Action Cam as an official alternative to the standard combat mode?

Can action cam be an official alternative to the standard click and turn mode? As in to say, make new players aware of it in the beginning tutorial mode?

I've been trying to get a few of my friends to start playing Gw2 recently but almost all of them dropped it when they thought that they had to click and hold just to turn. It was only until I told them about the Action Cam setting that did some of them actually start to enjoy it.

One of them even told me, "Why didn't they tell us about the setting in the beginning?"

That actually got me thinking. Should Action Cam be marketed as an official alternative to the default controls for new players? Quite a number of players like myself really enjoy playing it that way and I probably wouldn't have invested as much time as I did when I first started this game if there wasn't such an option.

I would appreciate if Anet told more players about the setting especially since cross-hair targeting seems to be all the craze nowadays (I could be wrong). I'm not asking to force everyone to start playing action cam but at least give some attention to it.

P.S. Can we have more options for Action Cam? (Bigger or different colored cross-hair options etc.)

I personally use action cam exclusively and I do every single bit of content in the game including platinum ranked pvp, fractal CMs and raid CMs. It makes the game 100% more fun to play, and I would find it hard to go back to click and hold. Using left click for auto-attack also feels much more natural.

Anet absolutely needs to make people more aware of action cam and expand on the feature. Obviously not if it takes away from other content, but there are ways in which action cam can be improved on. The only real problem with it is that you can't use teleport-to-target skills like phase traversal outside of the skills max range.

@Tazdingo.7213 said:Can action cam be an official alternative to the standard click and turn mode? As in to say, make new players aware of it in the beginning tutorial mode?

I don't think it should be, because it's not how a lot of players new to GW2 & MMOs will enjoy playing. Still, like a lot of features (especially new ones), it would be good if the game at least mentioned its existence, e.g. as part of the level up process (along with informing people about the TP, and so on).

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Tazdingo.7213 said:Can action cam be an official alternative to the standard click and turn mode? As in to say, make new players aware of it in the beginning tutorial mode?

I've tried to get friends into Guild Wars 2 who are not MMO gamers and they always have a difficult time wrapping their heads around holding the right mouse to turn the camera. You would not believe how many of them use only WASD to turn their camera around. People who are new to MMOs are not accustomed to click and hold. Once they learn about action cam they start to enjoy the game more and it also has the added benifit of forcing them NOT to be skill clickers.

There are so many players who are unaware of action cam and how it can be an alternative to playing the game, maybe even freshen up the gameplay experience for veterans. There's been so many times I tell a fractal or raid buddy about the feature, people who have been playing the game for years and are always surprised by it.

That's a good point about the trading post as well.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Tazdingo.7213 said:Can action cam be an official alternative to the standard click and turn mode? As in to say, make new players aware of it in the beginning tutorial mode?

Hmm...I see what you mean but ill have to disagree about players new to MMOs.

Lets say they are new to the MMO genre, I would suspect they would come from the new generations of games that are very action combat-y. Very few games out there are tab-target anymore (both console and pc) unless you're talking about players familiar to the mmo genre and are migrating from lets say, WoW.

Even then, my friends are coming from an mmo such as Black Desert which is VERY action combat.

The thing I like the most about Guild Wars 2 is that their combat is a mix of best of both worlds.I'm asking for at least some acknowledgement so that new players looking for an mmo to play would at least consider playing Gw2.

@"Matiole.6857" said:That's a good point about the trading post as well.

The trading post is mentioned during level up though (when your character reaches L7). (Not to say the notice is all that helpful, but it's a lot better than not being mentioned.)

I'm not denying that some people would like the action cam. I'm saying I doubt very much if it's the majority's preference. I doubt there's a good way to know which would work better as a default, and, all things being equal, business tend to stick with the status quo rather than take a chance that changing the default might help.

Just to be clear: I agree that the game should let people know about some of the more critical options, including action cam, regardless of what the default choices are.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Matiole.6857" said:That's a good point about the trading post as well.

Well I don't think it is or would be the majority of players preference, nor do I think it should be the default option, but it should be a clear option along side traditional click-to-hold. Right now it's tucked away hidden in the control options with 0 mention of it anywhere. If someone didn't tell you about it or you weren't feeling extra curious one day you would never know about it's existence. It's my position and I think the OP's position for the game to not hide action cam in the control options and bring it more to peoples attention, preferably in the early game for newcomers. I would totally be an ambassador for action cam, that's how much I enjoy it.

@"Matiole.6857" said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Matiole.6857" said:That's a good point about the trading post as well.

We can only hope that at least this post gets the attention of someone on the devteam haha...

But I agree that I always found it odd to have it tucked away within the keybinds and you had to actually select a key to toggle it.

Hopefully, a small change as at least mentioning it would garner some attention towards Guild Wars 2 as a whole.

I'm really not seeing how most player unfamiliar with MMOs would not enjoy the action cam. RTSs, MOBAs, and traditional MMOs are pretty much the only 3D games with real-time combat that don't use action camera, which makes them a minority. Everyone who mostly plays single-player RPGs, shooters, action-adventures, or hack-and-slash games will find the AC much more familiar, and likely much more enjoyable.

@"Hashar.6082" said:I'm really not seeing how most player unfamiliar with MMOs would not enjoy the action cam. RTSs, MOBAs, and traditional MMOs are pretty much the only 3D games with real-time combat that don't use action camera, which makes them a minority. Everyone who mostly plays single-player RPGs, shooters, action-adventures, or hack-and-slash games will find the AC much more familiar, and likely much more enjoyable.

Most of those genres also don't tab targeting as a main stay mechanic. Theres a long standing debate about the value of designing around sub-optimal control schemes for the sake of familiarity, and the amount of long term damage is actually done to UI design and Control schemes as a result. There are elements which can be seamlessly integrated into other design concepts, but many which need a specific set up to be intuitive in.

What you DON'T want to do is force the design to be something thats counter productive to itself. But you also want to make it intuitive. But a problem here is that most people don't understand the difference between "game intuitive" and "naturally intuitive". Game Intuitive isn't actually intuitive.... its simply a set of trained behavior gained through repetition. Having design concepts shared between formats lets players acclimate faster, but its not automatically better. And in some cases, it actually limits the player's ability to improve.

For example: The dual stick shooter control scheme is the ultimate refinement of a joypad based system. But its so insanely inferior to mouse based controls when it comes to precision, that the games have to be designed around the limitations of the control system to not frustrate the player into rage quitting. Thats a huge problem on both fronts, because it limits what Devs can do with level and encounter designs, while also limiting how good a player can be with the controls before hitting the skill ceiling. While this makes it easy for casual players to get on board, its also stiffed their growth to the point where they can't adapt to anything that involves fast moving targets or high levels of fine aiming.

The reverse can also be said for keyboard ported to Platformers. KB lacks the analog functionality that allows for fluid decoupled camera behaviors, and fine control of air-steering common to many games in the genre. Its not well suited for the format, and no amount of designing the game around it actually fixes the problem, so much as hide/compensate for it.

@Hashar.6082 said:I'm really not seeing how most player unfamiliar with MMOs would not enjoy the action cam. RTSs, MOBAs, and traditional MMOs are pretty much the only 3D games with real-time combat that don't use action camera, which makes them a minority. Everyone who mostly plays single-player RPGs, shooters, action-adventures, or hack-and-slash games will find the AC much more familiar, and likely much more enjoyable.

Yeah I personally feel that that's pretty much one of the reasons the MMO genre has been feeling so stale as of late. The ones with a good overall system tend to have a somewhat outdated tab-targeting combat style while those that are actually action combat just are pretty much meh in terms of other stuff to do in their games.In my opinion the top 2 MMOs, WoW and FFXIV, one of the reasons they are that popular are pretty much due to nostalgia and cause they're both of well-known franchises.

I feel Gw2 could attract audiences of both. Potentially expanding their playerbase. Granted this won't be an immediate confirmation of that.

@"starlinvf.1358" said:Most of those genres also don't tab targeting as a main stay mechanic. Theres a long standing debate about the value of designing around sub-optimal control schemes for the sake of familiarity, and the amount of long term damage is actually done to UI design and Control schemes as a result. There are elements which can be seamlessly integrated into other design concepts, but many which need a specific set up to be intuitive in.

What you DON'T want to do is force the design to be something thats counter productive to itself. But you also want to make it intuitive. But a problem here is that most people don't understand the difference between "game intuitive" and "naturally intuitive". Game Intuitive isn't actually intuitive.... its simply a set of trained behavior gained through repetition. Having design concepts shared between formats lets players acclimate faster, but its not automatically better. And in some cases, it actually limits the player's ability to improve.

For example: The dual stick shooter control scheme is the ultimate refinement of a joypad based system. But its so insanely inferior to mouse based controls when it comes to precision, that the games have to be designed around the limitations of the control system to not frustrate the player into rage quitting. Thats a huge problem on both fronts, because it limits what Devs can do with level and encounter designs, while also limiting how good a player can be with the controls before hitting the skill ceiling. While this makes it easy for casual players to get on board, its also stiffed their growth to the point where they can't adapt to anything that involves fast moving targets or high levels of fine aiming.

The reverse can also be said for keyboard ported to Platformers. KB lacks the analog functionality that allows for fluid decoupled camera behaviors, and fine control of air-steering common to many games in the genre. Its not well suited for the format, and no amount of designing the game around it actually fixes the problem, so much as hide/compensate for it.

Not for the sake of familiarity alone, no. The original argument was "new players likely wouldn't enjoy the AC," which I don't expect to be true. A player who enjoys the game, even if s/he plays it suboptimally, is far more likely to stay and contribute to the game's healthy growth than a player who knows how to play very efficiently, but doesn't find the outcome appealing. I, for example, find rifle Deadeye with action camera extremely fun, and that's what I currently play; that's what motivates me to log into the game (and potentially spend money on something from the gem shop). I know it's very suboptimal (and learning to work around the limitations is actually fun in and of itself), but, if I was forced to abandon all my suboptimal builds and the action camera mode, I would most likely abandon the game as well.

And the control scheme limitations you're mentioning aren't actually quite as insurmountable. Inferior, yes, but it is entirely possible to successfully raid and PvP in GW2 while using the AC. Can it prevent you from achieving your maximum potential? Perhaps (although I'm not sure how large the difference will be), but it is far from being the only thing standing between you and your maximum potential, and the absolute majority of players aren't playing to achieve the latter.