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| Thread: Creeping in Heroes 6 | |
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infinitus
Supreme Hero
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posted August 05, 2011 08:17 AM |
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Creeping in Heroes 6
Creeping in Heroes games are most time consuming game element. Most of gaming time players spent killing neutrals. Nothing wrong with that, except creeping minigame is boring and primitive (50 zombies walk on your archers, archers shoot. Repeat this 1.000 times) in most cases. Other elements of the game are done lot more better - town build is fun, hero build fun, map exploring fun, final battle very fun. Creep now is parasite living on fun from other game elements.
Success of H6 depends very much on how fun will be for players to creep, and here i see big problems. Creeping is more boring compared to precedent games. Creeping take now even more time because of units low damage\hi defense. No more shooting minigame, now is even more primitive exchange of hits between units combined with heal.
Creeping must generate fun, not kill fun. Situation can be changed by totally rework creeping minigame. In my opinion need to add lot more strategy here, lot more complexity, lot more game elements. For example neutral armies must be combination of units, must have hero that will lead them in battle. Units defense must be highest in front, lower on lateral, lowest on back. Battle map must have hi ground and low ground, tiles on battle map must have different tips of terrain affecting speed of units etc ...
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Nothing's impossible
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=loCSLJ6IodY
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Jabanoss
Promising
Legendary Hero
Property of Nightterror™
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posted August 06, 2011 11:04 AM |
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Edited by Jabanoss at 11:11, 06 Aug 2011.
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I agree a lot with this. I currently find creeping in Heroes 6 to be horribly boring. :/
I think there is many points that have made creeping so tiresome.
1. Healing) It feeling like every game is like playing Necro from H5. I didn't like that very much, the feeling that losing a single unit is a huge failure simple because of efficient healing. Healing that might be too efficient.
2. Lack of Tactics) In Heroes 5 it was so easy just splitting your army into nice small groups and cleverly positioning them to fully counter the specific creeps. Now Tactics is a skill which is fine I guess, (personally I don't like it) however even if you have it, it's still too clumsy to use imo. (For example you can't choose to exclude a stack of units unless you have tactics  )
3. Unit Durability) Yeaahhh... Well I don't know if this should or could be fixed, but it really make battles boring at the moment. Though it might just take some getting use to... 
Oh yeah, when you combine 1 and 3 yo just want to kill yourself of boredom.
Quote:
neutral armies must be combination of units
Though I don't think there needs to be all kinds of special tiles, or high and low ground...
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"You turn me on Jaba"
- Meroe
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infinitus
Supreme Hero
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posted August 06, 2011 11:16 AM |
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Quote:
Though I don't think there needs to be all kinds of special tiles, or high and low ground...
I don't know exactly what changes will make creeping better, for know this need lots of work and testing. Main idea is - creeping need changes, need to evolve. Many players get bored by this aspect of the game and they switch to duel/arena maps...
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Nothing's impossible
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=loCSLJ6IodY
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted August 06, 2011 11:23 AM |
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We have been trying to promote randomized neutrals for a while, the game could use more of that  At least mixed neutrals are possible in mapmaking, neutral heroes should as well.
Personally I'd like to see more minor effects tied to certain obstacles, special tiles, weather and so on. Nothing too powerful, just good enough for variation.
And more importantly..
Reduced core hp  These guys do not die easily and it's not hard to bring them back either. But if they were a little more frail facing strong neutrals would be riskier, more fun.
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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 06, 2011 12:14 PM |
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Quote:
Reduced core hp These guys do not die easily and it's not hard to bring them back either. But if they were a little more frail facing strong neutrals would be riskier, more fun.
This, obviously. When you face a stack of 10 mighty () Elite units, and they charge in and, lo and behold, kill 1 of your Core units, it just seems ... meh. 
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What will happen now?
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted August 06, 2011 01:16 PM |
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While I've been all for a HP reduction of 15 to 20% for Cores, I'M not so sure anymore about that, since the relatively high HP amount of Cores allows a twist to promote destructive spells without going overboard with immediate damage.
My idea for a better balancing of damage spell would make them a two-component spell, the first component being the direct damage as we know it, while the second component would be something of a "wounding" effect - a simply HP reduction with all the surviving units of the hit stack(s). The relation between kill damage and wound damage could be different depending on element and spell.
This kind of scaling damage spells makes sense only, when all units have a somewhat solid base HP. In H5 this would have been quite impossible, since you'd be able to waste a million of peasants with such a spell.
So I'd say that 15 HPs or so should definitely be the minimum for every unit.
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Jabanoss
Promising
Legendary Hero
Property of Nightterror™
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posted August 06, 2011 01:27 PM |
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I hate to say it, but I might actually miss the unit "imbalance" that was in H5. With that I mean that there was such huge difference between durable units and high damage units. That made creeping more dangerous and volatile. It forced the player to always have different plans of how to deal with certain stacks of units. Now it just feels like it's always the same.
Though that is too early to say of course.
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"You turn me on Jaba"
- Meroe
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted August 06, 2011 03:05 PM |
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Quote:
While I've been all for a HP reduction of 15 to 20% for Cores, I'M not so sure anymore about that, since the relatively high HP amount of Cores allows a twist to promote destructive spells without going overboard with immediate damage.
As if THAT's likely to happen, when you have to use a whole level's skillpoint just to learn one spell, which btw. will have a cooldown, meaning you can't use it every round.
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What will happen now?
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted August 06, 2011 07:11 PM |
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The problem with the creeping is not with the HP of the creatures but with the current state of the balance, particularly the advantage that the healers give. The presence of healing creature in whatever army in essence means that the total HPs that this army has during the combat are higher than the total HPs of the creatures which enter the combat (from the army with the healer) but their damage output remains unchanged. Hence - attacking larger neutral stacks becomes possible but takes loooong. I don't think Stronghold and Inferno - the factions without healers - suffer from the same problem. Actually I find the creeping with them to be rather fun, if not incredibly effective at this point.
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infinitus
Supreme Hero
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posted August 08, 2011 07:35 AM |
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Quote:
The problem with the creeping is not with the HP of the creatures but with the current state of the balance, particularly the advantage that the healers give.
I like the innovation with healers. It's add one more option for player to use, one more strategical option. Don't think problem is in healers or healing. In H5 are regeneration spell and for me is fun to creep with regeneration spell, longer yes, but fun.
Quote:
Hence - attacking larger neutral stacks becomes possible but takes loooong.
Possibility to attack larger neutral stacks i see as positive moment, players feel more like heroes - look how good i am, i can take much superior forces.
Way to go to me is adding new game elements in creeping process not reducing what we have now.
____________
Nothing's impossible
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=loCSLJ6IodY
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted August 08, 2011 03:22 PM |
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Well, factions without healers can just use regeneration spell from earth school. 
My main complaint is that attacking 30-40 elite units with 30-40 cores and defeating them without loses is actually easy. 
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DIEGIS
Supreme Hero
power of Zamolxis
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posted August 08, 2011 11:55 PM |
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Edited by DIEGIS at 23:56, 08 Aug 2011.
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well, i think creeping in 6th edition will be more fun then in the previous 5th, am I wrong? lets wait for the next beta. ive met interesting situations so far und let us know changes mate!
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dacian falx behind you
-knowledge itself is power-
www.cabinet-dentaire-malaunay.fr
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted August 09, 2011 10:49 AM |
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Quote:
Well, factions without healers can just use regeneration spell from earth school.
I think we've already discussed this about 5-6 times. Regeneration is a poor substitute for a healing creature which can outmatch its effectiveness from the point when the stack of the healer consists of some 15 creatures or more. Plus Regeneration has cooldown and why the hell should the other factions be forced to take a spell which becomes semi-useless later just to be effective at the early stage? Also why should they be forced to spend spell points on something which the "healing factions" get for free? And it's not like these "healing factions" have no access to Regeneration either.
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Possibility to attack larger neutral stacks i see as positive moment, players feel more like heroes - look how good i am, i can take much superior forces.
Yes, with Necropolis, Sanctuary and Haven. 
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pacifist
Famous Hero
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posted August 09, 2011 11:01 AM |
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Edited by pacifist at 15:31, 09 Aug 2011.
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Healing units are too strong right now (sisters, ghosts and priestesses), specially with magic hero leading them. They can own the starting areas by themselves (only one stack). It's a joke that a cleric with 23 sisters (not vestals which are broken) can beat 17 jaguar warriors with just one heal from hero. That reflects also the problem with two-square units that are not able to attack a one-squared unit in a corner other than one at a time (vampires love that ). A solution can be to adapt nbr of stacks to largest stacks from hero. Say the hero only has sisters, so the monsters come in 1 stack too if they are giant-sized. There will be other problems (reference to H4) where this can be abused also but to a lesser extent anyway here in H6. Also the lilims, vestals and other disabling units that have more power when in large numbers should not split too much as neutral. I guess the IA will not change much but we can hope some improvements.
edit : a little note on sisters. You can have your stack of sisters halved by damages, they can regenerate themselves in 3 heals provided they don't take more damage in the meantime of course. That means that 8 sisters can go down to 4 sisters (and the 4th have only 1 hp left as a minimum) and they still recover all their losses.
I'll do the maths for priestress later but it seems already they can sustain more damage but their spell can be dispelled also .
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http://www.youtube.com/user/alkoriak#g/u
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Avirosb
Promising
Legendary Hero
No longer on vacation
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posted August 09, 2011 11:05 AM |
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Quote:
players feel more like heroes
But I don't want to be the hero, I want to be the guy controlling the hero (excluding maybe campaigns).
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