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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted October 18, 2015 09:22 PM |
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Black Hole said:
BH had nothing to do with VIP fan feedback directly. It was UBI that decided. And UBI never wanted your feedback. When they asked your opinion on a specific item, it was always already too late to make the changes you asked for. Just two simple examples:
Oh that sounds awfully familiar doesn't it.
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted October 18, 2015 09:43 PM |
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GenyaArikado said:
Second, no, not really. All companies want to get their games asap out there. Delay's cost money and if it gets delayed its because its truly unplayable. It's nasty but semidecent videogames are take millions to make.
And with the advent of Internet, it became a lot easier to update games post-launch. A few decades ago, your games were sold as hard-copies in a store and you didn't have a means to download patches and the like. Bugs that still existed could only be solved in expansions so games, when released, had to be rock-solid on their own already. Mess up once and your sales will end.
These days, they try to cut corners because cutting corners means cutting expenses. They no longer aim for an 8+ figure when it comes to quality, but 5.5+ is good enough. They'll observe revenue from sales to see how much effort they need to make to bring it up a few notches by releasing patches online, even day-0 patches are relatively common. It's a trend in the gaming world that is becoming more and more annoying, as if product quality is something the developer mainly has to worry about post release.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted October 18, 2015 11:21 PM |
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verriker said:
Antalyan, I'm happy to think about such things, but respectfully you would need to offer up more food for thought than just repeating Ubisoft's own platitudes that game development is hard and the game has potential in so many words lol
in my opinion the whole Shadow Council facade was cynical from the beginning, simply an extension of the practice quoted above that Black Hole described for Heroes 6 lol
You are giving Ubisoft way too much credit here. 
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verriker
Honorable
Legendary Hero
We don't need another 'eroes
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posted October 18, 2015 11:47 PM |
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JollyJoker said:
You are giving Ubisoft way too much credit here.
perhaps, but following Black Hole's account that they're the world's stupidest schemers whose not-so-cunning plan blew up in their face ain't much kinder than accusing them of not mustering enough intelligence to even plan at all lol
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ywhtptgtfo
Hired Hero
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posted October 19, 2015 02:44 AM |
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Who is Quantomas by the way? A former Nival dev?
verriker said:
JollyJoker said:
You are giving Ubisoft way too much credit here.
perhaps, but following Black Hole's account that they're the world's stupidest schemers whose not-so-cunning plan blew up in their face ain't much kinder than accusing them of not mustering enough intelligence to even plan at all lol
Incompetence from management can be a very real thing. 
I had some first hand experience with incompetent managers while I was working in IBM as a dev. Within a few short years, they managed to drive a number of top-notch products into the ground and completely destroying several development teams.
The root cause is that the management felt they were too good to act on the feedback from those beneath them or even the customers themselves. Then when snow start to hit the fan, they throw everyone else under the bus and start whipping developers under them believing that this will create the missing deliverables.
Not to mention, some simply don't need care because they can dive to another cushy job whenever things go south. Imagine in our case that Erwan gets fired from Ubisoft. He'd most likely land a job as senior consultant in another game company, riding on his credentials Firoanna/Hawkins-style
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Kayna
Supreme Hero
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posted October 19, 2015 03:03 AM |
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Maurice said:
Mess up once and your sales will end.
These days, they try to cut corners because cutting corners means cutting expenses. They no longer aim for an 8+ figure when it comes to quality, but 5.5+ is good enough. They'll observe revenue from sales to see how much effort they need to make to bring it up a few notches by releasing patches online, even day-0 patches are relatively common. It's a trend in the gaming world that is becoming more and more annoying, as if product quality is something the developer mainly has to worry about post release.
And Ubisoft is still being stupid. A lot of people asked for a refund on steam. Some bugs do not require extensive testing to be found, and some stuff aren't even bugs ; optimizing the game doesn't require prior testing. Fixing the multiplayer requires little testing as well, and a good multiplayer equals $$$$, an argument that proves how stupid Ubisoft is. They wouldve made more money had they delayed the game for about 3 weeks just to fix those 2 things.
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Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted October 19, 2015 03:24 AM |
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GenyaArikado
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
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posted October 19, 2015 07:01 AM |
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Delaying probably also costs them more money than what will be refunded.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted October 19, 2015 09:22 AM |
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verriker said:
JollyJoker said:
You are giving Ubisoft way too much credit here.
perhaps, but following Black Hole's account that they're the world's stupidest schemers whose not-so-cunning plan blew up in their face ain't much kinder than accusing them of not mustering enough intelligence to even plan at all lol
Yeah, except that - freelancer - work for Ubisoft as well (since 10 years), and the real problem with H6 (beside the usual crew-ups and the sh!t that happens) has been that the coding was a mess (ask Limbic who tried to fix it afterwards). BH had problems to get the monster rolling at all (which is the reason why H6 is still buggy).
Also, Ubisoft did show a lot more commitment than BH is willing to give them credit for. The extraordinary delay with H6 and the additional funds necessary meant they had to trash another game.
Ubisoft's main error was, as I already said, to hire BH in the first place, as they later proved that the project was too big for them.
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kiryu133
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Highly illogical
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posted October 19, 2015 09:28 AM |
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Edited by kiryu133 at 09:28, 19 Oct 2015.
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And so H7 seems to be for Limbic except Ubi seems to at least give an additional percentage of snows 
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It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that the cis are at it again.
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verriker
Honorable
Legendary Hero
We don't need another 'eroes
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posted October 19, 2015 10:41 AM |
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JollyJoker said:
Yeah, except that - freelancer - work for Ubisoft as well (since 10 years), and the real problem with H6 (beside the usual crew-ups and the sh!t that happens) has been that the coding was a mess (ask Limbic who tried to fix it afterwards). BH had problems to get the monster rolling at all (which is the reason why H6 is still buggy).
Also, Ubisoft did show a lot more commitment than BH is willing to give them credit for. The extraordinary delay with H6 and the additional funds necessary meant they had to trash another game.
Ubisoft's main error was, as I already said, to hire BH in the first place, as they later proved that the project was too big for them.
well you work as an offsite translator I thought, separate from Team Erwin lol
I ain't gonna disagree, sure: Erwin hired a bad developer for the project, and tried to delude us all that he hired the perfect developer, and now it's past the point where a good developer can ever be hired because all the necessary budget and trust is used up, Asha uses all lol
beyond that though, with Ubi fatal direction there's smoke there's fire, they seem to have serious mismanagement, massive feature creep problems, blame games of their client, wasting everyone's time with VIPs, issues of being just plain dense in the head in ignoring Quantomas, like it's absolutely no surprise they delayed four months if "the (awful) final story script - which was UBI responsibility - was delivered to BH after 27 months... while originally there was 24 months for the whole development" lol
I think that sidekick guy of Erwin, Romain, was probably the last guy in the Might and Magic team who had a clue, just looking at his Amplitude Studio's Endless Space and Endless Legend he seems to know how to cook up a good game on zero budget while Erwin will just never get it lol
Erwin said:
There are several reasons for this long gestation period. Some pragmatic, like waiting for the perfect development studio to succeed Nival. However, the main cause lies in a long concept phase. We have discussed at length, and sometimes experimented, several additions to the Heroes formula. Some we kept, some we discarded. Heroes VI was to us a “labour of love”, and when you want to craft a precious gem, you don’t measure time.
Erwin said:
Our own perception of Heroes 6 is that it is worth a 8.5/10, which is closer to Heroes 3 (8.75) than to Heroes 5 (7.9).
We really consider we have kept the "soul" of the Heroes series, delivered a huge amount of contents (hours of gameplay, quantity and variety of assets), and also pushed all the levers of the game to 120% - graphics, story, RPG layer (with the addition of the Reputation system), strategy on the adventure map (reduction of tedious micromanagement, addition of the area of control and town conversion features), tactics on the combat map (improved racial ability, more variety for the battle conditions and objectives, boss fights).
Feedback from the Beta has allowed us to revise and improve the AI and balance.
We have added a very cool online dimension that is really a "breakthrough" in this legendary series.
There's still room for improvement (the town screens) and we're dedicated to support this game long after its release.
We understand some fans, and press people, are unsure about some changes that were brought to their favorite game. "Why change a formula that I have enjoyed for so long?"
Our message to them is: try out the game, and not just a single map. Play it for as long as you have played Heroes 3, or 5, and we're confident you will understand our choices, and love this game as much, if not more, than its predecessors!
Erwin said:
In spite of its long gestation period and the inevitable turbulence on the long way from concept to release, Heroes VI has been to us--Ubisoft and Black Hole Studios--a labor of love. Now that the precious gem is finally cut, shaped, and polished, we're truly proud of it. We are especially honored that the game's release coincides with the 25th anniversary of Might & Magic, and we hope that the fans of this legendary series, as well as the newcomers who saw the light and leaned closer to discover its source, will feel the passion we've poured into our craft!
anyway, it's all completely beside the point of whether their VIP forum and Shadow Council was all a load of ******** from the start lol
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted October 19, 2015 11:17 AM |
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The difference between Amplitude Studios and Ubisoft is that the former is making use of their "VIP-group" while the latter isn't.
I've been part of both, and AS had their own "Shadow Council" up for Endless Legend. However, they knew what they were doing: the website was for detail votings, toppings on the ice cream, if you want to, while the VIPs were mainly used to Beta (and Alpha) test (and they fueled us with new Betas quite regularly (every few days), making use of Steam services excessively. Also, they had a clear vision what they actually wanted to do with their budget.
(And here we are at Uplay which were not ready at the time to do the same thing as Steam (and still really isn't, I think).)
Also, with BH having a problem to really splice everything together, a Beta with fast fixes and new version in regular intervals just wasn't going to happen - and didn't happen with H7 either, so there isn't much room to debate over the "usefulness" of SC and VIP stuff.
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Bitula
Known Hero
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posted October 19, 2015 12:13 PM |
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As I see it: Limbic delivered the vanilla game in time, with less bugs and more content than H6 (which even missed the timeline). So why can’t this be taken as a good sign? And AFAIU Limbic reused nothing, because models were provided by 3d party for them and BH. So AFAIU they made a game from scratch, just as BH. So why can’t it be a good beginning? Just because of skill-wheel randomness issue and 7 magic schools? This is not a good reason to ditch the game and wait for H8 which will never come.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted October 19, 2015 12:25 PM |
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It's way simpler than that: BH used an inhouse development as game engine for H6, which wasn't that easy to use, apparently, while Limbic uses the Unreal 3 engine.
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frostymuaddib
Promising
Supreme Hero
育碧是白痴
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posted October 19, 2015 12:34 PM |
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Bitula said:
As I see it: Limbic delivered the vanilla game in time, with less bugs and more content than H6 (which even missed the timeline). So why can’t this be taken as a good sign? And AFAIU Limbic reused nothing, because models were provided by 3d party for them and BH. So AFAIU they made a game from scratch, just as BH. So why can’t it be a good beginning? Just because of skill-wheel randomness issue and 7 magic schools? This is not a good reason to ditch the game and wait for H8 which will never come.
Define: from scratch. They did reuse many models from Heroes 6 (check the unit lineups and on map object). Also, they were using already existing game engine (Unreal Engine). I'm not sure about H6's engine though.
You mention skillwheel and 7 magic schools. Those are only signs of a much deeper problem, imo. From my point of view is the unwillingness (or incompetence) of the team Erwin to see what makes Heroes games good and expand those features by improving them, by introducing some new features that would blend in with the original ones etc. What they did, imo, is that they took H6 (worst game in the series, imo) as their reference point, and used it as a base of new game.
That reminds me, there are a lot of people who say H7 is good game, and their argument is: "it is better than H6". I think that is wrong way to look at things: new game should be compared to the best game from the series, not to the worst.
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Bitula
Known Hero
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posted October 19, 2015 01:18 PM |
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JollyJoker said:
It's way simpler than that: BH used an inhouse development as game engine for H6, which wasn't that easy to use, apparently, while Limbic uses the Unreal 3 engine.
But NO! I think you are wrong here. BH already had their engine when they started implementation so it doesn't count thowards the two years of H6 development time. And it's actually easier to use an own engine than to use a 3d party engine. So Limbic was actually in disedvantage since they had to learn Unreal 3.
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Bitula
Known Hero
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posted October 19, 2015 01:26 PM |
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frostymuaddib said:
Define: from scratch. They did reuse many models from Heroes 6 (check the unit lineups and on map object). Also, they were using already existing game engine (Unreal Engine). I'm not sure about H6's engine though.
But No! Models were delivered by 3D party for both BH and Limbic. Just because some models are in H6 that doesn't make their development easier.
frostymuaddib said:
You mention skillwheel and 7 magic schools. Those are only signs of a much deeper problem, imo. From my point of view is the unwillingness (or incompetence) of the team Erwin to see what makes Heroes games good and expand those features by improving them, by introducing some new features that would blend in with the original ones etc. What they did, imo, is that they took H6 (worst game in the series, imo) as their reference point, and used it as a base of new game.
But its your IMO as you write. Otherwise it is moot. Why are they signs for deeper problem? What is the deeper problem? It's just some floating impressions and feelings from your side so far. Nothing concrete.
frostymuaddib said:
That reminds me, there are a lot of people who say H7 is good game, and their argument is: "it is better than H6". I think that is wrong way to look at things: new game should be compared to the best game from the series, not to the worst.
H7 is probably not a good game ATM. But why can't it be a good base for a good game? What is the problem with being optimistic at this early stage?
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted October 19, 2015 01:26 PM |
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True, but in the end it's a matter of how solid, bug-prone and usable the engine is, and while it looked BH's engine would be a fit, it would seem the engine itself wasn't solid.
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted October 19, 2015 01:33 PM |
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frostymuaddib said:
What they did, imo, is that they took H6 (worst game in the series, imo) as their reference point, and used it as a base of new game.
This is exactly what they did.
frostymuaddib said:
new game should be compared to the best game from the series, not to the worst.
Exactly, but then they're going to argue that "best" is subjective and will pull off their usual political speeches, and say "oh yes, this is a feature I liked in heroes 6 you know, it was not that bad". I've heard them too often.
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Bitula
Known Hero
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posted October 19, 2015 01:33 PM |
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JollyJoker said:
True, but in the end it's a matter of how solid, bug-prone and usable the engine is, and while it looked BH's engine would be a fit, it would seem the engine itself wasn't solid.
Yes, as far as I heard BH codebase was in a bad shape at the release. But since Unreal 3 per se is solid, it is also possible that the game codebase built on top of it is also solid. So again their is a good reason for hope.
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This MEGA THREAD is pages long: 
