Legion - Max Camera Distance Reduction

[MrPaladinGuy]

Is it April 1st ?

[Caolela]

The thing that gets me is - Blizz keeps handing out shit sandwiches and people keep eating them except this time, you get mayo instead of mustard or ketchup. They go back and buy the next, even worse xpac and keep paying for subs. Or they buy a fairly shitty new Blizz title.

Why? Why not do what they'd really listen to - no more easy money from customers? Quit playing and quit paying. You might get better responses than what you've had.

At least you wouldn't be playing a game you're starting to hate more and more.

[Deleted]

Next week they will limit all 6700k and gtx 1080 combo , disable all mouse buttons but 2 and ya turn off every air clima..... you know that can be an avantage!!

Btw the workaround is to buy 1000$ Curved Monitor 3440x1440

[Dracodraco]

Yup, also all screen comparisons that they took are uphill with huge chunks of terrain/NPC to fill the screen and lessen actual view distance difference.

This comparison image was posted on the reddit thread about it, and gives a far better idea of how hindering it would be in a raid environment where you usually have a top-down PoV:


Not gonna lie; I reflexively tried to zoom out when I went down to the second picture because it's super freaking noticeable. If what people are saying is true, view distance has decreased from 50 yards to 42.5 - so a radius of 15%. which happens to cut out *a lot*.

[Ickz]

This poll is meaningless. I'm sure the majority of people voting yes are just mad that Blizzard is "removing" options and didn't actually play at higher than default settings. I'm sorry, but the majority of players don't use console commands to modify their zoom level. It's insane people are making a big deal over this - Blizzard's reasoning is very sound on this.

[Bigbamboozal]

They particularly ask if that original view was so bad...YES! fucking YES! It was aweful, just as camera height on some races felt, for example playing a gnome after getting used to camera height on a taller race. What makes me balk at the reasoning as in theory? triple screen support. (eyefinity and so forth)
Yah, played lots with three screens, you see more of the game world.
Are they gonna destroy that as well?

[Crimewave]

Started to use maxcameradistance in BC and never changed since then. I'm not even melee and still think that default camera options aren't enough.
I wonder what Ion's guild raiders are going to say to him. Can't see them happy about this change.

As people already said - one step forward, two steps back. Anyway, I expect this shit to be reverted soon.

[deadman1]

LOL blizzard apologist??? if you actually knew me you wouldnt be saying that.
more like i hate people who complain for the sake of complaining. there's literally no reasoning with them, they just like to complain and see the world burn.

You even thinking that proves that you have no idea what you are talking about, you are literally disreguarding other peoples opinions because you disagree with them, you aren't allowed to do that.

and yes, it does make the game easier. you literally are able to see more things and gather more information of your surroundings than you normally would. that does make it easier. the same thing happened in overwatch where players were asking for a bigger FoV angle which would enable them to see more things around them and therefore enable for higher awareness with ease and make the game easier.

So does DBM is that being removed? No? Good call.

[Iskariott]

This poll is meaningless. I'm sure the majority of people voting yes are just mad that Blizzard is "removing" options and didn't actually play at higher than default settings. I'm sorry, but the majority of players don't use console commands to modify their zoom level. It's insane people are making a big deal over this - Blizzard's reasoning is very sound on this.

From my experience this console command is one of the most well known commands. i often read it being asked in trade chat. i dont think that least people use it.

[Axelond]

This change is so out of nowhere removing a crucial part of raiding without any testing or feedback. The default camera distance is not enough I hope they change it to some kind of middle ground.

[MrExcelion]

@chaud great idea on the poll btw

[Mormolyce]

I've always wondered why they didn't either make the full range of camera controls part of the main UI or... you know... remove it.

I look forward to this debate taking over from no flying as our resident 300-page flamewar. At least this one has an actual impact on gameplay.

- - - Updated - - -

This comparison image was posted on the reddit thread about it, and gives a far better idea of how hindering it would be in a raid environment where you usually have a top-down PoV:

I feel like these comparisons would be more telling if you took shots of an actual boss fight.

[Indigenously Abled]

From my experience this console command is one of the most well known commands. i often read it being asked in trade chat. i dont think that least people use it.

I've had it as a macro in my macros bar since TBC.

OT: Bullshit change. It makes no sense.

[Raugnaut]

I don`t think that the reduction in camera distance is really that bad of a thing.
Most boss encounters are fought in closed rooms where the camera was limited thanks to the ceiling anyway.
It is still possible to zoom out far enough to watch the whole raid.

What I personally find astonishing is the amount of hatred and toxicity in the answers to the post.
Are people really believing that attacking watcher and calling him an idiot will make blizzard revert the change?

In HFC, the number of bosses fought in a very small room - 3. Tyrant, socrethar, and Gorefiend(stomache)

In Highmaul, the number of bosses fought in a very small room - none.

BRF had more of this, but the rooms were still large, and generally not limited by the max view distance. Blackhand phase 2 was a slight pain, but not really.

As we go back in expansions, the number of bosses fought either outside, or in extremely large rooms that exceeds the range of max camera view distance FAR outnumbers the ones who are fought in smaller, cramped rooms. Hell, I can't even think of any who are fought in extremely tight rooms. Even dungeon bosses tend to have plenty of space to easily see the entirety of the boss fighting area.

Even in Legion, most bosses are fought in nice wide-open spaces.

If this is implemented, it may just cost Blizzard my subscription. Because fuck them trying to forcefeed us everything little !@#$ing thing. Not only is it inconvenient, its downright insulting.

[Dracodraco]

I've always wondered why they didn't either make the full range of camera controls part of the main UI or... you know... remove it.

I look forward to this debate taking over from no flying as our resident 300-page flamewar. At least this one has an actual impact on gameplay.

- - - Updated - - -



I feel like these comparisons would be more telling if you took shots of an actual boss fight.

Most likely would, but I don't have Beta installed, and it'll take me hours to do so as I've got no space for an extra copy of WoW on my SSD, so it'd need to be on my normal HD. Found a few more comparisons though;

Here's some guy testing his standard 1920x1080 monitor versus a beefed up 3440x1440 - seems like you can *buy* view distance to get an advantage, if it becomes a major issue, so no worries:
http://i.imgur.com/sQVcynC.jpg

And here's a brave person testing out Mannoroth with the new zoom-level in LFR, direct quote from the US forums:

Courtasy of Lorentz a video of what LFR Mannoroth looks like using the new Legion camera distance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-5CzOtXC_Q

A couple times that show the problems with the new tighter camera.
6:20--Shadowforce blinds the player:
https://youtu.be/j-5CzOtXC_Q?t=377

7:42--Big green explosion blinds the player
https://youtu.be/j-5CzOtXC_Q?t=462

8:18--Wings cover up most of the screen
https://youtu.be/j-5CzOtXC_Q?t=498

Beyond these somewaht extreme examples in general Mannoroth is covering 30-50% of the screen and in a lot of tanking configurations this blocks the view of most of the player's platform. If you needed to keep an eye out on abilities or mechanics on the opposite side the new camera angle would make that very difficult.

Lastly, it turns out that it's actually sort of easy to get our old options back - it's just a much bigger hassle. Here's someone explaining how to manually change the settings in order to work around this new change:

As a temporary work around (with some limitations and issues) you can open your config-cache.wtf for the specific character (so World of Warcraft/WTF/Account/[Account Name]/[Realm Name]/[Character Name]/config-cache.wtf) while you are not logged into the character and change

SET cameraSavedDistance "28.500000"
to
SET cameraSavedDistance "50.000000"

This will give you a camera zoomed out as far as the maximum in prior builds and on live. Unfortunately, anything that changes the zoom (even a mousewheel down) will cause the camera to zoom in to the 28.5 value. You can sort of get around this by binding keys to save and set a view (save when you log in, set to recall the 50 distance if something causes it to change). However, this view isn't saved through a logout and neither is the 50 value in the config-cache.wtf, meaning you'll have to repeat this process every time you log in (which is probably often with how unstable servers have been lately).

Which means that:

1: Anyone that cares about this enough to want to use it will have a script file they can hit to manually change the config-cache file to replace the 28.50000 value with the 50.00000 one - which is good, I might have to hack the game slightly (buuuut considering how half my guild uses Tmorph and they haven't been banned yet, I'm not deadly afraid of resorting to that if they're being this stupid about it), but atleast I can retain my viewdistance with a minor inconvenience of double clicking another button before I open WoW every time I log on.

2: Blizzard has effectively managed to remove my option to zoom in and out; I'm going to have to disable my zoom function so I don't hit it by accident, and reset my viewdistance. They wanted me to see more of the world? How about fucking forcing me to play zoomed out ALL THE TIME, MOTHER FUCKERS.

[Syrex87]

Next week they will limit all 6700k and gtx 1080 combo , disable all mouse buttons but 2 and ya turn off every air clima..... you know that can be an avantage!!

Btw the workaround is to buy 1000$ Curved Monitor 3440x1440

Gee don't let Blizzard know, next they'll limit our aspect ratio.... As someone that recently bought one, I can understand why they limit this in Overwatch... but it had better not come to WOW.

[Tornwar]

Gotta get my fries, so much salt in here

[Volardelis]

So does DBM is that being removed? No? Good call.

Bosses these days are designed with the assumption that players are using addons like DBM. Something fatboss commented on in their first LAD video (Laps Around Dalaran)

[Mormolyce]

Most likely would, but I don't have Beta installed, and it'll take me hours to do so as I've got no space for an extra copy of WoW on my SSD, so it'd need to be on my normal HD. Found a few more comparisons though;

Can't people just set the camera distance to the respective levels on live servers?

[Deleted]

WoW (pun) such a dumb change. Limiting the way people play their games has got to be one of the worst idea ever. Why allow to see more detail in the background then ? Wasn't that was one of the highlights of Legion recently announced ? Why do that if you are limiting the max factor... Seriously you guys are losing it. Too late to cancel the preorder now but I don't care if Sargeras is deepthroating Varian's corpse in the next expansion I'm not joining. Have funziez.