What can we as a community do to improve StarCraft - Page 10

On November 17 2017 12:08 GrantTheAnt wrote:
I've been wanting to jump into this thread for a couple of days but haven't found the time. There are some interesting points that deserve more info, so here goes (in no particular order):

* The OP concerns: first, I'd say those tweets referenced are from September and to be fair we've done a lot of work on MM latency since the launch in mid-August, including the DTR system, and both feedback and data has been very positive. We see around 1% of games are running in the lowest turn rate due to latency, and almost 85% in the highest now. This is not to say that there isn't more work to be done on the MM - we have more plans (including the diagnostic tool) and we'll keep focusing on the games that are performing poorly.

The reddit thread referenced should be taken with a large grain of salt. There is quite a lot of lost in translation moments in that thread for whatever reason. For example, I can say that our engineering team is the same size as it has always been. Sure, the art team is not doing a huge amount of SCR any more, but that's expected given that the art is done apart of tweaks. So *overall* the SCR team is smaller now, but on the engineering side (which is what matters for all of these issues) we're technically larger since a couple of senior engineers have been added to the Classic server team, one of which will spend the bulk of his time on SCR. There are no plans to disband the SCR team or anything of that nature. We're still here, we're still working on the game every single day. And even though we may not have played the game every day for the last 20 years like some folks here, I promise you that we treasure the game just as much, and want to see it as the best product it can be.

* Replays on profile - we're working on this right now.

* Chat bug - we rolled out a change to the spam filtering algorithm yesterday. I've asked for feedback on the Blizzard forum, if anyone sees it still occurring. There are no reports of it still being active right now.

* /f m for Blizzard friends - this is going through QA right now. It should be coming soon.

* Friends following ("abc has entered StarCraft, left StarCraft, entered game xyz") for Blizzard friends - this is also going through QA right now.

* Battlenet UI responsiveness. We're reworking the technical side of the UI to improve responsiveness. We have a small change coming very soon, and a much larger change which we're working on at the moment.

* "Patches are coming slower now". We're on patch 11 in around 13 weeks.

* Regional social (friends/chat). Unfortunately, at this stage, this is how all Blizzard services work (in the same way as gateways), so our hands are tied on this one for now. All I can say is that we've raised the topic internally at Blizzard to the relevant teams so they're aware of our suggestions.

* Our priorities in general: I've talked about this on the Blizzard forums, but StarCraft is many things to many people. They often have competing priorities. Some people hate that we worked to reduce the realtime lighting requirements; other people love it. Some people don't care about EUD at all; other people only ever played SC with EUD. Some people are still impacted by MM latency; other people say it's perfectly fine now. We try to service all groups and not leave anyone out. We receive feedback and requests from many different sources and it's impossible to work on everything at once. So we triage. And I understand that it's frustrating when we're not servicing the issue that's most important to you. I also know that we don't always get it right. Sometimes we've gotten the priorities wrong, and one thing we're doing to improve on that is expanding our network of reliable community sources and to open direct communication lines with them.

* On timeframes: we generally don't talk specifically about timeframes, because once a date is out there it becomes an iron clad guarantee, which can be tough to deliver on all the time given the nature of game dev.

* We did not coerce/force other servers to shutdown. We have a lot of respect for the work that Fish did over the years for the BW community.

* On global MM generally: there are some routes that are particularly bad - EU to Korea for example. The route between those regions is so bad that internet traffic tends to route the other way around the world, which is not ideal for low latency. So this leads to 2 obvious questions:

* Why global MM and not regional? As you guys know, SC is somewhat unique in that a large portion of the playerbase is in one region, and the playerbase in general is not in the scale of the Hearthstones of this world. Regional MM outside of Korea would have meant very long queue times. We already see some complaints for queue times - they would be far longer under a regional MM. In short, queue times and latency are in direct competition with each other.

Also, in another sense, the MM is kind of regional - in the sense that the MM will try very hard to match you with someone close to your MMR and close to you geographically. If you're getting matched on the other side of the world, it means there was no one else closer in a reasonable MMR range, and additionally that the MM predicted no one suitable would be available in the near future. In short, if you're matched with someone a long way away, without a global MM there would be no match at all.

* Why not rewrite the net code to a client-server model and host the servers ourselves? We looked at this early on, but the SC code contains certain interdependencies. Changing one system can potentially impact another. Changing something as fundamental as the network layer carried a significant risk of changing the way SC played, which was a dealbreaker for us. Our general policy was to leave the core of SC alone, and make changes around it, so as not to break or change the delicate genius of the game. We're doing some preliminary investigative work towards a system that may have a somewhat similar effect to this without affecting the SC net code directly.

Building a global MM was a much more difficult undertaking than a regional one, but we believe it's the right one for SC globally. Maybe, ultimately, we'll have to surrender on one or both of the above, but we've made good strides on improving the MM latency since launch, and we're rolling out new improvements all the time. We still have some rabbits left in the hat, and I believe we should run them down before we jump to a last resort.

Wow, this has been quite the long post, but hopefully it gives at least some context to the decisions we're making, and some level of confidence that we're working hard on making SCR the game that you all (and we) want it to be, regardless of where you stand on it right now. As always, your feedback is extremely helpful and I appreciate the time you guys take to talk to us and make this an awesome gaming community.

On November 17 2017 20:40 Qikz wrote:
I would love for the ability to host any map for matchmaking as a custom game, that way we could play the maps we want to.

I used to enjoy iCCUP becuse I'd host and learn a different map every single week. It was great.

On November 17 2017 22:28 chuDr3t4 wrote:

The way you propose for ppl to host ladder games means we are back to blizzard-approved map pool (to exclude ppl hosting somehow rigged maps) which is exactly how blizzard SC ladder functioned in 1999. And some ppl would take offense to that and call that a step-back.

On November 17 2017 23:21 AManHasNoName wrote:


True, but as evidenced by this thread, some subset of people are going to take offense and complain about absolutely anything Blizzard does!

On November 17 2017 23:32 esdf wrote:
there's hardly a thing blizzard did well. my personal opinion is that they haven't released a good game since first WoW.

On November 17 2017 23:31 ProMeTheus112 wrote:

I just hope you don't mean this as opposed to not complaining about anything at all.........

On November 17 2017 21:09 AManHasNoName wrote:

Edit: I also wanted to mention that the new Turn Rate change announcement in game is amazing! It's great to see the DTR in action. I've discovered that the majority of my games against Koreans are being played at TR14 (w/ low latency and no lag) which I find phenomenal!

On November 17 2017 22:01 Qikz wrote:


This isn't very helpful feedback. Why exactly is it unplayable? They can't help if they don't know what your problem is.

On November 18 2017 01:49 KrOjah wrote:


Oh, so is there some SC:R devs on this thread collecting information or player issues?

On November 18 2017 01:21 ProMeTheus112 wrote:
Well I dont agree with you at all, complaints are a way to make your voice heard as a customer and to state your expectations, and a way to take a stance against a company that may be trying yet again to screw you over. It doesn't matter if we are not all giving feedback in the same way and 100% positivity is a very weak way of taking a stance against a company as greedy as blizzard. I sure hope you won't just keep bulking all negativity into uninformed whatever. If anything being positive all the time can be pretty damn uninformed too.

I'm sorry but I don't have to be ok with the state the game is that was sold to me. I am very informed about the whole situation and I am not just going to keep giving sheepy positive feedback, I'll be negative and even harsh if that's what I feel I'm getting from the company actions.

Besides it did make me stop playing the game as well as others, so obviously there is nothing very positive about the situation to players like me. You can't just tell players like me that we should just change our mind, accept it and play when we don't want that. If you don't like a game and you think it's bad you might just call it what it is.

One thing I dislike and many others too is guys who just like to be all honey sugar positive to the devs cause they like to get attention from that - as you know commonly called "white knights". Pose as the good nice guys when they're just being the opposite. Me and others have to take flak from guys like you because we care about the game and we'll make it known. In the meantime others are taking the easy counter stance to just make us look bad but we're the ones taking more risk^^ and we, or some of us, might just do this for the love of the game, so you should perhaps have some respect for that. We could be wrong about the company intents, or we could not be wrong. I know trends where I've seen them for years now, and I can tell you blizzard has been on its way to just turn games into cash cows and dilute qualities over time by switching them around and never giving satisfaction.

Let's not be naïve, crooked businesses are a thing, and you're not gonna get much done if you are too afraid of complaints and criticism.

Even if your boss is screwing around with you you better know not to just accept it and make a stand to it if you want to do things different^^ I think blizzard is a pretty disgusting business, and I won't refrain to say it when I think so.