Guild Wars 2

I play on a 24" monitor – 1920 × 1080, and I noticed very little change while ingame, though the little bit I noticed wasn’t bad. That is not to say the change isn’t very much so there, but I just don’t really notice it while naturally playing/viewing the game.

I’m much more interested in seeing improvements to the horizontal FoV.

Seems a lot smoother so far. Def. a step in the right direction. I’m not sure why, and I can’t corroborate this, but it seems like it gave me a sizable fps increase. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking.

This is a great start, now finish the job!

- point the camera at the HEAD instead of the center of the back
(so we’re not staring at the ground when zoomed out, and our backs when zoomed in)

- allow people to zoom to first person.
(so we can enjoy the game without breaking the eula)

This is much better!

Thank you! This is perfect; this is exactly what I needed.

FoV testing is great yay.

YES! KEEP IT!

To no one’s surprise, everyone is happy with the change they’ve been asking for a long, long, long time.

Running 16:10 resolution here on a 22’’ display, this is definitely a much better fit than whatever claustrophobic FoV you had before. Camera movement is way less disorienting. Plus, now you can actually judge the scale and position of world objects – which you can’t do with low FoV, which is part of what contributes to motion sickness for many people.

Oh, also, seeing the world in proper 3D makes is considerably more pretty and immersive.

No graphical bugs so far, no noticeable fish-eye, no performance impact (you’re heavily bottlenecked in dynamic entity department anyway), and definitely none of the reasons you’ve listed for not including a wider FoV in the first place. Seriously, that was ridiculous. Keep the wider FoV, it’s better on all accounts.

People who sit closer – or ones with bigger displays – will probably want an even bigger FoV, up to 100(Horizontal), speaking from experience. People who play on their TV or small displays may want 70(Horizontal) or less. That’s why it’s prudent to have a slider: it’s something that’s tied to individual user-to-screen position and NOT some sort of universal standards.

Its a nice change.
Its one of those things that you notice on more of a subconcious level.

With the fov change things look more “natural”
Easier on the eyes x1,000,000.

This is delightful, thank you.

I’ve been playing windowed mostly so the difference isn’t too dramatic, but I definitely notice it’s easier to see ahead of me than it ever used to be now that I try fullscreen again.

Also haven’t noticed any performance hits.

Much better!

I thoroughly tested this change by turning new FOV off, taking a screenshot, turning FOV on, taking screenshot (right after logging in without changing camera position/zoom).

Furthermore, since the new FOV zooms out more, our characters appeared smaller. So I tested varying the camera position/zoom to try to reproduce what was seen in the old FOV (to verify that the effect isn’t from just a max zoom increase and angle change). Good news is that no matter how I tried to alter the camera under the new FOV, I could not produce the same clipped scene as the old FOV.

Good work! =)

First pic: old FOV
Second pic: new FOV upon relogging in, no camera adjustments
Third pic: new FOV upon adjusting camera to match old FOV as much as possible

However, even with this, I should say that a big problem remains in that the camera is way too sensitive to environmental changes (e.g. turning while being next to a wall). In such cases, the camera shouldn’t just zoom in/out while statically being placed behind the character. Rather, it should react to the character’s turning motion and maintain an overall fixed distance relative to the character by moving itself around the environment.

A good example of this would be Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. If you run up against a wall and turn, the camera stays still. And if you turn Link towards another direction while moving, the camera moves along the ground with two degrees of freedom while maintaining a good distance. Only when the player Z-targets, does the camera move and zoom behind Link.

A good example can be seen in this video:

Thank you so much, this is wonderful! I can finally play full screen again, and it’s just lovely.

Just need a Bunny logo for our guild banner (Legendary White Bunny) and we’ll be good to go

Love it you got my vote

The FOV change was really good for me on 1080p. It really allows you to see more.

the top is without the edit
bottom is with edit

I was fine (or so I thought) with the pre-change field of view. Now that I’ve seen the difference, I realize just how not-fine I was. This is a good change. It isn’t like you can see twice as much, but the vertical field is definitely larger. A slider would be nice to let me adjust it, but even with just this setting its a definite improvement.

I made an album of 6 images: 3 with, and 3 without the change.

http://imgur.com/a/EpRCe

Flicking between them you can see that this change seems to just ‘zoom out’.

It’s not completely noticeable unless you quickly switch between these modes and, in fact, before seeing the images side-by-side I wasn’t quite sure that the change did anything at all!

It is irrefutable that the ‘zoomed out’ situation is objectively a better experience though.

Being able to see more is always a great thing, until you see too much. I believe with this change we are still not seeing too much, and I wonder: why was this value chosen? How far can we go before our characters start looking too small/things become warped? I’d like to go right up to this barrier (if we aren’t already there), and I hope I’m not the only one who does.

See my post above. It’s not simply a zoom adjustment.

Gazareth.7230:

I made an album of 6 images: 3 with, and 3 without the change.

http://imgur.com/a/EpRCe

Flicking between them you can see that this change seems to just ‘zoom out’.

It’s not completely noticeable unless you quickly switch between these modes and, in fact, before seeing the images side-by-side I wasn’t quite sure that the change did anything at all!

It is irrefutable that the ‘zoomed out’ situation is objectively a better experience though.

Being able to see more is always a great thing, until you see too much. I believe with this change we are still not seeing too much, and I wonder: why was this value chosen? How far can we go before our characters start looking too small/things become warped? I’d like to go right up to this barrier (if we aren’t already there), and I hope I’m not the only one who does.

A great change. As an added holiday bonus it makes eases some of the pain of the Mad King’s Clocktower

SO much better! It’s really nice to be able to see all the way up. Please make this the standard.

Nice change. Thank you very much!

Before and After.

This game just got twice as good. Keep up the good work.

After playing with the increased FoV for a little bit, I have to say it is nice to see the sky and tops of buildings without having to force my camera up. Though I personally like FoV’s a bit higher, I can play without the drowsiness I was getting. So I know this is still beta, but thank you ArenaNet for looking into this! <3

Now on to the issue I found with the FoV. It seems that water reflections haven’t been updated to account for the wider view. While running around and taking screenshots, I noticed that reflections no longer matched with where the object rests above the water.

Look at the rock in the screenshot compared to where it’s reflection is in the water, when to the left of the screen, and to the right of the screen.

Despite this, I’ll still play with it enabled until it is officially patched in, or not.

MysticHLE.7160:

See my post above. It’s not simply a zoom adjustment.

I’m failing to see how your post proves that it’s not just a ‘zoom out’ change. I am open to belief that the FoV has been changed but I’m thinking that this produces the same effect as being zoomed out. I’ve studied my images over and over, and it really does just look like I’ve zoomed in, taken a screenshot and then zoomed out, and taken a screenshot.

Try it yourself, view the images in full resolution in adjacent tabs, press F11 to go full screen and then press [Ctrl+Tab] to go forward and [Ctrl+Shift+Tab] to go backwards. (I’m not sure if this will work if you’re not in 1920×1080 or with browsers other than Google’s Chrome).

I still think it’s a good change and I really like it, just trying to get the facts straight here.

To all those who are saying “I can see so much more, this is great”, I’m happy for you. I’m happy that you can get a better enjoyment from the game. However, I’d like to provide some constructive (i.e. negative) feedback.

As someone who gets headaches from playing and physical disorientation from stopping, I will say that on a 16:9 monitor the FoV situation went from utterly terrible to bad. This is a huge improvement over the comically low 16:9 FoV before the change, but it still is not fully workable – and why should it be without a range of some kind? FoV is a variable with many dependencies; it is not a solvable problem in that you pick the “correct” number and are done with it.

Like I said, I am truly glad that this fix happened. I am glad that others can enjoy the game better as a result of this effort. I realize this is a bugfix and not a feature implementation. But I feel the need to counter all the positive feedback in the thread by saying that, for many who are actually affected by the FoV situation physically, a wide range of values is needed.

On the topic of the bugfix in particular: it seems as if widescreen monitors STILL do not reach the vertical FoV of 4:3 monitors. Since this is the presumably the entire point of this fix, I think another look over the projection math is needed.

Yeah this looks much better than the original FoV… please for the love of all that is holy… make this standard!

Edit 1 : yeah as DefMatrixUltra said above… we need some sort of slider option for FoV too.

As an Asura this is absolutely fantastic. I wasn’t able to see the fantastic skyboxes before this, because I always had to have my camera pointed more towards the ground. Any attempt to look up was met by grass effects when the camera jammed into the ground because I’m so short. Really happy about this, I feel like I’ll finally be able to experience the world in its entirety.

Also I get these headaches after playing games with low FoV for too long, and that was happening with GW2 until now. Was really impeding on my ability to enjoy the game. Now the game looks 10x better and doesn’t give me headaches!

Very awesome patch. I love it. I stopped playing because of the low FoV, but will definitely start playing again effective immediately because of this. I would still absolutely love to just have an FoV slider in the options though over anything. Maybe disable it for sPvP play if the issue resides in giving everyone a level playing field. Either way, this is so much better than it was before. Thank you.

It looks amazing now. I never thought just FOV would make it look so much nicer. I think as a PC gamer, most of us would like as many options as possible in the options sliders. One thing I did notice is the performance hit is pretty big with this. Somewhere in the 15-20% as some others have mentioned when everything is maxed with Supersampling. I get around 45fps average now. I have to turn almost every option down a notch to reclaim that 15%-20%. I will try post detailed Fraps logs with areas when i run around some more. Either way still think its worth it.

Joriarty.4318:

Is there a way to do this on the Mac client?

It seems to work if you edit “/Applications/Guild Wars 2.app/Contents/Resources/CiderSettings.plist” and change:

<key>CiderGameOptions</key>
<string>--cmdline ""</string>

to

<key>CiderGameOptions</key>
<string>--cmdline "-testVerticalFov"</string>

Quite abit better, but i think there should still be a slider of max 100 FoV.

I like this change a lot, though I don’t really understand why there is no slider. As I have seen others point out, people using multiple monitors can see more, which rather weakens the “unfair advantage” argument against a slider.

I love it! While there’s always room for improvement, this is already a huge one. Thanks, you guys! ^.^

This is great! Thanks for listening Anet!

Much better with the new FOV. Thank you!

There is a small difference, which helps…but not enough of a difference for me to feel completely comfortable playing with it yet. A step in the right direction but I would like to see a bit more FOV as an option and to have the camera NOT point so low so I could see over my character a bit more instead of through it.

Keep Calm and FoV On

Thank You!

Like night and day! Awesome, thanks!

While this is a good change and i’m glad its being added, can I please beg that you leave it as an option (be it slider or toggle) and don’t just update so everyone gets the new one. I will be using the current changes but I have a friend who plays at near minimum specs and the FPS hit from a wider FoV would probably push it below usable (I got a bit of a hit to but its livable).

TL:DR: Good change, please make it an -option- not a forced change for everybody.

For the first 10 seconds I was going, I don’t see much of an improvement. I looks kind of different. Then I started moving around and zoom out as far as I can. It feels like a new game. THIS IS AWESOME!

Gazareth.7230:

MysticHLE.7160:

See my post above. It’s not simply a zoom adjustment.

I’m failing to see how your post proves that it’s not just a ‘zoom out’ change. I am open to belief that the FoV has been changed but I’m thinking that this produces the same effect as being zoomed out.

I come to you with science! Or… boredom? whatever its called. FoV changes are technically “zooming out/in”, so you’re kinda right. When you “zoom in” on a digital camera, it narrows its field of view so that a smaller area in the distance seems larger.

“Zooming out” in Guild Wars 2 with the mouse wheel doesn’t do this, but instead physically moves the camera farther away from your character.

This doesn’t get a better angle on the camera, and this means that some will still experience issues if they sit too close to the screen and proceed to confuse their eyes brain.

Widening FoV allows you to see more without moving the position of your camera. With the way the current camera interacts with terrain, especially on the smaller asura, this larger gives the benefits of seeing more without the possible trouble of the camera scraping against walls and objects when fully zoomed out, or when panned upward to see the sky.

So to show this, I actually stabbed the Master Carver in Lion’s Arch with my camera, and compared the scenery with the FoV changes at both max and min camera positions. I made sure to keep the camera half inside of the NPC to ensure that it did not change location.

http://imgur.com/a/SybIY

Notice that the greatest change with FoV is that more of the background becomes visible. The change to any object near the camera is negligible. This means I can play with the camera close to my character, and not have to make my character look small to still see what’s going on around me. This also means that I can see the sky when I have my camera behind my back, which adds to the scenery quite a bit.

After doing all of this, I don’t exactly why? So umm, here’s some info? Also, there still exists the water reflection issue, so there’s that too.

as i have ever known.
this. is. beautiful.

i’d like to have more horizontal fov too, though

Amazing.
Simply amazing.

Thank you so much, ArenaNet.

This is why you guys are who you are. You make games for your fans.

Freaking love you guys.

Now the only things missing are:

A) – The option to raise/lower the camera (similar to the left/right shift, but I think that the height it’s at now should be the lowest and then the highest should be a bit above the head).

B) – Object occlusion. (when the player walks in front of a small see-through fence, the camera Should NOT zoom in. Rather, it should stay in place and occlude the object allowing you to see your character or a shadow of your character).

An idea, maybe is to have the green outline appear around your character when part of their body is obstructed from view. By part, maybe around 25% or so.

Kind of like in MOBAs such as LoL, or DoTA 2, where your character goes behind something like a tower and their outline is there (I think those games do that, haven’t played in forever).

Without the Beta FoV Fix
http://i.minus.com/idwFVUFjd95qA.png

WITH the Beta FoV Fix
http://i.minus.com/izMtQeYhUuIu5.png

echo.3647:

i’d like to have more horizontal fov too, though

The Horizontal and Vertical FoV affect the same Fov, each works with different numbers, though. so you ARE changing the Horizontal… Hard to explain.

It works great for me (1920×1080) so far and I love the new FOV! Thank you ANet.

Just played for a couple of hours with this on and it was a noticeable improvement. It would be insane not to push this out as an update for all players (and if it doesn’t get updated for everyone, let us keep our special shortcuts…).

i think its better then before

awesome thanks guys

top without and bottom with fov

It’s taking me a bit to get used to, but I think this is definitely a good change. I can see so much more, and more clearly now, and my camera feels a lot less unwieldy, particularly in smaller spaces.
I think it should still be made so that the player can zoom all they way into first person for optimal control and view in tight spaces, but this FoV expansion is definitely an improvement.

spazznid.8039:

echo.3647:

i’d like to have more horizontal fov too, though

The Horizontal and Vertical FoV affect the same Fov, each works with different numbers, though. so you ARE changing the Horizontal… Hard to explain.

yes, i see
slowly my lids open =)

For the thousands in attendance, and the millions watching around the world!

Finally…! The FOV has come back too… Guild Wars 2!
If you smeeeeeeell what the Anet… is… cooking!

Love it! Best thing that happened since launch, improving immersion. Thank you!

Loving this change!! I can finally look at the sky, and I don’t feel like i’m looking through binoculars anymore Good job!

I don’t normally post on these forums, but I logged in just to say that the changes are AMAZING, and the game looks so much better! I didn’t realize that I was looking through a telescope the whole time until now.

I just stared at Divinities Reach in Queensdale for like 10 minutes, the camera never noticed it before!!

Awesome changes, definitely push this live.