A real eye sore. Poor visibility and a downgrade in so many ways compared to the original.
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Compare it to the terrain in Oasis. Much better visibility and cleaner. I don’t mind that the sand or lighting is a different color in Savannah or Watering Hole, but why have all those ugly splotches on the map? There’s all these plants on the terrain obscuring vision.
A savannah in real life is generally covered in grass and plants, makes sense that they have that for the terrain. the oasis map is a sand desert, these are how they were in the original game also.
You may as well ask why highland has grass on it (because it’s representing a temperate location)
Savannah has grass because savannahs have grass.
Honestly the retold version is a lot less harsh than the old one. The old one is covered in splotches as you say
I don’t think the original Savannah looked great, but it didn’t suffer from some of the same problems as the Retold Savannah. Look at the terrain in the Retold screenshot, almost every square is covered by some muddy green splotch. The terrain is also way less smooth. You can see how many colors and textures are clashing on the terrain and how it obscures visibility. Yes, it’s true the original Savannah has an ugly brown plant texture, but it’s also more uniform, which makes it less jarring. Just compare the screenshot of Oasis to the Savannah one. Do I think the original Savannah looked great, no, but the terrain had better readability. Watering Hole looks worse than Savannah in Retold, but both should be changed.
To be fair the ee version is especially bad.
Oasis is just a different kind of region, desert instead of savannah. They could make watering hole a desert map but that’s not really what a watering hole is. Water means plants generally.
As for readability, I don’t have an issue with it but I don’t play competitively. To improve readability they could make all maps desert terrain, but I have no interest in that.
I was thinking they could use the desert terrain for these maps, but recolor it to make it lighter or darker. Maybe use orange/clay or cracked earth looking terrain . They could also add different types of trees, shrubs, and rocks sparingly on the terrain so that it doesn’t look overwhelming. It’s not just that the visibility on Watering Hole or Savannah is bad, it’s that it looks washed out and kind of ugly. I’ve seen a bunch of people express this on stream. The terrains are arguably the weakest part of Retold, eventhough some look decent. The terrain in AoE 4 was a huge controversy and sort of sunk that game.
Up close look comparing the Oasis and Watering Hole terrain. Way too much going on with the image on the right. Too many indentations in the soil, blurry shrubbery, uneven surface etc…
Compare the original to what we got in Retold. The new watering hole is not easy to play on due to poor clarity, and it’s just ugly in general with too much clutter. The brown/green plant splotches all over the map. If you notice the ground texture has no smoothness too it. All these crevices and indentations in the terrain which create too much detail.
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I disagree
The old one is worse
The ne only needs more brightness
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The new one needs a terrain overhaul. The terrain is unreadable. Graphically the old one does look outdated and isn’t great to begin with.
Check out this screenshot. You can barely see the villagers on Watering Hole. The vegetation on the farms is too dense also. Watering Hole has so much clutter; it’s so hard to see.
