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Might & Magic Showdown, a tabletop-like PvP arena game - lol cancelled

Archibald

Arcane
Joined
Aug 26, 2010
Messages
7,869
Not sure that I follow, V was closer to III than IV, VI or VII.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
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Codex 2014
Well, what subtitle suggested. It's out now on Early Access:

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Warmest welcomes, Heroes, to Might & Magic SHOWDOWN!

SHOWDOWN brings you tactical arena combat, mixing strategic planning and real time action in quick, bite-sized sessions, with the mystical world and illustrious inhabitants of the Might and Magic universe. You’ll also be able to fully customize the appearance of your party with our in-depth miniature painting workshop.

Whether you’re a strategic commander, ready to storm the battlefield, or an aspiring artist, swapping the blade for the elegance of a brush, SHOWDOWN has something for you!

As big fans of tabletop gaming and miniature painting, we wanted to bring both aspects of that world together, reliving the nostalgic past time of painting your own army just how you want them, and bringing in the modern gaming aspect to allow them to battle right before your eyes, something we always wanted when we were younger!

We’re delighted to have you with us as we enter Early Access and begin modelling our community together. In this Steam Forum, we’d love to see all of your feedback towards the game, and all of your creations and victories along the way!

Together, let’s make some magic.



"The game is dull" :lol:

The miniature editor thing looks pretty and interesting though.

 
Last edited:

commie

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Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Divinity: Original Sin 2
:prosper:

So it is basically some cheap tablet game that UBISHIT just stuck the Might and Magic name on cause it was lying around. God, just let the name die already. What next? Assassin's Creed: Might and Magic?
 

ilitarist

Learned
Illiterate Village Idiot
Joined
Oct 17, 2016
Messages
857
So it is basically some other game that UBISHIT just stuck the Might and Magic name on cause it was lying around. God, just let the name die already. What next? Assassin's Creed: Might and Magic?

It would actually be interesting. Dark Messiah of Might & Magic was ok and at least you'd look at pretty cities.
 

Jarmaro

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This trailer is bad. Climax is bad, music choice is bad, voice actor didn't deliver. They wanted to make nostalgia video but in half they changed it into cheap adverstiment.
About game... Overall it looks bad, isntead of gameplay they focused on things like painting figures. Painting doesn't need to be bad, but I doubt people will actaully play.
AI programming is massive :incline:. I've never forgiven Bioware for deleting DA:O AI programming. Maybe it willl be bad, but at least will be present.
 

Snorkack

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I don't think I understand what this game's supposed to be. Is it some kind of football manager where you set up your team and tactics but have no direct influence on the match?
 

pippin

Guest
It's just them trying to cash in on the slowly more popular trend of virtual tabletop, an extension of virtual card games.
 

Jarmaro

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I don't think I understand what this game's supposed to be. Is it some kind of football manager where you set up your team and tactics but have no direct influence on the match?
In match you can tell them who should they attack, you can use skills as well. Actaully, you can mostly only use skills. All you do is watching and waiting for CDs.
 

Snorkack

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I don't think I understand what this game's supposed to be. Is it some kind of football manager where you set up your team and tactics but have no direct influence on the match?
In match you can tell them who should they attack, you can use skills as well. Actaully, you can mostly only use skills. All you do is watching and waiting for CDs.
Wow, my tabletop games playing out like Generic MMO #1532 is exactly what I always wanted.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/01/27/might-and-magic-showdown-review/

Might & Magic Showdown is a great painting tool but a dull game

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Might & Magic Showdown [official site] has popped into existence at a serendipitous time, while I’ve started to crave the delights of painting striking plastic and metal miniatures before sending them into battle. Seeing as how the past has made it clear I don’t really have the patience for it – nor the time, now – the prospect of having a digital suite to make the process considerably quicker and simpler is a seductive one. Lamentably, this fantastic tool is also shackled to a dreadfully dull game that utterly fails to evoke the strategic tabletop romps that inspire it.

Almost everything great about Might & Magic Showdown, at least at this Early Access juncture, is contained within its paint workshop. Once you’ve purchased a mini – using in-game cash earned by winning campaign or PvP battles – you get to name it and give it an intimidating pose, but more importantly you can transform it with a selection of paints that grows as you level up.

Initially, minis come with a plain default skin, grey and metallic, and a ‘classic’ skin that serves as an example of what you can achieve with a little bit of time and a big palette. Within the paint workshop, you can coat entire areas in a click or throw caution to the wind and use the customisable free paint brush. The latter can be a bit fiddly with a mouse, but it’s a necessity if you want to create more intricate designs or make, for example, a mini’s helmet a different colour from the rest of its armour.

Here’s what your first hero, a rather grim demonic knight, looks like with his ‘classic’ skin.

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And here’s his alter-ego, Date Knight, courtesy of yours truly.

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The editor allows for a surprising amount of expressiveness, and rather effectively mimics the actual process of painting minis, but with the sort of tools you’d expect in a 3D modelling suite. You choose your base colours, applying them individually to armour, flesh and so on, or the entire mini, and add washes and dry brush layers to make shadows and highlights pop. More fine tuning can also be done by using the mask depth slider and by adding extra layers, changing the depth or intensity of the colours respectively.

I really can’t overstate how elegant it is. In a few small steps you can make something entirely new, using only a small number of very flexible tools. It’s the sort of editor you can pick up in seconds. With incredible ease you can touch up a rather boring grey chestplate and transform it into a menacing piece of armour that glows with infernal energy, and by just adding a simple white highlight to a blue base, you can cover a mini in ice.

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Excellent, then, but not perfect. The grouping together of different parts of a mini so that they can be painted all at once is convenient, but the ability to create custom groups or just select individual parts would make the feature even more handy. A selection of patterns would be a treat, too, especially if, like me, you’d quite like to deck some heroes out in tartan. And while by no means a deal-breaker, it’s a shame that minis can’t currently be customised beyond their colours. Some different armour or accessories would go a long way to making everyone’s mini collections a little more unique.

When you first pop into the paint workshop, you’ll notice that the starting palette is a bit lacklustre, and to get more minis you also need to buy them, so you’ve got to pack up your little warriors and head to the battlefield diorama for some PvP bouts or campaign missions. And that’s where Might & Magic Showdown stops being fun. I feel like a battle-weary commander, sick of war and bloodshed, just wishing he could go back to his garage and crack open that magical box of paints.

showdown1.png


So! 600 words in and I’m just getting to the fisticuffs. I confess that I’ve been putting it off. Battles are real-time scraps between two bands of monsters and warriors. While you can field a bunch of minis, you only get direct control over your hero. With only a single hero to worry about, every battle ends up being a tiresome, albeit brief, slog spent staring at cooldown timers. You click on the enemy you want to attack, your hero will automatically run towards them, and then you just click on abilities until they are dead. At least while you wait for those abilities to activate you can keep clicking the basic attack, giving your finger a very gentle workout. No, there’s no auto attack.

showdown2.png


Creatures, the minis you have no direct control over, have customisable scripts that determine how they act in a fight. These scripts are Showdown’s single interesting wrinkle and its only tactical system. By making a custom script, you’re creating a chain of possibilities and reactions, selecting the type of combo a creature uses against specific enemies. You can make one of your mages focus on taking out enemy supports and finishing off stragglers, while your fiery warrior taunts groups of enemies before unleashing an AoE beatdown.

It can be tempting to create all these elaborate scripts dealing with ultra-specific scenarios, using all sorts of long combos, but that can lead to an unfocused creature who, while locked into these five-move combos, can’t react quickly to an evolving battle. However, attacks placed further down a combo chain do more damage, so risk-takers can be rewarded. Unfortunately, it’s hard to tell how effective a script actually is.

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Battles are largely impossible to follow, with an unhelpful camera and magical effects ensuring that the action is almost always obscured. And since these messy brawls are all in real-time, and you’ve got to keep watching your hero’s cooldowns, it’s hard to find a moment to check in on your creatures. Victory isn’t a particularly good indicator of whether or not your scripts were genuinely helpful, either. Maybe you just faced a less experience or skilled opponent. Perhaps it was your hero’s abilities or your creature selection that saved the day.

What’s really strange is that none of this evokes the sort of tabletop strategy and roleplaying games that clearly inspire Showdown. There’s little of the meaningful progression you get in the latter, aside from a linear series of abilities that unlock as heroes and creatures level up; nor are there any of tactical considerations or strategic conundrums that you’d expect to find in the former. The most notable departure is the choice of real-time combat, which doesn’t remotely work or leave much room for tactics, especially when you’re relegated to simply selecting enemies and hitting hotkeys. It’s the game’s largest obstacle, but is, according to the developers, part of their vision, so there’s no hope of a switch to a turn-based system. Not that such a switch is the only solution – they could also make a real-time system that wasn’t dreadful.

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Might & Magic Showdown is a bit of a cypher. It’s attached to a franchise that is has nothing to do with and is inspired by games with mechanics that it entirely rejects. It’s not clear what Ubisoft are really going for here, and right now if feels like a mess of ideas that aren’t really sticking. Yet still I play. I haven’t enjoyed a single battle, but I’m having the time of my life painting my minis.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
No more: https://steamcommunity.com/games/517070/announcements/detail/1421299655220124345

Might & Magic SHOWDOWN: Thank You and Farewell

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Hello Heroes,

We regret to announce that Might & Magic SHOWDOWN will be shutting down on July 31, 2017, ending our Early Access period and ceasing server support. As a result, the game will be inaccessible after this date.

We wish to convey our sincerest gratitude to you, our dedicated players, who have helped us navigate the management of an Early Access campaign – because of you, we have learned a great deal about how best to serve you and we hope to carry these learnings forward into future Ubisoft projects.

We also owe a very special debt of gratitude to our Might & Magic fans who accepted this new take on the universe. It has been our pleasure and honor to deal with one of gaming’s longest lived communities.

Effective immediately, Might & Magic SHOWDOWN will be removed from the Steam Store to prevent further purchase of the Early Access license. The game will remain in your Steam Library, but server support will end on July 31, 2017 and the game itself will become inoperable. In an effort to ensure that we abide by our players’ expectations of the Early Access model, we will be offering full refunds to players who feel they are owed them until July 31, 2017.

Thank you Heroes.
The Might & Magic SHOWDOWN team
 

ilitarist

Learned
Illiterate Village Idiot
Joined
Oct 17, 2016
Messages
857
I can't even joke about early access being the only access.

What the fuck were they thinking.
 

Hyperion

Arcane
Joined
Jul 2, 2016
Messages
2,120
If nothing else, the figurine painting looked awesome, and would be fantastic if someone adopts something similar for a proper turn-based RPG with a full party. Can't even imagine how much time we could sink into personalizing the perfect party.
 

ColCol

Arcane
Joined
Jul 12, 2012
Messages
1,731
Ha, now they'll use this as evidence that no one wants a might and magic game.
 

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