The Beta: Impressions

[Kalah]

I'm not sure, actually. I think it felt wrong because the camera angle was different and the graphics engine new as well. The hero and town building, though, felt good.

[loran16]

Where the hell do I report bugs? The link on the main site links straight back to the beta main page instead of a place to submit bugs. It's a circle.....

Are these things that I'm seeing as intended?
1. Mana regenerates completely for an academy magic hero after battle. I always have full mana going into battle/day. This essentially makes there no cost of spells.
2. Metamagic doesn't follow its description: the description is that after you obtain 3 metamagic, you cast all spells as novice, after 5 (with expert metamagic) you cast all spells as expert, after 10 (with master) you cast all spells as master. Instead, after 3 metamagic, all spells are cast as master.
3. Not every spell's description changes with advancement to master - for example the description of lightning bolt stays the same.

I'm kind of enjoying it, but I suspect these are all not as intended lol.

[crislevin]

Some major problems:

1. crash non-stop, I installed it and played for a few hours yesterday and everything seems fine. This morning, the game would not load and kept crashing.

2. extremely low FPS during other players' turn. It go from 80 in normal game to 10 when i hit "end the turn".

3. loading into a battle is too long. the transition from adventure to battle should be much smoother if possible.

4. the static town screen is GOD-AWEFUL. It was okay in academy and haven, but looks pathetic in sylvan. If its not too hard, 3D town screen would be better.

Obviously, I won't be able to test further, due to #1 problem above.

My rig:

i7-4790k
r9 295x2
12GB ram

[Kalah]

I have linked this topic to the developers so they can stop by and take a look when they have time. Please keep posting your impressions (off-topic rants will be cleaned) and also report bugs if you can. On this page there are instructions on how to post bug reports.

[loran16]

I have linked this topic to the developers so they can stop by and take a look when they have time. Please keep posting your impressions (off-topic rants will be cleaned) and also report bugs if you can. On this page there are instructions on how to post bug reports.

Rofl, nice link wise guy. You're already as good as the Ubisoft web page designor

Incidentally, I also get pretty low FPS at times, and the game is constantly using about 2.1-2.3 Gigs of RAM at all time (although that value doesn't increase, suggesting there isn't a memory leak like Heroes V, it just sucks at being efficient). I wasn't sure how much the low frame rate was me playing on a 4 year old laptop tho.

[Galaad]

Managed to play a few hours, the game feels just too much like h6, not a big surprise.

[crislevin]

I think I figured some problems out.

• If the game crashes at start, it may be fixed by "verify game integrity", this option is available in Uplay OR steam.
  
  The game fps drops during other player's turn, this mostly occur on large maps.

With these problem aside, here are my impressions:

• 1. Graphic is amazing. I predominantly played Sylvan, the design of unites, fighting animations, magic effects are all very nice. The 3D world is more vivid than H6 and added free camera angle (keyboard only) is much improved than H6 (still not as good as H5, where users can use mice to initiate camera rotation).
  
  2. The skill wheel is a good system, it is not as annoying as H5, but more sophisticated than H6.
  
  3. Games runs fine. On my desktop, with r9 295x2, it generally goes for 60-80fps on max settings. On my laptop with 860M (roughly equivalent to a desktop 7790/750), it runs quite smooth at medium settings (didn't check fps, but should be above 30, didn't see any hiccups)
  
  4. Quick access spells is a neat idea. The spell system is also quite interesting, each school has its unique spells, but feels overall evenly matched.
  
  5. Champion units are VERY powerful. With ~400hp, these things are very intimidating presence in the battle field.

Some more bugs to report:

• 1. Sylvan prefers "earth magic", but it never show up on the 4th level magic guild. In fact, 4th level only has one spell, the school of your choosing. I tried both "dry land" and "bad neighbor" maps, same problem.
  
  2. On the map "bad neighbor", there is one occasion, when I am at my town and intend to travel to the enemy town (all obstacles and neutral units are clear along the path), I double clicked the empty space next to the enemy town, my hero moved 2 steps, then stopped. I double clicked again, the hero suddenly appeared at the place I clicked. This can't be right, because it takes 4 turns to travel between two towns.
  
  3. Sometimes master hunter only shoot once?

Overall, this is a very promising installment.

[cjlee]

The lack of camera controls with the mouse should be very easy to fix. Most modern games have an interface panel that lets you customize hotkeys and other forms of input control, and even if H7 does not have currently, it probably will in some future patch.

I wonder why the system is so inefficient. Most modern games let you customize settings so that people with older computers can just tweak down their settings and still play. Does anyone reading or contributing on this thread have a system that is exactly right at the MINIMUM requirements? How does the system perform when you up or down the settings?

When Ubi says MINIMUM, do they mean a system that can just barely run the game with all setting tweaked down? Or do they mean a system that can just manage to run the game at the default eg medium FPS settings?

So far the reported bugs are very menacing. EG in all my Heroes gaming experience, since H2 elves always have had double shots. I've played what, 100,000 battles? Never encountered a bug where a double shooter can only shoot once.

[loran16]

I dropped the settings myself cjlee as much as I thought I could. I'm pretty sure I'm below minimum requirements fwiw. The FPS sucks, but it's playable.

Impressions:
Again my only completed game (on bad neighbors) involves Academy and a bug I'm pretty sure made metamagic too powerful (again, master spells on turn 2 via metamagic for no reason) and gave me full mana for every battle so i never basically could run out of battle. I also had 3 crashes, all when attempting to fight enemy heroes. One crash involved fighting two heroes in one turn.

But Ignoring those for now.....

Negative Impressions:
1. Unit costs for Champion Units seems ridiculously high. 7500 gold + 2 of a rare mineral + 1 other rare mineral PER titan? Jesus christ. I understand certain skills can lower costs, but these costs basically make it impossible to recruit the full allotment of creatures per week. Which is annoying to say the least.
2. Town level as a restriction for building is annoying - in prior heroes games, if you wanted to skip buildings to tech up quickly to certain units, or to tech up quickly to capitol/castle, you could, and that was your risk. This game doesn't let you risk it - you MUST build x amount of lower level buildings to gain access to higher tiers. Which is stupid since it reduces strategy for no reason. I don't get it.
3. AI is still not good - to AI's credit, it did obtain all the creature building structures to roughly equal my army in this campaign, but it never actually got all of those units out against me. The AI obtained Hydras but A. stuck the only one it bought on a scout hero with no other units and B. left one unbought despite me being about to attack the castle.
4. Unit animations are kind of lousy. The Titan doesn't throw a thunderbolt, he fires a beam, which is super lazy.

I will probably hold off on buying this game until I get a new PC and some time has passed since I suspect a lot of changes will be needed via patch.

[crislevin]

I wonder why the system is so inefficient. Most modern games let you customize settings so that people with older computers can just tweak down their settings and still play. Does anyone reading or contributing on this thread have a system that is exactly right at the MINIMUM requirements? How does the system perform when you up or down the settings?

When Ubi says MINIMUM, do they mean a system that can just barely run the game with all setting tweaked down? Or do they mean a system that can just manage to run the game at the default eg medium FPS settings?

My laptop is a i7-4710HQ (2.4GHZ) and a 860M (same level as Radeon 7790/5850/ GTX 460/750). This is on the minimum configuration as listed. I do have 8GB memory.

It runs at 1080p, medium texture, all other settings at high. The FPS during adventure is around 28-30FPS. It feels quite smooth. So I think minimum system won't be suffering too much if they turn the system requirement slightly lower, still looks quite amazing.

1. Unit costs for Champion Units seems ridiculously high. 7500 gold + 2 of a rare mineral + 1 other rare mineral PER titan? Jesus christ. I understand certain skills can lower costs, but these costs basically make it impossible to recruit the full allotment of creatures per week. Which is annoying to say the least.
2. Town level as a restriction for building is annoying - in prior heroes games, if you wanted to skip buildings to tech up quickly to certain units, or to tech up quickly to capitol/castle, you could, and that was your risk. This game doesn't let you risk it - you MUST build x amount of lower level buildings to gain access to higher tiers. Which is stupid since it reduces strategy for no reason. I don't get it.

1. this seems to differ vastly, the green dragon/old tree construction cost 15000 and 5precise resource and 20ore/wood, recruit cost 5500 and 1 precise resource. Shadow dragon/Snake cost 12000 and some resource to build.

2. Town level restriction basically means there is no way to get champion unit until week 3. Considering they are so much more powerful than any precious game, at least its an improvement than H6/H5, when there were restrictions and the unit are just soso.

[loran16]

The cost of Colossus vs Titan also features a large jump - from like 5K+1resource to 7500+2 of one resource and 1 of another. I guess the idea is making it worth getting unupgraded units? Meh.

--Sidenote, can we also talk about how stupid the renaming of resources is? You go back to the classic 7 resource system and instead you use dumb names that all sound the same. It's like the Zack Snyder-ing of Heroes - WE MUST MAKE IT DARK INSTEAD OF COLORUL - and just like Snyder's movies, it makes it incredibly bland.

Re: #2, the answer is to BALANCE better. Your Tier 7 units should be the most powerful, but you should have a cost for teching up to them fast. Costs and Benefits. Instead, the game basically says: "Nah, you're not allowed to pursue this strategy.". Which is stupid for a STRATEGY game.

[Kalah]

I moved some of the posts here to another thread. It's a good discussion, but since the devs read this thread, I want it clean: H7 beta relevant posts only.

Are these things that I'm seeing as intended?
1. Mana regenerates completely for an academy magic hero after battle. I always have full mana going into battle/day. This essentially makes there no cost of spells.

Got some feedback on that: did you have the Renewal – ability (prime magic)? It should give you 40 mana after battle.

[Milla aka. the Slayer]

So, my enemies manage to ride their horses backwards. Gallopping backwards. This is impressive.

My enemies also apparently have a spare savings account dedicated solely to the purchase of new heroes. I have killed at least ten in this very short game and player 2 AI just keeps buying more. Despite all the ones I killed so far, he has just bought four new ones - that I can see. Fog of War may be hiding more. One never knows.
You might think that this enemy thusly has no money for a proper army - but alas he does indeed. So, this is not the reason.

The AI's turns after I end the day give me plenty of chance to do laundry, read an entire article or cook a four course meal. I know this is a known problem but I still feel like I should mention it to further cement the fact that this sucks and is a major threat to the game's overall enjoyability.

The music I have to listen to while I wait for the AI players to take their turns, reminds me mostly of awful 90's family movies. It's stressful and very annoying to listen to.

AI is insanely overpowered in easy mode.

A stack of 20 ranged core creatures shouldn't be able to kill 10 of my melee elite creatures in two turns. It makes my elite melees completely pointless to buy.

Positive things:
The game is stunning and beautiful, it runs smoothly except for AI turns and I enjoy the ambient music.

The interface is great and easy to understand.

[Galaad]

OK the game is a little less boring while being played on heroic difficulty lol, a few remarks in no particularly order after my short session:

- Low level spells are too powerful! fire bolt killing full stack of cores with a unskilled lvl1 hero first battle on day one, what the hell lol
- Town tree is absurd, I understand prerequisites like blacksmith in order to get barracks but why would I need to build mage guild 4 to access Treant, or marketplace for Strider? Sorry but this is just funny lol Also, why not giving a little more diversity and suggesting different prerequesites depending on the champion we choose to have lol
- No range penalty is a perk, are you kidding me? Is not enough we don't have ammo carts now we get full range just like that, moving on lol
- Explorer skill is totally useless! Again what the hell, I understand logistics was super strong in past games but one movement point by level is just ridiculous lol
- Luck seems to trigger too often, ridiculous when you have the skill, triggers almost several attacks in a row lol
- Initiative just inverts turns of creatures, why not delaying it 50%? lol
- Heroes does not replenish full mana by passing the night in castle yet a few days after get them full spell points back lol
- The random skill system is a complete mess, but that's no surprise considering the game is optimized for the free picks with the class restrictions and such lol
- I personally do not like the UI at all, IMO recruitment screen is ugly not even speaking about the one from building construction one, small dull boxes not even showing buildings which are already barely distinguishable form the TS lol, also why bother doing top notch detailed unit models if we can't even admire them in recruiting screen lol
- AI is a total retard, fix its goddamn priorities, both on adventure map and combat please lol
- Too many core creatures have way too much speed! I can understand units like pixies being fast but why the hell would units like golems or sentinels cross 3/4 of the battlefield within the first turn lol

I may post more if I find the courage to play some more lol

EDIT

Just read a very interesting and straight-forward explaining post regarding the skill system and its too strong similarities with the one from h6 we all know and love lol
(mostly to the attention of round table heroes lol)

[crislevin]

So I played one large map with all 4 factions, rotate each faction one for a week, then repeat, now I am in week 4. Here are some observations, may not be precise, but probably meaningful:

1. Some factions have heroes more powerful than others. Dungeon has a hero that does 40 damage at the beginning of each enemy unit's turn. Which basically instant-kill small neutral units. Haven has a hero that came with Heal spell. Since Heal spell also resurrect, it seems too powerful.

2. Spells are very unique, lower level spells are very powerful. Light and prime seems particularly useful at lower level. Heal (light level 1) resurrects, instant reinforcement (prime level 1) allows for recruiting unit from the town w/o going back. The good thing is heroes can learn all of these without skill point being spent in the magic school. But if some faction is locked out of prime magic, then it would seem unfair.

3. For some reason, Dungeon seems short on cash. When I approached week 3, I had roughly 10k gold in my town with all factions except dungeon.

4. Sylvan units are really fast, with very high initiative (except champion unit). It has 3 shooting unit (hunter, druid, treant), each of them are very powerful. Earth magic ultimate also adds 15% HP. The whole faction feels quite strong. Champion unit construction costs 18000 gold, more than any other faction (12000 gold). Each though it costs less in rare resources, 18000 gold still feels quite a lot.

5. Champion unites (dmg/hp/attack/defense/range/movement/initiate):

Haven:

landsknecht 60-69/390/25/23/-/5/15
Swordmaster 69-81/450/28/26/-/5/19
Seraph 55-55/450/20/24/-/6/21
Celestial 68-68/480/20/28/-/7/23 resurrect

Sylvan:

Treant 34-44/430/18/25/full/3/12, protect neighbor, ranged attack, regenerate with dryad companion
Ancient Treant 45-59/460/20/31/full/3/15
Green dragon 75-77/500/18/26/-/4/11, regenerate, immune to earth
Emerald dragon 75-77/500/18/26/-/5-12, attack a cone in front

Academy:

Colossus 69-92/420/20/25/-/4/16
Titan 69-92/420/20/25/full/4/17, ranged
Arcane eagle 44-66/400/19/19/-/7/36, apply random negative effect to adjacent enemies
Simurgh 55-77/440/22/22/-/8/39

Dungeon:

Cave Hydra 58-73/400/21/21/-/5/25, attack all adjacent
Dark Hydra 58-79/450/21/21/-/5/25, life drain
Shadow dragon 42-53/400/20/20/-/5/28, attack a cone in front
Black Dragon 46-61/420/22/22/-/6/29, magic immune

[Galaad]

Some factions have heroes more powerful than others.

I personally haven't tried them all, but apparently this applies to all factions, for instance I've read picking Minasli with Academy is particularly destructive with spamming destructive water spells lol
Looks like most heroes are useless and a few others are totally OP repeating the same "strategy" over and over again until the end of the game lol

[loran16]

Got some feedback on that: did you have the Renewal – ability (prime magic)? It should give you 40 mana after battle.

Ah, my starting hero started with it. Okay that solves that. It doesn't solve the metamagic bug.

[crislevin]

Okay. I think I am mostly done with testing.

Here is my biggest complaint:

The enemy turns are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long. on a 4 players game, I am spending 60+% of time waiting. I can't imagine what it feels like on a 8 player map.

This is simply crazy.

[loran16]

Possible bug? I started a match on the 3 player large match as Dungeon. A few turns in, I randomly got full view of player 3 (red)'s turn, despite having no skills I could find that would enable such. I had no view of Player two (green), but player red i could see fully his turn. However, once red's turn ended and mine began, I lost that vision.

Non-bug related: Having a hero with estates (yeah I'll always call it estates) seems very powerful. Tech quickly up to advanced estates with 20% less costs for your town and double building and you can tech up pretty fast.

[crislevin]

One thing, Cabir is so very cute.