For the real-time strategy fans: what do you think of classic RTS franchises mainly living on by remasters/ports?

[SuikerBrood]

I'm actually not too worried (about that part, anyway; I have different concerns about Reforged). The way that SC:R broke some old SC1/BW custom maps was a pretty specific edge case that shouldn't recur on a similar scale with the new and enhanced WC3 WorldEdit. Mainly, as a customs player, the main thing I'd be worried about is the existing bugginess of a lot of classic maps; every customs player remembers what it was like to have a desync or server split where suddenly half the players drop out at once. It's to our benefit that WC3 maps are easy to fix and republish in a format that isn't locked to editing (without some hackiness, anyway); yes, that's how we had all the version control problems that gave us hundreds of competing fan edits of Wintermaul, but it's also what will rescue a lot of the old designs as needed. On the editor's side, SC2 made a gigantic mistake with the region-locking and encrypted publishing that were all intended to give original map creators full control (and possible monetization, they thought) but just ended up annoying everybody at once.

As for Battle.net, integration with their current services is a major positive reason for picking up Reforged at all, and systems for matchmaking or automated tournaments are already in the game; it's not an SC:R situation where we still don't have a 2v2 queue because it never existed in the first place and has to be built from scratch.

Click to shrink...

Loving these posts man.

The problem is that Warcraft 3 Reforged seems to be a more impactful remaster than SC:R. They are changing a lot of things, from the World Editor, the UI, the online infrastructure to a complete graphical overhaul. This is the reason why Warcraft 3 won't have a 'switch button' like SC:R did. You will be able to switch to the classic or new graphics in the settings menu, but it won't be as simple and fluent as in SC:R.

I'm really worried that they will destroy existing communities, maps and activity with the update. Currently the game has a healthy playerbase, you find games within seconds and a lot of custom maps are still being played. If they break things, that may never come back.

Like, Warcraft 3 has in my opinion always offered a better multiplayer experience than StarCraft II did. Sure, SCII was more modern and had more options. But Warcraft 3 felt like a community. Limited channel sizes, limited friendlists and the ICQ-style chatrooms made it so chatrooms felt cozy and welcoming. Clans really mattered in Warcraft 3, while in SCII it didn't as much.

The custom game mechanics in StarCraft II were problematic for me too:
1. The game list didn't empower smaller map creators. It made sure all the big games kept being hosted on and on and on.
2. The map editor from SCII was brilliant. But also brilliantly complicated. This made sure that people had to be very good at map making to get a simple map up and running. While in Warcraft 3 a complete noob in map making can build a map in a couple of hours.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm really excited for Warcraft 3 Reforged. I dig the new artstyle and I hope it will give the game a new life. But most of my current friends who are playing Warcraft 3 aren't planning to buy reforged.

 

[QuixoticNeutral]

The problem is that Warcraft 3 Reforged seems to be a more impactful remaster than SC:R. They are changing a lot of things, from the World Editor, the UI, the online infrastructure to a complete graphical overhaul. This is the reason why Warcraft 3 won't have a 'switch button' like SC:R did. You will be able to switch to the classic or new graphics in the settings menu, but it won't be as simple and fluent as in SC:R.

Click to shrink...

They were definitely quite clear that Reforged is a full remake, and that part of the reason it isn't just a swappable skin over a shared engine (like SC:R) is that they are outright redesigning some of the campaign stages and handling new events like the kind of in-engine close-up cutscenes you see in SC2.

My memory is a bit hazy on this, but I think I remember them saying at BlizzCon that the engine/editor overhaul will be doing things like detaching the UI elements from the rendering of the battlefield. That's better software engineering anyway, but it's what would allow for a classic/new UI swap within Reforged (I'm not too fond of the new UI, myself) as well as custom modifications like observer interfaces. I agree there's a risk of breaking backwards compatibility when Blizzard obviously won't take responsibility for testing every old custom map, and we'll have to wait to see how severe it is. They evidently realize that seamlessly importing the old file format is a priority, but they won't catch everything.

Now, the thing is, this kind of back-end transition has been done before. I don't know if you were around for the transition from vanilla WC3 to TFT, but TFT made overhauls of its own by introducing features like built-in leaderboards and a spell editor. Heroes and scoreboards were actually very fussy to customize until the expansion came along, delivering a new editor and expanded file format. My impression, though I can't say this for certain, is that this is roughly what they're targeting with Reforged. (Likewise, SC2 had an inflexible UI at launch, and it wasn't until the HotS expansion that the UI was abstracted into a something independently customizable.) Ideally, Reforged will handle the older, less powerful format as gracefully as how you could load both .scm and .scx into Brood War, and .w3m and .w3x into TFT; while I haven't kept up with this closely, I assume we'll be getting a new file format for the expanded feature set in Reforged (.w3r?) but existing maps should run just fine.

You're quite right about the complexity barrier of the SC2 editor. They basically handed the community their in-house tools (with minimal documentation, at that), and everyone was shocked to find that you had to write up your own scheme for implementing heroes, levelling, items/inventory, and all kinds of RPG-like elements we all depended on in WC3, but which weren't in GalaxyEdit because there was no reason to put them in SC2. It was all very inelegant, like going from Mario Maker to ROM hacks.

I'm cautious about Reforged myself and haven't pre-ordered. I'm exceedingly likely to jump in, at least to experience what they've done with the whole campaign (it's been a few years since I last replayed it top to bottom), but there is definitely a lot about it we still don't know.

 

[eyeball_kid]

I lament the fact that we don't even have a remaster of Total Annihilation, let alone a new entry in the series. (and no I don't like Chris Taylor's follow-ups and spiritual successors, they stray too far from what made TA great)

The UX on TA was brilliant. It's still brilliant. Any game industry school trying to teach how to make complex mechanics elegant and intuitive for the user should showcase TA.