Related to the disadvantage of the top-side team having their HUD on the bottom, wouldn't it be easier to just allow the HUD to be moveable as opposed to working out a mirroring type solution?

Maybe an option that enables the camera to track the mouse cursor? Kind of like Alien Swam where the camera will kind of extend the direction of the mouse cursor. That way the player can influence the camera a bit but isn't as demanding as moving the cursor to the edge and stuff; maybe it's a happy medium between Locked and Unlocked? Of course this should only be an option, not mandatory. Just my 2cents.

No... the vision differences are way more than they, they are related to the angle of the camera as well. The other way to work around this is to minimize your HUD scale, but that doesn't fully solve the problem people are talking about.

I like this approach, and would like to drop my thoughts on each method. Note that I've played for over 2 years, and been an unlocked-camera guy from the start. I will admit that I'm a bit biased toward this method as well, but hopefully I can explain that a bit later on.

I agree that this isn't a bad method for just starting out. It gets you used to seeing/following your champion, and it is easier to track where you are. It's a very binary system: locked or unlocked with no in-between. However, if you get too used to this method, it can (as evidenced by other posts in this thread) be very difficult to transition out of.

This is a stage I never really hit. Even though I hadn't played any real RTS games prior to this one, unlocked felt much more natural to me. Personally, I feel like players staying in this phase do themselves a bit of a disservice if they are serious about making the switch to unlocked. It just slows the transition. Go play a few co-op games and really practice maneuvering the camera

As was mentioned, this is hardly limited to 'the elite' as you say. And as a long-time unlocked camera user, I can sympathize with the thought that locked shouldn't even be an option. Though realistically, I would say they should show you locked at first in the tutorial, but then also make you spend a bit of time with it unlocked as well, so you can get the feel for both. Then they can still keep it an option to lock it again if you would like.

The biggest reason I would highly advocate unlocked camera would be more because of positioning and map awareness than anything else. The argument that you see an optimal range on all sides of you is a bit... off. There are many times when you know that there is nobody behind you, so there is no reason to have vision in that portion. The vast majority of the time, I have my champion tucked up in one of the corners of the map, and I'm watching my lane opponents. Heck, sometimes, especially with support, I keep my champion just OFF my viewable screen. It's far more important that I can see my carry and the other team.

This brings up the suggestion about letting you change where the camera locks. That just gets too complicated. I think the binary mode it has now is easier to handle than giving it some in-between mode. Now you have to think about where in the field of view you are, as well as moving the camera if needed. Seems easier to me to either keep it locked or move it freely.

The other thing I find interesting is that, as I said, I had never played anything like this game before, but unlike some others in this thread, I still found the locked camera to be extremely annoying. In the tutorial, I was almost cringing that it wouldn't let me move the camera myself. I had in the past played games like Sim City and the like. And I always used the mouse to push the screen around. It just seemed the most logical to me.

And then there's the fact that the slow/continuous scrolling map/screen actually made me kinda dizzy.

Given how boourns worded his response about the color blind thing, I would guess that the amount of players who use locked camera are much lower than those impacted by the color blindness. And the 'imbalance' between purple and blue in terms of camera angles is just one more reason to get used to unlocking

Also, regarding the 'choppy' scroll camera, you may just need to play around more with your mouse and scroll speed settings. I do find that there's a very small range on the map scroll speed bar that I find acceptable. Also, having a better graphics card goes a long way in helping make it scroll smoothly. I played for a long time on my old comp (from 2006, not bad, but pretty low-end graphics). When I built my new machine a couple months ago, it was amazing how much better the scroll felt.

Interesting idea, but Alien Swarm is a dual stick shooter adapted to mouse controls, I don't think they do much direct targeting of things. I think this could work well if we controlled champion movement with cursor keys primarily and had line targeting for attacks, but moving the view based on your mouse distance from your champion would make exact targeting very difficult I think. Think last hitting minions if your camera view and what was under your cursor was shifting with your mouse moves.

I could see us doing something like this if we ever ported the game to a console (not likely with the publisher agreements you see there though!).

I'd just like to see a relative-position lock.
Like say I have my view far off to the top of my champ, and hold a key.

My camera will lock onto and follow my champ, but won't automatically center on them, leaving them at the far bottom while the camera follows them around.

Re: color blindess, I would say the effect is much more negative for almost all color blind players so the impact of the severity and the number of people it affects makes it an issue that I want to fix very much. It is also something that we provide no alternative solution for, it's not like they can just practice really hard and see red/green again! Not being able to see who's friendly and who's the enemy is really not fun.

I see the point you bring up, but find that many players would be too put off without the camera-lock. When I started this game I stuck to camera lock only, and thought I'd never change. Then, as you mentioned, I realized you really needed to unlock for many champions.

I began to adjust, unlocking the camera for periods of time until I felt pressured to lock it again. Eventually I would stay unlocked for longer periods of time, and finally I play the game unlocked always now.

I think maybe a small tutorial focused on camera control would be nice, and every 10 levels it could pop up and recommend you do the tutorial again. The tutorial would recommend unlocking the camera.

Yes, I would prefer to ease new players into using unlocked camera in the tutorial. If you feel strongly that locked camera is your preference it will be there as an option, however I do feel it is important to steer new players to unlocked camera for the gameplay reasons Zielmann outlines so articulately. You really do lose a lot of map awareness with a locked camera and as a UI/UX designer I want to help our players become really awesome at our game by helping them do things that make for better gameplay.

I relate learning a game like this to learning how to play a sport. I honestly feel like had Riot chosen to not even make locked camera an option, it wouldn't be an issue. If people never got a taste of playing with locked camera, they would just get used to flicking the mouse around to move the camera. HOWEVER, since it WAS included from the beginning, it can't simply be removed completely.

Relating this to a sport, it's like learning a sport on your own and having mild success, and then finding out when you start to take lessons and get more into it, that you have formed a lot of bad habits. As you drop these habits and start to learn proper form*, you will do worse at first, comparatively, because you aren't playing how you are comfortable playing. But in the long run, once you master the more correct form, your game will be able to surpass anywhere you could have gotten it with your old habits. But if you had started off learning proper form, you would never have had to go through the rough transition while dropping your old habits. The tradeoff is that it does take a little longer to learn to play.

*I'm not trying to say unlocked is 'proper' and that locked is a 'bad habit'... just roll with the analogy, please.