While the official Guild Wars 2 forums have been understandably a little quiet over the holiday break, one ArenaNet staff member took some time yesterday to give players a bit of insight on developer time and how it is used. The subject at hand was camera inertia in GW2, which is basically the “rebound” effect sometimes noticeable when quickly spinning your character or camera around. Most MMOs feature a camera option with no inertia, which makes it easy for practiced gamers to move and turn using the mouse. On the other hand, having no camera inertia can sometimes make camera motions too sudden.
Staff member Evan Lesh posted in a forum topic regarding the possibility of a toggle feature for camera inertia in GW2, stating that a toggle would be ideal, but unfortunately not very likely anytime soon since it would take quite a decent chunk of developer time. Keep reading to see the detailed explanation, which is an interesting read for those curious about behind the scenes MMO development.
Originally posted by Evan Lesh (Source)
This is generally how things goes down:We start getting player feedback that some aspect of the game can be improved (let’s take the camera for example).
Get enough feedback that we determine a significant amount of the player base is affected negatively.
Evaluate options and assess development time required for a change. This can include refactoring code to make it configurable, creating the UI, and getting option text localized.In the case of camera inertia:
Option 1 is to pick and test some new values. Satisfies 98% of the player base, with zero dev-time, goes out as soon as we’re comfortable with the values.
Option 2 is to make a slider/drop down, pick acceptable ranges (not trivial), localize text, and update the UI. Requires new tech, and waiting for text to get localized. This satisfies 100% of the player base at the cost of time and slowly complicating the game.We picked option 1. It’s a fine balance between the two that really depends on cost/payoff. This isn’t to say we’ll never go back and do option two, but it’s now a pretty low priority.
