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baklava
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Mostly harmless
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posted January 07, 2012 11:45 AM |
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Quote:
If every other part of the game was working fine i doubt many would be bothered by resources.
Who knows. From my experience in fans, if the rest of the game was actually good, some people'd be pretty pissed off about them taking resources away.  They'd simply pay more attention to it. They'd like the game more overall, of course. This way they're like "who cares about resources, just fix anything, people".
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"Let me tell you what the blues
is. When you ain't got no
money,
you got the blues."
Howlin Wolf
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Disturbed-Gnu
Supreme Hero
Pro Bacon Vodka Brewer
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posted January 07, 2012 02:11 PM |
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Is that a joke? Cause I didn't laugh.
Nope, its not a joke at all. But people have difrent tastes, and we do not agree.
Quote:
No, he has a point.
Odium, I DID play MP and I HAD more fun with H6 than with any other heroes game MP.
Only 4 resources is NOT bad in any way. If you have 7 you are often simply limited because you don't have the necessary resources AND NO WAY TO GET THEM. Which means, certain builds are simply out.
Now, however, it's more like that you can build SOMEthing, but at the expense of something else.
Makes things more interesting.
However, the relation between mine income, findings and battle effort to get a few resources doesn't seem right.
But that has got nothing to do with number of resources.
Exactly  Brilliant mind, you have 
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted January 07, 2012 02:57 PM |
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Quote:
This is different now.
Nothing's different. You have rich map - you build whatever you want. You have poor map - you build whatever you have resources for. The only other variable is the strength of the neutral guards. End of story. This is no different from the situation in any previous Heroes game.
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted January 07, 2012 03:45 PM |
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Quote:
Arguably there is, but I'm not a fan of those super-duper-rare-and-special whatever, be that ressources, creatures (think WoG level 8 creatures) or artifacts (Grail for instance). Problem with those is that if they are extremely rare, you have to either:
a) Make game managable without them, as you will be frequently be unable to get them, which will make them pointless; or
b) Make them super-powerful to make it worth getting them, which makes them imbalanced (just look at the Grail, which has always killed the game, whenever it comes into play).
Either solution is bad if you ask me.
The special resource would not be a sole game-winner, but give you a economic strong advantage. Obviously the map wouldn't need to look like the one I made in paint, there are a lot of possibilities. You could make the special resource accessable from day 1 in one map and hide it underground in another. The only thing you would have to do is to ensure that every player starts out having equal possibilities to reach the special resource. Or perhaps in one map, X player would have an easier time reaching a group of high-yield resources and Y player would have it easier reaching the special resource. Map design would be more interesting.
Personally, i'm not really a fan of the Blood and Tears system gaining more importance as I don't like how it encourages players to either:
A) Be offensive.
or
B) Be defensive.
____________
Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted January 07, 2012 03:50 PM |
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Sorry, but that's just not true. Even the main assumption is wrong. There are not two types of map, one "rich" and one "poor". Good maps are neither nor: if rich means, that you can build what you want, it makes no sense to play them, because you could just as well start the map with everything already built.
Conversely, if a map is poor, the random "find" factor becomes too important, because it will make much more of a difference (also games tend to be longish and boring).
So that means, the majority of maps - and basically all GOOD maps - are neither rich nor poor, but something in between.
Back to 1-5 versus 6.
In 1-5 your strategy is to maximize possible buildings within a given week. However, there are GIVEN things: building order and town level (HoMM 5), which will force you to build SOMETHING (anything) before you can build something else you want, say the Elfen dwelling which is level 7.
On the other hand there are (and have been) builds that use only money or a resource you do not need for your main concerns. In HoMM 5 Genies are an example for a dwelling you can build mainly because you don't need mercury for others.
So there are and have been always builds that do not interfere with your GENERAL building ability: you find enough Mercury, you go ahead and build Genies.
In 6 that is different, because basically all builds needs all available resources, at least starting with level 2 (with a couple of exceptions, but that's just because of variety - all towns need the same number of res with differences in W/O, but same difference for everyone.
So there are no CHEAP builds, except the Hall of Heroes.
For the rest, EVERY build will somehow restrict your further building capabilities, which means, NO building is a no-brainer.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted January 07, 2012 03:58 PM |
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Quote:
Nothing's different.
Yes it is. In H5 you would not be able to build rakshasas, maybe not even mages or golems for a while while others would build their basic dwellings normally. Thanes? Not a chance. Treants? Dream on. Now no single unit is excluded from a build if you lack the resources, it is merely a matter of choice and strategy. Even upgrading over building another dwelling may have significance now that upgrades further boost growth. Always given the lack of resources of course.
____________
H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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avalon00x
Bad-mannered
Known Hero
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posted January 07, 2012 04:01 PM |
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Quote:
Quote:
This is different now.
Nothing's different. You have rich map - you build whatever you want. You have poor map - you build whatever you have resources for. The only other variable is the strength of the neutral guards. End of story. This is no different from the situation in any previous Heroes game.
This is ofcourse nonsence. Before you were FORCED to choose certain buildings on a poor map. now you have to CHOOSE wich of the buildings you want to make. i do not see why this is so hard to udnerstand.
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted January 07, 2012 04:44 PM |
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You are both talking about prerequisites, not about the resource variety.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted January 07, 2012 04:44 PM |
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No I'm not..
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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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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted January 07, 2012 04:53 PM |
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I think you are. Prerequisites and building prices. None of these has anything to do with the number of resources as such. You have a dwelling which requires 2 other dwellings to be built and costs 10 wood, 10 stone and 10 crystals. Alternatively you have another dwelling which requires 2 other dwellings and costs 10 wood, 5 stone, 5 crystal and 5 sulfur. In the first case you need to find 2x5 crystals, in the second - 5 crystals and 5 sulfur. You either have or don't have this amount on the map around you. You are all referring to the modified construction order and the different tiers of buildings in the towns, not about the different resources.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted January 07, 2012 05:04 PM |
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Ok let me take it from the start. How many times have you managed to build treants, rakshasas, wyverns or thanes on a poor map before week 4? And if you have, how good an idea was it to go for them there? The idea is that some factions could build all their basic dwellings whereas others could not. And those were predetermined. Delaying building a unit more than 1-2 weeks is a serious drawback, especially considering that most if not all maps could end by week 4-5 if one of the players was fast.
Now in case of poor map all factions will be hurt equally since their dependance on rare resources is about the same.
____________
H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted January 07, 2012 05:12 PM |
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Quote:
Yes it is. In H5 you would not be able to build rakshasas, maybe not even mages or golems for a while while others would build their basic dwellings normally. Thanes? Not a chance. Treants? Dream on. Now no single unit is excluded from a build if you lack the resources, it is merely a matter of choice and strategy. Even upgrading over building another dwelling may have significance now that upgrades further boost growth. Always given the lack of resources of course.
I think that ironically here, you locate the problem, but you don't locate the cure - or quite the contrary, you say in H5 it was bad for some factions/tiers, now let's make it bad for all factions and tiers!
Let's try to look at a couple of the examples you mention. Why was it that building Rahshasas or Thanes were not a viable option? Because they cost the same ressource as their respective level 7 creature. Thanes cost 20 Crystal (lol), Fire Dragons cost 10 (as well as 10 Sulfur); Rakshasa cost 10 Gems (on top of 5 Sulfur and 5 Crystal), Giants cost only 5 (more lols). For Treants, the main problem was the 15 Wood, which along with very high Wood demands in general for Sylvan (particularly the whooping 27 Wood for basic + upgrade Hunters which was pretty much a necessity) which made it tough. And you don't even mentioned Stronghold, which just was Mercury + more Mercury + even more Mercuty.
So I think the problems was that those were great examples of very poor balance. Now it is true that we make things even for everybody by reducing rare ressources to only one, because it's then even for everybody - but ironically, I think that doing this is not making a bad thing go away, but making a bad thing be something general for all factions and tiers. Is that a good thing? For me, deffinitely not.
I'd also like to add a comment that springs from what JJ wrote above. I don't think it was a bad thing that some building could be a "free pass" on some ressources - well not a complete freepass, cause remember that even if no other dwellings had demands for one particular ressource, there was always stuff like Mage Guild which had pretty high demands for ALL rare ressources.
I think particularly it's a problem now with regard to the elite dwellings, because we have three creatures of (ideally) similar strength, but you won't be able to afford them all in a period of time anywhere close to each other - you'll start with one, and then only be able to get the others later, where they are unlikely to be of as much use, given their lower numbers and all. I think that's a bad thing, I always liked having the full pallet of creatures that each faction offered - particularly since each creature offers something unique, and thus the faction's strength comes from the combination of the different creatures (or at least that's how I think it should be). But of course, that's also a matter of taste, I know that some people resent the 'buy it all' mentality, so I guess if that's how you see it, the new system works for you.
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What will happen now?
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted January 07, 2012 05:19 PM |
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Edited by Zenofex at 17:31, 07 Jan 2012.
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Look, this is all about intra- and inter-faction balancing, not about how many resources are there in the game. If the game designer has decided to put some dwelling with ridiculous cost in the middle of your town development progress and to effectively block the said faction's evolution while other factions are building everything with fewer resources (Haven in Heroes V before the patching), that's the designer's fault, not the resources'. The resource requirements could have been unified in Heroes I-V as well and the number of the resources is totally irrelevant to this. For example - level 4 creature dwelling in town X costs 5 of rare resource A, the level 4 dwelling in town Y costs 5 of rare resource B and the level 4 dwelling in town Z costs 5 of rare resource C. It's an end in itself but it works for an illustration.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted January 07, 2012 06:01 PM |
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Let me tell you something else then. Back when the tohers unanimously decided that the resource requirements were off, someone raised the question of what would be fair so that we could all play with a price-fixing mod. Veterans who had played dozens or even hundreds of games and no doubt had a good grasp of the balance.. and they could find no common ground. Granted that Nival were a clueless bunch but.. who can you really trust to get such a complex system right if even the majority of the veterans cannot agree?
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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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Cepheus
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Far-flung Keeper
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posted January 07, 2012 06:06 PM |
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Well, if Black Hole told me to put out a call on AoH's main page - or even in ToH - for balance recommendations from HoMM experts, and could guarantee that they would heed what they're given, I'll bet it would be surprising how quickly an agreement would be eked out. But we know that the developers mostly tend to do their own thing and barely ask for any input. I wouldn't be surprised if the lack of agreement and discipline in balance arguments is just due to the lack of obvious attention and an imperative situation.
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"Those who forget their history are inevitably doomed to repeat it." —Proverb, Might and Magic VIII
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted January 07, 2012 06:26 PM |
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Edited by Zenofex at 18:29, 07 Jan 2012.
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Quote:
Let me tell you something else then. Back when the tohers unanimously decided that the resource requirements were off, someone raised the question of what would be fair so that we could all play with a price-fixing mod. Veterans who had played dozens or even hundreds of games and no doubt had a good grasp of the balance.. and they could find no common ground. Granted that Nival were a clueless bunch but.. who can you really trust to get such a complex system right if even the majority of the veterans cannot agree?
The players deal with what they are given and apart from the mods, they can't do more than argue about what should be the cost of each dwelling. The designers on the other hand can do pretty much anything. Anyway, I don't think it's THAT complicated. Heroes V had obvious imbalances in the town developments which needed to be rooted out and those were more or less universally agreed upon as far as I remember (without going into details whether one dwelling should require 4 or 5 of some resource of course). Some of them were, some of them weren't. In the end, if two similarly skilled players can develop two different factions equally fast and to put similarly effective armies (qualitatively, not necessarily quantitatively) on the battlefield at the same given time, then these two factions can be considered balanced at least as far as the town development is concerned. Which means that "good only for rushes", "good only for late game", etc. =/= balanced.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted January 07, 2012 07:36 PM |
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I agree with Zenofex, the system can get to work, and I believe if it really had mattered, people would have been able to come up with a working solution (even if some people might want something else). I think there are some pretty simple precautions that can be taken - like not having level 6 and level 7 dwelling draw heavily on the same ressource, as this will create a negative synergy that allows you to build only one or the other in reasonable time. Now I know the new tier system provides some different problems than the old one, but with three or even two rare ressources there would be some very obvious ways to make things more varied and yet still comparable between factions.
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What will happen now?
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B0rsuk
Promising
Famous Hero
DooM prophet
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posted January 07, 2012 11:09 PM |
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The system used by Heroes VI is not hopeless in theory, but in practice it is. There's barely any communication between Black Hole / Ubisoft and the community. Big bugs remain with no patch on the horizon.
If they fix big issues only once an expansion is out, it sucks. Expansion is not for fixing bugs. You shouldn't pay extra to have bugs in your software fixed.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo RSA Animate - Smile or die
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted January 08, 2012 02:45 AM |
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Edited by xerox at 02:45, 08 Jan 2012.
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what REALLY BIG bugs are left?
personally I want them to focus on balance now
and that does not mean giving the Cerberus 1 more magic defense every single patch
____________
Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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zaio-baio
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted January 08, 2012 03:22 AM |
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Imho
1. You run out of wood with sylvan cuz you pay 27 for lvl 3 IMBA shooter ( archangles cost 25 ore ).
2. You dont have enough crystals for both magmas and thanas, cuz thanes can bash whole army with flamewave + rune thunderclap and dragons have 280 hp and 40 def and are great pair with armageddon spell.
3. You dont have resources for rajas cuz have chosen to build magic guild and do the same creeping exploits every single game.
4. You skip only squires with Haven and u have all other stuff. Why ? Cuz light magic sux at creeping and usind dark with 10 mana first 3 weeks is really annoying.
And it was better that way, all factions felt really different.
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