The Ubi/Nival alliance continues to fly with about as much understated grace as an awkward pink bird. Contradicting the promises of last week that the first patch will include updated AI, more maps, and a random map generator, Nival confirms that our first patch will now simply include a lot of ?????. Similarly, the map editor release has been pushed August, the random map generator sometime after that, and more maps shall not be known until a mystical bird named “patch two” alights upon our hard drives.

Personally, this doesn’t bother me as much as those who have been transformed into homicidal maniacs by it. Since Eric82 pointed out in the discussion following from my last post that the 20+ multiplayer maps can be customized for play against the AI, I think there is plenty enough HOMMV to chew on for the next couple of months. It just would be nice for Ubi/Nival to get their act together so as to stop misleading the community. Trust is a big part of managing a successful brand, and is a resource rapidly squandered when each week brings fresh contradictions and confusion. It happened during the beta test, it happened with the special editions, and now it’s happening with the patch releases. Honestly, hire a secretary.
The only thing certain at this stage is that Nival has ben paid enough to spend their time fantasizing over a bunch of Russian strippers who, disgustingly, have been paid to dress (and undress) in HOMMV regalia. Ouch…

The first patch has been released. The focus is almost entirely on bug fixes, with the only real addition some re-jigging of the CombatAI and a new “Easy” difficulty setting.

Here is the link and a description of the patch from Fabrice.

I had no problem installing the patch, though the Read Me recommends re-starting any saved maps since the patch can break games in progress (but not overall campaign threads). If you have a “very big map” that you are oly half-way through, you might want to hold-off installing the patch until you finish it. Nothing in the patch seems particularly critical to me.

Why do game companies penalize their good customers with incredibly annoying copy protection schemes? I’m sitting at home this evening unable to play HOMMV because I forgot the Disc 1 CD at my office. This kind of stupidity is nothing less than an incentive to crack / pirate the game. If i had just stolen the game I would not only be playing it right now, but I would also be $60 richer. It’s a ludicrous situation that completely defies logic.

I’m happy that Ubi dumped the equally as moronic StarForce, but surely there is a better solution than the stupidity that is dragging CD media around with you at all times. Perhaps a one-time online registration process? Maybe a bi-weekly or once-monthly CD check, or an alternative online passcode check? I’m not being paid to think about this stuff but someone is, and by God they should come up with something better than telling a paying customer to go fuck himself for having done the right thing.

Maybe I’ve been spoiled as a Mac user, where it is quite easy (and fairly reliable) to create a disk-image that fools the OS into believing physical media is present. But guess what: it never stopped me from buying a game, especially as a laptop gamer. Perhaps companies should take a page out of the Galactic Civilizations 2 corporate playbook, where developer Stardock’s bold decision to purposely distribute the game online and without copy protection has helped make it a sales hit.

Is everyone having fun yet? There are a lot of discussion threads about specific gameplay mechanics around the net, but not too many where people discuss the way the game “feels” or is “paced”. What do you think?

Generally, I’m finding the game a little “sparse”. There are certainly a lot of goodies on the map to be discovered (goody!), but even on the biggest maps cities seem few and far apart. This is really reducing my sense of strategic depth and grandeur. Typically I can beat the AI on “very large” unscripted maps by using that most simplistic of Risk strategies, the “roving mega-army”. I haven’t played HOMM3 in years, but I don’t remember it being quite so predictable. Maybe the Nival map designs are just boring? Maybe the 3D translation has messed up the sense of scale and distribution of objects on the map?

I’m also not to sure about hero skills and abilities. So far my magic-based heroes have been far more valuable that those with the combat skills like Attack, Defense or the Sylvan Ranger skills like “Deadly Shot” and “Rain of Arrows”. I appreciate that these can lead to some really powerful synergies in the end, but it seems like a waste to use all your hero skills to increase the damage dealt by the hero or stack when a simple direct-damage spell will accomplish the same thing *and* allow your hero to get the really good combat skills like luck and morale, or map skills like logistics. Smells like HOMM2 where the “chain lightning” spell was so effective that I never bothered teaching my heroes anything else. Some of the artifacts are a little overpowered too such that the hero who finds them can pretty much press the “I Win” button.

If anyone would care to play me online, I’d love to test out some of the multiplayer features against some real intelligence (email me @ obiter@gmail.com to arrange some play time). My initial experience trying to find an opponent through the game was pretty grim. Most players were condescending Euro-trash assholes hurling insults and racial slurs at me because I happen to live in North America. Brilliant.

I’m well on my way towards writing a fairly exhaustive review of the game in lieu of all the useless reviews from the mainstream websites, so look for that in a week or two.

Our pals at Celestial Heavens report with more info from Fabrice and Nival on upcoming additions to HOMMV. Speaking in interviews (with Age of Heroes) and on discussion forums (in Russian), the latest batch of promises somewhat contradicts earlier information. At least somethings never change, eh?

We can now expect the following:

• The map editor will come with the third patch, due mid-July, and will include two new map sizes: Small (72*72) and Huge (216*216). It will also offer campaign editing functionality.

• Eventually there will be an option to disable the camera flyby in towns (I tried to tell them but they wouldn’t listen).
• 10 new multiplayer maps will be released starting from the second patch. After these, Nival will start making new maps available gradually without any relation to patches.
• The second patch will include descriptions of creature abilities.
• Tweaks to the AI will be ongoing throughout the patching process.
• Duel mode “will be improved” — whatever that means.

All in all, it smells prety good to me. Regular patching and content updtaes are something usually reserved for MMOs but it certainly works just as well with HOMMV to keep the community interested, happy, and hungry for more. If Nival can actually meet the monthly schedules, HOMMV might manage to patch a path to a deserving score of 80-90% by the end of the summer.