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| Thread: Following the HOMM Evolution |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted December 27, 2010 09:36 AM |
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Well it's excellent work I must say, but since I only really have much experience with H3 I don't think I have much that could be added, except the recommendation that this thread be stickied so that it remains constantly on the first page, because really, it's an excellent guide to chart the progress of a great series.
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maken
Known Hero
Hail Hydra!
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posted December 27, 2010 12:38 PM |
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no, you pretty much covered everything 
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted December 27, 2010 02:06 PM |
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Now that you mention it I had made a magic evolution thread. That was back in my early days, could probably use some updating.
As for the current thread it is of course a matter of personal opinion so if you disagree somewhere go ahead, shoot 
Put that gun down nighty..
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H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted December 27, 2010 08:39 PM |
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Quote:
You could cover some creatures, the magic and heroes in this list.
And all evolutions of those.
IMO putting all that in one thread would make it too cluttered, but you could make separate threads and link to them from this one.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted December 27, 2010 09:26 PM |
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Indeed, there was a reason I left those out. Besides how heroes/units evolved affects the success of a heroes installment less than the skill and spell system implementation. Or rather there is not a lot to discuss about them except maybe the H4 system of heroes on the battlefield. I believe the best approach was in H5 where heroes could use a melee attack(and even had melee skills like mark of the damned or retaliation strike) as well as cast spells/abilities. They remained behind enemy lines but their presence felt less detached than before.
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H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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Vlaad
Admirable
Legendary Hero
ghost of the past
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posted December 27, 2010 10:44 PM |
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Edited by Vlaad at 00:49, 28 Dec 2010.
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Duncan
Famous Hero
The Pathfinder
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posted December 28, 2010 12:52 AM |
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Ghee... I hardly can remember which dwelling produces what in those "ancient" pictures . Not until I've a chance replaying them again...
One of the best history classes I've ever attended  . You're the man, as always, my friend!
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But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it.
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gnomes2169
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Duke of the Glade
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posted December 29, 2010 07:02 PM |
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Personally, heroes having their own initiative was a + for me, as it just made more sense. Really, the Hero IS, by all technicality, a very powerful creature with the blood furrie's strike and return/ no retaliation feature, as well as a caster ability. I liked the fact that you could use them even if they had no SP left, it made the heroes themselves more useful. Heroes were far more customizable and fun to work with, even if they were a bit random. I still liked their system the best... H3 skills seem sort of of simple after H5......
Unfortunately never played H4, but I have gone through H3 and Chronicles, such as Master of the Elements and Dragon wars. Very fun, while DW was sort of hell at the beginning... When you didn't have Chrystal dragons and they had 10 by week 2 
Never really got into H1 or H2... Artwork didn't catch the attention of my ADD like it did in H3 and 5, so I'll have to take your word for it.
Good thread, and I hope to see H6 up there soon.
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Yeah in the 18th century, two inventions suggested a method of measurement. One won and the other stayed in America.
-Ghost destroying Fred
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted January 19, 2011 12:32 AM |
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Edited by Elvin at 00:41, 19 Jan 2011.
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And now a closer look at which features each heroes game introduced, their implementation and how they affected the series progression.
HOMM 2
- First and foremost homm 2 introduced the creature upgrades, a feature that remains to this day. It spiced up the gameplay and increased the fun factor. Strangely the third level upgrade has never appeared since.
- Digging for ultimate artifacts after revealing the location by visiting obelisks, a tradition that carried over. Deffinitely powerful but nowehere near as powerful as the grail of the next installments, I kinda miss the earlier days..
- A number of spells received their mass version. It was a start in improving the magic system.
- The secondary skills were introduced, such as navigation, wisdom, logistics. An excellent feature that will always be part of heroes.
- The campaign allowed you to pick sides and even betray your ally later on. Not to mention optional missions, unfortunately these great ideas were never implemented again.
HOMM 3
- Each faction now had a might and a magic oriented hero 
- The fortifications(citadel, castle) now boosted weekly creature growth and new gold structures were introduced(town hall, city hall, capitol) with their own requirements. That gave a new dimension in town development, should one prioritize money, army or magic? Lots of options and adaptability.
- Spells received elemental masteries that made them less costly, improved their effectiveness and in some cases added mass effects. Which magic skills you picked had a major effect on your hero.
- Special terrains were introduced giving a variety of effects on combat. Some increased luck, others negated magic, others boosted magic masteries and so on. I cannot fathom why such a wonderful feature never appeared again.
- Heroes received specialties and unique skills! Every hero was different now, had personality.
- Campaign allowed you to pick which side you wanted to start with and completing the existing ones unlocked further missions. Plus each mission gave you a number of starting bonuses to choose from! Splendid idea.
- Artifact sets, how cool was that? Who can forget the angelic alliance, cloak of the undead king or power of the dragonfather? The hunt for the missing artifacts on maps made them a lot more fun, it was especially rewarding to assemble a legendary artifact set. Ah good times.
HOMM 4
- Upgrade system was abandoned in favour of unit choice, exhibit A or exhibit B. At first it sounds like a good idea but a reality check says otherwise. First of all they were poorly balanced with each other so in many cases there was no real option. Secondly the choice meant you had less creatures under your command. And finally they had different resource costs/requirements so you could not pick them solely according to your needs but according to the resources that the map allowed. Fail.
- Citadel and castle became fortifications, nothing more. Which would be alright. If they were not required to build certain units.
- The beautiful H3 gold structure was dumbed down, became unreasonably expensive and could no longer support your army so you were at the mercy of gold mines. Fail.
- Simultaneous retaliations negated the bonuses of the attacker making the first charge, now things were more equal. And more boring *yawn*
- Certain locations became flaggable so you did not have to waste time revisiting them with secondary heroes. Which was a pretty cool idea, hope to see it again.
- Heroes led their armies directly in the thick of battle. It was fun but unfortunately not balanced and having to drag the corpse of your hero back to town for resurrection or having to reclaim him from an enemy prison I never found particularly appealing.
- Units could now move without a hero. While it did give more freedom in scouting.. bad idea. You could keep attacking your opponent with one wolf everyday just to annoy him, split your pixies in stacks of 1 and scout all possible directions, if you lost your town you had to find his remaining units that kept running around the map.. Undesired side-effects I'd think.
- Fog of war added to the uncertainty and required you to always have scouts so that an enemy hero will not pass through your lands unseen. Realistic but also annoying. I personally prefer to see everything so that I can act according to that.
- Since heroes could walk the battlefield they needed some aid that came in the form of potions and vials. In some ways it was a good thing. I cannot hide that I did not like how they cluttered my inventory though, felt like carrying a bunch of poor artifact/spell substitutes. Ah the potions of immortality
- Skill mastery was promoted from expert to grandmaster, on one hand it gave you that feeling that you REALLY specialized in your skills. But to do that you had to spend 12 levels minimum. And that specialization was kinda necessary, you had less freedom than before. Gone were the days of picking 8 skills and enjoying it. Also spell abilities like meditation, demonology etc were the same freaking thing for every freaking faction under a different freaking name. That's a step backwards really.
- Magic system was more coherent than H3, each faction had its own distinct school and could also build annexes for other types of magic. I kinda liked it, not necessarily more than H3.
- Heroes received advanced classes which was pretty cool. Some were of course overpowered
- Line of sight was another interesting change but one that never appealed to me. It felt like just another restriction in the battlefield.
- All units had special abilities, there was none that was plain. I found that interesting.
- Unit casters were spiced up, they received various spells and a set amount of mana. How could you not love that! Unfortunately traditional spell-like abilities like the angel's resurrection were treated like spells too, worse yet imps could drain them dry and deny them their special.
- Daily growth as opposed to weekly growth always felt like a feature designed for noobs that cannot plan ahead. Where's the fun in buying your units a spoonfull at a time?
- Caravans made it easier for your army to reach specific locations and reduced the micromanagement of using a secondary hero for that. Simply excellent.
HOMM 5
- Factions received a very distinct concept and gameplay. One can only approve
- Part of it were the racials that added to the gameplay value and reduced imbalances stemming from factions being led by non native heroes.
- The skill system was reworked: For starters every hero class had a different skillwheel. Secondly each skill was tied to a number of abilities, the more you leveled in it the more abilities you were allowed to pick. That allowed for great hero customization but the requirements could often mess with your levelling even if you were an expert at it. However I consider it a success, a step in the right direction that could only be improved.
- Absolute abilities received a lot of attention at first. But the coolness they offered was not enough to hide the fact that you were better off without them. It stripped you of your creativity and often enough you messed up while at it, wasting whole games.
- Spell system received a new structure. Each faction had two favoured magic schools which added variety and more possible strategies. Adding special effects such as freeze, ignite or stun was a nice touch.
- Certain traditional spells were creatively tweaked or improved. Armageddon did physical damage where the meteor crashed, the useless magic mirror became a passive ability, resurrection reduced the units' hp with each consecutive cast, firetrap allowed you to cast landmines within a specific area and so on. Some very cool ideas.
- Strangely unit casters received a logarithmic formula so that their magical damage would decrease compared to stack growth. Adding to the fact that the game had dynamic balance - ie faction strength differed according to whether it was early/mid or lategame - it caused unnecessary restrictions or balance issues.
- While the hero abandoned the battlefield his presence could be felt more than ever with the inclusion of various combat abilities(mark of the damned, powerful blow, divine guidance) and the ability to attack units directly! That was a fine compromise on the hero's role in the battlefield.
- Initiative added a new level of depth in combat and eliminated the term of turns as we knew them. Unfortunately the given values in certain units and the cap of luck/morale at 50% plus the random starting atb position ranging from 0-0.25% made things.. messy. Very messy. But also fun. When you did not get unfairly slaughtered from it anyway. Hero initiative decided battles too often for my liking. This feature could work but it needed lots and lots of testing and reworking many other features.
- The defense reduction formula changed making defense almost as good as attack, the difference was most noticeable.
- Towns now gained levels with each structure built and some of them could only be built at specific town levels. I quite liked the idea, made things more balanced.
- Mage guilds became very cheap increasing the possible strategies. Levelling up like crazy and aqcuiring lvl 5 spells within week 3 was every rusher's wet dream. However..
- H5 dwelling costs were obscenely high, probably as a hopeless effort at balancing the game though resource costs. H3 costs made some sense, H5 none at all. And unless you claimed some mines asap you would be in extreme disadvantage.
- Creature upgrades also became very expensive. And I every much liked that! Because that way you had to prioritize which upgrades you most wanted than simply building them all at your leisure as was the case in H3.
- Warmachines took a prominent role and were a very viable strategy in many maps. A good idea.
- We always had magic resistance but H5 also introduced the concept of magic proof or magic protection if you prefer. It reduced magical damage.
- Battlefield felt smaller than before or maybe that was because in many factions half the units could charge the enemy on their very first action. That made things more intense and fun but at the same time a lot less balanced. I would very much have liked to see larger battlefields for epic clashes.
- Where H5 really shined were the outrageous amounts of possible counters. Phoenix? Cold death. Ballista? Mass deflect missile. Summons? Elemental balance. Magical immunity? Harm touch. Cold death on ballista? Bearhide wraps or dragon talon sword  There are so many possible mind tricks to keep things fresh for a long time.
- Another new feature was the race-based lineups. Had a better concept than the previous 'random' lineups but it also brought less unit variety and killed the creativity in some factions. I favour the middle way myself.
- Another departure from traditional heroes, now primary stats were quite uneven. A faction could have ridiculous attack but abysmal defense, extreme spellpower but next to no knowledge and so on. It no doubt made the gameplay more interesting, however often enough it wrecked games. There have been cases of a necromancer gaining only 1-2 knowledge until lvl 20.. If only there was a mechanism to avoid that.
- Low tiers were no longer weak in lategame, battle frenzy, vitality and a couple of artifacts could transform them into a force to be reckoned with Occasionally though that could break the balance so it would have been preferable if the tiers were better balanced to begin with.
I have probably forgotten a few things but that is long enough for now Opinions?
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H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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Kraken
Famous Hero
I just love being elemental
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posted January 19, 2011 02:07 AM |
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Fantastic post, Elvin, this makes up for that april fool's joke a few years back. 
But I'd say H3 was more addictive than H2, I couldn't find out how to put my Heroes into the towns in H2  if you can even do that.
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Vini Vidi Vici
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted January 19, 2011 03:54 AM |
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Edited by MattII at 04:59, 19 Jan 2011.
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Battlefields were smaller, in H5 10 wide by 12 long (except in sieges where they were 12 wide by 14 long) as compared with 11 wide by 15 long in H3, which had the additional advantage that large units were only ever 1 space wide.
You also IMO ought to add a bit about the graphics, which went isometric in 4 and 3D in 5.
Oh, and the big change to the magic system in 2 in regards to 'knowledge', and perhaps the addition of the 5th level of spells. 2 also saw the introduction of the market, hoards, and non-dwelling special buildings, and 3 the Resource Silo. On top of that 3 also amalgamated the Thieves Guild and Tavern, and all the separate defensive buildings
Edit: Oh, and town specialisations in H5, those were new as well.
And would it be possible to get this stickyed?
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vlaad
Admirable
Legendary Hero
ghost of the past
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posted January 19, 2011 04:59 AM |
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Edited by vlaad at 05:12, 19 Jan 2011.
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Quote:
- While the hero abandoned the battlefield his presence could be felt more than ever with the inclusion of various combat abilities(mark of the damned, powerful blow, divine guidance) and the ability to attack units directly! That was a fine compromise on the hero's role in the battlefield.
What I miss most is having more than one hero on the battlefield. It added an RPG feeling and a number of tactical options.Quote:
Battlefields were smaller, in H5 10 wide by 12 long (except in sieges where they were 12 wide by 14 long) as compared with 11 wide by 15 long in H3, which had the additional advantage that large units were only ever 1 space wide.
Actually there were lots of two-hex creatures.
EDIT: Ah, got it, thanks.
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted January 19, 2011 05:06 AM |
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Edited by MattII at 06:07, 19 Jan 2011.
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Yeah, but they were only two hexes long, now large creatures are the same two spaces long but also two wide. The old battlefield would fit 77 large creature stacks total with some space left over, but in H5 even the siege battlefield would only fit 42 large stacks, and the normal battlefield would only fit 30.
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admira
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted January 19, 2011 08:52 AM |
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a very good article. and cover all the features. Looking forward to seeing the Heroes 6 here.
Anyway, I personally support the Hero in Combat feature. Although some will consider it the key feature that causing Heroes IV to collapse but that is not in my case. It gives a sense of involvement on Heroes because they are 1 uber-unit that also need to walk to get close to the unit stack they are trying to attack, have their own turn and most importantly giving the epic feels like: Aragorn leading an army of Minas Tirith while smashing an army of Orcs himself.
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted January 19, 2011 09:15 AM |
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Yeah it was kinda cool in theory, but the power ramped up way too quickly, the potions only made it worse, and the artefacts were even worse than the potions.
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted January 19, 2011 09:42 AM |
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A very important instrument introduced by Heroes III: AB - the RMG. In my opinion the best addition in terms of increasing the replayability of the game. It is simply a must for every next game and why it was ignored in Heroes IV and initially in Heroes V (and subsequently pseudo-reintroduced) is a mystery to me. The only reasonable explanation is the money-sucking expansion policy according to which you don't release the full game at once but sell it part by part and the chumps are happy that their favourite things are eventually included in the Nth add-on. 
Regarding Heroes IV - anyone remember the Governors? This idea was pretty good, but underdeveloped. With a little more love, it could have been an excellent and very visible addition to the gameplay.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted January 19, 2011 01:20 PM |
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@Matt
Well I do not consider graphics a feature, I'm more concerned with the gameplay. Graphics and artistic style changes yet many of the features may return. Thanks for the additions, a few things did slip my mind
@Vlaad
Multiple heroes eh? Divine interception ftw
@Zenofex
Silly of me to forget the RMG, I did use that a lot back in H3. The one we got in H5 was poor on so many levels.. Governors I don't see as an individual feature, more like an extension of the nobility skill. It was good being able to select who affects your town but the game could have simply been designed to count the one with the highest mastery. Heh that reminds me of the time I used a lord with stronghold and breeding pens
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H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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emilsn
Legendary Hero
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posted January 19, 2011 03:54 PM |
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Great post mate
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Don't walk behind me; I may not
lead. Don't walk in front of me;
I may not follow. Just walk
beside me and be my friend.
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Borton
Hired Hero
A lemming in my pocket
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posted January 20, 2011 10:04 PM |
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Edited by Borton at 22:06, 20 Jan 2011.
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Quote:
All in all when I look at H5 I see a lot of wasted potential, […] If only it had been given more time to develop and test..
That's exactly what I think of H4. Thanks for this nostalgic and romantic (in some way) post. Those were the days, son!! Remember the sound made by buildings when being built in H1-H2? And the sound of the mines when you got close to them!!
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The HOMM4 vampire is Dave Gahan!!!
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yasmiel
Supreme Hero
Former Chessmaster
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posted January 30, 2011 04:47 AM |
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Well put original post.
Most of the thread is spot on.
My only different view is on 1 hero type per faction being a negative. I actually prefer 1 per faction to 2.
But I can live with what majority wants .
My reasoning would be that having 2 heroes per faction waters down the differences between them in the meta choice. And as soon as minor choices start affecting the big meta-choice, players tend to drift towards their singular play-style regardless of faction.
As it was with creature choices in H4, upgrade choices in H5, and even might vs magic choice in H3... to me having might vs magic choice in each faction is thus a minus.
Hopefully BH will make it work and not be a feature phased out by players picking 1; - though it will be way harder than it looks on paper.
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