Legion - Max Camera Distance Reduction

[Grumar]

the default max camera distance is fine, how far away do you REALLY need to see?

[OktaviusCoA]

well 540+ comments on this change says a lot... not many people happy about this change

[Caolela]

I'll tell you what I think it is. Ion Hazzikostas, like him or not, is a pretty thoughtful guy about the game. Again, like him or not, he has opinions--and has always had them going all the way back to his days at EJ--about game design and everything associated with it. I'm reasonably certain that over the years he's generated a long list of things he deems to be less than good design and things that are problematical with the game. He's now an assistant game director and for the third time, like him or not, there is someone in that group pushing system changes for stuff that's been in the game for years and it would make sense that it's him (assistant game director and all).

And so here we are. Whether or not anyone accepts his explanation, the explanation itself is pretty much pure, undistilled Watcher if you've been paying attention to anything he's said over the years. So whatever you or really, anyone else thinks that's probably how they see it.

Take that or leave it. As to your theory: I'm fairly certain that their long, incoherent process over flying didn't really make them any money. I'm fairly certain that implementing CRZ and cross-realm stuff reduced their income from realm transfers. Not eliminated it certainly but reduced it for a certainty. There are other things that fly in the face of your supposition that everything in the game is done to increase profit; things you routinely ignore as they don't fit into your specific framework. And that's OK. If the site enforced everyone making sense all the time, a great many people would never be able to post.

Commenting out a few dozen lines of code isn't going to save them anything and the certain knowledge that it would upset people isn't going to increase revenues or profits either.

So, you know, stick to your theories. They don't make any sense but you're in excellent company here.

They don't make any sense to you because you've always been a Blizz cheerleader, and can hardly find any wrong with most of what they do. You usually tow the 'company line' is what I've seen. This post is no different.

That Ion has decided this or that based on what "he deems to be less than good design and things that are problematical with the game" says nothing of the motives behind it. There seemed to be little to no problem for 11.5 years with zoom range but now, suddenly, Ion says lets shorten it. I don't think Blizzard's first consideration is what a large part of the player base wants or finds fun or interesting; it seems to be obvious that Blizz is attempting to make up for sub losses and attrition in any way it can.

No flying (if your goal was to artificially extend sub times) certainly made up for the lack of content in WoD, and the relatively smaller but very hilly topography/hard to traverse zones in Draenor - both of which were easy ways to spend less on development, then later the time it takes to finish the long Pathfinder grind.

CRZ & merges they probably had no choice about, because of dying realms and subs more people would likely have quit - but only after they had about as many realm xfers as they were likely to get did they then implement it.

"A few dozen lines of code"? By cutting 20%-30% or more of what's rendered on screen? That's a lot more than just a few dozen. Multiply that by thousands or millions of instances (just like with the example of Void Storage) and you get a sizeable hunk of data that in one fell swoop you don't have to store and retrieve, or foot the bandwidth cost either. It's fairly obvious if you're trying every thing you can find to max profit, which again, is what Blizz has done for years now since at least 2008. Even more so since they shot themselves in the foot with WoD.

Legion is shaping up to be more of the same. Garry 2.0 disguised as "Order Halls", a really awful PvP system that will be RNG based grinding where ~ 80% of players can't make up gear & power differences, no new BGs, more pruning, the list goes on -- all of which is either less work to do (lower overhead) or artificially extending grinds.

I could give many other examples, but those are some of the things that get "routinely ignored" in your specific framework of regurgitating the Blizzard line. You give people like Ion far too much credit in trying to paint them as something good for the players when in reality, they're there to maximize shareholder "value".

[Herogamer555]

Coming next expansion: "We realize this will be unpopular with a lot of players, but we're making it so that you can't turn off or down the volume of anything in WOW anymore. Our sound designers work really hard on making things sound cool, so we feel like you guys should appreciate that.

[fuZinator]

We here at Blizzard are tackling the problems that matter most!

On a serious note, after having quit WoW shortly after the release of WoD, I cannot help but laugh at how far out of touch blizzard is with its community. They just continue to focus on the most epicly retarded shit. Who goes out of there way to find stuff to "fix" like this?

[mudkipzz]

the default max camera distance is fine, how far away do you REALLY need to see?

You can't just get rid of a feature that's been in the game for close to 10 years for no reason whatsoever.

[Redblade]

You can't just get rid of a feature that's been in the game for close to 10 years for no reason whatsoever.

Pretty much this.

For people not understanding the complaint think of it like this. All those new MMO's you tried that just didn't feel right and that made you quit...this change will make the game not feel right to players who has been using this command for up to a decade. No reasoning nor justification from Blizzard is going to change this. And for what? Fairness...hopefully no one buys that shit, if they want fairness make the in game slider offer the same range.

[AxellSlade]

Really Blizzard, took you TWELVE years to figure out that zooming out much gave some people advantage? Now it makes sense why WoW is going downhill and you are investing in other genres.

[Gurg]

Browsing official forums i stumbled on few napkin maths regarding new MCD. All in all with new MCD settings performance drop varies between 13-15% for raiders due to lower FoV as you lose aprox 17-20% of current visibility, mainly affecting healers and melee DPS.

I took few 1920x1080 screenshoots with enabled UI before and after the chance so you can see how much of your FoV you lose with new settings.

Spoiler: 

Old MCD:


New MCD:

Putting on side all discussions about how does this affect gameplay and is this right change or not i cant but wonder how did they didnt factor in people with various visual health issues when they decided to make these changes?

I for once have Motion Sickness due to low FoV and im unable to play games like LoL, Diablo 3 and HoTS longer than an hour, hour and a half after which i MUST take a break for ~15-20mins or ill get sick, so i used CVar settings out of necessity, not to gain advantage over other players.

I got same Motion Sickness symptoms with new Legion MCD settings, which is, you must admit, for a monthly subscription based product to limit playability and affect health of people with various visual health issues not ok.

As i said in my previous comment in this thread, they maybe did it because of new competitive PvP, e-sports or even facebook stream feature, who knows, but they could limit it where it matters the most - in PvP, to "even the fields" for all players, but they should leave PvE and open world untouched, this is, after all, feature thats over a decade old and for various reasons people were using it for a long time.

[Shudder]

That seems to be the theory. Like a lot of other stuff it doesn't make any sense but it doesn't really have to. Blizzard changed something and the usual people are busy trying to one-up one another with posts that verge on satire. Riots in the streets? Ok, sure. That's likely to happen.

Less code? Ha ha. Compared to the assets and codes being added for the expansion? Besides the code is probably still there, just commented out.

I'm the one who mentioned riots. Let me introduce you to my good friend hyperbole.

[bloodmoth13]

What are you even talking about "hidden power only accessible through google"? This "hidden power" was hidden to only you it sounds like while the majority of the community wants it in the game because its used and loved not to mention its been in the game forever... probably longer than you have been playing it sounds like.

This might be the 2nd place winner for silly comments in this thread.

Dont get your knickers in a twist kid, i use it personally because i like any advantage i can get.

Its hidden because options for it arent available in game, you need to actually search it up the net to know what it is to begin with, so yeah its hidden from most players.

geez do you even try to understand what you read or do you just shitpost automatically?

You didnt even address any of my points to prove them wrong, your post is worthless.

[Shudder]

Coming next expansion: "We realize this will be unpopular with a lot of players, but we're making it so that you can't turn off or down the volume of anything in WOW anymore. Our sound designers work really hard on making things sound cool, so we feel like you guys should appreciate that.

I can honestly see this happening. I play with music turned off. With them demanding I use ground mounts so I can appreciate the art on the ground, demanding I play zoomed in so I can appreciate the armor team. I would not be shocked if I'm forced to play with music/sound for the same stupid reason.

[Gadzooks]

It's a pretty old-school form of game design but it's also a fairly old-school game. This isn't my favorite thing they've done by any means but I don't think it rises to the level of some of the hyperbole I've seen. At the end of the day WoW's customers have been invited to express their opinions but the game design belongs to Blizzard. It always has. It always will. Very few things are up for a vote. One either accepts that or not. Blizzard has always set the boundaries under which the game is played and that's not going to change. No one should be pretending otherwise.

Yep. That's why I moved on.

[Feanoro]

Ghostcrawler would have handled this much differently, and with a metric tonless drama.

Yes, he'd have snuck it in, hopd we were too stupid to notice, denied any change for months, and then when backed into a corner with the change common knowledge, lashed out at the playerbase as ignorant peasants who couldn't appreciate his brilliant designs. Same control freak problem, different approach.

It's a dangerous mindset for this kind of game - and it fits a lot of the changes that have been coming since Cata, especially the questing on rails aspect that I really loathe, that have made me move on from this product.

You are aware that Cata, aka WoW 2.0 because of how drastically it changed everything, was GC's baby? You're aware that he began the ongoing trend of "when in doubt, remove it"?

Pretending we would have liked or somehow not noticed this change under GC is ludicrous.

[Faylinn]

I find it funny that this happens the same time that more melee specs are coming.
Its still a sucky change but that is amusing.

Although this is gonna mess me up a bit since I norm stay farther out due to the fact that being close to the action constantly gives me headaches. I find it better being farther away and zooming in as needed. I've been using this since I found out about it during Maly in wrath and have been using it since...rip me.

[Moxal]

Very much not a fan of this change.

[bloodmoth13]

The salt argument. Gratz for being a sheep in the herd.Care to express yourself in your own way please? The "advantage" is not secret. it's a legitimate game option of the game residing in a console command. And it's readily available with the use of any search engine.

Funnily, after messing with the wardrobe in Beta and started actually playing the toon, the first thing i tried to do was to distance my camera far more than the game allowed. Not to the max, but much further. Despite my search and enquiries this was not possible. I haven't logged since. THAT's the level of annoyance this cahnge gave me.

You're calling an in-game console command a "workaround"? Then what are macros and Lua scripts (the latter also known as addons)? This exists in game for years and years. Please stop the bullshit about "hidden power" accessible to google only and that wasn't supported by Blizzard when it's was their OWN design.

Fuck there are alot of retards in this community.

Yeah there is alot of salt here, people are pissed by the change, didnt say their opinions are invalid or anything, just mentioned that people are unhappy, wasnt even a part of my argument, and i did express my opinion. Dont see how im a sheep in the heard when im specifically going against popular opinion and providing the other side of the argument so this doesnt turn into an echo chamber

It is hidden, the option isnt available through the games default UI, thats hidden, there are no buttons to manipulate this, you need to do some console command, just because alot of people do know it, doesnt mean everyone does, and its not an option many players will understand by interacting with the game itself, the information for it comes from third party sources, so, YEAH it is hidden.

Well too bad i suppose that you dont like it and dont want to play the game because of a camera option, have you tried out any of the new camera features to fill in the gaps that this change made you miss?


It is hidden power, macros are similarly hidden power, most players, despite what you may think, dont macro all of their abilities, and there will be a distinct advantage between those who do and those who dont, as macros generally lead to less button presses and less keybinds.

Macros for the most part though dont affect immersion the way max camera length does, which zooms you so far out that you are a dot. Its useful however because some bosses are so damn big that you can only see their big toe, the new camera features go a long way to fix these issues as they allow you to manipulate angles better rather than rotation around your character. I am ok with these changes as long as blizz fixes some of the other issues that make max camera distance necessary.

[Tazflyr]

Hoping they revert this b/c many people have the same issue---motion sickness, dizziness, nausea, etc.

[Glorious Leader]

Pretty much this.

.

I agree flying has been in the game for 10 years why remove it now? Oh wait you're talking about camera distance... shucks well guys they know best right?

[Fabinas]

It's a pretty old-school form of game design but it's also a fairly old-school game. This isn't my favorite thing they've done by any means but I don't think it rises to the level of some of the hyperbole I've seen. At the end of the day WoW's customers have been invited to express their opinions but the game design belongs to Blizzard. It always has. It always will. Very few things are up for a vote. One either accepts that or not. Blizzard has always set the boundaries under which the game is played and that's not going to change. No one should be pretending otherwise.

Of course it's their game. But the past has proven that we as players and customers have force upon their decision. The reaction you see here or in official forums is a part of this force. It might budge them (again), it might not. We still have to try. And according to what they decide we will make our own decisions.