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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted August 04, 2015 10:05 PM |
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I'm not really going to join in the fray here with the discussion about who's right or wrong about H3, because I don't even understand most of what has been posted. However, this does sort of border of something that I have wanted to discuss for some time, so maybe I'll grab this opportunity. Even though the early Heroes games (H?-H4) had multiplayer modes, they were very much single-player games: You had the first faze of the game where each player operated in their separate zones (not different from singleplayer vs. AI), then you had typically one epical clash that would decide the winner, and then you'd have a post-clash faze which was basically about finishing the job. This is important, because the outcome of the game was not so much determined by the actual battle (although of course that also had some importance) but also by all the events leading up to the battle: Whoever could creep most effectively, manage their resources and army best, etc. would have the best position at the time the player-vs-player battle happened.
Heroes 5 changed this by introducing the duel mode: Here you skip the entire pre-clash faze and goes straight into the heads-on battle. This has crucial implications for the demands of game balance - because where in previous games, you could have a faction with relatively bad creatures, but making up for this by making their dwellings very cheap and hence faster to get (for instance Heroes 3 week 1 Behemoths), this doesn't really work when you have duels: If creatures of one faction are weaker than those of the other factions, whole game basically collapses.
Now the question I would like to ask is: How much should Heroes games cater to the multiplayer aspect of the game? As I see it, Heroes 6 - most notably with its skill system - took a huge step towards focusing on the multiplayer aspect rather than the singleplayer aspect. Idea was that you gave player more control over something like Hero development in order to make the matchup more about player skill and strategy and less about random features.
I can't say whether H6 achieved that goal, because I never player multiplayer, but for me this killed an important essence of the Heroes series, because for me, the Hero vs. Hero clash was always the least interesting part of the game. The excitement was in the building of the hero (would you get the skills and spells you wanted) and in the exploration and preparation faze (would you get ready before enemies arrived, would you get to the important artifacts before they did, etc.). Maybe I'm in the minority with this opinion, but I feel this is an aspect of the game that has become increasingly neglected. Even with Heroes 7 new skill system, they obviously completely failed to understand what was fun about the Heroes 5 skill system (for all the infuriationg limitations it also had).
Anyway, that was just a ramble from my part.
PS: Oh, and please stop the bashing. The tone on the last couple of pages is very unconstructive.
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What will happen now?
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ChrisD1
Supreme Hero
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posted August 04, 2015 10:35 PM |
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Edited by ChrisD1 at 22:36, 04 Aug 2015.
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alcibiades said:
I'm not really going...
Welcome to 2015. Where everything HAS TO be shared online,and played online. And that's why old games, like pokemon had an extremely poor single player experience in its last itteration (X and Y).
Lets hope this "online era" ends soon enough.
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Gryphs
Supreme Hero
The Clever Title
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posted August 04, 2015 10:39 PM |
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I highly doubt that is going to happen.
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"Don't resist the force. Redirect it. Water over rock."-blizzardboy
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LizardWarrior
Honorable
Legendary Hero
the reckoning is at hand
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posted August 04, 2015 10:48 PM |
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ChrisD1 said:
Welcome to 2015. Where everything HAS TO be shared online,and played online. And that's why old games, like pokemon had an extremely poor single player experience in its last itteration (X and Y).
Lets hope this "online era" ends soon enough.
Thank God they didn't repeat that awful conflux and dynasty weapons in heroes 7.
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EnergyZ
Legendary Hero
President of MM Wiki
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posted August 04, 2015 11:04 PM |
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ChrisD1 said:
alcibiades said:
I'm not really going...
Welcome to 2015. Where everything HAS TO be shared online,and played online. And that's why old games, like pokemon had an extremely poor single player experience in its last itteration (X and Y).
ORAS is the last game. But, part of the charm of being online is to face an opponent, share a couple of words here and there before making the great clash. Heroes isn't any different in that aspect. Neither are MMO-s, come to think of it... so, I'll just assume as an alternative to social sites, sometimes.
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GenyaArikado
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
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posted August 04, 2015 11:07 PM |
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sandro400 said:
kiryu133 said:
but he's so adorable! Can't we keep him?
I say no, better return JEmo to us than this dude.
And I also miss Genya.
I may leave, but I'm never gone.
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EnergyZ
Legendary Hero
President of MM Wiki
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posted August 04, 2015 11:14 PM |
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alcibiades said:
Heroes 5 changed this by introducing the duel mode: Here you skip the entire pre-clash faze and goes straight into the heads-on battle. This has crucial implications for the demands of game balance - because where in previous games, you could have a faction with relatively bad creatures, but making up for this by making their dwellings very cheap and hence faster to get (for instance Heroes 3 week 1 Behemoths), this doesn't really work when you have duels: If creatures of one faction are weaker than those of the other factions, whole game basically collapses.
Well, not exactly. "Weaker" and "stronger" are a bit subjective terms; this would apply if there was, say, one peasant fighting one scouts. Since that is not the case, there is a wider picture to be seen here; while peasant isn't a strong fighter, there are many of them to be recruited. Scouts lack in numbers, but are much stronger. And this does not even yet include the artifact boosts, other creatures, specializations nor the skills themselves. Alone, yes, but rarely is it fought that way.
alcibiades said:
I can't say whether H6 achieved that goal, because I never player multiplayer, but for me this killed an important essence of the Heroes series, because for me, the Hero vs. Hero clash was always the least interesting part of the game. The excitement was in the building of the hero (would you get the skills and spells you wanted) and in the exploration and preparation faze (would you get ready before enemies arrived, would you get to the important artifacts before they did, etc.). Maybe I'm in the minority with this opinion, but I feel this is an aspect of the game that has become increasingly neglected. Even with Heroes 7 new skill system, they obviously completely failed to understand what was fun about the Heroes 5 skill system (for all the infuriationg limitations it also had).
There is some truth in that. But you seem to be forgetting that battles are a critical point of the franchise. For I can't count times how much has there been times that I am glad that the hero won the battle, even if the whole army was wiped out. While it is true that the excitement lies in building the hero, in my opinion it is to test those skills and abilities with another hero, who has different skills and strategies to counter your own. But yes, H6 did feel for me like a step back, due to that strange town conversion system.
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Datapack
Famous Hero
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posted August 04, 2015 11:19 PM |
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TD
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted August 04, 2015 11:48 PM |
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@Alciades
To me Heroes has always been a single-player and hot-seat game. I'm not sure if I ever even played h3-5 online as I just don't care playing with strangers. H6 I certainly didn't try online since the conflux kept disconnecting with me even on single-player so I can only imagine how horrible it would've been in multi-player games. As for the dual mode, I have played some with my friends on hot-seat. I can't really say it's satisfying in any way for me. It's one quick match and then it's over(which is also why I hate small/medium size maps, they just don't feel rewarding when you win them). If you had a "point"-system for duals so you could create your hero/artifacts/troops I would see it as much more fun, but the ready pre-set stuff just doesn't cut it for me as it's the exact same matches over and over again. I do agree that the direction of the series was heavily multi-player based on h6 and h7 which in great part made the skill-systems and hero specializations(among other things) so dull in name of balance.
Sadly in general once companies/devs start on the line of going to online they rarely back down thinking online will get more profit from the game. IMO you can clearly see from both h6 and h7 that they are targeted at casual players being so much more simplified games than games before them. If you look at h6&7 they are targeted at casual players, offer online for multi-player games and still get marketed as return to roots to target more long-term fans. To me the game seems a lot like Ubi is just trying to make quick buck using the series name with minimum effort(given all the copy/paste h6 material). Unfortunately this gives me little hope for possible h8 ever being much better than h6/7 unless ubi changes its general business practices(as they really try to milk games/fans thinking short-term rather than thinking long-term). I guess time will tell if h8 or even h7 eventually becomes good/decent game
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted August 05, 2015 12:28 AM |
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EnergyZ said:
Well, not exactly. "Weaker" and "stronger" are a bit subjective terms; this would apply if there was, say, one peasant fighting one scouts. Since that is not the case, there is a wider picture to be seen here; while peasant isn't a strong fighter, there are many of them to be recruited. Scouts lack in numbers, but are much stronger. And this does not even yet include the artifact boosts, other creatures, specializations nor the skills themselves. Alone, yes, but rarely is it fought that way.
Yes, you are right, one can acommodate for these differences also in duels by having different numbers, that is very true.
EnergyZ said:
There is some truth in that. But you seem to be forgetting that battles are a critical point of the franchise. For I can't count times how much has there been times that I am glad that the hero won the battle, even if the whole army was wiped out. While it is true that the excitement lies in building the hero, in my opinion it is to test those skills and abilities with another hero, who has different skills and strategies to counter your own.
Well I think it's important to distinguish between hero-vs-neutral battles and hero-vs-hero battles. The latter play a rather small part of the game, if not in importance then in game time, and that is why for me they often felt less important. True there were times where you had almost evenly matched armies where your skills and spells would make the difference, but most often I felt one hero was massively superior to the other, so it was more a question about minimizing losses and preventing the enemy hero in escaping (which in itself was a big and fun challenge in H3) rather than an actual chalenge about who would win - because that would often be decided by all the game actions that went before that actual encounter.
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What will happen now?
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raenus
Famous Hero
Grouchy curmudgeon
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posted August 05, 2015 05:45 AM |
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Edited by raenus at 05:47, 05 Aug 2015.
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I think you are definitely on to something alcibiades. I have always viewed Heroes as a single player game first and foremost and multiplayer as something for friends to do together, preferably on the same computer with a beer in hand. I think that trying to turn it into a competitive, multiplayer game is impossible while keeping the single player intact. Heroes will never be Dota or Starcraft, I don't care what they do.
The multiplayer games take way too long for it to be a spectator sport, require more planning than the average gamer is willing to sink in, the unique flavor and playstyle of each faction can make them unbalanced, and the variables that keep the game fresh and interesting to play hour after hour can, occasionally, screw over the unprepared player.
However, these are not cons or issues with the game! They are an integral part of the game and removing them shortens the games lifespan immensely, in my mind anyway.
The problem lies in the modern multiplayer focused gamer. A game is not necessarily meant to be a sport. It is not always going to be more enjoyable to play with others. It may not be fair 100% of the time. And it certainly is not always going to be fun to watch, and people who judge a game on these criteria should really stick to Dota, Starcraft, or CoD.
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Creature Quest: HaltWhoGoesThere
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fuChris
Promising
Supreme Hero
Master to the Speed of Light
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posted August 05, 2015 09:07 AM |
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alcibiades said:
Well I think it's important to distinguish between hero-vs-neutral battles and hero-vs-hero battles. The latter play a rather small part of the game, if not in importance then in game time, and that is why for me they often felt less important.
Hero-vs-neutral battles and hero-vs-hero battles don't necessarily have to exculde eachother either. There could be several opportunities to play against AI controlled hero armies at battle sites like the conservatories, utopias or behind teleporters. They could be even used as border guards between zones so that you had to beat them before you can get to the enemy/treasure area. This has been one of the most obvious ways to improve gameplay and I am absouletly baffled that it hasn't been implemented or talked about that much.
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"Now I am become Chris, the destroyer of worlds." - Robert Oppenheimer.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted August 05, 2015 09:33 AM |
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raenus said:
I think that trying to turn it into a competitive, multiplayer game is impossible while keeping the single player intact. Heroes will never be Dota or Starcraft, I don't care what they do.
The multiplayer games take way too long for it to be a spectator sport, require more planning than the average gamer is willing to sink in, the unique flavor and playstyle of each faction can make them unbalanced, and the variables that keep the game fresh and interesting to play hour after hour can, occasionally, screw over the unprepared player.
However, these are not cons or issues with the game! They are an integral part of the game and removing them shortens the games lifespan immensely, in my mind anyway.
Competitive like starcraft or dota no but it can be closer to backgammon  Which is to say, despite the element of randomness the better player will win more often and I'm fine with that. You can't judge a player in a best of 3 game though you can likely tell from his playstyle where he is standing.
H6 tried to streamline a number of features and it mostly failed. But I cannot deny that it played faster than H5 and that was a good thing. It should be possible to finish a map within a few hours and not 6-8 like in H5. A turn should not last more than 10 mins while in H5 I faced opponents who did 45-60 min turns!!
Spectator mode might not be as hot for a full game but combat replays? Those are invaluable. Everyone can and would happily watch a combat replay and I cannot forget how awesome it was to exchange replays when playing tournaments. Even if you were not participating you had something to look forward to.
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H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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Petiknight
Adventuring Hero
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posted August 05, 2015 09:59 AM |
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Hi Elvin,
You are right, I would like to see also a faster turn based game, but I tried the demo, and the gameplay was very slow even on the fastest settings, I hope they will improve it. And in this term H6 was great, fast AI's turn, and dynamic fights. I miss this in general.
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Hex
Adventuring Hero
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posted August 05, 2015 10:38 AM |
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Edited by Hex at 10:44, 05 Aug 2015.
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There is official release date for Heroes VII in this anniversary videos at 1:40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00TFGXt7sFc
It's September 29th.
Beta starts at August 26th and last only till September 2nd.
1 week beta, great!
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted August 05, 2015 11:03 AM |
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In Heroes III I made Turbo mod, which speeds all animations (adventure map and battle) to x 20. This saves me several hours on every long game but also required modifying every sound via Audacity software, then modified sounds have been placed in separate lod, from which the game reads now.
Therefore, it is possible to speed things but there is a cap limit, and beyond that the sound will still be longer than the animation then the game will have to wait sound to play. So it would be helpful to ask them if will be ways to modify sounds and create alternate folder. And if not, propose them this idea, as for long term players, nice and detailed animations are more of a nuisance than else.
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EnergyZ
Legendary Hero
President of MM Wiki
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posted August 05, 2015 11:16 AM |
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Hex said:
There is official release date for Heroes VII in this anniversary videos at 1:40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00TFGXt7sFc
It's September 29th.
Beta starts at August 26th and last only till September 2nd.
1 week beta, great!
1 week? Hm, what are they planning to if they want to collect so much data in so little time?
On a side note, did Youtube change *that* dramatically?
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alexine
Known Hero
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posted August 05, 2015 12:05 PM |
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Great... I wont try even this beta because I cant play after 14th august 
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We´re beautiful like diamonds in the sky ...
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Valen-Teen
Famous Hero
UFOlolOgist
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posted August 05, 2015 12:09 PM |
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Where is dungeon's reveal?! I can't wait for it. 
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Our hopes for Heroes VIII!
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Avonu
Responsible
Supreme Hero
Embracing light and darkness
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posted August 05, 2015 12:12 PM |
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Oficially? Tomorrow... but be prepared for leaks. 
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"When someone desires information, they come to me."
"Details are everything."
Pipiru piru piru pipiru pi!
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This MEGA THREAD is pages long: 
