Incline Hey hey people, it's the SsethTzeentach thread

[PulsatingBrain]

Care to tell me what's good about it?

 

[OctavianRomulus]

Honestly I don't really know, and maybe the best thing for HoMM4 would have just been a lick of paint and some new units. I just thought it was pretty autistic for that guy to REEEE at the idea that HoMM4 was littered with shit changes. Sitting down for the first time with Homm4 was a massive disppointment.

Oh, so it's me autistic for questioning of "Homm4 bad cuz not Homm3" attitude and NOT you for simply repeating "Hom4 bad" argument all over again? It's seems you suddenly lost all logic and reason, just like most radical members of fanbase. You don't have any idea what changes would be better and yet you like robot repeat "Homm4 bad". Not to mention that opinions are subjective and if you call something shit - it doesn't mean that you absolutely right.

For starters, the art is objectively bad. It's not like in H5 where the art is well done but you might not subjectively like it because it looks like Warcraft, it's just bad. Good art (not necessarily graphical fidelity) is vital in a Heroes game.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

Oh, so it's me autistic for questioning of "Homm4 bad cuz not Homm3" attitude and NOT you for simply repeating "Hom4 bad" argument all over again?

I mean, Citizen made a fairly sedate point that Homm4 made some bad changes and you threw a hissy fit. I dunno what to call that other than autistic. It certainly wasn't a "logical and reasonable" response. Which you seem to think are virtuous qualities

 

[Citizen]

"Homm4 bad cuz not Homm3"

But it's bad not because it's different from the previous games. It has weird focus on hero units that just doesn't work in a "huge armies" type of game like HoMM (the same heroes-focused gameplay works nicely in AoW1-2 though), it has awful gridless tactical combat which is much worse than visually clear and predictable combat of HoMM1-3, the towns are forgettable uninspired mash-ups with no central theme, as opposed to previous games' memorable and thematically different. And to top it all: terrible eyeraping visual style

Ih has good OST and some maniacs from codex claim that the writing is good, but that's not enough for a strategy game to be good

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

I mean, Citizen made a fairly sedate point that Homm4 made some bad changes and you threw a hissy fit. I dunno what to call that other than autistic. It certainly wasn't a "logical and reasonable" response. Which you seem to think are virtuous qualities

My answer to him is perfectly fine and wasn't emotional too, but you started to be his Yes-man like he is disabled and can't "win Internet brawl" without any help. In result you showed yourself as the very stereotype I described in my post.

But it's bad not because it's different from the previous games. It has weird focus on hero units that just doesn't work in a "huge armies" type of game like HoMM (the same heroes-focused gameplay works nicely in AoW1-2 though), it has awful gridless tactical combat which is much worse than visually clear and predictable combat of HoMM1-3, the towns are forgettable uninspired mash-ups with no central theme, as opposed to previous games' memorable and thematically different. And to top it all: terrible eyeraping visual style

Ih has good OST and some maniacs from codex claim that the writing is good, but that's not enough for a strategy game to be good

Well finally some arguments and not just "Homm4 bad".

It has weird focus on hero units that just doesn't work in a "huge armies" type of game like HoMM (the same heroes-focused gameplay works nicely in AoW1-2 though)

I liked focus on hero, because hero should be more than weakling that waiting in background while his army fighting. Technically Homm setting partially medieval, it was common back in the day for leaders of army fighting together with troops. In homm 1 there was no stack splitting, I remember reading somewhere that it was connected to one thing - units in homm wasn't planned as army, their "count" was just a hp bar (I can be wrong though). So homm not always was about huge armies with over9000 skeletons, more like small party with very high hp members.

it has awful gridless tactical combat which is much worse than visually clear and predictable combat of HoMM1-3

Well I can agree on grid. I didn't liked lack of grid.

the towns are forgettable uninspired mash-ups with no central theme as opposed to previous games' memorable and thematically different

Complaining about lacking central theme off towns it's like comparing pagoda with church and complaining that they are different. Ofc Chaos town will be different from Order. Towns in Homm series was always mashups from different myths and legends, don't see your point.

Ih has good OST and some maniacs from codex claim that the writing is good, but that's not enough for a strategy game to be good

Yes ost is good and writing is good, for strategy part - imho HoMM series isn't deepest of turn based strategy games. Relative simplicity is what made it popular.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

For starters, the art is objectively bad. It's not like in H5 where the art is well done but you might not subjectively like it because it looks like Warcraft, it's just bad. Good art (not necessarily graphical fidelity) is vital in a Heroes game.

Art always subjective. If you intend to prove otherwise, bring me measurement system that allow to scale art proven by scientific methodology.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

you started to be his Yes-man

I simply agreed with him.

Your response was an over-reaction. He didn't say anything as extreme as "should be repeated until nausea from sequel to sequel until normal people will start question "is it really worth buying a sequel if it's fucking same?""

Just like calling me a Yes man for agreeing with someone, you jumped to an extreme for no reason. Autism.

 

[Citizen]

Art always subjective.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

When I say "Art always subjective" it doesn't mean that I love every single in game model, I meant that you should take in account that if someone calling some art good/bad it doesn't mean he/she correct because there some kind of "art" standard, it just mean that person did not liked it. Listen or not to someone's opinion on art is another question.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

Art always subjective.

 

[Citizen]

When I say "Art always subjective" it doesn't mean that I love every single in game model, I meant that you should take in account that if someone calling some art good/bad it doesn't mean he/she correct because there some kind of "art" standard, it just mean that person did not liked it. Listen or not to someone's opinion on art is another question.

Yeah. I just linked a rainbow haired horse, something that looks like a gorilla that went full

and a moai statue on fire. All in the glorious 2002 prerendered 3d

Edited: Are you working on heroes 8 for Nival, Deadman?

 

[Citizen]

What I mean is: the fact that HoMM4 looks like this is because of a bad design, not some techical limitations. AoW1 also used prerendered 3d sprites but somehow looked amazing. (Even HoMM3 used prerendered 3d sprites, but most likely they retouched them a lot after rendering)

 

[OctavianRomulus]

For starters, the art is objectively bad. It's not like in H5 where the art is well done but you might not subjectively like it because it looks like Warcraft, it's just bad. Good art (not necessarily graphical fidelity) is vital in a Heroes game.

Art always subjective. If you intend to prove otherwise, bring me measurement system that allow to scale art proven by scientific methodology.

That's asking a lot tbh, you could write a whole library of books about that, which I will not do here, obviously. But to sum it up, art can be objectively good or bad but you can subjectively enjoy it or dislike it. Things like perspective, use of color, lighting and composition are objective. These things are really more like scientific principles, which if you know you can use to make art that does not represent reality but looks good. Heroes 4 simply looks muddy, with bad use of color and the sprites are obviously made after 3D models. If you want to make sprites out of 3D models you gotta work on them after or they look like plastic (that unicorn is the best example).

What I mean is: the fact that HoMM4 looks like this is because of a bad design, not some techical limitations. AoW1 also used prerendered 3d sprites but somehow looked amazing. (Even HoMM3 used prerendered 3d sprites, but most likely they retouched them a lot after rendering)

True, Heroes 1 came out in 1995 and it used outdated technology but I think it looks great and has aged a lot better than H4. The colors are a lot more vibrant for example

 

[†††]

hey hey people, it's the HoMM flame wars thread

 

[hello friend]

HOMM4 is ugly as sin and heroes participating in combat really didn't work at all, but there were several interesting things they tried to do with the combat system - simultaneous retaliations is one - and the caravan system were good innovations. One of the best scores of the series. Any unit being able to move around freely on the adventure map was the biggest mistake of all imo, because now you spend every turn wasting your time with a ton of weak stacks trying to pick everything up and scout as cheaply and efficiently as possible. When this was limited to heroes there is a higher initial investment and there is an upper limit on how many heroes you can have running around.

Some of the campaigns aren't bad. Gauldoth Half-Dead, the Solmyr plotline, these were both fairly decent. Spazz Maticus is not what people think of when they refer to HOMM4's interesting campaigns.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Mandalore and others offer their take on the Gothic Remake...but none of the others are Sseth.

 

[Cross]

the towns are forgettable uninspired mash-ups with no central theme, as opposed to previous games' memorable and thematically different.

It's the opposite. HoMM4's towns have a much more coherent and better developed theme than previous games in the series, since magic schools, skills, hero classess and artifacts are exclusive to specific towns. Creatures have much more distinctive abilities, including the ability to cast spells. So for example, Order in HoMM4 is the 'smart' town, with access to nobility, diplomacy, the treasury, their signature magic school being mental/mind-affecting spells and several creatures capable of spellcasting. You'd be hard-pressed to assign such a specific quality to any town in the previous games (e.g. mage units pre-HoMM4 are just ranged attackers). The towns in previous HoMM's are much more homogenous since everyone has access to the same skills (with the sole exception of necromancy) and spells (at most, a few spells might be banned from a specific town in HoMM3) and creatures have very few abilities worth mentioning, and what few abilities they have usually only have a 20% chance of triggering meaning they rarely come into play.

 

[Gerrard]

It has weird focus on hero units that just doesn't work in a "huge armies" type of game like HoMM

But it is the closest to the actual M&M games in that regard.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Being able to take Heroes into combat was one of the cool things about HoM&M4. Of the problems that game has, that has never been one of them. Hell, it's one of the reasons to play it.

 

[hello friend]

Doesn't work in practice.

 

[Citizen]

Being able to take Heroes into combat was one of the cool things about HoM&M4. Of the problems that game has, that has never been one of them. Hell, it's one of the reasons to play it.

It worked nice in MoM and AoW, but in a game where the average stack size linearly grows every week single units don't make sense.

Also this lead to giving regular units the ability to travel the strategic map on their own, which is stupid in a game where half of the resources on map just lie on a ground unprotected. Now the player doesn't need to optimize the movement path of multiple heroes to fight and collect stuff without losing unnecessary movement points and can just throw a bunch of fast 1-unit stacks at this problem

 

[Archibald]

Isn't that the reason why people are buying sequels? I want more of the same BUT better, not a completely different game in the same setting.

I think thats what expansions were for.

Any unit being able to move around freely on the adventure map was the biggest mistake of all imo, because now you spend every turn wasting your time with a ton of weak stacks trying to pick everything up and scout as cheaply and efficiently as possible. When this was limited to heroes there is a higher initial investment and there is an upper limit on how many heroes you can have running around.

This is one-sided take. HoMM4 removed lots of stupid movement on the map like collecting troops from dwellings every week with your secondary hero and if I'm not mistaken weekly resource collection was streamlined as well. Instead of that we could scout ahead with separate units, more active and interesting activity than just running around same circle with your hero every week.

Creatures having movement points also solved the problem of transporting troops from one side of the map to another in couple of turns (or even one turn) by transferring them from one hero to another. Granted, creatures could have had movement points without being able to move separately, but it is important to mention it as well.

Doesn't work in practice.

There was definitely an issue with the scaling, but I prefer HoMM4 version than what we got in HoMM5.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

H4 is such a remarkable case of historical revisionism in gaming. My headcanon explanation for this phenomenon is similar to what happened with Arcanum - younger people trying the game long after its release, when it was patched/modded/otherwise improved and received a semi-cult following and an opinion of a game you should like if you want to be seen as in the know.

It helps me to maintain my sanity, as I just cannot comprehend someone being a HoMM fan in 2002, shitting himself with anticipation, buying and installing H4 day1 and then going "yup, this is amazing, I'm going to shitpost about this game 18 years on in case someone thinks it kinda sucked".

 

[Lagole Gon]

Can't really comment on HoMM IV, never played it more than 30 minutes.

Just can't do it. It's too ugly. THE UGLIEST game I've ever seen. Looking at it causes meantal and physical discomfort. I would rather look at Rex making out with Warpig than HOMM IV.

 

[biggestboss]