Question about Heroes VI streamlining of resources

[lotusreaver]

As we all know, Heroes VI reduced the number of in-game resources from 7 (gold, wood, ore, crystal, gems, sulfur, mercury) to 4 (gold, wood, ore, crystal). Long-time fans are pretty unhappy with the change but mostly agree with the developers that the decision to streamline resources eliminates some redundancies in gameplay. For those who are unhappy, I'm curious if it is because of a perceived drop in aesthetics or gameplay?

AESTHETICS argument: "Reducing resources affects the visual diversity of the maps and I enjoy seeing a plethora of different resources and mines on the map itself. Everything looks too uniform now."

GAMEPLAY argument: "Reducing resources affects the complexity in the gameplay and I enjoy (micro)managing resources. Reducing resources dumbs down the game."

Personally, I am more in the aesthetics camp.

A lot of the counter-arguments about not adding resources back into the game involve the gameplay-side. e.g. the developers would have to completely rebalance the game and redesign game mechanics.

On the other hand, if people are bummed out about aesthetics, it could perhaps be solved with a mod that randomly replaces the current blood crystals and blood crystal mines with the classic resources? As far as the game is concerned, there'd still be 4 resources (gold, wood, ore, crystals). Regardless of whether you pick up gems, sulfur, or mercury, your stock of crystals would increase. But from an aesthetics standpoint, there'd be more visual diversity on the maps in that the crystal resource will now be represented by 4 unique graphics.

[Ell1e]

I don't really mind having less ressources. It sounded like a big change at first, but the building costs made it so that the only difference is less mines to control. In Heroes V, your most important ressource varied between faction, but you were always short on something. That's still the case, except it's always blood crystals now. That makes blood crystal mines more important, but with area control it's not like you can just grab mines to annoy other players anyways. I also like that with the current building costs, wood and ore don't become redundant as fast as in V.

That mod you mentioned might cause a different problem with aesthetics. A lot of maps use blood crystals and matching scenery for decoration, that might look weird with a different ressource.

[hellegennes]

At first I was sceptical about the change, but I'm now comfortable with it. It does create less frustration when you don't have a specific resource, which in some maps creates problems for specific factions, rendering the map unfair in multiplayer.

Yes, it does make the maps less colourful, but that's subjective. As for micromanagement, truth be told, previous instalments may have had 7 types of resources but wood and ore played a very small part in the game, in most maps, while in Heroes 6 you need them for the most part of the game. As far as micromanagement is concerned, this really is 5 vs 4 resource types.

[Konfuzius]

I don't mind it too much but I think they should have made 4 resources instead of 3. Two ordinary and two special resources. But that's for the character and uniqueness of the game only. So partially, I think it was a good decision.

[Mozared]

I voted 'not unhappy', because though the change has downsides, the good far outweighs the bad for me. In H3 Skirmish you could often spent the entire game before obtaining income for every single existing resource, which makes competitive play a bit of a gamble. In H6, regardless of what happens, you'll at least always be able to build up your forces without being stopped by some rather arbitrary restriction.

Even gameplay-wise it's not SO MUCH BETTER or anything, it's just that I really don't at all feel like I'm missing some of the removed resources. The game's just a bit easier and less to play through.

If I HAD to choose between aesthetics or gameplay, I'd vote for the Aesthetics argument. The downside to having less resources is that it removes some depth from the game. The 'feeling' changes slightly. The world you're playing in is smaller. You used to have to travel all over the map to far off regions to obtain income in certain materials, which (though possibly tedious) gave the whole thing a feeling of 'grandeur' or epicness.

All in all I guess I can conclude that I just don't think the gameplay suffers very much.

Edit: I will agree with the above post, though. I think 4 resources would've been better than 3. As mentioned, you're now usually short on Blood Crystals - this works pretty well, but I really wouldn't have minded some kind of rare 'epic' resource used to build tier 7 units in order to cap their usage (especially in competitive play) a bit.

[Pol]

I'm not unhappy but it affected gameplay to the worse. So I voted. There are more concepts how to get other (rare) resources in the game and keep them exactly where they belong.

So, it's now too simple, loosing the charm and simplifying gameplay.

[havoc_85]

For me, its both. Its the lack of visual variety and the resource management game got very simplified.

I like the varied resources because it made the factions even more unique - but I do understand the benefits of not having to delay your fights because you are still behind with the resource hunting game.


And another thing, having 7 resource types with the way territories are being controlled in Heroes 6 might cause problems.

Maps would have to be bigger in order to accommodate more mines per territory or maybe more territories for more types of mines (I assume we don't want a map object on every twist and turn) - which in turn, will make the maps much bigger.

Personally, I would love if that was the case.
I love big maps and I really enjoy playing slowly while doing and finding everything the map-creator built, but the poor map makers would just have their brain overheat...

This is an opinion of a Single-Player player that might work for Single-Player mode. I never played online versus other people so I don't know how its like over there

[GMnemonic]

definatly want all resources back first for gameplay and because of aestetics uniformity aswell

\To explain there is no "adventure feel" "no tactics"

You know what you will find around the corner, in previous games it was a real discovery becaues of it. Would it be worth it or not there where many choices tactically to be made.

[Kalah]

While it isn't game breaking, I thought reducing the amount of resources took away some diversity. I liked having lots of different mines, and I also liked that the different factions had a special "home" resource.

[Crochuntamus]

I'm unhappy with the streamlined resources because I think it's a simplification that nobody really asked for.
Removing depth made the game less interesting to me.