Devs respond to zoom request from beta

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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Yup zoom itself is not atrocious in general - it’s like what, zooming it 35%+ default view in AoeII-III DEs? I had fun and a good time despite it.
It’s important to clarify for some people, that requested change regard built-in zoom range, how much control is given to the player over the position of the camera.

In a good RTS that has faith in its customers camera is very flexible. It’s sometimes dumb and doesn’t do a favor to the quality of the models and textures but in DoW you cen set it to borderline TPP view. I don’t need that extreme freedom here, but proper camera height is the absolute minimum.

Also very important to put an emphasis on the fact that this is an option. Default camera can stay the same. Hell- it will be annoying but it can be set closer if somebody on the dev team is fixated about it. I don’t care as long as I’ll be able to quickly zoom out to a level known from other AoE games.

People are not asking for something more, but a minimum known from previous titles.
Camera zoom for RTS is like inverted aim options, or maybe rather mouse smoothing and sensitivity in FPS games. Don’t narrow player options and force anything.

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Allow the player to have the choice. AOE3, the original version, purposely restricted the zoom out because those devs said it would be ‘cheating’ to allow zooming out too much. This comment makes no sense to me, because if everyone is allowed to do something how can it be cheating? In AOE2, I always have the zoom set to maximum zoom out and I love it (granted I have a huge screen to play on). Most AOE2 players play more zoomed in. It is a matter of preference and what you are used to. AOE3 DE can zoom out less than AOE2. That is part of the reason why I came back to AOE2 DE, the other reason being lack of player base and people constantly doing only musket rushes over and over and over and OP still not balanced new civs. I am already super disappointed with the cheap cartoony look of the AOE4 units, the least they can do is allow me to zoom out super far so that it is harder to notice how terrible the graphics look. Some people have large high resolution screens they want to play on, why shouldn’t they be allowed to zoom out a lot? Try playing it on a 100" projector screen without a good zoom out. It stinks. “You can’t play the game like that” no YOU can’t play the game like that, some people can and want to. And if you can’t play the game like that, why don’t you fix the game so you can? The RTS game rusted warfare is an android game modeled on supreme commander and it allows you to zoom out as much as you want to (doesn’t mean you have to by the way) on an android phone! Maybe someone wants to zoom out to view an overview of the entire map and then zoom back in again. Maybe some people hate scrolling constantly and would prefer tiny barely clickable units as opposed to scrolling constantly. (Note that if you have a 100" screen it wouldn’t be ‘tiny’ or ‘barely clickable’ at all) People have different preferences, AOE2 accommodates a wide range of preferences and play styles and mods, that is why it is so popular, it give players CHOICE. I already preordered AOE4, but I just put in a request to steam to cancel my preorder, which they granted (this is really true)- I am a massive AGE fan and wanted to support it, but I have no desire to play a zoomed in mobile graphics game in 2021 when we have the technology (high resolution big screens) to do otherwise. I’m dead serious this is a deal breaker for me. I’m out. But I’m in for ultra zoom mode on AOE3, I just bought the expansion pack for AOE3 in anticipation of this feature.

If you asked me the ONE thing that would cause me not to preorder this game two years ago, it would have actually been either ‘lack of online skill matching ranked multiplayer’ or ‘super zoomed in mobile graphics’.

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268

Wow, if they added an ultra zoom out (even further out than AOE2) to AOE3 I might go back to it!! Thanks!!! So excited! I hope they will add it to AOE2 and 4 also!

Edit: I just bought the new DLC in hopes of being able to access the new ‘ultra zoom level’. It isn’t there, the max zoom level when scrolling the mouse wheel is the same as it ever was. Is there some ‘trick’ I don’t know to enable ultra zoom? It is already set to ‘very far’ as the default zoom level in the options.

Edit: Apparently it hasn’t been released yet they are working on it only.

Edit: I opted into the beta AOE3 DE version and tried the ultra or ludicrous zoom. It isn’t ‘ludicrous’ far from it, rather it is about the same zoom as in AOE2 DE. Which is great. I can easily play all the way zoomed out on my 90", but I actually would prefer it to zoom out as much as I want it to, like Supreme Commander. I mean why must I be restricted in my zoom out? Why is zooming out a lot considered ‘ludicrous’’? I think playing zoomed in a lot and constantly scrolling is ludicrous.

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269

Aoe2 already let’s you zoom way out.

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270

wow I seriously thought the zoom was just a beta quirk that would obviously be fixed on release, 0% chance I will ever buy this game with how disgustingly zoomed in it was in the beta

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271

Actualy, we, the beta tester, can’t disclose the zoom level in the beta.

We had no way to know the zoom level, from the start of the beta, to the end of beta.

We did not know if even any of the beta tester had the same zoom level.

Also, the zoom level could have changed, from the start, to the end.

The beta was quite a experimental project, for the developper, but it feal like it was already a full game.

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272

I wonder why they never invited me to beta test. They invited me for the other betas. Its not like my PC isn’t powerful enough and I did update my pc specs.

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273

It’s coz your butt was too crispy.

Devs love their food like they love their graphics.

BASIC.

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274

Some people just slipped through the cracks it seems. A bit of luck was involved after all.
Hopefully you can try it in the open beta, otherwise its not that long a wait.

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275

Maybe they tag your profile:

  • “the one that reveal so much, whit no reveal intention”

I still don’t understand wy they would write that…

Maybe it was a joke that we did not understand…

( prety sure it was bad luck)

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Sir, please pass the salt. You clearly had enough ; P

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277

NO zoom for you!!!

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If anyone would like some additional context:

The question was (roughly): Was there anything from the beta feedback that stood out? Most surprising thing? Most pleasing thing? Something you didn’t expect?

Adam started by talking about something else, but with regards to the quoted point:

“I think the big thing that we walked away with, probably there’s some things on the technical side, we really are covering such a wide range of PCs with this game, that I think the biggest one was people want to see more, right? They want to zoom out more. But that’s always every RTS I’ve ever made people are literally like, I want to zoom the camera out more, we’re like, Well, you can’t play the game like that!”

He then followed up with:

“I think is the one that we’re working to work towards, and see what we can do to help people because, you know, we want to, if we could, we would totally do it. The challenge is, is you know, we’ve got this such as range of PCs, that were the game sports, a lot of different types of PCs from integrated graphics up. And we want to make sure that, you know, we’re playing multiplayer, it’s still fair for everybody, right?”

I did think about working in that final but about wanting to keep things fair, but the story was more about another beta than about the feedback so I didn’t want to bog down the report. It might be useful context though with regards to why he possibly said “You can’t play the game like that”.

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279

actually I was recently shocked by my friend who plays age 2 (2013). The game actually showed you as much as the Screen size allowed. With my 2k monitor, I have a perfect overview in that game, no issues.but on his 720p 4:3 monitor, 7 barracks fill the whole screen :open_mouth:
For him age 4 will be easy to play if the zoom we see in the shots here is max. Fir me, it will be unplayable. I need a wide scope of the area to plan my walls, and my armys marches.

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abd still, its just not true. Best players in age 2 paly with very toomed in Camera most of the time…
Also age 2013 (as written above) didnt bother about that at all xD

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It’s in the Public Update Preview branch. You’ll have to go to the betas tab and activate it. Then you can go to the options and it’ll be there.

282

You just answered your own question.

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283

And the answer is no, it isn’t.

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Anyways, I feel like that the game at launch will be the same as the beta build. I don’t know, I just feel that nothing that beta testers have said/suggested will be implemented, like if they doesn’t give a damn about our opinions at the end.

After all, we can’t play the game like that…

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I doubt they’d go through the effort of sending 100,000 beta invites and compiling our feedback for them to do nothing with it.

Why would they waste time and money doing that?
Not to mention the potential leaks they risked by doing it.

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