Vanilla POTC

[K9zz]

was just wondering whats wrong with the vanilla version of the game bedsides the controls being goofy?

 

[LarryHookins]

Are you asking why dozens of people spent thousands of hours over the last more-than-a-decade modding the game?

A quick read-through of the feature list should answer that one nicely. New features, new storylines, new locations, new ships, new items, lots of tweaks and balances, the ability to sail between islands without going to the world map, a general refinement of the game play, addition of better role playing elements, additional realism, several different time periods to play in from the earliest days through Napoleonic, with reasonably period-accurate weapons, ships, international relations, etc.

Are all the changes better? That's for you to decide. But there's a lot more there than in the vanilla version.

Hook

 

[K9zz]

Are you asking why dozens of people spent thousands of hours over the last more-than-a-decade modding the game?

A quick read-through of the feature list should answer that one nicely. New features, new storylines, new locations, new ships, new items, lots of tweaks and balances, the ability to sail between islands without going to the world map, a general refinement of the game play, addition of better role playing elements, additional realism, several different time periods to play in from the earliest days through Napoleonic, with reasonably period-accurate weapons, ships, international relations, etc.

Are all the changes better? That's for you to decide. But there's a lot more there than in the vanilla version.

Hook

My question is whats wrong with the vanilla game? Since day one ive always used the build never tried it vanilla... im not saying nothing about the work that went into the build ..i just want to know whats wrong with the vanilla game..is there game breaking bugs or what thats all..why all the hostility about asking a f'in question?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I see no hostility? How about we keep it that way!

There were definitely some bugs in the original game, though personally I never found them game breaking.
So as far as I'm concerned, it isn't so much "what was wrong with the vanilla game", but "how could it be better".

For starters, the original game was very simple and while you COULD do free play, there was virtually nothing to do outside the main quest and the side quests.
A fair few side quests were also never finished by the original developers, so were left disabled in the released version of the game.
One of the first mods was to allow players to continue after the main quest had completed as well, since that used to end the game.

I always try to encourage people to try the original game for themselves so they can find out first hand what our community has been doing these past many years.
Otherwise it is very easy to take our work for granted, which would be a bit of a shame.

 

[LarryHookins]

I haven't played the vanilla game in over 7 years. Before I discovered the Community Build Mod, which became New Horizons, I played it a lot.

At its heart, the vanilla game is basically an arcade game. You play through the story, get a little Pirates of the Caribbean ambiance for a while, and it's over. There's nothing wrong with that, but I was looking for more of a pirate simulator where I could play in the PotC sandbox and ignore the story if I wanted.

I could be a pirate, or I could hunt pirates. I could be a merchant trader, buying and selling goods. I could just go looking for adventure. I wanted something with fairly realistic sailing, and the ability to sail between islands without having to use the world map, although I know some prefer using the world map exclusively. While some if it was possible in the vanilla game, the Mod gave me all that and more.

I logged over 800 hours in Sea Dogs: To Each His Own on Steam before realizing that what I really wanted was what New Horizons provides and so I'm back here. TEHO does some things better, and is a more modern game, but New Horizons is the better game of the two.

Like @Pieter Boelen said, people wanted to make the game better. And for many of us, making the game better wasn't a side quest, it was a way of life. If nothing else, PotC vanilla gave us a good base to start from.

Hook

 

[Grey Roger]

What is wrong with the vanilla game? Nothing, as far as I can see - I played it happily for years before I knew the Build Mod existed. If there are any bugs, they never caused me any trouble, probably because those parts of the game which were seriously bugged or incomplete, such as some side quests, were disabled so players can't see them.

I didn't even regard the controls as goofy, and indeed change the controls when playing the Build Mod to match those of the vanilla game - specifically, instead of using mouse buttons for "Attack" and "Block", which are the Build Mod defaults, I put them back to the vanilla game's Space and Ctrl keys respectively.

Of course, the vanilla game seems very limited when compared against the Build Mod, the reason being the whole purpose of the Build Mod is to expand beyond the vanilla game.

 

[K9zz]

I see no hostility? How about we keep it that way!

There were definitely some bugs in the original game, though personally I never found them game breaking.
So as far as I'm concerned, it isn't so much "what was wrong with the vanilla game", but "how could it be better".

For starters, the original game was very simple and while you COULD do free play, there was virtually nothing to do outside the main quest and the side quests.
A fair few side quests were also never finished by the original developers, so were left disabled in the released version of the game.
One of the first mods was to allow players to continue after the main quest had completed as well, since that used to end the game.

I always try to encourage people to try the original game for themselves so they can find out first hand what our community has been doing these past many years.
Otherwise it is very easy to take our work for granted, which would be a bit of a shame.

the first sentence from that guy was "Are you asking why dozens of people spent thousands of hours over the last more-than-a-decade modding the game?

to me thats defensive and hostile for asking a simple question.. thanks for the reply... jee wizz

 

[K9zz]

What is wrong with the vanilla game? Nothing, as far as I can see - I played it happily for years before I knew the Build Mod existed. If there are any bugs, they never caused me any trouble, probably because those parts of the game which were seriously bugged or incomplete, such as some side quests, were disabled so players can't see them.

I didn't even regard the controls as goofy, and indeed change the controls when playing the Build Mod to match those of the vanilla game - specifically, instead of using mouse buttons for "Attack" and "Block", which are the Build Mod defaults, I put them back to the vanilla game's Space and Ctrl keys respectively.

Of course, the vanilla game seems very limited when compared against the Build Mod, the reason being the whole purpose of the Build Mod is to expand beyond the vanilla game.

thanks

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I didn't even regard the controls as goofy, and indeed change the controls when playing the Build Mod to match those of the vanilla game - specifically, instead of using mouse buttons for "Attack" and "Block", which are the Build Mod defaults, I put them back to the vanilla game's Space and Ctrl keys respectively.

You too, eh? And there was me thinking I was the ONLY person to do that!
Call me crazy, but I have no problem at all with that "Space" and "Ctrl" for "attack" and "block".
Main reason for that is to save myself from clicking like mad with my mouse; that just wreaks merry havoc with my wrist.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

the first sentence from that guy was "Are you asking why dozens of people spent thousands of hours over the last more-than-a-decade modding the game?

to me thats defensive and hostile for asking a simple question.. thanks for the reply... jee wizz

I can see how you might interpret it that way, but that's really quite unnecessary.
When it comes to supposedly hostile sentences, I've seen so, SO far worse!

Spoiler

The shortened term "f'in", for example, does tend to qualify as "worse" considering what that term stands for.
Though I've seen far worse than that as well, so I'll gladly let that slide too.

In the end, you did get quite a valid response from Hook in that same sentence, so hardly something to get worked up over.
And you even got several more valid responses afterwards. So how about we do what I suggested in my first post and let any supposed hostility slide?
After all, I can assure you neither @LarryHookins, nor @Grey Roger nor myself have even the slightest intention of making things unpleasant here.
So assuming that you don't want to either, continuing this particular line of thought will do nobody any good at all.

 

[Grey Roger]

As I said, I played vanilla PoTC for years. I got used to those controls.

I tried the mouse controls, didn't do as well in combat, went back to using Space and Ctrl, and haven't tried mouse controls again since.

Now I think back, one thing about vanilla PoTC which was wrong when compared to Build Mod, as opposed to being improved or expanded in Build Mod, was officers in combat. You could get an officer up to Melee 10, give him all the perks, give him the best weapon available, and he'd still get killed pretty quickly during boarding. In Build Mod, a properly skilled and equipped officer is able to more than hold his own in a boarding battle and can literally be a life-saver.

 

[LarryHookins]

@K9zz That wasn't intended to be hostile. It was intended as a simple question. Exactly the same as yours.

Perhaps if you'd qualified your question a bit more (like telling us you'd played the New Horizons mod but never played the vanilla game) you'd have gotten an answer you found more useful. As it was, I was asking for clarification.

I've been involved in modding many games, and most of the time there was nothing whatsoever wrong with the original game, people just wanted to make the game better, or to customize it to their preferences. There were a few bugs that the modders fixed, but very few compared to tweaks and new features.

Like I said earlier, the vanilla game gave us a good base on which to build. If there had been anything really wrong with it, New Horizons would never have happened.

Hook

 

[LarryHookins]

I like the controls in Sea Dogs: To Each His Own better than New Horizons. I could probably edit the controls to make them similar, and even edit the code to make everything work exactly the same way with the proper control settings, but I don't want to step on anyone's toes, and I'm sure everyone has gotten used to the New Horizons controls anyway, and the TEHO controls would feel awkward to experienced players.

The New Horizons controls are definitely better than the vanilla PotC.

Hook

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I like the controls in Sea Dogs: To Each His Own better than New Horizons. I could probably edit the controls to make them similar, and even edit the code to make everything work exactly the same way with the proper control settings, but I don't want to step on anyone's toes, and I'm sure everyone has gotten used to the New Horizons controls anyway, and the TEHO controls would feel awkward to experienced players.

How are the controls in SD:TEHO?

 

[LarryHookins]

I haven't played in a while so I'm going by memory, and I'm sure I'll miss a few.

There are such things as the up and down arrow keys scrolling through menus and dialogs in every case, the left mouse button is the action key, right mouse button to move forward. I seldom ever used the F3 key. Looting bodies is done with the 1 key so you don't accidentally hit the F3 key when it does something you don't want. Several places in PotC I have to press space bar, while in TEHO it's usually the Enter key that works. You can also use the WASD keys to move.

Something as simple as going through a door: In TEHO you use the right mouse button to move forward until you're at the door, then the left mouse button to open the door and go through. Left mouse button initiates a dialog. You can play a lot of the game just with the mouse and occasional use of the numpad.

In PotC I have yet to successfully loot a ship I've captured without ending up going to the next level before I wanted to. I never had a problem in TEHO with that.

One that I like better in PotC is the use of the space bar to fire the cannons with automatic targeting. In TEHO the left mouse button fires the cannons where the aiming reticle is, and I don't think it has automatic targeting unless you're in third person view outside your ship.

This is just the controls.

The grapics are nicer in TEHO, and I like their map better. PotC has some better islands while TEHO has islands that match the real world better. You can see nearby islands in the distance (they're loaded with the main island you're at), but you can't actually sail to them without using the world map to load the new island. If you do there's nothing there but the textured land mass. I hated sailing around Hispaniola in TEHO, but in PotC it's good.

All their towns are small ones, no enormous ones anywhere, which makes it possible to get around everywhere without having to use fast travel. Many of the TEHO towns use a town model that's used in PotC, but the TEHO towns just feel better. I'm not sure what it is, but I enjoyed exploring the TEHO jungles (lots of good stuff out there), but I avoid it in PotC.

Sailing is so bad in TEHO that it would make more sense for a lot of ships to have the wind arrow pointing in the opposite direction. In all cases your fastest sailing speed is the closest you can sail to the wind. That's just... wrong.

PotC with New Horizons is by far the better game.

Hook

 

[Pieter Boelen]

There are such things as the up and down arrow keys scrolling through menus and dialogs in every case

That needs to be set up correctly for each interface. I don't think that has been dilligently done in the PotC modded interfaces.

The scroll wheel working in dialogs is pretty cool! I wonder if that might be possible in PotC as well.
I think at the moment the middle mouse button does function to "scroll" through dialog options, but I might be misremembering there...

Looting bodies is done with the 1 key so you don't accidentally hit the F3 key when it does something you don't want.
[...]
In PotC I have yet to successfully loot a ship I've captured without ending up going to the next level before I wanted to. I never had a problem in TEHO with that.

True, that! I wouldn't mind to see that changed.

Does PotC also use Spacebar to do looting? If so, maybe F3 could be disabled for that.
I think @Jack Rackham added a lot of spacebar support, which I definitely quite appreciate.

One that I like better in PotC is the use of the space bar to fire the cannons with automatic targeting. In TEHO the left mouse button fires the cannons where the aiming reticle is, and I don't think it has automatic targeting unless you're in third person view outside your ship.

Of course you like that better in PotC. It was YOU who made it work like that, if I remember correctly!
And if it wasn't you, then it was IncredibleHat. One of you two for sure.

Stock PotC worked the same there as SD:TEHO does, based on your description.

The grapics are nicer in TEHO

Newer game; that was to be expected.

and I like their map better

Indeed the PotC one is still somewhat simplified based on the "leftover islands" from the stock game and the fact that we don't have the manower to add all the "missing" islands.
The current worldmap we've got is definitely the best we've had and likely ever will have.
But a more true-to-life one would of course be better still.

You can see nearby islands in the distance (they're loaded with the main island you're at), but you can't actually sail to them without using the world map to load the new island. If you do there's nothing there but the textured land mass.

Indeed I saw that in the GM Viewer when looking at the island models, which is where the "urban myth" came from that CoAS/SD:TEHO have an actual DirectSail system.
In truth, neither of them has anything of the sort. It's just "faked" in the island geometry.
Would be nice to have that in addition to a REAL DirectSail system. But unless all islands are exactly in line with each other AND with the worldmap, that doesn't seem feasible.

All their towns are small ones, no enormous ones anywhere, which makes it possible to get around everywhere without having to use fast travel. Many of the TEHO towns use a town model that's used in PotC, but the TEHO towns just feel better.

Did they actually use PotC towns in TEHO? I know AoP/CoAS both had their own "single location" towns, which served their purpose, but also always seemed rather "dull" to me.
With the stock PotC towns, you can tell what nationality they belong to based on the architecture,
while I think the AoP/CoAS ones are just "cobbled together" from a bunch of standard components and are therefore far less distinct.
I do like in PotC the "large towns" versus "small ones" to make each town feel more different, but indeed I can imagine that does encourage more use of Fast Travel.

I'm not sure what it is, but I enjoyed exploring the TEHO jungles (lots of good stuff out there), but I avoid it in PotC.

I'll be really, REALLY curious to find out what's the difference there then! I'd assume they use pretty much the same 3D models, don't they?

Sailing is so bad in TEHO that it would make more sense for a lot of ships to have the wind arrow pointing in the opposite direction. In all cases your fastest sailing speed is the closest you can sail to the wind. That's just... wrong.

That's quite a shame. But that's really just controlled by the ships_init.c entries, I think!
Of course TEHO doesn't have an open PROGRAM folder, so those cannot be changed.

 

[Grey Roger]

Does PotC also use Spacebar to do looting? If so, maybe F3 could be disabled for that.
I think @Jack Rackham added a lot of spacebar support, which I definitely quite appreciate.

In PoTC, F3 is the general "do whatever the screen icon says" button, while Space specifically works for both looting and going to a new location. So it doesn't matter which one you disable, unless you disable Space for looting and disable F3 for moving to next location, or vice versa.

Occasionally I get careless, walk towards a chest and press the button before I get to it. The most common cause of going to next deck before I've finished looting is that I've got Space set to "Attack" as well, so I'm hacking away at an enemy, someone else kills him, I hack once too often, and I'm off to the next deck. If it's a choice between that occasional mishap or switching to using mouse buttons for "Attack" and "Block", I'll take the occasional missed loot. The next most common cause is if I've walked up to a body, but I'm only just in range. So the icon to loot appears briefly, I press F3, but in the meantime the game has decided I'm not in range after all, so it's off to the next deck. It's a bit annoying, especially when it happens on the gun deck because that has four chests, but there'll soon be another deck to loot...

Indeed the PotC one is still somewhat simplified based on the "leftover islands" from the stock game and the fact that we don't have the manower to add all the "missing" islands.
The current worldmap we've got is definitely the best we've had and likely ever will have.

It pretty well has to have the original islands, otherwise the standard storyline which assumes those islands probably won't work without some serious changes. Build 13 even kept the original fictitious names, transplanting the likes of Oxbay and Falaise de Fleur into a semi-realistic map of the rest of the Caribbean. Build 14 renamed them, so Oxbay became Barbados and Falaise de Fleur became Martinique, somewhere near their correct locations relative to other islands but still keeping the original shapes. Even if it's reshaped to look like the real island, Oxbay/Barbados is going to need the lighthouse, Gray Rock Bay and Far Beach, for example, if various quests are to work properly.

IWith the stock PotC towns, you can tell what nationality they belong to based on the architecture,
while I think the AoP/CoAS ones are just "cobbled together" from a bunch of standard components and are therefore far less distinct.

In stock PoTC, yes. In New Horizons, town scenes are re-used regardless of nationality, though some of them have different textures for different nationalities - the Spanish version of Port Royale town centre, as used in Havana, looks a bit different for that reason.

I do like in PotC the "large towns" versus "small ones" to make each town feel more different, but indeed I can imagine that does encourage more use of Fast Travel.

Some locations are imported from AoP, e.g. Charlestown. And some are imported from VCO; those are the huge places with lots of buildings that do nothing, and they're the ones in which it's really useful to fast travel or run with at least 5x time compression.

I'll be really, REALLY curious to find out what's the difference there then! I'd assume they use pretty much the same 3D models, don't they?

Being a whole new game, it may very well have new jungle locations. PoTC still uses the jungle locations from stock PoTC, and as the locations from a mere 8 original islands are now being used for the jungles across a whole lot more, there's naturally a lot of repetition. And in some places paths which appear to lead to another location don't go anywhere because there's nowhere for them to go, which means you'll walk (or run) to the end of the path and then effectively hit an invisible wall.

AoP avoided the problem of repetitive jungles, it didn't have them at all. You need to install the Supermod if you want to walk out of town, and as the Supermod re-uses PoTC jungles, you're back to the same problem. If I recall correctly, it didn't even change the location models, which means you can find the signpost between Greenford and Oxbay even though those towns don't exist in AoP. At least that's been corrected in PoTC - on Barbados the sign now points to Bridgetown and Speightstown, and on other islands it doesn't show up at all.

 

[LarryHookins]

The TEHO jungles are... prettier. There are no random bad guys running up to you and just attacking. There are occasional bands of brigands, but you have to approach them and do a dialog before they attack, and often they can be avoided. There are wandering native merchants selling pearls, gold and silver, all of which at excellent prices. Lighthouse keepers sell various things and sometimes have "washed ashore" goods at very low prices. Some of the beaches spawn treasure chests which are quite valuable and sometimes contain rare items. Not may people explore the jungle, but I recommend it to anyone playing the game. Most of the models are similar.

The tutorial forces you to go through the jungle many times, and I doubt anyone likes the tutorial. But you do get used to navigating the jungles. You can find maps of each island with the paths through the jungle, which is nice.

I'm not sure, but I think you can use the mouse wheel in PotC to scroll through dialogs. The one time I did it in TEHO, my game crashed, probably because it was having to load stuff too fast, so I didn't use it. Often the mouse wheel would scroll through other stuff, which was very nice.

There was a specific key to loot bodies, and the left mouse buttons would open chests. I suspect the space bar always took you to the next level, although eventually an icon would appear and the left mouse button took you to the next level..

The sailing model wasn't something built into the ships. Ships all had thin arrows pointing at their "best speed" and that was always upwind. You could sail slightly closer to the wind than that, but speed fell off very quickly. Slowest speed was directly downwind. For a while I just wrote it off as the sailing characteristics of the ship I was sailing, but when you've got a xebec (with some benefits and perks) that can sail within a couple points of the wind, where it sails fastest, and it's slowest sailing directly downwind, the wind arrow is just backwards. Other fore and aft rigged ships were similar.

Some of the PotC towns aren't just big, they're stupidly big. It doesn't just encourage fast travel, fast travel is essential. The first time I saw one of those enormous Spanish towns, I was like, "You've got to be kidding me." Tortuga isn't just big, it's ugly too, but I'll accept that part. The smaller towns in TEHO encourage exploring, and that helps when there are quests where you have to search every house. In PotC, Kingston, for example, isn't too bad, even though it's fairly large.

Hook

 

[Pieter Boelen]

In PoTC, F3 is the general "do whatever the screen icon says" button, while Space specifically works for both looting and going to a new location. So it doesn't matter which one you disable, unless you disable Space for looting and disable F3 for moving to next location, or vice versa.

I was indeed thinking of "vice versa". "Space" is, for me at least, also the "attack" button so as you yourself mention as well,
it could be quite annoying to accidentally reload to the next location when you pressed space right after the last enemy was killed.
So I'd imagine: F3 transfers to next location and Space does looting (as long as your sword is NOT drawn).
Would that be OK?

This would effectively mean disabling F3 for opening ANY boxes. I'm not sure if that is even possible....

It pretty well has to have the original islands, otherwise the standard storyline which assumes those islands probably won't work without some serious changes. Build 13 even kept the original fictitious names, transplanting the likes of Oxbay and Falaise de Fleur into a semi-realistic map of the rest of the Caribbean. Build 14 renamed them, so Oxbay became Barbados and Falaise de Fleur became Martinique, somewhere near their correct locations relative to other islands but still keeping the original shapes. Even if it's reshaped to look like the real island, Oxbay/Barbados is going to need the lighthouse, Gray Rock Bay and Far Beach, for example, if various quests are to work properly.

All completely true, which is why I think the current worldmap is pretty much as good as we're ever going to get in PotC.
To use another, we'd need to rework the worldmap, add brand new islands and towns AND modify all the quests to still work with them.
That's a crazy amount of work! So let's not do it....

In stock PoTC, yes. In New Horizons, town scenes are re-used regardless of nationality, though some of them have different textures for different nationalities - the Spanish version of Port Royale town centre, as used in Havana, looks a bit different for that reason.

Very true.
I do reckon the "Spanish" textures do look notably different from the "regular" textures.
If I recall, the stock game "Bonaire town" has been moved to Cayman and there's a Spanish textured version in Havana(?) and the actual Kralendijk has been retextured to look more Dutch.
Of course having unique models everywhere would be even better, but I do like that all our towns are at least not completely the same.

Some locations are imported from AoP, e.g. Charlestown. And some are imported from VCO; those are the huge places with lots of buildings that do nothing, and they're the ones in which it's really useful to fast travel or run with at least 5x time compression.

Yes indeed. We "hyjacked" the town models from AoP/CoAS that we thought were nicely distinct for variety's sake.

The VCO ones are also good for variety, but unfortunately some of them do have a "scale issue" that isn't easily solved.

Being a whole new game, it may very well have new jungle locations. PoTC still uses the jungle locations from stock PoTC, and as the locations from a mere 8 original islands are now being used for the jungles across a whole lot more, there's naturally a lot of repetition. And in some places paths which appear to lead to another location don't go anywhere because there's nowhere for them to go, which means you'll walk (or run) to the end of the path and then effectively hit an invisible wall.

True. Though from what I've seen in AoP/CoAS, they pretty much reused the PotC jungle and shore locations.
They added a couple more though and some of those made their way back into the PotC Build Mod as well.
Might be some more though that we haven't yet used and that we might consider to add one day for variety.

As it is: We used those "weird BuildingSet structures and trees" for the purpose of making same-model locations look not-too-similar instead.
Not quite ideal, but still better than having fully identical locations on different islands, I reckon.

If I recall correctly, it didn't even change the location models, which means you can find the signpost between Greenford and Oxbay even though those towns don't exist in AoP.

Why am I not surprised?

At least that's been corrected in PoTC - on Barbados the sign now points to Bridgetown and Speightstown, and on other islands it doesn't show up at all.

I'm really happy with that! I still remember how much time and effort it took us to sort that out.
But I think we even managed to sort it out in the end so that sign is correct in the Early Explorers period when the island is Portuguese and all the town names are different.
Of course if anyone decides to capture a town and rename it, it'll be wrong again. But there's nothing really to be done about that.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The TEHO jungles are... prettier.

Prettier in what way, I wonder? I think they may have replaced some of the palm tree models in CoAS, but I don't remember that for sure.
We did replace the stock PotC ground texture once, but I don't think we ever got confirmation if that was considered an improvement or not.

There are no random bad guys running up to you and just attacking.

Stock PotC didn't have those either. Should be easy enough to disable those if desired.

There are occasional bands of brigands, but you have to approach them and do a dialog before they attack, and often they can be avoided.

PotC has those.

There are wandering native merchants selling pearls, gold and silver, all of which at excellent prices.

PotC does have characters wandering and selling stuff, but they're not different in the jungles than in towns.
Would be cool if they were! Actually, the "store item selling" code could do with some serious reworking anyway.
For example, I want there to be an "Indian store" type for someone selling bows and arrows and that sort of stuff.

Lighthouse keepers sell various things and sometimes have "washed ashore" goods at very low prices.

Would be interesting....

Some of the beaches spawn treasure chests which are quite valuable and sometimes contain rare items.

Of course PotC does have the mod-added Treasure Quests instead, but those don't show up randomly.

The first time I saw one of those enormous Spanish towns, I was like, "You've got to be kidding me." Tortuga isn't just big, it's ugly too, but I'll accept that part.

Those are probably the VCO ones, which are indeed quite massive. They're a fairly recent addition.
At the time it was up for debate whether we should add them or not, but eventually we decided we did like having them for the sake of variety.