Guild Wars 2

You essentially want a MUSH arrangement, wherein players have build privileges. I understand the appeal of that.

However, in the context of roleplay, there would be a huge negative to such an arrangement: population dilution.

The problem is, the larger you make your grid (world), the greater the dispersal of your playerbase. If players get too spread out, they won’t be able to find each other anymore and the sense of a living world will be lost. What you’re suggesting would have this effect very quickly. Once implemented, and despite your lobby arrangement, most people would immediately retreat into their own little corners, and the shared space would become a wasteland. The very roleplay you were looking to centralize and make more accessible would become fractured and extremely difficult to become engaged in. I’ve seen this happen several times in text-based virtual environments. So often, in fact, that building small and restricting player building became the conventional wisdom for world design in the MU* community.

Then you have the effect on general gameplay to consider, as such a feature would take one more segment of the population out of it. PvP and WvW already do this, and it wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, but the design of GW2, with dynamic events and exploration being a huge chunk of the content, makes it one.

We’re barely a month in, and I’m already seeing events fail in starter zones, because there aren’t any players around to take them on. So I think this is already an issue ANet’s going to have to tackle, and a system like the one you’ve proposed would just complicate the matter.

We already have a big (possibly too big) shared world in which to play, representing a wide variety of different locations. We also have home instances, guild halls are no doubt on the immediate horizon, and I hear some form of personal housing is actually in the works. All of that’s probably going to be more than enough.

What I’d rather see are QoL adjustments and additions that would have particular benefit to roleplayers, but would be helpful/fun for most everyone…

- Player-made chat channels.
- Significantly reduced range for local chat.
- Additional safe spaces across the grid (like the treehouse in Shaemoor or many of the spots reachable by jump puzzles)
- Events and features in hub locations that roleplayers can consolidate around.
- Additional emotes, particularly idle stances and emotes that are environment interactive.
- Recognition that chat actually qualifies as activity.
- Lots more town clothing and wardrobes (in home instance?) for the storage of that clothing.

Why make them program something into the game,when they are already got to much to FIX already. You can easily google up a solution, that should not be to much of a hassle to use independently.
Here I will save you the trip, here look at this solution http://www.final-countdown.net/

Shhhh! People these days don’t want to be held accountable for their own actions.

You already have an option to do that. It’s called self discipline :P

The Breakdown
I wouldn’t be posting this if I hadn’t done all that I could to show that I’m not being an optimist playing on the good parts of the idea.

Pros

• Creates a great atmosphere for roleplay
• Gives the player the ability to express their own view and creativity
• Brings Roleplayers together and removes the limitations to player creativity and interaction
• Includes a new Gold Drain as well new items to spend Gems on
• Makes for an easier system to join into Roleplay
• Centralizes Roleplay and makes for an easier time to meet, congregate, network and pursue
• Decreases population strains in servers like Piken Square and Tarnished Coast

Cons

• Extensive hardware requirements
• Strain on current hardware
• Removes several players from the Economy almost wholly
• Additional work to include new content in the function
• Could cause TOS issues due to private ownership of in game content
• Increases the ease of trolling or griefing players in public instances
• Could decrease the wont to roleplay by removing the organic and sense of growth within roleplay through gameplay

So, that’s all I have for now, tell me what you think Players!

~Pylia

The Idea
When you enter the Heart of the Mists, you come into a lobby with; a series of vendors, lockers, the tourney master, and the Grandmaster (the guy who lets you join battles in random arenas).

With Structured RP, I want to replicate this, only with less PvP. With the unlocked cosmetic items and the lockers, we’ll replace with another locker that has every piece of armor in game, with all the stats removed. Cosmetic Armor for everyone, but to add another item on top of this, all of these items are given a new category of armor type that allows everyone to wear anything they like. Dyes however, are still up to you.

We’ll replace the vendors with vendors who sell ‘Deeds’; I’ll cover this later. We’ll remove the Tourney Master and replace the Grandmaster of Battle with the Master of Portals.

The Master of Portals will function like the Grandmaster of Battle, only instead of servers with PvP matches, he’ll have a cornucopia of Roleplaying instances from us to pick from. At first, these instances will only be stock ones, copies of home instances like Dreamer’s Terrace, Salma District, etc. and a few other high traffic areas in game already. They’ll function like the instances we already have, but instead of being there alone, everyone else who joins it will be present (up to a cap to keep the servers from blowing a processor) but later it’ll be filled with player maintained instances.

These instances are purchased via Deeds. These instances can range from anything to a small cottage to a whole forest. They can be dissected from the world or be brand new content. Now, these can be purchased with Gold or Gems, and they’ll be in their own respective vendors.

These instances are controlled by the person who purchased them, and they can be filtered, linked, and managed like a guild. The owner can restrict access based on Race, Class, Gender, and even what you’re wearing (or what you’re not). Of course the appearance catagory isn’t going to be a list of specific armor pieces you have to wear to get in, but more of what slots are filled or not. No Pants? Boot. Pants? Boot. Its up to the owner! The owner can also make their instance completely public and they can police their instance with these filter options and the ability to remove and or black list offenders of the player’s virtual property.

The owner can also make their instances private; to just themselves, or their party, or their guild, or their entire friend’s list.

Owners can also link the instances they own or are apart of through transition points, gates, streets etc. If you wanted you can build your own network of instances into a city.

Creating a Greater Roleplaying Enviroment
I’m not sure of everyone else’s experience with Roleplay so far, but my experience with Roleplay in Guild Wars 2 has been OVERWHELMING; I’ve spent over 300 hours of my time online Roleplaying ( my main is only level 30 and I have 250 hours on her so far). Roleplay is such a large part of this game that its largely consuming much of MANY players entire time online.
Whenever I log in, I’m hailed with invitations to come down to Tavern X and Y with all of my character’s friends. I have even started losing sleep over how rich an environment is here. AND I LOVE IT. So how could we take this richness and improve it? I know it does sound difficult but bear with me here when I say this.

Structured Roleplay
sRP, start thinking about it a little, wait where are you going? ITS NOT PVPRP!

I know when you hear this you immediately shift to thinking to Structured PvP, and that’s what I want, but not on the fact its PvP. What I want you to focus on is the fact that its an overarching system with a focus on skill and teamwork that isn’t restricted by Worlds (not in the Lobby but in the servers). Now you’re on the right track.

What I’m proposing is to bring all of us roleplayers together absolutely while making it so we don’t have to fight over the -very- few open spaces in the Mega-Worlds, while improving the features given to us.

Where do the NPCs get their town clothes anyway? The Master Leatherworker in Divinity’s Reach looks pretty awesome with his leather jacket and belts upon belts. I would love to be able to wear those clothes.

At the moment we are stuck with either our default town clothes, which honestly don’t suit some characters (noble human wears the same clothes as a human raised on the streets) OR we can buy gimmicky clothes off the gem store. Why aren’t there any other “normal” town clothes available?

In fact, I think that there should be craftable town clothes available in each of the three armour crafting lines – or a brand new crafting line just for town clothes – as well as a variety of “Fashion Merchants” around the world.

I know of a Charr in the Charrlands that gives you a headband as an honorary member of his warband. The same could be applied around the world. Save a hekket from a swarm of wasps and get some special tribal head piece. Befriend a grawl to get some body paints. Maybe a Sylvari Fashion Merchant could sell some sort of “grown” clothes to the other races? Or have an Asura Fashion Merchant who creates asuran-style clothes? Norn pelts, anyone?

I see a lot of potential in the Town Clothes system, but the future doesn’t look too bright as it is heavily shadowed under the gem store at the moment..

Xetelian.9278:

Am I the only one who wants Dolyak safety to be rewarding?

Absolutely not. I am all about Dolyak safety. I personally equipped all the Dolyaks with a whistle they could blow when assaulted by enemy forces.

The world is just a better place when the Dolyak’s are safe so Dolyak safety is it’s own reward.

WeLoveKanjimari.6725:

Here’s how things look if I rotate the camera so that I am facing where I need to jump.

And here’s how things look after jumping, if I rotate the camera so I can see in front of me

Oh hey look it’s a first person camera! With really bad FoV!

The camera will zoom in and make things extremely annoying if it gets too close to many objects.

Some objects it will zoom in for no reason whatsoever, as long as your character touches the object. It’s as if the camera considers the object “in the way” if it’s blocking even 1% of your character model, and it is awful. It needs to change. A toggle to “Allow Camera To Be Blocked By Solid Objects” or something, and all problems would be solved.

Here’s how things look.

Here’s how things look if I move ONE STEP to the right, making a single vine block my shoulder.

Here’s how things look.

Here’s how things look if I rotate the camera so that I am facing where I need to jump.

And here’s how things look after jumping, if I rotate the camera so I can see in front of me

Please. PLEASE fix this. You’ve said before that you fixed it, but you clearly didn’t, and it’s so, so annoying. I’ve done this puzzle so many times, but now I can’t because the camera is jumping and zooming almost at random and it’s making it so hard to redo it. Either make it so that your character can be hidden behind the environment, or make it so I can toggle that on. Please. I’m so sick of the camera thrusting itself into the back of my head because there’s a vine blocking my shoulder. That’s completely unecessary and it’s so annoying.

For those that haven’t played The Lord of the Rings Online, the manner in which you choose your cosmetic appearance is by slotting the gear you wish to appear to be wearing in the cosmetic gear slots. Basically, you have your regular gear slots, which affects your stats, and your cosmetic gear slots which affects your appearance.

The beauty of this system as opposed to the current one implemented in GW2 is that it allows you to look how you want without the hassle of constantly having to transmutate your gear. Another bonus of that system is that you only ever have to get a cosmetic set once (as opposed to once per set of gear, in GW2).

I understand that transmutation stones are a source of income for ANet in the gem shop, but I honestly think that the new system would overall result in more sales of cosmetic gear itself, rather than items that enable it, due to the ease at which people could customize their appearances. If you know that once you buy a cosmetic set of gear – you have that unlocked to always look that way without any hassle, you are likelier to make the purchase.

Selling extra cosmetic gear slots (ala LOTRO, allowing multiple cosmetic appearances to be made and switched at any given time) is also another viable income option from the gem shop.

Feedback would be appreciated.

Provide Options to Hide, Individually:
1. Chat box
2. Mini-map
3. Quest list
4. Party window (even the little head that’s there when not in a party)
5. Skill/utility bar

This is for those players who like to run with immersion. I am well aware that you can hide the entire interface, but there have been times where I wanted to hide just one thing and not have to lose everything else. The party ‘head’, for example, annoys me, to no end, sitting there when I am not in a party.

Improve Party List:

1. Indicate party leader in party list.
2. Show avatars of party members even if they are not in the same area.
3. Indicate health and conditions of party members, even if they are not in the same area.

This would allow party members to better assist their squad-mates, if need be, without having to be in the same region. For example: Member A has to go to Lion’s Arch and Player B chooses to stay in Sparkfly Fen. While Member A is in Lion’s Arch, Player B becomes a little overwhelmed with enemies; Member A notices the fluctuations of conditions and health of Player B and rushes to their aid, dropping what they were doing in Lion’s Arch.

Mini Pets:

1. Allow players to name their mini pets.
2. Allow players to manage mini pets in a manner similar to a ranger’s pets.
3. Allow players to change out their mini pets without having to carry them in their inventory.
4. Allow players to identify a key-bind to summon/de-summon their mini pets.
5. Allow mini-pets, not summons, to retrieve loot when the player is downed, but not when defeated.

Managing mini pets in a similar manner to how a ranger would manage theirs would allow the player to have access to all of their mini pets, at all times, without needing to carry them around. They would still be placed in the collection tab of the bank but could be accessed, anywhere, with a key-bind.

These features would allow for more player customization.

I say pets, and not summons, simply because a summon is nothing more than a spell used to conjure a spectral being. A spell, going based on lore (not GW lore), is no longer in effect when the caster is dead. When down, the caster would be too weak to be able to support the manifestation of the summon; not to mention the fact that they would be too focused on reviving themselves to do much of anything else. I was contemplating suggesting that this work for defeated players as well but decided not to on the grounds that the player is defeated, they can do nothing more than go back to town.

Add a Difficulty Toggle to Dungeons:

1. Difficulty of dungeons can be adjusted to the number of players inside of the instance:

A). Low – 1 to 2 players
B). Medium – 3 to 4 players
C). High – 5+ players (just in case they choose to increase the party size)

I have run across several players, myself included, who like to spend a portion of their time doing things alone, with the option of talking to, and including, other people. I believe that it is reasonable to allow ‘solo players’ to play the game without being limited to what they can, or cannot, do because of game design. I am not advocating that the dungeons be re-worked into cake walks; an adjustment method would be sufficient. Also, in an attempt to prevent exploitation, the following measure(s) can be taken:

1. The difficulty of the dungeon would self adjust according to the members inside of the instance. Meaning: if the dungeon is opened on ‘high’, and one player leaves, the difficulty would re-adjust to ‘medium’ to accommodate the smaller party size; this would work vice-versa as well.
2. Difficulty toggle would only be applicable to story mode.

lookitsandrea.8531:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Camera-and-FOV-field-of-view

They commented on the FOV.

The comments being obvious bullkitten, pointed out by posters in that thread.

VakarisJ.5619:

Like I said above – nausea isn’t a health issue.

Yes, that’s why I never studied it, it’s causes, or it’s treatments in my EMT training, and was never legally obligated to record it on my patient care records.

Here is a very informative video about FOV that ANET needs to understand.

drops two cents in the mystic forge of development

I’d like to see the outfits that are on all the NPCs unlocked for Town Clothing via the BLT.

I’d also like to see non-class armors unlocked in similar fashion, at least for the non-prestige items (dungeon gear, exotics, etc.). For example, a thief be able to put on cloth items for town clothing.

That shouldn’t effect PvP in any significant way and shouldn’t devalue end game achievements while giving us some variety. Thanks for your brief attention.

This does not affect me but it does affect my GF quite heavily – dizziness, nausea, motion sickness etc.

For A.net to essentially say “too bad, so sad, get over it” because they are worried about some art to people who become SICK when playing their game, is beyond appalling.

“gameplay suffers because positional awareness becomes less necessary in a game where combat is greatly designed around positioning.”

Ludicrous. Giganticus Lupicus. Do I need to say more? For the fight, the FoV expands obviously to compensate for the bosses size and the size of the arena. I play on a laptop, a pretty decent laptop, but on a 24" monitor. I suffer from no FPS drop. Your precious art stays the same.

Combat is designed around positioning is it? Please explain to us how this even makes sense or is even an argument.
1) You see red circle. You dodge out of red circle. How does this change if your FoV is larger, Jon Peters?
2) Players need to be aware of animations. We have to be able to SEE the players and the animations to avoid them. This is emphasized due to the fact that there is no cast bar.
Increasing FoV would let the players see more on the edge of their screen, forcing them be more AWARE of their peripherals. It would let players see MORE of your precious art.
That is the only change that would happen. People with 3 monitors already get this advantage. So you cater to people with 3 monitors, but you won’t fix a tiny issue that is making your customers SICK.

People are finding ways – Which YOU should do for them, A.net – to increase the FoV just to play the game and not throw up. You already give a larger FoV to people with three monitors. So your ENTIRE argument is invalid. How is it fair that people who spend an extra $400 – which isn’t necessary – get to enjoy a feature over people who get sick WITHOUT it just because they don’t go out and spend more money.

Ludicrous.

Unpredictability.4086:

I just want to say that I have had no problems with the FoV since the game has launched, even when I started playing it on my 4:3 monitor. Recently I upgraded to a 16:10 monitor, so of course I noticed a change, but I still didn’t think much of it.

I’ve watched some videos with comparisons between default and modified FoVs and honestly, every time I see the increased ones they look horrible. All I see is distortion and fisheye, like things should be not be moving like that. That and everything feels very tiny and not right.

However, I decided to experiment myself in window mode with a very wide resolution (1904×768) to see what it would look like anyways. OMG, this is so much better. I am totally on the FoV train now. I can completely see a difference, and there’s no fisheye/distortion going on either (or I woudln’t be using it). This is what has been missing in GW2 all along! The game looks a lot more “free” and “deconjested”.

This is a common mistake, if you watch a Video on youtube it does look distorted because the peripheral vision is different to the person that played/recorded that game sitting at a certain distance from a monitor with a monitor size that is most likely also different from your monitors size.

In short, videos do not work showing the effect. You need to actually set the game to fit your Monitor, distance from screen and resolution to see it.

The distortion and fish-eye part is still there but it is in your peripheral vision. This is the same as in real life, things beyond 60 degrees are distorted and not sharp, you only glimpse them out the corner of your eye.

Seeing that in guild wars 2 shop there are official guild wars 2 peripherals, and computer cases. I have a suggestion for a new item, that would greatly improve gaming experience.
An official guild wars 2 monitor. More specifically a 17" monitor. With it, you would experience the beautiful guild wars 2 world in full-screen, more naturally and you would not feel the claustrophobic effect and dizziness you get with the mainstream monitors that are simply too big for the Field of View guild wars has. Also the performance would improve, and there would be no implications on pvp advantages or art distortion.

I think It would be a great addition to your guild wars 2 hardware arsenal.

You can find the concept picture of the monitor in the attachment.

get rid of the bezel and sell them in packs of 3 so that it’s an official method to increase FoV >.>

bwillb.2165:

Honestly if the dev team would put a little effort into accessibility and standard visual options that every game should have, we wouldn’t need all this drama about third party apps.

Exactly. The UI in GW2 seems to have been designed to “look pretty” not to be ergonomic or efficient. Several unfortunate design choices, such as the camera “smoothing” (lag) or the fact that range indicators are at the bottom of the screen while enemies are near the top, etc., put unnecessary strain on players.

Not to mention incomprehensible decisions such as using red / green / blue for the WvW teams (instead of red / yellow / blue) when red-green colour blindness affects almost 5% of the population.

My mouse allows for hitting multiple keys at once with one button, is that considered wrong?
I.E. using 3 shouts with one button.

1) performance suffers greatly because of how things are built and view distances

My computer is quite low-end. I tried increasing FoV using existing methods (let’s say three monitors.) Had exactly the same performance as with the default tunnel-vision FoV.

2) art suffers because of texture tiling, LOD problems and just general stretching from the fisheye effect.

If implemented properly, there is little to no fisheye. And the art looks BETTER with higher FoV because I can actually see more than just the low-res dirt texture in front of me… I can take in the scenery! Besides, you focus on the center of the screen while playing, the rest is just peripheral vision which isn’t expected to look crystal clear.

3) gameplay suffers because positional awareness becomes less necessary in a game where combat is greatly designed around positioning.

This point doesn’t make any sense. No, really, I have no idea what you’re trying to say. How does a higher FoV make you have less need for positional awareness? The only thing it does in regards to positional awareness is let me more accurately judge distances because I’m no longer looking through a telescope. Gameplay doesn’t suffer, it’s dramatically enhanced. Gameplay suffers under the current FoV setting because I can’t play for more than a half hour without needing a break from the telescope.

There is a a serious camera problem, however, which is making some players nauseous. We believe a large number of these cases are not FOV related but rather due to bugs in camera smoothing. Because of this we are expediting a quick fix to this issue that is currently in testing and should see the light of day in the next build we do.

It’s good to hear you’re fixing camera smoothing. In fact, just let me turn that off completely, it’s a really bad feature to be forced onto a PC game. But you need to realize that camera smoothing is a problem in addition to the low FoV, not instead of it.

There is a very real issue here causing people to be unable to enjoy the game you have created. If no one on your development team has these issues, great, I’m happy for them, really, it’s good to not have these issues. But a lot of people do. And yes, for some of us it is just personal preference. But why not allow that preference? Allowing this choice would be no more harmful to the game than allowing us to change resolution or refresh rate.

Plague.5329:

Jon, leave it to the players. If they want lower performance, just have a notification in the slider that tells them they may experience issues. Otherwise, players WILL start developing third party methods of addressing this, as it IS a problem that you should be addressing, not the players. -snip-

Third party methods have already been developed. Unfortunately using it, even though it doesn’t give you any competitive benefit of significance (or any benefit that you wouldn’t already have if you use Eyefinity or 3D surround), is still a ban-able offence. The only hope now, is for ArenaNet to ease the reins a bit with community developed applications.

Xfraze.1704:

Then don’t make it the same for everyone, make it a slider.

The argument that it’s unfair to some players who opt not to play with a higher FOV is out the window since people with 3 monitors or custom resolutions from their video card settings can have a higher FOV.

This … a thousand times, this. Unless I’ve misunderstood one of ArenaNet’s core philosophies, I’ve always believed that they are a company that promotes inclusion and not exclusion. I also believe that general consensus from players complaining about the constricted FoV in GW2, has always been that some choice (i.e. a slider or numeral input – heck, even a command-line parameter) would benefit all.

I’m going to keep linking this video, because it simply refutes any concerns regarding game-breaking issues when you increase the FoV. I don’t quite agree with what’s being said in the video in terms of “what looks more natural”, and that it was made to look worse because of the zoomed-in nature of the comparison … but it illustrates one thing – a higher FoV isn’t as detrimental as it’s made out to be – not by a long-shot and not even in this extreme example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYV8dUQmmk4&feature=player_embedded

Respect goes both ways. If ANET won’t respect us enough to fix known health issues, why should we respect their terms of service ?

Seems like most people here don’t seem to understand the difference between using 3 monitors or windowed mode versus artificially increasing FoV in a fixed aspect ratio. They are NOT the same, and all of the issues Jon raised are alleviated when you increase the aspect ratio but are all painfully apparent when you don’t.

Unless you also adjust the vertical FOV to compensate for changes in the horizontal FOV. Most games do this automatically, though making us have to adjust both manually would be sufficient.

Because the reasons don’t matter. The entitlement brigade just wants what they want and don’t like being told no. The reasons are irrelevant, because even if Jon said “if we did this the game will crash every 10 minutes” they would still call him a liar and insist they should include it anyway.

Yes, we would call him a liar in that example. That’s because we have evidence on our side. Specifically, the people using higher FOV setups though multiple monitors, window shrinking or hacks and not having the game crash.

I want the FoV to be higher honestly. I just think that calling BS on a devs reasoning behind not changing it atm is not the way to go about things.

If someone makes a BS argument regarding something I find important, I don’t care who they are, they should be called out on their BS. If they are lying to us, then we need to make it clear they aren’t fooling us and we won’t let them fool anyone else. If they believe what they are saying, convincing them they are wrong might actually change things.

I’d try to do it as politely as possible. But politeness is secondary, calling them out is most important.

Jon pretty much said that the game engine can’t handle a greater FoV.
I can understand that he hesitates to plainly admit that, but that’s pretty much how it is.
“We cannot change it because we cannot change it…”

Yet hackers can. Meaning that even if ANET can’t code it themselves, they still can fix it by licensing the hack off whoever wrote it and integrating it into GW2.

I recall reading a while ago that Arenanet had gone from being a company primarily comprosed of programmers to one based around the artists…..with the result that we are seeing many decisions which represent “form over function”, this being one of the more in-your-face examples. (The other, for anyone interested, are the non-gameplay related UI elements. In brief “PvP locker” as a prime example).

I also recall reading that Anet are listening to us. We are telling Anet that the ability to change FoV without investing in a 3 monitor setup (or use 3rd party hacks) is important to us. It would be nice if we felt like we were being listened to…

I currently have 24 folders of nearly 1k screenshots each, moving them everytime is not fun but at least I am forced to have them somewhat in order