Campaign thoughts - Should Hero Abilities/Gameplay be updated

General Discussion
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The campaign in Reforged is getting some major updates like more mini-bosses and altered layout and new cutscenes. However, the one thing that isn’t changing seems to be the core gameplay and the way Heroes level up and obtain abilities. We see this from the Culling of Stratholme demo, where Arthas levels up and chooses the same basic abilities he had in the campaign (Paladin abilities).

I think that if they are going to the effort of updating and changing the campaign, I’d like to see updates to the core gameplay as well.

My vision of updated gameplay would be based on Heroes of the Storm’s approach to Hero control, but simplified so they can be adapted to WC3. I think there are some interesting design choices in HOTS that would give the War3 campaign a major boost in fun factor.

  1. All abilities available at start
    Heroes of the Storm has all abilities available right out of the box. This allows you to use all your tools available and learn how to play your Hero immediately. The gameplay is still heavily focused on resource management and efficient macro, and the learning curve remains generally the same. Abilities are still upgraded per level, so all starting spells could be considered ‘level 0’ and start as low-cost, weak spells. Let’s face it, as Arthas, no one would take Divine Shield or Devotion Aura first pick anyways. At least you have these tools available at the start whether you choose to use them or not.

  2. Talent system for progression
    I think adding a HOTS style talent system would promote replayability and give players something to meta-game. It doesn’t have to be as indepth as Heroes of the Storm, but something subtle like ‘Holy Light blinds nearby enemies’ or ‘Devotion Aura doubles effectiveness on units under 50% HP’ could be interesting. This could be sourced more closely to how DOTA2 talents work.

  3. Synergies
    Hero abilities should be more active and synergize with each other. Divine Shield and Devotion Aura as they exist right now are kind of bunk. I think they could be updated with a more active role. Divine Shield could work more like Varian’s Parry, and Devotion could be turned into a passive Trait and be replaced with an offensive attack. As it stands, I almost never use Divine Shield for Arthas since it’s a waste of mana.

  4. Add Traits
    A fifth ability or passive would really make Heroes shine. I think Uther’s trait is a perfect example, granting armor to any unit he heals. Passives like this really change how a Hero is used. Arthas has the same Paladin kit, but maybe he has more ‘selfish’ trait like he heals himself every time he casts Holy Light (I believe Uther also has this in a trait in HOTS).

These are just some ideas, but I think updating the campaign would make it last longer and give it some replay value like it deserves. I’ve always admired HOTS gameplay but it doesn’t really have any PVE content, and a lot of great ideas get stuck on a PVP-oriented game.

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It wouldnt be a remake if they changed the core gameplay, if they did that it would be a different game or a sequel. They could possibly do something more if they decide to release another new expansion or DLC of some sort, but I dont see that happening for the base game. Remember, everything in Reforged has to be compatible with the classic version of the game as well.

Some of your ideas work great for custom games, but not melee. It seems you are suggesting they change the campaign, but if campaign and melee are vastly different, it might confuse new players.

IMO the wc3 campaign is more about nostalgia and/or seeing the origins of your favorite WoW characters. If blizzard decides to add new gameplay elements, I would like to see them make a whole new campaign, rather than just update the original.

So let me ask you, are you more concerned about campaign or multiplayer?

i disargee

this would probably be worse for new players, especially if your using up mana much faster. Or it would require a complete overhaul of the games balance, thats too much work for a simple remaster

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Honestly having all abilities loses the strategic part of the game.

Some time after lvl2 you decide a hero path after seeing the enemy scenario or build.

Devotion aura should become more of an active with divine shield is a good suggestion. Maybe an active providing 25% phy. dmg resistance for like x amount of seconds. Same idea should be applied with other heros with weird spells like Bloodmage and Banish. or Dark Ranger and Spirit Drain.

Synergies already exist. Within a races hero plus their is also 2v2 and so forth.

Traits should not be added right now or suggested because of crappy balance state rn. Maybe the idea is looked into in the future.

Talent system could work honestly. Like DOTA did in 7.00. But with limited 10 lvls how can u use it?

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I agree, it wouldn’t be a remake. I’m making an argument based on what my interpretation of Reforged is, which is this nebulous realm of being neither a true remake or a remaster, but more like a remake+.

I agree that changing the core gameplay has a much stronger impact on staying true to the original, but I think the originals core gameplay for the campaign hasn’t aged well either. One example is using Thrall; there is practically no reason ever to take Farsight despite it being one of 3 choices. It’s not a choice really. The gameplay is set, you take CL/FS first, second, then max em out. Then you maybe consider taking the ult. There’s no incentive to deviate from it unless you’re playing some kinda ‘funzies’ meta.

My suggestion for this would be to give the player all of these abilities at the start but at half power and cost. You start with one point so you can level any ability up to “level 1” stats. This way you can start with CL but you still have access to weaker FS, or you can start with FS and have a cheap and weak CL to cast as a filler ability. If you are new to the game and don’t want to spend that point yet, you can test all the abilities straight up and find out for yourself which you want to go for first. In regards to a noob player being total noob, imagine what happens if they take Farsight the first time they play the campaign. They’re stuck with a useless spell and have nothing to do but rely on auto-attacks until they level up. This prevents that. Ideally, I’d go as far as removing Farsight and replacing it with his HOTS counterpart, Windfury. I’m honestly not a fan of having ‘useless’ choices in the Campaign.

I wouldn’t suggest a whole new campaign because at the fundamental level, we play the campaign to enjoy the story. I think that SC2’s RTS design is actually done very well, and it’s something I would also point to as a way to design the core gameplay around (the idea of having active, purposeful abilities and ‘talent’ options).

I don’t think new players finding the game too difficult would be much of an issue either, considering the way abilities are designed are very basic. I don’t think that every hero necessarily needs the depth of a HOTS character (since that would be way too micro-heavy) but I think that if they made the ability choices a bit more purposeful or choice driven, it could improve the gameplay.

In the situation where you control multiple heroes, there could be given an option to have active abilities (ie Frostmourne Hungers on Arthas) turned into Auto-cast, or added as a Hero-specific hotkey that works when group selected. You can still tab through heroes, but if you press ‘D’ key, you activate your main hero’s trait, and ‘F’ activates your second hero’s trait; and so on.

@EternalShade

Are you talking about multiplayer? I’m not sure what 2v2 and crappy balance has affect on Campaign. This idea is campaign-specific.

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OH. This makes way more sense. But why would they spend time for this for only campaign seems like alot of adding in new stuff. When the currently have thousands of animaitons, models, sounds to update. Collision sizes changes and balanceing. Along with terrain and doodads upgrades.

I would say maybe in wc4 not yet my friend.

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This is literally picking the spells as you level up. So in effect, it’s literally already in the game. You forget that the Campaigns are not just hero-only with passive units. On harder difficulties you do need to micro some units, as well as respond to various threats. Making Heroes overly complicated would only confuse new players, since each level they generally are introduced to a new unit, generally with its own specialties and niche places in your army, as well as having a new map / mission to deal with, AND are trying to follow the story. Throwing more into that just seems like a mistake. Classic Wc3 was fun because you didn’t need to be amazing at the game to get a handle on the levels and win.

Most of your ideas are already implemented in a softer way. Synergies are from items and hero typings/stats already exist (i.e. a Paladin with armor rings to make him a better frontliner, or a melee hero with an orb so they can hit air). Talent systems are literally just picking which spells you want to invest in. Heroes in melee matches are not the same as in a MobA, you don’t need nearly as much complexity, since there’s going to be 30 other things going on.

Ultimately, you don’t WANT people to have to be microing the hero every second of the game in an RTS. Warcraft 3 worked great because yes Heroes are a vital part of your army, but your other units have their own specialties generally, and require proper attention to be utilized correctly.

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Tbh I doubt they will, but I wanted to discuss thoughts and ideas. If we get a good enough editor, maybe we can do it ourselves as an enhanced campaign mod.

I just know a lot of RoC elements were broken upon balance patch updates. For example, Infernals used to be dispellable and Shamans with Purge were introduced in the same level. Infernals were made undispellable in later patches, making that particular mission much harder than necessary.

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It’s an interesting concept, but honestly I think you’d need an entirely new Campaign built with those mechanics in mind. The way it currently is works well since it’s being accessible even to those with poor micro skills.

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just cause its called Reforged instead of remaster, doesnt change the fact that they are keeping the core gameplay as the original, and it has to be compatible with the original, so no its not really a remake+ thats just how you interpreted their marketing scheme

if you look at SC:R you would see blizzard did the bare minimum in terms of a remaster, and theres a lot more they could have done but chose not to either for time or for money, and the same will probably be true for wc3r, they are not going all out on a new game the team is quite small

this is already possible, if thats your intention check out the hiveworkshop. Personally I am much more interested in co-op campaigns and am tired of the wc3 campaign after all these years, so I am very much looking forward to what modders and map makers can do

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While my examples may be too loose to properly convey the concept, I am mostly trying to rebalance the abilities so that there is more choice behind which to focus on.

While its true that microing units is a factor in the game, there are also some missions that are very hero-centric. I think adding more utility to passives and adding talents to promote different styles of gameplay could improve replayability and choice-driven customization.

Loose example is having a talent progression that synergizes armor and Devotion aura. If you choose this path, one talent could double armor bonus when units are low health, a higher talent adds armor as a damage bonus for units and a final talent that reduces holy light healing output but also reduces mana cost and cooldown. The idea with this build is to keep units at low HP where they get better armor bonus. Devotion would help keep them alive while a lower cooldown holy light helps maintain half health more frequently. This is a high risk-reward army focus build that requires more micro. This could synergize well with a Muradin berserker style build that makes him use his HP to deal damage.

Im looking at this in a very broad scope, like different styles of Hearthstone builds. I know this is a lot of effort put into just the campaign and I am aware Blizzard has limited resources, but ideas are never limited as long as the community has access to the world editor and campaign maps (hopefully).

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But once again, the Campaign is mostly to teach you the different aspects of your units/characters. They need to line up with online melee, as that’s the primary way you’re going to learn it.

Like I said before, its an okay concept on its own, but the classic campaigns literally just aren’t built with those in mind. You’d have to redo the balance from the ground up, which would take way more time than the dev team has. Personally, I think it would go better if they pulled a SC2’s Co-Op Campaign type thing in a later patch. You could add the concepts in there, make heroes a bit different from the solo campaign, and add in fluff like extra skill trees and stuff.

But just remember, the goal of the campaign itself is two-fold. First is to tell its story, and second is to teach players how to play the game. If it’s not teaching them the base game, going into Online play would be frustrating for the players. We all just want new people to be able to experience our favorite game and enjoy themselves, which is why I say your ideas have some merit, but the newer players need somewhere to teach them the basics of the game, and generally that’s what the Campaign was for.

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But they are basically rebuilding the campaign now anyway.

I’d very much like something like this. Just take a look at the SC2’s campaign: they differ a lot from normal melee SC2 games and new players have no problem with it. I hope WC3 uses something similar systems, like permanently upgrading your buildings and units and giving heroes some special abilities would be great, even some special campaign-only units. There are no Firebats in SC2 melee, are players confused about it? No, because they realize they are campaign units.

While I don’t like the level 0 abilities thing, I do agree that all campaign heroes should have useful abilities (Farsight is a good example). And even adding a fifth special hero-specific ability wouldn’t hurt at all. It would indeed make the campaign a lot more interesting and the heroes and characters more personal. It could also fix some lore issues: Grom isn’t a Blademaster, just give him a custom warrior-like abilities.

Don’t get me wrong, the current campaign is awesome, but now looking back at it, honestly, it does really just feel like a series of melee maps with some story.

And I disagree, the campaign isn’t really supposed to train people for melee; the campaign is for the story and an experience on its own. New players have to learn melee games anyway, if they plan to play multiplayer even a little seriously.

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But just remember, the goal of the campaign itself is two-fold. First is to tell its story, and second is to teach players how to play the game. If it’s not teaching them the base game, going into Online play would be frustrating for the players

I agree that its there to tell a story, I disagree that it is to be treated as a glorified tutorial. Yes, you can learn to play through the campaign, but everyone realizes at some point that the campaign is not a mirror of multiplayer.

The multiplayer meta is what is most important to multiplayer and you do none of it in the campaign. You dont scout your opponent, you dont hero harass, you dont employ surrounds and body block. All you really learn is how the spells work, and frankly you can do the same jumping straight into multiplayer or just playing Thralls Journey tutorial mission.

I dont think people will be praising WC3s campaign for having gameplay that stays true to multiplayer. What people want is deep gameplay they can return to, which is something Blizzard has been known for. For the campaign, it works like multiplayer but at a snails pace, because your levels are capped per mission. My idea is to expand the gameplay because of level caps and because there will be missions where you only control one hero at a time.

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I do agree even though I do not want abilities etc to be changed in campaign I think that at best I can consider campaign as a ‘bad’ tutorial for melee, it is mostly about trying to be kept on 100 food cap cause otherwise you can’t win agains mass armies and attack waves enemy has, unlike melee where we try to micro and stand below 50 food and even a Grunt you loose can cost you the game unlike campaign where it is just clashing of armies.

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I’m not saying it’s going to be a mirror. I’m saying that you need to learn the basics of Warcraft melee somewhere and that tends to be the Campaign. You learn how to build a base, what each building does, what units do and what types of attacks/abilities they have.

A good example would be Starcraft. 99% of players do not just start jumping into matchmaking and learn through playing on the ladder. You learn by doing a few campaign levels to figure out basics (how to get resources, how many workers to allocate, how base expansions work, how to actually win, etc).

Campaign is all about using fundamentals in an environment where you’re generally able to take your time, read tooltips, figure out different units gimicks, etc.

I honestly really liked Far Sight in RoC. On the final level versus Grom, you could find where the infernals are dropping instantly and send a few shamans to go purge them.

That’s something you can only say after you’ve had the basics ingrained into you. You take for granted that we know you put exactly 5 workers on a goldmine, or not to make 20 peasants to chop lumber. We know that farms/food buildings can be used to wall/defend, and that melee cant hit air units.

So once again, the base campaign (I literally just replayed all of RoC and TFT last night) are pretty fine how they are. Sure some levels could be spruced up a bit (which they said they will be doing), but I don’t think you need to add a whole nother level of complication to it. Some levels are frantic enough without having to worry about that. Talent trees, base level abilities, all these things would ultimately just be distracting for new players, and could put them into a disadvantage if they pick poorly. Save those mechanics for a Co-Op campaign or custom map set or whatever ends up happening, where you’re no longer “beginner” level but “intermediate.”

The campaign should be accessible to everyone like it was when I started playing. I mean, I first played when I was 8 years old, and I somehow managed to bumble my way through without cheats. I think that should be the sort of game the basic Campaign is, and I don’t think it would stay that way if you add extra levels of complexity (because I know my dumb 8 y/o self wouldn’t have been able to figure out what was going on).

Edit: I’m not saying any of your ideas are bad, in fact I actually like a couple of them. I’m just saying that there needs to be somewhere that most people would stumble onto initially that would teach them purely the base mechanics of the game. Plus keeping the hero power-level down more would make more sense in terms of the story anyways. Why would Arthas need to burn the ships, if he could 1 v 100 the Undead? Or Grom, why would he need Mannoroths blood if he could just crit smash Cenarius. However, this is all just my personal take on it, as I’d like to see something like a talent or skill tree added with a Co-Op campaign like SC2’s. I’d drop $$$ on that for sure.

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ONe of the most frustrating part of Reforged is that many players that are going to come over and try it out are coming from other genres of games, like HOTS/DOTA/LOL etc. Man, this is NOT that type of game…RTS is so different than controlling one hero with a bunch of abilities. There’s units, unit abilities, etc. all of which you’re responsible for…this game is much more difficult and complex than those types of games.

I keep seeing people compare this game to other genres…and they’re actually horrible ideas…like start with all abilities…what…i couldn’t even imagine

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Its an idea that would be designed for the needs of the campaign, not just arbitrarily doled out as a moba-lite.

There are actually quite a few missions where you literally control one hero and go through the missions with only a few abilities. Tyrande breaking Illidan out of prison, for example, is very rudimentary and all you do is avoid combat, and in the instances you do fight you literally auto attack them to death. That is the type of gameplay that hasnt aged well and is potentially being brought back in a new campaign.

Starcraft 2 is a good example to follow for installation type missions.

Also, the ideas Ive presented would work synetgistically with units. You still micro and macro your army, but there actually arent a lot of unit abilities available in the campaign for the majority of it. A lot of it is actually centered om heroes. Look at Culling, the units you have available are footmen, rifles and knights. The hero you control is Arthas. The abilities you have available are divine shield and holy light. The types of enemies you fight don’t micro themselves and act like basic creeps. Your strats are pretty much tank with melee and press heal once ever so often. That is the entire mission.

At most, you might get an item with a use effect to break up the monotony, otherwise the gameplay is dead simple and not worth replaying any more than once. Like I stated before, currently the campaign is actually less fun than mulitplayer because you cant even level up as quickly, your exp is capped per mission meaning there are drawn out segments of gameplay where you are stuck with one active ability at a time and only microing units against creeps. There werent even any true boss mechanics to speak of.

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Yeah, but the mission becomes difficult at a “hard” difficulty because not only is your base being raided from two sides by the Undead, in significant enough forces that you can’t just auto-repair a few towers to get through them, but you also have to micro your main force to kill the buildings. If you want to stay ahead of the curve, you have to also micro killing all the neutral civilians before they turn into Zombies.

I’m not saying any one of these aspects is particularly challenging, but when you start layering the base-defense, resupplying your main force and managing them to complete the objective, it can become pretty busy already.

And I think most of their restructuring of the levels will be focused on the monotony sections that you’re talking about. (Also, Tyrande rescuing Illidan from the prison, you start with like 5 other units, and gain a few more along the way). I won’t say the Priestess is particularly engaging to play as spell-wise for that mission, but that’s also because she has a passive, an auto attack buff, and a sealed ability during that mission.

For the replay value, that’s really where the Achievements come in, and are probably why they wanted to add them in.

RoC barely had boss mechanics sure, but plenty of TFT fights had challenges you could consider boss fights. Like Arthas vs The Old One, Illidan’s whole Black Citadel level, Arthas’s final TFT level… I could go on. I think those type of engagements were way more satisfying than say, SC2’s Zerg Campaign where you’re fighting the Primal Zerg leader. That’s obviously personal taste though. I think that an RTS “boss fight” should be a high pressure situation where units are flying at you from everywhere, and static defenses just don’t cut it. That, rather than an RPG style boss fight where there are AoE’s and massive spells being cast is preferential in my mind.

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Well, yeah that’s pretty much the only place where the ability is useful…

No body’s saying the basics should be taken out, and that the campaign should be some kind of RPG experience. Adding some complexity and other interesting stuff is not taking anything away from the fundamental gameplay mechanics.

More interesting, compelling and diverse gameplay mechanics don’t equal to harder game…

Who said the new abilities should be over-powered? What sense would that even make?

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You bring up a good point with missions becoming difficult due to macro. However, the ideas I hope to present shouldn’t heavily impact macro or unit micro.

I will say that I may have brought up some bad examples earlier, like with a parry-like ability or active damage ability on low cooldown. I should rephrase the context to having those abilities available for missions that are more Hero-centric or require less base building. SC2 does this with Installation missions.

I’m aware there are achievements, but considering they are being added over 15+ year old game mechanics, that’s not any more compelling gameplay than adding achievements to the original Super Mario Bros. on NES. Yes it adds another layer of depth, but absolutely no replay value.

I am not trying to devalue the gameplay. I am pointing out its flaws and where I potentially see improvement. Not all my ideas may fly since there are a lot of nuances to the campaign’s RTS roots (like controlling Arthas while base defending during the Frostmourne mission) but I don’t think the current style of A-move and come back in a few minutes is compelling for the campaign. I don’t think it ages well, even as an RTS.

Even more modern RTS like SC2 or Dawn of War 2 show that you can balance control of units with having more abilities accessible. While I do respect ROC and TFT’s original vision (moreso TFT since it corrected much of the campaign’s monotony by introducing compelling campaign-savvy abilities for each new hero) there are still some core flaws to it that I think could be rectified simply by allowing more moment-to-moment gameplay.

I think one possible way to approach this is like Lost Vikings design in HOTS. All of your abilities are picked through talents, yet you have the choice of which ability you want active. You can play TLV with all active abilities, or you could have TLV with no abilities. This changes how you approach the game, and could be a mission-based progression system rather than a set-and-forget Skill point system. This way if you know you are going into a map with a lot of macro involved, you can choose a macro build. If you like microing in a macro map, then by all means take the extra abilities instead of the passives. I think these type of talent choices should modify existing abilities or have options to provide passive boosts, and it would be your choice whether you want the extra micro or not. Basically if you want to play standard WC3, then you could choose the ‘A’ path and get a nice stat boost for good measure.

One example of this could be:
A) Devotion Aura doubles effectiveness on units under 65% HP
B) Shield Bash active ability which stuns an enemy, duration upgraded by Devotion ranks
C) Hero gains +3 armor, chance to stun attackers upon taking damage

This doesn’t conflict directly with macro if you choose not to. In this example, A is a macro-centric passive boost to Devotion, B is if you want more Active control over your hero, and C fills gaps by giving your hero a passive boost if you didn’t take Devotion and/or a choice to build your hero as a tank.

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