The Return of the Reviewer

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Angelspit
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The Return of the Reviewer

Unread postby Angelspit » 23 Oct 2009, 00:50

<imh src="/https://www.celestialheavens.com/homm3/ ... etower.JPG" align=right vspace=10 hspace=10>The Qurqirish Dragon went back to map reviewing recently and played through the following Heroes of Might and Magic III and IV maps:



Age of Legends

Discoveries

Chameleon

The land or Arylia

Growing Nations

Disenchanted Forest

A Narrow Divide

Oceania



You will find them all in the <a href="/https://www.celestialheavens.com/maprev ... .php#">Map Review section</a>. All articles contain ratings, gameplay information, bugs and a bottomline. More reviews will be published in the near future.

If you would like to take a look at the original page visit this link:
https://www.celestialheavens.com/1256259008
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Unread postby Kalah » 23 Oct 2009, 07:32

Yay!
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The Return of the Reviewer

Unread postby Artas1984 » 23 Oct 2009, 08:45

Good thing he does not review H5 maps - that would be a waste of time..
Edited on Fri, Oct 23 2009, 04:45 by Artas1984
Heroes franchise was not about the free actions of Heroes or monsters, it was not about 3D of shiny graphics either, it was about diversity and balance, simplicity of gameplay and realistic picture, strategy in it's purest form. That's why Heroes 3 will be the greatest game of all, because only Heroes 3 has all those qualities together, no matter which one you personally like more. This statement is unquestionable, uncriticized and undeniable .

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The Return of the Reviewer

Unread postby Akul » 23 Oct 2009, 08:51

Good to see that we have reviewers again :D



@Artas1984:

as unbelievable as it may sound, there are a a lot of people (myself included) who like H5 and would like to have reviews of its maps as well.

Also, your comment about "Waste of time" shows great disrespect towards mapmakers who make H5 maps.
Edited on Fri, Oct 23 2009, 04:54 by Akul
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The Return of the Reviewer

Unread postby Kalah » 23 Oct 2009, 09:11

Reviewing campaigns is a lot of work, of course, but I also see it as a bit of a necessity to have independent reviews on them.
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The Return of the Reviewer

Unread postby Angelspit » 23 Oct 2009, 13:14

A Heroes V map is next if I remember correctly.
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Re: The Return of the Reviewer

Unread postby Qurqirish Dragon » 23 Oct 2009, 15:44

Angelspit wrote:A Heroes V map is next if I remember correctly.
If it is one of my review (I have about 6 more that aren't on the above list), then I mis-typed the header (I noticed that on comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic) All my remaining reviews that you have not posted are Heroes 3 maps, and all but one are RoE. I have one more map from the batch I downloaded, then I am going to get a bunch of H4 maps. I've decided that I am always going to go to the oldest, unreviewed maps, but I am going to cycle through H3/4/5 for variety in my experience. I usually get 6 or 7 maps at a time (usually that is the number I can fit on one sheet of paper, leaving space for notes), so after the next H3 map, I will have 6 H4 maps, then some H5s.

@Artas: Even if I agreed with you (and I don't), my philosophy is that every map deserves a review. After all, if a person is making bad maps, some constructive criticism should improve future efforts.

I have made several maps for H2 and H3 (even a campaign for H2!), but they never come out that great. I know makes a map good, but for some reason I cannot execute it on my own (although I still like my SoD tutorial map)

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Unread postby Artas1984 » 23 Oct 2009, 19:17

My philosophy and disrespect is that Ubisoft STOLE the Heroes franchise and made money for themselves out of a legendary good game. That is a cheap strategy. Just like EA did with many games, so did Ubi. So yes i stick with my opinion definitely.



A dream come true would be if a forum like CL full of hard-core classic Heroes lovers would stand on it's own ground and ban Heroes 5 franshise at all showing total disrespect to Ubisoft they deserve, so that they might think for the fans next time when they release a game and not for their wallets. And that's the bottom point.



As for those who like H5 - i respect their likeness and say nothing bad about it. Every one has a taste of their own.
Edited on Fri, Oct 23 2009, 15:19 by Artas1984
Heroes franchise was not about the free actions of Heroes or monsters, it was not about 3D of shiny graphics either, it was about diversity and balance, simplicity of gameplay and realistic picture, strategy in it's purest form. That's why Heroes 3 will be the greatest game of all, because only Heroes 3 has all those qualities together, no matter which one you personally like more. This statement is unquestionable, uncriticized and undeniable .

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Unread postby Akul » 23 Oct 2009, 21:51

[My philosophy and disrespect is that Ubisoft STOLE the Heroes franchise and made money for themselves out of a legendary good game. That is a cheap strategy.]



1. They bought it. If not them, somebody else would. Thats how game market works boy

2. There were mor worse candidates then there were better ones... and that "better" is questionable as well

3. Making money is the goal of EVERY developer. They make games to entertain us and if we like the game, we buy it. Thats how the world works

4. A new HoMM game, no matter who makes it, will make a lot of people happy and increase the HoMM fandoms by adding new players to it (many of whom will they get older games as well). Nobody suffers because of it.

On the other hand, no new HoMM game lets the situation stay the same. In other words, nobody is happy besides few elitist fanboys who make less then 5% of players and about whom producers don't care



[A dream come true would be if a forum like CL full of hard-core classic Heroes lovers would stand on it's own ground and ban Heroes 5 franshise at all showing total disrespect to Ubisoft they deserve, so that they might think for the fans next time when they release a game and not for their wallets. And that's the bottom point.]



For that dream to come true, another dream of yours needs to come true: the entire forum should hate the game.

You see, there is a whole bunch of those who love or at least like H5. Many of them are older members like me.
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Unread postby hobowu » 24 Oct 2009, 00:02

[A new HoMM game, no matter who makes it, will make a lot of people happy]
I'll admit I was one of those, until I played H5, then all my dreams were shattered.

I'm sure more than 5% of "elitist fanboys" dislike HoMM5.
You may like HV (nothing wrong if you do like it), but it's definitely true that a sizeable population of those who played H3 (and H4) dislike/bordering-on-hate Homm5 and what nival/ubi have done to the game.

H5 games also take so long! (in comparison with H3. I can finish the Warlords map in H3 in about an hour and a half, can't do that in HV.
The AI is "better" in H5 though)

What most game developers these days don't understand is that pretty graphics aren't everything. Gameplay and replayability are far more important


On a brighter note, kudos for maptesters!
Always good to know which maps are worth downloading and playing through =)

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The Return of the Reviewer

Unread postby Akul » 24 Oct 2009, 11:16

Gameplay additions in H5:

1. Complex Skill System

2. Alternative upgrades for creatures (needs some balancment tough)

3. Gating

4. Dark Energy Based Necromancy (necromancy finally becomes a fun thing)

5. Awesome abilities for Sylvan Heroes (for those who know how to use them)

6. Mini artifacts in Academies (useless IMO, but still a nice addition)

7. Runic Magic

8. Blood Rage

9. Unique skills and abilities for different hero classes, especialy for Barbarians

10. Caravans on map

...



You can say that H5 was unbalanced. You can say that it doesn't have the "feel" the older games had. You can say that it was unoptimized. You can say a lot of bad things about it, but you can't say that H5 was only nice graphics. H5 added a bunch of gameplay features so Ubi did understand that gameplay isn't everything. I understand that it is fancy to blame new games for having nice graphics and nothing else, but that is not always true. There are other bad things as well.
Edited on Sat, Oct 24 2009, 07:17 by Akul
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The Return of the Reviewer

Unread postby Zamolxis » 24 Oct 2009, 11:32

@Akul: People use the "stole" word because they are very frustrated Ubi paid like nothing for a great franchise, and then invested a too modest amount of money in it, while trying to gain the most profits. It was an arguably bad investment / project management strategy, because some of us think that if they handled the project differently, we wouldn't have ten people arguing in such threads whether the game is good or bad, but hundreds.

People are angry with Ubisoft because we shouted in all languages at them (well, at least a lot in English & French) and on all forums (official, un-official or hidden) what large parts of the community expect from the game, and later on during the development, what game elements really suck for some of us. And then people are angry with Nival, who had quite an unprofessional approach of the game, by putting in there what they wanted, with little regard to what we wanted, as if they had been given a fresh new project, not a franchise with a history and a community with pretty well defined tastes. And eventually people are angry with Ubi again for allowing Nival to act like this.

I respect your liking of H5, and I guess nobody (or not many) expect you to change your taste. But I think what many H5-"haters" expect from the H5 fans, is a more realistic perception of how much Ubi failed to deliver a game that would appease the community in general.

Perhaps you're looking at these forum "fights", with 5-10 users defending and 5-10 users bashing H5 and say "hey, at least Ubi managed to make 50% of us happy". But what's wrong (sorry to say) with this perception, is that you may not realize that most people who are disappointed in a game, and don't even get a ray of hope from the developer that things may improve in the future, usually leave the community after a while. My personal perception is that of all the H2, H3 & H4 fanbase communities, judging by the little amount of players arguing over H5, perhaps not more than 10% actually liked H5 enough to remain on forums and defend it, 10% still hope their fight will lead to a better game one day, while the vast majority of 80% simply moved on to other games, some already disappointed by the turn the game took with H4, and most because the way H5 was done really killed their hope.

And that's a key element - hope. Half of the community was let down by H4, but at that point most still had the hope. And we can see from NWC's H5 sketches that they understood what went wrong and what didn't. Unfortunately for us 3DO went bankrupt. Ubisoft & Nival had the responsibility to spend a bit more time reading the forums and playing all games, to understand what the community needed. They only looked at numbers, saw H3 sold 3 times better than H4, and started building on that (well, kinda, considering how much Warhammer they brought in). Instead, they should have tried to understand why H4 failed to sell as much (or more), but also what even H3 fans liked in H4 and should be kept. What I believe most of us expected was continuity from H4, but correcting all that frustrated us. What hey gave was continuity from H3, including keeping some of its flaws, but then repeating some of H4's mistakes (and unfortunately only the type of mistakes that did not help give the "continuity" feeling).

So to conclude, I tend to agree with Artas that maybe a "dream come true" would be to have one day a NWC nostalgic HoMM forum, which would ban Ubi's releases from its pages, until they apologize (will never happen, but we're talking "dreams come true" here) and correct their mistake by building a H6 or H7 that would satisfy all the old HoMM fans who left the community in the past few years out of frustration.

------------------------------

QD - apologies for such a long and rather off-topic post. Your works is impressive and much appreciated (even if it includes H5:). I just hope this didn't bother you too much. Posts like this are all we have. Alternative would be for the remaining of us to leave the forums all together, but I'm not sure who will gain from that (Ubi won't know why they don't make more money, you'd have less fellow forumers and tournament players and we'd be frustrated that we've given up the fight maybe too easy...)
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Re: The Return of the Reviewer

Unread postby Qurqirish Dragon » 24 Oct 2009, 14:00

Zamolxis wrote: QD - apologies for such a long and rather off-topic post. Your works is impressive and much appreciated (even if it includes H5:). I just hope this didn't bother you too much. Posts like this are all we have. Alternative would be for the remaining of us to leave the forums all together, but I'm not sure who will gain from that (Ubi won't know why they don't make more money, you'd have less fellow forumers and tournament players and we'd be frustrated that we've given up the fight maybe too easy...)
No problem. I wouldn't have expected a large discussion on the fact that I have started submitting reviews again. Although discussing the problems with the H4-to-H5 change *IS* off topic, it can be argued that the H5 disappointment is the reason for few H5 reviews. (of course, there haven't been many reviews of ANY maps recently (other than my own).

On that last note, I have now downloaded 5 H4 maps, one of which is apparantly a 6-map campaign (which is why only 5 maps- I'll need more space on my paper for notes about the campaign.) The last couple H3 maps I reviewed had some pretty big flaws in them, unfortunately. For full details, either wait until they are posted here, or check out the newsgroup I mentioned above.
Matthew Charlap -353 HoMM map reviews and counting...

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Re: The Return of the Reviewer

Unread postby ThunderTitan » 26 Oct 2009, 07:13

Akul wrote:>but you can't say that H5 was only nice graphics<l

I still don't see how you people can think the graphic was nice...
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Unread postby astral76minor » 27 Oct 2009, 03:11

Let's face it... H5 was meant for online multiplayer gameplay. The AI is always the same. Heroes 5 was meant to be played with at least 2 human players. The problem with multiplayer and humans, is that we simply do not communicate and start playing the game online against each other or even as allies. Add more to the boredom and play campaign mode, it takes away from the fine art of Heroes 5. C'mon guys and gals, load up Hamachi and play H5 with up to 8 human players on the internet! Play H5 with a high broadband connection and enjoy.... BTW, I'd like to know how many people played H5 online with 3 human players???? Using Hamachi and autosave of course. WTF, I agree with medical use of certain medications when death is close! S&*$, I think certain things should be legal when life turns to burnt toast.... IF IT MAKES YOU HAPPY, then play H5 online with me, darn it, for lack of better words.
Edited on Tue, Oct 27 2009, 05:06 by astral76minor

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Unread postby ByteBandit » 22 Nov 2009, 07:45

Hmmmm......a little Nostalgia perhaps?

http://www.mmportals.com/2003/h2/the-as ... tips12.htm

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The Return of the Reviewer

Unread postby Horath » 23 Nov 2009, 16:50

Great to see this interest in the old games!!! I've recently been playing through MMVI and man, no offense to others, but HoMM II & III and MM VI & VII were amazing, fantastic games. I'm very glad to still own all of them.

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The Return of the Reviewer

Unread postby Psychobabble » 22 Dec 2009, 03:08

hahaha, awesome. I come back check the front page of the site like I do every 6 months or so and what do I find but a review of my very first contribution to the heroes community :). Hi guys, and good to see qurquish, kalah, angelspit still keeping the faith!



I put a lot of work into A Narrow Divide but I was making it in the really early days of the game when we didn't really understand the script maker. I tried to do way to much and in a really cumbersome way, it definitely isn't the most polished or accomplished of maps around. But there were hardly any maps with scripts at the time so it was something.



PS. it's hilarious to see people trashing the money grubbing profiteering Ubi by reference to the previous owners.... 3DO and NWC being posthumously lionised, I never thought I'd see the day!!!

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The Return of the Reviewer

Unread postby Psychobabble » 22 Dec 2009, 03:25

Oh, and some quick errors. The Age of Legends and discoveries reviews are not in the map review list (despite being in this post) and the land of (not or!) Arylia and Chameleon reviews says they was done by me not qurquish. Also all of the new reviews have a blank small image placeholder for some reason. I forget what the review upload back end looks like, but there was a cell somewhere for award or H3 images - find out what was in that cell for my other H4 reviews, (which didn't have an award) and make sure the new reviews are the same.



And i've read over the other reviews, bringing back memories there :). I never reviewed Oceania because I HATED playing XL maps with a passion, they just took so long and would always end up with you having a massive army and the enemy AI being pathetic and just rolling over. It was one of the earliest maps in the database though.



Oh, and finally, I think with A Narrow Divide I deliberately stopped death having necro because it was broken. Probably did wreck the balance though but it was so boring just playing unlimited vamps with death every time :).

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Unread postby Kalah » 22 Dec 2009, 08:03

PB!! :-D

Don't be a stranger, dude. You're allowed to just pop in once in a while, you know. :)


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