Only 4 resources. Good or bad?

[Arzang]

4 resources strikes me as a bit too low. The system from before was a bit too strange though.

Of course, I would like to see a new system that would make me go "omgwtfCHANGE!". Maybe 4 resources and a magic pool that is replenished in an alternate fashion, not related to mines?

One can argue for days whether or not 4 universal resources are enough. For me though, in order to make the towns interesting there should be better ways than to make one town that uses a lot of mercury and one that uses a lot of sulfur.

Short version:

4 may not be enough, but I'd rather see some other restrictions to town building than gems and crystals.

[Lord_Haart]

4 resources might work OK if they make Wood, Ore and Crystal much more distinct. Some nations might be highly Ore-reliant (eg Dungeon), others might need more gold (Haven), some need Wood (Sylvan), while others might need crystal, or a mix of 2 or more.

Even more, it might be dwelling-specific. So if you want Titans, you need Ore and Crystal, but if you can't get those in sufficient quantities you should use the Wood for Catapults instead (for example).

I don't think that the number of resources matter nearly as much as how they are used does.

[Kristo]

I had one other thought about this 4 resources business. Marketplaces ought to be an adventure map location only. With only three types besides gold, you're unlikely to be completely out of one resource. You're also unlikely to get stuck with a ton of something you can't use. The ability to convert between resource types should be contested between the players.

[Blocks100]

That's an interesting idea about players fighting over marketplaces - but for me they are are an essential part of the 'town' structure - whoever heard of a city without a commerce centre?

And besides, let players fight over towns to own more markets to get more favourable trade rights...sometimes the old ways are still the best.

The only thing that is truely making me baulk at the moment is those HUGE circular icons that hover over the heroes...they're so ugly. Still let's keep on repeating the mantra ...'it's only pre-alpha, its only pre-alpha...'

[MattII]

4 resources might work OK if they make Wood, Ore and Crystal much more distinct. Some nations might be highly Ore-reliant (eg Dungeon), others might need more gold (Haven), some need Wood (Sylvan), while others might need crystal, or a mix of 2 or more.

Good idea, but I still don't think that one precious resource is enough.

Even more, it might be dwelling-specific. So if you want Titans, you need Ore and Crystal, but if you can't get those in sufficient quantities you should use the Wood for Catapults instead (for example).

Another good idea, but a bit more complex since it means you're either fighting with few creatures than you have slots for, or balancing extra creatures.

I don't think that the number of resources matter nearly as much as how they are used does.

No, probably not, but I maintain the opinion that the number of resources in a series should remain fairly constant, and now that we've had 5 games, the 7 resources should have remained constant.

I had one other thought about this 4 resources business. Marketplaces ought to be an adventure map location only. With only three types besides gold, you're unlikely to be completely out of one resource. You're also unlikely to get stuck with a ton of something you can't use. The ability to convert between resource types should be contested between the players.

Interesting idea.

Also, how about adding in a Civilization series style dialogue screen that allows you to trade directly with other players at greater efficiencies than the market allows, but leaves them open to refuse your trades.

[Kilop]

I agrea with almost everything confeta said, i ll add that those 7 ressources were never fully exploited, and mostly a sorry excuse to lenghten lenght of games.

Seriously, everything in HoMM II wasn't perfect (even if arguably the best of the serie )

[MattII]

I agrea with almost everything confeta said, i ll add that those 7 ressources were never fully exploited, and mostly a sorry excuse to lenghten lenght of games.

I assume you mean speed rather than length, and even that doesn't make much sense since that 'speed' is determined by the map-maker, who can choose to add in the mines near the towns to provide more resources, or even provide the resources directly by daily 'events' (or at least you could in H3). The lack of exploitation is a point, but it's been getting better each game, and that's certainly no reason to cut it down to one single rare resource, they should have given us at least 2 to work with.

[SplinterHoMM]

What if all resources are equally rare and crystal is no more precious?
If wood/ore production is 1/day and its value is the same, then resource importance is defined only by its requirement for specific town.

[Kristo]

That's an interesting idea about players fighting over marketplaces - but for me they are are an essential part of the 'town' structure - whoever heard of a city without a commerce centre?

And besides, let players fight over towns to own more markets to get more favourable trade rights...sometimes the old ways are still the best.

That depends on how old you are. IIRC, H1 had neither Marketplaces nor adventure map Trading Posts. The problem with "more towns = better marketplace prices" is the more towns you have, the less you need to trade resources. You might want to, but you don't strictly need to. You're already winning. I want to see the ability to trade resources as a separate strategic goal from controlling towns.

OTOH, if they made a Trading Post flaggable, then it'll fall under the Area Control rules and it's effectively right back to the way it was.

[Mirez]

mmm just had an idea

what if let say you have 3 "special buildings" in your town (of which 1 is the market place) and you'd be able to upgrade those 3 times (ex. resource silo, better excange rates) however you can only upgrade 3/4 times in total so you wil have to choose between economy/magic/something else

I'll try to explain it better tomorrow when I'm sober

[Thorsson]

If they make it so every faction only needs one resource, it's very poor design. Notice that what was what pulled H5 Stronghold down completely: You needed Mercury for every single building, so without Mercury, you got nowhere.

A good example of how you can go wrong with multiple resources.

I'm thinking that the decision is due to other game factors - the town/fort control being the main one. On that basis I'm prepared to see how it plays before making a final decision.

[ThunderTitan]

What dodging? You can still have significant economic differences between factions with just 4 resource types. Unique buildings can also factor into that, depending on exactly what they do. We still don't know what the shape of the magic system is and the status of adventure map spells.

Hell, you can have economic differences between factions with every factor identical except the following - Necromancy, Resurrection spell access, and a vanilla might army. One can outstrip the opponent in terms of unit growth, one can maintain no casualties, the other hand has to constantly bleed units on the way to victory. Everything else being equal, the three factions are obviously very different on the economic scale based even on something as tangential as skill and spell access. Now consider potential differences in structure costs (dwelling cost ratios, mage guild cost, fort cost, special buildings cost, economy building costs). You just need a little imagination and a willingness to cut out clutter to make space for more varied and interesting economy differentiators.

Why yes, you can have differences by having 1 thing be different... still counts as homogenization when before there where 5 things.

As for the balance question, well, you think its fun to have to ban factions or heroes? You think its fun to have entire strategies and gameplay styles (that were probably intended by teh developers in the first place to boot) rendered worthless based on a minor technicality that it is impossible to win with them? You think crap like Deleb and Conflux was fun? A balanced game tends to have more gameplay options and variety than an unbalanced one.

If you want to win at all costs then sure, they're not fun... but it will always come down to a small number of strategies being better then the others, and imo that's not worth taking out a lot of the variety until you have just enough left to be able to balance it.

And you're acting as one can't fix OP strategies... this isn't Starcraft, there isn't a Korean scene that plays for money and needs to have balance frm the get-go in order for it to adopt the game. But i guess you're not expecting much balance patch, rightly so based on past experience.

I admit, im more of a SP guy, so the imbalances don't affect me as much, but why lessen my experience in order to make yours better... you know, SC2 had it right in making SP and MP different, even if they didn't do all that well with the SP.

Ah, yes, reality. That stupid, lazy excuse people use. Whatever those crazy things think of next? Food, water, and air?! Oh, those vagabonds, those scoundrels!

The situation is not a black and white situation as you are trying to reduce it to. They don't want to make a 2 faction game. They want to do more, they want to do something complex. But then, that nasty thing, reality kicks in, and you have to balance making the game complex with making the game playable.

Nice switch... i guess back when the game had 4 rare resources it wasn't playable... and now we'll see no imbalances whatsoever...

You said they don't have the time, which is true, but that's a "we're sorry" excuse, not a "what's best for gameplay" one... because what would be best for gameplay would be

And thanks for telling me what I have or have not considered. Because obviously, me arguing that a 4 resource system is not a change that should be viewed in vacuum nor it should automatically be branded as "bad," or me pointing out that there are alternatives to bring the same relevant effect in a more elegant and interesting manner is not thinking about it. Thanks a lot.

If i had automatically branded it as "bad" i would have just made you mad until you said something stupid which would make the mods ban you... it's so much easier then having to actually come up with arguments you know.

But hey, feel free to view my opinion in a vacuum...

Repeat after me. Mass appeal does NOT invalidate art. Designing a game so more people enjoy it is NOT selling out. Game developers tend to go into the business because they want to make games they believe are going to be fun for other people to play. To brand any design decision made to make the game more appealing and enjoyable to more people as a "cash grab" is insulting the game designer without any true rational basis or proof. I've seen this insipid argument leveled against so many great game developers now that it hurts to read it.

The developer has two elementary objectives in designing a game. Making a game to their vision and ensuring that the game keeps their development ability functional to fulfill that vision. They can make the game appeal only to a select minority of elitist hardcore or they can make a game that appeals to, at the very least, hell of a lot more people as well as some of that select minority. In both cases they are doing art. In both cases they are creating something that elicits an emotional response from a group of people. You cannot objectively assign one group's preferences as more important than the other. You can, however, objectively point out that one of those options leads to the developer crashing and burning, to sacrifice themselves for the ego for an ultimately small and inconsequential number of people. The same people who go "Alas, true art is thankless and it demands suffering!" and subsequently move on to the next example of "true art."

Rather cold, don't you think, oh person of refined taste for fine arts?

Look, it's clear that you prefer games that are well done to games that are designed with elementary psychological tricks to have mass appeal. But, please, do not succumb to the "all or nothing" absurdity. A game developer can easily have an artistic vision of what his game should be that is not incompatible with mass appeal.

It's not about incompatibility, it's about making sure your vision is above mass appeal concerns. One should take into account criticism and feedback, but it should never override your vision, it should just be used to improve it.

It's not about the game not having mass appeal making it art, it's about treating it as art, and the mass appeal be a result of that or not. HOW DO I MAKE THE GAME BETTER, WHICH SHOULD APPEAL TO MORE PEOPLE instead of HOW DO I MAKE IT APPEAL TO MORE PEOPLE.


Like check out the video below... notice how Matt Horner isn't the pretty boy he is in the released game?! And it's not just graphical quality, his face is obviously longer.

No. Either your understanding of the multiplayer scene of SC is flat out wrong, or you aren't making it clear through your statements that you understand it. Starcraft 2 has significant problems in terms of story-telling department, certain multiplayer design decisions that threaten the future of the game as a spectator sport, and the fiasco that is Blizzard's hilariously unfinished and unpolished Battle.net 2.0; but they are independent of the decision to appeal to both the classic fanbase and newcomers.

Some that you posted are, but c'mon... all the new stuff was done because of the advancements in RTS UI and other things since SC1 came out... and bnet 2.0 was for social networking, otherwise it would have been ready faster instead of delaying the game.

If not then what was the reason?

And to be honest, from what I played in SC2's single player, the only real gripe is lack of storyline substance. The campaign was superb in terms of gameplay and pacing; I felt it blew campaigns of other RTS offerings such as World in Conflict, Dawn of series, CnC series, Supreme Commander, etc. out of the water.

Frankly i disliked how every mission gave you a new unit, they could have made it more interesting then that, and taking out the actual map in the starmap and having only planet icons instead was annoying (i guess they didn't want to give us a map that might end up contradicting something in the lore), and they really could have put in some mid-mission story points like the original had. And sandbox style games never seem to be able to give us a good story progression...

I guess it would have been less disappointing if they hadn't taken out the Zerg and 'toss parts and justified it by saying they wanted to concentrate on the Terrans more... especially since with Blizzs WoW money they could have just hired more people.

A good example of how you can go wrong with multiple resources.

I'm thinking that the decision is due to other game factors - the town/fort control being the main one. On that basis I'm prepared to see how it plays before making a final decision.

Another being them wanting to simplify the town building aspect... like how now you build in a window on the adv. map...

[ecsunotos]

It'll far too easy for player to build town due to few type of resources.
Bad decission for strategic point of view

[Mirez]

why exactly would it be more easy?

[MattII]

why exactly would it be more easy?

Well unless you dramatically increase the 'dragon-blood' cost, buildings are going to be somewhat cheaper than they were (comparatively), and you won't be needing to do nearly as much inefficient trading just to get that 1 extra mercury/sulphur/crystal gems that you don't have in stock at the moment.

[Nelgirith]

I find it amazing how people say it makes the game easier, less strategic when we've not seen how the game works.

Who says there's any "crystallized blood dragon" mine ? (with such a name, a mine would be unlogical). This ressource could be obtained only by killing packs of mobs or looted on the map.

[MattII]

Who says there's any "crystallized blood dragon" mine ? (with such a name, a mine would be unlogical). This ressource could be obtained only by killing packs of mobs or looted on the map.

If there's no 'mine' for it, then chances are it's not going to function like precious resources did in the previous games, but like Mythril in H3:WoG, which is going to make the game even easier, unless dragons are really common.

[ThunderTitan]

Who says there's any "crystallized blood dragon" mine ? (with such a name, a mine would be unlogical). This ressource could be obtained only by killing packs of mobs or looted on the map.

Because unless dragon blood has a very fast reaction to air then it stands to reason that in order for it to crystallize it would have to go through the same process gemstones do...

Plus, crystallized dragon blood is both a mouthful and a rather unattractive name... i doubt they'll keep it for the released game.


And it would still simplify the game because it's only 1 resource, and thus you need to secure less sources for it to get a steady flow... the idea behind it being that it makes the game go faster... the argument being that being easier to balance and making the game go smother will make the experience better because you'll have more viable strategies, even if the overall number of strategies is lower...

[ThunderTitan]

4 resources might work OK if they make Wood, Ore and Crystal much more distinct. Some nations might be highly Ore-reliant (eg Dungeon), others might need more gold (Haven), some need Wood (Sylvan), while others might need crystal, or a mix of 2 or more.

Good idea, but I still don't think that one precious resource is enough.

Under such a system it wouldn't be rare, would it...

[ThunderTitan]

I agrea with almost everything confeta said, i ll add that those 7 ressources were never fully exploited, and mostly a sorry excuse to lenghten lenght of games.

And of course instead of actually trying to exploit them better we should just give up on them... that's how progress works.