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Heroes Community > Heroes 7 - Falcon's Last Flight > Thread: Heroes series - back to the drawing board?
Thread: Heroes series - back to the drawing board? This thread is 4 pages long: 1 2 3 4 · NEXT»
Stevie
Stevie


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
posted October 02, 2015 05:42 PM
Edited by Stevie at 21:03, 02 Oct 2015.

Heroes series - back to the drawing board?

I'm questioning the philosophy I've been upholding up until now, that the winning formula of this series was to take the old and build upon. But the past few years have only dismantled this idea bit by bit to the point I'm now thinking that it is only a dead end. I think TB was very right in his closing thoughts of his Heroes 7 review - "They don't know where they're going with it [...] I think a full back to the drawing board is required for HoMM.". JJ has been telling us this since a long time ago and we dismissed him. Now I feel very troubled because of that. There is no way this series can grow if it keeps leaning so heavily on what was before. Sure, Heroes 6 was a complete flop, and Heroes 4 was not that great either according to the opinions of many, but shying away from innovation is a losing mentality.

Just a noteworthy example: Civilization 5 was a game that implemented a ton of innovation which was not loyal to its roots, many people even going to the extent of saying that it was not a true civ game. Yet in spite of all that it was massively well received, winning many awards and high ratings, currently holding one of the largest and most dedicated player base there is.

There's no reason for the Heroes series to go on like this. I think it really needs to go back to the drawing board.

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TD
TD


Promising
Famous Hero
posted October 02, 2015 06:16 PM

Sorry for being off-topic here, but Civ 5 was terrible game when it came out IMO. It was(and still is) lacking a lot of features because devs tried to simplify the game. In many ways I consider civ 4 better game even now. It wasn't until the first expansion came out to civ 5 that I considered it a good game and I had fun playing it(and always did consider it still civ game).

As for HoMM I don't see reason to derail from the core or past games. It's simply matter of getting devs that/to understand the older games. H5 is the prime example that stayed true to the series(IMO) while still improving it at same time. Even the base game with all its problems was still in essence like older ones, but you can't really say that from h6 or h7. Those two games should be only remembered IMO as examples of how to not go re-inventing things that worked fine. Key is to add and polish, not replace!

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ChrisD1
ChrisD1


Supreme Hero
posted October 02, 2015 06:17 PM

Come on-.- and then i m  the drama queen. Lets just wait if the game gets properly patched. Lets play it then. Lets play the expansions too. And then you can wonder that. About gameplay, since i m most a casual player,i think with a few fixes here and there it can appeal to experienced players and casual ones at the same time.
I m not saying the game isnt flawed but you are exaggerating here a bit.
Wow i m making sense. Where is storm giant to call me dramatic?
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malax83
malax83


Famous Hero
Game ranger, HotA Player
posted October 02, 2015 06:17 PM

My opinion is H3 already has potential.

The only thing needed is a multiplayer platform and simultaneous turn, maybe adding areas of control to get simultaneous turn smoother.

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Kayna
Kayna


Supreme Hero
posted October 02, 2015 06:19 PM
Edited by Kayna at 18:20, 02 Oct 2015.

What needs to go back to the drawing board is Ubisoft's way of doing things.

All we need is a freaking game with 10 factions, 2 different upgrades for each units, go back to hexagonals instead of squares, extra mechanics like flanking, attacks of opportunity, a speed initiative wait system like King's Bounty where you can move, wait, then move again and attack at the end of the round with as many skills and spells as possible. It's not THAT hard, but it will never happen because Ubisuck doesn't want to invest a few thousand dollars more.

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verriker
verriker


Honorable
Legendary Hero
We don't need another 'eroes
posted October 02, 2015 06:29 PM

Julian Benson said:
There’s a reason why the games haven’t changed much. It’s because the fans don’t want change. They actively campaign against change. That puts Limbic, the team responsible for pushing the series forward, in an awkward position.

One of the people responsible for building this new Might & Magic is brand director Erwan Le Breton. He’s a veteran: having worked as a producer on the last four Might & Magic games. HIs work on Heroes VI began with a team brainstorm: what would the perfect Might and Magic game include? Their conclusions: more levels of strategy, an RPG reputation system like the one in Bioware’s games, they wanted to have some of the persistent elements they were seeing in MMOs, like an always connected community of adventurers.

Players hated it.

“The community was saying Heroes 6 was the worst game in the series ever,” Le Breton tells me. “All the changes that I mentioned […] they said it wasn’t heroes.” They complained that time and money had been spent on new features instead of refining other parts of the game.

“Heroes VI in this perspective was very innovative but it was hard to implement everything in the game and in the end all of us are disappointed with the final product compared to our original vision,” Le Breton says. “It was a question of time, money, and ambition. It was not the Heroes of our dreams.”

By the time the game released, Limbic felt they were “doing the game against a certain chunk of the community instead of doing it for them.”

So, when it came to Heroes VII “in the heart of the core team was how can we make a game for the fans?” Le Breton admits. “We want to do a good game but don’t have a vision for how Heroes should be.”

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fuChris
fuChris


Promising
Supreme Hero
Master to the Speed of Light
posted October 02, 2015 06:31 PM bonus applied by Elvin on 04 Oct 2015.

Thats just the PTSD talking. If the series would take on vastly different game-elements then that would turn it into a completely different experience. The hunger for the Heroes experience that we all so love would however not be satiated.
It would only lead to Ubi sitting on the naming rights and that another studio sometimes years later would make a copy of the game with better polish and us looking back and asking why this wasn't possible back then. And the anwser would be that it was but simply not in Ubi's hands.

Heroes is already a very complex game with multiple layers of strategy involved. The introduction of new elements into the game without polishing the already existing ones will always end up in an unrefined game.

Barely any new gameconcept since H3 has made itself a staple of the franchise since its switch to 3D but that is the developers fault and not ours.
H4 brought with it a new, expanded but still reasonable stat/skill system as well as an anwser to the problem of the mass spells with it's new approach to the mage guild amongst other things. None of it made it to the sequels. The governor system only made it into the game this time because the magic skills took up too much of the skilltrees and they needed to add something not magic based IMO.
H5 added an expanded skilltree, faction specific skillsets, the initiave system and a much faster multiplayer. All of these improvements have been severly dumbed down or simply forgotten since. The skilltree is a joke. The faction specific skills are too dominant and force upon you a certain playstyle. Sim turns will maybe sometimes later make it into the game. Maybe. Two expansions later probably.
H6 added a hero upgrade system, town convertion and area of controll. While not being quite satisfied with it the hero upgrade was something the community has been asking for since H4. Instead of further developing it it has simply been dropped. The townconcertion has been asked for since H3WoG. Instead of balancing it it has also been dropped. Area controll that nobody really asked for but didn't really bother anyone but was allowed to stay simply to streamline the game.

There were plenty of game elements that could have well become staple elements of the franchise by now if only they got the polish they deserved.
Instead we got flanking which is totally useless since you can't controll how to face your troops. Lovely.

And they still have the face to say they don't have any vision how the game can evolve. Blegh...
____________
"Now I am become Chris, the destroyer of worlds." - Robert Oppenheimer.

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EnergyZ
EnergyZ


Legendary Hero
President of MM Wiki
posted October 02, 2015 06:40 PM

Aye, there are a number of facts to consider:
*is the dev team experienced in making (strategic) games? Have they played the previous games to know what should (not) be in the game
*which audience are they targeting? The old or new ones? Or is it both, do they know how to please both sides?
*have they made some changes to make the strategy genre a more popular thing among the people?

Suffice to say is there clearly have to take a different approach. If Ubisoft continues on to their road, without considering the fans' feedback, then I don't see much faith in Heroes games being any better, to people's standards.

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kiryu133
kiryu133


Responsible
Legendary Hero
Highly illogical
posted October 02, 2015 06:56 PM bonus applied by Elvin on 04 Oct 2015.

As has been mentioned, Heroes 7 is nothing but a "best off" without realizing what made those particular parts so good to begin with mixed with just useless snow. For example, we're still in these really small battlefields yet they refuse to use Hexes even though they're simply superior in the current battlefield sizes. The only heroes game squares *kinda* worked in was H4 and that's because battlefields had a huge amount of them and they were used to make creatures vary wildly both in size and shape. Squares were used to create diversity where it might've been harder with Hexes (even though I disagree with that but that's irrelevant).

The skill system, while already under plenty of fire, is another such thing. It's clear that they understand H5 was fantastic in this regard but they completely miss Why it is. H7 has a wheel with a ton of skills spread out evenly around several categories with plenty of possible builds. In some ways it could even be seen as an improvement: no skills lead into useless dead-ends (anyone remember non-fire destruction?) and all trees have plenty of skills. Except it's not actually better at all since depth for building your hero is stripped away by making arbitrary limits such as stopping heroes from learning certain skills completely or making some skills clearly better than others and having way too many magic schools, removing even more diversity since every hero an only have a certain number of skills.

Then there's the magic system in general and it's complete lack of spells, weird way of earning high-level spells, no skill for improving spells generally along with plenty others.

Towns as well is victim to similar decisions such as removing any and all pre-requisites for hall-upgrades, arbitrarily limiting "town-level" system that does nothing but hinder certain strategies and just straight-up weird build-orders in general (Mag guild 4 for Preserve but not Academy to get Champs?!) and functionally terrible screens.

I don't think the series needs to get back to the drawing-board. I think the problem lies in the lead of the project. They clearly aren't game-designers. They know kinda what they want to make but they have no idea what that means. These are people who might really enjoy playing the game but enjoying playing a game does not mean knowing how to make one. For that you need to be able to analyze them and that is something I see a great lack off.

My answer is not that the franchise needs some "re-evaluation" or anything. We know what works or doesn't work. What we need are lead designers who knows how to implement these things as well as understands what new ideas might or might not work and WHY. We need game designers, not game players.
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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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Stevie
Stevie


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
posted October 02, 2015 07:07 PM

So what you're saying is that if the game was truly a "back to the roots" or a "best of Heroes", it would've been a successful Heroes game? I seriously doubt that. To me that premise right now appears as deeply flawed. A new iteration is supposed to bring novelty by virtue of it being new. If there's nothing new, there's nothing to come back to because you already have whatever the game presents with either Heroes 3 or 5 or whichever past entry.

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PROJ
PROJ


Known Hero
posted October 02, 2015 07:12 PM

You guys I think are very much over-analyzing the affect that these esoteric little gameplay details matter to the average consumer of a homm game.  Most of the criticisms (hexes are better than squares!) are subjective, many are needlessly nitpicky (if not outright wrong), and I can't imagine normal players ever giving these little details much thought.

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kiryu133
kiryu133


Responsible
Legendary Hero
Highly illogical
posted October 02, 2015 07:14 PM
Edited by kiryu133 at 19:15, 02 Oct 2015.

@Stevie
That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is that this team could never make a great heroes game, at least not the ones making the big decisions. They're not game-designers. They don't know why does or does not work. It doesn't mater what they do with the game as it would be bad either way. What I'm saying is that we need a lead who can see and understands why something fails or succeeds. Not that it does. If we get that, the game would, under the same circumstances, be great.

Might've been a bit unclear...
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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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Dies_Irae
Dies_Irae


Supreme Hero
with the perfect plan
posted October 02, 2015 07:15 PM
Edited by Dies_Irae at 19:35, 02 Oct 2015.

Stevie said:
A new iteration is supposed to bring novelty by virtue of it being new.


And its new features well-implemented. H6 brought out a bucket of innovations to the HoMM series (Dynasty, Area of Control etc). New in a sense of never before seen, yet not everyone was exactly pleased by how it turned out. New doesn't have to mean bad, as long as it's not broken.

In that respect, I think that H6 may have been too quick in dumping a whole load of new and different things on the series, which may have contributed to its relatively poor reception. Too much new at once might prove to be overwhelming, whereas gradually allowing things to evolve while introducing elements may be the better approach. Question is: who decides where to draw the line?

Why didn't H6 win the praise Civ 5 received? Apparently, doing something completely different can have the desired effect. People call H6 no true Heroes game, but I don't know if the Civ fanbase is comparable to Heroes'.
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kiryu133
kiryu133


Responsible
Legendary Hero
Highly illogical
posted October 02, 2015 07:19 PM

Dies_Irae said:


And its new features well-implemented. H6 brought out a bucket of innovations to the HoMM series (Dynasty, Area of Control etc). New in a sense of never before seen, yet not everyone was exactly pleased by how it turned out. New doesn't have to mean bad, as long as it's not broken.


H6 failed in very much the same way as H7 did: not understanding what these changes would mean for the game and an inability to build them effectively into said game. Stuff like Area of control and tiers were, (and still is) good additions and H7 shows how these two can be made well.

Question is why some of the only things that work are mechanics from H6 that game failed to implement...
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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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verriker
verriker


Honorable
Legendary Hero
We don't need another 'eroes
posted October 02, 2015 07:34 PM

Dies_Irae said:
H6 brought out a bucket of innovations to the HoMM series (Dynasty, Area of Control etc). New in a sense of never before seen,


actually most of them (other than anything to do with the conflux) were already seen in WoG lol
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TD
TD


Promising
Famous Hero
posted October 02, 2015 07:43 PM
Edited by TD at 19:47, 02 Oct 2015.

H6 has IMO many good features, they just needed polishing and further development.

AoC = Very good addition that took away additional micro/time away from capturing/re-capturing mines manually. Problem to me was that if you stole mine it was converted back instantly(every two weeks getting all "reset" to AoC owner would have been much better for example).

Town conversion = Very good idea as you getting lucky with 3 same faction towns initially didn't guarantee victory the same way it might in old games(it took the bad kind of randomness / luck away). Problem was it being made a no-brainer decision that had no real "pro/con" -type thinking from the player. This could have been evolved via increasing price, starting town from more basic level or/and as partial conversion so you can't change everything.

Dynasty weapons = Too big bonuses, they felt more like cheats. Better version would have been IMO that you get initial bonus, 2nd slot opens after you have fought 10 battles, 3rd slot opens once hero carrying it reaches level 15, 4th Slot opens once you have killed champion-level unit with hero-attack. 5th slot opens once you have conquered a dragon utopia. Well those are just some rough ideas, but anyway to have conditions by which to unlock the abilities during battle/game would have been much better than getting full-on cheat mode that allows you to kill everything since start.

Dynasty skills/pets = these were good IMO as they were. They were small bonuses player could pick to customize his hero/style. Also many rather useless skills in the pool.

Boss-battles = A refreshing change from basic battles. Some scaling to game-time would have been nice IMO, but I enjoyed them very much regardless.

Hero editor = specialization were just bad. It would need very extensive editor where you can give boost to all kinds of things to make the hero unique. The basic idea of being able to create heroes however was good.

Tears/blood system = The basic idea was nice. The balancing just had problems and also related to that gaining the tears/blood wasn't really equally easy and fast IMO. To further the system there should be small bonuses even after you get past 1000(was max I think) to encourage on the path.(Very much would like to see h4 style classes with this system also)

I can't really think of more mechanics from h6 atm, but I think that was plenty of good innovations that just had problems in the h6 execution.

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alcibiades
alcibiades


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
posted October 02, 2015 07:46 PM

Stevie said:
So what you're saying is that if the game was truly a "back to the roots" or a "best of Heroes", it would've been a successful Heroes game? I seriously doubt that. To me that premise right now appears as deeply flawed. A new iteration is supposed to bring novelty by virtue of it being new. If there's nothing new, there's nothing to come back to because you already have whatever the game presents with either Heroes 3 or 5 or whichever past entry.

There are different ways of brining new, however: You can bring new by adding to what's already there, and you can bring new by substituting what's already there. There's a significant difference , I don't think I need to elaborate on what I prefer.

I agree with Kiryu btw, H7 is just a general mess that doesn't know which leg it wants to stand on.

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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
posted October 02, 2015 07:50 PM

I've said it often enough, and I'll repeat it (and thanks, Stevie, for relating to me here):

A sequel of a game needs a NEW ANGLE.

The best example I can field is AoW 3. It's AoW alright - and because of the Class idea it's a COMPLETELY different game.

In a way, this would be comparable to Heroes, if a town could hire EVERY hero, and they all had their own spells and skills, so each town would play completely differently (in a very limited way that's possible with H7, but that's only a very imbalanced and one-sided by-product).

Of course the new angle shouldn't limit the game experience - so it must be a good one.

Which, in the end, is the problem.

It's not that easy to make something new which is sufficiently differenr and also sufficiently familiar, and the idea of a "best-of" is already damning because it speaks of a lack of vision.

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PandaTar
PandaTar


Responsible
Legendary Hero
Celestial Heavens Mascot
posted October 02, 2015 07:53 PM

alcibiades said:

I agree with Kiryu btw, H7 is just a general mess that doesn't know which leg it wants to stand on.


Basically because it tried to scoop up features from every other installment. Gluing them together, it seems, it's not so easy. It's become a Picasso sort of work. Some will say it's art even then. ^^
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"Okay. Look. We both said a lot of things that you're going to regret. But I think we can put our differences behind us. For science. You monster."
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Maurice
Maurice

Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
posted October 02, 2015 08:01 PM
Edited by Maurice at 20:04, 02 Oct 2015.

PROJ said:
You guys I think are very much over-analyzing the affect that these esoteric little gameplay details matter to the average consumer of a homm game.  Most of the criticisms (hexes are better than squares!) are subjective, many are needlessly nitpicky (if not outright wrong), and I can't imagine normal players ever giving these little details much thought.


But that's the whole issue. Most "normal" players (a real scotsman right there, by the way) are happy as long as the car they buy has 5 wheels: four underneath it and one inside to steer. They don't care about the color of the car, the number of doors or the comfort of the drivers' seat. They play the game maybe once, discard it and move on to something else.

Other people realise that there's a lot of potential that's being missed. A lot of "oomph" that would really make people drop their jaws and go "wow!". The devil is in the details. A Lamborghini is a car with 4 wheels below it and a steering wheel inside, but everyone (well, most people) turn and look when they see one driving by.

If you can't be bothered to consider the details, you'll never polish and fine-tune your creation into something amazing, that will last a number of years, instead of being dropped by the way side and forgotten in maybe one or two years.

I'm personally getting sick and tired of people accusing other people for "nit-picking" on those little details, because they see a much deeper potential that can be achieved. They don't argue against new innovations for the sake of argueing, or because it's not what previous titles held at their core - no, they argue because the new innovations get implemented in such a way, that it hampers its own potential. It could be so much more, but falls short and doesn't deliver. It's like building a Lamborghini and then forgetting to install more than 1 gear, so it can't go faster than 60 kilometers per hour. Or forgetting to install rearview mirrors that actually enable you to see backwards at an angle that's useful, or tires that aren't able to handle the turning rate that the vehicle could have.

And, in the end: if casual players don't care about those details, then why do they blame the people who do care for destroying the game? In the end, it's what the developers deliver, not what the fanbase argues about. If anything, UbiSoft has been perfectly able to miss why some innovations in the past were so great, as Kiryu already pointed out, despite numerous experienced players trying to explain this to them, offering them insights and suggestions that would increase its potential.

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