AOE-IV Casting (observer, point of view management) feedback (GENESIS qualifiers)

[IRC_tomate]

Hello. Not sure if this the right place to do so, and if the right people will get this feedback, but here we go. First thing first, I'm really grateful with everybody involved in this tournament, which up to this date (qualification stage) delivered so many hours of enjoyable content, thank you guys!

I'm long time RTS fan, played almost every game out there, only AoE2 and SC2 competitively tho. I started following tournaments trough recorded games back in the day ( katsuni) and since the rise of twitchtv watched as much as competitive players POVs and castings as I could. I have big quality standards since SC2 tournaments casting, and happily praised the inclusion of the observer role (MapuTV in this case) for two of the lasts AoE2 big events. Im considering the limitations of this 1st AoE4 tournament and how early is for this game and that this issue affects the overall budget money of the organizers, so please take what Im trying to write, a constructive feedback, with a grain of salt.

Nevertheless, the future AoE4 tournament scene needs observers as much as it needs casters (if we want to somewhat impact the e-sport market), some casters do indeed better than others on handling the camera point of view without having a big impact on the narration (don't wanna point out names on this regard).

* CAMERA PANNING (the MapuTV effect)
First, If I would want a dizzy-fast camera moving I would rather play the game myself or watch directly the players POV. It has not been very enjoyable to see the camera moving somewhat randomly while the speech tries to catch the gameplay and this mostly due to how has been done; arrow/wasd keys camera panning? cursor mouse edge screen panning? This feels like the old monk guy from AoE himself was moving the camera with his stick. Please consider the use of the middle mouse panning + minimap + follow unit functionality instead; minimap click for a fast camera field switch, middle mouse panning for adjustment and follow unit functionality for smooth cinematic experience (HOME hotkey by default in AoE4?)

* MISSING GLOBAL QUEUE (what's going on? AoE4 workaround)
I know AoE4 is going to improve with time, but today we have what we have, not ideal but hey let's try to use it the best we can. F1F2F3F4 Production hotkeys (as many players coming from other RTS games are learning) these are very important in AoE4, they also can be used to workaround the missing global queue in the spectating function. The global queue is very important to know whats going on in the game (for the viewer and the caster aswell) beyond the hey guys here are some units fighting some others amazing! Build orders, number of town centers, military buildings, can a player keep up his micro and the macro behind it? is he bending?

*MISSING VILLAGER/MILITARY COUNT (select all military/villagers hotkey workaround, mouse hovering/switching player's POV issue)
Currently AoE4 has hotkeys than can solve this while we wait for the future patches, please consider to use them, by default CTRL+SHIFT+C? CTRL+V? not sure. You can check quickly whats the army composition and its effectiveness against the other player. You can hover the mouse over the left bottom UI to check the military/villager count as you know and have shown on the casting but please consider to do it with the switch players POV hotkey while maintaining the mouse hovered in the bottom left since moving the cursor from left bottom to up right (selected player) back and forth its pretty ineffective in my opinion.

*USE (more) THE ON/OFF FOG OF WAR HOTKEY
In RTS gameplay is key to scout, what the players know about what is going on (can severely impact the decision making) and how they can adapt to it, let's include this in the casting. Also there is a hotkey too for it, CTRL+F? not sure.

Thanks4reading

TL;DR always praise the lord

tomate

UPDATE
There is a way to invert the middle mouse button camera panning!
Credit to the reddit user @Alhi thank you
Invert mouse button panning via config edit

 

[Lord_patito]

I will redirect this to the correct people! Anyway, you can always join the official discord

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[pete26196]

To the missing military/villager count point I mentioned this in the beta among other things UI related and Zak liked the post. So I know *someone* at relic has seen feedback about how to improve the spectator ui/features, we just need to see if things will actually be changed.

 

[IRC_tomate]

There is a way to invert the middle mouse button camera panning!
Credit to the reddit user @Alhi thank you
Invert mouse button panning via config edit

 

[LidaKor]

Interesting writeup! Looks like it mostly is related to the Qualifiers. We definitely tried impoving things for the main event.
I was fulfilling the observer role for the main event cast, and would very much love feedback on it. Of course, I have no effect on the overlays themselves, but would definitely be interested in opinions/feedback on how the main stream was observed. This was my first time as an actual observer (though I did commentary too, but was focusing quite heavily on camera movement, way more than before), so would love to hear what people think about my performance

 

[Brlr716]

I hope Aussie also cast aoe2 especially kotd in the future as well. Such a good caster