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Heroes Community > Heroes 7 - Falcon's Last Flight > Thread: Boy... they sure did MISTREAT this franchise
Thread: Boy... they sure did MISTREAT this franchise This thread is 11 pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 · «PREV / NEXT»
artu
artu


Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
posted December 27, 2014 12:31 PM
Edited by artu at 12:31, 27 Dec 2014.

It's a thesis by JJ.
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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
posted December 27, 2014 12:46 PM

Right.
Considering the success and critical acclaim of HoMM 3 ...

What reason would there be to DESTROY the whole world and redesign the game completely, leaving barely anything the way it was?

It must have been obvious from the getgo that "Heroes on the Battlefield" would make a radical redesign necessary - it's not that difficult to see that this was an extremely ambitious design goal, and way, way more ambitious than THE FORGE.

The question would be, if the Forge would NOT have been scrapped, but instead be met with SOME criticism, the way the more sensible people argue when debating the cons of the Forge (reasonable point would be whether it was really necessary to introduce such a potentially alienating element), would they have decided to go for a potentially much more confrontational game?

They were not allowed to develop HoMM 3 - a game that had been a smashing success - the way they saw fit, so they followed suit, and then came back with a vengeance, destroying everything.
They wouldn*t have done that, if they still had had fun with the HoMM 3 experience.

Imo, it's fairly obvious.

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okrane
okrane


Famous Hero
posted December 27, 2014 12:54 PM

RMZ1989 said:
mvassilev said:
I don't see the connection between fans objecting to sci-fi in HoMM and HoMM IV having different gameplay.

Exactly because there isn't one.

And as far as I remember, the creators of HoMM IV said that it is the closest thing to how they've imagined Heroes should look like in terms of gameplay I guess. I am not convinced at all that series would be much better if NWC was still making it instead of Ubi. After all we just could get different kind of evil.


H4 was unfinished and personally I enjoyed it a lot because there was a huge potential. The similarities to Magic the Gathering's deep and diverse strategy were obvious and they seemed to be taking it in that direction.

The game was never finished, it was probably released early because the guys were already bankrupt.

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RMZ1989
RMZ1989


Supreme Hero
posted December 27, 2014 01:19 PM
Edited by RMZ1989 at 13:22, 27 Dec 2014.

okrane said:
RMZ1989 said:
mvassilev said:
I don't see the connection between fans objecting to sci-fi in HoMM and HoMM IV having different gameplay.

Exactly because there isn't one.

And as far as I remember, the creators of HoMM IV said that it is the closest thing to how they've imagined Heroes should look like in terms of gameplay I guess. I am not convinced at all that series would be much better if NWC was still making it instead of Ubi. After all we just could get different kind of evil.


H4 was unfinished and personally I enjoyed it a lot because there was a huge potential. The similarities to Magic the Gathering's deep and diverse strategy were obvious and they seemed to be taking it in that direction.

The game was never finished, it was probably released early because the guys were already bankrupt.

It was never finished yet it had like what, 2 expansions?
I am not buying that stuff.

As kid I've played it a lot too, but I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as Heroes 2, 3 and 5. It was a good game that never should have been Heroes of Might and Magic game because it sucked at that.
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Storm-Giant
Storm-Giant


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
posted December 27, 2014 02:04 PM
Edited by Storm-Giant at 14:05, 27 Dec 2014.

RMZ1989 said:
It was never finished yet it had like what, 2 expansions?
I am not buying that stuff.

Game was severely underfunded and undermanned, with 3DO falling apart and making spin-offs of anything. I remember reading about how they had like only 2 programmers for most of the development cycle.

As JJ rightly says, H4 suffers from being too radical, too different from what the 'Heroes formula' was. And despite being so radical, it still has strong points and significant improvements over H3, which heavily supports the belief that NWC would have made an excellent Heroes V (or IV if you follow JJ argument) had they sticked to a more traditional approach.
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RMZ1989
RMZ1989


Supreme Hero
posted December 27, 2014 02:15 PM
Edited by RMZ1989 at 14:16, 27 Dec 2014.

Storm-Giant said:
RMZ1989 said:
It was never finished yet it had like what, 2 expansions?
I am not buying that stuff.

Game was severely underfunded and undermanned, with 3DO falling apart and making spin-offs of anything. I remember reading about how they had like only 2 programmers for most of the development cycle.

As JJ rightly says, H4 suffers from being too radical, too different from what the 'Heroes formula' was. And despite being so radical, it still has strong points and significant improvements over H3, which heavily supports the belief that NWC would have made an excellent Heroes V (or IV if you follow JJ argument) had they sticked to a more traditional approach.

"Had they sticked to a more traditional approach", but they didn't so that point is moot. Heroes 5 also had significant improvements over Heroes 3, that doesn't say much...

And of course that Heroes 4 would be better if they went for "traditional" approach, that is pretty much the reason why Heroes fans think that game doesn't belong to the Heroes franchise.
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Storm-Giant
Storm-Giant


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
posted December 27, 2014 02:53 PM

RMZ1989 said:
"Had they sticked to a more traditional approach", but they didn't so that point is moot.

And the question that should be answered is why. But the fact that they made H4 by no means makes NWC a bad choice for developing HoM&M games, far from it.

RMZ1989 said:
Heroes 5 also had significant improvements over Heroes 3, that doesn't say much...

It shows they had a fairly good idea of how to imrpove different areas of the game, even if the game was forced to be so different. The Magic System, Skill System, Map Editor, Flaggable Windmills...I'm not saying that they'd make a perfect game, but I'm convinced they better HoM&Ms than the ones we had after them.
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Galaad
Galaad

Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
posted December 27, 2014 03:17 PM
Edited by Galaad at 15:20, 27 Dec 2014.

RMZ1989 said:
"Had they sticked to a more traditional approach", but they didn't so that point is moot.

Since people don't even bother click on direct link I provide a page ago I will just copy-paste here :

Might and Magic Wikia said:
Jon Van Caneghem was more closely involved in the design of Heroes V than Heroes IV, and attempted to redesign the Heroes IV engine to more fully support a pure strategy game than one with abundant roleplaying elements. The game was to feature more of a focus on strategic decision-making than questing, and its maps would have storylines more suited to such gameplay. The AI was to undergo a complete rewrite from scratch, reusing no code from any of the previous games.


RMZ1989 said:
Heroes 5 also had significant improvements over Heroes 3, that doesn't say much...

Which is precisely why many H3 fans, such as myself too, enjoyed H5.
Apart Ashan, the only real critic made towards H5 by old timers are the graphics, many -if not all- prefer a 2D environment (you probably noticed the hot thread).

RMZ1989 said:
And of course that Heroes 4 would be better if they went for "traditional" approach, that is pretty much the reason why Heroes fans think that game doesn't belong to the Heroes franchise.

I just cannot refrain myself to mention that homm4 (NWC) still is way closer to other iterations than mmh6(UBISOFT) is.
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verriker
verriker


Honorable
Legendary Hero
We don't need another 'eroes
posted December 27, 2014 03:43 PM

JollyJoker said:
Right.
Considering the success and critical acclaim of HoMM 3 ...

What reason would there be to DESTROY the whole world and redesign the game completely, leaving barely anything the way it was?

It must have been obvious from the getgo that "Heroes on the Battlefield" would make a radical redesign necessary - it's not that difficult to see that this was an extremely ambitious design goal, and way, way more ambitious than THE FORGE.

The question would be, if the Forge would NOT have been scrapped, but instead be met with SOME criticism, the way the more sensible people argue when debating the cons of the Forge (reasonable point would be whether it was really necessary to introduce such a potentially alienating element), would they have decided to go for a potentially much more confrontational game?

They were not allowed to develop HoMM 3 - a game that had been a smashing success - the way they saw fit, so they followed suit, and then came back with a vengeance, destroying everything.
They wouldn*t have done that, if they still had had fun with the HoMM 3 experience.

Imo, it's fairly obvious.


lol no offense but I think you may be kind of reducing the full story to a cartoon here,
this was the real account from David Mullich of why Heroes 4 was so different

Quote:
I think that characterizing Heroes IV as a failure is overly harsh. While it wasn't the enormous critical and financial success that was Heroes III (which, I was pleased to recently learn, was named by PC Gamer magazine as the 25th Best Game of All Time), Heroes IV received good reviews and had its share of fans. The challenge with sequels is trying to make a game that has enough of the same things that made its predecessors fun, yet is different enough that it doesn't feel like the same old thing. Sometimes you strike the right balance, and sometimes you don't (George Lucas, anyone?).
However, things did go wrong on the project, and the two biggest problems were the Forge Town and Legends of Might & Magic. Allow me to explain.

New World Computing's two main franchises were the Might & Magic fantasy role-playing game series and its offshoot, the Heroes of Might & Magic fantasy strategy game series, for which I was the development team's leader for five years. Both franchises took place in the same universe, and their respective designers often worked together to make sure that there were no inconsistencies in the two franchises' storylines and to occasionally intertwine the storylines together.

When we got the green light to do a second expansion game to Heroes III, my lead designer, Greg Fulton, decided to build the game around the "forge" -- a machine capable of building weapons that could dominate the world and featured in the recently released Might & Magic 7: For Blood and Honor. His idea was to create a new type of town for the Heroes series, the Forge Town, where there would be a mixture of fantasy and science fiction elements. So, in this town, orcs would be armed with ray guns and minotaurs equipped with jet packs.

Now, while this mix of fantasy and science fiction had always been a staple of the Might & Magic RPG franchise, it was new to the Heroes series and there was an angry backlash from Heroes fans. As soon as we released the preliminary concept art, the fans became so upset, they immediately organized a boycott of the game and New World management ordered us to come up with a new concept for the expansion. One fan was so angry at us for even considering introducing science fiction elements into the Heroes series that he sent a death threat to Greg. Naturally, this rattled my designer, but when our management made light of the threat, Greg was so incensed that he quit his job.

This left me with no designer for our next big project, Heroes IV, and when I couldn't find a replacement for Greg in time for the project's start, I took the unusual step of giving Heroes III AI programmer, Gus Smedstad, the dual role of lead programmer and lead designer, since he understood the strategic elements of the game better than anyone except for Heroes' creator, Jon Van Cangehem.

As we began planning the design for Heroes IV, Jon (or JVC, as we called him) thought it was time to "completely reinvent" the Heroes series, and he encouraged us to rethink every element of the game. He also thought it was time to scale back the game by reducing the number of town and creature types available to the player.

With those marching orders, Gus completely revised the magic, skill, and town/creature system (my main contribution was the idea of moving the “heroes” off of the sidelines and onto the battlefield during combat). Gus also thought the game engine needed to be redone from scratch (some of the code was quite buggy and dated back to the game King's Bounty, the predecessor to the original Heroes game), although JVC didn't think the time was right yet to go with a real-time 3D engine.

Once JVC signed off on the design, I calculated that the project would require about 6 programmers and 18 months of work. Unfortunately, our parent company, 3DO, was having severe financial problems and ordered New World to begin work on a third franchise, Legends of Might & Magic, but without giving us any additional staff to work on it. Many of New World's best programmers — some of whom I was counting on to work on Heroes IV — were assigned to this new franchise, which also consumed all of JVC's attention for almost two years until it shipped. (Legends was the real failure. It was a total commercial and critical flop as well as being finished a year behind schedule, as I recall.)

So, instead of six programmers to program the game, I had only two — one of whom was also busy with the design work, while the other was also tasked with creating six new Heroes "mini-expansions" needed to supply 3DO with additional revenue. I tried for over a year to beg, borrow or steal additional programmers, but between 3DO-mandated salary and hiring freezes, I wasn't able to bring additional programming help onto the team. 3DO finally responded to our dilemma about six months before we were scheduled to ship the game, and I was given what I needed to hire on a bunch of new programmers in a hurry. However, the problem of the mythical man month (you can't have ten people do in one month what a single person can do in ten months) reared its ugly head, and as a result, Heroes IV shipped with underdeveloped AI and no multiplayer gameplay.

As for the one change I would make if I had it to do all over again, well, that has to do with another problem I experienced during the project. At the completion of Heroes III, my manager criticized me for being too "hands-on" during the game's development and ordered me to give the leads under me more latitude on future projects. While I disagreed with his criticism and thought that my leadership style on Heroes III had resulted in a pretty darned good game, my manager remained firm on the matter.

It so happened my lead game designer and lead level designer on Heroes IV didn't see eye-to-eye on a number of issues. Gus saw Heroes as primarily a strategy game but felt that the level designers were creating game levels that were more appropriate for an adventure game. While I sided with Gus — I thought that the game levels being designed had too much story text, too many artifacts for boosting hero attributes quickly to very high levels, and intricate storylines that conflicted with the premise that the heroes could now be injured on the battlefield — my orders were to let my leads make their own decisions within their own areas of expertise.

While my manager gave me a better performance review for my leadership on Heroes IV than on Heroes III, I felt that Heroes IV was a poorer game in large part due to the conflict between the game design and level design. So, if I had it to do over again, I would have followed the adage "to thine own self be true" and managed things a bit more closely as I did on Heroes III.


and even after all that, I think Heroes IV is still a way more interesting game than Heroes V and Heroes VI lol

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Stevie
Stevie


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
posted December 27, 2014 03:48 PM

Storm-Giant said:
But the fact that they made H4 by no means makes NWC a bad choice for developing HoM&M games, far from it.


To me it does. If their true wish was to alienate everything from the lines of Heroes 3 were, like JJ suggested, then I consider Ubisoft buying the rights as a salvation.

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Galaad
Galaad

Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
posted December 27, 2014 04:15 PM

verriker said:
lol no offense but I think you may be kind of reducing the full story to a cartoon here

Not really.
Quote:
One fan was so angry at us for even considering introducing science fiction elements into the Heroes series that he sent a death threat to Greg. Naturally, this rattled my designer, but when our management made light of the threat, Greg was so incensed that he quit his job.


Nevertheless thank you for posting insightful article

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okrane
okrane


Famous Hero
posted December 27, 2014 04:30 PM

a very insightful read

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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
posted December 27, 2014 04:35 PM

David Mullich has a couple of memory problems.

First of all the Forge was to feature in the FIRST expansion, the one that became AB and brought the Conflux instead.

This is what happened. Note the date, MAY, 1999.

This is an interview with Greg Fulton, published September 1999. Note, he's still there, a couple of months after the incident - and he's downplaying things.

So this:
Quote:
One fan was so angry at us for even considering introducing science fiction elements into the Heroes series that he sent a death threat to Greg. Naturally, this rattled my designer, but when our management made light of the threat, Greg was so incensed that he quit his job.
isn't accurate.

After HoMM 3 a couple of important people left the team, and Greg Fulton didn't suddenly quit or something. And whether JVC "encouraged" the team to redo everything or not - that isn't the question.

What I'm saying is, that IF SMALL PART of the fans hadn't acted like a bunch of rabid badgers and the designers had simply done what they wanted, I seriously doubt that the team would have seen so many changes, Greg Fulton would have stayed - and Greg wouldn't have killed his baby.

The same is true for the rest - you don't need to destroy a world to cut something and make serious changes: just look at HoMM 5 and HoMM 6.

Lastly and finally, since at the time I had good contact with Jennifer Bullard, I know that the happy times all had shared for some period were over and work was simply less fun that it had been.

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verriker
verriker


Honorable
Legendary Hero
We don't need another 'eroes
posted December 27, 2014 04:48 PM
Edited by verriker at 22:08, 27 Dec 2014.

yeah that's correct Galaad, I just meant the part suggesting they decided to blow up the whole world to get revenge on the fans like Dick Dastardly lol, that's not the case

well for vanilla H4 at least, I don't think they poured their hearts and souls into writing easily the best campaign stories in the whole series out of spite, but maybe the ridiculous expansion packs were indeed written to troll the fans lol

Jolly Joker said:
This is an interview with Greg Fulton, published September 1999. Note, he's still there, a couple of months after the incident - and he's downplaying things.


maybe I'm misreading, but it he doesn't say Greg Fulton was threatened and left immediately, does it?

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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
posted December 27, 2014 05:14 PM

The timeline is this:
Release AB: Sept, 30 1999. Designer Greg Fulton.
Release Sod: March 31st 2000; Designer Jennifer Bullard (!)
Release of Heroes Chronicles (Designer: NWC): the next 15 months, last one in June 2001.
Release Legends: Somewhere in 2001 (Designer: JVC; big failure).
Release HoMM IV: March 31st, 2002

See the problem? AMPLE TIME:
So things escalate in May 1999; Greg Fulton finishes AB - and quits, leaving Jennifer Bullard to pick up the pieces, making SoD and Chronicles as a mop-up of HoMM 3.
Finally Gus Smedstad takes the lead for HoMM IV design (Bullard being part of the team as well).

Now. If NWC had made light of the death threat - why would they had scrapped the forge. Because, if you read the Fulton interview, it's fairly obvious that he was pretty pissed about the scrapping, still believing that the Forge would have worked.
And if he left because they scrapped the Forge - what do you think who told him to scrap it?

And if JVC COULD tell them, redo everything, leave no stone unturned - wouldn't it be obvious that this would alienate fans as much as the Forge?

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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
posted December 27, 2014 05:47 PM

Let me add something. I don't say they destroyed things to screw the fans.
I say they destroyed it because they had no attachment to HoMM 3 and its world anymore - it wasn't there's anymore.
And it's ridiculous anyway, the whole thing. It's like a hailed punk band produces an album, and the next single they want to do is to feature a piano and a flute - and suddenly some fan website goes berserk, because real punk bands don't use those. And then the manager says, hey, guys, let's scrap piano and flute.
You think the punk band would be happy?

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okrane
okrane


Famous Hero
posted December 27, 2014 06:02 PM

JollyJoker said:
Let me add something. I don't say they destroyed things to screw the fans.
I say they destroyed it because they had no attachment to HoMM 3 and its world anymore - it wasn't there's anymore.
And it's ridiculous anyway, the whole thing. It's like a hailed punk band produces an album, and the next single they want to do is to feature a piano and a flute - and suddenly some fan website goes berserk, because real punk bands don't use those. And then the manager says, hey, guys, let's scrap piano and flute.
You think the punk band would be happy?


I don't think I agree with your assessment.
You can change stuff up in order to bring a revolution to the gameplay, which seems to be what was intended. Of course doing it with 2 developpers is far from ideal

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okrane
okrane


Famous Hero
posted December 27, 2014 06:13 PM

JollyJoker said:
Let me add something. I don't say they destroyed things to screw the fans.
I say they destroyed it because they had no attachment to HoMM 3 and its world anymore - it wasn't there's anymore.
And it's ridiculous anyway, the whole thing. It's like a hailed punk band produces an album, and the next single they want to do is to feature a piano and a flute - and suddenly some fan website goes berserk, because real punk bands don't use those. And then the manager says, hey, guys, let's scrap piano and flute.
You think the punk band would be happy?


I don't think I agree with your assessment.
You can change stuff up in order to bring a revolution to the gameplay, which seems to be what was intended. Of course doing it with 2 developpers is far from ideal

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Galaad
Galaad

Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
posted December 27, 2014 06:22 PM

JollyJoker said:
It's like a hailed punk band produces an album, and the next single they want to do is to feature a piano and a flute - and suddenly some fan website goes berserk, because real punk bands don't use those. And then the manager says, hey, guys, let's scrap piano and flute.
You think the punk band would be happy?

Perfectly accurate comparison.
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Zenofex
Zenofex


Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
posted December 27, 2014 06:27 PM

Galaad said:
Apart Ashan...
Don't understimate that please. Ashan with its unforgiving triviality and brainless characters is what had effectively destroyed a big part of the game's allure. Scrap Ashan, ignore the fact that Heroes V was a major disaster before Tribes of the East, pretend that the whole Heroes VI fiasco didn't happen and you will get the vast majority of the fans approving of the post-NWC Heroes. Unfortunately that would be a like cherry-picking with an excavator, don't you think?

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