1. Ever since this system came out in BETA people were pointing out the issues with it.
2. Blizzard merged with activision.
Keep in mind people that these people are NOT the old Blizzard... Activision made sure those guys who knew wtf they were doing were fired (a certain writer fired after burning crusade comes to mind).
Bottom line... the same novice team who made SC2 also made Wraith of the Lich King.. and Cataclysm.
Here is another issue that they will face when they release the map market: The bulk of the people with the nessesary skills to make those kinds of maps are no longer making mods on the Blizzard Engines and/or they have rolled back to previous mods because those still work.
Also as far as "whining" goes... Keep in mind that he specifically said he would like Blizzard to read this. That means its not ment entirely for you.
My person position is this: I will remind Blizzard every chance I get and to heck with you guys. I will make as much as I can and to heck with you guys. I don't know about you but I tend to expect more from $60 than I'm getting from this game. And keep in mind that I, and so many others, bought StarCraft 2 based on promises and statements they made that turned out to be nothing but lies and BS. $60... you know what else costs that much? Think about it. That $60 was my game budget for a whole year. There were a couple of titles I was looking at, yet i chose StarCraft 2. Blizzard had a reputation I thought I could rely on. And what did I get with my $60? A game that lacks basic functionality. A game that failed to live up to promises. A game that honestly.. dispite my best efforts, Is not fun. I am still trying to make it fun, it certainly has the potential - even a peron in the world of the blind can see that. If I could trade my copy of SC2 in for a $60 dollar refund I'd do it in a heartbeat - but I can't. So I have to make do. And I'm simply not the type to sit still and offer "constructive critism". That has been going on for a whole year now - everyone taking their turn at it. They have not even curled up a lip in response.
And yes I am doing something about it. I have my new game budget for this year. And I am going with a company who has been a LOT more public about what is going on with the game and what exactly the gameplay looks like. And they can show all of these things that Blizzard seems to reguard as "company secrets" and be owned by EA.
Besides that, I suspect that the release of HotS is not going to end my days of StarCraft nor the map projects I have going. And TBH its a waste of time for us custom mappers to buy it for a long while. Think about this: HotS means a HotS dependency. And unless they release that for regular StarCraft, only people who bought HotS will be able to use any HotS content. You know what I think that means? Right, its going to be another year before I can risk with any real confidence putting HotS content into any of my maps and having the "mass bulk" of the community be able to play it. A lot of people don't buy expansions right off the bat - made (potentially) even worse by the failure of Blizzard/Activision to put in any successful functionality for SC2 custom maps.
Anyways, if you still call the post "whining" think the last paragraph through and decide what you're going to do. Maybe some sales falling short will wake them up. We don't have much else to go off right now and "constructive critism" is sure as heck not working.
Blizzard and Activision are seperate companies with seperate developers. Blizzard isn't working on CoD and Activision isn't working on SC2. They have separate studios and employees. The merger was to take advantage of Activision as a publisher for the mutual benefit of both companies.
"The mapmaking community did its part too. With tens of thousands of custom maps uploaded to Battle.Net and hundreds of amazing custom games to play, we have all marveled at the technical, artistic, and creative skill of the StarCraft II mod community. Desert Strike, Storm of the Imperial Sanctum, Marine Arena, Zealot Frenzy, Star Battle and, of course, Nexus Wars have shown us an entertaining glimpse of what the talented StarCraft II community is capable of creating. We couldn’t resist throwing our hat into the ring and hope that players have enjoyed Aiur Chef, StarJeweled, and Left 2 Die."
Yeah I don't really buy the whole thing about "omgz Activision owns Blizzard now Blizzard is EVIL INCARNATE."
Look at it from a business perspective. Unless the Marketplace seems like a profitable venture for Blizzard, they really have no responsibility to make that happen. Nor do they have a responsibility to roll out a red carpet for the map-making community. I've got news for you: $60 for a game development platform is damn cheap. The editor alone is a good value proposition, and any support Blizzard might give to it or the community is purely a bonus. Given that the vast majority of SC2 players buy the game for the competitive RTS aspect (and NOT the custom games,) I seriously doubt that it would be a great benefit to Blizzard to spend more time and money flowering up the custom games aspect. It's not greed. Please. It's logic.
I don't blame Blizzard for not bowing to every whim of the map-making community. If you're that fed up with it then quit. I won't because I still like the platform even with its flaws. And because it's still cheap.
"Unless the Marketplace seems like a profitable venture for Blizzard, they really have no responsibility to make that happen. Nor do they have a responsibility to roll out a red carpet for the map-making community.
-Ok so you just directly implied that Blizzard has lost control of both Battle.net AND Starcraft 2
"I've got news for you: $60 for a game development platform is damn cheap. The editor alone is a good value proposition, and any support Blizzard might give to it or the community is purely a bonus. Given that the vast majority of SC2 players buy the game for the competitive RTS aspect (and NOT the custom games,) I seriously doubt that it would be a great benefit to Blizzard to spend more time and money flowering up the custom games aspect. It's not greed. Please. It's logic."
-Seriously, find me an engine that costs $60 dollars to mod (and do it not counting expansions - we can add up that cost after HotS is released for another $40 making $100). All that I know of or have worked on are either opensource conversions of "open source games" (like vega trek) or total conversions or partial conversions of games that also don't cost $60 for the base version (don't add in expansions, Blizzard hasn't put an expansion out for SC2).
"I don't blame Blizzard for not bowing to every whim of the map-making community. If you're that fed up with it then quit. I won't because I still like the platform even with its flaws. And because it's still cheap."
-Well if your just gonna cave thats your problem. I suspect eventually you will wake up. And I never said I would *quit* I said I am not spending my money on HotS. And if you even bothered to read my post I pointed out that not everyone is going to buy the expansion right away.
-Point two is... Where did that large and active playerbase that played only custom maps on WARCRAFT 3 that were looking foward to *even better custom maps* on StarCraft 2 go? I played Warcraft 3 for 7 years and I can tell you that community exists - or did Blizzard lose that already?
Keep in mind people that these people are NOT the old Blizzard... Activision made sure those guys who knew wtf they were doing were fired (a certain writer fired after burning crusade comes to mind).
Bottom line... the same novice team who made SC2 also made Wraith of the Lich King.. and Cataclysm.
Could you please quote some names of people who got fired? Just a few. I'm sure the list is very long, so just keep to the designers (programmers and artists are important, but they don't decide the overall design).
You also made a slight mistake, it wasn't Blizzard and Activision that merged, it was Activision and Vivendi Games (Blizzard's parent company). It was Vivendi (again, the parent company of Vivendi Games) who initiated the merger and holds 54% shares of the new Activision Blizzard.
I love these threads it's too hilarious... I love the passion in this community!
Just want to mention that from a (custom map) player's perspective it's been a bit rocky too. It is my understanding that people love variety and a good ole rotating lobby helped create that. My personal interest in playing Bnet custom maps has died because I can't get the variety (that I took for granted on war3). This may affect my decision on buying future SC2 expacs and thus affect their bottom line...
All you gotta look for is the list of people that got layed off around the time WoW Burning Crusade was being made/released. Thats pretty much your list.
And OneTwo just Fyi, the reason why there is so much "passion" is that I was literally raised on Blizzard.
Played WC2 single player (before I had internet) then eventually one of my friends lent me one of his copies of Starcraft and Starcraft:Brood war so I could play with him. He let me keep it for 3-4 years. Then I went the WarCraft 3: TFT, and that took me from... lets see... '03 to '11. The sheer amount of custom maps kept that game interesting and fun, and I came to it late!
If you are wondering why about that let me inform you this. I didn't get high speed until we moved into town before we were going to move to vegas. And that was 1/3 through my senior year in highschool. so that ment I was either at school, doing homework, working outside (parents first bought a fixer-upper "crumbling acres" then built a whole new house in a hay field "pain in my ass acres"), or playing video games. And the only video games I really had were Hearts of Iron, StarCraft and Warcraft 3 - oh and WoW but I had to get the patches from a friend cause downloading 500mb patches on 28.8k (when the weather was nice) was pretty painful.
So ya having a game like StarCraft 2 being this fucked up kinda hits a critical nerve whether I like it or not. Especially since this was the version I finally decided to make maps for and I literally started the day after the beta map editor came out and this stupid popularity system wasn't released until a little later. And then EVERYONE expected they would fix it - after all they always did in the past. When its a full year later AFTER release (which means about a year and a half of everyone expecting them to fix it if you count the Beta) I'm naturally rather on edge about it.
I don't know about you guys but you could stamp my left ass cheek "Raised by Blizzard" and have it be partially true.
-Ok so you just directly implied that Blizzard has lost control of both Battle.net AND Starcraft 2
Nope, I'm implying that Blizzard is a company and they do things for money in a reality where time, money, and energy are all finite resources for human beings.
Well if your just gonna cave thats your problem. I suspect eventually you will wake up. And I never said I would *quit* I said I am not spending my money on HotS. And if you even bothered to read my post I pointed out that not everyone is going to buy the expansion right away.
Your misplaced idealism is tiring. There's nothing to "wake up" to, and I'm not "caving." We simply disagree about this matter.
-Point two is... Where did that large and active playerbase that played only custom maps on WARCRAFT 3 that were looking foward to *even better custom maps* on StarCraft 2 go? I played Warcraft 3 for 7 years and I can tell you that community exists - or did Blizzard lose that already?
Maybe they couldn't afford the game. It is 60 BUCKS after all. That's like a fortune. I had to sell my brother just to pay for half. ;)
I posted this in a thread on the SC2 community forums that pertained to how disappointing Battle.net 2.0 is a year after launch. Listed everything I could remember about Battle.net 2.0's fail-filled rise to being infamous for sucking, and how Blizzard is not doing damn near enough to fix it.
Quote from me:
Blizzard, your game is fun. I like your game.
Your service, is crap. I do not like your service. Whoever designed the interface for it, I do hope you have fired them by now.
- Real ID angertrip
Did you really think this would go over well with anyone? You had to learn when people found Micah Whipple's address, among other things, in protest of this real id bs.
- No clan support
- No sense of community
- No shared replays
- SC1's lobby system > SC2's (and that game is 10+ years old now)
You cant even name your game, you just create and people join. Very basic, very bulky and cumbersome interface, and the chat box is too small.
- No chatrooms at launch (need I remind you about the "But do you really want chatrooms?" crap)
- No global/regional leaderboard by rank, only smaller leaderboards for your "division"
- No LAN Service AT ALL
- No name change service
- Requires b.net to even play the god damn game
...and so many more disappointments. It's been a year since this game was released. What have you guys fixed:
- Chatrooms we're added (although they can be difficult to use, and they're interface is really bad)
- Added/Renamed Diamond, Master & Grand Master League
- Several Cheap fixes for your terrible lobby system and custom match making search options that still don't really fix the problem as there is still a very low sense of a "community" on B.net.
Everything is still dead.
- You added a name change service with 1 free name change
You have a bad service, and whats worse is it's pretty much all forced upon us to even play your game. There is no LAN support due to your, apparently extremely big, fear of piracy (that is bound to happen anyways). I said it above, your game is fun, battle.net is not.
It's lack of features that should have been present from day 1, and still continue to remain absent from this game is ridiculous. Especially given that the original Battle.net had almost every one of these things built in. This is not an upgrade, not in the slightest. It's more of a joke. You cant possibly tell me you do not have the fund necessary for these things, WoW provides more than enough cash for that.
Is it Activision that's ruining you? That seems to be the trend, and their track record keeps rising. First Infinity Ward, next Blizzard Entertainment, then what will they destroy?
Like this post if you agree, lets see if they take it down.
This is again an example of how I think it shouldn't be done. Even aside from the odd spelling error, your entire post is a rant about how bad stuff is. Again; it's not like you aren't adressing some good points, but you're bringing them in a shitty and even somewhat unreadable way. I wouldn't blame Blizz for not taking something like that seriously.
All you gotta look for is the list of people that got layed off around the time WoW Burning Crusade was being made/released. Thats pretty much your list.
So you've never seen such a list before, you were talking out of your ass earlier and now are trying to cover it up? Fine with me.
Btw. Burning Crusade was announced on October 28, 2005 and released on January 16, 2007. The merger took place in 2008.
Ok, to make Moz happy (or at least try), I'll attempt to make a good post... If I forget something, remind me. Also, this is purely my opinion and not that of the mods, if anyone thinks that for some reason.
Things missing on day 1:
A fix for the popularity system
Chat channels
There were some imbalances
Global ladder
Still region locked
Fixed by year 1:
Slight improvements to the popularity system
Chat channels were added
The game seems pretty balanced now
They added Grandmaster league so that we can see the top 200 of our region constantly, but there still is no world wide ladder afaik
Allowed SEA to connect to NA, merged a few regions that were very close to each other
Let's start with the thing that actually interests mappers.
The Pop Sys
When it came out, everyone whined. Now that it's out for a year, people stopped whining mostly because the community is sick of the whining, but there's still a lot of whining going on here and there, the gigantic whine threads are just getting rarer.
I see the cause of the whining, as does everyone else. Still, there's no point whining on this forum. Blizzard doesn't read this, so what's the point? You just piss of a bunch of guys here and achieve nothing. If the pissing off people on mapster was the actual point behind the whining, then please say so so that us mods may start dishing out warnings and/or bans.
So, why all the whining? Cause the popularity system practically ruined mapping. It's not easy to get your map high enough in popularity to be able to play it, and its harder to keep it up there.
The popularity system was a good idea, just like it was having roaches be 1 supply, having double the health region they have now and having 2 base armor, but like the popularity system, it didn't work as intended. Instead of being a good meatshield, it just roflstomped everything in its way.
The biggest problem about the popularity system isn't only the system itself in my opinion, its the community. In wc3, the only way to get your map updated was to find it's website and download it from there, which immediately brought you into some form of contact with the maker. Yea, you mightve been one of those guys that just clicked the download button and vanished, but the makers still had some decent communication with the community imo. People were also a lot more patient in wc3, you could wait in a lobby for half an hour, and so would others.
But in bnet 2.0, if the game doesn't start within 30 seconds, people leave. (That is if they are the patient kind. Most just wait 5 seconds)
The community is served the newest updates of maps immediately, majority of people wouldn't even know where to go to give feedback, and even more don't really care. If you uploaded your map to a site, you could possibly have a download count which would provide some motivation to continue since even if you got no feedback, you'd know people are playing it. Nowadays you have to trust the popularity bar, which doesn't even increase in private games so it's extremely inaccurate if your map isnt popular.
Blizzard says that to get our maps popular, we have to advertise. But how do we advertise to a community that we can't contact?
Instead of showing the list when you click create or join game, it should show a page more like mapster - Showing new maps, links to videos, descriptions, etc. They could easily get unpaid volunteers to make sure that page gets updated - im pretty sure half the people here on mapster would do anything to get the system working at least partially.
What would be nice is a feature to sort of send PMs over battlenet, like actual mail instead of chat boxes. Shouldnt be hard to implement I think. The best thing about this would be that after you play a custom map, they could make battle.net automatically open a new mail thingy addressed to the author of the map with "feedback" as the subject. Majority would just hit the close button immediately, but the map makers would get some feedback, and from feedback you can improve your map and get motivation to actually do so.
A lot of ways have been suggested to fix the popularity system, a currently "popular" suggestion is sort the list by "time in lobby", i.e. how long the lobby has been open for. Popular maps would be on the bottom of the list because the lobbies would fill up quickly.
To be honest, I think *any* list apart from the popularity list should be the default one when you press "join game". I dont care whether it's featured, up and coming or fun or not, any of those would be an improvement. Why? Because people would have to use the buttons on the left to get to the popular maps. And why are maps popular? Because no one cares to press buttons other than those immediately in front of them. A lot would still go to the popularity list, but there'd be more attention for the other lists than there is now.
And I think the "Time in lobby" list is a great idea and should be the default. If you want to play a popular map, you go to the popularity list, but by default you have a list similar to wc3 - except that it's in the reverse order (Newer lobbies are at the bottom instead of top). Naming the lobbies isn't required, I don't care if they add that. It would help, but I see why they're not adding it. A simple list like that would be great.
Also, one great idea for Blizzard would be to hire 1-2 people to just go over these mapping forums and be in touch in with the community. Even if all they say is "Yea, I forwarded this to the developers. Whether they read it or not is a different story." the mapping community wouldn't dislike blizzard as much and view them the same way as now. The guy wouldn't even have to actually tell blizz anything, as long as the community thinks it's being heard it would be better than it is now.
All the whining isn't only because of a bad system, it's because blizzard makes us feel ignored.
If you don't like the system, don't work with it and don't rely on it. Why did I start Map Night? Not because I wanted sc2mapster people to hang out with each other on a friday night, but so that map makers can play their maps with a full lobby once a week and get some feedback. Screw the popularity system if it doesn't work for you, get active in Map Night. start your own event like this, or promote this one. If more people know about it, and your map is played on it, it's obviously played more. Why make your map popular and be ignored by it's players when you can meet up with people which afterwards give you feedback?
If we had people starting things like Map Night for other days of the week (on all servers), our maps would get played a lot more. It wouldn't have to be as long as my Map Night, just get people to stay 2-3 hours and then meet up again 2 days later. Just get the community you know and shares your views to play games with you. If you are all waiting for the popularity system to fix itself and get your maps played, well then you can wait for quite some time. I don't see the point of relying on a broken system. Blizzard told you to advertise - Do it! Tell people "Tuesday 6 PM, chat channel "something", we'll play a few maps and give each other feedback.", PM people, make forum posts, ask people whether they have a map that needs to be tested and ask them whether they have time on Tuesday and tell them to come.
-_-_-_-_-_-_
Ok, I dont know what Im talking about anymore, I woke up like an hour ago and have been writing this since. I hope it didnt turn into a whine/rant and is constructive.
You did a valiant attempt, but you're still missing my point. I do not want to discuss whether there was a lot of complaining, or whether "everybody has hated the popularity system since it came out". Your post is still an elucidation (biased essay, had to google that word myself - it's a translation of a more common Dutch word), even if it's written in prettier colours.
It's very hard to go about it in an objective manner, but what I'd want to see are facts, stated in a clear fashion. Whenever the popularity system comes up on... virtually anywhere, the responses are something along the line of "I think the name is an important factor in gaining popularity" or "The Warcraft 3 system was better because it allowed newer maps to actually be played". While none of these claims are per definition false, they're EXTREMELY open 'ideas' about the subject. Nobody knows for sure if the name of your map plays such a big role in gaining popularity. Nobody knows if newer maps are hardly played - there's a good chance that if you attempt to test this, people don't play your map because it sucks balls, not because they don't see it.
The problem with the whole issue is that the popularity system to Starcraft is basically what capitalism is to the world. Everyone has an opinion about it, but because there's so many variables involved it's nigh impossible to objectively state if it helps a specific group of people or not. You cannot objectively say something like "the easiest way to gain popularity for your map is X" because you have no means of proving it. This makes it really hard to make any sort of good point about it. The problem is that people have taken this as an excuse to go the other way and just throw their opinions out there as facts. "The popularity system is shit because it's hard for a good map to get popular just because it is new". Sounds familiar? To prove such a point we'd first have to determine when a map is good, and we'd then have to determine if the statement as a whole is true - Element TD had no problems getting popular, for example, and would disprove this argument.
The way I see it, the only way to even get close to putting down an educated guess as to what's good and bad about the popularity system is by filtering out all the bullshit and QQ'ing that's been going on. As soon as you let yourself get influenced by thoughts as "but everybody has been saying X", you get polluted. There's a batshit amount of people out there listening to Greenday, but that doesn't make it a 'good band' - they might be worth shit in terms of putting a message out, for all you know; they're just good in providing catchy music to most people. This all is contrary to some other aspects of the game, where it is so much easier to classify them as 'good' or 'bad' for specific groups of people; I can easily claim, for example, that the Starcraft 2 campaign is worse than the Starcraft 1 campaign for people who really don't care about lore/storyline and hate RPG elements.
Long story short, since this post is getting way larger than I wanted it to be; I want to get rid of all the people who are just yelling and screaming stuff. What I'd want to deal with the popularity system is a way more objective discussion than the ones we've been having around here, setting the good things (for mappers & players as seperate groups) off against the bad things, and then comparing this system to the one Warcraft 3 had. If we can do that in a decent enough manner and conclude that Warcraft 3's system was better for players as well as mappers (as I personally feel it is, but have no proper means of proving or even claiming it), we can get that message out for Blizzard and urge them to just get rid of 'popularity' as a whole.
u need someone to stream live what you are doing (2 cps or a big di.. no euhh!!! a big cp that can do it alone)
one to do what u are doing (yours) = playing with the other "regulars" a new mod or a favored goldie (photon cycles is the best!!!)
and another to record what is happening (remember to point your webcm to yourself ( : ) ) and put cool stuff around
then practice with people u like
then add the contacts one by one
u have them on line
(skype or other)
and you do it
you record
look at it
weep
edit it
make a vod
first
then u go from there
hosting is getting people to come on
and make the whole deal entertaining
then when u get all this (have to do it first to know what u need, one needs to experience things all the way to "get it")
then u have fun
ps: the secret? its simple it stands in only in a one word affirmation:
preparation
and the soul/tempo for it (and thats not me implying you don't, i bet you do, just me saying "one" does need to do the legwork beforehand to know what one's talking about :
you have 2 guests = 2 long conversation online with each one in preparation
"that's just simple of course id do that".. you say?
well of course.. just do it in preparation of an hour to 3 hour of stuff... and you will deliver
you need to show your game and map pages of "projet workplace pages or such treads
so players watching "relate" over easily and they actually note
If you all don't like it, don't buy another game by Blizzard, and purchase shares in ATVI and use your vote to vote out the current management. They have no legal obligation to us. They do have an obligation to make profit. You can tell them they are going in the wrong direction by not purchasing their next game. You can also, has a shareholder, enjoy the legal obligation they have to you: increase the value of their equity. If you think they are not doing that, by producing products which you think most people think suck, then vote for new management.
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@RodrigoAlves: Go
You're forgetting:
1. Ever since this system came out in BETA people were pointing out the issues with it.
2. Blizzard merged with activision.
Keep in mind people that these people are NOT the old Blizzard... Activision made sure those guys who knew wtf they were doing were fired (a certain writer fired after burning crusade comes to mind).
Bottom line... the same novice team who made SC2 also made Wraith of the Lich King.. and Cataclysm.
Here is another issue that they will face when they release the map market: The bulk of the people with the nessesary skills to make those kinds of maps are no longer making mods on the Blizzard Engines and/or they have rolled back to previous mods because those still work.
Also as far as "whining" goes... Keep in mind that he specifically said he would like Blizzard to read this. That means its not ment entirely for you.
My person position is this: I will remind Blizzard every chance I get and to heck with you guys. I will make as much as I can and to heck with you guys. I don't know about you but I tend to expect more from $60 than I'm getting from this game. And keep in mind that I, and so many others, bought StarCraft 2 based on promises and statements they made that turned out to be nothing but lies and BS. $60... you know what else costs that much? Think about it. That $60 was my game budget for a whole year. There were a couple of titles I was looking at, yet i chose StarCraft 2. Blizzard had a reputation I thought I could rely on. And what did I get with my $60? A game that lacks basic functionality. A game that failed to live up to promises. A game that honestly.. dispite my best efforts, Is not fun. I am still trying to make it fun, it certainly has the potential - even a peron in the world of the blind can see that. If I could trade my copy of SC2 in for a $60 dollar refund I'd do it in a heartbeat - but I can't. So I have to make do. And I'm simply not the type to sit still and offer "constructive critism". That has been going on for a whole year now - everyone taking their turn at it. They have not even curled up a lip in response.
And yes I am doing something about it. I have my new game budget for this year. And I am going with a company who has been a LOT more public about what is going on with the game and what exactly the gameplay looks like. And they can show all of these things that Blizzard seems to reguard as "company secrets" and be owned by EA.
Besides that, I suspect that the release of HotS is not going to end my days of StarCraft nor the map projects I have going. And TBH its a waste of time for us custom mappers to buy it for a long while. Think about this: HotS means a HotS dependency. And unless they release that for regular StarCraft, only people who bought HotS will be able to use any HotS content. You know what I think that means? Right, its going to be another year before I can risk with any real confidence putting HotS content into any of my maps and having the "mass bulk" of the community be able to play it. A lot of people don't buy expansions right off the bat - made (potentially) even worse by the failure of Blizzard/Activision to put in any successful functionality for SC2 custom maps.
Anyways, if you still call the post "whining" think the last paragraph through and decide what you're going to do. Maybe some sales falling short will wake them up. We don't have much else to go off right now and "constructive critism" is sure as heck not working.
Blizzard and Activision are seperate companies with seperate developers. Blizzard isn't working on CoD and Activision isn't working on SC2. They have separate studios and employees. The merger was to take advantage of Activision as a publisher for the mutual benefit of both companies.
"The mapmaking community did its part too. With tens of thousands of custom maps uploaded to Battle.Net and hundreds of amazing custom games to play, we have all marveled at the technical, artistic, and creative skill of the StarCraft II mod community. Desert Strike, Storm of the Imperial Sanctum, Marine Arena, Zealot Frenzy, Star Battle and, of course, Nexus Wars have shown us an entertaining glimpse of what the talented StarCraft II community is capable of creating. We couldn’t resist throwing our hat into the ring and hope that players have enjoyed Aiur Chef, StarJeweled, and Left 2 Die."
There is what blizz wrote on their blog, go check it out.
@Eiviyn: Go
Yeah I don't really buy the whole thing about "omgz Activision owns Blizzard now Blizzard is EVIL INCARNATE."
Look at it from a business perspective. Unless the Marketplace seems like a profitable venture for Blizzard, they really have no responsibility to make that happen. Nor do they have a responsibility to roll out a red carpet for the map-making community. I've got news for you: $60 for a game development platform is damn cheap. The editor alone is a good value proposition, and any support Blizzard might give to it or the community is purely a bonus. Given that the vast majority of SC2 players buy the game for the competitive RTS aspect (and NOT the custom games,) I seriously doubt that it would be a great benefit to Blizzard to spend more time and money flowering up the custom games aspect. It's not greed. Please. It's logic.
I don't blame Blizzard for not bowing to every whim of the map-making community. If you're that fed up with it then quit. I won't because I still like the platform even with its flaws. And because it's still cheap.
Could you please quote some names of people who got fired? Just a few. I'm sure the list is very long, so just keep to the designers (programmers and artists are important, but they don't decide the overall design).
You also made a slight mistake, it wasn't Blizzard and Activision that merged, it was Activision and Vivendi Games (Blizzard's parent company). It was Vivendi (again, the parent company of Vivendi Games) who initiated the merger and holds 54% shares of the new Activision Blizzard.
Edit: Oh, hold the presses! Vivendi might buy 39% more shares, giving them a 72% stake in the company! Vivendi was Blizzard's parent company since 1998, when they were still the "good old" Blizzard. So how did Bobby Kotick corrupt them so? Did he use his devilish stare to hypnotize them?
I love these threads it's too hilarious... I love the passion in this community!
Just want to mention that from a (custom map) player's perspective it's been a bit rocky too. It is my understanding that people love variety and a good ole rotating lobby helped create that. My personal interest in playing Bnet custom maps has died because I can't get the variety (that I took for granted on war3). This may affect my decision on buying future SC2 expacs and thus affect their bottom line...
Oh well... I'm killing for D3 at the moment!
@Tolkfan: Go
All you gotta look for is the list of people that got layed off around the time WoW Burning Crusade was being made/released. Thats pretty much your list.
And OneTwo just Fyi, the reason why there is so much "passion" is that I was literally raised on Blizzard.
Played WC2 single player (before I had internet) then eventually one of my friends lent me one of his copies of Starcraft and Starcraft:Brood war so I could play with him. He let me keep it for 3-4 years. Then I went the WarCraft 3: TFT, and that took me from... lets see... '03 to '11. The sheer amount of custom maps kept that game interesting and fun, and I came to it late!
If you are wondering why about that let me inform you this. I didn't get high speed until we moved into town before we were going to move to vegas. And that was 1/3 through my senior year in highschool. so that ment I was either at school, doing homework, working outside (parents first bought a fixer-upper "crumbling acres" then built a whole new house in a hay field "pain in my ass acres"), or playing video games. And the only video games I really had were Hearts of Iron, StarCraft and Warcraft 3 - oh and WoW but I had to get the patches from a friend cause downloading 500mb patches on 28.8k (when the weather was nice) was pretty painful.
So ya having a game like StarCraft 2 being this fucked up kinda hits a critical nerve whether I like it or not. Especially since this was the version I finally decided to make maps for and I literally started the day after the beta map editor came out and this stupid popularity system wasn't released until a little later. And then EVERYONE expected they would fix it - after all they always did in the past. When its a full year later AFTER release (which means about a year and a half of everyone expecting them to fix it if you count the Beta) I'm naturally rather on edge about it.
I don't know about you guys but you could stamp my left ass cheek "Raised by Blizzard" and have it be partially true.
Nope, I'm implying that Blizzard is a company and they do things for money in a reality where time, money, and energy are all finite resources for human beings.
Your misplaced idealism is tiring. There's nothing to "wake up" to, and I'm not "caving." We simply disagree about this matter.
Maybe they couldn't afford the game. It is 60 BUCKS after all. That's like a fortune. I had to sell my brother just to pay for half. ;)
I posted this in a thread on the SC2 community forums that pertained to how disappointing Battle.net 2.0 is a year after launch. Listed everything I could remember about Battle.net 2.0's fail-filled rise to being infamous for sucking, and how Blizzard is not doing damn near enough to fix it.
@ST4RKiLL3R: Go
This is again an example of how I think it shouldn't be done. Even aside from the odd spelling error, your entire post is a rant about how bad stuff is. Again; it's not like you aren't adressing some good points, but you're bringing them in a shitty and even somewhat unreadable way. I wouldn't blame Blizz for not taking something like that seriously.
Umm... happy birthday SC2 :)
So you've never seen such a list before, you were talking out of your ass earlier and now are trying to cover it up? Fine with me.
Btw. Burning Crusade was announced on October 28, 2005 and released on January 16, 2007. The merger took place in 2008.
Ok, to make Moz happy (or at least try), I'll attempt to make a good post... If I forget something, remind me. Also, this is purely my opinion and not that of the mods, if anyone thinks that for some reason.
Things missing on day 1:
Fixed by year 1:
Let's start with the thing that actually interests mappers.
The Pop Sys
When it came out, everyone whined. Now that it's out for a year, people stopped whining mostly because the community is sick of the whining, but there's still a lot of whining going on here and there, the gigantic whine threads are just getting rarer.
I see the cause of the whining, as does everyone else. Still, there's no point whining on this forum. Blizzard doesn't read this, so what's the point? You just piss of a bunch of guys here and achieve nothing. If the pissing off people on mapster was the actual point behind the whining, then please say so so that us mods may start dishing out warnings and/or bans.
So, why all the whining? Cause the popularity system practically ruined mapping. It's not easy to get your map high enough in popularity to be able to play it, and its harder to keep it up there.
The popularity system was a good idea, just like it was having roaches be 1 supply, having double the health region they have now and having 2 base armor, but like the popularity system, it didn't work as intended. Instead of being a good meatshield, it just roflstomped everything in its way.
The biggest problem about the popularity system isn't only the system itself in my opinion, its the community. In wc3, the only way to get your map updated was to find it's website and download it from there, which immediately brought you into some form of contact with the maker. Yea, you mightve been one of those guys that just clicked the download button and vanished, but the makers still had some decent communication with the community imo. People were also a lot more patient in wc3, you could wait in a lobby for half an hour, and so would others.
But in bnet 2.0, if the game doesn't start within 30 seconds, people leave. (That is if they are the patient kind. Most just wait 5 seconds)
The community is served the newest updates of maps immediately, majority of people wouldn't even know where to go to give feedback, and even more don't really care. If you uploaded your map to a site, you could possibly have a download count which would provide some motivation to continue since even if you got no feedback, you'd know people are playing it. Nowadays you have to trust the popularity bar, which doesn't even increase in private games so it's extremely inaccurate if your map isnt popular.
Blizzard says that to get our maps popular, we have to advertise. But how do we advertise to a community that we can't contact?
Instead of showing the list when you click create or join game, it should show a page more like mapster - Showing new maps, links to videos, descriptions, etc. They could easily get unpaid volunteers to make sure that page gets updated - im pretty sure half the people here on mapster would do anything to get the system working at least partially.
What would be nice is a feature to sort of send PMs over battlenet, like actual mail instead of chat boxes. Shouldnt be hard to implement I think. The best thing about this would be that after you play a custom map, they could make battle.net automatically open a new mail thingy addressed to the author of the map with "feedback" as the subject. Majority would just hit the close button immediately, but the map makers would get some feedback, and from feedback you can improve your map and get motivation to actually do so.
A lot of ways have been suggested to fix the popularity system, a currently "popular" suggestion is sort the list by "time in lobby", i.e. how long the lobby has been open for. Popular maps would be on the bottom of the list because the lobbies would fill up quickly.
To be honest, I think *any* list apart from the popularity list should be the default one when you press "join game". I dont care whether it's featured, up and coming or fun or not, any of those would be an improvement. Why? Because people would have to use the buttons on the left to get to the popular maps. And why are maps popular? Because no one cares to press buttons other than those immediately in front of them. A lot would still go to the popularity list, but there'd be more attention for the other lists than there is now.
And I think the "Time in lobby" list is a great idea and should be the default. If you want to play a popular map, you go to the popularity list, but by default you have a list similar to wc3 - except that it's in the reverse order (Newer lobbies are at the bottom instead of top). Naming the lobbies isn't required, I don't care if they add that. It would help, but I see why they're not adding it. A simple list like that would be great.
Also, one great idea for Blizzard would be to hire 1-2 people to just go over these mapping forums and be in touch in with the community. Even if all they say is "Yea, I forwarded this to the developers. Whether they read it or not is a different story." the mapping community wouldn't dislike blizzard as much and view them the same way as now. The guy wouldn't even have to actually tell blizz anything, as long as the community thinks it's being heard it would be better than it is now.
All the whining isn't only because of a bad system, it's because blizzard makes us feel ignored.
If you don't like the system, don't work with it and don't rely on it. Why did I start Map Night? Not because I wanted sc2mapster people to hang out with each other on a friday night, but so that map makers can play their maps with a full lobby once a week and get some feedback. Screw the popularity system if it doesn't work for you, get active in Map Night. start your own event like this, or promote this one. If more people know about it, and your map is played on it, it's obviously played more. Why make your map popular and be ignored by it's players when you can meet up with people which afterwards give you feedback?
If we had people starting things like Map Night for other days of the week (on all servers), our maps would get played a lot more. It wouldn't have to be as long as my Map Night, just get people to stay 2-3 hours and then meet up again 2 days later. Just get the community you know and shares your views to play games with you. If you are all waiting for the popularity system to fix itself and get your maps played, well then you can wait for quite some time. I don't see the point of relying on a broken system. Blizzard told you to advertise - Do it! Tell people "Tuesday 6 PM, chat channel "something", we'll play a few maps and give each other feedback.", PM people, make forum posts, ask people whether they have a map that needs to be tested and ask them whether they have time on Tuesday and tell them to come.
-_-_-_-_-_-_
Ok, I dont know what Im talking about anymore, I woke up like an hour ago and have been writing this since. I hope it didnt turn into a whine/rant and is constructive.
Yes, I can clearly see how you're stating all the changes.
Not everything has been bad. A lot is, but not everything.
@TheAlmaity: Go
You did a valiant attempt, but you're still missing my point. I do not want to discuss whether there was a lot of complaining, or whether "everybody has hated the popularity system since it came out". Your post is still an elucidation (biased essay, had to google that word myself - it's a translation of a more common Dutch word), even if it's written in prettier colours.
It's very hard to go about it in an objective manner, but what I'd want to see are facts, stated in a clear fashion. Whenever the popularity system comes up on... virtually anywhere, the responses are something along the line of "I think the name is an important factor in gaining popularity" or "The Warcraft 3 system was better because it allowed newer maps to actually be played". While none of these claims are per definition false, they're EXTREMELY open 'ideas' about the subject. Nobody knows for sure if the name of your map plays such a big role in gaining popularity. Nobody knows if newer maps are hardly played - there's a good chance that if you attempt to test this, people don't play your map because it sucks balls, not because they don't see it.
The problem with the whole issue is that the popularity system to Starcraft is basically what capitalism is to the world. Everyone has an opinion about it, but because there's so many variables involved it's nigh impossible to objectively state if it helps a specific group of people or not. You cannot objectively say something like "the easiest way to gain popularity for your map is X" because you have no means of proving it. This makes it really hard to make any sort of good point about it. The problem is that people have taken this as an excuse to go the other way and just throw their opinions out there as facts. "The popularity system is shit because it's hard for a good map to get popular just because it is new". Sounds familiar? To prove such a point we'd first have to determine when a map is good, and we'd then have to determine if the statement as a whole is true - Element TD had no problems getting popular, for example, and would disprove this argument.
The way I see it, the only way to even get close to putting down an educated guess as to what's good and bad about the popularity system is by filtering out all the bullshit and QQ'ing that's been going on. As soon as you let yourself get influenced by thoughts as "but everybody has been saying X", you get polluted. There's a batshit amount of people out there listening to Greenday, but that doesn't make it a 'good band' - they might be worth shit in terms of putting a message out, for all you know; they're just good in providing catchy music to most people. This all is contrary to some other aspects of the game, where it is so much easier to classify them as 'good' or 'bad' for specific groups of people; I can easily claim, for example, that the Starcraft 2 campaign is worse than the Starcraft 1 campaign for people who really don't care about lore/storyline and hate RPG elements.
Long story short, since this post is getting way larger than I wanted it to be; I want to get rid of all the people who are just yelling and screaming stuff. What I'd want to deal with the popularity system is a way more objective discussion than the ones we've been having around here, setting the good things (for mappers & players as seperate groups) off against the bad things, and then comparing this system to the one Warcraft 3 had. If we can do that in a decent enough manner and conclude that Warcraft 3's system was better for players as well as mappers (as I personally feel it is, but have no proper means of proving or even claiming it), we can get that message out for Blizzard and urge them to just get rid of 'popularity' as a whole.
@TheAlmaity: Go
I could run a map night for a little while. Not sure exactly where to start with that though.
To do a map nite:
u need someone to stream live what you are doing (2 cps or a big di.. no euhh!!! a big cp that can do it alone)
one to do what u are doing (yours) = playing with the other "regulars" a new mod or a favored goldie (photon cycles is the best!!!)
and another to record what is happening (remember to point your webcm to yourself ( : ) ) and put cool stuff around
then practice with people u like
then add the contacts one by one
u have them on line
(skype or other)
and you do it
you record
look at it
weep
edit it
make a vod
first
then u go from there
hosting is getting people to come on
and make the whole deal entertaining
then when u get all this (have to do it first to know what u need, one needs to experience things all the way to "get it")
then u have fun
ps: the secret? its simple it stands in only in a one word affirmation:
preparation
and the soul/tempo for it (and thats not me implying you don't, i bet you do, just me saying "one" does need to do the legwork beforehand to know what one's talking about :
you have 2 guests = 2 long conversation online with each one in preparation
"that's just simple of course id do that".. you say?
well of course.. just do it in preparation of an hour to 3 hour of stuff... and you will deliver
you need to show your game and map pages of "projet workplace pages or such treads
so players watching "relate" over easily and they actually note
If you all don't like it, don't buy another game by Blizzard, and purchase shares in ATVI and use your vote to vote out the current management. They have no legal obligation to us. They do have an obligation to make profit. You can tell them they are going in the wrong direction by not purchasing their next game. You can also, has a shareholder, enjoy the legal obligation they have to you: increase the value of their equity. If you think they are not doing that, by producing products which you think most people think suck, then vote for new management.