So the recent locked camera discussion had me thinking about what I like and dislike about the camera function. The thing that bothers me most is having to continually flick my mouse to the edge of the screen during teamfights to make small adjustments to my view. This eats up time, concentration and accuracy during the middle of the most hectic portions of the game.

The solution: A new key-bindable function called Lock Camera to Mouse. Say you bind it to the spacebar (I would). While you hold down the spacebar, your camera moves in direct proportion to your mouse movement - without having to move the mouse to the edge of the screen.

Picture it this way. We have two champs roughly half a screen width apart - Teemo and Mundo. The camera is centered on Mundo, and you want to center it on Teemo instead.

T__________M

Old system: You move your mouse to the left edge of the screen, wait until the screen scrolls far enough to center on Teemo. You then move your mouse back to the center of the screen to click on useful things.

New system: You press and hold "Lock Camera to Mouse". You move your mouse the distance between Mundo and Teemo. You release "Lock Camera to Mouse".

During this time, your mouse remains in the same position relative to the camera. If it was dead center at the beginning, it will still be dead center at the end.

This is faster, because it involves much less movement and can be done as fast as you move your mouse. It is more accurate, because it operates on a 1 to 1 analog to your mouse movement. It requires less of your concentration, because with practice it can be done on instinct.

Thoughts?

Interesting idea, I agree with you on the flicking to the edge being annoying. It's a pretty unconventional use of camera controls for a game so it would require a lot of adjustment. Would be worth experimenting with internally, and not too hard to do I think. We'd have to run with it for a while though because I think it might be confusing to control at the beginning.

interesting idea indeed +1

I wish we were able to perma lock the camera in any position we want... Meaning if we dont want it centered on us while holding space we can lock it to another center position.

+1 op

Doesn't middle mouse button already do this?

This is kind of like what MMB does. Except it scrolls continuously based on how far you are from where you moused down. I prefer the hand tool to pan your page type of metaphor myself.

I actually in my head was thinking of something completely different, which was to center the view on your mouse cursor when you press a key.

I see a problem with that: What if you wanna check something on the map? it will first scroll down your camera to the lower right corner of the map.

bloodline champions has a functionality sort of like this, but the arenas are so much smaller it might not transfer so well over to LoL