The Damage is Already Done

[Pitsu]

It reminds me a story:

In a poultry farm chickens suddenly fall ill and some of them die. The sanitation technician goes to managers and reports:
"5% of our birds have died due to yet unidentified disease, how do be proceed?".
The manager replays :"paint a green square in front of every nest!".

It gets done, but a week later 20% of chickens are dead
Technician:"the birds are still dying, what do we do?"
Manager:"Paint a red cross into every square!"

It gets done, and a week later the technician reports:
"Sorry, all our birds have died."
Manager: "Damn, I had yet so many creative ideas to solve the problem..."

[BB Shockwave]

As an old-time fan... I have to say the damage was done with HOMMV already. I actually even like 4 better than V-VI... And rather go back to play III then to finish any of them. Or, better yet... I play King's Bounty - Armored Princess.

For me three things killed the franchise:

1: The bloody stupid "initiative" system. I am sorry, but for me turn-based meant there are TURNS. Not that there is a cue and units - including your hero - wait in line to act, with faster units getting to attack twice per turn and slower ones maybe only once in every second. It made the gameplay totally unlikeable.

2: The designs. HOMM I-IV was high fantasy, cheerful and colorful and detailed. Every faction was very varied, even the humans (Haven). Lots of races populated Enroth and Erathia and we had heroes ranging from genies to barbarians to lizardmen. Liches were animated skeletons in wizardy robes and vampires looked like Nosferatu... Instead now, from V onwards Ubi mimicks the WoW style, mixing Warhammer look of insane shoulderpads and over-detailed armor with the japanese anime style of oversized swords. Worse yet, the factions became BORING - the Dungeon was just dark elves (an old cliche the old HOMM/M&M avoided well) and the Fortress became 50 shades of Dwarf. Even there, the designs were alike and boring - check King's Bounty on how you can make dwarf units look different.

3: The story. HOMMIV is at fault here too, blowing up the old world and adding new and easily forgettable heroes. But, V-VI just... ruined it all with its stupid "dragon gods" and copy-pasta typical fantasy cliche stories. In old HOMM we had snow elves and dragon-hunting genies and devils who came from SPACE and scheming necromancers manipulating everyone. Now we have the Warcraft equivalent of the humans with their own Arthas, necromancers who are supposed to be GOOD and worship some weird spider goddess, forgettable nagas with an unit roster ripped off japanese mythical beings, and bloody AZTEC orcs. Facepalm.

HOMMVII... sorry, M&MHVII has to be very good for me to even consider buying.

[BoardGuest808888]

I agree with u. Sometimes playing hoMM V+ felt like playing TBS version of Warcraft. Dunno if this can happen, but for me the design of HoMM 2-4 should be considered. I mean, sure, the world of Ashan is different, but who ever felt comfortable fighting in such gears like they wore in HoMM V-VI ? Especially Haven units. The soldiers looked more an art object than grunt.

[Xdarkon]

Even thought at this stage my expectations of Ubisoft are rather low I don't think it's too late to surprise everyone and make a fantastic game, which is why I am going to wait until the game is released before I buy it.

[Pol]

Even thought at this stage my expectations of Ubisoft are rather low I don't think it's too late to surprise everyone and make a fantastic game, which is why I am going to wait until the game is released before I buy it.

I will wait somewhat longer. if only because to convice myself, that this game will not end like its predecessor. With patches shut up, not modding, not AI, not maps, badly optimized and abandoned. Few years over will suffice.

I prefer perfect result, only.

But on the other note, I have plenty of time to spend with my family.

[Bloax]

I can understand the negativity from the disasterpiece that was HoMM6, but calling 7 a bag of shit before they even have all of the monster designs finalized is a bit of a hasty decision, is it not?

But yes, I'll buy it at some point likely closely after its release unless everyone quickly finds out that it did end up being a sack of shit.

[Variol]

I know the game will not be good because the unit count will be the same again. It will get boring way too fast.

[Panda Tar]

Well, now we have:

Arcane Eagle -> Simurgh

I was half expecting:

Magic Bird -> Hocus Pocus Bird

[mr.hackcrag]

Good points shockwave.

[ThunderTitan]

HOMMIV is at fault here too, blowing up the old world and adding new and easily forgettable heroes.

Gauldroth and Tawni where easily forgettable to you... my condolences i guess.

[Panda Tar]

"YES! Yes, Random skills will be available in Heroes VII! As an option for the ones who want it and the ones who don’t."

Well, another topic Limbic has shown that they are listening to fans.

Particularly, I prefer random skills. I didn't like this system in H6, aside also the fact that many skills seemed useless at some extension. Worst still was the fact that you could relearn things, if you built it wrong, like a robot (similar thing in Diablo 3, however, in the latter, I sensed usefulness).

[Panda Tar]

The town screens are feeling much like H4. Look more like an camp than a town. It doesn't look like there are civilians to be protected, a town to vouch for. Still, a work in progress. I hope they'll make it feel and look like a town in development, like we had in H3, for example, as you upgraded your town hall, more and more civilian buildings would pop up. I think in H5 was also like that, can't recall.

[cjlee]

I agree with u. Sometimes playing hoMM V+ felt like playing TBS version of Warcraft. Dunno if this can happen, but for me the design of HoMM 2-4 should be considered. I mean, sure, the world of Ashan is different, but who ever felt comfortable fighting in such gears like they wore in HoMM V-VI ? Especially Haven units. The soldiers looked more an art object than grunt.

I never understood why they wanted to make HOMM a Warcraft/ Warhammer clone.

The earlier versions of HOMM were perfectly sensible on their own. Each creature looked like a well rounded, realistic thing. The H2 Roc pecked. The halfling was unarmoured. The Minotaur carried one of the proportionately-largest weapons and it was the size of the minotaur's head. The vampire was a bat.

By H6 they all had insane armour, crazy styling, oversized weapons, all humanoids.

That said, there are still tons of apologists who won't admit that their fave game got turned into trash.

[Banedon]

And you are not even willing to commit yourself to preordering. You even produce this excuse about how you normally wait for reviews first.

Actions speak louder than words Banedon.

If you knew me in real life you would know that I'm very careful with money because of greater goals that I believe in - and actions speak louder than words. Not only are many of the games I play free, I have almost never bought games on release, instead waiting when the prices go down. I have pre-ordered one game in the past 10 years, and that was a MMORPG in which I had many friends pre-ordering as well. As a MMORPG there's also an advantage to pre-ordering, since you get to the higher levels faster. There is no advantage to pre-ordering HoMM 7 other than being able to familiarize yourself with the game sooner, and as such I have no qualms waiting. Another point is that I tend to play few games, preferring to get good at the games that I do play. There've been several good games that I have never played, even though I should: Skyrim and Dragon Age 2 spring to mind. I went years without playing The Witcher 2 either, until one day GOG had a sale for something like 10 dollars (?) and I bought it then. Am I a hypocrite? You may say so, but I think I am infinitely more patient and more conservative with my money than you.

That said, there are still tons of apologists who won't admit that their fave game got turned into trash.

There are also tons of apologists who constantly pronounce the death of their favourite games unless the developers do something, and no matter what the developers do they'll say variants of "too little too late sorry / the developers don't care / lulz why are you idiots still playing this piece of ****". I never understood why those people didn't do the actions-speak-louder-than-words thing and just leave. It seems almost that they think complaining is fashionable, or that they are really only arguing to attract attention.

Are you one of these people?

[BB Shockwave]

HOMMIV is at fault here too, blowing up the old world and adding new and easily forgettable heroes.

Gauldroth and Tawni where easily forgettable to you... my condolences i guess.

Sorry, I don't even know who they are, and I can remember every HOMMIII hero from Astral to Xenofex.

Okay, that's a lie...Gauldroth was the half-dead necromancer guy, right? By the time I got to his campaign I was bored by the story. Every HOMMIV story sadly had you playing against your own faction (so that you have plenty of towns to conquer from your own race) and it just felt repetitive and boring.

[Dalai]

I never understood why they wanted to make HOMM a Warcraft/ Warhammer clone.

Because they don't own it. They bought the franchise, but they never really owned it.

When you move to another city and can take a limited amount of things with you - you are always sad about some stuff you have to leave behind. You know the history of every piece of stuff, you know why you bought it and what is it's place in the big picture.

A new owner does not know and, more importantly, does not care. It's just some sentimental trash to him. It requires a lot of effort to understand the big picture. If it can be sold for 5 cents on dollar - great, he will do it just to clear the room. After all, everybody is sure they can build a better "big picture".

The problem is - they rarely can.

[jeff]

It is just my opinion of course, but as long as UBI insists on creating an updated H-III; the best they can do is good. Great was achieved and it was called H-III. Think about this, how many great movies with cult followings have had a great remake made; few if any. Even NWC realized this when they moved on to H-IV; something new had to be done. The main H-IV complaints were over-powered heroes and poor AI, both could have been fixed with more time and investment. Do not misunderstand I loved H-III and even the chronicles, but I had grown bored with that play style which is one reason I loved H-IV; it was an underfunded attempt to reinvigorate the franchise. UBI retained nothing Heroes in H-5 and its sequels except the tired gameplay style of H-III. The heroes and history were gone; only the name of some the races, creatures and structures remained. They have since made a half-hearted effort to bring back some of the heroes. UBI changing the graphics and adding the 3D format are decisions I am sure their marketing department feels needed be done to appeal to the younger audience; they may be right I do not know. However neither adds anything important to the game. Oh well it is useless for me to complain as they will not listen in any case, but it is how I feel.

[Groovy]

You've summed up my sentiments pretty well, Jeff (except for H4, which I never liked). I've found it very difficult to get excited about H7 because far too many of its expected improvements over H6 consist of going back to a variation on H3/5. Hopefully the game will also feature many genuine innovations that they haven't shared with us yet.

[Ermelloth]

Voted 2nd from the end: could try it if someone gives it to me as a gift. To buy a Ubisoft game again - no way.

Heroes 6 was terrible. The only time when I didn't buy any expansions.
Ashan as a game world / universe sucks big time too.

The best Heroes' product today and the most fun to play is Heroes3: Horn of the Abyss (custom addon created by number of fans).

[Neidhaart]

I'll try it before i decide if i enjoy it or not.