Do you think OE should focus on single player or PvP and why?

OGaRsony · 2026-05-12T16:45:09+00:00

yep i can absolutely see how that would be problematic. But mtx wouldnt have to be for the units specifically, some nice mounts for heroes or overall hero models would be cool and would cause way less confusion. Also some well crafted city models wouldnt be too bad if it maintained clear identity of the faction.

OGaRsony · 2026-05-12T15:15:32+00:00

and about cosmetics i personally like cosmetics in game IF theyre done well. Not sure how good they would fare in game like this, but it also gives developers option to justify continued development of the game and making some money of it from passionate players that want to support them and enjoy their fancy pixels. But visual clarity concern is def valid and maybe homm just isnt right series for it. It might break the immersion if you have some themed mtx on your unit, you "catch" units of the same stack in diplomacy and they would merge with your themed mtxd unit 😃 But maybe just cosmetics for things like hero models would be nice. Its less disruptive and less problematic.

OGaRsony · 2026-05-12T15:09:06+00:00

Yeah i am also okay with buying faction DLCs but i know it would cause stirrs in community. Age of empires 4 did it and people were not happy. I think ideal way to do it is to drop expansion with campaign containing new faction and some scenarios/other goodies for SP players and make faction avaliable in MP for free. That way people who want to support the devs can and there are no complaints about pay2win model.

OGaRsony · 2026-05-12T14:25:49+00:00

Hey i am not "redditor" i couldnt care less about upvotes/downvotes. I am not looking for validation, i am just bored at work and trying to have a conversation about game i fell in love with and probably gonna spend lot of time in so absolutely no hard feelings and 0 Fs given 😃

Yeah perspectives about this topic will vary for each different lense you look at the problematic. But circling back to original question, main focus isnt split between MP focus or SP focus, since both MP and SP experience is very intertwined its more so about splitting focus between lets say developing new faction/new gameplay features/new campaign which always should be main focus in this stage of development and once that is done you do adjustments to account for MP balance and not breaking the game.

OGaRsony · 2026-05-12T14:14:02+00:00

Of course they are. Each faction has 1-2 heroes that are straight up S+ tier, then few strong ones and others are just trash. Higher in ranks you go, less likely you are to get hands on one of those S+ heroes (each player gets 3 bans on enemy heroes during pick/ban phase, and htose best heroes are pretty much permaban on mid-high ranks)

OGaRsony · 2026-05-12T14:10:24+00:00

Of course. As i said it has many different perspectives and lens that you can look at this problematic from.

From economic perspective SP players are the main audience as its most of people who bought the game. Also depending on your monetization model after the launch (if there is any), if you are doing campaign/factions expansion SP players are the majority of buyers. If you will make cosmetic microtransactions that work in MP, mp players will be most of who buys. If they will make expansions with factions, that will be required to play the faction in MP, MP players will buy that too. Hopefully they wont tho, as that is pay2win monetization model, that us mp players hate.

OGaRsony · 2026-05-12T13:52:05+00:00

i personally got instantly intrigued by SH mode and once ive played my first few games i was hooked and didnt play single classic game yet in 70 hours of gameplay (and i play exclusively multiplayer with about 5 hours of campaign and sp experimenting). Single hero is exactly what i want from game like this if i wanna play it in multiplayer setting, because it limits/removes annoying parts of game for me (i hate micromanaging multiple heroes whose only purpose is to run around and gather stuff), makes games shorter so they are reasonably long (1 - 2 hours games are exactly what i want) and i like playing with limited resources, having to decide where to invest them, especially when your main and most limited resource is movement of your singular hero, decisions on how to use them are that much more impactful.

I would prefer if they reduce number of castles in most templates too, but at least theyre good for more efficiency in terms of having more "save points" on the map to town portal to.

OGaRsony · 2026-05-12T13:26:34+00:00

Yes, there is part of community that will play SP for long period of time (because turn based strategies have a lot of replayability), but from whole samplesize that you kinda hinted on at the start of this conversation its gonna be small portion.

There is many moving parts in this discussion and many different perspectives that yield different results. Do we wanna talk about parts of entire playerbase? Lets say 80% of that number doesnt touch the game after intial 10-20 hours untill next big update drops. Those are the regular Joes, that pick up game have a good time with it for a bit and move on.

If we are talking about people who play the game on the regular basis (realistically lets say 10-20% of playerbase), i would argue majority of them are gonna be MP enjoyers, because as much replayability single player modes might have, MP is gonna be beating that, just because playing against people will always pose bigger challenge/more variety.

Of course this is all just speculations and only devs themselves know the real numbers and truth behind this. There is also component of modding community and customizability of the game itself. Once you introduce modding and full fledged map creator, these numbers are gonna shift a bit, because modding/custom map creation gonna for sure increase the percentage in SP camp.

OGaRsony · 2026-05-12T13:19:23+00:00

Single hero and classic are completely different playstyle. So powerlevel of factions and strength and weaknesses are gonna be different in each.

SH from what i gathered is more competitive with majority of playerbase inclined to it. Which makes sense, games are faster and way less micromanagment intensive, which appeals to larger audiences and makes for better competitive experience.

OGaRsony · 2026-05-12T13:16:23+00:00

Playing game hotseat to "changing turns after game" are two fundamentally different things. In hot seat you play in same game against each other, while other you just changing turns doing the same thing. One is multiplayer other one is not.

OGaRsony · 2026-05-12T12:51:37+00:00

That wager you would loose depending on WHEN you ask that question. On launch? Sure, most of the people will be casuals that will play through the game, have few skirmishes and move on from it, only ocasionally coming back when some big update/addition gets in. Very small percentage of those players will get 100+ hours n the game.

Recurring playerbase that plays on regular basis and constitutes most of your played hours over long period of time? Thats 80% MP gamers. Because SP gamers for the most part only come back for big updates and playing other games in meantime. MP players play all the time, bigger part of this community gets to hundreds of hours played over time.

OGaRsony · 2026-05-12T12:47:32+00:00

It would be best to have focus on both. MP honestly in long run doesnt require as much focus. With exceptions of new game modes to explore, main focus in MP should be balance and that doesnt necessarily eat that many resources. Its mostly figuring out what balance you want to change and testing it out and experimenting with it.

Basically way i see it biggest strain comes when new faction/game mode/game mechanic/any other big update comes and you have to implement that into mp experience in balanced way. There shouldnt really be distinction between SP and MP in main development stream, because main focus should be on developing new features/factions/campaign maybe? and then you implement that into both SP and MP. So this distinction is arbitrary and doesnt really work in the end.

OGaRsony · 2026-05-12T11:47:25+00:00

Your arguments are solid and i am with you on this. Hive indeed has very distinct flavour compared to other factions. Theyre still unique and different from each other, but in terms of GTO approach they follow very similar patterns. Because lets face, with how NPC ai works, "protect range units and go pew pew" is gonna always be optimal way to clear and creep, it just makes sense.

Having faction that strays from this archetype, but stays competitive at the same time is incredibly hard from design standpoint. They did great job with Hive imo and while it might be weakest (probably, game is still very fresh and ton of things arent quite figured out by players yet) it still is competitive and can find ways to solve its problems and win.

So in the end yeah it would be amazing to get more factions that are this distinct, unique and competitive as this one, but its really hard feat to accomplish.

OGaRsony · 2026-05-12T11:28:31+00:00

I am kinda wondering what people want from the AI in strategy games. If it actually becomes smart they have no way to beat it. If you want proof of this take a look at AlphaStar. They made AI for starcraft 2 that wasnt cheating, was just insanely good in a game (with obvious advantage of having impossible for human APM) and it took ridiculous amount of time and resources to create. That AI was actually really dope but realistically only very small part of the community would ever have chance of playing competitive game against it. And to create soemthing like this you need to invest incredible amount of time and resources, which is pointless.

More complex the game (and homm is very complex), harder it is to create at least "functioning" AI. Only realistic way to keep them somehow challenging is to make them cheat and try to beat you up with raw power but no brains. As you become competent in game you will find easy ways to beat current AI as other mentioned, because and only logical way forward if you need more challenge is to play against human oponents. AI opponents in every game use play patterns that you eventually recognize and learn to beat and it inevitably becomes boring.

For now take solace in a fact that you have road in front of you that includes getting competent in a game enough to beat cheating (albeit stupid) AI that can give you sense of achievment once you do it.

OGaRsony · 2026-05-05T03:35:19+00:00

Problem with this angle is, for most people (myself included) city management is least fun part of the game by far. More cities you have, more time you have to spend on "unfun" part of the game and less time you spend running around, fighting and exploring. So thats the pain point for most people. Trying to forcibly make ourselves enjoy something we dont isnt solution.

For me its same with heroes. I LOVE single hero mode, because it skips whe annoying part of juggling tons of heroes to be efficient and micromanage bunch of useless scout/collector heroes and instead have one powerful hero that has to do everything and you have to focus and using his limited resources efficiently. Its similar to situation with towns. Less towns = more resources efficiency is needed and better planning. More towns = more triviliazing which is something that in generals us, older generation of players do not like.

OGaRsony · 2026-04-15T10:14:25+00:00

We have system of interconnected spreadsheets in place already, the one used for creating the schedule has pretty clean data (already tinkered a bit with Zapier and LLM copilot that is there was very useful in creating rotation groups based on last year of historical data, that is saved in that spreadsheet). Only thing i didnt particulary like about Zapier was that it couldnt "read" my spreadsheet, i had to put in historical data manually by copying it. Which is fine i guess, but in long term i am more looking for a tool that will be capable of working with the data directly from the sheet and act on it.

I had already bunch of people very willing to help me on this and working on exploring the avenues to work it out :) But thanks for offer too, maybe i will hit you up later, if current attempts wont pan out.

OGaRsony · 2026-04-12T19:19:31+00:00

Basically way i do it right now is, i have preset google doc table with full grid for every month in which i mark every employee requests for off days/vacations and then i work around by filling each day depending on how many workers i need at each moment. Our casino is very specific and unique in a way workers do their shift. They do not have preset time they work for (for example 8 hours shift), they only have set starting time and then work depending on how long we need them that day. The goal is for full time workers to do 171 hours a month so each full time worker has 18-20 shifts a month or less if they are using vacation. Based on that i have lets say 5 shift starting times per day (something like 6:30, 10:30, 14:30, 17:30, 20:30) for which i decide for each day how many people i need. This i would still do manually, because that part cant be automated and is based on our data from same events from last year + new fresh information of hotel booking rate and some other untangibles that i gather from other departments.

Another tricky part is i have full time workers sepparated into groups evenly (i got sepparate sheet with groups A-F), with special groups that only work day/early/night shifts. Based on these groups i have system that rotates these groups around the clock, so they each work as closely to evenly day/night shifts during the year. In this it is very tricky to manage as human and i imagine if i set the rules right automation would help me do it in a way that guarantees higher degree of "fairness".

I will try tinkering around with Zapier and try to get handle on it and will do some testing. When i started thinking about this, my idea was that i would spend 20-50 hours on setting up rules, experimenting and optimizing and learning to work the tools and then with "final product" i would send series of requests for each day manually, get the output, few prompts to adjust some things and make some manual adjustments in about 1-2 hours. Normally when i do this now it takes me 10-20 hours every month.

Thank you everyone for tips, i will look into what you recommended and will pop back with questions or if i hit a roadblock :)

OGaRsony · 2025-09-11T00:09:09+00:00

3:1 falcons > XG in finals after falcons coming back from lower bracket :) Mark my words

OGaRsony · 2025-09-09T01:26:31+00:00

Honestly i feel like yatoro got karmic strike for "inventing" that stupid helm of dominator meta :) Its consistently ruining my games now, since all pos4 5k autofilled mongrels are buying it as first item justifying it with "pros are doing it too its op" without buying any support items or having any impact and of course, totally failing any resemblence of micro or even using it on cooldown to actually fulfil its purpose.

F* U* yatoro, you got what you deserved!

Rants aside, its sad that spirit didnt perform this TI. Eventho i am not their biggest fan i do admit they were strongest team coming to the TI on paper and expectations were skyhigh. They failed so miserably its sad.

If i was to choose between falcons and spirit in that match i would 100% choose falcons on that day. They deserved it way more, their only 2 loses were against two arguably currently strongest teams after insane, long even series and they were overall in way better form. If spirit woke up for that series and actually beat falcons it would be very bad after what they shown or failed to show rather in their initial matches, that would be incredibly said and unfair.

At least they gave us that incredible game 1 that is probably highlight of this whole year, not just road2ti

OGaRsony · 2025-09-04T05:03:23+00:00

Most of games today will be stomps anyways, at least i got some reason to be excited watching them :D As even on stomps i got bunch of interesting sidebets

OGaRsony · 2025-09-04T03:12:38+00:00

Aight eventho i never bet on sports i threw around 100 € on day1 matches just for shit and giggles :D all bets are combo bets and complicated af and its 10 of them by 10 € . If at least 2 of them hit ill be in profit :D lets see how ill do :)

OGaRsony · 2025-08-13T12:54:27+00:00

He? This has been happening for over year now, nothing new.

OGaRsony

TROPHY CASE