Zooming out the camera

Hi all!
This is my first post here, and I would like to say I'm enjoying this game much :)

Now to my question: I searched the forum but found only older topics and no real answer.
Zooming out with the mouse wheel to the max I still found myself too close to the character while I prefer a more distant view, I like to have the sorrounding under control.

Is there any way to distance the camera more?
I read some old post in wich some ppl said they were looking into it but there were technical difficulties, is it still true?

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Irish86 wrote:

Is there any way to distance the camera more?

Nope.

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Irish86 wrote:

I read some old post in wich some ppl said they were looking into it but there were technical difficulties, is it still true?

It used to be slightly more zoomed in than now, and fixed, so those topics relate to that probably.
AFAIK there are no current plans to zoom out more.

That's indeed not the good news I was looking for :)

It seems to be based on the resolution you are running. Some people have a very zoomed out view, while others(myself included) have a really close up view. Not sure if there is much they could change.

Every action-RPG thats Like D1 or D2 has this camera distance.

Its part of the game itself. Having alot more view range would give you an huge advantage.

I understand the reasoning, but I'd prefer it a LITTLE further back as well, especially when being zoomed IN serves no advantage except looking at your character more closely.

I can get used to it but, as Zenn3k said, I'd prefer it a little further back :)

EDIT: @katjezz

It is an advantage if the threat area of the enemies stays the same.
I'm not asking the developers to "correct" this, I'm just discussing about how the distance is not automatically related to getting an advantage :)

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katjezz wrote:

Every action-RPG thats Like D1 or D2 has this camera distance.

Its part of the game itself. Having alot more view range would give you an huge advantage.

In that case, the game should be locked on 800x600 resolution to give everyone identical playing field.

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katjezz wrote:

Its part of the game itself. Having alot more view range would give you an huge advantage.

If it's a part of the game, and everyone has the same access to the feature, it's no longer an advantage. If the zoom range was increased, the game would be re-balanced such that it's not a "huge advantage". There was a time when Path of Exile didn't even have a zoom out feature!

Anyways, back to the OP. Yes, there are "issues" with simply increasing the zoom out range.

From my observations and testing in Closed Beta, when we could mess around with things freely, there are 3 main factors that are contributing to why further zooming out is not implemented yet:

1. Immersion. Zooming out further reduces the fine details that the art department has spent a lot of time adding. A lot of their work will go unnoticed/unappreciated with a further zoom value. In addition, more zoom requires a slightly larger light radius when in the dark areas. In essence, dark areas become less dark and a lot of "feel" is lost.

2. Performance. Zooming out further requires even more rendering power due to how the terrain system was implemented. As it stands, if you were to bypass the zoom restrictions, you'd see the entire terrain for the current instance. People that don't have a powerful graphics card who meets the minimal required PC specs would be at a disadvantage compared to someone that does.

3. Game balance. The game has been balanced around the current zoom. Being able to zoom out further greatly empowers ranged classes over melee. Such advantages do already exist with off-screen shooting with certain skill combinations, but it's a lot more "abusable" if you could zoom out further.

It should be noted though, bosses in general don't suffer from this (can't speak about Act 3, wasn't available in Closed Beta), as you have limited space to work with and their skills are mostly tuned so ranged characters suffer. For example, Brutus's Hook, Merveil's Ice Spear (ranged gets hit by 2nd form, 600% crit), Bandits small arena styled camp, and Vaal's Lighting Ray / Rocks.

I'm not going to re-search the forums and pull all the different dev replies that back my assertions, but if you did, I'm sure you would be able to find them.

I find it a little to zoomed in aswell .