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| Thread: Strange design decisions in Homm3 |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · NEXT» |
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Hourglass
Supreme Hero
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posted January 02, 2022 12:28 AM |
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Strange design decisions in Homm3
I was wondering,
There are a bunch of things in the game that I cannot exactly understand why a certain things were designed in a certain way. I think it doesn't make sense to make a thread for each of them, so I decided to make a thread were people can ask questions about things they found weird in the game, and also bring their own theories why some things work like they do. Maybe some of things are simple mistakes, but what do you guys think?
1. Why are Air Elementals weak against Lightning spells and Earth Elementals weak against Meteor Shower(earth spell)?
Fire is strong against Water, and vice versa. The water and fire elementals even do extra damage for each other, and this rule is true even for air and earth elementals. But for some reason, only the latter are taking extra damage from the same elemental magic that they do present?
2. Why is Protection from Air the only lvl 2 spell a hero can start with, if he/she doesn't have a spell specialty?
The basic formula is pretty straightforward: If a hero does have a spell book, but doesn't have a spell specialty that would be level 2 or beyond, the hero will start with a level 1 spell - except some of the heroes start with Protection from Air, which happens to be a level 2 spell, breaking this rule. They could have chosen Protection from Water, which is also lvl 1, so there doesn't seem to be good reason of breaking the formula.
3. Why does Pasis and Monere start with extra Air elementals? Normal Conflux army is Pixies, Air and Water elementals, but for some reason, these heroes come with two stacks of Air elementals. It would be easier to understand if they did have a specialty, but they're actually both Physic and Magic elemental specialists.
4. Why Thunar and Erdamon are exact copies? They both have Earth elemental specialty, and both come with Tactics and Estates, so nothing gameplay-wise are making them different from another.
5. Why does Badge of Courage gives protection against mind spells?
This is no longer true in Hota, but was this really a bug? I mean, you would probably need to write pretty good amount of code to accomplish an item like this, so for me at least, it seems that it would have had some kind of intention behind it. But if so - why?
6. Why is Learning so bad?
You could literally argue it giving negative value. +15% cannot mean more than an extra level, but you will need to sacrifice 3 level ups in order to have the the extra experience. There's a lot of time between the early concepts of ROE to the final release of SOD, yet this skill remained unchanged. Was there some thought process behind it, or is this simply a work accident?
7. Why is Eagle Eye so bad?
Pretty much the same thing as with Learning, but this one is weird in different way, as the skill actually has history - it was first introduced in Homm2. The skill saw some minor changes when it was added to Homm3, but interestingly they didn't just add it, but it did come with 3 artifacts, all giving very minor boosts to the skill, and each town received an Eagle Eye specialist (except Inferno, which only got hero with just normal Eagle Eye) I mean, they did went pretty all in with EE, I just cannot really see why did the skill made comeback in the first place?
8. Why mana regeneration is so inconsistent?
Daily mana regen is 1, Mysticim gives 1-3(sod) and the three artifacts give 1-3 mana each day. Now, if I only would have this information, I would expect mana being very limited resource - but for reason, a simple visit to magic well gives all your mana back, and same goes for spending the night in town with a basic mage guild. Some sources are also not only just giving mana back, but also doubling it. And we're not talking about rare and highly guarded objects. For me, it seems that there's simply no middle ground, some sources give tiny fractions of mana back, while others are giving all or more it without a sweat.
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Gandalf196
Disgraceful
Supreme Hero
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posted January 02, 2022 12:58 AM |
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Why does the Wizard class have such an atrocious scaling after level 10, namely 30/20/20/30 rather than the usual 20/20/30/30 for spellcasters?
Why do Warlocks get an absurdly useful (and cheap) unique building (Mana Vortex) while other towns get things as ugh ... Brotherhood of the Sword?
Why do some specialties have zero (like zero zero) usefulness while others are beyond broken?
And the list goes on. Look, HOMM3 is the one I love the most (the most charming, whimsical, yada, yada), but it is not well-thought at the detail level. Furthermore, the more I play Heroes II (the version that is currently being developed, fheroesII), the more I realize Heroes II was much more fleshed out in terms of its own features, while the successor accrued half-baked features on top of it.
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Eranikus
Tavern Dweller
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posted January 02, 2022 01:40 AM |
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Edited by Eranikus at 01:41, 02 Jan 2022.
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Hourglass said:
I was wondering,
There are a bunch of things in the game that I cannot exactly understand why a certain things were designed in a certain way. I think it doesn't make sense to make a thread for each of them, so I decided to make a thread were people can ask questions about things they found weird in the game, and also bring their own theories why some things work like they do. Maybe some of things are simple mistakes, but what do you guys think?
Gus Smedstad from NWC about the Badge of Courage:
"It's not a bug. The Badge of Courage has an interesting history;
originally it made you immune to the Fear spell. The Fear spell, as you
may know, got dropped as being unbalancing. The Badge of Courage then
got changed to "+1 Morale and immunity to all Mind spells". Berserk is
a mind spell. Unfortunately, the help text wasn't updated.
- Gus"
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Phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted January 02, 2022 08:15 AM |
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1) Why are Planeswalkers the only heroes with static creature specialties?
2) Why were some specialties so OP? (Logistics, Offense, Armorer, Intelligence, Navigation, Necromancy, skeletons, Animate Dead, Haste, Prayer, Meteor Shower and Chain Lightning.)
3) Why are some specialties almost useless? (Melodia, Astral, Inteus, Eagle Eye and First Aid specialists.)
4) Why are there no pikemen, centaur, gremlin, medusa, pixie or air elemental specialists?
5) Why is First Aid so bad?
6) Why are Town Portal and Dimension Door extremely OP?
7) Why can Gold and Black Dragons not be resurrected, unless you equip a relic that ruins their natural resistances + Resistance skill and artifacts?
8) Why is Armageddon extremely OP?
9) Why can you not cast positive Fire spells on Fire Immune creatures?
10) Why does certain artifacts ruin skills? (Wizard's Well - Mysticism, Pendant of Courage - Leadership AND Luck, Angel Wings - Pathfinding. (and Navigation.)
11) Why does Haste and Slow and Bless and Curse counter each other and why are they all so OP? (And they are even level 1 spells.)
12) Why is Blind level 2 and Hypnotize level 3, when Blind is 1000 times better than Hypnotize?
13) Why does Disguise exist?
14) Why does Teleport become so extremely cheap at expert level?
15) Why can AI not build certain buildings and cast certain spells?
16) Why does morale and luck cap at +3? (It is often possible to have a lot more than +3.)
17) Why does Resurrection require Advanced Earth, but Animate Dead does not?
18) Why are Fly and DD both in Air Magic? (DD should have been in Fire Magic.)
19) Why does Bron start with level 4 units?
20) Why does Torosar not have Artillery, when he specialises in Ballista?
21) Why does Necropolis have a First Aid Tent in their Blacksmith, when none of their heroes can learn First Aid?
22) Why does clerics not have access to First Aid Tent, even though they have the highest chance to learn First Aid?
23) Why does the Archery, Eagle Eye and Necromancy artifacts require a particular skill to use, when no other artifacts require any skill to use?
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BTB
Famous Hero
Moist & Creamy
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posted January 02, 2022 09:44 AM |
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Edited by BTB at 09:50, 02 Jan 2022.
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I mean, I can give actual answers to these questions, but most of them really boil down to a couple of things.
One, the idea just wasn't well thought-out. They went with what seemed good on paper rather than in practice because what would have been good in practice seemed overpowered on paper (see Learning and Mysticism being underpowered), or the inverse for things that ended up overpowered. This also applies when another idea interacts poorly with an existing one and the developers fail to notice, like when artifacts completely invalidate skills.
Two, the sunk costs fallacy - i.e. the "square peg in a round hole" problem. Rather than ditching an idea that clearly isn't working out (Eagle Eye) you just shove it in as hard as you can because you really want it to fit.
Three, time constraints. This is the answer to most questions related to Conflux's design.
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Hourglass
Supreme Hero
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posted January 02, 2022 11:21 AM |
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@BTB
I think you're right and many of these things can be explained as you presented, mistakes do happen and you just don't have endless time to polish up everything. Btw, I think it could be really interesting if you would go in-depth for some of the question, as I know you know quite many things of the game that some of us likely don't.
Eranikus said:
Gus Smedstad from NWC about the Badge of Courage
I think I've read this story at one point, but to me it only makes more questions. A whole bunch of protection artifacts were designed to the neck-slot, so for me it seems the should've been some sort of "choose the thing you're willing to have protection against." However, the Badge being treasure level artifact and going to Misc slot pretty much makes all the rest of those artifacts downright useless. This wouldn't be that big of a deal if the artifact had higher level, it would make more sense, but this isn't the case. Also, when you look at the artifact lists on Homm2, 4 artifacts give +1 morale while there's also 4 that give +1 luck. So, I think they were supposed to somewhat match that design in Homm3 and have 3 artifacts of each.
It's a rare case where despite it coming from the developer, I'm not fully convinced and I think the story isn't exactly complete and is missing some pieces.
Phoenix4ever said:
1) Why are Planeswalkers the only heroes with static creature specialties?
I personally think this is an actual design choice, and not something that was done in a rush: Conflux was back in the day was a new town, and probably they wanted to "spicy it up" and making it somewhat different than the original towns. I think this is also the reason why Elementalist have 6 primary stat points and not 5, and why the all the "new" spell specialties have fixed values and not scaling.
Phoenix4ever said:
2) Why were some specialties so OP? (Logistics, Offense, Armorer, Intelligence, Navigation, Necromancy, skeletons, Animate Dead, Haste, Prayer, Meteor Shower and Chain Lightning.)
3) Why are some specialties almost useless? (Melodia, Astral, Inteus, Eagle Eye and First Aid specialists.)
Probably this is something that was decided in the very beginning: not all heroes would be treated equally. When the game come out, it had around 120 different heroes. Making each one comparable wouldn't really work out, and got to admit there's something exiting when you're developing Crag Hack and manage to free a high level Tazar from prison.
Phoenix4ever said:
4) Why are there no pikemen, centaur, gremlin, medusa, pixie or air elemental specialists?
Probably because the creature specialty does really only work with might heroes and because the creature specialty isn't necessary that interesting in the first place. Gremlin specialty could have been thought out to be too powerful.
Phoenix4ever said:
7) Why can Gold and Black Dragons not be resurrected, unless you equip a relic that ruins their natural resistances + Resistance skill and artifacts?
I don't have a good answer for this, but I must say I just don't understand the Sacrifice-Gold Dragon interaction.
Phoenix4ever said:
11) Why does Haste and Slow and Bless and Curse counter each other and why are they all so OP? (And they are even level 1 spells.)
12) Why is Blind level 2 and Hypnotize level 3, when Blind is 1000 times better than Hypnotize?
I believe this is because they wanted to make the mage guild level 1 a good foundation for spells rather than making it to have only the most poorest ones. That's why the levels 2 and 3 probably have only few spells that stand out, the rest are used for more niche situations.
Phoenix4ever said:
14) Why does Teleport become so extremely cheap at expert level?
This is probably because all spells are supposed to somewhat scale with their magic schools, but this isn't really true with Teleport. I believe the cheapness is used to compensate for the very poor scaling of the spell.
Phoenix4ever said:
15) Why can AI not build certain buildings and cast certain spells?
I think the spell part especially is explained with the fact that I simply isn't coded to have to be able to do such maneuvers, that would require that much intelligence. I mean, the AI, while still being to offer challenge to the player is still pretty primitive. I just cannot see how AI could intelligently use Fire wall for example, as I believe the spell is designed solely for the player to abuse how the AI work. Scuttle boat is probably no-no for AI for it's own safety.
Phoenix4ever said:
17) Why does Resurrection require Advanced Earth, but Animate Dead does not?
Probably because Animate Dead is Necro exclusive, and thus have very limited pool of creatures it can resurrect. I mean, it doesn't stop Animate Dead being one of the best spells in game( ) but I believe this is thought process behind it.
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Phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted January 02, 2022 12:31 PM |
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@Hourglass
Thanks for answering a lot of my questions, I think you might be right about a lot of them. 
Luckily myself and HotA has fixed a lot of these "issues".
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FdgK
Known Hero
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posted January 02, 2022 06:26 PM |
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Edited by FdgK at 18:27, 02 Jan 2022.
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Adding to your list:
Why are there two heroes that start with three levels of secondary skills? Namely:
- Uland with Advanced Wisdom and Basic Ballistics
- Deemer with Advanced Scouting and Basic Wisdom
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Phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted January 02, 2022 06:36 PM |
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Yes I forgot about that.
In HotA they only start with 2 basic skills though.
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Eranikus
Tavern Dweller
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posted January 02, 2022 08:15 PM |
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Edited by Eranikus at 20:30, 02 Jan 2022.
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Phoenix4ever said:
Ooh, I got a few more:
19) Why does Bron start with level 4 units?
20) Why does Torosar not have Artillery, when he specialises in Ballista?
21) Why does Necropolis have a First Aid Tent in their Blacksmith, when none of their heroes can learn First Aid?
22) Why does clerics not have access to First Aid Tent, even though they have the highest chance to learn First Aid?
20) Torosar is an alchemist-human, who is supposed to have Mysticism as racial skill. And the second skill (Tactics) comes from his bio. And it's likely they wanted each side (good evil neutral) to have the same amount of Artillery specialists so one of the might heroes from rampart or tower had to become Artillery specialist.
21,22) Same rule about the equality of sides, good/evil/neutral should have access to all war machines.
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Hourglass
Supreme Hero
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posted January 02, 2022 08:52 PM |
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Phoenix4ever said:
19) Why does Bron start with level 4 units?
Hota describes this as a bug, and I got to agree with them. I think the guy coding the game did an oopsie here, and a wrong creature got into the second slot. It's hard to believe being intended feature, as the amount of available Basilisks is exactly the same(4-7) as it would be with Lizardmen. If the amount was something like 2-4, it would be easier to believe to be intended thing. Bron is actually a beast with 7 Basilisks in the early game.
Eranikus said:
21) Torosar is an alchemist-human, who is supposed to have Mysticism as racial skill. And the second skill (Tactics) comes from his bio. And it's likely they wanted each side (good evil neutral) to have the same amount of Artillery specialists so one of the might heroes from rampart or tower had to become Artillery specialist.
I believe this just rather a thing of they not trying to make somewhat optimized builds. E.g why does Coronius have Slayer specialty despite Druids having the least favorable changes of getting Fire magic? And why does Xarfax have Fireball despite not being able to use it in beginning?Btw, Torosar is still really good support hero, and Ballista specialty (the scaling) is probably one the weakest specialties in the game.
Eranikus said:
22,23) Same rule about the equality of sides, good/evil/neutral should have access to all war machines.
This is intended, I agree. However, there were the possibility to arrange the war machines differently. Rampart and Castle and for example Dungeon and Necro could change as well. (or rather, Dungeon could go with Ammo cart, Inferno with First aid and let necro have the Ballista.)
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Eranikus
Tavern Dweller
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posted January 02, 2022 09:34 PM |
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Edited by Eranikus at 21:37, 02 Jan 2022.
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I am also wondering about strange design decisions in hota.
For example Giselle. Is she a dwarf? No, she is a human, but the might heroes of the human race must have leadership (Ryland, Mephala, Lorelei, Synca...). Dwarfs race skill is Interference in hota. Elves have Archery. Gelu is half human and half elf, and his starting skills by following the rule are Leadership and Archery (correct). Genies and Efreets race skill is Scholar, Troglodytes have offence and so on. So why doesn't Giselle have Leadership?
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Hourglass
Supreme Hero
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posted January 02, 2022 10:03 PM |
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Eranikus said:
I am also wondering about strange design decisions in hota.
For example Giselle. Is she a dwarf? No, she is a human, but the might heroes of the human race must have leadership (Ryland, Mephala, Lorelei, Synca...). Dwarfs race skill is Interference in hota. Elves have Archery. Gelu is half human and half elf, and his starting skills by following the rule are Leadership and Archery (correct). Genies and Efreets race skill is Scholar, Troglodytes have offence and so on. So why doesn't Giselle have Leadership?
Well, to their defense, humans are the most inconsistent race when it comes to the secondary skills. Giselle could be seen as part of the Tazar-Crag Hack-Fiona-group which does have second stage of their skill of choice, but even after that there are plenty of humans that doesn't have Leadership. Tower, Inferno, Fortress and Stronghold all have human might heroes in their ranks, and none of them has Leadership.
But you're exactly right that there are some design choices in Hota that do not match with the original game. The nerfed Intelligence doesn't scale according the traditional rules (20->35->50) and the basic ends up giving most %, which is unheard of in the original game.
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Eranikus
Tavern Dweller
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posted January 02, 2022 10:24 PM |
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Edited by Eranikus at 22:32, 02 Jan 2022.
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Hourglass said:
Eranikus said:
I am also wondering about strange design decisions in hota.
For example Giselle. Is she a dwarf? No, she is a human, but the might heroes of the human race must have leadership (Ryland, Mephala, Lorelei, Synca...). Dwarfs race skill is Interference in hota. Elves have Archery. Gelu is half human and half elf, and his starting skills by following the rule are Leadership and Archery (correct). Genies and Efreets race skill is Scholar, Troglodytes have offence and so on. So why doesn't Giselle have Leadership?
Well, to their defense, humans are the most inconsistent race when it comes to the secondary skills. Giselle could be seen as part of the Tazar-Crag Hack-Fiona-group which does have second stage of their skill of choice, but even after that there are plenty of humans that doesn't have Leadership. Tower, Inferno, Fortress and Stronghold all have human might heroes in their ranks, and none of them has Leadership.
The only exception is heroes from Inferno who are not efreets. All other heroes have their race/class basic skill. Any ideas why Inferno might heroes do not follow the rule and why did hota crew decide to break Rampart as well?
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Hourglass
Supreme Hero
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posted January 02, 2022 10:58 PM |
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@Eranikus
Well, Mutare is also presented as Overlord human, yet he doesn't have Leadership. I don't see a good reason why a hero couldn't have skill from both his race and class, this could have easily been avoided. (like, e.g Stronghold literally having only one human*) Rather, I see humans as a combining elements, that allows skills of more variety to be present among towns.
Humans in Homm3 are presented in the usual fantasy setting: Capable of many things, jacks of all trades, but also masters in none.
*Edit: Bah, forgot Crag Hack and apparently Kilgor too, is a human.
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Mortarial
Hired Hero
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posted January 02, 2022 11:39 PM |
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Hourglass said:
2. Why is Protection from Air the only lvl 2 spell a hero can start with, if he/she doesn't have a spell specialty?
Probably it was a 1st level spell at the early stages of development.
Hourglass said:
Phoenix4ever said:
7) Why can Gold and Black Dragons not be resurrected, unless you equip a relic that ruins their natural resistances + Resistance skill and artifacts?
I don't have a good answer for this, but I must say I just don't understand the Sacrifice-Gold Dragon interaction.
The resurrection part of Sacrifice works as a spell of the same name: it is considered as a level 4 spell. That is why you can't resurrect Gold Dragons with it.
Hourglass said:
Phoenix4ever said:
19) Why does Bron start with level 4 units?
Hota describes this as a bug, and I got to agree with them. I think the guy coding the game did an oopsie here, and a wrong creature got into the second slot. It's hard to believe being intended feature, as the amount of available Basilisks is exactly the same(4-7) as it would be with Lizardmen.
HOTRAITS.TXT states that Bron should have Lizardmen in his second slot. The amount of Basilisks (4-7) also makes me think that it was not intended. If HotA really decided this to be a bug then why didn't they fix it, and moreover, why did they add another regular hero who starts with lvl 4 creatures?
Also, according to HOTRAITS.TXT Korbac should have 2-4 Dragon Flies in his third slot...
Eranikus said:
For example Giselle. Any ideas why did hota crew decide to break Rampart as well?
I've asked them about it at DF2 about 1.5 years ago. Still no answer.
Hourglass said:
Well, Mutare is also presented as Overlord human, yet he doesn't have Leadership.
The way I see this is that this pattern applies only to base game (RoE) heroes. In AB they didn't care much about it cause of lack of time - this is why there are also a lot of questions about Conflux design.
In case of Barbarians and Beastmasters + Knights and Death Knights there probably should be a class-related skill instead of race-related. So we have Offence, Armorer, Leadership and Necromancy respectively, which fits the pattern.
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BTB
Famous Hero
Moist & Creamy
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posted January 03, 2022 02:26 AM |
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Edited by BTB at 02:26, 03 Jan 2022.
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Phoenix4ever said:
7) Why can Gold and Black Dragons not be resurrected, unless you equip a relic that ruins their natural resistances + Resistance skill and artifacts?
9) Why can you not cast positive Fire spells on Fire Immune creatures?
Because programming is hard.
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gnollking
Supreme Hero
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posted January 03, 2022 02:26 AM |
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Giselle should be a no-brainer. She literally replaces the hero starting with advanced Resistance with her advanced Interference. Everything else is irrelevant. "Might heroes of the human race must have leadership" is nonsense, it's not only inferno heroes that differ from this, there's alchemists, death knights, barbarians and beastmasters as well. I agree leadership is somewhat of a "racial" skill for humans but it is far from mandatory, and Giselle fits pretty well with similar (human) heroes such as Crag Hack and Tazar.
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LordCameron
Known Hero
Veteran of the Succession Wars
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posted January 03, 2022 03:46 AM |
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Hourglass said:
But you're exactly right that there are some design choices in Hota that do not match with the original game. The nerfed Intelligence doesn't scale according the traditional rules (20->35->50) and the basic ends up giving most %, which is unheard of in the original game.
I think this is the single worse change Hota did. I also don't like interference, but this clearly violates not just some 'traditional rule' but the design philosophy of heroes of might and magic. Skill gain is exponential and exciting. Do I go wide early for all those useful (theoretically) skills, or go tall for a huge power boost?
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Phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted January 03, 2022 07:30 AM |
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I recommend 20/40/60 for Intelligence and +60% for Mana Vortex.
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