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Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted January 03, 2016 06:59 PM |
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Edited by Stevie at 19:02, 03 Jan 2016.
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JollyJoker said:
@ Stevie
Democracy doesn't work with visions.
Who said anything about a democracy?
And yes, fresh air is needed, a new take on Heroes is required, and definitely not remakes, best-offs or other frankenstein monsters.
____________
Guide to a Great Heroes Game
The Young Traveler
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Pitlord
Known Hero
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posted January 03, 2016 10:04 PM |
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how about a heroes 7:HD ?
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LizardWarrior
Honorable
Legendary Hero
the reckoning is at hand
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posted January 03, 2016 10:13 PM |
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Heroes 7 is already Heroes 6: HD, so that'd be Heroes 6: Full HD? 
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EnergyZ
Legendary Hero
President of MM Wiki
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posted January 03, 2016 10:28 PM |
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LizardWarrior said:
Heroes 7 is already Heroes 6: HD, so that'd be Heroes 6: Full HD?
One could still add HD+ and claim it is something never seen before. Not that I approve of it, though.
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blob2
Undefeatable Hero
Blob-Ohmos the Second
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posted January 04, 2016 12:16 AM |
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EnergyZ said:
LizardWarrior said:
Heroes 7 is already Heroes 6: HD, so that'd be Heroes 6: Full HD?
One could still add HD+ and claim it is something never seen before. Not that I approve of it, though.
Kings Bounty: The Legend graphics have more charm and artistry (and overall look better), and the games 8 year old already...
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RMZ1989
Supreme Hero
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posted January 04, 2016 01:57 AM |
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blob2 said:
EnergyZ said:
LizardWarrior said:
Heroes 7 is already Heroes 6: HD, so that'd be Heroes 6: Full HD?
One could still add HD+ and claim it is something never seen before. Not that I approve of it, though.
Kings Bounty: The Legend graphics have more charm and artistry (and overall look better), and the games 8 year old already...
Yeah but Kings Bounty has something that Heroes franchise lost long time ago, and that is a great atmosphere. In the end graphics don't matter that much if I would rather play Kings Bounty, Heroes 2, Age of Wonders, rather than Heroes 6 and 7.
____________
Give a man a mask, and he'll
become his true self.
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted January 04, 2016 11:06 AM |
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lol, the owner of maps4heroes is now stressed as the 4 Heroes 7 maps he got to upload are about 1 GB in size overall. 250 Mb/map, congrats. I just checked H5 maps, and each is less than 1 Mb. Speaking about lack of optimization, this is a huge aspect, who will host H7 maps at this size?
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TD
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted January 04, 2016 02:52 PM |
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Salamandre said:
lol, the owner of maps4heroes is now stressed as the 4 Heroes 7 maps he got to upload are about 1 GB in size overall. 250 Mb/map, congrats. I just checked H5 maps, and each is less than 1 Mb. Speaking about lack of optimization, this is a huge aspect, who will host H7 maps at this size?
Is that because of the "modding"? You know each unit and model basically being separate rather than all maps having common units? Or is that without the "master"-data? I dunno if that's part of it, but if it is maybe you could just upload map and tell player to manually connect the vanilla master-data for troops if the map isn't meant to have any changes so you don't have several vanilla master-data files.
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Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted January 04, 2016 03:26 PM |
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Edited by Stevie at 15:29, 04 Jan 2016.
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Stevie said:
JollyJoker said:
@ Stevie
Democracy doesn't work with visions.
Who said anything about a democracy?
And yes, fresh air is needed, a new take on Heroes is required, and definitely not remakes, best-offs or other frankenstein monsters.
I think I need to explain this further. Even if people have their own vision it doesn't mean that consensus cannot be achieved. If you think it can't then obviously any discussions about the core of the game and potential features / mechanics would then appear useless. The real problem isn't laying down ideas, it's that there's the danger people might try pulling things their way, and that births conflict. The only way to avoid that is the highest instance making the final call. I agree, we don't want politics, but what we do want is contribution. Take me and Maurice a while back, when we still hoped Heroes 7 might have a chance - we were debating on Skype all day about magic system, skill wheel, classes, damage types, primary attributes, etc. and once we had a round vision about how things could work we exposed it to the community. Then other people like Pawek or kiryu and others contributed their own input and weighted if what we believed could work was accurate. So what I'm trying to say is that a good idea comes to be after a thorough process of molding the good and sorting out the bad, and that's only possible if more minds are at work, scrutinizing every detail and offering feedback of their own.
____________
Guide to a Great Heroes Game
The Young Traveler
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted January 04, 2016 05:42 PM |
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I tend to think, that puzzling a game together isn't the right way to go. I think, at this stage you need at least one new (central) aspect to bring in a new angle, and I also think that with the new aspect other things will fall into place more or less automatically, leaving only a couple of things to actually decide.
A couple of months ago I was ranting about the chance H6 did NOT take. They came up with the recruitment pool; immediately obvious advantage of simplifying troop management - but for many people things became too simple.
All bias aside - recruitment pool PLUS daily instead of weekly growth would have been worth so much more of a try: the pool simply neutralizes the micro management you CAN invest into daily growth, because handling that would have been easy, while daily growth would have solved the problems that come with conquering towns/dwellings and the reflection for the pool.
The additional overall effect would have been that you wouldn't have the economy preference (daily money growth), so the road wouldn't have been paved.
Now, add conversion which was also part of HoMM 6. Daily growth would have worked better with conversion as well, obviously.
What I want to say is, that there are so many variables and options, especially in combination - add to that the unknown variables of some "master ideas" behind a new game, and things become really difficult.
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LucPatenaude
Famous Hero
Owning all 7 Heroes games
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posted January 04, 2016 09:40 PM |
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Aside all that complaining about Heroes 7s flaws and bugs.
How about wishing all the HC forums' members a wonderfully happy new-year 2016?
Heroes 7 will undergo an unforeseen amount of changes and, numerous mods will, unexpectedly, change our oversight of this game's mechanics' inner workings.
I do see this game faring way better on a monstrous, much newer and, way more performant-like gamer's rig(8 cores + the rest of its specs. running on DDR4's newest type of microchips).
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Pitlord
Known Hero
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posted January 04, 2016 10:48 PM |
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some interesting stats regarding heroes 7 on steam. i know, it doesnt include the uplay-versions but we can see a trend...
http://steamspy.com/app/321960
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Quantomas
Responsible
Famous Hero
AI Wizard
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posted January 05, 2016 12:02 AM |
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@Groovy
Thanks. Good to hear from you too. That is one cool avatar. 
@LizardWarrior
Duly noted, thank you. 
My plan for recruiting -- after giving community members a big amount of leeway didn't work well -- is to formulate proper jobs for which people can apply. We need a good match between skills and the work required. This implies that we also need a professional production process that defines how the community interacts with the work and what they can influence. If we make this a priority from the get-go, we should find a solution that works. The key is to make it transparent.
Galaad said:
H4 remake sounds great but I wonder what makes you think Ubisoft will contact you to give the source code.
That was merely a hypothetical consideration. But it would make economic sense. There is not that much market saturation for H4 and there are only a number of features to address -- AI, battlefield and hero-in-battle damage model -- to arrive at a fairly interesting game.
For people not aware of my work, barring some unforeseen change, our most logical starting point is H5 with the upgraded AI.
Why I consider an AI of superior value for a single player experience. If you have a poorly modelled or unreliable AI as an opponent, you can play casually or even carelessly to win. On the other hand if you have a good AI, you need to think, examine the situation and objects on the adventure map, and come up with a strategic plan to prevail. The game has much more depth. Additionally, players are encouraged to learn what works and what not. It is fun and makes you aware of the finer points of the game.
Regarding a vision how to evolve the gameplay, here is my current plan. First, I like to introduce a worldstate. It defines who owns which province on a worldmap and the strategic resources and assets. In effect it provides you a choice of various missions (the equivalent of current playable maps) from the worldmap, and many interesting things can be done by having worldmap variables affect the mission setup.
Secondly, I'd like to introduce patterns that define everything in the game. You can compare them with Minecraft's building blocks, only that they are also used to define skills, traits, spells, artifacts, creatures, heroes, everything in the game. Basically, you will be able to express every rule and object from all Heroes games yet, which will give us a sandbox to define and experiment with the rules that we will make the default of our game. The real strength of this approach though lies in the flexibility it provides us and that everything interacts dynamically with everything else in the game. Together with the worldstate this allows for fairly unique and advanced gameplay features.
I know this sounds fairly abstract and thought about giving an example here. But while writing the example, I realized that people here can object to it being special because you could write equivalent scripts. The main difference to scripts is that a pattern based approach is not that arbitrary (scripts require the author to define a change of the world in its entirety) and that building blocks (patterns) can be shaped and cut and logically intertwined by their very nature. They will also maintain proper reactivity, even if many worldstate changes interfere. It may not sound like a big deal but it is.
The argument that you normally hear against it is that it is next to impossible to write an AI for this. Well, our answer is that we have the AI already.
____________
Do you love strategy games? Join us on Discord: discord.gg/JKU6tey
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Brukernavn
Hero of Order
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posted January 05, 2016 12:07 AM |
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JollyJoker said:
I tend to think, that puzzling a game together isn't the right way to go. I think, at this stage you need at least one new (central) aspect to bring in a new angle, and I also think that with the new aspect other things will fall into place more or less automatically, leaving only a couple of things to actually decide.
A couple of months ago I was ranting about the chance H6 did NOT take. They came up with the recruitment pool; immediately obvious advantage of simplifying troop management - but for many people things became too simple.
All bias aside - recruitment pool PLUS daily instead of weekly growth would have been worth so much more of a try: the pool simply neutralizes the micro management you CAN invest into daily growth, because handling that would have been easy, while daily growth would have solved the problems that come with conquering towns/dwellings and the reflection for the pool.
The additional overall effect would have been that you wouldn't have the economy preference (daily money growth), so the road wouldn't have been paved.
Now, add conversion which was also part of HoMM 6. Daily growth would have worked better with conversion as well, obviously.
What I want to say is, that there are so many variables and options, especially in combination - add to that the unknown variables of some "master ideas" behind a new game, and things become really difficult.
This is also the reason why too many big changes often lead to negative consequences from the synergy effects. H6 actually set out to reducing micro management, but ended up reducing management altogether with regards to resources, towns, creatures and heroes.
I agree that you need a vision and a new angle, but that's not all. The major tasks for a successor (spiritual or direct) is to:
1) Keep and advance what was good with the previous iteration(s)
2) Address what was bad about the previous iteration(s)
3) Bring something new that makes the game feel fresh and different, yet familiar
Both H3 and H5 (which were the most successful games in the series) managed all three things. H7, and I would argue H6, managed none of them. Granted, the third point is the hardest part, but I see no reason not to start with the first two, and in the process working on the third. A vision or idea doesn't just pop out of nowhere, it has to start somewhere.
For instance, one of the main drawbacks of any heroes game is the amount of micromanagement and tedious tasks that has to be done, but become less fun for every turn - and eventually make you become bored. It drags out the game, but does not enrich the gaming experience. You don't necessarily have to do major changes to improve on this. Just think about the "buy all creatures" button from Heroes 4. A brilliant inclusion, that took three iterations including expansions before it was implemented.
I can think of a few changes that would further reduce micro management, without changing the gameplay itself too much. Some of them are really simple as well.
Caravans
Caravans already exist in Heroes, but they are grossly underdeveloped. Make it possible to set up default caravan destinations from towns, so it's just one click to buy and automatically send all creatures to where you want them. Include caravans in the skill system, for instance by having one ability to create and send caravans from a hero. Allow to change the destination of a caravan on the way. Make it possible to upgrade the caravan speed, and perhaps other aspects like sea travel or even defence. The way you can upgrade caravans could even be through global skills or spells - and suddenly the inclusion of global skills or spells becomes a candidate for a new, fresh idea to Heroes with many additional possibilities.
Combat
Combat is one of the most time consuming parts of the game. I would make the XP gain for fleeing armies the same as if you fought them. You should not have to grind to level up. With the AI of Quantomas the autocombat would also be decent. Autocombat with the option to repeat manually for undesired results is a good way to speed up the game. The benefit of manual combat is still mana and unit conservation when chosen, in addition to the thrill of selected battles.
Town development
Just making a well designed build tree is a major step, with a simple way to switch between towns and see where you are on the map. I also think queuing up build orders should be possible, if you have the funds for it. Visiting the towns in the beginning and while you are upgrading them is fun and inspiring, but when you have five towns of the same type, the need to enter each and every town to build something every day is not that great.
Optimization and AI
This isn't really micro management, and might seem like a given, but it is something that can drag out the game, and actually what killed H5, H6 and H7 for a lot of people. If the game runs slow, the AI takes several minutes to finish it's turn and you have to wait a few seconds every time you enter a battle or a town then you are quickly bored.
Personally, just these improvements would warrant me to buy an updated version of either H3 or H5. When we add into account changes to factions, hero development, spells and so on, then almost any game in the series is a good candidate for a community driven project. If it is well funded you can be even more ambitious. What I tried to exemplify with the caravans, is that you can come up with innovative additions just by working on what was good and bad in previous games. Initiative in H5 was introduced to reduce the importance of speed as a creature stat, and at the same time brought a whole new dimension to combat in general. Flanking in H7 was introduced just to have something new, but ended up dragging out fights even longer. New aspects always need a specific purpose, and by looking back you can often find many.
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TD
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted January 05, 2016 12:47 AM |
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Quantomas said:
Regarding a vision how to evolve the gameplay, here is my current plan. First, I like to introduce a worldstate. It defines who owns which province on a worldmap and the strategic resources and assets. In effect it provides you a choice of various missions (the equivalent of current playable maps) from the worldmap, and many interesting things can be done by having worldmap variables affect the mission setup.
Could you open that up a bit more a perhaps give an example from other games? It sounds a bit like how LoTR battle for middle earth II Rise of Witch-King had this strategy-board/map where clashing armies would fight for territory which would become the battle map. Or C&C 3 tiberium wars had domination mode in spirit of "Risk" (boardgame).
If it is something like those two I'm loving the idea.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted January 05, 2016 07:20 AM |
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@ Brukernavn
I think, that you are dead wrong here. You canNOT start with the first two and then add the 3rd on the fly. Why? With the first two you don't even have a justification for a new game. There is HoMM 3 WOG, there is HoMM 4 with Heroes on the battlefield, and there is HoMM 5.5, and between those 3 it's difficult to make a satisfactory successor that will not make you ask, why a new game?
To even start with a new game you need a strong vision of something new - let's say for the sake of the example, the H4 vision, Heroes on the battlefield - and going from there, the rest will develop.
There is only one game lurking under the stones of the old ones - something like Heroes 5.5 with a simple engine, simple map editor, working and logical duel editor, simturns and great AI to give the game the lasting value of HoMM 3.
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Hermes
Famous Hero
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posted January 05, 2016 07:27 AM |
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Pitlord said:
some interesting stats regarding heroes 7 on steam. i know, it doesnt include the uplay-versions but we can see a trend...
http://steamspy.com/app/321960
What? Player base decline in predominately single player game in the niche genre as the owners play through the game? You don't say.
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natalka
Supreme Hero
Bad-mannered
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posted January 05, 2016 07:47 AM |
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Salamandre said:
lol, the owner of maps4heroes is now stressed as the 4 Heroes 7 maps he got to upload are about 1 GB in size overall. 250 Mb/map, congrats. I just checked H5 maps, and each is less than 1 Mb. Speaking about lack of optimization, this is a huge aspect, who will host H7 maps at this size?
No, it seems mapmakers forgot to cook the map and make it smaller in size.
Modding on the map doesn`t add much size - I bet I have more modding than those maps that were released just after H7 start and my package is 30 Mb only(uncooked). What makes the maps so big is the prerendered lightning, shadows.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted January 05, 2016 08:04 AM |
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Hermes said:
Pitlord said:
some interesting stats regarding heroes 7 on steam. i know, it doesnt include the uplay-versions but we can see a trend...
http://steamspy.com/app/321960
What? Player base decline in predominately single player game in the niche genre as the owners play through the game? You don't say.
Nonsense:
Compare with Heroes VI
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Avirosb
Promising
Legendary Hero
No longer on vacation
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posted January 05, 2016 08:28 AM |
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JollyJoker said:
To even start with a new game you need a strong vision of something new
Good advice for free, self-funded projects operated by people that don't have publishers breathing down their necks.
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This MEGA THREAD is pages long: 
