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Corribus
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Unread postby Corribus » 28 Aug 2005, 00:57

I regret that I have not made part 3 yet... too many maps to make, too little time. I hope to get to it at some point (I already have the story sketch). Right now I'm busy with the WoG campaign, but if FNORD has to take a hiatus to work on the new version, then maybe I'll have some time to finish that one up.
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Corribus
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Unread postby Corribus » 28 Aug 2005, 01:01

@NickMP - Your point about game engines is a good one (wish I had thought of it! :-). It also serves to stress that taking risks with a formula when the sequel is far removed temporally from an earlier version makes more sense, because you're invariably at that point going to have to use a new engine. Also, one thing I've always believed, is that the long-term success of Heroes and its popularity is the easy with which the player can be the creator. I could be wrong, but few people probably stick to the campaigns that come with the game. Thus as long as the game engine and AI are solid, the game should be a success, no matter what form it takes (after all, H4, which is broken, still endures!).



(I haven't played Wind of Thorns yet - it's on my list. Someone recommended it to me.. oh yeah it was wimfrits! :P)
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Unread postby protecyon » 28 Aug 2005, 05:19

I find the statement given by Dragon Angel very interesting that the recipe for a sequel as stated by a Firaxis employee is "1/3 old, 1/3 improved, 1/3 new".



In the case of Heroes 5 it seems that people are not noticing the 33% that is new to the HOMM series. For example the new Active Time Battle system is a completely new feature for the HOMM series. It not only changes the way you play the game in terms of making you think faster, it also forces you to think on a macro scale, instead of a micro scale due to time constraints.



Also, the new ghost feature could potentially add more depth to the multiplayer games by adding a layer of espionage to the game.



Finally, the simultaneous turn mode is a new feature that will speed up the monotonous early portion of the game.



Of course it is evident that Nival and Ubisoft are nervous about adding these new features as they are completely optional. They do not want to take the risk of forcing these features on the fans in fear of losing the existing customer base. Thus, if fans don't like these features they can turn them off. However, this shows that Ubisoft and Nival are willing to innovate and incorporate new features into the series.

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Gaidal Cain
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Unread postby Gaidal Cain » 28 Aug 2005, 08:15

Sir Charles wrote: "People look at the handful of units we've seen, they look at some other minor aspects of the game and they then close their eyes to the rest of the game and begin to look at it as if they had tunnel-vision and they label it an H3 clone."



You say that as if the argument came after the town lineups were revealed. This is of course not the case. The high point of that discussion came with the infamous Nival interviews. For people who think H4 did very right in changing things as chaining and non-simul retal- i.e. people who wanted H5 to keep the extra emphasis on strategy that H4 tried to get over H3-, seeing these things discarded with a simple "Yes", and a smiley to add insult to injury, it was very provoking. Provoked people can't be excpected to act entirely rational.



@protecyon:

For those who only play SP, two of those changes are worthless. For those who play Hotseat, all of them are. Even if I don't doubt that they are good additions, I don't think they will impact my playing. So far, the only entirely new feature that's I'm more or less guaranteed to see in every game is the Hero trail. Again, not a bad idea, but I doubt it will transform the experience in the same way as simultaneous retals did.
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Unread postby OliverFA » 28 Aug 2005, 11:41

@protecyion: The recipe was not given by "just" a Firaxis employee, but by the Firaxis employee in charge of Civ IV ;-)



The important thing is not if the proportion is 1/3 or not, but the statement that to develop a good sequel you need to throw in something new and innovative while still keeping faithful to the original spirit and what the fans liked about it. Is much more easy to say than to do! ;-)

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Unread postby Corribus » 28 Aug 2005, 13:27

@Gaidal Cain - Did simul. retal. really "change the experience" for you? I mean, in principle, it should have really changed the strategy, but the game was so badly imbalanced in practice that, from my point of view anyway, it had no strategy whatsoever. So an accurate judgement about the worth of a lot of the "new features" in H4 cannot really be made.
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Unread postby wimfrits » 28 Aug 2005, 13:35

Nice read again. I agree completely with the 'facts' on company-consumer relation you put forth.



On fact#1

- Terming H4 "woefully unbalanced" is too much I think. The AI is unbalanced in that it is unfinished; heroes can be unbalanced in certain cases; but overall I'd say that balance in H4 is a lot better than in H3!

My guess is that the only ones to agree with your statement are the ones who have not played H4 enough to know.

- "the gamble failed" is not a very appropriate way to put it I think. AFAIK, the game was rushed because of 3DO's other financial issues. If H3 was released 6 months earlier than it was now, it would have been an equal 'disaster'. Even more I'd say, since H4 at least had the excuse of being innovative.

- I'd add to the reasons for an innovative H4 that another 'clone' would probably have been a complete disaster. But that's just my thought.



For the rest; good points.

Although I do not believe in the existence of facts. But that's another discussion :)



On comments below:



- Nick mentioned another point of interest. I think a substantial part of previous HoMM sales were created by mapmakers. I wonder what would happen to that if H5 really turned out to be a H3 clone.

On a side note, info so far seems to suggest that there might not even be a proper editor, so maybe Ubi thinks the effect of mapmakers on sales and durability will be irrelevant?



- Like Gaidal Cain said, I think the Nival interview darkened a lot of minds.
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Unread postby Campaigner » 28 Aug 2005, 22:13

Agreed. It's a buisness decision.



Heh, I laughed hard and good when I read that Q&A with Nival :D I loved that part with the smiley :)

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Unread postby Sir Charles » 28 Aug 2005, 22:41

@ Gaidal Cain



You're absolutely right. That Nival Q&A did start the ruckus. But even after Ubisoft has been trying to negate alot of what was said in that Q&A that Ubisoft never gave permission for Nival to give, people have still been saying h3 clone. From that one Q&A, we have 5 main points that sparked the uproar.....





Q: Will it be possible to use chains of troops like in III? Or are you planning to limit usage of such tactic?

A: It will be possible. 8)



Q: Will unit population grow every day or once a week?

A: Once a week - it wouldn't be interesting otherwise.



Q: Will an army be able to move without a hero?

A: No.



Q: Will the Heroes IV-like alternate creature build system be removed?

A: Yes, it will be.



Q: Will caravans remain in the game?

A: No.



The point that I was trying to make (and apparently failing at) was that from these 5 points alone people were labeling the game as a whole. Yes I know that we had some other minor bits of info that were similar to h3, but it was this that really started it all off if you ask me. We've since learned that caravans will most likely be brought back. We've also learned that Nival didn't have all the facts concerning Ubisofts' position on many items. Heck, even the comment about chaining....they say it will be possible. Pretty vague if you ask me. They could mean it's possible, but it's so restricted that it's virtually worthless. Or they could mean that they believe it was a FUN aspect of the game and they're happy it's back. Who knows. But it sure set off the hard-core fans. If you step back and look at a Heroes game as a whole, those 5 items are all relatively minor aspects that don't effect gameplay very much IMO. Did Nival screw up when they released that info? You bet. Did the fan-base over-react to that info? Abso-friggin-loutly.



Ubisoft has a vision in their minds of how this game should look, feel and play. I think it's very possible that they wanted certain h4 features but maybe they simply didn't WORK with the rest of the system that they wanted to incorporate. Heroes on the battlefield for instance. I've yet to see anyone come up with a plan that makes that system workable. In h4 it was a joke. The AI was a joke. The seige combat was a joke. It makes sense for them to design their game around a solid base of a game that WORKED. H4 didn't. And this is NOT coming from someone who didn't play h4 long enough to "know". By NWC standards H4 was VERY poorly made. Why on earth would Ubisoft want to build upon something that tanked? I'm just gonna drop this. There is simply no way I'm going to convince the hard-core h4 fans that their beloved game was a Heroes imposter.
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Unread postby NickMP » 28 Aug 2005, 22:56

Actually I thought that the AI is not that bad at tactical combat in H4 - I'm always impressed when in homes in on my best heroes and does one-two tactics like removing an immortality potion effect with Cancellation before hitting the hero with a stack of devils. OK, a good player will always beat the AI with equal forces, but that's true of lots of respected games - the Civ series, for instance. Where the AI sucks is in strategy - too often it sits around doing nothing, or nothing useful.

Anyway, I agree with Sir Charles that the five issues are not that crucial if the game is otherwise interesting (in fact I don't care at all about alternate creatures), and were treated mainly as an indication that an H3 clone was in the making. But I hope that any readers with influence over the process will note Wimfrits' point about the editor and try to persuade the developers that this matters. I speak as a consumer who is unlikely ever to touch the editor myself.

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Unread postby Corribus » 29 Aug 2005, 01:16

The combat AI may not have been that bad (although it certainly did have its quirks, like how you could totally neutralize a ranged unit in a siege by casting song of peace on it - stupid AI takes the ranged unit OFF of the tower, effectively TRIPLING the neutralization time...) but the system was fundamentally broken with the battlefield Heroes so it didn't matter if the AI was good or not in the first place. But I don't really want to argue the "worth" of H4. This discussion goes well beyond that, as Sir Charles has said and as I will make clear in the last part of this article.



If those five points in the Nival article are the impetus for all this discontent (I suspect it can't be wholly to blame though) it's probably not so much because certain H4 features were not included, it's the casual attitude with which they appear (from that interview) to have been dumped, which just exacerbated the whole thing. Bad PR I agree.



@ Wimfrits - whether you call it unbalanced or whether you call it unfinished doesn't really matter. It's a bigger issue than whatever the causes of H4's problems are. The fact of the matter is that H4 has a stigma, and the HoMM brand name is in bad enough condition as it is without carrying that stigma over into future works. Again, I will elaborate in due time.
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Unread postby Fnord » 29 Aug 2005, 02:15

Wimfrits: You wrote that "info so far seems to suggest that there might not even be a proper editor, so maybe Ubi thinks the effect of mapmakers on sales and durability will be irrelevant?"



What info is this that you write of? The only information I've seen on the subject is 1) confirmation that there WILL be a map editor, 2) a screenshot of the map editor in use, 3) a comment that they weren't sure yet about a campaign editor.



We've also been told that there will be a random map generator.



If you consider that Heroes 3 didn't even have a campaign editor or random map generator until the Armageddon's Blade expansion and that while Heroes IV's map editor was also a campaign editor, the game didn't include a random generator at all, I don't think this is such a big deal.



If they don't include a campaign editor in the initial release (and I would say there's a good chance they WILL include one anyway), it's quite likely they'll add it in an expansion instead. Surely there's plenty to do with a map editor alone until an expansion comes out.



Or have I missed some new information where they're suggesting now that they won't even include a map editor after all?
- Fnord

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Unread postby Corribus » 29 Aug 2005, 03:27

The combat AI may not have been that bad (although it certainly did have its quirks, like how you could totally neutralize a ranged unit in a siege by casting song of peace on it - stupid AI takes the ranged unit OFF of the tower, effectively TRIPLING the neutralization time...) but the system was fundamentally broken with the battlefield Heroes so it didn't matter if the AI was good or not in the first place. But I don't really want to argue the "worth" of H4. This discussion goes well beyond that, as Sir Charles has said and as I will make clear in the last part of this article.



If those five points in the Nival article are the impetus for all this discontent (I suspect it can't be wholly to blame though) it's probably not so much because certain H4 features were not included, it's the casual attitude with which they appear (from that interview) to have been dumped, which just exacerbated the whole thing. Bad PR I agree.



@ Wimfrits - whether you call it unbalanced or whether you call it unfinished doesn't really matter. It's a bigger issue than whatever the causes of H4's problems are. The fact of the matter is that H4 has a stigma, and the HoMM brand name is in bad enough condition as it is without carrying that stigma over into future works. Again, I will elaborate in due time.
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Unread postby Gaidal Cain » 29 Aug 2005, 05:48

Corribus wrote: "@Gaidal Cain - Did simul. retal. really 'change the experience' for you?"



More than some change to Multiplayer ever will :-). I think it was an adequate change, similar to f.ex. the wait button: some old tactics became much less practical and had to be replaced.



"If those five points in the Nival article are the impetus for all this discontent (I suspect it can't be wholly to blame though)"



They could be compared to pouring gasoline on some glowing embers, in that people had been a bit concerned about too many features from H3 and too few from H4 being confirmed even before- there were already indications of old-style retals and non-flaggable objects. Again, it not so much how much the gameplay is affected (though I think a few make a good deal of difference. They are certainly are not all 'minor'), but in what direction it is.
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Unread postby HMMFan » 29 Aug 2005, 06:57

It has been a good discussion because a lot of people on the forum are not "business" people in the sense of knowing (in actuality, as opposed to "common sense") the requirements of business. You provide some good generalities that dictate the path of H5, but there are actual business concepts that require it. For example, Ubi is a pubic company, as a result, has varying degrees of transparency required for investors. Investors demand professionalism, and a part od any due diligence for a project is "market research." Unless the officers wish to open themselves to shareholder suits, the company will spend millions for research and development of a game, and the development will follow the guideliness "discovered" (or "dictated") by the research. This is a point unknown or unappreciated by many. Unfortunately, people have dismissed this line of reasoning as UBI being "lazy" in its thinking, but that is just silly because these are serious business persons who have something important at stake...their careers.



A lot of the discussion on the firums here have really been a battle of opinions concerning "features" of the game. Unfortunately, people have confused the emotiional attachment they have for their opinions as the probable general concensus for the same. It's not, of course, but people are wont to believe that if they like simultaneous retaliation, everyone does and it would be a serious business mistake to design a game otherwise. It may, in fact, be a mistake on Ubi's part, but no one should make the mistake that the decisions makers didn't at least take time to think about it before discarding it.



In case people are interested, the US SEC website has on its website all of 3DO's filings, and there are interesting disclosures in those reports. For example, how much Trip lent to the company, the amount spent on development and the amount of profits from the PC games sales. I got into trouble elsewhere here when I said that H4 sunk 3DO. People thought that unfair. I suppose it would be more accurate to say that H4 did not save 3DEo, as the company hoped for. So, it was the final nail in the coffin. Don't believe me? Check out the financial statements in the annual and quarterly reports of 3DO. You will see that the spike in PC game sales revenues in the year of H4's release did not spike enough to overcome the debts (obviously). In their own words in the filings, the strength of the brand had become diluted resulting in weaker than expected sales. Business talk for "the game did not sell that well."



Keep up the good work.

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Unread postby wimfrits » 29 Aug 2005, 07:52

@ Corribus: You're right in that H4 combat AI had it's quirks. But so did the AI in H3; so I don't really see the point there. Beating the AI in combat generally was easier in H3, so I'd say that combat AI in H3 was less advanced than in H4.



Whether I call it unbalanced or unfinished makes enough difference for me. One suggests that the core game was flawed (ie innovation failed), the other that the AI could have a lot better given more time.

I do see your point that the effect on the game is the same.



@ Fnord: Sorry, didn't make myself clear. I was partly referring to the campaign editor, which I read it in some Q/A. I read somewhere else that texts will have a reduced part in the game and that displaying of texts might not be possible in a convenient way.



For someone who loves making story-rich campaigns, this is troubling. I'm sure the possible absence of a campaign editor will only trouble a select few mapmakers, but the possible reduced text facilities I think would have a more widespread effect.
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Unread postby Fnord » 29 Aug 2005, 08:04

Wimfrits: I agree that reduced map maker tools, such as custom text inclusion equal to that in the H3 and H4 map editors, would be a major mistake. It's pretty obvious that the longevity of the games does owe a fair bit to custom maps created by fans, and that definitely includes story maps. Frankly, I would be somewhat surprised if they do end up with a limitation of this nature, but I guess we'll have to wait and see. My guess is that they may be reducing or eliminating much of the default text for things like artifacts (also a mistake in my opinon) but hopefully they would still allow a mapmaker to add customize text, if desired.
- Fnord

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Unread postby HMMFan » 29 Aug 2005, 16:55

btw, I meant to say that Ubi was a PUBLIC company, and not a "pubic" company. Well, that made me chuckle this morning.....

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Unread postby Corribus » 29 Aug 2005, 17:04

A lot of good points made, Wimfrits, GC, HMMFan, etc. I won't reply to them individually except:



@Wimfrits - I will be the first to admit that the combat AI in H4 wasn't that bad; it had no more/less quirks than the H3 combat AI. Unfortunately, the adventure AI for H4 WAS a disaster, and that makes all the difference.
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Unread postby kurios » 29 Aug 2005, 18:26

Video Games are the only media form i can think of where the sequels are almost always better than the originals. But too many time developers try to use the name recognition to help sell a crappy game i.e. Forgotten Realms Pool of Radiance (the second one not the original vga one) The developers tried to link the game to the highly successful and aboslutely great Baldur's Gate 2. But Pool of Radiance was not even close to the level of Baldur's Gate 2. This i know is the marketing teams job to make money when and how they can and we consumers are at thier mercy. But it does seem that Ubisoft is listening to the Might and Magic fan community so i think we are lucky at that. Most other industries pay only lip service to cunsumer recognistion and just use marketing staregies to foist crap upon consumers.


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