Things you wish could've been in MM7/MM8 baseline

[darkdill]

There's plenty of things in these games that feel as though should've been implemented by the developers, but don't exist in-game and thus you have to make do with other, less suitable methods.

For instance, take Dragons in both MM7 and MM8. You can inflict all sorts of debuffs on them like Shrinking Ray, Slow, etc., and yet in the HOMM games they have total immunity to stuff like that. Unfortunately, in order to give a Dragon immunity to something like Shrinking Ray, you'd have to make them totally immune to Dark, meaning you can't use Shrapmetal to damage it. That feels awfully restrictive.

Another thing that really feels bad is that Trolls and Minotaurs in MM8 feel underpowered compared to other classes, Minotaurs especially. They can only GM Axe and Perception, can't wear boots or helmets, and are really just there for novelty or in case you got a good axe artifact/relic. Trolls have a similar problem, in that they're only good for their high HP pool and ability to GM Mace, Staff and Leather. It would've been nice if there could've been "Troll" and "Minotaur" skills that give them something unique and useful. For instance, if I had been part of the developers at 3DO, I'd have given Trolls the ability to sacrifice some health in order to Taunt enemies, causing enemies to prioritize your Troll instead of your vulnerable Cleric or Necromancer.

Sadly, due to how the game is coded, there's no way to add those things. You'd have to completely redesign the engine from scratch.

That said, if you could've added something while the game was in development, what would you have added?

[Bandobras Took]

The Dragon should have been MM8's variant of the Monk: Unarmed for attacks, Dodging for defense, and Dragon Ability if you want to breath fire at people.

Preservation should have caused Death/Eradication to cause unconsciousness instead.

I would have also added a neutral choice in addition to the good/evil split in MM7.