Re: Few reasons why Units Cards could be change
Mine, and a whole lot of people.Originally Posted by Sharpe
Big, cheap talk and accusation.
I'm a big fan of classical art. One of the most cited reasons the unit cards were jarring to people's eyes in the gameplay video of the Battle of Teutoburg Forest is there was a 100% pure white background. If there was an aged "classical" ceramic/parchment yellowish-orange background it should be a little easier on the eyes, as it's particularly bad to throw pure black and red into contrast against THAT.
Again, I do appreciate classical art, including Greek pottery which I personally have seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. I love it. I love the scenes where Achilles and Ajax are sitting with their shields and spears playing a board game, of charioteers and their horses, in monochromatic pottery art. (Black on yellow/brown background.) However, what we have here is NOT Greek art. It's a MODERN attempt at replicating such a style by MODERN artists. These are NOT real Ancient Greek artists. As such, they are not infallible. The artists who did the Japanese art copies happened to fool people into thinking that the art for Shogun 2 came from MUSEUMS. That artwork had COLOR, however, more than just two or three hues.
Second, these "simplified" figures appear better in larger size, such as on playing-card size sections in the playing card game there. When in a UI card, they are shrunken down to about a 100 by 200 pixel size, and in this new UI, the unit cards are PARTICULARLY narrow BECAUSE the battle UI is now configured to have ALL TWENTY units of an army in a SINGLE ROW, instead of split into two rows like the old Rome/Medieval 2/Empire UI, or taking up the entire width of the screen in the more classical Shogun original layout. Why? Because room has to be made for the OTHER twenty units of either a reinforcing army or a navy in the case of an amphibious assault. In other words, the space that was once taken up by TWENTY unit cards, now is taken up by FORTY units cards. This narrows the unit cards even further, and now there's even less room to include unique, distinct details that will help a player distinguish one unit from another. With up to FORTY itty bitty unit cards crammed into the bottom of the UI, it becomes more important than ever to make the individual unit cards distinguishable, so that players aren't going to be sending sword units against cavalry instead of spears, for example, or sacrificing a prized veteran unit against some berserkers instead of a cheap auxilia unit (you KNOW what I'm talking about...), in a twitch jerk reaction. When you're playing dozens of battles a day in a campaign, it WILL eventually happen. Think accidentally clicking the "Confirm" instead of "Cancel" button on making that hundreds of dollars/pounds/euro purchase.
At the very bottom line, there are TOO FEW COLORS.
We have machines that are capable of (16-bit) 65,536 or even millions of colors (32-bit: 4,294,967,296 - over 4 BILLION), more than the human eye can probably distinguish (about 7 million for the human eye), and what some may have been suggesting is that selecting an art style that for reasons not entirely clear has only two or three colors AND is not representative of the culture or time period may not have been the best choice.
Greek sculptures were reputed to have been brightly painted. Archaeologists and art historians believe the Parthenon in Athens had its metopes brightly painted. There is clear evidence that the Terracotta Army of the Qin Emperor in Xi'an, China, were brightly painted - in the dyes that were available: red/vermillion, purple, blue, bright green. Only the ages and elements have removed the dyes, and excavators are learning how to preserve those paints that RAPIDLY deteriorate once exposed to modern air.
I don't consider my opinion abnormal, nor the opinions of players who approve to be necessarily normal/average either.
Check the following thread with a poll.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...t-do-you-think
- YES - completely like them
52 18.25%- NO!
116 40.70%- Yes, but needs changing slightly
117 41.05%
The "NO!" votes at 116 or 40.70% outnumbers the "YES - completely like them" votes at 52 or 18.25% by MORE THAN TWO TO ONE. (Not bolded and underlined for emotional emphasis there, but to make it absolutely clear for people who don't tend to read things carefully.) There's the "Yes, but needs changing slightly" option which really is an ambiguous, arbitrary and subjective phrase that is not a very good choice for a poll for research purposes, but I suppose it was created as a middle-ground choice by the OP of that thread. The fact that the most number of people, 117 or 41.05%, have voted "needs changing slightly" (What does "slightly" mean here, exactly?) is a sign that there needs to be SOME change. Overall less than ONE-FIFTH of people have shown complete approval. (18.25%) The worst-hated presidents in modern US history, George W. Bush and Harry S. Truman, have had higher lowest-approval ratings - 25% and 22%, respectively.
Ouch.
In any kind of poll or study, when the negative results outweigh the positive results by a factor of more than two to one - THAT is usually a REAL sign that something is CERTAINLY wrong. Companies trying to sell or promote something cannot usually market on a factor like that. Politicians certainly cannot hope to run for office, or hold their office, on approval ratings like that. In any poll of scale, no matter how extreme the choice ("do you like a fork stuck in your eye - yes or no?" "Do you believe the moon is really made of cheese?"), at least SOMEONE will select each choice. I like the IDEA of artistic unit cards in the spirit of classical art - preferably the authentic style of each faction or at least the authentic style of contemporary Roman HIGH art. I don't think I've ever seen depictions of Roman legionaries in that pre-300s BC ancient Greek pottery/vase art style. I've only ever seen them in marble relief form or in mosaics.
Just my opinion...?
EDIT: Also note that the unit cards for Fall of the Samurai, inspired by monochromatic or black & white photography of the late 1800s, HAD MORE COLOR than these unit cards for Rome 2 do. There was red and blue and yellow tinted into the "photographs"/plates which were SO ARTFULLY done.And that's PHOTOGRAPHY, while these guys are doing hand-drawn art which should HAVE no limit to number of colors.
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So many TW gamers will sign your praises for all eternity!
Ideally I'd like unit cards in the fresh, colorful and non-BLACKENED (and non-ANCIENT Greek).... blah blah blah
