Before I say anything I would like to say, yes its a beta, no one is expecting perfection, especially not me.
As a concerned consumer of Blizzard products the state of Battle.net 2.0 is beginning to worry me (I'm sure I'm not alone here either). Let me explain why.
- Time. Battle.net 2.0 was the reason that Starcraft was delayed for so long. This generated (unsurprisingly) alot of hype about Battle.net 2.0. - I mean if it takes so long to make then it must be awesome. Why am I concerned about this. If it took Blizzard so long to make something that is, quite frankly considerably worse than say regular battle.net in pretty much all ways, how long is it going to take them to make something that is actually worth using? 2 months to release, 2 years to make what we got. You do the math, doesn't look good.
- Priorities. When Battle.net 2.0 was previewed by Blizzard all those years and months ago it had alot of exciting new features. All of which have been removed or are not currently in beta. Ok fair enough, we just wanna play the game and have fun. What concerns me is that the priority for Blizzard instead of adding something like a chat room, clan system or even something trivial but still useful like a pacman game inside battle.net. Blizzard instead decided to add Facebook. I don't mean to be blunt, but who actually wanted that? Does anyone actually add gamer friends to their facebook account? I have my mom and my wife on facebook I don't want someone from halfway around the world adding them and being like "Hi I'm Robs friend from the internet". - Thats just wrong. Priorities. An analogy that Jdanzi put to me on msn actually seems appropriate to sum up this point. "What Blizzard are doing is watering the plants when the house is burning down" - The house being Battle.net 2.0.
- Features. As an engineer myself in real life one of the sayings I find myself saying far too often is "If its not broken, don't fix it". Another saying I find myself using more than I should be is "Simple products are good products". More or less if your product does what it says on the tin then thats what the consumer is paying for not anything more than that. No one gives a shit if your brand new Ford Mondeo comes with a bumper sticker, but they expect it to take you from A to B. I think Blizzard need to learn a lesson from those two sayings. Battle.net 2.0 is a medium to play Starcraft 2, no one cares about adding facebook friends or achievements or portraits or what randomly selected metal your league happens to be or making yourself feel good about being rank 4 in bronze league "omgz im rank 4 at being shit". What people want is to play Starcraft 2 against other people and to do that they need a way of communicating with them that doesn't require giving out personal information to total strangers.
These things concern me. It should concern you too. Blizzard I hope you read this and I hope you understand that as a consumer I am disappointed in your total lack of understanding your customer and your apparent total lack of forethought when implementing Battle.net 2.0. As a positive suggestion I suggest you start with Battle.net 2.0 the way it was at the start of Beta, because it was better.
On May 23 2010 08:08 Two_DoWn wrote: Has anyone actually felt connected to a larger community when they logged into battle.net? Sure, I can chat privately with friends, but only one at a time. Or I could, if i could actually make a friend, which I cant cuz I cant get to know anyone because I cant talk to them in the first place.
This is something that people have hoping for so long, but I think it's becoming increasingly clear that they just fucked up. Badly.
Really, really, really badly.
EDIT: Because I'm vain, I'm gonna move this rant from like page 4 to here. Note that ymirheim was talking about the social features specifically and I kinda misunderstood him, but the rant is relevant to the thread anyway.
On May 23 2010 06:11 MadZ wrote: it really annoys me to see all this whinning about sc2 BETA. because it is BETA ffs blizzard can change everything about the game at any time. of course i would like to see some changes and thats why i leave CONSTUCTIVE feedback on blizzards forums instead of just go to tl.net and whine because whinning and saying that dustin browder is an idiot isnt gonna get you anywhere!! wait for the game to come out and see what it is like there. if it is s*** then go play broodwar that is still an awesome game and if sc2 turns out to be awesome you can play that..
It may be the beta but the release date is in two months. Everyone has the right to complain at this point. There are some things that Blizzard has totally missed, and even with countless threads on their forums they have yet to do it. Blizzard needs to start listening to users more.
No one has the right to complain at this point. Why don't people get it, the client running on your computer, the functionality and features available to you, the functionality of the battlenet infrastructure that is currently running is NOT the prototype running at blizzard headquarters.
This is a beta, blizzard is not using it for our pleasure or benefit they are using it because they need our help in identifying bugs and balance issues. They know what things they need this help with and they are only going to provide you with whatever functionality they actually want to get tested. Don't anyone see how ridiculous all of this is? Do you really think that the obvious stuff missing from the beta right now is missing because they are refusing to listen to fan demands?
This is a beta, this is not the game, this is whatever part of the game that blizzard needs you to test for them at any given time. The singleplayer campaign is not in the game, in fact not a shred of it is. Are people freaking out about blizzard skipping a singleplayer campaign for this game? Ofcourse not because common sense tells you that there is a campaign, it has probably been finished for some time now. It is not in the beta because blizzard does not want or need us to test it.
People make the mistake of thinking that the beta process is some kind of iterative design where the features of the game are slowly added as they get completed until the beta turns into the retail version when everything is done. That is not how a beta works. They don't add stuff to it when it gets completed, they add selected functionality.
This would make sense, if it wasn't for one very simple thing: Blizzard has said that most of the things we are asking for will not be in the game for release.
I don't care what version Blizzard are running in their HQ, hell that version probably even has LAN, that's not something we'll ever get.
Let's look at a list of features we have asked for, and see which ones blizzard have said will be in for relase. I'm not gonna look for sources of these, at least not tonight as I've gotta eat and go to bed.
I'll start out with an obvious one:
LAN Will not be in the game. It seems that they have even given up on the idea of having a LAN-through-bnet where you would have to authenticate your game before playing on LAN. Their reasons for this have been stupid excuses along the lines of people who want LAN being evil fly-wing-pulling bastards*:, but I guess it's probably piracy related.
* Ok I guess I'm gonna have to source this one, since otherwise nobody will believe me:
-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?
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.
Clan features Not at release. Wc3 had them, they were appreciated. SC2 won't have them for release, but hopefully later. Hopefully.
Online replays Not for release. They "hope to add them later", which is code for "never" seeing as how WC3 has gone its entire life without the feature being added, despite SC having had it since 2001 or thereabouts.
Chat channels Not for release. I don't know why they can't just hack up something extremely simple as a temporary solution - just let me create a persistant chat which people can freely enter or leave, please!! Bnet is completely desolate without these... Clan channels really made battle.net feel like a community; you'd have your home channel and then you'd go to other channels and meet new people.
It was fun, it's too bad they - by the looks of things - never experienced that, or they'd see the importance of having these, even in their most rudimentary of forms. And I'm not being sarcastic or snide here (unlike a lot of the majority of this post), if all you were exposed to was the "clan x17" type channels, I can understand why you don't see a great need for them to return.
Chat commands We have /r. That's it. They haven't even commented on this as far as I'm aware.
Customizable hotkeys "Not for release". Wc3 had this, what's so hard about it? The chinese hacked up a basic hotkey editor (I mean, at the time I think it was basically editing a text file, but they gave it an interface and shit) like.... 3 days after beta was out?
Ladder rankings I don't know what they've said about this except that they are aware people want to see their rankings. When I first heard about the division system, man, I was excited. I pictured a competitive setting where you'd advance from division to division, with play offs, with tournaments, with everything you can imagine.
Instead we get this "everyone is a winner" bullshit. Yeah, make all the divisions equal, that's fucking awesome. Yeah, make it so that you can't compare your rankings between divisons, that's just great. Oh and while you are at it, why not make it so you can't view anything except YOUR divison. Oh and hey, having divisions go by number is just far too scary when someone gets put in division 500, let's give them random names.
This isn't the fundamental support needed to create a competitive enviornment (which, incidentally, a ladder is), it's KINDERGARTEN. If you are old enough to play SC2, you are old enough to realize that there are people out there who are better than you, and if the shock of discovering this is too much for you, well, you were going to find out sooner or later, at least this way you are unlikely to get physically hurt in the process.
Custom game lobby Yeah, I'd like one that doesn't suck, please? Hopefully this is some seriously placeholder shit cause right now it's pretty barren. Let's see: - No way of telling who the host is? Check - No way of telling ping? Check - No way of searching? Check - No way of setting a game name? Check
I just cannot imagine that they are planning on leaving it this way, so for now, I'll let this one slide. I think it's just a really basic version to allow us to use the custom game feature at a very bare-bones level.
Oh and these are somewhat related to custom games, but not the lobby: - Unable to create password protected games (blizzard, let me tell you, having to invite 6 streamers and their co-casters by typing in their names, is not fun - give me password protected games and let people join by themselves - please). - Unable to switch map once you've created a game. Really, can't the map selection process be part of the pre-game lobby? I don't get it.
Cross server playability There is none. There won't be any for release. They don't even have latency as an excuse anymore - I played on US today without battleping, after the TCP to UDP switch, and it's completely smooth. No lag, next to no latency differences from playing on EU.
---------
Let's move on to some less basic things, but that I'd still have hoped would be in a the sequel to their - quite frankly - amazing battle.net platform. Actually, let me stop for a moment first and explain why I think Battle.net was amazing.
A lot of people look at the old SC1 battle.net and deride it as aesthetically unpleasing, or a buggy piece of shit (black list bug, which wasn't really a bug but a "feature" to stop people from trying to spam join game - I miss the bnet days before this was implemented). Or they think of the annoying chain animations present in all of WC3s bnet interface... And yeah, there were problems with Battle.net but it had a couple of things going for it: it was very, very simple and very, very functional.
WaaaghTV has been around since 2003, and there was even an SC version made not too long ago. Basically, it lets you view live games, from within the game, as if they were a replay. It's a completely lag free way of streaming games, with a built in slight delay, and supports a virtually infinite number of users (as far as I understand it), with next to no bandwidth costs.
This is, again - as far as I understand it, I've not been a huge part of the WC3 community nor the CS one - the premier way of streaming tournament games except for the very biggest ones.
I can understand why this wasn't added - especially given how many essential features were left out, but it still makes me sad that it hasn't even been talked about, not so much as a "maybe in the future". Well, maybe they just want to surprise us with it when they are able to put work into it, it's not totally impossible.
Tournaments WC3 had automated tournaments right from the start, I'm not sure what they've said about them for SC2. I had always assumed they would be in there, now I dunno
On May 23 2010 06:52 HalfAmazing wrote: Battle.net 2.0 is literally worse than WarCraft III's battle.net in every imaginable way. Not a troll, not hyperbole, not exagerrating in the slightest. It is worse. In every possible way. It is more cumbersome, less efficient, less transparent, more isolated, less secure (privacy concerns) and lacking in very basic functionality. If somehow you guys think that because it's a BETA it has a right to be this bad, you are delusional. This is really fucking close to the final product, and NOBODY likes it.
I'd go as far as to say that battle.net 2.0 being as crappy as it is, will actually spike an increase in piracy. Any kind of hacker-designed multiplayer service presented as an alternative to bnet 2.0 is going to provide a more enjoyable multiplayer experience.
You are wrong. There is one advantage of Bnet 2.0 over WC3s Bnet.
There are no chain anmations
More seriously tho, I completely agree, and I'll openly say that while I will buy the game, and any expansion that is made, unless things start improving, I'll be jumping at the first privately run ladder I see.
They seem to want to create someone too complicated
Heroes of Newerth has a simple interface and no one complained about it, it was easy to use and had CHAT ROOMS while in beta... imagine how hard they must of worked
The more I deal with it, the more I realize how clunky and useless -2.0 is. There are 2 things I want bnet for. Play games, and figure out who I'm playing. Right now, I cant get into bnet, (and thus cant do number one) but even when I get in, its a bi*** to find out the rank and relative skill level of my opponent. Match history should have the division and rank of your opponent visible.
This is something that people have hoping for so long, but I think it's becoming increasingly clear that they just fucked up. Badly.
Really, really, really badly.
Gotta agree with this. As the patches came out, I've been trying harder and harder to hold on to the hope that all of the things we want are actually finished and they've been holding them back. The hope is getting harder to hold onto. With Patch 13 and the stupid friend system, lag, non-unique names, and other terrible things they've done, my hope is pretty much gone.
I agree with PaD; what they're trying to do is way too complicated and useless.
I mean, when I first logged on, I was stunned to find that race selection was in the multiplayer menu. Really? What happened to picking your race in the lobby? Did they really, really need to actually go to lengths to ensure that people don't switch races during countdown?
And then there's the loading screen, which is long and it doesn't give you any countdown for the actual start of the game, so for the whole of the loading time I'm forced to concentrate over the keyboard and mouse like I'm doing some sort of reflex test. Because that's what it is! And the reason why it turns out like this, is because they painstakingly put the countdown before the loading screen, in the bnet2.0 interface.
It's just, ugh, little things that make the system really unweldy and uncomfortable to use. I love the match making system in place (one of the big put-offs of iccup was that I'd run into way the heck too many smurfs and it's really not fun playing clearly superior players) and so and so, but there're so many issues around ~_~
Edit:
On May 23 2010 05:48 Two_DoWn wrote: Match history should have the division and rank of your opponent visible.
That's one of the little things that bothers me, too. I can't sort match history by date, so I end up with this discombobulated list of games played in random points. The replay list is like that, too. I just have like 40 replays all named Twilight Fortress etc. etc. and it's ridiculous having to find which one is the one I just played.
On May 23 2010 05:47 PaD wrote: They seem to want to create someone too complicated
Heroes of Newerth has a simple interface and no one complained about it, it was easy to use and had CHAT ROOMS while in beta... imagine how hard they must of worked
It really makes me sick to my stomach to keep hearing people sport the belief that the reason blizz didn't put in chat is because they can't, don't have time/know-how.
Well I have to admit that before this most recent patch things were running fairly smoothly and i was content with what there was. Achievements and portraits can be fun, but are not the right priority as you said. What I'm getting at is that in my mind they just needed to put in the chat rooms, and some sort of clan system maybe, and then in my eyes it would've been pretty good. Though I would like a change with the leagues and divisions and whatnot, changing that to just a global ladder. I think your points are clear and I'd also agree with PaD, where HoN actually had a really basic and pretty good interface. Maybe blizzard needs some lessons xD.
I just ignore all the crying over no Chat Rooms. I have a feeling the reason they are not in right now is because they are too easy to implement and test that they can wait until the last minute or even release to put them in. Because of that, they are forcing us to test things that they know wouldn't be tested if everything they had in store was all available.
Give it time...have faith. Blizzard hasn't released a bad game before (in my opinion) and I wouldn't even think this would be the first.
I'm really worried, that the deadline is so close and well as you described, they haven't hit the nail yet. It's like when you have a project do next morning and you start at 11 pm the day before. I hope they can get their stuff together and pull it off with success. Or at least they could extend the beta. To make sure the game is as good as it can be. Almost everyone has a beta key so it wouldn't be so bad if they did this.
Warcraft 3 battle net is definitely a lot better than the current battle net 2.0. I did not pay attention to what was happening with starcraft 2 much at all until the beta, so I didnt know it was delay to make this battle net 2.0. That's really a disappointment.
Really all the Warcraft 3 battlenet needed was an easy way for friends to join the same custom game, instead of trying to remember how many explanation points was in the "FOOTY FRENZY 4.23 -ar!!!!!!"
Look at the Client right now: they integrate a payment system, combined with the webshop, ppl will need to pay for battle-net access in the future, if you pay for something you want comfort and features, they implement this now
there is nothing complicated, its a beta and they want to earn money with the b-net in the future... of course they will implement chatrooms and stuff, but its useless now at this state
Battle.net 2.0 took many years to make and quite frankly, I'm disappointed. I was expecting something awesome like Steam/Battle.net without the bad stuff. Instead it's some glitched up, sloppy interface lacking simple yet important features, and with new features that do not seem to work correctly.
On May 23 2010 05:52 jewce wrote: Well I have to admit that before this most recent patch things were running fairly smoothly and i was content with what there was. Achievements and portraits can be fun, but are not the right priority as you said. What I'm getting at is that in my mind they just needed to put in the chat rooms, and some sort of clan system maybe, and then in my eyes it would've been pretty good. Though I would like a change with the leagues and divisions and whatnot, changing that to just a global ladder. I think your points are clear and I'd also agree with PaD, where HoN actually had a really basic and pretty good interface. Maybe blizzard needs some lessons xD.
I think maybe what I said was a bit wrong or rather put across wrong.
Bells and whistles can be nice. But get the core of your product working well before adding stuff that makes it more complicated.
Its much easier to fix something simple than to try and fix something complicated.
Things like achievements and portraits aren't bad things but making sure the product does what it is supposed to do in the first place should be the priority. i.e. allowing people to play Starcraft 2 over the internet with other people from around the world with low latency, in a cheat free environment etc etc.
Adding achievements is fine but you better make damn sure the fundamentals of the product work to perfection before you start adding things that don't necessarily add value.
On May 23 2010 05:51 Southlight wrote: I mean, when I first logged on, I was stunned to find that race selection was in the multiplayer menu. Really? What happened to picking your race in the lobby? Did they really, really need to actually go to lengths to ensure that people don't switch races during countdown?
And then there's the loading screen, which is long and it doesn't give you any countdown for the actual start of the game, so for the whole of the loading time I'm forced to concentrate over the keyboard and mouse like I'm doing some sort of reflex test. Because that's what it is! And the reason why it turns out like this, is because they painstakingly put the countdown before the loading screen, in the bnet2.0 interface.
there is nothing wrong with race selection, and you can change race during countdown,, and there is countdown.. first you whine about it, then you complain?
Either they're having problems implenting a chat room (doubtful) or they're withholding it on purpose. The only reason I would be comfortable with is that it's because it's a beta, but they haven't said much about chat, and a simple statement confirming a chat would go miles in quelling our nerdrage
And catchj, if people thinking the inability to implement a chat room makes you sick, what about the alternatives? i.e. actual reasons for lack of chat, and reasons for adding facebook implementation first, those should make you sick
What you have to remember is SC2 is not battle.net 2.0. Of course battle.net 2.0 needs to be working properly for us to enjoy SC2, but Blizzard is making it extravagant because it is going to be their platform for all of their games in the future. Steam was valve's new age platform that was really really bad in the beginning, but it eventually became more usable.
I feel Blizzard tried to step to deep with their platform too fast. Yes I agree the facebook thing is really lame. Why add something so gimmicky that who knows maybe next year be obsolete for the "new" fad. Chat rooms will come eventually I could care less about them. The fact their join custom games screen is pretty bad and I cannot really figure out how to tell how long ago a game was created or if it is full until after I download the map. Worst case scenario is that Blizzard will revert battle.net to what it was before patch 13 to release the game with if they cannot figure out how to fix it by time July 27 rolls around.
The hardware upgrades they do while the beta is down also might be an overhaul of a few systems and adding in new features(unlikely), but maybe a hardware change will make battle.net 2.0 stable enough anyway for launch. Remember you are paying for SC2 the game which will be pretty much complete at release. battle.net 2.0 is the free feature you get for buying SC2 and any future Blizzard game so they still have a lot of time to tinker with it and fix it.
I think as an end user you don't know 98% of what was created and what are the possibilities of this whole battle.net platform. It's not something for starcraft2, its for all future games for next 10-15 years (or longer). Building such infrastructure and architecture (from software point of view) is insanely hard and complex task. What you see in your SC2 user-friendly interface is but a mere fraction of complexity behind whole system. So i wouldn't be so critical, because adding new features on a powerful platform is the easy part, while designing and implementing such platform is the hard part.
And all the portraits, decals, map publishing and other features - well that's simply the business part of battle.net, because there has to be some model of monetization in order to sustain itself and bring some profit (its what every corporation is after anyway and there's nothing wrong with that).
On May 23 2010 05:59 Zionner wrote: I have to agree about the lack of chat rooms in 2.0...
I've been watching an MMO emulator, which this ONE guy worked on for about a month...the first thing that was working was.....Surprise Surprise...
Chat Rooms!
Honestly, it may just be my lack of experience, but out of everything they could implement, are chat rooms REALLY that hard?
Again, do you actually think that? It really boggles my mind that people believe that they don't have it in because they can't.
I doubt it is because they can't.
I think its a distinct possibility though that Blizzard simply didn't think that having chat rooms was important and so didn't implement them. Thats really the scary part about it though. If it was just a lack of technical knowledge that would be a good excuse, as to why they didn't. Lacking an understanding of how important something like a chat room is well that's just frightening.
I get the feeling that most people around here have never been part of a beta before. That is not a criticism or my attempt at being smug but I am an amateur game designer myself, but I have been involved in several projects from start to finish, I know how the process looks and I have been in numerous beta tests. You are wasting your time and your concern over these issues. It is like how people wrote page after page in several threads about how blizzard had fucked up the friends system just to have blizzard come in and state the obvious the next day, pointing out that they had not actually changed the buddy system just temporarily disabled certain features.
The beta is going down in just over a week, it is going to be down for several weeks. This is not to make changes to the game. Altering the game they can do while having the beta running and then patching it in which is what they have done so far. The only reason to shut the beta down is because they are going to be working on the infrastructure behind it, battlenet and the specific battlenet related components of the game. Considering the fact that in just over a week, they are going to be doing full time work on the battlenet features for probably atleast a month. Does that not atleast suggest that these concerns are better left until the beta goes live again, and you can see what they actually did in that time?
I have never been worried because I know that the features needed for a good social basis are going to be there. If you look at the design process and the discussions at blizzcon etc and many of the different choices that have been made in the development it is OBVIOUS that the social side of the game is very high on their agenda. They are not going to fuck it up or leave it out. Don't look at what is in a rugged beta at the moment look at what the designers have been talking about and what they have been doing through the entire development process. It is all there in the details. A company that does not prioritize social networking and easy access to friends while gaming would not had put a button leading directly to the friends list while in a game and would not had created features such as the ability to form a party before starting a game. Just, relax.
This is something that people have hoping for so long, but I think it's becoming increasingly clear that they just fucked up. Badly.
Really, really, really badly.
As I just experience a soul crushingly painful waste of life failing to use Bnet in it's current state I'm inclined to alter the opinions expressed in my first post to agree ^^
I wrote this on the beta forum (bad written, I know):
Dear blizzard,
I am sure you heard about ICCUP before. It's a starcraft 1 server with great and simple futures. People from Korea, Europe and Asia are all playing on the same server and everything is working perfectly. One thing is not that good about it: it's not noobfriendly.
Blizzard fixed the not-noob friendliness with leagues, which is the only thing that battlenet 2 does better then ICCUP. Battlenet 2 is lacking a lot of very simple features which ICCUP has and which are NEEDED for starcraft 2 to become an ESPORTS game.
The feautures: - channels - decent friend adding system (now it is ridicilous, the system pre-patch 13 was better) - a global ranking (remove the divisions please) - lan
What you are doing now is: - dividing people between different servers - making tournaments almost impossible with the current friend system and with no-lan - making it impossible for people to check how well / bad they are doing compared to the rest of the world (ranking) - making it impossible to play with people from other continents - making battlenet a lonely place
Why is ICCUP - capable to add people to 1 global server? - capable to add chat channels without a single problem? - capable to make a global ranking?
Almost everyone at the teamliquid forums is asking for these futures and you keep on being stubborn. These features are so simple and still they are missing from battlenet. I know that you think that some of these features have disadvantages, but that doesn't take away that they are NEEDED if you want sc2 to be an ESPORTS game. I understand that making 1 global server is hard, but things like chatchannels, a decent friend-adding system and a global ranking are not that hard to implement. I also understand that this is BETA, but aren't these things so simple that they should be in the BETA already?
it really annoys me to see all this whinning about sc2 BETA. because it is BETA ffs blizzard can change everything about the game at any time. of course i would like to see some changes and thats why i leave CONSTUCTIVE feedback on blizzards forums instead of just go to tl.net and whine because whinning and saying that dustin browder is an idiot isnt gonna get you anywhere!! wait for the game to come out and see what it is like there. if it is s*** then go play broodwar that is still an awesome game and if sc2 turns out to be awesome you can play that..
A million little gui and other ui fixes, little changes in wording, half the the balance changes just make anyone who knows the game well say "wtf is that? why?", while big issues go unsolved. They add facebook to battle.net. I'm a little disgusted, but if it's making them money, I can put up with it. The little changes keep creating bugs and distracting them from larger problems...
looks like they've been holding back lobby chat at least.
Pretty sure they mean inside a custom game
On May 23 2010 05:59 Zionner wrote: I have to agree about the lack of chat rooms in 2.0...
I've been watching an MMO emulator, which this ONE guy worked on for about a month...the first thing that was working was.....Surprise Surprise...
Chat Rooms!
Honestly, it may just be my lack of experience, but out of everything they could implement, are chat rooms REALLY that hard?
Again, do you actually think that? It really boggles my mind that people believe that they don't have it in because they can't.
I doubt it is because they can't.
I think its a distinct possibility though that Blizzard simply didn't think that having chat rooms was important and so didn't implement them. Thats really the scary part about it though. If it was just a lack of technical knowledge that would be a good excuse, as to why they didn't. Lacking an understanding of how important something like a chat room is well that's just frightening.
Ya, it really boggles the mind. Chat rooms are a necessary basic feature.
When thinking of the new Bnet 2.0 I really am going to miss those times when you played games for fun, distraction, away from reality.
For a long time now i once in a while really enjoy RTS games from blizzard for the reasons above. But with the new Facebook integration it will be a lonely bnet for me, since i just do now want to let the whole world know that i am playing a game at a certain moment. Anyway, this just shows that they fit in the whole aspect of merging gaming with reality step by step witch is bound to come.
I loved the old bnet and i will miss it. I really hope Blizzard takes a second opinion on merging gaming with reality in this manner.
On May 23 2010 06:07 Jusciax wrote: I think as an end user you don't know 98% of what was created and what are the possibilities of this whole battle.net platform. It's not something for starcraft2, its for all future games for next 10-15 years (or longer). Building such infrastructure and architecture (from software point of view) is insanely hard and complex task. What you see in your SC2 user-friendly interface is but a mere fraction of complexity behind whole system. So i wouldn't be so critical, because adding new features on a powerful platform is the easy part, while designing and implementing such platform is the hard part.
And all the portraits, decals, map publishing and other features - well that's simply the business part of battle.net, because there has to be some model of monetization in order to sustain itself and bring some profit (its what every corporation is after anyway and there's nothing wrong with that).
Customers don't want a platform to be used for a game in 15 years. They want a platform to be used now, immediately.
Your next point about infrastructure is the scary thing, you are right which is why it is scary. Like I said before it took them years to make battle.net 2.0, and it is quite frankly a sack of shit. How can they presume to fix something that complicated in 2 months.
As for the business point of view, your wrong. Portraits and achievements and aren't what gives you the value of the product, they are gimmicks to try and suck in people. They don't add value and they don't make money, just a shoddy way of doing business. The only reason these things are there at all is because some phaggot in a meeting thought it would be a good idea. If you were to ask anyone important such as Jinro if these things were important he would say GTFO.
On May 23 2010 06:11 MadZ wrote: it really annoys me to see all this whinning about sc2 BETA. because it is BETA ffs blizzard can change everything about the game at any time. of course i would like to see some changes and thats why i leave CONSTUCTIVE feedback on blizzards forums instead of just go to tl.net and whine because whinning and saying that dustin browder is an idiot isnt gonna get you anywhere!! wait for the game to come out and see what it is like there. if it is s*** then go play broodwar that is still an awesome game and if sc2 turns out to be awesome you can play that..
It may be the beta but the release date is in two months. Everyone has the right to complain at this point. There are some things that Blizzard has totally missed, and even with countless threads on their forums they have yet to do it. Blizzard needs to start listening to users more.
if you noticed in the new patch you cant add friends inless you know their e-mails WHICH sucks because i made a good 2v2 friend but the only way i can add him back is if i play with him again odds being very very very slim i liked the old /f a systeme and i think their trying to involve to many things like, like facebook when people really just wanna game.... the old /f a system was ok for what it was back then but now its just stupid i have to ask what is your e-mail so i can add you ( to me thats like saying here some personal information send me some spam please oh and stalk me on facebook) i liked the name and identifier thing but they need to change it because their just making it worse and worse
On May 23 2010 06:11 MadZ wrote: it really annoys me to see all this whinning about sc2 BETA. because it is BETA ffs blizzard can change everything about the game at any time. of course i would like to see some changes and thats why i leave CONSTUCTIVE feedback on blizzards forums instead of just go to tl.net and whine because whinning and saying that dustin browder is an idiot isnt gonna get you anywhere!! wait for the game to come out and see what it is like there. if it is s*** then go play broodwar that is still an awesome game and if sc2 turns out to be awesome you can play that..
Gee madZ it's clear to see you have no idea what you're talking about here in your second post.
It really annoys me to see bull like the load above. The idea behind a BETA is to provide feedback. Two months from release? NO! Funnily enough they cannot change "everything about the game" you inconceivable prat. I see 90% reasonable criticism, at least in threads like this one on TL.net and the useless ones get ignored quickly.
On May 23 2010 06:08 ymirheim wrote: I get the feeling that most people around here have never been part of a beta before. That is not a criticism or my attempt at being smug but I am an amateur game designer myself, but I have been involved in several projects from start to finish, I know how the process looks and I have been in numerous beta tests. You are wasting your time and your concern over these issues. It is like how people wrote page after page in several threads about how blizzard had fucked up the friends system just to have blizzard come in and state the obvious the next day, pointing out that they had not actually changed the buddy system just temporarily disabled certain features.
The beta is going down in just over a week, it is going to be down for several weeks. This is not to make changes to the game. Altering the game they can do while having the beta running and then patching it in which is what they have done so far. The only reason to shut the beta down is because they are going to be working on the infrastructure behind it, battlenet and the specific battlenet related components of the game. Considering the fact that in just over a week, they are going to be doing full time work on the battlenet features for probably atleast a month. Does that not atleast suggest that these concerns are better left until the beta goes live again, and you can see what they actually did in that time?
I have never been worried because I know that the features needed for a good social basis are going to be there. If you look at the design process and the discussions at blizzcon etc and many of the different choices that have been made in the development it is OBVIOUS that the social side of the game is very high on their agenda. They are not going to fuck it up or leave it out. Don't look at what is in a rugged beta at the moment look at what the designers have been talking about and what they have been doing through the entire development process. It is all there in the details. A company that does not prioritize social networking and easy access to friends while gaming would not had put a button leading directly to the friends list while in a game and would not had created features such as the ability to form a party before starting a game. Just, relax.
What you are essentially saying tho, is that they intentionally put a gimped social system into the game, wasting a ton of work to create something that is just less functional than what we once had.
For instance, if I want to message someone in game, I have to use my MOUSE. In SC1, in WC3, I just wrote /w NAME.
Now I have to click up a friends list and find the guys name before I can message him - does that really make sense to you? Is there really any way to write that off with a "well, I'm sure they have non-terrible solutions just waiting to be implemented"?
On May 23 2010 06:11 MadZ wrote: it really annoys me to see all this whinning about sc2 BETA. because it is BETA ffs blizzard can change everything about the game at any time. of course i would like to see some changes and thats why i leave CONSTUCTIVE feedback on blizzards forums instead of just go to tl.net and whine because whinning and saying that dustin browder is an idiot isnt gonna get you anywhere!! wait for the game to come out and see what it is like there. if it is s*** then go play broodwar that is still an awesome game and if sc2 turns out to be awesome you can play that..
Nothing I said in my original post pertains to the Beta at all. Yes SC2 is in beta. Does that have anything to do with the Battle.net 2.0 development from 2 years ago until now. - No.
Don't get frustrated, that your using th beta right now and chat rooms are not yet available. Blizzard is testing one thing at a time just like to improve balancing they only let us 1v1/2v2 for the first couple months instead of allowing custom game publishing. This isn't because its not in the final product. Stop looking at battle.net in its current state. Look at the features and tell them what you don't like. (ie you don't like facebook) But, don't make your argument "Why aren't there chat rooms, while there's this stupid facebook thing available" the answer is simple, this is a beta blizzard doesn't need you beta testing a chat room.
On May 23 2010 06:08 ymirheim wrote: I get the feeling that most people around here have never been part of a beta before. That is not a criticism or my attempt at being smug but I am an amateur game designer myself, but I have been involved in several projects from start to finish, I know how the process looks and I have been in numerous beta tests. You are wasting your time and your concern over these issues. It is like how people wrote page after page in several threads about how blizzard had fucked up the friends system just to have blizzard come in and state the obvious the next day, pointing out that they had not actually changed the buddy system just temporarily disabled certain features.
The beta is going down in just over a week, it is going to be down for several weeks. This is not to make changes to the game. Altering the game they can do while having the beta running and then patching it in which is what they have done so far. The only reason to shut the beta down is because they are going to be working on the infrastructure behind it, battlenet and the specific battlenet related components of the game. Considering the fact that in just over a week, they are going to be doing full time work on the battlenet features for probably atleast a month. Does that not atleast suggest that these concerns are better left until the beta goes live again, and you can see what they actually did in that time?
I have never been worried because I know that the features needed for a good social basis are going to be there. If you look at the design process and the discussions at blizzcon etc and many of the different choices that have been made in the development it is OBVIOUS that the social side of the game is very high on their agenda. They are not going to fuck it up or leave it out. Don't look at what is in a rugged beta at the moment look at what the designers have been talking about and what they have been doing through the entire development process. It is all there in the details. A company that does not prioritize social networking and easy access to friends while gaming would not had put a button leading directly to the friends list while in a game and would not had created features such as the ability to form a party before starting a game. Just, relax.
What you are essentially saying tho, is that they intentionally put a gimped social system into the game, wasting a ton of work to create something that is just less functional than what we once had.
For instance, if I want to message someone in game, I have to use my MOUSE. In SC1, in WC3, I just wrote /w NAME.
Now I have to click up a friends list and find the guys name before I can message him - does that really make sense to you? Is there really any way to write that off with a "well, I'm sure they have non-terrible solutions just waiting to be implemented"?
Although I'm not opposed to this UI for 7 year olds / people who can spend more than 5 minutes on just facebook without becoming bored, it is 100% true that the ability to chat in this manner, this "old, back-technology" manner needs to be available.
They are acting like they are making some "wonder thing" (aka battlenet 2) when it just lacks every basic thing. Why is ICCUP capable of having all those needed futures while blizzard just fails to add them?
On May 23 2010 06:11 MadZ wrote: it really annoys me to see all this whinning about sc2 BETA. because it is BETA ffs blizzard can change everything about the game at any time. of course i would like to see some changes and thats why i leave CONSTUCTIVE feedback on blizzards forums instead of just go to tl.net and whine because whinning and saying that dustin browder is an idiot isnt gonna get you anywhere!! wait for the game to come out and see what it is like there. if it is s*** then go play broodwar that is still an awesome game and if sc2 turns out to be awesome you can play that..
It may be the beta but the release date is in two months. Everyone has the right to complain at this point. There are some things that Blizzard has totally missed, and even with countless threads on their forums they have yet to do it. Blizzard needs to start listening to users more.
No one has the right to complain at this point. Why don't people get it, the client running on your computer, the functionality and features available to you, the functionality of the battlenet infrastructure that is currently running is NOT the prototype running at blizzard headquarters.
This is a beta, blizzard is not using it for our pleasure or benefit they are using it because they need our help in identifying bugs and balance issues. They know what things they need this help with and they are only going to provide you with whatever functionality they actually want to get tested. Don't anyone see how ridiculous all of this is? Do you really think that the obvious stuff missing from the beta right now is missing because they are refusing to listen to fan demands?
This is a beta, this is not the game, this is whatever part of the game that blizzard needs you to test for them at any given time. The singleplayer campaign is not in the game, in fact not a shred of it is. Are people freaking out about blizzard skipping a singleplayer campaign for this game? Ofcourse not because common sense tells you that there is a campaign, it has probably been finished for some time now. It is not in the beta because blizzard does not want or need us to test it.
People make the mistake of thinking that the beta process is some kind of iterative design where the features of the game are slowly added as they get completed until the beta turns into the retail version when everything is done. That is not how a beta works. They don't add stuff to it when it gets completed, they add selected functionality.
I kind of agree with ymirheim. The game is in beta and Blizzard is obviously allow to toy around with its product. The facebook feature, I don't think I'll ever use it, but who knows if it becomes wildly popular with other players. And the whole friends list and identifiers are driving me a bit crazy, but again they are testing it out and we should give them our feedback, just as is being done.
The OP does make a good point on keeping things simple. Blizzard may be over complicating Bnet2.0 with all their new features when war3 bnet was pretty damn decent already and a bit of an upgrade could have done fine in sc2. But again, its Blizzard and they're obviously entitled to innovate how they seem fit.
Concluding, as players/testers/customers let's just keep providing Blizz with feedback and hopefully most of our concerns will be resolved in the final product.
I'm actually at a lan right now, we had a ton of delays because there is some kind of ip limit on Bnet so everyone (over 100 people) had to proxy to play. Then battlenet went down in the round of 16. Everyone had to replay games. It's pretty retarded. No chat rooms, No lan, everyone is having lag issues ON LAN! Giving away your email or facebook info is retarded. Here's a picture from the Fl lan. We're getting the games done now but it's been pretty rediculous!
On May 23 2010 06:16 FrozenArbiter wrote: What you are essentially saying tho, is that they intentionally put a gimped social system into the game, wasting a ton of work to create something that is just less functional than what we once had.
For instance, if I want to message someone in game, I have to use my MOUSE. In SC1, in WC3, I just wrote /w NAME.
Now I have to click up a friends list and find the guys name before I can message him - does that really make sense to you? Is there really any way to write that off with a "well, I'm sure they have non-terrible solutions just waiting to be implemented"?
Well yes and no. First of all the issue is that a development process is so complicated that I can only really speculate in how stuff looks at the production level over there. I wouldn't say they have non terrible solutions just waiting to be implemented for all we know they may already be implemented just not on our client.
I guess the friends list issue that arose with patch 13 is a good reverse engineering example. The current buddy list system is precisely the same as it was in patch 12. In this patch they disabled certain functionality on the client side because they wanted to direct testing. On our side it looks as if the buddy system is really stupid and really obnoxious but in reality they have actually not changed it at all on their currently up to date prototype.
I can't and won't pretend though to speculate on why certain things are not in or how they would work but I feel comfortable with the fact that it will be implemented. That said there will obviously be stuff that people want that might actually not be in the game or vice versa but it is not going to be like it is now is all I am saying. Also, things like the chat system are integrated into battlenet 2.0 which pretty much has had to be static since the beta launched. The short maintenance periods are not enough to add entire elements or components to battlenet 2.0 so for all we know a chat system could have been completed for the last two months, but they cannot actually implement stuff like that without taking down battlenet for an extended period of time. Which is precisely what they are doing very soon.
Also I want to add to those concerned that I am really not trying to bash anyone for whining, nor am I saying that I know what blizzard got finished and not. I can obviously not know that, all I am saying is that there may be a lot of unnecessary concern based on misconceptions of how the development process looks, and that is understandable. I am just trying to help by telling people that you should not worry too much about it, atleast not until the second phase of beta starts.
On May 23 2010 06:11 MadZ wrote: it really annoys me to see all this whinning about sc2 BETA. because it is BETA ffs blizzard can change everything about the game at any time. of course i would like to see some changes and thats why i leave CONSTUCTIVE feedback on blizzards forums instead of just go to tl.net and whine because whinning and saying that dustin browder is an idiot isnt gonna get you anywhere!! wait for the game to come out and see what it is like there. if it is s*** then go play broodwar that is still an awesome game and if sc2 turns out to be awesome you can play that..
It may be the beta but the release date is in two months. Everyone has the right to complain at this point. There are some things that Blizzard has totally missed, and even with countless threads on their forums they have yet to do it. Blizzard needs to start listening to users more.
No one has the right to complain at this point. Why don't people get it, the client running on your computer, the functionality and features available to you, the functionality of the battlenet infrastructure that is currently running is NOT the prototype running at blizzard headquarters.
This is a beta, blizzard is not using it for our pleasure or benefit they are using it because they need our help in identifying bugs and balance issues. They know what things they need this help with and they are only going to provide you with whatever functionality they actually want to get tested. Don't anyone see how ridiculous all of this is? Do you really think that the obvious stuff missing from the beta right now is missing because they are refusing to listen to fan demands?
This is a beta, this is not the game, this is whatever part of the game that blizzard needs you to test for them at any given time. The singleplayer campaign is not in the game, in fact not a shred of it is. Are people freaking out about blizzard skipping a singleplayer campaign for this game? Ofcourse not because common sense tells you that there is a campaign, it has probably been finished for some time now. It is not in the beta because blizzard does not want or need us to test it.
People make the mistake of thinking that the beta process is some kind of iterative design where the features of the game are slowly added as they get completed until the beta turns into the retail version when everything is done. That is not how a beta works. They don't add stuff to it when it gets completed, they add selected functionality.
actually some good points.
blizz will most definitely have chat lobbies the way they have in every other battle net game, they want people playing the game though, not sitting idle or chatting but playing and finding problems with the experience itself.
It's too bad Blizzard didn't listen to what the fans actually would have wanted for a Battle.net 2.0, and instead chose to 'surprise' us. Well it certainly is a surprise, it's surprising how awful Battle.net 2.0 is compared to Battle.net from 1998. I would most certainly rather have Brood War Battle.net at this point. Were there really any people clamoring for Facebook implementation? If they want to add that in, that's absolutely fine, but when they have been fucking up almost all other standards aspects and expectations that fans have come to expect, that is unacceptable.
On May 23 2010 06:37 Salv wrote: It's too bad Blizzard didn't listen to what the fans actually would have wanted for a Battle.net 2.0, and instead chose to 'surprise' us. Well it certainly is a surprise, it's surprising how awful Battle.net 2.0 is compared to Battle.net from 1998. I would most certainly rather have Brood War Battle.net at this point. Were there really any people clamoring for Facebook implementation? If they want to add that in, that's absolutely fine, but when they have been fucking up almost all other standards aspects and expectations that fans have come to expect, that is unacceptable.
The facebook thing is a bit what the fuck. I mean who actually wanted that? srs.
On May 23 2010 06:37 Salv wrote: It's too bad Blizzard didn't listen to what the fans actually would have wanted for a Battle.net 2.0, and instead chose to 'surprise' us. Well it certainly is a surprise, it's surprising how awful Battle.net 2.0 is compared to Battle.net from 1998. I would most certainly rather have Brood War Battle.net at this point. Were there really any people clamoring for Facebook implementation? If they want to add that in, that's absolutely fine, but when they have been fucking up almost all other standards aspects and expectations that fans have come to expect, that is unacceptable.
The facebook thing is a bit what the fuck. I mean who actually wanted that? srs.
and what happens when no one uses facebook anymore?
There are many things Activision/Blizzard add just to make easy money:
- Facebook integration is a new way of advertisement. All it does is to show people that their friends play this "Starcraft II" game. I have no idea why anyone would care to share their latest SC2-Achievements with their facebook friends. The only reason for this feature is for Activision/Blizzard and Facebook to get more customers and thereforce more money. - Achievements are a way to make people keep playing the game without actually adding any cool content, or improving gameplay. There's a reason every new game has achievements. - A very long closed beta phase, which really is open. In my eyes this is very successful advertisement. Beta-testing could be done by a MUCH smaller amount of testers. But this isn't relevant to bnet. - Then there's the thing with the ladders. But this is already being heavily discussed in other threads.
Gameplay is okay (I guess, not talking balance issues), but everything else has $$$ written all over it.
The only cool thing about bnet2 is cross-game communication (not implemented yet). But now that I think of it, bnet1.0 had that, too. In conclusion, they took bnet1, removed tons of features and added functions to display the full names of friends and facebook. If they don't implement at least the mandatory features, such as a normal chat room, bnet2 is a giant leap backwards from the thirteen year old bnet1.
Oh btw, all of my comments regarding missing functionality relates to stuff that is clearly missing in the game, those things I believe are likely to be getting into retail we just won't see them until beta phase 2, or maybe not even then.
However, things like global ranking is a design decision and that is obviously a different topic, and I would side with those who think another ladder system would be beneficial. But I am afraid that I can offer no comfort on that because due to the way the ladder system has to be integrated into the beta, what we see is what we got right now. That does not mean that they cannot change their mind if we keep whining about it though but stuff like that falls into a different category than a chat system which may be finished but just not implemented into the framework.
Could someone tell me why they decided to make Battle.Net 2.0 ? Having played Diablo 2 and WarCraft 3 for the past 10 years, i dont remember having seen any single person complaining about the battle.net as it is right now. Who needed Battle.Net 2.0 ? Who told them we needed facebook ingame sothat real life people know we're a nerds and internet people can stalk into our personal information ? Who told them it was better to give your e-mail to add a friend instead of doing "/f a accname" ? Then about the lack of chat-lobby, I find it really funny not to have channels in a BETA game. First it would avoid hundreds of morons posting retarded threads on their forums when they could just ask people on the same game via channels and get to know what they wanted to. Second, at a beta stage, it could be simply good to have channels to meet people in an environment you dont know anyone in. They lack of common sense. They are bringing marketing to a whole new level : they dont answer to their customers' requests, THEY CREATE THE NEW NEEDS. Yeah of course it's how the world goes nowadays, but you need really good ideas to make it work not achievment baby stuff or Play Co-op vs Computer modes. blizzard should stick to what they were doing best in the best : creating awesome video games. For the socialization, i think we human are the most capable people of making every place with basic features a friendly place, without having half of our personal info posted or our full game history avaible for anyone, even custom games.
ps: has anyone else noticed that you could not fucking mute a moron in you dont have him in friend list? lack of common sense, anyone?
This is something that people have hoping for so long, but I think it's becoming increasingly clear that they just fucked up. Badly.
Really, really, really badly.
I agree completely.
They are not holding anything back.
What we have right now is pretty much what we're going to have at launch. You want clans? LAN? Chat channels? Tournaments? Lower latency? Chat commands? Rankings? Buy our expansion back, we didn't have time to do that in the last 7 years.
On May 23 2010 06:46 Toxi78 wrote: Could someone tell me why they decided to make Battle.Net 2.0 ? Having played Diablo 2 and WarCraft 3 for the past 10 years, i dont remember having seen any single person complaining about the battle.net as it is right now. Who needed Battle.Net 2.0 ? Who told them we needed facebook ingame sothat real life people know we're a nerds and internet people can stalk into our personal information ? Who told them it was better to give your e-mail to add a friend instead of doing "/f a accname" ? Then about the lack of chat-lobby, I find it really funny not to have channels in a BETA game. First it would avoid hundreds of morons posting retarded threads on their forums when they could just ask people on the same game via channels and get to know what they wanted to. Second, at a beta stage, it could be simply good to have channels to meet people in an environment you dont know anyone in. They lack of common sense. They are bringing marketing to a whole new level : they dont answer to their customers' requests, THEY CREATE THE NEW NEEDS. Yeah of course it's how the world goes nowadays, but you need really good ideas to make it work not achievment baby stuff or Play Co-op vs Computer modes. blizzard should stick to what they were doing best in the best : creating awesome video games. For the socialization, i think we human are the most capable people of making every place with basic features a friendly place, without having half of our personal info posted or our full game history avaible for anyone, even custom games.
ps: has anyone else noticed that you could not fucking mute a moron in you dont have him in friend list? lack of common sense, anyone?
Times change, you can't stick with the same tech from 12 years ago, casual players wouldn't buy it.
Another minor quibble I have with Battle.net 2.0 since patch 13 is that sometimes (read: always) when I try to join or create a custom game, nothing happens and then I'm no longer able to do anything else. I can still navigate the menus, but I can't find matches or try to join other games. =[
On May 23 2010 06:07 Jusciax wrote: I think as an end user you don't know 98% of what was created and what are the possibilities of this whole battle.net platform. It's not something for starcraft2, its for all future games for next 10-15 years (or longer). Building such infrastructure and architecture (from software point of view) is insanely hard and complex task. What you see in your SC2 user-friendly interface is but a mere fraction of complexity behind whole system. So i wouldn't be so critical, because adding new features on a powerful platform is the easy part, while designing and implementing such platform is the hard part.
And all the portraits, decals, map publishing and other features - well that's simply the business part of battle.net, because there has to be some model of monetization in order to sustain itself and bring some profit (its what every corporation is after anyway and there's nothing wrong with that).
Customers don't want a platform to be used for a game in 15 years. They want a platform to be used now, immediately.
Your next point about infrastructure is the scary thing, you are right which is why it is scary. Like I said before it took them years to make battle.net 2.0, and it is quite frankly a sack of shit. How can they presume to fix something that complicated in 2 months.
As for the business point of view, your wrong. Portraits and achievements and aren't what gives you the value of the product, they are gimmicks to try and suck in people. They don't add value and they don't make money, just a shoddy way of doing business. The only reason these things are there at all is because some phaggot in a meeting thought it would be a good idea. If you were to ask anyone important such as Jinro if these things were important he would say GTFO.
Customers always want everything now and everything working perfectly from the very start, and that's natural. But that's not how businesses view it, they have to come up solutions that will pay off in long term and plan accordingly. I do believe Blizzard analysed and weighed all the costs and implications of creating huge platform for all their future games, otherwise they would have not started developing it. And since this is a huge undertaking it will have problems along the way and especially at the start, but that's the price they were willing to pay, because it's a long term solution. From clients point of view it will be frustrating and they will lose some, but i have no doubt that it will pay off eventually for everyone involved.
Battle.net is not a sack of shit, far from it. It's not perfect and it won't be perfect for some time to come, but it will definitely improve. It would be crazy to think that such a complex system can work perfectly from very start, no matter how long it was developed or how many brilliant people worked on it. It's normal and it happens for every complex IT project out there.
All these fancy features don't give value for you, but it does for them as a business. You might not agree with techniques used (achievements etc.), but they do work for masses and in turn have value for business.
the worst thing about battle net is that u feel so fucking lonely -_- what i loved about bn was how full of life it was compared to early versions of steam or other games ; / now its all gone and what they made is some utter unfriendly game interface rather then some community center .... come on how all these new guys are supposed to stay when only way to get friends in game is knowing some sc2 page or some one who plays this game for some time -_-
On May 23 2010 06:46 Toxi78 wrote: Could someone tell me why they decided to make Battle.Net 2.0 ? Having played Diablo 2 and WarCraft 3 for the past 10 years, i dont remember having seen any single person complaining about the battle.net as it is right now. Who needed Battle.Net 2.0 ? Who told them we needed facebook ingame sothat real life people know we're a nerds and internet people can stalk into our personal information ? Who told them it was better to give your e-mail to add a friend instead of doing "/f a accname" ? Then about the lack of chat-lobby, I find it really funny not to have channels in a BETA game. First it would avoid hundreds of morons posting retarded threads on their forums when they could just ask people on the same game via channels and get to know what they wanted to. Second, at a beta stage, it could be simply good to have channels to meet people in an environment you dont know anyone in. They lack of common sense. They are bringing marketing to a whole new level : they dont answer to their customers' requests, THEY CREATE THE NEW NEEDS. Yeah of course it's how the world goes nowadays, but you need really good ideas to make it work not achievment baby stuff or Play Co-op vs Computer modes. blizzard should stick to what they were doing best in the best : creating awesome video games. For the socialization, i think we human are the most capable people of making every place with basic features a friendly place, without having half of our personal info posted or our full game history avaible for anyone, even custom games.
ps: has anyone else noticed that you could not fucking mute a moron in you dont have him in friend list? lack of common sense, anyone?
Times change, you can't stick with the same tech from 12 years ago, casual players wouldn't buy it.
Warcraft III, Starcraft 1, and Diablo II are all still bestsellers (They are all top 15 atm). What are you talking about lol.
This is something that people have hoping for so long, but I think it's becoming increasingly clear that they just fucked up. Badly.
Really, really, really badly.
I agree completely.
They are not holding anything back.
What we have right now is pretty much what we're going to have at launch. You want clans? LAN? Chat channels? Tournaments? Lower latency? Chat commands? Rankings? Buy our expansion back, we didn't have time to do that in the last 7 years.
Yeah I agree with this. Its definitely a bit of fool's hope for the ones who are saying things like "it will be in release". I've been in alot of betas and what you get in beta is whats in release.
The product will be going Gold in about a month which means there won't be a lot of changes made to it after that. I reckon the product we see in beta phase 2 (if there is one) will be the finished article.
Battle.net 2.0 is literally worse than WarCraft III's battle.net in every imaginable way. Not a troll, not hyperbole, not exagerrating in the slightest. It is worse. In every possible way. It is more cumbersome, less efficient, less transparent, more isolated, less secure (privacy concerns) and lacking in very basic functionality. If somehow you guys think that because it's a BETA it has a right to be this bad, you are delusional. This is really fucking close to the final product, and NOBODY likes it.
I'd go as far as to say that battle.net 2.0 being as crappy as it is, will actually spike an increase in piracy. Any kind of hacker-designed multiplayer service presented as an alternative to bnet 2.0 is going to provide a more enjoyable multiplayer experience.
Two months into the release date. People complaining when the beta was released didn't matter as much but it does now. Keep the complaints up and make Blizzard rethink. They either have to pull a miracle in two months, or delay the game even further. Everyone that I've talked to agreed that Battle.net 2.0 is disappointing. StarCraft 2 heavily relies on Battle.net 2.0 so it definitely affects the game to a great amount.
I'm disliking Battle.net 2.0 more and more. Cold, sterile, cumbersome, isolating, and buggy. Only the last one can really be attributed to it being in beta.
This is something that people have hoping for so long, but I think it's becoming increasingly clear that they just fucked up. Badly.
Really, really, really badly.
I agree completely.
They are not holding anything back.
What we have right now is pretty much what we're going to have at launch. You want clans? LAN? Chat channels? Tournaments? Lower latency? Chat commands? Rankings? Buy our expansion back, we didn't have time to do that in the last 7 years.
Yeah I agree with this. Its definitely a bit of fool's hope for the ones who are saying things like "it will be in release". I've been in alot of betas and what you get in beta is whats in release.
The product will be going Gold in about a month which means there won't be a lot of changes made to it after that. I reckon the product we see in beta phase 2 (if there is one) will be the finished article.
Going gold means very little when most of the functionality we are talking about has to do with battlenet which is a server/service framework and only loosely related to the game. Also the fact that the game is connected to battlenet also means that going gold has very little definitive impact on what can be done afterwards. The game is going to patch instantly when you install it on release date anyway.
On May 23 2010 05:36 Necrosjef wrote: Before I say anything I would like to say, yes its a beta, no one is expecting perfection, especially not me.
As a concerned consumer of Blizzard products the state of Battle.net 2.0 is beginning to worry me (I'm sure I'm not alone here either). Let me explain why.
- Time. Battle.net 2.0 was the reason that Starcraft was delayed for so long. This generated (unsurprisingly) alot of hype about Battle.net 2.0. - I mean if it takes so long to make then it must be awesome. Why am I concerned about this. If it took Blizzard so long to make something that is, quite frankly considerably worse than say regular battle.net in pretty much all ways, how long is it going to take them to make something that is actually worth using? 2 months to release, 2 years to make what we got. You do the math, doesn't look good.
- Priorities. When Battle.net 2.0 was previewed by Blizzard all those years and months ago it had alot of exciting new features. All of which have been removed or are not currently in beta. Ok fair enough, we just wanna play the game and have fun. What concerns me is that the priority for Blizzard instead of adding something like a chat room, clan system or even something trivial but still useful like a pacman game inside battle.net. Blizzard instead decided to add Facebook. I don't mean to be blunt, but who actually wanted that? Does anyone actually add gamer friends to their facebook account? I have my mom and my wife on facebook I don't want someone from halfway around the world adding them and being like "Hi I'm Robs friend from the internet". - Thats just wrong. Priorities. An analogy that Jdanzi put to me on msn actually seems appropriate to sum up this point. "What Blizzard are doing is watering the plants when the house is burning down" - The house being Battle.net 2.0.
- Features. As an engineer myself in real life one of the sayings I find myself saying far too often is "If its not broken, don't fix it". Another saying I find myself using more than I should be is "Simple products are good products". More or less if your product does what it says on the tin then thats what the consumer is paying for not anything more than that. No one gives a shit if your brand new Ford Mondeo comes with a bumper sticker, but they expect it to take you from A to B. I think Blizzard need to learn a lesson from those two sayings. Battle.net 2.0 is a medium to play Starcraft 2, no one cares about adding facebook friends or achievements or portraits or what randomly selected metal your league happens to be or making yourself feel good about being rank 4 in bronze league "omgz im rank 4 at being shit". What people want is to play Starcraft 2 against other people and to do that they need a way of communicating with them that doesn't require giving out personal information to total strangers.
These things concern me. It should concern you too. Blizzard I hope you read this and I hope you understand that as a consumer I am disappointed in your total lack of understanding your customer and your apparent total lack of forethought when implementing Battle.net 2.0. As a positive suggestion I suggest you start with Battle.net 2.0 the way it was at the start of Beta, because it was better.
On May 23 2010 06:11 MadZ wrote: it really annoys me to see all this whinning about sc2 BETA. because it is BETA ffs blizzard can change everything about the game at any time. of course i would like to see some changes and thats why i leave CONSTUCTIVE feedback on blizzards forums instead of just go to tl.net and whine because whinning and saying that dustin browder is an idiot isnt gonna get you anywhere!! wait for the game to come out and see what it is like there. if it is s*** then go play broodwar that is still an awesome game and if sc2 turns out to be awesome you can play that..
It may be the beta but the release date is in two months. Everyone has the right to complain at this point. There are some things that Blizzard has totally missed, and even with countless threads on their forums they have yet to do it. Blizzard needs to start listening to users more.
No one has the right to complain at this point. Why don't people get it, the client running on your computer, the functionality and features available to you, the functionality of the battlenet infrastructure that is currently running is NOT the prototype running at blizzard headquarters.
This is a beta, blizzard is not using it for our pleasure or benefit they are using it because they need our help in identifying bugs and balance issues. They know what things they need this help with and they are only going to provide you with whatever functionality they actually want to get tested. Don't anyone see how ridiculous all of this is? Do you really think that the obvious stuff missing from the beta right now is missing because they are refusing to listen to fan demands?
This is a beta, this is not the game, this is whatever part of the game that blizzard needs you to test for them at any given time. The singleplayer campaign is not in the game, in fact not a shred of it is. Are people freaking out about blizzard skipping a singleplayer campaign for this game? Ofcourse not because common sense tells you that there is a campaign, it has probably been finished for some time now. It is not in the beta because blizzard does not want or need us to test it.
People make the mistake of thinking that the beta process is some kind of iterative design where the features of the game are slowly added as they get completed until the beta turns into the retail version when everything is done. That is not how a beta works. They don't add stuff to it when it gets completed, they add selected functionality.
This would make sense, if it wasn't for one very simple thing: Blizzard has said that most of the things we are asking for will not be in the game for release.
I don't care what version Blizzard are running in their HQ, hell that version probably even has LAN, that's not something we'll ever get.
Let's look at a list of features we have asked for, and see which ones blizzard have said will be in for relase. I'm not gonna look for sources of these, at least not tonight as I've gotta eat and go to bed.
I'll start out with an obvious one:
LAN Will not be in the game. It seems that they have even given up on the idea of having a LAN-through-bnet where you would have to authenticate your game before playing on LAN. Their reasons for this have been stupid excuses along the lines of people who want LAN being evil fly-wing-pulling bastards*:, but I guess it's probably piracy related.
* Ok I guess I'm gonna have to source this one, since otherwise nobody will believe me:
-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?
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.
Clan features Not at release. Wc3 had them, they were appreciated. SC2 won't have them for release, but hopefully later. Hopefully.
Online replays Not for release. They "hope to add them later", which is code for "never" seeing as how WC3 has gone its entire life without the feature being added, despite SC having had it since 2001 or thereabouts.
Chat channels Not for release. I don't know why they can't just hack up something extremely simple as a temporary solution - just let me create a persistant chat which people can freely enter or leave, please!! Bnet is completely desolate without these... Clan channels really made battle.net feel like a community; you'd have your home channel and then you'd go to other channels and meet new people.
It was fun, it's too bad they - by the looks of things - never experienced that, or they'd see the importance of having these, even in their most rudimentary of forms. And I'm not being sarcastic or snide here (unlike a lot of the majority of this post), if all you were exposed to was the "clan x17" type channels, I can understand why you don't see a great need for them to return.
Chat commands We have /r. That's it. They haven't even commented on this as far as I'm aware.
Customizable hotkeys "Not for release". Wc3 had this, what's so hard about it? The chinese hacked up a basic hotkey editor (I mean, at the time I think it was basically editing a text file, but they gave it an interface and shit) like.... 3 days after beta was out?
Ladder rankings I don't know what they've said about this except that they are aware people want to see their rankings. When I first heard about the division system, man, I was excited. I pictured a competitive setting where you'd advance from division to division, with play offs, with tournaments, with everything you can imagine.
Instead we get this "everyone is a winner" bullshit. Yeah, make all the divisions equal, that's fucking awesome. Yeah, make it so that you can't compare your rankings between divisons, that's just great. Oh and while you are at it, why not make it so you can't view anything except YOUR divison. Oh and hey, having divisions go by number is just far too scary when someone gets put in division 500, let's give them random names.
This isn't the fundamental support needed to create a competitive enviornment (which, incidentally, a ladder is), it's KINDERGARTEN. If you are old enough to play SC2, you are old enough to realize that there are people out there who are better than you, and if the shock of discovering this is too much for you, well, you were going to find out sooner or later, at least this way you are unlikely to get physically hurt in the process.
Custom game lobby Yeah, I'd like one that doesn't suck, please? Hopefully this is some seriously placeholder shit cause right now it's pretty barren. Let's see: - No way of telling who the host is? Check - No way of telling ping? Check - No way of searching? Check - No way of setting a game name? Check
I just cannot imagine that they are planning on leaving it this way, so for now, I'll let this one slide. I think it's just a really basic version to allow us to use the custom game feature at a very bare-bones level.
Oh and these are somewhat related to custom games, but not the lobby: - Unable to create password protected games (blizzard, let me tell you, having to invite 6 streamers and their co-casters by typing in their names, is not fun - give me password protected games and let people join by themselves - please). - Unable to switch map once you've created a game. Really, can't the map selection process be part of the pre-game lobby? I don't get it.
Cross server playability There is none. There won't be any for release. They don't even have latency as an excuse anymore - I played on US today without battleping, after the TCP to UDP switch, and it's completely smooth. No lag, next to no latency differences from playing on EU.
---------
Let's move on to some less basic things, but that I'd still have hoped would be in a the sequel to their - quite frankly - amazing battle.net platform. Actually, let me stop for a moment first and explain why I think Battle.net was amazing.
A lot of people look at the old SC1 battle.net and deride it as aesthetically unpleasing, or a buggy piece of shit (black list bug, which wasn't really a bug but a "feature" to stop people from trying to spam join game - I miss the bnet days before this was implemented). Or they think of the annoying chain animations present in all of WC3s bnet interface... And yeah, there were problems with Battle.net but it had a couple of things going for it: it was very, very simple and very, very functional.
WaaaghTV has been around since 2003, and there was even an SC version made not too long ago. Basically, it lets you view live games, from within the game, as if they were a replay. It's a completely lag free way of streaming games, with a built in slight delay, and supports a virtually infinite number of users (as far as I understand it), with next to no bandwidth costs.
This is, again - as far as I understand it, I've not been a huge part of the WC3 community nor the CS one - the premier way of streaming tournament games except for the very biggest ones.
I can understand why this wasn't added - especially given how many essential features were left out, but it still makes me sad that it hasn't even been talked about, not so much as a "maybe in the future". Well, maybe they just want to surprise us with it when they are able to put work into it, it's not totally impossible.
Tournaments WC3 had automated tournaments right from the start, I'm not sure what they've said about them for SC2. I had always assumed they would be in there, now I dunno
On May 23 2010 06:52 HalfAmazing wrote: Battle.net 2.0 is literally worse than WarCraft III's battle.net in every imaginable way. Not a troll, not hyperbole, not exagerrating in the slightest. It is worse. In every possible way. It is more cumbersome, less efficient, less transparent, more isolated, less secure (privacy concerns) and lacking in very basic functionality. If somehow you guys think that because it's a BETA it has a right to be this bad, you are delusional. This is really fucking close to the final product, and NOBODY likes it.
I'd go as far as to say that battle.net 2.0 being as crappy as it is, will actually spike an increase in piracy. Any kind of hacker-designed multiplayer service presented as an alternative to bnet 2.0 is going to provide a more enjoyable multiplayer experience.
You are wrong. There is one advantage of Bnet 2.0 over WC3s Bnet.
There are no chain anmations
More seriously tho, I completely agree, and I'll openly say that while I will buy the game, and any expansion that is made, unless things start improving, I'll be jumping at the first privately run ladder I see.
On May 23 2010 07:00 FrozenArbiter wrote: This isn't the fundamental support needed to create a competitive enviornment (which, incidentally, a ladder is), it's KINDERGARTEN. If you are old enough to play SC2, you are old enough to realize that there are people out there who are better than you, and if the shock of discovering this is too much for you, well, you were going to find out sooner or later, at least this way you are unlikely to get physically hurt in the process.
Clearly you don't remember how fun Kindergarten was. Nap time was the shit.
But other than that, I agree with the entirety of your post.
Woah, wait man. I was talking about social infrastructure only Although I fully agree with you on several of the features that we know won't be there. Maybe it was because my posts started off as a reply to a line of argument on chat systems or maybe I just failed to make it clear that is what I meant. I am quite skilled at making myself misunderstood so that is possible My apologies if I got people confused.
Anyway, all my posts relate only to core social features most prominently smoother friends management and chat.
As for all the other stuff I completely agree with most of that it is bad and that we won't see it. The biggest issue for me is the separate servers and the lack of global ranking. The lack of lan support I fully understand actually. They pretty much have to go with that in order to control hacking and piracy. Not saying I like it but I understand why it has to be that way.
Nice read, i will give out another perspective that is also frustrating me and i think that is also a big problem for many others like me.
My mayor problem as a tournament manager with Bnet 2.0 patch 13 is how i'm going to be able to group everybody and keeping their information as private as possible.
I respect people who don't want to give away their email accounts, even less if that account is their facebook account where i can find out who their relatives are, his relationship & every single information.
I can't imagine how hard it will be for Craftcup or gosucoaching to manage their tournament (I only know this ones) with +300 signed up players.
You can add people without their real ID after playing with them or by making a party. But when you make a party with more than 3 people you cannot create 1v1 map wich is absolutely riciculous, so you can't manage a tournament with a party of 32 people (i don't even know wich is the maximum numbers of party members possible)
There are many flaws in Bnet 2.0, and as far is know SC longevity depends on competitive multiplayer gaming (tournaments) and Bnet 2.0 isn't making that easier.
What will happen to Clan Leagues, Nation Wars, ICCUP, etc... They made SCBW survive all this years.
For me, the main purpose for beta testing SC2 is under a competitive enviroment unless they expect SC2 to die soon and we all go back to SCBW or WC3.
I loved SC2 before this patch, now i'm very sad and disappointed. Dustin Bowder go back to C&C.
On May 23 2010 07:05 ymirheim wrote: @FrozenArbiter
Woah, wait man. I was talking about social infrastructure only Although I fully agree with you on several of the features that we know won't be there. Maybe it was because my posts started off as a reply to a line of argument on chat systems or maybe I just failed to make it clear that is what I meant. I am quite skilled at making myself misunderstood so that is possible My apologies if I got people confused.
Anyway, all my posts relate only to core social features most prominently smoother friends management and chat.
As for all the other stuff I completely agree with most of that it is bad and that we won't see it. The biggest issue for me is the separate servers and the lack of global ranking. The lack of lan support I fully understand actually. They pretty much have to go with that in order to control hacking and piracy. Not saying I like it but I understand why it has to be that way.
Oh I see, sorry =] It's all good tho, that rant was long in the making.
On May 23 2010 07:05 ymirheim wrote: @FrozenArbiter
Woah, wait man. I was talking about social infrastructure only Although I fully agree with you on several of the features that we know won't be there. Maybe it was because my posts started off as a reply to a line of argument on chat systems or maybe I just failed to make it clear that is what I meant. I am quite skilled at making myself misunderstood so that is possible My apologies if I got people confused.
Anyway, all my posts relate only to core social features most prominently smoother friends management and chat.
As for all the other stuff I completely agree with most of that it is bad and that we won't see it. The biggest issue for me is the separate servers and the lack of global ranking. The lack of lan support I fully understand actually. They pretty much have to go with that in order to control hacking and piracy. Not saying I like it but I understand why it has to be that way.
Oh I see, sorry =] It's all good tho, that rant was long in the making.
And good thing you made it, I pretty much agree with it 100%.
I especially hate the fact that I will have to buy at least two different copies of the game to play with both my american and european friends.. I guess I understand the logic behind having the regions on separate servers. But they should at least let you "transfer" your account between servers.
rather than blaming them for all the stupid shit they have implemented into the "social interface", lets think about all the awesome GAMING features they could have implemented. -a generalized replays database, on which you could find every ladder game from the best divisions. -a "waaaghtv"-like interface sothat an unlimited ammount of people could watch a game live as observers, and lets dream, maybe make it so that people chat togehter? -a LAN feature, e-sports , anyone? -an implemented IRC interface to organize clanwars, tournaments etc. -A FUCKING CHAT LOBBY -how about add-ons just like in wow (never played wow just heard of it) sothat big organizations could release their addons, and lets dream, an ESL addon to check your clanwars and the ESL ladder, or add-ons to listen to some shoutcast during a LIVE GAME that you could watch as an observer.
but i think they just asked random faggots in the streets and the guys were like ..mhhh....if there is facebook....i could buy it....
This last patch truly let me see how garbage Battle.net 2.0 is.
It's gross, it's unnapealing, I want it gone.
I dont want facebook on a video games, I and i TRULY do NOT want my name visible to every arse i want on my friends list.
I cant explain how unappealing this new battle net is. Remove it, Introduce battle.net 1.0, Everyone wins. Battle.net 1.0 with a new interface is the way to go IMO.
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 is almost unreal he uses this as part of his justification for removing LAN. I cannot believe he actually said this.
No way of telling who the host is? - No way of searching? Check
The host is in white letters (it's hard to see) and you can search for published maps, which actually seems to work great (it's in the top right), much better than any other aspect of custom games right now. Too bad all custom games are unplayable at the moment because of lag and input delay.
This whole thread is full of so much ignorance its astounding.
Do you think what we're seeing now is EVERYTHING Blizzard has worked on? There are huge areas of the game that are "Disabled for Beta" because they don't want us to be preoccupied testing those things -- but that doesn't mean they're not working on it, idiots.
Do you not realize that there are different teams working on different areas of the system? The people who implemented Facebook have a different role than the people who balance the game or work on the clan features, etc.
What a ridiculous bunch of unappreciative ignorance.
Does anyone dare to make a post on the Blizzard SC2 forum complaining on how much Battle.net 2.0 sucks? I'm not trying to start something bad, but seriously... just look at Jinro's post. You're telling me those things could not be done yet (if ever)? StarCraft fans have waited for a sequel in over a decade and you've come up with.... this?!
On May 23 2010 07:13 Wolfpox wrote: This whole thread is full of so much ignorance its astounding.
Do you think what we're seeing now is EVERYTHING Blizzard has worked on? There are huge areas of the game that are "Disabled for Beta" because they don't want us to be preoccupied testing those things -- but that doesn't mean they're not working on it, idiots.
Do you not realize that there are different teams working on different areas of the system? The people who implemented Facebook have a different role than the people who balance the game or work on the clan features, etc.
What a ridiculous bunch of unappreciative ignorance.
while i kind of agree with what you are saying, seeing the posts actually listing all the LACK OF features really puts things in perspective that there really is not very much to appreciate at the moment :/
esp. considering all the features that they CHOSE not to implement and may never implement.
-a generalized replays database, on which you could find every ladder game from the best divisions.
This is actually something they have planned for their Proleague division. Assuming the pay or prestige is high, I can see it working. If not, I think pros are gonna be reluctant to have ALL their replays public.
Dustin Bowder go back to C&C
While I resent his comment about pulling wings off butterflies (come on, what has that got to do with wanting LAN man ? I've always like Browder but that was just offensive), I really don't think you can blame him for 99% of the battle.net direction.
As far as I understand it, that's a separate team and they don't really interact THAT much.
Jinro man that last post strikes home too much ;( Excellent OP btw I could not agree more on many of these points. We are all just hoping but it's becoming increasingly more apparent that they have just FUCKED things up royally so far. The beta going down is their chance at rebirth, but I am losing faith quickly. Seriously what the fuck blizzard, it's like they really had no clue what they were doing when they made Bnet. They really seemed to put the bottom line of making money out of Bnet above basic's that gamers EXPECT especially from blizzard. Sad times... really.
On May 23 2010 07:17 wrgrbl wrote: All I want is a chatroom. We can ghetto rig the rest of the social functions that bnet lacks ourselves if we just had that.
The truth. I wouldn't need a working friends list, working game lobbies, or whatever if only there were chat rooms. =[
Thank you, FA. Friends wondered why I was angry at the Facebook feature; you just summed it up exactly. So much is missing which shouldn't be hard at all to implement.
I've loved this game and I love it already. But my faith is slowly deminishing as time and patches go by... And with the little time left to the release? I just cannot believe it.
What a ridiculous bunch of unappreciative ignorance.
Unappreciative? Last time I checked Blizzard wasn't paying us to play the game. I do not appreciate anything they do. I pay for it. We will all buy this game and we have a right to complain, no - a REQUIREMENT - to complain. Excuse us for wanting the primary interface for playing SC2 to not suck. Or we could all sit quietly on our hands, give Blizzard $60, and thank them for a pile of crap. After all, we wouldn't want to be unappreciative!
They're spending way too much time on adding trash features to battle.net like facebook, achievements, zillions of leagues and other useless crap. I agree OP.
I don't think anyone cares about all the other flashy crap, we just want fast queues and lagless games. Don't bog down your servers with USELESS crap.
-a generalized replays database, on which you could find every ladder game from the best divisions.
This is actually something they have planned for their Proleague division. Assuming the pay or prestige is high, I can see it working. If not, I think pros are gonna be reluctant to have ALL their replays public.
While I resent his comment about pulling wings off butterflies (come on, what has that got to do with wanting LAN man ? I've always like Browder but that was just offensive), I really don't think you can blame him for 99% of the battle.net direction.
As far as I understand it, that's a separate team and they don't really interact THAT much.
yeah well, i really hope everything is not his fault and i might have been too agresive (mainly cz i'm not even able to play a single game ejejeje full of errors)
But you pointed out many key features that are lacking and who should we blame then ? I honestly don't understand who is taking the decisions, in W3 they made a lot of great implementations (i loved the tournament system & clan) and now they are downgrading it a lot.
If they want to do somekind of facebook integration then let us make pages with tournaments INSIDE BNET 2.0 just like facebook events... that would be AWESOME, but without giving away our privacy.
Back then I was sceptical, now I've tested it out and I'm convinced it is the wrong approach. They seem to legitimize all these restrictive mechanics with wanting to "protect" us from being "assaulted" by chat that's irrelevant to us as a person and the communities we've bonded to.
What happens though, for me atleast, is that when I log on to bnet 2.0 I feel isolated. They brag about the "always connected" experience, but i've never felt so disconnected in an online game as when I'm outside of a match in sc2. Lurking in chat channels, and occationally joining in on discussions that should catch my interest between random strangers is something I've appreciated a lot in all Blizzard titles.
Also, I want there to be a barrier between my gaming life and my real life. When I log on I want to be known as my chosen identity in each respective game. I do not want people to think of my real name when they see me log on. I want to be my avatar to others. Blizzard seem to be enforcing a blurred line between real life identity and online identity, which is actually something I take offense to. It's far too intrusive. I can't understand this being anything other than a marketing approach to bring new people into games that otherwise wouldn't give it a thought.
As of right now I feel Blizzard is trying to police us as consumers far too much, causing too much harm by trying to "shield" us from any kind of experience that they fear could potentially scare consumers away from their product. The marketing approach is also far too intrusive and somewhat disrespectfull towards the consumers privacy.
Don't want to compare apples to oranges; but somebody did bring up HoN.
- S2 Games is a speck of dirt compared to Blizz and the money they rake in; HoN still costs $30, even after release (lifetime subscription, like their other games)
- They have, since the beginning of the beta, supported IRC-like chat (could be IRC itself).
- They have, since the beginning of the beta, supported developers. By that i mean, they allowed people to pimp their tools on their forums, break apart the game, write model viewers, etc.
- They made a good map into a damn solid game. I didn't play in awhile but I still check it out every now and then, I see they add new heroes, they send out emails to subscribers telling them whats up, etc.
They probably had to get the beta testers to pay early to support the game and the servers. That's how popular the game has gotten. Their downtime throughout all this has been minimal, and they had (I was part of it for awhile but I got bored) a separate testing team of people interested to test beta patches before they were released, to make sure nothing fucks up.
Like I said, I don't want to compare apples to oranges. We will see if Blizz actually does something with bnet2. So far, the servers going down and everything doesn't look too good. Not for a company that can host truckloads of servers for WoW.
I think the only thing that bugs me about bnet2.0 is the fact that there are no channels. Channels are what made the sc:bw scene what it is today (at least in the americas and in europe).
Nice post Jinro, it started bringing back a ton of nostalgia.
Which come to think of it, I believe should have been Blizzard's main focal point with battle.net 2.0; nostalgia. Because lets face it, old battle.net felt so barebone yet so functional. There was a reason it was one of the most successful online gaming gateways.
All blizzard had to do was take old battle.net, keep everything the same except implement matchmaking, an easy to roam indepth ladder system (unlike the piece of shit we have now), and the party system. Leave the battle.net interface exactly the same except enable a way for users to browse custom games while having the chat still visible (think Diablo 2 but better...because this is fucking battle.net 2.0) and any game they create/join their party of friends will just come with them.
I couldn't believe the delay imposed for battle.net 2.0. I thought they would add a ton of new features, like integrated streams; accessible directly on battle.net 2.0 with reliable servers. Or a huge database for great replays; rather than having them scattered across the community. You know, stuff to make SC2 a more successful e-sport.
You can tell the quality is being hindered by profit. Blizzard is focusing on a bunch of gimmicks (achievements, portraits, facebook feature, the stupid graphs at the score screen? I wouldn't be surprised if they announce an option to streamline your xbox live buddies to your friends list, too) rather than fixing the gimped service. Battle.net 2.0 is more of a downgrade than an upgrade.
On May 23 2010 07:29 afiddy wrote: I think the only thing that bugs me about bnet2.0 is the fact that there are no channels. Channels are what made the sc:bw scene what it is today (at least in the americas and in europe).
Yeah the first thing I was puzzled about when I got my beta key was "Where are the channels?" I had to go to IRC to have someone tell me there are none...
Facebook integration is a joke -- we're all agreed. What offends me the most though, is that it's so obnoxiously intrusive. It's big, it's in your face and there's no 'not noticing' it. It's a giant ad that you can't help but be annoyed by. What I've noticed is that Americans in general are far more tolerant of this sort of thing than Europeans, because they've built up a higher tolerance for this level of monetization. Take the UFC for example, there's ads flashing on screen DURING the fights, there's the Harley Davidson "prep point", there's a stream of ads in between fights, there's this PPV's flavor of the week Goldberg shilling ("this PPV is being brought to you by shit-bag, another shitty piece of shit...bag), etc, etc. People just paid $50 for the PPV only to be subjected to this level of commercialization? How about "this PPV is being brought to you, by you and your $50! Maybe I'm going off on a tangent, but if I fucking pay for something, it's not being brought to me by anything other than my fucking wallet. Facebook is just the first step.
If it aint broke dont fix, the WC3 TFT battlenet was overall such a quality thing apart from some issues but every system has those. If they could just take the interface and overall features from warcraft 3 and then add in a lan latency that was all what needed to be done in those 5 years of development.
I understand the achievement system, just like WoW, someone who invested a lot of time into those achievements, is less likely to hack since he put so much time and effort into the game, that getting banned would basically kill all that work.
On a marketing PoV, its great, people get addicted to it. As a WoW achievement whore, I value some of those achievements and I would hate to switch mains after putting so much effort into one character (Lucky me, I just love my guy). I currently look forward to the SC2 achievements, but I do agree with some points... Facebook, really...?
This is something that people have hoping for so long, but I think it's becoming increasingly clear that they just fucked up. Badly.
Really, really, really badly.
I agree completely.
They are not holding anything back.
What we have right now is pretty much what we're going to have at launch. You want clans? LAN? Chat channels? Tournaments? Lower latency? Chat commands? Rankings? Buy our expansion back, we didn't have time to do that in the last 7 years.
Yeah I agree with this. Its definitely a bit of fool's hope for the ones who are saying things like "it will be in release". I've been in alot of betas and what you get in beta is whats in release.
The product will be going Gold in about a month which means there won't be a lot of changes made to it after that. I reckon the product we see in beta phase 2 (if there is one) will be the finished article.
Going gold means very little when most of the functionality we are talking about has to do with battlenet which is a server/service framework and only loosely related to the game. Also the fact that the game is connected to battlenet also means that going gold has very little definitive impact on what can be done afterwards. The game is going to patch instantly when you install it on release date anyway.
I hate people like you. Your blatantly fanboy and blatantly stupid. Even though you think your intelligent and try to appear intelligent. I hate people who say 'its only beta'... or 'its only alpha'........ what you see is what you get most of the time... in basically any beta ever made for any game.
I won't go to town flaming you... but if chat rooms were so easy to implement they should be in the beta. Unless there is absolutely no functionality.... even chat rooms need to be beta tested so that if 100 people click 'add friend' at the same time... you make sure no bad things happen.
The only reason they would with-hold chat rooms for release is to make you forget about the 10 other things they didn't do that they should have.... but they can point and say 'hey look we added chat rooms!@!@!@'.
Seriously the only reason they even made battlenet 2.0 was to make you pay for maps. That's it. B.net 2.0 isn't half as good as B.net 1.0 but they will keep at it because they want you to pay.
To me, Blizz did this just to confuse us when ranking ourselves against others. With division numbers you knew that being #1 in Platinium division 189 meant nothing because the #1 in Plat Div 1 to 10 had at least 500 points above you.
This is just another way to make competitive gaming less competitive and i don't understand why blizzard is doing this. What keeps any game alive is a competitive enviroment!! SCBW and CStrike, both of them have are at least 10 years old and people still playing them and generating income (not mainly monetary, but in terms of marketing).
I'm so confused with Blizz decisions about SC2 / Bnet 2.0
FrozenArbiter, that's probably the best post I've read yet. Sums up all my concerns better than I could. I hope some blizzard employee comes across that.
Back then I was sceptical, now I've tested it out and I'm convinced it is the wrong approach. They seem to legitimize all these restrictive mechanics with wanting to "protect" us from being "assaulted" by chat that's irrelevant to us as a person and the communities we've bonded to.
What happens though, for me atleast, is that when I log on to bnet 2.0 I feel isolated. They brag about the "always connected" experience, but i've never felt so disconnected in an online game as when I'm outside of a match in sc2. Lurking in chat channels, and occationally joining in on discussions that should catch my interest between random strangers is something I've appreciated a lot in all Blizzard titles.
Also, I want there to be a barrier between my gaming life and my real life. When I log on I want to be known as my chosen identity in each respective game. I do not want people to think of my real name when they see me log on. I want to be my avatar to others. Blizzard seem to be enforcing a blurred line between real life identity and online identity, which is actually something I take offense to. It's far too intrusive. I can't understand this being anything other than a marketing approach to bring new people into games that otherwise wouldn't give it a thought.
As of right now I feel Blizzard is trying to police us as consumers far too much, causing too much harm by trying to "shield" us from any kind of experience that they fear could potentially scare consumers away from their product. The marketing approach is also far too intrusive and somewhat disrespectfull towards the consumers privacy.
ugh, if chat actually got axed (i'd never seen those vids before, looks like it actually got the boot) then i agree completely
how insulting that in the video the guy says that it is hard to use a public chat a clan chat and a IM chat at the same time
honestly it is like they are trying to protect small children from a harsh and threatening world that is public interaction
What a ridiculous bunch of unappreciative ignorance.
Unappreciative? Last time I checked Blizzard wasn't paying us to play the game. I do not appreciate anything they do. I pay for it. We will all buy this game and we have a right to complain, no - a REQUIREMENT - to complain. Excuse us for wanting the primary interface for playing SC2 to not suck. Or we could all sit quietly on our hands, give Blizzard $60, and thank them for a pile of crap. After all, we wouldn't want to be unappreciative!
I'm surprised you've survived this long in life if you think SC2's "primary interface" is difficult or inconvenient. I managed to do everything I wanted immediately without issues -- seemed like common sense stuff. It all worked pretty good considering it's beta.
You're like a bratty kid who throws a hissyfit and threatens to kill himself every time his parents don't do what he wants. In reality, your bitching means absolutely nothing to anybody except yourself. Do you think Blizzard takes your rage seriously? You're like a clown for god's sake. If you at least acted like a rational human being who can weigh positives and negatives and come to a balanced conclusion, perhaps it would be worth paying attention to your ramblings. Exaggerating and throwing hissyfits only proves that your opinion is invalid.
Also, here's a fun fact: You're still going to buy the game, so it doesn't matter if they listen to you or not, does it? This is especially true if you pre-ordered it! HA ha ha ha. I haven't paid anything for this game yet but Battle.net seems like a decent set up. I prefer the way that Steam runs in the background, but this will do just fine.
EDIT:
Also, they didn't include all of the features because they don't want everyone wasting their time chatting like idiots. They don't have to choose between one of the other, either... They have different teams working on different aspects.
But on the topic of chats, again maybe they did not have it planned previously but they have gone out and said officially twice now that they ARE making a chat system. I believe they used some subtle gibberish about wanting to make it just right and for it to cover all the issues with an old school chat system.
To me that sounds like diplomatic talk for oops, we were going to axe it but didn't realize just how badly people wanted that in. But either way it means that we are getting another layer of communication and I bet some kind of chat system similar to that of world of warcraft. I wouldn't be suprised though if another explanation for why it has taken a long time is because they are coordinating it with the wow expansion that is due for this winter. I bet you they are trying to integrate the chat systems into the same platform.
So at least when it comes to chat, we should wait until after the beta goes up again after the battlenet overhaul and see what is up. Basically at this point either they have stuff already in the workings or complete that as I said we have not yet seen because it has just not been integrated with the framework, or if they have not, then it is too late in the development cycle to start making the stuff now anyway. So regardless, we can only really wait and see. Its out of our hands now. The ladder system and matchmaking system can still be changed though on short notice. We should keep nagging about this.
What a ridiculous bunch of unappreciative ignorance.
Unappreciative? Last time I checked Blizzard wasn't paying us to play the game. I do not appreciate anything they do. I pay for it. We will all buy this game and we have a right to complain, no - a REQUIREMENT - to complain. Excuse us for wanting the primary interface for playing SC2 to not suck. Or we could all sit quietly on our hands, give Blizzard $60, and thank them for a pile of crap. After all, we wouldn't want to be unappreciative!
I'm surprised you've survived this long in life if you think SC2's "primary interface" is difficult or inconvenient. I managed to do everything I wanted immediately without issues -- seemed like common sense stuff. It all worked pretty good considering it's beta.
You're like a bratty kid who throws a hissyfit and threatens to kill himself every time his parents don't do what he wants. In reality, your bitching means absolutely nothing to anybody except yourself. Do you think Blizzard takes your rage seriously? You're like a clown for god's sake. If you at least acted like a rational human being who can weigh positives and negatives and come to a balanced conclusion, perhaps it would be worth paying attention to your ramblings. Exaggerating and throwing hissyfits only proves that your opinion is invalid.
Also, here's a fun fact: You're still going to buy the game, so it doesn't matter if they listen to you or not, does it? This is especially true if you pre-ordered it! HA ha ha ha. I haven't paid anything for this game yet but Battle.net seems like a decent set up. I prefer the way that Steam runs in the background, but this will do just fine.
do you manage a tournament ? No Can you manage a flash tournament easily now ? if you can, then make a post about making a tournament in 2 hours let's see how well you do.
i will keep saying this. SCBW and other games like CStrike are alive thanks to a competitive enviroment. BNET 2.0 is making a huge effort to make that very difficult.
if you don't want to understand that, then i shall leave you drown into ignorance.
I know all of these have been pointed out a million times each but anyway...
I'm not big on competitive playing myself. In WC3, I usually play a bit of ladder and rather play custom games or go in chat channels. So the fact that they messed up clan features and ladder doesn't bother me AS MUCH (although I would often check the top of the ladder in WC3 for fun). I can still watch tournaments and hopefully the lack of LAN won't be the death of that.
But wait, they fucked up custom games as well. Amazing.
I hate being so pessimistic but they completely butchered every aspect on BNet 2.0 despite having a perfectly good model in WC3's version of BNET. I mean, when you butcher BASIC CHAT COMMANDS you have absolutely no excuse.
Hell, even earning icons feels useless now since you pretty much can't display them.
Game developpers really piss me off recently. Even the other game I'm looking forward to (Guild Wars 2) is being completely changed from GW1 to become a game that holds your hand.
I should just go play Diablo 2 and Counter-Strike again. At least they won't fuck up older games (I hope...)
I can see it now the person in charge of bnet2.0 is a facebook queen with 10,000+ random ass friends bragging how he is #1 in his gold division ALPHA BRAVO
[Acheivement Awarded 500 Real ID Friends] Reward Mothership ( just as useless )
-a generalized replays database, on which you could find every ladder game from the best divisions.
This is actually something they have planned for their Proleague division. Assuming the pay or prestige is high, I can see it working. If not, I think pros are gonna be reluctant to have ALL their replays public.
Dustin Bowder go back to C&C
While I resent his comment about pulling wings off butterflies (come on, what has that got to do with wanting LAN man ? I've always like Browder but that was just offensive), I really don't think you can blame him for 99% of the battle.net direction.
As far as I understand it, that's a separate team and they don't really interact THAT much.
yeah well, i really hope everything is not his fault and i might have been too agresive (mainly cz i'm not even able to play a single game ejejeje full of errors)
But you pointed out many key features that are lacking and who should we blame then ? I honestly don't understand who is taking the decisions, in W3 they made a lot of great implementations (i loved the tournament system & clan) and now they are downgrading it a lot.
If they want to do somekind of facebook integration then let us make pages with tournaments INSIDE BNET 2.0 just like facebook events... that would be AWESOME, but without giving away our privacy.
I guess blame the bnet team or maybe Greg Canessa, since I think he's the Bnet 2.0 design lead? He worked on Games For Windows Live too I think. Sigh, huge shocker they look and feel the same.
I should just go play Diablo 2 and Counter-Strike again. At least they won't fuck up older games (I hope...)
For now. I'm sure they'll eventually have a midlife crisis and go back and digitially remaster them a la Star Wars.
There was a thread here before about an interview with Dustin Browder, it was a twitter Q&A shit i believe where Dustin has clearly stated their stance on implementing chat rooms. + Show Spoiler +
In contrast to the campaign the new Battle.Net is probably a huge disappointment for a lot of the fans. That’s on the one side because of the fact that features we know from the original Battle.Net won’t be included and on the other side, we have to read news, that even the social networking website facebook will in some way be included. So what can you tell fans who say “Just give us chat channels now and leave it with the other stuff”?
Well, we’re working on the chat channels but the reason they are delayed is that we have something, which we think is much better than what we had in the original games. In the original games the chat channels were used by some of our users but they were largely misused just for spam. It was kind of a mess that they weren’t focused on only one particular topic. While we definitely feel the fans sort of enthusiasm to get them back, we don’t want those chat channels back. We feel like those chat channels were not a huge success for us and we can do them much better. So we will be looking into chat channels down the road that are more focused on specific topics, that are better organized around different social structures. We could certainly just jam the old channels back in but we didn’t feel like those were a huge success for us. But we really want this thing back, just much more interesting than before. So we’re definitely working on it and we definitely hear the users’ complains, but we think we can do better down the road.
which honestly sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me. FrozenArbiter summed up the state of the current Battlenet 2.0 pretty well, i definately understood the scale/difficulty of designing a whole new system that will support ALL future blizzard games, and i have to say its rather unfortunate that SC2 has to be the first "guinea pig" for this platform. but the problem is not the infrastructure itself, well for patch 13 it has, but still for functionality/interface/design part it has been abyssmal
SC2 is an awesome game, it would be a shame if it has to suffer the current state of Battlenet come release, i doubt that they can fix everything in time come release.
Let's just officially call it "Battle.net 0.5" now. It's an insult to the old Battle.net to act like this one is an improvement in any way.
Give me WC3 Bnet anyday. Or better yet, just give me something the community can cook up, since now I'm 100% positive that the community can make something much better than this.
That's one of the little things that bothers me, too. I can't sort match history by date, so I end up with this discombobulated list of games played in random points. The replay list is like that, too. I just have like 40 replays all named Twilight Fortress etc. etc. and it's ridiculous having to find which one is the one I just played.
Just push the "Date" label above your replays and your replays get sorted by date, not too hard...
On May 23 2010 06:11 MadZ wrote: it really annoys me to see all this whinning about sc2 BETA. because it is BETA ffs blizzard can change everything about the game at any time. of course i would like to see some changes and thats why i leave CONSTUCTIVE feedback on blizzards forums instead of just go to tl.net and whine because whinning and saying that dustin browder is an idiot isnt gonna get you anywhere!! wait for the game to come out and see what it is like there. if it is s*** then go play broodwar that is still an awesome game and if sc2 turns out to be awesome you can play that..
It may be the beta but the release date is in two months. Everyone has the right to complain at this point. There are some things that Blizzard has totally missed, and even with countless threads on their forums they have yet to do it. Blizzard needs to start listening to users more.
No one has the right to complain at this point. Why don't people get it, the client running on your computer, the functionality and features available to you, the functionality of the battlenet infrastructure that is currently running is NOT the prototype running at blizzard headquarters.
This is a beta, blizzard is not using it for our pleasure or benefit they are using it because they need our help in identifying bugs and balance issues. They know what things they need this help with and they are only going to provide you with whatever functionality they actually want to get tested. Don't anyone see how ridiculous all of this is? Do you really think that the obvious stuff missing from the beta right now is missing because they are refusing to listen to fan demands?
This is a beta, this is not the game, this is whatever part of the game that blizzard needs you to test for them at any given time. The singleplayer campaign is not in the game, in fact not a shred of it is. Are people freaking out about blizzard skipping a singleplayer campaign for this game? Ofcourse not because common sense tells you that there is a campaign, it has probably been finished for some time now. It is not in the beta because blizzard does not want or need us to test it.
People make the mistake of thinking that the beta process is some kind of iterative design where the features of the game are slowly added as they get completed until the beta turns into the retail version when everything is done. That is not how a beta works. They don't add stuff to it when it gets completed, they add selected functionality.
This would make sense, if it wasn't for one very simple thing: Blizzard has said that most of the things we are asking for will not be in the game for release.
I don't care what version Blizzard are running in their HQ, hell that version probably even has LAN, that's not something we'll ever get.
Let's look at a list of features we have asked for, and see which ones blizzard have said will be in for relase. I'm not gonna look for sources of these, at least not tonight as I've gotta eat and go to bed.
I'll start out with an obvious one:
LAN Will not be in the game. It seems that they have even given up on the idea of having a LAN-through-bnet where you would have to authenticate your game before playing on LAN. Their reasons for this have been stupid excuses along the lines of people who want LAN being evil fly-wing-pulling bastards*:, but I guess it's probably piracy related.
* Ok I guess I'm gonna have to source this one, since otherwise nobody will believe me:
-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?
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.
Clan features Not at release. Wc3 had them, they were appreciated. SC2 won't have them for release, but hopefully later. Hopefully.
Online replays Not for release. They "hope to add them later", which is code for "never" seeing as how WC3 has gone its entire life without the feature being added, despite SC having had it since 2001 or thereabouts.
Chat channels Not for release. I don't know why they can't just hack up something extremely simple as a temporary solution - just let me create a persistant chat which people can freely enter or leave, please!! Bnet is completely desolate without these... Clan channels really made battle.net feel like a community; you'd have your home channel and then you'd go to other channels and meet new people.
It was fun, it's too bad they - by the looks of things - never experienced that, or they'd see the importance of having these, even in their most rudimentary of forms. And I'm not being sarcastic or snide here (unlike a lot of the majority of this post), if all you were exposed to was the "clan x17" type channels, I can understand why you don't see a great need for them to return.
Chat commands We have /r. That's it. They haven't even commented on this as far as I'm aware.
Customizable hotkeys "Not for release". Wc3 had this, what's so hard about it? The chinese hacked up a basic hotkey editor (I mean, at the time I think it was basically editing a text file, but they gave it an interface and shit) like.... 3 days after beta was out?
Ladder rankings I don't know what they've said about this except that they are aware people want to see their rankings. When I first heard about the division system, man, I was excited. I pictured a competitive setting where you'd advance from division to division, with play offs, with tournaments, with everything you can imagine.
Instead we get this "everyone is a winner" bullshit. Yeah, make all the divisions equal, that's fucking awesome. Yeah, make it so that you can't compare your rankings between divisons, that's just great. Oh and while you are at it, why not make it so you can't view anything except YOUR divison. Oh and hey, having divisions go by number is just far too scary when someone gets put in division 500, let's give them random names.
This isn't the fundamental support needed to create a competitive enviornment (which, incidentally, a ladder is), it's KINDERGARTEN. If you are old enough to play SC2, you are old enough to realize that there are people out there who are better than you, and if the shock of discovering this is too much for you, well, you were going to find out sooner or later, at least this way you are unlikely to get physically hurt in the process.
Custom game lobby Yeah, I'd like one that doesn't suck, please? Hopefully this is some seriously placeholder shit cause right now it's pretty barren. Let's see: - No way of telling who the host is? Check - No way of telling ping? Check - No way of searching? Check - No way of setting a game name? Check
I just cannot imagine that they are planning on leaving it this way, so for now, I'll let this one slide. I think it's just a really basic version to allow us to use the custom game feature at a very bare-bones level.
Oh and these are somewhat related to custom games, but not the lobby: - Unable to create password protected games (blizzard, let me tell you, having to invite 6 streamers and their co-casters by typing in their names, is not fun - give me password protected games and let people join by themselves - please). - Unable to switch map once you've created a game. Really, can't the map selection process be part of the pre-game lobby? I don't get it.
Cross server playability There is none. There won't be any for release. They don't even have latency as an excuse anymore - I played on US today without battleping, after the TCP to UDP switch, and it's completely smooth. No lag, next to no latency differences from playing on EU.
---------
Let's move on to some less basic things, but that I'd still have hoped would be in a the sequel to their - quite frankly - amazing battle.net platform. Actually, let me stop for a moment first and explain why I think Battle.net was amazing.
A lot of people look at the old SC1 battle.net and deride it as aesthetically unpleasing, or a buggy piece of shit (black list bug, which wasn't really a bug but a "feature" to stop people from trying to spam join game - I miss the bnet days before this was implemented). Or they think of the annoying chain animations present in all of WC3s bnet interface... And yeah, there were problems with Battle.net but it had a couple of things going for it: it was very, very simple and very, very functional.
WaaaghTV has been around since 2003, and there was even an SC version made not too long ago. Basically, it lets you view live games, from within the game, as if they were a replay. It's a completely lag free way of streaming games, with a built in slight delay, and supports a virtually infinite number of users (as far as I understand it), with next to no bandwidth costs.
This is, again - as far as I understand it, I've not been a huge part of the WC3 community nor the CS one - the premier way of streaming tournament games except for the very biggest ones.
I can understand why this wasn't added - especially given how many essential features were left out, but it still makes me sad that it hasn't even been talked about, not so much as a "maybe in the future". Well, maybe they just want to surprise us with it when they are able to put work into it, it's not totally impossible.
Tournaments WC3 had automated tournaments right from the start, I'm not sure what they've said about them for SC2. I had always assumed they would be in there, now I dunno
On May 23 2010 06:52 HalfAmazing wrote: Battle.net 2.0 is literally worse than WarCraft III's battle.net in every imaginable way. Not a troll, not hyperbole, not exagerrating in the slightest. It is worse. In every possible way. It is more cumbersome, less efficient, less transparent, more isolated, less secure (privacy concerns) and lacking in very basic functionality. If somehow you guys think that because it's a BETA it has a right to be this bad, you are delusional. This is really fucking close to the final product, and NOBODY likes it.
I'd go as far as to say that battle.net 2.0 being as crappy as it is, will actually spike an increase in piracy. Any kind of hacker-designed multiplayer service presented as an alternative to bnet 2.0 is going to provide a more enjoyable multiplayer experience.
You are wrong. There is one advantage of Bnet 2.0 over WC3s Bnet.
There are no chain anmations
More seriously tho, I completely agree, and I'll openly say that while I will buy the game, and any expansion that is made, unless things start improving, I'll be jumping at the first privately run ladder I see.
This is a very concise review of everything that is missing from Bnet 2.0 in it's current incarnation.
Now, I've seen a number of responses to this thread basically saying "it's beta, they're holding things back, it'll be fine on release." First off, I think that's pretty naive, and most of the basic functionality that is missing, they have said that they are not going to include it on release. Obviously these omissions are frightening, but let's go beyond that for a second, and look at the "it's a beta" excuse.
Betas are not held in a vacuum, and haven't been for years. They now serve two purposes: testing your game, and building hype. You cannot eliminate either of these aspects, but it appears that Blizzard is trying very very hard to ignore the second aspect. Now, I'm not saying that they cannot make any mistakes, that would be silly. But the approach you take to a Beta will impact the response far more than any mistakes you make.
Let's look at HoN's beta for a moment. I would say that is a pretty good example of a well-run beta. They've made loads of mistakes along the way, but S2's communication has been consistently good, and they've done a very good job making sure they conduct the beta without pissing too many people off. End result? Sure, some people hate HoN, but they would have hated the game anyway. The rest came out of the beta with a good impression of a company that they've heard nothing about, and a good expectation that S2 would do right by them and make HoN as good a game as they can.
What is everyone's impression thus far from this beta? I can only give you mine, I'm not a mind reader. I've been a Blizzard fan since Warcraft 1. I've played everything they've released since then, and for sixteen years I've had great confidence in them as a company. This beta has severely, severely eroded my faith in Blizzard, and despite how long I've been waiting for Starcraft 2, this is also the first time I've seriously considered not buying a Blizzard game. I know I will, let's not make any bones about it, but I've actually considered it seriously this time.
From many of the posts, here and on other forums, I know I am not alone in feeling this way. What does this mean? Whether or not they've gotten the testing done they've wanted, Blizzard has failed horribly at the second aspect of a modern beta. They have utterly failed to generate positive feelings about the game, and have, in fact, trashed many people's long-standing confidence in them. Worst of all, it's not because they haven't produced a quality game, because they have. The bad blood they have generated is because they've refused to produce a quality networking system. Not failed to. REFUSED to.
As Jinro outlined, I no longer have any confidence that they are holding any content or features back for release. I believe that on July 27th, we will be stuck with this terrible excuse for Bnet, where even though you are online all the time, you are isolated, alone, and nearly incapable of interacting with anyone that you're not willing to share your personal information with. Worst of all, Blizzard reps will be out on the streets touting Bnet 2.0 as a breakthrough, extolling the virtues of Facebook integration, and assuring people that it's a good thing that they are no longer allowed to interact with anyone they don't know IRL.
On May 23 2010 07:29 Rotodyne wrote: My biggest problems with the new battle.net:
-no chat channels -the league system is absolutely retarded
Still, I like the new battle.net infinitely more than the old one. For me, the matchmaking makes up for anything else that they fucked up.
Look at WC3 Has automated matchmaking, chat channels, no league system, automated tournaments, etc.
True, I wasn't thinking about tournies or any of that good stuff because I never played WC3. I don't see how they've had this much time and havn't done anything good. :/ You're right, they fucked up really bad, assuming this is the version they are releasing.
Maybe they can throw something together during the beta break -_-
Has anyone actually felt connected to a larger community when they logged into battle.net? Sure, I can chat privately with friends, but only one at a time. Or I could, if i could actually make a friend, which I cant cuz I cant get to know anyone because I cant talk to them in the first place.
I know they didn't like chatroom spam, but they seem to completely ignore the ability (like in irc) for a bunch of people to be able to congregate to certain chat channels as something beneficial for the game. I remember spending a lot of time on nohunters and clan x17 back on USEast, and there's just no options for stuff like that in sc2 without using third party programs like mirc; i'm forced to use an IM-style chat with people I generally already know.
I'm kind of rambling here, but I concur with feeling "disconnected" when I'm not in a game. I don't feel like there's any community outside a few of the people you already know and are on your friend's list. I mean, what if I want to train a certain matchup with a player of a certain ability? How am I easily supposed to be able to do that without being able to join a popular chat channel? There's ways to do it, but they are all clunky and take research and time to discover them. I feel channels like clan x17, amidst all the stupid crap that went on there, really were helpful to a lot of players.
edit: and the no LAN thing is the kind of thing you see when companies become too large and too much about the money. It's really unfortunate. There's going to be tons of piracy regardless, to screw over tons of people to stop more potential pirates (which frankly, with any sort of deterrence, make up a very small number of potential buyers) is really ridiculous.
You have to understand Blizzard's player base to understand why they would add in achievements, and facebook integration. The majority of sales aren't going to come from people who read TL, it isn't going to come from people who are the top notch players of the world. It is going to come from regular gamers, past gamers of Starcraft and gamers of any other blizzard game. I think its pretty easy to understand why they would "focus" or at least have their battle.net x2 team focus on facebook integration and achievements.
Also for your third point, I would like to point out your analogy is quite wrong. People care a lot more about a car they are buying than whether it can take them to point A or point B. Luxury items like CD players, radios are even nessacary when buying a teenager a beat up crapper. Also I would like to say that achievements are kinda cool, I've seen myself go after an achievement even when frankly I don't care about them.
The only thing I would be worried about is this payment system. What is it for? Is battle.net going to be pay to play? Is it going to be used for blizzards ladder? Can you setup your own ladders to run?
Though I understand the complaint for a lack of chat-feature, but I also understand that it will be released soon after release. And Blizzard might even release a lack luster chat feature before hand to quell the complaints they I'm sure are recieving through the surveys.
- not have my privacy compromised - not have annoying ads shoved in my face - have a lag free experience - accurately determine my ladder ranking - play LAN tournaments without issue - be allowed to create and use multiple accounts - play single player without having to be online
StarCraft II is a Ferrari. It's a nicely designed, exciting new car. Battle.net 2.0 is the stipulation that you can only drive this car at speeds of up to 10MPH.
It just makes more sense to pirate the game right now. Maybe I'll buy it to support my buddy who works for Blizzard, but maybe I'll just wipe my ass with $60 in a futile act of defiance.
On May 23 2010 08:11 Illison wrote: In-reply to OP
You have to understand Blizzard's player base to understand why they would add in achievements, and facebook integration. The majority of sales aren't going to come from people who read TL, it isn't going to come from people who are the top notch players of the world. It is going to come from regular gamers, past gamers of Starcraft and gamers of any other blizzard game. I think its pretty easy to understand why they would "focus" or at least have their battle.net x2 team focus on facebook integration and achievements.
Also for your third point, I would like to point out your analogy is quite wrong. People care a lot more about a car they are buying than whether it can take them to point A or point B. Luxury items like CD players, radios are even nessacary when buying a teenager a beat up crapper. Also I would like to say that achievements are kinda cool, I've seen myself go after an achievement even when frankly I don't care about them.
The only thing I would be worried about is this payment system. What is it for? Is battle.net going to be pay to play? Is it going to be used for blizzards ladder? Can you setup your own ladders to run?
Though I understand the complaint for a lack of chat-feature, but I also understand that it will be released soon after release. And Blizzard might even release a lack luster chat feature before hand to quell the complaints they I'm sure are recieving through the surveys.
I can't even imagine too many casual gamers using Facebook Integration either simply because Bnet 0.5 is so ridiculously clunky and uninviting.
Okay, you can add your Facebook friends, but you can't play with them if they're in another country, you can only create a small party, you can never chat with very many of them at the same time since there's no chat channels, and the custom game interface is also very sloppy and hard to work with. With the way things are now, I simply can't imagine people coming together for a social experience in Bnet. At best, they'll simply organize together outside of Bnet and play that way, which works but totally ruins what Blizzard was going for with Bnet 0.5.
The big issue right now is that the SC2 community is surviving DESPITE Bnet, not because of it, and that's easily the most tragic thing since Bnet was hyped up more than any other feature in SC2. Yet right now it's hands down the worst part of the game.
I am like most of you people very disappointed in Blizzard, i know its still beta, but the whole approach blizzard is taking is wrong. I never wanted some stupid social network like blizzard is trying with bnet 2.0. All i ever wanted was a good game and a decent looking bnet like wc3, i only need bnet to chat with guys playing the same game i am.
Im really curious what this thing is blizzard wants to invent to replace chat channels, but i am almost certain its a letdown. All this looseness in match history and basic chat commands will hopefully be fixed some time later, but that does not change blizzard's approach to the new bnet. It feels like strange on the one hand blizzard wants to create a social experience with real id, broadcasting to friends, facebook(lol), party system (useless) etc and on the other hand they constrain the players: no channels, cant add friends, only real id to share some information, no notifications (they will come for sure), can only invite friends to games, cant host public games with observers, cant view other divisions/leagues, party system (good idea very bad execution), etc. Very many points on the negative side how could you have a social experience when you cant find friends or cant talk to them. I just don't get what blizzard wants to accomplish either they don't know what they want themselfes or they heavily messed up in their attempt to create a "better" bnet.
On May 23 2010 08:20 vic_gn wrote: I just don't get what blizzard wants to accomplish either they don't know what they want themselfes or they heavily messed up in their attempt to create a "better" bnet.
That or they're just trying to incite people to feed all their personal information to facebook because of some big cashola deal. And as any serious user of the interwebs knows, facebook is the go-to site when it comes to respecting their users' privacy.
The big issue right now is that the SC2 community is surviving DESPITE Bnet, not because of it, and that's easily the most tragic thing since Bnet was hyped up more than any other feature in SC2. Yet right now it's hands down the worst part of the game.
Never a truer word spoken. And at some point, people will just give up. If they have to fight the system too hard in order to keep the community going, they'll just say screw it, and move to another game.
On May 23 2010 08:11 Illison wrote: In-reply to OP
You have to understand Blizzard's player base to understand why they would add in achievements, and facebook integration. The majority of sales aren't going to come from people who read TL, it isn't going to come from people who are the top notch players of the world. It is going to come from regular gamers, past gamers of Starcraft and gamers of any other blizzard game. I think its pretty easy to understand why they would "focus" or at least have their battle.net x2 team focus on facebook integration and achievements.
Also for your third point, I would like to point out your analogy is quite wrong. People care a lot more about a car they are buying than whether it can take them to point A or point B. Luxury items like CD players, radios are even nessacary when buying a teenager a beat up crapper. Also I would like to say that achievements are kinda cool, I've seen myself go after an achievement even when frankly I don't care about them.
The only thing I would be worried about is this payment system. What is it for? Is battle.net going to be pay to play? Is it going to be used for blizzards ladder? Can you setup your own ladders to run?
Though I understand the complaint for a lack of chat-feature, but I also understand that it will be released soon after release. And Blizzard might even release a lack luster chat feature before hand to quell the complaints they I'm sure are recieving through the surveys.
You have to understand the key of success that any game that lives on more than 6 years have. A Solid Multiplayer Base.
WoW succeeded why ? because it's multiplayer and is competitive enviroment, and it works perfectly for THAT game SCBW succeeded why ? because of the same thing. Countrstrike, Warcraft3, DOTA (jesus they even made a new game because the market was huge and it was affordable to invest in that market)Call of duty, Medal of Honor, etc.
we are talking about a RTS game, its a totally different spectrum of market development.
People now are getting bored with Sims for example, but not with Cstrike or SCBW, and the answer es very easy, A solid multiplayer base.
Blizz might create a lot of income but in the end their reputation/consumer perception will go downhill if they don't fix what they are doing and that's what make a company successful nowadays.
You have to understand the key of success that any game that lives on more than 6 years have. A Solid Multiplayer Base.
No, releasing regular expansions to a successful game is what keeps it fresh and alive. At least that's the current corporate dogma that Blizzard (a partner with Activision, home of the IW debacle) subscribe to.
On May 23 2010 08:15 HalfAmazing wrote: I can't wait to not pay for the game and:
- not have my privacy compromised - not have annoying ads shoved in my face - have a lag free experience - accurately determine my ladder ranking - play LAN tournaments without issue - be allowed to create and use multiple accounts - play single player without having to be online
StarCraft II is a Ferrari. It's a nicely designed, exciting new car. Battle.net 2.0 is the stipulation that you can only drive this car at speeds of up to 10MPH.
I've been saying it from the start, and it sucks cause the game is actually fun, it's Blizzard who's ruining it by not including what the people who kept BW alive want in the game.
On May 23 2010 08:08 Two_DoWn wrote: Has anyone actually felt connected to a larger community when they logged into battle.net? Sure, I can chat privately with friends, but only one at a time. Or I could, if i could actually make a friend, which I cant cuz I cant get to know anyone because I cant talk to them in the first place.
This is my main thing as well. SC2 feels deader than a single player game to me even if there are thousands playing it at any given time.
With a single player game, you get what you expect; it's single player. With BNet 2.0, I feel like I've been banned or something when I log on (which is coincidentally THE SOLE REASON I haven't played many games; the game feeling dead). I don't hate playing it but like I've said before I'm not huge on ladder games. Still, I would probably have 5X or 10X the amount of games played though if I could spend time on BNet 2.0 doing other things on it as well. It would just pump me up for the game more.
The only thing I would be worried about is this payment system. What is it for? Is battle.net going to be pay to play? Is it going to be used for blizzards ladder? Can you setup your own ladders to run?
i was wondering this too, is the play time counter simply for beta or does it mean something more? and if that were the case is that why chat would be futile? because you wouldnt want to sit around talking when you're paying to be playing.
Couldn't agree with FA more. I can't believe this was the result of all the b.net 2.0 hype. I can't believe the windows live style of multiplayer gaming is so common nowadays. Chat rooms should be a basic gamer right, like free education in modern countries.
But from the developer's point of view, you just need to buy the game once then you can fuck off because the more you play it online the more of their bandwidth you use.
You have to understand the key of success that any game that lives on more than 6 years have. A Solid Multiplayer Base.
No, releasing regular expansions to a successful game is what keeps it fresh and alive. At least that's the current corporate dogma that Blizzard (a partner with Activision, home of the IW debacle) subscribe to.
Sims release regular expansions and since SIMS 3 people have forgotten them. And as far as i know ppl are still playing BW and Cstrike 1.6 worldwide with a TON of sponsors around them and tons of marketing.
I do agree with most complaints about the infrastructure of the game but I don't understand the people who complain about the game itself. Starcraft 2 is an amazing rts and a worthy successor of broodwar and wc3. This game is going to be unfreakinbelieably good. The only flaws with the game that I see lie in either battlenet 2.0 or in some of the out of game features. But as soon as you hit that loading screen it is pure blizzard perfection.
I don't get why you would not play the actual game just because you don't like the fact that there are divisions etc.
I'm not disagreeing with anybody here but people didn't really care about bnet or any of this stuff until now... the day the servers become fucked up which is pretty rare for any blizzard game. It just seems like people have nothing better to do now that they can't play sc2 than to whine about why they can't play starcraft....
That being said... I don't like bnet as it is either. I don't like the interface or the league bullshit, but at the end of the day... everybody has been dealing with it fine so far so I guess i will get used to it eventually.
I just want to say I really appreciate Jinro's summation of everything wrong with Bnet 2.0 at the beginning of this thread. Couldn't have said it better.
On May 23 2010 08:35 LiquidDeth wrote: What did they do to WoW?
They got involved and thats why it turned into the steaming pile it is today.
SC1 was left alone for ~8 years, its the most successful RTS game alive.
Blizzard is now very involved in SC2 trying to make it how they think it should be and look at the outcome. We got Bnet 2.0.
The problem isn't that Blizzard is getting involved. Blizzard has done lots of good things when they get involved. It's just that this time Blizzard is refusing to listen to any community feedback regarding SC2. Sometimes it feels like they're actively fighting against us or trying not to listen to us.
Fans: Blizzard please give us chat channels. Even if some of them were spammy, a lot had a very strong community aspect. Blizzard: SHUT UP YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT! CHAT CHANNELS WERE A FAILURE! NOBODY LIKES THEM! Fans: Blizzard what about cross-region play. E-sports needs it to- Blizzard: SHUT UP WE DON'T NEED CROSS-REGION! WE'LL JUST PUT IT ONCE WE'RE DONE INTEGRATING TWITTER AND MYSPACE! Fans: Please stop making Terrans so overpowered. Blizzard: BUFF TERRANS! I'M NOT SEEING ENOUGH MARAUDERS!! Fans: Make Ultras more durable please, they can't withstand the terrible terrible damage. Blizzard: NERF THEIR HP! GIVE THEM MORE DAMAGE!! Fans: What about online replay viewing? Or fixing the built-in lag? Or the poor ladder UI? Or the arbitrary custom map 10mb limit? Or tournaments? Or clans? Blizzard: FUCK YOU! FACEBOOK IS MORE IMPORTANT! Fans: But this game is incomplete! What ever happened to "it's done when it's done"? What ever happened to the Blizzard who released games when they were finished? Blizzard: RELEASE IT NOW! MAKE IT GOOD AFTER EVERYONE BUYS IT!
It's a damn shame since the game isn't too bad, but damn. They really must have been twiddling their thumbs for the past 7 years.
On May 23 2010 08:35 LiquidDeth wrote: What did they do to WoW?
They got involved and thats why it turned into the steaming pile it is today.
SC1 was left alone for ~8 years, its the most successful RTS game alive.
Blizzard is now very involved in SC2 trying to make it how they think it should be and look at the outcome. We got Bnet 2.0.
The problem isn't that Blizzard is getting involved. Blizzard has done lots of good things when they get involved. It's just that this time Blizzard is refusing to listen to any community feedback regarding SC2.
Which is exactly why them getting involved is a bad thing.
They listen to feedback, but only when it will appeal to the MASSES and not the actual hardcore gamers that will stick with the game for another 11 years.
If they get more money by adding facebook over chatrooms, they'll do it. And guess what? They did.
On May 23 2010 06:08 ymirheim wrote: I get the feeling that most people around here have never been part of a beta before. That is not a criticism or my attempt at being smug but I am an amateur game designer myself, but I have been involved in several projects from start to finish, I know how the process looks and I have been in numerous beta tests. You are wasting your time and your concern over these issues. It is like how people wrote page after page in several threads about how blizzard had fucked up the friends system just to have blizzard come in and state the obvious the next day, pointing out that they had not actually changed the buddy system just temporarily disabled certain features.
The beta is going down in just over a week, it is going to be down for several weeks. This is not to make changes to the game. Altering the game they can do while having the beta running and then patching it in which is what they have done so far. The only reason to shut the beta down is because they are going to be working on the infrastructure behind it, battlenet and the specific battlenet related components of the game. Considering the fact that in just over a week, they are going to be doing full time work on the battlenet features for probably atleast a month. Does that not atleast suggest that these concerns are better left until the beta goes live again, and you can see what they actually did in that time?
I have never been worried because I know that the features needed for a good social basis are going to be there. If you look at the design process and the discussions at blizzcon etc and many of the different choices that have been made in the development it is OBVIOUS that the social side of the game is very high on their agenda. They are not going to fuck it up or leave it out. Don't look at what is in a rugged beta at the moment look at what the designers have been talking about and what they have been doing through the entire development process. It is all there in the details. A company that does not prioritize social networking and easy access to friends while gaming would not had put a button leading directly to the friends list while in a game and would not had created features such as the ability to form a party before starting a game. Just, relax.
As far as im concerned this is the worst excuse ever. Theres no reason to remove basic functionalities for FORCE people to test retarded stuff like facebook friend integration. The people who wanted to use the facebook thing would use it regardless and for the rest of us its just hurting the balance testing of the game.
As for the rest of this thread,i totally agree, the new custom game lobbies are terrible, the friends list is terrible, sure its all shiny and pretty but its still a big stinky shit underneath it all. Blizzard if Bnet2.0 isn't DRASTICALLY overhauled before release im gonna be really dissapointed...
Pretty confused about the facebook thing, these social networks are fads and FB may not even be around by the time the first expansion pack comes out - three years ago it was Myspace, MSN messenger and RSS feeds, nowadays it's twitter, skype and facebook but who knows what it's going to be next year. Imagine if SC1 had done this, we'd have ICQ and usenet integration and most of the players would be scratching their head wondering what the hell those things even are.
I sent a message to an... acquaintance from Bluzzard and it was pretty much the following;
heya I got a cool idea scrap battle.net 2.0 sweep it under the rug it never existed it's just a bad memory use war3's battle.net sit back and call it a day bro
No, seriously. Battle.net 2.0 has been a chorus of facepalms ever since I first opened up that grotesquely ugly log-in screen with its puff child-proofed windows and extremely lagged chat windows, its player list that requires you to scroll down, and the complete and total lack of basic features.
There is no standpoint you can stand from to justify things like the lack of chat rooms, unique id's, online replays, a friends system that doesn't require you to join games just to add people, a clean and intuitive interface, and LOCAL MAP HOSTING.
One of the most brain damaging decisions in all of battle.net 2.0 is the removal of local hosting. You know, host BGH and everyone joins and downloads it and you have a good ol' time. You absolutely MUST publish a map in order to host it, and the limits on hosting maps are so ridiculously absurd that it's unbelievable. Maybe you don't know about some of those limits? Here's one for you, quoted straight from the b.net forums -
It did tell me that I had a language issue. When I tried to publish it gave a pop up window message that said i had the word "suicide" in my map. I just went and renamed the "baneling - suicide copy" to baneling - explosion and that fixed it for me.
Someone said that they failed - no, they didn't fail. They knew exactly what they were doing. The reason they removed local hosting fucked over everyone is because they are absolutely petrified of someone trying to circumvent their amazing ingenius PREMIUM MAP system.
Bullocks is what I say. Even Windows Live! For Games is better than battle.net 2.0 right now. At least it has key, fundamental features and gets straight to the point.
From what I understand there are two teams in Blizzard working on sc2 - the guys working on sc2 and the guys working on Bloatnet 2.0. If I were the guy sitting in the big vinyl chair and I saw this trainwreck I'd take a revolver to the whole lot of the battle.net team and start totally from scratch, or from wc3.
Oh. Achievements. Such stupid bullshit. Little pane shows up on the bottom of the screen, whatevs. Post patch 13 this gigantic window shows up and blacks out the entire screen and kills game functionality and I tried my damndest to get away from the damn thing so I can DO SOMETHING like... join the damn game. It sits there for like 10 seconds "LOL LOOK AT ME I'M AN ACHIEVEMENT" and every second I felt my blood boiling faster and faster.
Whoever is designing their ui's, both that of b.net and the editor, is in dire need of being sacked.
On May 23 2010 08:35 LiquidDeth wrote: What did they do to WoW?
They got involved and thats why it turned into the steaming pile it is today.
SC1 was left alone for ~8 years, its the most successful RTS game alive.
Blizzard is now very involved in SC2 trying to make it how they think it should be and look at the outcome. We got Bnet 2.0.
The problem isn't that Blizzard is getting involved. Blizzard has done lots of good things when they get involved. It's just that this time Blizzard is refusing to listen to any community feedback regarding SC2.
Which is exactly why them getting involved is a bad thing.
They listen to feedback, but only when it will appeal to the MASSES and not the actual hardcore gamers that will stick with the game for another 11 years.
If they get more money by adding facebook over chatrooms, they'll do it. And guess what? They did.
I don't think Blizzard is doing this to appeal to the masses. They're doing this because they have a specific "vision" for Battle.net and they want to make that vision come true no matter what, even though it's becoming increasingly clear that it's not gonna work out. I say that because most of these features don't even appeal to the masses either. I certainly don't see how the removal of chat channels benefits the masses in anyway since there's no reason why there can't be both, but they've gone so far with their RealID "vision" that it's too late to go back now. They'll force to use no matter how much we kick and scream.. The vision must become a reality!!!!
I imagine the conversation with the bnet2.0 team was something like this:
Dustin: So guys, we're planning to start SC2 beta! B.net 2.0 is ready soon right? Design Guy A: Uh well... Dustin: You mean you've had years to work on it and you've done nothing? Design Guy A: No! No! It's just sooooo awesome that we'll need a bit more time! Dustin: Great! I'll tell the fans!
Design Guy A: Shit, we have 2 months to scrap together something usable! Design Guy B: Sorry, what? I was playing farmville. Hey, we should totally integrate facebook into the new battle.net! Design Guy C: Has anyone on this team actually used the original battle.net?
On May 23 2010 08:08 Two_DoWn wrote: Has anyone actually felt connected to a larger community when they logged into battle.net? Sure, I can chat privately with friends, but only one at a time. Or I could, if i could actually make a friend, which I cant cuz I cant get to know anyone because I cant talk to them in the first place.
On May 23 2010 08:10 Drakan wrote: Get ready for a delayed release date :D
During the Beta break they will realise that they needed 1 more year to complete the game.
no that date is set in stone by activision.
This. If it were just Blizzard they'd delay the game, but with the Blizzard Activison merger there's no way this is going to get delayed, the game is getting released on the 27th of July no matter what state the game is in.
On May 23 2010 08:35 LiquidDeth wrote: What did they do to WoW?
They got involved and thats why it turned into the steaming pile it is today.
SC1 was left alone for ~8 years, its the most successful RTS game alive.
Blizzard is now very involved in SC2 trying to make it how they think it should be and look at the outcome. We got Bnet 2.0.
The problem isn't that Blizzard is getting involved. Blizzard has done lots of good things when they get involved. It's just that this time Blizzard is refusing to listen to any community feedback regarding SC2. Sometimes it feels like they're actively fighting against us or trying not to listen to us.
Fans: Blizzard please give us chat channels. Even if some of them were spammy, a lot had a very strong community aspect. Blizzard: SHUT UP YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT! CHAT CHANNELS WERE A FAILURE! NOBODY LIKES THEM! Fans: Blizzard what about cross-region play. E-sports needs it to- Blizzard: SHUT UP WE DON'T NEED CROSS-REGION! WE'LL JUST PUT IT ONCE WE'RE DONE INTEGRATING TWITTER AND MYSPACE! Fans: Please stop making Terrans so overpowered. Blizzard: BUFF TERRANS! I'M NOT SEEING ENOUGH MARAUDERS!! Fans: Make Ultras more durable please, they can't withstand the terrible terrible damage. Blizzard: NERF THEIR HP! GIVE THEM MORE DAMAGE!! Fans: What about online replay viewing? Or fixing the built-in lag? Or the poor ladder UI? Or the arbitrary custom map 10mb limit? Or tournaments? Or clans? Blizzard: FUCK YOU! FACEBOOK IS MORE IMPORTANT! Fans: But this game is incomplete! What ever happened to "it's done when it's done"? What ever happened to the Blizzard who released games when they were finished? Blizzard: RELEASE IT NOW! MAKE IT GOOD AFTER EVERYONE BUYS IT!
It's a damn shame since the game isn't too bad, but damn. They really must have been twiddling their thumbs for the past 7 years.
JAJAJajajajajajajajjajaja oh god is always good to have some humor around. bananacraft ! + Show Spoiler +
Anyway i liked the last one
Fans: But this game is incomplete! What ever happened to "it's done when it's done"? What ever happened to the Blizzard who released games when they were finished? Blizzard: RELEASE IT NOW! MAKE IT GOOD AFTER EVERYONE BUYS IT!
i don't get it... Blizz fans always waited years for their games to be released, and i don't understand the rush of releasing a game that have so many flaws.
On May 23 2010 08:08 Two_DoWn wrote: Has anyone actually felt connected to a larger community when they logged into battle.net? Sure, I can chat privately with friends, but only one at a time. Or I could, if i could actually make a friend, which I cant cuz I cant get to know anyone because I cant talk to them in the first place.
No.
I was gonna say sorry for being wrong, but you know what, Im not. The fact that I didnt know how to talk to more than one friend at a time isnt my fault. Its the creators of the shitty systems.
Yea I dont even know how to go DND or ignore a player, because its so difficult compared to BW.. you cant just type /ignore player or even /dnd, it SHOULD be that simple but it isnt..
Hell, even msging people is fucked, I tried /w and /m and neither work.. Only way i know is /r but thats only to reply to someone.. not msg someone new when your in game.
BNet 2 is like, the worst gaming "community" ive ever seen so far in 15 years of gaming.. and this is what they delayed SC2 for 2 years for? Fuck.
On May 23 2010 05:45 FrozenArbiter wrote: FA's super rant!
I fully agree with everying FA has said. B.Net 2.0 is a joke. As much as pre-Patch 13 B.Net was annoying, it was tolerable for me in the basic sense of at least being usable. Not anywhere near as useful as B.Net 1.0 in SC, but usable. At least.
I no longer see B.Net 2.0 as feasible. I can't believe this shit is gonna carry over into Diablo III and WoW, too. It's a quality way to ruin the end user experience.
I'm sincerely, and I mean it, hoping that all the cool functions I need to have SC2 will be in there on release date. If not, I will use SC2 the same way I used WC3. Campaign mode and to play UMS maps with a few RL friends of mine. No one else, no other reason.
I still have SC1, even if I haven't played it in months.
On May 23 2010 09:19 Skyze wrote: Yea I dont even know how to go DND or ignore a player, because its so difficult compared to BW.. you cant just type /ignore player or even /dnd, it SHOULD be that simple but it isnt..
Hell, even msging people is fucked, I tried /w and /m and neither work.. Only way i know is /r but thats only to reply to someone.. not msg someone new when your in game.
BNet 2 is like, the worst gaming "community" ive ever seen so far in 15 years of gaming.. and this is what they delayed SC2 for 2 years for? Fuck.
This all stemmed from the non-unique ID's, they coulda added all this by just letting us type in the identifiers when messaging someone i suppose (and i woulda liked that better) but insead they just get rid of identifiers to make it an even BIGGER clusterfuck of not being able to do anything unless you are a RealID friend...
I'm not super impressed with B.net 2.0 in its current state, but I think it still has some potential. It is difficult to find out who you just played rank-wise, no chat rooms is sort of lame, but I always avoided them like a hole in the head due to spammers anyway.
Just think about what you thought of B.net 2.0 when you first got the beta rather than right now because of patch 13.
If it would just run better (the menus feel clunky/laggy to me on my system) then it would be at least decent imo.
I couldn't stand the matchup system Supreme Commander 1 had, ylech. So things could be worse.
The facebook integration is pretty laughable/uneccessary - just a marketing deal pretty much, has no bearing on players like the people who come here - and the fact that this system is the reason for delay, supposedly, in the release is pretty bad. Really though thats kind of a scapegoat, we know balance-wise the game is not 100% ready...
It is relatively close though (granted we all have things we would change, all units being usable with their 'gameplay feel' intact would be nice, but still..), and the game is fun to play. It has a matchup system that needs work but has some potential still imo.
On May 23 2010 08:08 Two_DoWn wrote: Has anyone actually felt connected to a larger community when they logged into battle.net? Sure, I can chat privately with friends, but only one at a time. Or I could, if i could actually make a friend, which I cant cuz I cant get to know anyone because I cant talk to them in the first place.
No.
Man look at that! Battle.net is so broken right now that it's displaying all the text in some kind of moonspeak
On May 23 2010 08:11 Illison wrote: In-reply to OP
You have to understand Blizzard's player base to understand why they would add in achievements, and facebook integration. The majority of sales aren't going to come from people who read TL, it isn't going to come from people who are the top notch players of the world. It is going to come from regular gamers, past gamers of Starcraft and gamers of any other blizzard game. I think its pretty easy to understand why they would "focus" or at least have their battle.net x2 team focus on facebook integration and achievements.
I won't argue that achievements and facebook integration are a bad thing, but people are getting pissed (i.e. me) that these tiny implementations are being added when there are huge pieces of battle.net missing. Keep in mind that Blizzard delayed SC2 for years to cook up the battle.net 2.0 we are using right now.
Infact, I see it as them abandoning their major fanbase (us) for the new generations ($$$). Achievements are one of the newer additions to gaming and facebook is an evolving social networking site. Both of them are new ideas catered to generation z, where as the market of old SC were a mix of generation x and early generation y. This is the market that is begging for its old battle.net back while blizzard is turning their back to us saying "Sorry, you're too old now, you're either married or have more important responsibilities. We need to work on gimmicks to pry kids off their xbox 360 and make Starcraft seem hip and cool." They know the market they are targeting (casual gamers) won't mind the missing chatrooms because they probably haven't played SC1. And they won't mind the incredibly one dimensional ladder interface either because they probably won't even know what a ladder is.
Blizzard is ignoring its core SC fans when it comes to battle.net 2.0 (which in my opinion is their largest market) and I feel its a huge mistake. I was able to get beta keys for a few casual gamers: two roommates, my brother, and my old buddy who loved SC1 around its release (hell, even introduced it to me), but is now in his late 20's and started a family. Guess who still finds a little bit of time to play a few times a week? That's right, the same guy that owned his own personal computer back when 2GBs was the largest hard drive affordable on the market. My two roommates and my brother haven't logged on to battle.net for two weeks. If that won't prove to you who Starcraft's true fanbase is then I don't know what to tell you.
i feel like im one of the only people who benefitted from facebook stuff lol. I logged on and had 4 of my friends suggested to me so i didnt have to re-add them, and then i found out 1 more of my friends just got beta and we played a few games immediately lol.
that aside, I can't wait till SC2 ICCUP. seriously the ladder in SC2 is so garbage :\
On May 23 2010 09:32 Ideas wrote: i feel like im one of the only people who benefitted from facebook stuff lol. I logged on and had 4 of my friends suggested to me so i didnt have to re-add them, and then i found out 1 more of my friends just got beta and we played a few games immediately lol.
that aside, I can't wait till SC2 ICCUP. seriously the ladder in SC2 is so garbage :\
Heh the only thing i like about SC2 is the map makers. not the map editor. the map makers.
On May 23 2010 09:32 Ideas wrote: i feel like im one of the only people who benefitted from facebook stuff lol. I logged on and had 4 of my friends suggested to me so i didnt have to re-add them, and then i found out 1 more of my friends just got beta and we played a few games immediately lol.
that aside, I can't wait till SC2 ICCUP. seriously the ladder in SC2 is so garbage :\
The Facebook itself isn't bad. People are just pissed at the features that were delayed in place of Facebook, such as a decent ladder.
On May 23 2010 05:36 Necrosjef wrote: Before I say anything I would like to say, yes its a beta, no one is expecting perfection, especially not me.
As a concerned consumer of Blizzard products the state of Battle.net 2.0 is beginning to worry me (I'm sure I'm not alone here either). Let me explain why.
- Time. Battle.net 2.0 was the reason that Starcraft was delayed for so long. This generated (unsurprisingly) alot of hype about Battle.net 2.0. - I mean if it takes so long to make then it must be awesome. Why am I concerned about this. If it took Blizzard so long to make something that is, quite frankly considerably worse than say regular battle.net in pretty much all ways, how long is it going to take them to make something that is actually worth using? 2 months to release, 2 years to make what we got. You do the math, doesn't look good.
- Priorities. When Battle.net 2.0 was previewed by Blizzard all those years and months ago it had alot of exciting new features. All of which have been removed or are not currently in beta. Ok fair enough, we just wanna play the game and have fun. What concerns me is that the priority for Blizzard instead of adding something like a chat room, clan system or even something trivial but still useful like a pacman game inside battle.net. Blizzard instead decided to add Facebook. I don't mean to be blunt, but who actually wanted that? Does anyone actually add gamer friends to their facebook account? I have my mom and my wife on facebook I don't want someone from halfway around the world adding them and being like "Hi I'm Robs friend from the internet". - Thats just wrong. Priorities. An analogy that Jdanzi put to me on msn actually seems appropriate to sum up this point. "What Blizzard are doing is watering the plants when the house is burning down" - The house being Battle.net 2.0.
- Features. As an engineer myself in real life one of the sayings I find myself saying far too often is "If its not broken, don't fix it". Another saying I find myself using more than I should be is "Simple products are good products". More or less if your product does what it says on the tin then thats what the consumer is paying for not anything more than that. No one gives a shit if your brand new Ford Mondeo comes with a bumper sticker, but they expect it to take you from A to B. I think Blizzard need to learn a lesson from those two sayings. Battle.net 2.0 is a medium to play Starcraft 2, no one cares about adding facebook friends or achievements or portraits or what randomly selected metal your league happens to be or making yourself feel good about being rank 4 in bronze league "omgz im rank 4 at being shit". What people want is to play Starcraft 2 against other people and to do that they need a way of communicating with them that doesn't require giving out personal information to total strangers.
These things concern me. It should concern you too. Blizzard I hope you read this and I hope you understand that as a consumer I am disappointed in your total lack of understanding your customer and your apparent total lack of forethought when implementing Battle.net 2.0. As a positive suggestion I suggest you start with Battle.net 2.0 the way it was at the start of Beta, because it was better.
You seem to have disguised your own opinion as a deep understanding of "what people think and want", like 95% of OP. In fact I've a hard time believing that you, like me, are an engineer because your seem to be so narrow-minded and pointlessly harsh that it's frightening.
Even though I also don't like the way Blizzard kind of forced us to use FaceBook, they're other ways of initiating the debate than claiming that "no one cares about adding FaceBook friends".
The only thing 'new' Bnet 2.0 will have is the 'privilege' of paying for maps. Great stuff. They're not going to add (keep) a lot of stuff that made Bnet 1 the best matchmaking system in the industry because they're too busy trying to monetize anything they can and make you pay for maps.
I've never bought any Call of Duty... and probably won't be buying anything from Activision ever again. It's gonna be hard shelling out 60 bucks for this junk... let alone any more for expansions or maps.
Personally, Bnet2.0 huuugely failed my expectations. It failed to deliver so many features that I was hoping for (LAN, chat channels, clan functionality, tournament functionality) and delivered all this fluffy crap that I do not care about in the slightest (multiple divisions so everyone can feel better, skewed league distributions so everyone can feel even better, Facebook functionality, achievements, decals).
Actually, I am so exasperated right now that they delayed this game for a year to get this bnet2.0 online. Honestly, what type of Starcraft fan (as in one that will hang around for years) even cares about achievements (You Win!!), decals (wtf?) or Facebook (does it have to take over our lives?).
In my opinion, bnet 2.0 is so awful that if someone made a cracked server for Starcraft 2, I would not hesitate to join that despite the fact that I have pre-ordered and will buy the game.
This is something that people have hoping for so long, but I think it's becoming increasingly clear that they just fucked up. Badly.
Really, really, really badly.
EDIT: Because I'm vain, I'm gonna move this rant from like page 4 to here. Note that ymirheim was talking about the social features specifically and I kinda misunderstood him, but the rant is relevant to the thread anyway.
On May 23 2010 06:11 MadZ wrote: it really annoys me to see all this whinning about sc2 BETA. because it is BETA ffs blizzard can change everything about the game at any time. of course i would like to see some changes and thats why i leave CONSTUCTIVE feedback on blizzards forums instead of just go to tl.net and whine because whinning and saying that dustin browder is an idiot isnt gonna get you anywhere!! wait for the game to come out and see what it is like there. if it is s*** then go play broodwar that is still an awesome game and if sc2 turns out to be awesome you can play that..
It may be the beta but the release date is in two months. Everyone has the right to complain at this point. There are some things that Blizzard has totally missed, and even with countless threads on their forums they have yet to do it. Blizzard needs to start listening to users more.
No one has the right to complain at this point. Why don't people get it, the client running on your computer, the functionality and features available to you, the functionality of the battlenet infrastructure that is currently running is NOT the prototype running at blizzard headquarters.
This is a beta, blizzard is not using it for our pleasure or benefit they are using it because they need our help in identifying bugs and balance issues. They know what things they need this help with and they are only going to provide you with whatever functionality they actually want to get tested. Don't anyone see how ridiculous all of this is? Do you really think that the obvious stuff missing from the beta right now is missing because they are refusing to listen to fan demands?
This is a beta, this is not the game, this is whatever part of the game that blizzard needs you to test for them at any given time. The singleplayer campaign is not in the game, in fact not a shred of it is. Are people freaking out about blizzard skipping a singleplayer campaign for this game? Ofcourse not because common sense tells you that there is a campaign, it has probably been finished for some time now. It is not in the beta because blizzard does not want or need us to test it.
People make the mistake of thinking that the beta process is some kind of iterative design where the features of the game are slowly added as they get completed until the beta turns into the retail version when everything is done. That is not how a beta works. They don't add stuff to it when it gets completed, they add selected functionality.
This would make sense, if it wasn't for one very simple thing: Blizzard has said that most of the things we are asking for will not be in the game for release.
I don't care what version Blizzard are running in their HQ, hell that version probably even has LAN, that's not something we'll ever get.
Let's look at a list of features we have asked for, and see which ones blizzard have said will be in for relase. I'm not gonna look for sources of these, at least not tonight as I've gotta eat and go to bed.
I'll start out with an obvious one:
LAN Will not be in the game. It seems that they have even given up on the idea of having a LAN-through-bnet where you would have to authenticate your game before playing on LAN. Their reasons for this have been stupid excuses along the lines of people who want LAN being evil fly-wing-pulling bastards*:, but I guess it's probably piracy related.
* Ok I guess I'm gonna have to source this one, since otherwise nobody will believe me:
-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?
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.
Clan features Not at release. Wc3 had them, they were appreciated. SC2 won't have them for release, but hopefully later. Hopefully.
Online replays Not for release. They "hope to add them later", which is code for "never" seeing as how WC3 has gone its entire life without the feature being added, despite SC having had it since 2001 or thereabouts.
Chat channels Not for release. I don't know why they can't just hack up something extremely simple as a temporary solution - just let me create a persistant chat which people can freely enter or leave, please!! Bnet is completely desolate without these... Clan channels really made battle.net feel like a community; you'd have your home channel and then you'd go to other channels and meet new people.
It was fun, it's too bad they - by the looks of things - never experienced that, or they'd see the importance of having these, even in their most rudimentary of forms. And I'm not being sarcastic or snide here (unlike a lot of the majority of this post), if all you were exposed to was the "clan x17" type channels, I can understand why you don't see a great need for them to return.
Chat commands We have /r. That's it. They haven't even commented on this as far as I'm aware.
Customizable hotkeys "Not for release". Wc3 had this, what's so hard about it? The chinese hacked up a basic hotkey editor (I mean, at the time I think it was basically editing a text file, but they gave it an interface and shit) like.... 3 days after beta was out?
Ladder rankings I don't know what they've said about this except that they are aware people want to see their rankings. When I first heard about the division system, man, I was excited. I pictured a competitive setting where you'd advance from division to division, with play offs, with tournaments, with everything you can imagine.
Instead we get this "everyone is a winner" bullshit. Yeah, make all the divisions equal, that's fucking awesome. Yeah, make it so that you can't compare your rankings between divisons, that's just great. Oh and while you are at it, why not make it so you can't view anything except YOUR divison. Oh and hey, having divisions go by number is just far too scary when someone gets put in division 500, let's give them random names.
This isn't the fundamental support needed to create a competitive enviornment (which, incidentally, a ladder is), it's KINDERGARTEN. If you are old enough to play SC2, you are old enough to realize that there are people out there who are better than you, and if the shock of discovering this is too much for you, well, you were going to find out sooner or later, at least this way you are unlikely to get physically hurt in the process.
Custom game lobby Yeah, I'd like one that doesn't suck, please? Hopefully this is some seriously placeholder shit cause right now it's pretty barren. Let's see: - No way of telling who the host is? Check - No way of telling ping? Check - No way of searching? Check - No way of setting a game name? Check
I just cannot imagine that they are planning on leaving it this way, so for now, I'll let this one slide. I think it's just a really basic version to allow us to use the custom game feature at a very bare-bones level.
Oh and these are somewhat related to custom games, but not the lobby: - Unable to create password protected games (blizzard, let me tell you, having to invite 6 streamers and their co-casters by typing in their names, is not fun - give me password protected games and let people join by themselves - please). - Unable to switch map once you've created a game. Really, can't the map selection process be part of the pre-game lobby? I don't get it.
Cross server playability There is none. There won't be any for release. They don't even have latency as an excuse anymore - I played on US today without battleping, after the TCP to UDP switch, and it's completely smooth. No lag, next to no latency differences from playing on EU.
---------
Let's move on to some less basic things, but that I'd still have hoped would be in a the sequel to their - quite frankly - amazing battle.net platform. Actually, let me stop for a moment first and explain why I think Battle.net was amazing.
A lot of people look at the old SC1 battle.net and deride it as aesthetically unpleasing, or a buggy piece of shit (black list bug, which wasn't really a bug but a "feature" to stop people from trying to spam join game - I miss the bnet days before this was implemented). Or they think of the annoying chain animations present in all of WC3s bnet interface... And yeah, there were problems with Battle.net but it had a couple of things going for it: it was very, very simple and very, very functional.
WaaaghTV has been around since 2003, and there was even an SC version made not too long ago. Basically, it lets you view live games, from within the game, as if they were a replay. It's a completely lag free way of streaming games, with a built in slight delay, and supports a virtually infinite number of users (as far as I understand it), with next to no bandwidth costs.
This is, again - as far as I understand it, I've not been a huge part of the WC3 community nor the CS one - the premier way of streaming tournament games except for the very biggest ones.
I can understand why this wasn't added - especially given how many essential features were left out, but it still makes me sad that it hasn't even been talked about, not so much as a "maybe in the future". Well, maybe they just want to surprise us with it when they are able to put work into it, it's not totally impossible.
Tournaments WC3 had automated tournaments right from the start, I'm not sure what they've said about them for SC2. I had always assumed they would be in there, now I dunno
On May 23 2010 06:52 HalfAmazing wrote: Battle.net 2.0 is literally worse than WarCraft III's battle.net in every imaginable way. Not a troll, not hyperbole, not exagerrating in the slightest. It is worse. In every possible way. It is more cumbersome, less efficient, less transparent, more isolated, less secure (privacy concerns) and lacking in very basic functionality. If somehow you guys think that because it's a BETA it has a right to be this bad, you are delusional. This is really fucking close to the final product, and NOBODY likes it.
I'd go as far as to say that battle.net 2.0 being as crappy as it is, will actually spike an increase in piracy. Any kind of hacker-designed multiplayer service presented as an alternative to bnet 2.0 is going to provide a more enjoyable multiplayer experience.
You are wrong. There is one advantage of Bnet 2.0 over WC3s Bnet.
There are no chain anmations
More seriously tho, I completely agree, and I'll openly say that while I will buy the game, and any expansion that is made, unless things start improving, I'll be jumping at the first privately run ladder I see.
The current instability is not an issue (althought I rage at it all the same..) because this is a beta. Ok, I understand that entirely. I also understand that they have disabled certain features in patch 13 that we were accustomed to using; they want us to test other things. Fine. But...this game NEEDS chat channels, proper ladder standings, and well... at the very least EVERY SINGLE FEATURE THE PREVIOUS BATTLE.NET HAD. Their comments: "not available at release", make me want to gouge my fucking eyes out. They said THE EXACT SAME THING before WC3 was released in relation to replays. And they never materialised. Ever.
How the fuck have they had so long with this and still not have basic features ready to go 2 months from release? (I classify the ability to watch replays online with multiple people a basic feature. They fucking managed to do it with BW as soon as they implemented replays in the first place).
I propose to the maker of this thread to make a simple poll: do you like bnet 2.0? , with the answers yes and no. plain and simple,so we can show blizz what most of think about their piece of shit invention.
Heh. It's so blindingly obvious that I don't know why it didn't occur to me before now.
They're intentionally withholding basic Bnet functionality so they can package it as "new" with the expansions. It's the Supreme Commander approach, except it's intentional rather than accidental. They're breaking the basic SC2 product so they can fix it, and we'll swallow it whole.
Clearly, Heart of the Swarm will bring a workable friend system, and custom game lobby interface that isn't terrible.
Legacy of the Void will bring the never-before-seen breakthrough : chat rooms. And maybe a ladder system that doesn't suck.
It's so obvious now.
Edit : I'm not joking, I truly believe that this is what they're doing. As I posted below, the alternative is that they're so stupid that they can't see the problems with Bnet 0.5.
On May 23 2010 11:03 BillyMole wrote: Heh. It's so blindingly obvious that I don't know why it didn't occur to me before now.
They're intentionally withholding basic Bnet functionality so they can package it as "new" with the expansions. It's the Supreme Commander approach, except it's intentional rather than accidental. They're breaking the basic SC2 product so they can fix it, and we'll swallow it whole.
Clearly, Heart of the Swarm will bring a workable friend system, and custom game lobby interface that isn't terrible.
Legacy of the Void will bring the never-before-seen breakthrough : chat rooms. And maybe a ladder system that doesn't suck.
They gave us shitty Bnet 2.0 and we want regular bnet. They'd be retarded not to either revert entirely or make bnet 2.0 more like classic bnet, there goal is to make money afterall and almost nobody wants bnet to be this way. If there anti-piracy efforts are taking things far enough to alienate their customers their clearly fucking up. Did anyone care about a tiered f list or wow style achievements? Did we want Lan and chat rooms? I'm almost certain they would sell more copies of this game if they reverted the bnet interface back to sc/war3 style and added back in LAN.
The alternative is that they're just so stupid that they can't see the huge gaping flaws in what they have right now. I will believe sneaky business strategy before I believe that the entire Blizz development team went retarded.
On May 23 2010 11:16 BillyMole wrote: I take it you're saying I'm wrong.
The alternative is that they're just so stupid that they can't see the huge gaping flaws in what they have right now. I will believe sneaky business strategy before I believe that the entire Blizz development team went retarded.
I think you are going a little bit conspirationist now though this is like the whole "microsoft is intentionally adding bugs into windows to be able to sell new editions" urban myth.
Whatever can be said about sc2 and battlenet 2.0 there is no way they are sitting on these features to add them to battlenet with the next expansion. That would actually be a really stupid business strategy. Battlenet 2.0 is going to encompass all of their major titles and their entire markets, the expansions for sc2 are going to sell anyway. If they held back on features for their entire game market just to promote an expansion then they truly would be retarded.
I agree with you, Billy. I'd rather believe Blizzard is a soulless money pit trying to screw you over for every little bit it can than a completely and astoundingly retarded collection of incompetence.
Battle.net 2.0 is such a massive step backwards that it is hard to comprehend how they managed to fuck it up that badly.
SC2 will not be a fun game as long as it remains tied to BN2 in it's current state.
On May 23 2010 11:03 BillyMole wrote: Heh. It's so blindingly obvious that I don't know why it didn't occur to me before now.
They're intentionally withholding basic Bnet functionality so they can package it as "new" with the expansions. It's the Supreme Commander approach, except it's intentional rather than accidental. They're breaking the basic SC2 product so they can fix it, and we'll swallow it whole.
Clearly, Heart of the Swarm will bring a workable friend system, and custom game lobby interface that isn't terrible.
Legacy of the Void will bring the never-before-seen breakthrough : chat rooms. And maybe a ladder system that doesn't suck.
On May 23 2010 11:30 ymirheim wrote: I think you are going a little bit conspirationist now though this is like the whole "microsoft is intentionally adding bugs into windows to be able to sell new editions" urban myth.
Planned obsolescence or built-in obsolescence[1] is the process of a product becoming obsolete or non-functional after a certain period or amount of use in a way that is planned or designed by the manufacturer.[1] Also known as "Designed to Fail". Planned obsolescence has potential benefits for a producer because the product fails and the consumer is under pressure to purchase again, whether from the same manufacturer (a replacement part or a newer model), or from a competitor which might also rely on planned obsolescence.[1] The purpose of planned obsolescence is to hide the real cost per use from the consumer, and charge a higher price than they would otherwise be willing to pay (or would be unwilling to spend all at once).
For an industry, planned obsolescence stimulates demand by encouraging purchasers to buy sooner if they still want a functioning product. Built-in obsolescence is in many different products, from vehicles to light bulbs, from buildings to proprietary software. There is, however, the potential backlash of consumers who learn that the manufacturer invested money to make the product obsolete faster; such consumers might turn to a producer (if any exists) that offers a more durable alternative.
This is something that people have hoping for so long, but I think it's becoming increasingly clear that they just fucked up. Badly.
Really, really, really badly.
EDIT: Because I'm vain, I'm gonna move this rant from like page 4 to here. Note that ymirheim was talking about the social features specifically and I kinda misunderstood him, but the rant is relevant to the thread anyway.
On May 23 2010 06:11 MadZ wrote: it really annoys me to see all this whinning about sc2 BETA. because it is BETA ffs blizzard can change everything about the game at any time. of course i would like to see some changes and thats why i leave CONSTUCTIVE feedback on blizzards forums instead of just go to tl.net and whine because whinning and saying that dustin browder is an idiot isnt gonna get you anywhere!! wait for the game to come out and see what it is like there. if it is s*** then go play broodwar that is still an awesome game and if sc2 turns out to be awesome you can play that..
It may be the beta but the release date is in two months. Everyone has the right to complain at this point. There are some things that Blizzard has totally missed, and even with countless threads on their forums they have yet to do it. Blizzard needs to start listening to users more.
No one has the right to complain at this point. Why don't people get it, the client running on your computer, the functionality and features available to you, the functionality of the battlenet infrastructure that is currently running is NOT the prototype running at blizzard headquarters.
This is a beta, blizzard is not using it for our pleasure or benefit they are using it because they need our help in identifying bugs and balance issues. They know what things they need this help with and they are only going to provide you with whatever functionality they actually want to get tested. Don't anyone see how ridiculous all of this is? Do you really think that the obvious stuff missing from the beta right now is missing because they are refusing to listen to fan demands?
This is a beta, this is not the game, this is whatever part of the game that blizzard needs you to test for them at any given time. The singleplayer campaign is not in the game, in fact not a shred of it is. Are people freaking out about blizzard skipping a singleplayer campaign for this game? Ofcourse not because common sense tells you that there is a campaign, it has probably been finished for some time now. It is not in the beta because blizzard does not want or need us to test it.
People make the mistake of thinking that the beta process is some kind of iterative design where the features of the game are slowly added as they get completed until the beta turns into the retail version when everything is done. That is not how a beta works. They don't add stuff to it when it gets completed, they add selected functionality.
This would make sense, if it wasn't for one very simple thing: Blizzard has said that most of the things we are asking for will not be in the game for release.
I don't care what version Blizzard are running in their HQ, hell that version probably even has LAN, that's not something we'll ever get.
Let's look at a list of features we have asked for, and see which ones blizzard have said will be in for relase. I'm not gonna look for sources of these, at least not tonight as I've gotta eat and go to bed.
I'll start out with an obvious one:
LAN Will not be in the game. It seems that they have even given up on the idea of having a LAN-through-bnet where you would have to authenticate your game before playing on LAN. Their reasons for this have been stupid excuses along the lines of people who want LAN being evil fly-wing-pulling bastards*:, but I guess it's probably piracy related.
* Ok I guess I'm gonna have to source this one, since otherwise nobody will believe me:
-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?
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.
Clan features Not at release. Wc3 had them, they were appreciated. SC2 won't have them for release, but hopefully later. Hopefully.
Online replays Not for release. They "hope to add them later", which is code for "never" seeing as how WC3 has gone its entire life without the feature being added, despite SC having had it since 2001 or thereabouts.
Chat channels Not for release. I don't know why they can't just hack up something extremely simple as a temporary solution - just let me create a persistant chat which people can freely enter or leave, please!! Bnet is completely desolate without these... Clan channels really made battle.net feel like a community; you'd have your home channel and then you'd go to other channels and meet new people.
It was fun, it's too bad they - by the looks of things - never experienced that, or they'd see the importance of having these, even in their most rudimentary of forms. And I'm not being sarcastic or snide here (unlike a lot of the majority of this post), if all you were exposed to was the "clan x17" type channels, I can understand why you don't see a great need for them to return.
Chat commands We have /r. That's it. They haven't even commented on this as far as I'm aware.
Customizable hotkeys "Not for release". Wc3 had this, what's so hard about it? The chinese hacked up a basic hotkey editor (I mean, at the time I think it was basically editing a text file, but they gave it an interface and shit) like.... 3 days after beta was out?
Ladder rankings I don't know what they've said about this except that they are aware people want to see their rankings. When I first heard about the division system, man, I was excited. I pictured a competitive setting where you'd advance from division to division, with play offs, with tournaments, with everything you can imagine.
Instead we get this "everyone is a winner" bullshit. Yeah, make all the divisions equal, that's fucking awesome. Yeah, make it so that you can't compare your rankings between divisons, that's just great. Oh and while you are at it, why not make it so you can't view anything except YOUR divison. Oh and hey, having divisions go by number is just far too scary when someone gets put in division 500, let's give them random names.
This isn't the fundamental support needed to create a competitive enviornment (which, incidentally, a ladder is), it's KINDERGARTEN. If you are old enough to play SC2, you are old enough to realize that there are people out there who are better than you, and if the shock of discovering this is too much for you, well, you were going to find out sooner or later, at least this way you are unlikely to get physically hurt in the process.
Custom game lobby Yeah, I'd like one that doesn't suck, please? Hopefully this is some seriously placeholder shit cause right now it's pretty barren. Let's see: - No way of telling who the host is? Check - No way of telling ping? Check - No way of searching? Check - No way of setting a game name? Check
I just cannot imagine that they are planning on leaving it this way, so for now, I'll let this one slide. I think it's just a really basic version to allow us to use the custom game feature at a very bare-bones level.
Oh and these are somewhat related to custom games, but not the lobby: - Unable to create password protected games (blizzard, let me tell you, having to invite 6 streamers and their co-casters by typing in their names, is not fun - give me password protected games and let people join by themselves - please). - Unable to switch map once you've created a game. Really, can't the map selection process be part of the pre-game lobby? I don't get it.
Cross server playability There is none. There won't be any for release. They don't even have latency as an excuse anymore - I played on US today without battleping, after the TCP to UDP switch, and it's completely smooth. No lag, next to no latency differences from playing on EU.
---------
Let's move on to some less basic things, but that I'd still have hoped would be in a the sequel to their - quite frankly - amazing battle.net platform. Actually, let me stop for a moment first and explain why I think Battle.net was amazing.
A lot of people look at the old SC1 battle.net and deride it as aesthetically unpleasing, or a buggy piece of shit (black list bug, which wasn't really a bug but a "feature" to stop people from trying to spam join game - I miss the bnet days before this was implemented). Or they think of the annoying chain animations present in all of WC3s bnet interface... And yeah, there were problems with Battle.net but it had a couple of things going for it: it was very, very simple and very, very functional.
WaaaghTV has been around since 2003, and there was even an SC version made not too long ago. Basically, it lets you view live games, from within the game, as if they were a replay. It's a completely lag free way of streaming games, with a built in slight delay, and supports a virtually infinite number of users (as far as I understand it), with next to no bandwidth costs.
This is, again - as far as I understand it, I've not been a huge part of the WC3 community nor the CS one - the premier way of streaming tournament games except for the very biggest ones.
I can understand why this wasn't added - especially given how many essential features were left out, but it still makes me sad that it hasn't even been talked about, not so much as a "maybe in the future". Well, maybe they just want to surprise us with it when they are able to put work into it, it's not totally impossible.
Tournaments WC3 had automated tournaments right from the start, I'm not sure what they've said about them for SC2. I had always assumed they would be in there, now I dunno
On May 23 2010 06:52 HalfAmazing wrote: Battle.net 2.0 is literally worse than WarCraft III's battle.net in every imaginable way. Not a troll, not hyperbole, not exagerrating in the slightest. It is worse. In every possible way. It is more cumbersome, less efficient, less transparent, more isolated, less secure (privacy concerns) and lacking in very basic functionality. If somehow you guys think that because it's a BETA it has a right to be this bad, you are delusional. This is really fucking close to the final product, and NOBODY likes it.
I'd go as far as to say that battle.net 2.0 being as crappy as it is, will actually spike an increase in piracy. Any kind of hacker-designed multiplayer service presented as an alternative to bnet 2.0 is going to provide a more enjoyable multiplayer experience.
You are wrong. There is one advantage of Bnet 2.0 over WC3s Bnet.
There are no chain anmations
More seriously tho, I completely agree, and I'll openly say that while I will buy the game, and any expansion that is made, unless things start improving, I'll be jumping at the first privately run ladder I see.
Well put, FrozenArbiter. What makes this worse is that SC2 has been a fairly solid game throughout beta and will probably be even better by the time of release. The idea that they would wrap such a great game with such a horrendous service simply blows me away.
Honestly, I am now completely clueless as to what exactly they were doing during the one year delay that was prompted by the new Battle.net. Blizzard promised that the new Battle.net would be better then the private servers we used for StarCraft. Yet, till this point in time, it has been worse then even the previous Battle.net.
Blizzard, you said that they you wanted us to play on Battle.net; that if we had a problem, you wanted us to let you solve it within Battle.net. Well, we are complaining, we are letting you know that there is a problem....many problems, infact. So now, it's your turn. FIX IT!
i really think that blizzard is modelling bnet 2.0 based on xbox live. not sure why considering that the original battle.net and its incarnations (sc1, diablo, wc3) are the benchmark for multiplayer servers and lack of chat rooms is because xbox live doesn't have them (which is because you dont play xbox with a keyboard, but whatever)
theres a lot to be disappointed about with bnet 2.0 so far. All it had to be was the original battle.net with some additional features. this was posted this earlier on and might be one of the most saddening and telling signs of things to come:
On May 23 2010 08:58 IskatuMesk wrote: One of the most brain damaging decisions in all of battle.net 2.0 is the removal of local hosting. You know, host BGH and everyone joins and downloads it and you have a good ol' time. You absolutely MUST publish a map in order to host it, and the limits on hosting maps are so ridiculously absurd that it's unbelievable. Maybe you don't know about some of those limits? Here's one for you, quoted straight from the b.net forums -
It did tell me that I had a language issue. When I tried to publish it gave a pop up window message that said i had the word "suicide" in my map. I just went and renamed the "baneling - suicide copy" to baneling - explosion and that fixed it for me.
wow. not even sure what to say about this. guess its not surprising considering some of the ridiculous things the chat filter catches, such as "white" or "transition". Guess people need to be protected from their own friends on their buddy list. We're playing a game where you can melt people with sprays of acid or hit them with bursts of fire and watch them burn but god forbid if someone swore
Whoever is designing their ui's, both that of b.net and the editor, is in dire need of being sacked.
just going to leave this here because i feel like the guys lurking from blizzard need to read it again and let it sink in.
On May 23 2010 11:30 ymirheim wrote: I think you are going a little bit conspirationist now though this is like the whole "microsoft is intentionally adding bugs into windows to be able to sell new editions" urban myth.
Planned obsolescence or built-in obsolescence[1] is the process of a product becoming obsolete or non-functional after a certain period or amount of use in a way that is planned or designed by the manufacturer.[1] Also known as "Designed to Fail". Planned obsolescence has potential benefits for a producer because the product fails and the consumer is under pressure to purchase again, whether from the same manufacturer (a replacement part or a newer model), or from a competitor which might also rely on planned obsolescence.[1] The purpose of planned obsolescence is to hide the real cost per use from the consumer, and charge a higher price than they would otherwise be willing to pay (or would be unwilling to spend all at once).
For an industry, planned obsolescence stimulates demand by encouraging purchasers to buy sooner if they still want a functioning product. Built-in obsolescence is in many different products, from vehicles to light bulbs, from buildings to proprietary software. There is, however, the potential backlash of consumers who learn that the manufacturer invested money to make the product obsolete faster; such consumers might turn to a producer (if any exists) that offers a more durable alternative.
Conspiracy!
Oh man, you proved that there is such a concept hence thats what blizzard must be doing! I said you are sounding conspirationist because you made some rather far fetched assumptions based on nothing but speculation and piecing together unrelated facts which is what a concpiracy theory is.
Just because assassination exists does not mean that the CIA shot Kennedy.
Well with the way FrozenArbitor put it i couldn't agree more. All i have to say to the guys over at Blizzard is,
you guys put out a beta to get the feedback of the users, so we give it but it seems like its disregarded. There is a saying i heard when i first came into the working world and that is "The customer is always RIGHT" Blizz take a lesson here.
I doubt the facebook addition has much of anything to do with the bnet lag / outages since the update. More than likely there are some major issues with their UDP protocol they added, which was probably required in order to make 3v3 / 4v4 usable.
A slight correction I may add is that the tournaments feature in WC3 was not added until a short period of time into TFT, never in ROC. In addition, Waaaagh TV was never around as long as I played WC3 professionally.
But I'm still in agreement that BNet 2.0 is not in good shape and I'm worried that it may take a while to "fix", if it's planned to be fixed.
WOW! Jinro hit everything right on the money in the first page. I SURE AS HELL hope that Blizzard looks at this thread and fixes everything. I don't know what kind of strategy of sales they are doing, but several people told me specifically they would NOT buy this game if the game came as the way it is now...
What a ridiculous bunch of unappreciative ignorance.
Unappreciative? Last time I checked Blizzard wasn't paying us to play the game. I do not appreciate anything they do. I pay for it. We will all buy this game and we have a right to complain, no - a REQUIREMENT - to complain. Excuse us for wanting the primary interface for playing SC2 to not suck. Or we could all sit quietly on our hands, give Blizzard $60, and thank them for a pile of crap. After all, we wouldn't want to be unappreciative!
I'm surprised you've survived this long in life if you think SC2's "primary interface" is difficult or inconvenient. I managed to do everything I wanted immediately without issues -- seemed like common sense stuff. It all worked pretty good considering it's beta.
You're like a bratty kid who throws a hissyfit and threatens to kill himself every time his parents don't do what he wants. In reality, your bitching means absolutely nothing to anybody except yourself. Do you think Blizzard takes your rage seriously? You're like a clown for god's sake. If you at least acted like a rational human being who can weigh positives and negatives and come to a balanced conclusion, perhaps it would be worth paying attention to your ramblings. Exaggerating and throwing hissyfits only proves that your opinion is invalid.
Also, here's a fun fact: You're still going to buy the game, so it doesn't matter if they listen to you or not, does it? This is especially true if you pre-ordered it! HA ha ha ha. I haven't paid anything for this game yet but Battle.net seems like a decent set up. I prefer the way that Steam runs in the background, but this will do just fine.
EDIT:
Also, they didn't include all of the features because they don't want everyone wasting their time chatting like idiots. They don't have to choose between one of the other, either... They have different teams working on different aspects.
In an intense game of sc2 you cannot reply to a friend. You could in sc1. Using the mouse to select a friend is a hugely inferior system to using the keyboard, good only if you don't know the name of your friends. And even then sc1 had a /f l command that would list your friends and their statuses.
This is a downgrade. They don't seem to understand that the keyboard enters the commands in a RTS. You can't fuck around with the mouse while playing.
I agree wholeheartedly and completely with everything FrozenArbiter pointed out in his epic rant. What worries me is that although I've pre-ordered this game and I fully intend to play it and its expansions, until Battle.net 2.0 delivers on even the most basic of features, I won't hesitate for a second to jump onto the first and best privately run ladder I can find.
What kind of attitude is that to have before the game is even out?
They don't even have latency as an excuse anymore - I played on US today without battleping, after the TCP to UDP switch, and it's completely smooth. No lag, next to no latency differences from playing on EU.
Good god I wish that was true for me. I can't even play games on the US server - after playing perfectly lag free games on the US server from Australia - post patch because the lag is so crippling.
As has been said before: me or any half decent programmer could (if it wasnt against eula/tos) inject chat room code into bnet relatively easily... hell it could integrate into irc even. This would take < 2 days alone.
Why not just add it in? This is what confuses me. Instead of having some unpaid intern just create chat in a day or 2, they completely ignore it and add facebook integration. At least make it so we can water our crops in farmville from bnet!!!!!
if the current beta state is close to the release state I think blizzard should hire a new battle.net 2.0 director asap and pay him highly to fix it in time, as the current one has been focusing on the wrong features, I'd happily trade medals and achivements for a chatroom and game name/password it just doesn't seem to work the way it is and the cracks are showing with the identifier garbish being removed.... and jumping on the facebook wagon, just makes me want to roll my eyes with discontent.
There are certain things I can, to some degree, at least understand logically. Like, I think blizz is wrong and possibly dumb to see things this way, but I can at least understand that you can rationally construct an argument of some sort that says LAN is bad because of piracy, blah blah blah.
I can see that from a business point of view facebook integration could potentially open up new players to the game in some way, or at the very least may encourage some casual gamer who would play the campaign and shelf the game under normal circumstances to venture into multiplayer if he/she sees friends playing.
But so many of the things listed by FA originally are being left out for no real benefit whatsoever. I am literally having a hard time coming up with any conceivable logic for not having chatrooms when there is obviously some segment of people that want them. I mean, what is the downside to having them available? Quite frankly, its something easy enough to include that if even a small handful of people wanted them its probably still worthwhile to throw them in...
What is the logic to not allowing cross-region play in any way? In a worst case scenario why not make a person's "home server", as it were, the only place they can play ladder. Lag is potentially a problem, even if its not a big one these days, and I can see people getting pissed if their ladder games are messed up because of it, but then allow people to practice and play with whomever they please in custom games. I can't grasp the downside of allowing it...
There are a few things that I can't help but think will be added eventually because, quite frankly, they are things I would put off doing myself if I was a developer, especially if time was beginning to be an issue. I am ok with clan and tournament support (for example) not being available at launch provided that it is implemented at some point in the not too distant future. But the way things are looking I really don't have much hope on that from either...
Blizzard is suffering from the same disease that every other game maker has right now. It's become less about the game and more about the social networking and promotion. What these people fail to understand is that if you have a great game like Starcraft, you don't need the cutesy stuff like Facebook integration. Make the actual gaming fun, and the community will develop and the promotional opportunities will be there.
Hell, just look at this site and whole Broodwar community. It's not here because we want achievements so bad or because of Facebook. It's here because we love this game and had good gaming experiences online or in LAN. I know I'm being so "late-90s" but the commercialism and shallowness of the modern gaming industry is out of control.
On May 23 2010 13:05 Slow Motion wrote: Blizzard is suffering from the same disease that every other game maker has right now. It's become less about the game and more about the social networking and promotion. What these people fail to understand is that if you have a great game like Starcraft, you don't need the cutesy stuff like Facebook integration.
That's probably because Zynga has literally made a billion dollars by ripping off games with no real gameplay and slapping them on facebook. Developers don't have the disease: gamers do (for loose definitions of gamer).
On May 23 2010 13:05 Slow Motion wrote: Blizzard is suffering from the same disease that every other game maker has right now. It's become less about the game and more about the social networking and promotion. What these people fail to understand is that if you have a great game like Starcraft, you don't need the cutesy stuff like Facebook integration. Make the actual gaming fun, and the community will develop and the promotional opportunities will be there.
Hell, just look at this site and whole Broodwar community. It's not here because we want achievements so bad or because of Facebook. It's here because we love this game and had good gaming experiences online or in LAN. I know I'm being so "late-90s" but the commercialism and shallowness of the modern gaming industry is out of control.
Ehm, have you been reading the threads? It is the other way around. The actual gaming is fun, people are asking for the social networking.
Made a fairly big post on the bnet forums about it, for what it's worth. I drew pretty heavily from posts in here, particularly FA's. The text is below if anyone is interested. + Show Spoiler +
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.
---- -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. -----
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.
The most stupid thing by far, about the facebook integration is how temporary it is. Facebook, as a site, that is. How cool would WC3 look right now with myspace integration? It would be a fucking joke, but myspace was the shit back in 2003. Social networking sites are the cancer of gaming communities. None of your gamer friends want to see pictures of your dog, or your boring status updates.
On May 23 2010 11:47 SoMuchBetter wrote: i really think that blizzard is modelling bnet 2.0 based on xbox live. not sure why considering that the original battle.net and its incarnations (sc1, diablo, wc3) are the benchmark for multiplayer servers and lack of chat rooms is because xbox live doesn't have them (which is because you dont play xbox with a keyboard, but whatever)
As FA said earlier, apparently the Project Director of Battle.NET is Greg Canessa who previously worked on xbox live.
On May 23 2010 13:05 Slow Motion wrote: Blizzard is suffering from the same disease that every other game maker has right now. It's become less about the game and more about the social networking and promotion. What these people fail to understand is that if you have a great game like Starcraft, you don't need the cutesy stuff like Facebook integration. Make the actual gaming fun, and the community will develop and the promotional opportunities will be there.
Hell, just look at this site and whole Broodwar community. It's not here because we want achievements so bad or because of Facebook. It's here because we love this game and had good gaming experiences online or in LAN. I know I'm being so "late-90s" but the commercialism and shallowness of the modern gaming industry is out of control.
Ehm, have you been reading the threads? It is the other way around. The actual gaming is fun, people are asking for the social networking.
I'm not talking about just the game, I'm talking about online gaming functionality. There is a difference between a feature like Facebook, which I consider social networking, and chat, which facilitates setting up games online. Not to mention better game creation, ladders, etc. All of these have to do with creating a competitive online gaming environment. Facebook does not.
I remember blizzard dismissing things we wanted (i.e. chat rooms) and other stuff in interviews and saying they had "something else better planned". Well all the "something else better" has been trash. They should just listen to the community and give us the basics we want T_T
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.
On May 23 2010 11:47 SoMuchBetter wrote: i really think that blizzard is modelling bnet 2.0 based on xbox live. not sure why considering that the original battle.net and its incarnations (sc1, diablo, wc3) are the benchmark for multiplayer servers and lack of chat rooms is because xbox live doesn't have them (which is because you dont play xbox with a keyboard, but whatever)
As FA said earlier, apparently the Project Director of Battle.NET is Greg Canessa who previously worked on xbox live.
On May 23 2010 13:05 Slow Motion wrote: Blizzard is suffering from the same disease that every other game maker has right now. It's become less about the game and more about the social networking and promotion.
I agree with the deeper sentiment here which is to say that Blizzard has become so big that creating games is no longer about the customers, it's about running a business and selling a product.
Their reputation has been built on quality of game and quality of service. And for the last few years, I would strongly argue that Blizz has lost its touch with its customers. I blame WoW's success for blizzard's "Fuck you we know best" attitude.
I started my gaming career with blizzard back with WC2 when I was just a wee lad. I've owned multiple copies of every title they released since then. And here I am ready to give them the finger the first chance I get when another top notch developer (bioware, valve...) manages to make a hit title in a genre I play.
Wait... did he just say one of the pillars consists of chatting with friends and they don't offer chat rooms?
SC2 is great. B.net 2.0 is meh. I'm going to buy SC2... and play it. Hell I would even pay a monthly fee for a period of time. B.net isn't worth a monthly fee though.
Do you guys notice how the buttons and just general battle.net layout is different in the big patches? That's gotta mean that they're constantly working on it. Which is obviously extremely discouraging..
My gripe (apart from the stuff FA said) is the incredibly inefficient layout. I run @ 2560x1600 resolution, I can fit literally 20+ msn chat windows and can comfortably read/chat on all of them at the same time. Yet I can fit 3? 4? battle.net chat screens? How stupid is that
I'm not even going to rant about how insanely unintuitive navigating the profile/achievements/ladder rankings/etc is. It's just mindblowingly horrid. The replay "browser" (if you can call it that =| ) is completely fucking useless.
Now that I find out that the guy who designed XBOX live is behind BNET 2.0 development (also wtf @ bringing all the outside development "talent", too many original devs left I guess?) it's all starting to make sense. The completely unimaginative, bland, "nothing special" flavor that PS3 and XBOX have to their "community interfaces" is most definitely present here.
Bnet 2.0 looks like a huge step back for Blizzard. I don't have any faith in Blizzard adding the features so many of us want added "sometime in the future". Blizzard loves to say "yah that's something we think is cool and might add in the future" and then never actually add it. It reminds me when I was a kid and when I would beg my mom for something she would always answer "not right now, maybe later we will see" which always meant no.
Those that played Diablo 2 and WC3 know a little about this. So many cool additions were planned for Diablo 2 that I can not even remember them all, and every single major one of those never got added into the game.
Does anyone remember what happened with WC3 and watching online replays? I do. Despite SC and BW already having online replay watching WC3 was launched without the ability to watch replays online. This was a major concern to the WC3 community and there was tons of people posting complaints about it. The response from blizzard was that it was just something simple that they didn't have ready at launch but they would add it to the game in the future. The future responses from Blizzard became less and less optimistic about adding it in and finally months or was it years later (I don't remember was along time ago) they finally came out and said "We won't add it to the game sorry". WC3 never got online replays and I think there is a very good chance Blizzard will continue its history of having good intention to eventually add things to their games and never come through with it in the end.
Major lag. Anger. I even lag playing comps. The wonders of the internet connection. It's bull without LAN. What if I want to play during vacations in a mountain area without internet, but has power?
For a long time I wasn't angry or even annoyed with bnet 2.0... I was enjoying what is a very fun game and actual release seemed so far away I was just coasting along thinking everything will be ok when the game is released. A few things popped up along the way that made me scratch my head a little but just stayed calm and kept repeating to myself that blizzard isn't stupid... they know what players want and with some exception knew that giving players what they want is ultimately the best way to make more money (in most cases, maybe not every case, but most cases I do believe this to be true).
And maybe its this patch or the fact that an actual release seems to be looming or whatever... but I went from calm and confident to pissed off and skeptical in a very short span of time. As battlenet stands right now, it is a strong possibility that I won't even buy the game... not because I wouldn't have fun actually playing, because I know I would, but because I will not support blizzard in any way going forward if they try to force this BS down our throats.
i literally can not believe what they have done to battle net. i'm not complaining about the lag or technical issues experienced over the last few days, but if this is really their end product.. just wow. pretty much everything frozen arbiter said and more are such huge concerns... i'm trying to put it into perspective and figure out why blizzard has gone this direction. it's not like they don't know what we want
Posting this thread to show support... BNet 2.0 is missing so much functionality just 2 months out of release it's PATHETIC. No online replays, no chat channels, no clans, all things that sc1/wc3 had. What the FUCK?
The simple fact is that Battle.net 2.0 is not only failing to support the Starcraft 2 community, it's actively working against it.
Add chatrooms, fix divisions, re-add the ability to friend someone without playing a game with them first (who came up with that idea?). Easy ways to make Battle.net 2.0 a success.
So disappointed by Blizzard. With the route they've taken this game will be bought by millions of people then forgotten in a few months. This is probably what they want aswell, and we don't really belong to their priorities as long as we buy the game.
There is no standpoint you can stand from to justify things like the lack of chat rooms, unique id's, online replays, a friends system that doesn't require you to join games just to add people, a clean and intuitive interface, and LOCAL MAP HOSTING.
One of the most brain damaging decisions in all of battle.net 2.0 is the removal of local hosting. You know, host BGH and everyone joins and downloads it and you have a good ol' time. You absolutely MUST publish a map in order to host it, and the limits on hosting maps are so ridiculously absurd that it's unbelievable. Maybe you don't know about some of those limits? Here's one for you, quoted straight from the b.net forums -
Oh.
Wow.
Did not know this. So, I guess I really truly cannot wait for the first private server to show up... I always assumed they'd just add some kind of protection to the premium maps, like locking them to a specific account once you pay.
On May 23 2010 06:28 Reborn8u wrote: I'm actually at a lan right now, we had a ton of delays because there is some kind of ip limit on Bnet so everyone (over 100 people) had to proxy to play. Then battlenet went down in the round of 16. Everyone had to replay games. It's pretty retarded. No chat rooms, No lan, everyone is having lag issues ON LAN! Giving away your email or facebook info is retarded. Here's a picture from the Fl lan. We're getting the games done now but it's been pretty rediculous!
Gonna make sure blizz sees this -_-
On May 23 2010 07:33 HalfAmazing wrote: Facebook integration is a joke -- we're all agreed. What offends me the most though, is that it's so obnoxiously intrusive. It's big, it's in your face and there's no 'not noticing' it. It's a giant ad that you can't help but be annoyed by. What I've noticed is that Americans in general are far more tolerant of this sort of thing than Europeans, because they've built up a higher tolerance for this level of monetization. Take the UFC for example, there's ads flashing on screen DURING the fights, there's the Harley Davidson "prep point", there's a stream of ads in between fights, there's this PPV's flavor of the week Goldberg shilling ("this PPV is being brought to you by shit-bag, another shitty piece of shit...bag), etc, etc. People just paid $50 for the PPV only to be subjected to this level of commercialization? How about "this PPV is being brought to you, by you and your $50! Maybe I'm going off on a tangent, but if I fucking pay for something, it's not being brought to me by anything other than my fucking wallet. Facebook is just the first step.
Yes, I want to choke him everytime he fires off one of their commercial-jingles.
Or, everytime he starts talking about a future UFC event in the middle of an exciting fight: just shut. the. fuck. up.
Just think about what you thought of B.net 2.0 when you first got the beta rather than right now because of patch 13.
We want the old Blizzard back--the ones who actually listened to us. This game has too much potential... Battle.net 2.0 is holding it back tremendously.
I have to completely agree with everything folks here said about Heroes of Newerth. A small team of developers implemented perfectly what the Blizzard behemoth is still trying to boot up. I don't know what their plans are for Battle.net 2.0, but after HoN I'm not at all impress with anything I see there.
Is there any logical reason to assume that they've shown everything they will end up doing in the final product even though they've said that they'll take down the Beta and bring it back later on with more features? Not at all.
On May 23 2010 11:47 SoMuchBetter wrote: i really think that blizzard is modelling bnet 2.0 based on xbox live. not sure why considering that the original battle.net and its incarnations (sc1, diablo, wc3) are the benchmark for multiplayer servers and lack of chat rooms is because xbox live doesn't have them (which is because you dont play xbox with a keyboard, but whatever)
As FA said earlier, apparently the Project Director of Battle.NET is Greg Canessa who previously worked on xbox live.
Wow, that dude is horrible, talking about achievements and rewards and useless shit like that all the time when asked about the core features of B.Net.
Essentially Blizzard needs to print out the third post in this thread by Jinro, put checkboxes next to each point, and start working down the list to address them for release.
On May 23 2010 17:32 Wolfpox wrote: Is there clan support? No.
Are there chat rooms? No.
Is there any logical reason to assume that they've shown everything they will end up doing in the final product even though they've said that they'll take down the Beta and bring it back later on with more features? Not at all.
They specifically said chat rooms will not be there on release. I'm assuming clan support won't be in either given how late it is to test a feature of that impact.
I am losing hope for this game too. Sure, this is beta and there could be all sorts of things that suddenly appear in the final product that were not in the beta.
However, through the various patches, Blizzard broke things that shouldn't even be breakable if this was a solid program. They switch to UDP this late in the beta. They make it so that larvae don't die when you cancel an egg and later claim that it was a bug. Two possiblities: It was intentional and they are too proud to admit that they don't really understand the inner workings of Zerg, or it really was a bug. In this case the scripting must be a horrible, awful mess. Both are very, very bad. They do all this nonsense with names and identifiers and facebook in the latest patch. Someone complains that you can't add friends via nickname anymore and the response is that sometimes programmers intentionally take out functionality to test other functionality. Well sure sometimes they do. However, with the new naming conventions, it simply is impossible to add people via nickname. It's not unique, so you could add 100 people at once, or a random guy out of those 100. The version history of SC2Beta works as follows: All old patch data is copied over into the new patch folder, and the old patch data is kept as is. Result: Exponential growth of HDD usage. The problems with logging into other people's accouns and random resets of accounts seem to have been fixed now. Finally. However this whole issue made me wonder what kind of database Blizzard is using. Are the people managing their databases just bad, or have they written their own buggy database system instead of using a thoroughly tested and working existing database system? Hotkeys in SC2 are split up into 3 files in one Archive. At least one of these files overwrites the settings of another file, supposedly because they have different settings for Singleplayer and Multiplayer (yes don't be surprised if your hotkeys in the campaign are different from your hotkeys in the multiplayer part of the game). There has to be at least one other file that sets overwrites some UI hotkeys which is not easily accessible (I haven't found it yet). For example if you wanted a control group on the S key, you would toggle sound instead of assigning that control group, even if you remapped the toggle sound hotkey. This is quite the mess.
Now, the following might be a bit subjective, but I feel that Blizzard is failing hard at game design. Roaches at 2 supply are simply not swarmy. Ultralisks have become High DPS low HP units instead of tanks. Zerglings are the new tanks. Infested Terrans have been removed from the Infestor... to be readded to the Overseer?!? This spell isn't going to get any better by moving it from one unit to another.
I am really scared that they won't listen to us, just like activision did not listen to the cod community. We had an awesome Belgium call of duty community, and after the mw games came out it died. I moved to sc1 and I really hope that blizzard will not make the same mistake as activision =(.
Am I the only one having the feeling that good esports games are not produced anymore? They make everything so easy and just dumb. Starcraft 2 was actually my last hope... We really need to convince blizzard!
What about this idea: form a group with people like day9, tasteless and all those people who know what sc2 & battlenet 2 needs to success, and advice blizzard. Visit their headquarters, talk to them, advice, ... Form a group of esports representatives.
On May 23 2010 17:48 lew wrote: I am really scared that they won't listen to us, just like activision did not listen to the cod community. We had an awesome Belgium call of duty community, and after the mw games came out it died. I moved to sc1 and I really hope that blizzard will not make the same mistake as activision =(.
Am I the only one having the feeling that good esports games are not produced anymore? They make everything so easy and just dumb. Starcraft 2 was actually my last hope... We really need to convince blizzard!
What about this idea: form a group with people like day9, tasteless and all those people who know what sc2 & battlenet 2 needs to success, and advice blizzard. Visit their headquarters, talk to them, advice, ... Form a group of esports representatives.
I think they truly honestly do NOT care about the ACTUAL competetive side of this game. They'll try to make it LOOK like they do so as to get more money but i think they just wanna get as many people to buy the game at release as possible and thats about it.
On May 23 2010 17:48 lew wrote: I am really scared that they won't listen to us, just like activision did not listen to the cod community. We had an awesome Belgium call of duty community, and after the mw games came out it died. I moved to sc1 and I really hope that blizzard will not make the same mistake as activision =(.
Am I the only one having the feeling that good esports games are not produced anymore? They make everything so easy and just dumb. Starcraft 2 was actually my last hope... We really need to convince blizzard!
What about this idea: form a group with people like day9, tasteless and all those people who know what sc2 & battlenet 2 needs to success, and advice blizzard. Visit their headquarters, talk to them, advice, ... Form a group of esports representatives.
do you realize that the company is known as activision blizzard (nasdaq: ATVI)
This reminds me of the Fury beta - the game that had a pretty fun beta, but as it continued closer to release, the player base got bored, and tired of being ignored and just didn't buy the game. Months later they release the game for free, and send out teasing/borderline insulting emails to advertise their game until they had to shut down the servers permanently.
Although Blizzard won't have a money issue, I think the player base will drop sharply as release approaches unless they start listening to community suggestions or at least communicating an intent to work on these things.
do you realize that the company is known as activision blizzard (nasdaq: ATVI)
lolol
lol yes
It's so weird: mw2 was the best sold call of duty game but call of duty 2 and mw1 are still more played then mw2. I heard that activision is now SELLING their maps. When I was playing cod 2 we actually got those maps for free, in a patch.
On May 23 2010 11:47 SoMuchBetter wrote: i really think that blizzard is modelling bnet 2.0 based on xbox live. not sure why considering that the original battle.net and its incarnations (sc1, diablo, wc3) are the benchmark for multiplayer servers and lack of chat rooms is because xbox live doesn't have them (which is because you dont play xbox with a keyboard, but whatever)
As FA said earlier, apparently the Project Director of Battle.NET is Greg Canessa who previously worked on xbox live.
I am in awe of Blizzard's business sense. When you look at it from a sales and marketing perspective, Battlenet 2.0 makes perfect sense and it's hard to see how they could do it any better. With these 3 "pillars" they have basically guaranteed that the game will be bought by as many people as possible, get marketed to as many people as possible and make as much money as possible, while their only drawback is offending the community of hardcore gamers, most of whom will buy the game anyway.
"always online" = A neat and elegant DRM implementation which guarantees people will have to buy the game without the bad publicity from draconian software such as SecuROM, which is largely ineffective anyway.
"Achievements" = A proven way to make a game addictive to casual gamers, who otherwise might play a handful of games and then move on to something else. More players = more expansions and DLC sold. It's also an incentive to get people online and therefore buy the game rather than pirating.
"Competitive environment for everyone" = Again, the more casual friendly a game is, the most people are going to keep playing and not get overawed. The ladders and division system may be bad for the people who want to see global rankings, but for most casuals, seeing their name coming up number 5 in their gold league division is going to keep them playing more than seeing the fact that they're ranked 35,873 in the world.
"Connecting the Blizzard community" = They can advertise to you through WoW, Starcraft, Facebook, Your Email... by requiring email addresses they have set up a platform whereby they can advertise their products via email to anyone who has purchased the game, and should you choose to use their facebook integration can potentially market to 100s of people on your friends list as well. Whatever kickbacks facebook has given them is just the icing on the cake.
On May 23 2010 18:08 IKenshinI wrote: This reminds me of the Fury beta - the game that had a pretty fun beta, but as it continued closer to release, the player base got bored, and tired of being ignored and just didn't buy the game. Months later they release the game for free, and send out teasing/borderline insulting emails to advertise their game until they had to shut down the servers permanently.
Although Blizzard won't have a money issue, I think the player base will drop sharply as release approaches unless they start listening to community suggestions or at least communicating an intent to work on these things.
listening to the community does not equal letting the community design the game for them. and even then, most of the balance changes have reflected clear consensus in the community about what aspects of the game are and aren't fun, so it seems like blizzard's main problem is actually that it's impossible to please everyone.
Great posts by OP and FA I was getting too emotionally worked up going from thread to thread ranting about my dislikes of battle.net to the point where my thoughts were unorganized and completely incoherent (and rarely pertaining to the primary topic of discussion)
And I'm far too lazy to actually make an articulated, comprehensive yet concise post of my own
I'm glad there are other people that can persuasively convey their(our, the community's) opinions to hopefully convince the developers to finally make changes and take action.
On May 23 2010 17:32 Wolfpox wrote: Is there clan support? No.
Are there chat rooms? No.
Is there any logical reason to assume that they've shown everything they will end up doing in the final product even though they've said that they'll take down the Beta and bring it back later on with more features? Not at all.
They have said, publically that they WILL NOT HAVE THESE FEATURES IN THE GAME FOR RELEASE.
At least take the time to read stuff like this before you get your hopes up.
I am in awe of Blizzard's business sense. When you look at it from a sales and marketing perspective, Battlenet 2.0 makes perfect sense and it's hard to see how they could do it any better. With these 3 "pillars" they have basically guaranteed that the game will be bought by as many people as possible, get marketed to as many people as possible and make as much money as possible, while their only drawback is offending the community of hardcore gamers, most of whom will buy the game anyway.
"always online" = A neat and elegant DRM implementation which guarantees people will have to buy the game without the bad publicity from draconian software such as SecuROM, which is largely ineffective anyway.
"Achievements" = A proven way to make a game addictive to casual gamers, who otherwise might play a handful of games and then move on to something else. More players = more expansions and DLC sold. It's also an incentive to get people online and therefore buy the game rather than pirating.
"Competitive environment for everyone" = Again, the more casual friendly a game is, the most people are going to keep playing and not get overawed. The ladders and division system may be bad for the people who want to see global rankings, but for most casuals, seeing their name coming up number 5 in their gold league division is going to keep them playing more than seeing the fact that they're ranked 35,873 in the world.
"Connecting the Blizzard community" = They can advertise to you through WoW, Starcraft, Facebook, Your Email... by requiring email addresses they have set up a platform whereby they can advertise their products via email to anyone who has purchased the game, and should you choose to use their facebook integration can potentially market to 100s of people on your friends list as well. Whatever kickbacks facebook has given them is just the icing on the cake.
Your post scares me because it is entirely plausible. Sigh. Why cater to the people who will buy the game regardless of how shitty you make it, as long as you can rope people who have never played an RTS into it giving money you wouldn't have gotten before.
I keep wanting to believe that bnet 2.0 is just following Steam's footsteps. I remember when Steam first came out and I was horrified by it. I usually just launched counter-strike or half-life or whatever from my start menu no problem without any of this integrated nonsense. It was incredibly terrible at first and the friends list didn't work for a long, long time.
Over the ages, it got better and better. By better, I mean less of a nuisance. I could play offline and wasn't hassled. I like software that doesn't try to actively annoy me as hard as possible by forcing me to its whim. It seems like bnet 2.0 is following this latter trend.
I realize that Steam has to account for many different games and bnet 2.0 only has to cater to Blizzard games. I realize that it will help integrate future blizzard games, but honestly, I can't see bnet 2.0 being used for anything other than SC2's 3 sub games, DIII and WoW. Seems like a bold move.
I'll be honest as I can here. I never played BW on the ICCUP server until maybe a few months ago. Despite the technological challenge, I liked it a lot more. The original SC battle net was the most horrendous online service I've used. I can't remember how it compared at the time, but it definitely showed its age in the competitive times of BW. I never really used chat channels as a way to build a community, but I would always home-base it with friends there. I even met new friends in channels that had acronyms from my university. I could never do that with bnet 2.0. I'm in favor of chat channels now.
As far as finding games goes, I'm absolutely disgusted with how hosting games is done now. If I want to make a map, I should be able to select it from my computer's hard drive and tell my friends where to find it. I realize that the idea is if I'm on a friends computer, I can log in on my name and host a game that I've published. In an age of thumb drives that can hold a million starcraft 2 maps on them, this problem is immediately negated by tweens with half a brain that would think ahead of time to go through such a procedure. Limiting people to a draconian-like control freak system that is bnet 2.0 is extremely worrisome and doesn't feel like the Blizzard or original battle net we once knew.
The party system, from what I can tell from live streams and my own experience using it, seems to be trying to siphon off the xbox live mania with party systems that the ungodly beast Halo 2 popularized. It worked for xbox, not here. 4 player maximum parties, combined with the lackadaisical chat format with too-small chat windows is a literal nightmare.
As the game stands right now, I'd still buy it. I'd buy it to play with my friends, experience lame server downtime with them and have a fun time with them in general. I'd like to play it at LANs, too. I understood that bnet 2.0 needed a measure of dealing with software pirates and with such a big release there's bound to be a lot of them with their eyes set on SC2. However, by putting all your chips into a system that, with more and more patches, seems to be failing harder and harder does not, to me, seem like the correct approach.
I'm not a software engineer, I'm a physicist. I've written pretty intense C code for my research and I can also understand how frustrating the whole process can be, but ideally, you want a system that optimizes functionality with simplicity and speed. Bnet 2.0 doesn't seem to be heading in this direction, but quite the opposite.
The community has definitely raised hell over LAN, chat channels and so on, but I think Blizzard is too heavily invested in bnet 2.0. Delaying an incredible tour de force that SC2 is for this whole project means they are very serious about it. The thing is, though, they're only serious about how they want to implement it and not how the community wants it to be implemented. If they did, there'd be LAN and that would end half the problems right then and there.
To me, it stinks of what I call the Activision Curse. When Modern Warfare 2 was coming out, you couldn't convince me otherwise that the game was going to be complete ass. Then the draconian-like control freak that was IWnet came into the picture. Much like bnet 2.0, it really limited options and made the whole pc gaming experience for MW2 a travesty at best. It insulted their customer base. The reviews speak for themselves. I don't know how much control over IWnet and the pocketbook rape of DLC that was MW2, that Activison personally had, but Blizzards current mentality and way of going about these things looks so similar, that I have to have my doubts swing back and forth once a week, it seems.
The pay-to-play is the scariest angle I've seen. Yes, yes, we all know it's not going to be really a pay-to-play system that people fear it might have been, but really an option for less well-off countries to have a shot at SC2. I think that's admirable and I support it, but the Activision Curse would wind up having that feature implemented into SC2 somewhere down the line. I'm convinced that the 'constant connection' is a means to warrant something. I don't know what, but I feel something bad coming. Activision bad.
With the whole fiasco of Activision and IW with so many staff being fired from IW as a result, I almost feel like Blizzard made a pact with Satan. I really don't know how much of the problems associated with what people thought was the top-of-the-line gaming company like Blizzard are associated with Activision's reach into places where it shouldn't belong, or if Blizzard are really, truly losing their minds.
I want to look back on these days, a decade from now and think how silly I was. I don't want SC2 to be a failure. I don't want Activision to turn SC2 into a business with $15 downloadable content that should have been packaged with the game originally (fear of paying for chat channels, etc). Maybe I want too much, but I think my...our demands are reasonable enough.
Really, Blizzard has to make a choice. It can stick with bnet 2.0, that's fine. They have to decide to make long-term changes. SC2, as everyone knows, will be very imperfect at the WoL launch. Even after the Void it will still need further balancing. SC2 is a long term project and isn't going to be a pearl out of the box, but rather, a mountain of diamond after many years of slow, meticulous geological pressure.
If Blizzard doesn't choose to focus on the long-term aspect of the game and instead focuses on the short-term profiteering that MW2 was subject to and still is, then SC2 will be marked as a failure. It will be a good game. It will be a best seller, but it won't live up to its big BW brother. They're tough shoes to fill, but if they don't even attempt and charge you to see them put the shoes on, then the game has failed. Blizzard has failed and another of one of the most anticipated games of all time will fall to the axe that is the new world of corporate videogaming.
I am in awe of Blizzard's business sense. When you look at it from a sales and marketing perspective, Battlenet 2.0 makes perfect sense and it's hard to see how they could do it any better. With these 3 "pillars" they have basically guaranteed that the game will be bought by as many people as possible, get marketed to as many people as possible and make as much money as possible, while their only drawback is offending the community of hardcore gamers, most of whom will buy the game anyway.
"always online" = A neat and elegant DRM implementation which guarantees people will have to buy the game without the bad publicity from draconian software such as SecuROM, which is largely ineffective anyway.
"Achievements" = A proven way to make a game addictive to casual gamers, who otherwise might play a handful of games and then move on to something else. More players = more expansions and DLC sold. It's also an incentive to get people online and therefore buy the game rather than pirating.
"Competitive environment for everyone" = Again, the more casual friendly a game is, the most people are going to keep playing and not get overawed. The ladders and division system may be bad for the people who want to see global rankings, but for most casuals, seeing their name coming up number 5 in their gold league division is going to keep them playing more than seeing the fact that they're ranked 35,873 in the world.
"Connecting the Blizzard community" = They can advertise to you through WoW, Starcraft, Facebook, Your Email... by requiring email addresses they have set up a platform whereby they can advertise their products via email to anyone who has purchased the game, and should you choose to use their facebook integration can potentially market to 100s of people on your friends list as well. Whatever kickbacks facebook has given them is just the icing on the cake.
Your post scares me because it is entirely plausible. Sigh. Why cater to the people who will buy the game regardless of how shitty you make it, as long as you can rope people who have never played an RTS into it giving money you wouldn't have gotten before.
Not exactly my point, I probably should have mentioned that the game itself will be great, I mean it already is great, they know how much they can push it, they know that the game has to be good or they really will lose the hardcore fanbase, but they also know they have a bit more leeway with battle.net, that's why they have the best game developers in the world working on the actual game, and an XBox live guy and no doubt a marketing team working on battle.net.
They're smart and they know what people will put up with. It's like selling that horse on WoW, they know their limit, and that's why they'll never charge for gear that has a tangible effect in game, only stuff that looks cool.
Fuck when i read FrozenArbiter's post i had to rage punch my cat in the fucking face. Soooo heartbreaking for us fans, because you just now they can do better.
I've had my fair share of rants in various threads about this. Since it's released in summer i'm not sure how much i will play anyway. Maybe i give it some rest and join in later on.
I am in awe of Blizzard's business sense. When you look at it from a sales and marketing perspective, Battlenet 2.0 makes perfect sense and it's hard to see how they could do it any better. With these 3 "pillars" they have basically guaranteed that the game will be bought by as many people as possible, get marketed to as many people as possible and make as much money as possible, while their only drawback is offending the community of hardcore gamers, most of whom will buy the game anyway.
"always online" = A neat and elegant DRM implementation which guarantees people will have to buy the game without the bad publicity from draconian software such as SecuROM, which is largely ineffective anyway.
"Achievements" = A proven way to make a game addictive to casual gamers, who otherwise might play a handful of games and then move on to something else. More players = more expansions and DLC sold. It's also an incentive to get people online and therefore buy the game rather than pirating.
"Competitive environment for everyone" = Again, the more casual friendly a game is, the most people are going to keep playing and not get overawed. The ladders and division system may be bad for the people who want to see global rankings, but for most casuals, seeing their name coming up number 5 in their gold league division is going to keep them playing more than seeing the fact that they're ranked 35,873 in the world.
"Connecting the Blizzard community" = They can advertise to you through WoW, Starcraft, Facebook, Your Email... by requiring email addresses they have set up a platform whereby they can advertise their products via email to anyone who has purchased the game, and should you choose to use their facebook integration can potentially market to 100s of people on your friends list as well. Whatever kickbacks facebook has given them is just the icing on the cake.
This is so true, and it's scary. Blizzard attracted Activision to them, and I think Blizzard allready was heading this way without much of Activisions help. It's what happens when power and sales get too your head, you lose your way of being a company making good games. I think most people on TL.net realize how sales does not equal being a good game. Take Supreme Commander 1, TLO loved it, I loved it and it was a great game despise having a tiny playerbase. And guess what, it was made for hardcore gamers. A little better marketing and all the great stuff blizzard does to hype their product would make that game a big title.
The question is, what can we do? I love playing starcraft, but seeing how they spit in their loyal playerbase just makes me want to drop sc2 and find something else,, something what? Is there even something else?
Dno what you're all up to rly, but here's my opinion:
Get channels remove facebook feature
All the other stuff with leagues is just an implemented ICCup for example, so why r ppl rly whining about it? like everyone is playing such leagues in sc1, and here Blizzard r comin hosting it themself in a useful way to get the best experience of gaming, and gosh you rly have to whine about it?
The real problem is that they've just "overmade" 2.0, they're trying to make it have a cool look but it's just getting too complicated
That's the killer really. No matter how much we piss and moan about the lack of features, Blizzard know this is the big RTS title everyone has been waiting for so there's pretty much zero chance that we won't buy it. And that's us as the supposedly 'hardcore' community who will be most negatively affected by all the Bnet changes...I can hear them cackling already...
Yep, Blizzard is running a RTS monopoly and they know it. They know theres nothing else that even competes with them right now so if we all want to play RTS games still, we are stuck with SC2..
I personally, am looking into playing FPS competitively now. RTS are dead as soon as bw/war3 finally die out, and frankly I think they will in afew years not because they are a bad game, just because they are so old/metagame is so overrun. I really doubt we will spend another 5 years on BW finding new builds/etc, its pretty much to its limits right now with Flash/Jaedong/Bisu's builds. I really doubt anyone is going to suddenly make Scouts a common strat, and etc.
And for the guy who said Esports games are never made anymore; while I do agree its not common, theres some good ones out there.. Halo Reach is looking REALLY good, taking the best of all the old halos and combining with some really neat stuff.. the whole CS Pro mod is also getting better and better each time they release new patches. I think its just the RTS community thats dead unfortunately.
The question is, what can we do? I love playing starcraft, but seeing how they spit in their loyal playerbase just makes me want to drop sc2 and find something else,, something what? Is there even something else?
What can we do?
- Don't give them your facebook password, I mean I wouldn't give my FB pass to any 3rd party app, program or game anyway I think most people should adopt this philosophy because you don't know who you're giving your details to or what they're going to post on your feed. Show them that this facebook thing isn't going to help them and that it's a waste of time. If no one uses this feature they're not going to bother working on it.
- If they're going to keep forcing you to give your email out to everyone who wants to add you as a friend on bnet, then sign up with a dummy email address that you never check. They're soon going to realise that if they want to be able to inform you about their latest product via email then they're going to have to tighten up with regards to privacy in order to get a real email address from you that you might actually check.
- Enjoy the game, it's still going to be great even without the old bnet features, the ladder will still work better than it does in 99% of games released. Eventually private leagues like the ICCUP will come out for pro and hardcore players, and most of those will probably end up there.
Does anyone feel like all this is happening because they hired the Xbox Live guy?
- No chat channels (console games dont need chat channels) - No universal ladder (console games are for casuals, they just want to feel good) - No command line prompts (console games uses buttons from the controller)
On May 23 2010 19:24 Zed.iii wrote: Dno what you're all up to rly, but here's my opinion:
Get channels remove facebook feature
All the other stuff with leagues is just an implemented ICCup for example, so why r ppl rly whining about it? like everyone is playing such leagues in sc1, and here Blizzard r comin hosting it themself in a useful way to get the best experience of gaming, and gosh you rly have to whine about it?
The real problem is that they've just "overmade" 2.0, they're trying to make it have a cool look but it's just getting too complicated
The leagues are nothing like ICCUP.
On ICCUP, everyone starts at D. On ICCUP, there is ONE ranking - if you are D+ you are ranked #13509340950460958709, but that's fine.
In SC2, if you are Bronze, you are ranked #5 in bronze division #159405 ... I mean Bronze Division Delta-Tango-Foxtrot.
Here's the SC2 ladder rankings: Oh wait... there isn't one, because blizzard won't let you view anyones rankings except your own. The community has had to create their OWN rankings, thanks to Gibybo over at www.starcraftrankings.com
On May 23 2010 17:48 lew wrote: I am really scared that they won't listen to us, just like activision did not listen to the cod community. We had an awesome Belgium call of duty community, and after the mw games came out it died. I moved to sc1 and I really hope that blizzard will not make the same mistake as activision =(.
Am I the only one having the feeling that good esports games are not produced anymore? They make everything so easy and just dumb. Starcraft 2 was actually my last hope... We really need to convince blizzard!
What about this idea: form a group with people like day9, tasteless and all those people who know what sc2 & battlenet 2 needs to success, and advice blizzard. Visit their headquarters, talk to them, advice, ... Form a group of esports representatives.
I think they truly honestly do NOT care about the ACTUAL competetive side of this game. They'll try to make it LOOK like they do so as to get more money but i think they just wanna get as many people to buy the game at release as possible and thats about it.
They don't. They can say whatever they want, actions are what matters. They clearly don't care about anything but the short term, and I guarantee you that's because they don't really see any extra DIRECT money from the competitive side of the game. Look at tournaments like HDH, etc. Do they get any money for that? No. You need look no farther than this post from February : http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=23280178113&sid=5000 to see that Blizzard is trying to control the competitive scene, rather than let it happen on its own.
Basically, they're ignoring the free advertising that a well-developed community brings, and focusing completely on short-term gains at the expense of said community. Their playerbase is the casuals now (just look at WoW), and they're catering to them exclusively. Chat channels, clan support, and other base Bnet functionality is not something the casuals care about, so they are left out (or at least such a low priority that we'll be lucky to get them in one of the expansions a couple years from now). Facebook integration, achievements, these are bells and whistles that bring in the casuals, so this frivolous crap is what they're focusing on.
To them, it makes no difference whether SC2 dies a year after Legacy of the Void comes out or not. As long as we bought the game and the xpacs, they got their money, and they clearly are only out for the short term now. They're not thinking about making this another 10+ year run like SC1, culminating with guaranteed sales of SC3 in 2020. They're thinking only about how much money they can milk out of everyone RIGHT NOW, and who cares if they break the game.
MW2 sucked donkey balls, and is dead only months after release, but I guarantee you Activision considers it a resounding success. Nevermind that they probably cut sales of any eventual MW3 in half.
I have been following SC2 since it was announced. I started preparing to become good at it. At the end of 2008, the game looked mostly complete judging from the videos. I actually expected it to come out at 10th anniversary. But then the game got delayed for Battle.net 2.0 development. I thought - how nice this might be! Blizzard wants to astonish everyone with new generation platform that includes every feature possible! Finally, Bnet 2.0 was deployed into the beta. FUCK YOU BLIZZARD! YOU ARE STUPID MORONS! I no longer believe in shitty promises, enough for me. I work in IT industry myself and know perfectly that nothing is going to change that far in the beta. Bnet is screwed, it's a piece of dog shit. Only fucking casuals can play in this crap. It looks like you made everything as bad as you possibly could.
The playerbase will do what blizzard didn't, hopefully something like iccup will come into existence (I don't know if it is possible?). Simple things like chat rooms and the starcraft rankings website already have been made. I know it is disgusting that the consumer has to fix the product, but that just shows how much we love the game. I wish blizzard loved it too, instead of the green(or whatever color your counties currency is) paper that it prints. But that's business.
Let me refine my above post a moment, because this actually all makes sense if you stuff yourself into a businessperson's head. REMEMBER : most modern businesspeople only care about short term gains, NOT long term stability.
Working from the businessperson's head, everything that the development team does is focused on the target market. Their target market is not us, it is the new generation of gamers (the same ones that bought 10+ million copies of WoW). All their actions are focused on marketing their product to this target market, and thus they have to give them what they want.
What does this target market want?
- They want to feel like they accomplish something when they log in. Gogo league system and achievements. - They only want to play with the few people they feel comfortable with, and they want to be able to share their accomplishments with these people, who are probably family members and coworkers. Ok, add the RealID system, and integrate Facebook. - They don't want to be hassled by spam or trolls. Cue the removal of chatrooms, and let's also make it nearly impossible to add friends if you don't know their e-mail address.
That's pretty much what they want in a nutshell. Now, what do they not care at all about?
- They don't care about improving their performance, so long as they feel good about themselves. Ok, we don't have to waste effort with Online Replays, and we also don't need those Tournaments that WC3 had. - They already hang out with their RealID friends, so let's not waste any time implementing Clan features. Those are only for the crazies anyway. And while we're at it, their friends are all close by geographically. Let's go ahead and region lock the game, so we don't need to support global networking, or even try to minimize the lag (though there wasn't any left anyway).
If we view it from the businessperson perspective, and focus everything on the target market, you can clearly see how everything in Jinro's post is either a waste of effort, or actively contrary to their goals.
You might ask, why aren't they focusing on us, the competitive gamers? Well, three reasons. First, there are a lot fewer of us. Second, they know that we're guaranteed money anyway. They know that they can mangle SC2 all they want, we'll still buy it because we've been waiting so long, and loved SC1 so much. And last, to them the competitive scene either plays on hacked servers (ICCUP), or is in Korea under kespa. Either way, it brings them no money, and thus are not to be bothered with.
On May 23 2010 21:06 BillyMole wrote: Let me refine my above post a moment, because this actually all makes sense if you stuff yourself into a businessperson's head. REMEMBER : most modern businesspeople only care about short term gains, NOT long term stability.
Working from the businessperson's head, everything that the development team does is focused on the target market. Their target market is not us, it is the new generation of gamers (the same ones that bought 10+ million copies of WoW). All their actions are focused on marketing their product to this target market, and thus they have to give them what they want.
What does this target market want?
- They want to feel like they accomplish something when they log in. Gogo league system and achievements. - They only want to play with the few people they feel comfortable with, and they want to be able to share their accomplishments with these people, who are probably family members and coworkers. Ok, add the RealID system, and integrate Facebook. - They don't want to be hassled by spam or trolls. Cue the removal of chatrooms, and let's also make it nearly impossible to add friends if you don't know their e-mail address.
That's pretty much what they want in a nutshell. Now, what do they not care at all about?
- They don't care about improving their performance, so long as they feel good about themselves. Ok, we don't have to waste effort with Online Replays, and we also don't need those Tournaments that WC3 had. - They already hang out with their RealID friends, so let's not waste any time implementing Clan features. Those are only for the crazies anyway. And while we're at it, their friends are all close by geographically. Let's go ahead and region lock the game, so we don't need to support global networking, or even try to minimize the lag (though there wasn't any left anyway).
If we view it from the businessperson perspective, and focus everything on the target market, you can clearly see how everything in Jinro's post is either a waste of effort, or actively contrary to their goals.
You might ask, why aren't they focusing on us, the competitive gamers? Well, three reasons. First, there are a lot fewer of us. Second, they know that we're guaranteed money anyway. They know that they can mangle SC2 all they want, we'll still buy it because we've been waiting so long, and loved SC1 so much. And last, to them the competitive scene either plays on hacked servers (ICCUP), or is in Korea under kespa. Either way, it brings them no money, and thus are not to be bothered with.
I recall doing the WotLK Beta and the released product when it came to basic features were EXACTLY THE SAME. I'm not sure why people think that they simply don't have the ability to /w or chat rooms or <every other missing feature> intentionally out of the beta when they pointlessly update the looks of the UI every damn week.
To anyone who has played WoW over the past 2 years it's been more than obvious the direction Blizzard is going, catering to the masses that enjoy MW2 on a CONSOLE as opposed to actual gamers. SC2 being a competitive eSport is barely a thought to them.
It's not just this mediocre beta that has people concerned, it's everything that Blizzard is doing as of late, region locking is an utter joke in a game like Starcraft.
From very reliable sources inside Blizzard I got to know that they have seminaries where the message is that targeting the hardcore gamers is a complete waste. It's the casuals you want to attract.
Now that makes sense on a noob game like wow but in SC that's plain retarded. They could have build sometihng huge but apparently as we can all see now they only care about the casuals..
On May 23 2010 21:20 DarkShadowz wrote: From very reliable sources inside Blizzard I got to know that they have seminaries where the message is that targeting the hardcore gamers is a complete waste. It's the casuals you want to attract.
Now that makes sense on a noob game like wow but in SC that's plain retarded. They could have build sometihng huge but apparently as we can all see now they only care about the casuals..
The fact is that the masses of causal gamers are where the money is at and NOT the hardcore gamers and the two have opposing interests soo its pretty obvious who Blizzard will cater to... (Just look at WoW)
Let me refine my above post a moment, because this actually all makes sense if you stuff yourself into a businessperson's head. REMEMBER : most modern businesspeople only care about short term gains, NOT long term stability.
Working from the businessperson's head, everything that the development team does is focused on the target market. Their target market is not us, it is the new generation of gamers (the same ones that bought 10+ million copies of WoW). All their actions are focused on marketing their product to this target market, and thus they have to give them what they want.
What does this target market want?
- They want to feel like they accomplish something when they log in. Gogo league system and achievements. - They only want to play with the few people they feel comfortable with, and they want to be able to share their accomplishments with these people, who are probably family members and coworkers. Ok, add the RealID system, and integrate Facebook. - They don't want to be hassled by spam or trolls. Cue the removal of chatrooms, and let's also make it nearly impossible to add friends if you don't know their e-mail address.
That's pretty much what they want in a nutshell. Now, what do they not care at all about?
- They don't care about improving their performance, so long as they feel good about themselves. Ok, we don't have to waste effort with Online Replays, and we also don't need those Tournaments that WC3 had. - They already hang out with their RealID friends, so let's not waste any time implementing Clan features. Those are only for the crazies anyway. And while we're at it, their friends are all close by geographically. Let's go ahead and region lock the game, so we don't need to support global networking, or even try to minimize the lag (though there wasn't any left anyway).
If we view it from the businessperson perspective, and focus everything on the target market, you can clearly see how everything in Jinro's post is either a waste of effort, or actively contrary to their goals.
You might ask, why aren't they focusing on us, the competitive gamers? Well, three reasons. First, there are a lot fewer of us. Second, they know that we're guaranteed money anyway. They know that they can mangle SC2 all they want, we'll still buy it because we've been waiting so long, and loved SC1 so much. And last, to them the competitive scene either plays on hacked servers (ICCUP), or is in Korea under kespa. Either way, it brings them no money, and thus are not to be bothered with.
I'm not sure all casuals are like that. I'm a semi casual and my friends are all casual. From playing other games we do use chat systems. We did use clan systems even if it was just because we thought it would be funny to all be in a clan. My friends do care about their performance even if they won't put any time into practicing because losing sucks. So they'd be prepared to watch a little bit of a replay every so often and group replays makes it seem more like fun than work. Everyone thinks region locking sucks because we have friends in other regions from MMOs, Online console games like Halo 3, forums and those of us who moved to other regions.
On May 23 2010 21:06 BillyMole wrote: Let me refine my above post a moment, because this actually all makes sense if you stuff yourself into a businessperson's head. REMEMBER : most modern businesspeople only care about short term gains, NOT long term stability.
Working from the businessperson's head, everything that the development team does is focused on the target market. Their target market is not us, it is the new generation of gamers (the same ones that bought 10+ million copies of WoW). All their actions are focused on marketing their product to this target market, and thus they have to give them what they want.
What does this target market want?
- They want to feel like they accomplish something when they log in. Gogo league system and achievements. - They only want to play with the few people they feel comfortable with, and they want to be able to share their accomplishments with these people, who are probably family members and coworkers. Ok, add the RealID system, and integrate Facebook. - They don't want to be hassled by spam or trolls. Cue the removal of chatrooms, and let's also make it nearly impossible to add friends if you don't know their e-mail address.
That's pretty much what they want in a nutshell. Now, what do they not care at all about?
- They don't care about improving their performance, so long as they feel good about themselves. Ok, we don't have to waste effort with Online Replays, and we also don't need those Tournaments that WC3 had. - They already hang out with their RealID friends, so let's not waste any time implementing Clan features. Those are only for the crazies anyway. And while we're at it, their friends are all close by geographically. Let's go ahead and region lock the game, so we don't need to support global networking, or even try to minimize the lag (though there wasn't any left anyway).
If we view it from the businessperson perspective, and focus everything on the target market, you can clearly see how everything in Jinro's post is either a waste of effort, or actively contrary to their goals.
You might ask, why aren't they focusing on us, the competitive gamers? Well, three reasons. First, there are a lot fewer of us. Second, they know that we're guaranteed money anyway. They know that they can mangle SC2 all they want, we'll still buy it because we've been waiting so long, and loved SC1 so much. And last, to them the competitive scene either plays on hacked servers (ICCUP), or is in Korea under kespa. Either way, it brings them no money, and thus are not to be bothered with.
Great post, very good perspective. Makes perfect sense. I am sad to see the direction games have been going. It is almost as if popularity and mass appeal has killed the true spirit of gaming!
Let me refine my above post a moment, because this actually all makes sense if you stuff yourself into a businessperson's head. REMEMBER : most modern businesspeople only care about short term gains, NOT long term stability.
Working from the businessperson's head, everything that the development team does is focused on the target market. Their target market is not us, it is the new generation of gamers (the same ones that bought 10+ million copies of WoW). All their actions are focused on marketing their product to this target market, and thus they have to give them what they want.
What does this target market want?
- They want to feel like they accomplish something when they log in. Gogo league system and achievements. - They only want to play with the few people they feel comfortable with, and they want to be able to share their accomplishments with these people, who are probably family members and coworkers. Ok, add the RealID system, and integrate Facebook. - They don't want to be hassled by spam or trolls. Cue the removal of chatrooms, and let's also make it nearly impossible to add friends if you don't know their e-mail address.
That's pretty much what they want in a nutshell. Now, what do they not care at all about?
- They don't care about improving their performance, so long as they feel good about themselves. Ok, we don't have to waste effort with Online Replays, and we also don't need those Tournaments that WC3 had. - They already hang out with their RealID friends, so let's not waste any time implementing Clan features. Those are only for the crazies anyway. And while we're at it, their friends are all close by geographically. Let's go ahead and region lock the game, so we don't need to support global networking, or even try to minimize the lag (though there wasn't any left anyway).
If we view it from the businessperson perspective, and focus everything on the target market, you can clearly see how everything in Jinro's post is either a waste of effort, or actively contrary to their goals.
You might ask, why aren't they focusing on us, the competitive gamers? Well, three reasons. First, there are a lot fewer of us. Second, they know that we're guaranteed money anyway. They know that they can mangle SC2 all they want, we'll still buy it because we've been waiting so long, and loved SC1 so much. And last, to them the competitive scene either plays on hacked servers (ICCUP), or is in Korea under kespa. Either way, it brings them no money, and thus are not to be bothered with.
I'm not sure all casuals are like that. I'm a semi casual and my friends are all casual. From playing other games we do use chat systems. We did use clan systems even if it was just because we thought it would be funny to all be in a clan. My friends do care about their performance even if they won't put any time into practicing because losing sucks. So they'd be prepared to watch a little bit of a replay every so often and group replays makes it seem more like fun than work. Everyone thinks region locking sucks because we have friends in other regions from MMOs, Online console games like Halo 3, forums and those of us who moved to other regions.
Yeah, I agree, I think casuals are a bit underestimated here... I mean, I liked chat channels right from when I first started playing and had never played an RTS online before
They created a console like experience that they can make money off. I'm so disappointed in 2.0 as it is right now. From how it looks to how it runs and how we still don't know what it will even look like as a finished product.
Dustin Browder isn't saying that people who want LAN are evil butterfly killers, blizzard is just trying to prevent smurfing and from the context their way of doing that is making one ID and one server only for your game.
Oh and all the stuff people want are the easy fixes, building a whole new online network from the ground up takes a lot of time and effort, adding a chat room takes a day.
Another day of doom and gloom and TL.net, is SC2 officially the worst thing ever yet?
I really think that they are currently not developing the battle.net 2.0 as a platform, but rather as an architecture that will be updated in the future to something that will, hopefully, be something awesome.
that being said, if i don't get basic functionality out of bnet 2.0, and with basic I mean things like chat rooms, normal friend lists, chat shortcut commands and stuff like that, I'm simply not buying the game.
I honestly believe that in the event the game comes out with bnet 2.0 in its current state it will be ragehacked in the matter of days and i will play it on pirate servers anyway.
this looks like it's gona be the first game by blizz in 20 years that i'm not gonna buy.
why are big e-sports organizations not taking actions against blizzard for blatantly ignoring their communities? i think we all got through last year without sc2 and not playing sc2 wouldnt be a big loss for most of us, in the state it is now. what if gosugamers, teamliquid.net, all the progaming teams posted articles stating how bad blizzard is acting, the fact they are only targeting casual gamers with fucking xbox live programmers. and focusing casuals with an RTS is just completly stupid, you just cant be a casual when you play an RTS, because it gives you no pleasure to play, you dont feel any good when you play so sloppy etc. if blizzard doesnt care about hardcore gamers and esports organizations, its not a fatality, we can show them that if they dont need us, we dont need them either. and they can have regional finals with joethekiller vs zergundertakerFR23 both having 23 apm because they are checking their facebooks friends pictures during the games.
On May 23 2010 22:04 leser wrote: this looks like it's gona be the first game by blizz in 20 years that i'm not gonna buy.
are you serious? it's beta. it went 12 patches functioning like a pretty much finished game. be glad they encountered this now, in beta, and not at release. this board is so freaking emo sometimes.
On May 23 2010 22:03 Fizban140 wrote: I really have to question FrozenArbiters reading comprehension, pulling quotes and then divining out some meaning that was never there.
Dustin Browder isn't saying that people who want LAN are evil butterfly killers, blizzard is just trying to prevent smurfing and from the context their way of doing that is making one ID and one server only for your game.
Oh and all the stuff people want are the easy fixes, building a whole new online network from the ground up takes a lot of time and effort, adding a chat room takes a day.
Another day of doom and gloom and TL.net, is SC2 officially the worst thing ever yet?
Ah the classic "Blizzard knows best" blind fan post.
Well you believe that all you want but everything they've done during this beta and indeed ever since SC:BW says otherwise really.
Dustin's answer was indeed talking about removing smurfing but what does that have to do with LAN functionality? He's clearly brushing past the real question cause they don't have a good answer. They want to avoid piracy obviously and thats fine but they could make a work around to that and still have LAN (which is VITAL for live tournaments...) but they just ignore it cause they don't care about anything as competetive as that.
On May 23 2010 22:08 Doc Daneeka wrote: are you serious? it's beta. it went 12 patches functioning like a pretty much finished game. be glad they encountered this now, in beta, and not at release. this board is so freaking emo sometimes.
so i'm emo if i don't like the current state of bnet and i'm not gonna buy the game because i don't like what they did with the community system?
On May 23 2010 08:03 Renaissance wrote: The poll speaks for itself.
Yet most of the 90% will be buying the game. And that's what bothers me most, because that's why we will never get games which are made for players rather than shareholders again.
Great OP and overall thread with lots of great posts. Too bad it isn't gonna change anything.
On May 23 2010 22:10 leser wrote: so i'm emo if i don't like the current state of bnet and i'm not gonna buy the game because i don't like what they did with the community system?
wow, your view on emo is pretty distorted.
it's not just you specifically i'm just responding to yours cos it's the most recent in a long line of unreasonable whining. no one is saying you have to like how bnet is functioning right now. i'm just saying that there's a lot of kneejerk reactions going off in the many threads about this. do you really think blizzard is gonna ship a game that drops everyone from their matches?
On May 23 2010 22:03 Fizban140 wrote: I really have to question FrozenArbiters reading comprehension, pulling quotes and then divining out some meaning that was never there.
Dustin Browder isn't saying that people who want LAN are evil butterfly killers, blizzard is just trying to prevent smurfing and from the context their way of doing that is making one ID and one server only for your game.
Oh and all the stuff people want are the easy fixes, building a whole new online network from the ground up takes a lot of time and effort, adding a chat room takes a day.
Another day of doom and gloom and TL.net, is SC2 officially the worst thing ever yet?
Ah the classic "Blizzard knows best" blind fan post.
Well you believe that all you want but everything they've done during this beta and indeed ever since SC:BW says otherwise really.
Dustin's answer was indeed talking about removing smurfing but what does that have to do with LAN functionality? He's clearly brushing past the real question cause they don't have a good answer. They want to avoid piracy obviously and thats fine but they could make a work around to that and still have LAN (which is VITAL for live tournaments...) but they just ignore it cause they don't care about anything as competetive as that.
Where did I say Blizzard knows best? I never said that at all. I do agree though that people need to have more trust in Blizzard, they are one of the best game developers in the world, I think they can handle this. Feedback is important but when it devolved into whiny, raging e-bitching nothing productive happens.
Also Blizzard has shown many times how committed they are to this game as a competitive game. They balance it around the top players and take feedback from competitive players.
They do have a real answer to the question of the no LAN, pirating. I don't agree with it at all, but that is the reason. They want to make money off the game and PC games are highly pirated (anywhere between 40-60 percent of players for some games) so you can't entirely blame them for not having it.
Well, I guess I'll reiterate what many have said when I say that I totally agree with Jinro in just about everything he said.
I do sort of wonder if Blizzard is delaying a bunch of features just to launch the game faster. That does seem weird, though, because some things like chat channels/global stats don't seem hard to implement (Gibybo managed to do it and even create a pretty slick site to boot). Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about though....I have no experience in creating gaming servers so maybe it's way harder than I think.
I guess I'm just kind of ranting now, but I really think that implementing these bnet features would actually be good for Blizzard. They would make more money in the long run. Global stats, for instance--if you don't want to scare off the casual, just don't make it a big button. Make it an "out of the way" feature so you at least have it for the many people who DO want to know their actual rank.
On a final note, I don't believe that bnet 2 is unsalvageable by any means. Blizzard is an awesome company and will respond to what the fans want. I really do believe that they will also see that including these features will actually make them more money too. There is way too much money already riding on Starcraft 2 for them to not do what is absolutely best for the game. It just might take a while. Big companies cannot always move quickly, and it would not surprise me at all if many of these features are actually included eventually. It's just unfortunate about the "eventually."
On May 23 2010 22:10 leser wrote: so i'm emo if i don't like the current state of bnet and i'm not gonna buy the game because i don't like what they did with the community system?
wow, your view on emo is pretty distorted.
it's not just you specifically i'm just responding to yours cos it's the most recent in a long line of unreasonable whining. no one is saying you have to like how bnet is functioning right now. i'm just saying that there's a lot of kneejerk reactions going off in the many threads about this. do you really think blizzard is gonna ship a game that drops everyone from their matches?
no but we believe/know that blizzard will ship a game that cant fulfill the very basic needs of the players. be it chat,lan or a simple realm selection.
the focus is just switching back on it since a) the huge bnet fuckup keeps players from playing and thus talking over balance b) the removal of the normal "add friend" showed what a lonely place this so called multiplayer platform is more then ever before and c) the shipping date is coming closer and closer. and nothing has changed. and all we got is "yaya we dont care we know better" and "yaya maybe in a future patch/expansion or never" answers.
Perhaps the sc2pro mod could do something about it... With a TL chat channel as the first thing you see when u log on, maybe even having your b.net account connected with your TL acc. One can always dream...
In peru a social movement was started by local farmers when the police system was corrupt and out of function. The farmers organized "Rondas" where people took rounds doing the safe keeping job that the Police was supposed to do. These organizations grew bigger, followed the peoples will and solved civil suits etc. They even became a voice the state had to respect and the farmers autonomy was increased, their life qualites improved.
Resistance isn't futile. It's our right when there is wrong. We must stand up for our indigenous rights (as sc1 players), resist imperialism.
I believe in Starcraft 2. Not because of Blizzard but because of the people.
Jesus this is getting ridiculous, SC2 isn't some sort of social movement and Blizzard isn't an oppressive dictator. I think people need to take a step back and remember that this is a video game, and it is in beta. I wonder how long until there is a petition.
I agree with almost all of it. I am at the point where I want a unified voice to express our frustration at how few of our needs are met by bnet 2.0
In the past when addressing lan, they used the "vocal minority" excuse and made it sound like no one really cares. Whether they believe that or not, I don't want them to do it for every single thing on the long list of gripes we have with bnet.
I'd love to visit TL one day and see a news article on concisely stating the flaws with bnet 2.0 in addition to where Blizzard went wrong, and why they went wrong: developing things we have said repeatedly we dont want, ignoring us on features we have very passionately clamored for, disregarding us as if they know better when it's pretty clear right now they don't
I don't know who is actually in charge of Bnet 2.0 design, but they are reaching GFWL level of fail
I was thinking some more and I think it's worth mentioning that we have gotten some things we have asked for.
For instance the UDP is allowing people to play with less lag - or so I hear. Even Artosis asked for Ultra's to knock over force fields, and he got it pretty much the very next day.
I do think that this belongs in this thread. Blizzard listens (just ask some of the many who have visited Blizzard). It just takes some time.
Wouldn't it be nice if TL.net / GG.net / Ygosu and other starcraft/e-sport sites joined up and created an open letter with suggestions / improvements to battle.net 2.0 aswell as its current flaws. Add polls taken by the community to solidify the arguments.
It is quite clear that the balance team of SC2 reads TL.net, however the Battle.net 2.0 team seems to be completely oblivious to any sort of feedback given by the community.
Something bigger than a forum post on TL.net needs to happen to wake these guys up.
On May 23 2010 22:31 Jayde wrote: I was thinking some more and I think it's worth mentioning that we have gotten some things we have asked for.
For instance the UDP is allowing people to play with less lag - or so I hear. Even Artosis asked for Ultra's to knock over force fields, and he got it pretty much the very next day.
I do think that this belongs in this thread. Blizzard listens (just ask some of the many who have visited Blizzard). It just takes some time.
They have certainly shown that they do listen to the community when it comes to actual ingame content. However when it comes to the stuff around the game (read: b.net 2.0) they seem less keen on doing what the community actually wants, at least the more competetive community.
at this point i would honestly rather have sc bnet back. just fix the blank list, spruce it up a bit, and we're good to go.
having to add everyone just to play a private custom game is such a huge pain in the ass and it doesn't even work right (no 2 player maps if party has 3+ people).
On May 23 2010 22:18 Solitary wrote: I have to agree, I like how Heroes of newerth set up their interface and game system.
Simple and easy but still very operational.
I've seen a few people saying the HoN interface is a very good one. I'd like to second this and just say that the HoN interface chat channel system isn't the greatest however it is very easy to host games for 10 players and connectivity is very good. They also have regularly upwards of 50k players online.
I bet it didn't take S2 games 2 years or however long it took Blizzard to make battle.net 2 and the HoN interface even in beta was much better than battle.net 2.0 is at the moment. Got to bear in mind aswell that S2 had a shoe string budget for HoN and battle.net 2.0 is probably the most expensive product Blizzard have made. Good example of how to make something cheap simple and functional vs something expensive complicated and broken.
I think the main thing we should be trying to get across to Blizzard is that their priorities for battle.net 2.0 are just wrong. What the customer wants and what Blizzard is doing simply don't tie up....at all.
On May 23 2010 21:06 BillyMole wrote: Let me refine my above post a moment, because this actually all makes sense if you stuff yourself into a businessperson's head. REMEMBER : most modern businesspeople only care about short term gains, NOT long term stability.
Working from the businessperson's head, everything that the development team does is focused on the target market. Their target market is not us, it is the new generation of gamers (the same ones that bought 10+ million copies of WoW). All their actions are focused on marketing their product to this target market, and thus they have to give them what they want.
What does this target market want?
- They want to feel like they accomplish something when they log in. Gogo league system and achievements. - They only want to play with the few people they feel comfortable with, and they want to be able to share their accomplishments with these people, who are probably family members and coworkers. Ok, add the RealID system, and integrate Facebook. - They don't want to be hassled by spam or trolls. Cue the removal of chatrooms, and let's also make it nearly impossible to add friends if you don't know their e-mail address.
That's pretty much what they want in a nutshell. Now, what do they not care at all about?
- They don't care about improving their performance, so long as they feel good about themselves. Ok, we don't have to waste effort with Online Replays, and we also don't need those Tournaments that WC3 had. - They already hang out with their RealID friends, so let's not waste any time implementing Clan features. Those are only for the crazies anyway. And while we're at it, their friends are all close by geographically. Let's go ahead and region lock the game, so we don't need to support global networking, or even try to minimize the lag (though there wasn't any left anyway).
If we view it from the businessperson perspective, and focus everything on the target market, you can clearly see how everything in Jinro's post is either a waste of effort, or actively contrary to their goals.
You might ask, why aren't they focusing on us, the competitive gamers? Well, three reasons. First, there are a lot fewer of us. Second, they know that we're guaranteed money anyway. They know that they can mangle SC2 all they want, we'll still buy it because we've been waiting so long, and loved SC1 so much. And last, to them the competitive scene either plays on hacked servers (ICCUP), or is in Korea under kespa. Either way, it brings them no money, and thus are not to be bothered with.
Pretty much summed it up. Why would they waste time implementing a bunch of features only 1% of the people who buy the game would actively use or care about, it's not good business sense.
On May 23 2010 22:03 Fizban140 wrote: Dustin Browder isn't saying that people who want LAN are evil butterfly killers, blizzard is just trying to prevent smurfing and from the context their way of doing that is making one ID and one server only for your game.
Oh and all the stuff people want are the easy fixes, building a whole new online network from the ground up takes a lot of time and effort, adding a chat room takes a day.
Another day of doom and gloom and TL.net, is SC2 officially the worst thing ever yet?
He gets asked about LAN, doesn't have a real answer, and goes on to talk about pulling wings off butterflies. I know full well that he isn't directly saying if you want LAN = you are a butterfly killer, but he doesn't have an answer so he switches the topic.
It's all bullshit.
And no, SC2 isn't the worst thing ever - the game is awesome. Bnet 2.0 is a piece of shit, however.
On May 23 2010 21:06 BillyMole wrote: Let me refine my above post a moment, because this actually all makes sense if you stuff yourself into a businessperson's head. REMEMBER : most modern businesspeople only care about short term gains, NOT long term stability.
Working from the businessperson's head, everything that the development team does is focused on the target market. Their target market is not us, it is the new generation of gamers (the same ones that bought 10+ million copies of WoW). All their actions are focused on marketing their product to this target market, and thus they have to give them what they want.
What does this target market want?
- They want to feel like they accomplish something when they log in. Gogo league system and achievements. - They only want to play with the few people they feel comfortable with, and they want to be able to share their accomplishments with these people, who are probably family members and coworkers. Ok, add the RealID system, and integrate Facebook. - They don't want to be hassled by spam or trolls. Cue the removal of chatrooms, and let's also make it nearly impossible to add friends if you don't know their e-mail address.
That's pretty much what they want in a nutshell. Now, what do they not care at all about?
- They don't care about improving their performance, so long as they feel good about themselves. Ok, we don't have to waste effort with Online Replays, and we also don't need those Tournaments that WC3 had. - They already hang out with their RealID friends, so let's not waste any time implementing Clan features. Those are only for the crazies anyway. And while we're at it, their friends are all close by geographically. Let's go ahead and region lock the game, so we don't need to support global networking, or even try to minimize the lag (though there wasn't any left anyway).
If we view it from the businessperson perspective, and focus everything on the target market, you can clearly see how everything in Jinro's post is either a waste of effort, or actively contrary to their goals.
You might ask, why aren't they focusing on us, the competitive gamers? Well, three reasons. First, there are a lot fewer of us. Second, they know that we're guaranteed money anyway. They know that they can mangle SC2 all they want, we'll still buy it because we've been waiting so long, and loved SC1 so much. And last, to them the competitive scene either plays on hacked servers (ICCUP), or is in Korea under kespa. Either way, it brings them no money, and thus are not to be bothered with.
Pretty much summed it up. Why would they waste time implementing a bunch of features only 1% of the people who buy the game would actively use or care about, it's not good business sense.
I think the 1% number is wrong - do you really think all the people with like 5 posts who have posted in this thread are part of the hardcore old-guard that have played SC1 since release? I think far more casuals care than they think.
And wasn't it blizzard who said something along the lines of a casual is just a hardcore player waiting to happen? Something like that anyway.
The absolute casuals, the ones who will play the single player and maybe 2-3 games on bnet and move on to the next game, what sense would it make to cater to them when they won't be around to enjoy the features anyway?
Actually the reason Dustin Browder does not want to answer directly why they don't want LAN support is simply because it does not sound very well from a marketing point of view. Everyone at blizzard knows that they don't want LAN support because as long as all gaming must be done through their servers you cannot copy the game, you have to buy it and they got full control over content and users so that they are free to ban hackers etc.
Blizzard will say stuff like that it is for our experience because while there is a shred of truth in things like anti smurfing, no lan is for their benefit. Although on this one I got to admit that if I worked at blizzard I would had done the same thing. As a developer these days you really have to do stuff this way.
This is the reason why there is no LAN support and will never be LAN support, no matter what Browder says. I am afraid that unlike some of the other things that are missing, the lack of LAN is just a matter of welcome to the current times. MMO's, steam, x-box live etc. The PC market was being hit badly by piracy to the point where the consoles were taking over the entire market. The developers have realized that through online functions like steam they can get around it without keys and securom's and stuff that just gets broken eventually anyway.
LAN is dead, and it is not an sc2 issue, it is dead for gaming overall.
On May 23 2010 22:03 Fizban140 wrote: Dustin Browder isn't saying that people who want LAN are evil butterfly killers, blizzard is just trying to prevent smurfing and from the context their way of doing that is making one ID and one server only for your game.
Oh and all the stuff people want are the easy fixes, building a whole new online network from the ground up takes a lot of time and effort, adding a chat room takes a day.
Another day of doom and gloom and TL.net, is SC2 officially the worst thing ever yet?
He gets asked about LAN, doesn't have a real answer, and goes on to talk about pulling wings off butterflies. I know full well that he isn't directly saying if you want LAN = you are a butterfly killer, but he doesn't have an answer so he switches the topic.
It's all bullshit.
And no, SC2 isn't the worst thing ever - the game is awesome. Bnet 2.0 is a piece of shit, however.
The battlenet 2 UI and the replay system is oddly very far away from something as feature packed and convenient as HoN's UI and replay system...
Really, they should just take that design and shamelessly steal it...battlenet 2 feels worse than battlenet 1 in some respects and the replay system is pretty sparse. Obviously its a step up from SC1...but SC1 also came out in 1998.
On May 23 2010 23:02 ymirheim wrote: Actually the reason Dustin Browder does not want to answer directly why they don't want LAN support is simply because it does not sound very well from a marketing point of view. Everyone at blizzard knows that they don't want LAN support because as long as all gaming must be done through their servers you cannot copy the game, you have to buy it and they got full control over content and users so that they are free to ban hackers etc.
Blizzard will say stuff like that it is for our experience because while there is a shred of truth in things like anti smurfing, no lan is for their benefit. Although on this one I got to admit that if I worked at blizzard I would had done the same thing. As a developer these days you really have to do stuff this way.
This is the reason why there is no LAN support and will never be LAN support, no matter what Browder says. I am afraid that unlike some of the other things that are missing, the lack of LAN is just a matter of welcome to the current times. MMO's, steam, x-box live etc. The PC market was being hit badly by piracy to the point where the consoles were taking over the entire market. The developers have realized that through online functions like steam they can get around it without keys and securom's and stuff that just gets broken eventually anyway.
LAN is dead, and it is not an sc2 issue, it is dead for gaming overall.
Ok, so tell me why we can't have LAN that you have to first authenticate the game on bnet ? So, login to bnet, then in the custom game browser you can pick "LAN" and join games thare hosted on your Local Area Network.
It's pretty stupid how you can't even host LAN events for SC2 now, since they apparently have a limit to how many connections can come from 1 IP....
On May 23 2010 23:02 ymirheim wrote: Actually the reason Dustin Browder does not want to answer directly why they don't want LAN support is simply because it does not sound very well from a marketing point of view. Everyone at blizzard knows that they don't want LAN support because as long as all gaming must be done through their servers you cannot copy the game, you have to buy it and they got full control over content and users so that they are free to ban hackers etc.
Blizzard will say stuff like that it is for our experience because while there is a shred of truth in things like anti smurfing, no lan is for their benefit. Although on this one I got to admit that if I worked at blizzard I would had done the same thing. As a developer these days you really have to do stuff this way.
This is the reason why there is no LAN support and will never be LAN support, no matter what Browder says. I am afraid that unlike some of the other things that are missing, the lack of LAN is just a matter of welcome to the current times. MMO's, steam, x-box live etc. The PC market was being hit badly by piracy to the point where the consoles were taking over the entire market. The developers have realized that through online functions like steam they can get around it without keys and securom's and stuff that just gets broken eventually anyway.
LAN is dead, and it is not an sc2 issue, it is dead for gaming overall.
Ok, so tell me why we can't have LAN that you have to first authenticate the game on bnet ? So, login to bnet, then in the custom game browser you can pick "LAN" and join games thare hosted on your Local Area Network.
It's pretty stupid how you can't even host LAN events for SC2 now, since they apparently have a limit to how many connections can come from 1 IP....
Most likely nothing but legal issues. That and they already seem to be quite overwhelmed with their current load of programming and design.
On May 23 2010 23:02 ymirheim wrote: Actually the reason Dustin Browder does not want to answer directly why they don't want LAN support is simply because it does not sound very well from a marketing point of view. Everyone at blizzard knows that they don't want LAN support because as long as all gaming must be done through their servers you cannot copy the game, you have to buy it and they got full control over content and users so that they are free to ban hackers etc.
Blizzard will say stuff like that it is for our experience because while there is a shred of truth in things like anti smurfing, no lan is for their benefit. Although on this one I got to admit that if I worked at blizzard I would had done the same thing. As a developer these days you really have to do stuff this way.
This is the reason why there is no LAN support and will never be LAN support, no matter what Browder says. I am afraid that unlike some of the other things that are missing, the lack of LAN is just a matter of welcome to the current times. MMO's, steam, x-box live etc. The PC market was being hit badly by piracy to the point where the consoles were taking over the entire market. The developers have realized that through online functions like steam they can get around it without keys and securom's and stuff that just gets broken eventually anyway.
LAN is dead, and it is not an sc2 issue, it is dead for gaming overall.
Ok, so tell me why we can't have LAN that you have to first authenticate the game on bnet ? So, login to bnet, then in the custom game browser you can pick "LAN" and join games thare hosted on your Local Area Network.
It's pretty stupid how you can't even host LAN events for SC2 now, since they apparently have a limit to how many connections can come from 1 IP....
I guess that's because Blizzard wants Battle.net to be the new leading platform for onlinegaming and selling. Steam prooved, that those platforms can be extemely powerful economy wise, and Blizzard just wants to follow this trend.
On May 23 2010 23:02 ymirheim wrote: Actually the reason Dustin Browder does not want to answer directly why they don't want LAN support is simply because it does not sound very well from a marketing point of view. Everyone at blizzard knows that they don't want LAN support because as long as all gaming must be done through their servers you cannot copy the game, you have to buy it and they got full control over content and users so that they are free to ban hackers etc.
Blizzard will say stuff like that it is for our experience because while there is a shred of truth in things like anti smurfing, no lan is for their benefit. Although on this one I got to admit that if I worked at blizzard I would had done the same thing. As a developer these days you really have to do stuff this way.
This is the reason why there is no LAN support and will never be LAN support, no matter what Browder says. I am afraid that unlike some of the other things that are missing, the lack of LAN is just a matter of welcome to the current times. MMO's, steam, x-box live etc. The PC market was being hit badly by piracy to the point where the consoles were taking over the entire market. The developers have realized that through online functions like steam they can get around it without keys and securom's and stuff that just gets broken eventually anyway.
LAN is dead, and it is not an sc2 issue, it is dead for gaming overall.
Ok, so tell me why we can't have LAN that you have to first authenticate the game on bnet ? So, login to bnet, then in the custom game browser you can pick "LAN" and join games thare hosted on your Local Area Network.
It's pretty stupid how you can't even host LAN events for SC2 now, since they apparently have a limit to how many connections can come from 1 IP....
Because at a technical level, authentications like that are unfortunately in the same category as securom stuff in that it can be broken. Unless you have to actually play the game through battlenet then as soon as you are offline you can break the authentication. While admitting to no wrongdoings myself Windows update works kind of like this, you need to authenticate your windows version temporarily and then you get access to download updates without any authentication beyond that. I don't know about windows 7 but in xp and vista it was a rather simple task of installing a third party software that broke the authentication fooling the system that your windows was authenticated when it wasn't.
The limit on connections from one ip is just retarded though, is this true? I had no idea. Seems really retarded =/
On May 23 2010 23:02 ymirheim wrote: Actually the reason Dustin Browder does not want to answer directly why they don't want LAN support is simply because it does not sound very well from a marketing point of view. Everyone at blizzard knows that they don't want LAN support because as long as all gaming must be done through their servers you cannot copy the game, you have to buy it and they got full control over content and users so that they are free to ban hackers etc.
Blizzard will say stuff like that it is for our experience because while there is a shred of truth in things like anti smurfing, no lan is for their benefit. Although on this one I got to admit that if I worked at blizzard I would had done the same thing. As a developer these days you really have to do stuff this way.
This is the reason why there is no LAN support and will never be LAN support, no matter what Browder says. I am afraid that unlike some of the other things that are missing, the lack of LAN is just a matter of welcome to the current times. MMO's, steam, x-box live etc. The PC market was being hit badly by piracy to the point where the consoles were taking over the entire market. The developers have realized that through online functions like steam they can get around it without keys and securom's and stuff that just gets broken eventually anyway.
LAN is dead, and it is not an sc2 issue, it is dead for gaming overall.
Ok, so tell me why we can't have LAN that you have to first authenticate the game on bnet ? So, login to bnet, then in the custom game browser you can pick "LAN" and join games thare hosted on your Local Area Network.
It's pretty stupid how you can't even host LAN events for SC2 now, since they apparently have a limit to how many connections can come from 1 IP....
I guess that's because Blizzard wants Battle.net to be the new leading platform for onlinegaming and selling. Steam prooved, that those platforms can be extemely powerful economy wise, and Blizzard just wants to follow this trend.
Steam still has LAN functionality.
What in god's name are you talking about.
And all I hear from people is *speculation, speculation, speculation* as to why it's not included. I'd rather hear from the horses mouth why they haven't honestly answered the question - they aren't being transparent.
It's pretty stupid how you can't even host LAN events for SC2 now, since they apparently have a limit to how many connections can come from 1 IP....
You mean if theres a LAN like say DreamHack, just a few ppl there can play SC2? sorce for this?, it sounds to dumb to be true ^^
I assume it's not intentional:
On May 23 2010 06:28 Reborn8u wrote: I'm actually at a lan right now, we had a ton of delays because there is some kind of ip limit on Bnet so everyone (over 100 people) had to proxy to play. Then battlenet went down in the round of 16. Everyone had to replay games. It's pretty retarded. No chat rooms, No lan, everyone is having lag issues ON LAN! Giving away your email or facebook info is retarded. Here's a picture from the Fl lan. We're getting the games done now but it's been pretty rediculous!
On May 23 2010 23:02 ymirheim wrote: Actually the reason Dustin Browder does not want to answer directly why they don't want LAN support is simply because it does not sound very well from a marketing point of view. Everyone at blizzard knows that they don't want LAN support because as long as all gaming must be done through their servers you cannot copy the game, you have to buy it and they got full control over content and users so that they are free to ban hackers etc.
Blizzard will say stuff like that it is for our experience because while there is a shred of truth in things like anti smurfing, no lan is for their benefit. Although on this one I got to admit that if I worked at blizzard I would had done the same thing. As a developer these days you really have to do stuff this way.
This is the reason why there is no LAN support and will never be LAN support, no matter what Browder says. I am afraid that unlike some of the other things that are missing, the lack of LAN is just a matter of welcome to the current times. MMO's, steam, x-box live etc. The PC market was being hit badly by piracy to the point where the consoles were taking over the entire market. The developers have realized that through online functions like steam they can get around it without keys and securom's and stuff that just gets broken eventually anyway.
LAN is dead, and it is not an sc2 issue, it is dead for gaming overall.
Ok, so tell me why we can't have LAN that you have to first authenticate the game on bnet ? So, login to bnet, then in the custom game browser you can pick "LAN" and join games thare hosted on your Local Area Network.
It's pretty stupid how you can't even host LAN events for SC2 now, since they apparently have a limit to how many connections can come from 1 IP....
Because at a technical level, authentications like that are unfortunately in the same category as securom stuff in that it can be broken. Unless you have to actually play the game through battlenet then as soon as you are offline you can break the authentication. While admitting to no wrongdoings myself Windows update works kind of like this, you need to authenticate your windows version temporarily and then you get access to download updates without any authentication beyond that. I don't know about windows 7 but in xp and vista it was a rather simple task of installing a third party software that broke the authentication fooling the system that your windows was authenticated when it wasn't.
The limit on connections from one ip is just retarded though, is this true? I had no idea. Seems really retarded =/
I'm assuming the connection thing isn't intentional. Anyway, there are gonna be cracked servers anyway, so if you need a crack to play on LAN illicitly either way, does it really matter?
Yeah, one is harder than the other to accomplish, but once someone does accomplish it.... it's just as easy for everyone coming after him.
On May 23 2010 23:22 FrozenArbiter wrote: I'm assuming the connection thing isn't intentional. Anyway, there are gonna be cracked servers anyway, so if you need a crack to play on LAN illicitly either way, does it really matter?
Yeah, one is harder than the other to accomplish, but once someone does accomplish it.... it's just as easy for everyone coming after him.
Yeah, there will be private servers but generally companies are fine with that trade off. Private servers takes a lot more time to get working than cracks to a game and they generally figure that the number of players who will play on them will be dramatically reduced by the fact that such servers are generally very buggy or lack content or due to the lack of maintenance/support.
They much rather live with the existence of private cracked servers than cracks. Its a situation where they have to weigh how much money they would loose in either situation and they loose way less to private servers so they go for that. I'm afraid that my experience trying to make a living as a game designer has made me understand why blizzard and every other developer like those of LoL, HoN etc are going for this solution. It is a shame, because LAN is useful and it is a bit problematic to have to rely on having constant internet access but at the same time this is not something that is going to change unfortunately, it is a market thing and within ten years every single game will be working like this.
I would also in an ideal world love LAN support for myself, I am just resigned to the fate that those days are gone.
The thing is, we actually have a community that is positioned to he heard a lot moreso than most gaming communities. If the myriad of issues mentioned here aren't remedied in some way I think that there are enough well known, popular people in the community whose voices will be listened to that there could potentially be enough resistance to get Blizzard to listen or at the very least TALK to us.
To be clear, by remedied I do not meet that Blizzard immediately gets all this stuff fixed and in Bnet by release. I would be happy with, for example, "No, chatrooms will not be in the game at release, but we have definitive plans to add them shortly thereafter and they absolutely will be there eventually".
But, ya know, for all of us here who are pissed off about this, I think there are ways to resist and make ourselves heard. The problem is, I think, that for any of it to work a significant portion of us have to be prepared to not buy the game. If we're all gonna buy it anyway none of this will matter to anyone at Blizz.
On May 23 2010 23:22 FrozenArbiter wrote: I'm assuming the connection thing isn't intentional. Anyway, there are gonna be cracked servers anyway, so if you need a crack to play on LAN illicitly either way, does it really matter?
Yeah, one is harder than the other to accomplish, but once someone does accomplish it.... it's just as easy for everyone coming after him.
Yeah, there will be private servers but generally companies are fine with that trade off. Private servers takes a lot more time to get working than cracks to a game and they generally figure that the number of players who will play on them will be dramatically reduced by the fact that such servers are generally very buggy or lack content or due to the lack of maintenance/support.
They much rather live with the existence of private cracked servers than cracks. Its a situation where they have to weigh how much money they would loose in either situation and they loose way less to private servers so they go for that. I'm afraid that my experience trying to make a living as a game designer has made me understand why blizzard and every other developer like those of LoL, HoN etc are going for this solution. It is a shame, because LAN is useful and it is a bit problematic to have to rely on having constant internet access but at the same time this is not something that is going to change unfortunately, it is a market thing and within ten years every single game will be working like this.
I would also in an ideal world love LAN support for myself, I am just resigned to the fate that those days are gone.
I know plenty of people who pirate games, and none of them would consider buying a game just because they can't crack it. They just drop the idea of playing the game at all and move to another game. Pirates are not people who care about any particular game from my experience. They just want to get a quick dose of fun, and move to other games quickly.
By removing LAN (and all that other crap) Blizzard are not gaining new customers (since those who'd pirate the game are unlikely to buy it anyway). On the other hand, they are pissing off a lot of their actual customers - myself included. And I'm not buying the game as of now. I'm not playing the beta anymore nor am I going to sign their stupid ToS either. Regardless of whether they care, they've lost one customer already.
Blizzard instead decided to add Facebook. I don't mean to be blunt, but who actually wanted that?
Blizzard received MILLIONS of dollars from Facebook for selling out their fans with this "integration".
It wasn't a "decision" by Blizzard developers. It was a direct order from the financial department at Blizzard, to the developers. They take orders from money-grabbing leeches now. You're all missing the point here. When you refer to Blizzard, you're talking about people who've probably played two hours of video games their entire lives. They have NO IDEA what people want, or what they're doing wrong. It's all about the big $.
And I'm not buying the game as of now. I'm not playing the beta anymore nor am I going to sign their stupid ToS either. Regardless of whether they care, they've lost one customer already.
I haven't signed into the beta for a week, and I don't intend to buy the game. I won't be treated like cattle. It was humiliating and degrading every time I used to log on to Battle.net. If they think they can get away with crap like this, let's see how awake people really are. I still have faith in the common people, against abusive corporate greed like what we're seeing from Blizzard.
On May 23 2010 23:48 maybenexttime wrote: I know plenty of people who pirate games, and none of them would consider buying a game just because they can't crack it. They just drop the idea of playing the game at all and move to another game. Pirates are not people who care about any particular game from my experience. They just want to get a quick dose of fun, and move to other games quickly.
By removing LAN (and all that other crap) Blizzard are not gaining new customers (since those who'd pirate the game are unlikely to buy it anyway). On the other hand, they are pissing off a lot of their actual customers - myself included. And I'm not buying the game as of now. I'm not playing the beta anymore nor am I going to sign their stupid ToS either. Regardless of whether they care, they've lost one customer already.
Yeah, there are lots of people who pirate games who would not buy them either way, just as there are also a lot of people who would possibly buy the game but opts to pirate it because it when they can. I have been young too, I know how it is. I can honestly say that in my youth when I had less money that I downloaded a lot of games that I would probably had bought if I couldn't pirate it.
Even if you don't buy the game because of no LAN support Blizzard will be fine with loosing that money because they would loose more the other way around. But as I have said this is an issue that encompasses the entire market, not just Blizzard. So this is quite a broader issue than just sc2.
Bottom line is that Blizzard would loose more money and have less control with LAN mode, whether you agree with that or not it is one of those things that are not going to be negotiable. There are other things about the game that we can battle with blizzard on and try to get into the game, this is one we just have to let go.
Blizzard instead decided to add Facebook. I don't mean to be blunt, but who actually wanted that?
Blizzard received MILLIONS of dollars from Facebook for selling out their fans with this "integration".
It wasn't a "decision" by Blizzard developers. It was a direct order from the financial department at Blizzard, to the developers. They take orders from money-grabbing leeches now. You're all missing the point here. When you refer to Blizzard, you're talking about people who've probably played two hours of video games their entire lives. They have NO IDEA what people want, or what they're doing wrong. It's all about the big $.
And I'm not buying the game as of now. I'm not playing the beta anymore nor am I going to sign their stupid ToS either. Regardless of whether they care, they've lost one customer already.
I haven't signed into the beta for a week, and I don't intend to buy the game. I won't be treated like cattle. It was humiliating and degrading every time I used to log on to Battle.net. If they think they can get away with crap like this, let's see how awake people really are. I still have faith in the common people, against abusive corporate greed like what we're seeing from Blizzard.
- Former, huge Blizzard fan.
you have any sources to back that up or is just speculation?
On May 23 2010 23:02 ymirheim wrote: Actually the reason Dustin Browder does not want to answer directly why they don't want LAN support is simply because it does not sound very well from a marketing point of view. Everyone at blizzard knows that they don't want LAN support because as long as all gaming must be done through their servers you cannot copy the game, you have to buy it and they got full control over content and users so that they are free to ban hackers etc.
Blizzard will say stuff like that it is for our experience because while there is a shred of truth in things like anti smurfing, no lan is for their benefit. Although on this one I got to admit that if I worked at blizzard I would had done the same thing. As a developer these days you really have to do stuff this way.
This is the reason why there is no LAN support and will never be LAN support, no matter what Browder says. I am afraid that unlike some of the other things that are missing, the lack of LAN is just a matter of welcome to the current times. MMO's, steam, x-box live etc. The PC market was being hit badly by piracy to the point where the consoles were taking over the entire market. The developers have realized that through online functions like steam they can get around it without keys and securom's and stuff that just gets broken eventually anyway.
LAN is dead, and it is not an sc2 issue, it is dead for gaming overall.
Ok, so tell me why we can't have LAN that you have to first authenticate the game on bnet ? So, login to bnet, then in the custom game browser you can pick "LAN" and join games thare hosted on your Local Area Network.
It's pretty stupid how you can't even host LAN events for SC2 now, since they apparently have a limit to how many connections can come from 1 IP....
I guess that's because Blizzard wants Battle.net to be the new leading platform for onlinegaming and selling. Steam prooved, that those platforms can be extemely powerful economy wise, and Blizzard just wants to follow this trend.
Steam still has LAN functionality.
What in god's name are you talking about.
And all I hear from people is *speculation, speculation, speculation* as to why it's not included. I'd rather hear from the horses mouth why they haven't honestly answered the question - they aren't being transparent.
Steam DID NOT have Lan when it was released. An offline mode came later after about 1 year. This way they did force the users to log in into steam and use the online functions, stores etc.
I'm sure Blizzard is acting the same way, wants to force the users to use Battle.net all the time, and will put in an offline mode later on.
You have to understand, Blizzard has become a purely business driven company, the quality of their work has gone down. They just want to make more and more money. Adding facebook does not create any better playing experience at all. That was added to get more money from facebook. Greed has taken a toll on Blizzard...
On May 24 2010 00:16 Sashimi wrote: You have to understand, Blizzard has become a purely business driven company, the quality of their work has gone down. They just want to make more and more money. Adding facebook does not create any better playing experience at all. That was added to get more money from facebook. Greed has taken a toll on Blizzard...
We can understand that without being complicit in it.
As far as anyone commenting "well you seemed content with b.net 2.0 until the lag issue came up and now you're simply taking your anger out on something" couldn't be further from the truth.
I think the lag issue is a good thing because a lot of the b.net 2.0 hate that is currently being generated shows how little to do there is on b.net 2.0 when you can't play a game. On old b.net you could sit in chat rooms and socialize with the community, join a different realm, or play lan, whenever you couldn't play a game because of server instability. Anyone that used to play SC actively realizes how important those functions are to maintain a RTS fanbase.
Not rly - if you try had enough you can push a cart with square wheels - I'd say they tried to reinvent the wheel , but got tired half way, spit on it and got wasted.....
Blizzard received MILLIONS of dollars from Facebook for selling out their fans with this "integration".
It wasn't a "decision" by Blizzard developers. It was a direct order from the financial department at Blizzard, to the developers. They take orders from money-grabbing leeches now. You're all missing the point here. When you refer to Blizzard, you're talking about people who've probably played two hours of video games their entire lives. They have NO IDEA what people want, or what they're doing wrong. It's all about the big $.
There are legitimate concerns and then there is this...no actual knowledge, just some assumption based upon ignorance of blizzard, facebook, game development, or business in general. I'm quite happy that you won't buy the game...just one less BM person to worry about on B.Net.
BTW Facebook does not pay to have its service integrated into games, Blizzard isn't earning a Penny from facebook. What is it they say about people who ASSuME?
On May 23 2010 06:10 lew wrote: I wrote this on the beta forum (bad written, I know):
Dear blizzard,
I am sure you heard about ICCUP before. It's a starcraft 1 server with great and simple futures. People from Korea, Europe and Asia are all playing on the same server and everything is working perfectly. One thing is not that good about it: it's not noobfriendly.
Blizzard fixed the not-noob friendliness with leagues, which is the only thing that battlenet 2 does better then ICCUP. Battlenet 2 is lacking a lot of very simple features which ICCUP has and which are NEEDED for starcraft 2 to become an ESPORTS game.
The feautures: - channels - decent friend adding system (now it is ridicilous, the system pre-patch 13 was better) - a global ranking (remove the divisions please) - lan
What you are doing now is: - dividing people between different servers - making tournaments almost impossible with the current friend system and with no-lan - making it impossible for people to check how well / bad they are doing compared to the rest of the world (ranking) - making it impossible to play with people from other continents - making battlenet a lonely place
Why is ICCUP - capable to add people to 1 global server? - capable to add chat channels without a single problem? - capable to make a global ranking?
Almost everyone at the teamliquid forums is asking for these futures and you keep on being stubborn. These features are so simple and still they are missing from battlenet. I know that you think that some of these features have disadvantages, but that doesn't take away that they are NEEDED if you want sc2 to be an ESPORTS game. I understand that making 1 global server is hard, but things like chatchannels, a decent friend-adding system and a global ranking are not that hard to implement. I also understand that this is BETA, but aren't these things so simple that they should be in the BETA already?
link to this thread, i wanna see how they respond ^_^
Guys, I feel like I am playing the devils advocate all the time but can we not focus on the actual issues with bnet 2.0 which is the lack of functionality and the bad ladder design?
The facebook horse has been dead for a long time and it won't get any deader if you keep beating it.
Whether you believe me or not the addition of the facebook interconnectivity has had NO impact on any other production. It may seem that way intuitively but it is wrong. Adding facebook connection can not possibly have come at the expense of any other major functionality mainly because of how ridiculously easy it is to implement. All the work lies at facebooks side. They have the infrastructure set up already, all the random blizzard interm that they put to work on this for a few hours had to do was add the ui and the connectivity for battlenet to receive information from facebook. All the functionality for searching for friends and receiving who got the beta etc is all on facebook's side.
Beyond that, as someone myself who is unlikely to use this feature, I still don't feel the need to deny it to others. I don't need the facebook functionality even though I actually did surprisingly enough end up finding three more people I know who had the beta and ended up playing games with them, if adding this feature did not affect anything else why would I want it gone just because others don't want it. If you don't want to add sc2 buddies through facebook, just don't. If you don't want to play FFA, just don't. There is surely people who will use this feature and why would I care?
Enough with the facebook argument. There are actual issues with bnet 2.0 that should be addressed and talked about such as the lack of chat, clan creation and a sensible ladder system. Repeating the facebook whine is just dumbing the debate down.
On May 24 2010 00:49 ymirheim wrote: Guys, I feel like I am playing the devils advocate all the time but can we not focus on the actual issues with bnet 2.0 which is the lack of functionality and the bad ladder design?
The facebook horse has been dead for a long time and it won't get any deader if you keep beating it.
Whether you believe me or not the addition of the facebook interconnectivity has had NO impact on any other production. It may seem that way intuitively but it is wrong. Adding facebook connection can not possibly have come at the expense of any other major functionality mainly because of how ridiculously easy it is to implement. All the work lies at facebooks side. They have the infrastructure set up already, all the random blizzard interm that they put to work on this for a few hours had to do was add the ui and the connectivity for battlenet to receive information from facebook. All the functionality for searching for friends and receiving who got the beta etc is all on facebook's side.
Beyond that, as someone myself who is unlikely to use this feature, I still don't feel the need to deny it to others. I don't need the facebook functionality even though I actually did surprisingly enough end up finding three more people I know who had the beta and ended up playing games with them, if adding this feature did not affect anything else why would I want it gone just because others don't want it. If you don't want to add sc2 buddies through facebook, just don't. If you don't want to play FFA, just don't. There is surely people who will use this feature and why would I care?
Enough with the facebook argument. There are actual issues with bnet 2.0 that should be addressed and talked about such as the lack of chat, clan creation and a sensible ladder system. Repeating the facebook whine is just dumbing the debate down.
Blizzcon 2009, Blizzard talked about how they came about realizing they had to have Facebook integrated with Bnet 2.0 .
I also remember them saying this in response as to why the Beta was being delayed another year.
It was my complete understanding that Facebook is why we had to wait so long.
On May 24 2010 00:49 ymirheim wrote: Guys, I feel like I am playing the devils advocate all the time but can we not focus on the actual issues with bnet 2.0 which is the lack of functionality and the bad ladder design?
The facebook horse has been dead for a long time and it won't get any deader if you keep beating it.
Whether you believe me or not the addition of the facebook interconnectivity has had NO impact on any other production. It may seem that way intuitively but it is wrong. Adding facebook connection can not possibly have come at the expense of any other major functionality mainly because of how ridiculously easy it is to implement. All the work lies at facebooks side. They have the infrastructure set up already, all the random blizzard interm that they put to work on this for a few hours had to do was add the ui and the connectivity for battlenet to receive information from facebook. All the functionality for searching for friends and receiving who got the beta etc is all on facebook's side.
Beyond that, as someone myself who is unlikely to use this feature, I still don't feel the need to deny it to others. I don't need the facebook functionality even though I actually did surprisingly enough end up finding three more people I know who had the beta and ended up playing games with them, if adding this feature did not affect anything else why would I want it gone just because others don't want it. If you don't want to add sc2 buddies through facebook, just don't. If you don't want to play FFA, just don't. There is surely people who will use this feature and why would I care?
Enough with the facebook argument. There are actual issues with bnet 2.0 that should be addressed and talked about such as the lack of chat, clan creation and a sensible ladder system. Repeating the facebook whine is just dumbing the debate down.
Blizzcon 2009, Blizzard talked about how they came about realizing they had to have Facebook integrated with Bnet 2.0 .
I also remember them saying this in response as to why the Beta was being delayed another year.
It was my complete understanding that Facebook is why we had to wait so long.
I really can't see how that is even theoretically possible. Not even if my dead grandma was doing the coding. Either that is simply not the case or it was something else they had to wait for, something on facebook's side. From what I understand the long delay was related to significant infrastructure work on battlenet, it is possible that facebook was one thing that required the groundwork that was done during this time but if anything the work was necessary for a lot of other things too, and would have had to be done regardless of facebook integration.
I really wish I could find this video, does anyone have it?
Browder was asked why Starcraft was delayed when it was stated a year before the game would be ready for release that summer.
Browder goes on to describe the religious experience he had with Facebook and how he realized it had to be part of bnet 2.0 before release. He told this story in response to the anger over the delay of starcraft 2 due to bnet 2.0.
Anyways, to all their own, I'm not a fan of Facebook, I see no reason why it should be part of battle.net...but if people like it keep it.
On May 24 2010 00:49 ymirheim wrote: Guys, I feel like I am playing the devils advocate all the time but can we not focus on the actual issues with bnet 2.0 which is the lack of functionality and the bad ladder design?
The facebook horse has been dead for a long time and it won't get any deader if you keep beating it.
Whether you believe me or not the addition of the facebook interconnectivity has had NO impact on any other production. It may seem that way intuitively but it is wrong. Adding facebook connection can not possibly have come at the expense of any other major functionality mainly because of how ridiculously easy it is to implement. All the work lies at facebooks side. They have the infrastructure set up already, all the random blizzard interm that they put to work on this for a few hours had to do was add the ui and the connectivity for battlenet to receive information from facebook. All the functionality for searching for friends and receiving who got the beta etc is all on facebook's side.
Beyond that, as someone myself who is unlikely to use this feature, I still don't feel the need to deny it to others. I don't need the facebook functionality even though I actually did surprisingly enough end up finding three more people I know who had the beta and ended up playing games with them, if adding this feature did not affect anything else why would I want it gone just because others don't want it. If you don't want to add sc2 buddies through facebook, just don't. If you don't want to play FFA, just don't. There is surely people who will use this feature and why would I care?
Enough with the facebook argument. There are actual issues with bnet 2.0 that should be addressed and talked about such as the lack of chat, clan creation and a sensible ladder system. Repeating the facebook whine is just dumbing the debate down.
Blizzcon 2009, Blizzard talked about how they came about realizing they had to have Facebook integrated with Bnet 2.0 .
I also remember them saying this in response as to why the Beta was being delayed another year.
It was my complete understanding that Facebook is why we had to wait so long.
I remember alot of features I actually liked about battle.net 2.0 such as being able to communicate with friends who are playing other games. For example asking someone who was playing Diablo 3 if they wanted to play Starcraft 2 for a bit etc. That would have been good.
Just seems things like that went in favour of a facebook integration no one wanted.
Things like lack of chat, no clan creation and lack of a sensible ladder system don't appear to be things Blizzard just didn't have time to do as they are pretty simple to add. These are things Blizzard actually thought "we don't want this in our game", and just never implemented it. Lack of chat is really a big WTF for me because its so simple to implement, they obviously could have added it. Instead they thought it wasn't important to have it and just never bothered. Thats the disturbing part of the story and just shows how little Blizzard listen to or care about the fans.
great now im in the Sarengo Foxtrot Platinum league!!!!!!! WTF IS THIS ? IM NOT FUCKING 5YO ANYMORE I DONT GIVE A FUCK HOW U CALL MY FUCKING LEAGUE I JUST WANNA SEE THE COMPETITIVE EDGE OF THIS MOTHERFUCKING GAME
Public chat channels would be a nightmare. Sometimes I have seen up to 30,000 people on the US beta server, when it goes live there could (total guesswork) be up to 300,000 consecutive people online.
Think about wow's global chat channels (because that type of gamer will make up the vast majority of people playing sc2). They are a shit storm of spam. Constant, useless, shit. There was like a hundred plus wow servers for the US region. There's going to be what? 4 battle net servers? Asia, SE Asia, US and EU?
Ingame chat channels could be useful but really communication in most game communities is done by and large via irc, forums or vent and most time spent ingame is actually playing. It's inconvenient to have to use these applications rather than have them integrated into the game, it is a step backwards, but it isn't the end of the world.
Pheus, you realize that in SC and WC3, there were dozens of public chat channels for each country?
Like, you'd connect to bnet and be put into Brood War Swe-1, then you'd be able to CREATE YOUR OWN by simply typing in name of it.
/join op cG
Now I've created a brand new channel, and the account cG has OP powers in it. Seriously, not having chat channels is a gigantic step backwards, especially when they shove facebook stuff down our throat. I'm gonna use an analogy I used earlier today just because I liked it so much:
I think what Blizzard are forgetting is that while yes, mountain dew is great, people still drink water.
Facebook = Mountain Dew. Chat channels = water.
We can take the analogy even further and talk about how real life communities tend to be created near sources of water but I'll just leave it at that :D
I think what Blizzard are forgetting is that while yes, mountain dew is great, people still drink water.
Facebook = Mountain Dew. Chat channels = water.
We can take the analogy even further and talk about how real life communities tend to be created near sources of water but I'll just leave it at that :D
While I agree that chat channels definitely need to be in the game, saying that water is more important than Mountain Dew on a video game forum is probably not the best way to go.
In fact, half of the people reading this post are probably drinking Mountain Dew right now.
On May 24 2010 01:44 FrozenArbiter wrote: Pheus, you realize that in SC and WC3, there were dozens of public chat channels for each country?
Like, you'd connect to bnet and be put into Brood War Swe-1, then you'd be able to CREATE YOUR OWN by simply typing in name of it.
/join op cG
Now I've created a brand new channel, and the account cG has OP powers in it. Seriously, not having chat channels is a gigantic step backwards, especially when they shove facebook stuff down our throat. I'm gonna use an analogy I used earlier today just because I liked it so much:
I think what Blizzard are forgetting is that while yes, mountain dew is great, people still drink water.
Facebook = Mountain Dew. Chat channels = water.
We can take the analogy even further and talk about how real life communities tend to be created near sources of water but I'll just leave it at that :D
I've got a better analogy for you Jinro.
I think what Blizzard are forgetting is that while yes, a piece of shit is great (wait...wut), people still drink water.
Facebook = Shit. Chat channels = Water.
We can take that analogy further and talk about how real life communities tend to be created near sources of water whilst people tend not to want to live around big steaming piles of faeces.
We seem to be forgetting that it took blizzard what? 5 years or so to make starcraft 1 what it is today. Give them time they want to make this a huge e-sport even tho it is beta things aren't looking so great but... starcraft 1 looked horrible at first it took them a couple years to get rid of all the bugs and make it balanced etc... Patience by the time of the release blizzard should have a pretty decent game out which we can all enjoy...(hopefully)
It is really really sad to watch Blizzard progressively become worse every passing game. lol. Seriously... They've gone and fucked up possibly their greatest achievement (except for enslaving people onto WoW.) They've gone and fucked up Battle.net. And each game they've released since Starcraft has been progressively worse than the previous. It's almost comical how unorganized and unworthy this attempt is.
I feel the same way about Bnet2 as I do the US economy. lol. If people had any sense we'd be making demands and threats. Because this is just stupid. You call this a ladder? This isn't a fucking ladder. a Ladder has steps. This is a fucking GRIND. I have a choice of either placing in diamond and playing X or Y amount and just hanging out 1-30 depending on X or Y. That's not a ladder. Fuck you. I'm not a god damned fucking kid and I could wipe my ass with 100 person "personal ladders" GTFO. If people had any sense we'd be rioting in the streets.
On May 24 2010 01:44 FrozenArbiter wrote: Pheus, you realize that in SC and WC3, there were dozens of public chat channels for each country?
Like, you'd connect to bnet and be put into Brood War Swe-1, then you'd be able to CREATE YOUR OWN by simply typing in name of it.
/join op cG
Now I've created a brand new channel, and the account cG has OP powers in it. Seriously, not having chat channels is a gigantic step backwards, especially when they shove facebook stuff down our throat. I'm gonna use an analogy I used earlier today just because I liked it so much:
I think what Blizzard are forgetting is that while yes, mountain dew is great, people still drink water.
Facebook = Mountain Dew. Chat channels = water.
We can take the analogy even further and talk about how real life communities tend to be created near sources of water but I'll just leave it at that :D
I've got a better analogy for you Jinro.
I think what Blizzard are forgetting is that while yes, a piece of shit is great (wait...wut), people still drink water.
Facebook = Shit. Chat channels = Water.
We can take that analogy further and talk about how real life communities tend to be created near sources of water whilst people tend not to want to live around big steaming piles of faeces.
On May 24 2010 01:44 FrozenArbiter wrote: Pheus, you realize that in SC and WC3, there were dozens of public chat channels for each country?
Like, you'd connect to bnet and be put into Brood War Swe-1, then you'd be able to CREATE YOUR OWN by simply typing in name of it.
/join op cG
Now I've created a brand new channel, and the account cG has OP powers in it. Seriously, not having chat channels is a gigantic step backwards, especially when they shove facebook stuff down our throat. I'm gonna use an analogy I used earlier today just because I liked it so much:
I think what Blizzard are forgetting is that while yes, mountain dew is great, people still drink water.
Facebook = Mountain Dew. Chat channels = water.
We can take the analogy even further and talk about how real life communities tend to be created near sources of water but I'll just leave it at that :D
I've got a better analogy for you Jinro.
I think what Blizzard are forgetting is that while yes, a piece of shit is great (wait...wut), people still drink water.
Facebook = Shit. Chat channels = Water.
We can take that analogy further and talk about how real life communities tend to be created near sources of water whilst people tend not to want to live around big steaming piles of faeces.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the King of Comedy.
With the facebook function I found out that two people I went to college with have accounts and now I can play with them. Is this really that bad of a thing?
Just because they don't have every feature that you want doesn't mean you have to trash talk every single feature they do add that you don't care about.
On May 24 2010 01:44 FrozenArbiter wrote: Pheus, you realize that in SC and WC3, there were dozens of public chat channels for each country?
Like, you'd connect to bnet and be put into Brood War Swe-1, then you'd be able to CREATE YOUR OWN by simply typing in name of it.
/join op cG
Now I've created a brand new channel, and the account cG has OP powers in it. Seriously, not having chat channels is a gigantic step backwards, especially when they shove facebook stuff down our throat. I'm gonna use an analogy I used earlier today just because I liked it so much:
Exactly, this should be simple enough to implement. I mean they have it in every single blizzard game, even world of warcraft with what thousands of users online per server, you can just create a private channel afaik by typing in the name and joining it.
Actually, I have been thinking. The current "chat" sytem that is in bnet 2.0, the instant messenger style thingy should be all the framework needed to implement this, they actually shouldn't have to build any new framework. In fact, the game already has chat channels. When you message someone and open a chat window that is a new virtual channel that is created somewhere and with party chat and invite functions it is possible to invite multiple people into one of these channels.
The functionality that is missing is to add the ability to create a named chat window and have people be able to join it without being invited and that literally should not require any rework at all.
I think they should, to the bottom of the friendslist interface add a letterbox followed by a "join chat" button, as well as a "create new chat" button.
If you create a new chat you get told to enter a name and then you get an empty instant messenger window exactly like the party chat. They should add a few moderator buttons, just a handful is enough for a start, such as kick player or promote to moderator. Basically the player who created the chat gets moderator status automatically and can give it on to others. You should also have a button for adding a password to the channel.
It seems to me that the chat system from previous battlenet is already in bnet 2.0. It is just that the middleman is missing where we can create and join custom channels. This is what I think they ought to add though, and they should do it at the same time as they add custom naming for custom games and a browser for said games since the systems are related.
I am still however on the fence about the fact that this seems to be such an intuitive addition that I suspect that it is in fact already possible but just not activated on the beta but I will wait until the next phase of the beta goes up and see. If it is still missing then, then I will get worried. It should be very simple to add.
On May 24 2010 01:44 FrozenArbiter wrote: Pheus, you realize that in SC and WC3, there were dozens of public chat channels for each country?
Like, you'd connect to bnet and be put into Brood War Swe-1, then you'd be able to CREATE YOUR OWN by simply typing in name of it.
/join op cG
Now I've created a brand new channel, and the account cG has OP powers in it. Seriously, not having chat channels is a gigantic step backwards, especially when they shove facebook stuff down our throat. I'm gonna use an analogy I used earlier today just because I liked it so much:
I think what Blizzard are forgetting is that while yes, mountain dew is great, people still drink water.
Facebook = Mountain Dew. Chat channels = water.
We can take the analogy even further and talk about how real life communities tend to be created near sources of water but I'll just leave it at that :D
I've got a better analogy for you Jinro.
I think what Blizzard are forgetting is that while yes, a piece of shit is great (wait...wut), people still drink water.
Facebook = Shit. Chat channels = Water.
We can take that analogy further and talk about how real life communities tend to be created near sources of water whilst people tend not to want to live around big steaming piles of faeces.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the King of Comedy.
With the facebook function I found out that two people I went to college with have accounts and now I can play with them. Is this really that bad of a thing?
Just because they don't have every feature that you want doesn't mean you have to trash talk every single feature they do add that you don't care about.
The problem is that they basically invented plastic surgery before penicilline.
On May 24 2010 01:52 Motiva wrote: It is really really sad to watch Blizzard progressively become worse every passing game. lol. Seriously... They've gone and fucked up possibly their greatest achievement (except for enslaving people onto WoW.) They've gone and fucked up Battle.net. And each game they've released since Starcraft has been progressively worse than the previous. It's almost comical how unorganized and unworthy this attempt is.
This is the case with all company's. C&C: every version is more worse then the previous one. Same for call of duty series, same for cs and css, ...
On May 24 2010 01:44 FrozenArbiter wrote: Pheus, you realize that in SC and WC3, there were dozens of public chat channels for each country?
Like, you'd connect to bnet and be put into Brood War Swe-1, then you'd be able to CREATE YOUR OWN by simply typing in name of it.
/join op cG
Now I've created a brand new channel, and the account cG has OP powers in it. Seriously, not having chat channels is a gigantic step backwards, especially when they shove facebook stuff down our throat. I'm gonna use an analogy I used earlier today just because I liked it so much:
I think what Blizzard are forgetting is that while yes, mountain dew is great, people still drink water.
Facebook = Mountain Dew. Chat channels = water.
We can take the analogy even further and talk about how real life communities tend to be created near sources of water but I'll just leave it at that :D
I've got a better analogy for you Jinro.
I think what Blizzard are forgetting is that while yes, a piece of shit is great (wait...wut), people still drink water.
Facebook = Shit. Chat channels = Water.
We can take that analogy further and talk about how real life communities tend to be created near sources of water whilst people tend not to want to live around big steaming piles of faeces.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the King of Comedy.
With the facebook function I found out that two people I went to college with have accounts and now I can play with them. Is this really that bad of a thing?
Just because they don't have every feature that you want doesn't mean you have to trash talk every single feature they do add that you don't care about.
The problem is that they basically invented plastic surgery before penicilline.
See, analogies are awesome.
You're assuming that the same people worked on plastic surgery and penicillin and that progress on one delayed progress on the other.
On May 24 2010 01:44 FrozenArbiter wrote: Pheus, you realize that in SC and WC3, there were dozens of public chat channels for each country?
Like, you'd connect to bnet and be put into Brood War Swe-1, then you'd be able to CREATE YOUR OWN by simply typing in name of it.
/join op cG
Now I've created a brand new channel, and the account cG has OP powers in it. Seriously, not having chat channels is a gigantic step backwards, especially when they shove facebook stuff down our throat. I'm gonna use an analogy I used earlier today just because I liked it so much:
I think what Blizzard are forgetting is that while yes, mountain dew is great, people still drink water.
Facebook = Mountain Dew. Chat channels = water.
We can take the analogy even further and talk about how real life communities tend to be created near sources of water but I'll just leave it at that :D
I've got a better analogy for you Jinro.
I think what Blizzard are forgetting is that while yes, a piece of shit is great (wait...wut), people still drink water.
Facebook = Shit. Chat channels = Water.
We can take that analogy further and talk about how real life communities tend to be created near sources of water whilst people tend not to want to live around big steaming piles of faeces.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the King of Comedy.
With the facebook function I found out that two people I went to college with have accounts and now I can play with them. Is this really that bad of a thing?
Just because they don't have every feature that you want doesn't mean you have to trash talk every single feature they do add that you don't care about.
The problem is that they basically invented plastic surgery before penicilline.
See, analogies are awesome.
You're assuming that the same people worked on plastic surgery and penicillin and that progress on one delayed progress on the other.
It's insulting that they would choose to spend ANY time on facebook before having a basic chat feature implemented. Like, really, truly insulting
On May 24 2010 02:05 Powda wrote: Actually it was stated in an interview that Blizzard employees are moved around to different projects all the time.
When it comes to Devs, there is no solid ground, you are moved from warcraft to starcraft to bnet to diablo and back again as Blizzard chooses.
For all we know the facebook team did the majority of the facebook integration.
Now that I think about it, the BNET 2.0 chat and facebook chat are pretty damn similar. I wouldn't be surprised if by launch you can talk to people on bnet through facebook. If that happens and there still aren't normal chat rooms then I will jump on board the "we want chatrooms" bandwagon.
Honestly, if Bnet 2.0 is the reason for SC's delay and this is the crap shovelled, they need to roll some heads and cut some paychecks. Serious blunder.
It's all about money and politics. What do you guys think big ol' companies like activision do. They try to do what nets them the most money.
Blizzard's sc2 development team - sure, they care about us. Activision does not give the tiniest shit about us. And they are clearly in control of bnet 2.0. It's all about money!
Every single thing people complain about is a decision to try to get more money. Why do you think they would do it already knowing the SC1 fanbase is going to hate it.
I'm going out on a limb here to say that hte facebook integration is a good thing...
and I love the matchmaking compared to ICCup.
but It's missing chat channels, and many other things that would seem to be much easier to implement than chat channels?! If anything just make a pseudo IRC server/client that needed bnet authentication to enter?
On May 24 2010 01:44 FrozenArbiter wrote: Pheus, you realize that in SC and WC3, there were dozens of public chat channels for each country?
Like, you'd connect to bnet and be put into Brood War Swe-1, then you'd be able to CREATE YOUR OWN by simply typing in name of it.
/join op cG
Now I've created a brand new channel, and the account cG has OP powers in it. Seriously, not having chat channels is a gigantic step backwards, especially when they shove facebook stuff down our throat. I'm gonna use an analogy I used earlier today just because I liked it so much:
I think what Blizzard are forgetting is that while yes, mountain dew is great, people still drink water.
Facebook = Mountain Dew. Chat channels = water.
We can take the analogy even further and talk about how real life communities tend to be created near sources of water but I'll just leave it at that :D
I've got a better analogy for you Jinro.
I think what Blizzard are forgetting is that while yes, a piece of shit is great (wait...wut), people still drink water.
Facebook = Shit. Chat channels = Water.
We can take that analogy further and talk about how real life communities tend to be created near sources of water whilst people tend not to want to live around big steaming piles of faeces.
The State of B-Net 2.0 is completely appalling. I really hope blizzard and the guy who designed B-Net 2.0 reads this thread and takes some notes. I hear the guy who did B-Net 2.0 did Xbox live and it is really similar. Well to that I say, we are PC gamers! We are NOT console gamers here, learn to target your market. As PC gamers we need certain things to foster In-game communities, chat rooms and channels a long with clan support are so vital to doing this any talk of building an "online social community" is complete bullshit without basic chatting functions.
One of the best parts of old SC (when I played, very casually mind you) was playing somebody only to have him tell me to join *channel _____* to talk about the game and to give me tips. After a good 2v2 match with somebody I should be able to say in chat "hey good game man, join channel ______* and we'll play again. This is how friends are built on line. Right now we need to get their E-mail and use their terrible Real ID system. It's like whoever designed B-Net 2.0 just went out of his way to make it as hard as possible to meet people and create relationships in the game. As a socialization platform B-net 2.0 fails in every single regard. Newsflash.... PC gamers have keyboards to type with, give us a proper chatting platform.
Instead we get a bunch of flashy useless crap like decals and achievements instead. This stuff would be all fine if the basic functions of B-Net 2.0 wasn't so poorly done. I seriously don't see how the current B-Net 2.0 took so damn long to develop and is such a failure in nearly every regard. Don't people at Blizzard offices realize that battle net 2.0 is inferior to their previous battlenet platforms? Give me WC3 battle net over this over bloated, flashy, inefficient piece of junk any day. Don't get me wrong, SC2 is a great game itself, but with the current state of B-net 2.0 I am seriously considering passing on this one. Saddest part is Facebook actually now has a stake in seeing that we don't get chat channels in SC2, they want facebook to be the medium of communication between SC2 players, such a mega failure here.
I just read a bit through the bnet forums and posters there so terrible that it is aggravating. Most of the posters seem to be the 'casual' demographic and seem ok with blizzard destroying everything we know and love so they can get their achievements and happiness.... the whole thing is really, really depressing, especially because the game actually turned out to be really really fun. Also, the thought of no ICCUP for SC2 in the future is really disturbing as I'm sure they would fix everything wrong with the current iteration of bnet 2.0.
Cuz they don't want our money??? -_-;; You lost me Travis. If Bnet 2.0 is seriously what it is, and I can't play people from around the world, Koreans, Germans, Belgian Waffles, or lan but it's instead filled with achievements, bullshit bargraphs, and portraits, I'll seriously say goodbye. I love the game but what good is starcraft if I can't play it with the people I've played it with forever and ever.
Plus, I am so bad at BW now that getting Team Melee games together is mad fun LOLOLOL.
On May 24 2010 02:20 Froadac wrote: I'm going out on a limb here to say that hte facebook integration is a good thing...
and I love the matchmaking compared to ICCup.
but It's missing chat channels, and many other things that would seem to be much easier to implement than chat channels?! If anything just make a pseudo IRC server/client that needed bnet authentication to enter?
How can facebook integration benefit the game? I just don't see how it helps the existing player do anything that a better multiplayer client would do. I can however see it as a way to market activision/blizzard products to people on your facebook page
On May 24 2010 01:44 FrozenArbiter wrote: Pheus, you realize that in SC and WC3, there were dozens of public chat channels for each country?
Like, you'd connect to bnet and be put into Brood War Swe-1, then you'd be able to CREATE YOUR OWN by simply typing in name of it.
/join op cG
Now I've created a brand new channel, and the account cG has OP powers in it. Seriously, not having chat channels is a gigantic step backwards, especially when they shove facebook stuff down our throat. I'm gonna use an analogy I used earlier today just because I liked it so much:
I think what Blizzard are forgetting is that while yes, mountain dew is great, people still drink water.
Facebook = Mountain Dew. Chat channels = water.
We can take the analogy even further and talk about how real life communities tend to be created near sources of water but I'll just leave it at that :D
I've got a better analogy for you Jinro.
I think what Blizzard are forgetting is that while yes, a piece of shit is great (wait...wut), people still drink water.
Facebook = Shit. Chat channels = Water.
We can take that analogy further and talk about how real life communities tend to be created near sources of water whilst people tend not to want to live around big steaming piles of faeces.
On May 24 2010 02:15 travis wrote: It's all about money and politics. What do you guys think big ol' companies like activision do. They try to do what nets them the most money.
Blizzard's sc2 development team - sure, they care about us. Activision does not give the tiniest shit about us. And they are clearly in control of bnet 2.0. It's all about money!
Every single thing people complain about is a decision to try to get more money. Why do you think they would do it already knowing the SC1 fanbase is going to hate it.
I agree with most of this, except for the paranoia about Activision part. Could be true, unfair to assume that this is the case though.
People need to realize that TL is a very small part of what the overall community will be and very biased in a particular fashion (towards competitive play). It's a big possibility that taking in all the numbers that chat just isn't worth it for Blizzard to add to Bnet 2 (even with a very low cost) because in the end not enough people will care that it's not present.
Everyone here gives nice warm fuzzy anecdotes about joining random channels and talking with people, organizing events, and finding friends etc. But I don't think I could extrapolate that out to a wider user base.
As far as I know Street Fighter arcades, and Smash Bros don't have chat rooms and they have competitive scenes. Did Counter Strike have chatrooms before steam came around? I'm not sure on that one but I think they didn't and their competitive scene has turned out alright.
I can agree that having chat rooms would be better for us, but there's more to consider (with money as travis said) and it definitely isn't the end of the world or the end of competitive Starcraft as a lot of people here like to scream.
On May 24 2010 02:23 Regulate140 wrote: The State of B-Net 2.0 is completely appalling. I really hope blizzard and the guy who designed B-Net 2.0 reads this thread and takes some notes. I hear the guy who did B-Net 2.0 did Xbox live and it is really similar. Well to that I say, we are PC gamers! We are NOT console gamers here, learn to target your market. As PC gamers we need certain things to foster In-game communities, chat rooms and channels a long with clan support are so vital to doing this any talk of building an "online social community" is complete bullshit without basic chatting functions.
One of the best parts of old SC (when I played, very casually mind you) was playing somebody only to have him tell me to join *channel _____* to talk about the game and to give me tips. After a good 2v2 match with somebody I should be able to say in chat "hey good game man, join channel ______* and we'll play again. This is how friends are built on line. Right now we need to get their E-mail and use their terrible Real ID system. It's like whoever designed B-Net 2.0 just went out of his way to make it as hard as possible to meet people and create relationships in the game. As a socialization platform B-net 2.0 fails in every single regard. Newsflash.... PC gamers have keyboards to type with, give us a proper chatting platform.
Instead we get a bunch of flashy useless crap like decals and achievements instead. This stuff would be all fine if the basic functions of B-Net 2.0 wasn't so poorly done. I seriously don't see how the current B-Net 2.0 took so damn long to develop and is such a failure in nearly every regard. Don't people at Blizzard offices realize that battle net 2.0 is inferior to their previous battlenet platforms? Give me WC3 battle net over this over bloated, flashy, inefficient piece of junk any day. Don't get me wrong, SC2 is a great game itself, but with the current state of B-net 2.0 I am seriously considering passing on this one. Saddest part is Facebook actually now has a stake in seeing that we don't get chat channels in SC2, they want facebook to be the medium of communication between SC2 players, such a mega failure here.
agree. none of the extraneous stuff would be bad if they had gotten the fundamentals right. i mean, i can't even whisper friends in-game without opening a mini chat box or tabbing through like 6 people, what the hell?
gateway limitations just plain suck. they haven't even tried to explain that one and it is by far the worst.
On May 24 2010 02:23 SuperJongMan wrote: Cuz they don't want our money??? -_-;; You lost me Travis. If Bnet 2.0 is seriously what it is, and I can't play people from around the world, Koreans, Germans, Belgian Waffles, or lan but it's instead filled with achievements, bullshit bargraphs, and portraits, I'll seriously say goodbye. I love the game but what good is starcraft if I can't play it with the people I've played it with forever and ever.
Plus, I am so bad at BW now that getting Team Melee games together is mad fun LOLOLOL.
eh they already have our money we are all going to buy it and it probably will sell more copies now that they've introduced stupid shit like facebook integration
and they certainly will make more money selling maps and other features/addons
On May 24 2010 02:15 travis wrote: It's all about money and politics. What do you guys think big ol' companies like activision do. They try to do what nets them the most money.
Blizzard's sc2 development team - sure, they care about us. Activision does not give the tiniest shit about us. And they are clearly in control of bnet 2.0. It's all about money!
Every single thing people complain about is a decision to try to get more money. Why do you think they would do it already knowing the SC1 fanbase is going to hate it.
I honestly don't think Activision is involved in this. When you go by the interviews with Blizzard, it's pretty clear that they themselves are passionate about their new Bnet and are responsible for most of the decisions regarding it. Activision is just a publisher, they have no idea how to make online services, so the ball is indeed in Blizzard's court.
Basically Blizzard has what I call "vision blindness". They have a vision for a new product they are making, and they become so obsessed with making that vision come true that they will sacrifice whatever it takes in order to make it a reality. We've already seen their sacrifices regarding LAN, chat channels, replays, and so on. Hell, we've even seen it with KeSPA and how KeSPA claims that Blizzard pretty much ignores everything they say unless they bow down to Battle.net 2.0's feet and lick its toes. And even though I don't exactly trust KeSPA, I think in this case they are being truthful since Blizzard has been basically demanding that everything use Bnet for anything regarding their games.
Of course, the reason why I call it "vision blindness" is that when the vision has any kind of flaw, they ignore it entirely and only give bullshit responses like "we know better" and ignore any kind of negative feedback. It doesn't matter how much we bitch about chat channels or clans or LAN or RealID or anything. They will force us to eat anything they serve, even if they have to drag us kicking and screaming. I mean just look at Bnet right now. We've brought up countless issues regarding it, and how many of them have been addressed? Not only that, but we haven't even been able to change their response regarding multiple problems. Chat channels have been bitched about every single day since before beta started, and their answer is still "We know better. We aren't doing it." Same goes for almost everything else Bnet is lacking. Making their "social network paradise" vision come true is just that important to them, so much that even SC2 itself is starting to become of the many sacrifices.
It's not about casuals, hardcores, or even Activision. It's all about the vision. Allll about the vision.
Christ I knew bnet2.0 was shitty but FrozenArbiter's post really hits home on what a gigantic cock up they have made of this whole thing, I mean hell didn't they delay the game like a year to make bnet2.0 the best thing ever? yet they keep talking about adding very basic functionalities till after launch.
*sigh*, however stupid all this looks to us here, I can see where they are coming from. If you think about it from the point of view of a casual gamer, the things that they do make a lot of sense. I hope they are just trying to make the game as casual-friendly as they can before launch, and will eventually add those features requested by the hardcore community. After all, this community is very very small in the big picture.
the sc2 development team made a great game but do you really think they had any say in the direction of bnet 2.0?
just read the old interview with dustin browder. he sure didn't sound like he was excited about bnet 2.0 to me, he just sounded like a spokesman that had to hype it up. he even made it clear that sc2 would be good but we were going to be disappointed about bnet 2.0
The problem is that Blizzard SAYS that esports and a competitive community is their goal. This isn't Sakurai ignoring the small hardcore smash bros community and making a casual game like smash bros brawl, this is Blizzard agreeing with us in principle, and then failing to deliver.
I hope it is just having a lot on their plate and eventually things will be great. But there hasn't really been any progress since the beginning of beta...
On May 24 2010 02:47 travis wrote: the sc2 development team made a great game but do you really think they had any say in the direction of bnet 2.0?
just read the old interview with dustin browder. he sure didn't sound like he was excited about bnet 2.0 to me, he just sounded like a spokesman that had to hype it up. he even made it clear that sc2 would be good but we were going to be disappointed about bnet 2.0
That's because Blizzard has separate teams for their games and Bnet. According to Blizzard, they have their own separate Battle.net team that essentially does their own thing while doing some minor cooperation with the game-development teams. Dustin Browder has never been all that knowledgeable about Bnet because he doesn't call the shots on it. Look up names like Greg Canessa and Rob Pardo for those who actually work on it.
I agree with Travis. Because I really, really want to believe he is correct.
I really do trust Blizzard, but I really don't trust Activision at all. And frankly, I am getting Starcraft 2 regardless because it is a phenomenal game. The fact that Battle.net 2.0 isn't exactly what we expected just means I'll be spending less time on Battle.net and more time actively playing games and watching VODs.
All in all, it's worth putting up with some minor frustration in Battle.net 2.0 to play Starcraft 2. It's worth it because the awesomeness of SC2 > the stupidness of BN2.
On May 24 2010 02:54 Seltsam wrote: I agree with Travis. Because I really, really want to believe he is correct.
that's basically why i believe it too lol
i blame activision for that xbox live guy being hired in the first place
I think that is a reasonable assumption. Blizzard has had such a long standing history of fantastic service to the gaming community, and the first hint that something might go wrong is the first big undertaking after the activision merger? I doubt that is coincidence. Besides, Blizzard has been so good in the past that I think they deserve the benefit of the doubt.
"I have trust in you Blizzard. You should understand that if you made it more like warcraft 3 bnet it would be easier and better. Sometimes putting more effort ends up worse than putting less effort but with the right idea. Here briefly let me summarize what bnet needs cause I dont have any more breath to write about it:
What Battle Net needs to have:
• Ability to Use More than 1 In-Game Account not just Identifier. All is attached to email anyway • Identifier could be a small 3 letter tag, no need a 2nd name. What game uses such 2 name system?
->Or why need identifier? You cant type instead of O -> 0 instead of A-> 4 or put a dot/dash at the end of your name? That's how war3 worked
Look at war3 - does ppl making accounts WePepsiInfi, Insomnia. Sky etc etc confuse them with real pro players??
• So after created In-Game Account we enter a default Chat Channel belonging to our country
like Frozen Throne DEU-1 Frozen Throne FRA-1
From there we can enter any chat channel we type.
• In Chat Channels people can chat in the channel, use chat commands like whisper to each other, see other account names in that channel. • Doubleclick would open the profile of the clicked account. • In Chat channel you can right click some other's account and add to friend list by account or invite for Arranged team ladder • So You provided Map Protection. Thus make it so that a person who downloaded someone else's map to be able to host it.. Like Dota could be hosted by anyone right/
• Remove Divisions, add Global Ladder. Like war3 was - it is working pretty nicely by matching system. It may not be Levels if you dont want to but something else. Many people point out - what's the point in someone saying he's ranked 4th in Bronze? • Remove Achievements What is an achievement? Winning 5 games as Zerg? Winning 10 games as Protoss? No Blizzard, achievements should be given to Tournament Winners including ladder tournaments.
• Create Clan/Team
Create a team under the same rules you created in war3 with a Team Tag and Full Name (only 10 people can create a team, may get disbanded if inactive etc)
• Icons - should be gained much harder, less icons.
The above are 100% what I base on my 2 year exp in SC1 and 7 Years in Warcraft III Battle Net and seemingly others share the same."
A lot of things seem to make more sense once you realize the person responsible for Battle.net 2.0 used to work for Microsoft. He's trying to put a console gaming platform on computers. Us computer gamers are totally different from console gamers, in that we need chat, we need LAN, we need things that so we can communicate with hundreds, if not thousands of players at a time and not just our buddies playing.
On May 24 2010 02:47 travis wrote: the sc2 development team made a great game but do you really think they had any say in the direction of bnet 2.0?
just read the old interview with dustin browder. he sure didn't sound like he was excited about bnet 2.0 to me, he just sounded like a spokesman that had to hype it up. he even made it clear that sc2 would be good but we were going to be disappointed about bnet 2.0
This is pretty spot on. Blizzard has a completely different team on battle.net and as far as I know, I think Dustin Browder even said himself that they hardly even talk to the bnet 2 development team. This is really bad if there is no communication going on between the two.
On May 24 2010 02:54 Seltsam wrote: I agree with Travis. Because I really, really want to believe he is correct.
that's basically why i believe it too lol
i blame activision for that xbox live guy being hired in the first place
I think that is a reasonable assumption. Blizzard has had such a long standing history of fantastic service to the gaming community, and the first hint that something might go wrong is the first big undertaking after the activision merger? I doubt that is coincidence. Besides, Blizzard has been so good in the past that I think they deserve the benefit of the doubt.
I guess if you want to believe that, then it's fine. I still feel that it's mostly Blizzard's fault than anything regarding Activision. Keep in mind that I'm not saying Blizzard is incompetent, just that they're human. Game designers aren't superhumans who have some mystical understanding of games that mere mortals could never hope to understand. Most of them are simply passionate gamers like us who just want a fun game. Obviously there are things that Blizzard is experienced in, but there are also a lot of things that they don't have much experience in.
A good example of this is e-Sports. I'm not saying this to be arrogant or insulting, but I truly do feel that the community is a lot more knowledgeable about competitive gaming than Blizzard is. After all, it's the community who created the BW pro scene in the first place, and it's the community who takes the time to painstakingly analyze every single facet of the game and everything it needs to be good, whereas Blizzard probably does no more than simple hearsay on things the community has discovered. Remember that SC2 only had macro mechanics because of fan feedback after all. So in many ways I do feel that Blizzard is moving in the wrong direction with Bnet because they've made multiple decisions that would have NEVER been done if someone from the competitive community was in charge of Bnet, instead of just some X-box LIVE developer who's probably never played SC in his life. Nobody in their right mind would allow a Bnet to go live with region-lock, no chat channels, no online replays, etc. But that's what happening right now, and it's a damn shame.
On May 24 2010 02:47 travis wrote: the sc2 development team made a great game but do you really think they had any say in the direction of bnet 2.0?
just read the old interview with dustin browder. he sure didn't sound like he was excited about bnet 2.0 to me, he just sounded like a spokesman that had to hype it up. he even made it clear that sc2 would be good but we were going to be disappointed about bnet 2.0
Well you know, let's leave (my) nerd rage aside for a moment. Imagine you build up this service from scratch. Forget the Starcraft or Warcraft Battle.net. Just something completely new. The first logical steps that come to mind are social features and --->> easing in the player in to the "multi-player-experience". Recreating the beginner, the step-by-step learning experience they had so much success with in World of Warcraft. And there are clear signs now, right? Little guides on what counters what, practice league, some little challenges like "win 5 games with terran", etc. Just this very basic stuff Blizzard TODAY highlights in their philosophy of creating gaming.
When would you say should that be done? For release of course. No question. Any other time than right from the start would be bad. Because you need to bind the player not in 5 months, but from the very first minute.
I get that, i do understand the model. You have this, probably, great single-player and afterwards go like "hey, why don't you try multi-player a bit? What would you say is your level? Try following this tutorial, check out our tipps and tricks and be sure to browse our great knowledge database. Oh you lost? No problem buddy, try going against this guy. See? Ah isn't competitive gaming great? Why don't you take a break, i'm sure you're tired from all this 'playing', chat up your facebook friends. Oh and congratulation you won an achievement. Oh and another one! You are on a roll tiger!"
Ok. This shit gives you great reviews. And good reviews give you bags full of cash eventually. And right when shit gets stale, Blizzard will squeeze down an expansion down your throat. Plus Blizzard knows hardcore players play anyway. Why hurry up with features the casual gamer wont be using for quite some time? Give em things like the Editor, because casuals will profit from UMS. But let em test this game for us with all their passion deep into the night, they don't cost us anything, muahahaha.
I don't know about you guys but shit like that makes me really want to violate the EULA.
Bnet 2.0 actual status makes a lot of sense to me.
Let's imagine you are Bnet 2.0 Lead designer. You want to make it a platform for competitive gaming, and why not esports. What are you going to put in it ?
-> Chat channels ? Yes, must have for tournaments at leat -> Clan system ? Of course, those are the roots of competition -> Advanced tournament system ? Yes, that's the first step to esports -> LAN mode ? there wont be any esports possible ithout that Etc etc.
Now imagine you want to create a platform which goal is to attract as many casual gamers as possible, especially those playing on console systems and not PC yet, or playing on Blizzard games other than RTS (like WoW players). What are you gonna implement into Bnet 2.0 ?
-> Chat channels ? Nope, casuals will never use them. Having a friends list is enough. -> Clan system ? Nope, casuals will never use them. They aren't playing for competition but for fun. -> Advanced tournament system ? see above -> LAN mode ? LAN is for hardcore gamers. Casuals play from home, and dont move from it. And since pretty much everyone has a broadband connection nowadays, no reasons to implement it.
That's it for the competitive side. Now for the casual side :
-> Facebook friends list ? Yes, best way to attract casuals who arent playing PC yet -> Soft ranking system which doesnt show how bad you are to the rest of the world ? Yes, casuals dont play for competition. The recent change to Copper league goes to the same way - no matter how bad you are, you are still good enough to be in Silver league. No frustation guaranteed in SC2 ! -> Priority to mods and custom games/heroes available in custom games : best way to attract casuals through DotA and others mods -> Novice maps, achievements everywhere, play coop vs AI : totally casual gamers oriented. Achievements specifically appeal console players
As a conclusion, BNet 2.0 is perfect as it is. It's just purely oriented towards casual gaming and not competitive play/esports.
On May 24 2010 02:54 Seltsam wrote: I agree with Travis. Because I really, really want to believe he is correct.
that's basically why i believe it too lol
i blame activision for that xbox live guy being hired in the first place
I think that is a reasonable assumption. Blizzard has had such a long standing history of fantastic service to the gaming community, and the first hint that something might go wrong is the first big undertaking after the activision merger? I doubt that is coincidence. Besides, Blizzard has been so good in the past that I think they deserve the benefit of the doubt.
I guess if you want to believe that, then it's fine. I still feel that it's mostly Blizzard's fault than anything regarding Activision. Keep in mind that I'm not saying Blizzard is incompetent, just that they're human. Game designers aren't superhumans who have some mystical understanding of games that mere mortals could never hope to understand. Most of them are simply passionate gamers like us who just want a fun game. Obviously there are things that Blizzard is experienced in, but there are also a lot of things that they don't have much experience in.
A good example of this is e-Sports. I'm not saying this to be arrogant or insulting, but I truly do feel that the community is a lot more knowledgeable about competitive gaming than Blizzard is. After all, it's the community who created the BW pro scene in the first place, and it's the community who takes the time to painstakingly analyze every single facet of the game and everything it needs to be good, whereas Blizzard probably does no more than simple hearsay on things the community has discovered. Remember that SC2 only had macro mechanics because of fan feedback after all. So in many ways I do feel that Blizzard is moving in the wrong direction with Bnet because they've made multiple decisions that would have NEVER been done if someone from the competitive community was in charge of Bnet, instead of just some X-box LIVE developer who's probably never played SC in his life. Nobody in their right mind would allow a Bnet to go live with region-lock, no chat channels, no online replays, etc. But that's what happening right now, and it's a damn shame.
A lot of what you say here has merit, and of course Blizzard isn't flawless. But I think that there has been way more anti-Blizzard nerdraging than is really warranted. Given the lack of information that we have, I think it's unreasonable to start assuming that Blizzard has suddenly become a money-grubbing company who just wants to see a good profit margin and nothing else. Mind you, I am not discounting it as a possibility, but that's the conclusion a LOT of people in this thread seem to be automatically coming to. I just think that if we are going to be assuming anything at all, we should be assuming that Blizzard will come through for us in the end, since they have a history of doing just that.
Although it may be safer to just not assume anything and take everything with a grain of salt. Even if it's not perfect on release, it's an online game. They can patch stuff as it goes. Also, with these coming weeks of offline time, I will continue to place my faith (as it has been well-earned) in Blizzard until I see some seriously concrete evidence that I shouldn't.
On May 24 2010 03:22 Seltsam wrote: Given the lack of information that we have, I think it's unreasonable to start assuming that Blizzard has suddenly become a money-grubbing company who just wants to see a good profit margin and nothing else.
On May 24 2010 03:22 Seltsam wrote: Given the lack of information that we have, I think it's unreasonable to start assuming that Blizzard has suddenly become a money-grubbing company who just wants to see a good profit margin and nothing else.
Ever heard of this game called World of Warcraft?
Yes. I've also heard that their customer service is impeccable. Plus, that's an MMORPG, a genre which inherently attracts very casual gamers.
Starcraft 2 is an RTS, and one whose predecessor is famous for competitive play. It seems like an important distinction to make. Again, Blizzard has had such a rich history of gamer-conscientious decisions that I will continue to assume their continued competence until proven otherwise.
EDIT: I shouldn't say MMOs attract "very casual gamers." That is not accurate. What I mean is that it attracts a totally different type of gamer, and that the additions/changes/features in that game will reflect that.
<rant> I just love how "easy" Blizz is making it to add friends.
Now you can add all you facebook friends with two clicks! You can add your friend just by typing in their email! You can even just right click their name after the game!!
BUT YOU CAN'T ADD THEM BY THEIR F***ING USERNAME!!!!!!!!!! </rant>
Productive Comment: It is far more noob-friendly than SC:BW or even WarCraft 3. It still fails. Especially because of the year delay. I expected it to be able to order Chinese take-out or deliver pizza from in game. (no doubt it soon will, but still won't have chat channels.)
EDIT: Well, I take back the noob friendly part. I just tried to play with a friend who I played WC3 with a while back. We always met in a channel, talked about what we were going to do, then played. He has never tried to use Bnet2.0. Here's how it went.
Phone Text from Him: In game chat? Me: lol Him: Channel yellow Me: lol, nice try. Him: How do I get in channels? Can I whisper you in game so I can use my keyboard? Me: No and No, just tell me ur email and I will friend u. Him: What do u mean no channels/whisper. My username is RubiX. Me: I need ur email to friend you. Him: email@domain.com that's gay... Me: Tell me about it.
On May 24 2010 03:29 Pigsquirrel wrote: <rant> I just love how "easy" Blizz is making it to add friends.
Now you can add all you facebook friends with two clicks! You can add your friend just by typing in their email! You can even just right click their name after the game!!
BUT YOU CAN'T ADD THEM BY THEIR F***ING USERNAME!!!!!!!!!! </rant>
Productive Comment: It is far more noob-friendly than SC:BW or even WarCraft 3. It still fails. Especially because of the year delay. I expected it to be able to order Chinese take-out or deliver pizza from in game. (no doubt it soon will, but still won't have chat channels.)
I take it you are another one of those who missed blizzard saying that they did not change the buddy system at all, they just disabled parts for this particular patch. You ARE going to be able to add players by their username in the finished game.
it looks like their only goal is to irritate the players. when you disconnect 10 times in a row and you keep seeing "You have left the game!" you rly wanna punch a fucking moron from xbox live in the face and tell him THAT UR FAGGOT SHITNET0.2 DISCONNECTED ME NOT THE OTHER WAY ROUND
On May 24 2010 03:21 Nebulis wrote: Bnet 2.0 actual status makes a lot of sense to me.
Let's imagine you are Bnet 2.0 Lead designer. You want to make it a platform for competitive gaming, and why not esports. What are you going to put in it ?
-> Chat channels ? Yes, must have for tournaments at leat -> Clan system ? Of course, those are the roots of competition -> Advanced tournament system ? Yes, that's the first step to esports -> LAN mode ? there wont be any esports possible ithout that Etc etc.
Now imagine you want to create a platform which goal is to attract as many casual gamers as possible, especially those playing on console systems and not PC yet, or playing on Blizzard games other than RTS (like WoW players). What are you gonna implement into Bnet 2.0 ?
-> Chat channels ? Nope, casuals will never use them. Having a friends list is enough. -> Clan system ? Nope, casuals will never use them. They aren't playing for competition but for fun. -> Advanced tournament system ? see above -> LAN mode ? LAN is for hardcore gamers. Casuals play from home, and dont move from it. And since pretty much everyone has a broadband connection nowadays, no reasons to implement it.
That's it for the competitive side. Now for the casual side :
-> Facebook friends list ? Yes, best way to attract casuals who arent playing PC yet -> Soft ranking system which doesnt show how bad you are to the rest of the world ? Yes, casuals dont play for competition. The recent change to Copper league goes to the same way - no matter how bad you are, you are still good enough to be in Silver league. No frustation guaranteed in SC2 ! -> Priority to mods and custom games/heroes available in custom games : best way to attract casuals through DotA and others mods -> Novice maps, achievements everywhere, play coop vs AI : totally casual gamers oriented. Achievements specifically appeal console players
As a conclusion, BNet 2.0 is perfect as it is. It's just purely oriented towards casual gaming and not competitive play/esports.
Ok, so, I don't actually agree.
Look at WoW - I'm sure tonnes of casuals in that game joined guilds (clans). WoW also had chat channels (I say had because I dunno what the current status is).
On May 24 2010 05:00 FrozenArbiter wrote: Ok, so, I don't actually agree.
Look at WoW - I'm sure tonnes of casuals in that game joined guilds (clans). WoW also had chat channels (I say had because I dunno what the current status is).
And casuals like LAN, just for different reasons.
It is great to see you share the same thoughts as what I posted on page 20. The quoted poster is saying how Blizzard acts. Unfortunetly it is likely that Blizzard became more greedy and wants to gain money by attracting those that never touched a strategy game. And that they focused so much on attracting casuals that they didnt do the obvious to add these features.
On May 24 2010 02:23 SuperJongMan wrote: Cuz they don't want our money??? -_-;; You lost me Travis. If Bnet 2.0 is seriously what it is, and I can't play people from around the world, Koreans, Germans, Belgian Waffles, or lan but it's instead filled with achievements, bullshit bargraphs, and portraits, I'll seriously say goodbye. I love the game but what good is starcraft if I can't play it with the people I've played it with forever and ever.
Plus, I am so bad at BW now that getting Team Melee games together is mad fun LOLOLOL.
eh they already have our money we are all going to buy it and it probably will sell more copies now that they've introduced stupid shit like facebook integration
and they certainly will make more money selling maps and other features/addons
They don't have all our money. I certainly will not buy SC2 if battle.net 2.0 remains as is. Unlike other fanboys I actually preferred playing other games than SC1 and WC3 because they were actually much better than SC1 and WC3. But usually those games had terrible (and I mean really terrible) matchmaking systems and noone could deny Battle.net was by far the best matchmaking system known to any competitive game (BY FAAAAAR). Even new games that came out last year still don't have as good a matchmaking system as the wc3 battle.net.
That is not the case with Bnet 2.0 and SC2. I know better games will come out that will be better than SC2 (yes I know this is blasphemy but it's true)... but I still consider buying SC2 because of how good the original battle.net was compared to any other matchmaking. If Bnet 2.0 remains as is... like it appears it will be.... Activision won't have my money.
In fact I will never buy a Activision game again, because after WoW, it appears they have completely lost touch with their consumers and just want to screw you over and over again much as possible like EA (I will never buy a EA game again either).
Rocks can LAN and you can use them for custome games, seriously the only limit is your imagination, not sure about the tournament features but im sure you can have those too.
Look at WoW - I'm sure tonnes of casuals in that game joined guilds (clans). WoW also had chat channels (I say had because I dunno what the current status is).
And casuals like LAN, just for different reasons.
WoW is a bit of a specific case, as it came with built-in guilds and chat channels, simply because every other MMO has it (mainly because MMO wouldnt massive without at least some sort of way of communication between players). WoW guilds are pretty different from RTS clans. It's common for guilds to have several dozen/hundred of players, a good part of them being borderline active. Also there isn't any kind of competition between a large majority of guilds. Their primary role is social gathering, while clans imo always retain the small of competition. Actually WoW was oriented towards hardcore players at the very beginning, stuff like achievements didnt come until very late.
On May 24 2010 03:29 Pigsquirrel wrote: <rant> I just love how "easy" Blizz is making it to add friends.
Now you can add all you facebook friends with two clicks! You can add your friend just by typing in their email! You can even just right click their name after the game!!
BUT YOU CAN'T ADD THEM BY THEIR F***ING USERNAME!!!!!!!!!! </rant>
Productive Comment: It is far more noob-friendly than SC:BW or even WarCraft 3. It still fails. Especially because of the year delay. I expected it to be able to order Chinese take-out or deliver pizza from in game. (no doubt it soon will, but still won't have chat channels.)
I take it you are another one of those who missed blizzard saying that they did not change the buddy system at all, they just disabled parts for this particular patch. You ARE going to be able to add players by their username in the finished game.
I find it funny how you think that that excuse is the truth. ITs very obvious that it was merely a MASSIVE oversight on their part when they removed the identifiers and they just didn't bother to fix it. Hopefully they will now that theres been a bajillion people complain about it but who knows , this is blizzard were talking about.
Look at WoW - I'm sure tonnes of casuals in that game joined guilds (clans). WoW also had chat channels (I say had because I dunno what the current status is).
And casuals like LAN, just for different reasons.
WoW is a bit of a specific case, as it came with built-in guilds and chat channels, simply because every other MMO has it (mainly because MMO wouldnt massive without at least some sort of way of communication between players). WoW guilds are pretty different from RTS clans. It's common for guilds to have several dozen/hundred of players, a good part of them being borderline active. Also there isn't any kind of competition between a large majority of guilds. Their primary role is social gathering, while clans imo always retain the small of competition. Actually WoW was oriented towards hardcore players at the very beginning, stuff like achievements didnt come until very late.
Actually if anything WoW is the very evidence that blizzard cares about its customers. You pointed out something that is quite right, back when I played it it was really really hardcore. Any end game content was reserved to anyone who could put in seven raid nights a week. I have not myself been playing the game through all of the expansions because I did not have the free time to spend on mmo's but I got plenty of friends who play it and obviously blizzard retuned the game in the first expansion to make it more accessible for a lot more people. Because they listened to the community. They realized that only a single digit percent of the players actually wanted the really really hard and time consuming stuff. Then just as people started complaining that all the content were now too easy they went ahead in the third expansion and added hard modes and stuff like that on top of it to give more challenges to those few people who wanted really hard stuff, despite the fact that those people were a very small percentage of the player base.
Whatever the reasons be for why bnet 2.0 currently lacks so much, I am not prepared to jump on the "omg blizzard just wants money train".
But I really want to hear from blizzard what they plan on doing for the e-sports side of things. I want to hear straight up whether or not they are adding clan and tournament functionality and how it is going to work and when it is going to be put in. I am not fussed really if it is not in the retail until after a patch or two because I reckon they want to reach out to as many players as possible first but I really want a timeline from them.
The number one error of blizzard is thinking the same kiddies who play WoW are going to be the ones playing SC2, thus everything has been made to be retard-pointNclick-friendly.
Many of the people currently playing SC2 are long-term hardcore blizzard customers (I mean damn... I started with warcraft ONE).
They might suck-in a few of the kiddies with facebook integration and flashy, horribly laggy *wheee blue stars* flash menus but there's no fooling us older players (I'm still confused how a godamn 3-layered WELCOME SCREEN manages to choke up a modern computer....)
What I don't understand is why so many fanboys rush to blizzards defense ? Are you guys really f*kin retarded or what ? That thing essentially took 7 full years to be coded and not only is it grossly inferior to the previous version, EVERYTHING useful has been removed and replaced by gimmicky crap only 12 years olds can think are "cool".
I for one am not spending 60$ (well, €) for a game that won't, if ever, be enjoyable until maybe 2 or 3 years (let's not forget the add-on rip-offs that are coming too).
On May 24 2010 08:00 Santriel wrote: What I don't understand is why so many fanboys rush to blizzards defense ? Are you guys really f*kin retarded or what ? That thing essentially took 7 full years to be coded and not only is it grossly inferior to the previous version, EVERYTHING useful has been removed and replaced by gimmicky crap only 12 years olds can think are "cool".
This is really the reason why I made this post on TL and not on the official SC2 beta forums. There are just too many fanboys and trolls who really very very thick (the guys who played WoW, had like 200 days playtime and became 'the best player' only when everyone else quit the game).
Sadly though from what Blizzard is doing and responses I am reading here, it does indeed appear that the opinion of the casual noob is more important than the opinion of experienced player.
Blizzard did promise that SC2 was going to be a platform for competitive gaming, that appears to have been a big lie though. Things like removal of LAN and the lack of a clan system just seem to be really horrific oversights. Things like chat aren't hugely important it just makes things more difficult. I really fail to see though how it is going to be possible to conduct big tournaments on Battle.net 2.0 without having LAN. Doesn't matter how stable they make it you will never get LAN latency performance on a WAN network....ever.
I'm just hugely disappointed though, since I made this original post is been a couple of days and reading the responses from everyone else now really just confirms everything I said and really hammers the nail home that its not a bad dream, that SC2 might only be a shadow of what BW was and its just a damn shame after waiting so many years for it, only to see it butchered by a bunch of WoW faggots.
its not a bad dream, that SC2 might only be a shadow of what BW was and its just a damn shame after waiting so many years for it, only to see it butchered by a bunch of WoW faggots.
Necrosjef, I understand your frustration, and I think this is a great thread. You've got a lot of people here who agree with you. Blizzard are getting rid of their old fans and trying to draw in the 11-20 year-olds that spend money on "premium bonus" maps and chase "achievements". A new generation of consumer idiots, completely void of any critical thinking, or regard for the contents of their (parents) wallet.
Facebook integration happened in a patch in the beta, in a split second. What happened? Instead of turning the car around when they sensed that they were moving in the wrong direction, they stepped on the pedal and drove all the way to cashville
Most gamers are pumped for SC2, it seems most of the whining comes from former competitive SC players. I think this is just another case of the Casual vs. Hardcore user base argument.
Unfortunately for the hardcore userbase of TL, casual users have much more influence than you guys and that's the way it should be. It's not just about money either, but satisfying a larger number of people.
To the TC, you're jumping to a conclusion about the future of SC2 way to fast. Accurate predictions like these are really hard to make. Don't buy SC2 at release and check back 6 months after several patches; the existence of a thriving competitive scene may end up surprising you.
No need to get so angry and lash out on "WoW faggots."
On May 24 2010 08:59 Stripe wrote: Most gamers are pumped for SC2, it seems most of the whining comes from former competitive SC players. I think this is just another case of the Casual vs. Hardcore user base argument.
Unfortunately for the hardcore userbase of TL, casual users have much more influence than you guys and that's the way it should be. It's not just about money either, but satisfying a larger number of people. "
That's because casual players aren't informed, or don't care. There is no casual vs hardcore argument, as casuals don't know shit.
Thinking you can get a bunch of casuals to join in the RTS party is naive, period. Of course you can get casuals on a MMO, but why? Because "hardcore" in a mmo only meant you had hardcore amounts of TIME to dedicate to the game. I mean what's the last MMO you saw that required the amount of skill expected out of competitive RTS or FPS? So yeah, duh, you can bring all the casuals to WoW. Because MMOs are mostly about how much TIME, and only TIME, you're willing to dump into the game.
RTS however requires both dexterity and good decision making skills, and is a genre that tends, as the game progresses, to naturally overwhelm you with things to do, one of the challenges being to keep up with the sheer amount of things going on since you don't have unlimited APM.
So yeah, Blizzard is shitting all over the old competitive RTS gamers and thinking they can reel in the casual hordes to a RTS. I say good luck to them, but I think they're in for a big disappointment.
Thinking you can get a bunch of casuals to join in the RTS party is naive, period.
Exactly. Blizzard are aiming for the same approach with Battle.net 2.0 as with World of Warcraft. Most MMO players won't play an RTS game, or will only buy the first Starcraft 2 game to try it out, not the expansion packs. For Starcraft 2 to be successful, they should be aiming at mature gamers in the RTS community, There are millions of us who grew up with Starcraft and would love to invest time in Starcraft 2, but they have to realize that we're not idiots. I was displeased with a lot of things in Starcraft 2 before, but after the facebook integration and further focus on flashy icons and herding, I feel like an idiot every time I log on to Battle.net "2.0". I urge everyone to cancel their pre-orders and don't buy SC2 at first, let's make Blizzard swet a little, they deserve it for thinking we're idiot consumer cattle.
Perhaps if I were an idiot, I'd just shut up about it and buy all the games with a smile. Ignorance is blizz..
On May 24 2010 09:05 HalfAmazing wrote: That's because casual players aren't informed, or don't care. There is no casual vs hardcore argument, as casuals don't know shit.
They value different things. That's what creates these arguments.
On May 24 2010 09:05 shlomo wrote: Thinking you can get a bunch of casuals to join in the RTS party is naive, period. Of course you can get casuals on a MMO, but why? Because "hardcore" in a mmo only meant you had hardcore amounts of TIME to dedicate to the game. I mean what's the last MMO you saw that required the amount of skill expected out of competitive RTS or FPS? So yeah, duh, you can bring all the casuals to WoW. Because MMOs are mostly about how much TIME, and only TIME, you're willing to dump into the game.
RTS however requires both dexterity and good decision making skills, and is a genre that tends, as the game progresses, to naturally overwhelm you with things to do, one of the challenges being to keep up with the sheer amount of things going on since you don't have unlimited APM.
So yeah, Blizzard is shitting all over the old competitive RTS gamers and thinking they can reel in the casual hordes to a RTS. I say good luck to them, but I think they're in for a big disappointment.
Joining the RTS party doesn't mean becoming the absolute best at SC2 or even competitive. What's wrong with people with 10APM on the ladder playing other people with 10APM and having fun while slowly getting better?
On May 24 2010 08:59 Stripe wrote: Most gamers are pumped for SC2, it seems most of the whining comes from former competitive SC players. I think this is just another case of the Casual vs. Hardcore user base argument.
Unfortunately for the hardcore userbase of TL, casual users have much more influence than you guys and that's the way it should be. It's not just about money either, but satisfying a larger number of people.
To the TC, you're jumping to a conclusion about the future of SC2 way to fast. Accurate predictions like these are really hard to make. Don't buy SC2 at release and check back 6 months after several patches; the existence of a thriving competitive scene may end up surprising you.
No need to get so angry and lash out on "WoW faggots."
totally disagree.
yes TL is as hardcore as it gets. but what about the countless wc3 players that too want their chats,gateway selection,lan and clan features?
and i think you underestimate how important the western bw community is/was for blizzard success.
imagine all this hype around bw never happened. imagine evryone wouldve moved to other rts at 02 because new rts came out. blizzard wouldnt have the thousands and thousands of preorders. press wouldnt rip their limbs out to get preview info. hell even wc3 would never gotten as big. it would be "starwhat 2? sequel to a 12 year old game? meh.. whatever lets see if its ok" instead of "OMGAWD SC2! OMGOMGOMG MUST HAVE NAO!".
evryone that played wc3 half srs or bw expects something from blizzard. and they kick exactly those guys that spend years of their lifes with the games in the nuts. which is plain stupid cause:
-14 year old johnboy will buy the gamem play campaign, play some ffas/ums and be done with the game. - 14 year old johnboy wont decide wheter to buy the game or not on the bnet features - 14 year old johnboy maybe will buy an expansion. maybe not. - 14 year old johnboy might think "oh nice i can has facebook!" but will never really care about stuff like that
but - we will play the game for years to come. keeping it in the tournaments,on boards, keep the discussion up. creating a hype around their game. not only creates a huge playerbase for more $ but also is the best advertising possible in the game market. - we are heavily affected by the features provided by bnet since they are core to our gameplay expirience. -we WILL buy expansions(if we are happy.). and maybe even some more (i had like 5 sc+bw packs,3 wc3+tft packs, 3 d2+lod packs...) -we DO care about the features.
just look how big sc2 is on amazon already. do you really think more then 10% of the preorders are from "casuals" that never played sc/wc3?
no matter how you look at it, making the casuals #1 priority is plain retarded. blizz lost quite some of their good name already with wow. we all hoped this wouldnt affect the nonwow part of blizz. but we now are see whats happening. and we dont like it.
and i think you underestimate how important the western bw community is/was for blizzard success.
imagine all this hype around bw never happened. imagine evryone wouldve moved to other rts at 02 because new rts came out. blizzard wouldnt have the thousands and thousands of preorders. press wouldnt rip their limbs out to get preview info. hell even wc3 would never gotten as big. it would be "starwhat 2? sequel to a 12 year old game? meh.. whatever lets see if its ok" instead of "OMGAWD SC2! OMGOMGOMG MUST HAVE NAO!".
just look how big sc2 is on amazon already. do you really think more then 10% of the preorders are from "casuals" that never played sc/wc3?
no matter how you look at it, making the casuals #1 priority is plain retarded. blizz lost quite some of their good name already with wow. we all hoped this wouldnt affect the nonwow part of blizz. but we now are see whats happening. and we dont like it.
You're probably overestimating the western competitive BW community on the sales of SC2. Most people who played SC and is hyped for SC2 aren't really competitive players; most won't even make a D+ in ICCup. The same is true for WC3.
and i think you underestimate how important the western bw community is/was for blizzard success.
imagine all this hype around bw never happened. imagine evryone wouldve moved to other rts at 02 because new rts came out. blizzard wouldnt have the thousands and thousands of preorders. press wouldnt rip their limbs out to get preview info. hell even wc3 would never gotten as big. it would be "starwhat 2? sequel to a 12 year old game? meh.. whatever lets see if its ok" instead of "OMGAWD SC2! OMGOMGOMG MUST HAVE NAO!".
just look how big sc2 is on amazon already. do you really think more then 10% of the preorders are from "casuals" that never played sc/wc3?
no matter how you look at it, making the casuals #1 priority is plain retarded. blizz lost quite some of their good name already with wow. we all hoped this wouldnt affect the nonwow part of blizz. but we now are see whats happening. and we dont like it.
You're probably overestimating the western competitive BW community on the sales of SC2. Most people who played SC and is hyped for SC2 aren't really competitive players; most won't even make a D+ in ICCup. The same is true for WC3.
ofc the number of like d+ iccup players is tiny. but its not only about that. its about all the guys related to it or that were once more serious about the game(s).
evryone i know that is really interested in sc2 played wc3 alot or was atleast somewhat involved in the broodwar thing back then.even if it was just someone playing with the guys in his random clan and watching "pro" reps.and all those guys are somewhat related to the hype of broodwar. cause really, do you think anyone wouldve kept talking about broodwar if it hadnt such a amazing name?
and evry single one with that history is used to the features bnet provided. and they are all gone.
i recently gave another one with very little rts expirience(he only played wc3 campaign and some ums) a beta key and he asked me why all the bnet features were disabled for beta(chat,custom browser and gateway selection were the things he asked for i think). i told him they kinda scrapped all that and his reaction was the same as evryone else here. "kidding? why?"
/edit weird post. cant get my mind straight atm >.<
just get rid of the facebook rubbish blizzard, do something people care about, your essentially polishing a lamp with no genie when ur adding pointless features to a broken system
It's getting harder and harder to believe they are holding stuff back... they would have said something by now, responded to the waves of criticism flying their way. I hope the battle.net team is taking an honest and impartial look at what they've created and rethinking their priorities.
On May 24 2010 09:05 shlomo wrote: Thinking you can get a bunch of casuals to join in the RTS party is naive, period. Of course you can get casuals on a MMO, but why? Because "hardcore" in a mmo only meant you had hardcore amounts of TIME to dedicate to the game. I mean what's the last MMO you saw that required the amount of skill expected out of competitive RTS or FPS? So yeah, duh, you can bring all the casuals to WoW. Because MMOs are mostly about how much TIME, and only TIME, you're willing to dump into the game.
RTS however requires both dexterity and good decision making skills, and is a genre that tends, as the game progresses, to naturally overwhelm you with things to do, one of the challenges being to keep up with the sheer amount of things going on since you don't have unlimited APM.
So yeah, Blizzard is shitting all over the old competitive RTS gamers and thinking they can reel in the casual hordes to a RTS. I say good luck to them, but I think they're in for a big disappointment.
exactly. casual gamers might appear in the first months but after 1 year most of them will become hardcore players that like to play tournaments and maybe earn some few bucks on their hometown/country sponsored tournaments.
On May 24 2010 09:05 shlomo wrote: Thinking you can get a bunch of casuals to join in the RTS party is naive, period. Of course you can get casuals on a MMO, but why? Because "hardcore" in a mmo only meant you had hardcore amounts of TIME to dedicate to the game. I mean what's the last MMO you saw that required the amount of skill expected out of competitive RTS or FPS? So yeah, duh, you can bring all the casuals to WoW. Because MMOs are mostly about how much TIME, and only TIME, you're willing to dump into the game.
RTS however requires both dexterity and good decision making skills, and is a genre that tends, as the game progresses, to naturally overwhelm you with things to do, one of the challenges being to keep up with the sheer amount of things going on since you don't have unlimited APM.
So yeah, Blizzard is shitting all over the old competitive RTS gamers and thinking they can reel in the casual hordes to a RTS. I say good luck to them, but I think they're in for a big disappointment.
exactly. casual gamers might appear in the first months but after 1 year most of them will become hardcore players that like to play tournaments and maybe earn some few bucks on their hometown/country sponsored tournaments.
For getting number 1... in Bronze League.
I guess Blizz did something right. I mean, the rankings are so pointless that you can never know who's best. It means that there MUST be tournaments.
That's actually a really easy answer. The games are being hosted on BLIZZARD'S SERVERS. Christ, at least do some reading such as the one R1CH was kind enough to write up about the differences in connectivity methodology in bnet 2.0.
The number one reason for not having LAN is because of piracy. The instant lan is allowed, HELLO hamachi and probably even iccup once again.
Have you seen any other modern games? Do they have LAN?
Piracy will happen regardless. Piracy was huge in the original StarCraft yet it was extremely successful. ICCUP would never have existed if Blizzard actually updated Battle.net. For the past few years I've been on Blizzard's side regarding their feud with KeSPA, but now I'm having second thoughts. Blizzard did not put any effort into StarCraft's e-Sports success, and from the looks of it, doesn't want to for StarCraft 2.
The state of Bnet 2.0 for me is either they get their act together before release and prove this pile of steaming crap (bnet, not sc2) can work properly and not have stupid shit in it while not having important required stuff in it...or I cancel my pre-order and wait a few months for the game to actually have a fucking working online server system (edit: that doesn't dick my privacy over.)
Sorry to vent but seriously Im beyond being polite about bnet, its crappy crap covered in crap wrapping with a crap bow on top... and it keeps getting crappier.
They took online replays out for silly features like achievements, and I cringed but accepted it. Sure, they lied about that same promise in wc3, but this time things were.... different maybe?
But this just sucks, and I actually appreciate facebook when i say that.
Look at WoW - I'm sure tonnes of casuals in that game joined guilds (clans). WoW also had chat channels (I say had because I dunno what the current status is).
And casuals like LAN, just for different reasons.
WoW is a bit of a specific case, as it came with built-in guilds and chat channels, simply because every other MMO has it (mainly because MMO wouldnt massive without at least some sort of way of communication between players). WoW guilds are pretty different from RTS clans. It's common for guilds to have several dozen/hundred of players, a good part of them being borderline active. Also there isn't any kind of competition between a large majority of guilds. Their primary role is social gathering, while clans imo always retain the small of competition. Actually WoW was oriented towards hardcore players at the very beginning, stuff like achievements didnt come until very late.
And you think most guilds in SC and WC3 were hardcore ? Dude, when I was 13 and made the FrozenArbiter account on US West, I randomly bumped into a group of americans who had a clan called Frozen (which I joined for about a week or something).
They played some money maps (badly) and UMS. You don't think these guys were casual?
I never would have dreamed we would be in this place.
Before Battle.net 2.0 was out I was really worried that Blizzard would not implement all the cool e-sports ideas I had been wishing for. At the least I was hoping for some sort of built in WaaaghTV client.
The worst case scenario I had been contemplating that we merely got a slightly overhauled WC3 battle.net. I was thinking that would be dissapointing.
Well, haha, the joke is on me. My e-sports ideas now look like a pipe dream, and I would kill to have the WC3 battle.net instead of this POS.
It's not like the people at blizzard don't know what they are doing. They are well aware.
No chat rooms means no external ladder will arise, meaning people are forced to play blizzard's bullshit excuse of a ladder. All decisions are concious decisions in order to control and regulate their market. They don't give a fuck about me or you - only to expand and maintain and protect their business.
And seeing the amounf ot threads criticizing bnet 2.0 I think it's beginning to dawn for most people - aside from the most hardcore blizz fan boys, which I don't give a shit about anyways - that this is all we're going to get.
Same trend can be seen at other big companies, for instance Nintendo. Any smasher knows what I'm talking about.
On May 24 2010 19:26 Inori wrote: As a software engineer I feel obligated to jump in and defend my colleagues a bit. Don't diss SC2 developers. Don't diss bnet 2.0 developers. They're just normal adequate human beings doing their everyday job just like everybody else. They're doing what they are told to do by project managers, who decide most of the software changes. In SE there are a lot of situations where programmer doesn't agree with PM but he's better off keeping to himself and doing the job if he wants to keep the job.
Would you be angry at a sales man that the store he's working in doesn't sell your favourite <insert something here>?
The one responsible for this is Greg Canessa.
After watching that video you can kinda understand what battle.net 2.0 is supposed to be in Blizzards eyes. A lot of the features I quite like, and if it worked as described then I'd be pretty happy with it. What I don't understand is two things.
1. Where did they get the idea from that the customers actually want this stuff? I don't think I have ever seen a post on a forum anywhere that said "Please Blizzard add more achievements and facebook integration".
2. Why does the basic stuff on battle.net 2.0 not work. Like having games that don't crash all the time, servers that work all the time (always connected), friends list that you can actually add people to (ok they said they would change it back eventually), ladders that make sense and invite system to custom games that actually functions etc etc. List is endless with basic problems.
Part 2 is really like down to the software "engineers" though, these guys must be doing something fundamentally wrong for there to be so many flaws in the battle.net service, you can't blame a manager for the shoddy workmanship of the people underneath him. Obviously the managers at Blizz want X,Y and Z to be in battle.net 2.0 but its really down to the engineers and devs to deliver on that and frankly they have failed miserably.
These devs might be doing an "everyday job like everyone else" but they are doing it badly. Where I work if I make a mistake something explodes and someone dies. Would hate to think what would happen if these devs were working for some safety critical application, thats probably why they are working at Blizzard actually, all the good software engineers I know work on safety critical things like Nuclear/Satellites etc. whilst the bad software engineers make video games.
Part 2 is really like down to the software "engineers" though, these guys must be doing something fundamentally wrong for there to be so many flaws in the battle.net service, you can't blame a manager for the shoddy workmanship of the people underneath him.
Even in much smaller companies, yes you can. You can't even imagine the difference that a good and bad PM does to a IT project. Even when programmers are all junior level, a well managed project can still become successful. And with Blizzard funds, I'm quite sure they're getting best of the best as far as SEs go.
It's basically like this: SE makes some code, commits the SVN (or CVS or whatever other internal system they have), reports to PM that job is done. Code is tested by QA and his report also goes to PM. Then PM checks the reports and decides if code is good enough or should be reworked.
i.e. SE makes it so you lag. Tester sees this and reports. PM decides that it's not important and tells SE to integrate Facebook. SE shrugs and goes on with his job.
I can understand your point of view but if the SE got it right the first time, there wouldn't be a problem at all. What the SE should be saying is, "I'm not finished there is a problem" instead of submitting it for checking as a finished piece of work. That's the definition of shoddy workmanship right there, saying your finished with something when there is a mistake in it.
Chat channels and online shared replays are two obvious things that were essential to sc1. It's really quite sad that they can't manage something so simple, and despite liking the actual game, it's definitely enough for me to just not play.
Just goes to show that anyone can create crap, put a flashy title on it and successfully market it to the public. Props to Blizzards PR department, you had me fooled for a while! The game is good but I really dislike the new b.net. I agree with the majority of posts in this thread.
On May 24 2010 20:22 Necrosjef wrote: I can understand your point of view but if the SE got it right the first time, there wouldn't be a problem at all. What the SE should be saying is, "I'm not finished there is a problem" instead of submitting it for checking as a finished piece of work. That's the definition of shoddy workmanship right there, saying your finished with something when there is a mistake in it.
That's not how software developing works. There is physically no way a programmer can do 100% bug-clean code all the time, neither can he know for sure that the code is 100% bug free. Moreover, programmers hardly if ever finish a task in one go. Name any IT company you want and I can assure you they have long-long sessions of code reworking due to bugs while in development.
It might not be how software developing works. I don't work in the industry so I wouldn't speculate on that any further. I know when I finish a piece of work that its either correct or it doesn't leave my desk, maybe that's why I get paid a lot more than people who work for Blizzard
Battle.net 2.0 has been years in development, its obviously been delayed for whatever reason. Someone has to be to blame for 1st, the delays and 2nd, the finished product being so bad, after its being so long in the making.
On May 24 2010 20:32 DanceDance wrote: Just goes to show that anyone can create crap, put a flashy title on it and successfully market it to the public. Props to Blizzards PR department, you had me fooled for a while! The game is good but I really dislike the new b.net. I agree with the majority of posts in this thread.
Yeah, it helps that Starcraft has such a big name and following behind it but right now they are basically just riding on that and when this game doesn't live up to its predecessor they are just gonna drop the series entirely after milking as much money as they can from it.
Its a short term "hit it and quit it" attitude they are taking.
On May 24 2010 15:19 zomgzergrush wrote: "Not knowing who the host is"
That's actually a really easy answer. The games are being hosted on BLIZZARD'S SERVERS. Christ, at least do some reading such as the one R1CH was kind enough to write up about the differences in connectivity methodology in bnet 2.0.
I don't understand the constant use of the term casuals here. What i'd consider casual gamers aren't the kind of people who would even buy Starcraft 2 in the first place. Even the average BW/WC3 player would like the features we all want.
On May 24 2010 22:52 infinity2k9 wrote: I don't understand the constant use of the term casuals here. What i'd consider casual gamers aren't the kind of people who would even buy Starcraft 2 in the first place. Even the average BW/WC3 player would like the features we all want.
i totally agree with you. you dont have to be an hardcore gamer to be a regular RTS player that will buy and play SC2 actively instead of wc3 roc/tft. i know hundreds of hundreds of wc3 RT players that would like to have the things we all want to have, without wanting to become a progamer.
On May 24 2010 22:52 infinity2k9 wrote: I don't understand the constant use of the term casuals here. What i'd consider casual gamers aren't the kind of people who would even buy Starcraft 2 in the first place. Even the average BW/WC3 player would like the features we all want.
I'am sorry to say it that way, but you have no idea what your talking about.
blizzard and carnessa know what games have become today. games are not anymore restricted to a bunch of computer nerds like we where 12 years ago. since a few years there was a huge evolution in the gameindustry. games like WoW, farmville and Wii have changed the shape of the gaming world.
Also before that there was and is warcraft3 which has/had so many "casual" gamers in it. look at the huge variety of custom content. there are rpgs towerdefenses etc. so many different styles and games.
but battle.net2 and starcraft2 do not exceptionaly focus on the new "casual" consumer. they just realize that their products will have much, much more success if they get those people into their game and their community.
blizzard did, and does alot for the hardcore gamers. they listen to the hardcore community the most if you think about it. but they also know what the casual players want. they learned it from WoW and carnessa learned it from his experience with xbox life.
so in one hand, blizzard does get feedback from the hardcore and professional players to improve the game, and in the other hand they try to create an environment where casual players are motivated to be part of!
On May 23 2010 08:08 Two_DoWn wrote: Has anyone actually felt connected to a larger community when they logged into battle.net? Sure, I can chat privately with friends, but only one at a time. Or I could, if i could actually make a friend, which I cant cuz I cant get to know anyone because I cant talk to them in the first place.
This is something that people have hoping for so long, but I think it's becoming increasingly clear that they just fucked up. Badly.
Really, really, really badly.
EDIT: Because I'm vain, I'm gonna move this rant from like page 4 to here. Note that ymirheim was talking about the social features specifically and I kinda misunderstood him, but the rant is relevant to the thread anyway.
On May 23 2010 06:11 MadZ wrote: it really annoys me to see all this whinning about sc2 BETA. because it is BETA ffs blizzard can change everything about the game at any time. of course i would like to see some changes and thats why i leave CONSTUCTIVE feedback on blizzards forums instead of just go to tl.net and whine because whinning and saying that dustin browder is an idiot isnt gonna get you anywhere!! wait for the game to come out and see what it is like there. if it is s*** then go play broodwar that is still an awesome game and if sc2 turns out to be awesome you can play that..
It may be the beta but the release date is in two months. Everyone has the right to complain at this point. There are some things that Blizzard has totally missed, and even with countless threads on their forums they have yet to do it. Blizzard needs to start listening to users more.
No one has the right to complain at this point. Why don't people get it, the client running on your computer, the functionality and features available to you, the functionality of the battlenet infrastructure that is currently running is NOT the prototype running at blizzard headquarters.
This is a beta, blizzard is not using it for our pleasure or benefit they are using it because they need our help in identifying bugs and balance issues. They know what things they need this help with and they are only going to provide you with whatever functionality they actually want to get tested. Don't anyone see how ridiculous all of this is? Do you really think that the obvious stuff missing from the beta right now is missing because they are refusing to listen to fan demands?
This is a beta, this is not the game, this is whatever part of the game that blizzard needs you to test for them at any given time. The singleplayer campaign is not in the game, in fact not a shred of it is. Are people freaking out about blizzard skipping a singleplayer campaign for this game? Ofcourse not because common sense tells you that there is a campaign, it has probably been finished for some time now. It is not in the beta because blizzard does not want or need us to test it.
People make the mistake of thinking that the beta process is some kind of iterative design where the features of the game are slowly added as they get completed until the beta turns into the retail version when everything is done. That is not how a beta works. They don't add stuff to it when it gets completed, they add selected functionality.
This would make sense, if it wasn't for one very simple thing: Blizzard has said that most of the things we are asking for will not be in the game for release.
I don't care what version Blizzard are running in their HQ, hell that version probably even has LAN, that's not something we'll ever get.
Let's look at a list of features we have asked for, and see which ones blizzard have said will be in for relase. I'm not gonna look for sources of these, at least not tonight as I've gotta eat and go to bed.
I'll start out with an obvious one:
LAN Will not be in the game. It seems that they have even given up on the idea of having a LAN-through-bnet where you would have to authenticate your game before playing on LAN. Their reasons for this have been stupid excuses along the lines of people who want LAN being evil fly-wing-pulling bastards*:, but I guess it's probably piracy related.
* Ok I guess I'm gonna have to source this one, since otherwise nobody will believe me:
-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?
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.
Clan features Not at release. Wc3 had them, they were appreciated. SC2 won't have them for release, but hopefully later. Hopefully.
Online replays Not for release. They "hope to add them later", which is code for "never" seeing as how WC3 has gone its entire life without the feature being added, despite SC having had it since 2001 or thereabouts.
Chat channels Not for release. I don't know why they can't just hack up something extremely simple as a temporary solution - just let me create a persistant chat which people can freely enter or leave, please!! Bnet is completely desolate without these... Clan channels really made battle.net feel like a community; you'd have your home channel and then you'd go to other channels and meet new people.
It was fun, it's too bad they - by the looks of things - never experienced that, or they'd see the importance of having these, even in their most rudimentary of forms. And I'm not being sarcastic or snide here (unlike a lot of the majority of this post), if all you were exposed to was the "clan x17" type channels, I can understand why you don't see a great need for them to return.
Chat commands We have /r. That's it. They haven't even commented on this as far as I'm aware.
Customizable hotkeys "Not for release". Wc3 had this, what's so hard about it? The chinese hacked up a basic hotkey editor (I mean, at the time I think it was basically editing a text file, but they gave it an interface and shit) like.... 3 days after beta was out?
Ladder rankings I don't know what they've said about this except that they are aware people want to see their rankings. When I first heard about the division system, man, I was excited. I pictured a competitive setting where you'd advance from division to division, with play offs, with tournaments, with everything you can imagine.
Instead we get this "everyone is a winner" bullshit. Yeah, make all the divisions equal, that's fucking awesome. Yeah, make it so that you can't compare your rankings between divisons, that's just great. Oh and while you are at it, why not make it so you can't view anything except YOUR divison. Oh and hey, having divisions go by number is just far too scary when someone gets put in division 500, let's give them random names.
This isn't the fundamental support needed to create a competitive enviornment (which, incidentally, a ladder is), it's KINDERGARTEN. If you are old enough to play SC2, you are old enough to realize that there are people out there who are better than you, and if the shock of discovering this is too much for you, well, you were going to find out sooner or later, at least this way you are unlikely to get physically hurt in the process.
Custom game lobby Yeah, I'd like one that doesn't suck, please? Hopefully this is some seriously placeholder shit cause right now it's pretty barren. Let's see: - No way of telling who the host is? Check - No way of telling ping? Check - No way of searching? Check - No way of setting a game name? Check
I just cannot imagine that they are planning on leaving it this way, so for now, I'll let this one slide. I think it's just a really basic version to allow us to use the custom game feature at a very bare-bones level.
Oh and these are somewhat related to custom games, but not the lobby: - Unable to create password protected games (blizzard, let me tell you, having to invite 6 streamers and their co-casters by typing in their names, is not fun - give me password protected games and let people join by themselves - please). - Unable to switch map once you've created a game. Really, can't the map selection process be part of the pre-game lobby? I don't get it.
Cross server playability There is none. There won't be any for release. They don't even have latency as an excuse anymore - I played on US today without battleping, after the TCP to UDP switch, and it's completely smooth. No lag, next to no latency differences from playing on EU.
---------
Let's move on to some less basic things, but that I'd still have hoped would be in a the sequel to their - quite frankly - amazing battle.net platform. Actually, let me stop for a moment first and explain why I think Battle.net was amazing.
A lot of people look at the old SC1 battle.net and deride it as aesthetically unpleasing, or a buggy piece of shit (black list bug, which wasn't really a bug but a "feature" to stop people from trying to spam join game - I miss the bnet days before this was implemented). Or they think of the annoying chain animations present in all of WC3s bnet interface... And yeah, there were problems with Battle.net but it had a couple of things going for it: it was very, very simple and very, very functional.
WaaaghTV has been around since 2003, and there was even an SC version made not too long ago. Basically, it lets you view live games, from within the game, as if they were a replay. It's a completely lag free way of streaming games, with a built in slight delay, and supports a virtually infinite number of users (as far as I understand it), with next to no bandwidth costs.
This is, again - as far as I understand it, I've not been a huge part of the WC3 community nor the CS one - the premier way of streaming tournament games except for the very biggest ones.
I can understand why this wasn't added - especially given how many essential features were left out, but it still makes me sad that it hasn't even been talked about, not so much as a "maybe in the future". Well, maybe they just want to surprise us with it when they are able to put work into it, it's not totally impossible.
Tournaments WC3 had automated tournaments right from the start, I'm not sure what they've said about them for SC2. I had always assumed they would be in there, now I dunno
On May 23 2010 06:52 HalfAmazing wrote: Battle.net 2.0 is literally worse than WarCraft III's battle.net in every imaginable way. Not a troll, not hyperbole, not exagerrating in the slightest. It is worse. In every possible way. It is more cumbersome, less efficient, less transparent, more isolated, less secure (privacy concerns) and lacking in very basic functionality. If somehow you guys think that because it's a BETA it has a right to be this bad, you are delusional. This is really fucking close to the final product, and NOBODY likes it.
I'd go as far as to say that battle.net 2.0 being as crappy as it is, will actually spike an increase in piracy. Any kind of hacker-designed multiplayer service presented as an alternative to bnet 2.0 is going to provide a more enjoyable multiplayer experience.
You are wrong. There is one advantage of Bnet 2.0 over WC3s Bnet.
There are no chain anmations
More seriously tho, I completely agree, and I'll openly say that while I will buy the game, and any expansion that is made, unless things start improving, I'll be jumping at the first privately run ladder I see.
I'm probably way too late bandwagoning this, but damn, this was a good post. Thanks for articulating the sum of our complaints and I hope virtually every issue discussed rapidly finds its way into Blizzard HQ
On May 24 2010 22:52 infinity2k9 wrote: I don't understand the constant use of the term casuals here. What i'd consider casual gamers aren't the kind of people who would even buy Starcraft 2 in the first place. Even the average BW/WC3 player would like the features we all want.
I'am sorry to say it that way, but you have no idea what your talking about.
blizzard and carnessa know what games have become today. games are not anymore restricted to a bunch of computer nerds like we where 12 years ago. since a few years there was a huge evolution in the gameindustry. games like WoW, farmville and Wii have changed the shape of the gaming world. Also before that there was and is warcraft3 which has/had so many "casual" gamers in it. look at the huge variety of custom content. there are rpgs towerdefenses etc. so many different styles and games.
but battle.net2 and starcraft2 do not exceptionaly focus on the new "casual" consumer. they just realize that their products will have much, much more success if they get those people into their game and their community.
blizzard did, and does alot for the hardcore gamers. they listen to the hardcore community the most if you think about it. but they also know what the casual players want. they learned it from WoW and carnessa learned it from his experience with xbox life.
so in one hand, blizzard does get feedback from the hardcore and professional players to improve the game, and in the other hand they try to create an environment where casual players are motivated to be part of!
Starcraft also had a huge variation of styles and games. I mean HUGE. I can't count the number of unique UMS games I have played.
So if I understand correctly from the rest of your post, then you say its okay if they slash basic features so the casual gamers won't have to deal with them. Which I don't understand why the use of basic features would stop any 'casual' user from not enjoying the game.
On May 24 2010 19:26 Inori wrote: As a software engineer I feel obligated to jump in and defend my colleagues a bit. Don't diss SC2 developers. Don't diss bnet 2.0 developers. They're just normal adequate human beings doing their everyday job just like everybody else. They're doing what they are told to do by project managers, who decide most of the software changes. In SE there are a lot of situations where programmer doesn't agree with PM but he's better off keeping to himself and doing the job if he wants to keep the job.
I think you don't seem to understand that they delayed StarCraft II for a year because of Battle.net 2. The huge delay it caused made the nerds expect something that would satisfy them big time. But what the nerds got when Blizzard unveiled it is a half-assed product with Facebook integration.
There is no such thing as a casual gamer. He is an excuse to shove shit down your throat. You don't appreciate the taste of shit? MAYBE YOU'RE TOO HARDCORE. MAYBE YOU NEED TO BE MORE CASUAL.
You think a casual gamer doesn't want chat channels, LAN, or any of that good stuff? WHY NOT? YOU THINK "THE CASUAL GAMER" IS SOME KIND OF RETARD? If something matters to you, then you're HARDCORE. If you don't give a shit, you're CASUAL.
"THE CASUAL GAMER" is an invention by Blizzard's marketing department. Some fictionalized ignoramus who loves the buckets and buckets of shit shoveled into his mouth. "OHHH NOM NOM NOM YUM YUM BLIZZARD SHIT IS THE GOOD SHIT." "THE CASUAL GAMER" is some apathetic tool with no discerning appetite who'll eat whatever shit he's offered.
"THE CASUAL GAMER" is easy to cater to, as he has no desires, demands or concerns! If you're only disappointing EVERY. SINGLE. HARDCORE. player in the world, fear not, because "THE CASUAL GAMER" will still buy it!
Blizzard is just using "THE CASUAL GAMER" to deprive you of basic functionality in an effort to achieve greater control over your gaming experience. Because you care, you're HARDCORE and you're just not the target demographic. SORRY. "THE CASUAL GAMER" is a fucking myth.
On May 24 2010 23:52 HalfAmazing wrote: There is no such thing as a casual gamer. He is an excuse to shove shit down your throat. You don't appreciate the taste of shit? MAYBE YOU'RE TOO HARDCORE. MAYBE YOU NEED TO BE MORE CASUAL.
You think a casual gamer doesn't want chat channels, LAN, or any of that good stuff? WHY NOT? YOU THINK "THE CASUAL GAMER" IS SOME KIND OF RETARD? If something matters to you, then you're HARDCORE. If you don't give a shit, you're CASUAL.
"THE CASUAL GAMER" is an invention by Blizzard's marketing department. Some fictionalized ignoramus who loves the buckets and buckets of shit shoveled into his mouth. "OHHH NOM NOM NOM YUM YUM BLIZZARD SHIT IS THE GOOD SHIT." "THE CASUAL GAMER" is some apathetic tool with no discerning appetite who'll eat whatever shit he's offered.
"THE CASUAL GAMER" is easy to cater to, as he has no desires, demands or concerns! If you're only disappointing EVERY. SINGLE. HARDCORE. player in the world, fear not, because "THE CASUAL GAMER" will still buy it!
Blizzard is just using "THE CASUAL GAMER" to deprive you of basic functionality in an effort to achieve greater control over your gaming experience. Because you care, you're HARDCORE and you're just not the target demographic. SORRY. "THE CASUAL GAMER" is a fucking myth.
After reading some of these posts, I have hope. I have hope for hackers, I hope they can hack the game and create an actual enjoyable multiplayer experience. Blizzard did well on the actual game, but it's very ironic that they fucked up so bad on the things we all thought would be easy.
The bnet 2.0 experiment is this 'cater for the casual gamer' product, its a flop like all those lame hollywood films that go stright to DVD and then the bargain bin because nobody wants it. And we're voicing our anger because we know blizzard can do better, they're reputation is on the line and if they don't even meet us half way it will only be a matter of time before some cool hackers answers our prayers.
On May 24 2010 23:52 HalfAmazing wrote: There is no such thing as a casual gamer. He is an excuse to shove shit down your throat. You don't appreciate the taste of shit? MAYBE YOU'RE TOO HARDCORE. MAYBE YOU NEED TO BE MORE CASUAL.
You think a casual gamer doesn't want chat channels, LAN, or any of that good stuff? WHY NOT? YOU THINK "THE CASUAL GAMER" IS SOME KIND OF RETARD? If something matters to you, then you're HARDCORE. If you don't give a shit, you're CASUAL.
"THE CASUAL GAMER" is an invention by Blizzard's marketing department. Some fictionalized ignoramus who loves the buckets and buckets of shit shoveled into his mouth. "OHHH NOM NOM NOM YUM YUM BLIZZARD SHIT IS THE GOOD SHIT." "THE CASUAL GAMER" is some apathetic tool with no discerning appetite who'll eat whatever shit he's offered.
"THE CASUAL GAMER" is easy to cater to, as he has no desires, demands or concerns! If you're only disappointing EVERY. SINGLE. HARDCORE. player in the world, fear not, because "THE CASUAL GAMER" will still buy it!
Blizzard is just using "THE CASUAL GAMER" to deprive you of basic functionality in an effort to achieve greater control over your gaming experience. Because you care, you're HARDCORE and you're just not the target demographic. SORRY. "THE CASUAL GAMER" is a fucking myth.
lol, the casual gamer (IE the one that has no desires to play competitively and enjoys achievements and all this "fluff" so to speak) certainly does exist, and in large numbers. However, this still doesn't justify all the features left out. To appeal to a casual gamer you just need a lot of marketing (I don't think that's really an issue here), very easy to set up matchmaking, achievements etc., and easy to find/play custom games. There's no reason to leave out LAN options or chat functionality or a better ranking/ladder system because these casual gamers exist, because they can simply ignore that stuff if they want to.
On May 24 2010 23:52 HalfAmazing wrote: There is no such thing as a casual gamer. He is an excuse to shove shit down your throat. You don't appreciate the taste of shit? MAYBE YOU'RE TOO HARDCORE. MAYBE YOU NEED TO BE MORE CASUAL.
You think a casual gamer doesn't want chat channels, LAN, or any of that good stuff? WHY NOT? YOU THINK "THE CASUAL GAMER" IS SOME KIND OF RETARD? If something matters to you, then you're HARDCORE. If you don't give a shit, you're CASUAL.
"THE CASUAL GAMER" is an invention by Blizzard's marketing department. Some fictionalized ignoramus who loves the buckets and buckets of shit shoveled into his mouth. "OHHH NOM NOM NOM YUM YUM BLIZZARD SHIT IS THE GOOD SHIT." "THE CASUAL GAMER" is some apathetic tool with no discerning appetite who'll eat whatever shit he's offered.
"THE CASUAL GAMER" is easy to cater to, as he has no desires, demands or concerns! If you're only disappointing EVERY. SINGLE. HARDCORE. player in the world, fear not, because "THE CASUAL GAMER" will still buy it!
Blizzard is just using "THE CASUAL GAMER" to deprive you of basic functionality in an effort to achieve greater control over your gaming experience. Because you care, you're HARDCORE and you're just not the target demographic. SORRY. "THE CASUAL GAMER" is a fucking myth.
No, they DO exist. THEY come from things like C&C and WOW. Why would you BUY those games if you're NOT casual?
But seriously, there are casual gamers. Most of them are age 20ish-40 women who do "microgaming". They pay the most for in game content and they constantly flip games for the newest Zombies vs Plants. I thought my mom (yeah, my mom) was odd that she did that, but it's now becoming the norm. And it's a big cash cow. Blizzard is trying to get that demographic because they have the money, but they normally only buy smaller games. So you can see Blizzard's active attempt to get the demographic.
Now does the marketing make sense? Does the UI make sense? Does the censorship make sense? It just follows this research (and much more). They took the man who implemented casual gaming into Xbox (Xbox arcade) and made him head of Bnet 2.0
There is also a lot of research into achievements and casual gaming. I cannot find it right now because I think it was a few psychology papers from journals, but they are finding this demographic and they are finding they have the money. You know what else you find? They want the "fluff"/achievements.
PS. RANDOM CAPS is very annoying at least to me. You MAY want to not use them. It will get your point across better.
On May 25 2010 00:32 PROJECTILE wrote: lol, the casual gamer (IE the one that has no desires to play competitively and enjoys achievements and all this "fluff" so to speak) certainly does exist, and in large numbers. However, this still doesn't justify all the features left out. To appeal to a casual gamer you just need a lot of marketing (I don't think that's really an issue here), very easy to set up matchmaking, achievements etc., and easy to find/play custom games. There's no reason to leave out LAN options or chat functionality or a better ranking/ladder system because these casual gamers exist, because they can simply ignore that stuff if they want to.
But development time... that's the problem.
Real solution: delay the game.
Solution they will use: send out the game telling everyone it will be fixed, then, well, umm, oh! It was just a bug that it wasn't there! Oh wait, it's now an unfixable bug! Sorry! Wait until SC3! Don't worry, it's only $60. Did I mention you will get into the beta if you preorder it?
It is turning into a bunch of people trying to find a target for their frustration rather than figuring out something constructive to do. If you think they aren't listening to anyone, then why bitch about everything? If you think they SHOULD listen to everyone, back up that belief with some damn action. Make a constructive post about exactly what is the problem and a suggestion or two on how to fix it. And for the love of god, please back up your statements. I am so sick of every single person on here bitching just to bitch. There is such a thing as constructive complaints, but 80% of the most recent posts on this thread have definitely not fallen into that category.
Oh, and the casual gamer is not a myth. You are thinking in absolutes, which quite often leads to hasty assumptions. Some people care a lot; they are hardcore. Some people don't care at all; they are casual gamers. Some people care a little bit, others a bit more, and others even more. There is more than just "care" and "not care." There are shades of gray.
Seriously, if we expect to change anything, we really need to rally together behind a concrete idea, supported by fact, and present a few possible solutions. Saying "Blizzard is retarded" and arguing about who is to blame is both juvenile and, if anything, counter-productive.
This thread could really be a vantage point for a huge community-wide movement. If you really believe Blizzard just wants money, you can't just say that they're retarded and that they need to focus on the hardcore gamers. If you really believe they are that greedy, then try appealing to what you think would affect them.
To effect change, you have to appeal to those who can directly change things, and if you think what motivates those people is money, show them how many people really care. Those polls were great. I'd love to see more stuff like that.
Although, it might be nice to wait for release, because honestly, regardless of what seemingly self-contradictory statements have come out of the mouth of Blizzard, we don't know for sure what Bnet 2.0 will have in store for us until it's officially released. So now is the ideal time to gather data such as just how many people are displeased with the system and what needs to be integrated. There have been some great posts in this thread in that regard, but unfortunately the seem to be garbled by all the self-righteous Blizzard hate that has flooded this thread, especially recently.
Come on, we are Starcraft players, many of us long-time veterans. We know all about having a concise plan of attack and executing it effectively. So let's apply that concept here, too, so that we can actually give the people behind this system that we so desperately want to love some food for thought.
On May 25 2010 00:37 rackdude wrote: Now does the marketing make sense? Does the UI make sense? Does the censorship make sense?
Nope. If it makes sense to you, you should consider a career in marketing.
It doesn't make sense to you because you are not the market it's supposed to make sense for. Obviously, you know that because you read the links. So, can you elaborate why it doesn't make sense to you?
It is turning into a bunch of people trying to find a target for their frustration rather than figuring out something constructive to do. If you think they aren't listening to anyone, then why bitch about everything? If you think they SHOULD listen to everyone, back up that belief with some damn action. Make a constructive post about exactly what is the problem and a suggestion or two on how to fix it. And for the love of god, please back up your statements. I am so sick of every single person on here bitching just to bitch. There is such a thing as constructive complaints, but 80% of the most recent posts on this thread have definitely not fallen into that category.
Oh, and the casual gamer is not a myth. You are thinking in absolutes, which quite often leads to hasty assumptions. Some people care a lot; they are hardcore. Some people don't care at all; they are casual gamers. Some people care a little bit, others a bit more, and others even more. There is more than just "care" and "not care." There are shades of gray.
Seriously, if we expect to change anything, we really need to rally together behind a concrete idea, supported by fact, and present a few possible solutions. Saying "Blizzard is retarded" and arguing about who is to blame is both juvenile and, if anything, counter-productive.
This thread could really be a vantage point for a huge community-wide movement. If you really believe Blizzard just wants money, you can't just say that they're retarded and that they need to focus on the hardcore gamers. If you really believe they are that greedy, then try appealing to what you think would affect them.
To effect change, you have to appeal to those who can directly change things, and if you think what motivates those people is money, show them how many people really care. Those polls were great. I'd love to see more stuff like that.
Although, it might be nice to wait for release, because honestly, regardless of what seemingly self-contradictory statements have come out of the mouth of Blizzard, we don't know for sure what Bnet 2.0 will have in store for us until it's officially released. So now is the ideal time to gather data such as just how many people are displeased with the system and what needs to be integrated. There have been some great posts in this thread in that regard, but unfortunately the seem to be garbled by all the self-righteous Blizzard hate that has flooded this thread, especially recently.
Come on, we are Starcraft players, many of us long-time veterans. We know all about having a concise plan of attack and executing it effectively. So let's apply that concept here, too, so that we can actually give the people behind this system that we so desperately want to love some food for thought.
whatever the motives are, it seems like blizzard doesn't care for communitys on b.net 2.0 yet. Obviously chatrooms aren't something they 'forgot' to implement. My theory is they want people testing the game, as opposed to clogging up their server bandwidth idling in channels.
Why was the decision made to have multiple leagues instead of one unified league like the BW original ladder system? And suddenly the chosen removal of the ELO display? Interesting.
The latest move involving the need to add people by their e-mail is surely part of the same initiative. Now you can't add people you look up on starcraftrankings.com, see on livestreams, or youtube videos.
imo, Blizzard's lack of community support is a conscious decision made for the purposes of the beta. I'm sure come late June there will be some heavy implementation and no more complainers.
THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS THREAD IS THAT THESE THINGS WONT BE AT RELEASE AND WE ARE ANGRY AS HELL!
and you cant clog up server bandwidth with chatting. Seriously, this is the most retarded argument ever and no we won’t have these things at release.
READ the ENTIRE thread before uttering ridiculous arguments that fail SO HARD IT MAKES ME WANT TO KICK SOMETHING XD.
Now does the marketing make sense? Yes if they where marketing for care bears or pokemon 1444 the game.
Does the UI make sense? To anyone that has ever in his life touched something remotely similar in therms of rts. NO
Does the censorship make sense? AGAIN, if you had kids playing 1on1 online yes. DO THEY PLAY THE GAME ONLINE? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
They will play campaign mode, vs. computer and use cheat codes.
BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT CHILDREN DO.
And 14 + years old children cant be offended, true story.
Will most players care about either of these points. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
All this rage is expected from people who don't understand what is being done. B.net 2.0 is the new system that Blizzard is using for ALL THEIR GAMES, not just sc2. This is on the level of a Steam client release.
Does anyone remember Steam's release? Buggy friends list, laggy as hell connections, crashes on start up, inability to launch games, chat windows that wouldn't deliver messages, updates that never installed properly, memory leaks, the list goes on and on.
This doesn't get ironed out in the beta phase (steam didn't, so why do we expect this from bnet 2.0?). A lot of steam's functionality wasn't implemented until quite some time later. I expect no more or less from bnet 2.0. When all is said and done, however, I expect b.net 2.0 to live up to all the hype its garnered. This should include all the points being discussed currently (chat rooms, global ladder, tournament systems, clan channels, online replays etc...). To demand it at release or during beta unwarranted; demanding it during launch is a little more reasonable, but understandable if it isn't delivered.
Anyone expecting a smooth and easy ride when buying on day 0 for SC2 is naive. All I need to do is point to Half-Life 2 & CS:S implementation of steam for precedence.
Just as an example of the effect lack of LAN is having on the game, take a look at the Florida TL meet up. Only 16 people could play at the same time because there is a maximum users per IP limit. There were around 100 of us there. I think that's the moment I completely lost faith in bnet 2.0.
You can wave your "it's just a beta" psalms from your fanboy bible around all you want, potential esports titles in their beta stage (2 months before release, mind you) should be able to be played at LAN events.
On May 25 2010 01:25 EliteAzn wrote: Please hold off the complaining until the game comes out.
For the billionth time by the billionth person THIS IS BETA
This post would be acceptable if the release date wasn't TWO MONTHS AWAY.
um think about it. it took overnight for blizzard to patch some huge changes to zerg, and you think two months isn't enough time to make some other major changes if they want?
Telling people that they shouldn't complain about a game before they buy it, is asinine.
A company is deliberately trying to minimize communication between its customers, and implementing features that aim at getting a peek at your private life and habits - THEN making you sign an agreement saying they can use that information for any purpose - is clearly open for criticism.
On May 25 2010 01:25 EliteAzn wrote: Please hold off the complaining until the game comes out.
For the billionth time by the billionth person THIS IS BETA
This post would be acceptable if the release date wasn't TWO MONTHS AWAY.
um think about it. it took overnight for blizzard to patch some huge changes to zerg, and you think two months isn't enough time to make some other major changes if they want?
How about some real perspective? They've been working on this game since mid 2003. Why would they be able to do something in 2 months that they couldn't do properly in 7 years?
On May 25 2010 01:36 Perfect Balance wrote: Telling people that they shouldn't complain about a game before they buy it, is asinine.
A company is deliberately trying to minimize communication between its customers, and implementing features that aim at getting a peek at your private life and habits - THEN making you sign an agreement saying they can use that information for any purpose - is clearly open for criticism.
Then don't use it. You're not forced to sign up for Facebook integration in order to play the game. I would think that people using Facebook already either aren't aware, or don't care, about their privacy, anyway. This whole security madness about Facebook recently is hilarious. Like all of a sudden people realized they're putting personal information on the internet on a daily basis.
Then don't use it. You're not forced to sign up for Facebook integration in order to play the game. I would think that people using Facebook already either aren't aware, or don't care, about their privacy, anyway. This whole security madness about Facebook recently is hilarious. Like all of a sudden people realized they're putting personal information on the internet on a daily basis.
You're signing an agreement with Blizzard as you enter Battle.net. They can use any of your chat, text, any map you produce and any custom content, and sell it for their own gain. That's ONE issue. Then there is the missing: LAN, basic chat, customized games, hosting, clan support.
The users are getting a bad deal, and being led behind the light, it's sickening that so many of you accept this.
I can't wait to see one of two things: Ether A - All the stuff everyone is complaining isn't in the beta is in the retail version and everyone who bitched and moaned about how there it was missing in beta feels like a moron.
B - None of that stuff is in the beta and everyone who is bitching and moaning without making any constructive comments will bitch and moan about how their counter-productive bitching and moaning didn't make Blizzard see the incredible wisdom behind their angsty bitching and moaning.
I don't know which is more likely, and I hope it's A because I want to see that stuff implemented, too. But do people seriously expect to say shit like "Blizzard just wants money so they are making battlenet 2 suck so that idiots buy it" really is going to solve anything?
Really, if everyone just stopped and asked, "what am I hoping to accomplish with this post?" before they posted, there would either be a lot more constructive posts here, or a lot fewer overall posts.
On May 24 2010 23:52 HalfAmazing wrote: There is no such thing as a casual gamer. He is an excuse to shove shit down your throat. You don't appreciate the taste of shit? MAYBE YOU'RE TOO HARDCORE. MAYBE YOU NEED TO BE MORE CASUAL.
You think a casual gamer doesn't want chat channels, LAN, or any of that good stuff? WHY NOT? YOU THINK "THE CASUAL GAMER" IS SOME KIND OF RETARD? If something matters to you, then you're HARDCORE. If you don't give a shit, you're CASUAL.
"THE CASUAL GAMER" is an invention by Blizzard's marketing department. Some fictionalized ignoramus who loves the buckets and buckets of shit shoveled into his mouth. "OHHH NOM NOM NOM YUM YUM BLIZZARD SHIT IS THE GOOD SHIT." "THE CASUAL GAMER" is some apathetic tool with no discerning appetite who'll eat whatever shit he's offered.
"THE CASUAL GAMER" is easy to cater to, as he has no desires, demands or concerns! If you're only disappointing EVERY. SINGLE. HARDCORE. player in the world, fear not, because "THE CASUAL GAMER" will still buy it!
Blizzard is just using "THE CASUAL GAMER" to deprive you of basic functionality in an effort to achieve greater control over your gaming experience. Because you care, you're HARDCORE and you're just not the target demographic. SORRY. "THE CASUAL GAMER" is a fucking myth.
No, they DO exist. THEY come from things like C&C and WOW. Why would you BUY those games if you're NOT casual?
But seriously, there are casual gamers. Most of them are age 20ish-40 women who do "microgaming". They pay the most for in game content and they constantly flip games for the newest Zombies vs Plants. I thought my mom (yeah, my mom) was odd that she did that, but it's now becoming the norm. And it's a big cash cow. Blizzard is trying to get that demographic because they have the money, but they normally only buy smaller games. So you can see Blizzard's active attempt to get the demographic.
Now does the marketing make sense? Does the UI make sense? Does the censorship make sense? It just follows this research (and much more). They took the man who implemented casual gaming into Xbox (Xbox arcade) and made him head of Bnet 2.0
There is also a lot of research into achievements and casual gaming. I cannot find it right now because I think it was a few psychology papers from journals, but they are finding this demographic and they are finding they have the money. You know what else you find? They want the "fluff"/achievements.
PS. RANDOM CAPS is very annoying at least to me. You MAY want to not use them. It will get your point across better.
What kind of retard would you have to be (and I don't mean you btw) to think you are going to get the "soccermom" demographic to play an RTS game because of achievments?
I mean, what makes anyone think they are going to go for THIS:
Just because the game has achievments? Really?
Also, I would have thought this is exactly the demographic that would appreciate chat features, but I guess not.
On May 25 2010 01:41 EliteAzn wrote: remember, there is a huge hardware/software update that is triggering the end of phase 1.
Start making complaint posts after phase 2 begins.
I think the majority of complaints comes from things that Blizzard has officially said WONT be in the game by release but will MAYBE be added later.
Then don't use it. You're not forced to sign up for Facebook integration in order to play the game. I would think that people using Facebook already either aren't aware, or don't care, about their privacy, anyway. This whole security madness about Facebook recently is hilarious. Like all of a sudden people realized they're putting personal information on the internet on a daily basis.
You're signing an agreement with Blizzard as you enter Battle.net. They can use any of your chat, text, any map you produce and any custom content, and sell it for their own gain. That's ONE issue. Then there is the missing: LAN, basic chat, customized games, hosting, clan support.
The users are getting a bad deal, and being led behind the light, it's sickening that so many of you accept this.
Me, I'm paying for a game that I get to play and kill imaginary things in during my spare time after work. I don't plan to release any personal information or recite my potentially award-winning novels to people in the middle of these games.
I don't need Facebook to do any of that, either. I log in, kill stuff, log out.
Now, if you're the kind of person who opens up every conversation with "Hey, want to hear about this amazing screenplay I wrote?", then yeah, you might run into problems.
On May 25 2010 01:27 junemermaid wrote: All this rage is expected from people who don't understand what is being done. B.net 2.0 is the new system that Blizzard is using for ALL THEIR GAMES, not just sc2. This is on the level of a Steam client release.
Does anyone remember Steam's release? Buggy friends list, laggy as hell connections, crashes on start up, inability to launch games, chat windows that wouldn't deliver messages, updates that never installed properly, memory leaks, the list goes on and on.
This doesn't get ironed out in the beta phase (steam didn't, so why do we expect this from bnet 2.0?). A lot of steam's functionality wasn't implemented until quite some time later. I expect no more or less from bnet 2.0. When all is said and done, however, I expect b.net 2.0 to live up to all the hype its garnered. This should include all the points being discussed currently (chat rooms, global ladder, tournament systems, clan channels, online replays etc...). To demand it at release or during beta unwarranted; demanding it during launch is a little more reasonable, but understandable if it isn't delivered.
Anyone expecting a smooth and easy ride when buying on day 0 for SC2 is naive. All I need to do is point to Half-Life 2 & CS:S implementation of steam for precedence.
Nobody below you responded to this and I think it's quite insightful. QFT.
Then don't use it. You're not forced to sign up for Facebook integration in order to play the game. I would think that people using Facebook already either aren't aware, or don't care, about their privacy, anyway. This whole security madness about Facebook recently is hilarious. Like all of a sudden people realized they're putting personal information on the internet on a daily basis.
You're signing an agreement with Blizzard as you enter Battle.net. They can use any of your chat, text, any map you produce and any custom content, and sell it for their own gain. That's ONE issue. Then there is the missing: LAN, basic chat, customized games, hosting, clan support.
The users are getting a bad deal, and being led behind the light, it's sickening that so many of you accept this.
Me, I'm paying for a game that I get to play and kill imaginary things in during my spare time after work. I don't plan to release any personal information or recite my potentially award-winning novels to people in the middle of these games.
I don't need Facebook to do any of that, either. I log in, kill stuff, log out.
Now, if you're the kind of person who opens up every conversation with "Hey, want to hear about this amazing screenplay I wrote?", then yeah, you might run into problems.
Comedy is a good way of disarming serious topics that need to be discussed, good job.
There are some major issues here: Our privacy is being violated without any prior notice, the work that we put into a custom map is stolen by Blizzard to make money. The user will receive a small "cut" of the income Blizzard makes from selling content that you've made. This would be illegal if you didn't sign an agreement giving away all your rights to Blizzard. They can basically do anything they want with ANY of your facebook information without your permission.
After deliberately removing LAN, chat, clan support and some basic features to prevent users from communicating, Blizzard will steal your map and charge people money for it, hi-jack your LAN event and demand a cut from the income, then sell your private information to an ad company.
On May 25 2010 01:27 junemermaid wrote: All this rage is expected from people who don't understand what is being done. B.net 2.0 is the new system that Blizzard is using for ALL THEIR GAMES, not just sc2. This is on the level of a Steam client release.
Does anyone remember Steam's release? Buggy friends list, laggy as hell connections, crashes on start up, inability to launch games, chat windows that wouldn't deliver messages, updates that never installed properly, memory leaks, the list goes on and on.
This doesn't get ironed out in the beta phase (steam didn't, so why do we expect this from bnet 2.0?). A lot of steam's functionality wasn't implemented until quite some time later. I expect no more or less from bnet 2.0. When all is said and done, however, I expect b.net 2.0 to live up to all the hype its garnered. This should include all the points being discussed currently (chat rooms, global ladder, tournament systems, clan channels, online replays etc...). To demand it at release or during beta unwarranted; demanding it during launch is a little more reasonable, but understandable if it isn't delivered.
Anyone expecting a smooth and easy ride when buying on day 0 for SC2 is naive. All I need to do is point to Half-Life 2 & CS:S implementation of steam for precedence.
Yea, I was there on release day, and have used Steam since then, and it took them something like 3-4 years to make it good. Do you really want a game you already waited over a decade for to take 3-4 ADDITIONAL years to be playable? I sure as hell don't, especially not when they had a perfect system in place before, and decided to replace it with a dumbed down, less functional one. Battle.net in SC1 was closer to what Steam is now, and the new Battle.net is terrible in comparison.
On May 25 2010 01:27 junemermaid wrote: All this rage is expected from people who don't understand what is being done. B.net 2.0 is the new system that Blizzard is using for ALL THEIR GAMES, not just sc2. This is on the level of a Steam client release.
Does anyone remember Steam's release? Buggy friends list, laggy as hell connections, crashes on start up, inability to launch games, chat windows that wouldn't deliver messages, updates that never installed properly, memory leaks, the list goes on and on.
This doesn't get ironed out in the beta phase (steam didn't, so why do we expect this from bnet 2.0?). A lot of steam's functionality wasn't implemented until quite some time later. I expect no more or less from bnet 2.0. When all is said and done, however, I expect b.net 2.0 to live up to all the hype its garnered. This should include all the points being discussed currently (chat rooms, global ladder, tournament systems, clan channels, online replays etc...). To demand it at release or during beta unwarranted; demanding it during launch is a little more reasonable, but understandable if it isn't delivered.
Anyone expecting a smooth and easy ride when buying on day 0 for SC2 is naive. All I need to do is point to Half-Life 2 & CS:S implementation of steam for precedence.
The difference between this and Steam is that Steam at the very least had a solid core of features, and most of the problems it had were purely technical. I don't mind the fact that Bnet is laggy right now because it's a beta, and beta is when such issues are ironed out.
The main issue people have with Bnet isn't some technical problems, it's the INTENTIONAL, CALCULATED decisions to remove many of the features the community once enjoyed or desired in the name of control. There are no technical limitations with chat channels or cross-region play (even people in Europe say that lag between regions is minimal). Blizzard purposely removed these things and many of them show no signs of coming back. I honestly don't know what custom mapmakers are gonna do now that they have to live with the fact that they can only publish so many maps worth of content, or the fact that they can take everything we make and sell it at any time. It goes far beyond simple lag issues, and that's why we're upset.
Maybe I have a rosy memory, but I don't recall Steam having nearly the same amount of problems we are seeing with BNet2.0. With Steam, that platform was constantly and _quickly_ getting updated. Valve had no problems patching the platform quickly, sometimes even multiple times on the same day to fix problems. Blizzard isn't even close to as responsive as that yet.
Then don't use it. You're not forced to sign up for Facebook integration in order to play the game. I would think that people using Facebook already either aren't aware, or don't care, about their privacy, anyway. This whole security madness about Facebook recently is hilarious. Like all of a sudden people realized they're putting personal information on the internet on a daily basis.
You're signing an agreement with Blizzard as you enter Battle.net. They can use any of your chat, text, any map you produce and any custom content, and sell it for their own gain. That's ONE issue. Then there is the missing: LAN, basic chat, customized games, hosting, clan support.
The users are getting a bad deal, and being led behind the light, it's sickening that so many of you accept this.
Me, I'm paying for a game that I get to play and kill imaginary things in during my spare time after work. I don't plan to release any personal information or recite my potentially award-winning novels to people in the middle of these games.
I don't need Facebook to do any of that, either. I log in, kill stuff, log out.
Now, if you're the kind of person who opens up every conversation with "Hey, want to hear about this amazing screenplay I wrote?", then yeah, you might run into problems.
Comedy is a good way of disarming serious topics that need to be discussed, good job.
There are some major issues here: Our privacy is being violated without any prior notice, the work that we put into a custom map is stolen by Blizzard to make money. The user will receive a small "cut" of the income Blizzard makes from selling content that you've made. This would be illegal if you didn't sign an agreement giving away all your rights to Blizzard. They can basically do anything they want with ANY of your facebook information without your permission.
After deliberately removing LAN, chat, clan support and some basic features to prevent users from communicating, Blizzard will steal your map and charge people money for it, hi-jack your LAN event and demand a cut from the income, then sell your private information to an ad company.
Considering they're playing the role of the distributer, retailer and marketer, and they developed the tool you used to produce said content, do you really see them doing it any other way? Are they just meant to give you all this stuff for free?
On May 25 2010 02:07 mav451 wrote: Maybe I have a rosy memory, but I don't recall Steam having nearly the same amount of problems we are seeing with BNet2.0. With Steam, that platform was constantly and _quickly_ getting updated. Valve had no problems patching the platform quickly, sometimes even multiple times on the same day to fix problems. Blizzard isn't even close to as responsive as that yet.
Does it worry me? Yes.
This is also true. It's taken Blizzard 4 days now and the game still isn't playable. With Steam the games were always playable, excluding a handful of rare situations where Steam itself went offline, but even when that happened (I can think of 2 times in 6 years) they had it fixed within 24 hours. Steam had a lot of little quirky problems that were on a user-to-user basis, compared to BNet currently which has a massive system-wide array of problems.
Big difference when something is costing you revenue or not. Steam having problems costs revenue every second. BNet being down during Beta? No revenue loss. Means they can take their time to fix the issues properly, internally test them to make sure they're not breaking anything else, then releasing it, as opposed to opting for bandaid solutions to keep people happy. Steam had ENORMOUS large-scale problems in the early days. People couldn't even login to play HL2 for like the first 8 hours after release and then there were constant overwhelming traffic issues. Definitely rose-coloured glasses, there. Those issues probably cost them a metric fuckton of money from people frustrated they couldn't play the game on release day and returned it.
BNet definitely has the same risk, and Blizzard would be wise to learn from those mistakes. Leave people to get frustrated now, fix it properly while its in Beta and reap the rewards later.
On May 25 2010 01:27 junemermaid wrote: All this rage is expected from people who don't understand what is being done. B.net 2.0 is the new system that Blizzard is using for ALL THEIR GAMES, not just sc2. This is on the level of a Steam client release.
Does anyone remember Steam's release? Buggy friends list, laggy as hell connections, crashes on start up, inability to launch games, chat windows that wouldn't deliver messages, updates that never installed properly, memory leaks, the list goes on and on.
This doesn't get ironed out in the beta phase (steam didn't, so why do we expect this from bnet 2.0?). A lot of steam's functionality wasn't implemented until quite some time later. I expect no more or less from bnet 2.0. When all is said and done, however, I expect b.net 2.0 to live up to all the hype its garnered. This should include all the points being discussed currently (chat rooms, global ladder, tournament systems, clan channels, online replays etc...). To demand it at release or during beta unwarranted; demanding it during launch is a little more reasonable, but understandable if it isn't delivered.
Anyone expecting a smooth and easy ride when buying on day 0 for SC2 is naive. All I need to do is point to Half-Life 2 & CS:S implementation of steam for precedence.
The difference between this and Steam is that Steam at the very least had a solid core of features, and most of the problems it had were purely technical. I don't mind the fact that Bnet is laggy right now because it's a beta, and beta is when such issues are ironed out.
The main issue people have with Bnet isn't some technical problems, it's the INTENTIONAL, CALCULATED decisions to remove many of the features the community once enjoyed or desired in the name of control. There are no technical limitations with chat channels or cross-region play (even people in Europe say that lag between regions is minimal). Blizzard purposely removed these things and many of them show no signs of coming back. I honestly don't know what custom mapmakers are gonna do now that they have to live with the fact that they can only publish so many maps worth of content, or the fact that they can take everything we make and sell it at any time. It goes far beyond simple lag issues, and that's why we're upset.
Yeah, you do bring up valid points. Then again, we are only seeing what blizzard wants us to see, currently. Yes, they have said that chat channels are not going to be implemented during the launch, but I find it very difficult to see how they can build an online in-game community without some kind of public domain.
The way I see it, Diablo 3 is going to be on bnet 2.0. I think it would be impossible to play that game without some kind of chat / lobby system in place & without substantial updates and interface fixes. Imagine trying to navigate Diablo 3 with that interface. It becomes clear that bnet 2.0 is in it's infancy.
Perhaps they had a version they were testing out, but then scrapped it (a la Duke Nukem Forever) and started from the ground up. Blizzard has not been very transperant with regards to development cycles for the new bnet. Everyone assumes they've been working on the same infrastructure for 2+ years, when it could just as likely be a build that is just a few months old. This could explain why the interface and implementation looks so clunky right now. I believe they have ideas lined up for bnet within a year, but are strapped for time. They set the release date because they didn't want to delay AGAIN because of bnet (this is all speculation, but it makes sense).
If you're willing to weather out the storm during the initial release, I think it'll eventually come around in the winter / next year. If it doesn't, THEN we have something to worry about. Right now everyone is crying about spilled milk.
Lets be frank: the actual gameplay is phenomenal. People wouldn't be complaining about the bnet outage if the game wasn't fun as hell to play. I think that should give it enough gas to survive until Bnet 2.0 catches up with the actual gameplay.
I noticed a lot of posts about casual gamers and people who used to play SCBW casually.
I don't want to get in to an argument about what qualifies someone as a casual gamer, however casual gaming is pertinent to this topic because battle.net 2.0 caters to the casuals. I would like to say playing a game casually does not necessarily mean you're a casual gamer. I believe evaluating someone as a casual gamer needs to take in to account the media they use to play the game as well. Owning a gaming pc, for example, wouldn't be something a casual player would invest in.
Back then I saw a casual gamer as someone who had a console (N64, PS1, Sega Saturn) with a few games that they'd play with their neighbors or family. Today, due to technology becoming less expensive and everything connecting to the internet, I would classify a casual gamer as someone who plays Farmville, flash-based profile games, xbox 360, Wii, and WoW.
The new casual gamer likes rewards for their play. It is what keeps them going. It is what makes Farmville, xbox 360, Wii, and WoW so successful.
A lot of casuals play WoW because it caters to this new casual mindset (influenced by the desires of the new generation but I'll get to that). It rewards them for every quest they do; they receive achievements for their accomplishments, and you can customize your character as you see fit. Xbox 360 is the same way because of xbox live. You accomplish achievements and you customize your own profile person and the space they live in with trophies and rewards. On Farmville you get to customize your own farm and show it to the world (facebook). On Wii you make Miis and customize your character.
The new generation of casual gamers are pretentious. They need a system that shows the world what they have done with their time. If I were to take a current casual gaming 13 year old today, and sit him in front of SCBW, I can tell you he'd ask "how do I quit?" while he tries to migrate to a xbox 360 FPS or his farm on facebook.
So aren't I proving battle.net 2.0's purpose? No.
Blizzard designed Starcraft 2 with the devoted fan in mind. They didn't want to deviate from the Starcraft equation and they wanted to make US happy. We are still a viable market because as gaming is evolving so is the general age bracket (i.e. old SC vets still game). Meanwhile the battle.net team is shoveling this shitty ass casual gaming service that is anything but what the devoted fan needs. They are completely missing the boat. You can tell the two teams didn't communicate who the real market is with each other at all. And to conclude my point I'll offer an example:
My father would be considered a casual gamer. Hand him a controller and he'll learn the very, very simple mechanics of a game on his own in a few days. So lets say the new additions to battle.net 2.0 interest him and I sit him down in front of SC2 to play. He'd be fucking clueless. Starcraft 2 will turn away the true casual gamer.
and QFT:
On May 24 2010 09:22 BeMannerDuPenner wrote: evryone that played wc3 half srs or bw expects something from blizzard. and they kick exactly those guys that spend years of their lifes with the games in the nuts. which is plain stupid cause:
-14 year old johnboy will buy the gamem play campaign, play some ffas/ums and be done with the game. - 14 year old johnboy wont decide wheter to buy the game or not on the bnet features - 14 year old johnboy maybe will buy an expansion. maybe not. - 14 year old johnboy might think "oh nice i can has facebook!" but will never really care about stuff like that
no matter how you look at it, making the casuals #1 priority is plain retarded. blizz lost quite some of their good name already with wow. we all hoped this wouldnt affect the nonwow part of blizz. but we now are see whats happening. and we dont like it.
The solution:
What we need is a revision of old battle.net catered to SC2. Old battle.net already contains a lot of the features they stripped from us in battle.net 2.0, but the revisions would be the party system, matchmaking, and a more browsable ladder.
Blizzard should postpone this "battle.net 2.0/steam" idea until they refine it perfectly. It isn't a bad idea at all, but they have a lot of kinks to still work out. Once they are done they can then implement it to every one of their games and make a lot of money.
Casual vs Hardcore can be summed up quite simply as does the person treat gaming as a past-time, or do they treat it as a hobby (or even a career)?
Do you
A) Get home from work, load up a game, kill some shit, save the game and log out, go watch the new episode of Lost on TV, go to the garage and do some work on that shelf rack, or
B) Get home from work, load up a game and play the shit out of it until bed time, set your DVR to record Lost to watch when your internet goes out, only taking a break to make dinner or when your boy/girlfriend complains that you haven't taken out the trash/made him a sandwich, yet?
Every single game you listed (Farmville, flash-based profile games, xbox 360, Wii, and WoW) has both casual and hardcore gamers playing them. There's just a much larger population of casual ones, as there are hardcore.
Do you want to learn the game intricately, and become a master of it, or do you just play it to kill time? You can be in the Bronze league and be a hardcore gamer. You can be in the Platinum league and be a casual gamer. What defines them is how much time they spend, and how involved they get into it.
Would it surprise you to know that the vast, vast majority of gamers never complete the single-player campaigns of the games they buy?
While this showed up on Gamasutra about 6 months ago, its been well-known in the industry for a long time. Honestly, I believe its only because many video game developers are hardcore gamers themselves is the only reason we still have video games offering more than 3 hours of single-player gameplay.
When publishers start catching on, we'll see Bioshock 7 have like 3 levels and released in 6 months.
Bnet 2.0 to me reeks of them stripping back as much as possible to get the thing out the door. Their problem is they put time into fluff like achievements and portraits and not enough on other actually useful things.
I think the reason is achievements, portraits, FB friending, et al is a known quantity. It basically affects you and not others. There is little to "go wrong" in the long term. Chat rooms, online replay, clans, etc affect groups of people. I think honestly they're scared of what happens at launch. How many people are going to be on bnet? Will servers be overloaded? Will these other new features become unusable with a mass influx of new players?
What's odd to me is that if they have concerns about all of this sorts of stuff, beta is the time to test them in an environment that is more accepting (relatively) than the live game. But being so close to release, it seems they're just trying to get playing online to be solid, and (hopefully) adding more features over time as thing settle down after launch.
This is why you see FB added instead of other stuff. There's very little risk to adding it. This is also why people who say "this is only beta, wait till launch to see what's in it" are deluding themselves. They are not going to be adding some massive features before launch, for the same reason, "it's beta". Beta implies feature complete. All they are going to do from now until launch is tweak what is already there.
On May 24 2010 23:52 HalfAmazing wrote: There is no such thing as a casual gamer. He is an excuse to shove shit down your throat. You don't appreciate the taste of shit? MAYBE YOU'RE TOO HARDCORE. MAYBE YOU NEED TO BE MORE CASUAL.
You think a casual gamer doesn't want chat channels, LAN, or any of that good stuff? WHY NOT? YOU THINK "THE CASUAL GAMER" IS SOME KIND OF RETARD? If something matters to you, then you're HARDCORE. If you don't give a shit, you're CASUAL.
"THE CASUAL GAMER" is an invention by Blizzard's marketing department. Some fictionalized ignoramus who loves the buckets and buckets of shit shoveled into his mouth. "OHHH NOM NOM NOM YUM YUM BLIZZARD SHIT IS THE GOOD SHIT." "THE CASUAL GAMER" is some apathetic tool with no discerning appetite who'll eat whatever shit he's offered.
"THE CASUAL GAMER" is easy to cater to, as he has no desires, demands or concerns! If you're only disappointing EVERY. SINGLE. HARDCORE. player in the world, fear not, because "THE CASUAL GAMER" will still buy it!
Blizzard is just using "THE CASUAL GAMER" to deprive you of basic functionality in an effort to achieve greater control over your gaming experience. Because you care, you're HARDCORE and you're just not the target demographic. SORRY. "THE CASUAL GAMER" is a fucking myth.
No, they DO exist. THEY come from things like C&C and WOW. Why would you BUY those games if you're NOT casual?
But seriously, there are casual gamers. Most of them are age 20ish-40 women who do "microgaming". They pay the most for in game content and they constantly flip games for the newest Zombies vs Plants. I thought my mom (yeah, my mom) was odd that she did that, but it's now becoming the norm. And it's a big cash cow. Blizzard is trying to get that demographic because they have the money, but they normally only buy smaller games. So you can see Blizzard's active attempt to get the demographic.
Now does the marketing make sense? Does the UI make sense? Does the censorship make sense? It just follows this research (and much more). They took the man who implemented casual gaming into Xbox (Xbox arcade) and made him head of Bnet 2.0
There is also a lot of research into achievements and casual gaming. I cannot find it right now because I think it was a few psychology papers from journals, but they are finding this demographic and they are finding they have the money. You know what else you find? They want the "fluff"/achievements.
PS. RANDOM CAPS is very annoying at least to me. You MAY want to not use them. It will get your point across better.
What kind of retard would you have to be (and I don't mean you btw) to think you are going to get the "soccermom" demographic to play an RTS game because of achievments?
I mean, what makes anyone think they are going to go for THIS:
Just because the game has achievments? Really?
Also, I would have thought this is exactly the demographic that would appreciate chat features, but I guess not.
On May 25 2010 01:41 EliteAzn wrote: remember, there is a huge hardware/software update that is triggering the end of phase 1.
Start making complaint posts after phase 2 begins.
I think the majority of complaints comes from things that Blizzard has officially said WONT be in the game by release but will MAYBE be added later.
Just to note, if you read my post carefully you will see that I never admit that what they are doing is smart. In fact, if you read my other posts you will see I think it's stupid. What I'm trying to combat though is the stupid uninformed posts. The posts like "there is no casual gamer!" and talking about how they don't exist is just stupid. It will lead to a pissing match between Bliz and the fans because Bliz will say "yes it does" and we say "no it doesn't".
Instead we should act like informed human beings and say "it does exist, but what's wrong with what's going on?" Jinro, your stance is the same as mine. I don't think SC2 can be their game. However, I was just posting information because it seems like people in this thread (specifically the one I quoted) have been pretty shortsighted about what actually exists. I was just showing what is happening and what Bliz's thought process is. I hope people can make informed arguments know that deal with the marketing data that's out there instead of this "i don't like it. I'm a fan of Bliz, but now I won't buy it" stuff.
Edit: Thinking about your argument more, I don't think it works. I mean, it sounds like a simple idea: would they buy this game? No. Look at this picture. It's not their market.
And that's the problem, it's not their market! They know who they can get easily (us) and they know who they have to bait. So what are they doing? Trying to expand the market. That's just what marketing is made to do. Xbox Arcade was geared towards the same idea: get the casuals from the WII. In fact, now the guy who worked on Xbox Arcade is the one heading Bnet 2.0. Coincidence? (Too bad Xbox Arcade didn't work very well...)
What should be pointed out though is that Xbox Arcade didn't work as planned. In the same way, the microgaming interface being set up to sell minigames and maps is heading in the same direction. Still, they are trying anyways because that "soccermom" demographic is almost half of the paying market!
I really think that the only way to argue against all of these horrific changes would be to show somehow that this market is just clearly unreachable to the point that even gearing anything towards this 1/2 of the gaming market (literally, half of the $$$) is not worth the money. Actually, the best would be to find ways for these two group to get the features in a decent way so they can peacefully coexist.
On May 24 2010 22:52 infinity2k9 wrote: I don't understand the constant use of the term casuals here. What i'd consider casual gamers aren't the kind of people who would even buy Starcraft 2 in the first place. Even the average BW/WC3 player would like the features we all want.
I'am sorry to say it that way, but you have no idea what your talking about.
blizzard and carnessa know what games have become today. games are not anymore restricted to a bunch of computer nerds like we where 12 years ago. since a few years there was a huge evolution in the gameindustry. games like WoW, farmville and Wii have changed the shape of the gaming world. Also before that there was and is warcraft3 which has/had so many "casual" gamers in it. look at the huge variety of custom content. there are rpgs towerdefenses etc. so many different styles and games.
but battle.net2 and starcraft2 do not exceptionaly focus on the new "casual" consumer. they just realize that their products will have much, much more success if they get those people into their game and their community.
blizzard did, and does alot for the hardcore gamers. they listen to the hardcore community the most if you think about it. but they also know what the casual players want. they learned it from WoW and carnessa learned it from his experience with xbox life.
so in one hand, blizzard does get feedback from the hardcore and professional players to improve the game, and in the other hand they try to create an environment where casual players are motivated to be part of!
Starcraft also had a huge variation of styles and games. I mean HUGE. I can't count the number of unique UMS games I have played.
So if I understand correctly from the rest of your post, then you say its okay if they slash basic features so the casual gamers won't have to deal with them. Which I don't understand why the use of basic features would stop any 'casual' user from not enjoying the game.
no I tryed to say that its ok that blizzard implements all these environment things for the casual players. the basic bnet features of BW and WC3 must also be implemented. but they are not as important as the gameplay features. and blizzard listens heavily to the hardcore players to improve the gamplay of sc2.
If you are really honest, then this (gameplay) is what counts the most for hc/pro players and their fans. while the whole bnet2 features are gimmicks and extras that make things easyer/more appealing. and if they fail to implement bnet features that are wanted by hc/pro players, then these players will organise ladders, tournaments etc themselves like they allways did.
On May 25 2010 01:35 Bibdy wrote: Things can be fixed just as quickly as they're broken. Have any of you ever worked in software?
Sorry, but it sounds like you haven't. . Not to be mean, but that is a really naive statement. All CS labs I've ever done goes like this:
Program it in 8 hours. Great! Debug for 4 hours. OMG. Debug the next morning for 6 hours. 20 tabs open for each separate class. Debug for 10 more hours. Made some progress. Found one spelling error. Debug for 10 mores the next day. Realized someone else working on the project was a dumbass. Debug another hour. Now I have almost something. But it's inefficient. Change code in one area for relative efficiency. What? My partner implemented insertion sort? Change that to quicksort or heap sort. Crap, now I just ruined something. Debug it for 3 hours. Ok, now there's something that runs in most cases. However, there is this one case where it doesn't. Either stop right now and take the A- or work on it for 5 more hours to get the full credit.
Programming = 4/5 debugging. Especially as projects get larger.
There is a reason that these problems show up and take awhile to fix.
On May 25 2010 01:35 Bibdy wrote: Things can be fixed just as quickly as they're broken. Have any of you ever worked in software?
Sorry, but it sounds like you haven't. . Not to be mean, but that is a really naive statement. All CS labs I've ever done goes like this:
Program it in 8 hours. Great! Debug for 4 hours. OMG. Debug the next morning for 6 hours. 20 tabs open for each separate class. Debug for 10 more hours. Made some progress. Found one spelling error. Debug for 10 mores the next day. Realized someone else working on the project was a dumbass. Debug another hour. Now I have almost something. But it's inefficient. Change code in one area for relative efficiency. What? My partner implemented insertion sort? Change that to quicksort or heap sort. Crap, now I just ruined something. Debug it for 3 hours. Ok, now there's something that runs in most cases. However, there is this one case where it doesn't. Either stop right now and take the A- or work on it for 5 more hours to get the full credit.
Programming = 4/5 debugging. Especially as projects get larger.
There is a reason that these problems show up and take awhile to fix.
What I meant was the solution to the problem is usually a quick change or a minor tweak. It just takes time to read, absorb the code and find the source of the problem.
They might have added a whole bunch of changes in Patch 13, which broke the stability of BNet and I find it hard to believe this is going to last until launch. The fact that it was so stable before, and now its a complete disaster just screams that the problem(s) will be easy to find.
In all likelihood, it'll get fixed in Patch 14, released Thursday/Friday this week (they usually release updates on Thursday or Friday each week) and then everyone will completely forget any of this ever happened.
On May 25 2010 01:25 EliteAzn wrote: Please hold off the complaining until the game comes out.
For the billionth time by the billionth person THIS IS BETA
Except, as far as we know, the beta we are playing (for as much that is possible with patch13) is close to what the final product will look like. Think about that next time you yell "omfg its beta, they still have 2 whole months to fix something they've been working on for over 2 years!"
On May 25 2010 01:35 Bibdy wrote: Things can be fixed just as quickly as they're broken. Have any of you ever worked in software?
Sorry, but it sounds like you haven't. . Not to be mean, but that is a really naive statement. All CS labs I've ever done goes like this:
Program it in 8 hours. Great! Debug for 4 hours. OMG. Debug the next morning for 6 hours. 20 tabs open for each separate class. Debug for 10 more hours. Made some progress. Found one spelling error. Debug for 10 mores the next day. Realized someone else working on the project was a dumbass. Debug another hour. Now I have almost something. But it's inefficient. Change code in one area for relative efficiency. What? My partner implemented insertion sort? Change that to quicksort or heap sort. Crap, now I just ruined something. Debug it for 3 hours. Ok, now there's something that runs in most cases. However, there is this one case where it doesn't. Either stop right now and take the A- or work on it for 5 more hours to get the full credit.
Programming = 4/5 debugging. Especially as projects get larger.
There is a reason that these problems show up and take awhile to fix.
What I meant was the solution to the problem is usually a quick change or a minor tweak. It just takes time to read, absorb the code and find the source of the problem.
They might have added a whole bunch of changes in Patch 13, which broke the stability of BNet and I find it hard to believe this is going to last until launch. The fact that it was so stable before, and now its a complete disaster just screams that the problem(s) will be easy to find.
In all likelihood, it'll get fixed in Patch 14, released Thursday/Friday this week (they usually release updates on Thursday or Friday each week) and then everyone will completely forget any of this ever happened.
I really think that what happened is that they wanted to test the new networking (UDP) before the "break" on May 31st. They threw it out there to get as many error messages as they can. They probably have that break set up to be the major fix time. I think there will be one patch that will fix the "common" problem but you will have many cases (many cpus, many network cards, etc) that will still have problems. These won't get fixed until after the break. They timed this to look for those special cases and make those changes over the break. So, sadly, I think Bnet 2.0 will be pretty bad until it comes back post-May 31.
On May 25 2010 01:25 EliteAzn wrote: Please hold off the complaining until the game comes out.
For the billionth time by the billionth person THIS IS BETA
Except, as far as we know, the beta we are playing (for as much that is possible with patch13) is close to what the final product will look like. Think about that next time you yell "omfg its beta, they still have 2 whole months to fix something they've been working on for over 2 years!"
I still think the best argument against the "THIS IS BETA" remark is...
We are on a forum to talk about SC2. You cannot just talk about balance all day (that's complaining anyways). The strategy goes in the strategy section. So what is being talked about here? Yeah, you're browsing the area of the forum that you are saying you don't want to read about. Interesting...
On May 25 2010 02:34 Niteo wrote: I noticed a lot of posts about casual gamers and people who used to play SCBW casually.
I don't want to get in to an argument about what qualifies someone as a casual gamer, however casual gaming is pertinent to this topic because battle.net 2.0 caters to the casuals. I would like to say playing a game casually does not necessarily mean you're a casual gamer. I believe evaluating someone as a casual gamer needs to take in to account the media they use to play the game as well. Owning a gaming pc, for example, wouldn't be something a casual player would invest in.
Back then I saw a casual gamer as someone who had a console (N64, PS1, Sega Saturn) with a few games that they'd play with their neighbors or family. Today, due to technology becoming less expensive and everything connecting to the internet, I would classify a casual gamer as someone who plays Farmville, flash-based profile games, xbox 360, Wii, and WoW.
The new casual gamer likes rewards for their play. It is what keeps them going. It is what makes Farmville, xbox 360, Wii, and WoW so successful.
A lot of casuals play WoW because it caters to this new casual mindset (influenced by the desires of the new generation but I'll get to that). It rewards them for every quest they do; they receive achievements for their accomplishments, and you can customize your character as you see fit. Xbox 360 is the same way because of xbox live. You accomplish achievements and you customize your own profile person and the space they live in with trophies and rewards. On Farmville you get to customize your own farm and show it to the world (facebook). On Wii you make Miis and customize your character.
The new generation of casual gamers are pretentious. They need a system that shows the world what they have done with their time. If I were to take a current casual gaming 13 year old today, and sit him in front of SCBW, I can tell you he'd ask "how do I quit?" while he tries to migrate to a xbox 360 FPS or his farm on facebook.
So aren't I proving battle.net 2.0's purpose? No.
Blizzard designed Starcraft 2 with the devoted fan in mind. They didn't want to deviate from the Starcraft equation and they wanted to make US happy. We are still a viable market because as gaming is evolving so is the general age bracket (i.e. old SC vets still game). Meanwhile the battle.net team is shoveling this shitty ass casual gaming service that is anything but what the devoted fan needs. They are completely missing the boat. You can tell the two teams didn't communicate who the real market is with each other at all. And to conclude my point I'll offer an example:
My father would be considered a casual gamer. Hand him a controller and he'll learn the very, very simple mechanics of a game on his own in a few days. So lets say the new additions to battle.net 2.0 interest him and I sit him down in front of SC2 to play. He'd be fucking clueless. Starcraft 2 will turn away the true casual gamer.
On May 24 2010 09:22 BeMannerDuPenner wrote: evryone that played wc3 half srs or bw expects something from blizzard. and they kick exactly those guys that spend years of their lifes with the games in the nuts. which is plain stupid cause:
-14 year old johnboy will buy the gamem play campaign, play some ffas/ums and be done with the game. - 14 year old johnboy wont decide wheter to buy the game or not on the bnet features - 14 year old johnboy maybe will buy an expansion. maybe not. - 14 year old johnboy might think "oh nice i can has facebook!" but will never really care about stuff like that
no matter how you look at it, making the casuals #1 priority is plain retarded. blizz lost quite some of their good name already with wow. we all hoped this wouldnt affect the nonwow part of blizz. but we now are see whats happening. and we dont like it.
The solution:
What we need is a revision of old battle.net catered to SC2. Old battle.net already contains a lot of the features they stripped from us in battle.net 2.0, but the revisions would be the party system, matchmaking, and a more browsable ladder.
Blizzard should postpone this "battle.net 2.0/steam" idea until they refine it perfectly. It isn't a bad idea at all, but they have a lot of kinks to still work out. Once they are done they can then implement it to every one of their games and make a lot of money.
Here's the thing, before the release of WoW, MMOGs were pretty much the most hardcore of the hardcore genres of games out there. You'd think there was no way a soccer mom would ever pick up a MMOG like this and actually enjoy it, but somehow Blizzard managed this feat. I'm thinking Blizzard is "trying" to do the same with Battle.net 2.0 but so far I just don't see it really working, because the game SC2 itself doesn't seem casual friendly at all.
RTS's are very competitive by their very nature, obviously, but being able to mess around with your friends against the AI, or even other people is what is fun about playing RTS games casually. Being able to reach those friends quickly and easily is what will bring the casual market to the RTS genre.
Hence, being able to see and chat to your friends playing WoW, Diablo 3 or Starcraft 2 all from one system and having Facebook integration. It all makes sense when you understand the reason for it.
They aren't just throwing this stuff in for no reason. They're trying to get casual gamers interested in the RTS genre with these so-called 'ground-breaking' universal communication systems. Get casuals buying the game and your game's profit suddenly sky-rockets.
On May 25 2010 03:21 teamsolid wrote: I'm thinking Blizzard is "trying" to do the same with Battle.net 2.0 but so far I just don't see it really working, because the game SC2 itself doesn't seem casual friendly at all.
That's not true.
I have tons of friends in copper league during the beta that absolutely love the game and totally suck at it. They play like a couple games a week and talk about it probably twice as much.
Heck even SC BW was casual friendly. I played that game since release and totally sucked at it until I found these forums/iccup a couple years ago. My bnet account from a year ago is like 25-175
On May 25 2010 01:25 EliteAzn wrote: Please hold off the complaining until the game comes out.
For the billionth time by the billionth person THIS IS BETA
This post would be acceptable if the release date wasn't TWO MONTHS AWAY.
um think about it. it took overnight for blizzard to patch some huge changes to zerg, and you think two months isn't enough time to make some other major changes if they want?
How about some real perspective? They've been working on this game since mid 2003. Why would they be able to do something in 2 months that they couldn't do properly in 7 years?
lmao that is THE perspective. obviously you can't change something for the better if you don't know it's bad in the first place. why do you think they have a beta? purely for bug testing?
you act like blizzard knows EVERY SINGLE WAY a player could use a certain spell or feature in the game. what might be balanced now could be totally imbalanced a year from now due to a player finding a new way of using something. take mutas for example, compare brattsunami era muta use to julyzerg era muta use. it changed the game completely.
look how much brood war changed from release to v.1.15 or whatever version it went up to. and SC2 is still beta. if you don't "complain" now, then you have no right to complain after release (assuming you were in the beta) its like voting, you can't really complain about who got voted in if you didn't vote yourself.
On May 25 2010 03:21 teamsolid wrote: Here's the thing, before the release of WoW, MMOGs were pretty much the most hardcore of the hardcore genres of games out there. You'd think there was no way a soccer mom would ever pick up a MMOG like this and actually enjoy it, but somehow Blizzard managed this feat. I'm thinking Blizzard is "trying" to do the same with Battle.net 2.0 but so far I just don't see it really working, because the game SC2 itself doesn't seem casual friendly at all.
Exactly. You can tell SC2 as a product and battle.net 2.0 as a service are targeting two completely different markets.
And it is going to fail for SC2.
Any ideas on how to get the message out? We have 3 different topics on TL expressing everyone's distaste for the direction of battle.net 2.0. Two topics discussing battle.net 2.0 in general (with FrozenArbiter's professional insight), and one topic discussing how it will harm custom content (with IskatuMesk's custom content experience). If we were to combine all these topics and try to reach out to the general public then maybe we can get Blizzard to open their eyes.
Where do we go to? The battle.net forums have completely evolved from a decade ago; fanboyism runs rampant there and very few old fans still post there anymore. They'll basically eat up whatever shit blizzard cranks out.
There is that rock and battle.net 2.0 comparison picture that we could try to digg up. Does blizzard pay attention to twitter or facebook? We could try to get a change battle.net 2.0 group up. Any good ideas?
On May 23 2010 05:45 FrozenArbiter wrote: Cross server playability There is none. There won't be any for release. They don't even have latency as an excuse anymore - I played on US today without battleping, after the TCP to UDP switch, and it's completely smooth. No lag, next to no latency differences from playing on EU.
The latency argument is worthless anyway, since what are you supposed to do if you travel to another country? For example, this year, 10/12 months I am in the US, and the other two I'm in Europe. I am on a US server, but if latency was an issue, wouldn't it be better for me to select EU servers while traveling? If this were the case, it's a disservice to the customer to lock them in to their initial region's servers. I also have played the beta on US servers while in the EU, and the latency is fine.
Also, with this wonderful Facebook integration, I have RL friends, that will assumedly be showing up in Bnet as a Facebook friend also, registered on the EU Bnet servers that I won't be able to play with. Great.
At this point I'd even be happy with a web 2.0 micropayment to be able to log in to different regional servers. It's better than not playing on these other servers at all (or being forced to buy another copy of the game, which I know a lot of people will resort to).
I, like a lot of people am upset at the lack of server integration, however I also thought of something. What if its an intentional "design flaw" by separating us into different regions each one will have its own meta game, thus they impulse the creation of new strats and are able to locate imbalances more easily (e.g. the Korean Queen rush), since what they have are several separate testing environments it makes the process of balancing the game quicker. Then when they feel the game is sufficiently "balanced" they will overcome the "design error" and integrate the servers.
Honestly I feel it could just as easily be Blizz, being Blizz, but at least thats food for thought
On May 23 2010 05:45 FrozenArbiter wrote: Cross server playability There is none. There won't be any for release. They don't even have latency as an excuse anymore - I played on US today without battleping, after the TCP to UDP switch, and it's completely smooth. No lag, next to no latency differences from playing on EU.
The latency argument is worthless anyway, since what are you supposed to do if you travel to another country? For example, this year, 10/12 months I am in the US, and the other two I'm in Europe. I am on a US server, but if latency was an issue, wouldn't it be better for me to select EU servers while traveling? If this were the case, it's a disservice to the customer to lock them in to their initial region's servers. I also have played the beta on US servers while in the EU, and the latency is fine.
Also, with this wonderful Facebook integration, I have RL friends, that will assumedly be showing up in Bnet as a Facebook friend also, registered on the EU Bnet servers that I won't be able to play with. Great.
At this point I'd even be happy with a web 2.0 micropayment to be able to log in to different regional servers. It's better than not playing on these other servers at all (or being forced to buy another copy of the game, which I know a lot of people will resort to).
I just played my 5 placement games and a 2v2 on Asia, and there was NO LAG. The latency was really quite fine.
I was told the inbuilt latency to battle.net was 500ms. Not sure if any truth in that but if that was true you would only really experience lagg when playing Europe vs Australia for example which is around 750ms.
On May 25 2010 06:23 Necrosjef wrote: I was told the inbuilt latency to battle.net was 500ms. Not sure if any truth in that but if that was true you would only really experience lagg when playing Europe vs Australia for example which is around 750ms.
500ms? holy mother of zeus, WC3 was 250 and I think SC2 is supposed to be about 125.
On May 25 2010 06:23 Necrosjef wrote: I was told the inbuilt latency to battle.net was 500ms. Not sure if any truth in that but if that was true you would only really experience lagg when playing Europe vs Australia for example which is around 750ms.
I think that's some outdated information, it was 250 for a long time then halved down to 125.
125ms isn't too bad, maybe if they could get it down to 75 dynamically if you were close to the server and had good connection or so. Anywhere below 50ms becomes pointless and nearly impossible to notice, I think.
On May 25 2010 03:21 teamsolid wrote: Here's the thing, before the release of WoW, MMOGs were pretty much the most hardcore of the hardcore genres of games out there. You'd think there was no way a soccer mom would ever pick up a MMOG like this and actually enjoy it, but somehow Blizzard managed this feat. I'm thinking Blizzard is "trying" to do the same with Battle.net 2.0 but so far I just don't see it really working, because the game SC2 itself doesn't seem casual friendly at all.
Exactly. You can tell SC2 as a product and battle.net 2.0 as a service are targeting two completely different markets.
And it is going to fail for SC2.
Any ideas on how to get the message out? We have 3 different topics on TL expressing everyone's distaste for the direction of battle.net 2.0. Two topics discussing battle.net 2.0 in general (with FrozenArbiter's professional insight), and one topic discussing how it will harm custom content (with IskatuMesk's custom content experience). If we were to combine all these topics and try to reach out to the general public then maybe we can get Blizzard to open their eyes.
Where do we go to? The battle.net forums have completely evolved from a decade ago; fanboyism runs rampant there and very few old fans still post there anymore. They'll basically eat up whatever shit blizzard cranks out.
There is that rock and battle.net 2.0 comparison picture that we could try to digg up. Does blizzard pay attention to twitter or facebook? We could try to get a change battle.net 2.0 group up. Any good ideas?
I actully have been reading a lot of these post, but I'm so new t othis scene that I don't feel I have anything smart enugh to say, but this is one thing I've been thinking about a lot. IF the community here really is that disssatisfied, can we not make a effort in some other way then our own forums to change Blizzards mind? A ironic facebook group comes to mind, signing a petition is a nother?
And, this might have been ksed before, but is all this content TL produces also posted on the Blizz forums?
Thanks TL for being great, I'm also worried, beacuse if SC2 dosn't live up to the legacy, I'll will never get the chanse to be aprt of the jorney I missed with SC1
i just assumed they were going to add chat channels in when the game went live.. really disappointed that it appears they arent.
i wish they would just fix the terrible flaws and designs in the wc3 interface (i.e not being able to read chat while trying to join custom games etc) and just perfect on that design..
with patch 13 i got the impression that latency is not an issue (at least for me) if the bnet fuckups wouldnt accure i would be a happy camper regarding that.
On May 23 2010 06:10 lew wrote: I wrote this on the beta forum (bad written, I know):
Dear blizzard,
I am sure you heard about ICCUP before. It's a starcraft 1 server with great and simple futures. People from Korea, Europe and Asia are all playing on the same server and everything is working perfectly. One thing is not that good about it: it's not noobfriendly.
Blizzard fixed the not-noob friendliness with leagues, which is the only thing that battlenet 2 does better then ICCUP. Battlenet 2 is lacking a lot of very simple features which ICCUP has and which are NEEDED for starcraft 2 to become an ESPORTS game.
The feautures: - channels - decent friend adding system (now it is ridicilous, the system pre-patch 13 was better) - a global ranking (remove the divisions please) - lan
What you are doing now is: - dividing people between different servers - making tournaments almost impossible with the current friend system and with no-lan - making it impossible for people to check how well / bad they are doing compared to the rest of the world (ranking) - making it impossible to play with people from other continents - making battlenet a lonely place
Why is ICCUP - capable to add people to 1 global server? - capable to add chat channels without a single problem? - capable to make a global ranking?
Almost everyone at the teamliquid forums is asking for these futures and you keep on being stubborn. These features are so simple and still they are missing from battlenet. I know that you think that some of these features have disadvantages, but that doesn't take away that they are NEEDED if you want sc2 to be an ESPORTS game. I understand that making 1 global server is hard, but things like chatchannels, a decent friend-adding system and a global ranking are not that hard to implement. I also understand that this is BETA, but aren't these things so simple that they should be in the BETA already?
The latency argument is indeed worthless. I have been playing games on the US Server all the way from Singapore and except for some lag on the first day, there's next to no lag on the subsequent days that I have played.
I'd like to thank FrozenArbiter for showing me that I don't have to buy into delusion just because I dreamt that SC2 and Battle.net 2.0 would dissolve the gaming world in bliss once they arrived. I love the game. I think it's amazing, and as silly as Browder et al. may be, they somehow made an A+ RTS. I used to play games like Unreal Tournament, Rainbow Six, Halo 2 and Tremulous just because they were fun. My knees gave out when these games/franchises took the paths they took. It doesn't bother me, because I just go to the next game that's interesting (with BW being an eternal backdrop). I thought SC2 could be the next game for me. It's not - it isn't fun. Not because it's beta. It won't be fun at release because B.net 2.0 reeks of deceptive sewage. There is one feature, a great matchmaking system (not a great ladder). Everything else is either known not to be on its way or strongly suspected of being an empty promise or something designed to screw us.
See this, Canessa? We're not console gamers. We all have one of these. This is how we play our games. I understand that on Xbox Live, chat rooms make no sense because you don't chat with these, you use microphones. It's not helpful to have a Vent channel with 40 people in it, so why have chat channels on XBL? XBL conveniently lacks brick and mortar RTS games, but right now one of those is Battle.net 2.0's only title.
When you're on regular Battle.net, you're in one of two places. You're either playing in a game, or you're in a chat channel with the community. Tournaments, clans, clan wars, a place to meet people, to talk about the game, RIGHT INSIDE Battle.net itself. It really contributes to longevity.
You can pop out of the game you just finished and find yourself in a channel with friends and friends of friends dicking around. You're really excited about the game you just played, and you think it was awesome. On Battle.net: You host the replay and watch it together. On battle.net 2.0: You boot up your Livestream or ustream account to stream the replay. Your friends alt-tab and open up their browsers to watch your stream (even Livestream and ustream have built-in chat rooms). Battle.net goes down for maintenance and you wrack your brains out trying to read the Chinese characters on the offline launcher you downloaded so you can show your friends the replay, then you just ALT+F4 everything and load up Pokerstars. Later you email your friends the replay file so they can watch it by themselves, but none of them gives a fuck anymore.
It's a strategy game. Replays are a lot easier to deal with in RTS games than FPS demos or RPG replays. You already have them in SC2 at release, even though they weren't in SC1 at release. They need to be online. We've had online replays for a long time. Promising them after release so they can go the way of WC3 online replays - bullshit.
Modern games (go to open-source games if your favorite commercial game doesn't have this) use competent netcode. This means that people with modern (i.e., broadband) Internet connections can enjoy LAN latency or "unlagged" play. Games without such clever programming elements have LAN play so that you at least have perfect latency when you're playing your $5000 match at WCG or killing time with your friends at a Bay Area LANevermind. I have no doubt that the utmost effort put in by the Battle.net team to excise anything that could be cracked and turned into pirate (private) servers will only further motivate the Chinese or Russians to produce some actually worthwhile medium for playing this great RTS. If you can't even include Battle.net authentication LAN play (I log in to Battle.net to activate LAN play) then you can authenticate someone else's fucking credit card. You have squeezed and squeezed and drawn all the fun out from online gaming.
By the way, where are basic chat commands? Do I have to go back to the picture of the keyboard? Do they assume that people will only use the MOUSE to send messages to other players because they are masturbating with the other hand in order to extract some amount of fun from their miserable gaming service?
Antihack? We'll see how well they do about banning offenders in the future.
SC2 is an RTS. It's not an MMORPG. If you want to add persistent elements, it's fine, but only as long as you don't pretend they take the place of elements of Battle.net and modern games that any competent studio can put together. That is, including kindergarten achievements (that unlock DECALS and AVATARS REALLY!? Are you sure you know what an RTS game is about?) and calling it the Battle.net 2.0 experience does nothing more than equate the Battle.net 2.0 experience with being drowned in anal fetus corpses. They aren't harmful; lots of people think they're neat, but you're using them to strip basic features and mislead your fans (who have largely been guaranteed sales just because of BW's prestige) so they buy your World of Faceboxlivesoft cunt excrete. Unacceptable. The idea of a persistent character in an RTS game should NEVER supersede fundamental elements that make games fun. If you don't know what those are, you really didn't look hard enough at how you handled the original Battle.net. Xbox Live is full of titles from different studios. Battle.net 2.0 only has one studio. Canessa stated that this allowed a tighter integration of Blizzard games with Battle.net. What he meant was that they could scrap LAN and everything we're used to and charge you for your own content. It might work, and they might all retire before developing WoW 2, but if it doesn't, it's because of this short-sighted bullshit that sabotages how successful SC2 can be.
Matchmaking is great, you can always line up a game even if the trash in clan x17 is dodging you because you hit C+ on iCCup. However, the divisions just treat us like children. Overall rankings (just call up the players' hidden MMR?) and a totally transparent ladder - and names that aren't Warpgate Tango Foxtrot.
Gateway selection. I have friends in Europe and Asia. I want to play with them. Or is all this talk about Battle.net 2.0 being about esports which is about community just a butt plug for the shareholders? I'm surely not paying $180 for WoL if I even pay $60 to get into just one server. And no, I'm not a freeloader. People have shown that the latency is fine by having multiple beta accounts. If latency is the problem, then disallow people from matchmaking across servers. After you let me play on Asia, fix custom games and chat channels so I don't have to do hell knows what just to cheese someone I met from iCCup or TL or some other part of the Internet that actually knows how to support a Starcraft community. What are you trying to do, region-code Battle.net 2.0 like it's a DVD? What are we to you, pigs?
A custom games browser shouldn't be some sterile roster of forget it.
As far as map publishing, modding, and local map hosting... I can't say anything comparable to the expertise of IskatuMesk.
A couple of these problems are all related to the way B.net 2.0 handles traffic. Specifically, LAN latency, online replays, local hosting of maps are all ostensibly impractical (I'm only but so educated in networking) because everybody connects to Battle.net servers for games. This is great because some people for whatever reason have trouble forwarding ports on their network. Simply append a second netcode mode which is client to client so that we can have online replays and better custom games.
Most of the things so far are basic things that we would expect. Things we might like include clan support and tournament support. Real clans, too, not more XBL-derived inanity. Not just future patch -> never. What am I supposed to believe? You've promised Facebook and achievements on release. I already have my own achievements. They're called cheese the fuck out of my fr
I had some really elegant ways of articulating some of these points, but they were arrived at during hypnagogia and I can't remember them anymore. The profanity is pejorative and light-hearted. My attitude is serious. In summary, jury rig online replays, chat channels, chat commands, and gateway selection immediately or it's just a risible travesty. Make some improvements over the original and we'll talk about microtransactions. Stop salivating because I said that and add the damn channels. Dustin Browder, you have not disappointed me. Has Battle.net 2.0? I'll know whether it has disappointed me when I see a version of it that isn't blatantly some sort of April Fools' joke.
On May 23 2010 07:00 FrozenArbiter wrote: LAN Will not be in the game. It seems that they have even given up on the idea of having a LAN-through-bnet where you would have to authenticate your game before playing on LAN. Their reasons for this have been stupid excuses along the lines of people who want LAN being evil fly-wing-pulling bastards*:, but I guess it's probably piracy related.
Piracy issue: letting the terrorists win.
No matter what, people will get this from piratebay (or whatever), with a program to circumvent any security Blizzard puts in. They will install the game and play on third-party servers. They will do this whether or not LAN capability is in the game.
The rest of us, those who pay for the game and do everything as we should, will not have basic LAN capability that has been in, literally, every Blizzard RTS since Warcraft I (and I, probably what you would classify as a "casual" gamer, have used LAN in literally every Blizzard RTS since WCI). Authenticating with Bnet upon program launch would be acceptable.
Also, I fail to see how LAN will be allowing people to "beat up on noobs."
On May 23 2010 07:00 FrozenArbiter wrote: LAN Will not be in the game. It seems that they have even given up on the idea of having a LAN-through-bnet where you would have to authenticate your game before playing on LAN. Their reasons for this have been stupid excuses along the lines of people who want LAN being evil fly-wing-pulling bastards*:, but I guess it's probably piracy related.
Piracy issue: letting the terrorists win.
No matter what, people will get this from piratebay (or whatever), with a program to circumvent any security Blizzard puts in. They will install the game and play on third-party servers. They will do this whether or not LAN capability is in the game.
The rest of us, those who pay for the game and do everything as we should, will not have basic LAN capability that has been in, literally, every Blizzard RTS since Warcraft I (and I, probably what you would classify as a "casual" gamer, have used LAN in literally every Blizzard RTS since WCI). Authenticating with Bnet upon program launch would be acceptable.
Also, I fail to see how LAN will be allowing people to "beat up on noobs."
On May 23 2010 07:00 FrozenArbiter wrote: LAN Will not be in the game. It seems that they have even given up on the idea of having a LAN-through-bnet where you would have to authenticate your game before playing on LAN. Their reasons for this have been stupid excuses along the lines of people who want LAN being evil fly-wing-pulling bastards*:, but I guess it's probably piracy related.
Piracy issue: letting the terrorists win.
No matter what, people will get this from piratebay (or whatever), with a program to circumvent any security Blizzard puts in. They will install the game and play on third-party servers. They will do this whether or not LAN capability is in the game.
The rest of us, those who pay for the game and do everything as we should, will not have basic LAN capability that has been in, literally, every Blizzard RTS since Warcraft I (and I, probably what you would classify as a "casual" gamer, have used LAN in literally every Blizzard RTS since WCI). Authenticating with Bnet upon program launch would be acceptable.
Also, I fail to see how LAN will be allowing people to "beat up on noobs."
I think that's something alot of companies are failing to understand.
You can't stop piracy.
The more measures companies add to try and "protect their game", the more the pirates simply view it as a challenge to try and crack it even more.
The pirates managed to crack SC2 Beta for MP and it didn't even take them that long. The only games I know of that can't be pirated are likes of WoW where the whole point is playing the MMO experience and you can't really force 5000 people to play on your cracked server.
SC2 will be pirated anyway with loads of people playing on different servers. Just stupid to try and stop it. These pirates are people who break into software for a living, its just blind ignorance that Blizzard think by removing LAN they can stop them.
On May 25 2010 04:27 GMarshal wrote: I, like a lot of people am upset at the lack of server integration, however I also thought of something. What if its an intentional "design flaw" by separating us into different regions each one will have its own meta game, thus they impulse the creation of new strats and are able to locate imbalances more easily (e.g. the Korean Queen rush), since what they have are several separate testing environments it makes the process of balancing the game quicker. Then when they feel the game is sufficiently "balanced" they will overcome the "design error" and integrate the servers.
I think the division of servers may have some economic concerns tied to them. As Blizzard plans to sell things in Bnet2.0 and offer certain countries to even rent the game, it seems to me that it is a way to allow price discrimination and thus maximization of profits. People in Asia may not be as willing to pay for custom maps and what not as Americans and Europeans so they can price differently when the servers are divided without people getting pissed of about it. Probably cheaper bandwitch wise too (Speculation)
There needs to be a way to kick AFK hosts. I'm sick of joining 8 player games only to have the host be AFK and have no way of kicking him/switching hosts. The worst is when you leave the game, re-join, and END UP IN THE SAME GAME WITH THE AFK HOST.
There needs to be a way to kick players that are "pending" (aka: DL'ing SLOOOOW). I was in a game today and there was a player stuck on "pending". No one could kick him, and we couldn't start the game...
The problem here is with lack of BASIC CONTENT that Blizzard have PURPOSELY left out of the game.
LAN, clan support, chat, custom games - people assume that these features are in the game when they buy it, after all - why shouldn't they be? By the way, any criticism of being treated like cattle is absolutely merited and anything else would be worrying. Tons of people are boycotting SC2, and I can't do anything but sympathize with them.
On May 23 2010 07:00 FrozenArbiter wrote: LAN Will not be in the game. It seems that they have even given up on the idea of having a LAN-through-bnet where you would have to authenticate your game before playing on LAN. Their reasons for this have been stupid excuses along the lines of people who want LAN being evil fly-wing-pulling bastards*:, but I guess it's probably piracy related.
Piracy issue: letting the terrorists win.
No matter what, people will get this from piratebay (or whatever), with a program to circumvent any security Blizzard puts in. They will install the game and play on third-party servers. They will do this whether or not LAN capability is in the game.
The rest of us, those who pay for the game and do everything as we should, will not have basic LAN capability that has been in, literally, every Blizzard RTS since Warcraft I (and I, probably what you would classify as a "casual" gamer, have used LAN in literally every Blizzard RTS since WCI). Authenticating with Bnet upon program launch would be acceptable.
Also, I fail to see how LAN will be allowing people to "beat up on noobs."
I think that's something alot of companies are failing to understand.
You can't stop piracy.
The more measures companies add to try and "protect their game", the more the pirates simply view it as a challenge to try and crack it even more.
The pirates managed to crack SC2 Beta for MP and it didn't even take them that long. The only games I know of that can't be pirated are likes of WoW where the whole point is playing the MMO experience and you can't really force 5000 people to play on your cracked server.
SC2 will be pirated anyway with loads of people playing on different servers. Just stupid to try and stop it. These pirates are people who break into software for a living, its just blind ignorance that Blizzard think by removing LAN they can stop them.
WoW has been pirated long ago. there are very stable and "recognized" pirated servers. i know people that used to play W3 that became WoW nerds on pirated servers, playing 24/7 on these.
Just chill out. Non of the blizzard games were perfect when they first came out. The reason why Blizzard games are so great is because after release, they implement new patches to make the game better.. In this case, it is bnet2.0
On May 29 2010 00:45 zangryllama wrote: Just chill out. Non of the blizzard games were perfect when they first came out. The reason why Blizzard games are so great is because after release, they implement new patches to make the game better.. In this case, it is bnet2.0
There is a difference between not being perfect when they come out and actively making the product worse than the previous game.
On May 29 2010 00:45 zangryllama wrote: Just chill out. Non of the blizzard games were perfect when they first came out. The reason why Blizzard games are so great is because after release, they implement new patches to make the game better.. In this case, it is bnet2.0
There is a difference between not being perfect when they come out and actively making the product worse than the previous game.
Don't forget that not only have they made it worse, but they have given no indication that they have realized how bad it actually is. How is Blizzard supposed to fix something when they don't think it's a problem?
I'm just amazed that after all this time in development, that it's actually a step backwards. I mean, the Warcraft 3 Battle.Net in 2002, has all of the features we want/need, but now in 2010, we get Facebook?
I just want to say that I'm playing at the EU server without any lag whatsoever. bnet doesn't crash anymore. and I have no problems with playings custom games.
However, all the things you mentioned about missing features are crucial to bnet's success. No chat rooms, no lan, no offline single player, no online replay watching - that's disappointing, even if we got them in later patches/expansions.
EPT
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Although I fully agree with you on several of the features that we know won't be there. Maybe it was because my posts started off as a reply to a line of argument on chat systems or maybe I just failed to make it clear that is what I meant. I am quite skilled at making myself misunderstood so that is possible 
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