Legion - Max Camera Distance Reduction

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Legion - Max Camera Distance Reduction
The latest Legion build reduced the amount you can zoom out with the camera.


Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
This is one of this changes that we realize will be intensely unpopular with the group of players that has used console/WTF CVars to increase camera zoom beyond what the UI slider permits. For everyone else, they probably won't see what the big deal is, since it's removing a hidden option that most never used. But for those who are accustomed to an increased max zoom, it's changing the way you're experiencing the game in a way that feels restrictive and simply worse. So why would we do that?

In a broad range of gaming genres (from RTS to Action RPG), being able to zoom out and see more of the world around you provides an objective advantage in the form of information. Due to that competitive advantage, camera-unlocking or increased zoom distance are features commonly found in third-party hacks for a variety of games. Whatever the maximum allowed, that's what competitive players will use in order to maximize performance, even at the expense of the game's overall look and feel.

We strongly believe that there needs to be parity in this area between players who are using the default UI and those who have addons or knowledge of hidden console variables. One option was certainly to just allow the in-game slider to go all the way up to the CVar hardcap. But that scale is beyond the one around which the game was designed at its core. The development team builds the world, its art, its combat mechanics, and other interactions, around the base UI experience and scale. At the 3.4-CVar zoom level, your heroic Warcraft avatar takes up about as much screen-space as one of the dozens of marines you might control in a game of Starcraft.

Basically all of us started out playing WoW at the UI-enabled zoom level, and fell in love with that world enough that we now find ourselves here posting on an expansion beta forum discussing its future. At some point, we saw a raid video and wondered how they could see so much of the field at once, or we saw a forum post or got a helpful tip from another player, and learned that if you typed "/console CameraDistanceMaxFactor 4" you could zoom out way more, and we never looked back. But was that original experience bad, or have we just grown accustomed to something different?

There may also be a bit of hyperbole in the discussion around the change. This is a screenshot I just took with the max UI-selectable zoom settings in the current Legion build: http://i.imgur.com/e8vFT6t.jpg

I'm not sure it's fair to say that this level of zoom entails your character dominating the screen, or removes any awareness of nearby threats.

Finally, why did this happen suddenly now, late in the beta cycle, seemingly without any communication? Honestly, the intent was for the change to have been in place from early alpha onwards. I believe that what happened was that one of the CVars (CameraDistanceMaxFactor?) was clamped from the start, but a second CVar (CameraDistanceMax?) was overlooked. That issue was entered and tracked as a bug, and was just fixed recently. As a development team, at this point we're fixing up to 2000 Legion bugs a week, and it's not always obvious which player-facing build will contain a particular one of those fixes. This clearly wasn't something we ever imagined could just be swept under the carpet.
This article was originally published in forum thread: Legion - Max Camera Distance Reduction started by chaud View original post
Published on 2016-06-25 11:13 PM
796 Comments
Comments 795 Comments
  1. Melsiren's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Shadow Fox View Post
    The Game is designed around the Default game client without addons. Players are meant to follow the game clients limitations and workings to do what they need to do.
    Taking this part of your quote because it's actually false, Blizzard has admitted they design fights around players having addons like DBM and BigWigs.
  1. Shudder's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by familiar View Post
    Just another subtle change, preparing the game for console release.
    I'm looking forward to kicking console players out of my group like I do in ffxiv.
  1. Jazzhands's Avatar
    Looks like a lot of people will need to git gud.

    This is going to be annoying for me as a tank, but I'll get use to it. Not the end of the world.
  1. Incarnia's Avatar
    My God....... Why fix something that isn't broken? Their arguments for doing this are stupid. This is so gonna negatively impact raiders.
    Sometimes I'm thinking they got a hell of a charismatic troll with a sweet tongue in their midst, fucking up shit just for the laughs.
  1. Pull My Finger's Avatar
    Blizzards argumentation absolutely makes sense. I think anyone who's "upset" over this is a ridiculous person and obviously looking for something - anything - to bitch and be pissed about. And they act as if they were now forced to play zoomed in all the way. Total clowns!
  1. Rioo's Avatar
    I think I buy their argument for the change. I used the max distance myself so I dislike the change, but I can totally see where they are coming from. I also think there are other reasons that made them do this. Action cam for one.
  1. Super Kami Dende's Avatar
    As someone who has used CVar script change for close to a decade, this disappoints me greatly.

    Silly move on Blizzards part.
  1. mmoc5829d1e13c's Avatar
    Worst is they dont even give a proper reason for it...
  1. Fabinas's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by MoanaLisa View Post
    I hardly think it rises to the level of punishment. So it goes. Doubt very much if it's going to have any effect at all for most players.
    WoD was praised for only one reason (and almost everything else was shat on): Raiding. It has a big effect on the raiding community (of ANY lvl from normal to mythic). While the raiding community isn't the majority of WoW players, raiding is the pinnacle of WoW for expansions. There is no reason to shoot the community of your game's main focus on the foot for the vast majority who doesn't use the max camera feature anyway.
  1. mmoc7819529dd0's Avatar
    This is bad. Just downloaded PTR and in comparison - this is really bad. My monk won't feel the same. Don't know if I want to tank like that.
  1. Wishblade's Avatar
    Gonna feel a bit wierd for a while and be slightly hindering in certain areas, but there has been times when I found the camera distance to be somewhat ridiculous so I guess I'll get used to it eventually, as meh as it might be.
  1. Eronath's Avatar
    I've used the script for years now, I've never played with anything but my camera zoomed out as much as possible, and the change honestly doesn't seem that limiting to me? It zooms out quite a fair distance still, and shouldn't really warrant this kind of "outrage" imo.

  1. mmoceb1073a651's Avatar
    While I don't raid anymore with a guild, I think it's a bad decision to remove this feature. Sometimes, you just don't see anything if you cannot zoom out farther away.
  1. mmocdc260e8e2a's Avatar
    The change would be fine, IF they didn't make some bosses impossible to play properly without a maxed camera. In some cases you simply can't see the information you need to act properly.
  1. aeuhe4yxzhds's Avatar
    Its pretty stupid to cry about this change. What they should do is increase the fov, it has been horrible since the beginning. But what would you expect from uninformed people that is playing this game?
  1. risingforce's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Jazzhands View Post
    Looks like a lot of people will need to git gud.

    This is going to be annoying for me as a tank, but I'll get use to it. Not the end of the world.
    Right? As a tank, I feel that I always need 'beyond max' zoom because I need that spacial awareness.

    "Are my melee in the right place?"

    "Is that Marked range moving into position?"

    "Where's my co-tank?"

    Etc etc... going beyond max zoom was always really appreciated in raiding.

    I think the reaction here on MMO-C is a little over the top (as expected), a thread on Reddit in which the author of the addon DynamicCam seemed to add a much better perspective to the issue. I think it will be ok. But yeah if it stays this way then I'll be disappointed likewise. Here's the quote from MPStark (author of DynamicCam) from the reddit post:

    Quote Originally Posted by Mpstark View Post
    At least on beta right now, the max is still 1.9. You can verify this by doing:
    /script SetCVar("cameradistancemaxfactor", 2.85)
    /script print(GetCVar("cameradistancemaxfactor"))
    A camera factor at 2.85 would yield a max distance of 42.75, which is fairly close to the old max of 50. The new max distance is right now on beta is 28.5.
    DynamicCam, which I write, used CameraDistanceMax to "cheat" and be able to reset your zoom level to a known value by setting the max to that value and then zooming out (basically zooming in if you were further or zooming out to the new max). It would then restore the old max as soon as zooming was done and then I would have a clean slate in order to track.
    Using the factor would be easy to use in the same way (with some division), but it's locked from 1 to 1.9 currently, so I can only go from 15 to 28.5, so I can't do exactly the same thing. It's annoying, and, selfishly, I wonder if their motivation to change this in this way is targeted against my approach. They could have easily removed the factor and then limited the cameradistancemax to 28.5, but they didn't.
    REF: https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...emoved/d4nxv5p
  1. Adlian's Avatar
    First removing half of the UI options and forcing us to use addons and now this, wonder what the next thing will be? Maybe lock everything and force us to play by their idea how to gear our chars and stuff.
  1. mmoc5b249aa738's Avatar
    The change applies to everyone. It's been known for a long time now that the majority of the WoW community can not adapt to changes hence the "outcry". I hope Blizzard sticks to their decision
  1. tricolororder's Avatar
    I zoom out when tanking as well but legit this difference is barely going to be noticed outside of open areas

    the new setting is probably less limiting than ceilings in dungeons/raids, relacks for wonce

    my only concern with the new settings is for the people who take artistic screenshots etc.
  1. grexly75's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Eronath View Post
    I've used the script for years now, I've never played with anything but my camera zoomed out as much as possible, and the change honestly doesn't seem that limiting to me? It zooms out quite a fair distance still, and shouldn't really warrant this kind of "outrage" imo.

    I just find it absolutely hilarious that people are getting so salty over this, as I said in an earlier post if it was an obvious game breaking issue then the outrage would be justified.. But I think that in this case most complaining about this are complaining because they can..

    But looking at that image you posted I see no problem with the camera distance, and there are times that having the camera at max distance can be a hindrance like many of the fights in Karazhan that were in areas that having the camera at max distance would not help at all..
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