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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted April 22, 2011 11:34 AM |
bonus applied by Elvin on 22 Apr 2011. |
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Improving HoMM5
I thought about this some time lately (bored in a train ride.) HoMM5 brought us loads of fun, but wasn't really THE homm game. It never fixed most of the annoying HoMM mechanics (we can see first attempts of fixing them in HoMM6 though) and it didn't really bring anything new to the series while being - mostly due to poor optimization of the code - slow and sluggish to navigate.
Not that HoMM3 was fast when it was released, I remember what a pain it has been on my Pentium 133 Mhz  The cities loaded a week.
Anyways, if something ain't perfect, it can be improved - and HoMM5 definitively ain't perfect. I'm talking about things that cannot be simply modded, of course.
So, my points at making this game awesome:
1. Random distribution fix
Everything about this game is random. You get random spells in guild, mines are protected by random units, you get random artifacts on the map and there's a ton of random resources lying everywhere. Balancing a game that has things set in stone is hard by itself (see most RTS games), but balancing a game that's has massive random factor builtin as mechanic is nearly impossible. The most obvious example would be something like this:
- player A starts near rich sources of his required resource (say sulfur for warlocks) and there's also something like emerald slippers nearby guarded by some zombies. He gets meteor shower in his spell guild.
- player B starts with no required resources near, and the only artie around is sea captain's hat (with no sea on the map) guarded by arcane archers. He gets summon hive and arcane armor for his spells when trying to get summon phoenix.
Who would win in a short clash later? To me it's pretty obvious that the player B, even if greatly superior, would fail under most circumstances, lacking in both troops and spells.
This would actually be easy to fix in a few ways.
1. Obviously the easiest way to fix spells is to allow the user to get all of them, or let him choose. So, either the guild has both spells of each level available, or you just pick whichever you prefer to learn. Problem solved. Spellcasting would be much less "random" that way.
2. To fix the monster guards, it would be best to create a simple power rating and adjust the numbers accordingly. So, Zombies, being no threat at all, could be greatly boosted in numbers, say 200-300% of the original stack (wihtout giving more experience) while Arcane Archers, being mostly pretty snowy to creep, would have their numbers lowered. This of course isn't a perfect fix, mostly because creeping AAs is actually easy for some factions (stalkers+dungeon for instance) and hard as **** for others. So Actually I have a better idea: limit range of shooters - but I will get to that later.
3. As for artifacts, I think it would be best to leave some random factor in this game, after all it's not chess. However, if the hero would have a choice of several different artifacts when acquiring one - it would give people much better chances of getting things they actually need. So, instead of displaying what artifact it is on the map, you would be presented with several options of corresponding class: minor, major, relic.
4. Randomness of resources can be "fought" in many ways. THe easiest is to remove all "types" of special resource and introduce one - the way they did at HoMM6 - but this obviously is not a way to continue the "classic" HoMM. I'd say, although I like it, it was the cheap way out. The best idea would be to simply re-balance markets - allow them to trade resources at much better rates - 1/2 for instance, by default - and improve the total resource drain by various buildings. So, even if sulfur is dominant for dungeon, adding some bigger crystal/mercury/gem cost to other buildings while reducing the gold costs of the buildings would promote resource management while removing the monstrous gold strain of city development.
I think applying those four points would mostly eliminate random factor from causes of win/lose. Of course there would still be some, but it would be nowhere as deciding as it is now. Right now some arties/spells work best if simply banned on a custom map, if you want to have a fair matchup, not because they are THAT gamebreaking, but because it's gamebreaking if one player has them and the other wasn't so lucky to obtain anything useful.
2. Combat improvements
Inspired by Hammer of the Gods - a crappy HoMM predecessor - I think the combat system could be easily tweaked to be less about the first strike. HoMM4 tried to remove the deciding factor of first strike and of course failed (since there were first striking units anyway, and because it promoted passive gameplay too much). The simplier way is simply to divide the damage - give it a few hits and few retaliations instead of one single hit & eventual one retaliation. That way, the damage is distribued with a bigger chance of the defending stack actually doing something besides dying in first turn, and it's much more fun. We already have it in limited form, just get minotaur guards to attack griffins ^^
HotG also had an interesting way of using defense. Unlike HoMM, where defense is used for direct damage reduction, defense in HotG corresponded to the chance of blocking. Blocking a hit prevented all damage. While this obviously is an inferior choice (once again, it was highly random whether the unit blocked or not, while damage reduction of HoMM games works every time without random factor), I think it would be interesting to give certain units a block percentage. That would create a further diversification of the units: some would be tough for physical attackers to crack, but could not block spells, hence a perfect target for casters and casting units; Blocking could be implemented by partial damage evasion, not 100% damage block, with improved chances - to reduce the impact of random factor on battle even further.
HotG brought a fresh, inspiring idea of range units having - depending on power - limited range - which I liked myself. It of course only makes sense if units aren't able to cross the battlefield in one turn - paired with global slowing of all units, archers could see more action while being less annoying to deal with. It's no secret archers in HoMM5 were highly uninspiring - the highly crippling range penalty, usually bad initiative and fragility made them not very threatening on the battlefield. Even a big stack of liches usually failed to impress when attacking. That's obviously because the massive penalty reduced their damage to an equivalent of conscripts. Yeah. And to think they were one of the more powerful shooters...
So here's the idea. First of all, bigger combat field. Second, shooters with limited range for easier creeping (gives the hero at least 1-2 turns to prepare himself and his troops via spells before they move in the range - less annoying neutral battles) and no range penalty (after all, it does cripple them heavily). Give all shooters ranged retaliation. Finally, miss percentage. That's right, shooters at big distance can miss, and it's attack dependent (higher attack = less chance of failing - of course it's calculated for each unit in stack separatly to reduce random factor impact). That would reduce the neutral stacks (who don't have a hero to boost their attack score) of low tiers further by reducing their accuracy at bigger distance, making it MUCH less lethal for melee factions to creep.
Those changes would mean:
- No instant battle deciders from unis. No paladins that, hasted and buffed by ring of speed/staff of netherworlds get two instant-kills on your troops.
- Archers less annoying as neutrals, more useful as army members
- Archers being actually able to shoot more than once in combat before getting blocked (removing melee penalty would be also important, archers are already crippled by bad HP/defense values)
- Bigger impact of "tactics" skill
- Bigger impact of speed - in HoMM, unless units are gruesomely slow, it doesn't really matter that much what their speed is because there are three speed grades:
* slow-as-**** tier
* reach-the-enemy-in-1st-turn tier
* all-the-rest tier
Yes, the proposed changes would slow down battling, but also improve the impact of preparations before battle, I'm thinking about light magic, dark magic, destructive magic and alike here. If heroes have SOME time to prepare their stacks, it would mean a lot more to have some tactical abilities!
<this of course opens up potential abuse from Warlocks. With units far away and more time to cast spells because of improved battle field size and slower unit speeds, destructive may simply become a force that's too big to handle. This however can be tweaked in many ways:
- defense giving spell reduction to units (so destructive is ultra useful at creeping, but doesn't solve battles instantly)
- distance modifier (the further they are from the hero, the less damage spell cause. Could be useful to prevent instant battle deciders while retaining destructive's potential.)
- mana cost manipulation or extended formulas (spells casting a lot more if casted in a big distance, meteor shower draining more mana if hitting more units - much room to balance the destructive potential here)
In general, destructive should remain very powerful, however it should be weaker in 1st turns if the battle site is bigger. Personally, I think cost modifiers are the best solution - spells costing a ton would mean you have a choice: unleash your full potential fast and run dry fast, or wait for an actual battle to start and throw many spells but against a buffed enemy that's already near your troops.
3. Logistical improvements
What I hated about HoMM games in general was that my hero - in some terrains and with slow units - moved like a slug. It's not fun to take 2-3 resource piles, one chest, move a few steps and be forced to end turn. Again, and again, and again. With simultaneous turns, it would be quite easy to make turns longer. In general, moving shouldn't be as problematic, while actions like taking resources or fighting monsters should consume more of move pool. That way, reaching the other side of a small map wouldn't take three weeks (ridiculous). More mobility would mean in general faster gameplay on the map screen, and a lot more potential in scouting. Right now you can't do much if an exploring hero pops near your border and you're far away. By introducing this change, you could get back rather fast, because him taking the resources and exploring would take a lot more move points then your movement. Additionally, movecost may depend on how well the territory is explored; moving into unexplored territory could take more points and moving through explored one could be easy. That way, defending your terrains would be in general much easier, which would reduce the impact of lame towntaking by a single hero with a small stack. It's really not fun when towns change the owner 30 times per game.
4. Hero improvements
It's been debated over and over whether heroes should be able to participate in battles or not. HoMM4 in general failed here (again, it was either immortality potions abuse, or swift death of hero whenever an opportunity arose). On the other hand, games like Warlords:Battlecry failed to, because hero there was simply too powerful in the end end there was absolutely no need for armies.
What however people like is a sense of development. It's much easier to notice it when the hero actually is present on the battlefield, doing more damage and being harder to take down. However, it's one of the most tricky things to balance, because global damage changes radically in this game.
Let me explain it this way:
The overall damage per turn of an army in 2nd week is many times lower than overall damage per turn of an average army in 4th week.
Can't give direct amounts atm, but each weekly population of a stack adds another 100-200 damage per week which is further increased by hero's growing attack and blessing spells.
So, while your army can do about 400 damage per week in 2nd week (for example), it can easily exceed 2000 two weeks later, which is 500% more.
A hero must be able to sustain that much, however by using linear formula, this will make him way too strong early on (able to whitstand tons of punishment). Non linear formula will highly favorize melee heroes with high defense, making casters food for everyone, like they were in HoMM4.
Also, it has to include the fact that there are: spells, neutrals, maps where getting a big army faster is hard, maps where getting a big army faster is uber easy/you start with a big army...
In other words: pretty much impossible.
So, the hero "death" concept is pretty much out, unless we of course make some weird balance choices. For example, daily growth of hero's HP that doesn't depend on his stats (making warriors and mages have the same durability) on multiplayer games (campaigns could use different system). However, whatever we use, heroes will still be prime target, making the game - like pretty much all others that tried this - a "who kills the other side's hero(es) first" - instead of tactical game. (that's why homm4 failed, too).
So, all in all, despite hero units are fun, it can't be done in a satisfying manner.
However, some points can be realized by introducing Commanders - WoG like. Units that have their own skill&spell tree, own stats and can be balanced way better because their death doesn't remove all att/def bonuses or spellcasting from the current battle. Of course, that would take a LOT of balancing, but overall, it could be a fun addition.
5. Unit changes
This one is hard. While I love the fact that HoMM5 is loyal to the seven tiers standard of HoMM3, I dislike the fact that some tier7 units just don't have enough presence on the battlefield. Ever seen a good use of Spectral Dragons, for instance?
Besides re-balancing their ridiculous costs (mainly building costs), I'd totally improve their durability. Not just Spectral Dragons, but every tier7 unit. Getting them should be more of a reward than a hindrance of paying massive amounts for dwelling&creatures and getting them killed before acting.
Even if they do less damage, they should not die like peasants. The notorious example is the Titan. Looks good, has a great attack animation, and them gets rushed by some lame cavalry and BAM, dead. Where's the grace in that? in HoMM3, high tiers were much more intimidating, as in HoMM2. In this version, seeing an enemy with tier7 units while I have none mostly made me yawn.
Let's face it, those units deserve some glory, like the sight of HoMM2's awesome dragons which made people go *oh-crap*.
That's pretty much it, I might have missed some thoughts but if so, I'll add them once I recall them  What do you think of those changes? would it make HoMM5 better, or worse?
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We reached to the stars and everything is now ours
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Fauch
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 22, 2011 03:15 PM |
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yeah heroes 2 cyclops were truely intimadating
made my minotaurs do in their pants... well, not really actually
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However, whatever we use, heroes will still be prime target, making the game - like pretty much all others that tried this - a "who kills the other side's hero(es) first" - instead of tactical game. (that's why homm4 failed, too).
one thing you might forget about H4 is you can have several heroes in an army. like a tactician and 2 mages for example. and if they have immortality, you may have to hit them twice. or use mass cancellation. it is unlikely you can kill them all fast, so you have to make a choice. killing the tactician may seem obvious, but what if there is a life hero and he casts divine intervention? or an order hero casts hypnotize on your bigger stack?
in some cases, there could also be 2 tacticians, or the mages could carry artifacts increasing troops strength, so that you don't lose all the bonus when the tactician is dead.
I think, the biggest problem might be the tactician, because he gives huge bonus, which also means you lose a lot when he dies.
maybe killing a hero should just prevent him to act, without weakening too much the rest of the army?
basically, you have 2 main hero class. might and magic. both give bonuses to creatures, but when they die, not all the bonus is lost. magic heroes are like H4 mages and might heroes like H4 barbarian, and there is no need for a tactician that would do nothing else than sitting in a corner praying for no one to hit him.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted April 22, 2011 05:38 PM |
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Doomforge is back with a vengeance! If anything you are correct about H5 failing to address some of the series' flaws and overall sluggishness. Definitely made some welcome tweaks of existing content and combined features of the previous games - adding some of its own - but overall it wasn't exactly screaming for independence 
1. Randomness is the first thing you notice in H5. Chaotic level ups, big gap between units of the same level making random neutrals a pain, big gap on artifact or spell usefulness/power, random starting atb, high chances of effects with a huge impact on battle, sometimes a horde of tier 2 units appearing where you specifically set lots of tier 3 etc etc.
I am not against randomness mind you, it adds to the fun factor and replayability. But H5 did it at the cost of balance and it could be the cause of annoyance as much as fun. To actually bring a measure of (but still far from perfect)balance to ALL that you'd have to either start banning or mod half the units/spells/artifacts. And even so a good amount of the game has been hardcoded, so much for that.
Like you say a good player can get around this and make the best out of what he gets better than an average one but still. Power rating in neutrals could greatly help ease the earlygame chaos.
I don't like the option of choice in artifacts, that's one part of randomness that I don't want gone from the series. But I would like a way of setting limits of what can appear and what not when placing an artifact - that way you could avoid artifacts that are considered utterly useless in early/lategame or whenever it is you can gain access to that artifact.
Resource balancing in towns was ridiculous, simply compare the amount of resources you needed in H3 to build a town with an H5 one. In some maps it was outright or next to impossible to build thanes with dwarves, likewise you'd normally skip rakshasas with academy.. That is annoying, I want to make use of my army dammit.
I don't like the idea of a first charge, not when there are up to 3 units that can attack the opponent immediately and the chance for luck/morale or getting numerous attack artifacts is ridiculously high. I am against blocking, it was fun in age of wonders where every unit could miss against another but that is not for heroes. They tried that with the H4 minotaur and we all saw how fun that was. Mind you I'm all for alternative ways of minimizing a first strike like the shieldguard's ability or introducing an effective defense skill as H5 did but it's just easier to make units more sturdy or reduce the amount of damage dealt for each unit.
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It's no secret archers in HoMM5 were highly uninspiring - the highly crippling range penalty, usually bad initiative and fragility made them not very threatening on the battlefield.
You must have not gotten much action with crossbowmen or arcane archers H5 shooters were deadly(small ones anyway), possibly because they were easy to protect compared to previous heroes games. Even without tactics you could start the battle with them full surrounded, usually tanks that could take ages to kill. Many a time the orcs fell trying to break the formation and reach the crossbows. Range retaliation might make gameplay sense in H5 given the high dmg to hp ration but it just doesn't make real sense..
Btw I consider the miss chance as calculated by the minimum damage range of a shooter.
I too hated 3-4 speed units in H5. These guys were plain boring..
I am against defense giving spell reduction and applaud H6 for adding a magic defense stat.
Distance modifier for spells.. Kinda bleh, no likes.
Mana cost manipulation sounds fine.
Amount of movement in H5 wasn't all that much, which is why logistics were such a must. Only reduced the excitement from each turn. Movement cost differing on familiar compared to unexplored terrain sounds great.
I'm all for the introduction of a commander as long as the scaling works well.
Tier 7 had plenty of action in H5, that's why we build them week 2 with castle in multiplayer Of course there were certain questionable cases but overall they were pretty alright, especially when upgraded.
And yeah always found the concept of a tactician in H4 to be silly. No fun, just stand there and inspire your army passively..
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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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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted April 22, 2011 06:31 PM |
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yeah heroes 2 cyclops were truely intimadating
made my minotaurs do in their pants... well, not really actually
Well ok, Cyclops kinda sucked... But the rest was quite omg. Crusaders had mssive growth and double damage, Black Dragons were instant pwnage, Titans raped things, Bone Dragons had a scary damage rating (30-50 iirc) and Phoenixes were fast like hell iirc allowing first strikes. Compared to H5 and it's unremarkable tier7...  in H5, there were like, three units that impressed me visualy and "omg not this thing in week 2"-like:
Cyclopes (They were however rather unpredictable )
Shadow Dragons (For the ROAR my subwoofer would do each time they breathed)
Rainbow dragons (with their joke special).
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one thing you might forget about H4 is you can have several heroes in an army. like a tactician and 2 mages for example. and if they have immortality, you may have to hit them twice. or use mass cancellation. it is unlikely you can kill them all fast, so you have to make a choice. killing the tactician may seem obvious, but what if there is a life hero and he casts divine intervention? or an order hero casts hypnotize on your bigger stack?
in some cases, there could also be 2 tacticians, or the mages could carry artifacts increasing troops strength, so that you don't lose all the bonus when the tactician is dead.
Yeah but most of the time, I had a single hero or two-three undeveloped ****nuggets. In multiplayer, that is. Because of the retarded amount of EXP needed to reach level 5 spells, it was next to impossible for a mediocre Homm4 player like me to level up heroes sufficiently to get more than two max.
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I think, the biggest problem might be the tactician, because he gives huge bonus, which also means you lose a lot when he dies.
maybe killing a hero should just prevent him to act, without weakening too much the rest of the army?
That's what I thought myself. However, this could only work with HoMM3/5 system, definitively not with HoMM4 one
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basically, you have 2 main hero class. might and magic. both give bonuses to creatures, but when they die, not all the bonus is lost. magic heroes are like H4 mages and might heroes like H4 barbarian, and there is no need for a tactician that would do nothing else than sitting in a corner praying for no one to hit him.
Tacticians however bring the biggest benefit, so yeah, that's exactly what this guy is about: eating up potions of immortality every turn and begging for 1 turn of life more, since he's the obvious "KILL ME" dude.
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1. Randomness is the first thing you notice in H5. Chaotic level ups, big gap between units of the same level making random neutrals a pain, big gap on artifact or spell usefulness/power, random starting atb, high chances of effects with a huge impact on battle, sometimes a horde of tier 2 units appearing where you specifically set lots of tier 3 etc etc.
I am not against randomness mind you, it adds to the fun factor and replayability. But H5 did it at the cost of balance and it could be the cause of annoyance as much as fun. To actually bring a measure of (but still far from perfect)balance to ALL that you'd have to either start banning or mod half the units/spells/artifacts. And even so a good amount of the game has been hardcoded, so much for that.
I, also, am not totally against randomness, things are fun when you never know what benefit can you get around the corner. I am, however, against randomness pretty much screwing players from the very beginning. To have a slight advantage over the other opponent is pretty much fine, a better player should be able to overcome it anyway. To have a jokingly big advantage is not ok
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I don't like the option of choice in artifacts, that's one part of randomness that I don't want gone from the series. But I would like a way of setting limits of what can appear and what not when placing an artifact - that way you could avoid artifacts that are considered utterly useless in early/lategame or whenever it is you can gain access to that artifact.
This could be done by further dividing the artifacts into more specific groups... and of course better balance. That way it could be fun without giving the player a choice in picking the artie.
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Resource balancing in towns was ridiculous, simply compare the amount of resources you needed in H3 to build a town with an H5 one. In some maps it was outright or next to impossible to build thanes with dwarves, likewise you'd normally skip rakshasas with academy.. That is annoying, I want to make use of my army dammit.
Yeah, that was one of the most annoying HoMM5 things,my personal anti-favorite was Bone dragon dwelling, costs were ridiculous and the unit sucked anyway 
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I don't like the idea of a first charge, not when there are up to 3 units that can attack the opponent immediately and the chance for luck/morale or getting numerous attack artifacts is ridiculously high. I am against blocking, it was fun in age of wonders where every unit could miss against another but that is not for heroes. They tried that with the H4 minotaur and we all saw how fun that was. Mind you I'm all for alternative ways of minimizing a first strike like the shieldguard's ability or introducing an effective defense skill as H5 did but it's just easier to make units more sturdy or reduce the amount of damage dealt for each unit.
Minotaur block was total BS, I agree, because it was too strong when it triggered, and the unit was useless when it didn't. That's why partial blocking aka a (relatively big) chance to reduce the enemy's damage by (a moderate amount) is much better, more reliable and not annoying Although you can definitively just reduce the damage, in HoMM5 pretty much every "strong" fast stack had the power to instagib an enemy stack, especially with luck (which was broken anyway )
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You must have not gotten much action with crossbowmen or arcane archers H5 shooters were deadly(small ones anyway), possibly because they were easy to protect compared to previous heroes games. Even without tactics you could start the battle with them full surrounded, usually tanks that could take ages to kill. Many a time the orcs fell trying to break the formation and reach the crossbows. Range retaliation might make gameplay sense in H5 given the high dmg to hp ration but it just doesn't make real sense..
Btw I consider the miss chance as calculated by the minimum damage range of a shooter.
I didn't play much ToTe, this is true
The "big" shooters (mainly Lich) was my biggest disappointment though
those units were pretty much impossible to use correctly because blocking them was so easy with so many units that could cross the battlefield in 1 turn... 
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I too hated 3-4 speed units in H5. These guys were plain boring..
I am against defense giving spell reduction and applaud H6 for adding a magic defense stat.
Magic defense? Sounds good. Yeah, pretty much better than overpowering defense further 
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Tier 7 had plenty of action in H5, that's why we build them week 2 with castle in multiplayer Of course there were certain questionable cases but overall they were pretty alright, especially when upgraded.
Wow, you dudes certainly improved, I recall players struggling to get tier7 dwelling done in 2nd week most of the time
What I didn't like about high tier units is that heroes were able to kill them fast, meaning a fast rush with a tier7 unit was nowhere as scary as in previous versions (after initial buffs or whatever your hero was good at, he could simply rightclick tier7 units down with relative ease).
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And yeah always found the concept of a tactician in H4 to be silly. No fun, just stand there and inspire your army passively..
Indeed. It sucked. And it was such a big advantage, at the same point... Good that HoMM5 went in different direction
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We reached to the stars and everything is now ours
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted April 22, 2011 06:41 PM |
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Wow, you dudes certainly improved, I recall players struggling to get tier7 dwelling done in 2nd week most of the time
The wonders of not picking xp, skipping dwellings and capturing all mines week 1 assuming it was possible Unlikely to work on a poor map though. Take sylvan, was not that hard if you skipped treants and ONLY upgraded hunters, academy could skip golems and rakshasas..
Instances like that further made me question the design of the game, it did not feel.. stable. No natural progression.
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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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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted April 22, 2011 07:47 PM |
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indeed... I hate to skip things. Especially for Sylvan army, which imho had most potential, but was crippled with sick resource costs
I still wish there was an Elven warmachine hero.
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We reached to the stars and everything is now ours
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Fauch
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 22, 2011 07:59 PM |
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basically, you have 2 main hero class. might and magic. both give bonuses to creatures, but when they die, not all the bonus is lost. magic heroes are like H4 mages and might heroes like H4 barbarian, and there is no need for a tactician that would do nothing else than sitting in a corner praying for no one to hit him.
Tacticians however bring the biggest benefit, so yeah, that's exactly what this guy is about: eating up potions of immortality every turn and begging for 1 turn of life more, since he's the obvious "KILL ME" dude.
well, actually, I meant, that all heroes would give bonuses to creatures (attack, defense, magic attack, magic defense), would be killable, and would be either fighter or mage, but when they die, your army don't necessarily lose all their bonuses?
not sure about bonuses given from artifacts.
or you could even do the reverse thing, your army is angered by the death of their hero and they gain rage bonuses.
however, maybe they would lose all bonuses if the hero isn't resurrected fast enough (let's say after a few days)
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted April 22, 2011 10:19 PM |
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I'm pretty much against hero death/ressurection (via tombstone). Just more unnecessary logistics (taking the gravestone to base in HoMM4 was just... annoying.)
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We reached to the stars and everything is now ours
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted April 22, 2011 11:07 PM |
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Yeah that feature was more like.. dead weight. What do you think heroes should add or modify if you were given the freedom to go beyond where H5 went? One of the reasons I like the direction of H6 is that the developers seem to be reviewing how things worked in the past and whether it is worth keeping them as they were. It is a potentially risky move but also one with potential.
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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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Fauch
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 23, 2011 12:56 AM |
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Edited by Fauch at 01:07, 23 Apr 2011.
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it's not that risky, it's just modifying old things, not integrating completely new ones. though, if they wanted to go the safest way, they would just remake H3 with better graphics.
compared to H4, can't say that the developpers of H6 seem to be taking much risks actually (except for the facts that there are only 5 factions and the town windows lol)
the tombstones feature... not sure because usually my heroes didn't get killed. the main probleme was the 1st week, if you had to fight imps or gargoyles, I could rarely keep levels 1/2 heroes alive against them, which meant losing a bit of XP and time.
would be silly if he was automatically resurected at the end of the battle (if winner) and annoying if you had to rehire him (while your army is still standing but without a hero)
well, let's admit that the hero can't be killed (in that case having him on the battlefield is a problem, he could just be used as an indestructible obstacle) there could be some ways to disable him. I wonder why spells won't work on heroes? for example, slow down the enemy warlock or cast righteous might on your barbarian. well of course, hypnotizing the enemy hero might be a bit too powerful
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted April 23, 2011 10:10 AM |
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it's not that risky, it's just modifying old things, not integrating completely new ones. though, if they wanted to go the safest way, they would just remake H3 with better graphics.
That's pretty much what they did
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well, let's admit that the hero can't be killed (in that case having him on the battlefield is a problem, he could just be used as an indestructible obstacle) there could be some ways to disable him. I wonder why spells won't work on heroes? for example, slow down the enemy warlock or cast righteous might on your barbarian. well of course, hypnotizing the enemy hero might be a bit too powerful
If the hero was a "normal" unit, having spells working on him (some - probably should be immune to psychological effects like Titan is) would be an interesting move. However, this again puts more abuse in the window - implosion to the face pretty much ends stuff, so you need to get some sort of magical protection system for hero, which (most of the time) ends up being a must, delaying more "interesting" skills and slowing the pace of gameplay. Which is meh.
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We reached to the stars and everything is now ours
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mlai
Adventuring Hero
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posted April 23, 2011 11:05 AM |
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1. I like the idea of more evenly distributing attack/retaliation over several strikes, so there aren't 1st-strike-instagibs. But it can't go too far into becoming completely even; there should be an advantage for striking first. Perhaps the ATT stat should be divided into striking-first ATT and retaliation ATT, if you go the route of evenly distributing attack/retal over several strikes each.
2. How about this mechanic taken from the old AD&D rpgs...? When you walk past an enemy stack, it gets a free attack on your back. This way, it allows more tactical guarding of your casters and archers. Your tank stack can be standing further away from them and still be guarding them, depending on terrain.
This may sound like it gives advantage to flyers (no free attacks when passing enemy stacks). But maybe... give enemy archers a chance for automatic "opportunity strikes" on your flyers whenever they're flying around in firing range.
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yann
Adventuring Hero
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posted April 30, 2011 10:08 PM |
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The one problem that simply overshadows every other problem in Heroes V is simple: the gameplay is WAY too slow. You spend half of the game waiting for your turn...absolutely ridiculous.
Of course, we were all spoiled by Heroes I-IV with extremely quick AI turns so we come to expect the same (with the understanding it should be slightly slower) from all the games moving forward.
Hopefully, the new heroes games will fix this issue. Otherwise, the games will continue to mire in failure and it won't matter how nice the graphics are.
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mlai
Adventuring Hero
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posted May 01, 2011 02:03 AM |
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What are you talking about "waiting for your turn"? Against player 2?
Certainly not against AI. I don't know about you guys but AI turns take approx 8-10 seconds for my PC. Considering that I usually take a few minutes for each of my own turns, 8-10 seconds of break time aren't felt at all.
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Deathy
Known Hero
Angels Galore
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posted May 01, 2011 07:28 PM |
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nah, he has a point. atleast everytime i played 6 player maps against AI, sometime after third or fourth month, AI started taking 30+ seconds in their turns atleast for no apparent reason. although the waiting time got back to normal once i started taking AI's castles over constantly.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted May 02, 2011 08:05 AM |
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In some cases it could even take more than a minute. Esp in HoF but at the time there was also the instant travel bug.
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