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| Thread: Line-ups suggestion for Heroes 8 |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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lantranar
Adventuring Hero
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posted October 04, 2018 08:46 AM |
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Elvin said:
lantranar said:
By 2002, H3 gameplay was already outdated as it contradict so many values that should be expected of a strategy game.
I'd like to hear some examples to see if we're on the same page. Upgrade design could obviously be improved. Combat and skill system depth are also obvious. What else?
yes, upgrade could be improved, one example is to make the 2 versions completely different strategically, instead of one being strictly better than another.
the major part that make Hmm outdated, according to his opinion (and also my agreement), is the unlimited unit cap. You could stack 1 billion units into 1 and most of the time, it is always better than dividing them into multiple slot. The exception is when you havent reach maximum slot yet, which by nature is another type of unit cap.
You can say that this is unique to Hmm, but it also detrimental when it comes to level design, progression design, and game balance. Unit stacks can reach critical mass and at some point, it drives the game into extreme reactions. Losing units is supposed to happen on regular basis and centivize tactical thinking but Hmm somehow discourage that.
You can see that theres an attempt to fix this with Heroes Online, but it seems Ubi is still hesitating to implement it due to the fear of H4 : good ideas can be not very appealing to fans.
Back to the original topic, all I want to say is that we, as fans, should not impose ideas solely based on nostalgic feeling. We should focus more on gameplay experience instead. Creature lineup ideas- upgradable or not- can be open to how the designers create lores and themes. The less restriction, the better. That what I feel when I see how Ubi is doing with the recent Assasin Creed, they added some silly ideas but it works.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted October 04, 2018 09:40 AM |
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Tbh I am not entirely sold on stack caps because it limits the mapmaking potential(some people enjoy epic maps just as others enjoy fast-paced ones) and the cap could introduce 'artificial' limitations where you'd have to split your t7(or not take them with you) because the last 1-2 t7 your town produced go above the stack cap..
Instead, it might be fairer to make spells scale better compared to army growth. H7 even had an implosion that had no fixed damage but killed a stack percentage instead. If early spells were x + y*sp and higher tier spells had fixed plus stack percentage damage, I don't think it would be much of an issue. H5 even added freeze/stun/burn/armour shatter/physical vulnerability effects to make up for the army strength. A healthy mix of those should bridge the gap a little and besides, if offensive spells just did damage it would be boring.
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lantranar
Adventuring Hero
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posted October 04, 2018 10:09 AM |
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Elvin said:
Tbh I am not entirely sold on stack caps because it limits the mapmaking potential(some people enjoy epic maps just as others enjoy fast-paced ones) and the cap could introduce 'artificial' limitations where you'd have to split your t7(or not take them with you) because the last 1-2 t7 your town produced go above the stack cap..
Instead, it might be fairer to make spells scale better compared to army growth. H7 even had an implosion that had no fixed damage but killed a stack percentage instead. If early spells were x + y*sp and higher tier spells had fixed plus stack percentage damage, I don't think it would be much of an issue. H5 even added freeze/stun/burn/armour shatter/physical vulnerability effects to make up for the army strength. A healthy mix of those should bridge the gap a little and besides, if offensive spells just did damage it would be boring.
If anything, what you have just said is proof that it cause more harms to gameplay than not. Its just hard to create a balanced gameplay (in the sense that you can go to different builds and they can all be equally viable). Ofc there are ways to patch it up but so far all we have are half way measures.
As for the scale of the game and the epicness you mentioned, it does not particularly work against the idea of unit cap. Most other tbs and rts games have some kind of limitation and they all work well.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted October 04, 2018 10:11 AM |
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Quote:
Back to the original topic, all I want to say is that we, as fans, should not impose ideas solely based on nostalgic feeling. We should focus more on gameplay experience instead.
On that one should also note that Black Hole made such changes and failed because they did not understand the appeal of the original features nor why they were implemented as they were. And like us, they considered themselves passionate fans of the previous games.
We should always consider what features made us like the series in the first place and prioritize improvement over changing. It is reasonable to think that picking your spells would be fairer but the oversight was that 1) it is in your best interest to minimize the amount of spells and learn a majority of passive skills, which reduces the available spell pool and spell combos 2) you lose appeal of randomly finding the spell you want. It is reasonable to think that town conversion would equalize things for players who get non-native towns in their area compared to players who get 2-3 native ones. But that led to core unit overpopulation and lack of creative mixing and matching of various creatures. They removed the feature that dropped the army of secondary heroes to one t1 after buying 2 heroes and that led to people stacking on heroes other than building extra dwellings. And so on. Limbic had on their hands a wonderful H5 skill system and an H6 system that was badly received. Their solution? Instead of improve the H5 system, they thought that fans found it confusing so they simplified it, removed the cap of 3 abilities per skill on expert and made it manual. Result? All heroes that picked a skill had an identical skill tree regardless of faction and.. fanrage. Were the fans nostalgic or did Limbic screw up?
I expect sound reasoning in gameplay design but without sacrificing what makes the series what it is. And I urge caution when you change something without taking into account what chain reaction it may have on the rest of the system.
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Map also hosted on Moddb
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lantranar
Adventuring Hero
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posted October 04, 2018 10:44 AM |
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Elvin said:
I expect sound reasoning in gameplay design but without sacrificing what makes the series what it is. And I urge caution when you change something without taking into account what chain reaction it may have on the rest of the system.
but that is the thing, there must be changes. There is no version of Hmm in the past that can work anymore, and any changes will cause a chain reaction to more changes.
While personally I don't like many changes they have made, but I understand the underlying reasons why they did so, and as fans, we should also do instead of clinging onto nostalgic feeling.
Many of us here can whine or suggest as much as we want, but once any step into the position of a game designer, that person would have to rack his head to sort out many contradiction this series provide.
- ideas that attract new players quite often will piss off old fans.
- ideas that attract casual players will leave hard core ones unsatisfied
- ideas that make better world building/ lore might screw up all the old faction line ups
- ideas that can make a potential competitive community ( or just game balance) might have to scrap a major part of old Hmm games.
Most of the time those decisions are made by the higherups in Ubisoft, based on some cold hard data or some grand schemes barely anyone can know about. Game designers who get involved with this game already lack a lot of freedom, it only get worse when they reach out to fans only to get back even more restrictions, not constructive clues. "we don't care about plot, next game must have these factions, and these line-ups in particular" is not a healthy feedback imo.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted October 04, 2018 11:05 AM |
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Edited by Elvin at 11:07, 04 Oct 2018.
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Isn't it though? When so much effort goes into a lore few appreciate(or DRM design or achievements etc) while we get less effort on the factions that many want. That is a clear community wish, that ie starting with 5 factions is an absolute NO. The community only became vocal about it in response to H6, it wasn't a thing in the past. I mean there are those who are vocal about the inclusion of say a swamp faction but not nearly as many as those who will demand a bare minimum of factions.
A minimum of factions, random skill/spell system(at the very least optional), RMG, sim turns, focus on mythological/recognizable creatures etc are not a matter of whining fans, much as ubi tries to make it look that way.
I am aware of the budget/thematic/technical restrictions and deadline issues but that's all the more reason to plan beforehand the direction you want to follow, before the situation gets untenable. I've also heard devs feeling stifled about what they want to make as opposed to what the fans(majority anyway) want. But.. really? It's not a personal project for fun, it is a work project that expects to reach as many people as possible, make them happy and yield a profit out of it. I get it, things are tight but there should be some clear objectives on what to do and what to avoid. I didn't say no to changes, rather make changes with a specific mentality. If the core is good, whatever minor issues will be overlooked.
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Map also hosted on Moddb
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red_flag
Known Hero
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posted October 04, 2018 12:14 PM |
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Edited by red_flag at 12:45, 04 Oct 2018.
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lantranar said:
Overall , if the upgrade is not meaningful and impactful, it should be rather gotten rid of.
Necessity of the upgrade system in the game is a long-time discussing topic. Opponents says that in the end, no one plays by regular units, only upgraded ones. Then why that even needed in the game?
The fact is that Heroes are not only a set of rational functions, but also part of art, which gives certain emotions.
If take an example, then buying candy, we are not going to eat its packaging, but its beauty also gives us pleasure. In this sense, the process of upgrading units in itself gives a feeling of pleasure. At the same time, I want to note that the choice between two alternative upgrades brings some torment for me ...
lantranar said:
Back to the original topic, all I want to say is that we, as fans, should not impose ideas solely based on nostalgic feeling.
Why is the criticism of the innovations relating with the nostalgia feelings of the fans, and not to the fact that ideas are simply bad in themselves or their final implementation is unsuccessful?
Heroes 5 was an innovative (for Heroes) combat system - the fans accepted it, because It was implemented as a successful replacement for the classical system. If developers can offer a similarly successful alternative to the upgrades, then there will be no nostalgia problems.
In addition, if we talk about nastalgii in the creation of the line-ups ... The concept of the game is based on the use of popular mythological creatures, thereby it is in certain limitations from series to series. We have already seen what novelty of line-ups failed. I doubt someone from here being able to create a brand new cool lineup.
Says about the line-ups, imo, efforts should be invested in the graphic style, if you remember Disciples 2, despite the fairly simple and monotonous but nice gameplay, the game won a lot of fans thanks to the visual style of the units and the atmosphere.
So, do you prefer both pixie and dryad and innovative deer in the line-up instead of this nostalgia? I don't believe
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted October 04, 2018 02:06 PM |
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Upgrades are worthwhile if only as a means to develop faster at a price. Plus chasing the right resources, planning your map routes and so on. Provided they provide substantial benefit or survivability of course, H3 had some units that were barely worth upgrading. H5 was hit or miss, academy or fortress had some decent dilemmas while most of sylvan's original upgrades were plain inferior. But even if badly balanced, there were some good ideas: Shamans with melee hexing and no retaliation against slowed enemies vs chain lightning caster that requires sacrifice fuel. Wights with insta-kill vs wail aoe. Devils with pitlord summoning vs enemy relocation. Assassins with ranged attack vs melee/invisibility. Genies with random caster vs luck manipulation. Goblins with
Academy was one of the better examples of using alternative upgrades to promote a different playstyle. That's how it should be.
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Map also hosted on Moddb
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted October 04, 2018 02:14 PM |
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Quote:
So, do you prefer both pixie and dryad and innovative deer in the line-up instead of this nostalgia?
I personally prefer whatever is best, not whatever is nostalgia. If deer is bad its because its not a magical creature, not because its different from "nostalgic" unicorn.
For example I would prefer a sort of crystalline earth elemental to unicorn, and it would be interesting to even have a "rampart" which is not based on elves (imagine, for example, Amazons and a rainforest feel).
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red_flag
Known Hero
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posted October 04, 2018 02:39 PM |
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Elvin said:
Academy was one of the better examples of using alternative upgrades to promote a different playstyle. That's how it should be.
Yes, this is the point that upgrades / alternative upgrades or units should be much more involved in the gameplay features than just being
the choice between two different abilities.
NimoStar said:
I personally prefer whatever is best, not whatever is nostalgia.
That was a kind of rhetorical question about what we have now and what could have and how such a thing could happened with Heroes.
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted October 04, 2018 02:43 PM |
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lantranar said:
but that is the thing, there must be changes. There is no version of Hmm in the past that can work anymore, and any changes will cause a chain reaction to more changes.
While personally I don't like many changes they have made, but I understand the underlying reasons why they did so, and as fans, we should also do instead of clinging onto nostalgic feeling.
Many of us here can whine or suggest as much as we want, but once any step into the position of a game designer, that person would have to rack his head to sort out many contradiction this series provide.
- ideas that attract new players quite often will piss off old fans.
- ideas that attract casual players will leave hard core ones unsatisfied
- ideas that make better world building/ lore might screw up all the old faction line ups
- ideas that can make a potential competitive community ( or just game balance) might have to scrap a major part of old Hmm games.
Most of the time those decisions are made by the higherups in Ubisoft, based on some cold hard data or some grand schemes barely anyone can know about. Game designers who get involved with this game already lack a lot of freedom, it only get worse when they reach out to fans only to get back even more restrictions, not constructive clues. "we don't care about plot, next game must have these factions, and these line-ups in particular" is not a healthy feedback imo.
From the looks of modding community I think the "classic" formula still works today. Imo, the remaining fanbase would embrace a new title going that direction and could even lure back folks who lost faith already a long time ago.
A new idea that attracts new player is not necessarily doomed to piss off old fans, as long as it's not a core change in game mechanics like introduced in H6 I think it should be fine for the most part. Casual vs Hardcore is another great thing from the NWC era: easy to get into (casuals) but hard to master (hardcore). The main issue with world building is that Ashan is alien (no puns intended) to the original universe. Might and Magic has sci-fi background and it's not too present in the Heroes series, at least not at first glance. You make a very good point about competitive scene, we can still witness this even now with H3 and Hota's meta changes.
Lastly, while it is absolutely true a lot of flame has been sent as feedback, to be entirely fair it was more of a knee-jerk reaction as a part of the fandom clearly felt like being showed the middle-finger very straight and very clear. I don't find it fair to say there hasn't been any constructive clues forwarded to the game designers, these were ignored or dismissed for some key aspects, the vitriol followed.
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted October 04, 2018 02:59 PM |
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Heroes 7 tried to be "Heroes 3 remade" with mechanics, it brought again a seven creature lineup and all special resources, and got rid of all H6 innovations...
That didn't go too well.
I know it was bugs, but it wasnt ONLY bugs.
It was bland and uninspired.
You can't have a game based on a bland and uninspired "doing the same we did before" vision, developers must think they are doing something new and excitring.
If your game is just going to be a copy of what was before, then why bother? Just keep playing what was before.
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted October 04, 2018 03:03 PM |
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Edited by Galaad at 15:07, 04 Oct 2018.
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NimoStar said:
Heroes 7 tried to be "Heroes 3 remade" with mechanics, it brought again a seven creature lineup and all special resources, and got rid of all H6 innovations...
Keyword is tried.
Although, when you look through it details you notice they didn't even really tried.
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Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted October 04, 2018 03:13 PM |
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lantranar said:
Elvin said:
Tbh I am not entirely sold on stack caps because it limits the mapmaking potential(some people enjoy epic maps just as others enjoy fast-paced ones) and the cap could introduce 'artificial' limitations where you'd have to split your t7(or not take them with you) because the last 1-2 t7 your town produced go above the stack cap..
Instead, it might be fairer to make spells scale better compared to army growth. H7 even had an implosion that had no fixed damage but killed a stack percentage instead. If early spells were x + y*sp and higher tier spells had fixed plus stack percentage damage, I don't think it would be much of an issue. H5 even added freeze/stun/burn/armour shatter/physical vulnerability effects to make up for the army strength. A healthy mix of those should bridge the gap a little and besides, if offensive spells just did damage it would be boring.
If anything, what you have just said is proof that it cause more harms to gameplay than not. Its just hard to create a balanced gameplay (in the sense that you can go to different builds and they can all be equally viable). Ofc there are ways to patch it up but so far all we have are half way measures.
As for the scale of the game and the epicness you mentioned, it does not particularly work against the idea of unit cap. Most other tbs and rts games have some kind of limitation and they all work well.
Well said. Elvin's argument is ultimately self-defeating. The fact that you need spells that scale according to a stack just highlights that the stack size is the problem in the first place. Percentage damage is not solving it, it's just a workaround in as far as how spell damage handles that issue. Plus, having to see a spells dealing percentage damage makes for extremely linear, boring gameplay and sometimes ridiculously laughable as well when the casualties range from 10 Pixies in one case to 1000 or more in another with no better agency to that end than the stack the player targets. It's perfectly absurd.
With regards to controlled stack numbers making for a bottleneck of game potential, I completely disagree. In fact, I think it's one of the best ways to open design space now that the fear of numbers warping the game is out the window. It makes tactical thinking the preferred weapon of encounters instead of plain numbers advantage. Also provides simpler layout to tweak and balance balance for game designers and modders down the road. Besides, Heroes is supposed to be a fast game first and foremost, if you sacrifice that for the "epicness" of grinding armies into the thousands and millions that only a very small portion of players enjoy, then you really don't have your priorities straight.
What I find a bit concerning is how someone who used to tweak and balance a Duel map would take a stance against limiting stack sizes, when that person adjusted available armies, damage and abilities to the number. One week's army more and that frail balance would've been in chaos again, but who cares if that's just how Heroes is.
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Guide to a Great Heroes Game
The Young Traveler
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted October 04, 2018 03:48 PM |
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Quote:
Keyword is tried.
Although, when you look through it details you notice they didn't even really tried.
But it did try and those features removing much of what was new and changed from other titles prove it.
Ultimately it is futile to try, because any game that tries to be like heroes 3 is going to fail, because it is NOT heroes 3, and Heroes 3 is already Heroes 3. There is not going to be another Heroes 3 (Except VCMI  )
So, why would you appeal to someone who would in any case rather be playing heroes 3?
A new Heroes title has to be its own project, not a retread, as the imitiation will always be worse than the original; if anything H7 showed that.
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted October 04, 2018 04:04 PM |
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Edited by NimoStar at 16:05, 04 Oct 2018.
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Also, about the creature stack discussiopn, I have a proposal for the gameplay aspect that doesn't affect "unlimited stacking" but it adresses some of the problems of late-game scaling with heroes games:
There is a too great emphasis in "never losing a single creature" because 1- Creatures are scarce (weekly limit) and 2- Creatures are pure value, keeping them doesn't cost anything.
My proposal is then twofold:
1- Make creature recruiting flexible and not number-restricted (perhaps cost increases for each creature owned of the same time, as in some other strategy games to encourage diversification)
2- Creatures cost daily resources in addition to recruitment costs.
This second point is extremely important. In real life, having standing armies is expensive, not just because of their gear but because of maintenance. In Heroes games, this actually appears as a message for example saying "Creatures cannot join you because there aren't enough supplies to support them" if all your stacks are full. But they could be full with 7 peasants while not with 4000 azure dragons. So you can support 4000 azure dragons but not 8 stacks of 1 peasant each. Quaint :V
My proposal is that each creature has a daily maintenance cost, according to its type.
This will make you think twice before swelling up your army to absurd proportions; it would also make Diplomacy not busted.
Also it could be an interesting tactical addition; destroying the income sources of a player could make it have to dissolve part of his army, just like it would in real life, due to not be able to support it. It opens new possibilities in economic warfare.
It also could open new possibilities in creature design, such as some creatures being high maintenance and others very low maintenance. For example, I supposse Red Dragons eat a lot and are also very greedy, and would not fight if their master does not oblige to their demands. But Ghost Dragons would not need such cost, with some nominal necromantic tribute being enough to keep them on your side. Pikemen would have a daily salary, but Peasants could still generate gold but have near zero value in battle and be very fragile - making your opponent actively hunt them as they would be part of your economic base.
Late-game hero battles would not snowball into millions of units, keeping Magic relevbant to the end game and ending scalability problems for Hero skills and artifacts. After all, if your income cannot grow further with time, neither can your army - just like in reality.
Some players could even try to save more money and invest it into developing by having as little army as possible, but this would limit their expansion and leave them more open to attack.
As you can see, creature manteinance opens some very interesting and flavorful options for the game.
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monere
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
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posted October 04, 2018 04:11 PM |
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Edited by monere at 16:29, 04 Oct 2018.
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Quote:
Many of us here can whine or suggest as much as we want, but once any step into the position of a game designer, that person would have to rack his head to sort out many contradiction this series provide.
- ideas that attract new players quite often will piss off old fans.
- ideas that attract casual players will leave hard core ones unsatisfied
- ideas that make better world building/ lore might screw up all the old faction line ups
- ideas that can make a potential competitive community ( or just game balance) might have to scrap a major part of old Hmm games.
That's why I don't give a crap about anyone's ideas and will just make the game I want, the way I want. And everyone will love it, or else.... I will haunt them in their sleep
Quote:
For example I would prefer a sort of crystalline earth elemental to unicorn, and it would be interesting to even have a "rampart" which is not based on elves (imagine, for example, Amazons and a rainforest feel)
That actually sounds interesting. I subscribe to your idea
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted October 04, 2018 04:13 PM |
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@Nimo
They did a random mish-mash without knowing what they were doing and not even understanding why the features worked in the old games etc.
But yes, a remake should just be there to make some easy cash in the meantime of a new title. Some actually do it very nicely, Resident Evil HD Remaster comes to mind. I would love MM6-7-8 HD remasters. It's the endless argument about what made a formula successful. I know you love H4, but H5 sold and did better, because closer to H3 with clear improvements from a common ground on some gameplay aspects, in a similar fashion the latter was for its own predecessor. H3 was the golden age of the franchise and H5 kinda revived it, minus the visual and lore butcher.
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted October 04, 2018 04:20 PM |
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Edited by NimoStar at 16:21, 04 Oct 2018.
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"without understanding what made them work"
What made them work is that it was 1997, a game like H3 would never fly commercially today.
There is no sense in a remake, mods already make H3 "hd" and I shudder to think what horrors would happen to the sprites if they were made today.
H5 was sucessful because it was the first game in over 10 years, not because it was so good. Today H5 is still played less than H3. If it was so much "Improved", you would think it would be the opposite.
EVen then what made H5 notable is being different, not being the same. The Skill Wheel and Racial Skills are the most important H5 additions. And mostly why people still play it.
So, they play it because its different, not because it is the same. The people that want more of the same are still playing only H3.
There is no meaning in remaking games. Look at the Age of Empires 1 "HD remake", a complete fiasco, they butchered the sprites and didn't revive the game at all, plus is has ridiculous system requirements.
Anyways, I believe what you want is an "Heroes 3 Remastered" version, and so it's good that you make that clear - because that is not a new Heroes game, and it would not be Heroes 8.
PS: And Heroes 4 rocks and it was "the original vision of the makers of the game" ;=)
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted October 04, 2018 04:25 PM |
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Edited by Galaad at 16:26, 04 Oct 2018.
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It's not "more of the same", it's "the same but better".
Nah H5 was also a good game. SK and racials felt like more like an improvement than an addition. H6 was very awaited too, not as long had passed but still 4 years since TotE and players were wanting for more, look at H6's sells to understand H5's success. Look at H7's sales to understand H6's negative impact on their fandom. For sure the rehashed visuals from a loathed title did not help either, but they screwed up the gameplay too. 
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