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Heroes Community > Heroes 5 - Modders Workshop > Thread: [MOD] Might & Magic: Heroes 5.5
Thread: [MOD] Might & Magic: Heroes 5.5 This Popular Thread is 435 pages long: 1 50 100 ... 150 151 152 153 154 ... 200 250 300 350 400 435 · «PREV / NEXT»
sayke
sayke

Tavern Dweller
posted April 04, 2016 10:17 PM
Edited by sayke at 22:20, 04 Apr 2016.

Gidoza said:

Green -- The balance efforts look amazing, the graphics are clean and smoothe, and there's an internal logic to the game that far surpasses the original H5.

Blue -- I wonder how much the community is locked into a God-mode mentality in its insistence to keep certain spells/modes of the game intact and how much this actually harms the AI in the process.

However, on this note - some of these blues are things I'd be more than happy to edit for myself on my own computer and not involve the rest of the community, as I can understand how others wouldn't agree with me on these ones.

Red -- External new features need to be kept external and not default.  AI cheating specs are very inflexible.  Combat announcements ought to stay with the ATB bar.  More clarity in the skill descriptions zone.  Free spells harms mage guilds.



Interesting! I agree about graphics, internal logic, and balancing, but I think the balancing actually works great with the AI. For example, the AI *loves* town conversion and uses it to excellent effect. However, I don't agree about disabling the new features - they're awesome, most new players will love them, and you can always turn them off if you want in the Settings file. Also, you can create your own custom difficulty setting if you want, and I quite like the combat announcements style.

I also don't mind skills giving access to spells. That way guarantees those skills are useful. Besides, there are lots of ways to get spells besides the mage guild, which you may not have seen. You can buy them from various buildings on the map, get them from huts, etc.

What kind of game were you playing, anyway? What map template, what ARMG settings, what faction, what difficulty, etc? And how much did you play?

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thGryphn
thGryphn


Promising
Famous Hero
posted April 04, 2016 10:27 PM

I'll give my comments as a mere player of MMH5.5 with a little contribution hopefully on the way

Gidoza said:


The Combat Buttons -- I'm discovering how much of a visual person I am because of this, because I'm arguing with myself over the new placements of the wait/defend/spellcasting buttons on the screen.  Yes, I know that I could use the keyboard for this - but I really don't like using the keyboard for them.  In their new positions, the buttons seem far away from everything and much too small, and I need to actively think about the matter each time I do anything, which is really disruptive.  This may pass with time, but we'll see.




I see what you're saying and from a pure ergonomics pov, you're right. But I like that those buttons are out of the way and I can see more of the combat arena. It take a little getting used to, but I think it's positives overweight.

Gidoza said:


The Combat Announcements Bar -- This, on the other hand, makes no sense to me at all.  With the announcements on top, and the ATB bar on the bottom, I find my eyes jumping all around the combat screen to figure out what's going on, and I miss half of the announcements.  It doesn't make any sense to me for the announcements bar to be separated from the ATB bar - these are both bars that I'm looking at typically to see what's going on, so why separate them?  The new format for this in particular makes combat very frustrating and unenjoyable.  Putting the announcements back underneath (or just above - I don't care) the ATB bar would offer a much better flow.




I agree with this sentiment. I too wish that the announcements bar was right above the ATB bar. This is something that can be done with a re-mod, but I didn't feel the urge

Gidoza said:

The Skill Tree/Hero Types -- Well, you saw my complaint in the other thread...this looks amazing.      This essentially solves most of the issues that I was seeing and it looks like you guys have done an awesome job here figuring it all out.

I'm still struggling to understand exactly how it all works, though, because I don't find the descriptions especially clear.  For example, say we have a particular skill, let's call it skill A.  Skill A then lets you pick specialties B, C, and D, which in turn let you pick specialties B1, C1, and D1.  Do B1, C1, D1 all then in turn let you pick specialty E?  Or is specialty E only accessible from a very particular branch of B, C, and D?  (the former would make ideal sense to me, the latter not so much)



It's the latter (so, it's actually not E but C2), and one fact you're missing is that the heroes start with perk C. Given that you can pick only two more perks you have to make a plan. Is it B+B1, or B+C1, or B+D, or C1+C2, or C1+D? There are 5 alternatives and as you see everything there is accessible. All you have to do is want to do it, and be patient


Gidoza said:



Skill Descriptions -- This is a very specific complaint.  Whereas on one section of the guide it shows all the symbols and how they connect, my problem is that I don't know what most of the symbols mean.  So when I go to the section that explains what the symbols mean, I get the explanation - but in that section, the connections aren't made.  So then I need to jump back to the connections page and look at that again, and it just turns into a jumping-back-and-forth fest trying to figure out what things mean and how they connect.

SUGGESTION:  The descriptions page can remain the same, just indicate very clearly which specialty pick comes from which other specialty pick, so page-jumping isn't happening all the time.




If you look back a few pages, I posted the WIP image of an in-game skill wheel I'm currently working on. Once done, you will find all these information at a single page, with nice graphics and all

The descriptions in the skill wheel will be more detailed than you see in the regular Hero screen. Formulas for calculating certain effects and other quantities will be given in the skill wheel.

Gidoza said:



Free Spells??? -- I take particular issue with Master of Summoning at the moment, which my hero acquired.  I'm not so happy with getting the free spell.  Now, let's look at the iterations of this...

1.  I realize that Master of Summoning without a summoning spell is completely useless, which was the problem with Vanilla H5, because it was hard to justify taking the skill unless you had something to use it with, which we often didn't.  So this isn't a good option.

2.  So instead the proposed solution is just to give the spell to the hero.  This results in a level 4 spell (now level 3 I guess) being granted to the hero potentially at level 2??!? which is immensely powerful and lets me creep the map with ease, as if it wasn't easy enough already.

No, I'm not okay with this.  This isn't a good solution.  This is besides the fact that it devalues the Level 3 Mage Guild in its acquisition of a useful spell, particularly because there are only two (at most three) spells per magic type in a guild.  I was hoping the days of Solmyr (and the others) from H3 would be over here, but apparently not.  Once again, sort of like starting with too much money early on - I'd like to be able to earn my spells, not just get them easy-peasy like this.  The bonus helps alot - and that's precisely the problem.

My feelings are similar for basically all the other spells that are granted for free.  A "middling" solution would be nice, but I don't know if that's possible.  Anyways, given the choice between 1 and 2, I'd choose 1 hands down - I'd rather have no strong spell than a super spell early on.  However, if it summoned half as many elementals for twice the cost until you got the spell FOR REAL from a mage guild - then that's different.




I too am not very comfortable with the current solution.
How about a third option: add some prerequisites to current perks. I don't know what yet, I hadn't thought about it, but doing so would solve your concern about novice heroes learning too advanced spells for their own right.

Gidoza said:

Hero Direct Damage -- This falls into the category of stuff I was surprised that wasn't changed.  My wimpy low-level hero can do a direct hit on some level 4 creature and manage the same amount of damage as an Eldritch Arrow - and my hero doesn't have Avenger, nor any kind of other ability that would improve direct damage, and my attack is 0.  This is lame.  Strictly from my hero's direct attack, I cannot justify the use of a single spell in my spellbook, because my hero's damage is better than my magical damage, and the benefits of any buff spell I have will only mathematically become useful after I get a month's worth of extra troops to add to my army.

Result?  I guess I'm always using my hero's attack for now.  In Heroes 3 terms, it would be like starting the game with a hero who has magic arrow and infinite mana.  Once again - this is lame.

While the presence of direct hero attack in the game is cool and I like it (and I want it to be there), I've always felt that it was way too strong, particularly against high-level creatures.  I see no reason for the hero's damage on a Black Dragon to be higher than that on a Sprite - in fact, even equal damage favors hitting the Black Dragon - because that equal damage is by-passing all that Defence that any other unit would end up with reduced damage on.  Neutral fights are super anti-climactic, even in H5.5, and the only seeming solution is to make some groups obscenely powerful, which I don't really see as a solution.

To put it one way - in H3, there really is more strategic involvement:  when my mana runs out, I need to decide if I want to get into the next fight and suffer some serious losses, or run back to a town or a well to recuperate my mana so the next battle can be reasonable, even if it's only 20 mana.  H5 and H5.5 give no allowance to this - instead, in some battles I can run a unit around endlessly while my hero nukes it, and at the end I still have a full load of mana left (which recovers even faster in H5) in case I should run into something troublesome.  The effects of the benefits are cumulative, and it's overkill.

So in the end - I would have liked to see it where Heroes do marginal damage with their physical attack (VERY marginal), such that it is really a BONUS to the battle, and not critical to the fight.  Special abilities are an exception, because they're intended for that specific use, and I would see the current damage as being normative for that.

Anyways, that's my thought here - just curious of your opinions.



I'm sorry but I don't agree with your view here. Most likely, you need to experience MMH5.5 longer to understand it. In short, MMH5.5, infinitely better than the vanilla game, gives you the option to play pretty much any faction with a might or a magic focus. Mind you, if you use your Hero to attack a Dragon to kill say a few of them, your opportunity cost is casting a spell that can utterly cripple the whole army in front of you. That is, the Might focused Hero's actions must have somewhat substantial impact to have a good balance between Might vs. Magic strategies.



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thGryphn
thGryphn


Promising
Famous Hero
posted April 04, 2016 10:32 PM

Skeggy said:
thGryphn said:

Once you go to your skill wheel, the next time you visit in the same session will take you exactly where you left.

So, putting 3 buttons on the level up screen is unnecessary clutter and loss of aesthetics.



If we develop different class heroes, under one color, does that mean that skillwheel on every hero levelup screen has different display, as we left it on that particular hero that is?


Interesting scenario. I'll test for it once I'm done with putting it together...

The thing is, how hard is it to do a second click? I mean, if you look at the skill wheel image I posted a few pages back, all 24 classes will be accessible with a single click. So, even if you don't go back to the same page as you left, all you have to do is one click to open the skill wheel page, and a second click to go to your Hero class's particular Skill Wheel. Done


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Skeggy
Skeggy


Promising
Famous Hero
posted April 04, 2016 11:18 PM

thGryphn said:
Skeggy said:
thGryphn said:

Once you go to your skill wheel, the next time you visit in the same session will take you exactly where you left.

So, putting 3 buttons on the level up screen is unnecessary clutter and loss of aesthetics.



If we develop different class heroes, under one color, does that mean that skillwheel on every hero levelup screen has different display, as we left it on that particular hero that is?


Interesting scenario. I'll test for it once I'm done with putting it together...

The thing is, how hard is it to do a second click? I mean, if you look at the skill wheel image I posted a few pages back, all 24 classes will be accessible with a single click. So, even if you don't go back to the same page as you left, all you have to do is one click to open the skill wheel page, and a second click to go to your Hero class's particular Skill Wheel. Done




I can understand that two clicks are not a big problem. However, for me, 3 universal tree buttons are also not a big problem. In fact, that three buttons are quite interesting and simple way of overview. Skilltree can be visually complicated if the skills and perks are not "clickable", that is if they don't change coloration like in the Aurelain's skilwheel.
Don't get me wrong, I would like to see the skillwheel class overview even if it is not change-coloration-clickable, but, at the same time, if it is not change-coloration-clickable, then I would like to have a quick-look with 3 universal tree buttons.
And even if it is change-coloration-clickable, in order to compete with mind-effectiveness of the 3 universal tree buttons, visual-effectiveness of the all-class skillwheel would have to enable remembering all the selection previously made for each class.

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thGryphn
thGryphn


Promising
Famous Hero
posted April 04, 2016 11:39 PM
Edited by thGryphn at 23:58, 04 Apr 2016.

Skeggy said:
thGryphn said:
Skeggy said:
thGryphn said:

Once you go to your skill wheel, the next time you visit in the same session will take you exactly where you left.

So, putting 3 buttons on the level up screen is unnecessary clutter and loss of aesthetics.



If we develop different class heroes, under one color, does that mean that skillwheel on every hero levelup screen has different display, as we left it on that particular hero that is?


Interesting scenario. I'll test for it once I'm done with putting it together...

The thing is, how hard is it to do a second click? I mean, if you look at the skill wheel image I posted a few pages back, all 24 classes will be accessible with a single click. So, even if you don't go back to the same page as you left, all you have to do is one click to open the skill wheel page, and a second click to go to your Hero class's particular Skill Wheel. Done




I can understand that two clicks are not a big problem. However, for me, 3 universal tree buttons are also not a big problem. In fact, that three buttons are quite interesting and simple way of overview. Skilltree can be visually complicated if the skills and perks are not "clickable", that is if they don't change coloration like in the Aurelain's skilwheel.
Don't get me wrong, I would like to see the skillwheel class overview even if it is not change-coloration-clickable, but, at the same time, if it is not change-coloration-clickable, then I would like to have a quick-look with 3 universal tree buttons.
And even if it is change-coloration-clickable, in order to compete with mind-effectiveness of the 3 universal tree buttons, visual-effectiveness of the all-class skillwheel would have to enable remembering all the selection previously made for each class.




But of course, the perk icons will be clickable, I mean that's the whole point. You click on the perk icon, and its description appears in the center of the wheel... I don't know what else you imagine when you look at the pic I posted...

Aurelain's Skill Wheel was showing the prerequisites for each perk, which was a God-sent at that time due to incredibly intricate prereq system. With MMH5.5, the prerequisites are very structured and that structure can be readily seen on my wheel with the white-color lines. Special case prereqs that are currently shown on the Appendix page will be implemented like in Aurelain's wheel: highlighting the prereqs.

Edit: I really don't know what you mean by change-coloration-clickable, or mind-effectiveness. Universal tree pages show everything, including those that are completely irrelevant to your class. If you call that effective by any means, I don't know what to say. Effective to me means, it gives you what you need to see. Knight class should see only his skills/perks and descriptions. That is the whole purpose of my in-game skill wheel. Of course there is no way to tell what class you are, so all you have to do is click on your class button...


Edit2: Hmm, I think I understand now what you're saying with change-coloration. Well, then, you really need to see something. Aurelain's skill wheel was changing colors because all factions had the same 12 skills in common and only perks showed difference. So, a color-coding was helpful in differentiating between factions. In MMH5.5, the whole skill wheel changes, so forget about changing colors, you'll see a completely different skill wheel between the classes...

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Skeggy
Skeggy


Promising
Famous Hero
posted April 04, 2016 11:55 PM

thGryphn said:


But of course, the perk icons will be clickable, I mean that's the whole point. You click on the perk icon, and its description appears in the center of the wheel... I don't know what else you imagine when you look at the pic I posted...

Aurelain's Skill Wheel was showing the prerequisites for each perk, which was a God-sent at that time due to incredibly intricate prereq system. With MMH5.5, the prerequisites are very structured and that structure can be readily seen on my wheel with the white-color lines. Special case prereqs that are currently shown on the Appendix page will be implemented like in Aurelain's wheel: highlighting the prereqs.

Edit: I really don't know what you mean by change-coloration-clickable, or mind-effectiveness. Universal tree pages show everything, including those that are completely irrelevant to your class. If you call that effective by any means, I don't know what to say. Effective to me means, it gives you what you need to see. Knight class should see only his skills/perks and descriptions. That is the whole purpose of my in-game skill wheel. Of course there is no way to tell what class you are, so all you have to do is click on your class button...



Clickable in a meaning that once you click on one perk or skill icon, every other icon except the clicked one, is veiled with a white-greyish veil. And then you click on the one more icon and that icon is also unveiled. And so on… And yes, highlighting the prerequisites for the perks is good thing, but, for me, 3 universal tree buttons are more effective overview if the all-class skillwheell can't remember all the selection previously made for each class (hero).

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thGryphn
thGryphn


Promising
Famous Hero
posted April 05, 2016 12:00 AM

Skeggy said:
thGryphn said:


But of course, the perk icons will be clickable, I mean that's the whole point. You click on the perk icon, and its description appears in the center of the wheel... I don't know what else you imagine when you look at the pic I posted...

Aurelain's Skill Wheel was showing the prerequisites for each perk, which was a God-sent at that time due to incredibly intricate prereq system. With MMH5.5, the prerequisites are very structured and that structure can be readily seen on my wheel with the white-color lines. Special case prereqs that are currently shown on the Appendix page will be implemented like in Aurelain's wheel: highlighting the prereqs.

Edit: I really don't know what you mean by change-coloration-clickable, or mind-effectiveness. Universal tree pages show everything, including those that are completely irrelevant to your class. If you call that effective by any means, I don't know what to say. Effective to me means, it gives you what you need to see. Knight class should see only his skills/perks and descriptions. That is the whole purpose of my in-game skill wheel. Of course there is no way to tell what class you are, so all you have to do is click on your class button...



Clickable in a meaning that once you click on one perk or skill icon, every other icon except the clicked one, is veiled with a white-greyish veil. And then you click on the one more icon and that icon is also unveiled. And so on… And yes, highlighting the prerequisites for the perks is good thing, but, for me, 3 universal tree buttons are more effective overview if the all-class skillwheell can't remember all the selection previously made for each class (hero).



OK.

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Gidoza
Gidoza


Famous Hero
posted April 05, 2016 03:34 AM

Gidoza said:

The Skill Tree/Hero Types -- Well, you saw my complaint in the other thread...this looks amazing.      This essentially solves most of the issues that I was seeing and it looks like you guys have done an awesome job here figuring it all out.

I'm still struggling to understand exactly how it all works, though, because I don't find the descriptions especially clear.  For example, say we have a particular skill, let's call it skill A.  Skill A then lets you pick specialties B, C, and D, which in turn let you pick specialties B1, C1, and D1.  Do B1, C1, D1 all then in turn let you pick specialty E?  Or is specialty E only accessible from a very particular branch of B, C, and D?  (the former would make ideal sense to me, the latter not so much)



thGryphn said:
It's the latter (so, it's actually not E but C2), and one fact you're missing is that the heroes start with perk C. Given that you can pick only two more perks you have to make a plan. Is it B+B1, or B+C1, or B+D, or C1+C2, or C1+D? There are 5 alternatives and as you see everything there is accessible. All you have to do is want to do it, and be patient



Okay, I guess this is what I'm not getting.  You say that heroes start with perk C.  My response to this is...

1.  Why do heroes start with perk C?
2.  Does a hero start with perk C for every new skill that is acquired?
3.  How is C2 differentiated from B1 or D1?  That is to say - if C2 has two prerequisites, then it just sounds like it's a remnant of the old skill system where you need the right "stuff" to get the magical "big thing."  Hence why I suggested that any combination of B1/C1/D1 could give E.  Anyways, just need more info.


Gidoza said:



Skill Descriptions -- This is a very specific complaint.  Whereas on one section of the guide it shows all the symbols and how they connect, my problem is that I don't know what most of the symbols mean.  So when I go to the section that explains what the symbols mean, I get the explanation - but in that section, the connections aren't made.  So then I need to jump back to the connections page and look at that again, and it just turns into a jumping-back-and-forth fest trying to figure out what things mean and how they connect.

SUGGESTION:  The descriptions page can remain the same, just indicate very clearly which specialty pick comes from which other specialty pick, so page-jumping isn't happening all the time.




thGryphn said:
If you look back a few pages, I posted the WIP image of an in-game skill wheel I'm currently working on. Once done, you will find all these information at a single page, with nice graphics and all

The descriptions in the skill wheel will be more detailed than you see in the regular Hero screen. Formulas for calculating certain effects and other quantities will be given in the skill wheel.



My honest response to this is that H5.5 needs its own subforum.    Reading through a 150-page thread is a menace.

Anyways, on a primary note, though - yes, that would be awesomely useful.  



Gidoza said:



Free Spells??? -- I take particular issue with Master of Summoning at the moment, which my hero acquired.  I'm not so happy with getting the free spell.  Now, let's look at the iterations of this...

1.  I realize that Master of Summoning without a summoning spell is completely useless, which was the problem with Vanilla H5, because it was hard to justify taking the skill unless you had something to use it with, which we often didn't.  So this isn't a good option.

2.  So instead the proposed solution is just to give the spell to the hero.  This results in a level 4 spell (now level 3 I guess) being granted to the hero potentially at level 2??!? which is immensely powerful and lets me creep the map with ease, as if it wasn't easy enough already.

No, I'm not okay with this.  This isn't a good solution.  This is besides the fact that it devalues the Level 3 Mage Guild in its acquisition of a useful spell, particularly because there are only two (at most three) spells per magic type in a guild.  I was hoping the days of Solmyr (and the others) from H3 would be over here, but apparently not.  Once again, sort of like starting with too much money early on - I'd like to be able to earn my spells, not just get them easy-peasy like this.  The bonus helps alot - and that's precisely the problem.

My feelings are similar for basically all the other spells that are granted for free.  A "middling" solution would be nice, but I don't know if that's possible.  Anyways, given the choice between 1 and 2, I'd choose 1 hands down - I'd rather have no strong spell than a super spell early on.  However, if it summoned half as many elementals for twice the cost until you got the spell FOR REAL from a mage guild - then that's different.




thGryphn said:
I too am not very comfortable with the current solution.
How about a third option: add some prerequisites to current perks. I don't know what yet, I hadn't thought about it, but doing so would solve your concern about novice heroes learning too advanced spells for their own right.



I guess that's part of the issue - if we add too many prerequisites, then we're getting back into the old skill system in a way, which was bad.  Maybe we could run a brainstorming spree on this one, as options A and B just aren't good.



Gidoza said:

Hero Direct Damage -- This falls into the category of stuff I was surprised that wasn't changed.  My wimpy low-level hero can do a direct hit on some level 4 creature and manage the same amount of damage as an Eldritch Arrow - and my hero doesn't have Avenger, nor any kind of other ability that would improve direct damage, and my attack is 0.  This is lame.  Strictly from my hero's direct attack, I cannot justify the use of a single spell in my spellbook, because my hero's damage is better than my magical damage, and the benefits of any buff spell I have will only mathematically become useful after I get a month's worth of extra troops to add to my army.

Result?  I guess I'm always using my hero's attack for now.  In Heroes 3 terms, it would be like starting the game with a hero who has magic arrow and infinite mana.  Once again - this is lame.

While the presence of direct hero attack in the game is cool and I like it (and I want it to be there), I've always felt that it was way too strong, particularly against high-level creatures.  I see no reason for the hero's damage on a Black Dragon to be higher than that on a Sprite - in fact, even equal damage favors hitting the Black Dragon - because that equal damage is by-passing all that Defence that any other unit would end up with reduced damage on.  Neutral fights are super anti-climactic, even in H5.5, and the only seeming solution is to make some groups obscenely powerful, which I don't really see as a solution.

To put it one way - in H3, there really is more strategic involvement:  when my mana runs out, I need to decide if I want to get into the next fight and suffer some serious losses, or run back to a town or a well to recuperate my mana so the next battle can be reasonable, even if it's only 20 mana.  H5 and H5.5 give no allowance to this - instead, in some battles I can run a unit around endlessly while my hero nukes it, and at the end I still have a full load of mana left (which recovers even faster in H5) in case I should run into something troublesome.  The effects of the benefits are cumulative, and it's overkill.

So in the end - I would have liked to see it where Heroes do marginal damage with their physical attack (VERY marginal), such that it is really a BONUS to the battle, and not critical to the fight.  Special abilities are an exception, because they're intended for that specific use, and I would see the current damage as being normative for that.

Anyways, that's my thought here - just curious of your opinions.



thGryphn said:
I'm sorry but I don't agree with your view here. Most likely, you need to experience MMH5.5 longer to understand it. In short, MMH5.5, infinitely better than the vanilla game, gives you the option to play pretty much any faction with a might or a magic focus. Mind you, if you use your Hero to attack a Dragon to kill say a few of them, your opportunity cost is casting a spell that can utterly cripple the whole army in front of you. That is, the Might focused Hero's actions must have somewhat substantial impact to have a good balance between Might vs. Magic strategies.



I think you misunderstood me here.  I'm not saying that I never use spells.  I'm saying two things very specifically.

1.  Early-game hero damage (even on a magic hero) is so obscenely high that it does better damage than most or all of my damage spells, and practically outperforms any other spell I have.  At the very least, the amount of mana I would expect to use in a standard battle early in the game is dramatically reduced.

2.  Of course later in the game other spells are going to outperform the primary attack (unless it's a specialized might hero), so I'm going to use other spells.  However, should I run out of mana, my damage is still so impressive with no mana at all that the beating continues beyond what is reasonable.

In H3, if the hero ran out of mana - that's it for the hero, and the attacks stop.  I don't expect that in H5.  However, I DO expect that if my hero runs out of mana that I should have below 20% potential of what I had before...NOT 60+%!!!




Anyways - for everything else you responded to, thanks.     I know I'm not crazy!!!

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Gidoza
Gidoza


Famous Hero
posted April 05, 2016 03:39 AM

sayke said:
Gidoza said:

Green -- The balance efforts look amazing, the graphics are clean and smoothe, and there's an internal logic to the game that far surpasses the original H5.

Blue -- I wonder how much the community is locked into a God-mode mentality in its insistence to keep certain spells/modes of the game intact and how much this actually harms the AI in the process.

However, on this note - some of these blues are things I'd be more than happy to edit for myself on my own computer and not involve the rest of the community, as I can understand how others wouldn't agree with me on these ones.

Red -- External new features need to be kept external and not default.  AI cheating specs are very inflexible.  Combat announcements ought to stay with the ATB bar.  More clarity in the skill descriptions zone.  Free spells harms mage guilds.



Interesting! I agree about graphics, internal logic, and balancing, but I think the balancing actually works great with the AI. For example, the AI *loves* town conversion and uses it to excellent effect. However, I don't agree about disabling the new features - they're awesome, most new players will love them, and you can always turn them off if you want in the Settings file. Also, you can create your own custom difficulty setting if you want, and I quite like the combat announcements style.?



Thanks for the response.  I don't think you quite caught me on the last point, though.

I didn't mean to disable new features per se - I'm just saying that these shouldn't be included as the default.

However, as the corollary of that - should they be included as default anyways, it would be nice if there was an in-game check box that could undo the matter.  As it stands, H5.5 doesn't come with instructions for how to turn the new features off, and I still don't know.

As for creating a new difficulty setting - I don't know how to do that, either.  I'm quite sure it's on this forum somewhere, but I can't say that I've found it or understood it amidst all the clutter.


My main point:  understanding computer systems/programming shouldn't be required to play the game at the basic level.  It's getting too complex and out of reach who just wants a plain H5 with balance and bug fixes.

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magnomagus
magnomagus


Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
posted April 05, 2016 10:46 AM
Edited by magnomagus at 10:56, 05 Apr 2016.

@Gidoza: Thank you for your extensive review, just to clarify a few things right away:

1. read the tooltip of the formerly 'equal resources' setting.

2. the skilltree branching is explained on the appendix page (treeroot icon) in the ingame manual.

3. summon elementals is a relatively weak spell overpriced and not worthy of tier 4 in H5. please evaluate balance in perspective of human vs human competitive multiplayer.

4. Most games with RPG elements in this world (including HOMM series and TOE original) use a reduced experience multiplier for higher difficulties, otherwise the game doesn't become harder, you just level much faster. Regardless in H55 you can gain much,much,MUCH more experience than H5 especially on impossible level because the armies will be more enlarged than the experience is reduced. The resistance remains competitive no matter how long the game drags on, in H5 the game is mostly over by month 3 (if it comes to neutral resistance). You can actually reach L37 without knowledge trees in H55.

5. You don't need to read 150 pages, all vital info is summarized in the first posts of my threads.

6. The sprite issue and false description will be changed.

@THGrypn: I guess if the wheel position is remembered it is not so urgent.

What is your plan for the position of the skills on the wheel, I guess you have to come up with a system that places skills mostly in the same spot to reduce workload am I right?


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thGryphn
thGryphn


Promising
Famous Hero
posted April 05, 2016 12:58 PM
Edited by thGryphn at 13:25, 05 Apr 2016.

magnomagus said:

@THGrypn: I guess if the wheel position is remembered it is not so urgent.

What is your plan for the position of the skills on the wheel, I guess you have to come up with a system that places skills mostly in the same spot to reduce workload am I right?




Yeah, during the same game session, the skill wheel will open to the last visited class and skill/perk description. Unfortunately, afaik, there is no way to remember this per Hero...

Well, the skills will place themselves according to the probability of acquisition. The color-coding you see on my wheel is about that. 12%, 10%, 8% and 4%. Further, each class (except for the Barbarians) have their class-specialty as a 12%, so I will place those skills as the first skill on the wheel (for each class). Given these constraints, I don't think any common placement is possible across the board.

To summarize, I won't do any optimization. I will simply load a different skill wheel for each class.

Something I already optimized is that I won't be loading the background texture every time, so what will load is only the skill/perk buttons over a common background (the wheel itself). This is except the Barbarians; everytime you open a Barbarian class coming from a non-Barbarian class, it will load a different background. This is no thanks to you, magno, because you're using a different probability scheme for Barbarians

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thGryphn
thGryphn


Promising
Famous Hero
posted April 05, 2016 01:20 PM

Gidoza said:

Okay, I guess this is what I'm not getting.  You say that heroes start with perk C.  My response to this is...

1.  Why do heroes start with perk C?
2.  Does a hero start with perk C for every new skill that is acquired?
3.  How is C2 differentiated from B1 or D1?  That is to say - if C2 has two prerequisites, then it just sounds like it's a remnant of the old skill system where you need the right "stuff" to get the magical "big thing."  Hence why I suggested that any combination of B1/C1/D1 could give E.  Anyways, just need more info.




Only the heroes that start with a skill start with perk C of that skill (I'm not sure if there are any rare exceptions to this). So, no, if you acquire a new skill you don't get any perks right away, so there are a larger number of perk selection combinations, 8 to be exact: B+B1+C, B+B1+D, B+C+C1, B+C+D, B+D+D1, C+C1+C2, C+C1+D, C+D+D1.

C2 is not an ultimate, but is thematically different from B and D lines, and tied to the C line. You can think of B, C, D as three lines of specializations with different themes. Don't expect the themes to be terribly different from each other, we're still talking about perks under the same skill.

So, really, it's very different from the old system. More structured. More meaningful relations between perks and prerequisites. And the idea of any kind of ultimate is scrapped. The purpose is to make all perks useful in a balanced way, considering their impact on the average. Average, because the use cases of perks can change but you can weight the possibilities of those use cases occurring and the impact of the perk, and arrive at an expected impact of a perk, and balance over those. That's what MMH5.5 is attempting to do, and doing so very well, IMHO.



Gidoza said:

I think you misunderstood me here.  I'm not saying that I never use spells.  I'm saying two things very specifically.

1.  Early-game hero damage (even on a magic hero) is so obscenely high that it does better damage than most or all of my damage spells, and practically outperforms any other spell I have.  At the very least, the amount of mana I would expect to use in a standard battle early in the game is dramatically reduced.

2.  Of course later in the game other spells are going to outperform the primary attack (unless it's a specialized might hero), so I'm going to use other spells.  However, should I run out of mana, my damage is still so impressive with no mana at all that the beating continues beyond what is reasonable.

In H3, if the hero ran out of mana - that's it for the hero, and the attacks stop.  I don't expect that in H5.  However, I DO expect that if my hero runs out of mana that I should have below 20% potential of what I had before...NOT 60+%!!!



It is true that hero attack can help with neutral creeping early-game, but then there are other ways (a ton of them) to do early -game creeping. So, really, it's just another way to do early-game creeping and might heroes will make better use of it.

What you said for late game though is not valid. Late game, the stack quantities are so large that the impact of hero attack is diminished to pretty much zero. You cannot hope to win a battle with hero attacks late game. Armies matter most (late-game) and you would be better off to boost yours or cripple the enemy's when it's your Hero's turn. If you're out of mana, of course you would use your Hero attack, but it's because there is nothing else you can do. At that point, it's probably obvious that you will either win the battle or lose it. Either way, your Hero attacks will not change anything of that outcome...

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magnomagus
magnomagus


Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
posted April 05, 2016 01:22 PM

I don't understand, if all wheels are set up by skill probs, wouldn't that mean you have to redefine all 'hover mouse' positions for every wheel to get the descriptions?

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magnomagus
magnomagus


Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
posted April 05, 2016 02:19 PM

Also here is a workload reducing suggestion: why not instead of 22 wheels just create 2. One wheel with all magic skills and one with all might skills. Then clicking on the class buttons only shows a glow around the pizza pieces that are applicable to that class.

This underscores how the skill system was actually designed for simplicity.
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thGryphn
thGryphn


Promising
Famous Hero
posted April 05, 2016 02:20 PM

magnomagus said:
I don't understand, if all wheels are set up by skill probs, wouldn't that mean you have to redefine all 'hover mouse' positions for every wheel to get the descriptions?



Not exactly.
The skill/perk icon locations are fixed for each slice on the wheel. I'll just tell Knight to pull the contents of the first slice from Combat folder, second and third slices from Defense and Leadership, etc. Similarly for each class.

By the way, the skill wheel will work on-click, not on-hover.

It's a different design than Azard's. I'm really redesigning a new framework, without using his. I think it was required to do so since MMH5.5 skill system is very different from H5's. Azard was able to use a common skillwheel (including the skill locations and most perk locations) for all factions except for Stronghold. And, yeah, he had only 8 factions to deal with, I have 24 classes

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thGryphn
thGryphn


Promising
Famous Hero
posted April 05, 2016 02:32 PM
Edited by thGryphn at 14:35, 05 Apr 2016.

magnomagus said:
Also here is a workload reducing suggestion: why not instead of 22 wheels just create 2. One wheel with all magic skills and one with all might skills. Then clicking on the class buttons only shows a glow around the pizza pieces that are applicable to that class.

This underscores how the skill system was actually designed for simplicity.


I don't think I like that idea. It would show how each class fits in the bigger picture but I don't see how that is of use to the player. If I'm playing Seer, I'm trying to build him up and so I'm using the skill wheel to try and see how I can do so best. I'm not interested to see what other might (or magic) skills there are that I "cannot" get for my Seer!

In short, I think your suggestion would be good information about the skill system overall (like in an encyclopedia ) but not actionable information. If I get enough spare time, I can try and implement that along with the current one-wheel-per-class plan.

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Gidoza
Gidoza


Famous Hero
posted April 05, 2016 03:16 PM

magnomagus said:
@Gidoza: Thank you for your extensive review, just to clarify a few things right away:

1. read the tooltip of the formerly 'equal resources' setting.

2. the skilltree branching is explained on the appendix page (treeroot icon) in the ingame manual.

3. summon elementals is a relatively weak spell overpriced and not worthy of tier 4 in H5. please evaluate balance in perspective of human vs human competitive multiplayer.

4. Most games with RPG elements in this world (including HOMM series and TOE original) use a reduced experience multiplier for higher difficulties, otherwise the game doesn't become harder, you just level much faster. Regardless in H55 you can gain much,much,MUCH more experience than H5 especially on impossible level because the armies will be more enlarged than the experience is reduced. The resistance remains competitive no matter how long the game drags on, in H5 the game is mostly over by month 3 (if it comes to neutral resistance). You can actually reach L37 without knowledge trees in H55.

5. You don't need to read 150 pages, all vital info is summarized in the first posts of my threads.

6. The sprite issue and false description will be changed.

@THGrypn: I guess if the wheel position is remembered it is not so urgent.

What is your plan for the position of the skills on the wheel, I guess you have to come up with a system that places skills mostly in the same spot to reduce workload am I right?





1.  What are you referring to when you say this?

2.  I don't find it clear at all, which is why I'm asking about it.

3.  I never claimed it was worthy of tier 4.  This has nothing to do with what I said...

4.  I guess this is part of my issue, because I'm not interested in fighting bigger armies on higher difficulties.  Fighting bigger and bigger stacks of neutrals is just boring.  I'd rather fight smaller stacks with normal experience and get on with the standard conflicts.  This may also be part of the reason I don't bother with random maps, because I find the game chaotic and unruly.  My point is that the current set of AI handicaps are inadequate in every form.

5.  Again, I don't find it self-evident from reading the threads, or I wouldn't be asking.

7.  Anyways, do combination artifacts still have the original bonuses for a set number of items, or has the super item replaced these bonuses?  I hope the former is true, then I can just remove super items and the old artifacts will be mostly normal again.

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Gidoza
Gidoza


Famous Hero
posted April 05, 2016 03:25 PM

thGryphn said:
Gidoza said:

Okay, I guess this is what I'm not getting.  You say that heroes start with perk C.  My response to this is...

1.  Why do heroes start with perk C?
2.  Does a hero start with perk C for every new skill that is acquired?
3.  How is C2 differentiated from B1 or D1?  That is to say - if C2 has two prerequisites, then it just sounds like it's a remnant of the old skill system where you need the right "stuff" to get the magical "big thing."  Hence why I suggested that any combination of B1/C1/D1 could give E.  Anyways, just need more info.




Only the heroes that start with a skill start with perk C of that skill (I'm not sure if there are any rare exceptions to this). So, no, if you acquire a new skill you don't get any perks right away, so there are a larger number of perk selection combinations, 8 to be exact: B+B1+C, B+B1+D, B+C+C1, B+C+D, B+D+D1, C+C1+C2, C+C1+D, C+D+D1.

C2 is not an ultimate, but is thematically different from B and D lines, and tied to the C line. You can think of B, C, D as three lines of specializations with different themes. Don't expect the themes to be terribly different from each other, we're still talking about perks under the same skill.

So, really, it's very different from the old system. More structured. More meaningful relations between perks and prerequisites. And the idea of any kind of ultimate is scrapped. The purpose is to make all perks useful in a balanced way, considering their impact on the average. Average, because the use cases of perks can change but you can weight the possibilities of those use cases occurring and the impact of the perk, and arrive at an expected impact of a perk, and balance over those. That's what MMH5.5 is attempting to do, and doing so very well, IMHO.



Gidoza said:

I think you misunderstood me here.  I'm not saying that I never use spells.  I'm saying two things very specifically.

1.  Early-game hero damage (even on a magic hero) is so obscenely high that it does better damage than most or all of my damage spells, and practically outperforms any other spell I have.  At the very least, the amount of mana I would expect to use in a standard battle early in the game is dramatically reduced.

2.  Of course later in the game other spells are going to outperform the primary attack (unless it's a specialized might hero), so I'm going to use other spells.  However, should I run out of mana, my damage is still so impressive with no mana at all that the beating continues beyond what is reasonable.

In H3, if the hero ran out of mana - that's it for the hero, and the attacks stop.  I don't expect that in H5.  However, I DO expect that if my hero runs out of mana that I should have below 20% potential of what I had before...NOT 60+%!!!



It is true that hero attack can help with neutral creeping early-game, but then there are other ways (a ton of them) to do early -game creeping. So, really, it's just another way to do early-game creeping and might heroes will make better use of it.

What you said for late game though is not valid. Late game, the stack quantities are so large that the impact of hero attack is diminished to pretty much zero. You cannot hope to win a battle with hero attacks late game. Armies matter most (late-game) and you would be better off to boost yours or cripple the enemy's when it's your Hero's turn. If you're out of mana, of course you would use your Hero attack, but it's because there is nothing else you can do. At that point, it's probably obvious that you will either win the battle or lose it. Either way, your Hero attacks will not change anything of that outcome...




1.  As for skills - okay, that makes sense, thanks for the clarification!  I'll play more and see what the relations are and see how perk C is different from the other perks and enjoy those a little.

2.  My God, what kind of maps are you playing?  You make it sound like there are hundreds of thousands of troops that I'm up against.  Most maps I stick to are fully creeped bymonth 2, and player engagement occurs by week 2.  My comments are perfectly valid on a map where there is continuous combat and stacks are not growing large.  The sentiment I get is that H5.5 is geared towards enormous maps made by the RMG.  I'm saying that more tame maps suffer because of this focus.  (And hence this is why I'm not so happy about the mixed difficulty settings, because the stacks are NOT larger in my preference of map, so it DOES translate to a notable loss of experience.)

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magnomagus
magnomagus


Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
posted April 05, 2016 03:34 PM

@Gidoza:
I thought you played QAI, which has 'equal resources' setting (snatch icon)

You claimed summon elemental spell is too powerful to get early, which is not true. Any lvl 3 spell can be gained early even without free spell skills.

H55 is not geared towards large maps alone, it is also geared towards better small maps, if a creature stack is 20% bigger and you get 20% less experience for it, the result is the same.

Besides for you there is no problem at all since you want smaller stacks you just use the lower difficulty, this has no impact on the AIs intelligence and still keeps you the option to activate cheating and make the game harder than quantomas AI. There are no handicaps for the AI on any difficulty.

The RMG underwent massive improvements in H55, so you cannot judge it without playing it.

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magnomagus
magnomagus


Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
posted April 05, 2016 03:40 PM

Combo artifact effects are not removed because of ultimate items, in fact if you exchange the combo artifact you lose something, therefore doing that is only useful on large maps where you will find so many artifacts you can fill the slots again, if you only play small maps all this will have no impact on your game at all.

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