Posts from Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era - Обсуждение

It’s amusing that instead of providing valid arguments in favor of Olden Era and engaging in a constructive dialogue on the topic, you decided to nitpick the spelling and repeat the claim about “playing for 30 hours and developing Stockholm syndrome.” Well, each to their own. I remember you very well from the old days, and I wasn’t expecting a constructive dialogue anyway, so I’ll end the conversation here. But at least you made me laugh 🤣🤣🤣

It’s certainly interesting that instead of providing proper arguments in favor of the Olden era and engaging in a constructive dialogue on the topic, you decided to nitpick about spelling and repeat the thesis about “playing for 30 hours and developing Stockholm syndrome.” Well, each to their own. I also remember you very well from the old days; I didn’t expect a constructive dialogue from you in the first place, so I’ll end the conversation here. But you at least made me laugh 🤣🤣🤣

What is wrong with this thesis? Can you say that you like honey before you even try it? And a game is more complex than honey, which you can taste in a second and understand whether you like it in two. All your dialogues are unproductive because the developers don’t see them. Join the group on “Discord” and express your opinions there, which have already been expressed by others for a long time and noticed by the developers. P.S. I always pay attention to gross spelling errors because the general illiteracy around us has already reached its limit.

Well, actually, this thread was created to discuss, for example, this game, Olden Era, not to communicate with the developers, but simply for forum members to share their impressions... why not?
Furthermore, """And none of your negative comments will affect this""" is a statement that can be made in either direction; after your comment, I didn't feel like playing it anymore, and I didn't like the game any more...
Even further... literacy is, of course, good, but even a literate person can make simple typos on the internet, and they may not always want to delete and retype... besides, people here aren't writing a "school dictation"... if some comments are difficult to read for the reasons mentioned, you can simply not read them ))))
Even further... when a person learns to read and reads many books, they can open a new book, glance at a couple of pages diagonally, and they will roughly understand what the book is about, whether they might like it, etc... the same goes for games; if a person plays different games and is interested in them, why should they spend 100 hours in a new game to understand that THIS game is not for them?

Sometimes, you don't even need to try; one look is enough to understand that it's... well, how should I put it... definitely not honey, not even close 🤣🤣🤣

P. S. Pavlinho, don't feed the troll 🤣

Do whatever you want, trolls. Don’t play. It’s your choice. But I’m almost certain you will play when the game is released. And you will like it. And now, continue to criticize the graphics and interface. Good luck. P.S. If illiteracy were limited to online social media, I wouldn’t be talking about it, but it has long gone beyond those limits to the point that I even saw Putin laying a wreath at a monument with an inscription containing errors.

"And no amount of negative comments will change that," he asserted, a statement that, after his comment, made me even less inclined to play it, and didn't make me like the game any more...

Actually, yes.
I deliberately don't play the demo so that I can test the full version later, possibly even after the first patches. The logic is simple: I want to form an impression of the game by giving it as much time as possible to be polished; I'm not in a hurry. Maybe by that time, most of the things people are complaining about now will be fixed. The interface can be improved, the usability, and even the contrast can be adjusted/textures slightly retouched, perhaps by 2026. I'm not even talking about the balance, which is never good even at release, but it's generally accepted that it improves over time.
1) If it's still not very good then,
2) But if it does turn out to be good, I'll be pleasantly surprised (although I won't say I'll be amazed; there's still hope), and I'll enjoy playing it.
But all this talk about "you have to try the game" and "this is early access, it will definitely be 100% better at release" is more likely to demotivate. I've heard so much of it, and not once, literally not a single time, have I heard a story where a game was a disappointment in the demo/early access, and then suddenly became amazing. Well, there's something about No Man's Sky, that after a million years after release, it became a good game... But I haven't checked.
All these comments only create a reverse déjà vu effect, and my belief in option 1) strengthens, while my belief in option 2) weakens.
In fact, this is a big problem with the attitude towards the consumer, and it requires a clear distinction, that is, the developers should have long ago figured out the terminology and differentiated it.
First, a demo version should not be early access. A demo version is a full game, reduced in its capabilities just enough so that the player can make an informed decision about purchasing it. If the demo version is released before the game is finished and released, then it either does not fulfill its function (I cannot make a purchase decision if it is clearly raw), or it is incorrectly named.
Secondly, early access is not a beta test. And even the release version, excuse my frankness, is not a beta test! Games that are not finished but are already confident in their high quality should be released in early access. Yes, it will be even better at release, but it's already pretty good now, if you can't wait, play it. Besiege was already a great game in early access, in which I spent a considerable amount of time, and then they just added more levels and mechanisms. BG3 was also praised in early access, although I didn't play it then.
And yes, the release version, I repeat, is not a beta test. Ideally, we should not live in a world where the term "day one patch" exists: if it can be patched on the first day, then it could have been patched yesterday. Before release. Unfortunately, I will still have to close my eyes to this reality; I am demanding the impossible by today's standards.
As for the interface, and the aforementioned "7"... I have the impression that current game developers don't play games, and that's the main problem. At one time, I had quite high hopes for "7," played a few campaign missions, and generally came to the conclusion that it was playable. But then I dropped it, and in my personal ranking of games in the series, the 7th part remained below almost any other (except for 6, which is at the very bottom). Why? Because you can play it for a bit, but the balance and the interface don't encourage replayability – which, even after many patches after release, they still haven't made clear. And if the first thing is really difficult to develop, then the interface... It's just a matter of how many strategy games the designer has played, excuse me. You have examples of 6 (!) parts of Heroes. You know perfectly well that the path on the map should be drawn in such a way that it is visible the next day. You know in which part of the screen certain buttons should be, based on how often the player moves the mouse around the screen looking for them. You know which buttons should be there, what access to what on the strategic map may be needed. You know everything, it's all been chewed over and over. Why isn't it done, why does the player have to stumble over things or why are some things completely missing? Well, because they probably don't know. They've never played, they've never tried. Every time they invent the wheel from scratch, they forget to add spokes to the wheels, and then they wonder why it only drives to the first bump.
Either they don't play games, or they don't draw conclusions... I don't understand how the second is possible, though.

But I repeat, I haven't tried Era yet. I'm waiting and hoping. I'm very impressed by some detailed reviews that reflect the new features for the series that have been implemented in the game; I really want to try them out. The point of my message is that empty praise (as well as empty hate, without a doubt) is not needed by anyone. We'll talk about "there are flaws now, but they'll fix them" when and only when they fix them, because I've been disappointed too many times that they don't even come close to fixing them. I'm not saying they won't fix it. I'm not saying the game won't be good. I'm saying that if it's not very good now (although I haven't tried it, but I'm repeating other people's arguments), then judging "later" based on some strange expectations that 100% they will do everything right and fix everything... Well, you might as well throw money into crypto, I don't know, 100% Bitcoin will go up ))) I repeat that such comments are demotivating, but those that objectively and thoroughly describe the existing advantages now, without completely ignoring the disadvantages, are motivating.

Although, given the abuse of the lore and visuals, which is visible even without launching any demos, it's not exactly very motivating, but it's better than nothing.

Olden Era is a very controversial game. In total, I played about 37 hours in the playtest and demo. I will start with the good. Mechanically, the game turned out to be extremely interesting – it is the perfect successor to parts 3 and 5. It has alternative upgrades from part 5, a simplified but still interesting skill tree, they added an analogue of the central perk, a huge number of old and new objects, more than in part 5 with all the DLCs, they returned the class system from part 3, many new heroes with their unique (and not so unique) specializations, they added abilities to units that affect movement on the global map, as in parts 3 and 4, they added many new adventure spells, which were also in part 4. And if we evaluate the mechanical component as a whole, it turned out to be awesome – it is interesting to explore the map, there is a lot of new and returning old content. I would rate it a solid 8/10. Why not 9 or 10? It seemed to me that in some moments, the developer responsible for balance was not stopped, so some units have 9 abilities! As a casual player, I don't want to learn so many abilities, and in some moments the mechanics seemed too overloaded, so I lowered my rating. "Brevity is the soul of wit," as A.P. Chekhov wrote.

But how to explain and present such complex mechanics to the player in a clear and understandable way? And here we smoothly descend into a barrel of tar, because the lion's share of the visuals in OE is a talentless, uninspired, hastily made mess. The interface is a pathetic creation made by a first-year student. It is unintuitive, with small buttons that are arranged in some illogical way – heroes are on the left, cities are on the right, the arrangement of the hero's stats has become chaotic, the order of stats for units differs from window to window, some buttons are not where they should be, in the unit hiring window, stats and abilities disappear for some reason, and there is a lot of just blatant trash that makes your eyes hurt. The localization is just as talentless as the interface, where there are names like "Trickle Creek", "Pr-r-r-yg!", "Bulugan! Gr-r!" or "Aroma of Hops". In addition to the fact that these are absolutely unfunny names, they are also not informative at all. What do you think the spells "Shorten Shadow" and "Lengthen Shadow", and "Anya's Touch" do? Why couldn't the spells be named normally, for example: "Stone Skin", "Dispel Magic" or "Prayer"? For the sake of humor or some lore? For some reason, there were no such problems before... So every time I see a new spell (the icon of which doesn't explain anything to me), I have to read and memorize again that "Lengthen Shadow" is +2 attack and defense.

And this is just about convenience, there is also an aesthetic component in the game. I don't want to elaborate on the obvious truths that it was not a good idea to make the graphics look like a mobile game. I also want to agree with Drakkosha that the unit designs mostly do not suit Enroth, although some of the creature concepts are quite interesting. The idea that the spells in the spellbook were drawn as if by hand (as if a monk learned the "prayer" spell and drew how it works so as not to forget) was ruined by talentless designers who simply slapped icons from a mobile MOBA game like "League of Legends Bang Bang" or whatever this crap is called. Looking at the units, you can't understand what their role is and what their abilities are. For example, in part 5, the dwarf spearmen had 1 spear in their hand and 2 more in a quiver, you could guess that he is a ranged unit with a small amount of ammunition, but he can stab the enemy with a spear without a penalty in melee. There is nothing like that in OE – the mechanics are separate, the unit design is also separate. Do the dancers have a chakram in their hand? She is a ranged unit that shoots a laser from her fist, and she has a penalty in melee! For the visuals, I will give a 3/10, for the fact that they did not simply copy all the images from previous parts, but tried to make something new (the succubus, for example), and for the fact that the portraits of the heroes have their own character (although their drawing style is pop).

I will write a little about the music. Paul Romero is back – that's good. The new compositions are pleasant, but there are a lot of repetitions from previous parts (they are already using the grass theme from part 5 for the third time...). I will add +1 point for the music.

My final score at the moment is 6/10. The mechanics are great, the visuals are crap.

Lol, I didn't even notice the spell names when I was poking around that demo with two Factions. But there weren't many spells there anyway. Yeah, it's overkill. Originality is cool, I like the spells in Disciples, where a number of spells have beautiful, pompous names, and in Heroes of Might and Magic III, it's almost exclusively Latin. But there's always a brief description of what the spell does right next to it, so you won't get confused. In King's Bounty, there are a billion spells of varying degrees of usefulness with different cool mechanics and gimmicks, but the basic ones are named the same as their hero counterparts - speed, slow, blessing, curse, armageddon, etc. In Heroes of Might and Magic IV, each spell had a story, a description, sometimes quite funny, edgy, or just lyrical, but you had to dig to find these descriptions, and I didn't realize they were there right away. It's not always appropriate to go overboard with originality, especially if you, @%$#, are making a game for a franchise and setting that has established canons, and fans expect certain things that they have become accustomed to over the course of the series! I agree that it's cool to come up with something new, but if they went back to the roots and meticulously transferred everything pixel by pixel from Heroes of Might and Magic II or III, I would be just as annoyed, saying that they have zero imagination and are just copying the old. I praised the tentacle witch as a concept, my only questions are about the implementation. If she were beautiful, I would forgive her for not being a hero unit. There were hives, giant mantises, ice demons, and slugs in Heroes of Might and Magic IV. But balance is important, too much new is also bad, and they went overboard with their brilliant ideas. I understand, they got carried away, I even believe that they love the franchise, but they need to use their heads, you're not making some crappy Polish mod. The abilities of units in King's Bounty were strictly limited to three slots. Less is possible, more is not. That was enough. In Heroes of Might and Magic IV, units had spellbooks, usually with 1-4 spells, ogre-mages had more, 5-7, but they don't have a native mage hero and mana is scarce. You just won't use 9 abilities in a real combat situation. But you can show off and flaunt originality, yes. And in that demo, some of the new features seemed not the worst, like the global politics or the interface of the guild of mages in the form of a map of the sky, but the visuals were so off-putting that I didn't really want to dig and figure it out. In the old Heroes games, I enjoyed building cities to see how beautiful they were and what cool units they had. Even in Heroes of Might and Magic VI and the abominable Heroes of Might and Magic VII, I did this, and in Heroes of Might and Magic V, I was completely blown away by the beautiful models of the units on the full screen, succubi became my waifu for a long time, and vordansers became my husbandos. Okay, that was a long time ago. But recently, I played the Lego DC series, and I was so happy to discover new characters there, each one had to be unlocked, their abilities and animations checked, I remember the delight from the pompous, huge Darkseid, canonically floating with his arms behind his back, I remember the disappointment with my favorite Lobo, who couldn't have the ability to fly with his space bike, a cool animation of Clark Kent transforming into Superman, the implementation of Beast Boy, where they drew a separate model for each of his abilities, far away Bat-Cow, Krypto, Ace, my favorite evil cat Dex-Starr... And yes, I saw many characters there for the first time, like Atrocitus, Larfleeze, Saint Walker, and Indigo-1, and then I thought, "Oh, that was in Lego Batman!" In Olden Era, there was no such desire to explore the game and build new units.

9 abilities

If anything, it mainly discusses passive abilities, such as "ranged," "melee," "flight," "magic resistance," "certain creature type," and so on. Plus, abilities like "double attack" and "counterattack" have been given to a larger number of units than before. There are a maximum of 3 active abilities, some of which don't seem very useful to me. Here, you mainly need to remember which active abilities end the turn and which are additions to a normal attack, not forgetting about charges, hero attack, damage types/creatures, and other things.

Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era hits 1 000 000 wishlists! THANK YOU!

Greetings everyone!

We are BLESSED to announce that Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era hit over 1 000 000 wishlists on Steam!

You guys are an absolute delight and we are incredibly blessed to have you all by our side on this journey as you share your love for the game with us!

Olden Era is now the #15 most wishlisted game in the official global Steam Wishlists chart. That includes the top postitions in the genre: #1 spot in the Turn-based Strategy category and #4 most wishlisted title in the Strategy category. We have also become the #1 top Demo of Steam Next Fest and one of the most played strategy Demos in the history of Steam!

In addition to all of this, over 24 000 of you played our Demo at the same time at its peak — making us the best-performing strategy game Demo in SteamDB's history of observations — and you left over 2 000 reviews about the game! You have also sent us thousands of feedback pages with love, insight and thoughts on what you liked and also wish us to improve!

Nothing could have prepared us for such following and desire to make our game shine and so, from the bottom of our hearts, THANK YOU! We love you all and we will continue using this support as our strength to keep pushing forward towards Early Access!

Remember — the DEMO for Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era is available on Steam and you can play it NOW!

May the Dragon Utopias bless you with all the best artifact rewards!

https://steamcommunity.com/games/3105440/announcements/detail/530986630612254793

I don't see any "overload" in the fact that each creature has unique (or almost unique) active and passive abilities. This actually deepens and expands the gameplay. It's definitely better than the mindless creatures in Heroes 7 and the original Heroes 2 (though, of course, people would criticize the 1996 game now). Where the creatures differ only in their visuals and stats. And we shouldn't cater to casual gamers when making a game in the HoMM series. There are plenty of games for them already...

If anything, it mainly concerns passive abilities, such as "archer," "melee," "flight," "magic resistance," "such-and-such creature," and so on, plus various "double attack," "counterattack," and other abilities that have been given to more units than before. There are a maximum of 3 active abilities, some of which don't seem very useful to me. In this case, it's more about remembering which active abilities end the turn and which are an addition to a normal attack, not forgetting about charges, hero attack, types of damage/creatures, and other things.

Well, if we're talking about passive abilities, then



But even with this setup, you need to be more careful. The sixth game indulged in this; each unit had a plethora of medals in its profile – living creature, small/large, racial ability of such-and-such faction, and yet half of these things were extremely "captain-like." Although this trend started back in the fifth game.

I remember the droid mechanic from King's Bounty. It has more traits than average – archer, flyer, no penalty in melee, eyeless mechanism with a plethora of immunities and resistances, plus an active ability to heal other droids. It also has good speed and the fact that moving a unit in King's Bounty does not end the turn. As a result, we have one of the most annoying creatures in the game, which flies around the arena, shoots, and heals/resurrects if there is more than one stack of them. And this is still without the racial gnome ability (in those parts where it appears), because it's just a dumb piece of metal. Don't do that...

I don't see any "overload" in the fact that each creature has unique (almost unique) active and passive abilities. This actually deepens and expands the Gameplay. It's definitely better than the bland creatures of the seventh and ancient second games (we would, of course, criticize the 1996 game now). Where creatures differ only in visuals and stats. And it's not worth making the game in the HoMM series cater to casual players. They already have enough games...

I disagree.



Some units will inevitably be stronger, and some will be weaker. Instead of piling up a billion unique abilities and creating a huge power creep, wouldn't it be better to give each unit one, two, three, well, okay, five abilities at most, but together with the stats, they will play a significant role and make good units even better, and give weak units some stable, understandable niche. In the fourth game, the Nature faction prefers tigers to the only archer not because of its cool unique abilities, but because it is thicker, runs further, bites harder, and doesn't slow down the squad on the map. In the third game, they summon earth elementals not because they are so cool, but because they are the fattest piece of meat of all four, good luck digging them out. There, the centaur is considered one of the best units of the first level simply because it is large, fast, thick, and bites. When I played as Tau in the fourth game, I carried a whole herd of nightmares with me only because they have a super valuable terror ability, and this is essentially the only thing these horses can do; their stats are good, but not mind-blowing. In the same King's Bounty, which I love and praise, along with cool units covered with a bunch of abilities, there are also simple archers, swordsmen, wolves, bears, and other orcs, which are not very interesting in their army, but when there is a shortage, you can take a thick and biting stack that is difficult to dig out and everyone hates. And if you randomly slap all sorts of cool abilities and cover a unit with them like a Christmas tree, it will be like playing war as a child: "I killed you!" "But I have immunity!" "And I have immunity to your immunity!" Better less, but better.

Even chess, for example. Here, the units don't impress with their diversity, nor are there any abilities, or even basic stats. And yet, it is considered a super elite game for super intellectuals. I remember when I was a child, my dad played Heroes, and I thought it was just chess with beautiful graphics and hexagons instead of squares.

I haven't played it myself yet, but I approve. I watched video reviews and came to the conclusion that, in general, it's actually quite good, as "OldenEra" turned out to be recognizably reminiscent of "Heroes of Might and Magic III" with quite pleasant graphics and smooth, unobtrusive unit animations. The presence of a certain abundance of game mechanics details, in my opinion, can make the RPG system of the game flexible and customizable according to the player's preferences, which is hardly something to be perceived as a drawback.

If I were to criticize something, it would be that the mountains on the strategic map seem too small (compared to the hero and NPC figures), and during the tactical phase, it would be possible to add some hills from which it would be more effective to fire or defend in melee combat, and the strategic map could also be made less "flat," adding at least some height gradient in 3D. However, these are, of course, just my subjective nitpicks, as overall, "OldenEra" seemed to me to be a rather promising project that can still be improved and refined.

In any case, I wish the developers "fair winds and following seas" in their difficult task and, of course, patience in the toxic environment of the gaming community.

It's just chess, damn it. It's a game where the units don't offer much variety, there are no special abilities, and even the stats are basic. And yet, it's still considered a super elite game for super intellectuals, even after thousands of years. I remember when I was a kid, my dad played Heroes, and I thought it was just chess with pretty graphics and hexagons instead of squares.

If chess gets boring and seems too simple, I recommend Fischer Random Chess!

Poor, unfortunate souls. How difficult it must be for them to borrow game elements from the 7-8 previous games in the series, "improve" them, and implement them in Olden Era. It's pure torture. Oh, that "brutal regime" of Cyprus. Let's, all you concerned people, organize a flash mob in support or donate 100 rubles. Let's show these vile, spiteful creatures, lol.