As you know by now, Black Hole is not working on Heroes VI anymore. Since the M&M team and Ubisoft was commited to continue to improve and enrich the game beyond the release date, we looked for a new studio to work on a patching plan. This led to a period during which we couldn’t communicate since too many things were uncertain, even for us. Fortunately, things are getting better and clearer now.
Heroes VI was generally a success, although we agree it is far from perfect. This is why we intend to continue supporting it and improving it in the coming months. We can say that we are going to keep the franchise alive and there are many news to come in the near future. We cannot be more precise as there are unannounced projects coming, and we can’t spoil it yet.
There is no such thing as a “small” patch or a “major” patch. The number of issues solved by a patch is unrelated to their complexity. What seems a small patch to you can need a big amount of work, more than we initially expected – as we experienced firsthand with the 1.3 patch.
Just remember we're not talking about a small application with hundreds of lines of source code... but about a game with millions. Changing some lines in the source code can always break the game. Sometimes, there are unexplained side effects for which we need time to understand why they appeared and how to fix them.
The important thing is, 1.3 won’t be the final patch and we are committed to continue improving the game as much as possible.
After the delays we faced with 1.3 we’d rather talk about these when we are completely sure we have everything in control ?
- Why is the game still missing sim turns? It is one of the main factors that H6 online scene is dead.
Sim Turns is a very complex feature. It would be a great addition, and we know the online community is eagerly waiting for it. We have not ruled it out, but it won’t be added in one of the coming patches.
- The dynasty weapons seem more like a single player-focused feature. They are only available if you play online but if you do try to use them in multiplayer it becomes an impossible mission. Not everyone has access to all weapons due to different game versions (like collector's edition items), they can start the map at max level which gives the advantage to those that grind them through the soulforge, you can change them at any time as long as they have been unlocked in the campaigns, giving a serious advantage to the players with most weapons, not to mention making creeping considerably easier. Spending resources on lengthy lore descriptions and unique abilities seems a bit of a waste if they cannot be properly used in multiplayer, can we hope for changes in their online use?
It is important to realize that a vast majority of the Heroes players actually play only SP and are not interested in multiplayer, which explains why some content was tailored primarily for them.
- We were promised a user-friendly and moddable map editor, which isn't quite what we got. Have your priorities change?
The map editor is the actual tool used by the developers to make the game. It is very powerful, but unfortunately the work to make it more accessible and user-friendly had to be put on hold to focus on finishing the actual game. However we still plan to improve it in the future.
- Most fans will agree that the game's interface is not very user-friendly. Examples of this are not getting a proper spellbook, windowed as opposed to full screens(hero/skill/town) not to mention how tiny everything looks. Are there any plans for improvement?
One of the challenges we faced when making H6 was creating an interface that could work on both 4:3 and 16:9 screens, since more and more players now play on widescreen monitors. The solution we and Black Hole came up with (fixes-sized windows at the center of the screen) was successful in some ways and not-so-much in others. On the specific topic of accessibility and user-friendliness, your mileage may vary. Some of us were replaying some older titles of the series recently, and found themselves missing some of interface features added by H6 ?
Now we all agree the interface of Heroes VI lacks the “magical flavor” it used to have in the previous games. We’ll try to improve this whenever possible, starting by the fullscreen towns. In any case, this lesson has been clearly learnt for the future.
- Where are the long-promised town screens? Could you share a deadline?
Creating high-res 2D art is a long process. You have to find the good artists, design all the buildings, think about changes of the GUI, the aforementioned 4:3/16:9 conundrum… It took some time before we could start the actual production. The good news is, production is well under way, although we can’t give you an actual release date yet (we don’t want to jump the gun once more).
What we can say is, they will be closer to the Heroes III town screens, they will be interactive, show all buildings and upgrades, and will be released in a future patch.
- One of the major flaws of H6 was the skill system. Not only was it poorly implemented and balanced but most of its choices are close to meaningless. For example: Luck's Favoured I giving +2 luck for 2% extra chance to get 50% more damage. Assailant I giving +1 attack for roughly 2% more damage. Toughness giving +2% to your army hp. Siege master giving +1 structural dmg when you cannot even target specific walls. Such skills have minor to no impact on the game and as such they are not very appealing choices. Can we hope for a redesign of the system or at the very least making the skills similar in terms of usefulness/significance?
The skill system is clearly one of our big areas where we want to make improvements, but it’s too early to talk about specifics yet. We can tell you that work is ongoing to improve the overall balance of the skills, and this is something that will be addressed in some of the future patches.
- All might and magic classes play in about the same manner other than the different class-available magic schools and being barred from the magic and might tier 3 skills respectively. They all have access to the same might skills and exactly the same spells assuming they have the same magic schools which makes the gameplay far from diverse.. Do you plan to change this?
We are reviewing several options to promote the differences between Might and Magic heroes, and also between the Factions themselves. However it is a more complex area and we cannot promise these particular changes will be part of the announced patches.
- While healing is overused and can offer a virtually no-casualties game(by the time you meet your opponent), destructive spells remain fairly weak. What are your plans on remedying the situation?
Making healing spells weaker and destructive spells stronger is one of our goals. We are still reviewing various options for doing it properly. One of these would also include reducing the resilience of the Core units to make them more vulnerable, notably to destructive spells. These changes will be addressed in the coming patches.
- Many will agree that weakening certain spells by applying stricter cooldown limitations or even reducing their use to 1-2 charges makes them less enjoyable. Certain spells like mass healing/regeneration/stand your ground are already weak enough - especially as the game progresses - so what is the point of further limiting them? Would it not be better to rebalance such spells in other ways?
This is linked to the overall ongoing work on the skills and balance.