This is a GREAT article by Azzure that explains why playing SC2 feels lonely and boring most of the time, not because the game itself is boring but because of the lack of social interaction.
Compare SC2 to World of Warcraft for example - when I used to play WoW I would be online for hours even just running around chatting to people, while in SC2 I usually play a few games and then log out because it feels like I'm playing a single player game.
Let me preface this by saying that the people who read my articles can attest that I’m quite positive when it comes to talking about Blizzard and their design choices. They are my favorite game developers by far, and I am a big fan of all of their games. This is not an Anti-Blizzard rant, or anything close to that. And also please note that this article is an opinion feature-article, and these are my personal opinions.
There is a fundamental problem with Battle.net 2.0, and it has existed since SC2. In fact, I am 100% convinced it played a huge part in SC2′s lack of longevity and lack of success amongst the community.
The lack of presence and “Ghost-town Effect” of Battle.net.
Like many others, my history with Blizzard games is very long, detailed and grateful. Grateful that Blizzard existed because their games have been the only ones that have been ridiculously fun, long-lasting and satisfying. I started with SC1. Than I played D2 for many years. I even played WC3 for a few years, and of course, WoW for many years.
Starcraft 2 was the first Blizzard game that I only played for 1 month. Not because it was too competitive, too difficult or not fun, but because the game had something missing in it. I would find myself only logging on to play a game or two, than logging off. A far cry from previous Blizzard games, where I would log on, chat to people, mess around, talk strategy, experiment, play games with friends and in the mix of that, play the game. Eventually, Starcraft 2 felt like every other non-Blizzard game – dead, finished and pointless to play.
Battle.net 2.0 turned SC2 in to a ghost town, and ruined one of the most social RTS games in history. As I write this article, on a Saturday afternoon, there are just 13,000 SC2 games being played right now, Worldwide. At this same time, there are 51,000 games being played in Diablo 2, an 11 year old game. SC2 has no community that compares to what have seen in past Blizzard games, (except for the e-sports community). Why? Because Battle.net 2.0 doesn’t have any kind of social features, and is built from the ground up to prevent communities from ever forming.
Before Battle.net 2.0, I didn’t log in just to play the game and log back off. I logged in because it was a part of my every-day entertainment schedule. It was what I did instead of watch TV or play other games. And it was the most satisfying piece of entertainment for me for the last decade. Battle.net 2.0 took away every single part of the Blizzard community, and became a means to an end for them, rather than an epic gaming platform that brought players together and was a social metropolis of entertainment, community and excellent games.
love "ghost town effect" it fully describes the problem. the other problem is blizz who created so many popular games sucks at making them AMAZING games most of the time
This also has an accompanying thread on the d3 forums on battle.net of the same name (ghost town effect-- http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4139865470 ), with a lot of cross-linking with the long running (5.5 full threads now-- http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/4079626942?page=1 ) thread on the problems with the sc2/b.net 2.0 interface issues, which actually links back to a lot of TL.net's long threads on the UI too.
Teams and clan chat and social integration is a huge part of the game. The new development team is too slow to respond and barely listen to any feedback from players and fans. It might be too late to implement anything now, but if they don't for hots... i don't see this game going any further. I spent more time talking to people in channels then playing in sc1 and that lasted three years. I can't see sc2 keeping my interest for this long.
The mentality they go through balancing the game is even worse... if no one is using this unit ... let's remove it from the game. And since too many people are using this one, let's nerf it enough so no one will again. Look what happen to reapers / thors and now ghosts .. there is no point in making ghost in tvz anymore unless they go infestors.
On March 06 2012 01:54 caradoc wrote: This also has an accompanying thread on the d3 forums on battle.net of the same name (ghost town effect-- http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4139865470), with a lot of cross-linking with the long running (5.5 full threads now-- http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/4079626942?page=1) thread on the problems with the sc2/b.net 2.0 interface issues, which actually links back to a lot of TL.net's long threads on the UI too.
I don't quite understand what you think blizzard has done wrong. There are team games, there are chat channels, both staple and self-created, you can set up custom obs matches, custom ums games...
What exactly is missing that is needed? You can't compare the gameplay, because an MMO and an RTS aren't even in the same category.
On March 06 2012 01:54 caradoc wrote: This also has an accompanying thread on the d3 forums on battle.net of the same name (ghost town effect-- http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4139865470), with a lot of cross-linking with the long running (5.5 full threads now-- http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/4079626942?page=1) thread on the problems with the sc2/b.net 2.0 interface issues, which actually links back to a lot of TL.net's long threads on the UI too.
Both of the links are broken...
they work for me-- not sure-- I tried clicking on them just now, and they gave an internal server error, but if I copy link location and paste in a new window they work.
On March 06 2012 01:57 liberal wrote: I don't quite understand what you think blizzard has done wrong. There are team games, there are chat channels, both staple and self-created, you can set up custom obs matches, custom ums games...
What exactly is missing that is needed? You can't compare the gameplay, because an MMO and an RTS aren't even in the same category.
clans, group replay viewing, not shit UMS hosting/joining, LAN, and those are just things i thought up in 30 seconds
i think you need to take your head out of blizzards ass. they make some good games but they also make some god awful decisions
On March 06 2012 01:58 chip789 wrote: Sc: BW you log in BOOM giant chat box full of people. Sc2 you log in BOOM empty page of nothing.
I can attest to the fact that this is part of the reason I play SC2 so little, and why I play WC3 so much. Back in WC3 it was so so easy to get a group of people together and play the game as a community, because there was a gigantic plethora of ways to interact with other people. (Huge chat rooms, clans etc)
But in SC2, chat rooms are not inviting at all, they are so small.. I don't understand why they changed the way they did things when it comes to chat rooms and player interaction, but I firmly believe it's a step backwards.
I don't understand complaints of SC2 being a "ghost town".
In Brood War, I'd log in, get dropped into a USEast chat room, get spammed by bots, see a couple people arguing about something dumb, and jump out of the chat as fast as I could. In SC2, the original outcry when chat channels were left out was unreal. You'd think that when you log on now, you'd see something more than "There are 648 users in public chat rooms".
The entire quote from that article reads, "I had fun playing game X, and now I'm not having fun playing game Y because it feels like a ghost town" with no actual explanation as to why it feels so or how to fix it. This guy is seriously talking about D2? Sure it's social...log on and enjoy your wall of bot spam.
People complained that SC2 wasn't social because there were no chat rooms. Blizz adds them, and now it's generally less than 1000 people in public chats and people still complain that SC2 isn't social.
Honestly, WoW seems like a pretty bad example of built-in social interaction systems to me and suffers from a similar issue (a ton of players just autopiloting through the game without much communication at all). Needless to say that SC2 is infinitely worse, but if you were looking for examples you'd probably be looking towards something like EVE instead.
Well that's no big news, Blizzard made a point of honour at denying players what they basically want the most from Bnet 2.0 ....
It's like a giant Trollface from them laughing at all the fanboys playing their games. Fortunately for them their games are awesome in many ways, but it's a tricky game they're playing ...
Any multiplayer game is more fun with friends. SC2 was only really fun when I played 2v2 and 3v3 with people I knew before they all quit. 1v1 on the ladder gets boring really quickly.
On March 06 2012 02:03 tenklavir wrote: I don't understand complaints of SC2 being a "ghost town".
In Brood War, I'd log in, get dropped into a USEast chat room, get spammed by bots, see a couple people arguing about something dumb, and jump out of the chat as fast as I could. In SC2, the original outcry when chat channels were left out was unreal. You'd think that when you log on now, you'd see something more than "There are 648 users in public chat rooms".
The entire quote from that article reads, "I had fun playing game X, and now I'm not having fun playing game Y because it feels like a ghost town" with no actual explanation as to why it feels so or how to fix it. This guy is seriously talking about D2? Sure it's social...log on and enjoy your wall of bot spam.
People complained that SC2 wasn't social because there were no chat rooms. Blizz adds them, and now it's generally less than 1000 people in public chats and people still complain that SC2 isn't social.
Did you play Broodwar only in its final stage... where the community was very small and elitist actually? Because I still remember europe battle.net , fun chats in DEU-1. Strategy chat or overall fun in op ToT). Even hanging out on US.West op ClanBy op D.T- or any other channel, it was always social and even though there could be a time where actually no one would write a word, you were never alone.
I don't think how they introduced chat-channels into Starcraft or implemented them was the right way to do it, but its certainly better than just a friend list..Why can't I have a small editor/console like chat when I'm in battle.net?
Bring back /w /f m etc..
and give me the function to watch replays TOGETHER, PLEASE!
Fully agree, really the only way to beat the "ghost town effect" is to find some friends or a clan/team that has a ventrillo server set up or make a skype group call. Otherwise you get lonely and go do something else. Luckily I found a good group of friends with all my old VT team mates back in beta, and we were never on sc2 without being on vent together.
BNET 2.0 REALLY needs a clan function and a clan channel would be nice as well. I sincerely hope all these issues are addressed and fully taken care of for HOTS.
I can imagine how difficult it must be for the random newb who purchases the game, has nobody on his friend list, logs in, get BM'd on ladder and then is forced to repeat the process..'
I sometimes just randomly chitchat during the boring first 3-4 minutes (if I'm in a good mood and not annoyed in the first place) to spice it up a little. Most people go for it and chat weird stuff with me, but a lot of people just think I'm cheesing because I chat so much nonsense lol
Most of the time I concentrate on playing anyway though, mostly because I can't really come up with new thoughts about everything and anything each game.
I think a large cause of this is not the chat channels (though they don't help), it's just the god-awful custom game system, and the way it has kept any type of even halfway decent game and interaction through those games down. The primary way I met people playing WC3 was custom games, and I feel SC2 is really lacking in that aspect, and it's not helped by the absolutely tiny chat boxes inside the room, and the general coldness of the menu. Also, I think the type of games that are on top of the popularity are the kind where you can just autopilot through them with little to no interaction, as opposed to the heavily teamwork-reliant and relaxed games in WC3.
If you aren't being social in SC2 then I think that's no ones fault but your own. Blizzard implemented chat systems and ways to do basically everything you did in BW. If you really need to have a giant chat box in your face to be social in that game, then you really are the laziest person in the world. It takes two clicks to open a chat window. =/
On March 06 2012 02:03 tenklavir wrote: I don't understand complaints of SC2 being a "ghost town".
In Brood War, I'd log in, get dropped into a USEast chat room, get spammed by bots, see a couple people arguing about something dumb, and jump out of the chat as fast as I could. In SC2, the original outcry when chat channels were left out was unreal. You'd think that when you log on now, you'd see something more than "There are 648 users in public chat rooms".
The entire quote from that article reads, "I had fun playing game X, and now I'm not having fun playing game Y because it feels like a ghost town" with no actual explanation as to why it feels so or how to fix it. This guy is seriously talking about D2? Sure it's social...log on and enjoy your wall of bot spam.
People complained that SC2 wasn't social because there were no chat rooms. Blizz adds them, and now it's generally less than 1000 people in public chats and people still complain that SC2 isn't social.
Did you play Broodwar only in its final stage... where the community was very small and elitist actually? Because I still remember europe battle.net , fun chats in DEU-1. Strategy chat or overall fun in op ToT). Even hanging out on US.West op ClanBy op D.T- or any other channel, it was always social and even though there could be a time where actually no one would write a word, you were never alone.
I don't think how they introduced chat-channels into Starcraft or implemented them was the right way to do it, but its certainly better than just a friend list..Why can't I have a small editor/console like chat when I'm in battle.net?
Bring back /w /f m etc..
and give me the function to watch replays TOGETHER, PLEASE!
What you're describing then is that the "very small and elitist" group that played bwar then wants the same experience now. By definition your small and elitist group is likely exclusionary of lesser players...how is this "social" or does it give other a sense of community on Bnet? You know you can round up your friends from back then, pick a chat name, and have everyone jump in there when they log on Bnet 2.0.
I do agree with you about replay-together. That is hasn't happened yet is unconscionable.
On March 06 2012 02:10 Noocta wrote: SC2 need a frontpage with general chat channels. That would do so much. And that's like 1 day of work by Blizzard to make that.
Why? They're easily accessible as they are and still almost no one uses them.
Blizz probably doesn't give a shit. If anything they know the problem and have purposely tried to make it happen. Making another D2 or BW is probably the thing they want to avoid.
Unless it's a subscription based game like WoW, what benefit do they have for tons of people playing a game like D2? They lose money just maintaining the servers.
On March 06 2012 02:03 tenklavir wrote: I don't understand complaints of SC2 being a "ghost town".
In Brood War, I'd log in, get dropped into a USEast chat room, get spammed by bots, see a couple people arguing about something dumb, and jump out of the chat as fast as I could. In SC2, the original outcry when chat channels were left out was unreal. You'd think that when you log on now, you'd see something more than "There are 648 users in public chat rooms".
The entire quote from that article reads, "I had fun playing game X, and now I'm not having fun playing game Y because it feels like a ghost town" with no actual explanation as to why it feels so or how to fix it. This guy is seriously talking about D2? Sure it's social...log on and enjoy your wall of bot spam.
People complained that SC2 wasn't social because there were no chat rooms. Blizz adds them, and now it's generally less than 1000 people in public chats and people still complain that SC2 isn't social.
Did you play Broodwar only in its final stage... where the community was very small and elitist actually? Because I still remember europe battle.net , fun chats in DEU-1. Strategy chat or overall fun in op ToT). Even hanging out on US.West op ClanBy op D.T- or any other channel, it was always social and even though there could be a time where actually no one would write a word, you were never alone.
I don't think how they introduced chat-channels into Starcraft or implemented them was the right way to do it, but its certainly better than just a friend list..Why can't I have a small editor/console like chat when I'm in battle.net?
Bring back /w /f m etc..
and give me the function to watch replays TOGETHER, PLEASE!
What you're describing then is that the "very small and elitist" group that played bwar then wants the same experience now. By definition your small and elitist group is likely exclusionary of lesser players...how is this "social" or does it give other a sense of community on Bnet? You know you can round up your friends from back then, pick a chat name, and have everyone jump in there when they log on Bnet 2.0.
I do agree with you about replay-together. That is hasn't happened yet is unconscionable.
Only because you stated that you get annoyed by the chat doesn't mean other people are. I bet thousands of random newbies would even like to just be in a chatchannel sitting around, either talking or reading what others write about the game, not even mentioning there might be some very good players around.
Broodwar was small and elitist back then, because it was just insanely old and only a few people still actively played it or were basically playing on iCCup etc. Yet it was still not as cold and lonely as Starcraft 2 is. Nowadays I either have a skype conversation or stream to interact with the people... other than that, yeah... simply sad experience.
On March 06 2012 02:10 Noocta wrote: SC2 need a frontpage with general chat channels. That would do so much. And that's like 1 day of work by Blizzard to make that.
Why? They're easily accessible as they are and still almost no one uses them.
People are lazy. In Wc3 or BW, you log, the chat channel full of people is right in front of you. In SCé you need to search them = fail.
there is nothing in the game that promotes socializing... if blizzard wants us to play the game more then they really need to implement other things to do than just play games (like other social aspects)... think about WoW for example, when people play wow they play for probably about 50% of the time and socialize probably the other 50% of the time, i think the social aspects of wow has really been one of the big contributors to its success... blizzard is really messing up sc2 right now... the community could be 10 times bigger if they just implemented some more social aspects to the game... as im writing this its actually making me very angry because this is such an easy fix to make... blizzard you really really messed up... you have time to fix it... quit making excuses about why these social features aren't included
On March 06 2012 02:08 Bommes wrote: I sometimes just randomly chitchat during the boring first 3-4 minutes (if I'm in a good mood and not annoyed in the first place) to spice it up a little. Most people go for it and chat weird stuff with me, but a lot of people just think I'm cheesing because I chat so much nonsense lol
Most of the time I concentrate on playing anyway though, mostly because I can't really come up with new thoughts about everything and anything each game.
It's funny how prickly many people are when it comes to chatting in game, they filter everything as some kind of insult. Bnet isolation has only served to make the game feel super serial & hostile.
Just because the social interaction doesn't exist within the confines of the game program itself, doesn't mean it's not there. For example, you're on TL, a primarily Starcraft related website with more depth and content than any in-game chat program could ever provide. I have never found public chat channels in any game to be rewarding or fun; more often than not I read them with a sense of terror at the sheer stupidity and ignorance of the human race and eventually fled, never to return.
I honestly think Starcraft suffers from the fact that it's simply difficult to learn, and while its predecessor was able to single-handedly capture a majority of the gaming community, it also came at a time when "social" games eg: easy shit that requires more time than effort (read World of Warcraft) didn't yet exist. Gamers were a small sect of "basement dwelling" nerds who were smart and dedicated to their passion. Those people still exist and they continue to dedicate time and effort into learning and improving their skills, but they are overshadowed by a larger community of social games and gamers.
My entire last paragraphs was opinion and anecdotal, so back to reality. Starcraft lacks the tools to teach people even the basics of playing the game. Yes, it teaches people how to make and control units and buildings, but there is absolutely no higher-level information available within the game to help people. All of my friends are afraid to even try to learn it because they don't know where to start-that's why people don't play. It's hard and it takes a significant amount of effort to even find a guide on what the hell you're supposed to be doing. Sure chat channels might help in this aspect, but how much constructive criticism can you expect from a public chat channel that isn't flippant or disrespectful?
I'm rambling, but my point is that the learning curve is steep and there is no method INSIDE THE GAME to actually figure out how to play. Campaign is terrible and the challenges are a joke (except for opening gambit, which is alright but really lacks the information on how you should do things and why).
I just wish they could bring back to how it was for WC3. That was my most played games of all times, and 50 % of the playtime I had with the game was just chatting with clan members.
I can somewhat agree. I tend to log in and look at the UI with this forever alone feeling. Feels like I have no connection to people or someone unless I click on that find match button or look for a custom game. But even if I do, I would never have a long chat in a ladder game, and there isn't really any custom games that I like.
I do have friends to play with but even with the current friends I play with, there is no system to somehow make a strong interaction with other people and keep it consistent. We're like robots...find match, lose/win, find match, lose/win, alittle trolling in between, and thats about it.
i cant join more chat channels and i talk with friends in all of them dunno what you guys talking about lack of social interacting :< its not that hard to join a chat or make friends in customs you just need to talk
(yes custom game section sucks and we need clan support)
When the game came out there were no chat channels, and is probably the primary reason why this guy was unable to find any sort of sense of community. There literally was no way to interact with other gamers on a large scale when the game came out. I think this is actually the most egregious offense blizzard has had in terms of trying to make the game big and self sustaining (which could be taken as a compliment, but really the choice to leave out chat channels for release is such a no brainer bad idea that it blows my mind they chose not to put it in).
stuff that still sucks: There is no way to find out if a channel exists other than being told about it or guessing. Chat channels still cannot be "official" in the sense that someone can own and moderate a channel. There is still an 100 person limit to channels. No group replay.
I guess than a big part of this will be solved when they implement Clan support. B.Net 0.2 does feel lonely... but, in the end, I don't really care about chatting with random people. Maybe it's just me.
But a Clan chat that open as we log in, instead of, as of now, pretty much a nothing, would be good.
On March 06 2012 02:03 tenklavir wrote: I don't understand complaints of SC2 being a "ghost town".
In Brood War, I'd log in, get dropped into a USEast chat room, get spammed by bots, see a couple people arguing about something dumb, and jump out of the chat as fast as I could. In SC2, the original outcry when chat channels were left out was unreal. You'd think that when you log on now, you'd see something more than "There are 648 users in public chat rooms".
The entire quote from that article reads, "I had fun playing game X, and now I'm not having fun playing game Y because it feels like a ghost town" with no actual explanation as to why it feels so or how to fix it. This guy is seriously talking about D2? Sure it's social...log on and enjoy your wall of bot spam.
People complained that SC2 wasn't social because there were no chat rooms. Blizz adds them, and now it's generally less than 1000 people in public chats and people still complain that SC2 isn't social.
Did you play Broodwar only in its final stage... where the community was very small and elitist actually? Because I still remember europe battle.net , fun chats in DEU-1. Strategy chat or overall fun in op ToT). Even hanging out on US.West op ClanBy op D.T- or any other channel, it was always social and even though there could be a time where actually no one would write a word, you were never alone.
I don't think how they introduced chat-channels into Starcraft or implemented them was the right way to do it, but its certainly better than just a friend list..Why can't I have a small editor/console like chat when I'm in battle.net?
Bring back /w /f m etc..
and give me the function to watch replays TOGETHER, PLEASE!
What you're describing then is that the "very small and elitist" group that played bwar then wants the same experience now. By definition your small and elitist group is likely exclusionary of lesser players...how is this "social" or does it give other a sense of community on Bnet? You know you can round up your friends from back then, pick a chat name, and have everyone jump in there when they log on Bnet 2.0.
I do agree with you about replay-together. That is hasn't happened yet is unconscionable.
Only because you stated that you get annoyed by the chat doesn't mean other people are. I bet thousands of random newbies would even like to just be in a chatchannel sitting around, either talking or reading what others write about the game, not even mentioning there might be some very good players around.
Broodwar was small and elitist back then, because it was just insanely old and only a few people still actively played it or were basically playing on iCCup etc. Yet it was still not as cold and lonely as Starcraft 2 is. Nowadays I either have a skype conversation or stream to interact with the people... other than that, yeah... simply sad experience.
That's true, others may not, but nothing stops them from entering chat channels now. It's not hard to find the Chat Channel button and I don't really see thousands of people in chat.
People are lazy
It really requires less effort to make post after post on TL about SC2 not feeling social than it does to enter the chat channels that exist?
On March 06 2012 02:19 Alacast wrote: Just because the social interaction doesn't exist within the confines of the game program itself, doesn't mean it's not there. For example, you're on TL, a primarily Starcraft related website with more depth and content than any in-game chat program could ever provide. I have never found public chat channels in any game to be rewarding or fun; more often than not I read them with a sense of terror at the sheer stupidity and ignorance of the human race and eventually fled, never to return.
Fair enough, though that said, couldn't we imagine some imaginary UI that encouraged client-internal interaction a little bit more? Things like tournaments, shared replay watching, clan management, better chat options etc.
It really requires less effort to make post after post on TL about SC2 not feeling social than it does to enter the chat channels that exist?
Well that's just the thing of it. TL is a community. I don't know all of the factors that go into making a place a community, and I do research on stuff like that-- I don't think anyone does. But people DO make post after post on places like TL, and people DONT complain that places like TL dont feel social, in fact the opposite, and people DO complain about battle.net 2.0 UI being isolating-- so although people use words like 'effort' or 'lazy', maybe a better way to frame what you're talking about is something like 'conducive to community building', and TL IS, and the b.net UI is NOT, but perhaps it should be, because we all care about growing the community, and, I dunno, a UI is pretty important in that sense.
Honestly I feel like a big big thing nowadays is that a lot of those players complaining about this stuff grew up playing all those blizzard games and it's kinda a part of there awesome childhood expirience, so I'd say nostalgia might play a huge factor making these issues sound more serious than they are, I mean how arrogant does one have to be to generally put games made by blizzard above any other company, dissing sc2 by putting it on the same level with non blizzard games. Like really?
Other than that yes obviously we can all agree that the game is lacking central features and a lot of parts of b.net 0.2 are crap. But I hated every single blizzard game I touched before sc 2 (I obviously didn't play bw), and I had a horrible time with any warcraft game, whether thats the RTS or the MMO (though again I didn't play much warcraft 3) and diablo, in my eyes, is one of the worst games I ever played. And yet I love sc2 like almost no game before it, yes it has flaws but the core game itself is pretty good, retardetly unexplored still, but pretty fucking good. It might just be not caring that much about chat/custom games etc. because I honestly just wanna get better at the game and I can do that through ladder and through custom games without any issues.
And honestly how can you seirously call it an ghost town effect? Well that might be right if you wanna play a custom game thats not on the first page when you click on join game, but has anyone here waited more than 1 minute to find a ladder game yet? No? Well go play some 1.6 nowadays, takes some time to find decent servers if you don't know any, play some halo 2, well guess what you can't anymore, play some shadowrun that game is the most competitive skill orientated 360 shooter of all time, died in about a year. Those games are ghost towns, sc2 is pretty damn vived.
i 100% agree. on D2 (which i played religiously back in the day) when i would quit a game and enter chat, BAM bunch of people talking, no not bots, but actual real people.
when i play sc2, i too feel like i'm alone the second i hit "surrender"
So I'm still confused, are there really that many people who play games like SC2 to be social rather than to just improve and grind some matches? Seriously, if Blizzard had as much social aspects as people wanted, they would be exposed to so much garbage it would be unbelievable. Heck, look at moderated stream chats. They're cesspits for the lowest common denominator and that's exactly what you guys want to open up to?
My social interaction is with my friends on Ventrilo and messaging/talking to people in real life. I play SC2 to play matches, not meet new friends.
The problem is that blizzard saw the awesome forum communities and how popular they were and thought that people would just use them instead of ingame stuff. While it is true that many do use forums.. its just not the same and many people didn't know about them and it is absolutely dead for them online. Chat and a social experience is necessary for a game in modern times. There to is no excuse to not have it.
On March 06 2012 02:32 R3DT1D3 wrote: So I'm still confused, are there really that many people who play games like SC2 to be social rather than to just improve and grind some matches? Seriously, if Blizzard had as much social aspects as people wanted, they would be exposed to so much garbage it would be unbelievable. Heck, look at moderated stream chats. They're cesspits for the lowest common denominator and that's exactly what you guys want to open up to?
My social interaction is with my friends on Ventrilo and messaging/talking to people in real life. I play SC2 to play matches, not meet new friends.
It is not a matter of social or competition, it is that they want both. Between grinding games they want to chat with friends.
On March 06 2012 02:39 Zeller wrote: There's got to be some people around here that can actually get this across with some blizzard folks.
How about you and the people alongside you get this into your head.. They're aware of the complaints many SC2 players have and they don't give a shit.
People have got to realize that the blizzard they grew up with, the one they used to love is no longer there. It's gone, it's dead, now we have Actiblizz with their new policies of 1 account pr server, 3 expansionpacks and a whole ordeal of shitty policychanges that only benefits Actiblizz and their need for totalitarian control over anything that goes on.
On March 06 2012 02:39 TheRabidDeer wrote: The problem is that blizzard saw the awesome forum communities and how popular they were and thought that people would just use them instead of ingame stuff. While it is true that many do use forums.. its just not the same and many people didn't know about them and it is absolutely dead for them online. Chat and a social experience is necessary for a game in modern times. There to is no excuse to not have it.
But there already is chat...
Can someone that agrees with this article explain specifically what it is that they want (since the article does not)? None of this "better chat" nonsense...clear, concise ways that you think improve the social aspects of the game as a whole.
On March 06 2012 02:32 R3DT1D3 wrote: So I'm still confused, are there really that many people who play games like SC2 to be social rather than to just improve and grind some matches? Seriously, if Blizzard had as much social aspects as people wanted, they would be exposed to so much garbage it would be unbelievable. Heck, look at moderated stream chats. They're cesspits for the lowest common denominator and that's exactly what you guys want to open up to?
My social interaction is with my friends on Ventrilo and messaging/talking to people in real life. I play SC2 to play matches, not meet new friends.
It's the same reason I don't like to go play golf by myself, it's just less enjoyable. The game (golf) is the exact same, hell I think I even play better alone but by the end of the afternoon I am basically sprinting to my car to get the fuck out where as if I'm with my buddies having a few cold ones I don't ever want to leave the course. That's how it used to be. For me personally I used to spend hours just idling in chat channels on D2 bnet, doing other things but keeping an eye out for that one trade I needed. It was worth my time to leave the game open because there was a community there. Now, with SC 2, there is absolutely no reason at all to leave the game open after I play a few games.
Some days I feel like you do; I want to just hop on and ladder in peace. But it would be nice to at least have the option of hanging out in a real chat channel or watch a replay with my buddy or whatever. And it's not JUST the chat channels, it's a combination of all of the incredible shortcomings of Bnet that contribute to the lack of community within the game such as no shared replay watching, to clan support, shitty chat channels, etc.
I agree with the article. Here's what I'd like to see.
I think clan support and clan ranking would probably make a big difference. In game clan management.
The ability to join a clan and belong to a clan within the UI - not having to install vent or find a clans separate website, etc. The ability to click a button and get matched in a 1v1 game with other clan members just like ladder but only within the clan. Ability to click a button and get auto teamed with clan members for 2v2, 3v3, 4v4 against other players not in the clan. A ranking system and achievements of some type for clans overall so you can see where your clan is and have clan objectives. Clan specific maps, maybe with custom objectives or other tweaks that make it more than mass up and beat the comp. Maybe maps where you need to have different races in order to complete objectives and win, etc.
There are probably other features too but those are the ones I can think of right off. You can do most of this all on your own but engaging with a clan right now is not easy or effective. You have to sign up on their website or email somebody, you have to add individuals manully to your sc2 friends, they are mixed with all your friends so you don't know who is a clan member and who isn't sometimes, there are no clan objectives/achievements, etc.
Personally coming from Diablo2 and WoW over many many years of enjoyment, social interaction, THE reason i play and enjoy games. I couldn't agree more of what Azzure wrote in that blog post. Describes it perfectly.
Entering and playing sc2 feels lonely, you don't actually look forward to login the same way as i did with wow because i had a whole lot of friends enjoying the same as me and being social is the key i think to Blizzard games success. Why would the COMPLETELY demolish that with sc2 and make you feel like playing a SP game etc. I played WoW for 4-5 years until the recent downfall but that was solely because of the key strength lying in social interaction and my friends played it so we could player TOGETHER. That's why it's fun
Blizzard has gone from all to nothing with sc2 compared to all other games they have released. It's stale boring and you feel lonely.
I'm the only one of my friends playing fairly active competitively and those other who does will login play 1-2 games and logout again. It's so cold and lonely.
On March 06 2012 02:39 TheRabidDeer wrote: The problem is that blizzard saw the awesome forum communities and how popular they were and thought that people would just use them instead of ingame stuff. While it is true that many do use forums.. its just not the same and many people didn't know about them and it is absolutely dead for them online. Chat and a social experience is necessary for a game in modern times. There to is no excuse to not have it.
But there already is chat...
Can someone that agrees with this article explain specifically what it is that they want (since the article does not)? None of this "better chat" nonsense...clear, concise ways that you think improve the social aspects of the game as a whole.
the "better chat" is not nonsense, the original battle.net from 98 has better chat support than we got in 2012
On March 06 2012 02:39 TheRabidDeer wrote: The problem is that blizzard saw the awesome forum communities and how popular they were and thought that people would just use them instead of ingame stuff. While it is true that many do use forums.. its just not the same and many people didn't know about them and it is absolutely dead for them online. Chat and a social experience is necessary for a game in modern times. There to is no excuse to not have it.
But there already is chat...
Can someone that agrees with this article explain specifically what it is that they want (since the article does not)? None of this "better chat" nonsense...clear, concise ways that you think improve the social aspects of the game as a whole.
the "better chat" is not nonsense, the original battle.net from 98 has better chat support than we got in 2012
On March 06 2012 02:39 Zeller wrote: There's got to be some people around here that can actually get this across with some blizzard folks.
How about you and the people alongside you get this into your head.. They're aware of the complaints many SC2 players have and they don't give a shit.
People have got to realize that the blizzard they grew up with, the one they used to love is no longer there. It's gone, it's dead, now we have Actiblizz with their new policies of 1 account pr server, 3 expansionpacks and a whole ordeal of shitty policychanges that only benefits Actiblizz and their need for totalitarian control over anything that goes on.
k?
I guess you can immediately paint their reaction in the most negative light possible, that's your prerogative, and while it's likely that they have been intentionally remiss in not immediately addressing these complaints, it could be that their time-frame is different from yours. Could it be that they want to revamp the whole thing in conjunction with HOTS or as some special promotion? Could the actual rework of the system be more complicated than you imagine and take more time?
I've never once thought that SC2 feels lonely or had a lack of community. The strong presence of an e-sports community was mentioned, but immediately discredited as a 'proper' community. Why is this? Why is the YouTube scene not relevant?
^ because when you're actually on battle.net you don't feel it the ghost town effect doesn't apply to when you're watching a stream or chatting in stream chat but it does apply when you're on battle net and don't have access to those live feeds and events the chat channels they provide just don't cut it
On March 06 2012 02:53 kleydejong wrote: I've never once thought that SC2 feels lonely or had a lack of community. The strong presence of an e-sports community was mentioned, but immediately discredited as a 'proper' community. Why is this? Why is the YouTube scene not relevant?
It's not the community on the internet that is the problem. The problem is that when people play SCII, especially ladder, it kinda feels like playing against robots. Everybody is so caught up in winning that there's not much human connection besides gl hf and gg. So In order to foster a feeling of community while actually logged into the game, there needs to be better chat features such as /f m commands and public chat channels where you can hop around.
ghost town issue, now thats sounds interesting. Blizzard should just drop everyone in the public channel again. I guess people that simply close this chat, are less likely to complain, then the people that aren't able to open the chat. I would call it more, the issue of not entering the pub at a cold rainy day and stay outside and wondering why no one is out on the street.
I personally like Blizzard for not wasting resources into auto opening a public chat 90% of the people leave asap while bnet pops up. It would not take time to program it, but i would feel that they wasted their time. But i guess it was something special no other games had for a reason, but missed by many, that used it. While others have irc in their autostart list.
But no channels was really bad by Blizzard nevertheless, as its better for preparing to create games.
Well i am curious how diablo3 bnet will look like its a good indication for how hots bnet will turn out, while i gave up on bnet for WoL after reading they scrapped the system completely and had someone that made xbox live on it.
What I miss from broodwar is the /f m function, where you could message all your friends regardless of chat channels or games. Other than that. I never was much into open chat channels. I interact with my friends and my clan. You can open up several chat channels parallel, so I don't get it, that the old system should be better, where you only could join one channel at a time. If people want to interact, than they have all the tools in the game for it.
BUT the big fact here is, that the ladder plays the major part in the game, for most of the players. AND when you ladder, you don't chat, because chatting while playing will make your play worse (unless you are REALLY good or REALLY bad). I think once the ladder becomes less , and privatly organized custom games more valuable, players will interact more with each other.
And all the kids crying for clan support: We had no clan support in BW and it worked out very well. So that can't be the reason why people fail to form clans. I think everyone shouldn't blame blizzard for his own failure of social interaction. First look at yourself what YOU can do, if you are not satisfied with a situation.
I agree about the ghost town. I love TL and the communities, but the only time I feel lonely with something SC related is when I actually want to log on and ladder.
So, you want a game that once you are done playing it, you can find some way to continue to waste your time?
What a spectacular misinterpretation.
On March 06 2012 03:02 TeeTS wrote: What I miss from broodwar is the /f m function, where you could message all your friends regardless of chat channels or games. Other than that. I never was much into open chat channels. I interact with my friends and my clan. You can open up several chat channels parallel, so I don't get it, that the old system should be better, where you only could join one channel at a time. If people want to interact, than they have all the tools in the game for it.
BUT the big fact here is, that the ladder plays the major part in the game, for most of the players. AND when you ladder, you don't chat, because chatting while playing will make your play worse (unless you are REALLY good or REALLY bad). I think once the ladder becomes less , and privatly organized custom games more valuable, players will interact more with each other.
And all the kids crying for clan support: We had no clan support in BW and it worked out very well. So that can't be the reason why people fail to form clans. I think everyone shouldn't blame blizzard for his own failure of social interaction. First look at yourself what YOU can do, if you are not satisfied with a situation.
BW had free name changes so it was easy to change your name to include a tag and then the clan could just go populate a chat channel and claim it as their own.
On March 06 2012 01:55 Apolex wrote: The mentality they go through balancing the game is even worse... if no one is using this unit ... let's remove it from the game. And since too many people are using this one, let's nerf it enough so no one will again. Look what happen to reapers / thors and now ghosts .. there is no point in making ghost in tvz anymore unless they go infestors.
Or you know, infestors, which sucked balls at release, and nobody wanted to make them at all, so they got buffed and are now a mainstay of the game. Or the Thor, which everyone uses, is basically being removed from the game in the next expansion (MommaThor).
It's sad that their dev team cant get on simple issues like battle net fixing. but dont whine about game balance, they do that pretty darn well.
Clan support, with exlcusive clan chat channels that had moderators, chat channel functions, and visually distinguished clan leaders, with clan tags to boot. Oh also a really kick ass CLAN LADDER that motivated some of the top fun clans to compete with each other for top clan ladder spots.
There was also a much simplier cross-region cross freaking game chat support that could be used even in game. Not to mention the entire layout was visually more pleasing, entire screen chat channels, and yet you could still easily find games view your and others profile in detail, hell you could see their ladder level next to their name in the chat channel, something that no longer exists.
They even had daily tournaments that provided advertising room/income that spurred a lot of fun competition between people. Basically Battle.net 2.0 is inferior in every conceivable way. (Also purely athestically, but color schemes do matter and starcraft menus have a colder-space look to them, which is cool... but it's a colder look regardless.)
Article does a good job highlighting why all these missing features are so important.
On March 06 2012 02:39 TheRabidDeer wrote: The problem is that blizzard saw the awesome forum communities and how popular they were and thought that people would just use them instead of ingame stuff. While it is true that many do use forums.. its just not the same and many people didn't know about them and it is absolutely dead for them online. Chat and a social experience is necessary for a game in modern times. There to is no excuse to not have it.
But there already is chat...
Can someone that agrees with this article explain specifically what it is that they want (since the article does not)? None of this "better chat" nonsense...clear, concise ways that you think improve the social aspects of the game as a whole.
the "better chat" is not nonsense, the original battle.net from 98 has better chat support than we got in 2012
Please tell me what about it is better.
ease of access, they way it's implemented so you don't have to struggle to find people, things such as channel operators and other chat options, management of channels is absolutely horrible right now, and the ui in general is far from optimal for chats in b.net 0.2
if you've used chat in the old battle.net version, you'd realize how big of a step backwards they've made
I don't see how Blizzard created a ghost town effect for SC2 to be honest. The real reason there is a ghost town effect to begin with, is that there are too many social media outlets that already fulfill this need to begin with. Skype, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Instead of communities forming from within the game itself(within chat channels, individual games, clan channels) they are probably forming more on other social media.
SC:BW and D2 all developed long before the Myspace boom and eventual Facebook boom. I can understand the sentiments of the OP though, its just that the social aspect is out of Blizzard's hands.
The UMS system is a bit of a different story, which definitely needs improving upon. Why the hell doesn't anyone wanna play Nexus Word Wars... seriously.
Does anyone still idle IRC channels anymore? They'd rather do it on Facebook.
I didn't really feel the loss of interaction in Bnet 2.0 as much as most because I'm typically in vent or something with friends. However....the picture of Tychus instead of a more prominent news page or chat channels is pretty strange. Automatically putting people into chat also makes it simpler for those who are too lazy to open a chat channel.
Battle.net 2.0 surely feels like a ghost town. If you do not have that many friends who frequently log into B.net to play some games you can quickly feel lonely and rather just stick with laddering then. That in itself is not the true way of playing StarCraft II, which I think is a bad implication of the new B.net system. In BW it was fun to just hop into a channel and chat away, making new online friends and playing some really fun games. Now it just feels like a ghost town, as you have said, and nothing really interesting going on. I have to mention that the eSports community surrounding SC2 definitely is amazing, but other than that it isn't easy on a social level.
With me living in a very small countryside tow, with like only one friend who plays SC2 online, it has taken its toll on my view of B.net 2.0. I just wish that I had more friends around here who played StarCraft.
If you want to chat with people, go to Facebook or something. If you want to play Starcraft, play Starcraft.. I don't get this.. I have absolutely zero interest in chat channels, I couldn't care less...
On March 06 2012 02:39 TheRabidDeer wrote: The problem is that blizzard saw the awesome forum communities and how popular they were and thought that people would just use them instead of ingame stuff. While it is true that many do use forums.. its just not the same and many people didn't know about them and it is absolutely dead for them online. Chat and a social experience is necessary for a game in modern times. There to is no excuse to not have it.
But there already is chat...
Can someone that agrees with this article explain specifically what it is that they want (since the article does not)? None of this "better chat" nonsense...clear, concise ways that you think improve the social aspects of the game as a whole.
the "better chat" is not nonsense, the original battle.net from 98 has better chat support than we got in 2012
Please tell me what about it is better.
ease of access, they way it's implemented so you don't have to struggle to find people, things such as channel operators and other chat options, management of channels is absolutely horrible, and the ui in general is far from optimal
if you've used chat in the old battle.net version, you'd realize how big of a step backwards they've made
Ease of access - There's a button at the bottom of the screen that you click on to open the interface. I assume you want SC2 to open public chat for you as soon as you come in, which not everyone does
Struggle to find people - See above
Channel operators - I assume you mean mods. Private channels maybe though you can always move to a new channel if someone somehow finds you and bothers you. Also, what other options specifically?
Management of channels - ? What better way is there than a list of channels? That's common to both
UI - There's a big box of text, and a list of people to the right. This is different (and according to you, worse) than BWs UI how?
On March 06 2012 02:08 Bommes wrote: I sometimes just randomly chitchat during the boring first 3-4 minutes (if I'm in a good mood and not annoyed in the first place) to spice it up a little. Most people go for it and chat weird stuff with me, but a lot of people just think I'm cheesing because I chat so much nonsense lol
Most of the time I concentrate on playing anyway though, mostly because I can't really come up with new thoughts about everything and anything each game.
It's funny how prickly many people are when it comes to chatting in game, they filter everything as some kind of insult. Bnet isolation has only served to make the game feel super serial & hostile.
It's a competitive game, not a social club. Yes, if my opponent begins to chit chat, the first thing I'm thinking of is that he must be cheesing and is trying to distract me, which is true 90% of the time from my experience and I'm sure many others will corroborate. It doesn't mean I'm hostile, it just means I want to play the game and that's it. If I wanted to simply chat, there are tons of other places on the internet where I could be, and if I wanted to specifically talk about Starcraft, there are websites dedicated to that.
On March 06 2012 02:39 TheRabidDeer wrote: The problem is that blizzard saw the awesome forum communities and how popular they were and thought that people would just use them instead of ingame stuff. While it is true that many do use forums.. its just not the same and many people didn't know about them and it is absolutely dead for them online. Chat and a social experience is necessary for a game in modern times. There to is no excuse to not have it.
But there already is chat...
Can someone that agrees with this article explain specifically what it is that they want (since the article does not)? None of this "better chat" nonsense...clear, concise ways that you think improve the social aspects of the game as a whole.
the "better chat" is not nonsense, the original battle.net from 98 has better chat support than we got in 2012
Please tell me what about it is better.
ease of access, they way it's implemented so you don't have to struggle to find people, things such as channel operators and other chat options, management of channels is absolutely horrible, and the ui in general is far from optimal
if you've used chat in the old battle.net version, you'd realize how big of a step backwards they've made
Ease of access - There's a button at the bottom of the screen that you click on to open the interface. I assume you want SC2 to open public chat for you as soon as you come in, which not everyone does
Struggle to find people - See above
Channel operators - I assume you mean mods. Private channels maybe though you can always move to a new channel if someone somehow finds you and bothers you. Also, what other options specifically?
Management of channels - ? What better way is there than a list of channels? That's common to both
UI - There's a big box of text, and a list of people to the right. This is different (and according to you, worse) than BWs UI how?
On March 06 2012 02:39 TheRabidDeer wrote: The problem is that blizzard saw the awesome forum communities and how popular they were and thought that people would just use them instead of ingame stuff. While it is true that many do use forums.. its just not the same and many people didn't know about them and it is absolutely dead for them online. Chat and a social experience is necessary for a game in modern times. There to is no excuse to not have it.
But there already is chat...
Can someone that agrees with this article explain specifically what it is that they want (since the article does not)? None of this "better chat" nonsense...clear, concise ways that you think improve the social aspects of the game as a whole.
the "better chat" is not nonsense, the original battle.net from 98 has better chat support than we got in 2012
Please tell me what about it is better.
ease of access, they way it's implemented so you don't have to struggle to find people, things such as channel operators and other chat options, management of channels is absolutely horrible, and the ui in general is far from optimal
if you've used chat in the old battle.net version, you'd realize how big of a step backwards they've made
Ease of access - There's a button at the bottom of the screen that you click on to open the interface. I assume you want SC2 to open public chat for you as soon as you come in, which not everyone does
Struggle to find people - See above
Channel operators - I assume you mean mods. Private channels maybe though you can always move to a new channel if someone somehow finds you and bothers you. Also, what other options specifically?
Management of channels - ? What better way is there than a list of channels? That's common to both
UI - There's a big box of text, and a list of people to the right. This is different (and according to you, worse) than BWs UI how?
You're the minority I suppose, each to their own.
Indeed, to each their own. Not sure I'm in the minority per se, just that the people who don't care so much about chat don't usually have much to say about it ;p
Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not opposed to Blizz adding these things...I'm just trying to understand specifically what it is that people want. It's one thing for people to tell Blizz "we want better chat", but if they don't help Blizz understand what to address and improve, nothing will happen.
On March 06 2012 02:39 TheRabidDeer wrote: The problem is that blizzard saw the awesome forum communities and how popular they were and thought that people would just use them instead of ingame stuff. While it is true that many do use forums.. its just not the same and many people didn't know about them and it is absolutely dead for them online. Chat and a social experience is necessary for a game in modern times. There to is no excuse to not have it.
But there already is chat...
Can someone that agrees with this article explain specifically what it is that they want (since the article does not)? None of this "better chat" nonsense...clear, concise ways that you think improve the social aspects of the game as a whole.
the "better chat" is not nonsense, the original battle.net from 98 has better chat support than we got in 2012
Please tell me what about it is better.
ease of access, they way it's implemented so you don't have to struggle to find people, things such as channel operators and other chat options, management of channels is absolutely horrible, and the ui in general is far from optimal
if you've used chat in the old battle.net version, you'd realize how big of a step backwards they've made
Ease of access - There's a button at the bottom of the screen that you click on to open the interface. I assume you want SC2 to open public chat for you as soon as you come in, which not everyone does
Struggle to find people - See above
Channel operators - I assume you mean mods. Private channels maybe though you can always move to a new channel if someone somehow finds you and bothers you. Also, what other options specifically?
Management of channels - ? What better way is there than a list of channels? That's common to both
UI - There's a big box of text, and a list of people to the right. This is different (and according to you, worse) than BWs UI how?
Brood War wasn't a brilliant example of integrated social systems either. It was decent for its time, but in the era of social networking comparing a current product to a game released in 1998 is pointless.
Chat channels are only part of the problem (and a very basic solution). In order for social system to be functional by today's standards, you need to integrate it with the actual game features and give players some sort of direct motivation to communicate with other players.
Things like automated battle.net tournaments (where you autojoin tournament's chat channel when you join the tournament), a built-in guild/clan interface (again supported by official chat channels that the leaders can moderate and manage) and ranking, multi-user replay watching, and a million other ways you can bring people to talk to each other that have all been suggested over time. If just the clan feature was there, almost all active players would likely be in some clan. It may be a Bronze league clan, but you'd still have a feel you belong to a specific group and have friends/allies within the game.
Like 90% of all conversations I've had in SC2 was mostly BM/whining delivered by my last ladder opponent. I think most people have a similar experience. What SC2 has is just a system that allows you to talk to people or groups of people, but really you have no context and no reason to do so, especially if you play 1v1s or queue up solo.
On March 06 2012 02:02 Jellomomello wrote: This article is 100% accurate with the way i feel ( and have felt ) with SC2 and all Blizzard games in the past
On March 06 2012 03:38 Big-t wrote: I like starcraft because I dont have to talk/chat with mates. Is there something wrong with me????
No, not at all , ur a minority but if they implement all the request people want in a chat room, u'll still be playing starcraft 2. but because they don't have all the requested stuff, people are turned off by sc2 and play other games instead.
Before battle.net felt like one huge community of all blizzard games in the same chat server. Now it feels like sc2 is on it's own and can't interact with anyone else. I think a lot of the things that were implemented in sc2 were more Activison's ideas.
I see five reasons chat channels don't feel as social as in bw:
1) They are only a small part of the screen. in bw, your current chat channel dominated the screen. 2) You can get thrown into a chat channel by invite without your permission. 3) You can be in several chat channels at once, even while in game. this factor along with 2) means that hardly anyone that is "in the channel" are actually reading the chat. 4) You get muted for spamming after writing like 2 lines. Wtf? I want to write conversation style in a chat room, not a paragraph at a time. NO ONE GIVES A SHIT ABOUT BOTS. MODDED CHANNELS CAN BLOCK THEM. It adds a kinda fun element actually... 5) In bw, you could look at your mutual friends list and see what channels they are in if they aren't in game. This created people following each other around channel to channel and discovering new places to hang out.
I think if there is a ghost-town effect, it is mostly self-imposed. I've had lots of fun, social experiences in SC2. While I agree that Battle.net 2.0 is fundamentally flawed and just mediocre in general, I don't think it is for these reasons.
There are chat-rooms where you can hang out and look for social opportunities to interact, there are custom games like the Metalopolis obs series (although this is kind of separate from bnet 2.0, as it's a user-created thing).
Despite that, though, I completely agree that bnet 2.0 has a LOT of room for improvement in the social aspect. Oh wait,
FACEBOOK INTEGRATION
YEEEEEEEEAHHHHHH
(That was a joke. Nobody cares about facebook integration)
Man, this is exactly how i feel ! In my bw days i often stayed loged in for several hour not even playing, just chatting and fooling around with my allies and friends. Now it's gone, and on sc2 i almost never play more than 1 hour, because it feels so lonely. C'mon blizzard, how hard can it be to make REAL public channel ?
This is why the 1v1 KotH observer modes remained popular on battle.net 2.0. They are still the most fun I've had in the game, playing with people, casual chat during game, etc.
On March 06 2012 02:39 TheRabidDeer wrote: The problem is that blizzard saw the awesome forum communities and how popular they were and thought that people would just use them instead of ingame stuff. While it is true that many do use forums.. its just not the same and many people didn't know about them and it is absolutely dead for them online. Chat and a social experience is necessary for a game in modern times. There to is no excuse to not have it.
But there already is chat...
Can someone that agrees with this article explain specifically what it is that they want (since the article does not)? None of this "better chat" nonsense...clear, concise ways that you think improve the social aspects of the game as a whole.
the "better chat" is not nonsense, the original battle.net from 98 has better chat support than we got in 2012
Please tell me what about it is better.
ease of access, they way it's implemented so you don't have to struggle to find people, things such as channel operators and other chat options, management of channels is absolutely horrible, and the ui in general is far from optimal
if you've used chat in the old battle.net version, you'd realize how big of a step backwards they've made
Ease of access - There's a button at the bottom of the screen that you click on to open the interface. I assume you want SC2 to open public chat for you as soon as you come in, which not everyone does
Struggle to find people - See above
Channel operators - I assume you mean mods. Private channels maybe though you can always move to a new channel if someone somehow finds you and bothers you. Also, what other options specifically?
Management of channels - ? What better way is there than a list of channels? That's common to both
UI - There's a big box of text, and a list of people to the right. This is different (and according to you, worse) than BWs UI how?
Ok people seem to be way too caught up on just chat channels when what we're really talking about is clans + chat channels. I don't think anyone really just wanted public chat support. It's the chat in combination with the clans that made it a real social environment.
I never went on public/private chat channels in WC3. All I did was go to clan channels. People in the clan can moderate the channel. Just being in the same clan as someone makes it easier to socialize. You have some thing to work towards because your wins go into a collective clan stat. It's way easier to find practice partners; if you're in the same clan everyone is much more willing to practice and obs and give feedback. People naturally have a place to go to find like minded people because clans would usually be focused on 1v1, dota, or arranged teams.
I can't express how important clans are. Can you imagine playing an MMO without clan support?
Apparently people don't get what the ghost town effect is.
When i log in, the first thing i do is look at my friend list. What do i see there ? Something like 4 of my 30 or so friends are online, most of the rest hasn't touched the game since 1 month or more. Of those four, one is afk, another one just ladders, the last ones are about to go... and thus, most of the time, i just play a few ladder games and feel so alone i quit quickly. And each time i log out i know i will play less next time, unless i'm lucky enough to hit the same timing as one of my last true buddies still in the game. At this rhythm, i'll be out too in a month or two, and if HotS doesn't change anything it'll be over. The thrive of competitive mapmaking is the only thing i look forward to when i turn my computer on to play something - certainly not logging into ghost town b.net 2.0.
We just all log on to teamspeak and talk to each other even if we are in different games.
It is a bit distracting if you suddenly hear "How am I supposed to deal with broods after Ghost Nerf" when you are in the middle of a PvP, but you do get more human interaction.
On March 06 2012 02:32 R3DT1D3 wrote: So I'm still confused, are there really that many people who play games like SC2 to be social rather than to just improve and grind some matches? Seriously, if Blizzard had as much social aspects as people wanted, they would be exposed to so much garbage it would be unbelievable. Heck, look at moderated stream chats. They're cesspits for the lowest common denominator and that's exactly what you guys want to open up to?
My social interaction is with my friends on Ventrilo and messaging/talking to people in real life. I play SC2 to play matches, not meet new friends.
It is not a matter of social or competition, it is that they want both. Between grinding games they want to chat with friends.
And you can in the current system. You can use the in game chat or some other third party program like almost every other community does. I don't see how Blizzard dumping you into a cesspit of open chat would be preferable.
On March 06 2012 02:32 R3DT1D3 wrote: So I'm still confused, are there really that many people who play games like SC2 to be social rather than to just improve and grind some matches? Seriously, if Blizzard had as much social aspects as people wanted, they would be exposed to so much garbage it would be unbelievable. Heck, look at moderated stream chats. They're cesspits for the lowest common denominator and that's exactly what you guys want to open up to?
My social interaction is with my friends on Ventrilo and messaging/talking to people in real life. I play SC2 to play matches, not meet new friends.
It's the same reason I don't like to go play golf by myself, it's just less enjoyable. The game (golf) is the exact same, hell I think I even play better alone but by the end of the afternoon I am basically sprinting to my car to get the fuck out where as if I'm with my buddies having a few cold ones I don't ever want to leave the course. That's how it used to be. For me personally I used to spend hours just idling in chat channels on D2 bnet, doing other things but keeping an eye out for that one trade I needed. It was worth my time to leave the game open because there was a community there. Now, with SC 2, there is absolutely no reason at all to leave the game open after I play a few games.
Some days I feel like you do; I want to just hop on and ladder in peace. But it would be nice to at least have the option of hanging out in a real chat channel or watch a replay with my buddy or whatever. And it's not JUST the chat channels, it's a combination of all of the incredible shortcomings of Bnet that contribute to the lack of community within the game such as no shared replay watching, to clan support, shitty chat channels, etc.
Thank god for TL.
Golf doesn't require 2 people to play though. Amateur golfers don't golf to get better, they golf to hang out. I play SC2 to get better and if my friends are on, I'll chat with them on Steam or Ventrilo. Blizzard isn't the bottleneck here.
I don't play SC2 to hang out with friends, I play it for the competition. I have no problem whatsoever with the highly challenging, anonymous match-making of ladder play. I hang out with my friends to watch the NBA, grab a drink or see a concert. Just my .02...
Find me one person who used to play WoW a lot who didn't sometimes just run around the capital city aimlessly, chatting. You can't.
How exactly is someone supposed to make new friends in SC2? I never played BW in order to make friends, but my flist was pretty huge within a couple months without even trying, thanks to Battle.net's chat channels and custom map systems.
To a person buying SC2 without already-existing friends playing it, 100% of their social interaction is going to be butthurt Bronze-Silver players BMing them for (playing Terran/Protoss/Zerg, using any unit, attacking too early, attacking too late, not attacking at all, winning, and/or losing). Yeah, that sounds like a fun time.
Also, only 13000 games of SC2 going on worldwide on Saturday? Really? If that's true then SC2 is already dead.
Read the article and completely agree. I feel it is one of the reasons that console gaming has gotten so popular, because of the inherent value of things like split screening and bringing friends over for a dance off, etc.
Back in BW, I'd chill in chat channels and talk with some friends or even random strangers if we weren't playing a game at the moment. During Diablo 2, I'd supplement playing with conversation. On SC2, it's so lonely *sniff*.
On March 06 2012 02:39 TheRabidDeer wrote: The problem is that blizzard saw the awesome forum communities and how popular they were and thought that people would just use them instead of ingame stuff. While it is true that many do use forums.. its just not the same and many people didn't know about them and it is absolutely dead for them online. Chat and a social experience is necessary for a game in modern times. There to is no excuse to not have it.
But there already is chat...
Can someone that agrees with this article explain specifically what it is that they want (since the article does not)? None of this "better chat" nonsense...clear, concise ways that you think improve the social aspects of the game as a whole.
the "better chat" is not nonsense, the original battle.net from 98 has better chat support than we got in 2012
Please tell me what about it is better.
ease of access, they way it's implemented so you don't have to struggle to find people, things such as channel operators and other chat options, management of channels is absolutely horrible, and the ui in general is far from optimal
if you've used chat in the old battle.net version, you'd realize how big of a step backwards they've made
Ease of access - There's a button at the bottom of the screen that you click on to open the interface. I assume you want SC2 to open public chat for you as soon as you come in, which not everyone does
Struggle to find people - See above
Channel operators - I assume you mean mods. Private channels maybe though you can always move to a new channel if someone somehow finds you and bothers you. Also, what other options specifically?
Management of channels - ? What better way is there than a list of channels? That's common to both
UI - There's a big box of text, and a list of people to the right. This is different (and according to you, worse) than BWs UI how?
Ok people seem to be way too caught up on just chat channels when what we're really talking about is clans + chat channels. I don't think anyone really just wanted public chat support. It's the chat in combination with the clans that made it a real social environment.
I never went on public/private chat channels in WC3. All I did was go to clan channels. People in the clan can moderate the channel. Just being in the same clan as someone makes it easier to socialize. You have some thing to work towards because your wins go into a collective clan stat. It's way easier to find practice partners; if you're in the same clan everyone is much more willing to practice and obs and give feedback. People naturally have a place to go to find like minded people because clans would usually be focused on 1v1, dota, or arranged teams.
I can't express how important clans are. Can you imagine playing an MMO without clan support?
And FYI, the chat boxes in SC2 are really small.
Actually in the early days of MMOs, there were no clan support and they still thrived as the new genre of internet gaming.. I don't see how it's a big deal.. If you want to have a group of people to chat with, just get everyone to join a specific chat channel upon login.
Nowadays it is so easy to just alt-tab and go to TL or whatever online community site to chat with people. So many streams, topics, guides. It might not be in the game itself, but honestly I'm happy to just hit "PLAY", do my ladder game, then go to TL if I feel like I need to be connected to the community.
i feel the same .. in fact after around 1 - 2 hours i get bored ... even fully motivated i have troubles playing more then 2 hours without stoping being alone in the room .... hope blizz will notice this ..
On March 06 2012 04:43 drcatellino wrote: Nowadays it is so easy to just alt-tab and go to TL or whatever online community site to chat with people. So many streams, topics, guides. It might not be in the game itself, but honestly I'm happy to just hit "PLAY", do my ladder game, then go to TL if I feel like I need to be connected to the community.
I agree with this, I know there are a lot of things SC2 could be better at, but more community touch won't solve anything, I care about playing. I think in deep statistics are way more important, maybe clan support would be nice.
this is definitely the issue. I've been playing far less sc2 than bw, not because I'm in university now, but because of the lack of social interaction. the whole battle.net UI is frankly terrible. for custom games, only the popular ones are played, giving no chance for map developers. can't believe it's such a setback, and it's something not even graphics can save. wc3 and bw's custom games are far superior. it's a shame because sc2 could've been truly great.
On March 06 2012 02:32 R3DT1D3 wrote: So I'm still confused, are there really that many people who play games like SC2 to be social rather than to just improve and grind some matches? Seriously, if Blizzard had as much social aspects as people wanted, they would be exposed to so much garbage it would be unbelievable. Heck, look at moderated stream chats. They're cesspits for the lowest common denominator and that's exactly what you guys want to open up to?
My social interaction is with my friends on Ventrilo and messaging/talking to people in real life. I play SC2 to play matches, not meet new friends.
It is not a matter of social or competition, it is that they want both. Between grinding games they want to chat with friends.
And you can in the current system. You can use the in game chat or some other third party program like almost every other community does. I don't see how Blizzard dumping you into a cesspit of open chat would be preferable.
On March 06 2012 02:32 R3DT1D3 wrote: So I'm still confused, are there really that many people who play games like SC2 to be social rather than to just improve and grind some matches? Seriously, if Blizzard had as much social aspects as people wanted, they would be exposed to so much garbage it would be unbelievable. Heck, look at moderated stream chats. They're cesspits for the lowest common denominator and that's exactly what you guys want to open up to?
My social interaction is with my friends on Ventrilo and messaging/talking to people in real life. I play SC2 to play matches, not meet new friends.
It's the same reason I don't like to go play golf by myself, it's just less enjoyable. The game (golf) is the exact same, hell I think I even play better alone but by the end of the afternoon I am basically sprinting to my car to get the fuck out where as if I'm with my buddies having a few cold ones I don't ever want to leave the course. That's how it used to be. For me personally I used to spend hours just idling in chat channels on D2 bnet, doing other things but keeping an eye out for that one trade I needed. It was worth my time to leave the game open because there was a community there. Now, with SC 2, there is absolutely no reason at all to leave the game open after I play a few games.
Some days I feel like you do; I want to just hop on and ladder in peace. But it would be nice to at least have the option of hanging out in a real chat channel or watch a replay with my buddy or whatever. And it's not JUST the chat channels, it's a combination of all of the incredible shortcomings of Bnet that contribute to the lack of community within the game such as no shared replay watching, to clan support, shitty chat channels, etc.
Thank god for TL.
Golf doesn't require 2 people to play though. Amateur golfers don't golf to get better, they golf to hang out. I play SC2 to get better and if my friends are on, I'll chat with them on Steam or Ventrilo. Blizzard isn't the bottleneck here.
The shared replay thing would be great though.
I'm not sure what point you were trying to make about golf not requiring 2 people to play so I'll let you clarify before I respond. But saying amateur golfers don't play to get better is your own personal opinion and probably very wrong - there are likely MANY amateur players who play to get better (and have fun). Which is the same as starcraft, you play to get better (and have fun). If it wasn't fun at all you wouldn't bother to get any better at it.
2. you can create your own custom channels besides the preset ones which I and some other peoples use to hang out in so we're not bothered by dem trolls.
If you actually look for them they do exist its just not right in ur face as it was iin previous blizzard games.
On March 06 2012 04:43 drcatellino wrote: Nowadays it is so easy to just alt-tab and go to TL or whatever online community site to chat with people. So many streams, topics, guides. It might not be in the game itself, but honestly I'm happy to just hit "PLAY", do my ladder game, then go to TL if I feel like I need to be connected to the community.
I agree with this, I know there are a lot of things SC2 could be better at, but more community touch won't solve anything, I care about playing. I think in deep statistics are way more important, maybe clan support would be nice.
I'm not worried about you and me, we've already found the holy grail of communities and information. I'm worried about the new people to Starcraft who have no idea how big it is and where all this great stuff can be found. There is little to no interaction on bnet 2.0 so it's highly unlikely that the new people take the step we eventually took and find TL, reddit, etc. Without my friend telling me about TL I still wouldn't know it exists.
On March 06 2012 02:19 Alacast wrote: Just because the social interaction doesn't exist within the confines of the game program itself, doesn't mean it's not there. For example, you're on TL, a primarily Starcraft related website with more depth and content than any in-game chat program could ever provide. I have never found public chat channels in any game to be rewarding or fun; more often than not I read them with a sense of terror at the sheer stupidity and ignorance of the human race and eventually fled, never to return.
I honestly think Starcraft suffers from the fact that it's simply difficult to learn, and while its predecessor was able to single-handedly capture a majority of the gaming community, it also came at a time when "social" games eg: easy shit that requires more time than effort (read World of Warcraft) didn't yet exist. Gamers were a small sect of "basement dwelling" nerds who were smart and dedicated to their passion. Those people still exist and they continue to dedicate time and effort into learning and improving their skills, but they are overshadowed by a larger community of social games and gamers.
My entire last paragraphs was opinion and anecdotal, so back to reality. Starcraft lacks the tools to teach people even the basics of playing the game. Yes, it teaches people how to make and control units and buildings, but there is absolutely no higher-level information available within the game to help people. All of my friends are afraid to even try to learn it because they don't know where to start-that's why people don't play. It's hard and it takes a significant amount of effort to even find a guide on what the hell you're supposed to be doing. Sure chat channels might help in this aspect, but how much constructive criticism can you expect from a public chat channel that isn't flippant or disrespectful?
I'm rambling, but my point is that the learning curve is steep and there is no method INSIDE THE GAME to actually figure out how to play. Campaign is terrible and the challenges are a joke (except for opening gambit, which is alright but really lacks the information on how you should do things and why).
I pretty much agree with most of what you said. All of my friends who bought the game when it came out no longer play because they got too tired of not understanding how to progress in the game and were daunted when I got promoted to Diamond and they were still stuck in bronze league. It's hard for me to try and teach my friends how to play the game better without sounding elitist or condescending. They have mentioned to me many times if there were easier IN GAME tutorials to learn and read from they would still be playing.
What we need is for Blizzard to make a huge campaign like tutorial that starts out teaching you to keep making workers the whole game and ends teaching you how to split marines like MKP.
They'll never do this, but they should and it would make the community explode.
Idk why people complain so much about this, I think the current system is fine. If I want to join a chat room I'll join reddit or teamliquid. If I want to talk to some friends, I chat with them. I don't see the problem at all.
Is this seriously a big deal? Want to know how I deal with 'loneliness'? It's called alt-tab. I basically have my SC2 client open at all times. I'll read TL, talk to friends in Ventrillo, check my facebook, play another ladder game. People are making this into such a big deal when it isn't. How many threads have there been about this now? Computers are pretty damn good these days, you can have more than one program open at a time. You can have multiple monitors. You can alt-tab.
Yeah, spot on title. When I'm playing SC2, I'm always on vent with people but even then, I'd rather just be playing a game with them instead of going on a solo grind. That's not to say I don't enjoy playing SC2, I do, but I do find it much harder to play for extended periods of time in comparison to a game like WoW or DotA.
On March 06 2012 05:02 IMoperator wrote: Idk why people complain so much about this, I think the current system is fine. If I want to join a chat room I'll join reddit or teamliquid. If I want to talk to some friends, I chat with them. I don't see the problem at all.
Ok - cool for you. But how about all the people who quit playing because they feel alone ? Maybe you're fine with it, but many people aren't - or weren't, since most of them aren't playing anymore. The game will be way less fun, and SC2 as an esport way dead, when there will be almost no one playing it because people keep quitting. Just look at the statistics about the active playerbase season after season. It just keeps falling.
On March 06 2012 05:02 IMoperator wrote: Idk why people complain so much about this, I think the current system is fine. If I want to join a chat room I'll join reddit or teamliquid. If I want to talk to some friends, I chat with them. I don't see the problem at all.
And because you don't see the problem there is no problem, right?
I would guess that no one claiming that the current system is fine experienced the magic that was battle.net 1.0. You have no idea what you are missing.
On March 06 2012 04:43 drcatellino wrote: Nowadays it is so easy to just alt-tab and go to TL or whatever online community site to chat with people. So many streams, topics, guides. It might not be in the game itself, but honestly I'm happy to just hit "PLAY", do my ladder game, then go to TL if I feel like I need to be connected to the community.
I agree with this, I know there are a lot of things SC2 could be better at, but more community touch won't solve anything, I care about playing. I think in deep statistics are way more important, maybe clan support would be nice.
I'm not worried about you and me, we've already found the holy grail of communities and information. I'm worried about the new people to Starcraft who have no idea how big it is and where all this great stuff can be found. There is little to no interaction on bnet 2.0 so it's highly unlikely that the new people take the step we eventually took and find TL, reddit, etc. Without my friend telling me about TL I still wouldn't know it exists.
The outside-the-game clans and communities are awesome. The lack of in-game clan and clan chat channels is horrific. People didn't and still don't play Diablo 2 and War3 because they're the pinnacle of gaming, they play because of the fantastic way you can just quickly make friends and hang out with people.
Think about War3 laddering, I swear it was like 1/4 of the games you played you would have someone asking if you wanted to try out for their clan, join their new clan, start a new clan, etc. The clan ladder, clan message of the day, and hierarchy all just contributed to building your group of people to hang out with. The 100 person cap was even awesome because it kept it from being 5,000 people in the gosu clans and no one else having a chance.
It's really sad for the large chunk of people that switched from WC3/WoW into SC2 to find that one of the things they loved most (even if they didn't realize it) is gone. And now that player base is gone as well. Imagine the eSports community for SC2 if instead of 13k games, 100k games with 500k active players at any given time, there would be millions of unique views for the major events no problem.
It's not really an article it's more like an opinion piece, and it clearly is when you go to the link and it says [OPINION] next to the title. Then later on he goes into D3, it's like an open letter to blizzard to make D3 chat better and doesn't really offer better solutions to SC2 other than for it to just be better so D3 doesn't suck.
On March 06 2012 05:02 IMoperator wrote: Idk why people complain so much about this, I think the current system is fine. If I want to join a chat room I'll join reddit or teamliquid. If I want to talk to some friends, I chat with them. I don't see the problem at all.
Ok - cool for you. But how about all the people who quit playing because they feel alone ? Maybe you're fine with it, but many people aren't - or weren't, since most of them aren't playing anymore. The game will be way less fun, and SC2 as an esport way dead, when there will be almost no one playing it because people keep quitting. Just look at the statistics about the active playerbase season after season. It just keeps falling.
It keeps falling because of the learning curve, not because of the UI.
The kind of people that will quit because the UI is 'too lonely' and aren't able to think of alternatives (alt-tab? vent?) are the kind of people that would never get out of bronze and will quit anyways.
On March 06 2012 05:17 AcrossFiveJulys wrote: I would guess that no one claiming that the current system is fine experienced the magic that was battle.net 1.0. You have no idea what you are missing.
There was nothing magic about it... Public chat in any online game I've played, and I've been playing games for a long time, was a cesspool.
On March 06 2012 05:11 zefreak wrote: Is this seriously a big deal? Want to know how I deal with 'loneliness'? It's called alt-tab. I basically have my SC2 client open at all times. I'll read TL, talk to friends in Ventrillo, check my facebook, play another ladder game. People are making this into such a big deal when it isn't. How many threads have there been about this now? Computers are pretty damn good these days, you can have more than one program open at a time. You can have multiple monitors. You can alt-tab.
The problem is that I've *MET* a lot of cool people playing games, and I've met exactly 0 people playing Sc2. It isn't just abou talking with people I already know. I've met some through TL, but in SC2 itself you almost never meet anyone I met lots of people in Diablo 2 idling in chat rooms, and it was always worth while just to sort of see that community in a more real way. There is no analog to this kind of social experience in SC2. I definitely feel like that is missing from SC2. Husky did a great video a month or so ago about how battle.net works in Warcraft 3, and I think he hits on all the major points.
OK. Imo the most annoying thing is that there is no pretty windowed mode in sc2. It would be could if TL would "sponsor" some chat channels like TL 1v1 or TL Monobattles or something like that. I don't know if there are things like that but atleast i don't know about it and it could help if they were publicised on this site. Also it would make the game much more alive if there was a simple windowed mode where you could easily surf the internet at the same time and actually go full screen when you start to play some games (I hate alt-tabbing). Because when you are in SC2, you can play ladder, search for chat channels or try to play customs with friends, aka for me it's almost always ladder because I don't like having a fullscreen programm active on the background.
On March 06 2012 05:28 Progepanda wrote: OK. Imo the most annoying thing is that there is no pretty windowed mode in sc2. It would be could if TL would "sponsor" some chat channels like TL 1v1 or TL Monobattles or something like that. I don't know if there are things like that but atleast i don't know about it and it could help if they were publicised on this site. Also it would make the game much more alive if there was a simple windowed mode where you could easily surf the internet at the same time and actually go full screen when you start to play some games (I hate alt-tabbing). Because when you are in SC2, you can play ladder, search for chat channels or try to play customs with friends, aka for me it's almost always ladder because I don't like having a fullscreen programm active on the background.
There is a windowed mode option in Graphics..... There's also a channel named teamliquid which tends to always be full....
i honestly dont understand the problem here. Your lonely playing sc2? What you need someone to hold your hand why you play? How does playing 4v4 or 3v3 with your friends not satisfy you? I find it very fun to play team games with friends, we joke around, play around with builds, do customs. I dont understand how that is not enough for some people.
Maybe i dont see something but i tend to agree with what some other people were saying, that these people just werent good at the game and their excuse for quiting is "lonely ghost town effect". Sc2 isn't WoW, this is a real time strategy game and the best damn one at that.
On March 06 2012 05:28 Progepanda wrote: OK. Imo the most annoying thing is that there is no pretty windowed mode in sc2. It would be could if TL would "sponsor" some chat channels like TL 1v1 or TL Monobattles or something like that. I don't know if there are things like that but atleast i don't know about it and it could help if they were publicised on this site. Also it would make the game much more alive if there was a simple windowed mode where you could easily surf the internet at the same time and actually go full screen when you start to play some games (I hate alt-tabbing). Because when you are in SC2, you can play ladder, search for chat channels or try to play customs with friends, aka for me it's almost always ladder because I don't like having a fullscreen programm active on the background.
There is a windowed mode option in Graphics..... There's also a channel named teamliquid which tends to always be full....
I know there is a windowed mode but I last used it like the day I bought sc2 and didn't work too well, gotta try that one again. And I said about that TL chat channel that there probably is one but my point was that there probably are people that don't know about them. What's the problem about chat channels if there are big channels that are easy to use? ( I agree that the player limit is somewhat annoying and the UI could be better) but what is the point exactly if about chat channels being empty if they actually ain't empty? (not pointed directly at you cause I don't know if you are actually complaining or not)
On March 06 2012 05:11 zefreak wrote: Is this seriously a big deal? Want to know how I deal with 'loneliness'? It's called alt-tab. I basically have my SC2 client open at all times. I'll read TL, talk to friends in Ventrillo, check my facebook, play another ladder game. People are making this into such a big deal when it isn't. How many threads have there been about this now? Computers are pretty damn good these days, you can have more than one program open at a time. You can have multiple monitors. You can alt-tab.
The problem is that I've *MET* a lot of cool people playing games, and I've met exactly 0 people playing Sc2. It isn't just abou talking with people I already know. I've met some through TL, but in SC2 itself you almost never meet anyone I met lots of people in Diablo 2 idling in chat rooms, and it was always worth while just to sort of see that community in a more real way. There is no analog to this kind of social experience in SC2. I definitely feel like that is missing from SC2. Husky did a great video a month or so ago about how battle.net works in Warcraft 3, and I think he hits on all the major points.
Ive met close to a hundred people playing sc2 that i never met before. Not sure what your problem is but why dont you try talking or inviting someone to play with you. Its not that hard. I joined sc2 when it first came out and no one i knew in real life played. Still ive made many acquantances and even now i still meet people all the time. Whats the problem?
On March 06 2012 05:33 RedMosquito wrote: i honestly dont understand the problem here. Your lonely playing sc2? What you need someone to hold your hand why you play? How does playing 4v4 or 3v3 with your friends not satisfy you? I find it very fun to play team games with friends, we joke around, play around with builds, do customs. I dont understand how that is not enough for some people.
Maybe i dont see something but i tend to agree with what some other people were saying, that these people just werent good at the game and their excuse for quiting is "lonely ghost town effect". Sc2 isn't WoW, this is a real time strategy game and the best damn one at that.
I think that is really unfair to jump to that conclusion. I've been masters since the day it came out season 1 and I feel like it's a ghost town. Now the main reason I play is because I'm a competitive person and I like the game but I would like it hell of a lot more if a handful of the social things mentioned in this thread and others were implemented. I had about 5 RL friends who played for 1-2 months and haven't touched it since. Now I pretty much talked to no one for the few hours a week I play. My friends only enjoyed it if we were all on at the same time playing. Similarly, I haven't gamed on my Xbox in probably 8 months because the only time I enjoy any Xbox game is when I have 4 or 5 friends to play with and things rarely line up that way what with school, work, family stuff, etc.
Some people couldn't care less about interacting with people through bnet but the fact remains many people enjoyed that aspect from bnet 1.0. It's not appropriate to call everyone who thinks this way bad at the game.
There is definitely something missing from the game too. I used to play 22h sessions constantly on bw, while winning 1 out of 5 games. Sc2, 50% win ratio, can`t play for longer than 2h at a time
As someone who never even would join chat channels in WC3 (news page straight to quick matchmaking queue), I hadn't really thought about this much. I spend most of my time going on busy or ignoring people to insure I don't have to communicate with anyone on SC2 already. I love the ability I have to isolate myself and still be able to have an easy way to play with my friends.
But I can definitely see how this would be an issue. In BW, the game list, and chat channels always made me feel a little bit more part of a group. I think it'd be cool for a lot of people if they'd implement more of a social infrastructure in future expansions (While still insuring I can be as isolated as I want).
my 2cents is the same as the OP's, im a fan of the big chat window and everyone being in a clan because every single nub out there had a clan, or knew clan channels to hang out in because people were always recruiting in general chats (wc3 for example). And theres nothing wrong with nubs having clans, its a great thing, clans arnt just meant for elitists, theyre meant for people to feel at home and socialise in
I'll never understand the kind of people on gaming forums (and they exist for every game ever) who jump into a thread about possible improvements to the game and say "It doesn't bother me, it's not a big deal, Blizzard shouldn't do anything about it because it's not a big deal to me. It COULD be a better game, but it could also be worse, so Blizzard shouldn't make it any better! Because it could be worse!"
Fuck off, your input is not wanted. What are you even doing besides being purposely and annoyingly contrary? It reminds me of the Bioware forums for Star Wars:The Old Republic where some people would literally argue that major gamebreaking bugs shouldn't be fixed because they "weren't a big deal" to them and people who wanted them fixed should "go back to WoW".
All the social interaction I need is on this site... pretty sure it's the same for a lot of others as well. Although I do agree that some essential features are missing from B.Net 2.0 as well such as clan support (this being the biggest one).
On March 06 2012 05:42 gosublade wrote: There is definitely something missing from the game too. I used to play 22h sessions constantly on bw, while winning 1 out of 5 games. Sc2, 50% win ratio, can`t play for longer than 2h at a time
How long ago did you play BW to that level? Chances are (as with many people here) it was a while ago and your priorities and preferences have changed over the years. It isn't bad or a fault of the system, it's just the way things are.
For example, 15 years ago I would've been clamoring for in-game chat. Now, I only have a desire to talk to people that I know or at least people I can assume have a base level of competency and maturity. So bnet's current chat set up doesn't bug me too much.
On March 06 2012 05:33 RedMosquito wrote: i honestly dont understand the problem here. Your lonely playing sc2? What you need someone to hold your hand why you play? How does playing 4v4 or 3v3 with your friends not satisfy you? I find it very fun to play team games with friends, we joke around, play around with builds, do customs. I dont understand how that is not enough for some people.
Maybe i dont see something but i tend to agree with what some other people were saying, that these people just werent good at the game and their excuse for quiting is "lonely ghost town effect". Sc2 isn't WoW, this is a real time strategy game and the best damn one at that.
I think that is really unfair to jump to that conclusion. I've been masters since the day it came out season 1 and I feel like it's a ghost town. Now the main reason I play is because I'm a competitive person and I like the game but I would like it hell of a lot more if a handful of the social things mentioned in this thread and others were implemented. I had about 5 RL friends who played for 1-2 months and haven't touched it since. Now I pretty much talked to no one for the few hours a week I play. My friends only enjoyed it if we were all on at the same time playing. Similarly, I haven't gamed on my Xbox in probably 8 months because the only time I enjoy any Xbox game is when I have 4 or 5 friends to play with and things rarely line up that way what with school, work, family stuff, etc.
Some people couldn't care less about interacting with people through bnet but the fact remains many people enjoyed that aspect from bnet 1.0. It's not appropriate to call everyone who thinks this way bad at the game.
I wouldn't mind reverting back to bnet1.0 cuz it was awesome, but i really dont think that a giant chat channel when you log on is gonna solve the loneliness problem these people are having. Sc2 is already a social game and if you find yourself lonely in it, then i have to say that maybe these kind of games are just not for you. If you really like Sc2 the game then you should be able to play and have fun with it by your self. Im not saying you should play alone cuz its more fun to enjoy the game with others, but if you cant enjoy it by your self then i really dont think strategy games are for you. Take civilization for example, that is a single player strategy game that people love not because they can chat it up and socialize but because the game is so immersive and fun to play. Sure theres a mutliplayer mode i think but 95% of people just play the single player. I find sc2 is sordof like that. Im all for adding chat channels and stuff but i dont really think thats the real problem. These kind of games arent for the casual social gamer i guess.
I really hope these thing get fixed when HOTS come out, if not , i cant really see this game have a good future.
If they dont want we to have public channel why don't they do something like 1.division chat channel - to chat with people in your division, because right now I dont see a point of be in a part of division. 2.country chat channel - I play in SEA server and language barrior is a huge problem in that server. i think it will be cool to chat to people with same language, and make newcomers have someone to help them. or something that make people come together....
The community of this game really exists only on TL and such websites. It is fueled by tourneys and wonderful people who stream/upload videos of matches or strategy. In the actual game, you feel extremely isolated, and it only gets worse because of the nature of the game (competitive and harder to master in comparison to most other games).
What people forget (and this is not a coincidence but a product of failures of battlenet 2.0) is how a new interface platform should have been an upgrade over the last, and not a catch up game or the same thing. We live in a world of extremely important social networks and easy, cheap and available communication systems. And you are trying to tell me that a game that has a huge online following is a ghost town while you are logged in? This should be an indicator that you made a inferior product.
We complain today that we miss functions like shared replay watching and such things (which are gonna come in the next expansion I'm pretty sure of that), that we don't allow ourselves to think about the ideas like skype integration or some ventrilloesque program (not the bloody voice chat) merged in your friend list and custom map creation. Things like really in dept profile pages that you can edit yourself with loads of statistical data; automated tournaments and game reporting systems of those for browsers; an entire page dedicated to chat with better moderation and of course custom games system that works.
It's easy, implement clan features and make it easy to find a clan to join. They could also implement a clan ladder system and have a clan wars section or just have people ladder and count the total clan rating(divided by league of course). When you bring in the "guild effect" and have interaction between your guild and other guilds the social needs of people are easy to appease.
I remember back in WC3 I used to love custom games, like Tower Defenses and other mods, now in SC2 I just don't play them at all.
I don't know what it is, but I really follow the SC2 scene alot and watch a shit ton of streams but I hardly ever really sit down and play alot, I enjoy the game but something is missing. Maybe the article is right and it's this lack of interaction with other people, but I never really interacted alot with other players in WC3 either, so I don't know.
edit: I mean is it just me or were custom games alot more popular in WC3? Whenever I try to play micro tournament or any tower defense the lobby is usually empty in SC2, whereas in WC3 I felt like there was always someone else playing and I could always join a game?!
I miss the time when I could spam /f m and read every message, and keep up with what all 50 of my friends were doing every day (iCCup had more friend space). /f m anyone game? now I'm lucky if I get a pm from a friend on bnet. Bnet2.0 is basically everything in bnet gone wrong.... how could this even happen? lol
i must say that i have felt this from time to time because team games (for me) are boring and i hate relying on someone to do well or actually make their own detection but 1v1 is a lot of fun but i will only play a few games then play something that has more people involved. I have tried to join some amateur teams and they do the job for about three weeks until people stop logging on vent/skype. honestly i would be fine with just laddering and talking with people in vent that know the game but my friends are not into sc2 so they don't really know sc2 strats so it's like talking to a wall.
On March 06 2012 05:11 zefreak wrote: Is this seriously a big deal? Want to know how I deal with 'loneliness'? It's called alt-tab. I basically have my SC2 client open at all times. I'll read TL, talk to friends in Ventrillo, check my facebook, play another ladder game. People are making this into such a big deal when it isn't. How many threads have there been about this now? Computers are pretty damn good these days, you can have more than one program open at a time. You can have multiple monitors. You can alt-tab.
The problem is that I've *MET* a lot of cool people playing games, and I've met exactly 0 people playing Sc2. It isn't just abou talking with people I already know. I've met some through TL, but in SC2 itself you almost never meet anyone I met lots of people in Diablo 2 idling in chat rooms, and it was always worth while just to sort of see that community in a more real way. There is no analog to this kind of social experience in SC2. I definitely feel like that is missing from SC2. Husky did a great video a month or so ago about how battle.net works in Warcraft 3, and I think he hits on all the major points.
Ive met close to a hundred people playing sc2 that i never met before. Not sure what your problem is but why dont you try talking or inviting someone to play with you. Its not that hard. I joined sc2 when it first came out and no one i knew in real life played. Still ive made many acquantances and even now i still meet people all the time. Whats the problem?
The problem is you're using anecdotal evidence to cover faults of design. It's like saying that ladder anxiety isn't a problem and doesn't exist just because you or I aren't afraid to hit the "find match" button.
The fact that these articles pop up, and that this issue comes up in various other threads every now and then indicates that there is an issue with the system, also simply by analyzing the system it's not hard to realize that there's no motivation or context to social interaction.
This is so true, I hate reading stuff like this because it scares me about the future of Sc2. I hope Blizzard get themselves sorted. It's such a good game.
On March 06 2012 05:42 gosublade wrote: There is definitely something missing from the game too. I used to play 22h sessions constantly on bw, while winning 1 out of 5 games. Sc2, 50% win ratio, can`t play for longer than 2h at a time
How long ago did you play BW to that level? Chances are (as with many people here) it was a while ago and your priorities and preferences have changed over the years. It isn't bad or a fault of the system, it's just the way things are.
For example, 15 years ago I would've been clamoring for in-game chat. Now, I only have a desire to talk to people that I know or at least people I can assume have a base level of competency and maturity. So bnet's current chat set up doesn't bug me too much.
How do you FIND people that have that base level of competency and maturity without a way to even interact with them properly?
I mean like you, I played BW some 15 years ago for hours and hours. I still have no purchased SC2 because the times I've tried it have made me really scorn Bnet 2.0 The changes were pretty much all bad except for matchmaking.
The thing is...I don't know why anyone would be against making Bnet 2.0 better because it doesnt bother the people that don't want it. They can sit in THE VOID and conduct business as usual where as the people that wanted the social atmosphere can go and have that.
I don't really understand their decision making with B.net 2.0 at all. How can you make an amazing social interface in 1.0 and then take away every positive about it in a latter generation?
On March 06 2012 05:42 gosublade wrote: There is definitely something missing from the game too. I used to play 22h sessions constantly on bw, while winning 1 out of 5 games. Sc2, 50% win ratio, can`t play for longer than 2h at a time
How long ago did you play BW to that level? Chances are (as with many people here) it was a while ago and your priorities and preferences have changed over the years. It isn't bad or a fault of the system, it's just the way things are.
For example, 15 years ago I would've been clamoring for in-game chat. Now, I only have a desire to talk to people that I know or at least people I can assume have a base level of competency and maturity. So bnet's current chat set up doesn't bug me too much.
How do you FIND people that have that base level of competency and maturity without a way to even interact with them properly?
I mean like you, I played BW some 15 years ago for hours and hours. I still have no purchased SC2 because the times I've tried it have made me really scorn Bnet 2.0 The changes were pretty much all bad except for matchmaking.
The thing is...I don't know why anyone would be against making Bnet 2.0 better because it doesnt bother the people that don't want it. They can sit in THE VOID and conduct business as usual where as the people that wanted the social atmosphere can go and have that.
Exactly. why people are so against improvement when its not even ridiculous request. this is an industry standard.
On March 06 2012 01:52 orangesunglasses wrote: love "ghost town effect" it fully describes the problem. the other problem is blizz who created so many popular games sucks at making them AMAZING games most of the time
Can someone start a petition to really get some attention? I think if we bring this problem to Blizzard's attention and make them realize how big of an issue is (you want your sequels to sell, eSports to grow, and have another cash-cow?) then they won't be able to ignore it.
So instead of wanting a good game (SC2) people want chat rooms to talk to other guys in... Maybe I just don't get it but I long onto SC2 to play against other people and get better, when I'm tired of playing I log off and do something else. Seems strange to me that people want to log onto a game then go sit in chat rooms and talk to random guys. Sounds to me that you want to play and MMO but are playing an RTS.
Excelent article. I'm sad now because despite being a PC gamer for long time now, my online experience started really late. I didn't have acess to a good internet connection until around 2007ish. So having played both BW and WC3 singleplayer (among many other games) I realize that I have missed the most important part of them: the interaction. And looking at Bnet 2 and looking at what people describe Bnet1 was, it's clear that Bnet2 is complete miss. It would be really good that Blizzard implemented a good Bnet experience because it would add so much to the game (games if you count D3).~
I hope that blizzard open their eyes and do something about it. Before it's too late.
On March 06 2012 07:23 Ubenn wrote: So instead of wanting a good game (SC2) people want chat rooms to talk to other guys in... Maybe I just don't get it but I long onto SC2 to play against other people and get better, when I'm tired of playing I log off and do something else. Seems strange to me that people want to log onto a game then go sit in chat rooms and talk to random guys. Sounds to me that you want to play and MMO but are playing an RTS.
Except that this was already possible in all previous Blizzard RTS games... People like to be part of a community. Hell, that is why I'm on Team Liquid.
Anyone find it ironically amusing that facebook integration did nothing for the social aspect... why can't I chat to my facebook friends while on Starcraft? surely that's Integration.. and not just the ability to add email addresses...
such a good post, and should definitely take Blizzards money-addicted eyes off the building of money they live in and realize that there is a legitimate problem that will surely cause economic damage to them in the long run. An amazingly written article like this is sure to open eyes
On March 06 2012 02:39 TheRabidDeer wrote: The problem is that blizzard saw the awesome forum communities and how popular they were and thought that people would just use them instead of ingame stuff. While it is true that many do use forums.. its just not the same and many people didn't know about them and it is absolutely dead for them online. Chat and a social experience is necessary for a game in modern times. There to is no excuse to not have it.
But there already is chat...
Can someone that agrees with this article explain specifically what it is that they want (since the article does not)? None of this "better chat" nonsense...clear, concise ways that you think improve the social aspects of the game as a whole.
I played both Diablo 2 and WC3 for years, and was never keen on the chat. I never joined a clan in either game. That said, the chat and profile system *felt* social. You logged on and were immediately thrown into a chat full of people, as others have said. You could also check other people's profiles, where you'd find stats and stuff they'd written there, like clan info, interests, randomness. It all made me feel that I was playing within a larger community, even though I hardly ever attempted to interact with it! Importantly the chat was a lobby you could opt out of, whereas in SC2 it's something the particularly interested opt in for. The latter kind maintains and strengthens existing communities, but the former helps create new ones, and aids that curious feeling of a game-wide community.
A second point is the custom games interface. Custom game creation in WC3 (and setting up a game in D2) was a social affair. You named the game, you decided what it would be about. You were constantly evaluating and judging in relation to other, real people who had set them up. Even before entering a game, you were already interacting socially, or felt you were. It was also commonplace to play game after game with the same people, because the game would be re-hosted with either the same name or an intuitive one (baal run hell 2, baal run hell 3 etc.). SC2 has none of this, and as a result even custom games feel cold and lonely compared to WC3's.
I am sure SC2 may suffer from other problems as well; there is no reason to argue that this or that problem is more serious. It is sufficient to recognize that this particular problem is serious. We don't need to find and address "the one true problem", as if that was even possible.
Specifically, I believe the game would benefit greatly from the following features:
- A re-worked default interface that makes the first screen a chat full of people. Base it on the player's country (SWE-1, SWE-2 etc) like in WC3 and D2. Allow players to opt out or change their default chat to custom channels or ones organized by other criteria such as league.
- A custom game system where the players make their own games, with their own custom names. Let Blizzard be the only host, if that's important, but let the players set the games up.
- Allow players to search for profiles by their name. Let a search reveal a list of every player with that name. That way, you can find someone you played with despite not knowing their number (a common problem).
- Let us write messages in our profiles. It makes that guy we just beat/lost to more like a human being and less like a bot.
On March 06 2012 02:39 Zeller wrote: There's got to be some people around here that can actually get this across with some blizzard folks.
How about you and the people alongside you get this into your head.. They're aware of the complaints many SC2 players have and they don't give a shit.
People have got to realize that the blizzard they grew up with, the one they used to love is no longer there. It's gone, it's dead, now we have Actiblizz with their new policies of 1 account pr server, 3 expansionpacks and a whole ordeal of shitty policychanges that only benefits Actiblizz and their need for totalitarian control over anything that goes on.
The social interaction is a large part of most games, but I enjoy the fact that Starcraft and Starcraft 2 are games of skill. I enjoy talking to my friends and meeting new people on the internet (...usually.) but when I'm playing starcraft, I care only about my skill at the game, and I don't mind that there's not as much social interaction. If you want social interaction, in my opinion, that's what facebook is for.
For me, replays with friends is one of the most important features missing from sc2. A lot of my time in BW was spent watching a friend's game, or having a friend watch mine, while we talked about it. I'd log on for "yo dude come check out this awesome game I just played!" and have a fun time showing/watching the replay and chatting about it.
Sending the replay file isn't nearly as exciting, because you have to sync up and then watch the whole game through at the same speed in order to stay synced with your friend.
Honestly, i see complaints about bnet 2.0 all the time and im glad you guys are persistent. The entire bnet system is completely subpar. I wonder if they designed it that way because they were relying on websites like teamliquid and reddit and 4chan to have the community while the game itself is separate. What they really should do is not rely on 3rd party sources and develop their own way of housing a community. When i load up SC2, i do it to play the game. When i load up teamliquid/reddit/4chan, i do it to discuss the game and be a part of the community. It'd be cool if it was like BW or WC3 where i could do both in the same instance (see: bnet 1.0)
On March 06 2012 06:43 Noocta wrote: I tried to join the General Chat channel in Europe. 2 people in there.
._.
You should join the tl channel. Always 100 players. (full) Blizz should allow bigger channels.
TL is always full. :d Talk about disparity.
What IS the TL channel? Is it just TL? Or TL general? I remember there being a thread about it when channels first came out but when I went in them no one was in them...
I don't think the complaints are falling on deaf ears. The posts on the official forums have gotten enough traffic to warrant notice. There will be some changes in the future but I don't think they will come before HotS. I actually have 3 chat channels I automatically log into when I enter SC2 and they give me enough social interaction so that the game doesn't feel dead. My suggestion is to find good practice channels through TL and join them. Or start a thread about a new channel for social reasons based through TL. If you want to have a place where you can talk about how to improve your ZvZ make a ZvZ channel and post a thread here for people to see. Right now, we are going to have to use the system that is currently available and wait for an implementation of some of the social features people are asking for. The game doesn't give you the features right on login but the tools are there.
Which business goal is Blizzard following, that they are not implementing a chat system in their game?
Maybe because of it, it's much harder and more expensive to get useful community feedback out of ingame chat channels, than by the use of the starcraft forums all over the world?
- No storeage costs for chatlogs (prolly not even legal) - Availabilty to search througt petrabytes of infos form users and about them - no expensive 24/7 chat observer jobs - Gigantic market research potential
What else hold them back from implement chat channels?
On March 06 2012 02:10 Erik.TheRed wrote: isn't it silly how you can't even scroll up in chat without getting flipped to the bottom as soon as someone else types something?
isn't it nonsensical how people who are ignoring you are allowed to send you chat messages?
Exaclty. The way blizzard got all those small and easily modificable things wrong makes me wonder if only a single programmer worked on bnet. Reading a chat channel makes me so mad sometimes when it's active.
Try finding something in your match history, it'll always reset the game mode you were looking for a game in to "all", and you'll always have to scroll for ages if what you're looking for is dated. Why do I see my name several times in bnet pages and channels? Seeing my nickname (the one I picked) on the top right is sufficient to remind me of my identity. And I don't want a silly "facebook hurr" popup whenever I want to add someone to my friend list. The home page you get to whenever you login doesn't serve any use but to show us tychus' face and news nobody really cares about.
so basicly you guys want a /trade chat from world of warcraft or a justin tv chat like nasl when you enter sc2 ? wow you guys are plain crazy ... i mean some feature can be upgraded like costum game /w/f m but wanting a public chat that every troll/ rage and god know what more goes to otwn on .. no .. no thx blizzard please no
On March 06 2012 08:32 Diminisherqc wrote: so basicly you guys want a /trade chat from world of warcraft or a justin tv chat like nasl when you enter sc2 ? wow you guys are plain crazy ... i mean some feature can be upgraded like costum game /w/f m but wanting a public chat that every troll/ rage and god know what more goes to otwn on .. no .. no thx blizzard please no
So you never played on the original battlenet via BW I take it.
I agree with this article. I feel like blizzard wanted to create an incomplete game in order to sell the expansions. I don't know whether they lose sales because of this but I do feel lonely when I ladder. Only thing with which I can make it better is playing some stream in the background.
On March 06 2012 08:32 Diminisherqc wrote: so basicly you guys want a /trade chat from world of warcraft or a justin tv chat like nasl when you enter sc2 ? wow you guys are plain crazy ... i mean some feature can be upgraded like costum game /w/f m but wanting a public chat that every troll/ rage and god know what more goes to otwn on .. no .. no thx blizzard please no
All Blizz need to do is have a 'General' chat channel that you auto join when you login and can see off to one side, at all times while you are building up your courage to click that damn 'Find Match' button.
There are a bunch of features that Blizz could add to help, but this is the simple one. If you can see a bunch of activity, even if you're not talking you feel like you're part of a community.
world of starcraft mod everyone has toons and you can join games by moving your toon around and yelling: LFGAME! higher the league, you can move around to more places and find games with better players
On March 06 2012 07:23 Ubenn wrote: So instead of wanting a good game (SC2) people want chat rooms to talk to other guys in... Maybe I just don't get it but I long onto SC2 to play against other people and get better, when I'm tired of playing I log off and do something else. Seems strange to me that people want to log onto a game then go sit in chat rooms and talk to random guys. Sounds to me that you want to play and MMO but are playing an RTS.
I really don't understand people like you.
For some reason you believe that the quality of SC2 would decrease with "chat rooms to talk to other guys in." How is this so? Again, joining a chat room isn't mandatory for anyone. When you're tired of playing you log off and do something else so you clearly don't play games for any sort of social reason. That's fine...but others DO want that. You're also downplaying the affect chat rooms has on fostering a community that fosters MORE GAMES PLAYED and other such things. If you really want to look at numbers SC2 is less popular than D2. I don't know how you can get around the fact that there is a problem there.
On March 06 2012 02:39 TheRabidDeer wrote: The problem is that blizzard saw the awesome forum communities and how popular they were and thought that people would just use them instead of ingame stuff. While it is true that many do use forums.. its just not the same and many people didn't know about them and it is absolutely dead for them online. Chat and a social experience is necessary for a game in modern times. There to is no excuse to not have it.
But there already is chat...
Can someone that agrees with this article explain specifically what it is that they want (since the article does not)? None of this "better chat" nonsense...clear, concise ways that you think improve the social aspects of the game as a whole.
I played both Diablo 2 and WC3 for years, and was never keen on the chat. I never joined a clan in either game. That said, the chat and profile system *felt* social. You logged on and were immediately thrown into a chat full of people, as others have said. You could also check other people's profiles, where you'd find stats and stuff they'd written there, like clan info, interests, randomness. It all made me feel that I was playing within a larger community, even though I hardly ever attempted to interact with it! Importantly the chat was a lobby you could opt out of, whereas in SC2 it's something the particularly interested opt in for. The latter kind maintains and strengthens existing communities, but the former helps create new ones, and aids that curious feeling of a game-wide community.
A second point is the custom games interface. Custom game creation in WC3 (and setting up a game in D2) was a social affair. You named the game, you decided what it would be about. You were constantly evaluating and judging in relation to other, real people who had set them up. Even before entering a game, you were already interacting socially, or felt you were. It was also commonplace to play game after game with the same people, because the game would be re-hosted with either the same name or an intuitive one (baal run hell 2, baal run hell 3 etc.). SC2 has none of this, and as a result even custom games feel cold and lonely compared to WC3's.
I am sure SC2 may suffer from other problems as well; there is no reason to argue that this or that problem is more serious. It is sufficient to recognize that this particular problem is serious. We don't need to find and address "the one true problem", as if that was even possible.
Specifically, I believe the game would benefit greatly from the following features:
- A re-worked default interface that makes the first screen a chat full of people. Base it on the player's country (SWE-1, SWE-2 etc) like in WC3 and D2. Allow players to opt out or change their default chat to custom channels or ones organized by other criteria such as league.
- A custom game system where the players make their own games, with their own custom names. Let Blizzard be the only host, if that's important, but let the players set the games up.
- Allow players to search for profiles by their name. Let a search reveal a list of every player with that name. That way, you can find someone you played with despite not knowing their number (a common problem).
- Let us write messages in our profiles. It makes that guy we just beat/lost to more like a human being and less like a bot.
Everything here.
Plus group replays, and (as part of the custom game interface) a simple way to invite players to a game from the chat list, without actually having to friend/realID them.
On March 06 2012 03:26 jinorazi wrote: i dont know about others but clicking pisses me off, bring back / commands.
This is an example of an incorrect argument. Slash-commands were required in the legacy interface because there was nowhere to put that information in the UI (in the beginning, later it was shoehorned in and frankly looked terrible). War3 was built with the /f functionality built-in as a separate tab and it looked great, and it had a clan tab to boot. When you're complaining about what SC2 does and doesn't support, think about things that are actually absent rather than lamenting about clicking around in a UI.
SC2 has chat channels, it has /f m (called "broadcasts" now), it has individual chat windows.
It doesn't have channel moderation (of arguable usefulness, especially now that chat bots are gone meaning there are fewer--if any--channel wars), it doesn't have clan support, it doesn't have multi-viewer replays, it doesn't have a robust real-time tournament or event tracker. There is a lot of actual content that the current incarnation of Bnet doesn't support, so don't bother nitpicking about legacy slash-commands.
I've been following this thread throughout the day with great interest regarding the concern of social disassocation in StarCraft 2, and I'd like to offer some unique perspectives on the matter I haven't seen come up yet.
Most of what's been discussed already is the distress people are feeling with the lack of properly implemented chatrooms, or a distant perception from the community while within the game, among other such lacking features; automatic tournaments, clan or team systems, private channel moderation, poor ladder implementation, difficulty of the game, etc.. I'll even be the first to agree that to an extent the application some of these functions would bring will greatly improve upon the current battle.net design. However, what I don't see happening is the addition of these features reslolving the cold and indirect interaction people are becoming more perceptive of, because the root of the problem isn't lack of features, it's personability, or the lack there of. Furthermore, and likely to prompt some disagreement, the problem lays not only with Blizzard, but also with us, the community.
Let me clarify that last point so people don't write this off as some atypical bashing. There's a myriad resources the StarCraft community uses in order to come together with Team Liquid being the largest among them. Each one has an active body of people that contribute and support one another in some way, shape, or form, and that's a fantastic thing. You normally can't get that type of comradeship from other gaming communities. Where this commonwealth falls short however, is in their ability to maintain a centralized stage for non-professional teams to congegrate, communicate, and compete against one another, and where in my experience is the best place to create the personability we lack. Watching professional teams play in leagues like GTSL and NASTL is great for entertainment, but at the same time is incredibly impersonal. It doesn't inspire others to play unless they want to emulate their favorite player, and that desire doesn't last forever. Instead, they could be playing on their own team, and bonding with players of similar skill which will propagate their desire to play. We're months away from being two years into the release of StarCraft 2 and I'm still wondering why a competitive community like this has never taken the initiative to assemble themselves in this way.
Waiting around on Blizzard to dictate how people should come together through new features is an excuse. It will happen eventually, but what until then? To channel my grandfather, back in my day we didn't have no new-fangled clan tag system, or sophisticated lobbies. Hell, we just got piss drunk, tatooed our arms and talked through carrier pidgeon! Jesting aside, it's a good thing to let Blizzard know what needs improvement, but to wait around on them is a prospect nobody should be taking seriously. A centralized hub for non-professional teams is just one idea, one I know works, and there's a dozen more ideas people can come up with to make our StarCraft experience a little more brotherly. People just need to get involved.
What I miss the most is the lack of custom games. It's hard to make friends when we can't RM/SN and get the same guy to join again. Having the same guy show up to your game over and over again for two hours usually ended up with a new person on your friends list.
Well, that and being able to play maps that aren't shit...
I agree with the whole Battle.net 2.0 sucks -> no community -> less games line of reasoning, though.
I'd like to hear him explain WHY Battlenet 2.0 killed his RTS experience and ruined his childhood or whatever. You can still chat with players after matches and they added chat rooms so what's going on here? I'm really not sure what his problem is because he isn't saying anything specific. Uh, try to find friends who play the game? There's this website called teamliquid.net that sure as heck isn't a ghost-town, and if you can't find a thread for a practice partner or to chat or whatever you can make one if you're craving social interaction. I get what he's saying but he's not saying how Bnet 2.0 killed it which would be kind of helpful...
right now sc2 blew up as an esport and its great but eventually we need more player base as well we cant just float on people that watch we need people that play ! we need to make this game rich in both esport AND community. Its so crucial if we have half a million people playing every day on starcraft imagine the amount of viewers esports tourneys will start getting but instead people buy starcraft play single player, play multiplayer and then forget about the game and every once in a while they will start a team game with friends. and if blizzard really is so money hungry they could get rich from just selling profile portraits or lets say temporary ingame colours ( lets say you can purchase being yellow in every ladder game or whatever) simple features like these can make a company a fortune in no time this is how f2p games makes their money the difference is blizzard already charges money for the game itself????!!??!?!!? i dont understand whats there to lose for blizzard they can only win and still they decide to not do anything. they are completely blind sided for what needs to happen!
Excuse me for my rant i'm very passionate about this game and I want it to become as long lasting as broodwar was and not just a fluke.
I know my post will be drowned in pages of comments but here goes:
I agree 100% with OP. I played SC2 1 month and never launched the game again after that. This is also the first time I ever did that with a Blizzard game.
But before blaming SC2, could I be the problem ?
I think "Blizzard gamers" are people who were hooked to Blizzard on D2/BW/WC2/WoW. That means people now aged 25 - 35 years old with lives very different than the lives they had when they enjoyed Blizzard games.
I think the big factor here is that "Blizzard" gamers got old, got a job, got a family and now they have a big nostalgia effect when looking back at their "Blizzard" childhood.
Back in 2001, we wouldn't have blamed Battle.net. We would have used IRC, MSN, ICQ, AOL Chat, or whatever we needed to talk altogether.
But nowadays, because we can't relive the same feeling we had when playing D2 or BW, we blame Blizzard for the changes in our lifes :-)
Tho, Bnet2.0 is a fucking joke to be honest. Biggest joke ever.
On March 06 2012 02:22 kongoline wrote: we dont have the technology yet
Sometimes I wish there was a "like" button on TL...
Anyway, this is probably the core issue with the wider SC2 community. LoL and other DotA clones have shown us, if we had any doubt, that strategic depth and visual aesthetics are not the primary factor in a game's commumity success - social systems and community are.
People may have said War3, D2 and BW were popular because they were better games than, say, a C&C series game, but it was actually Bnet 1.0 that was their power.
This is exactly how I feel. I log on and play like 5 games, then I log off because it just doesn't have the social capabilities that the other blizzard games have. In BW I would log onto ICCUP even if I didn't feel like playing a game. I could talk to friends and clan members and mess around and have fun. The article by Azzure completely describes the state of Bnet 2.0.
There are other problems with SC2; namely all-in's and cheeses being too strong and the stress associated with losing to them.
However, socially speaking, I agree with this. Frankly I rarely chat much on B.net. I never played BW in its halcyon days but I hear stories all the time of how people would literally just spend all day logged in just for the social aspects of it. I'm envious of their fond memories, as SC2 is frankly a very isolated, personal thing. That's good sometimes, because I just wanna get in my zone and play by myself, but that doesn't mean I don't wanna talk the rest of the time...
Comparing two completely different games as 'evidence' for the article is laughable (D2 vs SC2 populations).
SC2 chat channels and you can talk with randoms or your friends all you want. WC3/BW channels were empty of any real conversation. It was either dead silent or full of bot spam.
The only real complaint is automated tourneys and clan stuff... which is pretty frustrating considering how long it's been since they said they were 'working on it'.
I stopped reading when it tried to claim Diablo 2 has more players currently playing. Im on diablo 2 right now and that's a lie, lawl.
Yes bnet .001 could do with some improvements, such as better team game matchmaking/removal of popularity for custom games/automated tournaments/Clans that you can actually moderate and a 1v1 unranked mode that uses MMR and some cross region support. As well as a live feed in the client for big tournament streams just like League of Legends has it.
If blizzard is worried about lost sales from cross region, just make sure 1 cd key can only be in use no matter what region you are in.
Maybe we need a poll? I don't really miss having a main chatroom at all; actually, I think it's better that I don't have to read chat unless I want to on Bnet2. You can still join a chat if you want, or have a chatroom with your friends, etc. If I really want to discuss something with strangers I can come to sites like these which are properly moderated
edit: I will add though, they really should add clan support (not for average players like me, but for teams) and shared replay viewing. Oooh and tournaments. Would do so so much for the game.
1- B.Net 1.0 is more like a chatroom. B.Net 2.0 is more like a browser (if you can even call it that) with a MSN/AIM/gtalk at the bottom right hand corner. Sure, B.Net 2.0 has the ability to do everything B.Net 1.0 can do, but its default post login screen shows blizzard's newest updates and news, while B.Net 1.0's default post login screen is chatroom. If I was a newbie and with no friends that play the game and no idea what TL.net is, then the only source of interaction with other players would be in-game.
2- UMS and casual games are difficult to find. Unless I'm mistaken, B.Net 2.0 shows all the top UMS maps, and it is very rare to see new maps make it to the rotation of the top maps. After a while, you will get tired of seeing the same maps over and over again. UMS games was a great place to relax after a hard day of 3v3 BGH (see later in paragraph). They need to revert back to the old system where only games with a host are shown. Casual games (although this goes hand in hand with my next point) are also difficult to find. Sometimes I just want to "3v3@BGH PROS ONLY" but I don't have a team to stack.
3- Lack of channel communities. Back in the days of B.Net 1.0 on useast, you can join clan x17, motel, whoa, etc etc etc. The only channel that I know in SC2 is teamliquid and it is always full. I have some channels (thanks to CSL) where I generally hang out and see familiar faces, but fresh blood is very rare.
4- Although this is indirect, the presence of different leagues somewhat discourages player interaction. Back the days of B.Net 1.0 (and especially in clan x17) anyone can shit talk anyone in the channel and then they would duke it out in a 1v1 LT with obs (more like witnesses), where the loser receives an endless barrage of "ROFL EZ NEWB GTFO". And yet the loser would come back the next day and the cycle begins again. Yes, this is entertainment at its finest and I would sit in the chat just to read it. With the presence of leagues, a bronze player will never shit talk a gold player because by default they already lost.
Anyways, I guess this is more of a rant than anything. Hopefully there were some good points made and I apologize for the BW references.
If they don't fix battle.net 2.0, I'm not buying HoTS. This is coming from a guy who bought SC1, BW, D2, D3, D3, LoD, WC3, WC3 TFT, SC2. The social interaction in this game is soooooooooooooooooooooo bad. Such a big step back from WC3 with it's clan + tournament features.
Blizz could implement an effing web browser into the UI if they wanted, and it would be awesome. Even if you could only reach battle.net forums through the UI, it'd make a huge difference.
Social interaction over the internet is well established and there's no excuse for not implementing any of it that makes sense other than "we don't care" and "it's not in our best interest financially for #include <reasons.h>".
I don't know about anyone else but i don't play RTS games to socialize. Yeh all these features you talk about would be nice but i get the feeling you care about them more then the actual gameplay.
1v1 unranked mode that uses MMR and some cross region support
1v1 unranked that uses MMR? That doesn't make sense. using the MMR for that would just mean that you are ranked secretly.
if you don't use MMR then people will treat it as a cesspit for wonky strategy's all the time and they wont care if they win or loose, which makes the mode pretty pointless. Now with MMR in the unranked mode the people that use it for ACTUALLY practicing/ learning a new race will get evenly matched opponents. The guys that don't take it seriously will be ranked with like minded people who want to fuck around.
Like people are saying, while the lack of social environment could certainly cause a reduction of played games, I think that's just a small piece of the picture.
Overall, the problem is just battle.net 2.0 in general, which not only has poor social support, but has terribly annoying "features", and a lack of features such as:
• Unable to view/share replays with others — WTF mate? • Stupid auto-start timer (doesn't give much time to change to the proper race, for instance) • Hosts cannot kick idiotic griever players from their games — they have to round up private people to play with or else deal with the grievers/trolls in public games • Slow, and laggy interface for the entire battle.net system (this is with a good connection and fast computer) • Terrible game listing system - People cannot have titles for their games, such as for certain skill levels only, or for certain novelty rules, or for practicing a certain matcup - Map listing system doesn't show games with players waiting to play a game. There could be 9 people waiting to play a game but noone will ever join because it's not high on the popularity list - General lack of, or poorly implemented sorting/rating/categorization of maps currently. Sure there's popularity, but not only does it only use 1 arbitrary method of popularity (hours played in the last X time?), but more importantly, it is the ONLY method of listing or finding a game (aside from keyword), which is terrible.
I'd say the lack of being able to play custom games (be it melee, or special) REALLY hurts gameplay numbers, because the majority of players aren't too interested in ladder/melee (at least that's how it was in Brood War), and even those who do ladder/melee lots, might sometimes want to cool off with a more relaxing game (problem is currently the games are kinda sucky due to the bad listing system).
Finally an argument I can understand. I always saw people complaining about Battle.net 2.0 and I disregarded it because they were complaining about chat channels even though they were in the game. But now I get it. I do remember when I logged into SC:BW, you were already in a chat channel and chat was flowing, you could see it and that gives off a feeling of its own. I would like to see this in battle.net 2.0. Not only that, but I would like to see this become a staple of battle.net 2.0. I don't want the background to be a picture of a unit and the "find match" button. I want the background to be chat, and I want the find match features listed along the side.
SC2 is boring and lonely, only if you are. Try to look back to the first place people. You log into SC2, and if it is your first time playing, you have no social networks, no friend's(that actively play), and have no idea of which channel to go to if you want to form teams and learn to play competitive ladder games.
My point in the end, is that you must play the game in order to build a social network, and this will allow you that nostalgia and familiarity you had so effortlessly worked for in prior blizzard rts games, and find so irritably, and uncomfortably pained with, in attempting to build anew in SC2.
SC2 is a Ghost Town?!? TAKE a Look In The Mirror People!
I don´t get why so many complaints about the custom map interface. In W3 only thing you could find was Dota.....
Errr, better clarify that, in both W3 and BW when you wanted to play a custom game only popular maps were hosted consistently just like in Sc2...
And I talk to my Bnet friends all the time. Many of the chat channels are filled with idle people laddering. I just talk to the friends I have made in our private chat. But oh well I never was too much into chatcraft.
On March 06 2012 11:39 TERRANLOL wrote: Finally an argument I can understand. I always saw people complaining about Battle.net 2.0 and I disregarded it because they were complaining about chat channels even though they were in the game. But now I get it. I do remember when I logged into SC:BW, you were already in a chat channel and chat was flowing, you could see it and that gives off a feeling of its own. I would like to see this in battle.net 2.0. Not only that, but I would like to see this become a staple of battle.net 2.0. I don't want the background to be a picture of a unit and the "find match" button. I want the background to be chat, and I want the find match features listed along the side.
I really think that Blizzard has assumed that the market is fundamentally different and that things like "real ID" and a friends list are the direction that social gaming is heading. But I think they underestimate how much desire there is for a social experience with strangers too. I think they missed the boat in terms of a community forming around the game. People don't get invested in a game just because they like the game, but also because they feel like a part of something bigger, and when you see all these chat scroll and people talking, it makes you have a social connection to the game that goes beyond you friends. In much the same going to a concert feels like a social experience because everyone there is a fan of the same band. If SC2 were a concert you'd all just sit in a private room listening segregated from everyone else - it just isn't the same, even if all those other people are still technically listening.
SC2 is my favorite game but I can't ever find good practice partners on NA. Even if I spam 4 channels for hours, I can't find anyone to play with. (as mid master)
Instead I have to ensue playing random maps and matchups all the time on ladder facing all-ins 75% of the time from people who care about their "ladder score." Like that matters...
I think Dustin Browder has said in an interview regarding chat channels that he wants people to socialize on forums, etc., rather than in the game itself..
On March 06 2012 07:23 Ubenn wrote: So instead of wanting a good game (SC2) people want chat rooms to talk to other guys in... Maybe I just don't get it but I long onto SC2 to play against other people and get better, when I'm tired of playing I log off and do something else. Seems strange to me that people want to log onto a game then go sit in chat rooms and talk to random guys. Sounds to me that you want to play and MMO but are playing an RTS.
I really don't understand people like you.
For some reason you believe that the quality of SC2 would decrease with "chat rooms to talk to other guys in." How is this so? Again, joining a chat room isn't mandatory for anyone. When you're tired of playing you log off and do something else so you clearly don't play games for any sort of social reason. That's fine...but others DO want that. You're also downplaying the affect chat rooms has on fostering a community that fosters MORE GAMES PLAYED and other such things. If you really want to look at numbers SC2 is less popular than D2. I don't know how you can get around the fact that there is a problem there.
Were you never on the original Bnet 1.0?
You're right...you just dont' get it.
Theres plenty of ways to talk to other people on the internet and "socialize" if you call it that. Facebook ect. Why does sc2 have to be so much about social networking? I play sc2 and other games because i enjoy playing the games themselves. If i want to socialize then i go out or talk to friends on the phone. You can add all the chat channels you want but what you really want is sc2 to be something like wow or d2 which it isnt. This is an rts game and you're essentially playing the game yourself. Some people enjoy 1 player games, others dont. Thats life
On March 06 2012 12:07 Tump wrote: SC2 is my favorite game but I can't ever find good practice partners on NA. Even if I spam 4 channels for hours, I can't find anyone to play with. (as mid master)
Instead I have to ensue playing random maps and matchups all the time on ladder facing all-ins 75% of the time from people who care about their "ladder score." Like that matters...
On March 06 2012 07:23 Ubenn wrote: So instead of wanting a good game (SC2) people want chat rooms to talk to other guys in... Maybe I just don't get it but I long onto SC2 to play against other people and get better, when I'm tired of playing I log off and do something else. Seems strange to me that people want to log onto a game then go sit in chat rooms and talk to random guys. Sounds to me that you want to play and MMO but are playing an RTS.
I really don't understand people like you.
For some reason you believe that the quality of SC2 would decrease with "chat rooms to talk to other guys in." How is this so? Again, joining a chat room isn't mandatory for anyone. When you're tired of playing you log off and do something else so you clearly don't play games for any sort of social reason. That's fine...but others DO want that. You're also downplaying the affect chat rooms has on fostering a community that fosters MORE GAMES PLAYED and other such things. If you really want to look at numbers SC2 is less popular than D2. I don't know how you can get around the fact that there is a problem there.
Were you never on the original Bnet 1.0?
You're right...you just dont' get it.
Where does my post say that "the quality of SC2 would decrease with chat rooms to talk to other guys in"? Don't make things up, you just look stupid. I don't think it would decrease anything within the game, I just think it's unnecessary. There are chat channels now, I don't see what's wrong with them, I seem to be able to use them perfectly fine.
Numbers wise I could really give a shit less every time I log on I constantly play different people sometimes I'll get the same person 2 times in a row in masters. This happens far less each division you go down, that's enough people for me. I'd much rather have them work on making the game better/balanced/maps ect... Not chat rooms.
Problems with the chat rooms: 50 person max. no passwording. no user moderation. bad integration with in game chat. barely any short / commands. piggybacks on the messaging system which has fun stuff like getting chat invites you can't ignore.
This is just from memory, but there's your problems.
On March 06 2012 14:53 Resistentialism wrote: Problems with the chat rooms: 50 person max. no passwording. no user moderation. bad integration with in game chat. barely any short / commands. piggybacks on the messaging system which has fun stuff like getting chat invites you can't ignore.
This is just from memory, but there's your problems.
Overall, the solutions to most of these problems can come from Blizzard taking a Valve-like approach and letting go of all of this overbearing control. Certain aspects I agree need to be monitored based on experience from BW, like the UMS scene. But opening up the system to have multiple ladders customizable by communities like TL or ICCUp and allowing for a more dynamic social experience that is more customizable on the users end would really push this game far. They compared to many other game they are definitely one of the more responsive companies, but in the direction this game would like to go, we need them be more dynamic and responsive. Almost unreasonably so, thus the need for a more open source approach to many things.
On March 06 2012 07:23 Ubenn wrote: So instead of wanting a good game (SC2) people want chat rooms to talk to other guys in... Maybe I just don't get it but I long onto SC2 to play against other people and get better, when I'm tired of playing I log off and do something else. Seems strange to me that people want to log onto a game then go sit in chat rooms and talk to random guys. Sounds to me that you want to play and MMO but are playing an RTS.
I really don't understand people like you.
For some reason you believe that the quality of SC2 would decrease with "chat rooms to talk to other guys in." How is this so? Again, joining a chat room isn't mandatory for anyone. When you're tired of playing you log off and do something else so you clearly don't play games for any sort of social reason. That's fine...but others DO want that. You're also downplaying the affect chat rooms has on fostering a community that fosters MORE GAMES PLAYED and other such things. If you really want to look at numbers SC2 is less popular than D2. I don't know how you can get around the fact that there is a problem there.
Were you never on the original Bnet 1.0?
You're right...you just dont' get it.
Where does my post say that "the quality of SC2 would decrease with chat rooms to talk to other guys in"? Don't make things up, you just look stupid. I don't think it would decrease anything within the game, I just think it's unnecessary. There are chat channels now, I don't see what's wrong with them, I seem to be able to use them perfectly fine.
Numbers wise I could really give a shit less every time I log on I constantly play different people sometimes I'll get the same person 2 times in a row in masters. This happens far less each division you go down, that's enough people for me. I'd much rather have them work on making the game better/balanced/maps ect... Not chat rooms.
Yeah, I also don't understand the obsession with chat rooms - in reality, it's a very easy thing to implement. However, I would rather have other things done in the game rather than chat rooms. Also, I don't believe that having chat rooms will increase the participation rate of ladder.
Honestly I spend a lot more time on TL than actually playing SC2. I play a few games and get off. I never had that feeling in WC3, which I play everyday. In my opinion, it's more refreshing to log on and talk to other people. Finding friends in-game is pretty difficult, and very few of my real life friends know what Starcraft 2 is let alone own it.
On March 06 2012 01:57 liberal wrote: I don't quite understand what you think blizzard has done wrong. There are team games, there are chat channels, both staple and self-created, you can set up custom obs matches, custom ums games...
What exactly is missing that is needed? You can't compare the gameplay, because an MMO and an RTS aren't even in the same category.
I would say a big difference is the first screen you see when you log on. When you signed onto SC1 or SCBW you were automatically placed into a chat channel where people talked and it felt like an active area (I understand there was spam and immaturity, but it felt different). I think those are the kinds of simple features the OP is trying to direct attention to.
/agree, great post and interesting article. hopefully blizzard recognizes their failure and fixes it soon, at least with HoTS.
Finding friends in SC2 is waay harder than any other blizzard game. And i completely agree that a major contributer to that is the poor UI and social interface. I always hate to see regressing in video games (whether it be in multiplayer functionality, graphics, content, UI, or whatever else developers can forget or mess up), and this is certainly exemplary of that.
Agreed with OP. Basically, B.net 2.0 is bad for meeting new people.
SC2's B.net is fine if you have a set of friends, use mumble, and an in-game chat channel where you hang out. But what if no one's on mumble and the chat is empty? There's no way to find people to add to your friends list. I occasionally PM people after a ladder game, but it doesn't happen very often.
Whenever stuff like this gets pointed out there are always a couple posters saying "oh well that one feature is not a big deal you guys! Just chat on reddit" or whatever. This shit adds up. Yes, poor chat room support by itself is not a deal breaker, but no shared replays, the custom game system. no lan...it all adds up.
I agree it would be refreshing to log into sc2 and have the chat screen going away with some random topic. For multiple older other RTS's I would just jump on for the chat not necessarily the game itself.
Okay look, for all the people complaining about *others* wanting chat, (which is just a single thing that adds together with MANY failed social design decisions in 2.0), you are not being forced to participate in any chat, like the 1.0 home screen had a button "Enter Chat," etc; basically you can continue playing sc2 like a "singleplayer game" as some suggest their ideal experience is. (however I also think a lot of those opinions are not informed by experiences with b.net 1.0)
but it's idiotic to suggest that the people who want channels are just being picky about their game, or are entitled and should just interact on FB, reddit tl etc, please don't make suggestions for others in your own image. It's not up to you to dictate the Bnet experience for everyone, especially when certain improvements are very simple and maybe even archaic (how long have chat channels existed on the internet?). And also, the 2.0 chat/flist/channels are still very lacking in key areas that would improve user experience, eg. /commands, larger rooms, moderation, inviting to chats without permission, true invisible mode/DND, chat scrolling to the bottom with new messages, no way to search players for real IDs.. these are improvements to CHAT alone, which is just one dimension of the problem, probably 2nd to the abject failure UMS custom system
and also, we still dont have fucking clans, are you kidding me? An unfortunate explanation for all of this would be that these features are going to be marketed to us as HotS exclusive or "Bnet Premium" or something. I imagine a bunch of old school blizzard employees in a corner of the breakroom, whispering about how incompetent and disconnected the upper management is and lamenting the loss of a fanbase so like themselves..
i think this really is one of the big problems with SC2.I also played WoW for many years but stipped because it is payed to play(i was paying with gold but the "dealer" didnt have cards)and if WoW gets free now,even that now cata is total shit compared to the other 2 expos.i woud still play it for many hours a day only because the social aspect.SC2 really lags many features taht coud make it so much popular.when i started playing SC2 i started with some of my friends but now im alone they all gave it up,and im palying really little maybe 5-8 ladder games/week.I really liek the community and im following every single tournament there is but it makes me so sad that there are so little people playing it now.
On March 06 2012 10:33 slytown wrote: You know why noone's in the BNET chat rooms? It's because they are all on TL and Redditt chatting. I don't understand the complaints.
What does that have to do with anything?
I know you guys think that Tlnet is a good place with TONS of people and really, I love this forum to death but it really isn't enormous as far as online communities go. Even Reddit is as big as it is because it's got far more going on than just SC2 in it.
How is this a proper excuse for how terrible Bnet 2.0 is? Disregarding the fact that the chat system is clumsy as all hell the custom game system is terrible. There is no acceptable way to get a new map to shoot off the ground because the popularity system is a mess. Imagine for a moment if DOTA had never existed prior to SC2. Then today somebody makes Dota exactly like it is an introduces it. In this current custom game system you would never see a soul play it because it would be on page like ...4 on the custom map panal and people never go there. Even if you yourself browse it you will never get a full game.
You really truly underestimate what a good social environment does for a games' longevity. At the current rate SC2 will see spikes for expansions but once the second one is out you're shit out of luck unless things are improved. A proper modding system and a proper social interface really helps a game live forever in RTS terms. That's why you have so many people still playing WC3.
"The ability to make custom games, so you can for example, make a game called “Level 10 duels”, or simply meet with some folks that aren’t on your friends list for any particular reason or event."
This very last point in the article I think is something like ~80% of the reason SC2 is a ghost town. The popularity contest needs to go away. Not only are there only about 10-25 maps that anyone can reasonably play at a time with strangers, but it would take like an hour to organize a game where everyone goes in with some pre-determined playstyle. For instance, say I want to play special forces for the 500th time because there is nothing else good winning the popularity contest, I also want everyone to play as an infestor because, well fuck, I think that would be cool. Well I can't do that without spending time organizing it and maybe I only play games when I'm feeling lazy (rolleyes). Or maybe I'm new and I don't want to piss everyone off with my suck so I want to join a game with other newbs. Can't do that either. Or maybe I want play the same map with the same people but don't want to put so much awkward social effort into it. You used to be able to just look in the game list and find the same game and enter it. Then you could be all like 'well that game sucked, mike was a dumbass and made carriers'.
You don't get any of that in bnet 2.0. It's a borefest that has virtually eliminated the mapmaking community and requires you to put in a stupid amount of effort to do what people could already do easily in Bnet 1.0.
4. The ability to make custom games, so you can for example, make a game called “Level 10 duels”, or simply meet with some folks that aren’t on your friends list for any particular reason or event.
This can't be emphasized enough! Big reason why we will never see the amount of great custom maps that WC3 had, amongst them Tower Defense and DotA. You can't rly host a game , there is only that join game bullshit. This is holding back the growth and longevity of the game soo much! Just think about all those people who only ever go on WC3 bnet to play fun maps....
Also the reason why community maps from ESV, Crux and TPW are held back so much. Only viable place to get good opponents in bnet is the ladder, when you just "join game" you have a) no idea how long it will take for someone else to join the map (likely forever since nobody knows you just joined a game on ESV Sanshorn Mist so nobody will ever join) and b) if for some reason somebody does join, he is most likely not your skill level at all.
We can only hope this will be fixed in HotS and with the marketplace system. But you better not get your hopes up high, considering Bnet 0.2 so far was complete bullshit, a total hindrance for SC2, worse than platforms of their previous games and overall just a disgrace.
On March 06 2012 02:04 Talin wrote: Honestly, WoW seems like a pretty bad example of built-in social interaction systems to me and suffers from a similar issue (a ton of players just autopiloting through the game without much communication at all). Needless to say that SC2 is infinitely worse, but if you were looking for examples you'd probably be looking towards something like EVE instead.
well your are right about wow now. but back in the days the game was very well designed around socializing on the server. they ruined it almost completely with cata, and some stuff before.
basically you can say that when activision came on board a lot of stuff went down the road with blizz.
On March 06 2012 15:11 Sovano wrote: Honestly I spend a lot more time on TL than actually playing SC2. I play a few games and get off. I never had that feeling in WC3, which I play everyday. In my opinion, it's more refreshing to log on and talk to other people. Finding friends in-game is pretty difficult, and very few of my real life friends know what Starcraft 2 is let alone own it.
This except for the WC3 part (never played that online). I'll happily poke around TL all the time. Even during my lunch break at work or sometimes when I'm waiting for an incubation time on an experiment or whatever. But when I get on SC2 in the evening I'll just play through a few games and done. Almost all of the interaction I end up having with other players actually through battle.net is my opponent raging after a loss.
Hell, I didn't even have anyone on my friends list until a couple weeks ago. I've lately been picking up 4v4s to unwind when I don't feel like 1v1 laddering. I've added a few people now; I never talk to them but it actually feels slightly better now I can see theres actual other people online who aren't just rage-fests. That said it'd be nice to actually meet people a bit easier; however the chat system is just awful and frankly I don't even know where to go for decent chat channels under the current crippled system.
I've even thought about taking a bit of a holiday and going all the way to the US to IPL4. But given the complete lack of people I know playing and the fact I don't know anyone IRL who plays I'm thinking it'd be a waste of time.
Blizzard wants people to play WoW instead its easy to see why they don't want people to stay playing SC2 other than to come back and buy the expansions .
The motive is there they want people back to WoW. I'm willing to be alot of the SC2 players are former WoW people.
On March 06 2012 19:01 Lightspeaker wrote: Almost all of the interaction I end up having with other players actually through battle.net is my opponent raging after a loss.
Yup, and vice versa. I sometimes just rage because there's no one to talk to.
It is pretty sad that 10 year old games have better social interaction structure than battlenet 2.0. That said, I can't even muster much energy to be angry over it, it's more a sense of defeat.
On March 06 2012 11:39 TERRANLOL wrote: Finally an argument I can understand. I always saw people complaining about Battle.net 2.0 and I disregarded it because they were complaining about chat channels even though they were in the game. But now I get it. I do remember when I logged into SC:BW, you were already in a chat channel and chat was flowing, you could see it and that gives off a feeling of its own. I would like to see this in battle.net 2.0. Not only that, but I would like to see this become a staple of battle.net 2.0. I don't want the background to be a picture of a unit and the "find match" button. I want the background to be chat, and I want the find match features listed along the side.
ye i agree with this. in bw you just logged in and people were talking and all around and you could see them in the lists etc. it was there by default and it was all around you when you werent ingame. you were the closest thing to connected as possible
in sc2 i log in and theres nothing, except when friends talk to you personally. even if you join a chat channel its usually pretty dead plus they are hard to find, and they are so small and tiny and the interface is just annoying small windows and annoying click sounds wherever i click in bnet.
imagine logging into sc2 and theres a screen in top right of a stream that shows some pro tournament, and the background is all chat just going wild over that game. you click channels and you can join "sweden", "germany" channels all over the place. they are there as default and bnet really tries to involve you into socializing. in sc2 it just feels like it doesnt actually try to encourage you at all to be socializing. you dont log and see huge splashes of conversations to enter or topics to read about or nothing. only thing you feel invited to do when u enter bnet is to search for a game.
i think really many wants this social interaction and even if they gave us chat channels, they cap it and we have to join it and know what the channel is called and we have to enter it like its some secret place. and then were there and its dead anyway with afk people cause nobody feels like chatting in this small awful looking green bluish window where you have to lean forward to read what things say
to paint a picture of what im getting at abit entering bnet should give the feeling of entering a market, there should be people all around you doing different stuff. get visually encouraged and invited to take part yourself.
in sc1 i made all my friends and contacts through bnet and custom games. in sc2 i didnt make a single friend by just starting conversation with random people on bnet. i think that just speaks for itself how discouraging bnet 2.0 is from a social aspect
It's not only the lack of features and integration I've an issue with, it's also the very act of trying to typing something out in SC2 feels really unresponsive and sluggish, leading to many misstypes. I don't understand how they could have gotten this so wrong, the only time there should be noticable latency is when you actually hit enter and send the message across bnet, it frustrates me to no end.
On March 06 2012 01:52 orangesunglasses wrote: love "ghost town effect" it fully describes the problem. the other problem is blizz who created so many popular games sucks at making them AMAZING games most of the time
This is what I hate about all gaming communities. Full of ungrateful pricks who think even their mom would design better games. Blizz games are amazing! Of course you teenagers who have never designed or produced real games can not appreciate anything, you are just simple consumers who whine about everything.
On March 06 2012 01:52 orangesunglasses wrote: love "ghost town effect" it fully describes the problem. the other problem is blizz who created so many popular games sucks at making them AMAZING games most of the time
This is what I hate about all gaming communities. Full of ungrateful pricks who think even their mom would design better games. Blizz games are amazing! Of course you teenagers who have never designed or produced real games can not appreciate anything, you are just simple consumers who whine about everything.
Can't say if you are trolling or not, but the problem here isn't that blizz sucks at making proper games. The main issue is that bnet 1.0 is better than 2.0 in almost everyway. That's what so infuriating, and really unfortunate for a game that could be such a great platform for socialising while playing a great game.
People have been asking for proper chat channels, clan support etc (everything has mostly been covered already). So it's not that we nag on blizzard telling them they have made a shit game, it's just that most of us can't grasp how they ended up making bnet 2.0 infinitely worse then its predecessor.
On March 06 2012 19:47 MorroW wrote: to paint a picture of what im getting at abit entering bnet should give the feeling of entering a market, there should be people all around you doing different stuff. get visually encouraged and invited to take part yourself.
This is the best analogy I've seen for what I was getting at earlier. Theres just no real encouragement to get involved and it feels difficult to do so because its inherently hidden away and thus seems rather "cliquey". This is especially bad for someone like me who doesn't know anyone IRL who plays and didn't play BW to any huge extent and so doesn't know anyone from back then either.
Doesn't help when the only chat channel I used to try to get into (Teamliquid) usually has 65+ people either in game or afk, 20 or so silent, 10 peddling off custom games I have no desire to play, and 5 people arguing or just plain spamming.
It's always full, but always so boring.
Sometimes I wonder if battle.net 2.0 is not fully to blame, but also the aging community that's more concerned with skill than having fun.... It seems like the overemphasis of E-sports and underemphasis of fun in Starcraft 2 is almost stifling any new blood to the game
Clans (including clan tags AND a clan chat channel), group replay viewing.
Some basic starter channels like general looking for group / looking for team (or clan) could also help people show that there are other people online.
On March 06 2012 01:52 orangesunglasses wrote: love "ghost town effect" it fully describes the problem. the other problem is blizz who created so many popular games sucks at making them AMAZING games most of the time
This is what I hate about all gaming communities. Full of ungrateful pricks who think even their mom would design better games. Blizz games are amazing! Of course you teenagers who have never designed or produced real games can not appreciate anything, you are just simple consumers who whine about everything.
Blizz did create a good bnet - TWICE.
Both the bnet of broodwar and the bnet of warcraft 3 were way superior to bnet 0.2 of starcraft 2.
I hate to say this, and obviously it's just my opinion, but I think Blizzard just doesn't care about its games anymore.
I started thinking about this when they started implementing "Paid" services in WoW. Like paid character name changes, or server transfers. My first thoughts about this was "Doesn't Blizzard already make enough money to NOT have to resort to these things?" Not to mention this inadvertantly brought the end of WoW since those who had the extra funds just transfered to the more populated servers while everyone else was left with dead servers and nobody to interact with. I mean your already paying 20- or so odd dollars a MONTH just to be allowed to play their games; that you've already paid for, as well as another 60$ every 6 months for a new expansion. I understand server maintenance and such so I suppose a monthly fee CAN be argued.
Then I picked up SC2. Obvioulsy after only having played for two months, my only exposure to how Blizzard dealt with balance was with the Ghost nerf. From what I read on the subject there seemed to be so many better ways to go about nerfing said unit, but did Blizzard actually listen? No.
I also have to agree with everyone who says that 2.0 was really ruined in a way that it doesn't even come close to the caliber of its predecessor. There's no clans, no group replays, barely any chat functions. It's safe to say SC2, aside from it's exterior community, is practically an anti-social platform. I mean what's more fun than to have a couple of your friends analyze a replay of a game you just lost on ladder? Or in a custom game? Sure we have streams now-a-days but not all of us have the luxury of being able to do so. This isn't a complaint, this is fact.
This leads me to my final thought on the subject, which sort of compliments my first statement. Does Blizzard actually listen to what we have to say? Do they just pretend; or respond ever so slightly just to apease the masses so they keep playing their games? I feel as though a company I've grown to love as a kid, has crumbled under what has brought so many other corporations down, Greed.
And TWO expansions for SC2?? REALLY? :\ Have fun balancing this one Blizzard.
It would be great if teamliquid made an article about this - use this thread and this huge thread for input. Problem there is really no way to pressure blizzard, an article on TL would do something!
Blizzard needs to appear committed enough to their games that you buy the next one, and buy the expansion pack, but what do they gain if you are in a pwnsome guild and play SC2 24/7? They need to make a game good enough to play and for it to be amazing, but a spirit of community just stops you playing other games. OMG Blizzard is the devil, I have solved the meaning of life.
On March 06 2012 21:21 Lizarb wrote: Clans (including clan tags AND a clan chat channel), group replay viewing.
Some basic starter channels like general looking for group / looking for team (or clan) could also help people show that there are other people online.
I agree with everything and chat moderation to clan channels at least. And proper chat so you can actually read older messages in active chat channel (as it goes to bottom when new message is posted)
Bnet is now hurting casual players so much that it really needs to be fixed.. There is like near to zero interaction with other players in Bnet 2.0 (other than clans and teams that are made before sc2.. yet it is still sometimes a pain in the ass without proper tools).
I just want a reply from Blizzard about this situation. Blizzard is going to fail big time if they don't fix bnet in HotS or earlier.
I just don't know why we have to beat this over their heads several times before they get the picture, and even then they do it half heatedly, even though its the single biggest problem BNET2 has. I have no idea what their BA's are doing or thinking.
I remember in BW, I'd sign on and immediately I'd join a channel where I'd normally hang out and see a bunch of people I know. I would see people talking over my friends list to eachother which would make me want to talk to them / join the conversation. I could easily just do /f l to see a simple and easy+fast to read list of exactly whcih of my friends were online, what games they were in, and what channels they were in. I could /f m to talk across my entire friends list and say hi to everyone and immediately be in a conversation.
In SC2, I sign on and am greeted by emptiness. I immediately see some pointless and out of date news article by Blizzard. I then have to click open my friends list and am given no real information about what their doing. I can't just say hi to everyone, I could use the broadcast thing but no one uses that and it's no where near the same as /f m since for someone to respond to me they have to open up their friends list, scroll to find me, then right click my name and click chat which opens a new window and then they can talk to me.
Any social aspect of SC2 is so much harder to use and it's just not there. In BW I was immediately engaged and promoted to talk to people and have fun. Most of the people i know in BW would literally have their comp on 24/7 running BW, or if not that they would have stealthbot on ( a program that would log you onto bnet to be able to chat ). Like, you guys don't understand how big a part of just idling and talking in chat channels was of BW. That's how you got games 90% of the time. Everything promoted social activity which resulted in people wanting to just stay on b.net all the time.
Just thinking of certain channels brings back memories. When I think of op hyo- I remember when I just started getting into competiive bw and it was big step for me going into there and playing games non stop with koreans. Then there were channels to chat like tl-west, x17, and tot) where there were literally always people just hanging out and talking, and most of the time you could find people looking for 1v1's or doing UMS's. And that's not mentioning the multiple different teams that I was in over the years, each with a channel that brings up different memories of different people.
There's so much more I could talk about lol, for those of you who don't understand why bnet1 was so much better than bnet2 ... I feel sorry for you
On March 06 2012 21:50 SCVonSteroids wrote:I hate to say this, and obviously it's just my opinion, but I think Blizzard just doesn't care about its games anymore.
I started thinking about this when they started implementing "Paid" services in WoW. Like paid character name changes, or server transfers. My first thoughts about this was "Doesn't Blizzard already make enough money to NOT have to resort to these things?" Not to mention this inadvertantly brought the end of WoW since those who had the extra funds just transfered to the more populated servers while everyone else was left with dead servers and nobody to interact with. I mean your already paying 20- or so odd dollars a MONTH just to be allowed to play their games; that you've already paid for, as well as another 60$ every 6 months for a new expansion. I understand server maintenance and such so I suppose a monthly fee CAN be argued.
Bobby Kotick is hardly the kind of guy who goes "no its ok, we won't monetise this". Considering he's on record stating that he's only really interested in making franchises which can be exploited year after year and make them hundreds of millions in revenue, ideally on every platform at once, I'm not entirely sure why you're surprised with stuff like that.
That said I doubt that mindset is the same in the balance team working on SC2. I mean...they get paid for the continuing development of SC2. Regardless of company policy regarding game franchises its not like they want to set out and deliberately sabotage their own work. They want everyone to come back for the two sequels after all. Why drive away the same people who are going to help hype your next release?
Then I picked up SC2. Obvioulsy after only having played for two months, my only exposure to how Blizzard dealt with balance was with the Ghost nerf. From what I read on the subject there seemed to be so many better ways to go about nerfing said unit, but did Blizzard actually listen? No.
"What needs balancing" tends to be based on tournament performances and statistics among the pro players; not on people complaining. No idea how they decide HOW to balance it though.
I don't think its fair to compare balance to these kind of things though. These are feature requests, things people want added that won't actually effect the game itself but will make the process of playing more enjoyable. Balance changes are much more difficult to assess and crowdsourcing for ideas isn't always the best idea. Case in point: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/3424794806?page=1
Guy complaining about cannon rushing in team games being "too common" and asking Blizzard to fix it. His OP has been edited now but you can see from the early replies and discussion that his first idea was to make a forge require a gateway. I'm fairly certain that anyone who posted a thread like that on HERE would be laughed off the forums. Even over there the vast majority of replies are along the lines of "stop being such a bad player then".
So listening to those kind of "balance" suggestions probably isn't the best way to go forward. I'm not saying whether the Ghost change was the best way to do it or not (personally I'd have been inclined towards...35+15 or something); but just assuming things would be good if the balance team listened to "the community" isn't necessarily true.
If you just look at how long Blizzard hypes games before their actual release would explain probably half of the sales they get. Also take into account ALL the Blizzard fanboys who will try ANYTHING this company comes out with, even if it looks bad. Hell, they could start hyping an MMO game about ponys and people would probably buy it upon release. (I think you understand my point here.) Blizzard seems to only be good at hyping stuff nowadays.
I don't really know who Bobby Kotick is, but from your explanation of the guy, he's a, excuse the language, fucking douchebag. When your aim is only to make money, you'll eventually fall flat on your face, or at the least be hated by a large amount of people. Greed is good? Please...
The balance issue wasn't brought up in an attempt to cry about the Ghost nerf. It was brought up to show how Blizzard really cares about its games and how they disregard public opinion. Top level players clearly gave their opinions on this nerf, so you can't tell me that they base their decisions off what pros think. Though I wholeheartedly believe that listening so some "noob" about something they find hard to play against, isn't a good reason to nerf something, but ignoring a player who's put a lot of time and effort into perfecting the game isn't very much of a good thing either. From the looks of it they just said "Ok here's what we plan to do, and there's nothing you can do about it."
Why have all the games they released before gone with only a single price-tag, yet now they feel they must continuously make their consumers waste, and waste, and waste...? It's almost as bad as that joke of a game CoD. Sure it's a good FPS, but do they really need a new one twice a year?
Call me ignorant for not knowing all the facts behind the company we all used to love, but the way they're going, there won't be much of a company left to love when people get tired of wasting their money every few months just to stay up to date with everyone else. This was my main concern on my first post, and will remain so until Blizzard starts taking care of its games like they used to, instead of using them as cash cows like they did with WoW. Sorry but flashy graphics and months of hypeing doesn't cut it for me. And rest assured, I'm not the only one with this point of view.
On March 06 2012 01:57 liberal wrote: I don't quite understand what you think blizzard has done wrong. There are team games, there are chat channels, both staple and self-created, you can set up custom obs matches, custom ums games...
What exactly is missing that is needed? You can't compare the gameplay, because an MMO and an RTS aren't even in the same category.
You should install WC3 for a day. Then spend the next week pondering why Blizzard downgraded their UI for SC2.
On March 06 2012 02:32 R3DT1D3 wrote: So I'm still confused, are there really that many people who play games like SC2 to be social rather than to just improve and grind some matches? Seriously, if Blizzard had as much social aspects as people wanted, they would be exposed to so much garbage it would be unbelievable. Heck, look at moderated stream chats. They're cesspits for the lowest common denominator and that's exactly what you guys want to open up to?
My social interaction is with my friends on Ventrilo and messaging/talking to people in real life. I play SC2 to play matches, not meet new friends.
It is not a matter of social or competition, it is that they want both. Between grinding games they want to chat with friends.
And you can in the current system. You can use the in game chat or some other third party program like almost every other community does. I don't see how Blizzard dumping you into a cesspit of open chat would be preferable.
On March 06 2012 02:42 Charger wrote:
On March 06 2012 02:32 R3DT1D3 wrote: So I'm still confused, are there really that many people who play games like SC2 to be social rather than to just improve and grind some matches? Seriously, if Blizzard had as much social aspects as people wanted, they would be exposed to so much garbage it would be unbelievable. Heck, look at moderated stream chats. They're cesspits for the lowest common denominator and that's exactly what you guys want to open up to?
My social interaction is with my friends on Ventrilo and messaging/talking to people in real life. I play SC2 to play matches, not meet new friends.
It's the same reason I don't like to go play golf by myself, it's just less enjoyable. The game (golf) is the exact same, hell I think I even play better alone but by the end of the afternoon I am basically sprinting to my car to get the fuck out where as if I'm with my buddies having a few cold ones I don't ever want to leave the course. That's how it used to be. For me personally I used to spend hours just idling in chat channels on D2 bnet, doing other things but keeping an eye out for that one trade I needed. It was worth my time to leave the game open because there was a community there. Now, with SC 2, there is absolutely no reason at all to leave the game open after I play a few games.
Some days I feel like you do; I want to just hop on and ladder in peace. But it would be nice to at least have the option of hanging out in a real chat channel or watch a replay with my buddy or whatever. And it's not JUST the chat channels, it's a combination of all of the incredible shortcomings of Bnet that contribute to the lack of community within the game such as no shared replay watching, to clan support, shitty chat channels, etc.
Thank god for TL.
Golf doesn't require 2 people to play though. Amateur golfers don't golf to get better, they golf to hang out. I play SC2 to get better and if my friends are on, I'll chat with them on Steam or Ventrilo. Blizzard isn't the bottleneck here.
The shared replay thing would be great though.
I'm not sure what point you were trying to make about golf not requiring 2 people to play so I'll let you clarify before I respond. But saying amateur golfers don't play to get better is your own personal opinion and probably very wrong - there are likely MANY amateur players who play to get better (and have fun). Which is the same as starcraft, you play to get better (and have fun). If it wasn't fun at all you wouldn't bother to get any better at it.
My point is that getting you're blurring the skill aspect of playing SC2/Golf when they imply entirely different experiences. The most common form of playing SC2 is to get better and improve in skill at some basic level. The most common form of Golf is an excuse to be outside and drink with your buddies. Most people don't go to a golf course to play alone and improve their ability while most SC2 players do exactly that on ladder.
If I wanted to enjoy a "golf" experience, I either use tools I already have on my computer or I play a more inherently social game. People want to turn SC2 into a social game and I don't see it being that beneficial given the level of maturity in a large audience (stream chat for example).
I guess I see SC2 more like Chess where the focus is competition and to socialize would not be taking the game seriously in which case I'd rather go play the game version of "golf."
On March 07 2012 00:38 SCVonSteroids wrote: I don't really know who Bobby Kotick is, but from your explanation of the guy, he's a, excuse the language, fucking douchebag. When your aim is only to make money, you'll eventually fall flat on your face, or at the least be hated by a large amount of people. Greed is good? Please...
...
Why have all the games they released before gone with only a single price-tag, yet now they feel they must continuously make their consumers waste, and waste, and waste...? It's almost as bad as that joke of a game CoD. Sure it's a good FPS, but do they really need a new one twice a year?
Call me ignorant for not knowing all the facts behind the company we all used to love, but the way they're going, there won't be much of a company left to love when people get tired of wasting their money every few months just to stay up to date with everyone else. This was my main concern on my first post, and will remain so until Blizzard starts taking care of its games like they used to, instead of using them as cash cows like they did with WoW. Sorry but flashy graphics and months of hypeing doesn't cut it for me. And rest assured, I'm not the only one with this point of view.
He's kinda important to the whole "money grabbing" idea about Blizzard because he's CEO of Activision-Blizzard. Blizzard isn't just Blizzard anymore, its a subsidiary of Activision-Blizzard. Your comment about Call of Duty was actually kinda funny because its the same guy in charge, Bobby Kotick. He's ultimately the one responsible for the CoD sequels ad infinitum as well as the milking of World of Warcraft.
Effectively its all the same company. Technically they're separate entities with separate management but they're both subsidiaries of the holding company Activision-Blizzard, run by Mr. Kotick.
Top level players clearly gave their opinions on this nerf, so you can't tell me that they base their decisions off what pros think.
You misunderstand me, they base what to change on tournament results and showings. So if GSL Code S is just all Terran they look to see why that is and see if its due to something being too strong. However they don't base how they change it on any "outsider's" opinion.
Much thanks to you for clarifying who Mr. Kotick is and what he does. All the more reason for me to hate the bastard for what he's doing to our favorite games then.
Excuse me if I didn't understand you correctly. I'm just stating my opinion and that of many others on how Blizzard just doesn't seem to give a damn anymore. To blindly look at tournament results and say "Oh this race is OP" has to be the dumbest thing this company could do. Maybe these players (who just happened to be Terrans let's say) worked very hard to get those tournament spots. Getting in Code S is, most certainly, not an easy feat, no matter WHAT race you play.
I feel this conversation can't go any further unfortunately, thanks for your input man, I always love criticism on my ideas and opinions. You taught me today that Blizzard actually IS a sellout company, as sad as that makes me feel.
On March 06 2012 01:57 liberal wrote: I don't quite understand what you think blizzard has done wrong. There are team games, there are chat channels, both staple and self-created, you can set up custom obs matches, custom ums games...
What exactly is missing that is needed? You can't compare the gameplay, because an MMO and an RTS aren't even in the same category.
The original battle.net threw you into chat conversations by default. Lots of friendships were created by chance.
Also, they don't allow group replay watching, or group creation/management.
On March 06 2012 04:43 drcatellino wrote: Nowadays it is so easy to just alt-tab and go to TL or whatever online community site to chat with people. So many streams, topics, guides. It might not be in the game itself, but honestly I'm happy to just hit "PLAY", do my ladder game, then go to TL if I feel like I need to be connected to the community.
I agree with this, I know there are a lot of things SC2 could be better at, but more community touch won't solve anything, I care about playing. I think in deep statistics are way more important, maybe clan support would be nice.
I'm not worried about you and me, we've already found the holy grail of communities and information. I'm worried about the new people to Starcraft who have no idea how big it is and where all this great stuff can be found. There is little to no interaction on bnet 2.0 so it's highly unlikely that the new people take the step we eventually took and find TL, reddit, etc. Without my friend telling me about TL I still wouldn't know it exists.
Is it only me that feels that it's mostly okay for what it is?
I mean, the only gripe I have is being blocked from typing more than 2 messages in quick succession (kind of a sucky thing when you type messages numerously and quickly from all those years in IM clients).
Other than that, it's perfectly fine.
The chat channels issue isn't as big as people make it out to be, I don't think, because the chat channels I am a part of, open immediately as I log in. This is no different to brood war. You can have conversations, you can find new channels and you can have conversation.
I prefer this system over BW, mainly because it removes a lot of the menial tasks of having to find a player to play on iCCup ladder and you can worry more about just playing the game you bought.
I think theres just a fine line between automating certain tasks in games and allowing the user to do those tasks themselves. My reason for this is that most people just want to play, not be bogged down by lots of silly little tasks in order to just play a game.
With BW, you have to log in, then spam whisper a bunch of people from the chat channel in hope that you get someone who wants to play against you, and then you have to go through creating the games and setting it up yourself. SC2 and B.net 2.0 does all of this for you, by way of matchmaking (which, for the 98% of people is perfectly fine).
SC2 does a nice job of automation of things in the UI that you don't have to repeatedly do all the time. The custom games stuff does need improvements, but that is one of my only gripes with the platform at the moment.
On March 06 2012 22:12 shinyA wrote: I remember in BW, I'd sign on and immediately I'd join a channel where I'd normally hang out and see a bunch of people I know. I would see people talking over my friends list to eachother which would make me want to talk to them / join the conversation. I could easily just do /f l to see a simple and easy+fast to read list of exactly whcih of my friends were online, what games they were in, and what channels they were in. I could /f m to talk across my entire friends list and say hi to everyone and immediately be in a conversation.
In SC2, I sign on and am greeted by emptiness. I immediately see some pointless and out of date news article by Blizzard. I then have to click open my friends list and am given no real information about what their doing. I can't just say hi to everyone, I could use the broadcast thing but no one uses that and it's no where near the same as /f m since for someone to respond to me they have to open up their friends list, scroll to find me, then right click my name and click chat which opens a new window and then they can talk to me.
Any social aspect of SC2 is so much harder to use and it's just not there. In BW I was immediately engaged and promoted to talk to people and have fun. Most of the people i know in BW would literally have their comp on 24/7 running BW, or if not that they would have stealthbot on ( a program that would log you onto bnet to be able to chat ). Like, you guys don't understand how big a part of just idling and talking in chat channels was of BW. That's how you got games 90% of the time. Everything promoted social activity which resulted in people wanting to just stay on b.net all the time.
Just thinking of certain channels brings back memories. When I think of op hyo- I remember when I just started getting into competiive bw and it was big step for me going into there and playing games non stop with koreans. Then there were channels to chat like tl-west, x17, and tot) where there were literally always people just hanging out and talking, and most of the time you could find people looking for 1v1's or doing UMS's. And that's not mentioning the multiple different teams that I was in over the years, each with a channel that brings up different memories of different people.
There's so much more I could talk about lol, for those of you who don't understand why bnet1 was so much better than bnet2 ... I feel sorry for you
Holy shit. Reading this I just realized that Blizzard is painting an accurate picture of the future dystopian society we're all going to live in.
On March 06 2012 21:50 SCVonSteroids wrote: I hate to say this, and obviously it's just my opinion, but I think Blizzard just doesn't care about its games anymore.
Blizzard showed us what they think about the "szene" when they released a major balance patch shortly before two big tournaments and tomorow we´ll have extended downtimes inbetween the IEM (the SC2 IEM games should start at 9 the downtime will atleast take untill 11 more likely to be 12 o´clock).
On March 06 2012 21:50 SCVonSteroids wrote: I hate to say this, and obviously it's just my opinion, but I think Blizzard just doesn't care about its games anymore.
Blizzard showed us what they think about the "szene" when they released a major balance patch shortly before two big tournaments and tomorow we´ll have extended downtimes inbetween the IEM (the SC2 IEM games should start at 9 the downtime will atleast take untill 11 more likely to be 12 o´clock).
Which is why we need either LAN, or some way of separating ourselves from Blizzard. Yes it's their game. But the stranglehold they have over it, is stifling progress. We paid our money for the game, they got want they wanted out of it.. now either give us the things we ask for as customers, or let us do it ourselves.
The fact that Esports is tied to commercial products will always cause this problem. Unless a game is created for Esports specifically top down, and given for free and open sourced to be managed by the games community itself, we are always going to have roadblocks. What we want, and what they want to do are always going to be different.
On March 06 2012 21:50 SCVonSteroids wrote: I hate to say this, and obviously it's just my opinion, but I think Blizzard just doesn't care about its games anymore.
I started thinking about this when they started implementing "Paid" services in WoW. Like paid character name changes, or server transfers. My first thoughts about this was "Doesn't Blizzard already make enough money to NOT have to resort to these things?" Not to mention this inadvertantly brought the end of WoW since those who had the extra funds just transfered to the more populated servers while everyone else was left with dead servers and nobody to interact with. I mean your already paying 20- or so odd dollars a MONTH just to be allowed to play their games; that you've already paid for, as well as another 60$ every 6 months for a new expansion. I understand server maintenance and such so I suppose a monthly fee CAN be argued.
the reason they charge the service is not just to make money, it's also to make sure the service will not be over-used.
if it was free there would be tons of people changing their name several times per day for shits and giggles, blizzard don't want that, so they limit the use.
of course, there are other ways to achieve the same thing, so I think of it as a solution to a problem which also gives blizz some money as a sideeffect.
That's nonsense! It just makes no sense to campare those 2 games in this topic.
In a SC2 games its 1v1, so no need to talk or 2v2 - 4v4, you just talk to others to coordinate not to socialize.
Outside the actuall game: well i use other IM, so i don't need the SC2 chat except for coordination with other players, and it's good enough for that,.
Comparing SC 2 to WoW or Diablo II doesn't make much sense.
SC 2 is a RTS. Both of those games are RPGs, one of them being a MMORPG. I don't know about the rest of the world, but in NA, at least, RPGs are much more popular than RTS games. The number of NA gamers who would play RTS games competitively online is miniscule compared to the number of NA gamers who would play WoW, Diablo II, and/or LoL.
On TL it's easy to get the impression that SC 2 is the most popular game in the world and the focal point of nerds today, but it simply isn't.
On March 07 2012 03:12 Dental Floss wrote: Prediction: Blizzard will use the addition of these features we're talking about here to justify the $60.00 expansion pricetag.
If they implemented all of the things the community has been suggesting I'd pay twice that.
On March 07 2012 03:12 Dental Floss wrote: Prediction: Blizzard will use the addition of these features we're talking about here to justify the $60.00 expansion pricetag.
If they implemented all of the things the community has been suggesting I'd pay twice that.
Thats some straight up stockholm syndrome.
An analogue to this situation would be MW3 where they've gotten everyone used to their insane system where you have to grind in-game to unlock multiplayer features. Their next step is to just add a 'feature' in where you pay them 50 bucks to unlock everything.
On March 07 2012 03:12 Dental Floss wrote: Prediction: Blizzard will use the addition of these features we're talking about here to justify the $60.00 expansion pricetag.
If they implemented all of the things the community has been suggesting I'd pay twice that.
Thats some straight up stockholm syndrome.
An analogue to this situation would be MW3 where they've gotten everyone used to their insane system where you have to grind in-game to unlock multiplayer features. Their next step is to just add a 'feature' in where you pay them 50 bucks to unlock everything.
i log on sc2 to find out if my friends are online and playing some teamleague cause i am retired from 1on1 and due to that ghost town effect there aren't many people i can train with to get into 1on1
in addition i feel kinda lonely cause i really dont like to add so much people
On March 07 2012 03:12 Dental Floss wrote: Prediction: Blizzard will use the addition of these features we're talking about here to justify the $60.00 expansion pricetag.
If they implemented all of the things the community has been suggesting I'd pay twice that.
Thats some straight up stockholm syndrome.
An analogue to this situation would be MW3 where they've gotten everyone used to their insane system where you have to grind in-game to unlock multiplayer features. Their next step is to just add a 'feature' in where you pay them 50 bucks to unlock everything.
imo the $18.8billion deal wasn't worth the crappy development decisions blizzard is making( not saying browder is anything above a slightly intelligent monkey). CoD has been in the shit for like what 4 years as after CoD:mw is the last one that was any good. When did wrath come out? I forget it was only a half decent expo, minus the shitty tiers of raid minus Uldar and some of the dragon fights but it was all don't stand in the fire for the most part aside from that. If Blizzard really made us pay for a ui chat function guess I'd have to live in the troll bog of mobas not something preferable as most of those people are asshats. They make xbox live trolls and asshats look like preschoolers in the world of trolling.
(not directed at Dental Floss) I guess most people find grinding games as the point of the game or practicing drull. if you want interaction play team games or something that allows you to more readily speak to people, becasue I know that the last thing I want when I am seriously playing or laddering or doing a online tournament the last thing i want to do is have a readily way to for people to bother me. bnet 0.2 was a better thing in wow as there are shit heaps of people and stuff and could just search people ingame to add them as a friend or be in group or whatever or whatever, in sc2 I find it problamatic because you have to have a C.Code to even add them atleast unless you played them or with them or met them on the forum and they gave you it prior. which is not why people almost always use a 3party program for communication but because in game voice chat is trash atleast 50% of the time.
On March 07 2012 03:12 Dental Floss wrote: Prediction: Blizzard will use the addition of these features we're talking about here to justify the $60.00 expansion pricetag.
If they implemented all of the things the community has been suggesting I'd pay twice that.
Thats some straight up stockholm syndrome.
An analogue to this situation would be MW3 where they've gotten everyone used to their insane system where you have to grind in-game to unlock multiplayer features. Their next step is to just add a 'feature' in where you pay them 50 bucks to unlock everything.
I find it problamatic because you have to have a C.Code to even add them atleast unless you played them or with them or met them on the forum and they gave you it prior. which is not why people almost always use a 3party program for communication but because in game voice chat is trash atleast 50% of the time.
Whats even funnier is that arguably the reason that they made the Character Code system was because they needed a work-around for the fact that
A) names aren't unique; a terrible decision that has made it even harder to carve out an identity in Bnet 2.0
B) The lack of identify management tools made is very easy to harass people compared to Bnet 1.0
C) Your real name is tied to your account and strangers would be able to know who you were
So to fix these Blizzard added a Secret Code that is supposed to help you only connect with people you like. In the end it exacerbated the problem by making it EVEN HARDER to add friends.
On March 07 2012 04:04 JiPrime wrote: I didn't really care about Bnet 2.0 until I got Dota 2 Beta. Now this, this is how you make an UI. Learn it Blizzard, learn it!
On March 07 2012 03:12 Dental Floss wrote: Prediction: Blizzard will use the addition of these features we're talking about here to justify the $60.00 expansion pricetag.
If they implemented all of the things the community has been suggesting I'd pay twice that.
Thats some straight up stockholm syndrome.
An analogue to this situation would be MW3 where they've gotten everyone used to their insane system where you have to grind in-game to unlock multiplayer features. Their next step is to just add a 'feature' in where you pay them 50 bucks to unlock everything.
I find it problamatic because you have to have a C.Code to even add them atleast unless you played them or with them or met them on the forum and they gave you it prior. which is not why people almost always use a 3party program for communication but because in game voice chat is trash atleast 50% of the time.
Whats even funnier is that arguably the reason that they made the Character Code system was because they needed a work-around for the fact that
A) names aren't unique; a terrible decision that has made it even harder to carve out an identity in Bnet 2.0
B) The lack of identify management tools made is very easy to harass people compared to Bnet 1.0
C) Your real name is tied to your account and strangers would be able to know who you were
So to fix these Blizzard added a Secret Code that is supposed to help you only connect with people you like. In the end it exacerbated the problem by making it EVEN HARDER to add friends.
I had a similar thing happen to your point A. was playing 2v2 and and one of the players name was SlayerSBoxer but i later realized he capitalizes it differently, still scared the shit out of me managed to win despite me and my friend spazzing out. Really hate the lack of Unique names makes people actually think of a name or snipe out a name they want at release.
Boy does the bm haunt you because its soo easy to harrass someone clean my ignore list like once a week :O.
Damn... Battle.net is so far behind this it's almost a joke. Blizzard need to pull their thumb out. Their main PC gaming competitor (in terms of respected companies) is making a fool of them. Hopefully they're making changes to show when they start letting people see HOTS.
i watched ogn LOL the other day...and wow, if sc2 had a intro system similar to it, it'll be such a better spectator treat. like join lobby, shows what races they picked with animation, while counting down to 10 sec. and when game starts, have something similar to what peepmode does.
i'm sure there will be some custom made maps with intros soon.
That's nonsense! It just makes no sense to campare those 2 games in this topic.
In a SC2 games its 1v1, so no need to talk or 2v2 - 4v4, you just talk to others to coordinate not to socialize.
Outside the actuall game: well i use other IM, so i don't need the SC2 chat except for coordination with other players, and it's good enough for that,.
Yeah it's a bad example, should have said compare it to WC3
If they are smart they could implement a feature similar to what Lol and Dota 2 have. Way to watch other games in progress from inside the game. Like games would have a limited number of observer slots (but those would be outside the real game so to not make problems for players, kind of like replay in progress) and they could watch together and chat while watching. Anyone that wanted could let their games be watched and those that did would get something back for it (maybe faster bonus pool recharge). You could list all games in progress and join at any time when there is a free slot. Of course games of popular players would always be full
On March 06 2012 02:07 VTArlock wrote: I can imagine how difficult it must be for the random newb who purchases the game, has nobody on his friend list, logs in, get BM'd on ladder and then is forced to repeat the process..'
You don' t even imagine bro.
I got the game a little after release and thought my friends would jump in a week or two later. Needless to say, they never did. I even bought a couple of game copies for them as a present, as a reason to start playing, didn' t work. They play LoL for the most part so when we are on skype and i am laddering, i feel miserable playing a game i like but forever alone.. So i play like 3 games tops and jump into the LoLtrain, which i don' t enjoy, just to have some company.
On March 07 2012 04:04 JiPrime wrote: I didn't really care about Bnet 2.0 until I got Dota 2 Beta. Now this, this is how you make an UI. Learn it Blizzard, learn it!
I will be buying hots. I wont be installing it until our issues are implemented. If I still see no progress in the UI development ill be reselling and switching games.
Valve is really putting Blizzard to shame with the Dota 2 UI.
Cross play on the front page, just by pressing a button, LAN, Possibility to spectate a game at any time, even while queuing for your own game Replays you can watch with friend, where you can jump to any time in the game Chat window at the frontpage, you can acces it even during shutdown maintenance. A lot of option to help new players Everything is in the same page, no need to go throught multiple window
If we had half of that for sc2 everyone would cry in tears of joy. -_-
Could we get some inside voices in here that have any sort of connection to Blizzard to comment on what they think about all these outcries from the SCII community? Or do they not care what we say anymore, after being converted by Activision into a money hungry company?
On March 06 2012 02:07 VTArlock wrote: I can imagine how difficult it must be for the random newb who purchases the game, has nobody on his friend list, logs in, get BM'd on ladder and then is forced to repeat the process..'
You don' t even imagine bro.
I got the game a little after release and thought my friends would jump in a week or two later. Needless to say, they never did. I even bought a couple of game copies for them as a present, as a reason to start playing, didn' t work. They play LoL for the most part so when we are on skype and i am laddering, i feel miserable playing a game i like but forever alone.. So i play like 3 games tops and jump into the LoLtrain, which i don' t enjoy, just to have some company.
So so sad..
You have just described my situation to a "T". Recently I find myself being drawn into the LoL scene even though I feel like it's an inferior game compaired to SC2. It's frustrating to say the least. Did you guys see the stream numbers for LoL durring IEM yesterday? They had 2X more viewers despite the fact that they haven't started a game yet!!
I'm of the opinion that right now the SC2 scene stays afloat because the game is fucking awesome, but more importantly, because people in the community have stepped up and developed a strong infrastructure outside of the game. Well run sites like Team Liquid and passionate people like Day [9] (and many others) are the reason I keep coming back.
We as RTS fans are at a disadvantage because our game isn't team orrientated. On man against one man (or woman). Its a lonely life. For this reason Blizzard NEEDS a better community system to compete with the up and coming DOTA clones. Here's hoping HOTS will deliver!
On March 06 2012 02:07 VTArlock wrote: I can imagine how difficult it must be for the random newb who purchases the game, has nobody on his friend list, logs in, get BM'd on ladder and then is forced to repeat the process..'
You don' t even imagine bro.
I got the game a little after release and thought my friends would jump in a week or two later. Needless to say, they never did. I even bought a couple of game copies for them as a present, as a reason to start playing, didn' t work. They play LoL for the most part so when we are on skype and i am laddering, i feel miserable playing a game i like but forever alone.. So i play like 3 games tops and jump into the LoLtrain, which i don' t enjoy, just to have some company.
So so sad..
You have just described my situation to a "T". Recently I find myself being drawn into the LoL scene even though I feel like it's an inferior game compaired to SC2. It's frustrating to say the least. Did you guys see the stream numbers for LoL durring IEM yesterday? They had 2X more viewers despite the fact that they haven't started a game yet!!
I'm of the opinion that right now the SC2 scene stays afloat because the game is fucking awesome, but more importantly, because people in the community have stepped up and developed a strong infrastructure outside of the game. Well run sites like Team Liquid and passionate people like Day [9] (and many others) are the reason I keep coming back.
We as RTS fans are at a disadvantage because our game isn't team orrientated. On man against one man (or woman). Its a lonely life. For this reason Blizzard NEEDS a better community system to compete with the up and coming DOTA clones. Here's hoping HOTS will deliver!
That's a good point. Just imagine if LoL had the solidarity of SC2 and Teamliquid, people like Day9, Husky, Tastosis all giving their all into making the game as exciting as possible and exposing it to everyone. It would be doing gangbusters in comparison.
I try to maintain a balanced diet of talking in chatrooms, 1v1, funday monday, and custom games. Unfortunately, the selections are not favorable for players looking to vary their social interactions.
On March 06 2012 02:03 tenklavir wrote: I don't understand complaints of SC2 being a "ghost town".
In Brood War, I'd log in, get dropped into a USEast chat room, get spammed by bots, see a couple people arguing about something dumb, and jump out of the chat as fast as I could. In SC2, the original outcry when chat channels were left out was unreal. You'd think that when you log on now, you'd see something more than "There are 648 users in public chat rooms".
The entire quote from that article reads, "I had fun playing game X, and now I'm not having fun playing game Y because it feels like a ghost town" with no actual explanation as to why it feels so or how to fix it. This guy is seriously talking about D2? Sure it's social...log on and enjoy your wall of bot spam.
People complained that SC2 wasn't social because there were no chat rooms. Blizz adds them, and now it's generally less than 1000 people in public chats and people still complain that SC2 isn't social.
The chat channels are out of the way and unintuitive. They need to rework the entire UI to support and force more social interaction. It makes the game feel more lively. These are subtle things the article in the OP is complaining about, but they're entirely valid.
On March 07 2012 04:04 JiPrime wrote: I didn't really care about Bnet 2.0 until I got Dota 2 Beta. + Show Spoiler +
Now this, this is how you make an UI. Learn it Blizzard, learn it!
W3 and bw have both decents UI. They are just being greedy (more than what a company should be) and leaving things undone so they can lure people into buying their expansions. Or you can be naive and think they were lazy or got wrong what people want.
i would not lie , i wish we had RIOT and Valve be the creators of Starcraft 2 , sadly blizzard is no longer the blizzard we know. The still create good games, but the mediums they deliver it on has deteriorated a lot. It reeks of greed and doing as little as possible to have a product that can be released despite having the longest production times compared to many game developers "When its ready" comes to mind they love to say. I understand battlenet 2.0 is built from the ground up. But there should be no reason we have to wait for the expansion to see improvements to this terrible battlenet. As usual greed is keeping them from doing this because whatever improvements they do have in store for battlenet i bet will only be available when HOTS comes out which could be over a year from now.
I still dont see them adding many things battlenet 1.0 had . When war3 was made, and starcraft 1 and diablo, You can clearly see it was a game built by gamers for gamers. With sc2 you can clearly see it was a game built by businessmen for gamers.
Obviously a game business has to make a profit , there is no denying this. However i believe when a game transcends more than what its asked to deliver, These games,These are the ones that "create the blizzards", these are the games that create the "valves", these are the games that create big companies. So while they take a small lost for going beyond what was necessary to make a game. It pays out in the long run because it builds a loved /loyal gaming brand that people will flock to and by their games in numbers "no matter what".
To me personally blizzard is relying on the "no matter what" a little to much for their recent games (this goes for upcoming diablo 3 as well fucking auction house ruining the integrity of actually earning your gear for e.g). Ever since WOW started raking in the cash,success has got to there head. With a couple more mediocre games "there so called name" will not be as prominent as it was before. Heaven forbid WOW actually dies. You will see how fast they turn around there direction towards game development. Signs are WOW isnt doing that well as before and this is all good new to me. No game should ever charge a monthly fucking fee to pay, how greedy can you get my god.
I'm not so optimistic that we're gonna see significant improvements in HotS. I mean, Blizzard has had a looooooong history of promising things and then not pulling through on them and this I expect will be no different.
People don't buy or not buy a game for the chat interface, they buy or don't buy it for how shiny it looks and how much fun everyone says it is. The two or three extra copies of HotS they may sell from making the chat system completely perfect wouldn't even pay for the people designing it to show up to work each day.
Sort of beating a dead horse with this article, I mean most people have been saying this since b.net 2.0 was released including myself. I would love to see some improvements that make it a more sociable experience but I just don't see that happening anytime soon. Not sure what they are thinking over there at Blizzard but time and time again I feel that Activision is corrupting another once great company.
So many things need to be changed in order for people to start logging on just to chat with other people and not just play the game, and I really hope that some changes are made to keep SC2 an alive game. At the rate that it is going, I don't see that happening.
That's why I didn't like Bnet 2.0 as compared to the Bnet that existed in the WC3 era. It feels SO lonely! There's is about zilch community interaction when it comes to the SC2 client. You have your friends list and a chat system that is so cumbersome it's rarely even used. No forums integration whatsoever in the client nor is there any form of community website that opens IN the game. Everything opens in an external browser that brings your attention away from the game back to the desktop. Why on earth would any developer want to take the player's attention away from the game? Geez
On March 07 2012 08:53 Noocta wrote: Valve is really putting Blizzard to shame with the Dota 2 UI.
Cross play on the front page, just by pressing a button, LAN, Possibility to spectate a game at any time, even while queuing for your own game Replays you can watch with friend, where you can jump to any time in the game Chat window at the frontpage, you can acces it even during shutdown maintenance. A lot of option to help new players Everything is in the same page, no need to go throught multiple window
If we had half of that for sc2 everyone would cry in tears of joy. -_-
Yeah man I can't lie, that UI looks completely sick. I would go so far to say that's the best I've ever seen in a game.
Well since I mostly play 3's and 4's with folks on vent etc, I don't really feel this a lot.
I will admit once I've played 5-6 1v1's I'll suddenly want to do something else though. Not sure if that is due to the 'ghost town' effect or something else tbh.
On March 07 2012 08:39 mell0w wrote: I will be buying hots. I wont be installing it until our issues are implemented. If I still see no progress in the UI development ill be reselling and switching games.
There's no excuse Blizzard. No excuse.
why pay for the product then? doesn't matter if you resell it.. you already gave blizzard the money.
dota2, while still in beta has done far more than bnet 2.0 has in terms of community. i automatically join chat channels when i load up the game and they are always lively. for a game with an average of 20k players at one time it feels much more populated than bnet 2.0's ghost town.
a lot of my friends have stopped playing SC2 and it feels even more lonely. i played BW for over 10 years and never had the feeling i have with SC2. i think it has to do with the fact that chat channels in bnet 2.0 aren't in your face, its kinda hidden and the game doesn't automatically put you into a channel when you start it up.
I feel like nobody complaining makes any attempt to just be pleasant and sociable in the first few minutes of the game, or after the game
Or while playing custom games
Or while in any of the (easily accessible) chat channels
The only reason why I'm not talking to a ton of people all of the time is because I don't WANT to. I've had a ton of offers to be practice partners, several of which I've accepted-- I could have asked a ton more people and have had most be accepted, too. IT IS YOUR OWN DAMN FAULT if you can't find people to play with and interact with and socialize with.
Just be a fucking pleasant human being and make an ounce of goddamn effort to be friendly and sociable and you will literally have more people you could strike up a casual conversation with that turns into a 3-hour 2v2/3v3/4v4 binge than you can keep straight.
I would LOVE for there to be group replay support. I would LOVE for there to be more information available about the tournament scene etc. upon login. But it is your OWN fucking fault and I have zero sympathy for you if you feel that SC2 is a "ghost town" and that there is nothing social about the experience. It is EXACTLY as social as you want it to be, assuming you have the capability of making more than exactly zero effort to be social.
Just make a rule for yourself to be as nice and pleasant as humanly possible in-game, even when you're raging. You'll feel better, you'll meet more e-friends, and it'll calm you down when you're raging.
"GLHF :D" "Whoa sick control man I felt like I couldn't look away from the battles for a second to macro D: wp gg " "Good push I haven't seen that particular timing before, how long you been practicing that?" HOLY SWEET TITS I JUST FOUND MYSELF A PRACTICE PARTNER
"u2" "fucking protoss imba" "ez race gj noob" *ragequit* Man, why does SC2 feel so lonely and desolate?
I find this interesting actually. I didn't know people really felt this strongly about it. For me personally I tend to put socializing and starcraft in separate boxes. Sometimes I'll play some 2v2s or 3v3s while talking to friends on skype, and that's enjoyable for sure. But for the most part I play just for the challenge/getting better at something aspect of it, then socialize elsewhere. I get the feeling this isn't a very common thought process haha
I honestly believe many more people would still be into the game if you had the ability to watch replays with your friends. A shame Blizzard didn't include such an important feature.
They certainly did not do it right in some aspects. When I want to play for fun with friends what I still do is go play some nutty BGH. On that note the more casual game formats of SC2 (2v2, 3v3, 4v4) are a huge failure in my eyes. The maps are boring and strive for 'balance'. Look at BGH, it is imba as shit, but that makes it frustratingly-awesome and fun in some weird way. They are also included in ladders like 1v1. I completely disagree with Blizzard's decision there, I genuinely believe that if there was a 'Casual' button next to 1v1 for instance, which opened some kind of channel and included various team play formats( 2v2-4v4; 2v2v2v2 etc. ; team monobattles) It would be way more chaotic, but way more fun.
how can they fix it though, guys? has anyone posted detailed solutions?
i think clan channels + moderation needs to be added -- would that be enough? i think the main problem is that most people are scared to actually play sc2
On March 07 2012 19:54 Vei wrote: how can they fix it though, guys? has anyone posted detailed solutions?
i think clan channels + moderation needs to be added -- would that be enough? i think the main problem is that most people are scared to actually play sc2
No, it's not. "Ladder fear" may be a common syndrome but it's not the reason people stop logging on. There's so much more to this game - or rather could be - than just the 1vs1 ladder. There are team games, custom games, there is chat ... but all of that is lacking in so many regards that there's no reason to stick with it.
Players keep playing a game because it entices them to do so, either through rewards or through a social framework to keep them connected with friends and contacts. Rewards like achievements or portraits only work for so long, and then it's down to the social component. Older Blizzard titles stayed active for so long because people actually had a reason to stick with them; either it was friends and clan mates to hang around with, or it was a custom scene that regularly delivered new or updated maps, thus providing the game with new content.
SC2 lacks all of this. "Ladder fear" existed in SC/BW and War3, but these games went on and on and on. It's the other issues that are killing SC2.
I love the social aspect of games, and moving to StarCraft from a team based game (CoD4) feels horrible at LAN when I'm just sitting there playing on my own, love LAN with team as constant banter and celebrating etc makes the game sooo much more enjoyable. I am not lacking this too much though as I am constantly on ts/skype with other guys from my team.
In my opinion, the biggest problem of bnet 2.0 is not that "ghost town" effect, but more the fact that 1v1 ladder has a lot of weight. Doing some 3v3 or 2v2 with friends is still pretty funny, but 1v1 sucks because it's supposed to exist only for training. What bnet lack is 1v1 tournaments like in wc3 and clan.
When you log in, you are automatically directed to a chat channel filled with players in your mmr range. So no matter what level you ladder at, whenever you enter bnet you will have the option of making friends/playing customs with people around your level. Maybe there could be similar 2v2/3v3 etc channels for people who prefer those modes. It would also be helpful if the chat channels were a bit bigger so you could see more of the chatting going on.
I'm sure something could be worked out for players who play only customs as well. Let me know what you guys think - I think logging in and immediately being in a chat channel with similarly skilled and like-minded players would be awesome.
On March 07 2012 20:30 getSome[703] wrote: My two cents:
When you log in, you are automatically directed to a chat channel filled with players in your mmr range. So no matter what level you ladder at, whenever you enter bnet you will have the option of making friends/playing customs with people around your level. Maybe there could be similar 2v2/3v3 etc channels for people who prefer those modes. It would also be helpful if the chat channels were a bit bigger so you could see more of the chatting going on.
I'm sure something could be worked out for players who play only customs as well. Let me know what you guys think - I think logging in and immediately being in a chat channel with similarly skilled and like-minded players would be awesome.
I like the idea, but it should be an option, not an automated standard. Most people don't enjoy being forced into a crowd, regardless of whether it's peers and likeminded folks or not. For those who wish to, who are talkative by nature, by all means, such a feature would be a cool addition to the game. For all of those who like to pick who they're chatting with themselves, just keep the traditional chat interface of previous games.
Don't forget: The UIs of previous games worked so well because they let the player decide what to do and where to hang out (or not). The moment something's forced upon people (like in SC2), it will fail.
I think that Blizzard has underestimated how gaming can be a social experience and a lot of the times is what makes them the most fun. If you think about online games like league of legends you have a team(maybe finding friends on league is hard but its better than Sc2 at the moment since it still has the social aspect of a team.) Also you can get a bunch of friends in real life together and make a clan with whatever name you want that is available. In wow you find people or you bring in real life friends again to do raids and the pvp. In Warcraft 3 there was clan functionality, so if you were only into playing 1v1 you could still have some kind of social network of people you play with. Starcraft 2 is lacking what all of these games have in terms of social gaming. It is a better game then all of them combined in my opinion(Just my opinion please dont reply with why I am wrong), but it suffers in player base compared to the other games.
Has there been a Blizzard response to anyones knowledge regarding this matter? It's to my understanding there's a plethora of posts with ways the game can be changed to incorporate all the concerns. I'm wondering their thoughts on this.
On March 08 2012 04:32 LaxCraft wrote: Has there been a Blizzard response to anyones knowledge regarding this matter? It's to my understanding there's a plethora of posts with ways the game can be changed to incorporate all the concerns. I'm wondering their thoughts on this.
I have no idea what forums Blizzard reads, but it couldn't hurt to go post this thread on battlenet forums.
I think he is confusing the fact that in WoW the social aspect IS the only reason to play the game anymore. Starcraft is at least challenging and a decent game, the social aspect isn't the center piece though.
I've been using Battle.net since it first launched back in the early 1997. Back then in Diablo 1 there weren't any specific servers, it was just one server all across the world. It was common practice to hop from European chat channels to the US ones and vice versa. There were conversations, some good and some bad. It was mostly just trash talking but it was fun. I made so many friends in Diablo 1 and we made a huge clan that had meetups, own homepage and own chat channel. We played together and had a laugh. Same practice in other Blizzard titles. All thanks to the default chat channels that popped on your screen when you logged in.
Guess what the funniest part is? 15 year old client was better at socializing than the one we use now! It's incredible but true. Now when I log into SC2 I feel like stepping into the empty void that has AI controlled opponents which play at various skill levels. I've made ZERO friends through Bnet 2.0. Perhaps Blizzard is afraid of the lack of moderation in the chat channels. Back in the 90's Internet was still very small and no one cared about what people said about others. Now that it has grown big and everyone uses it, times have changed.
On March 08 2012 04:32 LaxCraft wrote: Has there been a Blizzard response to anyones knowledge regarding this matter? It's to my understanding there's a plethora of posts with ways the game can be changed to incorporate all the concerns. I'm wondering their thoughts on this.
I have no idea what forums Blizzard reads, but it couldn't hurt to go post this thread on battlenet forums.
This thread has been reposted to the official forums already, and our 70+ discussion on the UI's shortcomings (see my signature) has threads on the english, german and polish boards, as well as five (5!) filled threads on the official US boards. All with zero Blizzard replies so far.
Yeah, I've felt this was the biggest problem with SC2 and the D3 beta since they were released. They do feel very empty as far as socialization and interaction with strangers is concerned. I made a lot of great friends playing D2 and that was largely facilitated by a chat interface that promoted actually talking to people. The current bnet 2.0 implimentations are extremely inconvenient and annoying to use. I really hope blizzard will understand that the chat function was a central component to the success of their online games in the past.
On March 07 2012 20:30 getSome[703] wrote: My two cents:
When you log in, you are automatically directed to a chat channel filled with players in your mmr range. So no matter what level you ladder at, whenever you enter bnet you will have the option of making friends/playing customs with people around your level. Maybe there could be similar 2v2/3v3 etc channels for people who prefer those modes. It would also be helpful if the chat channels were a bit bigger so you could see more of the chatting going on.
I'm sure something could be worked out for players who play only customs as well. Let me know what you guys think - I think logging in and immediately being in a chat channel with similarly skilled and like-minded players would be awesome.
I like the idea, but it should be an option, not an automated standard. Most people don't enjoy being forced into a crowd, regardless of whether it's peers and likeminded folks or not. For those who wish to, who are talkative by nature, by all means, such a feature would be a cool addition to the game. For all of those who like to pick who they're chatting with themselves, just keep the traditional chat interface of previous games.
Don't forget: The UIs of previous games worked so well because they let the player decide what to do and where to hang out (or not). The moment something's forced upon people (like in SC2), it will fail.
The Enter Chat button of WC3, the most magical thing ever invented.
On March 07 2012 16:49 RampancyTW wrote: I feel like nobody complaining makes any attempt to just be pleasant and sociable in the first few minutes of the game, or after the game
Or while playing custom games
Or while in any of the (easily accessible) chat channels
The only reason why I'm not talking to a ton of people all of the time is because I don't WANT to. I've had a ton of offers to be practice partners, several of which I've accepted-- I could have asked a ton more people and have had most be accepted, too. IT IS YOUR OWN DAMN FAULT if you can't find people to play with and interact with and socialize with.
Just be a fucking pleasant human being and make an ounce of goddamn effort to be friendly and sociable and you will literally have more people you could strike up a casual conversation with that turns into a 3-hour 2v2/3v3/4v4 binge than you can keep straight.
I would LOVE for there to be group replay support. I would LOVE for there to be more information available about the tournament scene etc. upon login. But it is your OWN fucking fault and I have zero sympathy for you if you feel that SC2 is a "ghost town" and that there is nothing social about the experience. It is EXACTLY as social as you want it to be, assuming you have the capability of making more than exactly zero effort to be social.
Just make a rule for yourself to be as nice and pleasant as humanly possible in-game, even when you're raging. You'll feel better, you'll meet more e-friends, and it'll calm you down when you're raging.
"GLHF :D" "Whoa sick control man I felt like I couldn't look away from the battles for a second to macro D: wp gg " "Good push I haven't seen that particular timing before, how long you been practicing that?" HOLY SWEET TITS I JUST FOUND MYSELF A PRACTICE PARTNER
"u2" "fucking protoss imba" "ez race gj noob" *ragequit* Man, why does SC2 feel so lonely and desolate?
While I agree with your main point, I believe the intent of the original post was to point out that the battle net structure does not currently easily facilitate for in-game community building. Features you and others have mentioned such as group replay support, custom tourneys, better blizzard promotion of tournaments/e-sports and so forth would gear bnet towards being more friendly towards community building.
All games, regardless of genre will have people that ragequit and in general be BM. You might argue that the onus is on the users to take the initiative to build a community. While that has some merit, anything that makes it easier for us to do so is always a plus and as a result I believe it would keep more users playing the game.
For example, a lot of people would not be (or not at all) as into starcraft if TL did not exist. For many, this website is a valuable tool in building a community, sharing ideas/strats and passion for the game. Sure, communities would emerge regardless but would it be as large in numbers?
EPT
![[image loading]](http://www.dota2tp.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/dota-ui.jpg)
