Nargott, I will try to approach this matter in two ways.
First, I will stop use the word synergy. It did not do any good to me so far...

Second, I will start posting some practical examples we can discuss on. Of course regarding "Combat" skill.

Here is the same battle played twice.

The first one - Level 4 Might hero fights overwhelming force. He has "Advanced Combat".
The second one - The same hero fights the same force but this time besides "Advanced Combat" he also has "Chain strike" and "Avenging strike".

Don't you think this kind of difference is worth 4 points of investment? What other combination of skills + perks can give such advantage at level 4?

Now the discussion.

Since Tote hero melee damage is increased by:
- vs tier 1 - 100%
- vs tier 2 - 100%
- vs tier 3 - 80%
- vs tier 4 - 77%
- vs tier 5 - 66%
- vs tier 6 - 55%
- vs tier 7 - 0%

These are considered base values for any further damage bonuses. With the introduction of "Combat" perk "Martial arts" the hero gains additional 50% damage (50% of time critical strike).
For example to compare it with ToTe for tier 1 this is now 200% damage increase.

Further more this damage can be increased by taking the "Chain strike" perk which allows another 10% critical strike damage for all hero hits.
In the second video above you can see the hero do critical strike damage for "166". He also kills 10 scouts with a normal hit due to critical strike.

Yes some skills and perks are weak at certain points of the game. It could be because the perk/skill is hardcodded or because the game mechanic is such it cannot be balanced or sometimes unwillingly (which we try to fix as much as possible). Such skills are put behind weaker ones so the choice actually becomes fair.

As you can see on the second videos those "Chain attack", "avenging strike" and "Retaliation strike" skills cannot be balanced because it depends on the formation of the units yours and not really the enemy approach. So very often the player can actually squeeze much more than the perk actually cost and this has to to accounted for when designing the skill tree.

@Nargott If you think "Combat" is weak I suggest to go and check what we did with "Puppet master" :P.

Regarding the mana increase of some spells to very high values.. I don't think it is viable because any hero will have enough mana at least for one tier 5 spell cast and by making some not dependent that much on spellpower will break the balance sharply around month 3. For example if "Puppet master" is strong on its own you do not need a lot of casts to turn the tide especially against mage already weaker creatures.

Regarding mana increase for blessings. Dark and Light schools depend less on spellpower and they are widely available to Might and Balanced classes. They are already balanced through the value of spellpower as each point of spellpower increase spell effect and duration so even if Might heroes can cast a blessing it will last for about 2-3 turns and then it has to be cast again. Also a major point a want to say is that if we make blessings expensive the magic schools will become very unattractive for Might classes as their strength of casting other spells is already low.

It would be nice if duration for example could depend on Knowledge instead of spellpower but there is no such variable in the .xdb files.

Regarding gameplay dissatisfaction factor due to weaker skill incrementation. This is a talk I did with another game developer a few months ago. He was modding another multiplayer game and was very precise about balance. The problem was that despite the great effort he has put it and the good state of the mod it did not bring much coverage by players. We both agreed that balance does not bring publicity. For example Broodwar is not a great game because it is balanced. What made it great was the ability to custom scenario maps with friends. Same goes for Diablo 2. Everybody knows heroes 3 WOG even though multiplayer balance does not exists.

Actually 2 years ago when I poked @magnomagus about improving the RPE mod the initial idea was not to make it for popularity but just to improve our gaming experience with a couple of friends. We were just annoyed of some flaws. During the process there was some increased interest from the community so it was decided to start advertise it on moddb.
Of course this is our way of thinking I do not want to accept it. As I said I will be glad if any of you decides to make a blitz version of the mod. Different minds have different ideas so you can find some holes in our work that we have not think of.

NargottВаша модификация очень хороша во многих аспектах и заслуживает высокой оценки в целом, но если уделить достаточно внимания исправлению некоторых недостатков, то вы сможете привлечь намного больше игроков.
В то же время, если уделять внимание разработке всевозможных новых вещей, а не исправлению недостатков, это будет хорошо именно для тех игроков, которым и так все нравится.
Выбирайте сами, в какую сторону развиваться, в сторону поддержки старых игроков или новых.

We try to fix both shortcomings and add new content both but both things are restricted to the ratio of the final product in comparison with the time spent working on it. We do this for fun and this is how we want to stay.
Actually there is a lot of positive feedback coming regarding combining mechanics and elements from all franchise releases (hero class system - heroes 4, governor system - heroes 7, new heroes - heroes 3,4,6 etc..) and making the game difficulty adjustable to anyones needs. Some people just like to explore other prefer to battle lots of T4 guarding their first wood mine.

There is also some criticism of course, more than a half of it is due to people not yet knowing how the game features work, the other is thoroughly discussed and I even can say the good one is already in the mod. I am pleased and somehow surprised that almost all of it is constructive oriented just like we do here . It makes me feel very good for the M&M society as a whole .

ЗаинтересованныйМожет все-таки дать бонусы к некромантии и приглушениям?

Shatters already give additional bonuses. "Necromancy" skill for other mages provides utility benefits for secondary heroes. For example you can have secondary dungeon hero with destruction that clears some treasures and use necromancy to gain buffer army. I have used this combination multiple times and it works very well.

ГусьВозможно я пропустил это... Какую программу вы используете для редактирования .exe-файла?

The best two that I know of are:
- Cheatengine - It is free and made for games. It has some very nice tutorials that explain all the basic and advanced operations. That knowledge is enough to make any of the changes we have accomplish but be warned as it takes a lot of time and often it goes unrewarded.
- AIDA64 - This is the ultimate binary reverse engineering tool. I am not familiar with it but I know from other people the hex wizards use it. With its help you can reverse engineer some binary operations to an actual code. It is not free.

Here is a little guide that I did regarding hex editing. I will further extend it when I have time.

DyrmanЦитата:
Сообщение от Ment
battleredcat,
В моде NHF сейчас занимаются разработкой уникальных моделей героев (базовых и новых). Psatkha участвует.
К сожалению, NHF вряд ли по умолчанию совместим с этим модом.
Даже очень несовместим. Главная причина - это классы героев.
Но модельки, с разрешения авторов, же можно использовать

Actually Psatka wants to integrate UHV with MMH55 but I do not know if he works on it or what is the progress.

DyrmanНе понимаю также, зачем городить кучу классов, когда достаточно по 2 на фракцию. БОльшее количество - это уже далеко не разнообразие, плюс уменьшение уникальности фракции.
Хотя и шести фракций было бы вполне достаточно) Разрабам для тех же гномов и орков пришлось придумывать новые школы рун и кличей соответсвенно, дабы не казались копиркой части других фракций.

The initial idea was with 2 classes per faction but some specializations or starting secondary skills could not fit well neither Might nor Magic.

DyrmanАвторы мода решили задействовать всё. Уж лучше не иметь мусора из слабых умений, нежели иметь таких множество.
Но если множество навыков и умений будет сильным, то это круто! Это и есть разнообразие, а не нудный выбор для игры по 10-20 часов...

I like what you say. I believe a lot of what we did gets pass the border line for quality. I am not talking about balance - The time and effort put in the internal skillwheel by TheGryphn, the videos made by Belisarius, the visual improvements by Xuxo, new adventure maps objects by Magnomagus and time and patience he spend at listening to 20 people shouting left and right about classes initial skills and stats.

There is a lot we have not done because of quality reasons - Wright was not changed for Death Knight because the 3D model did not keep consistency with other faction creatures. We did not add new hero models because there just for some heroes and it would look bad if some races had nice looking heroes and other sticking to default.

NargottВообще, как я понимаю, цель 24 классов в этой модификации заключается в том, чтобы игрок мог полноценно отыгрывать воина, полу-воина и мага за каждую расу, обходясь только родными героями. Т.е. дать каждой расе 3 разных класса, а не дать игре 24 разных класса.

Very nicely put! What I did not like in ToTe is that there is only one class per faction which restricts the player to use one stategy and because of that to buy just the preferable creature upgrade.
Now with three classes and creatures upgrades providing different tactical advantage (wherever possible) the replay value increased.

NargottНу а слабые умения - это зло, но его природа вряд ли связана с 24 классами. Здесь основная проблема в том, что вместо усиления мага в поздней игре ставка сделана на ослабление воина (как на уровне характеристик, так и на уровне умений).

Balance was achieved by reducing Might heroes and improving magic ones.
The reason was might was reduced is because the pace of the game became too fast. Here is the math:
- with 5% damage boost per primary skill if the difference between unit attack and enemy units defense is 30, this is 30*5 = 150% bonus damage.
This means 1 unit hits as hard as 2.5 units without a hero. Here I do not even add Offense, luck, leadership and other bonuses which can make this difference as high as 4 times.
In a scenario where both heroes have high attack and low defense the winer is the first army to hit/shoot because it will at least cut in half or one shot any of the opponent stacks.
Where is the strategy here?

Now lets discuss Might vs Magic heroes. In this situation Magic heroes will be on the losing side when it comes to frontal confrontation so they need to have their magic sharp.
But even if they have strong magic they need time to cast it. Magic heroes total damage output is equal to the sum of damage made in all rounds. The number of rounds depends on the survivability of his army. It does not matter how strong spells does the mage has unless he can cast for more than 3-4 rounds.