I very much dislike the flag occupation.

[MyLordFellington]

A very minor thing. But this is a simple case of something that didn't need to changed. Why remove stripe occupation? It worked. We don't need this apparent ugliness. I LOVE the living map, but this... eugh...

See how the stripes don't really interfere or try to distract you like the above image? Clean and alittle transparent

I do not want entire countries when occupied to be like this. Please. Do not. I've always hated flag maps.

 

[FedericoLachino]

Fully agree, aside from the fact that (in my humble opinion) its ugly, It might get a little confusing if a modded flag is a simple plain colour (such as libya's flag from 1977-2011).

 

[Nitan17]

Hard agree.

From information aspect, it's plain worse than stripes. With stripes, to know who occupies who where all you needed to know were the map colors of nations, which are always visible on the map and intuitively associated with the countries. With repeating flag pattern, now you need to know what the flags of involved countries look like and that info is absent from the map, have fun manually clicking each nation to check their flag. Also, flags change during the game, adding more confusion to the mix (map colors can also change, but more rarely and the switch is immediately visible on the map).

From a visual standpoint, it looks very messy, ugly and unfitting. When I saw it for the first time I thought it was a placeholder or a bugged texture.

 

[Vohen]

This would seem to me like a weird hill to die on, but if PDX is adamant on not changing this, I'm sure we can at least expect mods to do it.
Now, for anyone who cares, if such a thing will be ironman compatible remains to be seen...

 

[FranklyJustNess]

Maybe it could be tried to have the flag occupation, but with more transparency. I don't think there's currently a way to tell what country is underneath the occupation without clicking. Like in the first screenshot - is Mexico occupying USA or native countries?

 

[Cymsdale]

A dev did address this in a dev diary, and unfortunately it appears they consider flags better and everyone who disagrees is just wrong I guess. (emphasis added)

Alright, to walk you through my train of thought here; I am very aware that diagonal stripes have been used as visual language for a long time, my intent with the flags where to try to steer away from them by actually providing visualization of the country taking the territory in question. The diagonal angle we currently have for the flags was a way to still have some kind of resemblance of the old, since upon implementation of the new system and horizontal flags we thought people might have an easier time understanding the new visual language better with some elements that are familiar. Still, I think having flags instead of just stripes in country colors is a big improvement and if people are scarred by the old diagonals then we could look into adjusting it.

Let's be clear, it's not the diagonal that sucks, it's the flags that suck. (Although making the flags diagonal sucks too).

 

[Askorti]

I think this is very much a change for the sake of change. It doesn't actually provide more information, quite the opposite in fact. Looks are of course a matter of taste, but I personally believe they are much uglier. In particular because the flag on a map is a complete outlier. You do not see flags on the map in any situation other than an occupation, which does not actually make any logical sense, there is no clear association between the two other than the one made by this decision in development.

If someone was out of context, and wasn't following this game's development, the idea that the flag represents occupation would probably be completely alien to them, while stripes in the color of the occupier make much more sense. And they aren't used only in Paradox games, they are also used in maps in general, where if contested ownership and occupation is represented, it is very often in the form of stripes.

So here Paradox leaves this well established norm, that exists even outside of their games in favor of something completely unintuitive for the sake of... What exactly?

 

[Wizzington]

Flag occupation definitely conveys more information than colored stripes in a game where you can have numerous countries of quite similar map coloration. I would also say that in my subjective opinion the flag occupation looks a lot better in-game than it does on a screenshot. Stripe occupation is not particularly visually pleasing, it's just that it's been the norm in our games for a long time and gets a pass for this reason.

With all that said, I think we could still do more to iterate on the flag occupation and experiment with different scaling, tiling and transparency, but I still consider it an improvement over stripes regardless.

 

[Knuf Wons]

Flag occupation definitely conveys more information than colored stripes in a game where you can have numerous countries of quite similar map coloration. I would also say that in my subjective opinion the flag occupation looks a lot better in-game than it does on a screenshot. Stripe occupation is not particularly visually pleasing, it's just that it's been the norm in our games for a long time and gets a pass for this reason.

With all that said, I think we could still do more to iterate on the flag occupation and experiment with different scaling, tiling and transparency, but I still consider it an improvement over stripes regardless.

I feel like creating a “checkerboard” with transparent holes between flags would help see what country is being occupied while preserving the goal of making occupation more informationally dense. It picks up on the good of diagonals (see both countries vieing for control), without just hoping the aesthetic is the important part. In fact, by spacing out the flags each can exist and be appreciated without being visually overwhelmed.

 

[ArthanM]

Flag occupation definitely conveys more information than colored stripes in a game where you can have numerous countries of quite similar map coloration. I would also say that in my subjective opinion the flag occupation looks a lot better in-game than it does on a screenshot. Stripe occupation is not particularly visually pleasing, it's just that it's been the norm in our games for a long time and gets a pass for this reason.

With all that said, I think we could still do more to iterate on the flag occupation and experiment with different scaling, tiling and transparency, but I still consider it an improvement over stripes regardless.

While I don't hate the new occupation visualization.
It makes it harder for me to orient because most of the time I have a problem to recognize where a flag starts and ends which then leads to me staring at it longer than I should. This is of course different from flag to flag.
Maybe create some mild borders between the flags?
It could also be because of screenshots are from more or less random situations so I have to figure out who is involved where. So, this may not be such a big deal in the game because I will usually know the participants before looking at the occupation lines. Maybe, not sure. It feels like there is a room for improvement.

 

[Voigt]

I am still not sure how I feel about flag occupation, it probably can be improved, but I have to say, I don't very much like striped occupation.

 

[Vohen]

Flag occupation definitely conveys more information than colored stripes in a game where you can have numerous countries of quite similar map coloration. I would also say that in my subjective opinion the flag occupation looks a lot better in-game than it does on a screenshot. Stripe occupation is not particularly visually pleasing, it's just that it's been the norm in our games for a long time and gets a pass for this reason.

With all that said, I think we could still do more to iterate on the flag occupation and experiment with different scaling, tiling and transparency, but I still consider it an improvement over stripes regardless.

It still presents a problem at associating with what we see on the map.
Besides what @FranklyJustNess said you'd also need to have a deeper knowledge of flags to get the information presented there, which can be quite dynamic.
With colors, however, it's directly present on the map, even if you have no idea who's which flag, you can see the color on the map right there, so it's much easier to read.

Like, for example, what happens when we get something niche like a communist Tibet, with a completely unrecognized flag?
If the occupation is done with flags, you'll have no idea what's going on until you click around and find the flag for yourself.
If, on another hand, it's done by stripes, you can tell just at a glance "ah, the green country is invading the yellow country", I hope you can see just how more intuitive that is.

A nice exercise in this would be playing the flagle.io game daily, see how many flags you can recognize.
The way I see, Vic3 is essentially importing this guessing game.

 

[Bowser]

Flag occupation definitely conveys more information than colored stripes in a game where you can have numerous countries of quite similar map coloration. I would also say that in my subjective opinion the flag occupation looks a lot better in-game than it does on a screenshot. Stripe occupation is not particularly visually pleasing, it's just that it's been the norm in our games for a long time and gets a pass for this reason.

With all that said, I think we could still do more to iterate on the flag occupation and experiment with different scaling, tiling and transparency, but I still consider it an improvement over stripes regardless.

I think it is good that you try new things, overall the game looks amazing and like a big improvement over previous titles. But regarding this, I agree with the posts above that you should reconsider. Maybe the flag occupation looks much better in-game than on screenshots, and maybe I will change opinion upon playing the game. But I remain sceptic.

When zoomed out, the game map looks like a (beautiful) paper map. But in that context the flags on the map seem like an anomaly, it is not how occupation is visualized on traditional paper maps and I think it risks being immersion-breaking and strange-looking. Stripes IMO shows clearly which country is occupying and which is getting occupied, and in my subjective opinion looks fine. If you really don't want to use stripes there are other, more traditional, ways to show occupation besides flags that is more in-line with the paper map look.

Anyway, it is good to hear that you are still working on it.

 

[ero_sk]

Flag occupation definitely conveys more information than colored stripes in a game where you can have numerous countries of quite similar map coloration. I would also say that in my subjective opinion the flag occupation looks a lot better in-game than it does on a screenshot. Stripe occupation is not particularly visually pleasing, it's just that it's been the norm in our games for a long time and gets a pass for this reason.

With all that said, I think we could still do more to iterate on the flag occupation and experiment with different scaling, tiling and transparency, but I still consider it an improvement over stripes regardless.

The issue is of course very subjective, however, there is clearly quite a large group of people (judging by comments and reactions on this forum) that don't like the looks of it. I'm not quite sure why is it so hard to make this configurable and let each player decide what they prefer to see.

The trend of making things less configurable in the gaming industry is worrying.

 

[Lord Lambert]

Flag occupation definitely conveys more information than colored stripes in a game where you can have numerous countries of quite similar map coloration. I would also say that in my subjective opinion the flag occupation looks a lot better in-game than it does on a screenshot. Stripe occupation is not particularly visually pleasing, it's just that it's been the norm in our games for a long time and gets a pass for this reason.

With all that said, I think we could still do more to iterate on the flag occupation and experiment with different scaling, tiling and transparency, but I still consider it an improvement over stripes regardless.

How easy would it be to mod the visuals of it to return the diagonal stripes that many clearly prefer?

 

[blobmaneatsme]

Another question, is how much do we actually need a colour for occupied territories? It makes sense in the unit military system but in the front system it feels like 9/10 times could be answered by "which side of the red, glowing line of death is it on?"

 

[Wizzington]

How easy would it be to mod the visuals of it to return the diagonal stripes that many clearly prefer?

I imagine it's totally possible, though I'm not completely sure. I would also be willing to consider stripes as a graphics option if there remains a consistent demand for it after release and we know it's not just a matter of 'this is different'.

 

[Lord Lambert]

I would also be willing to consider stripes as a graphics option if there is still a considerable demand for it after release

This would be incredibly welcome, and I believe that demand will remain.

 

[Wizzington]

Another question, is how much do we actually need a colour for occupied territories? It makes sense in the unit military system but in the front system it feels like 9/10 times could be answered by "which side of the red, glowing line of death is it on?"

For one, you might have a totally occupied island with no fronts, in which case occupation wouldn't be shown at all.

 

[Wizzington]

This would be incredibly welcome, and I believe that demand will remain.

I'm not saying for sure it won't, but experience has taught me to always be a bit skeptical about demands to go back to the old way of visualizing something in the game. In most cases, that demand largely disappears as soon as people get their hands on the game and get used to the new way.