Ubisoft's Latest Disaster for Me

The game Might & Magic: Heroes VII, developed by Limbic Entertainment.
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Ubisoft's Latest Disaster for Me

Unread postby cjleeagain » 17 Nov 2020, 14:47

Dear Fellow Forummers

As you know, I've had great contempt for Ubisoft for a long time. My current experiences have continued to sustain my feelings of contempt for this company.

A few months ago I posted an appeal for Uplay logins.

I have finally found my Uplay account and password while spring-cleaning my entire house. (It was by accident; I was looking for a bank document and found where I'd written my login info!)

But guess what?

I can't get in! Because they forced 2FA down my throat without me asking for it. Now I can't get past the 2FA because I don't have access to Google Authenticator! And they never emailed me the top secret codes to disable this authenticator! I'm totally totally stuck@!
Last edited by cjleeagain on 17 Nov 2020, 15:05, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Ubisoft's Latest Disaster for Me

Unread postby Panda Tar » 17 Nov 2020, 15:47

I'm starting to think that it's Divine Providence trying to protect you from something.

If they don't have any way around it, then they are very incompetent, if you have enough alternate information of means to contact as to provide another way to recover or activate that thing. Or wait until people start to sue Ubisoft because they cannot access their accounts because the company decided to make of people's lives a hell.
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Re: Ubisoft's Latest Disaster for Me

Unread postby Pol » 17 Nov 2020, 21:21

@cjlee
You will need to contact their support and prove that it's you. I guess you are from EU cjlee?

If that is so, this is obligatory from 1st January 2021.
(https://www.termsfeed.com/blog/2-factor ... -payments/ - You must be capable of accepting SCA-compliant payments before the PSD2 deadline hits at the end of 2020.)

I already had some fun with that, to re-authorize may PayPal account, just to cancel it.
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Re: Ubisoft's Latest Disaster for Me

Unread postby Pol » 18 Nov 2020, 20:58

A small update, just checked Ubisoft Account and it still easy manageable from here. At least for me.
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Re: Ubisoft's Latest Disaster for Me

Unread postby Pol » 20 Nov 2020, 10:00

cjleeagain wrote:I did manage to get my account restored. Ubisoft customer support was pretty fast and friendly. (I suppose there are not that many customers remaining to complain?)

So I got hold of Trial by Fire for less than 10 Euros, and commenced playing it.

I've always said, don't pay full price for any ubisoft product. And I reiterate that advice. Trial by Fire looks ok, but is fairly lackluster. I don't think I felt anything about the dwarves (am not even finished mission 1, Glory or Death). It was ok enough as an addition to the Heroes world, but if you're looking for a challenge you will not get it unless you choose to deliberately play with 3 split up armies instead of combining starting armies.

I've once said on this forum that in order to make H7 challenging you need to play it in a different way from how we used to play H1-6. I reiterate that advice. I'm playing on Heroic and it's dull.

Currently I am disregarding my own advice, and playing this with one main hero just so that I can steamroll the enemy and finish the storyline quickly after which I can uninstall H7 again.

The damn dwarves are so alike, I can't tell them apart. This is not H2 with its unique hero portraits.
Still haven't worked out a strategy for Dwarves. I don't need to, since game is not challenging. But dwarven magic is pathetic. The runes are not as overpowered as H5 runes where your troops could turn incorporeal or attack multiple times, but I'm not sure I like the idea that a Dwarf hero could use Runes, Warcries, Regular Attacks or Magic. That's a lot of so-so abilities/ potential, but nothing that I can build a strategy around.
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Re: Ubisoft's Latest Disaster for Me

Unread postby Panda Tar » 20 Nov 2020, 13:12

Well, I guess he'll just have to cross that path once then. :lol:
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Re: Ubisoft's Latest Disaster for Me

Unread postby cjleeagain » 21 Nov 2020, 03:19

Hey I shut down my computer and restarted, and got a new IP address assigned to me. I'm back!
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Re: Ubisoft's Latest Disaster for Me

Unread postby cjleeagain » 21 Nov 2020, 03:23

Now on mission 2 of the Trial By Fire campaign. It's dull and all the bugs are fully operational at v2.2.1. So my next action is to dl Antalyan's wonderful patch...
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Re: Ubisoft's Latest Disaster for Me

Unread postby Pol » 21 Nov 2020, 08:27

There are two big mods, one is Antalyan's and the second by MoritzBradke, there we go:
http://www.hommdb.com/advanced-search-s ... e%5B%5D=35

Knowing the game, it's a good to resist vanilla call and play it modded only. ;)
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Re: Ubisoft's Latest Disaster for Me

Unread postby cjleeagain » 21 Nov 2020, 12:36

Amazing, Pol! Your link led to so many other mods!
What this tells me, is that it is not that difficult to mod this game. If it's not so hard to mod to get rid of bugs, can't the original guys who did it patch it properly? Pathetic Ubisoft quality.

BTW Antalyan's mod almost led to a minor disaster for me. I was already halfway through my dwarven campaign with my main hero Hathor at level 30 when I tried applying Antalyan's mod.

Hathor in the original version, got Economy as an ultimate level 4 skill. And he didn't come with Offence offered. Obviously that is a terribly designed skill wheel for a main hero, so Antalyan's mod changes that to Offence. But since I was at level 30 already, I just lost skills.

Fortunately deleting Antalyan's mod allows the original skills to come back!

But I have no choice. I'm not going to replay this dull campaign with Antalyan's mod. I'm going to finish it for the storyline. Then I will play future single player scenarios with Antalyan's mod.

(BTW, originally I didn't realize that the Economy was a bad design feature. I took it as a hint from the gamemakers that the Economy is important for dwarves. It certainly was the case back in H5 due to the cost of the Runes.)
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Re: Ubisoft's Latest Disaster for Me

Unread postby cjleeagain » 22 Nov 2020, 13:38

Okay... just documenting a few things (this post will be changed in future when I make a walkthrough)

Dwarven campaign mission 3, Greed is Good (or something like that).
You're supposed to accumulate lots of wealth while defeating your four opponents allied against you.

This is nowhere as tough as any campaign in a previous version of Heroes. Four opponents just means lots of weak, lousy heroes to bug you. After their initial defeats, most of these heroes will always disappear the next time you fight them - since AI isn't smart enough to equip them with at least one fast unit to give them the chance to cast nasty spells.

However, as I have noted in the past, Heroes 7 is designed such that fighting neutrals with zero casualties can be very tough. Because you don't have a really good disabling skill like Blind, and because the healing skills like Regeneration and Heal are so limited. So this map does not have to be a cakewalk. My heroes started at levels 31, 25, 25 and they hired as many troops in their home castles as they could, and I still had to skip fighting many neutrals to avoid casualties.

I can definitely accumulate the needed wealth to pass this mission. But it feels very sucky to finish this map by doing the bare minimum, knowing that there are literally hundreds of neutral stacks that I haven't killed, and if I killed, would probably launch my main hero Hathor to level 40 at least from his current level 32, and also knowing that there are at least +10 of every stat in locations and shrines around which I haven't visited. This map is very rich with neutrals and locations but it is such tedium to fight every battle.

So far I have only had one narrow fight (against one of the two main mission bosses Aeris). Aeris can hit all my forces for over 1200 Earth damage (earthquake) or over 1320 damage (stone spikes). Eventually I wisened up and just fielded one stack against him, then cast Armageddon twice. I wound up with my 200+ Shieldguards reduced to 55 but he lost everything.

No other challenging battle against enemy heroes. Big boring yawn. As I have observed, this game is really for the era of under 12-aged gamers.

One thing in this H7 version of the Runes skills: Runes are now independent of troops. That makes a gigantic difference! The Runes can't be incapacitated or delayed, so your hero will always be guaranteed certain opportunities to cast spells at specific times eg after certain troops have acted.

In most battles I would not dare come to battle with only 1 stack, since if the enemy blinded or incapacitated that stack, all would be lost. The Black Dragon was a killer unit, because since it was fast and immune to all spells, you could go to battle with only 1 black dragon and the enemy still couldn't take it out while your warlock fired away with spells.

Update: Map 3 was finished unexpectedly quickly when I accumulated enough resources without noticing. And now the storyline moves away from Hathor and gang.

Now on Map 4 with a new pair of heroes. I'm just blindly wandering around (mission calls for me to find someone) fighting everything and leveling up and visiting stat locations. Map designs are actually quite beautiful; at least Ubisoft is contemporary in responding to user expectations. But I really dislike playing with primary dwarf heroes who have no magic abilities (and they made sure I don't develop their already weak magic skills, by only allowing a level 1 mage guild!). Moveover, Economy is really a terrible skill to offer dwarves since the Runes no longer need resources to use unlike in H5!

Update: as part of the mission in Map 4, I'm supposed to find Brigid. I have done so. She is a level 15 hero... with zero skills! That's right, her skill wheel is totally empty! I restarted the game one day before, to no effect. So now I have a nearly useless level 15 hero. Moreover she is part of the storyline, so it's unwise not to develop her in case I have to fight some important battle with her later. Sigh. Ubisoft product has more bugs than there are cockroaches in the sewers.

Update: I finished map 4 (got Brigid to the level cap of 25 and gave her some skills, just in case - before reading Maltz's walkthrough and finding that Brigid doesn't get mentioned ever again after that).

Played map 5 which consists of female might dwarf Vilma and male magic dwarf Kari traveling around underground. Despite Ubisoft's efforts to make it more interesting with events like praying to Arkath to get free Fire Giants, heating up a magical something to create an underwater lake of meltwater, various avalanches, etc., I seriously didn't find this engaging at all. Yawn. As a longtime Heroes fan I'm playing this game still, but I won't recommend it to anyone.

Now onto map 6. According to Maltz's walkthrough, this is the final Dwarven map. After which there will be a 2-map campaign featuring Ivan and yet another dwarf. Once I finish these maps, I'm going to delete H7 from my computer and free up 30GB of HDD space.
Last edited by cjleeagain on 25 Nov 2020, 08:43, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Ubisoft's Latest Disaster for Me

Unread postby Pol » 22 Nov 2020, 15:42

As of moddings, slow, slow. You can discuss on that aspect with LordGraa or Antalyan or Moritz(HC only) but nobody is really ravished about it.

Objects, spells, some actions yes. But when we go to more subtle things, my understanding is, that nobody expected it. So on the scale from 1 to five this game would receive 2.

Some mechanics can be added (like weather system ATMOS - https://wpu.worldofheroes.cz/indexEN.html), but things like affecting computer's behaviours or even AI are simply a stopper, as they usually don't work.

I appreciate your patience, myself tried long time ago, wasn't pleased, removed and never returned. At some point I may return to Heroes VI, as there was bigger potential and exist unofficial modding tool. But situation here is also not good.

As of AI, heh, that would be best to be dicussed with Quantomas. But his AI is only H5 preped. See his discord from our main page.
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Re: Ubisoft's Latest Disaster for Me

Unread postby Panda Tar » 22 Nov 2020, 21:00

Maybe try playing H5.5, cjlee. Or have you already? People do compliment it.
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Re: Ubisoft's Latest Disaster for Me

Unread postby cjleeagain » 23 Nov 2020, 02:26

Oh yes, I've already played it a lot.
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Re: Ubisoft's Latest Disaster for Me

Unread postby cjleeagain » 26 Nov 2020, 15:58

Okaaaaay

Here I am on map 6 of the Dwarven campaign. Following Maltz's advice, I waited until day 7 of week 4 before freeing Kari. You'd think that now I have plenty of time in the middle phase of this map to do other things?

Nope. Day 1 Week 5, Red AI player's top heroes Hangvul and Tolgar were at their borders already. Day 2 they started invading my lands. I had no choice but to take them out on Day 4. To make things worse, these guys carried barely 1 week of creature growth each. So defeating them was no challenge, but I couldn't just ignore having such powerful heroes walk around my lands or they would flag my mines and demolish my forts.

Once I took both the level 35 dwarf heroes out, on Day 5 Week 5 this triggered the part 3 phase of this map. I would have to demolish 3 bridges, defeat 3 powerful dark elf heroes, destroy 3 forts, etc all within 3 weeks. Very unpleasant rush.

Then looking at Maltz's walkthrough, this campaign is going to be followed by an Ivan campaign with some units that I can't control. Having this crap AI do anything is a recipe for frustration and boredom.

I think I'm going to take a break from Heroes gaming.
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Re: Ubisoft's Latest Disaster for Me

Unread postby Panda Tar » 26 Nov 2020, 16:05

That was short lived. :lol:
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Re: Ubisoft's Latest Disaster for Me

Unread postby cjleeagain » 27 Nov 2020, 09:06

Panda Tar, Ubisoft's Products are not exactly addictive.

That said, I just happily did some checking up other games.
Randomly looking at 3 of the top rated games in 2020: Witcher 3, Control and Ghostrunner.

Hard disk requirements are 40Gb, 43GB and 22GB respectively.
Moreover they are first person shooters or something like that, so the graphical requirements are very considerable. Your unit will run around through lots of different environments. These are not at all like a set piece chessboard TBS game.

But how much space does HOMM7 take up? Officially I can't find any admission from Ubisoft. But it was over 26GB for me to download everything (after which Ubisoft folder on my HDD takes up 17GB). And you're talking about a game with terrible AI and static cutscenes where characters don't even talk with moving mouths.

I don't understand these guys. I just don't understand. Why is it so hard for Ubisoft to produce a good quality product that will garner positive reviews, so that they get more business and more repeat customers and their happy customers buy more Ubisoft games.

Right now because of my bad experiences with HOMM7, there is no way you can persuade me to buy any other Ubisoft product. Are they really happy to do this?
Last edited by cjleeagain on 27 Nov 2020, 12:29, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Ubisoft's Latest Disaster for Me

Unread postby cjleeagain » 05 Dec 2020, 16:35

Okayyyyy

Here I am, finally getting to play the last map of the Dwarven campaign. This is surprisingly hard. It's not as if the AI offers any real challenge on heroic - but that the timing is quite tight. You can't wander around and explore. I failed twice simply because of the timer. The instructions to 'destroy 3 bridges' had confused me. I thought I had to destroy the bridges first, after which I had to find a way to attack these three dark elven heroes?
Nope. What you're supposed to do, is to destroy the three bridges as instructed. And then rebuild one of them so that your main army can cross the bridge to attack the enemy!

After beating the Dwarven campaign,

Then I got to the Strange Bedfellows Map 1 of the Human campaign.

It was three months into the map before I felt that something was off. I don't know exactly what, but I thought there should be more 'events' or 'things' going on. So I checked Maltz's walkthrough - and it says Bart is supposed to join me.

Ah, but since Bart never showed up...

Looks like I've just wasted another 3 months of game time. Time to restart game. SIGH.

I just can't wait to finish this damned campaign, so that I can delete H7 permanently from my HDD!
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Re: Ubisoft's Latest Disaster for Me

Unread postby Panda Tar » 05 Dec 2020, 21:00

:lol:
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Re: Ubisoft's Latest Disaster for Me

Unread postby cjleeagain » 06 Dec 2020, 07:25

Oh well, I restarted this damn map (Human campaign after Dwarven campaign, map 1) twice. Once I explored the NE, the other time the SE.

It turns out that Bart is to be found in a random place in the mid-East. There's no particular reason why anybody would go to that place, but he's standing there and will join me if I walk near enough. Unfortunately it's a neutral area, so it wasn't one of the 'colored' zones under control of one of my two Dwarf warband enemies. So it was never all that obvious that I should be sending Ivan to this area to look for Bart. I chanced across Bart only by exploring.

Apart from this issue, there were a bunch of bugged battles where the enemy got infinite moves, running all over the battlefield seemingly without any movement limitations and attacking multiple times until my forces were slaughtered. Luckily none of these battles took place at crucial junctures, so when I found it was impossible to beat the enemy, I simply avoid that particular bugged neutral army. Yeah, typical Ubisoft quality gameplay. If Ubisoft quality is representative of France, no wonder we don't really hear of French cars or French computers or French phones.
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