I’ve already said that I gave the game a positive review on Steam. As far as I’m aware, that review is public. If I wanted to attack the developers, I’d be unlikely to have a positive review up? I have far better things to do with my time than to post on a forum to pointlessly attack developers. My posts are because I want the game to improve, as 2 DE has some problems that appear to be extremely hard to fix, so I feel 4 is the best way forward for the community, but only if the developers do what needs to be done, and in a timely manner.
I reported a bug in this thread, the bit where the damage to ships was directional was stated as fixed in the recent patch. Again, I’m helping them to fix their game, which does inevitably require constructive criticism/feedback.
The game already does that by giving a wider field of view if you have a 21:9 or 32:9 monitor. If competitive fairness were the motivation, they’d limit those monitors to a 16:9 view.
I think that’s a good point, but it’s an arguable advantage due to the lack of UI options right now. Having an ultrawide screen pushes the UI so far to the corners that it’s probably a disadvantage. I have two friends who play the game with ultrawide monitors and while they aren’t the sweatiest gamers, they both play in smaller aspect ratios due to the inflexibility of the UI. It’s quite literally a pain in the neck to use an ultrawide in this game as it exists right now.
What does you giving the game a positive review have anything to do with a possible lack of good faith in your arguments to me?
I said I could assume that folks were here to just attack the developers. I don’t do that. My belief is that you’re not potentially discussing this with me in good faith. You have, repeatedly, skipped my arguments about the actual zoom, technical and balance-related. If you (or anyone) had actually engaged with them, I’d likely have a vastly different opinion.
We can disagree until the proverbial cows come home. But I’m not going to sit here and let you attack me. Assume the person you’re arguing with is genuine. Otherwise, what you are doing most certainly is pointless.
You want me to provide evidence from now-closed beta forums that an overwhelming majority were positive about changing the zoom level?
Do you perhaps understand where I’m coming from when I think you’re not in good faith, here? Maybe it’s just an issue of bias, I don’t know. Nevermind the fact I can’t, because it predates release, but you’re asking me to prove something all of you adherents for more zoom options already take as proven fact.
Or are you asking me to prove that the consensus has diminished? Because that’s provable just by looking at the volume what people are talking about, on here, on reddit, on social media, wherever. I can’t possibly guess at the reasons why, but it’s not talked about as much anymore.
“the game already does this, so we should make a potential problem worse” is not a counterargument to people raising a potential problem.
I have a guess why it is not talked about as much (Please no one take this personal, lets focus on the topic, not each other). It is because everything that has to be said about it has already been said on here. Nothing has or will likely ever change. There is zero mention of it in any roadmap patch posting by the developers. After a while people give up. Why bother? People who gave up on AOE 4 because of it are unlikely to visit the AOE4 forums. I wasn’t going to either except I noticed notifications when on AOE3 DE forum and got sucked back in.
Everything has already been said. Everything posted in this thread was already posted in several other threads. The ones left are the ones who like the zoom where it is. AOE 4 essentially has a fixed zoom level. Yes you can zoom in further, which is far more useless than being able to zoom out more. How many people zoom in while playing? Relic didn’t adjust the zoom level in their other games, (according to Mr Isgreens own words people always ask for it in their games and he always says no), as far as I know, having played zero of them ever I have no idea. I have never played a Relic game and have no intention of ever doing so because I hate having my nose pushed into the screen while playing an RTS.
Heck, even if I LOVED the current zoom level, I would be greatly in favor of an option to tick to enable the zoom levels other people wanted, because it means more people play the game and a largest player base means its better for EVERYONE.
Perhaps! But it’s not something you can assume. Opinions on the zoom level were being made daily during the open beta. They were still being made when the game was released. This thread as well proves that people don’t necessarily stop posting about something just because they’ve already posted about it before.
I have responded to both the technical and balance arguments in the past, I wasn’t aware it was necessary to include the same information every time I post. Your argument seems to be that people are talking about it less, therefore their opinions have changed. I don’t agree with this, again you seem to expect people to constantly re-post the same information over and over again.
For example, Spirit of the Law raised the zoom issue early on after the game was released. Evidence that his opinion has changed would be a video where he says he has changed his mind, not him no longer commenting on the issue (in which case I would assume his opinion remains the same).
On the subject of possible performance issues with a greater zoom range, I ran AoE 3 DE last night with stats showing FPS, GPU % and CPU %. My FPS was always the 144 it’s locked at. GPU % was usually in the 67-73% range, and didn’t vary much with zoom level, sometimes GPU usage was actually lower when zoomed out more. CPU usage was around 6% and again didn’t appear to vary significantly when changing the zoom. It uses a different game engine, of course, but it shows it is technically possible to have a wide zoom range without the widest field of view imposing greater demands on the hardware (as you’d expect if the level of detail of objects is reduced as they become smaller).
It’s not necessary, but otherwise what are you doing? What are we even discussing? You want more zoom, I’ve said I’m not against there being more zoom, so you’re just what? Picking apart my posts in a deliberately uncharitable light? Mm-hm.
My argument was merely that it’s possible. Nobody knows for sure. Sure that makes for a bit of a boring conclusion, but if you want my argument on this specific tangent: I don’t like people speaking for anyone but themselves. Your attempts to paint opinions as belonging to a magical majority or insignificant minority is just how your bias aligns specifically with regards to zoom.
If you’re running any game at 144 FPS (as that suggests a matching monitor for starters, which you wouldn’t waste on hardware that can’t match up for a wide variety of titles), I don’t think you’re the target demographic for performance concerns.
I prefer the balance arguments myself, but I don’t understand how many arguments boil down to “it’d be fine for me, so why can’t Relic do it”.
I’m not the one painting opinions as belonging to a majority or minority.
You are totally missing the point with your response to my data on performance in AoE 3 DE. The level of performance doesn’t matter, what matters is that it doesn’t vary significantly with the field of view.
As for balance arguments, has anyone from Relic ever stated that as the reason? As I said, if that were their reason, you’d think they’d have locked all users to the same field of view, including those with wider than 16:9 monitors. What does it even mean for it to be a balance issue anyway if it has no impact on performance and therefore would be available to all users? What would be being balanced?
Relic hasn’t stated anything definitive as far as I’m aware. That’s likely a large part in why these discussions keep going in these circles. Nobody knows for sure. That’s irrelevant to you wanting more zoom options, but again, I’m not against you wanting more zoom options. I’m not posting here to say “people shouldn’t have more zoom options”, right?
Like I’ve already said, the fact that wide and ultrawide monitors impact the field of view - in the event zoom is related to unit design and balance - doesn’t mean that the developers should exacerbate that.
To come back to me missing the point on performance . . . how am I? You have no data, merely an anecdote. That’s my point. You cannot say performance doesn’t vary significantly because I’m pretty sure (though you can correct me) you’re not running on min-spec hardware. You haven’t tested across different hardware configurations, different driver combinations . . . you’re just saying “I’ve tested this on my machine and it’s fine”.
Its not our job to worry about this stuff. Its Relic’s job. If they can’t make an RTS game with a non-fixed zoom level then have Forgotten Empires do it, they clearly can do it. Don’t choose an engine which can’t accomplish basic RTS tasks such as zoom. They had four years and this is the best they could do apparently, put out a half finished game with fixed zoom, no ranked, inferior micro options, and units uglier than other Age games from 15 years ago. It looks just like the game ‘Empires Apart’, which an indie studio in Europe made in half the time with a tiny tiny budget and just a few programmers.
It is highly unlikely that Relic couldn’t make the game zoom out more if they really wanted to. They don’t want to. The main guy Mr. Isgreen said he thinks the game cannot be played that way. If we take him at his word, it means he doesn’t want to do it, not that he can’t do it. He didn’t say ‘we would love to enable players to choose their own zoom levels, but unfortunately that would make the game inaccessible to those with lower powered computers and affect game balance’. He did not say that.
Ah, you mean about whether the tiny change in zoom is meaningful or not. Okay, well I stand by my view that the vast majority of people would not regard seeing half a tree more on one side and a quarter of a patch of gold more on the other side as a meaningful increase.
The issue with ultra wide monitors isn’t whether or not it is a “problem” that should or shouldn’t be exacerbated, rather it speaks to their intent. If their intent were that all players should have the same field of view for competitive fairness, they would have locked ultra wide players to 16:9 (like some other competitive games have done in the past). The fact that they didn’t do this suggests this wasn’t their intent. If it is their intent, then they can just come out and say it, lock ultra wide players to 16:9, and I’ll uninstall the game. Even if that is their intent for competitive fairness, there’s no reason not to allow it in single player, like they’ve done with the score.
So, to be clear, you are speaking for a majority that you have no way of proving?
People argue over 0.5 damage per second on a single unit in a single Age. I don’t understand why balance suddenly gets ignored just because you’ve decided you want a change that could impact balance more than you care for the balance it impacts.
Nobody can speak for the developers’ intent. Ultrawide monitors are an absolute minority of any hardware survey conducted. They could’ve easily ignored it for the sake of prioritising things that affect a majority of players.
