Guild Wars 2

Hello.

I have recently bought the game and I really like it so far.

There’s one thing I really feel is important in recent 3D gaming is the quality of character animations. At the moment I think that the animations that do exist in the game are looking great, they are smooth, fluid and organic. It’s well done and characters usually don’t move too abruptly nor do they look like robots. With this said there’s one type of character animation that is simply lacking however. It’s not about modifying animations specifically, but merely about adding one type of animation, because at the moment it is simply not there.

I am referring to character’s body (torso and head mostly) rotation specifically when the character is not moving, idles and we (the player) rotate the camera left, right, up or down (or diagonally). When we do that specifically under that exact condition (when character idles but we rotate the camera) then I noticed that only the camera moves but the character does not “look” (“animates”) to where the camera is rotated (or where the camera “looks” at).

So that the character effectively remains still and only plays idling animations (stretching muscles, et cetera) even if we happen to be moving the camera (for example while holding down the right mouse click and rotating the camera while the character is not moving forward, backward or diagonally). I believe that adding such character animations would contribute to increase the already good overall organic and natural (for the most part) character animations set that do exist in the game.

Additionally, it would provide an extra visual “cue” for other players whom would happen to look at other players’ characters as to where the player himself or herself happens to be looking at while idling. So, for instance if I find myself in an occurring event with other players and happen to be idling for a brief moment (for example waiting while a wave of incoming enemies is about to be triggered) then other players whom might happen to look at my character would also see my character’s head/body movement correspond to my own camera movement.

That in turn could provide a visual cue as to where I happen to point my camera to, which might then convince another player to “guard” another entrance for an incoming wave. If I happen to look at an entrance to my left and the other player notices that, then perhaps (potentially) he/she might instead move further away to guard another entrance for the incoming waves of enemies. It’s very subtle of course and is not guaranteed to have such impact in actual game-play mechanics. But regardless of how adding such idling animations would “add” to the actual game-play itself I believe that adding such animations would certainly not “remove” anything from the game.

It would instead simply contribute to the attention to details and add to the believability and alleviate the reliance on suspension of disbelief. Since at the moment we might have to assume that the character is not always either idling or moving, but might also just happen to “look around” while idling and not just stretching muscles until the player decides to press movement keys on the keyboard.

I just wanted to add this suggestion for the developers to potentially consider it.

Thanks.