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I believe one does not interfere with the other. And so far, I see no arguments to the contrary.

SoD as a competitive discipline has hit its ceiling. To overcome it, something needs to change. If you change it, then it will no longer be SoD.

Essentially, the rigid position of SoD players on the immutability of the gameplay ties the hands of WT, allowing it to deviate from the original version as much as desired.

If TE had initially been a project for the entire Russian-speaking community, then perhaps the number of differences between WT and SoD would have been smaller than it is now. But what’s done is done; taking a step back is much harder than moving forward.

You see, to arrive at the desired outcome — a competitive game of Heroes, but one that is necessarily popular and spectacular — you need to go through a certain path. To traverse this path correctly and with minimal losses, you need to walk trails that are, if not the same, then at least parallel and intersecting. Do you understand what I’m getting at?

There is a game, it has several versions, essentially a split into two camps. If you were told to choose the single most important factor of the split, what would it be? I think it’s obvious — it’s morale.

You cannot change things radically; the rules of any game are modified, if at all, only little by little and rarely, and even then it causes storms of indignation and plenty of discussion. For unification to occur, the interests of both camps must be taken into account and present in roughly equal measure. Then a split can be avoided, and instead, people can be attracted.

Balance is created not only by eliminating all other surprises, but also by introducing counterbalancing advantages to the enemy’s advantages. That is, it’s not necessary to remove the clear advantages of one race over another; it’s enough to add another advantage to the other race. Like, you give us a nuclear warhead, and we give you plague vials or an earthquake.

The Heroes game was fundamentally conceived as a struggle between completely different forces and capabilities; it’s no coincidence that such diverse factions were invented. Each is strong in its own way. Well, if you look objectively, any faction can defeat another; especially since excessive imbalances can be removed, like Conflux for example.

Here we need to start from somewhat different criteria. We are burying the game by removing all its original starting skills. Well, imagine even if we play like in Anarchy, would you guess who would win? :) Let it be any faction against any other, but then everyone has a chance — that provides spectacle, but to achieve the competitive component, you certainly can’t play Anarchy, but removing everything down to a mirror match is also not right, as the only possible path.

There are different strategic possibilities for playing the game in different directions (WT, SoD, WoG, TE). In the game, everything depends solely on you, because no one forces you to do this or that, but that is the spectacle — that an abundance of options is the game’s multifunctionality.

On a chessboard, there are far more development options than in SoD, but players try to anticipate everything — that is their skill.

Only through negotiations between the two camps can a consensus be reached, and it simply cannot be uniform. Yes, you are right that something needs to be changed, but not everything; the foundations must remain.

To overcome it, something needs to change. If you change it, then it will no longer be SoD.

Gameplay can be changed, but you need to negotiate on every point. Maybe it will turn out to be not The Shadow of Death, but the Breath of WT.

P.S. Balance lies not in equality, but in counterargument.