I like this fan-service. Seemingly out of the blue, surprising even those that normally may be informed (but under NDA). I like how it restores the correct colors, very pronounced at the darker blue mana bar for heroes, and creeps now start with correct mana pool (note that the 100% mana pool was an unintended or at least unmentioned surprise change in patch 1.30 which prepped for reforged release).
There are however, quite some problems. Note that many of these need need repeated testing to lock them in as a known issue.
- There is no online (BNet) functionality (seems to be by design, but misses the point of what made legacy so awesome)
- Legacy seems to pick up the reforged folder location for maps. Due to different coding however, these maps don’t show in legacy UI.
- Hitboxes are similar to reforged, see below.
- Pathing is similar to reforged, see below.
- It would be great if it would pick up the customkeys.txt people use in reforged.
Hitboxes and pathing is a known issue, but a very under-represented problem.
The hitboxes is actually well known: items under a creep are very difficult to pick up. Since Reforged the cursor-priority has changed. Making it insanely difficult to click some specific objects. The items under creeps is most evident to the player base. It does happen more often: sometimes specific trees are insanely hard to target with a worker. It is very difficult to target enemy units which are partially hidden behind allied units with share unit control. In addition, many people have noted that in reforged it is much harder to surround enemy units, and enemy units may occasionally ‘pop’ or ‘displace’ themselves out of a surround. This coincides with people stating that units are just harder to select, most noticeable with a group of smaller units (militia, ghouls, footmen) in which its hard to click and correct individual units. E.g. clicking one selects more easily in selecting multiple or an unintended adjacent one. This poses interaction problems, which did not exist in legacy, at least not pre 1.30.
The pathing is less easy to articulate, and frankly we [being veterans with a memory muscle] are surprised that the pro-scene isn’t (or wasn’t) more upset over this. Although at times it operates in conjunction with the aforementioned hitbox issues (e.g. surrounds).
Most notable you see occurring in games somewhat frequently:
- Creeps do not return to original spawning location after agro
- Creeps not returning to sleep at night after agro
- Creeps retaining agro even when the player went well out of leash range for a longer time: prompting creeps to actively re-engage minutes later when the player re-enters leash range. As creeps have visions as-if they are air units, the pro-actively show up out of the fog from the player POV
- Creeps have different interaction and redirection logic. On TM the level 6 troll at the neutral shop will prioritize in range statues over DK and fiends - likely due to the autocast ability. But in 1.27 that wasn’t the case; the troll would only target the statue if it was the player unit in its closest proximity. For those having legacy 1.27 installed, this is very easy to test.
The issue is however more obscure in detail. Even in 2020 I’ve reported a 2on2 AT game with Thaedalius on Synergy. The enemy expanded and builded some defensive structures. We couldn’t target the buildings in front - no matter what. Reported on these forums in March 2020 and Thaedalius confirmed the odd behaviour in the thread. I recently experienced similar again. Hard to replicate though. At times we do see that a large base, walled of at 1 side and open at the far end, seems to ‘trap’ units that spawn inside the base. They simply can’t find their way out. No idea why. This never happened in ‘true’ legacy’.
Pathing summary: something odd has changed. But it is there beyond a doubt. Like a black hole before we discovered them: we can observe objects move oddly, but we can’t pinpoint the exact object prompting these mechanics.