HoMM6 gameplay discusion

The new Heroes games produced by Ubisoft. Please specify which game you are referring to in your post.
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Jolly Joker
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Unread postby Jolly Joker » 19 Mar 2007, 08:06

Thinking a bit about it, with the Heroes game all GENERAL creature improving workes with improving the hero: attributes, skills and abilities make sure that creatures get better. That's why improvements in that area would be redundant.
That would leave special abilities as field for creature improvements - making existing ones better, for one thing, and adding new ones for another.
That leaves basically two experience upgrades per creature: one adding a new ability (which could be Toughness in many cases, for example, adding a health percentage), and one making an existing one better. This last one would be easy for all percentage based things. All 50% things could be changed ro 40% before the experience upgrade and 60% after the upgrade. For example, Life Drain percentage for Vampires or scatter shot effectivity for Archers, shield bash, crippling, you name it.

Which leaves the question of experience division between hero and creatures. Awarding experience for killing doesn't work: the hero isn't killing that much (and the Warlock would gain experience like no one else here) and if you have units that do all the killing (like Blood Furies or certain shooter units) it's unfair as well, because the bodyguards get experience as well. So there would have to be something like a fixed division. Here I'd say the following as first idea:
The hero counts for 7 stacks since this the maximum allowed number that you start with and the hero will affect. Every different type of creature (not stack; splitting doesn't count) in the army that ENDS a fight counts as a stack as well. That would mean, for dividing experience there'd be between 8 and 14 stacks in the game and the hero would always count for 7.
Example: you go into the battle with one stack of Gremlins, 2 stacks of Stone Gargoyles and one stack of Stone Golems. That's THREE different creature stacks. With the hero's 7 stacks that's 10 stacks all in all. The fight gains 400 experience = 400/10 = 40 experience per stack. -> The hero gets 280 experience, each creature stack gains 40.
Note, that if that fight had been made with the Gremlins alone the Gremlins would have gained 50 experience only, while with a full row of 7 different creature stacks each stack would still have gained nearly 30 points of XP.

This MIGHT add something to the game. However, you just MIGHT not want to sacrifice that much XP for creature experience (inhibiting hero development.
In this case you could award the hero 50% of the experience anyway and THEN divide the remaining 50% the way described above (which would half the amount of XP gained by creatures). This would simply be a balance question because you'd have to find the XP value where creatures would gain an XP level.

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Starbatron
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Unread postby Starbatron » 20 Mar 2007, 16:13

While all this is interesting, I think Oliver said it best: "Heroes 6 must follow the CIV way." Yes, create drones of other games that use an experience system and make Heroes of Might and Magic a lemming. While I agree completely with the spirit of change (and agree completely about re-implementing heroes in combat; it can be done), I am not in favor of change simply to follow the other games out there. Why would I bother to buy a game that is merely a lemming of another game system with a different story line and graphics? Essentially, that is a big complaint about HoMMV, and suggesting HoMM follows other games systems is no different than HoMMIII being remade as HoMMV. :devious: New, I stress new, innovations should be made to make the next game stand out from past heroes games, but not merely copied material from other systems, especially when almost every other game uses that feature.

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Unread postby OliverFA » 20 Mar 2007, 18:00

Starbatron wrote:While all this is interesting, I think Oliver said it best: "Heroes 6 must follow the CIV way." Yes, create drones of other games that use an experience system and make Heroes of Might and Magic a lemming.
Looks like I expressed myself in a wrong way. I will reformulate it more clearly: when I say that Heroes must follow the Civ way, I am talking about the way in which Civ faces the problem of creating a new iteration of an existing game. That's what they did:

- 1/3 old: they keep the old features which are already working because they are doing good and because that is what will make fans recognixe their old well known game.
- 1/3 improved: those features which, despite being a good idea, could be improved (I would include Heroes 5 skill system here)
-1/3 new: things that didn,t exist in previous games and make you feel like you really bought a new game instead of an old one with new graphics.

In order to do that, they have to remove some existing features. Those are the unfun and boring ones which are tedious to play and don't add anything to the game.

So the result is a game that feels like the old game, plays like the old game, but at the same time also feel like something new and renewed.

IMHO, Heroes 5 feels like Heroes 3 with a 3D engine. I don't blame UBI for going that way. I understand that after Heroes 4 they didn't want to risk much. The good thing is that they saved HOMM, which is great! The bad thund is that Heroes 5 gets old soon. That is why I say that Heroes 6 must go "the civ way" and provide a game that on one side is similar enough to the previous ones to be recognixed and feel like Heroes but in the other side brings enough innovation to allow the franchise to continue growing and evolving.

The creatures XP or heroes in battle are just a couple of ways to bring that innovation, but are not related to Civ.

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OliverFA
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Unread postby OliverFA » 20 Mar 2007, 18:14

Jolly Joker wrote:Thinking a bit about it, with the Heroes game all GENERAL creature improving workes with improving the hero: attributes, skills and abilities make sure that creatures get better. That's why improvements in that area would be redundant.
That would leave special abilities as field for creature improvements - making existing ones better, for one thing, and adding new ones for another.
.
That certainly is a very interesting thing and fits much in HOMM feeling. Following with the vampires example, they could be able to learn "no retaliation", "fly" and "life drain". When the stack is promoted, the player would be prompted to choose between two skills just like with heroes.

If we are allowing several experience levels, we could split each skill in basic/advanced/expert (again like with heroes). I..e.

Basic Life Drain: restores 1/4 HP of inflicted damage.
Advanded: restores 1/3
Experts: restores 1/2.

This would also allow to offer the player a choice between improving an existing skill or choosing a new one (just like it happens now with heroes)

In addition, some general skills could exist, such as "toughnes" (+5%/+10%/+15%) HP

Upgraded dwellings could either boost creature growth or give a free skill to the creature (give "two shots" to an archer and you have a marksman!)

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Unread postby Starbatron » 20 Mar 2007, 18:22

I see I misunderstood your intent. My apologies :x I am still not completely sold on the experience idea, but the idea of choices certainly adds a flair to the idea, and creates something new that may be worth considering... :rumor:

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OliverFA
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Unread postby OliverFA » 20 Mar 2007, 18:28

Starbatron wrote:I see I misunderstood your intent. My apologies :x I am still not completely sold on the experience idea, but the idea of choices certainly adds a flair to the idea, and creates something new that may be worth considering... :rumor:
You didn't misunderstood. I explained myself in a wrong way ;-)

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Unread postby Starbatron » 20 Mar 2007, 19:22

It's a shame the "toughness" skill isn't an option for the specter dragons in HoMM V :D

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Unread postby OliverFA » 22 Mar 2007, 22:17

Another polemical question:

What about upkeep? One of the weak (or at least strange) points of HoMM have always been not having upkeep costs. Players can have massive big armies because they don't have to pay for them. but what if they had to actually maintain all those troops by paying upkeep for them?

Towns could provide upkeep for a basic number of creatures (depending on their hall) and the rest of the upkeep could be paid directly with resources. After all, at the end of the game you have nothing to do with all those resources.

By providing a basic upkeep with towns, players wouldn't have to worry about maintaining their troops at the begining of the game when they are low in resources. But once the game progresses, upkeep costs would limit armies sizes so they don't get insanely big, and add an additional strategic element.

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Kristo
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Unread postby Kristo » 22 Mar 2007, 23:01

King's Bounty had that feature. Any troops you couldn't afford the upkeep for would desert you. It seems strange that only KB has this feature. I really think JVC would have thought about it when he wrote Heroes 1. We can only guess at why he left it out but my bet is simplicity. Managing your economy in the midgame is currently pretty simple. Money comes in from towns and mines. Money goes out to replace dead creatures and buy new ones. If you're at least netting zero, you're doing fine.

If you add upkeep into the mix, now you have to start thinking four or five turns ahead to make sure you don't overspend. Plus, your army size changes daily, thus changing your upkeep target daily. It's more than I want to think about. Other games have it and I really don't think they need it either. If you're doing well, upkeep can be ignored. If you're not doing well, upkeep just makes it more obvious.

If you'd like a more consistent drain on the player's economy, I think an easier approach would be to lower the power gap between the bottom and top tier creatures. Make it a lot more difficult to go through battles with no losses. That way you always have to consider how to resupply your superhero in the field. He *will* be losing creatures, so the player will *always* be spending money. That serves basically the same purpose as upkeep without adding another mechanic to the game.

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Jolly Joker
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Unread postby Jolly Joker » 23 Mar 2007, 07:01

Please!
It's obvious that upkeep would suck with heroes because there are so many troops involved, which makes record-keeping a pain. Just think it through. Would Necro had to pay upkeep? What kind of an advantage would it be to have weaker but more troops? Joins for free? Sorry, no money. And you certainly don't want to calculate with half or quarter goldpieces. And... and... and
Upkeep is used where you don't have any production limits. In Homm there is a limit, though.

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Starbatron
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Unread postby Starbatron » 23 Mar 2007, 15:01

Yes, keep upkeep out of our HoMM universe!! It should have no place here. :devil:

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Unread postby Apocalypse » 24 Mar 2007, 09:34

Yes, I don't want upkeep. I hated the one in WarCraft 3 :mad:
lower the power gap between the bottom and top tier creatures
I fully agree with that. I hate tiers and their power... I mean how the h*ll can an elf (master hunter) die harder than a dwarf (defender)? Dwarves are supposed to be slow and sturdy creatures! Also, Blood Fury has 16 HP, but the Shadow Matriarch has 90!
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Unread postby RommeL_666 » 30 Mar 2007, 11:48

Heroes 5 is a nice try of something what is going to be the best game in the future,or diffrent words Heroes 6.
Main problem is battlefield,in Heroes 3 it was great,just it should be. In Heroes 4 was nice but in Heroes 5 is disaster. Well it is stupid to have range units when I can shoot with them only one time maybe two,and then the great dragon (black dragon,green dragon, griffin,or somebody else) comes and kills them like they are peice of paper.

larger battlefield is neccesary with obvius reason.Like somebody told allready there are to big diffrent between lower tier creatures and high..you can eat shit with 300 pixies if 15 black dragons attack it:/ where is the fun there,where is the exictment?

Come on guys fix the battlefield, it is too small!!!!! and definetly fix the creatures especially the highest tier creatures.Input more skill,magic. Heroes V is beautiful but poor game,it looks like Disciples II if we look the concept. The idea of exp of the creatures is great and I think it should be considerd.

Sorry for the bad english. ;|
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Unread postby Orfinn » 30 Mar 2007, 18:18

Wow! Being away from "home" a few dayz and look what happens a nice planning for Heroes 6, what a surprise ;p

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Starbatron
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Unread postby Starbatron » 03 Apr 2007, 17:39

Yes, the battlefield size is far too small. If you are going to have a small battlefield, why not just have them start right next to each other. It would be little different than we have now... :D

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Unread postby BoardGuest808888 » 04 Apr 2007, 05:20

You can also put more features of tactical value in the battlefield.

I like what they're doing for Age of Wonder series. Made the battlefield livelier, not just a battle pit.


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