Yet Another H6 Rant?

The new Heroes games produced by Ubisoft. Please specify which game you are referring to in your post.
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krs
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Yet Another H6 Rant?

Unread postby krs » 17 Sep 2011, 21:47

It seems like all hardcore fans of the heroes series want basically the same things and UbiHole (intent on $$$) is not listening (ignoring actually).

What can we do? Complain and come with suggestions until they get enough traction so they HAVE to do something about it.

Here a list with my likes/complains in no particular order: Feel free to add to it.

- graphics - a gem
- Skill tree - boring (Bring back a similar to H5)
- Access to the spell of your choosing at level up - priceless
- blood / tears reputation - brings more variety
- town trees - all the same
- Buy units from every castle - stupid (Caravans are better)
- champions - trash tier
- Necromancers - gone
- Runes and rage from H5 - gone (more diversity please)
- Creature variation between factions - close to inexistent
- initiative / speed - best implementation in H6.
- left to right battle fields only - H3 did it better.
- in battle power-up structures - good idea (poorly implemented).
- town portals - too many have access to them
- no behemots/devils/etc - eats my guts
- no craig hag - ^ also
- Asian themed faction has no place in Heroes - can live with it though
- Marksmen are not Maggogs!!! (ty cjlee)
- no rmg - dont like waiting
- no hero screens - even H4 had them WTH?

The game has almost all the basics needed for a good Heroes game. So I strongly hope that some gifted fans will take it and modify it according to community input.

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Unread postby ywhtptgtfo » 26 Sep 2011, 15:31

The Asians are portrayed quite nicely in H6 actually... it's nothing like the squinty-eye eccentric Chinese characters portrayed in Indiana Jones and other Hollywood action movies.

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cjlee
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Here’s my View of THE FACTIONS

Unread postby cjlee » 26 Sep 2011, 16:54

hi KRS


1) Haven is BORING.

When I played the demo campaign, I was astonished at how boring Heroes of Might and Magic could be on the hardest difficulty setting. Slava (or is it Pavel?)’s Haven campaign put me to sleep because there is no way to win without using the Praetorian’s special.

You only have 3 types of units, the lowest in any HOMM game to date. You have a low level hero with few abilities. The only way to win is to have 1 crossbowman stack, 1 vestal stack and 5 praetorian stacks surrounding them to deflect and reduce ranged damage while using the multiple-retaliation feature on attacking melee opponents.

Battles are all the same thing. 1) Arrange with tactics. 2) Protect ranged and healers. 3) Defend endlessly. 4) Use hero attacks or heal whenever needed. 5) After 15-25 rounds, you’ve won.

That’s how I fell asleep twice playing HOMM VI!

Things don’t get much better with the Elite units. Since they are fast and big, they get hit by your marksmen easily. No more casting vampiricism on Griffins like we all did in Heroes V. Haven is geared towards playing defensive (using tactics and griffins/ healing/ praetorians). Angels move slower than Ravenous Ghouls, so they’re a poor melee unit. Because it’s hard to mass enough Blazing Glories and associated skills like Haste to play a Harpy-like strategy like Mutare in Heroes III, I find Blazing Glories better as defensive units. They auto-dispel all bad spells placed on your troops, so it’s great to put them in the middle of your praetorian formation.

2) Necromancers now look weird.

Necromancers traditionally employ units that use melee - whether flying like ghosts and vampires and bone dragons, or walking ones like ghouls and zombies and skeletons. That’s how undead typically are portrayed in movies or books.

The current undead line up is really unsupported by any fantasy genre. It is a bizarrely strong ranged attacking faction with skeleton spearmen, liches and that ridiculous spiderwoman thing.

The undead melee has become unbalanced. In the past, vampires were a mainstay of the undead melee, flying forward to engage in close combat often with enemies surrounding them. Zombies and skeletons staggered behind. Now? Ghouls are amazingly strong now, far stronger than they are typically depicted in popular media. When they smell the Living, they can cover more ground than an Angel! And vampires, despite all that fancy drawings and swords and dramatic cinematic showing them throwing their swords up, have become very weak. They can’t suck more than a small portion of their damage back to heal themselves. They can’t even hit with no retaliation (a traditional vampire ability if you remember the novel Dracula)!

On the forums, the Putrid Lamasu is one of the most despised units because it does very little damage. But it is obvious to me that Putrid Lamasu (and vampire losing its melee prowess) is part of Ubihole’s ridiculous plan for their Necromancer faction. There is no way you can expect the Putrid Lamasu to survive as a frontline attacker, much less survive long enough to make its disease and putrid breath do any damage. Neither can the vampire. So they have to defend!

Undead are typically depicted in popular media as slowly making their way across the battlefield as enemies shoot at them. Now, Ubihole wants undead to bunker down. Get tactics. Cast various slow/weakening spells on the enemy. Use skeleton webs to slow them. Hide undead shooters behind the Putrid Lamasu which will infect everybody trying to attack undead shooters. Use vampire to help block enemies. Use ghosts and necromancy to heal your side until enemy is dead.

That’s a weird way to play undead.

3) Sanctuary is an uninspired rip off of Warcraft.

Blizzard was smart enough to give us the Nagas as a playable single-campaign race, but leave it out of the multiplayer because balancing it would be hard. Ubihole basically copied the naga faction from Warcraft Frozen Throne, without considering the possible implications of an amphibian race.

Now with no castle able to build shipyards, no summon boat spell and ships costing 20 wood each, obviously in any map with water the Sanctuary faction would be greatly overpowered. Sanctuary armies can walk and hang around on water, making them invulnerable in many ways. They can ambush other players by hiding in the Shroud that other players cannot unveil without entering the water.

Yet once water is out of the equation, Sanctuary is a joke. Sure, you can crush the AI with Sanctuary. But how do you beat another human player?

a) Sanctuary abilities usually involve soaking and chilling and freezing. These require other schools of magic or attack types to support them. That’s totally unlike, say, Inferno where Fire Magic is preeminent, or Haven where Light Magic rules.
b) Eye of the Storm is the most easily countered ability. No human player would bother to waste attacks on a unit marked by Eye of the Storm; he would just kill other stacks.
c) Tsunami is a joke. Nobody is really hurt by a tsunami, and since Sanctuary has the most small units tsunami is most useful against another Sanctuary faction. It can’t do much harm against the mighty barbarians’ cyclopses, centaur marauders and panther warriors. Totally ineffective against Haven. At least Father Sky’s Wrath affects and stuns all enemies!
d) Sanctuary has no flyers. (That ridiculous Kappa is a toad, not a flyer. And enemy loves targeting him because he has highest initiative, so he never survives for long.)
e) They are essentially set up to put all their eggs in the Kensei or Kirin basket. Their abilities are channeled towards one unit, which is risky and quite ineffective because that unit won’t last long in combat. It’s hard to get the Kensei to make his repeated attacks against a computer opponent; do you think a human player would be easier?

8) I find the barbarian stronghold faction overpowered. Not only do they get the most spells, they also get the most movement bonuses in battle. And Mass Life Drain?

9) Inferno seems the same as ever - strong melee, chaotic abilities, succubi that are slow to act while hell hounds and maniacs rush forward, fire abilities, fearsome retaliations. In general I find this a coherent faction much like the Infernos of Heroes III and V. Like in Heroes III and V, most people will probably not play Inferno because it is hard to play it well.

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Unread postby Konfuzius » 27 Sep 2011, 18:47

I would like to add mounts.
In H5 every faction had a unique mount that fit its faction.
Haven - Horses
Dungeon - Giant Lizards
Sylvan - Unicorns
Necropolis - Phantom Horse (unsure about that)
Academy - Elephants
Stronghold - Buffaloes
Fortress - Mammoths
Inferno - They don't need any hindering mounts at all :P

Now in H6 every faction has horses, they are well made but... it's not the same. Even Sanctuary as a WATER faction has horses that can move over water, wtf.

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Re: Here’s my View of THE FACTIONS

Unread postby mr.hackcrag » 28 Sep 2011, 14:52

cjlee wrote:hi KRS

1) Haven is BORING.

Battles are all the same thing. 1) Arrange with tactics. 2) Protect ranged and healers. 3) Defend endlessly. 4) Use hero attacks or heal whenever needed. 5) After 15-25 rounds, you’ve won.

That’s how I fell asleep twice playing HOMM VI!
I was afraid this would happen. I've played other games where a playstyle was designed for defense and passivity and every time it was just terrible. :ill:

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Unread postby Panda Tar » 28 Sep 2011, 16:35

Well, accordingly to their interview upon the Beta testing, healing was really nerfed and balanced. Perhaps this is not something to be concerned any more.
"There’s nothing to fear but fear itself and maybe some mild to moderate jellification of bones." Cave Johnson, Portal 2. :panda:

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Unread postby vhilhu » 28 Sep 2011, 16:46

Konfuzius wrote:I would like to add mounts.
In H5 every faction had a unique mount that fit its faction.
Haven - Horses
Dungeon - Giant Lizards
Sylvan - Unicorns
Necropolis - Phantom Horse (unsure about that)
Academy - Elephants
Stronghold - Buffaloes
Fortress - Mammoths
Inferno - They don't need any hindering mounts at all :P

Now in H6 every faction has horses, they are well made but... it's not the same. Even Sanctuary as a WATER faction has horses that can move over water, wtf.
I disagree. There's some very powerful imagery about heroes riding horses... like Napoleon, or Richard Lionheart, or Aragorn. There's something very specifically _heroic_ & kingly about riding a horse and galloping around the map, while a hero riding a flashy fantasy creature makes it another warcraftian monster-human combination.

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krs
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Unread postby krs » 28 Sep 2011, 17:56

I disagree. There's some very powerful imagery about heroes riding horses... like Napoleon, or Richard Lionheart, or Aragorn. There's something very specifically _heroic_ & kingly about riding a horse and galloping around the map, while a hero riding a flashy fantasy creature makes it another warcraftian monster-human combination.[/quote]

You do realize that Sanctuary ARE a monster-human combination.

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Unread postby ThunderTitan » 28 Sep 2011, 18:32

H5's mounts where oddly proportioned and stuff... i'd rather them just use horses if they're not interested enough in making the mounts look like they fit in (visual wise) and just go with whatever animal is connected to the faction in some way.
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vhilhu
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Unread postby vhilhu » 01 Oct 2011, 18:20

krs wrote:
I disagree. There's some very powerful imagery about heroes riding horses... like Napoleon, or Richard Lionheart, or Aragorn. There's something very specifically _heroic_ & kingly about riding a horse and galloping around the map, while a hero riding a flashy fantasy creature makes it another warcraftian monster-human combination.
You do realize that Sanctuary ARE a monster-human combination.
Yes! I'd like to see less of such, rather than more.

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Unread postby Soronarr » 18 Oct 2011, 12:38

I too dislike Sanctuari. A uninspired Warcraft ripoff. I don't know why designers insist on mixing compeltely different cultures from DIFFERENT TIME PERIODS. Some inspiration is OK, but you have to keep it SUBTLE.
But there's nothing subtle about naga Kensai in samurai armor.

The entire overall design is a mish-mash wihout any consistency and focus.

I miss the design of Hereos 2. Where everything had a muhc more unified and centralied look. Everything was rooted in nordic/european fantasy with a few light dashes from elsewhere.

These days there's a bunch of non-humans and strange creautres among humans.
The wizzards dont' feel like Gandalf, it turnrd into arabian nights on steroids.


Bah! The only one who remined somewhat consistent are necroplis and Inferno.

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Unread postby Qurqirish Dragon » 18 Oct 2011, 12:50

Soronarr wrote:
Bah! The only one who remined somewhat consistent are necroplis and Inferno.
*cough* H4 infernopolis *cough* :devil:

Actually, it's hard to mix undead with anything else (except for :up: ) and have things at all plausible. Similar with demons.
Disciples tried that, and although it worked OK with the undead faction (non-undead were necromancers- although they also had werewolves in that faction, which I never understood), the demonic faction felt more like a mix of types, rather than a blend (if you get my distinction in terms)
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Unread postby Soronarr » 18 Oct 2011, 12:55

Oh right..forgot about that. Dont' recall ever playing it actually in H IV.

Surprisingly enough I liked H4 better than H5. I liked heroes on the battlefield.

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Unread postby Panda Tar » 18 Oct 2011, 13:29

Me too.

H6 I don't know what to like yet. Will buy the game, so learn what to make of it.
"There’s nothing to fear but fear itself and maybe some mild to moderate jellification of bones." Cave Johnson, Portal 2. :panda:

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Unread postby TheUndeadKing » 18 Oct 2011, 14:23

Qurqirish Dragon wrote:Disciples tried that, and although it worked OK with the undead faction (non-undead were necromancers- although they also had werewolves in that faction, which I never understood), the demonic faction felt more like a mix of types, rather than a blend (if you get my distinction in terms)
While I do get what you mean, I disagree with you on this one. Yes, it wasn't a pure demonic faction like in H3, but the units all (except maybe the Berzerker) fit in the concept that is the "Legions of the Damned", the damned followers of Bethrezen. In Disciples II, they even possessed a mere human kid, named Uther, to bring back the leadership of Bethrezen.
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