Posts from Heroes 5 – “A masterpiece or an unfinished product?”

Hello!
Dima is feeling unwell today, and with your permission, I will answer your questions instead of him.
The release date was postponed by Ubisoft; I won't comment on the specific reasons. I can only say that there was no definite release date until the very last moment, and there was always a possibility that it could be postponed by about a month. So, the community's statement may have served as an additional argument.

There is no talk of postponing the release by six months. Even in the official statements (which Ubisoft representatives didn't rush to make, meaning they thought it over several times), the second quarter of 2006 is mentioned.

And one more thing... I would still like to add. When I said that the work on the game was almost finished (I already commented on this), I meant that the development of the game – the game mechanics, design solutions, etc. – was completed. And there was still work to be done on optimization, balancing, polishing, and so on – everything that is traditionally done in the final stage of development. Neither the size of the map, nor the interface, nor any other game elements will be changed; the additional time will be spent on bug fixing and improving the balance.

Gameplay:
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The size of the battlefield is not final, as well as the number of obstacles.
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Visuals:
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The interface is being refined, for example, for duel mode or for construction in cities.

In short, I have the impression that Nival's PR people have absolutely no idea what's going on and don't coordinate their words with the programmers and game designers...

Do they know about the promotion on the Nival forum?
Or did they delete all the news right away?
I haven't been there in a while...

Panic cannot be unfounded. Moreover, these are the largest websites, and they shape the masses' opinions about the heroes. The fact that saveheroes.org has already been visited by more than 40,000 people, and more than 2,000 signatures have been collected, is thought-provoking.
As for the voting, I'm in favor of option 3. I'd rather wait, but let it be a masterpiece. After all, can you name even one Blizzard game that was released on time? But they all became masterpieces.
As for the problems, the main problem, in my opinion, is the skills. There are outright overpowered skills and outright useless ones. Plus, the skill system, when it offers random choices... Here's an example. A Ranger can get Absolute Luck at level 5!!!! And how do you balance that? Every hit with luck is overpowered. Or Tent/Ballistics – if you get this skill, you'll be able to resurrect dragons/kill dragons, but if you don't, you'll feel like an idiot.
There is a solution, though. But then everyone will complain about it being an RPG. Namely, give players a choice of all the skills (like in Neverwinter Nights) and let the player choose what they need. Reduce the number of levels for upgrading, for example, to 20, and let them choose the most essential ones. Then the game will become very tactical. You can really assess the player's potential. If they do that, I'm all for it.
It would be good to return to the hero interface. Because the one proposed by Nival, in my opinion, is terrible. Or just remove all the buttons and assign all the controls to the mouse (again, Neverwinter Nights). I would choose the hero interface.
And, of course, increase the battlefield.
And abandon area-of-effect attacks by units. This is the worst simplification of tactics. You hit a dragon, and everyone gets roasted. You need to distribute damage with your troops wisely, and not suffer with this nonsense.
Remove the racial special abilities, except for necromancy. It turned out to be nonsense. There are special abilities, but the magic of the races is the same. It's stupid.

Although not that many, the balance needs to be adjusted, and there are glitches in some areas. And then it can go on sale after testing!