you sure this is correct? From my testing, say I have a hero with 1 armor. If i add an item that grants 12 armor via the behaviour (Modification-Life Armor Bonus field) to the hero i see a noticeable reduction in damage taken when the hero is attacked. You sure the scaling is off? It should be roughly 1+12 = 13 total armor times .06... Which is roughly 78% damage reduction, However armor should stack diminishingly the more you get so it should actually be considerably less than 78% damage reduction.
Your maths is incorrect. As I explained earlier WC3 armor increases EHP/Toughness (Diablo III terms) to attack damage. Although it appears to increase damage reduction with diminishing returns you must remember that damage reduction is exponential as far as toughness goes. The result is a linear increase in toughness.
The formula for Toughness multiplier...
armormod * armor + 1
In your case...
0.06 * 13 + 1 = 1.78 which means you can take 78% more attack damage before dying.
The formula for Damage reduction...
(armormod * armor) / (armormod * armor +1)
In your case...
(0.06 * 13) / (0.06 * 13 + 1) = 0.43820224719101123595505617977528 = 44% damage reduction
Armor like this is useful for scaling in RPGs without having to resort to inflated health numbers. It also can make some attacks more or less effective.
the issue is that we couldn't add the % value to the UI before
The percentage value was meaningless anyway. You knew how effective your armor was simply by reading the amount (something SC2 UI does support).
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or add in the same formulae that were used in WC3.
Thanks to the "Life Armor Forumla" fields it actually is possible to implement WC3 style armor into SC2 and has been so for a long time already. I admit there is an "off-by-one" error for units at full life but that is trivial. In fact SC2 is even better than WC3 in that certain damage effects can be made to be reduced more or less by armor.
Maybe there is a catch to the armor system I do not know of, however it is giving the expected results. For example marine hitting thor with 5 armor set to 100% toughness per armor gives 1 damage (as expected as marines do 6 damage and the thor can take 6 times the damage before dying from armor toughness). Another example being a thor hitting a thor with 8 armor set to 100% toughness per armor gives 10 damage (as expected as thors do twice times 45 damage and thor can take 9 times more damage before dying so 90 / 9 = 10. Have you tried it for yourself?
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Hmm... the way they chose to implement "attack ground" is rather clunky, using a behavior for the cooldown. That means attack speed modifiers won't work, and it's possible to shoot more often by alternating between attack ground and targeting a unit.
It would be better to spawn a dummy unit at the target point and order the caster to attack it. The same ability could be used for any unit instead of having to use separate ones. I could make a demo map if I thought Blizzard would listen.
I notice Thorns Aura has a search, an apply behavior and a damage effect (that does 0) but no behavior. Unless functions for damage/modification based on damage response amounts are implemented, I can't see how they can do it without triggers.
It is possible some of the features are aimed at LotV as that is the version they use for internal development.
Do we have a nice Lighting Set for this that does the day/night cycle to go with this?
Even if there is not one, it should not be too difficult to make one yourself.
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Have they sorted out a nice way to do the % base armour, the last time I was here they added something but it wasn't great.
WC3 did not have % based armor. It instead had EHP based armor similar to Diablo III. Every point of armor by default (changeable in gameplay constants) added 6% more toughness when taking attack damage additively. As such a unit with 100 armor would be able to take 600% more attack damage than a unit with 0 armor. The percentage you saw in the UI was based on the damage reduction needed to obtain this increase in toughness. This also meant that each point of armor was as effective as the last mechanically. Sure relatively they became less effective (1 armor at 100 armor is only a 1% increase) however that is the case for all such mechanics. Attacks could not be reduced below 1 damage (before armor type) so eventually toughness would flatline from certain sources.
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Does Blight have to look like Creep, I place down necro buildings but all I see is creep no blight.
I think that is a mechanical limitation with SC2. It cannot represent multiple types of creep. It would be possible to change creep into blight but then Zerg buildings would use Blight instead of Creep.
What might be a good idea is if Undead buildings were powered similar to protoss buildings. Blight could then be added as a terrain texture overlay similar to craters from missiles and artillery. In standard WC3 it grew so fast that propagation was not a tactical concern unlike with Creep where the growth limits your expansion speed.
Now about the player base. SC2 player base is ridiculously small if we compare it to, say, Google Play. NA server Arcade №1 map, Squad td, has 50k likes. Best games on Google Play has hundreds of millions downloads.
However competition is much more fierce on Google Play as your unknown game has to face off against games with millions of downloads.
Also "likes" does not mean downloads. Not only is it separated by regions (so you are only seeing the likes for a single of the many BattleNet 2.0 regions) but also not everyone who downloads and plays a map will post a "like". You might find that the best SC2 arcade maps have reached near a million downloads.
The actual problem with SC2 is that PC gaming is pretty dead. Most casual gamers have either migrated to dedicated games consoles (Wii U, PS4 or Xbox One) or have given up serious gaming for casual gaming (Android, IOS or Windows Phone apps). As such the total available player pool is likely smaller than was the case of WC3. Do not get disheartened however since most of the players on WC3 at its prime were there for DotA Allstars and only DotA Allstars so never would play your maps anyway. SC2 would be a lot more popular if dedicated AoS games did not pull all the players (League of Legends HoN and DotA 2 and possibly soon Heroes of the Storm).
If all you care about is your game success metrics then give up SC2 modding now. Stand alone apps will not only have the potential to be more popular (especially if you over hype them or hit it lucky) but you can also even make money from them (SC2 has no revenue stream).
This raises a possible idea to encourage SC2 mapping. What if they could bring in advertisements into SC2 maps? Popular SC2 maps would thus generate some revenue both for Blizzard and for the developers. This revenue could be used to fund map development and so you might find a sharp increase in the number of user-made assets.
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Is the warcraft 3 % armor system also implemented ? I see its saying like 1 or 2 armor on a hero but not sure if its based on a percentage
The Warcraft III armor system is similar to the Diablo III armor and all resistances system. Each point of armor actually means "+X% EHP" when taking attack damage (abilities ignore armor). In Warcraft III this defaulted at 6% so a unit with 10 armor could take 60% more attack damage before dying compared to a unit with the same health and no armor. Warcraft III armor has no diminishing returns since the diminishing damage reduction gain is canceled out by the growing value of damage reduction. Warcraft III armor had a mechanical limit that it could not reduce damage below 1 point (before armor types and other scales) meaning that there was a practical limit to armors effectiveness.
SC2 does not natively support this sort of armor however using the data editor you can wire it in. Thanks to one of the patches they added the ability to customize the armor damage mechanics which in theory allows you to fully re-create the Warcraft III damage system for those units.
Personally I liked how Warcraft III armor scaled. The only problem was that the growth of both armor and health often resulted in impossible toughness values, not something good for gameplay (especially after attack speed capped at +400%, as until then you have double damage growth to cancel it out). If you are limiting attack speed to reasonable rates (recommened) you might also want to limit armor to reasonable numbers as well.
The problem with SC2's armor system is that it lacks scaleability. Outside of well designed simple tactical maps I would not recommend using it as any form of scaling (such as heroes with levels) will result in major balance issues.
WC3 styled armor can be used to differentiate different kinds of attacks to make them weaker or stronger against certain units. In WC3 a unit with a lot of armor would be hard to kill with weapon damage however abilities would be more effective as they ignored armor. On the other hand a unit with low armor but a lot of health would require a lot of hits from abilities but would fall fairly quickly to normal attacks. Unless you plan to take advantage of such mechanics you might want to consider ignoring armor completely and instead use inflating health (how Heroes of the Storm does it) to increase toughness.
Your maths is incorrect. As I explained earlier WC3 armor increases EHP/Toughness (Diablo III terms) to attack damage. Although it appears to increase damage reduction with diminishing returns you must remember that damage reduction is exponential as far as toughness goes. The result is a linear increase in toughness.
The formula for Toughness multiplier...
armormod * armor + 1
In your case...
0.06 * 13 + 1 = 1.78 which means you can take 78% more attack damage before dying.
The formula for Damage reduction...
(armormod * armor) / (armormod * armor +1)
In your case... (0.06 * 13) / (0.06 * 13 + 1) = 0.43820224719101123595505617977528 = 44% damage reduction
Armor like this is useful for scaling in RPGs without having to resort to inflated health numbers. It also can make some attacks more or less effective.
Someone posted a formula long ago that allows it I think.
It was...
I have no idea how well it works but the major flaw of it apparently was a lack of negative armor support.
The percentage value was meaningless anyway. You knew how effective your armor was simply by reading the amount (something SC2 UI does support).
Thanks to the "Life Armor Forumla" fields it actually is possible to implement WC3 style armor into SC2 and has been so for a long time already. I admit there is an "off-by-one" error for units at full life but that is trivial. In fact SC2 is even better than WC3 in that certain damage effects can be made to be reduced more or less by armor.
Maybe there is a catch to the armor system I do not know of, however it is giving the expected results. For example marine hitting thor with 5 armor set to 100% toughness per armor gives 1 damage (as expected as marines do 6 damage and the thor can take 6 times the damage before dying from armor toughness). Another example being a thor hitting a thor with 8 armor set to 100% toughness per armor gives 10 damage (as expected as thors do twice times 45 damage and thor can take 9 times more damage before dying so 90 / 9 = 10. Have you tried it for yourself?
It is possible some of the features are aimed at LotV as that is the version they use for internal development.
Even if there is not one, it should not be too difficult to make one yourself.
WC3 did not have % based armor. It instead had EHP based armor similar to Diablo III. Every point of armor by default (changeable in gameplay constants) added 6% more toughness when taking attack damage additively. As such a unit with 100 armor would be able to take 600% more attack damage than a unit with 0 armor. The percentage you saw in the UI was based on the damage reduction needed to obtain this increase in toughness. This also meant that each point of armor was as effective as the last mechanically. Sure relatively they became less effective (1 armor at 100 armor is only a 1% increase) however that is the case for all such mechanics. Attacks could not be reduced below 1 damage (before armor type) so eventually toughness would flatline from certain sources.
I think that is a mechanical limitation with SC2. It cannot represent multiple types of creep. It would be possible to change creep into blight but then Zerg buildings would use Blight instead of Creep.
What might be a good idea is if Undead buildings were powered similar to protoss buildings. Blight could then be added as a terrain texture overlay similar to craters from missiles and artillery. In standard WC3 it grew so fast that propagation was not a tactical concern unlike with Creep where the growth limits your expansion speed.
However competition is much more fierce on Google Play as your unknown game has to face off against games with millions of downloads.
Also "likes" does not mean downloads. Not only is it separated by regions (so you are only seeing the likes for a single of the many BattleNet 2.0 regions) but also not everyone who downloads and plays a map will post a "like". You might find that the best SC2 arcade maps have reached near a million downloads.
The actual problem with SC2 is that PC gaming is pretty dead. Most casual gamers have either migrated to dedicated games consoles (Wii U, PS4 or Xbox One) or have given up serious gaming for casual gaming (Android, IOS or Windows Phone apps). As such the total available player pool is likely smaller than was the case of WC3. Do not get disheartened however since most of the players on WC3 at its prime were there for DotA Allstars and only DotA Allstars so never would play your maps anyway. SC2 would be a lot more popular if dedicated AoS games did not pull all the players (League of Legends HoN and DotA 2 and possibly soon Heroes of the Storm).
If all you care about is your game success metrics then give up SC2 modding now. Stand alone apps will not only have the potential to be more popular (especially if you over hype them or hit it lucky) but you can also even make money from them (SC2 has no revenue stream).
This raises a possible idea to encourage SC2 mapping. What if they could bring in advertisements into SC2 maps? Popular SC2 maps would thus generate some revenue both for Blizzard and for the developers. This revenue could be used to fund map development and so you might find a sharp increase in the number of user-made assets.
The Warcraft III armor system is similar to the Diablo III armor and all resistances system. Each point of armor actually means "+X% EHP" when taking attack damage (abilities ignore armor). In Warcraft III this defaulted at 6% so a unit with 10 armor could take 60% more attack damage before dying compared to a unit with the same health and no armor. Warcraft III armor has no diminishing returns since the diminishing damage reduction gain is canceled out by the growing value of damage reduction. Warcraft III armor had a mechanical limit that it could not reduce damage below 1 point (before armor types and other scales) meaning that there was a practical limit to armors effectiveness.
SC2 does not natively support this sort of armor however using the data editor you can wire it in. Thanks to one of the patches they added the ability to customize the armor damage mechanics which in theory allows you to fully re-create the Warcraft III damage system for those units.
Personally I liked how Warcraft III armor scaled. The only problem was that the growth of both armor and health often resulted in impossible toughness values, not something good for gameplay (especially after attack speed capped at +400%, as until then you have double damage growth to cancel it out). If you are limiting attack speed to reasonable rates (recommened) you might also want to limit armor to reasonable numbers as well.
The problem with SC2's armor system is that it lacks scaleability. Outside of well designed simple tactical maps I would not recommend using it as any form of scaling (such as heroes with levels) will result in major balance issues.
WC3 styled armor can be used to differentiate different kinds of attacks to make them weaker or stronger against certain units. In WC3 a unit with a lot of armor would be hard to kill with weapon damage however abilities would be more effective as they ignored armor. On the other hand a unit with low armor but a lot of health would require a lot of hits from abilities but would fall fairly quickly to normal attacks. Unless you plan to take advantage of such mechanics you might want to consider ignoring armor completely and instead use inflating health (how Heroes of the Storm does it) to increase toughness.
The assets are not released. They are "Available for testing" but not released, yet.
Hope this finally gets people to move from WC3. So much modding talent is still trapped with a decade old game it is depressing.