The "Arena" tournament is not yet over, but some preliminary results can already be drawn. Unfortunately, the tournament did not generate much interest; only 9 participants joined, and not all of them fully played out their group matches. Clearly, the arena format proved not attractive enough for a wide audience. Below, I would like to outline my thoughts on this situation, as well as announce a new tournament.
Why did the idea of arenas arise in Heroes at all? Obviously, because many games on standard templates ended with an early surrender by one of the players during the map exploration stage while attempting to tempo, or when one player saw another's stats, or when the finale began — a "blast in the face" — гг. At the same time, standard templates consumed a huge amount of time. A skill-test was an attempt to solve this problem. A mega-fast format dedicated to players battling with random troops. Various arenas also appeared. Recently, I played several games in lobbies in the classic skill-test, in skilltest balanced, and on "legion arena." The impressions are extremely poor. In case anyone hasn't played or has forgotten, let me remind you: a skill-test is when there are 6 random artifacts from warrior graves and 7 random creatures in the amount of one growth from refugee camps. Then comes a Pandora's box with leveling up to level 8, then several spells and a magic well. The ability to plan a strategy is close to zero: heroes already have two starting skills, the hero levels up first, and only then can you see which spells were dropped in the shrines. It is complete randomness; the drop of stronger units or a strike spell of level 4-5 makes the battle meaningless. Legion arena: a random pile of artifacts of various types is generated — including relics, the sphere of prohibition with the cloak of renunciation (in HotA!), in old versions they just lie in one huge pile, in newer ones they are at least split into three groups, from which you must choose one. Next is the choice of one creature of each tier from several available options. Then Pandora up to level 15 and two cities with built Mage Guilds and libraries. Playing the battle is not interesting at all due to the unbalanced drop of artifacts and the armies themselves: choosing creatures turns into picking imba-stacks at every level, either they dropped for you or they didn't. Skilltest balanced looks noticeably better, where developers put effort into avoiding one-sided battles and there are some levers to influence the outcome of the upcoming fight. But even it is inferior to Arena Konwentowa.
Arena Konwentowa is a completely different matter. Regarding troops: in terms of quantity, they are roughly equal for all cities. I will write below how to make them more or less equal in terms of quality (balance them). Regarding artifacts: relics, expedition artifacts, the sphere of prohibition, and the cloak of renunciation are not generated here. The player is offered to choose 2 out of 6 available piles of artifacts. Usually, the artifacts drop more or less identical or equivalent, so parameters will be comparable in battle. The player chooses what to emphasize: combat stats, magic, luck and morale, speed, amulets. On this map, the player immediately sees the available artifacts, knows how many and which troops they will have (according to tournament rules, only native ones can be taken, unit count is always fixed), and from the start knows the available spells (in the built Mage Guild in the city). There are 4 heroes to choose from (2-3 warriors and 1-2 mages); two can be leveled up immediately to level 15. The build is usually powerful since non-combat skills do not drop. Additionally, there is a university and a witch's hut where you can loot a great starting skill. After leveling two heroes, we choose the one we like more as the main. Battles are fought not with one growth and not with mega-legions, but with a pleasant number of units (from 11 upgraded T7 creatures, others increasing while striving to maintain proportionality).
The previous Arena tournament revealed some shortcomings. Winning with weak cities against strong cities is sometimes simply impossible, so the outcome of the game was occasionally decided by a coin toss for the right to choose in the final pair of cities. Therefore, the system of generating 5 random pairs and their subsequent crossing out is now canceled.
New system: players choose 5 cities each (the dock cannot be chosen, so as not to confuse Sodomites
); before the start of a game, players ban one city from their opponent. In total, a pool of 4 cities will be used for each participant. When creating a game, the host in PvP options crosses out the cities that the opponent did not choose for themselves, also crosses out the city they ban for the opponent, then presses the "random city" button — this determines the first game city from 4 possible ones for their opponent. Then the host performs the same actions regarding themselves. If a mirror occurs, the "random city" button is pressed again until a non-mirror pair is found. The pool of 5 favorite cities is chosen once before the start of the first game in the tournament; it cannot be changed subsequently. To add dynamism to the tournament and so that games with a reduced number of cities do not become boring, the new tournament will be BO3 instead of BO5. That is, in each round you will play 2 or 3 games with some of your 4 favorite cities (or not favorites, but stronger ones in your opinion). Thus, it creates an opportunity to cut off weaker cities and also ban the most imba city. The final pairs should turn out more even than they were in the previous tournament. Plus, there is an opportunity to prove how cool your favorite city is)
To take into account comments on the previous tournament and again for greater dynamism, time limits per turn are now introduced. Timer 0:00-07:00-0:00; before the finale, no more than 4 turns can be made, at the end of the 4th turn blue must already be standing on the battle field. That is, players cannot exceed the limit of 28 minutes to prepare for battle (the figure is based on = approximately half an hour).
For excitement and greater competitiveness, as last time, a prize pool of 5000 rubles is introduced. There are no entry fees.
I will address the true-Sodomites separately, who see the word "HotA" and read no further) I said before the previous tournament that on this map the differences between HotA and Sodom are almost not felt. Now there is ironclad confirmation: player Matematic reached the final of the previous tournament, winning 4 victories in 4 matches with a total score of 11-1. This player is a pure Sodomite; as far as I know, games on Arena Konwentowa were his first games in HotA lobbies. Play a couple of practice games on this map, get used to the small changes (interference instead of resistance, mass slow slows stacks slightly less, liches and magogs can choose the cell for strike) and dominate in the new tournament HotA artifacts can always be googled online; there is nothing supernatural there: stat increases, luck and morale increase/decrease, opponent's MP decrease.
Regarding the tournament format: BO3 games, tour duration 1 week, there will be a group stage and playoffs without a lower bracket. Number and composition of groups — depending on the number of registrants. Rules for determining places in the group: first points, then difference between won and lost battles, Berger coefficient, head-to-head encounter.
Registration will run until April 6th inclusive; draw results will be posted on the morning of April 7th, and the first tour will begin on that same day.
Summing up, the Arena Konwentowa map is much more thought out compared to its analogues. Here the player has many levers to influence the outcome of the battle, rather than everything being decided by randomness. There is a good opportunity to get an interesting and equal finale while spending very little time. The new tournament will take into account the shortcomings identified in the previous tournament regarding unbalanced pairs and dragging games. Such a format has only one minus: it does not answer the question of who plays Heroes better, because in modern Heroes everything is decided by skill on the strategic map, and this tournament is about the tactical phase. But this tournament is not proposed as a map for conducting a world championship in Heroes) It is proposed for conducting many interesting finales where you can play as favorite cities, enjoy a sweaty battle, and demonstrate your combat skill.
Registration is open!
The latest version of the "Arena Konwentowa 2.6.3" map can be downloaded from the attached file at the bottom of the header of this topic: https://m.vk.com/topic-59561616_36671817
Save the downloaded file in the "Maps" folder within the "HoTA" folder on your computer. After that, when launching the game, select it among scenarios (not random maps, please note).
A detailed text description of the map is provided in the first message in the topic of the previous tournament:
