depends on person perpective. Mine: TG victories > Bombards > Zoom
Other staff like balance for 1vs1 (i do not care a lot)… because in TGs it will be mostly imperials battles. etc.
there were comparison how many TCs can be seen on one screen.
Numbers (approximate) aoe2=11 TCs aoe3=8 TCs aoe4= 3or4 TCs
Someone did it in picture.
Do not lie next time, you probably never played in aoe3.
Whether it should be done is one question.
But there are alway people who keep saying it could not be done. That’s the reason for presenting previous examples.
Maybe I am misunderstanding, but it appears you are unaware that three out of the five Age of Empires games are 3D. AoE4 is the fourth. But it’s the first one to have these problems.
Did you really need all that just to say you disagree?
Watch some YouTube debates in apologetics for any subject, whether it be for alternative medical treatment for those with advanced stage cancer, or game design regarding balance of a unit skin and you will understand.
Because that’s not what you claimed people were saying.
You said people were saying the developers cannot improve the zoom. That’s not the case, even with your given example. They can improve the zoom. This apparently, according to a poster, will come at a cost to unit recognition. That still doesn’t mean they can’t improve the zoom.
Because the developers have to balance out the work required against everything else on their roadmap. If the developers commit to doing something with zoom after the existing commitments, then great. If they have to shake up their existing roadmap, then they’re going to upset some folks (while presumably pleasing those that want movement on the zoom levels).
And yeah, this is still completely ignoring the idea that it might be intentional with regards to games design / balance.
I recommend reading my posts again. Specifically the part where I said I’m not fussed either way, but would prefer the existing roadmap to be kept to.
Is not a small independent studio.
Also…
The “roadmap” is their own, they choose what to do.
You can’t excuse them with their own plan.
Doesn’t make any sense.
I thought people who are playing want the playerbase to grow…
Well, whatever. Someday.
If you want to criticise their plan, feel free. Doesn’t change the fact that a bunch of people are looking forward to either parts of it, or all of it. The zoom subject has been debated to death, repeatedly. It’s sensible to assume Relic know folks’ feelings on it.
Which means they’ve chosen the prioritise the other things listed on the roadmap. People who prefer changes to zoom aren’t gonna be happy, sure. Do you think Relic aren’t aware of that?
Every company has a budget. Every company has a limit on what they can deliver. Doesn’t matter how big or small, efficient or not.
Yeah… feelsbad
Yeah…
Again, this means nothing. They choose how to use the budget. You can’t excuse them with their own plan.
Anyway, they don’t care, as you clearly pointed out.
Someday hopefully.
And they chose something that I, as someone who’s looking forward to modding the game, prefer. That’s what this comes down to. You would prefer zoom improvements. There is no “right” or “wrong” answer. And “just do everything” isn’t an answer, it’s idealism.
I do not know what kind of wordplay you are addicted to.
There are a million other games out there who could still have good recognizablity and good overall graphics with more zoom.
If someone implies the developers CAN increae the zoom level (which in your words means simply increasing the zoom level despite the outcomes, but anyone who knows human language would probably know it comes with a natural hidden implications of doing a good job at the same time in this context), but at the cost of screwing up unit recognizability and many other aspects (which a million other games do not), does it imply this guy believes the dev team really has the ability to increase zoom?
Of course everyone who works on the engine knows how to increase the zoom. Simply find some parameters and increase the values. Alright. Problem solved. Now according to someone, optimization will crash, people cannot appreciate the game anymore, graphics or unit recognizability will be more of a mess (but there are a million other games who do not have the same problem), but of course he believes the dev team CAN improve the current zoom level!
If I say you CAN drive at the cost of hitting 10 people and crashing the car, do I really mean you CAN drive?
Only if “being able to drive” means “knowing to hit some pedal” but both you and I know it does not.
You say this in the same post you compare changing the zoom level to crashing a car 
Yes, but the point here is that unit recognition is heavily subjective. I don’t have any major problems with unit readability. Do you?
You called the poster out because they used unit readability as a factor for not increasing the zoom. Does that mean you agree that the readability is bad, and you still want more zoom regardless?
My point is very simple. I do not know if Relic can alter the zoom or not. Nobody here knows. We’re just guessing. You used somebody elses’ guess as a way to attack them for “the biggest insult (to the devs) ever”. Right? You weren’t making a constructive discussion from the start. You were talking about the apparent irony of other posts who accuse “critics” of “hating” and “insulting” the devs. You were making a silly little gotcha, to bash other posters who don’t share the same opinion as you. Are we on the same page now?
If anybody claims that Relic cannot increase the zoom level, I’d say the same thing. They don’t know. If someone insisted that was the case, I’d say they were wrong.
However, that’s still separate to unit readability. It’s not like a car crash at all, because any problem with unit readability (real or perceived) suggests a problem with design. And that’s tricky, because there are a bunch of ways to go about handling something like that.
And regardless, who cares? Why do you care so much about a single poster’s opinion about unit readability? Every single poster I’ve seen who’s emphatic about zoom either doesn’t care about any problems it might cause (“because it’s an option”), or insist that the developer should be able to resolve it. Because the past games have (nevermind any differences the past games may have had).
I’ll answer the question for you: you don’t care about that person’s opinion at all. Like I said at the top, you just wanted a reason to bash them. And don’t get me wrong, you haven’t been alone here. That’s why I said in my first reply - I wish people could argue without lobbing accusations back and forth.
I just had a look at some code available on a forum to allow more zoom range using cheat engine, and it seems to literally just be patching two values in the game to set different min zoom and max zoom.
By “can” I meant including any potential side-effects that ArrivedLeader and I were talking about.
I general, I presume a great majority of things can technically be done by any games developer. I’m not always right, but that’s where I lean. Because the challenge isn’t always making the technical part happen. It’s how it ties into everything else.
My personal stance on zoom is I believe Relic must have their reasons for not changing it more than they did previously, but I do think it’d be beneficial if they talked / were allowed to talk about it. Even if people still disagree, having the reasoning out there would give us a much more constructive basis than these endless roundabouts mostly involving all the same posters.
Man you guys are giving these devs who couldn’t even patch out the relic bug a whole lotta credit for “intended features”
Starting to sound a whole lot like Bethesda in here
Also nah it’d probably just piss me off more, like the reasoning for the crappy undetailed cartoonish brightly colored graphics we ended up with
I remember you are a native English speaker and I am not. So I do not know why you keep pretending you cannot read english.
First of all wordplay is not the same thing as anogy. And “keep debating the meaning of CAN while trimming every other part of the argument” is not the same thing as making an analogy to demonstrate your act of “keep debating the meaning of CAN while trimming every other part of the argument” which is what I mean by wordplay (you seem to like talking like that huh? Otherwise you’ll trim the entire context again and pretend you don’t know what I mean) . If you do not know that maybe check out some dictionary.
Do you know who cares about that? YOU. I wrote one sentence about it and you care about that to the degree that you wrote about three whole essays debating the meaning of “they can increase zoom” even though there is a clear context (and I even explicitly wrote that out) of “being able to increase zoom and not messing up optimization or unit recognizablity or anything else.
In the very same post I also wrote the only acceptable explanation for me is “they have other priorities” and that’s exactly what you mean. Then I made a simple and straightforward comment implying “if someone thinks the devs are going to mess up unit recognizability with more zoom, HE means they cannot handle zoom since other games have been doing that with no problem for 20 years” and it’s an insult to the devs (one according to basic English reading comprehension that I may not agree with, and one in other occasions will turn you police beacon on).
Maybe you have an alert system that only rings whenever you see the word “dev” and any non-positive word in the same sentence. Good for you.
I imagine they could come up with a better reason for the zoom level or other things than they could for the art direction resulting in things being difficult to see and control at higher zoom levels.
And when you point out these are stupid excuses because “a million other games CAN adjust zoom without messing up gameplay, graphics, optimization, etc. so there is no reason the aoe4 devs cannot do that”, someone jumped out debating “no of course they CAN technically increase the zoom but maybe at the cost of messing up things”.
I mean, I consider the notion that the zoom level is somehow unintended a bit more of a reach, hah.
It could be anything. But sure, I’m giving Relic a lot of credit, whatever. A lot of you aren’t giving them enough, so honestly what does it matter. Am I wrong? Are you wrong? Why do I have to fight so much just to have my opinions exist? Or at least, exist without getting compared to “Bethesda lol”.
Should I just give up and join in on the endless, incessant sniping? Is that really the way forward here?
Well, there’s no pleasing everybody. I’m pretty sure I said that already though 
If you understand the difference between “wordplay” and “analogy”, I’m not sure the fact that you’re not a native English speaker really matters 
I mean, “wordplay” is being “clever or witty”, as a rule, so maybe what I’m doing isn’t wordplay at all. At the end of the day it was just something you were accusing me of (as a negative), so I’m not fussed either way. Moving on.
Other games do have different zoom levels to Age IV, yep. Absolutely correct.
Other, other games also have comparable zoom levels to Age IV. RTS games. Perfectly playable, well-received, well-enjoyed RTS games. You want more. There’s nothing wrong with that. At every possible turn I have said there is nothing wrong with you wanting more zoom.
The problem you have is you’re incapable of letting other players have a different opinion. At least, without insulting, stereotyping, or belittling them (or the devs). So that’s what I take issue with.