I don’t want to con people into telling me that the game is trash. I’ve said it before, the game is solid, but solid is not enough nowadays. If you like it that’s great and I truly believe you, but things like this can’t be simply brushed off as “non issues”
I have a very thorough way of grouping my units and I still all too often end up with scouts mixing with my horsemen, or villagers with archers and such. There is also people who like to watch matches and these so similar units confuse spectators, no way to group that.
Sometimes inspiration must come from real life and history (even though these are far from historical games). Heavy cavalry tended to use heavier, more muscular (i.e. fatter) and taller horses to they could take on the armored rider’s weight plus the horse’s. Other horses were more athletic, faster and shorter. Those differences also had - to an extent - a bit of influence on their fur color.
Why not use that to enhance visibility? Instead of CTRL+C CTRL+V the same brown horse everywhere? You have a 3D engine, you can just scale up/down and tweak a few polygons to achieve that. I’m certain AoE 2 has more variety there. A Paladin definitely looks “fatter” than a horse archer or scout, which besides the great textures and art design, help us tell them apart.
You don’t have to zoom at all to see the rat tail on the helmets of Fire lancers; and most times torchers are NOT out so you can tell via the weapons as well at glance.
aoe1 2 and 3 always changed what color the horse was depending on cavalry type, and there were clear visual features to show updates, something aoe4 does have a bit of, namely the HRE man at arms changing weapons with their updates, from one handed to two handed sword, to mace, just wishing that logic applied to all updates equally
The same applies to you making the horses a few pixels wider, or any other little changes like that.
I get it, it’s iterative steps that eventually result in enough differences. But it’s a hard line to define when the distinction will kick in (for a majority of players).
Especially if you’re struggling to divide villagers and archers. I don’t deny you’re having an issue. The problem will be how widespread it is (for any given combination of similar units). And this is ignoring the rest of the UI informing what units you’re actually manipulating at the time.
Improving how unit details are displayed in multiple unit selections might be a far better return on investment (for the devs) than trying to subtly tweak units enough so that two types of horsemen when attacking a building specifically look different enough to the viewer. Unless they feel like going more ahistorical and assigning liberal differences in clothing, presentation, etc, between unit’s visuals.
Changing horse coat’s color is not a “little” change and only takes moving a few sliders in any image editing software to alter an existing texture. That is, if you can’t be bothered by making spotted textures and such.
All other parameters like size are admittedly smaller/harder to appreciate but in conjunction it all adds up.
Can you tell me why basically all horses are brown in AoE4?
Can you tell me why in AoE2 even in fast-paced action you can easily tell apart a scout from a knight from a cavalier from a paladin and not in this 20 years newer game?
It’s funny because if it were for you, this game wouldn’t have changed not a little bit since launch. Player colors? Who needs that? Unit differentiation? Meh, the UI solves that. Content editor? You can’t make it easier to use, you’re justholding it wrong.
Thank god we have people with eyes around here like the OP. I’m still laughing at the “look at the rat tails on helmets” comment above.
Almost everything people request here, since the first beta, is not important, or is way down the list, or is totally unrealistic, or has a good reason not to be there, or you just do not know what you need.
But the developers still end up implementing quite a few of them despite all these good reasons not to. What a betrayal.
That’s not what I got from your post. Fur tone was mentioned once, almost offhand, vs. the build of the horse(s) and discussion about polygons.
If you want to associate specific cavalry units by the tone and pattern of their fur, that’s a completely valid suggestion.
This is remarkably uncharitable.
That said, if the customer is indeed always right (and I’d disagree not least because the origin of that phrase might surprise you, but it is what you think is right), I am indeed a customer of the Content Editor, and you really don’t seem to be. I’ll also take the opinion of all the other active modders over yours on that specific topic any day of the week.
So much for polite and constructive disagreement And this style of response is absolutely a pattern of yours by now.
Im actually having much harder time telling now my own units from opponents units because of ability to pick colors. I had a game today which I think it was me as pink and opponent with purple. French ofc went for knights and I did go for lancers. I missjudged a fight when I quickly checked how it was going because colors were too close and lost the fight which resulted snowball effect.
I wish I could just lock colors to polar opposite for myself.
But there is one issue with this. I prefer each individual having its own color for the sake of knowing who is who. If I change the colors to ally/enemy then its much harder to do so.
It’s right up there in my first reply. You either didn’t read it or chose to ignore it.
The customer is always right and when they’re not, you have to clearly explain why they aren’t. You can’t just remain silent. If you do remain silent, then the customer will ALWAYS be right. BTW, you can weaponize the fact that I am or am not a content editor user all you want. That’s a weird flex.
I’m not here to make people happy. I’m here to try to point out what things are wrong about a game I wanted to love but fell short. There is a group of people that appears to defend the game’s decisions at all costs, even though the problems those decisions/limitations caused are as clearly seen as in the very first screenshot in this post. If you are part of that group (and by you I mean anyone reading this) and you take offense, that’s all the same to me. Worse than all the game’s faults are those who justify them.
Sure, and I will often say that more communication is generally a better thing. Not exactly going to get me arguing with this.
It’s not weaponising anything (anymore than anyone here is, yourself included). It was a point that we’re all customers, and we will often disagree on particulars. It can be invoked to grant my opinions on the Content Editor immunity to all criticism, because I as a customer am always right. Which is obviously silly.
We’re all customers. We’re not buying products on the high street. We’re arguing over the game’s direction wrt. our individual preferences.
Remember - you were the one making an uncharitable strawman out of my position(s) on using the Content Editor. And now you talk of weaponisation? Pull the other one, sorry.
Who’s talking about being happy? I’m talking about the consistency of your position of respecting polite discourse even when disagreeing. Except, as it repeatedly turns out, when it’s you being impolite. Then there’s an excuse. You always have an excuse. So I’m left with the conclusion that you simply want your ideas and arguments treated as such, and everything else is a fig leaf to be discarded when appropriate.
You can disagree with me on the game as much as you like. You can say it however you want (forum rules obviously applying - I’m not here to trap you into doing something and then invoking them. I’m trying, as usual, to talk it out). But if you don’t respect that other players who are invested in the game can have radically different opinions to you, then you’re never going to be able to build consensus.
And this style of response is absolutely a pattern of yours by now.