Full Auto Cast for All Unit Spells

[tulee]

I noticed that in Reforged, when you have a meat wagon with corpses, if you use raise dead on a necromancer, it will automatically consume one of the corpses in the wagon and allow the necromancer to raise a corpse instantly without needing to manually drop it from the wagon.

This change is really friendly to new players, and I am hoping the Reforged team can take this direction further by making all unit spells able to have an auto cast ability. I know it is harder for ones without a target (such as dispel spells), but it would make the game so much more accessible to new players if they could just focus on their heroes without managing unit spells.

Right now for players who are just being introduced to Wc3, the only spell-caster units worth getting for them are ones with auto-castable abilities (like Priests' heal spell).

 

[deepstrasz]

I noticed that in Reforged, when you have a meat wagon with corpses, if you use raise dead on a necromancer, it will automatically consume one of the corpses in the wagon and allow the necromancer to raise a corpse instantly without needing to manually drop it from the wagon.

Wasn't it always so? That's how I remember it anyway.

 

[FreeReign121]

I just wish they made all spells have the capability to be made into autocast spells in the world editor.

 

[MaoLi]

I noticed that in Reforged, when you have a meat wagon with corpses, if you use raise dead on a necromancer, it will automatically consume one of the corpses in the wagon and allow the necromancer to raise a corpse instantly without needing to manually drop it from the wagon.

This change is really friendly to new players, and I am hoping the Reforged team can take this direction further by making all unit spells able to have an auto cast ability. I know it is harder for ones without a target (such as dispel spells), but it would make the game so much more accessible to new players if they could just focus on their heroes without managing unit spells.

Right now for players who are just being introduced to Wc3, the only spell-caster units worth getting for them are ones with auto-castable abilities (like Priests' heal spell).

I agree with deepstrasz, it has been that way with the necromancer-wagon for a long time.

I think that it's not super easy to make ALL abilities autocastable. other than assigning the dedicated icon (and glittering particle decoration) and have it auto-cast repeatedly, almost every autocast ability I can think of necessarily requires some logical thinking (a minuscule AI) in order for it to be cast on the correct targets and at the right time and circumstances.
You know how autocasting necromancers sometimes tend to raise skeletons unnecessarily, for example when they're near your graveyard even though there's no enemy around?
It could prove quite annoying if your crypt fiends happened to waste one of their web on a bird critter flying by, or if your priests emptied their mana casting inner fire on your workers as they sit in your base.
You would need to create some user interface to arrange for these automatic behaviors before you could allow the generic user to turn any spell autocast. (As is the case with the meat wagon, sometimes these behaviors do not just involve the caster, but you may need to adjust behaviour of other nearby units as well. You need to mess with the basic "AI" that determines how units behave. It's a deep-core game mechanic you're asking to be made moddable with a UI-based tool like the WE.
I have no programming background but it doesn't really sound easy to cram all of this into a button or a datafield in the world editor.

 

[deepstrasz]

or if your priests emptied their mana casting inner fire on your workers as they sit in your base.

They still cast Heal on Disease Cloud units though even if their HP is not even at least the max value of the Heal spell

 

[MaoLi]

They still cast Heal on Disease Cloud units though even if their HP is not even at least the max value of the Heal spell

Yeah...
It would be great if they started by fixing stuff like that, which has been hanging for nearly 20 years, before making a very complex adaptation that allowed for autocastability of anything.
Better even it would be if the code was public to begin with and community coders could propose a fix for existing issues as well as new AI code for newly invented custom spells to be autocast, but who am I kidding.

 

[deepstrasz]

It would be great if they started by fixing stuff like that, which has been hanging for nearly 20 years, before making a very complex adaptation that allowed for autocastability of anything.

Well, let's say it'd be included in the balance and microing, melee skills, however since TfT Undead got the Obsidian Statue's Essence of Blight which does not suffer such mana loss due to Disease Cloud not affecting undead and no similar spell to work on undead existing. However, Essence of Blight does trigger when undead units are damage even 1 HP under their max life as Heal.

 

[MaoLi]

Well, let's say it'd be included in the balance and microing, melee skills,

Yes, let's say that.

 

[Daffa]

This is a pickle actually. Say, a reverse Flamestrike is wasted targeting enemies instead of healing allies. Reversed spells can cause lots of unexpected mess on some spells, at least from how the existing AI uses them from my experience.