Circling the DRM drain - Might & Magic VI

[rk47]

Ubisoft thanks you for keeping them afloat.

Meanwhile in Ubisoft HQ:

"See, I told you, it'd work! The DRM really drove people to buy it! We'll see increased sales in no time!"

[Bann]

And my take on the demo is that this is the closest they've ever come to matching HOMM3.

Shit, I might hold my nose and take the plunge as well.

[Ingmar]

Well, try the demo yourself before you spend all that money IMO!

[Sky]

I've got to wait for the xmas sale at the earliest, but I do love me some HoMaM, or I guess MaMH.

[MuffinMan]

...or I guess MaMH.

That requires a .

[Sky]

MaMH...speak to me MaMH!

[Bann]

Tried the demo, pulled the trigger last night. Was initally furious as the demo worked fine, but after steam finished downloading the game was hanging on the splashscreen when I tried to fire it up. Spent a bunch of time reading about similar issues and stewing in my rage, but a simple computer restart later it was working fine.

Only played for about an hour so far. First impression is positive, maybe even very positive. Items seem much more in depth, with set items (just like sets from diablo II) and relic gear (gear that can get better when certain conditions are met.) I did not find any of the fights in the first part of the first campaign (difficulty at normal) to be at all challenging, but Im guessing thats because it was the first hour of the game.

[lac]

I had the same issue with the splashscreen. Can't exactly remember what solved it but I thought it was a command line switch.
I ran through the tutorial and the first few missions of the first campaign and it's exactly what I expected having played the previous iterations. Also expected was me getting bored early on because the gameplay really is the same. It's a narrow genre. Still I expect to fire it up now and again in the coming months for a few hours at a time.

[rk47]

This game is the cure to my insomnia. Demo-ed it, decided that the formula is dead and buried. I wondered why I even gave a fuck.

[Bann]

Played about another 2 hours last night. I may have just been in a bad mood, but I wasn't feeling it at all. The fights all seemed to be forgone conclusions, and the movement and fight animations seemed to drag each fight out. I played around in the options and turned on quick resolve combat, hoping it would just zip around and show damage numbers on the fight, instead it autoresolves combat for you. After doing that 2ish times, I had a hard time slogging through a 5-10 minute combat I knew I would win, but leaving quick resolve combat on doesnt leave much game to play, basically just moving pieces around a board.

If I had a time machine, I'd wait till this hits on a steamsale or something. Im sure It will scratch an itch and I'll blow through it all in a weekend at some point, but I wish I hadnt paid full price for that.

[rk47]

Wow, Bann. It's basically 'Gobble up small stacks and finally culminate the whole shit into a siege fight that determines the outcome of the game,' It gets old in the 101th turn of all Heroes series and I don't see it changing anytime soon.

I can't say I'm inclined to buy the 6th. Hell, Civilization V felt fresher than this turd. Pass.

[Xilren's Twin]

I've been playing HoMM6 for several days now and wanted to post my impressions.
Overall, while I don't like it as well as 5, it's still an "ok" and enjoyable game for me.
In terms of changes I have noticed:

Hero leveling is now very different.  You are awarded a skill point now and can direct purchase a skill from either the Might or Magic trees. 
Each tree has 5-7 types, and each type has several skills/spells to choose from.  Most skills are ones from previous games, but there are some changes.
For instance, thus far in playing the Human and Necro campaigns, the Magic tree has not had a Fire type so no fire spells for me, but i have found scrolls of fireball and such in the gameworld.
Each skill is also a Blood, Tears or Neutral reputation.  Use of Blood or Tears skills gives you points along a progress bar towards a class upgrade.
You can also earn Blood/Tears points from certain quests or building upgrades.  I havent unlocked the end class modifiers yet so can't say much about them.
Each hero seems to have a class skill that can be used as an extra combat action, and fills from combat damage (given and received). 
The Human has a 1 turn damage aborber; the Necro can raise dead.
Combat is about what you would expect, but it's not always clear when creatures have area or linked attacks which can lead to spacing tactic problems.
Spells in combat now have a cooldown, so instead of me casting say "lightning bolt" every turn, i can only do it every 4.  Might skills have the same cooldowns, but no mana costs.
Creatures that can teleport clear across the map and attack, then return to their start square with no retaliation are very annoying.
Some combats have secondary objectives, like being victorious in a certain time limit, or making sure at least 1 of your specific creature types survives.
City building seems compressed.  I've yet to be able to build any rank 4 critters homes and only a had access to a few upgrades. 
Creature upgrades seems locked into a single type rather than the two choices in each creature had in 5.
Assaulting a city is a little different in that each wall section and the gate have structure points; a catapult can do 3 damage, most use creature attacks on the gate do 1, so you can batter your way inside in less time.
The ammo cart, healers tent, and balista are gone.  Havent seen any tower defenses but i think they exist in some fashion.
Building resources are now just wood, stone, and magic crystals.
When you purchases weekly creature reinforcements, if you do a Buy All, if puts all available creatures in the city you invoked it from rather than having to shuttle around each city.
Town portalling between cities you own is ok, but i have not seen any way to directly teleport reinforcements yet.
Oh yeah, and you cannot rotate the camera at all - just panning up/down/left/right and zoom.  Hello isometric view.

The online all the time part of the conflux is meh so far.  Basically i have seen 2-5 side quests pop up per mission that you only get via conflux, and some maps have a little conflux message orb which means you can read all the highly intelligent comments random players make, 90% or which have nothing to do with the game.  Shocking I know.
You also get achievements you can unlock, and an overall dynasty XP meter for you as a player, which gives a starting mission online bonus.
Actually the most annoying part is when you leave the game, it does some sort of saved game synch to Ubi, on top of the normal Steam synch, and wants you to go to Ubi's site to spend the "points" you earn.
Generally stable, but sometime my scroll your view by mousing to the edges of the screen just flat stops working.

So in short, it appears to me to be a small step backwards, but not a major leap backwards like Disciples 3 turned out to be.
If you've a big HoMM fan, get it.  If not, i'd say pick it up when it goes on sale.
If there were more turn based strategy games like this, HoMM6 might look underwhelming, but eh, beggars can't be choosers.

[Sky]

Thanks, XT.

[Threash]

Not as good as 5 is quite harsh considering most people think 5 is the worst of the bunch.  I'd say this is the best one yet, but if you played the old ones to death you've already played this one to death.

[rk47]

Based on the demo impression - balance is out of whack, I just realized the tier 1 creatures have HP in the double digits. THAT...is fucking broken. Combat is a drawn out affair, especially if you're playing Haven or Necro for their heals. This is a valid strategy, but after clearing the 10th critter stack with the same tanking wall strat around the bowmen, you'll see the problem when you fight a fellow human player. Not a fun experience at waiting for turns and falling asleep.

[Ingmar]

Not as good as 5 is quite harsh considering most people think 5 is the worst of the bunch.  I'd say this is the best one yet, but if you played the old ones to death you've already played this one to death.

I think 4 was the worst personally, at least 5 took the heroes back off the actual battlefield.

[Sky]

I hated 4 at first but really grew to enjoy it after forcing myself to adapt to the new rules. It's probably my second favorite, overall. I'd rate them 3,4,5,2,1.

[Selby]

I'd say this is the best one yet, but if you played the old ones to death you've already played this one to death.

So if I loved 2 and played it to death and loved 1, but couldn't get into 3 and ignored the rest, I'm safe ignoring this one too?

[rk47]

Just get the demo and ask yourself 'Do you want to re-learn which random stacks are shooters and their special abilities before engaging to ensure minimum casualty?'

I got around 10-20 turns in before realizing this franchise is dead to me.

[Xilren's Twin]

I finished the Necro campaign last night, which means i had my first Boss fight.  Yeah, boss fights in a turn based strategy game.   What annoys me about it is after having played through 4 complete missions and honing my tactics for best use of my undead troops and abilities, the Boss fight throws all that out.


While it was a change of pace from having to out stack the last fight on any given mission, I can't say I liked it.
Other random thoughts - im ok with the city building changes; magic crystals have now become precious in the early game.  The two town portal types actually make moving around the map pretty painless since you can port to forts plus cities, though you will still need a shuttle hero.   It also means there's really no reason to ever leave defensive units it you cities. Ran out of useful skills to buy by like level 27, and had level capped on the last 2 missions by half way through them, which meant i skipped a ton of small fights over resources  I didnt need.  Mentor skill on a level 30 hero can instantly make  your 2nd hero level 23 with no fights at all.  Side quests are worth doing.  full map exploration always helps.   Blood abilities seem way superior to Tears ones.  Relic sets are good.  The 6th tier necro unit is so awful (Lamusa?) i didnt use them at all for 2 missions.   Tactics and adv tactics are really neccessary.  MVP fight command is "wait". Ranged uber alles and necro units heal like crazy.
.
 In terms of the races, the elves, dwarves, dungeon and wizards from V are gone.  In place of them we get the Japanese themed Water race of Sanctuary, which so far sucks.  Not looking forward to finishing that campaign.   Still has the "one more turn" factor for me, which is why steam is saying i've got 67 hours in it already (not just me, one of my boys has played some).

[Sky]

One thing 4 did really well was de-coupling units from heroes, eliminating the need for shuttle heroes.

The boss fight sounds like the thing to prevent me from bothering. That sounds awful.

[Threash]

The boss fight became trivial once i figured out it doesn't get stronger and i do.

[Xilren's Twin]

The boss fight became trivial once i figured out it doesn't get stronger and i do.

To me that just makes the design decision on them even worse.  So you're choices are either an unfun battle where we change the rules on you, or just click next turn 30-50 times for ez-mode since you have already subjugated the entire map by that point.  Way to end a 10+ hour commitment to the campaign on a high note!

[Threash]

Tacked on boss battle are becoming the pvp of single player games.  The whole dynasty/weapon leveling thing can also be skipped the same way, massive armies give massive exp.

[rk47]

I'd...rather play King Arthur. Seriously at this point...playing whack a mole for 40 turns is getting tiresome. At least a regular army in King Arthur can still inflict casualties if you play like an idiot. With Heroes VI new heal = resurrection system? It's just a matter of grinding for result.

[Ingmar]

The shuttle hero is not a big deal, because the recruitment pool is scenario-wide you can often just stop off at the nearest town to recruit without using a second hero.

You should see Lum's played time on this one. 

[Sheepherder]

Tacked on boss battle are becoming the pvp of single player games.

It's a TBS with RPG elements.  Boss battles are an obvious feature to include.  But "throw stacks of doom at the boss" is really fucking lazy.

Also, replacing all the fantasy shit with weeaboo?

[Ingmar]

Uh, what? Are you getting this confused with Might and Magic Clash of Heroes?

[Lum]

You should see Lum's played time on this one.  

I WILL FINISH THIS POS

maybe

[Ingmar]

I think I discovered it inflates the hours played if you don't close that Ubiplay window that pops up after you close it, so maybe you're not as obsessed as I thought.

I'm enjoying it thus far, but I haven't gotten to a boss fight yet.

[Lum]

I think I discovered it inflates the hours played if you don't close that Ubiplay window that pops up after you close it, so maybe you're not as obsessed as I thought.

I'm enjoying it thus far, but I haven't gotten to a boss fight yet.

Oh hell, yes, that's super inflated then, since I just leave it running. Launching it is a crapshoot on my machine thanks to all the wondrous DRM.

[Strazos]

I tried going back and playing HoMM V...and it sort of pales in comparison at this point.

[Khaldun]

King's Bounty scratched this itch well enough for me that I don't feel I need to rip the scab off now.

[Ingmar]

Really enjoying the game, but I did encounter one pretty crippling bug - sometimes when you get a week of the plague, it sets your available recruitable creatures to like -100,000 each. Luckily it keeps 10 turns back autosaved, but if you aren't paying attention that can mean a map restart, which is a lot of wasted time.

Game is cool but you might want to wait for another patch or two if you haven't already taken the plunge.

[Xilren's Twin]

King's Bounty scratched this itch well enough for me that I don't feel I need to rip the scab off now.

While I also like the KB games, they dont have the territory control, multiplayer, or city building so i consider them different enough to want both.  (plus that annoying situation where you can flat run out of creatures to buy in KB)

Still playing and enjoying it; almost done the Human campaign now.  Thought the magic heroes were faw superior to might, but having explored the skills more i could easily make a kicking might hero now.
And thank goodness that play time stat is inflated; thought my older son was either not sleeping or skipping school to drive our number that high,,,