Heroes of Might & Magic 7

[mhm32167]

Just watched the twitch stream. Some info.

• Town screens will be 2d because stylistically better and 3d town screens are expensive
• Swordmaster inspired by paladin from heroes 2
• You will connect to uplay once then all features will be available offline
• Area of control and caravans are in.
• Area of control is created by towns and forts.
• Creatures from dwellings within area of control can be recruited from the nearby town
• They can also be recruited by caravans, which can be attacked en route to the town
• Forts can be built to create area of control, and can be destroyed. When destroyed, flagged mines, etc. become neutral
• Apprentices are elite academy units on magic carpets that can cast various spells
• Fog of war is as in heroes 3, not heroes 4
• There wont be bosses in heroes 7 as it doesnt fit the style of homm
• Currently skill progression is not random, i.e. players have full control, but devs are still discussing this
• Spellbooks are back and you acquire spells from mage guilds and from the adventure map if you have the required skill in the relevant magic school
• Academy towns have more spells than other towns
• Different towns will have guaranteed spells from their affiliated school in addition to other schools but not from opposed schools (e.g. dark and haven)
• Different heroes will have different specialisations, although some specialisations are common to multiple heroes.
• Mage guilds go up to level 4 with level 2 spells found in level 1 and level 5 spells found in level 4
• There will be female heroes in the game (yes somebody asked this)
• Kabir is an academy core unit. it is a fire spirit with the power to repair mechanical units and immunity to fire (and possibly vulnerable to cold). replacement for gremlin.
• There are various new spells including static discharge (name not final), which is a buff cast on friendly units that cause them to do electrical damage to nearby units
• Losing stacks in battle will damage army morale
• If inferno voted in succubus will be one of the creatures, if dungeon voted in minotaur will be one of the creatures
• Julien would like to have a steampunk 'forge' faction in a future game if the timeline moves forward sufficiently and he can convince erwan le breton
• You can destroy one level of your town per day. Doing so is not very precise. Can use it to change creature dwelling. Can also use it to sabotage towns you captured. There is an ability that allows you to salvage resources from destroying town levels.
• There will be greater variation of battle maps in heroes 7. Some smaller, some bigger, different kinds of obstacles, different lengths, widths.
• Magic bird/arcane bird are placeholder names
• Tears and blood system is out.
• If sales are good more factions will be added in future expansions.
• There wont be day/night cycles because each turn takes one day. There wont be seasons.
• In battles, heroes can act when the creatures are able to act.
• Powerful weapons will exist but no dynasty system or online-dependent system like heroes 6.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Areas of control are in.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

 

[Jaedar]

It's like the devs learned nothing from homm6

 

[Archibald]

Some things sounds ok, some sounds whatever, some sound bad and sad. Overall it ends up being bland, I guess this is going to be second HoMM game that I won't play.

 

[Zeriel]

A lot sounds better, but areas of control is unspeakably gross, almost enough to torpedo any interest in the game I had.

 

[Frusciante]

Areas of control are in.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

HOMM noob question: why is this bad?

 

[Zeriel]

Areas of control mean you can't take mines/other interactable nodes on map if they are in a town's zone of control, and the way it was in HOMM6 every single mine anywhere was in some town's node of control. It's supposed to combat the old strat of constantly taking resource nodes with wimpy 1 unit hero stacks, but the solution is way worse than what it cures.

 

[Archibald]

Does it really need to be cured in the first place? Yes, it is annoying to an extent, but on the other hand it forces you to actively defend your kingdom using more than one hero and the other side is motivated to use multiple heroes in order to limit your resource production. Honestly I always thought that it needs to be not cured, but a bit streamlined and promoted.

 

[Infinitron]

Hmm, I would say that a better way of solving this would be to let the HEROES have a (small) area of control from which they can defend against annoying raiders automatically from a range without having to zip around too much. That way you could also make it upgradable and stuff.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Yeah, or you know, maybe not at all.

Can't stop modern designfags from "fixing" stuff that was perfectly fine, though.

Areas of control mean you can't take mines/other interactable nodes on map if they are in a town's zone of control, and the way it was in HOMM6 every single mine anywhere was in some town's node of control.

God, that sounds fucking retarded. Good thing I never touched that piece of shit.

no dynasty system or online-dependent system like heroes 6.

Jesus Fuck what was that game?

 

[Zeriel]

You know those big agglomerations of cadavers in Vampire: the Masquerade that the Tzimisce make? It was basically that as a game.

Sidenote: just about everything but the areas of control from that Q&A sounds like an improvement. I really wish they'd drop area control, it would allow me to get excited about this. As-is, oh well.

 

[mhm32167]

They were a little vague about area of control. They said it will be different to heroes 6 in mechanics. Not sure what they meant or how they might go about implementing it differently. Personally I'm a little disappointed. I'm averse to the changes in homm6 that simplified gameplay like this, I skipped the 6th game as a result. I'm hoping Julien has enough of an influence to make this a good game, he seems to like the older might and magic games.

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

Fucking areas of control can fuck off!

Hands down the single worst thing about Heroes 6's gameplay. It would be much better if they just allow the player to plant some of their troops at a mine like in HoMM3.

I'm not sad about the Tears and Blood system being out either, or the Dynasty weapons, there were a few that were OP such as the vampiric sword Arachne.

 

[Cadmus]

The Tears and Blood system was fucking retarded as were the zones, as was the """"""""""""""""""""""skill tree""""""""""""""""""""" as were almost all the things about H6.

Guys you guys, just imagine, for a second, just imagine the game would be re-imagined right now and the development changed the art direction from this:

To something like this:

Now imagine how wonderful would these low-key, low-magic units without stylized shitty art look like. Imagine the castles being stark. Now imagine how much up you can go from there, how much headroom would they have to design fantasy elements and indicators of power.

Now it's a clusterfuck of beefy cartoonish over designed sci-fi-fantasy creatures instead.

 

[FeelTheRads]

It would be much better if they just allow the player to plant some of their troops at a mine like in HoMM3.

And wasn't it the same in Heroes 4 too? I'm not sure, although it's not actually necessary there, I guess, since you can have units on the map without heroes and you can use those as guards if needed.

But it needed a SYSTEM I guess.

Tears and Blood system

dynasty system

online-dependent system

It's like everything has to a be a SYSTEM these days. Hey guise we have a system for putting beloved franchises through the meatgrnider trololol

Guess it makes those wannabe designer hacks feel good if they can call their shitty convoluted design a system.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Good'ol "Summon elementals" type of mine protection is all what they need. Also they can add some skills/spells for building protection, like traps that slow a hero, debuffs that hinder their army, teleport back to his nearest casltle. Heroes can certainly use some "trolling" element.
There were similar mechanics in 5th game if I remember right, you can play as a "ghost" while your oppenents turn and slow him or such.

 

[Space Satan]

They should just make a nother HoMM III with tweaked and polished UI added utility functions and better graphics. At least it seems they are getting the idea.

 

[Archibald]

They should just make a nother HoMM III with tweaked and polished UI added utility functions and better graphics. At least it seems they are getting the idea.

Why? Its not like HoMM3 looks like shit, has bad UI or is unplayable.

 

[Space Satan]

It's the best HoMM so far, but if you are making a sequel, then it is expected to make things better.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

XXI century developers managing to make a game that has better graphics than HoMM III is probably like the jew-palestinian peace - a definite herald of the apocalypse and the end of the world, so no thanks, I'm still too young to die.

 

[mhm32167]

Hmm, I would say that a better way of solving this would be to let the HEROES have a (small) area of control from which they can defend against annoying raiders automatically from a range without having to zip around too much. That way you could also make it upgradable and stuff.

I don't think area of control is necessary at all. If they want to discourage weak heroes poaching mines, etc they could just make use of garrisons barring entry to various areas as in homm3, combined with intelligent map design. They could expand upon this by allowing garrisons to have upgradable fortifications, for instance. They could also make better use of summoning spells, e.g. to protect mines, garrisons, other adventure map objects. Provide a greater variety of such spells. Players should also recruit multiple heroes to help retain strategic assets. This would encourage superior planning and decision making rather than simplifying gameplay by completely removing elements that players used to have to deal with.

 

[DataPack]

• Area of control and caravans are in.
• Area of control is created by towns and forts.

Fuck me

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

To something like this:

Now imagine how wonderful would these low-key, low-magic units without stylized shitty art look like. Imagine the castles being stark. Now imagine how much up you can go from there, how much headroom would they have to design fantasy elements and indicators of power.

Now it's a clusterfuck of beefy cartoonish over designed sci-fi-fantasy creatures instead.

Yeah, exactly. I agree 101%. Great points, man!

Aesthetically, a HoMM3 with a dash more grim-dark would hit the sweet spot for me.

And wasn't it the same in Heroes 4 too? I'm not sure, although it's not actually necessary there, I guess, since you can have units on the map without heroes and you can use those as guards if needed.

TBH, I never played 4 or 5. I heard 4 was shit when it was released, and ignored 5 as a result also. I stuck with 2 and 3. I've played 6 a fair bit, and despite disliking a lot of things about it, I got a little enjoyment out of it - just enough to get back into 3.

 

[Archibald]

Most of the hate 4 gets for not being like 3, you see some people would like if HoMM was like EA's sports series with new release every year that is almost identical to the last one.
There was also a problem with it being unfinished. Parent company was hurting (some fans of retroactive history like to claim that HoMM4 killed it and everything was fine before it was released) and IIRC base game was rushed. Two released expansions were obvious cash-ins since they added very little (if we don't count campaigns and couple of neutral creatures then I think they didn't add anything at all) and fixed nothing. For comparisons sake 5 was utter shit when released but was fixed into decent game with two expansions.

I'd prefer if new HoMM game actually finished and fixed homm4 instead of trying to make homm3 again and again but this time with dynasty weapons system and prettier graphics.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

I don't know about 5 being a decent game. I've tried to play Hordes of the East expansion, but couldn't get past the 3rd campaign mission because of how bland, banal and boring everything was.