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Here's a list of other good points from this thread, which I'll try to keep up to date.
+ Show Spoiler +
The original post follows below.
This post is to point out bad, redundant or inconsistent UI in the new HotS Battle.net and to suggest some improvements and extra features. The TLDR version is reading the bold parts which gives a summary of the suggestions. The Battle.net thread links here.
Profile Page
1. Use more iconic units in the banner art.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/rEAop.png)
The banner art is ineffective in depicting the 3 races. For example, shown above is an unusual picture of a dark Templar, which few players would recognize. Artwork of more prominent and iconic units should be used instead. Perhaps also put a race-theme background on the profile page, like the old profiles.
There’s also a large gap shown in the screenshot. This gap wasn’t there in patch 2.0.1, why is it there now? Unless there is a reason for it, this gap should be removed.
2. Either use the bar in the season snapshop to display the win ratio or remove it.
The progress bar under the season snapshot is always full. Use it to represent win ratio, global rank as a percentile or something else. Otherwise, there’s no point, so the bar should be removed.
Ladder Page (in Profile)
3a. Streamline the Ladder page by removing the showcase boxes and change the Ladder Summary page to list each ladder that the player is in for the current season, which directly links to the division ladder list.
3b. Remove the Current Ladder page, since the summary page would now directly link to the division ladder list.
3c. Remove general information pages like the Grandmaster and Current Season pages from the profile and put it into a Community page, which includes other general information like news, profile search and a global ladder.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/hvkpI.png)
The 3 boxes where players can showcase the ladder they’re in looks awful. The boxes are huge, devoid of information, and have a tacky icon of Kerrigan on the top right corner. Remove this icon and instead use the text “Heart of the Swarm ladder” (or “Wings of Liberty ladder” depending on the expansion the player has), and include useful information, such as expansion, league, wins, losses, points, division, division rank, global rank (as a percentile) in a rectangular box similar to the one at the top of the screenshot.
In fact, this whole Ladder page should be redesigned. Currently, to view a team that isn’t showcased you would need to go: Profile > Ladders > Current Season > Heart of the Swarm > <ladder mode>. This is excessive. The Ladder Summary page should put all ladder modes (not just 3) in a list like the one on the top of the screenshot, allowing for scrolling if needed. For each ladder mode (1v1, 2v2, etc.) that the player is ranked in, it should display the information listed above, reducing this from being 5 pages away to 3.
The Grandmaster and Current Season page should be removed from the profile and put elsewhere. It’s got nothing to do with the player’s profile. It’s general and universal information. It should be grouped with other general information like the news and put into a community page. A global ladder and profile search should be included here too. The Previous Season page can also be deleted because it’s already covered by the Career Summary page.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/hM3fK.png)
Alternatively, group all of these items, excluding the news, and call it a ladder information page. WC3 had one on the internet. It’s awesome: http://classic.battle.net/war3/ladder/w3xp-ladders.aspx?Gateway=Lordaeron
Please borrow some ideas from the WC3 ladder page.
4. Change the color used to display the division name so that it is readable.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/oUHXE.png)
5. Remove the Leave League option.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/eVBFn.png)
This option allows a player to leave their league. This is a very bad feature. There is no legitimate use of this feature. Players with MMR near the boundary of promotion could abuse this feature to make it easier to get promoted. If the goal is to make promotions easier, then do this by increasing the uncertainty threshold of MMR required for promotion.
If instead the goal is to make it easier to change divisions, there is no point in changing divisions. Divisions are already meaningless. Allowing division hopping would make the division rank even more meaningless for absolutely no reason at all, since players could “choose” newer and easier divisions.
Allowing people to leave their league also resets their points to 0 and refunds their entire bonus pool. So this hurts casuals who aren’t aware that using this option requires them to start from scratch.
Moreover, it makes points a worse measure of skill, because the player would have to use up their entire bonus pool again in order for points to correctly measure skill, even if the system already has an accurate MMR for players who were active enough to use up their previous bonus pool. This wouldn’t be an issue if joining a new league after leaving a league retained the player’s previous points and bonus pool, accounting for time elapsed. But then, players could abuse this as a way of hiding their stats and ladder standing by leaving their league after each game.
So this introduces many abuses, changes points from a “skill+time” measure to a “skill+(highly weighted time)” measure, and there is no legitimate use for this feature.
However, the change where points for losing are absorbed from bonus pool is excellent, because it doesn’t affect the legitimacy of points.
Match History
6. Remember the filter that is applied to Match History when navigating back to it after viewing a score screen.
Currently, if the player filters the match history (1v1, 2v2, custom, etc), views a score screen, then goes back to the match history, the filter isn’t saved.
Matchmaking Page
7. Add pictures for each race when they’re selected in the Matchmaking page.
It would be good for new players to see what the races look like. Use iconic and very recognizable units, such as the Marine, Hydralisk and Zealot.
8. Separate unranked and ranked matchmaking queues.
Players who queue using unranked can be matched with ranked players. This has been described as working as intended to reduce queue times. But queues should be separated to prevent abuse. Here are some possible abuses:
-Deliberately lowering your MMR to bronze level to beat up on low skill players, with no consequence to your ladder standing.
-Leave or backstab in team games, also with no consequence to your ladder standing.
-If you're losing, you can even ask the opponent very nicely to give you a free win by leaving, and if your opponent is playing unranked, there's no reason for the opponent to say no.
-If you want to practice TvZ with unranked, then you should leave every game which is not TvZ, thereby giving your opponents free wins.
While it’s possible to do these things now, it would stuff up your ladder standing. Pooling rank and unranked games in HotS will mean that there's no incentive to stop anyone from doing this. Everyone would be able to freely smurf with no consequence, which was a major problem with multiple accounts in WC3. This is an error that should not be repeated.
9. Allow players to choose the match-up in unranked play.
Sometimes players want to practice a particular match-up. It’s unranked, there’s no reason not to do this. It would prevent the fourth abuse in the above list.
10. Add a global ladder and use a percentile to make it more easily readable.
A global ladder should be added because division ranks are meaningless. There is no point in ranking against 100 arbitrary and faceless players. As Blizzard says, “Players who play competitively on the ladder can now better track their progress regardless of which league they’re in. And those players that would like to enjoy the benefits of matchmaking, but are not interested in the pressure of being ranked can now use the unranked play mode.” This quote is from: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/7634957/
11. Fix the favored system or simply stop displaying whether a player is favored.
The favored indicator basically compares your points to your opponent’s MMR. This is why your opponent is nearly always favored until you have played for a few dozen games. Both players can both be favored because it isn't actually measuring who is favored to win. The reason for the current system is to "explain" to players why they get so many points for winning: you beat a favored opponent so here are a lot of points. But the real reason for rewarding lots of points at the start is to move the player's points minus bonus pool towards their MMR, so that better players can be ranked higher. Thus, the current system is deceptive.
Either change it to display who is more likely to win, (which means it would no longer be possible for both players to be favored in the same game), or simply stop displaying it altogether. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the second option.
12. Allow more colors instead of just red and blue for ladder play.
Seeing only red and blue for 1v1 games is getting to be an eyesore. Colors should be randomly assigned out of the first 8, like in WC3.
Custom Games Page
13. In the Browse and Bookmarks tab, list maps instead of listing map by mode to prevent duplicate entries. Remove the Mode column.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/VYkWZ.png)
As the above screenshot shows, the maps Hunting Grounds and Korhal City are both repeated 3 times, because of different modes. In fact, Hunting Grounds 2v2 is repeated twice, even though they are the exact same modes, because one has a Blizzard rating and another doesn’t. There should be 1 entry per map, neither the mode nor Blizzard rating should matter.
If a player wants to play a map in a particular mode, they could either join a game or create a game. For the former, they could go to the Open Games page where the mode is displayed. For the latter, they could find the map, create the game and choose the mode in the game lobby. Therefore, it is superfluous and a waste of space to list a map 5 times just because it has 5 modes.
14. Fix the Category drop-down menu to correctly filter by Category.
The screenshot in 13 shows that I’ve filtered by Co-op vs AI, yet melee maps where the game mode is 1v1 appears. If I filter by Miscellaneous (described as “Unclassified game type”) to find unit tester maps, then maps that are classified as Melee still show up. So the filter is clearly not working properly.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/h0wrM.png)
This is partly because melee maps are oxymoronically classified as Miscellaneous, but as I’ll explain in 15d, they shouldn’t be.
15a. Keep only melee maps in Custom Games by moving all non-melee maps to the Arcade, so that the Category drop-down menu can be removed.
Custom Games should only contain melee maps, not maps like HOTS Unit Tester Online or Starcraft Master. Are these maps in Custom Games instead of the Arcade because they only use units in the melee game? If I create a Nexus War map with only units in the melee game should it go in Custom Games and not the Arcade? Why are some unit testers and micro training maps in the Arcade instead? The line shouldn’t be so blurred. All non-melee maps should be in the Arcade. In this case, the Category drop-down menu would be redundant and should be removed as explained in 15b to 15e.
15b. Remove the Co-op vs AI category.
Co-op vs AI is just melee. This category is redundant. If people want to add AIs they can already do so. In addition, filtering by Co-op vs AI doesn’t even work, as explained in 13.
15c. Remove the Melee Spectator category. Allow spectator functionality in public custom games.
Melee Spectator is baffling, because you can already spectate any private game. While it's not currently possible to spectate public custom games, Melee Spectator doesn’t solve this because there are virtually no maps in this category and it doesn’t work unless someone uploads a specific map. It should be possible to spectate all maps, rather than only having a restrictive set of player published maps that can be publicly spectated being dumped into this category.
Hence, this category should be removed and spectator functionality should be added to public custom games, like WC3 and Dota 2. This is a very fun and relaxing feature in these games.
15d. Remove the Miscellaneous category. Add Custom Teams as a mode for Melee. Move legitimately miscellaneous maps, such as unit tester maps, to the Arcade.
Miscellaneous is the same thing as Melee. The only difference is you can make custom sized teams (e.g. 1v4v2) using Miscellaneous, but this feature can simply be folded into Melee by adding Custom Teams as an additional mode for melee maps. As explained above, the fact that melee maps are classified as Miscellaneous is bad UI designed because it makes filtering by Miscellaneous quite useless since it returns mostly melee maps, instead of legitimately miscellaneous maps.
Furthermore, the screenshot below shows that there’s another category, Other, which doesn’t appear in the drop-down menu and is superfluous because it should be the same thing as Miscellaneous.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/4OI8g.png)
There shouldn’t be 3 melee categories, there should just be 1: melee. The miscellaneous category should be removed, melee maps should not be classified as Miscellaneous, Custom Teams should be folded into melee, and legitimately miscellaneous maps, like the unit tester maps highlighted above, should be moved to the Arcade and properly classified there.
15e. Remove the Monobattle and Trainer category. Move maps with these categories (there are virtually none) to the Arcade.
The Monobattle and Trainer categories are redundant and should be removed from the Custom Games page. These maps virtually don’t exist, with the exception of Blizzard’s SC2 Master. The Monobattle and Trainer categories should be put in the Arcade, since these aren’t the standard melee game, as explained in 15a.
16. Remove the Play Offline tick box by making it automatic for 1 human player games.
Every game with 1 human player can automatically be offline, and every game with more than 1 human player can only be online. So the Play Offline tick box (next to the Create Game button in the screenshot in 13) is completely unnecessary. The choice should be automatic. Currently there are some minor differences between online and offline games. For example in the offline game, you currently don’t earn XP points. But you can still earn online achievements for your Battle.net account (as long as you don’t use a cheat code). Yes, I’ve checked that it works. So there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to earn XP points too, given that what happens in an offline game is still tracked by Battle.net.
17. Add the Has High Rating tick box to the other options in the Show drop-down menu or remove it from the Newest option.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/1ymjx.png)
The Has High Rating tick box only appears for Newest. But this is an inconsistency, because there’s no reason why that tick box shouldn’t be added for the other options like Top Played or Up & Coming (it might not be needed for Top Rated).
But then there’s also no reason why a Has High Popularity tick box can’t be added for all the categories except Top Played. Fix this inconsistency.
18. When showing Blizzard Maps, remove the Author column and add back the Rating column
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/WL1t8.png)
When showing Blizzard Maps, this is the only option where the columns Mode and Rating aren’t shown, and the Author column is added. This is an inconsistency. There is no point in displaying the Author column because it’s only showing Blizzard maps, it conveys zero information (the author is Blizzard). Make it show Name, Category and Rating like all the other show options such as Top Played and Top Rated (I’ve suggested in 13 to remove the Mode column).
19. Add a load game button to the Custom Game page
Currently, it’s possible to save an offline game, but this is not so useful because there’s no way to load a saved game without first entering another offline game. Either:
(1) Remove the option to save offline games. Is there any conceivable reason to save games against a computer?
(2) Add a load saved game option to the custom game page.
(3) Allow online custom games (with multiple players) to be saved and do (2). This feature is in WC3.
20. In publicly open games, allow the settings to be changed. Remove Locked Alliance for melee maps because it can’t be turned off or allow it to be turned off.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/5RT8E.png)
When joining a custom game, often there are no open games, so a new lobby is made. In these cases, I don’t see why the settings can’t be changed. I suspect it is because the game mode is listed in the Open Games page but there’s no reason why that can’t be updated when the host changes it.
Also, before the game is open to public (when the settings can be changed), the Locked Alliance setting cannot be changed when the Category is Melee. So either remove this setting for melee games or allow it to be changed. There’s no point in displaying a setting with a drop down menu that cannot be changed.
21. Use the same settings display in the lobby for the host and other players.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/fllJF.png)
There is no reason why the player shouldn’t be able to see the Game Privacy setting. Make the player’s view consistent with the host’s.
22. Abort the countdown if someone leaves.
There is no point in starting the game if someone leaves during the countdown.
23. Streamline the pages and buttons you’re blocked from while in a game lobby, in particular allow entry into the Replay and Campaign page, but disallow starting a replay or the campaign.
When in a lobby, the pages that you are blocked going into are illogical. For example, you can go into the Matchmaking page and the Arcade, but can’t start a game there. This makes sense. But then why can’t you go into the Replay page? In WoL, you also can’t go into the Campaign page. To be consistent, it should be possible to go into these pages, but be unable to start a replay or load the campaign.
24. Automatically publish all melee maps globally.
There is no reason not to do this as there’s no language or translation needed for melee maps, and it ensures the latest maps in Korea or tournaments are promptly made available to everyone around the world.
25. In the Custom Games page, move the map preview from mouse-over to a side bar, similar to the Replays page.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/snTnh.png)
Arcade Page
26. Add Blizzard Maps to the Show drop-down menu in the Browse page in the Arcade.
In the Browse page in the Arcade, the Show drop-down menu has the same options as the menu in the Custom Games page, except it is missing Blizzard Maps, despite there being several Blizzard maps in the Arcade, for example StarJeweled and Left 2 Die.
27. For consistency, remove the Arcade Chat button from the Arcade page since it’s in the Chat Channel list.
Before patch 2.0.2, there were buttons to enter General Chat, Looking for Team Chat, and Strategy Chat throughout the various pages in the UI. However, in 2.0.2 these buttons have been removed and consolidated in the Chat Channels list on the main page. To be consistent with this change, the Arcade Chat button should be removed. It’s the only one left, and it’s already on the Chat Channels list.
Chat functionality
28. Truncate the map name of the lobby that the player is in using “…” instead of using a tiny font size.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/g0BYc.png)
29. Display the map name in the tooltip of the button used to join the game lobby from a chat channel.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/i5VAp.png)
It is a useful feature that we can now join a game lobby through private chat channels by clicking the button shown. However, it doesn’t say what map we’ll be entering. The tooltip should say “Join <map name>” instead of “Join Game”.
30. Add chat options for time stamps and disabling automated messages like “Last Message <time>”, “<Player> has joined chat”, “<Player> has disconnected”.
31. Allow whisper functionality, including /w and /r in Battle.net, instead of only in-game.
32. Add an option to consolidate all chat, including channels, clans, groups, and whispers into one window, like WoW.
Groups and Clan
33. Allow clan and group channels to be auto-joined on login, like chat channels. Allow clan channels, group channels and public channels to be shown in-game.
There’s an “Auto-join channels” option to join chat channels on login, but it doesn’t work for groups and clan channels. There’s also a “Show chat channel messages in-game” option, which also doesn’t work for clan, group and public channels. These issues should be fixed.
34. Add the options Invite to Chat, Undock Window, Maximize Window, which are found in the cogwheel in the usual chat channels, to the cogwheel in group and clan chat channels.
35. Add extra features to groups, such as forums.
There’s no reason to join a group. It’s exactly the same as a chat channel. Add a forum, since that’s a useful way to discuss things with a group. If groups just have a chat, then how’s that different from a chat channel?
36. Add some more group categories such as Gaming, (TV and Movies), Music and Books.
37. Add a clan recruitment channel or a public channel for each clan.
38. Add a clan ladder, like the one in WC3.
UI Inconsistencies
39. Fix the UI inconsistencies shown below.
There are tons of inconsistencies throughout the UI. It’s as if the UI was haphazardly created by several people, without talking to each other and on an ad hoc basis. The UI is seemingly designed without any standard elements, such as standard windows, lists, and boxes that can be continually reused. There’s clearly no documented style guide. Why can’t be have a nice and consistent UI like WC3?
39a. Name of AI or Computer
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/x4V1L.png)
Enlarge picture: http://i.imgur.com/RwWWU.png
Note that all these screenshots (except the lobby) are of the same game. The screenshots shows that the AI or Computer is named:
-Computer 1, 2, 3 on the score screen
-A.I. 2, 3, 4 in the game and on the replay summary screen
-Player 2, 3, 4 on the vision drop-down menu inside replays
-Computer in a game lobby.
Why does the computer have so many different names? For consistency I suggest calling them A.I. 1, 2, 3, etc, everywhere.
Also, in the game lobby the difficulty can be set as “Level 1 (Very Easy)”, “Level 2 (Easy)”, etc. This naming convention looks bad. Either use “Level 1” or use “Very Easy”, don’t use “Level 1 (Very Easy)”, etc.
39b. List Styles
Fix the inconsistencies with the various styles of lists shown below, by updating the Replay list, Match History list and Division Ladder list to the style of the Custom Games list (highlighted in orange).
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/bshlE.jpg)
There are inconsistencies in the Statistics screen. Using the Custom Games list as the standard would mean that the column names in the race matchup stats should use a larger font and not be bold (like the column names in the map stats), and the row names, e.g. “Vs Protoss”, should use font B, not font A. In addition, numbers should use font B, but not be bold, the right menu should be named “Expansion:”, and there should probably be borders For each row.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/gtF7a.png)
39c. Right-Click Menus
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ZhY12.png)
39d. Buttons in menus
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/0f5tv.png)
For consistency, I suggest keeping the menu and Battle.net main page using upper case, centered. Then change the other menu buttons, including the side bar in the options to lower case, left-aligned. And remove Credits from the menu.
Also, the in-game menu includes lower case, whereas the Battle.net menu is all upper case. I suggest changing the in-game menu to use only upper case.
39f. Other Buttons
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/kg5R3.png)
39g. Save Replay Box
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/TdfO4.png)
Enlarge picture: http://i.imgur.com/Kiq1O.png
39h. Groups List
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/352ic.png)
39i. Bookmark Icon
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ZnfNH.png)
39j. Battle.net boxes
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/QFv3r.png)
Enlarge picture: http://i.imgur.com/BTryu.png
The first 4 boxes should be the new style for dialog boxes. The title is in upper case and the message is in a text box with a scroll bar. The dialog boxes highlighted in red should be changed to this style.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/h6qG0.png)
Enlarge picture: http://i.imgur.com/Xc0Df.jpg
There are many inconsistencies here. The 3 boxes in the top row, and the Players Near You boxes are the most consistent with the new style dialog boxes shown in the previous screenshot. For consistency all these boxes should be changed to use:
-Title with large font, upper case, centered.
-Big buttons with button text in upper case.
-Scroll bars for text boxes with multiple lines (while it can be argued that the boxes with no scroll bars above can’t be filled by player entered text, so that it can’t be scrolled, neither can the Report Content box in the previous screenshot, yet it still has a scroll bar).
The other boxes are an inconsistent hybrid between the style used in patch 2.0.1 (shown below for reference) and the new style.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/6gHHi.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/harwb.png)
The Find Groups box is a mess. It shows group icons, yet groups cannot choose an icon, so they’re all the same. This means that displaying the icon conveys zero information, so it’s pointless. If the icons are removed, the groups can even be put into a list.
In addition, this box has no button except Close, so it’s not immediately clear what the user should do. If you use the right-click menu or double click a group, it will bring you to the chat channel for the group, so that appears to be the primary function. Thus, a button should be added to enter the chat room of the selected group. Buttons should be centered.
The space to the left of the title is a back “<” icon for when the search is used. But this looks awkward and tacky. For other search functions in the UI, a large button is used for back, not a small, out-of-place “<” icon on the corner. The cog on the right corner also looks bad and does nothing when clicked. It should be removed.
It’s possible for search results to fill the space and in this case the results are scrollable despite there being no scroll bar. The "Browse Group:" text should be bold and white to be consistent with the boxes shown above.
39k. Error Messages
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Gc20S.png)
39l. In-game UI
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/LBJCb.jpg)
Enlarge picture: http://i.imgur.com/0yEkB.jpg
In Windows 7, if I resize a window, the thickness of the border doesn’t change. So the border for the Help and Hotkeys windows should be changed to be the same thickness as the Options and Message Log windows. I suggest changing “Cancel” and “Accept” to “ACCEPT” and “CANCEL” so that it is consistent with the Battle.net style boxes in 39j, bold all text highlighted in yellow, use lower case to be consistent with the suggestion in 39d, and extend the length of the buttons in the side bar of the Hotkeys window.
It needs to be decided that either the buttons always go inside the frame (e.g. the Confirm Exit box) or always go on the corners of the frame (e.g. the Options window). Then I suggest completely redoing the boxes highlighted in black, the alliance and resource trading windows and the disconnect windows to be consistent, because they currently look very amateurish and tacky.
In fact, the whole race themed UI looks really bad in my opinion and should be completely revamped.
Miscellaneous
40. Add an option that allows players to not see decals and alternative unit models on their screen. Add alternative unit models as rewards for playing.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/utgZo.png)
The giant decals in HotS look bad and they risk turning the game into a joke, when all sorts of goofy decals that are from Blizzcons, collector's editions and other exclusives can now be very prominently displayed. To prevent the game from looking like a pop culture joke, there should be an option to turn them all off from the viewer’s perspective.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/C7X3S.png)
Rewarding bonus unit models, even joke models like the tauren marine, through levelling for example, will be good for casuals. But only as long as there’s an option to turn it off so that units remain perfectly recognizable, gameplay is fully readable and so that I can avoid seeing the game look like a joke.
42. Make the “faster” game speed the default (including for Campaign and Challenge) and have an option to display times in real time, not normal speed time.
Having slower speed options doesn’t help casuals. It just makes them unprepared for playing ladder, custom games, and even arcade games. If the game defaults to fastest, especially for the campaign and challenges, it won’t hurt them by making the game harder to play. Instead they’ll just get used to it like everyone else. Challenges are not helpful and even painful to play because they can only be played in normal.
All times, on tooltips, on the score screen, on the in-game clock, should be displayed in real time, not normal speed time, or at least this should be an option. Under the current system, a 30 minute game is more like a 20 real minute game, and 200 APM is more like 300 real APM.
43. Add a button on the bottom left of the Battle.net UI that minimizes all windows and shows the Battle.net main page.
It’s possible to minimize all windows by right-clicking the bottom bar, but it doesn’t also go to the Battle.net main menu. This suggestion is to copy the show desktop button on the bottom left of Windows 7.
44. Add the following features: From WC3, automated tournaments. From Dota 2, reconnect functionality after being dropped from a game, and watching any ladder game streamed via the client (delayed or after they’ve ended).
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Very constructive, I'm impressed
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Sick post, wow. I hope that blizzard reads this. The should hire you! Well done!
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Very detailed report, I am impressed. :D
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Great job and well done! True story by the way!
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This looks like it took quite a bit of work. Quality job, the things you suggest are not as subjective as you would expect a post like this to be.
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Wow that's insanely detailed, good job, and good suggestions 
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Kudos to you having written down all this, I was too lazy to do so even though I was bothered by a lot of inconsistencies you mentioned. Nice summary and I hope Blizzard listens.
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Wow, you did a perfect job here. Let's hope that Blizzard will read this!
Greetz
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very well done i agree with everything but the decal part that say it makes game a joke but i agree there should be a option for players to enable custom stuff or not
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Great work! I'm agree with all.
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Russian Federation4295 Posts
One bad thing is that only a small part of these suggestions will be implemented before HOTS release, and another part - somewhere around LotV date
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i m impressed, does anyone want to post that on the us bnet forums?
well done!
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On December 10 2012 01:14 myRZeth wrote:
i m impressed, does anyone want to post that on the us bnet forums?
well done!
its already there ;p
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very nice, glad someone posted this on bnet forum. i hope they listen. well played sir
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On December 10 2012 01:20 MateShade wrote:
It's the beta...
And this is exactly why those threads are increbibly constructive, to point out things that may or may be not in the focus of the blizzard employees. Kudos to the op. Hope his work gets appreciated
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On December 10 2012 01:20 MateShade wrote:
It's the beta...
Yes, and that is exactly why Blizzard if looking for this kind of feedback. Do you even understand the concept of a beta?
Sick thread by the OP. Hope Blizzard gives it the attention it needs.
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This is unreal, and very detailed.
With all there resources, you think Blizzard would have someone keeping track of this shit lol.
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Wow, I hope you sent this information to Blizzard as well! It would be nice to have more UI consistency.
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I hope the guys at blizzard who are in charge of the UI see this. I hope you posted it already in the official forums.
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On December 10 2012 01:57 Swish 41 wrote:
I hope the guys at blizzard who are in charge of the UI see this. I hope you posted it already in the official forums.
would make it kind of hard, i dont think you can post on the bnet forums including all the pictures.
this post would be very hard to describe in text only.
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Holy shit 0.o dude!
OP deserves much love!
Blizzard listen!
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Impressive.
Did not read all of it but what I saw is very reasonable, although many of the bugs would have been fixed with time anyway it's always good to point them out.
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Your first is : "a bar that is always full cannot convey any information" make the rest of the post and the 4 hours you wasted with it useless. Play 1 2v2.
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Are you sure the leave legue doesn't resett your mmr, if so it could be useful if you want to switch race instead of going on a huge losing spree until you are up against opponents of the same skill level.
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Nice post, star-worthy material ^^
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Holy shit... this is like professional QA feedback.
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Very well done! I hope they take this feedback seriously.
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Wow, you definitely put some time into this. Good job and hopefully Blizz will take a look at this.
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Very good feedback! ! Also impressive amount of work you have put into this
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On December 10 2012 02:10 TiTanIum_ wrote:
Your first is : "a bar that is always full cannot convey any information" make the rest of the post and the 4 hours you wasted with it useless. Play 1 2v2.
lol, that bar shows 24 games 14 wins... perhaps you should read a little more thoroughly
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Damn, very nice work!
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Btw, this thread needs more attention on us battlenet. No reactions to it thus far , US players go bump this shit plz!
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Great depth and suggestions, good post.
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Extremely well done. You dissected the interface as meticulously as would a Graduate Professor. Really hope that Blizzard reads this.
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On December 10 2012 01:37 Knalldi wrote:And this is exactly why those threads are increbibly constructive, to point out things that may or may be not in the focus of the blizzard employees. Kudos to the op. Hope his work gets appreciated
Any form of post like this involving gameplay or balance is immediately shutdown with the casual reason of:
Fuck off to battlenet forums.
This is about the UI sure, but why should it be any different? :D blizzard wont read it here :3
And he's right, its the beta, theres bound to be shit like this.
Nice post btw, i did enjoy the read (well, half of it, i got lazy and skimmed the rest)
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This is a really fantastic, well thought out post. Such great attention to the details like the inconsistencies in errors. Probably one of the biggest things I agree with is 40. I get they want to keep some players happy by putting skins and fun decals in the game but I really don't want to see that when I'm either a) watching tournaments or b) playing ranked games.
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Jesus fucking crap, parallel, how long did this take you?
By the way, clients are supposed to pay for this level of design feedback. The one thing that always bothered me about Blizzard (and TL) is that their community's are a litte too generous.
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This is a thorough analysis, and I liked it.
Thanks a lot.
I hope most of it will be implemented =)
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Holy shit this is amazing. Someone from blizz should print this out and put it on the wall or something lol. The only thing I guess I disagree on is the icon removal. You showed the only building in the game that has 4 icons around it and even then it really isn't an annoyance to most people. Still amazing job though unfortunately I don't think it will make much of a difference.
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Very good job. The UI could do with a little housekeeping.
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Very constructive, well written and easily understood with the addition of pictures. Must have been some diligent research behind all this considering the details in the UI you mention. I thank very much you for putting so much time and effort into our game being clean, logical and easily used!
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On December 10 2012 02:11 Tedde93 wrote:
Are you sure the leave legue doesn't resett your mmr, if so it could be useful if you want to switch race instead of going on a huge losing spree until you are up against opponents of the same skill level.
I tested this. I had only my 1v1 league, no 2v2 league, and I left my 1v1. When I went to queue again it said I only needed one placement match, so it doesn't appear to reset your MMR. (If it did, it would presumably give you 5 placement matches again.)
Edit: typo.
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'm just blown away by the incredible work put in here.
Wow.
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And not a single fuck will probably be given.
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Very impressive, great job!
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Wow, that's a long post. A ton of work in it.
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I thought the font inconsistency was interesting. Definitely a lot of good points here. I hope these small things get polished before the release.
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you should get payed by bliz for this post
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very nice work, very good read
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Nice one.
One suggestion for Blizzard:
40. Add an option that allows players to not see decals and alternative unit models on their screen. Add alternative unit models as rewards for playing.
Use this to make (parts of) HotS F2P. You guys stated that you were looking in to it. This is the way. I know I would pay for some other models (if not too expensive). Look at LoL. There you can pay for more champions, but most of the money put into the game is spend on skins (atleast for my group of friends except me (I want all the champs first and care about looks later).
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Thank you for doing this. I wanted to do this for the ladder navigation nonsense, but it was too much work. I still can't navigate quickly to the important ladder pages (~ last meaningful ladder ranking in 1on1) of my opponents after 2 years of SC2.
Also, the chat channel names should not be much larger than one (text) line as they currently are. It takes too long to find someone in the user list in larger channels.
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This option allows a player to leave their league. This is a very bad feature. There is no legitimate use of this feature. Players with MMR near the boundary of promotion could abuse this feature to make it easier to get promoted. If the goal is to make promotions easier, then do this by increasing the uncertainty threshold of MMR required for promotion.
If instead the goal is to make it easier to change divisions, there is no point in changing divisions. Divisions are already meaningless. Allowing division hopping would make the division rank even more meaningless for absolutely no reason at all, since players could “choose” newer and easier divisions.
Allowing people to leave their league also resets their points to 0 and refunds their entire bonus pool. So this hurts casuals who aren’t aware that using this option requires them to start from scratch.
Moreover, it makes points a worse measure of skill, because the player would have to use up their entire bonus pool again in order for points to correctly measure skill, even if the system already has an accurate MMR for players who were active enough to use up their previous bonus pool. This wouldn’t be an issue if joining a new league after leaving a league retained the player’s previous points and bonus pool, accounting for time elapsed. But then, players could abuse this as a way of hiding their stats and ladder standing by leaving their league after each game.
I'd have to disagree. Now I haven't played HOTS yet so I may be wrong, but if you're right that leaving the league resets points to zero and gives back your bonus pool..... THIS IS GOOD! But I would say that it should only be able to be used once a week.
Say you're in whatever league it doesn't matter, and you're concerned with your wins/losses or points, whatever, and you go on a massive losing streak. You know the kind, where sometimes people want to break their CDs and all that fun stuff. Well guess what. Rage reset, BOOM! Clean slate. Or if they have a different account they can hop on there, but instead of looking at an ugly 15 game losing streak and dropping from top 20 in their division to rank 70, they can /clearstats and start from scratch. This is a good feature to have.
But how will we know who the good people are? Most pros already have a good idea through playing people and through tournament play. Judging skill based solely on ladder hasn't worked yet anywhere, so why try to force it to work now?
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Blizzard should hire you, like seriously... With all that information. o_O
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Nice post, however I gave up any hope for blizzard to actually innovate and meet our expectations.
Add the following features: From WC3, automated tournaments.
Brower basically said that it is something that they plan on adding into... Legacy of the Void. Yes, it's going to take then 5 years to do something that was already implemented in warcraft 3.
I know blizzard hasn't been known for being being an innovative company for quite a long time now, rather relying on very polished games, but seriously going backward like that? I feel that they lost a big opportunity with blizzard, and that the company as a whole is going to change a lot in the future if they don't want to become obsolete.
Good post nonetheless.
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That's quite the efford; well done, OP. Don't agree with absolutely everything but it doesn't matter.
Hope Blizzard give this a serious read.
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On December 10 2012 06:16 Ero-Sennin wrote:Show nested quote +This option allows a player to leave their league. This is a very bad feature. There is no legitimate use of this feature. Players with MMR near the boundary of promotion could abuse this feature to make it easier to get promoted. If the goal is to make promotions easier, then do this by increasing the uncertainty threshold of MMR required for promotion.
If instead the goal is to make it easier to change divisions, there is no point in changing divisions. Divisions are already meaningless. Allowing division hopping would make the division rank even more meaningless for absolutely no reason at all, since players could “choose” newer and easier divisions.
Allowing people to leave their league also resets their points to 0 and refunds their entire bonus pool. So this hurts casuals who aren’t aware that using this option requires them to start from scratch.
Moreover, it makes points a worse measure of skill, because the player would have to use up their entire bonus pool again in order for points to correctly measure skill, even if the system already has an accurate MMR for players who were active enough to use up their previous bonus pool. This wouldn’t be an issue if joining a new league after leaving a league retained the player’s previous points and bonus pool, accounting for time elapsed. But then, players could abuse this as a way of hiding their stats and ladder standing by leaving their league after each game. I'd have to disagree. Now I haven't played HOTS yet so I may be wrong, but if you're right that leaving the league resets points to zero and gives back your bonus pool..... THIS IS GOOD! But I would say that it should only be able to be used once a week. Say you're in whatever league it doesn't matter, and you're concerned with your wins/losses or points, whatever, and you go on a massive losing streak. You know the kind, where sometimes people want to break their CDs and all that fun stuff. Well guess what. Rage reset, BOOM! Clean slate. Or if they have a different account they can hop on there, but instead of looking at an ugly 15 game losing streak and dropping from top 20 in their division to rank 70, they can /clearstats and start from scratch. This is a good feature to have. But how will we know who the good people are? Most pros already have a good idea through playing people and through tournament play. Judging skill based solely on ladder hasn't worked yet anywhere, so why try to force it to work now?
Then just give players a number of smurfs. Having a limited number of smurfs is still better than giving players the ability completely reset their skill rating.
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Very detailed, all very valid points :D, I didn't even realize how many inconsistencies there were in the UI O.o
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Very well done! In regards to 15.c I believe that has something to do with maps specifically made for casting (in and upcoming patch the spectating UI is going to be easily changed in the editor). I do not believe it has anything to do with casual spectating.
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jesus tittyfucking christ
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That is really throughout and detailed feedback. I think one of the most important aspect of a game in terms on attracting new players is how easy it is to look at a game and not bee confused.
Looking at LoL i have no clue what is going on and I get lost in its interface, and its something that has really prevented me from playing the game.
Also as much as i feel like blizzard wants to put out a perfect game, there is so much that the community is demanding atm, but blizzard seems as though they might not have the manpower to take on everything at once.
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good catches on the inconsistencies. I would never have been arsed to go though them like you did, so well done.
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Wow, thank you so much for taking the time to put all of this together. Blizzard should subscribe to this thread imo.
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Making the UI look unified/polished like this is something a lot of people overlook and is very important. Thanks for pointing this out!
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Great work, are you looking for a job? Let's spread the word to let Blizzard see this!
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Wow this is really good. There are people like you who companys hire to get their products better, and you did it all for free just because you love the game.
I hope blizzard will use this.
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holy shit, well done good sir. someone make sure blizz sees this.
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I love this. Amazing job! I really hope Blizzard reads this and listens!
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On December 10 2012 00:31 Snowbear wrote:
Sick post, wow. I hope that blizzard reads this. The should hire you! Well done!
They won't if it doesn't go into their forum.
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wow. this is a lot of work.
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A lot of this is good but some of it is just nitpicking.
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Fucking awesome feedback post, detailed and with some great examples what to do instead.
Love it
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very impressive! i'd love to see the UI changed in this direction
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@ OP
You must have a lot of time in your hands =) Very nice work overall and i agree with everything but the part about the "leave League" option.
Its a thing that can help casuals to get over Ladder anxiety easily. Even myself, who plays over 10 Games each day, get really frustrated and demotivated when i´m deeply in the minus on my Win/Loss ratio and with this option i can simply reset everything.
So it does have a point and the negatives that it makes points useless to judge skill:
Isnt that the case now too?
I can think of no way to make points more meaningless then tey are now. I can easily (and did) achive 1800 points in master by simply only playing when i have bonus pool.
just my 2 cents ^^
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very well done, agree with a lot of the things that are said in here. hopefully blizz takes a good look at this because it will definitely help them show what i assume most of the community wants
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Very impressive. I do however would like to stress that the default viewing option for custom games should be a random list of "open games waiting for players", just like in WC3. Otherwise the scene dies as just the same few maps gets played over and over.
Blizzard also has to solve the issue with an people stuck on "connecting.." in a map. It means that map can never start, and every time you try to join that map, you end up with the guy stuck on connecting, so basically that map is disabled.
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Amazing post, this is how all feedback should be
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That's some quality beta testing
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Well done. They better use detailed reports like these.
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Even though Blizzard have said in interviews that they browse the forums this amazing feedback needs more spread. We don't want it overlooked.
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The HotS UI is a major improvement over that terrible, terrible 1.5 UI. But everything is relative.
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Got an additional one btw:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Qzatal.jpg)
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On December 10 2012 06:16 Ero-Sennin wrote:Show nested quote +This option allows a player to leave their league. This is a very bad feature. There is no legitimate use of this feature. Players with MMR near the boundary of promotion could abuse this feature to make it easier to get promoted. If the goal is to make promotions easier, then do this by increasing the uncertainty threshold of MMR required for promotion.
If instead the goal is to make it easier to change divisions, there is no point in changing divisions. Divisions are already meaningless. Allowing division hopping would make the division rank even more meaningless for absolutely no reason at all, since players could “choose” newer and easier divisions.
Allowing people to leave their league also resets their points to 0 and refunds their entire bonus pool. So this hurts casuals who aren’t aware that using this option requires them to start from scratch.
Moreover, it makes points a worse measure of skill, because the player would have to use up their entire bonus pool again in order for points to correctly measure skill, even if the system already has an accurate MMR for players who were active enough to use up their previous bonus pool. This wouldn’t be an issue if joining a new league after leaving a league retained the player’s previous points and bonus pool, accounting for time elapsed. But then, players could abuse this as a way of hiding their stats and ladder standing by leaving their league after each game. I'd have to disagree. Now I haven't played HOTS yet so I may be wrong, but if you're right that leaving the league resets points to zero and gives back your bonus pool..... THIS IS GOOD! But I would say that it should only be able to be used once a week. Say you're in whatever league it doesn't matter, and you're concerned with your wins/losses or points, whatever, and you go on a massive losing streak. You know the kind, where sometimes people want to break their CDs and all that fun stuff. Well guess what. Rage reset, BOOM! Clean slate. Or if they have a different account they can hop on there, but instead of looking at an ugly 15 game losing streak and dropping from top 20 in their division to rank 70, they can /clearstats and start from scratch. This is a good feature to have. But how will we know who the good people are? Most pros already have a good idea through playing people and through tournament play. Judging skill based solely on ladder hasn't worked yet anywhere, so why try to force it to work now?
I'm not even sure what the OP is mumbling about wiht the leave league feature anyway. It's only something you have when you're in GrandMaster league and don't want to be there for various reasons. I'm not sure how much it is used anyway but you're just put back to Masters if you leave Grandmasters league. You don't have that button in lower leagues at all.
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O_O oh boy... how many hours did all the research and comparison procedure took?
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Very nice! Thanks for spending your time on this! I hope they will listen to (at least some of) your suggestions.
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can u post the link to the b.net forum in the op pls ?
this was a lot of work, i might not agree with everything but still with most
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On December 10 2012 07:47 Seiniyta wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2012 06:16 Ero-Sennin wrote:This option allows a player to leave their league. This is a very bad feature. There is no legitimate use of this feature. Players with MMR near the boundary of promotion could abuse this feature to make it easier to get promoted. If the goal is to make promotions easier, then do this by increasing the uncertainty threshold of MMR required for promotion.
If instead the goal is to make it easier to change divisions, there is no point in changing divisions. Divisions are already meaningless. Allowing division hopping would make the division rank even more meaningless for absolutely no reason at all, since players could “choose” newer and easier divisions.
Allowing people to leave their league also resets their points to 0 and refunds their entire bonus pool. So this hurts casuals who aren’t aware that using this option requires them to start from scratch.
Moreover, it makes points a worse measure of skill, because the player would have to use up their entire bonus pool again in order for points to correctly measure skill, even if the system already has an accurate MMR for players who were active enough to use up their previous bonus pool. This wouldn’t be an issue if joining a new league after leaving a league retained the player’s previous points and bonus pool, accounting for time elapsed. But then, players could abuse this as a way of hiding their stats and ladder standing by leaving their league after each game. I'd have to disagree. Now I haven't played HOTS yet so I may be wrong, but if you're right that leaving the league resets points to zero and gives back your bonus pool..... THIS IS GOOD! But I would say that it should only be able to be used once a week. Say you're in whatever league it doesn't matter, and you're concerned with your wins/losses or points, whatever, and you go on a massive losing streak. You know the kind, where sometimes people want to break their CDs and all that fun stuff. Well guess what. Rage reset, BOOM! Clean slate. Or if they have a different account they can hop on there, but instead of looking at an ugly 15 game losing streak and dropping from top 20 in their division to rank 70, they can /clearstats and start from scratch. This is a good feature to have. But how will we know who the good people are? Most pros already have a good idea through playing people and through tournament play. Judging skill based solely on ladder hasn't worked yet anywhere, so why try to force it to work now? I'm not even sure what the OP is mumbling about wiht the leave league feature anyway. It's only something you have when you're in GrandMaster league and don't want to be there for various reasons. I'm not sure how much it is used anyway but you're just put back to Masters if you leave Grandmasters league. You don't have that button in lower leagues at all.
Yes, you do. It's there even if you're in Bronze league.
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On December 10 2012 08:24 Special Endrey wrote:
can u post the link to the b.net forum in the op pls ?
this was a lot of work, i might not agree with everything but still with most
It's linked in the first paragraph of the OP.
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just saw, i am blind, thx
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On December 10 2012 08:26 paralleluniverse wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2012 07:47 Seiniyta wrote:On December 10 2012 06:16 Ero-Sennin wrote:This option allows a player to leave their league. This is a very bad feature. There is no legitimate use of this feature. Players with MMR near the boundary of promotion could abuse this feature to make it easier to get promoted. If the goal is to make promotions easier, then do this by increasing the uncertainty threshold of MMR required for promotion.
If instead the goal is to make it easier to change divisions, there is no point in changing divisions. Divisions are already meaningless. Allowing division hopping would make the division rank even more meaningless for absolutely no reason at all, since players could “choose” newer and easier divisions.
Allowing people to leave their league also resets their points to 0 and refunds their entire bonus pool. So this hurts casuals who aren’t aware that using this option requires them to start from scratch.
Moreover, it makes points a worse measure of skill, because the player would have to use up their entire bonus pool again in order for points to correctly measure skill, even if the system already has an accurate MMR for players who were active enough to use up their previous bonus pool. This wouldn’t be an issue if joining a new league after leaving a league retained the player’s previous points and bonus pool, accounting for time elapsed. But then, players could abuse this as a way of hiding their stats and ladder standing by leaving their league after each game. I'd have to disagree. Now I haven't played HOTS yet so I may be wrong, but if you're right that leaving the league resets points to zero and gives back your bonus pool..... THIS IS GOOD! But I would say that it should only be able to be used once a week. Say you're in whatever league it doesn't matter, and you're concerned with your wins/losses or points, whatever, and you go on a massive losing streak. You know the kind, where sometimes people want to break their CDs and all that fun stuff. Well guess what. Rage reset, BOOM! Clean slate. Or if they have a different account they can hop on there, but instead of looking at an ugly 15 game losing streak and dropping from top 20 in their division to rank 70, they can /clearstats and start from scratch. This is a good feature to have. But how will we know who the good people are? Most pros already have a good idea through playing people and through tournament play. Judging skill based solely on ladder hasn't worked yet anywhere, so why try to force it to work now? I'm not even sure what the OP is mumbling about wiht the leave league feature anyway. It's only something you have when you're in GrandMaster league and don't want to be there for various reasons. I'm not sure how much it is used anyway but you're just put back to Masters if you leave Grandmasters league. You don't have that button in lower leagues at all. Yes, you do. It's there even if you're in Bronze league.
Well, my apologies. I looked and it's indeed there. I don't see a problem it being there however.
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could not agree more with removing the joke-decals, always thought it was flashy to begin with, not it glows, and its animated. Really reminds me of ricerrockets with there altezzas
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Make sure to post on the Battle.net Forums to push the post and make sure that Blizz reads it! Awesome post btw!
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holy shit what a nice post, found so much stuff i would never notice
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On December 10 2012 07:21 Paladia wrote:
Very impressive. I do however would like to stress that the default viewing option for custom games should be a random list of "open games waiting for players", just like in WC3. Otherwise the scene dies as just the same few maps gets played over and over.
Blizzard also has to solve the issue with an people stuck on "connecting.." in a map. It means that map can never start, and every time you try to join that map, you end up with the guy stuck on connecting, so basically that map is disabled.
I'm really curious why Blizz is against the custom-names for UMS lobbies. It seems like not a big deal, or at least something they should be neutral about but from what I remember Dustin Browder said they do not want to bring in custom names at all.
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Blizzard please read this and take notes...
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WOW. Yeah, you're ideas are impressive and there's a lot of detail! I hope Blizz takes this into consideration.
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I wish they showed worker count in the stats of games afterwards, Viewing the economy results see how many workers I was behind or ahead in games is important to me, for instant info, I don't have time to watch every single replay after every game i play
The info after games is pretty low compared to WOL, They show stuff thats not important like players "apm" which does not tell you anything really.
Also the APM count is broken, it counts the Computer auto minning @ start as apm, which boost a players apm by like 100 @ start of the game......so its showing bonze silver players with like 400 Apm, when the fact is there real apm when viewed in replay is like 30 or 40 lol.
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Pretty good points, I can't imagine Blizzard adding 40 new things to the UI alone in 4 months though, so we probably won't see most of this until patch 2.5 or even LotV.
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Blizzard needs to see this, grat job!
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Splitting the queues (a la 8) would be a bad idea. It would inflate the ranking such that it is no longer representative of the playerbase - I don't want bronze to be the worst of the players who think they are good enough to play ranked.
I don't see why an "unranked" matchup is required anyway, it literally makes zero difference to the choice of opponent and thus will be no "easier" than a normal ranked game. The person will still know how they are performing and will still feel the frustration as usual if it isn't what they expect/hope...
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Blizzard can't get it all right for Hots or what will they have to add for LotV  seriously nice post I loved it but now I can't help but notice everything you pointed out while I am going through the menus
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On December 10 2012 10:08 jalstar wrote:
Pretty good points, I can't imagine Blizzard adding 40 new things to the UI alone in 4 months though, so we probably won't see most of this until patch 2.5 or even LotV.
A lot of these stylistic changes are just a couple of lines of code, though. Some are obviously a bit trickier, but I think if they just take this list and work on it for a day most of it will be fixed. However, I do doubt that they will actually do this :p.
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Please hire this man Blizzard.
Really well constructed and solid points brought up. gj
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Some good points, but a chunk of this is really un-needed points. for example, of course searching "blizzard maps" will make every map in the list be under the author "Blizzard", but removing it would make it so searching say "Ladder" wouldn't say if its a "blizzard" map, a "GSL" map, or some random community members map. Removing it from the "Blizzard Maps" filter would only reduce the consistency,
a few more things, but overall some pretty good stuff
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congrats, you wasted 4 hours of your time putting together a post that is pointless. the game is in BETA. these aren't prioritys for blizzard at the moment, I think they'd rather put a game that is good to play together before they try and change "starting colors from red and blue"
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On December 10 2012 08:56 Erik.TheRed wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2012 07:21 Paladia wrote:
Very impressive. I do however would like to stress that the default viewing option for custom games should be a random list of "open games waiting for players", just like in WC3. Otherwise the scene dies as just the same few maps gets played over and over.
Blizzard also has to solve the issue with an people stuck on "connecting.." in a map. It means that map can never start, and every time you try to join that map, you end up with the guy stuck on connecting, so basically that map is disabled. I'm really curious why Blizz is against the custom-names for UMS lobbies. It seems like not a big deal, or at least something they should be neutral about but from what I remember Dustin Browder said they do not want to bring in custom names at all.
because dustin browder is a coonch
User was warned for this post
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Please put this on the featured TL news articles, it deserves everyone's attention!
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Great thread but I would hate to be Blizzard lol.
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On December 10 2012 11:50 jesseclaytonjames wrote:
congrats, you wasted 4 hours of your time putting together a post that is pointless. the game is in BETA. these aren't prioritys for blizzard at the moment, I think they'd rather put a game that is good to play together before they try and change "starting colors from red and blue"
That a joke? This is EXACTLY the time to talk about this stuff. What do you think beta is for?
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Seeing this at an Engineering point of view, the majority of the suggestions are aesthetic. When they release a beta patch, they're more concerned about the functionality of the product than looks. Eventually they will be fixed in the future, but that's the point of Beta: They want to test out functionality rather than looks.
Yes I can see the many inconsistencies in the UI, but I really not gonna be concerned at this phase because it's not one that is being released into the masses. Think of it as writing the first draft of a report and all you care about at the time is the content of the report and not moreso the grammar, layout, and alignment because it's all going to be finished upon release. That sums up 99% of all the reports that I write up for all my classes.
I do appreciate your problems about the current beta patch, but that's the idea of a beta--there's BOUND to be problems.
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On December 10 2012 12:54 earti wrote:
Seeing this at an Engineering point of view, the majority of the suggestions are aesthetic. When they release a beta patch, they're more concerned about the functionality of the product than looks. Eventually they will be fixed in the future, but that's the point of Beta: They want to test out functionality rather than looks.
Yes I can see the many inconsistencies in the UI, but I really not gonna be concerned at this phase because it's not one that is being released into the masses. Think of it as writing the first draft of a report and all you care about at the time is the content of the report and not moreso the grammar, layout, and alignment because it's all going to be finished upon release. That sums up 99% of all the reports that I write up for all my classes.
I do appreciate your problems about the current beta patch, but that's the idea of a beta--there's BOUND to be problems.
Likewise, isn't a beta phase the ideal time to correct these kinds of issues? Blizzard almost assuredly has a team of graphic designers and such who focus on this kind of stuff. Putting that group to work on these inconsistencies and errors isn't really taking time away from the balance team or anything, is it? (Maybe it is; I'm no expert on how a company like Blizzard manages its personnel.)
Perhaps the Battle.net UI ought to be further down on the to-do list than unit balance and design for the time being, but it's certainly an essential and important feature in its own right, and ought to be maintained with similar care. Heart of the Swarm isn't all about those flashy new units; one of the major focal points of the expansion is to revamp the UI, and the beta is a perfect time to fix odds and ends related to that overhaul.
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On December 10 2012 13:11 Archas wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2012 12:54 earti wrote:
Seeing this at an Engineering point of view, the majority of the suggestions are aesthetic. When they release a beta patch, they're more concerned about the functionality of the product than looks. Eventually they will be fixed in the future, but that's the point of Beta: They want to test out functionality rather than looks.
Yes I can see the many inconsistencies in the UI, but I really not gonna be concerned at this phase because it's not one that is being released into the masses. Think of it as writing the first draft of a report and all you care about at the time is the content of the report and not moreso the grammar, layout, and alignment because it's all going to be finished upon release. That sums up 99% of all the reports that I write up for all my classes.
I do appreciate your problems about the current beta patch, but that's the idea of a beta--there's BOUND to be problems. Likewise, isn't a beta phase the ideal time to correct these kinds of issues? Blizzard almost assuredly has a team of graphic designers and such who focus on this kind of stuff. Putting that group to work on these inconsistencies and errors isn't really taking time away from the balance team or anything, is it? (Maybe it is; I'm no expert on how a company like Blizzard manages its personnel.) Perhaps the Battle.net UI ought to be further down on the to-do list than unit balance and design for the time being, but it's certainly an essential and important feature in its own right, and ought to be maintained with similar care. Heart of the Swarm isn't all about those flashy new units; one of the major focal points of the expansion is to revamp the UI, and the beta is a perfect time to fix odds and ends related to that overhaul.
Of course, what if a majority of those issues listed have already been patched in their internal versions? And yes, spending time fixing tiny inconsistencies does take time, because they are typically the same programmers that are programming the functionality. The same mindset of a programmer would always push functionality over aesthetics, which is 80% of the job done for 20% of the work, the rest of the 20%, which can be bugs and interface improvements, takes the largest amount of time.
The UI revamp is indeed simply testing all the buttons. They want to make sure they function correctly first than worry about looks.
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The only thing I would like to say is in regards to the 'Leave League' button. As a casual I tend to have a few weeks where ill ladder, and then a couple of months where I won't play. After watching some ESPORTS I'll get in the mood again, but any muscle memory and awareness of how not to be completely clumsy has generally faded by then. I know I would rather have a fresh slate when I come back after being afk just so that the first few games I play aren't all roflstomps. I understand that in time any skill lost can come back, but in regards to the idea of trying to keep casuals engaged, it's really hard to get back into the game when you just feel like you have no chance of winning when you sit down.
This is a casualfag opinion though, and I completely agree with the criticisms of that option too so I can't really offer a solution. Excellent thread!
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On December 10 2012 13:47 ItsPaul wrote:
The only thing I would like to say is in regards to the 'Leave League' button. As a casual I tend to have a few weeks where ill ladder, and then a couple of months where I won't play. After watching some ESPORTS I'll get in the mood again, but any muscle memory and awareness of how not to be completely clumsy has generally faded by then. I know I would rather have a fresh slate when I come back after being afk just so that the first few games I play aren't all roflstomps. I understand that in time any skill lost can come back, but in regards to the idea of trying to keep casuals engaged, it's really hard to get back into the game when you just feel like you have no chance of winning when you sit down.
This is a casualfag opinion though, and I completely agree with the criticisms of that option too so I can't really offer a solution. Excellent thread!
Your points are legitimate, that's what unranked is for though - the leave league button really doesn't do anything except offer a chance for people to abuse the system by skipping the 'uncertainty' period to get promoted. It has no bearing on your MMR, it just is like the start of a new season where after a game it will place you immediately upon your current MMR.
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On December 10 2012 06:23 SinCitta wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2012 06:16 Ero-Sennin wrote:This option allows a player to leave their league. This is a very bad feature. There is no legitimate use of this feature. Players with MMR near the boundary of promotion could abuse this feature to make it easier to get promoted. If the goal is to make promotions easier, then do this by increasing the uncertainty threshold of MMR required for promotion.
If instead the goal is to make it easier to change divisions, there is no point in changing divisions. Divisions are already meaningless. Allowing division hopping would make the division rank even more meaningless for absolutely no reason at all, since players could “choose” newer and easier divisions.
Allowing people to leave their league also resets their points to 0 and refunds their entire bonus pool. So this hurts casuals who aren’t aware that using this option requires them to start from scratch.
Moreover, it makes points a worse measure of skill, because the player would have to use up their entire bonus pool again in order for points to correctly measure skill, even if the system already has an accurate MMR for players who were active enough to use up their previous bonus pool. This wouldn’t be an issue if joining a new league after leaving a league retained the player’s previous points and bonus pool, accounting for time elapsed. But then, players could abuse this as a way of hiding their stats and ladder standing by leaving their league after each game. I'd have to disagree. Now I haven't played HOTS yet so I may be wrong, but if you're right that leaving the league resets points to zero and gives back your bonus pool..... THIS IS GOOD! But I would say that it should only be able to be used once a week. Say you're in whatever league it doesn't matter, and you're concerned with your wins/losses or points, whatever, and you go on a massive losing streak. You know the kind, where sometimes people want to break their CDs and all that fun stuff. Well guess what. Rage reset, BOOM! Clean slate. Or if they have a different account they can hop on there, but instead of looking at an ugly 15 game losing streak and dropping from top 20 in their division to rank 70, they can /clearstats and start from scratch. This is a good feature to have. But how will we know who the good people are? Most pros already have a good idea through playing people and through tournament play. Judging skill based solely on ladder hasn't worked yet anywhere, so why try to force it to work now? Then just give players a number of smurfs. Having a limited number of smurfs is still better than giving players the ability completely reset their skill rating.
It's not about resetting their skill rating it's about resetting their record and their points.
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One thing that still annoys me about the party system, is the fact that if you have a say 4 people, 2 want spectate and the other 1v1. You cant create a 1v1 map, say cloud kingdom, the system just wont let you... Its stupid, And I cannot come up with a valid reason why you cant create a 1v1 map with 4 people in party. Ive been complaining about this since the beta of WOL and nothings changed, bug reports etc =/ You can create a map like taldarim just fine with 4 people in a party... =/ This falls under UI because the system greys out, every single map that is "unplayable" with the amount of players in the party, despite being perfectly fine.
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On December 10 2012 11:13 speknek wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2012 10:08 jalstar wrote:
Pretty good points, I can't imagine Blizzard adding 40 new things to the UI alone in 4 months though, so we probably won't see most of this until patch 2.5 or even LotV. A lot of these stylistic changes are just a couple of lines of code, though. Some are obviously a bit trickier, but I think if they just take this list and work on it for a day most of it will be fixed. However, I do doubt that they will actually do this :p.
This is my point, if people think this whole list will be fixed by HOTS release they are not thinking in Blizzard Time (tm). I think Blizzard will probably implement all of these suggestions (and I bet nearly all were suggested internally already) but it will take forever.
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I really like your post, looks like a lot of effort and I would also like my ui to be nice and clean.
On December 10 2012 00:17 paralleluniverse wrote:
300 APM is more like 200 real APM.
I think this is the other way around.
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The funniest part is that Blizzard takes FOREVER to implement such changes, implicating that there is a lot of QA (from a programmer's/designer's perspective it's ez pz, QA is the only possible reason it takes so long). Which means that they TESTED the current design and ACCEPTED it, lol :D
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Very detailed and impressive post. I stand behind most of these changes. I want to highlight the lack of chat time stamp, which is one of your points. It is really confusing for people (like me) who leaves Starcraft on sometimes. Coming back to the computer, you literally know nothing of when a specific person chatted with you, other than somewhere between after you left and before you came back. This is really annoying.
While most of these things would take a very short time to fix, Blizzard is still a company, every single change must go through discussion, decisions, work distribution, implementation, testing, bug fixing, more testing and finally release. Most people think the process is just implementation and then release, which is plain wrong. It does take a long time for a company to change something due to this process.
With this being said, it does take blizzard quite a while longer than it should, to implement a change.
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I am really impressed with how many inconsistencies you've found. I also found that my eyes and brain had been hurting from looking at menus in the beta, but now I know why! Thanks for documenting all of this, Blizzard should take this to heart and send you cake for doing this work for them!
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@Millet:
We are right smack in the middle of the QA part. I mean if the OP was made for WOL during 2011, then it would be really hard for Blizzard to change things.
But since we are in the BETA phase, I hope these type of changes are in the "fixable before release" domain.
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Fantastic work thanks! Hopefully blizzard reads this.
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Sounds like a bunch of little stupid things for the most part.
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Excellent post, I agree with everything and hope it'll all get implemented. Kudos top the op
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Some good suggestions, mixed in with an awful lot of nitpicking and subjective opinion, and it comes across as a bit whiny in places (See: "I don't want to see these joke decals in my super serious alien shooting game!!" if silly things like that offend you then you probably shouldn't be playing Blizzard games). Trim out some of the whiny parts and this is good feedback though.
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Fantastic post.
There is one thing I'd like to address though:
Allow more colors instead of just red and blue for ladder play.
Seeing only red and blue for 1v1 games is getting to be an eyesore. Colors should be randomly assigned out of the first 8, like in WC3.
Accessibility should be an important feature. If nothing else, introduce a color-blind mode that lets people define what colors they want to see when they turn on friendly colors. The current red and green is pretty atrocious if you are red/green colorblind - green and blue or blue and yellow etc would work much better and should be an opiton.
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Holy...Great post.
I hope this post gets the attention it deserves on bnet forums.
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Great post! I hope Blizzard reads this.
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I think there are a Color blind option
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Very good job.
Being able to fully customise your UI would be great though.
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On December 10 2012 13:47 ItsPaul wrote:
The only thing I would like to say is in regards to the 'Leave League' button. As a casual I tend to have a few weeks where ill ladder, and then a couple of months where I won't play. After watching some ESPORTS I'll get in the mood again, but any muscle memory and awareness of how not to be completely clumsy has generally faded by then. I know I would rather have a fresh slate when I come back after being afk just so that the first few games I play aren't all roflstomps. I understand that in time any skill lost can come back, but in regards to the idea of trying to keep casuals engaged, it's really hard to get back into the game when you just feel like you have no chance of winning when you sit down.
An option to lower its own MMR could be used for smurfing. The MMR however automatically widens its interval when you didn't play for some time. That means you get both easier and harder opponents. So you have to face a few roflstomps, but the matchmaker will adapt quickly because you lose a lot of MMR because the interval is so wide. It gets narrower when you play on.
Hots also has a few options to get you back in shape. You can play unranked. While you still get roflstomped, you don't lose ladder points or bonus pool points. You also can try to play versus AI. Hots offers to tell the AI how to play (early rush, timing attack, eco opening, ...)
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The UI Inconsistence hurts my brain, well done.
so sad.
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On December 10 2012 00:17 paralleluniverse wrote:
8. Separate unranked and ranked matchmaking queues.
Players who queue using unranked can be matched with ranked players. This has been described as working as intended to reduce queue times. But queues should be separated to prevent abuse. Here are some possible abuses:
-Deliberately lowering your MMR to bronze level to beat up on low skill players, with no consequence to your ladder standing.
-Leave or backstab in team games, also with no consequence to your ladder standing.
-If you're losing, you can even ask the opponent very nicely to give you a free win by leaving, and if your opponent is playing unranked, there's no reason for the opponent to say no.
-If you want to practice TvZ with unranked, then you should leave every game which is not TvZ, thereby giving your opponents free wins.
While it’s possible to do these things now, it would stuff up your ladder standing. Pooling rank and unranked games in HotS will mean that there's no incentive to stop anyone from doing this. Everyone would be able to freely smurf with no consequence, which was a major problem with multiple accounts in WC3. This is an error that should not be repeated.
Before I start to comment on this point, I like to applaude you for the effort of your very good posting. I also noticed some of the inconsistencies, you however made a detailled posting with many example images. Guys like you make our world a better place.
You pointed out some issues with the mixed ranked/unranked pool. I think that the advantages however outweigh the issues with this. At least in the Hots beta, it seems to work quite okay.
There could be other measures taken by Blizzard to avoid abuse. For example to not lower the MMR below a certain value per day so even if you leave 50 games in a row, you only lower your MMR by X points. Also there could be a limit of games allowed per hour. This limit could be done in a way that occasional leaving, even for some games in a row, is possible without noticing any limit.
Team backstabbing was an issue in WC3 random team already.
If you want to practice TvZ and leave 2 out of 3 games to play versus zerg only, you cannot really practice because your MMR is too low and you roflstomp the zerg. But I agree that there is a potential issue here.
What about begging for a win? I guess this is mostly an issue in lower leagues where it doesn't matter that much. I also doubt that every non-ranked player will see no reason to say no. Since the unranked player gets no ladder points anyway, why grant the other one free points when he doesn't earned them?
In the end, I see the with to practice versus a particular race as the biggest issue, giving random freewins to other players. How could this be fixed? Either with a limit (just X very short games allowed per hour) or with an account standing which flags frequent leavers. The match maker then could attempt to match a frequent leaver versus another frequent leaver.
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On December 10 2012 06:16 Ero-Sennin wrote:Show nested quote +This option allows a player to leave their league. This is a very bad feature. There is no legitimate use of this feature. Players with MMR near the boundary of promotion could abuse this feature to make it easier to get promoted. If the goal is to make promotions easier, then do this by increasing the uncertainty threshold of MMR required for promotion.
If instead the goal is to make it easier to change divisions, there is no point in changing divisions. Divisions are already meaningless. Allowing division hopping would make the division rank even more meaningless for absolutely no reason at all, since players could “choose” newer and easier divisions.
Allowing people to leave their league also resets their points to 0 and refunds their entire bonus pool. So this hurts casuals who aren’t aware that using this option requires them to start from scratch.
Moreover, it makes points a worse measure of skill, because the player would have to use up their entire bonus pool again in order for points to correctly measure skill, even if the system already has an accurate MMR for players who were active enough to use up their previous bonus pool. This wouldn’t be an issue if joining a new league after leaving a league retained the player’s previous points and bonus pool, accounting for time elapsed. But then, players could abuse this as a way of hiding their stats and ladder standing by leaving their league after each game. I'd have to disagree. Now I haven't played HOTS yet so I may be wrong, but if you're right that leaving the league resets points to zero and gives back your bonus pool..... THIS IS GOOD! But I would say that it should only be able to be used once a week. Say you're in whatever league it doesn't matter, and you're concerned with your wins/losses or points, whatever, and you go on a massive losing streak. You know the kind, where sometimes people want to break their CDs and all that fun stuff. Well guess what. Rage reset, BOOM! Clean slate. Or if they have a different account they can hop on there, but instead of looking at an ugly 15 game losing streak and dropping from top 20 in their division to rank 70, they can /clearstats and start from scratch. This is a good feature to have. But how will we know who the good people are? Most pros already have a good idea through playing people and through tournament play. Judging skill based solely on ladder hasn't worked yet anywhere, so why try to force it to work now?
On December 10 2012 13:47 ItsPaul wrote:
The only thing I would like to say is in regards to the 'Leave League' button. As a casual I tend to have a few weeks where ill ladder, and then a couple of months where I won't play. After watching some ESPORTS I'll get in the mood again, but any muscle memory and awareness of how not to be completely clumsy has generally faded by then. I know I would rather have a fresh slate when I come back after being afk just so that the first few games I play aren't all roflstomps. I understand that in time any skill lost can come back, but in regards to the idea of trying to keep casuals engaged, it's really hard to get back into the game when you just feel like you have no chance of winning when you sit down.
This is a casualfag opinion though, and I completely agree with the criticisms of that option too so I can't really offer a solution. Excellent thread!
On December 10 2012 07:06 gCgCrypto wrote:
@ OP
You must have a lot of time in your hands =) Very nice work overall and i agree with everything but the part about the "leave League" option.
Its a thing that can help casuals to get over Ladder anxiety easily. Even myself, who plays over 10 Games each day, get really frustrated and demotivated when i´m deeply in the minus on my Win/Loss ratio and with this option i can simply reset everything.
So it does have a point and the negatives that it makes points useless to judge skill:
Isnt that the case now too?
I can think of no way to make points more meaningless then tey are now. I can easily (and did) achive 1800 points in master by simply only playing when i have bonus pool.
just my 2 cents ^^
It's not a good idea to reset your points simply because you're on a losing streak or have just returned to the game after a break.
Firstly, leaving the league doesn't affect your MMR, so it's not going to make you lose less, or be matched to worse opponents. It has no effect on matchmaking. It only effectively allows you to hide your points.
Secondly, if you want to practice and not have it affect your record or if you get mad and have anxiety about losing streaks, you can play unranked.
Thirdly, in most situations, it doesn't even help you overcome your losing streak. Suppose you've used up your bonus pool and your true skill level is 1600 MMR. You go on a losing streak of 10 games, because you're drunk and hence playing worse than normal. If this causes your MMR to drop by 300, should you leave your league? Well, you'll now be matched with players around 1300 MMR, and if your true skill level really is 1600 MMR, you should be able to more easily win and get back to your correct MMR, say in about 20 games. Just as MMR is self-correcting, so are points, because after accounting for bonus pool, points converge to MMR. If you left your league, then to get back to where you should be, you'll need enough games to use up you're entire bonus pool, and that could easily take over 20 games, depending on how far into the season it is. And throughout that time, your points will be incorrect.
But even worse, just as it is easier to be promoted after the start of a new season, for the same reason, it's far more likely that using leave league after a losing streak will demote you. So it doesn't help you, it just screws up points being a good measure of skill plus a certain level of activity. And the fact that players may not know this and still use the option regardless, is another reason to remove leave league.
You say that maybe this option should only be useable once a week. It's already usable, by force, once every 2 months, i.e. every season reset. And that's how it should stay.
The main points of your posts is to say that ladder anxiety is a problem. It is. But this is not the solution. There are some more effective remedies. For one, Blizzard should remove the obsessive focus on division ranks. While it's completely meaningless, casuals are less likely to know this. Together with the bonus pool system, division ranks makes the ladder feel like a treadmill, because the inflation of other player's bonus pool perpetually causes your rank to fall, and requires you to play to keep up the same division rank. That is of course assuming you didn't know that division ranks are meaningless and should be ignored. So the first pain-free step would be to display points more prominently and division ranks less prominently, since points always increase due to bonus pool.
There are also changes that can be made to the flawed bonus pool system to make points a better skill measure, while keeping recent activity relevant, but that discussion would require more time.
Another suggestion that should greatly help with ladder anxiety is an option to hide previous season history. Since MMR and points are self-correcting, and win ratios converge to 50% (unless you're very very skill or very very unskilled), it's not possible to stuff up your current ladder stats. However, the previous season history is unchangeable, and it's the only way you could permanently "stuff up" your account, so it may be a large factor in ladder anxiety. While hiding it would be a loss of information, at least it's not current information, it's old information.
But the best way to fix ladder anxiety is to have unranked games, and Blizzard has already done this. So there are better ways to address ladder anxiety which I won't strongly disagree with. But ultimately, the point of a ladder system is to correctly and truthfully rank players, not to hide your current ladder standing because of hurt feelings.
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On December 10 2012 11:37 Warpath wrote:
Some good points, but a chunk of this is really un-needed points. for example, of course searching "blizzard maps" will make every map in the list be under the author "Blizzard", but removing it would make it so searching say "Ladder" wouldn't say if its a "blizzard" map, a "GSL" map, or some random community members map. Removing it from the "Blizzard Maps" filter would only reduce the consistency,
a few more things, but overall some pretty good stuff
The "author" column doesn't show up if you use another filter. If it did, then I would agree with you. Currently, it only shows up for Blizzard maps, and this adds zero information, while at the same time being inconsistent with the other filters.
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On December 10 2012 04:35 Defacer wrote:
Jesus fucking crap, parallel, how long did this take you?
By the way, clients are supposed to pay for this level of design feedback. The one thing that always bothered me about Blizzard (and TL) is that their community's are a litte too generous.
A few days.
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On December 10 2012 12:54 earti wrote:
Seeing this at an Engineering point of view, the majority of the suggestions are aesthetic. When they release a beta patch, they're more concerned about the functionality of the product than looks. Eventually they will be fixed in the future, but that's the point of Beta: They want to test out functionality rather than looks.
Yes I can see the many inconsistencies in the UI, but I really not gonna be concerned at this phase because it's not one that is being released into the masses. Think of it as writing the first draft of a report and all you care about at the time is the content of the report and not moreso the grammar, layout, and alignment because it's all going to be finished upon release. That sums up 99% of all the reports that I write up for all my classes.
I do appreciate your problems about the current beta patch, but that's the idea of a beta--there's BOUND to be problems.
On December 10 2012 16:45 ClanRH.TV wrote:
Sounds like a bunch of little stupid things for the most part.
Most of the UI inconsistencies are currently in WoL, a live finished product.
Yes, there are a lot of little things about UI design and inconsistencies, because there's a lot of real UI issues with B.net. But if that's not your interest, there's some serious stuff about ladder and how easy (or not) it is to use the UI too.
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Is the monobattles category really a case of "nothing much there at all"? As far as I know monobattles is pretty popular and its probably the my most played category - a category for that would be suitable for map variants in that mode. Its an easily definable group of maps that doesn't need to be lumped together with other Arcade maps
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On December 10 2012 20:40 mellitus wrote:
Is the monobattles category really a case of "nothing much there at all"? As far as I know monobattles is pretty popular and its probably the my most played category - a category for that would be suitable for map variants in that mode. Its an easily definable group of maps that doesn't need to be lumped together with other Arcade maps
Really? According to my search on WoL, there's only1 monobattle map.
I'm not saying to remove it. I'm just saying to make Monobattles a category in Arcade, instead of a category in Custom Games, since it's not the standard melee Starcraft game.
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Great write-up I disagree about the new decals making the game look like a joke, I enjoy them and like that blizzard has added a exp mechanic to attain them, it's small things like that that make me want to play a bit more
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While I think most people appreciate your work I am sure all of these things you have pointed out will be fixed for release, at the end of the day its a BETA and you are NOT expected to experience a FINALIZED product. I think there are more important things than font consistency.
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On December 10 2012 21:11 Swwww wrote:
While I think most people appreciate your work I am sure all of these things you have pointed out will be fixed for release, at the end of the day its a BETA and you are NOT expected to experience a FINALIZED product. I think there are more important things than font consistency.
Most of the UI inconsistencies are also in the live game.
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I wounder how the programming code looks if it allows for this inconsistency. It must be a maze.
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On December 10 2012 22:03 GrassEater wrote:
I wounder how the programming code looks if it allows for this inconsistency. It must be a maze.
Not necessarily. The programming code probably processes a UI description file. I would be very surprised if the buttons and other UI elements are rendered within the actual program source.
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Thank god for anal graphic designers.
Seriously, no sarcasm implied, good work
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Yeah just wanna pop in here to echo the statement most people are giving, thanks a bunch for all this hard work People like you make this community.
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Can we get someone (possibly a pro) to go through this and put some on the restricted pro sc2 forum on battle.net?
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This is an impressive job, really well put . I just can hope someone on blizzard reads this.
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On December 11 2012 00:01 `phobiA wrote:
Can we get someone (possibly a pro) to go through this and put some on the restricted pro sc2 forum on battle.net?
Not neccecary, if you look at Dustin's Twitter you can see he's already aware of this thread.
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Nice thread and good work!
I hope Blizz takes this serious
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This has been posted on battle.net right? This is amazing, great work man.
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Gold! if you did this on your own without having a designer degree you found your talent 
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Excellent post. As an added suggestion, you should be able to communicate to real-id friends from the beta, even if they dont have it.
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+ Show Spoiler +Slightly off topic, but I was reading the twitter after you linked it and I started to wonder if anyone felt less secure knowing he was platinum.
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On December 10 2012 21:13 paralleluniverse wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2012 21:11 Swwww wrote:
While I think most people appreciate your work I am sure all of these things you have pointed out will be fixed for release, at the end of the day its a BETA and you are NOT expected to experience a FINALIZED product. I think there are more important things than font consistency. Most of the UI inconsistencies are also in the live game.
that hurts D: so true
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Awesome post! Very detailed, very objective, very good in general.
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United States8 Posts
Hey all -
This is Cloaken, the StarCraft II Community Manager.
I wanted to personally hop in here and mention that we at Blizzard found this post extremely helpful; many thanks to paralleluniverse for taking the time and energy to be so detailed and thorough with the feedback. While we are still in beta, many of the things mentioned in this post were already on our polish list and, in some cases were already cleaned up in internal builds. That being said, there was plenty mentioned here that we did not have on our list but will most certainly be adding due to the quality of the feedback. So, thanks again for taking the time to write this all up!
Consider yourself perma-invited to all our future betas.
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This is what QA department should be doing. OP you did really amazing job, they should hire you.
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When the font size and alignment issues are fixed, I will remember that it was paralleluniverse from the TL forums who's effort made it possible that even those small things got polished.
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OP, Blizzard should give you a mousepad or something for helping their game development team. Good work Sir !!
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mousepad?!?! How bout hooking him up with some beta keys and hots when it comes out.
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Hi guys
Didn't want to start a new thread for this question. After the latest patch I had to uninstall and reinstall HoTS. Since then, I get a pinging noise (the same noise an observer gets when they spam click a building) when I spam a rally point. For example if I make a drone and I'm spamming the rally point onto a mineral patch it pings that sound every time I click the minerals.
I can get rid of it by disabling Interface Sounds but then I also lose the error sound you get when you don't have any minerals to make something or not enough supply. In the past, I'm almost certain I only got the error sound I just mentioned and I did not receive the pinging noise. Does anyone know what's going on?
Or I'm just crazy.
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On December 12 2012 14:35 Cloaken wrote:Hey all - This is Cloaken, the StarCraft II Community Manager. I wanted to personally hop in here and mention that we at Blizzard found this post extremely helpful; many thanks to paralleluniverse for taking the time and energy to be so detailed and thorough with the feedback. While we are still in beta, many of the things mentioned in this post were already on our polish list and, in some cases were already cleaned up in internal builds. That being said, there was plenty mentioned here that we did not have on our list but will most certainly be adding due to the quality of the feedback. So, thanks again for taking the time to write this all up! Consider yourself perma-invited to all our future betas.
Thanks to the team for their work on improving SC2 and B.net. I'm glad you found this helpful.
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On December 12 2012 14:35 Cloaken wrote:Hey all - This is Cloaken, the StarCraft II Community Manager. I wanted to personally hop in here and mention that we at Blizzard found this post extremely helpful; many thanks to paralleluniverse for taking the time and energy to be so detailed and thorough with the feedback. While we are still in beta, many of the things mentioned in this post were already on our polish list and, in some cases were already cleaned up in internal builds. That being said, there was plenty mentioned here that we did not have on our list but will most certainly be adding due to the quality of the feedback. So, thanks again for taking the time to write this all up! Consider yourself perma-invited to all our future betas.
I win.
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hahaha, wow, great job! It's interesting to see that all these things existed.
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On December 12 2012 14:35 Cloaken wrote:Hey all - This is Cloaken, the StarCraft II Community Manager. I wanted to personally hop in here and mention that we at Blizzard found this post extremely helpful; many thanks to paralleluniverse for taking the time and energy to be so detailed and thorough with the feedback. While we are still in beta, many of the things mentioned in this post were already on our polish list and, in some cases were already cleaned up in internal builds. That being said, there was plenty mentioned here that we did not have on our list but will most certainly be adding due to the quality of the feedback. So, thanks again for taking the time to write this all up! Consider yourself perma-invited to all our future betas.
awesome that you take some time posting on TL
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Ah! you reminded why I am not a software tester but a developer! nice work. You not a Saffer by any chance?
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They should add a "view replay" button in the score screen so you can quickly watch replay, and go back there to restart laddering !
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On December 14 2012 04:15 Cosmos wrote:
They should add a "view replay" button in the score screen so you can quickly watch replay, and go back there to restart laddering !
This! The new "Play Again" follows very clearly the obvious logic of "what would the user want to do from here?" As I see it, the most common things to do after a game are a) play again, b) watch the replay, and c) close the game. a) and c) are readily accessible, why not make b) just as much so?
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On December 14 2012 04:15 Cosmos wrote:
They should add a "view replay" button in the score screen so you can quickly watch replay, and go back there to restart laddering !
Yeah I really dislike having to go out of the matchmaking submenus to get to the replays after games, also please put back no. of workers created in a game in the quick look stats post match please.
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Great Job OP. And you totally win. Perma-invite to all future betas!
Pure professional and I am glad Blizzard recognizes this post.
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Hat's off to OP. Blizzard should hire you on the spot
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I agree with all your points, just wish more people saw it.
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Wow so much work :o Should get payed for that tbh
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/RwWWU.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Kiq1O.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/BTryu.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Xc0Df.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/0yEkB.jpg)
