Let me be very clear and state that we are not looking at removing locked camera as an option.

What I said was that we should not use it as a *default*. As I said in my follow up post: I would prefer to make non-camera locked play easier to learn for all players.

There are many gameplay reasons why you don't want to lock the camera to your player. This is less of an issue on some champions, but even still you ideally want to be able to focus on the action in a team fight no matter what your positioning.

As UI designers we want to help players become masters of the game. I believe that being able to comfortably use a free camera is part of that. I'm open to hearing arguments why that is not the case *if* free camera was very easy to use.

I would LOVE the ability to move the camera with the arrow keys (or whatever binds they are set to) while keeping it locked (with space re-centering). I feel like this would allow for a hybrid playstyle and also alleviate some of the disadvantage of being purple team with locked camera. I play about 65% locked and 35% unlocked.

Also, let me say we would definitely want to improve the experience for camera locked players, but it is also something that is used by a much smaller proportion of the players.

We are always trying to make the experience better for *all* our players and we try to prioritize things that are high value and impact a lot of people. Color blind mode is an example of something I really want to do because it could improve the experience of almost 10% of our players by *so much*. We would do that before we improved locked camera mode. In the same vein, improving the camera management in free camera mode would make many, many of our players more able to excel at the game. Of course, we balance all of this with how difficult it is to do.

Finally, many of the suggestions I see make the interaction with the camera more complicated and harder to discover, this is somewhat the opposite of what I would like to do as a general direction. But please keep the suggestions and constructive criticism coming!

I bind WASD to map scroll keys. Never have any problem.

Then respond to the individual suggestions! There are a lot of great suggestions out there and the main ones, I do not believe, make the camera use more complicated. Let's break down the stages a player learns this game:

Locked camera:
This is generally when a player first starts the game. It's limiting but only because the designers MADE it that way. Of course you won't be doing well with Kog'Maw on locked camera, but characters like Tryndamere and Garen should be just fine on locked camera. There are a lot of people who never progress past this and are fine playing unranked pug matches or with friends the way they enjoy the game.

Hybrid camera:
This is when people start experimenting with the unlocked camera. They go back to locked camera for group fights because there is too much going on to keep track of or because they keep accidentally moving the camera at the wrong time. This is where I consider myself, mostly due to necessity as I like to play Kog'Maw but also because purple team is so gimped with a fixed camera.

Free camera:
This is when players feel comfortable with the camera and no longer need to have a fixed camera to keep track of the action. This is where the elite players feel everyone should be and don't seem to care about anyone in the previous two categories. Also, a side note, the elitists seem to feel that this should be the only mode available, thus making the game much less accessible to players who would otherwise support this game financially just because they feel the only people who should play this game are the top 30-40% (if that).

My problem with these three options is the horrible learning curve because of how inaccessible the camera is. The modes available for camera control are choppy and counter-intuitive at times. Having no gradient on the movement causes a jerk every time you try to move the camera a small amount making it daunting to say the least. I have made a couple suggestions that would help the camera overall feel more comfortable as well as add a few more options to the control and eliminate the purple gimp. I can't think of any of those suggestions, except the off-center customized lock that would complicate things. Even that can be a separate button and again, just help smooth the transition from one playstyle to the next. At least, this is how I see the situation.

-Arcie

PS. 10% of players, yeah, the color blind issue needs to be sorted out. However, I would estimate the number of lock camera users to be 20+%. Remember, when a new player starts, they tend to find the locked camera and learn on that. Those players going up against real players probably find themselves frustrated when stuck on purple. I have seen people mention quitting because of this imbalance and it mainly affects locked camera users.

Honestly riot, how can you say that camera is a low priority issue?

Have your read the forum? I keep reading from 1 year tons of post about "Purple Team Camera Problem".

How can you say that Locked Camera users are the Minority after this? You want to make the game more user-friendly but you shouldn't listen top elo players about this issue.

I will also second the sentiment that I find last hitting and skillshots to be significantly easier with the camera locked. Skillshots in particular -- and I play a lot of Kennen/Ezreal/Blitzcrank.

Agreed. Not to say they are easier for everyone, just that there are a large group of players who are not RTS players. MOBA is a genre that is spawned from RTSs but has taken on it's own life past DotA. As developers, if you ignore chances to innovate, you are going to lose the competitive scene to games who will. Some players can't keep track of their character as easily in free camera and skill shots become exceedingly difficult, especially moving south, where your character has to be almost entirely off the top of the screen to get a shot.

-Arcie

Here's the thing, people who use free camera are the vast majority of our players, not the elite. I've been having some people collect more detailed stats on locked camera usage and we'll evaluate again from there.

We're unlikely to do really disruptive things like allow map mirroring and things like that. This would be technically risky and time consuming and potentially negatively impact player communication and gameplay because two people on the same team are seeing completely different things.

I don't think changes to camera angle or FOV are likely to pass muster either, we limit zoom out and control the view angle so players with the money to buy larger monitors/faster video cards/higher resolution don't have an advantage.

We might consider some kind of camera position biasing, but it has the potential to be really janky. Mostly likely would be a small adjustment to account for the HUD space at the bottom.

Unfortunately with a fixed camera you're always going to have to sacrifice vision range in one part of the screen for another and you're regularly going to run into cases where the wrong part got sacrificed. I agree that on purple side this happens more often at the bottom of the screen, but if we corrected this we could seriously screw you if you loop around a teamfight from the bottom/blue side.

I wish I saw an easy answer to this, but it seems like what people really want is some kind of view that follows their champion and also keeps the part of the action they're interested on screen as well. That's pretty hard to get right since we can't read your intentions.

take the art out of the HUD, and make the lifebar/manabar, the inventory, and minimap semi transparent, then remove the player portrait completely, and add a mini version at the top of the rest of ur teams portraits. problem solved all around.