|
Another WC3 conceptual idea:
Why is it that the all the units have variable damage? I couldn't find an adequate explanation for this. My two guesses are firstly that it was ported over from RPG's where variable damage was considered to provide more immersion, or secondly to add randomization to battles to force players to break patterns and to pay attention to battles.
The negative example that might prove the latter necessary would be something like both five and six hydralisks killing a dragoon in four hits, which adds important patterns you have to memorize. And you could argue this is to the detriment of the casual accessibility of the game, but personally I think that logic is a bit dubious. I'm using a BW example because I don't know when exactly Blizzard decided to add this to the game; for all I know it was a leftover from Warcraft: Legends and was not something they added because of gameplay issues arising in WC3-proper.
By adding random factors you're forced to pay more attention, you can see this with spells like bash that are only useful if you capitalize on it to immediately focus fire or surround. My association with this is also (!) pokemon battles where all the random effects make the outcome of fights not boringly deterministic.
Anyway, I thought this might have been a good concept, but I don't fully believe in the execution. The breaking of patterns is not that useful because units have so much health that damage averages out anyway, I think it's only significant when you're killing wisps in three or four hits or something, or when you're chasing a unit and fire off one last shot. Mind you that I'm happy for the luck-aspect to exist here because it adds some mystery and excitement and you have enough chances to outplay your opponent anyway.
Two other examples are evasion and critical strike. Blizzard itself has admitted that critical strike wasn't the most brilliant idea they ever had because afaik they changed the logic of c.s. to be more reliably spaced out to once every 6-7 hits. But I think it's still a good example of an ability that forces you to react. People have complained that critical strike should be a higher percentage with lower damage output, but that might defeat the purpose of the ability.
Evasion on the other hand is more boring because not taking any damage is less decisive, it means that instead of having to react immediately you can react later, which is intrinsically less interesting than critical strike imo.
Personally I thought that critical strike and evasion were interesting enough that really they should have been unit abilities, maybe for, say, the archer and troll headhunter.
Another ability like this is pulverize, which gives a 25% chance to deal area of effect damage to your attack. However, the aoe is not that significant and the random factor doesn't seem to add much to the game.
I had a concept for pulverize so that it would work with combos. Instead of a 25% chance it would fire on every fourth attack, but would be reset after x(5?) seconds of not attacking, maybe it would have a longer attack animation also. I thought this might be an improvement to the initial version because now you are really rewarded for paying attention and splitting your units just in time. Thoughts?
|
I have wondered about the sense of it too.
Claivethrowers,gryphs, the Blademaster (cause of crits) and the Alchemist have a high damage variance. for most other units, it does not fall into account too much.
It does make the crit stronger, because it forces opponents to use their potions earlier, if they want to be safe.
|
On June 15 2015 04:02 3point14 wrote:
I have wondered about the sense of it too.
Claivethrowers,gryphs, the Blademaster (cause of crits) and the Alchemist have a high damage variance. for most other units, it does not fall into account too much.
It does make the crit stronger, because it forces opponents to use their potions earlier, if they want to be safe.
I recall asking this question a million years ago on the wc3 battle.net forums when I was still a fledgling and someone authoritatively told me it was obviously to fix the broken Starcraft instances of patterns with specific numbers of units being significant. I never questioned that and assumed this was the consensus opinion, partly because virtually nobody ever raised the issue. This was also during the time when people fought over whether BW or WC3 was the superior game, and in retrospect I should wonder if that influenced the opinion at the time.
|
Gaming has always brought out strong opinions. Even pros often contradict each other, when saying a unit is obviously overpowered. Doesnt make Blizzs work easier.
with the question of imbalance, it can have nice mathematical and philosophical scenarios.
Orb of corruption, staff of imbalance, Blademaster may be overpowered, but as long as the winrate of the race isnt higher than others, it does not mean, that the race is too strong or that something has to be changed.
I personally dont like it, but giving every race something overpowered, can be balanced.
Even if a strat is too strong, it can also mean, that you have to make more precautions against it in the beginning of a game, which then again balances all options of your opponent. Like in football, where Messi is defended more than other players, which evens the threat between him and his teammates.
anyways, on gaming forums you will hear people call any unit overpowered, even mountaingiants or tauren.
psychologically interesting.
|
Mountain Giants have an ability that can be almost nullified with proper counterplay. I find those sort of abilities interesting, where the direct effectiveness is completely dependent on the actions of at least one of the sides.
The classical example is flamestrike: very high damage, but you have to assume the opponent will move out of the way. The consequence is that for experienced players it serves as a positional tool or a way to interrupt attacking units and so on, but for newer players it's a very punishing offensive ability. If you contrast flamestrike with blizzard then the latter has a similar effect but it also deals some guaranteed damage even versus good players. The fact that some of the effect is guaranteed is both a blessing and a curse, because it means that the ability stays useful across all skill levels, but it reduces scope of counterplay. Of course you have to analyze this on a case by case basis, but I think sometimes it's necessary to introduce guarantees into an ability to keep it functional, as a sort of insurance.
To apply this to the mountain giant, I thought the taunt ability should either literally force units to attack it or it should not exist at all. As far as I know there is a Dota ability that functions like this (link). It's always difficult to create tanks or meat shields in an RTS game. I don't think the tauren, mountain giant, knight and abomination are tremendously successful units, because you're not obliged to focus them. They need to be able to either obstruct enemy units (and it's better to have two grunts than one tauren in that case) or cause some nuisance to incentivize the enemy to prioritize them.
A more idealized solution is to find ways to have the strength of the ability scale with the skill of the player that casts them.
One idea I had for a flamestrike replacement was based on touch screen gestures. The premise is that in Warcraft 3 area of effect abilities need to be instant damage to function because of the ease to run out of the targeted area. There are two options to break this, one would be coordination from other units that can obstruct or slow the targeted units, but my suggestion is to have a flame trail ability which follows a path you have to create via a mouse gesture. That way you have to constantly decide where to move your units, because the flame might follow a non-obvious path which had anticipated your movements. The obvious downside is the fact you would need new interface capabilities and it's a bit of a fanciful idea, but I think it's cool. :p
|
also, regarding critical strike, I think it relates to how health works in Warcraft 3: you have to take into account burst potential when considering a unit's health. It can mean that doubling the health pool of a unit increases its survivability by an even higher amount, because you kind of have to subtract burst potential. So archers are really incredibly weak and die to anything because they are easily focused down, you can't really pull them back or otherwise save them, heal them up and reactivate them. They are almost a liability. That's partly why critical strike was so powerful, the burst damage counts for more than regular damage.
|
On June 18 2015 06:59 Grumbels wrote:
also, regarding critical strike, I think it relates to how health works in Warcraft 3: you have to take into account burst potential when considering a unit's health. It can mean that doubling the health pool of a unit increases its survivability by an even higher amount, because you kind of have to subtract burst potential. So archers are really incredibly weak and die to anything because they are easily focused down, you can't really pull them back or otherwise save them, heal them up and reactivate them. They are almost a liability. That's partly why critical strike was so powerful, the burst damage counts for more than regular damage.
I don't think the key to solving Critical Strike lied in increasing every unit's health pool.
Critical Strike was down right too powerful, especially once people learned how to build around it. You'd have a Blademaster hitting for 200's three times in a row (like that famous video of Lyn vs. Lucifer).
It has to be nerfed somehow. Maybe decrease the multiplier, or maybe remove the RNG from it. Do something à la HoN, e.g. the proc is no longer random, but occurs every X/Y/Z hits. This means you can control the crit strike, but you also can't get several in a row and kill a hero in three hits. It also adds a great skill factor to the game.
|
On June 18 2015 14:49 Spaylz wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2015 06:59 Grumbels wrote:
also, regarding critical strike, I think it relates to how health works in Warcraft 3: you have to take into account burst potential when considering a unit's health. It can mean that doubling the health pool of a unit increases its survivability by an even higher amount, because you kind of have to subtract burst potential. So archers are really incredibly weak and die to anything because they are easily focused down, you can't really pull them back or otherwise save them, heal them up and reactivate them. They are almost a liability. That's partly why critical strike was so powerful, the burst damage counts for more than regular damage. I don't think the key to solving Critical Strike lied in increasing every unit's health pool. Critical Strike was down right too powerful, especially once people learned how to build around it. You'd have a Blademaster hitting for 200's three times in a row (like that famous video of Lyn vs. Lucifer). It has to be nerfed somehow. Maybe decrease the multiplier, or maybe remove the RNG from it. Do something à la HoN, e.g. the proc is no longer random, but occurs every X/Y/Z hits. This means you can control the crit strike, but you also can't get several in a row and kill a hero in three hits. It also adds a great skill factor to the game.
number of hits sounds good to me.
how important would you say, is the Bm nerf? would you rather nerf Human first, or buff Ud?
it seems to me that tanks are more imba.
Id say:
1. nerf tanks
2. buff Ud somehow
3. nerf Bm
4. nerf Ne staff
|
Humans match up vs NE is so bad they Humans don't even play it, and you want to nerf Humans.
TBH, game need no balance patches. People got to used to constant patches, that is pretty silly. The effects of patching in the community can be seen more effectively on Melee vs PM communitty, and PM doesn't even patch frequently.
If you still insist on patching, at least make it crazy patches like dota instead of balancing patches, but that is way harder on an RTS.
|
It's been a few years ago since I've seen high level Warcraft 3, but what used to annoy me in the past was heroes or units becoming unkillable. I'm thinking of th000 games where he plays human vs undead with use of priests, items, zeppelin, staffs and the paladin creates a hero combo that can not be killed ever. Or night elf games where every time you think a unit might almost die the staff of preservation saves it. Human vs night elf games are the worst sometimes, I recall games on Echo Isles that had fights with spellbreakers that would last for minutes because of all the healing, and that's not a compliment. That's what I would try to address if I had the power to change the game.
I associate th000 with abusive strategies actually, I think he also was quite good at "macro play" which is almost a misnomer in Warcraft 3, but which would consist of turtling with towers and two bases to mass gryphons on maps like Melting Valley.
I don't know too much about the balance at high levels, but I suspect that Warcraft 3 is in some ways limited and liable to being figured out and that it would require at least yearly patches to shake up hero preferences and so on. That would also address some balance concerns, because the win rates get ossified due to lack of development and would at least fluctuate more with patches.
With upkeep fixing your unit count at 50 and with only a few viable units per race, you might have extremely well mapped out favorable compositions. I'm not sure how to fundamentally address that, but at least patches and introduction or rotation of heroes, items, units would prevent stagnation.
|
On June 18 2015 14:49 Spaylz wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2015 06:59 Grumbels wrote:
also, regarding critical strike, I think it relates to how health works in Warcraft 3: you have to take into account burst potential when considering a unit's health. It can mean that doubling the health pool of a unit increases its survivability by an even higher amount, because you kind of have to subtract burst potential. So archers are really incredibly weak and die to anything because they are easily focused down, you can't really pull them back or otherwise save them, heal them up and reactivate them. They are almost a liability. That's partly why critical strike was so powerful, the burst damage counts for more than regular damage. I don't think the key to solving Critical Strike lied in increasing every unit's health pool. Critical Strike was down right too powerful, especially once people learned how to build around it. You'd have a Blademaster hitting for 200's three times in a row (like that famous video of Lyn vs. Lucifer). It has to be nerfed somehow. Maybe decrease the multiplier, or maybe remove the RNG from it. Do something à la HoN, e.g. the proc is no longer random, but occurs every X/Y/Z hits. This means you can control the crit strike, but you also can't get several in a row and kill a hero in three hits. It also adds a great skill factor to the game.
I suspect future instances of Warcraft games will not have such a dependence on directly applied random effects and replace them with procs that will affect your next attack but with some graphical notification to give your opponent a chance to notice, or maybe special attacks that will hit once every x attacks.
I think purely random effects are good as long as they can be repeated, that is to say, they should not be game deciding by themselves so that the randomness averages out over time. More powerful abilities like critical strike should not be purely random. That's why I suggested changing, say, the tauren proc to hit every 4th attack, since that's a quite significant ability, while adding critical strike and evasion to lower tier units because they're more or less harmless on units that you can mass.
|
Th000 is known for a lot of things. He has been part of half the greatest comebackgames Wc3 has ever seen.
He is known for the worlds best Ne vs Hu (him as Ne). He is the worlds best random player and went Random in the Wcg finals 2013 against Moon (he rolled Ud, lost, then changed to Hu). He is also known for good gamesense, often using units noone else uses. and yes, he abuses ALOT. It wins him games, so he does it.
thats my problem with Wc3. the abuse tactics are too good to be passed on. Human is so beautiful when they go 1base, but turtling will win the game.
I actually dont like patches that much either, cause it breaks up many patterns I internalized, but the game would be nicer if some strats were easier to deal with.
I dont get why the procommunity doesnt patch the game itself though, especially when most are good randomplayers
|
It's more complicated than that.
I don't know if you guys played during 1.14 and before, but basically at that point in time UD would massacre HU. This was before fast expansions were really a thing, notably because Destroyers were a lot stronger.
Anyway, the point is: while it is possible to beat UD as HU without fast expanding, it's a lot harder. More importantly, it isn't doable on every map. Stephano, back when he played WC3, was fond of going straight T3 against UD and he generally managed well. But on WC3 he was nowhere near top 5 in the world, and was top 10 in France at best.
At very high level though... I don't recall seeing a Human not going fast expand against UD too many times. So, while a fast expanding HU can quickly become a lame turtle fest, it's also the best option the race has against UD. For the longest time before that, HU vs. UD was incredibly unbalanced.
|
nerfing bm is a pretty bad idea since hes the only good unit the orcs have
the only truly broken thing in the game is the tome of xp
and the book of the dead i guess
|
I recall there was a bug with destroyers back then. The forums lighted(lit?) up with complaints about destroyers and people were like, nothing has changed about the unit to explain why this should be the case, but then someone discovered a bug introduced in the latest patch that doubled the splash damage or something like that.
|
On June 19 2015 19:37 Spaylz wrote:
It's more complicated than that.
I don't know if you guys played during 1.14 and before, but basically at that point in time UD would massacre HU. This was before fast expansions were really a thing, notably because Destroyers were a lot stronger.
Anyway, the point is: while it is possible to beat UD as HU without fast expanding, it's a lot harder. More importantly, it isn't doable on every map. Stephano, back when he played WC3, was fond of going straight T3 against UD and he generally managed well. But on WC3 he was nowhere near top 5 in the world, and was top 10 in France at best.
At very high level though... I don't recall seeing a Human not going fast expand against UD too many times. So, while a fast expanding HU can quickly become a lame turtle fest, it's also the best option the race has against UD. For the longest time before that, HU vs. UD was incredibly unbalanced.
agree 100%. I played Human back then, and had 50%+ in vsNE and vsHU, 40% vs Orc and 10% vs UD with lvl 34.
On wcreplays I browsed pages and pages, not finding a Hu winning. I can still dig up many reps from pros back then (ill do some research); it was slapstick, it was roll over and die.
The strat was rifle caster. The timewindow is extremely small, after that casting WEs or Slow becomes a liability, cause of destros. Riflers are countered heavily by Dk,Lich,Cl and Abos.
FatC became my hero when he beat Fov in a bo3.
When the whole thing switched completely, with tanks and towers (then Humans almost always won) , I refused to play that stupid tac and still do, like many other humans on ladder that I encounter as Ud. the B2W casters even joked about so many Humans on w3arena trying to make 1base work cause its simply more fun (and less flame).
1base can work though, with spellbreakers or dragonhawks or towerrush. I actually do like the Hu vs Ud pro games nowadays, cause they are very intense and the winrates are about even. waggonpushes!
btw: theres a tourney in China with 16k$ prizepool with 8 players on 10-12.07.15 .
There are 3 HUs and 2 UDs, so should have some nice HUvsHU and HUvsUD  especially with WFZs strong vsHU
|
Is there English casting and such for that Chinese event? I'm really interested in watching another WC3 event.
Anyway, I was thinking about this: my worst match-ups were always ones where I was playing some preconceived strategy I picked up from pro-games without understanding them. I never really knew what to do in UDvsUD when playing Lich-ghoul, nor did I know what I was doing playing mass dotts in NEvsNE or NEvsOrc, nor doing standard timing pushes with BM/SH/grunt/raider vs UD. You still win a lot because those strategies are popular for a reason, but you stop thinking and just repeat patterns you've seen elsewhere.
This is my current weakness in chess: I learn an opening, but I can only recognize some thematic opening concepts without knowing when or where to apply them, so I basically play random moves and I would be better off playing more generically based on opening principles.
I really feel that games are best served when players can make mistakes and are rewarded for having game sense instead of mindlessly repeating some optimal strategy. Sometimes that requires developers to break optimal strategies, other times you can just wait for counters to be developed by the players. The latter is ideal, but difficult to predict.
|
What do you think - will the RTS team completely move over to heroes of the storm after LotV is finished? The nature of heroes of the storm genre requires constant updates and I wonder if the RTS team at Blizzard will just work on it from now on.
The only hope for WC4 I see is if Jay Wilson is working on a secret project that turns out to be warcraft rts since he has good strategy game experience - seems like he has worked on company of heroes, dawn of war, homeworld 2
|
Im sure B2W will cast it in English
|
Sorry, who or what is B2W? My google search just gives a clan name, -- & I discovered that apparently CrotaGaming is still making WC3 videos. (maybe I'll watch some)
On June 20 2015 06:55 Jimmy Raynor wrote:
What do you think - will the RTS team completely move over to heroes of the storm after LotV is finished? The nature of heroes of the storm genre requires constant updates and I wonder if the RTS team at Blizzard will just work on it from now on.
The only hope for WC4 I see is if Jay Wilson is working on a secret project that turns out to be warcraft rts since he has good strategy game experience - seems like he has worked on company of heroes, dawn of war, homeworld 2
They're already completely moved over to heroes of the storm, they hired some new people for LotV singleplayer and had David Kim do work on multiplayer part-time. I'm sure that the resource-deprived SC2 team will just be absorbed into any of their other teams and that they plan on supporting heroes of the storm for at least the next five years. So I doubt there will be a new RTS any time soon.
They should make one though.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
