On June 03 2011 00:24 KOFgokuon wrote: I'm not that impressed w/ the graphics =/
honestly, if your that into good graphics, your playing the wrong genre of game..
As a HOMM 3 fan, good graphics are pretty low on the list with respect to how much I'm going to like this game. If the core gameplay is good and if it's as much fun to play as HOMM3, just with more features, that will be plenty for me. I hate when they screw up the core content of a game and instead concentrate on flashy graphics etc. I mean honestly, is anyone playing turn based strategy games for the graphics? it's the strategical aspect that makes the games fun, not the graphics. Sure graphics are a huge deal in other genres like 3D shooters, sports games, racing games, etc, but not so much turn based stategy.. (you could even argue the same for real time, look at all the pros who play SC2 on low settings)
The thing is, HOMM3 has beautiful artwork, even if it is 2D. This is in addition to the wonderful gameplay.
Also, is it too much to ask to bring back hexes in the battle maps? Jeez, that alone would have made 4 and 5 more playable. Squares are just so boring.
On June 29 2011 16:32 True_Spike wrote: townscreens - or rather their complete absence.
That's one of my biggest gripes too.
Question: I haven't played HoMM since the 3rd one where you had to dig and find the grail before you could build it... how the hell do you build the grail in VI?
On June 03 2011 00:24 KOFgokuon wrote: I'm not that impressed w/ the graphics =/
honestly, if your that into good graphics, your playing the wrong genre of game..
As a HOMM 3 fan, good graphics are pretty low on the list with respect to how much I'm going to like this game. If the core gameplay is good and if it's as much fun to play as HOMM3, just with more features, that will be plenty for me. I hate when they screw up the core content of a game and instead concentrate on flashy graphics etc. I mean honestly, is anyone playing turn based strategy games for the graphics? it's the strategical aspect that makes the games fun, not the graphics. Sure graphics are a huge deal in other genres like 3D shooters, sports games, racing games, etc, but not so much turn based stategy.. (you could even argue the same for real time, look at all the pros who play SC2 on low settings)
what? Is it that big of a deal to expect SOME level of change since HOMM5??
The third 1 was ok, but it seemed to add too many complications that really just slowed down the game imo. Like the Capitol upgrade path to get full income out of your first town... took really long.
Also the homogenization of units, all of them having upgrades, and no units having 2 upgrades, and etc. Kind of threw it off for me, the 2 types of heroes per castle I wasn't a big fan of either >_> honestly I think apart from having more Castles the third one didn't add anything that was that good over the second one.
On June 29 2011 16:32 True_Spike wrote: All the mistakes from the 5th part of te series seem to have made their way into the 6th, too. My biggest grief so far, though, are townscreens - or rather their complete absence. Towns in HOMM3 were SO gorgeous, I do not understand why it is impossible to reproduce 12 years later without making it look like garbage. What is this obsession people have with 3d graphics? Can't the townscreens at least be 2d if it makes them look FAR better?
Also, it strikes me as odd that musical scores are nowhere near as good as they ware more than a decade ago.
HOMM3 is the best in the series by far even by todays standards, in my opinion. I hope 6 will be at least half as good.
What are the mistakes of the 5th you are speaking about?
I thought the 5th was a great game, very similar to the 3rd, overall it felt like thesame game.
The only complaint you mention, is the townscreens, wich the 5th had and were quite good in my opinion. Only played through the tutorial in the 6th so far. Town didn't seem to grow, but you could only buy 1 building in that campaign. Hero leveling seems to have changed to remove all the randomness. UI is clean and easy to grasp... Overall, liking this game alot so far =)
On June 29 2011 16:32 True_Spike wrote: All the mistakes from the 5th part of te series seem to have made their way into the 6th, too. My biggest grief so far, though, are townscreens - or rather their complete absence. Towns in HOMM3 were SO gorgeous, I do not understand why it is impossible to reproduce 12 years later without making it look like garbage. What is this obsession people have with 3d graphics? Can't the townscreens at least be 2d if it makes them look FAR better?
Also, it strikes me as odd that musical scores are nowhere near as good as they ware more than a decade ago.
HOMM3 is the best in the series by far even by todays standards, in my opinion. I hope 6 will be at least half as good.
What are the mistakes of the 5th you are speaking about?
I thought the 5th was a great game, very similar to the 3rd, overall it felt like thesame game.
The only complaint you mention, is the townscreens, wich the 5th had and were quite good in my opinion. Only played through the tutorial in the 6th so far. Town didn't seem to grow, but you could only buy 1 building in that campaign. Hero leveling seems to have changed to remove all the randomness. UI is clean and easy to grasp... Overall, liking this game alot so far =)
Heroes 5 is in the same ballpark as Heroes 4, and 2(and slightly above heroes 1 and heroes chronicles). That is, it is a good game, no mistake. However it is not an excellent game, nowhere near genre culminating, like Heroes 3 is. That is, according to gamespot user rankings, which are the most objective criterion possible to establish for ranking games.
On June 30 2011 09:39 Kiarip wrote: Personally I liked the second 1 the most.
The third 1 was ok, but it seemed to add too many complications that really just slowed down the game imo. Like the Capitol upgrade path to get full income out of your first town... took really long.
Also the homogenization of units, all of them having upgrades, and no units having 2 upgrades, and etc. Kind of threw it off for me, the 2 types of heroes per castle I wasn't a big fan of either >_> honestly I think apart from having more Castles the third one didn't add anything that was that good over the second one.
Yeah, good thing no one ever uses the Capitol building path at most, one gets town hall for bonus gold, but after that its all unit buildings, all action, baby. Heroes 3 suits wonderfully for optimised gameplay. Though yes, in terms of user rankings, 3 is easily the highest ranked of the games.
On December 14 2010 10:31 plated.rawr wrote: I see a lot of people saluting Heroes 3 as the pinnacle of the series, but I really disagree. The third didn't really create anything new from the second game. Yes, it rehauled the races, yes it "upgraded" (also known as broke) necromancy, yes it added more units, but really, it was in no way superior to heroes 2, gameplay wise. More than anything, it removed racial differences as well as devalued agressive gameplay thanks to the capital income.
The negative changes from 2 to 3 includes - Capital income - Supercharged necromancy - Upgrades for EVERY unit - Terrible Magic Missile-sound!!!!
Capital income encourages turtling on your income rather than agressive expansion and exploring. Yes, you need special resources, but the map makers and random map generators always placed them within your "safe area", meaning you didn't really have to explore past your safe little center of the universe to get what you needed, and since you had 4k income + hero bonus, you'd not have to leave your pocket of perfect safety till you had your home castle pretty much fully upgraded. Stale and static.
A part about the very limited income of 1k was that if your opponent decided to be ballsy and get a gold mine outside his territorry, he'd be outproducing you insanely hard. 1k + 1k is far more significant than 4k + 1k. Lower home income and higher relative potential gain resulted in a far more dynamic and agressive game.
The low income also forces a higher awareness of your army composition. You won't be able to purchase all the dwelling each week, so you need to be very careful in what you choose. Half or more of the dwelling will be left, meaning your choice of composition will be very determinal to your game, causing for more exciting fights than "I have produced for x round, he's produced for y rounds, ergo I win"-borefests.
Supercharged necromancy - with this I mean the scaling unit return (up untill Vampire Lord I think it was?). On grandmaster necromancy you got something like 20% + hero speciality + 10% per necrospire of killed enemies returned in hitpoints as Vampire Lords, who were practically unkillable thanks to lifedrain, no retaliation and Raise Dead. Compare that to Heroes 2 base skeleton only-ressurection, and you can see what was a handy cannon fodder-production ability turned into a gamebreaking powerhouse without equal.
With upgrades available for every unit, the races lost a lot of their uniqueness. With every unit having upgrade potential, all your base unit feels like placeholders, meaning it'll encourage turtling till you've got the upgraded dwelling - "If i go out now, I'll lose 'em since they aren't upgraded to no-retal / max range / crazy defense / no retal / blood drain / face rape / etc". With some units only at one tier, they added phases in the game where one race was more suited for exploration than others. Warlock, for instance, with their centaur at tier 1 and gargoyles at tier 2, were an early agressive race. Fast archer, durable and fast support. In addition, the three upgraded tiers of Dragons really made them unique. The green dragon was good, but weak. If you managed to get your tower to red dragons, they really started to kick ass. Black dragon? Jesus, you must have been agressive to get this much sulfur! But with heroes 3, everything was standardized. "This is your base unit. This is your upgraded unit. The base unit sucks. The upgraded unit is cool. All the races work like this. Turtle some with your capital while you upgrade, kekekekeke."
Oh, and standardized upgrades also meant that whoever attacked got double the disadvantage - enemy castle defenses as well as technology disadvantage from having to move from point A to B without being able to tech the YOU HAVE TO TECH THESE-units compared to his enemy, making it pointless to move out without upgraded units, meaning anything but turtling was pretty much suicide.
Last, but most important - Magic missile? The iconic FYOIIIING sound is what made the spell so great! In heroes 3, it's replaced by some generic magical projectile crap - no whistling silver arrow of awesome anymore!
Heroes 5 is enjoyable as the leveling and skill system has gotten a very nice rework, which is great, but unfortunately, it didn't remove itself from the standardized races and turtle potential. It's unfortunately doubtful they'll return to the things that made heroes 2 so good compared to 3, but it will probably still be a great game.
What WOULD make heroes 6 smell the glory of heroes 2 would be changes such as - Reverted low income, 250 > 500 >1k. - Varied ammounts of upgrades for different races, spaced out intelligently to give various races strenghts at various stages of the game - tier 1 with 3 upgrades? Sure! Tier 7 with no upgrades? Awesome! A race without a tier 7 unit at all? Wicked!
as well as general changes that could improve the game, such as - Units blocking / reducing ranged line of sight in combat. Eg, shoot past the tile of an enemy unit into a unit behind, lose 1/2 / all ranged attack power, meaning strategic placement of units more important.
The capitol rush gamestyle you describe of Homm 3 having is widely known as the "noob" style of play. It is terribly inefficient. And not much fun, I agree. Good thing that it is almost never useful in actual gameplay. Instead mass hero recruiting + treasure hunting is the de facto way to get income. And Upgrading units? Cmon, that is week 3 building priority perhaps, rarely any sooner. And online games tend to end around that time anyway - week 3 and week 4.
Can you increase the animation speed of units in the combat area? I played the 2 map tutorial at DH and was annoyed with how slow the combat played out after I ordered an action (options disabled in that version). Sending the healer to attack something and triggering a crit probably took 20 seconds until it was over...
theres this annoying glitch with alt tabs and the mouse cursors accuracy that kills the game for me so far That aside, hexagonal battle (erm spots? shapes?) and a better town view would be cool And the ability selection screen seems so ... unwieldly... i think i preferred the random element
I've only played 3 and recently (last week) got 5 for nostalgia reasons. The only thing that really let me down was aesthetics. Maybe it's because i haven't ever played 3 when i was older then like 12, where i only cared about "LOL I HAVE 300 GHOST DRAGONS RAWR" but i really miss the unique feel each race had. there was something in every faction that made me want to play them. The loss of units like Troglodytes, beholders, behemoth (maybe i just haven't seen some of these in 5 yet) really upsets me.
And the city views suck in 3d. It's hard to look at a max city in 5 and feel like the king of a huge fucking war city. I never know what any of the buildings look like =[
edit: oh right i came in this thread initially to ask if the demo for 6 had any multiplayer functionality at all, or a game mode that lets you set race/alliances to whatever you want instead of being locked in to teamsizes/faction
I played III, IV and V. I had the most fun with V, because it was streamlined. Most things are straightforward, but there's still a strategic depth in and out of combat. The second add-on balanced what was overpowered, and added more options.
The only things I disliked about V are the AI - cheating doesn't even begin to describe it - and the randomness in what spells your towns have. So, if VI fixes that, I'm buying it. If it keeps those mistakes - I'm buying it. Because it would still be a blast to play.
On July 02 2011 03:44 ChrisXIV wrote: The only things I disliked about V are the AI - cheating doesn't even begin to describe it - and the randomness in what spells your towns have. So, if VI fixes that, I'm buying it. If it keeps those mistakes - I'm buying it. Because it would still be a blast to play.
As far as I know you pick spells as you level up in this game?
I came to this thread because i was curious about people's opinions and instead i get to read tons of elitist posts saying why H2 or H3 or H4 or H5 was the best of the series. The only posts on topic were about town screens.
So does anyone have opinion about how the game in beta looks so far? (Unbiased opinion pls, try to pretend that H1-H5 never existed)
On July 04 2011 18:53 Kaniol wrote: I came to this thread because i was curious about people's opinions and instead i get to read tons of elitist posts saying why H2 or H3 or H4 or H5 was the best of the series. The only posts on topic were about town screens.
So does anyone have opinion about how the game in beta looks so far? (Unbiased opinion pls, try to pretend that H1-H5 never existed)
Pretty good, important points (that are certain):
Only 3 resources (wood ore and crystal): Better IMO, you could be screwed on some resources quite badly in other heroes (because of strong creature protecting that mine, or that mine being the most far away, luckily upgraded marketplace had your most important resource) Heroes don't learn spells randomly, you can choose with ability points (like it, some heroes were absolute crap if you didn't have certain spells) The random skill system is gone, it's just a skill tree now. (dislike it, liked that you were sometimes forced to use other skills than you would have liked. Also there is a chance that some skills/spells are so good that every hero will want them) No double upgrades (dislike, but that may come in an expansion like the last game) No decent townscreen (don't care)
watch the youtube vids of totalbiscuit and the yogscast. You can draw more conclusions from those.
I really like how Heroes VI is looking, I like most of the improvements a lot. It seems like the developers are trying to reduce the amount of luck (No more random abilities/skills, less different resources) in the game, which I think is beneficial to the game's playability.
I can't recall the difference between Homm3 and homm 5 initiative system, so it's hard for me to comment on whether that is good or not. I remember V's system was good though.
I also heard that they are making remakes of old heroes songs to the game, which is amazing as well. I really hope they have this song included:
On July 04 2011 19:41 Vapaach wrote: I really like how Heroes VI is looking, I like most of the improvements a lot. It seems like the developers are trying to reduce the amount of luck (No more random abilities/skills, less different resources) in the game, which I think is beneficial to the game's playability.
I can't recall the difference between Homm3 and homm 5 initiative system, so it's hard for me to comment on whether that is good or not. I remember V's system was good though.
I also heard that they are making remakes of old heroes songs to the game, which is amazing as well. I really hope they have this song included:
Hero 3 system had basically turns, where the fastest units act earlier in the turn, and the slower later. But each unit acts once a turn. If you wait, the fastest waiting units act last in the turn.
In Heroes 5, you had an initiative list, and faster units not only mover earlier, they also move more often than slower units. Waiting puts you back half one of your turns in the initiative slider. This for example also means that slowed zombies basically never act.
On July 04 2011 19:41 Vapaach wrote: I really like how Heroes VI is looking, I like most of the improvements a lot. It seems like the developers are trying to reduce the amount of luck (No more random abilities/skills, less different resources) in the game, which I think is beneficial to the game's playability.
I can't recall the difference between Homm3 and homm 5 initiative system, so it's hard for me to comment on whether that is good or not. I remember V's system was good though.
I also heard that they are making remakes of old heroes songs to the game, which is amazing as well. I really hope they have this song included:
Hero 3 system had basically turns, where the fastest units act earlier in the turn, and the slower later. But each unit acts once a turn. If you wait, the fastest waiting units act last in the turn.
In Heroes 5, you had an initiative list, and faster units not only mover earlier, they also move more often than slower units. Waiting puts you back half one of your turns in the initiative slider. This for example also means that slowed zombies basically never act.
In that case, I actually think I like the Heroes 3 system more, it seems more balanced to me ^^
On June 29 2011 16:32 True_Spike wrote: All the mistakes from the 5th part of te series seem to have made their way into the 6th, too. My biggest grief so far, though, are townscreens - or rather their complete absence. Towns in HOMM3 were SO gorgeous, I do not understand why it is impossible to reproduce 12 years later without making it look like garbage. What is this obsession people have with 3d graphics? Can't the townscreens at least be 2d if it makes them look FAR better?
Also, it strikes me as odd that musical scores are nowhere near as good as they ware more than a decade ago.
HOMM3 is the best in the series by far even by todays standards, in my opinion. I hope 6 will be at least half as good.
What are the mistakes of the 5th you are speaking about?
I thought the 5th was a great game, very similar to the 3rd, overall it felt like thesame game.
The only complaint you mention, is the townscreens, wich the 5th had and were quite good in my opinion. Only played through the tutorial in the 6th so far. Town didn't seem to grow, but you could only buy 1 building in that campaign. Hero leveling seems to have changed to remove all the randomness. UI is clean and easy to grasp... Overall, liking this game alot so far =)
Heroes 5 is in the same ballpark as Heroes 4, and 2(and slightly above heroes 1 and heroes chronicles). That is, it is a good game, no mistake. However it is not an excellent game, nowhere near genre culminating, like Heroes 3 is. That is, according to gamespot user rankings, which are the most objective criterion possible to establish for ranking games.
On June 30 2011 09:39 Kiarip wrote: Personally I liked the second 1 the most.
The third 1 was ok, but it seemed to add too many complications that really just slowed down the game imo. Like the Capitol upgrade path to get full income out of your first town... took really long.
Also the homogenization of units, all of them having upgrades, and no units having 2 upgrades, and etc. Kind of threw it off for me, the 2 types of heroes per castle I wasn't a big fan of either >_> honestly I think apart from having more Castles the third one didn't add anything that was that good over the second one.
Yeah, good thing no one ever uses the Capitol building path at most, one gets town hall for bonus gold, but after that its all unit buildings, all action, baby. Heroes 3 suits wonderfully for optimised gameplay. Though yes, in terms of user rankings, 3 is easily the highest ranked of the games.
On December 14 2010 10:31 plated.rawr wrote: I see a lot of people saluting Heroes 3 as the pinnacle of the series, but I really disagree. The third didn't really create anything new from the second game. Yes, it rehauled the races, yes it "upgraded" (also known as broke) necromancy, yes it added more units, but really, it was in no way superior to heroes 2, gameplay wise. More than anything, it removed racial differences as well as devalued agressive gameplay thanks to the capital income.
The negative changes from 2 to 3 includes - Capital income - Supercharged necromancy - Upgrades for EVERY unit - Terrible Magic Missile-sound!!!!
Capital income encourages turtling on your income rather than agressive expansion and exploring. Yes, you need special resources, but the map makers and random map generators always placed them within your "safe area", meaning you didn't really have to explore past your safe little center of the universe to get what you needed, and since you had 4k income + hero bonus, you'd not have to leave your pocket of perfect safety till you had your home castle pretty much fully upgraded. Stale and static.
A part about the very limited income of 1k was that if your opponent decided to be ballsy and get a gold mine outside his territorry, he'd be outproducing you insanely hard. 1k + 1k is far more significant than 4k + 1k. Lower home income and higher relative potential gain resulted in a far more dynamic and agressive game.
The low income also forces a higher awareness of your army composition. You won't be able to purchase all the dwelling each week, so you need to be very careful in what you choose. Half or more of the dwelling will be left, meaning your choice of composition will be very determinal to your game, causing for more exciting fights than "I have produced for x round, he's produced for y rounds, ergo I win"-borefests.
Supercharged necromancy - with this I mean the scaling unit return (up untill Vampire Lord I think it was?). On grandmaster necromancy you got something like 20% + hero speciality + 10% per necrospire of killed enemies returned in hitpoints as Vampire Lords, who were practically unkillable thanks to lifedrain, no retaliation and Raise Dead. Compare that to Heroes 2 base skeleton only-ressurection, and you can see what was a handy cannon fodder-production ability turned into a gamebreaking powerhouse without equal.
With upgrades available for every unit, the races lost a lot of their uniqueness. With every unit having upgrade potential, all your base unit feels like placeholders, meaning it'll encourage turtling till you've got the upgraded dwelling - "If i go out now, I'll lose 'em since they aren't upgraded to no-retal / max range / crazy defense / no retal / blood drain / face rape / etc". With some units only at one tier, they added phases in the game where one race was more suited for exploration than others. Warlock, for instance, with their centaur at tier 1 and gargoyles at tier 2, were an early agressive race. Fast archer, durable and fast support. In addition, the three upgraded tiers of Dragons really made them unique. The green dragon was good, but weak. If you managed to get your tower to red dragons, they really started to kick ass. Black dragon? Jesus, you must have been agressive to get this much sulfur! But with heroes 3, everything was standardized. "This is your base unit. This is your upgraded unit. The base unit sucks. The upgraded unit is cool. All the races work like this. Turtle some with your capital while you upgrade, kekekekeke."
Oh, and standardized upgrades also meant that whoever attacked got double the disadvantage - enemy castle defenses as well as technology disadvantage from having to move from point A to B without being able to tech the YOU HAVE TO TECH THESE-units compared to his enemy, making it pointless to move out without upgraded units, meaning anything but turtling was pretty much suicide.
Last, but most important - Magic missile? The iconic FYOIIIING sound is what made the spell so great! In heroes 3, it's replaced by some generic magical projectile crap - no whistling silver arrow of awesome anymore!
Heroes 5 is enjoyable as the leveling and skill system has gotten a very nice rework, which is great, but unfortunately, it didn't remove itself from the standardized races and turtle potential. It's unfortunately doubtful they'll return to the things that made heroes 2 so good compared to 3, but it will probably still be a great game.
What WOULD make heroes 6 smell the glory of heroes 2 would be changes such as - Reverted low income, 250 > 500 >1k. - Varied ammounts of upgrades for different races, spaced out intelligently to give various races strenghts at various stages of the game - tier 1 with 3 upgrades? Sure! Tier 7 with no upgrades? Awesome! A race without a tier 7 unit at all? Wicked!
as well as general changes that could improve the game, such as - Units blocking / reducing ranged line of sight in combat. Eg, shoot past the tile of an enemy unit into a unit behind, lose 1/2 / all ranged attack power, meaning strategic placement of units more important.
The capitol rush gamestyle you describe of Homm 3 having is widely known as the "noob" style of play. It is terribly inefficient. And not much fun, I agree. Good thing that it is almost never useful in actual gameplay. Instead mass hero recruiting + treasure hunting is the de facto way to get income. And Upgrading units? Cmon, that is week 3 building priority perhaps, rarely any sooner. And online games tend to end around that time anyway - week 3 and week 4.
yeah but if you make the map big enough or make the creatures strong enough that won't be the right way to play anymore.
Anyways the point is that it's unnecessary, it doesn't matter people actually play game, they obviously work around it in a way that makes it more playable, but it still has some shitty features.
Plus let's not forget a bunch of useless-ish secondary skills they added.
EPT
at most, one gets town hall for bonus gold, but after that its all unit buildings, all action, baby. Heroes 3 suits wonderfully for optimised gameplay. Though yes, in terms of user rankings, 3 is easily the highest ranked of the games.
