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Serejai
6007 Posts
On October 15 2014 20:34 TAMinator wrote: Not sure if its just me, but my game randomly lags a lot during games. Dont think my internet/comp specs have anything to do with it It's not just you. Has been happening to a lot of people since they switched over to the live Battle.Net servers last week. | ||
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Thalandros
Netherlands1151 Posts
On October 15 2014 08:48 Serejai wrote: To be honest, I think it's something they did with the reset. I've been playing since February and I have never gotten less than 60 FPS on max settings. When the servers came back online last week I was getting 8-10 FPS and changing everything to low didn't help at all. They released another patch later that night, or the next morning... it's playable now but I still hover around 30 FPS, or about half what I used to get. The servers themselves are incredibly unstable, too. Everyone seems to have lag issues every now and then since the reset. It definitely seems to be an issue on their end, though, so I wouldn't really worry about it too much cause there's likely nothing you can do. Alright, fair enough. Still, the engine itself (which what both SC2 and Heroes is running on) is so incredibly inefficient and bad, they really need to find fix. Yeah, almost any PC ran run it, but past that there's no real point. Powerhouses can't take advantage of SC2/Heroes the way you can with almost any other game. It's meh. But I'll have to stick with this for a while I suppose! It's not terrible, but it's not great either. | ||
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KeksX
Germany3634 Posts
On October 15 2014 18:48 Spaylz wrote: Twitch viewership rarely exceeds 1000 viewers. Also, up until recently, Blizzard was explicitly forbidding major tournaments. Only small-scale tournaments were allowed, with little to no advertisement, and no cash prizes. BlizzCon is pretty much the only big tournament happening, and it's a tradition of Blizzard. You are right though, you can buy stuff at the moment. It's something that has to be tested too, naturally. Arguably the most important part, on Blizzard's end. Viewership has improved quite a bit over the past couple of weeks. The point is not so much about people wanting to see, but I hardly think that Blizzard limits exposure in media. Maybe they don't actively push the game as if it was released already, but apart from the tournament thing I think people have pretty much free reign, right? Also not blaming them for letting people buy stuff already. My only complaint is this annoying way to handle alpha invites - completely random, arbitrary. You have better luck creating 10 accounts than to be a loyal customer. | ||
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Serejai
6007 Posts
So, in the case of a game like Heroes... it's running on a WC3 engine, modified to an SC2 engine, and then modified again to Heroes. There are bound to be a lot of efficiency issues, but it's really not viable for them to make a new game engine. Unlike other companies, they don't license out their engines so they would have no way of recouping the cost of developing a new one the way companies like iD or Crytek can. | ||
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Sn0_Man
Tebellong44238 Posts
Seriously Blizzard is easily a big enough company to write a new engine if they wanted. They have incredibly large revenue streams already. | ||
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Serejai
6007 Posts
Look at it this way; Unreal Engine has been out for the same amount of time as the Blizzard engine (~16 years). During that time Unreal Engine has been updated three times (UE2, UE3, UE4) with a bunch of minor modifications in between. The difference is that Unreal Engine brings in royalties from other developers, and is used in multiple games per year. If you look at the Blizzard engine, version 2.0 would have been with the release of Warcraft III in 2002. Since then, nothing at all has really changed. Unlike other companies, Blizzard doesn't improve the graphics of their games very much at all, which means less changes are needed to the engine because less new technologies are utilized. When you look at something like Unreal Engine, the average development time of a new version is 3-4 years. Considering how slow Blizzard is at releasing games to begin with, do you really want to add another 3-4 years to the development cycle of every game? You can throw money and developers at it all you want, but it doesn't really speed up the creation of a new engine. In fact, adding more people to the development would probably slow it down. I'll be the first to say the Blizzard engine sucks. It's outdated, it's inefficient, it's not powerful at all. I would love a better engine but just because they have the money to make one doesn't mean it's a financially responsible decision, and they are a business after all. | ||
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Sn0_Man
Tebellong44238 Posts
I mean there also happen to be many robust, viable, license-able engines out there that blizz could use if they wished. Yes, I understand that bringing in a new engine would cause probably a year or more of delay rewriting the game and getting their devs familiar with the engine. There happens to be an entity to blame for that and it rhymes with lizard. Imagine, the technology for LANs, which clearly just isn't there yet, could get figured out! TL;DR: "Blizz engines suck cut them some slack its an old engine" is not really a reasonable argument. | ||
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Serejai
6007 Posts
Look at Call of Duty; the original was an amazing game, but the latest installments are just rehashes of older versions and they still sell like hotcakes because the general gaming population is stupid. How about Madden games? You have to be next-level retarded to drop $60 a year on the same game over and over again, and yet millions of people do it. There's just no reason at all for Blizzard - or any gaming company that does half-assed work - to put more effort in when people are already buying their products. Figure out some way to educate gamers en masse and I guarantee we would have things like LAN support within a week. | ||
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ETisME
12386 Posts
strange because it doesn't happen to me this often in SC2. Game is fun though, I am liking it quite a lot, but the grinding will take a long time. | ||
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Tenks
United States3104 Posts
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KeksX
Germany3634 Posts
On October 15 2014 23:50 Serejai wrote: I'll be the first to say the Blizzard engine sucks. It's outdated, it's inefficient, it's not powerful at all. I would love a better engine but just because they have the money to make one doesn't mean it's a financially responsible decision, and they are a business after all. ... ? The Engine, and its editor, is incredibly powerful and flexible. I can't think of another Engine that puts out mods in that kind of fashion really, the only thing coming close to that are previous iterations of the same engine. Yes it might be "outdated" but thats easy to be these days. | ||
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Serejai
6007 Posts
On October 16 2014 03:37 KeksX wrote: ... ? The Engine, and its editor, is incredibly powerful and flexible. I can't think of another Engine that puts out mods in that kind of fashion really, the only thing coming close to that are previous iterations of the same engine. Yes it might be "outdated" but thats easy to be these days. Not entirely sure what you're talking about here. Are you saying the engine is good because it's used for multiple games? Or because it can be utilized to create things like modified SC2 maps? Because that's pretty much what any game engine in the last decade does, only all the commercial ones do it better. Also not sure what you mean when you say the engine is powerful, because all Blizzard games have pretty much bare minimum hardware requirements and, as other people have pointed out, fail to utilize even a fraction of hardware resources. That's basically the exact opposite definition of the word "powerful" in this context. Now, if you were to say something like "The engine isn't very powerful, but it is as flexible as every other engine on the market and the editor is a bit more powerful than most editors" then you'd be correct. Anyway, if you want to compare the Blizzard engine to top tier commercial engines like Frostbite, Source, Unreal, iD Tech, CryEngine... or even proprietary ones like Anvil (UbiSoft), Crystal Tools (Square Enix), or Forgelight (Sony), then you have to realize that the Blizzard engine would be very firmly at the bottom of the list in terms of being "powerful", about the middle of the pack for flexibility, top 3 as far as editors go, and probably middle of the pack for stability as well since some of the FPS-centric engines are buggy in regards to netcode. Just like with all Blizzard games, the engine itself focuses on "polish" and working with the largest audience possible. Having a powerful/feature rich engine and having an accessible engine cannot go hand in hand, and Blizzard chose the latter with theirs. It's not a bad thing that the engine isn't powerful, because it works well with their artistic style and allows the highest possible number of people to experience their games. But, you do take a hit with things like graphical quality and hardware scaling. For a game like Heroes I think it's a perfectly fine tradeoff, but the whole engine discussion started due to there being some pretty major performance issues in the alpha due to the engine being on the low end of the spectrum. As I said earlier, there's probably not an easy fix for this unless they redo a good portion of the engine (which isn't likely at this point in development). | ||
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Thalandros
Netherlands1151 Posts
Think about the source engine for a second. It's a very old, but great engine. It doesn't have the greatest visuals (although I can't complain) but it runs so smoothly. Anyone with a 3 year old graphics card can get 200+FPS on CS:GO, maxed out settings. Why is my GPU and CPU barely being used in SC2, but I still get shit performance? Same in Heroes. My card stays under 40C pretty much all the time playing heroes. And yes, these are games that are supposed to be very heavy on the CPU, but they're even saying they want to switch WoW to more balanced and less ''CPU-dependant''. Blizzard's engine isn't terrible, and it's very powerful if you look at it for just a second. (You get a LOT for the performance put in on lower end PCs) But dig deeper and you find so many problems that, if fixed, would be SO WELCOME. I'd like to take advantage of my monitor playing competitive games, but that's not possible with SC2 dropping to ~60FPS in late game ZvT's and Heroes of the storm basically never even going OVER 80FPS on every CPU dependant setting on lowest. World of Warcraft and Diablo 3 seem WAY less affected by this, even though they are. (WoW even more than D3 though), and it's a real shame. Their games are played professionally and competitively. Come on Blizzard. | ||
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KeksX
Germany3634 Posts
On October 16 2014 04:05 Serejai wrote: Not entirely sure what you're talking about here. Are you saying the engine is good because it's used for multiple games? Or because it can be utilized to create things like modified SC2 maps? Because that's pretty much what any game engine in the last decade does, only all the commercial ones do it better. Also not sure what you mean when you say the engine is powerful, because all Blizzard games have pretty much bare minimum hardware requirements and, as other people have pointed out, fail to utilize even a fraction of hardware resources. That's basically the exact opposite definition of the word "powerful" in this context. Now, if you were to say something like "The engine isn't very powerful, but it is as flexible as every other engine on the market and the editor is a bit more powerful than most editors" then you'd be correct. [snip] Sorry I am using a different definition of powerful  I'm referring to the fact that even as an end-consumer you can utilize the Galaxy Editor and create your own game - even if it just a map in SC2 or the respective game of GE. So yeah the last sentence is true. I think thats the biggest point thats, at the same time it is working FOR them, working against Blizzard, as this end-consumer usability is incredibly hard to pull off. And sadly, I believe all Blizzard does is use a third-party engine for rapid prototyping. Afaik Hearthstone was created in Unity before it was ported over to Blizz's internal tools. Of course if they would be to use UE4, or any other commercial engine, for an actual Release I think they'd be able to put out a lot more "powerful"(in the other meaning) stuff, but I don't think they will ever do that. They're just way too old-fashioned. Just look at how they handle SC2 - it's completely stale/frumpy(whatever word fits best) and nothing compared to how Valve does it. Which might be due to a lack of Engineering Knowledge/Manpower, though. | ||
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Serejai
6007 Posts
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BlacKcuD
Germany107 Posts
On October 16 2014 05:32 KeksX wrote: Sorry I am using a different definition of powerful I'm referring to the fact that even as an end-consumer you can utilize the Galaxy Editor and create your own game - even if it just a map in SC2 or the respective game of GE. So yeah the last sentence is true. I think thats the biggest point thats, at the same time it is working FOR them, working against Blizzard, as this end-consumer usability is incredibly hard to pull off. And sadly, I believe all Blizzard does is use a third-party engine for rapid prototyping. Afaik Hearthstone was created in Unity before it was ported over to Blizz's internal tools. Of course if they would be to use UE4, or any other commercial engine, for an actual Release I think they'd be able to put out a lot more "powerful"(in the other meaning) stuff, but I don't think they will ever do that. They're just way too old-fashioned. Just look at how they handle SC2 - it's completely stale/frumpy(whatever word fits best) and nothing compared to how Valve does it. Which might be due to a lack of Engineering Knowledge/Manpower, though. Where did you read that Hearthstone is no longer running on Unity? I am following Unity and HS very closely and there was never any mention of HS being ported to a custom internal SDK or anything. Afaik, HS is still running on a (heavily customised) versoin of Unity. | ||
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KeksX
Germany3634 Posts
On October 16 2014 06:20 BlacKcuD wrote: Where did you read that Hearthstone is no longer running on Unity? I am following Unity and HS very closely and there was never any mention of HS being ported to a custom internal SDK or anything. Afaik, HS is still running on a (heavily customised) versoin of Unity. I remember reading on the unity community forums that they have apparently only used Unity for protoyping though I have no idea where. Was quite a while ago. IF they are still using Unity, that'd be great and explain why Hearthstone is handled a lot differently than SC2. | ||
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Spaylz
Japan1743 Posts
I mean, the obs feature of Dota 2 is pretty cool, and I doubt we'll be seeing that kind of stuff in HotS, given that BNet 2.0 sucks. I'm going to compare it to both Dota 2 and HoN, as I have experience in those two, but yeah. In HoN, you could "spectate" and "mentor" a friend, meaning you'd join their game and watch it in their point of view, with the camera moving only to where they actually looked. In Dota 2, they pushed it a bit further and made it more public, what with the "Watch" system. As sad as it is, I seriously doubt we'll see anything remotely close to either of those features in HotS. In terms of game engines though... S2 (the company behind HoN) made their own engine, as I recall. It's called K2, and was used for Savage 2, Heroes of Newerth and I believe Strife as well. All in all, the engine is absolutely amazing and graphics/fluidity were one of HoN's strong suits. HoN was hands down the most pleasant in-game experience I've had. I could be wrong, but a cursory Google search seems to suggest that K2 was indeed made by S2. I also recall many forum discussions mentioning the fact that HoN's engine was made on the inside. Is it really that much of a financial black hole for Blizzard to make a new engine? S2 was a small indie company before HoN, and even after its success, they're medium-sized now at best. It boggles the mind that an indie company could find it worth it to make their own engine, while Blizzard, which generates billions of dollars, sticks to the bare minimum. The market of MOBAs is a demanding one though. Could be that this time, Blizzard actually has to deliver a bit more. They're up against LoL, which is now the absolute giant of the genre, and also up against Dota 2 and the utter flexibility and general awesomeness of Steam. While one can argue that HotS, due to being so different, doesn't cater to the same crowd, it really does, and it will be competing with both those games and the other popular MOBAs (at least to some degree). Truth be told, HotS has made me like Blizzard again a little bit. It's a very fun game, and it's reminiscent of WC3, at least for me. Still, I feel that Blizzard will need to do a bit more and polish the user experience/quality of life aspects of BNet to really drive it home. Maybe I'm too optimistic though. | ||
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TMG26
Portugal2017 Posts
On October 16 2014 07:10 Spaylz wrote: It seems true that Blizzard is generally happy to offer less content than its competitors. I mean, the obs feature of Dota 2 is pretty cool, and I doubt we'll be seeing that kind of stuff in HotS, given that BNet 2.0 sucks. I'm going to compare it to both Dota 2 and HoN, as I have experience in those two, but yeah. In HoN, you could "spectate" and "mentor" a friend, meaning you'd join their game and watch it in their point of view, with the camera moving only to where they actually looked. In Dota 2, they pushed it a bit further and made it more public, what with the "Watch" system. As sad as it is, I seriously doubt we'll see anything remotely close to either of those features in HotS. Dota also has "coaching".When you join a party you just tick the coach box. | ||
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deth2munkies
United States4051 Posts
MMR RATING TO THE GROUND, BABY! | ||
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