King`s Bounty: Warriors of the North announced

[Mygaffer]

Sooooo excited about this. When I heard they were ditching this series, which has been so successful for them, and trying to release an MMO, a field that is nothing if not overcrowded and 2012 has several great looking MMO's slated for release, it never made any sense to me that they would be releasing an MMO.

I will certainly be buying this day one.

[Rah]

North Warriors is a great news

I would like to see a new multi-level campaign. What I mean is a single campaign as the ArmoredPrincess campaign or the first one, but with the option to start at different locations with different races and this would affect the quests, the story (in some degree) - like you are helping your race to win against the others in some world threatening events and decide the outcome.

I would like to see some skills affecting the creatures skills like in the first KB, but fixed (I remember that when you unlock some skill, it was unlocked for neutral enemies as well - maybe this was fixed with the latest patch but I haven't played that part so much as AP, so I cant tell).

I definitely don't want to see the micromanagement cut or simplified as some readers here suggested - see what happened to Heroes 6, it is a disaster and definitely a grand mistake, so please devs, keep this in mind, I already have thrown in the bin the latest spawn of a once great game (HMM) - not only for this reason but this counts as well. Leave the running around for buying creatures as it was. Don't make the game predictable and too easy and straightforward!

Create three-four destiny points in the main quests so you can have different game-end. Dont play with good-bad finals but something more interesting as pushing the world in this or that direction (and you can use this in an expansion as starting points, like a finale where the elves are enslaved and they fight vs. demons for freedom, or a world where the magic is banned, or a world with almost extinguished lizards, or a world which is too much order and no fun controlled by humans etc.)

As for the dragon/spirit/Valkyrie since it is only one spirit give it several directions for development, like stage 1, where you have to choose between might and magic, stage 2, where you have to choose between order and chaos - in this way you can deal with the longevity and the desire of the players to try different options - keep the spirit independent from the hero classes - three hero classes with order/might, chaos/might, order/magic and chaos/magic spirit gives you many choices and play-styles. I remember how fun it was playing with 4 different spirits. And you can do this with only 2 variables and a little imagination

Invent at least one more resource for buying creatures, possible 4. If you use one, you can earn it after fighting level 5 creatures to buy level 5 creatures and from main quests. When the player is out of it, s/he has to play again with 1-4 level creatures and again try different play-styles, not using only dragons for example. If there are 4 main resources, they could be used for creatures from different races and again you are giving more options.

In the first KB I liked the idea of gaining different noble titles but this had no effect on the game. You can use this in a way desired from many players here, and this is the idea for OWN castle, which the hero can rule and build. Each title gained gives you the opportunity to upgrade it and built some dwelling. I don't know if this is not in collision with the copyright and if you are allowed to move so closely to Heroes of Might and Magic, but if there is no problem, you can implement this idea. Each title will give you the right to build a dwelling of the next level, mage guild with researched spells, teleport to the castle, marketplace/artifact merchant. There could be side-quests like random notice from the game that the castle is attacked and you have to return to it, for a random fight against a hero/army.

What about creatures items? Every stack could equip one item and it alone would be effected by its special properties, not the whole army. Or you could equip the stacks with one potion to be used on that stack in the battle - only one again.

There are so many other ways to improve the game. You can fix Necro for example. What I mean is that it lacks (at the moment) the sinergy between units. Actually many other races lack this, but in Necro this is very obvious. Skellies are OK, Zombies - not, I dont think someone uses them in their own army, the two ghosts are pain in the ass when oversizing, vampires are strange with no life drain in human form and as bats they are not interesting (atleast for me) - play a little bit with numbers giving vampires life drain, remove the no-retaliation and instead of that give them unlimited retaliation - I tried this in a self-created mod and the results were very satisfiting both playing with and against them, give the Liches cloud attack properties to heal adj. friendly undead (they are supposed to do that and to help other lesser undead) etc. Remove the oversizing possibility for ghosts and because they are spectral units, give them chilling attack which makes the blood of all living creatures freeze or because they inflict fear-effect on their minds, next attack in the same turn from other undead is more powerful - this is one way to create synergy between units, or make all zombies taunt enemy attacks in some distance and give the liches the ability to resurrect into no-life all lvl1 and lvl2 undead (skellis and zombies), again you have synergy here.

And all lvl 5 units could have some auras depending on their aligment. This is another option to improve the tactic side on the battlefield. These auras could be improved by some hero-skills...

[Fatt_Shade]

@Rah Some nice ideas, but some arent much useful :
1) starting campaign in different locations with different army not doable i think. it would be better to make spawning enemy army depending of game time, so when you get back to some location you can try out new units/skills/items you acquired so far. So making limited enemy/battles is not interesting.
2) Changing skills-units is not big problem, it can be modded easy by players here on forum. What we need from game developers is campaign,islands, and good functioning editor.
3) Bigger difference between hero classes would be nice, because so far in all KB games i played only difference between warrior/mage was leadership/spell dmg. Same skills/medals/items available . . . too monotonous
4) New resources nice idea, but in HoMM we had many resources but no lds limiter, here we have only gold but every hero is limited heavily by lds and units available to lead.
5) Hero titles, and owning castle not bad, but where to place it and how to control what happens there . . . This is turn based tactical strategy game, i dont think managing castle would go with it. We play with what we have at disposal, not what we would want to have in inventory
6) Creature items, not good idea. Look red sands mod for CW, there is unit exp system which give great new play style, so no need for unit items if game developers take that for new WotN.
7) Like i said changing individual skill or unit abilities or passive unit talents is doable after game get out, and players get their ideas about how to fix what developers missed
Just hurry up, and get it to market already

[Rah]

Some nice thoughts there, Fatt_Shade.

I hope the devs are willing to create a new game, not to upload what we already have.

1 -> All areas have different difficulties and quests. Creating templates which adjust the difficulties and creating many versions of the same quests, depending where you start, makes this possible.

2 -> Everything could be modded. I prefer to pay for the game and adjust it slightly if needed, not do it alone from the scratch like everyone in the bronze age was doing everything for himself alone. It is called industry. Game industry in this particular case.

3 -> Nice you are open to some changes.

4 -> Following this logic, lets take the gold out from the picture.

5 -> I don't like Red Sands and the idea of creature experience. I tend to memorize the creatures stats and skills and there is a sane limit for that. Memorizing thousand variables will get me far away from this game. This is one of the reasons I don't like games like Diablo and WoW, where you have unlimited items with different random numbers, percents, combinations etc. This is the same with creatures gaining experience. Too much statistics is as bad as too less.

6 -> Of course there is a way to do it. Castle turns could be equal to 5 or 10 battles fought or so. Castles could be limited to one race only, artifacts offered do not differ from the artifacts in the other "static" castles. Just another castle, but it will give more depth to the game in some aspects. I like people that have ideas and think over them, not people that when looking at something new, have this initial reaction to refuse it.

7 -> Do you think that a third game under KB hat if made with slight changes in the game play will be a success? You can not sell the same thing in different package and think that the customers will not expose you. There is no worse thing than leaving the customers feel cheated for what they bought. Last example - Heroes 6.

If the future NorthWarriors game wants to be a success it has to offer many new things, or many changes, not only few other skills and creatures.

If I like a game I tend to buy it multiple times for presents to my nephews and friends, I bought KB six times. The same applied for other games I liked - Neverwinter nights and few other RPGs. And I am doing this because I want the sequel to have more life and new titles from it to be created. But first the devs have to make their invenstment as new creative ideas and extras. Modding is a good thing and I am glad that the KB code is very easy to be changed, but if a game is plain and stupid, do you think that even modded it will reach more than few hundred gamers?

[Fatt_Shade]

1) OK i agree it could be done, but i dont think developers will make it that way
2) What if game industry do same thing to KB series as it happened to HoMM serial? They made 5th and 6th hoping to attract players with nice graphic and totally missed gameplay and story like in HoMM3
3) I`m always open for new ideas and then think would i like to have it in game or not, i never drop it even before thinking.
5) I`m not saying only Red sands mod was good, many other mods had great ideas, and dont by players simply because they wanted to make something of their own for this game.
for the Legend check HoMM-babies mod, Matt did great job with it,
in AP mods Csimbi had nice idea for Extended skills (it would be great for warrior to have mirht skill tree up to 5th lvl, paladin mind 5th lvl, mage magic skills up to 5th lvl, to make little difference in classes),
for CW adventure mod, equilibrium mod, red sands +extreme mod, Mytic also had great idea for making available critical hit for special unit abilities but i think he never published it also ShadowTek`s anti paladin mod great ideas, never got published But nevertheless many interesting ideas in all of those mods.
6) Every 10-20 battles you can build something in YOUR castle, hm nice . That would be OK

[Rah]

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

1) OK i agree it could be done, but i dont think developers will make it that way
2) What if game industry do same thing to KB series as it happened to HoMM serial? They made 5th and 6th hoping to attract players with nice graphic and totally missed gameplay and story like in HoMM3
3) I`m always open for new ideas and then think would i like to have it in game or not, i never drop it even before thinking.
5) I`m not saying only Red sands mod was good, many other mods had great ideas, and dont by players simply because they wanted to make something of their own for this game.
for the Legend check HoMM-babies mod, Matt did great job with it,
in AP mods Csimbi had nice idea for Extended skills (it would be great for warrior to have mirht skill tree up to 5th lvl, paladin mind 5th lvl, mage magic skills up to 5th lvl, to make little difference in classes),
for CW adventure mod, equilibrium mod, red sands +extreme mod, Mytic also had great idea for making available critical hit for special unit abilities but i think he never published it also ShadowTek`s anti paladin mod great ideas, never got published But nevertheless many interesting ideas in all of those mods.
6) Every 10-20 battles you can build something in YOUR castle, hm nice . That would be OK

I agree that the players did a spectacular job, but KB was spectacular at first place. If you have a good base, than modding is fun. If you try to do devs job, than it is a tedious work.

H6 devs made many mistakes, misled by the publishers and the players, trying to please everyone. Katauri has a great team with great ideas, I was just pointing to some other possibilities, not saying that I will not like the game otherwise I am used to brainstorm dozens of ideas for any project and this is how it works, imagination first, than work

H6 suffered from lack of imagination. All of these wicked numbers, percentages, statistics, dublicated skills, different names for the same skills, everything messed up. I hate the most the logarithmic formula for calculating attack/defence/damage. This was the first thing that surprised me. I am good in doing some high math, but this is too much for the poor brain. Next thing was the static skill system, every level the same choices or the illusion of choices. Next thing the magic system, taking out the "learn spell" ability and the mage guild is a huge step back, convert towns (an example how fans can be so wrong in their ideas, by the way - this is an old idea from H3 WOG and it is so wrong, taking away the pleasure of mixing races in your army, because if you do so, the enemy will take you down with larger numbers), no micromanagement at all, no regular visit of map objects (something that KB should implement, not on so large basis as in H4 but still, at least some objects that refresh themselves after some time could be a good thing), town portals and town gates that give you instant army is unrealistic and was bashed by many, less resources, less possibilities, less of everything (except bugs but that is another topic, bugs could be fixed with time, I hope, but because of the things said above I will never give this game a second chance, it is so boring). And in the same time other things were much more than needed, like overpowered and common healing/resurrection for 4/5 of the races, overpowered skills and underpowered skills making the skill choices predictable and static. The last thing makes H6 much less enjoyable and with much less longevity than KB where you can take different skills everytime and still enjoy the game. In H6 there are very few tactics playing each town just because of the rules, in KB there are hundreds of tactics for winning the same battles - and these tactics vary from creature choices, where you could pick lvl 1-2 creatures and still win very easily or lvl 5 and rule the battlefield, or spellcasters only, or archers only etc.

So I think Katauri has found its way in this game, when looking back to the Legend and the Princess.

I wish the KB devs to keep the golden thread (middle path of everything), not to go only in one direction and to mix ideas very carefully.

If they cannot implement the first idea of different starting regions, than they could make the campaign more interesting if they give you the opportunity in the middle of the game to choose whos side to take, like playing for different kingdoms. You can favor dwarves over elves, or elves over demons etc, choosing different quests from the different realms. And with different outcome, battles and so on. Active enemy troops is a good idea - this means if you do quest X for the dwarves you will fight dragons standing before castle A, if you do quest Y for the elves, you will fight demons before castle A - and this demands different tactics and gives you different story path and different bonus. If you take the side of dwarves, you could benefit from one bonus for your army, if you take the side of humans, you are given another bonus - like in Warlords Battlecry II and III when doing the world map.

And the most important thing in a game like Heroes or KB is the lore. Fans give so much attention to it, and it is one of my favorite things as well. Mystic/divine lore is much more preferred than common lore. This means that some creatures are with divine origin, like angels. The idea of improved human beings born like angels is a common lore, the idea of divine messangers of a god force is a mystic lore. I hated the sci-fi elements in Might and Magic where devils were aliens and angels were born from a wizard experiment, this makes the world look like a dull materialistic riff-raff trying to survive and follows the law of the jungle. Some divine force giving you sacred quests here and there is much more inspiring than the other. In H6 the larger part of the creatures are created by the wizards - the orc race, the undead race, part of the water race... Pathetic. Give the world some godly springle - this is fantasy world, not DNA/genetic mutation world. Some things have to be left without explanation, this is how imagination works, where the rational steps back.

[Razorflame]

VERY ANXIOUS for this


i will buy it all :

[Darkeonz]

I wish they would give us a release date and some more screenshots and news from the game