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First person view - my thoughts exactly...

    • 6 posts
    • 2756 posts
    April 24, 2016 2:09 AM PDT

    Very interesting, but I respectfully disagree - not with the entirety, but on-the-whole.

    Whilst theoretically first-person should suit a role-playing game (putting yourself in a more 'realistic' view) I think it's one of the many things where technology doesn't simulate it well enough to make it immersive, for me.  When you try for realism and fail it's more jarring than if you use a technological analogue.

    In first-person when you cannot quickly peek just your left eye around a corner or peep up over a rock or whatever (which is the situation in current games - not enough body control), the third-person can simulate that nicely.  Some FPSs manage the peek look, but aside from presenting a smaller target, which is irrelevant for most RPGs, it still tends to behave (as far as responding AI is concerned) as if you jumped your whole body out and back.

    In first-person you cannot (even with modern surround sound) hear people sneaking up from flanks and rear as well as even a normal human can never mind a battle trained hero.  Not just hearing, but the vibration and pressure changes of multiple opponents leaping around you on a battlefield cannot be simulated well enough.  Again, a third-person view nicely simulates your situational awareness of your immediate surroundings.  (A minimap with subtle cues might be even better, but that's another potential argument...)

    In first-person, similar to the awareness argument, I tend to feel (and I think this observation is born out by the common usage in films) like I'm wearing a diving mask.  First-person is almost always low Field of View (by resolution necessity unless you have a very large or multi- monitor setup) and the feeling is claustrophobic in it's literally blinkered aspect.  It's used to marvellous cinematic effect for certain scenes and games, but in a role-playing game especially with group-based open combat it is too limiting.

    In first-person you have no awareness of yourself.  A good thing when being stabbed in the gut by a rusty orc sword, but not condusive to immersion for me.  I like to see my own heroic fighting stance as much as the monsters.

    First-person is more realistic, but suited to FPS/twitch more than MMORPG.  This is a personal opinion even more so than my other points, perhaps, but when I play battlefield I do continually flick my point-of-view into room corners and behind me and whatnot and, yes, it's exciting and 'realistic', but the hand-eye coordination of running down a corridor, having a quick mouse-flick-look into adjacent corridors or behind me and then getting that rifle-sight ahead into the danger points of the next room is nothing like what I like to be doing in an MMORPG.  There's other posts on that, so nuff said.

    I'm playing devil's advocate here somewhat - if Pantheon was 3rd-person only the first thing I would do is look for the PoV slider and max it or go editing that INI file, but I'd cope.

    To respond to one or two of the points in the article you link: -

    third person is "easy mode".  Lol.  Trying to draw the reader in I suppose.  I'd let him off that, but he does say it a lot later on...

    it's going to be a skill-based ability that you'll have to level up in order to use, and will be akin to Astral Projection.  Hmm, so no more an attempt at something realistic than third-person then?  He does then go on to say how first-person is more 'realistic'...

    Yeah, it's more effective, just like that cinema horror shock scene, but as immersion goes, third-person still works in those situations - you can still have surround sound relative to the character and it works for me.  I remember in EQ2 when there was surround sound you could set relative to the camera.  Now that was weird.  You very quickly appreciate the third-person avatar as being the center of the surround sound and react just the same when something happens 'around' you.

    Cheating, in other words. If I was really a ranger and I wanted to bow-kite a mob, I'd have to keep my eyes trained on my target, and running backwards would be a near impossible feat. Sure, I could peer over my shoulder to avoid trees and large boulders, but I've also got to focus on the mob I'm hunting. It's just not realistic.  Lol. Talk about not realistic.  In first-person you have literally no way to kite.  It's not 'realistic' to not be able to quickly and repeatedly flick my head use through periferal vision see the rocks I'm going to fall over.  In a combat situation someone could become excellent at running backwards while firing a bow, especially if you train at it every day.  Not if to look in a particular direction you have to turn your whole body like in first person view though.  Even if you added some kinda 'mouse-look' head swivel you're then getting into FPS controls again.

    Bah I'm stopping here - it feels like I'm bashing the writer and I don't mean that, but he's so keen to suggest third-person is 'easy mode' (repeatedly) and First-Person is 'hard-mode' and more realistic that it makes me want to stand up and call "woah there, hoss".

    There's some interesting ideas there and, sure, go ahead - good luck to you; but to suggest "this is it. I've got the answer"? *shrug* Not for me.

    Edit: Just watched the video on that site.  It is indeed using FPS-style 'targetted' combat like, say, Skyrim.  There's even a targetting reticule for the archer, so yeah, I even more understand the preferences regarding first-person.


    This post was edited by disposalist at April 24, 2016 2:13 AM PDT
    • 1434 posts
    April 24, 2016 11:38 PM PDT

    We've actually talked about an "Immersion" type server with first person mode. Brad liked the idea. It can be problematic though, because like Disposalist said, first person has many limitations in games that you don't have in real life. Even if you mastered a perfect field of view, 3d sound, depth perception and lod, there will always be little things like needing to peek around corners or easily behind yourself that will never be as easy as it is in real life.

    Either way, I'd love to play on a hardcore immersion server with PvP. That would really get the blood pumping. I still believe to this day, the locked first person view in early EQ was part of what created the high levels of immersions that early adopters look back on so fondly... even if most people don't even realize it.

    • 2756 posts
    April 25, 2016 12:50 AM PDT

    That's probably true, Dullahan.  My first memories of the night forest around Kelethin pretty much play in my mind like Blair Witch.  The first-person probably was a part of that ;)

    First-person horror movie shock scene mode hehe.  Torch goes out - you hear an orc grunt nearby - ORC PAWN HITS YOU FOR 5 DAMAGE!  AAAAAAAARGH!

    • 724 posts
    April 25, 2016 1:57 AM PDT

    The worst thing about 1st person view in EQ is that your "view" is your body. If you "look" into another direction (especially while running), you move into that direction. If there was a way to just turn your head to look  (even if limited to some 90 degrees or so to each side), this would make the mode 1000% more usable for me.

    • 47 posts
    April 29, 2016 8:44 PM PDT

    Sarim said:

    The worst thing about 1st person view in EQ is that your "view" is your body. If you "look" into another direction (especially while running), you move into that direction. If there was a way to just turn your head to look  (even if limited to some 90 degrees or so to each side), this would make the mode 1000% more usable for me.

    This was the main thing that nobody could ever seem to get right. It always felt like your eyes were around your midsection. 

    • 1618 posts
    January 16, 2017 10:52 AM PST

    Not a fan of first person view. You miss out on all the effects and animations that the artists put so much effort into creating. I stay in 3rd person view to watch my character do all he does. For me, that is immersion.

    • 62 posts
    January 16, 2017 11:10 AM PST

    I also was a first person guy myself. But for some reason i prefer mmo's in 3rd person, no matter how good the first person is. ESO has great first person mode but it's totally no realistic. In real life i have more sence of what is going on around me and even behind me as i walk everywhere. Games cannot simulate that with first person. Especially in PvP you are at disadvantage to those who play 3rd person.

    I don't believe 3rd person is easy mode. Situational awereness is better simulated in 3rd person as the current technology cannot mimic first person IRL.

    that, and i want to be able to see my character's animations and cool armor aswell. Also the first person mode of Vanguard made me dizzy. I only use first person mode if i want to enjoy scenery and take screenshots.

    • 2886 posts
    January 16, 2017 11:47 AM PST

    I played EQ in first person for many years and loved it. Then I played an action MMORPG. I tried playing it in first person for a while because it was what I was comfortable with, but it was not practical in that setting so I reluctantly played in 3rd person. Then I played that game for so long that I got used to 3rd person. I like the situational awareness and the ability to see how cool I look lol. Now I play in 3rd person 98% of the time, and just occassionally bounce into 1st if I feel like it.

    Ideally though... VR goggles.

    • 3016 posts
    January 16, 2017 2:12 PM PST

    Beefcake said:

    Not a fan of first person view. You miss out on all the effects and animations that the artists put so much effort into creating. I stay in 3rd person view to watch my character do all he does. For me, that is immersion.

     

    First person view reminds me of the RPGs I have played..Oblivion for example.    Prefer when in a large world like Pantheon will be, that I can be in third for peripheral vision,  and view of what is about to hit me from behind.   If there will be servers in first person only ..fine by me,  I won't be playing there. :)  First person still good for crafting and things like that.

    • 5 posts
    February 7, 2017 2:14 PM PST

    If you swung a weapon in EQ1 first person view, did it show up on the screen?  If i remember right.. the camera would move toward the enemy at each swing motion and you could see the weapon... and if an orc smacked you with a big hit you would do a 360 pan while you were stunned! Little things like that made for great immersion. 

    • 97 posts
    February 7, 2017 2:54 PM PST

    Rustin said:

    If you swung a weapon in EQ1 first person view, did it show up on the screen?  If i remember right.. the camera would move toward the enemy at each swing motion and you could see the weapon... and if an orc smacked you with a big hit you would do a 360 pan while you were stunned! Little things like that made for great immersion. 

    Yes you would see your weapon(s) and/or shield from a first person perspective as if you were really looking through the eyes of your character. And yep, getting stunned and spinning around... yes I know that if someone hits you hard enough to stun you, realistically you're not physically going to spin around, but the spin was  agreat way to disorent you as the player, and force you to find the mob and get back in position. Since the game can't whack you on the head through the monitor to disorient you :)

    • 595 posts
    February 7, 2017 3:22 PM PST

    The main issue I have with this discussion, whichever side you reside, is it operates under the fallacy that one of the two perspectives (in this case first-person) is unequivocally more immersive than the other, and I just can't agree with that.  Even if that held true some non 0% of the time, surely this would vary from person to person.  In other words, what may be immersive to one may be quite the opposite for another.  Frankly, I think the general "jarring" nature of most first-person perspectives is less immersive.  Still, I like to bounce between both depending on the situation.  With that said, if I had to choose only one I would chose third-person.  Now according to the author, I prefer "easy mode".  Do you see how dismissive that line of reasoning is?

    In the end, beyond just generally disagreeing with the author, I think he's overstating this far more than is called for.  It's not nearly as black and white of a discussion as he would have us think.  And frankly, the "easy mode" vs. "hard mode" thing is silly in my mind, particularly when boiling down the relative difficulty of a game to something so relatively unimportant such as camera angle.  It's actually quite dismissive to the work of developers in general to boil so much down to perspective.  Want to make your game more difficult (or "hard mode" as he says)?  Surely there's better ways than artificially limiting the information players have via camera perspectives.  

    Ultimately, I happen to feel that perspective is not nearly as important to immersion as most would like to pretend.  And certainly not difficulty, as the author would have you believe.

    • 97 posts
    February 8, 2017 7:47 AM PST

    Nikademis said:

    Ultimately, I happen to feel that perspective is not nearly as important to immersion as most would like to pretend.  And certainly not difficulty, as the author would have you believe.

    I disagree with this statement and I'll tell you why:

    I believe it all comes down to how the game was originally designed to be played. For example, in EQ1 it was designed to be played originally in first person perspective. That design strategically allowed for adds to come up behind you without you knowing they were there. If a scenario that was designed and had it's difficulty scaled for that reason, if you suddenly remove the threat of a mob coming up behind you without you knowing until it has already started beating on you, then all other things being equal, you have made the scenario "easier."

    Now, if you're planning for 3rd person all along, maybe you make that similar scenario, but instead you put in a range attacking creature that can hit you at a range that is just outside of the maximum camera zoom, so you can't see it.

    How can you plan, design, and most importantly, balance using both first and third person perspective? I don't know, which is why I'm not the one developing the game.

    *edit* added underlined portion


    This post was edited by Quintra at February 8, 2017 7:49 AM PST
    • 1618 posts
    February 8, 2017 8:19 AM PST

    If they didn't want us to play in 3rd person, they wouldn't spend so much time, money, and computing power putting all the special effects/animations on items/spells that you cannot fully appreciate in first person.

    • 595 posts
    February 8, 2017 10:08 AM PST

    Quintra said:

    Nikademis said:

    Ultimately, I happen to feel that perspective is not nearly as important to immersion as most would like to pretend.  And certainly not difficulty, as the author would have you believe.

     If a scenario that was designed and had it's difficulty scaled for that reason, if you suddenly remove the threat of a mob coming up behind you without you knowing until it has already started beating on you, then all other things being equal, you have made the scenario "easier."

    Well unfortunately for your logic, I played Everquest the same way I plan to play Pantheon, with a mixture of first and third-person perspective.  So the fact that Everquest didn't lock the player into first person renders this irrelevant.  If they absolutely didn't want you to be in-third person (because it was crucial to design) than they would not have allowed people to toggle to third-person (or any of the different camera angles for that matter).

    I have no doubt that the author believes he's gaining something by forcing players into first-person.  But from my perspective, all he's really doing is artificially limiting a player's information and calling it game design.  It's smoke and mirrors.

    • 2886 posts
    February 8, 2017 10:11 AM PST

    Beefcake said:

    If they didn't want us to play in 3rd person, they wouldn't spend so much time, money, and computing power putting all the special effects/animations on items/spells that you cannot fully appreciate in first person.

    If they REALLY wanted us to play in 3rd person, they wouldn't even provide the option to play in 1st person, right? I'm not saying I disagree with you. I will probably spend at least 95% of my time in-game in 3rd person view. But no one can claim to know how the game "is meant to be played" if VR is clearly giving us options.

    • 2752 posts
    February 8, 2017 11:56 AM PST

    I like having the option to play in either mode. In EQ I played almost exclusively in first person and I had no issues with it whatsoever, but since then the push to 3rd person has been absolute it seems. It was jarring at first but I am kind of used to it now, but I would love to have a well done first person where I can see my arms swinging weapons and blocking attacks with a shield etc. Especially for some cramped dungeons/tunnels/rooms where 3rd person would be more detrimental. 

    • 1281 posts
    November 12, 2017 8:09 AM PST

    I am a "first person" kinda guy.  "Third person", or "God view" depending on who you talk to, just feels off to me.

    • 334 posts
    November 12, 2017 1:47 PM PST

    Though I like first person too with its advantages, there's a distinct advantage to seeing what sneaks up from out of viewing angle.
    Contributing: horse (mount) head/ears blocking view, as you would normally be able to shift in saddle and able to see anyways, an on/off switch atleast

    • 753 posts
    November 16, 2017 4:07 AM PST

    If first person weren't so disadvantaged in a game where third person is provided, I would definitly play first person.  The whole point of first person is to see the game through your eyes and, in some way experience things as you would if you were there.  Don't see that monster coming up behind you?  Well, you wouldn't if you were there.  That sort of thing.

    BUT - third person is a reality... and a ton of people prefer it over first person... which means that if I'm doing anything in game with other people, I had better be third person, because if I'm not, I'm disadvantaging myself within the group and perhaps causing issues for the group.

    I will likely play first person at times when I'm not grouped with other people - because I do find that "through your eyes" thing to be more immersive.

    • 1281 posts
    November 16, 2017 5:53 AM PST

    Wandidar said:

    If first person weren't so disadvantaged in a game where third person is provided, I would definitly play first person.  The whole point of first person is to see the game through your eyes and, in some way experience things as you would if you were there.  Don't see that monster coming up behind you?  Well, you wouldn't if you were there.  That sort of thing.

    BUT - third person is a reality... and a ton of people prefer it over first person... which means that if I'm doing anything in game with other people, I had better be third person, because if I'm not, I'm disadvantaging myself within the group and perhaps causing issues for the group.

    I will likely play first person at times when I'm not grouped with other people - because I do find that "through your eyes" thing to be more immersive.

    I have never felt "disadvantaged", or been called out in a group for "disadvantaging" them because I was in first-person mode.  Personally, I find third person to be "too busy" and it's a pain in the neck to concentrate on what I am doing.  I also find movement awkward in third person mode.

    • 1785 posts
    November 16, 2017 8:33 AM PST

    I played first person in EQ for 5 years.  Then, I went to EQ2, and I had to "get used" to the 3rd person viewpoint, because the 1st person support in EQ2 wasn't as good.

    These days, I tend to default to 3rd person, though usually with the camera in pretty close, just because I do like being able to see my character going through animations, etc.  I don't think one way is inherently better than the other and it's silly to use it as a dividing line between players.  There's plenty of people who can kite in 1st person (I know I did), and there's plenty of people who will not pay attention to where they're going in 3rd person (been there, done that).

    I think the key is ensuring that the game supports both camera types well and giving players the choice.  For first person, that means animation and sound support so that when your character does something or when something happens, you see/hear it.  For third person, that means allowing the camera to be rotated, angled, and zoomed in or out independent of character facing.  It's not hard to do in modern engines, but it still matters.

    • 3016 posts
    November 16, 2017 10:55 AM PST

    Just play the way you are comfortable..I like my "panavision view" in third,   it helps me stay aware of what's around me,  but that doesn't mean to say that "my" preference is the best. :)  Something jumps out of the bushes at me..I see it as it happens.    Play what works for you best, and it is afterall a quick roll of the mouse wheel to either view.   First person works well in some dungeons that don't seem to accomodate third very well.  :)

     

    Cana

    • 753 posts
    November 16, 2017 7:04 PM PST

    Kalok said:

    Wandidar said:

    If first person weren't so disadvantaged in a game where third person is provided, I would definitly play first person.  The whole point of first person is to see the game through your eyes and, in some way experience things as you would if you were there.  Don't see that monster coming up behind you?  Well, you wouldn't if you were there.  That sort of thing.

    BUT - third person is a reality... and a ton of people prefer it over first person... which means that if I'm doing anything in game with other people, I had better be third person, because if I'm not, I'm disadvantaging myself within the group and perhaps causing issues for the group.

    I will likely play first person at times when I'm not grouped with other people - because I do find that "through your eyes" thing to be more immersive.

    I have never felt "disadvantaged", or been called out in a group for "disadvantaging" them because I was in first-person mode.  Personally, I find third person to be "too busy" and it's a pain in the neck to concentrate on what I am doing.  I also find movement awkward in third person mode.

    It's likely a "your mileage may vary" thing.  Different people view things differently and all that.