Why did NWC screw up simple stuff over the games?

[Xfing]

It seems that NWC made some really bad and unnecessary screwups in Might and Magic 8 which were right and correct in 7 and 6.

For example, having perfectly implemented no-respawn zones in MM7 (Castle Harmondale), they managed to screw it up in 8, where the Merchant House of Alvar and Balthazar Lair shouldn't respawn at all, yet they do.

Also, the reputation mechanic got simplified with each progressive game, from 6 where practically anything you did could affect it, to 8 where practically nothing you did affected it. You could Armageddon an entire town and your rep didn't even change (That one is actually understandable, since it's not like everyone would SEE you casting Armageddon), but killing guards or peasants didn't lower your rep for you either.

So how do you explain this? Time constraints?

[kurac]

if i might add that they also messed up the recovery time on bow skill that was just fine with mm7. so having an expert bow with skill 4 is same as having expert bow with skill 40, absolutely same speed was very annoying cause i couldnt fire them bows like machine guns as i could in mm7 had to destroy my whole dark elf party cause it was useless

edit: oh and yes, the fag in the merchant house in ravenshore telling me "hey, you got some chests downstairs, put stuff there that you dont want to lose!" so i was like "yay! i will put all the valuables there so the map respawn wont destroy them when i train 50 levels at once!"

guess what. map respawned

[Arret]

The reputation changed because starting in 7, reputation is local to a zone rather than global and more importantly affects merchant prices. This is best demonstrated in MM7 after you clear out the troglodytes where sell prices go from 50% to over 70% after 1 quest. Even in 8, if you actually bother to donate 5 times in the temple, you get slightly better prices. Rather than overhaul the mechanic, they just put it out as is.

With peasants I'm sure it was due to the complaints about how easy it was to mistakenly kill them in 6, which was changed to just a town hall fine in 7.

[hellegennes]

Well, it was easy to kill one, but if you kill the whole village it's certainly not a mistake. And by the way that's absurd on the part of the developers, because the only reason the peasants were killable was to help you reduce your reputation fast. But since there is not need for that in MM7, why did they leave the ability to kill peasants at all?

[Arret]

Because terrorizing the local population with Blasters is fun.

[Xfing]

Somebody made a fix for the Merchant House of Alvar not to respawn, right? Probably GrayFace. Dunno how to use it, though. And another should be made for the Balthazar Lair, it makes zero sense for it to respawn.

[Arret]

I'm pretty sure no one fixed the containers because of the difficulty involved. I agree that the respawns in Balthazar Lair are ridiculous and need to be fixed though. The whole point of the main line story was to kick them out.

[Xfing]

I actually have the file still. The one that's supposed to fix the Merchant House, I mean. It's a Notepad file and is called AlvMercFix or something like that. I keep it in my main directory, but haven't been able to make it work. I agree, though, that it would be really neat if this was fixed.