Posts from Ideas and suggestions.

I already spoke with Sav in my trance to increase the area where the Grail is located (so that it would be much more difficult to dig it up).

Shouldn't they fix the Grail again, by the way, now that Reddit has appeared in the thread?! :D :D

Everything is fine, nothing needs to be fixed :D

Regarding Graal, I would suggest simply fixing the cheating button. Because it's still a bug that needs to be fixed, and there's also a gameplay need for it.

After a long time, Graal has returned to the game, and here are the complaints again... why then did you vote for his unban?

Finally, the Grail is back in the game, and now there are complaints... why did they vote for its unban?

Everything is relative. At that time, it seemed like it didn't matter. But Reddit was able to prove the opposite, just like in the case of the captain's hat. Besides, the Grail in the Tower or the Fortress is overpowered. If it were possible to simply ban its placement in these two castles...

I suggest banning Reddit. It would immediately eliminate so many problems.

Added 47 seconds later

Everything is fine, nothing needs to be fixed :D

Maybe we can bring back SHA to the game?:smile12:

I suggest banning Reddit. It would solve so many problems.

That's also an option, but who will be the first to discover things then? :D

Maybe we should bring back SHA to the game?:smile12:

Easy call :D

Everything is known through comparison. At that moment, it seemed like it wasn't a deciding factor.

Well, it still isn't much of a deciding factor even now. More precisely, it decides no more than other irregularities in the spawn.

When Mullich and the level 4 specialists were brought back into the game, the reasoning was pretty much the same.

An imba is something that creates a clear skew in gameplay in favor of that imba. For example, diplomacy - under no-rules settings, everyone tries to dig up or level up a diplomat; the presence or absence of diplomacy on a hero is a key factor when choosing a starting faction.

The Grail does not create such a skew; there is no rush for the Grail, no discussions like "Grail is far => restart" or "Grail is on respawn => we play any crappy layout" are observed. In many cases, digging for it is even detrimental - the lost days of tempo are not guaranteed to pay off.

I'll repeat here regarding diplomacy: allow it only for money; if they join for free, you must either fight or let them escape. You can't join many good things for money, and this will only provide a way to counter the opponent's Dragon Utopia for stats/control and a strong imbalance in donating to creature banks (which happens often on any map template), when your Dragon Utopia is simply "for money" and you are struggling to take them using only own native units.

p.s. Ideally, even implement (for example) a double price for joining. Want 10 angels - give 40K and stay without money.

Even now, it doesn't really decide the outcome. More precisely, it doesn't decide the outcome any more than other imbalances in the distribution.

Well, it depends. It might not be that important on HL+U, but on some other balance, it's almost a guaranteed win.

Well, it depends. It might not be as decisive on HL+U, but on some balance, it's almost a guaranteed win.

Indeed, on a balanced map, hiding your knights when your opponent doesn't have any is almost a guaranteed win.

They need to fix and nerf everything; the current builds are already unbalanced, and heroes like the Moon are only effective on mirror maps, and even then, probably only with Soda. Banning Grail in the Tower is still somewhat acceptable, but what did Flax do wrong? Now, with the restructuring leading up to the Grail excavation, you can get almost all the magic without it. Just because Reddit complained doesn't mean you should judge based on that. (By the way, he loses half his games even with Grail.)

What if you simply removed Mullich from the list of available starting heroes, just like you did with the Moon faction, and made him only available in the tavern?

I'll repeat here regarding diplomacy: allow it only for money; if they join for free, the unit must either fight or be allowed to flee. You can't join many good units for money, and this will only provide a way to counter the opponent's Dragon Utopia for stats/control and a severe imbalance in donating to creature banks (which happens often and on any template), when your Dragon Utopia is simply "for money" and you are barely taking them with your own native meat.

p.s. Ideally, even implement (for example) a double price for joining. Want 10 angels - give 40K and sit without money.

All discussed options for the technical limitation of diplomacy included the possibility of joining only for money.
Regarding the double price - an option is possible where only half of the squad joins for the price of a full one (as in Heroes 2 with underleveled diplomacy).

Besides, the Grail in the Tower or the Conflux is an unfair advantage. If it were possible to simply prohibit placing it in these two castles...

You could simply remove the map opening and all spells. Moreover, the Tower already has a bonus (+15 magic power), and you could introduce a bonus for the Conflux – for example, a resistance or magic bonus when defending the castle.

Regarding the "grind" stack – yesterday, I played with four friends in TCP/IP (and we play without online rules). In that game, "attacking with a hidden unit and retreating" made the game. In one turn, I reduced the number of Sea Serpents guarding the passage from 38 to 13 using six heroes. If I hadn't taken the first number, I wouldn't have been able to do it, but I managed the second almost without losses. And after that, all the good stuff in the center of the map (the M-castle) was mine. That's how it goes...

Hello, dear colleagues. After the demonstration tournament in HotA (which was held with the participation of guest developers on the stream), I still haven't let go of the idea of rebalancing almost unused secondary hero skills, which Nick mainly talked about. Basically, I would like to know your opinion on introducing some changes to the secondary skills in order to increase their value relative to the current "good skills." This would make hero development more optional (I briefly looked through 3 topics and only a couple of posts touched on this topic).

1. Eagle Eye - give the hero, who possesses Eagle Eye, the ability to look into the opponent's spellbook, and also increase the chance of learning a spell used by the opponent, up to 100% on expert difficulty. (This change is intended to minimize the random element of this skill and give it a tactical option, which can introduce a new tactical feature with viewing the enemy's spellbook. However, with a small caveat, so that the skill has a full scaling and with a chance of learning and with tactical application - it can be done like this: 1) at the basic level of the skill, the level and school of the enemy's spells in the spellbook will be displayed - without revealing the spell itself (it will be possible to narrow down the range of possible spells of the opponent and exclude options when you are not ready for Armageddon, for example, as a means of achieving a pure draw), 2) an advanced level will show the spell itself, 3) an expert could show the level of development of the elemental magic skill that the enemy character has).

1.1. In terms of atmosphere, I don't think these changes will significantly harm the gameplay, because skills with a double effect already exist in the game, such as diplomacy and schools of magic (considering that, in addition to increasing the effectiveness of spells of the learned schools, it also reduces mana cost). The very idea of using the skill will not change - it will still have a passive, optional effect on interacting with the opponent's magic. But at the same time, the skill will have a useful tactical effect, which can play a role in the final stages, but will not significantly break the balance among the established must-have skills, such as offense, logistics, defense, but will rather become an optional acquisition, like tactics, and will rid the skill trees of 1 useless element.

2. Scouting - if something needs to be changed in HotA's scouting, I think it is necessary to give scouting the option to show the number of units guarding objects more accurately, up to the exact number of units on expert difficulty (this refers to the guard that stands directly on the ground, and not in buildings), but make the radius in which the more accurate number of creatures is visible twice as small as the character's viewing radius (with all the consequences, namely, taking into account the viewing radius of scouts and heroes with various items that increase the viewing radius).

2.1. Thus, we can get variability in terms of possible characters for priority development. That is, it may turn out that one player plays as a logistician and travels long distances in search of objects, while another plays, for example, Beatrice or Shiva and has an advantage in the form of a larger viewing radius and safer exploration, based on more accurate information about the number of creatures in the guard. In general, these changes will likely leave logisticians in a more advantageous position, thereby not particularly breaking the balance of modern heroes and not affecting the current contenders for the main characters. Support heroes will have a very good skill that can be used to reduce the amount of randomness in the game, which is the subject of so much criticism. Plus, in terms of preserving the atmosphere of the heroes, this will again not fundamentally change the skill, as in the case of Eagle Eye above. Scouting will remain a good, optional skill, but players will have tactical freedom for new solutions, for example, whether to take tactics to defeat archers or take scouting and more accurately scout the number of units in the guard. (the question of how to deal with scouting units in the enemy character's army with these changes remains open).

3. Luck - used in modern heroes, if instead of it it gives outright garbage, like first aid or Eagle Eye. Based on the authenticity of the skill itself, as an increase in some kind of bonus (to increase damage in this case) for its optional use, I would suggest increasing the chance of triggering unit abilities (like the blindness of unicorns and the petrification of basilisks). Within reasonable limits, of course. As a percentage of the base bonus, most likely, I would do this.

3.1. I doubt that this is feasible on the game engine, because the trigger is probably directly tied to the unit and it will not be possible to change this value.

4. Resistance - I would like to add an option to resistance in the form of a ratio of the level of the resistance skill to the level of the opponent's school of magic skill that he uses when casting. That is, in the case when your resistance skill level is higher than the opponent's school of magic skill level, then it is cast with reduced effectiveness (let's say you have an advanced resistance, the opponent wants to cast a basic slow - the slow passes a full resistance check of 10 percent, I think, at the advanced level, and then, if the spell passes to the unit, the slow loses part of its effectiveness), if it is equal to the opponent's skill level or is lower than it, then it works only as a normal resistance + possibly a percentage reduction in damage from combat magic, let's say 5-10-15 percent.

4.1. It is unlikely that the developers will have an element with which it will be possible to elegantly implement this innovation, which means that it will be necessary to manually set the parameters for each spell, taking into account the newly baked resistance, separately. Therefore, I have little hope for a full-fledged innovation for resistance, based on this, I ask you to pay attention to reducing magical damage directly from combat magic (I would balance this skill by increasing the effectiveness of mysticism and magic, so as not to completely kill the potential of mages, but about them later).

5. Diplomacy - based on modern specific templates, such as anarchy, where diplomacy is used in its usual form, this skill is unlikely to be subject to changes, in my opinion, however, I would ask the developers to pay attention to the mechanics of surrendering a certain percentage of units, depending on the level of diplomacy (in small percentages, of course, for example, a support hero can cut 1-2 archdevils from the guard on Jebus, for example). This will give diplomat heroes an additional option in use and allow them to bypass the ban on joining the army through diplomacy. Thus, we will get rid of 1 ban that is not sewn into the HD mod, make heroes-diplomats more attractive supports than they were. Unless it will be necessary to make a one-time use of diplomacy to surrender part of the troops. So that this effect somehow sticks to the guard and it would no longer be possible to "diplomatically" influence it, in order to protect against abuses with endless breakdowns of diplomats.

5.1. Again, within the framework of the game mechanics, we will not fundamentally change the essence of the skill, but only make it more balanced in accordance with modern online battles in heroes. Another thing is that this is a mechanic, I am ready to argue, it is quite difficult to implement, so I do not have high hopes for such an innovation.

Such writing at 6 in the morning will probably look chaotic and disjointed, so I will stop here. I really want to know in which directions the changes to the skills are currently leaning towards the participants of the project, because there have been many conversations, even more opinions, so everything written above is my IMHO, of course.
Thank you for your work.

P.S. Nick, when are the streams?)