Készült 2016. augusztus 5. | írta Attila
UPDATE2 Győzött a közösség és a józan ész! A Blizzard visszavonulót fújt, és egy soron következő hotfix csomagban megnövelik a maximális látótávolságot közel akkora mértékre, mint amekkora a patch előtt volt. A csökkentés eredeti oka meglehetősen ködös. Nagyon is érthető, ha a Blizzard nem szeretné, hogy a játékosok RTS nézetből játszanak a WoW-val, hisz így nem jön át a “hangulat” (persze ez kinek mit jelent), de ha valaki így szeretné tolni, miért ne tehetné, amikor nincs igazán kompetitív előnye, ráadásul mindenki számára elérhető? Egyébként se jellemző az, hogy minden esetben a maximálisra húzzuk a látótávolságot, de repülés közben vagy instance-ekben, én is reflexszerűen el szoktam kezdeni tekergetni az egér görgőjét. Több ezer comment született a témában – inkább pro, mint kontra – és a Blizzard végre hallgatott a szóra és megbütyköli kamerát. Örvendjünk együtt!
We’ve been closely following the discussion around 7.0.3 camera changes, and especially feedback regarding specific sources of visual and physical discomfort. We recently released a client hotfix that addressed a number of mount-related camera issues, and we have another update in the works that addresses screen/FOV distortion resulting from addons that alter the viewport. Many developers on the WoW team are sensitive to various forms of motion and simulation sickness, and it’s an issue about which we care deeply. The last thing we want is for anyone who loves the game to feel unable to enjoy it due to physical discomfort.
Obviously, the cap on CVar-controlled max zoom distance has been a major focus of both community and our own internal discussions. My original post on the matter was not as clear as it could have been regarding our motivations for the change in the first place. It placed too much emphasis on “competitive advantage” in terms of a level playing field, when the core concern I was trying to convey is that “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.” That shouldn’t be a terribly controversial statement: When you’re trying to dodge Fel Outpouring waves on Kormrok in Hellfire Citadel, the farther out you can zoom, the sooner you can see when they’re headed your way; why wouldn’t you zoom out as far as possible? (Corollary: Around what expected zoom level do we tune the speed and lethality of the waves?)
In the course of working on Legion, and trying to improve the overall look and feel of our combat, class abilities, and the ways in which players interact with the world, we took stock of all aspects of that experience, including the camera. World of Warcraft is an avatar-driven open-world RPG, placing the player in the shoes of a hero who adventures throughout Azeroth, yet with the previous max console zoom, that hero would commonly take up less screen real estate than characters in isometric games like Diablo or Heroes, or even many Starcraft 2 units. At that zoom level, details of your character get lost, and details in the world vanish. The game ultimately is designed to be experienced with the camera zoom range available in the default UI.
Now, that is not to say that we don’t at times fail in creating an overall experience that is smooth and free of frustration at those zoom levels. When a tank can’t see around a boss like Archimonde to know where incoming demons are in order to corral them, that’s obviously not ideal. There is much we can do to keep WoW’s scale from spiraling out of control, as well as UI and camera improvements to the experience of fighting huge monsters, and we’ll be paying close attention to feedback along those lines as we move into Legion.
We intended to limit the console-overridden camera zoom very early on in the Legion Beta, which would have left us with many months to iterate on gameplay and feedback that arose from the change before releasing Legion. However, due to an oversight (we capped one way of overriding it, but not another) the change did not properly go through until the very end of the development cycle. Since then, we’ve heard from many players that they’ve relied on increasing the camera zoom to counteract a number of sensitivities, ranging from motion sickness to headaches from spell effects.
Recently, a number of players have reported some relief through using a new addon that allows them to bypass any and all limits on zoom distance. That addon takes advantage of a bug that has existed for some time but gone unnoticed (passing a negative value into a function). In an upcoming hotfix, we will be fixing that bug and thus causing that addon (and others like it) to honor the standard camera limits.
However, in that same hotfix, we will also be raising the hard cap on camera zoom to a midway point between what was possible prior to 7.0, and what is possible through the in-game interface options. This increased cap will allow power users to once again be able to extend their camera distance via a console command, should they so desire. The choice of the new max was informed by reports from players regarding what zoom distance eased the discomfort they were experiencing. Ultimately, we would prefer to address the underlying issues rather than relying on increased zoom to mask those issues, but now that patch 7.0.3 is live and we cannot properly iterate on the sort of changes that would be required, reapplying the band-aid is preferable to leaving an open wound.
We look forward to hearing your feedback once these changes are live. We want to continue working to improve the readability, usability, and accessibility of our game from a visual standpoint, including camera functionality, and community feedback and discussion are invaluable when dealing with such an inherently subjective area.
UPDATE A hivatalos fórumokon a játékosok ezerrel rápörögtek a kameratávolság témájára, ahogy elnézem ez most a legnépszerűbb topic az amerikai fórumokon, de az európaikon is megy a panaszkodás egy ideje. A Blizzard az éjjel megszólalt az ügyben, de gondosan kerülte a konkrét kérdést, mégpedig a kameratávolság ügyét. Személy szerint nem érzem olyan súlyosnak az ügyet (egyelőre), de kiderült, hogy van más baj is. Egyes játékosoknál úgynevezett motion sickness, magyarul kinetózis jelentkezett a patch után. Mint kiderült, a probléma valós, és már dolgoznak rajta a Blizzardnál.
First and foremost, please know that this is a topic of discussion and development across multiple teams here. We have teammates who are sensitive to motion sickness. We care very much about making sure playing our game doesn’t make you – or them – feel unwell.
Although the maximum camera distance changes are the most immediately noticeable, there were several less-apparent changes made to how the camera functions in the pre-expansion patch, and we’ve already identified some cases where those changes may be causing issues. Here’s a few examples:
- We’ve found an issue with camera shake effects, which we’re currently working to hotfix (if you’ve run Bloodmaul Slag Mines since the patch, you’ve likely noticed this one). (Ezt már javították egyébként.)
- There was a systemic change to our graphical renderer which changes the way FoV is calculated. Manually resizing the viewable game area (which is usually done via “viewport” addons) may be affecting the game camera differently than before. We have identified the cause of this issue and are actively addressing it.
- We’re also tracking down some vehicle-related camera bugs.
We believe that underlying issues like these are the actual source of many of the motion sickness concerns. To that end, if you find yourself feeling ill in-game, examples of where you were and what you were doing at the time would be very useful for helping us track down exactly what’s causing the issue, especially if you can provide video footage so that we can see what the camera was doing at the time.
This issue is very important to us, and we’re working hard on investigating and correcting it as quickly as possible. Any examples you can send us are very much appreciated.
Thank you very much.
Még 10 év után is képes meglepetést okozni a WoW játékos közössége azzal, hogy milyen apróságokon (?) képes totál kiakadni. A reggeli rutinom szerves része az, hogy átnézem a blues postokat, hátha találok valami érdekeset. A múlt héten kiderült, hogy a Legionben a Blizzard lecsökkenti a maximális kamera távolságot. Miről is van szó? A felhasználói felület beállításai között ugye megadhatjuk azt, hogy mekkora legyen a maximális távolság a karakterünk és a “kamera” között, amit viszont eddig egy konzol paranccsal tovább növelhettünk. Nos, ez a patch megjelenése után már nem így lesz, nem lehet hackelni ezt a paramétert. OK, mondtam magamban, érdekes, de nem olyan nagy szám ez. Más szerint viszont az, és a hivatalos WoW fórumon már az ötödik threadet fogyasztják a felháborodott játékosok! Ez tényleg akkor probléma lenne?
A Blizzard magyarázata ekképp hangzik:
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 all 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.
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Tags: ui