I agree entirely with this statement. The problem is, Riot wants the game to favor the unlocked camera players. They keep saying that the game is supposed to be played unlocked. So, if they made it possible for someone to compete with a locked camera, they would be upsetting the unlocked players, in their opinion (pure speculation based on forum responses). Rather than making locked a viable playstyle, they would not only leave purple gimped (even unlocked players need to zoom out to have a fair chance on purple), but they won't even consider any other fixes to the issue.

The zoom out is the simplest fix. They move the camera lock a few more inches back. Boom, done, go Riot. But they don't want to be heroes, they want to be oppressors! No! You can't see anything that's going on south of you! No! You can't have intuitive camera controls! No! We won't offer any other options for locked camera!

I have read every one of Boourns responses in this thread and many other. He refuses to cut the fat out of the UI to give us more vision, refuses to consider simple fixes to these issues, instead saying the overly complex ones have merit but we know they will probably never happen, and refuses to acknowledge that with a little tweaking, locked camera players would be able to develop a new playstyle that was legitimate and not gimped as it is now.

Give us a bit more zoom, give us a minimal HUD, give us a better camera angle, give us mirrored Summoner's Rift, give us an off-center camera lock options, give us something!

-Arcie

If you play a support hero or a jungle where there is little offense going on, playing with an unlocked screen you can notify your team about mias and such rather then them having to waste a second typing it up or being caught typing and dying.
Increasing the distance when locked still works but you still have a problem with not being able to look into different lanes or down the river.
Personally i didnt know you could have it locked until a mis-click and raged that it was locked.
This is a choice summoners have. Sure you get a lot more benefits playing unlocked but you feel less comfortable for some people. Again i play unlocked and never have i played with a locked camera.

Ummm... Click and hold on the minimap... It allows you to look wherever you want with a locked camera. You CAN keep solid map awareness with locked camera. As I pointed out in another post, I tend to keep better map awareness with locked camera because I am focusing only on my character's movement and the map. With the unlocked camera, I have to focus on the movement of my character, movement of my camera, and the map. The map often falls by the wayside in this setup. =(

-Arcie

I agree that switching the default to an unlocked camera would likely influence players to learn on an unlocked camera. However, I have 1100 normals under my belt and all of them were played with a locked camera. While it is true that initially it did hinder me when it came to skill shots, it is untrue that it continues to hinder me to this day.

I think it's important to remember that while playing, the Y button is your friend. I use it very actively in every game any time I need to look around without having to use the minimap (since it snaps back to your champion upon mouse release).

I'm pretty sure he means it shouldn't be the DEFAULT option. Sure, players can switch to locked if they liked it, but should learn to play it with unlocked, as it leads to advantages when using skillshots and better map awareness.

Its not that its more things to manage (though admittedly it is) its that you can potentially miss an opportunity to even attempt a skill-shot, simply because you were repositioning the camera. Since the skill-shot will go where you cursor indicates, you physically can't move/skill-shot/camera pan without being locked-on. Since the camera will move with your champion.

I also think you underestimate the severity the Purple-Team/Locked angles creates. I know many people, that quit playing because of it. Not everyone has the dexterity to play Free-Camera, or the mental power to micro-manage it. But you know what, they would of spent money on your game if it wasn't such a night and day problem.

I also know people that Auto-Leave when they get Purple Team, just because they don't want to deal with it personally, or have a team mate feed because they can't play Free-Camera well, or because they're Locked and on the Purple bottom lane.

I just think it would be wise to avoid a mentality that some other companies have. Say Square-Enix with their first MMO, "This is how we intended you to do, so do it this way or don't play." That was a large part of that companies problems.

BTW, there's a handy red post browsing function for forum threads (look at the top right of this post)! I addressed this early in the thread, let me be clear again: we would not remove locked camera toggle as an option.

But you have every intention of leaving it horribly gimped, right? I mean, when it comes to improving different features of the game, this one gets shafted just as hard as the vs AI, correct? I think we need a solid month of no new champs and just a massive overhaul of the interface, gameplay and camera mechanics, etc. Sure having a new champ every 2 weeks is great (as imbalanced as they seem to be released due to the rush) but I would love this game to have more polish and more options!

-Arcie

You, sir, get a +1 from me! I have been pushing all of these points in multiple threads for a while now and I think your sum up of the severity of the issue is great. Unfortunately, notice Boourns totally ignored it in favor of responding to someone who didn't read pages 2-5.

I will say this though, for some people it is much easier to aim a skill shot when the camera is set to lock. Its easier to get the character where you want them to be FOR the skill shot. Perhaps its more of an FPS thing, but keeping the cursor on a point while the camera is moving is basically circle strafing from above.

-Arcie

@Arcie, you might want to dial down the hyperbole a little bit. As a general rule, when threads aren't constructive or informative anymore I stop replying. I've stated more than once that I'd like to improve the locked camera experience, but there are higher value UI improvements that we're doing instead right now. We already have people gathering stats so we can see if we should raise the priority. I can't give you any more of a commitment than that, I don't just decide to do features in the game and have them happen!

While I understand your frustration that we are not doing seemingly simple fixes for a problem that affects you greatly, we have an incredible number of things that we want to do to improve our player's experience. We are constantly evaluating how big an improvement any given feature is to our players overall vs. the amount of effort we put in and try to maximize the amount of improvement we release. Unfortunately our priorities and yours as an individual player will not always line up.