Guild Wars 2

Now that we’re getting a first person camera, I’d just like to put out there that this option would be nice to have. No, I don’t mean a full-fledged FPS/Elder Scrolls first person mode with properly positioned arms and their own attack animations. I know that would take a lot of extra work. I’m just talking about a box we can check to have the game draw our character model while we’re in first person mode, and maybe to make sure that the camera is placed in a position that allows us to see the front of our own torsos when we look down, rather than seeing inside of them. A few other MMO’s, such as Everquest 2, have offered this in the past. I wouldn’t think providing this as an option would require much extra work, and it’d be nice for those of us who want a bit more immersion, as well as those who might want to use the Oculus Rift in the future.

Yus. Do want…. to see down my rifle’s iron sights when firing.

I have from time to time wanted to take photographs of my own avatars and up until now this has meant positioning them close by a wall or other upright structure or object and carefully vectoring in the camera until the character is nicely represented. This is often an easy way (at the moment) to do as you wish, although I will admit that it seldom catches action poses as the character has to be at rest to do it.

I think you may be misunderstanding the purpose of this, Belenus. It isn’t for taking screenshots of an avatar up close. The purpose is to make it so that when actually playing the game in first person, our avatar is not invisible. In other words, when we look down, we see ourselves, and when we attack, we may see glimpses of our hands and weapons. This should be disabled by default, of course, because most people will simply want to use the first person camera for screenshots and filming purposes. For those who’d like to play with it, though, this would be a simple way to allow them to see their character while doing so. Like this:

I think I understand what implementation you are asking for. When the camera gets up close to the character there is a character fade/transparency effect so that you can see through your character.

We should be able to adjust the parameters for that feature so that we can completely turn it off. With this, the first person camera can catch glimpses of the character, either when animation moves character parts in front of the camera, or when you aim the camera in a way that that forces parts of the character to be in front of it.

A simple implementation may be odd/broken for first person, because the game is pretty loose with how the camera is facing in relation to the character’s facing, but it would still be nice to simply be able to turn off the character transparency.

On the other hand, increasing the sensitivity of the fade effect would be nice, since this effect seems to be inconsistent with larger characters (or perhaps it has to do with specific race/size combinations). With some characters, my camera can be zoomed in all the way, and my character has >80% opacity even though they take up half the screen.

Now that the new camera is in, I’m going to bring this one out again one more time, in the hope that a developer might see it and at least pass the thought along, even if it’s a long shot. I’d really like to have the option for the game to draw my character while in first person mode. It’d make actually playing in that mode fun, as opposed to simply using it for screenshots and video.

It’s simply not possible.

First, they’d have to render the character without a head. This would render a headless shadow on the ground. Creepy!

Second, a lot of animations would be impossible to follow with the camera. Spins and rolls, for example, would make anyone sick to the stomach within a few seconds.

Third, you can’t lock the camera on the character model. Well, you could, but just watch the insane amount of bobbing a character’s head does while running, or how much it rotates when standing still. That’s constant extreme camera shaking that would cause extreme motion sickness.

It sounds cool, but it would be awful. That’s why games make different models and animations for third person and first person. Well, except for Tribes 2, but the character animations were all designed with that in mind from the start.

I think it totally is possible, and something that would help future-proof the game, given the recent surge in VR displays.

The character does not need to be only partially rendered. You could render the whole character and position the camera in front of the characters face, with the character rotating as the camera rotates. Also, there is no problem with rendering just the arms and torso. That’s what elder scrolls games do, and it worked fine for them. Additionally the player’s shadow does not need to be rendered when in first person.

You don’t need to replace the animations to be exactly the same as third person. I use leaping death blossom on thief all the time in first person. Most people would rather see hands and daggers attacking that look cool, rather than just seeing nothing due to a completely transparent character.

Head bobbing and shaking can be eliminated by restricting how much the camera moves. Since head bobbing is predictable, aggressive camera movements can be isolated and removed in first-person.

It would be awesome to have a fleshed out first person view. With ESO, the developers originally planned to have a only a third person view, but when the community asked for a full first-person they added it in at the last minute, so that shows how a mmo designed for third person can have first person successfully integrated. If a real first person perspective was developed for GuildWars2, it would be well worth buying another expansion just for the increased immersion.

Since I would enjoy this as well, let’s try to get this noticed…

IMAGINE THE FIRST-PERSON E-SPORTS POTENTIAL! WOWZERS!
there isn't any. but e-sports.