VIEWS -- Pan, Pitch, Rotate, and Zoom

[Rizhall]

I think they should all go ahead and be implemented. With a lot of the macro being automatic or easier now, we need something to add to our depth. Adding angle changes would add more depth to the scouting and micro game, I think.
So what if being zoomed out can have advantages? Nothing's stopping the other player from zooming out either.
SCII is already taking a hit so it can be used on older computers. Further hindrance can be detrimental to the overall game's success.

[Whanhee]

An interesting camera angle would also be that of the point of view of certain units. Definitely useless in multiplayer, but if you want to make a video and get really in on the action, that might work. It also makes for jokes ums maps. Counterstrike sc2 anyone? XD

[Caine]

there is no gameplay reason whatsoever why they shouldn't alow you to do whatever the hell you want with the camera. every RTS since somewhere around 2005 lets you rotate and zoom in as much as you want, but poeple still mostly play it through the defult camera position 99% of the time, the 1% is used when a unit is behind a building or something.

everything a free camera doe sis alow for some nice screen shots from replays, for comepetive play it is mostly at the same position since you don't have time to play around with it

[Lupino]

Why no "All of the Above" option? There's no reason why these camera angles shouldn't be implemented into the game. No one is forcing the uptight "pros" to have to actually use them, but the 99.99% of the rest of the population probably wouldn't mind something fun like this.

[MattII]

Why no "All of the Above" option?

Possibly because it's multiple choice, so you can already select 'All of the Above' anyway.

[n00bonicPlague]

Possibly because it's multiple choice, so you can already select 'All of the Above' anyway.

Yeah, I made it multiple choice. I thought about doing:

• ALL
• PITCH and ROTATE
• ROTATE and ZOOM
• PITCH and ZOOM
• PITCH
• ROTATE
• ZOOM
• NONE

But I decided that would be a little much.

[Josue]

there is no gameplay reason whatsoever why they shouldn't alow you to do whatever the hell you want with the camera. every RTS since somewhere around 2005 lets you rotate and zoom in as much as you want, but poeple still mostly play it through the defult camera position 99% of the time, the 1% is used when a unit is behind a building or something.

everything a free camera doe sis alow for some nice screen shots from replays, for comepetive play it is mostly at the same position since you don't have time to play around with it

Agreed. it is supposed to be well adjusted so it won't give any overpowered strategical advantage or disadvantage.
like Rizhall said, for example, a limit in the zoom out should be added, that goes for rotate and pitch too.
Something else, the commands or keys used to activate them should be easy to learn:
for example

mouse wheel for rotate,
CTRL+mouse wheel for zoom, and so on
AND you must be able to enable/disable set sensibility of mouse wheel,etc for each one.

Why no "All of the Above" option? There's no reason why these camera angles shouldn't be implemented into the game. No one is forcing the uptight "pros" to have to actually use them, but the 99.99% of the rest of the population probably wouldn't mind something fun like this.

I think it's OK, for "All of the Above", just pick them all.
Anyway, if Warcraft III had it, why not? after all now it's finally 3D!
Pan, Pitch, Rotate, and Zoom, we will at last be able to watch an epic battle from close up! specially in the replays, when you want to slow down the speed and watch it happen again and again "from different angles" (I hope the replay includes a "jump to x time feature" or just a scroll bar like a video)

[SpiderBrigade]

Basically, the only feature that makes any real difference (ie, has the potential to cause problems) is maximum zoom-out level. Blizzard has said many times that they have problems with players trying to zoom all the way out if they are allowed to do so, and playing the game at that scale - at which point all the work of making units easy to read and nice to look at is wasted.

So yes, there should be as much zooming in as you want, plus panning, tilting, etc. Mostly these won't be used, but when needed they should be there. But there will be a hard cap on how far out you can zoom, at least while playing. Possibly replays might allow huge zoom-out for a grand overview.

[Alex06]

Rotate and Zoom like in RA3 and C&C3 would be nice...
I hated it in WarCraft 3, where all you could do was only a limiting mix of pitch and zoom.

[FlashWar]

Look at this: http://www.starcraft2.com/features/p...mothership.xml

In the demonstration videos of the mothership, they pitch and zoom.
Edit: Actually, if you look through most videos, you will see they pitch/zoom/rotate already.