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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted January 04, 2012 12:28 AM |
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Edited by Elvin at 00:31, 04 Jan 2012.
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Heretics.. Upgrades spice up the gameplay and give more options.
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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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somi
Known Hero
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posted January 04, 2012 12:29 AM |
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Edited by somi at 00:31, 04 Jan 2012.
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Quote:
My friends and I have who play both single player and multiplayer against eachother have come to a general agreement on the following:
-4 resources have definitely added strategy for us in multiplayer. In fact, this is the first game in the series where I feel like resources matter for more than a month.
It's not because of 4 resources that they matter more, its becose the cost is much higer so you need much more resorces. The same thing can happen with 7 resources, if units cost more. It's pretty simple. 4 resources adds nothing. You can do the same thing with 7 resources, even better if you would need to pay for every unit a resource. There are a lot of ways to implement 7 resources to matter much more, but they didn't improved it, but made it more simpler. They went one step back, not forward. You may like more simple system, but i don't. And generaly that is the main problem with heroes 6, making some aspects of game more simple. When making a sequel, important for me is to improve all aspects of game, dont remove some (or change drastically), or make theme simpler.
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gnomes2169
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Duke of the Glade
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posted January 04, 2012 12:33 AM |
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Quote:
Heretics..
Yup.
Problem?
____________
Yeah in the 18th century, two inventions suggested a method of measurement. One won and the other stayed in America.
-Ghost destroying Fred
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted January 04, 2012 12:41 AM |
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No upgrades makes the game strategically and tactically more shallow. Choosing what and when to upgrade adds a great deal of diversity. Case closed. 
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Lexxan
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Unimpressed by your logic
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posted January 04, 2012 01:17 AM |
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Quote:
Heretics.. Upgrades spice up the gameplay and give more options.
Only really when there are TWO upgrade options. Otherwise it's just a very draining enterprise, ESPECIALLY in H6. (I couldn't upgrade Seraphim in my latest map untill mid month 3 X_X)
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gnomes2169
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Duke of the Glade
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posted January 04, 2012 01:20 AM |
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Quote:
No upgrades makes the game strategically and tactically more shallow. Choosing what and when to upgrade adds a great deal of diversity. Case closed.
Creating predictable and recycled upgrades again and again adds not a drop of depth or strategy to a game series. If you have new or interesting ideas, then I whole heartedly agree with you. Otherwise, it is the same game with shiny graphics. ToTE was very good in this regard, changing the role of many of the creatures in game, sometimes more usefully (Pit lord, a sub-par lvl 6 caster to the Pit Spawn, a lvl 6 anti-swarm creature) and sometimes not-so-usefully (Vermin gave mana to the Pit Lord... but the pit spawn was clearly a better choice)...
If you cannot make the upgrade interesting or strategic, then I would much rather just have my creature in one go thank-you-very-much.
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Yeah in the 18th century, two inventions suggested a method of measurement. One won and the other stayed in America.
-Ghost destroying Fred
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mike80d
Famous Hero
Map Maker
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posted January 04, 2012 01:33 AM |
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Quote:
Quote:
My friends and I have who play both single player and multiplayer against eachother have come to a general agreement on the following:
-4 resources have definitely added strategy for us in multiplayer. In fact, this is the first game in the series where I feel like resources matter for more than a month.
It's not because of 4 resources that they matter more, its becose the cost is much higer so you need much more resorces. The same thing can happen with 7 resources, if units cost more. It's pretty simple. 4 resources adds nothing. You can do the same thing with 7 resources, even better if you would need to pay for every unit a resource. There are a lot of ways to implement 7 resources to matter much more, but they didn't improved it, but made it more simpler. They went one step back, not forward. You may like more simple system, but i don't. And generaly that is the main problem with heroes 6, making some aspects of game more simple. When making a sequel, important for me is to improve all aspects of game, dont remove some (or change drastically), or make theme simpler.
I partly agree, but in previous Homms I may not have gone for the same resources that my opponent was going for. In this one we really fight over resources month-after-month!
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blizzardboy
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Nerf Herder
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posted January 04, 2012 02:40 AM |
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I <3 upgrades, and I appreciate the way they were developed in H5 and 6. Almost every upgraded unit, apart from just having higher numeric values to their stats, is also given a strategically-relevant ability, which keeps the upgrades from being bland. The difference between harpies and furies is quite profound. Furies aren't just a harpy with higher stats; they're harpy with no-retaliation, which changes everything. It's like one second you're alone and the next second you have seven babies in your lap.
H3 had upgrades, but they were lame and straightforward. I didn't mind having them because... why not... but it was one of several things that made the game vanilla compared to its successors. H4 didn't include upgrades, which didn't bother me much because the upgrades in H3 were uninspiring anyway, but they made up for it by forcing you to choose what creature you want for each tier, which I thought was really nifty.
What the upgrades in H6 mean is if you want that extra special something out of the unit ASAP, you gotta pay those blood crystals for it. You want the awesome Frozen Ground ability to dish out a ton of damage to enemy walkers? Fork over the cash and shinies.
The next step up would be alternate upgrades!
***
The H6 resource system isn't ideal to what I would ultimately want, which would be a more complex system in place, but even so it's still superior to every previous Heroes game. It's never something I complained about until I started playing H6 and I realized, "Wow, this is so much more intense and meaningful." If you continue to push yourself to your limit, you will not have a boring excess of resources. They matter in month 1, 2, and beyond.
And when I say about ideally having a more complex system, I'm not talking about arbitrarily tossing 4 rare resources in the game and claiming that it's more complex because 4 is a higher number than 1. I mean something like having 3 or 4 different levels of rarity, and having a market where a resource might be more or less expensive to trade for depending on what's available and what you're offering (like in real life). You could even introduce something like the idea of lowering your weekly creature production in order to get more resources.
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"Folks, I don't trust children. They're here to replace us."
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted January 04, 2012 02:47 AM |
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alternate upgrades was what made TotE so great
they made H5 ten times better, though obivously they could have been more balanced *cough* arcane archers *cough*
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Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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mike80d
Famous Hero
Map Maker
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posted January 04, 2012 03:21 AM |
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BlizzardBoy: Great post! I agree whole heatedly, and hope for a higher tier resource or trade commodity
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted January 04, 2012 04:44 AM |
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Edited by Zenofex at 04:45, 04 Jan 2012.
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The alternative upgrades in TotE were a great idea which was mostly badly implemented. It increased the total amount of the creatures but made some of them completely or almost completely redundant (some of the new creatures turned to be worse than the original ones too) which pretty much resulted in perfect template builds. Of course there were upgrades which were both useful.
Anyway, don't get your hopes too high, the alternative upgrades will most likely return with the second expansion at the earliest, if at all. There's so much to be fixed in this game that the addition of new (read - old but unpaid for) content looks like an impossible task in the near future. There is still no sign of the promised town screens, the balance is disastrous, a good number of bugs remain, there are no sim-turns and no custom maps for MP. After that they have to bring back the factions which they decided to leave behind and eventually a RMG. So if Ubisoft haven't declared that the project is an utter failure by the end of 2013, you may get your alternative upgrades.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted January 04, 2012 07:12 AM |
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Quote:
No upgrades makes the game strategically and tactically more shallow. Choosing what and when to upgrade adds a great deal of diversity. Case closed.
This. I always felt that one of the big tactical considerations you had to do in Heroes 3 was whether to upgrade one unit or to build an entirely new dwelling. Basic units generally were pretty meh, but building more structures would allow you to collect more creatures in the long run - so it was basically an evaluation about whether you could afford to wait or whether it would pay off to go for a quick upgrade.
In Heroes 4, you just build the structure asap, no more to think about. That deffinitely flattened out the game a lot for me.
____________
What will happen now?
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B0rsuk
Promising
Famous Hero
DooM prophet
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posted January 04, 2012 07:23 AM |
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Edited by B0rsuk at 07:24, 04 Jan 2012.
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Lexxan
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Unimpressed by your logic
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posted January 04, 2012 09:17 AM |
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Just in general, I think one of H6's biggest missed opportunities is not to have alternative upgrades according to reputation :-|
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Coincidence? I think not!!!!
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted January 04, 2012 10:01 AM |
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A couple of notes:
Town/Unit-wise NO Heroes game did it right so far: While HoMM II had special town structures with 2-5 upgrades and in case of the 2 upgrades even a double upgrades, III introduced the UNIFORM town structure (one of HoMM III's bad design decisions) with 1 upgrade for each creature.
IV brought alternative dwellings, but cut upgrades and creature numbers due to having armies with heroes filling the creature slots.
V went back to the uniform system of III adding an alternative upgrade, adding quantity without quality and thought.
Lastly VI kept the uniform Heroes III structure yet again.
I'm still waiting for a Heroes game with UNIQUE town structures, where the building plans will somewhat look like in Disciples. DIFFERENT from town to town, upgrades where they make sense, with the possibility to have alternative units/upgrades or even two upgrades like the Dragons in HoMM II.
I also like the TIER system of HoMM VI. This would in theory offer the possibility to add one additional creature per tier (I would opt for one without upgrade) and have a Reserves I, II, III skill (somewhat like in King's Bounty), adding lots of options and tactical depth.
Speaking of resources. Let's just say, that the NUMBER of different resources is pretty irrelevant. 4 or 7, that alone makes not much of a difference, except now you need them all and anytime. That said, it's becoming a question of TIMING: It's pretty cumbersome, when you have to endlessly fight for 1 resource after another and a few hundred experience. Fights shouldn't be MEANINGLESS, which is partly the case in HoMM VI.
To illustrate what I mean, imagine you have to do ONE fight for TEN resources that will be really hard, against TEN fights for 1 resource that you are waltzing through, for the same XP and net gain; obviously, the game has to be "set-up" that way, so that the relation between number and difficulty of fights versus XP and resource gain is right, and here VI didn't get it right.
The missing diversity is not a function of missing resources, but of too much repetition and missing resource-giving objects (look at HoMM IV for interesting ones and interesting map objects).
Also, the relation between mine income and resource finds on map is no good for a STRATEGY game: considering the amount of resources needed for building a town up the part that comes from your mines is simple too low (and here they are simply the 3 mines missing, that would deliver 3 more resources).
This is all part of the fact that they concentrated too much on other things instead of making the changes RIGHT and with a view on consequences for the rest of the game.
I don't see anything wrong with
a) Zones of control (great)
b) Town conversion (why not? Has its ups and downs)
c) creature pool (ALOT better for MP and not without logistic finesses).
Overall there is no bad Heroes game, not even IV. Heroes VI is WAY better than Heroes V was 3 months after release, and even that was interesting.
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avalon00x
Bad-mannered
Known Hero
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posted January 04, 2012 10:10 AM |
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Quote:
Quote:
But stop letting complete nostalgia get in the way.
Is this some slogan? Every time when someone tries to explain (to himself, most likely) why so many people like Heroes III and not the next games from the series, the said person refers to this... nostalgia. Try to imagine that some of us play Heroes III on regular basis and are not just "returning" to it once in a while to remember how it was a decade ago.
I have spent the past 30 minutes trying to imagine that people still play h3 but have been unable to. I loved H3 Back in the days when it was still new or atleast not ancient. and hell it was an awesome game for its time but. if it where to be released now it would barely score a 30%. wheras H6 got pretty decent reviews. and after playing H6 alot of H3 functions feel sluggish and annoying while not adding anything besides out dated but ugly graphics.
in my oppinion the worst thing you can do is play games you played when you were young. the magic is just gone once you look at it from a new perspective and it wont even come close to the sensation you felt when you played it back then. leaving it with nothing but a dissapointment.
so if we review all games right now. the best will ether be H5 or H6.
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evinin
Supreme Hero
Servant of Asha
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posted January 04, 2012 10:17 AM |
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Edited by evinin at 10:18, 04 Jan 2012.
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This is a really strange poll to me. 
I know that I'll probably get stuff like this  for my post but I'll write it anyway. I don't think that there is a bad Heroes game because I've enjoyed all of them really much. I haven't played only the second part so it's the only one I can't judge.
Heroes I may have the lowest graphic and game components but it has nice creature designs and it started everything after all. It didn't have an upgrade system so the system was a later idea after all. 
Heroes III is the most loved game, yeah, I know that. I played it first also and I loved it. I loved towns, music, creatures... They were all great. But that's all actually. I don't like neither the skill nor the magic system. Now I don't play it at all.
Heroes IV is the most hated game, yeah, I know that. But it's the one that I have played the most. It had the best campaigns, I love so much the Gathering Storm story. I didn't miss creature upgrade though I prefer it. Many units aren't that good, true, compared to the other games. I also love the fact that heroes can fight for real. I still play it sometimes when I need to let go some anger and so (killing units with heroes that is).
Heroes V... I played all the campaigns and trust me - they are not that bad as they look like. The factions are nice, the new world is nice, I liked it when I played it. Will I play it again? I don't think so. Why? Heroes VI.
I love Heroes VI. It has bugs, yes, but I can live with them. I was afraid to have upgraded Griffins because it was said that there was a bug, but when I finally did I understood that it's really nothing that much. It has the best creatures ever. These creatures have so many unique abilities and so that I can't even remember them all. I would love the game if it were only for some of them - like Marksmen, Liches, Kirins... The creatures of a faction really work like one - you can combine them so good that you may not even loose a single unit in a battle stated as hard. Yes, Necro is overpowered, but what? You can't say that you don't like playing with it and revive all of your losts.  There are some really sweet heroes abilities, too, and the Tears/Blood system is a nice feature. Some of the campaigns are boring (Irina, Anton) but some were really interesting all the time (Anastasya).
So yes, my point is that I don't think there is a bad Heroes game. Sorry is you are like this  right now.
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odium
Known Hero
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posted January 04, 2012 10:32 AM |
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Edited by odium at 10:33, 04 Jan 2012.
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@avalon00x
While I find it true that some games which were magical back then will not create the same impression nowadays, I don't think it's correct to compare them one next to another. Context must be taken into account. Technically, H5 ToE is far better than H3, however if we take the context into account things turn in favor of H3. It's not about nostalgia, but the state-of-art for games in a particular period. H3 was closer to the state-of-the-art in its time than H5 was in 2006.
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Dave_Jame
Promising
Legendary Hero
I'm Faceless, not Brainless.
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posted January 04, 2012 11:21 AM |
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One thing I like about H6 is the fact that there are cases when it is more profitable for you "NOT" to upgrade a unite.
For example
The marksman: Their piercing shoot is nice, but it limits there use.
Imperial Gryfins assult hits more targets but the enemy can dodge it.
Shamans: Will it be better to have a mass effect that is weeker or a single target effect that is stronger.
And also the Ravegers: Thaunt is a great ability, but do I need it at all time?
I do not suppose, that there are many more such examples, but they are present. (Cyclops could be one of them, the shift from physical to magical attack can be demotivational) So this is a nice step
On the other hand, things like NO option to recruit neutrals (wolves, mermaids, I want mermaids (sireins as translatedy YEY)) and an almost NO motivation to combine armies is a really bad thing.
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Avirosb
Promising
Legendary Hero
No longer on vacation
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posted January 04, 2012 11:44 AM |
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Edited by Avirosb at 11:45, 04 Jan 2012.
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H6.
All the removed, changed, and added stuff makes the game nigh impossible quite difficult for me to enjoy.
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