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CsArOs
Tavern Dweller
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posted July 14, 2023 06:21 PM |
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Edited by CsArOs at 05:21, 15 Jul 2023.
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Hello everyone,
After going through majority of the changes Hota made in its entire career, I learned some of the methods they used for balance. We all know that some factions are just worse for no reason (Inferno) while others are better (Conflux). Same applies to spells, buildings, etc. While some variation is fine, ay times it becomes annoying. After careful consideration and calculations in Excel, I have thought of the following small changes that are in line with previous balance elements. I suggest the following, mostly easy-to-implement changes for 1.7:
CREATURES:
I INFERNO HP. Inferno's creatures have very little HP compared to other factions without good benefits for it.
1) Imp - HP stays at 4. Familiar - HP increased by 1 to 5. Reasoning: While this change may seem problematic (it was made in early Hota patches only to be removed in 1.3.3) back then it increased HP of both Imps and Familiars, affecting imp caches and demon farming even more. Now, with the additional HP point for the upgrade a) there is a reason to upgrade imps a bit earlier and b) they can be used to demon farm more reasonably. 35 Familiars deal more damage then 4 demons, but less than 5.
2) Archdevil's HP increased by 5% from 200 to 210. (Possibly even more, but 210 seems good enough for me). Reasoning: While Devils have standard HP for unupgraded level 7, Archdevils have laughably small HP pool of 200. This is the lowest upgraded level 7 HP in the game, in line with Ghost Dragons who have more growth via Skeleton Transformer and lower than 2nd lowest Chaos Hydra at 250. On top of that, HP of 210 would let you evenly demon farm 4 demons per Archdevil insteaf of 3.78 demons.
3) Hell Hound's growth is weirdly small, only to be normal once you pay a 1000 tax. I suggest either a) increasing Hell Hound growth by 1 or b) increasing Hell Hound growth by 2 AND removing Cages building.
II INFERNO COSTS. On top of low HP, Inferno units are weirdly expensive for their extremely low hp and relatively low damage. I suggest cutting off 1000-2000 gold per week:
1) Devils and Archdevil's cost more than a Red and Black Dragon respectively right now. I suggest decreasing their prices to match (at 2500 gold for lvl 7 and 4000 gold for lvl 7+).
2) Pit Fiends and Pit Lords cost a lot for their HP and damage, and while Pit Lords are at least understandable in their cost when demon farming is considered, Pit Fiends don't have any abilities. I suggest decreasing their costs by 30 and 34 respectively, to 470 and 666. This makes Pit Lords slightly easier to access, while most importantly making a Demon Summoning unit cost 666 gold.
III TOWER CREATURES. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possesion of good fortune must be in want of buffs for Tower creatures. While Ancient Lamps made Tower suck a bit less, they are still of questionable quality.
1) Genies can fulfill one wish (random spellcast on Basic unlike Master Genie's Advanced spells). This way Genies are no longer this weird angsty girl awaiting her puberty and the moment she becomes a Male Master Genie, but an actually useful unit. OR 2) Overall decrease some costs so their creatures are more accessible.
Notably, Tower has already received some buffs to costs (f.e. 1.3.4 change to Altar of Wishes cost and also changes to the cost of Upg Cloud Temple, etc.), so perhaps this part could be skipped.
Now that the main, reasonable and in-line with Hota ideas I want to push for are out of the way, let's discuss more controversial changes I think would work wonders for balance:
SPECIAL BUILDINGS:
1) Castle Gate. Inferno's Castle Gate is probably the worst building in the game. On majority of maps it just does absolutely nothing for the low price of 10000 gold. On some L and most XL maps Castle Gate still does nothing, and only having 2 (so the cost of 20 000 gold, 10 wood and 10 ore has been paid, close to a tier 7 dwelling) actually does something - provide you with a worse Town Portal. Now that Hota made Town Gate a thing, I suggest they put exactly that into Inferno's Castle Gate - a one way Advanced Town Portal with an increased price to, say, 15 000 gold.
2) Mystic Pond. Mystic Pond, while good in theory, is very weak and takes 5-8 weeks to pay back for itself (probably greatest time for self-payback for any resource source) and can end up giving you 1 wood for a whole week. I suggest a small change: letting Mystic Pond only spawn Rare Resources and decreasing the price from 2000 to 1000 gold. Now, while Mystic Pond still won't be best, you can count on obtaining rare resources isntead of ore and wood.
SPELLS:
I believe PvP has shown fully the ranking of magic schools to be Earth > Air > Fire ~ Water. Because of that, Earth Magic secondary skill is currently considered a must f.e. on Jebus Cross. To avoid this Earth Magic supremacy and encourage some less common spells to be used, I suggest following small changes:
1) Slow, Haste - please increase mana cost to 8/6. Reasoning: since slow and haste are considered one of the strongest spells, increasing their mana cost will support using alternatives more (such as Quicksand at 8/6 mana, Prayer or Teleport at 15/12/6/3)
2) Curse, Bless - please increase mana cost to 6/5. Reasoning same as above.
3) Disguise is pretty much useless right now, so I suggest letting it affect Diplomacy, perhaps making neutral armies count hero strength as if he had maximum number of troops for each bracket (f.e. 4 for 1-4 or 49 for 20-49). Then maybe somebody would at least try to cast it.
4) Please increase Destroy Undead damage scaling to 15*power. While Death Ripple can be used to destroy some one-stacks, Destroy Undead works on only 8 creatures and their upgrades. Letting it actually do damage would make wonders for this spell.
5) Animate Dead - please increase mana cost to 20/16. Reasoning: Necropolis is one of the S tier factions and Animate Dead is one of the reasons for it. By increasing the mana cost by 5 points we can ensure it will be used less often, bringing some more balance.
6) Fireball, Inferno - please increase damage scaling to 20*power. Right now these spells are a costly Magic Arrow and they can be so much more. While I think 20*power is fair enough, 15*power may be more reasonable and perhaps some testing could be done. Alternatively, base damage depending on fire magic level could be increased. On the same note, please let Heretics like Xarfax and Xyron start with 0 defence and 2 knowledge so they can actually cast their spells.
7) *This change is controversial and I will gladly hear counterarguments for it* Resurrection - please make it so the creatures stay after battle no matter the Earth Magic level. Reasoning: One of the sources of the Earth Magic supremacy is this spell. Only Advanced and Expert level are actually useful. By letting Resurrection work every time, we can remove the need to have Earth Magic on every single hero. On top of that, it doesn't really make sense lore wise - they resurrect somebody and 3 hours later he just dies? That's not resurrection but rather a syringe of cocaine for a dying man.
8) Sorrow, Mirth, Misfortune, Fortune - please increase Morale/Luck change to 2/2/3/3 based on the secondary skill level. Right now these spells are mostly unusable due to how weak they are (it takes 3 casts of Expert Misfortune to make a single-faction army with expert leadership have 0 morale. 3 casts.) As well as the fact that artifacts also do it but you can't dispel an artifact. Now they should be at least usable.
9) Fire shield - please remove Defence, Shield and Armorer from fire shield damage calculations. Right now casting Fire Shield on a tanky unit is pretty worthless, and it's much better to cast it on something squishy. This seems backwards. Punishing someone for having high Defence stat or Armorer also seems backwards; after all, there is never a punishment for high Attack anywhere in the game.
10) Water Walk - please decrease the mana cost to 10/7 and perhaps increase the total amount of movement points available when walking over water (not unlike the effect roads have for movement) on Expert level. Out of all adventure map spells this is the only one nobody cared about, but letting it travel further and for less mana could be a solution.
SECONDARY SKILLS:
1) Learning. I don't think anything can be done about it. Even if we increase the numbers to something ridiculous like 50% XP on Expert Learning, a character without learning will have 2, maybe 3 levels less than the one with learning (right now, aith 25% xp at max it's 1 level difference). This skill will be useless no matter what. Nonetheless, I suggest increasing the XP gain to, say, 30/40/50%. At lest the skill will do *something* then.
2) Eagle eye. Greg Fulton stated that the only reason Eagle Eye exists is because it was a legacy skill and nobody planned for it to be that bad. He also stated that in he'd see the skill removed entirely. I believe Eagle Eye could receive Resistance treatment and just be removed by default from all maps. Add the effect of Eagle eye to Scholar (since only possible Eagle Eye usage is also having Scholar and Wisdom) and remove Eagle Eye by default from all maps. Eagle eye specialists don't need any changes as they could just increase the chance now obtained from Scholar.
3) First Aid, Ballistics and Artillery. There are, respectively, 3, 4 and 11 heroes starting with these skills. And out of all heroes ever used, only those that start with First Aid have First Aid; hardly anyone chooses Ballistics as well. Artillery does have niche uses, but is often too weak later in the game to matter. If that wasn't enough, 8 heroes have Ballista as specialty and 1 has Cannon, even though Cannon is far superior. I suggest giving those skills Resistance treatment as well, effectively removing them from the game by default, and instead adding a new skill: Warfare. Warfare includes First Aid, Ballistics and Artillery at once. I feel like this combination is still balanced, since I would still much rather have Offence, Pathfinding on some maps (Logistics or Navigation on others), with Scouting being on par with Warfare. At the same time, I think having heroes with Ballista only specialty really limits them, thus I suggest changing all Ballista / Cannon specialties to 'Offensive Warfare: Ballista and Cannon gain 5% attack and defence per 5 hero levels.' First Aid Tent specialty, to keep original numbers as close as possible, could instead increase HP healed by First Aid Tent by 5 per hero level.
4) Sorcery: please buff the numbers by 5 or 10 percentage points to 10/15/20% or 15/20/25%. Right now the spell is very weak (at Power of 20 it is equivalent to having around 3 more Power, while Armorer at Defence 20 is equivalent to having 6 more Defence (same for Offense).
5) And finally, Offence, Logistics, Armourer and Archery specialists. It is no secret that these heroes are often superior to alternatives. After running some numbers, I've realized that simply decreasing their % skill increase per level to 3 or 4 % is enough to make them absolutely reasonable. I realize that these heroes are 'flag heroes' of their factions, therefore I suggest 4% per level decrease to balance them.
And that's it! What do you think? Do you agree with these ideas for balance? Can somebody from Hota implement them? The Creature and Spell changes seem really easy to do (literally changing a few number values per spell), and I'm hopeful that the wonderful people behind Hota will implement at least some of them, or other changes with similar effect. And if you've read this long post so far, have a nice day!
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okrane
Famous Hero
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posted July 14, 2023 07:49 PM |
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Fairly reasonable ideas, hota does need a balance pass
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RerryR
Promising
Supreme Hero
Researching Magic
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posted July 15, 2023 09:12 AM |
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CsArOs said:
Hello everyone,
Hi
CsArOs said:
And that's it! What do you think? Do you agree with these ideas for balance? Can somebody from Hota implement them?
These are some valid suggestions, but it has all been here a hundred times.
Can HotA implement them? Ofc they can, some are really just simple edits that take a few minutes. But based on our experience over the last years, they won't.
Your best approach is to check the "how to edit Hota" thread and implement these for your own game. Thats the best advice you can get.
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CsArOs
Tavern Dweller
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posted July 15, 2023 02:34 PM |
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RerryR said:
Your best approach is to check the "how to edit Hota" thread and implement these for your own game. Thats the best advice you can get.
Thanks for the reality check. I'll work on that myself then.
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foerno
Adventuring Hero
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posted July 16, 2023 05:28 PM |
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inferno castle gate is never used. to buff it, it should work exactly like town gate map object. that is, it should allow you to teleport to any of your towns without using movement.
this way, it could be a viable - if costly - alternative to town portal on maps where you're struggling to get the spell or earth magic. would still be only used in very specific situations, and very rarely, but at least it wouldn't be useless.
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MurlocAggroB
Hired Hero
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posted July 16, 2023 11:31 PM |
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One interesting suggestion I saw is moving Dimension Door from Air to Fire. That way every school has at least one mobility spell (although Water Walk is still kinda crappy) and it makes Air slightly less of a sure thing.
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gatecrasher
Famous Hero
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posted July 27, 2023 12:24 PM |
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Talking of the hero Elmore replaces on water maps: I think that should be Illor, Corkes or Leena rather than Derek.
Derek is the specialist for Crew Mates/Seamen who, alongside Pirates, are not only the most iconic/defining units of Cove imho but also are the kind of guys who run a ship obviously.
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phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted July 27, 2023 03:24 PM |
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gatecrasher said:
Talking of the hero Elmore replaces on water maps: I think that should be Illor, Corkes or Leena rather than Derek.
Derek is the specialist for Crew Mates/Seamen who, alongside Pirates, are not only the most iconic/defining units of Cove imho but also are the kind of guys who run a ship obviously.
Why not just allow 9 captains? On maps without water leave out Cassiopeia.
I would rather have Tark, with a normal starting army, than Cassiopeia. Level 1 creature specialists become useless fast anyway. (Except Galthran.)
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FerynaCZ
Tavern Dweller
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posted July 27, 2023 06:56 PM |
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Was it considered to upgrade Zombies into Mummies? I know Necro is basically already the quirkiest town from the original, but that would be fitting the three-stage upgrades there is for Pirates, and that neutral units being incorporated into normal town is the precendent of Factory.
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gatecrasher
Famous Hero
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posted July 27, 2023 09:51 PM |
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FerynaCZ said:
Was it considered to upgrade Zombies into Mummies? I know Necro is basically already the quirkiest town from the original, but that would be fitting the three-stage upgrades there is for Pirates, and that neutral units being incorporated into normal town is the precendent of Factory.
But why? Just because why not?
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Wolfnacht
Tavern Dweller
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posted September 30, 2023 09:16 PM |
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CsArOs said:
7) *This change is controversial and I will gladly hear counterarguments for it* Resurrection - please make it so the creatures stay after battle no matter the Earth Magic level. Reasoning: One of the sources of the Earth Magic supremacy is this spell. Only Advanced and Expert level are actually useful. By letting Resurrection work every time, we can remove the need to have Earth Magic on every single hero. On top of that, it doesn't really make sense lore wise - they resurrect somebody and 3 hours later he just dies? That's not resurrection but rather a syringe of cocaine for a dying man.
It does make sense lore wise - and I can recall at least some other non-HoMM games having a similar mechanic. You're not magically gifted/skilled enough to fully resurrect a living being - just reanimate them for a brief moment of time; you challenge the strongest force in the universe, death, but are not strong enough to master/defeat it yet. When it comes to balance, I feel like that would make campaigns/scenarios too easy since you could do no-casualties fights way earlier, and I don't think HoTa should be disregarding non-PvP content.
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AlexSpl
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted September 30, 2023 09:43 PM |
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Edited by AlexSpl at 22:44, 30 Sep 2023.
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I don't think that you have to incorporate old neutrals into original line-ups. This is a poor decision from designer point of view. And, defininitely, is not how HotA team handles game design problems.
What the team has done is already not comparable even with highest quality mods that exist now, its philosophy stays true to the original NWC ideas about the game. With that skill level I'd recommend to the team to start working on their own project. We don't need AAA, we need quality (c). As for Factory, I do really love Heroes, but hope Factory will be the last faction.
Well, why? You should have noticed that there are plenty ideas in the air to make the game more dynamic. Even Cove is an experimental faction walking along the edge of the original game concept. Factory will be even more avant garde. And this is the point at which we should stop, at least, if we want to save "staying true to the original" motto. Mods? No problem, but culturally HoMM3 has to have the end, rounding all the sharp edges of the original game and not becoming an overweight monster.
Also notice that Heroes III is a mostly online game as for now. Yes, there are old farts  like you and me who still play vs AI. But we are minority. Time changes, as do ways to play games. That said, we should keep "official branch" of Heroes (and I sincerely believe HotA is the one) as compact as possible. What would be really interesting though is new spells. I think 5-10 new spells is a must to refresh players' interest in the game.
And, one more note - believe me, you cannot make the ultimate game by expanding the old one. Look at chess. The game is still played on a 8x8 board. Think about it, as this thought is also applicable to HoMM.
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darkdill
Hired Hero
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posted October 13, 2023 01:28 AM |
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Edited by darkdill at 19:27, 21 Oct 2023.
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Not sure if I've suggested it before, but Eagle Eye is a skill I think the game could do without. It's far too situational, doesn't always work, and is made redundant if you just take an enemy's town or have someone with Scholar. It also dilutes the skill pool for Witches, making them an even weaker class. Heck, one of the developers for Heroes 3 even said it was a lousy secondary skill.
I know the HotA team isn't in the habit of removing secondary skills, but they did do that to Resistance (though that was because it was game-warping). Replacing Eagle Eye with something useful would be nice, though I'm not sure what would be most appropriate.
EDIT: Okay, I've thought of one way that Eagle Eye could be reworked. It's not set in stone, though, especially for any numbers.
Eagle Eye
When an enemy hero casts a spell, your hero has an X% chance to cast it immediately afterwards on a random valid target at no MP cost. Potency is based on a portion of your hero's Spell Power and their skill in Air/Earth/Water/Fire Magic. If both heroes have Eagle Eye, a copied spell cannot itself be copied.
Basic: 30% chance, copies up to level 1 spells, casts at 20% Spellpower
Advanced: 40% chance, copies up to level 2 spells, casts at 30% Spellpower
Expert: 50% chance, copies up to level 3 spells, casts at 40% Spellpower
This maintains the "copy spells" nature of Eagle Eye, but makes it MUCH more useful. On heroes with poor magical stats (especially those with low Knowledge), this could let you give the enemy a taste of their own medicine whenever they use a spell on you. However, I would not allow Eagle Eye to copy level 4 or level 5 spells, as copying something like Armageddon would be obnoxious (and could be shooting yourself in the foot if your enemy is using a Dragogeddon strategy). This way, if your enemy knows you have Eagle Eye, they can play around it.
Having it only scale off a portion of your Spellpower would keep high SP heroes from being too strong with it. Additionally, those who specialize in Eagle Eye (Serena, Geon, etc.) and artifacts that focus on Eagle Eye would increase the chance of activation; they would not improve how potent the copied spells are, nor would they let you copy level 4 or level 5 spells.
Overall, this would make Eagle Eye a much more desirable secondary skill, even if it relies a bit on RNG.
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AlexSpl
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted October 14, 2023 06:42 AM |
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Edited by AlexSpl at 06:52, 14 Oct 2023.
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"Barbarian Breakout (Allies)" map. Can someone confirm that the Town Portal spell (at None Earth Magic) doesn't work (doesn't teleport your hero to the nearest town)?
Give your starting hero the Town Portal spell (for example, with nwcthereisnospoon), walk away (to the nearest Ore Pit) from the starting town and try to cast Town Portal.
Doesn't work both in HotA and SoD (HD 5.4 R50).
I suppose, that's because of the allied town undeground is occupied. But is it intended to work in such a way?
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darkdill
Hired Hero
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posted October 20, 2023 08:44 PM |
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I was having a look at the Cove heroes and think one of the reasons that they're so good is that none of them get truly bad secondary skills. All the other factions have heroes that start with bad secondary skills like Eagle Eye, Learning, etc.
As such, various Cove heroes should get their secondary skills changed. For starters, having most of the Cove heroes start with Offense is too good. Having all the Navigators start with Wisdom is, I suppose, acceptable since other spellcaster heroes tend to start with it.
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted October 21, 2023 11:34 PM |
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Captain specialties are also pretty good. All 4 lower levels plus Offense, Scouting and Cannon, plus Navigation on Water maps. Only the Navigators have some weaker heroes, even then they are almost the only ones without someone with Eagle Eye or Mysticism (that now is decent but they made the pool much before, when it sucked).
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darkdill
Hired Hero
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posted October 24, 2023 11:08 AM |
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Had an idea while looking at some Reddit discussion: What if Gnolls and/or Gnoll Marauders had some kind of "Swamp Guide" ability? This would basically be the Nomad's "Sandwalker" ability, but for swamps.
This would be undoubtedly helpful on Random maps or any map with a lot of swamps, as even Fortress heroes can get slowed down by it (especially if they grab creatures of other alignments) and Beastmasters don't innately start with Pathfinding.
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Hourglass
Supreme Hero
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posted October 24, 2023 07:29 PM |
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darkdill said:
Had an idea while looking at some Reddit discussion: What if Gnolls and/or Gnoll Marauders had some kind of "Swamp Guide" ability? This would basically be the Nomad's "Sandwalker" ability, but for swamps.
This is obviously just me speculating, but it might be that they have already found a different approuch to the problem: If you look closely to the screenshots they showed few months ago, a new, green building with a simple hole as a door can be spotted in couple of screenshots. I highly doubt it has anything to do with Factory, and it just happens to be shown within swamp in both pictures. What I'm currently thinking is that it's a Trailblazer (movement object for Wasteland), but for swamp instead. But again, this is nothing but a guess.
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LordCameron
Known Hero
Veteran of the Succession Wars
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posted October 24, 2023 10:33 PM |
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A way to fix a lot of the school of magic problems discussed here is to go back to Homm2 style "mass" spells. Add in mass slow, mass bless, mass haste, resurrect true and so on.
It's strange that inferno and fireball weren't merged but everything else was.
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted October 25, 2023 05:59 AM |
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phoenix4ever said:
On maps without water leave out Cassiopeia.
I would rather have Tark, with a normal starting army, than Cassiopeia. Level 1 creature specialists become useless fast anyway. (Except Galthran.)
 When I started to think you have some understanding of the game you say something like this.
Without cheating, I've already managed to smash a main Castle hero JUST with the nymphs I was collecting from the external dwellings (about 500 nymphs X 2 weeks growth of Castle including 3 Archangels).
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