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[Xenofex_086]

I know that Ubi has been in charge from the beginning, but they're not the ones doing the programming, testing & designing. Changing developers (or making the wrong choices in developers) has been the biggest problem Ubi's done IMO. That, and of course pushing the developers to release by a specific time.

Oh, just that? They're nearly innocent then. Probably Black Hole also enforced the nigh non-existent communication policy to Ubisoft and told them that they will be allowed to patch the Conflux before anything else gameplay-related or otherwise they will get insulted and refuse to develop the game further. Man, what blackmailers!

But even BH, the basic concepts of the game and the mechanics were solid and very good. The implementation though...pretty piss poor.

That's not a problem, the game still has potential and even if it never turns into something material, it's good to know that it could have been something good, right? Right?

[Quique30]

Oh, just that? They're nearly innocent then. Probably Black Hole also enforced the nigh non-existent communication policy to Ubisoft and told them that they will be allowed to patch the Conflux before anything else gameplay-related or otherwise they will get insulted and refuse to develop the game further. Man, what blackmailers!

That's not a problem, the game still has potential and even if it never turns into something material, it's good to know that it could have been something good, right? Right?

Heh, I like you

Sir Charles, I respect your opinions and I know you've been around since...forever. But making UBI look almost free of guilt in this mess is the wrong choice. Publishers are responsible for the games they publish. They take the risks and, as a result, they receive the biggest share of their sales. Among their duties, it's QA (shared with the developer). You can usually see that in the credits. Now, tell me how (and this happened to me) huge oversights like making all the "exclusive" weapons, digital deluxe edition included, available for everyone at no monetary or dynasty point cost passed them by? Or the nice ability to compare achievements that made you effectively lose all of them? These are no simple bugs or misspelling errors. These are the kind of things that should have never seen the light of day had QA done its job.

Add to this the lack of communication and the horrible, HORRIBLE(!) DRM that are UBI's sole responsability and well, you get the picture.

This has been an experience I won't easily forget. And I feel especially sorry for the future of one of my most beloved series of all time.

[KingImp]

Sir Charles, I respect your opinions and I know you've been around since...forever. But making UBI look almost free of guilt in this mess is the wrong choice. Publishers are responsible for the games they publish. They take the risks and, as a result, they receive the biggest share of their sales. Among their duties, it's QA (shared with the developer). You can usually see that in the credits. Now, tell me how (and this happened to me) huge oversights like making all the "exclusive" weapons, digital deluxe edition included, available for everyone at no monetary or dynasty point cost passed them by? Or the nice ability to compare achievements that made you effectively lose all of them? These are no simple bugs or misspelling errors. These are the kind of things that should have never seen the light of day had QA done its job.

Add to this the lack of communication and the horrible, HORRIBLE(!) DRM that are UBI's sole responsability and well, you get the picture.

This has been an experience I won't easily forget. And I feel especially sorry for the future of one of my most beloved series of all time.

Thank you and very well said. Ubi has to take a lot of the blame because they are the ones in charge. They make the decisions about what is done and what isn't done. Twice now they've deliberately gone with bargain basement developers just to save a few bucks. I can't wait to see what 10 man developing studio team they go with next.

Ultimately, what Ubi says goes and they are to take full responsibility for letting this garbage not once, but twice get out the door. And one would think they'd be more careful after H5's release. Never in my wildest dreams would I think that they'd allow H6 to be even worse. There were never this many bugs in H5 as there are in H6 and now there is no hopeful outlook for it being fixed properly now that you've all but confirmed BH is done.

Oh, and I don't want to hear, "well the fans can mod it." No, it's the developer's responsibility to fix things, add things, and make it right. Not the fans.

[Dreamwright]

Thank you and very well said. Ubi has to take a lot of the blame because they are the ones in charge. They make the decisions about what is done and what isn't done. Twice now they've deliberately gone with bargain basement developers just to save a few bucks. I can't wait to see what 10 man developing studio team they go with next.

That is absolutely accurate and one of the most prominent reasons why I chose to cast my protest vote. Looking at their Massive studios and games like World In Conflict, I know for a fact that Ubisoft has the resources at hand to make something really special out of the series, but constantly the production team elects to go for ill-fated coalitions with one outsourced team after another, rather than, say, lobbying for a few dollars more and assembling a solid internal team which will actually accumulate experience over time.

[C_h_u_c_k_l_e_s]

Oh, just that? They're nearly innocent then. Probably Black Hole also enforced the nigh non-existent communication policy to Ubisoft and told them that they will be allowed to patch the Conflux before anything else gameplay-related or otherwise they will get insulted and refuse to develop the game further. Man, what blackmailers!

That's not a problem, the game still has potential and even if it never turns into something material, it's good to know that it could have been something good, right? Right?

Okay, feel free to just put words in my mouth. Is Ubisoft blame free? Heck no. I never said they were. The bottom line is that it's their game so the end result is theirs. But my point is that they didn't do the game design. Sure, the communication with the fanbase has ALWAYS been horrible. We're constantly pushing them to communicate more. Heck, that's probably our #1 most common comment to them over the years. But communication doesn't change the programming.

[C_h_u_c_k_l_e_s]

Heh, I like you

Sir Charles, I respect your opinions and I know you've been around since...forever. But making UBI look almost free of guilt in this mess is the wrong choice. Publishers are responsible for the games they publish. They take the risks and, as a result, they receive the biggest share of their sales. Among their duties, it's QA (shared with the developer). You can usually see that in the credits. Now, tell me how (and this happened to me) huge oversights like making all the "exclusive" weapons, digital deluxe edition included, available for everyone at no monetary or dynasty point cost passed them by? Or the nice ability to compare achievements that made you effectively lose all of them? These are no simple bugs or misspelling errors. These are the kind of things that should have never seen the light of day had QA done its job.

Add to this the lack of communication and the horrible, HORRIBLE(!) DRM that are UBI's sole responsability and well, you get the picture.

This has been an experience I won't easily forget. And I feel especially sorry for the future of one of my most beloved series of all time.

Again, like I said to Xenophex, I'm not saying Ubi is blameless. Quite the contrary. I'm only pointing out that putting all the blame on them is also misdirected. As for the QA, I can't answer that. We're not involved on that end of things. To be honest, we weren't nearly as involved as we were in H5 IMO. The communication issue has always been there. It was there with Nival as well. I don't know if it's Ubi who's putting the muzzle on them or if it's simply the fact that they're spending the majority of the time working on the game instead of conversing with the fanbase. Who knows.

I just find it odd that people are so surprised by the way things went. I guess people were expecting things to run more smoothly than they did with H5. I certainly wasn't. We had new team leaders from Ubi on the project, we had new developers on the project, they weren't just modifying the previous game (like h1 to h2) but rather starting from scratch yet again...this had repeat offenses written all over it from day 1 IMO. Now that they're using another developer again to do the patching just tells me we're going to go through the wringer yet again. This has nothing to do with the skill or quality of the team working on the game. It has to do with their amount of experience on this particular game. Anytime you're tackling heroes for the first time, it's going to be difficult. IMO the worst mistake that Ubisoft made with H6 was going away from Nival.

[C_h_u_c_k_l_e_s]

Thank you and very well said. Ubi has to take a lot of the blame because they are the ones in charge. They make the decisions about what is done and what isn't done. Twice now they've deliberately gone with bargain basement developers just to save a few bucks. I can't wait to see what 10 man developing studio team they go with next.

Ultimately, what Ubi says goes and they are to take full responsibility for letting this garbage not once, but twice get out the door. And one would think they'd be more careful after H5's release. Never in my wildest dreams would I think that they'd allow H6 to be even worse. There were never this many bugs in H5 as there are in H6 and now there is no hopeful outlook for it being fixed properly now that you've all but confirmed BH is done.

Oh, and I don't want to hear, "well the fans can mod it." No, it's the developer's responsibility to fix things, add things, and make it right. Not the fans.

Yes, Ubi makes the decisions...but those are mainly the "big picture" decisions. A LOT of the day to day stuff they let the developers go their own way. But I TOTALLY agree with the comment about the developer selection. This isn't saying that either Nival or BH are bad outfits. From what I've seen...they're solid outfits. But switching them, pushing them, restricting them...that was NEVER going to work. I'm never going to be on board with a deadline of any type for a game like this. It needs MORE time than most types of games. If Ubi actually developed the game in house, maybe they'd know that.

And yes, there WERE this many bugs in h5. Heck, there were MORE. I think people are remembering things more fondly because of how things finally turned out after the expansions. But h5 was a mess for a LONG time.

As for BH...I've never gotten a complete answer on them. It sounds as though they're almost going under. I'm not sure. But right now, a different team has taken over (limbick). Whether that's permanent or not, time will tell.

As for h6...they're fully committed to fixing everything from what I've heard. They've got a very comprehensive patching plan in place to fix everything and add new things. As usual, with a game this big and complex, the time schedule is never going to be accurate. But they are working on things to fix the game. They're not happy with the current state, they know the fans aren't happy with the current state and they certainly don't plan on leaving things as they currently are.

[C_h_u_c_k_l_e_s]

That is absolutely accurate and one of the most prominent reasons why I chose to cast my protest vote. Looking at their Massive studios and games like World In Conflict, I know for a fact that Ubisoft has the resources at hand to make something really special out of the series, but constantly the production team elects to go for ill-fated coalitions with one outsourced team after another, rather than, say, lobbying for a few dollars more and assembling a solid internal team which will actually accumulate experience over time.

Spot on. Outside developers could conceivably work...but only if given plenty of time to learn on the job and from their mistakes. I've never understood them not using in-house developing. Baffling.

[C_h_u_c_k_l_e_s]

@
C_h_u_c_k_l_e_s : so you can confirm that Black Hole Games does not develop the game anymore?

No, I can't. The last I heard, BH was struggling financially to stay afloat. I do know that a different team is working on the patches. Limbic. But they've done some work on the Heroes games before. So they're not COMPLETELY new. But any switching of developers is a bad thing from my perspective.

[Xenofex_086]

Okay, feel free to just put words in my mouth. Is Ubisoft blame free? Heck no. I never said they were. The bottom line is that it's their game so the end result is theirs. But my point is that they didn't do the game design. Sure, the communication with the fanbase has ALWAYS been horrible. We're constantly pushing them to communicate more. Heck, that's probably our #1 most common comment to them over the years. But communication doesn't change the programming.

That's an understatement and the actual situation has been discussed since Ubisoft took over the franchise. They may not be designing the game but they are certainly approving the design as market-worthy, be it from purely gameplay perspective, technically or whatever. The things that Black Hole can be blamed about are not that many and I'm not a programmer to point them objectively. However, I do happen to know some stuff about management, dealing with customer expectations, marketing and advertisement and things like that and I can certainly say that Ubisoft's behaviour is - by far - a textbook example of what should not be done. The didn't only shroud a low-budged game in almost total secrecy during the development and frustrated a huge number of people, they also didn't do anything to improve their image or the image of the game and its future when it was released and it became apparent that many of the pre-release concerns were well-founded. No need to continue with the DRM (which is treated as the most important feature of the game!), the promises for good post-release support and all of their other promises in general, the fact that they cut so much content and as usual plan (or were planning, the recent events make it doubtful) to release the rest with expansions and of course charge the players for it, etc. - I suppose you are fully aware of these things yourself. And that's a big corporation we're talking about, not some backwater publisher struggling to survive. It's just like that - Heroes is a low priority project for Ubisoft because they think that the TBS genre is a niche genre with limited customer base. And even if part of this is true, Heroes is still the most popular TBS by far and, if handled properly, can easily generate more than 1 million sales even nowadays, piracy and idiotic anti-piracy policies notwithstanding. Of course after this series of failures the masterminds in charge of the project will probably think that it's become an even more niche game and won't bother further - which is by the way very good and my hopes are to see the franchise sold to some competent company.