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| Thread: A trip to the past, part II - HoMM3 & HotA (Guest star: Elvin) |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · NEXT» |
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted December 10, 2019 08:59 PM |
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A trip to the past, part II - HoMM3 & HotA (Guest star: Elvin)
It has been probably one of the most ambitious gaming projects of my last few years of life, and it has finally come to fruition - completing HoMM3 with all expansions. It took a while (I started when I posted my original Trip to the past thread which was about beating HoMM 1 & HoMM 2 + PoL. In other words, almost a year and a half, even though Elvin knows how much of that was slacking 
My rules were simple - complete the old flame by:
- finishing all campaigns, on Impossible if difficulty can be chosen, by blindplay (without re-playing or checking the map in the editor);
- finishing the hardest tier of maps on "Impossible". At least those rated hardest - by blindplay (without re-playing or checking the map in the editor, with two exceptions in form of HotA maps).
It took an awful lot of time, but it never felt dull, or boring. Irritating, maybe (especially HotA at times), but it was mostly captivating and fun.
So let's dig in..
Restoration of Erathia
Ah, the first game. The community's favorite HoMM3 entry, and for a good reason. This game aged better than wine: the graphics remain pleasant as always, the gameplay is simple yet addicting, the music is fantastic and the atmosphere is just there. You really feel the world, even the map looks awesome to look at, with an adventurous feel to it. With a layer of complexity that later entries in the HoMM series usually failed to reproduce (though HoMM5 was arguably on par or better), HoMM3 till this day remains the most fun installment in the Heroes of Might and Magic series.
Not much is to be said about the campaigns, though. I feel that this is the only weak point of this otherwise amazing game: the campaigns were blah. Even comparing to HoMM2 or PoL, you can see that they really were generic - the new event system was underdeveloped, and the difficulty level was extremely low. It was more of a prolonged tutorial than a real game. So I will not even post my scores here; they are meaningless. The campaigns were braindead from start to finish. You could finish many in two-three weeks by just rushing properly.
Still, even with weak campaigns, this is the game that shook the community, giving us fun unlike any other and continuing strong after 2 decades, which is nothing short of amazing. I'd rate it 9/10, subtracting a point due to rushed and lame campaign section.
Armageddon's Blade
The first expansion came with a bang: a catchy name, a new town, and harder campaigns. While this sounds great, in reality, Armageddon's Blade didn't offer that much. A single town made of scrapped/rahashed assets (mostly elementals), a bunch of semi-decent, but ultimately underwhelming campaigns (way better than RoE, but still lacking) - and not many memorable maps. There wasn't really much added to the game, but because the game was so awesome by itself, it was received fairly well. After all, who didn't like MOAR HoMM3?
The campaigns were, like I said, a bit better. First, they were more varied. Second, they were harder, although they still didn't present the ability to choose difficulty (why?). Finally, the story felt a bit better, more complete and less generic. My scores are as follows:
And a few words about them - just a few, since I don't remember most of them too well (it's been a year or so  )
Armageddon's Blade was quite okay, the story didn't suck, however mission 1 had un-banned Dimension Door. So if you were smart and took Wisdom early (and expert it before level cap hit), you'd get a massive advantage in the later maps, even allowing you to finish the final missions within a week! The final battle with Xeron was quite fun, actually, but he couldn't stand a chance against a heavily boosted hero.
Festival of Life was a bit meh - the missions were very easy and the amount of stat boosters was ridiculous - in the final mission Kilgor had over 60 points of attack! lol!
Dragon Slayer was well received by the community for its novelty - fighting "against the map" without an AI opponent was new for HoMM3 (although it's made its debut in Price of Loyalty), and the iconic dragons were quite exciting for us kids back then. However, the mission against Fairy Dragons was massively frustrating, because instead of regular neutral stacks, you'd have to open Pandora Boxes containing an unknown number of Faerie Dragons - not only it would add additional dialogue boxes to click through, it would also make it rather difficult to assess your chances without saveloading. It wouldn't help that the map was HUGE and that Faerie Dragons were fast and trigger-happy with their spells, making this an awkward "spam resurrection" kind of map. The rust dragons scenario was even worse, as you were forced to flag all mines on a HUGE map - each guarded by rusts, of course - making it the same ressurect-spamming fiesta, possibly one of the few almost boring missions of the entire HoMM3 game. Final mission had a new gimmick - no magic guilds/wells, however by that time your stats would mostly allow you to just go through everything without much hesitation. I was also lucky to get a mistic orb of mana as a random drop from a chest, woohoo. Overall, an annoying campaign. I didn't like it too much, to be honest.
Dragon's Blood was - again - a bit generic, and it felt like a mix of Kilgor's campaign and Dracon's campaign - the final enemies in the final maps would be large amount of neutral Dragons guarding stuff. Also, having Estates on my main hero triggered my PTSD and annoyed me a lot, haha. Pretty easy campaign, nothing special.
Playing with Fire - ah, Adrienne's campaign. When I first played this, as a 12 yo kid, I was like "HURR DURR TOO HARD". And yes, it is the first campaign where there's some difficulty, but it isn't much. Developing your secondaries and boosting your heroes to their maximum potential allows you to push in three different directions simultanously in the final map, and there's plenty of towns, so it helps. Not a bad campaign, despite being short - and also quite story heavy. Pretty nice.
Foolhardy Waywardness - Elvin loved this one since he skipped Air/Earth and was forced to deal with the final mission without TP/DD. In general quite goofy campaign + the final mission has some PoL vibes to it: you have to defend a town and enemies come from 4 islands, each connected to yours through a monolith one way! It's not "Descendants" tier (from PoL), but it can be pretty annoying, I guess. Me, I just steamrolled the AIs with Dimension Door rush of an overpowered 40 allstats hero. Not a bad campaign as well, just remember to have DD for sanity sake.
I rate Armageddon's Blade at 6/10. In retrospect, it didn't really bring much new stuff, and the campaigns were decent, but annoying at times.
Shadow of Death
The second expansion is quite widely loved by the community - it came with (finally!) polished campaigns of substantially higher difficulty, memorable maps, and a new artifact combo system, however, no new town was a bit of a downer to me. This time you could pick difficulty for campaigns (finally!) so I dug in, and had a surprisingly fun time. Scores (all missions on impossible
and some highlights:
A New Beginning - That was rough! Trolled to play a crappy first aid specialist wasn't too fun, the 2nd mission was pretty frustrating, introducing border guards that were just a tier above your starting army, very close to your town and forcing you to deal with a stream of crappy AI heroes leaping in and heading for one of your four towns (incl. a guy with boots of speed)! Some "Descendants" vibes here, which triggered my PTSD. After getting through mission 2 you get some skills/spells and it becomes a stomp, as usual.
Birth of a Barbarian - an interesting campaign because you are completely prohibited from casting magic (and trolled again by "chain lightning" speciality - really? what's with 3DO and trolling in SoD?). This forced you to build around might, tactics, and artillery (high ATT + Ballista is pretty darn fun in late missions, gotta admit - it's no Summon Earth Elemental but it does get the job done). Poor Elvin struggled with the 1st mission, while I just lured the AI's hero (Aine) out of the castle carefully calculating my travel distance and went back to recapture an empty town @ day 7, recruited some units and kicked the crap out of Aine. Bwahaha. I'd still get events how I should hurry since Aine is on my heels. Ohh really?!
Elixir of Life - a campaign I remember very vaguely - it was either easy, or just generic. Don't have much to say about that one, unfortunately!
Hack and Slash - this one (Mission 2, in particular!) brutalized a lot of newbs back then and going back to it, I have to say that it does have something that is challenging. Mission 1 is just regular slugfest, but in mission 2 there's a powerful hero (Edric) with a HUGE army coming for you very fast (in 2nd or 3rd week, can't recall) - if your Crag Hack is poorly built, you will struggle to stop him. In my case, slowblind + lack of AI's mana (he used it on neutrals, lol) made me defeat his HUGE army without much problems and from there it slowly became a stomp. Fun campaign, worth playing.
Rise of the Necromancer - It's fun to be evil! This time, as a reward for passing the above, you can play as Sandro and rise liches with cloak of the undead king. You also have armor of the damned on you. This obviously makes you pretty much impossible to defeat, however there is something pretty satisfying about going with hundreds of liches and trashing helpless enemies around. A bit casual, but still recommended for the novelty of actually being overpowered from the scratch without cheesy tricks.
Unholy Alliance - our heroes from campaigns 1-4 come back to defeat Sandro... or do they? Well, here's something that really pissed me off (and pretty much anyone I spoke to about this campaign): HoMM3 doesn't support cross-campaign hero import. So you get Gem/Crag/Yog/Gelu, but their skills are RANDOMIZED! And yes, you can expect awful combinations like Learning, Mysticism and Eagle Eye on your guys! Trying to salvage a workable "build" out of this mess takes a LOT of reloading and cursing. Probably more than it is worth! Shame on you, 3D0. This was the perfect opportunity to modify the code and allow cross-campaign hero import, but you went the lazy way!
Once you're done with the starting missions (which means rolling your guys - unless you don't mind playing without logistics and with Eagle Eye - getting the usual spells for them, and boosting their stats a bit) you can finally play the game and it's surprisingly good. My two complaints, however: the maps are RIDDLED with Necropolis towns (expect cover of darkness to be spammed by the AI whenever you get near, constantly throwing the fog at you - extremely annoying) and the final missions are pretty underwhelming, your heroes become so strong that the enemies really can't catch up anymore. Memorable/difficult mission would be Yog's 1st mission (the AI has quite the advantage in troops/towns) and Crag+Yog's first joint mission (again a lot of powerful enemies around - allied, IIRC!). The final fight with Sandro is sadly a letdown, as he doesn't have many troops at his side. It would've been fun to fight against thousands of liches here, but they didn't go for it.
Specter of Power - the final campaign, and the one housing the hardest mission of SoD (mission 2). You're limited to level 10, without your imba arties, and your enemies rock a couple of fully upgraded populations against you! Getting expert earth magic, blind, slow and some spellpower for Animate dead REALLY helps here. If the AI combines armies (it does so, but rarely), you're in quite a trouble. Once you're past mission 2, it becomes pretty easy again, I believe that, in the penultimate mission, I defeated Melodia in 1st or 2nd day of 1st week, haha - fear the DD!
Finally, there's the little "competition" me and Elvin had. I planned to compare our scores here and comment on them, but Elvin has uninstalled the game, deleted the scores and forgotten most of his experiences! You can blame his awful memory, feel free to do so  However, I do not forget as easily! The whole competition ended with me winning 4:3 I got better scores in "Birth of the Barbarian", "Hack and Slash", "Rise of the Necromancer" and "Specter of Power", while Elvin beat me in "A New Beginning", "Elixir of Life" and "Unholy Alliance". Nice try Elvin, but there's only one king here...
I'd rate SoD as a solid 7/10. While not big on new things, it brought one of the best and most memorable campaigns of the series.
Chronicles
Since I've already made a thread documenting my Chronicles playthrough, there is little reason for me to repeat all of that. If you're interested in my opinions/indepth thoughts/scores/ratings, just check that thread. There's a summary on the last page.
TL;DR version:
Chronicles was mostly a cashgrab, though it did start in a rather inviting way. "Warriors of the Wastelands" introduced some grim campaign, VERY event-heavy, with interesting storyline. it's easy to connect to Tarnum, and it's refreshing to see something as morally bankrupt as a player-controled hero that has to slaughter helpless peasants because he's actually going mad with his vengeance quest. Of course, it was just once campaign, and nothing new, but the campaign was great.
Conquest of the Underworld introduced some of the most infurating map designs ever made (lul) but at the same time the story remained decent... however it was clearly not "Warlords" tier. Tarnum turned goody two shoes way too fast and without any clear "in-between" period, which made him much less interesting. Such a wasted potential for a truly morally ambiguous story!
Revolt of the Beastmasters had a pretty decent storyline as well, but the maps (especially the final one) felt way less detailed and less interesting.
The rest of Chronicles games ranges from goofy (World Tree/Fiery Moon) to just plain bad (Masters of Elements/Clash of Dragons/Sword of Frost). You get uninspired plots, lack of development for Tarnum as a character, less interesting events, tiny maps, rushed maps, and a feeling of being robbed intensifies. At least World Tree (and Fiery Moon, to lesser extent) are quite difficulty for missions 1-2, which is a novelty since Chronicles campaigns are in general very easy, even on Impossible difficulty.
Worth playing? Warlords - yes. Conquest/Revolt - if you liked Warlords, sure. The rest - nope. Don't waste your time unless you're a completionist. You can get them for a dollar on GoG nowadays, so at least it's no longer a robbery.
Horn of the Abyss
Let's get this straight - I usually don't play mods. Because mods are mostly soulless number tweaks (usually "balancing" games, aka making everything boring and bland) with uninteresting/lacking artistic design. Modders usually lack vision, integrity that makes the "real" games what they are.
Fortunately, I could happily make an exception for HOTA. Because it's everything you'd hope a 3rd expansion to be. Introducing new town (and soon, a 2nd one), CAREFULLY balancing the game to not ruin your years of experience, and giving you tons of new content, from new artifacts to hard campaigns, this is an awesome experience. Let's get the rating out of the way - 8/10, no doubt. HotA doesn't revolutionize HoMM3 but is by all means a better expansion than the original ones, giving you more stuff and making you interested longer. All of that for free!
As for campaigns, let's start off with a good old scoreboard:
Under the Jolly Roger is easy and serves as a story introduction to the new faction (Cove). Not much to say about it!
Terror of the Seas brutalized many players, some even claimed on reddit and thelike that Mission 2 is impossible to beat on "Impossible" difficulty. Well, it obviously isn't. Both Elvin and me beat it, but yes - it is pretty damn hard, way beyond the difficulty of Shadow of Death's hardest missions. In general, this campaign introduces a new concept - "rush or die". As you're usually underdeveloped in a way (ie. limited to town hall or can't constuct tier 6-7 dwellings, or earth magic/blind is banned for the player), you cannot hope to overcome the AI if you leave it alone. Instead, you have to succeed at first week rushes, with a weak army. This is actually great training and it - unlike SoD - WILL make you a better player and work on your anti-AI skills and that crucial timing, but can be quite frustrating to pull off. Mission 2, in particular, features one of the most frustrating "rush or die" manouvers you have to pull: defeating a hero with EXPERT Ballistcs AND Blind spell AND good attack/defense AND a huge army in week 2 with nothing but some tier 1-5 units. In my case, the hero in question had 120 gnoll marauders, 80 Lizard Warriors, 42 serpent flies, 24 basilisks, 20 gorgons and 16 wyverns... of course the very idea is to take his castle by 7th day and bait him to attack you there as you don't stand a chance in the open, but even if you manage to do so, the army advantage AND spell advantage of the AI is massive, forcing you to execute the rush / defend your town with absolute perfection.
Speaking of frustrating... with Elvin, we even dubbed HotA team in a nasty way which I won't mention here (much love to the team, of course - you guys rock ). I pictured them meeting in a conference call and listing all the annoying things a campaign can have, then just making such a campaign to troll the players mercilessly. The list is quite long but let's name the single most frustrating troll move of the campaign: giving you a hero with (crappy) preselected skills, and... making him your MAIN HERO for the next mission without a warning! Lol! you better have visited those skill boosting objects with him or you're up for one frustrating mission 
Once you're past a certain stage (and once you develop your magic), you're "rewarded" with not-so-fun sea labirynth (UGH) and a huge final mission with AI wielding the armageddon's blade and such. The final battle is finally fun - although if you get the Armageddon's Blade off AI's hands, you can hit and run him to death. He does have quite crazy numbers in his army but he can't do much against repeated armageddon strikes.
Horn of the Abyss is the ultimate campaign and is only 4 missions long, but those missions can get quite wild. As usual, the AI swims in freebies while you struggle to get useful skills and spells for your duo of heroes. However, the game is kind enough to handle you Summon Elemental, and with that spell, everything becomes a breeze. While the last mission introduces crazy amount of freebies for the AI, you can just go with your starting army and elemental spam out of every battle. It's not so hard when you're summoning 240 elementals per cast and have 40 A/D, eh? Due to an oversight that hota never fixed, the player will not lose when his real units are defeated, so if you have enough mana, you can just spam elementals till you overpower the AI's starting army and then resurrect 1 stack. And you win. Cheesy finale to an otherwise quite difficult campaign. Overall,however, Terror of the Seas feels harder and more tense, the first three missions at least.
And a final view of the scoreboard, from HotA:
For those of you who don't play HotA - it uses different rank values, so the creatures are different than the ones in my little excel tables above.
WHEW! That's all of the campaigns! But we're not done, that would be too easy, eh?
Here's a bonus for you, the MAPS! I picked the highest tier of each entry and beat it on impossible. This means 1 mission for ROE (expert), 1 for AB (expert), four for SoD (Impossible), and three for HotA (2 expert + 1 impossible - since 1 would be lame).
Scores (HotA version, all on impossible diff):
And a few words about those 
Five Rings - the only Expert tier map of Restoration of Erathia. There's a LOT of riding here - but due to the map's composition, it's hard to reach the first AI without two weeks of a ride first. This makes it suprisingly difficult to beat the AI which comes with a 2 pop advantage - however, the AI is quite dumb, and will let you take his town from under his nose. Beating the AI in his own town is much easier, and after some skills/spells you start your way towards victory.
The Gauntlet - the only Expert tier map of Armageddon's Blade. This one is the same idea (fight one AI, move through a gate/portal and fight another - one at a time), but executed better - less riding, more fighting. Since you have a richer land, it's easier to beat the AI and you actually get free units after beating each AI - quite a substantial amount! I'd dare say it's overkill, actually. This makes the map pretty easy, however, it's still fairly enjoyable to play.
Adventures of Jared Haret - Shadow of Death's impossible rated "S" map. Hard to see what's impossible in it - yes, the AI does have quite a bit of an army, but you get a lot of free stuff on the way, plus some really powerful artifacts like the Golden Bow! fun little mission, but obviously nowhere near "impossible".
Marshland Menace - Shadow of Death's impossible rated "M" map. Probably the hardest of the bunch, but would be much harder if AI wasn't so braindead. The amount of freebies the AI gets is quite intense (I recall 600 dragon flies in 2nd month or so) but the AI will not press the advantage and will play passively for some reason. I didn't play this at HOTA (I wanted the original feel, so I played non-hota maps on H3 HD mod) so maybe that's why the AI is so weak. If AI pushed hard, you'd struggle a bit due to obscene number of troops it carries, but since it doesn't... you can get into AI's lands, take most of his towns, and farm an army big enough to defeat it. Quite underwhelming!
Pestilence Lake - Shadow of Death's impossible rated "L" map. This one is fairly fun; the map is very sterile though, at least the part you start at, making it hard to create a meaningful army. The purple AI gets a ton of freebies as usual and will come after you with a huge army, however,if you play decently you should roughly match his armies' size. If AI combined forces, this would prove extremely hard, but it doesn't, so all you have to do is hunt down those heroes carrying 2-3 pops of fully upgraded units. If they combined armies and gave 12 pops to one powerful hero, you'd be quite screwed, but the AI, again, disappoints.
Back for Revenge - Shadow of Death's impossible rated "XL" map. This one made me puzzled as a kid. how do you beat that! As an adult, it was a little bit of a downer. The map is actually easy. All you really have to do is to play the correct side (Red is the strongest), because the sides are imbalanced; for example, IIRC Green (Fortress) gets very sterile part of the island and is blocked by a level 3 creature (fun if they are grand elves) while the Tan fortress gets three lizard dwellings and a much more rich map. Logic? Either way, the idea is to beat the AIs, farm units and kill 300 ancient behemots before 5th month is done. With a proper hero, like Orrin, this is quite easy to do, just get lots of marksmen, grand elves and lizards in your army.
In Defense - HotA's expert rated "M" map. I wouldn't call it hard. The AI doesn't get free units - just resources, and they have three towns while the player can get 5 on his side. You're forced to play the Castle, and there's a ton of creature dwellings on the map, so getting a huge army isn't too hard. There are monoliths (one-way) leading to your part of the map, so there's that, but you have some ways of fast travel of your own, so keeping the AI in check before eradicating him shouldn't be too hard.
From the Depths of Hell - HotA's expert rated "S" map. Now this, on the other hand, is a proper noobgrinder. A very interesting idea of activating each AI at 7th day of each week and forcing him to attack you through a one-way portal near your city. Yeah, you just need to win 6 battles + capture the AI's town before the final hero awakens - however, the AI gets a massive advantage on troops while you're starving for resources and units (and are locked to tiers 1,2,3 and 5 only!). This is a cool map because it forces you to prioritize your moves and plan in advance what to do and where to go each week. Once you have proper map control, the battles are a formality. Once complaint, though: if you don't get archery and intelligence, you are REALLY screwed on this map. And unlike Earth/Logs/Tactics, you won't get them from a hut. Which means the RNG will have a final say, unless you reload the map until you get a proper skillset, of course.
A Cold Day in Hell - finally, HotA's only (so far) impossible-rated "M" map. And a proper final boss of the game, let me tell you. This takes all the "freebie" nonsense and takes it to the EXTREME. The AI will not only get 10 of each resource/15000 gold each week. He'll also get double population each week. But no, that's not all! There are also repeateble events on the ground that only work for the AI. Each event adds +5000 exp and +2 allstats to a passing hero! Yes, this means fighting heroes with 40-50 allstats in the first month.
Impossible? hell no - well, if you do it the EZ way, like me, obviously. You start with a hero with fire magic and intelligence. And there's plenty of SP/KL boosts around. And there are SP/KL artifacts for taking on the map. I guess the mapmaker hints heavily here that you will need massive direct spell damage to overcome those ridiculous heroes. And that's exactly what you should do. I did it the easiest way possible (and I'll freely admit it here) - i fished for Armageddon in my main town. once I got that, I just stomped the AI. With early utopias and 25 Spellpower, I'd melt one ridiculous army after another in one arma cast, taking their artifacts in progress.
Easy, you say? well, there's a catch! one of the heroes has a recanter's cloak. And suddenly, you're a 10/10 A/D hero with no units against a full blown army of 150 griffins,40 champions, 70 crusaders, 10 angels, 50 cyclopes and 300 halberdiers... led by a hero with 45-50 attack and defense. Whoops? haha, not really. you can still hit and run, you know. I had a lot of luck because this particular hero parked 1 tile away from my town, so I just bought 1 dragonfly, attacked, surrendered (120 gold), and spammed my magic missile (bcuz cursed ground) till I killed every single unit in one turn. It took me 50000 gold and a lot of time, but it sure was lulzy. After that, it was a mopup with arma and a glorious victory after 36 days. Cool map, and if you beat it without arma, you have my eternal respect. I wouldn't bother, lol.
That concludes this ridiculously long topic. Two things left to say:
1. yes, this is a trilogy! There will be a third part - about HoMM4 and its expansions - the last of the 3D0 HoMM games.
2. no, I'm not finished with HoMM3 forever. While replaying the same game over and over is not my style (so many games to play... so little time in life!), I'll surely be returning for the new town (Factory) and new campaigns. Maybe they'll even listen to my suggestion and ban Summon Elemental from it. That would cut my abusive ways quite a bit!
Eternal glory, guys. Hah. Thanks for reading, and be sure to play this game to its fullest, it's TOTALLY worth it!
See ya!
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JoonasTo
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
What if Elvin was female?
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posted December 10, 2019 10:02 PM |
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One thing that shows through this post the most is that the camnpaign/map designs all bloody suck.
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DON'T BE A NOOB, JOIN A.D.V.E.N.T.U.R.E.
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted December 10, 2019 10:14 PM |
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Well they do have some flaws:
1. In campaigns, Mission 2 is usually the hardest - your main is still too weak to get key spells/skills but AI gets the usual BS amounts of troops;
2. In campaigns, final missions are too easy; courtesy of having way too many cumulative boosts on the way and starting with spells like Summon Earth Elemental rocking 40 allstats.
3. The maps are pretty much always based on AI getting buffed to obscenity with free troops, stats or artifacts, otherwise the AI doesn't stand a chance.
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JoonasTo
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
What if Elvin was female?
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posted December 11, 2019 11:37 AM |
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I always hated how your hero was limited to a certain level. I can understand how free levelling would be a problem but in most early maps you hit that cap one third of the way and it’s just frustrating. Instead they should have just made the earlier maps not have enough experience to get too many levels. Limit the amount and types of creatures available for the player(say only 1,2,4 for castle with no citadel/city hall allowed) and you can make do with much smaller guardian amounts. Similarly the maps should be more limited, I remember some early maps having 10+ skill boosters...
I think they tried something like this with RoE initial campaign but the first map was just too big for it. The mission to acquire the griffins felt great as a theme too. The execution just wasn’t there.
We’ve gone over the campaigns in detail in another thread but there really needed to be more utilisation of creativity in them. The side switching krewlord tatalia was such a great idea. This is mostly why SoD was both great and annoying at the same time. It would have been great if you had to fight the heroes you made in the campaigns before. Instead we got random rolled heroes to play with.
In general the difficulty setting shouldn’t be needed for a game like heroes. Instead you could just spend more time on the map to allow your army to grow to have an easier time. This will result in a worse score so it’s a self-adjusting difficulty setting. The faster you break through the faster you can grow and the faster you can finish the map, rewarding good players with a better score than the bad ones.
Heroes 6 broke this completely by punishing you for breaking through faster even to the point of softlocking you on some maps. In that regard, the older ones are still way better off.
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DON'T BE A NOOB, JOIN A.D.V.E.N.T.U.R.E.
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted December 11, 2019 03:11 PM |
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I guess the game system doesn't cope too well with how the campaigns work. There is such a massive gap between players who visit stat boosters/get spells and those who don't. Even though 1998 wasn't yet the time when catering to casuals was a thing, it still is a noobtrap.
Perhaps such boosters should be extremely limited in campaigns (if even present) because of the advantage they create. It's really impossible to make the campaign click for players who just go for random skills/spells and minmaxers. This is an issue with HotA campaigns as well: they are clearly meant for minmaxers, and re-rolling your starting hero till you get logs and earth within 2-3 first levelups is quite boring.
Plus, some spells just don't translate into campaigns well. Take Summon Earth Elemental for an extreme example, or Armageddon. But even "regular" spells, like chain lightning, can become ridiculous if heroes are allowed to grow to 20+ SP due to hit and run. That's yet another limiting factor.
I think it would be most healthy (easiest to balance the difficulty around) if:
1. Stat boosting was extremely limited
2. Heroes would not carry over spells above level 2 (because fishing for slow is also pointless RNG layer so they could carry over to certain extent)
3. Unless the scenario is deliberately built around having a spell like Armageddon, problematic spells should be disabled in later scenarios.
4. You can't lose your main and only he carries through. This is to disable hit and run which can beat anything due to AI's stupidity.
You can create a scenario with challenging amounts of troops on enemies only if you get rid of the factor of "I win" spells like Summon Ele or Arma with ridiculous SP/KL.
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We reached to the stars and everything is now ours
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JoonasTo
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
What if Elvin was female?
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posted December 11, 2019 03:54 PM |
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Yeaaaah, I remember running to the corner of a map and back for some +SP boosters in the past before finishing the map. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The cost of visiting such a booster just should be enough days to have an equal exchange in score.
I think the spells given to player should be pretty tightly regulated. Dd, Fly, Tp, view earth/air, summon/scuttle boat etc. should be outright banned unless the maps specifically call for them. There are others that should be thought to be pretty serious too like resurrection/berserk/Arma/summon. Carrying over is fine as long as their availability is considered beforehand. You can give res as a scroll, for example, to stop it from transferring forward.
Easier way to disable hit and run is to just disable the taverns from castles and have them as external buildings only but that brings obvious problems to town development as it is required for town hall. You can still hit’n run with that but not nearly as effectively. Being forced to not lose your hero is just a pain in heroes because your scouting radius is miniscule in comparison to enemy movement. Someone can be just outside of vision so you have to be spamming view spells to keep that from happening. It’s just gimmicky.
It is also a big problem that heroes gain far too many levels. In general a hero shouldn’t get much past level 20. And preferably start the last map without a full secondary skill collection. If they get their last secondary skill just before the final fight that would be optimal. The game simply wasn’t designed with 30 primary skill heroes in mind. This point alone would fix so many of the campaign issues. 10/10/10/10 hero isn’t nearly the problem a 20/20/20/20 is.
Another thing is some secondaries can wreck the design completely. Like eagle eye. It’s funny but it can be game breaking at times, oops learned arma. Similarly mysticism can be devastating if some maps were designed around no mana refills. As weird as it sounds one free slow a day on a map with no extra towns or wells is massive. Plus everyone will just like hero building more if they don’t get offered a choice between pathfinding and navigation on a full grass map...
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted December 11, 2019 04:07 PM |
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Valid points. HoMM3 wasn't really meant for ridiculous scores, and it shows. However, things could be toned back to reality when we get rid of some offending spells, and block unnecessary boosting.
AI is another problem. It's simply weak - I think that it would be a lot better with a sort of "exterminate mode" - if it assesses the player is way below its power it should push relentlessly for your towns. That way giving the AI freebies could actually achieve something. It could be achieved by reusing the same script that makes the AI go for the nearest town when it loses its last. Because a hero literally idling (not even moving) somewhere at a random mine 2 turns of movement away from my hero (camping in his town with 1/5th of his army) is just weird.
The poor AI leads to mapmakers showering the AI with freebies, which puts unnecessary focus on Arma or Elemental or other cheese spells - is cheesing the AI the only way? this is a common problem in games where AI is boosted to oblivion to compensate for stupidity - players are forced to use weird tricks to beat it, which has nothing in common with tactics meant for a real player. See Civilization series (especially IV) on Deity difficulty - same stuff.
"A cold day in hell" is an extreme case - heroes with 50 allstats week 3? umm.. this is pushing it. Quite far, in fact.
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We reached to the stars and everything is now ours
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JoonasTo
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
What if Elvin was female?
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posted December 11, 2019 05:06 PM |
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A lot of the time the mapmakers just want something to be “epic” with no real reason so you get 4000 titans and what not. You don’t have to be very smart to realise the XP from
beating them will break levelling pretty badly.
The problem with AI is connected to map design. Freebies are generally frowned upon because of how they are (not) presented, not because the enemy has the advantage. A map starting with you invading the kingdom where they have seven towns, is not thought bad. Giving enemy free gold and creatures is. It’s all in the presentation. Say it’s a map with civil war. Four feudal lords and the king. They are of different strengths and alliances so some are allied, others have more towns. You being the upstart only have on the middle of nowhere. The king(or I guess queen in H3) has the most and they are well developed with good network of travel. As the map progresses you can slowly build your strength and hide but obviously the strongest alliance will capture the others and grow stronger, faster. So it would be a setup where fast, aggressive, skilled player would benefit, but a slower turtle minded player could still win. Just his score would be horrendous. Most wouldn’t consider the AI having multiple towns over you in a map like that to be offending because it fits the setting.
A map like that is still very hard if you try to get a good score and beat it fast while it’s not too difficult if you go around just waiting for more creatures to accumulate. In that regard it’s balanced nicely, just by the player’s own skill level. The aim of a hard map shouldn’t be to frustrate or to kill you. It should be to prevent you from winning. These are not coin games, the end result is achieved when the player feels accomplished. Repeated tries are not a goal anymore. The more effort a player spends on beating a map, the more they usually feel they have accomplished. Imagine playing a mario level that keeps throwing near death experiences at you as you advance, that you just barely avoid. You’re a nervous wreck by the end but because you manage your own advance speed through the level you can avoid going too fast for your skills and dying. Will you be an amazing player by the end? Not necessarily but you’ll have enjoyed it a lot more than if it was a fixed speed autoscrolller that was too fast, or too slow.
In case I somehow live past 70 and retire I should make a campaign where the ideal is achieved. Just to prove that a good campaign can be made.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted December 11, 2019 09:36 PM |
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My official congrats mate It has been fun replaying things on impossible after all these years. At times frustrating but overall fun!
I did not replay RoE campaigns and I don't miss most of those all that much as Arma and SoD did things a lot better. What credit where it's due, they were literal campaigns for the war to come. That part was right.
Armageddon's Blade had some of my favourites like the omonymous campaign which had an epic castle vs inferno feel, Mutare's fast-paced skirmish missions, Adrienne's necro madness and Dracon's novelty factor. But Christian's final campaign was freaking epic Mate, if you want a challenge go play it without wisdom. No DD, fly or TP! I got screwed over SO HARD on the last mission, always had to be back by day 1 to defend my town and yet I managed to finish off all enemies against overwhelming odds. Insanity!
Shadow of Death was great. I did not remember Crag's campaigns that fondly but Gem, Gelu and Yog were amazing. As were Sandro and the alliance missions. Properly challenging stuff, until you get the usual suspect spells ^^ The randomly skilled heroes pissed me off to no end but the missions were solid. And regarding Yog's first mission, screw you doomforge!
Horn of the Abyss has left me with.. mixed feelings. They were challenging and worth completing but I could easily imagine myself flushing them down the toilet and throwing a grenade in there for good measure. Either approach is fair. One thing is for certain, the mapmaker was a total sadistic troll. I swear, the whole team must have brainstormed on the most frustrating concepts humanly imaginable and picked the top of the top.
No map challenge for me, I'm done for the time being
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H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted December 11, 2019 10:38 PM |
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Elvin said:
And regarding Yog's first mission, screw you doomforge!
Should I respond to that with the classic "L2P"?
Elvin said:
Horn of the Abyss has left me with.. mixed feelings. They were challenging and worth completing but I could easily imagine myself flushing them down the toilet and throwing a grenade in there for good measure. Either approach is fair. One thing is for certain, the mapmaker was a total sadistic troll. I swear, the whole team must have brainstormed on the most frustrating concepts humanly imaginable and picked the top of the top.
Yeah, same thoughts here. Those campaigns at one hand impress with the challenge level and design, and on the other, annoy to the core. If some things were improved a bit (like the annoying tendency for the mapmakers to cap the player to village/town hall - why!?), it would be way better.
Elvin said:
No map challenge for me, I'm done for the time being
And here I thought this thread would motivate you to start playing the maps...
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted December 12, 2019 08:19 AM |
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Edited by Elvin at 08:33, 12 Dec 2019.
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Doomforge said:
Elvin said:
And regarding Yog's first mission, screw you doomforge!
Should I respond to that with the classic "L2P"?
It's called facing my trials like an idiot a man
JoonasTo said:
I always hated how your hero was limited to a certain level. I can understand how free levelling would be a problem but in most early maps you hit that cap one third of the way and it’s just frustrating. Instead they should have just made the earlier maps not have enough experience to get too many levels. Limit the amount and types of creatures available for the player(say only 1,2,4 for castle with no citadel/city hall allowed) and you can make do with much smaller guardian amounts.
That reminds me, I like the approach of learning and using the lineup gradually. Hota's approach was.. Mostly first three cove units in the 'tutorial' campaign(and some more in third and final mission) :/ I thought fine, we'll get to play more in the second campaign. HAHA no. Cove hero, lots of strongholds. Then second mission, up to 5 but you barely get to use them because starting town must be defended and your town hall is capped. Hrmph.
JoonasTo said:
Heroes 6 broke this completely by punishing you for breaking through faster even to the point of softlocking you on some maps. In that regard, the older ones are still way better off.
Damn, I'd almost forgotten that. Play fast, trigger a boss or whatever fight too early, lose. And if that battle takes place before your prior autosave, good job, your whole mission is wasted. H6 also had seriousy large maps with stat boosters scattered across long travel distances. Bosses placed on the map would either be total pushovers or impossible to defeat depending on when you found/faced them. A pity.
JoonasTo said:
I think the spells given to player should be pretty tightly regulated. Dd, Fly, Tp, view earth/air, summon/scuttle boat etc. should be outright banned unless the maps specifically call for them. There are others that should be thought to be pretty serious too like resurrection/berserk/Arma/summon. Carrying over is fine as long as their availability is considered beforehand. You can give res as a scroll, for example, to stop it from transferring forward.
Actually SoD did that. No Town Portal before mission 4 and town portal scroll in mission 3. But DD allowed me to finish half arma missions(Catherine) in like 2 days, including the final mission. Not to mention Sandro's final mission where you are supposed to visit 3 border guards first, one of which guarded by lots of archangels. Instead.. view air, DD, pick towns one by one. Screw your border guards 
JoonasTo said:
The aim of a hard map shouldn’t be to frustrate or to kill you. It should be to prevent you from winning. These are not coin games, the end result is achieved when the player feels accomplished. Repeated tries are not a goal anymore. The more effort a player spends on beating a map, the more they usually feel they have accomplished.
Hota on the other hand assumes that you have lost numerous times and know exactly where enemy towns are before the map is beatable. Naturally requires skill optimization and taking them out before x week. To be perfectly fair it's not that the maps are impossible playing blind, just very unlikely. And if you manage you will have to resort to dirty tricks or face frustration after frustration till you want to uninstall the damn game ^^ That c2m1 mission doomforge says requires to rush week 3 or die? I somehow managed without rushing but only because I managed to capture enemy town while the far stronger hero was outside. And later I realized that this town does not allow upgraded t7 like THE OTHER ONE. And if a hero catches you in the open, mass haste, gg. No saving that, limited town, army and income. You have to explore quickly, not get caught or lost, capture unguarded town and not get pummeled when the much stronger hero comes to retake it. Just peachy.
Then next mission.. I am a few days late and new week rolls. I manage to capture enemy town completely unguarded, hell yeah! Then AI combines army from all heroes and destroys me. HOW! WHY! Even behind castle walls! But I am 2 weeks away from my already weak town, must take the green player out now or the others will come for my town which is incidentally a loss condition ^^ So.. load and back to the nearby sanctuary.. One hero moves a day away, I capture town. Now not all heroes close enough to combine armies, I face two strong heroes and survive by the skin of my teeth. Damn you mapmaker!
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H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted December 12, 2019 10:16 AM |
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The 3 weeks rush or die is C2M2.
The C2M1 is rush second week or die. Since you rushed the incorrect town (the northern one), you struggled a lot more than I did You're supposed to rush the one to the left. It comes with capitol and behemoth dwelling (upgrade-able).
And yes, you absolutely have to do it day 7 and buy whatever units are available the next day to survive the attack, because the AI has armies several times bigger than yours, and heroes with 10+ attack lol. You can win because his armies are mostly walkers and he doesn't have Ballistics. AI's worst nightmare are moats. They will totally wreck it if the AI doesn't luckily break too many walls early.
Whole "Terror of the Seas" is a marathon of patience (reload till you get proper skills) and a sprint for the towns in the first two-three weeks, which STILL may require perfect play to win (like C2M2). I can see why newbies think it's impossible to do When you have pretty much nothing and you're supposed to face a gigantic army with a hero spamming Blind and having expert Ballistics, you really need to play at your best + have some luck (because 20 wyverns getting morale is pretty much GG, same with catapult destroying the bridge in the first try). It would be much easier if the AI didn't have a dragonfly hive next to his town; that would be up to 8 wyverns less, which is a lot easier to do.
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We reached to the stars and everything is now ours
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JoonasTo
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
What if Elvin was female?
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posted December 12, 2019 11:10 AM |
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Elvin said:
JoonasTo said:
Heroes 6 broke this completely by punishing you for breaking through faster even to the point of softlocking you on some maps. In that regard, the older ones are still way better off.
Damn, I'd almost forgotten that. Play fast, trigger a boss or whatever fight too early, lose. And if that battle takes place before your prior autosave, good job, your whole mission is wasted. H6 also had seriousy large maps with stat boosters scattered across long travel distances. Bosses placed on the map would either be total pushovers or impossible to defeat depending on when you found/faced them. A pity.
And the enemies are only activated once you pass certain triggers on the map. These could be just certain points on a map. So certain enemies were inactive until you passed through a road. Meaning just sitting in your starting area for a few weeks gathering champions clicking the turns away was the fastest way to beat the map. Then just walk out and capture all towns because enemies didn’t do anything while you were training units.
In comparison to someone actually playing the game who has to deal with three fully built castles and three level 20 heroes with the armies to match, weeks earlier, just because he passed through a tile on a map. Stupidity.
JoonasTo said:
I think the spells given to player should be pretty tightly regulated. Dd, Fly, Tp, view earth/air, summon/scuttle boat etc. should be outright banned unless the maps specifically call for them. There are others that should be thought to be pretty serious too like resurrection/berserk/Arma/summon. Carrying over is fine as long as their availability is considered beforehand. You can give res as a scroll, for example, to stop it from transferring forward.
Actually SoD did that. No Town Portal before mission 4 and town portal scroll in mission 3. But DD allowed me to finish half arma missions(Catherine) in like 2 days, including the final mission. Not to mention Sandro's final mission where you are supposed to visit 3 border guards first, one of which guarded by lots of archangels. Instead.. view air, DD, pick towns one by one. Screw your border guards !
View air/earth are such OP spells most people overlook. Maybe it’s because most only ever played single player or maps they know by heart but going to a new map and being able to tell exactly where to go and what to avoid at the start of every turn is such an advantage over others. Which way to start exploring? Oh the ore mine is that way and the gems too right, let’s get that first. Oh look, an enemy hero is just a tad that way, let’s maybe avoid that. Oh look his castle is over there, don’t mind if I do.
Oh look the enemy hero just landed on an island a little that way, let’s go scuttle his boat xD
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted December 12, 2019 11:48 AM |
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Edited by Elvin at 11:51, 12 Dec 2019.
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I finished off the last enemy hero in a hota campaign by stranding him on an island. His boat looked very scuttleable
But that post-H5 trend to give minor scripted quests for everything, even nobrainer stuff. Capture this mine +100xp. Capture this fort +250xp. Tie your own shoelaces +300xp. Naturally that would often lead to unplayable missions because a script failed to trigger. Urgh. Have fun replaying, maybe wait till it gets patched.
Amusingly, H7 did not really have a choice in the matter because the AI was so outstandingly inept that it had to be guided by hand. Many missions seemed to be made around this, keeping the AI in the sidelines or only spawning it when the time was right.
Doomforge said:
The 3 weeks rush or die is C2M2.
The C2M1 is rush second week or die. Since you rushed the incorrect town (the northern one), you struggled a lot more than I did You're supposed to rush the one to the left. It comes with capitol and behemoth dwelling (upgrade-able).
That is the thing, I didn't even rush! I did not yet know the map and was actually exploring the goodies to the west. Then I was driven from my area because the eastern AI got too close and I fled to the north lol. It was a hilariously messy blind play.
____________
H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted January 06, 2020 08:24 PM |
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I guess finishing the HotA campaigns now will produce significantly lower scores since you are much slower (nerfed logs, movement artifacts) and can't generate as much mana anymore (nerfed intelligence).
Now obviously nobody gives a rat's behind about scores in HotA campaigns, but in case it was actually competitive (like, an ingame leaderboards kind of thing)... well, that would quite suck
I'm quite surprised, TBH, that HotA devs did not utilize my feedback about Summon Elementals in campaigns.
This is literally a gamebreaking spell in every single way. Allowing it to carry over = lolnope. It instantly breaks whatever you're trying to accomplish. Should be a scroll spell only, unless the exploit with the combat going on despite your army being dead is fixed.
This is important since they are planning a Factory campaign...
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Rakso
Adventuring Hero
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posted January 06, 2020 09:02 PM |
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Edited by Rakso at 21:03, 06 Jan 2020.
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@Doomforge I have a friend who is remaking campaigns for the HotA Crew(the ones this topic is about, the originals). They are going to be nearly-totally reworked or at times remaked from scratch and shared to the community in a patch soon, or either "pretty" soon. In the nearest future also the original campaigns from vanilla to match the HotA difficulty-style and innovations. 
He's very talented and skilled at mapmaking, so perhaps most of the issues you're talking here about will be fixed or reworked in case you haven't yet felt that the campaign can f*ck one up, seems like it will be able do so ever deeper soon. lol
Edit: and these sure will mind the changes, such as logistic and intelligence.
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted January 06, 2020 10:20 PM |
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Wait, even the RoE/AB/SoD will be remade? wow, that's quite something. I just hope he won't go overboard with some things, like one-way monoliths near player's towns (UGH), or heavy restrictions in Dwellings/spells/skills with many things banned.
Sounds fun, obviously 
But he REALLY needs to restrict summon elemental. It's imperative so that the campaigns are not a laugh
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted January 07, 2020 07:32 AM |
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Edited by Elvin at 07:33, 07 Jan 2020.
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Interesting, I'm looking forward to this. Hota campaign mostly focused on the challenge but did not deliver on the fun. Not that the originals were always barrels of fun but when faced with too many restrictions and the mapmaker decides how you will play the map, a big part of the game's appeal is lost.
Also immersion-breaking design like when Bidley gets stuck underground and he has to depend on his friends above to visit the tents without even having contact! Seriously, did the underground border guards set up camp down there to make wandering heroes starve to death, unless by some stroke of luck a friend visits their corresponding tent? The tents would make more sense underground, most of the locations down there are pointless anyway.
And if a map requires that you rush or die by week 2-3, there should probably be some indication where the enemy base is. A text box, a sigh, an observatory from a vantage point where there is no immediate contact, an eye of the magi, a scripted event perhaps. Losing and replaying is for old school castlevania, not heroes.
Finally, Tark. If you're setting him up for next mission main hero, let people know! If not, give him a minimum level on his solo mission so that people don't have to reload if they left him lvl 10.
If your friend addresses those, it's gonna be great
____________
H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted January 07, 2020 09:52 AM |
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^ This man speaks the truth.
Also, please don't restrict the players to village hall  This means beat the AI week 2-3 or lose. I do enjoy rushes but I don't really enjoy being forced to rush for 3 missions in a row and that's what Terror of the Seas does.
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We reached to the stars and everything is now ours
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Rakso
Adventuring Hero
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posted January 07, 2020 10:07 AM |
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Edited by Rakso at 10:08, 07 Jan 2020.
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Doomforge said:
Wait, even the RoE/AB/SoD will be remade? wow, that's quite something. I just hope he won't go overboard with some things, like one-way monoliths near player's towns (UGH), or heavy restrictions in Dwellings/spells/skills with many things banned.
Sounds fun, obviously
But he REALLY needs to restrict summon elemental. It's imperative so that the campaigns are not a laugh
Yes, RoE & AB & SoD, but probably not in this year. You should be able to expect redesigned HotA campaigns tho, althrough I think not all of the scenarios will be made by my friend - personally I think it would be way better if one person only would work on the design of the whole thing, that would be less chaotic, as you know - "if you want a thing done well, do it yourself", but that's of the HCrew to decide the approach.
I'm sorry but I doubt I can really say anything about their structures, designs and especially "your-issues" fixes "work in progress" as I'm not really having any deeper insight nor do I co-operate with him at making them, I'm more of a custom type maps of a guy rather than being into lore restriction and scenario walkthrough imposed designs(I mean the plan of the world in the map, enemies, what are heroes supposed to do and whatever(as example Water Dimension)), as HotA is wanting.
We are both mapmakers from poland, close friends from chat and passion, but we don't often talk about how we plan our maps in the inner to be "styled" like, but rather strove in outsmarting the HotA changes or map editor limits that managed to pull me even in the least into the basics of modding. lol
Althrough I can tell you I've sent him this topic to read over, literally a gift from heaven that you wrote a reply on it in this certain area point of time to me and him to notice it, otherwise we both "maybe" wouldn't ever know of it. Though I don't care so much of it for the sake of it's unneedity for my own, I doubt he ignored any sort of research on the net about the campaigns case anyways, so he could hopefully drop on it at some point in time, but well known is - the earlier, the better.
By so I mean: It's very highly helpful to simply hear other people opinions, ideas suggestions to just know them and keep at the back of your head to recall and hopefully be able make use of for the better sake, althrough it's often the less used, the more the map starts being built in strings(or being close to be completed), like an invisible spider's web, where a thing is connected to the another one far away, pretty much without players often realising so due to lack in analizing the map from the mapmaker point of view, making the suggestions too much map affecting or screwing at times to be implementable.
Cheers,
ps: Don't worry about elementals summoning to trigger your PTSD. a solution sure will be found, the scroll one is pretty much decent already.
Elvin said:
Interesting, I'm looking forward to this. Hota campaign mostly focused on the challenge but did not deliver on the fun. Not that the originals were always barrels of fun but when faced with too many restrictions and the mapmaker decides how you will play the map, a big part of the game's appeal is lost.
Also immersion-breaking design like when Bidley gets stuck underground and he has to depend on his friends above to visit the tents without even having contact! Seriously, did the underground border guards set up camp down there to make wandering heroes starve to death, unless by some stroke of luck a friend visits their corresponding tent? The tents would make more sense underground, most of the locations down there are pointless anyway.
And if a map requires that you rush or die by week 2-3, there should probably be some indication where the enemy base is. A text box, a sigh, an observatory from a vantage point where there is no immediate contact, an eye of the magi, a scripted event perhaps. Losing and replaying is for old school castlevania, not heroes.
Finally, Tark. If you're setting him up for next mission main hero, let people know! If not, give him a minimum level on his solo mission so that people don't have to reload if they left him lvl 10.
If your friend addresses those, it's gonna be great
I agree 100%. I started disliking one-strat based maps the sooner I realised it doesn't work good for "meta-changing, updates, nerfs, boosts etc." HotA basis, also for the feedback of the masses, and % of completions. That's also for me: the fun comes from diversity in approaches, which still appear to be challenging to oppose, without restrictions to create the threat, althrough some must repeal for other to unleash the true bigger amount of variety.
Maybe you can expect the maps to suggest from some, up to plety of ideas or solutions in passing them alternatively, but all being difficult to achieve in their own way, not a laughable walk on top obviously.
He'll surely read your reply. I'm not certain if he'll write one. If he won't, then it's due to not willing to come out himself with spoilers, I believe.
Cheers,
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