i recently picked up HoMoM II again, and one thing i really noticed when playing it was meaninful choices. By the time one week had gone by you could have almost every unit in the arsenal, besides the ultimate one, and almost a full mages guild.
Is there that much difference between HOMM 2 and HOMM 3, 4, and 5? Since in all the other HOMMs, you can only build one building a week, that's 7 buildings by the end of one week. That is at most all 7 dwellings of your city, without any upgrades. And building those means you don't have room for a City Hall (for more gold), Fort (more growth) or blacksmith, let alone 5 ranks of a mages guild.
We played this yesterday during map night with about 9-10 players.
Three or four players had no clue what to do and either left at the start, or lost their hero+army two-three times figuring out what the hell they were supposed to do, causing them to get so far behind that they got completely smashed whenever they met an enemy hero - after which they left.
As a veteran HOMM player, I personally knew what to do and got off to a good start.
All other players found out what the map was about relatively quickly (with some guidance by me I s'pose) and played it for a good 45 mins before they all ended up leaving (Eiviyn got stuck in a tree or something).
Overall I quite liked the map. It does play a lot like the original HOMM in real-time and the way you set up the battles does have a chance to work. To summarize all the criticism I have (including previously named points so you can use this as a checklist if you want):
Army size. Once your army gets too big you start randomly attacking other packs, plus the map starts to lag. 'Instancing' battles in some way to prevent one army from engaging three neutral armies in a big battle would really help.
Multiple heroes. 'Nuff said.
Map balance. Most units seem balanced fairly well, but the map balance is kind of weird. In the original HOMMs, capturing a sawmill and an ore pit protected by level 1-2 mobs at the start was always fairly easy. Here, I started near a crystal mine protected by a small pack of T3 units and didn't get my sawmill until I could beat a large group of T4 units. I didn't get ore until I ventured out relatively far.
Overall terrain. I s'pose this is fairly low priority, but the terrain on your map is just really really bland and boring. In a game of this, good terrain is kind of a must. Stuff like improving the location and looks of buildings like mines ties into this.
The cities as a whole are bland. Obviously they are WIP, but just to point it out; you need more than a dialog screen with some buttons.
Some of the spelling as a bit off or odd; you might want to get someone with a good grasp of the English language to go over it. Generally it's not terrible, but it confused me in a couple of cases.
To tie into that - clarity. If it weren't for me, I doubt half the people in the map would've figured out what the game was about. I had several people asking what mines were for, for example. You might want to add some tooltips or any other kind of clarification as to how stuff works once you get closer to finishing the maps.
Also something you're probably already working on, but... more diversity. HOMM had arenas, morale flags, sancutaries where you couldn't be attacked, temples... your map has cities, mines, and recource/chest pick-ups - that's it.
Last but not least; the magic system needs a bit of improvement. The spells worked fairly well as is, but my hero had so much mana regeneration from the get-go that I could simply chain-cast spells and never run out of mana. And that was without ever even grabbing skill points in increased mana regen.
Reading this thread amuses me. All Fulla's feedback is basically feedback on things that were 100% recreated from the original game, because Zolden is trying to get close to that. Then Tolkfan comes in and rages about it not being close to HOMM because of the map not being turn-based.
To Fulla I would like to say; I'm sure your feedback is helping, but you really need to keep in mind that HOMM is a completely different game from Starcraft. Even though they share somewhat of a same genre title. It's fairly normal for HOMM players to spend the first hour leveling their heroes and upgrading their town before they even start thinking about attacking eachother. Because the game is normally turn-based, it has a really slow buildup and a *really* long playtime.
A pall of mine plays HOMM5 fairly avidly and we discuss the game every now and then - he's told me that online matches of the game (I only played single player) can literally last up to 5-6 hours with ease because of the immense worlds and set-ups the game throws at you. Of course, there it's actually possible to save the game in between and continue it later. This whole set-up does make the whole thing feel more rewarding though, because you literally raised your army from scratch in most cases.
To Tolkfan; If you don't like it I recommend you don't play it anymore first and foremost, but I would say... give it more of a chance? It's a beta - I can't speak for turn-based play, but I can imagine that views of the castle/town will come into play once more stuff is fleshed out - it's the basics that need to work first.
Yesterday during map night I noticed that this map was actually on page 3 of the pop list, which I thought was pretty interesting. I might give it a whirl soon :)
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Is there that much difference between HOMM 2 and HOMM 3, 4, and 5? Since in all the other HOMMs, you can only build one building a week, that's 7 buildings by the end of one week. That is at most all 7 dwellings of your city, without any upgrades. And building those means you don't have room for a City Hall (for more gold), Fort (more growth) or blacksmith, let alone 5 ranks of a mages guild.
We played this yesterday during map night with about 9-10 players.
Three or four players had no clue what to do and either left at the start, or lost their hero+army two-three times figuring out what the hell they were supposed to do, causing them to get so far behind that they got completely smashed whenever they met an enemy hero - after which they left.
As a veteran HOMM player, I personally knew what to do and got off to a good start.
All other players found out what the map was about relatively quickly (with some guidance by me I s'pose) and played it for a good 45 mins before they all ended up leaving (Eiviyn got stuck in a tree or something).
Overall I quite liked the map. It does play a lot like the original HOMM in real-time and the way you set up the battles does have a chance to work. To summarize all the criticism I have (including previously named points so you can use this as a checklist if you want):
Reading this thread amuses me. All Fulla's feedback is basically feedback on things that were 100% recreated from the original game, because Zolden is trying to get close to that. Then Tolkfan comes in and rages about it not being close to HOMM because of the map not being turn-based.
To Fulla I would like to say; I'm sure your feedback is helping, but you really need to keep in mind that HOMM is a completely different game from Starcraft. Even though they share somewhat of a same genre title. It's fairly normal for HOMM players to spend the first hour leveling their heroes and upgrading their town before they even start thinking about attacking eachother. Because the game is normally turn-based, it has a really slow buildup and a *really* long playtime.
A pall of mine plays HOMM5 fairly avidly and we discuss the game every now and then - he's told me that online matches of the game (I only played single player) can literally last up to 5-6 hours with ease because of the immense worlds and set-ups the game throws at you. Of course, there it's actually possible to save the game in between and continue it later. This whole set-up does make the whole thing feel more rewarding though, because you literally raised your army from scratch in most cases.
To Tolkfan; If you don't like it I recommend you don't play it anymore first and foremost, but I would say... give it more of a chance? It's a beta - I can't speak for turn-based play, but I can imagine that views of the castle/town will come into play once more stuff is fleshed out - it's the basics that need to work first.
Yesterday during map night I noticed that this map was actually on page 3 of the pop list, which I thought was pretty interesting. I might give it a whirl soon :)