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On February 05 2012 00:14 KingPwny wrote:That xmas card made me giggle. I mean how awesome and down to earth is he?  While you are making the case that blizz is sorta programming with a collar around their neck, I can appreciate that they have their eyes on the pot of gold for their shareholders. But this is exactly what bankrupts successful companies, and if their parent company doesn't care about customer satisfaction, then I'm sry to say that Blizz will go down eventually. And hopefully another company with a better business plan will come around
Exactly. And sad as it may be, you'll find that when a company goes down, the PEOPLE that made the company great in the first place will reform with a different name and keep hammering the quality out under a new name. So if blizzard dies, the great games will live on.
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i wondered a lot why Battle.net 2.0 lacks so much in usability. A lot of things which are in doesnt really make sense or are badly done. While others (which were in previous versions of Battle.net 2.0) are completely missing.
I also dont get why Blizzard wont listen to the community in this case. However i guess it has to do with the fact that they cater the casual gamers who don't want/need this functionality or see it as a problem. Us more hardcore people already got the game anyway, and why would they throw money at a "problem" which wont increase their revenue.
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I cannot open the image posted in the first post (concerning the new UI). I get always the message: File not found!
Can someone reupload it or give me another source?
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On February 05 2012 00:58 [F_]aths wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2012 03:37 OblivionMage wrote:On February 04 2012 02:50 [F_]aths wrote:
The custom game system in WC3 is bad. I still remember all the hassle when I wanted to play a Tower Wars or a Hero Line Wars. Normally it tooks minutes to set up a game. With SC2, it often takes just seconds. It's also way easier to play with a friend, either custom games or ladder team games.
I also find it way easier to establish a chat with the player I just played. I wanted this for WC3 so badly, but was forced to remember his name. Now I can just contact him from the score screen.
1. The custom games system in Warcraft 3 was not bad. Yes, it could take a minute to find players, but you could find players for any custom map, at any time, with any rules/specifications you wanted. In Starcraft 2, you can play 5 custom games with absolutely random people, in maybe 30 seconds. In Warcraft 3, you could play any custom game, with whatever rules you want, with whatever mix of players you want, in maybe 2 minutes. I'm not sure how one could choose the Starcraft 2 method, especially because it greatly discourages people from making new maps, so the Starcraft 2 custom games aren't very good anyway, while the Warcraft 3 games saw constant innovation. 2. It is not way easier to play with a friend in Starcraft 2. There were no issues doing this in Warcraft 3. Just hover over their name in your friends list (or type /whois <playername>), and the game will show you the title of the game they're in. 3. It was not way easier to establish a chat with a player you just played against, not in any way. At any point during the game, you could type /f add <playername>, or you could note his name after the game in the scorescreen, or, if you totally forgot, you could watch your 'lastreplay' to get their name. The lack of 'character codes' made it easier to communicate with players. If you remember their username, you could /whois or /w them whenever you wanted. In WC3, the chat was more cumbersome as you need to memorize the other guy's name. In SC2 we have a chat box where we even can read the previous discussion when we are in a game. This was not possible in WC3. In WC3, the /r command already was there (as it is available in SC2 games) but when you had a chat with two guys, you needed to frequently enter the whole user name again. I am glad that SC2 fixed this issue. In WC3, any username was unique per realm so many weird usernames showed up. SC2 allows any name to be used up to 1000 times, which is an advantage over WC3. Overall, I use the chat function in SC2 way more because it is easier to keep track of friends. The whois command in WC3 still made it difficult to count the amount of space characters. It was a pain to get with a friend into a custom game. In WC3 you needed to accept to play with weird custom map settings. Often I didn't find the game I wanted to play and needed to create my own game. Often it took minutes to start. SC2 favors default map settings over other ones, but this provides a faster game start and ensures that most guys are familiar with the map settings. The UI could be better, but it should't try to emulate WC3 (or SC1.)
What they could have done was to simply use the UI in WC3(SC1) and uppgrade it. Fix these small issues.
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On February 05 2012 02:53 MichaelJLowell wrote:
They half-assed the service because they knew they could get away with it. Thomas Tippl is on the record (as confirmed through Soren Johnson) as saying that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty made its money back, it was profitable, but ultimately wasn't worth it for the company. That's right: One of the company heads is on the record as stating that they would have rather spent the money used to develop StarCraft II someplace else. Not with the free-to-play game model flourishing, which is why Diablo III is focusing so heavily on the Real Money Auction House and basically acting as a lead-in for Titan, which will ramp those microtransactions up to eleven.
But ultimately, the biggest issue concerning whether "Blizzard gives you for your entertainment dollar on Starcraft 2 still beats almost anything else out there" is that this is the weakest real-time strategy outing the company has provided in nearly fifteen years. Now, don't mind me, it's still not a bad game. I think I mentioned in one of the other threads that Dustin Browder's work on Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 is on full display here, and I'd actually say the two games are roughly equal in terms of game quality. Only one game got a hell of a lot less publicity than the other, and doesn't have an established community of professionally-salaried players trying to bend and break it every which way. For Blizzard as a developer of real-time strategy games, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was a regression.
The weakest real-time strategy outing in fifteen years... so to break that down, what you're saying exactly is that Starcraft 2 is worse than Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne, and on par with Warcraft 2. You're entitled to your opinion, but I really have to disagree on that one, the usability issues alone with setting up Warcraft 2 games and finding a fair match were show-stoppers for a lot of people.
So Starcraft 2 isn't a cash cow compared to WoW or Blizzard's plans for micro-transactions. Maybe Blizzard plans to someday leech every last dollar from the community and bill us for using battle.net on the basis of our APM and charge us for watching replays on youtube. But right now we're paying 30-60 bucks every 5 years for a new well-supported RTS, and we're getting a good deal. I hope they continue to work on the things that bug me, but right now I'm satisfied with the job they're doing.
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On February 05 2012 03:18 StartingCrafty wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2012 02:53 MichaelJLowell wrote:
They half-assed the service because they knew they could get away with it. Thomas Tippl is on the record (as confirmed through Soren Johnson) as saying that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty made its money back, it was profitable, but ultimately wasn't worth it for the company. That's right: One of the company heads is on the record as stating that they would have rather spent the money used to develop StarCraft II someplace else. Not with the free-to-play game model flourishing, which is why Diablo III is focusing so heavily on the Real Money Auction House and basically acting as a lead-in for Titan, which will ramp those microtransactions up to eleven.
But ultimately, the biggest issue concerning whether "Blizzard gives you for your entertainment dollar on Starcraft 2 still beats almost anything else out there" is that this is the weakest real-time strategy outing the company has provided in nearly fifteen years. Now, don't mind me, it's still not a bad game. I think I mentioned in one of the other threads that Dustin Browder's work on Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 is on full display here, and I'd actually say the two games are roughly equal in terms of game quality. Only one game got a hell of a lot less publicity than the other, and doesn't have an established community of professionally-salaried players trying to bend and break it every which way. For Blizzard as a developer of real-time strategy games, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was a regression. The weakest real-time strategy outing in fifteen years... so to break that down, what you're saying exactly is that Starcraft 2 is worse than Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne, and on par with Warcraft 2. You're entitled to your opinion, but I really have to disagree on that one, the usability issues alone with setting up Warcraft 2 games and finding a fair match were show-stoppers for a lot of people. So Starcraft 2 isn't a cash cow compared to WoW or Blizzard's plans for micro-transactions. Maybe Blizzard plans to someday leech every last dollar from the community and bill us for using battle.net on the basis of our APM and charge us for watching replays on youtube. But right now we're paying 30-60 bucks every 5 years for a new well-supported RTS, and we're getting a good deal. I hope they continue to work on the things that bug me, but right now I'm satisfied with the job they're doing.
You can't be serious with your comparison to WC2. That you're resorting to that as an argument in this discussion shows how futile your point is. Let me repeat it again for you: We're not asking for wonders, or unheard-of levels of support. We're asking for things that have worked well before, and were removed for financial reasons, and because the developer in question was the wrong guy for the job.
Fine that you're content with getting less bang for your buck. We're not. Getting any of these features implemented will eventually benefit all players, even yourself. Please understand this. And it costs you nothing at all. So why argue against it, or waste time pointng out minor flaws in other people's posts?
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On February 05 2012 03:18 StartingCrafty wrote:
The weakest real-time strategy outing in fifteen years... so to break that down, what you're saying exactly is that Starcraft 2 is worse than Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne, and on par with Warcraft 2. You're entitled to your opinion, but I really have to disagree on that one, the usability issues alone with setting up Warcraft 2 games and finding a fair match were show-stoppers for a lot of people.
I'd say StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is inferior to Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness. At least Warcraft II has an absolutely insane pace of game and creates some incredibly fascinating dynamics with both its grid-based positioning system and the means with which buildings can be manipulated and positioned. From there, I think StarCraft's game engine is generally more fun to manipulate with those units (and is simply a better competitive game in Brood War), Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos has the best single-player campaign of any Blizzard real-time strategy game, and The Frozen Throne is possibly a better multiplayer game than Brood War, and no-doubt superior when it comes to team games. StarCraft II has a pretty average single-player campaign and its one-versus-one multiplayer flaws are totally evident, i.e. "Just remove Protoss from the damn game."
As far as "usability issues" and "setting up Warcraft 2 games", it would be like complaining that a Street Fighter II Turbo arcade cabinet has no "online multiplayer support". You judge it by the game, not the level of available talent and the distribution models for playing it.
On February 05 2012 03:18 StartingCrafty wrote:
So Starcraft 2 isn't a cash cow compared to WoW or Blizzard's plans for micro-transactions. Maybe Blizzard plans to someday leech every last dollar from the community and bill us for using battle.net on the basis of our APM and charge us for watching replays on youtube. But right now we're paying 30-60 bucks every 5 years for a new well-supported RTS, and we're getting a good deal. I hope they continue to work on the things that bug me, but right now I'm satisfied with the job they're doing.
As I said, it's not a bad game, although I probably won't be purchasing Heart of the Swarm unless I get coaxed into reviewing it for whatever reason. But is it better than any of its predecessors? Warcraft: Orcs and Humans is about it.
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On February 05 2012 03:29 Shockk wrote:
You can't be serious with your comparison to WC2. That you're resorting to that as an argument in this discussion shows how futile your point is. Let me repeat it again for you: We're not asking for wonders, or unheard-of levels of support. We're asking for things that have worked well before, and were removed for financial reasons, and because the developer in question was the wrong guy for the job.
Fine that you're content with getting less bang for your buck. We're not. Getting any of these features implemented will eventually benefit all players, even yourself. Please understand this. And it costs you nothing at all. So why argue against it, or waste time pointng out minor flaws in other people's posts?
If you're trying to convince Blizzard of your points by saying you represent the contingent of players who think they're doing worse than anything they've done since Warcraft 1 and that the state of battle.net now is comparable to how it was in the 90s, I don't think you're going to reach them very effectively. Telling them that they're doing everything wrong is inaccurate, Starcraft 2 arrived with some good changes and some bad ones. Posting images claiming battle.net is worse in every way compared to what it used to be isn't likely to gain you any leverage. Starcraft 2 has already sold more than Warcraft 3 combined with its expansion, they don't want to take a step back. You need to convince them they can take a step forward and have a battle.net that's accessible to new players and draws a large fanbase while keeping the pro players happy.
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On February 05 2012 03:32 MichaelJLowell wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2012 03:18 StartingCrafty wrote:
The weakest real-time strategy outing in fifteen years... so to break that down, what you're saying exactly is that Starcraft 2 is worse than Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne, and on par with Warcraft 2. You're entitled to your opinion, but I really have to disagree on that one, the usability issues alone with setting up Warcraft 2 games and finding a fair match were show-stoppers for a lot of people. I'd say StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is inferior to Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness. At least Warcraft II has an absolutely insane pace of game and creates some incredibly fascinating dynamics with both its grid-based positioning system and the means with which buildings can be manipulated and positioned. From there, I think StarCraft's game engine is generally more fun to manipulate with those units (and is simply a better competitive game in Brood War), Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos has the best single-player campaign of any Blizzard real-time strategy game, and The Frozen Throne is possibly a better multiplayer game than Brood War, and no-doubt superior when it comes to team games. StarCraft II has a pretty average single-player campaign and its one-versus-one multiplayer flaws are totally evident, i.e. "Just remove Protoss from the damn game." As far as "usability issues" and "setting up Warcraft 2 games", it would be like complaining that a Street Fighter II Turbo arcade cabinet has no "online multiplayer support". You judge it by the game, not the level of available talent and the distribution models for playing it. Show nested quote +On February 05 2012 03:18 StartingCrafty wrote:
So Starcraft 2 isn't a cash cow compared to WoW or Blizzard's plans for micro-transactions. Maybe Blizzard plans to someday leech every last dollar from the community and bill us for using battle.net on the basis of our APM and charge us for watching replays on youtube. But right now we're paying 30-60 bucks every 5 years for a new well-supported RTS, and we're getting a good deal. I hope they continue to work on the things that bug me, but right now I'm satisfied with the job they're doing. As I said, it's not a bad game, although I probably won't be purchasing Heart of the Swarm unless I get coaxed into reviewing it for whatever reason. But is it better than any of its predecessors? Warcraft: Orcs and Humans is about it.
Competitive Wc3 TFT was/is in no way better than competitive BW, on a 1v1 level. Sorry, not going to entertain dissent on this. It just isn't.
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On February 05 2012 04:12 Shiori wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2012 03:32 MichaelJLowell wrote:On February 05 2012 03:18 StartingCrafty wrote:
The weakest real-time strategy outing in fifteen years... so to break that down, what you're saying exactly is that Starcraft 2 is worse than Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne, and on par with Warcraft 2. You're entitled to your opinion, but I really have to disagree on that one, the usability issues alone with setting up Warcraft 2 games and finding a fair match were show-stoppers for a lot of people. I'd say StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is inferior to Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness. At least Warcraft II has an absolutely insane pace of game and creates some incredibly fascinating dynamics with both its grid-based positioning system and the means with which buildings can be manipulated and positioned. From there, I think StarCraft's game engine is generally more fun to manipulate with those units (and is simply a better competitive game in Brood War), Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos has the best single-player campaign of any Blizzard real-time strategy game, and The Frozen Throne is possibly a better multiplayer game than Brood War, and no-doubt superior when it comes to team games. StarCraft II has a pretty average single-player campaign and its one-versus-one multiplayer flaws are totally evident, i.e. "Just remove Protoss from the damn game." As far as "usability issues" and "setting up Warcraft 2 games", it would be like complaining that a Street Fighter II Turbo arcade cabinet has no "online multiplayer support". You judge it by the game, not the level of available talent and the distribution models for playing it. On February 05 2012 03:18 StartingCrafty wrote:
So Starcraft 2 isn't a cash cow compared to WoW or Blizzard's plans for micro-transactions. Maybe Blizzard plans to someday leech every last dollar from the community and bill us for using battle.net on the basis of our APM and charge us for watching replays on youtube. But right now we're paying 30-60 bucks every 5 years for a new well-supported RTS, and we're getting a good deal. I hope they continue to work on the things that bug me, but right now I'm satisfied with the job they're doing. As I said, it's not a bad game, although I probably won't be purchasing Heart of the Swarm unless I get coaxed into reviewing it for whatever reason. But is it better than any of its predecessors? Warcraft: Orcs and Humans is about it. Competitive Wc3 TFT was/is in no way better than competitive BW, on a 1v1 level. Sorry, not going to entertain dissent on this. It just isn't.
Competitive WC3 was less watchable than competitive BW. But in terms of rewarding skill, punishing mistakes, and having incredibly complex rulesets I think it wins. It's those qualities that make it completely unapproachable as a spectator sport though and that's why it will never be the esport that BW was.
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On February 05 2012 04:12 Shiori wrote:
Competitive Wc3 TFT was/is in no way better than competitive BW, on a 1v1 level. Sorry, not going to entertain dissent on this. It just isn't.
Brood War is a superior one-versus-one game, yes, but not nearly as superior as Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne is for team games. And you guys can fight from there on that one! (Although I'd prefer you didn't, since it was meant to be a comparison to StarCraft II, which is the focus of the topic, don't ban me for possibly starting a flame war, mods, etc.)
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On February 05 2012 04:18 MichaelJLowell wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2012 04:12 Shiori wrote:
Competitive Wc3 TFT was/is in no way better than competitive BW, on a 1v1 level. Sorry, not going to entertain dissent on this. It just isn't. Brood War is a superior one-versus-one game, yes, but not nearly as superior as Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne is for team games. And you guys can fight from there on that one! (Although I'd prefer you didn't, since it was meant to be a comparison to StarCraft II, which is the focus of the topic, don't ban me for possibly starting a flame war, mods, etc.)
BW had a pretty competitive team games scene...
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In terms of rewarding skill? No, I'm sorry to say, there's just no macro in WC3. You get 5 workers and you're fully saturated, units are way more expensive. WC3 was all about micro because that's all it had, BW had incredible micro tricks as well, but it also had impossibly difficult macro (some of which was because of the UI). In terms of rewarding skill, BW far outstrips WC3.
Personally I found WC3 way more fun to play than BW since the BW units were frustrating to control and I liked the hero/creep farming features, but no way does it have a higher skill ceiling.
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On February 05 2012 04:26 Sententia wrote:
In terms of rewarding skill? No, I'm sorry to say, there's just no macro in WC3. You get 5 workers and you're fully saturated, units are way more expensive. WC3 was all about micro because that's all it had, BW had incredible micro tricks as well, but it also had impossibly difficult macro (some of which was because of the UI). In terms of rewarding skill, BW far outstrips WC3.
Personally I found WC3 way more fun to play than BW since the BW units were frustrating to control and I liked the hero/creep farming features, but no way does it have a higher skill ceiling.
Don't you find it odd that so much of BW's "skill" was just struggling against the technical limitations of the game? It seems to me that a game that allows players to make decisions within the mechanics is going to reward competition more than a game that forces players to fight against them. WC3 rewarded calculation and actual decision making. BW simply rewarded speed...well, both games rewarded lots of things but I think that's a fairly key difference.
I don't really want to get into a debate about whether micro or macro takes more skill because I'm simply not good enough at either to really be making any claims. And this thread really isn't about that anyway. WC3 and Battle.net 1.0 is simply a better product than Starcraft 2 and Battle.net 2.0.
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Anyway this thread is about starcraft 2 and battlenet, let's not have a slap fest over BW and WC3.
For the record though, michael, you're so wrong.
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I'm personally having my fingers crossed that Heart of the Swarm will come with a lot of additions and fixes to the battle.net UI...
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wow.. he practically did their job for them
wtf..
why cant they just copy this shit...
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i too have the feeling that the bnet is a rather cold place. most people i played with dropped out. since then i got one person added to my friendlist.. in every other mutliplayer game i played before i had way more socializing going on. hell i still hang around in TS with people i met online about 6 years ago. i feel like this wont happen in sc2. im not sad about this or going all emo on it but its kind of confusing and unusual for me. and im pretty sure this will hurt sc2 in the long term because what will keep you playing this game is not only getting into masters/GM league but the people you surround yourself with.
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EPT
