Move & Attack-Move for ALL owned Combat units

PTR Discussion and Bug Report
1

I have seen this type of command/feature in custom War3 maps and other games.
Specifically in games that have UI limitations like Warcraft 3 has with capped unit selection.

Lately i watched Grubby War3 tournament where a ton of new players tried War3 and their number one complaint and struggling point was the limited 12 unit selection.
Especially with masses of low population cost units like Flying Machines and Footman/Ghoul/Archer.

And these new players would often even forget random combat units across the entire map, due to bad rally points or just struggling with control groups due to limited selection cap.

While that part of War3 design should not be changed this late into War3 life cycle i think this suggestion would be a good addition to help new players as well as some specific playstyles like Necromancer Skeletons and low population units.

And i honestly don’t think this would meaningfully cheapen or devalue the skill required for players that have already mastered War3 in the past 20y of its existence.

I suggest Blizzard adds two new hotkeys for commands to the game:
- All combat units that the player owns on the entire map will Move to the targeted location.
- All combat units that the player owns on the entire map will Attack Move to the targeted location.

If needed these commands can be keybind only without UI elements, to simplify implementation for Blizzard.
But of course it would likely be better if there was some kind of UI element yo show that these exist.

To be clear this would not show the player the selection or unit icons of all these units - it would merely order all these units to Move or Attack Move towards the targeted point.
So the players would still need to make full use of Control Groups so they can see unit icons in order to target them with spells/items and see their health bars and give individual unit orders and select individual units.

I know probably some of the hardcore War3 players will be against this QoLife and assistance tool, and may even like individually controlling 60 Flying Machines.

But please try to understand that War3 needs to attract new players to keep blizzards (now microsofts?) funding for future patches+content+servers and to also keep the non-ultra-competitive players interested.

2 Likes
2

Late reply, but I’ll take a contrary stance.

A lot of games have the ‘select whole army and send it’ button, and when I was a new RTS player I over-relied on this button, naturally struggling with control groups as a beginner. Thing is, i never got over this crutch until WC3. While frustrating at first, I’m now so happy wc3 forced me to use control groups wisely. I finally had to learn the diligence and intention of control grouping techniques, and i’m a better player for it

3

This is untrue and I’ve been following things since the resurgence a few months ago. 12 unit limit is a non-issue because of how small armies are in this game compared to SC2.

They will learn to not do this. The bar that is set for a player to unlearn these habits is very low.

This will not cheapen or devalue the skill that’s been developed, but it will encourage degenerative gameplay that exclusively preys upon noobs. One-basing double/triple T1 Prod will be viable if noobs can sit in base until 40+ pop and then a-move an army. This will be especially bad on smaller maps.

This right here spells it out for everyone to see. This is not QoL, this is game design. No one masses “60 flying machines” unless they’re noobs in a 4v4, meme’ing, has no clue what they’re doing, or all three.

The main thing Blizzard can do to attract new players is by fixing the bugs that are plaguing multiple subsets of players that are trying to get into the game. Queue drops, random crashes, music playing during CG cutscenes in the campaign, buggy hotkey menu – These affect new players much more than 12 unit cap selection. You can fit entire armies in 2 control groups which you’ll want to use anyway to organize your backline and spellcasters.

Blizzard, I implore you – Do not expand control groups past 12 or add a “select all army” command.