Ok, the SC2 tournament scene is growing with more and more tournaments, and an increase in the prize pool for the top tournaments. Professional SC2 players practice full time, in professional teams, with a professional practice regiment. We also have professional casters casting SC2 full time as their profession. Like it or not, SC2 is one of the defining game in the esports movement.
So why is Blizzard so unprofessional and pays us lip service for handling timeout issues when thousands of dollars are on the line for major tournaments?
In the GSTL finals, MKP was losing to PartinG when one of the players lagged out and there was a regame. PartinG was at roughly 150 supply while MKP was at 110 supply. It was clear that PartinG had a clear advantage - but maybe not enough for the IPL judges to decide on a clear win. The audience then started to chant "We want LAN, we want LAN, we want LAN!"
I believe Mike Morhaime, the CEO of Blizzard, was in the audience watching this live. Unfortunately, Mike Morhaime will probably shrug this off and Blizzard will do nothing about it and nothing about LAN.
As much as we disagree with Blizzard for not adding LAN to SC2, even for major tournaments like the GSL, IPL, MLG, etc, I don't understand why they don't add an option to auto-save the map when a player times out.
We know that Blizzard won't add LAN to SC2 - we've been down that road before. But the least Blizzard could do is add an option to auto-save the game map in case of a timeout. Either the player or referee could load the saved game, and the match could continue at the point just before the timeout. Of course, the players that load the saved game should not be able to see the opponent's position and the fog of war would still apply - a saved game that is loaded would behave just as if the game were unpaused.
Provided that the players have to stay in their booth during the map reload or are disallowed from talking to any spectator/opponent until the match completes (so they don't get any outside information on the state of the map), tournaments world wide could use this functionality to prevent a regame. A regame is the worst thing that can happen - it's unprofessional, unfair, controversial, and simply silly.
Blizzard, we love your game but your game at the professional level is embarassing. If you are the company we think you are, please do something about this.
they care... if they didnt they would not have a balancing team... idk people need top widen there perspective a lil.... its understandable why their is no LAN on sc2, and its fine with me
On April 08 2012 19:15 ki11z0ne wrote: they care... if they didnt they would not have a balancing team... idk people need top widen there perspective a lil.... its understandable why their is no LAN on sc2, and its fine with me
On April 08 2012 19:15 ki11z0ne wrote: they care... if they didnt they would not have a balancing team... idk people need top widen there perspective a lil.... its understandable why their is no LAN on sc2, and its fine with me
Yes...because no LAN reduced the amount of piracy. Oh wait...
On April 08 2012 19:15 ki11z0ne wrote: they care... if they didnt they would not have a balancing team... idk people need top widen there perspective a lil.... its understandable why their is no LAN on sc2, and its fine with me
Why is it understandable?
Because the day you incorporate LAN is the day I can steal StarCraft online, and play it without a battle.net account.
On April 08 2012 19:14 tomatriedes wrote: Completely agree with this, though I'm not a programmer so I don't know how difficult it would be to implement.
I don't think it's very hard for Blizzard to implement. I'm a programmer and all they have to do is a data dump to a file when the person drops out (they don't even have to save the map until a person drops out). Then they would need to tweak the code to allow the map to be reloaded with all parties in the lobby. It's easy to do for them - they could probably even add this functionality in the next patch.
On April 08 2012 19:14 tomatriedes wrote: Completely agree with this, though I'm not a programmer so I don't know how difficult it would be to implement.
I don't think it's very hard for Blizzard to implement. I'm a programmer and all they have to do is a data dump to a file when the person drops out (they don't even have to save the map until a person drops out). Then they would need to tweak the code to allow the map to be reloaded with all parties in the lobby. It's easy to do for them - they could probably even add this functionality in the next patch.
Well, in that case I can't see any reason for not doing it. I hope they get onto it soon.
On April 08 2012 19:13 bLuR wrote: i don't think they really care enough to do anything about it
Let's make them care. FYI, I was part of the group that complained about the colors being too hard to see during the BETA - Blizzard listened and made the colors easier to see in one of the BETA patches. Blizzard knows there is money in SC2 as an esports - if we are vocal about it, we can convince them to make a change.
Besides, the change we are asking them to make is very easy. As a programmer myself, if they structured their code correctly, this is not a difficult feature to add.
On April 08 2012 19:15 ki11z0ne wrote: they care... if they didnt they would not have a balancing team... idk people need top widen there perspective a lil.... its understandable why their is no LAN on sc2, and its fine with me
Why is it understandable?
Because the day you incorporate LAN is the day I can steal StarCraft online, and play it without a battle.net account.
But you can do that already.... and even have LAN.
Because all they realised save game feature in wc3 was an incredible feature ( not sure if bw had it , didnt play ) . So they remove all forms of good features only to add them into their expansions as an incentive for you all to buy their games.
On April 08 2012 19:15 ki11z0ne wrote: they care... if they didnt they would not have a balancing team... idk people need top widen there perspective a lil.... its understandable why their is no LAN on sc2, and its fine with me
Why is it understandable?
Because the day you incorporate LAN is the day I can steal StarCraft online, and play it without a battle.net account.
But you can do that already.... and even have LAN.
So Blizzard should sponsor their product being stolen, and make it just that much easier?
On April 08 2012 19:15 ki11z0ne wrote: they care... if they didnt they would not have a balancing team... idk people need top widen there perspective a lil.... its understandable why their is no LAN on sc2, and its fine with me
They wan't you to *think* they care, they should at least made LAN available to big tournaments, (They have to get Blizzards approval to host the tournament anyway with the current TOS)
DotA2 saves every full minute passed - dunno why SC2 can't. Still - would be some seconds (or ~2min) lost but not the full game. Wonder if the saves would cause lag issues ^^
On April 08 2012 19:15 ki11z0ne wrote: they care... if they didnt they would not have a balancing team... idk people need top widen there perspective a lil.... its understandable why their is no LAN on sc2, and its fine with me
Why is it understandable?
Because the day you incorporate LAN is the day I can steal StarCraft online, and play it without a battle.net account.
But you can do that already.... and even have LAN.
So Blizzard should sponsor their product being stolen, and make it just that much easier?
Why would it make it easier, if it's already out there? The only thing it does, that it's hurting loyal customers who want to play it offline with their friends.
On April 08 2012 19:15 ki11z0ne wrote: they care... if they didnt they would not have a balancing team... idk people need top widen there perspective a lil.... its understandable why their is no LAN on sc2, and its fine with me
Why is it understandable?
Because the day you incorporate LAN is the day I can steal StarCraft online, and play it without a battle.net account.
But you can do that already.... and even have LAN.
So Blizzard should sponsor their product being stolen, and make it just that much easier?
Blizzard's product has been stolen a long time ago.
Holding back LAN doesn't do ANYTHING anymore... They just won't add it because they think it would be admitting failure.
And like many things Blizz should do to make SC2 a better game, auto-save won't come, ever. It's maybe a 5-day investment for a single programmer to write, chack and bugfix a script for that. A week of work, for one guy.
I don't know what it is, laziness, not caring at all, not getting any immediate money from it... Actually, just charge tournaments 100$ to use the autosave. All the big ones will buy it, because nobody wants to live with accusations that "X should have won if he didn't dc, tournament is a farce". So money is out as a reason, which means it's laziness or not caring.
On April 08 2012 19:32 dezi wrote: DotA2 saves every full minute passed- dunno why SC2 can't. Still - would be some seconds (or ~2min) lost but not the full game. Wonder if the saves would cause lag issues ^^
The game could be saved the moment a person officially drops out. The SC2 client still has the map information when a player drops out. Doing it this way does not affect lag during the game at all.
On April 08 2012 19:15 ki11z0ne wrote: they care... if they didnt they would not have a balancing team... idk people need top widen there perspective a lil.... its understandable why their is no LAN on sc2, and its fine with me
They wan't you to *think* they care, they should at least made LAN available to big tournaments, (They have to get Blizzards approval to host the tournament anyway with the current TOS)
The least we could do is make some noise about this issue to get them to listen. Trust me, an auto-save when a player drops out is easy for a Blizzard programmer to do. If we make enough noise, I think Blizzard will do it.
Agree TOTALLY with OP. Ever since SC2 was announced, Blizzard has been promoting the game as a serious e-sports product, catering primarily to e-sports practitioners. The new B.net is shaped to be the single source of access to the game, as it's an "online-only" game, but there's NO support or added framework for running tournaments and such. The fact that you can organize huge leagues and tournaments with six-digit prize pools ($), 100 000+ viewers, proper production teams with professional broadcasting equipment etc. without Blizzard giving ANY guarantee of a stable connection to B.net can only come off as utterly unprofessional. They have some of the most skilled employees out there, I'm sure they can come up with a better solution than this, if they have any interest in e-sports at all...
That they market it as an eSport, while purposefully limiting the competitive aspect of it to ineffectually fight pirates tells a lot about their priorities.
What about the gigantic amount of data storage needed to save every single dropped out game ? i must happen like a lot on leader on a second basis (and implementing something only for tournament would bring a public uprising as always).
And then even if they manage this, would you like to be instantly put back in a game in the middle of a fight when banelings when rolling and your marines where running ? it would be unfair too
Maybe they don't implement that feature because it possibly can make StarCraft II the best game known to mankind in technical manner? :D (not that I don't see brilliant ideas out there to make BN better)
But seriously, it is a good idea... I can understand dropping in ladder and such, when people want to actually play (I don't like when drop = loss though, sometimes it's so frustrating... I know, I know, ladder is not important but it can be frustrating nevertheless), but custom games should have that option implemented. let's do a petition! Or let's kidnap someone from Blizzard and release that person when they implement that saving option...
It's not hard to implement at all; they already have replay functionality built in in the form of replays! Replays already allow you to skip to any time you desire and replicate the exact game state at that time. All they need to do is allow players to resume gameplay from the point that someone dropped.
On April 08 2012 19:15 ki11z0ne wrote: they care... if they didnt they would not have a balancing team... idk people need top widen there perspective a lil.... its understandable why their is no LAN on sc2, and its fine with me
Why is it understandable?
Because the day you incorporate LAN is the day I can steal StarCraft online, and play it without a battle.net account.
huh? That's not the reason...
The reason is because if you incorporate LAN Blizzard won't be able to request FEE + FREE SPONSORSHIP to every single tournament that goes above the 5K prizepool
On April 08 2012 19:52 zeross wrote: What about the gigantic amount of data storage needed to save every single dropped out game ? i must happen like a lot on leader on a second basis (and implementing something only for tournament would bring a public uprising as always).
They could have this auto-save option for all games, not just tournament matches. Why limit it to tournaments? It could be an option you can turn on or off in your settings.
On April 08 2012 19:52 aQuaSC wrote: Maybe they don't implement that feature because it possibly can make StarCraft II the best game known to mankind in technical manner? :D (not that I don't see brilliant ideas out there to make BN better)
But seriously, it is a good idea... I can understand dropping in ladder and such, when people want to actually play (I don't like when drop = loss though, sometimes it's so frustrating... I know, I know, ladder is not important but it can be frustrating nevertheless), but custom games should have that option implemented. let's do a petition! Or let's kidnap someone from Blizzard and release that person when they implement that saving option...
Please spread the word! Get Blizzard to listen to us - no more regames in major tournaments, please.
On April 08 2012 19:58 nicknack wrote: BW game drops 8 mins in, drops happen, lan wouldn't have fix the drop (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia0_Izz_uFU&feature=player_embedded#!)
but I Agree some sort of start from when the game dropped function would be cool/useful.
Yup. LAN doesn't necessarily mean there won't be drops from the game. An auto-save function would work for LAN too (in the unlikely scenario that Blizzard adds LAN).
On April 08 2012 19:15 ki11z0ne wrote: they care... if they didnt they would not have a balancing team... idk people need top widen there perspective a lil.... its understandable why their is no LAN on sc2, and its fine with me
Why is it understandable?
Because the day you incorporate LAN is the day I can steal StarCraft online, and play it without a battle.net account.
huh? That's not the reason...
The reason is because if you incorporate LAN Blizzard won't be able to request FEE + FREE SPONSORSHIP to every single tournament that goes above the 5K prizepool
I read somewhere that the fee from tournaments with over 5k prize pool isn't true. Don't know where the source is though, but I also don't know where the source of your information is.
I think the concept of auto saving a game after a drop, is absolutely feasible. If you think for a little bit. Theres no way they cannot implement it...
Not making lan, not giving lan to the competitions. Well at least something like (auto saving) would be just insane ! It just a small tweak they'd have to do. Really wondering what makes them not do it....
Sadd for ST.
Parting had that **** of mKp on his knees crawling...
i just feel like Valve did a much better job at dota 2 than blizzard did on SC2 in terms of online connectivity. Reconnecting is something I really want on every online game now, it's such an amazing feature
If there never was a reconnecting feature I don't know how many games of dota 2 i would've lost with an abandon
"Battle net 2.0 will be so good you'll forget it doesn't have lan!"
First class politicians, or first class liars and money pigs, is what i'd say they are. They made the money, now they don't care anymore. Less features for us, more money for them. Not my money anymore, that's for sure.
I'm sure that this would be possible using the mapmaker (assumption, I have no experience with it whatsoever). Problem is, someone would have to take the initiative to make a template for this, and apply it to every tournament map. Also, there's no guarantee that tournaments will use it, so it may be a fruitless effort for the mapmaker.
Problem with autosave when someone drops is that they could be experiencing problems for up to 10-20 seconds before the actual drop.
Would be sweet if they could add autosave for every 20 seconds of tournament games and people could reconnect and continue from the best point in the autosave, say 10 seconds before the drop or something similar.
On April 08 2012 20:18 karpo wrote: Problem with autosave when someone drops is that they could be experiencing problems for up to 10-20 seconds before the actual drop.
Would be sweet if they could add autosave for every 20 seconds of tournament games and people could reconnect and continue from the best point in the autosave, say 10 seconds before the drop or something similar.
If they're experiencing problems they should pause, so I don't think this is a very big concern.
On April 08 2012 19:52 zeross wrote: What about the gigantic amount of data storage needed to save every single dropped out game ? i must happen like a lot on leader on a second basis (and implementing something only for tournament would bring a public uprising as always).
And then even if they manage this, would you like to be instantly put back in a game in the middle of a fight when banelings when rolling and your marines where running ? it would be unfair too
On April 08 2012 19:14 tomatriedes wrote: Completely agree with this, though I'm not a programmer so I don't know how difficult it would be to implement.
I don't think it's very hard for Blizzard to implement. I'm a programmer and all they have to do is a data dump to a file when the person drops out (they don't even have to save the map until a person drops out). Then they would need to tweak the code to allow the map to be reloaded with all parties in the lobby. It's easy to do for them - they could probably even add this functionality in the next patch.
I guess you saw the source code for the engine right ?
On April 08 2012 20:18 karpo wrote: Problem with autosave when someone drops is that they could be experiencing problems for up to 10-20 seconds before the actual drop.
Would be sweet if they could add autosave for every 20 seconds of tournament games and people could reconnect and continue from the best point in the autosave, say 10 seconds before the drop or something similar.
If they're experiencing problems they should pause, so I don't think this is a very big concern.
It's not that easy if there's computer problems or packet loss. A good 5-10 seconds could easily pass when one playing is experiencing problems before drop or requesting pause.
How many people have had to buy new sc2 games because all they needed to do was change their name or play a different race on ladder? Things are implemented poorly on purpose to make more money. Lower your expectations of blizzard, they aren't as good a company as their games make them out to be.
Age of Mythology that is from 2002 does have that you can save replay if someone drops out and replay it later, I don't know why Starcraft 2 hasn't it. I'm sure more RTS games has it as well.
Having the CEO be in the audience while it happens is enough to put a fire under someones ass. I'd say forget about LAN, isn't going to happen. But a save feature is super likely in the future.
On April 08 2012 20:33 MiacroISBADK wrote: How many people have had to buy new sc2 games because all they needed to do was change their name or play a different race on ladder? Things are implemented poorly on purpose to make more money. Lower your expectations of blizzard, they aren't as good a company as their games make them out to be.
This here is sadly true. They are a company and their goal is to net as much income as possible. There are changes they make to the game, and those do not effect their income, such as changing emp range, nerfing fungal, reducing cost of upgrades from forge.
They do not want to add a league for each race since then it is less likely that the user will purchase another copy of SC2 so that they don't tank points while off-racing. The same thing also goes for namechanges, if you have already changed your name and want to stay "hidden" you have to purchase another copy of the game. They would obviously net more income if they add namechange by purchase (Say 2 usd, they will obviously take something like 10 usd, but 2 usd sounds reasonable).
Implementing LAN will probably not cause them to lose money due to piracy, I would actually say that they would benefit from the LAN implementation. Off-line tournaments will get taken more seriously, since disconnects like in GSTL will not happen as often. Having almost no latency is the main reason as to why I want LAN. The difference from playing online and playing vs AI makes the online part a joke. Stutterstepping, injecting, movement in general is 10 times as good with low MS. I am ashamed that they have not added LAN yet, but they are probably not doing it since it requires more work, or they are saving it for HOTS to have yet another "buy this expansion to get what you have always wanted" trick. It's just like in world of warcraft, they did not implement what everyone wanted until the expansion, this leads to more sales and more excitement towards the new game.
TL;DR - Most changes that does not occure is due to no finanical gain.
On April 08 2012 19:15 ki11z0ne wrote: they care... if they didnt they would not have a balancing team... idk people need top widen there perspective a lil.... its understandable why their is no LAN on sc2, and its fine with me
Why is it understandable?
Because the day you incorporate LAN is the day I can steal StarCraft online, and play it without a battle.net account.
huh? That's not the reason...
The reason is because if you incorporate LAN Blizzard won't be able to request FEE + FREE SPONSORSHIP to every single tournament that goes above the 5K prizepool
I read somewhere that the fee from tournaments with over 5k prize pool isn't true. Don't know where the source is though, but I also don't know where the source of your information is.
:S
Even though the fee-thing doesn't reallly exist, the main point is still valid: SC2 doesn't earn money for Blizzard like WoW on a monthly basis. So they have to keep control over their product (they learned from BW) by constantly being involved at the very basal level (No Blizz=no SC2). The only time they gain money is a) fees of any kind (e.g. from tournament organizers/leagues once SC2 is really established) b) Users buying stuff: Expansion Packs (rHotS). They will lose their only source of profit whenever they establish non Blizzard-relayed gaming. I'm not saying I like it, but they definitely learned from BW.
On April 08 2012 19:52 zeross wrote: What about the gigantic amount of data storage needed to save every single dropped out game ? i must happen like a lot on leader on a second basis (and implementing something only for tournament would bring a public uprising as always).
And then even if they manage this, would you like to be instantly put back in a game in the middle of a fight when banelings when rolling and your marines where running ? it would be unfair too
I'm pretty sure the OP is referring to save feature for custom game matches ( like non ladder matches ) . and the save would probably be stored in the player / observer's computer. Similar to the save feature in wc3. ( Just like a replay would be stored in your computer)
The fact that valve took a feature from wc3 , a feature that was so essential for competitive dota and made it better really shows how much valve cares for its game and the competitors. I've seen countless amount of competitive dota games saved from a regame just because of the single save feature. ( you had to save manually before , afaik dota 2 has auto saved feature )
So what we have is Blizzard takes a popular game , remakes it , strips it of any GOOD features. Sticks a "2" at the end of the product and you get Starcraft 2.
Valve takes an amazing feature for a 10 player game and makes it better. Looking at the common problems OUTSIDE of balance to improve the game , disconnects / save feature . A much FULLER product and it hasn't even had its official release.
Really makes me wonder what's stopping me from going back to dota once they release dota 2..
Edit : The only good thing I've thought of which blizzard has included in starcraft 2 is the match making system. Different level of skill in a team was a big problem in dota 1. But I'm pretty sure dota 2 will follow suit with games like LoL to get a decent match making system as well.
On April 08 2012 20:11 MrHoon wrote: i just feel like Valve did a much better job at dota 2 than blizzard did on SC2 in terms of online connectivity. Reconnecting is something I really want on every online game now, it's such an amazing feature
If there never was a reconnecting feature I don't know how many games of dota 2 i would've lost with an abandon
I can see how reconnecting can work in Dota, but in SC2? The time you're disconnected you're basically a sitting duck. Half the time you'll reconnect to your base in ruins.
Also the last thing I want it to have to wait for someone to lag out, then the reconnect, then lag out again, then connect again.... etc.
Having lan does not do anything, can't you realize that? What's having lan gonna do agains the evil electric radiator? What's lan going to do against computers crashing? Nothing.
Save Game feature is the best and ultimate solution.
On April 08 2012 20:11 MrHoon wrote: i just feel like Valve did a much better job at dota 2 than blizzard did on SC2 in terms of online connectivity. Reconnecting is something I really want on every online game now, it's such an amazing feature
If there never was a reconnecting feature I don't know how many games of dota 2 i would've lost with an abandon
I can see how reconnecting can work in Dota, but in SC2? The time you're disconnected you're basically a sitting duck. Half the time you'll reconnect to your base in ruins.
Also the last thing I want it to have to wait for someone to lag out, then the reconnect, then lag out again, then connect again.... etc.
For competitive play, it would mean that one would pause when one drops, wait till he reconnects, then resume the game. Dota 2 also allows you to pull save files from a certain time mark, so if a crucial fight happened and large amount of lag occured, they can just load the save file before that big fight ocurred.
how about instead of ranting you suggest the tournaments to add autosave options to their maps, which is do it once then copy paste. As you dislike regames (editor makes that possible fairly easily). I personally don't mind seeing another awesome game. Anyway saving in an rts does a nice amount of lag. And since it has to be stored somewhere reachable, well not a problem in tournaments. I don't see a good solution to this really, even allowing to reconnect has some issues. So Admin decision imo best way to do it.
But shouting for Lan is always so funny to hear, when a drop happens, saw enough drops with Lan as well. And not started to shout Want Hot Seat Mode/Splitscreen.
Reconnecting to custom games would be easy to add though without changing to much of the system, it would probably feel a bit unprofessional and i doubt Blizzard wants to add something half heartedly. So will probably take some time till we have that.
On April 08 2012 19:14 tomatriedes wrote: Completely agree with this, though I'm not a programmer so I don't know how difficult it would be to implement.
I don't think it's very hard for Blizzard to implement. I'm a programmer and all they have to do is a data dump to a file when the person drops out (they don't even have to save the map until a person drops out). Then they would need to tweak the code to allow the map to be reloaded with all parties in the lobby. It's easy to do for them - they could probably even add this functionality in the next patch.
I guess you saw the source code for the engine right ?
Gotta love the armchair experts hey.
The amount of times I said, "should be simple, all I have to do is this" while programming only to have the problem expand and expand wildly beyond my first estimates are beyond count.
While there is a chance they might never release LAN, the least they could do is implement a reliable way to reconnect/remake the game, I can guarantee that that would probably solve 99% of the problems a disconnect causes. It would no longer be a tragedy to D/C because you could reconnect or re-make the game from the point you left off.
On April 08 2012 20:11 MrHoon wrote: i just feel like Valve did a much better job at dota 2 than blizzard did on SC2 in terms of online connectivity. Reconnecting is something I really want on every online game now, it's such an amazing feature
If there never was a reconnecting feature I don't know how many games of dota 2 i would've lost with an abandon
I can see how reconnecting can work in Dota, but in SC2? The time you're disconnected you're basically a sitting duck. Half the time you'll reconnect to your base in ruins.
Also the last thing I want it to have to wait for someone to lag out, then the reconnect, then lag out again, then connect again.... etc.
Actually its quite easy to solve the reconnect issue, just force a pause in the game while the other player is connecting, the pause is done by the game and it can't be over-ridden by any player.
Alternatively you have the option to remake the game, but with the option to start from the exact place you left off.
And if you suspect a computer might still lag out, you wait it out until the techs fix it, and then reconnect/remake, it really isn't that hard to think up and would probably solve so many problems.
On April 08 2012 20:57 FeyFey wrote: how about instead of ranting you suggest the tournaments to add autosave options to their maps, which is do it once then copy paste. As you dislike regames (editor makes that possible fairly easily). I personally don't mind seeing another awesome game. Anyway saving in an rts does a nice amount of lag. And since it has to be stored somewhere reachable, well not a problem in tournaments. I don't see a good solution to this really, even allowing to reconnect has some issues. So Admin decision imo best way to do it.
Can this be done? I don't know what the capability of UMS is. Are there any experts with UMS that know if this can be done?
On April 08 2012 20:11 MrHoon wrote: i just feel like Valve did a much better job at dota 2 than blizzard did on SC2 in terms of online connectivity. Reconnecting is something I really want on every online game now, it's such an amazing feature
If there never was a reconnecting feature I don't know how many games of dota 2 i would've lost with an abandon
I can see how reconnecting can work in Dota, but in SC2? The time you're disconnected you're basically a sitting duck. Half the time you'll reconnect to your base in ruins.
Also the last thing I want it to have to wait for someone to lag out, then the reconnect, then lag out again, then connect again.... etc.
For competitive play, it would mean that one would pause when one drops, wait till he reconnects, then resume the game. Dota 2 also allows you to pull save files from a certain time mark, so if a crucial fight happened and large amount of lag occured, they can just load the save file before that big fight ocurred.
Ok that'd work. How often is just one player a problem though at a tournament? If the link to Bnet goes down it'd affect both players. To restart from that, you'd need the client to save the game state (ala replays). Is that what people are talking about.?
On April 08 2012 19:15 ki11z0ne wrote: they care... if they didnt they would not have a balancing team... idk people need top widen there perspective a lil.... its understandable why their is no LAN on sc2, and its fine with me
Yes...because no LAN reduced the amount of piracy. Oh wait...
On April 08 2012 19:14 tomatriedes wrote: Completely agree with this, though I'm not a programmer so I don't know how difficult it would be to implement.
I don't think it's very hard for Blizzard to implement. I'm a programmer and all they have to do is a data dump to a file when the person drops out (they don't even have to save the map until a person drops out). Then they would need to tweak the code to allow the map to be reloaded with all parties in the lobby. It's easy to do for them - they could probably even add this functionality in the next patch.
I guess you saw the source code for the engine right ?
Gotta love the armchair experts hey.
The amount of times I said, "should be simple, all I have to do is this" while programming only to have the problem expand and expand wildly beyond my first estimates are beyond count.
Exactly. Fixing this so it works within their current system might not be possible. It is not like Blizzard knew that Esports was going to take off when they released the game in July of 2010. Programming it hard and they would need to make sure the system worked well. Its not just saving the half finished game, it is making a place for the game to be stored, options in a lobby a file time to search for and so on.
And we are never getting LAN. Kespa claiming the BW was part of the public domain and the 1000s of free copies of BW took care of that.
This incident at the GSTL, with Browder, Morhaime and Segaty attending, is hopefully the turning point. We do need the option to save a custom game and use savegames to continue a match which was disconnected. Saved games are useful for other things, too (practice certain situations versus a friend.)
On April 08 2012 19:15 ki11z0ne wrote: they care... if they didnt they would not have a balancing team... idk people need top widen there perspective a lil.... its understandable why their is no LAN on sc2, and its fine with me
Yes...because no LAN reduced the amount of piracy. Oh wait...
Oh wait what? It did.
We can all agree that you can't play pirated games online nowadays, right? No matter what sort of DRM they use. Given that you can pirate sc2 and play vs AI, all the campaign, tutorials, challenge map etc. pp., running everything over b.net didn't do shit for piracy. All that it did was give every single tournament these sort of issues. Besides no lan is mainly thanks to kespa and chinese pc bangs, which used pirated versions of bw.
That asside real lan is probably impossible to do without releasing a >2 GB patch for WoL, what they can do though is give us shit like save game and blabla, and especially give lan with hots.
Blizzard wont do anything that they will not gain money from. Maybe they have a technological hole now that their current programmers don't know how to implement such save feature. Maybe they are saving the feature to be released on a future expansion to get lost fans back.
One thing is sure that they will not give any tournaments the LAN feature. Piracy is not the only reason Blizzard decided not to give LAN, as currently there even are pirated versions of SC2 with the LAN implemented. Maybe even greater reason Blizzard did not include LAN is so major tournaments could not use it. Blizzard got sick from Kespa for not paying them royalities for using Blizzard games for commercial purposes. To ensure such things wont happen in the future, Blizzard wants the power to instantly shut down any tournament game via Bnet if they have disagreements of the royalities they should pay Blizzard.
On April 08 2012 21:12 [F_]aths wrote: This incident at the GSTL, with Browder, Morhaime and Segaty attending, is hopefully the turning point. We do need the option to save a custom game and use savegames to continue a match which was disconnected. Saved games are useful for other things, too (practice certain situations versus a friend.)
Was Browder and Segaty there too? I hope so and I hope they are embarassed about what happened.
Blizzard just HAS to change their main concepts for the future, or Starcraft will be a niche esports game and not THE esports game like BW was.
They always said the fusion with Activision does nothing to their mentality and their concepts for the fans. The fusion with Activision is just business related and they have no impact on anything related to developing the games they said.
On April 08 2012 21:12 [F_]aths wrote: This incident at the GSTL, with Browder, Morhaime and Segaty attending, is hopefully the turning point. We do need the option to save a custom game and use savegames to continue a match which was disconnected. Saved games are useful for other things, too (practice certain situations versus a friend.)
Was Browder and Segaty there too? I hope so and I hope they are embarassed about what happened.
I don't know who Segaty is, but Browder was definitely there, the camera pointed him out in the game of Maru vs July, also Wolf and Khaldor shout outed him and Mike. There is also a picture of Mike and Dustin talking to each other embarrassed while the D/C was going on.
There are maps that do already have save integrated. So why not make standard MLG, GSL, etc. maps come with these sorts of things. Although I do believe Blizzard should step it up, we, as a community, can step it up and do it ourselves.
On April 08 2012 21:02 Destructicon wrote: While there is a chance they might never release LAN, the least they could do is implement a reliable way to reconnect/remake the game, I can guarantee that that would probably solve 99% of the problems a disconnect causes. It would no longer be a tragedy to D/C because you could reconnect or re-make the game from the point you left off.
On April 08 2012 20:11 MrHoon wrote: i just feel like Valve did a much better job at dota 2 than blizzard did on SC2 in terms of online connectivity. Reconnecting is something I really want on every online game now, it's such an amazing feature
If there never was a reconnecting feature I don't know how many games of dota 2 i would've lost with an abandon
I can see how reconnecting can work in Dota, but in SC2? The time you're disconnected you're basically a sitting duck. Half the time you'll reconnect to your base in ruins.
Also the last thing I want it to have to wait for someone to lag out, then the reconnect, then lag out again, then connect again.... etc.
Actually its quite easy to solve the reconnect issue, just force a pause in the game while the other player is connecting, the pause is done by the game and it can't be over-ridden by any player.
Alternatively you have the option to remake the game, but with the option to start from the exact place you left off.
And if you suspect a computer might still lag out, you wait it out until the techs fix it, and then reconnect/remake, it really isn't that hard to think up and would probably solve so many problems.
The idea seems quite simple. Implementing new features not already supported by the technology on a project as big as Starcraft 2 is not simple. I hope they spend time on it, but it's almost rude to naively proclaim the work trivial.
On April 08 2012 20:57 FeyFey wrote: how about instead of ranting you suggest the tournaments to add autosave options to their maps, which is do it once then copy paste. As you dislike regames (editor makes that possible fairly easily). I personally don't mind seeing another awesome game. Anyway saving in an rts does a nice amount of lag. And since it has to be stored somewhere reachable, well not a problem in tournaments. I don't see a good solution to this really, even allowing to reconnect has some issues. So Admin decision imo best way to do it.
Can this be done? I don't know what the capability of UMS is. Are there any experts with UMS that know if this can be done?
Gamestates can be fairly accurately recorded into memory while a game is running. This means that as long as the individual game is uninterrupted, you can recall back to an earlier time with the right mod.
Passing data from an interrupted game to a new game to reload the gamestate would require writing and reading to/from a file. The only types of files you can access this way through a UMS are bank files, which are woefully inadequate for holding the type of data a replay holds.
On April 08 2012 21:12 [F_]aths wrote: This incident at the GSTL, with Browder, Morhaime and Segaty attending, is hopefully the turning point. We do need the option to save a custom game and use savegames to continue a match which was disconnected. Saved games are useful for other things, too (practice certain situations versus a friend.)
Was Browder and Segaty there too? I hope so and I hope they are embarassed about what happened.
I don't know who Segaty is, but Browder was definitely there, the camera pointed him out in the game of Maru vs July, also Wolf and Khaldor shout outed him and Mike. There is also a picture of Mike and Dustin talking to each other embarrassed while the D/C was going on.
I am sure they would love to fix it and I wouldn't doubt there is stuff coming in HotS. But if you read the news about Diablo 3, it sounds like Blizzard was and is all hands on deck to get that game out the door by May. They are huge, but they make huge games.
On April 08 2012 21:14 Sea_Food wrote: Blizzard wont do anything that they will not gain money from.
But Blizzard does make money from SC2 as an e-sports now and they know the potential $$$ of the SC2 esports scene growing. Blizzard can demand royalties from tournaments, especially major tournaments like GSL, IPL, MLG, etc. Now even Kespa wants to swtich over to SC2 - yet more $$$ for Blizzard. While we are not there yet, imagine if one day, ESPN decides to broadcast SC2 tournaments? That's even more $$$ for Blizzard.
A simple feature like saving the game when a player disconnects would make SC2 look that much better in the e-sports scene. This is just a win-win for Blizzard. Hey, I'm not for giving Blizzard more money, but at the same time, I feel bad for players that have to do a regame, especially if one player had a clear advantage.
It's probably on their long laundry list of things to add into the game, but most likely lower than stuff like replay sharing and that map marketplace idea. I wouldn't be surprised if they add the feature in the future, but it will be a long ways away from now if they do.
Maybe this scandal will convince Blizzard to move the feature up their laundry list, but I doubt they will suddenly drop work on all of their other in-progress features to urgently work on a re-game feature.
On April 08 2012 21:20 Destructicon wrote: [There is also a picture of Mike and Dustin talking to each other embarrassed while the D/C was going on.
Oh man, I hope so! I really hope Mike Morhaime and Dustin Bowder fix this issue. Regame in a major tournament because your software sucks should shame the both of them into doing something about this.
It would be even better if they could extend the replay function so that you can start a game at any given point from the actions in the replay. This would have the extended benefit of practicing a certain situation more efficiently and you could experiment with decision making to a given strategy more easily.
On April 08 2012 21:20 Cocoba wrote: There are maps that do already have save integrated. So why not make standard MLG, GSL, etc. maps come with these sorts of things. Although I do believe Blizzard should step it up, we, as a community, can step it up and do it ourselves.
If there are expert UMS map makers out there that know if this can or can't be done, please speak out.
I said the concept isn't hard to think up, I didn't say it isn't hard to implement, I really have no idea how the program of battle.net is written, but I am sure it is a solvable issue, hard maybe, but still doable. And after what happened, and with the embarrassment of being right there during a crucial match of a final I hope Mike and Dustin take the issue seriously enough to direct some resources to solving the problem.
They did announce they want to improve Battle.net in patch 1.5 in various ways, hopefully this issue will now get a high priority.
On April 08 2012 21:17 Bommes wrote: Blizzard just HAS to change their main concepts for the future, or Starcraft will be a niche esports game and not THE esports game like BW was.
They always said the fusion with Activision does nothing to their mentality and their concepts for the fans. The fusion with Activision is just business related and they have no impact on anything related to developing the games they said.
Yet I see more and more Activision everywhere.
Well they HAVE changed their main concepts. They realized that, while BW was THE number one game in esports, they didnt earn a cent. Some years ago, they invented WoW, the monthly money-machine. And with the relatively new concept of DLC at hand, they realized that selling a great game once might make them famous, but not rich. They would only earn big money by constantly giving the gamers content one piece at a time (read: WoL, HotS...). To circumvent all problems with IP rights etc. (think of what would happen in China if SC2 became a big thing there without intrinsic control) they just copied the WoW-concept. Just without the monthly payment.
On April 08 2012 20:57 jdobrev wrote: you can already do that in Warcraft 3, it shouldn't be too hard.
(player disconnects but you save game so you can reload and continue)
This. It's just sad that wc3 and brood war were so much superior when it comes to functionality. I'm sick of companies who screw over their paying customers to prevent some people from pirating their product (which is never gonna succeed anyway).
On April 08 2012 21:31 Adventurekid wrote: It would be a bit weird if Blizzard only limited the save function to tournaments though.
I don't see why they wouldn't do it for the game in general. Just add this option in user settings or maybe pop up a dialogue when a user drops to save the game. It's good for everyone, not just tournaments.
I read a discussion on this on the blizzard forums shortly after sc2 came out and the consensus at the time at least seemed to be that such an autosave system would be entirely non-trivial, technically speaking. So not expecting to see it soon. If that was the problem they wanted to solve a LAN version of some kind would be more straight-forward. For myself I think they should have gone the option for a sort of specially licensed LAN version that tournaments could pay to use, even if they had to do something crazy like have Blizz officials in black suits with sunglasses install the hardware for them. Doesn't seem likely at this point however.
On April 08 2012 21:31 Adventurekid wrote: It would be a bit weird if Blizzard only limited the save function to tournaments though.
I don't see why they wouldn't do it for the game in general. Just add this option in user settings or maybe pop up a dialogue when a user drops to save the game. It's good for everyone, not just tournaments.
On April 08 2012 21:38 Cloudsong wrote: That would actually be a great solution, but as we know Blizzard lacks the effort when it comes to supporting Esports.
But I think Blizzard sees $$$ in E-Sports now Plus, adding a feature like this only helps their sales for the next two expansions of SC2.
On April 08 2012 19:15 ki11z0ne wrote: they care... if they didnt they would not have a balancing team... idk people need top widen there perspective a lil.... its understandable why their is no LAN on sc2, and its fine with me
They care...about $$. People need to start to realize this, nothing good comes from being naive. They have balance teams because people won't buy an unbalanced game - therefore less money to their pockets. Does a lack of LAN and/or match-saving option affects their income? Not in a slightest.
Their main income comes from casual gamers (copies of games bought). Does those people think about lan and match-saving before they spend their money on the game? Were You hasitating before buying SC2 because of lack of LAN/match-saving? You know it , and Blizzard knows it - NO, YOU WERE NOT. Because You don't need those feauters to enjoy the game.
E-Sports needs LAN and match-saving. It needs it because there is a lot of money on the line. Because such situations like yesterday's GSTL make this whole thing look very unprofessional. But does it affect Blizzard's pockets in any way? Aren't there more and more tournaments, with bigger and bigger prize pools, more fans, more pro-gamers, more growth as a whole despite the lack of LAN/match saving? You don't need to be a genius to see how it works. They don't implement LAN/match saving and still get more and more $$.
In this case, why would a person responsible for implementing those features care to make such a decision? Because sometimes a match get interrupted? Like, 0.1% of times? 'Is this a reason why i should put myself in danger of loosing my money? In a place when i can no longer control what happen to SC? Like it was with KESPA?'
I actually tweeted rob simpson about this yesterday. For anyone that's reading/posting in this thread and wants an answer/blizzard to get on this, I suggest doing the same. Let's make this happen guys!
Creating a file that can be reloaded that maintains fog of war, mineral counts, unit position, and can be simultaneously joined by not only the players but observers is more complicated then anyone thinks.
On April 08 2012 21:40 Haydin wrote: I actually tweeted rob simpson about this yesterday. For anyone that's reading/posting in this thread and wants an answer/blizzard to get on this, I suggest doing the same. Let's make this happen guys!
Thanks Haydin! Can you post Rob Simpson's Twitter address? What about Mike Morhaime and Dustin Bowder? Let's get this done - if it is easy for the progamming team to do, we want this feature ASAP.
Just to give you a perspective on how realistic it is that SC2 gets LAN/Autosave whatever:
From an interview with Justin Browder:
-And what about the situation where you have a tournament where everyone is on one DSL line? Internet play would be impossible there - there was a "pseudo-LAN" solution mentioned where you'd be connected directly as long as there was some sort of internet connection, is that still in the cards?
I believe so. We're still looking at tournament solutions, we don't know what our final set of solutions will be, but we're actively looking for something that will allow that situation to be a lot more positive experience. We've gotten a ton of feedback, we've heard that even that solution that you mentioned isn't enough, I don't know what the final form will look like, how that will finally shake out - but we're really aware of the problem, and we've heard the feedback, and we're trying to deal with it.
--------
The interview was published in April of 2010. Two years ago. Look at where we are now.
On April 08 2012 21:41 FatkiddsLag wrote: Creating a file that can be reloaded that maintains fog of war, mineral counts, unit position, and can be simultaneously joined by not only the players but observers is more complicated then anyone thinks.
I'm not an expert on this, but what about UMS maps? Aren't UMS maps nothing more than different scenarios where players can join? Can the map modding community even do a fix for this?
The point is, let's get Blizzard aware of this issue and that we as a community want a solution to this. Even if we get a fix to this by HoTS, that's better than no fix at all for the next several years.
On April 08 2012 21:43 hegeo wrote: Just to give you a perspective on how realistic it is that SC2 gets LAN/Autosave whatever:
From an interview with Justin Browder:
-And what about the situation where you have a tournament where everyone is on one DSL line? Internet play would be impossible there - there was a "pseudo-LAN" solution mentioned where you'd be connected directly as long as there was some sort of internet connection, is that still in the cards?
I believe so. We're still looking at tournament solutions, we don't know what our final set of solutions will be, but we're actively looking for something that will allow that situation to be a lot more positive experience. We've gotten a ton of feedback, we've heard that even that solution that you mentioned isn't enough, I don't know what the final form will look like, how that will finally shake out - but we're really aware of the problem, and we've heard the feedback, and we're trying to deal with it.
--------
The interview was published in April of 2010. Two years ago. Look at where we are now.
Great idea, seems like a good compromise to them bitching out about LAN.
Civ 5 has this function, you can literally save game, log off, take a nap and come back. Granted you have to manually save, but surely it wouldn't be too hard to have it auto save, or for the option for an observer to save it once someone starts lagging out.
On April 08 2012 21:43 hegeo wrote: Just to give you a perspective on how realistic it is that SC2 gets LAN/Autosave whatever:
From an interview with Justin Browder:
-And what about the situation where you have a tournament where everyone is on one DSL line? Internet play would be impossible there - there was a "pseudo-LAN" solution mentioned where you'd be connected directly as long as there was some sort of internet connection, is that still in the cards?
I believe so. We're still looking at tournament solutions, we don't know what our final set of solutions will be, but we're actively looking for something that will allow that situation to be a lot more positive experience. We've gotten a ton of feedback, we've heard that even that solution that you mentioned isn't enough, I don't know what the final form will look like, how that will finally shake out - but we're really aware of the problem, and we've heard the feedback, and we're trying to deal with it.
--------
The interview was published in April of 2010. Two years ago. Look at where we are now.
Yeah, I can't believe SC2, including the BETA, has been out for 2 years and nothing has been done about this. We've had regames before, but it took a regame in a major tournament where the CEO of Blizzard was present to see how pathetic their software is. I hope Blizzard makes this a priority again.
On April 08 2012 21:41 FatkiddsLag wrote: Creating a file that can be reloaded that maintains fog of war, mineral counts, unit position, and can be simultaneously joined by not only the players but observers is more complicated then anyone thinks.
LOL. All computer games on this world have save option. Its incredibly easy to implement. Think of it as a save option in starcraft campaign. You open the file that as you said "can be reloaded that maintains fog of war, mineral counts, unit position". You join the game. You are the host. And You control terran units. Do You really think that its hard now, for other player to join this game and control other units? No, its just so simple that can be implemented in a hour.
If this was a case, there would be no replays, because its exactly the same thing without an option to control those units. Many game programmers said already, its simplier to make then you think. And not to mention, Blizzard already made match-saving in previous games. So...i guess...its not complicated at all...
i'm pretty sure blizzard is well aware that its an issue, but until HoTS i doubt a fix will come,. as it'd be a pretty big thing + probs a seeling point for hots lol.
Its just too big of a thing to patch in, and they wont announce an official solution until they decide on one, as theres definitely a few options.
On April 08 2012 21:41 FatkiddsLag wrote: Creating a file that can be reloaded that maintains fog of war, mineral counts, unit position, and can be simultaneously joined by not only the players but observers is more complicated then anyone thinks.
LOL. All computer games on this world have save option. Its incredibly easy to implement. Think of it as a save option in starcraft campaign. You open the file that as you said "can be reloaded that maintains fog of war, mineral counts, unit position". You join the game. You are the host. And You control terran units. Do You really think that its hard now, for other player to join this game and control other units? No, its just so simple that can be implemented in a hour.
If this was a case, there would be no replays, because its exactly the same thing without an option to control those units. Many game programmers said already, its simplier to make then you think. And not to mention, Blizzard already made match-saving in previous games. So...i guess...its not complicated at all...
I'm also a programmer but having said that, I've never seen the code for SC2. If their code design and code structure is flexible enough, it might not be too difficult of a fix. At the end of the day, only the Blizzard programmers know.
However, I hope that Blizzard brings this up as a priority. Because regames are not fair and regames are silly at high level tournaments like the MLG, GSL, IPL, Dreamhack, IEM, etc.
On April 08 2012 21:41 FatkiddsLag wrote: Creating a file that can be reloaded that maintains fog of war, mineral counts, unit position, and can be simultaneously joined by not only the players but observers is more complicated then anyone thinks.
LOL. All computer games on this world have save option. Its incredibly easy to implement. Think of it as a save option in starcraft campaign. You open the file that as you said "can be reloaded that maintains fog of war, mineral counts, unit position". You join the game. You are the host. And You control terran units. Do You really think that its hard now, for other player to join this game and control other units? No, its just so simple that can be implemented in a hour.
If this was a case, there would be no replays, because its exactly the same thing without an option to control those units. Many game programmers said already, its simplier to make then you think. And not to mention, Blizzard already made match-saving in previous games. So...i guess...its not complicated at all...
I'm also a programmer but having said that, I've never seen the code for SC2. If their code design and code structure is flexible enough, it might not be too difficult of a fix. At the end of the day, only the Blizzard programmers know.
However, I hope that Blizzard brings this up as a priority. Because regames are not fair and regames are silly at high level tournaments like the MLG, GSL, IPL, Dreamhack, IEM, etc.
If they are going to do it, it will be in HotS. That is the best chance for them to change the back end in Bnet and allow for this sort of change.
On April 08 2012 21:58 Plansix wrote: If they are going to do it, it will be in HotS. That is the best chance for them to change the back end in Bnet and allow for this sort of change.
I really hope they have a fix for this no later than HoTS. They've ignored this for 2 years and it took a major incident at a major final in front of the CEO of Blizzard for this to maybe get some attention again. I really can't believe they did nothing in the last 2 years to address this - oh wait, they INTEGRATED FACEBOOK for SC2, lmao.
there are huge flaws to continuing a game though. players could plan out how they want to react fully, for example. its quite horrible for a terran whos committing to a bunker rush against a flustered zerg to suddenly dc and later have to continue in that position where the zerg can spend time away from the game sort of like in a 'statis' to reflect on the most efficient decision and to carry that out.
On April 08 2012 19:13 bLuR wrote: i don't think they really care enough to do anything about it
ugggh people like you literally make me sick. So ignorant. All of the top organisers for starcraft like dustin and david kim pour their heart and soul into this game......please stop making such stupid comments
On April 08 2012 22:06 shucklesors wrote: there are huge flaws to continuing a game though. players could plan out how they want to react fully, for example. its quite horrible for a terran whos committing to a bunker rush against a flustered zerg to suddenly dc and later have to continue in that position where the zerg can spend time away from the game sort of like in a 'statis' to reflect on the most efficient decision and to carry that out.
Loading a saved game is no different than a pause, provided the players are not allowed to leave their booths or communicate with someone who has outside knowledge of the match.
Players can already plan their next move during a pause. When a pause happens during an intense fight, players can also plan what to do in the fight when the game unpauses.
they had the ability to save games in wc3. in 10 years or watching pro games and 8 years of playing myself i cant say i remember a time when it was actually used tho..
On April 08 2012 19:13 bLuR wrote: i don't think they really care enough to do anything about it
This. They just do not care. They clearly have the money and the people to work on this, and it shouldn't be all that complicated, but they don't feel like doing it.
Hopefully the rise of DotA 2 to the top of esports will change Blizzard's mind. Starcraft 2 will look a bit ridiculous next to DotA 2 which has auto save for reloading purposes, reconnect feature and LAN (among many other rly good features like being able to watch any pub game at any point... + Show Spoiler +
However DotA 2 as of yet does not have Facebook support, so clearly Bnet 2.0 is superior
On April 08 2012 20:57 FeyFey wrote: how about instead of ranting you suggest the tournaments to add autosave options to their maps, which is do it once then copy paste. As you dislike regames (editor makes that possible fairly easily). I personally don't mind seeing another awesome game. Anyway saving in an rts does a nice amount of lag. And since it has to be stored somewhere reachable, well not a problem in tournaments. I don't see a good solution to this really, even allowing to reconnect has some issues. So Admin decision imo best way to do it.
Can this be done? I don't know what the capability of UMS is. Are there any experts with UMS that know if this can be done?
Gamestates can be fairly accurately recorded into memory while a game is running. This means that as long as the individual game is uninterrupted, you can recall back to an earlier time with the right mod.
Passing data from an interrupted game to a new game to reload the gamestate would require writing and reading to/from a file. The only types of files you can access this way through a UMS are bank files, which are woefully inadequate for holding the type of data a replay holds.
On April 08 2012 19:15 ki11z0ne wrote: they care... if they didnt they would not have a balancing team... idk people need top widen there perspective a lil.... its understandable why their is no LAN on sc2, and its fine with me
Why is it understandable?
Because the day you incorporate LAN is the day I can steal StarCraft online, and play it without a battle.net account.
But you can do that already.... and even have LAN.
So Blizzard should sponsor their product being stolen, and make it just that much easier?
Why would it make it easier, if it's already out there? The only thing it does, that it's hurting loyal customers who want to play it offline with their friends.
I'm sorry, but there's something I must've missed. How exactly do you play StarCraft 2 online with a pirated version? Englighten me, please.
On April 08 2012 19:13 bLuR wrote: i don't think they really care enough to do anything about it
ugggh people like you literally make me sick. So ignorant. All of the top organisers for starcraft like dustin and david kim pour their heart and soul into this game......please stop making such stupid comments
What have Dustin Browder and David Kim and the Esports manager Rob Simpson really done that benefitted the community or the state of the game? The problem is I don't doubt their incentive to change something. But as long as the people that are really in charge don't see any financial benefit they won't commit any ressources into anything.
And being a programmer myself. If SC2/Battlenet was programmed by sane people it should be possible to add this feature because the replay already has all the information to simulate the game up to a certain point.
On April 08 2012 19:13 bLuR wrote: i don't think they really care enough to do anything about it
ugggh people like you literally make me sick. So ignorant. All of the top organisers for starcraft like dustin and david kim pour their heart and soul into this game......please stop making such stupid comments
What have Dustin Browder and David Kim and the Esports manager Rob Simpson really done that benefitted the community or the state of the game? The problem is I don't doubt their incentive to change something. But as long as the people that are really in charge don't see any financial benefit they won't commit any ressources into anything.
The balance of the game has drastically increased since the start of the game. The maps are also much better now. The Esports team seems to be not that bad. I guess the people that implement features are a different team.
On April 08 2012 19:13 bLuR wrote: i don't think they really care enough to do anything about it
ugggh people like you literally make me sick. So ignorant. All of the top organisers for starcraft like dustin and david kim pour their heart and soul into this game......please stop making such stupid comments
What have Dustin Browder and David Kim and the Esports manager Rob Simpson really done that benefitted the community or the state of the game? The problem is I don't doubt their incentive to change something. But as long as the people that are really in charge don't see any financial benefit they won't commit any ressources into anything.
I don't know, man, perhaps you forget a little thing called "StarCraft 2" which I personally think speaks for everything they've ever done for us. Furthermore, unless Dustin Browder, David Kim and/or Rob Simpson does EXACTLY what the so-called "community" wants them to do, they're not doing ANYTHING. #killingesports #killingstarcraft
On April 08 2012 19:13 bLuR wrote: i don't think they really care enough to do anything about it
ugggh people like you literally make me sick. So ignorant. All of the top organisers for starcraft like dustin and david kim pour their heart and soul into this game......please stop making such stupid comments
What have Dustin Browder and David Kim and the Esports manager Rob Simpson really done that benefitted the community or the state of the game? The problem is I don't doubt their incentive to change something. But as long as the people that are really in charge don't see any financial benefit they won't commit any ressources into anything.
The balance of the game has drastically increased since the start of the game. The maps are also much better now. The Esports team seems to be not that bad. I guess the people that implement features are a different team.
I was not thinking about balancing and adapting maps to the state of the game because it should go without saying that they have to do that. But actually implementing features(apart from chat) that have been asked for for months now.
I don't know, man, perhaps you forget a little thing called "StarCraft 2" which I personally think speaks for everything they've ever done for us. Furthermore, unless Dustin Browder, David Kim and/or Rob Simpson does EXACTLY what the so-called "community" wants them to do, they're not doing ANYTHING. #killingesports #killingstarcraft
The fact is not that they are not doing exactly what I or the community want. They are doing nothing apart from saying it's on the agenda and will be done when we have time.
On April 08 2012 19:13 bLuR wrote: i don't think they really care enough to do anything about it
ugggh people like you literally make me sick. So ignorant. All of the top organisers for starcraft like dustin and david kim pour their heart and soul into this game......please stop making such stupid comments
What have Dustin Browder and David Kim and the Esports manager Rob Simpson really done that benefitted the community or the state of the game? The problem is I don't doubt their incentive to change something. But as long as the people that are really in charge don't see any financial benefit they won't commit any ressources into anything.
The balance of the game has drastically increased since the start of the game. The maps are also much better now. The Esports team seems to be not that bad. I guess the people that implement features are a different team.
I was not thinking about balancing and adapting maps to the state of the game because it should go without saying that they have to do that. But actually implementing features(apart from chat) that have been asked for for months now.
I don't know, man, perhaps you forget a little thing called "StarCraft 2" which I personally think speaks for everything they've ever done for us. Furthermore, unless Dustin Browder, David Kim and/or Rob Simpson does EXACTLY what the so-called "community" wants them to do, they're not doing ANYTHING. #killingesports #killingstarcraft
The fact is not that they are not doing exactly what I or the community want. They are doing nothing apart from saying it's on the agenda and will be done when we have time.
Like a good many has said before, why can't Blizzard force a pause in the game engine while giving time for reconnection like Dota 2 has? I mean Dota 2 already has the reconnection feature, just that they would require pausing manually. I can understand if it's a hassle for ladder games, but it should at least be there for all custom games where all the competitions are definitely held over. All hail Valve, seriously.
On April 08 2012 19:13 bLuR wrote: i don't think they really care enough to do anything about it
ugggh people like you literally make me sick. So ignorant. All of the top organisers for starcraft like dustin and david kim pour their heart and soul into this game......please stop making such stupid comments
What have Dustin Browder and David Kim and the Esports manager Rob Simpson really done that benefitted the community or the state of the game? The problem is I don't doubt their incentive to change something. But as long as the people that are really in charge don't see any financial benefit they won't commit any ressources into anything.
The balance of the game has drastically increased since the start of the game. The maps are also much better now. The Esports team seems to be not that bad. I guess the people that implement features are a different team.
I was not thinking about balancing and adapting maps to the state of the game because it should go without saying that they have to do that. But actually implementing features(apart from chat) that have been asked for for months now.
I don't know, man, perhaps you forget a little thing called "StarCraft 2" which I personally think speaks for everything they've ever done for us. Furthermore, unless Dustin Browder, David Kim and/or Rob Simpson does EXACTLY what the so-called "community" wants them to do, they're not doing ANYTHING. #killingesports #killingstarcraft
The fact is not that they are not doing exactly what I or the community want. They are doing nothing apart from saying it's on the agenda and will be done when we have time.
There's that word "nothing" again.
Yea ok I'm exaggerating. Looking at the last patchlogs apart from Balance changes what have we got: -Pointless APM/EPM change -Larva displayed very good while we are at somehow indicate on the production tab when things are being chronod -Privacy settings also good. But where are the really significant feature additions that need to happen to make SC2 a better game?
On April 08 2012 19:13 bLuR wrote: i don't think they really care enough to do anything about it
ugggh people like you literally make me sick. So ignorant. All of the top organisers for starcraft like dustin and david kim pour their heart and soul into this game......please stop making such stupid comments
not sure if troll or serious... mate, it is thanks to people like you if this game is fucked up like it is... Blizzard team has lost decency and dignity, because they clearly made everyone understand that they will add features only if they can get money for them... And sir, you are the only guy that still have not understood that. The fact that at Ipl the casters have asked to clap Blizzard and no one did, can make everyone understand that blizzard is going to lose way more than he can expect (and I hope so. I, for one, won't buy Diablo 3, even If I wanted to do it. I would rather enjoy getting a game like the witcher.)
Edit: they will add reconnect features, though , people, don't worry. It will just be coming as a dlc... wait... someone said Hots?
... it would be so easy to have an extra copy of SC2 running on an private Server for the tournaments(provided from blizz, or rent from them so they get some money) and with the help of some IT guys you could easily create a private network for this sc2 version (like Lan), without blizzard doing anything except providing a other gameversion.so this version comes with very downgraded features, like no campain, no achievments.... only with maps and the possibility to host maps ..... so there is no sense in pirate this version....
also u need a programm to fill a database for casters and players, but this is not too difficult, cause u need only like 70 spots. 4-6 casters and 64 players.
greater qualifires like at mlg with 500+ players can be played online, like before
On April 08 2012 22:49 Oktyabr wrote: Like a good many has said before, why can't Blizzard force a pause in the game engine while giving time for reconnection like Dota 2 has? I mean Dota 2 already has the reconnection feature, just that they would require pausing manually. I can understand if it's a hassle for ladder games, but it should at least be there for all custom games where all the competitions are definitely held over. All hail Valve, seriously.
Reconnect would be equally awesome. Whatever is cheap and easy for Blizzard to do since Blizzard thinks about $$$ and us fans would rather see a fix to prevent regames in future tournaments.
I am very much against it if it only saves like once a minute or so as DotA2 does. This game would suffer greatly from it and let's say a player drops during an all-in and his build is so all-in that is his only way to do it. He is winning the game and the engagement, but drops and the game saved 1 or 2 minutes earlier and he can't really get out of this build. That would be detrimental and a re-game would be more fair even to the winning player. However, if it can be done so it would save the second the game stops and nothing would change from that point in time, I'm very much for it.
eSport does not make them all that much money, their time is far better spent developing HotS and the other expansion than catering to the needs of a minority.
I am not saying this to rile you up, or "troll" you but deep down you know it to be true.
This feature is not some sort of button they can just press and voila! Its there. I can imagine something like this would be a huge undertaking for them
So money is out as a reason, which means it's laziness or not caring.
It is a money issue, as time spent adding this feature would cost $$, when the same people could be doing the expansions or the patches, things that would appease a far bigger section of the crowd.
Saying its a 5 day investment shows a lack of knowledge how games function, changing one thing tends to buggy up another, it would take months to fully implent and test this feature.
On April 08 2012 22:58 Bumblebee wrote: I am very much against it if it only saves like once a minute or so as DotA2 does. This game would suffer greatly from it and let's say a player drops during an all-in and his build is so all-in that is his only way to do it. He is winning the game and the engagement, but drops and the game saved 1 or 2 minutes earlier and he can't really get out of this build. That would be detrimental and a re-game would be more fair even to the winning player. However, if it can be done so it would save the second the game stops and nothing would change from that point in time, I'm very much for it.
They should be able to save the game the instant a player officially disconnect or give you the option to save when a player has officially disconnected. Like I said, the client still has the data on the game state before a person disconnects. The trick is to keep that data and auto-save it to a file, or pop up a dialogue to give you the option of saving the game. As a programmer myself, I'm pretty sure that saving the game data to a file is easy for them to do.
Maybe the harder part for Blizzard is loading the file so that players and observers can start off where the game last ended. This is an answer that only the Blizzard programmers can answer.
On April 08 2012 23:00 Tyree wrote: is not some sort of button they can just press and voila! Its there. I can imagine something like this would be a huge undertaking for them
As a professional programmer myself, if their code is structured flexibily and well designed, it shouldn't be too hard for them to do. If not, then I guess us fans will have to wait. Only the Blizzard programmers really know in the end.
On April 08 2012 22:58 Bumblebee wrote: I am very much against it if it only saves like once a minute or so as DotA2 does. This game would suffer greatly from it and let's say a player drops during an all-in and his build is so all-in that is his only way to do it. He is winning the game and the engagement, but drops and the game saved 1 or 2 minutes earlier and he can't really get out of this build. That would be detrimental and a re-game would be more fair even to the winning player. However, if it can be done so it would save the second the game stops and nothing would change from that point in time, I'm very much for it.
^Excellent point.
Also to every comment like this one:
On April 08 2012 22:59 Noocta wrote: The real awnser ? They just got lazy. And Activision was pressing them to release the game earlier than Blizzard would want.
I already posted the quote by Dustin Bowder from April 2010 concerning their perspective on LAN.
Another quote from StarCraft II lead producer Chris Sigaty on (maybe at least the technical side of ) what we are discussing here:
Joining a current game will not be possible at launch, but "we have some long terms plans to do a lot with exactly that," explained Sigaty. "The idea of joining and looking at game types you might be interested in participating in, but want to check out first that's something that's possible.
This interview is from June 2009 (Source). So they at least already thought about the technical implementation of some sort of "jumping into a current game" (only as a spectator in this case, at least this is how I interpret this).
I think they already had all the ideas mentioned in this thread, but chose to NOT implement them, because of several reasons. So this is not about being lazy or stupid or not understanding the gamers.
I think Activision (and EA) cares a lot more about their short term profits than quality products and long term trust of the consumers. It's unfortunate.
On April 08 2012 23:00 Tyree wrote: eSport does not make them all that much money, their time is far better spent developing HotS and the other expansion than catering to the needs of a minority.
BTW, I wouldn't be so sure about this. If the CEO Mike Morhaime deliberately travels to Korea to personally discuss with KESPA on SC2 rights, I think Blizzard sees some type of money in e-sports. We've seen Mike Morhaime and other Blizzard employees at GSL, IPL, and other SC2 tournaments time and time again.
Not to mention that Blizzard is pushing the SC2 World Championships:
On April 08 2012 23:00 Tyree wrote: is not some sort of button they can just press and voila! Its there. I can imagine something like this would be a huge undertaking for them
As a professional programmer myself, if their code is structured flexibily and well designed, it shouldn't be too hard for them to do. If not, then I guess us fans will have to wait. Only the Blizzard programmers really know in the end.
As a professional programmer, what would you say to a PM that came up to you and said:
"Hey, make sure your code is flexible". - "Why?" "So that implementing new features in the future is possible." - "What features?" "Nothing specific right now, just make if flexible."
I was a programmer for some time, but never got into design patterns too heavily. Is this kind of flexibility actually achievable? In that can you program it in such a way that "New Feature X" is easy to implement for any values of X? And maybe more pertinent, how much does this add to time and cost?
On April 08 2012 22:58 Bumblebee wrote: I am very much against it if it only saves like once a minute or so as DotA2 does. This game would suffer greatly from it and let's say a player drops during an all-in and his build is so all-in that is his only way to do it. He is winning the game and the engagement, but drops and the game saved 1 or 2 minutes earlier and he can't really get out of this build. That would be detrimental and a re-game would be more fair even to the winning player. However, if it can be done so it would save the second the game stops and nothing would change from that point in time, I'm very much for it.
They should be able to save the game the instant a player officially disconnect or give you the option to save when a player has officially disconnected. Like I said, the client still has the data on the game state before a person disconnects. The trick is to keep that data and auto-save it to a file, or pop up a dialogue to give you the option of saving the game. As a programmer myself, I'm pretty sure that saving the game data to a file is easy for them to do.
Maybe the harder part for Blizzard is loading the file so that players and observers can start off where the game last ended. This is an answer that only the Blizzard programmers can answer.
this should be easily done; blizzard just needs to take the replay data and reuse it for game state purposes. the instant the disconnect happens, the save file should be generated so there is minimal downtime to resume the game. (heck as others have stated, they could just use the replay data afterward and generated it post-game) it is up to blizzard to work out the details (one system only has the save? people editing the save file?), but I know they can do it. it's just a matter of them committing to such a fix.
I don't understand why my post on the 1st or 2nd page got missed: + Show Spoiler +
On April 08 2012 19:54 Hairy wrote: It's not hard to implement at all; they already have replay functionality built in in the form of replays! Replays already allow you to skip to any time you desire and replicate the exact game state at that time. All they need to do is allow players to resume gameplay from the point that someone dropped.
SOMEONE ALREADY MADE A CUSTOM MAP WHERE YOU CAN SAVE ANY TIME YOU LIKE AND GO BACK TO THAT POINT
Forgive the caps/red etc, but the first time my post was completely overlooked. People need to stop the pointless speculation - this feature has already almost been fully implemented by modders, so it would be trivial or blizz to do themselves:
On January 25 2012 10:36 turtles wrote: update: BIGGER, better and now also uploaded on EU!
Salt is a training tool which enables saving and loading the game in multiplayer matches with practice partners! It is designed to help people test out the timing and execution of all aspects of their play and I have recieved positive responses from Bronze players, pro players/casters (Qxc and Husky) and many people from all levels in between.
To use the tool a player simply types "save" or "load" into chat and they can jump to whatever point in the game they want. For a simple look at how this works and how it can be used you can watch the episode of HuskyStarcraft where he did a review/tutorial on it as part of a new series.
(note, near the end of the clip his opponent clicks on the "restart" button hence the confussion)
He does a good job of outlining some uses for this which are holding timing attacks and practicing micro in real world engagements. It is also useful to develop build orders to test out what a build order is weak against, different variations on a build order and which paths work best when transitioning, as well as practicing games where spawn location plays a role as it lets you chose which starting location each player begins at.
To use simply enter the custom maps section of Battlenet and search for "SALT" and there should be a number of the maps in the list.
LADDER / TOURNAMENT: SALT Antiga Shipyard SALT Entombed Valley SALT Cloud Kingdom SALT Metalopolis SALT Shakuras Plateau SALT Shattered Temple SALT Tal'Darim Altar
TOURNAMENT: SALT Dual Sight SALT Crevasse SALT Daybreak SALT Terminus
NOT IN COMPETITIVE USE: SALT Xel'naga Caverns SALT Bel'shir swamp (one of my own maps, not balance tested)
MORE MAPS: coming soon
If you use custom hotkeys for control groups then you will need to edit the file SALTkeybindings.SC2Banks which will be found in your banks file.+ Show Spoiler +
Start the game and it will create a default file for you, if you do not know where it is located do a search of you SC2 folder and you should find it. To change the hotkey for control group 1 to the letter 'q' find the line that says <Value string="1"/> and change it to <Value string="q"/>. all letters, numbers and F1-F12 keys are allowed.
In the future I will be looking into being able to save the game as a file so that it can be shared with others, distributed to help people become better gamers, included in help requests (eg. "Help. What should I do in this situation?") and used in tournaments in the case of a player who gets disconnected.
I sincerely hope that you all find this to be a useful tool.
Jumping in to observe a game is something league of legends was doing before SC2 launched. Any excuses for blizzard are just that, excuses. The technology is there and it's not some unforeseen development they could not have predicted.
SOMEONE ALREADY MADE A CUSTOM MAP WHERE YOU CAN SAVE ANY TIME YOU LIKE AND GO BACK TO THAT POINT
Forgive the caps/red etc, but the first time my post was completely overlooked. People need to stop the pointless speculation - this feature has already almost been fully implemented by modders, so it would be trivial or blizz to do themselves:
On April 08 2012 23:00 Tyree wrote: is not some sort of button they can just press and voila! Its there. I can imagine something like this would be a huge undertaking for them
As a professional programmer myself, if their code is structured flexibily and well designed, it shouldn't be too hard for them to do. If not, then I guess us fans will have to wait. Only the Blizzard programmers really know in the end.
As a professional programmer, what would you say to a PM that came up to you and said:
"Hey, make sure your code is flexible". - "Why?" "So that implementing new features in the future is possible." - "What features?" "Nothing specific right now, just make if flexible."
I was a programmer for some time, but never got into design patterns too heavily. Is this kind of flexibility actually achievable? In that can you program it in such a way that "New Feature X" is easy to implement for any values of X? And maybe more pertinent, how much does this add to time and cost?
Of course perfect flexibility is not possible. Still this should be possible to implement in reasonable time. But even if it's not when a player drops all the information about the game must still be available in memory like building positions, unit positions, health and ressources etc. Now serializing all the information is a tedious thing to programm probably but nothing difficult once you have the format specified. Now you could even run an external script on this file to use the mapeditor to generate a new custom map with the buildings and units and ressources placed accordingly. This map can then be hosted and the players rejoin. Implementing it like this would require no real change to the hosting/game creation implementation.
Saw this in the Reddit thread - it's supposed to be a picture of Mike Morhaime and Dustin Bowder during the disconnect. Can anyone confirm this picture is authentic?
SOMEONE ALREADY MADE A CUSTOM MAP WHERE YOU CAN SAVE ANY TIME YOU LIKE AND GO BACK TO THAT POINT
Forgive the caps/red etc, but the first time my post was completely overlooked. People need to stop the pointless speculation - this feature has already almost been fully implemented by modders, so it would be trivial or blizz to do themselves:
Seriously, so far I wouldn't say Blizzard have proven to be at their best when it comes to tech optimization (apart from the BW engine, which has some very neat optimizations, but mostly because that one smart dude made it almost entirely by himself from scratch).
Another very important question is - why 400 vs 400 lings tend to lag on beyond Recommended specs machines? The pathing algorithm as it is now is ridiculously heavy for the CPU, compared to any other elements of the game. We regularly see in major tournaments some computer to have issues with low FPS even in offline play. Streamers often have non-network lag, despite having top-notch hardware. I hope Blizzard's core programmers find ways to optimize the CPU consumption a little bit, which would require delving into the very basics.
On April 08 2012 22:58 Bumblebee wrote: I am very much against it if it only saves like once a minute or so as DotA2 does. This game would suffer greatly from it and let's say a player drops during an all-in and his build is so all-in that is his only way to do it. He is winning the game and the engagement, but drops and the game saved 1 or 2 minutes earlier and he can't really get out of this build. That would be detrimental and a re-game would be more fair even to the winning player. However, if it can be done so it would save the second the game stops and nothing would change from that point in time, I'm very much for it.
I assume they'd probably design it so that players who don't get a fatal error save the same information that goes into a replay (original map seed + player actions).
On April 08 2012 23:35 Hairy wrote: I don't understand why my post on the 1st or 2nd page got missed: + Show Spoiler +
On April 08 2012 19:54 Hairy wrote: It's not hard to implement at all; they already have replay functionality built in in the form of replays! Replays already allow you to skip to any time you desire and replicate the exact game state at that time. All they need to do is allow players to resume gameplay from the point that someone dropped.
SOMEONE ALREADY MADE A CUSTOM MAP WHERE YOU CAN SAVE ANY TIME YOU LIKE AND GO BACK TO THAT POINT
Forgive the caps/red etc, but the first time my post was completely overlooked. People need to stop the pointless speculation - this feature has already almost been fully implemented by modders, so it would be trivial or blizz to do themselves:
On January 25 2012 10:36 turtles wrote: update: BIGGER, better and now also uploaded on EU!
Salt is a training tool which enables saving and loading the game in multiplayer matches with practice partners! It is designed to help people test out the timing and execution of all aspects of their play and I have recieved positive responses from Bronze players, pro players/casters (Qxc and Husky) and many people from all levels in between.
To use the tool a player simply types "save" or "load" into chat and they can jump to whatever point in the game they want. For a simple look at how this works and how it can be used you can watch the episode of HuskyStarcraft where he did a review/tutorial on it as part of a new series.
He does a good job of outlining some uses for this which are holding timing attacks and practicing micro in real world engagements. It is also useful to develop build orders to test out what a build order is weak against, different variations on a build order and which paths work best when transitioning, as well as practicing games where spawn location plays a role as it lets you chose which starting location each player begins at.
To use simply enter the custom maps section of Battlenet and search for "SALT" and there should be a number of the maps in the list.
LADDER / TOURNAMENT: SALT Antiga Shipyard SALT Entombed Valley SALT Cloud Kingdom SALT Metalopolis SALT Shakuras Plateau SALT Shattered Temple SALT Tal'Darim Altar
TOURNAMENT: SALT Dual Sight SALT Crevasse SALT Daybreak SALT Terminus
NOT IN COMPETITIVE USE: SALT Xel'naga Caverns SALT Bel'shir swamp (one of my own maps, not balance tested)
MORE MAPS: coming soon
If you use custom hotkeys for control groups then you will need to edit the file SALTkeybindings.SC2Banks which will be found in your banks file.+ Show Spoiler +
Start the game and it will create a default file for you, if you do not know where it is located do a search of you SC2 folder and you should find it. To change the hotkey for control group 1 to the letter 'q' find the line that says <Value string="1"/> and change it to <Value string="q"/>. all letters, numbers and F1-F12 keys are allowed.
In the future I will be looking into being able to save the game as a file so that it can be shared with others, distributed to help people become better gamers, included in help requests (eg. "Help. What should I do in this situation?") and used in tournaments in the case of a player who gets disconnected.
I sincerely hope that you all find this to be a useful tool.
Thank you for your time, Turtles
Again, how does a map that saves/reloads as long as you don't disconnect from the game help in the situations at hand (one player crashes or disconnects)? Replays are already a record of all actions taken in the match, the whole problem is getting back into a game or recreating the same game with a new lobby.
SOMEONE ALREADY MADE A CUSTOM MAP WHERE YOU CAN SAVE ANY TIME YOU LIKE AND GO BACK TO THAT POINT
Forgive the caps/red etc, but the first time my post was completely overlooked. People need to stop the pointless speculation - this feature has already almost been fully implemented by modders, so it would be trivial or blizz to do themselves:
Maybe Blizzard needs to hire this guy, lol. I wonder if the major tournaments could make use of this map.
Maybe they also fear that this feature could somehow be exploited, since a copy of the state of the current game must be saved somewhere (which would probably make it easier for cheaters to access it and watch it during their play). Storing it on servers perhaps would be to much of a storage/organization problem for Blizzard. Still I think as i stated before they already discussed it at length in 2009 and just don't want it.
On April 08 2012 23:37 Bigtony wrote: Jumping in to observe a game is something league of legends was doing before SC2 launched. Any excuses for blizzard are just that, excuses. The technology is there and it's not some unforeseen development they could not have predicted.
The part about technology is true. What you say about League is pure nonsense. What was always in LoL is reconnecting to games after a drop. Observing is relatively new (~this summer).
Blizzard is developing blizzard dota, and coming along with blizzard dota is the ability to reconnect to games after a d/c. So lan is not needed to fix this d/c issue. This is a solution that helps much better, even if there is a meteor destroyed the computer, the player can still reconnect via a new computer.
On April 08 2012 23:00 Tyree wrote: is not some sort of button they can just press and voila! Its there. I can imagine something like this would be a huge undertaking for them
As a professional programmer myself, if their code is structured flexibily and well designed, it shouldn't be too hard for them to do. If not, then I guess us fans will have to wait. Only the Blizzard programmers really know in the end.
As a professional programmer, what would you say to a PM that came up to you and said:
"Hey, make sure your code is flexible". - "Why?" "So that implementing new features in the future is possible." - "What features?" "Nothing specific right now, just make if flexible."
I was a programmer for some time, but never got into design patterns too heavily. Is this kind of flexibility actually achievable? In that can you program it in such a way that "New Feature X" is easy to implement for any values of X? And maybe more pertinent, how much does this add to time and cost?
Or, it's called making a proper architecture in the first place. You are right, unconditioned modularity is impossible to achieve. It highly depends on the profile you designed it for. But the fact they removed already existing features, which can be regarded common sense in multiplayer online games, speaks volumes to their philosophy. You should call such hindsight for what it is, bad programming.
I don't mind having no LAN actually. Look at Warcraft 3 for example. Player base of that game is split among various non-official realms like EuroBnet, iCCup, Garena and Hamachi. It's just overall bad for the game.
I like this save game idea though. It would be a really good feature for tournaments and I think it shouldn't be too hard too implement something like this.
If there was just some way, I don't care how, to resume a custom game for a dropped played, then I might forgive them for not having LAN. At least do something Blizz, please :/
On April 09 2012 00:41 nvs. wrote: Blizzard just cares a lot less than we do. Any time they ever show signs of "caring" you best believe the potential for increased profits is involved.
I can see this very helpful and it might even solve the issue for the moment. Also i dont think its hard to implement; we've seen save/loads in DotA games when one of the team dropped the game just loaded and contiuned to play. This might be another feature where bnet 1 rolls over bnet 2.0
This is of course way more complicated than some of my colleagues make it out to be.
At first you have to consider that client-side "just dumping the file on disconnect" can't create a synced save for both players (they cant communicate the state they want to save). Secondly you cant just simply let one player recreate a game from a savefile without verifying that this is the disconnect-state (one sided manipulation of the game).
Therefore some games did go the way of just saving every x minutes (synced game-saves), that would suck for sc2, you could have a safegame before the big micro-intensive fight which turned the game around for one side. Also the save-file can't be easily readable (encrypted, decrypting with assistance of the server side?).
Does any client even have the full game-state? That would probably be an easy entry for maphack, the server would need to assist again. The server would probably need to be aware of the entire gamesatete and create a savefile on disconnect (yeah.. when exactly did that happen?) which both players can access for the certain timeperiod, but thats heavily dependand on the current implementations and would probably be something for hots to introduce.
I'm really wondering why there's no saving in multiplayer in the first place, in wc3 and sc1 there was, and even in the sc2 single player there is. It's so simple but blizzard didn't add it, I really don't know why.
Perhaps technology is devolving and now you can't make save button even though you work on sc2 for 3-4 years.
This isn't a solution with a game like starcraft 2. The issue is that many strategies revolved around your oppenent having no idea what your doing, like cloaked banshees. If the guy sees your banshees, and the game drops. Well, now your oppenent has an upper hand when the game is continued back from the previous saved point. I'm pretty sure you guys understand what I mean here.
Such information with builds like cloaked banshees, dts, all ins or whatever would mean that they're effectively soiled.
cause blizzard only add features to the games that will make them money, they don't add features to help the game (not anymore at least). Not like their sales will go up by adding this feature, people bought their games anyway already so they can take their sweet time adding such simple things. I've lost all my respect for blizzard over the last 5 years, all they care about is releasing a game with the bare minimum amount of features to get money. Even wc3 had a save game feature and that's 10 years old, blizzard can't add that in sc2? of course they can they have the best programmers in the world probably but they are just lazy and would rather work on things that actual make them money.
On April 09 2012 01:04 Gajarell wrote: This is of course way more complicated than some of my colleagues make it out to be.
At first you have to consider that "just dumping the file on disconnect" can't create a synced save for both players (they cant communicate the state they want to save). Secondly you cant just simply let one player recreate a game from a savefile without verifying that this is the disconnect-state (one sided manipulation of the game).
Therefore some games did go the way of just saving every x minutes (synced game-saves), that would suck for sc2, you could have a safegame before the big micro-intensive fight which turned the game around for one side. Also the save-file can't be easily readable (encrypted, decrypting with assistance of the server side?).
Does any client even have the full game-state? That would probably be an easy entry for maphack, the server would need to assist again.
And thats just my first few thoughts on that..
First and foremost, I'm assuming that the client has all game information (if this weren't the case, I don't know how those maphacks work). If this is true, regarding sync issues, if there is a referee in the match, the referee's save file could be used. This would be the last state of the game on the referee's client before the disconnect.
The game can be saved on the official disconnect of the player rather every X minutes. That guarantees the latest state of the game and would include the big micro-intensive fight.
On April 09 2012 01:09 axellerate wrote: This isn't a solution with a game like starcraft 2. The issue is that many strategies revolved around your oppenent having no idea what your doing, like cloaked banshees. If the guy sees your banshees, and the game drops. Well, now your oppenent has an upper hand when the game is continued back from the previous saved point. I'm pretty sure you guys understand what I mean here.
Such information with builds like cloaked banshees, dts, all ins or whatever would mean that they're effectively soiled.
Save points are just a back-up plan for massive server failures. A reconnection feature is the more important one, one that many of Blizzards competiting RTS games have already implemented. Heroes of Newerth, Dota2, and League all have reconnection features. Pausing when someone disconnects, and letting them reconnect to miss maybe a few seconds of game-time. So many people were dismissing the reconnect feature during the beta, "Oh we don't need reconnect, if someone disconnects in SC2 the game is already over." Well that's why you use it in combination with that nifty feature called pause, which referees can do once a player is lagging out.
As a community we must stop pushing for LAN, something Blizzard will never implement in a million years. We should rather push for something many of Blizzards competiting games have already implemented, reconnection feature.
On April 09 2012 01:09 axellerate wrote: This isn't a solution with a game like starcraft 2. The issue is that many strategies revolved around your oppenent having no idea what your doing, like cloaked banshees. If the guy sees your banshees, and the game drops. Well, now your oppenent has an upper hand when the game is continued back from the previous saved point. I'm pretty sure you guys understand what I mean here.
Such information with builds like cloaked banshees, dts, all ins or whatever would mean that they're effectively soiled.
Save points are just a back-up plan for massive server failures. A reconnection feature is the more important one, one that many of Blizzards competiting RTS games have already implemented. Heroes of Newerth, Dota2, and League all have reconnection features. Pausing when someone disconnects, and letting them reconnect to miss maybe a few seconds of game-time. So many people were dismissing the reconnect feature during the beta, "Oh we don't need reconnect, if someone disconnects in SC2 the game is already over." Well that's why you use it in combination with that nifty feature called pause, which referees can do once a player is lagging out.
As a community we must stop pushing for LAN, something Blizzard will never implement in a million years. We should rather push for something many of Blizzards competiting games have already implemented, reconnection feature.
Multiplayer saving is better than LAN. Computers can still crash with LAN.
We have multiplayer saving in RTS games 13 years ago. It worked simply: Player A drops. Player B or a spectator hits the save button. A new game lobby is hosted, player B chooses to load from save. The save game file is transferred to player A in the same way that maps are downloaded. The game resumes.
On April 09 2012 01:09 axellerate wrote: This isn't a solution with a game like starcraft 2. The issue is that many strategies revolved around your oppenent having no idea what your doing, like cloaked banshees. If the guy sees your banshees, and the game drops. Well, now your oppenent has an upper hand when the game is continued back from the previous saved point. I'm pretty sure you guys understand what I mean here.
Such information with builds like cloaked banshees, dts, all ins or whatever would mean that they're effectively soiled.
Save points are just a back-up plan for massive server failures. A reconnection feature is the more important one, one that many of Blizzards competiting RTS games have already implemented. Heroes of Newerth, Dota2, and League all have reconnection features. Pausing when someone disconnects, and letting them reconnect to miss maybe a few seconds of game-time. So many people were dismissing the reconnect feature during the beta, "Oh we don't need reconnect, if someone disconnects in SC2 the game is already over." Well that's why you use it in combination with that nifty feature called pause, which referees can do once a player is lagging out.
As a community we must stop pushing for LAN, something Blizzard will never implement in a million years. We should rather push for something many of Blizzards competiting games have already implemented, reconnection feature.
"As a community we must stop pushing for LAN"
No, no, no a million times no.
How about as a paying and supporting customer? They're who they are because of us, not them. Is it too much to ask for a needed feature?
Saved game states are stupid.
A) strategies will be reformed during the interval of time because of the nature of sc2. B) Certain strats will be hard countered and the game will severely favor the other player. C) The flow of the game will be interupted severely. Lots of people dislike even pauses for a few seconds because of this reason. D) This is an Esport, and because of the above reasons, ALL factors MUST be balanced across the board because peoples money is on the line.
Yeah if you have a third-party-guy, posessing the full-game-state, it's easier.
Still determining the exact point of the disc is non-trivial, a player could start to lag (emergency-save-now/at which point?), beeing unable to communicate his commands and drop a few seconds after. At the point of the drop the game could already be decided and the save-game would be useless. You could save multiple states, lag(1), lag(2), disc(3). But you would have to decide which one to use.
I'm not saying there is no way to make this work, its just a non-trivial-problem, so let's work on our patience.
We have multiplayer saving in RTS games 13 years ago. It worked simply: Player A drops. Player B or a spectator hits the save button. A new game lobby is hosted, player B chooses to load from save. The save game file is transferred to player A in the same way that maps are downloaded. The game resumes.
You can hack over lunch, but it's just so easy to break.
On April 09 2012 01:32 Gajarell wrote: Yeah if you have a third-party-guy, posessing the full-game-state, it's easier.
Still determining the exact point of the disc is non-trivial, a player could start to lag (emergency-save-now/at which point?), beeing unable to communicate his commands and drop a few seconds after. At the point of the drop the game could already be decided and the save-game would be useless. You could save multiple states, lag(1), lag(2), disc(3). But you would have to decide which one to use.
I'm not saying there is no way to make this work, its just a non-trivial-problem, so let's work on our patience.
We have multiplayer saving in RTS games 13 years ago. It worked simply: Player A drops. Player B or a spectator hits the save button. A new game lobby is hosted, player B chooses to load from save. The save game file is transferred to player A in the same way that maps are downloaded. The game resumes.
You can hack over lunch, but it's just so easy to break.
wrong both players already have the full game state (this is why maphacks work). this is not a complicated feature to implement, people saying it is don't know what they are talking about. its also already been done in a mod http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=297534
saying that we haven't completely figured out how to save a game in a multiplayer rts (lol) is obviously untrue. warcraft 3 had it, as people have embarrasingly pointed out
Isn't there all ready a save and load tool custom map? Why don't we try to bypass blizzard all together and just make a custom that saves automatically every 1 minute for every map in the map pool?
In my heart of hearts I feel that Blizzard got what they deserved. Having a disconnect at a critical point in the biggest match of the year so far? What were those jokers thinking not putting in an option for high-profile tournaments to use LAN? Blizzard only has themselves to blame and though it's unfortunate for all the fans, I hope that the embarrassment this has caused Blizzard leads them to look more closely at their poor decision making.
I guess all we can hope for is that Blizz got some guilty feelings upon being there when it all happened, and are gonna look closer on this issue in the future. These kind of events really ruins the entire tournament.
On April 09 2012 01:32 Gajarell wrote: Yeah if you have a third-party-guy, posessing the full-game-state, it's easier.
Still determining the exact point of the disc is non-trivial, a player could start to lag (emergency-save-now/at which point?), beeing unable to communicate his commands and drop a few seconds after. At the point of the drop the game could already be decided and the save-game would be useless. You could save multiple states, lag(1), lag(2), disc(3). But you would have to decide which one to use.
I'm not saying there is no way to make this work, its just a non-trivial-problem, so let's work on our patience.
We have multiplayer saving in RTS games 13 years ago. It worked simply: Player A drops. Player B or a spectator hits the save button. A new game lobby is hosted, player B chooses to load from save. The save game file is transferred to player A in the same way that maps are downloaded. The game resumes.
You can hack over lunch, but it's just so easy to break.
wrong both players already have the full game state (this is why maphacks work). this is not a complicated feature to implement, people saying it is don't know what they are talking about. its also already been done in a mod http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=297534
saying that we haven't completely figured out how to save a game in a multiplayer rts (lol) is obviously untrue. warcraft 3 had it, as people have embarrasingly pointed out
Seriously, that mod might seem like it is related to this situation, but it really isn't. People need to stop linking it.
And all players/observers in any game already have all the game state information. This is why map hacks work and why each client can generate their own replay file.
I agree...the LAN thing can be somewhat understandable, but why a CUSTOM game can't be saveable is beyond me. Maybe due to the possibility of people being able to forge replays?
On April 09 2012 01:43 MrEnzyme wrote: wrong both players already have the full game state (this is why maphacks work). this is not a complicated feature to implement, people saying it is don't know what they are talking about. its also already been done in a mod http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=297534
saying that we haven't completely figured out how to save a game in a multiplayer rts (lol) is obviously untrue. warcraft 3 had it, as people have embarrasingly pointed out
Agreed. In theory, both clients need to have the same game state or the game is out of sync. I'm not sure if the server is involved with syncing the game.
I agree with you that saving the game state should be trivial for Blizzard. It's the loading of the game file that may be more complex, especially with observers joining, etc. I guess only Blizzard would know the answer to this.
On April 09 2012 01:09 axellerate wrote: This isn't a solution with a game like starcraft 2. The issue is that many strategies revolved around your oppenent having no idea what your doing, like cloaked banshees. If the guy sees your banshees, and the game drops. Well, now your oppenent has an upper hand when the game is continued back from the previous saved point. I'm pretty sure you guys understand what I mean here.
Such information with builds like cloaked banshees, dts, all ins or whatever would mean that they're effectively soiled.
Save points are just a back-up plan for massive server failures. A reconnection feature is the more important one, one that many of Blizzards competiting RTS games have already implemented. Heroes of Newerth, Dota2, and League all have reconnection features. Pausing when someone disconnects, and letting them reconnect to miss maybe a few seconds of game-time. So many people were dismissing the reconnect feature during the beta, "Oh we don't need reconnect, if someone disconnects in SC2 the game is already over." Well that's why you use it in combination with that nifty feature called pause, which referees can do once a player is lagging out.
As a community we must stop pushing for LAN, something Blizzard will never implement in a million years. We should rather push for something many of Blizzards competiting games have already implemented, reconnection feature.
"As a community we must stop pushing for LAN"
No, no, no a million times no.
How about as a paying and supporting customer? They're who they are because of us, not them. Is it too much to ask for a needed feature?
I said that because we should stop wasting our efforts on something that will never be implemented. The second they implement LAN is the second their game will be pirated for multiplayer. People think Blizzard cares about the community way more than they actually do.
On April 09 2012 01:09 axellerate wrote: This isn't a solution with a game like starcraft 2. The issue is that many strategies revolved around your oppenent having no idea what your doing, like cloaked banshees. If the guy sees your banshees, and the game drops. Well, now your oppenent has an upper hand when the game is continued back from the previous saved point. I'm pretty sure you guys understand what I mean here.
Such information with builds like cloaked banshees, dts, all ins or whatever would mean that they're effectively soiled.
Save points are just a back-up plan for massive server failures. A reconnection feature is the more important one, one that many of Blizzards competiting RTS games have already implemented. Heroes of Newerth, Dota2, and League all have reconnection features. Pausing when someone disconnects, and letting them reconnect to miss maybe a few seconds of game-time. So many people were dismissing the reconnect feature during the beta, "Oh we don't need reconnect, if someone disconnects in SC2 the game is already over." Well that's why you use it in combination with that nifty feature called pause, which referees can do once a player is lagging out.
As a community we must stop pushing for LAN, something Blizzard will never implement in a million years. We should rather push for something many of Blizzards competiting games have already implemented, reconnection feature.
"As a community we must stop pushing for LAN"
No, no, no a million times no.
How about as a paying and supporting customer? They're who they are because of us, not them. Is it too much to ask for a needed feature?
I said that because we should stop wasting our efforts on something that will never be implemented. The second they implement LAN is the second their game will be pirated for multiplayer. People think Blizzard cares about the community way more than they actually do.
As a programmer, I can tell you that the game has already been cracked. So that point is false. And yea, its sickening how bad blizzards PR is and how they lack supporting a community which is so strong when it comes to supporting them.
Unfortunately, I am no longer part of that community. SC2 WOL was my last blizzard game. I even cancelled my D3 preorder.
On April 08 2012 19:14 tomatriedes wrote: Completely agree with this, though I'm not a programmer so I don't know how difficult it would be to implement.
I don't think it's very hard for Blizzard to implement. I'm a programmer and all they have to do is a data dump to a file when the person drops out (they don't even have to save the map until a person drops out). Then they would need to tweak the code to allow the map to be reloaded with all parties in the lobby. It's easy to do for them - they could probably even add this functionality in the next patch.
Hey! I'm not going to bother looking at the source to see how they implemented game states and make statements about how easy it is to fix. Programming are easy!
On April 09 2012 01:32 Gajarell wrote: Yeah if you have a third-party-guy, posessing the full-game-state, it's easier.
Still determining the exact point of the disc is non-trivial, a player could start to lag (emergency-save-now/at which point?), beeing unable to communicate his commands and drop a few seconds after. At the point of the drop the game could already be decided and the save-game would be useless. You could save multiple states, lag(1), lag(2), disc(3). But you would have to decide which one to use.
I'm not saying there is no way to make this work, its just a non-trivial-problem, so let's work on our patience.
We have multiplayer saving in RTS games 13 years ago. It worked simply: Player A drops. Player B or a spectator hits the save button. A new game lobby is hosted, player B chooses to load from save. The save game file is transferred to player A in the same way that maps are downloaded. The game resumes.
You can hack over lunch, but it's just so easy to break.
But we are trying to solve a problem for major tournaments where there will always be observers in games, and optionally referees in games. Also, I think we can trust professional players not to pull the cable out when they are losing at a live event.
As for saving multiple states: Have checkpoints every x seconds where both players report in. The game restarts from the last available checkpoint where both players reported in. You might get a second or two of rollback but it a lot better than a regame.
On April 08 2012 19:15 ki11z0ne wrote: they care... if they didnt they would not have a balancing team... idk people need top widen there perspective a lil.... its understandable why their is no LAN on sc2, and its fine with me
Why is it understandable?
Because the day you incorporate LAN is the day I can steal StarCraft online, and play it without a battle.net account.
It's already possible to play Starcraft 2 on LAN/P2P — it's just an illegitimate/crack method.
On April 08 2012 19:14 tomatriedes wrote: Completely agree with this, though I'm not a programmer so I don't know how difficult it would be to implement.
The multiplayer save/load feature was already there from Brood War, so it should/would be very easy to implement. edit: not surprisingly, this has already been said
Hacking would only be an issue for unsupervised matches, and non-trusted-players, which essentially makes it a complete non-issue. No-one wants to have the system mandatory for ladder or anything; it would just be a really useful feature for friends who were playing, or even 2 people having a grudge match, but most importantly supervised matches such as in tournaments.
On April 08 2012 19:14 tomatriedes wrote: Completely agree with this, though I'm not a programmer so I don't know how difficult it would be to implement.
The multiplayer save/load feature was already there from Brood War, so it should/would be very easy to implement.
Whether or not Brood War had the feature has no bearing on how much work it'd take them to incorporate it into SC2, just fyi.
On April 08 2012 19:14 tomatriedes wrote: Completely agree with this, though I'm not a programmer so I don't know how difficult it would be to implement.
The multiplayer save/load feature was already there from Brood War, so it should/would be very easy to implement.
Whether or not Brood War had the feature has no bearing on how much work it'd take them to incorporate it into SC2, just fyi.
I guarantee that incorporating this into SC2 would take far less work than the 'Arcade' feature that is being added in patch 1.5.
On April 08 2012 19:14 tomatriedes wrote: Completely agree with this, though I'm not a programmer so I don't know how difficult it would be to implement.
The multiplayer save/load feature was already there from Brood War, so it should/would be very easy to implement.
Whether or not Brood War had the feature has no bearing on how much work it'd take them to incorporate it into SC2, just fyi.
I guarantee that incorporating this into SC2 would take far less work than the 'Arcade' feature that is being added in patch 1.5.
Yea lol. It wouldn't be that hard at all. Blizzard is pretty lazy if you ask me. One dude could have implemented every single feature we wanted (shared replays, LAN, Clan tags etc...) in about 3 months tops.
A whole team of experienced programmers like the ones at blizzard could have put everything in over the span of 3 weeks at most.
On April 08 2012 19:14 tomatriedes wrote: Completely agree with this, though I'm not a programmer so I don't know how difficult it would be to implement.
The multiplayer save/load feature was already there from Brood War, so it should/would be very easy to implement.
Whether or not Brood War had the feature has no bearing on how much work it'd take them to incorporate it into SC2, just fyi.
I guarantee that incorporating this into SC2 would take far less work than the 'Arcade' feature that is being added in patch 1.5.
I suppose that's true...did you mean to quote me? That seemed unrelated.
Do any of you know how hard it would be to do this? The coding alone must be horrendous, let alone determining the exact moment of disconnect, the exact moment that commands stopped coming in, and the exact state of everything on the fucking game map. The game's code is infinitely more complicated that Brood War, and all of these "Oh, well, it was in Brood War. Should be easy to implement" really shouldn't even be posted. Unless, of course, you're a computer programmer. Because I'm not, so any post from a legit programmer (RICH) telling me it's easy enough to do would be welcome. But the same rando-TL international business lawyers becoming rando-TL computer programmers is getting more than just a little old.
I was just saying that it would not be an extreme amount of work to add this. Blizzard obviously have a huge codebase so any change will take a bit of time, but unless there is some strange issue with their original code not supporting multiplayer save in any way (not too likely) they could add this feature in a small patch.
Just to add to the list of decade old RTSs games that had this feature, Age of Empires 2 had this feature as well (probably other ones as well, I just know for sure on this one because I played it like a few weeks ago).
On April 09 2012 02:02 Mauldo wrote: Do any of you know how hard it would be to do this? The coding alone must be horrendous, let alone determining the exact moment of disconnect, the exact moment that commands stopped coming in, and the exact state of everything on the fucking game map. The game's code is infinitely more complicated that Brood War, and all of these "Oh, well, it was in Brood War. Should be easy to implement" really shouldn't even be posted. Unless, of course, you're a computer programmer. Because I'm not, so any post from a legit programmer (RICH) telling me it's easy enough to do would be welcome. But the same rando-TL international business lawyers becoming rando-TL computer programmers is getting more than just a little old.
no no no no no. It's not more complicated. SC2 is a more advanced game, but the systems haven't changed.
Starcraft 2 uses replays exactly like brood war, and that's how you can save/load games — let alone other methods. (Brood war probably didn't use a replay system for save/load because replays didn't exist when the save/load first existed, but that doesn't mean the replay system couldn't be used for loading games) Even the standard non-replay method (which consists of of just counting all the units on the map, all the sprites, all the statuses of objects, all the statuses of statuses, etc.) exists in Starcraft 2 already, it's just only for Single Player.
The disconnect time does not need to be known — the observer/player(s) just need to be able to save during or immediately after the disconnect. It's not an automatic system being implemented that would be used on the ladder or anything. It would be for specific cases where there's a 3rd party observer (or two trusted parties playing the game without a third party) to ensure there's no exploitation of the system
I am not sure why people keep pushing the "if there is lan people will pirate and play the game off of battle.net" Well if any of you track any places like darkblizz and communities like that you'd know that there is a piece of software (which I will not name) that already exists, allowing people to play over lan and hamachi networks. People are already pirating starcarft 2 and playing in 'offline' communities. . . . the game and systems have been hacked wide open it's just that not everyone knows this..
On April 09 2012 02:02 Mauldo wrote: Do any of you know how hard it would be to do this? The coding alone must be horrendous, let alone determining the exact moment of disconnect, the exact moment that commands stopped coming in, and the exact state of everything on the fucking game map. The game's code is infinitely more complicated that Brood War, and all of these "Oh, well, it was in Brood War. Should be easy to implement" really shouldn't even be posted. Unless, of course, you're a computer programmer. Because I'm not, so any post from a legit programmer (RICH) telling me it's easy enough to do would be welcome. But the same rando-TL international business lawyers becoming rando-TL computer programmers is getting more than just a little old.
As a programmer, dumping the game state to a file should be straight forward and easy. If there is any tricky part, it's loading the game file for multiple players, observers, etc, so that the game can resume from its last state. This is something that only Blizzard programmers would know.
On April 09 2012 02:02 Mauldo wrote: Do any of you know how hard it would be to do this? The coding alone must be horrendous, let alone determining the exact moment of disconnect, the exact moment that commands stopped coming in, and the exact state of everything on the fucking game map. The game's code is infinitely more complicated that Brood War, and all of these "Oh, well, it was in Brood War. Should be easy to implement" really shouldn't even be posted. Unless, of course, you're a computer programmer. Because I'm not, so any post from a legit programmer (RICH) telling me it's easy enough to do would be welcome. But the same rando-TL international business lawyers becoming rando-TL computer programmers is getting more than just a little old.
I am a computer programmer, and have been doing it professionally since 2006.
The replay files are stored as a sequence of commands, I believe. If this is not true, then disregard everything else I say. But, if it is a sequence of commands (player A clicked here, player B pressed 'a'), then restoring from a partial save is possible with how the save file is structured. You just fast-forward / rewind the save to the point you want, and then hit resume and essentially fork the game. This same method could be used to take an existing replay and fork the game, which could make for some interesting training sessions (if I would have noticed this drop faster, could I have won? let's go re-play the game right before then and you stop the drop and see what happens).
As far as how difficult it would be to implement in game, I can't say. Being a computer programmer doesn't tell you how they wrote their code. They could have some stuff in there that makes this harder than it should be. That's not at all uncommon.
All I can say with reasonable certainty is that if the save file is stored as a timestamped list of player commands, and the game engine recreates the game from that data, then the save file format already supports restoring from a partial save very easily.
On April 09 2012 02:14 branflakes14 wrote: Vote with your wallet then. It's pointless throwing a tantrum when you keep buying their games.
That's not really the way to go about things. they're not the best analogies, but it's kinda like not voting or not paying taxes and expecting the government to improve.
On April 09 2012 02:14 branflakes14 wrote: Vote with your wallet then. It's pointless throwing a tantrum when you keep buying their games.
That's not really the way to go about things. they're not the best analogies, but it's kinda like not voting or not paying taxes and expecting the government to improve.
But what incentive does Blizzard have to change anything when people are still buying their games en masse? Not giving them money is the ONLY way they'll improve.
On April 09 2012 02:14 branflakes14 wrote: Vote with your wallet then. It's pointless throwing a tantrum when you keep buying their games.
That's not really the way to go about things. they're not the best analogies, but it's kinda like not voting or not paying taxes and expecting the government to improve.
But what incentive does Blizzard have to change anything when people are still buying their games en masse? Not giving them money is the ONLY way they'll improve.
For one, e-mailing them directly in a reasoned manner? Politicians usually take action when (many) citizens sends a letter addressed directly to them. Or e-mailing E-Sports organizers, who could then tell Blizzard just how unacceptable it is to not have a save-game state feature.
Not buying the game won't send the message that you aren't buying the game BECAUSE of the lack of save-game/LAN feature. There is no way Blizzard would ever know. Taking other actions may though.
Why not just have a rejoin like they have in Dota 2, LoL and HoN. HoN is a small relatively unknown company (at least before they made HoN) and they were able to implement it, so I imagine Blizzard could. Then when someone drops, they could just pause the game and wait for the other player to reconnect.
Hm.. you could save games in BroodWar....In 2012, i really think this can be achieved in StarCraft II? I mean, that is probably totally up the UI of the game, but...i wouldn't want to hear that it's impossible by todays technology standards
On April 09 2012 02:28 Chicane wrote: Why not just have a rejoin like they have in Dota 2, LoL and HoN. HoN is a small relatively unknown company (at least before they made HoN) and they were able to implement it, so I imagine Blizzard could. Then when someone drops, they could just pause the game and wait for the other player to reconnect.
You mean S2*
Also, please, for the love of all programmers in the world, don't say stuff like: "Well completely different game A does it, so game B should do it too."
None can say how much work it is for Blizzard to implement this, other than their engine, game and BNet programmers or guys like Dustin Browder who have to know pretty well how stuff works, the interface at least (not the complete implementation).
I mean as far as SC2 goes, I myself would imagine this is certainly something doable and we will see it at least with the release of HotS. Still, one just cannot easily draw strings between 2 different games.
On April 09 2012 02:02 Mauldo wrote: Do any of you know how hard it would be to do this? The coding alone must be horrendous, let alone determining the exact moment of disconnect, the exact moment that commands stopped coming in, and the exact state of everything on the fucking game map. The game's code is infinitely more complicated that Brood War, and all of these "Oh, well, it was in Brood War. Should be easy to implement" really shouldn't even be posted. Unless, of course, you're a computer programmer. Because I'm not, so any post from a legit programmer (RICH) telling me it's easy enough to do would be welcome. But the same rando-TL international business lawyers becoming rando-TL computer programmers is getting more than just a little old.
I am a computer programmer, and have been doing it professionally since 2006.
The replay files are stored as a sequence of commands, I believe. If this is not true, then disregard everything else I say. But, if it is a sequence of commands (player A clicked here, player B pressed 'a'), then restoring from a partial save is possible with how the save file is structured. You just fast-forward / rewind the save to the point you want, and then hit resume and essentially fork the game. This same method could be used to take an existing replay and fork the game, which could make for some interesting training sessions (if I would have noticed this drop faster, could I have won? let's go re-play the game right before then and you stop the drop and see what happens).
As far as how difficult it would be to implement in game, I can't say. Being a computer programmer doesn't tell you how they wrote their code. They could have some stuff in there that makes this harder than it should be. That's not at all uncommon.
All I can say with reasonable certainty is that if the save file is stored as a timestamped list of player commands, and the game engine recreates the game from that data, then the save file format already supports restoring from a partial save very easily.
I agree with this 100%. In addition, if the game would not store the camera movement of the observers, or make those optional, in my opinion observers would no longer be able to slow down games if the observer lags.
It seems like unless there is a save just as one player drops, it is kind of pointless. If a player disconnect, and last save was a minute prior to the disconnect, that is a full minute of information that both players will have about the game before it is played out. This could be dt's in your base, a doom drop en-route, or any tech choice made that hadn't been scouted at the save point, but was revealed prior to the disconnect. This would create more problems than it would solve, imo.
On April 09 2012 02:14 branflakes14 wrote: Vote with your wallet then. It's pointless throwing a tantrum when you keep buying their games.
That's not really the way to go about things. they're not the best analogies, but it's kinda like not voting or not paying taxes and expecting the government to improve.
But what incentive does Blizzard have to change anything when people are still buying their games en masse? Not giving them money is the ONLY way they'll improve.
Um...they already have our money. If you don't buy HotS I guess that could work, but most of the buyers only play the single player anyways. I think this route is much better.
Say there's a proxy rush between a pro (who's initiating in the rush) and a lesser player in an open bracket game. Instead of the lower player going into a panic and making some mistakes, the game drops right when he scouts it.
He's then able, for the next few minutes, to recollect his thoughts and determine how he wants to react, and then they re-start up from that point. Is that fair?
If there's no advantage then re-game, if there's an advantage then award the person with the win. LAN would be great, but this saving in game thing.... no, that's stupid.
On April 09 2012 02:49 Ero-Sennin wrote: Say there's a proxy rush between a pro (who's initiating in the rush) and a lesser player in an open bracket game. Instead of the lower player going into a panic and making some mistakes, the game drops right when he scouts it.
He's then able, for the next few minutes, to recollect his thoughts and determine how he wants to react, and then they re-start up from that point. Is that fair?
If there's no advantage then re-game, if there's an advantage then award the person with the win. LAN would be great, but this saving in game thing.... no, that's stupid.
None of it is fair, but re-gaming a 27 minute game is not good either. None of it is ideal.
On April 09 2012 02:02 Mauldo wrote: Do any of you know how hard it would be to do this? The coding alone must be horrendous, let alone determining the exact moment of disconnect, the exact moment that commands stopped coming in, and the exact state of everything on the fucking game map. The game's code is infinitely more complicated that Brood War, and all of these "Oh, well, it was in Brood War. Should be easy to implement" really shouldn't even be posted. Unless, of course, you're a computer programmer. Because I'm not, so any post from a legit programmer (RICH) telling me it's easy enough to do would be welcome. But the same rando-TL international business lawyers becoming rando-TL computer programmers is getting more than just a little old.
Pretty sure if DotA 2 can auto-save the game every 30 seconds, so can this.
But hey, keep up with the condescending attitude and absolutely refusing the idea to improve the game.
On April 09 2012 02:49 Ero-Sennin wrote: Say there's a proxy rush between a pro (who's initiating in the rush) and a lesser player in an open bracket game. Instead of the lower player going into a panic and making some mistakes, the game drops right when he scouts it.
He's then able, for the next few minutes, to recollect his thoughts and determine how he wants to react, and then they re-start up from that point. Is that fair?
If there's no advantage then re-game, if there's an advantage then award the person with the win. LAN would be great, but this saving in game thing.... no, that's stupid.
Well, if you're caught cheating, would you not be disqualified? o_O. With this weird hypothetical situation, the person could just as likely disconnect and request a regame claiming they could've won.
EDIT: Whoops just figured you weren't implying someone was cheating. Regardless that is what refs are for. Of course a ref could make a 'bad call' in this situation, but unfortunately bad calls happen in all sports at all levels. Having this option is WAY better than not having this option.
They'll definitely be "looking into the possibility of looking into it".
That has been their standard response in every interview about every issue from b.net 2.0 to tournament support, to chat channels, to custom maps, to a 100 other issues since 2009.
As said, if you give us LAN, so many people, especially for example in Cyber Cafes in Asia, will go and get crack copies and then play over LAN. Perhaps even over such programs as Garena would make it free for us over the world from our rooms too.
Also, I COMPLETELY agree: why no save on disconnect? There is practically no reason to save Blizzard's stupid decision making, laziness, but also and most importantly this is NOT MENTIONED ENOUGH! IT'S A GREAT IDEA :D . Me and friends play wc3 custom maps, and always one of us wil disconnect 45 mins into our epic WC3 TD's (((( It's so easy to save on DC, I love this idea for SC2.
On April 09 2012 03:12 LaLuSh wrote: One thing is for sure.
They'll definitely be "looking into the possibility of looking into it".
That has been their standard response in every interview about every issue from b.net 2.0 to tournament support, to chat channels, to custom maps, to a 100 other issues since 2009.
And then they implement a smaller/worse fix to the issue than everyone suggested. So after we get told this can't be done because of technical complications or that they're looking into it, we'll get auto-saves in coop vs AI games instead and "everyone is happy".
I'v suggested a feature like this a long time ago, and I'm pretty sure that at some point during SC2's developement these features came up (auto-saves, reconnect feature, LAN, etc.) and for some reason they decided against them so I doubt we'll ever see it. (Unless HotS sale numbers are bad, then they'll probably slap in a few really awesome features into LotV that the community actually wants only to get the numbers up.)
Here's a quote from David Ting IPL director. "Computer lost connectivity to the local network during the MKP vs Parting. LAN mode would not have helped with this issue."
So LAN wouldnt matter, people seems to forget that almost all disconnection issue is due to local network problems. À Save on custom Game would be the best. As soon as someone's countdown starts it should save the game.
On April 09 2012 02:49 Ero-Sennin wrote: Say there's a proxy rush between a pro (who's initiating in the rush) and a lesser player in an open bracket game. Instead of the lower player going into a panic and making some mistakes, the game drops right when he scouts it.
He's then able, for the next few minutes, to recollect his thoughts and determine how he wants to react, and then they re-start up from that point. Is that fair?
If there's no advantage then re-game, if there's an advantage then award the person with the win. LAN would be great, but this saving in game thing.... no, that's stupid.
You must not like when people pause either. I don't find this to be a big issue.
I'd also much prefer this feature to LAN. There will always be a possibility of the game crashing for whatever reason. Some sort of way to save or rejoin games is the only way to completely avoid this situation. It's way more likely that Blizzard actually implements something like this than changing their mind about LAN support too.
Hate to say it, but the first thing that came to my mind last night is that Blizzard is ruining e-sports. It is clear that Blizzard wants to support e-sports with all of the tournaments that they sponsor and hold, but it is also clear that they are not willing to support e-sports at the cost of their own profit (not that it isn't understandable). I like the option of an auto-save if a player drops. It seems like a fair compromise and could help e-sports without hurting their profits.
I'v suggested a feature like this a long time ago, and I'm pretty sure that at some point during SC2's developement these features came up (auto-saves, reconnect feature, LAN, etc.) and for some reason they decided against them so I doubt we'll ever see it.
Well, here are my quotes of Bowders and StarCraft II lead producer Chris Sigaty on these topics (posted earlier in this thread): + Show Spoiler +
On April 08 2012 21:43 hegeo wrote: Just to give you a perspective on how realistic it is that SC2 gets LAN/Autosave whatever:
From an interview with Justin Browder:
-And what about the situation where you have a tournament where everyone is on one DSL line? Internet play would be impossible there - there was a "pseudo-LAN" solution mentioned where you'd be connected directly as long as there was some sort of internet connection, is that still in the cards?
I believe so. We're still looking at tournament solutions, we don't know what our final set of solutions will be, but we're actively looking for something that will allow that situation to be a lot more positive experience. We've gotten a ton of feedback, we've heard that even that solution that you mentioned isn't enough, I don't know what the final form will look like, how that will finally shake out - but we're really aware of the problem, and we've heard the feedback, and we're trying to deal with it.
--------
The interview was published in April of 2010. Two years ago. Look at where we are now.
I already posted the quote by Dustin Bowder from April 2010 concerning their perspective on LAN.
Another quote from StarCraft II lead producer Chris Sigaty on (maybe at least the technical side of ) what we are discussing here:
Joining a current game will not be possible at launch, but "we have some long terms plans to do a lot with exactly that," explained Sigaty. "The idea of joining and looking at game types you might be interested in participating in, but want to check out first that's something that's possible.
This interview is from June 2009 (Source). So they at least already thought about the technical implementation of some sort of "jumping into a current game" (only as a spectator in this case, at least this is how I interpret this).
I think they already had all the ideas mentioned in this thread, but chose to NOT implement them, because of several reasons. So this is not about being lazy or stupid or not understanding the gamers.
On April 09 2012 03:40 dCc wrote: Hate to say it, but the first thing that came to my mind last night is that Blizzard is ruining e-sports. It is clear that Blizzard wants to support e-sports with all of the tournaments that they sponsor and hold, but it is also clear that they are not willing to support e-sports at the cost of their own profit (not that it isn't understandable). I like the option of an auto-save if a player drops. It seems like a fair compromise and could help e-sports without hurting their profits.
They aren't "supporting" esports at all... to them its a marketing term for a game. If they honestly cared in the slightest for esports the UI wouldnt be total shit.
the real problem enlies in the fact that they ruled that there had to be a regame. parting should have gotten the win after the drop. he was clearly in a HUGE advantage. unless he drops dead and lands on the move key forcing his units to never attack, he wins that game.
that said, i do think there needs to be a load feature however the way the game works, from what i understand it cannot be done. we'll see what their solution is. i think they should route the games locally if they are on the same network, but then again this drop was because the computer lost network connection and david ting even said that LAN wouldnt have made a difference.
On April 08 2012 19:15 ki11z0ne wrote: they care... if they didnt they would not have a balancing team... idk people need top widen there perspective a lil.... its understandable why their is no LAN on sc2, and its fine with me
Why is it understandable?
Because the day you incorporate LAN is the day I can steal StarCraft online, and play it without a battle.net account.
But you can do that already.... and even have LAN.
So Blizzard should sponsor their product being stolen, and make it just that much easier?
Why would it make it easier, if it's already out there? The only thing it does, that it's hurting loyal customers who want to play it offline with their friends.
I'm sorry, but there's something I must've missed. How exactly do you play StarCraft 2 online with a pirated version? Englighten me, please.
There's a LAN emulator called StarFriend that lets you play games on LAN, or lets you play over Hamachi with other people running the program. You can't play on the official Battle.net with a pirated copy, of course, but you can play multiplayer.
There are a few threads about it here on TL if you want more information. It hasn't really taken off in popularity because it's not the most user friendly application and also because it took so long to develop that by the time it came out everyone already had SC2 anyways. It's possible that it could see a boost in popularity with HotS, though.
On April 09 2012 03:18 Arghnews wrote: Why is Bliz holding back LAN?
As said, if you give us LAN, so many people, especially for example in Cyber Cafes in Asia, will go and get crack copies and then play over LAN. Perhaps even over such programs as Garena would make it free for us over the world from our rooms too.
Also, I COMPLETELY agree: why no save on disconnect? There is practically no reason to save Blizzard's stupid decision making, laziness, but also and most importantly this is NOT MENTIONED ENOUGH! IT'S A GREAT IDEA :D . Me and friends play wc3 custom maps, and always one of us wil disconnect 45 mins into our epic WC3 TD's (((( It's so easy to save on DC, I love this idea for SC2.
Because they think it stops piracy and they refuse to admit they were wrong.
On April 09 2012 04:31 winthrop wrote: there are rules for dcs so it's professional.
No LAN is understandable, but there are alternatives that are easy to implement that won't hurt Blizzards income. Saving or reconnection are both perfectly valid options and Blizzard should implement them. I'd be more excited about those changes than about all that bs crap they've got planned for 1.5..
On April 08 2012 19:15 ki11z0ne wrote: they care... if they didnt they would not have a balancing team... idk people need top widen there perspective a lil.... its understandable why their is no LAN on sc2, and its fine with me
Why is it understandable?
Because the day you incorporate LAN is the day I can steal StarCraft online, and play it without a battle.net account.
But you can do that already.... and even have LAN.
So Blizzard should sponsor their product being stolen, and make it just that much easier?
I think a better way to think of it is: Not purposefully fucking their product at the expense of players who DO buy it because it'll be pirated either way. I didn't know LAN was a feature made exclusively for the purpose to allow pirates to play.
im ok whit there not being lan but not having a save system in case of drops wich by the way even Age of empires 2 wich is a quite old game haves its just disgusting.
a save system is probably the only thing that Activision would let them do since they strongly believe that lan = piracy = death of the industry
On April 08 2012 19:14 tomatriedes wrote: Completely agree with this, though I'm not a programmer so I don't know how difficult it would be to implement.
They already have something that look a lot just like the idea. Do u know your ur replays? They are a game where u look like a player or something like that. The problem would be start the game from when it stopped. Just like if the replay became a map and then they could play from there. Mike Morhaime should read what im saying now, it could be very useful.
You make it sound like this will be a simple, Saturday afternoon stroll to implement auto-save upon random disconnect. As far as Blizzard is concerned, the resources required to support that are too costly to be worth the benefit. Probably. Either way it's another waste of time for Blizzard when the fact is people love Blizzard's games and will continue to buy them no matter how many legitimate issues are brought up. It's a shame, too, but honestly auto-save in this manner ought to be pretty low in the priority list. And do you really think it would just be a snap of the fingers to reload from that point and leave it to the players to get back in the action and everything's A-OK? Because I highly doubt that would be the case. Someone should experiment in a tournament sometime just to prove that it's not as simple as people like the OP might believe. A good idea, but there are more important issues to complain to Blizzard about that they won't do diddly-piss about anyway.
i hope you guys know that one key reason that not having lan has been an ok thing is because if sc2 had lan then kespa could do whatever the fuck they want (fucking cockroaches) and maybe we would have koreans playing in our tournaments what would esports be then? and blizzard does care believe me otherwise they wouldnt give two shits about balance or making blizzcon or listening to the community and so as they do this they are sinking more money into sc2 so please choose to think before you say such stupid things i think this server thing is bullshit of course i think it would take another year for hots to come out if they chose to do it but in the end when they find a way to keep kespa in check you will see the lan come out
They get money, its not like if this feature is implemented, it will attract a lot of money... ( if we look from business pov) i think it will cost a lot and it doesnt have good roi. Keep in mind blizzard is just gaming company its not like apple, samsung etc...
On April 09 2012 03:36 Reign.SLush wrote: Here's a quote from David Ting IPL director. "Computer lost connectivity to the local network during the MKP vs Parting. LAN mode would not have helped with this issue."
So LAN wouldnt matter, people seems to forget that almost all disconnection issue is due to local network problems. À Save on custom Game would be the best. As soon as someone's countdown starts it should save the game.
He posted a more detailed explanation on reddit also.
"For those who are looking for the technical explanation, we have a complex network infrastructure at the event. According to our network engineer, the symptoms (backstage systems) that we saw even after that main stage lost connectivity seem to point to a DHCP related issue. The way things appear to be set up, Cosmo created different network blocks for the different sections / areas. For instance, the SC2 stage area is in a different network block as the master control (SC2). The master control is shared with the LoL stage and tables. The master control (LoL) is on another block, etc. etc.
What I'm suspecting is that the SC2 stage machine that had issues reached its DHCP half-life and was trying to renewing its IP with the DHCP server. This is likely the cause of the disconnect.
In layman's term, there is protection on the hotel network that disallows connections that have over 24 hour duration. We likely have hit a glitch that caused the disconnect. I will talk to Blizzard tomorrow regarding adding a reconnect option. "
But the question is if the game had LAN would they be connected to the hotel's complex network infrastructure or would they have their own network that just has to connect the 2 players plus observers that they have complete control over with no surprises like this.
>I don't understand why they don't add an option to auto-save the map when a player times out
They already perfectly preserve the state of the game in the replay. Shared replays are already 'on the list' of coming features according to blizzard. Load up replay, hit play-game-from-here button. Done. No need for LAN or some other system of saving the game.
On April 09 2012 05:46 JackDT wrote: >I don't understand why they don't add an option to auto-save the map when a player times out
They already perfectly preserve the state of the game in the replay. Shared replays are already 'on the list' of coming features according to blizzard. Load up replay, hit play-game-from-here button. Done. No need for LAN or some other system of saving the game.
LAN is most certainly needed because it can stop more instances of a save state being necesarry in the first place. It's not a small feature to ommit.
On April 09 2012 05:46 JackDT wrote: >I don't understand why they don't add an option to auto-save the map when a player times out
They already perfectly preserve the state of the game in the replay. Shared replays are already 'on the list' of coming features according to blizzard. Load up replay, hit play-game-from-here button. Done. No need for LAN or some other system of saving the game.
LAN is most certainly needed because it can stop more instances of a save state being necesarry in the first place. It's not a small feature to ommit.
You don't need LAN for a reconnect option. Let the gameclient store the replay-file when a game crashes (replays are just sequences of actions with timestamps). When the reconnect option is chosen, both clients communicate the contents of their replay file and find the last timestamp where both replays agree. This will be the timestamp that the game will start at. Rerun the game from the replay-file (just like you'd do with replay watching) until the decided timestamp. Add a 10-20 sec countdown so that players can orient themselves on the situation and you're good to go.
you know people are stupid when you're in a thread about auto-reconnect and someone brings up something about LAN and how blizzard won't implement it and only talks about that -_-;;;
and of course, this won't happen overnight, with regards to the reconnect. but people make it to be more difficult than it actually would be. why? the replay feature, at the very least, can be used as the basis to recreate the game conditions at the time the drop happened. an actual reconnect wouldn't be hard either (just disable the timeout and add support to reconnect even if the computer shuts off). some of the building blocks are there, they just have to add the rest in. at the very least they should bring that to HoTS.
and with regards to this being low on the priority list: this is akin to adding airbags to a car. you hope you never have to use it, you don't use it everyday, but when you do have to use it you are glad to have it.
On April 09 2012 03:36 Reign.SLush wrote: Here's a quote from David Ting IPL director. "Computer lost connectivity to the local network during the MKP vs Parting. LAN mode would not have helped with this issue."
So LAN wouldnt matter, people seems to forget that almost all disconnection issue is due to local network problems. À Save on custom Game would be the best. As soon as someone's countdown starts it should save the game.
He posted a more detailed explanation on reddit also.
"For those who are looking for the technical explanation, we have a complex network infrastructure at the event. According to our network engineer, the symptoms (backstage systems) that we saw even after that main stage lost connectivity seem to point to a DHCP related issue. The way things appear to be set up, Cosmo created different network blocks for the different sections / areas. For instance, the SC2 stage area is in a different network block as the master control (SC2). The master control is shared with the LoL stage and tables. The master control (LoL) is on another block, etc. etc.
What I'm suspecting is that the SC2 stage machine that had issues reached its DHCP half-life and was trying to renewing its IP with the DHCP server. This is likely the cause of the disconnect.
In layman's term, there is protection on the hotel network that disallows connections that have over 24 hour duration. We likely have hit a glitch that caused the disconnect. I will talk to Blizzard tomorrow regarding adding a reconnect option. "
But the question is if the game had LAN would they be connected to the hotel's complex network infrastructure or would they have their own network that just has to connect the 2 players plus observers that they have complete control over with no surprises like this.
Yes, because those observers would need internet to broadcast the game.
And a DHCP server would still be something you would use on that small closed network you are talking about, the chance of that hickup happening would just be smaller because fewer clients would be connected to the DHCP server and therefore less renew failures would happen.
And no, nobody would use static ip's for this. That would be terrible network design and make room for even more errors than a properly configured DHCP setup.
A savegame feature will only be good if it's autosave. Seeing an observer saving the game after every battle would ruin the spectator view. And autosave would only be good if it's done atleast every 5 second. If we take the autosave feature dota2 it saves every minut at .00. But let's say somebody made a pylon in a base, you scouted it, and a warp-in happened. The game crashed, it's .59 seconds and the save is ~1 min old. Now you know there is a pylon in the base and your opponent went all in on it. Fair to use that savegame? No, you have more information and alot less time needed to prepare yourself. I dota, preperation takes longer time and hence 1 min is acceptable, but sometimes unfair. Though often 1 engagement doesn't secure the win and hence you can accept it.
This is harder in SC2. And the reason you can't do a save every 5 seconds would be servercost. Blizzard would need to keep every savegame, for every 5 seconds in game time, for every customgame, for 24 hours. That's alot of diskspace, no matter how small a savegames is. So it's a big investment for blizzard to make in order to get it to work.
On April 09 2012 05:46 JackDT wrote: >I don't understand why they don't add an option to auto-save the map when a player times out
They already perfectly preserve the state of the game in the replay. Shared replays are already 'on the list' of coming features according to blizzard. Load up replay, hit play-game-from-here button. Done. No need for LAN or some other system of saving the game.
LAN is most certainly needed because it can stop more instances of a save state being necesarry in the first place. It's not a small feature to ommit.
Yeah, but one thing Blizzard has been clear about is that they will never do LAN. But on the other hand they say they'd love to do shared or group replays when they get around to it. They could shut up a lot of the complaining about LAN with this option since it at least provides an option better than a full regame in instances like the GSTL drop.
(Also think about this -- how fun would it be to load up the game with MKP and take control at the decisive battle with your friend and play it out for fun!)
On April 09 2012 05:46 JackDT wrote: >I don't understand why they don't add an option to auto-save the map when a player times out
They already perfectly preserve the state of the game in the replay. Shared replays are already 'on the list' of coming features according to blizzard. Load up replay, hit play-game-from-here button. Done. No need for LAN or some other system of saving the game.
LAN is most certainly needed because it can stop more instances of a save state being necesarry in the first place. It's not a small feature to ommit.
Yeah, but one thing Blizzard has been clear about is that they will never do LAN. But on the other hand they say they'd love to do shared or group replays when they get around to it. They could shut up a lot of the complaining about LAN with this option since it at least provides an option better than a full regame in instances like the GSTL drop.
(Also think about this -- how fun would it be to load up the game with MKP and take control at the decisive battle with your friend and play it out for fun!)
that last scenario actually sounds really cool....but until blizzard commits to implementing that feature I don't really have faith in them. It's been almost 2 years, and it isn't in. I don't think their wallets are into supporting the competitive scene besides the bare minimum to shut up dissent.
Simply put, can they have a return of cost if they make this possible? I'm guessing that the answer is "no". Blizzard doesn't CARE about anything if they can't make money off of it, they're a company (and joined at the hip to Activision at that too). Everything that matters to them is the bottom line, everything else is expendable. Thus is the nature of most companies.
On April 09 2012 05:46 JackDT wrote: >I don't understand why they don't add an option to auto-save the map when a player times out
They already perfectly preserve the state of the game in the replay. Shared replays are already 'on the list' of coming features according to blizzard. Load up replay, hit play-game-from-here button. Done. No need for LAN or some other system of saving the game.
LAN is most certainly needed because it can stop more instances of a save state being necesarry in the first place. It's not a small feature to ommit.
Yeah, but one thing Blizzard has been clear about is that they will never do LAN. But on the other hand they say they'd love to do shared or group replays when they get around to it. They could shut up a lot of the complaining about LAN with this option since it at least provides an option better than a full regame in instances like the GSTL drop.
(Also think about this -- how fun would it be to load up the game with MKP and take control at the decisive battle with your friend and play it out for fun!)
that last scenario actually sounds really cool....but until blizzard commits to implementing that feature I don't really have faith in them. It's been almost 2 years, and it isn't in. I don't think their wallets are into supporting the competitive scene besides the bare minimum to shut up dissent.
Blizzard DID commit to shared replays, the said they plan to implement it eventually. And luckily it's not JUST a tournament feature, casual players can use it for fun or practice too so it should have a good return on investment for them across all demographics.
On April 09 2012 06:14 leperphilliac wrote: Simply put, can they have a return of cost if they make this possible? I'm guessing that the answer is "no". Blizzard doesn't CARE about anything if they can't make money off of it, they're a company (and joined at the hip to Activision at that too). Everything that matters to them is the bottom line, everything else is expendable. Thus is the nature of most companies.
Their upcoming expansions will provide a financially-justifiable opportunity to add major new features.
On April 09 2012 05:46 JackDT wrote: >I don't understand why they don't add an option to auto-save the map when a player times out
They already perfectly preserve the state of the game in the replay. Shared replays are already 'on the list' of coming features according to blizzard. Load up replay, hit play-game-from-here button. Done. No need for LAN or some other system of saving the game.
LAN is most certainly needed because it can stop more instances of a save state being necesarry in the first place. It's not a small feature to ommit.
Yeah, but one thing Blizzard has been clear about is that they will never do LAN. But on the other hand they say they'd love to do shared or group replays when they get around to it. They could shut up a lot of the complaining about LAN with this option since it at least provides an option better than a full regame in instances like the GSTL drop.
(Also think about this -- how fun would it be to load up the game with MKP and take control at the decisive battle with your friend and play it out for fun!)
that last scenario actually sounds really cool....but until blizzard commits to implementing that feature I don't really have faith in them. It's been almost 2 years, and it isn't in. I don't think their wallets are into supporting the competitive scene besides the bare minimum to shut up dissent.
God that sounds amazing. It would be so much fun to be able to start playing, actually playing, replays from any given point. Why not? Shouldn't be that hard to implement, as was said "They already perfectly preserve the state of the game in the replay" Shared viewing of replays and then being able to jump into them... this is what battlenet 2 should have been about.
On April 08 2012 19:15 ki11z0ne wrote: they care... if they didnt they would not have a balancing team... idk people need top widen there perspective a lil.... its understandable why their is no LAN on sc2, and its fine with me
But seriously though, "balancing" the game is mainly to keep people interested and talking about the game...alot of the changes they make happen far too soon and are too drastic. If they really cared about "balance" (and took note of Brood War), they would let things play out more. Patching and balancing is mainly to retain game interest.
On April 08 2012 19:15 ki11z0ne wrote: they care... if they didnt they would not have a balancing team... idk people need top widen there perspective a lil.... its understandable why their is no LAN on sc2, and its fine with me
But seriously though, "balancing" the game is mainly to keep people interested and talking about the game...alot of the changes they make happen far too soon and are too drastic. If they really cared about "balance" (and took note of Brood War), they would let things play out more. Patching and balancing is mainly to retain game interest.
On April 08 2012 19:17 Chargelot wrote: the day you incorporate LAN is the day I can steal StarCraft online, and play it without a battle.net account.
But you can do that already.... and even have LAN.
So Blizzard should sponsor their product being stolen, and make it just that much easier?
They're pretty much doing a similar thing with the real money auction house in Diablo 3, so it would be logically in-line with their other actions in my opinion.
On April 09 2012 03:36 Reign.SLush wrote: À Save on custom Game would be the best. As soon as someone's countdown starts it should save the game.
No, a save/load feature would be best (particularly the option to do so while the counter is displayed) Custom games cannot detect drops as far as I know, and the whole point of drop detection is unnecessary anyway, so no need to include it.
With current technology it should be possible to make a galaxy script which can be loaded onto any map which could load specially parsed replay files, but with huge technical setbacks
This would take a lot of work in 3 different ways: 1. A bunch of work to parse replay files into a coded format for the map script to read (3rd party program) 2. A ton of work to make a map script that will read/execute/translate the coded format into game actions (certainly the most work, I'd say) 3. A bit of work any time anyone wants to load a map based off a replay. They would need to create a version of the map with that script in it (unless it already existed), they would need to run the parsing program, then they would need to copy and paste the data into the custom map.
On April 09 2012 05:31 RIPJAWS wrote: i hope you guys know that one key reason that not having lan has been an ok thing is because if sc2 had lan then kespa could do whatever the fuck they want (fucking cockroaches) and maybe we would have koreans playing in our tournaments what would esports be then? and blizzard does care believe me otherwise they wouldnt give two shits about balance or making blizzcon or listening to the community and so as they do this they are sinking more money into sc2 so please choose to think before you say such stupid things i think this server thing is bullshit of course i think it would take another year for hots to come out if they chose to do it but in the end when they find a way to keep kespa in check you will see the lan come out
2 things: 1. Work on your grammar, especially run-on sentences. 2. You should maybe pay more attention to what's going on with SC2. It has been possible to play SC2 over LAN/P2P for probably over a year now. I don't even necessarily see how no-LAN could really stop KeSPA or other organizations from running tournaments due to battle.net, aside from maybe blocking their IPs or something? I don't know how effective that would really be.
On April 09 2012 03:36 Reign.SLush wrote: Here's a quote from David Ting IPL director. "Computer lost connectivity to the local network during the MKP vs Parting. LAN mode would not have helped with this issue."
So LAN wouldnt matter, people seems to forget that almost all disconnection issue is due to local network problems. À Save on custom Game would be the best. As soon as someone's countdown starts it should save the game.
He posted a more detailed explanation on reddit also.
"For those who are looking for the technical explanation, we have a complex network infrastructure at the event. According to our network engineer, the symptoms (backstage systems) that we saw even after that main stage lost connectivity seem to point to a DHCP related issue. The way things appear to be set up, Cosmo created different network blocks for the different sections / areas. For instance, the SC2 stage area is in a different network block as the master control (SC2). The master control is shared with the LoL stage and tables. The master control (LoL) is on another block, etc. etc.
What I'm suspecting is that the SC2 stage machine that had issues reached its DHCP half-life and was trying to renewing its IP with the DHCP server. This is likely the cause of the disconnect.
In layman's term, there is protection on the hotel network that disallows connections that have over 24 hour duration. We likely have hit a glitch that caused the disconnect. I will talk to Blizzard tomorrow regarding adding a reconnect option. "
But the question is if the game had LAN would they be connected to the hotel's complex network infrastructure or would they have their own network that just has to connect the 2 players plus observers that they have complete control over with no surprises like this.
Yes, because those observers would need internet to broadcast the game.
No largescale production like ipl/mlg/gs(t)l broadcast from the same computer the observing is done from, so no, they wouldn't need to be connected to the internet. Also, even with lan, the worst that would happen if there was a mixup somewhere else in the "internet chain" would be the stream dropping.
Talk, talk, talk. We've been down that road a billion times. Since their balls belong to Activision the only place you can convince Blizzard of anything is with the wallet. I've pirated some games,but I always bought the Blizzard ones, because I felt they cared. How many times have people begged for LAN support, even just for the tournaments (don't tell me that can't be done- they had a special observer tailored wow for broadcasting purposes too). Money is all they care about so let's make this about money. I'm not gonna buy D3.
EPT
Plus, adding a feature like this only helps their sales for the next two expansions of SC2.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/6D8fb.jpg)
(((( It's so easy to save on DC, I love this idea for SC2.
