Show visual signs of damage when unit is low on HP

Similar to how buildings catch fire, when a units HP gets low we should see them get bruised, bloodied, and have broken armor or weapons… would be amazing especially since the new shiny graphics could use a little more grittiness or gore!

Maybe there could also be visual differences when units have armor or attack upgrades? like many people think the footman have too much armor, maybe they could have less armor when they have no upgrades, and the Knights are missing there gold plating?

26 Likes

I don’t like changing stuff eith every armor/weapon tier, but visual changes with unit specific upgrades would be nice and a lot easier IMO.

Example: Grunts getting body paint with the Berserk upgrade. It’s a smaller visual change but very flavorful IMO.

The damaged animations would be amazing too! A lot of work, but very nice.

12 Likes

I agree that upgrades should add a minimal visual upgrade. (Too much would make them indistinguishable)
Body paint is a good idea.

3 Likes

maybe is to much, but i have to see it to have a true opnion

What was impossible in 2002 is not impossible in 2018. Games before and after 2009 was another leap. I’m unsure of the changes in the last 8 years because progress has moved at a faster pace.

Don’t be afraid to ask Blizz for stuff beyond 2002’s limitations.

5 Likes

Agree 100%. the differences in upgrades should be minimal, but they would add a TON of flavor to the game, and adding unit specific upgrade visual differences would also be excellent. The riflemen rifles could get longer, gyrocopters could gain a tube of some sort pointing down to drop bombs with, raiders could always be carrying a net with them or have a pack on the wolf, etc.

2 Likes

That would be pretty awesome. Just like in sc2 you upgrade lings and you get wings. Or a marine gets a shield. The tier ones would be a bit over the top but the individual unit upgrades should be visible.

4 Likes

D3 had level differentiation on hirelings too.

Armor tiers could work as partial addons or whole armor replacements. Too much work ! Maybe. Better this than cinematics :stuck_out_tongue:

Most units then have 4 sets of armor and 4 sets of weapons.

caster units lack this, some siege engines too, hirelings are not upgradable. Casters are 3 sets.

  • with such a differentiation, heroes levels could make them visually look better too. They get higher armor but look the same from the start.

Footman starts with some chain mail and a rusty bent sword, first upgrade to weapon removes rust and straightens the blade. Shield from old wood to new paint, reinforced with metal. Armor gets something like partial plate.

So in the end you end up with shiny armor all over the place if this is considered cool.

Wounded units should have different posture.

1 Like

Such damage system is generally a bad idea for RTS games because degraded states naturally start to blend together making it harder to grasp what is going on. Sure it looks cool, but from a player perspective it can get annoying.

For example is it an injured Rifleman or Peasant? Both would look like humanoids with damaged cloth/leather wielding a tool of sorts. Sure on your 4k HDR screen on ultra settings with anti aliasing and with 20:20 vision you can see it, but not all of us are that fortunate and most players will compromise something. There is a reason why many professional players use lowest settings for games where the hardware they use easily perfect 60FPS the games.

The fire on buildings might have been a left over concept from StarCraft. In StarCraft buildings that catch fire (Terran) will take damage over time so it is technically a debuff and hence has a major visual appearance. In Warcraft III the buildings can remain on fire forever, which actually is kind of weird.

2 Likes

WC1 and WC2 both had burning buildings long before SC was ever even thought of

1 Like

The problem with doing tier based visuals is that they have 2 ways of approaching it.

  1. You create a skin version of every tier upgrade combination per unit which would be a tremendous amount of work. Or.

  2. Strip all current models to a more barebones state and create the upgrades as attachments. Considering how far along they are on unit visuals this wouldn’t happen otherwise theyd have to scrap a lot of work.

Thats why the suggestions like the warpaint on the grunt upgrades are a great choice. They would be easy to add as the skin would just have a minor addition to an existing skin. So this could be done without having to rework the whole systen.
It also has the benefit of actual gameplay being readable.
You either see a normal grunt and know it isn’t upgraded or see some extra colour on it and can visually see your oponent has invested into it. This would also make replays a bit more immersive

2 Likes

Yes, Yes, Yes. Sorry that’s all I could think off. Though it would be a hard time to vs players in Classic in one server. I mean they could be in a disadvantage unless Blizz would also add that feature in Classic which I doubt for.

changing colors is just bad and I know of some examples. BFME had armor upgrade, it turned all units into bad-looking brown things with shiny blue or red stuff glowing on their weapon edges. Was that kind of an awesome differentiation ? Not at all. No differentiation is better than useless glows and wrong colors are used.

Sad thing is that they are building in a very old system, to make it compatible with old maps… So there’s still a lot of limitations sadly

BFME didn’t have a good visual upgrade system–it was just various colors of glowing. it is true that bad differentiation is worse than no differentiation, but GOOD differentiation, where the unit is still instantly identifiable, and the upgrade is OBVIOUS, is FAAAR better than no differentiation between upgrades.

Nice idea!
And for those who don’t want it, they could add an option to turn it on/off

first thing i thought of was mortal kombat 9 when while your characters are fighting, their clothes would get ripped and there would be visible tears and wounds on their bodies. they don’t need to go that far, but add a little blood on them and maybe add some weapon damage. that would be good enough for me :slight_smile:

1 Like

Cool idea’s I’d like that a lot however this should probably be saved for a warcraft 4 instead of trying to squeeze it in with reforged. It is simply too much work and they have enough on their plate as it is with a limited budget.

maybe in a future expansion? :slight_smile:

This would be great as some additional purchasable cosmetic content.