12 unit Selection

General Discussion
1

I know a lot people are concerning about the 12 unit selection. I have a naive idea recently.

The traditional 12 unit selection is not easy to remove. Even if the selection limit does not influence the balance design a lot, unlike the case in starcraft (zerg will be much stronger with F2A), selection of large number of units requires the redesign of the path finding and moving strategy, which highly influence the control feeling. For instance, in the old games that allow unlimited selection, like age of empire, all the selected units are group to 1 team with the lowest speed in the group, and move together to keep the team. Another modern example is starcraft 2, which force the same units to gather together, and then different units move according to their own speed. I don’t think most of players want that the control feeling of warcraft changes such much to starcraft2 or AoE2. Therefore, one cannot just consider the selection problem without changing the game mechanics that are the core design of warcraft.

However, warcraft has another mode which I never see any people use it, i.e. auto-formation with alt+F. After auto-formation, all selected units move together with the lowest speed, similar to the case of AoE2 that allow player to select all units. I think in this mode, selecting 12, 24, 36, 48 units together are fully allowable. In the real esports match, nobody will use it, even if it allows to select all units together. As for game mechanics, nothing needs to be changed for path finding or moving strategy, since the auto-formation has already been there in the game.

In sum, allowing auto-formation to select all units helps noob player to enjoy 4v4 or other unprofessional games, while the real ladder games won’t be changed anyway.

2

The 12 unit removal is a luxury issue, which I believe Blizzard has no current interests atm. Even if they are, as you stated, some forms of reprogramming will need to be formatted, which will cost them time and expense, which doubles down on them avoiding it… unless they have some sort of marketing expert that proves the change will yield greater success.

3

If my consideration is correct, they don’t need to release it from beginning. It can be added to future update. For instance, from beginning starcraft cannot use right click to set rally while warcraft was released, and starcraft cannot use shift+# to add units to team from beginning. Moreover, you may find that in recent warcraft, qwerasdfzxcv style of hotkeys is selectable (but still not effect so far).

I guess allowing auto formation mode to select all units does not require the change of core game design, but indeed is helpful for the beginners. I hope people may see it someday in FFA or 4v4 games.

1 Like
4

I think most of us that really want to select more then 12 units won’t mind having auto-formation. It’s not like we were going to all-army from the exact formation we wanted for a given engagement, and go “aww I wanted my necromancers to tank the enemy footmen”. We’re gonna A-move. The only difference is how many times we must repeat the same instruction.

The fact is, noob money is still green and there’s gonna be a lot of people who would like to see where WoWs story comes from. If I can barely put up with 12 select and I actually played both campaigns of Orcs and Humans, normies are definitely not gonna put up with some ridiculous 90s 12 select nonsense. You might as well have them control their army with a DOS prompt.

5

auto formation is actually quite good for noobs, besides selecting more than 12. For instance, if your hero run faster than the footman, it is easy to lose the hero as its dangerous position. In contrast, auto formation can keep it behind the footman.

Without auto formation, if you select 24 units, then right click or attack move, the behavior will be quite strange, and requires the change of path finding mechanics.

Therefore, if it really works, that could be a good design.

6
1 Like
7

Blizz had a poll about the 12 units selection and I am glad the community demanded it to stay and they listened.

8

Pretty sure people were at least asking to compromise removing the 12 unit limit for custom games like Risk, Helms Deep, etc. and not on general melee

9

Custom games will have the possibility to have unlimited numbers of units in one selection. Yes, you will be able to select the entire map and A move on a point.

10

The 12 unit selection in solo should be kept for sure. But I think removing it for auto formation case is harmless. Nobody will play solo match with auto formation on.

11

No way, it doesn’t do anything for melee games either except make people want to play them less.

12

If you have a point, please explain it. Why does it influence the gameplay and make the game worse? I am a player who had 300 apm when I focused on this game 10 years ago. Even now, my apm is higher than 200. I know a lot of people can do that for micro control and multitask. From my view, even if we allow the auto formation mode select more than 12 unit, I will never use it, since no pro gamer use auto formation. With auto formation, one fully loses micro control. It is just a helpful tutorial mode for noobs. If you say no way, there should be some reasons behind it.

13

That’s the problem. It doesn’t influence gameplay in any meaningful way. Pressing 1, right clicking, pressing 2, right clicking, and then pressing 3 and right clicking to move your army compared to just selecting all and right clicking is not a meaningful display of skill.

It just shows you found a way to deal with a clunky system.

15

Exactly, that’s why I’m saying to remove the 12 unit selection. It’s worthless

And the worst part is, even if they do it later, it’ll be too late for sales. People will have made up their mind about the game. And ohhhh yess, you can bet this clunky system is going to affect sales.

16

that means you never understand how RTS works.

Selecting units influences the path finding. it is not just about selection. Selecting 12 is not older than selecting all. Check aoe please.

With the removal of selecting 12 unit, you need to tell how the team move, like aoe2 or sc2. It won’t perform like wc3 anyway. it seems that you don’t understand this point.

17

I think you’re not reading all the posts in your thread. Unlimited selection is apparently already in the works for other modes. Implementing it to melee would not be a tech concern.

18

In other mode, the path finding and micro control are not such important, and people can enjoy with F2A. Applying to melee means you change the game to either aoe2 or sc2. And all recent pro gamers stay at classic version, since you create a new game. As I said if you prefer selecting all, play the auto formation mode, why refuse others to play the one they prefer? For me I play SC, sc2, aoe2 and wc3, and I want them different with each other.

it is not a tech problem. It is that you change the game to another. I use detailed words to claim how teams in sc2 and aoe2 move. They are different with wc3. Recently game with 12 unit selection move in another way.

aoe was released on 1997, and aoe2 was released on 1999. Aoe2 allows you to select all. Why the system by default is more advanced than wc3 released on 2002? Just because it allows you selecting all?

19

"That’s the problem. It doesn’t influence gameplay in any meaningful way. Pressing 1, right clicking, pressing 2, right clicking, and then pressing 3 and right clicking to move your army compared to just selecting all and right clicking is not a meaningful display of skill.

It just shows you found a way to deal with a clunky system."

We went through this before. You can point to any game mechanic and make a similar argument… You can say mining gold is a “clunky system”, or that creeping in multiplayer is a “clunky system”. That’s not a reason to change it.

Why are we restricting heroes to only 6 items? Is that a “clunky system” too? Why is town portal a consumable item? This can go on, and on, and on.

I think the mistake here is people seeing this as a restriction. It’s not a restriction, it’s a rule. All games have rules, and those rules have consequences. The consequence of having this rule is players are encouraged to find efficiencies in controlling small groups independently relative to their opponent doing the exact same thing.

Some people call this skill… unfortunately the example you used was completely without context. If this was in the context of a large battle with another player, pressing 1 instead of 2, or 2 instead of 3 could have dire consequences depending on your decision making ability in that given moment, relative to the decision making ability of the other player.

However… if both players are simply relying on a single click to move their armies around, you effectively throw out all the required decision making of what would otherwise be a test of skill between both players to see who’s got the better micro within those set of rules.

All you would be doing is removing 1 of many rules in the game, or “obstacles” as you see them. That’s why I said… if you start with this… people are just going to move onto the next thing and it will keep going.

So you are wrong… being forced to ctrl grp, in the context of a fight with another player forced to do the same, that’s where skill comes in. The fact alone that you HAVE TO push 2, or 3… forces decision making. Your decisions determine your skill relative to the other player’s ability to do the same, faster, and with more efficiency.

This is like one of the most important aspects of the game and you turds keep asking to “just scrap it cuz it’s old”. I don’t think any of you have really thought this through, at all… because you’re not game developers.

20

Not really, whether you force someone to use control groups or not, the one who groups their units has an advantage.

Removing the unit selection limit does nothing to that. It sure does make it so moving your army around the map is less clunky though. Feels way less bad if you don’t have a 12 unit limit

21

Lol you guys literally make me laugh, still talking so dramatically about the skill of pressing 1 and 2 …the unit group motions dont have to be slowed down, the pathfinding doesn’t have to be so deep an issue, just have proportional speed multipliers per unit/unit-type subtracted from a group’s overall speed rofl.

You guys act like everything was so perfect when really your minds just adapted and accepted the technical shortcomings of the game, and then you confuse it as an example of the need for skill…rofl. Go make up the most complex game in the world with your friends, and then have fun playing…with just your friends. Why have a remake at all if we aren’t trying to bring back old and new players to grow a community.

Then you have this moron with the audacity to talk about our unrealistic expectations when it comes to the fact that we ‘are not game developers,’ despite our points being about a disgustingly solvable issue - and he says this without any perspective on the business need for accessability, efficiency, and practicality. People complain blizzard has been lazy with this game, and then they go giving them so much lee-way to be lazy since they say don’t change blatantly stupid aspects. The pro scene will always exist because pros adapt. Relax. Make the game smoother Blizzard, do the right thing, except odds are you probably won’t.