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Heroes Community > Heroes 8+ Altar of Wishes > Thread: What Really went Wrong with H5?
Thread: What Really went Wrong with H5? This thread is 7 pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 · NEXT»
Elvin
Elvin


Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
posted August 03, 2011 02:23 PM

What Really went Wrong with H5?

Despite its shortcomings, there is little doubt that H5 was a successful entry in the series. It accentuated faction uniqueness in gameplay, art and flavour, it introduced the racial skills, the brilliant initiative system, nicely redesigned the skill system, added elemental status effects, all units had a special ability or two(except blade dancers ) and the alternate upgrades enriched the gameplay amongst others. What I am truly thankful about is the improved combat depth, no other game in the series had so many possible combinations and strategies.

Unfortunately as good as the aforementioned sound, not everything turned out as rosy. I am not going to argue about the poor release state, the slow patching pace, the silly campaigns or retarded AI. The focus of my analysis is what went wrong from a balance/design/feature perspective.

For one the evolution of the game was uneven, if ubival had an ambitious long-term vision I don't see it. Idle periods of nothingness were occasionally interrupted by HUGE changes(town resource costs, necromancy/training rework), the first addon gave us.. just about nothing if we exclude the dwarven faction and suddenly comes tote with all the goodies. But even so many ridiculous imbalances remained and the fabled 3.2 patch never came. The core weaknesses of the game were never addressed. Was Nival more focused on their upcoming H6 to the point they neglected fixing H5? Who knows. It's possible that their balancing department was simply that bad or they thought they could get away with it but if anything it gave the impression that they were stumbling about blindly, dealing with things as they come - some of them anyway. Another thing I did not like, they left out what was not necessary and dropped what was incomplete instead of fixing it. Dropped neutrals, dropped dwarven locations, all lost in limbo.

Anyway, to narrow our focus a bit..

For such a complex game, Nival went for a dynamic instead of a linear balance. Each faction's strength varied according to early, mid or lategame. Which added to the variety.. and made a variety of maps obsolete for certain factions. Week 2-3 maps? Rush-able, unlikely to be balanced. Over week 6 maps? Sylvan, dwarves etc dominate.
I really wonder if it was partly intended but balance spiraled out of their control or it was an unintentional flaw. Like I said earlier, the game is complex enough without taking into account time periods.

For a game that tries so hard to give the illusion of choice, the reality was so cold and unforgiving. So many skills or alternative upgrades were simply not viable compared to certain standard strategies or required very unconventional and risky play. But many were more or less useless. Mass spells for one overwhelmed other spells, badly so. The overwhelmingly good 2% chance skills made the game a lottery. It really is a shame they did not try to balance them a little more.

Half of your success lied in your hero build. It actually mattered more what build you had than how good you are in commanding your army. It was mostly about skills and stats than tactics which I could live with but somehow feels.. wrong.

And for all its tactical depth, randomness reigned in the battlefield. Which side you had placed your units, whether luck/morale triggered in the right moments, whether your hero was playing first, the starting atb.. That was a major design flaw, nobody minds a little randomness but this not only was extreme but it also amplified the effects of said randomness by effects that happened too often and packed too much punch. When units have such low survivability, having a starting initiative boost by as high as 25%, a chance for double damage or +50% atb boost at a 50% cap and randomly set hero positions when there are so many skill/spell counters the whole thing is closer to a luckfest than a display of actual skill. That is not to say that tactical skill did not play an important role, it very much did and it allowed for no mistakes either. But under said circumstances it was a dice roll and hoping that your skill will be enough should you get the wrong end of the stick. Or you ended up eviscerating the opposition, not quite sure why or how that happened.

Under these circumstances speed and initiative allowed for outrageous exploits and H5 messed with those two a lot. Tactics and aura of swiftness could give up to 2 speed which was a matter of life and death given some factions' damage dealing potential. Then there were windstrider boots, the -1 speed from the necro set, rune of charge(!!!), stormwind..

And probably the most important issues of them all, one that reflected in both single and multiplayer, especially in creeping. The game was too damn sluggish. Due to all those exploits it was possible to defeat ridiculous amounts of enemies with next to no army at all like 2 vampires taking on a horde of archangels or 1 fury killing a throng of squires. That made the turns for the first few weeks unbearably slow, to the point that 30 min turns sounded normal. Some factions had it easy and fast, others slow and painful. That and the poor multiplayer support I feel were what kept H5 from achieving greatness. H3 and H4 have gone on for decades, can H5 do the same under these circumstances, without resorting to a duel kind of map? That is the true test.
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Raelag84
Raelag84


Famous Hero
posted August 03, 2011 03:25 PM

Quote:

And probably the most important issues of them all, one that reflected in both single and multiplayer, especially in creeping. The game was too damn sluggish. Due to all those exploits it was possible to defeat ridiculous amounts of enemies with next to no army at all like 2 vampires taking on a horde of archangels or 1 fury killing a throng of squires.


Well creeping may not have been the best way to go about it, but I think that it was good that you could pull of upset victories in heroes of might and magic V. Made the game more exciting.

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Nelgirith
Nelgirith


Promising
Supreme Hero
posted August 03, 2011 03:27 PM
Edited by Nelgirith at 15:30, 03 Aug 2011.

Pretty much agree with you but I think you forgot another major reason (in fact several but intertwined) :

- too few maps
- no map editor on release
- non-user-friendly map editor

The replayability of H5 suffered a lot since people had too few maps to play on, be it in solo or in multi and the lack of map editor at release was a major mistake (which they are repeating with H6 - and no, I don't trust those "soon" ).

Once the map editor was released, it turned out it was quite complicated too handle (even the H4 editor was much easier) and we even had to plead with them to release a manual ... which we of course had to translate for non-english users.

Once a handful of people started to get a gripe on the editor, it was already too late.

People who might discover H5 now could be pleased, but I doubt people who have shunned H5 away will ever turn back. I know I don't and won't ... H5 has been uninstalled 2 years ago and never touched again ... while H2/H3/H4 are still installed and played every now and then.


It's quite sad that Ubisoft is once again repeating the exact same mistake with only 10 maps (seriously ???) and no map editor on release (even if it's promised for "soon" after release). They're putting so much emphasis on the solo game and the useless RPG aspects of this game that you really wonder if Erwan understands what this game really is and means to players.

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Avirosb
Avirosb


Promising
Legendary Hero
No longer on vacation
posted August 03, 2011 03:43 PM

T-too few heroes...?

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War-overlord
War-overlord


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Presidente of Isla del Tropico
posted August 03, 2011 03:46 PM

Quote:
They're putting so much emphasis on the solo game and the useless RPG aspects of this game that you really wonder if Erwan understands what this game really is and means to players.


You do ofcourse realise that there are player out there who enjoy that part of the game the best.
____________
Vote El Presidente! Or Else!

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Avirosb
Avirosb


Promising
Legendary Hero
No longer on vacation
posted August 03, 2011 04:02 PM

Quote:
much emphasis on the solo game

Um, what? Weren't town windows and area control created with multiplayer in mind?

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Zenofex
Zenofex


Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
posted August 03, 2011 04:05 PM

I don't quite understand the point of this Heroes V analysis, it's not like there are thousands of people playing it at the moment or something happening with it at all but yeah, most of these things are correct. I could add a few pros and not so few cons myself but it's irrelevant anyway. What it certainly lacked to a great extent though was replayability. Lack of maps, lack of RMG, lack of decent AI, lack of good multiplayer, lack of everything worthy of your attention for more than a few weeks. Some problems were fixed with HoF and TotE but most of them - all of them major - remained even though people were complaining about them since the very beginning.
One thing I totally detested about Heroes V though was the painfully obvious "suck their money" attitude displayed by Ubisoft. A mere half an year after the release of the totally disastrous original version with no editor, entire colonies of bugs, non-existent balance and hundreds of other glitches, they released an expansion pack. Now how swinish is that? The expansion itself was less than mediocre but at least the most horrible technical issues were fixed by then. If they do the same thing again, the only thing they'll deserver is a mass boycott leading to very poor sales and at least several dismissals or key figures, starting with the producer.

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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
posted August 03, 2011 04:13 PM

I could write a Blog about the problems the campaign orientation of modern strategy games bring.

Anyway. What went wrong with Heroes 5, when you consider the longevity of the game is

Singleplayer:
complicated editor -> not enough maps

Multiplayer: too unbalanced due to too BIG "variations" that are either randomized or hard-wired. That is, the variation would have had to be limited.

Examples: Luck for up to 50% prob for +100% damage
Min Max Damage for for example Imperial Griffins
Initiative differences between slowest and fastest.
Stalkers as example a hard-wired imbalance or Arcane Archers...

Also, SCALE is a problem - I mentioned for Heroes 6 already that it is nonsense to use half movement points for movement, but have 1 movement point as a smallest unit for adjustments. The problems, Elvin sketched for the cumulative effects of Power of Speed, Windstrider Boots and so on, would be non-existent, if they had had the good sense to double movement costs (2 and 3), double movement allowance (allowing "new" speeds of 9 and 11 and 13 and so on), effectively HALVING the effect of these and be able to scale and balance stuff better.

As a result Homm 5 feels like you wield a big, unbalanced sabre.

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infinitus
infinitus


Supreme Hero
posted August 03, 2011 05:32 PM

Nice analysis, now we have question - how to prevent H6 to went wrong, can we ?
____________
Nothing's impossible

http://www.youtube.com/watch?
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Dave_Jame
Dave_Jame


Promising
Legendary Hero
I'm Faceless, not Brainless.
posted August 03, 2011 05:33 PM

I will post one thing that has been troubling me on Heroes V especialy on the maps.

The problem with the heroes V maps (apart from ther low number) was the fact that they were to symmetric and unified

What do I mean with this
For the first point. Many maps looke like someone just made half of the map an the other half was just a mirrored image of the first one. Nad this is the the better option. Many of them were just 1/4 made 4 times.

Why was this? for the sake of balance? I do not think so, no I do not.
And the worst part was the fact, that these maps looked like someone copied them from any random RTS. They can work fot RTS but not TBS.

The second point is related to the landscape of the map. To many maps in Heroes V were made just in ona land tipe. Only Grass, Only Snow, only desert. This is one reason why I like the Necro Campaigne in ToE it does not look like if it was made by a 12YO.


These two points combined create the image that I personaly call "Over-focusing on the fact that this is a game".
I will try to explain. When I play Heroes II, many maps are creted in an pseudo realistic landscape whit different terrain types. This actually gives me the feeling that my Hero is conquering a real land. A land that has its history, a land that has its hidden places that I have to find. A simetric map cannot create this image, especially if it is made by one terrain type. Of course there were symmetrical maps both in H2 and H3 but there were not that many of them.

This in my eyes  also hellepd to decreec teh replayability
____________
I'm just a Mirror of your self.

We see, we look, we gather, we store, we teach.
We are many, and you can be one of us.

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Corribus
Corribus

Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
posted August 03, 2011 05:41 PM

For me the biggest problem was the 3D implementation.  I just think the strategy feel got lost among all the visual bells and whistles.  

Actually I think most of the town builds, spell system, skill trees, and creature lineups were pretty inspired.  I especially liked how some of the factions really felt different from each other - actually a vast improvement over H3.  The campaigns were mediocre, but not a really big deal as far as I was concerned.

H5 wasn't a bad game.  It just didn't have the lasting appeal that H2 and H3 had - but I'm willing to entertain the idea that it was as much how I've changed since then as how much the HOMM formula has.

Looking back on my official review of H5 at Celestial Heavens (I'd provide a link to it, but I can't from my current computer), my views on H5 haven't really changed that much.

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Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted August 03, 2011 06:00 PM
Edited by Doomforge at 18:06, 03 Aug 2011.

- massive game randomization

- many tiers of spells that were either useless or awesome. Phoenix/Arcane Armor, for instance. If you get the former, you can creep 6x better than normal, or win the game on a rushmap. If it's the latter, your creeping becomes limited, and you have nothing to use in a rush. Example how a coin toss solves the game for you. The difference between the same academy player at week 5 in terms of army, arties and levels is MASSIVE depending on the summon phoenix spell, or lack of it.

- ridiculous impact of first turn. Most of stacks could kill each other with a single blow when luck occurred. This lead to having "key troops" dead in the single turn, effectively making low DEF factions' life miserable. Especially big units that were easy to reach in 1st turn were screwed. For instance, my favorite example: Riders. Their -def special made them good, so... they were targeted and killed in the first turn regularly. I don't recall a game where they haven't been completely killed off in the first 1-3 turns.

- initiative differences and its impact on DPS. The range was too wide.

- starting initiative. Lol at the randomization when 1st turn practically decides the game.

- Broken heroes. Hi Wyngaal.

- Broken artifacts. Hi staff of netherworld.

- Broken units. Hi Arcane Archer.

- Broken spells. Hi mass haste.

- Broken skills. Hi luck.

- Broken subskills. Hi empathy.

- Division by 0 : Lucky hasted Arcane Archers lead by Wyngaal with staff of netherworld and having empathy.

- Factions power changes in time, makes some of them severly overpowered on small map, and some on big (warlocks on small, elves on big = total joke).

- Imbalanced creeping, some factions could do wonders, some could do absolutely nothing

- Badly balanced dwellings' cost, there were always 2-3 "junk" units to skip because it wasn't possible to get full army even on big maps, save maybe extremely rich.

- Alternatives that were usually better than original upgrades by a large margin

that's about it I think.

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radox
radox


Known Hero
posted August 03, 2011 06:11 PM
Edited by radox at 18:15, 03 Aug 2011.

Nice topic, Elvin

I share most of your thoughts, but for me, the two worst things about Heroes 5 (since I don't play the campaigns very much and prefer hot-seating with friends) were the incredible sluggishness of the game, especially the AI players' turns in late game AND the somewhat lost feeling of epicness. Yes, H2 (especially), H3 and even H4 had this feeling of epicness while you played them. You felt like you were indeed immersed in a real fairytale mystic land and it was fantastic. The atmosphere of these games simply couldn't be better. With H5, they began a tradition that unfortunately will continue in H6 - simply make a warcraft-clone interface, remove all the "medieval" things about it etc, etc, etc. I have already posted about the removed Spellbook in combat and its replacing with a dull rectangular box
Such thing are completely unacceptable in the epic world of the legendary Heroes saga. It, since day one, has been supposed to, above all, immerse you in the game universe. And if a game cannot succeed in doing this, it has already lost 50% of its battle for staying in the industry's history.

P.S. - What about a lucky empowered Implosion with emerald slippers on a week of Earth? ;(

P.S.2 - Elvin, tell me more about facing 50 Archangels with 2 Vampires???

And yes, Zenofex was absolutely right when he said that the main thing Ubisoft are trying to do is suck our money. They have turned the entire series into their own franchise. I recently bought the H1-H5 complete pack DVD's and their logo is all over it. Even when you are installing Heroes 1 or Heroes 2. On each step, you can read the cold "This product is a trademark of Ubisoft" etc, etc... They have taken over games that they have absolutely no rights over, regardless that they have bought them. The Heroes saga spirit will alway live in our memories of 3DO and NWC. They created it and with them, it died...
What have Ubisoft done with H5? They hired a cheap, inexperienced Eastern-european studio to develop the game. This was a greedy action aimed at reducing the game cost. Then, they rushed Nival to launch the game early, while it was obviously not ready, just to make money faster. After the release, they became completely deaf about our complaints and most of them were never adressed. We fast-forward to NOW. WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW? The absolutely same thing are happening with H6. They again hired a ultra-cheap game studio to be the devs, they again are rushing the game release while it isn't ready yet, the game again doesn't have a percent of the old Heroes spirit, they again aren't listening to our griefs and recommendations. Money, money, money...

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Corribus
Corribus

Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
posted August 03, 2011 06:20 PM

I don't buy that.

For one thing, ultimate thing every gaming company cares about is money.  The individual laborers may care about the artistic side, but for developers quality is a means to an end (dollars), not an end in itself.

That said, if Ubisoft or the game's developer had only been interested in a quick buck and not in producing a high quality H6 (or, for that matter, H5) that meets with fan expectations, they wouldn't have solicited the opinions of the fan community throughout the entire production process, from conception through beta.    

You can argue about whether they got it right in the end, but claiming that Ubisoft isn't interested in what fans want is just believing what you want to believe rather than what actually is the case.

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Warmonger
Warmonger


Promising
Legendary Hero
fallen artist
posted August 03, 2011 06:25 PM
Edited by Warmonger at 18:25, 03 Aug 2011.

Quote:
Broken heroes. Hi Wyngaal.

Wyngaal has no means to defeat a swarm of cyclops, for example. He's powerful only in multiplayer, and only as a main hero.
Quote:
Broken artifacts. Hi staff of netherworld.

I'd rather say that most of other artifacts were just boring and useless, at the end you just stacked the ones which gave initative advantage.
Quote:
Broken units. Hi Arcane Archer

In H5 pretty much all the units were interesting in some way. Still, no matter how AA is powerful, it dies from any blow or spell.
Quote:
Broken spells. Hi mass haste

Disagree. H5, especially ToTE, had the very best and interesting spell selection in series... during combat, that is.
Quote:

Broken skills. Hi luck.

Quote:
Broken subskills. Hi empathy.

Empathy is
1. Difficult to receive for most of factions
2. Not from the "luck" skill tree, so you have to choose
Quote:
Imbalanced creeping, some factions could do wonders, some could do absolutely nothing

Creeping itself implies breaking the game, thus there cna be no balance. If you wnat balance, charge with whatever you've got.
Quote:
Alternatives that were usually better than original upgrades by a large margin

Damn, there must be better and worse units, arts, spells and heroes. It's so even in chess.

The beauty of Heroes is that a number of resonable strategies and combinations was large, and each of subtle trick could be countered. Insta kill in first turn couldn't, however. But that's the only weak point I could find in a multiplayer game.
Randomization is good, as then it involves creativity and choice, not just building same strategy every single game.

The game sucked utterly in solo scenarios. This, combined with editor issues pointed by Nelgirith, killed the community, apart from ToH of course. No maps, no fun.

____________
The future of Heroes 3 is here!

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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
posted August 03, 2011 06:26 PM
Edited by JollyJoker at 18:28, 03 Aug 2011.

Can we PLEASE stop this unfounded ranting? You can virtually see the spittle flying when you read this nonsense.
Err, I mean Radox.

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Salamandre
Salamandre


Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
posted August 03, 2011 06:49 PM

Or maybe the gaming environment. When H2-H3 came out they were pretty uniques and had no direct concurrence. H5 came out when half of the planet is addicted to WoW and other half to Guild Wars, which are exhaustive in all domains, RPG, strategy, customization. It leaves few chances to developers to find something new and appealing.
____________
Era II mods and utilities

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alcibiades
alcibiades


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
posted August 03, 2011 07:07 PM
Edited by alcibiades at 19:18, 03 Aug 2011.

Interesting topic. I would like to address some of the points you're making, and add some thoughts of my own.

First of all, I must say that what really killed H5 for me was that it was poorly programmed. The game was lagging to an extent that it was impossible to play on XL maps, and AI was extremely poorly crafted. Problem with this issue is that it's something that's hard to mod. With access to the game files and (one could wish) help/advice from UbiSoft, we can change pretty much any numeral variable in the game through modding, but we can't re-program the entire game.

I think if the game had been technically functioning, we could have solved most of the other issues with a Mod á la WOG. Let me give you some specific examples:

- Initiative: Values of initiative spanned something like 8 through 20. This was a huge difference - a unit with 20 Initiative would act 5 times in the same time that a Int-8 units acted twice. But easy solvable: Simply shift all initiative values. By shifting values by a fixed amount, impact of initiative will diminish. For instance, add 20 to all values, and said creatures will have initiative 28 and 40. This means that fastest unit acts thrice in the room that slowest acts twice. 5:2 is changed to 3:2, which levels the field - and also makes the initial ATB bonus less important.

- Creeping abuse and speed issues: Many of the problems with creeping you mention, like single-Fury abuse etc. would not be possible if Initiative was more balanced. Thus, it should not be as big a problem with large speed.

- Battle Field size and single-turn crossing: This one is more tricky, as battle-field size is not readily changable. One could scale down movement, so that high-movement units have one or two less total movement - or at least make it so that not quite so many units can readily cross battlefield in one turn. On the other hand, picking skills that add movement should give you a tactical edge, so while balancing might be an issue, I also think this is a feature in its own right. Health : Damage ratios are easily changed btw to minimize possibility of instant kills.

- Poorly balanced Alternative Upgrades: This can also be helped a long way with making appropriate simple stat changes and/or modifying specific abilities. For example: Master Hunter vs. Arcane Archer. One of several reasons for AA being imba was that it was one of the few ranged units that had Initiative greater than 10. Obviously, for ranged units going before other ranged units is a huge advantage - so why not reduce AA initiative and boost Master Hunter instead. Then you have a choice between a fast unit that does less damage or a slower one that does more damage.

- Luck and Morale: I'm pretty sure trigger chance can readily be reduced to 8 % per point instead of 10 %, if one feel these abilities are overpowered.


This is not saying that everything can be helped out with modding. Opposite spells overruling instead of negating each other for instance is an incredible flaw in game design which cannot readily be changed (afaik). Skill lottery will always be the case, you can't have all skills being equally likely and at the same time have some favored skills. Unless one bans certain skills for each class (possible), there will be some low-chance options that are attractive. Dual Hero class might be a solution if a mod is made to work, but that is not trivial. And last but not least - the over-time favoring of some factions can perhaps be very hard to prevent. Academy mini-arties for one is just broken in late game.

So my point is? If Ubisoft had made an effort to really get the game running and functioning, I think a lot could have been solved through modding to make it a much greater game than it is.
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What will happen now?

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KingImp
KingImp


Famous Hero
posted August 03, 2011 07:18 PM

Quote:
the lack of map editor at release was a major mistake (which they are repeating with H6 - and no, I don't trust those "soon" ).


Wait. I know there was no RMG planned for release, but are you saying that now we aren't even getting the map editor at release.

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markkur
markkur


Honorable
Legendary Hero
Once upon a time
posted August 03, 2011 07:44 PM

I like and still play H5 and that was before 5.5's A.I. overhaul. It is mostly an expectation(privately shout insanity, those that must)that I remain heavily focused on the best aspects of the game and editor. iow, I am on a Quest to find the ticket to making some good maps. I'm still on that quest and will not stop until I drop. With Q's recent work; that old game-play that most seemed to hate, is playing very differently. Hard is HARD now, pure and simple. Every map I had made previous to E.E. needs to be re-tested.

I played H2 and H3 intensely for a decade. Clearly, I must have really liked them. However, today they are "flat as a pancake" and I am past the point of wanting to imagine; "that a curvy blue line is a river", movement penalty or not. I can still play and enjoy 2&3 to some degree but the magic is gone for me. It is not possible at all for me to immerse myself as I once did. It does indeed feel more like playing "battle-chess" (old game) these days. I like chess also but do not play it if I can go for a dynamic adventure in various game-worlds. That fact for me, really reveals how different all players of "any" HoMM game can be.

In H5, the ability to create very diverse terrain is very important for me. That's even with a very difficult Editor (I've ranted volumes) Armies are not THAT important to me; because you can fight with butter-knives... as long as each contestant has one. I am still learning ways to make a good map in Five. I've recently written how varied that belief is for different folks(their varied definitions), so no one needs to tell me that I am wrong. I am correct for me and some "few" others. However, I think there is a sweet-spot that "may" be found where "many-sorts" might merge opinions and agree that a given map is fun. This view might be a silly notion but I'm not there yet in my scheming to completely dismiss this notion. "There" is defined; "skilled enough to create it"...assuming it's possible.

H5 failed for 1 main reason. <imo> The "Commanding Vision" was not there, or at least not one that I would call a Big Picture. With it; the Editor would never have been released in a last minute scramble and most gameplay issues like; on-line-play, bug-patches etc. would have been corrected. Without it? This thread and many others testify to the undersight of what could have happened.

What bugs me now; is reading comments about H6. Here I am awaiting the Editor and the gameplay is...? Oh well, I'll just have to wait and see for myself.

One last comment. I don't think Nival did a bad job overall. I think they were/are a very talented group and some of their innovations are still very good.

In the end; I don't know who was leading the charge but <imvho> they did forget their sword and brought a dagger instead. But that could be because of; ...what I see as the problematic viewing of a "newer realm"; the monstrously varied fan-feed-back


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"Do your own research"

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