It's great that HotA is so briskly winning over new followers, ready to leave the unfair and irrational world of Heroes 3 SoD forever for the wonderful future you have dreamed of.
I simply expressed my opinion regarding the problem; I categorize them under the analytics subsection.
Right now, we aren't talking about those who are ready to switch, although, for example, I don't know a single person who started playing HotA and then switched back to SoD.
I want to talk about bringing fresh blood into the game.
Новичок, who hasn't played any of the versions, will choose HotA for a number of reasons:
1) The absence of those very rules mentioned above.
No hassles, just play peacefully; there are no bugged paths, and it's impossible to get artifacts and other goodies for free.
You won't break the rules out of nowhere and receive a tech-port for it after spending not even an hour at the computer.
2) The generator creates a roughly equal road network, and there are no cases like those described above in the image with Inferno.
3) Free lobby (perhaps for now), where a lot of people can find a game to suit any taste.
4) To figure out the game, Новичок start with small maps. This allows them to play more games in one period of time, thereby learning faster how to play different Castle factions. SoD is currently played mainly by HL+U, and on small maps there are noticeably more bugged generations, and everything boils down to who performed better during restarts.
The same M200 hasn't been held for a long time because the map layout decides much more than the player's skill. But in HotA, I think such a tournament would be a huge hit.
I love SoD, but I feel no negativity toward HotA. You can play wonderfully on both versions; it's just that there are certain bugs in SoD which, if fixed, would bring only positive results and lower the barriers to entry for this game.
