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LOTV brought some great changes to the arcade, but the number of players still feels low, apart from a few maps (Mafia, some tower defenses)
Why is that? Lots of people say "it's not 2004 anymore, there are lots of high quality games for free on Steam etc."
But that's not true at all! Sure, tower defenses and dota clones are abundant, but the custom games in WC3 and SC1 provided so much more - what about the grand strategy games for example?
I mean maps like Diplomacy, WW2 axis vs allies, Star Trek Diplomacy, all the LOTR maps (especially Last Alliance on SC), empire builders and so on. I've never found a commercial game providing this gameplay with up to 12 players (holding cities in real time on a europe/middle earth/space map with massive battles and so on)
Single player games - yes, but multiplayer games with lots of people in the lobbies - no.
In SC1 and WC3, these games could be filled up within seconds during the respective heydays! Just what happened here? The "it's not ten years ago, people expect more and can get elsewhere" explanation doesn't hold water in this case at all.
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Undead Assault and NOTD is always bumping with people.
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I know zealot hockey is working well too ^^
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If you make a game for an arcade you have to work really hard promoting it, otherwise it will never come up in the top lists.
In wc3 and sc1 you could see what games are open and join whichever you want. If you wanted to try a new arcade game you only had to join available game to try it out. In sc2, you have no idea if there is anyone playing and what new games are popular atm.
So, in my opinion, lack of custom game lobbies is one of the major contributors to the state of the arcade.
Regarding the massive grand strategy games you are referring to, I think I've read somewhere about sc2 engine not being able to work well if there are too many units on the map.
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On June 08 2016 01:11 Nazara wrote:
If you make a game for an arcade you have to work really hard promoting it, otherwise it will never come up in the top lists.
In wc3 and sc1 you could see what games are open and join whichever you want. If you wanted to try a new arcade game you only had to join available game to try it out. In sc2, you have no idea if there is anyone playing and what new games are popular atm.
So, in my opinion, lack of custom game lobbies is one of the major contributors to the state of the arcade.
Regarding the massive grand strategy games you are referring to, I think I've read somewhere about sc2 engine not being able to work well if there are too many units on the map.
There still is an open lobby list where all the games are listed that are open/hosted and have free spots ... ?
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Yes but you can't name the lobbies. You also can't start a new lobby for yourself and your friends if there is already one in progress.
Lets say you have 4 friends, so there's 5 of you. You want to play an arcade game that can hold 8 people and you want all 8 people in.
There is one already started and has 6 people out of 8 maximum in it. Now, there is no possible way for you and your friends to be in a same game, unless you ask the host to kick some people out, so you and your friends can play all together, or you wait for the game to fill up/start/drop so you can host and your friends can join and then you can wait for another 3 random people if you want 8 people altogether.
AFK hosts.
Say a map is not very popular and host is afk. You have 8 out of 12 possible people, but the host is afk. You can't start a new lobby to play, and you know that no matter how much you wait, you won't get another 4 people in less then 10-20 minutes, so already your experience is ruined.
Then you have griefers who do something similar it on purpose:
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/15700237973
And even worse, there are kick bots that do that continuously for hours or even days.
What about if you don't want to play with one or two people, but you are not the host? Bad luck, you can't start your own lobby unless the one you left doesn't fill up.
The Starcraft 2 editor is very complex and hard to get into, compared to the editors of other games (SC1, WC3, Age of Empires map editor - all very easy to mess around with, setting up triggers was child's play). It is powerful and you can do a lot with it, true. But it is also much harder to just start doing a mod or a map straight away.
Starcraft 2 Arcade is a mess and even after some improvements 6 years later, it's still no better then SC1 or WC3 bnet.
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On June 07 2016 23:00 TeamWriter wrote:
LOTV brought some great changes to the arcade, but the number of players still feels low, apart from a few maps (Mafia, some tower defenses)
Why is that? Lots of people say "it's not 2004 anymore, there are lots of high quality games for free on Steam etc."
But that's not true at all! Sure, tower defenses and dota clones are abundant, but the custom games in WC3 and SC1 provided so much more - what about the grand strategy games for example?
I mean maps like Diplomacy, WW2 axis vs allies, Star Trek Diplomacy, all the LOTR maps (especially Last Alliance on SC), empire builders and so on. I've never found a commercial game providing this gameplay with up to 12 players (holding cities in real time on a europe/middle earth/space map with massive battles and so on)
Single player games - yes, but multiplayer games with lots of people in the lobbies - no.
In SC1 and WC3, these games could be filled up within seconds during the respective heydays! Just what happened here? The "it's not ten years ago, people expect more and can get elsewhere" explanation doesn't hold water in this case at all.
I played maps like Fall of the Roman Empire and WW2:DiE for hours on end in SC1, but the grand strategy maps on offer in the Arcade didn't grab me enough to warrant me playing them again.
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EPT
