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dark-whisperer
Famous Hero
Darkness feels no mercy
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posted June 24, 2022 11:18 AM |
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Lets wait for road map next week and then see what they have in mind. Also we can always push ideas on suggestions page since they are lookin
g at everything no matter how many upvotes suggestion has.
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted June 24, 2022 07:26 PM |
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artu said:
They are for something which results in them being strictly against other things, devoted Catholics being strictly against abortion for instance, hence his anology.
That is doctrine. But you see I wasn't against SoC in principle. I made this thread after all. JJ irrationally is the one that defends everything even senselessly if it is invalid.
I readily admit that the ga,me will have it's "Pros" like "balanced multiplayer" if that's all you care about, but this doesn't come as a consequence or as an addon of careful balancing and good asymmetric design (as in Starcraft) but rather of poor gameplay variety and arbitrary mechanical restrictions; so for me, this lack of imagination isn't worth it.
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Never changing = never improving
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted June 24, 2022 08:52 PM |
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The real question is why you engage in a crusade against a game YOU DIDN'T EVEN PLAY, for one thing, and is at version .75 for another.
A non-fanatic reaction would be something like, "I had some hopes, but at this point it doesn't look like the game will interest me enough to give it a go. Way it goes, nothing for me." Case closed. Bit like my stance with the new Disciples game. I decided it wouldn't be for me, period. No need to start a crusade against it.
You know, it's like with the Forge. The sane people said either, fine by me, no problem, or no, not my kind of pretzel, but we'll see how it works out. The fanatics started a crusade.
SoC is fine AT THIS POINT. Next week a first SimTurn version will go up (already! Think about how long the guys from Nival took to do that). They hire, because the game has been selling well - at one time they were even leading the Steam charts, apparently. Things will proceed, and, as Whisperer said, we'll get a roadmap next week. Which will probably tell us a lot.
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted June 24, 2022 09:37 PM |
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Edited by artu at 21:38, 24 Jun 2022.
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I dont think Forge is a good example. Forge was an expansion to a game people already loved, which completely transforms it’s universe. It’s like putting a Death Star in Middle Earth. So I can understand when people find it annoyingly distasteful.
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Are you pretty? This is my occasion. - Ghost
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The_Green_Drag
Supreme Hero
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posted June 24, 2022 10:10 PM |
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If pointing out a games short comings and wanting to discuss it is a crusade, what should I call dressing up as spider-man to a Heroes Fan event because of not liking a spider being in a game?
It is funny though seeing so many heroes 6 and 7 similarities getting a pass in SoC when people were so frantic about every little thing in the homm games. Dummys at Ubisoft didnt realize they just needed to rebrand Homm under a new IP and *poof* most people's standards become signifyingly lower. Simply rearranging the title to "Might and Magic Heroes" wasn't enough!
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted June 24, 2022 10:29 PM |
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Artu, you know that I respect your opinion, but people "loving" something doesn't entitle them to anything, although some see that differently, but you know that on a personal level this is called stalking then.
And it doesn't matter whether anyone can understand an opinion. Everyone can have their opinions alright. It's a question of how fanatically you try to enforce your opinions (against the opinion of others).
I'm not going to debate the forge here, but the idea that this has no place in the M&M world is silly, because SF has always been part of it.
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dark-whisperer
Famous Hero
Darkness feels no mercy
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posted June 24, 2022 10:31 PM |
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Of course people will have more relaxed stance towards the game that is indie and without any legacy. Its clean slate to do whatever you want. It is like HoMM but it is not HoMM.
Burden of legacy, mix of different fan expectations makes HoMM almost impossible game to make today.
SoC feels fresh and familiar at the same time. Its not constricted and pressured by previous games and since its still in development its exciting to see what devs will do next.
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted June 25, 2022 01:34 AM |
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JollyJoker said:
I'm not going to debate the forge here, but the idea that this has no place in the M&M world is silly, because SF has always been part of it.
Theoratically, yes. But it was never a real part of the HoMM branch of the universe in terms of ambiance. De facto, HoMM is a mythological universe, not sci-fi.
And I havent said it entitles you to anything, the developers will decide Forge or no Forge etc. and they may face the commercial consequences if they let down too many players. But criticising a completely separate game harshly by comparing it to HoMM even though you didnt play it and reacting to an expansion of a game you like in terms of ambiance are not the same in nature.
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Are you pretty? This is my occasion. - Ghost
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted June 25, 2022 08:07 AM |
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SoC needs to introduce the cyberpunk Forge  it goes better with their shining stuff dark pixel warcraft style, lol
And high tech does in fact fit warcraft pretty well (after Starcraft started being just warcraft in space)
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Never changing = never improving
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted June 25, 2022 09:23 AM |
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artu said:
JollyJoker said:
I'm not going to debate the forge here, but the idea that this has no place in the M&M world is silly, because SF has always been part of it.
Theoratically, yes. But it was never a real part of the HoMM branch of the universe in terms of ambiance. De facto, HoMM is a mythological universe, not sci-fi.
There wasn't really a "HoMM branch of the universe". There was the original HoMM, HoMM 2 basically being an upgrade of it, delivered within a year. It wasn't a CLOSED universe either. HoMM 1 made that quite clear with that story, Letters from Ironfist. They went through a mysterious gate ending in that strange land (where HoMM happens). NOTHING says that "the strange land" is on the same planet (on the contrary, M&M says, it's part of a bigger universe). A universe isn't defined by the first story staged in it - if it was so, you could never add anything, once you started with a world.
De facto, it's up to the creators of a world to do how they please with it, which is why they smashed it after the forge fiasco.
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Groovy
Hired Hero
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posted June 25, 2022 11:04 AM |
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The_Green_Drag said:
It is funny though seeing so many heroes 6 and 7 similarities getting a pass in SoC when people were so frantic about every little thing in the homm games.
I've noticed this as well. I remember town conversions being heavily criticised when Heroes 6 came out, as an attempt to dumb down the strategy to appeal to casual players. I didn't see anyone criticise the same design decision in SoC.
dark-whisperer said:
Of course people will have more relaxed stance towards the game that is indie...
Agreed, even though, for an indie studio, they appear to be well funded. According to SoC credits, the game was made by some 30 people, not counting Coffee Stain (publishing), Studio Konkret (cutscenes), Swipe Right (marketing), interns, translators, testers, or people with unspecified roles.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted June 25, 2022 12:41 PM |
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Groovy said:
I remember town conversions being heavily criticised when Heroes 6 came out, as an attempt to dumb down the strategy to appeal to casual players. I didn't see anyone criticise the same design decision in SoC.
Well, I for one did not critisize it, on the contrary, because it eliminated the luck factor in games with random (secondary) towns; getting a "fitting" one meant game over for everyone else.
It's a long time I've been playing H6, but if I'm not completely wrong you didn't have to convert the town, and after the last patch the price of conversion was pretty high as well.
As for SoC, you have three options:
1) Occupy a town. If the town is big enough this works like a grail; your creature production is increased all over your empire and you get a lot of gold out of it (more than you get, if you convert it);
2) Raze a town. Town is reduced to level 1, all buildings are razed; this takes as many rounds as the town has levels; you gain some money from the raze each turn; after the raze the town has basically been converted to one of your towns of the lowest level with no building;
3) Conversion. This takes as many turns as the town has levels and needs a hero in the town for the whole time. After conversion you have one of your towns with the corresponding building of the same level.
It's a decent enough mechanism. Occupation works pretty well.
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Groovy
Hired Hero
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posted June 25, 2022 03:04 PM |
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Edited by Groovy at 15:10, 25 Jun 2022.
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JollyJoker said:
Well, I for one did not critisize it, on the contrary, because it eliminated the luck factor in games with random (secondary) towns; getting a "fitting" one meant game over for everyone else.
There are other scenarios where it either doesn't matter or works well, including pretty much any single-player scenario.
You are quite right that SoC has taken this feature a step further. In Heroes 6, you could still add units from other factions to your army, which is not possible in SoC.
It's good to see additional town-capturing options. I wasn't commenting on that. My point is that Heroes 6 was widely criticised for allowing players to homogenise the game world, while SoC forcing players to homogenise the game world has not been criticised at all.
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The_Green_Drag
Supreme Hero
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posted June 25, 2022 03:52 PM |
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Groovy said:
The_Green_Drag said:
It is funny though seeing so many heroes 6 and 7 similarities getting a pass in SoC when people were so frantic about every little thing in the homm games.
I've noticed this as well. I remember town conversions being heavily criticised when Heroes 6 came out, as an attempt to dumb down the strategy to appeal to casual players. I didn't see anyone criticise the same design decision in SoC.
Yeah town conversion is a big one. I was also thinking about how the creature tiers also got reduced to three and having the lowest tier units be crazy strong, while top tier units are just okay at best. To compensate, they made the majority of the top tier ranged, also, like H6
Not to mention the generic and similar creatures that came with the h6 tier system.
Also, boring fixed hero specialties. There's a few good ones thrown in, but always static. The one's like +1 stat to X creature can be cool, but then not picking that hero makes me not want to use said X creature.
Removing most of the RNG buildings on the adventure map.
Knowing all the spells right from the start.
It is truly interesting to me. I remember all these things being criticized to no end in h6 and again in h7. But here it is praised.
I always thought it was peculiar (until playing the game) the way the CEO guy would make a point to comment on H6 anytime it was even brought up, even in passing, on their discord channel to express how much he loved that game. But don't question it, SoC gameplay is totally inspired by heroes 2 because Devs said so, and not just the graphics. Everyone remembers the weak spell damage of heroes 2 and the dominating tier 1 units 
P.S. another new fun single-player feature is being worked on and added! you can take control of the neutral camps the other player is fighting in an upcoming patch! woohoo! Maybe they the AI work can get pushed back more and just tell people to use this feature instead.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted June 25, 2022 06:38 PM |
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H6 has been a decent enough game, eventually, the major flaw being hero development and skill picking plus a few oversights and unlucky decisions with regard to resouce allocation, prioritizing the wrong things for development.
Low-tier Creatures and their abilities were a bit over the top, but once things got whipped into shape with the late patches the game was quite playable. Give it a slightly modified H5 skill system and magic guilds and things would probably have been fine.
I don't see any similarities between H7 and SoC and not many with H6 and SoC.
Keep in mind that in SoC you are not forced to build your whole creatures roster, since you can build smaller buildings on building places as well. In theory you could build nothing but Rat Warrens, going with an all-Rat army. Would suck with the magic, of course, but in theory it's possible.
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Groovy
Hired Hero
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posted June 25, 2022 09:07 PM |
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JollyJoker said:
In theory you could build nothing but Rat Warrens, going with an all-Rat army. Would suck with the magic, of course, but in theory it's possible.
I've done this with rats and dreaths. Those were my easiest games against the AI. All of my buildings were cheap to build and units cheap to recruit, I didn't need to worry about building dependencies or exotic resources, and I could fully upgrade my entire army while ignoring almost all of the unit research options.
For magic, I used the units that came with the wielders. By the time those died off, I had enough rats/dreaths to overrun the AI players.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted June 25, 2022 09:25 PM |
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You can overrun the AI no matter what you do at this time. The question is what the balance goals are.
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The_Green_Drag
Supreme Hero
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posted June 26, 2022 03:03 AM |
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I would cite H6's empty adventure map as a big contributor to it being a snore fest. SoC has a lot more interactable objects, which is great, but as per usual with this game they mostly just do similar stuff. There is like 6 different buildings that give you gold or gold income, yet zero buildings that give any kind of random resource type because this game hates RNG. Only one I can think of is the blacksmith giving a random low tier artifact. There aren't really any "end game" incentives equivalent to a dragon utopia, strong neutrals, library of enlightenment, etc.
As for low tier troops, SoC by design encourages low tier armies. They want small tier armies to be able to go toe-to-toe with mid or large tier ones. That aspect is a negative for me and adds to the progression problem I have with the game. On top of low tier troops being very strong in general thanks to large stat gains when they upgrade, there are also many different ways to quickly stack on 10, 20 , 30 points of offense/defense. There are also multiple bonuses of +1 damage and +2 hp through powers, research, artifacts and hero specs which obviously helps out the low tier troops a lot more than the higher tier ones. There is no bonus for +%hp increases to help out bigger troops. There is only one +%damage skill (combat training).
Also by design the combat is very quick and much of it is determined in the first few rounds. Going first and striking first is very important in this. The stacking momentum mechanic ensures that even more. I've had no problem taking down higher tier armies whenever I mass low tier troops on any of the factions. Whether or not the AI is bad, it doesn't change how easily other stacks will fall when hit by a full stack of low tier troops.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted June 26, 2022 09:36 AM |
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While I agree with you on a couple of things, my impression is a slightly different one.
The rate of Damage versus HP is pretty high in general, while the damage increase/decrease for offense/defense difference isn't that big. It may amount to as much as 50% in both direction when it's high against low, but that's not much compared to the 30%/250% in H3.
So bottom line is that stacks die fast, making it a matter of not simply having an initiative advantage, but also of casting the right spells at the right moment, for example the 75% melee resistance thing or the Repel spell and so on.
This makes it difficult for the AI, because it's all about avoiding to be hit hard (not necessarily hitting hard and first yourself).
So a rat-only army will be in trouble against a diverse army that deploys back, knows what its doing and casts spells effectively, but of course it has devastating potential - a lot more so than a Rana Guards only army, for example.
Bottom line is, that I would like to see the attack/defense values of the medium ans high tier creatures increased and the stack limits increased as well of those.
I EDIT this to add that this probably wouldn't change much. The situation is that some troops are better than others in the hands of the AI (as it was in AoW 3) because of their character. The Faes, for example, are glass cannons - high init, high damage, low HPs. However, usually movement is not enough to reach an enemy, and the same is true for Knights. If you play human faction you must be careful with your damage-dealing assets - which the AI isn't. So when the AI moves Faes and Knights up, you can kill them easily, dealing with the slower troops afterwards. And that's true when the AI fights itself as well.
So basically the AI can't handle most of their troops correctly.
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted June 26, 2022 04:19 PM |
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JollyJoker said:
artu said:
JollyJoker said:
I'm not going to debate the forge here, but the idea that this has no place in the M&M world is silly, because SF has always been part of it.
Theoratically, yes. But it was never a real part of the HoMM branch of the universe in terms of ambiance. De facto, HoMM is a mythological universe, not sci-fi.
There wasn't really a "HoMM branch of the universe". There was the original HoMM, HoMM 2 basically being an upgrade of it, delivered within a year. It wasn't a CLOSED universe either. HoMM 1 made that quite clear with that story, Letters from Ironfist. They went through a mysterious gate ending in that strange land (where HoMM happens). NOTHING says that "the strange land" is on the same planet (on the contrary, M&M says, it's part of a bigger universe). A universe isn't defined by the first story staged in it - if it was so, you could never add anything, once you started with a world.
De facto, it's up to the creators of a world to do how they please with it, which is why they smashed it after the forge fiasco.
Sorry, turns out I missed this one yesterday.
Well, when I say the HoMM branch, I meant apart from M&M series which you seem to concur, so there is “the branch.”
And when I say “de facto, it’s mythological” this is again exactly what I mean. The ambiance, the creatures, the towns, none of it is sci-fi or high-tech. They are from various ancient mythologies, medieval towns and soldiers, pure fantasy material. “Nothing suggests the universe is on the same planet” has nothing to do with the “de facto” ambiance, the interface the players got used to. It’s some obsecure detail in the story which most people dont even read, it’s a technicality. Nothing suggests you dont have Captain America, Batman and Hulk in this universe or multiverse either but it would be a bad idea to implement them as a faction to a HoMM 3 expansion.
Your “de facto” of how the creators can do what they please is about who has the initiative when it comes to game design and I also already mentioned that anyway. And if their design fails, the game doesnt sell. My “de facto” is about the universe we play in pre-Forge HoMM franchise being a fantasy ambiance, not sci-fi.
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Are you pretty? This is my occasion. - Ghost
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This thread is pages long: 
