Poll on new zoom out level in CoH3 alpha

I am trying to show Relic some feedback I have gotten in all the videos I have made to date, it was my personal gut instinct, but has been proven by 9/10 comments I've seen.

Please vote in the above.

Zoom out is great for casters and if players want to spectate matches and replays but not for standard matches.

Zoom out is great for casters and if players want to spectate matches and replays but not for standard matches.

As a caster that cast with zoom out for years I can say that yes it helped me see more, but it made my casts worse to watch, for that reason I choose not to use it. If I enable it I'll always end up using it, and then the game doesn't look as good.

As a caster that cast with zoom out for years I can say that yes it helped me see more, but it made my casts worse to watch, for that reason I choose not to use it. If I enable it I'll always end up using it, and then the game doesn't look as good.

I agree 100%.

I have lost interest in recent casts of Coh3 fairly quickly and simply left because it was boring.
Similar with YouTube videos but in these situations I would tend to just click ahead however the result was the same.

The one exception was today watching Siberian because he zoomed in to Coh2 levels.
He also made the point that it is the immersion that makes Coh so good and different from other WW2 RTS and I agree completely.

There are also other issues that make it difficult to see clearly what is going on but hopefully that will be improved in the next 12 months.

Ideally there will be a menu option for what zoom level the player wants, ie standard zoom like coh2 and slightly greater zoom like what coh3 has. I don't want to be adjusting the zoom every match with the scroll button.

Thing is. Zoom is a bit inconsistent right now. For instance, if you can clearly see it on this screenshot:

Show Spoiler

As you can see base terriority has greater elevation therefore you can see how much bigger pio on left is, beach on the other hand has lower elevation and look how small pio on the right is. This is max zoom out. Its actually a thing for 1v1 map, 2v2 maps have normal zoom level across the board.

I belive in SP alpha cameras min\max zoom was actually changing dynamicly based on the elevation, but it was super fiddly, with camera jumping around. At least it looked awful druring first preview, because even small elevation changes affected the camera.

As for the zoom, I think its in the right spot anyway. But if anything, there at least should be min\max elevation parameter, so camera would only be affected in drastic situations like on mentioned 1v1 map.

Imho it makes tactical plays a great deal harder to do when a player's field of view is just so....massive. Many flanks in COH2 come from just off camera in an unexpected direction. It's great for coordinating long range fights but that's not necessarily a good thing.

The current zoom is great, going back to coh2 actually feels nauseating and claustrophobic overall. I'd say at most it needs a little bit more consistency like gachi pointed out but overall it's fine. And if people want it to be more zoomed in then they can just do that. (And relic should provide the option to set your default angle and zoom to anything and to each and every map IMO)

Current coh3 zoom level makes it easier to play and less immersive.
I recommend zooming in a little. Little.

Eh it’s fine.

I've gotten used to this zoom level and have been enjoying the overview of battle. Makes flanking easier, don't need to scroll around as much (I don't use tact map). I wouldn't change it or if its a must then a tiny bit.

The zoom level would be fine if you could see your units at high resolutions. The overly realistic color schemes are ironically what's breaking immersion. Everything's drab tan brown, units blend in to much with the background, so all you can do is look at the unit icons. And all the ground clutter and detail does not necessarily make for a better game. They need to make major changes to make this interesting to play and look at.

The big attraction to the CoH franchise for me is the up and personal nature combined with the squad based combat. The massive increase in zoom changes how that feels on a fundamental level, and it really detracts away from the graphical increases we see this time around as much of that is erased with the camera as far away as it it.

With the new zoom CoH3 feels more like Sudden Strike or Blitzkrieg. Although I really loved those games, the CoH2 feeling is way better. I would prefer the old zoom for CoH3.

Spectating a match should allow zooming out. It is an absolute must.

During the game Coh2 zoom is decent but you end up with units that can shoot further than the screen distance. Meaning you can only see like 45 meters or less as your units move to the center, but units can shoot 50 meters or more. So a little zoom compared to Coh2 is not a bad thing.

But the extra zoom will lessen immersion and make it hard to see units.

And in the current alpha, the color scheme used is pretty bad. Unit icons are grey instead of blue/red unless selected. Points have weird UI colors. A blue team will have one shade of blue for units and a different shade for points captured, etc.

So the poor color choices/design and the extra zoom make it feel less intuitive.

The worst part of the extra zoom is the loss of texture fidelity in the rendering. Could be why people keep complaining it looks cartoonish. Coh2 felt like the distance chosen was to maximize texture resolution. Always seeing the full texture resolution and not a Mip-Mapped version at half or less resolution.

More options are always good. If it is indeed an issue, just add a toggle in the options for "classic" camera mode, which puts the zoom at CoH1/2 levels. Or better yet, a slider; so you can finely tune your 'default' camera zoom level.

I didn't even notice there was a different zoom level until this thread

Coh2 felt like the distance chosen was to maximize texture resolution. Always seeing the full texture resolution and not a Mip-Mapped version at half or less resolution.

This statement was for 1920x1080 which was the typical display res when Coh2 came out. Since you should design your game for the next gen of hardware, perhaps the new zoom level is optimized for 2k or even 4k screens.

Since people are complaining about FPS problems, I am not sure designing for 2K would be a great idea just yet. If the lags are CPU dependent, and are not tied to the GPU, maybe its not too bad to think in terms of 2k.

MIP MAPPING
When a polygon is viewed at such a distance or angle that there are less pixels on the screen than the texture size being drawn, the next lowest texture resolution will be used to avoid aliasing. So a 1024x1024 texture will be drawn using a 512x512 or smaller version when viewed certain ways.

Coh2 felt like it was designed so the 1024x1024 full res version was available most of the time.

Ironically, vCoh had really low texture resolutions. When Coh2 came out they were higher res and people liked the vCoh look better. Now for Coh3 they may be even higher res and people are complaining it is cartoonish. Maybe people should lower their texture quality and see if its still cartoonish looking

Thing is. Zoom is a bit inconsistent right now. For instance, if you can clearly see it on this screenshot:

Show Spoiler

As you can see base terriority has greater elevation therefore you can see how much bigger pio on left is, beach on the other hand has lower elevation and look how small pio on the right is. This is max zoom out. Its actually a thing for 1v1 map, 2v2 maps have normal zoom level across the board.

I belive in SP alpha cameras min\max zoom was actually changing dynamicly based on the elevation, but it was super fiddly, with camera jumping around. At least it looked awful druring first preview, because even small elevation changes affected the camera.

As for the zoom, I think its in the right spot anyway. But if anything, there at least should be min\max elevation parameter, so camera would only be affected in drastic situations like on mentioned 1v1 map.

this is it.

coh3 has supposedly combat designed around more elevations. you need a farther camera to represent said elevation.

that said, the default zoom level in coh3 may discomfort coh2 players used to a closer fov.

a simple mouse wheel scroll to zoom in, and boom. you get your closer battlefield camera back.

i guess relic can have an option settings to default your prefered zoom levels

In the Company of Heroes of the series, I have always liked looking at detailed elaborate soldiers. And in the previous parts, I don't need to zoom the camera as close as possible to see it. in CoH1 and 2 you can play and have a visual pleasure. CoH3 does not, and the interface as a whole is rather poor, it is very difficult to navigate in it.

I prefer having the freedom to choose. It's quite simple in my opinion... I prefer freedom over restriction... I prefer practicy over aesthetic...

If you can choose, you can do what you want. Also take in mind that higher field of view affects frames per second and detail should be reduced to preserve higher FPS.

In addition to this, I would even replace the tactical map to a full map zoom view with a hotkey so you have a max gameplay zoom set to a coh2 zoom level and the full zoom to the tactical map view.