How was this taken out of context? he repeated the same thing almost verbatim in the official Q&A but simply replaced “you can’t play like that” with “so we decided to listen for once and you can see the new and improved zoom by 20% in the next beta” (which turned out to be worse horseshit than “you can’t play like that” since nobody can even tell if the zoom was increased or not).
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Can confirm. I photoshopped that button into a different position and passed out just 10 seconds later.
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They Said They Fixed It… (Age of Noob - YT)
Thats what happens when the request of fixing something went up and down the levels, through all the tiny grinding gears of corpo…
Proposed concept was ground to dust in the process, but we can check that box now 
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Nope, not horseshit. The change was noticeable enough. I would guess about a 10-12% change. I am happy with the current zoom level. It’s much more immersive and fun to watch that way than AOE2 for example. Meanwhile, the insatiable nerd rage of the sad, bitter folks running around on these forums acting like AOE IV and the devs have retroactively destroyed their childhoods because their personal vision of a game has not been implemented continues apace…
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What’s stopping you from zooming in to the immersive and fun level of zoom in AoE2? Meanwhile you ever-saitiables were calling us nerds even before our rage got you your current immersive and fun zoom level for AoE4.
You’re welcome.
Also, even you are guessing half of what they said. So, yes horseshit.
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It’s alright man, just keep uttering your mantra and ignore reality.
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Who in their right minds decides to add in a max zoom in the first place? Game engines these days can scale assets down to more gpu-managable models automatically when their size on screen is small. They are also having to figure out the cpu stuff anyways. I wish I knew but my guess is “a team that didn’t have the time to make things efficient.”
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It was a 20% increase in the amount you could see on the screen. I don’t know how exactly that translates to the distance from which you are viewing, but that distance increase is obviously less than the 20%.
Why do you guys even try to argue the specifics? The situation is obvious: We have asked them to pass the salt and they pushed it a few cm towards us. It either means “we don’t give a flying ■■■■ about what you want” or “we are so out of touch that we can absolutely not figure out what you could possibly want”. Neither induces trust, does it?
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Well I’m pretty sure a lot of people that did not like the zoom are ok with it now. Obviously some still are not. Personally I can live with it now, but I’d like another 10% or so.
If enough people are still unhappy with it then perhaps they’ll tweak it again. They can always look to you guys for some very reasonable and constructive feedback.
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I bet suits based that decision on a fact that League of Legends camera is really zoomed in “AND HOLY HECK ISN’T THAT GAME POPULAR AND MADE MILLIONS”. Muh science and statistics lul
Though I understand how easy this change could have been made, “pass the salt” has pretty clear parameters. Whereas “more zoom” is such an open ended request.
We shall see if they’ve determined people still aren’t satisfied with the zoom levels.
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Dang it, this seems like me trying to make my first RTS as a 10 man studio. Relic… are u guys sure u made RTS before ? i mean this ■■■■ was not in COH series anyway.
lets hope this is fixed, such small stuff can be fixed in a matter of a week actually.
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The fact that I don’t find any level of zoom fun or immersive in AOE2 is what’s stopping me. I played AOE2 from a boxed CD-ROM like 19 years ago. It was great at the time. In many ways it is a timeless classic. But it’s also extremely dated and showing its age at this point and the copy-paste civ design turned me off a long time ago. Personally I think Age of Mythology is the best age game to date and I like how AOE IV has taken inspiration from it as well.
That makes no sense
None of that has anything to do with the zoom…
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I disagree. It is a clear request which they just don’t want to fullfill for whatever reason: Allow every user to play at the zoom level they find to be perfect for their playstyle.
Any caps needed? Indeed: Don’t clip into stuff or show the models in uncomfortable close-ups (zoomed in too far) and don’t make the engine off itself or the hardware melt by trying to display everything on the map at once (zoomed out too far). Thats it… now let the user set his min-max zoom levels within those caps so he can happily mousewheel in and out. Offer a sensible standard preset.
What about the above solution seems so outlandish to you?
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Zoom level has gameplay implications, it’s not just some arbitrary thing that just needs to be low enough to prevent you seeing off the edge of the map.
This doesn’t mean the current level is correct (or not), but acting like it’s a purely aesthetic choice for the user setting it is incorrect.
The maximum zoom level needs to, at the very least, ensure that players that meet the minimum specs can use max zoon with minimum settings.
It also changes how playing even campaign levels is if you can see all of the map at once and don’t have to scroll around to micro.
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Thats what I’m arguing for… allow me to adjust it so I can see shit. How exactly does the gameplay currently benefit from the claustrophobic max zoom they enforce onto the player?
You are aware of fog of war and how the unexplored map looks like? It’s useless to zoom out and not see because it’s unexplored or under FOW. There would be no problem of “seeing too much”. You will also be unable to control stuff properly when zoomed too far out. Again, zoom in when you want to do the pixel perfect micro…
In what parallel world is having to constantly move the viewport of an RTS a positive thing in any sense?
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I know that’s what you’re arguing for and you’re wrong because being able to see more than another player means you can more quickly interact with a larger area of the map with less work.
The more you can see and manage without having the move the more easily you can micro units in multiple places, including being able to more easily attack an opponent from multiple sides while they have trouble defending both fronts because they can only see one at a time.
This impacts gameplay and UX in a competitive online environment.
I am, and I’m also skilled enough at RTS games to have units/buildings in more than one location at once and farther apart than games generally allow you to zoom.
You need to think about things a bit more deeply than how it looks to you before you start making bold statements like “zoom doesn’t impact gameplay cause fog of war”.
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You cannot use the lowest common denominator of some potato spec to set the camera distance… that is absolute madness. If your game cannot handle that your lowest spec user zooms out, adjustments have to be made in other ways to ensure performance. It’s an RTS for crying out loud… we need to see and control stuff. This feature must have priority.
Again, in which parallel world of complete madness would you trade zoom distance for performance, instead of implementing proper LOD adjustment? How can you defend such practice?
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