The Beta: Impressions

[Madaxe]

@Lomedae - Ouch. Yeah, I agree that those "week of" are too strong. I agree with the posts that these should be mild. The plague one is bad enough, we don't need more or even worse modifiers.

The games definitely needs some attention in the stability department. I think the memory usage/leak is causing a good chunk of my stability issues. Uses a huge amount of RAM and seems to eventually crash...

@King_Roland - Congrats on the new comp

Got a chance to play a few more Bad Neighbors matches. Still enjoying the game! A few more comments:

SPELLS - You get to pick a school, besides your factions favored, to always have one spell of that school in each level in the mage guild. The lvl 4 mage guild gives you one spell only, so it can't have the faction's favorite magic school, it will have the school you pick only. So, no chance of your factions favored school's spell showing up! So, building a Light magic (Heaven's favored school) hero, you won't get a LvL 4 light spell from your guild. That is frustrating, to say the least. So, unless I am missing something, this needs to be addressed somehow.

AI - not very consistent...sometimes really bad. One game the enemy was a complete joke. I think he just never built up much, as it also looked like he hardly took any of the neutrals/mines in his territory. Definitely needs work. Had two games where enemy AI seemed to be doing ok, but at least half where AI was worthless.

FLANKING - I still like flanking, but I think it needs some tweaks. I like how you have to decide if you want to expose your own backside to the slower oncoming enemy stacks or just attack more frontally in the intial engagements,etc. Or, do you move out of a defensive "turtle" to hit a flank, etc. But, if you are just moving a stack to another spot, many times that puts your unit facing the wrong way, leaving it easily open to being flanked. Maybe if left-click continued to move your stack as usual but, if you instead held down the left-click, you would then use your mouse to rotate your unit's facing. Then, upon release, it moved and finished by facing the correct way?

HERO BUILDS - I like the hero classes per faction and I don't mind the pre-set skill pizzas per hero. But I can see why other's would not. I think it would be cool if they allowed an option to custom build your Hero instead of picking one. You get to customize what their skill pizza is as far as the base skills and some points to pick the hero's specializations. They could even add % chances like H5 for how often the Random option offers up perks depending on faction/class.

Multiplayer - Encountered the out of sync issue. Loaded up a multiplayer game and the first combat would throw the out of sync errors. Tried older saved games, skipping combat that turn, etc, but nothing worked. Pretty much trashed a MP player game. Hopefully they get this stable soon.

[loran16]

Okay I'm done with the beta. I still am able to play it, but there's very little more I feel like learning at the cost of playing this game.

My computer is probably below the minimum to play the game, but the memory usage is insane. When the game boots up, i'ts using 2 Gigabytes of Ram immediately; that number increases to 3 as I start a map, and has gone as high as 4.5 GB mid game. That is unacceptable for any game. You should not be using that much RAM for heroes even more. Seriously, this is brutal and I can't play the game long like this.

The enemy turn length again si totally brutal and needs to be fixed.

More bugs!
1. Had a battle with a dungeon hero where the first turn involved the opponent, presumably using shroud, putting two of his tier 1 units inside a minotaur. I couldn't target them, and when i killed the minotaur it got to the point where I couldn't hit them and he kept defending with them, so we had a stalemate. Had to reload from a save.
2. Units randomly seem to disappear from my hero sometimes - I can't figure it out. Upon restarting combat, the units reappear and can be used as intended.
3. The leadership ability allowing a hero to have 9 units does not work. I do not know what is the point of this ability if it doesn't work. I was excited to have a bajillion high tier units only to find it didn't work and I'd wasted a skill point.

I hope to get a new computer within 6 months, and then I hope the bugs are fixed. But I would not advise a week 1 purchase if this is the product this late in development.

[Avonu]

Few photos from last Friday and Saturday, when Ubisoft organized MM Fandays in Poland. Sorry for resolution:










Now few news about Heroes 7 and franchise:
- Erwan remembers Galaad well, but Ubi-Nox not at all . I wonder why?

- If there will be expansion pack and if it would have new faction, that would be Fortress - because during votes it had 3rd place among fans (Inferno was 4th).

- All Ashan factions will use the same theme music - with remixes and/or differents musiacal instruments but over all if you hear Haven theme in one game, it would be similar in another. So for example faction combat maps in Heroes 7 will use themes from previous game.

- There are plans to release Heroes figurines - IIRC we should see Sandro and Akasha (a naga from H6). Erwan and Ubi-Nox didn't remember details or price but they said about ~15 Euro.

- AI knew how to flank units in this preview version so it's a progress, but it still need a lot of work.

- Mother Namtaru - Necropolis support/hybrid warfare unit - has two actions in turn - first she cast buff on an ally and next she attacks a foe.

- I don't know if it was in beta but Necropolis' Graal building gives +10% Necromancy and Dungeon's doubles spies buidings efficacy (so you can plunder two random mines/creature dwellings instead one)

- There are still bugs in game. Ubi-Nox said that this preview version wasn't final (Troglodytes still don't have burrow movement) and some of bugs were fixed... but after my experience with Heroes 6 demo and 1.0/1.1 version I am not so sure.

- Each year Ubisoft team has a "brain storm", during which Dark Messiah 2 topic is returning regurally, so maybe we will see this game eventually.

- Sandro. Officially he is dead (killed by Cyrus before Heroes 5) but as he is one of Marzhin's favourite characters, maybe he will back.

- Heroes 7 story:
Jeff Spock was responsible for Heroes 6 overall story. For Heroes 7 it's Kurt McClung, who also wrote Ivan's campaign. IIRC Marzhin is responsible for Sylvan campaign, while Ronan Lebreton for Nercopolis (Erwan's brother who worked at DoC and Heroes Online).

- "Sister of Blood" comic book ends on first issue - it wasn't a success, so no new stories (I think "a flop" would be better word ). However there are chances we will see its story as pdf file. Same with cancelled MM:Riders story but here budget is a obstacle (not money but budget line - so basically "Who will pay for that? Not me").

- Erwan doesn't control everything with iron grip... and he is used to hate. He reads H7 blog or Heroes Community but skips hate posts.

- Skillpizza is very nice... at first/second/third play. And I think that's an idea behind it and 6 classes - to have multiplay choices in short run.
However after few games, you know already which skills and abilities to choose and which heroes.

Overall game looks promising but if I have to choose one word to describe it, it would be "incomplete" - good promises, but game still need a lot of work.


EDIT:
Here you have 3 parts of music concert from Saturday.
Sorry for resolution and not the best recording but until we have official video, this is all what we have.

part 1 - 23 minutes, part 2 - 12 minutes, part 3 - 11 minutes.

[Panda Tar]

In H2, only when months turned out (4th weeks), something would really happen: plague or some unit had its population doubled. It think regular weeks could make units growth + 5 here and there.

[Steven Aus]

I kind of like a Heroes game without Plague weeks or months (haven't seen one in the time I've been playing the MMH5.5 mod). But I wouldn't mind if regular weeks gave tier-dependent bonus growth while month weeks instead gave you two normal weeks growth added to your dwelling. If Month of Plague is not going to be in (I enjoy its absence) then you can't really have the entire unbought creatures of a certain in-town dwelling double their creatures in a Month Of Creature.

If there was a change to a system similar to H5 (or MMH5.5 if there are any changes between the game and the mod) I would prefer:

a) Normal weeks give a number of extra creatures based on the tier of which creature it is (or weeks of creatures that exist in the world but not in the game for some comic relief);

b) Month Of Creature (first week and day of a new month) gives you two normal week's worth of creatures to whichever creature it is;

c) Special Weeks like when magic of a certain type is always expert, artifacts are half price and trading to resources is twice as cheap and trading to gold is twice as expensive, triple income for mines and towns (all week) and triple growth for all buildings built before Day 1 of the week (and triple growth from dwellings captured before or during the week), mana regen is doubled, etc. If any of these are too overpowering you could remove them, but a few special but not overpowering weeks add some flavour (Australian spelling) without skewing the game balance too much;

d) No Plague weeks or months;

e) No nonsensical ones like no retaliation, no attacking from range, no flank bonuses;

f) Like H5, not having original and upgraded creatures having separate special weeks or months - if you have a week or month of Cyclops, that applies to a basic or upgraded dwelling not having the earlier way of having a separate Week of Mage which only boosted non-upgraded Ivory Towers and Week of Archmage which only boosted upgraded Ivory Towers. This was a H5 addition that I was especially pleased with, certainly in MMH5.5 mod (but AFAIK it was in base H5 too).


If you're going to take pointers from any Heroes game or mod, I would choose MMH5.5 (or perhaps H4 Equilibris, if you were including Heroes in battle), plus any more useful changes that are possible if you have (or are making) the source code.

[loran16]

Two more bugs/performance issues actually I forgot.
1. Minotaur retaliation is totally bugged. When you attempt to attack a minotaur, it always shows as "retaliation: no" - even if it can retaliate. Needless to say, with its preemptive retaliation, thats a huge error. Also, some no retaliation abilities, such as that of the silverback, DO NOT WORK on minotaur. I tried to use one on a minotaur stack, had my wolves drop to 0 D, but the minotaurs STILL struck first. Needless to say, ugh.

2. The game moves a TON faster when you're not connected to the internet. I'm not sure why that is, I had UPlay offline with internet still connected on my computer and the game was MUCH slower - once i disconnected, game sped up a lot.

[Marzhin]

- There are plans to release Heroes figurines - IIRC we should see Sandro and Akasha (a naga from H6). Erwan and Ubi-Nox didn't remember details or price but they said about ~15 Euro.

More like 150 euros ^^' Actually there were prototypes for Sandro and Akasha statues, but they would be too costly to produce and too expensive for customers, so it's unlikely that will ever happen. I wish I had that Sandro prototype on my desk at Ubi though :p

- Sandro. Officially he is dead (killed by Cyrus before Heroes 5) but as he is one of Marzhin's favourite characters, maybe he will back.

Lorekeep's bio mentions his ghost still haunts the city's ruins, so I believe even after his duel with Cyrus he's not fully dead

Here you have 3 parts of music concert from Saturday.
Sorry for resolution and not the best recording but until we have official video, this is all what we have.

part 1 - 23 minutes, part 2 - 12 minutes, part 3 - 11 minutes.

Wow, that's pretty awesome. Makes me wish I could have been there.

[BB Shockwave]

I have to say, the beta left me... bored.

The game is not bad, despite the rather numerous bugs. Rather it is just... bland. The special abilities, the spells, the too many skills, even most units... just has this "seen it all" feeling. The graphics are exactly like VI, so no changes there - things are too small and too detailed to be seen without zooming in.
I played a Dungeon game on a small map, and an Academy on a Large map, and started a Sylvan but quickly abandoned it. Academy was still more interesting, a bit, but had some weird changes that made me bristle - gargoyles are terribly slow now, and golems no longer resist magic, they kinda took away the reason these units were good. Other units were overpowered - at the end my 300-400 Cabiris just one-shotted everything. Especially since the crazy AI barely explored his own half of the map, often even leaving unguarded resources around. Dungeon was worse - so many melee units with so few specials. I still wonder what the ugly kabukis are good for - they are easily killed and their special is not that useful. The Assassin is not very good since they retaliate to him - they die in droves - while the Minotaur is too strong with no retaliation and that skill that lets units attack twice if they don't get retaliated. Dragons are ugly with their weird purple orb-y wings.

Loading time for the AI is terribly slow, which it should not be on a 8-Core AMD with 16GB RAM and a highend graphics card.
Some of balance issues too - the thief guild that lets you basically inflict week of the plague on your enemy is kinda overpowered, and Metamagic makes investing skill points in other spell schools meaningless.


But overall... I found the maps boring - combat got repetitive since you fight the same neutral creatures over and over, unlike the varied armies of King"s Bounty, and gone were the cool special structures of HOMM3 where you fought various creatures for resources.
They gave back the 7 resources, only to... make them look almost exactly the same, with Dragonglass especially looking just like Crystal. What was so wrong with Sulphur, Gems and and Mercury? The game is colored, yet not colorful - and I am glad we had an ALT highlight key.

[BB Shockwave]

Oh yeah, and unavoidable Week of the Plague, no reload helps. BOOO-urns!

Two more bugs/performance issues actually I forgot.
1. Minotaur retaliation is totally bugged. When you attempt to attack a minotaur, it always shows as "retaliation: no" - even if it can retaliate. Needless to say, with its preemptive retaliation, thats a huge error. Also, some no retaliation abilities, such as that of the silverback, DO NOT WORK on minotaur. I tried to use one on a minotaur stack, had my wolves drop to 0 D, but the minotaurs STILL struck first. Needless to say, ugh.

2. The game moves a TON faster when you're not connected to the internet. I'm not sure why that is, I had UPlay offline with internet still connected on my computer and the game was MUCH slower - once i disconnected, game sped up a lot.

Odd, or you mean during AI move? I found the game slows to a crawl, not that you can do much more than move the map, but even that is done in skips.

Oh, and the Metamagic skill that damages enemies hitting your units in melee? Sooo bugged, but apparently only for golems, if they are hit, they damage the enemy with this skill + and themselves too for same damage. WUT?
Also, I think the large elite units are needlessly overly powerful. The 130-150 HP of minotaurs or raskhasas means it's like having a HOMMIII tier 7 unupgraded unit with you.

[BB Shockwave]

- All Ashan factions will use the same theme music - with remixes and/or differents musiacal instruments but over all if you hear Haven theme in one game, it would be similar in another. So for example faction combat maps in Heroes 7 will use themes from previous game.

Oh. THAT, thanks for reminding me. They reused Clash of Heroes music for Haven, for example. How ***** lazy is that?

I friggin' refuse to buy this game, Ubi was lazy with VI but they went extra lazy with this game, it's little more than V with a few III elements using the graphical engine of VI.
I hope this tanks so hard, Ubi will finally get the liscense out of its claws, and to someone deserving, like Triumph or 1C.

[BB Shockwave]

Oh, forgot to share this gem. I made a video of it, but often the whole enemy camp, 4-5 heroes, was riding backwards, sideways, and all directions, to that silly music. This happens to your hero too, if you put them in the garrisson and take them out...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb-mYPZbi4g

Okay I'm done with the beta. I still am able to play it, but there's very little more I feel like learning at the cost of playing this game.

My computer is probably below the minimum to play the game, but the memory usage is insane. When the game boots up, i'ts using 2 Gigabytes of Ram immediately; that number increases to 3 as I start a map, and has gone as high as 4.5 GB mid game. That is unacceptable for any game. You should not be using that much RAM for heroes even more. Seriously, this is brutal and I can't play the game long like this.

The enemy turn length again si totally brutal and needs to be fixed.

Oh, trust me, it's not dependent on RAM. I have 16GBs and it still was terribly slow while the AI was thinking... and not doing anything.
Seriously, why is the AI thinking so long, and then - for months - not even trying to conquer a resource site it could already take, or even just sending a hero to grab unguarded resources? Even HOMM2 AI could do that!

More bugs!
1. Had a battle with a dungeon hero where the first turn involved the opponent, presumably using shroud, putting two of his tier 1 units inside a minotaur. I couldn't target them, and when i killed the minotaur it got to the point where I couldn't hit them and he kept defending with them, so we had a stalemate. Had to reload from a save.

LOLLL! Minotaur got hungry and ate them. ?D Btw, shroud should be for EVERY faction, because moving around with 2*2 large units is ungainly and impossible.

2. Units randomly seem to disappear from my hero sometimes - I can't figure it out. Upon restarting combat, the units reappear and can be used as intended.

Yep! Happened to me too, they are back if you end the battle. But I also saw one time where restarting a battle made the enemy's 15 Cabiris morph into 44 gargoyles - a unit he already had once. Mirror Image?

3. The leadership ability allowing a hero to have 9 units does not work. I do not know what is the point of this ability if it doesn't work. I was excited to have a bajillion high tier units only to find it didn't work and I'd wasted a skill point.

Yep, bugged - tried, but I still have 7 stacks only. Maybe you can split existing stacks during Tactics phase? (again, something that should come with a skill, not available for everyone)

[BB Shockwave]

SPELLS - You get to pick a school, besides your factions favored, to always have one spell of that school in each level in the mage guild. The lvl 4 mage guild gives you one spell only, so it can't have the faction's favorite magic school, it will have the school you pick only. So, no chance of your factions favored school's spell showing up! So, building a Light magic (Heaven's favored school) hero, you won't get a LvL 4 light spell from your guild. That is frustrating, to say the least. So, unless I am missing something, this needs to be addressed somehow.

I don't think so, I captured a Haven city which had Resurrection as the level 4 spell.

AI - not very consistent...sometimes really bad. One game the enemy was a complete joke. I think he just never built up much, as it also looked like he hardly took any of the neutrals/mines in his territory. Definitely needs work. Had two games where enemy AI seemed to be doing ok, but at least half where AI was worthless.

Remember how in HOMMIII you had scares like that one teleport one-way guarded by a hundred Titans suddenly having an enemy hero emerge and easily defeat the killer stack? Well, on that large desert map, "I" did THAT to the enemy! Wham, teleport next to castle, enemy defeated in 3 more turns. Just... AI is terrible.

HERO BUILDS - I like the hero classes per faction and I don't mind the pre-set skill pizzas per hero. But I can see why other's would not. I think it would be cool if they allowed an option to custom build your Hero instead of picking one. You get to customize what their skill pizza is as far as the base skills and some points to pick the hero's specializations. They could even add % chances like H5 for how often the Random option offers up perks depending on faction/class.

It's annoying that everything is pre-ordained. No surprises, no hoping for that elusive skill at levelling up. Plus , what good is hero classes if you can only recruit ONE hero from your faction per week, no choices?

[BB Shockwave]

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.

It works the other way too - y'know those damned Druids with their overpowered rays that go through all units? In a real tactical I lost tons of mages and rakshasas... using quick battle I lost only like 5 Golems. It's almost like cheating.

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.

Happened to me too, and others... quite annoying bug.

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.

You can, but it's well hidden... tiny skills icon on the top right above the hero's artwork!

One thing, Cabir is so very cute.

Indeed! Well, not that they are original - they are basically D&D kobolds. I do love their "win" animation where they fire fireballs into the air in triumph, only for them to fall back on their heads.

[BB Shockwave]

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.

I loved your post... just saying. And yes, that "enemy turn" music makes the whole thing look like a comedy. Which it kind of is... as Galvatron said to Starscream, "This is bad comedy."
I can see the insane AI loading time meaning most new players dropping this game after the first map.

AI is overpowered, though? How? I mean, it cheats and has far more units than it should have, but for me, it usually kept stupidly dividing them amongst heroes and thus I beat them each easily. It also kept running next to me with heroes with no units... Btw, that is pointless too - as even a hero with 1 core unit kills a no-unit hero automatically, why would anyone use them this way?

Also, Sylvan is overpowered - shooter treants (HOW do they even shoot? I can't see what they shoot), and the Blade Dancer is a fast mini-hydra, hitting everything around it.

And as Galadeel said, really, if every unit has 4-5 movement by default, plus how half the units are immune to slow... then might as well skip the battlefields and just call this Disciples IV.

[Panda Tar]

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

Check the hero specialization. It might be "Moongallops".

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.

Any music that reminds you you are wasting your time by doing nothing at all has the power to get annoying. Almost the same effect of songs you pick up to be in your alarm clock. You grow to hate them.

[Pol]

@Marzhin
Any screenshot of implemented Heroespedia? That could be one of base stones of the game and I'm really curious.

[gourley4p]

part 1 - 23 minutes, part 2 - 12 minutes, part 3 - 11 minutes.

Thanks for sharing about the experience. These concert links are very nice.

[mr.hackcrag]

https://youtu.be/-4kUd9xlxKQ

From the official trailer at around 3:30: "Solo maps let you play against the game's expert A.I."

Is it true?

[gourley4p]

https://youtu.be/-4kUd9xlxKQ

From the official trailer at around 3:30: "Solo maps let you play against the game's expert A.I."

Is it true?

I never played above normal A.I. On easy, the A.I. was almost criminally inept. I tried a few maps where I put half of the opponents at Easy level and half at Normal. The Normal level opponents wiped out the Easy level opponents every time.

[Pol]

The interesting question is if AI cheats and how. Does it see the enemey? (Human, other AI)
Does it get reinforcenments & resources & free spells?

For 3D maps AI is hard thing, that's why you should start with it ASAP, of course, after you have set up all constants. In case of Heroes you have advantage, as AI don't need to see 3D, that's just for humans, and for 2D is easier, still tweaking AI is task which cannot be done under six months, with AI it's almost like with a real baby.

Considering Ubi developing system, asking us what units we would like to seen, they started already too late. As for sure, you need all base units summarized, before beginning AI development.

Now it's just question, if it will be moddable?

Also seeing the Beta, dialog decoration are almost non-existent, we are returning to times of H5. No need to speak about font, really.

Still a 2D representation of combat and overall map, would be a huge advantage, the question is, if it can be modded of it's plainly impossible.

Which leads me to final point, that I would prefer games which are finished in beta state. As it does warrant that final version will have only bug and balances fixes but will be released with full set of features.

Checking the pre-order forms brings up also one more question, Collector's edition, which is incredibly costy, is being shipped with one different item. That being cup, poster, T-shirt or nothing. Is that just being randomized or is there some rule what to ship where and why?

Anyway, overall this release looks like step in the right direction. Decisive will be how much Ubi love it will receive.