Why hasn't it been equalled?
doesn't it have major issues with faction balance and spell rng and combat being fiddly and combat order w/r/t mass haste/slow
>>736340298>faction balanceIt's mostly a pve game. From what I've seen of competitive play they often balance factions via randomly selecting 2 then having the players bid for the one they'd prefer to play using their starting gold. So if it's Castle vs Inferno and both players prefer Castle one says "I'll give you 1000 gold to start Castle" and the other says "I'll give 3000 gold" the other says "I'll give 4000 gold" and the other says, okay, 4000 gold. They balance it that way to an extent, but again, it's mostly a PVE game and all the factions are fun to play for different reasons. >spell rng There are resists, ya >combat fiddly combat order I don't think that's an issue.
People just pretend to like it to seem worldly, it has artificial popularity
>>736340298It absolutely has faction balance issues, what are you talking about. In casual PvP games you eat dirt if you pick say fortress or inferno. But in PvE it doesnt really matter and in competetive PvP the starting castle does not matter that much, you mostly gather your army through neutral dwellings in the map.
>>736341518Great map! >>736341794In casual pvp most people won't be equally skilled so if you're decent at the game you can pick those factions, otherwise there are a lot of good ones to choose from.
>>736340000Fuck off faggot. It has been by 4 and 5. Even 6 to some degree and olden era will soon follow.
>>736341518>it has artificial popularityThat's so blatantly wrong I can't even bother to insult you properly for writing that. Suffice to say that I played Heroes III co-op with my older sister when we were well into our university years, while her only other gaming experience consist of The Sims 1&2, King's Quest VI and Age of Empires 2 (where she only played custom maps without opponents so she could build a comfy village and pick berries).
>>7363422374 is awful, completely hideous game. 5 is pretty good from what I remember but has aged significantly worse than 3. 6 I've never played.
>>736342237>>736342326compare this beautiful homm3 with pic related ugliness
I never understood the "gameplay" of these games.You're just hard gated at every turn and have to do things in a specific sequence with little leeway.
>>736342395How do you mean? Every turn you have options in where to explore, what to build, what fights to take, what skills to level up, what to pick up/what to prioritize and what to buy/not buy, how many heroes to build, how you chain them, how you navigate terrain, etc.
>>736342447By hard gated I mean paths of progression through the map are hard gated by some enemy you can't kill until you harvest most of the resources in your available area. Then just that over and over.
>>736342757Not really the case generally
>>736342345>>736342393Thats why you are subhuman retards. You compare strategy games based on looks instead of gameplay. I wont deny that 3 is the prettiest of them all but it has zero depth compared to the sequels and lots of balance issues.
>>736342393I will also add the fact that 4 looks much better in movement while 3 has mostly static map.
>>736342990The gameplay in 3 is great too though. Being a timelessly beautiful work of art that looks and sounds incredible and is enjoyable to experience is definitely the main selling point, but it wouldn't be a fun/addictive game if there wasn't lots of gameplay elements that make it good And I think homm3/homm3 mods are the most played competitively among the entire franchise
>ai necro players and covers of fucking darknessYou should be able to disable this fucking building reeee
>>736340000I liked Age of Wonders 1 more.
>>736343098Compared to what? Throwing rocks outside home irl? You havent played any games in the series besides it. If you did you would know how lackluster it is. I sunk thousands of hours into the series 3 included of course. The game is boring, shallow and repetitive. It plays the same every single time. Gimping yourself to play differently doesnt count. The fact that many people play it doesnt mean shit when their taste is trash and iq too low to play any other entry in the series. Is fortnite or roblox the greatest game of all time? Heroes 3 players be yapping like they know anything but havent played anything actually
>>736343169got rid of it
>>736343587I've played 2, 3, 4, and 5. I like them all except 4 but 3 is the one I really like to play. >does popular = good When it comes to games which are 20+ years old it tends to, yes, and the game in the franchise which maintains the largest competitive following tends to the the best. Some of the best games ever made like >warcraft 3 >brood war>aoe 2 >super smash brothers melee Are all over 20 years old with dedicated competitive followings to this day, because of their quality. If 4 and 5 were much better games than 3, they would probably be the ones played at a competitive level among homm players, but i don't think they are
If 4 is so god-tier, why is nobody playing or talking about it?(besides constantly seething and whining ofc)
>>736341518more of these map edits lmao
>>736343647Deluded. Heroes 3 has a huge following because its so fucking easy to get into and play and is pleasing to the eye. That is all. Im a slav we all played this game to death. Even my mother that doesnt play video games at one point was playing it. Doesnt mean its a good strategy game. Nobody that plays 3 competetively has any skill that could be useful in other entries. Maybe besides 1 stacks and chaining. Other heroes games are still played but the fanbase is smaller simply due to the fact that the games dont look like 3. You have even examples in this thread and countless other in previous ones or the ones that will be made in the future. Morons shitting on games they havent played simply because they dont look visualy appealing to them. Or they played 4 for 5 minutes and shat themselves because it was different than 3.>I've played 2, 3, 4, and 5. I like them all except 4Funny because 4 has the most depth out of all of them. Once again proving me that heroes 3 players are people that dont play strategy games.
killed this bitch on my turf earlier and was able to buy with boots of speed from tavern... shame about eagle eye though. I wish I could see all the skills AI heroes build into because it'd probably be pretty funny
>>736344154I don't know if you're right or wrong, but how the game looks and feels matters and 4 is just too ugly for me to want to play. Among old games, the ones that are still popular, like all the ones I listed, are still very good to look at, even 20 years later. AOE2 is a good example, has a similar art quality to homm3 and still looks better than games made currently.
>>736343739I play it (also 5 and even 3) with friends. Mostly pvp but not always. Always looking for new people to play with.>>736344154I will also add that you can see numbers of people playing 3 because it has a lobby. You cant measure playerbase of 4 and 5 simply because its more fragmented.
>>736340298No one but cum guzzling esports faggots whose entire worth is defined by their multiplayer rank in a children's hobby cares about balance in video games.
>>736344215Its fine. It just boils my blood when people praise this game so much even tho there are better ones in the series but they havent played them and talk shit. Visuals are subjective they cant be judged the same way gameplay can. And 4 looks like a fairy tale. I mean yeah some units are butt ugly but the overworld is beautiful. I dont get the hate for 5 either. It looks old but not dated. Motherfuckers dont know what dated means.>>736344379Your opinion doesnt matter you shitter. I bet you laugh at game journalists in other threads but as soon as someone with knowledge shits on your game you start seething. Also balance should matter since this game was build around playing with others.>children's hobbyyeah nevermind you are a retard. here is your (you)
>>736344472Nah he's right, 3 is still the GOAT for a reason. You can seethe all you want about strategy but no one cares. Games are meant to be fun first and foremost and 3 has always been the most fun.
>>736344472>visuals are subjective Not really, and if you want to stress that, then EVERYTHING is subjective and why say anything about anything ever? To pretty much everyone 3 looks very good and 4 looks very bad. You like what 4 looks like, but I see this and I'm turned off fundamentally. To me, 2 looks like a fairytale and is also very beautiful >5 5 looks... fine, but in terms of creature design it's not as good as 3 or even 2. Your passion for 4 is interesting to me though, maybe I'll try it sometime, but I do generally just play vs ai as i don't know people to play the game with and according to this video I'm watching the AI in 4 isn't really worth playing
>>736342757By properly using magic, kiting and stack splitting to soak up retaliations you can clear way, way harder creature dwellings than you normally would be able to if you played like a newbie and just ran the armies into each other. If you're one of the people who just played HoMM3 as a kid then watching a really good player play out fights feel like cheating because they constantly pull off bullshit stuff like dragons with a handful of troglodytes and then use the rewards from killing dragons to snowball their powerstack.
>>736344712Nice thing about the game, can be played and enjoyed by children for the wonder and beauty of it, and also by adults of all skill levels. And one of the best local multiplayer games ever made too
>there's a homm4 schizo nowthis board is such dogshit
>>736344527The fact that some people thing diving in septic tanks is fun doesnt mean its fun in general. The strategy is the most important part of strategy games yes. I know 3 babies dont play strategy games so thats ok. Im used to your retardation. Art can have different styles moron. Do you also want to tell me that cross and circle game is on the same level as chess?>but I see this and I'm turned off fundamentally.Have you tried playing the game instead of looking at static pictures? The game works. Besides it doesnt matter im not arguing about the visuals. Im talking about the gameplay and the fact that this game is judged solely on how it looks. One of all the other elements.>5 looks... fine, but in terms of creature design it's not as good as 3 or even 2.To each their own. Pit fiends in 5 actually represent their status. Meanwhile in 3 they look laughable. The problem is 4 is an unfinished mess when it comes to ai so learning the game vs it is pointless unless playing on custom made maps that are just hard. Its just too dumb otherwise.>>736345050Im here to combat the schizo that is calling OE a tranny game and all the brainlets calling homm 3 the second coming of christ. Also call me the "unpopular heroes games schizo" since i dont praise just 4.
>>736341518the crazy part is the castle on the left side is a fan mod.
>>736344892>And one of the best local multiplayer games ever made tooLmao. When bulwark came out i played one scenario then got bored.>>736345176Its terrible. By design and lore. Vori got butchered. Cant belive we went from cove to factory and this piece of garbage.
HoMM 4 is fun fun but it is kinda ugly. It still has some of that charm, atleast in the overworld and music, but other than that it's worse than HoMM 3.
>>736345163pit fiends are one unit, and they look fine in 3. The vast majority of units look much cooler in 3 than 5, pic related You can like 4, maybe it is good, but I don't understand why you hate 3 so much
>>736343769
>>736345863>Fantasy game
>>736345545I dont hate the game. Ive been playing it since it came out and once upon a time i was a fanboy defending it as well. That was before i played in depth all titles that came after. I hate 3 dick riders. It isnt the best in the series. Thats all. All the critique towards 4 and 5 is they are ugly(subjective) or they arent 3. Its as fucking dumb as saying chicken sucks because it isnt pork or vice versa.
>>7363458953 babies made sure of that. just another reason to hate them>>736346613
>>736346613If chicken smelled really really bad, like a rotting corpse, it wouldn't matter if it tasted slightly better than pork. That's the actual analogy
my only real complaint is that the enemy AI spawns a metric ton of heroes that run around and hide and are just being annoying pieces of shit late game on big maps, and that late game devolves into town portalling and DD all over the placebut that's more of a map size issue, dunno how HoTArds play on gigantic maps. Even XL gets tedious and boring fastotherwise it's our modern day chess, if you're not a brainlet
>>736346741Do you have a single fact to back that up or are you just another retard? Can you show me a single review that shows how trash 4 is? How unplayable or dogshit it is? Doesnt have to be by a "professional" just somebody that actually played the game.
>>736340000>perfect colorful graphics>perfect amount of different races>PERFECT sound effects>P E R F E C T ost
>>736347012I'm saying it's so ugly it's genuinely offputting in substantial way that's important, not that it has bad gameplay.
>>736346831Chaining is the answer to that. You dont allow ai any breathing space. Chaining is also why this game isnt chess. Its like a really convoluted mazing game.>>736347049>different raceslol. lmao. they all play the same almost exactly the same. you have 4 unit archetypes.>>736347054>cant enjoy a good piece of vidya because one element is "bad". its also the least important element of a strategy game. i could understand if it had visual clutter that made it so you are unable to tell what is part of terrain and what can be interacted with but it isnt the case.
>>736346831I love when I can finally outscale and buckbreak all the shithead AI bitches who have been pissing me off for months on end showing up every time I walk out of my castle and running around in my lands stealing all my mines and recapturing cover of darkness towns and being annoying FAGGOTS i love when i KILL THEM
>>736347209chaining is only useful in mid game, one strong hero walks in and your chain is decimated
>>736347362chaining is what allows you to kill enemy off before they start shitting out heroes. then its a matter of cleanup. also the point of chaining is to have your whole army present in every direction of your chain at once. so you cant be caught off guard. good god this game is so awful. or this mechanic should i say. it doesnt make any sense.
>>736340000Age of Wonders has always been better.
>>736347680If you play on 200% you can't get enough gold to make huge hero chains on 99% of scenarios this isn't really how the game is played. Chaining is like a way to shuffle troops from town to your main hero who's 3 turns away.
>>736347680you're only allowed like 8 heroes on the map, how the fuck are you going to chain your way on XL maps while being deep in the enemy trenches? You're just asking for your reinforcements to be slaughtered along the way by enemy mains
>>736345895 i try to put a lot of bait out there like calling the gnoll hut a witches hut and calling fortress stronghold
>>736340000Too much soul. Quads of truth
You know a strategy or tactics game is good when you're rewarded for bringing LESS units instead of MORE.
>>736347982Sure, the ways people figured out to do things in this game are non-intuitive and clever uses of game mechanics. When do you typically have to fight 1100 rust dragons in normal gameplay btw?
>>736347738>>736347806you dont understand the game because you play against ai. on big maps there is always enough resources to get to the hero limit fast. you chain to get rich and powerful. obviously the advantage you get from that depends solely on how good you are at taking fights and how far you can push your army. that way you get control spells from mages guild/map/artifacts and its gg then. just clean up. boring and repetitive. thats why mp is superior. you never know how your opponent will play.
>>736348054There's that one campaign mission where you have to fight like 4000 nagas, it happens.
>>736347982but is it fun repetitively kiting enemies for 2 hours?
>>736347982this is what heroes 3 boils down to and what people consider "good gameplay" puzzle maps. because its a puzzle game. also a good game would make me utilize my whole army in some way and not just dump and never recruit/build slow units. or even mediocre untis like griffons.
>>736348063>on big maps there is always enough resources to get to the hero limit fast No there isn't when you start with 0 gold and 0 resources. What you're referring to are ultra rich specific pvp templates. Anon earlier referenced ai and you told him he needs a giant chain to combat their annoying faggotry. If you play on 200% difficulty you start with 0 resources and will probably have 2 or 3 heroes only for quite some time.
>>736348128>a good TCG would not have any bad cards in any sets Optimizing unit speed to improve your hero over-world movement is game knowledge that improves performance. It's like saying the skill tree is bad because some options are inferior. Pokemon is a bad game because not all 150 pokemon are equally viable in competitive play, etc.
>>736348128well obviously you want to rush to T7 units, but griffins are like the best T3 units in the game wtf are you doing bro?
>>736348197Griffins are like the worst unit castle has, I don't know why noobs have such high opinion of them.
I find IV more fun and immersive for campaign play. The stories are pretty nice and the music is top notch.
>>736348231they are maybe optional but a flier that has infinite retaliates is really good in castle sieges, a spower stack of them is way better than cavaliers or knights who will have to camp outside castle walls for a while during a siege
2 is my favourite and the one I always go back to. Mostly because of nostalgia but I don't think 3 offers enough different to justify playing that instead, even if it is widely seen as objectively better in every way, it seems dull to me without the nostalgic charm.Heroes 4 was so much fun also despite the hero gimmick being so broken it destroys the game concept. They were heading in the right direction and the game was way overhated.
>>736348134IF ITS A GIANT MAP how the fuck do you allow ai to reach you before you are done with getting control over the most important things on the map? you deal with early incursions with chaining and then your main hero deals with their towns once he gets some movement. are you really that bad that you cant reach hero limit week one on 200%? if the answer is yes then just practice. thats the solution.>>736348185designing a game when you skip 80% of the game is bad game design. also all pokemons have their own niche tier and league they can be used at. show me a niche for fucking zombies or wraiths. they are bad enough that i would rather turn them into more skeletons for the powerstack>>736348197they are shit compared to the rest of the castle units. and thats why they are never built. they dont lead to any building and you need to build t4 just to get to them. yeah they are tanky but not tanky enough. yeah they have damage but not enough. yeah they are fast and fly but not fast enough. absolute dogshit game.>>736348310teleport or earthquake. yeah i know nobody uses these spells because there are only 4 viable ones in this turd but cav dont need to wait and castle has natural disposition towards water school so you are more than likely to get the teleport.
>>736340000HotA improved upon it.
>>736348461>are you really that bad that you cant reach hero limit week one on 200%?purchasing 7 heroes costs 17500 gold and that's without purchasing any troops or structures. On the vast majority of scenarios you do not even have access to that much gold week 1
Need the right time and right audience. If it released today, it would have fizzled out in a few months. It did have an amazing base however. The og game came with so much content already, and then they had all the tools to create more maps. So even if you did not love playing the game, a lot of people found joy in creating maps. You just don't get that anymore.
>>736348461HoTArd spottedyou are playing it rong
>>736348461Spells that are good in combat>magic arrow >slow >shield >haste >stoneskin >bless >prayer>protection from (air and earth)>lightning bolt >meteor shower >berserk >teleport >frost ring >chain lightning >implosion >armageddon >resurrection >animate dead>summon elementals >firewall >dispell >cure >clone
>>736348568thats only 40 gold piles maximum or 18 chests plus waterwheels/leprechauns plus all the resource banks you can find. it really isnt that much. also you dont need all 8 instantly. but you still should end up with them.>>736348635>736348635hota at least tried to balance this game. and make it more playable and diverse the playstyles. what exactly is wrong?
>>736348740forgot >blind and maybe a few others, but there are plenty of spells and use cases for every school of magic. I've even seen pro players use quicksand or whatever it's called. Curse, destroy undead, death ripple, fireshield all sometimes used as well
>>736348740start with haste if you are a might hero or slow if you are more of a spell caster. chain lightning and implo are the only damage spells you need. summon air elemental and the worst case scenario is a draw. resurrection spam is also viable. berserk only if you fucked your build and got fire magic (nice game design).the rest is used rarely or never. spamming magic arrow against first enemies doesnt count.thats 5 spells that are useful. i will be generous and throw cure and blind in there
>>736348759Chests don't all have 2000g in them. They don't even all have any gold in them. It's more like twice that number of chests, and no you won't even find 18 on most scenarios week 1, lol, and that's still assuming the ONLY thing you spend money on is heroes.
>>736348759>what exactly is wrong?it's missing the point, adding more bigger doesn't improve the core gameplay progression in any way, it's just empty fluff. Having added Conflux alone is already stupid
>>736348857This just isn't true
>>736348857what's your opinion on Prayer and Bless? I think Bless is pretty decent early on.
>>736348902smartest 3 retard at full display.18x1000(the minimum amount of gold you get from a chest) is 18000. i was also generous since you can obviously get more than that. you forgot all the other shit i mentioned but its obvious to me that you are stunted so one thing at a time i guess
>>736348461>designing a game when you skip 80% of the game is bad game designThe game was not designed this way, it was optimized this way by the competitive playerbase, which is a strength of the game, as truly knowledgeable/skilled players interact with the game completely differently from new or experienced but unskilled players. My dad has been playing this game since it came out, for fun (because it's a very fun game) without a competitive concern in the world, and I would be shocked if he knew hero movement speed was contingent on slowest stack in army.
>>736348929go back to playing restoration of erathia then. why the fuck are you even here? it doesnt add bigger. it actually tries fixing this shit game. making more skills viable. making factions actually stand out.
>>736349208HD mod is all you need, fuck your minmaxing autism
>>736349084early on yes. very good. on some units especially like storm elementals or hell hounds for example. vs ai of course. prayer is better than haste if you have a fast army so they can reach without the speed bonus anyway or if enemy doesnt have much mana.
>>736349142okay my bad, it's late and i was conflating the 500xp you can get with gold you can get That said, what you're referring to is gameplay on ultra rich pvp templates designed specifically to speed up the game and featuring things like tons and tons of gold to pickup and tons and tons of creature objectives. The average shadow of death scenario played on 200% difficulty does not feature enough gold to play in that style. You don't ramp up 8 heroes and then get infinite wyverns from pickets (which do not exist in shadow of death btw) and other creature rewarding objectives. That's not the way the game works in shadow of death scenarios
im not trying to be a contrarian or anything (and i know theyre not exactly the same) but master of magic was KING
>>736340000Perfection cannot be beat.
>>736349170doesnt mean its not a bad game design. if something is so bad you skip it its bad no matter how you look at it. and since you are talking competetive level. there is barely any recruitment or building up the cities going on. its a joke. why should i care what your dad thinks of this game if he lacks the knowledge? should random people start applying for jobs that require certain knowledge or skills they lack?
>>736349268what genre is heroes 3 again? if i want to discuss strategy you better fucking belive i will. if its shit you better belive i will tell you. but just so you are happy: both heroes 3 without hota and with is bland boring trash. that looks good but is still trash
>>736349558turn BASED strategy, you should know that by now
>>736349471It's not bad game design. >since you are talking competitive level I'm not. The way the game is played at top competitive level is very different from how it's played by most people who continue to play and enjoy the game to this day. >there is barely any recruitment or building up the cities Again, for most people who play the game, this isn't true. Playing PVE is how most people enjoy the game and that's how PVE is played. The competitive maps and strategies look fine too, which is why they're also popular, but it's not something I'm super interested in, and I play quite a few games somewhat competitively
>>736349318wyverns were present in shadow of death as were angles. the only creature banks that were not were giants/cyclopses and firebirds (im talking about the important ones that you encounter the most because im sure there was more of them)obviously you adjust to the demands of the map but chaining is still top priority. it allows you to gather shit faster. that doesnt change.>>736349615so bland and boring i would rather replay crusaders of might and magic than play 3 again for some timebtw if any of you are actually interested in playing the games let me know. i can even play 3
>>736349756yeah, you're not convincing anyone, in 10 years time slavs will still play HoMM3 like it's chess
