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| Thread: Elvin's Guide To Making a Good Heroes Game! |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 · NEXT» |
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted April 17, 2016 02:24 PM |
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Edited by Elvin at 14:36, 17 Apr 2016.
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Elvin's Guide To Making a Good Heroes Game!
For years we have been offering feedback and discussing ideas, mechanics and features we want for the next heroes. But perhaps we have been doing this all wrong! Getting something right is hard when the designer hasn't played the game enough. Instead, we should be telling ubi what not to do!
Lo and Behold, for I present you..
The Guide to Making a Good Heroes Game!
Or rather the Guide to Not Making a Bad Heroes Game ^^
- Do not screw up the atmosphere with dull colours, unrealistic unit scale or crappy sound effects like H7 did!
- Do not try to cut corners where you will be met with fanrage: Including lack of town screens, factions or excessive remodeling that looks 95-99% like the original.
- Avoid realistic adventure map proportions and bad visibility! If the player cannot tell what the map is depicting at a single glance, you are doing something wrong. See H2-H4.
- Avoid the shiny syndrome! Too many glowy effects incur ocular agony to our poor eyes! Same is true when factions are monochromatic!!
- Do not underestimate the fans! They can handle some depth, hell they are asking for it! Streamlining features like the plain H6 adventure map, the H6 town development and lack of rare resources or the simple H7 skill system did not exactly go well. Aim for simple to play yet difficult to master!
- Avoid general sluggishness! Having 1-2 sec loading time for each combat or 1-3 long animations pointlessly waste the player's time and make him/her want to play less! On top of making earlygame feel more boring. Units should simply move, attack, flinch, retaliate. No holding their head shuddering or waving their weapons around for show. Flyers should not take a few seconds to fly above the target to attack from behind! Actions should be instant!
- Loading times should not be H7 terrible either!
- Avoid unit designs that evoke reactions such as "wtf is that". People want popular and recognizable creatures! And if a known unit is no longer recognizable, you're doing something wrong!
- Avoid miniscule items, symbols or units! Everything should be possible to view in glorious detail. For starters, avoid H6/H7 deptiction of artifacts in the inventory.
- Secondly, avoid a zoomed out camera in combat. Nobody cares about the freaking surroundings! They want to feel part of the combat and see their units up close! Large battlefields such as those In H6/H7 do not help in that respect.
- Discontinue the tradition of worthless AI. If the AI is H7 bad, you can't even enjoy the campaigns! H3 AI was always the victim but at least it tried! H5 was even worse but tried to make up for it through ridiculous amounts of cheating. Not good either!
- Avoid pointless skill restrictions and allow almost every class to have access to almost everything, with different odds! H5 did that and it was great!
- Avoid invasive interface or otherwise sticking in your face things you don't want to see! The town interface is no place for a mini map! Neither is the hero screen! Put everything in its place instead of the disjointed mess we see in H7.
- Design the game balance first, the campaigns later! Nobody cares about campaign balance when the replayability of the game is at risk!
- Avoid tabs!!! Don't make the player waste clicks when he could see everything in one screen! For instance, all unit models/abilities/stats in the hiring screen or all hero units/abilities/stats in the hero screen.
- Avoid community votes unless they involve very general features such as manual or random skill system, dynamic or turn based initiative, squares or hexes etc.
- Don't try to reason why something cannot be changed, focus on changing what the community wants to change! Nobody cares why something cannot happen!
- Whatever release deadline you decide, scrap it and add 6-12 more months to it!
- Listen to Elvin! He probably knows more than the last two teams combined!
- There you go, make a decent H8
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H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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kiryu133
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Highly illogical
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posted April 17, 2016 02:54 PM |
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Mediczero
Famous Hero
Warlord of the sea
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posted April 17, 2016 03:34 PM |
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I can agree with almost all of this. If anything, I don't think the camara should be set to zoomed so close that there is no possiblity of using the battlefield for showcasing beautiful and interesting settings for a battle. Though the combat itself should be the focus, so an easy to use zoom funktion should be the ideal.
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Baronus
Legendary Hero
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posted April 17, 2016 04:18 PM |
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EnergyZ
Legendary Hero
President of MM Wiki
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posted April 17, 2016 04:31 PM |
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Nah, remember that despite Black Hole's interests, both Heroes V and VI were released prematurely, with too many bugs. So I'd expect, regardless of developer, Ubi still pushes on too hard and early.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted April 17, 2016 05:40 PM |
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BH was pushed prematurely for sure but their minds were not in the right place. I know, I've been there.
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H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 17, 2016 05:56 PM |
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Gryphs
Supreme Hero
The Clever Title
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posted April 17, 2016 08:30 PM |
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Edited by Gryphs at 20:30, 17 Apr 2016.
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Do not worry I am sure Ubisoft is paying close attention.
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"Don't resist the force. Redirect it. Water over rock."-blizzardboy
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Aionb
Known Hero
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posted April 17, 2016 09:11 PM |
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Great guide!
Now all we need is Erwin and the spikes with diamonds out of the way.
P.S. I think you should have mentioned "avoiding Homer Simpson results for the AI behavior", just in case.
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Mediczero
Famous Hero
Warlord of the sea
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posted April 17, 2016 09:35 PM |
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Gryphs said:
Do not worry I am sure Ubisoft is paying close attention.
Somebody give this man a cookie!
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Baronus
Legendary Hero
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posted April 17, 2016 09:50 PM |
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Edited by Baronus at 21:54, 17 Apr 2016.
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Ubisoft was a giant BH was a small kid. And had duty to care this kid... Its bad if executor bankrupt and employer has big profits. Im not a witness but they complained. Creators HMM V resigned too...
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Mediczero
Famous Hero
Warlord of the sea
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posted April 17, 2016 09:58 PM |
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Can we all agree, despite any actual chances for it happening, that Ubisot selling the rights to the Heroes/might and magic series would be the best thing that could happen? Assuming they don't sell it to somebody even worse.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted April 17, 2016 10:06 PM |
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The whole point of this thread was exactly that ubi doesn't get it. Even when they do get some things right, they mess up others that were not problematic to begin with. All they have to do is get someone who knows well the old games or just keep notes of the forum feedback, of which there is plenty. After all these years I still don't see that happening. Superficial knowledge of the community's feedback is not good enough as H7 has so clearly shown.
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H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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Gryphs
Supreme Hero
The Clever Title
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posted April 17, 2016 10:27 PM |
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They did have people that new the old games well, but have "wisely" decided to cut off contact with them. Ubisoft clearly does not care about what others think, as if that was not known already, no matter how smart it may be to listen.
So really, I do not think Ubisoft will ever "get it", they have an allergy to "getting it".
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"Don't resist the force. Redirect it. Water over rock."-blizzardboy
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Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 17, 2016 10:48 PM |
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Can we please use proper terminology? Ubisoft is a company with over 9000 employees and many subsidiaries, hiring a lot of devs and outsourcing many other artists. Are they all responsible for the failures of Heroes 7? The M&M team is just a handful of people and Erwan le Breton is but one man. What are you so afraid of? Point that bloody finger in the right direction instead of the blue wild yonder ffs, it sends a way more powerful message and tackles with the issue at it's core!
As for the over 10 commandments above, that's just surface level of majority's go-to pipe dream about Heroes. The iceberg down below is made out of things you don't get to see in one or two features, but you could imagine how they went when you see the final product. Budget, time, appropriate devs, ambition and goals, philosophy and vision, game knowledge, equipment and software, code, various milestones, proper communication and truthful advertising, etc. - how can one "fix" those with an easy guide? Making games is not as easy as following the know-how recipes on fan forums, it's a stupid industry with a lot of politics and internal affairs.
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Guide to a Great Heroes Game
The Young Traveler
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted April 17, 2016 10:51 PM |
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Entirely moddable, as Civ or Skyrim. From interface up to how you level. From adding new towns and mobs up to adding new skills and artefacts. Then you optimize loading times and you have a potentially excellent H game, without too much head scratch.
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Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 17, 2016 11:17 PM |
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Edited by Stevie at 23:18, 17 Apr 2016.
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Yea, it is just that simple. I'm sure you'd make a great creative director Sal and bless us with a proper Heroes VIII. Not even a head scratch? Erwan le Breton went bald scratching his head over Heroes and he's still failing. No, it's not easy, not in a franchise like this. It's hard even for the best of the best to keep up with the piling expectations, take a look at Civ BE or Elder Scrolls Online since you mentioned them.
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Guide to a Great Heroes Game
The Young Traveler
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Gryphs
Supreme Hero
The Clever Title
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posted April 17, 2016 11:18 PM |
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Stevie said:
Can we please use proper terminology? Ubisoft is a company with over 9000 employees and many subsidiaries, hiring a lot of devs and outsourcing many other artists. Are they all responsible for the failures of Heroes 7? The M&M team is just a handful of people and Erwan le Breton is but one man. What are you so afraid of? Point that bloody finger in the right direction instead of the blue wild yonder ffs, it sends a way more powerful message and tackles with the issue at it's core!
I use Ubisoft itself because Ubisoft as a company has been the one making bad decisions of late. What is the last Ubisoft product that has been just all around fantastic and not hindered by Ubisoft's general attitude. Ubisoft's lying, poor choices, and other such things make the whole company disreputable and naturally anything connected to that (i.e. the MMH team) will usually be disreputable as well. So, I would not just hold Erwin and his cronies responsible, after all, if everyone acts the same than no one will be encouraged to change.
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"Don't resist the force. Redirect it. Water over rock."-blizzardboy
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted April 17, 2016 11:38 PM |
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Stevie said:
Yea, it is just that simple.
Making a game entirely moddable is not simple, because each component has to be bug free, in order for the whole to work under any parameter. When I say "without head scratch", I mean not having to cope and support the billion of weird requests and personal critics the "very experienced in game making" community floods every day.
My idea is quite simple and not too risky: if you lack knowledge or inspiration to build a entirely new Heroes game, go for a generic one but overall moddable. In the end, if you feel you have a better idea, you buy the game then implement it, instead of daily garbage, or just skip it and keep your adrenaline at safe levels.
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Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 17, 2016 11:42 PM |
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