To preface this topic: This subject has been looming in my mind for the past month now, and I have a lot of frustration built up over how StarCraft: Remastered released and the subsequent months that transpired. To prevent this topic from straying from the main point, I will try to be as impartial as I can. I am also crossposting this between Blizzard Forums and Teamliquid as the Blizz devs have said that they do not check other forms of StarCraft discussion as much as their own forums.
2017 is now coming to a close. We are now on patch 1.20 of StarCraft: Remastered. 1.16.1 and the private servers and third party programs that flourished under it are now mostly gone. If you want to play StarCraft, you now have one real option, and that is play on Blizzard servers with what features SC:R provide you. Herein lies the big problem.. not only does 1.20 provide less features than 1.16.1 did, but some key features that were advertised with SC:R still have not been released or do not work as intended. The features I talk about are:
Matchmaking - Matchmaking, although a welcome addition to the old archaic method of finding opponents via lobby, is still shoddy at best. Better than at launch where results were actually completely DISCARDED and matches constantly got canceled, a large portion of players are still struggling to use the main feature of SC:R. I cannot speak for the Korean community, but a lot of foreign players have voiced their frustrations with the latency issues that surround the matchmaking system. Some players have even outright quit because of this issue.
iNcontroL - Mana - Morrow -
Leaderboards - Another feature that has been advertised on the starcraft.com website for SC:R is something that is even worse off than matchmaking and may be the worst feature in the game. People are still getting double MMR gains/losses, matches not recording, inaccurate display of MMR (I personally cannot see my MMR and haven't been since release), friend ranks do not get displayed for some people, and sometimes the leaderboards just flat out don't load at all. Did I mention season 1 hasn't started yet and we're approaching 90+ days since release? Blizzard has mentioned that once leaderboard/matchmaking issues are fixed, that "We will be resetting the Season when these issues are resolved". This announcement was made on August 16th, two days after release. It is now November 11th and we are still in a limbo test season. Reference: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/starcraft/topic/20758537891
Other than the fact that the current profile lacks over 50% of the features teased in the screenshots that Blizzard provided, the current profile's features don't even work for the most part. See my MMR in my screenshot? That is not my MMR. Starlog.gg says my MMR is actually currently sitting at 2066 at the time I took this screenshot at. The history tab does not display all my games I have played, as well as having matches not being clickable so you can't actually see any info on previous matches with the exception of the very last match you played. Also, viewing other player profiles is really hit or miss on whether they ever load.
Misc 1.16.1 Features - Through third party launchers, 1.16.1 offered: A better observer/replay tool that had unit counts, notification/lobby sounds, working friends list and working chat commands, lobby ping, lag detector, first person replays, EUD enabled with a strong Use Map Settings community, download status, and a ton more.
Now to hammer my point home: The thing that makes this situation all the more frustrating is what we learned at Blizzcon just a few days ago. According to a post made on the broodwar subreddit of someone who attended the event, they claim to have talked to the classic games team of Blizzard who revealed some unsettling information. "The team is small. Sounded like they had maybe 15 developers on the classic team and only a few seem to even still be working on remastered. Which makes the patches they have released very impressive imo". Although speculative, if true; this is nothing less than a slap in the face to the StarCraft community that they reduced the team while the game is nothing more than a glorified dump in .exe format with more glaring issues than Charlie Sheen. Rumors and conversations have been running that Blizzard's classic team has mostly moved on to WarCraft 3 Remastered, but there is no way to know for sure if this is true at the current time. I have also heard fucked up shit like Grant Davies is being chained up in Blizzard's basement as the sole developer working on StarCraft; Remastered and all the sewage pipes are directly aimed above him as the exit points. Kind of makes it feel a little odd that this all transpired and Blizzard still had the gall to tell us they did this "for the love of the community" when we are still not getting what we actually paid for.
Now for the positive stuff. The whole point of this topic is not to take a huge shit on Blizzard, but rather, how we can bridge the gap of shortcomings from their end. If you're new to this community, StarCraft: Brood War has been notorious for a lot of things. Match fixing, hitting kids in front of their mothers, developing useful skills toi have, and most importantly: we have a strong community of members who have a deep passion for this game. StarCraft: Brood War has survived many many years due to a strong Korean pro scene, but also due to an incredibly resilient and talented pool of contributors. The amount of servers, websites, and third party tools developed for this game may be one of the largest out of any game in existence. For servers, we've lived through PGTour, WGTour, Carrier, ICCup, Fish, Brain, Netwars, Shieldbattery, and more. As for third party programs? I feel like it would be a disservice to start listing them as there is way too many that have left a very large imprint on the game itself that I would feel bad if I forgot any.
I know most people are familiar with this stuff, but for those who aren't, here are some projects that were under way before StarCraft: Remastered was announced:
Shieldbattery - http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/brood-war/508993-shieldbattery-bw-revitalized-for-modern-mortals A server that was going to modernize StarCraft before Remastered was announced. Still a work in progress, Shieldbattery had the ability to bypass StarCraft lobbies and a server entirely and would launch you into a StarCraft game in seconds from your browser. It included window mode, improved latency, and as in the process of developing matchmaking.
OpenBW - http://www.openbw.com/project/ This project was beyond amazing. "This is a complete recreation of a game engine. It is fully compatible with Brood War. Including every single feature, bug, and pathfinding quirk. The engine is written in c++ and the source will be publicly available." from this engine branched many amazing things. You could watch replays in your browser with OpenBW with a simple click. They provided BW AI support (if you don't know about the StarCraft AI scene, check it out. It is one of the most underrepresented but most intriguing things. ( http://www.starcraftai.com/wiki/Main_Page ; https://sscaitournament.com/ ) OpenBW also started on StarCraft: HD a few weeks before SC:R was announced (and has since halted progress). Their beginning work was really promising though, and can be seen on their website.
Starloghttps://starlog.gg/en/ This is unlike the previous two, as it did not exist before SC:R, but it is now a vital 3rd party tool. This website gives us extremely interesting information and logs match histories to fulfill the gap that Blizzard has left us with their own incomplete profiles and match histories. I religiously use this website when laddering to check on my progress. I feel this is the type of initiative we need to take - to complete the missing parts of the game that Blizzard has released.
So in conclusion and summary, I hope this post enlightens people who are not aware of the current state of StarCraft: Remastered, and I hope it inspires people that we cannot wait any longer and must take the reigns for ourselves. I think it is time to sort of face the music and realize that what progress is done on SC:R is going to be extremely slow, and we cannot wait up for it. I do not blame the dev team, but this is the situation we find ourselves in. Ty2's father had a stroke.
Game desperately needs an influx of new blood, players in their teens to early 20s.Problem is people who grew up with the game are now late 20s to late 30s and have FT job, wife kids mortgage etc.So their activity is less.But with blizzard making SC2 free to play i imagine the kids will go there unless their PC is garbage.
what if it was blizzards plan all along was to release remastered for a low price to make some quick cash off of all of us and many others, then release a half baked buggy mess in order to kill the game off in hopes that those bw players will quit the game and move on to more profitable blizzard games in the future, i know it sounds absurd but i have been playing bw alot less lately and i woundnt be surprised if this was so some sick twisted marketing plan lol
On November 11 2017 07:37 -Debaser- wrote: They launched a buggy mess. They honestly should have pushed back release date instead of releasing game in beta.
No, it was perfectly playable. Unless you need a mouse sensitivity of 2.3132142 and a ping of 23. Oh by the way, people are playing pubg, not Starcraft
if you want new people coming to the game, you gotta make it nice and comfortable to play, not a buggy mess if I ran away from it I'm sure many new people might come to it and leave pretty fast cause they get much more quality out of interfaces of other games, and just insufficient quality from this unfinished and half destroyed interface which is probably exactly what the higher ups at blizzard want
now I read the post above mine (castleemg) and I see he's saying the same thing, you know what that's probably the truth
also at this point I wouldn't mind if heyjoray gets temp banned lol
On November 11 2017 07:50 ProMeTheus112 wrote: if you want new people coming to the game, you gotta make it nice and comfortable to play, not a buggy mess if I ran away from it I'm sure many new people might come to it and leave pretty fast cause they get much more quality out of interfaces of other games, and just insufficient quality from this unfinished and half destroyed interface which is probably exactly what the higher ups at blizzard want
now I read the post above mine (castleemg) and I see he's saying the same thing, you know what that's probably the truth
also at this point I wouldn't mind if heyjoray gets temp banned lol
also thx OP for writing this
I think they are still shitting on the League of Legends browser. How is that game popular?
On November 11 2017 07:42 castleeMg wrote: what if it was blizzards plan all along was to release remastered for a low price to make some quick cash off of all of us and many others, then release a half baked buggy mess in order to kill the game off in hopes that those bw players will quit the game and move on to more profitable blizzard games in the future, i know it sounds absurd but i have been playing bw alot less lately and i woundnt be surprised if this was so some sick twisted marketing plan lol
On November 11 2017 07:50 ProMeTheus112 wrote: if you want new people coming to the game, you gotta make it nice and comfortable to play, not a buggy mess if I ran away from it I'm sure many new people might come to it and leave pretty fast cause they get much more quality out of interfaces of other games, and just insufficient quality from this unfinished and half destroyed interface which is probably exactly what the higher ups at blizzard want
now I read the post above mine (castleemg) and I see he's saying the same thing, you know what that's probably the truth
also at this point I wouldn't mind if heyjoray gets temp banned lol
also thx OP for writing this
I was (still am) a passionate brood war player, yet I haven't touched the game since the release in August. I'm quite busy in real life right now, but the reason I don't play is because I don't want to frustrate myself with the poor experience that is starcraft remastered.
I pray every day people would just return to 1.16 iCCup/Fish.
Should we make a Facebook Page asking for help and calling the atention of higher blizzard boss ?,not gonna like is a bad product,is not finished,they killed fish brain and i guess iccup is in target,but iccup is pretty much dead already,my guess is that they have 2-3 programmers,and they have no idea of how to fix the problems,idk maybe some emergency mission from blizzard could actually help us,cuz right now remastered smells scam.
Nice thread, catch it while reading the ASL finals one, nice.
Really the profile website somebody should saved it and upload it as i am sure it will be deleted, it is improbable that we will get our replays in the profile... i mean Remastered is running a server that logs you out every second to save server time?, and they also cant and wont let you "auto loging" so imagine that.
Another thing is what is strongly think, at the end we got robbed yes... no doubt about it, the product is nice, it works a bit, but is like a slap in the face to one of the most important game sin history, something tells me tho that ACTIVITION is waiting for bad reviews to appear somewhere so they are clean and safe and wont do nothing, and because they game is so small they are sincerilly pissing on it. They have NO respect for one of the most important games in history, i am sure ACTIVITION would not even endevour on Remastering Starcraft if they knew things would have end up being so bad for their wallet. I hate ACTIVITION so much, they are the cancer of the gamming industry, even EA takes care its own games better.
But we will get all this stuff one way or the other, someone will create an amazing launcher when a final version comes around "1.21",i am sure that after 1.21 thats it... we wont have a significant patch for at least half a year or more, so when 1.21 comes we will get wathever it comes with it and thats it, 1.22 can probably never happen. The cool thing is that all the deelopers can work on remastered now and make a nice launcher with plugings, mods etc... cant wait for what the community has to offer.
Another thing that i am sure we will get is a Dedicated server solution of some kind from Blizzard, Warcraft III & Diablo II are P2P working also, i am not sure if they are willing to have bad feedback from all the sides, they will eventually get to much bad feedback and will have to open the pocket for dedicated servers. This does not necesarily means changing the netcode, a lot of other solutions like running the game in a server and clients being like terminals is one...
On March 29 2017 09:40 ninazerg wrote: thanks Blizzard. Thanks for the 1.18 patch that makes StarCraft free even though it was technically already free.
Blizzard neglected the game, and pirate servers appeared to fill the voids that Blizzard left as their legacy. The good thing about third-party servers is that Blizzard has no control over them. The community can manage its own shit without having to asking some corporate entity if it's okay. The whole thing is a response to the waning popularity of SC2, and the revival of Brood War. Even with the demise of the SSL, thousands of viewers in Korea have watched StarCraft being streamed by former pros, and the ASL popped up.
This is a simple numbers game: the SC2 stream numbers are very telling, and Blizzard wants to squeeze some extra jizz out of that delicious e-sports cock in Korea before it dies out again, so... sudden interest in Brood War! If they can't create a new game that isn't garbage, why not take control of an already existing product? It's clear to me that Blizzard wants to have a level of control over the Fish server, and wants to kill off the Brood War section of iCCup by introducing a ladder. I shudder to think what kind of ladder Blizzard is prepared to administrate, considering how ill-prepared and short-sighted they have been in recent years. Who's going to handle ladder reports? Who's going to watch ladder replays to make sure there is no cheating going on? Who's going to ban abusers from the ladder?
On November 11 2017 07:42 castleeMg wrote: what if it was blizzards plan all along was to release remastered for a low price to make some quick cash off of all of us and many others, then release a half baked buggy mess in order to kill the game off in hopes that those bw players will quit the game and move on to more profitable blizzard games in the future, i know it sounds absurd but i have been playing bw alot less lately and i woundnt be surprised if this was so some sick twisted marketing plan lol
the tiny amount of revenue and even smaller profit isn't worth the decline in reputation. this is a company that cancels games 5 years into development if the quality is not there.
i say this game means so little to Blizz that it fell between the cracks.... and that's why it sucks. ATVI is too busy with multibillion dollar projects to worry about a $15 game that can't even sell 1 million units. not 1 single activity, engagement, sales, or profit metric was released by ATVI about SCR. The thing bombed financially.
On November 11 2017 09:36 hyfrehyfre wrote: I hate ACTIVITION so much, they are the cancer of the gamming industry, even EA takes care its own games better.
EA continues to expand the C&C universe to untold levels of incredible success.
You listed a bunch of grievances and hardly said anything about what we can do to improve the community. I for one love the HD mode and the matchmaking. I can get matched with someone with similar level in less than 30 seconds? That's a dream that no other 3rd party could do on this scale. I got tired of waiting for 3rd party programs that promised such features but never could show it.
And how is it a slap in the face of the bw community? Yes, the team may be small but at least there is a team that made SC:R. They didn't have to make SC:R for us, and I trust blizz's hiring process to pick the cream of the crop to get things fixed. It's also funny how people are quick to generalize the entire blizz company, saying that their a bunch of money grubbing corporate hooligans who are running BW into the ground. Really? The entire BW got a huge boost when SC:R was revealed and blizzard went all out with the announcement and premiere. That tournament with Boxer, Flash, JD, and BIsu was legit and thanks to blizzard. Hell, they offered JD and Bisu $25,000 just to play a Bo5 at Blizzcon. Just for the fans (it even had a fan vote).
"what if it was blizzards plan all along was to release remastered for a low price to make some quick cash off of all of us and many others, then release a half baked buggy mess in order to kill the game off in hopes that those bw players will quit the game and move on to more profitable blizzard games in the future, i know it sounds absurd but i have been playing bw alot less lately and i woundnt be surprised if this was so some sick twisted marketing plan lol."
This is complete bullshit.
However, I do agree that SC:R still needs a lot of work and that posts like this are necessary to gain blizz's attention. I trust that blizz will not leave their game in this condition. The devs have been making videos talking about the problems and how they intend to fix them. That shows they are willing and doing what they can.
The lag issues keep me from playing the game. In at least 7 of 10 games, there are unbearable spikes for me. I did not experience those before SC:R. The battle.net also is a joke right now. Flist doesn't really work, whispering to multiple people at the same time is tedious and there are no clan / tournament features at all. I really hope they keep working on the game, otherwise it's one of the biggest disappointments in years for me.
To be honest, the fans are only a very little part of it without professional infrastructure. Without progamers and the progaming infratructure, the fans may as well no exist and Starcraft will be equally non-existent.
BUT with progaming infrastructure to inspire fans, to see the peak level of Starcraft being played, and motivation to attract new blood, the fans become an enormous multiplier of success!
tlds: Only fans, NO. Only progamers, NO. Progamer and Fans, FUCK YES!!!
On November 11 2017 08:50 B-royal wrote: I pray every day people would just return to 1.16 iCCup/Fish.
I hoped for broodwar remastered since the announcement of SC2. I did stick to playing on Iccup on and off, also watched all the SSL's and most of the higher tier BW content. Then came the rumours, and soon after that, finally the announcement Broodwar remastered came! I was so happy. I even forgot my principle not to pre-order a game and paid for it in advance. But when it was released, I was quite disappointed. I felt like I paid money to sign up for beta testing. Now I've totally given up on playing bw. No returning to iCCup, just random koreans there.. At least there's ASL.
On November 11 2017 15:59 Golgotha wrote: You listed a bunch of grievances and hardly said anything about what we can do to improve the community.
The topic is titled "What can we as a community do to improve StarCraft". Not "Here is some suggestions I have to improve the community". There is no topic like this on the forum currently, and I think the current state of StarCraft: Remastered warrants a discussion, thus I contributed it. I'm willing to help improve the community and brainstorm.
On November 11 2017 15:59 Golgotha wrote: I for one love the HD mode and the matchmaking. I can get matched with someone with similar level in less than 30 seconds? That's a dream that no other 3rd party could do on this scale. I got tired of waiting for 3rd party programs that promised such features but never could show it.
Shieldbattery is, to my knowledge, the only server who advertised matchmaking and it was never given a chance as SC:R was announced and released before it even went out of closed beta. As someone who played almost exclusively on Shieldbattery, I can say that it was a fantastic project. I have no recollection of any other server offering matchmaking, so I find your statements somewhat misinformed and disrespectful if you are actually referencing to Shieldbattery as a 3rd party program that "promised such features but could never show it" when Blizzard actively fucked over the devs by giving them patch 1.17 so the server could update accordingly for when the release came and then Mike Morhaime goes on stage to announce patch 1.18 (which was never given to SB) effectively stunting it (and 1.20 more or less putting it into its current inactive state). I'm not going to speculate and make wild claims- I do not know if Shieldbattery could ever host and maintain a matchmaking system to the extent that Blizzard does, but I think it is important to acknowledge that Shieldbattery accomplished a large portion of what it set out to do as a project.
On November 11 2017 15:59 Golgotha wrote: And how is it a slap in the face of the bw community? Yes, the team may be small but at least there is a team that made SC:R. They didn't have to make SC:R for us, and I trust blizz's hiring process to pick the cream of the crop to get things fixed. It's also funny how people are quick to generalize the entire blizz company, saying that their a bunch of money grubbing corporate hooligans who are running BW into the ground.
I am the type of person who likes getting what they paid for, so I think considering it a slap in the face is about accurate. Your justification for the current state of the game is "They didn't have to make SC:R for us" is so ridiculous that I am actually confused if it is legitimate or some really odd attempt at being facetious. What does that have to do with anything?
Not a single fucking thing. So because someone made a product, they are no longer to be judged or should be shown leniency when they take your money and do not deliver on promises they make? Maybe you're happy with the product, and that is completely fine. If the glaring issues that seem to affect the majority of the playerbase aren't affecting you, whatever dude. I'm not here to shit on you or convince you to hate StarCraft: Remastered. We're on a StarCraft forum after all, so that seems quite ludicrous. I don't want people to dislike the current state of StarCraft or raise pitchforks at Blizzard. The whole point of this topic is to discuss what we can do to improve it. The points I listed in the original post was not to change anyone's opinion because I can guarantee you it isn't fucking news to the vast majority of people who read this topic.
On November 11 2017 15:59 Golgotha wrote: Really? The entire BW got a huge boost when SC:R was revealed and blizzard went all out with the announcement and premiere. That tournament with Boxer, Flash, JD, and BIsu was legit and thanks to blizzard. Hell, they offered JD and Bisu $25,000 just to play a Bo5 at Blizzcon. Just for the fans (it even had a fan vote).
Who knew releasing a remastered edition would boost the player base? Okay we get it, cool. Blizzard, out of the kindness of their gracious hearts, reached out and set aside a dev team to release StarCraft: Remastered out of love for the community. Here is a reality check for you: They didn't stuff cash into those players pockets because they thought it was nice of them to do so. It was an investment. Maybe you could explain to us why Blizzard charged Afreeca a $100,000 licensing fee to host ASL 4? (Source: www.teamliquid.net). It was rumored that the reason why Afreeca could not come to licensing agreements with allowing Twitch or Youtube to stream the 4th ASL is because of the steep licensing fee cost Blizzard imposed on them. Or how about the fact that it is highly speculated that the majority of the team who worked on StarCraft: Remastered are already onto another project, being WarCraft 3: Remastered, despite the fact that we were reassured that there would be an active team continuing support and development after SC:R's release (Technically they didn't lie, but the truth is that it is was reduced to what seems to be 2 or 3 people). If things aren't starting to click in your head that the decisions made at Blizzard are beginning to look like they are putting money before community, logic may be lost on you.
Because you have said so much odd stuff (no offense) my post has probably come across as crass. So, to clarify and summarize, I realize this post comes across as anti-Blizzard but that is not my intention. I realize that Blizzard is a company first, and their main goal is to be profitable. That isn't lost on me, and I fully respect that and their right to charge, license, and maintain their game how they please. However, I think it is never okay to settle for less than what a developer promises you. Take one look at No Man's Sky and see the events that transpired in that case. They were intentionally vague about their game details, even going so far as to outright lie about features their game would have. This caused one of the biggest backlashes in video gaming history. I feel it is almost an injustice to compare StarCraft: Remastered to No Man's Sky release because StarCraft: Remastered is still a great game and delivered on the majority of things they advertised, but I'm going to go the extra few miles so you can maybe understand why it isn't okay to lie to customers. Can you actually with a straight face tell someone that No Man's Sky release was fine because "They didn't have to make the game" after people spent $60 on what they believed was an advertised space exploration game that had multiplayer, active space travel, and the allure of finding the 'center of the universe' when in actuality it was as if some developers turned Spore into a pretty game and then added elements of Minecraft, Eve Online, and a baby taking a nasty shit in his diaper and mixing it in a blender along with a few tabs of mescaline? Cause most people were under the impression that when they bought StarCraft: Remastered, they too would have gotten what was advertised. No, it is not near the disaster that No Man's Sky was, but you're dense as fuck if you think it was anything less than dishonesty what we received.
I wanted to keep playing BW (especially because of the Zotac tourneys) but i had to stop just because of how shitty my experience was. Bnet/the ladder has a isolated SC2 feel to it, the NA servers are split up and there's no centralized chat channels.
No 2v2 ladder also takes away a big part of the social aspect of BW. The friend list is terrible, you can't add EU players (if you're an NA player, vice versa) unless you change your bnet region via the launcher. Even when you do that you can only see your friends on w/e region you're logged into.. which only adds to the isolated gaming experience.
The ladder is either fine or extremely laggy, it's hit or miss depending on the hours you play on. I'm not willing to spend my time playing in laggy games 30-40% of the time tho.
On top of all that the new fixes/patches are being released way slower now. People have been telling the devs about the chat bug for months now and they still haven't fixed it. How do they expect to fix all the issues BW has when it's taking them this long to fix a simple chat bug?
EPT
