[2023] am I the only one that didnt like how zoe's E works in wild rift?

This is something we wanted to do but we had some tech limits with it having a variable range that we couldn't solve in time.

We did try a few different variations with having the camera pan but it made things really funky when you were trying to quickly combo your abilities without sending E through a wall. Using the mini-map to pan the camera isn't a great experience, but we try to help compensate for that with the line drawn on the minimap.

We do use the mini cam when you hit something off screen, but we also don't want to put too much on the mini cam. Not all phones can handle both cameras at once so it can lead to situations where the game ends up being unfair if your phone's hardware isn't top of the line.

Or confusing situations where you are panning the camera (thus it shows yourself in the mini cam) as you aim or fire E, what should the camera show?

Or worse you (and we saw this a bit when testing abilities that could use the mini cam) are aiming your ability and the mini cam pops us blocking your view.

We can ways make adjustments in the future if there are significant problems, but this is a high-level optimization on a very high-skill champion. Zoe is also brand new so I expect there is a bit of a learning curve that everyone is working through atm before we decide if changes to this are needed.

It's not so much a tradition of WC3, though I imagine there is a lot of overlap as to why it should be limited. We have tried different zoom levels, especially early on in the game's development but changing it has a fundamental impact on the feeling and balance of the game.

The biggest reason is that zooming out grants you more vision of the area around you (ofc) this makes ganks more difficult, while reducing the importance of vision. Wild Rift is also a very tactical game and being zoomed out makes pvp combat and tactical play much more difficult and unclear.

This camera zoom was specifically chosen and does impact the range of abilities, if we pulled the camera further out we would want to increase VFX (especially for short-ranged abilities) so that players could still have a clear understanding of what is going on, while long-range abilities are adjusted/balanced with the camera size in mind (Notice how Blitzcrank's Grab doesn't go past the screen).

Speaking as someone who has played WR with the adjusted camera, and raided in MMOs (where you are expected to have a max zoom camera) the game also just looks and feels better when you can see your champion.

We had you in mind when we made this change.

We did try versions where the camera shifted a little bit while you were aiming E (even if not through walls) but it makes comboing a bit funky as the camera then needs to move out and then back Zoe, so it slows everything down in an unintuitive way. This makes using multiple abilities feel odd and is the kind of thing that is very difficult to explain without getting your hands on it.

As for a fully unlocked camera, that is not something the team is planning and we are very unlikely to change. A game's camera is directly tied to how the game plays and feels, and this would be a lot of work for something that I suspect most people would not use.

Because we would never ship champions anything if we waited for things to be perfect. That's a larger take on the question, but and we do explore if we can do a champion before we start working on them. Famously Veigo was a champion we started on but ran into unforeseen constraints that forced us to put him in the ice box.

More seriously to your point though, we don't always know what is needed for a champion when we start working on them. Particularly the kinds of things that come from working on a champion and after having played them a bit. Things like Lillia and Zoe's third abilities (E) drawing a line on the mini-map were not things we thought of when we started on the champions, but that we discovered would be good to have through playtesting. Lillia's R showing the number of enemy champions that it would affect didn't show up until very late in her development.

Other times something ends up being easier than we thought, or even more difficult, maybe someone leaves the team or they need to shift their focus to another area of the game and we can't do everything we want to.

This doesn't mean we would lower our quality bar and release something we are not confident in, we do feel Zoe is in a good place. Would this be an improvement? Possibly, we haven't gotten to test it, but this is where iteration and experience help us in the future.

We would still like to add Veigo and Sylas at some point but for the moment he is still a problem child.

I'm glad you are enjoying Zoe, I have had a similar experience with her in Wild Rift, I played her a lot when she came out on PC but I wouldn't say I was particularly good with her. In our internal tests I have felt she is much easier to pick up... Then I lane against Endstep who destroys me and shows that even with her being easier to pick up I still have a ways to go before I can call myself a good Zoe player.

Thanks! You're gonna make me all warm and fuzzy inside. I'm glad I can shed some light on a bit of behind the scenes game dev. I'm glad you are enjoying the game.

Sylas is a bit easier for sure, but they have the same core problem, due to them copying abilities. We want to add them both but need to solve those problems first.

Sorry I didn't get a chance to look into this today, but yes that sounds like a bug, I'll bring this up to our QA team and we can look into it. If you have a clip send it my way, and I'll include it.

Thanks for bringing this up.

Champion-specific settings and toggles are not something we want to do, it ends up being a rabbit hole where before each game you need to adjust your settings or don't feel like you can play a champion until you have tweaked their own specific setup.

There are situations where players might prefer using an existing setting over another with a champion, but we are not happy when something must be used (Looking at you Riven, and Dash in Move Direction: Off).

I understand that shooting the projectile away from your opponent is a bit odd, but we felt it was worth it to avoid situations where tap casting the ability would basically be trolling yourself if the first cast went toward your target. It can still be aimed in situations where you do want to send the first cast forward, though that will likely be less common.

As for the bug you problem up, this isn't something I have seen, but if you have a clip (ideally showing your screen touch position if possible) send it my way and I'll bring it up to our QA team for us to dive into it.