Well I like it... my theory at the moment is that once you hit around 18 hours played with your map, it resets to 0 hours but will go up again because people are currently playing it... so in a way we have our war3 system back! Each map goes up to the top hitting the 18hour peak and then it floats back to 0 and cycles endlessly back and forth... so now we have a rotating list (assuming this isn't a bug)... so this is quite awesome!
The only bad news is that it's hard to consistently find the map you want... and also if you're a small time map you'll still be low on the list. It just means that SOTIS and Star battle and nexus wars go back to 0 when they hit 18 so the top maps get rotated now.
How is it awesome? There's no way to tell how successful your map is by looking at a number from 1 - 20, which is all you see at a glance. It needs to be much more obvious than this if a map you make is successful. Else, you're basically doing a ton of work merely to insert the finished product into some database.
There needs to be some evidence easily displayable to the public of the success of a map. In War3 / BW, success was obvious when the map lobbies in the game list were 50% or more your map.
And, up until now, in SC2, you had a popularity meter.
Now there is nothing. Your map just cycles up and down the list. There is nothing to show for the hard work. It's not like we're asking for money. Just recognition and proof that we designed the map correctly.
no offense, but the popularity meteor from before was really bad.
How could a gauge that didnt take into factor how many players or the average time taken to complete a game say how popular a map really is? Yay for the 10 minute small number of players maps raping the popularity list.
So many 1 player maps just rocketed straight to the top of the popularity list then died off fast cause of this bad gauge.
New system is decent, not great, but i think its definitely better than what we had before.
well mines is 12 players, and the average game is around 40 minutes also......
i never had popularity problems for my map, however when i frst released the map( about 4 1/2 months ago), it was incredibly frustrating never being able to start a full a game cause of the old system.
Basically players would enter your map, but because i required 12 players, a host would afk in the lobby waiting for other players, and then it ended up going no where, cause host is the only one who could start the game. It happened all the time. What are the chances of more than 1 person pressing scroll more numerous times to enter custom games? you might get 1 person, but another? LOL..., Now lets say you got 6 lotto winners ( thats the amount of luck required), the players were waiting so long in the lobby that host went afk and it would never start.so the games went no where when i first released the map on this god forsaken horrible system.
I am not ashamed to admit i said fuck this system, waited for a reset, and boosted the map with a mouse macro by leaving my pc on to run it whole day/night.
Only then was i able to get some players into the game. Cause it appeared higher on the list. Then it took off in the popularity and stayed on page 1/2/3/4 for atleast 3 months now. Basically if i didnt abuse. It would be lost in the abist with the rest of the maps that are going no-where due to 0 popularity
Now check this new system, Any new map now could basically appear on the top of the list, Gather 8 friends, log in some time for the map, and when it reaches 13 or so hours, it will be on page 1.
The biggest problem of the custom game list basically got a huge facelift, Its not great, but its Pretty good start imo.
I didn't have popularity problems either. Even now, my map is constantly hitting the 20 game limit, over and over again. When I click to join a game of it, it's a full lobby very quickly, regardless of its current position in the map-cycle.
But there is nothing to stand it out from other maps cycling. They all cycle. Equally. It shouldn't be like that. The point of making a map, at least to me, is to prove to myself I'm capable of the design process, and I feel I am at contest with others to prove abilities. Now there is no proof.
There is no permanent recognition like there was in War3 and the prior SC2 system.
What's the point of releasing a new map if it's just going to be filed into a turn-table of maps for others to enjoy?
I only played around for a little, but it seems like popular maps cycles through faster than non-popular maps. Was playing RedTD and it never cycled back up to page 1. It was stuck on page 3, while other maps that was popular gets constantly cycled back up to page 1. Could only play Red circle TD twice, and 2nd game only had 3 players.
Yeah you have it right... popular maps will indeed cycle their way backup to the top and leave a lot of the lesser-volume played maps sitting on page 2+
I see Vexal's issue atm and yeah while overall the new system is better (especially from a player's stand point), it is definitely not fun trying to gauge your own map or even find it at times.
I did experience a problem myself tonight where my map was at page 4 when I wanted to test full house so I had to wait for it to naturally go to at least page 2... and now it's on page 8 or w/e... But either way because of the change I think maps will last longer and not be so overplayed!
Edit: Maybe an acceleration meter on the map lol... so you can see the rate at which your map is cycling? Map's like Nexus Wars and SOTIS will have high cycle rates... whereas maps that typically sit on page 4 will have a very slow cycle rate...
My maps are oscilating between page 1 and 10. Every minute they are in a different page.
My guess is that popularity is the sum of minutes played from each player in a period of 1 hour. The minutes are added when the players leave the game.
Therefore, if you have a 12-players RPG that takes 3 hours to finish, when the game is done you will have +36 hours(popularity) during 1 hour.
Wow are you sure only at the end? I'd like to think that's false because in the PTR first day when there was almost no maps being hosted (only melee choices and only 3-4 were on the popularity list) I hosted Toxic Slums for 1-2 minutes, a map that surely wouldn't be played randomly, and as soon as I got out it was already on the list at a couple hours if I remember correctly... meaning that other people would have had to start games while I was in mine for it to be that high since I only played for 1-2 minutes.
How is it awesome? There's no way to tell how successful your map is by looking at a number from 1 - 20, which is all you see at a glance. It needs to be much more obvious than this if a map you make is successful. Else, you're basically doing a ton of work merely to insert the finished product into some database.
There needs to be some evidence easily displayable to the public of the success of a map. In War3 / BW, success was obvious when the map lobbies in the game list were 50% or more your map.
And, up until now, in SC2, you had a popularity meter.
Now there is nothing. Your map just cycles up and down the list. There is nothing to show for the hard work. It's not like we're asking for money. Just recognition and proof that we designed the map correctly.
It's a lot better than the old system that's for sure. If you're looking for recognition then i guess you'd have to wait for the marketplace or, see how many people give you feedback by posting on your map's thread on bnet or here.
It could be a bug. Storing the time in seconds in an unsigned short would cause wrap around at about 18 hours :P.
Oh my God you're right !
Oh Blizzard, this is sooo much fail - but it's so funny xDDD
@everyone who doesn't know what this means:
They're storing the number of seconds per map in a short integer. But this integer cannot store more than 65500 seconds (18 hours). After that it's full and it automatically jumps back to 0 and starts all over again.
Blizzard probably changed it into a short int in this patch to save memory on their servers, but they didn't take into consideration that it overflows that quickly :D
They're storing the number of seconds per map in a short integer. But
this integer cannot store more than 65500 seconds (18 hours). After that
it's full and it automatically jumps back to 0 and starts all over
again.
Blizzard probably changed it into a short int in this patch to save
memory on their servers, but they didn't take into consideration that it
overflows that quickly :D
...
This can't be serious.
God, that's goddamn newb programer's FAIL, not a huge company.
What the fuck >_<.
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Well I like it... my theory at the moment is that once you hit around 18 hours played with your map, it resets to 0 hours but will go up again because people are currently playing it... so in a way we have our war3 system back! Each map goes up to the top hitting the 18hour peak and then it floats back to 0 and cycles endlessly back and forth... so now we have a rotating list (assuming this isn't a bug)... so this is quite awesome!
The only bad news is that it's hard to consistently find the map you want... and also if you're a small time map you'll still be low on the list. It just means that SOTIS and Star battle and nexus wars go back to 0 when they hit 18 so the top maps get rotated now.
@OneTwoSC: Go
Hm then i guess they need my favorite map features in as well, the "last played map" should serve for now
@progammer:
Good point..
im still hoping the scrap the entire thing completely.
It could be a bug. Storing the time in seconds in an unsigned short would cause wrap around at about 18 hours :P.
@OneTwoSC: Go
How is it awesome? There's no way to tell how successful your map is by looking at a number from 1 - 20, which is all you see at a glance. It needs to be much more obvious than this if a map you make is successful. Else, you're basically doing a ton of work merely to insert the finished product into some database.
There needs to be some evidence easily displayable to the public of the success of a map. In War3 / BW, success was obvious when the map lobbies in the game list were 50% or more your map.
And, up until now, in SC2, you had a popularity meter.
Now there is nothing. Your map just cycles up and down the list. There is nothing to show for the hard work. It's not like we're asking for money. Just recognition and proof that we designed the map correctly.
no offense, but the popularity meteor from before was really bad.
How could a gauge that didnt take into factor how many players or the average time taken to complete a game say how popular a map really is? Yay for the 10 minute small number of players maps raping the popularity list.
So many 1 player maps just rocketed straight to the top of the popularity list then died off fast cause of this bad gauge.
New system is decent, not great, but i think its definitely better than what we had before.
@Jinxxx123: Go
My map was a 10 player map with average games lasting 45 minutes.
@Vexal: Go
well mines is 12 players, and the average game is around 40 minutes also......
i never had popularity problems for my map, however when i frst released the map( about 4 1/2 months ago), it was incredibly frustrating never being able to start a full a game cause of the old system.
Basically players would enter your map, but because i required 12 players, a host would afk in the lobby waiting for other players, and then it ended up going no where, cause host is the only one who could start the game. It happened all the time. What are the chances of more than 1 person pressing scroll more numerous times to enter custom games? you might get 1 person, but another? LOL..., Now lets say you got 6 lotto winners ( thats the amount of luck required), the players were waiting so long in the lobby that host went afk and it would never start.so the games went no where when i first released the map on this god forsaken horrible system.
I am not ashamed to admit i said fuck this system, waited for a reset, and boosted the map with a mouse macro by leaving my pc on to run it whole day/night. Only then was i able to get some players into the game. Cause it appeared higher on the list. Then it took off in the popularity and stayed on page 1/2/3/4 for atleast 3 months now. Basically if i didnt abuse. It would be lost in the abist with the rest of the maps that are going no-where due to 0 popularity
Now check this new system, Any new map now could basically appear on the top of the list, Gather 8 friends, log in some time for the map, and when it reaches 13 or so hours, it will be on page 1.
The biggest problem of the custom game list basically got a huge facelift, Its not great, but its Pretty good start imo.
@Jinxxx123: Go
I didn't have popularity problems either. Even now, my map is constantly hitting the 20 game limit, over and over again. When I click to join a game of it, it's a full lobby very quickly, regardless of its current position in the map-cycle.
But there is nothing to stand it out from other maps cycling. They all cycle. Equally. It shouldn't be like that. The point of making a map, at least to me, is to prove to myself I'm capable of the design process, and I feel I am at contest with others to prove abilities. Now there is no proof.
There is no permanent recognition like there was in War3 and the prior SC2 system.
What's the point of releasing a new map if it's just going to be filed into a turn-table of maps for others to enjoy?
@Vexal: Go
I only played around for a little, but it seems like popular maps cycles through faster than non-popular maps. Was playing RedTD and it never cycled back up to page 1. It was stuck on page 3, while other maps that was popular gets constantly cycled back up to page 1. Could only play Red circle TD twice, and 2nd game only had 3 players.
@sandround:
Yeah you have it right... popular maps will indeed cycle their way backup to the top and leave a lot of the lesser-volume played maps sitting on page 2+
I see Vexal's issue atm and yeah while overall the new system is better (especially from a player's stand point), it is definitely not fun trying to gauge your own map or even find it at times.
I did experience a problem myself tonight where my map was at page 4 when I wanted to test full house so I had to wait for it to naturally go to at least page 2... and now it's on page 8 or w/e... But either way because of the change I think maps will last longer and not be so overplayed!
Edit: Maybe an acceleration meter on the map lol... so you can see the rate at which your map is cycling? Map's like Nexus Wars and SOTIS will have high cycle rates... whereas maps that typically sit on page 4 will have a very slow cycle rate...
My maps are oscilating between page 1 and 10. Every minute they are in a different page.
My guess is that popularity is the sum of minutes played from each player in a period of 1 hour. The minutes are added when the players leave the game.
Therefore, if you have a 12-players RPG that takes 3 hours to finish, when the game is done you will have +36 hours(popularity) during 1 hour.
@RodrigoAlves: Go
Wow are you sure only at the end? I'd like to think that's false because in the PTR first day when there was almost no maps being hosted (only melee choices and only 3-4 were on the popularity list) I hosted Toxic Slums for 1-2 minutes, a map that surely wouldn't be played randomly, and as soon as I got out it was already on the list at a couple hours if I remember correctly... meaning that other people would have had to start games while I was in mine for it to be that high since I only played for 1-2 minutes.
It's a lot better than the old system that's for sure. If you're looking for recognition then i guess you'd have to wait for the marketplace or, see how many people give you feedback by posting on your map's thread on bnet or here.
Why is there a popularity system at all, ffs?
Oh my God you're right !
Oh Blizzard, this is sooo much fail - but it's so funny xDDD
@everyone who doesn't know what this means:
They're storing the number of seconds per map in a short integer. But this integer cannot store more than 65500 seconds (18 hours). After that it's full and it automatically jumps back to 0 and starts all over again.
Blizzard probably changed it into a short int in this patch to save memory on their servers, but they didn't take into consideration that it overflows that quickly :D
@s3rius: Go
Now thats the first time i've ever seen a bug I don't want fixed. Assuming it is one.
Having mixed feelings of this "bug"!!!
...
This can't be serious.
God, that's goddamn newb programer's FAIL, not a huge company.
What the fuck >_<.