Warcraft III

[thorfinn]

Hrm. Warcraft III... Morgan's right. There are a few obvious interface niceties that haven't been done. I'd love to be able to target a spell by clicking on the image of the person in the "selected units" area, for example. It's a lot easier than trying to track some unit that might be running around all over the place. And now that I'm playing the campaign game... I'm coming to understand why the multiplayer computer kicks serious butt. Hero management is bloody time consuming, and when the enemy comes a-calling, the computer hero is stupidly over-powered, compared to the human managed one. They really should've put more effort into simplifying the hero management process, so that humans can vaguely keep up. Oh well.

Oh well.

Comments

Um...

[barrington.livejournal.com]

You can target a spell by clicking on the unit's portrait. I did it all the time during the human and undead missions, casting the healing spells on my wounded powerful minions.

Have to agree with the hero management; where does the PC get all that experience from in multiplayer? I can't even find enough NPCs to kill for that much XP, let alone actually win in a fight against them before the computer has. Still, I am enjoying the campaign, even if Neverwinter Nights and Wizardry 8 have distracted me from it for a while...

Re: Um...

[thorfinn]

Gak. :) Stoopid me. Heh. Damn complicated hero-management foo. As for the experience... the problem again is that there actually is enough XP out there, but you can't build your base and send your hero running around killing monsters at the same time. The computer can, because it has infinite attention span, and doesn't take two seconds to switch between hero-control and base-control. Realtime Strats have always been a game of how much you can focus your attention to exactly where it's most needed... and when the number of things that require serious micromanagement attention simultaneously to progress goes beyond one, the computer gains an advantage. For Warcraft III in multiplayer, that number starts at two (base management and hero management), and progresses to three (reserve unit management)...

Re: Um...

[entrippy.livejournal.com]

Zigactly.

Although I'd argue that the usual RTS runs to three things at the same time - base building, resource collection, army management. Warcraft games in general tune the resource collection down compared to other games (you start with a gold mine right there) but even so, you have to pay attention. And regardless of how many it is, adding a micromanagement heavy hero into the mix is exactly one too many.

Quick tip - in the early game, don't worry about the "reserve army" - set the barracks rally point to your hero, and keep your entire force with the hero. If your base gets attacked, well - that's what town portals are for. Only once you've used your town portal should you worry about a base defence force.

Heheh

[dragongrl.livejournal.com]

I don't grok the WarcraftIII lingo, but I'm sure I'll be well versed in it very soon, as Eric has caught the WarcraftIII addiction bug...and is going to be installing it on his brand new IBook (which he plans to make a dual boot, with Debian...whee!) Did I mention I'm a bit jealous of my resident geek?

Back to sleep for me....Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

-NyagoDragonGrl *gryn*

Re: Heheh

[freiheit.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, I'll let you play Warcraft III on my iBook a little; if you're good. (Okay, okay; if you're naughty, too)

(Hi thorfinn)

[kitling.livejournal.com]

hey thorfy

thanks for linking the webtests off the main page - I've noticed and it is a very good idea to deal with something i was finding annoying and i know other ppl do to.. i think we need to point this technique out and hope others catch on :) Its a good idea

[thorfinn]

No prob. :) I figured the biggest objection was that they chew a rather large amount of space for what they're worth (on the web, a picture is worth about three words, it seems, not a thousand), so sticking them behind an <lj-cut text="webtests here"> tag solved that problem neatly.