So AGS, since all the concerns and their responses about these topics are scattered across and some long forgotten, I’m going to gather together all the points most of us who care about the game here had at one point and hope for some kind of resolution. If I forget something I hope people can bring it up in the comments, and I’ll add it to the main post.
I don’t want anyone’s concerns to be swept under the rug, because one person’s issue should be all of our issues, regardless of what you are into personally, or what stance you have.
I apologize for any stronger language, it’s just the way I think, I’m trying my best to sound as reasonable as I can so that it can be digested easier.
- Shadowhunter demon form
I’m not going to expand on this too much because people in the thread have already explained, but basically people are hoping the changes aren’t of malicious nature and were just a glitch. I’ve read some bad accusations about people asking for a clarification being banned, but I don’t have proof so I’ll just leave it at that.
If this is a deliberate change however, it’s a good intro for what’s everything wrong with our version. The intended form is the bottom picture, why does our demonic form over here give us dark skin and turns our hair black? I don’t think most people signed up to be a scuffed werewolf from a 40-50s movie when they’re thinking about playing a demonic character. It’s not okay to change things because new players might be unaware of how it was originally, and that goes for pretty much all of the things I’ll bring up in this thread.
3/23 Edit: Roxx replied to the inquiry, no confirmation for either yet but they are looking into it.
3/25 Edit: Roxx came back with new info and closed the thread. It was deliberate, not a glitch. Read the reasoning given here
- Recolored npcs and card art
Same thread but there are probably multiple ones on this one – why are there npcs that had been recolored? This is something that most people would call racist if it was in any other context. I believe the intent wasn’t malicious, but it ends up looking really bad either way. There is not a single western game, movie or book that was adopted in the east and had skins of characters recolored to fit their culture better. None, people don’t do that regardless of where they are from, it’s weird. Why did you feel the need to make a Korean fantasy game “more inclusive to the west” by altering characters in such a way?
I feel like people should be really mad about this, because it’s not normal, but the nature of how all of these issues are being swept under the rug means no one knows better, and you can’t give a shit about something you are unaware of. The fact is, if people knew about this you’d be reading articles about amazon blackfacing asian characters over “this character is running around in panties and high heels.”
- Face presets
This is how my character is supposed to look like.
But instead, this is what I see during character creation.
Can you please explain to me, why have you replaced already existing facial options with newer ones that aren’t in the game anywhere else? I hope I don’t have to tell you why this is really bad, since it’s not just an npc that you interact with once during leveling, but your very own character, that costs money to modify a second time by the way.
And again, new players have no clue and just assume this is the way the game is, meanwhile players that know are annoyed that options have been taken away from them, some of which they might have been looking forward to use.
- Missing/replaced outfits in char creation
It’s an issue with a broader stance I’ve seen CMs bring up as well before, and it also ties into the same line of thinking that led to the previous changes.
Why is this a thing? Why are new (and old) players shown something different in our version than what they are supposed to see? The outfit you replaced here does not showcase the class fantasy at all. It’s just bad. It looks like some scuffed Assassin’s Creed from the middle ages.
But this is subjective, the main issue is again you have replaced something that new players have no way of knowing about. It’s questionable at best that you have spent manpower on this instead of more pressing things.
The whole approach that AGS seems to have with this “we will do our best to hide the evil part of the game that coincidentally seems to be most of it,” is just outright trash. How are you going to promo and show off skins properly when you’re afraid to show them at all? Other servers get videos of new skin releases showing them for players to get excited about and hype them up, while for the single skinline you added so far 1+ month into the game, all you did was drop a single line of text in a patch notes, with 0 pictures, and that wasn’t even the type of skin you find problematic. (3/23 Edit, they made a news post for the skins – with pictures – but the most revealing one wasn’t included, not gonna tinfoil it though, and better late than never)
What will happen when summer skins are going to be in season? Are you not even going to write a single sentence about it and just hope that players notice and spend money and that no new kotaku or other dogshit “amazon sexualizes women in video games” article that NO ONE reads pops up? You HAVE to ignore these, it’s not feasible to please this layer of the internet or reality, because they don’t live in the real world.
Some of the rest that still belong to this part
– Replaced starter outfits (no you don’t get white drops for them, and they are useless anyways since there is no transmog system)
– Sneaky additions of unneeded pieces of clothing to npcs that required someone to sit down and edit, which is insane to me.
Example:
Inanna got a new inner layer of clothing for no reason
– Edited promo material (they said it’s not gonna be like this ingame, but then what’s the point? It’s just going to mislead everyone)
Thanks to @svalr93 for bringing it up
Okay apparently these 2 are supposed to be the same skin, but the one we got for char creation has pants instead for some reason.
What’s up with that? I couldn’t find the right one when I was looking through the skins in KR, so are we the only ones with it? Can someone that played on RU/KR/JP confirm?
– Long radiosilence on the thousands of requests for all nature of skins into the game, including revealing and summer skins. Thankfully @Maselbart provided us with a much needed response, but the point still stands.
Shameless plug
TLDR
– Recolored npcs
– Replaced and westernized facial presets
– Drastically altered class experience (demon form)
– Prude attitude towards showcasing what the game has to offer
– Random censorships that no one could have possibly asked for
On a closing note, this is really important, so please read it carefully.
Don’t change, add.
Don’t replace things in the game, don’t make it into your version, because it’s not ours that’s for sure, and a game should be for players. You don’t answer to journalists, to investors, to anything. You answer to us, because without us the game does not exist in the first place, and this does not change no matter what borders you bring the game through.
I’ll put here the things I missed that other community members have brought up
– Regarding translation
So… let her have some dignity.
we got one character being turned into a black character and you’re using the word blackwashed? Also, this version of the game lets you make NOT just asian characters, but of others races as well, including asian. This is the western market. Western! We need diversity and we needed it yesterday!
