Skills and Abilities rant!

[Da' vane]

This has been bugging me for a while, but as a fan of HoMM IV, I can't help but feel that skills and Abilities have gone completely the wrong way in HoMM V.

The skills are mostly cool, and the idea of getting abilities is great, but what ruins it for me is that you have to plan your hero from the beginning and cannot organically level up your heroes.

The limits of only three abilities per skill sucks. Each skill has the option of three abilities, and it is all too easy to take all three of the starting abilities for your skills and never see the higher level ones. If you pick the wrong skill or the wrong ability, you'll never get that ultimate, no matter how much you want it. In fact, chances are that if you don't look this up on the Skill Wheel or similar aide, you'll never even know it exists.

This just plain sucks. The system requires that you know every combination beforehand, before you can even use it effectively. Sure, there's all sorts of abilities you can get from Master of Fire for instance. However, since you are often required to have other skills and abilities before these even appear when you level up, you might not even know about them, let alone plan for them.

I liked the RPG feel of HoMM IV, where you'd be able to level up organically and go into an advanced class based on what skill combination you had. Sure, most of these were combat-based classes because you got offered combat at level 3 automatically, but that didn't make a difference. Basically, you didn't have to plan your character, and take what feels right or fun. A visit to a witch hut or university could change their entire progression path of your hero, and help make them different in the end.

But, despite the increased options with skills and abilities in HoMM V, the sheer rigidness of the sytem rules out any sort of organic evolution for your heroes. Pick up the wrong skill or ability, and entire options are denied to you - and you'll end up with a bunch of low-level abilities that all characters can get anyway, and the only difference is their Speciality.

When levelling organically, you aren't likely to pick up recruitment for your main hero - it's just not useful. How are you supposed to know if there are any cool abilities beyond recruitment, or if you need recruitment for your ultimate? If there is, by the time you take recruitment normally, you've filled all the abilities under Leadership, so you can't get any advanced abilities after recruitment anyway. Likewise, if there's an ability after Master of Fire, but you don't have the skill and ability requirement for it, how are you supposed to know and not fill up the ability slots with Master of Storms and Master of Ice.

The preplanning needed for your heroes removes any organic evolution options for your hero, and a simple wrong skill at a witch hunt or a bad level up option can leave you punished with not reaching whatever higher ability goals you have set yourself.

I know the interface only allows for three abilities for each skill, but this just sucks. There have been complaints before about the enforcement of 3d graphics in the game with no apparent purpose (and, this is even worse for me, because I'm playing the game at minimum spec, so all the graphics look naff anyway). Surely, if at stupid useless 3d image of your hero was removed so that the interface could be expanded, you could place more abilities under the skill, and not justify the stupid 3 abilities rule.

It's not like it would make too much of a difference to the power of heroes without this rule. After all, they get one skill boost or ability per level up, so if they spend it taking a 4th ability under Leadership that they now have the requirements for, they aren't using to to pick up another level in Destruction Magic or a second ability under Attack. This would greatly open up the RPG aspect of Heroes, and allow for the cool combinations to be discovered even if the player does make mistakes and picks up the wrong ability.

[Ethric]

Good post there.

I for one felt in H4, and it also goes for H5 (even more so I guess), that the rigid grouping of skills should go. Instead of allowing you x number of skills divided on y groups, just give you 20 or whatever slots to fill with whatever you want. The requirements would still be there of course; if you want skill B you need skill A first(at a certain proficiency perhaps or in combination with other skills). But if you have skill A and *don't* want skill B, that slot shouldn't be reserved for skill B, and thus wasted.

[DaemianLucifer]

The only problem with the current system is that they decided to hide the advanced abilities.If you had them portrayed in the description of the skill that provides them,along with their prerequests,there wouldnt be a problem.

[Gus]

The only problem with the current system is that they decided to hide the advanced abilities.If you had them portrayed in the description of the skill that provides them,along with their prerequests,there wouldnt be a problem.

True. But will they do that? Isn't it what Fabrice said, that they didn't want to reveal the skilltree because it was "part of the fun" or something like that?

[Bandobras Took]

Your main complaint isn't with the skill system; it's with the lack of documentation (whether in the game or in the manual).

Your complaint with the skill system is settled around only having three sub abilities. I can see where you're coming from, but I like the idea of the trade-off. You can get Urgash's Call or unique Demon Lord abilities, but only at the cost of leaving behind other skills you'd like to take.

And I don't mind the difficulty involved in getting an ultimate skill, either. Make it any easier, and every game turns into a race for the ultimate. As it stands, people will play around with several different skills depending on their preference. At least, they will if they have proper documentation, which I agree: Ubi really dropped the ball on that one.

[DaemianLucifer]

True. But will they do that? Isn't it what Fabrice said, that they didn't want to reveal the skilltree because it was "part of the fun" or something like that?

Yes,I can imagine how fun for them it is to read all these "what this skill leads to" threads.

[ThunderTitan]

Isn't it what Fabrice said, that they didn't want to reveal the skilltree because it was "part of the fun" or something like that?

See, this is what happens when you don't send people death threats. They think frustrating you is "part of the fun"....

But it would be nice to have 4 ability slots, so those heroes that start witht he wrong skill can have a shot at the Ultimate.

[Gus]

DL and TT, don't get me wrong, i think that everyone thinking "less documentation adds to the fun" should be beaten to death.

[Da' vane]

Documentation helps - it would be a start, so you can see if Scholar is worth taking because of some cool ability it leads to.

However, there is still the problem of "wrong" abilities in slots. Three abilities simply isn't enough - because in quite a few cases you need three specific abilities for each skill to get to your ultimate, and the third often requires other skills that you may not have. If you take something in that place, you can never get that third ability, even if you get the appropriate skill later, and thus can never get your ultimate.

I think that just sucks. I don't like to plan ahead with my heroes like that. I prefer to just let the heroes evolve - taking abilities and skills as they come up that will help out the hero. More often than not, I've maxed out my two starting skills and filled all the abilities before I've even gotten a third skill, and when I haven't, it's usually because I picked it up through a Witch's Hut or something.

There's only five skills, and it should be possible to, over time, pick up all the ability combinations of those five skills. Yes, that can mean a lot of abilities, and thus a lot of level ups.

What's really interesting is what are they planning for an expansion... more downs mean more heroes, meaning more abilities... and if they are adding them for the new guys, why not add some stuff for the existing hero types too? But, this would make things worse because there would be even more options than there are now, yet still only three ability slots to fill.

Three ability slots simply sucks. Looking at the skill wheel alone, this is about a third of all the abilities relating to a specific Skill. That's just sad, and will get worse if they add more abilities.

[Iswald]

This reminds me of a MUD that I used to play on a number of years ago. (For those unfamiliar, a MUD is basicly an online text based RPG -- predecessors of MMORPGs.) On this particular MUD, LegendMUD, the skills that your character could learn depended upon the stats and starting hometown of your character. All of the skills that your character currently qualified to learn could be seen with the allskills command. However, any skill which you didn't qualify for wouldn't show on the list. Often, this would be because your stats were too low. Sometimes, it was because you were from the wrong hometown. There were help files for every skill, but you could only access the files for the skills you were qualified to learn. A lof of people didn't like not being able to look up whatever they wanted to. In general, this was really a good thing.

For example, when somebody couldn't find an answer to a question, they had to ask somebody else for the answer. This forces more communication between players and helps foster a sense of community. Also, there are those who want to try and figure out everything on their own. For this type of player, they can keep creating different types of characters and seeing what they are capable of doing. This increases the replayability of the game.

However, H5 is a different type of game. If you have questions, you have to leave the game and look online for help. This does help build a community, but there is a shared sense of frustration as a result. In addition, there is no editor or even random map generator. Because of this, you'd have to keep replaying the same scenarios over to see what each character can do. Playing the same maps over gets kind of boring and detracts from whatever enjoyment might have been gained by checking out the different skills and abilities.

Note that I haven't actually purchased H5, just played the demo.

There's a paper on this topic called "HEARTS, CLUBS, DIAMONDS, SPADES: PLAYERS WHO SUIT MUDS" that received quite a bit of attention when it was released around 10 years ago. Admittedly, much of this doesn't apply to games such as H5, but some does. And, some of that which doesn't might be applied by somebody misguided.

[DaemianLucifer]

Documentation helps - it would be a start, so you can see if Scholar is worth taking because of some cool ability it leads to.

However, there is still the problem of "wrong" abilities in slots. Three abilities simply isn't enough - because in quite a few cases you need three specific abilities for each skill to get to your ultimate, and the third often requires other skills that you may not have. If you take something in that place, you can never get that third ability, even if you get the appropriate skill later, and thus can never get your ultimate.

I disagree.The sistem is nice because you arent force to chase the ultimate.And the ultimate is supposed to be hard to get.Compare it to HIV and youll see that it is just as hard as becoming a shadow priest.If you want to chace the ultimate,you have to put some effort in it.If not,there are many other paths that are just as nice.For example,in inferno campaign I took tactics instead of battle frenzy,and it still worked very nice,even though I didnt get urgashs call.

[ThunderTitan]

The Ultimate is to hard to reach at the moment. Heck, I don't really see people getting it in a single map right now. That's annoying.

[thecheese]

The Ultimate is to hard to reach at the moment. Heck, I don't really see people getting it in a single map right now. That's annoying.

I'm working on getting Urgash's Call on a Hotseat map, and I'm almost there. Got another 2 levels to go, and I'm at 30, but I think I can do it. Granted, I am prolonging the AI's life for the sake of this experiment; he should've been dead a long time ago.

Which brings me to the point that ultimate skills are a joke. Not because they aren't good, they are, but because you'll never see them used in any kind of game where you're trying to win. Of course, maybe if they made a much bigger map, this would change...

[DaemianLucifer]

I'm working on getting Urgash's Call on a Hotseat map, and I'm almost there. Got another 2 levels to go, and I'm at 30, but I think I can do it. Granted, I am prolonging the AI's life for the sake of this experiment; he should've been dead a long time ago.

Which brings me to the point that ultimate skills are a joke. Not because they aren't good, they are, but because you'll never see them used in any kind of game where you're trying to win. Of course, maybe if they made a much bigger map, this would change...

Youll almost never see a level beyond the 30th.If you dont get your ultimate until then,youll never obtain it.Thats because leveling system is just stupid.

[thecheese]

I'm realizing that now. Didn't realize how drastically it would increase at this point. Should've saved my trees.

[thragar]

What really aggravates the problem is that there is no prompt at a witch's hut. I end up never using them because you could end up with a skill that doesn't help you at all.

[Ethric]

Just use the running around to pick up resources and creatures every week-hero to check what it is

[HodgePodge]

What really aggravates the problem is that there is no prompt at a witch's hut. I end up never using them because you could end up with a skill that doesn't help you at all.

Just another lazy exclusion by Nival. I always save my game just before going to a witch's hut … if I don't like the skill, I reload … but people shouldn't have to do this.

[Omega_Destroyer]

I agree. And most of the time I got offered logistics for some reason.

[Da' vane]

Organic hero evolution means that if a Hero encounters a Witch Hut, they would take the skill, whether they like it or not, and then adapt to using it in their strategy.

In the previous games, there was no real penalty for doing this - you didn't feel you had to check it out or reload if it was "bad". In HoMM III, you had 8 skills to choose from, so burning one on a Witch's Hut wasn't a big problem. If it was useful, you got all your heroes to pick it up, otherwise, you ignored it.

In HoMM IV, you had a must more restricted number of skill slots, but mot people decided their advanced class by the first two or three, and the other skills were just filler, so burning one wasn't all that bad (read "end of the world") once you'd got those filled, and there were lots of ways to pick up the skills you wanted.

Yet, in HoMM V, with it's abilities and limited to 3 slots and needing specific combinations of skills, the chances you take with a Witch's Hut is almost unbearable. Not all skill combinations work, and unless you know beforehand what the skill in the hut will be, can't really plan around it with applicable skill comboes for high level abilites. You can only hope that is a skill you want, and if not...

Sure, I don't need to chase the ultimate ability, but that is not the point. The fact is, if you play without meticulously planning your heroes progression, you will never see the ultimate ability, because the odds of picking the right combination without knowing it beforehand is slim. More often than not, organic heroes all end up with the first teir abilities cloging up their slots (Master of Ice, Scholar, tactics, and so on) with maybe a few second teir abilities if there's no real requirements besides a previous ability in the same skill. Third tier abilities will almost certainly not be organically available, because you need an exact order of abilities to get to them, even when they don't require abilities from other skills.

I'm bored, and it's late, but the chance of randomly picking abilities is reduced significantly as you go up the tiers simply because of the requirements. This is the problem. Not to mention that if you're supposed to do that sort of planning, then HoMM V should have given you the option of picking any available ability when you level up, not just two chosen at random. As it stands, it is simply far too random for the 3 ability limit to be justifiable, or even fun!