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| Thread: Town Portals |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted November 30, 2014 01:46 PM |
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Zombi_Wizzard said:
or maybe they could introduce army caps ... then TP can be as op as you want - problem solved
Army caps only for TP, right? I think this was what Maurice had in mind but it would work better this way.
Even if I still think my first idea is still the best, mid heroes can protect nearest town, ubber heroes can travel everywhere and smash everything.
My experience of Heroes is that after a while either you lose or you end up getting control over the map. At that point every turn spent before you finnish is just a boring waste of time. So, let's speed it up.
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted November 30, 2014 02:31 PM |
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Edited by Galaad at 14:31, 30 Nov 2014.
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fuChris said:
Town portal should definately remain a spell unlocked in mage guild, useable at a high enough hero level but the hero should only be able to teleport to towns that have it built. The buildings cost should remain high like H3 Inferno TP(20k gold if I remember correctly) thus hindering you in building it in every town.
The spell cost should remain high(all movement points and 20-30 mana atleast) and maybe even cost extra depending on the distance to the town but should not cost all mana as it would handicap magic heroes greatly while only minorly affecting might heroes and that would a further unblance the already non-existing balance of the game.(Don't say "how can you know it won't be balanced?" None of the previous games were ever balanced....)
The more towns you have, the more gold you have, and 20k is nothing in homm3 in mid-late game to invest so I don't think it would hinder you in any more way than building champion dwellings (upgraded Cloud Temple was 25k). Money isn't a problem in L-XL maps if you know how to use logistics and secondary heroes properly.
As I already said, the problem with TP being a spell makes it too convenient of use, I don't want to only have to open my spellbook to counter an attack that only existed because I failed in planning my heroes movements over the land. If hero level would influence in the town portal process, I think it should only in a way that the hero would be able to use the concerned building. No hero below a certain level would be able to use the building for example.
Town portal should, in my opinion, be only used like the castle gate in homm3's Inferno town, to travel from one town to another one. This is already a huge advantage, considering the days you are saving by using it, and loosing movement points appears as only logic and legit to me in this situation.
Regarding the magic hero issue, then maybe he could loose half of his mana while traveling through TP, so he would still have a handicap but keeping a fair chance to counter a might hero. However, I might need to point out that fighting behind a castle -fortifications, arrow towers- gives you an incredible advantage on the outcome of the battle. Being back there should only give you a chance to save your castle, and not necessarily counter the opponent by a snap of fingers.
I don't want to be able to permit myself critical strategic mistakes on the map because I have one spell that allows me to.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted November 30, 2014 02:52 PM |
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Zombi_Wizzard said:
or maybe they could introduce army caps ... then TP can be as op as you want - problem solved
No problem not solved, if the purpose we want the TP to fulfill is to allow you to travel across the map without wasting endless time walking the mile. If you don't want to allow army transport, you might aswell just leave it out of the game completely.
Obviously the two perspectives we have to put up against each other here is the gameplay/balance question vs. the convenience question.
On one side, from a gameplay/balance point of view, H3 town portal suffered from a number of issues:
- It was skill unbalanced (Earth Magic = win)
- It was faction unbalanced (Swamp and Stronghold with no 4th level mage guild = screwed)
- It was too cheap to use (jump-jump-jump-jump-jump on the same turn)
On the positive side, H3 town portal was convenient and wasn't overly easy to gain access to.
H5 and H6 town portals tried to make up for these faults in different ways - H5 by making it more limited in use (only nearest town) and making it skill independant, H6 by making it a building. H5 solution failed, however, because it essentially didn't solve the purpose of the spell, at least not from a convenience pov. - sure you could get back to nearest town, but it didn't save you endless bothersome trips from one end of map to the other. H6 solution failed in the sense that it simply was too accessible.
I think a good town portal solution must be convenient - this means there shouldn't be troop limits, less you end up with a useless feature. On the other hand, it should not be strategically imbalanced. I do think Jackson's second idea is a pretty good compromise to these interests because it becomes more of a convenience feature than a gameplay/strategy feature - you can't just spam-jump around the map on same turn, but it does allow you to link towns across maps over large distances when you control both ends. It's also strategically balanced in that it doesn't give you a safe-card you can always pull no matter what circumstances are - if you are a long way from a town, you will be screwed if enemy comes to attack and you didn't leave any defences, and this is exactly what needs to be the case.
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Nocturnal
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted November 30, 2014 02:57 PM |
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Town protal is a slippery slope in Heroes. Makes the game go dumb but are also necessary. You wouldn't be able to finish many campaings in the series without Town Portal. As soon as you leave your town, an enemy hero will come. As AI calculates your movement, it doesn't move until you move. If you move away, he approaches town, knowing you will not reach it sooner. If you walk back to your town, AI will walk away. Town Portal solves this. LEt him approach and then suddenly appear in your town.
But this gets boring over time as you repeat it over and over. AI never gets your town and never poses a threat. Basic town portal even made it go dumber, as you move from town to town in one instant.
A solution that comes to my mind is this: town portals should be adventure map buildings. Every hero will have a "Build Town Portal" spell.
You go to a certain point on the map and cast the spell. It demands high amounts of resources and can only be cast once a game month by a player Every next portal will demand more resources. When you cast the spell you build one door of a two-way town portal there. You cast "Other Door" spell when you walk and go to the point on map where you want your second door.
During the building a window pops up like heroes' trading window. You put the copy of one unit in your army there. It will not grow but you can update the stack or change it with another unit upon visit.
Once built, they cannot be altered, but they can be destroyed by you or your enemy. Destroying a town portal demands: twice the cost of building it, 2/3 of your movement points and you lose all of those movement points when you destroy it and the fight with your copied unit which you will control. You will lose the resources even if you lose the fight. This way it will not be also easy for your enemy to destroy a portal and run back and will stop one-unit heroes destroying your town portal.
Let me know what you think about this.
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OhforfSake
Promising
Legendary Hero
Initiate
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posted November 30, 2014 03:32 PM |
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Heroes of Might and Magic is not the game I expected at first.
When I got HoMM, I thought it was part Civilization at higher resolution. I didn't think Diplomacy was only for neutrals. I didn't think I couldn't continue to enjoy the game once I'd won it.
The goal in Heroes is to eliminate all opposition and nothing more to it. The whole city building prospect is for me nothing more than an illusion of creating a grand civilization.. I see a town more like a military camp.
HoMM is more battle field war than world conquering.
When I got HoMM, I thought it was part C&C Red Alert in TBS mode. Imagine in this, Warcraft, Starcraft, etc. that you only build one very powerful unit and then go out and SMASH while every other road to your base is left open.
Heroes of Might and Magic allows for one super powerful hero who can carry all army, who can quickly move to most destinations on XL maps and once an area is scouted knows all he needs to know.. only with few exceptions.
Once this main hero exists, other heroes become purposeless. Sure you can build up some exotic stuff, but every main has a counter and that means it's a lot of time wasted.
TP is a major part that allows for this. Allows for single mind greedy expanding without much concern for spreading thin.. I guess a main hero could have invaded Russia!
So the game is most interesting at the "building the main hero phase" and once he exists at the "main battle phase".. hence the game is more like a military camp building, exploring and tbs battle game. But building the main hero is where spreading thin can be devastating, it's where you need scouts, chains, creeping.. this is the part which usually decides the game for me. The main battle is typical cosmetic.
In other words, TP simplifies the game a lot and some like it, some don't. If you want something more similar to what I wanted with a lot of micromanagement, then TP is not good, but then you should be able to build outside of town (which can be targeted and even used by the enemy, no HoMM 4 Caravan thank you), so you can deploy roads and rails for fast transport, otherwise all your exploring does your naught if your enemy can from the flank move towards your town as fast as you.
Of course one could simply scout in all directions, after e.g. 3-4 days, always keep the main army as close to town as one day travel before the scout who's explored the least in any direction, then your main army can get back to your town most of the time.. and I think many people will say "this is not HoMM" anymore.
Another proposal is that:
1) Make TP a late game spell, but always make it available if you want it. I don't like it to be a specific town building and I'd prefer if you had more choice over what you got in your mage guild.. so e.g. you go for transportation spells, but then maybe you don't get mighty destruction spells like Armageddon and need a second town for that...
2) Change the way TP works, so you set an arrival station which you can transport to from any point, but doing so opens a portal that lasts an amount of days depending on e.g. your skill or level.
This means placing a TP receiver at town would be suicide, because you risk enemies using the same portal from all sides. On the other hand, if one could build on the map, one could invest an area to be alike a trap field.. or where there are border guards only you can pass, so one can reach town, but now has to transport the main army back earlier. Heck I wouldn't mind if such a portal could be used to go back again. The spells should obviously not be called TP then.
So while I see many of you want to limit TP, I would like to expand it...
Anyway:
Quote:
Town protal is a slippery slope in Heroes. Makes the game go dumb but are also necessary. You wouldn't be able to finish many campaings in the series without Town Portal. As soon as you leave your town, an enemy hero will come. As AI calculates your movement, it doesn't move until you move. If you move away, he approaches town, knowing you will not reach it sooner. If you walk back to your town, AI will walk away. Town Portal solves this.
Another solution would be for an AI which is not "all knowing".. AI shouldn't know if I've logistics or have scouted the area beyond my town. Here I like to shroud of darkness, because it requires you to have scouts on vital bottlenecks.. here the AI has to find a way to get a scout in the middle of your camp without you noticing it, or it'll never know how far away you're from your town.
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Living time backwards
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Zombi_Wizzard
Famous Hero
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posted November 30, 2014 04:13 PM |
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OhforfSake said:
Another solution would be for an AI which is not "all knowing".. AI shouldn't know if I've logistics or have scouted the area beyond my town. Here I like to shroud of darkness, because it requires you to have scouts on vital bottlenecks.. here the AI has to find a way to get a scout in the middle of your camp without you noticing it, or it'll never know how far away you're from your town.
This.
+ 100 - I agree completley.
OhfofSake - i think you share a lot of my view of Heroes. From your post, idk if you like "one army doomstack" gameplay or not, but all your points are correct.
I personaly think the way Heroes plays has it's charms, for sure, but i think that it could be improved with army caps. And not just for TP reasons, but you would be forced to split your army and have several armies and "great" battles during one game that would have meaning.(think Total War for eg.) TP can still play important role in distance traveling. I don't think it would be useless at all. small one-on-one scenarios would not change at all, if done correctly.
But i know that my view is very controversial, and i may be in minority - and that this may be topic for diferent discussion.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted November 30, 2014 07:03 PM |
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Nocturnal said:
It demands high amounts of resources and can only be cast once a game month by a player
You are heading in the wrong direction faster than the speed of light once you come up with something that needs these limitations imo. Once you impose a month cooldown you effectively reduce convenience to zero which is exactly the opposite of what needs to be done. When you have something that costs a lot of resources and has an extremely long cooldown, this will inevitably reduce to being only a wildcard that will save your behind when you are about to be run over by the enemy which, once again, is exactly the opposite of what Town Portal needs to be.
The idea of actually being able to place two-way teleporters on the map is kind of interesting however, but I fear this will be even more devastating for gameplay than H3 town portal was (this would essentially be an "anywhere portal").
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hycoo7
Tavern Dweller
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posted November 30, 2014 09:59 PM |
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Instead of town portal you could have time travel, which lets you backtrack where you were like a week ago. Not a big fan of any of the tp versions in earlier games, except for infernos gates. There should be no spell which you must have in a playthrough.
I also would not mind seeing the doomstack hero begone, and having 2-3 heroes be the optimal way to play. This would give more meaning to neutral units and enemy towns you capture (using their units), aswell as having different types of heroes.
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Nocturnal
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted November 30, 2014 11:49 PM |
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alcibiades said:
Nocturnal said:
It demands high amounts of resources and can only be cast once a game month by a player
You are heading in the wrong direction faster than the speed of light once you come up with something that needs these limitations imo. Once you impose a month cooldown you effectively reduce convenience to zero which is exactly the opposite of what needs to be done. When you have something that costs a lot of resources and has an extremely long cooldown, this will inevitably reduce to being only a wildcard that will save your behind when you are about to be run over by the enemy which, once again, is exactly the opposite of what Town Portal needs to be.
The idea of actually being able to place two-way teleporters on the map is kind of interesting however, but I fear this will be even more devastating for gameplay than H3 town portal was (this would essentially be an "anywhere portal").
You can build a new town portal every month, not use one every month. The cast spell is not town portal but "Build Town Portal"
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted December 01, 2014 12:11 AM |
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The main issue of using Town Portal is that you can ferry your main army around at will, as long as you have access to the Town Portal, regardless of how it's set up. One of the things H6 did wrong was that it combined the creature pools across your kingdom, making them recruitable at any of your towns (I am not considering other faction towns, because of the town conversions you could do). How is a freely available Town Portal going to remedy that aspect?
So, as I see it, restrictions need to apply to avoid abuse. But I agree as well that the restrictions shouldn't be so severe that the convenience drops to zero.
In H3, it was a spell that required Advanced Wisdom to use. That was pretty harsh, for Might Heroes, forcing them to get Wisdom as a skill as well if they wanted to make use of it. Furthermore, it became even more powerful with Earth Magic, giving you access to any of your towns, rather than the nearest. This shifted the use of Town Portal too strong towards Magic Heroes.
If both Hero types have to get equal access to Town Portal, you have to forego Town Portal as a spell that costs mana. Either it becomes a mana-less ability, or a building.
I already posted my first suggestion: Towns should have a Town Portal building and any Hero can use such a Town Portal to move from one town to another that you own, once per day. Furthermore, the adventure map has an extra building type, an inert Town Portal, that can be used as entry point. When accessing such an inert Town Portal, you can reach any of your towns with a Town Portal building present.
However, this suggestion still doesn't prevent the player from massing all troops from all towns into a single one in one day - you just need multiple Heroes, chaining the creatures through your towns with them.
As another suggestion: once you have built a Town Portal in one of your towns, your Heroes can purchase Town Portal scrolls from the Mage Guilds. The price is subject to balancing (may depend on the map size - and thereby expected game length). These scrolls are single-use only, they are consumed when used. I'm not sure whether you should be able to buy more than one or that it should be a unique item per Hero.
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castiel_789
Adventuring Hero
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posted December 01, 2014 12:48 AM |
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hycoo7 said:
Instead of town portal you could have time travel.... There should be no spell which you must have in a playthrough.
Are u implying that time travel is not a spell? If so what is the mechanic around time travel?
hycoo7 said:
I also would not mind seeing the doomstack hero begone,
I'm not sure if you're implying army cap or attrition but in any case most multiplayer are competitive people and forcing a play style is counter intuitive.
Nocturnal said:
You can build a new town portal every month, not use one every month. The cast spell is not town portal but "Build Town Portal"
theoretically u could also create a line of supply between an opposing castle and 3 of you nearby well placed castle. Map changes and soft spot can exist.
Back on topic
It's one of those simple very complex problem you want to travel but not to the point where it's spammable. The problem come from the source mana pool. But since fixing a problem to create another is not the way to go best way would be to leave it an adventure spell, allow TP to every castle, make it so it's not a commodity for every hero. Like h5 enough for strong hero but no so for starting hero.
The cap should be softened a litle bit 15 on 40 on that system felt more natural. For reference somewhere beetween the stroll and the grinding in the exp curver. Normally the level reachable around week 3 to 4 by main hero.
The link should be severed to the mana. Instead of costing mana it has charge of his own that are refilled every month so during a month you can use ~ 3 to 5 TP. This way u have to think when u use it and it's not spammable to the point where main hero can defend any town.
Also for champaign and single player the difficulty could adjust the number of use. Hard : 3 to easy : unlimited
I was toying with the idea of # of castle owned = # of TP but the former seem more adaptable to the experience of players.
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Gryphs
Supreme Hero
The Clever Title
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posted December 01, 2014 02:10 AM |
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I imagine casting a spell that moves a whole army would be more time consuming than say shooting a fireball so perhaps a ritual system could be used for things like town portal. You could cast it but it would take a whole day to move your army, and would remove all your movement points. You could also add a resource cost to the ritual which would act as ingredients so to speak which would allow might heroes to use it. This way you would have to wait before teleportation and would be able to cross large distances but without being able to teleport to a city about to be attacked.
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted December 01, 2014 02:50 AM |
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Edited by Galaad at 02:51, 01 Dec 2014.
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Quote:
Towns should have a Town Portal building and any Hero can use such a Town Portal to move from one town to another that you own, once per day. Furthermore, the adventure map has an extra building type, an inert Town Portal, that can be used as entry point. When accessing such an inert Town Portal, you can reach any of your towns with a Town Portal building present.
However, this suggestion still doesn't prevent the player from massing all troops from all towns into a single one in one day - you just need multiple Heroes, chaining the creatures through your towns with them.
We know from the gameplay features revealed on mmh7 blog that there will be these choke points, defined as either bridges or teleporters. We also know, and I quote, that it will not be possible to recruit troops from all your kingdom in any town and fort. Finally is also confirmed there will be no town conversion, and that a caravan system will be implemented as well as forts.
The question I am asking myself here is, would massing top creatures from all towns into a single hero always worth it, and would it be fun and somehow balanced ?
Chaining all the heroes to allocate creatures within them, probably the main hero with top ones, would likely be an ending game feature, and not a mid-game one. Or would it be ?
Quote:
As another suggestion: once you have built a Town Portal in one of your towns, your Heroes can purchase Town Portal scrolls from the Mage Guilds. The price is subject to balancing (may depend on the map size - and thereby expected game length). These scrolls are single-use only, they are consumed when used. I'm not sure whether you should be able to buy more than one or that it should be a unique item per Hero.
This is a very good idea. Being able to teleport without using the said building from a single-use scroll instead of a learned spell that its casting would only be limited by hero's mana and movement. I think you should be able to buy more than one, but not more than one at the same time, and after use there wouldn't be any restock for a defined time, where the convenience will be dropped by the fact that you just used it. I also agree with the idea that the hero would need a certain level to be able to cast the spell.
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OhforfSake
Promising
Legendary Hero
Initiate
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posted December 01, 2014 05:07 AM |
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hycoo7 said:
Instead of town portal you could have time travel, which lets you backtrack where you were like a week ago.
Someone beat you to it! It's called save game.
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Living time backwards
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted December 01, 2014 08:31 AM |
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Nocturnal said:
You can build a new town portal every month, not use one every month. The cast spell is not town portal but "Build Town Portal"
I see - but it still strikes me as awfully inconvenient and inflexible. A month in game time is still an awfully long time.
Gryphs said:
I imagine casting a spell that moves a whole army would be more time consuming than say shooting a fireball so perhaps a ritual system could be used for things like town portal. You could cast it but it would take a whole day to move your army, and would remove all your movement points. You could also add a resource cost to the ritual which would act as ingredients so to speak which would allow might heroes to use it. This way you would have to wait before teleportation and would be able to cross large distances but without being able to teleport to a city about to be attacked.
This is actually a pretty interesting aspect. We already had a Town Portal that consumes all your movement (in H5) but that doesn't solve the problem that you can zip back to a town to defend it. One could change it so that casting Town Portal uses all your movement and your army doesn't appear at target destination until beginning of next turn at which point you will start with your normal movement (minus perhaps any movement you'd used before casting the spell the day before). The advantage of this would be that you can't cast spell when enemy is one day's travel from your town and then make sure to defend it - on the other hand, you could then cast it when he was two days' of travel from it and then arrive the day before he got there and go out and attack him yourself, so that might work against this model - but still, it would require a bit more planning.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted December 01, 2014 08:45 AM |
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fuChris said:
Town portal basicallyworks as an insurance policy.
And since all insurances suck one way or another, this one sucks as well.
Personally I like the pressure that comes with having no TP, because no matter how this is set up, it will take a lot of time get the insurance, and until then you have to guard against surprise attacks anyway. In HoMM 5 your hero needs to be level 20 and you need to build a full guild to get TP, but if you play on high difficulty on maps like, umm, was it Underground Treasure or something like that, and since the AI knows your whereabouts, you must be able to react when they come calling (which they will do eventually), even though this might happen, when you are a couple of days away from your town.
Still, you may get it wrong, but since the AI cheats as well, you can always reload. 
In MP, TP is bollocks anyway. No TP helps to decide the game.
Which means, if it was for me they could drop Town Portal altogether.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted December 01, 2014 08:59 AM |
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JollyJoker said:
And since all insurances suck one way or another, this one sucks as well.
Personally I like the pressure that comes with having no TP (...) In MP, TP is bollocks anyway. No TP helps to decide the game.
Which means, if it was for me they could drop Town Portal altogether.
And again, this is because you only consider the gameplay aspect of the TP - and not the convenience aspect.
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted December 01, 2014 09:16 AM |
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Gryphs said:
You could cast it but it would take a whole day to move your army, and would remove all your movement points.
So you move with your army until 1 movement point remains and then you teleport? No, I think there should be a minimum amount of movement points left before you can cast it, perhaps even as much as full movement points.
Galaad said:
We know from the gameplay features revealed on mmh7 blog that there will be these choke points, defined as either bridges or teleporters. We also know, and I quote, that it will not be possible to recruit troops from all your kingdom in any town and fort. Finally is also confirmed there will be no town conversion, and that a caravan system will be implemented as well as forts.
I think you misunderstand me. The best way I can illustrate what I mean is by an example.
Suppose you have three towns. Your main Hero is in town C. Besides that, each town has a Hero as Garrison Commander. A new week begins so each one has new creatures to recruit. You recruit the creatures in all three towns. In Town A, you load all creatures on Hero A and then teleport him to Town B. Once there, you load all creatures on Hero B (the ones purchased from the town as well as those brought in by Hero A) and with Hero B, you teleport to Town C - where you have Hero C as well as your main Hero. You load everything on your main Hero just like you did with Hero B moments before and then teleport Hero C to Town A.
The end result is that within a single day, all your towns still have a Garrison Commander, while your main Hero also has all creatures produced by your towns that week.
The only way to prevent that is by making Town Portal level restricted.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted December 01, 2014 09:28 AM |
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alcibiades said:
JollyJoker said:
And since all insurances suck one way or another, this one sucks as well.
Personally I like the pressure that comes with having no TP (...) In MP, TP is bollocks anyway. No TP helps to decide the game.
Which means, if it was for me they could drop Town Portal altogether.
And again, this is because you only consider the gameplay aspect of the TP - and not the convenience aspect.
The convenience aspect has been covered by the creature pool - but that was too convenient for many, it would seem. You don't play XL SP maps and suddenly decide you have to be at the other map end - doesn't happen; and you can't do big maps with one hero anyway. Not in HoMM 5 and not in HoMM 6, and in HoMM 6 you not only had the creature pool, the hirable heroes grew in strength according to your main.
Which means, there are a lot of ways to make things convenient without the use of fast travelling devices.
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Darkem
Known Hero
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posted December 01, 2014 09:56 AM |
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Town portal shouldn't be allowed to use in multiplayer game. However, if we don't want to see such severe limitations in the game, the spell could be possible to use only within one area of control, once per day. What do you think about it?
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