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Heroes Community > Heroes 5 - Temple of Ashan > Thread: Heroes Unique Skill, Troops, Abilities, Spells and Balance
Thread: Heroes Unique Skill, Troops, Abilities, Spells and Balance This thread is 3 pages long: 1 2 3 · NEXT»
TowerLord
TowerLord


Promising
Supreme Hero
Hero of Good, Slayer of Evil
posted March 23, 2007 06:03 PM

Heroes Unique Skill, Troops, Abilities, Spells and Balance

I hear people talking about balancing wizards with knights, spells, resource costs, troops, balancing the unique skill etc. This, in my oppinion is not the best thing to do because balance is a global thing. All these elements summed together should be balanced, not one by one. If you are trying to balance a single element of these, you will break the global balance, and that certainly isn't very good. Sure when a huge imbalance exists (like marksmen training used to be.... ), then it should be fixed, but you notice how it was handled ?! It changed some town buildings and some skills/ abilities... Same thing happened to necromancy, a change in the whole system ! That's how these things are handled ...

As I see it,

Primary Skills(Probabilities of getting them) + Secondary Skills(and Abilities) + Special Skill + The Troops + The Spells + The Unique Buildings(and the benefits from them) in town should be balanced... And if we were to start a topic about balancing factions that's where we should start it !

Putting some random numbers on the paper about some new costs, troops stats, abilities , spells is very easy, but in real game it won't work! So if you wanna fix something, just think about the side effects too, and try to fix them also

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executor
executor


Famous Hero
Otherworldly Ambassador
posted March 23, 2007 06:14 PM
Edited by executor at 18:15, 23 Mar 2007.

Well I just want to say that there is one thing introduced in HoMM 5 that is an near-to-impossible task to balance: training. Alcibiades had some nice ideas about it, but I think that balancing it would never be completed. Don't kno much about the new necro, but he seem to be a bit, if not underpowered, then 'player-unfriendly' in it's mechanics. All for now, game awaits...
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feluniozbunio
feluniozbunio


Promising
Supreme Hero
posted March 23, 2007 08:19 PM

Of course you are right Towerlord. I just don't think its easy think to balance everything at once. But sure, you need to take global overview into consideration when you change anything and one can't just compare one unit to another and say that theres no balance becouse one is better. But theres a saying in my country evil is lurking in details and balancing a game is not an easy task.

For example. Lets take a look on gremlins and compare them to skeletons. The difference is huge. But i guess this gap is filled on some other lvls. But now there is another thing. Ive had a game once. I have played against academy and he took Havez. We have played Dead mans lake. on week 3 day 3 or 4 he was 1 day away from my castle and he was 19 lvl and got balista which killed my 6 hydras in one shot (there was only 6 so he couldn't kill more , if there was more , more would have been dead). He got 300+ gremlins and other stuff u have in that much time but his stats were just sick due to fast creeping + enlightenment abuse. I'm not saying it was unbeatable because i can think of some things that could have killed him but i think its just too much for certain factions and i think Nival should take more closer look at starting heroes balance because this is very important aspect of the game.  
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alcibiades
alcibiades


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
posted March 24, 2007 12:20 AM
Edited by alcibiades at 00:21, 24 Mar 2007.

Quote:
All these elements summed together should be balanced, not one by one.


Well, that then is a matter of oppinions.

Personally, I think it's a very narrow line to walk, but as many elements as possible should be ballanced by themselves. Thus, total army strength should be ballanced between the factions, independantly of other factors. Buildings costs should be ballanced by themselves. Racial skills should be ballanced. Secondary skills and abilities should be ballanced. Town buildings should be ballanced. Etc ... Of course, there is a limit - level 1 units should not be exactly ballanced between the factions, but I think you get the picture.

Then, why is this necessary? Because it's a bad thing, when the different aspects of the game are interdependant. Imagine one faction having low resource cost and low general army strength, but another faction having high resource cost but high general army strength. These may seem to ballance each other out. However, there is one factor which is not taken into consideration in this case, which is the resourcefulnes of the map. In a very resource scarce map, the faction with high army strength but high resource costs will be unplayable. On the other hand, in a resource rich map, the faction with high general army strength will clearly get the upper hand, because resource demands will not be an issue in this map.

Therefore, it is my oppinion that some things cannot be used for ballancing out, because they are dependant on external factors like the layout of the map. If all factions are ballanced out on ressources, however, the above will not be an issue. Of course, some factions might have high needs for Wood, whereas others have need for Sulfur, and in a map poor in Sulfur, that will be a problem (i.e. poor map!), but in a general map, where all resources are equally available, it would ballance out. And that's the way it should be imo.
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feluniozbunio
feluniozbunio


Promising
Supreme Hero
posted March 24, 2007 02:29 AM
Edited by feluniozbunio at 02:33, 24 Mar 2007.

Quote:

Then, why is this necessary? Because it's a bad thing, when the different aspects of the game are interdependant. Imagine one faction having low resource cost and low general army strength, but another faction having high resource cost but high general army strength. These may seem to ballance each other out. However, there is one factor which is not taken into consideration in this case, which is the resourcefulnes of the map. In a very resource scarce map, the faction with high army strength but high resource costs will be unplayable. On the other hand, in a resource rich map, the faction with high general army strength will clearly get the upper hand, because resource demands will not be an issue in this map.


You got the point here. It shouldn't be done this way. But now let's take a look at the example i gave. and i think it may more or less siut the situation like this. There is one castle whith better creatures   on lvls 1-3 (Academy) and theres faction with better creatures on lvs (4-6) (Dungeon).You may assume that on medium map u fight your first fight (not rushing) in 4th week , (rushing) 3 rd week. Then Academy (since they have better lower lvl creatures) decides to rush and there is fight in 3rd week. the other faction can't really use his bonus since he doesn't have enough time to collect enough troops of favorable lvl (4-6 that is) and this is not fair. Thats why i think units should be better balanced in terms of tiers too.

On top of that there are some heroes who give enormous boosts (in numbers and stats) and enable to creep literally everything and anything much sooner then any other faction.

Besides Havez there is also Deleb but he is totally different case because inferno doesn't have good early game and his ballista is only threat so he is not as broken as Havez (besides infernal low tier units are so weak that they need those war machines right from the start)

And what with other factions? Everybody knows that sylvan easily get rushed. So why not to make a hero which starts with war machines to even chances? Why where is NO way they can be cometitive early game?
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dschingi
dschingi


Famous Hero
the guy with the dragon golem
posted March 24, 2007 12:36 PM

Like TowerLord said...

It's impossible to balance all this stuff separately. Differences between unique skills, chances to get skills at level up, creatures etc. is what makes H5 fun!. If someone wanted to balance each of those separately, he would give away the possibility to make them unique for each faction. Just take the racial skills: All of them are completely different from each other, you simply can't make them equally powerful in any map size, with any number of players, and at the same time make them independent from what the corresponding creatures, buildings etc are.
Example: Necros need Necromancy to make up for their weak creatures. That makes completely sense. How could you balance Necromancy to make it equally powerful to the Avenger skill? It's just not possible...
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ZombieLord
ZombieLord


Promising
Famous Hero
that wants your brainz...
posted March 24, 2007 01:03 PM
Edited by ZombieLord at 13:15, 24 Mar 2007.

@TowerLord: Are you talking about my spell ideas?
If so, come on, +6 attack for 20 Spellpower now isn't catastrophic. Academy is considered a little weak than Haven anyway
Also, it's just plain stupid that Academy has the same power of spells as Haven... that means the spellpower is useless? How can that be balanced? (you can say you don't use Light Magic... but THAT's the point! I want Academy to be able to use ALL type of spells! Light Magic is not only for Haven!)

Quote:
Personally, I think it's a very narrow line to walk, but as many elements as possible should be ballanced by themselves. Thus, total army strength should be ballanced between the factions, independantly of other factors. Buildings costs should be ballanced by themselves. Racial skills should be ballanced. Secondary skills and abilities should be ballanced. Town buildings should be ballanced. Etc ... Of course, there is a limit - level 1 units should not be exactly ballanced between the factions, but I think you get the picture.

I agree completely. You should balance things one by one, not in total (or almost). That's because with the 'total' balance you would end up dependant on the map. Suppose a race is very strong with level 6 and 7 creatures but weak with others. Now, if the map is rich, this race will be overpowered. Otherwise underpowered. This means imbalanced.

It's definetely better to balance things one-by-one, so that your strength won't be map dependant.

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TowerLord
TowerLord


Promising
Supreme Hero
Hero of Good, Slayer of Evil
posted March 24, 2007 04:05 PM

Quote:
@TowerLord: Are you talking about my spell ideas?
If so, come on, +6 attack for 20 Spellpower now isn't catastrophic. Academy is considered a little weak than Haven anyway
Also, it's just plain stupid that Academy has the same power of spells as Haven... that means the spellpower is useless? How can that be balanced? (you can say you don't use Light Magic... but THAT's the point! I want Academy to be able to use ALL type of spells! Light Magic is not only for Haven!)



Not only about your ideas... I saw more threads about balancing some specific things about the game. I don't think your ideeas are bad... but look at it this way there are some spells , in which the Mastery is most important, and the spell power less important, and other spells where the spell power is very important. Academy is not weak compared to Haven... on small maps Academy totally crushes Haven nowadays. Also Artificier is the best Racial skill on the long term..... After you fully built your town and don't need any more resources , and the game goes on, you simply use those resources to build incredible artifacts for your troops ! Ring of Speed and Staff of the Netherworlds are the most game breaking artifacts in the game, and you can get mini arties much better than those for your troops. Also there is the deadly Obsidian armageddon strategy ... which seems to win games for me lately. Even if you don't have armageddon, you still can harass your opponent with Destructive spells , so I wouldn't say Academy is underpowered at all! It has very powerfull beggining, powerfull late game compensating with Artificier for lower Wizard stats, only mid game is a little harder because lvl2-3 minis are hard to get, and spells become a little less powerfull .
And of course Academy is able to use all the spells... why wouldn't you use Mass Righteous Might or Mass Haste?
Having these light and dark spells dependant on spell power would make knights use only Cleansing(or opposite spell to remove effect), not cast their own buffs, because those are simply worse, which is not very nice.

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Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted March 24, 2007 04:48 PM

If you can get 20+ knowledge and a LOT of resources (and through MMR, you can..), academy troops may gain +3 luck, +25% to initative and like 5-6 att points. That's a lot! Against a warlock, arties giving spell resistance are an obvious choice, together with artie merchant, magic mirror and some skills it may be risky for a wlock to depend on spells only in endgame.

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feluniozbunio
feluniozbunio


Promising
Supreme Hero
posted March 24, 2007 05:41 PM

To be honest i think Academy is the most powerful faction and doesn't need any additional boost but this is just my opinion
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TowerLord
TowerLord


Promising
Supreme Hero
Hero of Good, Slayer of Evil
posted March 24, 2007 05:46 PM

The idea of having all troops from all towns balanced, doesn't work . Just imagine how powerfull necro would be if his troops were as good as the troops from all the other towns, when he gets so many more out of necromancy ! Same thing goes for the Dwarven line-up, which has a little less powerfull creatures and more expensive buildings than other towns because of the super powerfull runes and hero super unique abilities.

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feluniozbunio
feluniozbunio


Promising
Supreme Hero
posted March 24, 2007 05:54 PM
Edited by feluniozbunio at 18:10, 24 Mar 2007.

Quote:
Just imagine how powerfull necro would be if his troops were as good as the troops from all the other towns, when he gets so many more out of necromancy !



For sure it wouldn't suck so hard like it does now

As for me Inferno and Necro are very underpowered (inferno with Deleb perhaps may be playable but people don't allow to take her so it doesn't matter)
By the way I haven't met any person who plays inferno. There are lots of players playing Necro, true,  but still it doesn't change my opinion about the castle.
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Plexus22
Plexus22


Known Hero
posted March 24, 2007 08:34 PM
Edited by Plexus22 at 20:42, 24 Mar 2007.

Quote:
Quote:

Then, why is this necessary? Because it's a bad thing, when the different aspects of the game are interdependant. Imagine one faction having low resource cost and low general army strength, but another faction having high resource cost but high general army strength. These may seem to ballance each other out. However, there is one factor which is not taken into consideration in this case, which is the resourcefulnes of the map. In a very resource scarce map, the faction with high army strength but high resource costs will be unplayable. On the other hand, in a resource rich map, the faction with high general army strength will clearly get the upper hand, because resource demands will not be an issue in this map.


You got the point here. It shouldn't be done this way. But now let's take a look at the example i gave. and i think it may more or less siut the situation like this. There is one castle whith better creatures   on lvls 1-3 (Academy) and theres faction with better creatures on lvs (4-6) (Dungeon).You may assume that on medium map u fight your first fight (not rushing) in 4th week , (rushing) 3 rd week. Then Academy (since they have better lower lvl creatures) decides to rush and there is fight in 3rd week. the other faction can't really use his bonus since he doesn't have enough time to collect enough troops of favorable lvl (4-6 that is) and this is not fair. Thats why i think units should be better balanced in terms of tiers too.

On top of that there are some heroes who give enormous boosts (in numbers and stats) and enable to creep literally everything and anything much sooner then any other faction.

Besides Havez there is also Deleb but he is totally different case because inferno doesn't have good early game and his ballista is only threat so he is not as broken as Havez (besides infernal low tier units are so weak that they need those war machines right from the start)

And what with other factions? Everybody knows that sylvan easily get rushed. So why not to make a hero which starts with war machines to even chances? Why where is NO way they can be cometitive early game?


I think global balance is the only way to go if you want the game to have any kind of long term entertainment value. Heres an idea, why doesn't Nival make every faction have the same resource requirements with the same number of buildings, the same building tree, creatures with the same stats for each tier, the same magic capabilities, and a copy of every hero in each faction just with different names! But then people would complain that your mage guilds gave better spells than mine! Better make all the mage guilds give all the same spells every time too

All this talk about making every aspect of each faction match the equivalent aspect of each other faction is crap. IMO each faction can handle itself just fine in most circumstances. In the example of the low resource demanding town with weak army vs the high resource demanding town with strong army, sure one faction may have less resource damands and be able to develop more army but the units are still weaker than the opponents units so on a broader scale the power of the two factions still evens out better than everyone gives them credit for.

If you reverse this scenario and say its a rich map, then the town with low resource demands may in fact have a weaker army but chances are that faction will be able to take their game at least one step beyond the other faction in other ways like dropping all that "extra" money into special buildings or upgrading every single creature dwelling and all units in army, or even spending it on powerful artifacts if there happens to be an artifact merchant somewhere on the map, which there almost always is. Hell, since they have so much extra money from the richness of the map they can even buy out the entire artifact merchant and be sittin good with boosted stats and abilites while the other faction is just getting by and managing the basic tasks of building creature dwellings and hiring creatures but not too much extra. Afterall, every faction has a limit to what they can accomplish in a single 4-6 week game and rarely (at best) is a map soooo rich that neither faction is limited at all in what they build and how, much the town gets developed and how many troops they hire. Theres always compromise to make, and priorities to set about where the money gets spent and beleive me, regardless of what faction you are playing, you will find a way to spend the money!

The example above about academy having better 1-3 lvl creatures than Dungeon is the type of thing I'm talking about. Academy's creatures may be better but Academy is more expensive than Dungeon, the creatures will have worse stats (considerably worse even in week 3)than the dungeon ones, and also even early Dungeon can develop some nasty destructive magic which is very effective in those early battles, looking at ALL the factors not just tier to tier creature comparison I think it evens out decently.

Someone mentioned that they think Inferno is weak. Perhaps thats why Nival gave them the ability to literally spam the battlefield with gated units. Now, these are troops that functionally are just as good and powerful as the inferno's original army. They don't go away when attacked. I'm definitely not an inferno expert but I think if you played against a skilled Inferno player and find yourself hacking through a swarm of gated units on the battlefied just to get to your opponents "real" army, wasting time and hitpoints while your opponent eats away your army, you may change your mind about Inferno being weak. Not only that Inferno has good speed, initiative, and damage making those gated units iven more problematic.

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TheDeath
TheDeath


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
with serious business
posted March 25, 2007 12:14 PM

Everyone says how good global balance is, but that's where the real imbalance comes from actually.

Why? People always complain about a faction being weak in a map than another. Know why? Because they are balanced differently. As ZombieLord says, suppose you have a certain faction with weak lvl 1s, and powerful tier7s (above average). THIS IS NOT BALANCED.

Having a weak spot compensating for a powerful spot is not balanced. Balanced means to keep both under the same level --i.e average!

@Plexus22: Man, GLOBAL balance does NOT mean different abilities. It means that a certain faction has weak spots compensating for overpowered spots. and this is not balanced.

You should keep both "spots" at an average level, so no choices are better than others ALWAYS. Also remember that Global balance makes each faction strength vary between maps -- which is a bad thing. All factions should be equal in power in all maps, otherwise it means the game is imbalanced.

And one more thing: non-Global balance does NOT mean that all creatures are the same, etc.. it simply means that all creatures are average for their level. This also applies to spells.

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sdfx
sdfx


Famous Hero
posted March 25, 2007 12:35 PM

Towns have never really needed to be balanced but the maps DO need some balance. A bad map will always screw even the best balance but the opposite is true as well: even the worst balance can be fixed by a good map.

Simply put:
Good maps guarantee good balance
Bad maps guarantee bad balance


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TowerLord
TowerLord


Promising
Supreme Hero
Hero of Good, Slayer of Evil
posted March 25, 2007 12:36 PM

Death, I don't understand what you are saying ... all creatures being average for one level ? No ups and downs ? Then there is no special flavour to every town... they are all very similar and the game becomes a little  boring. If you want averages, maybe you should try town vs. town games ... then obviously there will be no ups and downs.
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TheDeath
TheDeath


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
with serious business
posted March 25, 2007 01:02 PM
Edited by TheDeath at 13:05, 25 Mar 2007.

Quote:
If you want averages, maybe you should try town vs. town games ... then obviously there will be no ups and downs.
You clearly didn't understand what I was saying

It doesn't matter whether it is a town vs town or similar. What do you call "ups" or "downs"? To have different abilities?

What I said about "above average" or "weak" for their level means everything, not abilities. Even if it's townVstown, it still will have some creatures better than others, from your perspective.

For example, Angels are waay too cheap.. probably that's compensated by something else, but that's bad.

"average" creature means it has the same qualities -- but NOT the same abilities. In depends on how you use the abilities to classify a creature's strength, but if one is clearly overpowered for it's price then of course that is either imbalanced or compensated by another weaker-than-average creature.

EDIT: The thing is, every creature MUST be useful and all of them should be worth their price, on all maps.. the choice between which to recruit should only be based upon the enemy's decisions and (which ability works better against him).

What I said it's bad is something like this: Gremlin is overpowered, but Golem is underpowered.. that's BAD.. both should be average in POWER -- abilities and everything else decide the power. However that doesn't mean the same abilities. I don't know how to explain this better

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feluniozbunio
feluniozbunio


Promising
Supreme Hero
posted March 25, 2007 01:05 PM
Edited by feluniozbunio at 13:18, 25 Mar 2007.

Quote:


The example above about academy having better 1-3 lvl creatures than Dungeon is the type of thing I'm talking about. Academy's creatures may be better but Academy is more expensive than Dungeon, the creatures will have worse stats (considerably worse even in week 3)than the dungeon ones, and also even early Dungeon can develop some nasty destructive magic which is very effective in those early battles, looking at ALL the factors not just tier to tier creature comparison I think it evens out decently.




so you say that 19 lvl 300 Havez's gremlins have worse stats than pathetic 50 assasin of dungeon? Warlock has better destructive magic, true but academy has resistance and Havez got Big Bad ballista which rips apart everyhing and wait, he has remote control too in case you get your ballista. im not even taking mini artifacts into consideration. only  +health makes its gremlins twice as tough to kill.

By the way, i agree with The Death.
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TowerLord
TowerLord


Promising
Supreme Hero
Hero of Good, Slayer of Evil
posted March 25, 2007 01:27 PM

@Death , ups and downs , means levels which are more powerfull or less powerfull then the other towns balanced by other weaker or stronger levels! I don't want to see Black Dragons and Spectral Dragons having the same stats , same growth and only little different abilities to make the difference.

About the Havez issue ... yes he is powerfull and the ballista is a very good skill for wizards, but you can kill the ballista along with some troops with a meteor shower / fireball , if it is so scary for you. Actually Havez's ballista has nothing special compared to other Wizards ballista, just that it is more accesible, and you can use it to creep from the very begining.
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TheDeath
TheDeath


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
with serious business
posted March 25, 2007 01:32 PM

Quote:
I don't want to see Black Dragons and Spectral Dragons having the same stats , same growth and only little different abilities to make the difference.
Then it means you don't want to have the game balanced.

Simply put it scientifical: if a unit costs x gold, then the amount of abilities (powers) and stats should be proportional to this, not on your "feelings" about a certain faction (i.e I feel that necro needs weak dragons).

Quote:
About the Havez issue ... yes he is powerfull and the ballista is a very good skill for wizards, but you can kill the ballista along with some troops with a meteor shower / fireball , if it is so scary for you.
Yeah sure, 1100 hit points are easily killed with such a spell.

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