Poll: H6 Expansion or H7?

[Fuddelbaerentatze]

- "Its a shame that Heroes IV is ignored in such a way ..."



I didn't. I suggested to bring its features with addons.



- "It is time to move from the H3 model ..."



I agree, but where to move? H3 isn't even my favourite game in the series, but i assume most of the fanbase can agree on its core values as a starting point, whereas H4 or H5 would be much more controversial. That's the whole purpose I suggested to remake H3, release it, and then go on with addons that bring features of H4 and H5 to the game. To assemble all cool features of all homm games in one step seems to me like an extremely ambitious effort, and I doubt ubi be willing to give the manpower and budget necessary for such a project. Thus i suggested incremental steps.



Id love to see a dimensional portal to "my perfect world" where the featuresets of h4 & h5 would be the center of the universe, I would go there for sure. But even if such a portal would exist, I doubt that a noteworthy part of the fanbase would like to go there and I and a few others would be pretty lonely in this perfect world, most of the fanbase would be elsewhere.



- "I really wish that the next Heroes game would draw upon all of the successful elements from past Heroes games."



So do I



- "I agree with the overusing of Heroes 3, it is really annoying. If I want to play it, I'll install it. There is no need to have it remade several times."



What's annoying to me is willfull or careless misinterpretation of what was actually said just to have a rant ...

[ShardofTruth]

Straight to Heroes VII? I wouldn't buy it, Ubisoft has to prove that they recognize and remove the many flaws of Heroes VI first and patches/addons are the preferable way to do so.

[Archer]

Why would I ever buy Heroes 7 if they leave Heroes 6 now as it is? It would be a very bad example. "Ubisoft, creator of broken and unfinished games now presents us another masterpiece"? That would be the end of the series.

Create 2 solid expansions, give the developers time to make them right and do not abandon the game like Heroes 5 was. (If a game needs to be patched, it really should be patched. Especially when people are playing it.)

[klaymen]

"I agree with the overusing of Heroes 3, it is really annoying. If I want to play it, I'll install it. There is no need to have it remade several times."

What's annoying to me is willfull or careless misinterpretation of what was actually said just to have a rant ...

I just don't want Heroes into Call of Duty model - make a slight change and sell it as a new game. That is why I am against making new Heroes game based on Heroes 3 (and that is one of the reasons why I hate Heroes 5).

[dark raider]

I would say give us an expansion...with the elves and dungeoun(dark elves)...

[jeff]

I would say give us an expansion...with the elves and dungeoun(dark elves)...

I agree that UBI has to fix H-6 to help 'patch' its relationship with the fans. Then IMHO H-7 needs to incorporate more H-IV features and of course a usable fan friendly (for the non computer geek) campaign editor.

[Ryder]

Straight to H7. Way too many poor gaming ideas were introduced into H6.



Give me my spell book back you fricken imbeciles!!!

[CloudRiderX]

"I just don't want Heroes into Call of Duty model - make a slight change and sell it as a new game. That is why I am against making new Heroes game based on Heroes 3 (and that is one of the reasons why I hate Heroes 5)."



Total agreement on CoD model hate. I have no idea why people buy those games.

...but in Ubisoft's defense, they reached out to the Heroes community (including us) to determine which game was the best foundation for the series' revival, and everyone pointed at Heroes III, regardless of personal favorites. All sequels should have a blend of pre-existing core mechanics and new material, so you can't hang them on that decision.



In many ways, I think the community itself makes Ubi;s job more difficult. There are a lot of old school fans in our community, and some of them will never be happy with the newer games regardless of what Heroes games they draw from. At least when Heroes V was being worked on, fans were somewhat united. These days, each fan seems to have a unique condition of satisfaction, and Ubi will never be able to fulfill them all.

[ywhtptgtfo]

>Give me my spell book back you fricken imbeciles!!!



Not to mention many of the spells are a joke.

[hellegennes]

Let's be honest. The turn-based strategy game market is considerably smaller than most of the other genres' markets. This leaves Ubisoft with predictable decisions, where they put most of their yearly budget on genres that generally attract more buyers and are less high maintenance, because, let's face it, we ARE high maintenance. We want our games to be perfect and be able to enjoy them for many months, whereas the average action-shooter aims at keeping the player satisfied for a few weeks at most. It's a different target audience who responds in quite different ways. They don't care much about replayability. They move on to different games, when they finish.

[parcaleste]

My fingers are like "expansion or it didn't happen", but my heart says "kill it already (like you didn't killed already)". Honestly... I don't know.

[GreatEmerald]

>That's the whole purpose I suggested to remake H3, release it, and then go on with addons that bring features of H4 and H5 to the game. To assemble all cool features of all homm games in one step seems to me like an extremely ambitious effort, and I doubt ubi be willing to give the manpower and budget necessary for such a project. Thus i suggested incremental steps.

How about this strange and mysterious concept called "mod support"? You could have it all, made by the community, if only they made an easy way to mod the game to your heart's content.

[infael]

I play Heroes Kingdoms, which is run by Ubi. They have destroyed HK by making huge changes & dropping in the middle of the game. Where it once was about building heroes & cities, anything can now be had by buying seals. This includes artifacts & ” legendary heroes”. These heroes have triple digit stats & can be purchased for 2 weeks use. My alliance is planning to leave after our server is done, unless Ubi creates seal-free worlds.



To me, these things are the actions of a company looking for max profits. Kids in todays world are not the gamers of yore.

[klaymen]

How about this strange and mysterious concept called "mod support"? You could have it all, made by the community, if only they made an easy way to mod the game to your heart's content.

There is a risk that the community may do a much better job than the developers will and even people may not purchase expansions/DLC containing some game mechanics changes, because mods added them a long time ago and for free.

[Fuddelbaerentatze]

- How about this strange and mysterious concept called "mod support"? You could have it all, made by the community, if only they made an easy way to mod the game to your heart's content.



Ever done a non trivial mod? I didn't, because, well it isn't trivial. Even "simple" modding is quiet an effort, only a minority of the fanbase is capable of doing a decent mod. And if it goes beyond swapping treant graphics and animations with those from a beta version (just as example), it is not a minority but literally a handfull or even less of exceptionally skilled people that is capable of doing it. Something like WOG or Equilibris is a huuuuge effort. Remove one or two key person and you will effectivly kill the project because the "community" has no one to fill the gap. Non trivial modding is imho not so much a community effort, but the effort of very very few individuals.



I am not against modding, but I would prefer to have the developers do the major features of the gamemechanics, no pun intended. Then the parameters of this mechanics could be exposed in a nice editor for modding, but still there is only so much you can do with an interface. Also I don't believe that modding will get easier as technology progresses, but the contrary. The move to 3D engines alone has such heavy tax in complexity that we never ever will see again such userfriendly editors like in H3 and H4.



If you look at games that where opensourced (and how much more modfriendly could it get) you still will find that only very very few people can take advantage of it to mod the game because for most of the fanbase the moding process, even if exposed with nice graphical interfaces, will always remain something strange and mysterious.

[jeff]

The move to 3D engines alone has such heavy tax in complexity that we never ever will see again such userfriendly editors like in H3 and H4.

This an obvious contributing factor to the poor editor (from a fan friendly view) that came with H-5 and 6. 3-D graphics are too high a price to pay for this and other reasons. Unfortunately too many feel it is the way of the future. So patch H-6 forget the expansions then move on to H-7 and how about drop the 3-D, no chance of that.

[Pol]

@jeff
3D graphics is counter-productive for strategical games. 3D effects and scenes not but the 3D graphics in 'table' and 'units' is. Keep the basic mechanics and the appearance as simple as possible. Leave the human mind to run. (KISS rule)

The same apply for the editor. Or to say it better. This is what the editor with almost endless strategical possibilities dictate to create a good game. The editor is the core for human creativity and it's therefore core of the game. Not otherwise.

[jeff]

@jeff
3D graphics is counter-productive for strategical games. (KISS rule)

This is what the editor with almost endless strategical possibilities dictate to create a good game. The editor is the core for human creativity and it's therefore core of the game. Not otherwise.

We are on the same page.

[klaymen]

Ever done a non trivial mod? I didn't, because, well it isn't trivial. Even "simple" modding is quiet an effort, only a minority of the fanbase is capable of doing a decent mod. And if it goes beyond swapping treant graphics and animations with those from a beta version (just as example), it is not a minority but literally a handfull or even less of exceptionally skilled people that is capable of doing it. Something like WOG or Equilibris is a huuuuge effort. Remove one or two key person and you will effectivly kill the project because the "community" has no one to fill the gap. Non trivial modding is imho not so much a community effort, but the effort of very very few individuals.

I am not against modding, but I would prefer to have the developers do the major features of the gamemechanics, no pun intended. Then the parameters of this mechanics could be exposed in a nice editor for modding, but still there is only so much you can do with an interface. Also I don't believe that modding will get easier as technology progresses, but the contrary. The move to 3D engines alone has such heavy tax in complexity that we never ever will see again such userfriendly editors like in H3 and H4.



If you look at games that where opensourced (and how much more modfriendly could it get) you still will find that only very very few people can take advantage of it to mod the game because for most of the fanbase the moding process, even if exposed with nice graphical interfaces, will always remain something strange and mysterious.

Modding is a hard work, yes. But you don't need everyone and his dog to make mods - the capable minority is enough.

Hell, Age of Wonders 2 has pretty amazing mod support and they even made a fan patch adding a ton of content and bug/exploit fixes (it is a 2d game, but my point stands). Gothic 3 was a bugged mess until the community fixed it (yes, the devs could not fix it).

Therefore modding may help to the game survive for much longer, or survive at all.

[jeff]

Modding is a hard work, yes. But you don't need everyone and his dog to make mods - the capable minority is enough.

Hell, Age of Wonders 2 has pretty amazing mod support and they even made a fan patch adding a ton of content and bug/exploit fixes (it is a 2d game, but my point stands). Gothic 3 was a bugged mess until the community fixed it (yes, the devs could not fix it).

Therefore modding may help to the game survive for much longer, or survive at all.

What you say may be true, but the capable minority is small in number and frequently divided over several projects. Coordinating talent if you can get it becomes more difficult the longer a mod takes. Equilibris has been working on its latest version for years. If H-6 is more difficult with its 3D graphics; it just doesn't seem practical. Without the source code any mod is going to be a large task, and I don’t believe anyone thinks UBI will release the code. They won’t release H-IV’s code even though they have pretty much ignored the game itself. That is not to say I won't wish any group good luck should they decide to try. However a good fan friendly editor (preferably) with or without a campaign ability will do more for the game's survival than any mod.