Guild Wars 2

HHR LostProphet.4801:

I want first person camera. I don’t care if it’s broken or not or if I don’t “get a feeling for my character”, I only want to use it in PvE anyways. You could also add a way to see parts of your body, even if you’re in first person mode, just like the most FPS games have (speaking of legs, chest, arms, weapons and such).
On a side note: In the glorious “Real Life”, I’m bound to use first person camera and I think I have a good feeling for my “character”.
The first person mode doesn’t has to be perfect. I just want to use it to explore the world on a new level.

This is the single most important thing I want to see in the game, and we know there is a perfectly usable first-person camera that has already been implemented in the code. Even better would be the ability to simply scroll into our character’s head. You could allow us to dolly closer to our characters, and vanish the character when it gets to a certain point. This is so basic, it still baffles me to think it is not in the game.

I also would like to agree with the suggestion to, as we can move the camera position horizontally, it would be nice if we could move the camera vertically. And the ability to move both farther in either direction than is currently possible would be wonderful as well. Currently, I absolutely hate the camera position for norn and asura characters. A little latitude would make me more comfortable in their skins.

And of course, the ability to change the field of view would be wonderful also. That is becoming more and more common, and some people have some serious problems with fields of view that feel wrong to them. I don’t understand that, and I don’t know how prevalent that problem is, but anything that helps people is welcome.

But, everything, absolutely everything, pales in comparison to the need for a first-person camera.

Branden Gee.2150:

Firstly I want to thank all of you for very clear and well thought out constructive feedback it is always a pleasure interacting with players.

Secondly I would like to reiterate that me posting on this thread does not mean that changes to the camera will or will not happen either now or in the future of GW2 development. Please assume everything in this post is purely hypothetical.

I know that your being here is a not a guarantee of these things being done, but simply the fact that you are speaking with us on the issue means a very great deal. This is the first time I’ve ever seen anyone from ArenaNet communicate rationally with players about this issues. Or the first time since this, and that is absolutely wonderful. Just knowing that someone at the company has heard and seems to care what we think.

Demand better zoom out. (One tick would be lovely)
Maybe keep wvw how it is… But seriously was the camera just recently changed within the past 2 months? I’ve returned(And its not a settings issue) And I feel… More zoomed in,more 3d effect on other characters around mine. I hate it. F**ks with my eyes man…

Branden Gee.2150:

So for the first technical challenge, how could we get this to work when the camera doesn’t know what ‘ground’ is.

Does the camera know what angle the center of the screen is pointing towards is compared to the axis that is “the ground”? If yes, then under or over a certain angle the point of view could be elevated. I see a pretty big issue with this however. Currently your view being blocked by walls stops you from shooting an AC all over the place. Wouldn’t such a change cause problems with that? Also could allow people to look at things maybe they shouldn’t be looking? Not sure how maps are designed in this sense.

Could we have an option for disabling the camera acceleration feature please? It makes the game feel very sluggish and unresponsive compared to other games.

I’ll take anything that fixes the broken camera that causes it to bounce of objects and constantly zoom in and out on jumping puzzles. It makes some of the game inaccessible for my large Norn warrior, see jumping puzzles and anything that require intricate jumping, as you can’t see anything but a closely zoomed in wall/object.

It’s the same for indoors combat too, anything where you have to fight in a confined space is an absolute nightmare.

Leodious.5671:

But, everything, absolutely everything, pales in comparison to the need for a first-person camera.

I disagree. The game’s low FoV is the much bigger issue. It’s something that can cause motion sickness and even prevent people from playing the game.

Tachyon.5897:

I’ll take anything that fixes the broken camera that causes it to bounce of objects and constantly zoom in and out on jumping puzzles.

Yes, this is my biggest problem with the camera. Whenever I’m walking up some hills or whatever and there are little rocks in the way, the camera is zooming in/out constantly and jumping around. It is super annoying and very distracting.

I would like that instead of the camera jumping in/out, the smaller objects instead get a little bit of opacity so you can see through them. I believe this would alleviate most of the problems and make the experience a lot smoother.

Hi Brandon,

lately I’ve started taking screenshots but I had to use some tricks to get the right angles. Using the box of chocolate to shrink works great for fake first person.

Being able to zoom in and out more would help a lot. If you don’t want to implement a true first person view, could you consider turning the player character completely invisible when zooming in real close? The ghost face we have now is a bit strange.

The shifted position of the camera works well when zoomed in but it is barely noticeable from afar.

It might be nice to increase the individual steps one can zoom, maybe 1/3 more. It shouldn’t make much of a difference when zooming fast but could help adjusting the angle when you’ve got more time.

The Dragon fights and LS boss encounters feel so good because it is one of the few times the player gets to see what I would consider a very nice viewing distance for much of the open world content, it’s a liberating experience, almost.

picture 1 – left/right positioned camera works great when zoomed in, although I had to force the camera on top of the pedestal there to get the right distance. regular zoom was too far or too close, I moved the character instead.

picture 2 – needed to get the camera on top of a surface right in front of me to get this close but I think this could be the max zoom? maybe a bit further out to guarantee great visuals

picture 3 – chocolate that shrinks you, how anti chocolate but still great

picture 4 + 5 – with chocolate shrinking and without

picture 6 – when closing in on the water surface, the camera zooms in rapidly, do you think you could lower that hit box? Camera position left/right neglectable.

Would be nice if the camera shift was more noticeable when zoomed out. Also move the camera up or down as mentioned by others.

Crazy idea though…why not let the camera go underwater? could you elaborate on how the camera change from land to underwater happens? It’s a great animation and has this “wow” effect when the underwater world pops in.

I can’t participate in the tech talk, just wanted to add what issues I encountered.

I believe that enhancing the camera would go a long way in enhancing the overall Guild Wars 2 experience since it is the main feature that carries all visuals.

thank you!

This is gonna be hard in english… lets try:
Sometimes i break out of the maps and i find interesting behaviour on map textures. The same “piece of paper” (let’s call it that way) gets a solid texture from one side, so you are actually seeing a wall, but if you go around and watch that very same “piece of paper”… well, it’s invisible. That allows me to see everything on the other side of the “piece of paper” allowing the camera to see in a directiong where there’s something solid.

That gave me 2 ideas:
- Could it be possible to place cameras inside walls, but allowing the player to see everything in the other side as if there was no wall?
- If that happens, could it be possible to just “gray out” a bit the screen when the camera is inside a wall/object/something and you are watching throught it? Otherwise it could be confusing.

Not sure if that would solve something, just my though.

Edit: More thoughs.
Does the different colours on that picture surface matters for the camera system? I mean, would it be possible to make a surface with collision only for the camera but invisible for everyone else? I guess it’s because i’ve seen invisible walls in lot of places and they’re annoying for the camera. Maybe playing a bit with that could help to fix the issue.

Elrey.5472:

This is gonna be hard in english… lets try:
Sometimes i break out of the maps and i find interesting behaviour on map textures. The same “piece of paper” (let’s call it that way) gets a solid texture from one side, so you are actually seeing a wall, but if you go around and watch that very same “piece of paper”… well, it’s invisible. That allows me to see everything on the other side of the “piece of paper” allowing the camera to see in a directiong where there’s something solid.

That’s backface culling – polygon faces only need to be rendered from one side when it’s expected they’ll only be viewed from that side. Problem is some faces will remain visible to the camera unless the object is strictly convex, so they will still obscure parts of your view.

Some game engines turn objects invisible when they impede the camera view. Perhaps this might help in Troll’s End etc., but it means you’ll see a lot more backfaces in some places.

Thanks Brandon, that’s very interesting about the target point offset when you look up/down. One suggestion I have is to try varying the target point based not just on the angle of the camera, but also based on the distance of the camera from the character. As an example of the impact this can have, see the screenshots attached.

1st – Gives you an idea of the location – Divinities Reach slope.

2nd – When looking up the slope and moving the camera upwards, this is about as close as you can get before the target starts to move, leading to 3rd and 4th as the character drops down off the screen. At no point does the character overpower the screen.

5th – Looking down the slope instead – Move the camera upwards, leading to 6th, 7th, and 8th – camera still pointing into head of character, even though it’s massive and beginning to ghost out. 9th – character finally dropping out of frame.
as target moves.

Because the target point offset is based on the camera angle relative to the horizontal, the slope of the terrain massively affects the end result. A downward slope pushes the camera that much closer to the character before the offset kicks in, leading to screen-full-of-character-itis. If the calculation took the actual distance from the character to the camera into account as well, then maybe the effect could be normalized to somewhere in the middle, regardless of the terrain?

Right, time for bed, I will ponder the Smart Pivot some more when I am awake :-)

(As an aside, while playing around making screenshots for this, I realised that the “character obscuring camera” issue is generally rather better than I remembered it being during normal play. I vaguely recall getting all excited about the Boss camera being improved a while back (Feature Pack 1?), so it’s quite possible it happened at the same time and I was too busy getting on with playing to realize :-)

Well… why not start from the simplest suggestions? Why start from smart pivot.

(a) Taking character out should be as simple as not rendering her. No change to the camera.

(b) Sleep/sit: as I don’t know what the current implementation is, I would like to say that there is no need to tie the look-at/pivot point to emotions; just to the used character pose. Character goes down at knockout too.

(c ) James Blinn published a paper on Nested Transformations and Blobby Man; I implemented camera from it. The camera code has a look-at point which around the camera rotates, and has a point where that look-at point lies on the screen, and has distance between look-at and the camera. Does the screen point need to be in the center of screen, making terrain more visible than wished?

(d) I like that I’m able to see my mesmer’s undies. That is perfect now.

One thing I would definitely want to see changed is the FOV, and the constant zooming. Especially during jumping puzzles it is very annoying how the camera constantly zooms in and out when it collides with anything. And due to the strange FOV settings, I feel like my eyes are being pressed against the screen. Ease on the FOV a little, and we’ll see a lot more of the environment, plus it will be a lot easier on the eyes. A large reason why the current camera settings make players nauseous, is because of the weird FOV settings. Alternatively, allow us to change the FOV ourselves. I’ve seen screenshots of players who experimented by forcing GW2 to assume a different FOV (which probably is not approved by Anet, but what ever), and the game looks so much better. You see so much more of the world, and it’s way easier to look at.

To illustrate the zooming problem, see this entertaining video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PegX3QH-gy0

Different FOV:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhCF_jusNRo

I will note that the FOV thing is a two-edged sword. Certain FOV settings could give you an unfair advantage in competitive play, while others are completely reasonable, since the game currently is very strenuous on the eyes.

I find myself avoiding jumping puzzles because the constant zooming makes me a bit dizzy.

Branden Gee.2150:

Alright just trying to get all of these thoughts into a single concise list. (Please note this does not mean that any of these things will happen)

I would prefer that developers would look at the list in order from simplest to more difficult. I rate and comment the list entries. I’m not a know-it-all person, but know a little (not a disclaimer, but I do know only a little).

• First person camera

Can be as easy as making the distance between the camera and the character to zero. No change to code. Done it in my software this way.

• Increase max dolly (camera distance) distance
• Decrease min dolly distance

Both easy. The first is already done automatically in major boss events. The question is what to do when camera gets very close and how to do? Fading too early is not wanted. Jumping puzzles shows that the character should disappear completely. In FPV mode, when dolly distance is zero, the character must disappear. But devs should look at Skyrim camera mods which keeps the body and the weapons (they can now stare at their character’s chest). Simplest would be to make the character disappear
at some point.

• More finite dolly control

Easy. Changes to key and pointer motion events, if done like in the editor of Skyrim. User holds a key down, and then moves mouse forward and backward to dolly. Coarse dolly as usual with mouse scroll.

• Manual camera height adjustment

Easy. Add a new slider to options dialog, next to horizontal adjustment.

• Manual FoV adjustment

Easy. Add a new slider to options dialog.

Note: I would prefer a semi-transparent HUD sliders for adjusting the pivot point (camera’s look-at point) and the FoV because the options dialog would hide the view.

Honestly, I don’t have anything to contribute other than my sincere thanks for listening and hope (like everyone here) for alternate FoVs and 1st person camera.

In case you guys need to see more input on this and have missed the threads that crop up occasionally, all these reddit threads have 150+ upvotes:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2dwl46/about_first_person_view/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/yyin2/gw2_needs_a_first_person_camera_option/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/15yc6v/if_you_could_argue_the_case_to_anet_for_just_3/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1gcrat/how_are_we_supposed_to_enjoy_a_fireworks_show_if/

dev trigger warning (teasing- but this was when the kitten hit the fan about SAB, commander tags, and camera views) http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2dx5c9/i_feel_anet_has_lost_touch/

Branden Gee.2150:

…

If the camera detects a collision, it should check if the collision happened beneath the lowest point of the character hitbox. If so, the camera should stop rotating around the character but start to rotate around itself.

Or simply move the rotation point. Currently, the point the camera is rotating around (I’ll call it M) is somewhat where the head of the character should be. Call this the Player Centric Camera Movement. If you disable this, or move a slider, you can move the point M behind the character, so that the camera isn’t rotating around the character anymore but around a point behind the character.
Not the optimal but an easy implementation.

As a side note: Fix these kitten ugly and big hitboxes, they’re kitten ugly and way too big. Take Monster Hunter as example. That’s how you design hitboxes.

I’d like to mention my 2 biggest issues with the camera:

- bouncing zoom in and out if the camera hits a wall or pipe above my head
- looking upwards

If you divide between “add feature” and “fix annoyance”, then the above is the annoyance part – if you add anything else to the camera, I would consider it a feature, which is not so important as fixing an annoyance.

The “Looking upwards” problem can be seen if you fight the Claw of Jormag in its second stage. Try to hit the paw in melee while you try to see upwards to the head of the Claw to see the damage numbers that appear there. It’s impossible – the camera moves to your feet on the ground and you are only seeing floating clipped character textures from all of the other characters.

In this case, I wish the camera would lift itself up from the ground to above my head, giving me the possibility to look over my body and the bodies of the other players that obstruct the view.

I understand that in competitive play, it is probably undesirable that you may see more than it is intended – you may look behind stuff above you from the ground, while in reality you aren’t able to look behind it. But as long as you are not able to attack it, like it is currently, it is perhaps acceptable.

Speaking about the bouncing zoom, I could only guess on what to do. As I learnt, there is a ray traced from the camera to the object and/or character, and if it hits something on its way, you get the hit position. I assume, the camera is then repositioned to the hit position to avoid that the camera moves behind and inside walls and objects.

This results in the bouncing effect, if the next moment the hit position has vanished and the camera can go back to its original distance. Perhaps it is possible for the ray to try a few more camera positions before a final hit is reported.
If you find a hit on the first ray, predict the way the camera and the character will move for the next few frames and ray-trace these situations. If the hit is gone with these, don’t move the camera (zoom in) at all but let it go through whatever small pipe hit the camera.

I see a lot of good ideas here. I hope some of them get implemented because fighting with the camera isn’t near as much fun as fighting other things in the game.

I would be happy with an option to just turn off the auto adjustments. But being able to zoom out more would be even better

Did you change the crops? nice!

What else made it into the feature pack?

I’ve dabbled a bit in ArcheAge (or rather QueueAge) over the weekend, and the game has a very intriguing toggle in the menu called “Action Camera” (default) and “Classic Camera”. Classic Camera had a very Guild Wars 2 feel to it (somewhat constricted in terms of view) and switching to “Action Camera” made a remarkable improvement – and as far as I could see, it was basically an FoV adjustment.

In terms of camera height, I’m still convinced that a higher pivot is probably one of the key areas GW2’s camera could be improved remarkably (as an option obviously, if possible). The reason I say this is because:

I personally feel a lot more comfortable playing GW2 characters with “higher” views. Norn and Charr have the highest pivot points. Most of my characters are norn female, because they take up less screen real-estate than norn males, and when you make them very short in character creator, the high camera pivot remains, which is great.

Humans and Sylvari are totally unplayable for me. I forced myself though the human storyline because of how well it was presented (and for nostalgia, having fine-combed GW2 pre-beta video’s of the only area we were allowed to see for a while, since 2010. lol). The pivot for the Asura is just too low … I sadly deleted my beloved little mad scientist to make room.

Anyhow, I hope this thread won’t die out! Thanks Branden for your kind words and participation. Attached, some old 2 year mock-ups from when these discussions first started. They’re still relevant, and I hope it makes sense.

Makovorn, those pictures are perfect examples of the two biggest problems with the camera. It is just in the wrong place for most people I have spoken to on this issue,, and for the reasons you describe. Obviously it should be an option to change it, and not another thing forced on people who don’t want a change.

If they could fix this and the collision jerkiness problems, they would have a camera nearly as good as every other camera in every other game I’ve ever played. And if they added scrolling in/out first person view, again like every other RPG ever, then I would feel okay about it, I think.

But I’ve nearly given up hope that anything substantial will be done with regard to the camera issues.

Branden Gee.2150:

Updating the list and necroing the thread all in one go!

(Please note this does not mean that any of these things will happen)

• First person camera
• Increase max dolly (camera distance) distance
• Decrease min dolly distance
• More finite dolly control
• Automatic camera height adjustment on /sleep emote
• Manual camera height adjustment
• Stop ‘random snapping’ from happening
• Look at camera
• Free orientation movement
• Fix automatic camera height so that the over the shoulder camera works as it would be expected to work
• Manual FoV adjustment
• Look acceleration toggle
• Keep drawing mouse cursor when right clicking toggle
• Keybind toggle for holding right mouse down / click once to toggle option

Please let me know if there is anything else I’m missing.

Have you considered adding something like we saw with the Action Mod? Where the there is a cross hair for letting us know where skills will target? I know the mod is frowned on, but from what I have seen of it, I liked it alot.

munkiman.3068:

It’d be really nice if the camera worked like it does in GW. That would solve a lot of issues with the camera.

This. A million times this.
And more.

Marvelous that this problem is finally getting the attention it deserves.

(as suggested by Randulf.7614 for me to post this here – thank you)

As some of you will be aware, you can take pictures within Guild Wars 2 by switching off the interfaces and identifying information above characters and objects so only the landscape itself is shown and that makes it possible to take great screen captures. However, when I’m making screen captures I often have to hide my own character and I achieve this in a number of ways. When on land I stand near to a solid wall and then type /sleep to get my character as low as possible then pan the camera around until it is where I want it.

In water I do the same thing but obviously under water cannot hide my character which is most irritating, but if I want to take an image of something from the water and above it, it takes careful maneuvering to put my character just below the surface to achieve a clean shot. But as you might imagine, there is only so much you can do with the POV camera which is centered on your character. Years ago I beta tested a virtual world called Second Life and one of the nicer ideas in SL was that you could move the camera around independently of the character, simply by moving it to a point relative to the character and then zooming into it, and then if you wished, moving to another point and doing the same – all without moving the character itself.

Such was SL that with suitable points which could be clicked on, I could maneuver the freelook camera almost anywhere and doors and walls ceased to be a problem as I could now bypass them to see what was inside. I would like to propose that Guild Wars 2 have such a system introduced as an additional option. It would not be that hard to implement and could be selected by simply pressing a key (toggle) on the keyboard which switches the camera from following the character to FREELOOK mode. An additional option would be for the character itself to be toggles to visible/invisible but only to the user of that character. For everyone else it would be visible in world. I would be interested in hearing what other users think.

Varezenem.2813:

Branden Gee.2150:

(5) Camera orientation changing seems like it would be very jaring when in combat. I would be curious to hear your ideas for a control scheme for this.

(5b) Would this be like a ‘lock on target’ look-at?

I believe this one was well implemented in Perfect World (I might be wrong) where you could freely control the camera within a certain range of your character. This should be deactivated for PvP (anyways it used to be used for Videos and SS).

Well this video is old but should give a decent idea of what I’m talking about.

Grimno’s Video

Hahahaha that video reminded me of this one, diff game same style. Eve Hell

could we please get an update on if/when the defeated forced camera pan regression is going to be fixed? I find it infuriating to the point that I don’t want to play the game at all.

I’m not the only one:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Death-Downed-Camera
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Camera-moves-when-you-are-dead
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Please-re-fix-the-Death-Camera
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Camera-Auto-pan-after-death
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Downed-state-camera-is-now-rotating-again
…plus others…

Branden Gee.2150:

The death cam spinning bug should be fixed. It will go out at some point.

That is great to hear! Thank you for your hard work and responses. It is appreciated very much.

If you have a moment and are able to, could you also comment on if the issue of the downed-state camera zooming in completely upon being downed is or will be corrected again as well please?

Branden Gee.2150:

The death cam spinning bug should be fixed. It will go out at some point.

thanks for the update, i(we) really appreciate it.

> First person perspective. (Immersive, cool and it enables Oculus Rift)

> Ability to zoom out further (Think this isn’t in the game because of the game’s combat philosophy. Although, perhaps letting the player choose for themselves is the best? A zoomed out view lets you have a better overview, but you can’t see animations as well)

Phadde.7362:

> First person perspective. (Immersive, cool and it enables Oculus Rift)

> Ability to zoom out further (Think this isn’t in the game because of the game’s combat philosophy. Although, perhaps letting the player choose for themselves is the best? A zoomed out view lets you have a better overview, but you can’t see animations as well)

Zoom out might have more to do with PvP, especially WvW.

What I would like to see is higher res screenshots, ignoring the current screen resolution and always rendering in 4k (for instance), or an option to take max quality screenshots without manually changing settings.

Or custom presets.

would be great for Arenanet as well if players post these kinds of screenshots instead of using medium or high settings for screenshots?

frame drops are gonna be severe but unless you take several screenshots in a row, it shouldn’t bother too much.

might be a bit discouraging for players with lowest spec pcs?

Branden Gee.2150:

Alright just trying to get all of these thoughts into a single concise list. (Please note this does not mean that any of these things will happen)

• First person camera
• Increase max dolly (camera distance) distance
• Decrease min dolly distance
• More finite dolly control
• Automatic camera height adjustment on /sleep emote
• Manual camera height adjustment
• Stop ‘random snapping’ from happening
• Look at camera
• Free orientation movement
• Fix automatic camera height so that the over the shoulder camera works as it would be expected to work
• Manual FoV adjustment
• Look acceleration toggle
• Keep drawing mouse cursor when right clicking toggle

Please let me know if there is anything else I’m missing.

Edit: Added more features to list.

This is it man! The most important things about camera control:

1. Manual FOV adjustment,

2. Manual camera height adjustment – Put camera orientation on the character head not on the character middle back. In current state when i zoom in, the character take whole screen and i can’t see anything – only his back. So please move camera up on head like in every other 3rd person game. I would be very happy if camera position and FOV are like in The Secreet World, or make this slider for manual adjustment,

3. Stop random snapping from happening – i think this is the thing when some item is standing between player character and camera, than camera goes crazy and zooms fast to character back., and again because camera position i cant see kitten thing. But if the camera is centered on character head or if we had FPS camera this would not happen.

4. And ofc first person camera!

This are the 4 most important things you should do about camera fix.

neneza.6954:

Branden Gee.2150:

Alright just trying to get all of these thoughts into a single concise list. (Please note this does not mean that any of these things will happen)

• First person camera
• Increase max dolly (camera distance) distance
• Decrease min dolly distance
• More finite dolly control
• Automatic camera height adjustment on /sleep emote
• Manual camera height adjustment
• Stop ‘random snapping’ from happening
• Look at camera
• Free orientation movement
• Fix automatic camera height so that the over the shoulder camera works as it would be expected to work
• Manual FoV adjustment
• Look acceleration toggle
• Keep drawing mouse cursor when right clicking toggle

Please let me know if there is anything else I’m missing.

Edit: Added more features to list.

This is it man! The most important things about camera control:

1. Manual FOV adjustment,

2. Manual camera height adjustment – Put camera orientation on the character head not on the character middle back. In current state when i zoom in, the character take whole screen and i can’t see anything – only his back. So please move camera up on head like in every other 3rd person game. I would be very happy if camera position and FOV are like in The Secreet World, or make this slider for manual adjustment,

3. Stop random snapping from happening – i think this is the thing when some item is standing between player character and camera, than camera goes crazy and zooms fast to character back., and again because camera position i cant see kitten thing. But if the camera is centered on character head or if we had FPS camera this would not happen.

4. And ofc first person camera!

This are the 4 most important things you should do about camera fix.

On number 2, “The ability to put camera orientation on the character’s head…”

I like the camera further down, because I want to be able to see my character’s fancy stuff sometimes when I’m running around. I’d like the ability to move it lower.

This has been on on-going gripe from almost day one, i guess we can be glad that it’s something we can hopefully look forward to addressing. “The worst camera in any 3d game ever” i hear a lot, especially with platforming as part of the gameplay.

Branden Gee.2150:

The death cam spinning bug should be fixed. It will go out at some point.

This brings me back to the days in RODE. (Not the part where it’s getting fixed.)

Not completely sure if it fits in, but since you mentioned this

• Keep drawing mouse cursor when right clicking toggle

it possibly does: Add an option for highly visible mouse cursors.

Is the harsh camera zoom when encountering walls/obstacles covered anywhere? Would love transparency on objects/walls or something to help with that.

Branden Gee.2150:

(Please note this does not mean that any of these things will happen)

I didn’t understand that particular part, but the rest of your post was AWESOME!
This thread got me really excited now!

Branden Gee.2150:

Shockwave.1230:

Is the harsh camera zoom when encountering walls/obstacles covered anywhere? Would love transparency on objects/walls or something to help with that.

This is covered by “Stop ‘random snapping’ from happening”. It’s actually a pretty interesting issue due to how guild wars 2 handles objects in the world. In order to do something like transparency you would need some way to either ‘tag’ objects as being able to be transparent or detect in real time that the objects can be ignored. To go back and tag each individual object in each map would take quite a long time and there is the possibility that some things could be missed or other objects end up getting tagged that shouldn’t have been.

Fortunately, the easy workaround for this would be a first person cam. This is at its most annoying when doing JP’s in tight corridors. First person camera for those would eliminate the terrible camera issues without devs having to tag objects for transparency. Win/win for devs and community.

Branden Gee.2150:

Shockwave.1230:

Is the harsh camera zoom when encountering walls/obstacles covered anywhere? Would love transparency on objects/walls or something to help with that.

This is covered by “Stop ‘random snapping’ from happening”. It’s actually a pretty interesting issue due to how guild wars 2 handles objects in the world. In order to do something like transparency you would need some way to either ‘tag’ objects as being able to be transparent or detect in real time that the objects can be ignored. To go back and tag each individual object in each map would take quite a long time and there is the possibility that some things could be missed or other objects end up getting tagged that shouldn’t have been.

Or maybe we could have an alternative, tag only the player character as being able to go transparent. I have no idea how easy or hard it would be, but for example, currently when the camera “bumps” into a wall or something the camera can snap to a point where we lose all visibility, all we see is wall and our character’s back, making it hard to see which way we can walk to move away from the wall or even if there’s something else blocking us from doing that (which is bad for PvE, but can mean the difference between winning and losing in PvP) .

The way I’d see it working (no idea how easy or hard it would be) is that once the camera reaches a certain distance from the character model (either from player input or pushed by an obstacle) the character starts becoming transparent, the closer the camera is, the more transparent the player character is, and once it reaches an even closer threshold, the camera moves to where the PC model’s head is and the character becomes completely transparent (invisible), AKA, first person mode, until it moves away from whatever obstruction caused it in the first place. At least that’s how I’ve seen it work in other games, but granted, the ones I’ve played that have done that are single player, no real idea whether the fact that you’re playing online makes it harder to implement or not.

all I want is to be able to zoom out a little more, the gw1 zoomout was great. It would be immensely helpful for world events, wvw and pvp.

also sidenote, making the mouse cursor more visibile, especially with all the particle effects and mass of people on the screen, would be a huge benefit

All I want at this point is the defeated camera to be fixed. I don’t want it to move after I move it to stop it from spinning.

Lotsa options. People prefer different camera. The current camera is ok. Just needs more options.

Looking up: At Tequatl and Jormag, I would toggle the option to raise the camera above all’s heads. But when taking screenshots, I would keep the existing one, or even lower the pivot point. As dev said, the camera is already complex when player looks down or up. When player looks up, the pivot moves above and offcenter, or? An addition would be to simultaneously shorten the distance to pivot point, even to 0 when pivot is above the head. Then Jormag would do fine.

Branden Gee.2150:

Updating the list and necroing the thread all in one go! (Please note this does not mean that any of these things will happen)
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Please let me know if there is anything else I’m missing.

Looks good to go. You know how important element the view-customization is.
Different playstyles/roles need different settings.
Personally, I’m keeping my camera total close to my Ranger with a horisontally slided setting, so its kind of ~centered just above the shoulder. This makes Longbow combat feel more focused.

P.s.: If there will be an FPS view, keep in mind that standard mouse-wheel zoom will need a “dual stage” setting that stops the zoom at minimal TPS (stage 1) – then next zooming forvard applies the FPS view.