Good Bye Nival?

[Corlagon]

I think we can both agree that imbalance usually lessens a game's quality when it can be avoided.

[Asheera]

Well I know what you mean, something like this (both games in the examples have the same gameplay mechanics)

Game A has six towns, two very imbalanced.
Game B has five towns, all of them very balanced.

Yes, Game A has more content but imbalance doesn't count, so it's actually only 4 quality towns. The other has 5, so it is better.

However, if we have:

Game A with six towns, all of them very balanced.
Game B with the same six towns, but has two more which are imbalanced.

In this case I wouldn't consider Game B worse than A, since it doesn't lack anything A has. It has more content, but since it is not quality (imbalanced), it shouldn't be considered a lot better either. But I don't get it why say B is worse than A when it just has more content? Apart from Hard Disk space, it has no disadvantage, even if the extra content is crappy.

[MER]

@Ppl saying H5 is better than H3 because its more popular:

It is more popular at the moment because it's new, every new game in the beginning has popularity. The question is, will it be still popular in 9 years as H3 is now. If yes, then OK, H5 is at least as good as H3. But i highly doubt that will be the case.

Example: when Warcraft 3 came out in 2003 everyone jumped on it thinking it'll surpass Starcraft. And for several years it was the more popular of the 2 games. However now WC3 scene is essentially dying (im not talking about DoTA) whereas Starcraft is still flourishing after 11 years. The case with H3 and H5 is the same IMO, it's just a temporary moment of fame for H5.
Edited on Fri, Feb 06 2009, 13:27 by MER

[Pitsu]

I will leave the former topic for now and comment the last post only.

Additional material that causes imbalances or dislike is fine only as long as it can be turned off. Like many things in WoG. A good example could be the unfortunate user made map that causes minotaurs and ghost dragons have enormous hit points in H5. It is just few monsters out of so many, but how many people wonder what the heck is that. And unless you can prevent any random town to be conflux in H3, it may ruin a map even though no player chooses it as a starting town.

Coming back to NWC-Nival-3DO-Ubi and game quality, then it might be good to remember that although NWC was the developer until H4 WoW, its shortcomings are related to the publisher 3DO. For me H2 is the favorite. Somewhere during H3 development NWC lost its independence to 3DO, and from soon thereafter i see degradation in both, HoMM and MM games. Thus, even if original NWC would come together and express willingness to work again on HoMM, its outcome would depend much on Ubi. Even more, since it is Ubisoft that picks the new dev. team, game's quality must be mostly Ubi's responsibility.

[jeff]

I guess Jeff meant that Ubi has some responsibility about Heroes V,

Ahem, I wasn't going to comment again, but here goes. In part you are right, sorry but I’m an ex-military officer and it was drilled into us you can delegate authority, but you can’t delegate responsibility. How does that apply here, simple as owner of the franchise it was UBI’s responsibility to ensure the quality of the product, not Nival. Nival’s mistakes are UBI’s mistakes. UBI had the ability and the responsibility to fix anything they felt was broke. If it was not fixed then they did not feel it was broke. Any argument defending UBI falls short by the fact they are the owners it’s their responsibility alone to ensure ultimate product quality. The fact I prefer H-IV to H-V has nothing to do with it. I’ve moved on, I point to H-V players dissatisfaction with the product (example: patches that break as much as it fixes) and when Fabrice just prior to tribes release makes the comment we didn’t know fans were unhappy with the H-V editor shows a complete lack of connection with the fan community. UBI has shown itself not to care until after the fact, unless that changes I stand by my previous statement.

It does seem this is starting to go way off topic, perhaps the mods will close it if it continues to evolve into a 4 v 5 debate.

[Jolly Joker]

However, the bottom line is, it's all strawman arguments anyway. Why?

With H IV 3DO did a lousy job. NWC knew their game and tried something else on one hand, but 3DO did their best to butcher it. The bottom line was - technically - a bad game at release. No MP. No AI. Exp packs were designed to make a fast buck only.
I don't think Ubi did a worse job than that.

STILL, it's H IV you prefer and like and defend. Why? Because your preferences are so that subjectively the shortcomings of H IV don't matter to you nearly as much as those with H V (did someone say editor?).

For others it's the same thing. If the game serves your preferences well, great, if not, to hell with the guilty parties.

[Avonu]

With H IV 3DO did a lousy job. NWC knew their game and tried something else on one hand, but 3DO did their best to butcher it. The bottom line was - technically - a bad game at release. No MP. No AI. Exp packs were designed to make a fast buck only.
I don't think Ubi did a worse job than that.

Yes, they did.
3DO was on edge of bancrucy IIRC, so for them selling games was "to be or not to be".
Ubisoft on the other hand realeased HV without map editor, with only a handful of maps to play, with Artificial Idiot and without some features which were annouced to be in HV (simultaneous turn - remember anyone?). Not mention that this game was buggy even after first patch (and still no editor included).
Did they have to released HV so quickly? No, they could afford to wait some time to polished this game. Did they do that?

[darknessfood]

3DO indeed did a lousy job on the HoMM IV expansions. I think (like Avonu said) they needed the money bad.
Ubi's HoMM V wasn't bad at all, and the expansions were more than a mere "let's cash in". They did have more gameplay, and such. I'm only dissapointed that they didn't support the game very well, with patches and stuff...

[jeff]

STILL, it's H IV you prefer and like and defend. Why? Because your preferences are so that subjectively the shortcomings of H IV don't matter to you nearly as much as those with H V (did someone say editor?).

Agreed

[Edwardas 3]

I read the commentaries about *bad job* on HoMM IV ,get sad and play it never the less again and again.

I tried to skirmish in HoMM V but way too long AI turn made it impossible .Empty maps ,lack of neutral mobs I could ignore ,but waithing 5 minutes every turn is no go.

So before VI is released it wud be 3 and 4 for me.

[HodgePodge]

STILL, it's H IV you prefer and like and defend. Why? Because your preferences are so that subjectively the shortcomings of H IV don't matter to you nearly as much as those with H V (did someone say editor?).

Yes, I said EDITOR! Or should I say LACK of a user-friendly Editor. I could've put up with just about all of the sh!t shoveled at us by Ubival with H5 … except for the horrible Map Editor.

All of the so called 'shortcomings' could've been overlooked if Heroes V had a decent, user-friendly Map Editor. That's why I prefer Heroes IV, the magnificent Map/Campaign Editor makes Heroes IV much more fun to play.

[ByteBandit]

I also believe sentimentality may have played a minor role in the game not being a complete success. Despite great gameplay and graphics, I think the dismissal of past legendary heroes (i.e. Sandro, Crag Hack, Lord Haart and so on) may have rubbed true loyalists of the game the wrong way. I have no evidence to prove it. It's just a theory. But hopefully the game will continue to push new ground in the future, but retain older values as well.

[Edwardas 3]

Why HoMM 5 was not set in traditional HoMM universe it would be

nice to meet old rascals type Crag ?

[ThunderTitan]

>>It's just a hypothesis.<<

Fixed that for you...

>>Despite great gameplay and graphics,<<

Gameplay was OK, but the graphics... i bet you thought WC3 had good graphics too.

[Asheera]

Matter of taste I guess, I agree some models look ridiculous (like the Peasants) but most have a good design.

And in no way you can compare H5 graphics with Warcraft 3. H5 has much better graphics, let's compare the trees for a start, hmm?



(left WC3, right H5)

[Metathron]

Warcraft III is four years older than HoMM V, so that doesn't really speak in favour of the latter.

And yes, I thought WC3 had good graphics; not at first, though, it was an acquired taste. So, by extension, I quite liked the HoMM V (adventure map) graphics.

[Asheera]

Well I was not the one to bring up the comparison with Warcraft 3

Also, that 'being old' argument is no excuse. Just look up at Neverwinter Nights which was released the same year as WC3. Compare the trees if you'd like.

Warcraft (including WoW) just has silly graphics, and not just because it is old. It's just how it is, beats me why.

But this is getting off-topic

[darknessfood]

Indeed.HoMM V just had a certain style. A bit cartoonish (so perhaps the comparison of Asheera wasn't THAT bad).It had a pretty good style if you ask me !

[jeff]

I agree H-V had good graphics but at a cost, since just about everything moved it caused system requirements to be unnecessarily high. My few attempts with its editor were continually frustated by the slow computer performance caused by the highly detailed objects constantly in motion. No I don't use old computers, I replace them frequently. So my system was always well above the stated requirements. When I judged the H-V contest Psycobabble held just before he left a few of the nicely decorated maps were just painful to play because the high number of objects caused all aspects of the game to run slowly. They must balance that better if H-VI is to succeed.

[Asheera]

I agree that H5 runs too slow compared to how it looks. Bad engine optimization I guess, so let's hope the new company is better at this (and making a fast AI while not losing any of its 'intelligence' for this process)