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Heroes Community > Heroes 3.5 - WoG and Beyond > Thread: [Official Thread] HoMM 3: Horn of the Abyss - Announcements, Questions, Features
Thread: [Official Thread] HoMM 3: Horn of the Abyss - Announcements, Questions, Features This Super Thread is 548 pages long: 1 70 140 210 280 ... 301 302 303 304 305 ... 350 420 490 548 · «PREV / NEXT»
Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted March 29, 2018 06:01 PM

I am quite surprised that of all things wrong with Homm3, it's the Resistance change that bring so much negative emotions.

For once, it's a stupid diceroll skill that does nothing most of the time, 20% is completely unreliable. Which is the core definition of an unhealthy game mechanic. Too strong when it works, useless most of the time.

Also, it's a single game mechanic in a game where we have griffin conservatories and hive nests all over the maps, where orb of inhibition exists, when a spell can win you a game or make you lose resources (dimension door vs. magic mirror, anyone?), where one side may get town portal or armageddon and the other may get inferno spell, where one hero gets logistics and the other gets eagle eye.

You will never "balance" such a complex game and all you can achieve is ruining it. Its core mechanics are IMPOSSIBLE to "balance". Period.

After playing HotA some time I'm actually impressed by them toning down Conflux and Necro in a gentle way (those towns actually don't seem broken anymore, lol) without ruining the towns by overnerfing.

As for the resistance change, what I like here is the removal of unhealthy diceroll mechanic in favor of something consistent, albeit I do think it's underwhelming/boring (too little impact overall). Maybe if magic heroes were generally comparable to might ones... but they aren't. There's a hundred of IFs one has to face when playing magic hero (right spells, right skills, right timing), but a might hero is pretty much fully consistent, because he's going to get his army and high A/D and his biggest worry is getting mass slow/haste lol. Whereas a mage needs to fish for particular spells in a 10-20% chance super-expensive (resource-wise) mage guild bingo game and if he gets crap, he may as well leave the game. THis also applies to being offered eagle eye and learning on level up, while the might guy gets offense and tactics. Fully fair, right?

To conclude, the game is not "balanced" and as such is fun and unpredictable, and there are still people good at it and able to win consistently. Getting unhealthy things tweaked is fine by me, though.

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fred79
fred79


Disgraceful
Undefeatable Hero
posted March 29, 2018 06:58 PM

most of what you stated only applies to random maps, though. a map creator can set heroes up for whatever they need, to balance what's needed, if necessary.

but i realize that the hota team(and yourself, most likely) already know that, and are dealing with something that effects everyone. i'd like to see how hota runs balance-wise, when they're completely finished in that aspect.

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Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted March 30, 2018 03:33 PM

I guess it doesn't apply to common multiplayer maps, but I like to play some old, poorly balanced ones (AB's Two Continents remains my favorite, even though with preset dwellings you're pretty much forced to play Stronghold for the left continent and Fortress for the right ) where a crapton of conservatories and hives is placed.

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Romanov77
Romanov77


Known Hero
posted March 30, 2018 03:50 PM

I have some concern about some decisions of the mod.
I am by no means a die-hard competitive OCD player but I feel that these two things could maybe be excessively radical:



1) External dwellings accumulating creatures
I feel this could really break balance on many maps.
Yes it was annoying to have a secondary hero to check them, but it added strategy to the game, diverting attention and heroes to gain the benefit.


2) The magic guild spell re-roll
I feel this is removes a fun kind of randomization.
Suddenly you get much better chances to get the spell you want and capturing-developing other town because of this becomes less of a priority.
This might be exclusively a "single player" concern, but I really liked capturing enemy towns to visit their magic guilds thus finding that spell I longed for. It felt rewarding.

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phoenix4ever
phoenix4ever


Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
posted March 30, 2018 04:16 PM
Edited by phoenix4ever at 16:17, 30 Mar 2018.

Romanov77 said:
1) External dwellings accumulating creatures
I feel this could really break balance on many maps.
Yes it was annoying to have a secondary hero to check them, but it added strategy to the game, diverting attention and heroes to gain the benefit.


2) The magic guild spell re-roll
I feel this is removes a fun kind of randomization.
Suddenly you get much better chances to get the spell you want and capturing-developing other town because of this becomes less of a priority.
This might be exclusively a "single player" concern, but I really liked capturing enemy towns to visit their magic guilds thus finding that spell I longed for. It felt rewarding.

1) This is a change I really like, it was a chore to constantly check dwellings each week. The creatures in the dwellings are also not upgraded, so maybe you don't even want them if you have the space.
I guess this change also explains why they nerfed Firebirds, cause they would be OP if you could go crazy with Armageddon after buying 10 from a random dwelling.

2) That I agree with you, I don't like spell research either, but fortunately it can be turned off.

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bloodsucker
bloodsucker


Legendary Hero
posted March 30, 2018 07:42 PM
Edited by bloodsucker at 19:45, 30 Mar 2018.

Doomforge said:
Maybe if magic heroes were generally comparable to might ones... but they aren't.

It can affect might heroes too, if the turns are too short for the spells to be useful, for instance if you have 6 of power that are turned to 3 and the battle lasts for ten turns, your Slows, Hastes and Shields will require more spellpoints that you have.
I'm with Sal (again), the problem is the rich templates. Of course, if you get one of the better components of the AA, you don't even notice how weak your barbarian or beastmaster is in terms of magic skills. Early game Power and Knowledge are as useful as Attack and Deffense but they don't scale equally. The moment you have more then 5 of each you are settle for life, while Attack and Defense are useful up to 60 at least and you easily get four points from minor artifacts and single powerups. But if your might hero is without spellpoints or Resistance turned them useless, it will definitively affect the fight.

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Gandalf196
Gandalf196


Disgraceful
Supreme Hero
posted March 31, 2018 12:54 AM

bloodsucker said:
Doomforge said:
Maybe if magic heroes were generally comparable to might ones... but they aren't.

It can affect might heroes too, if the turns are too short for the spells to be useful, for instance if you have 6 of power that are turned to 3 and the battle lasts for ten turns, your Slows, Hastes and Shields will require more spellpoints that you have.
I'm with Sal (again), the problem is the rich templates. Of course, if you get one of the better components of the AA, you don't even notice how weak your barbarian or beastmaster is in terms of magic skills. Early game Power and Knowledge are as useful as Attack and Deffense but they don't scale equally. The moment you have more then 5 of each you are settle for life, while Attack and Defense are useful up to 60 at least and you easily get four points from minor artifacts and single powerups. But if your might hero is without spellpoints or Resistance turned them useless, it will definitively affect the fight.


What if spell duration were to be determined by (spell power)/3 rounded down (or up), as it was done in King's Bounty ? Source: http://kingsbounty.wikia.com/wiki/Intellect

Alternatively, spell duration could be determined by (0,7* spell power + 0,3* knowledge)/3 rounded down (or up), so that knowledge becomes more useful, meaning you actually have a reason to use knowledge artifacts, instead of relying on them only when you need to recharge your spell points.

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Hourglass
Hourglass


Famous Hero
posted March 31, 2018 02:04 AM

Gandalf196 said:


What if spell duration were to be determined by (spell power)/3 rounded down (or up), as it was done in King's Bounty ? Source: http://kingsbounty.wikia.com/wiki/Intellect

Alternatively, spell duration could be determined by (0,7* spell power + 0,3* knowledge)/3 rounded down (or up), so that knowledge becomes more useful, meaning you actually have a reason to use knowledge artifacts, instead of relying on them only when you need to recharge your spell points.


Not sure if I completely agree with your suggestion, but I've always felt that 1 spell power = 1 duration of spell is a just isn't a good formula. That's the one reason of many things why might is better than magic. If you have something such as 10 spell power with a might hero, that's all you need, because most battles are over before the 10th turn begins. It doesn't matter if a magic hero has 30+ spell power, if no battle lasts that long.

Also, if they would change how spells last in battles, Conjuring artifacts would receive a nice buff.

Hmm, now when I've said that, I actually feel that spell power/3 could make things quite interresting.

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StrikerX
StrikerX


Known Hero
The Bringer of Rain
posted March 31, 2018 08:21 AM

Gandalf196 said:

What if spell duration were to be determined by (spell power)/3 rounded down (or up), as it was done in King's Bounty ? Source: http://kingsbounty.wikia.com/wiki/Intellect



I was just thinking about this very thing earlier today.  If there was someway to change so that spell turns = spellpower / 2 but maybe that's too small and 3 would be better.  That would help magic hero's more in that they're spells would last longer than might hero's because even 5 rounds and the fight is usually over.


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phoenix4ever
phoenix4ever


Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
posted March 31, 2018 09:20 AM

I think Spell Power / 2 (rounded down) would be good, where can we change this?

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bloodsucker
bloodsucker


Legendary Hero
posted March 31, 2018 12:20 PM
Edited by bloodsucker at 12:22, 31 Mar 2018.

You are all looking in the wrong direction. Take the dozens of relics and creature banks from the templates and no other changes are needed. It's the richness that unbalances the matches, you are fighting week three with armies of dozens of level six and packs of level seven creatures and have several relics to choose from.
When the core of your armies came from the initial town and your better artifact will give six or seven to one skill, you will see the problem in a quite different light.

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Sav
Sav


Known Hero
posted March 31, 2018 01:03 PM

bloodsucker said:
You are all looking in the wrong direction. Take the dozens of relics and creature banks from the templates and no other changes are needed. It's the richness that unbalances the matches, you are fighting week three with armies of dozens of level six and packs of level seven creatures and have several relics to choose from.
When the core of your armies came from the initial town and your better artifact will give six or seven to one skill, you will see the problem in a quite different light.

But in case of multiplayer it seems that players' choice is rich templates. In Russian multiplayer community poor templates like Balance and Panic are usually considered boring and poorly balanced compared to the templates like 6lm10a, Jebus Cross, Diamond. That poor templates had even more restrictions than other ones and currently they are almost never played (as far as I know Polish players play Balance template, but I don't much about this; anyway they play Jebus Cross as well). For me it seems that the practice shows that rich templates are usually more interesting and better balanced.

HotA template editor allows disabling creature banks, artifacts etc., so it is not a problem to create the templates you want. Then you can try to promote them, and then collect the statistics and players' opinion. I don't think that it makes sense to judge the players' choice from just theoretical point of view, without touching modern multiplayer practice.

If speaking about non-multiplayer, than there is no problem at all. Just create the template you want (or modify the existing template) and play it.

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bloodsucker
bloodsucker


Legendary Hero
posted March 31, 2018 01:34 PM
Edited by bloodsucker at 13:49, 31 Mar 2018.

I prefer rich templates too. But when people start argue about the core mechanics of the game because it doesn't suit the changes to gameplay created by those templates, one has to point this.
I'm trying to make a map for Era these days, you know what my biggest problem is? How do I balance level 8 creatures, commanders, henchmen and second henchmen, Emerald Towers and a structure that allows for changes in creatures experience gained abilities with an AI that doesn't really know how to take advantage of this. But this is a map for Era, it is supposed to change core mechanics and I have the means to increase AI's heroes power progressively, give them better specialties, modified creatures and even automatically increase their creatures basic attributes with time.
Now, if I'm in trouble with a single map I hardly believe someone can expect to change things like global spellpower effect and get a better balance for random maps. But truth being said, your solutions to Necromancy and Phoenix growth were quite simple and they work pretty well.

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StrikerX
StrikerX


Known Hero
The Bringer of Rain
posted March 31, 2018 05:13 PM

Well I wasn't referring any specific template or even MP (I never play multiplayer).  In one aspect though, having turns = spellpower puts might classes on equal footing as magic classes because even with major artifacts + leveling it's easy to get to 5 to 10 spellpower and then all your casts last the entire combat round (same as magic users who have 15+).  

Kind of like how H5 does it.  (Though I wouldn't go that far as in H5 spell turns last barely 4 rounds even with very high sp) but a sp / 2 I think would be a pretty interesting change)

I do agree about the current super rich templates with no restriction on amount of creature banks / conservatories / wyvern trees / relics that can spawn with many many utopias.

I'm pretty meticulous in limiting all them to 1 per zone and 0 to 1 relic per faction and max (3) majors per zone with 1 or 2 utopias in my template.  The maps turns out really well and makes major artifacts fun to use again.   Not sure why MP templates wouldn't be using more limits on them.

As you said it's alot more balanced to just play with town creatures you've bought instead of so many angel / wyverns / 50+ stacks of neutral tier 6 and 7  joiners.  I love that part of tournament rules 'neutrals never join' in HotA just for that reason.

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MCB
MCB


Hired Hero
posted March 31, 2018 07:11 PM
Edited by MCB at 19:17, 31 Mar 2018.

Only lacks one thing for me in this moment on rmg editor: control building for neutral towns. There are plans to make it?

As for magic heroes, isn't the same 20 spell power than 10 when you cast implosion, armaggedon or even meteor shower. Also if you have good knowledge with intelligence you can win with elementals. Obviusly if there aren't hordes of wyverns, etc...

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FrothFrenzy
FrothFrenzy


Hired Hero
posted March 31, 2018 09:16 PM

A question popped up on Reddit regarding the score calculation for HotA. I never thought too much of it, but I did notice there was a change in scores after I installed the expansion.

Before, I used to get Archangel scores almost all the time, now the highest is 'only' a Haspid.

In the documentation, all I found was this:"The way of map winning score calculation was changed. Now it is harder to get higher ranks."

So, how exactly was it changed?

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StrikerX
StrikerX


Known Hero
The Bringer of Rain
posted March 31, 2018 09:29 PM

FrothFrenzy said:
A question popped up on Reddit regarding the score calculation for HotA. I never thought too much of it, but I did notice there was a change in scores after I installed the expansion.

Before, I used to get Archangel scores almost all the time, now the highest is 'only' a Haspid.

In the documentation, all I found was this:"The way of map winning score calculation was changed. Now it is harder to get higher ranks."

So, how exactly was it changed?


I noticed this too.  I can't even score with a tier 7 creature anymore on any maps I play.  Use to be alot easier to get high scores.

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FrothFrenzy
FrothFrenzy


Hired Hero
posted March 31, 2018 10:16 PM
Edited by FrothFrenzy at 23:29, 31 Mar 2018.

Doomforge said:
To conclude, the game is not "balanced" and as such is fun and unpredictable, and there are still people good at it and able to win consistently. Getting unhealthy things tweaked is fine by me, though.


I'm only quoting the last part, but this was a very good post. It's the nature of this game to be unbalanced and attempts to balance it will probably upset the situation even more. However, the developers can try to iron out some random things that seriously affect the gameplay progression to make the general experience more consistent. A good example would be that every 'normal' hero always starts with three creature stacks, as opposed to one player starting with one stack and the other possibly with all three. I feel HotA designers did a very good job in this regard.

I've been gaming since the early 90s and having some abilities an almost always must-have while having others that are borderline useless is absolutely normal for me. I just try to get the ones that are good in this case, but I accept a negative outcome as a part of the game. We are all under the same limitations, after all. If someone rebalanced the stats on some less useful abilities, though, I would appreciate it.

StrikerX said:
I noticed this too.  I can't even score with a tier 7 creature anymore on any maps I play.  Use to be alot easier to get high scores.


I managed to fill the scores with a decent amount of level 7s, but not a single Archangel since I installed HotA. Just yesterday, I managed to beat the AI in a 1v1 on Impossible, small map, in just 3 days. I believe the exact score was 416 and this got me a Haspid.

I'd assume there is either another variable involved or the scores were changed to be more rigorous, almost borderline unreasonable. Something only a speed-runner could achieve after many restarts. I only play small and medium maps (don't have time for bigger maps), so that could also be a factor here.

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P4R4D0X0N
P4R4D0X0N


Famous Hero
posted April 01, 2018 02:54 AM

I dunno why ppl complained so much about Resistance... or even bring in maps or scenarios others may have created. The old skill was garbage in any way. Unpredictable, also the effect it has on old maps is quite marginal, compared to other abilities/spells/effects it's way inferior anyway and would never lead to a super big change in the game mechanic under normal circumstances to have Resistance at all...

I agree on renaming/replacing it. The name resistance doesn't fit very well according to the effect it has.

I personally hope for other reworks/replacements. Most important learning and eagle eye, followed up by scholar. Maybe also luck and leadership could be united to a single skill like in HoMM4.

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just0
just0


Adventuring Hero
posted April 01, 2018 04:08 AM
Edited by just0 at 04:20, 01 Apr 2018.

P4R4D0X0N said:
I agree on renaming/replacing it. The name resistance doesn't fit very well according to the effect it has.
Why stop with the name of the skill? The whole game should be renamed to Heroes of Might and Magic Suppression III.

Personally, in the upcoming rework, I hope they are able to keep the spirit of the old mechanic intact and avoid the need to rename anything at all.

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