Nival Answers: Part Trois

[ChinaBlue]

The "map overview" is not the "kingdom overview"

I certainly hope "Old Boy" knows the difference already...

[DaemianLucifer]

The "map overview" is not the "kingdom overview"
The map overview was the screen where you could check what faction / hero / starting bonus all players had after starting. The current setup, with just the quest log is more than enough in this respect.

Wasnt map overview actually a map where all the heroes,resources,artifacts,portals,mines and towns were displayed for easier spotting?This one would be a great help now with this dumb camera.

[King Imp]

Since it seems I'm not part of "most of the fans", tell me: what's so bad about morale? I can agree that luck needs to be toned down, but I think morale is fine as it is.

Because it triggers far too often when a hero has Expert Leadership.

Granted, I agree that Luck is the much bigger problem, but watching an enemy troop going constantly while you sit there and wait is quite annoying and frankly a little overpowered.

Luck though is in a whole other category and needs to be seriously looked at. The only problem is getting the clueless ones at Nival to recognize it.

[DaemianLucifer]

Because it triggers far too often when a hero has Expert Leadership.

Granted, I agree that Luck is the much bigger problem, but watching an enemy troop going constantly while you sit there and wait is quite annoying and frankly a little overpowered.

Luck though is in a whole other category and needs to be seriously looked at. The only problem is getting the clueless ones at Nival to recognize it.

10% chance to appear is a bit too much.Maybe 5% per each morale would be better.But its the turn retal and no LoS that actually makes this one overpowered.

[jeff]

No LoS that actually makes this one overpowered.

I agree here, it is very annoying placing troops in front and watch the opponent shoot through the front row.

[MrSteamTank]

Well that post does it. I completely regret buying this game. Oh man.

Nival flat out refuses to change about 90% of things in the game when a lot could use changing.

When a playable multiplayer that doesn't take 5 hours to finish per game comes out(as in simultaneous turn mode is finally released as promised) we'll probably have to see someone at a 3rd party make a balance patch to fix what nival cannot.

Ah well I'm ranting. It's a decent game but the support is simply abysmal. Reminds me of black & white with the exception that black & white actually brought some new cards to the table.

[Campaigner]

I don't care that much about paperdoll, Death Knights and ultimate abilities.



I want my HoF, nomral heroattack removed and spells rebalanced.

[hein321]

what about the high scores table?

[Bandobras Took]

Really?! How about in maps where you get only 1 hero?! Or the Sylvan campaig, where Findan can't get it? What if you just don't get any heroes that can get ultimate offered to you in the tavern?

Wait . . . map designers might decide to deny you access to an ultimate ability? Fancy that. I've played a scenario where I was disallowed a tavern, but that doesn't mean taverns are flawed.

And the fact is only having some heroes be able to get it doesn't make it harder, it just forces you to use a certain hero to do it. It's just blimey stupid.

If we're going to argue semantics, then fine. It makes it more limited, not harder. So far, we've got Nival saying that they made it really difficult, and you calling them names for saying it.

I've had people whine and call me stupid when I didn't give them what they wanted, but the problem wasn't with me.

And weren't there 4 ability slots in the beta?! That tells me that this wasn't done on purpose, their just making up excuses.

That's okay, Nicolai being raised as a Vampire told you that the storyline of Heroes 5 was a complete rip-off of Heroes 3. But being wrong when making unjustified and untenable accusations has never stopped you in the past, so I have dim hopes for the future. Oh, well . . .

This is senseless. If a hero can never get the UA because a player chose (or even was forced to choose) an incompatible skill, that's one thing. But having certain heroes start with incompatible skills is not a good idea.
No hero should (normally) start with something preventing the UA.

That entire statement is based on two assumptions:
1) That everybody is always going to want to go for the ultimate ability in every game; and
2) That a hero who has chosen skills based on effectiveness rather than on a path to the ultimate ability is going to be crippled for the duration of the game.

Neither of those is noticeably accurate.

[Meandor]

So what that some heroes can`t get ultimate? For Ultimate you nead ~30lv, like you are going to reach that in normal game? If you are starting a long game than take a hero ho can get ultimate.

[Khelavaster]

"That entire statement is based on two assumptions:

1) That everybody is always going to want to go for the ultimate ability in every game; and

2) That a hero who has chosen skills based on effectiveness rather than on a path to the ultimate ability is going to be crippled for the duration of the game.



Neither of those is noticeably accurate."



Sorry but you make absolutely no sense.

Getting the ultimate should be very hard, but this difficulty should be posed by the intrincacies of the skill system. That some heroes are arbitrarily prevented from ever getting the ultimate is obviously the result of HOMMV still being a poorly tested beta, so naturally Nival will try to pass it as a "feature".



Of course you could say "it's by design" just like Daleb's killer ballista or the War Machines fiasco, but hey.



Khel.
Edited on Mon, Jul 03 2006, 04:42 by Khelavaster

[Bandobras Took]

I'm still trying to figure out the sense in wanting every single hero to have a clear path to the ultimate ability.

You mentioned Deleb. She really doesn't have a clear path to the ultimate ability, and yet she comes highly recommended by Inferno players. Which is it? Is she crippled or not?

Or Nymus, who can't get the Ultimate Ability ever. Is the person who chooses that Hero going to have a significantly worse time than the one who chooses Grok?

To draw a parallel, this whole thing is like complaining that it's too difficult to kill the Ruby and Emerald Weapons in FFVII. You don't have to kill them; the game doesn't suffer for you not killing them. They were stuck in for people who like a challenge.

Ultimate Abilities are not needed to win a game of Heroes V. The likelihood of your opponent getting one and you not are small. They're something to shoot for if you feel like a challenge.

Why must every hero be able to get to the Ultimate Ability? What logic are we going on here?

[letsrock]

I agree with Took. There is no need to choose your Hero based on the fact that he/she can get Ultimate or not in normal games. And Ultimate is nice for Campaign only I think, in normal single-map games, the game will usually finish when ur hero is level 12 - 20.

I think the most important thing now for Nival to do is to fix the multiplayer disconnection bugs, then release a map editor.

[theLuckyDragon]

@Bandobras Took's question
Probably uniformity. Which means lack of diversity. Which is bad.

Anyhow, if someone really wants to give the possibility of reaching the UA to all heroes, it's probably moddable.

[Qurqirish Dragon]

This is senseless. If a hero can never get the UA because a player chose (or even was forced to choose) an incompatible skill, that's one thing. But having certain heroes start with incompatible skills is not a good idea.
No hero should (normally) start with something preventing the UA.

That entire statement is based on two assumptions:
1) That everybody is always going to want to go for the ultimate ability in every game; and
2) That a hero who has chosen skills based on effectiveness rather than on a path to the ultimate ability is going to be crippled for the duration of the game.

Neither of those is noticeably accurate.

That statement does not make either of those assumptions.
1) Not everybody is going to want the ultimate, as you say. I merely state that the OPTION should be available. To put it to a rediculous extreme: Not everybody will want summoning magic- does that mean that if a hero were prevented from every getting that skill, that wouldn't be a bad thing?

2) I said NOTHING about the power of a hero with or without the UA. All I said was that all heroes should have the potential for getting the UA.

You seem to be of the opinion that if I want the ability to get the UA, then I want to actually get the UA all the time. That is definitely not the case.

[Bandobras Took]

All I was going by is your belief that certain heroes being blocked from the Ultimate is not a good idea.

Please expand on this: why not?

If you don't want to get an ultimate ability, there's little difference between heroes that can and can't.

If you do, you pick a hero that can reach it.

I don't see why every hero in the game has to be able to reach an ultimate ability.

[ThunderTitan]

Because it's a stupid choice. It doesn't make geting it any harder, just imposible if you don't get a hero that can get it.

If they wanted to make it harder they would just have kept some heroes that can get to it faster because of their starting skills/abilities, and some that don't. Making it imposible from the get go is stupid.

[Warlock]

Personally the thing that bothers me the most about that is the lack of information. Unless I am looking at fansites like this, how the heck am I supposed to know which heroes can get the ultimate abilities, let alone how to get the ultimate abilities or that UAs even exist!? It's the poor documentation I think that's the most annoying to me.

Otherwise, I sort of agree with you Took about just picking a hero who can get it. Though I also agree that for something that's hard to get *anyways*, completely disallowing certain heroes from getting it seems kind of stupid. It's not like it would be that hard to give them some other ability.

Anyways, as for the rest of the list, a few comments:

They had ideas to implement raising zombies or ghosts instead of skeletons, and it is possible that they will implement it.

I don't know about this one. I will start by saying I like Skeleton Archers a LOT better than these two. But I'll also say I realize that right now they are a bit insane with the shear number you can get with this. So if these replaced some of the archers, that might not be horrible for balance reasons. If it replaces ALL of the archers, screw that. I want archers

Also, Zombies suck. Ghosts would be decent but I really don't want any zombies. Besides which, how would this work if you had no free slots in your army? I think I need to hear more about what they want to do with this to comment.

The ability of non-Haven factions to effectively use Haven Training will be corrected.

Can someone tell me what the issue was here? Best I can guess is that you are allowed to hire Haven heroes, and they can get training so you can use this? Is that what the problem was? Because I don't really see a problem with that, especially given you can do this with any other faction and use their faction special (i.e. Haven hiring a Necromancer can use Necromancy, etc). If that wasn't the problem, then I don't know what this is talking about

Adding an "X close" button to pop-up windows is problematic. Use Esc or Cancel.

Not that I really care about the feature, but I find this hard to believe. You can't make a button and tie it into the ESC/Cancel hotkey function?

No hotkeys will be introduced to the main menu.

Same as above - I don't particularly care but the refusal to do this is a bit baffling.

The first aid tent only heals a limited number of times to discourage the player from skipping turns just to resurrect some creatures.

As has been said already, this is crap. And this is a real crap reason used for justification. Seriously, like someone said, allow unlimited heals and a max of three ressurrections. I'll give you the pseudocode right now (this is guessing on my part of course):

Code: Select all

Battle()
{
   int numRes = 0;

   // blah blah battle stuff

   // First Aid Tent's turn:
   numRes = FirstAidTent(numRes);
}

FirstAidTent(numRes)
{

   if(amountHealed > totalHP && numRes <3)
   {
      HealUnit(ID,amountHealed);  // this assumes healing over the max hp ressurects units
      numRes++;
   }
   else
   {
      HealUnit(ID,totalHP);   // only heal up to the max hp of the current stack size
   }

   return numRes;
}

There you go. Granted I don't know exactly how it actually works, but it's not freaking hard to do something like that.

The map overview mode from Heroes III is unlikely to be introduced because nobody asked for it.

-_- We are asking now, can you add it?

[DaemianLucifer]

So what if some heroes cant get the ultimate?Are you saying that every single person in the world can be a proffesional football player?Or a great musician?Those things require your body and your mind to be specific,so there will be some people that will never achive this.

[Warlock]

So what if some heroes cant get the ultimate?Are you saying that every single person in the world can be a proffesional football player?Or a great musician?Those things require your body and your mind to be specific,so there will be some people that will never achive this.

I think if you really worked hard enough at it, yeah. It may come more naturally to some, but with enough effort I'm sure anyone could really do these things (physical limitations aside - someone who is paralyzed obviously can't play football for example).

In the same vein, it is already a lot of effort to get an ultimate ability already. Level 30 alone is pretty high, plus you have to follow a specific path, and one mis-step can screw you out of it. So I mean, if people are willing to go for it, that's cool. But not giving them the option at all because they picked "the wrong hero" kind of stinks.