UbiSoft is Making Money

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UbiSoft is Making Money

Unread postby Roman » 26 Oct 2008, 15:44

I think Heroes 5 is an excellent game and Nival/Ubisoft did a good job on it and saved the franchise. As such, I would expect that Heroes 6 would be similarly well-done and if not, well then I would just stay with Heroes 5, just as I stayed with Heroes 3, when Heroes 4 was released and did not appeal to me.

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Unread postby Asheera » 26 Oct 2008, 17:30

Apart from some bugs and a somehow bad engine I have to say that I really like the Heroes 5 gameplay, towns, etc, and hope that Heroes 6 would be similar - but maybe with even more features. :)
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UbiSoft is Making Money

Unread postby Roman » 26 Oct 2008, 17:33

Asheera, thanks for posting that article - I enjoyed reading it a great deal. The automatic translation is far from perfect, but understandable enough. :)



I think I agree with the conclusion that the back and forth between a developer and a publisher can lead to a better game in the end.



That said, I was shocked to read that Ubisoft initially wanted the game to be realtime! That would have been the end of the HOMM series for me!

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Unread postby Zamolxis » 26 Oct 2008, 17:40

Thanks for the article Asheera. Quite informative, even if he's quite subjective about several aspects of the development process.

What Mishulin leaves out is how much they wanted to make the game look like Warhammer, and how much the community & Ubi had to fight that back (well, Ubisoft more for legal reasons of course...). And still the game has too many Warhammer units for my taste. And there are many other things he leaves out, but I went over that so many times in the past and I'm not in the mood of repeating myself.
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Unread postby Kristo » 26 Oct 2008, 18:48

Wow, I really like a lot of the initial screenshots from Nival. It's a shame Ubisoft made them change things.
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Unread postby Zamolxis » 26 Oct 2008, 20:22

I have to agree with Kristo on this one.

Game looked initially very promising, but it was mainly Ubi who came with the request to make the game "darker". Because for them darker = more mature (=stupid philosophy if you ask me). And they "darkened" everything: the interface, the creatures, the alignments...

So yeah, here we have one of the 100 reasons I don't like Heroes V. Heroes III had the perfect balance in terms of alignment atmosphere: 3 Good, 3 Neutral, 3 Evil. Heroes V on the other hand was totally unbalanced from this pov upon release: 3 Neutral & 3 Evil. That's it (and add-ons didn't improve that one bit).

If anyone thinks Haven, Sylvan or Academy can be labeled as "Good" in H5, pls send me a PM (to not pollute this topic) and I'll prove to you why they are Neutral at best.
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Unread postby Asheera » 26 Oct 2008, 21:11

Academy may even be labeled as 'evil' since they enslaved the Orcs.

EDIT: I hope I did not 'pollute' this thread...
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Unread postby Zamolxis » 26 Oct 2008, 22:25

Yep. That's only part of my argument that Academy is "Neutral at best". And I have similar arguments for the other two. ;)
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Unread postby Jolly Joker » 27 Oct 2008, 06:34

We had this discussion already one way or another, but I think, that your classification is wrong. Let's see.

The real evil seem to be the Demons (Infermo). They are alien (from another plane) and want to destroy the life of Ashan. This is - basically - the Warhammer idea of the "demons of the Warp".

Humans are, therefore, in a way like humanity in Warhammer: they fight the Demons, have an inquisition and so on, and WOULD BE good, except that goodness is usually swept away in centuries of wars and vigilance. That means, Humans WANT TO BE good, but in reality are tainted with evil (and that is fittingly exemplified in them having Light and Dark magic). That means, Humans are not neutral in the usual grey sense. They strive to be good - and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they become evil doing that. Which means they are EITHER good (Light Magic, original upgrades) OR evil (Dark Magic, second set of upgrades).

Sylvans - or Elves - are the same, basically. They WERE good, but the Demons have corrupted them (with the events the Tieru scenario is giving). It's basically the same then with the humans, only the situation is a bit different. The Demons did something which led to genocide (an evil thing, obviously) which led to Sylvans being tainted: I would consider them good - with the exception of the taint concerning the Dark Elves and their stance and actions toward them. This part of the story is a Warhammer copy as well.

The Dark Elves might considered evil. However, they have an excuse. They have been hunted and killed and managed to make them a new home. They are not welcome in the realm of the Dwarves as well, and they have been wronged by their cousins. That means, as long as things cannot be sorted out with the Sylvans they will be enemies to the death. Moreover it's clear they are distrustful. *I* wouldn't call them evil. They are misguided and since they are Elves, they are misguided with a vengeance.

Which leads us to the Dwarves, clearly a neutral faction, or are they? They xenophobic and to themselves. The reason is, their loyalties are strong, stronger than with everyone else, and they would honour each and every agreement to the death. Other races are not so loyal, so they have been disappointed a couple of times and therefore mistrust everyone else. Which actually would make them a good race, if they were not so elitist and arrogant because of that. They are furthermore flawed in their greed for precious things.
This is, interestingly enough, a race that would be good, if it would't be so darn sure they were better than the rest, so they are diluted somewhat to goodish-neutral.
Another Warhammer rip-off, but Dwarves have been a rip-off since their second appearance, so that doesn't really count. :)

Then there is the Academy - magical scientists we might call them, and THEY are of course neutral as well - they have to be, since science will not let itself stop with "good" and "evil". Except that there IS a limit, and that limit has been Necromancy. Initially a Wizard "project", things were declared taboo - but real scientists won't let themselves stop from something like that. So you might say that the Academy are the Wizards with something like a rest of a conscience, while the Necropolis are the Wizards without any conscience. This, by the way, is NOT Warhammer. :)

However, since Necromancy as such seems to be evil in that souls are enslaved and unlife is nurtured by evil ways, I would classify Necropolis as evil, too.

That leaves the Orcs, a creation of the wizards, and while everyone else would probably classify them as neutral, in reality they are the good ones. :) Yes, they are! Created from rather inferior material as a mix of demon and human, they have become the saviours of ashan. They are ugly, but that's not their fault. They have honour. They are suppressed and belittled, but they found their own way. In their way - as a race - they strive for peace - they are not partaking in the strife on Ashan - with the exception that they still do fight the evil they were made to fight.
This is actually a pretty original thing from Nival.
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Unread postby TheRider » 27 Oct 2008, 09:43

@jj

ok, so you are calling them - 1 wanna be good, 1 ex good, 1 neutral and 3 evil aligments ??? and the orcs that were created from demon blood and were supposed to be bloodthursty, are actually the good guys (no argue here). I can take that, but I think that the Creator Gods in that universe are crazy and no one follows the essence it was created with. Which leads to the Zamolkis' opinion that this is one chaotic dark universe that doesnt follow its initial way.

Heroes was a high fantasy game, now it is low fantasy game.

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Unread postby Jolly Joker » 27 Oct 2008, 11:10

Allow me to disagree. No one is good or bad by nature - there has to be a possibility to be both otherwise you are what you naturally are which is neither good nor evil like with animals. If you have no choice, you are driven by something you cannot influence - which is pretty boring in the medium and long run.

So something that is good by definition, like Castle or Rampart in Heroes 3 is in fact nothing at all, except a cliché. Basically, the Light side of the Haven in H 5 is good because they CAN be bad as well (and in fact are both depending on what you pick and how you write the story). No one is good as such, but what happens depends on the actual and acting individuals.

In other words, it is as it should be in an immersive universe, whether you like it or not, whether you call that low fantasy or not.
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Unread postby TheRider » 27 Oct 2008, 17:10

of course it is so, but why the bad guys are very clear defined as bad and the good guys could act either as good or bad (lack of virtues?) it seems to me (if I can use the Ad&d rules that the evil guys are lawful evil and the good are chaotic good :) )

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Unread postby Jolly Joker » 27 Oct 2008, 17:34

The 2 evil guys are evil because what they do or aim for is bad for basically everyone else, if they get free hand.

Now define good.
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Unread postby Asheera » 27 Oct 2008, 17:34

I have to agree that it's a lot more interesting to have good and bad parts and not having "ultimate good" or "ultimate evil" alignments set in stone for the factions or something like that.
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Unread postby TheRider » 27 Oct 2008, 17:45

service to self without honoring the others defines evil (or acting against natural laws or cosmic way ot things).

service to others defines good, honoring the right of others to exist in their own ways and supporting them defines good. good is not defined by fighting the evil (this only leads to even more chaos).

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Unread postby Moragauth » 27 Oct 2008, 18:23

I agree with JJ on Dungeon. What does one expect from a faction unfairly persecuted, that had to fight to survive? Personally I find them far more "good" than the Sylvan hippies and their eco-fundamentalism, and worthy of my admiration. As for the dwarves, I do not think their materialism is a flaw.



As for the orcs, I wonder when Nival will reveal the metaphysics whereby creatures of crafted partly of pure evil can be "good"...



TheRider, yes, that is the simplistic product of modern and Christian ethicizing. The ancients never had this idiotic concept of ethics whereby service to the self was inherently "evil", as opposed to actively seeking the harm of others in disregard of their interests. I realize this is totally different to D&D alignments, but I consider them to be the equivalent of a high school kid's paper on ethics. I.e. worthless.



I for one am happy HV is more akin to WH. I have always liked the WH setting and aside from the MMORPG, have never liked the strategy games associated with it. HV comes close to being one. :)
Edited on Mon, Oct 27 2008, 14:24 by Moragauth

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Re: UbiSoft is Making Money

Unread postby Jolly Joker » 27 Oct 2008, 19:02

TheRider wrote:service to self without honoring the others defines evil (or acting against natural laws or cosmic way ot things).

service to others defines good, honoring the right of others to exist in their own ways and supporting them defines good. good is not defined by fighting the evil (this only leads to even more chaos).
What game did you get that from? I mean, acting against natural laws or the cosmic way of things?
What is that supposed to mean? Service to others is good?
WHY?

I mean, what about those you serve? They accept services? THat's not good, isn't it?
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Unread postby astral76minor » 27 Oct 2008, 20:06

If you can still find the original first release beta of H5, it did let you move creatures over the adventure map just like H4. Like always, UBI did not want the programming issues associated with that and did not include this important feature in the official release of H5 standard. Since the game is CPU intensive, when you add more heroes, monsters, etc to the map it slows down the AI and makes you want a Quad CPU. Just try an impossible map in heroic mode and you'll see how slow the AI turns are....in multiplayer on the internet of course.
Edited on Mon, Oct 27 2008, 16:10 by astral76minor

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Unread postby astral76minor » 27 Oct 2008, 20:56

After carefully reading the manual PDF, the opposites can be figured out as follows:

Haven (Life) vs. Necromancer (Death)

Academy (Order) vs. Dungeon (Chaos)

Sylvan (Nature) vs. Stronghold (Might)

This leaves only two factions that must be opposites:

Fortress (Dwarves) vs. Inferno (Devils)

For a total of 8 in ToE.

Since we agreed it is all fantasy, I agree that the mapmaker decides how the factions oppose each other. You can make any war you desire. I think H2 was way more balanced with factions, but it was simple then....

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Re: UbiSoft is Making Money

Unread postby Zamolxis » 28 Oct 2008, 00:23

TheRider wrote:"Heroes was a high fantasy game, now it is low fantasy game."
I couldn't have said it better myself. You nailed it down perfectly TheRider. ;)

I was sure that if JJ will pass by, this will turn into a technical debate, with some ppl actually missing the essence, which cannot be quoted in long posts from manuals, but it's about how the game feels, and that was very well expressed by TheRider in just once sentence.

There's nothing that you can/need to prove here JJ. People simply have different tastes. You and I will always disagree on things like this. Lord of the Rings "bored you to death" (exact quote), while the Heroes V storyline used to give you mental orgasms when you were doing the official translation for Ubisoft (and I'm only slightly exaggerating your enthusiasm back then). I love LOTR and consider the H5 storyline a series of clumsy, obvious attempts to avoid clichés, which fails to deliver a catchy, not-forced original story.

I have accepted your tastes from quite the beginning. I hope one day you'll learn to accept mine (and others') and stop trying to prove anything.

I don't like H5 because whatever faction I choose, I cannot escape the feeling I'm only leading a bunch of fanatic/bloodthirsty/greedy/evil pack of creatures, which doesn't give much satisfaction (kinda like having to choose between soviets, nazis & anarchists for example). You enjoy/dislike games from a totally different perspective and you'll never get anywhere trying to prove, from that perspective, that you are right and others are wrong.


@ astral76minor: Regarding moving creatures on the map, I'm not sure what beta are you talking about, because I know the game since alpha, and still there was no creature movement on the map. Regarding the opposites you extracted from the manual, I'm not sure if you're trying to make a point for the atmospheric balance in the game. It's like saying there was balance in WW2 because Stalin turned against Hitler. That was not Good facing Evil, just Lesser Evil facing Greater Evil, and the Lesser Evil won. And that's the choice I feel it's given to me in H5 as well.
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