Guild Wars 2

After I ran this by an Arenanet employee in game the employee asked me to be sure to put this suggestion up in the forums because s/he felt that:

a) The idea would greatly improve the quality of play.
b) The implementation should, that is should, be easy and fairly painless.
c) It’s an idea that, once you think about it, actually is necessary for no-HUD play.

The idea is simply this:

1) With the HUD on the chat has, in OO coding terms, a “.visible” property. For some reason the ability to toggle the chat is dependant on what I can refer to as:

if (HUD.visible==“True”)

Why? Even without a HUD you should still be able to talk to other players. Speaking to each other is not an electronic enhancement the way a minimap or ground targeting circle is.

2) When the HUD is off there is no way to know if you are dieing. Really? Even if you took away all my character’s electronic enhancements that you see in the HUD I think the character would know if his arm was half chopped off and he needed to throw a heal. As it stands, wihtout the HUD you have no idea if you’re injured or not. Therefore, the health bar should be able to be toggled even if the HUD is off, just as the chat window should be.

Here are the reasons these things are needed and how they would make a positive difference:

- If I’m running around I personally prefer to use the M map and then actually look around at the landmarks to navigate, exactly the same way I have to navigate when I’m out for a hike in real life. This results in feeling as if I’m actually exploring a new place that I’ve never been instead of just running to the next POI or waypoint that I need for map completion.

- If I don’t have tags above the AI mobs then I have to open my eyes and look at everything to make sure I don’t stumble into a hornet’s nest and you know what?

I actually notice all the detail that went into the world of GW2. It’s really amazing how much people never notice when their heads are buried in a HUD and a minimap. Running around staring at the minimap may get you around quickly but you miss out on seeing a lot of things in the world that make you stop and say “Wow… WOW!”

Have you ever gone to NE Metrica province and looked up? Way, way up? Try it sometime. That’s the kind of thing you notice when you’re looking around instead of at a minimap.

The quality of the experience goes way, way up when I turn off the HUD and zoom in as much as I can… but the fact that I can’t communicate with anyone is worse than inconvenient. The fact that I don’t know when I’m hurt and need to use a heal is just absurd. After all, it would hurt to have my leg hacked off!

chat.visible should be usable regardless of the status of the HUD.visible variable and there should also be a Health.visible and it too would be able to be toggled regardless of HUD.visible’s state.

Thanks for reading this and I hope it’s as easy to implement as I believe it should be. (Hate that word “should”…. )

P.S. : Actually no, I’m not an RP’er. I’m a guy who has spent years navigating by sight as I explored thousands of acres of forest in real life. I found that the game has much the same feel if the HUD is off and I zoom in as much as possible. I like that feeling… and would use it as often as possible if only I could see the chat and my health.

Oh, and being able to zoom the camera all the way in to 0 would be great too. Come on, I know it’s possible… I already make it happen by standing next to a wall and rotating the camera and just want to be able to do it without being next to a wall.

Am I the 1,000,000th person to ask for a zoom to first person ability? If so, do I win a prize? :p

This game is designed from 3rd person perspective. First person would mean redoing major mechanics in the game. So the answer is probably not.

The HUD system is one of the better ones I have played, in any game. Could it be improved, yes, but what you are asking for is not possible with the current game design.

Dusty Moon.4382:

This game is designed from 3rd person perspective. First person would mean redoing major mechanics in the game. So the answer is probably not.

I’ve seen a video/screenshot somewhere (for the life of me, can’t remember where!) where there was an option in the settings to go to first person… so, I’d say it’s not that impossible…

About the HUD, I really like the idea!

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

Dusty Moon.4382:

This game is designed from 3rd person perspective. First person would mean redoing major mechanics in the game. So the answer is probably not.

I’ve seen a video/screenshot somewhere (for the life of me, can’t remember where!) where there was an option in the settings to go to first person… so, I’d say it’s not that impossible…

About the HUD, I really like the idea!

You can’t turn it off while playing – you can shrink it is all. The screen shot is cntrl+shift+H – they did not have the HUD off – only for screenshots.

There was a 3rd person MOD for first person play but you will get perma-banned for using it as A.Net does not allow mods to the game.

It’s nowhere near impossble, it’s called camera.zoom in most cases. It has a min value, all you need to do is reduce it to just above zero and then you’d get the same effect as if you stood next to a wall and rotated the camera so that it shoved into the character… and the character disappeared.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing else that would have to change at all. It’s one variable that is restricted by one minimum value and one maximum value. All you do is change the minimum value and let players zoom in on themselves until they can’t see themselves anymore.

Problem solved.

The chat is already able to be toggled. At worst if it’s a subcomponent of the overall HUD then it would need to be broken out and made into it’s own thing that was independant of the HUD (allowing it’s toggle to be completely independant) and that’s a whole lot easier than 95% of the things coming in the feature pack.

The hardest thing would be the health indicator…

If it were me, I’d just duplicate the chat so that there are 2 of the same thing (which is already able to be toggled) with one that’s in HUD on mode and another in HUD off mode. This re-use of the same code would greatly facilitate the process and make it easier to code. After that, I’d created a small graphic of a human silhouette that is all black and place it in the corner. At 100% health it’s color code is 0,0,0 and at 0% health the color code is 255,0,0 … then just use a % of heath variable to alter the color.

Nothing fancy, nothing too involved and that would make it 3 problems solved.

And CNTL-SHIFT-H turns my HUD on and off. It does not take a screen shot and I often run around with the HUD off. When I want a screen shot I have to use PRT-SCN … but like most people I do turn the HUD off for screen shots.

(Later edit: Okay, make the health fade from green to red with yellow in between. Whatever colors you like, the idea is pretty much the same.)

There was first person mode in the edge of the mists beta testing. I tried it out for a minute and it made me feel sick so I turned it back off and never tried it again.

Dusty Moon.4382:

This game is designed from 3rd person perspective. First person would mean redoing major mechanics in the game. So the answer is probably not.

The HUD system is one of the better ones I have played, in any game. Could it be improved, yes, but what you are asking for is not possible with the current game design.

Although you may be correct that it was designed with 3rd-person in mind (to ‘see’ your character gets customers involved more, associates them with their avatar more deeply), it is not ‘impossible’, nothing is impossible in computer programming

Merely moving the camera down and put it in front of the location of the eyes on the avatar, which is already pre-calculated based on height, placement of the head objects (eyes are their own objects in the game, not just panels), and with the floating-camera-in-front-of-the-head – BOOM, First Person.

I am #1,546,173,045,281 voter by the way of: PUT IN A FIRST PERSON POV OPTION!

And to be fair I think they key word here is, as TheTechnician said, “Option”.

No one should be forced into it. But neither should people be forced to not do it either.

I really do hope that the ability to zoom “all the way in” is one of the unadvertised changed in the feature pack. Fingers crossed…