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| Thread: Why we don't want heroes on the battlefield? |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · NEXT» |
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Momo
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted December 04, 2010 11:39 AM |
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Why we don't want heroes on the battlefield?
I've seen many posters saying that HoMM4 was a chance to learn that we don't want heroes as playable units.
As much as HoMM4 was a controversial chapter with many let-downs, I fail to see how placing the hero on the field was a bad move. It did nothing but improving the playing experience to me. Yet it apparently didn't work well for most.
Is there anybody out there who knows what I'm missing? Why people think that system didn't work?
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DarkLord
Supreme Hero
Fear me..
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posted December 04, 2010 02:57 PM |
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I think cuz after a while hero becomes way too powerful, so the army becomes not really important.. While in other HoMM's army itself is a vital part of a game and strategy..
p.s. Btw i Love HoMM4 
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Fauch
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted December 04, 2010 05:58 PM |
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I think it makes sense that heroes can be killed
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OmegaDestroyer
Hero of Order
Fox or Chicken?
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posted December 04, 2010 06:12 PM |
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They are more like generals than heroes in my book. A hero is someone you envision killing a dragon personally with a sword and nothing but a smile on his/her face.
And yes, I did mean "nothing."
____________
The giant has awakened
You drink my blood and drown
Wrath and raving I will not stop
You'll never take me down
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evinin
Supreme Hero
Servant of Asha
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posted December 04, 2010 06:58 PM |
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Edited by evinin at 18:59, 04 Dec 2010.
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I personally love the heroes in battlefield. Some of them are just killing machines. I really loved playing the Gathering Storm where heroes were more important than creatures.
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Dj0rel
Tavern Dweller
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posted December 05, 2010 12:12 AM |
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Quote:
I think cuz after a while hero becomes way too powerful,
Way too powerful if you're up against AI anyway.
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SwampLord
Supreme Hero
Lord of the Swamp
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posted December 05, 2010 06:26 AM |
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I haven't played HIV, but I've heard a lot of horror stories about either building a caster hero and having him get instagibbed right at the start of the fight by a fast-moving powerstack or having heroes with invulnerability potions rip apart entire armies by themselves.
Allowing heroes to be killed, and to put out large amounts of damage outside of spells, completely alters the combat paradigm and may even place more emphasis on killing the enemy hero rather than bringing down their army. That's the main issue with having heroes on the battlefield, at least how I see it.
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They can take my swamp, they can take my town, but they will never take my FREEDOM!
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Invictus
Adventuring Hero
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posted December 05, 2010 06:59 PM |
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Edited by Invictus at 19:01, 05 Dec 2010.
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The main problem is that they never found the right balance to heroes. Heroes were either completely useless or totally overpowered. There was not much middle ground in between.
In single player campaigns, you can easily see that heroes are so powerful that creatures are useless. In campaigns, the only purpose of creatures was to serve as city defense while the hero was out hunting, or to add movement points to the hero (by adding Angels, Dragons, Phoenix, etc.) When you have an overpowered hero, such as Tawni that can kill 8 black dragons in a single hit, it shows that creatures become obsolete by the 2nd campaign map.
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Momo
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted December 06, 2010 01:00 AM |
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Quote:
I haven't played HIV, but I've heard a lot of horror stories about either building a caster hero and having him get instagibbed right at the start of the fight by a fast-moving powerstack or having heroes with invulnerability potions rip apart entire armies by themselves.
Allowing heroes to be killed, and to put out large amounts of damage outside of spells, completely alters the combat paradigm and may even place more emphasis on killing the enemy hero rather than bringing down their army. That's the main issue with having heroes on the battlefield, at least how I see it.
I think this reply is exhaustive and intelligent.
Indeed that was a big problem in bringing heroes on the field. Still, I think that placing an overpowered guy on the battlefield that seems unkillable for absolutely no reason (lorewise, of course) is hardly acceptable, even if it works better for game mechanics. It just seems so weird and unjustifiable to me that I liked better the warped combat mechanics of H4 than H3/H5.
Still, there's not much you can do to find a compromise solution. Making the hero incredibly hard to kill for the other units (like giving it a bazillions hit points) feels just as unrealistic as having it invulnerable. Prioritizing to kill other creatures (for instance, you can kill the hero if you kill the army that "defends" it) ends up just like H3/H5 combat system plus another unnecessary step where your army goes to kill the hero. And so on.
In the end, I find both systems flawed.
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theunknown
Known Hero
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posted December 06, 2010 01:43 AM |
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Some thoughts about heroes in battle
Who plays wog with commanders option turned off? I do only sometimes but commanders are like true leaders of an army and like any leader they can be killed.
What are heroes? They can be army killers or some towns favorite leader or some great tactician or a treasure hunter and even the dirtiest of thieves. Hero has a wide definition but in general it is someone who inspires some people. There are heroes that we can see in real life, others are characters from history or even fictional like from a game or a myth.
I personally want to be able to kill any hero I am able to see, if he runs away from my grasp(battle) that's fine but if I am much better and manage to trap him, I would like the ability to send him in prison or just kill him and leave his corpse in the open.
Heroes in battle was a great addition of H-IV but one of the reasons what I believe caused people to hate this addition is the loss of heroes specialties.
Some would say that heroes tend to be more important and powerful than creatures, this depends on the map. Its not the game's fault people tend to play maps that are hero development friendly. Try to play a game where you can gain only 5000 exp before the first fight with your enemy. Then would you rather have 5 heroes with level 2 (that can barely kill one level 2 unit), 10 angels and 60 monks or 4 heroes with level 2 and 10 angels 60 monks and 90 pikemans or only 2 heroes and 5 creatures, it all depends. Try to play a game with no ability to gain experience at all, maybe what you think about overpowered heroes will change in an instant.
Heroes power also tends to weaken the more towns you have, up until now most the maps you've played were one town for you and your enemy and many chances to experience and skill your heroes. Maps tend to be this way because there is good skill system in H-IV and in order for the map not to be boring and to faster fulfill the skill system you end up with endless hero upgrades.
BTW has anyone mentioned how great or unbalanced are some of the creature artifacts? If your game lasts long before the big fight those artifacts can easily be a battle winner.
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tttttc
Hired Hero
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posted December 06, 2010 03:26 AM |
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I think Invictus has made the point. That's why I like campaigns scenarios that has a very challenging final battle, like Captain Swift in Tawni's second scenario. Conquer everything else, gather 70+ black dragons, overpower Captain Swift's 100+ black dragons, done.
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Invictus
Adventuring Hero
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posted December 06, 2010 03:49 AM |
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The Captain Black battle was pretty epic. I think that's the only battle in a non-first-map in the entire set of original campaigns that genuinely required creatures.
Quote:
Some would say that heroes tend to be more important and powerful than creatures, this depends on the map. Its not the game's fault people tend to play maps that are hero development friendly. Try to play a game where you can gain only 5000 exp before the first fight with your enemy. Then would you rather have 5 heroes with level 2 (that can barely kill one level 2 unit), 10 angels and 60 monks or 4 heroes with level 2 and 10 angels 60 monks and 90 pikemans or only 2 heroes and 5 creatures, it all depends. Try to play a game with no ability to gain experience at all, maybe what you think about overpowered heroes will change in an instant.
I didn't say that heroes are ALWAYS overpowered compared to creatures. I wrote that heroes are EITHER overpowered OR underpowered, depending on the situation. When heroes are underpowered (like they die in the first round), they are useless and basically become a hassle to the whole system.
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Osmin
Hired Hero
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posted December 09, 2010 02:55 PM |
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The hero system is one of the best things about Heroes IV. As I see it, the heroes should be more important than the creatures. It's not called "Armies of Might and Magic", after all. Having the heroes on the battlefield, making it possible to have armies without heroes, and making it possible to have several heroes in one army; these factors make the gameplay more interesting. Also, it makes the stories more believeable: how could Emilia and Solymr have fought together against Gavin Magnus if you could have only one hero in your army?
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted December 09, 2010 09:57 PM |
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I think problem was that it was poorly balanced, not the concept itself.
Like people say, if you pumped your Hero with Combat skill, he became über powerful - however, if you didn't choose to spend 20 levels there, he only survived if you doped him with potions of immortality. And without Combat, he didn't serve any role on battlefield but to cast spells, which made the whole idea of placing him there useless.
However, if Combat effects were something you gained automatically with leveling and they were better balanced, it could have worked fine.
____________
What will happen now?
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Invictus
Adventuring Hero
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posted December 10, 2010 02:59 AM |
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Edited by Invictus at 03:06, 10 Dec 2010.
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I think this is how they should've done it
(1) First, the physical offensive capabilities of heroes should be way less [for example, archery should do 65% less damage, and melee about 40% less]. The main culprit is the archery skill, which makes heroes insanely powerful on the battlefield. Not many creatures even have ranged attacks, and if they did, they are subject to range penalties, unlike heroes which can attack at any range. Therefore, having such a powerful range attacker upsets the balance of the creatures' playing field where only few creatures are ranged. What is so bad about archery is that it's way more powerful than offensive spells, and much more convenient (for example, magic is useless against anything with GM magic resistance). Compared to chaos magic, archery usually does about 70% more damage which is ridiculous.
(2) The durability of heroes needs to be reasonable. (as a side point, the durability of heroes is affected by their offensive capabilities due to "first strike" retaliation). The above suggestion to better correlate durability with levels is good.
However, I think a large part of the problem is with the formation system, which makes it is REALLY difficult to protect a weak hero when the enemy has ranged attackers or creatures that can fly all the way. If it were the H3 hex system, protecting a hero wouldn't be so bad, because in H3, a large creature + a normal creature can fully cover a cover hex. However, in H4, there are no hexes, and when the enemy creature is in movement distance, it's nearly impossible to seal off your hero from even melee attacks. And even if you do manage to start off in box formation, your army would get raped by cyclopses and area-of-effect attackers.
What I would've done is make it so that a hero can sit of the battle as long as his army meetings a certain condition related to size [for example, you have 20+ creatures AND your army is at least 1/2 the size of the opposing army]. When he is sitting out, he can't perform any attacks and cannot cast targetted spells beyond 1/3 length of the map. Furthermore, tactics skills are decreased by half. On the other hand, heroes cannot be attacked in this mode until the opponent kills enough of your army to force your hero out.
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Bones_xa
Known Hero
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posted December 11, 2010 11:23 PM |
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Edited by Bones_xa at 23:25, 11 Dec 2010.
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If the heroes in H4 were not actually part of the combat like in H3, I would be ok with that. The main thing that makes H4 so much fun and what I really love about the game over H3 is that you can have multiple heroes for each group. Instead of just one hero for each army you can have many of them join together, and you can have much more than just 8 single heroes in a game.
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MSG-1-1
Known Hero
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posted December 12, 2010 02:43 PM |
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How I see it was that the change from h3 to h4 was a bit too steep.
I don't think the problem was that heroes were on the battlefield, but how hard it was to learn how to use them properly. When 3DO launched homm4 it was full of bugs and was horribly unbalanced,scaring most of the players to stay playing h3.
I admit that playing against the AI when you know how to use heroes properly is just too easy, since AI doesn't have a clue what to do with them.. But playing a multiplayer game against a similar level opponent couldn't be more fun in h4.
And I dont think there's such a thing as a "owerpowered hero" who kills all creatures in combat.. you just need to know how to counter it.. Most of these assumtions come from inexperienced players and bad map design where boosting your barb for example is too easy.
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Borton
Hired Hero
A lemming in my pocket
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posted December 13, 2010 02:09 PM |
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Quote:
I think this is how they should've done it
(1) First, the physical offensive capabilities of heroes should be way less [for example, archery should do 65% less damage, and melee about 40% less]. The main culprit is the archery skill, which makes heroes insanely powerful on the battlefield. Not many creatures even have ranged attacks, and if they did, they are subject to range penalties, unlike heroes which can attack at any range. Therefore, having such a powerful range attacker upsets the balance of the creatures' playing field where only few creatures are ranged. What is so bad about archery is that it's way more powerful than offensive spells, and much more convenient (for example, magic is useless against anything with GM magic resistance). Compared to chaos magic, archery usually does about 70% more damage which is ridiculous.
(2) The durability of heroes needs to be reasonable. (as a side point, the durability of heroes is affected by their offensive capabilities due to "first strike" retaliation). The above suggestion to better correlate durability with levels is good.
However, I think a large part of the problem is with the formation system, which makes it is REALLY difficult to protect a weak hero when the enemy has ranged attackers or creatures that can fly all the way. If it were the H3 hex system, protecting a hero wouldn't be so bad, because in H3, a large creature + a normal creature can fully cover a cover hex. However, in H4, there are no hexes, and when the enemy creature is in movement distance, it's nearly impossible to seal off your hero from even melee attacks. And even if you do manage to start off in box formation, your army would get raped by cyclopses and area-of-effect attackers.
What I would've done is make it so that a hero can sit of the battle as long as his army meetings a certain condition related to size [for example, you have 20+ creatures AND your army is at least 1/2 the size of the opposing army]. When he is sitting out, he can't perform any attacks and cannot cast targetted spells beyond 1/3 length of the map. Furthermore, tactics skills are decreased by half. On the other hand, heroes cannot be attacked in this mode until the opponent kills enough of your army to force your hero out.
I particularly like the idea on the last paragraph, indeed I've been working in my mind in a solution like that, because as all or most of you guys I like the idea of heroes as part of the combat, but also I believe that it's strongly unbalanced.
Besides, I thought about another idea to limit overpowered heroes, which could match with many other ideas shown in this thread: I wouldn't decrease the damage atributes of heroes, instead I would set a limit to the number of creatures "killable" per attack, no matter how strong the strike is. For example, for lvl 1 creatures a hero could beat with an attack no more than 16 creatures (4x4), because it's "believable" that a dexter and brave warrior could take 16 weak lives in "a turn"; For lvl 2 creatures the maximum of creatures killable would be 9 (3x3), for lvl 3 number would be 4 (2x2), and for lvl 4 number would be 1 (1x1), because in a fantasy world we can dream of legendary heroes capable of beating by themselves one single monstruous creature such as a dragon, but it's kind of weird taking down a 40-dragon-army with one guy.
I know this idea doesn't solve the entire problem, but I think it could help to fix part of the trouble we're debating here. I would thank if anyone finds cons to this method.
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The HOMM4 vampire is Dave Gahan!!!
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Joey_sw
Tavern Dweller
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posted December 18, 2010 06:06 AM |
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i kinda dissapointed in how the heroes presented in combat:
no horse riding heroes, just like it was in previous installment.
what happened to the horses?
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tttttc
Hired Hero
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posted December 24, 2010 05:46 PM |
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Because if you only have heroes in the army (like in TGS campaign), things get boring soon. I admit I initially like this idea a lot, after all HOMM is not an RPG game. It's a strategy game. Real heroes don't fight themselves. Real heroes command other men/things to fight.
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