Posts from Sacred Haven of Debauchery Auto-translated

Nah, there's no such thing as six-fags. They have nowhere to come from, because there's nothing to do in the game. It's the most content-poor and stripped-down part of the series. But it had its pluses. A beautiful global map, a story.

The seven, on the other hand, was unfinished and very budget, but it's playable outside of the campaign, unlike the six. It can be modded, it has all the gameplay mechanics foundation. Even a map generator. That's why it formed a community. Yes, it's the community of the global mod 7.5, but still.

Five and three are two mutually exclusive legends. A Heroes fan praises either one or the other. For them to be rated absolutely equally is a rarity. At that, five is actually quite a carbon copy of three and didn't try to stray far from its progenitor. At the same time, three without HotA in its base form is now far less presentable than five.

Four is loved by those who got it in their hands at the right time. For me it was the first part of the series and I treat it with tenderness, but even so it's no match for five and three. Because from the standpoint of completeness, it's just as unfinished a stub as six and seven.

Two and one had a completely different stat system than three. But they were forgotten by 99% of players and didn't stand the test of time. May the still-living fans of two forgive me. By the way, I tried two around 2017 and I liked it then. In places more than three.

Well, as for OE... gameplay-wise it's the best part of the series. But stylistically it loses to five, to three, and even, perhaps, to six and seven (they share one style). It has a weak campaign. And it has a peculiar approach to multiplayer balance. The story scenarios are weird too. As a map builder, I now disagree with the developers on many things. And the AI is still at a very early stage of development. But the gameplay makes up for a lot. OE fixes the things that were an eyesore to me through all the countless hours I played five and three.

The ideal Heroes for me would be five with OE's gameplay) Though, squares don't necessarily have to be changed to hexes.

With games, things are still simpler in this regard. It's enough to simply not sell out to agenda-driven funds and not forget that your key audience has always been not the Twitter lunatics but fat nerds and autists. Want to make something new at your own risk — go ahead; want to recolor dresses for cute girls and throw them into a gacha — do that. That's exactly why based Asians and humble indie devs always outclass the cancerous Pentiple-A studios.

Publishers have been throwing a wrench in the works for a long time — just recall Master of Orion III or Titan Quest, which turned out successful despite the interference. These days, it's actually somewhat easier, as indie developers have more opportunities. Yes, AAA publishers strive to monetize everything they can get their hands on, but the industry isn't limited to AAA games alone.

Exactly! When next time some streamer someone "throws shade" at my wonderful mod, I'll respond with something like "Given that this product is free, independent of any 'producers and publishers,' and with complete disregard for its popularity, I declare: don't like it - don't eat it!"🤣🤣🤣

Publishers have always been throwing a wrench in the works. Ever since the concept of a publisher came into existence. The fifth game miraculously turned out to be a good entry. Ubisoft was already messing around back in 2005. It's just that there are publishers who don't particularly interfere with the creative process. Or with politics. They simply make money. From the shadows. And everything works out great for them. That doesn't mean they aren't greedy corporations. They're just not that stupid.

But I'm not fat...

And what exactly did they fix there?

The fifth game made war machines a useful skill, whereas OE... simply removed them, bringing back the dubious Ballistics from the third game.

Magic became better in some aspects, thanks to the addition of cooldowns, but the magic skills themselves plummeted in value. And on top of that, some overpowered spells were simply replaced by others that are no less overpowered — take Avatar (which they still can't balance) or the ice wall exploit!

Shooters in Heroes have always been dangerous and never needed buffs. Nevertheless, in Olden Era they... removed the limit on the number of shots (along with the ammo cart) and reduced the range penalties.

The specializations of certain heroes put any previous installment to shame. Forbidding your opponent from using an entire school of magic while you have max-level spells in it? Easy and simple — at least one such hero exists in every faction!

The economy in towns not only develops several times faster, but it's also easy to reach a state where the player can calmly develop all their towns, buy up all the growth, and spend the change on artifacts. In other games in the series, achieving that was possible, but not without effort.

Town Portal is now available to every hero, provided they have enough levels.

Alchemical dust adds nothing to the game. You either drown in it, or you upgrade the same creatures over and over. It reduces the variety of options, since only select units have active abilities without upgrades.

Special creature abilities now require focus. You gain focus either in long battles, or if you've heavily invested in it with skills. Not all abilities are equally useful. In the end, most of them turn out to be just pretty buttons you have no use for — focus will always go to one or two units.

In the fifth game, faction skills were diverse and reflected the factions' identities well: Knights upgraded creatures further, Dwarves had rune magic, Barbarians had magic suppression, blood rage, and battle cries... And what do we see in Olden Era? Boring stat bonuses for heroes in two factions. Two kinds of necromancy for two more. The Hive's gating, which wasn't even overpowered in the fifth game, completely gutted. And... just a couple of focus charges at the start of battle for the Grove, which half-heartedly tries to imitate Barbarian blood rage, but without much success.

But the best heroes in terms of gameplay are the fourth ones, and the most beautiful are the second ones.

1) It's not out of the question that war machines will be brought back in the future. Not all mechanics are in the game from the start of early access. Neither the machines, nor water, nor the underground were deliberately removed. They've been postponed for the future so that the rest can be sorted out first.

2) Oh, those poor mages... the meta in the game is warrior-focused, and Avatar was overpowered for 1.5 patches, after which it fell into the gutter and is rarely played nowadays. Heroes has always had a fierce imbalance between schools of magic; in HoMM3 it was exacerbated by the walk mechanic, which inflated the usefulness of Earth and Air even further. In OE they made a separate walk system (HoMM5 did the same, except they also nerfed the spells themselves and removed some), and also initially wove it into the template mechanics. So walk is no longer some kind of imba for casters of specific schools, but an integral part of tempo. Also, OE doesn't have universally accessible mass slow, haste, and domination, for which the developers deserve a huge thank you.

3) Like mages, ranged units in OE are a suffering class. Why? It would take a long time to explain... there are many ways to counter them. Even excessively many.

4) The idea is that the hero defines the player's gameplay. That's why each faction has many imba heroes. More than there are bans. And again, mages currently lose to warriors in the meta. Even school specialists. Unfortunately, there are heroes with outright useless or too mediocre specializations, and this problem hasn't been addressed yet.

5) It came from the uselessness of the Capitol in HoMM3. No one among pros ever built it. OE has plenty of templates for building up with a large number of towns, and even there, tempo support is impossible without resource banks. The economy is balanced by the conditions of a specific template. Exodus, for example, gives you up to six towns and many resource banks over the course of the game. But somehow no one tries to squeeze in all seven tiers... can't afford it. Seems the economy isn't so all-powerful after all.

6) Same as in HoMM3 when taking meta land... The level there, by the way, wasn't needed.

7) The main purpose of dust is to upgrade artifacts and spells. And you don't get to bathe in it often.

8) Hive presses unit buttons the least, because of eggs. But it doesn't have that many abilities either. Everyone else presses them very often. Temple's self-buffs, all of Grove's awakenings and abilities (especially Grove), Necropolis ghosts rarely press, but coffins, liches, and dogs press constantly; Dungeon mostly uses stances, but medusa escape, dragon fire shield, assassin ranged strike, and minotaur attack ignore are also in demand. All situational. Neutrals usually have useful abilities too.

9) Temple is just unlucky with its racial ability in life. It'll probably be changed again soon. But HoMM5 also had solutions like the sworn enemy or overly expensive minicons for mages. And runes and blood rage were from DLC and were complete imba. Necromancy, by the way, was reworked in HoMM5. Gating nerfed? It's never been as imba as it is in OE. Those larvae are terrifyingly effective, and together with T6 worms they form the strongest Hive tactic.

In my opinion, playing the first Heroes is purely a personal achievement for the annals of history.

The second Heroes are cozy, fairy-tale-like, and hardcore in a good sense. Pleasant music, pleasant atmosphere, sure they're outdated, but the game is quality.

The third ones are the baseline. I like both the original, and HotA, and over 20 years ago I had a very pirated WoG with a ton of buggy maps. All of this holds a certain place in my heart, especially since these were the first Heroes I discovered.

The fourth ones didn't appeal to me at first at all. I just didn't understand the concept, and visually they seemed ugly. As an adult, I finally gave them a try, and now I consider them a very good and solid game. Sometimes I get the urge to play the Campaigns on max difficulty.

The fifth ones — also a huge like. I'm that person who, according to Astral, doesn't exist, who likes the beautiful polished version from the Nival guys no less than the third game that inspired it. They also forever hold a place in my little heart.

I played the first one. It's awesome. Some of the designs and sounds really hit the spot.

Well, I'm also that same nonexistent player. I got acquainted with the third one much later than with the fifth, but I have a huge number of hours in it. Including the error simulator WoG, VCMI, mods based on WoG, and, of course, HotA. First and foremost HotA. HotA is truly one of the greatest mods to computer games, having literally managed to become the original game.

Well, so, as I said, they made the imba spells universally available, but introduced crutches. And now that's part of the expected gameplay. That's dubious, though.

So far they haven't brought any of that back, and they haven't mentioned machines in their future plans.

And it won't be addressed. And the salt I described is that:

1) This is a warrior hero, as it happens (yes, that dragon among the seventh-game elves, whom the game stubbornly passes off as Jadame's elves)

2) His school of magic focuses on utility spells and, perhaps, occupies the niche of Earth magic in OE.

Well, and... mages suffer, yes. Because of such specializations, yes. It's much harder to shut down a warrior.

In OE there are simply too many towns overall. Two or three times more than needed. And that also affects the economy. Never in my life have I had an experience where three towns fit on the starting screen — two of which I own from the start. And then OE came out.

Only in words. In reality, the hero needed Expert Earth and Advanced Wisdom. Which also had to drop. How often does that happen?

Tell that to people who have two laboratories right at respawn.

Focus only covers a small portion. Most skills (that summon for necros or their resurrection) are pressed 90% of the time. I'm even afraid to ask who activates the dragon shield and why. Not to mention prompting all Grove units at once. Many of the available abilities (yes, yes, those very self-buffs of Temple and some other creatures) are a dubious endeavor even without spending focus, since they force you to waste a turn. Focus doesn't add any tactical depth — it adds monotony.

Those larvae don't even have time to hatch. And necromancy was reworked in the fifth game, yes. OE for some reason made its own version of fifth-game necromancy, but far less convenient. Even after the patch.

By the way, you still haven't written what exactly good OE has fixed. So far I've only heard what I already knew before: they watched how cyber-cutlets play on certain templates and tailored the whole game to that. And the presence of at least two meta heroes (Galthran and Gunnar, son of Gunnar and ancestor of Gunnar) in the campaign only reinforces me in that thought.

Guide on how to play with maggots:

1. Level up the skill and take these sub-skills: +strike against buildings and +number of maggots per hero level (it used to be not particularly useful until the number of maggots was reduced in a patch in favor of more HP per unit)

2. Level up the law for +1 starting energy.

3. Place the egg at the start of the battle with a neutral. Either within striking distance of one stack, or two. The bot wastes its turn destroying it. If the maggots hatch, it has to fight them while we dismantle its friends.

4. At the third law level, pick up taunt, and also grab the T1 cooldown spell and max it out to 2 charges per cast at the first opportunity.

5. The whole map now lies before us. Early on, worms with corpse devouring will help us, and later they will too, and by then the army will already be decent.

Against a player:

1. Summon maggots exactly at the end of the round, so the opponent either has no chance to break the egg at all, or very few chances. The maggots hatch, taunt is on the opponent, and they will try with all their might to destroy the maggots, or spend spells to move their stack away from them.

2. If we have living maggots and spare energy, we blow up. If there's no energy, we kill ourselves on the enemy and blow up too. The main thing is not to do it on our own units. Laws for explosion damage will help ensure the opponent's stacks don't stay indifferent.

3. Profit!

I haven't yet figured out how to condense a thousand hours of experience in OE into one compact post.