New Creature Tier System

The new Heroes games produced by Ubisoft. Please specify which game you are referring to in your post.
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MilesTeg
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Unread postby MilesTeg » 16 Dec 2010, 12:09

I understand your criticism TT but I think "hard to master" part has so much to do with scouting in addition to drops, expanding etc.
I don't want to discuss another game here; so I'll try to make it as short as possible, if you don't scout in SCII you are dead. It is that simple. You can have the best micro etc. but you are still going to lose.

I played all of the HOMM games, although none of them competitively, and I don't remember any case I paid attention to the opponents army composition. I usually selected the creatures which fit to my playing style and sticked with them.
However with this tier system, if I scout my opponent has tons of marksmen, maybe I'll try to build an army composition of ghosts and vampires for example (or imperial griffins of course).

Also having no unit as weak as a peasant is also a big plus for me as Mirez mentioned. I don't agree with the Imps though, they were useful for mana stealing:-)

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Unread postby Mirez » 16 Dec 2010, 15:50

meh, mana stealing is.... okay I guess but after that they still function as death fodder rather then have a part in the strategy
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Unread postby LoneKnight » 16 Dec 2010, 18:57

Mana stealing would be interesting if it could be used on caster units, hence making them a counter to that.

It'd be interesting if the game had that kind of structure to it; a kind of back and forth gameplay of who scouts who first, then who counters whose counter. I think what I disliked in older HoMMs is that there was usually one decisive battle, and then it's over. With RPS type counter play, you could quickly create a team that defeats the composition that defeated your army, which would act as a kind of negative slippery slope mechanic (which the older games direly needed imo).

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Unread postby Zenofex » 16 Dec 2010, 19:00

RTS and TBS can not be compared, the dynamics levels are very different and usually the TBSs are much more complex than the RTSs, which at one point are normally reduced to who-can-click-faster. Moreover, the greater part of the RTSs are no strategies, but tactics at most (including StarCraft), while the strategical element in the TBS games is much better emphasized. Now, before someone grabs a torch and pitchfork and starts with "you n00b, you are biased, you know nothing about StarCraft and the RTS games, blasphemy, etc.", I'll say that I've been actively playing StarCraft for about 10 or 11 years now and it's one of my favourite games (1, not 2) and also that I've played a lot of other RTSs.
We are yet to see how will the new tier system look like and whether it will be better than the previous one, but the argument that the scrapped 7 tiers weren't as good as the current 3 in terms of balance is simply void and Heroes V is the proof for this. Apart from a few totally useless creatures, all the factions could employ their whole armies on the battlefield and make use of even the weakest units stats-wise. It was only necessary to give the weakest creatures some good ability and they became useful. This could have been further improved, but they decided to dismiss the whole concept and start anew. We'll see if this was the right decision.
However with this tier system, if I scout my opponent has tons of marksmen, maybe I'll try to build an army composition of ghosts and vampires for example (or imperial griffins of course).
Even if we accept that the comparison between a RTS and a TBS could have some meaningful results, in this case your example will be valid only in rush scenarios on small maps. Heroes has never been a "fast" game though and hopefully never will be, so it's fully possible to have all the tiers before you even find the opponent, depending on the map size and the neutral parties blocking certain paths. On XL maps it's actually a rule.
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Unread postby ThunderTitan » 17 Dec 2010, 07:34

MilesTeg wrote:I understand your criticism TT but I think "hard to master" part has so much to do with scouting in addition to drops, expanding etc.
I don't want to discuss another game here; so I'll try to make it as short as possible, if you don't scout in SCII you are dead. It is that simple. You can have the best micro etc. but you are still going to lose.
Yes, the hardest thing in SC is sending out a probe to look around the map so you can see if your opponent chose paper, rock or scissors...

Just like the 2nd most important thing is having hands, because you can't win without them (because you can't play)...

Knowing what your opponent is doing and what the counter to that is is what's important and "hard to master", not the actual act of scouting, and that's knowing the game, not knowing to send a probe out. And of course there's harassing the opponent with the scout-probe, but that's on the same page as drops and other stuff.

Seriously, most of the stuff that makes SC the game it is (build orders, micro, harass etc.) depends on it being real time.

...

But counters could be added to Heroes, though that might end up making the game be decided too early by whoever started hoarding the right units first. Being 2 weeks behind on unit production won't be overcomed by counters unless they're really unbalanced... though i guess they could put unit caps per heroes, but if that is based on their levels would open up new issues, like higher level heroes having bigger armies etc.
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Unread postby MilesTeg » 17 Dec 2010, 10:53

Wow, first you limited the definition of scouting to your own description, then you said it is an easy task.
Knowing what your opponent is doing and what the counter to that is is what's important and "hard to master", not the actual act of scouting, and that's knowing the game, not knowing to send a probe out.
In my deifinition Knowing what your opponent is doing = scouting. There are so many methods to do that, not just sending a probe.
Of course you also have to know the game, I thought that was given. If someone doesn't know how to counter after scouting then he doesn't care about the game he/she is playing and I won't discuss the game with someone like that.

Anyway, I am glad at least we agreed on "countering" can be a nice addition if implemented correctly. In a HOMM game there won't be hard counters, only soft counters. So, it will be nice if I gain a little edge when I know what my opponent is doing.
If an example from a TBS game is necessary, Civ IV is a good example for having counters in a TBS game by the way.

I also wonder if this tier system is easier to handle for the AI or not? I couldn't decide. AI can have some presets about its unit composition and maybe it will be more managable for AI. What do you think?

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Unread postby ThunderTitan » 17 Dec 2010, 15:36

MilesTeg wrote:Wow, first you limited the definition of scouting to your own description, then you said it is an easy task.

In my definition Knowing what your opponent is doing = scouting. There are so many methods to do that, not just sending a probe.
Of course you also have to know the game, I thought that was given. If someone doesn't know how to counter after scouting then he doesn't care about the game he/she is playing and I won't discuss the game with someone like that.
The point was that the actual action of scouting (with or without the probe, though good luck winning against someone who knows what they're doing if you wait that long to scout) isn't really hard to master... it's knowing what to do with the information you obtain that is "hard to master", just like giving move orders is very simple, dancing with Vultures, Marines, Mutas etc. is the hard part.

MilesTeg wrote:If an example from a TBS game is necessary, Civ IV is a good example for having counters in a TBS game by the way.
Civ doesn't have unlimited troop capacity for each adv map unit...

For counters to actually matter in Heroes one would need to change how the game works in many way, like recruiting (which might already be changed if the tiers work like i heard Clash of Heroes does), how many units a hero can have, adding some way for you to scout early (in the previous game those nasty neutral stacks tended to block your path), perhaps even a way to convert units into the ones you need (because if i have 20 archers and then discover that the enemy has 20 counter-archer units by next week i would have 20 archers + X counter-counter-archers while he would have 20+X counter-archer units which would devaste the archers and then only have X units to take care of and the numbers should be enough to defeat any soft counter).
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