One big reason we SHOULD keep the 12-unit control group cap

I would say otherwise. Perhaps you’re too new to this forum, but there are definitely people who were clamoring for the removal of the Upkeep system as well as increasing food caps.

And the OP, to their credit, gives a substantially more compelling argument to remove the upkeep system than what you have presented, which is purely based on convenience and little else. I may not agree with that OP, and I may agree with raising the selection limit to 16-20 for WC3, but at the end of the day your argument remains very unconvincing to me.

When it comes to ‘not have a cap’, I am usually in the camp of ‘we need a cap, but we can always improve’. Not everyone will agree with my personal opinion. My reply was directed at someone who said ‘There is no good argument to have the cap anymore’, and I’m sure even you would disagree with that statement since you are not advocating Unlimited selection, rather increased selection (if I am correct).

And in the context of someone making an argument for convenience - You can literally say that about anything in the game, but it doesn’t give those suggestions credence unless there is warrant for change. And to be frank, there is nothing that I have seen in your argument that warrants change that is any more convincing than the OP in the link that I provided, who wants to test the game without Upkeep. Your argument is less convincing than a radical change.

Notice how the original poster has no rebuttal to the circumstances I listed where increasing the unit cap would be helpful.

It doesn’t matter if you provided something the OP hasn’t replied to you on. I’m replying to you now, and I’m telling you straight up your argument doesn’t convince me that the selection limit should be raised for any other reason than you want it to and that you believe it’s better for the game. It honestly doesn’t need any reply at all since convenience and quality of life additions are not necessary for a 20-yr old game that is still being actively played. In the end, it doesn’t need to be considered, even if you think it’s a fantastic addition to the game.

As forumers, we can have a reasonable discussion about having it added to the game. But don’t pretend that just because some people may not be able to counter your arguments that your argument is now superior, and that the other people aren’t listening. You are the vocal minority, and the majority of WC3 players don’t even come to these forums. These forums are an echo-chamber of discontent enthusiasts who have greater expectations of what Reforged should be. Keep that in mind.

The opinions of pro’s should be given more weight than the average schmo but if you’re too intellectually lazy to consider the merits of an argument on its own without the endorsement of a pro then that’s you’re deficiency, not mine.

The decision to not update the 20-year old interface is because this is a 20-year old game, as it played 20 years ago. This is something Blizzard already decided upon, and frankly their decision, as disagreeable as it may be, has merit to it because many WC3 players have been vocal about it being kept the way it was.

I don’t even agree with those opinions, but I understand why they were made. Blizzard isn’t fixing what isn’t broken, and despite what certain people in this thread may thing, 2 control groups for 13 ghouls is not broken. There is definitely merit to having increased selection, but it is also fine the way it is now.

A big part of micromanagement is utilizing control groups for macro, even when it’s a simple task of moving 13 ghouls. And there are always workarounds to that - perhaps make 12 ghouls and use the food for something else. Perhaps vary up your unit composition to something that fits better. Perhaps don’t mass those gyrocopters if you can’t be bothered to macro them. Sure, it would be more convenient to be able to group more of them, but that ultimately affects how the game is played, and when it comes down to it, this is how this archaic game is played.

Even now, I would advocate adding quick-casting (spell cast on cursor rather than cast-and-click) or having visual templates for cone/line AOEs like we have in modern MOBAs, but I would see how people who play competitively may want things kept the same too. But hey, if someone disagrees and wants it kept the same, I don’t think it would be fair to say those people aren’t listening. They did listen, and they disagreed.

“we need the selection limit otherwise wc3 wont be the same and far too easy. cope with it or play fortnite”

sounds alot like

“we eat our soup with a fork, and we’re not gonna change it. starvation is for the weak.”

Not in this thread. Bringing those up as examples only serves to derail the thread and make a bad apples to oranges comparison.

And from the guy you quoted: “Upkeep mechanics was originally created for keeping less units on the screen for game to perform better.”

WRONG.

From http://classic.battle.net/war3/basics/upkeep.shtml:

Upkeep has been included to improve tactical management for players while fostering a more aggressive style of gameplay. Players are more aggressive and turtle far less in their bases, and it gives players real strategic decisions to make about how many units they wish to control with pros and cons to each. Upkeep is also instituted to focus the game on smaller numbers of units. The more units that are allowed in the game, the less powerful Heroes will be relative to your army. This is simple math.

The guy you quoted has no idea why the upkeep system was even there in the first place. It had nothing to do with game performance or hardware limitations. It was largely in furtherance of the design goal of making the game Hero-centric. And yet you present that fool as an example of someone making a better argument.

Yes, I only advocate for a 24 unit cap. Even raising it to just 18 would go a long way. I work as a programmer. I have an inkling of how easy this change would be. There is probably some Collection/Array type data structure storing the units in the grouping that is limited by some declared constant value. The value of this constant was likely picked due to UI real estate constraints at the time. Increasing this limit up to 18 would require almost no work. (Just widen the display by 3 units) Increasing it to 24 would require MINOR UI work slightly heightening the unit display area. (There is already a lot of wasted empty black space that can be utilized for a 3rd row.) Given how little work this change would take, your claims of other people “not putting forth a convincing argument” ring rather hollow.

Wanting something and believing it’s better for the game is generally what motivates people to post on these forums in the first place… thank you captain obvious.

Nah not really. Blizzard hyped Reforged up plenty themselves: “With updated UI and countless quality-of-life improvements”. Name 1 quality-of-life improvement being implemented for Reforged. (quality-of-life refers to how you interact with the game, not prettier icons. The prettier icons are covered by “updated UI” though I would claim merely making the icons look better is a pretty low bar for “updating” the UI.)

Fixed that for you.

Not sure why the community needs to accept that in 2020 with what was advertised to be a “Reforged” game.

I agree those things should be done. That is no longer trivial work though. Now you’re rendering totally new graphics in a 3D play area. Merely stretching out the unit display area of the UI a little and increasing the value of 1 unit limiting constant value could probably be done in 1 week.

The only valid argument I could think of against increase the unit control cap would be that the pathing code is so bad it couldn’t handle the increased number of units. That’s it.

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If that is the only reason you see against unit control cap, then you surely do not understand what Warcraft 3 is all about.

Its as simple as that, your perspective is focused on how to improve, and you do not see what it means to retain the spirit of the game, no matter how clunky it may seem.

Like I said, Blizzard may have bemused the idea of adding many QoL features at the start, but its clear that this is not the direction that they want melee to go in.

For the record, I still think it should be a feature added for custom games.

yes exactly, increasing or removing the selection cap serves just that one purpose of making the game less cumbersome to control in certain situations. there really isnt more to it. and there doesnt need to be more. its the ultimate reasoning to make that improvement - its an allround improvement. there are no downsides to it, except for upsetting ppl with a really narrow minded sentiment towards any changes to the game: no changes. why dont you play version 1.0 RoC then? wc3 in version 1.30 has very little to do with the release version in terms of melee multiplayer.

your only argument for keeping the 12 unit selection is literally “it has always been like this”. if someone doesnt agree with you “ppl dont understand what warcraft is about”. for the majority of ppl warcraft isnt about being forced to move 13 units (of the same type) in two groups. choosing to group 13 units in 2 groups can still be done. i just dont see where you are getting the short end of the stick here.

the spirit of the game also has hardly anything to do with the 20 year old limitation of a 12 unit selection, probably done to fit 12 units in the 4:3 ratio UI for the tiny cathode ray monitors or they didnt know better back then. if this was such a great mechanic, why hasnt any other RTS game adopted the 12 unit selection after wc3?

its quite funny to think about the magic of 12 unit selections as you depict it: “oh wow, cant wait to move around exactly 12 units per group this evening - wc3 would sure suck if i could move 14 units at once.” cmon, not once in the history of mankind anyone had that thought.

This is the state of the game and the current trends and direction that Blizzard has chosen. Reforged could have been something new and updated, but it is clear Blizzard does not want that. And neither do many of the fans who prefer the gameplay untouched. I have not spoken out on behalf of people who want to keep it the same, because I don’t understand their reasoning either. But they do exist, and I would fathom to guess they are not few in number and they are the ones who continue to play WC3 today.

If it was as simple as a unanimous outcry for change then I’d be all for it. But honestly that isn’t what this is. This is as divided as the flying/no flying debacle with modern WoW, or adding QoL to Classic.

When it comes to changing a big part of how the game controls, it is a slippery slope towards changing other aspects in the name of QoL. That is one of the big reasons behind #Nochanges for Classic WoW, and while I don’t agree with it, I respect it. WC3 has not been my go-to RTS for many years, and I’m fine with having moved on from it honestly. I am not personally invested in playing WC3 melee, and that is why I am being impartial here.

Is that because they decided it was too much work or gave up? Their advertising certainly doesn’t suggest that’s the direction they’re taking.

There will NEVER be a unanimous outcry for a change like this. It doesn’t matter the game, their forums will always have a cadre of status quo defenders who fear that any change will somehow ruin their game and thus they put up knee-jerk resistance to any suggestions no matter how innocuous. This is what is so frustrating. That so much resistance is being raised against such a simple change that should be a no-brainer to want to have implemented. It’s all so very typical.

Is that because they decided it was too much work or gave up?

They ran out of time.

Development of this game was meant to be 1 year from announcement. From the very beginning, they had the ‘Before or on Dec. 31’ date listed there, so everyone knew their schedule was more or less fixed. This is not a normal thing for a Blizzard game, you know, the company known for releasing their games Soon™.

Yet what really informed people here that their development was going to be strained was the loss of 800 employees and Mike Morhaime leaving the company at the beginning of the year. That seemed to start a massive shift in the company. There was also a lot of blowback from Diablo Immortal, and frankly the stock market was doing pretty bad for all game companies across the board.

Even without communicating it to the public, their silence was indicative of what was happening. Keep in mind Beta was planned for Spring 2019. We didn’t get beta until November. It doesn’t take much to realize whatever they had planned and hoped for was being met with development hell, especially if they couldn’t provide any public notice about the state of the ‘promised beta’.

Right before Blizzcon 2019, we had articles released about voice acting being cut. Then there’s the cutscenes being scaled back mentioned at Blizzcon. By then, the writing’s on the wall. And that was 3-4 months ago.

So if you’re coming in now and asking if it’s because it’s too much work or because they gave up, and you’re still basing your judgement on whatever statement they put up on their website, you’re missing the entire point because they’ve been radio silent to the public and have screwed up putting info on their website numerous times now.

This includes having the Dark Ranger being listed under ‘Night Elves’ section of their patch notes. Then a few months later, they accidentally upload an image of the Night Elves section of their website, with a Dark Ranger plastered alongside a Druid of the Talon and Ancient of Life. And what about the renders of new units that they made giant posters of for a convention in China, that were only LEAKED to the internet and never released to us online as official promotional material?

So I mean… you can see why people like me who have followed this game for the past year are so jaded and non-plussed by misleading information on their official posts. They simply lack the resources to update anything, and even when they do it seems like it’s being updated by interns or something. We have no confidence in their official promotional material for a long time now. It’s very clear with that one convention event that they prioritize marketting in China over all else.

So someone like you and Xelfire coming here to point out stuff that’s already wrong on the website… Yeah, like we didn’t know that the website has barely been updated for the past year. Like we didn’t know it was being updated by incompetant marketters. Like we didn’t know that none of the information was correct or up to date with what little people could glean from interviews and articles that provided contradictory statements.

The website has been a joke for almost a full year now. And I laugh when people point at it as though it should be Reforged’s bible. Like I said, you either know what is going on, or you don’t. What they write on the site still isn’t a lie. It’s incredibly misleading, but it is not a lie, it’s just not what you expect it to be. Which is pretty much all of Reforged in a nutshell. I’m pretty sure you won’t see ‘Made for China’ on the website either.

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This. Is. Critical.
It is very difficult to unlearn poor habits.

People have played and loved this game for almost TWO decades WITH unit cap.
It was and is part of the core mechanics of meele and sure makes microing harder. If you have a problem with the cap, get used to it, become better in the game or shut up and stop complain about smth every halfway decend player has absolutely no problem with.

You play mass gyros? Learn how to micro with many control groups.
You have a hero and 12 ghouls? Create a control group with all the ghouls and use your hero with F1.
Your control grp is full but you would like to add another unit of the same type?
Bad luck for you, use your brain to make it work with another control group.

The way you click on the keyboard is a huge part of this game and the limited control groups make it hard to learn and master, but thats why I and many others love this game, because it IS hard.
Everyone, who wants the cap to be removed will play Reforged for 1-2 month MAX and then keep on playing Fortnite or similar.
Removing of the cap would be a punch in the face of all the people who kept this game alive for so many years, just to make some casuals happy, who won’t stay with the game anyways.
Make it an option for customs, but meele must stay the same as it is!

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I have suspected in the back of my mind for a while that Blizzard wouldn’t really be able to pull off Reforged. The information you’ve provided here makes that even more clear. I think it would be very sad but I can accept it if Blizzard simply no longer has what it takes to move WC3 forward and innovate. Perhaps some “suit” is guiding their “market strategy” and now all they care about is a myopic and narrow minded focus on Chinese micro-transactions for skins. I really hope that’s not the case but I’ve got a bad feeling you’re probably right about them.

Literally the only reason people would want to keep the 12 unit cap are people who are used to it and feel some form of elitism and/or nostalgia from it. It would be incredibly dumb to keep it in, mind-boggling dumb. Zero reasons to keep it in.

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thats my impression aswell.

The 12 unit limit conversation has existed for far longer than this forum. What is clear is that WC3 was designed with the 12 unit limit in mind. Deliberately, for the purpose of pacing, and not simply because of some technical drawback. There are many factors that are simply not discussed here because these forums are mainly an echochamber for discontent fans who want to see more out of Reforged. But take this to Reddit or Discord or Teamliquid and you will have more concise reasons why the 12 limit should change, beyond your limited acceptance of ‘elitism’

I think doing research on both sides of the argument will allow a better common ground for a reasonable and practical solution.

I vote for elitism and being unable to change just as well.
Pro/veterans would feel no change since using control groups are way more efficient, just like in SC2.
The only improvement is for new players and casuals who just want to have some casual fun in some 3v3 games.
All the improvements that SC2 interface has, it should be in this game.

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Haha stop trying to sound like this is a complex issue that has pros and cons. There are no cons for removing the 12 unit cap. And yes, they created the 12 unit cap cause of technical issues, not because they designed it deliberately for gameplay purposes. Blizzard even stated this themself, so it should be you that has to do some research. The practical solution is to just remove the cap, there is no reason for it anymore whatsoever.

Give me a source on that being a technical limitation. Because I even found a quote from WC1 about the devs saying the 4 unit limit was purposefully chosen, and purposefully increased to 9 for WC2. They mentioned C&C had unlimited selection at the time too.

Even back in Warcraft 1 the selection limit was not random. https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/the-making-of-warcraft-part-1

Later in the development process, and after many design arguments between team-members, we decided to allow players to select only four units at a time based on the idea that users would be required to pay attention to their tactical deployments rather than simply gathering a mob and sending them into the fray all at once. We later increased this number to nine in Warcraft II. Command and Conquer, the spiritual successor to Dune 2, didn’t have any upper bound on the number of units that could be selected. It’s worth another article to talk about the design ramifications, for sure.

I have not seen one instance of this being called a technical limitation by the devs. They always talk about increased selection as something to look into, but not as a problem that needed to be fixed.

Let me be clear - I want increased unit selection, but I want to make sure it os done right and for the right reasons. If the 12 unit selection is not a technical limit, then it should not be discussed under the pretense of being one. That is what I would consider a baseless excuse, like if I were to say WC3 planned for 5 races (which it did) but it didn’t due to technical limitations at the time (which is speculation). Technical limitation should not be a reason to add a 5th race if this were the conversation. We should look at this from a design perspective, not a problem solving one.

Somebody mentioned giving a higher selection gives more unit control not it does not. You don’t control 200 units at once you A-move them.

CONTROLLING 200 units you don’t need being able to pick them all because you already have them spaced out in different control groups because they are used for different things, Like harassment , Flanking ect. Theres perhaps 1% where select all units has a legit use outside F2+A

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It is like complaining that Total War games should never augment the number of units in their games because it is the “mechanic” we know and love. Come on, the game could have evolved a little more with this reforged, remake, makeover or whatever you want to call it.

Blizzard doesn’t seem to give a damn about it. Only news you can find are on their websites and launcher. The news websites have nothing of interest about this game. This is just sad and poor PR.

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Why did they increase it to 9 in WC2 and then to 12 for WC3? Why does that control limit only seem to increase with each iteration? What is so magical about the number 12 now?