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Upkeep was "unfun" on the surface but it was a cool mechanic that let so many different strategies be so viable. Potion of inv. was the worst item, cheap, no counters, significantly devalued hero healing/damage reduction, game was definitely better before that became a must have.
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Dec 8, 2020 16:53
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SirSamVimes posted:Supreme Commander is the gold standard for a great many things in RTS. I love Supreme Commander but it is worth noting that even its admittedly very good implementation of naval combat is basically "blob all your poo poo and attack move."
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Dec 8, 2020 17:04
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General Battuta posted:Were you on some other Warcraft 3 team? Yes, esports
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Dec 8, 2020 17:07
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I couldn't get into SupCom because all your units were robots without personalities. My arbitrary game preferences may have made me miss out on some good gameplay, I fear.
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Dec 8, 2020 17:24
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highperching, mountaineering, towering, etc. are a viable strategy mostly because of upkeep so i've never minded it 
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Dec 8, 2020 17:56
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Upkeep is cool and good because it encourages big plays to go along with the big army instead of people sitting on their rear end with huge blobs of dudes doing nothing. Also because it allows for defensive play and TOWA shenanigans.
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Dec 8, 2020 18:50
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Assuming that players would build the biggest army possible and then be able to use an increased cash flow from lower upkeep as a catch up mechanic sounds exactly like the kind of system you'd design after watching people play Starcraft 1.
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Dec 8, 2020 19:08
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I Love You! posted:Yes, esports Well more stories! More stories! What was the WC3 esports scene like? Did it have a ~meta~? How was Frozen Throne designed to fix the problems of WC3?
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Dec 9, 2020 05:50
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General Battuta posted:Well more stories! More stories! In RoC you can creep to 6+. RoC had completely different loot tables (including shop stuff). All kinds of abilities were different. No neutral tavern. No player shop buildings. TFT adjusted building costs significantly. I think they increased lumber cost and toned down gold a bit, but I could be remembering wrong. They also might have changed lumber income itself? SC1 and WC3 were wildly incomplete games and their expansions were like entirely new games in terms of just how much they changed and improved gameplay. TFT had a big esports scene. It was pre-youtube and pre-streaming so the amateur people people would record mp3 casts of replays and say "pause your replay at 0:25. Unpause in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1" and then you'd be syncd with the cast. I don't remember if that started in RoC but probably. There were tournament vods but they weren't very common. The "esports scene" for early RoC was more like weekly tournaments. At least at first. Or maybe there was more and I didn't know even though I followed the replay sites religiously and played in some of the weekly tournaments. The ladder algo in wc3 kinda sucked and wasn't mmr based. If you just wanted to farm icons you'd constantly make new teams and get your first 20-50 wins for free bashing new palyers. 1v1 was also like this, and you could make as many accounts as you wanted. Lots of people were real mediocre but would brag about their ratio from abusing this. Khorne fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Dec 9, 2020 |
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Dec 9, 2020 09:26
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PaybackJack posted:Assuming that players would build the biggest army possible and then be able to use an increased cash flow from lower upkeep as a catch up mechanic sounds exactly like the kind of system you'd design after watching people play Starcraft 1. I believe that SC1’s campaign (and SC2) really taught an entire generation of RTS people that turtling up is an effective strategy. It almost never is.
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Dec 9, 2020 11:24
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General Battuta posted:I love Supreme Commander but it is worth noting that even its admittedly very good implementation of naval combat is basically "blob all your poo poo and attack move." Balanced Annihilation (Spring) has great TA style naval combat, but getting a game these days is really tricky, unfortunately.
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Dec 9, 2020 12:13
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On the note of RoC allowing you to creep past level 5, Frozen Throne not being able to do so actually interferes with a couple of maps in the RoC campaigns in Reforged; I think the second-last Orc level, and the third-to-last Night Elf level both feature primarily Creeps as the enemies you face along the way for at least one of the heroes' paths in each map, resulting in Reforged not allowing the heroes that would have levelled up in those maps to do so. Because they're past level 5, and are only facing creeps, and thus gaining no experience where they would have in Reign of Chaos before the creep experience cap.
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Dec 9, 2020 17:01
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Khorne posted:Ladder Abuse Ladder abuse I got way too familiar with as our clan (LRA) was all about 2's, 3's, 4's rankings. Outside making new teams, the go 0-10 or 0-25 to get 50+ really, really easy games. Then there was the go 0-10/25-10/25-20/50-20 phase. There was a collective mmr phase where one player would tank then match with a good player. Just before WoW was the worst, combination of all the abuse tactics kept most of the top 100 untouchable... and you'd never play them because they'd only get really low level games. And poo poo got significantly worse from there. Best fun, only useful for clan wars, was you could have 5-10 people playing 1v1 on an account at the same time to make a 'legit' fake account in hours. Edit: I should note LRA 100% stole multiple tower strategies, including perching, from TOWA. 1st_Panzer_Div. fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Dec 9, 2020 |
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Dec 9, 2020 17:13
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Khorne posted:It varied based on patch. Casters were very strong until they completely redid damage types (due to casters). There were no shop buildings for each race so human priests were even stronger. Piercing became the strongest damage type in the later patches (or post-tft, I don't know, it's all a blur). This is all pretty much accurate (I didn't work at Blizz anywhere near during this time period but was playing in various events). There really wasn't an "esports" scene of note back in early RoC in the west - it was more in TFT days that people were joining teams and making names for themselves outside weekly Bnet tournaments and clan-hosted tournaments. There were plenty of tournaments organized by the top clans, though there were rarely prizes and they weren't casted/broadcasted since the technology wasn't there yet. Much more relevant and influential early on were the curated replay sites - these were actually closer in relevance to what esports are today because it's where you went to see the best players, newest strats, crazy plays, etc. If you were a really good (or just very creative) player your hope was always to have a replay featured on one of the big sites, and to not be on the losing side of a really sick replay. I still remember very clearly almost every one of my replays that made it to those sites (from both sides). And echoing the above on the ladder - grinding to a top-100 slot on the ladder was an insane affair because the "ladder ranking" was not MMR-based, nor was matchmaking really, and the top teams had been accumulating ladder points for ages. And while you lost a lot more for a loss than you gained for a win, it was still mostly about grinding at a very high win % for a very long time if you wanted to climb at all, as opposed to just winning more than half your games vs. equally-skilled opponents. Most of what I did at Blizz was related to SC2 and SCR so these are mostly grizzled ladder vet stories I Love You! fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Dec 10, 2020 |
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Dec 9, 2020 17:30
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The daily automated (?) tournaments were a really good idea and it's a shame nobody's copied them as far as I can tell. Then again I don't think there's anything quite like Bnet anymore at least when it comes to a place you can just idle and chill in a channel with 100k players on various other games. I've been playing the hell out of aoe2de lately and the game is much better than the conquerors but I actually miss the zone warts and all. It felt like a community.
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Dec 9, 2020 17:59
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BlazetheInferno posted:On the note of RoC allowing you to creep past level 5, Frozen Throne not being able to do so actually interferes with a couple of maps in the RoC campaigns in Reforged; I think the second-last Orc level, and the third-to-last Night Elf level both feature primarily Creeps as the enemies you face along the way for at least one of the heroes' paths in each map, resulting in Reforged not allowing the heroes that would have levelled up in those maps to do so. Because they're past level 5, and are only facing creeps, and thus gaining no experience where they would have in Reign of Chaos before the creep experience cap. There's a bunch of weird issues with changes made to the campaign in Reforged that change or slightly screw with the single player experience for odd reasons, but "luckily" I only had to deal with the multiplayer issues I Love You! fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Dec 9, 2020 |
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Dec 9, 2020 19:41
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I was thinking about it and man night elfs are a wacky addition. What’s their version of a Knight/Tauren/Abom? A Druid? Kinda? A mountain giant? Their workers turn into buildings like zergs, but are also potentially infinite producers. Also they can explode. Their first unit is a super delicate ranged unit, huntresses are very squishy for a mainline melee, their dragon-like aerial unit hits ground only, they bank up healing juice in their food supply, the list goes on. Within the confines of WC3, they are loving weird as a faction. And it works! Blizzard knocked it out of the park with night elfs. And they made the anime hero poo poo!
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Dec 10, 2020 10:51
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It's bears
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Dec 10, 2020 11:09
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jokes posted:I was thinking about it and man night elfs are a wacky addition. What’s their version of a Knight/Tauren/Abom? A Druid? Kinda? A mountain giant? My favorite part about Night Elves in WC3 and Classic WoW is the visual/art design. It is goofy and makes no sense but it also looks nice. They are nature worshippers, master hunters, got beasts and deities of the wild on their side. Visually, they just kludged together some Greco-Roman and Shinto stuff and called it a day. The tree buildings have shimenawa on them. Moonwells have torii on them. Hunter's hall has slanted roofs with that curly maidenhead type thing on the crest. Then there's just random marble pillars and a bunch of Pantheon-rear end looking ruins all over the place. In WC3 alone it is almost exclusively Japanese themed. WoW just threw marble ruins everywhere on top of that. And then their units are very loosely based on "some European forest Druid poo poo" It is a bunch of disparate things that work just fine together, but it's funny to me how each of those pieces has like no common ground at all.
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Dec 11, 2020 06:04
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The reversal of traditional gender roles in a fantasy setting was dope, even if the unit design was a little, uh. Also worth pointing out, as scantily clad as the female night elfs were, the male night elfs also were showing a lot of skin. Demon hunters and KOTG don’t wear shirts at all, even though Demon Hunters get flared JNCO jeans. Basically everyone is shirtless, actually, except for some female units and the Druids of the claw. Night elfs were pretty great. Something happened when they became bouncy perky cheerleaders in WoW though. Dryads, yeah, I guess.
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Dec 11, 2020 06:48
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jokes posted:The reversal of traditional gender roles in a fantasy setting was dope, even if the unit design was a little, uh. It all went downhill when they decided WoW wouldn't lock classes based on gender for Night Elves
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Dec 11, 2020 06:49
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Half of Dracula posted:It all went downhill when they decided WoW wouldn't lock classes based on gender for Night Elves ...I did not realise this until now. They even got it wrong in the intro!
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Dec 11, 2020 09:36
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It's a bummer they didn't go with the original plan and make the classes based on units.
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Dec 11, 2020 16:46
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They pretty much are though. Mage, priest, shaman, paladin, death knight, demon hunter, and druid are pretty much all direct unit conversions. Or the base unit combined with the other racial variations. Warriors are just amalgamations of the various martial units. Warlocks as a unit date to Warcraft 1. Rogues are pretty much unique as a playable unit in Warcraft, but an rpg staple otherwise.
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Dec 11, 2020 16:58
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Blademaster unit always struck me as a combat rogue, tbqh.
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Dec 11, 2020 18:08
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Wind Walk makes the connection with stealth pretty clear also night elves were better in wc3 when they were essentially bloodthirsty amazon murderers taking care of their lazy brothers, change my mind
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Dec 11, 2020 18:24
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Tubgoat posted:Blademaster unit always struck me as a combat rogue, tbqh. Aren't combat rogues like pirates now or something?
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Dec 11, 2020 20:47
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THE BAR posted:Aren't combat rogues like pirates now or something? Basically. Roll The Bones is a rather pirate-y dice-gamble thing, but it was more obvious in Legion when we had a talent for a straight-up cannonball barrage ability.
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Dec 11, 2020 23:59
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I know this has probably been said several times since Reforged was released but it doesn't hurt to ask again: when I look at my Blizzard account, it shows RoC and TFT under "classic games", same as my registered licenses for D2 and LoD, but if I download the clients for either of the War3 games, will I only be able to play them through the Reforged client? Should I just find my disks and install them that way?
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Dec 13, 2020 04:45
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Aces High posted:Should I just find my disks and install them that way? If you have a LAN or some private group you'd prefer to play with, yes. Otherwise, connecting to Battle.net forcibly updates you to the second worst version.
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Dec 13, 2020 04:51
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I see, I don't care too much for online play, I'm more concerned about the campaigns and if the Reforged client has borked the classic versions
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Dec 13, 2020 05:05
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Oh, baby, you know it has.
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Dec 13, 2020 05:23
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Aces High posted:I see, I don't care too much for online play, I'm more concerned about the campaigns and if the Reforged client has borked the classic versions It is important to note that, while you can play the original versions of the campaigns by playing under Non-Reforged graphics, I do not personally know what the Reforged Client may have done to said original campaigns. However, the Reforged Client still has no custom campaign support. So, if you've enjoyed any custom campaigns like Arkain, Rise of the Blood Elves & Curse of the Forsaken, Shadows of Hatred, or others, those are not playable under the Reforged Client.
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Dec 13, 2020 06:20
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Mata posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4LiaGG8KSs tillerman disagrees da goos chop da wood
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Dec 13, 2020 11:34
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I Love You! posted:This is all pretty much accurate (I didn't work at Blizz anywhere near during this time period but was playing in various events). There really wasn't an "esports" scene of note back in early RoC in the west - it was more in TFT days that people were joining teams and making names for themselves outside weekly Bnet tournaments and clan-hosted tournaments. There were plenty of tournaments organized by the top clans, though there were rarely prizes and they weren't casted/broadcasted since the technology wasn't there yet. Who actually handled balance for WC3? Was there any quantitative data used or was it mostly balanced by feel and play test? Was there someone whose job it was to say “orc is too weak/strong” or was everybody just a generalist? No idea if you had any insight into these processes, but my experience in game dev is that internal conversations are often just as frustratingly subjective and incoherent as your average forum thread.
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Dec 13, 2020 16:14
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General Battuta posted:Who actually handled balance for WC3? Was there any quantitative data used or was it mostly balanced by feel and play test? Was there someone whose job it was to say “orc is too weak/strong” or was everybody just a generalist? No idea if you had any insight into these processes, but my experience in game dev is that internal conversations are often just as frustratingly subjective and incoherent as your average forum thread. Normally I wouldn't assume engineers/designers/management at a studio played their own game, but old Blizzard definitely did and there have been anecdotes posted about senior Blizzard people being late to meetings due to playing their own games at work. Khorne fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Dec 13, 2020 |
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Dec 13, 2020 16:54
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Khorne posted:During WotLK WoW only had 2 people working on class design & balance. lol that's amazing.
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Dec 13, 2020 17:33
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Khorne posted:During WotLK WoW only had 2 people working on class design & balance. 
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Dec 13, 2020 18:07
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Groovelord Neato posted:lol that's amazing.
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Dec 13, 2020 18:10
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Khorne posted:It's not as bad as it sounds. Provided you get one or two people working on it who are very involved and good at their jobs. When you expand to larger teams you get disconnects, a lack of a shared vision, and pretty much everything we saw with launch d3 where classes were designed as if they were for entirely different games. What were classes like at D3 launch?
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Dec 13, 2020 18:28
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