World Editor concerns/questions

General Discussion
1

Hello there ! I’ve tried some Reforged custom maps , custom hero maps more exactly and I would like to express my concerns/questions.

When they announced Reforged they told us that there will be world editor improvements, but for me it is still limited and Damage detection systems can go as far with an old engine like that and it will never as complex like a SC 2 or Dota 2 engine.I hope I’m wrong but some examples are:

  • Attack modifiers still exist - This was removed in Dota 2 and gave more options/fun regarding builds. In War 3 you can’t stack them and you can’t have Multishot + Incinerate + Frost Arrows at the same time for example which is sad.

  • Limited number of attack/armor types like Hero,Chaos,Heavy etc.

  • Types of damage - You can’t have multiple types of damage from spells or auto attacks like Fire, Water, Chaos, Physical, Nature etc. and damage reductions for each type.

  • Spells which scale with your attributes or different sources of power/types of damage - This is available is many maps but only to an extent and it isn’t a default option for the editor, it requires a lot of work depending on the spell, for many spells it is just impossible.

  • Number of attacks for second - Sources of attack speed(Bloodlust, Agility , Endurance Aura etc.)I’ll give a comparison here so it makes sense. A unit in W3 with 450% attack speed has the same attack speed as an unit with 500% attack speed , every unit has a specific cap for attacks per second. In Dota 2 this isn’t as limited and the engine allows you to go much higher.
    Now , in W3 there are ways to go around that with, with Combat - AttackCooldown Time but only in some specific circumstances. The point I want to make is that attack speed is too limited.

  • User interface doesn’t show important details of units like movement speed , health regeneration, number of attacks per second , damage reductions to different sources , attack projectile speed etc.

  • Heroes are limited to 3 stats only , you don’t have the option to expand that

  • Inventory size

I can point out other things as well but I think these are the main issues. Are these limitations going to be addressed ? Custom maps and map development can be a much better experience and with more options from a creative standpoint and I don’t think this can be achieved with an old system.

2

This can be done quite easily now by modifying the spell damage for the unit when it is cast using the new natives that were added as part of making Reforged.

The limit is with faster attack speed. The range is -80% to +400%. Using triggers one can modify any unit attack speed up to 50 attacks per second using the new natives that were added as part of making Reforged.

StarCraft II is limited to at most 16 attacks per second.

Allowing that to be changed would likely be non-trivial. I can imagine the current hero attributes are hard-baked into native types.

3

Is it ? Can you make a chain lightning ability on a 10 s cooldown which has 20% chance to trigger on your auto attacks which deals 20% of your base attack damage as lightning damage(subsidiary of spell damage)to each target hit and not be an attack modifier ? Or a multishot ability which shoots searing arrows to each target and deals agility based damage while also getting lifesteal for each target hit ?
The point is , spell damage should be a default stat for units which can be used as a source to increase the damage of abilities, not obtainable only via triggers.The majority of the maps don’t have scaling for their spells and for good reason.
Many features like this should be available by default as bare minimum.

This is what I mean. The cap which you’re mentioning should be a default option for maps which can be achieved by attack speed items/spells and Agility not obtainable only via triggers. It’s like you need to have a set of triggers for each map in order for your custom map to work as intended which is a massive setback from a map creation and gameplay perspective. A modern engine would’ve been much better.

4

What does that have to do with scaling ability damage… I did not quote the part about attack modifiers you posted.

Except then this locks users into a single way to handle spell damage. As opposed to the more dynamic pure trigger approach possible currently.

For unrelated reasons. Either the map is old so all the Reforged related added trigger natives did not exist when the map was made, or the author thought that scaling spells was not necessary and so actively choose not to.

It already is? As far as I can tell +400% attack speed works correctly in almost every case except maybe if some rounding error is involved. The discrepancy comes from units having slower base attack speed and hence lower maximum attack speed. Limit is +400% of base so at most 5 times as fast.

Triggers ignore this entirely and I think even reset the limit. This makes setting attack speed via this means a risky business as one must be careful to restore it consistently.

Well for the most part attack speed works as intended. One just has to design around -80% to +400% boosts, which is kind of reasonable given that scaling attack speed does not really make sense even for an RPG. Attacking 50 times per second looks stupid as units twitch like they are having some sort of fit and can cause some serious performance issues if many units start doing this.

So limiting to 16 attacks per second is better than the 50 attack per second limit we have now? One must remember that Warcraft III remained popular for custom mapping long after StarCraft II which had “a modern engine” at the time.

5

It is scaling ability damage , because it scales with attack damage(I’ve said different sources of power/types of damage) and it also can scale with lightning damage which can be a subsidiary of spell damage if the editor can handle multiple types of spell damage and some spells have attack modifiers on them which can hardly be removed from what I’ve seen.

I just provided one example as a default stat for the game. The system can be expanded based on that and be much more complex and still have room for innovation/creativity.

Because the Warcraft 3 and the World Editor weren’t designed to have scaling spells to begin with. We can see that on the default Object Editor menu. The damage for spells is static by default. The Intelligence stat doesn’t have spell damage amplification or whatever you want to call it.

There’s an argument to be had here. Warcraft universe has always been more successful that the Starcraft one for various reasons. It is more attractive from an art perspective , generally medieval genre is the most successful approach to RTS games and it is the most rich from a lore perspective and well build universe compared to the other Blizzard games. That is why custom mapping remained popular.
I didn’t mention to limit anything. What I strongly believe is that by default units should have a higher attacks per second cap (not 50) ,maybe around 20 depending on the unit , cap which can lowered or increased by triggers.Also a more detailed user interface which show unit statistics in detail would fit this.

6

Should it? A huge problem that has been complained about for over a decade is that hero stats have fixed mechanics.

What if they made all hero stats generic like SC2 stats? Then people complain it is too complicated like SC2…

In reality hero stats are kind of pointless. This is why Heroes of the Storm and most StarCraft II RPGs do not use them. One can modify the properties directly. If anything Warcraft III needs an option to disable hero stats for hero units. At least one can modify the UI to hide them now.

The cap is not based on individual units. It is based on absolute added faster attack speed. Hence why people have suggested that the -80% and +400% limits should be able to be modified in gameplay constants.

7

Are they pointless ? Stats are at the base of RPG genre since the beginning. Different titles expanded on multiple stats and are much more creative regarding what each stat does. People complained about the simplicity of Hots since the beginning and it is a big reason why it failed. You should look at Dota 2 or League who are successful regarding the customization and building your character while having access to different stats and thinking accordingly which build fits your playstyle. Custom hero games would be pretty much dead without stats , that is why it needs to be expanded.
In reality ,in depth customization is appealing to the audience , one of the reasons why Path of Exile, Dota 2 and League found success and why Hots failed.

8

Stats have always been used as a base to derive some mechanics from. For example in dungeons and dragons they were used to resolve checks and calculate damage and the like. However in the case of computer systems this tier can be masked by having the game engine do such calculations automatically allowing the presentation to be much simplified.

For example in a traditional stat based system an ability might have some amount of base damage. This is then modified by spell power. Spell power is then calculated from items and intelligence. Intelligence might be gained on level up or from items. This could all be simplified into just showing the player the actual amount of damage the spell does to begin with. Under the hood intelligence is not even needed, as one could simplify that into the spell power directly.

Strength is another good example of this. A user does not care how much strength their hero has, instead they only care about how much health, health regen and possibly damage they deal. Instead of an item adding strength, it could add these 3 properties directly, which is much more meaningful to the player. Likewise when the hero gains levels, the gain could be represented directly by those values rather than saying they gain strength.

This is the foundation of games like Borderlands 2. When the player levelled up everything of theirs just scaled. They do not need to concern themselves about strength or other attributes used to derive their stats or damage since at the end of the day they only care about how much damage they deal, and how much they can take.

Heroes of the Storm failed more due to overall market shrinkage rather than anything else. It was aimed at casuals rather than DotA 2 players (since they will only ever play DotA from now until the end of time…) and had great success at shaking up LoL as well as killing off older competitors. The problem was then the battle royal genre sucked up most of the casual players away from MOBAs reducing the potential player pool to an unsustainable level.

DotA 2 found success because it is DotA. No other reason. It targeted the DotA Allstars player base which moved across. Such player base is hardcore fanatical about their DotA and so it does not actually matter if anything makes sense or is stupidly overcomplicated as long as they can stomp their noobs or anyone who has not wasted a lot of their life learning all the pointlessly complicated mechanics.

LoL found success because it is a MOBA, literally just that. It was out much earlier than DotA 2 and was one of the first out the block. In fact its only competitor around the time was HoN, but who remembers that game everyone used to talk about all the time…

Heroes of the Storm was very impactful. It did have great success at pulling casual players away from LoL and even DotA 2. It certainly killed off the last of the HoN talk. However then battle royal games appeared and took away a lot of the casual gamers from the player pool. With the remaining casuals split between LoL and HotS many choose LoL purely because that is what they were used to as it existed longer than HotS did and so is what they started playing first. Adding to this was HotS having accessibility problems due to being based on SC2 rather than a RPG style game engine like the competitors used so many players with bad internet or slow CPUs could not even play HotS. The result was an insufficient number of players to justify continuing AAA spending. HotS still has a reasonable player base, just not as large as a AAA competitive title needs.

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9

There are a lot of things they announced will come out. But did any of the World Editor changes come true? Like most things in Reforged, you can never be sure.

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