u/Hizsoo

#Art Style

The game really needs different kind of art for environment and troops and they failed at it. Some clean and distinguishable silhouettes for troops to stand out. The establishment art design principles appear to be neglected. Needs less ugly weather and particle effects. It's really cluttered. Even pixel art games can do better than this.

The 3D lighting really looks awful at certain areas. They really need a talented art director and guidance.

Even with Ai, it looks really awful. Far from honest good work. They would be better off cultivating their Ai for their use case. Ai works better, if it stays within the provided framework.

The lava terrain on the adventure map having an outstanding glow and being surrounded by bright textures is ridiculous.

#UI

I assume that the most overlooked part of the Heroes 3 remake is the UI. The size of most UI elements looks great, but the aesthetics are underwhelming.

The hero inventory looks bad. Too many square shaped boxes. The hero portrait is at the middle and it's distracting from the gameplay flow. Parts of the UI with the same functionality shouldn't be broken up into pieces.

There are multiple parts of the game with resource management and management simulation. Most of them needs to function smoothly and support fast decision making.

#Perspective

I don't mind it as much, that they switched to full 3D graphics, but let's not forget about the simpler alternatives.

Having a well implemented fixed camera requires less work, less system requirements and it's less distraction for the players. In case a fixed camera creates more distraction than the closest alternatives, than it's just a worse implementation.

Film makers could know it better that a camera is really useful for directing the attention of the audience and provide a unified experience with less unnecessary details. Having a focused experience with a fixed camera have a certain charm and involves less uncertainty.

A smooth gameplay flow can be a lot more important, then immersion.

#Outside positive examples

Visual clearity is pretty important. Some boardgame and magazine designs are superior, compared to 3D graphics bloated with effects.

Some colorblind settings make visual clearity better for everyone.

You should be aware that there will be no major patches during ongoing tournaments. Olden Era is not officially an e-sport game, but you can expect that Unfrozen is loosely following e-sport regulations.

We are likely to get a bigger patch after the Alvari cup.

Te genetikai hulladék! Akkor szóljál bele, ha már nem anyádnál laksz, fizeted az adót és már letettél valamit az asztalra! Amíg a szüleid kenyerit eszed, addig ott azt csinálod, amit mondanak!

There are...

• The Kreegans from Inferno

• The Angels from Castle

• The Lizardman from Fortress

• The Ancients from the cancelled Forge faction

Wow. If I've seen some great creative fictionan world building, then it must have been elsewhere. Every joke is new to child, but people regurgitating the greatness of the Might and Magic lore are on something else. Ai does better slop, than a nerd with onesided sci-fi fetish and obsession.🤌🤌🤌 Such a plague for the fantasy game.

And than Unfrozen was foolish enough to involve John Van Caneghem in designing the Schism faction.

The concept for the Temple faction is that they are really good at funneling.

• T7 - When a positive effect is applied to your creatures, it also applies to your Angels. Angels can also soak buffs from the enemies.

• T5 is the main cavalry with flexible flavor: A secondary damage dealer funneler OR team utility

• T1 is a basic melee unit with a little flavor: Offensive or soaking

• T2 is a ranged unit with a self buff

• T3 is the low tier cavalry unit (Griffin) with a self buff

• T4 is a supprt unit with targeted buffs

##T6 is a melee troop with defensive self buffs, but this Inquisitor is too lame.

Ignoring a portion of the enemy's attack when being hit functions better as an alternative layer of defense that they can't penetrate, then just giving additional defense.

The melee range and the defensive stats make the Inquisitors better at holding position defensively. They have awful target access and can't just purge any enemy that you want.

Inquisitors seems to be really lame without strong offensive buff spells. They don't do much.

It would be a huge improvement, if the Inquisitor's self buff would also apply to a friendly target and if the purge would be ranged as well. Than the Inquisitor could sit down and have no need to movement boost anymore.

####They have really narrow counterplay.

The Hive T3 unit and it's upgrades, Hornet, Chanter, Stinger are a bit awful for being a low tier cavalry unit. They are definitely more underwhelming, than Hell Hound and Cerberus in direct contact combat.

The Cerberus works well with their high attack, speed and initiative while having no enemy retaliation and cone attack. The insects are just coming in hot with some utility effects. It's a problem with these T3 insects, when they provide too much team utility. The rest of the faction should rather provide the follow up for them. Not enough raw stats or self sufficient abilities. It's not fair to compare troops across multiple games, but Griffin and Aga'Soth Riders are also more reliable.

Hive creatures seems to be mismatched.

Hornets should do the raiding with Swift Strike.

Reavers should do the feast with damage based on stack size or guaranteed kills, while having a barrier that absorbs the first enemy attack in each fight.

Waurms should have some regeneration and debuff or DoT. Growth and decay.

Direct alternative to spell cooldowns. Instead of preventing the use of the spell, each seal increases the mana cost of the spell. Lose one Spell Seal of each type per turn.

- Pay more to cast the same spell again.

- In case that casting cheap spells too frequently is a problem, than here's something different, than cooldowns.

##Hive

Replace Scorpions with new creature that slightly resembling what H6 Breeders could have been. The new creature is to be based on Carrion Queens from PoE: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Carrion\_Queen

It's attack type could be anything, but I prefer short range with high damage and receiving more melee damage.

A big bug that spawns small bugs. One of it's abilities has to be to spawn an exploding bug to deal AoE damage. Either spawns bugs as temporary units, (player control is not necessary for these units), OR the bugs are just alternate animations for projectile, AoE & debuff abilities.

Starts the combat with max ammo (3/3). Generates 1 ammo per turn. Simple abilities cost 1 ammo. Strong abilities cost 2 ammo. The 1 cost ability deals more damage and sends a bigger bug, if the target is within 7 tiles range. Can consume a Focus Charge to generate 1 ammo. Scrap this whole section if unnecessary.
If we can't have mana for caster creatures, than I prefer some ammo and ammo generation instead as a direct alternative. Ammo was an exclusive resource for shooters in previous Heroes games. Shooters in Olden Era have unlimited ammo and practically can't run out of ammo. Don't get confused by it. Ammo have a different interpretation here.

It's weird that Hive has a lot of melee units, but none of the melee units have AoE abilities. The Larva blowing up is like a cheap band-aid. Maybe their melee troops make up for it with focus fire and target selection.

Fire Larva from Summon Swarm to be demoted to being a perk.

Make the Hive Queen pick 1 out of 3 stance bonuses for herself after the deployment phase for the whole combat.

Hive and Inferno are supposed to be offense factions that are tactical and don't wait for the opponents. Adaptive choices can cover their weaknesses. The current T4 & T7 already have some adaptive abilities. Go further! It's better than using the Larva in some annoying and time consuming ways. The role of the Larva shifts at different stages of the match, but stance bonuses are more consistant. I think that swarming the enemies with Larva OR Scarabs are annoying game design dead ends that are unhealthy for the game, unless it's a versatile troop which can be quickly disposed.

Replace Summon Swarm with a skill, like Trimvirate's Strength with stance bonuses. Your hero can pick a stance each turn. Make a perk for it, that rewads for staying in the same stance. Flat bonus every 2nd turn.

• Damage & Initiative

• Shield & Defense

• Speed & Attack

• Spellpower & temporary mana

##Dungeon

Replace Trimvirate's Strength with something. Pick 1 out of 3 debuffs for the opponents after deployment: Snake mark, Bull mark, Chthonian mark.

Trimvirate's Strength is good, but too generic and boring. Easy to forget. Hive could get more out of doubling down on adaptive bonuses.

Rework for the attribute distribution of Dungeon heroes.

Some players complained about that they want the old attributes profile for Dungeon as a spellpower & offense faction. Olden Era is the only game where Dungeon has a balanced attributes profile and faction skills. Applying a debuff at the start of combat, like poisoning the enemies is more simple and a better fit for Dungeon's theme across multiple Heroes games. An assimetric playstyle creatures more interesting player interactions.

##Schism

Make Abyssal Communion give different types of bonuses after every 2 Communion level. (1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8)

Schism gets too much of the same thing. Too much Shadow Army.

I checked out the game that keeps getting referenced. Rogue is genre defining, because it was inspirational for later games and also genre defining, because the whole industry still didn't quit the player terminology: Roguelike. Most importantly, Rogue doesn't have meta progression. Has the least amount. Other aspects of Roguelikes can be described in other ways. I'm taking a broder approach to categorise the meta progression of a lot of games, not just fantasy RPG games. This categorisation doesn't factors in the possible effects of the player character's death or other game fail states.

Roguelike is less like a genre and more like a sign about the level of meta progression within the game.

##Types of Meta progression:

• Yes - There is continuous meta progression in the game between multiple play sessions.

• Soft - Players accumulate permanent progression for their player profile, and temporary progression within each match.

• No - Every match starts fresh. Players may gain gameplay modifiers during each match.

• Denied - Meta progression is not included in the game due to early technical limitations or hostile design.

Command & Conquer: Rivals is a fast paced RTS game for mobile. Further development for the game was halted a few years ago. Here's squad showcase video from the early days of the game: https://youtu.be/xHdP\_56TsCQ

Rivals has hex based combat AND SQUAD MECHANICS. Age of Wonders 4 could have been a better example, but I didn't played it. M&M: Era of Chaos also has squad machanics, but a bunch of players in Heroes subs hated the game's graphics style and the payment model.

A lot of players complained about troop size in Olden Era and fail to grasp the concept of squad mechanics. There are stack sizes for creatures in Heroes games. Occasionally there are a few cases of multiple models within the same troops, like the Ghosts in Heroes 5.

The squad mechanics could have been good enough for Heroes 7, where the creature abilities were really basic.

The active creature abilities are pretty flavorful in Olden Era. I wouldn't be satisfied with less. There isn't much of a way to turn back. It would look comical, if a squad of Minotaurs would use ground slam.

There are a few things that come to my mind:

• A more rich lore for Blood Omen 2

• Erasing Ascendence

• Extending Soul Reaver 1 & 2 as they were originally intended

• Trim down time travel while adding proper fillers between major events

Probably dragons, goblins, kobolds, dwarves, Leprechaun, catfish and maybe Troglodytes.

I'm interested of having a few creatures fulfill this stereotype in a pirate faction.

Would be much better, than some creatures with silly, anime fantasy or simple jank implications.

Command & Conquer: Rivals is a fast paced RTS game for mobile. Further development for the game was halted a few years ago.

Rivals has hex based combat AND SQUAD MECHANICS. M&M: Era of Chaos also has squad machanics, but players in this sub hated the game's graphics style and the payment model.

A lot of players complained about troop size in Olden Era and fail to grasp the concept of squad mechanics. There are stack sizes for creatures in Heroes games. Occasionally there are a few cases of multiple models within the same troops, like the Ghosts in Heroes 5.

The squad mechanics could have been good enough for Heroes 7, where the creature abilities were really basic.

The active creature abilities are pretty flavorful in Olden Era. I wouldn't be satisfied with less. There isn't much of a way to turn back. It would look comical, if a squad of Minotaurs would use ground slam.

Hating it the least is about being tolerable and a stable bottom line. The weakest part of the faction getting less disapproval.

Reddit only allows 6 options in polls, so some of them had to be excluded.

Excluded:

Inferno: The troops are kind of ugly, janky and it's a low tier faction.

Castle: It's not as impressive to hate Castle. They are boring, generic, overrepresented, zealous and dumb. Excluding any other faction would have caused a bigger outrage.

View Poll

I think that there is room for having 2 water factions in a Heroes game. They should be designed with distinct differences in mind and be included in separate DLC.

##Cove

Geography: Caribbean, Tortuga, Indonesian

Theme: murky water, poison, mangrove, steep shores, Spanish

Creatures: pirates, catfish

Candidates: Naga, eldritch, barnacles, aligator-snake, salamander, seer

##Sanctuary

Geography: Japan, Australia, mediterran, chinese caves

Theme: clear water, venom, open sea, smooth bech shores, moist caves

Creatures: Shark Guard, Coral Priestess,

Candidates: Mermaid, Octopus, sea horse, dolphin, swordfish, stingray

I format my posts in the app in mardown and after I hit post, a few things happen: Double linebreakers get simplified to single, so they no longer work. "/" gets inserted in front of "#" and "*", so it gets displayed as simple text and don't work. I don't use a big variety of ways for markdown formatting, so I wouldn't know every problem I could have.