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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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bronzephenix
Hired Hero
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posted August 04, 2011 04:54 PM |
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I agree that although Nival is to blame for many technical things, Ubisoft also has a responsibility in thi fiasco. They are the franchise holder, and lacked of foresight when they chose Nival's proposal. They wanted to outsource to reduce the costs, sacrifying the possibility of a tighter relationship. They reaped what they sew, if they're unable to handle properly this kind of outsourcing, they're also to blame. And it's the same about the game content. They're the producers, they could have made any specifications for the game and given that as a prerequisite to the developer, but they likely didn't want to bother with that, and only did story elements, letting Nival do watever they wanted about the game design.
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markkur
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Once upon a time
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posted August 04, 2011 07:34 PM |
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@Corribus
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I know that Ubisoft has expended an incredible amount of effort to include fans in the formation of a new HOMM franchise.
This is along the line of what I pointed to earlier. I'm guessing but it seems to me, to be "ANY present-day game-maker" and then take this (ask the fans)road, is to invite a real hornet's-nest to the design of your product. I can imagine internal paralyzing results as they navigate fan feedback.
<imo> H6 is under the same challenge, because the world of HoMM is a long-lived world and full of confilcting views about everything. I would not want the job. I run into oppressive negativity from some folks when I do the work and trying to give one map away. Not griping just stating the obvious.
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"Do your own research"
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perathekojot
Known Hero
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posted August 04, 2011 11:42 PM |
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Quote:
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. .
Arcane armor could not be dispelled. AA unit was meant to be saved for the end. Standing in corner, so it couldn't be reached by half of enemy army. It wasn't meant to be a big threat, your hero is a threat. AA unit is simply there to outlast everything else. I will elaborate one of examples I gave, so you got the idea what I am talking about.
Orson. Zombie specialist. On lvl24 give +12 defense/attack to zombies. Mass endurance give +9 defense. Defending in corner, with the help of stand your ground, defend command gives +60% to defense rating. Expert defense lower damage by 30%. Add now necro primary stats high defense rating, plus bonus for enlightenment. Now do the math. Zombie defense rating will top attack of any lvl7 with righteous might.
Next number. Basic zombie rising cost is 4DE  Upgrade 6DE, Average DE number during the game should be weekly 400-500 DE points, less in the beginning, more on later weeks. With good micromanagement, planning, you should be able to maximize their number, by rising solely zombies. So in week 4 with heroes starting army, city growth, little bit of transforming and of course smart use od DE points, you should get 400-500 zombies, with 19-21 hp each, doubled effectively with armor. That is 2000 hp stack with highest defense on battlefield. With waiting command gets double initiative, not losing its defense value. Reached only by half of enemy units. Single archangels with 5 morale and 5 luck will on average kill 2-3 zombies per turn. 10 will kill 20-30. While your hero cast COTN with lets say 400-500 damage * 7 for every stack. Who will last longer?
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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
Like I said with lvl5 guild and expert summoning, phoenix is not needed. Usually lower level, cheaper spell will suffice. In extreme situation previously described defending tactic will do better. For instance, on Hourglass (hard core map), Orson with this tactic could break the main garnizon in week 3 (garnizon is consisted of 200 of each elementals, 20 phoenixes, 50 death knight), while phoenix will die after few retaliations. Of course you won't find yourself playing this type of battle on UBI original map, cause they are crap.
Basically AA was spell to raise your chosen units survivability to the absurd, and allow your hero enough turns to cast powerfull spells and destroy the enemy with it. All other examples, and many more, are somewhat different, but essentially it is all explained in previous sentence.
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted August 05, 2011 12:00 AM |
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Nice - on paper, I mean. Really, those things, we did like 2-3 years ago. I'm not going to be rude here, of course, it's a solid strategy on paper, but I can think of countless ways to defeat it, and I'm not even that good H5 player myself. I'm sure Elvin can explain it better to you why this simply wouldn't work that well as on paper - it may be good against a certain faction of course or two, but...
Let me give several ideas from my head:
Inferno: CoTN doesn't affect them. Gated stacks soak up retaliation, the others can simply pound and pound. Likely to have vulnerability spell that will slowly devour all your defense. Familiars, if stacked, can steal a big part of your mana and hence limit your ability to cast.
Elves: if you're unlucky (coin toss, again) almost all units can act before you even think of casting spells. Arcane Archers lucky strike against racial enemy: zombie (they ignore def, partially, btw) will kill of ridiculous amounts of your zombs. With morale, they can actually attack three times before you even move or cast a spell, if you're unlucky, meaning you will lose the majority of Zombies before even casting a single spell.
Dungeon: Will not wait for you to gather zombies. They will rush you with destructive, which Necropolis really fail against (I consider it to be near impossible to win vs. dungeon destructive rush as Necropolis and iirc so does Elvin).
But that's beside the point: your point is that AA doesn't suck. In defense of it, you give an extremely exotic scenario of a Orson on XL map (or L?), having power of endurance, CoTN spell from build (33% chance) and enough time to cast power of endurance, arcane armor AND several consecutive COTNs after. In this particular scenario, yes, AA is good. But, how much of the game does that cover? How realistic is that, and how many factions can actually benefit from AA like this?
Also, for CoTN to do 500 damage, you'd need 30 spellpower. Sorry, impossible.
Yup. Exotic build, as I said, and I don't disagree with you there that AA is good for one. That's what I've been saying all along.
Compared to phoenix for a generic situation however it's garbage, imho.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted August 05, 2011 12:26 AM |
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Actually I'd fear Orson under pera.. Orson is not unbeatanle but he's pretty damn good and pera has always been close to my level if not better. He knows his stuff, he doesn't talk about paper strategies.
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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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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted August 05, 2011 12:59 AM |
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@markkur
Not sure I follow.
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perathekojot
Known Hero
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posted August 05, 2011 01:17 AM |
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It isn't on a paper. I have played several time with Orson. He starts with vitality. He needs 4 more level for mass endurance and stand your ground. Summoning, enlightenment and logistic, will come, all you need to plan your leveling.
Although I begin to suspect, we think of different type of map. I mostly think about custom made Toh played maps, in a last 2 years. At it fines, imo. Usually spellpower 30 is reachable for necro. Still for 400 damage you need 21 SP, and that is a minimum you can get, with arties added. 21-30 sp. Still impossible?
Inferno, mass decoy, 21-30 sp equals 200-270, with slippers 300-400. With all those gates around. Best mass decoy effect in game.
Every faction is played differently. So, playing against them requires different aproach. The thing I described was not a strategy as a whole, just a breaking move
Of course, against rushing faction, you will use swift mind. That solves a lot of problems. Arcane archer included. Also because with arcane intuition (another awesome spell) you will learn decoy, suffering, weakness,... Arcane intuition will give you full view on his hero, arties and build. He has empathy or not, which mass spells, ... everything he got. And then you form your strategy.
To, as a magic faction, even the odds, to prolong, to weaken, so that at one point you can focus on hurting them, with a rock at the corner of a battlefield. And trust me, they wont charge at zombies from start. There are bigger treats: torpor, sorrow, harm touch, decoy, suffering, shield allies.
AS for dungeon, like I said, we think of different maps. Usually that is on of least picked factions. With strikeout system introduced, almost nobody ever pick them. But of course you wont pick this strategy with Dungeon, you go tactics with mass haste. There is no ultimate strategy in H5, it depends on many factors, starting with opposing faction, hero and map.
Also Orson on smaller is even better. But without AA, I am afraid. Still same strategy. Just you learn decoy and rest spell from liches, skip entire mage guild (5 days) and caught them with their pants down. 300 zombies week 3 is even bigger rock.
AA is almost solely meant for necro and academy. Dungeon if it involves really heavy creeping, and you know you will get it in time.
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markkur
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Once upon a time
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posted August 05, 2011 06:14 AM |
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@corribus
Considering the age of the world of HoMM; seems to me that ANY game-developer that tried to become a "tech-advanced-modern-game-maker" with a precious franchise like HoMM and then pulled all the plugs, in an effort to reach out to all the fans to get loads of fan feedback would be...doomed.
e.g.
1.Markkur Magix is making H6.
2.My helpers say "lets ask the fans!"
3.I agree and we gather fan-responses from 3-4 places incuding HC
5.Finally I have the 75-100 people that work for me and we need to mix the fans ideas with all our ideas.
Considering how any H6 thread reads here @ HC?
I'd make my game and forget spending time and money asking any questions outside of those working at Magix
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted August 05, 2011 09:18 AM |
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First off I thank you for your feedback and thoughts on the matter. Apparently those are things we mostly agree on and I am glad that most of them will not be part of H6. Undoubtedly there will be other flaws but I trust BH to work on them, a lot more than I did Nival.
Obviously the map editor was a big issue, complex or confusing documentation, hard to use scripts, non user friendly. The RMG I don't even want to talk about. Coupled with lack of maps the situation was pretty much terrible, thank goodness we had talented mapmakers like fiur, insatiable or jinxer.
The camera was another issue, while I enjoyed it and could get around its little flaws, it was not as easy for others to get used to. But at least a classic viewpoint was introduced.
The poor programming of the game was apparent, those memory leaks were horrid.. So much lag.
@ Radox
That's a classic last stand exploit. Each time the archangels attack your 2 vampires, the last one survives with 1hp. You raise. He attacks, 1 survives. You raise again. After 5 raise dead your vampires have 1hp each. So, when the archangel attacks he kills the top 1hp vampire, the second that survives attacks for 1 dmg and raises back the previous vamp. At that point your hero is free to do whatever he wants, the vampires won't be going anywhere.
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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 05, 2011 11:43 AM |
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@peraththekojot
I see your point - it's not like I've been trying to be a smartbutt, however what I think is AA is good for a handful of strategies - yes, good, maybe damn good even - while phoenix can suit almost every method there is. But perhaps you're two or three levels beyond my abilities and can execute it incredibly well, which of course changes everything.
On the whole CoTN thing - it puzzles me though, why using a light faction you can't just spam anti magic like we did in vanilla H5 days. Sure, CoTN wasn't exactly hot there - 64+8*SP was rather laughable compared to iirc 144+12*SP it is in ToTe - but still... if I was to take 400 damage per turn, I'd rather protect key stacks.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted August 05, 2011 12:22 PM |
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I don't really think the question is whether AA is a useful spell, because it is. But is it useful not to be a level 5 spell? Probably not. It seems too situational and/or it seems to rely on too many secondary counters (yes, it will absorb damage, but it's not like you won't lose units, unless you affect your stack also with another spell like Regeneration, Vampirism, or whatnot). Actually, if AA drained 100 % of the damage at Expert mastery (or better still, had the damage absorption depend on spellpower), even if it had less capacity (á la H6 Guardian Angel but capped) I think it would have been a much more interesting spell, and at least suited for level 5.
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What will happen now?
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perathekojot
Known Hero
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posted August 05, 2011 12:39 PM |
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Quote:
On the whole CoTN thing - it puzzles me though, why using a light faction you can't just spam anti magic like we did in vanilla H5 days.
It is simply matter of size of your army. First cast of Cotn 7*400=2800 damage. You protect one troop (negating all good effect and preventing ressurection), next cast of Cotn 6*4=2400, you protect next stack, next Cotn 2000 damage. At that point after defeating all necro army expect zombies with some losses and 3 casts of Cotn, your stacks are too small, and game is over. Take lvl7 for instance. In week 4 with external dwelling (best case scenario) you will have 10-11 units. Take away few off them lost in battle in melee, then take away 6 of them for 3 executive cotn, is there any reason to protect 2-3 unit at best. And of course if you protect lvl7 or 6 from start, its even worse. Because if you are left with high level troops against few hundreds of zombies that take ages to kill, enemy hero will simply kill them by his strike. Also zombies in corner could be reached by only one large unit. Not to mention zombies themselves will kill them eventually, if your hero needs to negate other side casting. And zombies are not immune to raise dead, while your protected units are. But even then with ressurection dead stack is over, cause they will be just destroy with Cotn again, with a good chance not to get to act, depending on ATB values.
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted August 05, 2011 12:56 PM |
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Well, that's interesting actually, I'd love to try it out.
Have you tried similar scenario with Laszlo's Vindicators ? Yeah no AA, but a way better and tougher unit, dealing much more damage too, with morale (unlike zombs) and resistant to ranged attacks.
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perathekojot
Known Hero
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posted August 05, 2011 12:59 PM |
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Quote:
I don't really think the question is whether AA is a useful spell, because it is. But is it useful not to be a level 5 spell? Probably not. It seems too situational and/or it seems to rely on too many secondary counters (yes, it will absorb damage, but it's not like you won't lose units, unless you affect your stack also with another spell like Regeneration, Vampirism, or whatnot). Actually, if AA drained 100 % of the damage at Expert mastery (or better still, had the damage absorption depend on spellpower), even if it had less capacity (á la H6 Guardian Angel but capped) I think it would have been a much more interesting spell, and at least suited for level 5.
Most of summoning spells are highly situational. For instance, wizard can defeat knight with outrageous number of paladins by simple MOTW + summon hive combo. Unless knight has immunity and mana to cast it. In this case goes from best spell in game to useless. Change wizard with necromancer, put lvl6 with harm touch next to them, immunity won't matter. Just an example.
I like the fact that in H6 same spell can't be spammed turn after turn. Cooling down period will enrich gameplay. But, spells last to little, and prevent effective combinations like I mentioned before. Even if you had AA spell in H6, this combo is useless if you have to lose half of all your casting to cass mass stone skin and AA every four turn.
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perathekojot
Known Hero
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posted August 05, 2011 01:14 PM |
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Quote:
Well, that's interesting actually, I'd love to try it out.
Have you tried similar scenario with Laszlo's Vindicators ? Yeah no AA, but a way better and tougher unit, dealing much more damage too, with morale (unlike zombs) and resistant to ranged attacks.
Interesting idea, but knight simply lack in SP and mana Although with vampirism and retaliation strike, standing in corner defending, boosted defense with endurance and stand ground, could very well work.
Hero specialist really did shine in H5. Hope they will get reintroduced in H6 eventually. They really made some strategy possible that would otherwise be suboptimal. Added to game variety a lot. For instance Executioners with Gorhsak. They were ultimate killers. Largest growth for lvl5 with double strike. But if you cant protect them from puppet/frenzy they alone are enough to massacre your entire army, usually in single blow per stack. Starting with cyclops
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted August 05, 2011 01:20 PM |
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This is getting way off topic..
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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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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted August 05, 2011 01:23 PM |
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Quote:
I like the fact that in H6 same spell can't be spammed turn after turn. Cooling down period will enrich gameplay. But, spells last to little, and prevent effective combinations like I mentioned before. Even if you had AA spell in H6, this combo is useless if you have to lose half of all your casting to cass mass stone skin and AA every four turn.
But isn't that exactly what makes things pretty interesting? You will have to make a lot more and a lot more complex decisions? There is the additional effect that lots of troops have dispelling abilities and that there are lots of dispelling spells as well, so the battle situation is much more unstable, so there will be tons of effects on creatures which will change permanently.
So the tactical situation changes very fast and you have to take stock regularly to check what effects are on everyone - and what will be the best thing to do at that point, that is, battles between 2 real players will have much less automatic actions.
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perathekojot
Known Hero
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posted August 05, 2011 01:36 PM |
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Quote:
This is getting way off topic..
Sorry about that. I mostly wanted to point out how important and interesting were hero specialists, so maybe will have another chance to use them in H6. Because, losing them for sake of balance, doesn't make game better and interesting. Anyway, I'll stop now.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted August 05, 2011 01:41 PM |
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That is a valid concern, it's the whole arcane armour discussion that was getting old
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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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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted August 05, 2011 01:47 PM |
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Quote:
But isn't that exactly what makes things pretty interesting? You will have to make a lot more and a lot more complex decisions? There is the additional effect that lots of troops have dispelling abilities and that there are lots of dispelling spells as well, so the battle situation is much more unstable, so there will be tons of effects on creatures which will change permanently.
So the tactical situation changes very fast and you have to take stock regularly to check what effects are on everyone - and what will be the best thing to do at that point, that is, battles between 2 real players will have much less automatic actions.
I guess that depends on how you define tactics. With a lot of extra variables, it's pretty much impossible to plan ahead and predict what will happen. Will that make the game more complex? Possibly. Will it make it more tactical? I'm not so sure. If all you can do is evaluate by the current situation, I won't say game is more tactical, rather the contrary.
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What will happen now?
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