Do you play in locked or unlocked camera?

always unlocked. It’s pretty necessary imo

I play locked unless I’m playing a macro heavy character (Zag, Aba, TLV, or notable Dehaka)

If it require precise skillshots, locked camera or bust.

No not really. There are pros and cons for both ways but ultimately it all just boils down to personal preference.

When aiming skill shots it’s important to have a static point of reference. Some people like that static reference to be the terrain while others like it to be their hero.

Playing Diablo type games (locked) or starcraft type games (unlocked) influences your preference.

Personally, i play locked. Here’s why I choose this way:

Pro:

  • The location of the team fight is always repositioning. Locked reduces the required mouse movements during those crucial micro moments. Yes spacebar recentres but a recentre also requires a swift repositioning of where your curser is on your screen. This is a big plus for me.

Con:

  • if you’re locked you do need to click the minimap to see other parts of the game. This requires extra mouse movements. Typically though if I’m concentrating on macro play then it’s during a point in the game when it’s easy to control my character like travelling, clearing lanes or when I’m dead. I’m okay with extra mouse movements during these downtime periods.

  • locked is more akward for super ranged heroes like azmo, rag’s molten core or ana’s eye of horus. I cant argue with that. However, these are usually big moments so i don’t mind that occasional extra step to unlock my screen. FYI, playing chromie is fine as she can only shoot half a screen anyway.

  • unlocked camera was heads and shoulders superior for seeing the shimmer on stealth heroes. Since the shimmer is much easier to see that point is moot.

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Unlocked, it isn’t difficult to get into the habit of hitting spacebar or even just binding to whatever key is most convenient to you. So I don’t see much point playing locked when just a slight press of a key I have the camera centered on my character again, so re-positioning the camera isn’t all that difficult. And since I generally tend to play healer having the camera unlocked means I can keep a better eye on my teammates during a fight.

This sounds like you have a really bad mouse DPI if it is that slow to react… My mouse DPI is rather fast so I don’t really encounter these issues at all, which I suppose makes a big difference if you’re playing unlocked and locked because you have a really good gaming mouse it isn’t an issue at all with regard to cursor speed.

I know I had some of those issues when I was playing with a crappier mouse but when I upgraded years back and adjusted slowly to a higher DPI setting I find unlocked has been far more conducive to my gameplay.

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I actually just stick with the default settings. Does locked mean the camera never moves and is just static?

Locked, unless I’m Abathur. I cannot play unlocked. It makes me seasick watching my hero move and my camera staying still.

Locked means the camera stays centered on your hero unless you specifically move the camera elsewhere. Unlocked means the camera only moves when you tell it to, or your hero starts to leave the screen. It’s locked by default I believe.

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I personally like locked for 90% of characters cause I know exactly where my character is without effort.

Unlocked.Only Mobile Legends Players locks their camera.
(They are also hoping for skills to auto target)

Locked camera is for noobs. No offense.

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Ha! I’d love to blame the tools, but if i can be honest with myself the mechanic has a lot to do with this. Interesting to hear about you noticing a difference with a gaming mouse.

I was reading the blog about Diablo 4 and their UI design. There’s a section where they’re talking about positioning the UI to reduce having to move your eyes around the screen to gather information.

When they talk about eyes moving around your head we’re talking about milliseconds worth of difference here, but that’s the kind of stuff that improves performance.

I like shaving milliseconds off reaction times during micro team fights at the expense of being cumbersome during the down time. However, we are talking milliseconds here so my position still stands on whats best is what you’re most comfortable with.

It’s like saying the metric system is for noobs. Why use a more cumbersome system when another does the same job but much simpler and easier to use?

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Unlocked always 100%. But I do hold space sometimes to lock the camera briefly (mainly to get the camera back on my hero quicker) on certain heroes in certain situations. My mouse scroll speed sense is also like 20% I believe (to avoid stupid snapping).

Except locked camera doesn’t give the same functionality as unlocked. If you think it does, it means you have very little experience with this game. Mal awareness is the single most important thing in this game, and locked camera severally limits it.

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I can tell you right now playing locked camera with a higher DPI setting is basically hell. You easily hit the boundaries of the camera very quickly so that the higher response speed ends up being more detrimental. You’d be better off lowering the settings around the 1000 or lower range, otherwise you’ll end up fighting against the camera far too often at that point as you keep restricting your speed.

Put simply if you’re able to play on a higher DPI setting unlocked is the way to go as you’ll get your bang for your buck, as the response time aligns well when you need to move the camera quickly so at that point it is just adjusting your hand eye coordination. So I will say a faster response time does still gain value in this game.

unlocked camera for sure

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This is a misunderstanding about locked camera that seems extremely wide spread in this topic.

Locked camera does not limit map awareness. When one pans the camera using the minimap it automatically unlocks when far from the hero. Locked camera only applies to when the camera is near your hero.

When near your hero it will limit the maximum distance the camera can be drifted from the hero. It also will automatically follow your hero. For most heroes this is fine, as the camera gives more than enough view area for all their ranged abilities. If you need to check areas of the map, clicking on the minimap (which you need to do when unlocked anyway) will stop the follow and give you unrestricted camera movement.

This was not always the case. Long ago HotS had a much more zoomed in camera. Many heroes had abilities that could not be cast a full range in some directions with locked camera. Since the camera zoom-out patch this is no longer the case except for a select few such as Azmodan, which can also be worked around by minimap camera reposition.

Playing HotS with high DPI is hell in general. One needs a low DPI so that hand movements accurately translate into positions on the screen for landing skill shots.

For example at 1000DPI moving your mouse 1 inch or 25.4 mm left or right would move the cursor half way from left to right of the screen at 1920x1080 pixels. Each pixel on the display is 0.0254 mm of movement. A distance of 10 pixels is 0.254mm. 1000DPI is not even that high as far as some mice go.

At truly high DPI you will end up fighting the error in precision caused by your own hand and so start to perform worse. This is why no one recommends high DPI mice for RTS games. One wants a reasonable DPI maximum such as 800-1200 at most. Enough that your hand is not having to move huge distances and can efficiently cross the screen while low enough that you can still quickly and precisely target any point of the screen area.

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I don’t like the camera moving on it’s own sometimes. Always unlocked.

You know what else severely limits my ability to play? Puking everywhere from how off-putting it feels when my hero isn’t the center of the screen.

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Oh I see, thank you for explaining it to me.

I am going to try it unlocked and see if I like it.

Unlocked, exclusively.
For those that mentioned minimap, ya I use it tons (I come from rts background). I can see folks using locked on some heroes that have already been mentioned, but it is wholly unnatural to me.

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Interesting discussion regarding mouse sensitivity.

Another factor worth mentioning is that the distance your curser is away from your character also adjusts the sensitivity of your shot.

For example, let’s say your character is in the centre of your screen and your mouse curser is on the edge of your monitor. Moving your curser 1 inch will adjust your skillshot angle by ~10 degrees (high accuracy)

However, if your curser is right next to your hero and you move your curser that same 1 inch, your skillshot angle widens to ~170 degrees (low accuracy).

This trick obviously doesn’t work for certain skillshots. For example, the location of the focal point is important for liming’s missiles.

However, 90% of skillshots in this game only care about the direction its cast. If your hero is the static reference point (locked) then you can easily modify your shot sensitivity by moving your mouse closer or further away from your hero.

Hope that explanation made sense.

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