How we clean posts

I agree I have seen the zoom out on the latest founders videos and it is quite far, I think the topic got a little confused.  I think the assumption was that you would be tied into a very tight narrow point of view only.  But there appeared to be a nice amount of zoom in and out. 

Icons are not a big deal at all if you can see and manage your armies in an easy way. we just have to wait for the alpha and few patched to see how the game plays without those icons. i think Oxide is doing something really interesting and new here. so lets wait a few more days.

Yes after watching the video It wasn't quite what i thought it was. As long as i have the ability to move around the battlefield to different areas quickly im not concerned so much with icons. Good deal. 

OK then, time for me to get involved here...

I am a long-time RTS player, introduced to the genre by the likes of C&C, AOE1, and Homeworld. In the mid-2000s though, I, like so many others, was shown the future by Gas Powered Games and Supreme Commander. I've stuck with it ever since. Since that day, every single time I have tried another RTS type game, without exception, I have found the gameplay and experience frustrating to the point of infuriating, because not one single one of those games has managed to take on board just what SupCom achieved in terms of user interfacing. Just got Homeworld Remastered in the summer sales, and it's a glorious as I remember. And yet... ARRRGHHHH, the lack of Strategic Zoom. It's so incredibly frustrating!

And now this... Suffice it to say that Ashes of the Singularity has very much caught my attention. We have flow-based economy. We have grand scale. We have great looking maps and units. We even have a simulated physics engine! I squealed with delight. Here, at last, is an honest-to-goodness effort to reinvigorate the true RTS genre with a game which may, finally, take the mantle from SupCom:FA. 

Imagine my disappointment when I read this thread through... It's like the lesson simply hasn't been learned. So while I recognise that I have no authority, or influence, or any of that around here, I'm going to make this post and be absolutely clear and resolute:

This game needs Strategic Zoom. Without it, the game will flop. It may be a financial success, but if that's all you're going for here, then the potential is already wasted entirely. This game has the potential not just to be financially successful, but to be the RTS to beat, the yardstick, the top of the pile.

Without Strategic Zoom, it will fail in this regard. End of story.

Yes, it had been done before, but SupCom showed the way forwards in a way which has never been replicated, before or since. Only Sins came close, and even there IMO it was inferior. A player should never have to pan the camera. Ever. It's slow, cumbersome, and gets in the way. A player should only have to flick his finger to have an absolute overview of everything going on. Icons are a necessity to this game's success. Yes, they are ugly sometimes, but gameplay > visuals any day of the week, and as SupCom has proven unequivocally, icons are the best possible option for gameplay. They are the fastest way of getting data about what is going on to the player's brain such that they know what to do next.

I'll go further: The minimap, as a concept, is outdated and utterly without merit. Having it as an option is fine, especially if there's a cartographic mode. Making it necessary for gameplay because the importance and power of Strategic Zoom was dismissed or underestimated is just going backwards 15 years. It takes up screen space, it's never as detailed or flexible as a fully realized zoom, and with zoom around you'll find that very, very few people have any need for it. That, alone, should be reason enough to abandon it as your route and go the SZ route. Dual monitors is one thing, but once again please look at what SupCom tried to do, and just do it right: The second monitor shouldn't be a minimap as such (Though the option to have different modes should absolutely be there), it should simply be a fully realized second display port, also with full strategic zoom available if you want it. It's easy to move around and re-position inside it, it gives you exactly the info you want, and it's incredibly intuitive.

You have more than 30,000 potential hard-core RTS fans just itching to transfer from SupCom:FA to this game. For a simulated RTS game, that's an incredible number of players, more than any has been able to hold on to since SupCom. FAF is growing by the day thanks to community support, development, and promotion, and as a member of their development team I can say the future there looks extremely bright.

Don't throw all that away with one avoidable decision. Please... We all want this game to be the next step in RTS. Make it happen!

That post sure had a lot of definitive statements. The gist is that SC:FA was the pinnacle of RTS gaming, and everything that follows must copy many of its components, or it is a flop. If that is what the SupCom community thinks, seems rather narrow minded, even if there is experience to back that up. While I also liked SupCom, I'm looking forward to some new ideas, or at least some mashup of pre-existing ideas that have worked. Given the team involved, I think a little trust at this early stage is warranted. I'd like to see this game in a beta state before forming a conclusion.

I like strategic zoom too, but only for the purpose of gaining battlefield context. I'd rather not control units in icon mode. Doing so in SupCom and GalCiv2 was a novelty at first, but then I started feeling like I was playing a board game, not a modern video game, and that takes away a good deal of the fun for me. If we're not going to be controlling individual units like you do in SupCom, individual unit icons are not needed. I think some level of battle group abstraction is needed at max zoom-out, and I can't wait to see what they come up with.

I think a lot of comments here are how i want the game to be, not how Ashes team wants or project the game..

Forget the icons ,they dont want i dont want and you will see will work very well without it.

Keep in mind that this is a game hows this team wants and so obviously its the way have to go.

Try to imagine a game, produce it and show the public that you want to be interested, you'll see in your imagination that many agree and disagree,its part of this industry.

I think also there has been more discussion and opinions about this subject, because there isnt mush more to talk about the game, when  the first version comes out  will be more subjects to talk.

AOTS for me, I can be wrong but it seems that will be one of the best rts of the genre to be released in these last years.

Quick, release the alpha before a fist-fight breaks out!

Ok. Just to make this easy:

If you liked Supreme Commander you will absolutely hate this game. 

There.  Now, any similarities between the two will be coincidental and unexpected.

As a former avid sup com player I do understand the frustration behind opinions coming from other sup com players. This is an issue within the community itself where everyone is narrow minded and set on their ways. On the contrary though, I had an old discussion with another player where we were discussing the issues with PA and the concept of having a round battlefield. He stated, by having a part of the player's view cut off you are cutting off information, information is what is needed to make an informed decision. Now PA may have solved this, not sure, haven't played it since the beta, but the concept still holds,  if you want a player to make the most informed decision possible they must be given the most information possible. This is also why when you talk to a higher end sup com player that usually tell lower end players to not zoom in so much or get tunneled vision, you are strategically severing yourself. A game like starcraft where strategic zoom doesn't exist, they are putting an artificial restriction on information that does not add gameplay value. One could try and argue that fog of war is an artificial information cap, which is true, but players can actively negate this by scouting or building radars(in sup com at least, no idea if they exist in sc2) which adds some sort of gameplay mechanic. Now strategic zoom is only 1 solution to this problem, it's a good solution imo, but it's not the only solution. A minimap is what a majority of classic rts games use, which works in some respect, but does not stand in terms of presenting as much information to the player possible. If you guys have another solution that works better, that's great, but you must keep in mind the whole concept of it. The dev team is definitely more versed in the concept than me, but this is just a reminder to both the dev team and the people in the thread the core purpose strategic zoom, minimaps, etc. hold.

I'm just seeing a disconnect between what you saying ("we're not hostile to strategic zoom") and what you are saying ("we absolutely are not doing strategic zoom").

If you don't do strategic zoom, your replacement had damned well better be awesome. Yeah. SZ might have a lot of icons. So improve on that. Abstract them somehow. Do single icons for solo units and a bigger icon for your meta units. That would be acceptable and if done well could be an improvement. It just sounds like you're trying to say "wheels have too many facets so we're going to use octogon shaped wheels so you don't get overwhelmed." No. Just plain no.

Did you consider to change Icons in relation to zoom distance. Like showing less Icons e.g. just the meta units when zoomed out and more detailed icons when you zoom in?

That's not correct. Planetary Annihilation developers turned SupCom fans down entirely the same way as AotS ones, by embracing orientation towards TA pros.