The Beta: Impressions

[Panda Tar]

More than wyverns?

It was reported that, sometimes, when loading a map and reloading it, it would make all adventure map dwellings change randomly, as if the map was being generated anew.

Also reported that when using Instant Reinforcement on certain units at castle would make them go ok to reinforce battle, and the same number would be available back at town, enabling additional troops indefinitely. Troops added would become permanent.

[davegray]

I have a generally positive reaction to the game, but there are definitely a few issues that need cleaning up. However the graphics were great, and I like the new skill system.
Most importantly the enemy turns are frustratingly slow. If this isn't sorted out I can't imagine that many people will have the patience to sit and wait.
I have also found that the Thieves Guild disappears when I sign out from a session and has to be repurchased (although the information remains).
In addition it seemed that the estimated damage/kills shown quite often bears little relation to the actual damage inflicted. This led to bad/false choices during combat which was quite annoying.
Finally the game crashed quite frequently, and this needs to be addressed as quickly as possible.

[King_Roland]

Beta impressions:
My system: Acer Aspire X3400, AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 830 Processor, AMD Radeon HD 5570; windows 10 os

The Beta became available immediately from uplay without requiring any code; downloading the game took about 40 minutes
Strangely first few times uplay additional components kept reinstalling Microsoft C++ redistributable – took several minutes each time; recently this is not re-occurring; Couldn't access 'known bug list' or report any bug - message in ubisoft forum kept saying I didn't have access privileges to web page.

The game and the adventure map is slow to load, but during the game the speed was fine, except AI turns were slow; One game I set up ‘Bad Neighbours’ where both were ‘human’ so I could play both sides – no AI turn.

Adventure map – feels the same as H5,H6; I didn’t like the graphics as the heroes and objects seemed relatively small and indistinct. With H5,H6 you could zoom in and have a clear view of the hero and other objects but you can’t seem to be able to do that with H7.
Unable to turn camera angle around left or right – only closer, limited up and down movement

Leveling up skills – an improvement from H6; similar to H5 skillwheel but not random. I fear that certain skills will be overpowered and similar to H6 will be picking the same skills (reinforcement, regeneration, heal, etc) every game.

Town build similar to H4 (requiring choices), however the requirements for buildings make specific strategies difficult. I hope they relax the requirements.

Music was good but as always with a Heroes game can be repetitive.

[loran16]

Two more glitches found tonight:
1. Faced an army of 30 Gargoyles split into 3 groups of 10 with 7 wolves and 20 crossbowmen with a might hero (8 ATK). Quick Combat had the gargoyles winning in a total rout - 3 gargoyles dead, my entire army dead. An actual battle resulted in a clean sweep (no casualties) for me. I have no idea what the quick combat was doing.

2. My army had two unit groups I'd started with and two unit groups that had agreed to join me in liu of battle. I attempted to then attack a group of trogladytes that weren't very large, only to find that the two units which had joined me didn't appear in battle - I wasn't given the option to deploy them in tactics nor were they there when tactics phase ended. Upon reloading my save and redoing it, they were there as normal. Was very confusing.

Some presumably final thoughts of things that could be changed:
1. In scenario select screen, make it more clear which skills a hero you're picking starts with - it's clear what 10 skills are available, but I mistook what the second skill my might hero started with when I tried.
2. Similarly the pre-game hero select screen shouldnt allow you to switch to heroes of other towns unless you're choosing that town first. I accidentally picked an Academy town when I wanted Haven by picking the money-giving Academy hero, thinking i"d start with him and a Haven town. Nope.
3. In-game, when selecting a hero from the Tavern (or whatever its called), you can see attributes of the heroes available but not their skills. This makes memorization required and makes no sense. Please fix.

Overall, I've enjoyed the game - tho I will wait a few months for bugs to be fixed before I even think of buying it.

[Madaxe]

Just de-lurked to give some impressions . Played a couple of partial games in the beta2. Couldn't load one of my save games on my first game, so started a second. All I have had time for.....

TLDR: I am enjoying the beta (except for bugs and performance issues). I think the game is very promising and I am looking forward to it. It has that Heroes and one-more-turn feeling for me. I am mostly worried about the performance and "polish" of game at release.

Heroes profile (might be useful to devs):
First Heroes game: Original Kings Bounty
Favorite Heroes: H5
Least Favorite : H6
Favorite Gamemode: Skirmish vs AI
Multiplayer: yes,Co-op
Mapmaker: Occasional
Fan-dom: One step below hardcore (have job,kids,etc )
Rig: i7 with 1G Quadro, 8G RAM

The Bad:
GRAPHICS - objects are too tiny making them hard to see at times
GRAPHICS -Too washed out looking
GRAPHICS - Combat effects (spells) seem a little underwhelming. H5 spell affects seem better
GRAPHICS - Overland and some combat movements are a bit choppy
GRAPHICS - Town Screens are mostly pretty blah looking and not very functional
GRAPHICS - Overall graphics seem neither charming nor immersive
GRAPHICS - Resources look too much alike on map
GRAPHICS - Zooming/Rotating is klunky. H5 right click worked well (with Home key to return to standard view)
COMBAT - Core units stats plus quantity seem a bit too much. Too strong
AI - Way too many heroes
AI - Battle AI makes some poor choices....but Limbic seems intent that these AI things will improve...hopefully.

The Meh or not sure yet:
GRAPHICS - Reuse of some H6 units. Not too big of deal though since I disliked H6 and didn't play it for very long, so I don't really notice
GRAPHICS - Units overall look fine. Some are nice. Some are underwhelming.
UI - Eh, it works I guess. Lots of brown
AI - On hard, I soundly "lost". (Of course, I have no idea what I am doing at this stage). AI Hero army stomped my main hero and army. Reloaded and after a few days AI had split his army up and I won
AI - Takes forever (they mentioned it wasn't optimized, so kind of expected it)! Limbic stream of newer build looked promising though, as AI turns were much faster.
SPELLS - A little sparse per school I think. But 7 schools now. Not sure what I think yet
TOWNS - Governors. Seems like an interesting idea, not sure what I think yet.
AREA of CONTROL - I am leaning towards liking it, but not sure yet
ADVENTURE MAP - Movement seems a bit too short for some map sizes? Not sure overall...
UNITS - Abilities seem interesting, haven't played enough factions to decide I guess
HEROES - Too many unit growth boosts as specials? Otherwise Heroes differ in starting abilities and skills. Seems diverse.

The Good:
SKILLS - Like having Grandmaster level of skills
SKILLS - Skill Pizza in game
SKILLS - Random option for skills! Hated H6 skill progression. Very welcome option to at least have Random again
SKILLS - Abilities and perks look pretty interesting to me.
SKILLS - Probably a minority, but as of right now I kind of like each hero having different skill pizzas
SPELLS - Seem to be interesting overall as far as what they do. Very interesting interaction with skills and perks.
SPELLS - Being able to pick another school to show up in Guilds besides favored
SPELLS - Mage guilds are back! Skills as perks was bad......
SPELLS - Overland spells seem like a cool addition.
TOWNS - The town builds seem pretty interesting to me. Lots of choices to have to make. Costs,etc, though might need tweaking.
TOWNS - Garrisons seem like a cool idea
MULTIPLAYER - Sim Turns at release! Very Awesome! Played for 1.5 hours and we didn't crash. An option to not view others battles must be coming I would think.... It would be nice to be given the option per battle somehow.... I personally don't want to watch if I am not done with my own turn. But if I am done with my turn, I wouldn't mind having the option.... But overall, would rather at least have the ability to turn this off completely.
RESOURCES - Return to 7 was very welcome. Wish they would have just gone back to our previous types, but I can live with it.
UNITS - Like that one Core and one Elite are better than others. This made the sting of going to 3 tiers from 7 a bit easier for me.
COMBAT - Flanking seems like a nice addition and full of possibilities of risk/reward

[Lomedae]

My profile is comparable to Madaxe, and I actually agree with most of the game play points made.

I like the overall graphic style, and I think it's well executed and has a definite charm.

What I really do not like is the big influence the special weeks have on the game, I played a game where 2nd week was heroes -5 mp, thirds week was ranged combat does not work and fourth week was a plague. This destroyed this particular map/game for me. There always was some randomness from the weeks, but the balance is gone this time around I think.

A good sign is that I have the 'one more turn' feeling in a way I have not experienced since V. So that's very positive.

I am not impressed by the stability of Uplay and the game itself. many crashes, and problems syncing saves. If Ubi does not get their act together that might very well be a showstopper for me, I do not buy a game to be frustrated by the drm or community crap I do not wish, I am happy to ignore it if it works but if it's causing this kind of instability it just needs to go.

[Panda Tar]

Is there a list of these, er, charming week effects? A whole week without ranged capabilities is a bit ... terrible.

[mitra12]

Could someone tell them that the Beta has stopped working today (4th/5th) for some of us. I was trying to post on the shadow council, but that simply stopped working when I logged in, and you have to log in to post comments, so... I know that it's still working for a friend of mine, and the only difference is that I preordered earlier than him (I know I should wait with ordering it, and I agree that Ubisoft is terrible, but I love Heroes and I think I'm gonna like this iteration as well... and I wanted access to the Beta).

[King_Roland]

@mitra12 - With my first attempt to play this evening (from Uplay) the game crashed at startup, but my second attempt was successful and I was able to play.

[mitra12]

@King_Roland - I've tried so many times now. I've tried to delete the Beta and reinstall it, and I've tried it on two different machines (Mac Pro and Mac Book Pro) with different versions of windows (win 7 and win 10). I tried it again today and same result, it shuts down at loading... The strange thing is that it was working just fine until the 4th, and nothing has changed on the machines, so I believe they canceled the Beta for those of us who preordered the game early (before the first Beta). Has anyone else experienced this?

[Rife]

Yes, unfortunately this is the current situation for me as well. I never even got to try out the Sylvan faction.

[loran16]

Beta still works for me.

I still keep getting the same computer vision bug. i randomly get vision of opponents turns, even though I have no ability to see that area of the map during my own term. It's a major bug - I know exactly where the opponent is, what their units are, etc. Awful.

In all honesty tho, the biggest killer in this game is opponent turn length, as has been previously mentioned. I'm at a point in a game where i just want to end turn like 4 times in a row to get enough cash to recruit a full week's troops, and that'll take me like 15 minutes. Blech.

EDIT And oh yeah I also have the game repeatedly crash if I attempt to fight more than one enemy hero/town at a time.

[Galaad]

Is there a list of these, er, charming week effects? A whole week without ranged capabilities is a bit ... terrible.

Other weeks seems to be OK, but this one is indeed one of the biggest WTF h7 brought to the table, shooters can't shoot for a week, seriously this is insane lol

[Rife]

There were a few others I thought questionable, like the week where you couldn't get flanking bonuses, or the one where there were no retaliations. That last one kind of pissed me off...

I did enjoy the week of the Frenzied Gnasher, where it was explained this was the week they got extra growth before they were hunted to extinction. I miss the Frenzied Gnasher... I will console myself with Ancient Behemoths.

[Steven Aus]

I enjoyed the extra ones that HOMM5 had, such as Week of Trade (artifacts and resource exchange were halved - good for exchanging into resources, not good for exchanging into gold), Week of Conjunction (triple income and triple growth) and the ones where magic acts as if you had Expert in that skill. And growth weeks also make sense. But As If ranged units forget how to shoot, units forget how to retaliate, no flanking bonuses etc. All of these nonsensical weeks need to be removed from the game if they are to have any credibility IMHO.

[BahamutXero]

I have a subpar computer as well, but it runs the game fine. What I can't stand is the the amount of times it takes for the AI to take it's turns. I read somewhere that they're working on it but I'm going to wait for confirmation after release before I buy it.

[cjlee]

Looking at the number of comments about game imbalance due to extreme 'week of the...' I think it is a priority to fix this. This can probably be done much more quickly than fixes like AI improvement and turn length, and has an immediate effect on improving game experience.

no matter how good H7 is otherwise, if every other week they have an imbalanced 'week', it turns the game upside down. I remember there were weeks in H6 where the good side prevailed, or the necromancer was stronger, or magic was stronger. I did not appreciate these at all. We all want game balance, not quirky and unexpected bonuses or debuffs popping up just before a major battle.

Simply take away the 'weeks of the...' that have any real impact on the game. Instead, replace them all with amusing or entertaining 'weeks of the'. In H2 all the 'weeks' did not have any real effect. In H3 the weeks only had a modest impact on creature growth, and even that you had to do hiring before you noticed.

[King_Roland]

Update: Well, my 5 year old computer had a problem starting up - no power. Took it to BestBuy and according to the Geek Squad the power supply unit wasn’t working and due to the unit's unique shape would be difficult to find a replacement and repairing would not be possible.

So, had to upgrade to a new computer sooner than expected. New computer is Acer Aspire TC-705 – i7, 3.6 GHz, 12 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 745.
I deliberately provided my computer specs in my previous posting as it was clearly below the minimum requirements for the new Heroes game. My point was to indicate that yes, you can play even below the minimum requirements.

With the new computer I can compare the Heroes Beta performance/experience against my old computer.
Load times for menu/map/combat screens were slow with the old computer but much faster with the new computer. The graphics for the adventure map was about the same. The hero movements were smoother with the new computer but the overall speed was the same for both computers.

[King_Roland]

Beta impressions 2: I basically agree with all of Madaxe’s comments. The weakness of the new Heroes is the adventure map graphics as to the size and clarity of the heroes and objects. With H5 the size of the maps felt relatively small, but with H7 by adjusting the size, the heroes and objects feel small. Thinking back, the relative size actually makes H7 feel more like H2 or H3.
The smaller amount of camera angle movement for H7 compared to H5 is disappointing.

But having said that, I did feel that ‘one more turn’ feeling. Will I buy the new Heroes game? Absolutely yes. I have played every Heroes game since Heroes 2 and don’t see why I wouldn’t play this game as well.

[Galaad]

The weakness of the new Heroes is the adventure map graphics as to the size and clarity of the heroes and objects.

With all the respect, I think is a little more than that lol
And no I'm not going to repeat the same things time and again when it has been perfectly heard already.