The state of Battle.net 2.0 - Page 12

Online Replays

Someone who hasn't played sc1 won't understand how absolutely critical it is but the majority of players spent as much time watching replays with friends as they did playing. Replays are absolutely crucial to the multiplayer environment. Winning an awesome game in ladder vs a good opponent is great but what a player really wants to do is message all his friends and get them to watch the replay with him. Equally when they get flattened it's very common for a player to message a friend to watch the replay with them and discuss it. Multiplayer replays are as much a part of the game as the ladder itself and have been completely overlooked. I am well aware they were added to sc1 after the release but at the time it was new and revolutionary. sc1 did this 9 years ago, I'm sure the sc2 team can work it out. This function was not added to wc3 so I feel it's important to bring up exactly how critical it is to the gaming experience rather than hope that the game is just finished at some point in the future.

Chat Channels

Firstly, they are absolutely vital for the running of a tournament. You bring everyone into a channel and they just message each other. For bigger tournaments you divide it into several chat channels based upon brackets. Currently we're in the strange position where tournament organisers are forced to give out people's facebook ids and email addresses to random strangers or to simply use IRC. As with sc1, this technology exists. It's absurd that it's not in the game.
Secondly, the social aspects of chat channels cannot be overlooked. You can emulate it with parties but you have to keep adding and leaving every time someone plays a game. In sc1 upon winning you'd automatically return to the channel you were in when you started a game. You could have a home channel where your friends hung out and you'd spend far more time chatting than playing. You also saw the development of channels such as op ToT) where good players who didn't know each other congregated for friendly games. There is no such mecca in sc2.

Chat Commands

Just the same ones sc1 (or even better icc's hack of sc1) uses would be great. When I'm spamming in an intense ladder game at 200apm and a friend messages me I'm not going to click to open the friend interface, then click the friend I want, then select the chat box that now covers part of the screen and start chatting in it. That's simply not viable in game. The keyboard can type /m name sup? in a second and the entire process can be cancelled by a single stroke of esc or return if something in game comes up. I appreciate having /r but it's not enough. The mouse is just the wrong tool for dealing with chat and friends in game and I'm not sure how anyone in the bnet2 team didn't know this. Maybe if you have 30 apm and don't know how to spell your friends' names it'd be more practical but in sc1, even if you couldn't spell their names you could go /f l and it'd list your friends with their current status. Simply not fit for purpose, a downgrade from a functional system.

Ladder rankings

This is the heart of a ladder. This is what it's about. The ladder ranking says how good you are. If it goes up you're doing better. If it goes down you're doing worse. You cannot have a ladder without a ladder ranking. Leagues, divisions and now these absurd names for divisions are just a complex way of hiding a player from how many people there are above them. And I don't understand why. If I was 8 and just picked up a RTS for the first time with sc2 I might be a little disheartened to discover I wasn't top 10 in the world. But that's not really the target audience of a competetive ladder. Some people will be better at the game than other, that's not only inevitable but also pretty much the point. Thanks for this great auto matchmaking ladder but please stop trying so hard to conceal the outcome of it. It's like you've made a great running track and banned stopwatches.
On a related note, cross server laddering and a combined ranking is necessary for it to have any meaning. The Korean server is already at a generally higher level than the EU one. For a comparison points to have any meaning they must be worth the same on every server and that means the servers have to be able to play each other. I've used a US beta key and played on the US server without lag, there's no reason why I couldn't ladder vs them. If the top 10 in Europe couldn't get into the top 100 in Korea then the whole ranking system becomes meaningless.

Custom game lobby

I want to be able to see the name of the host and their ping. I also want to be able to filter and search custom games. A game name and password system would be ideal. sc1 had this and it worked brilliantly. You made a private name, set a password and used your functional chat system to /f m the password. Although the functional friend system would tell them you joined a game and if you used your standard password friends would know what it was and if they wanted to join they could.
Having to invite everybody to a custom game isn't fun. When you're playing a streamed game and the streamer says he wants to invite his caster giving him host powers or having to find out his identifier is inconvenient. In sc1 they could just pass on the password and the people who needed to join could join. Of course if your password got out you could be flooded with random people but I feel like I have to ask, who are these people desperately trying to join my game that forces it to be invite only? Give me a password and allow people who want to join my game and know the password to join. If people I don't like start to join I can always kick them and in a worst case scenario, use a different password.

LAN

I'm pretty sure I know why LAN hasn't been put in the game. It's to stop everybody in China using the same CD key on a virtual LAN. And that's fine, I know they did it with sc1 and obviously Blizzard is well within their rights to require online verification to prevent large scale piracy. What I don't understand is why Dustin feels the need to insult me over it.

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-How do you think that the removal of LAN play will affect the game's popularity, especially in tournament situations where you can't have 50 people on one DSL connection, or less-developed areas where broadband is restricted?

DB: The question really is, for us... I feel like broadband is available in a lot of places. Most of our users are already able to connect via broadband, and if you don't have broadband your online gaming experience is probably suffering on its own already. We're trying to create a stronger internet community, to encourage people to play on the internet, which is how it's meant to be played: With achievements, with the matchmaker, with your friends - you can see them if you're logged on wherever you are in the world.

We've found that certainly for us, StarCraft is a vastly superior experience when playing against someone of equal skill as you, and that might not be your friends. It's much, much more fun when you're being matchmade against someone with your skill level, and believe me, that's something we've been working on perfecting in StarCraft II. In the beta, we're still ironing out all the kinks but you almost always feel like you should be matched against somebody of your skill level, who can play at the level you can play at. In StarCraft, if you're playing someone who is better or worse than you, it really loses some of its teeth.

Sure, there'll always be someone who likes beating up on noobs, who likes pulling wings off butterflies, but that's not a fun experience. But by building a huge Battle.net community and bringing it together, we want to get them to play together. That was our goal from the beginning: to have everybody all on the same server, playing as one huge community.

I certainly hear the concerns about it, but it's something we're going to try and see how it goes, first.
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When I'm playing LAN the guy I'm playing with is generally in close proximity to me. When a guy is in close proximity he is generally a friend. So what I'm asking here is if I can have some kind of way of playing with my friends. So when DB turns round and says the only reason I'd want to play LAN is to avoid ladder and bash worse players I feel like he doesn't really understand what LANs are about. I'm not there to pull the wings off helpless insects, as bad as my friends are at RTS games it's not a sadism thing. It's because I enjoy spending time with them and would like to spend time with them playing sc2.
If you don't want everyone to pirate your game then use online verification before enabling LAN mode, I'm fine with that. It's a compromise that I can live with. But when DB shows no understanding of what a LAN is and calls me a sadist for wanting one I'm rather offended.




This post is not meant to be a whine or a flame, it is intended as a list of problems and arguments for why they need to be resolved. Bnet2 has been built up as this amazing new system that'll revolutionise gaming, we've been told the only reason sc2 has been delayed this long is because of it. So when I get on and see that it doesn't work and that the coders are spending their time on facebook integration so my aunt can see my sc2 awards and people I game with from around the world can add me to their facebook I get rather worried. It doesn't work and it'd mean a lot to me if they'd actually spend some time fixing the problems.

This whole thing makes me cry. I built a new computer because I wanted to play the new game. I'm going to Korea for 10 months because I wanted to be in the mecca of esports when SC2 unfolds (I can't go back in time and go there in 1999 for BW). The game is good. Blizzard's idea of making things for the sake of being cool makes the game fun and addicting, and years of development make sure it's balanced and competitive (and not a waste of time like persistent games - MMOs).

Then some force within Blizzard comes to treat me like a child and a fucking animal. There are too many really important things missing and not on the way. Why shouldn't I play on LAN, do I look like a pirate? Why shouldn't I play with my European and Asian friends? Why can't you show me how bad I really am compared to the rest of the ladder? Don't worry, I can take it. Why shouldn't I enjoy dicking around with other players in channels? I have to play BW just so I can feel the warmth of op irc and clan x17 after SC2 numbs me lonely. Your idea of esports is community, but then you sunder and mince the community... and you stab KeSPA in the face?

You have a competent matchmaking ladder. Great! Make sure you keep the hackers out. But how am I supposed to meet people? asld;fkjasld;fkjasl;dfkjasl;dkfj damnit.