What’s wrong with LotV? (Besides the terrible epilogue)
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Ditto. LotV has incredible story, visuals an army customization.
Magtheridon is the best boss encounter is the game. I would like others to be as challenging. At least, on the ultrahard difficulty (they did say there might be such).
Check out this glorious failure at Magtheridon by the Russian streamer bonivur.
Yeah, on a related note, Blizzard must add in more autosaves.
Interesting topic.Anything that makes the campaign more challenging should be welcomed but ofc not straying too much from the base mechanics of the game.Spiceing things up a bit is always nice.For example for me Lords of Everquest was a nice game that could realy throw things at you in the campaigns that makes you think always and can very often give you a serious pounding if you make a silly mistake.And its mechanics are very similar to war3.
This is the type of boss battle I’m thinking of. Not as quick and intense though, since the pacing is designed for MOBA players. I imagine the phases being more drawn out.
Magtheridon is a cool boss battle but I think it could be spiced up even more if he had phases, like the boss battle above. Here’s an example
Phase 1
- Magtheridon has a large mana pool and high-cost spells. He will cast and channel spells so long as he has mana, and you should be Mana Burning/Mana Draining him to prevent it. Tank and Spank
Stasis
- He enters ‘Stasis’, where he is immune to attacks and spells. This wipes any Debuffs on him and gives him time to regen his mana. He casts Rain of Fire around the map on your units. You must kill the Minions channeling his invincibility. This phase is activated at 33% HP and at 66% HP
Phase 2
- After coming out of first Stasis, he resumes Phase 1 but with Howl of Terror ability to debuff you
- He will summon minions onto the field. Kill the big one for a Unholy Frenzy buff.
- This gives a bit of strategy to the phase. Make sure you position the minion where you can get the most benefit
- You can burn the big minion and get Unholy Frenzy buff immediately, or you can CC (Banish) the minion and save it for later.
Phase 3
- After coming out of 2nd Stasis, he will have Devour Magic to heal himself and gain mana. Keep Mana Burning him, Spread out your units.
- There will be mini healing fountains scattered around the room, but you have to be careful of him casting Rain of Fire on top of your hurt units
- Big Minions continue to spawn, you can choose to burn them for the buff or CC and ignore them
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What is this, a MobA? Hell no. Warcraft 3 already has its own mechanics, and fighting playable heroes is the whole point. You know what the weakness of each hero is, and can exploit it. Having to learn something THAT complicated makes actual 0 sense in an RTS. If this was WoW, sure that could be a thing. But this is just excessive. How would you learn these mechanics to plan for them, beyond literally losing your army and having to start over?
Literally nothing is more annoying than invulnerability mechanics in Campaigns. Think about how fun it is to kill the Paladins during any of the Undead campaigns.
Bosses don’t need this complicated of a fight to be fun or rewarding to kill. Seeing a Pitlord AoE cleave down your army in his demonic fury is plenty to get the adrenaline going. And let’s not forget that the point of campaigns is for the story.
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I disagree, otherwise you can just watch youtube for the story.
The point of a campaign is to be played. In terms of campaign bosses, there are no weaknesses to exploit, its a zergfest of whatever units you have left by the end of the mission. There isn’t much strategy beyond ‘press all the buttons that can be pressed until the boss is dead’.
Magtheridon is hard because his stats are inflated, thats about it. We can call that challenging, but it is not very engaging.
Story is not mutually exclusive to basic gameplay.
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Implying people don’t do this for it already?
I vividly remember being unable to beat Starcraft Campaigns when I was younger, and had to resort to the only cheat code I knew (thereisnocowlevel) to get the story. If you want those “boss fight” mechanics, do what you’ve suggested to people disliking edits and “Go make your own Campaign levels.”
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This makes me think of azmodan in d3.
Extremely high hp and annoying surrounding blood pools to dot your units to death would make it harder to zerg the pitlord dead.
It doesn’t need to be as fancy as starcraft 2, just rip off diablo.
Kill sylvanas? She keeps doing a skeleton king and calling down more archers.
Kill cenarius? After he dies, his emerald dream spirit pops up 10 times bigger and as moody as the monster in Star Trek V down on the planet.
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As a person whose replayed the WC3 campaigns more than any other story content in any other game in his life. I completely agree making certain enemy characters like Mag more dynamic to fight is a great idea.
Yes vanilla mag is hard but he’s mostly just a giant fat tub of lard who sits there and wails on you. You might as well be fighting a generic tauren with buffed HP and damage. It’s very underwhelming compared to recent blizzard games RTS or RPG bosses.
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Again, not mutually exclusive. The canpaigns are being remade, there is precedent to have story and decent mechanics if they are already implementing new sub-bosses.
If you like tank and spank, its all in the original campaign, which remains untouched.
Mechanics can also be toned down with difficulty settings to the point of being negligible, like LFR mode. Difficulty and mechanics are not mutually exclusive either.
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It would. Making a climactic boss fight more memorable and maybe telling the story with the mechanics better.
You’d be surprised how much care and attention goes into game mechanical storytelling.
Besides, it’s not reinventing the wheel. It’s just putting a tire around the old wooden cart wheel.
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Maybe something like this? small AoE nukes, big stasis fields, mirror images to spread damage and units spawns while the boss is fighting? This one from sc2 is perfect to deal with big armies [Solo] Abathur - Part & Parcel - Starcraft 2 Co-op (Brutal) - YouTube
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I didn’t say it added to the story. Mechanics are gameplay and is separate from story, so any argument that the story is gonna be changed or affected is not a good reason for or against new mechanics.
Kinda like saying movies should use practical FX because it tells a better story. That is irrelevant because the choice to use Practical or CG FX does not affect what is considered good storytelling. Its a tool for entertainment
The campaign is meant to be played just as a movie is meant to be watched. You could definitely make an argument that you prefer simple mechanics because you just want to enjoy the story and not the gameplay, but you cant turn that into a reason to not have improved gameplay. Its a non-reason, an excuse for opinion. Gameplay difficulty settings remove that argument entirely, proved by game which have ‘story modes’ in the form of low difficulty settings. That will exist regardless of boss mechanics.
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Yes, but let me guess, you would have seen no point to Blizzard remaking Stratholme either, correct?
I am aware of the opinion not to change on the basis of keeping things similar to the original, but we already have an example of Blizzard reinventing the wheel with new voices, new level design, and even adding subbosses. What hasn’t changed are spell abilities and the general RTS gameplay.
So honestly trying to make an argument that they shouldn’t reinvent the wheel is far beyond opinion at this point, it’s already being done.
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Should they enable the Phoenix in Lord of Outland? I believe, the abuse can be prevented by invisible walls that don’t let it fly around the Death Towers.
That demo was definitely not Reforged’s final form.
By the way, my instinctive urge against Triceron’s suggestion happened when he suggested spawning units when Magtheridon is invulnerable. But wait, now I’m watching Happy’s campaign walkthrough, and there in TFT, there are units appearing on the map! In Shards of the Alliance. They “get out” of the tunnel entrances.
I would love to. It would leave the meetings more fun and reformulated. For those who do not like the idea, there could be a “pure” campaign mode.
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My goal overall is to involve the player and the existing mechanics more than just a ‘use it on cooldown because you have it’. We spout how much the campaign is intended to teach you mechanics that are used in multiplayer, though we’re never given and rhyme or reason to use these abilities tactically.
Illidan has Mana Burn. Use this ability when enemy has Mana to do damage. Straight forward. But there’s no intent behind the design because bosses have huge mana pools and you’re just gonna be casting on cooldown until you’ve drained them, and that’s about it. Guess what happens in a real multiplayer game? That enemy is gonna chug a potion in order to cast spells. That enemy is going to use a potion of invulnerability to regen a bit of health and mana. That enemy is going to try and prevent you from Mana-burning them just to get a few spells off - something Magtheridon never does.
Ideally the campaign should involve mechanics that involve tactics, and not just tank and spank and watching health bars.
By all means, you can play on a harder difficulty setting right now and lose to the over-tuned enemy stats, but I don’t see how that is challenging the player since you don’t really have any tools to change the outcome. It’s not like choosing to Mana Burn at the right time or burning down some minion will actually change the outcome of the battle - It comes down to how many units you have surviving the entire mission until you got to Magtheridon.
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As an example, how would improved Melee AI change Magtheridon’s boss fight?
It’s literally him and a couple Demon Catapults against your entire army. I mean… would he start walking over to your ranged units instead? What would be different?
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AFAIK, enemy heroes in the FT campaign do use potions.