Modders messing up with this (or devs making an official mod) is much better than messing up with the menu and possiibly breaking stuff
Not to mention that outside monasteries and new UU skins everything we are getting is just extending the diferent skins we had for monks and castles already
I didnât think of that. 900% agree. Copyin and pasting some SMX files is way less aggresive than modifying the menu.
And again, we already have the Anne_HK visibility mods or others like no snow, delete stumps and smaller walls.
I find it very weird that some people are arguing so strongly against this. I agree that these options should be added, even though I wouldnât use them personally. The arguments against seem pretty weak to me.
In a similar vein, Iâd like an option for classic graphics, or at least the ability to mod the classic graphics back in â this is something I would (sometimes) use. (This is currently not possible to mod for at least four reasons: impossible frame rate conversions, DE handles unit directions differently, DE handles building destructions and rubble differently, impossible conversion from DE particle effects to classic animations.)
There seem to be a couple of misconceptions about mods in this thread, which Iâll try to correct.
The claim isnât that every change can be added easily with mods â official updates and DLCs often bring features that would be very difficult or even impossible to mod. The claim is that this particular request would be easy to do with a mod. That saidâŠ
This is sort of true â it would be relatively easy to replace the new graphics with the old ones in a mod, assuming that the frame numbers are the same for old and new versions of units (which I think is likely). However, that wouldnât actually restore the old appearance for buildings â fire and garrison flag positions will almost certainly be different, and those are not easily moddable.
While I like the new castle graphics personally, I can easily see why someone would have a preference to only use the old ones. The style of the new ones does seem quite different â e.g. the old ones are really just keeps and look more realistically scaled, whereas the new ones take the approach of trying to fit a whole castle into the 5-by-5 square. It reminds me more of the AoE1 building style, where the buildings are undersized relative to units.
I disagree so hard with this âoptionsâ idea, itâs unbelievable.
Sometimes having options is good. But for this case of the castle, monk, trading cart, etc, skins, itâs just a ridiculous nitpick.
Completely agree with you Dreigon
@Player870583437, no. you can use the flat building mod if you like, but donât try to make the menu more cluttered for the rest of us.
Did you have any issues with the meso monk in aoc?if not this argument dosent have any meaning.
I am strongly against it.
According to this view, the game should be kept at an underdeveloped level, as it has been between two and three decades in terms of graphic design.
With this âoptionalâ proposal look the whole thing like this, that you want to maintain the games previous âEurocentric policyâ. I do not want that. As an example, I also want to give the civs of America their âuniquenessâ. And that means literally, to letting them play only in the new graphical look with a Castle, Monastery and Unique unit.
If the developers are making an effort, to finally add cosmetic improvements to the game for many individual civs, one should be grateful for that and not criticize their work, for leaving the old, boring graphics for many civs together.
Please do not post such general things to the forum for the future, that no one has confirmed to you. Certainly not the entire player base.
There would be quite a few players, who would have a big problem with that, me too. And the current comments partly demonstrate, that this is the case. I would even go so far as, to NOT buy such a DLC, if the newly created civ specific graphics were only offered as an âoptionâ and not in general.
According to the topics, which you constantly suggest in the forum, do you want to see the âVlachsâ as a new civ in the game and you want them get as unique as possible. Therefore, I do not assume, that you want the same architectural graphics for the Vlachs as for other Eastern European civs.
These in general keeping graphics concerning to all civs, is exceptionally bad in Age of Empires 2 compared to other Strategy games, and if the developers want to improve this, that is only commendable.
I dont think I need to tell you, but making modders mess with the fire and garrison graphics seems like a way less problematic thing than devs possibly making a mess with the settings to please very few
Just use mods, they are really easy to install and I guarantee they will be out on day one after the update
Purism doesnât allow using mods
I do think the possibility of breaking something is the most convincing argument against this â but it would be very similar to the small trees option, so should be possible to add using the same approach.
Thereâs a functional difference, because you can already activate/deactivate graphics mods. Adding an optuon is something new
Even master gamers like Viper have no issue with these new cosmetics - not sure why lesser players are crying about itâŠ
Iâm not sure I follow â as I already said, this canât be done properly with a graphics mod. I donât know how the small trees option works behind the scenes, though, so maybe that is essentially just a graphics mod as well.
Maybe you could find out by reading their posts in this thread?
It is a rhetorical question. When the masters of competitive play have no grievances why are the others whining?
Nostalgie not readability.
Nostalgia can be managed by them playing AOK. Leave them to it.
Or by modding the game.
The setting they want would technically be a mod anyway.
Small trees is still a mod, just with a button in the settings menu.
I will never understand why people against the ideas of more options / choices for players
âIt take time and resourcesâ
âOnly small amount of people want itâ
Thatâs great, it mean youâre not foundationally against the idea itself, but question of priority and resources management.
And in the end of the day, its the devs to decide if they accpet the suggestions, and how to implement it into the game.
I would say If they want to make cosmetics DLC money, an option/toggle like feature is needed, eventually.
You just canât have the new player to learn like 10+ different looking of monks or other units.
The problem in this case is that there are already regional monks and unique castles in the game now, they are just becoming more common.
This makes a generic setting harder to set up.
People are used to American monks looking different for 25 years now and some civilisations having unique Castles for 5 years.
Now should the setting remove all regional monks or leave the American one?
Should the setting remove all unique castles or only the ones added to old civilisations?
Should there be a setting for regional Trade Carts too?
A lot of different options that each only a small number of people want and all of them are super easy to make as a mod. Even if they were official they would still technically likely be implemented as a mod anyway.
If itâs a DLC its toggleable automatically. You can just not buy it or disable it in steam.
But I donât think they want to go this route. They are doing regional monks now and will likely add more units in the future.
But I can see why people would want to be able to turn off regional military unit skins in general.
I think new players are much more likely to want regional unit skins then old players.
They donât have the nostalgia for the old skins and since they are not used to seeing Aztecs in plate armour it will likely ruin immersion for them more then for someone who seen them that way for 25 years.
I think there is a none trivial amount of people that look at screenshots of the game and wonder âwhy do the Mayans have Crossbowsâ, âwhy are there European Knights in this Chinese armyâ or âwhy are the Ethiopian villagers white skinned?â