Might & Magic Heroes VI Catch-All

Hi there

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Due to arrive on May 27th, 2011.

Don't know if there's already a thread about this game, but if there is, feel free to crush this one under the delete button!

It seems that Ubisoft isn't completely loony (Rocksmith, We Dare), and is publishing the sixth installment on the HoMM series, although changing it around to MMH (ok, still loony).

The game so far looks a lot like 3 or 5. Don't know if that's a good thing or bad one. However, I really liked the art direction featured on the screenshots:

IMAGE(http://cdn.steampowered.com/v/gfx/apps/48220/ss_37ce1c7280a2991f9e5eaa6d82e530ea8237a916.1024x768.jpg?t=1300308602)
Overworld

IMAGE(http://cdn.steampowered.com/v/gfx/apps/48220/ss_3e39887fd587e9d1d3b73fe130b79d455a725963.1024x768.jpg?t=1300308602)
Battle screen

Cinematic Trailer (meaning, cool demons but no gameplay )

But, lo and behold, combat!

Feels very traditional, but the pedigree is strong. This installment is being developed by Black Hole Entertainment (Armies of Exigo, Warhammer Mark of Chaos). Thanks NoHighScores, for raising my awareness about this one.

It seems you can already pre-purchase and reap some ingame bonuses, like a Lucky Demon Sword of Doom.

We talked a little bit about it here. Personally I think I'm over this formula, it looks too much like older titles.

Doesn't mean I won't buy it at some point, I still bought Disciples III even though the reviews (from trusted sources) said it was pretty terrible. And it was, but pretty.

I was unimpressed by HoMMV and it's expansions. Now we have newer games that does HoMM better (like Armored Princess and the like). What is HoMM6 / MMH6 doing to differentiate itself from the others (and it's past)?

Yeah I made a thread here, but yours has all the pretty pictures and videos, so I wouldn't mind making this the main one

I am rather irrationally annoyed that it's being called 'Might & Magic Heroes VI' instead of 'Heroes of Might & Magic VI' for some reason. It just makes me angry! Yarrrrrrr!

I hope we're not locked into that 'let's watch the battle from the top of a skyscraper' viewpoint from the demo video; I'd like to be able to zoom in and check out some of the character details/animations. That's another point that King's Bounty spoiled me on and I think would be difficult to return to the days of yore.

Looking forward to hearing more! I need to go back and play III; I loved II so much that I burned out on the series and never actually got into III; everything I've read seems to indicate I'll be in for quite a treat.

Need to wait and see. 4 and 5 didn't really live up the earlier titles in the series, and I never got into either one. I also won't buy the game with the crazy Ubisoft internet-always DRM. Nothing has been announced on that front, yet, and the dev studio said on their forums that they didn't know yet, either.

They did said there will be an animated 2-D town screen - I believe the screens up til now are 'placeholders' pending more work. I also hope for a demo!

Yeah, every one is pretty lukewarm about this, and we are 2 months away from release and still have to hear anything about the game that says what is it about. Why get this instead of 3 or 5?

Sorry sinkwater, I searched for such a thread, but came up empty

oMonarca wrote:

Yeah, every one is pretty lukewarm about this, and we are 2 months away from release and still have to hear anything about the game that says what is it about. Why get this instead of 3 or 5?

Sorry sinkwater, I searched for such a thread, but came up empty :(

I will probably bite on this. I played 2 and 3 into the ground and have little desire to revisit them. Heroes 5 got such mixed reactions that I stayed away, but for the art style just didn't work. This new one seems to have a cleaner style than 5. I won't even mention 4. The thing I am concerned about is the lack of factions, but if that allows them to make each one interesting I am OK with it. In my opinion Heroes 3 had some balance problems... with so many factions some got the shaft in comparison to others.

oMonarca wrote:

Sorry sinkwater, I searched for such a thread, but came up empty :(

It's ok. I blame Google!

Now available on Steam for 49.99.

If you buy on Steam now, you can get into the Beta -- so there's that.

Has anyone found any beta impressions yet? I've come up empty so far.

Puce Moose wrote:

Has anyone found any beta impressions yet? I've come up empty so far.

I've scraped some information off the interwebs here and there but nothing too "official".

The resource and town management is a matter of taste... if you like the granular approach and the "for want of a nail the shoe was lost" feeling from not having that 1 gem or sulfur you need to upgrade, it ain't in Heroes VI.
If you prefer a more general "vespene gas" approach where you're more focused on what to get rather than how to get it, you'll probably be more pleased. Town management follows similar ideas, in that you can convert any town to your own faction for a not-huge resource fee. So you can homogenize your army if you wish. I have no idea if the town loses buildings/levels when you do this, but I would personally prefer to see it do so. It would make the choice less cut and dried.

People seem to universally like the graphics but find a number of UI elements that need work. There is also no full town screen at the moment, which people are sad about... though that may be a temporary condition.

There is a distinct lack of randomness - heroes' skills can be picked from the full tree, exact enemy numbers can be ascertained, etc. I am sure this is a nod to the WoW crowd though I would prefer to keep the 'surprise' factor in the game. After all HoMM is not an RPG - you are not the heroes, you're just telling them where to go. They develop on their own. I like the the surprise of not fully knowing how a hero is going to develop.

Edit: I got burned by my faith that Elemental would be ship-shape by launch, so there is no way I will be pre-purchasing this.

imbiginjapan wrote:
Puce Moose wrote:

Has anyone found any beta impressions yet? I've come up empty so far.

I've scraped some information off the interwebs here and there but nothing too "official".

The resource and town management is a matter of taste... if you like the granular approach and the "for want of a nail the shoe was lost" feeling from not having that 1 gem or sulfur you need to upgrade, it ain't in Heroes VI.
If you prefer a more general "vespene gas" approach where you're more focused on what to get rather than how to get it, you'll probably be more pleased. Town management follows similar ideas, in that you can convert any town to your own faction for a not-huge resource fee. So you can homogenize your army if you wish. I have no idea if the town loses buildings/levels when you do this, but I would personally prefer to see it do so. It would make the choice less cut and dried.

People seem to universally like the graphics but find a number of UI elements that need work. There is also no full town screen at the moment, which people are sad about... though that may be a temporary condition.

There is a distinct lack of randomness - heroes' skills can be picked from the full tree, exact enemy numbers can be ascertained, etc. I am sure this is a nod to the WoW crowd though I would prefer to keep the 'surprise' factor in the game. After all HoMM is not an RPG - you are not the heroes, you're just telling them where to go. They develop on their own. I like the the surprise of not fully knowing how a hero is going to develop.

Edit: I got burned by my faith that Elemental would be ship-shape by launch, so there is no way I will be pre-purchasing this.

This.

And here are my impressions:

1. Music still sucks. I hope they fix this.
2. The lack of a map that moves as I mouse to the edges. I found myself clicking the mini-map to look over things.
3. Heroes now come in two flavors - Might and Magic. IF you go Might, all of the third tier MIght abilites open up and only the tier two Magic abilities open up. If you go Magic, the opposite occurs. As it was just posted, you can pick up any of the skills. I too liked the randomness of earlier games and the 'game' you'd be playing to get just what you wanted when it came up.
4. There are currently only four groups -- Empire, Demon, Orc, and Japanese/Water. In the beta, you play the Empire and Japanese.
5. There is no dedicated Hero turn anymore. You can go at any time during the turn when your army goes. Unforunately, I sometimes forgot to go at all.
6. You can convert any city now and they also added outposts. I like the outpost bit because you can recruit all your troops from the place without returning to your home city as in the older versions. I always got around this by running a bunch of heroes in the older versions in a long chain with my heroes.
7. Now you can't just gain and lose mines anymore -- You have to take the city or outpost that controls the mines in the area unless you post a hero there full time to take control. Kind of nice that you don't have to run around and reaquire mines, but I don't know that I like this bit of it because it puts a lot of power into the cities and you can no longer poach, making secondary heroes a bit less useful for anything but babysitting duties.
8. Unit special abilities now appear as a button on the bottom left and you no longer have to click on the unit to bring the up, which is nice too. Makes it easier to use these without leaving the screen.
9. Towns do lose buildings when you convert. Nothing was worse when the enemy took one of my buildings, converted it, and then I lost some higher tier troops to it when I retook it and converted it back. You can convert outposts and the like too.
10. No full town screen is a bit bothersome. UI is a bit clunky.

Greetings all - New member and new poster here, but as this is really the only game I am playing right (the beta that is - sad, isn't it) I am going to post some thoughts.

I remember HoMM2 quite fondly, and HoMM3 came out as I was changing graduate programs, so far too much time was wasted on it. I, like many, was not a big fan of 5, I really think the desire to jump on board with new technology and display really made the game suffer.

Anyways, back to 6. As far as a beta goes, this is a fairly terrible one, there is little or no way to report issues and bugs, and the devs seem to be absent on the boards.

My major gripes - The removal of randomness. I know, "real" strategy players are against such things, but it added a level of fun. It seems that some of the charm of the single player was lost in the attempt to make the multiplayer part more strategic. I completely understand that, but it seems that they took a couple too many pages from the RTS book.

Heroes- I think there needs to be A LOT of balance oh the heroes. Like Blacksheep, I often forget that my so-called is sitting back there, I wish they would add a pop-up letting you know you forgot to use him/her. Magic heroes seem quite weak, as their spells are limited by mana but might heroes only have cool downs on their abilities.

The control zones - I think these need to be smaller. While it is nice that a measly wandering hero can't disrupt your entire economy, it seems to remove some of the need for conflict.

Town Portals and universal recruitment - Ugh. Just ugh. This seems to be the biggest problem. Even though it seems that the devs were trying to level the playing field, this really removes strategic thinking. Basically, biggest army = win. While this seems to be intuitive, it provides no way to come back or to fight in a different style. You can't lure an enemy away from their cities and then attack and take them, because they can keep a reserve army ready to appear at ANY city and teleport from ANYWHERE back.

Hmmmm, this game either suffers a complete turn-around (of opinion, at least) or I guess I'm skipping it.

TotalBiscuit has a fairly long video on the beta over on hs website.

Captain Marvel wrote:

Greetings all - New member and new poster here, but as this is really the only game I am playing right (the beta that is - sad, isn't it) I am going to post some thoughts.

Thanks for the thoughts - it sounds like those are the sort of things that a beta is designed to fix, but it doesn't sound too hopeful that they will be.

oMonarca wrote:

Hmmmm, this game either suffers a complete turn-around (of opinion, at least) or I guess I'm skipping it.

Don't worry, there is always HOMM 3 to get back to. (I have friends who still play it on pretty regular basis, it holds up really well.)

Captain Marvel wrote:

Greetings all - New member and new poster here, but as this is really the only game I am playing right (the beta that is - sad, isn't it) I am going to post some thoughts.

Welcome aboard! Hope you find your stay comfortable!

Played the demo (available now on fileplanet if anyone cares to take a spin) and had a few likes and dislikes about it.
Some of this stuff has already been mentioned by blacksheep, but its just what I took away after playing the demo

Likes
- Heroes don't have a dedicated turn. Adds another layer of strategy to time your heroes turn. Use a nice AOE ability when mobs are grouped, wait til end to rez some troops, etc
- Heroes also get a talent build screen. Instead of picking from one of four random generated leveling perks, you get an ability point you can spend in Might or Magic tree
- During battle, all units must move during a round. In HOMM5 I'm pretty sure units could just keep hitting wait, but now all units most exhaust their turn (through moving or defending) before a round ends.
- In battle, units can take cover behind obstacles (rocks, etc) which reduces the damage they sustain from ranged attacks.
- When attacking a castle, your units can now attack the castle gate to break through quicker if your siege weapons aren't getting the job done.

Dislikes
- The town building screen could definitely use some improvements
- Wasn't able to rotate the camera at all (on world map or battle map). They did a good job of showing enough, but I missed HOMM5s ability to rotate it at times.
- Can not take over a resource node if the owner of the node has a town in the zone. However, once I took over town, all resources he possessed automatically switched over to me.

Miscellaneous
- The lack or resources, even though I knew about it, was really strange. Only managing 3 resources and cash in the demo I played.
- I was hoping they would do true "simultaneous turns" for online play, but doesn't look like this is going to happen (at least for launch)
- Overall I thought the graphics looked pretty good. The voice acting was poor to average, but even poor to average is a step up from HOMM5 in that department.

There were a few other things that escaped me, but overall it gave off that Heroes vibe. I don't know that I'd pick it up at full price, especially with all the games coming out this holiday season, but I'll definitely pick it up at some point.

Bean wrote:

Played the demo (available now on fileplanet if anyone cares to take a spin) and had a few likes and dislikes about it.
Dislikes
- Can not take over a resource node if the owner of the node has a town in the zone. However, once I took over town, all resources he possessed automatically switched over to me.

This sounds like a "like" for me. I never was a big fan of the micromanagement of resource nodes.

Yea I like the new way they handle resources. It was always a source of blinding rage in the old HOMM games when your opponent would send a hero with no troops onto your lands and just run around capping all your mines over and over and over.

The new system is a billion trillion gazillion times better.

Sinatar wrote:

Yea I like the new way they handle resources. It was always a source of blinding rage in the old HOMM games when your opponent would send a hero with no troops onto your lands and just run around capping all your mines over and over and over.

The new system is a billion trillion gazillion times better.

I never looked at it from the perspective of a hero with no units. In terms of that, I would agree with like. But when Im marching with a nice sized army and can't take over a node, it feels strange. From that new point of view though, move it off the dislike list into neutral for me. Not completely for or against it.

Bean wrote:
Sinatar wrote:

Yea I like the new way they handle resources. It was always a source of blinding rage in the old HOMM games when your opponent would send a hero with no troops onto your lands and just run around capping all your mines over and over and over.

The new system is a billion trillion gazillion times better.

I never looked at it from the perspective of a hero with no units. In terms of that, I would agree with like. But when Im marching with a nice sized army and can't take over a node, it feels strange. From that new point of view though, move it off the dislike list into neutral for me. Not completely for or against it.

I was always fine with the no army hero stealing nodes. It gave you incentive to keep a home army strategically positioned to stop heroes from sneaking in. It was also one of the ways a weaker player can even the tables a bit against a strong opponent. I know I used that tactic vs the computer.

Just picked this up and started playing. Is any one else having an issue with a flashing mouse pointer? The game isn't unplayable, but it forces me to slow down when performing actions. If I move the mouse too quickly, it blinks in and out of existence.

Tkyl wrote:

Just picked this up and started playing. Is any one else having an issue with a flashing mouse pointer? The game isn't unplayable, but it forces me to slow down when performing actions. If I move the mouse too quickly, it blinks in and out of existence.

It's a known issue, devs already have a fix for it coming in the first patch.

Surprised there's not much chatter about this one. I wonder if the shaky last few games have soured people.

I'm really enjoying the release. I did have some major issues getting the game to start up. In fact, I couldn't play at the first day it was out because of a flashing black screen on start up. Major bummer as this was one of my most anticipated titles to release this year. I did eventually find a work around and it seems to run pretty stable now.

Theres a certain charm about it that I haven't felt in IV or V. It definatly feels like there is a enough new stuff to be interesting. I like the presistant profile. I like the units and thier abilites. I like the weekly random events. I like that I didn't even know you could rotate the map. With the couple hours I've got to spend playing the impression I get is Heroes VI feels a lot more like the good old ones then the 'alright' new ones.

Sinatar wrote:
Tkyl wrote:

Just picked this up and started playing. Is any one else having an issue with a flashing mouse pointer? The game isn't unplayable, but it forces me to slow down when performing actions. If I move the mouse too quickly, it blinks in and out of existence.

It's a known issue, devs already have a fix for it coming in the first patch.

Yeah, I'm having the same thing, it's a bit annoying.

Also annoying: that opening mission. It felt a lot like a Facebook game, with the way it guides you down a tunnel and gives you just a constant stream of rewards to click on and collect without giving you a sense of why you need those things first. Not to mention the silly quests and achievements. I'm hoping the actual core game picks up and takes over from these things as I progress, because right now it feels really condescending.

Pretty landscapes, though. Especially the waterfalls.

Disgusting amount of bugs. Think I'm done until I see a patch. Otherwise, pretty fantastic.

Certis wrote:

Surprised there's not much chatter about this one. I wonder if the shaky last few games have soured people.

That, and the preview stuff hasn't really shown anything that's really grabbed me. It looks like more HOMM, but prettier - while I'll pick it up at some point, there's nothing making me think "Must spend $50 to play this now".