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Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
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posted April 14, 2015 02:22 PM |
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Damn, when I'm older I want to be like Maurice. Your posts are so well written 
Maurice said:
In Heroes7, there will be 3 "Ultimates", though not as game-breaking as the one from Heroes5 - and this is a good change! They should make multiple Ultimates, with much lower prerequisites than the ones from Heroes5, while also having lower impact.
Although I agree on that - toning down Ultimates is a good step - I for one would abolish Ultimates and, instead:
- Make all perks interesting and somewhat powerful.
- Make tier 2 & 3 perks a bit more powerful than the previous tier ones.
This, combined with a slighty higher number of achievable perks (like 2/3/4 with basic/advance/expert skill) would leave us with 'ultimate' heroes that wouldn't rely on getting one particular super perk, but a combination of skills & perks, with emphasis on synergies as you mention above.
Not that I'm saying that H7 ultimates won't work, far from it, it's just my personal preference 
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Dave_Jame
Promising
Legendary Hero
I'm Faceless, not Brainless.
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posted April 14, 2015 02:28 PM |
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Maurice said:
Fact remains that each Hero class has 15 or so skills explicitely excluded. No way to acquire those, in whatsoever way. If we ignore Racial skills, Heroes7 has the dubious honor of being the first title in the series to exclude basic skills from Heroes.
Point 1: You ment 10 skills, since 5 are Faction related
Point 2: Each faction has access to All but 6 skills, (faction skills and oposite magic skill). So you are not limited in which skills you can use with each faction. You only have to have a plan and know what you want to play, and this will influence your starting hero. I'ts not like you never picked a hero whitout a certain build in the head. And even with this "limitation", you have a variaty in skills and perks, similar to what the H5 V/H system had to offer, thanks to all skills beeing accesable, and not gated away by unseen numbers.
As Zombi_Wizzard noted, if you wanted to play a cretain style, that had a low chance with your faction, you were given out to the mercy of RNG. Now Even when you play the same faction, and would use the random system, you have several playstyles available which would not depend on things you cannot influence. You would only have to know what you want to play and choose one of 6 options.
The game does not exclude 10(9) abilities. It distributes them in a different way, but all factions can use most of them.
True we will yet see how much will each class differ.
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted April 14, 2015 03:51 PM |
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Edited by Maurice at 15:52, 14 Apr 2015.
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Storm-Giant said:
Damn, when I'm older I want to be like Maurice. Your posts are so well written
Lol, thanks  . Woot, I have a fan  .
Dave_Jame said:
Point 1: You ment 10 skills, since 5 are Faction related
So far, I've heard the number of 30 skills being thrown around, which is composed of 24 basic skills and 6 faction skills. If these numbers are wrong, then someone please correct me.
Assuming 24 basic skills of which any Hero can only ever have 9, that leaves 15 basic skills that are unobtainable by any given Hero. I am not considering faction skills here, mind you. I do not yet know which skills are faction-disallowed.
Quote:
Point 2: Each faction has access to All but 6 skills, (faction skills and oposite magic skill). The game does not exclude 10(9) abilities. It distributes them in a different way, but all factions can use most of them.
Perhaps, but those are locked into three distinct pools. This implies that some skills will never occur in combination with other skills, which essentially kills off any interesting, hybrid-ic type Hero builds. No room to play around. Your Hero starts with 10 pre-determined skill options, deal with that and nothing else. Yes, you can choose two other skillsets too, but that's a lot less flexible than relative free skill choice (once again, omitting the racial skill).
Quote:
As Zombi_Wizzard noted, if you wanted to play a cretain style, that had a low chance with your faction, you were given out to the mercy of RNG. Now Even when you play the same faction, and would use the random system, you have several playstyles available which would not depend on things you cannot influence. You would only have to know what you want to play and choose one of 6 options.
And how does that work for replayability? Instead of each level up having the chance to get offered any of the 24 basic skills (well, excluding the ones the selected faction can't learn, like Dark Magic for Haven and skills already learned), you already know levels ahead how you will develop your Hero. Such fun.
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Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 14, 2015 04:38 PM |
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Edited by Stevie at 17:54, 14 Apr 2015.
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I must disagree that the system is more tight and focused as you suggest. It's actually the opposite, with a higher skill count but approximately the same number of abilities the system is more diluted. You get the same for more, which essentially means less. Not only that, now you're limited from the start to a certain number of secondary skills (9 out of 24(?), excluding racials) because of classes, which up until now was unheard of. Now I am literally forced to play with a preset set of skills on any hero. What happened with true development, where you built the hero yourself? Wasn't JJ right all along? I believe so. The restriction-based class system proved to be a bad addition.
So why did this happen? Because the community complained about a lack of replayability. So they gave us classes, which I can only say that they don't solve any problem at all. They just created another level of it. Now there's not only 2 categories of heroes, might and magic, with no replayability, but 6. So we got an extra 4 heroes with the same issue. Did that solve anything? Not at all, it expanded on the same problem in the fleeting hope that it will! But you know what solved it before? Randomness.
In Heroes 5, because of randomness, your hero would NOT develop the same way game after game after game. At level 10 with a Wizard, you would've had say Enlightenment, Sorcery and a spell school. Then, in another game, you would've gotten Logistics instead, with a 2% chance to get it. And you would've seized the moment and felt happy about it because it was out of the ordinary and therefore more exciting. But then, Heroes 6 came along and changed things. Not only you would've gotten the same exact build each and every single time, but even the way you got there would've been exactly the same. Level 2, take this skill, level 3, that one, level 4, the next one, and so on. Over and over again. But in Heroes 5, not to mention that there was a real chance that you weren't going to get your dream build in the end, but the pathway to that was almost always different. And it mattered!
I've seem many people with the mindset that "randomness is anti-strategy", or "randomness screwed up my build". I've got only one thing to say to them: Heroes was never a strategy game only, it was a chance and strategy game. If I were to compare it with a more classical game, it wouldn't be Chess, but Poker. Why? Because Poker is still a strategic game (and if you think that's not true then I suggest you inform yourself better), but unlike Chess it has an element of chance to it. And so did Heroes, and it felt more exciting, more unpredictable, and above all more rewarding when things turned out your way.
Now, the devs repeated the same mistake, opting for a free pick system just like in Heroes 6. But the community was quick to react and we got both systems in the end. Everyone satisfied, right? Just that it's not really that simple. As I played the game I realized that a random system would not work, and I wasn't the only one to notice. And I figured it would be the case because of the class restrictions and the prerequisites of skills. Simply put, the system was constructed in such a manner that it has no drawbacks when you pick a skill or an ability. Because, remember, it was designed for free pick, and it wouldn't make sense to have drawbacks when the player can just avoid them. So when you replace the free pick with randomness, what you essentially have is a game of dice where you cannot lose no matter what you get or how many times you roll. A soulless system where there is no risk whatsoever. In Heroes 5, you could've gotten only 5 skills out of 12, and be limited to your choice, not having access to the rest for the entire game. How many can you get in Heroes 7? - ALL of them! In Heroes 5, you could've gotten only 3 abilities per skill, and their prerequisites mattered. How many can you get in Heroes 7? - again, ALL of them! And the prerequisites don't matter beyond having either one of them. On the other hand, there is one good thing randomness could achieve, it would ensure a different pathway to your desired build, so you would end up with a bit of replayability. But that's it, no real danger, just roll the dice often enough and you'll eventually get everything you want.
So I hope people can now understand why I feel so strongly on this one. It's not like Necropolis here, this is gameplay we're talking about. When I saw the system, I immediately came back home and tried to raise awareness through threads and comments and even creating an attempted model as feedback. And it wasn't just me, even Elvin did that way before me with his Feature Showdown threads, but no one got the point of those. So when people come and tell me how a simplistic and non-random system is the way to go, they're not only going against a personal belief of mine, but more importantly against the spirit and the legacy of what Heroes has been all about.
I'm warning the community. What we're getting here is all kinds of bad and it has to change now when change is still possible. That, or we'll have to wait for Heroes 8. With the Alpha phase entered, it might already be too late for Heroes 7. I am just keeping positive because of their requests for feedback, hoping that it's not just for statistical purposes but for actual change. So if feedback is what they want, then feedback is what I'll give them, and I encourage everyone to do the same.
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Guide to a Great Heroes Game
The Young Traveler
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fuChris
Promising
Supreme Hero
Master to the Speed of Light
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posted April 14, 2015 05:00 PM |
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Stevie said:
What we're getting here is all kinds of bad and it has to change now when change is still possible.
While we're at it, let's get rid of flanking and the 7 magic shools. Not gonna happen. They probably could still change them but they won't. At this point it's all about damage controll.
I honestly belive that all these feartures would do great in a RPG.
The main problem is that The Spiger GodErwan has confused what type of game he is in charge of making.
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"Now I am become Chris, the destroyer of worlds." - Robert Oppenheimer.
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Steyn
Supreme Hero
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posted April 14, 2015 05:03 PM |
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At least you have to find the optimum build for 6 hero classes per faction, so for 30 different classes. This will probably give you a bit more replayability than in H6.
Still I would prefer a faction skill wheel containing (almost) all skills, with different chances of obtaining a skill for different hero classes. This is not possible with the free choice system, but hopefully they will implement it in the random skill system.
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Pawek_13
Supreme Hero
Maths, maths everywhere!
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posted April 14, 2015 05:20 PM |
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As some of you may remember, I have created a small paper regarding magic and probability. In this paper, an operation called combination was introduced. It is used to calculate in how many different ways can k objects be picked from n-object set, k<n. In other words, this is a calculation that would let us calculate in how many different ways can k skills be picked to form a skillwheel from pool of 30 skills (assumed and higly probable total number of skills in Heroes VII).
When we pick 10 skills from the pool, bearing in mind that one of them is a racial skill and it is available for only one faction, we get 7845024 possible unique combinations of a skillwheel. Let's assume that our new skillwheel will have 15 skills, where one of them is racial. In such case we get 11767536 possible unique combinations of a skillwheel, which is a bigger value than one for 10 skills.
Conclusion? By simply picking five additional skills to the skillwheel we get a hoast of new possibilities of picking a skillwheel, so why not use them, especially when we even have greater number of combinations than before.
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Zombi_Wizzard
Famous Hero
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posted April 14, 2015 06:04 PM |
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fuChris said:
Zombi_Wizzard said:
A good random system, to me, should be the one where randomness isn't avoided, but accepted.
I couldn't disagree more.
You do realize that Heroes is a strategy game? A strategy game where calculating risks on everything is the main point of the gameplay?
Can I rush that mine? Can I take that town? Can I beat that Dragon Utopia without crippling my army? Can I get that ultimate build without suffering through half the game with shoddy skills?
Heroes has always been about the management of these risks. But if you take away the management part of the game then you end up with a rail shooter disguised as a strategy game.
NO, because, the skills themselves then, become part of the enviorment, which you must build your strategy arround, and can't be planned. Just like in games like Civilization, you start with random map. You don't plan which resourcess you get. Think of skills as resourcess, which you build your strategy around. BUT ONLY if this is possible, so that OTHER ASPECTS of gameplay are flexible.
OR.
Another option, which is JUST AS GOOD. ---> Make skills NON-RANDOM!
yes. Then you can plan, and have your prerequisites. But if skills are random. No prerequisites PLEASE!. Thank you Ubisoft H7 is good in this regard.
Thing is this. Poker is a strategy game. So is chess. But poker deals with "chances". You bet based on likeliness of outcome. In chess on the other hand, you deal with certainty. In poker, even if you have 80% chance, that you'll get a full house next turn, it's not certain. So you can lose, even if you predicted and calculated the odds correct. While in Chess, if you predict all things correct, and make no mistake ... you win. Winning or losing in chess has no excuses of you having "bad luck". It's 100% skill.
And I like that. And why I dislike Poker. I get that's strategy involved. but diferent kind. I hate "poker-kind" strategy, which H5 random skillwheel promotes. There. 
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A8T
Adventuring Hero
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posted April 14, 2015 06:05 PM |
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Random skills is fine I think for single matches. It means players have to adapt to circumstances rather than just get cozy with the same abilities.
The problem is with the campaigns, were some skills you really need to survive. Case in point, I was trying to help someone though the Heroes V dungeon campaign, who by chance had none of the Destructive Magic skills required for a good Raelag build and instead had things like War Machines, and Basic Attack. So it looks like they are going to restart the last two maps just to try and make sure they get the right skills. That's not a rewarding experience, that's a pain in the neck!
And sure, if you are a good player you should be able to work round this, but not everyone is a veteran player.
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Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 14, 2015 06:18 PM |
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kiryu133
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Highly illogical
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posted April 14, 2015 06:21 PM |
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that's a lot of Cactus's. also, the Behemoth location makes no sense.
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Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
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posted April 14, 2015 06:23 PM |
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kiryu133 said:
also, the Behemoth location makes no sense.
That's a trend if I have seen one.
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kiryu133
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Highly illogical
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posted April 14, 2015 06:25 PM |
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Storm-Giant said:
kiryu133 said:
also, the Behemoth location makes no sense.
That's a trend if I have seen one.
add useless walls to that since any army could just walk around the closest mountain. seriously, that's just empty dessert behind said town, no wall.
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fuChris
Promising
Supreme Hero
Master to the Speed of Light
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posted April 14, 2015 06:27 PM |
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Zombi_Wizzard said:
NO, because, the skills themselves then, become part of the enviorment, which you must build your strategy arround, and can't be planned. Just like in games like Civilization, you start with random map. You don't plan which resourcess you get. Think of skills as resourcess, which you build your strategy around. BUT ONLY if this is possible, so that OTHER ASPECTS of gameplay are flexible.
Except that in Civ games you DO plan on which resources you get and even if you don't get them you can still trade for them except that then you will have to sacrifice probably several of your own resources which is a calculated decision on your part. Do you go for longbowmen or will you sacrifice some other key resources to get a crossbowrush?
So unless you plan on an early rush(in either game) you will have the chance to acquire that resource/skill as long as you are good enough to survive that long.
Point is that not getting the most powerful skills at the earliest point is not a gamebreaker and infact getting it adds a kind of satisfaction and sense of accomplishment that the current system completely lacks.
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"Now I am become Chris, the destroyer of worlds." - Robert Oppenheimer.
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Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 14, 2015 06:28 PM |
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Edited by Stevie at 18:29, 14 Apr 2015.
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I dislike the + X in the area of control. Why not global?! What's the reason to have either of those buildings when the idea is to not waste time around your Town for too long, but to explore and complete your quest? Doesn't make any sense to me.
Take the House of Smalltalks: "+X% chance for negotiations with neutral armies inside the town's Area of Control for the player's heroes". On what planet would this building actually be viable?
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Guide to a Great Heroes Game
The Young Traveler
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Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
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posted April 14, 2015 06:28 PM |
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Just don't think too much on it, lol
There are more important concerns. Like the Skill System!
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Zombi_Wizzard
Famous Hero
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posted April 14, 2015 06:40 PM |
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fuChris said:
Point is that not getting the most powerful skills at the earliest point is not a gamebreaker and infact getting it adds a kind of satisfaction and sense of accomplishment that the current system completely lacks.
Getting a powerfull skill, early and "pwning" everything in sight (like getting Deleb in random heroes game AND getting all war machine skills in row, plus maybe logistics somewhere in between for eg.), because I got a stroke of good luck ... does not sound satisfying to me AT ALL. It sounds, getting lucky and win. It does not give me a feedback: "you played good and made good decisions, and won". But instead: "you only won because you got this and that, otherwise I would pwn you." It's not satisfactory AT ALL.
And games usualy end prematurely because people leve games untill they get the starting bonuses they want. It's like ... logistics untill lvl 5 or I quit, kinda deal.
prerequisites, do not increase satisfaction at all. Not in random skill system. You want to plan your skills? say goodbye to randomness. Every system should play to it's max potential. If it's random, then it's random, if it's non random, then great deal of planning should be required. Middle ground will always feel lackluster.
And in Civ ... no. you don't decide to start next to iron or horses for eg. Most times, basic resourcess are obtainable in near area, so you must find them and exploit them. But I remember a game of continents, where there was only one source of horses on entire contintnet, next to other player's starting base. This is random. What you do NEXT is not. You said correctly : even if you don't get them, you can still trade for them. But that means you MUST trade or give up on it. Or ... you know ... conquer the punk who owns it Bottom line is. Placement of resourcess is random, and part of enviorment. You must ADAPT to that enviorment. Just like random skills should be - they apear randomly, what you do with them NEXT, is your play.
EDIT.: Oh, I almost forgot to add this important part. In Civ, you are guaranteed that all strategic resourcess will show up (at least on normal size map and above, I never even tried smaller map, so maybe then), it's just placement that is random. While in H5, Logistics was not just "a matter of time", sometimes it just didn't show up. You were not guaranteed to get every skill possible to show.
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Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 14, 2015 06:57 PM |
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Edited by Stevie at 19:02, 14 Apr 2015.
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It's a lot more satisfactory actually, because you made that luck with your own hands on the path of prerequisites. You affected your chances by cleverly working with the possibilities. I cannot get behind the idea that cherry picking the absolute best each and every time is more satisfactory than that. Not in a million years.
But then again, you openly admitted that you hated Poker, which's same principle was foundational for Heroes' skill system for a long time. Chance and strategy was the flavor of this game until Ubisoft managed to ruin even that in their pursuit to make Heroes as generic as possible. And you're then telling me you like the way Heroes 6 did things and expect me to agree? In spite of the well known disaster it was? In spite of my desire to go back to the roots? Not in a billion years.
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Guide to a Great Heroes Game
The Young Traveler
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Zombi_Wizzard
Famous Hero
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posted April 14, 2015 07:03 PM |
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Stevie said:
. And you're then telling me you like the way Heroes 6 did things and expect me to agree? In spite of the well known disaster it was? In spite of my desire to go back to the roots? Not in a billion years.
Nope. H6 skills didn't fail because they were not random. But because non random skills were implemented wrong. This killed replayability.
Here: example:
Remove Logistics and pathfinding. Replace it with 4 skills: Desert movement, snow movement, swamp movement, mountain movement.
Much better system. Because every time you will pick diferent skill, coz it's diferent map
And no. Ubisoft presented poker-style strategy with H5. There was no skill-wheel before so ... I'm fine.
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Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 14, 2015 07:05 PM |
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This MEGA THREAD is pages long: 
