|
| Thread: Erwan Le Breton answers your questions - Submit before Wednesday Oct 12 12:00 GMT+1! | |
|
Brukernavn
Hero of Order
|
posted October 11, 2011 10:13 PM |
|
|
Erwan Le Breton answers your questions - Submit before Wednesday Oct 12 12:00 GMT+1!
(Copy of the info submitted in the news thread to make it visible to more readers)
Submit your questions in English here: Link - Google translate link
Just write in your name, headline and question (in english) in the form under the article and press send before tomorrow 12 GMT+1. Erwan will answer as many questions he can in about an hour.
Here is a quick translation of the page in case the google translate link didn't work well:
Do you have questions about the new Heroes game? Now you can get answers.
It's been a while since Heroes of Might & Magic V appeared, and now the sequel is finally ready. Might & Magic: Heroes VI launches Thursday, and in that regard, we have got hold of the game's producer, Erwan Le Breton.
Answering the readers questions
He does the online meeting tomorrow at 12:00, and answer questions for about an hour. You can ask questions already in the form at the bottom of the article, but remember that they must be written in English.
Erwan Le Breton has been a producer on several of Ubisoft's Might & Magic games, and he also has primary responsibility for the ongoing development of the fantasy world in which these games takes place. Before joining Ubisoft he wrote among other things, several French comic books in the fantasy genre, as well as a "Choose your own adventure" books.
Might & Magic Heroes VI follows closely in the footsteps of their predecessors, delivering a mix of turn-based strategy and role playing. You must fight for power in colorful fantasy environments, with the help of powerful heroes and their armies. We have looked at the game several times, and last, it was Marius Kjørmo who was impressed by the title.
- If you have played the previous games, you will immediately feel at home, even if you have to spend some time trying to get an overview of the various properties you have the opportunity to take advantage of. But you don't have to be an experienced player to benefit from this. I think that Heroes VI is the game that not only can get the old fan base back in front of the PC screen, but also attract new fans. I am pleased at least to get really going when the game comes out in October, he wrote in the sneak peeks from gamescom.
Q & A
design decisions
why did you decide to remove town view from homm5 wich was great. could spend alot of time looking at my (heaven) town
2nd question why is there no elves in the game. its the first HOMM game without elves and dont even try to say that Nagas are elves. considering every homm game predecending it had elves in them from the beginning.
3rd and last question i have for you. why is the experience gain in this game so much slower than any of the other games in the series. it takes so much more time to lvl up. that usaly when you have cleard the biggest map (in the beta) u are like 13 14. (using normal speed) around 20-22 using fastest.
By: henrik kvamsdal
Answer: 1/ The town view has not been removed - it is sill there. But we agree it is not as nice and rewarding as in the former Heroes. Improving these town views is on top of our post-launch support priority list.
2/ There are 9 factions in the world of Ashan - selecting 5 out of these 9 for H6 means some players' favourites are absent. The 5 factions of H6 were chosen for their relevancy to the main story, and the Nagas because we wanted to introduce you to this new faction that had been mentioned several times in the former M&M games. The Elves are not really involved in the events told in the game. However, if you complete the campaign, you may learn that they are not so absent after all 
3/ Leveling up takes more time simply because the maps are bigger and the campaigns longer. Reaching level cap for a given map too soon is really frustrating. Also, exp gain is faster on multiplayer and skirmish maps.
Random
Why have you removed things that made the earlier games more random? Things like a random selection of skills on hero level up and mage guild? i found this to be one of the challenging aspects of the earlier games. To work with what you get and adapt your strategy from game to game.
I havent played the beta to much, but it seems to me that it will take a lot more time to build up a strong spellbook then before, is this true?
Even so, im still looking forward to the game. Preordered the special edition as soon as i could.
By: Endre
Answer: Thanks for preordering the special edition
The power of the various abilities have been changed since the beta, in accordance with the players' feedbacks, and our support of the game will obviously continue after its release.
Concerning our reduction of the random factors, I guess it is a question of "belief". Our team considers that putting the player in full control, with a full knowledge of the consequences of his choices, what he can gain or lose, is a more "strategic" experience than offering him limited choices based on probabilities, with no clear visibility on his possible development paths.
Release date
When is the release date?
By: Kari
Answer: Tomorrow, october 13th
Randomness vs predictability
One of the big changes I noticed in the beta for Heroes 6 was that there were no random skills anymore. Not really sure what to think of that personally. Obviously it's good that a level won't be made or broken by whether or not you for instance get logistics, but when I played it out, I found myself worrying whether people would arrive at predetermined paths. Which I believe would significantly lower replayability, one of the key aspects that certainly made Heroes 3 so popular. People played that over and over again, and you didn't know how things would necessarily turn out cause heroes had different skills every time. Now someone who figures out an optimized recipe can destroy an equally good player who's trying something new by default.
What are your thoughts on randomness/predictability and it's effect on replayability in Heroes 6?
By: Per
Answer: Heroes now have 4 paths of development (Might / Magic and Tears / Blood), so a single map can at least be experienced in 4 different ways.
More generally, there are over 200 hero abilities in H6, and they combine with hundreds of other abilities conferred by the creatures in your armies, the artifacts you equip, and even special buildings you can build in your towns!
Add to that the fact that you can mix several factions in a single map, and you may understand why we're not too worried about replayability and the fun, challenge, and excitement that combining all these abilities and looking for your own "ultimate" path will provide
New factions
How many factions can we play on release, and will you add more later on?
By: MarcDaKind
Answer: 5 factions are present in H6, out of 9 that are present in the world of Ashan.
So there is ample room for additional factions in possible extensions
Tough!
HOMM (it'll always be "Heroes: .." for me) made me into a PC gamer, and I've played and enjoyed every single one except the one we do not speak of. This includes the closed beta of Your coming title. And there's no denying You've had a lot of tough choices in regards to what exactly to take from the previous games, what to refine, what to cut and what to add. What would You say was THE toughest choice/compromise for You during the development?
By: Vidar N
Answer: The toughest compromise was to accept the fact that the game would be released with town screens that we felt were not satisfying. But, as said before, it's on top of our post-launch support priority list.
The toughest choice was the revised skill system. It was discussed at length with the VIP fans from our private forum, and our first proposal was (justly) discarded in favour of the current system.
Topic
Hello. I haven't played any of the previous M&M games, so is this a game for me?
By: Alias
Answer: You don't need to know anything about the lore of the M&M world or the mechanics of Heroes to play and enjoy this game.
If you like Epic and Enchanted Fantasy worlds, mature stories ripe with intrigues, developing one or several heroes along multiple paths of evolution, playing at your own pace rather than being forced to become the fastest keyboard hitter in the world, and games that will challenge the strategist or the tactician that hides in you, then run and buy Heroes 6, you won't regret it
Less resources?
Why where so many resources removed?
Less resources equals less fun. One of the fun part of the Heroes of Might and Magic games is to find the right resource. Well, now that fun is gone.
Sorry for complaining, but this is just my personal opinion. There's more things I want to say, but I won't whine to much
By: Tor
Answer: The 4 rare resources have been combined into a single one, called “Dragon Blood Crystals”.
Its existence is linked with the history of Ashan. In the Mythic Age, when Asha and her children fought against Urgash. The Dragon gods have shed their blood on Ashan, which crystallized in power nexus, also called Dragon veins.
The people of Ashan have learned how to extract, and use, those crystals, for magic purposes.
We have three main reasons for this change:
- This brings more strategy to the game. At first, you could think this is the contrary but on former Heroes, each faction had his specific resources to look after and so did not care much about the other guy and his mines. Now that every faction is looking for the same resource, mines possession will be much more strategic as you’ll also prevent the other to take this crucial resource.
- Games with a lot of resources are not strategy games but management games. If you look at Starcraft 2, they have 2 resources. Games such as Settlers VII (7 resources) or Civilization V (32 resources!!)focus more on management. In the former Heroes games, you would often spend a lot of time collecting rare resources that were useless to you just to convert them in the marketplace. This kind of micromanagement was not really the funniest part of playing M&M Heroes...
- It is much easier for map makers. You don’t need to think too much about which resources to place on the map depending on which factions are present.
Your faction!
Everybody has a favorite HoMM (or MM:H in this case) faction. Now, I've always been a big fan of the Necropolis myself, mostly due to their awesome creatures, but what is YOUR favorite faction and why? Don't limit yourself to just H6 here; I'm talking about your overall favorite faction in the franchise.
By: Thomas
Answer: My own favorite faction has always been Asylum / Dungeon, maybe because I'm so fond of black
More seriously, I think it's because I like Magic, Dragons, Minotaurs (my main WOW character is a Tauren) and Dark ELves (now that they're leading this faction).
In H6 I prefer to play Necropolis (black again I suppose, but I really enjoy the creature line-up and their abilities, and also the faction's philosophy and Anastasya's campaign).
DRM
Since Ubisoft is the publish for HOMM many are worried about their customer unfriendly DRM policies.
So I'm wondering what kind of DRM will HOMM have?
By: Atle
Answer: MMH6 will require you to connect online once to create your "Dynasty" account and activate the game.
You will then have the choice to play offline (if, for a reason or another, you're in a place with no internet connection), or online (connected).
If you play online, you will benefit from our various Conflux and Dynasty features.
The Conflux is the "social network" of the M&M community that includes your player profile (achievements, friend list, etc.), newsfeeds, access to forums and leaderboards, ingame chat (including skype integration), etc.
Basically we want you to stay in touch with your friends, the M&M community, and us, without having to quit the game and go back to your desktop.
The Dynasty is a bit like a flying company's "Miles" system. The more you play Heroes while connected, the more you earn "Miles" (we call them "Dynasty experience points"). Once you reach a certain number of Dynasty xp, you "level up" as a player.
Your Dynasty "rank" (silver, gold, platinum...) will unlock certain privileges and gifts. For instance unique heroes you can play in multiplayer, dynasty "Traits" (special passive abilities that can be given to all your heroes, from all campaigns, or on multiplayer maps) and Dynasty Weapons (the most powerful artifacts in the game, that all your heroes can equip).
The idea is to give you persistent benefits attached to you as a player, and not to your heroes. For instance, if you unlock a Dynasty weapon while playing Kiril in the Inferno campaign, you can give it to Anton in the Haven campaign, or to one of your heroes in a multiplayer map.
Fan involvment?
Hei erwan
I was wondering if you could tell the us how you wokred withe the fans during this game?
By: znork
Answer: Hi Znork
Good question, coming from one of our VIP fans
The VIP private forum was created early in the game's development phase.
Concept arts and design documents were shared with the VIP fans to get their most enlightened feedback. Countless topics were discussed, some "hotter" than others.
It happened that the reaction from the VIP fans was unanimously negative. In that case, we analyzed the cause of the discontent and explored possible solutions. For instance, this led us to revise drastically our initial skill system proposal. They are also very active in helping us address the town screen issue.
VIP fans were also invited several times at key-events in the life of the project: the game's reveal at the Gamescom 2010, the Press Tour in Black Hole's studio in January of this year, the latest Gamescom and Igromir shows.
Before the Beta started, some of them were able to test the game.
Today, the VIP fans are still very active, and consulted on the post-launch plan.
As for the rest of the fans, we have always been "secretly in touch" with them by reading their countless contributions on their respective community forums.
Julien Pirou, aka "Marhzin", our lead level designer, used to be a fan himself, and he's regularly reporting the "vibes" from the community, drawing our attention to the hottest topics being discussed.
Also, we now have a worldwide M&M community developer (Irina Kassina), and various tools for us to communicate with the fans (official site and forums, facebook page, dev diary videos and Q&As...), something that was cruelly lacking at the time of Heroes 5!
Tavarn heros
Why is the a hero called harald in the game?
By: Bjørn
Answer: That's an homage to one of our VIP fans, coming from Norway
Review score
Hey!
I was wondering if you got the "stones" to grade your own game? What is your honest opinion? 1-10 where 10 is the best score. Peter Molyneux from the Fable universe game his own games 5 out of 6. So, do you think something is missing before the big release tomorrow?
Cheers!
By: Tony
Answer: Our own perception of Heroes 6 is that it is worth a 8.5/10, which is closer to Heroes 3 (8.75) than to Heroes 5 (7.9).
We really consider we have kept the "soul" of the Heroes series, delivered a huge amount of contents (hours of gameplay, quantity and variety of assets), and also pushed all the levers of the game to 120% - graphics, story, RPG layer (with the addition of the Reputation system), strategy on the adventure map (reduction of tedious micromanagement, addition of the area of control and town conversion features), tactics on the combat map (improved racial ability, more variety for the battle conditions and objectives, boss fights).
Feedback from the Beta has allowed us to revise and improve the AI and balance.
We have added a very cool online dimension that is really a "breakthrough" in this legendary series.
There's still room for improvement (the town screens) and we're dedicated to support this game long after its release.
We understand some fans, and press people, are unsure about some changes that were brought to their favorite game. "Why change a formula that I have enjoyed for so long?"
Our message to them is: try out the game, and not just a single map. Play it for as long as you have played Heroes 3, or 5, and we're confident you will understand our choices, and love this game as much, if not more, than its predecessors!
|
|
KingImp
Famous Hero
|
posted October 11, 2011 10:20 PM |
|
|
Yeah, ask him who at Ubisoft cluelessly said that the game would be out on the 11th for North America.
Sorry, I couldn't resist. 
|
|
SoilBurn
Known Hero
BurnsSoil
|
|
posted October 11, 2011 10:40 PM |
|
|
I asked the following but do not expect to get a satisfying answer back:
Hi Erwan,
many beta testers have complained that having unrestricted skill trees leads to a boring repetition of the same "hero builds". Do you plan to do something in order to restrict access to certain skills (e.g. based on previous skill choices) and/or avoid so-called "supermarket builds"?
|
|
dark-whisperer
Famous Hero
Darkness feels no mercy
|
|
posted October 12, 2011 09:29 AM |
|
|
question
Hi Erwan,
I of course have questions concerning townscreens:
1. Are new townscreens going to be 2D, 2,5D or 3D?
2. Are they going to be fullscreen?
3. Are they going to be fully interactive?
4. Are they going to show every possible building and upgrade?
5. Is the patch that will introduce screens going to be free?
6. What is estimated timeframe for completion of new screens?
7. Is community going to be involved at all in creation of new townscreens (not including VIP fans)?
Thanks in advance.
____________
Faith does not give you the answers, it just stops you asking the questions.
|
|
Helinx
Tavern Dweller
|
|
posted October 13, 2011 11:28 PM |
|
|
Quote:
Hi Erwan,
I of course have questions concerning townscreens:
1. Are new townscreens going to be 2D, 2,5D or 3D?
2. Are they going to be fullscreen?
3. Are they going to be fully interactive?
4. Are they going to show every possible building and upgrade?
5. Is the patch that will introduce screens going to be free?
6. What is estimated timeframe for completion of new screens?
7. Is community going to be involved at all in creation of new townscreens (not including VIP fans)?
Thanks in advance.
I want those questions to be answered too 
____________
|
|
Dies_Irae
Supreme Hero
with the perfect plan
|
|
posted August 26, 2015 11:42 AM |
|
|
feidrota said:
to Erwan
I have a question about modding.The question is:
What will modding in H7 be like? Will it be editing individual maps,or will it give the modder the opportunity to change the mechanics of the game itself?
Thanks in advance.
Introduction to modding in MMH7
____________
|
|
verriker
Honorable
Legendary Hero
We don't need another 'eroes
|
|
posted August 26, 2015 01:37 PM |
|
|
hey Erwin I have a question, where have all the good men gone and where are all the gods? where's the street-wise Hercules to fight the rising odds? isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed? late at night I toss and I turn and I dream of what I need lol
____________
|
| |
|
|
