This option has been enabled for Carcassonne players, so there's no principled reason why this should not be available for players of this game, too. Thanks!

Thanks for your quick acknowledgement. :-)

I'm not quite sure what "preloaded" means in this context... but allow me to expand upon what I mean with respect to the Carcassonne tiles:

When playing that game, I use the first edition artwork. However, because the tiles for the Princess & Dragon expansion are only available in the newer art style, these tiles appear in that newer style alongside the older artwork.

Thus, whenever my games load, the older-style tiles appear immediately, and then I watch as the P&D tiles slowly load afterwards—first a blurry version that progressively "scans" to be clearer (wish I knew the technical term for this).

Anyway, it's pretty lame to have this needless resource hit. :-/

Saint Petersburg is currently one of the least resource-intensive games that I play on this site, and it's also one of my favourites overall on- or offline, so I'm really hoping that the publisher's decision will allow me to continue enjoying the game. Either way, thanks for your work on its implementation!

I assume this is asking that it be a *user* preference, like a "skin", and not something that is chosen by the table creator for all players at that table. Correct? That's better for user loading times and such.

Also it makes it clear that this option does *not* have anything to do with whether 1st or 2nd edition card prices are in effect.

I suppose you will need to "doctor" a few of the card images (Judge, Observatory...) so that the price remains independent of the skin.

I strongly agree, and also note that in two other games artwork "enhancements" are an interface downgrade:

Dice Forge (the animation of the dice coming down is seen as very flickering ad distracting gray lines).
7 wonders (where now it is harder to see what others have on limited screen real estate).