Guild Wars 2

There are lots of valid reasons for people to be able to zoom in to a first-person point of view. Among them: Preventing “crazy camera” when using large characters in areas with low ceilings, taking screen captures without your toon in the way, and being able to look way UP at things without your toon blocking the view.

In the video below, Matt Wuerffel talks about how they automatically change the Field of View for Boss fights, zooming out so you can see more of the action when a huge bad guy appears. Devon Carver then says that the biggest problem they are having with instituting a First Person camera is because of the GW2 combat style… you lose vital perspective of where you are and what you’re facing, and where attacks are coming from.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gjo8MklCiLI

Now that I finally know what their problem is with First Person camera, it isn’t a hard solution at all. In the same way that they automatically adjust our zoom level when a Boss appears, why can’t they also automatically zoom us out of first person mode whenever we’re attacked?

For people who want a first-person-shooter experience, this won’t do any good, and from what Devon said it doesn’t look as if it’ll ever be instituted anyway because of the combat issues. But couldn’t this be done to solve those other problems? Simply take us out of first person view when in combat. (FPS is actually rarely mentioned when I see a thread asking for a First Person camera. If that is all that is keeping them from implementing it, then just take it out of the equation!)

NOTE: Taking damage from a fall should NOT zoom us out of first person. Some JP’s have natural long drops intentionally. (Along the same lines, falling damage or poision air, etc. should not make Ranger pets un-stow either. The game needs to differentiate between attack damage and environmental damage).

EDIT: If First Person view were added, and ANet didn’t provide automatic zooming out in combat, what would it hurt? How hard is it to scroll your mouse wheel out manually so you can see your surroundings to fight? We did it all the time in GW1. They’re over-thinking it.

I think their reasoning is that it has to be a different “mode” of view. Unlike zooming out which is literally just placing your camera further back, you can’t just place your camera further in. You’d actually want to stop rendering your own model, but then you wouldn’t see your animations which would be detrimental. Additionally, how would they deal with rolling, spinning, and all sorts of other wonky animations that make your head (and eyes) move all over the place.

Ignoring that, and assuming they just make you look forward. They still have to re-do a lot of the animations so you can see while in FPmode or figure out a way to work them on the clients.

Tl;dr: Lots of work for QoL which is not something that happens unless directly related to $ in the current game industry.

I dunno all the tech involved in doing it, but apparently they already have first person camera… they just aren’t happy with the way it works in combat. So I say take combat out of the equation completely by forcing a zoom-out.

Either that, or just give it to us as-is, and let us know that it isn’t a recommended mode for combat. That way there’s almost zero time and effort involved to give us a little of that quality-of-life improvement.

I pretty much play my norn everytime I log in and idc the reasoning I still want first person view. Idt there’s any low ceiling area where you rly have to pay attention to the ground except maybe cm. but if there was 1st person I’d have an easier time in cm. I mainly want the feature for screenshots anyway. I remember reading somewhere back when the game first came out, the lack of first person view was because they want to emphasize the idea that the game is all about your character, your character is the hero blah blah blah. If that were the reason, it’d be a rediculous reason. Just implement it already, it’d take 5min.

sanedude.9450:

I pretty much play my norn everytime I log in and idc the reasoning I still want first person view. Idt there’s any low ceiling area where you rly have to pay attention to the ground except maybe cm. but if there was 1st person I’d have an easier time in cm. I mainly want the feature for screenshots anyway. I remember reading somewhere back when the game first came out, the lack of first person view was because they want to emphasize the idea that the game is all about your character, your character is the hero blah blah blah. If that were the reason, it’d be a rediculous reason. Just implement it already, it’d take 5min.

Listen to this guy, ANet! This dude is sane!

I HOPE they don’t think we want a skyrim or TESO first person view. Hell no. I just want the camera to pass trough my head so I can see with the eyes of an asura/human/charr/norn so to take screenshots and videos. Without hands or movements.

Just a simple, plain floating camera that you can get into like in gw1 that allows you to see the worlds. Nothing complicated, nothing strange. I’m sure a modder could do that in a day.