Posts from Suggestions for a SOD mod.

A pioneer at the end of the game... Google Tournament Edition TE and World Tournament WT.

Your suggestions to change the balance are not new. Although I haven't seen some of them. In general, the point is that those branches are already dead, but SoD is still alive.
Now they've made HotA, but I don't know what's what there; it seems they haven't touched the magic, but they've added a lot of other stuff.

Currently, only baratorch with his ND mod has managed to surpass NWC and create something truly worthwhile. Everything else I would call greater or lesser perversions, interesting only to certain groups of players. In HotA, there don't seem to be any major changes to the gameplay (i.e., the least amount of perversions).

Every game should have such a great ending.
As for The Shadow of Death, there are too many controversial changes.
SoD is close to perfection and requires only minor changes to become perfect.

- Move "Prayer" to level 1
- Expert "Blindness" is cast on an area, like a meteor shower.

but this would have had to be done about 10 years ago, and today, even if such a mod were released, few people would play it, because everyone except beginners has become accustomed to a certain state of affairs over many years and simply won't use pointless skills.

And this, to put it mildly, is a bad idea: to make an overpowered unit even more overpowered. No one would play "Heroes" like that.

Of course, a number of things should have been reworked: the bonuses for Mysticism, Magic, and Learning skills should have been improved to reasonable values, the effect of Camouflage should have been fixed at the Advanced and Expert levels, ideally, Resurrection and Raise Dead should be made equal, and the effect of Resurrection without Earth Magic should be made permanent, but this should have been done 10 years ago, and today, even if such a mod is released, few people will play it, because everyone except beginners has become accustomed to a certain state of affairs over many years and simply don't take useless skills, and Camouflage, if it's not a basic skill, is not used (does anyone even remember it?).

But these, to put it mildly, are bad ideas: to make an overpowered thing even more overpowered. No one will play "Heroes" like that.

I think that now, no matter what, very few people will play it. Although some "Heroes" communities (I mean gatherings of people) could play using their own patches with minor changes, since everyone has a completely different opinion on what needs to be strengthened, what needs to be weakened, etc. (I've already seen this).

If something is being done for a single-player game, then this is definitely the way to go.
But if it's being done for a multiplayer game, based on the experience of watching hundreds of online matches.
React to feedback.
Don't make changes for the sake of changes, but only with a clear understanding of how it will actually improve the game.
That is, to increase the chances of popularity.

For example, there is one change, primarily for JC, which is likely not difficult to implement.
It will increase the spectacle of the final battles and also slightly rebalance all the factions.
It would be very interesting to test it in practice.

Returning to the topic of improving SOD – besides the perfectly good option of continuing to play the original game, there are 2 main paths.
1) Make a series of changes based on rational analysis to increase the game's variability, etc. This is the path that Hota has long intended to take, but is hesitant to do so for understandable reasons – the resulting game/mod could only be called Heroes 3 in a very conditional sense.
And then the question arises – if you have found the resources/strength/time for such a serious improvement, maybe it would be better (better from different points of view – including an ethical point of view) to make another, new game (which can be called whatever you want)? Is there a lack of ability for this?
2) Slightly refine SOD, generally accepting all its features, not always high variability, and in some cases – irrationality.

I definitely prefer the second option.
And the most challenging part here is figuring out what and how to "polish" so that it appeals to players.