It's so cool FML is still going. I started watching YouTube videos on Back2Warcraft and, man, I really miss this game. So, out of curiosity (and not promising anything!), I have some questions:
How do you play online? Read something about Reforged screwing everything up but not sure what info is currently accurate.
Is there still an active ladder or custom game scene for FFA? (Or even 4v4 RT to practice macro openings/fights?)
If there is still an active FFA scene outside of the leagues/tourneys, what are games usually like? I've got an itch to play but not if it's 2.5+ hours per game. (Especially if those games consist of camping bases, building on islands, and hearing "omg lost all" every time a hero dies.)
The first part is one other people have touched on: Every other race has a huge incentive to kill Orcs early. Although HU players can potentially fight Orc players straight-up in the late game, it's very, very micro intensive to pull off whereas timely rushes are not. NE is so susceptible to bats. UD practically auto-loses the late game to the extent that it feels incredibly redundant to mention it again.
The second is many orc build orders are really limited at mitigating rushes. From what I've been able to watch periodically since I stopped playing, most orc players tend to not prioritize what's most helpful against rushes, like boots on a BM, getting 1 walker out early for spirit-link, and especially fortified towers. The first two buttons that need to get pushed the second after T3 completes should be the hotkey for one's war-mill and D for reinforced defenses - every game. That was one of my rules and I didn't even play when there was more than 2 players that would regularly rush orcs in a given season.
They could've both had high winning %. I imagine I remember Seksi and Renaud specifically because Seksi had the highest winning percentage of anyone at the time and Renaud was one of the guys I played A LOT back in the day. Renaud was probably the single most improved player from '07-'08. It was cool to see he had stuck with the game type and just kept getting better.
When you play as aggressive and with as good of micro as htrt and have levels 8/8/7 before anyone else than yeah. If there was an Orc player of your skill level then the only 1-up you'd have is mass tp and a more cost efficient MU against elf.
IMO, FFA is too complicated to generalize about racial superiority in match-ups except when it's glaringly obvious, like UD late game vs Orc late game and Orc T2/early T3 vs Hu/UD T2/early T3. If I remember the two games I played with htrt right, they're a great example of what I'm talking about. Both games were split 1v1s on Monsoon where we both easily beat our respective opponents. The first game, he won his faster and initiated the final 1v1 forcing me to TP back to my main. After that he never let me get near a shop to buy heal scrolls and quickly beat me. The second game was another split 1v1 where I won mine more cleanly, went 100 first, and forced him to fight me in a position where he similarly had no heal scrolls and couldn't buy from his goblin merchant. In other words, barring extreme examples, it's more about the events of a game and the players themselves than the races involved.
When the bot was new(ish), I almost won 75% of my bot games with NE after not having played for years. I think I was around 70-35 when I stopped while being ~25-18 with Orc and ~45-17 with NE. Back then Seksi was like 70-10 with doing mostly greedy DR/archer openings and Renaud was ~60-12 with generally playing fast low upkeep with griff/tank. Most FML players should win more often than not just by being able to understand what can and should be done when left alone early on. The problem we generally seemed to have (and probably still have) was managing any kind of chaos that was different from what regularly happened in a 4-man FFA. I was a huge example of this.
I switched to NE because I had no answer for mid-game pressure when playing Orc like I always had in ladder FFA and FML. (IMO to play Orc in bot games and win as often as the other races, Orc players need lots of solo experience playing windwalk BM and using raiders/spirit walkers for rushing/rushes. All my solo experience as Orc was from before BM and spirit-link were discovered. I won my solo games with speed scrolling into bases and chainwaving workers and/or tower rushing. Funny fact: there's still an "advanced" strategy section for Orc on BNet with pics of me attempting a tower rush in the finals of one of the BNet solo tourneys: http://classic.battle.net/war3/orc/advanced.shtml). With NE, I actually had experience with doing what NE needs to do for winning in the mid-game, like playing bears, doing T2 archer/dott/merc pushes, and doing cheeky things with staff of tele/preservation on DH/PB.
tl;dr: I think most FML players can win 75% of their bot games provided they don't try to do it with Orc and they learn an early/mid-game strat for the games that require it.
If I still had the game, I'd do a time table to show the difference because I can't exactly remember how long it takes for wyv tech and grunt builds to expand. Even with 780-980 gold spent on rax and grunts, a grunt build only needs to expand 80-100 seconds faster than a wyv build to cover that cost. I don't remember the exact timings but I think wyv tech expos came up 1-3 minutes slower on maps with easy natural camps, (Silverpine, Twilight, etc.) about 4-5 minutes slower on maps with harder naturals (Market Square, Murgul Oasis, etc.).
In a bigger game, I'd be more reluctant to wyv tech as orc. If I spawn near a human and I wyv tech, I'm a level 3 AM and defend footmen rush away from dying or being crippled (as long as they also cancel my expo once during the early game). I think what you've really highlighted is for games with more early skirmishes and less hoarded gold overall, a stacked BM is Orc's biggest advantage and best way to win consistently. Grunts allow a faster expo, they make it more possible for preventing other players from cancelling that expo, and this earlier boost in income makes it easier to purchase boots and more circlets to help carry us toward and even during parts of the late game.
I love this post because I had a similar experience when I did the opposite as you and began learning NE for FFA as a predominantly orc player. (I wanted to be able to play NE as an alternative for FML games against 2+ players who would likely rush me out as orc, like htrt and Maga, as well hopefully control and win games more quickly against players who preferred to hoard as much as possible - I didn't have time for 2+ hour games). Like you, I had some funny shifts in perspective given the different strengths and limitations. It was funny to go from fearing DK/lich/fiend rushes as orc to laughing them off once I got a level 3 DH with 1-2 circlets and boots.
I'm surprised you did as well as you did with wyv tech because my experiences were always the opposite. When I played orc in FFA, I felt like as soon as the game started there was a fuse that was lit and when it ran out, I would be teamed for being a reputable orc player during the part of the game where orc becomes one of the strongest races. For me the early game was about maximizing efficiency in creeping and expanding to secure every possible advantage to better combat the impending teaming. Wyv tech was never effective for me in accomplishing this. When I did try getting into FFA again once the FML bot went up, I actually gave up on orc for big games with lots of players and very few mines. I felt orc was limited without a bank for countering chippo with bats. I'm surprised you won more as orc than your main races when someone who mostly played orc like myself had the opposite experience during the 1.5-2 weeks I played bot games for.
-Hippogryphs are often terrible units. They literally do next to nothing in so many cases and are probably the single most overproduced unit in FFA.
When I played, this was so true. NE does need them against mass gargs, NE air, and mass wyvs (wyvs crush dotts without hippos to tank). I think because they're so commonly needed, they're also typically built even when fighting armies that dotts are much better against, like gryph/tank and fiend/wyrm.
Hi, guys. This thread reminds me of the guide I wanted to write but never did before I stopped playing. Here are a few things I can remember I would have wanted to say that may have been/still be unpopular:
-Most of the time for orc players, taurens are unnecessary unless there's another orc in the game. Especially on non-shredder maps, the resources spent on totems, melee weapon upgrades, and pulverize are better spent elsewhere.
-Orc players should never ever, ever, ever ever wyv tech for the early game. Play a custom game with a wyv tech build and creep route and then play a game with a grunt or HH build and creep route. Note the huge difference in gold, caster tech speed, and hero levels and never wyv tech again!
-More often than not, DR first for NE and Orc isn't worth it. It's not because she isn't strong, particularly in a large 1v1 fight, but because she's largely a defensive hero (I.E. preventing pressure more so than applying pressure). She does this so well in large 1v1 fights that these strengths can warrant teaming. The most common teaming situation is being 2v1'd in a 3way. Even with all her strengths, she offers nothing for busting through globs of towers. Winning a fight, quickly destroying much/all of someone's main, and forcing them to rebuild rather than assist the other player can make a 2v1 into a much more manageable pair of alternating 1v1's. The DR may make winning a fight and forcing someone to retreat into their main easier but then what? Heroes like the DH, FS, and, to a lesser extent, blade master, can help crack bases quickly with their ultimates and help deal damage that's harder to recover from quickly where the DR cannot. Winning 1v1 fights while being teamed doesn't help players win as much as it does to win slightly harder 1v1 fights and quickly wreck bases after.
-"Death star" mains (tightly packed towers that surround one's main and cover most/all of their base) are almost important as creeping, expanding, using hotkeys, breathing, etc. (The exception is UD because their towers are so weak. A NE "death star" is mass moon wells.) As a rule, if players have some gold in the bank and a base that prevents them from easily being eliminated, they still have a decent chance to win.
-Don't "wing it" on creeping and expanding. My eventual philosophy as an FFA player was if I were to breakdown FFA into its components, like creeping/expanding, micro/macro in fighting, and "manipulation"/communication/teaming, and rate what I was best at and what I was weakest at, creeping/expanding would need to be my #1 strength. I learned this by perpetually losing to Nooblex in ladder games because I ran out of gold for bats before he ran out of gold for chippo. When I watched the replays, it was always the same lesson for me: he put up his 2nd and 3rd expos faster than I did because his creep patterns were built around securing gold mines quickly rather than chasing after camps with good item drops, such as sobi masks and energy pendants, like I tended to pursue at that time.
-Against experienced players overall, "manipulation" is one of the least important skills. I was watching some of Mage's old FML shoutcasts and in one of the games with htrt, soso, and a rich UD they were both attempting to team, htrt basically admitted he still had gold, called out soso for still having gold, and then he preemptively called out for soso holding back on making units like other players would in that situation. He then did exactly what he preemptively accused soso of doing and committed very few units to the teaming. This is, in my opinion, highlights exactly why some players love "manip" and why it only works well when it comes in a less expected way. In other words, this worked because htrt, if I recall correctly, was more of a fighter than a talker. Communication is important, particularly when one player is much stronger than the rest, but "manipulation" (communication with big lies) is like a trick play or onside kick in football. To win as much as possible, people would ideally be able to lie and counter lies, but it's not a high percentage move nor how players should try to win most games most of the time.
-Plan where buildings are going to go from the start. Certain buildings are better at blocking out tanks from a mass TP on a player's main and help a hall stay alive longer to ensure players can TP home. For orc, the main should eventually be completely surrounded in towers, borrows, and nothing else. For NE, the main should eventually be completely surrounded in moon wells, chim roosts, and/or a hunter's hall. For UD, I think zigs only excel at this and for HU, towers and farms. It can be a headache but it's not as bad as losing a won game from not killing a critter and having your main fall before the TP finishes.
I'm not sure people will find some of this disagreeable/unpopular when theory-crafting and whatnot, but if the FML shoutcasts I watched are any indication, a lot of this is still unpopular when it comes to putting it into practice.
Lol I actually tried last summer shortly after the bot went up and it was pretty ugly. It would've taken a couple months to really start getting back into it. I wouldn't get to practice the style of Orc required in FML games in the mid-game intensive bot games. It was also very discouraging to see that 2-2.5 hour long 4 person FFAs were now the shortest games in tournament play.
I ended up to switching to NE because they were more up my alley for bot games and I hoped to take advantage of the more conservative play of the current FFA players with the NE's awesome tower busting. Then players like Seksi and Maga microed in circles around me a few times and whatever it was that motivated me to watch replays and play FFAs for 25+ hours a week as a teenager wasn't there anymore. Instead of rededicating myself in the face of a clear example that I wasn't playing as well as I could, I opted to quit again.
(On a side note, other than getting T2 rifle/caster rushed as Orc in FFA, coming back and playing against Maga as NE without a KoTG is about the most helpless I've ever felt as an FFA player in a situation that didn't involve teaming or a suicider.)
Anyway, I've come to understand that video games offer a great deal of opportunity for heavily introverted people like myself to sink their teeth into certain expertise and detail oriented skills (and at a fast pace at that), but I didn't really get to take advantage of those skills in a meaningful way until I stopped playing video games. So I'm afraid I won't be coming back, but I'm happy to check in and see what's been happening in FFA. Around the time I quit the first time, it was cool seeing Renaud transform from a more middling FFAer to a real wildcard with creative and aggressive strategies, and when I tried making a comeback, it was even cooler to see he had become both skilled and rounded as a player.
Oh, and my account during my attempted comeback was Mostly.Harmless, Mostly_Harmless, or some other very similar variant of those two.
Plush was amazing, but never knew how to handle manip. Fly is the reason I played FFA when I saw his replays when him and pencil were rank 1 and 2 at like level 52 or something.
grandbulp/tchou-tchou/other names he had, he was good but definitely not top 10...
Ha, I agree with your criticism. From what I remember about FFA, my approach was more mathematical than anything. Depending on the race and player, I was mostly about getting a feel for how much money would be needed to win a 1v1 against most players or finish off someone in a three way to make it a 1v1. When facing a player such as yourself, I hoped for and did my best to help ensure the more typical split 1v1s during that time would happen and didn't want anything to do with a three-way requiring greater use of chat and playing equalizer. I played more like a mash-up of a fencer and an economist and three-ways were much more chaotic by comparison, like being at the final table in poker. If there were a replay to show all of it, this would be most evident in the S4 finals where I played rather clueless once Fly quickly eliminated Target, and managed to help get myself teamed 'til near-death despite perhaps being the most disadvantaged player at that point in the game.
Nooblex gave me an incredible amount of trouble. Other than games against Lost where he quickly reached 6-5-5, NE vs Orc was about money more than anything else for me and more so than any other match-up. Nooblex was especially difficult because he would sacrifice creeping speed in favor of expoing more quickly and he always had 5-10k more at a minimum than I would presume as a result. Once I switched to a more efficient style of Orc (going BM with mirror image over FS or TC first, more heavily emphasizing speed of expanding, and opting to skip teching taurens entirely when there were no other Orcs in the game), Nooblex had stopped playing. I never got to try to out economy the economic master, but it did help me avoid the more timing intensive fights against Lost if only by being able to fast 100 him out of ladder games.
I probably lost to Bulp on ladder more than anyone else though. In games, he chatted like someone beneath his skill level and while this helped him be one of the best pure ladder players in FFA when I was playing, it didn't translate all that well to non-ladder FFAs. Like me, he was more used to winning and winning rather easily in a specific way and as a result, he didn't fully adapt to tournament play.
-WCReplays doing an article on Rice and putting up Nooblex's guide. Very cool exposure for an under-appreciated game type. It's what got me into competitive FFA.
-Qualifying for FML season 3. Memorable for me because I barely even made it in. Back then we had two rounds of qualifiers and after discing game one and missing game two, I was out until winning a replacement FFA for an early drop-out.
-Going TC/PB/PL in season 4 semis against Nline, Deaddontbite, and Camp&Spank. I decide to try a new hero combo and attempt to rambo my way to the finals. It worked and it's probably my favorite FFA game I've played.
-Fly taking up UD and playing anonymously for a few weeks.
-Smerbeck almost beating Target in an FML game in season 2 or 3. It came down to Smerbeck with I think 100 pop of wyrms/bat riders (guy got himself a peon) and 5k vs Target's last chippo army. But a few chim splits later and this upset was over.
Ideally you would look like the weakest, look weaker than you really are, but also look harder or about equally difficult to take out or cripple than the middle guy. It's also better if you can accomplish this with your play rather than chat because there aren't many ffa players, we've all seen each others' tricks, and it takes the automatic presumption that you're manipulating out of it.
Basic goal is making a 3-way into a 1v1 against someone weaker than you. If you're strongest, you kill the easiest to kill (which would be an undead). If you're in the middle, you team the strongest until he's out or much weaker than you. If you're the weakest, you play equalizer until you aren't the weakest and then refer to the above. Beyond that it's a mess of skill, balance, perception, and deception that'll only get sorted out with experience.
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I started watching YouTube videos on Back2Warcraft and, man, I really miss this game. So, out of curiosity (and not promising anything!), I have some questions: