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The problem with you guys arguying is that you mix in logical and sound complains (the memory leak issue for instance), with weird calamity claims or conspiration activision theories. You can't be taken seriously when you just bring those kind of arguments to the table and I'm not sure Blizzard or anyone involved with the game would take those post with the care needed.
Let me just tell you guys of how it works in those kind of industries.
Blizzard has a small set of devs dedicated to Sc2, they have to divide their time between new features, bug fixing, balance editing,... Of course the devs don't make those decisions. The project leader/ lead designer make the priority decisions. No dev comes to work in the morning telling himself. Hey I'll fix that bug now and after lunch I'll implement chat system. BAM.
For bug fixes it goes that way:
a) Analyse the bug reports (they have a QA team dedicated to this). Sort the bugs, check with the dev team if it's already fixed, known, planned. < It already takes time. On Wow it's quite fast because the Q&A team and the dev team are apparently very stable and work very well with each other.
b) In case of a new bug verify the bug / replay it / test it on their machines. It can get tricky here. Bugs are not always well documented and in case of technical bugs can sometimes appear once out of a few iterations. < It takes even more time. Depending on the bug it can take very long, and if they can't find it soon, they might drop the bug or postpone the analysis in order to do more urgent things/ easier things.
c) wow they verified it. They need to get the dev team to understand where the bug comes from in the code. Sometimes dev "A" will have to check code from dev "B" to understand it. And of course they have to understand. Not that easy. In case of memory leaks for instance, it can come from a lot of factors. It can come from legit errors in the code, but can also come from 3rd party issues (graphic card drivers, directx, a combination of multiple issues,...). They have to identify that precisely to define a workaround. < It's the hardest part probably. Especially if you have multiple reports of "memory leaks" without providing info on the hosting system.
d) Oh boy fix it. But how? The time to fix will be identified. The bug fix prioritised and then they'll put it on the schedule. Usually the bugs are qualified as such :
- critical mystake (BSOD,...)
- renders the game/critical function unplayable
- occasional bug / quality of life bug (playable, but annoying)
- Would be nice if we fixed that sometime. (translation issue, ...)
Of course lowest priority will take a lot of time because they have other things to do.
e) testing!
Did my fix introduce new bugs?
Did my fix introduce performance issues? Client side? Server side?
Is the bug really fixed?
f) package it and schedule it for deployment.
6 steps and I probably forgot some more. All this take a lot of resources.
To design a new function they also need to have the design team/ community team/ marketing ... have a shot at specifications.
All this process and work, involves a lot of human interactions. So you WILL have mystakes. You WILL have some shitty stuff going out because dev "C" was lazy, dumped, demotivated (A and B are nice guys).
Because of all this a lot of companies choose not to listen to their player base at all. Most of them actually. Blizzard actually tries to some extant to implement stuff that the players want. It's not that easy, so give them some slack.
Another thing: of course they sell sc2 to make money. Welcome to real life, they aren't 3 guys coding in their garage a tetris... Besides what I don't get is that you guys didn't pay more for this additional feature, they didn't cheat you out of it. If it needs more stuff, provide them with ideas, or specifics. Going all hate/whine about they didn't make it perfect the first time those greedy bastards, is disrespectful for their work regardless if you're right or wrong.
tl;dr : chill guys 
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Scrap the custome game interface , its killing custome games
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On January 18 2011 21:53 Inex wrote:
The reason why people mentioned consoles is because BNET 2.0 really resembles a console interface. I mentioned this before, but the cross game chat is a clear example of that. PC users don't need cross game chat, skype easily fixes that. Console games don't have chat rooms, because typing is impossible with a gamepad. BNET 2.0 also didn't have chat channels. Clan support is also crucial for the community, but Blizz haven't said anything about it yet. Also, why not allow experienced 1x1 or 2x2 players get an additional in-game character, that they can use for practice? Asking professional players to buy multiple copies of the game is an insult, considering that they are one the main drivers of SC2's success in e-sports. I still don't know how to ignore a random dude that starts flaming or raging over the chat. The list goes on, but the overall idea is that the people designing BNET 2.0 have no idea what the community needs. They feel everyone should feel special, when they are rank 1 in some crappy division, not aware of how far from the top tier they actually are. The whole user friendly mentality is just sickening. Good players should be rewarded, bad players should be encouraged to get better by looking at the top, not comforting them with false rankings.Another thing, how often did you guys used the Facebook integration? Was it a worthy feature, or it could've been easily removed for the sake of a more functional chat? Cross game chat? The bottom line is BNET 2.0 is great for anything BUT Starcraft 2. I really hope the next expansion makes a huge U-turn for the best, right now this is not acceptable. Don't say SC2 is still a young game, because Blizz have had more than a decade of experience in online gaming.
Even though I wrote it in a very cynical way I don't think it's all because of the "xbox live"-guy. The mentality just screams "we overslept web 2.0 hype and now overcompensate where we shouldn't because we dont really understand it". Especially the facebook integration and the cross-game messaging system is proof of that.
But these are good feature for post-release patches. Noone would have said a thing if they gave us these features in a later patch. Some would use it, some would ignore it, fine. But the mentality to prioritize these features over certain core features is confusing to me.
But let's play with it for a second, everything pre chat patch here:
1. You are a casual gamer, almost no experience with action-rts
2. You play the singleplayer then move over to multiplayer
3. You play placement matches, land in bronze
4. You play a few games, hey you make a friend, achievement yes
5. It gets too hard, your 1 friend cant help you he's in bronze as well after all
6. Play some more, wade through the slideshow of a menu to check your stats / achievements
7. You play a few UMS games (no promotion that something like this exists)
"Oukey" you say to yourself. "I've done that, that was fun" you think to yourself. And now you're back to the Battle.net Interface. And you quickly realize..."I'm alone here". Where is everybody?
An inherent flaw of the system if you ask me. I just like to point this out because Blizzard took the facebook way of social interaction but then somehow it never occurred to them that FB works because you know someone, that someone knows someone you know as well from school, and so forth. While here if you're not so lucky to know about Teamliquid or have friends that like to play SC2 you basically are stuck in this interface that completely prevents the free spirit of activities driven by micro communities. And if you can't grasp the importance of such activities, think about where you are! Teamliquid. Think about the random conversations you had in WoW. Think about the little fellowships you formed or the massiv guilds you joined.
And, for those of you who where not fortune enough to undergo the very early days of Starcraft, this happend there instantly. Everyone, and I mean everyone was in the same pool. Clans, UMS, Tournaments everything formed through the power of, albeit anonymous, but still social interactions. So it all comes down to these activities that all surround this games. Sometimes the connection is a bit loose but still, you are there, together playing the game. The incentive is there.
And that is where everything comes together. That is why chat channels, watching replays online together, clan support, promoting UMS, personal statistics, a good custom game interface, custom tournaments and just everything that encourages these activities that walk with the game is so damn important. They might think "achievements!" but this is not WoW. These sidequests are just that, sidequests.
And that is the reason why people are disappointed in Blizzard's Battlenet 2.0. Because Blizzard has most of these things in their previous games! Now you tell me where the 2.0 part kicks in.
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On January 19 2011 00:08 Bellygareth wrote:+ Show Spoiler +The problem with you guys arguying is that you mix in logical and sound complains (the memory leak issue for instance), with weird calamity claims or conspiration activision theories. You can't be taken seriously when you just bring those kind of arguments to the table and I'm not sure Blizzard or anyone involved with the game would take those post with the care needed. Let me just tell you guys of how it works in those kind of industries. Blizzard has a small set of devs dedicated to Sc2, they have to divide their time between new features, bug fixing, balance editing,... Of course the devs don't make those decisions. The project leader/ lead designer make the priority decisions. No dev comes to work in the morning telling himself. Hey I'll fix that bug now and after lunch I'll implement chat system. BAM. For bug fixes it goes that way: a) Analyse the bug reports (they have a QA team dedicated to this). Sort the bugs, check with the dev team if it's already fixed, known, planned. < It already takes time. On Wow it's quite fast because the Q&A team and the dev team are apparently very stable and work very well with each other. b) In case of a new bug verify the bug / replay it / test it on their machines. It can get tricky here. Bugs are not always well documented and in case of technical bugs can sometimes appear once out of a few iterations. < It takes even more time. Depending on the bug it can take very long, and if they can't find it soon, they might drop the bug or postpone the analysis in order to do more urgent things/ easier things. c) wow they verified it. They need to get the dev team to understand where the bug comes from in the code. Sometimes dev "A" will have to check code from dev "B" to understand it. And of course they have to understand. Not that easy. In case of memory leaks for instance, it can come from a lot of factors. It can come from legit errors in the code, but can also come from 3rd party issues (graphic card drivers, directx, a combination of multiple issues,...). They have to identify that precisely to define a workaround. < It's the hardest part probably. Especially if you have multiple reports of "memory leaks" without providing info on the hosting system. d) Oh boy fix it. But how? The time to fix will be identified. The bug fix prioritised and then they'll put it on the schedule. Usually the bugs are qualified as such : - critical mystake (BSOD,...) - renders the game/critical function unplayable - occasional bug / quality of life bug (playable, but annoying) - Would be nice if we fixed that sometime. (translation issue, ...) Of course lowest priority will take a lot of time because they have other things to do. e) testing! Did my fix introduce new bugs? Did my fix introduce performance issues? Client side? Server side? Is the bug really fixed? f) package it and schedule it for deployment. 6 steps and I probably forgot some more. All this take a lot of resources. To design a new function they also need to have the design team/ community team/ marketing ... have a shot at specifications. All this process and work, involves a lot of human interactions. So you WILL have mystakes. You WILL have some shitty stuff going out because dev "C" was lazy, dumped, demotivated (A and B are nice guys). Because of all this a lot of companies choose not to listen to their player base at all. Most of them actually. Blizzard actually tries to some extant to implement stuff that the players want. It's not that easy, so give them some slack. Another thing: of course they sell sc2 to make money. Welcome to real life, they aren't 3 guys coding in their garage a tetris... Besides what I don't get is that you guys didn't pay more for this additional feature, they didn't cheat you out of it. If it needs more stuff, provide them with ideas, or specifics. Going all hate/whine about they didn't make it perfect the first time those greedy bastards, is disrespectful for their work regardless if you're right or wrong. tl;dr : chill guys
The problem, and I'll think most will agree here, is that Blizzard's standards have dropped a fair height since War3 (Arguably some time in their WoW history, frankly, I'd guess it really has some - or a lot of - things to do with the Activision merger), both in writing, which is oh-so apparent in everything recent they've done, with no exception: from the way they fucked up Arthas to the horrible cheesiness of the Diablo 3 class trailers to the way Starcraft 2's story just plain sucked on every aspect compared to their previous work; and other things, such as interface and, as has been pointed out, plain simple coding. Now, what throws more fuel into the fire is their outright lies prior to the Starcraft 2 launch, the failure to admit any mistakes whatsoever afterwards and the general extremely slow pace in which they address problems. If it takes half a year for a design team of 50 to code a simple chat room system that's not even all that great and to reduce an integer from 30 to 5, something is terribly wrong.
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On January 19 2011 00:08 Bellygareth wrote:The problem with you guys arguying is that you mix in logical and sound complains (the memory leak issue for instance), with weird calamity claims or conspiration activision theories. You can't be taken seriously when you just bring those kind of arguments to the table and I'm not sure Blizzard or anyone involved with the game would take those post with the care needed. Let me just tell you guys of how it works in those kind of industries. Blizzard has a small set of devs dedicated to Sc2, they have to divide their time between new features, bug fixing, balance editing,... Of course the devs don't make those decisions. The project leader/ lead designer make the priority decisions. No dev comes to work in the morning telling himself. Hey I'll fix that bug now and after lunch I'll implement chat system. BAM. For bug fixes it goes that way: a) Analyse the bug reports (they have a QA team dedicated to this). Sort the bugs, check with the dev team if it's already fixed, known, planned. < It already takes time. On Wow it's quite fast because the Q&A team and the dev team are apparently very stable and work very well with each other. b) In case of a new bug verify the bug / replay it / test it on their machines. It can get tricky here. Bugs are not always well documented and in case of technical bugs can sometimes appear once out of a few iterations. < It takes even more time. Depending on the bug it can take very long, and if they can't find it soon, they might drop the bug or postpone the analysis in order to do more urgent things/ easier things. c) wow they verified it. They need to get the dev team to understand where the bug comes from in the code. Sometimes dev "A" will have to check code from dev "B" to understand it. And of course they have to understand. Not that easy. In case of memory leaks for instance, it can come from a lot of factors. It can come from legit errors in the code, but can also come from 3rd party issues (graphic card drivers, directx, a combination of multiple issues,...). They have to identify that precisely to define a workaround. < It's the hardest part probably. Especially if you have multiple reports of "memory leaks" without providing info on the hosting system. d) Oh boy fix it. But how? The time to fix will be identified. The bug fix prioritised and then they'll put it on the schedule. Usually the bugs are qualified as such : - critical mystake (BSOD,...) - renders the game/critical function unplayable - occasional bug / quality of life bug (playable, but annoying) - Would be nice if we fixed that sometime. (translation issue, ...) Of course lowest priority will take a lot of time because they have other things to do. e) testing! Did my fix introduce new bugs? Did my fix introduce performance issues? Client side? Server side? Is the bug really fixed? f) package it and schedule it for deployment. 6 steps and I probably forgot some more. All this take a lot of resources. To design a new function they also need to have the design team/ community team/ marketing ... have a shot at specifications. All this process and work, involves a lot of human interactions. So you WILL have mystakes. You WILL have some shitty stuff going out because dev "C" was lazy, dumped, demotivated (A and B are nice guys). Because of all this a lot of companies choose not to listen to their player base at all. Most of them actually. Blizzard actually tries to some extant to implement stuff that the players want. It's not that easy, so give them some slack. Another thing: of course they sell sc2 to make money. Welcome to real life, they aren't 3 guys coding in their garage a tetris... Besides what I don't get is that you guys didn't pay more for this additional feature, they didn't cheat you out of it. If it needs more stuff, provide them with ideas, or specifics. Going all hate/whine about they didn't make it perfect the first time those greedy bastards, is disrespectful for their work regardless if you're right or wrong. tl;dr : chill guys
That's bug fixing. Shitty interface design is not a bug, it's just that - shitty design. Missing features aren't bugs either - they're features they couldn't be bothered to add to the product.
All of that could have been avoided if they had had the proper design goals in the first place.
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On January 19 2011 01:34 ciortas1 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2011 00:08 Bellygareth wrote:+ Show Spoiler +The problem with you guys arguying is that you mix in logical and sound complains (the memory leak issue for instance), with weird calamity claims or conspiration activision theories. You can't be taken seriously when you just bring those kind of arguments to the table and I'm not sure Blizzard or anyone involved with the game would take those post with the care needed. Let me just tell you guys of how it works in those kind of industries. Blizzard has a small set of devs dedicated to Sc2, they have to divide their time between new features, bug fixing, balance editing,... Of course the devs don't make those decisions. The project leader/ lead designer make the priority decisions. No dev comes to work in the morning telling himself. Hey I'll fix that bug now and after lunch I'll implement chat system. BAM. For bug fixes it goes that way: a) Analyse the bug reports (they have a QA team dedicated to this). Sort the bugs, check with the dev team if it's already fixed, known, planned. < It already takes time. On Wow it's quite fast because the Q&A team and the dev team are apparently very stable and work very well with each other. b) In case of a new bug verify the bug / replay it / test it on their machines. It can get tricky here. Bugs are not always well documented and in case of technical bugs can sometimes appear once out of a few iterations. < It takes even more time. Depending on the bug it can take very long, and if they can't find it soon, they might drop the bug or postpone the analysis in order to do more urgent things/ easier things. c) wow they verified it. They need to get the dev team to understand where the bug comes from in the code. Sometimes dev "A" will have to check code from dev "B" to understand it. And of course they have to understand. Not that easy. In case of memory leaks for instance, it can come from a lot of factors. It can come from legit errors in the code, but can also come from 3rd party issues (graphic card drivers, directx, a combination of multiple issues,...). They have to identify that precisely to define a workaround. < It's the hardest part probably. Especially if you have multiple reports of "memory leaks" without providing info on the hosting system. d) Oh boy fix it. But how? The time to fix will be identified. The bug fix prioritised and then they'll put it on the schedule. Usually the bugs are qualified as such : - critical mystake (BSOD,...) - renders the game/critical function unplayable - occasional bug / quality of life bug (playable, but annoying) - Would be nice if we fixed that sometime. (translation issue, ...) Of course lowest priority will take a lot of time because they have other things to do. e) testing! Did my fix introduce new bugs? Did my fix introduce performance issues? Client side? Server side? Is the bug really fixed? f) package it and schedule it for deployment. 6 steps and I probably forgot some more. All this take a lot of resources. To design a new function they also need to have the design team/ community team/ marketing ... have a shot at specifications. All this process and work, involves a lot of human interactions. So you WILL have mystakes. You WILL have some shitty stuff going out because dev "C" was lazy, dumped, demotivated (A and B are nice guys). Because of all this a lot of companies choose not to listen to their player base at all. Most of them actually. Blizzard actually tries to some extant to implement stuff that the players want. It's not that easy, so give them some slack. Another thing: of course they sell sc2 to make money. Welcome to real life, they aren't 3 guys coding in their garage a tetris... Besides what I don't get is that you guys didn't pay more for this additional feature, they didn't cheat you out of it. If it needs more stuff, provide them with ideas, or specifics. Going all hate/whine about they didn't make it perfect the first time those greedy bastards, is disrespectful for their work regardless if you're right or wrong. tl;dr : chill guys The problem, and I'll think most will agree here, is that Blizzard's standards have dropped a fair height since War3 (Arguably some time in their WoW history, frankly, I'd guess it really has some - or a lot of - things to do with the Activision merger), both in writing, which is oh-so apparent in everything recent they've done, with no exception: from the way they fucked up Arthas to the horrible cheesiness of the Diablo 3 class trailers to the way Starcraft 2's story just plain sucked on every aspect compared to their previous work; and other things, such as interface and, as has been pointed out, plain simple coding. Now, what throws more fuel into the fire is their outright lies prior to the Starcraft 2 launch, the failure to admit any mistakes whatsoever afterwards and the general extremely slow pace in which they address problems. If it takes half a year for a design team of 50 to code a simple chat room system that's not even all that great and to reduce an integer from 30 to 5, something is terribly wrong.
Some of your points are valid, but you may have an idolised vue of what was Diablo2's classes or Starcraft 1 story (and it's a matter of opinion, but I thought previous Diablo's classes where more cheesy than Diablo 3's).
Also, you have to realise that when the main product is shipped most of the dev team is reassigned to say, the expansion, or other projects usually. I'm not saying that's the good way to do it, it's just the way the industry works. So the additional features will take a lot more time than it should.
And Balance decisions? It's not a matter of coding, it's mainly a matter of the design team making the decision and testing the decision, exploring more ways... I personally am glad they don't make balance changes as fast as for wow for instance (ruining or overbuffing classes ).
For the chat room, you just make an amalgam between delay and workload. I'm pretty sure they didn't spend all that much time making it. They just decided not to make it a high priority and to dedicate a lot of resources into it. Does it need a lot more resources? Probably if it's an important feature. Is it important for the blizzard design team? Probably not. Is it important for the community? Maybe more than what's perceived by the bliz team.
Edited the last part to recenter on bnet:
Bnet 2.0 is first and foremost a technical accomplishement to be able to put 100 000 more users at the same time together to play game almost lagless. Bnet 1 had a lot less users and was laggy as hell in comparison.
Of course other systems work that way but for a RTS for the PC, it's quite good that they managed it.
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On January 18 2011 21:12 Shockk wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2011 20:01 Inspectah wrote:
I think its fine when they implenment clan support.
The chat channels are awesome, i saw guys like MorroW and Haypro on teamliquid EU (and they actually talked to us), this other channel has a King of the Hill Tourney going on the whole day, and ppl can find practice partners in their skill range. Overall they improved bnet so much imo.
And I didnt got spammed to buy anything yet.
You guys exegerrate way so much, stop QQ and be happy for what weve got.
It's pretty bold (if not overly arrogant) to dismiss valid criticism as "QQ". And many people here provide just that. Blizzard handing us flawed chat channels doesn't mean we have reason to be happy with the current state of the game. It's the first issue on a long list of neccessary improvements. Some folks may exaggerate, that's true, but the majority claiming "b.net 2.0 sucks!" happens because it's true.
Well all Im trying to say is that blizzard gave us this very balanced and fun game to play and people are complaining over the top about bnet 2.0. You guys demand stuff that is not owed to you by blizzard in any way. In fact they dont owe anybody anthing. If they feel like this UI is better for their own product for whatever reason theyre allowed to do so. Welcome to capitalism.
How can you be so demanding? Imagine sc2 wasnt even released, the pc gaming scene would still be stuck on WoW, esports would die with counterstrike and that leaves us with major console releases as gaming powerhouses.Hf  So just bear with blizz and give them the benefit of the doubt.
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Main thread post updated (new pics)
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On January 18 2011 21:53 Inex wrote:
Don't say SC2 is still a young game, because Blizz have had more than a decade of experience in online gaming.
I should agree , even tho i said that as a "slack cutter" a few times , to maybe give em some room , but this is the hard truth right there ,
also agreed with the other text.
On January 17 2011 23:33 Jibba wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2011 20:58 IkeScurvy wrote:
You guys should probably stop mentioning consoles in a negative way, it just makes you sound like elitist jerks. The system they have in place right now is just a bad system. It doesn't matter what the previous job of the designer is. It's just a bad system. They bring up consoles because the chief designer of Battle.net 0.2 is a console designer. I don't think it's a coincidence that the system looks like it should be navigated with a controller. He did what he knows, but Blizzard should've known better, especially after all the shit Infinity Ward took for dumbing down MW2's interface.
I've already explained that MW2 was a made up revenge against activision many of IW guys wanted to leave the company after COD4 released. (when co-founder grant collier went missing)
On top of that , there's was a coincidental feature on Kotaku , some people have also the same opinion (well they have the same result out of the facts because they have followed events and news just like me , i was a COD guy back then)
The article is here http://kotaku.com/5731810/was-modern-warfare-2-an-act-of-sabotage
EDIT: lol i think i quoted you already and i forgot ... i was specifically meaning this time , i missed it , that you said "iw took the shit" for dumbing down MW2 pc version (pretty much the whole game) actually , IW wasn't IW anymore , the company was sold to Activision in 2003 , so , the developers just did a backfire , IW wasn't their's neither Acivision , but they tarnished Activision image either IW or AV , for busisness man and investors they obviosuly know what kind of company is what (you can't be a business man without knowing this) , they planted a "charge" on the way out "of the door".
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On January 19 2011 02:20 Bellygareth wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2011 01:34 ciortas1 wrote:On January 19 2011 00:08 Bellygareth wrote:+ Show Spoiler +The problem with you guys arguying is that you mix in logical and sound complains (the memory leak issue for instance), with weird calamity claims or conspiration activision theories. You can't be taken seriously when you just bring those kind of arguments to the table and I'm not sure Blizzard or anyone involved with the game would take those post with the care needed. Let me just tell you guys of how it works in those kind of industries. Blizzard has a small set of devs dedicated to Sc2, they have to divide their time between new features, bug fixing, balance editing,... Of course the devs don't make those decisions. The project leader/ lead designer make the priority decisions. No dev comes to work in the morning telling himself. Hey I'll fix that bug now and after lunch I'll implement chat system. BAM. For bug fixes it goes that way: a) Analyse the bug reports (they have a QA team dedicated to this). Sort the bugs, check with the dev team if it's already fixed, known, planned. < It already takes time. On Wow it's quite fast because the Q&A team and the dev team are apparently very stable and work very well with each other. b) In case of a new bug verify the bug / replay it / test it on their machines. It can get tricky here. Bugs are not always well documented and in case of technical bugs can sometimes appear once out of a few iterations. < It takes even more time. Depending on the bug it can take very long, and if they can't find it soon, they might drop the bug or postpone the analysis in order to do more urgent things/ easier things. c) wow they verified it. They need to get the dev team to understand where the bug comes from in the code. Sometimes dev "A" will have to check code from dev "B" to understand it. And of course they have to understand. Not that easy. In case of memory leaks for instance, it can come from a lot of factors. It can come from legit errors in the code, but can also come from 3rd party issues (graphic card drivers, directx, a combination of multiple issues,...). They have to identify that precisely to define a workaround. < It's the hardest part probably. Especially if you have multiple reports of "memory leaks" without providing info on the hosting system. d) Oh boy fix it. But how? The time to fix will be identified. The bug fix prioritised and then they'll put it on the schedule. Usually the bugs are qualified as such : - critical mystake (BSOD,...) - renders the game/critical function unplayable - occasional bug / quality of life bug (playable, but annoying) - Would be nice if we fixed that sometime. (translation issue, ...) Of course lowest priority will take a lot of time because they have other things to do. e) testing! Did my fix introduce new bugs? Did my fix introduce performance issues? Client side? Server side? Is the bug really fixed? f) package it and schedule it for deployment. 6 steps and I probably forgot some more. All this take a lot of resources. To design a new function they also need to have the design team/ community team/ marketing ... have a shot at specifications. All this process and work, involves a lot of human interactions. So you WILL have mystakes. You WILL have some shitty stuff going out because dev "C" was lazy, dumped, demotivated (A and B are nice guys). Because of all this a lot of companies choose not to listen to their player base at all. Most of them actually. Blizzard actually tries to some extant to implement stuff that the players want. It's not that easy, so give them some slack. Another thing: of course they sell sc2 to make money. Welcome to real life, they aren't 3 guys coding in their garage a tetris... Besides what I don't get is that you guys didn't pay more for this additional feature, they didn't cheat you out of it. If it needs more stuff, provide them with ideas, or specifics. Going all hate/whine about they didn't make it perfect the first time those greedy bastards, is disrespectful for their work regardless if you're right or wrong. tl;dr : chill guys Edited the last part to recenter on bnet: Bnet 2.0 is first and foremost a technical accomplishement to be able to put 100 000 more users at the same time together to play game almost lagless. Bnet 1 had a lot less users and was laggy as hell in comparison. Of course other systems work that way but for a RTS for the PC, it's quite good that they managed it.
That is where the facts clash, this is only a matter of networking expertise , networking platform how well it is set up and in what status the servers are , plus , general amount of power and bandwidth for the servers , if it's not done correctly it makes lag , pretty much has nothing to do with the desing or features or bugs , if a bug is causing LAG , it's is not a bug in Bnet , it's a bug in the networking architecture , somewhere in those server settings maybe , something configured incorrectly.
on the other things , well , they are busy with cataclysm i'll say , and the SC2 team isn't as big yet.
@ I also agree on the fact that missing features are clearly not bugs by them self , ofcourse , that's logical and not only contextual, maybe he got his thought wrong twisted.
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On January 19 2011 20:54 Stewox. wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On January 19 2011 02:20 Bellygareth wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2011 01:34 ciortas1 wrote:On January 19 2011 00:08 Bellygareth wrote:+ Show Spoiler +The problem with you guys arguying is that you mix in logical and sound complains (the memory leak issue for instance), with weird calamity claims or conspiration activision theories. You can't be taken seriously when you just bring those kind of arguments to the table and I'm not sure Blizzard or anyone involved with the game would take those post with the care needed. Let me just tell you guys of how it works in those kind of industries. Blizzard has a small set of devs dedicated to Sc2, they have to divide their time between new features, bug fixing, balance editing,... Of course the devs don't make those decisions. The project leader/ lead designer make the priority decisions. No dev comes to work in the morning telling himself. Hey I'll fix that bug now and after lunch I'll implement chat system. BAM. For bug fixes it goes that way: a) Analyse the bug reports (they have a QA team dedicated to this). Sort the bugs, check with the dev team if it's already fixed, known, planned. < It already takes time. On Wow it's quite fast because the Q&A team and the dev team are apparently very stable and work very well with each other. b) In case of a new bug verify the bug / replay it / test it on their machines. It can get tricky here. Bugs are not always well documented and in case of technical bugs can sometimes appear once out of a few iterations. < It takes even more time. Depending on the bug it can take very long, and if they can't find it soon, they might drop the bug or postpone the analysis in order to do more urgent things/ easier things. c) wow they verified it. They need to get the dev team to understand where the bug comes from in the code. Sometimes dev "A" will have to check code from dev "B" to understand it. And of course they have to understand. Not that easy. In case of memory leaks for instance, it can come from a lot of factors. It can come from legit errors in the code, but can also come from 3rd party issues (graphic card drivers, directx, a combination of multiple issues,...). They have to identify that precisely to define a workaround. < It's the hardest part probably. Especially if you have multiple reports of "memory leaks" without providing info on the hosting system. d) Oh boy fix it. But how? The time to fix will be identified. The bug fix prioritised and then they'll put it on the schedule. Usually the bugs are qualified as such : - critical mystake (BSOD,...) - renders the game/critical function unplayable - occasional bug / quality of life bug (playable, but annoying) - Would be nice if we fixed that sometime. (translation issue, ...) Of course lowest priority will take a lot of time because they have other things to do. e) testing! Did my fix introduce new bugs? Did my fix introduce performance issues? Client side? Server side? Is the bug really fixed? f) package it and schedule it for deployment. 6 steps and I probably forgot some more. All this take a lot of resources. To design a new function they also need to have the design team/ community team/ marketing ... have a shot at specifications. All this process and work, involves a lot of human interactions. So you WILL have mystakes. You WILL have some shitty stuff going out because dev "C" was lazy, dumped, demotivated (A and B are nice guys). Because of all this a lot of companies choose not to listen to their player base at all. Most of them actually. Blizzard actually tries to some extant to implement stuff that the players want. It's not that easy, so give them some slack. Another thing: of course they sell sc2 to make money. Welcome to real life, they aren't 3 guys coding in their garage a tetris... Besides what I don't get is that you guys didn't pay more for this additional feature, they didn't cheat you out of it. If it needs more stuff, provide them with ideas, or specifics. Going all hate/whine about they didn't make it perfect the first time those greedy bastards, is disrespectful for their work regardless if you're right or wrong. tl;dr : chill guys Edited the last part to recenter on bnet: Bnet 2.0 is first and foremost a technical accomplishement to be able to put 100 000 more users at the same time together to play game almost lagless. Bnet 1 had a lot less users and was laggy as hell in comparison. Of course other systems work that way but for a RTS for the PC, it's quite good that they managed it. That is where the facts clash, this is only a matter of networking expertise , networking platform how well it is set up and in what status the servers are , plus , general amount of power and bandwidth for the servers , if it's not done correctly it makes lag , pretty much has nothing to do with the desing or features or bugs , if a bug is causing LAG , it's is not a bug in Bnet , it's a bug in the networking architecture , somewhere in those server settings maybe , something configured incorrectly. on the other things , well , they are busy with cataclysm i'll say , and the SC2 team isn't as big yet. @ I also agree on the fact that missing features are clearly not bugs by them self , ofcourse , that's logical and not only contextual, maybe he got his thought wrong twisted.
By 'he', are you referring to me? If so, in the post I made I didn't refer to bugs specifically, I said problems, and there are maaaaaany problems with the game that work just the way they were intended by Blizzard. Didn't want to respond to the guy since, frankly, the only points he brought up were there because he couldn't read what I wrote.
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This is a BIAS taken from the console world , this is a very basic example of crappy mobile/console attitude and design , this show more button must go AWAY.
I feel your rage with me, it's one of the reasons I can't stand playing on bnet 2.0
Now in 2.0 programmers didn't placed the buttons and ui and windows , so , it's more of a "user friendly" BS , but the older stuff worked , programmers have that practise and they know what's a good system and you have everything clearly shown to you.
If I could use Diablo Bnet 12 years ago as a kid with ease I don't comprehend why they had to import the "IQ of 50 required" user friendly console xbox crap on a PC system. When they could have just imported the interfaces and everything from the old Bnet, tweaked it and no one would have complained.
What I miss the most, is logging into Bnet and having a wide array of /commands to do everything I'd want to quick and easy, now navigating back and fourth between a menu within a menu within a menu is fucking tiresome...
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On January 19 2011 20:54 Stewox. wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2011 02:20 Bellygareth wrote:On January 19 2011 01:34 ciortas1 wrote:On January 19 2011 00:08 Bellygareth wrote:+ Show Spoiler +The problem with you guys arguying is that you mix in logical and sound complains (the memory leak issue for instance), with weird calamity claims or conspiration activision theories. You can't be taken seriously when you just bring those kind of arguments to the table and I'm not sure Blizzard or anyone involved with the game would take those post with the care needed. Let me just tell you guys of how it works in those kind of industries. Blizzard has a small set of devs dedicated to Sc2, they have to divide their time between new features, bug fixing, balance editing,... Of course the devs don't make those decisions. The project leader/ lead designer make the priority decisions. No dev comes to work in the morning telling himself. Hey I'll fix that bug now and after lunch I'll implement chat system. BAM. For bug fixes it goes that way: a) Analyse the bug reports (they have a QA team dedicated to this). Sort the bugs, check with the dev team if it's already fixed, known, planned. < It already takes time. On Wow it's quite fast because the Q&A team and the dev team are apparently very stable and work very well with each other. b) In case of a new bug verify the bug / replay it / test it on their machines. It can get tricky here. Bugs are not always well documented and in case of technical bugs can sometimes appear once out of a few iterations. < It takes even more time. Depending on the bug it can take very long, and if they can't find it soon, they might drop the bug or postpone the analysis in order to do more urgent things/ easier things. c) wow they verified it. They need to get the dev team to understand where the bug comes from in the code. Sometimes dev "A" will have to check code from dev "B" to understand it. And of course they have to understand. Not that easy. In case of memory leaks for instance, it can come from a lot of factors. It can come from legit errors in the code, but can also come from 3rd party issues (graphic card drivers, directx, a combination of multiple issues,...). They have to identify that precisely to define a workaround. < It's the hardest part probably. Especially if you have multiple reports of "memory leaks" without providing info on the hosting system. d) Oh boy fix it. But how? The time to fix will be identified. The bug fix prioritised and then they'll put it on the schedule. Usually the bugs are qualified as such : - critical mystake (BSOD,...) - renders the game/critical function unplayable - occasional bug / quality of life bug (playable, but annoying) - Would be nice if we fixed that sometime. (translation issue, ...) Of course lowest priority will take a lot of time because they have other things to do. e) testing! Did my fix introduce new bugs? Did my fix introduce performance issues? Client side? Server side? Is the bug really fixed? f) package it and schedule it for deployment. 6 steps and I probably forgot some more. All this take a lot of resources. To design a new function they also need to have the design team/ community team/ marketing ... have a shot at specifications. All this process and work, involves a lot of human interactions. So you WILL have mystakes. You WILL have some shitty stuff going out because dev "C" was lazy, dumped, demotivated (A and B are nice guys). Because of all this a lot of companies choose not to listen to their player base at all. Most of them actually. Blizzard actually tries to some extant to implement stuff that the players want. It's not that easy, so give them some slack. Another thing: of course they sell sc2 to make money. Welcome to real life, they aren't 3 guys coding in their garage a tetris... Besides what I don't get is that you guys didn't pay more for this additional feature, they didn't cheat you out of it. If it needs more stuff, provide them with ideas, or specifics. Going all hate/whine about they didn't make it perfect the first time those greedy bastards, is disrespectful for their work regardless if you're right or wrong. tl;dr : chill guys Edited the last part to recenter on bnet: Bnet 2.0 is first and foremost a technical accomplishement to be able to put 100 000 more users at the same time together to play game almost lagless. Bnet 1 had a lot less users and was laggy as hell in comparison. Of course other systems work that way but for a RTS for the PC, it's quite good that they managed it. That is where the facts clash, this is only a matter of networking expertise , networking platform how well it is set up and in what status the servers are , plus , general amount of power and bandwidth for the servers , if it's not done correctly it makes lag , pretty much has nothing to do with the desing or features or bugs , if a bug is causing LAG , it's is not a bug in Bnet , it's a bug in the networking architecture , somewhere in those server settings maybe , something configured incorrectly. on the other things , well , they are busy with cataclysm i'll say , and the SC2 team isn't as big yet. @ I also agree on the fact that missing features are clearly not bugs by them self , ofcourse , that's logical and not only contextual, maybe he got his thought wrong twisted.
Sorry but you're wrong. I've worked in performance and optimisation and most of the time lag issues and performance troubles come from bad programmation, or a specific feature that fucks up the whole thing.
Of course network and system architecture and good sizing of the platform is important but it's not the issue most of the time.
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I agree with the shortcomings of battle.net 2.0 brought up, but you have to recall the past interviews with greg.
He's looking at battle.net in the grand schemes of their plans for 20 years, building a platform that will connect all blizzard titles into their own world, basically he wants to build the next xbox live for Activision Blizzard on the pc.
So in perspective of sc2, the majority of development is most likely shifted to diablo 3 and the future of the platform and getting those where they want it, not all the additions and modifications it currently needs in sc2. It should still be considered in beta for the lack of features and polish of its current incarnation.
We'll have to wait and see whats next and if the community can shape the direction it takes but before the expansion, it will probably only revolve around balance and minor fixes to battle net, nothing major.
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On January 20 2011 22:31 Bellygareth wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2011 20:54 Stewox. wrote:On January 19 2011 02:20 Bellygareth wrote:On January 19 2011 01:34 ciortas1 wrote:On January 19 2011 00:08 Bellygareth wrote:+ Show Spoiler +The problem with you guys arguying is that you mix in logical and sound complains (the memory leak issue for instance), with weird calamity claims or conspiration activision theories. You can't be taken seriously when you just bring those kind of arguments to the table and I'm not sure Blizzard or anyone involved with the game would take those post with the care needed. Let me just tell you guys of how it works in those kind of industries. Blizzard has a small set of devs dedicated to Sc2, they have to divide their time between new features, bug fixing, balance editing,... Of course the devs don't make those decisions. The project leader/ lead designer make the priority decisions. No dev comes to work in the morning telling himself. Hey I'll fix that bug now and after lunch I'll implement chat system. BAM. For bug fixes it goes that way: a) Analyse the bug reports (they have a QA team dedicated to this). Sort the bugs, check with the dev team if it's already fixed, known, planned. < It already takes time. On Wow it's quite fast because the Q&A team and the dev team are apparently very stable and work very well with each other. b) In case of a new bug verify the bug / replay it / test it on their machines. It can get tricky here. Bugs are not always well documented and in case of technical bugs can sometimes appear once out of a few iterations. < It takes even more time. Depending on the bug it can take very long, and if they can't find it soon, they might drop the bug or postpone the analysis in order to do more urgent things/ easier things. c) wow they verified it. They need to get the dev team to understand where the bug comes from in the code. Sometimes dev "A" will have to check code from dev "B" to understand it. And of course they have to understand. Not that easy. In case of memory leaks for instance, it can come from a lot of factors. It can come from legit errors in the code, but can also come from 3rd party issues (graphic card drivers, directx, a combination of multiple issues,...). They have to identify that precisely to define a workaround. < It's the hardest part probably. Especially if you have multiple reports of "memory leaks" without providing info on the hosting system. d) Oh boy fix it. But how? The time to fix will be identified. The bug fix prioritised and then they'll put it on the schedule. Usually the bugs are qualified as such : - critical mystake (BSOD,...) - renders the game/critical function unplayable - occasional bug / quality of life bug (playable, but annoying) - Would be nice if we fixed that sometime. (translation issue, ...) Of course lowest priority will take a lot of time because they have other things to do. e) testing! Did my fix introduce new bugs? Did my fix introduce performance issues? Client side? Server side? Is the bug really fixed? f) package it and schedule it for deployment. 6 steps and I probably forgot some more. All this take a lot of resources. To design a new function they also need to have the design team/ community team/ marketing ... have a shot at specifications. All this process and work, involves a lot of human interactions. So you WILL have mystakes. You WILL have some shitty stuff going out because dev "C" was lazy, dumped, demotivated (A and B are nice guys). Because of all this a lot of companies choose not to listen to their player base at all. Most of them actually. Blizzard actually tries to some extant to implement stuff that the players want. It's not that easy, so give them some slack. Another thing: of course they sell sc2 to make money. Welcome to real life, they aren't 3 guys coding in their garage a tetris... Besides what I don't get is that you guys didn't pay more for this additional feature, they didn't cheat you out of it. If it needs more stuff, provide them with ideas, or specifics. Going all hate/whine about they didn't make it perfect the first time those greedy bastards, is disrespectful for their work regardless if you're right or wrong. tl;dr : chill guys Edited the last part to recenter on bnet: Bnet 2.0 is first and foremost a technical accomplishement to be able to put 100 000 more users at the same time together to play game almost lagless. Bnet 1 had a lot less users and was laggy as hell in comparison. Of course other systems work that way but for a RTS for the PC, it's quite good that they managed it. That is where the facts clash, this is only a matter of networking expertise , networking platform how well it is set up and in what status the servers are , plus , general amount of power and bandwidth for the servers , if it's not done correctly it makes lag , pretty much has nothing to do with the desing or features or bugs , if a bug is causing LAG , it's is not a bug in Bnet , it's a bug in the networking architecture , somewhere in those server settings maybe , something configured incorrectly. on the other things , well , they are busy with cataclysm i'll say , and the SC2 team isn't as big yet. @ I also agree on the fact that missing features are clearly not bugs by them self , ofcourse , that's logical and not only contextual, maybe he got his thought wrong twisted. Sorry but you're wrong. I've worked in performance and optimisation and most of the time lag issues and performance troubles come from bad programmation, or a specific feature that fucks up the whole thing. Of course network and system architecture and good sizing of the platform is important but it's not the issue most of the time.
Em , yes , ingame performance and lag spikes , slowdonws, that is coding inside the game engine , but im speaking about networking , the game can have excelent code , while if the servers are crippled their SERVER-SIDE systems and settings , that's again "programming" but it's not the work SC2 team does involve , it relies on another team that's responsible for that. and we saw how achievement servers were always going down, some guys there have trobule with some servers... it's because of a priority , they don't foucs so much for SC2 as they do for wow of course, they thought it's fine , but when a emergency gets up , they aren't ready.
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Anyone else crashing like no tomorrow?
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For me the most annoying part of Battle.net 0.2 is how there is a significant delay between requests and they start queuing up. Seriously Its like impossible to navigate the GUI without getting the message about flooding Battle.net and queuing the requests. Can Blizzard, one of the richest gaming companies in the entire world, seriously not sustain a server that can handle more than 2 or 3 requests from a person in a row?
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On January 25 2011 09:12 Disastorm wrote:
For me the most annoying part of Battle.net 0.2 is how there is a significant delay between requests and they start queuing up. Seriously Its like impossible to navigate the GUI without getting the message about flooding Battle.net and queuing the requests. Can Blizzard, one of the richest gaming companies in the entire world, seriously not sustain a server that can handle more than 2 or 3 requests from a person in a row?
Yeah , exactly , frogot to point out.
It really feels sluggish and slow response , every menu feels like it's a new "page" in a browser and it needs to download it , the result is this and instead of downloading data , it lags and it doesn't display menu modules and gui which it has in the 80 MB bnet MPQ file , it would be a lot better if it would just display and progressively show new hits or in the custom game lobby actually having a server browser like it's meant to be without show more and with a refresh button / stop refresh.
The result is this distinctive feel of a broken crappy flash-code service that is very similar to what Xbox live and youtube is like.
I was never really a Apple fan because i wasn't aware of it in early days and still never used a single apple product, and i know the guy's weird about not having it on the ipad/phone/whatever , but for some reason i fully agree on one particular thing Steve Jobs said , Adobe Flash is crappy broken piece of shit. So many nonexperienced asstwats makes sites with flash these days i hate flash and i hate flash sites , they're always bugged and i just hate the methodology of using scripts to execute stuff in a site , where i want direct links to everything!
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EPT
