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| Thread: What Really went Wrong with H5? |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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perathekojot
Known Hero
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posted August 04, 2011 12:23 AM |
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Arcane armor was an awesome spell. Just a bit complicated then phoenix. Mostly it was combined with other spells to create very powerful combos. Sometimes even gamebreaking. Orson with stand your ground, big stack of zombies, defending in corner and spamming COTN (another useless spell, if I remember correctly) on many map was simple unbeatable. Lucretia with big stacks of vamps with arcane and extra vampirism, also. Ghosts with same combo and any hero. Change COTN with mass decoy for same result. Academy with MOTW + armor + regeneration/vampirism on lvl6 and 7. MOTW + armor + elemental/obsidian + circle/fireball. Rushing Havez with hp arties and armor on gremlins. Deep hydras + armor for creeping / armagedon spamming. To many excellent combinations to write them all down.
Also, academy hero with lvl5 mage guild and expert summoning doesn't need phoenix for powercreeping.
There are quite a few almost useless spells in H5. Arcane armor isn't one of them. It was mainly meant for final battle, to give magic caster time (surviving long enough) to destroy enemy with powerful spells. So, please, use another example.
So far H6 beta is light years behind in this area. For competitive MP players 70-80% builds will be the same for any faction, any hero. At least till respecializing. Which, again, is most of the game. At least it is more balanced and less random. Right? 
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted August 04, 2011 01:25 AM |
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H5 base game was kinda lame but the series really matured with Tribes of the East. The campaign and story improved a lot and the alternate upgrades were a HUGE thing.
Unlike H3, almost all creatures did something fun and interesting and there was a lot of creative and fun racial diversity.
I really enjoyed TotE and still do.
But ofc H5 had some big issues.
I have three big issues with it.
1. The story in H5 was really bad, though I enjoyed TotE very much. What I did not enjoy however was that Dungeon and Sylvan got ignored in the story after H5.
2. The enormous balance issues. Some things were just super overpowered, while other things were never used.
In many cases, there was just a single choice in the alternate upgrades. Like why would you ever want to choose Master Hunters over Arcane Archers?
3. THE STUPID GARGOYLES - well, that and other stuff like the super long AI turns. I hated that. And the small amount of multiplayer maps etc. Maps in general also looked a lot more creative in previous games. I still remember that map in H3 that looked like a big dragon and then there was another island that looked like a volcano on the same map + plus a small island filles with little chests.
3.
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted August 04, 2011 07:53 AM |
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Edited by Zenofex at 07:54, 04 Aug 2011.
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Quote:
I don't buy that.
For one thing, ultimate thing every gaming company cares about is money. The individual laborers may care about the artistic side, but for developers quality is a means to an end (dollars), not an end in itself.
That said, if Ubisoft or the game's developer had only been interested in a quick buck and not in producing a high quality H6 (or, for that matter, H5) that meets with fan expectations, they wouldn't have solicited the opinions of the fan community throughout the entire production process, from conception through beta.
You can argue about whether they got it right in the end, but claiming that Ubisoft isn't interested in what fans want is just believing what you want to believe rather than what actually is the case.
Of course every company is interested in the money in the end but then there are these companies which actually show some respect to the buyers and would be buyers and those who don't. Ubisoft certainly falls in the latter category. You I see, I absolutely don't mind to give my money to, say, CD Project because their dedication to The Witcher series is obvious and despite a few shortcomings they never gave me the impression that they are making the game so they can push it to the market and squeeze the fans, no matter how many technical and gameplay flaws it has. Or, say, Blizzard. I don't like what they are turning into ever since WarCraft III and especially WoW but they indeed give a damn about the quality of their products.
What I mean is that no game is perfect by the time of its initial release but when you throw a nearly unusable product only to release a full expansion pack some 6 months later, then you are just a worthless, greedy corporate s*** who should be kicked out from the entertainment industry for good at the very least. I really hope that we won't see a repetition of this scenario with Heroes VI.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted August 04, 2011 09:24 AM |
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You cannot compare a company like Ubisoft with a small company like Blizzard who are simply doing THEIR few games.
It should be obvious that Ubisoft is trying to establish something of a brand, Might & Magic, and that they will continue developing games.
They pick developing studios for their games. Nival has made Etherlords 1 and 2 before Heroes 5, and while Etherlords 1 is - in my opinion - a really, really good (albeit somewhat imbalanced  ) game, Etherlords 2 was ... incomplete, obviously due to the Heroes 5 deal (which should have served as a warning). Etherlords 2 wasn't supported, even though the game was published as a campaign game ONLY (no stand-alone maps).
With Heroes 5 it became the same thing: after Ubisort cancelled the deal with them for Heroes 6, they simply stopped supporting 5 - a more intelligent move might had been to do a final patch, completing the work, but the thing is that it wasn't Ubisoft who stopped the support for 5, it was Nival.
I think, no, I'm in fact very certain, because I'm part of Ubisoft's team when it comes to Might and Magic, that on Ubisoft's side, at least the responsible staff, everything possible has been done to make Heroes 5 a good game. A lot of people has worked very hard - but cooperation with Nival proved difficult in some areas.
The shortcomings of the game can be divided in two parts:
It's all Nival's fault, except when it comes to
a) background setting (Ashan and lore)
b) Campaign story
c) voice acting (different responsible parties for each language with differing results)
Oh, d) battlefield size, that is, if you would have liked a smaller battlefield, because Nival had planned for a smaller one.
Now it's Black Hole, not an inexperienced developer either, and again Ubisot is delivering background, story and voice acting, while the game mechanics and ideas are mainly Black Hole.
At this point a couple of things are very clear already:
a) The game will have a better editor that allows pretty much everything.
b) Black Hole wants to make a balanced and streamlined game for MP purposes (which results in having somehat underwhelming effects in game).
c) The campaigns will be better than those of H5 vanilla.
Of course a couple of things are still in a state that could mean failure. The interface is desastrous, in my opinion, and the desastrous interface is amplifying the, err, underwhelming humbleness of the town screens windows.
Balance is still to be find somewhere in the Jade Ocean, but not on the surface of Ashan - but all in all I'm fairly curious about the next beta version.
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Nocturnal
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted August 04, 2011 09:49 AM |
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H5 TOTE still stands as one of my favourite games. I'm one of the few who don't like H3 that much. Looking from a chronological perspective, H5 fixed most of H3 problems: made each faction, each creature and spells much much more dinstictive from each other and unique. Also unlike the most people I love H5 graphics, I love 3D in general. Racial skills, alternative upgrades, and the list goes on for me as to why I love H5 TOTE that much.
But when it comes to problems there are also many of course:
1- Overpowered creatures:
Archer in Sylvan and both of its upgrades, and the Crossbowman in Haven does excessive damage regarding their tiers. Cavalier's upgrades also are incredibly overpowered, they are like murderers. And when you give such a brilliant ability like lay hands and champion charge, they become even more monstrous. I hate dragons in general but in H5 I hated them even more as they are unfairly strong. With that kind of a damage output they simply shouldn't have that much speed and initiative, making them massacre stacks in the very beginning of combat as with 8 speed it can reach the other side in one turn.
2- Overpowered spells: There are only 3 owerpowered spells for me.
Frenzy is the first one, as it cannot be cleansed by any means. Most strong spells have also downsides like Puppet Master lowering the initiative, Resurrection lowering the HP, and they also cost lots of mana. But this one doesn't have any and it doesn't cost much mana.
The second one is Regeneration as it actually heals much more effectively than Resurrection when used on a high tier creature. It is possible for a Dragon to resurrect 2 stacks of itself in one turn so can come back to its pre-combat condition in several turns with only a mere 8 mana.
About Divine Vengeance, I think I don't need to say anything. It is just a ridiculous spell.
3- Training: Every racial skill rocks except for Haven's pitiful Training. I have never used it in any game, except for "Good Old Duel" of course
4- Trash units: Some of the units are really there only for that faction to have that tier of a creature. Gargoyles in Academy, Peasants in Haven and Zombies in Necro.
5- Inferno: This faction, with its racial and myth, could have been a brilliant faction but I find it the weakes in the game. Devils I find very ordinary for a 7th tier and very uncharismatic for a devil in apperance. Its ability is not a practical one as being in that situation, where you have lost a complete stack of creatures is already a bad thing and you have to be in that situation to use its ability. H3 Devil is in the appearance a perfect Devil for me. Horned Demons and Overseers are unnecessary except for the alternative upgrade Grunt. Familiar are only there for their mana stealing. Cerberus die like flies. Succubus do very little damage and their initiative is very low for a creature with that kind of damage output.
6- Hero abilities: Some heroes have very nice abilities, Lethos being my favourite, but some have very silly ones. Faiz, Eruina (I have seen her ability to activate only a few times), Yrbeth (as a Warlock your standard mana should already be enough), Maeve, Alastor, Raven, Dirael (as Wasp Swarm is already a never used spell).
7- Maps: The only problem about maps for me is that I don't like many castles in a map, and the info about maps didn't show how many castles there are in the map, so I have quit the game in the middle, many times, when I saw there are 8 castles but 3 players.
8- I am sure there is a name for this among players, but I don't know it. I hate how an enemy hero with 1 creature with him/her takes your mines one by one and even take you castle while you are away exploring knowing that the main hero of your opponent is away from you. And this hero is the 5th hero on the map by the same player.
9- Story: The game's story was not even a little interesting for me. Also there were many many names and events mentioned which I don't know as I haven't ever played H1, H2, H4 and haven't played H3 campaign or didn't read the whole myth of the game. So those also made it hard for me to follow the storyline. Altough I have enjoyed playing the campaings as there were nice events and funny dialogs. Agrael especially was a funny man. "Gentle Druids, it's harvest time" 
10- Battle: There is only one thing I hate in the battle system. I have explained this when I have newly entered the HC, and I was told that it got fixed in H6, but unfortunately it is not. Here:
Like in this image, I want my unit to go by the path I choose, not through the firewall but go around it. In other words, I want to be able to choose my unit's path tile by tile whenever I want. In H6 they actually go as it was in H5 but only show the full path not only the destination tile like in H5.
I think that's all the major problems for me in H5
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yasmiel
Supreme Hero
Former Chessmaster
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posted August 04, 2011 10:08 AM |
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I think H5 would have profited if they stuck with the meta choice in alternative upgrades, instead of allowing to pick every single tier.
So player would choose between sets of 7 creatures, which would be much easier to balance, and would feel like there are more factions overall to choose from.
H5 ToTE is on top of my heroes games list as well.
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted August 04, 2011 10:55 AM |
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Quote:
ou cannot compare a company like Ubisoft with a small company like Blizzard who are simply doing THEIR few games.
Blizzard small company?  Wow!
As for the rest - Nival are hardly innocent but they are not the ones taking the decisions, especially about the marketing of the game. Everything which Nival did or at least the important bits was approved by Ubisoft because Ubisoft is the franchise owner. Excuses like "we picked the wrong developer for these tasks" show lack of competence, it's not like we should choose who should develop Heroes although I'm certain the fans can come up with some good suggestions. And then again the release policy is entirely Ubisoft's department and that's what I was talking about up there. They knew that the game wasn't playable when they approved the release, heck if it wasn't for the fan activity which delayed it for a couple of months it would have been even worse. Then several months later it turns out that they had the capability to release a better version of the game with one additional faction, no matter how boring it is, if they had just decided to wait for a bit longer. If that's not a proof for moronic corporate obsession with money at the expense of everything else, I don't know what is.
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Nirual
Famous Hero
Imbued Ballista
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posted August 04, 2011 10:56 AM |
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Edited by Nirual at 11:02, 04 Aug 2011.
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Same here.
I think the problem was mainly marketing and the general impression the first game left on people. When TotE rolled around and improved so much, a lot of people already lost interest in the game and I really didnt see much media buzz around TotE. If it had been marketed as Heroes 6 (it was standalone anyway) and had the advertising behind it, I think it would've been a huge hit.
It still had problems, sure, but from there on they could've improved a lot more for future expansions, rather than scrap everything and start from scratch like they did for VI.
Quote:
You cannot compare a company like Ubisoft with a small company like Blizzard who are simply doing THEIR few games.
Well, no. The real comparison would be Black Hole versus Blizzard (both working under the umbrella of a big name publisher, Ubisoft vs Activision).
The main difference being that Blizzard can do pretty much whatever they want since they are doing well. And their style is to pay a lot of attention to polishing games. They are not pressed for deadlines like most smaller game companies are, and they have the manpower and money to finetune balance to a point hardly anyone can match. For most other games, you can be happy if they have a few patches to fix the most glaring imbalance issues.
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In ur base killing ur doods... and raising them as undeads.
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted August 04, 2011 11:17 AM |
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Quote:
Arcane armor was an awesome spell. Just a bit complicated then phoenix. Mostly it was combined with other spells to create very powerful combos. Sometimes even gamebreaking. Orson with stand your ground, big stack of zombies, defending in corner and spamming COTN (another useless spell, if I remember correctly) on many map was simple unbeatable.
This is not correct. You could either remove AA with cleansing spell if you were a light caster, or you could simply ignore the AA'ed unit and destroy everything else. The remaining stack of zombies wouldn't be a big threat to a full army, even without dispel. Also, there's no comparison between phoenix creeping and AA creeping, because the former is blazing fast and allows some ridiculous abuse of the AI, the latter is slow and doesn't do much. Absorbing 50% damage done by enemies to a sp-dependent virtual hp pool? yaaay... useless when creeping.
Quote:
Also, academy hero with lvl5 mage guild and expert summoning doesn't need phoenix for powercreeping.
Yes, it doesn't. However, with Phoenix, your abilities increase like tenfold.
Quote:
There are quite a few almost useless spells in H5. Arcane armor isn't one of them. It was mainly meant for final battle, to give magic caster time (surviving long enough) to destroy enemy with powerful spells. So, please, use another example.
I don't agree. AA is mostly useless in creeping, and in battle it's rather exotic - it can be used well, it can win you a game, but it's just not something happening frequently. If the caster, instead of doing something that is actually useful just wasted his turns to prolong the inevitable by a tiny bit of time, he'd surely lose. AA is more of a spell that is cast by the end of the battle, when stacks are reduced, damage no longer is so deadly and that 2k hp 50% reduction can actually do something. And this still assumes no cleansing. Unless you deliberately base your strategy around heavily artificed two stacks, motw, AA and regeneration, but that's about it 
Quote:
So far H6 beta is light years behind in this area. For competitive MP players 70-80% builds will be the same for any faction, any hero. At least till respecializing. Which, again, is most of the game. At least it is more balanced and less random. Right?
It's less random right now and less balanced  but don't forget it's still beta.
Btw: Divine Vengeance was so broken I didn't even mention it
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted August 04, 2011 11:27 AM |
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You see this the wrong way, Zenofex. Since producer and developer are two different things, there are those things like CONTRACTS, and those contracts have certain conditions.
Delaying the game - or any product, for that matter - costs money: someone has to pay the additional bills and the additional work time of the people on the project.
Why would Ubisoft pay, when the developer can't meet the deadline?
You would be inclined to say that NIVAL would have to pay for any delay, except if the delay would be somehow Ubi's fault - they would he to work for free.
You can imagine, though, that Nival wouldn't be too keen on that - working for nothing - as a result, they prefer to deliver what they are contractually obliged to, no matter what.
This is always the problem, when a publishing company like Ubisoft hires a developing studio for a game. There is a budget, and there is a projected development time, and once everyone agreed on the terms you have to fulill them because otherwise legal consequences, compensation claims and whatnot come into play.
The bottom line is, that it's the DEVELOPER who must meet the terms they agreed upon. If the developer cannot do so they shouldn't have signed the contracts in the first place, which is pretty obvious for everyone with any business experience.
With a game project like that a lot depends on how solid the basic design concept is. As should be known, 8 months or something like that were wasted for HoMM 5 with a concept that was scrapped - you remember the first alpha stuff with the comic-like look: scrapped.
So they had to start again from scratch, and that time was missing.
Now, if you were Blizzard, you'd simply delay things a year - no contracts whatsoever, and if you can afford it...
However, Blizzard is basically doing one game at a time only, which makes keeping track of frontd expenses pretty easy, which is completely different with Ubisoft.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted August 04, 2011 11:32 AM |
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Edited by Elvin at 11:34, 04 Aug 2011.
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I don't remember it being dispellable..
Where creeping goes it was more of an epic neutral or garrison trump card and as such useful only rather late. Too late, probably a few days before enemy encounter as you plundered the middle map riches from epic guards. Like a horde of green dragons with armour + vampirism. Or taking down a ridiculous garrison like dragon hill's with 20 black dragons, 30 magmas and 500 assassins or so. 5-6 titans can do some pretty hardcore things there with armour, regeneration, haste and artificer
Hardly a common situation though, like doomforge said it's pretty much an exotic thing. And frankly, only academy and necro could pull it off nicely in a big battle. Probably dwarves and dungeon too but both had much better options anyway.
EDIT:
I see lots of feedback, will address this as soon as I get the time
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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 August 04, 2011 11:36 AM |
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I'm pretty sure everything was dispellable. The difference in level however could screw things up: 3% for every level of difference. With Academy heroes inclined to have better levels
Some factions however could simply bully the enemy with brute force. Endgame Lolelves, for instance
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Nelgirith
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted August 04, 2011 11:37 AM |
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Quote:
However, Blizzard is basically doing one game at a time only, which makes keeping track of frontd expenses pretty easy, which is completely different with Ubisoft.
Uh ... No they don't. They have 4 teams. Unless you think their teams are working on WoW on mondays, on SC2 on tuesdays, on Diablo 3 on wednesdays and on project Titan the rest of the week.
Each project has its own team and currently they're working on WoW patch 4.3, WoW's next expansion (which was leaked a few days ago), SC2's first add-on, Diablo 3 and they have a huge team and a part of WoW's dev team working on their Project Titan (they're next MMO).
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted August 04, 2011 12:01 PM |
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That's what I said: One game at a time, which is Diablo 3. Ok, Project Titan probably counts.
But addons don't, not in my book.
They make BIG games, but very few, only. Of course, with WoW being such a hugh success, they continue to develop stuff for it, but that's just working on an old game that has already proven itself. It's like the WoG team or something. Very low risk.
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted August 04, 2011 03:33 PM |
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I think JJ's assessment of the situation is pretty much spot on.
From my personal experience, some of which I cannot share, I know that Ubisoft has expended an incredible amount of effort to include fans in the formation of a new HOMM franchise. And I do appreciate that, even if the end products haven't always been what I hoped they would be. Game development is not the simple process it was in days long past, but many fans still try to pretend that it is so that they can easily find someone to blame when a game doesn't meet up with their expectations.
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I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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bronzephenix
Hired Hero
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posted August 04, 2011 03:42 PM |
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Quote:
First of all, I must say that what really killed H5 for me was that it was poorly programmed. The game was lagging to an extent that it was impossible to play on XL maps, and AI was extremely poorly crafted. Problem with this issue is that it's something that's hard to mod. With access to the game files and (one could wish) help/advice from UbiSoft, we can change pretty much any numeral variable in the game through modding, but we can't re-program the entire game.
I think if the game had been technically functioning, we could have solved most of the other issues with a Mod á la WOG. Let me give you some specific examples:
Well it's actually being done in the modding section by Quantomas who somehow manage to reprogam and dramatically enhance the AI and is on the way of making a H5 Wog.Unfortunately, even though the work is impressive it come a bit late and the H5 community has already crumbled.
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted August 04, 2011 04:23 PM |
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Quote:
Since producer and developer are two different things, there are those things like CONTRACTS, and those contracts have certain conditions.
Let's focus on this - if Ubisoft are the innocent people whose confidence has been betrayed, they should have made the contract flexible enough to allow compensations for delays and eventually additional development time. It's not as simple as "Nival failed to make a good game by the deadline and Ubisoft were forced to release it". The thing is that Ubisoft were not forced to do anything at all. See what happens with Heroes VI? It has been pushed back twice now and the beta built we've been provided with is still infested by bugs and the balance is pathetic - even if it is old, I doubt that the "real" beta is considerably better. This is all a result of the previous experience and feedback, at least this is being done right. So if they have just applied the same policy to Heroes V, the game would have been released roughly when Hammers of Fate went to the stores. Which kind of is the thing which I'm trying to say. The didn't want to delay the release although the were perfectly able to do it.
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Avirosb
Promising
Legendary Hero
No longer on vacation
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posted August 04, 2011 04:31 PM |
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Ubisoft is responsible for the story.
They're far from innocent.
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OmegaDestroyer
Hero of Order
Fox or Chicken?
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posted August 04, 2011 04:38 PM |
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Then they are responsible for the worst sin of the series:
Isabel
That's right. I rank her inclusion in the series worse than New World Computing caving-in to the whiny anti-forge crowd, which ultimately resulted in the awful release state of Heroes 4 and the death of the company (I may be skipping a few steps here but you get the idea... hopefully), the uninspired, clichéd "dragon god" lore of Heroes 5, and even the ridiculously stupid depiction of the Dungeon faction in Heroes 5.
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The giant has awakened
You drink my blood and drown
Wrath and raving I will not stop
You'll never take me down
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted August 04, 2011 04:52 PM |
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Quote:
Quote:
First of all, I must say that what really killed H5 for me was that it was poorly programmed. The game was lagging to an extent that it was impossible to play on XL maps, and AI was extremely poorly crafted. Problem with this issue is that it's something that's hard to mod. With access to the game files and (one could wish) help/advice from UbiSoft, we can change pretty much any numeral variable in the game through modding, but we can't re-program the entire game.
I think if the game had been technically functioning, we could have solved most of the other issues with a Mod á la WOG. Let me give you some specific examples:
Well it's actually being done in the modding section by Quantomas who somehow manage to reprogam and dramatically enhance the AI and is on the way of making a H5 Wog.Unfortunately, even though the work is impressive it come a bit late and the H5 community has already crumbled.
I know. Depending on the moddability of that for personal purposes, I think I'll reinstall H5 rather than buy H6 and then see what I can make of it.
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What will happen now?
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