Some background on our camera decisions for the updated Summoner’s Rift

Hey y'all,

Anyone who’s played on the new Howling Abyss map will remember we pulled the camera zoom out to deal with long-range skill shots on a narrow strip of land. Even then, a lot of adaptation had to happen, and we realized then we didn’t do a great job of communicating what had actually gone into the decision. Recently we've seen a few players asking about the camera angle choices (specifically keeping the same zoom level / field of view) we made for the updated Summoner's Rift, so I wanted to give some extra context on the forums.

We didn’t arrive at our camera angle choice easily: months of research, lab experiments, and user experience studies went into this. If you’ve read our gameplay dev blog on the updated Rift (http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/features/dev-blog-srs-gameplay-updates), you’ll also know what our results were (we kept the zoom level, decreased the field of view, and pulled the camera further back from the ground plane), so let's talk about what we didn’t change: the camera zoom.

Here’s a quick rundown of the issue:

First, mastery’s a key pillar of League of Legends design, and a lot of the core skills of League – positioning, map awareness, skill shots, combat movement – are balanced around our current camera zoom. Creating discrepancies through mods or pulling back the camera zoom disrupts a lot of fundamental skills that all players value. League is an ever-evolving game, but your basic combat instincts – how much time you have to react to an enemy gank, how you move in a team fight, your level of map awareness, etc – are things we definitely want to maintain.

Second, echoing the above through a game health lens: League is balanced precisely around our current level of camera zoom, so we need to consider any implications a change like this would have. Like I mentioned before, we pulled back the camera on Howling Abyss to weaken long-range skill shot champions (many of which are still very strong on the map for obvious reasons), but those same champions do have meaningful weaknesses on a map like Summoner’s Rift. Lux can be super annoying on a 5v5 ARAM, but put her on SR where a Vi can sneak around to punch her in the face, and you get my point.

Third (and finally), there were questions about offering varying levels of zoom in the options menu, but we’ve seen that almost all players (specifically the competitive ones) default to showing the maximum amount of real estate as possible. The competitive advantages are just too much to ignore, so while it might be considered a ‘choice’ for some, max level zoom would be an assumed for anyone who wants to be competitive.

This feeds into our larger philosophy on third-party mods: if they’re perceived to give any form of competitive advantage, then they become the default choice for pros, and that just creates this weird divide between those ‘in the know’ and outsiders. Specifically relating it to camera zoom, this obviously falls into the realms of competitive differences, and it’s why we deliberately do not allow any modifications of FoV or zoom.

TLDR, the camera angle, the field of view, and the level of zoom that we’ve chosen to go with on the updated Summoner’s Rift are ones we’ve considered very carefully. Not only do we need to balance the proper level of information players are receiving at all times on their screen, but we need to ensure the game remains exciting and that even the most map-savvy pro can be surprised by a sneaky play. Hope this gives a little more context behind our decision!