Why 3D RTS games are too zoomed in?

[dprog1995]

I had this question for some time.

In games like old CnC games , Starcraft 1, Star Wars Galactic Battleground and AOE 1&2 Which are 2D the camera shows you a good view of the battlefield.

But on the otherhand games like Generals, Warcraft 3, Battle for middle earth 1&2 and Star Wars Empire At War camera is too zoomed in.

So, why 3D RTS games are like that?

[Gary]

this is one of the reasons i dont play starcraft 2 online


the other reason is that i suck lol

[Soondead]

Some will say it's a question of polycount, and for some devs I'm sure that's part of the reason, but not all 3D RTS games were zoomed all the way in. In fact, "Total Annihilation" was one of the first RTS games in 3D (if not THE first?) and the size of each unit was comparable to those in C&C. Later came "Supreme Commander" which let you zoom out even further.

Quite a lot of care went into the pixel art in early RTS games to give units and buildings distinguishing features so players could tell them apart at a glance. In the 3D games mentioned above, gameplay would easily devolve into mass producing hordes of visually indistinct units and just throwing them all at your opponent to overwhelm them.

C&C also suffered from the "tank rush" syndrome, but atleast you could tell if they were tanks or cars or whatever.

[SuperCrumpets]

old games are too zoomed in too.
only supreme commander and Ruse does it right

[ZombieMouse]

I just looked at some screenshots on Wikipedia of Total Annihilation and it doesn't look like true 3D. It mentions a later fan project to make it 3D.

The first 3D RTS I played was Earth 2150 (released 2000):
https://store.steampowered.com/app/253880/Earth_2150_Trilogy/

You could zoom out and angle the camera to see really far in that game. Weather was a thing and you could turn the lights on/off on your vehicles to see better/hide them. It was cool for it's day, with features like designing your own vehicles.

[JudasPhysicist]

I find Warcraft 3 a bit zoomed in for my taste as well, however the pace of action is much slower compared to a classic C&C game so I find that it doesn't hinder the gameplay too much, it just feels claustrophobic.

On the other hand if you want total freedom on your camera, then check out Ground Control 1,2 and World In Conflict. These games in my opinion have the best camera system I've ever seen. You use WASD (or rebind the controls to WASD) to move the camera around much like an FPS game, and use the edge panning to turn the camera, very liberating stuff there.

I literally had to either use autohotkey scripts for games that don't allow key rebinding (I'm looking at you CoH 2) to get the WASD to move the camera implemented in.