Guild Wars 2

Thank you for the kind words! It’s good to see that I’m not the only one with that issue. Let’s hope this also reaches the devs.

Exactly this! I missed everything from the Living Story Season 1 except for the refugee part at the very start. At some point after it, I signed into the game, got that final explosive cutscene, was rather alienated as I had no idea what was going on and ended up in a completely destroyed Lion’s Arch. Did I mention I was already alienated before the cutscene ended?
Yeah. Stranding in a Lion’s Arch in ruins didn’t help.

Then, Season 2 happened and I knew none of the characters that I already should have known. None at all. I decided to postpone playing Season 2 until I caught up, which simply didn’t happen. Now Heart of Thorns is out, and I’m reluctant to play that because I know neither Season 1 nor Season 2, i.e. I have no idea what led to what’s about to happen…at least no idea in an even remotely relatable way.

Actually playing through Season 1 would give me all the more reason to get back into GW2 for real rather than for an evening or two per month.

(tl;dr towards the post’s end)

Hiya guys,

I’ve taken a rather long hiatus from GW2 after getting used to Action Camera-style MMO play in Champions Online. GW2 just felt way too slow, too clunky in comparison after having played CO that way and I never really got back into GW2.

Today, I heard about the new Action Camera mode for the first time and immediately rushed to get online and try it. At first, I was overjoyed: The mode seemed to be exactly what I had hoped for! In CO, I was able to configure Tab Targeting in a way that Tab always targeted the enemy closest to the cross-hair, which can be done using the right mouse button in GW2’s implementation. Perfect! Optional snap-in ground targeting plus a hotkey allowing you to temporarily disable it or vice versa, depending on your global setting. If that hotkey was a toggle rather than “keep it pressed to switch modes”, again perfect, but even in its current form: wonderful! Time to dive back into GW2 and explore all the new stuff with wonderfully dynamic combat!

Or so I thought until I went and tried. The first thing I realized was that in Action Camera mode, the maximum angle that could be between my character’s walking direction and the selected (i.e. locked-on) enemy while permitting targeted abilities to hit was significantly smaller. That alone didn’t discourage me yet, though.

What really discouraged me was the realization that, if an enemy gets between the cross-hair and my targeted enemy, the attack would not only ignore my selected target, but target the enemy now closer to the cross-hair (or sometimes miss both of them, depending on the state of the Autotargeting settings). In other words, the so-called target lock doesn’t lock properly. This gets even worse if you want to use the “Look Behind” key to really just look behind you while still auto-attacking the target you locked on: Only the camera turns, but then the character shoots, stabs or slashes into the direction of the cross-hair, which will then be behind the character, completely ignoring whatever target you selected.

The way it is right now, Action Camera is a nice gimmick, but it lacks the necessary precision to be considered an actual alternative to the classic control schemes. One to two little details would redeem the whole Action Camera immediately, though:

tl;dr: If you use Action Camera mode and lock on a target, whether by right-clicking, tab targeting or even click-targeting before enabling Action Camera, creature-targeted skills should actually be directed at the target you locked on, ignoring the cross-hair. That’s what locking onto a target means, after all.
Since right-clicking while neither allies nor enemies are in the cross-hair is the only way to clear the selection during Action Camera play, this may require the implementation of a hotkey for clearing the currently selected target other than ESC, otherwise this might become another deal-breaker especially in scenarios where free space is hard to target.

Even with only the first of these two changes implemented, ideally just as an option for the sake of those who prefer the Action Camera as it is right now, I’d be all over GW2 again. Please, please, pretty please make it happen.

Aironfaar

EDIT: changed “single-target attacks” to “creature-targeted skills” in the tl;dr section