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Heroes Community > Heroes 7 - Falcon's Last Flight > Thread: ~ Heroes 7 - Beta Discussions ~
Thread: ~ Heroes 7 - Beta Discussions ~ This thread is 64 pages long: 1 10 20 30 40 ... 47 48 49 50 51 ... 60 64 · «PREV / NEXT»
Minastir
Minastir


Promising
Famous Hero
posted August 29, 2015 01:08 AM

cleglaw said:
we need a counter info for metamagic stacks. since it empowers spells at certain numbers, we should be able to track the number to make a tactic.

edit: i have an extra key thanks to ubi's mail. contact me with HC Messenger if you want it.

You mean how many meta magic points hero has during battle ?
because you can right click on the hero portrait in the down right corner and there you have info about metamagic bonus, in the same place where you have abilities info

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yogi
yogi


Promising
Famous Hero
of picnics
posted August 29, 2015 02:18 AM

lordgraa said:

Sylvan gameplay video

Dungeon gameplay video


great vids
____________
yogi - class: monk | status: healthy
"Lol we are HC'ers.. The same tribe.. Guy!" ~Ghost

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Zeki
Zeki


Supreme Hero
sup
posted August 29, 2015 02:42 AM
Edited by Zeki at 02:44, 29 Aug 2015.

Gryphs said:
Zeki said:
nothing is less polished than h6
H6 may have been poorly polished but H7 feels like it has none at least for the time I played it...but it is a beta so it will be better at release(I hope). Worth mentioning if the map editor is good I could probably forgive H7 most if not all of its shortcomings.

If not running at all because i have an nvidia graphics card is in any way polished then i agree.. (talking about final vanilla version btw. For me beta of h6 was actually more stable than it became later on after release) But on the other side it seems like h7 beta is playing very different on different systems. I for example had no single crash and (apart from stupid ai) no game breaking bug in h7. Actually i do enjoy playing h7, the old one more turn feeling is back while with h6 i always quit after a few turns because i was so bored.
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dkolb
dkolb


Promising
Known Hero
Nay Nay and Aslan Protector
posted August 29, 2015 07:55 AM

My thoughts:

How it looks:
The art direction I've seen of this game is all over the place. I do like the stained glass motif and it does look very cool but the stained glass looks nothing like the overworld map which looks nothing like the towns which looks nothing like the battle screen. It just seems at times to be bunch of different elements jumbled together with no consistancy. It might be more polished in the actual release. I do like that the game seems to have has more "flavor" to it and looks better to me than in H6.

The creatures we are used to in previous installments are rather boring. Especially units like crossbowman/griffin and royal griffin who are in serious need to a facelift. All of them need to be redesigned and in fact after HOMM6 Asha itself might need to be redesigned or even changed all together because it looks very sameish. HOMM 2,3, and 4 were made by the same people but look RADICALLY different with HOMM4 taking place in an entirely new world. HOMM5, HOMM6, and HOMM7 look very alike in many respects.

The creatures they added or actually bothered redesigned look good which is frustrating because it shows they do know how to make interesting creatures. The swordmaster is very cool, the dungeon trog is freaky, and the arcane eagle is extremely creative.
The towns are nice. I won't give them more than that but they look nice. You should to be able to highlight a building and recruit creatures from the individual buildings. In other HOMMs the buildings seemed to have more to do with the creatures that dwelled within them a perfect example is HOMM4 where Medusas are recruited from a garden of statues nightmares from a haunted wood ect. I honestly can't tell when building any of the Haven creature's dwellings where they even are/ are supposed to be.

The graphics on the menu are really horrid. Will talk about that more later.

How it sounds: The sound effects are grating at times but the music is great as always especially the Sylvan theme.

How it plays:

Much like the creatures movement animations: very jerky.

I'm not expecting Deep Blue but the AI is extremely stupid and waiting for the AI is a waste of time. This is 2015 there is no reason I should be done with my turn faster than the AI is. I'm a human being so that's really bad when I'm processing and reacting faster than a computer.


It's really hard to tell what ability a creature has even from the town or in the army screen. I had to right click them to get a tiny picture of their stats the only way I could find out about their abilities was in battle. The skill wheel isn't very self explanatory or user friendly but it can be figured out. A big problem is with the inventory screen. My character picked up a bow and apparently couldn't equip it. Wondering why I right clicked the bow and brought up this long string of text talking about it's abilities and that it's a set item and then listing the artifacts in the set. Well the problem is I couldn't read any of it because it was overlayed under the inventory screen, so I still have no idea why I couldn't equip the bow! Another annoyance someone else pointed out is that when casting a spell you can't cancel it by right clicking.

The balance of the game seems weird. I do like that the wolves and the soldiers are extremes of each other but they are so extreme that by the time the sentinel moves a few steps the wolves will have already killed everything. The wolves are allowed to pretty much travel anywhere on the field and get a huge attack with no retaliation while seemingly retailiating against everything that attacks them. Since they are faster than archers and most other units this means they pretty much obliterate ranged attackers. Meanwhile the sentinels at least in my game became invincible I just took a few defensive perks and huge stacks were only killing like 10 at a time. Probably if I put celestial armor on them none of them would have died. These are core units doing this.

Then I attacked an enemy castle and I didn't bother to take warfare and I didn't get lucky enough to learn that spell the brings down the wall. I figured it would take longer but my creatures would wear it down. Well they instead wandered around like idiots while a little catapult hurled pebbles at it and the archers did like 1/4th damage. Then for no reason the entire enemy army just up and marched right through their own gate and were slaughtered. This after 100 turns of just staying there. Ugh game needs work.
____________
"...once you bought your first green dragon, there was already a necromancer with six or seven boners out and about-Lord_Wook"

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oakwarrior
oakwarrior


Famous Hero
posted August 29, 2015 10:27 AM
Edited by oakwarrior at 10:30, 29 Aug 2015.

Jumping in here to say many thanks for all the impressions so far!

To quell some fears: There has been good progress on the AI speed and thought process and I hope we can show it off before release

Do note that if you play an 8-player map with full AI loadout, you will still have to wait, because there's literally 7 other players in the game besides you, with up to 8 heroes per player
The thinking time of the AI has been greatly reduced (like, GREATLY), but they still need to perform the actions. Of course, if the AI is under the fog of war, the movement is instantaneous, so the early game shouldn't drag too badly

We all know the pain we felt upon the release of H5 (hell, it was one of the main reasons I stopped playing), and we don't want to put people through that again.

As a direct reply to dkolb: you can say that you're in 2015 or 2025 even, technology matters less than the actual algorithms used to compute things. The advance in technology rather sets new thresholds of speeds at which things can be computed, but algorithms can be inherently expensive themselves

alcibiades, the only thing off the top of my head would be to delete all game files and reinstall :/
Sorry for the hassle

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cleglaw
cleglaw


Famous Hero
posted August 29, 2015 10:39 AM
Edited by cleglaw at 10:40, 29 Aug 2015.


hello oakwarrior, good to see you in here! ai was a really worrying topic for me... can you guys update beta so we can see & try it? theres still some days before it ends currently, with those long turns, its mostly pointless to play anyway.  

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whatwait
whatwait

Tavern Dweller
posted August 29, 2015 10:55 AM
Edited by whatwait at 10:59, 29 Aug 2015.

Yeah, i actually been invited too(havent tried first beta), and wanted to try, but i just can't take waiting for these turns. I didn't know that turns were so long so i've tried map with 8 players, and after my first turn, i just never bothered playing the game again. Early game, when you can't even see the AI, turns should not take so long.

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alcibiades
alcibiades


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
posted August 29, 2015 11:42 AM

oakwarrior said:
Do note that if you play an 8-player map with full AI loadout, you will still have to wait, because there's literally 7 other players in the game besides you, with up to 8 heroes per player

I'm sorry, but that doesn't make sense to me. H3 handled 8 players with multiple heroes in a fraction of the time a turn takes in H7. Plus we're not talking late-game times, we're talking turn times right from turn 1, where each player only has two or maximum three heroes.

Quote:
alcibiades, the only thing off the top of my head would be to delete all game files and reinstall :/
Sorry for the hassle

Like I said, crapware ... but I shall try this, just to see if problems persist.
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What will happen now?

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Salamandre
Salamandre


Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
posted August 29, 2015 11:57 AM

As long as people will buy games where you have to wait insane amounts of time between areas switch, between AI turns, between everything not depending on human player, this crap will continue. I can't explain it other than the fact that people are so addicted to playing that they will buy anything, just to kill time.


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Era II mods and utilities

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frostymuaddib
frostymuaddib


Promising
Supreme Hero
育碧是白痴
posted August 29, 2015 11:57 AM

alcibiades said:
oakwarrior said:
Do note that if you play an 8-player map with full AI loadout, you will still have to wait, because there's literally 7 other players in the game besides you, with up to 8 heroes per player

I'm sorry, but that doesn't make sense to me. H3 handled 8 players with multiple heroes in a fraction of the time a turn takes in H7. Plus we're not talking late-game times, we're talking turn times right from turn 1, where each player only has two or maximum three heroes.



This made me think a little about AI (I worked a little with AI and Machine learning, but I'm far from expert in these areas). Core of the adventure map actions didn't change much since H3. IMO, the reasoning of AI, when it comes to adventure map, should have been even simpler: area of control makes reasoning about certain map object much easier, and the rest of the objects more or less the same. Also, hero behaviour on adventure map is practically the same as in H3 (except that they can have no troops, although even that is possible in H3). What comes to mind is this: they could use H3 AI code, adapt it and use it for H7 (if they have the code...). If it is not possible to use the code directly, use it as inspiration.

I recall some earlier conversation of H4 (it was long ago, so I can't find the source) about it's AI. If I remember correctly, they reused AI from H3, and it failed. The reason it failed, in my opinion, is because there were critical changes for adventure map (creatures move without heroes, the way heroes day when defeated, no hero chaining). I don't see those problems in H7.

Of course, these are just my thoughts, and as I said, I'm not an expert

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Dave_Jame
Dave_Jame


Promising
Legendary Hero
I'm Faceless, not Brainless.
posted August 29, 2015 12:03 PM

So just finished my 2nd Game
this time Sylvan on the small map. Hard difficulty and Osiris as my Main hero.
Weird choice maybe, but actually won me the game, as when I encountered the enemy hero for the first time, and we had really the same power, a random bystanding group of Hunters and Griffins joined, which then lead to an easy victory, and as it is usual on Dual maps, the winning of the game.

So My impression of Sylvan
I actually got couth in an interesting early game. The earth magic world spell motivated me to do some regular turn by turn micromanagement for the motivation of extra 200 gold/turn, With Jenova (YeY jenova, my favorite is bac) as my Secondary hero it was a nice economy boost, as well as movement thanks to native terrain.

Generally the idea of behind Sylvan none-combat gameplay looks interesting. Boosting their own map movement while reducing that of their enemy, not being limited by the absence of any spell school, and having the mystic pond giving random rare resources rather than one specific.
But in this gameplay some things got a bit more noticed then in the first one.

1: The reduction of sloots to 8 created a rather dense population of artifacts for some spots. Especially the "Off hand" which now acts as the shield hand and pocket. One extra spot would be nice. (The huge number of artifacts, as it looks like to be, does not help this as well.)
2: The new magic system, combined with random skills is really rather pesky. Since you can't control what to choose directly. I ended up on level 23, not having the Tier 4 spells (Well one spell both castles had the same one) for the single reason that the RSS kept giving me Paragon or Defence perks rather the Air magic, which I needed to get the last 8th point. I would personally reduce the needed points by 1 to 0-3-5-7.
3: Some animations are really funny The enemy's shadow stalkers (Dark elf) kept moonwalk-sliding around the map which made me thing: How do those DE ride these things. And Flying movement of creatures, even if not as bad as in the first beta, is still very bad.
4: the E+ creatures look rather outside now. Generally the impact of Elite units is rather low, but the top Elites (Mino, Deer, etc.) are cast aside for the simple reason of their cost. When you have the opportunity to get the, it is usually a question of one or two turns to get the capitol, and when you have that, they are again one or two turns away from the champion, and after this you spend most of your cash getting those champions to use them. So if you don't have a gaping lack of resources, then building theses units is a really low-key - Final step - Ok I have nothing else to build sort of thing.

Generally I liked the Sylvans. Nature's wrath is not as appealing to me as Shroud of Darkness was, but it worked. And watching hunters obliterate large number of champions was great, especially since the enemy targeted Druids and Blade dancers rather then them.
Druids on the other hand felt kind of useless, partially for the fact that the first time I used them was against the game-breaking battle where they were the only lose, that could not be prevented, but mostly for the fact that I keep 1-2 slots free for random joining units. Nothing like getting 70 juggernauts or 65 priest for free when you yourself have 20-40 units of the same tier.

So that is my opinion after game two. Some more issues have appeared but for me, the game still looks fun. Next on Havem and the 8FFA map
____________
I'm just a Mirror of your self.

We see, we look, we gather, we store, we teach.
We are many, and you can be one of us.

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Dave_Jame
Dave_Jame


Promising
Legendary Hero
I'm Faceless, not Brainless.
posted August 29, 2015 12:05 PM

Salamandre said:
As long as people will buy games where you have to wait insane amounts of time between areas switch, between AI turns, between everything not depending on human player, this crap will continue. I can't explain it other than the fact that people are so addicted to playing that they will buy anything, just to kill time.



Hey .. you can always have a book by your side to fill in the long loading times.. :-P
Bad argument I know but that does not change the fact the I actually do this :-D
____________
I'm just a Mirror of your self.

We see, we look, we gather, we store, we teach.
We are many, and you can be one of us.

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Salamandre
Salamandre


Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
posted August 29, 2015 12:07 PM

H3 AI code is not better. When I made my mod Conquistador thus each AI hero was boosted and had big army and all, the wait between turns increased to several minutes. Then if you watched what they do, the most of time the program calculated between priorities because bigger army increased the list of doable actions. So the hero didn't move at all, just stay there and waited for program to find next action. So I wouldn't say H3 AI code is something to start from.

But I suspect AI alone isn't something developers care much about, if the game doesn't crash during your turn and graphics are nice, let's sell it.
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Era II mods and utilities

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frostymuaddib
frostymuaddib


Promising
Supreme Hero
育碧是白痴
posted August 29, 2015 12:13 PM
Edited by frostymuaddib at 12:14, 29 Aug 2015.

@Salamandre

I agree that it is not better, but I have a feeling that it was better than the ones in H5 (not counting Q's mod), H6 and H7. The best thing would be good AI from scratch, but I don't see that anytime soon.

Quote:
So I wouldn't say H3 AI code is something to start from.


I meant that it would be better than the current thing they are doing, but I guess you are right. I overreact a bit, becuase I cannot understand  that after two finished games, and third almost finished, they cannot create reasonable AI.

As for AI in H7, it is not just slow, but stupid as well.

Quote:
But I suspect AI alone isn't something developers care much about, if the game doesn't crash during your turn and graphics are nice, let's sell it.


Unfortunately, this...

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LizardWarrior
LizardWarrior


Honorable
Legendary Hero
the reckoning is at hand
posted August 29, 2015 12:18 PM
Edited by LizardWarrior at 12:22, 29 Aug 2015.

Salamandre said:
H3 AI code is not better. When I made my mod Conquistador thus each AI hero was boosted and had big army and all, the wait between turns increased to several minutes. Then if you watched what they do, the most of time the program calculated between priorities because bigger army increased the list of doable actions. So the hero didn't move at all, just stay there and waited for program to find next action. So I wouldn't say H3 AI code is something to start from.



The AI seems stupid only after you learn the game well, but beginners can't beat AI on impossible, until they learn what skills to take, what spells to use and which tactic to deploy, beginners don't count how many hexes does a creature can move and where to be out of enemy reach. Yeah, after 15 years ofc it won't be such a great challenge as people discovered how the AI is likely to move and they can outsmart it easily. Not that h3 AI is surprisingly smart

Salamandre said:

But I suspect AI alone isn't something developers care much about, if the game doesn't crash during your turn and graphics are nice, let's sell it.


FTFY

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oakwarrior
oakwarrior


Famous Hero
posted August 29, 2015 01:20 PM
Edited by oakwarrior at 13:27, 29 Aug 2015.

We are trying a "novel" approach to AI and internally we're quite happy how it's turning out. I can't delve into the specifics, but it's not the good old "if (condition filled) then (do something)" system. It's not supposed to emulate human thought of course, because that'd take a lot of time and potential scientific papers to put into the framework of the game. Instead, the AI in H7 always strives to succeed and progress based on the current situation it is aware of.

Additionally, taking an AI and trying to rewrite it for another game is generally a bad idea. Taking inspiration is fine of course, but that does not guarantee an optimum result. Most of the time it's better to take already available knowledge and experience and build it from the ground up with the game. Mixing and matching will always end up with something that's fairly hard to monitor, as you might not always be fully aware of the consequences of a minor change.

EDIT: To come back to Salamandre's claim that the trends of high loading times will continue... they really will. But not because that people "accept it" because of buying the game. No. It's always because of the demand for AAA/5++++/10-out-of-10 graphics. Always. And devs will always try to push the graphics as far as they can, because that's where the demand and competition lies. And then if you don't meet the "triple-A" requirement on graphics, the review scores will start at 60%, not at 80%. It's the unfortunate truth that's reflected across the board in both game critic circles and in the playerbase.

All that is "acceptable" because it's the way things are. There needs to be a significant change in trend for them to change. Game developers will ALWAYS push the existing hardware, not try to stay within certain low boundaries.

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kiryu133
kiryu133


Responsible
Legendary Hero
Highly illogical
posted August 29, 2015 01:36 PM

oakwarrior said:

All that is "acceptable" because it's the way things are. There needs to be a significant change in trend for them to change. Game developers will ALWAYS push the existing hardware, not try to stay within certain low boundaries.


That's probably very true. On consoles. PC is quite a bit different, no matter how strange that actually sounds and time and time again are we reminded of the success stories of graphically "inferior" games on PC.

But UBI don't care snow about PC so whatever
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It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that the cis are at it again.

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frostymuaddib
frostymuaddib


Promising
Supreme Hero
育碧是白痴
posted August 29, 2015 01:49 PM
Edited by frostymuaddib at 13:50, 29 Aug 2015.

oakwarrior said:
Additionally, taking an AI and trying to rewrite it for another game is generally a bad idea. Taking inspiration is fine of course, but that does not guarantee an optimum result.



I agree, but given the previous installments of the Ubi Heroes, I just had impression that it would be better to use H3 AI (I say this to point out previous fails ). I really want to see decent AI in heroes games, but I lost all hope. (I want to be proven wrong )

oakwarrior said:

EDIT: To come back to Salamandre's claim that the trends of high loading times will continue... they really will. But not because that people "accept it" because of buying the game. No. It's always because of the demand for AAA/5++++/10-out-of-10 graphics.


Here are my thoughts on this. The demand for 10-out-of-10 graphics is shown (I think) by the number of people buying the game. If people stop buying every game that looks pretty, state of the market would (or rather should) change. I do not blame developers at all for this, they need to sell their product (they have to earn money) so they have to follow the 'rules'.

The only way that this can be changed, I think, is to change ourselves: our game-buying habbits. I burned myself with H6, and the base reason was: 'I like Heroes franchise, I have to buy this game also'. That was wrong. Because of this, I planned to wait for H7 release, so I can see if I like the game enough to buy it. Fortunately, I got the beta, and I saw the game, and I realised I will not buy it. Not because it is not like H3, or something like that, just because I do not like it (AI was not included in this assessment ). I won't spend a penny on something that I don't like. In the end, I believe that it is up to the gamers to 'direct' the way game development works. If the majority buys games for graphics, so be it. I won't be happy, but majority likes that and thats it (I'd still have rights to rant about that ).

@kiryu

Ubi and PC

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LizardWarrior
LizardWarrior


Honorable
Legendary Hero
the reckoning is at hand
posted August 29, 2015 01:50 PM

This game has graphics so real that you mistake your monitor for a window

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frostymuaddib
frostymuaddib


Promising
Supreme Hero
育碧是白痴
posted August 29, 2015 01:51 PM

Forgot about Minecraft

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