|
|
MattII
Legendary Hero
|
posted November 16, 2013 11:38 PM |
|
|
|
Okay, maybe not a boss creature, but something similar to say the Azure dragon of H3, or Mega Dragon of H4.
|
|
DoubleDeck
Promising
Legendary Hero
Look into my eyes...
|
|
posted November 17, 2013 08:48 AM |
|
|
|
I don't mind the boss creatures, it's just that they were too easy to defeat even on hard...make them uber strong so that you have to fight about 10 times to get to know how to defeat it...
|
|
Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
|
|
posted November 17, 2013 10:06 AM |
|
|
I see two problems about them. First, the require additional resources that could be used on neutrals instead. Second, they should either scale with your hero/army strength or the game should reset your army to a specific size.
When I faced the abyssal worm, I had exchanged my resources for crystal in the marketplace because I was too bored to wait and when I faced the boss I had zero chances because my army was too small. To get there I had 7 days or else I would lose the game and it is a miracle that I had an autosave before I gathered 1000 crystal to trigger its appearance. Same happened with Michael, I captured and held that fort pretty early and then Michale swooped down and kicked my @ss. On the other hand in Sandor's campaign I had saved the eastern cave for last and only faced Hai Ryu when I had ridiculous amounts of army. I destroyed the boss effortlessly.
So yeah, such events need to be scripted with specific armies on you and also take into account how good or bad skills you have. If they do they can be a lot of fun but otherwise that's a lot of fuss for something you will see 1-2 times in your life. Now if they also had a boss duel mode..
____________
H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
|
|
DoubleDeck
Promising
Legendary Hero
Look into my eyes...
|
|
posted November 17, 2013 06:37 PM |
|
|
I hear you, boss duel mode would be super!
There were instances where your troops were adjusted for boss fights in H6 but most were not...
I guess they should not have boss fights, but instead have something like at the end of the H5 vanilla game when you fought Kha-beleth's armies, wave by wave...once you get rid of an army, a second army appears, etc. so you have to perform well for each wave of attack...
|
|
War-overlord
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Presidente of Isla del Tropico
|
|
posted November 17, 2013 07:11 PM |
|
|
In that case, I'd rather have bossfights. Having to survive wave after wave gets real old real fast. Especially if the map's economy is poor.
____________
Vote El Presidente! Or Else!
|
|
Raelag84
Famous Hero
|
|
posted November 17, 2013 07:20 PM |
|
|
Elvin said:
..resources..
Now that you mention it, we should be more considerate of the resources that Ubisoft has to expend.
Just what does it mean to the company's budget to improve graphics, to improve balance, to have more factions, and to have wider neutral verity?
Are you even allowed to tell us?
|
|
Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
|
|
posted November 17, 2013 08:02 PM |
|
|
I wouldn't know, I don't work for ubi's financial department  We just make suggestions given the time and/or cost limitations(we can do that, we can't do that).
____________
H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
|
|
Raelag84
Famous Hero
|
|
posted November 17, 2013 08:21 PM |
|
|
Elvin said:
I wouldn't know, I don't work for ubi's financial department We just make suggestions given the time and/or cost limitations(we can do that, we can't do that).
Well, I know nothing about video game making, except I get the impression that there are trade offs when making a game, and therefore I might suggest getting rid of some good things to have other better things.
For example; If improving graphics means making the game less balanced then I would be happy if graphics did not improve, or even got a little worse, for a theoretical H7. I am not sure if the trade offs work exactly like that that, but the point is that we, as a community, should discuss what we are wiling to sacrifice to get the things we desire most.
|
|
Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
|
|
posted November 17, 2013 08:24 PM |
|
|
Graphics take the backseat to gameplay every day of the week.
____________
H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
|
|
NamelessOrder
Famous Hero
|
|
posted November 17, 2013 09:01 PM |
|
|
@Raelag84
I'll just point out that balance is not something that you can achieve at the release. No strategy is balanced right at the premiere.
I don't believe that it takes lots of money to balance the game. You need real dedication. From time to time the company should introduce balance patches to even the game. One person (even community manager), who actually can play the game (at decent level) can observe player-made tournaments and high ranked games and clearly see what are the major problems (they are visible). After the game is out you mostly need simple fixes like changing the stats of creatures (which are UP/OP) or their numbers (I'm talking about duels in Heroes games because this is the only mode that leads to competitive play).
Heroes has never been a competitive game so a "real" balance is not needed (like in SC2). The players just need to think that they are winning because of skills and not because of underlying unbalances. H6 duels' mode had design flaws (and lots of freaking bugs) but could be balanced quite easily even by increasing the number of creatures in UP factions (Stronghold, Dungeon in might vs might).
Last but not least: the way to balance the game should be thought out when designing the game. That means not having 10 factions with 3 subgroups but a manageable pool. And some tool that helps to gather data about statistics from matches between top players.
____________
Uplay: ZergRusher | H6: Thoughts on duels | DoC: Cassa
|
|
Raelag84
Famous Hero
|
|
posted November 17, 2013 09:18 PM |
|
Edited by Raelag84 at 21:33, 17 Nov 2013.
|
Elvin said:
Graphics take the backseat to gameplay every day of the week.
Agreed! Now it's just a matter of how much gameplay we can get with that sacrifice of graphics.
@NamelessOrder
It's good to hear that achieving balance requires much dedication, but little money. This forum alone is full of dedicated people who, would be happy to help achieve balance in a game for free. In fact, if alot achieving balance just means observing, then even I could help.
Although from the sounds of it, I am going to have to curb my love of faction verity if I want balance. Too bad
|
|
Avirosb
Promising
Legendary Hero
No longer on vacation
|
|
posted November 17, 2013 11:04 PM |
|
|
What happened to that project regarding a potentional spiritual (fan-made) successor?
Is it still ongoing?
|
|
Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
|
|
posted November 17, 2013 11:26 PM |
|
|
I think the more important thing of balancing is that it is applied through easy to make and release patches. Sometimes there are changes that could be applied by changing a few values on unit/spell/other formulae and it would suck if something like that took months to get patched. I don't mind if a big patch comes every 1-2 months but it should be possible to introduce minor tweaks with minimal effort if a major imbalance is discovered. I guess what I am really hoping for is a clean and easily-tweaked code.
____________
H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
|
|
Raelag84
Famous Hero
|
|
posted November 18, 2013 03:38 AM |
|
|
Well what encourages me is that balance is the one thing that any fan can actually help with.
Let me know if there's anything else in game making that's like that. Sitting back and complaining isn't enough for me.
|
|
DoubleDeck
Promising
Legendary Hero
Look into my eyes...
|
|
posted November 18, 2013 08:35 AM |
|
|
@Nameless: nice post dude
I always think the simpler the game, the easier and better it is to balance. Like having simple creatures from H1 - H3 instead of creatures with massive abilities/spells. The only aspect that requires depth is hero development in skills...the key to Heroes was always to avoid troop losses, so that you can get great armies to win the map.
Some creatures should have some mechanics different to others (like horses move differently to castles in chess) but should remain fairly simple. Just my opinion.
|
|
JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
|
|
posted November 18, 2013 10:19 AM |
|
|
Raelag84 said:
Elvin said:
Graphics take the backseat to gameplay every day of the week.
Agreed! Now it's just a matter of how much gameplay we can get with that sacrifice of graphics.
@NamelessOrder
It's good to hear that achieving balance requires much dedication, but little money. This forum alone is full of dedicated people who, would be happy to help achieve balance in a game for free. In fact, if alot achieving balance just means observing, then even I could help.
Although from the sounds of it, I am going to have to curb my love of faction verity if I want balance. Too bad
However, IN PRACTISE they sometimes take the driver seat.
Example: Battlefield, Squares, different creature sizes.
|
|
DoubleDeck
Promising
Legendary Hero
Look into my eyes...
|
|
posted November 18, 2013 11:14 AM |
|
|
|
On the battlefield, I must say I liked the animations that creatures had (esp vampire with his twirling sword, and pit lord drawing fire from the heavens for his attack) but once you have seen them many times, you don't notice it anymore, so is it so necessary? That being said, are creature animations a big bugdget item...probably not.
|
|
JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
|
|
posted November 18, 2013 11:32 AM |
|
|
Wrong perspective.
We talk about 3d-modelling, and that comes into play every time a unit moves on the BF. You probably know that 2d-HoMM3 had 1x1 and 2x1 creatures, 2x1s moving SIDEWAYs when moving, say in a Southeasterly direction.
With 3d-modelling, though, creatures TURN into the direction they move - and THAT makes every non-square unit size quite bothersome.
1x1 and 2x2 are easy - they can be treated like circular units and therefore they can turn on the spot, needing only the space they are actually on. However, a 2x2 is FOUR TIMES as big as a 1x1, and from a GAMING perspective, it's rubbish to have unit sizes so different. In PLAY, this means, you can really exploit the big size and beat really powerful stacks, just because they are easy to block and need so much space.
So for GAMING purpose, if your goal was to have units of different size for whatever variety reasons, it makes a lot more sense to have smaller size differences.
But now imagine what happens when you have a 2x1 creature (and it doesn't matter whether BF is hexes or squares), a size which would obviously be fitting for all horse-like creatures and riders. HOW DO THEY TURN? Answer: they have to move one of their two squares/hexes onto a different square, and that square must be free. Also, with squares, if they move diagonally - what kind of space are they actually need to b able to move through?
The point here is, that the BF and the way units are shown on it DO NOT WELL SUPPORT DIFFERENT UNIT SIZES IN 3D.
In my opinion, this can only mean, that if you want a) 3D and b) different unit sizes, a complete change of BF and unit representation would have had to be found (already in HoMM V).
|
|
DoubleDeck
Promising
Legendary Hero
Look into my eyes...
|
|
posted November 18, 2013 12:21 PM |
|
|
Okay I hear you and good point.
Is unit size of 1x1 and 2x2 that bad anyway?
And the fact that you can exploit big creatures by blocking important creatures from them (like shooters) I would think is a good thing.
2x1 creatures can only work in 2D battlefields...
Wondering if the battleground changes diagonally (like in H4) if it would help...
|
|
Raelag84
Famous Hero
|
|
posted November 18, 2013 02:38 PM |
|
|
DoubleDeck said:
@Nameless: nice post dude
I always think the simpler the game, the easier and better it is to balance. Like having simple creatures from H1 - H3 instead of creatures with massive abilities/spells. The only aspect that requires depth is hero development in skills...the key to Heroes was always to avoid troop losses, so that you can get great armies to win the map.
I respectfully disagree with this. In my heroes games, I like lots of factions, and I like them to be so different from each other that it almost feels like playing a different game with each faction, even if it means balance is off. Otherwise, I would just play Chess.
I realize that I am in the minority on this, but there is a compromise that can achieve the best of both worlds.
Introduce the Vanilla game with a few basic factions that are very similar (except for their heroes). Then it will be up to us verity lovers to find and report balance issues, because, there will be some even with the simplest of factions.
If we prove our ability to address balance issues then Ubisoft can feel comfortable introducing more factions and introducing more complexity to them, knowing that us verity lovers will hunt down the issues for them.
You would get the balance you want, and I would get the verity I want, because, I worked for it.
@JollyJocker
Interesting observation about unit size. Honestly, I failed to notice.
|
|
|
|
This thread is pages long: 
