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Heroes Community > Heroes 7+ Altar of Wishes > Thread: Creature experience instead of upgrades
Thread: Creature experience instead of upgrades This thread is 3 pages long: 1 2 3 · «PREV
lantranar
lantranar


Adventuring Hero
posted December 07, 2018 03:48 PM

JollyJoker said:
That's just because H3 made upgrades "standard mandatory" and then 5 and 6 and 7 continued this uninspired nonsense.

The key is to make "upgrades" a MEANINGFUL feature, not a mechanical one.

I mean, an upgrade that indeed does only give some minor stat updates - well, is that really necessary?

On the other hand, if you DO have a meaningful upgrade, say Gremlins to Master Gremlins, the upgrade is mandatory, and you might say redundant as well.

So the key of the game feature "creature upgrades" is doing them the right way, which shouldn't be surprising.


but in this sense there hasnt been a Hmm game that has 'meaningful' upgrade. H2 only had a few for each town, so back then it still felt good, but the core idea behind it is still... questionable. When it comes to meaning ful choices regarding upgrade, it is not about when and how to purchase the upgrade, but also about which version of the creature is better for the situation even if player already has access to all. Among all iterations, H2 and H3 were quite bland.

-H4 has the summoning portal (preserve) that can recruit multiple creatures that share the same growth points (exp). If unupgraded and upgraded creatures are fundamentally different, then I dont see any point of them being the 'the same'. Soldiers should have diffrent weapon types, beast should be of different breeds or something.
-H5 has Haven archer that has different ability (crowd control) compared to its upgraded version. In some rare cases, picking the vannila unit is actually a slightly better idea.
-H6,7 have done nothing regarding this matter

As for creature exp, AOW already solved this by adding unit exp bonus as an optional structure built in town. I dont see how such mechanic wouldnt work for Hmm.
Upgrade, as it has always been, is only somewhat significant in multiplayer games. In single player mode, it is just a chore. At least that is what Starcraft2 devs thought about it: they got rid of all the mundane upgrades in campaign mode.

As for Diplomacy, it is not misdesigned, but rather under-developed. It was systematically better in H4 as all factions are given tools to gain advantage through interacting with adventure map (life-resurrection, death-necromancy, nature -summoning ,order-diplomacy+charm). Tho there are many flaws (chaos sorcery is not in the same theme, nature summoning is vastly under-powered, diplomacy and charm dont stack), but the intention was well-thought out. It made much more sense compared to H3 as necromancy in only available to 1 faction and diplomacy is randomly given to all.
Without skills that encourage interaction with adventure map, we have H6 that is design with only small scale games in mind.
I think such interaction felt great in all previous Hmm game (1-4) was because they hit a nice balance between forcing the players to use multiple town types and sticking to the original chosen town's strength.

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Elvin
Elvin


Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
posted December 07, 2018 04:39 PM

lantranar said:
Soldiers should have diffrent weapon types, beast should be of different breeds or something.

As for creature exp, AOW already solved this by adding unit exp bonus as an optional structure built in town. I dont see how such mechanic wouldnt work for Hmm.

I've long thought that this is the role of blacksmith. Sharper blades, better gear, alternative weapons or special ammo.

lantranar said:
In single player mode, it is just a chore.

No less than starting with an undeveloped town and a lvl 1 hero.. If someone is that lazy I'd sooner recommend them a different game than lazify the game.

lantranar said:
As for Diplomacy, it is not misdesigned, but rather under-developed. It was systematically better in H4 as all factions are given tools to gain advantage through interacting with adventure map (life-resurrection, death-necromancy, nature -summoning ,order-diplomacy+charm).

I dislike 'universal' approaches. In H4 it made sense because there is zero skill variety and you'll always get those if you play a magic hero. But cramming unit-joining or army-increasing skills in your racial is simply cheesy. I'd much rather allow the possibility amidst a variety of skills but not as default gameplay. It would make sense if diplomacy helps with joiners, first aid tent with reviving troops after combat, tactics with reinforcements from reserved stacks etc but the choice to go for such a build would be up to you. H6 giving resurrection capabilities to most factions from the very start was plain cringeworthy.

Additional interaction with the adventure map, definitely. But not in such a narrow way. There should be ways to improve in exploration, transportation, mining, hiring units, sabotaging/misdirecting the opponent etc according to your gameplay style.
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lantranar
lantranar


Adventuring Hero
posted December 08, 2018 06:03 AM

Elvin said:
lantranar said:
In single player mode, it is just a chore.

No less than starting with an undeveloped town and a lvl 1 hero.. If someone is that lazy I'd sooner recommend them a different game than lazify the game.


Well, I mean a different kind of chore. Building up your town and hero gives you a sense of progression, which is rewarding by itself.

Upgrading your units is also a kind of progression, but it stops having any meaning after it is done, and proceeds to the next town. My point was simply that if there is 2 units of totally different entities, there should be a meaningful choice between them. Exp is just one way to solve this, it is not necessarily the best idea, just an idea that is implemented quite well in some other games.

Quote:
Additional interaction with the adventure map, definitely. But not in such a narrow way. There should be ways to improve in exploration, transportation, mining, hiring units, sabotaging/misdirecting the opponent etc according to your gameplay style.


well true. While I always praise H4 for its ideas, it is obviously not known for its execution. It needed to be more flexible to allow heroes to have access to more skills at first, rather than just 1 faction-binded skill.
H5,6,7 are even worse as they overly emphasize faction/racial skills. Those games kill remove all motivation to use other towns' units to me.

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