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| Thread: Strange design decisions in Homm3 |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · «PREV |
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BTB
Famous Hero
Moist & Creamy
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posted January 03, 2022 11:34 AM |
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I just got rid of the mana overboosting effect on the Vortex entirely and turned it into a mana bonus for defending heroes.
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heymlich
Famous Hero
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posted January 03, 2022 06:59 PM |
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Edited by heymlich at 19:01, 03 Jan 2022.
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In my experience, if everything is balanced perfectly, it does not really matter what choices you make.
Also, HoMM3 is primarily a single player game. You can pick the faction/hero you like if you want to play just for fun, or you can pick a weak faction if you are in the mood for a challenge.
To me as a solo player, HoM3 is perfectly fine as it is.
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Hourglass
Supreme Hero
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posted January 03, 2022 09:31 PM |
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Mortarial said:
2. Why is Protection from Air the only lvl 2 spell a hero can start with, if he/she doesn't have a spell specialty?
Probably it was a 1st level spell at the early stages of development.
I thought so too, I actually expect that it might have changed positions with View Air, but this is just a guess.
HOTRAITS.TXT states that Bron should have Lizardmen in his second slot. The amount of Basilisks (4-7) also makes me think that it was not intended. If HotA really decided this to be a bug then why didn't they fix it, and moreover, why did they add another regular hero who starts with lvl 4 creatures?
We know this answer, I think it was even stated by Picolan itself; they wanted to make turn the bug into a feature. Wouldn't be surprised if Factory would continue this design.heymlich said:
In my experience, if everything is balanced perfectly, it does not really matter what choices you make.
Also, HoMM3 is primarily a single player game. You can pick the faction/hero you like if you want to play just for fun, or you can pick a weak faction if you are in the mood for a challenge.
To me as a solo player, HoM3 is perfectly fine as it is.
Well, the point of this thread isn't necessary on balance, but rather the oddities and strange decisions in the original game. They don't need to be gamebreaking things, but probably some small things that don't even necessary affect how the game is played.
Oh, one more:
Why is Rib Cage listed as a minor artifact? According to the normal formula, items that give +2 stats are being treated as treasure artifact.
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Phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted January 04, 2022 08:43 AM |
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Hourglass said:
Why is Rib Cage listed as a minor artifact? According to the normal formula, items that give +2 stats are being treated as treasure artifact.
There is also Tunic of the Cyclops King, which gives +4 Power, but is a major artifact, while other +4 artifacts are only minor. (I guess NWC saw Power as the most valueable stat?)
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Mortarial
Hired Hero
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posted January 04, 2022 12:48 PM |
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Phoenix4ever said:
Hourglass said:
Why is Rib Cage listed as a minor artifact? According to the normal formula, items that give +2 stats are being treated as treasure artifact.
There is also Tunic of the Cyclops King, which gives +4 Power, but is a major artifact, while other +4 artifacts are only minor. (I guess NWC saw Power as the most valueable stat?)
And I always thought that the Knowledge artifacts are on the wrong spot. We have Rampart set, which is the weakest one so it belongs to Treasure tier. Necropolis and Fortress sets are Minor ones, Stronghold (yeah, Crown of Supreme Magi should be here) and Inferno sets belong to Major tier. By following this logic you can see that +2 and +4 Knowledge artifacts are not in their tiers.
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phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted January 04, 2022 07:08 PM |
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Well it could be both ways, there really is no way to tell, but the current design seems odd.
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BTB
Famous Hero
Moist & Creamy
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posted January 05, 2022 02:23 AM |
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Just for the record, every single point that has been brought up in this thread thus far is something I ended up changing. You could almost make this thread a basic checklist of things to look at when making a hack.
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Phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted January 05, 2022 08:20 AM |
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I have added all 23 questions to my first post on page 1. (Possible future questions will also be added to that post.)
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Borsukrates
Tavern Dweller
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posted January 05, 2022 07:04 PM |
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Hourglass said:
I was wondering,
5. Why does Badge of Courage gives protection against mind spells?
This is no longer true in Hota, but was this really a bug? I mean, you would probably need to write pretty good amount of code to accomplish an item like this, so for me at least, it seems that it would have had some kind of intention behind it. But if so - why?
Same reason Bless overrides Curse spell, but other buffs and nerfs don't (maybe haste and slow). Someone thought it was cute enough to warrant a special case.
Quote:
6. Why is Learning so bad?
You could literally argue it giving negative value. +15% cannot mean more than an extra level, but you will need to sacrifice 3 level ups in order to have the the extra experience. There's a lot of time between the early concepts of ROE to the final release of SOD, yet this skill remained unchanged. Was there some thought process behind it, or is this simply a work accident?
Because they preferred to err on the side of caution. Otherwise Learning might become mandatory. As for lack of balancing changes - 3 out of 5 team leaders were gone from the developer by the time Armageddon's Blade was finished.
Source: Gregory Fulton, Homm3 lead designer alongside Jon van Caneghem. One of the Fanstratics newsletters.
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7. Why is Eagle Eye so bad?
For better or worse, they wanted to have consistency between Heroes2 and Heroes3. So it was a bad decision made during the development of Heroes2 and another bad decision for not having enough courage when Heroes3 was made.
Source: Greg Fulton, another Fanstratics newsletter.
The bottom line: Heroes3 didn't have full-time balance designers or even dedicated testers! Network play was an afterthought. Greg Fulton literally said they thought it was "inconceivable" that people would play H3 in a competitive manner. It was designed as a single player game.
Source: Greg Fulton, see in particular Fanstratics newsletter #10.
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phe
Famous Hero
Life and Freedom
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posted January 05, 2022 07:11 PM |
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...Ballista needs Artillery and Archery to shoot effectively instead of consolidating Archery bonus into Artillery skill...
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FirePaladin
Promising
Legendary Hero
DoR Modder
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posted January 05, 2022 08:01 PM |
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BTB said:
Because programming is hard.
Those are actually design choices as far as I know. H3 code isn't so crappy for them to not have just implemented their vision.
Btw, I'm glad you're keeping all the debates on H3's aspects here instead of other threads. 
Also yes, I could answer some of Hourglass's and Phoenix4Ever's questions based on an exclusive interview with Gregory Fulton (no, not from private discussions about DoR though), but I really lack the time.
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Enshackling time itself, heralds of the Ancients among their heat-depleted land.... Who could they be, who could rally the beings of the East and the North and control the mortals' fate?
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RerryR
Promising
Supreme Hero
Researching Magic
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posted January 06, 2022 08:18 AM |
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BTB said:
Just for the record, every single point that has been brought up in this thread thus far is something I ended up changing. You could almost make this thread a basic checklist of things to look at when making a hack.
If you have the means and tools to change these things it is just logical to do it. Why should one settle for less, it is not the year 2000 anymore. No need to strangle yourself with pure conservatism just so cling to some nostalgia, like some people like to do here.
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