Guild Wars 2

I would simply just prefer an Appearance tab that is dedicated for looks alone and then your equipment tab, which exists now, handles the stats. But it seems transmutation stones were implemented for the microtransaction factor which I do not quite approve of – it works and as a player you can get them from your check-lists but they only work up to level 79.

I agree with this. Transmutation stones are too much of a hassle, especially while levelling up, going through constant upgrades. I wonder how they’re selling though. If people are buying them, there’s not much hope they’ll change it.

I’m not going to make this any longer than it has to be. If I ever manage to get rank 100 I would like to show off my gear more places than just heart of the mists (same should go for pve armor if you would enter heart of the mists)

It would be great if you could use it as town clothing

Why else get all this fancy gear if you can only show it in one place!

Increase the variety in armour at low levels.

I played through levels 10 to 65 with the same visual “coat” armour, because there appeared to be only two to three other styles—and I didn’t like them.

AND/OR, allow transmutation of visual styles between the Light, Medium and Heavy armours. *If necessary limit it to non-rares etc.

I would also like to see some options to tweak the scrolling combat text.

• Different locations.
• Different colours.
• Configuration on type for each (incoming damage/outgoing/etc).

I would love to be able to see the UI bits better. Currently I have problems with boons/conditions, sometimes it’s a window in the way.

• Allow us to move all elements of the UI.

• Allow us to resize all elements of the UI.

• Allow us to change the transparency of all elements of the UI.

• Allow us to tweak the colour of all elements of the UI.

Please Arena-net, I want this game to succeed as i think it has the best foundation of any MMO I’ve ever played. However, i feel that the current camera system will turn a lot of players away, especially the more “skilled” or experienced player-base that are picky with game feel and responsiveness.

If anyone has anything else to add related to the camera (or player-control related to the camera) or if you agree with any of the above and desperately want to see the camera improved, I encourage you to please feel free to post here.

Thank you

The angle and orientation of the camera is currently set so the player is constantly looking down at the ground. Very little of the game world is actually visible when the camera is positioned at its optimal resting spot. This not only makes it hard to see what is happening around the player but it also completely destroys immersion and makes the game feel cramped and claustrophobic. Currently, in order to see the sky and in front of you, the camera needs to be positioned so it’s almost touching the ground so you’re aiming it straight at the characters back/legs. This is especially problematic when combined with the current camera collision detection.

Solution: Angle the camera up slightly and make the bottom of the camera closer to the feet of the player’s character so less of the ground behind the player is visible and more is visible in foreground in front of the player specifically so there’s more vertical vision.

Currently the camera collision detection is extremely sensitive and/or buggy. Every single object in the game will ‘collide’ with the camera causing the camera to zoom in so it’s in front of that object. In most other third-person games the camera is allowed to pass through most objects so the camera isn’t constantly zooming in and out. This makes running around extremely disorientating and players have to constantly fight the camera to try to prevent the constant zooming in and out. Even spinning the camera on perfectly flat terrain with no objects around will make the camera zoom in for whatever reason.
Solution: Enhance the intelligence of the camera collision detection so it doesn’t constantly zoom in and out. Only walls and very large objects (i.e., giant boulders) should cause the camera to zoom in. When the camera collides with the ground the camera also shouldn’t zoom in.

Camera zoom is the maximum distance away from the character that the camera can be set to. Ideal camera distance really just comes down to personal preference. However, most players coming from an MMO background would prefer to be able to zoom the camera out significantly more than is currently allowed. Having the camera so close to the character can actually cause physical motion sickness in some players.

Solution: Add a ‘camera distance’ slider in the options menu so players can pick their preferred max camera distance. This is the ideal method of increasing the max camera distance instead of just allowing players to zoom the camera out more by default. I think increasing the max camera distance by 33% would be a good starting point, further would be ideal so players can pick what they like, but i can see how having it set too far can give some players an unfair advantage or cause frame rate problems or graphical problems (specifically with height collision).

The A and D keys currently turn the player and camera at a very slow rate for whatever reason. This turn rate is completely unrealistic and uncomfortable to play with. The current turn speed makes the A and D keys completely worthless for both combat and navigation. There’s also a great deal of acceleration with both the A and D keys. When first pressed it takes 2-3 seconds until they turn the character at the maximum speed.

Solution: Simply increase the turn rate for the A and D keys to about double what they’re currently set at. The turn rate should be fast enough for the player to run in a tight circle (so a diameter of about one body length) while holding both W+A.

Locked Camera
In some third-person games (especially third-person shooter games), the camera is by default ‘locked’ to the mouse such that the right-mouse-button doesn’t have to be constantly held down to turn the camera (and by extension the character). This makes moving the camera seem a lot more natural, especially in a fast-paced RPGs like GW2 where movement and positioning is so important. It can also eliminate hand fatigue as well as the potential of developing carpal tunnel by not requiring the player to constantly hold the right-mouse-button at all times.

Solution:
Consider adding an option to lock the camera to the mouse. When this mode is enabled, it would also enable a secondary keybind (for example, ‘shift’ by default), when held down, this key would temporarily unlock the camera from the mouse and bring up a cursor that would allow players to still interact with the world when needed. Also, whenever a menu is open that requires the cursor (such as the Trading Post, the inventory, the loot window, dialogue/NPC interaction, etc) the mouse would automatically become temporarily unlocked and would automatically become locked again when the menu is closed.

The Camera Glitch causes the camera to suddenly jerk with very little actual user input and then resets the cursor to the middle of the screen. This issue is difficult to describe so I’ll just post these two videos to demonstrate:
Guild Wars 2 camera glitch – BWE2
Guild Wars 2 camera glitch – BWE1
It appears like this is being caused by the acceleration/snap function of the camera. It senses quick movement and then jerks the camera despite the user barely moving the mouse at all.

Solution: Unfortunately there isn’t an easy solution for this problem. It will require extensive bug checking and/or some recoding of the camera algorithm.

Update: I believe this has been fixed. I personally can’t reproduce it anymore; however, there is one comment in the youtube videos posted above stating that they still have this issue as of 9/2/12. Can anyone confirm/deny if it’s still happening to them?

Currently the left-click mouse button will select a target upon key-press rather than key-release. This makes it so whenever the player attempts to turn the camera by left-clicking first, that they randomly select unwanted targets. This is especially problematic in WvW because there’s very little room on the screen in large battles to purposely avoid this problem (i,e,. by positioning the cursor away from all targets before left-clicking).

Solution: Make the left-click button only select a target upon release instead of key-depression.

Camera acceleration, also known as camera smoothing, is when the movement of the camera is exponential (i.e., it scales with mouse speed) rather than linear (i.e., mouse movement is transferred perfectly to camera movement). The purpose behind it is to make the camera feel like it has weight or momentum behind it but all it really does is make the camera feel sluggish, non-responsive, inaccurate, and ‘heavy’.

To make the above explanation easier to understand, here’s an example of camera acceleration: If you hold the right mouse button and move your mouse 1 inch at an extremely slow speed, the camera will turn about 45 degrees in-game; If you move your mouse 1 inch (the same distance as before) at an extremely fast speed, the camera will turn about 360 degrees. It’s scaling, or accelerating, the camera rotation based on mouse movement speed. In a linear movement system (one without camera acceleration), the camera would turn the same amount in that 1 inch, independent and unaffected by mouse movement speed.

Current Accelerated Camera:
1 inch of mouse movement at 2meters/second = 45 degree camera rotation
1 inch of mouse movement at 4 meters/second = 360 degree of camera rotation (when it should still be 45 degrees)

Proposed Linear Camera:
1 inch of mouse movement at 2meters/second = 45 degree camera rotation
1 inch of mouse movement at 4 meters/second = 45 degree camera rotation

The majority of gamers strongly dislike camera acceleration, in fact, if you search the web, you will see most competitive gamers will actually go out of their way to turn it off or remove it if possible (via console commands or game-file modification). Camera acceleration makes precise camera movement nearly impossible, especially at faster mouse speeds, which is a big deal because fast mouse speeds are required in fast-paced competitive PvP. It also makes the camera feel sluggish and unresponsive at slower mouse speeds.

Camera snap is the exaggerated camera rotation that happens when the game senses the mouse turning the camera at a very fast speed, it’s closely related to camera acceleration. When the game picks up on this aggressive mouse movement, it will try to predict camera movement and then suddenly ‘snap’ the camera ~60 degrees to where it thinks you’re trying to turn it to. This makes camera movement extremely unpredictable.

Solution: Keep camera acceleration and camera snapping on by default but add an option to disable it. This way, the very small minority of casual gamers that like this feature (because either they dislike having to move their mouse hand as much or they just don’t notice) will have it on when they start the game up. The more advanced majority of players can then go into the options to disable these post-processing features if they so desire.

Currently the turn speed of the camera is tied to the in-game FPS. Whenever the game is running at ~60 FPS or more the camera turns at its normal full speed, however at anything below 60 fps, the camera becomes progressively slower. For example, at 10-25 fps (extremely likely to happen in large 50v50 battles in WvW) the camera’s sensitivity markedly decreases such that it feels like it turns at one-third to one-half its normal speed.

Solution: Untie the camera’s sensitivity from the game’s FPS so the camera turns at the same speed no matter if the FPS is at 1 or 100.

Field of Vision is the extent of the observable game world that is seen on the display at any given moment. Currently GW2 has a very narrow FOV that can’t be changed. The problem with a narrow and unrealistic FoV is that it induces a feeling of tunnel vision. This can lead to headaches, eye-strain, nausea, and other symptoms of motion sickness. Not only does increasing the FoV alleviate these symptoms, it also makes the game look more natural and increases the level of immersion. To get an idea of big a deal a FoV change can make, I suggest you watch this video demonstrating a 60 FoV vs a 100 FoV in Tera.

Solution: Add a Field of Vision slider in options with a numerical read-out in degrees so players can pick a FoV that doesn’t make them feel sick and also makes the game world look more natural. Even if increasing the FoV causes graphical issues i feel it should still be implemented. Most players that do suffer from motion sickness at narrow FoV’s would probably prefer looking at the graphical anomalies than feel sick while playing.