I was in the beta and know what did or did not transpire. I claim ignorance on anything beta-related, as I prefer to play it safe with NDA stuff. That’s why I focus on post-beta/current state stuff 
But thank you, regardless!
The change being meaningful or not is absolutely a matter of opinion. Being able to see more at once, even in small increments, can have effects of logistics and unit preservation at the very least. Balance is something that’s affected by a large range of factors, and “what you can see without micro” is one of those.
That’s of course ignoring any technical aspects behind the zoom, but people seem pretty dead set on assuming they don’t exist because some people were apparently able to customise their zoom in a pre-release beta. I don’t agree with “it works for me therefore there are no problems”, chiefly because people use it to put down bugs that should be reported on. But the same applies here. I don’t treat any such reports as an indication that the playerbase on the whole would have no technical issues with increased zoom.
You can consider my opinion “not credible” if you want. It’s telling that that’s the approach you’re taking to arguments you disagree with, instead of respecting that different opinions exist.
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Did you look at the video link? You honestly are saying with a straight face that being able to see a 1/4 of a patch of gold and 1/2 a tree more is a meaningful adjustment that would likely satisfy the majority of the people who wanted a zoom adjustment in the closed beta? Just want to be sure there is no misunderstanding.
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Because “I don’t want people to be able to change this graphical option” is not just a “differing opinion”
A large portion of the community is saying not having this option, which is capable of being allowed as we’ve seen, and has been in the previous games, is significantly affecting our enjoyment of the game.
If I said “I think they should remove the option to play at anything other than 720p because thats the resolution I like” would that be a fair differing opinion? no everyone would agree this is not just a different opinion but one that would harm the game by unescesarily limiting users in their options.
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Your argument is the equivalent of saying something like it will make a meaningful difference to poverty if poor people are given 1 pence/cent whatever extra per year. You can claim something like that is a matter of opinion, but there comes a point when an opinion would be regarded as so absurd by the vast majority of people that it seems far more likely that someone has another reason for putting it forward, rather than it being their genuine opinion.
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Other than a few perpetual agitators on these forums, who is this “large portion of the community”? Like what made you even choose those words? The game has 90% positive review score on Steam. You should really just be speaking for yourself instead of pretending most people aren’t enjoying the game due to the zoom level.
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Everyone who took the survey after the closed beta feedback. It was overwhelmingly the number one complaint about the game when people were asked what their complaints were. They were not steered towards the response in any way. The people who hate the zoom level look at gameplay videos and don’t buy/play the game at all, so they don’t leave steam reviews. Like me.
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I gave it a positive review on Steam AND would like to be able to zoom out more. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
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I’m sure that’s true but it doesn’t really have anything to do with the point I was making.
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I would never presume to know how much would satisfy a majority of people who wanted it improved.
My point here is that the improvement is arguable. I’m not saying you’re not allowed to find it insufficient.
I didn’t say I didn’t want people to be able to change it. If you’re going to reply to my posts, please read them first.
A “large portion of this community” isn’t saying anything of the kind. There was near-universal consensus before this change, however since then - however much it still isn’t good enough for you - consensus has changed.
My argument isn’t the equivalent of anything. If you can’t respond to, or even grant the baseline respect to, the arguments I’ve made, then that’s on you. A feature in a video game isn’t anything like poverty, which by the by seems like a deliberately antagonistic analogy.
You can consider my opinion ridiculous. That’s your opinion. The second you start making assumptions about a greater majority, or casting doubt on my motivations for posting it, is when things change.
It’d be easy if I dismissed you or anyone else in this thread as just using the zoom as a way to attack the developers. I don’t do that. My recommendation is you grant other posters the same credit in turn, otherwise it all kind of falls over. At this point you’re certainly not convincing me that you’re here in good faith.
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The zoom is fine to me. It feels a little more zoomed out than sc2 for instance.
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Refer to my post earlier in this thread where linked evidence of threads with hundreds of replies, and reviews with thousands of upvotes, asking for more zoom.
Also note, the many others in this very thread agreeing with us.
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I don’t think the zoom can be easily improved. The game is already extremely taxing on a lot of hardware due to poor optimization. To increase the zoom would just further exacerbate that issue. I’d rather they address performance (like why doesn’t this game take advantage of multithreading in 2021???) before they try to adjust the zoom.
well, buy better videocard. or play zoomed in. it’s an option.
U dont need 80 fps to zoom out for a few seconds.
Anyway, this is dump speculation about “performance”, game cost 60$, also devs praised themselves for the optimization. Finally, multithreading wont affect “zoom” and visual picture.
Also, in closed beta we already have “trick” how to zoom out more.
At least u can zoom out, check positions and zoom in.
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Yep, let me just remove the rubber band from my roll of hundred dollar bills to buy a videocard in the current market.
What is the “speculation”? The game was struggling to just pan the camera around at launch. That’s something they’ve rightly prioritized, but still you can open task manager while you are playing and look how the game uses resources. A single thread/core gets pushed to 100% utilization while the rest of your cpu sits idle, and gpu usage will be at 100% until the game inevitably crashes unless you put a hefty frame limiter on. I mean there’s also a huge memory leak or something when you open the mastery menu. The performance issues in this game are rampant, and personally while I’d appreciate a higher zoom level, I’d appreciate overall performance being addressed first.
Sounds like they totally blew it with AOE 4 then. “Lets make an RTS game with no zoom capabilities (everyone always uses max zoom = no zoom capabilities effectively) and ugly mobile phone style units that look like blobs of color!” They should have asked forgotten empires for some tips on how they pulled off AOE 3 DE it sounds like (Epic game, highly recommend AOE 3 de). They added super zoom a year after it came out and I noticed zero performance difference. Yes, I realize, different engine, 3d and all. Keep making excuses for Relic to prevent needed features such as zoom from getting into the game by pretending everything is fine? Why? I don’t get it. How can anyone possibly be opposed to adding an OPTIONAL feature that you don’t even have to use which doesn’t affect game balance for everyone else? Graphics card can’t handle it? Don’t enable the option.There is a mod for AOE 2 DE which allows you to turn all the graphics into cubes. The pro Finish players use it because they think it gives them an advantage, everyone else hates it and never uses it. Yet no one opposes it.
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no problem for me at all. Videocard is cold (2080Ti) and 3700r is feeling fine.
They claimed to bring game for “wider audience”. If price was 30$ i would understand “performance restriction”, but price is 60$ and it’s named AAA.
The last one thing: CnC some how managed to zoom out into “minimap”. So u can zoom out and lowing settings.
So it’s firstly gamedesign and secondly “performance” issues.
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the point is, to focus your view to certain points. An ambush is useless, if your enemy sees 30% off the whole map all the time.
the argument that they shouldnt give us more zoom because it would be more taxing , doesnt make any sense, becuase thats literally the whole point of graphical options
we have the option to play at ultra settings, and at 4k resolution too, of course not everyone can handle it but thats why its an option!
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If a graphical option gave an advantage to some players then it’d be a problem. Hypothetically, if some graphical setting let you see through fog of war, it’d be an extremely high priority issue. You can’t give zoom to a subset of the players who can actually run the game with it because it obviously gives an advantage to those players in a way that window dressing doesn’t.