SE Asian should either have their own style or grouped with India rather than China. You would expect same climate same armour.
For me regional unit sprites are the number 1 thing I want in AoE2DE.
I have played AoE3DE, AoE4 and AoMR so Iām used to different civilisations having different looking units so it feels so wrong going back to AoE2DE.
Every civilisations outside of Europe just feel so wrong to play. It kills all my immersion every time and I think itās a big factor why many people prefer more European civs being added to the game. Everything outside of Europe just feels wrong.
The farther you go away to worse it gets. American and African civs look the worst. Not even the skin colour of the units is remotely correct. Which is double strange considering the unique and regional units look correct.
The Indian civs have a lot of regional and unique units so their armies feel less European but then the European looking are so strange between all the Indian ones.
I donāt want to imagine how wrong Chronicles would look like with European units.
I guess for someone who only ever played AoE2(DE) and has little to no time spend in other games of the series its something you get used to. You just get used to all units looking European. You donāt really think about the soldiers and more about the numbers they represent.
But I donāt think the majority of people that play AoE2 are people that basically play nothing else. That is just the dedicated core of the community.
Imagine someone wanting to pick up the game now. Especially someone who is not from Europe. Like someone from China seeing the new DLC about China. And then they see all the armies full of European looking units ruining their immersion. They will probably reconsider picking up the game.
And the game needs to grow and attract new players it canāt survive of the existing player base forever.
And I expect >90% of people that would get used to regional skins very quickly and most of them would not want to go back.
How many people complained about the looks of the Definitive edition when it came out? How man of those people think that AoE2HD looks better now?
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For me its a thing iām able to suspend disbelief on. Iām not at all arguing that it wouldnāt be more proper or more authentic-looking to have regional unit sprites, and if I was able to get everything on my wishlist it would be on there. I just also get that there are a lot of people who play for the competition moreso than the immersion, and for those people instant readability is more important. I personally would rather focus on aesthetics that would be less problematic for the competitive scene (which I enjoy watching) such as architecture sets, or environmental stuff to make campaign settings look more true to where they are actually set (Eurasian steppes and Indian settings both are ok, but I think there is improvement to be made, even jungles and deserts probably have a bit of room for improvement)
Competitiveness is not an issue at all because you can just turn of the regional sprites.
There are people that donāt even have building sprites so they can be more competitive.
Most people donāt pick up a new game because they want to be competitive in it (well unless it doesnāt offer anything else), they pick it up for other things like immersion, campaigns and so on and then stick around for the competitive part.
Like small trees, idle villager indicator or permanent building range indicators it is something that some people want but others donāt.
So I personally think additional cosmetic objects or architecture sets do less for immersion then regional skins would do.
I just canāt stand Aztecs in plate armour or Mayan crossbows anymore.
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If they go that way, awesome! Because yeah the casual scenario person that I am as a player would love regional skins, itās jut the pro-scene spectator part of me that is nervous about it.
If they made it toggleable that would be ideal. They havenāt made features toggleable in the past (that iām aware of) is the main reason I assume they wonāt do that, but if they are going to do that would assuage any concerns I personally would have.
In the very worst case you could always install a mod, right?
A default skins for everyone mod.
But looking at the reactions in the forum and other places they will likely make that an official feature or at last an official mod.
Yeah, he was put on the spot, being asked a question about something that had been done several years earlier by someone else. Totally understandable he would not remember exactly.
Iāll make a new poll about regional skins after the DLC releases and we really know what it contains and we can actually experience how it impacts the game.
Chronicles also gives a good comparison point by having units that look almost identical or totally different to the equivalent AoE2 units.
Also the question if units should have regional names.
Like should the American Crossbow still be called Crossbow when the sprite uses a bow and arrow?
I hope and want regional skins but they didnāt even add a byzantine architecture set to sell mountain royals so I doubt something this comprehensive will happen.
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