Diablo > Diablo 4Mar 26, 2024 5:00 pm CT

You will finally (finally!) be able to zoom out farther in Diablo 4

Last week’s Diablo 4 Campfire Chat introduced a lot of changes coming to the game in May (including a vastly overhauled itemization system), but one small change may have flown under the radar: increased zoom distance. It’s a simple but welcome change to how much of Sanctuary we can actually see while playing D4, and we’ll get to check it out when Diablo 4’s latest patch hits the PTR next month.

So yes, Diablo players, soon you’ll be able to zoom your camera out a lot farther in Diablo 4.

Diablo 4 lets you zoom out to see more of the monsters coming to murder you

Originally Posted by PezRadar (Official Post)

For some added context, the way it works is that there will be two options now. One is a Standard zoomed feature which is how it is presently in the game. The other will be a Far feature which is what some noticed yesterday.

Some platforms like PC (but not Steam Deck) will default to the Far zoomed out feature. There will be a new option in the menu to change this to Standard as well. Steam Deck can also change it, but I just want to note their default is the Standard zoom.

Consoles will also have these two options as well.

The team did some extra checks on performance for this as this does increase draw distance and add some more things on the screen. If players experience any performance related items during PTR, please let us know in the PTR forums when those open up. It is important for us to make sure we get that in.

To my admittedly not as good as they used to be eyes, the new zoom looks like a midway point between the current World Boss zoom that takes your view of your character way out and the current level of zoom, which will remain as an option. It’s interesting that different platforms have different zoom defaults, with PCs using new zoom and Steam Deck remaining at standard zoom — no news yet on what zoom settings will be like for Xbox or PlayStation, but they should have the same options.

I’m very interested in this new zoom setting, because one of the problems I’ve had in D4 has been that mob density just off of the visible screen can be a lot higher than it initially appears. That could leave me scrambling to hit Iron Skin when I would have certainly used it early if I’d realized there were fifty mobs just down the hall — so this is a good change for survivability.

This mid-range zoom seems like a good compromise between standard and boss zoom. I would have found just using the current World Boss zoom to be a bit too much, since the zoom has to be very far out for those gigantic monsters to fit on the screen, but it can often feel like you’re an ant watching. I’m excited to get my hands on it during Season 4.

The Diablo 4 PTR will be live on April 2 with our first hands-on look at the new zoom levels. Diablo 4 Season 4 will be live on May 14 with these changes permanently available to all players.

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