15th December 2024, 4:45 PM
(This post was last modified: 15th December 2024, 4:47 PM by A Black Falcon.)
First, one more thing -- while in Starcraft Remastered, if you launch the game then click on your second monitor (to be logged in while using a web browser like this or something in between games) you still hear the game audio, in WCI/WCII Remastered the audio stops the moment I alt-tab to the other monitor. Given how great WCII's soundtrack is -- it's one of the best ever after all -- this is kind of too bad, I'd rather the music continued to play like SC:R's does. Oh well.
Well, the online seems to be mostly dead already. It's not completely dead, but at any given time there may not be any games to join. Given the seriously lacking featureset -- most notably the absence of being able to download custom maps, though not having a ranked ladder is also a big deal -- that isn't too surprising, but it is quite sad, WCII multiplayer is great fun! The game is challenging, but not as intense an ordeal as Starcraft, which is nice. It is much more random with its massive damage ranges for attacks, and that can be annoying at times, but still, it's a fantastic game and I'd like to play it more against humans, the AI isn't very good.
On that note, I played through the Human campaign of WCII: ToD and found the first 13 missions pretty easy. I guess I'm better at games now than I was in my teens... heh. There is an absolutely massive difficulty spike for the final mission, which was a stiff challenge, but even tehre most of the challenge is at the beginning; after dying a lot and wondering how I'd ever beaten it before, finally on one run where I managed to trap and killl the three Death Knights early, I won easily. Basically the level starts you with a massive hill to clime to not die as you have to fight lots of enemies with not much and get attacked constantly by dragons, but get established with some arrow towers and trap those DKs and it's easy after that.
On a related note, mission 13 was weird, I expected to get attacked but just ... wasn't. The AI had transports all over but I was only attacked once, by one Ogre, early on. Then after that, nothing. That sure made things easy.
So yeah, WCII? The campaign's fun but short. There are 14 missions, but only the last is hard, and I only lost a couple of times on any mission before that one. I think mission 8 was second hardest. It felt like a less substantial game than I remember it being, though of course I didn't stop after one campaign after a kid, I made some (terrible) maps, played against the AI, played against humans on Zone.com or WCII BNE, etc. And there is more. there's always that WCII expansion campaign in the remaster. I never managed to beat the BtDP campaigns in the '90s, and haven't gone back and finished them since. So yeah, I should do that now; I'm sure I could beat it now...
But in the original WCII campaign, the AI basically spends most of its time standing around waiting for you to attack it and only rarely attacks you apart from specific things like those Dragons in the last mission that come at you constantly. Obviously the AI is cheating and not really playing like you are, they don't need to actually mine and such, and even today it's hard to make computer opponents in RTS games that actually play the game. Even so, it'd be neat to see WCII with better AI opponents. I know that they exist for Starcraft, there are fanmade ways of playing against much stronger AI opponents than the default stuff.
Alternately of course they could fix the online by adding the missing features, maybe that would draw more people in. Bu
Oh, as for Warcraft I, I've played a bit of the remaster and love how it now basically has WCII's interface, but apart from the missing multiplayer, I was really hoping that they'd put the video bits back in that aqre missing, suhc as the video map screen, the victory/defeat animations on the score screen, and such. It's kind of amusing, though... like, I'm playing one of the missions and think 'oh yeah, that bridge to the left has a mine on it, and the enemy base is on the bridge straight ahead'... and that's right. I doubt I've played WCI much since the mid '90s, so it's interesting that I remember things like that about its mission designs. WCI's such a fun game, even if it is unbalanced -- archers/spearmen and water elementals/demons are hugely overpowered versus any other units -- so it's a nice nostalgia trip, and a pretty good game as well. It's no WCII, but it is good.
As for the patches to WC3, I haven't played it so I can't say much about that. I'm glad that they finally did a big update to the game, though, it badly needed it. I played a few games of WCIII earlier this year after getting back into Starcraft, but somehow WCIII hasn't dragged me back in like SC has; I'm still very much loving Starcraft 1, both playing it sometimes and watching pro play on Youtube, but WC3? I watch it a bit and played a couple of games, just enough to remember some of the unit names and such that I had forgotten (and yes I had forgotten a lot of them, unlike SC; as I've said before I definitely memory-holed WC3 somehow...), but it's such a frustrating game! I know I have said this but it's so weird, I remember it being easier than SC but now it feels just as hard to win at, as killing Heroes is incredibly difficult with how often they heal. It's a game all about learning Hero skills and what they all do and I'm not sure I want to do that. But I should at least play the remaster a bit to see if it is indeed fixed now or not.
Yeah, the fixes in this patch nerf Bloodlust quite a bit and slightly boost Heal, but it probably needs more, agreed. My idea probably would be to turn Heal into a thing with a lasting effect, like Bloodlust has but with healing that continues over time. That probably would be the best fix, I think... I know it's a big change, but something is needed to make the game balanced and that patch might not be enough. I like the idea of heal-over-time...
Of course, if WC1 online was ever added back in to Remastered maybe that would need patches too given how OP archers and elemental summons are, but as a single player only game that games' imbalance works.
I really do think that those games still have LAN support for pro tournaments. Maybe if WCII had a pro scene it'd get them for the Remaster too.
Well, the online seems to be mostly dead already. It's not completely dead, but at any given time there may not be any games to join. Given the seriously lacking featureset -- most notably the absence of being able to download custom maps, though not having a ranked ladder is also a big deal -- that isn't too surprising, but it is quite sad, WCII multiplayer is great fun! The game is challenging, but not as intense an ordeal as Starcraft, which is nice. It is much more random with its massive damage ranges for attacks, and that can be annoying at times, but still, it's a fantastic game and I'd like to play it more against humans, the AI isn't very good.
On that note, I played through the Human campaign of WCII: ToD and found the first 13 missions pretty easy. I guess I'm better at games now than I was in my teens... heh. There is an absolutely massive difficulty spike for the final mission, which was a stiff challenge, but even tehre most of the challenge is at the beginning; after dying a lot and wondering how I'd ever beaten it before, finally on one run where I managed to trap and killl the three Death Knights early, I won easily. Basically the level starts you with a massive hill to clime to not die as you have to fight lots of enemies with not much and get attacked constantly by dragons, but get established with some arrow towers and trap those DKs and it's easy after that.
On a related note, mission 13 was weird, I expected to get attacked but just ... wasn't. The AI had transports all over but I was only attacked once, by one Ogre, early on. Then after that, nothing. That sure made things easy.
So yeah, WCII? The campaign's fun but short. There are 14 missions, but only the last is hard, and I only lost a couple of times on any mission before that one. I think mission 8 was second hardest. It felt like a less substantial game than I remember it being, though of course I didn't stop after one campaign after a kid, I made some (terrible) maps, played against the AI, played against humans on Zone.com or WCII BNE, etc. And there is more. there's always that WCII expansion campaign in the remaster. I never managed to beat the BtDP campaigns in the '90s, and haven't gone back and finished them since. So yeah, I should do that now; I'm sure I could beat it now...
But in the original WCII campaign, the AI basically spends most of its time standing around waiting for you to attack it and only rarely attacks you apart from specific things like those Dragons in the last mission that come at you constantly. Obviously the AI is cheating and not really playing like you are, they don't need to actually mine and such, and even today it's hard to make computer opponents in RTS games that actually play the game. Even so, it'd be neat to see WCII with better AI opponents. I know that they exist for Starcraft, there are fanmade ways of playing against much stronger AI opponents than the default stuff.
Alternately of course they could fix the online by adding the missing features, maybe that would draw more people in. Bu
Oh, as for Warcraft I, I've played a bit of the remaster and love how it now basically has WCII's interface, but apart from the missing multiplayer, I was really hoping that they'd put the video bits back in that aqre missing, suhc as the video map screen, the victory/defeat animations on the score screen, and such. It's kind of amusing, though... like, I'm playing one of the missions and think 'oh yeah, that bridge to the left has a mine on it, and the enemy base is on the bridge straight ahead'... and that's right. I doubt I've played WCI much since the mid '90s, so it's interesting that I remember things like that about its mission designs. WCI's such a fun game, even if it is unbalanced -- archers/spearmen and water elementals/demons are hugely overpowered versus any other units -- so it's a nice nostalgia trip, and a pretty good game as well. It's no WCII, but it is good.
As for the patches to WC3, I haven't played it so I can't say much about that. I'm glad that they finally did a big update to the game, though, it badly needed it. I played a few games of WCIII earlier this year after getting back into Starcraft, but somehow WCIII hasn't dragged me back in like SC has; I'm still very much loving Starcraft 1, both playing it sometimes and watching pro play on Youtube, but WC3? I watch it a bit and played a couple of games, just enough to remember some of the unit names and such that I had forgotten (and yes I had forgotten a lot of them, unlike SC; as I've said before I definitely memory-holed WC3 somehow...), but it's such a frustrating game! I know I have said this but it's so weird, I remember it being easier than SC but now it feels just as hard to win at, as killing Heroes is incredibly difficult with how often they heal. It's a game all about learning Hero skills and what they all do and I'm not sure I want to do that. But I should at least play the remaster a bit to see if it is indeed fixed now or not.
Quote:I think the biggest issue between orc and human sides as far as balance goes is that healing requires far more input commands than bloodlust to be viable. I'm not asking for a WC3 style option where paladins auto-heal anyone injured within range, but I suppose if they altered the healing spell itself into a health buff (a sort of "overheal" effect that pushed health above the max for the unit, up to a certain percentage of their max), that would go a LONG way towards fixing that imbalance.
Yeah, the fixes in this patch nerf Bloodlust quite a bit and slightly boost Heal, but it probably needs more, agreed. My idea probably would be to turn Heal into a thing with a lasting effect, like Bloodlust has but with healing that continues over time. That probably would be the best fix, I think... I know it's a big change, but something is needed to make the game balanced and that patch might not be enough. I like the idea of heal-over-time...
Of course, if WC1 online was ever added back in to Remastered maybe that would need patches too given how OP archers and elemental summons are, but as a single player only game that games' imbalance works.
Quote:I will note that WC2 is still missing LAN features, and frankly at this point we're lucky they haven't removed LAN play from Warcraft III and Starcraft 1. They seem intent to coral us into their walled garden for ALL play, so they can properly advertise any upcoming DLC they might want to sell us down the line. It's ridiculous to be missing such a basic feature that is still available in the B.Net version of the game, but hey, I'm selfishly thinking of things from a player's perspective aren't I?
I really do think that those games still have LAN support for pro tournaments. Maybe if WCII had a pro scene it'd get them for the Remaster too.
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