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Wind_Falcon
Adventuring Hero
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posted January 17, 2017 06:43 PM |
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Thanks for the update. I know that just from the sprites we don't know everything about the new creatures, but we can discern some things, and I would still like to give my feedback, for whatever its worth (and with keeping in mind everything orzie said about the lesser evil etc).
Crossbowman for Knight is very uninspired. It just cements Knight as the most boring class thematically, as everyone is just a type of ground based soldier. I think its completely intentional that they gave the Griffin to Castle in Heroes III, as it both gives that fairy tale/fantasy touch to the town, as well as a flying creatures with its own ability (the same could be said about the Arch/Angel as well, though I personally think its the best decision to stay away from Judaeo-Christian mythology to keep in line with Heroes II). Something to that effect would have been both better, sticking closer to the NWC vision, as well as improve the gameplay of the town/class. Even giving them Monks would have been better, though I understand why you might have chosen otherwise. The sprite itself doesn't look interesting at all as well.
I very much enjoy the Harpy for Barbarian. Everything seems great - the sprite itself, thematically and gameplay wise. You hit it out of the park here.
Satyr for Sorceress is somewhat hit and miss. It again comes from Greek mythology like the Centaur and Pegasi Rider (HIII), but somehow feels less at home in the town, especially considering their "lustful" image from the myths, in my mind this creature would find its home in Warlock, and not Sorceress. The safest bet here would have been the Pegasi Riders in my opinion, as the Centaurs have their home in Warlock in HII. Otherwise some new fairy tale creature that doesn't come from Greek myths would be my choice (something from Brothers Grimm fairy tales for example). I feel the sprite falls short in comparison to the NWC HII sprite quality as well.
I'm not sure what the Wizard creature is supposed to be, I guess Gremlin? Either way, cant figure too much from just looking at it (don't know which would be worse, for this unit to be a shooter, or for it not to be a shooter), but I don't like the sprite and don't think just by looking at it that it fits with the rest of the town/class. I really like the Naga from HIII, though I understand why you chose not to put a powerful creature into an already powerful class/town.
The giant floating head (I guess its a Beholder?) I though was awful even when you first showed it some pages ago, and now seeing it next to the other creatures I like it even less. I don't know how it will behave gameplay wise, so I can't comment there, though potentially there is a lot that can be done with the concept, so I'm not against it. The sprite is horrible though, there are so many cool Beholder (and Beholder-like) designs out there to draw inspiration from, this is just bad (and so is the explosion death animation that you've showed).
Black Knight for Necromancer - same as Harpy, I like it a lot.
I'm not impressed with the Witch creatures. They have a similar issue to Knight, only here majority of creatures just look like a spiced up regular animals. The Gnoll/Basilisk/Dragonfly are all easily better fitting concepts than any on the animal like creatures, something more outlandish should have been their replacements. The level one creature (Trbesman?) also is very uninteresting. The level 7 creature (Wyvern?) visually doesn't look anywhere close to the sprite level of the other level 7 creatures, otherwise I like the idea behind it.
And finally the desert town (was it Dervish?). I generally like how its turned out, though I personally would have preferred for these units to stay neutral, it just feels very amateurish and hack job-y to put them in a town, add a few more, and call it a day (very much like Conflux). I also don't know how I feel about the Genie being the level 7 creature. Somehow it doesn't fit, but this might be just because I'm so used to thinking of it as a neutral unit. But even then, I'm guessing you have balanced it and made his special ability something closer to the Gorgon from HIII, and even though its a powerful unit, its not a level 7 creature...
The rest of the Witch and Dervish creatures look really good sprite wise, it just begs more the question what happened to new creatures in the vanilla towns, the majority of them don't look as good and aren't as inspired by the very standards that you have set yourselves.
Anyway, I'm still really looking forward to the mod and to see what my impressions of the towns/classes and creatures will be once I get to play them.
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joedenver
Tavern Dweller
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posted January 17, 2017 07:24 PM |
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the new units look great and blended nicely with the rest, great work guys, i know the frog is an original scrapped work from the game artist his/herself, and you bring it back to life! cool 
so many childhood memories from heroes 2, thanks for the hard work, i hope and pray this project to have a smooth way ahead until it release someday 
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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted January 17, 2017 07:53 PM |
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That looks amazing and I'm even more excited to play it now. 
To make some minor criticisms, the mantis looks like it has too much going on (its model is a little too complex), the manticore looks a little off, and I'd think the black knight should be a higher level than the lich (but that could just be status quo bias). But the rest looks good to great. I especially like the integration of the MM6 creatures. And the broccoli dendroid.
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Eccentric Opinion
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RerryR
Promising
Supreme Hero
Researching Magic
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posted January 17, 2017 08:31 PM |
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For me the dendroid, the deamon and the frog look like creatures from World of Xeen which i realy like. Keep on going 
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted January 17, 2017 08:52 PM |
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I like them.
Also, how do you manage town dwellings when there is no upgrade possible (for example peasant)? The upgrade remains in gray or you found a way to disable it?
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted January 17, 2017 09:00 PM |
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____________
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Drakon-Deus
Undefeatable Hero
Nixonite
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posted January 18, 2017 07:37 AM |
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Thanks guys, this is great to see.
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OxFEA
Promising
Famous Hero
feanor on DF2.ru
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posted January 18, 2017 06:25 PM |
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Salamandre said:
Also, how do you manage town dwellings when there is no upgrade possible (for example peasant)? The upgrade remains in gray or you found a way to disable it?
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tupaz
Adventuring Hero
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posted January 18, 2017 10:09 PM |
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Edited by tupaz at 22:14, 18 Jan 2017.
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That's how Heroes 2 worked, but here can't have upgraded paesants instead? 
Anyway, Heroes 2 art, sound effects and music with heroes 3 mechanics is like a dream come true, my hype is at maximum level more than any other AAA game in the past 20 years or so.
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The_Green_Drag
Supreme Hero
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posted January 18, 2017 10:41 PM |
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Yeah the new units look fantastic! Very well done
My favorite is the manticore! Didn't expect to see that here and I am pleastently suprised. My least favorite would be the giant toad. I know it's from the h2 museum and all but it should be sized down a tad and pushed to tier 2 or 3 I think. Fits the swamp theme tho.
I was expecting to see inferno, are they not included in the next version?
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted January 18, 2017 11:10 PM |
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Now we need a MS-DoS application to run it.
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Hero_Of_Light
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted January 21, 2017 02:49 PM |
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I would really like to make some dwellings work like the Thatched Hut of your mod, meaning that there will be no upgrade (or less upgrades if there are more than one like in mage guild).
Since this mod is for ERA, can you please share the script that makes this possible?
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Not idly do the leaves of Lorien fall.
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OxFEA
Promising
Famous Hero
feanor on DF2.ru
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posted January 22, 2017 11:51 AM |
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It's not a script, sorry.
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majaczek
Supreme Hero
Work at Magic Dimmension
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posted January 23, 2017 10:15 PM |
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OxFEA said:
It's not a script, sorry.
a plugin with source? please?
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Lord_Immortal
Famous Hero
DoR Dev Team
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posted January 24, 2017 01:49 PM |
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orzie said:
And now we present the approximate bestiary of the upcoming v0.8 beta version.
If I may, I would like to suggest a couple of changes (Crossbowman and Mantis) to the new units you have added. Not that they are not beautiful (in fact all of them are wonderful both in graphical and conceptual terms) - it's just that some things fit better with the towns than some other things.
For example, adding the Crossbowman to the Knight faction seems a little repetitive due to the fact that there already is an Archer unit. Instead of the Crossbowman I would suggest the Cleric (from Might&Magic VII). Given that the Knight faction already has the "religious" theme with the Crusader/Paladin the cleric would fit. Plus, it needs at least one "magical element". The Cleric would still be a shooter like the Crossbowman. However don't completely discard the crossbowman. We could have him as an alternative unit to the Archer (much like the mod for VCMI/Heroes IV). It would also give more uniqueness to the Knight faction as a whole and represent the diversity of tactics in human armies.
Also, regarding Fortress: there already is a big frog and a big wasp in your town, and a big mantis? A little repetitive of having a faction of oversized animals, I think. Fortress is a faction with a lot of potential, many mythical beasts are represented as serpents, reptiles or swamp dwellers. The original Heroes 3 Fortress had Basilisks and Gorgons, both based on Dungeons and Dragons and both would kill with their stare. As you stated, you wanted to keep the Heroes 2 atmosphere of fairytale/medieval mythology over the D&D concepts. That I like and fully agree. That is why my suggestion would be to have the Cockatrice instead of the Mantis. Medieval Mythology has Cockatrices instead of Basilisks (sometimes they are used inter-changeably). Here's some of my favorite artworks:
Cockatrice from Spiderwick Chronicles (personal favorite)
Cockatrice (just like in medieval sculptures)
Fan art (more reptilian version)
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e-lysander
Known Hero
Lysander
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posted January 25, 2017 04:26 AM |
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Lord_Immortal said:
For example, adding the Crossbowman to the Knight faction seems a little repetitive due to the fact that there already is an Archer unit. Instead of the Crossbowman I would suggest the Cleric (from Might&Magic VII). Given that the Knight faction already has the "religious" theme with the Crusader/Paladin the cleric would fit. Plus, it needs at least one "magical element". The Cleric would still be a shooter like the Crossbowman. However don't completely discard the crossbowman. We could have him as an alternative unit to the Archer (much like the mod for VCMI/Heroes IV). It would also give more uniqueness to the Knight faction as a whole and represent the diversity of tactics in human armies.
I've been in opposition to the Crossbowman since day one, but I think they have their reasons so whatever.
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BurntPhoenix
Hired Hero
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posted January 27, 2017 07:48 PM |
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I thought I saw before that the team prefers that the Knight town not get anymore religious than the paladin/crusader, so the new unit was bound to be another medieval soldier type. I like the crossbowman. It's not groundbreaking, but it did not need to be...he fits into their lineup.
I too hope the beholder undergoes a better transformation or is changed to something else. True, it was in Might and Magic 6 as a creation of warlock Agar in Enroth (right?), but aesthetically for heroes 2, the sprite lacks the, dare I say, 'elegance' of the other Warlock units.
I would think the medusa would be a good replacement for the beholder in Warlock---it seems the medusa is the odd one of the bunch/black sheep for the desert faction.
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zmudziak22
Supreme Hero
Heroes 3 Fan
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posted January 27, 2017 08:42 PM |
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In first version of Succession Wars, there was Bishop as lvl 5 unit. His dwelling was same as h2 knight defender.
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Lord_Immortal
Famous Hero
DoR Dev Team
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posted January 27, 2017 09:33 PM |
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M&M 7 Priests of the Sun do not look "too religious" though, I don't think they should be a problem.
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lujo
Hired Hero
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posted February 01, 2017 06:01 PM |
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Edited by lujo at 01:01, 02 Feb 2017.
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I know it's customary to apploud every bigger modding effort out there and that there's hours of work involved with all sorts of things related to any major modding, but I really have to say that the roster looks terrible and that all the talk about a lot of considerations and compromises and whatnot sounds like a pile of nonsense.
Knight: Crossbowman and swordsman need to switch places. You give knight a second shooter at lvl 4 it's a completely different castle, To the point that any arguing about keeping with thee spirit of H2 is laughable. In H2 the Knight had one lousy and slow shooter you needed to upgrade to get anything out of. A castle with 2 shooters (graphics irrelevant) you practically start out with is 100% not the same thing. Having a speedbump prerequisite to build whatever builds the second shooter could also be a good idea. And the swordsman and the paladin are too similar as units not to have a bigger gap between them. In H3 they merged them (with unfortunate concequences) but that's how similar they are.
Rating: The type of unit is sensible, as the guys who tweaked the roster for heroes 3 would also tell you, but the placement is very stupid on multiple levels.
Barbarian: Just no, Barbarian doesn't have a flying unit, even a semi-flying unit like the harpy. The harpy, if it's anything like the H3 harpy, doesn't work unless it's in a spellcasting castle (because of the damage spread and semi-reliance on buffs unless it has no retaliation, and from what documentation I could find elsewhere yours doesn't).
It was invented to replace the gargoyle over at the warlock, so if you're going to have a harpy then not having it replace the gargoyle is just stupid. On flavor grounds, too, all units at the barbarian except the cyclops are tolkinean, in particular ones which in folklore before that were basically parodies of non-latin non-germanic peoples, orc of Huns and Mongols, Ogres of Huns, and Trolls of Finns and Soumi, along with wolves and goblins attached to that whole branch of folklore by Tolkien. The Cyclops is there because it's, along with the Satyr, the ancient (rather than medieval) "barbaric" stereotype. The other ones are centaurs (for the horse nomads like sythians) and satyrs (for any rustic/barbarous folks, it's used around the mediterranean to this day). So if you're going to dump another greek creature into the barbarian, the Satyr is the one to put in.
Also, Satyr, as a spellcasting creature, would work nicely here, morale boosts for barbarian units would be quite good. It would help the ground guys possibly reach the other side faster (or strike twice), and it would help the shooters shoot twice, while keeping him in the back to defend if need be. It's ideal mechanically and for flavor, and what's even more important, you can put him at tier 4 or 5 and leave the wolf at 3 because it's very important or the barbarian to have that very fast early unit with the cheap buildup for map exploration.
Rating: Anyone doing this sort of thing should in their sleep understand every single transformation and move or omission of units KB to HIV. Someone who does, doesn't even suggest what you did, and probably shouldn't be anywhere near modding or asked for opinion. An basically nothing at all was random.
Sorceress: Satyr is greek mythology and nothing else here is greek, it's all nordic (it's all folklore from northern europe). If you're going to use the gnome, move him here, because the halfling IS the gnome port from Kings Bounty and you put them both in the same castle (facepalm).
Rating: I get how this happened, but it's still not a compromise worth making.
Warlock: The beholder is both awful an unnecesary, and while they squeezed him into the Dungeon in H3 it absolutely doesn't fit with the H2 Warlock, because the H2 Warlock has a 100% clear theme. Warlock is medieval stuff, greek hybrids and medieval hybrids. You just replace the gargoyle with the harpy to reduce the early flying tank power Warlock had always had balance issues with (it's both on flavor and the same thing was done in H3 because it's just so sensible) and you replace the beholder with the only other loose greek hybrid, the Medusa. You have to make her a shooter like they did in H3, but, again, nothing else would really make sense.
Rating: Holy clueless batman! Things moved afer H2 for a reason, not for lore, and again, this sort of thing happened for really good reasons.
Wizard: You can't have the gnome and the halfling in the same castle, halfling is the gnome port/adaptation, thats why there's no gnome to begin with... And the boar was always pointless filler. The sensible thing is to move the gargoyle here (because doooh, it's a kind of golem) and use whatever for the missing slot. That mage graphic that's floating around idk.
Rating: Dear god, you ported the gnome right next to the gnome port. I don't even...
Necromancer: Moving the only shooter the castle has that far up the tech tree makes no sense, you really should not have swapped it and the knight.
Rating: Meh, uninspired and relatively easy solution, but again, quite a blunder in moving the lich further up.
The mess with the frog: is a complete incoherent mess. The tribal guy looks just racist, the wasp is unrelateable, the lizardman is fine, the frog is just goofy, the mantis dwarfs everything, the tree should be lower because who's going to want a slow moving lvl6 walker and the wyvern is a lame dragon and you really shouldn't make a castle have that as it's endgame unit. It's godawful.
The memorable unit from the Fortress was the gorgon bull, and it would make a better top end unit than any here (provided it had 2 hex breath and death stare as it would trump other high tier units and be interesting) and that's to begin with. If the frog is the basilisk, then you don't need the medusa, because H3 basilisk IS the h2 medusa with a different skin and name. So unless you move the medusa to be a shooter over at warlock, you have 2 same units (at the same rank, too). If that frog isn't the basilisk, then you have a goofy giant frog in your mod, which is terrible (yes the graphic was there which is convenient, but it wasn't used because it's a goofy giant frog, for gods sake). The wasp doesn't look like a heroes unit, and neither does the mantis (and the mantis never has), and giant insects feel about as lazy as repainting dragons. Also, if you change the head of the "tribal" guy to be an animals head, you can have people not go "this is racist" and "why two human spearmen with the white guy at lvl 3 but the black guy at lvl1" but possibly "this is cool" provided the animal in question is, idk, a cat or something that fits with the rest of the swamp dwellers.
Rating: Holy god people, you can code, you can animate gifs, you're doing something people will apreciate regardless of the quality because it will look pretty and noone who'd want to play anything like it will have any alternative, but jesus allmighty you should not be designing castles. You actually actively badly suck at it. Prove me wrong.
The sand castle - if you swap the medusa (shooter) for the beholder, or idk, for the goofy frog (as is) and come up with something for this spot, this doesn't even look terrible. Except obv the djinn can't have the KB deamon troop halving thing, that's gamebreaking.
Rating: The medusa move is the most obvious thing in the universe, and I have no clue what the new stuff does, so I can't judge. Not a big fan of bluntly dumping neutrals into one castle becuase they were designed with other things in mind (chiefly to provide heroes in Heroes 1 with very fast moving troops for auxiliary heroes, or for unit rank replacements for lousy units like replacing Peasants with Rogues or Dwarves with Nomads). So it's not like it couldn't work, it's that it wasn't meant to and they were moslty not meant to be used with each other.
Anyway I don't expect anyone to listen to this, and the mod will get a lot of praise even if it's terrible because H2 graphics just trump h3 graphics. But you did write you might do a rebalancing update at around 1.0. So there you go, you can skip straight to that part right away and save yourselves the embarassment. Any tester which doesn't basically tell you most of this is not a very good tester.
There. My tone is the way it is because, yes, it's that laughable and I'm doing you an actual favor by telling you this AND I also don't expect people who'd blunder this badly to listen to good advice so I'm having fun. EDIT: And after the "discussion" it turned out that the guy running things is basicaly the graphics guy. Which explains a lot, the project is being run by what's essentially a manal laborer who would, on a professional project like this, be told what to do, payed and never under any circumstances asked about much of anything. It's hard work, sure, but you don't get a ceramic tile layer guy to do draw up plans for a multi-story house, or to even understand them
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This thread is pages long: 
