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| Thread: Who's REALLY to blame for the continuous downfall of the Heroes series? |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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EnergyZ
Legendary Hero
President of MM Wiki
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posted October 11, 2015 03:35 PM |
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fred79 said:
homm4 was the first to break away from the 2d into 3d, so yes, homm4 started it. would you really deny that?
One can hardly call that 3D. It is 2D with 3D model sprites. There is nothing more that can be said about that.
fred79 said:
the issue i have with a 3d heroes game, is that the 1st 3 were 2d, and it was a great formula. then, homm4 came out. my dad bought it, played it a little, and hated it. i watched him play, and i remember thinking to myself, "this isn't a heroes game". and it still isn't. you don't go from a winning formula, to another formula, just because the newer format is more popular. especially, if you're going to do something WORSE than what you did before.
Maybe so. But times change, unfortunately, and things have taken a different approach. Otherwise, they wouldn't have more fans, would they?
fred79 said:
heroes games stand alone in the gaming world, for me. what i was introduced to, that i fell in love with, was discontinued as soon as i got my first glimpse of homm4. besides the fact that it looks like a BAD heroes knock-off(it really doesn't look like a heroes game at all), they used horrible graphics, when compared to it's predecessor. if you're going to "upgrade" or "improve", you don't take a step BACKWARD. you improve what's ALREADY GOOD. if i SEE something has changed, and not for the better, i'm not going to bother with the product itself.
Tell that to Ubisoft and the other games. They will tell you "we don't have much budget". I am above such statements and I agree. What I don't agree it is just bad.
fred79 said:
i have the same problem with bands who change over time. if you start out as something, then become something else, your name shouldn't be the same. take marilyn manson, for instance. for years manson came out with manson-ish material, and it rocked. then, he started getting older, and he started becoming a goth phil collins. now, he lost most of his oldschool fans, and he's a fatass who doesn't put out music that says "marilyn manson". he puts out music that says only "marilyn". his good songs become more and more of a rarity. it/he's a different product, with the same name.
take another one of my favorite bands: bile. they categorized themselves as "demonic electronic", and fittingly so. their last album, however, made me want to puke. there's a snowing BLUES TRACK on it, next to all the NOW soft-rock. don't get me wrong, i dig blues(like i like a lot of 3d games), but blues(and soft-rock) doesn't say "bile" to me. to have a band that made demonic music meant for the fiends of hell, to start putting out softer bullsnow... they should have changed their name. and they didn't. you go to a concert thinking you're going to release some tension by throwing people around, and instead, everyone's singing "kumbaya" and waving lighters. if i HEAR something is different than it used to be, and it's NOT better, i'm not going to bother with the product. i haven't bought a manson, bile, korn, static-x, deftones, icp, twiztid, etc., album since they all changed(and NOT FOR THE BETTER).
Maybe so. But times change, and so do people. Some things shouldn't change, but people should at least remain open-headed, as in try out new things.
fred79 said:
you cannot associate something that was good or great, with something that is altered and appears/sounds/plays like crap, and keep the same title. it just doesn't work. think of books: if you come out with a series, and it's all serial killer gorefests, then you come out with a book IN THE SAME SERIES that talks about soccer moms in suburban U.S., you're going to get some complaints. something along the lines of "hey, i was READING THAT. wtf did you do THAT for!? i was following a storyline, you had me hooked, i was craving more, and you throw in this pretend 'good morning america' mickey-mouse snow?"
It all depends how it fits in. If it has no relations with the previous series, then one could certainly claim it is just bad. But there is also something called "thematic change". Example: one book has a horror-theme about a bunch of adventurers, while the other has a personal experience of soccer-mom, who had a personal, horrific tragedy.
Just saying it has to fit in with the context, from a slightly different angle. For if one does not do that, the whole series becomes boring and predictable.
fred79 said:
do you see what i'm saying? it's not the same game; it HASN'T BEEN since homm4. they can "improve" everything they want, and it STILL ISN'T A HEROES GAME. it's a WARCRAFT RIP-OFF. heroes had it's own thing going, and damnit, it was good. there was no need to change the goddamn formula.
Not since Heroes IV, but V. Heroes IV still had some relations to be called Heroes game, just with many different mechanics. Lore and story was quite good, there are many new innovations (changing classes, hero actively participating in battle, new and old creatures etc.).
V, VI and VII do look like Warcraft games. And there is a reason - to attract the other fanbases. I don't approve of such actions, but they still go on.
Now, from all your opinions, one could assume you are conservative - just afraid of changes. And the world changes every day; either for better or worse. Trust me, you are just a handful or people that claim Heroes IV is as bad as VI or VII. Sure, it is not as great as Heroes III, but has its own qualities. But, you have to remember MM9 was also bad, but this is all due to 3DO being nearly bankrupt and gave less and less money from it.
Also, we asked one dev and it was stated they don't do 2D anymore because:
1. it is more expensive to do 3D models and convert them to 2D
2. there aren't that many graphical designers doing 2D models
So, to sum up, I also don't prefer the directions what Ubisoft is doing and neither I don't approve of them. Their reasons may just be incompetence, greed or just going with today's trends. But, one should just get the best out of it and cherish the best moments - even if there aren't that many of them. For if we all were like you, publishers today would receive so much money to barely cover the costs.
But yes - Ubisoft has to change their ideals and their opinions, for now they are very stubborn when it comes to games directive.
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Pawek_13
Supreme Hero
Maths, maths everywhere!
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posted October 11, 2015 03:36 PM |
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Edited by Pawek_13 at 15:40, 11 Oct 2015.
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kiryu133 said:
H5 tribes was great so Ubi can't be the only one to blame just as H7 isn't the only one to suck so Limbic isn't alone in this either. So in my mind, whatever happened between 5 and 6 is the cause. So what happened there? Could it be so that the lead was replaced? Many of the problems plaguing 6 and 7 aren't present in H5 so what gives?
There was a change in lead. Erwan is, in fact, a successor of a guy who is called Fabrice CAbounet and resigned from his position after TotE was released (Erwan primarly worked on Dark Messiah.) Fun fact - Heroes V also had beta and it was virtually unplayable. However, the game was to be released very soon. Many of the fans didn't want this to happen, therefore a whole action called "Save Heroes" and people responsible for it even wrote a petition (it can be read here.) After this action release date was removed and the game was less buggy that it primarly used to be. I'm sure that cooperation with Fabrice wasn't so great (Elvin and alcibiades can say something more about Fabrice, as they were on this forum at the time of Heroes V) but he seemed to be a better creative director than Erwan is right now.
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EnergyZ
Legendary Hero
President of MM Wiki
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posted October 11, 2015 03:40 PM |
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A bigger question is - why did this Fabrice leave? Is it because of Ubi's "policy" to keep people only for three years and dismiss them? Like it was done with Nival to Limbic?
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Pawek_13
Supreme Hero
Maths, maths everywhere!
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posted October 11, 2015 03:43 PM |
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EnergyZ said:
A bigger question is - why did this Fabrice leave? Is it because of Ubi's "policy" to keep people only for three years and dismiss them? Like it was done with Nival to Limbic?
I have no idea. At that time I wasn't even twelve, so I can't provide you with answers. I'll try to find something in Acid Cave's archives but don't get too excited.
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted October 11, 2015 06:07 PM |
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JollyJoker said:
And there you go - don't make illogical conclusions. HoMM 5 started out messy - but eventually they swung around ... so what would you think taught THAT to people?
Meanwhile, while Nival got their sh!t together, Black Hole was not, and that's what made H6 a fiasco.
So the fault isn't by the fans because they had no reason to suspect they wouldn't fix things.
The fault is before that - having a super solid budget for H6 and wasting it by appointing a studio not up for the task.
I'll tell you what it taught me. Heroes V, after TotE, left me with mixed feelings. The bad impression from the terrible release never faded, the game never got a decent map editor or RMG, many balance issues remained unsolved, the TotE campaign didn't improve Ashan's image one bit. On the other hand a genuinely new, fresh and fairly well-executed idea was introduced to the series with the alternative upgrades, the worst issues got fixed, the gameplay foundation got developed adequately and the game finally became not only playable but also enjoyable (to an extent).
Believe it or not, when Heroes VI was announced, I was fairly sure that the release will be no better than that of Heroes V. New developer, same publisher = everything restarts to the same basic crap, not to mention that Ashan was kept with all its flaws, town screens were disposed of, music was recycled and generally apart from the obvious technical problems visible in the beta just a few weeks before the release, the game screamed low budget and incompetent execution from the beginning (you may argue otherwise, that's the impression it left). After all the problems and negative feedback with the Heroes V release, Ubisoft simply did the same thing with Heroes VI. That is where the game should have died but obviously generated enough profit to zombify it for a full expansion. Now we have Heroes VII and guess what - same thing, identical situation. If there was some excuse for the fans to buy Heroes VI, there is zero excuse to do the same with Heroes VII. No more right to complain - either demand refund from the retailer or enjoy the garbage Ubisoft is throwing at you.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted October 11, 2015 06:40 PM |
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Zenofex said:
Now we have Heroes VII and guess what - same thing, identical situation. If there was some excuse for the fans to buy Heroes VI, there is zero excuse to do the same with Heroes VII. No more right to complain - either demand refund from the retailer or enjoy the garbage Ubisoft is throwing at you.
Your logic is still wrong. If you say the fans are to blame for the state of H7, what you do is invoking a causality between the fact that fans pre-ordered the game and the fact that game is bad. And that is wrong. There are plenty of examples of fans pre-ordering games that turn out good.
Your logic only works if there is a rodden developer involved. If we accept for a moment that UbiSoft are only here to take our money and hence make a quick cash grab (which may or may not be true, I can't testify to that), the causality goes: Fans preorder game -> Ubisoft decides for quick cash-grab -> Game turns out bad. Which may mean the fans are naïve idiots, but still means Ubisoft are the ones who are to blame.
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted October 11, 2015 06:57 PM |
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No, you're missing the point. There should have been no pre-ordering at all. At this point Ubisoft deserve no trust, giving them a single penny in advance is too much.
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted October 11, 2015 07:38 PM |
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No way. If you look at steamers profiles, you will be amazed, thousands of them have thousands games and spend 25 hours daily to play. Gaming became a necessity for such people, and so is pee-ordering.
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Era II mods and utilities
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Kayna
Supreme Hero
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posted October 11, 2015 07:44 PM |
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Yeah, well, when you preorder a dozen of games and they all work, then you preorder an Ubisoft game... whoops! It can happen. You let an Ubisoft game slip in there bro. It happens to the best of us.
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Sleeping_Sun
Promising
Famous Hero
Townscreen Architect
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posted October 11, 2015 07:56 PM |
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Zenofex said:
No, you're missing the point. There should have been no pre-ordering at all. At this point Ubisoft deserve no trust, giving them a single penny in advance is too much.
But, there are new and young players who are ignorant of many things. Some are not familiar:
1) with the past of the series, and as such, they do not have the same standards of quality (of the game) that the old players have. They see the game, they like it, they buy it.
2) with the positive/negative associations tied to some publishers, such as Ubisoft. This results that some people are not critically assessing the context of game-publisher-player or at least not informed well of the game that they are buying. Thus, players may not be aware of some foul and nasty practices employed by the companies to earn more money. Hence, they represent the easy money for the companies.
3) with the way this franchise has been treated, along with the attitude the higher ups towards the game.
This is slightly based on my own experience (I was very naive). Before I became a relatively active member here, I was not thinking critically regarding the games and all the issues that I now see in the gaming industry. For me, the games were just an entertainment. They invoked the idyllic atmosphere. It never occurred to me that real life is so dramatically different than the idyllic atmosphere I experienced through the games. I did not believe that greed and shady practices of the companies is a standard way of doing their business. I was a sweet summer child...
One of the reasons why I appreciate this community is the fact that you guys opened my eyes and made me think about lots of things.
But of course, not to insult some people, there are those who are completely stripped from any cognitive abilities ( I've met some people both online and in real life) which renders them incapable of any reasonable thinking. They do whatever they do, and they are deaf to any talk.
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EnergyZ
Legendary Hero
President of MM Wiki
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posted October 11, 2015 07:59 PM |
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Actions speak louder than words. Including no actions being taken.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted October 11, 2015 08:37 PM |
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Zenofex said:
No, you're missing the point. There should have been no pre-ordering at all. At this point Ubisoft deserve no trust, giving them a single penny in advance is too much.
Still doesn't make them responsible for how the game was made, however.
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fred79
Disgraceful
Undefeatable Hero
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posted October 11, 2015 11:31 PM |
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alcibiades said:
Still doesn't make them responsible for how the game was made, however.
true and false. true, because they don't literally have their hand in the development and decision process. false, because they buy products from a company who disappoints again and again.
look at the latest anger over missing things from the collectors edition. people got screwed by them, in more ways than one. and they preordered the content. is ubisoft to blame? of course. are the people who put their faith in a company that has produced less-than-satisfactory results for it's customers in the past to blame? yes to that, too. hopefully everything gets ironed out with that, though.
it sure doesn't look like it, though. it looks like ubi is telling the consumers to go snow themselves. which is pretty much what they did with the last release, from what i read. if a company sees they can get away with something, they're going to be encouraged to do it again. and by purchasing something from this company, you are only SUPPORTING this behavior.
according to your line of reasoning, when people elect an official in politics, and when that politician screws people over, the people who elected him/her AREN'T partially to blame for that. and that makes no sense to me.
if you were part of the cause that led to the effect, then you are partially to blame. how you and others don't see that, is beyond me.
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted October 12, 2015 01:02 AM |
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fred79 said:
i have the same problem with bands who change over time
When I was in my teens I felt exactly this about David Bowie. Wtf is this "Absolute Beginners" thing? Where are the spider's from Mars?
I also loved Red Hot and Nick Cave and they also got old, the problem was I was also getting old with them. So, while I still love their old musics, I prefer to have them accepting and integrating their changes, then to have them mimic themselves for the last ten or twenty years. Who wants to see a fifty years old Anthony Kiedis hanging his junk on a sox?
Games are not people and corporations are not people too, if one is gone other can rightfully take his place, games can be revived and bad decisions can be left with the new versions, if they get old is precisely in the opposite sense of what you are saying; it's because they didn't improved looks, sound, lore and maybe sometimes (hope none of the current devs reads this cause they know nothing) even gameplay, according to the progresses made by technology.
I'm with you on 2D serving the series better but I think if Heroes IV had got his TotE it would had been the best in the series and it was the first attempt to 3D.
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AgnesLynd
Hired Hero
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posted October 12, 2015 11:36 AM |
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fred79 said:
alcibiades said:
Still doesn't make them responsible for how the game was made, however.
true and false. true, because they don't literally have their hand in the development and decision process. false, because they buy products from a company who disappoints again and again.
look at the latest anger over missing things from the collectors edition. people got screwed by them, in more ways than one. and they preordered the content. is ubisoft to blame? of course. are the people who put their faith in a company that has produced less-than-satisfactory results for it's customers in the past to blame? yes to that, too. hopefully everything gets ironed out with that, though.
it sure doesn't look like it, though. it looks like ubi is telling the consumers to go snow themselves. which is pretty much what they did with the last release, from what i read. if a company sees they can get away with something, they're going to be encouraged to do it again. and by purchasing something from this company, you are only SUPPORTING this behavior.
according to your line of reasoning, when people elect an official in politics, and when that politician screws people over, the people who elected him/her AREN'T partially to blame for that. and that makes no sense to me.
if you were part of the cause that led to the effect, then you are partially to blame. how you and others don't see that, is beyond me.
I am not aware of any country with elections where people have any real idea of who exactly they're electing or any form of control over their chosen leadership afterwards. Democracy worldwide is a bigger scam than any advertisement company could ever hope to pull off.
But that aside it's not like the game is enjoying a booming success, and numerous refunds and poor reviews are a testament to that. Really no point in blaming users with this state of the situation. I understand your "Ubisoft ruined my childhood icon" sentiment, but not everybody felt that way. A lot of people operate on the "fool me twice" method, and allow companies to regain the trust after a misstep. It genuinely seemed like they were moving in the right direction. I own games from Ubisoft - recent games, too - that shipped without problems and were enjoyable, such as Rayman Legends, Far Cry 4 and Child of Light.
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mike80d
Famous Hero
Map Maker
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posted October 12, 2015 03:49 PM |
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Edited by mike80d at 15:49, 12 Oct 2015.
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I chose Erwan. He may have been given a reduced budget by Ubisoft, but he decided where those resources would be spent. It's apparent that he had no meaningful vision for the game, and chose to spend most of the budget on items NOT related to AI, strategy, game immersion, multiplayer, etc. How could this not be his fault?
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ywhtptgtfo
Hired Hero
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posted October 13, 2015 07:35 AM |
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I chose the execs. A healthy company would've learned from the mistake that was HoMM VI and kept the production process of HoMM VII under a tighter leash. Given that Erwan mismanaged the franchise, he should've been put on a PIP long ago but instead he got to stay and cause more damage.
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Akul
Hired Hero
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posted October 15, 2015 12:45 PM |
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Edited by Akul at 13:18, 15 Oct 2015.
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The main problem with last two heroes (as I consider H5 a good game: it was fine on release and the two expansions just made it into an objectively better game than H3) is in the fact that Ubisoft's overall quality as a publisher dropped considerably in the last several years. They don't give enough resources to their Devs, rush them (sometimes for outright stupid reasons) and they themselves are badly organized.
Until Ubisoft does some changes to the way it is organized, one should be cautious of any games they release, not just Heroes. As is, they are worse than EA.
EnergyZ said:
V, VI and VII do look like Warcraft games. And there is a reason - to attract the other fanbases. I don't approve of such actions, but they still go on.
Of those, only H5 looks Warcraftish. H6 and H7 changed their artstyle.
Quote:
Also, we asked one dev and it was stated they don't do 2D anymore because:
1. it is more expensive to do 3D models and convert them to 2D
2. there aren't that many graphical designers doing 2D models
Here's a third as well:
3. Today it is easier to develop a 3D game than a 2D one (even modern 2D games are usually just 3D games disguised as 2D)
With that said, there is absolutely no difference between 2D and 3D heroes other than aesthetics. The gameplay is unchanged and today's engines handle all the hard stuff concerning 3D (as I mentioned, even many 2D games are just 3D games in disguise for this very reason).
Also, I noticed that a lot people act like H3 was amazing at release (maybe because most people started with Complete?). Quite frankly, it wasn't: it needed AB to polish it and SoD to give it a proper storyline campaign (RoE campaigns are, for the most part, an embarrassment).
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fred79
Disgraceful
Undefeatable Hero
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posted October 15, 2015 01:28 PM |
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Edited by fred79 at 13:29, 15 Oct 2015.
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@ akul: i started playing heroes when the first one came out, so your claim that h3 wasn't great upon it's initial release, is wrong, imo(and because i started with the original, i don't fit into your demographic anyway). the expansions only made it better(minus the Forge debacle).
as far as 2d and 3d being no different, i have read on here where people found it difficult to see what was going on, because of a 3d map/battle; whereas with a 2d map/battle, things were much clearer. so again, your assumption would be wrong. i have played both 2d and 3d games(outside of heroes, mind you), and claiming that 2d and 3d are the same, is like calling a circle and a sphere the same.
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verriker
Honorable
Legendary Hero
We don't need another 'eroes
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posted October 15, 2015 01:31 PM |
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Akul said:
Also, I noticed that a lot people act like H3 was amazing at release (maybe because most people started with Complete?). Quite frankly, it wasn't: it needed AB to polish it and SoD to give it a proper storyline campaign (RoE campaigns are, for the most part, an embarrassment).
frankly, I don't understand anyone who comes with this revisionist idea that RoE 1.0 wasn't an excellent game on launch, it came virtually the barest minimum of bugs, with more content up front than any other Heroes game and expansions only piled on more stuff lol
campaigns were a fine little yarn too, even for whoever bizarrely chooses to judges a Heroes game on its prepackaged campaign story lol
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