Hello guys today I would like to discuss the upcoming remaster for this game , what things I hope to see being included and more.
First gameplay:
So as you know this game is really old and sadly the gameplay suffers from this now back in 1995 warcraft 2 was great RTS probably the best on the market it helped the RTS genre greatly but the RTS grew fast and soon warcraft 2 found itself in a playground with other RTS who built upon the foundation of blizzard RTS these games however were having a better time like the age of empires games or the CNC games , blizzard would drop starcaft I didn't get to try the RTS behemoth or legend yet but it surely sounds an impressive RTS game.
Well while starcaft was something warcraft in terms of new games was just hanging there , lord of the clans game would be cancelled and blizzard would publish some books no new warcraft until wc3 which was a huge even gigantic leap in terms of gameplay comparing both warcraft 2 and 3 would seem unfair wc3 just wins in every regard to gameplay I would explain more in a bit.
So whats the problem with warcraft 2 gameplay and how can the remaster hopefully solves this? There is lot that happened in RTS since wc2 was released , rally points , multiple units queue , and better UI design , mechanics becoming more automated like age of empires 2 in its original expansion introducing auto farming (if farms runs out of food the worker automatically rebuilt it).
Well one thing that will a quality of life improvement would be rally points and queuing multiple units instead of the system that is in war2 currently you all know it so im not gonna explain it.
Another thing would be better UI , and more communicating with the player about an upgrade finishing or a gold mine collapsing , as it stands you have to press on the unit effected by upgrade to see whether the upgrade was finished or not , so a simple sound effect or a message like "upgrade complete (upgrade name)" is really nice and won't hurt the game in anyway.
Rally points one thing I hate about older RTS like age of empires 1 and warcraft 2 is you can't do rally points each peasant or worker that finishes training has to be manually tasked with a job its TEDIOUS there is no fun in assigning every new worker to wood you can just place the rally point on wood and every new worker goes go wood it helps make the game a lot smoother and make it play in a less clunky manner.
Now this is quite essential I would say the most important out of all has to be pathfinding there is nothing more frustrating than an RTS with crappy pathfinding you be sometimes annoyed already and switch back to your expansion just to find the workers all blocked by a silly rock wasting maybe couple seconds to few minutes of income and it can be agitating having to constantly babaysit units near mountains and ships near islands cuz they have a hard time finding out whether this area is water or ground getting stuck in the most unnecessary times when cannon balls are flying left and right and your transport decides to pause on a very easily avoidable obstacle but nope that 1995 pathfinding makes it stop there and get by a cannon ball IT COULD HAVE EASILY AVOIDED , having to deal with such stupidity on top of other outdated elements all make the experience less fun and more frustrating so I really hope they fix this one its the most important of all.
Now finally to my favorite topic balance :
I have talked a lot about balance of this game especially on this site and that's because good balance helps to make a game feel good to play , feel fair , and feel fun well sadly warcraft 2 lacks substance in its balance well what do I mean by substance? It lacks depth , nuance for example an engagement between a grunt and a footman is solely determined on who hits first if we include upgrades it becomes on who has 1 more upgrade once you max upgrades it returns to who hits first or has more numbers or who has more higher health footmen/grunts ,there is no room for lets say other factors like different stats auras etc.
That's why warcraft 3 engagements are much better a fight between footmen and grunts could swing in one or the other depending on much more than who hits first most of the time , auras play a role heroes with different items and levels the unique upgrades for each unit helps influence their performance (footmen don't really a unique upgrade to help them in melee vs melee) the longer kill time allows for skill expression the food and upkeep system makes it more interesting as footmen would outnumber grunts thus makes the situation where the outnumbered orcs win look better rewarding the orc player for using his few in number grunts quite well.
Now im not saying make warcraft 2 play like warcraft 3 no no warcraft 3 is unique because of how its designed copying and pasting it to warcraft 2 wouldn't work instead changing this lame balance of mirror units , giving some spells autocast would help make the game more interesting truth is warcraft 2 doesn't have to be super complex no sometimes its ok to play a simple game and if simplicity help the game then that might be the route to take look at red alert 2 its not complex or have deep combat mechanics it just happens that the soviets and allies are very unique and distinct allowing for unique interactions and gameplay plans well thats how it supposed to be multiplayer in red alert 2 is prism tank spam.
Well I think it goes that more complex games have better multiplayer as the skill ceiling is higher however too much complexity would alienate new comers and push away new players look at arena shooters for example like quake its fast paced gameplay combined with very high skill ceiling damaged the game rather than help it so there needs to be this good spot where its not too simple that it becomes bland and shallow and not too complex that it becomes hard to understand.
What im trying to say the remaster needs to address the issues of the outdated gameplay bring some features from warcraft 3 and its gonna play well it doesn't have to be the best RTS experience whether its singleplayer or multiplayer it just has to be good which is what this game currently lacks A good gameplay.
What do YOU want from the remaster? Do you have any hopes?
Oh and one final thing im somewhat conflicted on the remaster on one hand blizzard is the company famous for its workers stealing breast milk and releasing crappy games these few past years on the other hand hope is kicking in pretty hard knowing how successful Microsoft RTS title (age of empires) is these days I can't help but dream big for the remaster.
