Necropolis alternative upgrades are up now...

[MistWeaver]

Hey Orfinn, (and other alt upgrade lovers) lets take a psycologhical twist again.
If these alternates were the original upgrade of necros one year ago - how all of you would feel about that ? I think everyone would be pissed. Because now Ubival does not trying to create something, at least of equal quality. They are doing just something .. different. Whatever what.. even if that would be pinky lich.

[Meandor]

Lich has a wedding dress, who cares about color

[Wolfsburg]

Guys, we are losing the track here. See, if we go on about all the upgrades we find horrible we dilute our chances of making something about it.

Why werent your cries about HOMM5 heard? There are many answers for that. Some of them very unpolite, but one of those is... Because the wishes and pleas were too many, that makes them less pungent.

If all fans had themselves gathered and pushing Ubisoft with the solo purpose of making a larger battle arena, we would have gotten it.

[PhoenixReborn]

But this is getting extreme. Colour pallete changes will be sold to me as new units?

Actually, what makes them new is that they have different special abiliites. I really don't care about the color's as long as I can distinguish them from the original.

Having the shadow witch and blood fury look very similar on the adventure map is bad.

Having a wraith that is pink and a wraith that is green, with two different weapons, is fine. I can distinguish.

[Jolly Joker]

Who cares about freaking color schemes?
Me, I'm interested in the abilities. Are they really bringing something new or are THEY only another color, err, name for abilities we already have?
Will the abilities WORK? Or will we have a bug when we cast Phantom Forces on the invisible Stalkers? Or the game crashes because a gated stack is about to appear on top of them?
So for all I care they can make them checkered pink and orange provided they deliver the rest in a worthwhile and satisfactory state.

[PhoenixReborn]

Sure, make it easy and boring for Necropolis. Give them any chance to build their army any way they like it. Brillant ideas. I wonder whether you've ever played them seriously.

I'm curious, if you're taking the line that Seperate upgrades should have seperate raising i.e. Emerald dragon->Spectral dragon, Rainbow dragon->Ghost dragon, do you also think that the hero specialties should not be changed at all? For example Eruina would affect Matriarchs but not the alternate?

Yes, too advantageous. Raising high level creatures and upgraded high level upgraded creatures may be neat but it is imbalancing.

GOW

Sorry, but spending 700 DE for one crummy spectral dragon, or 500 de points for a couple of wraiths, using up your entire weekly raising points, is much more restrictive than unlimited (only by neutrals which are always plentiful) skeleton raising.

[Meandor]

But few liches with raise dead or one dragon might be game breaking at certain situation.

[MistWeaver]

Who cares about freaking color schemes?

mm.. I guess everyone except you and Ubival, right ?

EDIT: and Meandor. He is busy caring about lich wedding dress

[ThunderTitan]

and offend one anothers nation just because the alternate upgrades are not as they should!

Will the abilities WORK?

Any other game we would just assume they must.... but hey, what do i know.

[MistWeaver]

Develop a list with the names of the units which were simply repainted, and demmand bigger changes. Im not saying politely send a mail to Ubival. Im saying put them under siege pressure. There are not many communities that are so scary as we are. We are fanatical, they dont know what to expect from us!

Im not saying demmand changes based on personal tastes (I for instance hate the white cape of the nosferatu), this would bring the third WW in this forum and we would end up with nothing. Im saying only the repaints.

There is no logical explanation to convince me that the same group that developed an alternate creature such as the red dragon couldnt do a better job on the other ones.

Gathering all of the communities under a few representants with the exact same annoying demmand is like putting together the pieces of Armaggedon blade.

That probably would work before H5 release, and we have such precedent already.
But now it won't. Because now Ubi is just squeezing out last juice from the lemon called H5. Their task is minimal investments to make more money from the thing they have already sold.
(EDIT: 3DO were doing exactly the same and sometimes with even less investments, but 3DO was sinking you know ..)

And moreover number of ppl who will not buy TotE because of s**ty atl. upgrade models, will be filled up by number ppl who will buy TotE because of boobies posters.

For a simple example: I dont drink Coke since ages because their market policy in my land is extreme aggressive and dirty.

And I dont drink Coke because its causing gastrointestinal disturbance & much more.

[ThunderTitan]

And I dont drink Coke because its causing gastrointestinal disturbance & much more.

I don't drink it because it's not very good... the "extreme" commercials only help me feel even better about it.

[Alamar]

My idea:

Develop a list with the names of the units which were simply repainted, and demmand bigger changes. Im not saying politely send a mail to Ubival. Im saying put them under siege pressure. There are not many communities that are so scary as we are. We are fanatical, they dont know what to expect from us!

Im not saying demmand changes based on personal tastes (I for instance hate the white cape of the nosferatu), this would bring the third WW in this forum and we would end up with nothing. Im saying only the repaints.

There is no logical explanation to convince me that the same group that developed an alternate creature such as the red dragon couldnt do a better job on the other ones.

Gathering all of the communities under a few representants with the exact same annoying demmand is like putting together the pieces of Armaggedon blade.

Only the realistic threat of a major loss in sales would inspire UBI / Nival to do major redesigns to the expansion at this point.

However, judging by the various "will you buy it threads", there aren't nearly enough people willing to "boycott" the expansion --- I.E. they're happy enough with what they have & what they see so far.

FYI: I still don't have the first expansion because I haven't seen much in the way of improvements with the AI / map editor / usability of the original + expansions as a whole / etc.

[Wolfsburg]

That probably would work before H5 release, and we have such precedent already.
But now it won't. Because now Ubi is just squeezing out last juice from the lemon called H5. Their task is minimal investments to make more money from the thing they have already sold.

And moreover number of ppl who will not buy TotE because of s**ty atl. upgrade models, will be filled up by number ppl who will buy TotE because of boobies posters.

Only the realistic threat of a major loss in sales would inspire UBI / Nival to do major redesigns to the expansion at this point.

You guys are painfully right.

Im too late.

If I knew how to change the skins of the characters Id surely spend some days and do it myself (Id make a neat bald nosferatu). But im a walking technology-denial.

[Alamar]

That probably would work before H5 release, and we have such precedent already.
But now it won't. Because now Ubi is just squeezing out last juice from the lemon called H5. Their task is minimal investments to make more money from the thing they have already sold.

And moreover number of ppl who will not buy TotE because of s**ty atl. upgrade models, will be filled up by number ppl who will buy TotE because of boobies posters.

Only the realistic threat of a major loss in sales would inspire UBI / Nival to do major redesigns to the expansion at this point.

You guys are painfully right.

Im too late.

If you're a HoMM fan then I think your / our best hope is to try to get a HoMM 6 that has the sort of improvements that we'd like to see.

Unfortunately I'm becoming more & more convinced that a "standard" game developer / publisher won't EVER be able to give us everything that we want and still have a commercially viable product.

For the most part [there are exceptions!] games need great eye candy in some form or another to sell well. Unfortunately there are limited development budgets so if you pay attention to eye candy then things like AI / map editor / etc. are going to suffer. Also traditional publishers / developers are often forced to release a game before it is REALLY ready and once that's done there's not a strong economic reason to put much effort into patches, expansions, etc.

Only your smaller developers [without a real publisher pushing them] are going to be able to put the effort into the RIGHT pieces of the game in order to please hard core fans.

Note I would have thought that a fan lead project might work but so far I haven't seen any fan run strategy games being developed that have a decent AI WITH the level of eye candy that even HoMM fans would now desire .... Plus I'm sure UBI has more than enough lawyers to squash anything that would compete with them before they even got going ....

[earthworm]

Just a question. Are there supposed to be alternate Haven upgrades or haven't they released any yet? if not, are they planning to use the renegade Haven as the alternates?

[watcher83]

That, my friend, is The Question.

[Orfinn]

I wonder like hell on the same thing (though I have a stomach feeling it will be the renegades, just tuned somewhat). Btw welcome to the boards earthworm ...Are your real first name Jim?

[Wolfsburg]

Note I would have thought that a fan lead project might work but so far I haven't seen any fan run strategy games being developed that have a decent AI WITH the level of eye candy that even HoMM fans would now desire .... Plus I'm sure UBI has more than enough lawyers to squash anything that would compete with them before they even got going ....

I surely do not mean an official iniciative. We do it like we always did. Unofficial modding. Id gladly try my best to change creatures appearence (I draw quite nice). I would only need to get introduced in the whole modding process. Is this archievable for someone with basic computer knowledge?

[captain of haven 3]

i think the necropolis upgrades are the best yet with dunguen right behind them

[ThunderTitan]

For the most part [there are exceptions!] games need great eye candy in some form or another to sell well.

And why isn't Heroes one?!

(I draw quite nice).

Don't think that counts in 3D games unless it for inspiration.