r/gaming • u/yutface • Mar 28 '23
I know it's a minor gripe - but every game does this and I wish they wouldn't
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u/Gillalmighty Mar 28 '23
Auto camera should always be an option. I like adjusting it myself
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u/killer_burrito Mar 29 '23
Not just a toggle on or off, but being able to set the position when it's on.
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u/HighOnTacos Mar 29 '23
Guild wars 2 is ten years old and has a ton of settings for the third person camera. Only game I've seen that has an optional camera offset, having it to the left or right of your character so you can see what's straight in front of you.
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u/ImrooVRdev Mar 29 '23
Guild wars is a goddamn masterpiece of engineering. Update can drop, and you can keep playing, thing downloading in the background, and then applying on next loading screen.
As far as I am aware, this is pure black magic, because at my company we still take servers down to update them, and clients need hard reset to start downloading stuff.
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u/Ink_Smudger Mar 29 '23
It's crazy. The game turns 10 this year, and the NA servers have like a week of downtime in that entire decade total, and a big chunk of that was when they were migrating their servers to a new data center. (EU ones have been down longer due to some tech issue a few years back, if I recall). I wish something like that was standard for all online games. Always frustrating having time to play something and finding out the server is down for the next 12 hours.
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u/OM3GAS7RIK3 Mar 29 '23
It's easily the most impressive implementation of red/green staggering I've seen in the wild for sure.
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u/dre224 Mar 29 '23
Holy fuck yes. Especially with the new technology like the new unreal engine. There is no excuse to not have the ability to control the angle and movement of auto camera. I actually love auto cameras when they work properly but with alot of games being open world or having alot of hidden areas being able to see the world is more important than ever. God of war has been pretty good with the auto camera but still doesn't give you the amount of customization of camera settings I wish I had.
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u/EmergencyNerve4854 Mar 29 '23
Gotta love people using Unreal Engine as the new buzzword.
They could have given you these options back on the first PlayStation. You know why they don't? $$$. It costs time and money to develop these options.. and to design your game with these options in mind. And many many more things.
Lord. Lol
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u/Athedeus Mar 28 '23
And sometimes they force it straight down. Can't see anything.
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u/lactosefree1 Mar 28 '23
I'd rather look top down than have it point at the sky.
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u/cefriano Mar 29 '23
Everyone here gushes about FromSoft games, but no one talks about how the lock-on camera is completely useless because most of the bosses are huge and it'll just force your view straight up while you're trying to hack at their ankles.
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u/Boner_Elemental Mar 29 '23
Part of Git Gud is knowing when to turn off target lock
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u/ItIsYeDragon Mar 29 '23
Is that an actual mechanic or just trying to get around a bad lock-on system? Asking genuinely cuz I plan on playing Elden Ring soon.
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u/EpilepticBabies Mar 29 '23
It is genuinely important in fromsoft games to know when to turn off target lock.
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u/master_tomberry Mar 29 '23
And a good tip for fighting giant enemies is hug/aim at their groin. Or their asshole. We are not good people
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u/Ranger4878 Mar 29 '23
Is it our fault that that’s where the bosses can’t hit us or is it the design fault
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u/fade_like_a_sigh Mar 29 '23
The target lock is fine in my experience and does what it says on the tin, it locks you to the target.
The problem people encounter often isn't in the target lock itself, it's in thinking that being locked to a target is always the best case scenario.
In Soulsborne, being locked on can really help sometimes. And at other times, what you absolutely need is the free camera and movement control if you're taking on bosses with specific attack patterns, or huge bosses that mean being locked on means staring upwards which isn't always helpful, or big groups of enemies.
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u/Everyones_Fan_Boy Mar 29 '23
Just lock on and then off regularly. You know how you can reset a camera in most games? It's that but instead of resetting on your asshole you reset to the enemy's asshole instead.
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u/Cassereddit Mar 29 '23
When you have many enemies in a group or multiple points of attack, you need to know how to refocus or unfocus your camera lock-on so you actually don't shoot yourself in the foot.
That's the full 'mechanic'.
Same goes for all the other Soulsborne games
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u/lavvvenderrr Mar 28 '23
BRO DOESNT WANNA TAKE IN THE SPLENDOR AND MAJESTY OF VIDEO GAME ARCHITECTURE!!!!!!!!!
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u/r_rembrandt Mar 28 '23
OP is floor gang
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Mar 28 '23
Floors and corners, that's where they get you, kid
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u/see_dub Mar 29 '23
Is that an expanse reference?
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u/Hannibal0216 Mar 29 '23
*Doors and corners, it's a misquote but yes
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u/see_dub Mar 29 '23
I would qualify it more as a joke than a misquote, but that line lives in my head rent free. I’m not used to seeing references like that in the wild
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u/General_Specific303 Mar 29 '23 edited Mar 29 '23
Yeah, I can't tell you how many times I've said to myself "I'm sick of seeing this game's enemies, environment, and obstacles. I want to see more of the floor"
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u/Tough-Reading9810 Mar 28 '23
fromsoft games (bloodborne and dark souls 3 especially) have incredible architecture. there is no auto camera, the player can look wherever they want, and it's so much easier to actually admire the architecture that way rather than being forced into one perspective.
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u/spaceguydudeman Mar 29 '23
Uhh, some of the soulslike games definitely do have their fair share of auto camera controls (not talking about the lock on camera).
In fact, they even auto pan you towards viewpoints at certain points where you can easily admire the worldbuilding.
but then again i forgot I was in /r/gaming so let's just keep the circle jerk going.
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u/Tough-Reading9810 Mar 29 '23 edited Mar 29 '23
i know ds3 zooms the camera out at irithyll but i don't remember it forcing the camera back into one place like when you're driving around in cyberpunk which is the kind of thing op is talking about. when fromsoft want you to look at something they usually just make sure you're already looking in that direction using long corridors and assuming the player will face in the direction they're moving
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u/ESOCHI Mar 28 '23
Me constantly having my thumb on the right stick while driving in GTA.
Right there with ya, OP.
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u/BetterWankHank Mar 28 '23
Stole my comment. Too many games seem to prioritize aiming the camera into the distance rather than being able to see where we're currently driving. Why is everything directly in front of me a blind spot???
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u/Soul-Burn Mar 29 '23
I guess that's why many games put the character a bit to the left or right of the middle, as much as I dislike over-the-shoulder cameras.
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u/z3anon Mar 29 '23
All they have to do is have the default ciew panned slightly above the car while keeping it in frame. There's no need to sacrifice either the distance or up close camera view.
I don't understand why it's such a common problem when there's plenty of actual good examples.
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u/ReivynNox Mar 28 '23
It's just the worst when in a car. Burnout Paradise constantly had me crashing into cars I couldn't see, because they were hidden by my car. Can't even see over the slightest little hills.
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u/Vonbonnery Mar 29 '23
Burnout Paradise was the worst for this. Fun game but was basically driving blind the whole time.
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u/steveosek Mar 29 '23
It's worse once you get the ultra high end vehicles too. Particularly that dlc DeLorean clone that would drive 1200mph when in hover mode.
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u/cookinwithspice Mar 29 '23
Thank you for writing this. gta 3-SA were perfect then starting with 4, suddenly i have a view of taillights only, and its brutal.
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u/metamorphosis___ Mar 29 '23
Im playing thru gta v rn and just now realizing that i subconsciously do this with the camera
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Mar 28 '23
I honestly don't remember if either GTA or Red Dead have options to center the camera automatically. I got so used with navigating with the right analog (taking turns and etc), camera who circles around automatically are almost a afterthought to me (but ironically, I hate when Mario 64 does that, I emulated this game on a phone and the crude 3D camera really annoyed me. However, I think Banjo-Kazooie learned with those mistakes and improved the camera a little... still clunky tho)
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u/TBOPFalconWAR Mar 28 '23
I also hate this but to be fair to Ni No Kuni II (the game in the pic) it has the option to turn both horizontal and vertical camera auto-reset off.
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u/wicktus Switch Mar 28 '23
Enjoyed Ni No Kuni 2, it's not as good as the one but still had fun, it's a simple straightforward JRPG
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u/xweedxwizardx Mar 28 '23
is that the game in OP? looks very similar to the art in Dragon Quest but I can't tell what game
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u/TheSaiguy Mar 28 '23
Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom. The character shown is the president of the United States, Roland.
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Mar 29 '23
It was fun for a bit. But every, single, enemy had a knock back move that they use constantly.
I spent more time on my back than swinging my sword.
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u/yogaman421 Mar 29 '23
I really liked NNK2 at first, but it felt like the game was just a downward slope in quality as you went through it. Beginning was magical (9/10), casino city was fun (8/10), 1984 water city was interesting but makes less sense the more you think about it (7/10), tree city was boring and the character arc of the party member you get there was super underwhelming (6/10), and I just quit after that. Also I was really disappointed with the characters since they feel barely present after their introductions.
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u/Moglorosh Mar 29 '23
I platinumed it last year, it was an excellent game. I think my favorite part happens at the very beginning when your main character first gets transported to Ding Dong Dell and the mouse soldiers come. Was not expecting him to just pull out a handgun and ace them.
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u/Fedacking Mar 29 '23 edited Mar 29 '23
The beginning to that video game is bonkers. Please, anyone that doesn't know, watch this shit or read this shit The president of the US is on it's way to a summit of the UN, the city gets nuked and gets transported into fantasy land. He appears in the middle of the coup, pulls out a gun and murders a guard
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u/GrunkleThespis Mar 29 '23
The art and cutscenes aren’t as good as 1 but I think the kingdom building mechanics are such a Huge addition. And the combat is leagues better than NNK1.
Ni No Kuni 2 mighty be my new favorite JRPG
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u/moonbad Mar 29 '23
I enjoyed the pikmin style higgledies a lot more than the pokemon style battles of the first one too.
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u/lockzackary Mar 29 '23
i always describe ni no kuni 2 as the proper reclaim your kingdom game, which FF XV (final fantasy 15) massively failed to do
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u/darkbreak PlayStation Mar 29 '23
By the time you got back to your kingdom in FFXV it was pointless. The game didn't even allow for any rebuilding efforts afterwards in the story.
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u/steveosek Mar 29 '23
What a bizarre game ff15 was. You could beat the entire game just warp-striking everything. There was only one boss in the entire game where you would possibly have to deviate from this, and it's one of the last bosses lol. You CAN do other stuff, but nothing is as effective as just spamming warp strike the entire game. That's why I tell people who haven't played it to play it on harder difficulty. Even after all the changes up to now, it's still a highly disjointed mess of a game that feels more tech demo than anything else. It tries to do the bounty thing from ff12 but doesn't do it as well. Yet the actual road trip bits with the bros were actually oddly fun.
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u/Seastep Mar 29 '23
I really wanted to love NNK2, but the late game kingdom building got so oppressive that I uninstalled it.
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u/moonbad Mar 29 '23
You finish the game before you even get to any of the late kingdom stuff. That's all optional.
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u/Seastep Mar 29 '23
Maybe I'm mistaken. I could swear there was some requirement to upgrade the kingdom before you could enter some late game area.
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u/jordantylermeek Mar 28 '23
I'm an indie developer. I'm not a GOOD developer but I know enough to be able to add to this. Camera work itself can be someone's primary job for a while on game projects. There's all sorts of things you can program the camera to do. Some modern norms are making it so that objects that come between the camera and the player character at a certain distance from the camera fade out (if you've ever had an npc or wall block the view obnoxiously you know what I mean.) That tiny addition has programming needed and considerations that have to be made. Now how that applies to the angle of the camera is probably more of just dealers choice. They may have decided that a slight downward tilt messed up the view they wanted the player to see as they explored the world, or maybe they felt the view better gave the player more peripheral awareness. I also prefer your angle for 3rd person, but they may have just had someone saying "do this because x,y, and z reasons." Or we could be overthinking it. They might have spent a week getting the camera where they wanted it and said "ALRIGHT! NOW LETS GET TO WORK ON BOOB PHYSICS" and never looked back.
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u/Kbungo Mar 28 '23
Leon Massey made a video about camera perspective just a few days ago. It's wonderful and very relevant here!
Link: https://youtu.be/pnJtvMvN2fw52
u/Kryptosis Mar 28 '23
Sidenote: I just noticed sharing like this is a use-case that content creators who start their videos with "You've read the title so..." haven't considered.
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u/Sintax- Mar 29 '23 edited Mar 29 '23
Been a game developer for near 15 years now in the controls and camera space. Generally this sort of thing is pretty well known by this point in 3rd person games with level navigation like this. Even in cases where you don't have the character blocking the center of the screen, players will generally* want to look slightly down, because it allows them a better angle on understanding the space in front of them. It gives you a better sense of depth and the topography of the level you're in than a straight on look.
This is why games like Uncharted 4 have a reticle that is offset from the center of screen, so that the point of weapon aim works with the natural compulsion to look down slightly and players don't then have to re-adjust their aim between aiming at targets and navigating space.
*Generally here meaning the average player experience, there are always people that want different things, which is why option menus have been getting more detailed.
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u/Saskatchatoon-eh Mar 29 '23
I mean, that makes sense because when you are walking around irl, where do you look? 40 yards in front of you? No, you look at the ground like 10 yards in front of you.
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u/RobKhonsu Mar 28 '23
They might have spent a week getting the camera where they wanted it and said "ALRIGHT! NOW LETS GET TO WORK ON BOOB PHYSICS" and never looked back.
This describes so many projects that I work on. It's like this is something that needed to be decided before any programing was done and for mostly political reasons (or like the guy that made this code left the company last year and it'll take 20 hours to figure out how to set it.) it's like pulling teeth getting it fixed so the issue goes to the bottom of the pile never to be looked at again.
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u/jordantylermeek Mar 29 '23
Yeah I've heard as much from some people who have real dev jobs. I come from an Army background and now work in IT. Programming is something I've been learning with my friends for a few years now. I'd really like to get to a point where I feel confident applying for a dev job.
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u/Tunro Mar 29 '23
Do you know what an API is? Have you written one?
Have you taken data from one dumpsterfire, generated a report and moved it to another dumpsterfire?
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u/heyheyhey27 Mar 29 '23
All I ask is that games either have a slider for "home" pitch, or a checkbox to turn off automatic recentering to that pitch lol
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u/MastaFoo69 Mar 29 '23
I really both love and hate the object fade that has become pretty normal. As long as it starts to fade AT the intersection with the camera its fine. But damnit people gotta stop making things fade when they get close. Let me appreciate the fucking art up close
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u/AmericanLich Mar 28 '23
I have the opposite problem. Does me no good to see the ground. Darksiders does this, it pushed the camera down in front of you at all times.
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u/skwudgeball Mar 29 '23
I feel like I’m going crazy. Why would anyone want the camera showed on the bottom? You can literally see like 50% of what you can see in the top camera.
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Mar 29 '23
GTA V had a camera height setting while driving , wish every game had that setting regardless of walking/running/etc. Also, what game is this?
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u/SLOPPEEHH Mar 28 '23
FFXIV spoils the player when it comes to camera options. It's pretty good.
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u/barofa Mar 29 '23
When it comes to any setting, to be honest. No wonder they are so popular, they actually listen to the players
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u/imtayloronreddit Mar 29 '23
Cant lie adjusting from a super zoomed out, high angle camera to the more typical 3rd person camera after playing FFXIV for like 9 months straight was rough
Also I miss being able to just zoom in and out with L1+Right Stick. If a game even gives me camera options in the menu imma set it up once when I first start playing and never touch them again. I'd readjust my zoom in XIV all the time mid gameplay to suit what I was doing, its just such a nice feature.
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u/getyourcheftogether Mar 28 '23
I mean hell, Mario 64 had multiple cameras angles
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u/phantom56657 Mar 29 '23
You say that, but I remember trying to climb that one tower, and the camera constantly "corrected" itself.
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u/ZachAttack6089 Mar 29 '23
Yeah the Tick-Tock Clock world sucks because the edge of the map is a solid wall rather than an endless pit (like most of the other worlds are). Since the camera isn't supposed to go inside a wall, any camera angle except for looking towards the wall is gonna be finnicky.
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Mar 29 '23
Ah.... yeah... M64 is not a good example of a good camera in a game.
It's actually one of the worst.
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u/Anchelspain Mar 29 '23
It was fantastic in its day, as one of the pioneers of 3D cameras that weren't fixed at a set distance from the main character and had user control. But yeah, as with any early implementation of new tech, it had flaws that wouldn't pass today. Particularly getting stuck in so many places and rotating in steps.
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u/Dunbaratu Mar 28 '23
I'm the opposite. I hate it when the camera prevents me from seeing things my character should see because the camera is forcing me to look down at the floor rather than out ahead of me. "Oops I guess my character was ignorant of the existence of that grizzly bear until he got within 4 meters of it. That's understandable. They're famously so small and hard to notice."
Sometimes when they force the look-down camera on you it's because it's a way to let them only have to populate a small part of the world at a time. If you are unable to see far, they can leave far away things unloaded and you'll be none the wiser.
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u/Layzrfyzt Mar 29 '23
god this has been getting under my fucking skin replaying kingdom hearts 1. how am i supposed to platform without being able to look down at the platforms???
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u/WorldEaterYoshi Mar 28 '23
Imo the floor camera looks a lot better when it's more zoomed and over the shoulder rather than right behind. Like resident evil, arkham games, etc.
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Mar 28 '23
I have the opposite opinion, I do like the over the shoulder camera, how "zoomed" it is... but I don't like when the camera is panning to the sides. Resident Evil is like that by the way, it kinda makes sense because the camera is panning to the left, which means when the right handed character pull up a gun, the gun will be located at the center of the screen. For third person shooter games, it makes sense. Now for any other kind of genre, I think the cameras who are focused precisely at the center, they look better. I used mods in Witcher 3 to do exactly that
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u/ruppert240 Mar 28 '23
I absolutely hate that camera angle and I have stopped playing several games because of it. I simply cannot fathom how it is better. Lol
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u/WorldEaterYoshi Mar 28 '23
It's very cinematic. Adds to immersion. Not for everyone though.
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u/ruppert240 Mar 28 '23
To me it feels claustrophobic or like I’m always trying to see over the other shoulder, it just feels unnatural to me.
I do see your point about the cinematic aspect though!
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u/gorilla_gage Mar 28 '23
It’s usually used in third person action games with guns/aiming where the middle of your screen is used as a crosshair
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u/shegedep Mar 29 '23
In the Arkham games there’s no reticule, Batman just takes up a whole third of the screen. And then in combat it zooms way out.
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u/lactosefree1 Mar 28 '23
Cinematic, but definitely breaks immersion the first time you don't see the edge of the level and yeet off the side, then you never want it again
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u/Siaten Mar 28 '23
Not "every" game does this. Third-person low is probably the most uncommon perspective. Third-person high is definitely the more popular of the two. Minor gripes are fine, but don't pretend like low perspective is status quo.
The best games allow camera lock in both as well as first person.
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u/-goodgodlemon Mar 28 '23
I prefer my games in the second person perspective. I don’t but the idea of someone making this is hilarious.
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u/Lambdafish1 Mar 28 '23
A fair few games do 2nd person perspective for boss fights, especially old 3D platformers for some reason. Off the top of my head: Jano in Rayman 2, Tyrannoid Queen from Ratchet and Clank 3, Xigbar in Kingdom Hearts 2. The clairvoyance power in Psychonauts also gives a second person perspective.
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u/Just-Call-Me-Matt Mar 28 '23
There's also that one mission in Driver: San Francisco.
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u/spartanzerox Mar 28 '23
What game is this from?
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u/Quick_Information_67 Mar 28 '23
Ni No Kuni 2
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u/koala_cola Mar 29 '23
Is it good? Doesn’t look like the first one
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u/Quick_Information_67 Mar 29 '23
I personally loved it. I liked the mechanics a lot better. I like grinding, collecting stuff and dressing my peeps up tho.
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u/lolalanda Mar 29 '23
Even worse on games where the physics are crap and you get dizzy by your own character moving in a strange way.
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u/DrScience-PhD Mar 29 '23
driving around Los Santos constantly holding the right stick down slightly
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u/BlaiseTEvans Mar 29 '23
i’ve been playing the ff7 remake and the whole time i was annoyed because i thought the camera was a bit too close the the character but i eventually went into settings and found that there was actually a camera angle setting! maybe i’m just dumb and camera settings are common but i thought it was cool
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u/b3nz0r Mar 29 '23
When I drive in GTA5 I literally am constantly adjusting the camera to be more like 2 and less like 1, even though it constantly snaps back into position
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u/XPisthebest Mar 28 '23
I really hate over the shoulder cameras more than any other camera options. Specially the really zoomed in ones where the character is way to the left of the screen. You can't do a proper 360 degree rotate on PC with that. The camera first jankily snaps to the left and moves the character way to the right and it happens every 90 degree turn. Lately, too many games from Sony do this over the shoulder style and there's no way to fix it.
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u/ReivynNox Mar 28 '23
The really up-close over-the-shoulder camera has only one good use: claustrophobic Dead Space like survival horror.
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u/Alternative_Low8478 Mar 28 '23
Look i'm playing nier automata. I'm tired of having 2b's ass in my face tbh
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u/CraziestCreepr Mar 28 '23
It’s hard to see the enemies and environment when all that’s in your face…
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u/eddyak Mar 28 '23
And when you push the camera up so you can actually see in front of you, the crap auto-camera controls just slide it right back two seconds later.