i think a little check box in the options for ‘‘regional unit skins’’ would make sense. like for color moods and other graphical settings. Settings like that are always client side
This forces everyone to download the skins. No thanks.
Jist make it a completely optional dlc
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Not if only client side. But then, you’d still need to have ti download repeated versions of the stock units skins
They could code it so if a unit graphic’s for a specific civ isn’t found on the mod files it just uses the default one instead
Then you just have one graphic per unit unless you install a mod
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If its a toggle in the settings, like they asked for, everyone has to download everything. You choose whether or not to use them.
As a completely optional dlc, only those who want to use them have ro download them
i think you misunderstood me. ‘‘Buy regional unit skins DLC → toggle it on and off in the options menu’’. without DLC the check box would be greyed out. No download of regional unit skins if you don’t have the DLC. The visual appearance is client side only. So you can switch between standart and regional unit skins (for immersion and competitive or whatever reason) and if you don’t want them at all, you don’t have to pay and don’t have to download them. I think that’s the way everyone can be happy with.
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Not sure where the confusion comes from.
AoE2DE already has the Enhanced Graphics Pack that you can choose to download or not and you can still choose to disable it ingame if you already downloaded it.
All of the suggested DLCs here would work the same way, independent on if they are free or not.
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Zhenshili mod added a lot of this but would love an official version. I’ve always hated the readability concerns… If you want to point and click coloured blobs as quickly as you can play a different game!
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That could be super easy or super hard, as we don’t know the source code. My guess is that is in the part of the code that belongs to AoE (1997) and if I were a developer wouldn’t dare touch that, because it could break a lot of things.
as soon as they make skin DLC that cost money is the day they test water to potentially limit graphical mods and they’ll get to decide which type of “graphical mod” can be allowed. this could lead to killing mods down the road simply because people is “willing to pay for it”. guess modders will go back to HD/AOC while DE only remains for competitive play and “looks”.
you talk as if it was natural, little did you know how much bug and problem it introduced for the game and modders.
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I can’t see them ever do that. Taking people features away they already had before.
I think it would have the opposite effect. Make it easier for mods to replace skins because they are now addressed differently. Then people don’t have to do data mods to make unique/regional unit skins mods.
They would of course take down mods that just redistribute the payed skins.
I’m not exactly sure how the system works but there is one very simple way that would definitely work:
Give every civilisation/architecture set unique unit skins in the Data set but then just link all of them to the default one in the file system.
Then modders can overwrite those links with actual sprites.
Well yes it would probably brake existing mods. But you can’t improve on a game if you try being compatible with old mods.
I mean every DLC release brakes half of the mods already.
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thats what I would like to happen but we know all too well the management behind gets to decides, not the devs.
I wouldn’t be surprised that if this game make them enough money and gain enough traction, they’d even put in loot boxes and stuff. BR is a great example of them trying/testing water and due to how unpopular it was it never went anywhere.
however Skin is another matter and will no doubt be popular, even if its a small possibility I dont even want to go there, avoid at all cost, period.
they can introduce new skins, but not as paid DLC, ever.
they would have to find ways and implement it somehow similar to current extra civs that only paid players have access to. but Skins however doesn’t work that way, at the moment and even unpaid player have access to new skins in scenario editor and they could easily use them for anything.
to prevent this they’d be forced to implement and re do current system and who knows what they’ll put in to restrict this and what effect it’ll have. no thanks.
edit: now that I thought about it, the newly introduced SLD with better compression is a method to limit it and can/will kill off mod. they specifically not remove the support for previous SMX format so mods dont break, so they can simply introduce a new format past SLD and remove support for other graphical files. YEP NO THANKS.
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that sounds dangerous mate. with amount of bugs this game currently has, and ones reported well over 1+ year that remains unfixed, just imagine the “toggle” option accidentally remove support for non-standard graphics and all mods with custom graphic dies. then we wait for possibly 3-4 months for them to fix that crap, just NO.
I mean, even bugs as major as crashes sometimes don’t get hotfix for and we have to wait 1-2 months, the modders will no doubt get left in the dust with this one.
I wouldn’t see it wrong if they were unique free skins of generic units (like the ones the Dutch and Ottomans villagers have now in AoE 3)…then for the unique units and kings for Regicide yes I would make paid skins…
ok so basically you don’t trust the developers and the management behind them at all and rather have them do nothing that has the chance to create new bugs until all bugs are fixed?
That’s a little extreme.
I regional skin DLC would just include SLD (or whatever) files.
Why should they remove the support of SMX if they haven’t done it yet? To make people angry?
What does that have to do with Lootboxes? Most of the industry has gone away from them by now.
Also I have always been talking about a DLC in the literal meaning. You download the files. If you don’t have the the DLC installed you don’t see the skins even if you play against someone who has the DLC.
If you have the DLC the people you play against also have custom skins.
Also it is a DLC so you can disable it in Steam (and probably also in the Microsoft store) so even if they don’t manage to add a toggle for it in the game you can still just not activate the DLC.
I can understand that you’d personally not want to pay for it, that’s fine.
But I think you are panicking a little to much here.
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I’ll add to this, having civ skins was something that was done by a mod in HD. It’s not something completely unheard of
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everything new in a game can cause new bugs and problems. that’s absolutely no reason for not making new stuff. by that logic we would still play age of kings
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I wrote: “thats what I would like to happen but we know all too well the management behind gets to decides, not the devs.” and I am being pretty specific here. if you want to treat them the same by all means.
but why can’t people not connect the dots? when it comes to monetary gain they’ll do so for the reason of “protecting paid customer”. imagine people who pays for skin DLC only to have other modders release them as a mod, you know since it’s all in the game. it just won’t end well.
being a bit extreme yes I do agree, theres no telling what they are willing to do when trying to get more popularity in this game and lootboxes aren’t far fetched when you think about IF when this game gets popular enough. they have already tried BR which is a joke in itself trying to do that in a RTS game.
what part of people would have access to them do you not understand? just look at AOK heaven for example, DE graphical asset released on those forum. people who didn’t pay for DE would still end up getting them.
- paid DLC skins gets leaked and released as mods
- change entire system which cost a ton of money
- or, just limit the mods via graphical file format or through other easier means
yea I can already see which is much easier, NO THANKS.
HD is a dead game that is no longer updated by MS and they specifically released DE to take over. how is this comparison even relevant? you want to use something that hasn’t been updated by MS for years that they dropped support to something they just released 3 yrs ago hoping to revive and target possibly esport?
wrong. bug is a pretty big issue alright, but doesn’t come close to the concern of them limiting the game in a way that would possibly restrict mods, not to mention in this case it’s both restricting mod + additional bugs that might get introduced.
since you like ot cherry pick and conveniently ignore the fact that I said about them possibly restricting graphical mods, and conveniently ignoring the fact they taking months or 1+ year to fix bugs. I also mentioned they can release skins, but just not paid DLC, why don’t you try to address those issue yeah?
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For sure this kind of cosmetic DLC is needed since Mesoamerican civilizations have champions and halberdiers ## ### ####### but they never even discovered metal working technologies for weapons and armors but only for jewelry, it is not even feasible to wear metal armor and weapons in the jungle environment, it is pure fantasy breaking the feel of the game.
Even worse the knights/cavaliers on Chinese/Japanese/Koreans are hilarious since knight/cavalier/paladin was a thing and a way of life only in Europe.
Japanese should have mounted spears and mounted samurai instead, while Chinese and Koreans should have mounted spears and mounted swordsmen with round shield and one-handed swords with eastern Asian armor and look.
Also Vikings are well known to have mounted one-handed axemen with big round shields and mounted spears instead of cavaliers.
European Monks instead of Imams and Buddhist monks are also an issue, why is this even happenening years after they managed to do such a great job with Mesoamerican monks???!!
While African civs having white villagers is at least pretty silly.
It is a historical game trying to get civilizations as accurate as possible as we can see in the latest expansions so this issue should be solved at least from this visual point of view.
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I understand your points. I think you look from a way too pessimistic/negative perspective on the whole new content thing. I love seeing devs trying new features and being creative. Maybe it’s just me i don’t know but i think regional unit skins seem to be the logical next step into immersion/visual upgrade for the game and i really don’t think that this should be a big problem. Player created content like mods should never be an excuse for not making new things for the devs. But again, that’s maybe just me.
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