TBS HoMM3 fan add-on Horn Of The Abyss now available in English

[Valky]

Conflux needed nerfing, quality-wise it was basically a poorly implemented fan town with no redeemable features and, on top of that, it was overpowered. It needs a complete overhaul, not only a nerf. This fan expansion does indeed look better than the clusterfuck that is WoG, so I'll definitely try it once I get to HoMM3.

That's a personal problem solved by having self control and not using it in the maps you play instead of being a no fun allowed Sawyer and ruining it for everyone.

 

[DakaSha V]

What a garbage opinion.

 

[Valky]

What a garbage opinion.

Only a shit person like you would believe enforcement of your opinions on other people's single player games should be done. You are the essence of decline.

 

[DakaSha V]

What a garbage opinion.

Only a shit person like you would believe enforcement of your opinions on other people's single player games should be done. You are the essence of decline.

Such a dramatic way to argue for shit opinion.

Your reasoning doesn't even make sense. If the game were fucking balanced at release (which I'm sure was the goal), then would you argue for imbalance? No? Then what the fuck are you actually arguing for. Yes? Then what the fuck are you smoking.

Ohhhh, you're a purist dipshit that can't stand seeing his childhood game changed, regardless of whether or not the changes are reasonable. In short, you want to "enforce your opinions on other people's single player games".

Idiot.

 

[Valky]

What a garbage opinion.

Only a shit person like you would believe enforcement of your opinions on other people's single player games should be done. You are the essence of decline.

Such a dramatic way to argue for shit opinion.

Your reasoning doesn't even make sense. If the game were fucking balanced at release (which I'm sure was the goal), then would you argue for imbalance? No? Then what the fuck are you actually arguing for. Yes? Then what the fuck are you smoking.

Ohhhh, you're a purist dipshit that can't stand seeing his childhood game changed, regardless of whether or not the changes are reasonable. In short, you want to "enforce your opinions on other people's single player games".

Idiot.

League of Legends is a much better game for you.

 

[DakaSha V]

 

[Dzupakazul]

The funny thing about Conflux is that Conflux, while being really strong in SoD to conquer the map and deliver a quick victory, and it terrorizes Multiplayer, it's also a garbage town in large Single Player maps that take months to complete, solely because so many of its units are fully immune to magic. Therefore, you can't effectively employ the "kill every AI stack, then Blind their last remaining stack, resurrect everyone, and win only then" - the kinda tactic that stuff like late-game Unleashing the Bloodthirsty or The Empire of the World is about. That's one of the reasons no mapmaker ever picks Conflux as a "starting town" for any of those maps - it would be too easy to conquer everything early with Conflux, but later it would just fall off harshly and sit there uselessly. Conflux's entire role in those kinda games is to provide you with the option to build a grail in it to get all the spells (and that also breaks some maps).

But yeah, I dislike Conflux a lot myself, the Town Hall in particular looks completely out of place: why is the centerpiece of the building - the big, golden globe thingy - made of jagged, sharpened edges? The units are mostly uninspired and ugly (esp. their upgrades), and Tier 4 and 5 are awful and uninspiring. Even with all its faults, it was still the *perfect* town for month 1 - uber level 1, 25 hp shooters, fast mini-hydras on steroids, huge movement speed across the board, magic university, fastest unit in the game, innate immunity to armageddon on FOUR tiers...

I don't have any problem with unit balance changes - heaven knows that Fortress wouldn't be as amazing as it was in SoD 4.0 if it weren't for the badly needed buffs to Lizardmen and Dragonflies. It's nowhere near the atrocity that some optional WoG features offered - and many WoG detractors really got burnt on WoG (even though it was a groundbreaking, fantastic tool for mapmakers at the time) just because of all the ktichen sink shit like commanders, units gaining XP, ugly unit reskins, and vast changes to various mechanics.

I mean, HotA is already an ambitious project that really revitalized the HoMM3 scene - the added lobby system and all the QoL certainly helped, people are playing that game like crazy without having to look for one another on gameranger, and there's an actual ranked ladder now - but if you don't care for that stuff and want to keep playing SoD, you can keep playing SoD (+ERA), so I see no reason to get mad.

 

[Valky]

That's why I'm super excited for VCMI, because they will be able to make a VCMI port of HotA and add the new content without the sawyer changes that specific people want.

 

[Lagole Gon]

Top quality mod. But I rage quitted it during the second campaign. 3 on 1 gangbang and you can't lose your shit main town.

I've also finished the Foolhardy Waywardness recently. Feels like something made by Australian interns.

 

[Lagole Gon]

Fuck Evenmorn. Fuck it.

KURRRRRRRWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

 

[Lagole Gon]

God damn this mod is almost perfect.
Maybe... maaaybe, just maybe, russians are not the worst thing on earth after all.

 

[Citizen]

God damn this mod is almost perfect.
Maybe... maaaybe, just maybe, russians are not the worst thing on earth after all.

Good. Let the slav flow through you. One FoN playthrough and several Eador Genesis maps and you can almost consider yourself russian.

 

[Storyfag]

God damn this mod is almost perfect.
Maybe... maaaybe, just maybe, russians are not the worst thing on earth after all.

Russian people? Most definitely. Russian state? Weeeeeell...

 

[Valky]

God damn this mod is almost perfect.
Maybe... maaaybe, just maybe, russians are not the worst thing on earth after all.

It was good at first, a few years ago, and then they went full retard and decided instead of a vanilla expansion, they wanted to make a le perfect balance modification, might as well install WoG with the shit they've taken out of the game now.
Now, VCMI is the only real deal.

 

[Dzupakazul]

It was good at first, a few years ago, and then they went full retard and decided instead of a vanilla expansion, they wanted to make a le perfect balance modification

Riiiiiiiight. So even though the nerfs to Necro and Conflux did not dethrone them from the Tier 1 position and you can still be up to your regular tricks like massing Skeletons or exploding everything with Elementalists, preserving the actual feel of every faction, but the overall pool of strategies increased due to the changes and increase of viability of certain builds (for example, Stronghold no longer has to pay out of the ass for Cyclopi, and Magogs are an actual viable opener unit), the game is somehow poorer for all these changes. Why, again? HotA still is not perfectly balanced, and it's moot to talk about perfect balance in a game so subject to RNG and map considerations. Filthy rich templates still favor towns that can easily get their powerful level 7 units fast, such as Castle. Poor templates still favor towns that have cheap buildup, like Stronghold and Fortress.

WoG was a great mod - if you installed the right components. I had very little fun with any of the WoG installs that I saw just install everything haphazardly, and ended up piling up features upon features. WoG was great for mapmakers and some amazing custom scenarios were made for it, but let's not pretend that a nerf to the Conflux build order is equal to the spaghetti of commanders, units gaining XP, and a whole bunch of other features. Not to mention that the new faction actually retains a degree of graphic fidelity, unlike the pastel recolor units of WoG, like Supreme Archangels and Santa Gremlins.

If you're a Single Player fan, you should barely notice the impact of most of HotA's balance changes - factions still play the same way. If you're an MP fan, you can finally get a game going online without people either banning or instapicking Necro or Conflux. Unless you like playing against the same shit, over and over again. I like people actually trying out Tower and Inferno in games - I don't give a fuck if 10% of the playerbase are "balance whiners", if these balance whiners actually feel secure in picking something other than Castle or Rampart, then this makes for more diverse gameplay.

Do you also hate NWC for buffing Lizardmen and increasing the cost of Archangels in one of the official patches? Was preventing the Week 1 Tower Gremlin rush in one of the earliest Restoration of Erathia patches a sign of decline?

 

[Valky]

I notice pretty fucking obviously when they rip out heroes and artifacts that were previously in the game. That's just objectively removing content and twisting the game into something they want it to be like WoG rather than being a vanilla expansion like HotA originally functioned. If you don't like a particular strategy, have some fucking self control and just don't use it in your game. Hell, the map designer allows you to make specific spells not appear in a mage tower, but HotA is going down the route of "we're just going to fucking ban spells we don't like from the game completely". As a single player fan, I don't have any fucking say in being able to play things after they completely remove features from the game, but as a multi player fan, I could instead just use the map designer and house rules to not use certain parts of the game and have the same result instead of being an upright faggot who thinks my perfect balance vision of the game should be forcibly imposed on everyone who plays the mod.

All they managed to accomplish was make it analygous to the decline that D:OS went through when the same thing happened in EE to remove skills and nerf everything in the name of balance. Sawyerfags need to mass commit suicide.

 

[Lacrymas]

Don't play the mod if you don't like it then? Your thinking makes zero sense from a lot of perspectives. This is what the mod does and what the modder wants to do, and if you install it you know what you are getting into. If you want to be an absolute purist, then just don't play it. No modder is obliged to not change anything from a balance standpoint because Valky on RPGCodex doesn't want that. Or learn to mod yourself and change whatever you don't like in HotA to suit your own wants.

 

[Valky]

Thankfully VCMI exists now so the only good parts of HotA - only new additions to the game like Cove - can be added and you don't have to go through HotA anymore.

 

[Lagole Gon]

Now some ruskies should make a lovecraftian city. I think there was some shoggoths in Might and Magic 8, so it's basically lore-friendly.

 

[Storyfag]

Now some ruskies should make a lovecraftian city. I think there was some shoggoths in Might and Magic 8, so it's basically lore-friendly.

 

[Dzupakazul]

If you don't like a particular strategy, have some fucking self control and just don't use it in your game.

I had matches online where a player would pretend to know all of the external rules and then proceed to ignore them all and go full retard, which is a waste of time for everyone involved. Yes, those raisins are weeded out of the community. No, it's not worth spending a 2-3 hour match with a retard just to find out he can't follow the most basic rules.

HotA is going down the route of "we're just going to fucking ban spells we don't like from the game completely".

Except no spell is banned in HotA according to the newest changelog.

As a single player fan, I don't have any fucking say in being able to play things after they completely remove features from the game, but as a multi player fan, I could instead just use the map designer and house rules to not use certain parts of the game and have the same result instead of being an upright faggot who thinks my perfect balance vision of the game should be forcibly imposed on everyone who plays the mod.

See my point #1. Even then, having to agree to a cumbersome set of rules is much more difficult and self-restriction has a pretty stupid and arbitrary effect on people who just enjoy playing their faction. Nerfing baseline across the board means that anyone can jump into MP without having to learn a set of arcane rules that govern MP. Russians either outright banned Necro or forced a ruleset where Isra, Vidomina and Galthran can't be picked, you can't make Transformers and Necro Amplifiers. Right now, Necro still maintains its core tenet of being a faction that becomes unstoppable once it gets rolling, but it's simply much more difficult to get there before anyone can contest you, which makes for more interactive gameplay.

That, and "upright faggot's perfect balance vision" is actually supported and embraced by the community to the extent no other mod was provided with. Entire tournaments are now run on the thing. The mod is also pretty much a collabortive effort of the community, and actual good players are involved in the design process, so it's not like it's just one dude, but a fairly competent committee with some democracy here and there.

And on top of that, I'm fairly certain you can simply unban Mullich, Galthran, Orb of Inhibition and Recanter's Cloak, and add whatever features that no longer naturally spawn to the RMG templates. Many maps, even in HotA itself, still have the "banned" artifacts placed on the map. It takes some fiddling with what amounts to variables in text files, or in case of fixed custom maps, simply setting the right flags in the map editor. It's a bit unwieldy, admittedly, but you can customize. Complaining about heroes being ripped away also makes little sense to me when Castle by default lost Lord Haart to Necropolis between expansions, for example (and you still can bring LH back if you want, he's just no longer default).

I'm simply not sure why it's not considered a worthwhile tradeoff to no longer have some broken features (or have to make the slightest effort to unlock them) in favor of some features that are implemented with a 20 year old understanding of how the game actually works. It was Restoration of Erathia that had already removed one of the strongest strats in the game that was already plenty strong in HoMM2 (namely, constantly buying heroes and getting fresh armies from every one of them in the early game) I wouldn't go back to RoE 1.0. just because it had some minutiae shit whose removal was inconsequential in the grand scale of things, and nobody is pining for the return of that mechanic either. At its core, HotA is still Heroes 3 (which is more than what can be said about full-install WoG), and it's more Heroes 3 than less Heroes 3 because the things it actually adds are overall higher quality.

Like, I'm happy, for instance, that negative Luck in HotA actually does something other than "jack shit". It indirectly buffs underappreciated Archdevils and adds a whole new layer to the gameplay. For that change, I can live without the stupid fucking Orb of Inhibition a.k.a. that one uninteractive piece of shit artifact that fully cements the "Heroes of Might and Might" metagame of HoMM3.

 

[Edija]

Cursor is missing on any video I do of HOTA. It works fine ingame but is just not visible on the recording? Any ideas? I use Nvidia Shadowplay to record if its of any importance.

 

[Crash]

Just like the official content, installing WoG on top of it will not cause any conflicts, at least that's what they say.

I had the opposite impression before, glad I was wrong, thanks for the good news!

creatures accumulating in neutral dwellings as time passes

That's not new, that was already in WoG.

 

[Parabalus]

 

[Lagole Gon]

So after all these years we will see Forge. And it's steampunk instead of technofantasy.