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| Thread: Bored of the beta: a mini-review |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted July 11, 2011 01:13 PM |
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Says you.
Considering there are lots of people who would claim that H4 is the best game of the serious, I think that's a verdict that everyone will have to build for themselves.
It is certainly already inferior to Heroes IV as far as the town screens and the overall town interface is concerned and you won't find many who will say otherwise. Just an example.
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The point is this game won't be balanced at least for a very long time.
Yes, that's my concern as well. Heroes V had... how many? Several patches for its whole lifetime between the release of the first version (the horror!) and TotE and not all of them dealt with balance issues even though there were many of them. Sure, Nival is a different company but... Ubisoft isn't. Don't know who prioritizes what should be included in a patch and what not but it's quite likely to be the latter who have my complete distrust that they can do the things right.
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Ankhes
Hired Hero
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posted July 11, 2011 01:17 PM |
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Yea but balancing is long process and it is extremely hard to predict what one change will do. Small footsteps is imho the best way to go. Everything has to be taken into consideration - how this change will affect early,late, mid game. How it will work with other changes to other things etc. Even all these suggestions could be very off because we have got only one map Broken Alliance with ridiculously easy access to all the resources and creature dwellings. On other maps without creature dwellings at all maybe cores won't be imba at all or maybe champions/elites are even worse because there will be so few resources that you won't be able to get them so easily.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted July 11, 2011 02:19 PM |
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Quote:
Quote:
Says you.
Considering there are lots of people who would claim that H4 is the best game of the serious, I think that's a verdict that everyone will have to build for themselves.
It is certainly already inferior to Heroes IV as far as the town screens and the overall town interface is concerned and you won't find many who will say otherwise. Just an example.
Heroes IV's town screens were ugly, in my opinion, without even a modicum of the atmosphere the 3 predecessors had.
Also, these things can be changed, and a town screen is a pretty irrelevant part of the game anyway - icing on a cake that's either tasty or not.
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Kitten
Known Hero
Roar
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posted July 11, 2011 03:33 PM |
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@vaeledrin
I am glad we think alike. Btw the way I understand it, Nival did want exactly that, a polished H5 remake. But as much fun as I found H5 to be, I am thankful that we are taking some new steps and breathing new life into the franchise. Let's face it, there is absolutely no way for the devs to avoid criticism. At the very best they can hope to piss the least amount of people, can you imagine how that feels for them? Or to put it differently, how much interest would you find in spending a few years of your life into a game that is one of the same with just different units/spells? If there is no ambition it is easy for things to fall apart, you can tell when someone no longer loves what he does. It would reflect on the project. But at the same time you need to be aware of what your fanbase wants and that is what we are doing right now - giving them feedback. I wish the collaboration with the insiders had begun sooner and there was more involvement (and some extra budget  ) but now things are different. If there is something I can tell is that they are listening. Give them what they need to hear, don't drown them in complaints that cannot accomplish something.
Very well said ^^ Especially this line "But as much fun as I found H5 to be, I am thankful that we are taking some new steps and breathing new life into the franchise."
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MagniBronzeb...
Adventuring Hero
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posted July 11, 2011 04:08 PM |
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I knew that someone will point out chess as TBS without randomness. However the fact is, chess isn't even a computer game (sure you can implement it to work on comp, but this is not the idea behind chess), it was invented lot of centuries ago. Today COMPUTER based TBS have heavy elements of randomness in them, more than RTS. Let me list some: X-COM, Panzer general, Civilization, Spellcross, Age of wonders, Disciples, ... All of these have chance based features, your main goal is to maximize the chance % for abilities you plan to use and neglect the other. For example in heroes skills, if you for example choose wizards, you made a compromise your game won't be centered about logistic skill, if you want logistics at all costs, then you choose another hero/castle. However it still gives you small chances if you really want to go little "astray".
If you are so cocky about random skills, why you don't complain about random damage of creatures, random abilities, random weeks, etc.
Also current skill system is very daunting for a new player, you have like 5+ choices for each category (which are 5 too) for might and magic, so you end with like 5*5*2 = 50 choices :S You may say that pr0s should handle this easily, but the game should be designed around casual players too. At least they could do a tree based structure. And unlike previous editions of heroes games, now leveling requires even more experience.
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Seraphim
Supreme Hero
Knowledge Reaper
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posted July 11, 2011 04:13 PM |
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Yea but balancing is long process and it is extremely hard to predict what one change will do. Small footsteps is imho the best way to go. Everything has to be taken into consideration - how this change will affect early,late, mid game. How it will work with other changes to other things etc. Even all these suggestions could be very off because we have got only one map Broken Alliance with ridiculously easy access to all the resources and creature dwellings. On other maps without creature dwellings at all maybe cores won't be imba at all or maybe champions/elites are even worse because there will be so few resources that you won't be able to get them so easily.
Small steps? That's ok in the development phase but the beta stage is not in the development phase.Beta phase exists solely to fix balance issues.Most customers moam about balance which is why the beta phase is so important.However,the game suffers from issues far worse than balance which I pay the least attention to.
Why not delay the game even further?What we customers want is a decent gemeplay,good graphics and a stable game.
None of this is available currently.The game is inbalanced,the UI and town windows are crap and the beta crashes often.
The devs should start burning the midnight oil and begin to fix these issues because the release date is not far.Else,the game will be as famous as H4.
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odium
Known Hero
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posted July 11, 2011 04:17 PM |
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Edited by odium at 16:21, 11 Jul 2011.
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In my opinion, even if the game is not an enhanced version of the previous game (which is not something that I'm against), it brings to the table some interesting ideas. However, the way it is implemented right now, makes me think of the game as being boring. And no, I'm not missing randomness which I totally hate, but the uniqueness in strategy and ability trees for different factions. A very good solution is to make something like Heroes 5 skillwheel with the Heroes 6 mechanics (i.e without randomness). This includes prerequisites for certain skills, but I'm not referring to the superficial prerequisite mechanics (level 5 and level 15 skills) which is implemented right now.
Of course skills and abilities should be tuned according to the current mechanics (only 3 tiers, strengths and weakness of each faction). Even though some people say (including respected members of the community) that the current implementation leaves room to different skill picking strategies for different factions, in my opinion the differences are pretty minimal and leaves the impression of similarity.
Apart from the difference between factions, I believe that there is a problem with the difference between heroes from the same faction but with different affinity towards might or magic. If the skill tree becomes more complex, similar to Heroes 5, then it will be easier to bring difference between the might heroes and magic heroes.
Another idea that goes hand in hand with making skill trees faction dependent is assigning to each faction far less magic schools than there are right now. Heroes 5 had only 2 native magic schools for each race. That turned out to be a bit bad since there were too few combinations. Making something like 3 native magic schools per faction would create many more combinations.
All in all the simplified might and magic trees, should be completely refurbished.
ps: the might tree is inherently poorly organized.
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Ankhes
Hired Hero
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posted July 11, 2011 04:54 PM |
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Of course beta is to eliminate bugs not only to balance game, and how do you want to balance it? Revolutionize everything and see how it works? And do that over and over again so that one thing in one patch is imba and in another one is completely underpowered? For example in SC2 Blizzard did same change like 4-5 times and reverted it back in another one(zealot building time) even though it was just like 6 sec. You can't predict how one change will affect other things. You can't balance game by just mixing stats here and there and hope it will work fine now...
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Seraphim
Supreme Hero
Knowledge Reaper
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posted July 11, 2011 05:20 PM |
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Of course beta is to eliminate bugs not only to balance game, and how do you want to balance it? Revolutionize everything and see how it works? And do that over and over again so that one thing in one patch is imba and in another one is completely underpowered? For example in SC2 Blizzard did same change like 4-5 times and reverted it back in another one(zealot building time) even though it was just like 6 sec. You can't predict how one change will affect other things. You can't balance game by just mixing stats here and there and hope it will work fine now...
Balance it? Here is my suggestion,they should take as much time as needed to balance something because the more time is spent,the more balanced the game will be.
EA is the perfect anti-thesis of game support and balance.Mostly they balance a game either "Revolutionizing" everything or making step by step decisionsin,on which each patch they release something OP or UP is created.
The best thing to do is not following EA's footsteps,which is rushing the game unfinished.
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odium
Known Hero
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posted July 11, 2011 05:41 PM |
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The best thing to do is not following EA's footsteps,which is rushing the game unfinished.
Well to be honest, I have a pretty bad opinion about Ubisoft, in the sense that I believe that they do not aspire for greatness (like Blizzard does to some extent) but at the best financial outcome. Reality is that, following Pareto rule (80-20 rule), greatness and best financial outcome are antagonist terms on a short/medium period. Therefore, I will never expect them to create a masterpiece but a decent game. Looking at Heroes 6, it can be a decent game like Heroes 5 but there is also the possibility of it being a disaster. I guess it's up to the insiders to influence their decisions.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted July 11, 2011 05:49 PM |
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While this is an understandable matter of taste, I don't understand why so much fuss about this is made.
if you people lost majority of excitement because the level ups aren't random anymore, it seems to me you weren't playing for the game itself, but for the spike of adrenaline when level-uping. In other words, you played heroes a lotto draw once per few battles. If this is what turns you on, why the whole "heroes" addition? Why not poker?  There's a lot of strategy to poker and a ton of randomness, I'm sure you'll love it.
Well, I think one of the things I did enjoy most about the previous Heroes games was just that, the excitement of building your Hero. And it was not about gambling, it would be foolish to play as Sylvan and then expect to get War Machines - but on the off chance that it happened, it was double exciting, because suddenly it offered some new doors.
And I really don't think Heroes 5 was as bad on that part as previous games. Like I said, pretty much all the skills were usefull, and for each faction that ones you were likely to get offered often suited that faction's style. So it was not like in Heroes 3, where you would get the choice between Mysticism or Eagle Eye, which could pretty much ruin a game. Sure, some perks could be annoyingly ellusive (which is why I would make perks not random), but on the other hand there was a certain charm in manipulating the game by choosing your skills and perks so that you would get the best chances to get the right skills offered. Sure, it was annoying when you aimed for a specific build and then was forced to ruin it, but if you did things carefully, that very rarely happened.
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Crayfish
Known Hero
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posted July 11, 2011 07:17 PM |
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Edited by Crayfish at 20:35, 11 Jul 2011.
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The factions have the potential to play very differently. With proper skill trees, unique magic schools and honing of the creature and faction abilities, five factions could give much more gameplay variety than in any previous HOMM game.
As it is, this hasn't been fully realised. I think that finishing the game, particularly in terms of differentiating the factions, is a significantly more major priority than adding further factions. That can comfortably be done in expansions. I wouldn't play a boring, unvaried game if it had 50 factions.
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Seraphim
Supreme Hero
Knowledge Reaper
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posted July 11, 2011 08:37 PM |
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Who's talking about 50 town?
6 towns and 20 neutrals + 10 bosses would have been perfect for the variation.
Nighterror you should stop asking for ridiculous stuff.Given the current state of the game,5 factions and 10 neutrals is the all you get.They might add more in expeansions,if there will be any.
Maming about things like not to many factions wont change anything,at least for this game.
On the other hand,what you think is perfect and what other people think differs alot.It might appear as you are inherently right but that is mot always the case.You have to understand different view points.
FOr example,I dont think that adding more neutrals would affect the game too much because they are just some creature that appears in adventure map.In H5 they were nothing special,in H3 they were nothing special...that goes at least for me.However,adding more bosses would be good only if they were unique in themselves,aswell as having unique rewards after beating them.
For example,a hero might be given the choice to have either 100k gold,50k experience,200 dark elementals.
More factions would have been better,but AFAIK,devs leave those for expansions in order to gain more money.It is happeing everywhere recently in the form known as "DLC" or simply as an expansion pack.
The only thing I hope for is that "modd-ability" of H6.
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Jabanoss
Promising
Legendary Hero
Property of Nightterror™
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posted July 11, 2011 08:37 PM |
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Edited by Jabanoss at 20:40, 11 Jul 2011.
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I love the new Skill system, but I have one big beef with it. Many of the skills are so weak, and I'm not only talking about general imbalance.
I'm talking about that skills that feels so minuscule bonus-wise. As if you don't really care if you take them, since the difference is unnoticeable.
I also dislike that their are no true racials, that's super boring and need to be addressed.
But I do not agree that the new system is boring in any way. They only need to balance it properly, to make everything worthwhile.
Lets look at it this way, what would you say if Diablo 2 had random selection of spells. That each time you level you only get choose between 2 random spells?
Sure it's would certainly make it thrilling each time you level, but it takes away the ability to plan, and to pick and choose as you wish...
The new system just needs balance and racials. (and faster leveling past level 5!!!)
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"You turn me on Jaba"
- Meroe
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einomida
Known Hero
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posted July 11, 2011 09:12 PM |
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"I'm gonna be werewolf Druid."
*Level up*
Summon Raven or Heart of Oak
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted July 11, 2011 09:23 PM |
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FOr example,I dont think that adding more neutrals would affect the game too much because they are just some creature that appears in adventure map.In H5 they were nothing special,in H3 they were nothing special...that goes at least for me.However,adding more bosses would be good only if they were unique in themselves,aswell as having unique rewards after beating them.
Hear, hear! Neutrals are in most cases just waste of a perfectly good unit, because you will not be able to recruit it or built it in your town. A few neutrals (like the Elementals to summon and the Phoenix from H5) are fine, but the less the better in my book.
And I agree, I don't really think the number of towns are that important anymore. 5 towns or 6 towns doesn't really tilt the balance, and it's certainly not the most urgent problem with H6 in my optics - quite the opposite!
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What will happen now?
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vaeledrin
Adventuring Hero
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posted July 11, 2011 09:42 PM |
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Aside from tweaking various skills, all I want is faster blood/tears leveling when it comes to the hero system! Perhaps also tweaking some of the blood/tears abilities as well.
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odium
Known Hero
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posted July 11, 2011 09:43 PM |
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Edited by odium at 21:49, 11 Jul 2011.
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And I agree, I don't really think the number of towns are that important anymore. 5 towns or 6 towns doesn't really tilt the balance, and it's certainly not the most urgent problem with H6 in my optics - quite the opposite!
+1
Improving balance and skill trees are by far more important issues IMO.
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DestinyatWork
Tavern Dweller
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posted July 12, 2011 01:28 AM |
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I too think 5 cities are a good start if they work on the uniques of every city.
But I agree with Nighterror that the neutrals are to few.
Why? because the early and mid game becomes boring very fast if you only meet the same creatures over and over again diversification is very important there or it will feel like a drag you have to go through instead of an adventure.
If you look at warcraft 3 and to some extent Kings Bounty they offer quite a lot of smaller tribes of neutrals that mix up the experience.
Some examples:
Thieves, pirates, gnolls, lizardmen, boarmen, mummies+scarabs, werewolves and so on.
I think this would allow for very interesting map objects, fortresses and so on that are an important part of this game.
Examples:
start of the game:
a cave or forest with wolfs + werewolf leader or bears + direbear
thief hideout with treasures guarded by thief units and a thief hero
midgame:
pirate ship sailing the sea with treasures pirate units + hero
gnoll village or lizardmen village
endgame:
pyramid with mummies, scarabs, undead, and a dead pharaoh king as hero
This of course would be the optimal thing, unfortunately nothing we can hope for now.
But 3 other options that can be realized now and should have high priority to at least give a decent amount of diversification.
-mixed units like all 3 core or f.e. sanctuary + storm elemental, haven + wolves as the dukes units.
-using the elementals to create some different ones for example earth, rock and gold elemental or fire, lava and hellfire elemental,
creating new skins and abilities for a few more shouldn't take too much time but would give some good options for mine guards.
-neutral heroes that appear if you attach f.e. map objectives like a thief hideout clashing with creeps+hero is always more interesting than only creeps
I think this topic is underestimated, this is an adventure game in the end and it needs all the differences it can get to spice it up in the longterm. Not as tedious as KB where there were a lot of creeps mixed up strangely just because it was possible but a lot more then it is now and I mean especially outside of the campaigns.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted July 12, 2011 08:23 AM |
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But I agree with Nighterror that the neutrals are to few.
Why? because the early and mid game becomes boring very fast if you only meet the same creatures over and over again diversification is very important there or it will feel like a drag you have to go through instead of an adventure.
Bosses not-withstanding, I don't see why neutrals would be particular good to solve this issue. Instead of adding a lot of neutrals, use the creatures to make a new faction instead. In that way, you not only have more creature to encounter, but also to play with.
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