Ubisoft - Trailer Announces Might and Magic X

Also they will be in close touch with the fans. Estimated release date September 2013. If they are aiming a 25 hour game, they must be ready for pretty harsh negative feedback. According to me with this state it will be more like an experiment on Ubisoft's side than a real squel.

I think that this was expected from the fact that this project is PC only (not a big budget multiplatform) and outsourced to an external studio. Moreover, I think that 25 hours playtime for a game from UBI soft is quite and achievement.
 
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I haven´t noticed this mentioned anywhere in the (confusingly written) article.

I hope journalist confused about the 25 hours part and the developer were actually talking about the main story. 25 hours playtime is like a tutorial stage for an average M&M game. I remember doing all the quests and exploring all the dungeons in the New Sorpigal area in M&M 6 where the game has been started took more than 25 hours.

Maybe Ubisoft has a plan to add dungeons and quests with DLCs. I don't know.
 
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I hope journalist confused about the 25 hours part and the developer were actually talking about the main story. 25 hours playtime is like a tutorial stage for an average M&M game. I remember doing all the quests and exploring all the dungeons in the New Sorpigal area in M&M 6 where the game has been started took more than 25 hours.
I don´t think estimated 25 hours of play time is mutually exclusive with a game being open world.
Also, M&M 6 is long largely because it contains what I consider unnecessary amount of monster grind and pointlessly big dungeons, not because it comes with free roaming per se.
From what I remember, M&M 3-5 didn´t take me much longer than 25 hours to finish - in these three the gameworld was fairly big and there was plenty of dungeons, but all three were also rather notably swiftly paced.

Personally I pretty much have blank opinion on M&M X right now, so it´s not like I´m arguing it´s gonna be a good game, but I don´t think there´s currently any reliable info strongly implying it´s gonna be crap (or seriously unfaithful sequel) either.

The Polygon article is pretty crappy.
 
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In this case, I'd rather have a game that feels huge and open with some big dungeons and lots of killing than I want a condensed "experience" driven RPG that ends too quickly.

A big part of the appeal of Might and Magic 6 was the size and the kind of playtime you could expect, and that's as it should be. I want my worlds huge and grind is just part of the deal you make for it to be a feasible thing for developers to pull off convincingly.
 
"Of course, you're not alone: You control a four-member party chosen from 12 typical fantasy classes like elves, dwarves, orcs and mages, and you can switch between them on the fly".

That article is really well written. I think it's pretty cool that elves, dwarves and orcs are now classes! (Although that's not reallt typical of fantasy now is it?) I want to be a human orc. Or maybe there's the slight chance the author of that article is..well, crappy.
 
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It's hard to estimate just how big the old MM games were. I remember spending weeks playing through MM6 and 7, but the last time I played through MM7 it only took me a few days. Even MM8 took me a while back in the days - now I can complete it in a single day. It's honestly a 10 hour game if you know what you're doing.

Things are a bit different now when we don't have to take notes on where trainers are and how to get to certain places on what days. It's normal to just look it up on the internet. There's a lot of time consuming stuff like that in the old MMs that is not going to be an issue in MMX, which means it's unfair to expect a game that takes as long to complete as MM6-7.

However, the world itself has to be open, and there has to be a certain amount of content. It can't be "semi open" like KoA for example.

Edit:
That article is really well written. I think it's pretty cool that elves, dwarves and orcs are now classes! (Although that's not reallt typical of fantasy now is it?) I want to be a human orc. Or maybe there's the slight chance the author of that article is..well, crappy.

MM8 had a similar system. Minotaur, for example, was both a class and race. It worked out fairly well in my opinion - whatever issues MM8 had did not come from its class system.
 
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It's hard to estimate just how big the old MM games were. I remember spending weeks playing through MM6 and 7, but the last time I played through MM7 it only took me a few days. Even MM8 took me a while back in the days - now I can complete it in a single day. It's honestly a 10 hour game if you know what you're doing.

Things are a bit different now when we don't have to take notes on where trainers are and how to get to certain places on what days. It's normal to just look it up on the internet. There's a lot of time consuming stuff like that in the old MMs that is not going to be an issue in MMX, which means it's unfair to expect a game that takes as long to complete as MM6-7.

Yeah, but back then - it was part of the fun and the experience to figure these things out. Lots of games can be completed in a very short time once you know what you're doing - but you don't know what you're doing when you're playing it for the first time.

First time playthroughs are the only ones that make sense in terms of measuring how long it takes to complete a game.

It's really irrelevant how things were "back in the day" - and I assume that those of us who enjoy large and lengthy RPGs still want that - no matter how that playtime is accomplished. Well, just as long as it's enjoyable. Developers need to adapt and provide a lengthy game when appropriate - even in a world where looking up things online is the norm.

I don't think a game like this would work well as a 25 hour game - unless we're talking about rushing through the main quest. That's just not long enough to give a proper feeling of a huge world with a ton of content. Breathing room is vital for that - and you want players to feel like there's literally a world out there to explore. You don't want to guide them through linear quests with a predictable playtime. You want to give them a sensation of freedom and not have the ending be visible from an early stage to cramp that feeling.

Some RPGs are suited for shorter playtimes and that's fine - but I don't think Might and Magic is a good example of that.

I'm definitely not going to be happy if 25 hours is a genuine estimate of the average time it will take to complete.
 
Imo, it doesn't make sense to compare completion time for a game you've played multiple times. Even games like Morrowind can be finished in a few hours when you "know what you're doing".
 
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Le Breton said:
For Heroes 6, Ubisoft offered private, VIP forums to the game's most dedicated players. Like Heroes 6, Might and Magic X Legacy is being developed with an "actively involved" community, said Le Breton. Limbic and Ubisoft showed their fans early concept art and design ideas, and solicited their feedback by letting them vote on features.

Le Breton noted that involving fans is a double-edged sword, because while they have a deep knowledge of the games themselves, they often don't know what they want unless it's put in front of them. They tend to be much better at commenting on something that's presented to them than at coming up with ideas themselves.

This statement seems rather strange to me. So far, it doesn't seem like they have been presenting much of the game to anyone at PAX.
The game's website's forum link doesn't even lead to the proper forum. And on the proper forum, there's not even so much as an introductory posting welcoming fans on behalf of the dev team, much less a single answer or comment to community postings. So, where did this interaction happen? In a closed forum for die-hard fans of a strategy title that has only the most tenuous connection to the games they claim to base their project on?
"Close touch" indeed…
 
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If knowing what you're doing = abusing glitches and holes in the design, yes (in the cited MM8 examples, make use of overpowered chars). Anything that allows completion of a game in a few (real or ingame) hours should mostly be counted as design oversights IMO.

Anyways, I think they know they can't sell a game that will take you 25 hours on the first playthrough at full retail price. Probably not even to a casual crowd.
 
I'm not talking about abusing anything. Just do all the quests in the right order and avoid too many reloads and MM8 is a short game. It was never long - it's not even close to the scope of MM6 or 7, but the only reason it ever took more than a weekend is trying to figure out where to go, when to go there, etc. Stuff that most players wouldn't consider acceptable in a game today - either there's hand holding (map markers etc) or the journal would have that kind of information.

Missing information is the only reason MM8 was ever longer than Mass Effect or similar linear games, despite being an open world.

Edit: I think part of the problem is getting access to flying relatively early. There are several characters you can pick up that already have the spell memorized. That speeds things up a great deal. They should definitely have flying in MMX, but it shouldn't be available until later on.
 
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Indeed, that should be MM7, but I don't expect them to deliver something of that scope.
 
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I think Sirtech sold the Wizardry IP to some corporation that would make a complete cock up of a new Wizardry. I wonder what David Bradley is doing these days though?
Bite yer tongue, mister. DW might be a good "vision" guy, but Heuristic Park can't code a game without half a million bugs including a couple game-stoppers. Between missing features and bugged features, discussions about DW's games start and end with "coulda, shoulda, woulda".
 
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"Of course, you're not alone: You control a four-member party chosen from 12 typical fantasy classes like elves, dwarves, orcs and mages, and you can switch between them on the fly".

That article is really well written. I think it's pretty cool that elves, dwarves and orcs are now classes! (Although that's not reallt typical of fantasy now is it?) I want to be a human orc. Or maybe there's the slight chance the author of that article is..well, crappy.
I noticed that, too. Remember though, that MM8 did treat races as classes. Most likely, you're right that it's a crappy article, but that's not 100%.

edit- I see Maylander already addressed this
 
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Indeed, that should be MM7, but I don't expect them to deliver something of that scope.
Yeah, MM7 with a bit more diverse environments, more memorable dungeons and better endgame would be ideal, as far as following 6-8 goes.
However, based on the use of grid based movement alone I think they´re going for design closer to the earlier installments.
 
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There is a german guy who has completed all the Gothics in like one hour each. You can find his videos on youtube. "gothic speedrun".

The technique consists of knowing exactly where to find each important story item, drinking a lot of speed potions, and running through enemies instead of fighting them.

I don't think in RPG's it really counts how long time it takes to play a game on your consequent playthroughs. Only the first time counts, after that you know the essentials of passing the game, and you can ignore 90% of the content.
 
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