Heroes of Might & Magic 7

[Valky]

The existence of thisstill makes me hate ubisoft for buying the IP.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I'd tone the edge down a bit. The first game ubi financed after acquiring the franchise was (with expansions) better that homm4 and a pretty good homm sequel. I'm not sure why they decided to go all shovelware on the series later, but with AoW3 and EL I don't care that much.

 

[Archibald]

I'm not aware of the sales data, but my blind guess would be that they saw HoMM5 sales as "ceiling" for the franchise and weren't too thrilled with it. So at some point decision was made to move most of the talent and resources to other franchises, like AssCred, that have bigger potential as far as sales go.

 

[GrainWetski]

I'd tone the edge down a bit. The first game ubi financed after acquiring the franchise was (with expansions) better that homm4 and a pretty good homm sequel. I'm not sure why they decided to go all shovelware on the series later, but with AoW3 and EL I don't care that much.

Yeah, guys, they made a mediocre game and then just took a dump on the franchise. Why you hatin' on this fine company?

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Nah, hating them is fine, since VI and VII are a complete disgrace. I'm just pointing to the evidence that the series was probably fecked anyway, possibly even worse than what ubi did.

 

[Valky]

It was screwed regardless because of 3D0 and NWC going out of business, after the shift from 3 to 4 and MM9, no one will doubt that. The only difference at that point is who the series could have gone to, and Ubisoft was possibly the worst company possible that could have gotten their hands on it, next to EA.

 

[Archibald]

Well among non-edgy people Ubi wasn't seen as this big evil from the start. HoMM5 had lots of problems on launch, but many of them were fixed (to an extent) with expansions and patches. Many people saw it as Ubi going back to the roots in order to revitalize the franchise after HoMM4 blunder. Surely, once the franchise was re-established we'd get some truly new and good stuff. Unfortunately that never materialized, most likely due to HoMM5 sales being good, but not good enough to turn into their flagship franchise.

Looking back I'm not sure that any other big publisher would have done better job. And smaller ones wouldn't have had enough resources to pull it off.

 

[Valky]

Well among non-edgy people Ubi wasn't seen as this big evil from the start. HoMM5 had lots of problems on launch, but many of them were fixed (to an extent) with expansions and patches. Many people saw it as Ubi going back to the roots in order to revitalize the franchise after HoMM4 blunder. Surely, once the franchise was re-established we'd get some truly new and good stuff. Unfortunately that never materialized, most likely due to HoMM5 sales being good, but not good enough to turn into their flagship franchise.

Looking back I'm not sure that any other big publisher would have done better job. And smaller ones wouldn't have had enough resources to pull it off.

Don't tell me to calm down, not after the "Heroes 3 HD Edition"

 

[Archibald]

I don't think anyone is really defending HoMM6/7 or 3 HD Edition here. I just don't see much reason to believe that some other big publisher would have done better job. Most of them probably didn't care at all about HoMM since from what I recall Ubi bought HoMM for peanuts.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Ubi basically killed off Black Hole entertainment, which was a very talented developer that got the short end of the stick twice, and fatally.

First, with Armies of Exigo (a truly fantastic RTS), which got published by EA and got released at roughly the same time (2004) as EA's fucking terrible Lord of the Rings Battle for Middle Earth RTS, with predictably no visibility or marketing (compared to that game's infinite budget), and left out to die in the throes of shitty Gamespy online functionality. The demo for the game didn't help either, as it contained all three races and a pretty good map, so people just played that and didn't buy the game.

Strike two was Heroes 6. There are horrifying reports by BH employess about the whole Ubi experience, lack of funding, surreal deadlines, etc.

Spoiler

**Hi Guys. Several months have passed since the release of Heroes 6, and because there are so many questions from you regarding BH which UBI seemingly ignores, I feel it's time that I give you some information.I worked for Black Hole during the whole H6 development. For us, it was a dream project as we were real fans of the Heroes series, having played it since the original King's Bounty on Commodore 64. And I can tell you it was the UBI producers who didn't keep their deadlines, and that was what led to a total failure of the whole development. Back in 2008, during the contract negotiation process, UBI business decision makers didn't want to hear about making it into the contract that in case of any UBI delays there would be any penalty for UBI. This was a stupid decision of a business development boss (she said "UBI would never be late with any deliverables".... HAHAHA). And that led to an awkward situation where the whole development got snowed up... but the UBI producers kept telling Black Hole that "no worries, guys, there would be more time and budget, just do what we say". It was then that one faction, Academy had been removed from the content list, as well as many other things. And then, at half of the development, Romain suddenly quit, Erwan was removed from the project - he was "elevated" to the position of Might and Magic Brand Director, which meant his direct involvement in the development was over -, and BH was left there with the blame. Just an example, the final story script - which was UBI responsibility - was delivered to BH after 27 months... while originally there was 24 months for the whole development. No comment.As for BH commitment, BH used up all its 6 months reserves just to be able to finish the project... this was more than 1 million Euros!!! And they (we) did this knowing it would never be payed back, as royalty would only be paid after 2M Heroes sold at full price. We all knew 2M copies would never be sold (neither at full price nor at reduced price), still we wanted to finish the project. During the last 10 months, our full team worked 24/7, without any chance for compensation... and because of this, we didn't have any resources to find other projects and make sure BH would survive after the release of Heroes 6. In the meantime, our new UBI producers kept telling that "the BH team is not working during the nights and weekends, and is not committed to the project at all...". I can only say, just ask any of the BH team members of their commitment...As for the many bugs: Heroes 6 is a gigantic project, with 1.5-2 million lines in the source code. This is bigger than most RPGs. Such a project can only be finished with good quality if there are several years and a huge budget (i.e. Blizzard games), or if there is a strict design lock date after 7-9 months of the start of development... in case of Heroes, the UBI guys were adding new ideas and were changing existing features during the whole development, even at the last months, so it was simply impossible to make a stable game for release. Just see what they are now doing with patch 1.3 (BH is not involved in that at all btw.). They cannot release a simple patch with a few smaller fixes in time, they are already in a 2-3 weeks delay. This is because the code is extremely complex, and UBI does not have the team to overview it and make it work in time, even if the Limbic guys are really great (and no, they are not involved in the Heroes development from the project start, they joined like 20 months later).Some examples of what BH added to the game at their own cost, just to make the game better:- Town screen (we hate the current version, but it is still better then the "let's make a screen shot from the adventure map 3D town and use it as a town screen" that UBI wanted - we could have made a much better one, but didn't have money and time).- Additional ingame cutscenes (I know cutscenes are not great, but again, we received the story after 27 months... we only had a couple months to make the cutscenes from scratch, and a very limited budget - and I think that the overall visual quality of the game proves to anyone that we could have made really great cutscenes if we had had the time and budget).- 300 unique Combat Maps (there were 20 in the contract)- 3D animated Main Menu (UBI wanted a simple still image)- Additional NPCs- Campaign Overview Map (Campaign Window)- and many more........And what were the UBI decisions:- Less resources- No fullscreen town screens- Only five factions (as a consequence of the continuous delays of UBI deliverables)- Creature pool- and many more such "great" changes.........This project cost Black Hole its existence... while UBI is making profit on Heroes 6.And just some more thoughts: UBI EMEA were working with four 3rd party developers during the Heroes development:- Capibara - They made the really good (and financially successful) Clash of Heroes. The are not working with UBI anymore.- Eugene Systems - They made R.U.S.E. They are not working with UBI anymore.- Black Hole - They made Heroes 6. They are not working with UBI anymore.- Techland - They made a 47% game for UBI (Call of Juarez: The Cartel -http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/ca...rez-the-cartel) - They are still working with UBI EMEA on a big project.We heard the UBI guys blame those developers (and Nival) many times... I guess BH was blamed the same way to those developers.It is always the developer who is responsible...Just some food for thought.... Thanks guys for reading.*

Ubishit is a soulsucking corporate giant whose only redeeming factor is Rayman. Fuck Ubishit open world games.

 

[Archibald]

After so many Kickstarter "hits" I find stories about evil publishers responsible for everything bad a bit more dubious these days. But hey, they added cutscenes from their own money, that truly makes them not guilty of making shit game.

Edit: and is there any info on who came up with retarded tiers system?

 

[Great Deceiver]

You said it yourself, Ubi bought the M&M license for peanuts and wanted a quick/cheap turnaround. I don't buy into the whole Kickstarter coolaid/perfect devs either, but to ignore Ubi's role in the utter decline of M&M would be pretty oblivious.

 

[Maggot]

Nah, hating them is fine, since VI and VII are a complete disgrace. I'm just pointing to the evidence that the series was probably fecked anyway, possibly even worse than what ubi did.

NWC HoMM5 looked pretty nice at least visually. There's a few interviews online about it too and it makes you wonder what could have been if Ubisoft never got the series.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

After homm4 and mm9 I think it's pretty safe to assume that the series was dead anyway.

 

[Archibald]

Well 3DO/NWC was gone, so if some other big publisher didn't buy the franchise then we probably wouldn't have seen anything at all. It might as well have fallen into territory where nobody knows who owns the rights as is/was the issue with some older games.

 

[Valky]

Rather see something you love die peacefully with its dignity in tact than strung up on life support and humiliated for years in the hospital.

 

[CptMace]

Because finishing with Heroes IV and M&M IX meant dieing peacefully with its dignity intact
Although we got Dark Messiah and M&M X so I really don't give a fuck about the mobile stuff et co.

 

[Valky]

More dignity at least
I've heard Eador Genesis is a bit like HoMM, I might want to give that one a try some time.

 

[A horse of course]

Did they ever fix that piece of crap Heroes 6? I remember trying to play it but my saves kept vanishing due to their retarded cloud/always online DRM randomly dropping.

edit: nvm checked steam reviews, it's still fuggin broken

 

[Cyberarmy]

It's still broken, I cannot play it without downgrading my drivers...

 

[Great Deceiver]

I recently installed Uplay to redeem the free Rayman game and I had forgotten I actually own H6. Installed it to have a laugh and it ran without issue for the hour that I played it.

 

[Zeriel]

I can't believe H7 actually got an expansion!? Obviously it features the dullest faction to ever bless the series, not that I was going to buy it anyway. I'm just curious to see how it's going to sell. Players can't be THIS retarded.
If only Ubisoft and its recent degenerte incarnations (UbiHole and Limbosoft) could just drop the series, I'm not having fun with HoMM since Tribes of the East.

It's astounding to me that they didn't drop Limbic like a hot brick after Heroes 7 release. If nothing else, we can't call Ubisoft unloyal, they are giving Limbic an inordinate amount of rope to hang themselves with. (Or are they sticking with them because Limbic is the cheapest developer they could find?)

It'll be tragicomic if MMX ends up selling more than this.

Well, that appears to be what happened. About double.

http://steamspy.com/app/238750

http://steamspy.com/app/321960

Guess shoveling out another Heroes game because of course it's more popular than the RPG series wasn't such a hot ticket. Then again, if a MMX sequel had been released in the same state as this game I don't think it would have sold 160k either.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Well, that appears to be what happened. About double.

Wow, just wow.

 

[Archibald]

Do all HoMM7 sales go thru Steam? Because those numbers look insanse. For comparison Age of Wonder 3 has around 7 times as many owners and Legends of Eisenwald is trailing only by around 15k from HoMM7.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

No, Ubisoft has it's own platform that it sells from too, I also wouldn't think that any physical copies would be steam versions.