Feedback and Opinions About Equilibris Patch for Heroes IV

Official forum of the Equilibris mod to Heroes of Might and Magic IV (Russian forum)
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Arctic_Slicer
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Feedback and Opinions About Equilibris Patch for Heroes IV

Unread postby Arctic_Slicer » 25 Feb 2010, 09:56

I downloaded the Equilibris patch a few years back and thought I would give feedback on my experiences.

Things I like:

-Enemies use different formations leading to more interesting combat decisions.
-The "free" creature skills such as necromancy and summoning have been nerfed making them less unfair but still good enough to have them.
-Venom Spawns, Ogre Magi and Minotaurs are actually viable now making them my preferred choice in their respective towns. These creatures are just awesome and possibly the best thing about this patch.
-The changes to the magic dampener in Strongholds makes might better and less redundant as their heroes often had GM magic resistance anyway.
-On that same note having innate magic resistance based on level for all heroes is a nice bonus as well.
-Adding creature only spells like resurrection and terror to the mage guilds was awesome in many ways. It's a boon for map builders as more spells creates more possibilities. Also these spells make enemy spellcasters, including AI, ones more dangerous adding more challenge to the game and most importantly, they are just plain fun.
-Summoning and Necromancy menu is useful and well implemented. I just have to remember that I need the hero with the skill highlight before attempting to open it.
-I don't have to hunt down my game CDs to play.

Things I didn't like:

-The arrows that allowed a player to adjust quantities of items in blacksmiths seems to have been removed.
-Vampires might have got nerfed just a little too hard as they seem plain worse than venom spawns now. I think lowering their defense and power might have been just a bit too much. I agree with all of the other changes though in regards to necromancy, growth rate, etc.
-Efreet still suck and needed a boost.
-Ditto with Cavaliers.

Things I would have like to have seen:

-I was always annoyed that the tactics skill only affected creatures but not heroes. Obviously this is done for balance interests but I always thought it would have been nice if tactics said "this hero and all friendly creatures" instead of simply "all friendly creatures". As long as it only affected the hero whom had the skill and not all friendly heroes I don't think it would be broken. No longer would it have been redundant to have multiple tacticians in your army; rookie knights would actually feel like "might" heroes as they would be noticeably better in combat than squishy priests and necromancers. Most importantly how ever is that it would have solved the long standing issue of tactics being a completely worthless skill set for the many RPG maps around that focus heavily or entirely on heroes.
-You've made a lot of improvements with the might faction but it's still underpowered. Their level 1 creatures are are among the best in the game but this doesn't translate to their higher level creatures which is probably a big part of way they fall behind in longer games. Boosting the hit points and defense of their upper levels creatures was probably needed.
-I never thought it was fair that Stronghold taverns charged a higher price for off alignment heroes than other taverns and to make matters worse they have a higher morale penalty for being might armies as well. The prices for hiring off alignment heroes in other towns should have been raised to compensate for this obvious imbalance.
-Nobility is the worst skill set in the game and could have used a boost. Upping the creature bonus from the governor role or upping the gold produced from estates should have been done to make the skill more desirable and lords actually hire able.
-Much like you had a summoning menu I thought it would have been continent to have a class selection menu to choose from the classes that hero is currently qualified for.
-Also I always wished that the base classes had some sort of minus bonus themselves such as 5% to life magic for priests, etc.
-Likewise some of the advanced classes could have a used a reworking of their bonuses as well.

I'm sure there are other things I wanted to say about it but they don't come to mind at the moment. Overall it's been a great experience and I'd like to thank the Equilibris team for provide a great product at no cost to me. Anyway I've wanted to give my feedback on this for a long time but I'm wasn't ever real sure where to do it and I'm still not sure if this is the place to do it but I just want the people responsible for this to know that I appreciate it. Thanks again.

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TheUnknown
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My review

Unread postby TheUnknown » 02 Mar 2010, 01:52

Congratz to your first post Arctic_Slicer, very nice to see new guy around here and their experience with the game.

I love:
-Making the creature choices more interesting (only vampire is a bit weak, crusader is a bit overpowered, unicorn is also a bit weak)
-Advanced classes in comparison to regular homm4
-Artifact balance
-All the bugfixes and interface improvements

I like:
-Balanced skills (resurrection, charm, diplomacy)
-Spell changes also are very good generally, specially having new spells.
-Changes in blacksmiths in towns are also very great (balance had to put acid vials in every town ;| )
-Buildings cost balance

I don't like:
-Tactics % bonuses, maybe cos I haven't had many hero army opponents. I was always thinking that scouting was the one that needed more balance.
-Innate magic resistance, 1 defense per level and 1 speed every 5 levels make heroes gods toward creatures (the idea in this try to help against melee and archery heroes or make high level heroes stand out is a good one but brings another issues, the innate magic resistance makes spell casting on heroes roll on the dice even in a situation they wouldn't have m. resistance, artifact or dampener. There are too many ways to already get a resistance or a ward.

I hate:
none ;)

BTW
"-The arrows that allowed a player to adjust quantities of items in blacksmiths seems to have been removed."-this is only in towns, outside you have the arrows cos there you may lose movement if you miss a click.
"-Much like you had a summoning menu I thought it would have been continent to have a class selection menu to choose from the classes that hero is currently qualified for." wanna have this one :)

MSG-1
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Unread postby MSG-1 » 14 May 2010, 08:54

Is the mod ever going to come out?
3,51 has been the same for many years now..
If help is needed maybe the community could help. There are still some very active players with experience of 10 years of online homm4.

MSG-1
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Unread postby MSG-1 » 14 May 2010, 11:31

Here are few changes that came to mind when I looked at the map editor:
arts

Ring of speed: major
all resource arts: treasures
scale mail of strength: minor
circlet of wisdom : treasure
boots of explorer: minor
all terrain boots : treasure
mullich : major
rings of 20% : minors
creatures:
faries faster on adv map
unicorns faster / more dmg / hp
more def for efreeti
vamps : 1-2 more per week / def a bit up / speed on adv map
boost ogre mage with some better spell eg confusion / magic arrow
increase behemoth speed adv map
...
and these were the ones I came up in 5minutes.

+ I really loved the adv dwellings and ideas u had for the next patch. What happened guys? :)
sea monster cave was gorgeous!

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Dalai
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Unread postby Dalai » 26 May 2010, 18:15

MSG-1 wrote:and these were the ones I came up in 5minutes.
I believe that :)
"Not a shred of evidence exists in favour of the idea that life is serious." Brendan Gill

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TheUnknown
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Some questions for the next patch

Unread postby TheUnknown » 23 Jul 2010, 19:00

Well with so little activity going on here in the past .... I was thinking on asking again about the patch and have a little suggestion.

If there is much to be done, can you just release something like a balance patch with little changes, for example no liches until they get done.

What can there be in the minor update version:
The market changes, the secondary classes changes (some are already great, the changes for others shouldn't be science fiction, just add life ward for some or similar :) or add two abilities if you can, in case one is not enough), the changed effects for prayer and unholy song and other spells like in equilibris 3.55 alpha, some creatures stats changing, using mass versions of ice bolt or other spells if needed and some other stuff that don't require hard coding.

The version doesn't need to be perfect, people will play the one they like most, usually its the one that is the newest, I would like equilibris to be more like for example DOTA, there can be a new version every year or half year with little changes, you get some feedback and you do what you think is good. Eventually you get a very good balance for both the players and the game point of view.

There are some modders that can do the kind of changes I am talking about, but if they're combined with the knowledge of the equilibris team we would have little remake to perfect the already great gameplay.


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