Hi Everyone,

I'm back to answer your questions about Heroes of Might & Magic: Kingdoms. As you all know, this project is still ongoing and we're doing our best to meet all your expectations and we're working as well to secure a date for the Beta. Now, on to the questions!

P.S. - Justice, your story was great

Cheers,

How many cities will the game have?

We plan to have 3000 to 5000 players for each world with a maximum of 8 cities per player. It's possible to have 40,000 cities in one world.

Will heroes have unique abilities?

In HOMM Kingdoms, your heroes will be very different depending on the careers and skills combination you choose. With a total of 13 careers and 47 skills with 3 expertise levels each, there are hundreds of possible combinations.

Will there be faction specific buildings?

Each faction has their own buildings and units, but they are very different from each other when it comes to the strength of their armies or the extent of their magical abilities.

Earlier it was said that a hero can be captured when he fails a scouting mission. We also learned that someone can be a scout mercenary of some sort. How does the scouting system exactly work?

When a hero scouts a city we compare his scouting level (including any bonuses from artifacts) to the most powerful hero of the targeted city. These parameters dictate whether the result is a success or a failure. There are different levels of success and failure, so depending on the level of your hero you will have more or less info on the city. If you fail you will be spotted, and injured or captured.

Will the "Week of the..." system remains the same?

Yes, we adapted it a little bit to fit the HOMM:K gameplay but the logic is still the same. Now, the week system only affects resources. However, we add a daily system meaning that you will have two systems that you can anticipate by a clock system. Depending on the day, the resources will be more or less expensive when you send/buy it to the NPCs merchants.
If you choose to play as a merchant, you will have to pay attention to the rates and stock some resources before having a very advantageous day.

Will the Tears Of Asha will be in the game?

Yes! You will be able to discover the "very rare" Tears of Asha while exploring the world of Heroes of Might and Magic Kingdoms. How to use it? And what is it for? Two questions I can't answer yet

Yaiden

aaah finally thank you, definitely some interesting answers. I hope though chances of completely failing a scouting are low. It seems kinda lame you lose alot (30%) of army due to a failed scouting.

Yay an update!

I hope that Yaiden isn't so secretive about the Tears of Asha because it will be the win condition.(find it->build it->protect it->win ? )

Yay! Seems like my posts are kinda magical the following one is the update! Cool - t

Keep up the good work guys - we all have faith in ya!

I think Tears of Asha will have temporary effects, and for example next week will be in other place and other player can find it.

quote:

Originally posted by mtkyebra:
I think Tears of Asha will have temporary effects, and for example next week will be in other place and other player can find it.

That would certainly be more interesting but I hope the game will have some kind of cool end game phase.

I'm not sure but I think that has not been answered:
Have the heroes a maximum level?

quote:

Originally posted by mtkyebra:
I'm not sure but I think that has not been answered:
Have the heroes a maximum level?

The maximum level being 40, each hero will have only 40 points to spend, tough choices ahead!


I hope we don't have to wait 3 months for the next update.

Excellent update! It is good to hear that servers will have 3-5K players. Should be plenty of room for everyone.

And the hero careers and skills are pretty impressive too. I think this is going to be a great HOMM game and probably one of the best browser games around. It seems to have both accessibility and depth.

Hopefully the Tears of Asha will be implemented in various ways on different servers... having the chance to play open ended vs. finite servers with set win conditions would turn one game into two or more with very distinct strategies for each.

Thanks Salad, I didn't remember.
Oooo I'm seeing me playing in all servers.

But if there are finite servers and we achieve high hero levels...in the infinite world we would't have much to do. Or maybe take cities and expand more than we can in finite servers.

I expect that beta players will have the last word in the "player feeling" and we can change that kind of thinks if we don't like the result.

quote:

And it's not that he can't post those things, is because that's considered spam and I won't tolerate it. Start to be patient is the best way to get a good game

aha so negative comments are considered spam..
gotcha.
+1 for those kinds of totalitarian moderators

first you don't post updates, then you remove the forum, then you add it back, and still no game after a year of announcing..

you guys seriously failed

quote:

Originally posted by mtkyebra:
But if there are finite servers and we achieve high hero levels...in the infinite world we would't have much to do. Or maybe take cities and expand more than we can in finite servers.

The way I imagine it, an "infinite server" that keeps running allows player alliances to rise and fall over time. There would be lots to do from a collective standpoint, but from an individual standpoint, yes, I suppose you'd end up maxing everything out. Though even then, a lot of players will rebuild their personal empire to make it more effective, or because of rule changes affecting balance.

quote:

Originally posted by Aragorn_748:
first you don't post updates, then you remove the forum, then you add it back, and still no game after a year of announcing..

you guys seriously failed

That's a total troll post. I think the community management could be a little more transparent, but really, I don't think too many people are interested in HOMM:K yet other than the die-hard fans who are already here. The Devs and community managers have to think of the bigger picture. If they whipped everyone into a frenzy then fell further behind schedule, there would be a lot more than a few dozen disappointed people like there are now.

I also think HOMM:K is a pretty ambitious project. Just based on what we know it will have more features and a greater scope than any other browser-based massive multiplayer strategy game that I know about. That kind of thing takes time.

quote:

Originally posted by vizier.mv:
I also think HOMM:K is a pretty ambitious project. Just based on what we know it will have more features and a greater scope than any other browser-based massive multiplayer strategy game that I know about. That kind of thing takes time.

Well I wouldn't call it an ambitious project you have to remember that Ubi is a game industry giant while most of the browser games are made by little companies.
People expect a lot more from big names and if they want to keep the hardcore browser gamers( ) they have to offer more than just shinier graphics and they also have to meet the expectations of the HoMM community.

As I was writing this I realised why the player limit is so low (I thought this was a bad idea before) compared to other browser games.
In other games there are so many people that you are just a number.
But by decreasing the player limit you and your actions have more impact and players can get more involved.

quote:

That's a total troll post. I think the community management could be a little more transparent, but really, I don't think too many people are interested in HOMM:K yet other than the die-hard fans who are already here.

Your b***** knows no bounds. Well not anymore no. People have gone long by now. And this policy will alienate future customers even more.

quote:

The Devs and community managers have to think of the bigger picture. If they whipped everyone into a frenzy then fell further behind schedule, there would be a lot more than a few dozen disappointed people like there are now.

Yeah that's a good policy. Talk about ignore the issue here. BTW, they _already_ did that. They did whip people into a frenzy, fell behind schedule, and now they are doing damage control. How do you know how many people left?

quote:

I also think HOMM:K is a pretty ambitious project. Just based on what we know it will have more features and a greater scope than any other browser-based massive multiplayer strategy game that I know about.

.

Ambitious ? Then you obviously don't know a lot. It's basically a rehash of travian, with prettier graphics. It's all been done before.

quote:

That kind of thing takes time.

apparently..i guess you're one of the failing devs?

LOL Aragorn, I don't think you did anything to make yourself sound less nutty with that rant.

The fact is that I'm not afraid to call the devs or community managers out. In fact, I did just that on my fansite last week. Because I thought they deserved it.

But they responded. We got a new update. We got clarification on where they are in terms of internal testing. If communication was the problem, communication we got.

So I'm hopeful that they'll keep that up from now on. After all, we're only here because we think this is going to be a great game. If it is, we'll be the first to let the world know. Hopefully Ubi will respect our enthusiasm and throw us a bone once in a while from now on.