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| Thread: Suggestion concerning the resource system | |
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creepiestdani
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 26, 2011 11:24 PM |
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Suggestion concerning the resource system
I've been thinking, what is the difference between the old and the new resource systems?
I'll start with an obvious observation: throughout a Heroes of Might & Magic game you get most resources from piles scattered around the map. This was the case in all previous games, and I suspect it will be no different in Heroes 6 because it is I think a necessary condition for making town-building strategically appealing. For this reason, by having fewer resources, the developers have to make buildings cost more -- what they lose in variance, they have to make up for in quantity.
But the main difference between the two systems as I see it is that in the old system some piles are more valuable than others, which means the order in which you get those piles matters. This ties in with the management of another game "resource": movement-points. During a game-week you can do a limited number of battles, which means you have to prioritize -- a crucial aspect in the first few weeks of a multiplayer game, especially when playing on Impossible. If you're only concerned with quantity, the order in which you get those piles is unimportant -- you'll always get the closest least-guarded ones. If however some piles are more important than others, you have to manage your movement points much more carefully, which adds another strategic layer to the game.
My suggestion is for them to make more kinds of resource piles of the same type available. I was thinking of three: small, medium and large. The number of resources they yield would be variable, but known:
small: 3-5
medium: 5-8
large: 8-12
There could also be mixed resource piles which gave random combinations of both ore and wood for example (say 'small ore pile+large wood pile').
This I think would make the game more strategic because it allows players to manage the movement-points resource more efficiently. Practically it does not detract from the game at all for less able players, but adds a (or, rather, retains this) strategic layer for good players.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject. 
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maeerol
Hired Hero
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posted February 26, 2011 11:46 PM |
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Good idea... still, I'm not satisfied with the actual H6 resource system... I already said it, and I'll repeat: two rare resources would fit better in the game ( one for the good, and other for the evil factions... they could affect the hero alignment too ).
Indeed, they won't change that, so, at least your idea would make the resources a bit more interesting... 
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MrDragon
Supreme Hero
Eats people with Ketchup
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posted February 27, 2011 12:20 AM |
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Quote:
Good idea... still, I'm not satisfied with the actual H6 resource system... I already said it, and I'll repeat: two rare resources would fit better in the game ( one for the good, and other for the evil factions... they could affect the hero alignment too ).
Indeed, they won't change that, so, at least your idea would make the resources a bit more interesting...
Problem is, with this design you come back to where capping mines loses its relevance as the resource you claim either is one your opponent cares little for or one you don't care for.
Having a resource you both need, and as a high priority makes it a flashpoint for conflict.
By reducing it down to one resource it comes an incredibely important aspect of the game to fight over.
Finally right now there are no "good" or "evil" factions, we have one faction dedicated mostly to chaos and the other factions each have their own ideals and leaders with personal motivations.
(Though we know from experience some demons have personal motivations as well, which can lead to unexpected alliances and demon on demon violence.)
Even if one could arbitrarily hedge them into those catagories, it wouldn't work with 5 factions.
Sometimes, less is more, and I think that from a at least purely design standpoint, a single advanced resource makes more sense.
Plenty of games get greater strategic complexity then the HoMM series in resource management with only 2 or 3 resources, we got 4.
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yasmiel
Supreme Hero
Former Chessmaster
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posted February 27, 2011 12:38 AM |
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This might sound strange but i liked the system in Heroes 1 the best.
What was the difference?
It still had all 4 rare resources, but... no marketplace!. denying a suitable rare mine to the opponent means he will never ever manage to yield his strongest troops
In a way, H1 is the most similar to H6, from the "battle for resources" standpoint.
Anyhow, H6 system will work well... as far as resources go at least.
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creepiestdani
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 27, 2011 01:08 AM |
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Quote:
This might sound strange but i liked the system in Heroes 1 the best.
What was the difference?
It still had all 4 rare resources, but... no marketplace!. denying a suitable rare mine to the opponent means he will never ever manage to yield his strongest troops
This can also be achieved by having prohibitive marketplace exchange rates. It is quite frustrating not being able to build something because of missing a single resource.
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted February 27, 2011 02:09 AM |
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Edited by MattII at 02:24, 27 Feb 2011.
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Quote:
Sometimes, less is more, and I think that from a at least purely design standpoint, a single advanced resource makes more sense.
Agreed, so lets scrap wood and ore as well, because you know, the only place you use them is in buildings, nowhere else (except maybe wood for ships).
Quote:
Plenty of games get greater strategic complexity then the HoMM series in resource management with only 2 or 3 resources, we got 4.
Yeah, by having 43 different units compared to our 7/faction.
The real issue with the resources always was that 6 of the 7 were so rare you could do practically nothing with them, not that there were 7 of them (hells, look at the number of resources Settlers had).
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soul_blighter
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 27, 2011 08:08 AM |
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i'm willing to give the new resource system a try....see how things work out in the longer run of play, both in the campaigns and the skirmishes. if the entire plan was to divert attention from micro-management (as said countless times in the interviews and Q/A's), then thats what they were thinking when they opted for 4 resources.
there's also a slight hint at returning to the old system (seven resources, although not sure about the old mine flagging system) in the future, see the second homm comic strip and u'll figure it out....i wonder if that meant anything? 
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MrDragon
Supreme Hero
Eats people with Ketchup
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posted February 27, 2011 09:39 AM |
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Quote:
Yeah, by having 43 different units compared to our 7/faction.
7 per faction, not counting upgrades still gets us to 35 units, not a lot less then 43 is it?
What games are you basing this around on? also I specifically noted RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, the amount of different units is almost completely irrelivent.
Many RTS or TBS games will have 10 to maybe 15 units per faction and sport 2 to 8 factions (strongest titles seem to rely on 2 or 4), of which some will have similar roles or functions, and their costs are balanced an various ways but say we look at Warcraft and Starcraft with only two resources, it's not so much about the amount of different units as the balance they have of primary vs secondary resource.
You can't just blindy build your army, you have to keep in mind how much resources you have stockpiled and are taking in.
Starcraft example: blow through to much gas and you'll have to rely on spamming zealots as protoss, blow through to much minerals and you will have tons of gas sitting in your stockpile doing nothing.
It might seem simple, but it's not, try watching some replays of Esport Starcrafters and keep an eye on their resources, you'll see they will keenly balance their income, worker count and military expenses, letting either their minerals or gas go to waste because they didn't spend in a carefully thought through and balanced way, they WILL LOSE.
Try Dawn of War, they don't have 43 units/faction either.
or Command and Conquer, Total Anihilation and many many others.
Games which make resources and managing them important, don't have rediculous numbers of units and still are hailed as great titles by both consumers and media.
As for Wood/Ore, I thought about those myself as well, they have the exact same purpose, just in different balances.
They are the resources that control your town development rate.
But.... provided they do the costs on various structures correctly, having two of these, regardless of you almost always capping both mines in the first two turns, will force you to make decisions on what buildings to build and in what order, spend to much wood quickly and you might cripple your more general structures in later turns, then once you cap an extra mine your building options might shift.
Now in theory, they could have done that kind of approach with the advanced resources, except they never did, and if they did, juggling 4 resources on top of the 3 basic would actually slow down gameplay a lot for likely little gain.
Ofcourse, only time will tell what the exact effects of the new system will be, but I'm going to predict that tighter balance on fewer resources makes for deeper gameplay without becoming a to dense obstacle.
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted February 27, 2011 10:57 AM |
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Well of course we're going to have tighter balance, we have fewer resources to work with, and a lot less to do with them, what with no longer having a Mage Guild, and the fact that we're reduced to 2 special buildings per town of 4 available, not to mention that this new tier setup further reducing the difference between factions (basically, building all the dwelling is going to be done in 3 steps, all Core, all Elite, Champion).
BTW, 43 was in no way meant to be an accurate count of the number of units of any game, it was just meant to indicate that most of those games have a greater selection of units than we have, (we get exactly 7 units types per faction, and we're allowed only 7 stacks per hero, not the dozens or hundreds of separate units RTS gamers have to deal with).
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Nelgirith
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted February 27, 2011 12:08 PM |
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Quote:
Well of course we're going to have tighter balance, we have fewer resources to work with, and a lot less to do with them, what with no longer having a Mage Guild, and the fact that we're reduced to 2 special buildings per town of 4 available, not to mention that this new tier setup further reducing the difference between factions (basically, building all the dwelling is going to be done in 3 steps, all Core, all Elite, Champion).
BTW, 43 was in no way meant to be an accurate count of the number of units of any game, it was just meant to indicate that most of those games have a greater selection of units than we have, (we get exactly 7 units types per faction, and we're allowed only 7 stacks per hero, not the dozens or hundreds of separate units RTS gamers have to deal with).
Your post is full of assumptions. Have you seen a building tree yet ? Until then, you really don't know how many buildings there are in a city, nor if creatures from a same tier require a building each or a building for all 
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MrDragon
Supreme Hero
Eats people with Ketchup
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posted February 27, 2011 12:30 PM |
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All I'm saying that indeed 43 is in no way accurate, try 10 to 15 per fection is most common RTS games, which is often resulting in 40 to 90 units (spread over all factions), not that far off from HoMMVI.
Starcraft I for example had about 12-14 units per faction, including units spawned by abilities.
(I keep using Starcraft and Warcraft as examples because I play/played them a lot and thus don't have to look it up much  )
Just had a look at C&C RA2, around 40 units total, just 5 more then HoMMVI if you DO NOT include upgrades, neutrals or bosses.
HoMMVI, including upgrades will boast 86 creatures (as far as we know).
51 without upgrades.
Remember that other then your starting hero, heroes aren't free purchases either, and artifacts that you might purchase from merchants, or adventure map objects that have fees, like the Cartographer or the Tree of Wisdom (or whetever the level-up tree's name was).
We also know that besides creature dwellings there are several new structures including 4 faction unique non-creature dwellings.
+ The Hall of Justice.
+ The Town Portal structure.
And who knows what else?!
We know close to nothing about the towns themselves.
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vitorsly
Known Hero
Joker!
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posted February 27, 2011 01:50 PM |
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Quote:
... nor if creatures from a same tier require a building each or a building for all
It has already said that it will work like this (using necropolis as an example and assuming you buy a dwelling every day)(numbers are guesses)
Day 1
0 core pool 0 Elite pool 0 champion pool
Buy boneyard (skeletons)
20 core pool 0 elite p and 0 champio p
Day 2
Buy graveyard (ghouls)
35 core p 0 elite p 0 champion p
Day 3
Buy spirit tomb (ghosts)
50 core p 0 elite p 0 champion p.
So there are separate dwellings for every creature but the pool is the same and adds for every dwelling of that category you buy.
BTW why we talknig about creatures again?
I like your Idea of different amounts in stack but I also taught about this:
Silver mine (500 gold day) Gold mine (1000 gold day) Platinum mine (2000 gold day)
Small saw mill (1 wood day) Large saw mill (2 wood day)
The same as wood for cristals and ore.
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soul_blighter
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 27, 2011 03:14 PM |
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Quote:
Quote:
... nor if creatures from a same tier require a building each or a building for all
It has already said that it will work like this (using necropolis as an example and assuming you buy a dwelling every day)(numbers are guesses)
Day 1
0 core pool 0 Elite pool 0 champion pool
Buy boneyard (skeletons)
20 core pool 0 elite p and 0 champio p
Day 2
Buy graveyard (ghouls)
35 core p 0 elite p 0 champion p
Day 3
Buy spirit tomb (ghosts)
50 core p 0 elite p 0 champion p.
So there are separate dwellings for every creature but the pool is the same and adds for every dwelling of that category you buy.
BTW why we talknig about creatures again?
I like your Idea of different amounts in stack but I also taught about this:
Silver mine (500 gold day) Gold mine (1000 gold day) Platinum mine (2000 gold day)
Small saw mill (1 wood day) Large saw mill (2 wood day)
The same as wood for cristals and ore.
wheres all this info from??? i was waitin for this kinda stuff! can u post the link/source for these info?
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creepiestdani
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 27, 2011 03:55 PM |
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Quote:
I like your Idea of different amounts in stack but I also taught about this:
Silver mine (500 gold day) Gold mine (1000 gold day) Platinum mine (2000 gold day)
Small saw mill (1 wood day) Large saw mill (2 wood day)
The same as wood for cristals and ore.
Love the idea!
For me the game is more interesting when resources are scarce (that's why I only play on Impossible), because I like town building to be a challenge in itself, which does not happen on lower difficulty levels. Simply put, when resources are scarce, they become more valuable. By resources I mean both short-term (piles) and long-term (mines) resources. Were I to design the system, my goal would be twofold:
- to increase the overall value of all resources, by balancing the cost of buildings that use up resources with the resources available; to simplify, the value is directly proportional with the cost of the buildings, and inversely proportional with the abundance of the resources
- to increase the value of some resources over others
Example:
Do I get the two smaller resource piles or the large one? In getting the large one I save a turn, but I will certainly suffer some losses. Is it worth it? If that one turn allows you to build the champion unit dwelling this week, which you otherwise wouldn't, I'd say it is. Well, you get the idea. Such scenarios happen very often when playing on Impossible.
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted February 27, 2011 08:09 PM |
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Edited by MattII at 20:14, 27 Feb 2011.
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Quote:
All I'm saying that indeed 43 is in no way accurate, try 10 to 15 per fection is most common RTS games, which is often resulting in 40 to 90 units (spread over all factions), not that far off from HoMMVI.
Starcraft I for example had about 12-14 units per faction, including units spawned by abilities.
(I keep using Starcraft and Warcraft as examples because I play/played them a lot and thus don't have to look it up much )
Just had a look at C&C RA2, around 40 units total, just 5 more then HoMMVI if you DO NOT include upgrades, neutrals or bosses.
However, in all these games units have to be controlled individually, so if we can get say, 90 units, that's like 13 heroes (13 heroes gives us 91 stacks), and those heroes and stacks don't have to be simultaneously micro-managed either.
Quote:
We also know that besides creature dwellings there are several new structures including 4 faction unique non-creature dwellings.
+ The Hall of Justice.
+ The Town Portal structure.
The dwellings and faction unique buildings are now going to be the only real differences between towns now, so even if we did still have 4 rare resources, there'd be less diversity in their use.
One thing I'd like to see is the old H4 system, where there are untapped resource sites that you have to build mines on before getting anything out of them. I'd also like to see some weekly resource generators, in addition to the normal daily ones (like the Imp Pit and Miners Guild, rather than say the Windmill).
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MrDragon
Supreme Hero
Eats people with Ketchup
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posted February 27, 2011 08:42 PM |
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Quote:
However, in all these games units have to be controlled individually, so if we can get say, 90 units, that's like 13 heroes (13 heroes gives us 91 stacks), and those heroes and stacks don't have to be simultaneously micro-managed either.
Except we're talking resources and things to spend them on, not how you control your army, that you can control individual units does not have any effect on the purchasing of the units.
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creepiestdani
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 27, 2011 11:47 PM |
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Quote:
The dwellings and faction unique buildings are now going to be the only real differences between towns now, so even if we did still have 4 rare resources, there'd be less diversity in their use.
There's a very large variation that can be achieved with just four resources and building dependencies (that is, buildings that require other buildings in order to be built).
It's interesting that if you deconstruct the two systems, the difference is not really that great. As I said previously, you get most resources from piles.
15 wood = 3 piles (if you don't have a mine)
5 sulphur,5 gems,5 crystals = 3 piles
If you don't find a sulphur pile in the latter case, you're stuck (without a marketplace); if you don't find a wood pile in the former, you're stuck.
The difference has more to do with flavor than function. Disregarding the flavor (which I personally don't really care about), having less resources is better, because it makes them more disputed in multiplayer.
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vicheron
Known Hero
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posted March 02, 2011 11:58 AM |
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Quote:
Quote:
... nor if creatures from a same tier require a building each or a building for all
It has already said that it will work like this (using necropolis as an example and assuming you buy a dwelling every day)(numbers are guesses)
Day 1
0 core pool 0 Elite pool 0 champion pool
Buy boneyard (skeletons)
20 core pool 0 elite p and 0 champio p
Day 2
Buy graveyard (ghouls)
35 core p 0 elite p 0 champion p
Day 3
Buy spirit tomb (ghosts)
50 core p 0 elite p 0 champion p.
So there are separate dwellings for every creature but the pool is the same and adds for every dwelling of that category you buy.
BTW why we talknig about creatures again?
I like your Idea of different amounts in stack but I also taught about this:
Silver mine (500 gold day) Gold mine (1000 gold day) Platinum mine (2000 gold day)
Small saw mill (1 wood day) Large saw mill (2 wood day)
The same as wood for cristals and ore.
Heroes 4 had something like that. There were "small" resource generators like Miner's Guild, which generated 10 ore per week, Imp Pit, which generated 5 sulfur per week, etc.
I think a simple way of improving the resource system is to give the player some ability to increase the production of mines. The easiest way is to make it so that garrisoning troops in mines increase production.
An upgrade system of some kind where you invest gold and other resources to improve mine production, and maybe add some guards to prevent harassment, could also work.
There could also be an option to temporarily increase production. It would be easy to let you spend gold to increase production for a few days. Another option is to give the option of increasing production temporarily at the cost of reduced or zero production for a number of days afterwards. For example, they could give you the option of doubling the production of a mine for 5 days at the cost of the mine becoming non-functional for 10 days following that.
However, I think the best way to improve the resource system is to add more ways of using rare resources. Spell research would be a simple addition. When you build a mage guild, you should be given the option to research new spells at the cost of gold and rare resources. Artifact crafting is another simple addition. They already had mini-artifacts in Heroes 5. There's no reason why they can't let you craft artifacts for your heroes.
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creepiestdani
Adventuring Hero
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posted March 02, 2011 12:52 PM |
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Wonderful ideas vicheron!
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mike80d
Famous Hero
Map Maker
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posted March 02, 2011 02:28 PM |
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IMO:
-Different sized stacks of ore/wood/dragon's blood is
-Silver/Gold/Platinum mines is
-spend 1,000gold to temporarily increase ore or wood production is
I'd like to suggest something like this:
-Adventure map object called "Mason's Guild", which when captured improves the efficiency of the mason's in all of your towns, thus reducing the ore required for buildings by 10%. A similar "Carpenter's Guild" could be for reduction in lumber usage.
-For every shipyard owned, your boat building skills improve and the wood required per boat is reduced by 'X' amount.
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