Guild Wars 2

I remember back when i first saw the game, one of the things that really drew my attention was the detail in the world, the amazing architecture and the incredible views of waterfalls and terrain. I imagined leveling a character and then just stop and be able to zoom in and take a look at the village in the distance from the top of a hill, and then just sit there and enjoy the view. I imagined spending hours, just walking around the world looking at Divinity’s Reach, Lion’s Arch, and all the other incredible cities and views. When i finally got to play in the first Beta Weekend, the first thing i did after creating my Human Thief was trying to zoom in to go first person and look at the view of Shaemoor.. I can still remember how disappointed i felt at that moment. Such a beautiful view and no ability to watch it in full screen… I thought to myself ”This is just a Beta, they’re gonna add this at some point… They have to”… They didn’t.

Today i was, for the first time in my long time of playing the game, walking around, with my camera position at the furthest right it could go, on my little Asuran Ranger, exploring and looking at the beautiful city of Lion’s Arch. That was the moment i realized how badly this game needs a first person mode.

Earlier this week i actually downloaded the demo version of the original Guild Wars, as i love the GW2 lore and wanted to know more. (I ended up dropping the idea, as the questing gameplay had become old when Guild Wars 2 was released, but that’s another story.) The important thing is that i walked around Ascalon City and Ashford Abbey for a bit in first person mode, and i was amazed by the experience! Even with those simple structures! And then i found this spot in Lakeside County, on the edge of the road, just north of that little village, looking at the view of the village on the right and the amazing waterfalls in the background. THAT was incredible. And again, with those simple structures. Imagine how unbelievable it would look in Guild Wars 2!

At that point i was really curious. Why the heck, if i get a that amazing experience by looking at Guild Wars 1 with first person mode, do we not have that feature in Guild Wars 2! What were ArenaNet thinking!? I started Googling, and i found this old forum thread, back from June 2012, taking about a First Peroson Camera mode in the settings that was obviously later removed. And one of the reply’s said that ”ArenaNet doesn’t want a First Person view because they like us to be intimately familiar with our player’s backside.” What the heck!? THAT can’t be the reason they wasted all those resources creating such a beautiful world, but not allowing the player to fully enjoy it! And if they are afraid that people will play in first person they already have a fix for that in-game: The way the game is played! It would be almost impossible to coordinate in a fight against 5 centaurs, and placing the huge AoE circles in first person. And the ability to look around corners and over walls in 3rd person has huge benefits, so i believe nobody would play the whole game in first person mode!

So please ArenaNet! Change your mind and give us that First Person mode to let us enjoy the incredibly beautiful world you have created!

Thank you!

/Gammarik

Sorry for the long post, i just wanted to get every aspect i had into the post I’d love to hear what you guys think, and maybe, together, we can change ArenaNet’s mind!

I want FP mode so I can get a close up of there face (or shoulder piece) while standing in front of them rather than behind them so the POV is in their face (I’m not bumping bums, I simply wanted a close up).

First person camera has been a requested feature ever since the public got it’s hands on GW2 more than a year ago now. There are a few problems ArenaNet would have to get around:

• Firstly, they’d have to figure out how to make your character model “disappear” from your view when you zoom in, so that you don’t see ugly, fragmented clipped textures and half-rendered arms. With Guild Wars 2’s combat mechanics as it is, the best option would probably be a different set of rendered arms (a la ‘The Elder Scrolls Online’) for FPV

• Secondly, they’d have to find a way to adjust the camera height. There are very, very few games that actually gets this right. You zoom into first person view and what do you see … a beautiful world as seen through your characters bellybutton!?. The overall camera height in this game (the center point or pivot) is IMHO way too low as it is, even in 3rd person view.

• Thirdly, there is a question of time & resources. It’s been 9 months since the game has been released. At this point, it’s safe to say the devs’ simply doesn’t care for features such as this, or they don’t care to give it any priority over what they need to do in terms of new content.

This is always been a bit of a pickle in my view … why even create new content if one can’t get the fundamental issues with the camera (and oh, there are MANY issues) right? The only answer I can think of, is that players just don’t complain enough about it to get the devs’ attention. It’s always going to be an issue of a strong vocal minority unfortunately.

Maybe one of these years we’ll actually get a straight-up answer from the devs’ concerning the camera issues … but yeah, 9 months after, I’m not holding my breath. I love this game dearly, but painful truth is painful.

As long as it’s optional, I don’t see why not (though I would never use it, because it would make things like jump puzzles even harder.)

On the subject of JPs, I wish there was a way to change settings so there was NO auto-zoom at all when close to the walls. It’ an artificial, technical mechanic that gets in the way of both combat and puzzles, making things more difficult than they should be.

I wish there was first person view so I could easily make more guild wars 2 machinimas

Star Ace.5207:

As long as it’s optional, I don’t see why not (though I would never use it, because it would make things like jump puzzles even harder.)

On the subject of JPs, I wish there was a way to change settings so there was NO auto-zoom at all when close to the walls. It’ an artificial, technical mechanic that gets in the way of both combat and puzzles, making things more difficult than they should be.

Certain auto-zooms are unfortunately necessary, because without them, the camera (and your view as a player) would simply clip through the artificial visual barriers such as mountain sides, cliffs, walls etc. Beyond those barriers, there’s nothing worth seeing but ugly game geometry – it breaks immersion.

However, there are ways they should be able to turn camera collision off for certain objects (that doesn’t need to provide such a visual barrier) – things like trees, pillars, rocks, ground clutter etc. You see this often in MMO’s, most recently, Neverwinter, where collision exists for your character, but not necessarily the camera, allowing the camera to gracefully move through objects while they soft-transition out and back into your view.

At the moment, GW2’s camera collides with almost everything and very ungracefully, making it rather uncomfortable to play. Coming back to first person camera and your comment on it being optional – you’ve hit the nail on the head here. IMHO, we should really have choices like these (similar to a choice of FoV and camera height). It is not impossible for ArenaNet to give us these choices, I just don’t think it’s on their agenda, which makes me sad.

I’d happily sacrifice the 15-20 in-game hours it took me to do Flame and Frost, and have the devs’ divert some of the considerable time it took them to produce this content (which will indecently be gone and forgotten in a few days) for something more permanent (and IMHO essential) such as fixes for the camera and more camera options.

A FoV slider that includes first person would be amazing. My wife is still suffering migraines/nausea post FoV patch. Is there any hope to us getting a FoV slider ingame to get a nice FoV 90? She still can’t play more than 20mins without suffering for it and she desperately wants to at least finish the game.

I just First-Person view, so it’ll give ANet the incentive to add Oculus Rift support to Guild Wars 2… (>_>) ’ ’ ’