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B0rsuk
Promising
Famous Hero
DooM prophet
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posted July 30, 2011 05:17 PM |
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Edited by B0rsuk at 17:19, 30 Jul 2011.
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I doubt Heroes of Might and Magic can ever be a successful multiplayer game. It's fun for a couple of times. Even if there were no balance issues (and everything from 1-5 has serious ones) it's a turn-based game. In A-B-A-B format. The only really popular multiplayer TBS games have simultaneous turns. Dominions2, Dominions3 have solid multiplayer communities.
Can you name a one popular multiplayer game that uses alternating turns ?
Few of 2 vs 2 games I played over the internet actually finished. Usually the winner was the one whose partner hasn't left.
Aside from having to wait for another players, Heroes was always very random. Randomness, if not overused, makes games more fun. As long as you don't take yourself extremely seriously like wannabe pro players do. Classic (1-3, even 4) Heroes had:
- random piles of resources, including random amounts
- countless random map locations: windmills, demon cave, sphinx, vaults guarded by creatures
- random monster guards
- random spells in magic guild
- random combat damage
- random luck and morale strokes
- chance-based magic resistance for monsters and spells
- chance-based creature abilities (blind, paralyze, curse, double strike, poison, aging, stoning)
- random rewards, artifacts
- random location of the ultimate artifact. In Heroes2 even the ultimate artifact is random.
- random primary and secondary skills at level up
- random weeks
The list goes on, on and on. Because many multiplayer gamers can't stand a single defeat due to chance, and are control freaks, they tend to avoid Heroes games. Randomness is a fundamental part of Heroes.
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted July 30, 2011 05:21 PM |
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Randomness kills multiplayer. When it's all a coin toss who will win and who will lose (because EVERYTHING is random and with so much randomness, balance it's impossible), competing against other people is no longer fun. It took map makers a long time and effort to strip maps of much of the randomness by banning spells, making equal positions and stuff like that. Guess it wasn't fun to play lotto every time you play against somebody.
That's why I claimed that people clinging to anti-MP "fun" features will not be satisfied by their removal and vice versa. It's a situation where one group will be left annoyed, no matter what ubihole does.
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Avirosb
Promising
Legendary Hero
No longer on vacation
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posted July 30, 2011 05:26 PM |
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Quote:
Randomness kills multiplayer
I find Super Smash Bros. Brawl to be a pretty fun game,
but then again, I don't play on a "professional" level.
That, and the match durations are significantly shorter than those of a Heroes game.
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted July 30, 2011 05:29 PM |
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and a whole different genre 
"random" and "strategy" just don't go well together.
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Austere
Tavern Dweller
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posted July 30, 2011 05:31 PM |
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Wouldn't it be possible to have some turns go simultaneously? So long as your areas are blocked off by creeps, you can't interact with one another or compete over similar resources, right? So couldn't your turns be simultaneous up until when those dividing creeps are removed?
Although, if you were each going for the same stack of creeps at a similar moment on the same turn, what happens then would be awkward, I'm not exactly sure how it could be handled. Perhaps it could be that at the start of a turn, if two heroes are within the potential movement range of one another and the block to their path isn't impassable (like a creep block or a transport gate, rather than a mountain range) than the turns are no longer simultaneous. The game could choose from the start the turn order, however it does it now, and just apply that at the moment it's necessary.
____________
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted July 30, 2011 05:43 PM |
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But then, notice that there is a difference between completely random and just determined by statistics. Skill offers in Heroes 1-5 were determined by statistics, but they were not completely random. With each faction, you knew som skills were very likely to come up, and some were very unlikely. Hence, if you chose to base your strategy on a very rare skill (before it had occured), obviously you made things hard for yourself. I don't see a problem with that.
And yes, there were incidents of very common skills not coming up, and people always mention those, but frankly, I think it's because these are the cases that stick to the minds of people. Yes, a 15 % skill has a 20 % chance of not popping up over 10 levels, but that's also a 80 % success rate. 10 % skills are a bit harder - roughly 1/3 (35 %) for not showing up, and 2/3 for them showing up. Is that too uncertain? I guess it depends on your mentality, but it's a chance of succes that I didn't mind live with.
____________
What will happen now?
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted July 30, 2011 05:49 PM |
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for Homm5, I think the worst part wasn't skills (although not getting a certain skill i.e. sorcery for warlock could totally cripple his effectiveness), but the spells. Some were awesome, some were useless. For instance, getting puppet master against stronghold was awesome, but getting curse of the netherworld instead was... insignificant at best.
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Avirosb
Promising
Legendary Hero
No longer on vacation
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posted July 30, 2011 05:54 PM |
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Quote:
"random" and "strategy" just don't go well together.
A lot of famous generals throughout history can attest to that,
but I guess "fantasy" and "realism" don't go well together either 
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted July 30, 2011 05:57 PM |
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Exactly  At least Bonaparte didn't have to deal with Arcane Armor in his level 5 guild 
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Avirosb
Promising
Legendary Hero
No longer on vacation
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posted July 30, 2011 06:07 PM |
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But, what does that make Lord of the Rings? 
Ain't Middle Earth some sort of realistic/fantastic setting?
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted July 30, 2011 06:09 PM |
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well, were there great strategists there?
I thought they defeated Sauron cause... you know... two hobbits dropped a coiled piece of metal into a volcano.
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Seraphim
Supreme Hero
Knowledge Reaper
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posted July 30, 2011 06:37 PM |
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Quote:
for Homm5, I think the worst part wasn't skills (although not getting a certain skill i.e. sorcery for warlock could totally cripple his effectiveness), but the spells. Some were awesome, some were useless. For instance, getting puppet master against stronghold was awesome, but getting curse of the netherworld instead was... insignificant at best.
Luck and morale triggers were worse...
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted July 30, 2011 06:39 PM |
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oh yes, true. Forgot that.
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Seraphim
Supreme Hero
Knowledge Reaper
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posted July 30, 2011 06:54 PM |
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Quote:
oh yes, true. Forgot that.
I once supported randomness but that changed when I played H5.
Getting an unlucky streak is beyond annoying,it makes just want to scream how idiotic randomness is. Its already annoying in real life.
Randomness runis it really.
They have to cut randomness to 1% if they want to make it fun.
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted July 30, 2011 06:56 PM |
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I agree. Opinions on the "awesomeness" of randomness usually change after you're on the losing side because of it...
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted July 30, 2011 07:30 PM |
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I'm not inclined to discuss this, since no good will result from it, but the "competetive" Heroes play faction makes a very grave mistake: they try to force their ideas of competetion onto a game, instead looking at the game and develop competetion ideas.
In the end, the more equal the players are, the higher the likeliness that THE GAME that decides the outcome, as soon as there is ANY randomness at all.
I always thought that Heroes is the ideal game for LEAGUE play. Also you need to avoid rich maps, you have to play on high to highest difficulty, and you need a winning condition that does not need the conquest of the (last) opposing town.
Heroes isn't chess. Playing competetively cannot mean to decide who is best player. It's more like, say, Bridge. You gain a title for a specific season, not more, and if you play in a League that may involve luck, but you won't end the league first on luck.
Also, you can have very different leagues. You may have town leagues - as many leagues as there are towns, where you would play out the best player of aspecific town and then have play-offs with the 8 winners.
Or you could have completely random leagues where towns and starting heroes would generally be determined randomly.
And so on.
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted July 30, 2011 08:09 PM |
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JJ,
don't forget that pretty much in every environment that assumes competition, the rules are set to limit the effect of random factor and equalize starting situation for players. Except those based on the random factor itself, like Bridge.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted July 30, 2011 08:28 PM |
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I don't think so. Or why is there a home team and a guest team, for example. And the playground - it might be in a bad state. Deliberately, because the home team wants to fight down the teachnically better guest team. There will be a coin toss to determine the starting condition, and if the guest team wins, they will make sure to reverse the preferred playing order of the home team.
There is weather. There is the randomness of referee decisions which may be wrong. How many high level events are decided by wrong referee decisions? ONE wrong decision, and the game may be lost.
That's a lot of randomness.
And we are just talking about probability.
It's an illusion to believe that things get less random when you reduce the amount of randomness. If you have one coin toss, it will be heads or tails, deciding somthing. If you have a lot of those, usually nothing is decided. There shouldn't be decisive things decided randomly, though. As in, I move first, I win.
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B0rsuk
Promising
Famous Hero
DooM prophet
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posted July 30, 2011 08:57 PM |
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Quote:
Exactly At least Bonaparte didn't have to deal with Arcane Armor in his level 5 guild
Instead, he had to deal with many unknown factors, and improvise. The world is not like a tennis court. Napoleon wasn't warring against a copy of France led by a Napoleon.
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted July 30, 2011 09:00 PM |
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Heroes game is more like tennis court than the world, definitively...
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This thread is pages long: 
