Rethinking design failures: Warfronts, garrisons and Warcraft 3

[loras]

So the other day i was doing one of those invasion events for a garrison, and beyond being buggy (orcs stuck on walls, barely targettable) it was also lame.
Then i started thinking about how it could be better, and i quickly realised i was basically thinking of a more reactive version of warfronts. But warfronts also sucked.
So then i thought: "They all borrow from things from Warcraft 3, like DotA, which didn't suck. So what made those not suck?".

And that's where we are at present, as at thispoint i'm pretty much thinking aloud about how to improve and/or combine invasions and wafronts, perhaps by borrowing from WC3, and i invite you to join me in this consideration.

First i'm going to list some positive things about each of them that i hope can possibly used in this improvement:
- WC3 had basebuilding, allowing meaningful and genuine interactive choices; Building placement altered not only aesthetically but also functionally. In warfronts this was very iffy and lacking, in part due to the multiplayer aspect. When thinking of invasions in conjunction with WC3 the first thing that comes to mind is the tower defense mission from WC3, when the blood elves flee through the portal, that could have been combined with basebuilding to add a fun and interesting aspect to base planning, rather than to frontload everything to default AI behaviour making matters quite uninteresting.
- Garrisons have customisation, not a lot, but there are options. Both warfronts and WC3 lack this part, though it can be argued that WoW itself is the product of introducing customisable heroes to Warcraft 3.
1. Going from there customisation for our new feature could involve troop choices, which could easily be taken from or inspired by the original warcraft 3, and which may even reinforce some racial or class identity as well as to allow players to implement new ones. Naturally they would have to act the part as well, though in light of the difficulties duch many combinations could pose it might be better to allow players to "program" the behaviour of troops directly (one could think of the way Dragon Age allows this) to allow them to try to make things work themselves while also enabling workarounds for true faults). The troops could easily use only existing player and item model, avoiding the need for excessive amounts of new artwork (or new stuff to maintain).
2. The other aspect of customisation lies in the buildings and objects of course. In WC3 you had no customisation here either; every building existed in one version, warfronts had even less options and the garrison was also extremely disappointing in this sense, allowing barely anything beyond the most primitive of choices, but the good thing it did is was to make those choices meaningful by tieing function and form together semi logically, and not just be a reskin of another. However even that lacked basic stuff like doodads almost entirely, allowing only some lame trophy stands. By contrast warcraft 3's map editor allowed full control of effectively everythinh, and it spawned many (mini)game modes as a result.
3. Third is the aspect of sound (hail Murmur!), which only garrisons allowed to customise. This was pretty awesome, but it too needed more comprehensive options; more tracks first of all, but also more reactive stuff like i.e.a night track, a combat track and so forth; all of the same gets boring after a while.
- The actual fighting itself in invasions was utterly lame, in warfronts it was also none too good, but there are some aspects worth mentioning, namely the events, the bosses and minibosses, and the option to charge into battle alongside a squad of help under your control (sort of). While i can't say they worked well they were still notable enough to be memorable. WC3 is on a different level here of course, but the extent of the relevance thereof is limited due to WoW's scope; very few play this game to issue detailed commands to an engire squad at once. Here i would like to once again propose Dragon age as an example: Allowing players to define their followers' behaviour before combat allows them to anticipate and understand their interaction, and thus still add a new layer to combat beyond troops being simple guardians or predefined npcs.
- Besieging, invasions were the worst offender here as they just randomly pop up everywhere willynilly, frankly ruining immersion. Warfronts were at least somewhat interesting on this front, but suffered greatly from, among other things, the inability of (player)characters to directly damage building, making it all somewhat tedious and boring. Now WC3 excells here, as enemies are forced to contend with their environment and especialy the buildings therein. I think it is clear our new creation needs way more comprehensive and interactive besieging and besiegable objects, tools and vehicles.

Anyway that's all i've got for now, i may expand this later

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The lack of garrison customization isn't a problem specific to the garrison. WoD barely had any content whatsoever. All of the resources went towards the raids.

[McNeil]

Garrisons and warfronts were both very early designs that weren't really improved upon when released. They ended up being a one time thing for a single expansion like soon with Torghast which is a shame, they all have potential to grow into something much more. At least Dragonflight doesn't have a big feature like this (which I consider a con) so I guess its less to be dissapointed about.

[Venziir]

The biggest issue with Garrisons were that WoD had no other content, so what was intended as a side-feature, became the be-all end all.

As for Warfronts, I really liked the concept and the execution - though I didn't care about the HC version or the Darkshore one. I really did enjoy Arathi though.

[Flurryfang]

I like the idea of mixing warfronts and garrisons together. If they made a game mode around that, where you could take a garrison and fight against another, with a large amount of customization in how to equip your troops and garrison, it could be a new form of RBG.

I really hope, that they give the housing/garrison element another try and implements it in a way, that does not make an entire expansion rely on the feature. I think the garrison primarily failed because it had to be at the center of WoD and therefore had to have a TON of features in it, that it did not need.

Having something like Garrisons and Warfronts stand on their own, seperated from the clockwork of the primary gameplay, lets it really just be what it is - a fun housing simulator.

[Varanus]

I maintain my opinion that the garrisons themselves were done well. The issue was that there wasnt anything to do outside of them, and that everything was tied to them. They should have been just fun side content. Optional. Cosmetic, with a few perks. They were a very good beta version of what player housing could have been.
Its kind of a shame that Blizz abandoned the idea. Seemingly because they didnt understand that it wasnt the garrisons that were the issue with WoD, it was how they used them.

[Zendhal The Black]

warfronts would make an awesome battleground

[loras]

So what i'm getting from this is that it should be solidly implemented yet limited in scope.

Practically i imagine that re-using assets would be of high importance for that; no new buildings (or maybe a small resolution update) and using existing player models for troops (added benefit might be that this would allow us to customise their uniforms using the existing transmog function), and likely to limit most troops to player classes and/or vehicles. Furthermore they could use the "wild AI" they developed for Island Expeditions during BfA to create somewhat interesting troop behaviour. It should be doable to allow us to as players to toy with the behavioural parameters (explained in-game as "tactical instructions" or command or something).

So now that we have an army, now we need a game and proper functions and interactions for the buildings, i think looking at WC3/DotA/Tower defense would be a good idea here.

Tower defense might be a good "PvE" variety: A threat has arisen and spawns endless hordes of minions and bosses, but luckily you have a small base prepared beforehand, as well as yourself.

Iimagine it as a turn-based sort of game mode (allowing one to pause it whenever there is no fighting), with an action/gather phase and a build phase.
So it starts out with a threat being spotted, say a demon portal being opened. Your scouts report this, as well as the lay of the land. Sadly they are too powerful for a pre-emptive strike to be launched.

So you send for reinforcements and brace for impact by reinforcing your defenses.
You get an RTS-like overview map of the battlefield (courtesy of your scouts' vivid tale-telling skills) and a stock of the resources and units you have at your disposal, as well as a selection of the buildings you have the knowledge to make (think plants vs. zombies; there are many buildings but you can only use a few in any given game). Think of stuff like walls, moats, traps, towers (hey!) of various kinds, but also of stuff like a stable (increases passive income from reinforcements), toolsmith (improves gatherers), blacksmith (improves fighters), engineers and enchanters (allows for modification of troop capabilities outside of active tower defense, i imagine one enchantmeny and one engineering gizmo to be allowed at a time to modify all troops), barracks and the like to increase the rate of troops or gatherers spawning and so on.

So you order some of that stuff built.

And then you start thinking of tactics for the coming battle; what will your workers focus on, who will protect them while they work? Perhaps if all their activities are close to one another, or you're somehow highly mobile, then you'll want to protect them yourself (perhaps with a suitable choice of npcs to back you up).
Or perhaps you want them to just focus on building, protecting and fighting, and you'll do the gathering.
Or you're such a good planner that you are confident that all that can be managed by npcs while you sit back and relax, only to react when things do not go according to plan.

Then the battle phase happens (and you cannot command anymore) and the invaders flood towards your troops and defenses and familiarity ensues. And then we evaluate the damages and see how things went and prepare for the next phase.

Now in regards to losing: If you lose your base gets ravaged and all npcs have a chance to be killed, and you, as always, miraculously get away. Practically i imagine that stuff like collectibles will be locked away safely enough to just not be affected, or to just get a banged up version of their looks if they're base-objects.
This will lower morale and impose a temporary (i think 6 hours or so, not refreshing upon acquiring a new stack) penalty on your attempts at tower defense, like i.e. slower troop generation, penalising you in a wat that's not prohibitiveyet discourages you from trying the more challenging (and rewarding) versions too often in a row. Naturally there will be a non-rewarding training mode that has no drawbacks in case you really just want to play tower defense.
Additionally it will take a toll on your base, making it look more, well, ravaged every time you lose, but allowing you to spend in-game resources to get it and the damaged base-pbjects repaired. Also your npc buddies die and will need fo be replaced, though in lieu of HR department-simulator i think it would suffice to just reroll a new random npc character for any dead position. Could keep track of how many tower defenses your npcs survived for shits and giggles, maybe allow you to customise them a bit once they survive ~10 waves on any nontraining difficulty?

Victory is of course when your troops push towards the portal and close it, serving as a sort of bossfight where you choreograph your npc support and perhaps won't even need to do much fighting if all went well before.
To prevent resource-overfarming the spawned waves before the bossfight will get tougher too, but the boss itself should remain fairly fixed in difficulty because interesting mechanics tend not to mesh well with endless scaling.

Now i imagine this to be content for anything between 1 and 20 players, though there will be only one commander during any planning phase/battle phase pair. So if you don't like doing all this you can also get the rewards by just acting like just another goon in the army.


Might start thinking sbout a player versus player variety soon, but not now.

[Gaidax]

It is really simple.

People play WoW for core WoW experience - world, raids and dungeons.

All these secondary activities with Warfronts, Isles, Garrisons and Torghast are basically worse versions of what other games dedicated to that specific genre offer. It's simply not the WoW's core exprience that people play this game for.

Blizzard can always bribe people into doing these things and some may actually enjoy them, but ultimately I view it as a distraction that could be reinvested into making core WoW experience better.

[Accendor]

So the other day i was doing one of those invasion events for a garrison, and beyond being buggy (orcs stuck on walls, barely targettable) it was also lame.
Then i started thinking about how it could be better, and i quickly realised i was basically thinking of a more reactive version of warfronts. But warfronts also sucked.
So then i thought: "They all borrow from things from Warcraft 3, like DotA, which didn't suck. So what made those not suck?".

And that's where we are at present, as at thispoint i'm pretty much thinking aloud about how to improve and/or combine invasions and wafronts, perhaps by borrowing from WC3, and i invite you to join me in this consideration.

First i'm going to list some positive things about each of them that i hope can possibly used in this improvement:
- WC3 had basebuilding, allowing meaningful and genuine interactive choices; Building placement altered not only aesthetically but also functionally. In warfronts this was very iffy and lacking, in part due to the multiplayer aspect. When thinking of invasions in conjunction with WC3 the first thing that comes to mind is the tower defense mission from WC3, when the blood elves flee through the portal, that could have been combined with basebuilding to add a fun and interesting aspect to base planning, rather than to frontload everything to default AI behaviour making matters quite uninteresting.
- Garrisons have customisation, not a lot, but there are options. Both warfronts and WC3 lack this part, though it can be argued that WoW itself is the product of introducing customisable heroes to Warcraft 3.
1. Going from there customisation for our new feature could involve troop choices, which could easily be taken from or inspired by the original warcraft 3, and which may even reinforce some racial or class identity as well as to allow players to implement new ones. Naturally they would have to act the part as well, though in light of the difficulties duch many combinations could pose it might be better to allow players to "program" the behaviour of troops directly (one could think of the way Dragon Age allows this) to allow them to try to make things work themselves while also enabling workarounds for true faults). The troops could easily use only existing player and item model, avoiding the need for excessive amounts of new artwork (or new stuff to maintain).
2. The other aspect of customisation lies in the buildings and objects of course. In WC3 you had no customisation here either; every building existed in one version, warfronts had even less options and the garrison was also extremely disappointing in this sense, allowing barely anything beyond the most primitive of choices, but the good thing it did is was to make those choices meaningful by tieing function and form together semi logically, and not just be a reskin of another. However even that lacked basic stuff like doodads almost entirely, allowing only some lame trophy stands. By contrast warcraft 3's map editor allowed full control of effectively everythinh, and it spawned many (mini)game modes as a result.
3. Third is the aspect of sound (hail Murmur!), which only garrisons allowed to customise. This was pretty awesome, but it too needed more comprehensive options; more tracks first of all, but also more reactive stuff like i.e.a night track, a combat track and so forth; all of the same gets boring after a while.
- The actual fighting itself in invasions was utterly lame, in warfronts it was also none too good, but there are some aspects worth mentioning, namely the events, the bosses and minibosses, and the option to charge into battle alongside a squad of help under your control (sort of). While i can't say they worked well they were still notable enough to be memorable. WC3 is on a different level here of course, but the extent of the relevance thereof is limited due to WoW's scope; very few play this game to issue detailed commands to an engire squad at once. Here i would like to once again propose Dragon age as an example: Allowing players to define their followers' behaviour before combat allows them to anticipate and understand their interaction, and thus still add a new layer to combat beyond troops being simple guardians or predefined npcs.
- Besieging, invasions were the worst offender here as they just randomly pop up everywhere willynilly, frankly ruining immersion. Warfronts were at least somewhat interesting on this front, but suffered greatly from, among other things, the inability of (player)characters to directly damage building, making it all somewhat tedious and boring. Now WC3 excells here, as enemies are forced to contend with their environment and especialy the buildings therein. I think it is clear our new creation needs way more comprehensive and interactive besieging and besiegable objects, tools and vehicles.

Anyway that's all i've got for now, i may expand this later

There were a lot of problems with warfronts, but IMO the 3 biggest ones were:

- Basically impossible to lose. If you feel like your contribution does not matter except maybe speeding the thing up a little bit, there is no fun in doing it. If there is absolutely no challenge whatsoever to overcome, if everything plays out the same, not matter what you do, where is the fun in that?
Why have all those different units and upgrade paths and external events when none of that matters in the first place? Wafronts probably should have had the same structure as raids from the beginning, with an easy version (that still had to be much harder than the ones we got), a "normal" version and a "hard version". I am not even starting with things like mythic difficulty, while that would have been cool, probably it would not have been necessary for this feature.

- Lack of QA at the beginning. Basically the first 2 months they were a broken mess. Falling through the floor, people getting randomly kicked, finished warfronts not closing, game breaking bugs that prevent participants from finishing the warfront, hart resets in between, mechanics not working as intended etc.
Warfronts were likely the most bugged feature for WoW that was ever released and people got a bad opinion about it because of that.

- No PVP version. I am not even a PVP player, not at all. But I mean come on. How was THIS feature not designed with a PVP version in mind?


Also the second warfront was more of a scenario than a warfront, so they had given up on that already anyway...

[Flurryfang]

SNIP

¨....Have you ever played Savage 2: Tortured Soul?

Its a multiplayer RTS, that has 1 commander and several other players on each team, where the commander plays a traditional base building game and the other players play a WoW like battleground game.

If you are looking for ideas to build on top of what you have, then it might be worth a look


On topic: I think the big danger in this system, is having too much focus on the NPCs, as that is the main problem with the Warfront/Invasions Blizzard have made. Against a player character, with the knowledge of AOE and the ability to kite, NPCs are very weak when it comes to delivering impact on objectives.

If a Garrison-Warfront-WC3 hybrid is to work, i think it will work based upon player action and NPC inaction. Having NPCs being the walls and defenses work quite well, especially if they can get some AOE defense, and letting players be all about doing the active/aggresive part, will avoid many of the problems with having NPCs run around like headless chickens.

At the same time, i think it will be too ambitious if the game mode should be playable by 1 to 20 people. It will stretch the design of the mode soo much, that it won't really work well for any format.
its like the same reason why Blizzard have locked Mythic to a specific group size. If you want to make something really engaging, you have to be able to know what the players come in with and how much you can expect from them.

[loras]

There were a lot of problems with warfronts, but IMO the 3 biggest ones were:

- Basically impossible to lose. If you feel like your contribution does not matter except maybe speeding the thing up a little bit, there is no fun in doing it. If there is absolutely no challenge whatsoever to overcome, if everything plays out the same, not matter what you do, where is the fun in that?
Why have all those different units and upgrade paths and external events when none of that matters in the first place? Wafronts probably should have had the same structure as raids from the beginning, with an easy version (that still had to be much harder than the ones we got), a "normal" version and a "hard version". I am not even starting with things like mythic difficulty, while that would have been cool, probably it would not have been necessary for this feature.

- Lack of QA at the beginning. Basically the first 2 months they were a broken mess. Falling through the floor, people getting randomly kicked, finished warfronts not closing, game breaking bugs that prevent participants from finishing the warfront, hart resets in between, mechanics not working as intended etc.
Warfronts were likely the most bugged feature for WoW that was ever released and people got a bad opinion about it because of that.

- No PVP version. I am not even a PVP player, not at all. But I mean come on. How was THIS feature not designed with a PVP version in mind?


Also the second warfront was more of a scenario than a warfront, so they had given up on that already anyway...

The bolded part is painfull accurate, heh.

I will return for more when energy, health and time allow me to give this idea another spin.

- - - Updated - - -

¨....Have you ever played Savage 2: Tortured Soul?

Its a multiplayer RTS, that has 1 commander and several other players on each team, where the commander plays a traditional base building game and the other players play a WoW like battleground game.

If you are looking for ideas to build on top of what you have, then it might be worth a look


On topic: I think the big danger in this system, is having too much focus on the NPCs, as that is the main problem with the Warfront/Invasions Blizzard have made. Against a player character, with the knowledge of AOE and the ability to kite, NPCs are very weak when it comes to delivering impact on objectives.

If a Garrison-Warfront-WC3 hybrid is to work, i think it will work based upon player action and NPC inaction. Having NPCs being the walls and defenses work quite well, especially if they can get some AOE defense, and letting players be all about doing the active/aggresive part, will avoid many of the problems with having NPCs run around like headless chickens.

At the same time, i think it will be too ambitious if the game mode should be playable by 1 to 20 people. It will stretch the design of the mode soo much, that it won't really work well for any format.
its like the same reason why Blizzard have locked Mythic to a specific group size. If you want to make something really engaging, you have to be able to know what the players come in with and how much you can expect from them.

I have not played that game, i may take a look if i find the means to. ^^

[Caiphon]

It is really simple.

People play WoW for core WoW experience - world, raids and dungeons.

All these secondary activities with Warfronts, Isles, Garrisons and Torghast are basically worse versions of what other games dedicated to that specific genre offer. It's simply not the WoW's core exprience that people play this game for.

Blizzard can always bribe people into doing these things and some may actually enjoy them, but ultimately I view it as a distraction that could be reinvested into making core WoW experience better.

Pretty much this. WoW's specialty has always been world immersion, dungeons, raids and (for the PvP oriented) BG/arenas. These are experiences that few other games can offer at this level. On the other hand these auxillary features are always a massive downgrade from what they've been 'inspired' by. I'd dare say pet battles are the most well-made of them all as that one actually plays like Pokemon, which can't be said about any of the others.

Since WoD WoW has been like a pizzeria that suddenly starts selling mediocre kebabs and terrible sushi instead of paying attention to their pizza. If I wanted sushi I'd go to a proper sushi-ya.

[Itori]

A decent experience with garrisons would have been an ever progressing thing along with raid content and expansions. It could have laid the groundwork for housing, or at least player areas by introducing a town building experience. Garrisons started off great giving you the ability to drop down structures and build you a small community to use as a base of operations for that expansion but it could have went beyond.

Drop in the ability to buy plots of land out in the world and make them instanced, have 3 stages to them (Small, Medium, Large) and it could have been a gold sink which blizzard loves to add. Develop your small community by giving you daily quests given by recruit-able citizens or heroes you meet out in the world and do introduction quests for to obtain. populate your town with them, build structures that affect crafting, gathering, and combat and station said heroes there for buffs.

As raid content progresses and eventually expansions drop they could add in designs that change up the look and feel of your community through aesthetics, decorations, and monuments. Decorate your town with things such as different themed buildings such as Shadowlands mobs roaming around, have a gothic architecture similar to the areas of the Maw. Dragonflight drops add in aesthetics that give it a more dragon theme and so on.

In terms of mission tables, don't just make it bland like WoD where you could sit in your house and collect raid materials and gear and just log in like some dumbed down mobile game. Have it where instead of progression you can send out followers to gather cosmetic gear from specific raids/dungeons. Seeing as we're heroes of our faction, add in the ability to raise armies and send them off to have training battles with other players armies in exchange for tokens and rewards for aesthetics.

More details can be introduced but honestly its an idea to give the player something to do other than logging in and grinding for gear.

[Unlimited Power]

I still reckon that warfronts could potentially work as PvEvP BGs if they were adjusted somewhat.

The primary issue with it is that there's really no way for players to make permanent headway towards a victory with the way it currently works.

Blizzard would have to implement a resource system similar to AV to ensure a determined end to the match rather than a continuous back and forth of stealing bases with no clear winner.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I think garrisons were simply disapointing to everyone that knew about the feature before release. It neither captured the WC3 feeling of running an army, not let it people making a place that they could call their own (it was incredibly restricted and shallow like most customization things done by Blizzard) and it had none of the aspects people expect of housing. At the end it was another base you had minimal controll over and for many the main feature was the daily collecting of loot from the mission table, while the world was so pathetic and barebones that no one even wanted to go out and do anything.

Warfronts had similar issues, despite having already a way reduced scope. I personally didn't mind them as a little side thing to get some transmog, but others once again fell for the promise of RTS bullshit. Their goal of bringing some of the constant HvA conflict to the PvE players was also quite misguided imho. For the players that care about the conflict because of the story, it's utterly meaningless setdressing, since you know next round/week the tables have turned. So the narrative appeal is rather slim. For people wanting to bash heads with red text above it PvP already has them covered.

In general I think it's pointless to try and chase the glory of an RTS with the framework of an MMORPG. At most they could do something like a DotA type PvP mode, but even that will be wrought with issues, since the simple UI and gameplay as well as the clear visuals were central to making it work. Game design-wise stuff like the 3rd person MOBALD Smite back in the day already had issues with it. Not everything gets better by being put into a fully accessible 3d space, which is not exactly a new lesson in the industry. Anyway, going for the even further removed core of an RTS is just bound to flounder, especially with PvP being a side-show activity for a major part of the playerbase and WoW having next to no elements in common with the genre (maybe if WoW was a sandbox MMO).

- - - Updated - - -

- No PVP version. I am not even a PVP player, not at all. But I mean come on. How was THIS feature not designed with a PVP version in mind?

Because that was precisely the point of it. It was supposed to be a PvE thing, because PvP (Battlegrounds) already exists. The whole point was to change over the zone once a week and give some PvE access to the faction war story. To make it work for everyone this required being instanced and winning being pretty much guaranteed.

[Biggles Worth]

The fact that there was no PvP Warfront option just blows my mind.

[MoanaLisa]

Garrisons were a preliminary take on a mini-city-building game mixed with base building. Those are essentially endless and you can mess around in Cities and SimCity for practically forever. It's not well remembered these days but garrisons started off being relatively popular. That more or less ended when people realized that your garrison could be 'finished' in less than a few weeks and after that it was just moving deck chairs around. There was no real improvement to be had once it was done. That's on Blizzard. Customization is at the heart of the problem but structurally there should have been a never-ending list of things that could be done to 'improve' your garrison that involved you going out in the world and collecting resources, etc.

[Kokolums]

these are failures because WoW was built on simple social play. they killed social play and replaced it with systems after systems after systems which have proven not to boost the playerbase. they refuse to see the elephant in the room for some reason.

[WilliamWalrus]

Ashran/Wintergrasp/Warfronts/Garrisons are all things that should really be mixed together and take the best out of each.

They basically took one idea and did it 4 times, each time not fully baked, it's pretty incredible.