Guild Wars 2

The intro of FPV and new camera features was a good step forward, but since it’s still in beta (at least i think it still is) i thought i suggest an option that would take it one step further, specifically when trying to take screenshots, not only of scenery, but also allowing better close-ups of your character.

GW2 has the most amazing detail in their armor and weapon/skins but even with the new camera, its impossible to take a really close-up shot of your character with the current set up and show off those details. It’s kinda shame really.

So I propose a Fly Camera!

Basically fly camera can be a /flycam command in the chat window when u want to switch to it. This would allow you to detach the camera from your character and freely fly around, take aerial panoramic shots and most importantly be able to close in/out from your character as much as you want. The sky is the limit literally.

Prior to playing gw1/2, I played an elder scrolls game called Oblivion for several years. It was released in 2006 and it had this camera feature u could activate by using the above mentioned command. It was amazing for taking screenshots.

When using fly camera. your character stands where u left them when you activated the camera so you don’t have control of your character, but rather, you have full control of the camera.

I don’t know how difficult it would be to include this feature in the current set up and gw2 in general, but if it’s not possible then at least tweak the existing camera so you have a better control of the zoom in/out.

At the moment, when zooming in, the camera jumps form where your character stands over there, where you can’t really see any fine detail of armor, face etc. The next turn of the cog on your mouse wheel shoots past your character and spins them in the opposite direction.

Even in Rift, the camera control is amazing. I can zoom in very close to my character and here are couple of examples of what i’m talking about. I could have zoomed in even closer than that too, but in gw2 I can’t do that without glitching my character in some way. I had really hoped with the changes to the camera the zoom would have improved but alas its kinda same as it always was, at least when it comes to closing in on our characters.

Plz devs plz make it happen. Thanks >3

I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but detaching the camera from the player like you’re talking about (as opposed to how it happens in the revenant hammer attack) is never going to happen in an MMO.

Finer control of the camera we have would be nice, but I’m not hopeful.

You actually can get some closeups now, though you may have to fiddle with toggling character height camera on/off and zoom your FoV way down and choose your vertical/horizontal offset and possibly stand on an edge of something if you want to see your feet. So it’s not on-the-fly.

(And because I cannot resist: play an asura, adjust camera to character height, go into first person face to face with a Norn. You should get a great shot of their fly).

You will never see a multiplayer game with any kind of pvp with such feature.

Donari.5237:

You actually can get some closeups now, though you may have to fiddle with toggling character height camera on/off and zoom your FoV way down and choose your vertical/horizontal offset and possibly stand on an edge of something if you want to see your feet. So it’s not on-the-fly.

(And because I cannot resist: play an asura, adjust camera to character height, go into first person face to face with a Norn. You should get a great shot of their fly).

Well, that’s my point isn’kitten that you have to go through all that just to try and take a close up shot. It shouldn’t be that difficult should it? You should be able to take a decent close up by default, not have to adjust all the camera settings just to take a shot, which may not suit your normal playstyle. Which then means you have to go back and forth through these settings every time you want to take close up shot.

It would be nice if in PvE, when you have completed a zone or instance you have the option (or an item – TP 1000 gems) that allows this. Imagine being able to create your own vista style fly by vids.

Sandpit.3467:

It would be nice if in PvE, when you have completed a zone or instance you have the option (or an item – TP 1000 gems) that allows this. Imagine being able to create your own vista style fly by vids.

When you think about it, they already have a fly camera with vista panning, the only difference would be to allow the player have it. But as i’ve said in my OP, if they can’t give fly cam they can at least tweak the existing one to give better functionality and options. the way it stands, it’s better than it was but still not quite good enough.

I mean check the 2 shots in my OP, then check the shot of my char from gw2. Tha’ts the closest i can get to it. Rift, a completely f2p game has a better camera than gw2 and it disappoints me that’s the case. gw2 was even released after Rift so it should have even better systems one would think.

You certainly can get closer than that. I took a series of closeups, I forget why — maybe for that “how old am I” thread — here are a couple of them. I had to toggle off “Use Character Height” and disable First Person so I didn’t keep slamming into that and rotating the character, then slide the FoV to low.