Don't care if it has been said ...

Just reading what Laeus posted (no promises, got it) restored my will to keep playing and hoping the counter might one day be here. Thank you. It seems RE really is listening. This is a good sign.

YES! MORE SOUNDS THAT A TRACKER IS COMING!!! LOVE!!! =D
 
Sooooo annoying to have to manually track items.. I only really track for tournament games now, I just wing it for league nowadays.

Basically all I've seen here is people whining and crying that others "cheat" because they are willing to put forth the effort to keep track of something in-game while the whiners aren't.
 
LOLOLOLOLOL

ceroxide, you must have an awesome memory if you can keep that in mind when you have 30+ active games and your opponent has just made his move after a 1 day delay.

Sadly, some of us are very forgetful in our older years and have other things to keep in mind in our daily lives other than whether our opponent in HA used one scroll or two.

@ AZRIEL. 
I've been off the Forums lately, sorry for that.
I always have 40+ games going every time without fail, I haven't written down, or app tracked a thing for months.(never app tracked ever) I get more satisfaction knowing I beat & continuously beat opponents who actually MAY be tracking themselves. Which like I said is an advantage if one is & the other isn't.
I basically win A LOT due to my intelligence, strategizing & the ability to stick to my strict formula for positioning & actions.
I'm a huge fan of Active players, who play frequently & I avoid re-playing time wasters, mostly due to keeping my lead in the GC leaderboards.
As for memory in 40+ games. I only need to remember Scrolls & Runes. Those items I can do from memory of my positioning & unit structure. Basically it takes a scroll to bring some buffed dude down, so it's not hard to remember where your upgraded dudes went. Unless someone is dumb enough to constantly park their buffed dudes near the enemies deploy area. Rez potions don't factor if you always plan to Stomp. Like I said I play to my strict formula, which works for me. I don't need to write stuff down anymore, nor do I want to.

There is lots of stuff to track when your new to the game. When you are experienced, only the deal-breakers count. My maths is good & my worst case scenarios are looked at before I submit. I always have a fail safe should I take a serious risk.

Yes, clearly it is only the casual new players who are advocating for including an item log.
 
Everything can become a deal breaker in close games. It could even come down to your opponent having that last piece of armor making their archer take 4 hits to KO from an impaler rather than 3. So in some situations, you might decide to trade the impaler before they get a chance to equip, for example.
 
Steam players will have a significant advantage in terms of third party tracking over iOS players, since a Steam player can switch in and out of HA in a much more convenient fashion on the PC, allowing them to record the game state more easily. 
 
I can somewhat understand the "do you feel lucky" mentality, but I don't think that is a strong argument against, say, including the item log as an option that is off by default. Anyway, I don't think there's much more to be said on my part, Robot has already mentioned they are reviewing it, so it all depends on what they decide.

If the concern is that it might turn off casual players or whatever, why not just add it as an option that's off by default?

That's a great point Trip, one that I hadn't considered before. I'm sure at high level play you've had to deal with tracking items a lot more than I have :)
 
And for the record, my math is good as well ;)

I think adding in a tracking option would make the game a little too formulaic. In fact, and I am prepared to get shot down by this, I would personally like the option for slightly customisable inventories once you've played a few games, within reasonable limits of course, just as a way to make things a little less predictable.

 
It's an interesting suggestion, but I think in practice it would be next to impossible to avoid one of two outcomes. Either A) one ideal configuration is discovered, and nobody can find a good reason to use anything else, or B) the rock/paper/scissors aspect of the game becomes even stronger, with certain configurations dominant against some teams, while failing miserably against others. I don't consider either of these two outcomes to be favorable.
 
As far as the "Dirty Harry" style intrigue goes, keep in mind that ignorance is, and always will be, completely voluntary. All of the information that a tracker would provide is freely available as it is. The reason that the standoff in Dirty Harry was exciting was because the audience (and the villain) probably didn't have the time or foresight to actually count the shots. In a game like this, good players have both. And they often use it -- at least in games that they really want to win. There wouldn't be any extra information given with a built-in item tracker. It would simply stop penalizing those without the insight or inclination to track items manually, and (as I described earlier) lighten the learning curve for new players trying to figure out why that enemy spy was suddenly able to move 4 squares instead of 2.

It just seems odd to me trying to tell others how they should play their games.
 
People say they want or need item trackers and they get told they don't. We all agree is a huge advantage for those who do, but still we want players to remember items. We insist that it's almost impossible to remember the status of 200 items (only runes and scrolls), especially after several days and we get told to then just play shorter games. People want to not be at a disadvantage, especially by not doing something we all agree is a chore, and they get told to try and win that way, because it is better, or in any case continue to do that chore. And if you're worried because you play competitively then don't play that way, play casual.
 
The thing is that probably those who want to, will do so, and those who don't, won't. 
 
With the in-game tracker, the ones who want the tracker would get it, the ones, who don't could just turn it off, the ones who like the surprise would play with the added surprise factor of not knowing if the opponent is tracking or not (as always), the ones who like competition wouldn't give that edge to the opponent, the ones who play casual wouldn't mind as it is just a game to them and the ones that want the challenge to defeat someone who is tracking items would get exactly that. In any case, we can do what we always do: if we don't like what the opponent is doing then we would stop playing with them and just keep our group of friends who play exactly the way we do, without forcing others to do it.

@Ome15  Well said...  8-)

 
Ok, just recently discovered that I was wrong on this one -- unit and item descriptions are already available in the player information popup in-game. But I'm still standing by my other points!  ;)

 
I never count, and I have been as high as #2.  Course I am out of the top 10 now for the first time in a while, but that is another issue.  Anyway, my point is dont count, compete, have fun.  No sense driving yourself crazy counting when your not going to beat Trip anyway :)