Is the lack of responsiveness something core of WC3?

General Discussion
1

I have played WC3, and I’m looking forward to this new one. But I was never a hardcore fan simply because I was too young to understand RTS. Coming back to WC3, I realized units take like a full second to either change an action after a command or even following a simple shift command. Is this something that is considered like a core celebrated feature of WC3 ? I recently learned that the clunky pathing is something they wanted to keep, I don’t know how does the community feel about this one.

12 Likes
2

Ok let me give my PoV on these quirks that some people may think added value to the gameplay.

Simply put most players here are just used to the quirks and learned to exploit it. This is not some deep strategy or reason behind it. Its a bug. Or some Esport thing but I highly doubt that.

Now you can include it in for legacy reasons but its not a feature. Most gamers playing this for the first time or after a long time would be annoyed by it and rightly so. They will say the game is buggy and poorly optimized.

Now if this was some RTS game trying to represent real world tactics like command relay delay. Then yeah. I get it. Imagine playing a total war game, realistically ordering 1000 soldiers out of your 5000 would take some time to be relayed and obeyed. So you need to play it smart you can’t keep ordering your archers back and forth each time your enemy threatens to charge you with their cavalry.
People enjoy those sort of realism challenges.

Unfortunately this is not what is happening with WC3. At least to me.
Its just an annoyance, like there is something wrong with the game.

9 Likes
3

Yeah, just buggy code…

I really don’t get why so many people think idiotic unit pathing AI is in some way integral to gameplay. When I first loaded up SC2, I spent (no kidding) at least 30m just running one marine through a mass of other marines, giggling like a school girl. Then when I heard they were going to leave stupid pathing in SC:R, it just kinda lost all appeal to me… I never did mind the old school, comicbook-esque graphics so the exact same flaws and bugs in a shiny new wrapper was just kinda meh…

6 Likes
4

I am too deeply dissapointed that they will keep the clunky pathing for the sake of a nostalgia feeling for some. It will be a big sacrifice of many new commers that will get turned off by that sadly.

15 Likes
5

As far as I know, Warcraft 3 has square collision shapes whereas games like Sc2 uses circular collision. Not only that, units in Sc2 can nudge other friendly units out of the way to allow them to squeeze past, which lends to Sc2’s significantly more fluid movement system. I’ll refer to collision shape + unit nudging as ‘movement system’.

Now, the reason why people are unwilling to have Warcraft 3’s movement system change is because bodyblocking is a strategy in 1v1s to kill enemy heroes. If the collision shapes would be changed, this tactic would either have to be re-adapted or might become harder to execute altogether. There’s also the worry that a more fluid pathing might cause armies to gain a ‘deathball’ quality to them since everything moves so nicely together. I don’t know whether that’s true or not.

I personally would love a new movement system and I feel that more often than not I’m just fighting the game to get my units where I want them to be. They get stuck on one another all the time, get stuck when moving in slightly tight spaces, and it’s just a pain in the nethers to have to micro everything around. I imagine a great number of people would simply respond to that with ‘git gud’ but the reality is not everybody is great at micro. Then again, balancing a game around what the majority want is not exactly the best course of action.

The compromise here would be to allow the movement system of choice to be toggled in-map. This brings with it the problem of ‘training’ players to be used to a system in custom but then getting the clunky movement system in ladder and melee. Compared to being forced to deal with the clunky movement system, I’d rather be able to chose and ‘bad habits’ be damned.

Or they could test things out with separate ladders - one with old movement system, one with new movement system. The results would certainly be interesting.

6 Likes
6

You can still body block in SC2 with the hold hotkey. This is how you build walls by putting units on hold in the next to the building in the wall effectively blocking it. You can also see this mechanic exactly when zerglings surround an inmortal without the use of hold. It’s more rare in SC2 because units usually die fast but it still observable and possible.

1 Like
7

There are a few things going on.

  1. Command input delay. This is likely just due to bad code or a design based on hardware limitations at the time. This needs to be fixed.
  2. Unit turn rates. This is a feature, and is every bit as important as attack animations. Dota 2 has the same feature, and some people say it makes the game feel sluggish or delayed. Unit turn rates keep ranged units from being able to kite easily, and adds weight to the units. Unit turn rates are an important part of the game that should stay.

As for collision, units do indeed have square collision boxes, as well as some other anomalies I outlines here:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/warcraft3/t/an-in-depth-look-at-wc3-collision-mechanics/1110

10 Likes
8

I mean sure I don’t mean it’s impossible in sc2 but you have fewer units in wc3 and it’s a bit harder afaik. If I’m wrong then I’m even more in favour of changing the movement system.

1 Like
9

Thanks, I do understand now. Hopefully, they will address the command input delay.

10

I honestly cringe so hard at people like you: “ITS JUST NOSTALGIA”. Seriously? Do you understand that the competitive nature of RTS is the only thing that keeps them played to this day? Do you understand that the only reason sc1 pathing is still in sc1 is because it kept the game alive for 20 years in South Korea? Its not people like you that boot the game once a month that kept it alive, its the dedicated fans that watch esports matches, and compete in tournaments that keep it alive. The same goes for Warcraft 3 in China. Give me a break with your nostalgia argument bs. The pathing is what makes strategies and its here to stay forever. If you dont like then dont play the game, maybe try out league of legends or something else.

8 Likes
11

Let me first explain that the old pathing is not a bug that’s being exploited or kept for nostalgia reasons. It is actually a core mechanic for the game. Micromanagement is huge in WC3 and having units block eachother is part of that. It is one of the core differences between the Warcraft franchise and the Starcraft franchise.

No, the delay you’re experiencing is not something good although I can’t say I recognize it at all. But obviously if the game can run smoother then it will only benefit the game and it is very possible this already caught blizzards attention.

3 Likes
12

Because if you played multiplayer you would understand how this game is entirely based on whether you kill an expensive unit or not. The pathing allows to block it and if the player isnt careful to kill it. Micro. Same if the player has his own units blocking, part of micro is to secure your hero and control. That’s what differs War3 from SC2 that this game is micro heavy and SC2 is macro heavy.

This should not be even questioned.

7 Likes
13

well, earth to Tahu, this game was not alive. 400 games being played on ladder is not an alive game. You and your 2 friends were not keeping this game alive brah this game was DED. and again you and your 2 friends does not justify the investment of reforged, do you know what does justify it ? do you know what keeps a game alive? a constant influx of new players. New players are not attracted by a non existent nostalgia Tahu because they never played the game, and suboptimal code of a 15 year old game is not attractive.

Also, you can do the same thing in SC2 with modern pathing. You can block units either by using the hold positon and if you get a full surround you will block them, and even if it didn’t which it does, I don’t know why people think that it is impossible to replicate the pathing with modern code without being clunky af.

1 Like
14

Keep unit turn rates as it is a part of the gameplay but if there is some sort of unit reaction delay then maybe they could smooth that out a bit. They stated that they want all current custom maps to work on Reforge so if you changed turn rates it would make a lot of maps very unbalanced especially DotA 1 which needs that so called clunky-ness to make each Hero feel unique.

1 Like
15

Are you forgetting the purpose of Reforged is to bring a new look and features to a game that plays THE SAME way? I highly doubt you have much understanding of the game. No you cannot do that efficiently with SC2 mechanics and it takes a lot more units to do that.

2 Likes
16

Let me try to explain this for you.

The pathing and movement in Warcraft III is what allows actual micro to happen in the game.

In games like HoTs, LoL, and to a lesser extent SC2, units slide around and change velocity instantly on every single right click. There is no weight to the units in those games.

This causes there to be much less ability for players to micro units, because what happens is both players end up just right clicking back and forth on the same 5 pixel area until one player accidentally walks in range and gets caught.

In Warcraft III this type of movement doesn’t happen because if you simply right click back and forth you will get caught up because your units need to be micro’d around each other.

The movement system allows for micro to happen where in other games with faster instant movement, the micro is dumbed down to just right clicking all of your units back and forth in one area instead of microing the individual units.

In SC2 this is shown by the fact that most times it’s better to just a-click your army and allow the smart pathing and auto targeting to micro the fight for you, maybe there’ll be a slight concave setup but usually that’s it. Sometimes taking time to micro units in SC2 fights can cause you to lose the fight because the enemy units have animations that are so fast they lose nothing from your microing while you lose attack uptime.

It isn’t just a quirk, it is an integral part of the gameplay that gives more and more opportunities for higher skilled players to excel over lower skilled players throughout the entire game.

If the movement was dumbed down so that there was no difference between a higher skilled player microing and a lower skilled player a-clicking with auto-pathing, that would be extremely damaging to the game.

The movement is one part of Warcraft III that allows the skill cap of the game to be so much higher than a lot of others.

8 Likes
17

Yeah I accepted that, I still believe it is a bad move. I was here to discuss the command input delay which seems rather unnecessary to keep.

2 Likes
18

If you’re talking about the actual like 1000ms ladder delay that’s there, then yeah 100% agree it should be fixed.

That’s definitely not a gameplay feature :smiley:

2 Likes
19

I do find hilarious WC3 players feeling superior than SC2 players because the micro. While WC3 does require more micro in general, you could apply the same density of micro and macro at the same time in SC2 and thats what you can witness from pro players. I’m not saying SC2 is superior they are different games.

SC2 is not as simple as moving the army and attack with a concave don’t be so ignorant. Yeah, maybe that was your experience but don’t overgeneralize. " let the army auto target to micro the fight for you" , cheezus…

Really, thanks for your detail explanation but I find completely futile to discuss more with you because obviously you haven’t been exposed much to anything that is not WC3. Just food for thought, do you really think after 15 years theres simply no way to improve the pathing and for it to still block units? (this is rethorical) The iphone was not even released 15 years ago.

21

All valid and agree with everything, except the word “cheater” slighly far fetched my friend. Learning quirks is not cheating haha.