the unproductive thoughts of a guy you've never heard of

[chunter6]

Long time heroes fan, browse this site alot, never post, yadda yadda.

just some things I dont think Ive seen mentioned, though granted, I havent scoured every topic posting.

slightly unrelated, but first, am I the only one who now likes V better than III?
what does III have that V doesnt other than that 'golden era' feel. dont get me wrong, Ive still probably logged more hours in III than V, but still, V has more strategical options as far as creature upgrades and choices, a better spell system (IMO), factions play extremely differently with racial abilities, and more in depth leveling system. whats not to like?

anywho, so what weve seen with VI.
whats with all the female units? I dont want to come off as misogynistic, but I like my warriors to be big and beefy. sure, creatures like succubi or medussa are obviously going to be female, but angels? i mean yea an angel can be a chick, but an angel for a battle field i would like to see some intimidating presence. just seems like they are trying to squeeze more female units in unnecessarily, maybe in a vain attempt to reach out to female gamers? i dunno, blind guess. but centaurs? arent centaurs classically male anyways?

which is my next point, The might and magic series has traditionally had traditional fantasy units (minus all the space stuff). Id really like to see more classic fantasy units than creatures made up for the world of asha. Im not so close minded as to say we can only have classic creatures. but I personally would prefer it to return to that. ill play elder scrolls for unique creatures.

though i do gotta say, Im digging the cyclops, reminds me of the behemoth from III, love it.

but aside from that beast, whats with all the lanky, skinny, hunched over growling guys? zombies are chunky and slow!

I have seen this posted, but Im dissapointed at the lack of optional upgrades, as well as the upgrades mostly looking to be almost pallet swaps. heres my totally unfounded theory: theyre keeping it easy to tell which is the better, for new players to easily identify which one is the upgrade, rather than them looking tottally different, and not knowing which one is which.

segway to next point. I feel like the resources being down the 4, boring upgrades, non need to flag mines, converting of towns, and only 5 towns are changes made to make it easier for new players. again, totally unfounded opinion, but I think if that is the case, it isnt needed as its not like this is a really complicated series, and secondly, i feel this game has a much larger long time fan base than any amount of new players it will gain, so dumbing it down for new players is a disservice not so much to the fans, but the larger number of fans it has than it will gain.

and lastly the 5 towns things really irks me. And the fact that they arent doing dungeon, wizard, or elves (minus whatever the 5th is) seems to me to be for the fact that they can release an expansion wish a faction that has been with hereos the whole time, this seems lazy and greedy.

still looking forward to this game, and will withhold judgement till i play it, but as of right now, im not holding my breath.

ps, no death knight? wtf mate. coolest necro creature ever.r

[ThunderTitan]

slightly unrelated, but first, am I the only one who now likes V better than III?
what does III have that V doesnt other than that 'golden era' feel.

Whatever it is has kept a lot of people playing it 12-ish years later...

whats with all the female units? I dont want to come off as misogynistic, but I like my warriors to be big and beefy. sure, creatures like succubi or medussa are obviously going to be female, but angels? i mean yea an angel can be a chick, but an angel for a battle field i would like to see some intimidating presence. just seems like they are trying to squeeze more female units in unnecessarily, maybe in a vain attempt to reach out to female gamers? i dunno, blind guess. but centaurs? arent centaurs classically male anyways?

It's phycological warfare... makes all the fanboys nervous...

ps, no death knight? wtf mate. coolest necro creature ever.r

They just didn't want to confuse people with too many knights... they left that for the dragons.

[MattII]

what does III have that V doesnt other than that 'golden era' feel.

1. The fact that the time between turns is something under a minute, not half-an hour.
2. You don't have to rotate the adventure map to see everything.
3. The Dungeon and Fortress actually feel like good factions, not just Warhammer snatches.

I feel like the resources being down the 4, boring upgrades, non need to flag mines, converting of towns, and only 5 towns are changes made to make it easier for new players.

Agreed.

[Variol]

I get what you're saying chunter6.
Like others, for me, in a word it's "simplicity". Going back and playing H3 now is pretty scary/ugly. H5 probably is my fav, but I could sacrifice a lot of graphics to have a game which runs faster. But it also seems like these designers do not have the ability to do a simple, yet nice looking graphic. If it is the Russians making this game, I can fully understand; they just have to do it extravagant and over the top.

I'm playing Etherlords 2 again right now. That game and Disciples 2 are kind of the "standard" for me. The graphics in both are excellent, the game runs excellent and I can not "make" them crash. And I play them on a 9 year old PC.

[vicheron]

Heroes 5 had a lot of problems when it was released. It was really buggy. It was very slow. It had several missing features. It didn't have very many maps.

In terms of gameplay, the maps were much smaller, which was a huge detriment, especially to the exploration and adventure aspect of the series. They took away several features, like being able to flag windmills, high level creature dwellings, a bunch of adventure structures, etc., for no reason. The game speed issue was never fully resolved.

Then there was the really poorly written story. Heroes 3's story wasn't perfect but at least it was competently written and made sense. Heroes 5's story is full of plot holes and the characters act like idiots. Plus since the maps were so small, it really limited the game's scope. In Heroes 3, it felt like that there was a real war being waged since you often had huge maps with 8 or 10 towns, more if there's an underground area, that take weeks to explore. With Heroes 5, most of the time, there are like 4 or 5 towns and you can cross the entire map in four days. It just felt like these were little skirmishes rather than a full scale war.


duplicate post removed - QQD

[Qurqirish Dragon]

The main reason I prefer H3 to H5 is the quality of the maps. H3's editor allowed even amateur mapmakers to make very nice maps. H5's made it so that even putting out a signpost with a message attached was a major bit of scripting.
I realize that more could be done with H5, but the editing was so cumbersome that many of the great mapmakers never made any. Regardless of the quality of the in-house maps, there were only a finite number of them, and as someone who played hundreds of maps from H2/3/4 designers, that's a big problem.
The long delays between turns, as others have mentioned, didn't help things either. I gave up on finishing many H5 maps because even shortly into the map, things would grind to a halt. Although this did happen occasionally in an H3 map, that was usually when there was a large network of 'liths, and most good mapmakers avoided those.

[Zenofex]

what does III have that V doesnt

Playability, replayability of the single-player games, working RMG with Armageddon's Blade, excellent Map Editor, plenty of maps, story written by someone who actually has a general idea of what this thing is, Might and Magic classes for each faction, good AI... Seriously, Heroes V has its merits, but saying that Heroes III does not surpass it in some (quite a few actually) fields is not very educated opinion.

whats with all the female units?

That's what many of us want to find out. I guess it's some perverted form of "equal rights" for men and women but you never know what's in the heads of the masterminds who decided to mobilize the "gentle part" of each race.

[sezerp]

(...) In Heroes 3, it felt like that there was a real war being waged since you often had huge maps with 8 or 10 towns, more if there's an underground area, that take weeks to explore.

Actually, 8 - 10 towns is sth. you can fit on medium map in H3, still having some space left to work with. Case in point: map Griffin Cliff from "Long Live the Queen" campaign contains exactly 10 towns. (5 Castle, 2 Inferno, 3 Dungeon).

[jeff]

whats with all the female units?

Frankly, I have no problem whatsoever with that.

[Darkström]

whats with all the female units? I dont want to come off as misogynistic, but I like my warriors to be big and beefy. sure, creatures like succubi or medussa are obviously going to be female, but angels? i mean yea an angel can be a chick, but an angel for a battle field i would like to see some intimidating presence. just seems like they are trying to squeeze more female units in unnecessarily, maybe in a vain attempt to reach out to female gamers?

I think they reach out to the male gamers...

[Pitsu]

*tries to imagine what kind of males the lamassu could attract...* Necrozoophiles? Male lamassu?

[ThunderTitan]

*tries to imagine what kind of males the lamassu could attract...* Necrozoophiles? Male lamassu?

Sphinxes most likely...

I guess it's some perverted form of "equal rights" for men and women but you never know what's in the heads of the masterminds who decided to mobilize the "gentle part" of each race.

Perhaps something like "we could double our numbers if we didn't exclude more then half the population from the armed forces because of some archaic notion of combat that came about from a time when the fighting was over said part of the population"?

[Zenofex]

Could be, but this doesn't really change the fact that the chances of survival of some unarmed nun in her Sunday's best on the battlefield are between zero and non-existent and her combat efficiency will be the same or worse. People had and still have reasons for these sexist and discriminative armies you know.

[Thelonious]

Could be, but this doesn't really change the fact that the chances of survival of some unarmed nun in her Sunday's best on the battlefield are between zero and non-existent and her combat efficiency will be the same or worse. People had and still have reasons for these sexist and discriminative armies you know.

That's what? Chicks fight dirty? Come on, it's a fantasy universe. Chicks can fight over there; and if they couldn't magic would allow them to anyways...

I just think they have more female units so they can have another Nival style release party... bet you though that the centaur and harpy units wouldn't be one of the choice the dancers/models would dress up as...

[Metathron]

I just think they have more female units so they can have another Nival style release party...

What a fine reason that would be for their inclusion. Aahh, like the Enroth release parties of yore...

[Zenofex]

I don't mind a few Amazons, but their approach is blatantly deliberate. Why did they need to turn the Centaurs into females? Well, to fill the female quota for Stronghold, that's why. There are similar cases in all factions and frankly only Inferno looks OK at the moment in this regard.
And even if it's just me, I think that every creature on the battlefield should look like something that's meant to be there, not a runaway from the nearest royal wedding party or bikini model contest. This suspends the entire Haven, I know.

[vicheron]

As long as they don't have scantily clad front line female units then it's fine. There's nothing wrong with magic users, archers, or speedy raiders/skirmishers that don't wear a lot of armor, although it shouldn't mean that they wear bikinis.

In fact, mages in Heroes games always wear robes. Other than in Heroes 5, archers wore leather or chain shirts. Skirmishers like nomads and bandits also wore little to no armor.

[jeff]

As long as they don't have scantily clad front line female units then it's fine. There's nothing wrong with magic users, archers, or speedy raiders/skirmishers that don't wear a lot of armor, although it shouldn't mean that they wear bikinis.

What's wrong with you? Seriously you would rather look at female warriors hidden in heavy armor?

[Kalah]

I agree with Zeno that the units should not look out of place on a battlefield; meaning that they should not necessarily wear armour, but the bikini style is just ludicrous.

[ThunderTitan]

Could be, but this doesn't really change the fact that the chances of survival of some unarmed nun in her Sunday's best on the battlefield are between zero and non-existent and her combat efficiency will be the same or worse.

As opposed to an old guy with a wooden staff? Or something the size of a 12 year old with a wooden boomerang?

People had and still have reasons for these sexist and discriminative armies you know.

Yes, because it's hard to treat women as the weaker sex when they know how to kill you... just ask the israelis.