Modified Melee

I want to start a discussion regarding Warcraft melee.

Bias aside, for those interested in analysing and changing the current melee system into something different, lets talk. Since everyone has their own perspectives of the system and enjoy different aspects, tell us what you enjoy and what you'd change.

Personally I feel it lost the more epic feel that Warcraft 2 had. You could lose a fight, but still go on to win a game much more likely than in War3. Heroes didn't have such critical roles in the gameplay and defences weren't so flimsy.

I was never good at melee but I always found wc3 approach way inferior to squad tactics in DoW for example. Their heroes were good but hell you could easily win without them. In warcraft3 its hard to do so.

On a bright side sc won't have heroes.

I would probably eliminate the heroes and give each race a system quite unique. For example I wouldn't make lumber for undeads and give them higher than average amounts of lumber at start. The only way for undeads to make lumber would be to convert corpses (enemy or their own) into lumber and give them few fast attack units at start (wimpy but cheap like) that in some way give lumber when they fight. Also I would rename their resource from wood to bone.

I would make all human warriors gain small boost over time and at some higher level give them ability to promote them into Leaders or something that would inspire units around them to fight better. And possibly give a cap of how many leaders you can own.

I made an altered melee design once, I was thinking of a simplified melee with minimal base/techtree management (only single main building that trains all the units, 2 or 3 support building that you can build such as towers/moon wells) and a minimal unit rooster, with big emphasis on micromanaging those units and map control.

Without heroes, there could be greater differences between the races like in Starcraft, the undead could focus more on corpses as a terciary resource to generate overwhelming numbers, humans could be more expand oriented with good base defense, while orcs and night elves would have fewer units, orcs would compensate with raw power while elves with mobility and range to keep their losses down.

I even made a map where I started coding the abilities, human footmen had a triggered defend that greatly reduced the damage of all attackers who attacked them from the front, making humans good at defending chokepoints but bad when outflanked, kinda like terrans in Starcraft. I made other abilities too, actualy, now that I remember, I finished nearly all skills, so with only a bit more work that map would have been playable.

Nah I would make corpses their (undead) secondary resource in start... And treat it as a different than lumber (your allies can't trade it to you but you can convert bone to lumber etc...) I want people to go around and say... OMG ud rush.

As for orcs I would remove all trolls and taurens and add Ogres. Makes orcs as badass as in wc2 and force their overwhelming numbers but only mid game. Orcs should be highly mobile enabling them to quickly allocate and strike again.

Night elves should be stealthy and ranged, not just units, buildings as well.

Personally, one dynamic that makes WC3 tedious is all the micro, and not only with heroes (although they are the main reason). One way to solve this is to go the SC route regarding units, and make everything have much lower numbers, as in, less hp and damage for everything, lose upkeep and a higher unit limit.

As for heroes, I'd keep them, but I'd also give them divine armor (ultra-high damage reduction), less offensive and more support spells, and greatly reduced melee damage. This would make their combat roles less significant and would make them less micro demanding, while increasing their support roles. Basically, the idea is that the hero is there to bolster the troops, and not a one man army.

As far as the races are concerned, several interesting things could be done as far as redesigns, but I'd start out with just tweaking them, since a redesign of any one race is opening the balance can of worms.

I generally like the gameplay as it is.
If anything I think expanding on, instead of 'altering' would be better,
Priority of new additions, that I feel are needed, MORE:
- racial heroes (a 5th hero per race)
- neutral heroes (an extra 1 or 2 for the neutral tavern)
- racial items (a few new items per player owned shop)
- neutral items (a few new items for neutral shops and neutral drops)
- units (perhaps an extra unit per race)
- abilities/upgrades (some units can be expanded on with an extra ability here and there, such as footman, rifles, grunts etc.)

Pretty much go on from there...
But to sum it up:

Human/Undead could use an agility Hero.
Ne could use a strength Hero
and Orc could just use well, an extra Hero :p.

A neutral light melee agility Hero would be nice, a variant of a Demon Hunter/Warden type, fast, agile etc.

Fulla, wc3 is overcrowded as is.
I was thinking of 6 units per race (including workers) for my redesign. It's an extreme, but I'm a minimalist. At least with such a design, you're likely to see most of the units in one game. Well, this thread encouraged me to post another one specificaly about my project. Who knows, I might actualy finish it someday.

True, it is a bit crowded with units. But I wouldn't cut the number of units down so drastically, rather increase the accessibility of all the units, making for larger battles or more frequent confrontations that don't always decide the game.

((I think Warcraft 3 is fine as is. Yes. Flame me all you want on this statement.

I do have to admit there is one thing that should be changed:
-Dryads

Yes, I am a Night Elven player. I loathe Dryads. Why? They're a Tier 2 unit that defeats all other Tier 2 units nearly [seeing Tier 2 units are mainly spellcasters]. ((Don't make me argue about this more. I don't want a flame war over Drayds again.))

Okay, anyways, going back on topic...

I made this one map called Kingdom Wars Tactics, a custom melee. I'll elaborate more on this later--it's a project I've abandoned for now, but plan on returning to later.))

((EDIT:

I'll also elaborate more on why I think Warcaft 3 is nearly fine as is... in time.))

Dryads are okay. Spell Immunity in a melee game is a double-edged sword. Especially for regular units. However, the night elves have a way to get around it by using Rejuvenation, Moon Wells, and Tranquility. Other then that, the other races can't help them, much.

Racial heroes are fine. I think five heroes for each race is over-doing it. You can only have three per game, anyways.

I think things are fine as it is. I'm only concerned about the defensive structures. They don't really do their job.

I agree. I've gone wild with defenses, but a couple siege units in the fray and it's GG. Especially when frost wyrms walk in, that freezing attack is a bitch. The defenses in the game are almost not even worth getting, but people seem to do so anyways.

Some general considerations:

• Compared to StarCraft the races in wc3 are not tremendously diverse in their design: all use the same basic tech-tree framework with few aberrations. This helps to (presumably) balance the races, but comes at the expense of character and diversification of tactics between races.
• Heroes are an indispensable game play element in wc3. This itself is not really a pro or a con, it simply represents another layer of consideration. Argues for reducing the role of heroes exist, as do counter-arguments for increasing their role: expand the dichotomy between macro and micro perhaps? I'd be tempted to argue that wc3's 'half-hearted' implication is the problem more than the existence of heroes themselves.
• Balance is a nebulous concept and one that needs to be taken with grain of salt: chess isn't balanced (white has a tiny statistical advantage) and neither is StarCraft (Scouts suck, for instance). The only problem is where imbalance is highly intrusive, and i think in those cases Blizzard has done a good job (hell SC needed an entire expansion pack to fix Mutalisks). Thus is think Wc3 =/= Balance = Sux arguments of the kind you sometimes see from SC fanbois are fairly useless.
• Micro vs. macro. One of the most contentious points in this sort of discussion: some people think a focus on micro makes for a more exciting game (better capturing the raw excitement of other genres like FPS, for example). Other prefer a focus on macro due to a belief that it better services what they see to a primarily a 'strategy' game. Reconciling these two camps needs to be considered by any designer for often it is too easy to focus on one at the expense of the other and to the overall detriment of the game. I'd argue that wc3 is perhaps too micro-focused while a game like Supreme Commander would fall in the opposite camp: so macro heavy so as to lose the 'actiony-fun' of a game like wc3.
• Game length. From what i cans see, the competitive RTS market today prefers games to be over in ~15 minutes. This of course works to preclude 'epic' gameplay with a stronger focus on patterned gameplay and fast-pacing.

I may add more if they come to mind.

I have always wanted to tweak melee but my ideas are always unconventional, my team work sucks and I now hate all warcraft III development since I have to boot in windows... I am probably posting for no actual reason.

But we can hear your ideas, right? They aren't connected to booting in win?