Conceptiually best heroes game?

[Jolly Joker]

GC, and DL, I think you both argue a bit beside the point here. The question is not which game has the most original game concept or game aspects, the question is which game has the BEST concept.
What you do now, is making a difference between the concept in an abstract sense and coming up with excuses naming them implementation. However, there must be a way to judge whether a concept is good or bad, and the only way to judge it IS by its implementation. Otherwise there wouldn't be bad concepts at all because in the end it was only a question of finding the right implementation.
It is easy to see, though, that the hero-on-the-battlefield concept with the stack-based combat (featuring ARMIES of creatures) is a bad idea. It's just as bad an idea as letting an army general fight as a common soldier in the front line, no matter how you implement it.
However, giving said general an option to call up an airstrike each "turn" is possible.

[pepak]

The poll asks for the "conceptionally" best Heroes game, and I, too, cannot understand why so many people voted H 4: H 4 clearly has the worst concept of them all

Clearly any use of the word of "clearly" means that there is no other argument than a subjective one. I think quite the opposite thing you do, for precisely the same reasons you do.

Now, for clones (and differing concepts).
Heroes I is obviously an original concept.

And the same thing I criticize with "clearly" is true for "obviously". Although in this case I tend to agree that Heroes I was relatively original.

[DaemianLucifer]

It's just as bad an idea as letting an army general fight as a common soldier in the front line, no matter how you implement it.

Of course,generals never did that,sure

And you want proof of the concept actually being the best?Ok,tell me what other game with no AI,that was released prematurelly,that had so many bad implementations and imbalances,is still being activelly played by so many players 5 years after the release?

[Jolly Joker]

It's just as bad an idea as letting an army general fight as a common soldier in the front line, no matter how you implement it.

Of course,generals never did that,sure

And you want proof of the concept actually being the best?Ok,tell me what other game with no AI,that was released prematurelly,that had so many bad implementations and imbalances,is still being activelly played by so many players 5 years after the release?

But whah you want is just that: letting a General fight at the frontline as part of a very large army.
And for the rest, I don't know how many people play H IV (still). So I don't know how many are "so many". Since it was the last sequel the real question would be: tell me how many players KEPT PLAYING H 3 (or even H 2) and stopped playing H 4 rather fast after its release. I'd bet that the percentage is much bigger than with other sequels (where people tend to switch to the newer versions GENERALLY). If they don't (and they didn't) there seems to be something wrong with the new game. Conceptually.

[DaemianLucifer]

But whah you want is just that: letting a General fight at the frontline as part of a very large army.

I thought that with this one it was rather obvious I was sarcastic.Generals were in the front lines lots of times(let me just mention alexander and ceasar here).Only with the discovery of radio and phones the officiers became safer.

And for the rest, I don't know how many people play H IV (still). So I don't know how many are "so many". Since it was the last sequel the real question would be: tell me how many players KEPT PLAYING H 3 (or even H 2) and stopped playing H 4 rather fast after its release. I'd bet that the percentage is much bigger than with other sequels (where people tend to switch to the newer versions GENERALLY). If they don't (and they didn't) there seems to be something wrong with the new game. Conceptually.

Really?So all those people that quit because "This game has no AI!","This game is way imbalanced!" actually quit playing it because it was a bad concept?I guess you learn something new every day.

[Jolly Joker]

Don't get ridiculous. The leaders of old did take part in the battle, but only a very selected few led actually from the front. Those who DID do it actually, were guarded by their special bodyguard whose task it was to make sure that noting untoward could befall their beloved leader, so they certainly did not take the way all the others did.
Risking the life of a good leader in the front line when THOUSANDS are fighting and after the invention of missile weapons is and was poor folly. There really is not much more to be said about this.

For the rest, having no AI doesn't have an impact on MP play and being imbalanced never was any reason to not play a game - just look at H 3 and the MP rules widely adopted by the official sites.

[Metathron]

creature importance, and creatures, town-building and towns as a whole are by far the worst of all Heroes games

In your humble opinion, which I (and many others, obviously) humbly disagree with.

Don't get ridiculous. The leaders of old did take part in the battle, but only a very selected few led actually from the front. Those who DID do it actually, were guarded by their special bodyguard whose task it was to make sure that noting untoward could befall their beloved leader, so they certainly did not take the way all the others did.
Risking the life of a good leader in the front line when THOUSANDS are fighting and after the invention of missile weapons is and was poor folly. There really is not much more to be said about this.

If it is of such vital importance for you that logic permeates every facet of a turn based fantasy game, why then do you not gripe about the non-simultaneous turns of creatures (found in all of the games save HoMM IV), which clearly makes no sense. Not that it bothers me, but be fair or at least try to make your view less slanted, i.e. don't pick and choose as much as you do, as it makes your posts far less credible.

[Akul]

H4 has bad concept? Hmm...

1. Advanced classes - class finally means something and they are made in a good way
2. Battlefield
3. FoW - you now require to use scouts
4. Caravans
5. The best magic system in the whole goddamn game
6. Good skill system (true, it is not as good as the H5 one, but still better then the past ones)
7. Best campaign system in the serial (true, you need expansions)
8. Garrisons mean much, much more and are strategicaly more important
9. Creature choosing - every creature is choosen by: "against whom you fight". Strategy+!
10. Both creature abilities and creature stats are important. In H3, abilities were almost invisible while in H5 abilities are more important then stats.
11. Has one of best multiplayers
12. If I remember more things, I'll write it here

H4, by its concepts, incresed both most important aspects of every HoMM game: RPG and strategy. The only bad things about the game are:
1. Terribly stupid AI
2. Heroes on battlefield are unballanced
Conceptualy, H4 may be the bst, but by impletation, it is as terrible as H5 (which, BTW, is not really much played).

And talking about general:
Generals in Middle Ages were on the battlefield. They needed to be there or else their armies won't fight with all their potential. In 1,2,3&5 hero can't fight which is stupid because many heroes in middle ages did fight.
In H4, lets imagine that you take a knight without combat skills. He is needed there to increase stats of his army, but even a level 2 stack can kill him so you need to leave him bodyguards so that he don't die. Sending a stack to eliminate the annoying knight is a good strategy as well as realistic.

[Mytical]

Ok we are still debating opinons however. Just because we go against the 'common' opinon, does not mean it is invalid. Anyhow, that is all I am going to say on the subject (why beat a dead horse), so argue away!

[DaemianLucifer]

Don't get ridiculous. The leaders of old did take part in the battle, but only a very selected few led actually from the front. Those who DID do it actually, were guarded by their special bodyguard whose task it was to make sure that noting untoward could befall their beloved leader, so they certainly did not take the way all the others did.
Risking the life of a good leader in the front line when THOUSANDS are fighting and after the invention of missile weapons is and was poor folly. There really is not much more to be said about this.

About the bold part,did you even read what I suggested?And I do mean read,not just glanced it.

[Pitsu]

What is the fuss about leaders and generals? Yes, some among countless generals are heroes and some among countless heroes are generals. So what?

[DaemianLucifer]

Ok we are still debating opinons however. Just because we go against the 'common' opinon, does not mean it is invalid. Anyhow, that is all I am going to say on the subject (why beat a dead horse), so argue away!

Oh,you still think that we are debating against you?What an ego

[ThunderTitan]

Heroes I is obviously an original concept.

*cough* Kings Bounty *cough*

[Jolly Joker]

We are talking about game concepts here, Sauron, not about single features. Features have to work with each other and in the end make more than the sum of their parts to create a truly good game. In this H 4 simply failed, and the failure is conceptual, not implementory. The main reason is the silly idea to copy with Heroes IV what Aow/Disciples introduced with their single unit fightings. BOTH games work much better in this respects than Heroes with stack based combat could ever hope for which should be rather obvious (except for some dreamers who really fell in love with the idea to have this feature in their favorite game).
This doesn't mean that the resulting game would be crappy; it simply means that those other games (games with SINGLE creatures) would always be more consistant and conceptually better - they would feel more natural.
So conceptually it was a very big mistake to try this. However, to implement not only heroes but even MULTIPLE heroes on the battlefield things had to be sacrificed, and no matter what you are saying, Metathron, the towns in H IV are ugly, town-building is practically not existant and the picking between different creatures was ALOT better done in Disciples (where you would pick, for example between a powerful single-unit Healer or Caster or a mediocre mass Healer or Caster). This is, however, NOT a conceptual flaw of the feature as such (picking between creatures) it's a flaw of the concept of how features are interacting.

To forestall any misunderstandings: What you seem to call flawed implementation is what I call flawed concept of feature interaction. In this I would say that Heroes IV had a very bad concept of feature interaction, of the relative weight of features against each other and how they worked.

Again, the main conceptual flaw of Heroes IV is adding Heroes to the battlefield AND (to make it work) let everything else "suffer" because of it.[/b]

[Gaidal Cain]

the towns in H IV are ugly,

Yup, that's a nice example of a concept..

town-building is practically not existant

And this relates to the concept of chooseable creatures, or heroes in armies how?
(And I do mean the concept, not the implementation with only four levels).

Again, the main conceptual flaw of Heroes IV is adding Heroes to the battlefield AND (to make it work) let everything else "suffer" because of it.

I can agree with the notion that the implemention of heroes on the field is bad, but the concept isn't (as again, the counterexample of commanders in WoG show). The main flaw is the combat skill. If heroes could only be one of efficient fighters and generals/spellcasters , heroes on the field can work.

[Jolly Joker]

WoG Commander is NOT heroes on the battlefield. Wog Commander is one additional army position for a "variable and upgradable creature" IN ADDITION. That's something else entirely, ESPECIALLY in the H 3 context, giving commanders a fixed position to act as with creatures, but leaving the Hero installed. Note further, that the AI isn't fully handle the Commander part which sheds a rather warping light onto the evidence.

[Humakt]

Good things of Heroes 4:
- Heroes on battlefied
- Multiple heroes on battle
- Skill system
- Spell system
- Creatures can travel without heroes.
- Combat system (Line of Sight, Morale and Luck)
- Pretty adventure map graphics
- Lots of Objects
- Map Editor
- Fog of War
- Choosing creatures in towns
- Teleports (no more AI looping them like in H3)
- Creature banks getting refilled
- Caravan
- Flaggable Mills
- Dwellings keep their creature growth
- Music

These are the problems for me in Heroes 4:
- Buggy AI (can still be challenge with help from map maker)
- Necropolis (other towns were good though)
- Some unbalances (thankfully Equilibris has fixed them)
- Difficulty system
- Expansions
- Sieges could have been better (or at least siege AI)

I'm actually satisfied with the way they implemented heroes on battlefield. Too few of the players understand that the values and strengths of heroes compared to creatures are map specified. Resource rich map with lots of dwellings but few hero power-ups does increase the value of creatures since you can't do much without them as your heroes will be of low level. Also good Tactics hero multiplies your creatures' usefulness on battlefield. Combat is not necessary skill for heroes as you can protect them with LoS and combat tricks (and use Immortality Potions).

Good things about Heroes V
- Graphics/art
- Town themes
- Music
- Skill system
- Spell system (it's not as good as H4 but definitely better than H3)
- Caravan (only with expansion)
- They've added different forms to multiplayer.

Bad things:
- Heavy Map Editor
- No scripts in multiplayer maps?
- Lack of objects
- Lack of spells

So yes, I do like both games.

Is still being activelly played by so many players 5 years after the release?

Not very many players considering the lack of feedback or playtesting results to my latest XL map I'm afraid.

[Mytical]

And don't forget, H3 STILL has players, and remember it was out before H4 (just for those who can not count). So by that argument DL, H3 would in your own logic trump h4..even conceptually. Just thought I would point that out.

[DaemianLucifer]

And don't forget, H3 STILL has players, and remember it was out before H4 (just for those who can not count). So by that argument DL, H3 would in your own logic trump h4..even conceptually. Just thought I would point that out.

You dont say?It does?Really?I wonder why I voted HII then.Oh,thats right:Cloning

[igoraki]

Again, the main conceptual flaw of Heroes IV is adding Heroes to the battlefield AND (to make it work) let everything else "suffer" because of it.[/b]

hi JJ,nice to see you are more active on ch for some time now...

i would say you simple dislike this concept of adding heroes to the battle and therefor call it impossible to implement

however,some ppl here (me too)liked the concept,which is maybe taken from aow and and disciples,maybe from mom or maybe from some other game before that,thats not important,imho....taking good ideas from other games is something i can only encourage,maybe it would be good if ubi and nival did take a look into some other games as well when creating h5,instead of blindly following older heroes concepts....

why do i think heroes in battle is a good concept ?

1)increased number of possibilities for battle,will i have one weak hero casting song of peace or will i take another stack of creatures instead

2)you can kill it and therefore remove all the effects he or she have on the creatures or prevent it from casting of various spells,something you couldnt do in previous heroes and h5

3)it encourage usage of the multiply armys,imho,since you can use all or most of your heroes in final battle,so creating good second or third hero is not just waste of time like it was in previous heroes games

so variety is the key word here,increased number of possible combinations...and that is something good,imo,and therefore i call this concept good and advanced compared to all other heroes games

why then do you not gripe about the non-simultaneous turns of creatures (found in all of the games save HoMM IV)

its also in kings bounty,Metathron,just fyi