I'm happy to announce that ShieldBattery is finally back! I started this project almost 8 years ago with the goal of bringing StarCraft out of the Windows 98 era. Blizzard helped a lot with that, but also left us, the community, without a lot of control over our own destiny should they lose interest. We think it's time for the community to take back the reins.
After countless hours of work (over literal years), we're shipping an update today that brings StarCraft: Remastered support, improvements to a number of our existing features, and skill-based 1v1 matchmaking. And, maybe more importantly, we're now in open beta: anyone can sign up for an account and start playing immediately.
Full list of features and changes (not really, there's too much to keep track of!)
StarCraft: Remastered support added (and 1.16 support removed )
Open beta! Invite process removed, signups are instant.
Matchmaking. 1v1 for now, teams (arranged and random) are in the works and a high priority for us.
Cloud-based map uploads, currently to your own private collection. In the future we'll allow you to manage a public collection and work to collect different versions of the same map together.
Transparent starting fog of war (in HD graphics, SD coming soon)
More game server locations. In addition to the coverage we had in US West, US East, and central Europe locations before, we also now have servers in Korea (Seoul), Australia (Sydney), Brazil (São Paulo), and Sweden (Stockholm).
I'd like to thank all of the contributors who've helped keep this project alive over the last few years and gotten us to the place we are now:
2Pacalypse-
neive
Excalibur_Z
v1
and many more!
We're committed to delivering a top-notch StarCraft experience, developed and run by community members, with a tight feedback loop with all of you. This release is just the first of many more. We're going to be constantly delivering new features and improvements from here on out. If there are things that bug you about playing or observing, cool new ideas you have for the game, or things you'd like to see work differently on ShieldBattery, we'd love to hear about it.
We have a new Discord where all of our contributors hang out that can be used for reporting bugs or suggesting changes. We'd also love you to stop by if you're interested in contributing directly to the codebase.
Lastly, some of you have asked about contributing to our maintenance and hosting costs. I've taken the time to set up a company to manage our funds, and a few different sites to choose from if you'd like to help out. I'm working on this project full time for the moment, and if we get enough contributions I'm happy (very excited, even ) to keep doing that for as long as possible. Check our our updated FAQ page for more info and links.
Won't this just segment the small playerbase even more. While I admire all the work that went into this, it feels really bad to break off part of the playerbase
Hmm i kinda wish there was a way to mix remastered ladder with this one.Like they do in warcraft reforged.I dont really know if this is gonna be good for high lvl play. But atleast we know that in the future there will be an operational server managed by people that care. Cant wait to try it.
Gonna try to figure out if linux users are able to run this version of the client, but I hope if I can't figure out a way that we get a linux compitable client soon!
On March 13 2021 06:46 FavoritBW wrote: just played my first match (both players in sweden). the game was on tr 20 and quite laggy/choppy :/
Our netcode is currently built on top Blizzard's dynamic turnrate stuff which is not always the best, we have some plans/work in progress to replace this entirely which will hopefully improve things. The new servers are also a different configuration than we've used previously, so if you continue to see network problems, definitely let me know and I'll see if there's anything we can tweak there.
Other than the potential of 2v2 ladders, what problem does this really solve? I love the dedication put into this I’m just failing to see it’s purpose.
On March 13 2021 10:03 Rimasuta wrote: Other than the potential of 2v2 ladders, what problem does this really solve? I love the dedication put into this I’m just failing to see it’s purpose.
On March 13 2021 10:03 Rimasuta wrote: Other than the potential of 2v2 ladders, what problem does this really solve? I love the dedication put into this I’m just failing to see it’s purpose.
This can have continued development. Whereas remastered has been all but ditched from my understanding by Vivendi Activision Blizzard.
On March 13 2021 10:03 Rimasuta wrote: Other than the potential of 2v2 ladders, what problem does this really solve? I love the dedication put into this I’m just failing to see it’s purpose.
Lots of little things to solve... I.e. better SD graphics. More support on the ladder with hackers etc... Improved netcode
And more importantly is having someone that's interested in the game (i.e. not Blizzard)
On March 13 2021 12:22 MineraIs wrote: So you can run remastered without buying remaster?
SC: Remastered is free from Blizzard. If you don't purchase the HD version, you won't have access to those features (you'll be limited to SD graphics). We don't do anything to bypass or unlock features that haven't been purchased.
On March 13 2021 12:58 Loser777 wrote: I've seen some screenshots that show the standard "TR 24 Low," does that mean it uses the same p2p type connection that regular SC:R does?
On March 13 2021 06:46 FavoritBW wrote: just played my first match (both players in sweden). the game was on tr 20 and quite laggy/choppy :/
Our netcode is currently built on top Blizzard's dynamic turnrate stuff which is not always the best, we have some plans/work in progress to replace this entirely which will hopefully improve things. The new servers are also a different configuration than we've used previously, so if you continue to see network problems, definitely let me know and I'll see if there's anything we can tweak there.
Oh, I think I forgot to mention it in the opening post, but for the first couple weeks at least we're planning on keeping matchmaking open only during the weekends so that we have time to fix bugs and make bigger changes. I'll announce the opening/closing time for next week closer to mid-week, but for this weekend:
Matchmaking Opens: NOW Matchmaking Closes: Monday, Mar 15 5:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00)
Once we have more of the kinks worked out, we'll leave it open all the time.
I don't 1v1 these days, so I will patiently await support for big multi person games... haven't been able to play on Battlenet for a couple years as long as two of us are in the same house and someone else is in another house Hard to get friends to play for that reason, so I'm happy this is going open Beta
On March 13 2021 05:33 Waxangel wrote: shoulda gone with "recharged"
Hahah just have to quote this for posterity
Super cool to SB there, even if Blizzard eventually fucks everything up this means we have a real modernized community backup. In addition it's possible that if SB becomes the premier private server that we'll also get much better interaction with the Korean community if they're forced off of bnet due to Blizzard's lack of support.
I just found out about this from a chat message from Sziky's stream. SC:R lags quite a bit when I play against non-USA players, so I'm definitely going to play on ShieldBattery more from now on.
is this faster for across the board run-of-the-mill internet? scr just kills my 100mbps when i turn up turn rate to like 16 even. says some proxy things that i have to contact my provider which in my country just sucks since they lock up the router or something e.g. portforward issues etc
i have tons of friends who play but are just frustrated by this too
On March 14 2021 08:08 Broodwar4lyf wrote: is this faster for across the board run-of-the-mill internet? scr just kills my 100mbps when i turn up turn rate to like 16 even. says some proxy things that i have to contact my provider which in my country just sucks since they lock up the router or something e.g. portforward issues etc
i have tons of friends who play but are just frustrated by this too
It might be better for you right now, it might not. I imagine at the very least it will be more consistent
We're only a very small part of the way into our intended netcode changes right now. Once those are all implemented, I can give you a much stronger answer. As is, though, we're still using Blizzard's code for determining turn rate, etc. that a lot of people are dissatisfied with.
I think it's super-cool that you're still doing this. I'm kind of disappointed with how Blizzard handled pretty much everything. I thought that it was cool that you made the original shieldbattery to begin with. I felt like iCCup was really slipping in how they were handling Brood War, by essentially shoving it aside for DotA.
Killing 1.16.1 support is big personal upset for me but undestandable. I just wished some day to play on good old not fucked up SD graphics. Thanks guys for putting your effort into this. Blizzard Activi$ion can go milk their money ahead, we will never allow you ruin this game!
On March 15 2021 06:30 outscar wrote: Killing 1.16.1 support is big personal upset for me but undestandable. I just wished some day to play on good old not fucked up SD graphics. Thanks guys for putting your effort into this. Blizzard Activi$ion can go milk their money ahead, we will never allow you ruin this game!
Tec mentioned that having better SD graphics is on the list of to-dos for SB.
Is this a good idea? Are you not afraid of diluting the player base between all the servers.
This is fine for enthusiasts but for the general and casual player, I can't see this being successful.
Why not contact blizzard and work with them? If you say because this isn't the blizzard of old, maybe you're the own who lacks enough passion. Food for thought.
On March 15 2021 03:03 Cheesefome wrote: unpopular opinion but will we b able to play fastest? xDDDDDDD
You can certainly create custom lobbies on Fastest right now As to whether it will be in a map pool for matchmaking, unsure at this point. Our plans for 3v3 matchmaking, etc. are pretty up in the air atm and will require some testing and feedback and iteration, so we'll see!
On March 15 2021 06:30 outscar wrote: Killing 1.16.1 support is big personal upset for me but undestandable. I just wished some day to play on good old not fucked up SD graphics. Thanks guys for putting your effort into this. Blizzard Activi$ion can go milk their money ahead, we will never allow you ruin this game!
Yeah, we really have to choose where to invest effort wisely since we have a limited number of people working on things. Trying to build a feature set across very different versions of the game is really challenging. We still have mostly maintained support for 1.16 thus far, but we haven't done any work to make it compatible with SC:R clients, so we'd have to split our already-small playerbase to support both right now. It's possible that once we've written the newer version of our netcode that compatibility would be easier, but it's still a lot of work and continuing effort to test/maintain something that not a lot of people would actually use (and certainly wouldn't bring in any *new* players that haven't been playing BW forever).
Our real hope is that we can smooth over a lot of the things Blizzard did with SC:R that make you not want to use it over 1.16: better SD graphics filtering, improving performance, reducing its memory usage, etc. We've already done some small things there, but there's still a long way to go.
On March 15 2021 09:25 Mizconout wrote: Is this a good idea? Are you not afraid of diluting the player base between all the servers.
This is fine for enthusiasts but for the general and casual player, I can't see this being successful.
Why not contact blizzard and work with them? If you say because this isn't the blizzard of old, maybe you're the own who lacks enough passion. Food for thought.
The state of SC:R is the outcome of the system at work inside of Blizzard, I don't believe that trying to work within that system will produce the outcomes the community actually needs. I'm not really afraid of diluting the playerbase across servers because:
1) We're not taking anything away by launching this. If you want to keep using Blizzard's service after installing our client, you can. Hell, you can even queue for matchmaking on both servers at once.
2) The BW community has long used private servers (and had multiple private servers running successfully at once, e.g. Fish and ICCup). It's really people using Blizzard's service for competitive play that is the anomaly here, as far as BW's history goes.
I truly think continuing to use Blizzard's walled garden, just because it's what's there, is a big mistake for the community. If you're walking down a street that you can clearly see is a dead end, not going to get you to where you want to be, do you stand at the end of it saying, "Man this kinda sucks but I guess it's where we are," or do you turn around and find a different street? ShieldBattery is that different street: it's a lot of work to get to the point where we're even, but once we're even we have so much more potential.
We launched this now, knowing that it is not a complete feature-set to replace what SC:R has, because we want to develop this in the open. We want the community's feedback as early as possible, not just on theoretical plans but on what features we actually have built. We want to iterate on these features with all of you. If you're not interested in doing that, or only want to use a service after it feels "complete" to you, that's fine. Check back in a month or two and see if we're there yet.
On March 15 2021 09:25 Mizconout wrote: Is this a good idea? Are you not afraid of diluting the player base between all the servers.
This is fine for enthusiasts but for the general and casual player, I can't see this being successful.
Why not contact blizzard and work with them? If you say because this isn't the blizzard of old, maybe you're the own who lacks enough passion. Food for thought.
What the fuck is with this judgmental snooty ass attitude before you even get a response?
How are you, someone who probably has never contributed a single thing to BW, suddenly the arbiter of who lacks passion? Wtf?
Delete this shit. It's no wonder we have so few people who consistently provide content for the community, given that they have to present it to ungrateful fucks like you.
On March 15 2021 06:30 outscar wrote: Killing 1.16.1 support is big personal upset for me but undestandable. I just wished some day to play on good old not fucked up SD graphics. Thanks guys for putting your effort into this. Blizzard Activi$ion can go milk their money ahead, we will never allow you ruin this game!
Tec mentioned that having better SD graphics is on the list of to-dos for SB.
On March 15 2021 06:30 outscar wrote: Killing 1.16.1 support is big personal upset for me but undestandable. I just wished some day to play on good old not fucked up SD graphics. Thanks guys for putting your effort into this. Blizzard Activi$ion can go milk their money ahead, we will never allow you ruin this game!
Yeah, we really have to choose where to invest effort wisely since we have a limited number of people working on things. Trying to build a feature set across very different versions of the game is really challenging. We still have mostly maintained support for 1.16 thus far, but we haven't done any work to make it compatible with SC:R clients, so we'd have to split our already-small playerbase to support both right now. It's possible that once we've written the newer version of our netcode that compatibility would be easier, but it's still a lot of work and continuing effort to test/maintain something that not a lot of people would actually use (and certainly wouldn't bring in any *new* players that haven't been playing BW forever).
Our real hope is that we can smooth over a lot of the things Blizzard did with SC:R that make you not want to use it over 1.16: better SD graphics filtering, improving performance, reducing its memory usage, etc. We've already done some small things there, but there's still a long way to go.
That's very neat! Hope you guys can deliver what Blizz couldn't in future. I'm little bit on WoW binge right now, so I'm going to try it maybe tonight, can't wait! I'm really excited and wishing all the best and good luck for you!
this is just such a huge present to the community for 20 years we were able to CHOICE MATCHUP untill blizzard promptly decided to fuckus over in ranked while thinking for 2 years ''investigate '' implement race picking (assholes truelly) now change race to avoid a mirror matchup finally its back we get back what was taken from us with no reasoning
this is just such a huge present to the community for 20 years we were able to CHOICE MATCHUP untill blizzard promptly decided to fuckus over in ranked while thinking for 2 years ''investigate '' implement race picking (assholes truelly) now change race to avoid a mirror matchup finally its back we get back what was taken from us with no reasoning
You are not supposed to nitpick your matchup on ladder
Nitpick sounds like avoiding certain races - e.g. playing only pvt and dodging zergs and protosses. This should not be allowed. Race picking the way SB implements it is the same thing that existed for SC/BW between 1998 and the release of SC:R, without anyone ever considering it a negative. Then blizzard removed it because they were incompetent.
this is just such a huge present to the community for 20 years we were able to CHOICE MATCHUP untill blizzard promptly decided to fuckus over in ranked while thinking for 2 years ''investigate '' implement race picking (assholes truelly) now change race to avoid a mirror matchup finally its back we get back what was taken from us with no reasoning
You are not supposed to nitpick your matchup on ladder
Nitpick sounds like avoiding certain races - e.g. playing only pvt and dodging zergs and protosses. This should not be allowed. Race picking the way SB implements it is the same thing that existed for SC/BW between 1998 and the release of SC:R, without anyone ever considering it a negative. Then blizzard removed it because they were incompetent.
Most likely Tappo the deranged troll is what you are responding to but this is correct.
PvP has historically been my best match-up and my other vP MUs are the worst of the 9 available but I have had a lot of fun playing TvP casually over the past few years so this is a welcome addition. Kudos!
this is just such a huge present to the community for 20 years we were able to CHOICE MATCHUP untill blizzard promptly decided to fuckus over in ranked while thinking for 2 years ''investigate '' implement race picking (assholes truelly) now change race to avoid a mirror matchup finally its back we get back what was taken from us with no reasoning
You are not supposed to nitpick your matchup on ladder
As long as it's for mirrors only it's fine imo, people should have the option to play the game however they want. We're talking about main matchups here, a lot of non-progamer tier players (who are still competitive) main race picked matchups instead of mirrors. Having a ladder that lets them practice the game however they see fit is fair.
There's no real competitive edge for dodging mirrors other than it being for personal preference (many players find mirrors stale). If anything it's harder/less practice efficient (time-wise) to learn a 2nd race.
What happens if two queue with a no mirror option turned on? Is a digital coin flipped to decide say in a PvP situation with two who’ve ticked to off race mirrors who plays say PvZ and who plays ZvP or what have you?
I know it existed before but I like that it’s being implemented. I think Blizz have missed a trick in not enabling at least a little race picking, many people in many games will always have one matchup they hate so much that they don’t want to ladder, so I’m unsure why they force it.
I loathe SC2 PvZ with a burning passion for a decade, I don’t see how it makes ladder less legitimate if I could play my (rather worse) Terran if I rolled a Zerg
this is just such a huge present to the community for 20 years we were able to CHOICE MATCHUP untill blizzard promptly decided to fuckus over in ranked while thinking for 2 years ''investigate '' implement race picking (assholes truelly) now change race to avoid a mirror matchup finally its back we get back what was taken from us with no reasoning
You are not supposed to nitpick your matchup on ladder
As long as it's for mirrors only it's fine imo, people should have the option to play the game however they want. We're talking about main matchups here, a lot of non-progamer tier players (who are still competitive) main race picked matchups instead of mirrors. Having a ladder that lets them practice the game however they see fit is fair.
There's no real competitive edge for dodging mirrors other than it being for personal preference (many players find mirrors stale). If anything it's harder/less practice efficient (time-wise) to learn a 2nd race.
Yeah, in my opinion (which I guess should be obvious since I came up with this in the first place ) this is a good compromise. You're not reducing the number of matchups you have to play, just picking a different matchup you find more enjoyable for the 3rd one. And indeed, playing 2 races is likely harder than playing just 1
On March 16 2021 07:16 WombaT wrote: What happens if two queue with a no mirror option turned on? Is a digital coin flipped to decide say in a PvP situation with two who’ve ticked to off race mirrors who plays say PvZ and who plays ZvP or what have you?
I know it existed before but I like that it’s being implemented. I think Blizz have missed a trick in not enabling at least a little race picking, many people in many games will always have one matchup they hate so much that they don’t want to ladder, so I’m unsure why they force it.
I loathe SC2 PvZ with a burning passion for a decade, I don’t see how it makes ladder less legitimate if I could play my (rather worse) Terran if I rolled a Zerg
Keep up the good work!
It is indeed a coinflip, yeah (so one player plays their main race, the other gets the alternate).
I think one of the main concerns here (and why we went with this setup rather than allowing full racepicking) is just trying to make a simple UI for choosing these things. Another big concern is having a system that doesn't limit potential matches in matchmaking (e.g. if you and your opponent both racepick every matchup, we either need to make the matchmaker more selective, or we need to deal with cases where you and your opponent have no overlap). This setup makes it fairly simple both to understand (for players) and implement (for us) so it seemed like a good middle ground of possibilities.
On March 15 2021 09:25 Mizconout wrote: Is this a good idea? Are you not afraid of diluting the player base between all the servers.
This is fine for enthusiasts but for the general and casual player, I can't see this being successful.
Why not contact blizzard and work with them? If you say because this isn't the blizzard of old, maybe you're the own who lacks enough passion. Food for thought.
What the fuck is with this judgmental snooty ass attitude before you even get a response?
How are you, someone who probably has never contributed a single thing to BW, suddenly the arbiter of who lacks passion? Wtf?
Delete this shit. It's no wonder we have so few people who consistently provide content for the community, given that they have to present it to ungrateful fucks like you.
Mizcoconout brought up a legitimate concern of the likelihood of there being a smaller player base split between a new server. I don't think it warrants cursing him out over it.
this is just such a huge present to the community for 20 years we were able to CHOICE MATCHUP untill blizzard promptly decided to fuckus over in ranked while thinking for 2 years ''investigate '' implement race picking (assholes truelly) now change race to avoid a mirror matchup finally its back we get back what was taken from us with no reasoning
You are not supposed to nitpick your matchup on ladder
As long as it's for mirrors only it's fine imo, people should have the option to play the game however they want. We're talking about main matchups here, a lot of non-progamer tier players (who are still competitive) main race picked matchups instead of mirrors. Having a ladder that lets them practice the game however they see fit is fair.
There's no real competitive edge for dodging mirrors other than it being for personal preference (many players find mirrors stale). If anything it's harder/less practice efficient (time-wise) to learn a 2nd race.
Yeah, in my opinion (which I guess should be obvious since I came up with this in the first place ) this is a good compromise. You're not reducing the number of matchups you have to play, just picking a different matchup you find more enjoyable for the 3rd one. And indeed, playing 2 races is likely harder than playing just 1
Oh the good old days of grinding ICCUP with one matchup and one all-in build on map on the week all day ;D
On March 15 2021 09:25 Mizconout wrote: Is this a good idea? Are you not afraid of diluting the player base between all the servers.
This is fine for enthusiasts but for the general and casual player, I can't see this being successful.
Why not contact blizzard and work with them? If you say because this isn't the blizzard of old, maybe you're the own who lacks enough passion. Food for thought.
What the fuck is with this judgmental snooty ass attitude before you even get a response?
How are you, someone who probably has never contributed a single thing to BW, suddenly the arbiter of who lacks passion? Wtf?
Delete this shit. It's no wonder we have so few people who consistently provide content for the community, given that they have to present it to ungrateful fucks like you.
Mizcoconout brought up a legitimate concern of the likelihood of there being a smaller player base split between a new server. I don't think it warrants cursing him out over it.
If you have any reading comprehension in your skillset you'd understand that I was referring to the comment concerning passion for the scene.
On March 15 2021 09:25 Mizconout wrote: Is this a good idea? Are you not afraid of diluting the player base between all the servers.
This is fine for enthusiasts but for the general and casual player, I can't see this being successful.
Why not contact blizzard and work with them? If you say because this isn't the blizzard of old, maybe you're the own who lacks enough passion. Food for thought.
What the fuck is with this judgmental snooty ass attitude before you even get a response?
How are you, someone who probably has never contributed a single thing to BW, suddenly the arbiter of who lacks passion? Wtf?
Delete this shit. It's no wonder we have so few people who consistently provide content for the community, given that they have to present it to ungrateful fucks like you.
Mizcoconout brought up a legitimate concern of the likelihood of there being a smaller player base split between a new server. I don't think it warrants cursing him out over it.
On March 15 2021 09:25 Mizconout wrote: Is this a good idea? Are you not afraid of diluting the player base between all the servers.
This is fine for enthusiasts but for the general and casual player, I can't see this being successful.
Why not contact blizzard and work with them? If you say because this isn't the blizzard of old, maybe you're the own who lacks enough passion. Food for thought.
What the fuck is with this judgmental snooty ass attitude before you even get a response?
How are you, someone who probably has never contributed a single thing to BW, suddenly the arbiter of who lacks passion? Wtf?
Delete this shit. It's no wonder we have so few people who consistently provide content for the community, given that they have to present it to ungrateful fucks like you.
Mizcoconout brought up a legitimate concern of the likelihood of there being a smaller player base split between a new server. I don't think it warrants cursing him out over it.
Come on, whats wrong with threatening and intimidating other user? What do you think this is? A Forum on which people post different opinions? After all, the succes of the Foreigner Brood War Scene speaks for itself! Just look at the great things coming out of Iccup!
No seriously, you should be grateful: They exported the brood war pros/personalities (IdrA etc) to korea, which then turned sc2 pro. This scene truely knows its doing.
Big Shoutout on my end to Liquid´Drone for quoting my post as an "Degenerate Troll PBU" Good to see that an Moderator cant tell the difference. My post sparked another discussion. I will just continue
I didn't ban you and I have no idea what you are talking about. To my knowledge, I've never actually banned you - maybe that's wrong though because I have no idea what your original account was. I answered your post saying that your description of 'nitpick your matchup' is an inaccurate description of what is offered by shield battery.
I have played virtually every single ladder that has existed. I played the original battle.net ladder back in 1998. I played on Kali (although no ladder there). I played maven's ladder. I played cloud ladder, later cloira. I played gamei. I played wgtour. I played pgtour. I played iccup. I've also played a myriad of tournaments and clan leagues - not gonna mention them all, but it's a triple digit number.
All of these allowed race picking. Literally every single one. Then Starcraft:Remastered is released, blizzard implements match making - which in many ways is just what we wanted. But they removed the opportunity to race pick, despite the fact that it has always been possible in the past. Fixing it was never difficult, and among non-korean players, race-picking the way SB implements it has always been reasonably popular, but blizzard still did not implement it. I call this incompetence, in the same way I call 'insisting that people should play on fast setting despite nobody anywhere doing this' (which blizzard was still doing in 2006) incompetence.
Coming back from being a previously banned user has always been possible on this website, btw. You just have to a) sit out your original ban length, b) change your ways, because otherwise you're gonna keep doing the shit that got you banned in the first place, and possibly c) (in egregious cases) apologize and show that you're a more mature person than you used to be. I'm guessing you never did either of these - which is why this account of yours is also gonna get axed soon.
I mean I don't really play much anymore, but the only thing I don't like about race picking is that it basically takes me back to the iCCUP days where I never got to play my favourite matchup which was TvT.
I don't mind race picking but I worry a bit that at my level, where there is already an overwhelming amount of protoss players, race picking would bring a percentage of terran players to play protoss, so I might end up playing TvP an even larger amount of the time. This would force me to not participate in the ladder as much, otherwise my TvT would deteriorate, and it's also not as much fun to play only one matchup most of the time.
Honest question here..what does shieldbattery actually deliver over SCR besides saying "i play on the indy server"? Obviously team matchmaking would be monumental and game changing, but until that is delivered, forgive me that my only other connotation of shieldbattery came from seeing TelecoM >>Nuked<< saying "im gonna play shieldbattery bc its obv better than mainstream sc" whenever he lost to somebody on scr ladder.
On March 20 2021 10:05 StalkyBear wrote: Honest question here..what does shieldbattery actually deliver over SCR besides saying "i play on the indy server"? Obviously team matchmaking would be monumental and game changing, but until that is delivered, forgive me that my only other connotation of shieldbattery came from seeing TelecoM >>Nuked<< saying "im gonna play shieldbattery bc its obv better than mainstream sc" whenever he lost to somebody on scr ladder.
Have you tried playing on SB at all?
There's no "invalid password" issues. There's a different map pool for matchmaking. There's a lightweight client you can sit in instead of b.net. There's racepicking on ladder. There's revealed fog of war.
Even if you assume that none of the announced features are ever implemented, it's a very different experience from existing b.net ladder.
Coming from Java & python background, I started learning Rust, and would like to try & contribute. I myself work w open source so I dont believe Im entitled to anything. I will try to check the list of issues myself in earnest but I did a quick glance with this default label https://github.com/ShieldBattery/ShieldBattery/issues?q=is:open is:issue label:"good first contribution" and only found older issues. In case you also think its benefitial to spend your time on admin work like this, can you label any server-side issues as good 1st contribs?
Thank you so much for your work on this. I have been following it on and off for the past 7-8 years! I hope it will be at least as much in the future.
The moment you launch the 2v2 matchmaking and it works without big glitches, people will start abandoning Blizzards servers as the word will spread quickly.
p.s. One idea I've had for a long time, about matchmaking: I don't know how it currently works, but have you considered having separate MMRs for each matchup? For example, my TvP could be above average, my TvT can suck ass. Without separate MMRs, this would lead to me losing a lot of matchmade TvT and winning a lot of TvPs. With separate MMRs, it's possible to achieve close to 50% winrate on all matchups. Objectively, each matchup requires mastery of different tactics (at least that), so it would make sense.
On March 21 2021 22:04 niteReloaded wrote: The moment you launch the 2v2 matchmaking and it works without big glitches, people will start abandoning Blizzards servers as the word will spread quickly.
p.s. One idea I've had for a long time, about matchmaking: I don't know how it currently works, but have you considered having separate MMRs for each matchup? For example, my TvP could be above average, my TvT can suck ass. Without separate MMRs, this would lead to me losing a lot of matchmade TvT and winning a lot of TvPs. With separate MMRs, it's possible to achieve close to 50% winrate on all matchups. Objectively, each matchup requires mastery of different tactics (at least that), so it would make sense.
i dont think so honestly. 2v2 matchmaking is nice, but its not a big concern for the majority. And ppl tend to stick to the most populated server, which clearly is still bnet. I think major problems with bnet, too much hackers, to much bugs/glitches/downtime will be the biggest drive for switching to a third party server, also possible is that SB really outshines Bnet. That would take more than 2v2 matchmaking tho.
On March 21 2021 22:04 niteReloaded wrote: p.s. One idea I've had for a long time, about matchmaking: I don't know how it currently works, but have you considered having separate MMRs for each matchup? For example, my TvP could be above average, my TvT can suck ass. Without separate MMRs, this would lead to me losing a lot of matchmade TvT and winning a lot of TvPs. With separate MMRs, it's possible to achieve close to 50% winrate on all matchups. Objectively, each matchup requires mastery of different tactics (at least that), so it would make sense.
This would increase the complexity and cost of finding matches for people greatly, as you would effectively have to enter them into the queue once for each matchup they'd possibly play. Also makes it really hard to come up with a rank for them as far as the ladder goes. So no, this will probably not happen
On March 21 2021 03:38 PVJ wrote: Coming from Java & python background, I started learning Rust, and would like to try & contribute. I myself work w open source so I dont believe Im entitled to anything. I will try to check the list of issues myself in earnest but I did a quick glance with this default label https://github.com/ShieldBattery/ShieldBattery/issues?q=is:open is:issue label:"good first contribution" and only found older issues. In case you also think its benefitial to spend your time on admin work like this, can you label any server-side issues as good 1st contribs?
Thank you so much for your work on this. I have been following it on and off for the past 7-8 years! I hope it will be at least as much in the future.
I will try to sort through issues/file things we know about but haven't and add some more of these this week. I'll note, though, that our server is written in JavaScript/TypeScript, so it may not be what you're looking for if you're interested in Rust. Our Rust stuff is all things that run in the game and is pretty hard to get started with (requires a lot of knowledge of the game internals, reversing, etc.) =/
What I'm most looking forward to is a streamlined friend feature. No more having to switch gateways to play BGH MMR bot and play West with my friends/higher volume of pub games.
On March 22 2021 11:11 Jealous wrote: What I'm most looking forward to is a streamlined friend feature. No more having to switch gateways to play BGH MMR bot and play West with my friends/higher volume of pub games.
ya the best way SB can separate itself from Bnet (other than having a better matchmaking system) is by increasing the player bases social experience/QoL, that's where Blizz always comes short
Happy to announce that as of today, our matchmaking system will be available during the week as well, instead of just on weekends!
We're going to try to keep to the same sort of release schedule (roughly Thursday or Friday each week), but matchmaking will be available at all non-maintenance times.
- installation got blocked, on someting called .7z - interface is awesome, everything flows really great! nice logo too - match "failed to load" for some unknow reason - so many "security checkpoints", do to even the encaging of the apps through internet (in anything nowadays) , might be worth into getting verified, i know this project since long time, but a newcomer might get discouraged from even downloading
i' m on windows 10 pro, edge (assuming the browser doesn' t even matter since its a program)
bottom line i don' t get why the game failed to load, was supposed to be a TvZ on Eclipse
Hope this helps and thanks for all the effort put into this, and launching the beta for all!
On March 24 2021 02:36 pebble444 wrote: okay, Christmas has come early this year;
some things to report:
- installation got blocked, on someting called .7z - interface is awesome, everything flows really great! nice logo too - match "failed to load" for some unknow reason - so many "security checkpoints", do to even the encaging of the apps through internet (in anything nowadays) , might be worth into getting verified, i know this project since long time, but a newcomer might get discouraged from even downloading
i' m on windows 10 pro, edge (assuming the browser doesn' t even matter since its a program)
bottom line i don' t get why the game failed to load, was supposed to be a TvZ on Eclipse
Hope this helps and thanks for all the effort put into this, and launching the beta for all!
- .7z is a zip file, it's what contains the installer/application content
- If you fail to load into a game, it'd be helpful if you can send us your log files (right click the system tray icon and hit "Open Logs Folder" and then send us the stuff in there. Easiest way is probably through our Discord but you can also PM me on here if you have somewhere to upload them to (pastebin, etc. is fine)
- Security stuff we can't really do much about. All our stuff is already signed, it just takes time + a certain number of installs before Chrome and Windows stop marking it as suspicious. If you have other antivirus software that is causing problems with it, reporting it as a false positive would be helpful.
Seeing a working example of hooking SC:R into a private server, other servers like iCCup may pick up the technique as well. An era of private servers may revive if not being shut down by officials. Persisting SB as 100% non-profit may secure it for community.
If we continue on at the usual pace, I think we should hit 1000 games played this weekend. Thanks to everyone for continuing to use it, it's been great to see all the activity on the ladder in the past week!
Started messing around with 3dpaint for a project i' m doing; i really felt like doing something different than pictures of humans, so i took the logo of shield battery and doubled it, it' s one over another but "crossed" if you will; found it interesting that it really looks like a wheel this way, like if you take it in the program and spin it, it really gives that moving/momentum effect. Around it is a human iris i found on the net, and of course, the swarm;
On April 10 2021 01:03 iCCup.Face wrote: I hope you find the time and resources to add the 2v2 ladder. I wish to help you and ur staff.
Yes, 2v2 ladder is very high on our priority list. We're currently laying the groundwork necessary for the team matchmaking (e.g. a party system), so we should have *some* version of a team ladder relatively soon!
Started messing around with 3dpaint for a project i' m doing; i really felt like doing something different than pictures of humans, so i took the logo of shield battery and doubled it, it' s one over another but "crossed" if you will; found it interesting that it really looks like a wheel this way, like if you take it in the program and spin it, it really gives that moving/momentum effect. Around it is a human iris i found on the net, and of course, the swarm;
Would appreciate anyone with older graphics cards (especially integrated Intel cards) trying out our Fullscreen changes and telling us if they see any new problems.
On May 03 2021 00:42 PfourOne wrote: I tried out SB yesterday and really enjoyed it. Thank you for the work you've done in your free time without being paid anything that you've put into this! Looking forward to see what it develops into... I am chobo but still trying my best xD
Well said!
(Nuked post has been slightly edited for grammar and clarity.)
Looks great! Would you consider adding additional hotkey accessibility? At some point, remastered started saving your hotkeys in a giant json. My friends, who want to try out the game, are intimidated by the default hotkeys, the normal process of changing hotkeys, and trying to copy-paste into the json. Would be nice to be able to just send them a link to download. Even better if grid is a default option. That's what most of them use in other games.
On May 05 2021 01:16 Poppinfreshzero wrote: Looks great! Would you consider adding additional hotkey accessibility? At some point, remastered started saving your hotkeys in a giant json. My friends, who want to try out the game, are intimidated by the default hotkeys, the normal process of changing hotkeys, and trying to copy-paste into the json. Would be nice to be able to just send them a link to download. Even better if grid is a default option. That's what most of them use in other games.
Yeah, when we add a hotkey editor in our client, it will likely also include presets and/or an easier way of sharing configurations. Definitely Blizzard's system is not really ideal
Grid as "default" is a pretty horrible approach, though I doubt anyone in SB was considering it. Having multiple presets and a configuration options is basically ideal 👌
What about implementing a toggle for various types of common modifications used by progamers outside of standard vs. grid? For example, "ZerO's Muta Micro" with patrol on q, "Pro Nexus" with Probes on w, etc.
On May 05 2021 08:39 Jealous wrote: Grid as "default" is a pretty horrible approach, though I doubt anyone in SB was considering it. Having multiple presets and a configuration options is basically ideal 👌
What about implementing a toggle for various types of common modifications used by progamers outside of standard vs. grid? For example, "ZerO's Muta Micro" with patrol on q, "Pro Nexus" with Probes on w, etc.
Yes, we're definitely not considering switching the defaults, certainly not to something as radically different as grid, but I do think having setups from various pros + well known players, as well as things people consider to be somewhat "standard" setups (grid, etc.) would make it a lot easier for people new to the game to get started in a "reasonable" way. As it is now, the game throws you in and is like, "change whatever you like!" But for someone without a lot of familiarity with what the game demands, that's a pretty overwhelming amount of choice.
Likely this would take the form of being able to select between different named presets that are built-in, as well as being able to save/restore/link your own presets.
As with any project like this, SB has to be significantly better than battle.net to succeed. So if it not fully operational or offering same or limited functionality comparing to BN it will not even pick up.
On May 07 2021 03:18 Cele wrote: whoever is constantly creating new accounts to smurf here is certainly very determined :D
It's Tappo the deranged Blizzard shill troll. It's best to not even acknowledge their existence. Let that pathetic loser shout into the void, making dozens of accounts.
I think you are missing the point, random person that keeps making new accounts to trash this thread. SB isn't trying to overtake the ladder or steal you away. What SB offers is a path forward for a 22-year old game, when Blizzard has proven uninterested in improving the game since remastered was launched. We were promised many new and exciting changes, many of which did not arrive, and SB is a way to continue improving SC:R into the future when Blizzard finally abandons it completely. The SB project started before anyone knew about SC:R, so it was originally a way to modernize 1.16.1 but has now shifted focus as a recovery operation for SC:R's inevitable abandonment.
Where to start? Bnet hasn't been improved on in years and we're getting Chinese messages in-game now.
Simply put, BW has no future on bnet. It doesn't provide anything of value to the game, if anything it's holding it back. You need a proper client to support the game in order to fully take advantage of everything it has to offer. The infrastructure (client) should be there to support the game and allow it to flourish.
That's how you bring people in, BW has more to offer than just 1v1 ladder. Build a proper client that allows people to tap into the various aspects that the game has to offer and let the game do the rest. That's how you'll grow the scene and hopefully allow it to become self-sustainable (this is the endgame goal). Self-sustainability is impossible to achieve without a proper infrastructure in place though.
Where to start? Bnet hasn't been improved on in years and we're getting Chinese messages in-game now.
Simply put, BW has no future on bnet. It doesn't provide anything of value to the game, if anything it's holding it back. You need a proper client to support the game in order to fully take advantage of everything it has to offer. The infrastructure (client) should be there to support and allow the game the flourish.
Keep in mind: There are currently 25000 on the korean server. How are they playing the game?
Lack of option, give ppl options and let them make their own decisions. People play BW because of the game, that's the foundation. They don't play BW because it's on bnet, they have to because there's no alternative.
Eventually bnet will go downhill due to lack of support from Blizzard imo. It takes time/money/effort to maintain servers and i don't see them wanting to do that long term.
On top of that bnet lacks a lot of essential features like team ladder, global friends list, proper ranked chat channels etc. I could go on for days here, these are all discussions that i've had with the SCR dev team. I made several easy to implement suggestions to them that would have greatly improved our QoL on bnet but it fell on deaf ears.
They were willing to accept the tens of hours i put into giving them feedback on various bugs in the early SCR beta days (this is pretty much the main thing they've done in the past 4 years, fix self-created bugs) but when it came to actually improving the game they weren't willing to do much more (and like i said these weren't hard things to do, i factored in the size of the team when making my suggestions, these were bare minimum suggestions). There's so much more that could be done. Hell, even the global latency is still terrible, the game's been out for 4 years now.
I'll give them credit for the graphics, that was a homerun. If that wasn't done well it would have destroyed the game. Everything else was executed poorly to mediocrely (hotkeys and obs mode were also good.. but we're not re-inventing the wheel here). I'm sure there's a lot of reasons for that but to me those are just excuses, it's on them to get the job done. This game is still unfinished.
The bottom line is this, the people who actually watch and play this game understand that there's nothing like it. The product speaks for itself. Our objective should be to figure out how to share what we've experienced with others, and for that the client needs to streamlined for modern day use (which bnet isn't). Give the game the infrastructure that it deserves and let the chips fall where they may, if it deserves to grow it'll do so organically. But don't hold it back, that's what Blizzard is doing through incompetency.
Give it the infrastructure that it deserves and let the chips fall where they may, if the game deserves to grow it'll do so organically. But don't hold it back, that's what Blizzard is doing through incompetency.
Don't know why you're taking the bait from that troll. (who the hell does that anyway? Why is that guy spawning accounts just to shill Blizzard's passive killing of BW?).
The above statement is completely true though, Blizzard is completely strangling this game to its early death.
On June 10 2021 03:51 MineraIs wrote: ^ as you say that tons of people playing ladder or custom games. Doesn't seem like bnet is dead to me?
People "playing" the game has nothing to do with the current situation of battle.net and the maintenance that Blizzard has done for SC:R in the last 4-5 years.
A game being barely playable in multiplayer is not exactly some utopia that anyone attains to in this day and age.
Take any game that has multiplayer and is still relatively active (BW counts) and see if it has the same problems that BW has had in these years. There's only one, and that's Warcraft 3, coming from the same aforementioned company.
Sustaining a playerbase after all this time is a testimony to the quality of the actual game, not the bottom of the barrel pathetic effort Blizzard has put into maintaining and stabilizing this game and its infrastructure.
On June 10 2021 03:51 MineraIs wrote: ^ as you say that tons of people playing ladder or custom games. Doesn't seem like bnet is dead to me?
People "playing" the game has nothing to do with the current situation of battle.net and the maintenance that Blizzard has done for SC:R in the last 4-5 years.
A game being barely playable in multiplayer is not exactly some utopia that anyone attains to in this day and age.
Take any game that has multiplayer and is still relatively active (BW counts) and see if it has the same problems that BW has had in these years. There's only one, and that's Warcraft 3, coming from the same aforementioned company.
Sustaining a playerbase after all this time is a testimony to the quality of the actual game, not the bottom of the barrel pathetic effort Blizzard has put into maintaining and stabilizing this game and its infrastructure.
Oh, please. I have had very few problems over time since SC:R with game creation and joining. Outages of the League of Legends queue, for example, felt way more frequent (but shorter lived, tbf) when I actively played that in the past.
All in all I wouldn't claim it to be as shit and doomed as some people here try to make it out to be. The most negative part is the missing support to make sure broken things get fixed faster.
On June 10 2021 03:51 MineraIs wrote: ^ as you say that tons of people playing ladder or custom games. Doesn't seem like bnet is dead to me?
People "playing" the game has nothing to do with the current situation of battle.net and the maintenance that Blizzard has done for SC:R in the last 4-5 years.
A game being barely playable in multiplayer is not exactly some utopia that anyone attains to in this day and age.
Take any game that has multiplayer and is still relatively active (BW counts) and see if it has the same problems that BW has had in these years. There's only one, and that's Warcraft 3, coming from the same aforementioned company.
Sustaining a playerbase after all this time is a testimony to the quality of the actual game, not the bottom of the barrel pathetic effort Blizzard has put into maintaining and stabilizing this game and its infrastructure.
The most negative part is the missing support to make sure broken things get fixed faster.
Some things have never been fixed. It's been 5 years. That's the point.
Plus everything gets slower and slower, and buggier with every patch.
live games and reps get de-sync'd yet everything is fine, ok
Like i said, people can make their own decisions and play wherever they want.. but for that they need options. Whatever happens after that is up to them, the client will speak for itself.
Blizzard just re-pushed a patch this week that completely broke LAN play, made the game unlaunchable for a sizeable portion of the population, broke the commonly used map editor, broke major chat and user functionality, added an annoying Chinese nag message for everyone. And this was the *second* time they pushed this patch, after they pushed it for a full day before and all of the same problems were there.
Despite people complaining immediately, tons of people reaching out on their forums and social media, etc. it took them 16 hours to roll it back again. They've still never posted an announcement about what the goal of the update was, never posted an announcement that they even released the update. The only reply on the situation was some lowly forum support person saying they "poked the devs" to get them to roll it back.
The thing that really needs to be understood here is that what we have now is not a steady-state. Even if it feels sufficient for however you want to play, it's not sufficient for building a larger community, for serving the sorts of events and competition that BW needs to thrive, for expanding the reach of the game. And more than that, Blizzard is an *active threat* to the longevity of the game. How long do we have until they push a patch like this last one and they never roll it back?
On June 10 2021 06:03 tec27 wrote: Blizzard just re-pushed a patch this week that completely broke LAN play, made the game unlaunchable for a sizeable portion of the population, broke the commonly used map editor, broke major chat and user functionality, added an annoying Chinese nag message for everyone. And this was the *second* time they pushed this patch, after they pushed it for a full day before and all of the same problems were there.
Despite people complaining immediately, tons of people reaching out on their forums and social media, etc. it took them 16 hours to roll it back again. They've still never posted an announcement about what the goal of the update was, never posted an announcement that they even released the update. The only reply on the situation was some lowly forum support person saying they "poked the devs" to get them to roll it back.
The thing that really needs to be understood here is that what we have now is not a steady-state. Even if it feels sufficient for however you want to play, it's not sufficient for building a larger community, for serving the sorts of events and competition that BW needs to thrive, for expanding the reach of the game. And more than that, Blizzard is an *active threat* to the longevity of the game. How long do we have until they push a patch like this last one and they never roll it back?
You're an experienced programmer so you can understand where all those things you mentioned are most probably coming from:
- they ditched the people that actually knew the codebase (to some extent) from the initial launch (the Classic Games Team) - they hired some lowly soul into an entry level paying job to do maintenance for the game, someone with little experience and certainly very little knowledge over an archaic codebase like that of BW. - whoever is now over-seeing the game from a dev perspective is probably just bombarded with requests like: we have to do this for the Chinese version of the game until X because of bla/bla regulations
Then that person goes into the making whatever change is necessary with very little QA, pushes the patch and surprise, surprise, they break 5 other parts of the game because of it.
It's a classic scenario that happens in every shop with 1/10000000 financial power of Blizzard.
It's pure negligence and incompetence and they should be ashamed of this crap and no reasons for fans of the game or people that have bought the product to not castigate them for it.
On June 10 2021 06:03 tec27 wrote: Blizzard just re-pushed a patch this week that completely broke LAN play, made the game unlaunchable for a sizeable portion of the population, broke the commonly used map editor, broke major chat and user functionality, added an annoying Chinese nag message for everyone. And this was the *second* time they pushed this patch, after they pushed it for a full day before and all of the same problems were there.
Despite people complaining immediately, tons of people reaching out on their forums and social media, etc. it took them 16 hours to roll it back again. They've still never posted an announcement about what the goal of the update was, never posted an announcement that they even released the update. The only reply on the situation was some lowly forum support person saying they "poked the devs" to get them to roll it back.
The thing that really needs to be understood here is that what we have now is not a steady-state. Even if it feels sufficient for however you want to play, it's not sufficient for building a larger community, for serving the sorts of events and competition that BW needs to thrive, for expanding the reach of the game. And more than that, Blizzard is an *active threat* to the longevity of the game. How long do we have until they push a patch like this last one and they never roll it back?
You're an experienced programmer so you can understand where all those things you mentioned are most probably coming from:
- they ditched the people that actually knew the codebase (to some extent) from the initial launch (the Classic Games Team) - they hired some lowly soul into an entry level paying job to do maintenance for the game, someone with little experience and certainly very little knowledge over an archaic codebase like that of BW. - whoever is now over-seeing the game from a dev perspective is probably just bombarded with requests like: we have to do this for the Chinese version of the game until X because of bla/bla regulations
Then that person goes into the making whatever change is necessary with very little QA, pushes the patch and surprise, surprise, they break 5 other parts of the game because of it.
It's a classic scenario that happens in every shop with 1/10000000 financial power of Blizzard.
It's pure negligence and incompetence and they should be ashamed of this crap and no reasons for fans of the game or people that have bought the product to not castigate them for it.
yup, that's why we've been stuck in limbo for years
Do you wanna get competitive players on shield battery? host ladder season with 3k prizes for every player.koreans pros included. Do you wanna get 2v2 players on shield battery? make 2v2 ladder. Do you wanna get UMS community koreans included ? Allow UED like fish server did. You will get most of them.
If shield battery is better than remastered they will realize this and switch again.Like they did years ago to fish or iccup.
For me the best solution is We somehow as a community help to reach actual blizzard devs and try to get some tools for shield battery.So they can operate in a way like fish server did in the early of remastered before dying.That way shield battery will be integrated and mb also mix both matchmakings instead of spliting more the player base.
On June 10 2021 05:14 HUOTURZREGDs wrote: --- Nuked ---
I just want to know who this random guy is who keeps making new accounts like this to protest against SB lol.
Even if you're against SB and think it will never work, I feel like it's pretty easy to at least view the initiative as cool. People literally built something like this from the ground up with their own free time. Even if you hate it, appreciate the technology, appreciate the people, appreciate the enthusiasm people have for the game. You literally don't have to agree with it and can simply appreciate it in other ways. But to come here and basically badmouth it from multiple smurfs and start troll level counter arguments at every moment seems like a mental health problem at this point lol. See a therapist.
On June 10 2021 05:14 HUOTURZREGDs wrote: --- Nuked ---
I just want to know who this random guy is who keeps making new accounts like this to protest against SB lol.
Even if you're against SB and think it will never work, I feel like it's pretty easy to at least view the initiative as cool. People literally built something like this from the ground up with their own free time. Even if you hate it, appreciate the technology, appreciate the people, appreciate the enthusiasm people have for the game. You literally don't have to agree with it and can simply appreciate it in other ways. But to come here and basically badmouth it from multiple smurfs and start troll level counter arguments at every moment seems like a mental health problem at this point lol. See a therapist.
I think it might either be a kid with too much on his hands or someone that is fanboy-ing Blizzard to the absolute extreme and tries to protect their image in whichever way they can. The latter is hard to believe it actually exists out there in the real world.
He must have burnt through at least 200 accounts/emails by now.
I hope at least he has this automated somehow. For his own sanity.
You just outed yourself as a snotty kid that doesn't understand much of anything including where "e-sports" is actually coming from out there in the real world, along with other things.
Spare everyone the time and just stop posting your idiotic rants. Find something useful to do with your time.
On June 10 2021 05:14 HUOTURZREGDs wrote: --- Nuked ---
I just want to know who this random guy is who keeps making new accounts like this to protest against SB lol.
Even if you're against SB and think it will never work, I feel like it's pretty easy to at least view the initiative as cool. People literally built something like this from the ground up with their own free time. Even if you hate it, appreciate the technology, appreciate the people, appreciate the enthusiasm people have for the game. You literally don't have to agree with it and can simply appreciate it in other ways. But to come here and basically badmouth it from multiple smurfs and start troll level counter arguments at every moment seems like a mental health problem at this point lol. See a therapist.
I think it might either be a kid with too much on his hands or someone that is fanboy-ing Blizzard to the absolute extreme and tries to protect their image in whichever way they can. The latter is hard to believe it actually exists out there in the real world.
He must have burnt through at least 200 accounts/emails by now.
I hope at least he has this automated somehow. For his own sanity.
Proof me wrong, what have you guys done in the last 10(?) years besides bitching about Blizzard and having russians host tournaments for the same 5 "Progamer". Have you had a single offline tournament? Not counting the one Blizzard hosted, of course. Where is your great awesome community? Are they just typing:"BWFTW FTW4EVER!!!" without actually playing the game?
Isnt this project just the perfect mirror of how people dont actually support the project?
I'm not gonna prove you wrong, however u should check the history yourself to see you are the one being wrong here
On June 10 2021 03:51 MineraIs wrote: ^ as you say that tons of people playing ladder or custom games. Doesn't seem like bnet is dead to me?
People "playing" the game has nothing to do with the current situation of battle.net and the maintenance that Blizzard has done for SC:R in the last 4-5 years.
A game being barely playable in multiplayer is not exactly some utopia that anyone attains to in this day and age.
Take any game that has multiplayer and is still relatively active (BW counts) and see if it has the same problems that BW has had in these years. There's only one, and that's Warcraft 3, coming from the same aforementioned company.
Sustaining a playerbase after all this time is a testimony to the quality of the actual game, not the bottom of the barrel pathetic effort Blizzard has put into maintaining and stabilizing this game and its infrastructure.
Oh, please. I have had very few problems over time since SC:R with game creation and joining. Outages of the League of Legends queue, for example, felt way more frequent (but shorter lived, tbf) when I actively played that in the past.
All in all I wouldn't claim it to be as shit and doomed as some people here try to make it out to be. The most negative part is the missing support to make sure broken things get fixed faster.
it hasn't even been 20 days yet, how's bnet looking to you now?
That goddamn blizzard patch is back again, auto scrolling is fucked, i get the very distracting chinese message, and my friend list is useless as i dont see wether people are ingame (and if so i cant join through the friendlist...) Sigh... SB s fun but not enough folks. I d like it integrated if possible. Also a 2v2 ladder may be with bwcl maps? I m open to discuss the 2v2 maps btw for next bwcl season to coordinate
On June 30 2021 06:15 LaStScan wrote: I played couple games on SB, will there be a feature adding announcer voicepack just like skins feature?
Yeah, that should be a pretty easy thing to add, I'll look into it! (For now I think it should take whatever was last set when you launched from the Blizzard launcher)
The side-by-side comparison to Blizzard's response speaks for itself. Keep up the great work.
Did blizzard have a response or is the point that there was none?
Nice stuff!
Blizzard has not responded, the last post from anyone affiliated with them (although I don't think paid?) was to say they'd poke someone to roll back the last bad patch, before subsequently rolling out a new version of the patch, which is broken in the same ways. That's the place we're at now, still no indication that they have anyone actively working on the game that is interested in communicating with the community in the least, or that they're even aware of things like this exploit.
They seemed like sensible defaults to us looking at what other, similar applications do. The former can easily be changed in our settings, and we're lacking setting for the latter, but hopefully we'll add it soon ^^.
On June 29 2021 08:00 tec27 wrote: We've just pushed a new update that includes a fix for the flying SCV exploit.
Out of curiosity, what was the cause and what was the fix? Interested in how the code works because apparently executing this bug causes the gamma settings to reset -- how is that possible?
On June 29 2021 08:00 tec27 wrote: We've just pushed a new update that includes a fix for the flying SCV exploit.
Out of curiosity, what was the cause and what was the fix? Interested in how the code works because apparently executing this bug causes the gamma settings to reset -- how is that possible?
I don't know of any relation to gamma settings with this bug or why that would occur.
The basic idea behind most of the recent things that have been exploited in SC:R is that a number of things you'd expect to be automatic occurrences because of game state are actually implemented as orders. So you'd probably expect that units e.g. die as a consequence of being 0 health, but it turns out there is actually an order for that, similar to a move order or a stop order, etc. There is a limit on the number of orders you can queue up at once, and a limit on the number of orders you can queue per turn, and if you fill up that buffer, there are cases where these other, "system" orders can no longer be queued.
A number of mineral hack exploits worked this way, effectively preventing things from dying while gaining minerals from (what should have been) their death. Blizzard attempted to fix some of these things at some point in SC:R's history, but didn't do a great job at it. This particular exploit fills the unit's order buffer with stop commands so that the game can't give the SCV an order to return to normal collision detection, and thus it floats forever (unless the game decides that order needs to be delivered again, e.g. because it starts and stops building something again).
Our fix is pretty simple, it increases the size of the order buffer by a bit, but only allows those extra slots to be used for system orders. This ensures these important actions can always be delivered and won't be skipped over.
So I don't have any experience with SB but have heard great things about it from others and the website. I'd like to ask some people here a question. Please forgive my ignorance. I did ask a few players this question but they weren't able to provide much insight. I glanced at previous posts but didn't really find an answer. Perhaps I missed it. If so, sorry!
So basically we do live showmatches on battle net and I was thinking of doing them on shield battery instead in order to decrease latency issues. For example, when Dewalt or Dandy play a Korean and I observe, there is some lag. Would SB server significantly decrease lag for us? I think we typically set the turn rate to 14 or 16 on Battle net.
I don't think BSL or other major events have ever hosted any of their streamed live games on SB, so if the answer to the above question is 'yes', I wonder why others haven't tried to use it?
My experience is I get something like 4 TR better on SB than bnet. If I can do tr16 with a player on bnet, tr20 is smooth on SB. I've also had TR24 with NA on SB - I've never had that on bnet.
I dunno why others haven't hosted games there yet, but I'd be delightfully supportive if you decided to do it! As a player, I definitely prefer playing SB over bnet.
On July 11 2021 08:41 Liquid`Drone wrote: My experience is I get something like 4 TR better on SB than bnet. If I can do tr16 with a player on bnet, tr20 is smooth on SB. I've also had TR24 with NA on SB - I've never had that on bnet.
I dunno why others haven't hosted games there yet, but I'd be delightfully supportive if you decided to do it! As a player, I definitely prefer playing SB over bnet.
this, on average it's about ~4 TR better for me
vs kors i get TR16 high on bnet (best case) and the games are slightly laggy, on SB i get TR16 low vs kors without any stutter lag
my SB experience so far has been purely 1v1 games tho, i dunno how the TR is with 3+ international players in the same game
I imagine it's mostly due to the lack of built-in observer mode (this is the next thing on my todo list, so, hopefully this will not be a problem soon!).
As to whether your experience would be improved, it's hard to say. A lot of people anecdotally report better turnrates/latency on SB, and I do think our servers likely help, but we don't have hard data on that and most of the improvements to netcode are still in planning stages and haven't been implemented yet.
The downsides of SB currently (which will either be fixed or become obsolete soon):
There's still a bunch more work to do on these in the future, but hopefully this is a good start
One thing I'd be interested to hear feedback on is how we should handle stats for games where people play Random. Bnet currently handles these by including those stats in whatever race was assigned. Is that what you all prefer, or would you like to have a separate stat line specifically for Random here?
Guys, how does it works? You are able to edit SC:BW remaster codes or it is going to be a separate client for shieldbattery so there would be separately SC:BW remaster and SC:BW remaster shieldbattery?
On July 11 2021 16:06 metodman111 wrote: Guys, how does it works? You are able to edit SC:BW remaster codes or it is going to be a separate client for shieldbattery so there would be separately SC:BW remaster and SC:BW remaster shieldbattery?
Our client acts sort of like the launchers of previous generations of servers. It launches the normal game, and is able to modify it and communicate with it to perform as needed, but it's still all based on the "standard" Remastered client.
On July 11 2021 16:06 metodman111 wrote: Guys, how does it works? You are able to edit SC:BW remaster codes or it is going to be a separate client for shieldbattery so there would be separately SC:BW remaster and SC:BW remaster shieldbattery?
Our client acts sort of like the launchers of previous generations of servers. It launches the normal game, and is able to modify it and communicate with it to perform as needed, but it's still all based on the "standard" Remastered client.
Any performance penalties from doing it this way? Although I imagine it's pretty much the only way.
Given the overall work on this game from ex-Blizz, I would assume their optimizations are pretty much non-existent at this point.
tec27, be great if you could provide a stream graphic for me and other streamers to display during our broadcast events, as a way to further promote SB. Just an idea. If that's something you've already done or are interested in doing, please let me know. I'd need a 1920 1080 resolution graphic. Ideally, the graphic would contain all the useful bits of information about SB that you deem necessary to include. My discord is also oxtQ#7362
Not SB related but I'm asking here cause I think you guys know better. Any fucking idea why I can't chat someone after game on Remastered? Whenever I wanna type someone I lost on ladder it says "User is not logged" which is clearly a lie. Is it really time to migrate to SB? This coding is ridicilously bad.
tec this is more a personal request but do you have any ability to edit the actual in game overlays? Having the observer overlay on replays would make things a hell of a lot better for usability (i.e. unit bar in the bottom right and playback bar in the middle or something as it's always hidden).
On July 12 2021 19:28 outscar wrote: Not SB related but I'm asking here cause I think you guys know better. Any fucking idea why I can't chat someone after game on Remastered? Whenever I wanna type someone I lost on ladder it says "User is not logged" which is clearly a lie. Is it really time to migrate to SB? This coding is ridicilously bad.
you can only write to people on the same server. the ladder person was from a different server.
On July 12 2021 19:28 outscar wrote: Not SB related but I'm asking here cause I think you guys know better. Any fucking idea why I can't chat someone after game on Remastered? Whenever I wanna type someone I lost on ladder it says "User is not logged" which is clearly a lie. Is it really time to migrate to SB? This coding is ridicilously bad.
you can only write to people on the same server. the ladder person was from a different server.
Makes sense. Is there a way to type him, let's say if I put server name after his name? F.e. Nickname-USWest something like that. This system is honestly garbage.
On July 12 2021 14:58 ox.tQ wrote: tec27, be great if you could provide a stream graphic for me and other streamers to display during our broadcast events, as a way to further promote SB. Just an idea. If that's something you've already done or are interested in doing, please let me know. I'd need a 1920 1080 resolution graphic. Ideally, the graphic would contain all the useful bits of information about SB that you deem necessary to include. My discord is also oxtQ#7362
sure thing, I'll work on something!
On July 12 2021 20:59 Qikz wrote: tec this is more a personal request but do you have any ability to edit the actual in game overlays? Having the observer overlay on replays would make things a hell of a lot better for usability (i.e. unit bar in the bottom right and playback bar in the middle or something as it's always hidden).
These sorts of things are definitely possible, but it's not necessarily a simple task at this point, and not really a high priority for us atm. So something like that could/probably will happen in the future, but no idea when.
We're pretty close on observer mode as well, but it needs a few fixes that didn't quite make it in for this update. Should be out in the near future though!
I'd like to make a suggestion. Apologies if it comes off as unsolicited, silly and/or unimportant.
Basically it has to do with making the server more accessible and appealing to Latin Americans, given the great number of players (and fans/viewers) from that region of the world. It would help increase the player base of the server if that's something important. (I don't think people from outside of South America would complain about attracting them since one of the main contributions of the server is decreased latency between players from different regions?) In any event, if that seems like a reasonable thing to do, then perhaps a Spanish translated version of the site would help in this regard? Or promotional graphics (in Spanish) to raise awareness around SB, which some of the famous Spanish casters or streamers could help promote (such as Jan, Deathfate or popular players such as Terror and Dandy). Of course, a promotional graphic in English would be great too, especially if popular streamers who have substantial audiences like Artosis, Tasteless, Falcoln Paladin, BSL and others could use to help spread the word.
the finish line (or starting tbh) is near, you're doing gods work boys, much appreciated <3
On August 14 2021 13:52 TeamThinkQuick wrote: I'd like to make a suggestion. Apologies if it comes off as unsolicited, silly and/or unimportant.
Basically it has to do with making the server more accessible and appealing to Latin Americans, given the great number of players (and fans/viewers) from that region of the world. It would help increase the player base of the server if that's something important. (I don't think people from outside of South America would complain about attracting them since one of the main contributions of the server is decreased latency between players from different regions?) In any event, if that seems like a reasonable thing to do, then perhaps a Spanish translated version of the site would help in this regard? Or promotional graphics (in Spanish) to raise awareness around SB, which some of the famous Spanish casters or streamers could help promote (such as Jan, Deathfate or popular players such as Terror and Dandy). Of course, a promotional graphic in English would be great too, especially if popular streamers who have substantial audiences like Artosis, Tasteless, Falcoln Paladin, BSL and others could use to help spread the word.
will you add an option for users to turn on/off the fog of war?
let's worry about about making the client operational and getting ranked matchmaking (team matchmaking is left which is a focal point, we need to retire poor redpepperflake from his AT/RT duties) going before thinking about luxury updates, there's only a handful of people working on this
that said, the fog of war suggestion is a good one because it's related to competitve play, they know about it
Good job, but there is one very important change to be made to attract many people to SB: static turn rate for custom games. Only because of it i'm not getting people to test out Shield Battery
On August 14 2021 13:52 TeamThinkQuick wrote: I'd like to make a suggestion. Apologies if it comes off as unsolicited, silly and/or unimportant.
Basically it has to do with making the server more accessible and appealing to Latin Americans, given the great number of players (and fans/viewers) from that region of the world. It would help increase the player base of the server if that's something important. (I don't think people from outside of South America would complain about attracting them since one of the main contributions of the server is decreased latency between players from different regions?) In any event, if that seems like a reasonable thing to do, then perhaps a Spanish translated version of the site would help in this regard? Or promotional graphics (in Spanish) to raise awareness around SB, which some of the famous Spanish casters or streamers could help promote (such as Jan, Deathfate or popular players such as Terror and Dandy). Of course, a promotional graphic in English would be great too, especially if popular streamers who have substantial audiences like Artosis, Tasteless, Falcoln Paladin, BSL and others could use to help spread the word.
Definitely not silly or unimportant! Localized versions of the site/client are definitely something we want to add in the future (ideally with an easy way for community members to help contribute translations, since it's a lot of languages to potentially support), but this is probably a bit behind the other main things we're working on atm. In short, that's team matchmaking, improved netcode, and enough chat management capabilities for SB to be viable for tournaments to run on. After those things get in, though, we'll definitely be looking at how we can expand to other communities we're not currently reaching.
On August 14 2021 16:39 Bonyth wrote: Good job, but there is one very important change to be made to attract many people to SB: static turn rate for custom games. Only because of it i'm not getting people to test out Shield Battery
We've been looking at improving the netcode more recently, and while we definitely *could* add static turn rate settings to custom games, I'm hesitant to put in the work to do so at this point in time. Firstly, because I think with a few changes we could make TR24 quite viable for a much larger part of the population. Secondly, we'd like to revamp how turnrate works entirely, so that the game always operates at TR24 but has a configurable turn buffer size. Both of these changes potentially involve revamping/improving the dynamic turnrate algorithm.
So basically, we can either spend time adding support for this setting, or we can spend time on the improvements that make it unnecessary and are way better overall.
will you add an option for users to turn on/off the fog of war?
Maybe eventually, but at the moment I think it's a defining feature and there's been plenty of people who logged on thinking they'd hate it who have really liked it. I know you complained before that you felt it was too blue (and there is an increased blue component in the unexplored fog, so this could be something we adjust). Is the reason you want to be able to turn it off because of that, or because of something else?
Just installed the update, gonna try out the features. I really hope SB can attract more players, the only thing I'm missing is being able to consistently find a ladder match... I don't know how many foreign streamers have played around with ShieldBattery on stream but I imagine just having someone like Artosis mention it live would bring more attention towards it.
Just installed the update, gonna try out the features. I really hope SB can attract more players, the only thing I'm missing is being able to consistently find a ladder match... I don't know how many foreign streamers have played around with ShieldBattery on stream but I imagine just having someone like Artosis mention it live would bring more attention towards it.
Keep up the good work guys.
Matchmaking ladder 2v2 would inflate the number of users even for 1on1 imo
Just installed the update, gonna try out the features. I really hope SB can attract more players, the only thing I'm missing is being able to consistently find a ladder match... I don't know how many foreign streamers have played around with ShieldBattery on stream but I imagine just having someone like Artosis mention it live would bring more attention towards it.
Keep up the good work guys.
Matchmaking ladder 2v2 would inflate the number of users even for 1on1 imo
For sure. So many people on Remastered are making custom 2v2 games, when 2v2 ladder gets added on SB at least these people would technically not need the Blizzard client anymore. Fingers crossed.
it' s just mind-blowing to be honest how much interest, support and dedication there is to this where it' s free people living out their passion for a community, as opposed to a multi milion euro (dollar) company as Blizzard, who has no one on their side taking care of Broodwar);
in an ideal world the people taking care of this would get a full salary and support, not only to mantain and support, but to also develop new ideas new concepts towards their dedication and Love;
On August 16 2021 05:18 pebble444 wrote: it' s just mind-blowing to be honest how much interest, support and dedication there is to this where it' s free people living out their passion for a community, as opposed to a multi milion euro (dollar) company as Blizzard, who has no one on their side taking care of Broodwar);
in an ideal world the people taking care of this would get a full salary and support, not only to mantain and support, but to also develop new ideas new concepts towards their dedication and Love;
Keep on keepin on, is all there is to say really
...
If people contribute to the project in terms of coding or financial help, these features may come along quicker.
On August 16 2021 05:18 pebble444 wrote: it' s just mind-blowing to be honest how much interest, support and dedication there is to this where it' s free people living out their passion for a community, as opposed to a multi milion euro (dollar) company as Blizzard, who has no one on their side taking care of Broodwar);
in an ideal world the people taking care of this would get a full salary and support, not only to mantain and support, but to also develop new ideas new concepts towards their dedication and Love;
Keep on keepin on, is all there is to say really
...
Because the systems are different for 1v1 and 2v2 and take time to implement. We have been working on it, we're not keeping things from you for no reason.
On August 16 2021 05:18 pebble444 wrote: it' s just mind-blowing to be honest how much interest, support and dedication there is to this where it' s free people living out their passion for a community, as opposed to a multi milion euro (dollar) company as Blizzard, who has no one on their side taking care of Broodwar);
in an ideal world the people taking care of this would get a full salary and support, not only to mantain and support, but to also develop new ideas new concepts towards their dedication and Love;
Keep on keepin on, is all there is to say really
This would be a good time to mention that if you like what is being done here and want to make sure the work on this continues for a long time to come, subscribe to tec's patreon https://www.patreon.com/tec27
New update is here! We've put a bunch of work in to making our matchmaking system faster, and making it work better when population is low, so definitely check it out if you've had trouble finding games in the past. We also swapped out our previous map selection system for a more standard veto one.
I'm quick to make the hammer go click on my tec9, as soon as you try to take mine fool it's your bedtime. Feel the blast from the chocolate bomber. Infrared aimed at your head like your name was Sarah Connor.
So when will Shieldbattery become the sentient AI we all secretly deep inside hope will initiate doomsday, soonish?
On September 03 2021 01:27 iNstiN wrote: Is this platform currently active?
The project and platform are active and still in continued development. It's not the most populous place yet, so for now you'll find scattered games unless you invite friends. That should change once we get some of the more exciting features in, but feel free to try it out and give feedback.
Like many I too look forward to shieldbattery. Any thoughts on wine https://www.winehq.org/ as a target? Perhaps it is more interesting and easier to hit than linux.
On September 03 2021 15:21 user80269 wrote: Like many I too look forward to shieldbattery. Any thoughts on wine https://www.winehq.org/ as a target? Perhaps it is more interesting and easier to hit than linux.
Does ShieldBattery work on Linux or OS X? This is not currently something we're focusing on, but we do have plans to ensure that ShieldBattery is usable via Wine.
On August 31 2021 05:47 Lorant Ham wrote: I'm quick to make the hammer go click on my tec9, as soon as you try to take mine fool it's your bedtime. Feel the blast from the chocolate bomber. Infrared aimed at your head like your name was Sarah Connor.
So when will Shieldbattery become the sentient AI we all secretly deep inside hope will initiate doomsday, soonish?
Even if it would not be classic Brood War anymore, but would it be possible that Ghosts can autocast lockdown and that you can hotkey more than 12 units in one group, or even hotkey more than one building in a group? For example, toggling between classic mode (Brood War unchanged) and convenient mode would be funny
On September 03 2021 15:21 user80269 wrote: Like many I too look forward to shieldbattery. Any thoughts on wine https://www.winehq.org/ as a target? Perhaps it is more interesting and easier to hit than linux.
Does ShieldBattery work on Linux or OS X? This is not currently something we're focusing on, but we do have plans to ensure that ShieldBattery is usable via Wine.
To expand on this a bit further. As Tec said, this is not something we can currently invest our time in, but that doesn't mean someone else can't. This is a community project after all .
On October 17 2021 18:54 AssyrianKing wrote: Just wondering, what's the difference between Shield Battery and normal Blizzard servers?
Shield Battery is run by people who care about bw. The maps are up to date and hacks are fixed.
*snip*
Well no, I don’t think this was ever claimed.
I believe, using a little bit of common sense that the common hacks afflicting Blizzard’s ladder are patched out on Shield Battery, not that SB is immune to exploits from a dedicated programmer who thinks the best use of their time is introducing wonkiness into a 20 year old game.
On October 17 2021 18:54 AssyrianKing wrote: Just wondering, what's the difference between Shield Battery and normal Blizzard servers?
Shield Battery is run by people who care about bw. The maps are up to date and hacks are fixed.
But are they essentially different servers? Or just a launcher that has extra features?
ShieldBattery is its own server with a completely separate/original implementation of the non-gameplay features (chat, matchmaking, etc.), plus some enhancements to the gameplay side of things (transparent starting fog of war, fixes for exploits, etc.)
On October 22 2021 00:01 ajmbek wrote: For me this just does not work
Can you clarify a bit further what problem exactly are you seeing? In case the game won't start, can you please send us your log files (easiest to do by joining our Discord). You can access the log files by right-clicking the icon in the system tray:
Big news! Some of you may know that I said we'd launch 2v2 matchmaking by the end of the year, and we're getting pretty close to December 31st so... we can finally give you a date!
2v2 Matchmaking will launch on ShieldBattery on Thursday, Dec 16 5:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00).
We'll get the update pushed before then, so if you log in before that time, you can start queueing as soon as the time hits.
We've also picked our initial map pool, seen below. This is a first pass, attempting to balance classic 2v2 maps with some additional newer picks, and we'll definitely be iterating on these choices in the future.
I've tried to answer (what I think will be) the common questions below, but if you have any others feel free to ask!
FAQs
Can I queue with a pre-arranged team?
Yes, ShieldBattery will support finding a partner through matchmaking, as well as queuing as a party (parties are a new feature added in this update!). Both ways queue you into the same pool of players, so it's still possible to play against a party as a solo player, or vice versa (but we do attempt to account for advantages a party may have).
Is there a ladder for 2v2?
Yes, the ladder system will work similarly to the 1v1 system. Each player will have their own individual rating, and ratings will be adjusted individually at the end of each match. We've attempted to prevent common problems with such a system, such as queueing with much lower-rated players to get easier games and boost your rank, but we'll need to collect some real data to see how well that's working. So, bear with us!
It's possible in the future that we can also provide team-based rankings for players that play together frequently, depending on what people prefer.
How does map selection work?
Map selection will work similarly to 1v1: we have a pool of 7 maps, and you have 3 vetoes. Unlike in 1v1, it's possible for the entire pool to get vetoed here, so a veto doesn't guarantee you won't ever have to play on a map, but it does decrease the likelihood.
What turn-rate will games use?
Games will use dynamic turn-rate through our custom regionally distributed servers, which is the same as our 1v1 matchmaking currently functions. This should generally be no worse than what you'd experience on Blizzard's servers, and in some cases will be better. Improving the netcode substantially is the next big piece of work we're undertaking after this launch, so stay tuned for more updates around this.
thank you so much for everything you do!! i hope shieldbattery takes off, and i hope a centralized server located in korea could help migrate the entire player base from SCR to SB. blizzard ladder has so many cheaters right now it's crippling the game. from S all the way to the bottom of F, the game is almost entirely map hackers and smurfs.
On December 03 2021 11:52 lost dedicated wrote: YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES
thank you so much for everything you do!! i hope shieldbattery takes off, and i hope a centralized server located in korea could help migrate the entire player base from SCR to SB. blizzard ladder has so many cheaters right now it's crippling the game. from S all the way to the bottom of F, the game is almost entirely map hackers and smurfs.
On October 25 2021 04:44 WombaT wrote: Damn I wish I got a chance to see some of these nuked posts, I wonder if there’s an archive somewhere
EXACTLY what I was thinking...
Also this thread has more nukes than an average NHFFA!
On December 03 2021 22:16 DiMiaN wrote: I'm always too late to see before it gets nuked
It's really not worth it. It's a disgruntled and deranged troll who is a Blizzard shill named Tappo. All he does is shit on the SB team. He doesn't deserve the attention, so just ignore him. Imagine how sad his existence must be if he registers dozens of accounts over the course of years just to grief people who actually contribute to this community
I hope you find help for your mental issues, Tappo.
@SB Team: This is cool and even if it doesn't get much recognition at first, people will come around and try it. The 2v2 community is much louder than it is actually big in numbers but its ladder potential is quite substantial.
We’re looking to organize a 2v2 qualifier tournament on SB using its rating system for the quailes like BSL uses ladder for its qualies. I’m speaking to a few people now about pooling together funds to finance prizes. If you’re interested in donating any amount, please know we will set up a matcherino for it and link that in an upcoming thread on TL.
The goal would be to encourage 2s gaming and create hype around a 2v2 league on SB with at least a first season. Quailes will probably last at least two months and then top teams (# of teams to be determined based on participation) will be placed into brackets. Only one division. Some of the bracket matches will be casted and streamed live, and definitely the semis and finals. Prizes for winning top 3 teams most likely. I’m not sure on the rules and specific format at the moment (I’ll have to consult with 2s folks to get a better idea). But that’s kinda the picture. Not looking to go crazy serious with this event idea. Just something cool and fun for the community, particularly 2s folks, to be excited about in addition to the SB 2v2 ladder system.
On December 03 2021 06:46 tec27 wrote: Big news! Some of you may know that I said we'd launch 2v2 matchmaking by the end of the year, and we're getting pretty close to December 31st so... we can finally give you a date!
2v2 Matchmaking will launch on ShieldBattery on Thursday, Dec 16 5:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00).
We'll get the update pushed before then, so if you log in before that time, you can start queueing as soon as the time hits.
We've also picked our initial map pool, seen below. This is a first pass, attempting to balance classic 2v2 maps with some additional newer picks, and we'll definitely be iterating on these choices in the future.
I've tried to answer (what I think will be) the common questions below, but if you have any others feel free to ask!
FAQs
Can I queue with a pre-arranged team?
Yes, ShieldBattery will support finding a partner through matchmaking, as well as queuing as a party (parties are a new feature added in this update!). Both ways queue you into the same pool of players, so it's still possible to play against a party as a solo player, or vice versa (but we do attempt to account for advantages a party may have).
Is there a ladder for 2v2?
Yes, the ladder system will work similarly to the 1v1 system. Each player will have their own individual rating, and ratings will be adjusted individually at the end of each match. We've attempted to prevent common problems with such a system, such as queueing with much lower-rated players to get easier games and boost your rank, but we'll need to collect some real data to see how well that's working. So, bear with us!
It's possible in the future that we can also provide team-based rankings for players that play together frequently, depending on what people prefer.
How does map selection work?
Map selection will work similarly to 1v1: we have a pool of 7 maps, and you have 3 vetoes. Unlike in 1v1, it's possible for the entire pool to get vetoed here, so a veto doesn't guarantee you won't ever have to play on a map, but it does decrease the likelihood.
What turn-rate will games use?
Games will use dynamic turn-rate through our custom regionally distributed servers, which is the same as our 1v1 matchmaking currently functions. This should generally be no worse than what you'd experience on Blizzard's servers, and in some cases will be better. Improving the netcode substantially is the next big piece of work we're undertaking after this launch, so stay tuned for more updates around this.
oh my god, merry christmas/happy holidays/ glory to the devs! Single best BW news of the year!
Wow amazing! ShieldBattery has accomplished way more than Blizzard ever did in such a short amount of time. 2v2 Matchmaking, brilliant. Now it's time to host a cash event on Shield Battery to get the popularity growing.
I will share be sharing the SB server to [WHITE] but with the low population at the moment and difficulty at times finding games, I think it will be best to host continued cash events on SB to really get it going!
just as a future idea - are there plans to maybe support shared base maps? (ie. be able to force players to spawn in a certain set of locations, similar to sc2) Is it even possible (outside UMS)?
On December 04 2021 10:39 blabber wrote: just as a future idea - are there plans to maybe support shared base maps? (ie. be able to force players to spawn in a certain set of locations, similar to sc2) Is it even possible (outside UMS)?
we explored this in the BWCL map selection process, and it did look like it had to be UMS, thus it was shelved. But if anyone knows how to do it in a normal map then we d be happy to give it a try
On December 04 2021 10:39 blabber wrote: just as a future idea - are there plans to maybe support shared base maps? (ie. be able to force players to spawn in a certain set of locations, similar to sc2) Is it even possible (outside UMS)?
Yes, this is something we are planning to add in the future, but it's a lower priority than a few other things right now (e.g. netcode)
On December 04 2021 02:26 ox.tQ wrote: We’re looking to organize a 2v2 qualifier tournament on SB using its rating system for the quailes like BSL uses ladder for its qualies. I’m speaking to a few people now about pooling together funds to finance prizes. If you’re interested in donating any amount, please know we will set up a matcherino for it and link that in an upcoming thread on TL.
The goal would be to encourage 2s gaming and create hype around a 2v2 league on SB with at least a first season. Quailes will probably last at least two months and then top teams (# of teams to be determined based on participation) will be placed into brackets. Only one division. Some of the bracket matches will be casted and streamed live, and definitely the semis and finals. Prizes for winning top 3 teams most likely. I’m not sure on the rules and specific format at the moment (I’ll have to consult with 2s folks to get a better idea). But that’s kinda the picture. Not looking to go crazy serious with this event idea. Just something cool and fun for the community, particularly 2s folks, to be excited about in addition to the SB 2v2 ladder system.
Any comments and suggestions welcomed.
Okay so we'll be organizing a 3.5 month long 2v2 tournament on SB. Official announcement will be made soon. But here are some more details after our consultation . There will be a qualifier starting on Dec 16 when SB 2v2 ladder launches and ending Feb 16 or so. That's about two months. The teams with the highest ratings at the end of the qualifier period will make it into the brackets (number of teams able to qualify will be determined, depending on participation numbers).
We will aim to gather a minimum $1000 prize for 1st and 2nd places (and maybe 3rd). The bigger the prize, the higher chance more people will play, (especially spanish and korean users), and the better the 2v2 ladder experience on SB will be, so hopefully folks consider contributing to the prize pool and growing it further throughout the course of the tournament. We will set up a matcherino and link it in the official announcement.
The rules will be flexible to accommodate as many players as possible and increase the chance that more people will participate. That means double random races or double zerg races will be allowed. Koreans will be allowed to participate. Individuals who prefer to play with a specific ally can participate as well as individuals who don't have specific allies and are willing to play with random public partners, or a combination thereof (i.e., sometimes play with a specific ally, sometimes play with random public partners).
In addition to this 3.5 month tournament , we will offer smaller prizes to the top performing 2v2 individuals each month. This will incentivize people to play on the launch day of SB's 2v2 ladder, and continue playing 2v2 ladder each week and month. We need to ensure an adequate supply of 2v2 players on SB for optimal team gaming experience so this idea will hopefully help with that.
Other than that, I think that's it.
Oh here are some emerging details about the 2v2 SB system in case any one is interested. I learned about them from the core developer Tec while trying to figure out how best to organize this tournament.
So there will be a leaderboard for 2v2 players, you will be able to see the scores (e.g., 30-5) and ratings (e.g., 2020) of individuals. This will help us identify the top performing individuals to pay prizes to each month, so long as they have officially enrolled in the tournament above. We will also set up a channel in the SB discord server for people to sign up and to communicate and coordinate with us and each other about the tournament. It can also be a 2v2 chat channel for everybody until/unless SB decides to set up a separate discord channel for that.
SB will only record scores and ratings of individuals and not teams. I will use an example to explain how it works. So imagine Madinho, Kenzy and Marwin all have 0-0 records. If Madinho and Kenzy play 2v2 ladder as allies and play 100 games, winning 75 games and losing 25 games, each of them will have an individual record of 75-25 (and a rating based on that score). But then if Madinho plays 2v2 with Marwin and wins five games with him, then Madinho's individual record will become 80-25, while Kenzy's will remain 75-25, and Marwin's will become 5-0.
The points you earn or lose for 2v2s on SB will depend on the ratings of your opponents. SB uses a modified elo rating system basically.
Regarding how players are matched, it's similar to 1v1 matchmaking on SB, it has a set of criteria for people you can be matched with, and it relaxes over time if no game could be found. Once a match is picked, the teams are balanced optimally from the players that are in it (although if either side is prearranged obviously there's only one possible arrangement).
Regarding how points are distributed in imbalanced matchups, it's unlikely that high rated people would be made to play very low rated ones, but if the queue is very empty it could happen. However, the high rated players would also receive extremely few points for winning
On December 04 2021 02:26 ox.tQ wrote: We’re looking to organize a 2v2 qualifier tournament on SB using its rating system for the quailes like BSL uses ladder for its qualies. I’m speaking to a few people now about pooling together funds to finance prizes. If you’re interested in donating any amount, please know we will set up a matcherino for it and link that in an upcoming thread on TL.
The goal would be to encourage 2s gaming and create hype around a 2v2 league on SB with at least a first season. Quailes will probably last at least two months and then top teams (# of teams to be determined based on participation) will be placed into brackets. Only one division. Some of the bracket matches will be casted and streamed live, and definitely the semis and finals. Prizes for winning top 3 teams most likely. I’m not sure on the rules and specific format at the moment (I’ll have to consult with 2s folks to get a better idea). But that’s kinda the picture. Not looking to go crazy serious with this event idea. Just something cool and fun for the community, particularly 2s folks, to be excited about in addition to the SB 2v2 ladder system.
Any comments and suggestions welcomed.
Okay so we'll be organizing a 3.5 month long 2v2 tournament on SB. Official announcement will be made soon. But here are some more details after our consultation . There will be a qualifier starting on Dec 16 when SB 2v2 ladder launches and ending Feb 16 or so. That's about two months. The teams with the highest ratings at the end of the qualifier period will make it into the brackets (number of teams able to qualify will be determined, depending on participation numbers).
We will aim to gather a minimum $1000 prize for 1st and 2nd places (and maybe 3rd). The bigger the prize, the higher chance more people will play, (especially spanish and korean users), and the better the 2v2 ladder experience on SB will be, so hopefully folks consider contributing to the prize pool and growing it further throughout the course of the tournament. We will set up a matcherino and link it in the official announcement.
The rules will be flexible to accommodate as many players as possible and increase the chance that more people will participate. That means double random races or double zerg races will be allowed. Koreans will be allowed to participate. Individuals who prefer to play with a specific ally can participate as well as individuals who don't have specific allies and are willing to play with random public partners, or a combination thereof (i.e., sometimes play with a specific ally, sometimes play with random public partners).
In addition to this 3.5 month tournament , we will offer smaller prizes to the top performing 2v2 individuals each month. This will incentivize people to play on the launch day of SB's 2v2 ladder, and continue playing 2v2 ladder each week and month. We need to ensure an adequate supply of 2v2 players on SB for optimal team gaming experience so this idea will hopefully help with that.
Other than that, I think that's it.
Oh here are some emerging details about the 2v2 SB system in case any one is interested. I learned about them from the core developer Tec while trying to figure out how best to organize this tournament.
So there will be a leaderboard for 2v2 players, you will be able to see the scores (e.g., 30-5) and ratings (e.g., 2020) of individuals. This will help us identify the top performing individuals to pay prizes to each month, so long as they have officially enrolled in the tournament above. We will also set up a channel in the SB discord server for people to sign up and to communicate and coordinate with us and each other about the tournament. It can also be a 2v2 chat channel for everybody until/unless SB decides to set up a separate discord channel for that.
SB will only record scores and ratings of individuals and not teams. I will use an example to explain how it works. So imagine Madinho, Kenzy and Marwin all have 0-0 records. If Madinho and Kenzy play 2v2 ladder as allies and play 100 games, winning 75 games and losing 25 games, each of them will have an individual record of 75-25 (and a rating based on that score). But then if Madinho plays 2v2 with Marwin and wins five games with him, then Madinho's individual record will become 80-25, while Kenzy's will remain 75-25, and Marwin's will become 5-0.
The points you earn or lose for 2v2s on SB will depend on the ratings of your opponents. SB uses a modified elo rating system basically.
Regarding how players are matched, it's similar to 1v1 matchmaking on SB, it has a set of criteria for people you can be matched with, and it relaxes over time if no game could be found. Once a match is picked, the teams are balanced optimally from the players that are in it (although if either side is prearranged obviously there's only one possible arrangement).
Regarding how points are distributed in imbalanced matchups, it's unlikely that high rated people would be made to play very low rated ones, but if the queue is very empty it could happen. However, the high rated players would also receive extremely few points for winning
sounds fantastic, double zerg is broken though..
one comment more - imo the top 4 in any tournament like that should get rewarded financially. Especially when it's a 16 or more player/team tournament. 500/250/125/125 sounds perfect at least to me.
Anyways, I appreciate your and your team's work in reinvigorating the BW scene very, very much. Legendary stuff. Cheers!
2 zerg team is strong in early stage. falls behind in late game. players who are understanding about 2 zerg early stage and knowing how to transition into mid game, they will be okay. I'm a person who played lots of torture, hard core style so I honestly don't care about picking 2 zerg.
I'll take Scan's word for it that ZZ isn't as broken as we might assume, but I still really liked the mandatory ZR in PL back in the day I think it adds a fun element into 2v2, both as a player and spectator.
It's also impossible to keep track of the races that teams pick for ensuring proper qualification. We'd have to get that kind of data from SB team and go through it on an individual basis. There is no match history available, meaning you can't click on a player's profile and see all the details of past matches (e.g., dates, times, races picked, maps, etc.).That information may become available in future updates on SB. It would also be too time consuming and burdensome for any of us to verify no one is picking ZZ or RR, or playing with a single partner or random partners, etc. For logistical reasons at least, it's just easier to be flexible with the rules and encourage mass participation.
On December 05 2021 13:52 MineraIs wrote: Need an official posting to advertise the 2v2 launch. I didnt know about it until i saw someone talking about it on discord.
There's a post on one of the previous pages of this thread, an announcement post in our discord, a tweet, and a post on the BW subreddit. I'm not sure what else you would like me to be doing here I'd prefer not to make new threads every time we release a new version, makes it very hard to track discussion
I suppose we could rename the thread from time to time. Keep "ShieldBattery:" at the beginning and then add whatever new feature has been updated behind the colon?
Amazing!! I hope new 2v2 maps are created in the future for the Ladder as these maps being used are purpose made for 1v1 (except for Hunters). Also would be nice to have allies spawn in same area like in SC2 with the new maps. Bring on 3v3 as well!!
On December 14 2021 06:47 banga_ph wrote: Also would be nice to have allies spawn in same area like in SC2 with the new maps
There are maps that need to be that way. Like Iron Curtain comes to mind. But since BW always been that way with 2v2.(random spots) I ask myself how 2v2 players feel about it.
On December 14 2021 06:47 banga_ph wrote: Also would be nice to have allies spawn in same area like in SC2 with the new maps
There are maps that need to be that way. Like Iron Curtain comes to mind. But since BW always been that way with 2v2.(random spots) I ask myself how 2v2 players feel about it.
personally, i d like to try a few in BW to see how that d work. requires UMS though as far as I know which was the main blocking points for leagues, like BWCL
It s hard enough to have people download the mappool let alone play on maps in the mappool, so imagine if it had to be UMS... Plus it also opens the door for abuse on edited UMS maps
I believe the option to allow players to spawn at specific spots in the map is not available yet in ScmDraft2 for TopVsBottom or Melee. This might require a recoding of the map making tool to allow for such a option to be included for creating a map that enables designated spawning points outside of UMS.
Like I said earlier, such features are things that we plan on doing at some point in the future. We've already thought through the basics of how that could be done on ShieldBattery, we control the whole game so we can add features that do not exist otherwise, we're not limited by how SC:R behaves today. Configuring the map spawns could easily be an add-on tool on top of existing map editors, it doesn't require a complete remake or any modification to existing tools.
The main issue isn't so much "how do we do it" but "when will we have time to do it." Given that it is extremely speculative that these will even be fun to play on, it's hard to prioritize that in front of, say, improving netcode, integrating replay analysis features, etc.
On December 14 2021 19:27 oxKnu wrote: Blizzard is so lame for not hiring people that can obviously improve this game and already have the know how.
What a garbage company.
While I'm sure there was a significant knowledge gap that Grant and his team had to overcome before they could even get started on such a spaghetti-code game, and it's debatable whether that gap was cleared completely by the time they started developing new features beyond basic parity, the unfortunate boring reality is that every project has a budget. At any company, there exists opportunity cost where you need to make decisions like "should I have my Senior Engineer working on a project that generates $20,000 per month or $200,000 per month?" The SB team, as a team of enthusiast developers, exists outside of these constraints. SC:R was a low budget effort with only a skeleton engineering crew allotted. If Blizzard had expanded the budget to support the kind of time that the SB team has committed up to now and beyond, it very well might have failed commercially, and nobody's going to greenlight a project like that.
On December 14 2021 19:27 oxKnu wrote: Blizzard is so lame for not hiring people that can obviously improve this game and already have the know how.
What a garbage company.
While I'm sure there was a significant knowledge gap that Grant and his team had to overcome before they could even get started on such a spaghetti-code game, and it's debatable whether that gap was cleared completely by the time they started developing new features beyond basic parity, the unfortunate boring reality is that every project has a budget. At any company, there exists opportunity cost where you need to make decisions like "should I have my Senior Engineer working on a project that generates $20,000 per month or $200,000 per month?" The SB team, as a team of enthusiast developers, exists outside of these constraints. SC:R was a low budget effort with only a skeleton engineering crew allotted. If Blizzard had expanded the budget to support the kind of time that the SB team has committed up to now and beyond, it very well might have failed commercially, and nobody's going to greenlight a project like that.
Yes, yes, sure, sure. But they could have had all these thoughts before announcing SCR, CarbotSkins and whatnot, so they could eventually communicate in a healthier way. If it was "only" SCR and not all the other dead projects, bad company culture and stuff, you might still hold them in your heart or whatever. But he's right, Blizzard is a garbage company.
If anything, this makes SB more awesome than the project already is.
On December 14 2021 19:27 oxKnu wrote: Blizzard is so lame for not hiring people that can obviously improve this game and already have the know how.
What a garbage company.
While I'm sure there was a significant knowledge gap that Grant and his team had to overcome before they could even get started on such a spaghetti-code game, and it's debatable whether that gap was cleared completely by the time they started developing new features beyond basic parity, the unfortunate boring reality is that every project has a budget. At any company, there exists opportunity cost where you need to make decisions like "should I have my Senior Engineer working on a project that generates $20,000 per month or $200,000 per month?" The SB team, as a team of enthusiast developers, exists outside of these constraints. SC:R was a low budget effort with only a skeleton engineering crew allotted. If Blizzard had expanded the budget to support the kind of time that the SB team has committed up to now and beyond, it very well might have failed commercially, and nobody's going to greenlight a project like that.
Yes, yes, sure, sure. But they could have had all these thoughts before announcing SCR, CarbotSkins and whatnot, so they could eventually communicate in a healthier way. If it was "only" SCR and not all the other dead projects, bad company culture and stuff, you might still hold them in your heart or whatever. But he's right, Blizzard is a garbage company.
If anything, this makes SB more awesome than the project already is.
*snip*
Ok, so let me get this straight: they should've migrated to the SCII/HOTS engine for SC:R?
On December 14 2021 19:27 oxKnu wrote: Blizzard is so lame for not hiring people that can obviously improve this game and already have the know how.
What a garbage company.
While I'm sure there was a significant knowledge gap that Grant and his team had to overcome before they could even get started on such a spaghetti-code game, and it's debatable whether that gap was cleared completely by the time they started developing new features beyond basic parity, the unfortunate boring reality is that every project has a budget. At any company, there exists opportunity cost where you need to make decisions like "should I have my Senior Engineer working on a project that generates $20,000 per month or $200,000 per month?" The SB team, as a team of enthusiast developers, exists outside of these constraints. SC:R was a low budget effort with only a skeleton engineering crew allotted. If Blizzard had expanded the budget to support the kind of time that the SB team has committed up to now and beyond, it very well might have failed commercially, and nobody's going to greenlight a project like that.
I don't want to be harsh or anything, but you sound like an apologetic manager or a marketing guy that tries to keep his job after a failed project.
I mean, sure there's always some ground to catch up on any new project (be it a remaster even) but the absolute sure failure that is supporting a game is almost always the fault of the people in charge of the decision making. In the game industry there have been tons of games that have simply got the can because they were too inefficient of a business going forward. And that's fine, it's the way 90% of businesses go irl.
However, the fact that they put up the marketing with all sorts of features and promotion around the game to just then brutely halt work on it and leave the game in a perpetual never-fixed territory with their only move being trying to charge Afreeca 100K on a tournament that takes 50K to organize is astounding.
Blizzard is cancer. Pure cancer.
May I remind you that this is a game that has been completely reverse engineered by people on their own time in the past, and we have a bunch of people here basically offering a better version of the service by not even having access to the source code.
Excuses for incompetence are worse than incompetence itself.
On December 14 2021 19:27 oxKnu wrote: Blizzard is so lame for not hiring people that can obviously improve this game and already have the know how.
What a garbage company.
While I'm sure there was a significant knowledge gap that Grant and his team had to overcome before they could even get started on such a spaghetti-code game, and it's debatable whether that gap was cleared completely by the time they started developing new features beyond basic parity, the unfortunate boring reality is that every project has a budget. At any company, there exists opportunity cost where you need to make decisions like "should I have my Senior Engineer working on a project that generates $20,000 per month or $200,000 per month?" The SB team, as a team of enthusiast developers, exists outside of these constraints. SC:R was a low budget effort with only a skeleton engineering crew allotted. If Blizzard had expanded the budget to support the kind of time that the SB team has committed up to now and beyond, it very well might have failed commercially, and nobody's going to greenlight a project like that.
Yes, yes, sure, sure. But they could have had all these thoughts before announcing SCR, CarbotSkins and whatnot, so they could eventually communicate in a healthier way. If it was "only" SCR and not all the other dead projects, bad company culture and stuff, you might still hold them in your heart or whatever. But he's right, Blizzard is a garbage company.
If anything, this makes SB more awesome than the project already is.
*snip*
Ok, so let me get this straight: they should've migrated to the SCII/HOTS engine for SC:R?
Like...what?
*snip*
I'm just going to assume that you haven't played these two games long enough to understand the difference. Because what you're saying there is complete non-sense.
SC:R still exists because SCII is a trashcan of a game.
What trash is he/she speaking now? Can mods just not leave it up as a monument to idiocy?
Blizzard demonstrably don’t really care, if they did they’d just offer the Shield Battery folks some cash to develop and incorporate their feature set into the retail product.
If I’m not mistaken they’ve implemented a working 2v2 ladder and their anti-cheat measures are demonstrably superior to Blizzards, and their servers mitigate regional latency better too.
Then move on to WC3 remastered which is also hugely lacking features which the community have filled in.
In an ideal world, or well my ideal world we’d have all of these features in the launcher, easily accessible for all without recourse to third parties.
In no way meant to disparage the third party work, and given Blizzard’s current direction a third party alternative seems a necessity. Just from an ease sense/not splitting the playerbase IF there was a one-stop shot, feature-rich place to play either BW or WC3 that’d be great
What I took from Excalibur's post is that SB team put their hearts and souls into this project for the sake of the game and its remaining player base.
I just hope for their sake and in the spirit of community-oriented service, they are meaningfully thanked by more members of the community via use of their free server and through financial support. So long as the non-profit and free services they are providing and will continue to provide meet the reasonable expectations of people.
It will be very disheartening for me personally to see not enough people thank SB team via donations. I have already stated that I will be winding down my own event organizing if I see that happening. There is a lot of talk among BW enthusiasts, but very little 'walk' when it comes to recognizing and supporting individuals who are shouldering the burden of not only keeping the game and community alive but doing things to really revitalize and breathe new life into them like SB (and BSL).
^^Wouldn't go to far into that direction. Everyone is aware that this effort can't sustain itself on the financial side, unless someone with very generous pockets comes around.
If you get a project like this going you definitely have the skills to earn a decent pay working for some telecom/video game company. Plenty of those jobs/gigs around.
What's laudable is the commitment to something that will most likely not earn you money but rather personal satisfaction and maybe some hero status for a bunch of middle-aged nerds.
Huge respect for doing this. Many wouldn't even dare. It's also a huge slap to Blizzard and a display of how incompetent they are. Indirectly of course.
I think more people can certainly afford to make a one-time donation of $1 or $5 to these highly impactful community-oriented projects which benefit everyone and the game. The money in itself is not as important as the gesture.
If someone participates in events like BSL and/or watches their streams 24/7 and has never donated even a single dollar, that is a (free rider) problem in my opinion, especially when they purport to care about the game and state of the community. The same would apply to SB if it serves the mass community and enhances game experiences. More people need to stop being selfish, cheap and lazy and support these vital projects.
Is a certain level of play expected to queue into 2v2 matchmaking?
Would be fun to get back into Brood War with the feature I've been waiting for since the remaster launch, but I'm so rusty since I stopped playing, I probably get reported for "throwing" all the time.
On December 16 2021 04:01 ox.tQ wrote: I think more people can certainly afford to make a one-time donation of $1 or $5 to these highly impactful community-oriented projects which benefit everyone and the game. The money in itself is not as important as the gesture.
If someone participates in events like BSL and/or watches their streams 24/7 and has never donated even a single dollar, that is a (free rider) problem in my opinion, especially when they purport to care about the game and state of the community. The same would apply to SB if it serves the mass community and enhances game experiences. More people need to stop being selfish, cheap and lazy and support these vital projects.
Real life is always a numbers game. Unfortunately that truth applies more often than we'd like to admit.
Close to 80% of the viewers of those twitch steamers that make millions every year also don't donate one dime (and for years, as you'd put it) and yet that doesn't matter.
Just as that is a reality, so is the fact that community values sometimes don't translate where you'd want them to.
Not to cut off anyone's spirit, but it's worth noting these things every now and again rather than continue flogging a dead horse.
I'd flip that into something else: "How many of the people willing to put up a 3 dollar donation for one of these events think that that can actually make a difference?"
It's similar to 1v1 ladder on battlenet. SB 2v2 ladder will try to pair you up with an ally (if you need a random public partner) and opponents who are similar to you in rating and ping. If the system has trouble doing that, only then will it try to match you with people who have different ratings and pings. So there will hopefully be players of different skill levels.
2v2 SB ladder has its own modified elo system. Points are won or lost based on the ratings of your opponents. So high rated teams will receive few points for beating much lower rated teams.
On December 16 2021 08:30 shin ken wrote: Is a certain level of play expected to queue into 2v2 matchmaking?
Would be fun to get back into Brood War with the feature I've been waiting for since the remaster launch, but I'm so rusty since I stopped playing, I probably get reported for "throwing" all the time.
The ruleset that the current core model follows is: inexperience > inactivity > ping > search time > rating closeness (and the overall search range is governed by a player's uncertainty). The current 2v2 model expands this by also factoring in whether the team is prearranged or individuals and applying an applicable matchmaking handicap. Since we've had a lot of new accounts generated in anticipation of 2v2 matchmaking, you should not expect your first few matches to be perfect since all of those new accounts will start out at the same seed rating and need a number of games to spread out until they land where they belong. Naturally, as with any first pass, we'll be monitoring closely and collecting match data to confirm whether the model is behaving appropriately and preparing adjustments in cases where it isn't.
I think the financial support is there, the community driven Tastosis Patreon to fund their continued casting of ASL is proof of this. I myself am a member of the patreon and the contribution currently stands at about $11,000 USD a month! If we can get some high profile personalities, like Artosis/Tasteless, in the SC scene to promote SD in their streams who knows how much it could potentially help out. Even getting streamers to do test runs for 2v2 livestream could be what the community needs to spark interest and financial support for Shield Battery.
On December 16 2021 18:51 banga_ph wrote:If we can get some high profile personalities, like Artosis/Tasteless, in the SC scene to promote SD in their streams who knows how much it could potentially help out. Even getting streamers to do test runs for 2v2 livestream could be what the community needs to spark interest and financial support for Shield Battery.
a lot of people have donated and chatted to artosis about shieldbattery but he seems to ignore it every time
On December 16 2021 18:51 banga_ph wrote: I think the financial support is there, the community driven Tastosis Patreon to fund their continued casting of ASL is proof of this. I myself am a member of the patreon and the contribution currently stands at about $11,000 USD a month! If we can get some high profile personalities, like Artosis/Tasteless, in the SC scene to promote SD in their streams who knows how much it could potentially help out. Even getting streamers to do test runs for 2v2 livestream could be what the community needs to spark interest and financial support for Shield Battery.
I think those numbers are coming from SC2 fans and simply put, fans of the two, unlikely that those are congruent with BW fans.
But yeah, an Arto + Tasteless 2v2 stream might be interesting and nice promotion.
Also you have to consider that these guys get paychecks from Blizzard (through Afreeca) for their SC2 casts so there might be a good reason why they avoid talking about ShieldBattery.
You never wanna anger BigCorp. Because in case they want to create some special SC event, Tastosis are in prime position to get the casting gig, you don't want to throw away that lucrative one-time thing out the window for some random take on stream.
On December 16 2021 18:51 banga_ph wrote: I think the financial support is there, the community driven Tastosis Patreon to fund their continued casting of ASL is proof of this. I myself am a member of the patreon and the contribution currently stands at about $11,000 USD a month! If we can get some high profile personalities, like Artosis/Tasteless, in the SC scene to promote SD in their streams who knows how much it could potentially help out. Even getting streamers to do test runs for 2v2 livestream could be what the community needs to spark interest and financial support for Shield Battery.
I think those numbers are coming from SC2 fans and simply put, fans of the two, unlikely that those are congruent with BW fans.
But yeah, an Arto + Tasteless 2v2 stream might be interesting and nice promotion.
Also you have to consider that these guys get paychecks from Blizzard (through Afreeca) for their SC2 casts so there might be a good reason why they avoid talking about ShieldBattery.
You never wanna anger BigCorp. Because in case they want to create some special SC event, Tastosis are in prime position to get the casting gig, you don't want to throw away that lucrative one-time thing out the window for some random take on stream.
The Tastosis Patreon was specifically made for ASL casting which is a BW only tournament so I highly doubt any SC2 fan would sink their money to support it month after month. I also believe underestimating the passion people have for a game is a mistake. Both Artosis and Tasteless could have walked away immediately when they were let go by Afreeca but they didn't and instead reached out to the BW community for support so they could continue the English casting for ASL. Well numbers don't lie as you got $11,000/month to prove that support.
As much as we all want to diss Blizzard for what they have or have not done for BW, we need to realize they own this IP product. Blizzard can do whatever they want with it. Do you believe Shield Battery is flying under their radar unnoticed? Anything that you do relating to SC:R they can pull the plug on if they so choose to even if you doing it literally for free... but they have not for SD. So no, Tastosis talking or live streaming 2v2 on Shield Battery would have no relevance to them angering BigCorp or missing out on a chance to land a gig for a fantasy mega SC:R event in the near future (I wish) as it seems even big bad Blizzard doesn't care about Shield Battery being around. Fun fact... they know.
I think the Tastosis Patreon was a little different.
People are good at putting their hands in the pockets if it’s a binary thing. Either we get x money and we do the thing, or we don’t and don’t do that content.
I would assume that general community projects that are ongoing efforts it’s a little different. Unless they’re consistently asking for money there’s a temptation to assume they don’t need it, or some other donor will cover it.
On December 16 2021 18:51 banga_ph wrote: I think the financial support is there, the community driven Tastosis Patreon to fund their continued casting of ASL is proof of this. I myself am a member of the patreon and the contribution currently stands at about $11,000 USD a month! If we can get some high profile personalities, like Artosis/Tasteless, in the SC scene to promote SD in their streams who knows how much it could potentially help out. Even getting streamers to do test runs for 2v2 livestream could be what the community needs to spark interest and financial support for Shield Battery.
I think those numbers are coming from SC2 fans and simply put, fans of the two, unlikely that those are congruent with BW fans.
But yeah, an Arto + Tasteless 2v2 stream might be interesting and nice promotion.
Also you have to consider that these guys get paychecks from Blizzard (through Afreeca) for their SC2 casts so there might be a good reason why they avoid talking about ShieldBattery.
You never wanna anger BigCorp. Because in case they want to create some special SC event, Tastosis are in prime position to get the casting gig, you don't want to throw away that lucrative one-time thing out the window for some random take on stream.
The Tastosis Patreon was specifically made for ASL casting which is a BW only tournament so I highly doubt any SC2 fan would sink their money to support it month after month. I also believe underestimating the passion people have for a game is a mistake. Both Artosis and Tasteless could have walked away immediately when they were let go by Afreeca but they didn't and instead reached out to the BW community for support so they could continue the English casting for ASL. Well numbers don't lie as you got $11,000/month to prove that support.
As much as we all want to diss Blizzard for what they have or have not done for BW, we need to realize they own this IP product. Blizzard can do whatever they want with it. Do you believe Shield Battery is flying under their radar unnoticed? Anything that you do relating to SC:R they can pull the plug on if they so choose to even if you doing it literally for free... but they have not for SD. So no, Tastosis talking or live streaming 2v2 on Shield Battery would have no relevance to them angering BigCorp or missing out on a chance to land a gig for a fantasy mega SC:R event in the near future (I wish) as it seems even big bad Blizzard doesn't care about Shield Battery being around. Fun fact... they know.
Totally disagree with your first statement there. There are many people that primarily watch and follow SC2 and also like to tune in for ASL but not more than that. BW casuals if you want. Those people chimed in because of Tastosis, not because of ASL solely. Had that Patreon been started by Scan or Nyoken no one would have chimed in although that's arguably far better commentary for ASL.
Both Artosis and Tasteless had previous Patreons running before the Afreeca split for ASL, so them trying out that idea to see how much they can get is not really some out of the box idea, let's be real here. And they do seem to enjoy casting SC more than SC2 so why not?
I never implied Blizzard was completely misinformed, just shit at being a game publishing company for SC:R, and us being caught in the middle of that.
On December 16 2021 23:52 WombaT wrote: I think the Tastosis Patreon was a little different.
People are good at putting their hands in the pockets if it’s a binary thing. Either we get x money and we do the thing, or we don’t and don’t do that content.
I would assume that general community projects that are ongoing efforts it’s a little different. Unless they’re consistently asking for money there’s a temptation to assume they don’t need it, or some other donor will cover it.
Very good point actually.
A hypothetical would be If somehow the SB team would say something like: We need 6 months to achieve this feature (I dunno, something like global TR16 Low latency) and we would need 15K to finance that. It only takes like 1-2 people 'with money' to make that possible.And this actually happens quite a bit with kickstarter projects in the R&D field. Mainly because there's a lot of genuine: well if you can do it, GG, here's your money.
Stretch goal type (kickstarter like) things do seem to have larger success rate than anything else. (for serious work/goals)
On December 16 2021 23:52 WombaT wrote: I think the Tastosis Patreon was a little different.
People are good at putting their hands in the pockets if it’s a binary thing. Either we get x money and we do the thing, or we don’t and don’t do that content.
I would assume that general community projects that are ongoing efforts it’s a little different. Unless they’re consistently asking for money there’s a temptation to assume they don’t need it, or some other donor will cover it.
Very good point actually.
A hypothetical would be If somehow the SB team would say something like: We need 6 months to achieve this feature (I dunno, something like global TR16 Low latency) and we would need 15K to finance that. It only takes like 1-2 people 'with money' to make that possible.And this actually happens quite a bit with kickstarter projects in the R&D field. Mainly because there's a lot of genuine: well if you can do it, GG, here's your money.
Stretch goal type (kickstarter like) things do seem to have larger success rate than anything else. (for serious work/goals)
I think you alluded to the more significant core difference between the two projects in an earlier post. It's the cult of personality + the casual viewer/user, not the type of goals put forward IMO.
I am willing to bet that the majority of people who watch Tastosis don't play either BW or SC2. They watch them more like a podcast with a visual aid, more or less. They listen for the personalities involved, the storytelling, and the bants, and once in a while something cool happens onscreen and you get some hype. It's a pretty solid deal. It doesn't require anything out of you and you can enjoy it for free, so it has a greater potential for mass appeal. Plus, a lot of them are nostalgic people who used to play back in the day but are now older and make money, so to them giving back to Tastosis (who were around during said person's tumultuous youth/college career and provided them with entertainment when they were broke and hung over) is not a giant leap to make.
Compare that with funding SB. First of all, casuals won't know anything about SB or why it is useful. "Why don't you just play on the official servers?" Second of all, casuals won't care because in order to enjoy SB, you need to actually use it by playing the game, which the majority of the people behind Tastosis' Patreon likely don't do. Third, it unfortunately may have been different if it was Tastosis as the "face" of this project, but people outside of TL likely don't know who tec27 or 2Pacalypse are, and thus they don't care and if they see it come up they will be like "Literally who?" Finally, competitive 2v2 hasn't been a thing in 15 years on the pro level outside of showmatches so that further dampens any potential interest. It's not like funding SB because they developed 2v2 results in some measurable outcome for the donor, like x hours of content or y tournaments casted. For most people who donated to Tastosis', considering the amount of impact that donating for SB would have on their lives, it's the equivalent of dumping money into a void and forgetting about it.
So, TLDR there are a lot of reasons why the whole "Well Tastosis raised $11k/month to deliver weeks-outdated casts despite there being higher skilled casters doing it for free and on time so SB can get a lot of funding also" argument doesn't really hold water. Sure, a relatively smaller amount of people may be interested in supporting with $1-5 as ox.tQ said (the optics on that is arguable, but that's a different line of discussion). But banga_ph bringing up Tastosis' fundraiser is like comparing apples to oranges and makes no sense in this context.
The Korean audience seems to be into these random team games (more like streamer battles rather than anything BW try-hard related) so that avenue should be worth a shot in pursuing. Maybe some of the Korean speakers around these forums can do some small-scale advertising for SB.
It seems like popular streamers for other games there that occasionally try BW for some fun games could actually use this.
On December 17 2021 01:32 2Pacalypse- wrote: While we're on the subject of funding and donations, let me drop a link to tec's patreon page again - https://www.patreon.com/tec27
He's currently working on SB fulltime, but that can't last forever!
++++++++++++++++++++
SB 2V2 LADDER IS UP
eonzerg and bonyth (among others) are currently streaming smooth ass 2v2 ranked games on there!
There's currently a known issue with allied chat not working, we're working on a fix for that. Thanks to everyone who's trying it out and giving us feedback!
So, TLDR there are a lot of reasons why the whole "Well Tastosis raised $11k/month to deliver weeks-outdated casts despite there being higher skilled casters doing it for free and on time so SB can get a lot of funding also" argument doesn't really hold water. Sure, a relatively smaller amount of people may be interested in supporting with $1-5 as ox.tQ said (the optics on that is arguable, but that's a different line of discussion). But banga_ph bringing up Tastosis' fundraiser is like comparing apples to oranges and makes no sense in this context.
So what you are saying is any community led support for SC whether it be Tastosis Patreon or something else relating to SC:R does not make sense because it needs to be within a certain context? I was pointing out the success the Tastosis Patreon had and is still enjoying and the possibility this could be replicated for Shield Battery if the right things are done to shine more light on the project. This all falls under the SC:R umbrella and the fact a community is still out there willing to provide financial support for things related to the game. To brush this aside as though it had no relevance whatsoever is rubbish thinking.
So, TLDR there are a lot of reasons why the whole "Well Tastosis raised $11k/month to deliver weeks-outdated casts despite there being higher skilled casters doing it for free and on time so SB can get a lot of funding also" argument doesn't really hold water. Sure, a relatively smaller amount of people may be interested in supporting with $1-5 as ox.tQ said (the optics on that is arguable, but that's a different line of discussion). But banga_ph bringing up Tastosis' fundraiser is like comparing apples to oranges and makes no sense in this context.
So what you are saying is any community led support for SC whether it be Tastosis Patreon or something else relating to SC:R does not make sense because it needs to be within a certain context? I was pointing out the success the Tastosis Patreon had and is still enjoying and the possibility this could be replicated for Shield Battery if the right things are done to shine more light on the project. This all falls under the SC:R umbrella and the fact a community is still out there willing to provide financial support for things related to the game. To brush this aside as though it had no relevance whatsoever is rubbish thinking.
I explained all the reasons why the two projects are not congruent in all of the paragraphs before the one you left in, I don't have anything more to add that isn't just a rehash of a point I already made and that you did not address.
Played a bunch of 2v2 games yesterday, everything seems to be working great. Except few minor issues with dynamic latency (sometimes it just crushed to tr8 and never recoveres), and some random drop of a player once or twice (but cannot say how much fault of SB was it) it was great.
On December 17 2021 18:32 kogeT wrote: Played a bunch of 2v2 games yesterday, everything seems to be working great. Except few minor issues with dynamic latency (sometimes it just crushed to tr8 and never recoveres), and some random drop of a player once or twice (but cannot say how much fault of SB was it) it was great.
Thanks for trying it out!
We saw almost 300 matchmaking games played in the past day, which is great! Hopefully that pace continues.
We're open to changing the turn-rate setting (to a static value) as a stopgap measure until we can get better netcode in, but we need some more data to decide what a good value would be. It's pretty rough to just go on anecdotes, people's experiences tends to be wildly different unfortunately. So in our next update we should be able to gather a little better info about what latencies players are actually seeing, and use that to make an informed decision there.
On December 17 2021 19:39 ggsimida wrote: needs korean localisation and maybe get FBH/Last etc to promote it to the korean community for it take off like Fish did
We do have Scan and Bishop playing too, so they could for sure do it too. FBH is a great idea, I talk with him once in a while, I can suggest an idea.
On December 18 2021 06:49 vinipuxas wrote: whats the point to play in TR 8 or lower ??? where to choice race ??? 100% fail with this shit 2x2 matchmaking system
Why do inept noobs always qq about the TR? And picking the race isn't quite rocket science if you take more than 2 seconds to figure it out.
On December 18 2021 06:49 vinipuxas wrote: whats the point to play in TR 8 or lower ??? where to choice race ??? 100% fail with this shit 2x2 matchmaking system
Why do inept noobs always qq about the TR? And picking the race isn't quite rocket science if you take more than 2 seconds to figure it out.
stop call other people noobs you idiot , if you donate for some tourn dont give you right to call people noobs or anything else . its just whats the point play 2x2 without any control you move units and they respond 2sec later ??? answer me that you smart idiot LML
On December 18 2021 06:49 vinipuxas wrote: whats the point to play in TR 8 or lower ??? where to choice race ??? 100% fail with this shit 2x2 matchmaking system
There are icons for each race. Did you look at the screen?
On December 18 2021 06:49 vinipuxas wrote: whats the point to play in TR 8 or lower ??? where to choice race ??? 100% fail with this shit 2x2 matchmaking system
There are icons for each race. Did you look at the screen?
already find help , thanks to one your admin , but lml need to be more nice with new people and stop bm them , make me so angry ... thank kwark
On December 18 2021 06:49 vinipuxas wrote: whats the point to play in TR 8 or lower ??? where to choice race ??? 100% fail with this shit 2x2 matchmaking system
There are icons for each race. Did you look at the screen?
already find help , thanks to one your admin , but lml need to be more nice with new people and stop bm them , make me so angry ... thank kwark
Did you miss the part where you came in angry and insulted the project because you couldn’t work out how to click on the icon you wanted. LML was right, your attitude was wrong.
On December 18 2021 06:49 vinipuxas wrote: whats the point to play in TR 8 or lower ??? where to choice race ??? 100% fail with this shit 2x2 matchmaking system
There are icons for each race. Did you look at the screen?
already find help , thanks to one your admin , but lml need to be more nice with new people and stop bm them , make me so angry ... thank kwark
Learn english and learn to behave, you really acting like 12 year old right now.
Never was big fan of 2v2 personally but super stoked for this because it will bring more players into the game. All hail SB!
We just pushed an update to fix a few things (most notably, ally chat is working now )
Here's the tweet with a changelog:
This update also logs more info on our end about player latencies, so hopefully we can try to nail down a decent stopgap solution for turn-rates shortly.
For anyone willing to support the main developer and the SB team, that's the way. I'm sure there will be more than a couple people enjoying the new SB developments as the holiday season is coming along.
I think y'all might need to prioritize ignore function or muting people. So many shit-talking rude noobs lol just flaming each other non-stop in main chat.
On December 20 2021 09:41 Jealous wrote: I think y'all might need to prioritize ignore function or muting people. So many shit-talking rude noobs lol just flaming each other non-stop in main chat.
Yes, known thing. We can only work on so many things at once, so if you all would like to see e.g. improvements to the netcode, it would be nice if you could stop causing additional work for us
On December 20 2021 09:41 Jealous wrote: I think y'all might need to prioritize ignore function or muting people. So many shit-talking rude noobs lol just flaming each other non-stop in main chat.
Yes, known thing. We can only work on so many things at once, so if you all would like to see e.g. improvements to the netcode, it would be nice if you could stop causing additional work for us
I didn't do anything >_> I told them to stop being so toxic, that's about it. I wasn't a participant in the BS.
On December 20 2021 09:41 Jealous wrote: I think y'all might need to prioritize ignore function or muting people. So many shit-talking rude noobs lol just flaming each other non-stop in main chat.
Yes, known thing. We can only work on so many things at once, so if you all would like to see e.g. improvements to the netcode, it would be nice if you could stop causing additional work for us
I didn't do anything >_> I told them to stop being so toxic, that's about it. I wasn't a participant in the BS.
Wasn't saying that you did, that was a message for everyone
On December 20 2021 09:41 Jealous wrote: I think y'all might need to prioritize ignore function or muting people. So many shit-talking rude noobs lol just flaming each other non-stop in main chat.
Yes, known thing. We can only work on so many things at once, so if you all would like to see e.g. improvements to the netcode, it would be nice if you could stop causing additional work for us
I didn't do anything >_> I told them to stop being so toxic, that's about it. I wasn't a participant in the BS.
Wasn't saying that you did, that was a message for everyone
On December 20 2021 09:41 Jealous wrote: I think y'all might need to prioritize ignore function or muting people. So many shit-talking rude noobs lol just flaming each other non-stop in main chat.
I remember that used to be the spirit In the iccup 2x2 channel.And they had admins anf shit XD.Personally idc. I will like to have my own channel. There should be one for dev updates too.
Im curious if 2v2 players are making the switch to shield battery or they still playing customs on scr .
On December 20 2021 09:41 Jealous wrote: I think y'all might need to prioritize ignore function or muting people. So many shit-talking rude noobs lol just flaming each other non-stop in main chat.
I remember that used to be the spirit In the iccup 2x2 channel.And they had admins anf shit XD.Personally idc. I will like to have my own channel. There should be one for dev updates too.
Im curious if 2v2 players are making the switch to shield battery or they still playing customs on scr .
Yea, it's definitely a classic StarCraft thing, but I feel like the main chat should be kept noob- and new people-friendly, and part of that is removing the toxicity/muting violators from at least public channels. Letting people make their own channels will help too, of course.
There are definitely a lot more players, and a lot of them 2v2 players, active on SB nowadays.
EDIT: Idea: Create a #Shitters or similar chat that is specifically for muted BM players. Other people can watch the shitshow and chat in it too, of course, but all muted/banned players can only chat there. Like a containment zone. Should be pretty funny
Also in the spirit of classical SC: players disconnecting to avoid getting a loss? Or at least preventing the others from getting a win. People care about their stats too much, even after all this time.
On December 21 2021 03:30 LML wrote: Also in the spirit of classical SC: players disconnecting to avoid getting a loss? Or at least preventing the others from getting a win. People care about their stats too much, even after all this time.
Like I said in chat and on our Discord, these games will count as a loss for them just as soon as I write the code to do it, all the reports from the other players are there and are enough to finalize the game. So they're very dumb to think this works at this point, but it's also causing a lot of people to bug me about it and interrupting the time I have to work on things, so it is pretty frustrating all things considered!
how's 1v1 going so far? still super high level? i'd love to get off the official ladder, but i'm in mid-E rank and frankly i think i should be at like 1000 MMR, not 1300.
On December 21 2021 07:04 lost dedicated wrote: how's 1v1 going so far? still super high level? i'd love to get off the official ladder, but i'm in mid-E rank and frankly i think i should be at like 1000 MMR, not 1300.
2v2 definitely far more popular atm, still need to convince more people to ladder there for 1v1 instead of going back to bnet. I imagine as we continue to implement more features (especially the next revision of netcode) it will become a lot more appealing for 1v1 as well
For anyone willing to support the main developer and the SB team, that's the way. I'm sure there will be more than a couple people enjoying the new SB developments as the holiday season is coming along.
Reposting this for this page and new people.
Is there a paypal (or similar) for one time donations just because this is awesome?
For anyone willing to support the main developer and the SB team, that's the way. I'm sure there will be more than a couple people enjoying the new SB developments as the holiday season is coming along.
Reposting this for this page and new people.
Is there a paypal (or similar) for one time donations just because this is awesome?
Possible to make shieldbattery more mobile friendly? Obviously just for the chat rooms and viewing ladder. Keep it up you are doing great! Gave you a coffee tip
On December 27 2021 18:25 DiMiaN wrote: Possible to make shieldbattery more mobile friendly? Obviously just for the chat rooms and viewing ladder. Keep it up you are doing great! Gave you a coffee tip
Thanks for the support!
We have done some work on the splash page to make that a bit more mobile friendly, but the chat and such are a bit older and hard to work with at the moment. There are some plans to restructure that UI a bit soon, though, so perhaps we can work that in It is definitely a long-term goal that you could chat and such on mobile
2v2 ladder should have random allies to negate team stackers. I see the people asking for ally all day and I don't think it fair for someone who does not have an ally.
On December 29 2021 13:34 Optimate wrote: 2v2 ladder should have random allies to negate team stackers. I see the people asking for ally all day and I don't think it fair for someone who does not have an ally.
Hard disagree. Half the fun of playing teams is playing with your friends.
In an ideal world where there was a huge playing population, I could see the argument for having split ladder - random and pre-made - but as is now, mixed is the way to go 100%.
On December 29 2021 13:34 Optimate wrote: 2v2 ladder should have random allies to negate team stackers. I see the people asking for ally all day and I don't think it fair for someone who does not have an ally.
Hard disagree. Half the fun of playing teams is playing with your friends.
In an ideal world where there was a huge playing population, I could see the argument for having split ladder - random and pre-made - but as is now, mixed is the way to go 100%.
I think what he means is, teams should be matched vs teams instead of a random 2 players.
On December 29 2021 13:34 Optimate wrote: 2v2 ladder should have random allies to negate team stackers. I see the people asking for ally all day and I don't think it fair for someone who does not have an ally.
Hard disagree. Half the fun of playing teams is playing with your friends.
In an ideal world where there was a huge playing population, I could see the argument for having split ladder - random and pre-made - but as is now, mixed is the way to go 100%.
I think what he means is, teams should be matched vs teams instead of a random 2 players.
Then generally you would not find matches. There simply isn't enough population currently to split the pool, queueing for an hour to play a single match isn't a good way to keep (or build) a player-base.
Arranged teams will get a handicap against random teams in the future, but we need to collect data to see how large the advantage conferred is. Unfortunately this isn't a value you can just pick out of thin air.
In my opinion, if you have a random ally you should get twice the points as a team stacker. I don't think it is fun to log in and get bashed by team stackers. Plus, amazing players allying worse players means more people can learn that way.
On January 03 2022 07:17 TelecoM wrote: The 2v2 scene is doing amazingly well on SB right now, now all we need is a big population of 1v1ers to play, it will happen eventually I am sure.
i think three main points need to change for korean 1v1 players to switch:
1. there has to be a tangible improvement to lag between koreans and foreigners when compared to official. client-sided turn rate would help a lot. i wouldn't mind having TR12 playing against a TR24 korean if it means both of us are happy and have adapted to our latency. i know i've heard this isn't supposed to work this way but that lowlatency program coming around the end of 1.16.1 is exactly what i'm talking about. it lowered the turn rate client-sided while the opponent kept the slower turn rate.
2. better community support. the way SCR works basically killed most clan channels. i remember fish being very lively, while now it's just not the same even though brood war has reached its second peak in korea. shieldbattery should put up multiple chats by default, including those for clans korean and foreign alike.
3. remove cheaters and add an overwatch-style system similar to what fish server used to do. before anyone says anything about community effort, i would be more than happy to help check suspicious replays with my free time if it meant a better experience for everyone. i've started using kLauncher which helps a bit, but it really shows just how many [removed] users are out there, as the program is called. it's a cheating service you subscribe to monthly disguised as a legitimate program.
On January 03 2022 08:41 atrox_ wrote: really not enjoying the vibe in SB since the 2v2 has come in compared to when I was in it previously - just people flaming each other
I'm sorry you're not enjoying it, but I'm not really sure what you would like me to do with this information. Prior to 2v2, ShieldBattery had next to no users, no real regular chat. The same number of games have been played in the last 16 days as had been played in the entire previous year. I'm sorry that you're experiencing the growing pains of a community that lacks all the tools it needs to manage that community, but you really need to understand that we have to build all of those things, and it takes a lot of time and effort to do so. I'm the one person working on this full-time at a large personal financial loss, and yet people throw requests and complaints at me like I'm a multi-national corporation.
I'd definitely like to give people more ability to control whose chat they see, muting ingame, adding chat bans for egregious offenders, etc. But all of these things take work, and for the most part we can't afford to prioritize a great deal of these things over stuff like netcode. Unfortunately I am but a single person, so if you aren't happy with how other people are acting around you, maybe you could try to get them to change their behavior?
On January 03 2022 07:17 TelecoM wrote: The 2v2 scene is doing amazingly well on SB right now, now all we need is a big population of 1v1ers to play, it will happen eventually I am sure.
i think three main points need to change for korean 1v1 players to switch:
1. there has to be a tangible improvement to lag between koreans and foreigners when compared to official. client-sided turn rate would help a lot. i wouldn't mind having TR12 playing against a TR24 korean if it means both of us are happy and have adapted to our latency. i know i've heard this isn't supposed to work this way but that lowlatency program coming around the end of 1.16.1 is exactly what i'm talking about. it lowered the turn rate client-sided while the opponent kept the slower turn rate.
We already have better things in mind that make this type of shenanigans unnecessary. SC:R's netcode is extremely rudimentary and missing a lot of basic things that would improve things significantly, but unfortunately it's also a fair amount of work. We don't have access to the source, everything we build on top of has to be reverse-engineered first, on top of simply building the better things. It's absolutely what I want to focus on at the moment, but it is still hard given how much people demand of me personally all the damn time (see your own points 2 and 3 here, which want us to work on completely unrelated things at the same time).
2. better community support. the way SCR works basically killed most clan channels. i remember fish being very lively, while now it's just not the same even though brood war has reached its second peak in korea. shieldbattery should put up multiple chats by default, including those for clans korean and foreign alike.
The plan has always been to support multiple channels, and I find it kind of frustrating people always assume that the current state of things is the final plan. It takes times to build these things, and we're not going to ship them without features that let people manage their own channels properly (and let us administrate across all the channels as well, and communicate with everyone even if they're not in a single channel as well). Given that, there is still work to be done to ship this, but demanding obvious things over and over again doesn't really do anything to help those features get shipped.
The problem here isn't ideas. I honestly can't think of a point in the last 5 years of working on this where someone has suggested something we haven't already thought of or put on the list. And before you say, "well show us the list!", well, we have, and do have a list on our splash page, nobody reads it and you all just suggest the same things to me all the time anyway. The ideas are mostly obvious, it's the implementation that is difficult.
And it is *absurdly* frustrating to continuously hear "just do X!", "why doesn't this have Y?!" over and over again from people that have zero understanding of how much work goes into this stuff, and zero respect for the people that work on it.
And I'm sorry if you feel any of this doesn't really apply to you, I've just come off a week of building more features to permanently ban users who are misbehaving on the system, when what I really wanted to be doing was finishing some stop-gap netcode improvements so people will stop complaining to me about dynamic TR. If you all really want to see more features and improvements come out at a regular pace, there are two major ways you could help: 1) Donate some money and 2) Convince your fellow community-members to stop doing stuff that requires us to take our attention away from building those features. It sucks that a few selfish people can ruin things for everyone, but well, that's just the way the world works I guess.
On January 03 2022 08:41 atrox_ wrote: really not enjoying the vibe in SB since the 2v2 has come in compared to when I was in it previously - just people flaming each other
I'm sorry you're not enjoying it, but I'm not really sure what you would like me to do with this information. Prior to 2v2, ShieldBattery had next to no users, no real regular chat. The same number of games have been played in the last 16 days as had been played in the entire previous year. I'm sorry that you're experiencing the growing pains of a community that lacks all the tools it needs to manage that community, but you really need to understand that we have to build all of those things, and it takes a lot of time and effort to do so. I'm the one person working on this full-time at a large personal financial loss, and yet people throw requests and complaints at me like I'm a multi-national corporation.
I'd definitely like to give people more ability to control whose chat they see, muting ingame, adding chat bans for egregious offenders, etc. But all of these things take work, and for the most part we can't afford to prioritize a great deal of these things over stuff like netcode. Unfortunately I am but a single person, so if you aren't happy with how other people are acting around you, maybe you could try to get them to change their behavior?
On January 03 2022 07:17 TelecoM wrote: The 2v2 scene is doing amazingly well on SB right now, now all we need is a big population of 1v1ers to play, it will happen eventually I am sure.
i think three main points need to change for korean 1v1 players to switch:
1. there has to be a tangible improvement to lag between koreans and foreigners when compared to official. client-sided turn rate would help a lot. i wouldn't mind having TR12 playing against a TR24 korean if it means both of us are happy and have adapted to our latency. i know i've heard this isn't supposed to work this way but that lowlatency program coming around the end of 1.16.1 is exactly what i'm talking about. it lowered the turn rate client-sided while the opponent kept the slower turn rate.
We already have better things in mind that make this type of shenanigans unnecessary. SC:R's netcode is extremely rudimentary and missing a lot of basic things that would improve things significantly, but unfortunately it's also a fair amount of work. We don't have access to the source, everything we build on top of has to be reverse-engineered first, on top of simply building the better things. It's absolutely what I want to focus on at the moment, but it is still hard given how much people demand of me personally all the damn time (see your own points 2 and 3 here, which want us to work on completely unrelated things at the same time).
2. better community support. the way SCR works basically killed most clan channels. i remember fish being very lively, while now it's just not the same even though brood war has reached its second peak in korea. shieldbattery should put up multiple chats by default, including those for clans korean and foreign alike.
The plan has always been to support multiple channels, and I find it kind of frustrating people always assume that the current state of things is the final plan. It takes times to build these things, and we're not going to ship them without features that let people manage their own channels properly (and let us administrate across all the channels as well, and communicate with everyone even if they're not in a single channel as well). Given that, there is still work to be done to ship this, but demanding obvious things over and over again doesn't really do anything to help those features get shipped.
The problem here isn't ideas. I honestly can't think of a point in the last 5 years of working on this where someone has suggested something we haven't already thought of or put on the list. And before you say, "well show us the list!", well, we have, and do have a list on our splash page, nobody reads it and you all just suggest the same things to me all the time anyway. The ideas are mostly obvious, it's the implementation that is difficult.
And it is *absurdly* frustrating to continuously hear "just do X!", "why doesn't this have Y?!" over and over again from people that have zero understanding of how much work goes into this stuff, and zero respect for the people that work on it.
And I'm sorry if you feel any of this doesn't really apply to you, I've just come off a week of building more features to permanently ban users who are misbehaving on the system, when what I really wanted to be doing was finishing some stop-gap netcode improvements so people will stop complaining to me about dynamic TR. If you all really want to see more features and improvements come out at a regular pace, there are two major ways you could help: 1) Donate some money and 2) Convince your fellow community-members to stop doing stuff that requires us to take our attention away from building those features. It sucks that a few selfish people can ruin things for everyone, but well, that's just the way the world works I guess.
I regret my previous post and take back the comment, I was looking to play a game late last night and got frustrated when I opened the client again. As someone that has experience in working on open source software (and received the exact same, mundane, pointless comments that I posted myself that offer nothing of use just a complaint) I should have definitely thought it through a bit more, apologies. Best of luck with your project - I really hope it does well for the good of the game
On January 03 2022 13:45 tec27 wrote:And it is *absurdly* frustrating to continuously hear "just do X!", "why doesn't this have Y?!" over and over again from people that have zero understanding of how much work goes into this stuff, and zero respect for the people that work on it.
i wasn't trying to imply it's easy and that simple, i'm sorry if it came out that way. i understand there's a lot to do and that it's a crazy amount of work. the work you do is very appreciated and i hope to see SB succeed. i'm just throwing some of my opinions out in the open, i'm by no means an expert.
On January 03 2022 00:48 Optimate wrote: In my opinion, if you have a random ally you should get twice the points as a team stacker. I don't think it is fun to log in and get bashed by team stackers. Plus, amazing players allying worse players means more people can learn that way.
The design, which is not yet fully realized, is that arranged teams (parties) will have a matchmaking handicap applied according to their proven advantage expressed as a function of win percentage over random teams. For example, if the parsed data from actual SB games shows that arranged teams beat same-rated random teams 55% of the time, and a 55/45 matchup equates to a 40 MMR gap, then when the 1500-rated arranged team searches for a match, they will be searching +40 MMR higher than their current rating (and therefore are less likely to match against 1500-rated random teams). Now that we have thousands of matches' worth of data, I can start searching for that inflection point, but it's not ready yet.
I'm hesitant at this juncture to award any extra points directly for random teams beating arranged teams because in theory the matchmaking handicap should resolve that problem by itself, but I'll keep an eye on whether that's necessary.
On January 03 2022 00:48 Optimate wrote: In my opinion, if you have a random ally you should get twice the points as a team stacker. I don't think it is fun to log in and get bashed by team stackers. Plus, amazing players allying worse players means more people can learn that way.
The design, which is not yet fully realized, is that arranged teams (parties) will have a matchmaking handicap applied according to their proven advantage expressed as a function of win percentage over random teams. For example, if the parsed data from actual SB games shows that arranged teams beat same-rated random teams 55% of the time, and a 55/45 matchup equates to a 40 MMR gap, then when the 1500-rated arranged team searches for a match, they will be searching +40 MMR higher than their current rating (and therefore are less likely to match against 1500-rated random teams). Now that we have thousands of matches' worth of data, I can start searching for that inflection point, but it's not ready yet.
I'm hesitant at this juncture to award any extra points directly for random teams beating arranged teams because in theory the matchmaking handicap should resolve that problem by itself, but I'll keep an eye on whether that's necessary.
Injecting extra points into the system seems like it would cause more problems than placating someone's feelings is worth IMO.
On January 04 2022 03:26 Jealous wrote: Injecting extra points into the system seems like it would cause more problems than placating someone's feelings is worth IMO.
The aim of the ladder system is to keep match outcomes zero-sum, so that means no "bonus" points of any kind. There are numerous advantages to handling things this way, the most valuable of which is that it's just simpler. So that remains a core principle in this iteration of the ladder.
Having said that, we know that arranged teams have some advantage over random teams, the question is how much? And that is calculable based on recorded results, as many ranking systems in other games have shown. I've seen this applied two ways. The first is as I described before, by simply moving the initial search MMR up according to the advantage, and the second is to use that modified MMR in the actual rating update calculation (in this latter case, if your adjusted MMR as an arranged team were 1540, then actually score the game as if you were 1540 rather than 1500). The second case is simply a further nudge in that direction. My assumption is that it may not be necessary because your even matches are assumed to be against 1540s anyway, so if that holds true then you will simply rise up to 1540 through natural outcomes.
On January 04 2022 03:26 Jealous wrote: Injecting extra points into the system seems like it would cause more problems than placating someone's feelings is worth IMO.
The aim of the ladder system is to keep match outcomes zero-sum, so that means no "bonus" points of any kind. There are numerous advantages to handling things this way, the most valuable of which is that it's just simpler. So that remains a core principle in this iteration of the ladder.
Having said that, we know that arranged teams have some advantage over random teams, the question is how much? And that is calculable based on recorded results, as many ranking systems in other games have shown. I've seen this applied two ways. The first is as I described before, by simply moving the initial search MMR up according to the advantage, and the second is to use that modified MMR in the actual rating update calculation (in this latter case, if your adjusted MMR as an arranged team were 1540, then actually score the game as if you were 1540 rather than 1500). The second case is simply a further nudge in that direction. My assumption is that it may not be necessary because your even matches are assumed to be against 1540s anyway, so if that holds true then you will simply rise up to 1540 through natural outcomes.
Yea I might have not expressed myself clearly, but I was basically agreeing with your proposal over the one that you were responding to. I think it makes sense.
I think it makes more sense to give a bonus to players that use a random ally. That way it encourages people not to be team stackers like the majority of 2v2 players are. You might also give them less points of a loss if they have a really bad ally.
Brood war is a really old game.People usually play 2v2 with people they know.That is proly the most fun part about it. It is also frustrating to play with someone that is way worse than you. Like it happened to me that my ally was attacking my units. >.< . Tec already said he is super busy right now to optimize the MM. In the future and if there is enough population maybe pairing should have some priority to match full team vs full team and randoms vs randoms to make it more casual. But we are very far from this I feel.
For anyone willing to support the main developer and the SB team, that's the way. I'm sure there will be more than a couple people enjoying the new SB developments as the holiday season is coming along.
Reposting this for this page and new people.
Is there a paypal (or similar) for one time donations just because this is awesome?
On January 04 2022 22:03 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote: Brood war is a really old game.People usually play 2v2 with people they know.That is proly the most fun part about it. It is also frustrating to play with someone that is way worse than you. Like it happened to me that my ally was attacking my units. >.< . Tec already said he is super busy right now to optimize the MM. In the future and if there is enough population maybe pairing should have some priority to match full team vs full team and randoms vs randoms to make it more casual. But we are very far from this I feel.
Hopefully eventually can have both... I know it splits the play base, but still what is the point of having 2 of the most skilled players, picking Terran and Zerg on a set team vs a random team who is potentially playing with a non zerg ally. The probability of other team winning is literally in the 0.0001% up to 30% (and the 30% would only be if they were against opponents of equal skill and they worked decently together).
Sure, I get that it's a ladder.... but it's a 22+ year old game, must we still be squeaking out every advantage? I mean if others truly find that fun, than there point is just as valid as mine. I understand that, just don't understand how it can be fun queuing into a lot of games where your average net chance of losing is like 3%(if not even less).
speaking of losing and shit, why are so many 2v2 players so fucking disrespectful? name calling, trolling, throwing the game because i didn't make miracles happen... seriously? i'm sure we're all grown ass adults here, right? why do so many people on shieldbattery think it's acceptable to straight up be a terrible person? this is seriously how you guys treat people?
it's not SB itself that's the issue, this same problem was on iccup and it's even worse on bnet. if you're reading this and you bad manner your teammates, please grow the fuck up.
On January 17 2022 21:21 lost dedicated wrote: speaking of losing and shit, why are so many 2v2 players so fucking disrespectful? name calling, trolling, throwing the game because i didn't make miracles happen... seriously? i'm sure we're all grown ass adults here, right? why do so many people on shieldbattery think it's acceptable to straight up be a terrible person? this is seriously how you guys treat people?
it's not SB itself that's the issue, this same problem was on iccup and it's even worse on bnet. if you're reading this and you bad manner your teammates, please grow the fuck up.
That's literally the experience you get in any online multiplayer game in existence. Sure, you could argue that the average age in the SC community is higher, but that doesn't make a difference online.
Might seem like a new development because many have mostly played 1v1 in bw. If you play team games with strangers as your partners it requires a pretty calm and cool personality to not be affected by your partner sucking.
On January 18 2022 02:46 Liquid`Drone wrote: Might seem like a new development because many have mostly played 1v1 in bw. If you play team games with strangers as your partners it requires a pretty calm and cool personality to not be affected by your partner sucking.
Or the dreaded sucking + shit talking partner. So shit at the game that they are oblivious to how hard they are being carried.
Played a 2v2 with some absolute dickhead recently. Before the game even started, he was already involved in some spat with the host team.
Game starts and he wants me to sac my Zealots into the Lings/Sunken so he can run by with Vults and harass Zerg eco. Great plan! Unfortunately he just runs in and dies without attempting to get inside the base.
He continues making 100% vultures and laying mines for the next 5 minutes which isn't bad I guess. Didn't get punished for it. We gain a pretty significant lead mostly because I bust the Terran and defend my 3rd. He sends some Vultures in support but he keeps throwing them, like 10 lost to Sunks with no kills, 8 lost to Tanks/Hydra, etc. The enemy realizes that he has made no Tanks all game and attacks him. He has like 1 Tank and no army because he threw away all his Vultures. Enemy has mines and Lurkers out at this point.
I checked the replay. My mans is floating 5000 minerals on a 40 SCV eco, 5 Factories but 4 are idle, 230 APM doing nothing at all. Starts screaming at me to make army and save him. My army was not enough to win 2v1 against the Lurkers, Tanks, and mines camped in his natural. "MAKE ZEALOTS" he says. I'm waiting on the obs + a round of Goons. "NOOB" he DMs me. While floating 5000 minerals and producing 2 Vultures.
I was tempted to just leave right then and there. Fuck this guy. But, I manage to practically single-handedly win the remainder of the game because I was so far ahead of the crippled Terran I had busted and the Zerg who was on fewer bases than me.
Imagine having that fuck as your ally 50% of the time and keeping a model code of behavior in pub 2v2s. It's almost impossible.
However, I do agree that flagrant shit talkers who just spam the main chat should just be chatbanned. There are too many on SB.
On January 18 2022 02:46 Liquid`Drone wrote: Might seem like a new development because many have mostly played 1v1 in bw. If you play team games with strangers as your partners it requires a pretty calm and cool personality to not be affected by your partner sucking.
Or the dreaded sucking + shit talking partner. So shit at the game that they are oblivious to how hard they are being carried.
Played a 2v2 with some absolute dickhead recently. Before the game even started, he was already involved in some spat with the host team.
Game starts and he wants me to sac my Zealots into the Lings/Sunken so he can run by with Vults and harass Zerg eco. Great plan! Unfortunately he just runs in and dies without attempting to get inside the base.
He continues making 100% vultures and laying mines for the next 5 minutes which isn't bad I guess. Didn't get punished for it. We gain a pretty significant lead mostly because I bust the Terran and defend my 3rd. He sends some Vultures in support but he keeps throwing them, like 10 lost to Sunks with no kills, 8 lost to Tanks/Hydra, etc. The enemy realizes that he has made no Tanks all game and attacks him. He has like 1 Tank and no army because he threw away all his Vultures. Enemy has mines and Lurkers out at this point.
I checked the replay. My mans is floating 5000 minerals on a 40 SCV eco, 5 Factories but 4 are idle, 230 APM doing nothing at all. Starts screaming at me to make army and save him. My army was not enough to win 2v1 against the Lurkers, Tanks, and mines camped in his natural. "MAKE ZEALOTS" he says. I'm waiting on the obs + a round of Goons. "NOOB" he DMs me. While floating 5000 minerals and producing 2 Vultures.
I was tempted to just leave right then and there. Fuck this guy. But, I manage to practically single-handedly win the remainder of the game because I was so far ahead of the crippled Terran I had busted and the Zerg who was on fewer bases than me.
Imagine having that fuck as your ally 50% of the time and keeping a model code of behavior in pub 2v2s. It's almost impossible.
However, I do agree that flagrant shit talkers who just spam the main chat should just be chatbanned. There are too many on SB.
what is your skill level like using old iccup ranks?
Yeah sometimes I see my opponent trash talking his ally. From my perspective it looks funny but I remember being in that situation 10 years ago and a top 2v2 player did the same to me. I was down bad lmao.
We've put a ton of work into the netcode for this release, so would love your feedback on that front. We've also fixed the observer desync bug that has cropped up quite a bit in both foreign and Korean tournaments (I'll make a separate thread about that so people can avoid causing it on bnet if they're not playing with our fixes).
On February 06 2022 20:39 Broodwar4lyf wrote: OP but...where can iwatch the 2v2 sbtourney last december? can't seem to find it on the twitch channel posted. TIA
It's still in ladder phase until the end of February.
On January 18 2022 20:17 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote: Yeah sometimes I see my opponent trash talking his ally. From my perspective it looks funny but I remember being in that situation 10 years ago and a top 2v2 player did the same to me. I was down bad lmao.
Weird I noticed the opposite. Being a 2v2 player, I see a lot of very BM 1v1 players when they are my ally. They are really poor losers and never can take the blame for the loss.
On February 08 2022 10:49 banga_ph wrote: Which folder are the maps located for Shield Battery in SC?
The map browser uses the same folders SC:R does normally: the program folder and My Documents\StarCraft\Maps
If you're asking where it *downloads* maps to, that's stored in your user data folder, but isn't really intended for human consumption and I wouldn't recommend trying to browse it.
On February 08 2022 11:26 banga_ph wrote: Thanks for the quick reply! Would it be possible to have a map pack link added in Shield Battery to get the maps manually?
It's sort of a pain to maintain and distribute things outside of our existing map system so I don't plan on it, but could you explain why you want to download the maps separately? Maybe we can try to solve that in some other way
On February 08 2022 11:26 banga_ph wrote: Thanks for the quick reply! Would it be possible to have a map pack link added in Shield Battery to get the maps manually?
It's sort of a pain to maintain and distribute things outside of our existing map system so I don't plan on it, but could you explain why you want to download the maps separately? Maybe we can try to solve that in some other way
It would be much easier to have them in one folder to access for practice games. Currently can't seem to find some of these maps. Even a downloadable link for a zip file with all the maps would do. Anyway just a suggestion if it can be implemented.
@TT1 regarding your expressed desire to add a 2v2 shared bases map, I think that would be epically awesome!! Something innovative that Broodwar never done before and I think iccup never did. Let's add some more depth to this old game and try it out!!! Also, I support adding Polypoid but keeping Hunters/Python/FS like you recommended. Hunters good to bring in the Hunters players.
Yup, we'll definitely try it out eventually, should be fun. It'll add a different feel/more variety to 2v2 by making slower/non z teams like PP/TT/PT more viable.
It's definitely gonna turn 2v2s into slower/more passive games imo, some ppl might like that more. Or if that's not your cup of tea you can just veto and stick to the classic 2v2 maps.
On February 08 2022 11:26 banga_ph wrote: Thanks for the quick reply! Would it be possible to have a map pack link added in Shield Battery to get the maps manually?
It's sort of a pain to maintain and distribute things outside of our existing map system so I don't plan on it, but could you explain why you want to download the maps separately? Maybe we can try to solve that in some other way
It would be much easier to have them in one folder to access for practice games. Currently can't seem to find some of these maps. Even a downloadable link for a zip file with all the maps would do. Anyway just a suggestion if it can be implemented.
So if you're playing on ShieldBattery, you don't need to have them at all, you can just pick them out of the Official Maps list when you create a lobby. Were you confused about that part, or are you trying to play on them outside of ShieldBattery?
On February 08 2022 11:26 banga_ph wrote: Thanks for the quick reply! Would it be possible to have a map pack link added in Shield Battery to get the maps manually?
It's sort of a pain to maintain and distribute things outside of our existing map system so I don't plan on it, but could you explain why you want to download the maps separately? Maybe we can try to solve that in some other way
It would be much easier to have them in one folder to access for practice games. Currently can't seem to find some of these maps. Even a downloadable link for a zip file with all the maps would do. Anyway just a suggestion if it can be implemented.
So if you're playing on ShieldBattery, you don't need to have them at all, you can just pick them out of the Official Maps list when you create a lobby. Were you confused about that part, or are you trying to play on them outside of ShieldBattery?
Yes trying to play them outside of Shield Battery.
Shieldbattery is a great program for experienced 2v2 players. I am not a bad player I don't think, but learning 2v2 on here is difficult, because no one wants to ally because of my poor record and match making puts you up against higher mmr teams. I think for the longevity of SB it'll be important to get new blood.
I'd suggest an unranked option which pairs against ranked players so an experienced player can take a newbie under their wing and teach them without destroying their record.
On February 13 2022 06:11 Optimate wrote: I have same problem as Mutaller. Get roflstomped over and over again by team stackers.
You didn't even know how to make units follow each other (twice btw, among other things) so I don't think the opposing team is the problem here. Maybe you just need to get better at the game?
Sorry to call you out like this but perspective is important. When a noob blames smurfs or "team stackers" like they aren't using the ladder as intended, it sort of loses its potency.
Well there's no denying that AT has a big edge over RT, you get to pick your ally and races (this will get adjusted with better MMR weightings/handicaps in future seasons).
That said, at lower lvls the main problem comes from the lack of activity (this gets compounded during BSL seasons), which causes more team mismatches. We've been talking about a lot of these issues (mainly related to RT/griefers etc), there's some solutions but workload-wise the devs are already doing as much as they can.
For now we're prioritizing long term self-sufficiency projects like improving the netcode/latency. We know about all these issues tho, I'm out there with you guys. I see it, i talk to players from all skill lvls. Not much can be done at this stage other than increasing the player pool, the work the devs are putting in is to add features to make this happen. There's no magic wand to make all this stuff happen overnight tho.
On February 13 2022 06:11 Optimate wrote: I have same problem as Mutaller. Get roflstomped over and over again by team stackers.
You didn't even know how to make units follow each other (twice btw, among other things) so I don't think the opposing team is the problem here. Maybe you just need to get better at the game?
Sorry to call you out like this but perspective is important. When a noob blames smurfs or "team stackers" like they aren't using the ladder as intended, it sort of loses its potency.
Well yes. He is a noob ( by your description a super noob ) And he still trying to have fun in a videogame playing on shield battery. How do you balance that ? Im sure there are many like him. Should they do CPL for months ? I actually think a non ranked MM will help a lot.In theory good teams will not play such system. More casual and less competitive is something positive when you are just starting.
On February 13 2022 06:11 Optimate wrote: I have same problem as Mutaller. Get roflstomped over and over again by team stackers.
You didn't even know how to make units follow each other (twice btw, among other things) so I don't think the opposing team is the problem here. Maybe you just need to get better at the game?
Sorry to call you out like this but perspective is important. When a noob blames smurfs or "team stackers" like they aren't using the ladder as intended, it sort of loses its potency.
I don’t know how to make units follow. How do you do it?
On February 13 2022 06:11 Optimate wrote: I have same problem as Mutaller. Get roflstomped over and over again by team stackers.
You didn't even know how to make units follow each other (twice btw, among other things) so I don't think the opposing team is the problem here. Maybe you just need to get better at the game?
Sorry to call you out like this but perspective is important. When a noob blames smurfs or "team stackers" like they aren't using the ladder as intended, it sort of loses its potency.
I don’t know how to make units follow. How do you do it?
move hotkey then left click the unit you want the selected unit to follow
i came back to starcraft from a 10+ years break and i had to look this up again after a game i had where i tried to do it and i couldn't remember or figure out how. it's not really very obvious
edit: worth noting that it's pretty sluggish and weird compared to just doing it manually, just saves apm is all
On February 13 2022 06:11 Optimate wrote: I have same problem as Mutaller. Get roflstomped over and over again by team stackers.
You didn't even know how to make units follow each other (twice btw, among other things) so I don't think the opposing team is the problem here. Maybe you just need to get better at the game?
Sorry to call you out like this but perspective is important. When a noob blames smurfs or "team stackers" like they aren't using the ladder as intended, it sort of loses its potency.
Well yes. He is a noob ( by your description a super noob ) And he still trying to have fun in a videogame playing on shield battery. How do you balance that ? Im sure there are many like him. Should they do CPL for months ? I actually think a non ranked MM will help a lot.In theory good teams will not play such system. More casual and less competitive is something positive when you are just starting.
I don't have a problem with that suggestion at all, I think it's a potentially* good idea. I was opposed to the assessment that he has the same problems as the poster above when the problem of not being good enough is a personal one.
* further subdividing the playing population might be bad
Social/unranked system would be pretty good imo. Admittedly I don't play 2v2, but that's more because it already feels a very established scene, and if your face doesn't fit (skill not up to same level as community) then you quickly become ostracized. I think a social playlist would help in making it more inclusive.
On February 08 2022 11:26 banga_ph wrote: Thanks for the quick reply! Would it be possible to have a map pack link added in Shield Battery to get the maps manually?
It's sort of a pain to maintain and distribute things outside of our existing map system so I don't plan on it, but could you explain why you want to download the maps separately? Maybe we can try to solve that in some other way
It would be much easier to have them in one folder to access for practice games. Currently can't seem to find some of these maps. Even a downloadable link for a zip file with all the maps would do. Anyway just a suggestion if it can be implemented.
So if you're playing on ShieldBattery, you don't need to have them at all, you can just pick them out of the Official Maps list when you create a lobby. Were you confused about that part, or are you trying to play on them outside of ShieldBattery?
Yes trying to play them outside of Shield Battery.
We may add a map download feature or something similar in the future, but as it is now I don't think I really have the time or energy to try and support people that want to play outside of ShieldBattery. Our goal, after all, is for people to use our client.
On February 14 2022 10:15 psyCrowe wrote: Social/unranked system would be pretty good imo. Admittedly I don't play 2v2, but that's more because it already feels a very established scene, and if your face doesn't fit (skill not up to same level as community) then you quickly become ostracized. I think a social playlist would help in making it more inclusive.
I appreciate the desire, but I think adding things like this without a corresponding increase in the player-base size would do a lot more harm than good at this point.
The main issue with the 2v2 as it stands is the amount of people in it: the queue is empty enough such that it's almost always forced into picking any 4 players, regardless of their MMR, and thus matches can often be lopsided. There are also a number of people who create new accounts quite frequently (thus resetting their MMR away from their actual skill), which makes it very hard to balance matches. Some of these things will be addressed in the next season as we move to a different MMR system, but without more players it's likely the matchmaker can't really do a whole lot about balancing matches well. Finding ways to get more players needs to generally be our priority, but this also often means we can't spend a ton of time smoothing out rough edges on existing features.
What future changes might the developers be considering? I used to think Shield Battery would not succeed but my mind was blown away since I've been using it the last couple months. Sorry for being a doubting Thomas. Great job team!
The new built-in map making features surprise me. I mean, we can already achieve all of that, can't we? It would also bind a map to SB, so in that regard it's obviously a good lock-in move
On February 18 2022 07:36 LML wrote: The new built-in map making features surprise me. I mean, we can already achieve all of that, can't we? It would also bind a map to SB, so in that regard it's obviously a good lock-in move
So some of the examples, sure, but that's not the full breadth of what we have in mind. I also think there's a ton of value in making things more approachable, for players, viewers, and mapmakers. ShieldBattery started largely as an attempt to make BW approachable in an era where even just hosting games or playing the game without color bugs required guides, launchers with a million checkboxes with hard-to-understand functionality. The goal was largely to make a very smooth experience that "just worked" at a very high quality level, that didn't require knowing where to look for guides, having years of understanding and community involvement, etc. just to get started playing the game. Remastered has smoothed over some of those issues, but also added many of its own, and in many cases Blizzard just sidestepped problems rather than solving them outright.
With map features, there's a number of things that experienced mapmakers use a lot that are much less accessible to newer ones (even very subtle things like mineral placement, using certain tiles to influence pathfinding, etc.), and a number of these things end up causing problems even in pretty popular maps. It seems to me that it would be very nice to provide mapmakers with a better set of features that make the common, easy, obvious path the "right" one. We can look at something that's been present on maps for probably 2 decades now: reverse ramps. Tons of maps use reverse ramps, many of them cause pathing or vision/miss-chance issues, and it's a pretty non-obvious thing if you don't know to look for it (and certainly not obvious to players of said maps). Blizzard, rather than attempting to fix this issue, quite literally "papered over" it in Remastered: they made it so maps could use sprites that look more seamless but behave in the exact same (problematic) way. I think that we, as a community, can build much better solutions for these things, that we don't have to live with a million small technicalities that every player and creator needs to be aware of.
There's also a ton of, quite simply, very weird map features that make very little sense unless you've been watching or playing BW for a long time. Take Troy gates, for instance. Yeah, this works, but is it really the ideal viewing and playing experience? Should we really have to have commentators explain every time such a map is played how these things behave, the peculiarities of the BW engine that cause them to behave that way? This kind of stuff is small, but when you stack a ton of these small things up, it makes BW feel way more intimidating than it already is.
Anyway, I wouldn't consider any of the map stuff to be nearby on the horizon, it's definitely a longer term idea. We don't particularly want to break compatibility with the existing game if we can help it, but there are a number of things that, to do what's right for the game, end up requiring it. Even some of our existing exploit fixes, because they are more extensive and fix more than what Blizzard has done, can potentially break replays played on SB if you view them outside of SB. It's definitely a tradeoff we don't take lightly, but I think for things that have the potential to greatly improve the game experience, it can be worthwhile.
Well didnt read all posts but u should open ladder view for non logged users, if someone only wants check ladder he must register and log-in now. Also ladder could just look better, like + flags etc . I know you have other important things to do, just sayin.
Any updates if 2x2 will see any new maps especially shared base maps? Would be a refreshment to play a shared base map. I don't think Iccup ever had any.
On March 09 2022 03:20 Optimate wrote: Any updates if 2x2 will see any new maps especially shared base maps? Would be a refreshment to play a shared base map. I don't think Iccup ever had any.
iCCup never had it, as it's not possible without UMS to guarantee the spawn points. So it would require changing something in the game code to make this possible. Something SB certainly can do, but there are probably a few more pressing points on their agenda.
Hi; I wanted to report my experience trying to install and play on sb on my wife’s computer: Point 1: with all the windows security I would not have downloaded it and installed it had I not of course know what it was or excatly who is behind it, which in my case I know; is there no way to “validate” it from a “trusted source”? Point2: it automatically detected that I am in Italy so the first part of the installer is in italian, then it switches to English; seems like some form of google translate though; and here I would like to offer to translate into italian to help, if someone from who is maintaining it is interested in sending me material to translate and follow up; my italian is not as poor as my English, so I can guarantee a grammatically correct translation of the materials into Italian. Point 3: once I actually installed it, without any particular problem, I realized I actually had to have a copy of bw; now in my stupidity in hindsight I realize this was kinda obvious; but I would suggest making that clear to new users before they go through the installation process;
I am kinda torn on the fact that you can’t pick your races in 2v2 based on what you see your ally as playing. This could be described as a weakness compared to iccup.
Is there going to he a way I can download top players’ replays? I thought had heard that they would be automatically posted for everyone to watch.
On March 17 2022 04:13 Optimate wrote: I am kinda torn on the fact that you can’t pick your races in 2v2 based on what you see your ally as playing. This could be described as a weakness compared to iccup.
Is there going to he a way I can download top players’ replays? I thought had heard that they would be automatically posted for everyone to watch.
on picking races, we've spoken about this in the past but it's too early to do anything here, player base is still too low
on reps, this is coming down the line, if you're patient enough you'll enjoy a lot of the stuff coming
We've pushed a new update that brings in ranked seasons and a new ranked system, for both 1v1 and 2v2. Included with the new seasons are new map pools:
We don't have an exact date for the end of this new season, but you can reasonably expect it to last about 3 months. We'll give a more exact date as we solidify our plans and see how things work out. Map pool refreshes will likely happen around the middle of the season to keep things fresh.
New Ranked System
Our major goals for our ranked system are:
Fast rating convergence - a player's rating should quickly adjust to their actual skill level, without requiring a ton of games to be played beforehand.
Earned rank - a player's rank should feel "earned" through continued play. The top ranked players should be highly skilled ones, but the system should also encourage active play throughout the season.
Accurate across seasons - the system should be able to share skill data across seasons, so that players receive close matches even at the beginning of a season.
Resilient to smurfing - the system should be able to detect smurfing across multiple accounts, and use that to share skill information without boosting smurf accounts to higher rankings.
Our previous system was a modified version of Elo, and worked fairly well at delivering accurate skill rating for very active players. It didn't work so well, however, for users that played only a few games. Additionally, tying our leaderboard directly to this skill rating allowed top players to take and maintain top rankings without playing many more games, and left us very few good options for dealing with smurfing or keeping skill rating data across seasons.
The new system takes a different approach. It splits the ranking system into two parts: matchmaking rating (MMR) and ranked points (RP). MMR will be based on Glicko2, which is more aggressive than our previous system at delivering accurate rankings, so it should converge to your skill level in fewer games. MMR is used for matchmaking, but will not be used for rankings, so we can easily share it across seasons and use it to find accurate matches for smurf accounts.
So you may be wondering, if we're not using MMR for rankings, then how are rankings decided? That's where the points come in.
Point-based Leaderboards
There are two key parts to how Ranked Points work: Point Potential and Bonus Pool.
Your Point Potential is anchored to your MMR. That is, the higher your MMR, the more points you can expect to achieve through continued play. This is set to MMR*2, so a 1500-rated player will earn reduced points after 3000 RP, while a 2000-rated player will earn reduced points after 4000 RP. This also works in the other direction, so the further behind a player's points are from their Point Potential, the more points they will earn for a win.
For example, a 1500-rated player with 500 points will earn 96 points for a win or lose 0 for a loss, while a 1500-rated player with 3000 points will earn 48 points for a win or lose 48 points for a loss. This means that the fastest way to reach your Point Potential is to keep playing and winning games, since your gains will dramatically outweigh your losses until you reach it. It also means that the top ranked players in the system will be the highest skilled players that are also actively playing games, playing enough games to earn their Point Potential.
The Bonus Pool is a growing pool of points that accumulate at a fixed rate over the course of the season. When you have Bonus Pool points available, they'll be used to double any points you gain from wins. The Bonus Pool also absorbs point losses, with any points that would have been lost covered by the Bonus Pool first. So a player with a bonus pool of 100 who earns +96 points for a win would see that increased to +192 and the bonus pool reduced to 4. A player with a bonus pool of 100 who lost a game that would have cost them -30 points would instead see their bonus pool reduced to 70 with no point change.
Together, the Point Potential and Bonus Pool encourage continuous ladder activity, as players who don't achieve their Point Potential or spend their available Bonus Pool will find themselves falling behind on the leaderboard.
Our new season starts right now, we look forwards to seeing you all on the leaderboards! gl hf
On June 07 2022 11:39 Jonoman92 wrote: Also, I just want to say that I anxiously await the day that this ladder system affords the opportunity for the following conversation to occur:
Player A: I'm higher ranked than you on ladder scrub. Player B: Who cares? I have higher MMR. EZ.
Yeah, the point-based leaderboards are your way to say "prove it." An inactive player is essentially a wasted spot on a leaderboard, in the sense that their rank doesn't reflect their current ability. With this ladder refresh, we tried to strike a balance between activity and skill where the top of the ladder will be the best active players, and below them will be a mix of inactive "good" players and active "average" players. The design is such that a good player will have a couple of weeks of inactivity before they get overtaken by a wave of active weaker players.
Imagine what they could do if blizzard gave them funds. Feels like the world is upside down, those who do, get nothing, and those who do nothing, get rewards
Hey tec27, I know it won’ t mean much, but never give up; trust me; what you have created, and are bringing forward, has a lot more influence than you think; proof is hard to come by, but when it happens, it’s annoying as a fly;
Note: you will not be able to auto-update from the last version, please visit our website to download the latest installer: https://shieldbattery.net/splash. This can be installed over your existing client to update it. Sorry for the inconvenience!
Just wanted to to mention how smooth this was. I played a game with a university buddy and my room mate- we hadn't played together in years and normally it's like an hour getting whichever client (back in the old Hamachi or Garena days) where we are trying to port forward and trouble shoot and get it all running (The big hindrance was typically having two people on the same network AND having people in other cities in the same game.) But they all downloaded Shield Battery and joined my UMS game and we were off to the races.
Especially important as BW Battlenet hates my computer, creating some sort of black screen input error. Now if only I could convince all the boys that played BW in uni to play again for an old 2v2v2v2...
I think Shieldbattery is the best thing that happened to 2x2. I just don't understand why people refuse to play it, instead gathering 12 people on bnet to play 1 game with 8 observers and 20 minutes waiting for laggy game.
Edit: Maybe it would be a nice idea to allow obserevers in ladder games, maybe with a latency not to make it laggy? I know it would be impossible, but find somebody who doesnt know that. ^^
On March 21 2023 02:56 Johnek wrote: I think Shieldbattery is the best thing that happened to 2x2. I just don't understand why people refuse to play it, instead gathering 12 people on bnet to play 1 game with 8 observers and 20 minutes waiting for laggy game.
Edit: Maybe it would be a nice idea to allow obserevers in ladder games, maybe with a latency not to make it laggy? I know it would be impossible, but find somebody who doesnt know that. ^^
That's on the docket, but it will require a different presentation method. Any time you have players in the game, even if they're observers, they are required to send and receive data packets from all of the other players. The solution to prevent observers from lagging the game is to send a delayed recording of the actions in the game, similar to how Dota TV operates. That is planned, but clearly it's a large undertaking.
On March 21 2023 00:58 [AS]Rattus wrote: some rnd guy creating new accounts to write bs?
That's tappo. He has mental issues - instead of seeking for medical help, he seeks attention here on TLnet. He has been doing that for almost 3 years I think.
On March 21 2023 00:58 [AS]Rattus wrote: some rnd guy creating new accounts to write bs?
That's tappo. He has mental issues - instead of seeking for medical help, he seeks attention here on TLnet. He has been doing that for almost 3 years I think.
On March 21 2023 00:58 [AS]Rattus wrote: some rnd guy creating new accounts to write bs?
That's tappo. He has mental issues - instead of seeking for medical help, he seeks attention here on TLnet. He has been doing that for almost 3 years I think.
Seems like a good program and all but no one plays this... like at all. I qued forever just to hit some random player on some garbage map I've never heard of =\. Impressive programming but this literally has no one playing it.
the map u played on is a remake of CB, the minimap is shown so it should be easy enough to tell
activity depends on players, if every1's default server is bnet then u obviously wont find games the 1 time u decided to try the client out. that's part of the problem
On March 25 2023 06:47 TT1 wrote: the map u played on is a remake of CB, the minimap is shown so it should be easy enough to tell
activity depends on players, if every1's default server is bnet then u obviously wont find games the 1 time u decided to try the client out. that's part of the problem
So you're saying part of the problem is that everyone uses bnet. Why is that a problem? It's a problem for Shield Battery but what kind of problem is it for players? What solution does Shield Battery solve? I can see it being extremely useful when Blizzard eventually axes online play for SC:BW but until then, I don't see how there will ever be enough players using this to make it viable. We're lucky there's still enough players on b.net to make the game playable.
P.S. Nah, that's a garbage map. The map pool is as atrocious as this season's BWCL.
On March 25 2023 06:47 TT1 wrote: the map u played on is a remake of CB, the minimap is shown so it should be easy enough to tell
activity depends on players, if every1's default server is bnet then u obviously wont find games the 1 time u decided to try the client out. that's part of the problem
So you're saying part of the problem is that everyone uses bnet. Why is that a problem? It's a problem for Shield Battery but what kind of problem is it for players? What solution does Shield Battery solve? I can see it being extremely useful when Blizzard eventually axes online play for SC:BW but until then, I don't see how there will ever be enough players using this to make it viable. We're lucky there's still enough players on b.net to make the game playable.
P.S. Nah, that's a garbage map. The map pool is as atrocious as this season's BWCL.
All of the things that people complain about with bnet:
- Netcode - Lack of direct support for community events - Unfixed bugs - No matchmaking outside of 1v1 - No community input in map pools (see, you can already give feedback directly to TT1 who makes map pools here!) - etc.
It's a bit frustrating to have people come in, give it a try for 1 game, and then complain that there are no players and never come back. Do you not see how that attitude contributes to everyone being stuck in an inferior system? At some point people are either going to have to put in an extremely minimal amount of effort to change their habits (or Blizzard's servers will fall over entirely), or that problem isn't really solvable. A lot of us are putting in effort, time, and money into trying to provide something nice for the community, but there are quite a few people who expect everything (including a large player population) to be handed to them for zero investment of their own. "Oh I'll just move over once there are 20,000 other players already" doesn't work if all 20,000 people are saying the same thing. You can also see how that's pretty discouraging, I'm sure.
PS: You DM'd me on Discord immediately after your original post here to have your account deleted. You then left the ShieldBattery Discord so I couldn't actually reply to you. I can delete your account for you, but it's a manual process and cannot be reversed, so you should be sure you actually want that. If you do, you need to DM me through ShieldBattery (also tec27 there) with the request so I can verify you actually own the account.
There was more people playing on pirate pvpgn servers back in the day, netcode gud i give u that ofc and matchmaking for 2v2, community events there is discord, unfixed bugs will not make anyone move unless a new bug that makes playing impossible for everyone on bnet appears (and blizz tend to fix those), there is community input for maps on blizzard forums and they go with low effort option of using a mix of asl maps, current map pool is better IMO that what SB have, after some community outrage everyone including the koreans ask the blizz intern to update latest versions of current maps and he did.
Maybe you are much focus on the technical aspects that usually in projects nobody cares other than other devs?
People can play wherever they want, what SB offers is much better latency, a 2v2 ladder and no hacks (on top of all the additional features that keep getting added to improve player experience). Of course like tec said, if everyone has the "Oh I'll just move over once there are 20,000 other players already" mindset then that makes it impossible to have any meaningful progress up until something disastrous happens to Bnet.
The main thing Bnet has going for it is the 1v1 ladder (Kors are 99.9% of the player base, for them bnet ladder is fine because it's TR24), chat channels and ppls friends list and stuff (more of a habit/comfort thing). That's all, so if you'd rather play on a shitty ladder (from a company that gives 0 fucks about the game or their player base, that's who you're supporting) for the rest of your life then by all means, go ahead.
For the maps, u can suggest maps on our disc or msg me on SB for direct feedback, there's diff factors that come into play when i pick maps, the main one being lack of activity and trying to motivate foreigners to try the client out. We change the map pool frequently tho so that's not too much of an issue, having quality maps to cycle through is a bigger issue for us.
A lot of our maps from this season are being used for BWCL so the idea was to give a place for foreigners to come together and practice on those maps via ladder. Also, the map makers are putting a lot of time into their work and they've been consistently improving their skills/knowledge (just like players, this stuff doesn't happen overnight) so we want to support them as well. The main content BW has is map creation so the map making community is extremely important to the game.
I can argue the player base that do BWCL is small if compared with the rest of foreigner bnet, something is clearly not working with your approach but ok, lets blame the players instead for not moving to the superior system.
All i hear is entitlement and complaining, what do you suggest? People act like we haven't been trying all this time, our hands are tied (we don't have an army of devs working on this, there's no magic wand that'll make us have everything we want overnight) and players are too lazy to dl a standalone client and switch, that's the main issue. We have to figure out how to incentivize players to come out of their shells/comfort zone and give the client a shot
Everyone wants the world but they're not willing to give anything for it (not even their time, which is the bare minimum), they want everything to be served up to them on a platter lmao. We all love BW and have the same endgame goal, to grow the game and have a self sufficient community. If you care about the game then do w/e you can to help us move towards that goal, that's all.
I've give already my suggestion, get a ui for openbw make SB the default server there, don't wait for bnet to die, if bw is "electronic chess" then an alternative for the scr client must exist, otherwise keep waiting for it to die then maybe u'll get players.
Is hard to give feedback when you tag it as entitlement and complaining, I get u guys are frustrated but don't direct it to the player base, don't blame the players you are trying to attract, seems silly and counterproductive.
everyone wants something but they're not even willing to do the bare minimum to support the project
for example CPL players want to get better at the game, they have a lag free ladder accessible to them yet they can't come together to take advantage of the tools at their disposal, everyone is just waiting to get spoon fed
First with the maps. The current map pool you have is atrocious and if you spoke to BWCL admins, they would tell you that they have received so much negative feedback from players this season that they're going to put their foot down on the weird, janky-ass maps next season because they're well aware that they fucked up. So, don't follow them.
Second, don't criticize me for downloading the client, playing a game, and not liking my experience. I even tried playing a 2nd game but eventually gave up in the same manner I would if I was on hold for 3 hours waiting for tech support. As far as I can see, I did what most players won't do, I tried it out. Don't get mad at me because you don't like the feedback. That's literally a child's mindset. I founded and ran an online marketing company for over a decade that has done work for everything from small mom and pop stores to fortune 500 companies. I don't get mad at what Google Analytics tells me, or the bad reviews I read, or what the focus-groups / polls are telling me. Grow up and realize what your customer-base is (hint: it's current StarCraft players) and try focusing on what they want.
For me, I when I want to play a game, I want to actually play it (not sit in a que for an hour). I also want a map pool that is maps I know and are frequently played elsewhere.
If you want some legit constructive critique, #1 Fix the horrid map pool. #2 Create something exciting that'll get people to play (for example, partner with BSL and have their ladder be exclusively on SB, or create your own SB BSL format with a prize pool). #3 How about you allow random but tell the other person what race they are so it's not a bullshit game. #4 How about you make race-picking an option (for example, vs Z I play T, vs P I play T, vs T I play P). If I sat and thought for longer, I could probably come up with a fuck ton more stuff.
Tec27, I am a programmer and I understand what went into this and it's honestly an impressive program. I have nothing but admiration for what you made but there needs to be a need and you guys are clearly lacking fundamental marketing knowledge to figure out what your niche is. Calling Blizzard a company that doesn't care and trying to shame people into using your program is a shitty excuse for a business plan. It's actually what you (TT1) just proclaimed we are doing, "entitlement and complaining". Grow up and do your research to figure out what'll get people onto your platform, come up with a plan, and execute. Don't bitch and complain because you don't like feedback from your target-audience. You should be thankful you're getting any at all. Most people don't DL your client, don't give you feedback, and don't give a shit.
As far as I see it, as it currently sits, you're not going to have a large community using SB until Blizzard disbands online play for SC:BW (probably years from now). You might be able to change that but you'll have to do stuff different and be extremely proactive if that's going to be the case.
why do you deflect so much, i'm just telling you that your suggestion is already implemented, everything else you mentioned i've also tried (BSL, CPL, BWCL etc, it takes 2 to dance)
you literally lost 1 game then cried here and msg'd the entire world to have your account deleted and you're saying im being childish? lmao
what was a 1 day thing for you has been over 10+ years for ppl like tec, everything you mentioned we already know, ur little google analytics was prob coded by tec, keep that baby shit to urself and understand who you're talking to
On March 25 2023 11:41 TT1 wrote: why do you deflect so much, i'm just telling you that your suggestion is already implemented, everything else you mentioned i've also tried (BSL, CPL, BWCL etc, it takes 2 to dance)
you literally lost 1 game then cried here and msg'd the entire world to have your account deleted and you're saying im being childish?
lmao plz just stay on trash buggy bnet w/ 1 map pool change a year and enjoy ur tr10 games, pathetic BW experience
what was a 1 day thing for you has been over 10+ years for ppl like tec, everything you mentioned we already know, ur little google analytics was prob coded by tec, keep that baby shit to urself and understand who you're talking to
LOL. Well, I think a congratulations is in order. That was probably the closest to being direct I've ever seen you be. Usually you're just a little passive-aggressive prick.
P.S. I never cried here messaging the world about deleting my account. I privately messaged the creator on Discord about it (he brought it up here) because I couldn't find a delete account button (there's another suggestion for ya, add that shit) and I don't want spam or shit from you guys because I have no intention of playing this again. You would know that if you could read what's in-front of your face (there's a typical little prick TT1 passive-aggressive comment for ya).
I will play on b.net and enjoy it as much as I can. Enjoy playing on SB you prick.
Edit: I gotta comment on this roflmao. "ur little google analytics was prob coded by tec, keep that baby shit to urself and understand who you're talking to". You obviously know nothing about coding LOL. My classes at U.C. Berkeley had us make programs like SB. It's cool and good but absolutely nothing out-of-this-world. Get over yourself kid roflmao. Also, I mentioned that in relation to marketing (the other thing I went to school for). You clearly know nothing about either LOL.
i wish i was as smart & successful as you, truly a modern man (good enough or i gotta up it?)
you tell me to do research yet you're clueless about so much, 1 of ur suggestions was right in front of ur eyes.. so how can i take you seriously? apparently u spent hours on the client but couldn't be bothered to check it out, then you come here all high and mighty with demands, it's laughable
tec is an ex google employee (and he's been around the bw scene forever, even post sc2), that's what i meant w/ the google analytics jab, he knows what he's doing. also i get it man, you're real special but im sorry to say that idgaf about ur life. the value ppl add to the game is the only thing that matters to me (the measurable kind)
you're right tho i have 0 knowledge about coding, that's why i stay in my lane, knowing a bit about something doesn't make you an expert either. the only thing you're an expert at is being baby lvl at everything 👶, what i don't know i leave to the real gosus, that ain't u
On March 25 2023 11:41 TT1 wrote: what was a 1 day thing for you has been over 10+ years for ppl like tec, everything you mentioned we already know, ur little google analytics was prob coded by tec, keep that baby shit to urself and understand who you're talking to
Way to go man! keep up the good work, since tec is an ex google employee you guys clearly know what you're doing, forget I said anything.. I'm out of here, best of luck with the project.
Uhh well SB is actively being developed, vs bnet which has one unpaid intern there to keep the lights on? I think that's a big enough reason to use SB and try to make it successful NOW. Because by the time bnet goes offline, who knows if SB will still be there & if it's not, then you have NOTHING. But obviously there's a chicken and egg issue with the user base & I'm not genius enough to figure out how to fix that.
How did iCCup ever get so big back in the day? Mouth-to-mouth advertising? Do we know? Anyway. iCCup perks were very clear, waaaay better latency that b.net could offer, a ladder, a launcher with different settings such as a timer and anti-hack. Penguin Plug hackers were notorious back then on battle.net...
Right now battle.net has some key things: TR24 low, Auto-MM, biggest player base with - very importantly - the high level amateurs to pros whom don't hack. If I had no friends (of my skill level) or were a pro I'd know where to play.
We need more people to tell about SB and convince them with perks that are important to them. We then need those people to always open SB first any time they wanna play BW and only open battle.net if they can't find a proper game on SB within 5 minutes. And even so, they should keep checking back to SB after every game they play. That's the only way I see people successfully migrate to SB before battle.net falls. We definitely can't have an elitist image if we want to become the mainstream platform. Your average BW player has typical Twitch chat attitude/behavior at best lol.
Definitely keep organizing BSL, CPL, BWCL on SB for sure. Dewalt recently literally said the only problem SB has is its low player base. Bonyth also recently mentioned he has no issues with SB. That's the 2 best foreigners being positive about SB. That's about the best PR you can get.
Let's say we can successfully get all foreigners to play on SB. Then the biggest player base will still be on battle.net. The best players will then still go back to battle.net simply for their desire to improve, that will then cause a chain reaction where the best competitive players on SB will now also migrate back to battle.net and so on. Even the noobs will then likely migrate back to battle.net because of the hard decline in player base.
TL;DR: I think for SB to be successful we don't just need all foreigners on SB, but also the Koreans. Now how do we convince the Koreans?
TL;DR: I think for SB to be successful we don't just need all foreigners on SB, but also the Koreans. Now how do we convince the Koreans?
spon matches vs foreigners in bnet and then on SB would get their foot in the door. however there would need to be a follow up event or something to make a big deal about the experience.
On March 25 2023 13:57 Peeano wrote: How did iCCup ever get so big back in the day? Mouth-to-mouth advertising? Do we know?
-nuked-
With iCCUP part of the reason the scene died there was the Koreans leaving for FISH and then they just kept making it worse on the StarCraft side. I kept requesting things to make it better, but they literally didn't care about it anymore - every design decision they made was because of the WC3 side and it added a bunch of limits, like the limit to maps of the week or the fact they wouldn't add any new maps from the newer tournaments at the time.
iCCUP at the time was also pretty much the only way to play, where as now even though it's not perfect people have battle.net which has while small the biggest population. Until you get the majority on shield battery people are very unwilling to be the first people to switch. People are like sheep, they follow the flock and very rarely is anyone willing to be the change they want.
If every person who wanted to play on shield battery but didn't because it didn't have enough people switched there'd suddenly be a huge influx of people.
TL;DR: I think for SB to be successful we don't just need all foreigners on SB, but also the Koreans. Now how do we convince the Koreans?
spon matches vs foreigners in bnet and then on SB would get their foot in the door. however there would need to be a follow up event or something to make a big deal about the experience.
sponmatches and showmatches are cool and could easily showcase the improved netcode, but the level of impact is unlikely to move enough people.
honestly its possible with the league system to start giving people a reason to play, now what if next BSL Ladder stage can be properly organized on ShieldBattery? of course enough people need to sign up but even then its a start to being a viable alternative to B.net because at the end of the day people will always cling onto the out of the box solution over needing to go through a 3rd party regardless of how simple it is to do so.
Something that makes no sense to me is why the 2v2 community is not using SB. I remember when 2v2 ladder was announced many people got it but then it kind of die.( mb cuz the latency issues back then ) But then they announced the BSL 2v2 league on SB and it was really active again ( atleast the first 2 weeks i was playing ) to die again. I think will be interesting to get feedback from such players and see why they all quit. I myself asked in some public 2v2 games why they not using SB and the answers are often not players or lag issues.( The lag issue was told by Octzerg so i didnt take it so serious. That guy wanna play UMS on TR24 low LOL ) But is weird.
Im not even going to mention what are my issues with SB cuz it butthurt tec somehow.
On March 25 2023 18:24 fgfzrzufhjfhgj wrote: --- Nuked ---
It's weird when tappo has one of the more reasonable posts in this discussion (sorry, still have to ban you tho).
Just to try to bring the discussion back from all the mud slinging, we *are* thankful for all the feedback we get. That's kind of a whole point on why I personally think ShieldBattery is very important for the BW community. It's made by the BW community members who are involved with the community in a way Blizzard never was and most assuredly never will be. Feedback to us means that someone is actually listening and can lead to a change, instead of automatically going through a figurative paper shredder somewhere at Blizzard's offices.
But TT1 is right in saying that we've been working on this for over 10 years now (I've just checked, and the first thread by tec about it in the BW Staff forums is from October 28 2012!), and we pretty much have heard it all by now. All the hard truths about the impossibility of making people use ShieldBattery is nothing new to us. We know it's hard to get people (especially Koreans) who are happily playing on battle.net to suddenly stop and come spend hours in queue on ShieldBattery. We're aware that focusing on purely technical stuff will not help us attract new people.
The reason why the negative feedback, especially from the established members of the community, is hard to read for us is perhaps because we expect of them to look beyond the first impressions and to realize what the true goal of ShieldBattery is. Which, if I may put in my own words, simply boils down to 2 things:
Support the current BW community in a way Blizzard doesn't
Allow the BW community to survive well into the future
With an additional bonus goal being an expansion of the BW scene, but this is not so much only on us as it is on everyone who cares about BW and want to see it grow. Looking at ShieldBattery as a business is a wrong perspective to have imo, even if we vaguely share the same goal of trying to attract more users.
If we did treat ShieldBattery purely as a business; well first, we would close down the doors a long time ago. And second, it would lead us to optimize for different things, probably the ones which don't align with our goals. When a community members come to us that they would like to organize a tournament on ShieldBattery, we spend weeks implementing the support for Leagues, which allow you to organize a ladder qualification phase seamlessly (stay tuned for more announcements here!), we don't tell them that this doesn't fit in with our bussiness plan. Good luck getting Blizzard to do something like that.
I'd just like to close out by saying that my only hope is that more people start realizing what the true potential of ShieldBattery is, rather than what it is *now*.
On March 25 2023 20:38 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote: Something that makes no sense to me is why the 2v2 community is not using SB. I remember when 2v2 ladder was announced many people got it but then it kind of die.( mb cuz the latency issues back then ) But then they announced the BSL 2v2 league on SB and it was really active again ( atleast the first 2 weeks i was playing ) to die again. I think will be interesting to get feedback from such players and see why they all quit. I myself asked in some public 2v2 games why they not using SB and the answers are often not players or lag issues.( The lag issue was told by Octzerg so i didnt take it so serious. That guy wanna play UMS on TR24 low LOL ) But is weird.
Im not even going to mention what are my issues with SB cuz it butthurt tec somehow.
Since then, we've added even more intermediary servers around the world to improve latency, so the experience will absolutely be better than anything Bnet can produce (I don't know the exact number of Bnet servers, but it's definitely way fewer). The matter at hand is, as you mentioned, simply getting the players. Right now we have a dedicated few who pop on for games and announce their queues in the chat. I think some newcomers to SB are expecting the Bnet experience of just jumping on and queuing anonymously, but unfortunately we're not there yet: until we are, those players are encouraged to manage their expectations and treat SB like they would Fightcade ("hey anyone want to queue 1v1?" "any 2v2ers?"). Simple, concise, public communication on behalf of community members goes a long way in making the platform feel more alive, and that's how grassroots growth is possible.
I absolutely encourage you to share feedback (you can DM me if you wish), but just to provide a little context for transparency: tec as the project head has an endless backlog and finds it distracting when he feels he needs to post defensively in justifying the existence of the platform, design decisions, or pivots we've made. I personally feel more at ease when he's able to work heads-down on a feature or collaborate/troubleshoot with forthright community members (for example, Bonyth who went way out of his way to supply detailed bug reports when he was having issues).
On March 25 2023 20:38 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote: Something that makes no sense to me is why the 2v2 community is not using SB. I remember when 2v2 ladder was announced many people got it but then it kind of die.( mb cuz the latency issues back then ) But then they announced the BSL 2v2 league on SB and it was really active again ( atleast the first 2 weeks i was playing ) to die again. I think will be interesting to get feedback from such players and see why they all quit. I myself asked in some public 2v2 games why they not using SB and the answers are often not players or lag issues.( The lag issue was told by Octzerg so i didnt take it so serious. That guy wanna play UMS on TR24 low LOL ) But is weird.
Im not even going to mention what are my issues with SB cuz it butthurt tec somehow.
Just to be clear, I don't have any problem with you mentioning issues you have in this thread. The main thing I have a problem with is people not respecting the people that are putting their time and energy into working on this stuff. I think our past interactions made me feel you were doing that, but it's probably just a bit of a language barrier, so I apologize if it felt like you couldn't share any critical feedback/suggestions/etc. here, that's definitely not what I want.
As far as G5, jchassoul, etc., I'm not gonna respond to your posts individually because they're not really worth much and they're quite disrespectful to everyone that has actually contributed. You seem to believe we just don't think about this stuff, that we don't have good reasons for the decisions we have made. You can't even be bothered to look at what SB even has before you start suggesting features we already have, things that cannot work on a technical basis, or stuff that is so small a change that it would never pull a single new player.
Coming in and shitting on TT1's map pool after playing 0-1 games on it, not even bothering to understand why he may have chosen the things he did, how it helps the map-making community to actually get their maps played, how it provides potential for attracting players where running a more "standard" pool would not... it's just so dumb. Please take your hands off the keyboard and think for a second. Maybe give us some credit for being able to think as well. If you wanted to play map pool like bnet's on SB, you could have. We had plenty of them in previous seasons. Yet you didn't? Weird, maybe that wasn't actually the thing keeping players away, maybe it doesn't have as much of an effect as you seem to think it does. Maybe experimenting with that a bit is worthwhile, instead of just doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?
If you want to actually contribute instead of just taking potshots at us and assuming we're morons, the source code is open and we gladly accept pull requests:
On March 26 2023 10:01 jchassoul wrote: i'll fork it, no worries friend, market pressure will benefit us both.
Yeah, I'm sure the community will appreciate the "great benefits" of you making everything more confusing for no particular reason at all, guy who had zero interest in contributing until he could be an asshole about things. Enjoy discovering that OpenBW is not, in fact, a complete or correct implementation of the game logic, is not licensed for use by anyone other than the original creator, and not particularly useful for purposes such as "playing the game with other people". Hope you don't waste too much of other people's time getting to that point.
wonder if it's a coincidence that people that are playing the same video game since they were 10 years old are also acting like they are still 10 years old (referring to all the whining people)
All of the things that people complain about with bnet:
- Netcode - Lack of direct support for community events - Unfixed bugs - No matchmaking outside of 1v1 - No community input in map pools (see, you can already give feedback directly to TT1 who makes map pools here!) - etc.
All of the things that people complain about with bnet:
- Netcode - Lack of direct support for community events - Unfixed bugs - No matchmaking outside of 1v1 - No community input in map pools (see, you can already give feedback directly to TT1 who makes map pools here!) - etc.
All of the things that people complain about with bnet:
- Netcode - Lack of direct support for community events - Unfixed bugs - No matchmaking outside of 1v1 - No community input in map pools (see, you can already give feedback directly to TT1 who makes map pools here!) - etc.
Does this refer to any in-game bugs?
Yes, for instance, we have better fixes for the floating SCV stuff than Blizzard implemented, and prevent a number of similar bugs that have been used for mineral hacks + unit duplication glitches. We also have fixed a desync issue that can occur while observing games.
This is the first tournament running its qualifier through our new Leagues system! Signups are open right now, and actual league play should start in a few minutes:
All of the things that people complain about with bnet:
- Netcode - Lack of direct support for community events - Unfixed bugs - No matchmaking outside of 1v1 - No community input in map pools (see, you can already give feedback directly to TT1 who makes map pools here!) - etc.
Does this refer to any in-game bugs?
Yes, for instance, we have better fixes for the floating SCV stuff than Blizzard implemented, and prevent a number of similar bugs that have been used for mineral hacks + unit duplication glitches. We also have fixed a desync issue that can occur while observing games.
Also, Team Melee replays work on ShieldBattery (but only for the games that are actually played on ShieldBattery).
Is there any way to watch replays with others on shield battery? I notice the replays don't show up in the folders when you try to create a lobby with them.
We're planning on expanding the party system, so besides being used for 2v2 matchmaking, you can also create a lobby together with your party and watch replays together.
On April 01 2023 05:36 2Pacalypse- wrote: Not yet unfortunately.
We're planning on expanding the party system, so besides being used for 2v2 matchmaking, you can also create a lobby together with your party and watch replays together.
Thanks for the info, that sounds like a good way of doing it.
Hey guys! This is a question I've been meaning to ask for a while now, but is there an update on the Wine version of SB? A buddy of mine whom I play 2v2 customs with on Bnet uses OS X and it'd be cool to play proper 2v2 ladder. I am aware of the faq section of the site, just wanted to carefully check on if there are any updates Thanks!
On April 09 2023 00:43 Akio wrote: Hey guys! This is a question I've been meaning to ask for a while now, but is there an update on the Wine version of SB? A buddy of mine whom I play 2v2 customs with on Bnet uses OS X and it'd be cool to play proper 2v2 ladder. I am aware of the faq section of the site, just wanted to carefully check on if there are any updates Thanks!
There have been reports of SB working on Wine via some GitHub contributors although it is not -- at present -- officially supported. Give it a try and see if it works for you and your friend.
On April 09 2023 00:43 Akio wrote: Hey guys! This is a question I've been meaning to ask for a while now, but is there an update on the Wine version of SB? A buddy of mine whom I play 2v2 customs with on Bnet uses OS X and it'd be cool to play proper 2v2 ladder. I am aware of the faq section of the site, just wanted to carefully check on if there are any updates Thanks!
There have been reports of SB working on Wine via some GitHub contributors although it is not -- at present -- officially supported. Give it a try and see if it works for you and your friend.
Ok it seems like the one thing SB is missing is active players.
Let's all who are willing gather around that cause and brainstorm ideas how to make progress here.
Some ideas of the top of my head: 1. Make a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for a 2v2 tournament to be held on SB. Since SB's edge over battle.net is most apparent in 2v2, that could be one approach to take.
Doing prize tournaments for 8 consecutive weeks would make people develop a habit of coming to SB.
Crowdfunding can be a big part of this, as most of BW players are working, making money and share a love for this game. This type of population I think is willing to donate.
2. Define 'hot hours'. Check out the stats when SB is most active, and write them somewhere clearly. This way, the people who wanna try it out, play some games, can all try to come online at a similar time, rather than randomly. (Kinda like Tinder has peak hours.)
We can start with this right now, if the developers list top 3 peak hours in a week. Don't list the stats if they're depressing. Just give us 3 potential timeslots to come online.
--- Comment on my suggestions, and write you own as well. Come on.
Also, I wanna ask everyone to filter their words in case they wanna say ANYTHING negative towards the developers. Every word you say should go thru a filter of gratitude after you remind yourself how much time, and efforts with good intentions these people have invested and continue to invest. The objections you have should be delivered with extreme care. Take all poison of out your words, and deliver feedback with a neutral tone.
If you want the BW community well, then remember we're all in this together, try to contribute positively.
On April 09 2023 09:56 niteReloaded wrote: Ok it seems like the one thing SB is missing is active players.
Let's all who are willing gather around that cause and brainstorm ideas how to make progress here.
Some ideas of the top of my head: 1. Make a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for a 2v2 tournament to be held on SB. Since SB's edge over battle.net is most apparent in 2v2, that could be one approach to take.
On April 09 2023 09:56 niteReloaded wrote: Ok it seems like the one thing SB is missing is active players.
Let's all who are willing gather around that cause and brainstorm ideas how to make progress here.
Some ideas of the top of my head: 1. Make a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for a 2v2 tournament to be held on SB. Since SB's edge over battle.net is most apparent in 2v2, that could be one approach to take.
On April 09 2023 09:56 niteReloaded wrote: Ok it seems like the one thing SB is missing is active players.
Let's all who are willing gather around that cause and brainstorm ideas how to make progress here.
Some ideas of the top of my head: 1. Make a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for a 2v2 tournament to be held on SB. Since SB's edge over battle.net is most apparent in 2v2, that could be one approach to take.
Doing prize tournaments for 8 consecutive weeks would make people develop a habit of coming to SB.
Crowdfunding can be a big part of this, as most of BW players are working, making money and share a love for this game. This type of population I think is willing to donate.
2. Define 'hot hours'. Check out the stats when SB is most active, and write them somewhere clearly. This way, the people who wanna try it out, play some games, can all try to come online at a similar time, rather than randomly. (Kinda like Tinder has peak hours.)
We can start with this right now, if the developers list top 3 peak hours in a week. Don't list the stats if they're depressing. Just give us 3 potential timeslots to come online.
--- Comment on my suggestions, and write you own as well. Come on.
Also, I wanna ask everyone to filter their words in case they wanna say ANYTHING negative towards the developers. Every word you say should go thru a filter of gratitude after you remind yourself how much time, and efforts with good intentions these people have invested and continue to invest. The objections you have should be delivered with extreme care. Take all poison of out your words, and deliver feedback with a neutral tone.
If you want the BW community well, then remember we're all in this together, try to contribute positively.
I like the hot hours idea! While I do think visibility is obviously a plus to getting more people to play on SB, there needs to be a need for your average person playing Remastered ladder to play on SB instead of Bnet. Active TL users are probably more fine with waiting that extra time for their match if it means playing on SB, but for someone not as invested there is probably not much of an incentive to ditch Bnet right now. This is not really a concrete suggestion obviously, but also since SB is pretty much a niche within a niche, the playerbase will have next to no players you can consider "beginners". And there are already a lot of people registered on SB so I think it's more to do with people loving the idea of SB but will still play on Bnet because the playerbase is larger right now.
Hey guys! I really enjoy playing on SB, but i feel like its hard to find opponent on 1v1 ladder even tho there is League with actual prize pool happening right now. What about adding feature where you can see how much players are in Queue right at the moment when you start find opponent? I think it would improve ladder experience alot for both 1v1 and 2v2 gameplay!
On May 02 2023 21:02 Dewaltoss wrote: Hey guys! I really enjoy playing on SB, but i feel like its hard to find opponent on 1v1 ladder even tho there is League with actual prize pool happening right now. What about adding feature where you can see how much players are in Queue right at the moment when you start find opponent? I think it would improve ladder experience alot for both 1v1 and 2v2 gameplay!
We used to have that, then took it away. What ended up happening was nobody wanted to be the only one in the queue, so they would only queue if other people were already queued. The other consequence was they would queue-dodge, so if Player A posted that they were queuing and Player B didn't want to play against that person/race, Player A would wait until the active queue went back to 0 before queuing up himself.
On May 02 2023 21:02 Dewaltoss wrote: Hey guys! I really enjoy playing on SB, but i feel like its hard to find opponent on 1v1 ladder even tho there is League with actual prize pool happening right now. What about adding feature where you can see how much players are in Queue right at the moment when you start find opponent? I think it would improve ladder experience alot for both 1v1 and 2v2 gameplay!
Besides what LML and Excalibur_Z said, we're also planning on making a sort of home/news page inside the app which will hopefully increase the visibility for the leagues that are currently running and incite people to queue more.
There is a new map pool on ShieldBattery which includes both the maps upcoming ASL and BSL. 11 maps in total are in the pool, with 5 vetoes available! There is also a refreshed 2v2 map pool with regular amount of maps.
Can SB host games between 2 pre-determined individuals with several observers? We are planning to host an online tournament with live casting and the lag on Battlenet is unbearable. Is SB better than BN in terms of lag?
On February 22 2024 15:24 scvn wrote: Can SB host games between 2 pre-determined individuals with several observers? We are planning to host an online tournament with live casting and the lag on Battlenet is unbearable. Is SB better than BN in terms of lag?
Yes, you can host a custom lobby in melee mode and have observers.
It is likely better than bnet in terms of lag, but that's dependent on a lot of factors.
On February 22 2024 15:24 scvn wrote: Can SB host games between 2 pre-determined individuals with several observers? We are planning to host an online tournament with live casting and the lag on Battlenet is unbearable. Is SB better than BN in terms of lag?
Yes, you can host a custom lobby in melee mode and have observers.
It is likely better than bnet in terms of lag, but that's dependent on a lot of factors.
Thanks for the quick feedback. What about cheating? Is it possible to cheat on SB? Like map hack or some other form of cheats?
On February 22 2024 15:24 scvn wrote: Can SB host games between 2 pre-determined individuals with several observers? We are planning to host an online tournament with live casting and the lag on Battlenet is unbearable. Is SB better than BN in terms of lag?
Yes, you can host a custom lobby in melee mode and have observers.
It is likely better than bnet in terms of lag, but that's dependent on a lot of factors.
Thanks for the quick feedback. What about cheating? Is it possible to cheat on SB? Like map hack or some other form of cheats?
It is possible to cheat, yes. Unfortunately preventing maphacks (which can be done pretty much undetectably) is basically impossible without some very major restructuring to the game, so we haven't done that.
I see. But can these cheats be done on Battlenet as well? Basically I want to evaluate which platform to host a tournament where cheating is a legitimate concern. I see that BSL is using SB for their own tournaments. Surely people can cheat while playing their BSL games on SB right? Players have just been very honest or...?
On February 23 2024 07:35 tec27 wrote: It is possible to cheat, yes. Unfortunately preventing maphacks (which can be done pretty much undetectably) is basically impossible without some very major restructuring to the game, so we haven't done that.
On February 23 2024 09:53 jinjin5000 wrote: I'm so annoyed it's been 7 years since release almost and the official turn rate system hasn't even come close to SB's stuf.
Nobody is even working on Remastered anymore at least not actively I believe. The team they left working on it after release was 3 people and all of them have since left Blizzard.
Whenever I feel a bit demotivated in life, I come back to this SB thread. It reminds me that somewhere in the world, there's an individual so highly motivated that he wakes up each day to fire up his VPN, click his bookmark to this thread, create a new account, and diarrhea on the keyboard. That level of dedication is truly an inspiration.
On February 23 2024 13:50 scvn wrote: I see. But can these cheats be done on Battlenet as well? Basically I want to evaluate which platform to host a tournament where cheating is a legitimate concern. I see that BSL is using SB for their own tournaments. Surely people can cheat while playing their BSL games on SB right? Players have just been very honest or...?
On February 23 2024 07:35 tec27 wrote: It is possible to cheat, yes. Unfortunately preventing maphacks (which can be done pretty much undetectably) is basically impossible without some very major restructuring to the game, so we haven't done that.
Almost every player competing in BSL is an established/known player, and good players would be able to detect a pattern of someone cheating over the course of multiple games, or if someone is getting better results than you would expect from them.
If cheating is such a concern, then perhaps those individuals you are concerned about should not participate, or you should review their replays manually. There isn't any real way around it unless you host it at a LAN center without allowing anyone to bring in flash drives.
On February 23 2024 13:50 scvn wrote: I see. But can these cheats be done on Battlenet as well? Basically I want to evaluate which platform to host a tournament where cheating is a legitimate concern. I see that BSL is using SB for their own tournaments. Surely people can cheat while playing their BSL games on SB right? Players have just been very honest or...?
On February 23 2024 07:35 tec27 wrote: It is possible to cheat, yes. Unfortunately preventing maphacks (which can be done pretty much undetectably) is basically impossible without some very major restructuring to the game, so we haven't done that.
Yes, you can cheat on bnet as well. SB has some improvements over bnet (e.g. we've fixed a number of exploits that involve things like overflowing the action buffer to duplicate units/gain minerals), but at the end of the day BW (and basically all existing RTS games) have a fundamental flaw in how they are structured that cannot be patched over, you'd have to fix the structure. SC:R in general is more challenging to reverse engineer than previous versions of BW, which helps to keep the number of hacks available lower, but these things certainly do exist.
On February 23 2024 13:50 scvn wrote: I see. But can these cheats be done on Battlenet as well? Basically I want to evaluate which platform to host a tournament where cheating is a legitimate concern. I see that BSL is using SB for their own tournaments. Surely people can cheat while playing their BSL games on SB right? Players have just been very honest or...?
On February 23 2024 07:35 tec27 wrote: It is possible to cheat, yes. Unfortunately preventing maphacks (which can be done pretty much undetectably) is basically impossible without some very major restructuring to the game, so we haven't done that.
The other half of it is that we actually take disciplinary action when a player is found to be cheating, exploiting, or simply harassing other users. You're not going to find that level of enforcement on Bnet.
Hello ! Is it possible to incorporate our fastest league into the client? Our association is based in Op UGL@USWest and deeply involved in the swift-paced league, about to embark on season 44. Many thanks in advance!
On February 23 2024 13:50 scvn wrote: I see. But can these cheats be done on Battlenet as well? Basically I want to evaluate which platform to host a tournament where cheating is a legitimate concern. I see that BSL is using SB for their own tournaments. Surely people can cheat while playing their BSL games on SB right? Players have just been very honest or...?
On February 23 2024 07:35 tec27 wrote: It is possible to cheat, yes. Unfortunately preventing maphacks (which can be done pretty much undetectably) is basically impossible without some very major restructuring to the game, so we haven't done that.
Yes, you can cheat on bnet as well. SB has some improvements over bnet (e.g. we've fixed a number of exploits that involve things like overflowing the action buffer to duplicate units/gain minerals), but at the end of the day BW (and basically all existing RTS games) have a fundamental flaw in how they are structured that cannot be patched over, you'd have to fix the structure. SC:R in general is more challenging to reverse engineer than previous versions of BW, which helps to keep the number of hacks available lower, but these things certainly do exist.
I was wondering since iccup had an antihack detector, what approach it used to detect hacks and if this can be applied to SC:R or since it is more challenging to reverse engineer if the same approach can't be used / too time consuming.
We just deployed an update supporting a new form of ladder and matchmaking: 1v1 Fastest!
The ladder division model has also been altered and is now determined by points rather than MMR. MMR is still the skill-matching component, but each division instead requires a particular point threshold to attain, and these thresholds are moving targets as the season progresses (since the bonus pool slow-drips points). Additionally, bonus pools will stop increasing for the final 7 days of a season.
I imagine the transparant fog of war can easily be toggled, just like setting the frame rate. Transparancy drastically reduces the amount of time to learn a new map. As most of us have a full time job and some are a parent on top as well. This is really just a nice QoL option.
On November 02 2024 00:44 Peeano wrote: I imagine the transparant fog of war can easily be toggled, just like setting the frame rate. Transparancy drastically reduces the amount of time to learn a new map. As most of us have a full time job and some are a parent on top as well. This is really just a nice QoL option.
This person wants to be able to force it off for everyone. They've been harping on it for years. Transparent fog-of-war does not change the skill expression of the game and makes the game dramatically more accessible for newer players (while also making it possible to use a wider range of maps in map pools), so no, we won't be doing that.
On November 02 2024 02:24 tec27 wrote: This person wants to be able to force it off for everyone. They've been harping on it for years. Transparent fog-of-war does not change the skill expression of the game and makes the game dramatically more accessible for newer players (while also making it possible to use a wider range of maps in map pools), so no, we won't be doing that.
You're mistaken? Where did I ask to have it forced off for everyone? I asked for an option.
At any rate, I hardly think 2-3 posts over the course of four years constitutes "harping". I won't apolgize for raising the issue once again.
By the way, have you visited the Blizzard forum? People have been "harping" on Blizzard for 2v2, new map pools, and bugfixes for years. But you don't see Blizzard pooh-poohing users asking for changes.
Me thinks the lady doth protest too much. I wonder if there are other reasons such a simple change have been lacking, perhaps there are limitations with the SB renderer code or something?
We're all familiar with the SB dev's stance on the issue. None of the issues with this decision made in my post were addressed.
On November 02 2024 02:24 tec27 wrote: This person wants to be able to force it off for everyone. They've been harping on it for years. Transparent fog-of-war does not change the skill expression of the game and makes the game dramatically more accessible for newer players (while also making it possible to use a wider range of maps in map pools), so no, we won't be doing that.
Yeah, thats common. Have you seen the Blizzard forum? People have been "harping" on Blizzard for 2v2, new map pools, and bugfixes for years. But you don't see Blizzard smugly refusing and belittling their playerbase for asking for changes.
Me thinks the lady doth protest too much. Perhaps there are limitations with the SB renderer code.
I don't understand the hostility in your posts. You continuously draw inaccurate conclusions, cite inaccurate comparisons, and make inaccurate assessments and use that to fuel your own vitriol against the project. It's weird.
On November 02 2024 02:24 tec27 wrote: This person wants to be able to force it off for everyone. They've been harping on it for years. Transparent fog-of-war does not change the skill expression of the game and makes the game dramatically more accessible for newer players (while also making it possible to use a wider range of maps in map pools), so no, we won't be doing that.
You're mistaken? Where did I ask to have it forced off for everyone? I asked for an option.
At any rate, I hardly think 2-3 posts over the course of four years constitutes "harping". I won't apolgize for raising the issue once again.
By the way, have you visited the Blizzard forum? People have been "harping" on Blizzard for 2v2, new map pools, and bugfixes for years. But you don't see Blizzard pooh-poohing users asking for changes.
Me thinks the lady doth protest too much. I wonder if there are other reasons such a simple change have been lacking, perhaps there are limitations with the SB renderer code or something?
We're all familiar with the SB dev's stance on the issue. None of the issues with this decision made in my post were addressed.
[edit] toned it down a little
I apologize if I'm confusing you with someone else that wanted it forced off for everyone. We have a small number of people who have been incredibly rude and condescending to us about this particular thing over the years, and I really do not take kindly to people acting that way towards people that are volunteering their time, energy, and money to support this game, especially when those same complainers praise the multi-billion dollar company that is Blizzard for doing less than the absolute bare minimum. As for Blizzard not "pooh-poohing" users, well, they don't have anyone working on the game at all, nor staffing the forums, of course they don't reply.
I don't mind there being an option for turning off this feature locally if you really don't want it, but I didn't want to add a ton of options without being able to change them while ingame (which is a more involved change, Blizzard's option dialog code is rather hairy). I would also prefer to prioritize work on things that I think could actually move the needle on player population, which things like this are not.
SB implements a fastest ladder in six months, where's blizzard? If it wasn't for remastered taking the wind out of the sails of SB with remastered, we'd all be on SB. I still think the only reason they did it was to keep the IP, and free ads for SC2. They tried to kill the pro scene, the only reason why they don't poopoo people on their own forums is because they don't read it. It's just a vent hole. Meanwhile SB responds within 24hrs on a bug report in a freaking chat channel, how low friction is that. And you can see the patch in the making within another couple days.
Personally I always keep the map full screen on my second monitor. I could also make a flip book with plastified print outs.
You really made an account to go into some random third party broodwar forum thread discussing fog of war settings on the minimap, to preach how great blizzard is in 2024.
On November 02 2024 22:56 Navane wrote: You really made an account to go into some random third party broodwar forum thread discussing fog of war settings on the minimap, to preach how great blizzard is in 2024.
No, you're wrong. He's actually made dozens of TL accounts to verbally blow Blizzard throughout the past 5 years or so.
It's always funny which hills people choose to die on at times, because when I played on SB I found transparent minimap fog of war super useful as a SC2 player that doesn't know the maps and I kinda miss it when playing on Battle.net.
Then again I remember how I've absolutely hated the addition of a scan radius indicator in SC2 because at the time I thought this was lowering the skill ceiling.
it's just the BSL pool in case ppl want an easy place to ladder and practice the BSL maps
also we can adjust the amount of maps in the future, for each 2 maps we add a veto tho (so 11 maps u have 5 vetoes, 9 maps u have 4 vetoes, 7 maps u have 3)
Is it active for games now? Last few times I went to look I didn't seem to find any games, but it is awesome that SB is still making improvements, Blizzard needs to just hire the SB team to run Bnet.
On November 23 2024 21:31 PurE)Rabbit-SF wrote: damn dude, 1v1 fastest sounds fun, but shit no one playing tho
It gets more active when a tournament event is added under "Leagues". For example BSL ladder stages, ladder tournaments etc. Other than that, on the rare occasions when bnet goes down for a while people seem to transfer over to SB.
PS This is a great opportunity to appeal to tournament organisers to consider SB for their next event. I for one enjoy playing on SB whenever the competition is there!
Is it possible to port Shield battery for SC2 as well? I might be happy to work on that, since blizzard is obviously not putting more investment into this "legacy codebase/product" anymore
EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/iydSDrd.png)
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