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| Thread: Magic heroes weaker than might? |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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Aron
Known Hero
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posted March 31, 2014 10:57 AM |
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Yup, I've had that same idea of casting twice, preferably once you're allowed to use an attack spell and once a condition-based spell.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted March 31, 2014 01:21 PM |
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However, one more casting means basically that you have a situation that is akin to a Might hero not being able to cast at all and the Magic hero casting once, which is not only imba, but also no fun.
I had the idea of making spells dependent on additional dwellings - let's call them Magic Amplifier (levels 1 to 5).
These buildings would, starting with the week of building them, increase the base value of all spells depending in their effect strength on Spell Power.
So your Magic Arrow would be level one with a base Value of 10 + 10*Power. Upon building Magic Amplifier Level 1, Magic Arrow base value would increase by, say, 5 + 5*Power immediately on building it and every week thereafter (with an increase in Mana cost or not as an additional balancing factor).
The effect would be an added linear growth component for spells comparable to creature growth.
I mean, imagine the Dungeon building a level 2 guild, getting Ice Bolt for a base 20 + 20*Power damage. In week 2 Dungeon player would build MA Levels 1 and 2, adding an additional 10 + 10*Power damage, boosting Ice Bolt immediately to 30 + 30*Power. In week 3 and every week after that, Ice Bolt would continue to get better each week, so by week 10, The Ice Bolt had an effect of 110 + 110*Power (keep in mind that the actual numbers would have to be thoroughly playtested).
This MIGHT solve the problem. It would also be fun. You'd never know, meeting a Caster hero, what raw magic damage he would be able to dish out.
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted March 31, 2014 01:34 PM |
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Edited by Maurice at 13:36, 31 Mar 2014.
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I think the solution could be found much more easily, as the key seems to be in the "Mass" spells (Slow and Haste come to mind):
- Make buff / debuff spells "Mass" for Caster Heroes by default, regardless of skill level;
- Make buff / debuff spells "Single" for Might Heroes by default, regardless of skill level;
I realise some spells may need a bit of tweaking to provide a benefit between skill tiers, since for instance the difference between Advanced and Expert Haste / Slow is simply the difference between single target and mass targetting.
All the other spells are direct damage spells or summon spells, which scale with Spell Power. Might Heroes have low Spell Power to begin with, meaning that only Casters may make good use of them. At the same time, this makes creature spells more valuable for Might Heroes (for instance Bloodlust from Ogre Magi).
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted March 31, 2014 02:19 PM |
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Where's the fun in "making things so and so by default"?
Also, the magic skills would be useless for everyone and not worth the bother.
The problem of mass spells is only one side of the coin - the other is the waste of the Power attribute.
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Aron
Known Hero
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posted March 31, 2014 02:47 PM |
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Edited by Aron at 14:49, 31 Mar 2014.
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JollyJoker said:
However, one more casting means basically that you have a situation that is akin to a Might hero not being able to cast at all and the Magic hero casting once, which is not only imba, but also no fun.
I had the idea of making spells dependent on additional dwellings - let's call them Magic Amplifier (levels 1 to 5).
These buildings would, starting with the week of building them, increase the base value of all spells depending in their effect strength on Spell Power.
So your Magic Arrow would be level one with a base Value of 10 + 10*Power. Upon building Magic Amplifier Level 1, Magic Arrow base value would increase by, say, 5 + 5*Power immediately on building it and every week thereafter (with an increase in Mana cost or not as an additional balancing factor).
The effect would be an added linear growth component for spells comparable to creature growth.
I mean, imagine the Dungeon building a level 2 guild, getting Ice Bolt for a base 20 + 20*Power damage. In week 2 Dungeon player would build MA Levels 1 and 2, adding an additional 10 + 10*Power damage, boosting Ice Bolt immediately to 30 + 30*Power. In week 3 and every week after that, Ice Bolt would continue to get better each week, so by week 10, The Ice Bolt had an effect of 110 + 110*Power (keep in mind that the actual numbers would have to be thoroughly playtested).
This MIGHT solve the problem. It would also be fun. You'd never know, meeting a Caster hero, what raw magic damage he would be able to dish out.
Oo Hey sorry I really don't understand. Why wouldn't a might hero be able to cast at all? Obv he'd run out of mana pretty soon but that's why he's a might hero.
A way to then balance this would be to remove all mass-spells or have them have a significantly shorter duration compared to power. Maybe like adding those HoMM2 spells that are mass-spells but cost alot more mana and they would only last for 2 turns no matter magic power. Normal slow would still work as normal, only that expert wouldn't cast it on everyone.
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Aron
Known Hero
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posted March 31, 2014 03:19 PM |
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Edited by Aron at 15:27, 31 Mar 2014.
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JollyJoker said:
Where's the fun in "making things so and so by default"?
Also, the magic skills would be useless for everyone and not worth the bother.
The problem of mass spells is only one side of the coin - the other is the waste of the Power attribute.
Part of the reason it becomes a waste is I think the fact that once it starts to matter the armies become to large for the damage to matter but at the same time scaling up the damage would make them to strong early on where the default damage is already enough against neutrals for example.
Maybe a way to solve it would be to limit growth?
Having less growth means that each magical strike is by default more powerfull. It's very easy to mod and play around with but at the same time it's quite a crude tool and doesn't end up solving the problem, just pushing it further into "late game" parts of a scenario.
But hey, maybe that's ok? If you're a mage hero you better win fast. You're a might hero, try to hold out and then own with a mass army?
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted March 31, 2014 11:08 PM |
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Aron said:
Maybe a way to solve it would be to limit growth?
Having less growth means that each magical strike is by default more powerfull. It's very easy to mod and play around with but at the same time it's quite a crude tool and doesn't end up solving the problem, just pushing it further into "late game" parts of a scenario.
Do you try the WoG mods? I believe is Phoenix that makes you pay an upkeep of the units in your army.
I find the game ok as it is but maybe this would end up doing what you were sugesting, if your army grows too big you don't have enouch money to keep it so you are forced to play with smaler armys.
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Aron
Known Hero
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posted March 31, 2014 11:17 PM |
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Ye that could be a part of it. Altho I dunno, it would make the gameplay a bit weird. You'd just run around looking for a battle.
I've got ERA II installed, I just don't play WoG that much. But it's pretty good, I haven't tried all the options yet.
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Sarcyan
Adventuring Hero
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posted April 01, 2014 02:30 AM |
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Edited by Sarcyan at 02:36, 01 Apr 2014.
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JollyJoker said:
However, one more casting means basically that you have a situation that is akin to a Might hero not being able to cast at all and the Magic hero casting once, which is not only imba, but also no fun.
I had the idea of making spells dependent on additional dwellings - let's call them Magic Amplifier (levels 1 to 5).
These buildings would, starting with the week of building them, increase the base value of all spells depending in their effect strength on Spell Power.
So your Magic Arrow would be level one with a base Value of 10 + 10*Power. Upon building Magic Amplifier Level 1, Magic Arrow base value would increase by, say, 5 + 5*Power immediately on building it and every week thereafter (with an increase in Mana cost or not as an additional balancing factor).
The effect would be an added linear growth component for spells comparable to creature growth.
I mean, imagine the Dungeon building a level 2 guild, getting Ice Bolt for a base 20 + 20*Power damage. In week 2 Dungeon player would build MA Levels 1 and 2, adding an additional 10 + 10*Power damage, boosting Ice Bolt immediately to 30 + 30*Power. In week 3 and every week after that, Ice Bolt would continue to get better each week, so by week 10, The Ice Bolt had an effect of 110 + 110*Power (keep in mind that the actual numbers would have to be thoroughly playtested).
This MIGHT solve the problem. It would also be fun. You'd never know, meeting a Caster hero, what raw magic damage he would be able to dish out.
Quite interesting... This could work fine. I wonder though, would this also affect Might heroes?
The solution is great to add more value to Power. Still, you mention some direct damage spells, which is where Magic heroes shine, and then we are back in the same crossroads. Direct damage spells aren't the most important spells in the game. So ideally Power could also have an influence on spells like Blind -like more Power adding an extra turn to the duration of Blind, and things like that-.
Maurice said:
I think the solution could be found much more easily, as the key seems to be in the "Mass" spells (Slow and Haste come to mind):
- Make buff / debuff spells "Mass" for Caster Heroes by default, regardless of skill level;
- Make buff / debuff spells "Single" for Might Heroes by default, regardless of skill level;
I realise some spells may need a bit of tweaking to provide a benefit between skill tiers, since for instance the difference between Advanced and Expert Haste / Slow is simply the difference between single target and mass targetting.
All the other spells are direct damage spells or summon spells, which scale with Spell Power. Might Heroes have low Spell Power to begin with, meaning that only Casters may make good use of them. At the same time, this makes creature spells more valuable for Might Heroes (for instance Bloodlust from Ogre Magi).
That's actually a good point. The fact that Might heroes are much more creature reliant -pretty much like how their creatures get the most benefit from their strength and defence, compared to "gimpy" magic heroes-, and their creatures can help to compensate for the lack of magic skills by having some special skills themselves without depending on the abysmal magic abilities of Might heroes, sounds good to me.
Magic heroes of course have a very strong reliance on their creatures, but to a lesser extent.
As for being able to cast several spells in the same turn for Magic heroes, I think that, in order to avoid what JollyJoker pointed out, it could be done in a more sensible manner.
The idea would be having the Migth heroes cast a single spell per turn, as usual, AND letting the Magic heroes to cast two spells in the same turn, BUT with a little twist...
Allowing them to cast an offensive spell, and a defensive ("beneficial") spell for their troops in the same turn. This could help to balance their natural low physical offence and defence.
Say they cast Magic Arrow (offence, as per JollyJoker's idea) and Shield (defence).
Aron said:
JollyJoker said:
Where's the fun in "making things so and so by default"?
Also, the magic skills would be useless for everyone and not worth the bother.
The problem of mass spells is only one side of the coin - the other is the waste of the Power attribute.
Part of the reason it becomes a waste is I think the fact that once it starts to matter the armies become to large for the damage to matter but at the same time scaling up the damage would make them to strong early on where the default damage is already enough against neutrals for example.
Maybe a way to solve it would be to limit growth?
Having less growth means that each magical strike is by default more powerfull. It's very easy to mod and play around with but at the same time it's quite a crude tool and doesn't end up solving the problem, just pushing it further into "late game" parts of a scenario.
But hey, maybe that's ok? If you're a mage hero you better win fast. You're a might hero, try to hold out and then own with a mass army?
Thing is that this could fix the hybridisation issue, but the problem is that while the point is that Might and Magic heroes should be more and more different as the game goes on, to the point of being unrecognisable to each other, the good intentions behind your idea could make the game become very predictable.
Guy/girl with the magic hero. "So... my opponent has a might hero.... They are going to attack late. They don't stand a chance against me right now".
While the girl or guy with the might hero could go. "My opponent better hurry, because it's their chance to beat me to a pulp, 'cos later I am going to make mincemeat of them".
Ideally, the differences between both approaches would be so high that the experience would be totally different when playing a might or magic hero.
But also keeping those differences as pronounced as they can, while keeping a great balance throughout entire games.
I mean..., for both vs AI and vs Human games, of course. master_learn, thanks, btw.
What's TDS the Doctor? Just curious...
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Heroes of Might and Magic; They aren't only games, they are passions. And feelings. Laura Jackson is the most beautiful woman who has ever existed!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSBTC1HHN-E
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OhforfSake
Promising
Legendary Hero
Initiate
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posted April 01, 2014 02:35 AM |
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Sarcyan said:
So ideally Power could also have an influence on spells like Blind -like more Power adding an extra turn to the duration of Blind, and things like that-.
Great idea, how fortunate it already works like that then.. 
Edit: I haven't really followed the discussion, so it may have been mentioned already.
My experience is that knowledge and power are skills whose greatness depends on their absolute value. Power/Knowledge lower than 6, and it's impractical, maybe even worthless. But going above.. say 14, seldom makes a lot of difference. Since arties and leveling typically will make sure your power/knowledge lies between 6 - 14, all the extra gain a magic hero has doesn't help a lot when playing a typical map.
On the other hand, since damage is based on the difference between attack and defense, every point into attack helps (I imagine only the AB might hit the sealing, hence why I like Tazar with Stronghold.. ).
Anyway, that's why I don't think it's any specific advantage for might that after level 10, the high chance of +att/def for barbarian/beastmaster goes away.
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Living time backwards
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Sarcyan
Adventuring Hero
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posted April 01, 2014 02:55 AM |
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Edited by Sarcyan at 02:57, 01 Apr 2014.
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OhforfSake said:
Sarcyan said:
So ideally Power could also have an influence on spells like Blind -like more Power adding an extra turn to the duration of Blind, and things like that-.
Great idea, how fortunate it already works like that then..
hahah, I didn't know. It's no fun to be a noob sometimes and enjoying the boons of it.
Replace the idea a with a b and yeah, there is. 
What about making it more difficult to dispel Blind or a similar spell by increasing the percentage of an spell's "un-banish ability" depending on your Power? 
Say... If you cast Blind and have 10 Power (in the example the opponent hero has 1 Power), the other hero has a 10% chance to dispel your Blind spell, at 20 Power it has a 5% to dispel it, so the higher your Power the more difficult would be for other heroes to dispel your spells.
Of course, the more Power a hero has the less the chances. If you find a Might hero with 5 Power, they'd have a... let's say, 50% chance to dispel your magic, with you at 10 power -half than you-, tipping the balance in neither favour.
At 20 Power and 5 Power of your opponent, they would have just a 25% chance to dispel your magic.
Hypothetically, at 20 Power for both heroes, the Power advantage would be null, only except if Luck was a factor for Magic heroes in those cases..., of course.
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Heroes of Might and Magic; They aren't only games, they are passions. And feelings. Laura Jackson is the most beautiful woman who has ever existed!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSBTC1HHN-E
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Sarcyan
Adventuring Hero
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posted April 01, 2014 03:03 AM |
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OhforfSake said:
Sarcyan said:
Edit: I haven't really followed the discussion, so it may have been mentioned already.
My experience is that knowledge and power are skills whose greatness depends on their absolute value. Power/Knowledge lower than 6, and it's impractical, maybe even worthless. But going above.. say 14, seldom makes a lot of difference. Since arties and leveling typically will make sure your power/knowledge lies between 6 - 14, all the extra gain a magic hero has doesn't help a lot when playing a typical map.
On the other hand, since damage is based on the difference between attack and defense, every point into attack helps (I imagine only the AB might hit the sealing, hence why I like Tazar with Stronghold.. ).
Anyway, that's why I don't think it's any specific advantage for might that after level 10, the high chance of +att/def for barbarian/beastmaster goes away.
That's why I think that should be fixed. The more attack and the more defense the bigger the difference, but it's not fair to magic heroes that the diminishing returns of Power and Knowledge are much more pronounced.
What's the point of having 400 mana points when you can cast only once per turn? I mean, having the ability to cast a defensive and an offensive spell in the same turn for magic heroes could help their game style.
Sure, with 400 mana points you aren't as dependent on things like Mysticism or returning to town, but I am okay with returning to town with a Magic hero as part of their game, 'cos it makes for a difference.
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Heroes of Might and Magic; They aren't only games, they are passions. And feelings. Laura Jackson is the most beautiful woman who has ever existed!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSBTC1HHN-E
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 01, 2014 07:36 AM |
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Not so fast, people. Let's just repeat the IMPORTANT thing:
HoMM 2 is working in that regard, presenting players with 6 individually very different town/hero combinations (which, by the way, is something that at least in parts has been understood by Nival as well, when they did HoMM 5 which comes of course with the disadvantage of having only 1 hero type per faction).
Anyway. Obviously, a might and a magic hero type per town wouldn't have worked with the setup of HoMM 2. So what are the problems?
Let's ask this: is a mass spell ALWAYS a good thing? The answer here is a clear NO. A Mass spell, as we understand them, is a creature buff or debuff, the power of which depends on the amount of stacks and number and quality of troops in them. It's fine, if you can boost a small army with things like Mass Bless, Mass Bloodlust, Mass Haste, Mass Shield and so on - however, it's ultimately worth squat, if opponent afterwards hits you with a Death Wave, and you lose half your troops.
Obviously, one way to balance Might against Magic - and I suppose something in this regard was meant in some of the last posts - is to modify spells with the power difference of the two heroes in question. This would mean the following: Stone Skin cast on Expert level would gain +6 Defense for every troop +/- 10/5% effect (for example), for every point in power difference (no need to even round that). So in the example of having a 10 10 5 5 hero fighting it out against a 5 5 10 10, Mass Stone Skin cast by the Might hero would add a 4.5 Defense to every unit, while Mass Stone Skin cast by the Magic hero would add a +9.
This is kind of difficult, though. What about Bless/Curse, for example? Instead of simply giving Bless max damage (plus bonus), we would have to make Bless a spell modifying min/max damage or something like that. Clone? Stack cloned gets smaller or bigger. Blind? Duration gets modified ...
So depending on spells this would involve quite individual solutions, with the effect that the game would lose SOME simplicity, since anyone would have to ask themselves, what EXACTLY would happen when casting a spell.
Heroes Online currently does the following: A magic hero gets one more action per round, but one less army stack (also, stack size is limited, based on hero level). Note, that this makes for a sufficiently different game experience, having the stack size limits at the same time in place to balance things.
Of course that doesn't work, because one very important goal is maximizing creature production in order to outproduce opponent and beat him with numbers, if nothing else.
If we speak about the Magic capabilities of Might heroes - in HoMM 2 Mass spells were level 3 and 4 and would cost a lot of mana as well. You couldn't cast a lot.
Also, Blind/Paralyze would "deactivate" stacks. Think about the difference it makes to get Blinded, when your hero has FIVE or SEVEN stacks. That a Might hero was able to aquire one or even two magic skills and cast mass spells was not the imbalance in itself. The main imbalance comes from the fact that THERE ARE TOO MANY TROOPS (both stacks and HPs) for Magic to make itself felt.
Then there are the Magic skills: Eagle Eye? Christ. Learning? You must be kidding. Scholar? Not for the main hero, thanks. Mysticism ... ok, that's of course something: what would happen with the game balance, if: Magic wells would be limited to one per town on the map; each mage guild level in a town would replenish only up to 20% of the max hero mana; mana regeneration would be = Knowledge value, with Basic Mysticism double Knowledge value (20%), Advanced 35%, Expert 50%. Or something like that.
Sorcery? Could have obviously done more than what it does.
So the bottom line here is, that everything concerning the ARMY side has been massively boosted in HoMM 3, while the magic and their support skills have simply been left the same or made cheap. It's not the mass spell that is wrong to cast for a Might hero - it's the fact that it's cast to cheap and is too powerful too soon in comparison to Power-based spells. I mean, it's not only the Mass Spells. Clone is a killer spell as well. Blind/Paralyze...
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted April 01, 2014 01:36 PM |
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Edited by Maurice at 13:37, 01 Apr 2014.
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It's a different ballpark if we redesign the Might class and the Magic class. Although I abhor Heroes IV, at least they got the Tactics department fleshed out nicely; Heroes didn't boost their army with their stats, the Tactics skill and its subskills took care of that.
Now you can't really do that in Heroes III, unfortunately, because they don't use the subskills system. I am taking that system as a baseline for some new thoughts and ideas.
Since Attack and Defense values of Heroes are applied to the creatures under their command as well and Might Heroes have much higher values there than Magic Heroes, Magic Heroes need some other way to level the playing field. Outright destroying enemy creatures is one way (any direct damage spell), disabling them completely is another (blind), the third is by either buffing own creatures, or debuffing enemy creatures to bring their effects on par.
A few radical approaches (aside from the one I stated above to have Might Heroes only cast Single spells and Magic Heroes always cast Mass spells where applicable):
- Remove Wisdom from Might Heroes;
- Remove Wisdom altogether and integrate this into the Magic schools akin the way it is done in Heroes IV;
- Make separate Mass spells of single target spells and move them up to higher spell tiers;
- Have Spellpower play a role in non-damage spells other than enhancing the duration of a spell;
- Reduce spell effectiveness the more HPs are influenced (next to spellpower influence);
- Increase spell effectiveness the more mana is spent (next to spellpower influence);
Any and all combinations possible, of course, not necessarily all of them combined.
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted April 01, 2014 03:18 PM |
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The main question for me at this moment is: WHAT THE HELL ARE WE TALKING ABOUT? Is this for Heroes 7? A new mod/add-on for WoG? My dream game?
I think the mass spells moved to upper levels would solve a lot of problems here and the increase of efficency of non-damage spells depending on spellpower (for a long time I tought it was how it worked, btw) would do the rest. Imagine, a barbarian with wisdom and earth but with a spellpower of 5 does a slow that reduces speed by only 3 where a wizard with spellpower of 10 casts a slow that reduces speed by 5. Let them wait there for 4 turns while my shoothers do their job and bye, bye might advantage. Same with shield and bloodlust.
But I also think this add-on to WoG (only way I see this implemented) is very hard to make and basicly useless, cause in WoG you can have 10 skills and use the Arcane Tower so, it doesn't matter how you started, you will end up with a hero with more attack and defense then power and knowledge and with an almost perfect mix of might and magic secondary skills (and if u missed something there are always the Battle Academy and the School of Wizardry).
In WoG, the only problem is: in the long term there are no heroes of might and heroes of magic, all will end up with a good mix of secs and a strong preference for might in the prims. Complete sameness aqquired.
And that's ok by me.
P.S. To Sarcyan - TDS means The Dragon Slauther (I believe I already told you this is my favorite WoG map) and "the Doctor" is one of the modified heroes you can play with.
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Aron
Known Hero
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posted April 01, 2014 06:22 PM |
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lol we are just talking mate. It's a meta discussion. As I said in my thread about the star, all main things concerning strategy have already been talked about. This is just a talk about how the game would be better and why.
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Sarcyan
Adventuring Hero
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posted April 01, 2014 07:41 PM |
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Edited by Sarcyan at 19:42, 01 Apr 2014.
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JollyJoker said:
Not so fast, people. Let's just repeat the IMPORTANT thing:
HoMM 2 is working in that regard, presenting players with 6 individually very different town/hero combinations (which, by the way, is something that at least in parts has been understood by Nival as well, when they did HoMM 5 which comes of course with the disadvantage of having only 1 hero type per faction).
Anyway. Obviously, a might and a magic hero type per town wouldn't have worked with the setup of HoMM 2. So what are the problems?
Let's ask this: is a mass spell ALWAYS a good thing? The answer here is a clear NO. A Mass spell, as we understand them, is a creature buff or debuff, the power of which depends on the amount of stacks and number and quality of troops in them. It's fine, if you can boost a small army with things like Mass Bless, Mass Bloodlust, Mass Haste, Mass Shield and so on - however, it's ultimately worth squat, if opponent afterwards hits you with a Death Wave, and you lose half your troops.
Obviously, one way to balance Might against Magic - and I suppose something in this regard was meant in some of the last posts - is to modify spells with the power difference of the two heroes in question. This would mean the following: Stone Skin cast on Expert level would gain +6 Defense for every troop +/- 10/5% effect (for example), for every point in power difference (no need to even round that). So in the example of having a 10 10 5 5 hero fighting it out against a 5 5 10 10, Mass Stone Skin cast by the Might hero would add a 4.5 Defense to every unit, while Mass Stone Skin cast by the Magic hero would add a +9.
This is kind of difficult, though. What about Bless/Curse, for example? Instead of simply giving Bless max damage (plus bonus), we would have to make Bless a spell modifying min/max damage or something like that. Clone? Stack cloned gets smaller or bigger. Blind? Duration gets modified ...
So depending on spells this would involve quite individual solutions, with the effect that the game would lose SOME simplicity, since anyone would have to ask themselves, what EXACTLY would happen when casting a spell.
Heroes Online currently does the following: A magic hero gets one more action per round, but one less army stack (also, stack size is limited, based on hero level). Note, that this makes for a sufficiently different game experience, having the stack size limits at the same time in place to balance things.
Of course that doesn't work, because one very important goal is maximizing creature production in order to outproduce opponent and beat him with numbers, if nothing else.
If we speak about the Magic capabilities of Might heroes - in HoMM 2 Mass spells were level 3 and 4 and would cost a lot of mana as well. You couldn't cast a lot.
Also, Blind/Paralyze would "deactivate" stacks. Think about the difference it makes to get Blinded, when your hero has FIVE or SEVEN stacks. That a Might hero was able to aquire one or even two magic skills and cast mass spells was not the imbalance in itself. The main imbalance comes from the fact that THERE ARE TOO MANY TROOPS (both stacks and HPs) for Magic to make itself felt.
Then there are the Magic skills: Eagle Eye? Christ. Learning? You must be kidding. Scholar? Not for the main hero, thanks. Mysticism ... ok, that's of course something: what would happen with the game balance, if: Magic wells would be limited to one per town on the map; each mage guild level in a town would replenish only up to 20% of the max hero mana; mana regeneration would be = Knowledge value, with Basic Mysticism double Knowledge value (20%), Advanced 35%, Expert 50%. Or something like that.
Sorcery? Could have obviously done more than what it does.
So the bottom line here is, that everything concerning the ARMY side has been massively boosted in HoMM 3, while the magic and their support skills have simply been left the same or made cheap. It's not the mass spell that is wrong to cast for a Might hero - it's the fact that it's cast to cheap and is too powerful too soon in comparison to Power-based spells. I mean, it's not only the Mass Spells. Clone is a killer spell as well. Blind/Paralyze...
I like the fact that Heroes of Might and Magic is like chess, relatively easy to learn but you can master it from there, and then it’s when your imagination, intelligence, positioning your “pieces” (single unit stacks, like pawns, "tricks vs AI" thread comes to mind) or the ability to calculate the outcome makes a huuuuuge difference.
So it doesn’t necessarily mean the game would become more complicated at all. Especially the way the game works where –very smartly done btw- you right click on things and you get concise and very useful help.
In the description of what Power does they could add a very short line saying something along the lines of…: “Power can affect the duration of the spells and more Power can make some of the spells more difficult to dispel for the opponent”.
Your mention on how Heroes Online works is certainly a step in the right direction, with some extra refinement.
Reading your comment I think we are in agreement about the fact that whether by means of limitations or game design, like HoMM 2, or some touches here and there, the idea is that the hero should define the game, like in Heroes 4, not exactly by H4 means, but just because of their class, instead of the hybridisation you get in HoMM 3 at some point.
Reading again the Original Post of this thread, it’s clear that the author, while being a newbie, understands that there is a problem with that.
If the most popular heroes in Heroes 3 are 20 Might heroes with Magic heroes nowhere to be seen, that’s clearly a problem.
Personally I treasure both styles, so whether I choose Might or Magic I want things to be fair –and that’s where the problem lies, imho- like in HoMM 2.
Maurice said:
It's a different ballpark if we redesign the Might class and the Magic class. Although I abhor Heroes IV, at least they got the Tactics department fleshed out nicely; Heroes didn't boost their army with their stats, the Tactics skill and its subskills took care of that.
Now you can't really do that in Heroes III, unfortunately, because they don't use the subskills system. I am taking that system as a baseline for some new thoughts and ideas.
Since Attack and Defense values of Heroes are applied to the creatures under their command as well and Might Heroes have much higher values there than Magic Heroes, Magic Heroes need some other way to level the playing field. Outright destroying enemy creatures is one way (any direct damage spell), disabling them completely is another (blind), the third is by either buffing own creatures, or debuffing enemy creatures to bring their effects on par.
A few radical approaches (aside from the one I stated above to have Might Heroes only cast Single spells and Magic Heroes always cast Mass spells where applicable):
- Remove Wisdom from Might Heroes;
- Remove Wisdom altogether and integrate this into the Magic schools akin the way it is done in Heroes IV;
- Make separate Mass spells of single target spells and move them up to higher spell tiers;
- Have Spellpower play a role in non-damage spells other than enhancing the duration of a spell;
- Reduce spell effectiveness the more HPs are influenced (next to spellpower influence);
- Increase spell effectiveness the more mana is spent (next to spellpower influence);
Any and all combinations possible, of course, not necessarily all of them combined.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful said. Superb high quality ideas some of them, imho, especially the Wisdom one exclusive to Magic heroes.
You could remove Offense and Armourer on Magic heroes to compensate for it. Since, ideally, you shouldn’t need those with a Magic hero!
In HoMM3, Magic has the disadvantage that there are skills and artifacts that can nullify it completely, something that doesn’t occur with attack and defence.
On a different note, JollyJoker mentioned that a hero type per town like in HoMM 2 wouldn’t be a good idea, which I agree with. Your town could have some variety.
Pure Might towns with at least one hybrid hero type, but never pure Magic. Pure Magic towns with another hybrid, but never ever pure Might. Each build viable but totally different from one another.
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Heroes of Might and Magic; They aren't only games, they are passions. And feelings. Laura Jackson is the most beautiful woman who has ever existed!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSBTC1HHN-E
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OhforfSake
Promising
Legendary Hero
Initiate
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posted April 01, 2014 07:50 PM |
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Sarcyan said:
In HoMM3, Magic has the disadvantage that there are skills and artifacts that can nullify it completely, something that doesn’t occur with attack and defence.
Say that to level 108 Tazar.. But yeah, magic is much easier to make worthless, and even when it's very important, only a few spells are of importance.
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Living time backwards
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Sarcyan
Adventuring Hero
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posted April 01, 2014 07:58 PM |
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Edited by Sarcyan at 20:05, 01 Apr 2014.
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bloodsucker said:
The main question for me at this moment is: WHAT THE HELL ARE WE TALKING ABOUT? Is this for Heroes 7? A new mod/add-on for WoG? My dream game?
I think the mass spells moved to upper levels would solve a lot of problems here and the increase of efficency of non-damage spells depending on spellpower (for a long time I tought it was how it worked, btw) would do the rest.
P.S. To Sarcyan - TDS means The Dragon Slauther (I believe I already told you this is my favorite WoG map) and "the Doctor" is one of the modified heroes you can play with.
The main subject we are talking about is the Original post of this thread. Changes for the future and how to overcome that is a related topic.
I say future ‘cos my knowledge of Heroes IV and Heroes V is even more limited than Heroes 3 and 2.
Heroes IV got some things right in that regard, which Maurice pointed out already despite his dislike of Heroes IV.
Heroes V… I just completed the first Heaven campaign, and I was so happy with the freedom of choice in the game! That’s what I loved the most about the game, and makes me dream about how different a hero can be from one another.
My main gripe with Might heroes not being able to attack from afar was fixed –still, not 100% satisfactory- in Heroes V. Isabel, a Might hero, can launch a hand to hand attack on every turn. Cool!
Even so, being able to attack enemies behind walls could be modified, like letting her using a Bow for situations like those. It feels odd, but it was fair for Might heroes.
I gotta try Magic heroes in HoMM 5, but if it is as different compared to Might heroes as I expect it to be, then I’ll be in for a treat!
Quote:
Imagine, a barbarian with wisdom and earth but with a spellpower of 5 does a slow that reduces speed by only 3 where a wizard with spellpower of 10 casts a slow that reduces speed by 5. Let them wait there for 4 turns while my shoothers do their job and bye, bye might advantage. Same with shield and bloodlust.
Hmmm, maybe other solution is that the barbarian wouldn’t be allowed to have Wisdom, like Magic heroes shouldn’t need Offence and Armourer…
Thing is that Magic has a few counters. If you add to that that a Might hero can caste Mass Haste or Mass Slow, in similar conditions, the battle is lost for the Magic hero beforehand.
Moreso if the opponent has the Orb of Inhibition –which is dead for Magic heroes- and the Recanter’s Cloak... it's game over too.
Quote:
But I also think this add-on to WoG (only way I see this implemented) is very hard to make and basicly useless, cause in WoG you can have 10 skills and use the Arcane Tower so, it doesn't matter how you started, you will end up with a hero with more attack and defense then power and knowledge and with an almost perfect mix of might and magic secondary skills (and if u missed something there are always the Battle Academy and the School of Wizardry).
In WoG, the only problem is: in the long term there are no heroes of might and heroes of magic, all will end up with a good mix of secs and a strong preference for might in the prims. Complete sameness aqquired.
Is HoTA like that? Because while I have WoG, I didn’t try it yet, and that being the case I want to test it out but I hope HoTA handles the matter in a sensible manner. I mean, differently.
It reads like they deeply improved the game, but the scope got limited.
I shall try WoG eventually, I hope.
Quote:
TDS means The Dragon Slauther (I believe I already told you this is my favorite WoG map) and "the Doctor" is one of the modified heroes you can play with.
bloodsucker, yes!! I have that map from time ago. It is zipped yet. Along with other maps you recommended me to try, and others I got by reading the tricks vs AI thread.
I want to complete Heroes 3 campaigns first -vanilla and expansions-, then Heroes Chronicles, Heroes IV (feel VERY VERY attracted to this game, because of the different feelings people have about it) and Heroes V, before getting into WoG. HoTA and stuff like that.
I will probably try the Succession Wars for HoMM3 first than any other mod though, because I love HoMM2 art style and have fallen deeply for it.
Heroes VI... can wait, 'cos the bug list thread in Ubisoft fourms scared the hell outta me. Too bad, 'cos I'd have purchased it already weren't for that.
And it looks like the development of the game got halted...
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Heroes of Might and Magic; They aren't only games, they are passions. And feelings. Laura Jackson is the most beautiful woman who has ever existed!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSBTC1HHN-E
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Fauch
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 01, 2014 09:22 PM |
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you could make blind higher than level 2, so that you can't learn it without wisdom. you can also make sure it doesn't appear in some castles.
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