Devs respond to zoom request from beta

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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it is.
can google pictures - there are some other examples from play.

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I had to go through some of my saved video caps to double check.

That image really doesn’t look at max zoom to me, idk lol

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What else would it be? Why does having the OPTION (as in optional, adjustable, each individual’s choice) hurt?

You paint the picture of a completely idiotic playerbase. Maybe “don’t frame your issue with it” as the general playerbase’s problem.

You posted his content on several occasions in the beta forum
 I still don’t like the guy. He is throwing the same useless statements as people here (“almost always”, “most people”, “many players”). Too much smelling his own dorito farts and painting the picture of the player being a natural enemy of the developer, without any substancial arguments. Does not matter what he casts or plays.

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45

Is fun how they say the actual zoom is ok, but in the trailers most of the time camera is zoomed out as hell in a level that is not available in the game.

Even if is for mere aestethics


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What else would it be? Why does having the OPTION (as in optional, adjustable, each individual’s choice) hurt?

Because people will use it as a shortcut because they will think it helps them when in reality, it introduces other issues that are not as obvious to those players.

You paint the picture of a completely idiotic playerbase. Maybe “don’t frame your issue with it” as the general playerbase’s problem.

What players want and what they actually want to play is different. Ask any, ANY developer about player recommendations that were idiotic or counter to the core gameplay loop and they will happily list all of them. Are there success stories of players asking for a feature that indeed improved the game? yes of course, but for something so fundamental as zoom levels in RTS, this is something that has been researched and tested for the past three decades.

You posted his content on several occasions in the beta forum
 I still don’t like the guy. He is throwing the same useless statements as people here (“almost always”, “most people”, “many players”). Too much smelling his own dorito farts and painting the picture of the player being a natural enemy of the developer, without any substantial arguments. It does not matter what he casts or plays.

Mate, you are talking about someone who has been part of the industry for two decades. And he is not the only one with the same viewpoints and experience. Take your pick of a developer. Hell Immortal, which is an SC-like game by former players and devs has a similar zoom level, and these guys literally wrote research papers on this stuff.

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47

Earlier videos were a different build, where the zoom was further out

No clue why they changed it.

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48

Ahh. Blizzard’s modus operandi.

image

And when were they ever wrong


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49

Still don’t care.

For example? And don’t repeat that they wonder why things get smaller when zooming out, lol.

*SLAP* Break out of it, boy! *SLAP*
I’m asking for your opinion
 stop smelling their farts. Specifics! Enlighten me!

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50

I so knew you would pull that and the sad fact is that the broken clock was right. Again, ask any developer from any company and they will tell you exactly this. Blizzard are the only dummies who said the quiet part loud.

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So we agree that some devs are often more wrong than they are right?

Maybe in this case Relic is wrong, just this once, and the community is right?

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For example? And don’t repeat that they wonder why things get smaller when zooming out, lol.

  • Miss clicking units
  • Miss clicking orders
  • Tunnel vision on fights (players might only look at part of their screen to see a fight instead of using the whole screen, leading to eye strain)
  • Faster playing (depending on developer intent they may want slower play, zoom in helps with that)
  • More power needed to render the scenes
  • Loss of detail
  • Minimap awareness (zoom in levels encourage better mini map reading)
  • Tactical play/raids (zooming out allows players to see more of their base making attacks on eco less successful over all).

A bunch of others.

SLAP Break out of it, boy! SLAP
I’m asking for your opinion
 stop smelling their farts. Specifics! Enlighten me!
Still don’t care.

What are you talking about dude? listening to people who have more experience than you about game development and RTS development is now smelling their farts? grow up.

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53

If we were talking about some obscure feature in an RTS genre (something like introducing rogue-lite mechanics), something that has not been explored and is likely not polished then sure, it very well could be the case.

But for something as fundamental as zoom levels, something that is usually decided early on development and then tested internally multiple times, not as likely. I am happy to see a new beta with different zoom levels. But people trying to paint this as some sort of “how could the devs be this wrong!” thing is just ridiculous.

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54

Then why, Age of Empires II, the King of Kings, for them and for many, which has a big competitive scene (related to other Age games) has more zoom out level than Age IV? And don’t tell me Age IV is different, it has the same game basics.
If it is soooo bad to zoom out, why this wasn’t fixed yet in the other Age games?

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55

You have a good point, but isn’t it more appropriate to let the user decide what’s best for their gameplay?
Instead of crashing it and saying “the game should only be played like this, regardless of screen size or preference”

Do as in AoE2 DE, leave a configuration for the player to choose how he wants to play it, not everyone wants to be a PRO, sometimes just build a beautiful city with friends and attack each other.

I understand that exaggerating the zoom out leads to other problems, false click, hit box and as the PRO video said, I’m not telling you to see the entire map, but only to be able to regulate a 10-20% zoom out.

You can compare with AoE2 even from the video you mentioned, the size of the units with the size of what is presented in AoE4,

@MoonBoyPrime We are far from something like this:

Capturar2.PNG
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Trailer April 2021 (For me that kind of vision is more familiar to the franchise, but that’s my opinion.)

And from my point of view, if it’s an information that arrived in the DEV, it’s that there must be a lot of people in the AOE community bothered about it, and it’s important to discuss this.

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56

Because that game was released over 20 years ago, and we’ve had time to test different things since. Play AoE2 DE, and you will see that there is limited zoom. You can’t see the entirety of the map (baring mods or capture age).

I get wanting to see more, and it would be fine for, say, a photo mode or replay system, but at some point, there needs to be a limit to the zoom level for the game.

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It is absolutely baffling why that comment was made to be honest. As far as I know, it’s almost universally accepted by the Beta Testers that the Zoom Levels were a tad too close to be played comfortably. I started a Reddit poll on this to check whether I’m delusional, but the results so far is that 90% agree that we need to zoom out more.

I genuinely do not understand their stance on this. This is not an artistic choice, some balance issue, or something else that is somewhat gray and there’s no right or wrong answer. RTS games require good vision, and if you don’t give that to the player, you’re objectively hindering the experience of the majority of players. If this was a 50-50 topic where half players want something and the other half don’t, I’d get their decision. However, most of us were vocal about this against the current zoom level.

I really hope they change their stance on this and listen to the community like they have on other occasions. This really feels like a hill they don’t want to die on.

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Miss clicking units + Miss clicking orders
→ Sounds like you should zoom in

Tunnel vision on fights (players might only look at part of their screen to see a fight instead of using the whole screen, leading to eye strain)
→ Just lol. Again: just zoom in/out to get the best viewport for whatever you try to look at in an eye-friendly way

Faster playing (depending on developer intent they may want slower play, zoom in helps with that)
→ Well quite the opposite: I need to jump around (moving the viewport) even for trivial tasks, instead of having a convenient access to everything that matters. Constantly changing the whole scene is not good for eyes either.

More power needed to render the scenes
→ As said a thousand times: Does not matter. We are not talking about zooming into a full planet view, are we? Optimize the game elsewhere to get those few frames back. This should not be the players’ problem. Other games manage it just fine.

Loss of detail
→ ??? Zoom in to see the eye lashes of your sheep. Zoom out to see it grasing on that magnificent landscape.

Minimap awareness (zoom in levels encourage better mini map reading)
→ Because I cannot see jack shit in the main viewport, I should use an even tinier viewport more often? WTF, m8? The two work together and offer different information.
That also sounds bad for the eyes :joy:

Tactical play/raids (zooming out allows players to see more of their base making attacks on eco less successful over all.
→ So you say only by tunnel visioning the player, game elements such as raiding eco can work? I would say some other games, including AOE4’s predecessors, would disagree with that statement.

Then present your conclusions, don’t repeat what others said. Or worse: Tell us to go watch what others said.

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The problem is that most of those downsides are mitigated by allowing the player to change zoom levels mid game. If you need to micro you can zoom in to your comfort level and if you need to get an overview to plan your economy or control artillery units then you can zoom out.

Even Day9, who I adore and is often brought as the authority on the subject because of the video he did on zoom levels often changed zoom levels as he was playing AoE2.

image
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Why can he be trusted to not tunnel vision, not missclick, have minimap awareness but we can’t?

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an interesting take on it:

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Changing zoom levels (from out to in while playing is fine I have no problems with that). My core arguments are:

  1. Its ok to have multiple zoom levels for different parts of the game. Ex Casting, Photo mode etc.
  2. Its ok for the devs to experiment with it internally, but to not show them to the public, as people will always ask for more zoomed out options.
  3. Its better for the game to have a single zoom out option ( with variable zoom in), people adjust.
  4. It is wrong for people to paint this issue as the developer being rigid or arrogant or stubborn. Because this is a topic that they and other devs have worked on for decades.
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