Make it possible for alliance workers to be hidden in farms

PTR Discussion and Bug Report
1

Of all races, the economy of the human race is the most vulnerable to destruction. This is because people cannot save their workers from inflicting magical and physical damage on them.

In comparison, elven workers sit in a braided mine and are invulnerable to damage. Elf workers extracting wood are often located on trees where melee warriors cannot reach them, and even if heroes or ranged warriors reach them, the elf workers can always be cured with water from wells.

Working orcs can be planted in holes protected from damage, and even fired from them at enemy units.

Undead workers are the second most vulnerable after humans, but compared to humans they are still better protected from damage because:

  1. They are on a cursed land that restores their health.

  2. The hero and units who were brave enough to go deep into the undead base and try to kill the undead workers find themselves under fire from an icy slowing freeze that shoots from the main building.

  3. The undead heroes dk and lich are the strongest in terms of inflicting instant magical damage, so any hero enemy to the undead who dares to go deep into the undead base to try to kill workers risks stumbling upon the teleport of dk and lich, after which dk and lich will kill him several units with coil and frosty new one. Knowing this, other races most often do not risk going deep into the undead base to kill workers.
    It turns out that undead workers are better protected from damage than human workers.

And only the working races of the alliance are not protected from damage in any way. They can take on militia form, but this will not protect them from damage. Therefore, the alliance’s economy suffers the most and is destroyed the fastest.
This is a clear injustice in the balance compared to all other races who can protect their workers from damage, but people cannot.

I propose to make it so that working people can be placed in the farm building, one person for each farm. This will at least somehow protect working people from damage.

If this option is not suitable, then you can make sure that workers can be placed in the main building, 4 people per main building. This will make the second human base much more durable because as soon as the second human base is completed, they will be able to hide 4 of their beaten workers in it.

As a counterbalance, you can make sure that the alliance workers are in militia form for only 40 seconds, and not 42.5

If this option does not suit you, then you can at least make sure that the scroll of gradual healing of health for the human race, which heals 400 health, is divided into 2 charges of 200 health each. This will make it possible to more effectively treat working people and the archmage, and when treating workers, part of the healing scroll will not be wasted. In addition, this will make it possible to more effectively counteract the cloud of undead disease. It will be possible not to wait until the disease reduces 400 health, but to use one charge from the scroll when the warriors only lack 200 health.

I suggested this in my thread “49 Balance Changes That Give New Tactics”

2

I agree with the core sentiment, however the solution presented seems a little silly.

I’d really only propose something a little less dramatic and tweak existing systems, for instance, shifting more of the arcane tower’s power towards mana burn, or, perhaps even better, have the arcane tower inflict a debuff that prevents mana recovery, to slow down the typical BM/FS in which its almost impossible to not lose at least one peasant no matter how hard you try, as well as the slightly less unfair AM/BM harass.

3

This won’t help because:

  1. Varden often buys a bottle of anti-magic shield, drinks it, and his mana is not burned. In addition, she can use a fan of knives, injure workers, and run away or teleport to a distance where towers that burn mana cannot reach her. Then she will wait until the knives recharge in time, and do the same, and she will repeat this many times. While she repeats this, she spends very little time in the reach of mana-burning towers, so the majority of working people die.

  2. The undead have the main abilities that kill workers: coil and frosty nova. They are used at such a distance when towers that burn mana either do not reach the distance of the dk and the lich, or they reach and manage to make 1-2 hits, but also burn very little mana. As a result, most workers end up killed anyway. In addition, on T-3, banshees can cast an anti-magic shield on undead heroes for free and they will not burn out any mana at all.
    In addition, the undead often use the pressure of 4 destroyers with mana to attack the second base of the alliance, which quickly destroy towers, and their mana does not burn out because they are immune to magic.

  3. The main abilities of orcs killing alliance workers are the seer’s chain lightning and the tauren’s shock wave. They are also both used at a distance where mana-burning towers cannot reach them. The shock wave perfectly destroys not only workers, but also the towers themselves.
    In addition, even if the blade master burns out all the mana, it still will not save the workers because the main damage of the blade master is physical, and he will still kill the workers with normal and critical hits, after which he will either fly away on a teleport scroll or on a personal teleport.

Therefore, improving mana burning for towers will not give anything and will in no way save the alliance from total genocide of workers, but the ability to hide alliance workers in farms can do this. My experience of watching tournaments for 20 years tells me that this is the only way to do it.

4

On what maps and how can you get an anti magic shell in the firsts minutes of the game, which is when this kind of thing happens the most? Very interested to know. If we’re talking late game, you should either be in their base ending it or defending yours (or otherwise having more significant defenses to where this shouldn’t be the problem you’re making it out to be)

Coil is a really, really, really inefficent way to kill workers. I’ve never been rushed by a DK casting coil to kill peasants. It also has a lengthy cooldown and you can’t just mow down peasants with it. Frost nova is used in this way but I really don’t see lich harass often enough to say this is a big issue.

Orcs and humans are the real kings of hero harass, but again, I’ve NEVER been hero harassed with an anti magic shell. That’s not a tool that anyone has until later in the game, which again, by then you should have more stuff.

It really sounds more like you’re talking about later game stuff, not the early hero harass which I personally find to be much more of a frustration as human. Past early game you can afford to lose some workers here and there if you’re playing properly, and you should have an actual army. You should also have casters by this point.

Maybe it’s only a thing super pros do? But I’ve not once ever seen someone send in a hero to harass workers in the late game where magic protection would be available.

2 Likes
5

This does not happen in the first minutes of the game. This happens when the Varden reaches the third level and the alliance begins to set up a second base. If the alliance manages to build a tower that burns mana, then the Varden either waits for the opportunity to buy a bottle of anti-magic shield, or runs up to the workers, makes a fan of knives, wounds them, then runs away from them and in the process receives very few blows that burn mana because she has blink.

Coil is a really, really, really inefficent way to kill workers. I’ve never been rushed by a DK casting coil to kill peasants. It also has a lengthy cooldown and you can’t just mow down peasants with it. Frost nova is used in this way but I really don’t see lich harass often enough to say this is a big issue.

So you don’t watch tournament games. In tournament games, most of the workers die from the coil, frost nova and physical attacks from the lich and spiders from a distance.

Orcs and humans are the real kings of hero harass, but again, I’ve NEVER been hero harassed with an anti magic shell. That’s not a tool that anyone has until later in the game, which again, by then you should have more stuff.

And I didn’t say that the orcs use an anti-magic shield. I said that the orcs kill the alliance workers with the seer’s chain lightning and the tauren’s shock wave.

I have been watching tournament games for 20 years, and I see how workers die there.

6

No, I don’t watch tournaments, and most people don’t either. So what you’re saying is this is a pro only issue. I’m really not a fan of balancing games purely for the pro community, because it can adversely affect the game at other levels of play and frankly, the pro scene in WC3 is really tiny (which is entirely Blizzard’s fault with #$^%&ing up Reforged, but that horse has been beaten to a pulp already) Leauge of Legends has shown that you can make targeted balance adjustments that improve the game for one category of players without adversely affecting another. They routinely make adjustments that are targeted at specific groups, from the lowest levels, to the higher ranks of Ranked, to the professionals. addressing issues within those segments without making things worse at other levels. For example, a champion with a more straightforward skill set that doesn’t rely heavily on skillshots might be overpowered at low levels of play and too weak at higher levels, or a champion that isn’t picked in low level play because the risk/reward payoff isn’t there due to a skillshot that is too unreliable at that level, but is simultaneously too good at pro. You can’t simply nerf it because the champion would become even more useless- so they shift some of the power from the skill shot to other parts of their kit to make the champion pickable by more players without it being overpowered in pro play.

The reason this can be done is because there is more that changes at each level than simply skill, the entire approach to the game by the community can be different. I’ve seen games do it well, so I really want to push back on the notion that we should make all balance changes based on the pro scene, due to differences in the way the game is played that go beyond simple skill issues.

So yeah, maybe this happens at the tip top tier of play, but this isn’t a problem in most games most people play. Maybe if more people watched the pro scene I’d be seeing stuff like this more because other people would try to imitate it. But that isn’t happening.

The arcane tower was specifically created to make hero harass harder by limiting how long they can stay. The issue I HAVE often had is Orc players will often early harass with BM or FS and they build a shop between bases so they can regen mana and just come right back. Hence my proposition to have arcanes temporarily prevent mana recovery.

We can’t really buff militia because that would also make them stronger for other purposes, but hiding in farms the way peons hide in burrows, it just isn’t the same thing and it would look dumb. I’d be much more in favor of solutions that don’t involve a brand new mechanic- they’d be a lot more likely to be implemented. I’m in agreement with you that HU generally has the most vulnerable workers, but I really don’t like your solution.

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7

Poor game balance adjustments at the professional level make it so that the undead are the strongest, the alliance is the weakest, so low-level players have no incentive to improve their game skill to a professional tournament level.
And those who have not yet bought the game but are thinking about it, see on YouTube that the game is unbalanced, and do not buy it unless they want to play as the undead.
For these reasons, Warcraft 3 is still less popular than it could have been, and that’s why it’s selling so poorly.

It’s amazing to me how you can balance the game based on the MMR rating, if at the professional level of tournaments all the strengths and weaknesses of the races are visible much better than at the amateur level?

This has been confirmed many times, for example, when the attack speed of the alliance shooters was increased, many professional players for the alliance began to play pressure with shooters and priests, when they were returned to the attack speed as it was, then at the professional level they stopped playing pressure with shooters and priests. Then they added attack speed again, and again professional players began to play through shooters and priests.
Now shooters have been added 10 health, this will lead to shooters being played again a little more often than before.
If something does not work or is ineffective, then it is not used at the professional level of the game.

It’s as if an alcohol company producing successful alcohol changes its taste and composition depending not on what the world’s best tasters with many years of experience say about it, but on what homeless people on the street say about it.

I’ve seen games do it well, so I really want to push back on the notion that we should make all balance changes based on the pro scene, due to differences in the way the game is played that go beyond simple skill issues.

There is no other way to qualitatively improve Warcraft, increase its popularity and increase its sales

So yeah, maybe this happens at the tip top tier of play, but this isn’t a problem in most games most people play. Maybe if more people watched the pro scene I’d be seeing stuff like this more because other people would try to imitate it. But that isn’t happening.

This does not happen because at the professional level the game is not balanced. The undead are the strongest race, the alliance the weakest.
People see this, so they don’t want to move to the professional level where you can successfully play in the majority only for the undead.
Why play for three other races if they will still lose to the undead?

The arcane tower was specifically created to make hero harass harder by limiting how long they can stay. The issue I HAVE often had is Orc players will often early harass with BM or FS and they build a shop between bases so they can regen mana and just come right back. Hence my proposition to have arcanes temporarily prevent mana recovery.

This will not cancel the fact that the anti-magic shield will protect against this effect, so by buying a bottle of anti-magic shield or casting it with banshes, the enemy heroes of the alliance will still kill all the alliance workers.
In addition, towers that burn mana have a small attack radius, so they do not reach the seer, tauren, dk, lich, and varden who use their skills at a distance.
In addition, heroes such as the blade master, demon hunter, pit lord do not depend on mana, and can still kill workers even if all their mana has been burned out.
So it won’t do anything.

We can’t really buff militia because that would also make them stronger for other purposes, but hiding in farms the way peons hide in burrows, it just isn’t the same thing and it would look dumb.

There is no other way to ensure that the economy of the alliance is not the most vulnerable of all and the workers of the alliance do not die from constant genocide.
Either the developers will do this, or nothing else will work.

Why would this look stupid?
In the game, elf workers hide in a tangled mine
Orc workers hide in holes.
Why would the workers of the alliance look stupid if they could be hidden in farms one by one?
This is not strengthening the militia, but equalizing the militia’s ability to not receive damage, just as workers of all other races may not receive it.

As a counterbalance, you can reduce the militia time to 40 seconds, or to 37.5.

8

I"m not really going to go into most of the other stuff, but we are way, way, way, WAY beyond any possibility of increasing the game’s popularity and its sales, which are basically negative because of how heavily the game was refunded around Reforged’s launch.

And yes, there is other ways. You can not balance purely for the pro scene. Most people do not watch the pro scene and do not care about it. Improving the pro scene will not have any meaningful impact on sales or popularity. Only a serious investement in the project, hiring a full dev team and spending a year or more on fixing all issues, making new features and repairing the relationship with the community could possibly do that. And even then, that kind of effort and money would be better spent on a Warcraft 4 (which will also never happen).

You’re operating on a false premise that people find this game on Youtube, watch pros play and go “wow I wanna be like them.” This is a 20+ year old game. This kind of thing simply does not happen. War3 does not and never did have the kind of mass appeal that some other old games have. The RTS genre has always been somewhat of a niche one. And even if people did do that, these people discovering the game on Youtube know absolutely nothing about how the game works and are not capable of appriciating the balance (or lack thereof) nor the skill of the “pros.” Now, i’m not saying that things like YT have no effect whatsoever, but given the age and current obscurity of the game, its impact has little chance of becoming meaningful, certainly not with a handful of tweaks aimed at balancing the pro scene. War3’s real problem right now is the quality of the game for the majority of people playing it. If people are buying, playing (or attempting to play) and refunding the game, I think there are far more serious issues hindering the game’s popularity than this.

Again: This is not a problem I’ve ever encountered at the average joe play level. I have never seen someone obtain anti magic shields and use them to circumvent arcane towers to harass (and its not like priests and dispel aren’t a thing…). I’d really love you to show me a video of this happening in an ordinary game of unremarkable players, because I’ve literally never seen it. And if pros do something, there should be at least a few people out there trying to imitate it.

Even if I accept your proposition that this is a serious issue, in this case my diagnosis would be that the item in question is overpowered, not the strategy as a whole. We are looking at an item defect, not a human race design defect.

Also the popular opinion right now in the PTR patch thread seems to be that Human is the strongest right now. So I don’t really see a buff to HU base defense likely in the near future.

2 Likes
9

Warcraft can significantly increase its popularity and increase its sales, but for this the game needs to be balanced based on the balance of the professional tournament level, and not from the amateur level. There is no other way to do this.
You do not have systems thinking and have a very narrow outlook that does not see prospects.

And yes, there is other ways. You can not balance purely for the pro scene.

It is possible and necessary. There is no other way to improve Warcraft and increase its sales. Within the framework of this balance, all other ways will lead to the fact that professional level players will be dissatisfied with the changes being made and will stop playing Warcraft. And after that they will stop playing it at the amateur level.

Improving the pro scene will not have any meaningful impact on sales or popularity.

It will. You simply don’t have systems thinking and don’t see any prospects.

Only a serious investement in the project, hiring a full dev team and spending a year or more on fixing all issues, making new features and repairing the relationship with the community could possibly do that.

No. This can be done by making most of the changes that I wrote about in my list of “49 points to improve balance.”
At one time, Dota was just a small custom map for Warcraft. But it developed, changes were made to it to improve its balance, focusing specifically on the professional community, so it was precisely because of the improvement of balance that it became a top popular game. The developers of Dota 2 did not change anything in the balance of Dota at the time of its transition from the Warcraft engine to a new one in 2012. They simply copied the balance that was in 2012. This proves that by changing the balance and focusing on the professional community, you can make the game top in popularity and sales. You simply don’t have systems thinking.

War3 does not and never did have the kind of mass appeal that some other old games have.

Because the balance of races in it has always been unbalanced. And he remains so for the moment. This is the main reason why the game is not popular. I gave an example of Dota in which the developers improved the balance, and this made it successful.

War3’s real problem right now is the quality of the game for the majority of people playing it.

No. The unbalanced nature of the game, the focus on amateurs and the changes in balance based on the amateur level of the game make it so that people do not want to improve their playing skills in it to a higher tournament level. Therefore, the audience and sales of the game are not growing.

I have never seen someone obtain anti magic shields and use them to circumvent arcane towers to harass (and its not like priests and dispel aren’t a thing…). I’d really love you to show me a video of this happening in an ordinary game of unremarkable players, because I’ve literally never seen it. And if pros do something, there should be at least a few people out there trying to imitate it.

35:33 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNycnL9XPUw
17:29 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwVUS5ot86U
11:33 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSHb1zBrA5Q&t

It’s obvious that you don’t watch Warcraft tournaments at all.
In patch 1.36.2, the already very strong fan of knives used against alliance workers was strengthened. Previously, the workers and priests of the alliance died from constant and strong genocide, but now they will die even more from super-genocide.

A professional-level tournament player, Hawk, who has been playing for the alliance for many years, looked at the changes in the patch and was very dissatisfied with them
1:35 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw89nFNbuIY

He has been saying for many years that the alliance is the weakest race. I suspect that the strongest players for the Alliance Soc and Fortitude will confirm this.

Also the popular opinion right now in the PTR patch thread seems to be that Human is the strongest right now. So I don’t really see a buff to HU base defense likely in the near future.

You can’t know that.
To find out, you need to vote among 2-3 audiences of the game.
Among the spectators.
Among professional players.
Among amateur level players.
Among the commentators.
Rumors are not polls.
Polls would show that the alliance is the weakest race.

10

I can not take your posts seriously if you keep repeating this. Any efforts to balance the game in any way should be made with the intention of ensure the game is as fun and enjoyable to play as possible. Take any argument involving improving game sales and please just toss it out the window because no matter how freaking amazing the pro scene is, it is not going to suddenly make people buy the game (and more importantly keep it) in any significant numbers. And, if they play the game, aren’t pros and find the balance sucks for them even though it might be working for the pros, they’re still going to quit. If you keep repeating this argument “we have to please the pros to increase game sales” this isn’t going to go anywhere.

“systems thinking?” what? And yes, I don’t see any prospects because there aren’t any realistic ones. Please cite some examples of games everyone forgot about and then the game gets a patch and suddenly its a huge popular game again. You can’t, because they dont exist. About the closest example, which still wasn’t for a game that was decades old, is Final Fantasy XIV, which had a horrible launch. Rather than allow the entire franchise’s reputation to be damaged, SE decided to remake the game from literal scratch and it ended up becoming a massive success after the original failiure. But this didn’t involve any competitive or pro gamer scene. Examples. Provide examples of a pro gamers saving a dying game after a balance patch.

It. Has. Never. Happened.

I don’t care how many balance points you have. It’s going to take a lot more than balance updates of ANY kind, regardless of where they are targeted, to move this game towards growth. It needs content updates. More bug fixes. Promised enhancements and features that still haven’t been delivered. Modern game features such as being able to rejoin a game after a crash or disconnect. Balance is just one piece of a much larger puzzle, and even then, as I’ve said countless times, balance changes need to make the game better for everyone, not just the top 20 players.

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11

It is FREAKING HILARIOUS that despite arguing against me, you are now stating that we need to take everyone’s opinions into account. That’s what i’ve been saying this ENTIRE TIME.

Regardless, this isn’t about “rumors.” this is about a patch you can go and play right now on the PTR server. It’s about currently available information and current opinions from current players.

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13

Dude, no one has any idea what you’re talking about.

14

You were given a list of things to do to make the game as fun as possible. Or you do it and the game becomes like this. Or you don’t and the game dies.

The balance needs to be changed in favor of professional players in Warcraft because it still often hosts tournaments with good prize money. People who are just getting acquainted with Warcraft can see that if you become a professional Warcraft 3 player, you can make a living from it like TGV, Happy, and other tournament players. This pushes players to improve their skills to a professional level. And if the balance at the professional level is unbalanced, then players have no incentive to improve their gaming skills and therefore the game’s audience does not grow.

“systems thinking?” what? And yes, I don’t see any prospects because there aren’t any realistic ones. Please cite some examples of games everyone forgot about and then the game gets a patch and suddenly its a huge popular game again. You can’t, because they dont exist.

Dota and Dota 2. With each new patch it became more and more popular, although almost nothing was changed except the balance.

I don’t care how many balance points you have. It’s going to take a lot more than balance updates of ANY kind, regardless of where they are targeted, to move this game towards growth. It needs content updates

They gave you an example of Dota. Almost nothing was changed except balance, and the game became more and more popular over the years. I gave you a list of content updates. There are 49 points that give new tactics and strategies to the game.

15

Uh… no. Dota 2 in particular recieves feature and content updates to this day, which do a lot to maintain popularity. And Original DotA really isn’t that popular any more with all the successor purpose-built games out there. Yes, people do still play it, but this really doesn’t support your argument.

Again. False statement. Dota 1 has not been getting more and more popular recently. Otherwise I’d be hearing about it in gaming-related editorial content. If you have data that shows an increase in player numbers for Dota 1 specifically, I’d love to see it, because Dota 1 is a War3 map and I see no indication whatsoever that there are more people in this game because of DotA than there was last year, or the year before that, or the year before that…

YT occasionally tries to get me to view war3 related stuff because I’ve watched some relevant videos. None of the videos it serves me are about DotA. I find that your argument lacks any supporting substance.

17

Just like Warcraft, it still receives updates, but in Dota they improve the balance correctly, but in Warcraft they don’t. That’s why Dota is popular, but Warcraft is not very popular.
This confirms my arguments that it is enough to improve the balance in the game, and then it will become popular.

Again. False statement. Dota 1 has not been getting more and more popular recently.

Because she has reached the ceiling of popularity. But at the moment it is much more popular than Warcraft.

18

It confirms nothing. It’s not the balance changes that make the game popular, it’s the events, new characters and content, etc. that make it popular. You’re making a false correlation.

Dota 1 IS warcraft. Again, this really doesn’t help your argument. And you literally just countered your own argument by saying it has “reached the cieling of it’s popularity.” This completely contradicts your earlier statement that it is “getting more and more popular,” because you literally just said right here that it CAN’T get more popular.

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19

No, my correlations are absolutely correct. I have experience balancing and successfully changing other games. Therefore, I know better than you.

This completely contradicts your earlier statement that it is “getting more and more popular,” because you literally just said right here that it CAN’T get more popular.

I didn’t say that Dota is becoming more and more popular. I said that in the past it became more and more popular because its balance was improved more and more until it reached the ceiling of conventional popularity. Google translator sometimes translates my texts incorrectly.

20

That would homogenise the races, an inherently bad suggestion that one would expect from Blizzard, not the fans.

21

Fact check!

Yes, you did.

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And where did I say that the game is becoming more and more popular?
I didn’t say that.
I said that with the change in balance, the game became more and more popular until it reached the ceiling of popularity.

Perhaps Google Translate is not translating verb tenses correctly for me. But this is not my mistake, but the mistake of Google translator.

I meant that the game became more and more popular, but at a certain point it reached the ceiling of popularity, not that it becomes more and more popular every day in the present tense.