After re-installing WC3 and playing it I seriously doubt Warcraft Reforged is going to be popular on a scale of anything that would be considered a smash success.
There’s definitely going to be a strong surge of initial sales and I imagine some degree of overall increased player engagement in an ongoing sense (if they get the matchmaking/finding-a-game component right).
However, if WC Reforged is mainly just a re-skin of WC3 but retains the same bad pathing and clunky unit movement / unit control, I doubt Reforged will have legs. It kind of feels bad to go back and play that game after playing modern games.
Whereas I agree they need to retain core design elements that enforce the small tactical Hero+Small Army core of the game, the pathing itself needs to be addressed and brought to some kind of more fluid, intuitive, and sensible state.
It’s kind of painful trying to control Units in WC3 compared to modern standards.
I don’t think you are alone here. I’m definitely in the camp of make it the best game it can be, even if that means making it a BIT different than it was originally. However, there are also plenty of people on the other side of the fence, whom are mostly long-time players of the current game. I suspect the fresh blood audience is bigger than the long-time players one. Will be interesting to see what decision is made here.
You know, a far more sensible suggestion would be to make underused units part of the meta. It does break my heart when I see the glorious Necromancers and the Dreadlord in Reforged, and then remember that they are trash units.
I for one would also like to entertain even more daring changes, such as the rebalance of ultimates along with making them available at level 5 (with 4 being the last level achievable by creeping) to see them more often.
Asking for bigger or no control groups is even socially acceptable on these forums.
But pathing? That’s a complete non-issue.
Maybe, that’s not even pathing but the unit turn rates?
RTS’s in general aren’t really big sellers anyway and always was kind of niche. So I don’t see what the difference is. SC:R was definitely successful as far as who it’s audience was and I don’t see WC 3 being any different. There will never be an RTS that hits massive sales ever again. Gamers don’t want slow, methodical gameplay anymore. If it isn’t action packed from beginning to end, the chances are that a majority aren’t going to even care about the game.
I’d say, the RTS games are anything but slow. They are too demanding in terms of attention and micro. Whereas in Dotka clones, you can turn off your brain for the first 15 min.
Yes they are actually. It takes time to get to a point where you won’t just get wiped going into a fight. Campaign levels can take a half hour plus to finish depending on skill or lack thereof and how much exploring the map you do, but it’s still not just “jump in and play” it takes strategy and time. None of which is wanted anymore by the masses.
I’m not only talking about competitive modes for the most part, but that’s only because once you know build orders and the like there is no thinking about anything until your army is ready to attack and that still only applies to playing with skilled players who use the same strategies depending on the race. But each person who plays Undead is going to use the same meta every time and same with the other races. RTS’s are indeed slow for the unexperienced meaning the likelihood of the game actually keeping new people is going to be slim to none. My point is that once you know what to do any kind of thought process is only used during fights. So the first minutes are still no brainers.
Also moba’s aren’t RTS’s in the strictest sense. So they are balanced and tailored to be played differently.
Pathing is fine. In other RTS the ai auto paths some things for you, not in WC3.
The only pathing “bug” i say is the a+click will sometimes attack creep camps when it shouldnt.
Example, you are moving a small army across the map to harass. You a+click enemy base, you then look at your base and build…but oh wait your archers have attacked a rock golem and now you cant attack.
As long as body blocking and surrounds aren’t heavily affected, why not? We should experiment. They could smooth out crowd & dynamic pathfinding a bit so it feels better (less stop & go)
Is that what you really want for WC3 ? Watch this:
xhttps://www.twitch.tv/videos/349373767
Here i just reduced collision size of the unit and increased the speed of turn rate. That alone improved the clunckyness of rifles by ALOT (i left grunts untouched tho); i increased also the movement speed to make them look like SC2 marines just to show where this “reworking AI pathing” could lead to.
Think wisely before making WCR just a “Starcraft with orcs”.