General Thoughts on the Homm VI Demo?

[parcaleste]

^ Nice post, I can easily agree with most of the stuff, even though I am not feeling so bad about this game, even though it do needs some serious tweaking and find it that I kinda have enough with it after not so much time playing it.

One thing that pop-up in my mind when reading your opinion about the tiers system - I loved the idea of having this kind of differentiation to 3 tiers, but after playing a while I think the core one is getting really useless, cause the elite ones are just raping them. I guess Ubihole must add some more powerful special abilities to the core units (like the Goblins trap) in order for them to compete later game against elite/champions.

And I will say it again - return the idea of having to buy precise number of core and elite creatures (40 core, 15 elite, whatever) and let the player to decide with how many shooters he will play, how many healers and how many tanks/melee units. Now this will really add to the strategy and this differentiation will serve right to its purpose, in my opinion.

[Panda Tar]

@cjlee

Aye, good post. Many things I agree in there. At this very moment, I'm also inclined not to buy, unless some changes or improvements are shown upon the releasing date, but all this cut-here and cut-there really disappointed me to no end.

I'm a player since Heroes 2 and seeing that the variety of playstyle or even factions were better at that time than this is now, I'm not sure what these Ubi people are truly trying to achieve. What good is a dead franchise? I wouldn't be really happy if I was responsible for the death of a near 20 years-old franchise.

But of course, some people will still buy the game...

[Dalai]

@cjlee
Excellent post! Corporate product, not creative - very precise definition.

After seeing a bunch of people post generally positive comments, I'm glad to find that you share my feelings.

Actually, a lot of people feel mildly or not so mildly (like me) negative about H6. It just happens that we are immediately labeled "whiners" who spoil others' fun. So we just post occasionally. You can see that celestialheavens.com number of visitors grows much faster than forum activity, which is quite low.

Ironically, I went to a university where we had quite a lot of Eastern Europeans. All the following names: Pawel (this spelling), Svetlana, Slava, Anton, Irina and Sandor were classmates, friends or teaching assistants at some point. I even had a summer fling with Anastasia (this spelling). There was a Kirill (this spelling), although he was Greek not Slavic. Not being Slavic myself of course I can’t tell how common these names are, but I get the sense that Ubihole is making a game where their characters are named based on the most-common names in Eastern Europe, which irritates me even more.

Every name you mentioned but Sandor are very common in ex-USSR. Spelling may differ, but you'd be surprised to find out how many versions of the same name there are in official documents.

Try calling them Prince John, Warchief George, Archmage Mike, Prophet Tom and Demon Hunter James and see how dumb it sounds.

I am very much surprised by Ubihole choice of names too. And yes, it does look stupid.

[ThunderTitan]

Demon Hunter James sounds awesome...

[krs]

Ironically, I went to a university where we had quite a lot of Eastern Europeans. All the following names: Pawel (this spelling), Svetlana, Slava, Anton, Irina and Sandor were classmates, friends or teaching assistants at some point. I even had a summer fling with Anastasia (this spelling). There was a Kirill (this spelling), although he was Greek not Slavic. Not being Slavic myself of course I can’t tell how common these names are, but I get the sense that Ubihole is making a game where their characters are named based on the most-common names in Eastern Europe, which irritates me even more.

I thought that was my imagination only, but yeah, those names are common in eastern Europe and hurt the ear.

Sandor and Istvan (I think I saw him somewhere maybe H5? ) are the most common Hungarian names. Istvan = Stephen, Sandor = Alexander.

Pavel is the same as Paul (English pronunciation: /ˈpɔːl/) is a common masculine name in countries and ethnicities with a Christian heritage (Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Protestantism) and, beyond Europe. Its a disciples name for Christ's sake! Imagine how common that is.

Svetlana - Hack! I know 2-3 Serbian of origin girls called Svetlana.

Anton - Big time saint! there even is a Church of St. Anton. A big no no like all the rest.

Irina - Common!!!!

Kiril - (Spelling) He invented the alphabet that is used in slavic countries.

IMHO the namings were an internal joke started by Nival developers and perpetuated ever since.

Conclusion? As a rule of thumb stay away from Disciples and Saints names. And do a google search beforehand.

[Pol]

Demon Hunter James sounds awesome...

Freaking usaish!

Ironically, I went to a university where we had quite a lot of Eastern Europeans. All the following names: Pawel (this spelling), Svetlana, Slava, Anton, Irina and Sandor were classmates, friends or teaching assistants at some point. I even had a summer fling with Anastasia (this spelling). There was a Kirill (this spelling), although he was Greek not Slavic. Not being Slavic myself of course I can’t tell how common these names are, but I get the sense that Ubihole is making a game where their characters are named based on the most-common names in Eastern Europe, which irritates me even more.

I thought that was my imagination only, but yeah, those names are common in eastern Europe and hurt the ear.

Sandor and Istvan (I think I saw him somewhere maybe H5? ) are the most common Hungarian names. Istvan = Stephen, Sandor = Alexander.

Pavel is the same as Paul (English pronunciation: /ˈpɔːl/) is a common masculine name in countries and ethnicities with a Christian heritage (Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Protestantism) and, beyond Europe. Its a disciples name for Christ's sake! Imagine how common that is.

Svetlana - Hack! I know 2-3 Serbian of origin girls called Svetlana.

Anton - Big time saint! there even is a Church of St. Anton. A big no no like all the rest.

Irina - Common!!!!

Kiril - (Spelling) He invented the alphabet that is used in slavic countries.

IMHO the namings were an internal joke started by Nival developers and perpetuated ever since.

Conclusion? As a rule of thumb stay away from Disciples and Saints names. And do a google search beforehand.

I don't know what surprises you, I bear one of these names myself. They are common and anyone living from the middle Europe to the East must be knowing that - so, that's including Black Hole Entertainment.

PS Anton is also common name also Kiril. Simply all of them. There's no reason to stay off from them.

[qiox]

I've played the demo skirmish once with each faction on Hard.

The game seems really, really, really easy.

I think the ease of getting the town portal structures in all towns breaks the game in matches vs AI.

Each game I played involved taking a new town, then sitting in it until the start of the following week, buying all available troops, moving on to the next town.. etc

The longest game ended Month 3 Week 3.

The AI was always afraid to move into my territory to take one of my towns because it knew I could simply town portal over and attack him.

And even if the AI is shown as a severe threat to my main hero, he will run away because the AI does not want to trade armies.

I sure hope the final product is not so easy.

[ThunderTitan]

Svetlana - Hack! I know 2-3 Serbian of origin girls called Svetlana.

It's actually Sveltana in the game...

[Banedon]

It may be just me, but near the end of the beta I found starting up a Heroes 3 game easier than a Heroes 6 game. Not sure why. Possibly it's because Heroes 3 games are so much simpler, or possibly because the time taken in between turns is shorter in H3, or perhaps because I'm more familiar with Heroes 3, or maybe because H3 maps are more fun than H6 maps (which are straight deathmatches as far as I could see), but psychologically it was a lot easier to start Heroes 3 instead of Heroes 6. I almost had to force myself to play Heroes 6, which is not a good sign.

Perhaps a Heroes 3 style game with the H6 features that lessen micro would've been good, idk.

[Elvin]

In all fairness you had probably been playing H3 for at least several years

[Pol]

In all fairness you had probably been playing H3 for at least several years

What not to say a decade out of loud?

[Banedon]

In all fairness you had probably been playing H3 for at least several years

True, but that would mean H6 has more novelty factor and so be more enticing, wouldn't it?

[mr.hackcrag]

If H6 had better designed factions, I would be so much more excited about the game. I guess it's unreasonable to expect that expansions will redesign all the factions, or at least change creature color schemes.

[Zmeio]

H6 I liked and I was interesting, but I have some concerns.
Main - converting cities and the opportunity to buy the population from any city/fort.
Also, I worry how the new skill tree is affect the game.
This is about the gameplay.

Graphic - Some units are too similar and i was confused often (Sentinel - crossbowman, 2 females creatures from Haven - i play only heven for now).

[microbrien]

I had a lot of problems with the demo. If I don't hear the final version is light-years better, I may never play an installment after III again...

I was not very happy with it -

http://tl-dr.co/frontpage/2011/10/11/wi ... es-vi.html

[Metathron]

http://tl-dr.co/frontpage/2011/10/11/wi ... es-vi.html

part IV, the first developed by Ubisoft

IV was the last one developed by NWC. V was the first by Ubisoft (Nival actually).

[Tress]

To add some of my own thoughts. First of all I havent played demo that much since I wanted to wait for release. But from OP and other people in this topic comes arguments against game, based on bashing of setting. Ie too much like wow, dont like names etc. Agree that asian style town doesn't really fit. In homm 3 Rampart looked like japaneese castle and it's guild like pagoda(wont even mention town hall) but general feel wasnt that much based on single culture. That was good part, and that in my eyes is con for Homm 6. But bashing names just because they are slavic isnt really objective thing to do. After all it;s just one faction who have slavic name. All mages have regular fantasy themed names like arantir, cyrus,markel etc. That imo helps see gryphon duchy as separate faction, even if they both ar humans. Even more it helps differentiating sub factions of haven. For example look at wow - all humans have some sort of names and there really isnt differentiation between stormwinds humans or lorderons(ok now that we have worgen they have names like anatoly too, and have similar slavic themes.(before anything homm5 was before that or at least same time.)) But again that really helps separating humans of lorderon/smw against Glineas , in one more way in addition to gloomy clothing style.
To even more elaborate this point , in TES series each faction have relativelly unique style of names, and for example cyrodils have names that are very ancient Rome style, but that isn't point to bash the game.

Demon Hunter James sounds awesome...

Ever watched Monty python's Holy grail? Rhetoric question.

[microbrien]

http://tl-dr.co/frontpage/2011/10/11/wi ... es-vi.html

part IV, the first developed by Ubisoft

IV was the last one developed by NWC. V was the first by Ubisoft (Nival actually).

thanks for the correction. never trust an elf! (read wiki)