I know that this feature goes way back to SC. But in Wc3, is it to encourage you to play with small groups or to force you to hotkey your groups? Or what? Never fully understood the mechanic since you will eventually end up with over 12 units in the late game. How do you deal with it? Grouping?
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Git gud, group up ctrl 1 - 9 simple as that
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i do not know for sure what the point is but, they likely wanted people to see all units grouped together. starcraft 2 solved the problem by allowing that without a limit of 12. warcraft 3 is still limited to 12.
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It was so that the game would run well on the lowest required specs at the time.
Think of what the game supported, custom games, 4v4 melee, etc. If you could select all your units and order them to move all at the same time - you and the other players (could be up to 12) in the game with you-, the game would lag, especially if you were running on the lowest specs at the time.
Same thing for StarCraft. This was the original reason behind limiting selection to 12 units.
With today’s computers, this original reason no longer applies.
Now, people have attached “strategic design/balance reasons” behind this limitation, but the real reason is what i said above, to prevent lag.
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Something something “the micro and meta of the game” blah blah blah.
If someone wants to be super all about micromanaging their army, they can with control groups. If someone wants to send their 70-food-consuming army over to raid a base with only one click, they should be able to. It will hurt lazy players that don’t use control groups, but at the same time, they should have the option.
It should be a player-controlled option to choose in their own settings, instead of having people throw a tantrum about “don’t change the meta”.
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It’s just a pointless relic of the past but there are sadly enough people that defend that old BS.
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i do not defend it. the limited selection is a relic, nothing more. it is worthless now.
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Because people can’t be bothered to learn to play again. Because if they went the SC2 style, it means that all the pro-players that kept wc3 alive through multiplayer tournaments would have to learn something new, and god forbid it, that might happen. So basically they sacrifice the modernization of the game for the sake of people like that.
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that’s not exactly true, the C&C games back in the mid to late 90s had unlimited unit selection, and it had nothing to do with minimum spec requirements, WC/SC just involve more strategy and balance
Yes it is to encourage grouping units. It hinders your play to group all units together, as it means you are not microing separate unit types efficiently. In most cases your weakest units get attacked first (say casters) so if you want to retreat your casters but keep the rest of your army attacking, then you don’t want them all in 1 group
If you had 8 rifles and 6 casters, you should have the rifles in group 1 and the casters in group 2. You should never group certain units together, like melee and siege. You also should rarely (almost never) have more than 12 units of the same type except maybe on the occasional mass gyrocopters (not including workers of course, which should be broken up into separate groups for lumber/gold/defenses, etc)
For more info check out my guide on hotkeys here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/WC3/comments/69p3nv/improved_custom_hotkeys_setup_by_wtvr/
it explains unit control groups in details about halfway from the top of the guide.
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I kinda like it TBH. adds more micro, and macro to the game.
You’re almost never going past 2 groups so why this does matter ? no big deal
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Most people group melee separately from ranged but some do separate it by tier, so yea 2-3 is usually good for your main army but sometimes I had 4 groups just for my army alone (depends on your race though). then you should also have workers on 4/5 and buildings on 6/7/8
2 is the bare minimum IMO
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Ok seems like grouping your stuff is the best way to go. I never got good at using the hotkeys. All I ever had was Group 1 = whole army. My games would usually go something like this; build a base, creep some, build an army, A-move the army to the enemies base and win/lose the game.
you want some help practicing? you on discord or reddit?
I meant total army size will almost never go past 2 groups.
Those who want to control everything at once should at least group their army to 1 so 2 groups shouldn’t be a big deal right?
I personally want Blizzard remove the 12 units selection on ladder too. Wc3 is more focusing on micro than macro game, and that’s the reason why I like wc3 than sc (but like sc series too <3). If we remove the limits, that doesn’t make user can easily micro dryad , fiend, and magical units which that won’t affect balance. I think reforged team is more focusing on new user base from wow series, and i’m not sure all new users are going to play ladder; they going to play campaign then custom maps. But for some new ladder player, I hope old system that block to start should gone, and 12 unit system is it, which not gonna break the balance but make new user welcome. As reforged team said they gonna remove the 12 unit limits on custom game, importimg that system won’t hard on ladder. If they really worried about balance or whatever, I hope Blizzard let user or pro player play on beta so get some feedback. Not just saying “no we are not going to add it.”
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people have been giving feedback to blizzard long before the beta, wc3 is 17 years old. blizzard talks to pro players and clans, and especially the esports communities in asia. everybody already discussed the 12 unit selection all year long, and blizzard said they are keeping 12 unit selection because they want to keep ladder play the same for classic players
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No, you can’t give the option to change that. That would actually be unbalanced. You either change or not, for everyone the same. And they decided not to change this. Easy.
these “classic stay classic” blizz for every relic useless thing like tiles / 12 units in group / dumb pathfinding, but when it comes to artstyle and lore they go for “look at new female DK we done!” or “let turn a medieval brutal paladin into skinhead” or “anime fancy sword for everywhere!”
Every pros will be used to countless selection in a couple of games. It cant break the game as there are alrdy less then 12 units used for 60% time of the game in pro-level, and the when it comes for extra units they just forced(!) to use extra bind just for nothing (realy there is no reason for this limitation). But even having lesser than 12 units player are going to bind different groups sometimes - so they just will do it regardless of the limit or no.
Why 12 units in group were made in wc3? Because in sc1 it was 8 and in wc2 it was 6 and in wc1 it was 4. They just being limited by the hardware. And for now (and many years before) - there is no reason to keep this relic alive. Blizz just dont want to do extra work (making playing wc3 better expirience), they want to sell old game with new models.
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that’s not true (I already explained earlier in this thread)
for easy visibility/accessibility within the hud