Please do not create multiple skins for heroes or units. I’d like wc3 to remain as authentic as possible (I’m okay with new looks), so I don’t want it to look like HOTS where heroes have many skins that players can choose from. Different colors is good enough
Update: In reading the responses posted, I would not mind new skins at all, but I would really, really appreciate the ability to only see the standard skins. Personally, I’m worried about not being able to easily follow unit types during melee. Moreover, this fantastic game is a rts and I don’t want it to emulate something like hots that is hero-centered. I want it to look and feel like wc3. I’m excited about the announcement, and I cannot wait to see what blizzard can do
I’d love the option to make it so you don’t see your opponents skins. So that way if you’re playing against someone that loves skins and has them all plastered on their units you don’t have to see them if that doesn’t tickle your fancy.
They already confirmed you will be able to play archmage as Antonidas or Jaina (riding a horse, to preserve gameplay balance) for example, or paladin as Uther or Arthas (wielding either the hammer or frostmourne).
I am glad they are doing things like this. It adds more variety to the game, without giving any player gameplay advantage.
I am strongly against different skins for regular units though, like grunts or footmen. Regular units should look as basic as possible and the same for all players playing the same unit type. This would otherwise create a giant clusterf*ck of hard to distinguish units during mass fights. It’s already getting harder to differentiate between a footman and a paladin, let alone if the footman had a special, shiny skin. He’s just a basic soldier and should stay as that.
chieftain axe looked awesome in old WCIII, new one ? too much wow (meaning bad) and it looks more like a halberd.
New Tauren tree weapon ? Worse than WC III of old. I didnt like wide trees utilized as a weapon in the first place, but the choice is bad vs very bad, since functionality and stomp remains. Maybe there was a reason why wow didnt bring in any more weapon trees.
They could easily just add an option not to show any custom skins. Poof, problem solved! And those who want to have skins can still see them. Just because you don’t like something, doesn’t mean it has to be denied from everybody. Especially what comes to cosmetics.
I personally would love to have different skins for all heroes and units. It would be awesome to collect chaos orc skins or Blackrock orcs with grey skin and heavy black armors. Or like blood/high elves for humans, or whatever, really!
Technically. There is option “Move type” in the World Editor which has settings like ‘hover’, ‘foot’, ‘fly’, ‘horse’ and so on. I don’t think ‘foot’ and ‘horse’ have actually that much difference but maybe some sound settings, like horse units might have some special sound effects on them, but not entirely sure.
Different collision sizes and movement speeds. Even though you could apply the same values on the ground model (without the horse), it wouldn’t look good.
Movement speed has nothing to do with being on a horse though. The blademaster (and several more ground models) have the same movement speed as the far seer and archmage. In fact, from what I remember, the Tauren Chieftan actually has faster movement speed than far seer and archmage with level 3 aura.
Selling modern USA minority group skin packs would be an immense success. Can you imagine the memes that the typical offensive Russian kiddo would enjoy? That’s a must buy.
I would hate myself if they implemented it after reading my bright post and going eureka… But at the same time, I would be eager to see it in action!
On a more serious topic, I’m torn about the gender-swapped skins. The Demon Hunter (Demon Huntress!) and the Dreadlord (err, Dreadlady? sounds cool, btw) seem like fine additions. Jaina is a must, too. But what’s about the others? What’s about the strict gender roles of the Night Elves? The vanilla WoW cinematic already disrupted the feel by showing [off, hehe] the NE Druidess (that turns into a kitty, admittedly), but can you imagine female Druidesses of the Claw? Like angry, angry ursas, she-bears? Maybe, it would be cool, actually… Eh, don’t know.
Female Archers and “Hunters” would feel very wrong, though. On the other hand, scantily clad Night Elf dudes shooting loads [of arrows] at the weary travellers of both the disgusting Horde and the Alliance… That would be a sight.
@BrazyStarfish, Salamander
I couldn’t agree more. I remember an early promotional video about HotS in which the devs explained how important a character’s silhouette is to recognizing them easily and quickly. And then they went ahead and released all manner of skins for heroes that change their appearance massively.
Obviously the idea is that people would pay for them and by using them provide free advertisement, nudging the other players into purchasing skins for themselves.
To me that is simply an underhanded tactic. It is basically a continuous low-level attack on the player’s restraint that should not be part of a game for which they paid already.
Compare it to other forms of entertainment: On free TV channels you will have ads, but not on pay-per-view channels or programmes. On the radio you will have ads, but not on an album or song you buy.
Likewise such “advertisement” is tolerable in free-to-play games, since it is essentially your form of payment.
IF there will be paid skins in the game, I suspect you won’t be able to disable other player’s skins being displayed, but if they only included some free ones that make sense lorewise (like Jaina or Arthas), there seems to be no reason not to allow people to disable them. I actually thought it would have been nice in the original game if heroes could randomly have the campaign-exclusive skins (Jaina, Arthas, Tichondrius, Thrall, Grommash, Illidan, Malfurion).
I find extensive numbers of character skins immensely irritating in many games, not only because they make it harder to parse game situations, but also because they often break the overall design (on purpose).
IF there will be paid customization, I will pass on the game, unless there will be a disabling option.
If there will be free customization, I should expect the disabling option to be there, but will probably not be dissuaded if it isn’t there.
As long as they are only campaign or other “serious” alternative skins (like they mentioned Jaina, or say Grom for BM) I’m fine with skins. Crazy HotS stuff is a big no no though.
New skins are find provided they don’t deviate from the theme I.e no Halloween, Xmas, themed units etc. or at least if they do allow only the owner to see them.