Zoom level

I look forward to playing the game with better zoom. It’s too hemmed in for me.

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based on COH experience - it’s easy to fix when the mods will be available.
COH has some tweaks with zoom, but unfortunately it doesnt work for aoe4.

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Yes I agree. Please fix this so that we can zoom way out and see what is going on! I almost can’t even play the game right now. Thanks.

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Just wondering, I’ve only ever used mods for AOE2 in singleplayer

is it possible to play multiplayer using a mod for example that adds extra zoom out?
or would this be cheating?

may be? but who cares?

Adam said the current zoom the best, so how it can be cheating if any will be worse than the “best” zoom.

Small trees could be considers also as cheat.
Imagine Adam would prohibit small trees, cause “it’s the best as devs see it” and “get used” reasons.

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well I guess what im really asking is CAN you play multiplayer with a mod the other players in the lobby dont have on?

That must have been in some private conversation with you or something, he never said that publicly.

no, he did say it

he said “you cant play like that!”

in reference to zooming out more

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Isgreen also mentions that the development team has had a lot of useful feedback from the recent beta period, with one of the main stand outs being players wanting to manipulate the camera more.

“I think the big thing that we walked away with… there’s some things on the technical side,” Isgreen tells us. “We’re really covering a wide range of PCs with this game. I think the biggest one was people want to see more.

“They want to zoom out more. But that’s every RTS game I’ve ever made. People are literally like, ‘I want to zoom the camera out more’, and we’re like, ‘you can’t play the game like that’!”

Here is the limited context we had. An article about an interview.

He said they got useful feedback, with zoom being one of the main stand outs. The infamous quote some of you like to throw around is in reference to the fact that every RTS game they ever make people want to zoom out more. This is pretty much always true, I believe Day9 has some videos discussing it.

You will also note that immediately after this they increased zoom so that 20% more is on the screen. Perhaps not enough to satisfy all of us (I would like another 10-20%), but the narrative some people here like to push that the zoom feedback was completely ignored, or they were mocking us, is patently false.

As I said I want a little more zoom still, but I also acknowledge there are other factors to consider. He even mentions in that quote how they are covering a wide range of PCs. Clearly they have tried to make the minimum specs as low as possible for this game. Maybe we will still get some more zoom in the future, but whatever they do it has to still allow the game to run well for people using the minimum specs while using the maximum zoom level.

Possible or not, I believe this would be considered cheating. Assuming that is, that some machines are capable of using the mod and running well and others are not. AoE2 has many mods you can use in multiplayer such as small trees, grid, or range indicators that give an advantage. However, those do not rely on system specs and the devs have been incorporating settings directly into the game that give the same functionality as some of those mods so that it is more accessible to everyone.

It was the very first answer to “zoom issue” after(or during) closed beta.

LOL
if devs are offended by “zoom requests” than i’m offended with current “zoom”. 1-1.

Some streamers and pple saying “the first RTS in 10 years”, u should not complain because u should support the RTS games. It will help to resurrect the genre. But it’s BS, why i should care about some genre, if zoom killing 4-4 games. Compared to aoe2, TGs are joke. It’s so hard to understand what’s going on.

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I am currently playing the game with the 1 euro gamepass test thing, and will definetly not be buying the game fully if the zoom remains this ridiculously close. All the games feel really claustrophobic and I feel like I can not control my units without constantly nudging my camera back and forth, which only adds an annoyance to microing rather than actually requiring any sort of “skill”. I wish it was as far as AoE2:DE or atleast as far as AoE3:DE.

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Also the rethoric that “since some players might not be able to run the game smoothly at a further zoom out then everyone must be zoomed in” is really dumb. Competitive games have always allowed users with higher end systems to have an advantage.

Imagine if CS:GO would limit you to 30fps since maybe someone cant run the game higher than 30fps so you have to suffer too. Thats just dumb.

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Who said anything about being offended? Or anything about not complaining? I just suggest not resorting to saying things that are straight up false or making assumptions about people you have never met in support of your arguments.

Wanting more zoom has many great arguments without any of that nonsense. Often trebuchets are not even on the same screen as their targets. Not that many buildings can fit on one screen. In a large battle it can be hard to see everything going on at once. As I said I too want some more zoom.

Calling it “rhetoric” does not somehow invalidate it. The devs have very obviously kept lower specs in mind when making this game. Competitive games also do not ALWAYS allow users with higher systems to have an advantage, even if many of them do. Many games try to make things as fair as possible. That is also not at all a valid argument to throw out any such restrictions. I doubt there are any games that actively try to give people with better hardware an advantage over everyone else. There is somewhere between that and limiting FPS as you say where things will typically land.

Fairness is also not the only thing they have to consider. The game already has some hitbox issues and difficulty in clicking on things individually (they really need to make some improvements here). The more you zoom out the worse and more apparent these other issues become and the more people they will have complaining and unhappy about them. It’s all a balancing act. You may say well give people the choice, and yeah that is a valid argument, but the point still stands and it is still something they must consider.

im not trying to invalidate it by calling it a rethoric, im trying to invalidate it by saying hectic shooter games where your fps has a lot of impact on your ability to react to quick situations do not restrict the fps, even when some people are unable to run the game at the same high fps or do not have the higher refresh rate monitors. Why should we be restricted on our zoom level if someone cant run the game zoomed out more?

In AoE2 the zoom level was highly connected to the users screen resolution, was it a problem when other people had a higher zoom out than others?

Have they considered that zooming out more makes precise microing harder? There are downsides on zooming out too.

In my opinion its just dumb to say “This is the zoom level everyone should play because someone might have low fps if they can zoom out more”.

I feel like they do not want to zoom out more because there are issues with some of the coding or assets of the game, where they will not look right, or glitch out somehow if the player is allowed more freedom in zooming out, and it feels like they are just trying to hide it under “like this its fair for all!” curtain. But thats just a feeling. (If you look at the yellow light pylon effect on building waypoints you can see how it cuts out at the top at the “old” beta zoom level, as if it was designed with this zoom level strictly in mind)

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I think the zoom is fine the way it is-- but wouldn’t mind if I could at least zoom out enough to see a treb attacking at max range.

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imo that should be the minimum max level

of course we need to be able to see what we’re hitting!

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It isn’t patently false. Age of Noob did a video on the supposed changed zoom level and he shows both the pre change and post change max zoom levels and I cannot tell them apart. If you technically do something but no one can tell you did something, it is the same as ignoring the number one feedback item. And they know darn well that people wanted to zoom out more than that. There is no way they could possibly believe that that minute adjustment was what people wanted after having read the avalanche of feedback. I don’t believe it is possible for anyone to read the feedback and think that a zoom level adjustment that tiny would satisfy players. So it must mean that they made a fake adjustment just to be able to say they were ‘responsive to player feedback’. It very well could be a limitation of the engine, except that in the beta someone already was able to zoom out a lot, and people preferred it, so there goes that theory.

If you look at the zoom level improvements in the other Age games, they were all ‘real’ improvements not token improvements. Everyone knows what improving the zoom level means. Look at AOE 2 2013 vs AOE 2 DE, AOE 3 DE vs AOE 3 DE ludicrous zoom improvement, AOE 1 vs AOE 1 sprite control, AOM EE vs AOM original. They are all massive and real zoom improvements.

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yeah the amount they change it screams “change it as little as possible so that we can say we did something but it remains functionally the same” to me

ive always been asking for at least 100 - 150% more zoom out, since closed beta

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What would be their motive behind it?

To them-- whats the difference between a 10 percent increase to 200 percent? What would they lose or gain from changing it or not?

Could it be that they have a particular vision of how they want it and are willing to bend to the consumer only so much? I dunno-- just because AoE2 had a lot of community involvement-- that isn’t this game, and while community involvement is important, this is a different developer that probably handles things differently than previous developers. Maybe once this game is 5 to 10 years old.