EPT![[image loading]](http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/9186/azb9so.jpg)
Because people were complaining that this post lacks flashy pictures, I jacked this one from some other post here on TL.
EDITUUUUUU: Just to clarify, I'm not criticizing the system because of the recent bugs since patch 13 (buggy UI, crashes, lag), I'm saying that even from a conceptual standpoint the entire system has fallen short of what they promised and of what we expected. I have every expectation that these bugs will be fixed soon enough, surely by release. Please don't put words in my mouth.
A note to the assuredly frustrated mods: I see you put up a nice little green banner since I started writing this. Your request to stop posting about Bnet is, I believe, aimed toward people complaining about lag and disconnects etc. My post isn’t as much a complaint about those recent issues as it is to the overall conceptual shortcoming of the whole system. Crossing my fingers you wont lock this.
START HERE:
Since the launch of patch 13, I have come to realize just how much I hate Battle.net 2.0. I also realize that there have been many dozens of other posts regarding the exact topics that I’m going to bring up again in the next few paragraphs, and that most of you are sick and tired of hearing about it. Unfortunately for you, my distaste for the new Bnet overwhelms my liking for not having the entire first page of this forum covered with complaints about the new system.
I’m not completely sure what all of the rest of you have been experiencing since the patch, but I can effectively no longer play the game. I can’t start a ladder match without the game crashing, now user created custom games are disabled, and all of the Blizzard-made custom games just lag out until one of the players gets dropped. Frustrating to say the least. This has really brought me to question the viability of SC2 as a product by mid-summer, as well as the stability of the entire philosophy of modern day Activision Blizzard.
I was around seven when I first played StarCraft. It was the first game that I think I had ever played on a computer. I was enchanted immediately and played through the campaign using cheats rather liberally (I still remember that I bawled when Tassadar died). Later on in my life I was introduced to WC3, which, again, was an unbelievably high quality game to someone with little other gaming experience. I sucked at both games, as I still can’t beat an easy computer in WC3, but the art, lore, and gameplay grasped me and pulled me in. To my young mind it seemed like Blizzard could do no wrong. Blizzard was the perfect company that constantly produced revolutionary titles that set industry standards in every genre that they ventured into. While this would’ve been a fairly accurate statement at the time, the more recent developments with the new Bnet system would indicate that Blizzard is moving away from their throne from which they once looked down on all of the PC gaming industry.
Gaming has become less and less of a hardcore and competitive hobby as more and more companies sacrifice quality and difficulty to open their game up to a wider audience, thus earning the company more money. I had hoped that Blizzard would shy away from this fast growing trend, but their new Bnet system is pretty clearly driven toward earning their company more money by making it more appealing to the wider audience.
![[image loading]](http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/1213/battlenetavatars.jpg){kind=avatar}
At least the Battle.net UI doesn't look this retarded anymore.
First off, the ELO system. This frustrates me for a few reasons. This system will always favor the people that have played more games, that is, owned the game the longest. There will always be point inflation because you earn usually three or four times as many points for a victory than you lose for a loss. This wouldn’t be as big as a problem if the favored system didn’t have such a massive impact on the dealing out of points. The favored tag is almost never accurate. At least 9 out of 10 times I start a game it says that my opponent is favored over me, but when I ask my opponent in game, surprisingly often (most of the time) they will say that they were shown me as being favored. I wouldn’t care that this system was so buggy and ambiguous if it didn’t make so much of a difference on your climbing of ranks. If you win against a favored opponent, bam, 20 points. Haven’t played for awhile? Bam, another 20. But you’re favored in a game that you won? Alright, here’s 3 points for you. A little too dramatic of a difference for such an inaccurate system.
Then there’s the division and league system. To be honest, I’m not fully opposed to this change. The league system works great for the people who want a competitive experience but are still awful players. Copper through gold (or now bronze through platinum) leagues I think should stay this way. It makes it an interesting experience to try to get to your division’s #1 spot even if there’s no way that you could be in the first 10,000 on a straight up ladder. In the platinum (now diamond) league, however, there is no reason to hide information like an overall rank from the players. They’re good enough to be able to be ranked among the best fifth of all of the players (if the separate league system is doing it’s job correctly; Blizzard has told us nothing about the way leagues are separated as far as I know, so I won’t go into that here.), so why should they not be able to see where exactly they fall in that upper echelon of competitive players. Absurd, to be honest.
As a side note, I fail to understand why Blizzard has insisted on naming all of the different divisions in each league. Since there is no way to browse through the different divisions in your league or in others, why assign them numbers or stupid names? Not a technical fault, but still a pointless frill of the system that just overcomplicates things. Again, unnecessary and absurd.
To make up for the shortcomings of the ranking and matchmaking system, Blizzard stuck in an achievement system. The first time I heard about this I was pissed. My anger has only grown exponentially since I realized that Blizzard hoped that people would be distracted by this and just be satisfied with the new Bnet now that you can earn “Achievement Points”. I think that this quote from a wonderful post from joolz can express my thoughts on Achievements better than I can myself:
On May 23 2010 22:21 joolz wrote:
There ARE unlocks and achievements but the overwhelming majority of them are incredibly easy to get. XBOX games actually give you an achievement for finishing the tutorial stage... then beating the first level... then beating the second level... and so on. You actually get achievements for doing things you can't avoid doing. And then these achievements get turned into points, and those points go on public display in your profile, and then you have a pissing contest to see who has the most points among your friends, and then you just keep paying your money to the companies who just keep making achievements easier and easier to get because god damn it you need those points, don't you?
Does that sound familiar? Achievement showcase, anyone? Put your 5 favorite achievements on display! Get a decal for spamming games played! Show off your achievement points because it's on display as a big ass font number next to your name when people look at your profile. TELL YOUR FREAKIN FACEBOOK FRIENDS YOU WON FIVE GAMES AS ZERG!!!
There ARE unlocks and achievements but the overwhelming majority of them are incredibly easy to get. XBOX games actually give you an achievement for finishing the tutorial stage... then beating the first level... then beating the second level... and so on. You actually get achievements for doing things you can't avoid doing. And then these achievements get turned into points, and those points go on public display in your profile, and then you have a pissing contest to see who has the most points among your friends, and then you just keep paying your money to the companies who just keep making achievements easier and easier to get because god damn it you need those points, don't you?
Does that sound familiar? Achievement showcase, anyone? Put your 5 favorite achievements on display! Get a decal for spamming games played! Show off your achievement points because it's on display as a big ass font number next to your name when people look at your profile. TELL YOUR FREAKIN FACEBOOK FRIENDS YOU WON FIVE GAMES AS ZERG!!!
Well said.
As another little tidbit to address the expansion of achievements infiltrating the quality of games, I reference this slightly humorous, slightly frightening speech by Jesse Scheel.
Now, it is not only that the new Battle.net features that they tried to implement are all miserable failures, it is also that all of the things that made their old system successful they have decided to remove. Sounds like a bunch of truly intelligent people are hard at work to make our gaming experience better, doesn’t it? LAN support, clan systems, chat channels, gone. Three of the most important aspects of a successful online gaming service are just missing, and Blizzard has explicitly stated that they have no intention of putting them back in any recognizable format that we’re familiar with.
![[image loading]](http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/2166/battlenetim.jpg)
This just screams clutter. What exactly was so bad about chat channels?
Battle.net has delayed the game some three or four years now. It has done little but hinder the development team which is trying to slog through the mess that is Battle.net 2.0 to try to construct an entertaining, competitive game on top of a disfigured and fractured infrastructure. Dustin Browder has implied in a number of interviews that the development team and the Battle.net team are largely separate, and that he hopes that the quality of the work from one team should not reflect on the other.
I believe that the quality of StarCraft 2 as a game is unimpeachable. I won’t speak to balance right now, as the development team still has a few months before release, but they have created a genuinely interesting set of game mechanics along with widely varied and diverse races that interact in a way that can keep someone interested in the game for years. There are constantly new strategies popping up that can revolutionize the way a certain match-up must be played. The game is fun. The game is interesting. The game has every potential to become just as big a success as its predecessor, if not even more so, unless Battle.net 2.0 keeps dragging it down. Greg Canessa has single handily brought about all of the technical flaws that make people question the potential of the game being a successful product.
![[image loading]](http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/6474/38332655.jpg)
This is the enemy.
I’m disenchanted. The Blizzard that I knew in my childhood that was incapable of producing an inferior product no longer exists. Battle.net 2.0 has proven to be unsuccessful at every turn. I would be completely satisfied if they just rolled back the entire system to the technologies of the original Battle.net with an easily accessible global ladder, chat channels, clan systems, and a matchmaking system that certainly had fewer complaints than this new garbage we need to put up with. I’m enraged. I had higher expectations than they delivered for, and I don’t believe that they can fix the service before release. Truly a letdown.
Oh, and by the way: Facebook Integration.
Need I say more?
![[image loading]](http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/1298/n1019347999302934985503.jpg)
