Ubisoft Release 1.7 and Unity

[Romanov77]

Hope that Ashan ends up being a terrible dream made by Crack Hack while sleeping on a table of a Axeoth tavern.

[hellegennes]

I may be mirroring my views, here, but I believe that the reason HVII was not well received is that it has absolutely nothing new to offer. Same units, same factions, same mechanics, same gameplay elements. At least HVI dared to introduce new things. HVII failed in this respect.

Of course, it's not only the developer's fault; the main issue is that Ubisoft won't spend money. HVII was ridiculously low-budget, which makes no bloody sense. Ubisoft won't spend more money because they don't expect a lot of returns, but in order to have returns you need to spend. The amount you can get is not predetermined.

[Karmakeld]

Galaad wrote:

And about these new H4 campaigns... I just hope some dedicated h4 fans will implement them to h4, the game it belongs to, because here is just h4 texts in a h7 environment, pretty horrible from my POV.

Now THAT'S an open invitation.. Let's hope someone picks it up.. (if there's any interest for it, that is)..

It's funny, why Ashan is so different. I've heard many saying they don't care about Ashan and the Dragon Gods, but I'm uncertain why that world is fundamentally different from Enroth/Axeoth. It consist of heroes, creatures, wars for nations etc. Ofcourse the worship of dragon gods influencing most factions, I consider to be THE biggest difference, other than that, I do believe it's a matter of storytelling. Ofcourse you have to enjoy the gameplay, but if we only focus on the storytelling, I too believe, the later installments, lack the storytelling that takes you 'under the skin' of the characters, but seemingly alot of players don't play for the story (beats me, why you'd wanna play a campaign if not for the story, but each to his own taste).

Romanov, that idea should be included in the campaign Galaad suggested

Hellegennes, I do think H7 offers some new mechanics, atleast from a map makers point of view, you have the potential for living out many cool ideas, and integrate them with your storytelling. But I think issues as the AI, insanely big map sizes (+80MB pr. map), and generally bad implementation of the available stuff are (also) reasons why H7 hasn't been succesfull. If we for a moment look past all the issues and bugs, I think the editor opens up for so many possibilites. H3 and H4 had good storytelling, but the campaign were quite ordinary. Fan made maps showed what the editor(s) were indeed capable of. But with H7, scripts you'd think would be fundamental, were being added by patch 1.6. They've added 80 new heroes portraits with patch 1.7, yet I read, ppl. can't find them in the editor (if they can even open it anymore). I just read a tutorial for the H7 editor today, and it seems you have the option to add interactions to any objects. So you could potentially make it possible for a hero to fall down a well, as if it was a portal/tunnel. But like the 80 new heroes, again and again, it seems like you have all these options, which in reality you can't fully use, due to various odd limitations It seems like they're tripping over themself, and I fear that the Unity campaign, might just end up offering little new, besides a more well written story..

[Galaad]

Hope that Ashan ends up being a terrible dream made by Crack Hack while sleeping on a table of a Axeoth tavern.

I may be mirroring my views, here, but I believe that the reason HVII was not well received is that it has absolutely nothing new to offer. Same units, same factions, same mechanics, same gameplay elements. At least HVI dared to introduce new things. HVII failed in this respect.

There is no big changes as seen in IV or VI indeed but saying "everything is the same" is both inaccurate and ignorant. While III and V have similar mechanics they are fundamentally different in game design from VII.

Of course, it's not only the developer's fault; the main issue is that Ubisoft won't spend money. HVII was ridiculously low-budget, which makes no bloody sense. Ubisoft won't spend more money because they don't expect a lot of returns, but in order to have returns you need to spend. The amount you can get is not predetermined.

Not only developers fault but they do have their share of responsibility. Again I am going to point out award-winning AoW3, with a team of 15 people and I doubt they had better budget, yet their game looks good, is fast and well optimized, has quality gameplay and even get multi OS support (Win, Mac, Linux). So I put blame as much on Limbic than on Ubi. Ofc a clueless Creative Director is probably the biggest obstacle for a quality title.

It's funny, why Ashan is so different.

To me is a general feel and spirit, and yes Ashan's story telling sucks. I do consider its general universe to be incredibly dull and shallow, and on the other side there is so much potential in the original universe that Ubi is not willing to explore it's really sad. At least Unity campaigns will make more people realize how much Ashan is stupid.

[JSE]

It's funny, why Ashan is so different. I've heard many saying they don't care about Ashan and the Dragon Gods, but I'm uncertain why that world is fundamentally different from Enroth/Axeoth. It consist of heroes, creatures, wars for nations etc. Ofcourse the worship of dragon gods influencing most factions, I consider to be THE biggest difference, [...]

With that argumentation, you could also claim that all more or less Tolkienesque fantasy worlds are basically interchangeable and that fans of one world should automatically be fans of all similar worlds. In reality, of course, all of these worlds have their own fan communities, people who love these worlds for very specific and individual reasons. And that's exactly the point here: It's all about the detail!

While on the surface Ashan might have a very similar design principle to that of Enroth or Axeoth, lots of smaller-scale design decisions (the dragon gods being only one) make it very different from the original M&M worlds. It's because of these decisions that many of us don't like Ashan.

other than that, I do believe it's a matter of storytelling.

I don't think that storytelling per se is the main reason for the dislike of Ashan. It's more fundamental things like naming, faction design, creature association, world mythology, and the overall visual design done by the so-called "world artists".

The original M&M worlds had very different quality levels of storytelling -- the worlds themselves, however, were always interesting and fascinating.

[Karmakeld]

JSE wrote:

..And that's exactly the point here: It's all about the detail!

That's true, but my point was that Ashan could just as easily have had similar creature design, world lore etc. as Enroth or Axeoth. But I agree that it's the details that makes the difference and makes the worlds come alive. I should've made that clear in my post - guess I sleept during class there And ofcourse, it's a basic matter of making the world and it's inhabitants interesting..

[Erwinner]

another user from ten years ago said it best about the World of Erwin the World of Might & Magic® lol

Ubi are either clever or stupid or both. Clever - keeping one group of people/writers as a creative control over the universe to give the different games within it one style. Stupid - they're really pretty awful at the stories to be honest, if both Nival and Arkane were given more of a free hand in making up the new M&M universe I suspect they would have had something many times better (though with the potential of many small inconsistencies). You only have to look at Nival's and Arkane's previous work.

[JSE]

That's true, but my point was that Ashan could just as easily have had similar creature design, world lore etc. as Enroth or Axeoth.

Sure, as Ashan's fundamentals are Tolkienesque/D&D-style fantasy, too, it could have been made into a good M&M setting. In my opnion, this option was forfeited when the details were fleshed out.


@ Erwinner:
If outsourcing the development to multiple companies is necessary (and Ubisoft apparently thought it was), it certainly makes sense to at least manage the world lore in one place. I wouldn't even call that "clever" -- it's basic logic. Given the low quality of the world itself, however, this method seems unnecesarry in hindsight. It might have even done more harm than good.

Arkane Studios is such a talented developer that they actually managed to create a great game set inside a bad game world. To me, Dark Messiah is the only good thing that has happend in the Ubisoft M&M era so far. So, one could argue that, to some extent, the developers themselves can make a difference. The Heroes games are of a completely different nature, of course, and have a much larger scope than a first-person action game. It's much more difficult -- if not impossible -- to hide bad world design when you're dealing with entire nations. That's why I don't blame either Nival, Black Hole, or Limbic. They probably all did a good job in the face of immense creative obstacles.

[overall]

New patch haven't play H7 for while maybe i could try it now seems that Marzhin and Co. done some new content to it...
patch doesn't much say is AI get any better more or less to been seen... i kinda think that biggest flaw in H7 was that it was released so unfinished i don't really see myself getting any new Ubisoft M&M titles if Ubisoft can't provide proper budget and time to development them...
but yea i don't so mind coz Dark Souls 2 came and pretty much deliver everything what i was looking for... actually i finish it just while ago...
for lack of time i kind of spent first year looking its arts and other people playing it...
but now that im done wit it well i can't say it's a perfect game... there's all kinds of thing that could work more proper and sometimes it feels bit too hollow but it truly makes you say WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT! x)
so in a game would give it 8/10 points but in arts and style i give it 10/10 and cat paw...
i like high contrast and its contrast to similar games is just in class of its own... and even better there will be Dark Souls 3... soon...

[Galaad]

i kinda think that biggest flaw in H7 was that it was released so unfinished

I disagree. But I'd say the legions of bugs and malfunctions of the unfinished broken product is hiding a flawed, insulting and extremely poor game design.