Necropolis alternative upgrades are up now...

[Alamar]

For the most part [there are exceptions!] games need great eye candy in some form or another to sell well.

And why isn't Heroes one?!

A game without good eye candy [or at least "charming" eye candy] needs:
1. To be extremely good and/or
2. Have awesome word-of-mouth and/or
3. Have an enormous fan following that will buy it anyway

At this point in time HoMM [H5 or future H6] doesn't seem to have any of the above going for it.

I contend that with traditional publisher / developer models that the wrong things will be stressed [again] and H6 won't be the kind of game that we want. [Eye candy > quality == perception of the traditional games industry]

[Orfinn]

And thats sad, very sad...

[ThunderTitan]

1. To be extremely good and/or

Too bad the HoMM series suck so much...

[Alamar]

1. To be extremely good and/or

Too bad the HoMM series suck so much...

It's not that bad ... it's just that it's not nearly as good as it should be. Also I suspect that the last several iterations of the series has eroded the hard core fan base so that's not helping matters much ....

[Of course the game doesn't seem to work well on my PC so from my limited POV I will certainly rate it worse than others who don't have my issues]

[Omega_Destroyer]

I'm pretty sure Titan was being sarcastic. It's just what he does.

[Elvin]

Occasionally

[gaspi2]

Non-shooting lichies?O_o
Maaan what a idiotic idea(sorry about drastic words)
How will they attck? by hands?
I wouldn't say anything but they have mana only 4 2 raise dead.
I find banshee quite nice, but once u get howl of terror, it's spec. ability is 4 nuttin(as horror's dragon is)
I don't like the vampires and poltrgeist. If smb has ammo cart their speciality looses effect. and sleeping strike is IMO 4 nuttin - 4 what purpose is to sleep low tier stuff 4 life drain?
:-/

[PhoenixReborn]

I think the melee lich has a spray attack like the sprite.

[Jolly Joker]

Death Wail is completely different from Banshee Howl.

[Wolfsburg]

I think the melee lich has a spray attack like the sprite.

If it is really so, I back my previous statements and confess. Those liches are hand-to-hand tanks, one of the best in the game if we' re to compare stats.

Plus: 2 raise dead in each battle is more than enough to minimize losses.

I liked the HP boost the banshee got, but I dont see myself using the nosferatus over the vamp lords.

[Adicto]

and sleeping strike is IMO 4 nuttin - 4 what purpose is to sleep low tier stuff 4 life drain?

If Sleeping Attack works like Blinding Attack, Shield Bash, Whip Strike, and so on, the chance of “stunning” an enemy stack will be high considering the great amount of nosferatus you will be able to get via necromancy. For example:
- 60 nosferatus vs. 10 thanes = 2400 hit points vs. 1000 hit points
- Probability of “stunning” thanes = 25% + 3% * (2400/1000) = 32.2%

In addition Sleeping Strike would work in retaliations & against creatures that have already retaliated, unlike no-retaliation ability which is only useful when vampire lords are attacking a creature that has not retaliated yet.

[Campaigner]

1. Unfortunately I'm becoming more & more convinced that a "standard" game developer / publisher won't EVER be able to give us everything that we want and still have a commercially viable product.

2. For the most part [there are exceptions!] games need great eye candy in some form or another to sell well. Unfortunately there are limited development budgets so if you pay attention to eye candy then things like AI / map editor / etc. are going to suffer. Also traditional publishers / developers are often forced to release a game before it is REALLY ready and once that's done there's not a strong economic reason to put much effort into patches, expansions, etc.

3. Only your smaller developers [without a real publisher pushing them] are going to be able to put the effort into the RIGHT pieces of the game in order to please hard core fans.

4. Note I would have thought that a fan lead project might work but so far I haven't seen any fan run strategy games being developed that have a decent AI WITH the level of eye candy that even HoMM fans would now desire .... Plus I'm sure UBI has more than enough lawyers to squash anything that would compete with them before they even got going ....

1. TBS fans have higher demands than other people who buy games and is therefore harder to please. Add to that that we exspect to play a TBS for years and its an economical disaster to try and please us. To top it all of, the big genres (RTS, FPS and RPG) are more profitable.

2. If I look at the back of gamebox and it has old graphics, then I think that the entire game is oldfashioned as well (e.g ancient interface, bad animations. A budget game).
A gamedeveloper team is divided in different sections (art, design, programming and sound) and everybody does their part. If they switch around people for different projects then it can very well be as you say in order to get the game out quicker.
If they're not interested in their reputation then they will do as you say.

3. Got that right. We got Stardock and and the guys who made Dominions.

4. A decent game with the right design which is moddable (like WarCraft III The Frozen Throne) can be fixed.