Heroes VII Announced

[jeff]

It is probably more likely that a RMG will be available than a campaign editor. While that strategy will prevent me buying the game; I at least understand it.

The younger the target audience, the less likely you will find players that want to invest the large amount of time it takes to create a quality campaign. I say campaign because I feel that is what is required to have an epic storyline. Several players have created memorable single map RPG like stories; so I am not ignoring them.

My feeling is the modern generation player wants to set a few parameters have the computer produce a map that they can play quickly. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Unfortunately the lesson UBI has not learned is the longevity of the game is directly tied to fan made maps and campaigns. Despite two failures, yes I call H-5 a failure because of its powerful but poorly executed editor, I have no reason to believe UBI will correct this error.

Please stop blaming the studios that UBI hired to produce the previous games. I am ex-military and firmly believe you can delegate authority, but you cannot delegate responsibility. UBI cannot hide behind the excuse well so and so actually created game. Wrong it is UBI's game; if its screwed up, blame UBI.

[Znork]

"In addition, one of the main parts of our vision for this new Heroes title is to empower our players wherever we can. To do so we have designed powerful yet accessible tools to put at their disposal. Our fans have repeatedly requested these features, and we consider these tools as being part of meeting their expectations."

[Stephan]

[Pitsu]

"In addition, one of the main parts of our vision for this new Heroes title is to empower our players wherever we can. To do so we have designed powerful yet accessible tools to put at their disposal. Our fans have repeatedly requested these features, and we consider these tools as being part of meeting their expectations."

[Stephan]

Promises during H6 development sounded even better:

Yes, we plan to ship it with the map editor included. Our goal was to make it hard-coded meaning no scripts needed (unlike in Heroes V mapeditor). Our main priority at the moment is to make it user-friendly. We might add a campaign editor later, and about the random map generator: its too early to talk about it.

[Avonu]

And don't forget promises during MMX development too.

[Fuddelbaerentatze]

Anyone here who has already created an account for the Shadow Council site? I would like to know how the vote on elves vs dwarfes is going, but you need an account to follow the vote and I'm just to lazy to create one for myself. So where is the vote going on the moment? Can somebody tell please?



@UE4 - I doubt Ubisoft would allow the use of a license that will eat away 5% of their sales. I Agree that a UE3 license probably was already owned by Limbic or Ubi when the decision was made and helped to keep the costs down.



@compability: Why is the UDK3 not compatible with actual UE3 Games? Did I miss something? My Impression is the UDK3 is up to date, you can donwload a version right from april 2014 on their site?



@UE4 Scalabilty - I am neither familar with UE3 nor UE4, but I wouldn't be surprised if the scalability for Android only exists by way of OpenGL 2.x and that means reduced bling in comparison to DirectX 11+ or OpenGL 4+. However, afaik H7 will be PC only, so at the moment scalabilty right down to android devices is a non issue.

[dark raider]

Fuddelbaerentatze.. last time i checked it was 67% for Sylvan 33% Fortress..

[dark raider]

and btw... what is these warfare units??

[Avonu]

Warfare: Balista, Catapult, Healing Tent

[GreatEmerald]

>@compability: Why is the UDK3 not compatible with actual UE3 Games? Did I miss something? My Impression is the UDK3 is up to date, you can donwload a version right from april 2014 on their site?

UDK is essentially a game in and of itself. You can't use UDK to, say, edit XCOM: Enemy Unknown maps, because the code in the game is different from the code in UDK. One does not load in the other and vice versa.

>@UE4 Scalabilty - I am neither familar with UE3 nor UE4, but I wouldn't be surprised if the scalability for Android only exists by way of OpenGL 2.x and that means reduced bling in comparison to DirectX 11+ or OpenGL 4+. However, afaik H7 will be PC only, so at the moment scalabilty right down to android devices is a non issue.

You scale down by reducing bling. There's no other way to it. And UE4 can reduce more bling than UE3 could (and doesn't have any additional overhead over UE3 that I know of).

Since UE4 is capable of using newer bling than UE3, the max bling setting may very well require a better PC. However, the medium bling option in UE4 would be both visually and in terms of performance identical to the max bling option in UE3.

[theGryphon]

What's a bling?



I like the style in graphics... less cartoonish, but I'd prefer an even more mature approach with darker tones, crisper lines, etc.



What's gonna make or break it, is the same as before: A good AI that actually deserves the I, a well thought-out skill system, and at least a workable map editor.



Observe I didn't say "balance," which I think is overrated. HIII was not balanced at all and everybody loves it, lol. It's OK to have some imbalances, just don't kill it with God-mode like stuff!

[Fuddelbaerentatze]

What's gonna make or break it, is the same as before: A good AI that actually deserves the I, a well thought-out skill system, and at least a workable map editor.



I doubt we will see more than modest improvements in AI. There is marketing sensationalism about brillant new AIs since like forever ... maybee even earlier than Dune. To make the AI an interesting player you need scripts, cheating, and a AI programmer that is an excellent player too to teach the AI the tricks human players use. Good AI by the way of computing is very very hard to achieve.



"Observe I didn't say "balance," which I think is overrated. HIII was not balanced at all and everybody loves it, lol. It's OK to have some imbalances, just don't kill it with God-mode like stuff!"



I second that. Balance is not needed for the campaign and often kills interesting concepts for the sake of multiplayer fairness. Balance watered down elemental chaining and necromancy in H5 until it was no longer fun in my opinion. Starcraft II did something I like very much: They have balanced mode for multiplayer games with a reduced set of units and skills, and a different inbalanced but interesting gamemode for campaigns with a larger set of units skills with greater impact on the gameplay.

[jeff]

and at least a workable map editor.

I would change workable to useable or fan friendly. You could argue that both H-5 and 6 had workable editors, but neither was useable by many of the map makers of the earlier chapters. I being in that group.

[Wizard of Soz]

In case no one has seen it yet, IGN has a roughly 12 minute interview with Erwan, and some gameplay.

http://uk.ign.com/videos/2014/08/15/mig ... escom-2014

[Kalah]

I like the idea of different combat objectives, like "protect the catapult".
Flanking and using obstacles as cover also sounds interesting.

[Avonu]

You have both these features introduced in Heroes Online already and they are not bad. However flanking = "I do more damage this turn, but enemy will do even more damage to me next turn".

[japol]

''there will be 3 new resources replacing gems, mercury, and sulfur. ''.

Since this is Ubisoft we are talking about,i wouldn't be surprised if one of those resources was points that you get from playing online on their Uplay platform.
Oops i am giving them ideas ,don't i?

[Blake]

wow.. that IGN video was awesome!! I loved it in the catapult battle how titans were walking around in the background destroying buildings. Adds to the tension and excitement of the battle. The map 'events' were awesome too eg titans destroying buildings, catapults destroying titans, avalanches, draining lakes, blasting forcefields etc. While simply a bit a bling it'll add more fun and excitement to the campaign experience.

And the castle battle at the end wow..

One thing I was a bit disappointed in was the Human castle screen. It just looked like the Limbic Heroes 6 replacement castle screens that I didn't really rave over. Hell they probably got the same guy to paint them lol.

Its funny, I've been playing Heroes since the 90s and just this week I've been showing my new girlfriend Heroes 1 and we're having a blast. So its ironic that this oldschool heroes player is watching a heroes 7 video and loving the 3d elements but complaining about the 2d stuff haha.

[hellegennes]

"Hell they probably got the same guy to paint them lol".



Given that it's the same developer, that's quite likely. The game is far from finished, though, so plenty of things may change.

[JSE]

The IGN video acutally confirmed my worst fears: Ubisoft seems to think it's best to focus on the new visual effects, eye candies, and story bits instead of showing us some new and interesting gameplay features. Is this because there really is nothing new to show? Flanking could potentially be a good element (implemented well!) -- but is that all? Is all the rest just like in Heroes 5? It certainly looks that way. Very disappointing!

[Korbac]

Limbic did a decent job on M&M X Legacy. I hope they can handle Heroes 7. Fingers crossed. I will be following this very closely.