Guild Wars 2

Very well written

Signed

Thanks for the detailed write-up.

While the FoV doesn’t make me nauseous, I do feel like I can’t see enough of the world most of the time. Your point about aspect ratio made me resize my window in windowed mode, creating a significant letterbox, and that helped a great deal. The problem, of course, is that it shrinks everything to the point where I can barely read the text.

A wider FoV would be greatly appreciated, especially given how beautiful this game is. Funny that in recent times media is tending more and more toward a panoramic aspect ratio, but ANet has given us such a restrictive view of the awesome world they created.

Increasing the pan out distance on the camera, as you pointed out, is a bandaid that doesn’t really adress the problem, and it adds the problem that I can see even less detail on my toon, which is disappointing given the well designed armors and animations. I would love to get in a lot closer to my toon if I could see the world around him better.

Excellent post and it actually explained a few things that are happeing but I didn’t actually know why!

While I find the game playable I definitely feel that after the initial launch issues are resolved they need to address these, as you are right – In an action orienated combat game you really need to experience to be as smooth and precise as possible, especially a MMO as you already have latency to deal with.

They seem to have addressed the downed state close up camera so maybe there is hope they could rework the other camera issues..

One thing I would add to the list is that we have no control over the camera height, which leads to a very poor use of screen space.

Almost half the screen is showing the ground behind my character (which I don’t really care about), and all the action takes place in the upper half of the screen. This is bad enough as it is (forces us to pitch the camera down to avoid having our own character block the view, which means we’re looking at the ground most of the time), but it’s even worse when you consider that things such as your boons, conditions, skill cooldowns and range indicators are all at the bottom of the screen.

So we effectively have to keep looking at the top of the screen (to see the enemy), then at the bottom of the screen (to see the icons), and so on, which is very tiring.

For example, as a Guardian, a lot of my decisions depend on whether I have aegis or not. That should be displayed near my character, not on the opposite edge of the screen.

If there was a way to adjust the camera height (not rotation, the actual height of the camera pivot point, above the character’s head § ), we could see more of the world in front of our character and move the character itself closer to the action bar, which would put the enemies near the middle of the screen and would reduce the visual distance between the “action” and the icons on the UI.

§ – The pivot point currently seems to be on the ground in front of the character, which is the source of some camera issues, such as the “ping-pong” bug with Asura characters when they approach certain objects.

I really appreciate that you have addressed this issue in such a detailed and nicely penned text. I agree on every single point. How is this game to appeal to professional gamers if their precision is halted by a sloppy camera?

Apotheosize.4293:

They seem to have addressed the downed state close up camera so maybe there is hope they could rework the other camera issues..

Yes, I’ve just noticed this… for a given value of “addressed”. I am now unable to move the camera more than 1 metre away from my Asura character when he dies. In other words, on my screen I see my own character and a bit of the surrounding ground. If I rotate the camera to make it more horizontal it usually gets stuck on something and all I can see is a piece of wall.

Whenever players need to fight the UI instead of the enemy, a game design fairy dies…

Bump,
the narrow FOV is the most important game breaking issue for me.
ANET if you don’t fix that i will have to stop playing this game i guess.
-I am currently playing windowed with an 21:9 aspect ratio and a very flat camera angle, I HATE IT!

Thanks very much to the OP for explaining the camera problem(s).

I find the camera ‘sluggishness’ almost unbearable and feel nauseated after playing GW2 for some time. At first I thought it was just mouse-acceleration and then I thought it was camera zooming problems, but now I realise that it’s a combination of multiple camera issues, as implemented in-game.

I’ve had an open ticket since shortly after release and only hope that ArenaNet listens to the players and fix this soon.

Other than this I reckon GW2 is an awesome game.

Wow. Thanks again for all the support, and keep it coming

Whenever players need to fight the UI instead of the enemy, a game design fairy dies…

Remember the unit groups and pathing in Starcraft 1? Now that was bad

One thing I would add to the list is that we have no control over the camera height, which leads to a very poor use of screen space.

It would be great if the camera would automatically increase height when entering combat, or when the ground targeting reticle comes up, or some other algorithm.

This is the point of view and behaviour that comes to mind (video):
Batman Arkham City – Survival of the Fittest Combat Challenge Map

Notice how the camera returns to the character’s height at the end of each stage (1:10), and how the FoV increases when the camera shoots up at the start of each stage (1:18).

Great post!

We have been complaining about these issues since the first beta weekened, but I have yet to see an official response from ArenaNet about the camera. I would at least like them to acknowledge these are issues they intend on working on, or that the camera is working as designed and is remaining as it.

It really does feel like a bad port that wasn’t optimized for PC release. Having options to disable smoothing and acceleration, as well as a greater FoV are industry standards. As it is now, the game is uncomfortable for me to play, and wrestling with the camera is just not a fun experience.

This is in the game status update that was just posted:

“Downed mode camera
In tonight’s software update we will improve the downed mode camera to maintain a more consistent distance taking race into account.”

sad thing is this is the least of the problems. I’m still confident ArenaNet will get to smoothing and all the other issues tho… – Because if they truly want this game to be an e-sport its just as simple as: Fix all current camera issues or this game will never become a competitive PvP game

I’m crossing my fingers and trust ArenaNet in their ability to hear our roars

The camera was the only thing that did really hurt me during the stresstests. I’m playing for almost 2 weeks now and I still couldn’t adapt to the camera easing & acceleration, I hate it, it just feels wrong.
I implemented different cameras in 3D-environments myself, it’s not THAT hard to come up with something acceptable…

Tennn.5498:

Because if they truly want this game to be an e-sport its just as simple as: Fix all current camera issues or this game will never become a competitive PvP game

^ This

An awesome topic Baxuz.

Right now I’m unable to play GW2 for longer than 15 minutes before my eyes hurt and I get an awful headache because of FOV. It NEEDS a slider ASAP.

Agreed on the camera issues.
Maybe they are listening, since they did some patching for the Downed State camera issues.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_status_updates

Downed mode camera
In tonight’s software update we will improve the downed mode camera to maintain a more consistent distance taking race into account.

Where have I seen this before?

Oh yeah, every BWE event, and each time it was apparently ignored.

The only thing they did was fix actual bugs (or design choice, not sure; like that double click twitch) with the camera.

As I keep saying; the game was rushed out and this just one of the hundreds of things wrong with it.

While everything here is really important, the one thing the game desperately needs right now is an extended zoom or FoV slider. The view is too narrow, even zoomed out all the way. It’s not impossible to play, but there’s always that kind of feeling that something isn’t right and it’s really bothersome when you can’t do what you want to due to the narrow FoV.

Lewzephyr.5281:

Agreed on the camera issues.
Maybe they are listening, since they did some patching for the Downed State camera issues. (…)

That’s all good but sadly I don’t really care at this point. I know it’s an annoying bug, but to experience it you need to play the game, and that is something I cannot do without a serious headache

These are some serious issues which needs to be fixed if they ever want to their game to be considered an Esport, lag, imprecise and unresponsive controls are not acceptable by competitive players.

I’d just like to point out that yes LCD monitors all have response time, but so does everything else in the computer. For a top of the line gaming mouse for example, there is a 1ms delay, most mice have around 4ms and more, which is more than many LCD monitors actually have. But the biggest factor for input lag is in the graphics card rendering the image and sending it to the monitor, this lag can be reduced by increasing framerate, that’s why 60 FPS is required (And more is preferred) in games where input lag is important to minimize.

In this game however 60 FPS will not help you in that area, I assume this is because they added smoothing and inertia, but it may also be that the engine does not use raw mouse input by default or something.

the camera in its current state is completely and utterly broken, and is unviable in any small environments, and even worse for any kind of platforming, especially considering that your movement speed isn’t the same in all directions.

the worst part is that i don’t remember it being like this in the betas at all, so it feels like they added that change for the worse intentionally.

BrunoBRS.5178:

the worst part is that i don’t remember it being like this in the betas at all, so it feels like they added that change for the worse intentionally.

Camera issues have been there and reported since at least Beta3.

In response to Litego.4953:

Mouse lag isn’t an issue for me as the mouse pointer itself is responsive; the problem lies with the camera itself.

There were threads about the poorly engineered camera as far back as the first beta weekend. I don’t understand why it’s been left as it is. It’s something the player interacts with constantly when playing the game.

And it feels like a chore. Always has to be tinkered with to see what you want to see, never actually feeling right. It’s making me feel sick with its bad FoV and constant bumping into things. Don’t even get me started on the ridiculous bug that makes its distance oscillate rapidly if there’s something very close at the front of character.

It’s like making a triple-A movie and hiring a random drunk as the director of photography. Doing. It. Wrong.

Lewzephyr.5281:

BrunoBRS.5178:

the worst part is that i don’t remember it being like this in the betas at all, so it feels like they added that change for the worse intentionally.

Camera issues have been there and reported since at least Beta3.

that’s the point. i played beta 1 and 2 and don’t recall those issues. i missed beta 3, but showed up for the stress tests later on, and the camera just felt worse.

it’s like they’re worried i’ll lose my character if a certain object gets in front of it, so the camera glitches its way through everything to make sure it doesn’t happen, and ironically, it becomes even harder to know where your character is.

The Red.1025:

In response to Litego.4953:

Mouse lag isn’t an issue for me as the mouse pointer itself is responsive; the problem lies with the camera itself.

Ah yeah that’s true. I’m an FPS player at the core, so I’m used to only dealing with the camera and not think about the pointer. In that case it is the smoothing and inertia which is absolutely killing the camera feel even with raw input. But my post is still true though, the input lag caused by the LCD monitor described in the OP is still one of the lowest ones with rendering being the highest.

As a long time pc fps player the camera feels like im playing some lame consolized game, who the hell needs acceleration when your using a mouse. the game does have a hardware cursor it’s the camera itself that has the + – acceleration it feels absolutely horrid. I agree that people who claim it doesn’t exist don’t know any better. this isn’t acceptable for a pc game. and the fov… again seems like its more optimized for a console game then a PROPER pc game. say what you want about WoW but atleast it has a real camera.

please just give us an option to disable it and adjust the fov/zoom i really enjoy this game otherwise. the camera man its a really important part of the game and currently its a real mess.

If you continue to ignore the problem you will lose alot of customers including me.

I’ve noticed that the camera seems to behave differently for different character sizes, as well. I like to use the jumping puzzle at Morgan’s Spiral as an example. Had a hell of a hard time doing it on my Charr; camera kept zooming in suddenly, getting stuck, etc, which lead to me falling quite a bit. Eventually made it through, but it was frustrating (I had to do some blind ‘leaps of faith’). Did it on my Norn, and it was almost as annoying (maybe because the Charr body takes up more horizontal space as well as vertical)…then I did it on my Sylvari. No falls, easy, camera was much smoother, didn’t get stuck once.

So it seems to misbehave the most with characters that aren’t human-sized/shaped, since others in this thread have said they have major camera issues with their Asura, as well.

I’m handicaped, IRL. I need a very quick, responsive and nervous camera, or it takes me 3 or 4 sec to make a 180°. I love the game, but I can’t play it yet.

Please, help.

ArenaNet, I love your game, but please fix the camera issues…

1- downstate camera zooms deep into the character, making it impossible to see the enemy bashing at you

2- When pressing/holding the right trigger in the mouse, the camera zooms into the character and looks up. Super frustrating when all i want to do is turn the camera around.

3- In tight spots, the camera goes crazy!

Sincerely;

Aden Celeste

First, a big thanks to ArenaNet for listening to feedback and tweaking the downed state camera. Keep up the good work!

After a lot of testing in different areas, I came to the conclusion that the camera input lag is tied to the game performance. In the Hall Of Monuments, where I can push 60 fps on any settings, the game does not feature input lag. The problems defined later on are still present (FoV, bouncing, smoothing…), but the camera responds instantly if using vsync with a framerate cap, or if not using vsync at all.

That would suggest that the mouse input processing has lower priority than other processes at the time, which would also explain the unexpected lockups and variable speeds. If you take into consideration the big FPS drops the game currently has when turning the camera, it’s probably an optimization issue tied to many other problems.

+1 for this thread.

In certain jumping puzzles the badly working camera can be a real pain. Eg. Troll’s End jumping puzzle is atm. competely broken, because the camera gets stuck all the time, and the only way to complete the puzzle is to make some leaps of faith or try to fix the camera by moving the character, both of which – at least for me – usually lead to fail and irritation.

Oh, and all this irritation causes heavy coffee usage. Arenanet, I blame you for causing me to deplete my coffee supply early

Yes, Anet, PLEASE fix the camera issues. I don’t mind if you don’t want to have the camera zoom out more, although that would be really nice to have the game zoom out more, but at least fix the snapping and erratic camera movements, and allow players to adjust the FOV.

Anet, if you want to this to be a good e-sport game, then allowing players to have the option to change the FOV so it makes it easier for players to see what is going on in game is absolutely essential.

Unfortunately, I just received a response from GW2 Support stating the camera is “working as intended”. An official response in this thread would be nice.

I hope someone in ArenaNet googles “GW2 camera lag” and realizes that although the camera may be “working as intended”, it is not “working” well.

• Edited to express my frustration at lack of acknowledgement of the problems. *

The Red.1025:

Unfortunately, I just received a response from GW2 Support stating the camera is “working as intended”. An official response in this thread would be nice.

I hope someone in ArenaNet googles “GW2 camera lag” and realizes that although the camera may be “working as intended”, it is not “working” well.

• Edited to express my frustration at lack of acknowledgement of the problems. *

This is pretty sad news…

This FoV is an insult to the video game culture and to the gamers.
It’s a question about health … making people epileptic, gj guys … way to get a good mood on those fora.
What’s that, 20th century ???
Forget about hardware, people WILL upgrade their own to play your game, this is a fake optimization.
Beeing a huge fan of GW1 since the beginning, I always thought of Arenanet as an open-minded and progressist editor … This passive and obscure attitude about this issue (too recurring nowadays) is a proof of obvious stubbornness. It is sad to see that you are a step away from perfection, but this step is as large as your ego is Arenanet.
With respect for all the good hours of game and some puke for the hours of headaches.

Since they ‘fixed’ the downed camera, I can’t zoom it out hardly at all now while downed and so I can’t really find a spot to teleport away to (thief) and so I just sit there and die because the camera is stuck 4 feet away from my character. Please tell me there is some way to fix this.

I’ll have to chime in here with the downed camera. It’s bothered me since day one but I only really lost my kitten when I tried out thief.
“Here! Have some cool abilities! You just can’t use them proper because we’ll make the camera zoom in on your butt.”
Why? Why do this? This makes all the classes with ground targeted spells inherently weaker.

THIS! THIS! THIS!

Numbers 5, 7 and 8 in particular.

If you want to insist on third person view at all times 7 is a must. In ad person addition to what is said in 8 A first person view is a mush for a game this beautiful Its great to take screen shots of my character in exotic locals but I also want to take screen shots of the world without my characters backside in them. 5 exasperates the problem (I want to take screen shots of stuff above me and be able to see anything other then my characters posterior.)

I agree with all the other things OP said but those three are the worst for me.

Damai.1947:

This FoV is an insult to the video game culture and to the gamers

Thats exactly what i think since the first 10s of BWE1

Signed!
I can also add to this is as it makes it impossible to best use thief shadow step ability when downed since you cannot turn the camera around to face behind you or move camera at all as it becomes stuck when backed into a corner when downed in some PvP environments and events meaning that using the shadow-step ability to pick a location further away from the action to heal is impossible.

I cannot stress enough how many times the camera alone has killed me due to all the stuff above and inc the thing I mention right here which otherwise would have saved me if I could get away to get that last 3s of heal to stand up again.

absolutely agree with this post 100%.

i can’t play GW2 with the default camera fullscreen settings. so as a result, i’m forced to have to play in windowed mode with 60% vertical space just to get a decent FoV… i HATE windowed mode, but have no choice if i want to have a natural, wide view of the game world.

please Anet: give us a wider more spherical FoV (broaden the sides and top), and a bit more zoom distance would be wonderful!

The Red.1025:

Unfortunately, I just received a response from GW2 Support stating the camera is “working as intended”. An official response in this thread would be nice.

Well I doubt that they really mean that, since they changed the downed camera state, and are still actively working on fixing the camera bugs. Why would you fix something that you think is working as intended?

Baxuz.1943:

The Red.1025:

Unfortunately, I just received a response from GW2 Support stating the camera is “working as intended”. An official response in this thread would be nice.

Well I doubt that they really mean that, since they changed the downed camera state, and are still actively working on fixing the camera bugs. Why would you fix something that you think is working as intended?

I put a ticket in shortly after release. After much to-ing and fro-ing, and screenshots of my game settings and NVidia settings, two (2) diagnostic reports from software supplied from GW2 Support, and a video I recorded demonstrating how slow the camera was to come to rest, that was the response.

There has been absolutely no acknowledgement, as fas as I can see, that there is any problem at all. It is “working as intended”.

I would, however, love for you to be correct.

If ANet doesn’t acknowledge this blatant issue, which apparently a lot of people are suffering from, then they are not a particularly caring or serious gaming company.

Just because they feel that their camera system is “working as intended” doesn’t actually mean it’s good. You shouldn’t really have to ask for a FoV slider and a camera that doesn’t bounce around when you get a physical object behind your character in a triple A title.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_status_updates

they’re working on it; if you refer to this link, you’ll see their order of priority.

i rather doubt it’s a case of ego, or of not caring; rather, they have a priority, and they’re following it.

i have to say, i’m curious about why this hasn’t been addressed previously, through the bwes, but it wasn’t, and now they’re beginning to work on parts of it. i have faith that they’ll continue … as they get the time and the ability.

just my thinks.

I completely agree. I am a longtime FPS player and the non-linear nature of the camera is nauseating to me. I also agree the FOV is far too narrow. Finally the downed state camera zooming in and panning on it’s own is a major pain. Please fix! Thanks.

The slow, laggy, unpredictable GW2 camera that zooms in and out almost randomly if you accidentally get an object (eg, a skinny Sylvari mortar plant) between it and the character (especially bad as an Asura, even maxed height), is about as bad as they come – and it’s gotten worse with the new fixed zoom level of the downed camera so that rallying (and avoiding equipment damage) becomes even harder than it already was due to not being able to find foes you can attack with your piddly little downed skills to try and defeat. :/ Combined with the consolish ultra-low FOV (doesn’t seem to be even 70 degrees for me on a 19" widescreen @ 1440×900 – and I need 85-90 to be comfortable), the camera makes GW2 a frustrating, annoying experience.

It would be so nice if the devs would go and look at the view and camera of GW1 and then replicate it in GW2. Never happen, though.

I agree with everything that the OP has written. Especially the horrible FOV, it’s the reason why I haven’t played it since 2 days after release when I saw they had changed nothing from the beta weekends. I think because it looks like it might come to consoles that they are going to keep a low FOV, which is a bit worrying, it would be nice to have a dev response on this.

Agreed with the points the OP made and feel that after any lingering difficulties affecting login are resolved, I’d like to see the camera issues be the next priority for AN.

One more point I’d add to the list is when zoomed out, it would be nice if things in between the camera and the player were transparent. Nothing like fighting and not being able to see the battle because your camera is behind a tree.

When resolving this, I hope that AN realizes that no one setup will be optimal for everyone and therefore giving players as much flexibility to set the camera up to their own preferences would be ideal. For example, I imagine this is especially true of FOV, (I’m hoping they include buttons to toggle FOV on the fly), as everyone is a little different on that.

BTW, congrats on a great game AN. Camera Issues and typical early-release bugs aside, you all produced an outstanding MMO.

Isende.2607:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_status_updates

they’re working on it; if you refer to this link, you’ll see their order of priority.

i rather doubt it’s a case of ego, or of not caring; rather, they have a priority, and they’re following it.

i have to say, i’m curious about why this hasn’t been addressed previously, through the bwes, but it wasn’t, and now they’re beginning to work on parts of it. i have faith that they’ll continue … as they get the time and the ability.

just my thinks.

I do not share your faith and cannot see ArenaNet acknowledging camera issues in your link, or anywhere else for that matter (including my contact with GW2 Support).

There still has been no official response to this, one of the biggest/oldest threads in this forum.

The camera makes the game, which is otherwise awesome, virtually unplayable for me.