quote:

Originally posted by xEaGLeNeC_:
Post your reasons why this game failed commercially.
is it because of wow ? people are tired of tbs games ?

Lets discuss.

4 me, it failed because of unusable / unplayable multiplayer. Even if it worked sometimes when we played little maps with no portals and no underground, and we did manage to finish game, we have no way to make serious map due to non existing scripts in mp... 4 example, in H4, we had maps that was perfect for 3 player multiplayer with in game mode changing> with limited time or limited resources and few other settings that we could change during the game by visiting certain object on map, and giving correct answers to questiuons there. Without scripts that is just not possible. Every map, no matter how good it is, is not interesting after 6 months of playing over and over... H5 is most beautifull 3d game that ever seen, and regrdless of missing script possibility I spent 3 days on re-making one H3 map that we playes for hundreds of times and 4th day editor just gone dead while saving... and it distroyed my 3-day effort. I lost interest on starting editor ever again... Yes it was stupid of me, not to make backup copies, but editors in h3 and h4 never had any single problem, and I was using them almoust every day.

So, just becuse of that H4 was better than H3, and because of that and becuase of mulitplayer beeing worse with every patch, H5 is dead 4 me.

DP.

Please do not flame about "perfectly working multiplayer" if you did not *really* played and finished multiplayer maps with 3 or more players on serious maps.

quote:

Originally posted by Moragauth:
Unreal, anecdotal evidence and a lack of people posting on a forum don't prove the case that HV was a failure

OK, so what evidence can anyone provide to prove it was a success? I am open-minded enough to change my opinion if I was presented with some facts on sales figures. I can only think of one reason a company would hide this. Perhaps so the brand has some value left in case they find a buyer? As far as Amazon, it seems to me that if HOMM did not sell well there, it is likely indictative of total sales. We are talking about the largest seller on the internet, not some local computer store. Study some statistics will you.
I never said HOMM5 was not a well-done game (well, after TOTE, anyway), I just agree with the original post that it was an unsuccessful one. Perhaps if there was never a monstrosity like HOMM4, and TOTE was released as the initial offering and not the second expansion, things would have been different. We'll never know.

For evidence just use the search engine and check the forum - the game producer Fabrice Cambounet at least few times posted about it. Can you post the link about Heroes V sales at Amazon?

I just can't understand why a commercially successive game have to be automatically a favorite for everyone. You think Heroes III is clearly better, OK. But that doesn't mean Heroes V was a commercial failure.

It'd only be a failure if Ubi failed to realize a profit or break even with it. That'd indicate the resources were badly used, and that they should've been invested elsewhere. Now, unless someone has some figures showing Ubi to have incurred a net loss on HV, I'm unconvinced that it "failed". The onus of proof is on those claiming it is a failure, not on anyone else.

It may not have lived up to its full potential, but very few games do anyway. I enjoyed it more than HII and HIII, and in spite of its flawed MP, I liked the game... for me that is sufficient for it not to be a failure.

First off all ubisoft consideres HV a successes and are happy withe the results. They are working on a new web game for heros. They hade not been putting more money in to the game hade they not been happy.

But we not talking about ecominc or sales success her are we? We are talking about is this a clasic! So instead on foucsing on success or failure, we are debating did it live up to expectaions. That is the real qustion we could be debating.

For me its not a clasic but on the other hand it never could be one. The expections for the game was to grate. But when i get my new pc ill be abel to play it again wiche i will. The gamley on itself was realy good, and user interface was ok. I loved the units and the maps. The campains where not that good, and the in game cut sceens where just bad.

I have to admit i never got online to play the game so i guess that is omthing i could be realy critcal about. But then agin this is a hot seet game for me. So no bigy for me.

So all in all HV as a game did what it should it has paved the way for H VI.

So to answer the qustion "Why Heroes V failed?" You asked the worong question. And should have asked way its not a clasic.

And good to see how many old guard poster there are out there.

quote:

Originally posted by unreal_az:

If the game would be good there would be more then 10 posters around here/day ok?
Where are the people that were so active when the game was announced? Zamolxe, Kartabon, Znork, Oak.. etc? Don't you think they kinda got bored with the game and stoped playing it?

We are her all of us withe exsaetion off zam. We are just not posting her Wiche dosent meen we are not active. Right now we are we are at heros kingdoms wiche will be fun nett based mmorpg version of heros. Come over and say hi.

quote:

Originally posted by digitalpriest:

quote:

Originally posted by xEaGLeNeC_:
Post your reasons why this game failed commercially.
is it because of wow ? people are tired of tbs games ?

Lets discuss.

4 me, it failed because of unusable / unplayable multiplayer.

I think that too. HV had the worst multiplayer I have played on any recent TBS. The devs made a huge mistake listening to hardcore heroes fans. I remeber some polls asking about what the devs should focus on: "multiplay or single-play?" and the majority always were "single play"... and the result of that is what we get today. Of course the hardcore fans are very proud, but the world gave it a pass.

There is no way, at least nowadays, for any strategic game to be successful and have a prosperous and long life without great multiplayer fun.

If, as you are not tired to repeat over and over again "the world gave H 5 a pass", why would "the world" hang around here and discuss that? If your claim is true, the world has moved on, so who do you expect to discuss this with you? The "world" that gave H5 a pass? The "aliens" who did not?

10 people discussing a game yaaay....
I played Heroes 5 cause there is no other game at this moment tbs fantasy, but fear not Disciples 3 and King Bounty are near.

hey I have a problem I've never posted on forums before so excuse me if what i'm doing is retarted.

I thought someone might know how to help me.

I have a Heroes V game and I try to run it on Vista and it doesn't work it stops everytime at 60% I downloaded directX 9.0 and everything and I still don't get it.

The error reads:

component: gm
File group: [gm] data
File: F:\data4.cala
(cyclic redundance check)

^^ Theres your problem, Vista.. theres nothing wrong with the game, its the crappy crappy OS your using. Vista is so full of bugs i've heard nothing good about it.

For me even though I spend more time waiting for the computer to actually input and run the commands (only 512MBs of RAM) Its engaging enough for me to want to sit through the computer taking 30 secs - 1 minute to load up the castle/buy creatures screen repeatdly.

The storyline is awesome, they did a really great job on it. The cutscenes work just great the way they are, if they did the fancy animated video cutscenes it would add a lot of extra needed production time and money. Extrangance that just wasn't really nessary and not really needed, the in-game cut-scenes were more then adaquate. The video cut-scene for the Heroes V intro was more then enough. The only thing I can say is that what they could have done was try and keep the requirements down, I think 1GB of RAM is a bit heavy handed for the graphical level in the game. (But then i'm using the lowest settings possible and it still runs ****!)

bummer

is there no patch to make it run for Vista, I have searched but I have had no such luck, though I have read in other forums that they have gotten heroes V to run on Vista...

I'm a little confused.

Lets keep focus on the subject: why the world gave heroes a pass.
I blame nival.

I think the purpose of this thread was to discuss why Heroes V was a commercial failure. Since that question has been answered like a dozen times, we can conclude this discussion.

xEaGLeNeC_, you still haven't answered the question - from where comes your knowledge that the world gave Heroes V a pass? Judging from the activity in the Ubi forums? Amazon sales? Opinions of your friends?

@steve_3800 the error you get is not due to vista.
I'm preety sure you can't even install the game.
The error is related to faulty disk(s).
Take it back to the store and get another one or try with another dvdrom/cdrom (depends on media).

Btw it failed due to this:

Ign review for Homm 5: 7.8/10
http://pc.ign.com/articles/710/710358p3.html
Ign review for Homm 3: 9/10
http://pc.ign.com/articles/160/160222p1.html

Gamespot review for Homm 5: 8.2/10
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/heroesofmightandmag...l?tag=result;title;0

Gamespot review for Homm 3: 9.1/10
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/heroesofmightandmag...l?tag=result;title;1

Do you want to know why Homm 5 got so big grades? For me 8 is big. Cause it the ONLY GAME that is fantasy tbs that has this many castles, troops, skills, artifacts etc and people were waiting for something new for years.
If disciples 3 came out 2 months before this game and it would have recieved a 9 grade lets say, trust me homm 5 would have gotten max 6....

So basically people buy and play the game cause there is no other, but these aren't excuses for the multiplayer problems and bugs and the time computer takes to finish a turn.

quote:

Originally posted by unreal_az:
@steve_3800 the error you get is not due to vista.
I'm preety sure you can't even install the game.
The error is related to faulty disk(s).
Take it back to the store and get another one or try with another dvdrom/cdrom (depends on media).

Btw it failed due to this:

Ign review for Homm 5: 7.8/10
http://pc.ign.com/articles/710/710358p3.html
Ign review for Homm 3: 9/10
http://pc.ign.com/articles/160/160222p1.html

Gamespot review for Homm 5: 8.2/10
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/heroesofmightandmag...l?tag=result;title;0

Gamespot review for Homm 3: 9.1/10
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/heroesofmightandmag...l?tag=result;title;1

Do you want to know why Homm 5 got so big grades? For me 8 is big. Cause it the ONLY GAME that is fantasy tbs that has this many castles, troops, skills, artifacts etc and people were waiting for something new for years.
If disciples 3 came out 2 months before this game and it would have recieved a 9 grade lets say, trust me homm 5 would have gotten max 6....

So basically people buy and play the game cause there is no other, but these aren't excuses for the multiplayer problems and bugs and the time computer takes to finish a turn.

Ok, I admit your post qualifies for an entry in the list of most absurd claims ever, since it can field even two of them in one post, and as such has some entertainment value.
Next time I see something that is well reviewed, I'll remind myself that the good review is only due to the fact that the testers don't have the products for comparison that will be presented to the public in three years.
Also, I'll really have to stop buying and using things just because they come with the largest amount of stuff to play around with or just because they happen to fit exactly into the description of what I like.

IOW, it failed to live up to your expectations. Fair enough. But to me that is not sufficient to brand it a failure... If getting lower scores than a prequel is now considered to be signs of a failure, I wonder how many games "fail" this way. A commercial failure it is not...

It is the only game? Rubbish. AoW II is still around, as are many other TBS games. Ever considered that people actually like the game? Gamespot's average user score for the game is also high. The site is not charitable with its reviews (as user scores always tend to be higher than review scores.) You're grasping at straws.

I started out being massively disappointed by Homm V. After playing the game for a while, adding HoF and ToTE and patches, the game is now very playable to me. I'm still waiting for that final patch to solve the AI, speed and stability issues, but even without that patch, I will keep playing. One other problem to me is the poor maps created by the RMG, they all look the same, just with small variables, which cuts down on replayability.

I have high hopes for Homm VI, and I really hope that all issues in Homm V will be addressed, plus a lot of new exciting features added. I don't expect it to be an entirely new game, but some major changes have to happen.

All in all, considering the size of this project, it's not all bad, but it does have some birth defects that I would not have expected from a company that has delivered so many great successes. I can kinda recognize a little bit of what was said about the lack of alternatives. There really isn't anything like Homm that I would consider an acceptable alternative, and I concede that I'm probably putting up with a lot of things I wouldn't have put up with if there was an alternative.

I personally don't see this game as a failure. I know quite a few people who play it. I couldn't stand IV. I don't think I ever finished it. I like III better only because there are a heck of a lot more quests and a heck of a lot less bugs. I like the improved graphics in V, but my only real complaint is the bugs and the fact that it is so short.