I think itd be excellent to have a zoom feature like the one featured in Supreme Commander. Zooming all the way out of the map would allow you to simultaneously micro manage all your armies in seperate battles.
I'm pretty sure a type of limited zooming is already in the game. But just so I understand exactly what you are talking about, what is the zoom feature like in Supreme Commander?
I havent played it but I watched a video review. Supreme Commander allows you to zoom all the way out on the map, so you can see everything at once. This allows for controlling groups of units that are on opposite ends of the map without having to jump back and forth to them. How would this destroy pro gaming?
Much easier to macro, which will result in lower need of thinking, making it much harder for the really "pros" with multitasking skills, to win against other players.
You gain macro, but you loose micro, as it is harder to position your units from far away. But zooming so far out that you see the entire battlefield... No. If you want to move around units while viewing the entire map, use the mini map. But zooming out 50 or 100% sounds OK.
I would like to have the zoom included, because I prefer to play with a macro focus, though I tend to micro a good deal anyway. I have played one of the Supreme Commander games on Neon's computer, and the zoom in that was useful, but didn't create any unfair advantages, from what I can tell. Zooming out to 100% is better than the minimap anyway, because it isn't *mini*. As for pro players losing their edge against the masses, that is unlikely. Even if it did happen, consider the benefits: a new generation of professional players would be born! Thus, including a zoom that creates a macro focus would not necessarily be a bad thing. I always thought of macro as more thoughtful, as opposed to the flood of commands required to micro successfully. Micro focus always struck me as having too much twitch, while macro focus can create a more relaxed, intellectually focused game. Of course, SC has been notorious for its balance between micro and macro, so maybe disrupting that balance too much would be a bad thing. Still, a zoom feature sounds appealing.
I thought about it some more, and have decided that a zoom feature like that would not belong in Starcraft II. I could see a basic zoom (that they already have) that is more or less simply for aesthetic purposes. One of the main ideas in Starcraft is that a player has to manage every single individual unit. It is not a large-scale army game where it would make sense to be able to see the whole map. Zooming out that way would make it extremely difficult to control a player's army - units would be too small to direct. Let's stick with the mini-map. It has all of the benefits that zooming out would give to Starcraft anyway.
I think it would only really benefit Zerg players. I know that I suck at macroing Zerg so I never play them. But if I could have a bigger view of the map then macroing would be easier. Protoss and Terran wouldn't benefit as much because their armies consist of less units than Zerg obviously. I think the effectiveness of zooming is also linked to how many units you can select...I mean whats the use of being to able to simultaneously view 150+ zerglings if you can only select 12 at a time? I know this will not be the case in SC2, but unit selection would be the limiting factor in zoom's implementation. (Zooming out I mean - I'm pretty sure we can all agree that zooming in is more for fun than for strategic advantage)
or like in Supreme commander u can zoom from near one unit lvl all the way out to the strategic map WOW i obviously didnt read the first page
