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On February 21 2016 09:26 Clonester wrote:
Making WC3 maps is much harder then BW maps, at least, when you want to achieve balance:
Neutral creeps, neutral buildings/shops and possible Item drops add 3 more to balance mapelements, you have to have an eye on. Following this, most maps cant be released polished and balanced. Even now the current maps (where atleast 3 community maps are used) arent free of balance problems. The biggest problem is that Warcraft is much harder to balance, 4 races, each with 4 heroes, 10 neutral heroes, neutral units, creep routes and the biggest part, the RNGesus itemdrops. Itemdrops are a core mechanic of Warcraft and changing them would take a part of its soul, but they will always feature unbalance. Most prominent example is chrystal ball against pipe/flute/drums. Or when an undead player gets the GG scroll.
All in all I dont think that you can fix through maps, also because the small sceen seems to be unwilling to play on new maps (just like the BW scene, where fighting spirit and circuit breaker is there for ages) and there is no star league which could force in new maps.
I am indifferent about the upcoming patch. On the one hand I dont like it, because even tho Warcraft III is not balanced at the moment like BW is, I say it is the greatest RTS of all time. It is save that the Solo-Warden gets nerfed, but it is one of the coolest strats we can see (when it is well played). On the other hand I think human building armor (and its upgrade) will also get nerfed, which I like. Turtle human isnt very cool to watch, maybe even nerf to the siege engine, but not shure.
In the end it all falls and stands in games with some parts of RNG, we often see units or heros survive with 1-20 hp, while the damage of the blademaster is per hit is between 26-46 from the start. How to balance that? I dont see how warcraft III can have total balance and its current state is pretty fine. 120 and Fly have shown that UD and Orc are not dead.
Eh, keep in mind, Fighting Spirit and Circruit Breaker are "only" 5-6 years old, and we've seen new maps like Demian and Avalon recently, I dont think thats even comparable to how WC3 leagues are still running 13 year old maps.
I think the item drops, while they are part of the soul game, they should be balanced to be comparable with eachother, and not have godlike items versus useless and/or redundant items. Thats not fun or interesting.
120 has done amazing in spite of UD being very weak, but at the end of the day it's still very weak, how long has it been since we've had a big UD champon?
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Is UD weak or UD players simply worse? have people made the stats with APM and plays and stuff?
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On February 23 2016 04:02 TMG26 wrote:
Is UD weak or UD players simply worse? have people made the stats with APM and plays and stuff?
Many people, myself included, think that UD is the worst race (though you can argue about the margin, which may depend on the matchup, and my information may not be up to date).
There are several possible reasons for this, but I think the most notable are:
-UD is the most predcitable race of all: Hero choices are almost set in stone. Their casters could just as well be nonexistent, meaning UD have a relatively limited pool of units they can play.
-Expansions are far much harder to establish and easier to harass than with any other race.
-They tend to build their army slower/have the weakest t2/invest more resources in tech early (all of which linked), which means the often lose mapcontrol for the entire midgame. Often for UD one lost fight equals gg, where other races have mechanisms that make comebacks possible.
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Undead isn't as weak as people make it out to be. Orc depends a lot on item drops for its advantage. It can just as easily be said that undead is at an advantage versus human.
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Hey all wc3 fans 
So i've heard alot of this "patch" that will come to warcraft 3 this year, but i can't find any information about it anywhere. I still think its just alot of people trolling, since there is no proof.
Anyone got a link or something?
Thx!
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There is no official conformation for the patch, but it is save, that Blizzad contacted Netease and the chinese Pro Players to get oppinions for a potential patch and said they want to press a new patch in the time where the warcraft movie hits china.
On the maps: We have newer maps, the one with the skeleton runes, amazonia 1.3 and some other 1.X maps. On the same side we have TM, EI, TR, TS which are super old. But the biggest difference is:
While we have (had) large tournaments and organisations in Broodwar and SC II (KESPA for BW, Blizzard and to some degree Kespa/GSL for SC II), we dont have them at the moment for W III. Following the end of Kespa in Brood war, the FS, CB madness startet. In Warcraft we never had such a prominent organisation, who could force new maps. Blizzard didnt care so much, players didnt accept new maps like in other games (as maps in Warcraft have far more concerns then in Broodwar or SC II) and organisations didnt had the power to force the maps in. Following that, they keept playing on very old maps, as these have been scene as balanced. And some have been not, like lost temple, for which we got amazonia and it friends. In the end the scene is just to small to force new maps over the concern of the pros. If War3Arena would push a complete new mappool, there might be much less War3Arena players. Same for other clients.
To the unbalance
As I said I say Orc and UD are underrepresented and underperforming. Not by 40:60, but by 45:55. You also wount get the unbalance away, as the game is much harder to balance out like Starcraft games, as there is much more impactfull for the balance. But I dont see UD such behind, yes 45:55, but not extreme behind. UD Heroes are the strongest heroes in the field when it comes to lower lvl and with higher lvls, they are the best nukers. UD armies are the most effiecent 50 supply army in the game, their heeling is great, their T1.5 unit is the best of all 4 races, Their anti-caster is the best one in the game, while their caster are not trash, but way to easy to counter.
And when it comes to champions, we got only one BIG tournament a year, WCA, won by an Orc over a human. And the smaller offline ones, PGL, Human over Nighelf and GCS (Golden Championchip Series, the finals of netease ladder challange) won by a Human over an Undead. It is not like there is alot of chances for Undead to win tournaments at all.
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One of the current top Undead players, Believe, in an interview before he did military service said that he doesn't think undead is a weaker race, simply that undeads must execute perfectly.
A good parallel between sc2 and undead would be Parting's Soul Train push, particularly during the Wings PvZ broodlord era.
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On February 24 2016 00:17 hiromi wrote:
One of the current top Undead players, Believe, in an interview before he did military service said that he doesn't think undead is a weaker race, simply that undeads must execute perfectly.
A good parallel between sc2 and undead would be Parting's Soul Train push, particularly during the Wings PvZ broodlord era.
That doesn't really make sense, if every other race is able to do well and get championships by executing imperfectly, and undead MUST execute perfectly, that puts Undead at an extreme disadvantage because every other race is "allowed" to make mistakes but undead aren't.
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United States338 Posts
It's hard to say, we had players like Space who could barely move his hands play amazingly well as UD. UD was what I used to get top 100 on US East back in the day, but I distinctly remember switching to Night Elf during the 'year of the orc'.
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On February 24 2016 01:03 lestye wrote:Show nested quote +On February 24 2016 00:17 hiromi wrote:
One of the current top Undead players, Believe, in an interview before he did military service said that he doesn't think undead is a weaker race, simply that undeads must execute perfectly.
A good parallel between sc2 and undead would be Parting's Soul Train push, particularly during the Wings PvZ broodlord era. That doesn't really make sense, if every other race is able to do well and get championships by executing imperfectly, and undead MUST execute perfectly, that puts Undead at an extreme disadvantage because every other race is "allowed" to make mistakes but undead aren't.
Except it's not really an "extreme" disadvantage is it. No one who's watched or played this game would suggest UD's "extremely" weak. Fraught with vulnerabilities maybe, but good UD players have always been terrifying. From what I've seen there's no map/race matchups that fall wider than 45/55 or at worst 40/60 in favour of one side and the better player seems to win the vast majority of the time. It's such a skill intensive game, it seems wrong for so much time and energy to go into discussing balance.
The thing I've always wanted to see was the ability to choose the item you got from a camp. For example if you had the level 1 drop (or whatever item level it is) you could choose Slippers, Gauntlets, Mantle, Cloak etc. It would probably need to be coupled with a rebalance (read nerf) of abusable items but it would cut out that stupid RNG factor that crops up in many games. One player takes a huge risk to creep a red camp and gets Crystal Ball or Runed Bracers vs Orc while their UD opponent gets Pipe or Trueshot.
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I was thinking about this recently, there's been a lot of comments in this thread, on /r/wc3, on how cool the upkeep system is. One criticism I have looking at it from this point of time, is that I feel like I hardly ever see games go into low upkeep, and I NEVER see games that go into Heavy Upkeep.
Is the upkeep system actually good at making players making the choice of suffering the economic loss for a bigger army? Like if tomorrow If you patched out the Upkeep system, and put in a low pop cap of like 50/52/54, we'd get the same result.
Am I wrong?
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Moon playing well today, don't miss it on twitch.tv/back2warcraft , sick tournament!
Would be really cool to have the stream featured on TL under other games btw .
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Definitely. There is serious overlap between SC fans and WC3 fans. And the wc3 streaming scene is pretty active (there are several regulars who would qualify for featured streamer) that a wc3 tab would be nice .
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On February 25 2016 21:51 lestye wrote:
I was thinking about this recently, there's been a lot of comments in this thread, on /r/wc3, on how cool the upkeep system is. One criticism I have looking at it from this point of time, is that I feel like I hardly ever see games go into low upkeep, and I NEVER see games that go into Heavy Upkeep.
Is the upkeep system actually good at making players making the choice of suffering the economic loss for a bigger army? Like if tomorrow If you patched out the Upkeep system, and put in a low pop cap of like 50/52/54, we'd get the same result.
Am I wrong?
The tournament linked between our posts currently has both players above 60 supply. I don't really care about the mechanic either way but it does impact the games a lot.
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Reprisal made manner sanctuaries on check's expo lol
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On February 26 2016 00:18 Yurie wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2016 21:51 lestye wrote:
I was thinking about this recently, there's been a lot of comments in this thread, on /r/wc3, on how cool the upkeep system is. One criticism I have looking at it from this point of time, is that I feel like I hardly ever see games go into low upkeep, and I NEVER see games that go into Heavy Upkeep.
Is the upkeep system actually good at making players making the choice of suffering the economic loss for a bigger army? Like if tomorrow If you patched out the Upkeep system, and put in a low pop cap of like 50/52/54, we'd get the same result.
Am I wrong? The tournament linked between our posts currently has both players above 60 supply. I don't really care about the mechanic either way but it does impact the games a lot.
Yeah, bad timing :-<.
Maybe my argument should be against the high upkeep point instead?
I saw Reprisal go up to 60 or so, but that game was a clown show.
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On February 25 2016 21:51 lestye wrote:
I was thinking about this recently, there's been a lot of comments in this thread, on /r/wc3, on how cool the upkeep system is. One criticism I have looking at it from this point of time, is that I feel like I hardly ever see games go into low upkeep, and I NEVER see games that go into Heavy Upkeep.
Is the upkeep system actually good at making players making the choice of suffering the economic loss for a bigger army? Like if tomorrow If you patched out the Upkeep system, and put in a low pop cap of like 50/52/54, we'd get the same result.
Am I wrong?
I see low upkeep pretty often among streamed games. But it depends on races and matchups:
For example NEvOrc: The Night Elf has alot of things to spend his money on prior going over 50 supply: Heal scrolls to counter shockwave, Potions for 3 heroes, staff for 3 heroes, orb of venom for D.H., additional moon wells, expansions. You will see the Talon Nighelf sitting on 50/50 pretty long or even all the time. He pushes when he got his items and 50/50 and does not go over 50 usually.
The orc on the other hand plays only 2 heroes and relies not so heavy on items: Scrolls are okay for him, but not so demanding like for the talon nighelf. He needs invu pots for his heroes and mana for his TC. He has no staffes to buy, no additional beneffit from burrows like the wells. His expansions are harder to take (expect the buys small town house). He will most likely not attack at 50/50, but push to 65-70 and then feel confident to attack. The more units he has, the more power does his army have, as he needs walkers for dispel/chain and raiders do alot of damage to the talons. You will see the orc go over 50 quite often.
The more units the night elf has, he will not gain much more strengh like the orc. Talons only tickle with their attack, they are mostly needed for fairy fire and whirlewind. The core damage comes from his triple hero combo.
Other example is human. He will sit at no upkeep for a long time, as he gets his expension and builds towers here. Usually he uses footman/mercs when the enemy is already at T2 or even T3, depending how easy he got his expo. Following this, human swims in gold, he will build up to 4 or even 6 production buildings and then starts pumping units up to 80 supply.
NE vs NE also often sees low upkeep, every additional unit is usefull, when you have bear fights, more bears are the thing you want. You cant counter enemies units with items like NEvsOrc, so you see often fights arround 60-70 supply, depending how the game wents.
There are more matchups where you see higher supplies then 50, it always depends on what you can do else with your gold and the ROI from additional army supply. Also when you want to end the game with this push, you not only buy all the items, but sques out as much units, not caring how much gold you get, as you want to end the game, properly against an opponent who was shy of going over 50.
But you are right with over 80 supply, high upkeep. You see it very rarely, for example by a human who banked 3000 gold prior of going there. Grubby has shown in his Warcraft Series a game, where he saved over 4000 gold as Orc and then pumped straight to 100 supply and won the game. But it is rare, I would say not rare because of the upkeep itself, but of a core game mechanic:
You dont see deathballs in Warcraft III. They do not exist. You cannot turtle up in Warcraft, as you are going to be behind in experience and Items quite fast. You need presence on the map, creep and stop the enemy from creeping. Following this you will see fights much before players are in the perfect "now I can win-push" comfortzone. Players need to be on the map, need to creep and need to fight: Either by harass or by direct fights. There is no reason to stay behind and wait for the 100 supply, as your enemy then has the best items and 5/5 heroes. Fights become a thing all the time.
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On February 23 2016 04:02 TMG26 wrote:
Is UD weak or UD players simply worse?
I think UD is supposed to be the weakest race, something like 49-51 in all matchups and supposed to be the strongest race in 2v2.
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On February 26 2016 00:36 Dingodile wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2016 04:02 TMG26 wrote:
Is UD weak or UD players simply worse? I think UD is supposed to be the weakest race, something like 49-51 in all matchups and supposed to be the strongest race in 2v2.
It is the strongest race in all team games from 2v2 up to 4v4.
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Awesome writeup, Clonester. I corrected myself in a previous post, I suppose my criticism shouldn't necessarily be with the upkeep system in general, but probably the tuning with low-high, maybe? There's no death balls in WC3, so I don't really see a point in the high upkeep system. Maybe it's way toooo radical to suggest putting low and high at lower caps, but I do have to question High Upkeep when there's never a practical time where you're going to go there as part of your strategy.
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EPT
