Since the game’s been out 4 years as of next month, can the zoom restriction be reconsidered and changed? At least for unranked, private SP and MP games vs. AI?
I was going to play a single player vs. AI game, but nope… I can’t. Map launched, I saw the zoom, cringed, and promptly quit the game to play something else. As I’ve done a number of times. And is a big reason why I didn’t buy it sooner than 2 or 3 years after it came out.
When I only have 5 TCs x 3 TCs (width and height) field of view, I get claustrophobic and cramped. No can do. Not fun at all. For me, it’s like trying to read a book 2" from my nose…
It’s less zoomed in than Starcaft and Warcarft (and original AoE2). So it doesn’t bother me.
AoE DE games can zoom out further, and I guess all the Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander type games, but AoE4 isn’t particularly zoomed in for an RTS.
So you want it zoomed in even lower and closer to the land? I think you can scroll the mousewheel in more, and disable Panoramic mode in settings. (It’s a little hard to tell if you’re saying you are for or against being able to zoom farther out )
Ugh, no thanks. Sounds like two games I will continue to forever avoid.
I like managing my empire, with seamless micro and macro management. Not managing my cul-de-sacs
Definitely. The difference between AoE2DE and AoE4 zooms is laughable.
Imagine Civilization games having AoE4’s zoom restriction and trying to manage your civ/empire there. Lol
if only panoramic actually provided better zoom, instead of swinging the camera to more vertical angle at the same distance only
also zoom in in aoe4 is just as bad as zoom out
One thing they have to take into account when setting the zoom level is performance. On AoE2 DE if you use the high def graphics mode you also annoyingly can’t zoom out. I don’t know if that’s a factor here or not. I know some people used hacks to zoom out further, I’m curious if that affected performance at all on lower end machines.
I assume you must have found the original AoE2 unplayable.
Yeah I agree that would be very silly for a turn based civilzation management game with no units to micro.
It is very hard to get ANY criticism through here without being swarmed. Even if that is just an add-on. Even if that benefits everyone. Even if they “personally don’t care”. Leave them with their perfect game forever.
context matters, when aoe2 released in 99 it was an improvement over games released prior in terms of playability and controls, which includes the camera, and the camera in engine was programmed to show more with a higher res display down the line
it also basically pionereed many QoL features aoe1 lacked
aoe4 released into post starcraft 2 and post aoe DE era (after aoe DEs proved what could be done in terms of features and zoom), and it failed to come anywhere near those, if aoe4 released in 99 instead it’d be a pioneer, but we’re no longer in 99 now are we, thats why it doesn’t feel right
Any point of reference on the high definition graphics for AoE II: DE that CRothlisberger mentioned? I don’t have it myself to check.
Personally, I want there to be more zoom-in in AoE IV.
Zoom out probably impacts the minimum hardware specs for the game, and as it is an advantage to be able to zoom out to a certain extent, adding something that benefits some players at the expense of others is unlikely.
That said, that means there isn’t really an argument to extending zoom-out in, say, SP content.
Well we were talking about only zoom level. He finds AoE4 unplayable because he doesn’t like how zoomed in it is. Likewise Starcraft and Warcraft. I’m not debating that at all.
I just assume he also found original AoE2 unplayable since it was zoomed in even more.
I mostly agree, but whatever they set the minimum specs of the game at and the maximum zoom level at, it still has to run well in that state even in single player.
I prefer all possible options in all settings, but realize that’s unrealistic. The devs have to take a lot of things into account when setting limits.
Some companies take it way too far trying to create what they consider the optimal experience, such as Nintendo not even having ANY sound options in most of their games.
“Settling on performance” is a weak argument, imo. Otherwise, games like Civ, GTA V, RDR 2, and most any other game would lock in their max settings on a potato and give player little or no ability to make them better. AoE4’s zoom setting was locked in on a potato. Tech has improved and people have bought new hardware since then.
Here are Steam PC stats Oct 2021 vs. Aug 2025. Looks a bit better nowadays…
I don’t use the 4K graphics pack for AoE2DE, so I’m not sure what you’re referring to on that part, and/or it sounds like a bug?
We’ve evolved as a gamer species since then, as @KG19991380 pointed out. AoE4 shouldn’t feel like you’re playing at 1024x768 or 800x600, but it does to me. It’s zoom level is akin to that, imo
I micro everything in AoE2:DE at maxed zoom out level on a 1440p monitor, and in Fast mode. No issues whatsoever. Makes it jarring to try and play AoE4, with a zoom seemingly stuck in the year 2000 or 2005.
It probably does, but that’s why developers invented an “Options” menu decades ago. If your PC can’t handle certain settings being medium or high, or “on”, you disable them, turn them down, or turn them “off”. We all know how to do that by now. If a game’s framerate is too chunky for me, I change settings. I really don’t understand this argument. Maybe for ranked? Sure? But the rest of the game? No… as you recognize.
The game can easily zoom out more and it would run fine on my PC. As it would have four years ago
Two words: “Options Menu.” Do you really never touch the Options menu to adjust Graphics/Video settings on any game you play? I have to imagine you do.
Every game is different, and I (we?) have to adjust Texture Quality, Shadow Quality, Anti-Aliasing, Hair effects, and everything else to customize the experience for our PC. Why does AoE4 have to be the only game to hard cap its settings (or at least its zoom level) to potatoes? I guarantee my PC would be fine if I could zoom out more, and my GPU and CPU are around 7 years old.
For anyone who got a new PC today, I would never say, “Sorry, but when GTA 6 comes out next year, I hope the game’s max settings are hard-capped at my 7 year old system. I don’t want your graphics to look any better than mine. You want higher resolution textures and a much farther draw distance? Nah. Since the game has to run well on a 7-year old PC or older, Rockstar should hard cap settings at that. I don’t know how to use the Options screen.”
Why not uncap that, too? I’d never use it, but sure, why not
Subjective. I think “small trees”, “cube resources”, “idle pointers”, and “tower range indicators” mods look bad, but at least a few of those are in the vanilla AoE2DE game now. I don’t use them and wouldn’t. Thankfully, I can turn them off.
Funny how they, along with several other mods that give a competitive advantage, were and are allowed in Ranked play in AoE2DE. Yet zooming out more in AoE4, even just for SP/MP unranked skirm with friends, is the deal breaker
Well yeah, it’s subjective. I think it looks awful. It doesn’t help that the shadows and lighting system starts to break down, units start to overlap with their health bars weirdly, and the terrain geometry looks much worse at a distance.
To put it very plainly, it looks terrible.
Edit: it was an official mod added in an update over a year ago, you can only use it in skirmish (no multiplayer)
Not a bug, you just lose the ability to zoom out much if you play with the 4k graphics pack. People have complained about it as well. Although I think hardly anyone uses it. It’s been a while since I tried it.
I’m sure that also factors into the limits they set.
As I said devs try to curate the optimal experience (sometimes overzealously).
Unit readability and such starts to suffer as you zoom out. Sure it’s up to players to use it or not, but then you have streams and images of the game out there looking worse. I’m sure these are all things that get considered when making these decisions.
Not sure if anyone noticed but the age up animations with the gold stringing up into the air were not meant for further zoom out because once they added panoramic you could see the top of them end abruptly and oddly rather than going snoothly off the screen. I’m actually not sure if they’ve ever fixed that since, I’ll have to check.
Ahh, yeah, I actually had it and forgot about it, because it seems like they went out of their way to make it unusable. I probably looked at it once, sighed, and never used it again. It looks pretty bad. And it’s a “Game Mode” for some odd reason, mutually exclusive with all the other game modes. How does that make sense?
They sure do try hard to force us to use close zoom. Like, who would want to play the game like this?
And the 3D, non-orthographic cam doesn’t help things either.
So, again. 4 years post-launch, I’m asking them to re-evaluate/re-consider zoom and implement it correctly. No weird artificial limitations (fog) to try and force us to not use it. If they really wanted to implement it as a usable solution, they’d also add a camera tilt function so we can get a more top-down angle instead of the strange perspective view.
Yes, you pick Free Cam “game mode”, and you can’t pick and choose your win conditions. Odd:
On the bright side, over one year after I asked, I finally see how to view “monsters” (the icon in upper-right in my last screenshot)… which I assume will show me Kraken finally?
EDIT: No idea. Tried and don’t see any. Maybe they only show up when you sail over them? Are there land-based monsters, too? Again, didn’t see any.
I don’t know about those, but I’m pretty sure my right-clicks or build orders used to make gold ribbons. I don’t see them anymore. I may have turned them off, but good luck finding the option in the menu with huge fonts, tons of vertical padding, and no search function. My gold ribbons look like weird squished arrows for some reason:
The Free Camera mod they added is literally just for people to capture images/videos. It’s not really for playing the game. It’s probably useless for anyone not creating youtube videos or whatever.
the 4K pack is first an addon, and second only there for 1440p or higher resolutions when camera zoom out with default graphics becomes too far to possibly play half precisely, while some people also use it at 1080p its still a matter of what you care more about, pushing camera back, or being able to zoom into individual pixels (you can’t do either in aoe4 btw)
Would be a similar challenge even if you pull the fog back in AoE IV, mind you.
Not saying there aren’t small gains to be made in zoom out in IV that would have less drawbacks (imo) overall, but it seems to have a lot more potential things to balance.
I think it is only for 4K+. Not to be used for resolutions lower than that. Or at least not designed for sub-4K, and devs had some issues with stability when they tried to fix zoom for sub-4K. A dev commented the following info years ago:
For AoE2DE on 1080p and 1440p (sub-4K), I found this PSA much more useful than the 4K pack:
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