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| Thread: What is 3DO thinking? |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · «PREV |
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Gerdash
Responsible
Famous Hero
from the Animated Peace
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posted March 29, 2002 04:43 PM |
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i would be surprised if many ppl unfamiliar with homm would buy a turn-based game without at least reading some reviews, no matter how good the cover.
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DonGio
Promising
Famous Hero
of Clear Water Mountain Clan
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posted March 30, 2002 09:39 PM |
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We're talking kids here, Gerdash, kids with money. If you had put Harry Potter on the cover of HOMMIV, can you imagine how many copies it would sell?
And Jenova, what planet are you from?
But, after playing, I can say, the graphics on the box reflects the graphics in the game: Supersucky (as hard as you can imagine, and then some...)
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There are 10 types of people: Those who read binary, and those who don't.
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Jenova
Famous Hero
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posted March 31, 2002 05:12 AM |
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Erathia of course.
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brody
Known Hero
Pathetic Loser
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posted April 02, 2002 08:33 AM |
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Edited By: brody on 2 Apr 2002
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I dunno about you, DonGio, but when I was a kid I didn't have money, certainly not tons. Even when my parents had money, I didn't get more than like $40 a month... and barely enough for one game a month is hardly what I'd call "tons of money". Besides, the people buying TBS games aren't usually the kids who look for pretty boxes; it's the hard-core gamers.
EDIT: oops, you never said "tons of money", just "money", sorry...
Besides that, I didn't think the box looked any worse than H3, H2, or even AB. I haven't seen SOD, so I can't comment on it, but the whole heroes series boxes always seem simple and to the point; nothing flashy like everquest or a FPS, and I think that's a good thing. TBS gamers (or at least I) don't look for flashy boxes, they look for something that looks professional and elegant. H4 box could be better, but I doubt it'll hurt sales any.
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DonGio
Promising
Famous Hero
of Clear Water Mountain Clan
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posted April 02, 2002 03:11 PM |
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As I mentioned earlier, I don't think the "hardcore gamers" and people already knowing about HOMMIV will be swayed in either direction by the box cover. However, 3DO is rumored to have financial problems, and that's why I think they should try, in every possible (legal) way, to sell as many copies of the game as possible. Agree so far?
The box cover for HOMMIII (at least mine) showed a big battle taking place. There were many 3D-rendered creatures, mostly from Castle and Tower if I remember correctly, and they were fighting and marching and looking good. The box held a great promise of what was inside.
As a kid, I got around 40$ a month, and often, I would spend that money on a PC game. Then I would go to my local retailer, and check the boxes there. I would read on the bakc and all that, but most often only on the boxes that caught my eye. The HOMMIV box doesn't catch many eyes, or so I believe.
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There are 10 types of people: Those who read binary, and those who don't.
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trevorl
Tavern Dweller
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posted April 06, 2002 01:06 AM |
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Bad Pictures are Good...
I agree that the cover could have been done better, but given 3DOs current circumstances, it doesn't matter.
3DO is in financial trouble because of good marketing, not poor marketing. I'm not the only one I know who avoids buying 3DO games because of their corrupt corporate culture. The eager people in 3DO marketting have a history of false compatibility claims for their software and the public is "Once burnt, twice shy". (See system requirements discussion in "First Impressions" Thread)
It's too bad because 3DO really does have some of the best games, but once they get the concept fleshed out enough to market to the beta-testers of the world, they dump development and leave it to the marketers to dupe the mainstream public who will be stuck with buggy junk. 3DO has survived for years off of the widespread policy of no returns of openned software.
Take Heart!
The poor marketing might actually be a glimmering sign of a comming turn-around for 3DO. If they can actually slow down their marketing group enough to allow testing, maintenence, and support to get ahead of them, then there is a chance that the public will start to re-build faith in their marketing claims. The 3DO web site actually has a disclaimer now, stating that their software is NOT intended to run on Win2000 or XP. If they put it on the boxes too - well that would be a step towards legitimacy.
However, it still leaves legitimacy many more steps to go; nowhere does 3DO admit that their CD roms are a non-standard format that can not be read by 1 in 8 CDROM drives. Regardless of System Requirements, it is still a gamble buying 3DO software without testing it first.
The Cover art looks, to me, like it was put together by the development team, not the marketing team. The Development Project Manager might actually be managing the software release and maintenence. If that is the case, then there is hope for the patches that people are already calling for - and there is therefore also hope for 3DO.
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HappyPike
Known Hero
Pikeman
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posted April 06, 2002 01:09 AM |
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brody
Known Hero
Pathetic Loser
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posted April 06, 2002 03:02 AM |
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Quote:
However, it still leaves legitimacy many more steps to go; nowhere does 3DO admit that their CD roms are a non-standard format that can not be read by 1 in 8 CDROM drives. Regardless of System Requirements, it is still a gamble buying 3DO software without testing it first.
Don't know where you've been the last 5+ years, but almost every game on the shelf uses this "non-standard" format. It's called Safedisc, it's a copy protection, and it (or another similar protection) is on probably 95% of the games out there...
It's not their CD-ROMs that are a problem, it's the industry's paranoia of piracy. They think putting these protections together, which cause many older cd-rom drives (and even some newer ones) to be unable to read the cd's. The same thing happened with Civ3, I posted about it on the forums there too (civfanatics.com). Same as D2, Tribes 2, M&M7 (haven't played 8 or 9 but I'd assume they're the same), Need for speed 4, etc. I can only make claims to games I've played, but if you look at gamecopyworld.com, you'll see that most games today have some form of advanced protection. To say 3DO is lying because of this means that everybody in the industry is also lying.
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trevorl
Tavern Dweller
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posted April 06, 2002 07:50 PM |
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truth in advertising
Quote:
To say 3DO is lying because of this means that everybody in the industry is also lying.
1) Some copy protection schemes are worse than others at screwing up honest users. My personal experience is that only the 3DO combination is actually rejected by a significant number of cdrom drives.
2) Lying about system requirements is a totally separate issue. HOMM3 doesn't run on NT4 sp4 regardless of the type of cdrom drive you use. I went through 6 !!! different cd drives (All perfectly operable for other "Protected" games) before 3DO finally notified me that the NT4 compatibility claim on the box was inaccurate and that I should have verified that the software works on my computer BEFORE I bought it. No other company disavows responsibility for compatability claims used to sell the software.
Test, then Buy; never the other way around.
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DonGio
Promising
Famous Hero
of Clear Water Mountain Clan
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posted April 07, 2002 08:55 PM |
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But what do you think of the box cover?
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There are 10 types of people: Those who read binary, and those who don't.
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brody
Known Hero
Pathetic Loser
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posted April 09, 2002 09:27 PM |
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Quote:
1) Some copy protection schemes are worse than others at screwing up honest users. My personal experience is that only the 3DO combination is actually rejected by a significant number of cdrom drives.
2) Lying about system requirements is a totally separate issue. HOMM3 doesn't run on NT4 sp4 regardless of the type of cdrom drive you use. I went through 6 !!! different cd drives (All perfectly operable for other "Protected" games) before 3DO finally notified me that the NT4 compatibility claim on the box was inaccurate and that I should have verified that the software works on my computer BEFORE I bought it. No other company disavows responsibility for compatability claims used to sell the software.
Test, then Buy; never the other way around.
As for screwing up honest users, I've seen the exact same problems with GTA2, NFS4, MM7, H3AB, D2 + D2 Exp, Civ3 (you could possibly even find the posts on civfanatics.com if you search enough), etc. The protection used on H4 is the same as that used in most other games, ie Safedisc. 3DO isn't doing anything different there, so don't assume they are just because of an NT issue.
As for that NT issue, I know that Tribes2 had a windows 2000 issue at first, even though the box said it worked on 2000, and I know Diablo 2 had a similar problem. I don't know about NT for those two, but NT was never great at running games. I had NT at work, sp6, and it still was buggy with many games, even those that said they worked on NT. Granted, it probably had more to do with NT's lack of support for my crappy sound and video cards, but still, the games run fine now that I have 2000, so it is definitely partially NT's problem.
And what do you think Blizzard or Sierra said when you asked them about the Windows 2000 bug? They said it was a problem with CD-ROM drives, assuming it had to do with the copy protection. My friend emailed sierra again and again, telling them the drive he used was working fine under 98, and only had problems with 2000. They never said anything to him about that, they just kept saying it was a known issue with the copy protection and to try it with a different CD-ROM drive. Yes, in fact, other companies do say things to disavow their responsibility until they get things fixed. (I think Sierra has that fixed now, anyway...)
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Godlike
Tavern Dweller
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posted April 12, 2002 05:36 AM |
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What are you all talking about? The cover sucks as the game does! I don't care if the box looks like snow, all i want is to see a good game istalled on my comp from that box ! HOMM4 is a sequel of the heroes of might and magic series and has a lot of fans! But the way they made the game is stupid ! Where are all those cool things we had in HOMM3? I would rather play heroes 2 instead of HOMM4 ! HOMM4 is just a caravan game ! All i do is set up caravans everyday so i can gather troops ! Nothing exciteing about that ! And the fights are .......! Why are you angry about the way the box looks? In my oppinion the box is better than the game, if you know what i mean! Are the 3do guys thinking about turning the heroes series into a RTS? Undecided? Stupid? My message for them is: Thanks for the Heroes 1,2,3 but pls maybe it's time to retire! I don't want HOMM5 to be as dumb as HOMM4 is!
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Jenova
Famous Hero
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posted April 12, 2002 10:30 AM |
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Man I posted such long first impressions about the game in another flame bait thread you posted and a mod deleted it.
Anyway, I think the resolution system sucks. They shouldn't make it the higher your res, the more stuff on your interface.. They should scale it down so that you see the same sized interface no matter what res. It would take more work, but it would end up better that way. Look how huge the interface is in 800x600.. Ridiculous. The adventure screen is as good as gone.
About the caravans, I do it weekly.. or fortnightly. No need to do it every day. But if you're on the go, it also means you gotta keep claiming more towns or else you can't get caravans going to you. It's better than hero chains, less management needed.
The game is overall good though, but not as great as it could have been. Hopefully Age of Wonders II will make up for the slightly disappointing HOMM4.
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DonGio
Promising
Famous Hero
of Clear Water Mountain Clan
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posted April 12, 2002 12:34 PM |
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Godlike: I'm not angry about the looks of the HOMMIV box, I just wondered why they made it dull and boring when they should be trying to attract new players to the game, considering their financial trouble. So read the post before you start ranting...
Play well
DonGio
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There are 10 types of people: Those who read binary, and those who don't.
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Sir_Elric
Responsible
Famous Hero
Having a bad hair day.
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posted April 12, 2002 07:46 PM |
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Um chatting about boxes now are we?!........mmmmmmm scarey stuff!......time to go outside and feel the sun on your face there guys LOL!!!
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Neverwinter Nights - "City of Melnibone"
Direct connect - ausnwn2.dyndns.org:5121
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celfious
Promising
Legendary Hero
From earth
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posted May 22, 2002 03:42 PM |
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Well, I can't read an entire companies mind, and I dont know anyone there personally so..
I "HOPE" They're thinking, "We gotta put out some cool download's, and super addon's cuz we released an unfinished product"
You know?
I dont want to hurt they're feeling's, but I shouldn't be going through this, nor should any prommising customer's such as ourselve's.
We've been happy until now, and even now, I dont think we're exactly enraged, just let down.
Moderator's note:This topic has been closed, as it refers to an older version of the game. To discuss Heroes 3, please go to Library Of Enlightenment, to discuss Heroes 4, please go to War Room Of Axeoth.
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