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| Thread: Spell organization: Heroes III vs Heroes V |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · NEXT» |
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Pollo2002
Famous Hero
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posted December 26, 2019 08:53 PM |
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Spell organization: Heroes III vs Heroes V
I'm considering doing a mod that restructure the magic system. (I've been waiting too long for HOTA to do it, but it seems it will not happen in the next few years either)
I would like to read arguments on why the heroes III system is better than heroes V.
What I'm talking about here is the division of spells between the different schools.
I always disliked heroes 3 organization. It's Fire/Water/Air/Earth, but other than some thematic flavor, the school doesn't tell anything to the player. And investing in any kind of those spells doesn't lead the player to any kind of general strategy.
PLayers Choose a school of magic for very specific spells, not for a grand strategy or plan for a hero. Of course even talking about the concept of the schools, let's pretend for a moment the schools are balanced.
Schools are basically the same, a litle defense, a little offense, some damage spells, etc. One even wonders why there exist different spell schools. This is another reason I liked Heroes II magic system better. Yes there were no schools, but it's better to have schools if there is no inherent strategic purpose for it's existence?
On the other hand in Heroes V, the spells are organizaed by strategic functionality so when a player chooses a school to focus on, it's choosing a strategic path, regardless of specific spell selection.
That also gives a more particular distinction to Heroes and towns giving preference to certain schools that change more how a heroes or town is played.
I guess my opinion is that Heroes II>Heroes V> Heroes III.
I would like to hear arguments of why this is not the case.
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monere
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
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posted December 26, 2019 10:13 PM |
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Quote:
I would like to read arguments on why the heroes III system is better than heroes V
better? I don't know if it's better, but since you want to hear opinions here's mine regarding why I like H3 spells more than H5 spells...
1) there's more of them... in a strategy game (like H3 I assume pretends to be) more is better. It adds to the strategic element of the game;
2) they're better designed... all of them are so unique and so clear that you just cannot NOT like them. In comparison, most H5 spells are surrounded by smoke, and they're also too dark and vague... design-wise I mean. Well, at least that's how they appear to me;
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Pollo2002
Famous Hero
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posted December 26, 2019 10:16 PM |
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While i appreciate the answer, your complaints have nothing to do with the system, but more a complain on specific spells itself.
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phe
Famous Hero
Life and Freedom
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posted December 26, 2019 10:23 PM |
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-spells should be separated into single and mass version
-single Haste and Slow should be 2-3 level, their mass versions on 4-5 level
-single spells could have small area effect on expert
-most important spells like Town Portal, Resurrection, Dimension Door, Fly should be at expert level for every user regardless of knowledge of schools of magic, knowledge of schools of magic would only decrease their mana cost
-not permanent Resurrection could be separate 3rd level spell
-Town Portal, View Air, View Earth should have limited range
-mana cost should depend on stack size
-spells should have some bonuses after some number of casts
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Hourglass
Supreme Hero
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posted December 26, 2019 11:13 PM |
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I understand why developers in more modern games tend to serate their spells to different categories (support spells, debuffs, damage...) and this is done even in Homm4. To be honest, separating spells such a way has likely been always around, even in first Final Fantasies there's a difference between white and black magic etc.
But honestly, I kinda like Homm3's style because it's so different.
And I don't completely agree that there isn't any tries of making some kind of diversion between spells thou:
Fire magic for example has kind of "selfdestructible" theme:
1)All fire dmg spells and berserk can hit your own units as well
2)If you wanna bring back dead troops, you literally need to Sacrifice something else first
3)If you wanna buff your troops with fire magic (Bloodlust, Frenzy,Slayer, Fire Shield) it's always making them deal more damage, but you need to "open" yourself to the dangers of the fight aswell.
4)Curse makes enemies to take less dmg, but still some blood is spilled 
Earth has "fatigue" plan going on:
1) Slow, quicksand and Force field will make your opponent hard to move in the battlefield
2) The buff are about making you taking less beating and overall protecting you (Shield, Stone skin, Anti magic, Resurection and Animate Death)
Water is very buff-based magic school:
1) Dominate the battlefield with spells cast on your creatures: Prayer, Bless, Mirth, Clone.
2) Cure and Dispel to keep nasty debuffs away.
3) If water debuffs, it's about making the enemy less of thread, while not completely shutting they off. (Weakness, Forgetfulness.)
4) Clearly least ways of dealing damage (Ice bolt, Frost Ring)
I can't really see what Air is really up to. Kiting your way to victory with hasty archers with precision and fortune on them, while taking less damage from indirect sources with Air shield and Magic Mirror?
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Pollo2002
Famous Hero
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posted December 26, 2019 11:13 PM |
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the post of PHE was off topic.
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Pollo2002
Famous Hero
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posted December 27, 2019 12:47 AM |
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That was some streetching.....
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portus
Adventuring Hero
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posted December 27, 2019 08:13 AM |
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Edited by portus at 08:16, 27 Dec 2019.
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Hourglass has a point there, or at least I agree with him. I do like better the separation of spells in H3 tan in H5; I find the criteria of the elements likeable enough for factions to rally around (making their lore and environment more prone to some schools than others).
Meanwhile, H5's separation based on "functionality" just doesn't seem that appealing to me, and it even feels a bit more "one-dimensional" than nature elements whereas the latters look as if they can actually host a more connected-to-nature-forces philosophy. However, I must admit that, glad as I was when H5 came out, it never really enticed me even while acknowledging its enhancements (this obsession with going 3D everywhere back then was a kick in the groin when it was my favourite game series' turn), so I might be biased or even poorly informed on H5 magic system comparing to my H3 knowledge.
In conclusion, I would definitely go for nature concepts such as elements rather than functionality (destructive, etc). Hourglass has already shown how, while having "a little bit of this and that" as Pollo says, there's a noticeable trend towards different strategies. You could start from there and then stress those trends. You could even add more "elements" such as wood, metal, moon, void or so, as some other community members have featured all along in their presented projects. I also like how it is dealt with in this role playing board game, "The legend of the five rings".
As to me, last year I was working on a project based on the concepts of order/chaos/light/darkness while giving each town "unofficially" a certain nature element flavour. Order and chaos were opposed, just like light and darkness, and so would happen with the twelve factions intended depending on the concept they rallied around. At the same time, some of the factions would be partly connected to some of the other concepts in a H4 fashion (for example, castle/haven/knight's castle would belong in Order alignment but with fair connections to Light).
This would result in the biggest part of the spell collection categorized in those four schools, and their odds of showing up would obviously depend on the faction's alignment. BUT, at the same time, each faction would have a few specific spells more representative of their context (carrying on with the example, Reanimate dead would only show up in Necropolis, and Blizzard would only show up in a snow-based faction). These spells would be available ONLY in the specific faction's towns and would also belong to one of the concepts associated to that faction. Any hero who visits a "foreign" town can learn these spells, but they need to get their asses to that town if they ever want to learn them.
I hope this helps you find your way, or at least help you get some sleep haha.
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Ssssshhhhhhhpp!! Ah! (crimson cloud and I'm gone)
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Skeggy
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted December 27, 2019 10:24 AM |
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H5 has some serious unresolved issues concerning the philosophy of the spell system.
First of all, it is not quite clear how light-dark opposition can provide such intense justification for selective affection of mass spells when at the same time all wide-areas and mass destructive spells, and summoning area spells (firewall) gives damage to all units indiscriminately. I suppose a hostile-only fire trap (summoning) is the exception to this unreasonable practice.
It’s like light and dark are somehow supposed to be more intelligent principles and destruction and summoning non-intelligent even though summoning can summon Phoenixes, clone troops, summon blade barriers ...
I suppose it’s justified to assume that destructive principle should not discriminate friends from hostiles, but that’s ok only if we assume that destructive principle is more elemental-evoking than authentic magic, and that would imply that destruction is a more primitive sub-branch of summoning. But that reasoning also implies that factions should have ceratin elemental immunities and weakneses, because, if we give elemental-evoking (sub-branch of summoning), the relevance of official school, that means that elements are much more integrated into lore since they affect all.
Four elemental schools have none of these problems, they are an authentic representation of possible full-fledged magical realities.
The only thing that H3 is missing is factional-based magical immunities and weaknesees.
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JoonasTo
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
What if Elvin was female?
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posted December 27, 2019 10:37 AM |
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Let’s get this out of the way first, heroes 4 spell schools suck and the spells themselves are bland copies of each other.
Second, heroes 5 spells are totally random. Why is haste a light spell? Why is righteous might a light spell? Why in the hells is divine vengeance a light spell? These have nothing to do with light. It’s retarded. There’s only blind in it that is actually a light spell. So one, out of all the spells. I think heroes 3 elements did a lot better job than this. Ice bolt, summon water elemental, water walk...
... wait, water walk? Fly? View earth? Aren’t those, like, adventure map spells? Inside different spell schools too. Ofc, it’s not perfectly balanced but in a system of specialisations these would all belong to adventure map spell school. That would be much worse.
But what about destructive/summoning? It’s great, right? No. Summoning has like what, four summoning spells? Arcane crystal, hive, elemental and phoenix. You can maybe argue a case for firewall/firetrap too. Wasp swarm, magic fist? Destructive. Earthquake? Destructive. Arcane armour? Buff.
Destructive is clearly defined. Stuff that hurts. This also means it’s the least useful spell school. It’s very binary and loses all power after a certain point in the game. If this is what you wish to aim for, then by all means do. Just understand the caveats that come with it.
So for example a H3 would look like this:
H3 destructive:
All the damage spells
H3 debuff:
All the spells affecting enemy units
H3 buff:
All spells affecting your own units
H3 adventure map:
All the spells cast on the adventure map
In this system every hero will pick the adventure map school and the debuff school every game. That is because heroes isn’t played against your opponent, it’s played against the map. Thus DD, Fly, TP, View air/earth are the best spells in the game. After that come slow and blind. There are some niche uses for other spells but these are what govern whether you win or not.
But if you stop thinking about the game as a strategy game(that it really isn’t) that you play to win but rather an adventure game that it’s meant to be. You soon realise elemental magic is far superior because of the innate understanding and thematic connections we make. Chain lightning is air. Fireball is fire. Earthquake is earth. Ice bolt is water. These are much more enjoyable to play. You want to walk on water? Get water magic. You want to fly? Get air magic. You want to burn your enemy to cinders? Get fire magic. You don’t need to explain this to a person. They don’t need to be a gamer to understand it. And that cannot be stressed enough.
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted December 27, 2019 12:29 PM |
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JoonasTo said:
Destructive is clearly defined. Stuff that hurts. This also means it’s the least useful spell school.
I never really learned to play Heroes V but I used to pick Destructive Magic and some Ice perk because it would give me the chance to learn an Attack related perk (Frozen Weapons, I think) that gives about plus 15% damage to all creatures. Pretty nice buff, while I had no idea what to do with the magic stuff...
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Skeggy
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted December 27, 2019 01:03 PM |
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JoonasTo said:
So for example a H3 would look like this:
H3 destructive:
All the damage spells
H3 debuff:
All the spells affecting enemy units
H3 buff:
All spells affecting your own units
H3 adventure map:
All the spells cast on the adventure map
Well, it is like that in H5. Light is buff, dark is debuff, destructive is destructive, summoning is a little bit of everything and there are adventure spells also.
Perhaps names should be changed, but the essence is there and it can be recognized as such.
Problem with H5 spell system is incoherence that it has, both on level of consistencies of principles and how those principles effects and should affect whole gameplay, and consistencies of spells in spell schools.
I can understand the problem with light magic having a divine vengeance spell.
I can also understand the problem of summoning magic having firewall spell when master of fire perk from destructive magic adds armor-damaging effect (-50% defense) to firewall.
Where would you place those two spells? What other possible inconsistencies can you quantify?
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monere
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
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posted December 27, 2019 09:05 PM |
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Quote:
heroes 4 spell schools suck and the spells themselves are bland copies of each other
are you sure you meant to say "heroes 4"? Because if you did, I disagree with you. H4 spells are at least as good as H3 spells in my opinion
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elaf
Adventuring Hero
viajeinterminable.com
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posted December 28, 2019 12:09 AM |
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This was my last attempt some years ago:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1SuPGnzHJ-AZVJWZDNJSEYwRWs/view?usp=sharing
http://heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=39835
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1SuPGnzHJ-AZVJWZDNJSEYwRWs/view?usp=sharing
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted December 28, 2019 08:44 AM |
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Mm, I think changing it to effect would need tow extra schools, Adventure (obviously) and Arcane, the latter covering such Spells as Hypnotise, Sacrifice, Anti-Magic, Resurrection, Teleport, Clone, etc. Arcane would probably require at least one other magic school to be learned before you could learn it.
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JoonasTo
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
What if Elvin was female?
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posted December 28, 2019 06:12 PM |
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monere said:
Quote:
heroes 4 spell schools suck and the spells themselves are bland copies of each other
are you sure you meant to say "heroes 4"? Because if you did, I disagree with you. H4 spells are at least as good as H3 spells in my opinion
Heal/Bind Wounds
Phantom Image/Create illusion
Magic Fist/Magic Arrow
Haste/Speed
First Strike/Snake Strike
Spirit Armour/Stoneskin
Then there is the mass system, ward system, dispel system, summon system...there are great ideas in there, but the overall experience is poor.
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monere
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
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posted December 28, 2019 06:38 PM |
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Edited by monere at 18:41, 28 Dec 2019.
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I agree with you regarding the spells you've exemplified, but I don't agree that the overall experience is poor.
There are WAY more spells that I like than spells that I dislike, which I have not seen before, and I like their concept, as well as how well designed they are. More specifically, here are my favorite H4 spells:
LIFE
- exorcism
- defender
- martyr
- heavenly shield
- song of peace
- celestial armor
- regeneration
- sanctuary
ORDER
- blur
- displacement
- flight
- cowardice
- pain mirror
(I'm not even including the powerful blind, berserk, and the mass versions of blur, precision, slow, and forgetfulness which makes ORDER magic school the best and most versatile school in my opinion)
DEATH
- poison
- aura of fear
- mass sorrow (I love this underrated spell, along with Mass Misfortune from CHAOS magic school)
- vampiric touch
- hand of death
CHAOS
- fire aura
- confusion
- first strike
- misfortune
- mass slayer
- lightning
- cat reflexes
- cloud of confusion
- mass misfortune
- disintegrate
NATURE
- terrain walk
- summon leprechaun
- fortune
- giant strength
- wasp swarm
- dragon strength
(Again, I'm not including in this list the mass versions of fortune, speed, and snake strike, which also makes this school a powerful and cool one, as well)
And yes, I do like all of these spells, and use them frequently when I play H4. In balanced / hard fights I have always had to think about which spells to use first, and on which creatures, unlike in H3 where you usually go for mass slow / blind / berserk and it's game over. In H4 the spell system is better in my opinion, and I oftentimes find myself using various spells, not just mass slow + blind. I recall fights where I had to cast dragon strength first instead of blind, or I had to cast mass forgetfulness on nasty cyclops / venom spawns instead of berserk... hell, many times summoning leprechauns (so I can take retaliations off and buffing myself with fortune) instead of casting blur / mass speed has proved to be the right choice. In H3 you don't have this tactical depth when it comes to spells, and I reckon this is also because there's only one cast per turn, whereas in H4 you can cast up to 7 times per turn if you have an all-hero army.
As for the wards, there's many of them because there needs to be many (you either get protection against all magic schools, or you get none, which is why they have had to create so many wards). But I like the idea of wards, just as I like the mass casting of some powerful spells (slow for example which is ruining many H3 fights). The mass casting system is better implemented in H4 than in H3 in what concerns me.
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted December 29, 2019 05:06 PM |
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What he means is there are a lot of similar spells, be it within a school (slow, mass slow, create image, create illusion, etc...) be it between two schools (slow/fatigue, haste/speed, confusion/wasp swarm, etc...) because one needs to have access to something similar, despise having this or that magic school.
For me Summon Ship is the best example of how the system is broken. If you don't have Life Magic you can't learn it and yet it is sometimes absolutely necessary to proceed. Fortunately, you can use scrolls of spells from schools you don't have but this is none the less a lousy implementation.
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted December 29, 2019 05:47 PM |
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JoonasTo said:
Then there is the mass system, ward system, dispel system, summon system...there are great ideas in there, but the overall experience is poor.
That's because you really, really need confusion/waspswarm/song of peace (also blind and terror in Equilibris) unlss your units can cast those. I'd either see those removed entirely (too powerful) or distributed evenly between schools.
3 stacks of 1 genie allow you to kill pretty much everything that isn't faster than genies (rare) or overly numerous (rare) or magic immune (rare) with just some mages and halfings.
The contrast between pathetically weak Might town and Order town is lol. 
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monere
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
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posted December 29, 2019 06:49 PM |
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Doomforge said:
The contrast between pathetically weak Might town and Order town is lol.
yeah, that's one of the bad things about H4
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