What if you create official and experimental game patches?

PTR Discussion and Bug Report
1

I recently wrote a list of over 49 things to improve Warcraft

But people believe that many of these points are dubious, and developers are afraid to introduce any of this so as not to upset the existing balance and not lose the existing audience of players.

What if you create two versions of a patch for Warcraft? One official one in which there will be those changes that the developers have already announced in patch 1.36.2, and the second experimental version of the patch in which everything will be introduced, or some changes that I proposed, and are also proposed by other players?

This way, it will be better to see what players play the most, what they are most interested in playing, and which changes players respond well to in the experimental patch, and which ones they respond poorly to.
The audience playing the official patch will not go anywhere. And the audience playing the experimental patch will not be dissatisfied with the changes in it because there is a second official version of the patch that does not contain everything that is in the experimental version of the patch.

For example, I made a proposal that it was necessary to add the ability for alliance workers to hide in farms because the alliance economy is the most vulnerable to destruction of all races because their workers are the easiest to kill

I also proposed giving the paladin the ability to heal himself with “holy light” with 50% effectiveness in order to equalize his capabilities with the capabilities of 2 of the 3 DK skills for healing himself.

Developers are afraid to introduce this because they are afraid of upsetting the balance. You can do this in an experimental patch and see how it goes, but the audience playing the official patch will not go anywhere.

This way you can find out which changes players like and which they don’t. This can be done so that Warcraft 3 develops not at a snail’s pace, but much faster.

Only the experimental and official patches need to be done somehow so that the player does not have to bother with reinstalling these patches on the game every time if he is tired of playing one of these versions of the game.

Write what you think about it below?
And like my thread if you like this experimental patch idea

2

In theory this isn’t a bad idea; and Overwatch has been known to occasionally do this. But this game is a lot smaller and is being managed by one or a few people who don’t really know that much about the game, so it is unlikely they’ll invest the time required to create and manage another publicly accessible branch.

3

Your “balance” patch is totally unbalanced. And you buffing things what doesnt need buffs at all. Like pala buffs is hilariously not needed.

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4

When some changes are made on the test server, they are created for a period of several months. Until the official patch is released, and not forever.
The number of these changes is very small, and I propose to do more.
In addition, I propose that, along with the official patch, there should always be an experimental Warcraft patch, so that it would also be included in the statistics, and it would be clear which of these two patches is played more.
This would make it easier to understand which changes players like and which they don’t.

Explain?

On the contrary, I equalize the capabilities of some heroes with others. In the case of strengthening the first skill of the paladin, this equalizes 2 of the 3 skills of the DC to heal himself with the fact that the paladin does not have a single skill with which he could heal himself. If you give the opportunity to heal yourself with “holy light,” this will equalize the capabilities of the paladin with the DC. Disprove it.

5

Sorry, I gotta agree with Feomatar, Paladin is widely used and is central to builds with a focus on riflemen.

The best basic indicator that something is wrong is pick rates. We should be looking at heroes that are picked less often in particular. This popularity issue often (though not always) implies a potential weakness leading to their unpopularity. And last I checked, paladin is not an under-picked hero.

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6

If the paladin’s two skills were as effective in helping him survive as the two DK skills, then in tournaments or even in amateur games we would see how the paladin is often chosen as the first hero. And this never happens. Therefore, this proves that the paladin’s skills help him survive much worse than the DK skills.

7

the two heroes arent the same in any way and cant be compared in the way that you are.

I looked over the stats on W3C.

The current state in 1v1 for Human is archmage having by a massive margin the highest overall pick rate.
MK and pally are pretty similar, and blood elf is a distant fourth place.

This tells me that AM is probably too universally useful and Blood is on the weak side or a more niche pick.

Based on the information available I think Paladin is in a decent spot. I think the problem is more just how dominant archmage is rather than how weak paladin is.

in team modes, there is a lot less variation in pick rate, with blood elf still being in last place but the other three heroes are closer together.

Perhaps we should be talking about how to help Blood rather than paladin.

8

This is a consequence of the fact that the paladin’s skills allow him to survive worse than the skills of the DК. The DК has 2 self-healing skills, while the paladin has none.
Archmage is chosen because he is a marksman hero who does not take as much melee damage as a DĐš or paladin. He can shoot while behind a wall of infantrymen. Therefore, there is a greater chance that he will survive, and therefore the archmage is often chosen as the first hero.
If a paladin could heal himself like a DK, he would be chosen more often.

the two heroes arent the same in any way and cant be compared in the way that you are.

Where did I say they are the same?
I didn’t say that.
I said that perhaps the paladin was created as an antipode, or a counter-hero to DK. But it turned out that the paladin’s skills allow him to survive worse than the DK, otherwise the paladin would be chosen as the first hero as often as the DK.

9

This isn’t a consequence and means nothing. Paladin has other skills that are useful and work fine.

Comparing these two heroes is useless. Both races have a different library of units and the heroes interact with them differently.

“DK is better” isn’t a reason to buff pally.

You are SPECIFICALLY comparing these two heroes in a vacuum. In your view they fufill the exact same needs and purpose and therefore if one is better than the other, they must be equalized. That’s your logic as I see it here.

The difference is the two races couldn’t otherwise be more different and pally is balanced for the armies that human builds and dk is balanced for the armies that undead builds.

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10

What do you think is the consequence of the fact that the DK is chosen as the first hero and the paladin is not chosen?
This is precisely a consequence of the fact that the DK can heal himself with 2 out of 3 skills, but the paladin cannot. Therefore, in the first few minutes of the game, when his health is reduced to low, he has nothing to heal with (without spending gold), and DK is treated with an aura. You can be treated with a scroll of gradual health restoration, but then the DK does the same. The scrolls seem to equalize each other in terms of treatment capabilities, but if we discard the scrolls, the DK has 2 self-healing skills, and the paladin has none. It turns out that the DK has more self-healing capabilities, so he is chosen as the first hero, and the paladin is not.
These are basic things that can be seen if you watch any tournament.

Offer another option why, according to your DK, they almost always choose the first hero and the paladin is not.

Or why, when playing DK against a paladin, the undead have a better chance of winning than the alliance.

“DK is better” isn’t a reason to buff pally.

You see, you yourself finally admitted that DK is stronger than a paladin. And since he is stronger, then the paladin needs to be strengthened to equalize their chances.

After 20 years of watching tournaments of professional players, I don’t see any other way to make people stop being the weakest race, and the undead to stop being the strongest. If you see it, suggest your options.
But I will say right away, without the paladin’s ability to heal himself, he will never become equal to the DK. He will always be worse. And until he has the opportunity to heal himself, he will not be chosen as the first hero.

11

I didn’t admit anything. I was referring to your argument.

And as I said before, it is irrelevant. the two races are different, you can’t compare heroes because they do similar things, because you have to consider all the other factors. Each race will pick its heroes for different reasons.

Your “tournament watching” experience means nothing to me.

There may be balance issues with the human heroes, but those issues are not with pally. BM is underpowered, and AM is overpowered, if anything.

Even if I agreed with you that one was better than the other (I don’t), they don’t need to be equal. They can’t be balanced against each other, because there are two other races we need to look at. Balance applies to all races and matchups, you can’t buff a hero because you see a problem with one matchup, it might make them too strong against a different matchup. if your years and years of experience should have taught you anything, it’s that balance is way more complex than simply “this guy is better than that guy” or “this guy sucks buff it” etc. etc.

Also: DK doesn’t have 2 self heals. Death Coil can’t be used on self. A slight regen buff doesn’t count. devotion aura mitigates damage and invincibility is… invincibility. DK also has to sacrifice a unit for that self healing, so you’re effetively paying gold to heal yourself, which offsets the power of that self heal. 20 years and you still don’t know how this stuff works? cmon. Pally can avoid more damage than that ability can heal between increased armor and total damage negation for a rather long period of time- and that invulnerability doesn’t cost gold.

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12

The undead have more healing capabilities even when compared to the capabilities of the race.
For most of the game, the alliance can be treated with the paladin’s holy light, priest healing, and a scroll of gradual healing. Here it might be worth adding the ability to be treated with a teleportation staff, but it appears when most of the game has already been completed. It turns out that there are three and a half possibilities for treatment.

The undead have the ability to be treated with a “cutushka”, a DK aura, treatment of obsidian statues, and a scroll of gradual healing. Here we could add the ability to be cured of the cursed earth and a pact with death, but they are not a full-fledged unit of comparison because the cursed earth is only at the base, and a pact with death kills one of its own. I think the cursed land and the pact with death can be counted not as two possibilities for healing, but only as half each. That is, a pact with death and a cursed land are generally only 1 opportunity to be treated. In total there are 5 possibilities for treatment.

Three and a half for the alliance, versus 5 for the undead. The undead have more healing capabilities, so they are stronger.

13

frankly I think its laughable that you consider a self heal with a gold/unit cost to be better then invulnerability and I think that by itself discredits your opinion on Paladin.

Also: Pally’s heal can be used on 3/4ths of the organic units in the game while DK’s only works on units of its own race. Since the heal is more potent than the damage, that’s the more important use case and Paladin is simply more versatile.

14

I don’t think it’s much better, just a little bit better. Because with the help of it, DK can:

  1. Stay next to the army for 1-2 minutes, give it an aura and heal your own. Just by staying nearby and giving an aura, he heals a lot of health for the rest of the army. Calculate how much this is in quantity from each unit in the army per minute. The divine shield makes it possible to stay next to the army for only 15-30 seconds, after which the paladin must be removed from the army, otherwise he will be killed by magic or focus.
  2. DK can fight in close combat for these 1-2 minutes. But a paladin can’t spend that much time because the divine shield quickly runs out.
  3. Its reload time is much faster. I don’t remember exactly how long, but in the old versions it was 15 seconds, and the paladin’s divine shield recharges 35/50/65, or something like that. A dk can “eat” not one but two warriors from the army in battle, and remain alive even under focus, but a paladin cannot.

This confirms my point of view that DK is stronger.