After surfing the web i found a rather interesting FAQ from blizzard about heart of the swarm. Now this may not be news to most of you but i was happy to find this out.
Quote: Blizzard
As far as Battle.net improvements, one primary focus will be on getting the StarCraft Marketplace up and running at some point around the launch of Heart of the Swarm. The maps and mods community in StarCraft II has published tens of thousands of custom maps using the StarCraft II editor. Our goal with the new Marketplace design will be in upgrading the custom map UI to better showcase the wide variety of great new maps and mods to players who are looking for fun new gaming experiences. We want players to be able to more easily find, rate, and sort through all the great custom maps that have been created.
I was wondering what you guys had heard about this or if you have more information on this. I read a couple topics here and there about some ideas but nothing confirmed.
We are very well informed with this matter. blizzard will take a step towars flash style UI that will give some hope of getting your games played, but
will most likely fail horribly (or atleast a bit).
I still think the hots will provide "better system for mappers, but not for gamers".
Ill let you figure out yourself what I mean by that, if we assume the UI is mostly similar to the latest presentation.
Well, one of the things mentioned at blizzcon is that if you open a lobby to public, it will be put in a qeue for the Fun or Not system. That will definitely help people get testers.
Well, one of the things mentioned at blizzcon is that if you open a lobby to public, it will be put in a qeue for the Fun or Not system. That will definitely help people get testers.
@TheAlmaity: Go Currently fun or not does that to some extent. While testing one of my maps fun or not decided to give me people in my lobby. It really did help out. My fears are the following.
Yeah also with the fun or not system doing that. They may only play it once or twice but cant play it again because lack of players. Unless they instantly want to play it over and over.
If the new interface looks like the image i posted above it will have more maps on the screen than the current one does. I think you have a point about fun or not it really should be called that. I doubt it will get renamed with the title update.
The UI should not have those big banners for promotion. They could just make new page for info about maps and promoting.
I think I would prefer something like.
Active lobbys on left side and most popular/bookmark on right side. Active lobbys would be those rotating ones. And preferably popular maps wont show up on the rotating list, since you can easilly join them from the popular thingy.
I think I would like less gategories is the best. You could then use drop down menu or something to filter more if you so wish.
The UI should not have those big banners for promotion. They could just make new page for info about maps and promoting.
I think I would prefer something like.
Active lobbys on left side and most popular/bookmark on right side. Active lobbys would be those rotating ones. And preferably popular maps wont show up on the rotating list, since you can easilly join them from the popular thingy.
I think I would like less gategories is the best. You could then use drop down menu or something to filter more if you so wish.
I believe filters/categories would be a solution. Compare the Tower Defence popularity list with the Custom Game list. Chances that your map will be found in the Tower Defence list, is a hundred times bigger than in the Custom Games list. If they added more filters/categories, players would be able to browse lets say RPG maps, while mappers would have better chances to get their map seen.
This would not be the final solution, but could be used in addition to zenx1's suggestion about having active lobbies shown aswell.
thats pretty great. If those things just rotate nicely and are active lobbys I think I could live with that.
Im not totally sure if I like the ratings showing...I suppose its fine (perhaps even option to disable rating or buffer that shows rating after like 20 ratings)
Its still pretty full, but I sort of still like it. Yea I have not really anything bad to say about that. Its really close to my vision of good custom map system.
In this case I believe its actually good thing to have somekind of banner below the rotating menu. You dont want to have 100 maps shown so the waiting time
probly is a bit shorter.
I think I liked the previous one better. That is pretty much perfect.
Its a bit hard to say how much stuff you can put to a window without being overwhelmed...and blizzard should have somekind of statistics how many people
play custom games and based on that try to make a screen that would give enough players for all gategories.
That later option wouldnt be that bad either. with small adjustments They could add small buttons to change the popular maps to new and noteworthy/bookmarks/whatever. and needless to say that banner looks stupid. I guess one option would be add like 3 featured maps or something there...
There are couple different designs that are good in my opinion. And its pretty hard to say whats the optimal one. I would almost lean to the later one just because Im not sure how the traffic in custom game system would divide....hard to say indeed.
Things I would DEFINETLY ADD:
rotating active lobbys (there can be couple variations how to apply this)
top10 maps (No more, just 10!)
edit* I see you updatet your image. Thats a NO! Do not waste space like that. I would prefer those featured maps or some random map promotions there (could switch daily or w/e). The info we see is enough at the normal hover mouse view.
There are couple different designs that are good in my opinion. And its pretty hard to say whats the optimal one. I would almost lean to the later one just because Im not sure how the traffic in custom game system would divide....hard to say indeed.
@zenx1: Go
Yeah I agree with you on that point but i think their current traffic is thrown off with the current system. Everybody wants something better and with something better i think the traffic would completely change.
As for my last image i made I'd say the bottom area should be a very flexible in what it can provide to the player. Based on personalized settings the bottom could be the following.
Sort the maps by pre-defined category (RTS, TD, DotA etc) and force the player to pick a category before he can search.
Then address the real problem; 80 pages of utter shit maps. There really needs to be some quality control. Anything. Convert that fun or not system into a "This map isn't listed unless at least one game has been completed with a score over 50%" or something. Really, people whine that nobody looks past page 1; there's a damn good reason. There's nothing there, and if there were, it'd be buried under mountains of trash.
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Popularity System Fix (Heart of the Swarm)
After surfing the web i found a rather interesting FAQ from blizzard about heart of the swarm. Now this may not be news to most of you but i was happy to find this out.
Quote: Blizzard
As far as Battle.net improvements, one primary focus will be on getting the StarCraft Marketplace up and running at some point around the launch of Heart of the Swarm. The maps and mods community in StarCraft II has published tens of thousands of custom maps using the StarCraft II editor. Our goal with the new Marketplace design will be in upgrading the custom map UI to better showcase the wide variety of great new maps and mods to players who are looking for fun new gaming experiences. We want players to be able to more easily find, rate, and sort through all the great custom maps that have been created.
Blizzard FAQ
I was wondering what you guys had heard about this or if you have more information on this. I read a couple topics here and there about some ideas but nothing confirmed.
We are very well informed with this matter. blizzard will take a step towars flash style UI that will give some hope of getting your games played, but will most likely fail horribly (or atleast a bit).
I still think the hots will provide "better system for mappers, but not for gamers".
Ill let you figure out yourself what I mean by that, if we assume the UI is mostly similar to the latest presentation.
3 Points I gleamed
Well, one of the things mentioned at blizzcon is that if you open a lobby to public, it will be put in a qeue for the Fun or Not system. That will definitely help people get testers.
@TheAlmaity: Go
wow... I really dont like that they refuse to admit that something pre-activision has some qualities better.
@TheAlmaity: Go Currently fun or not does that to some extent. While testing one of my maps fun or not decided to give me people in my lobby. It really did help out. My fears are the following.
@gamemore: Go
Yeah also with the fun or not system doing that. They may only play it once or twice but cant play it again because lack of players. Unless they instantly want to play it over and over.
@Taintedwisp: Go
Well with what TheAlmaity is true then that would fix that problem to some degree.
Personally i think the entire user interface change will work wonderfully if the following happens.
What should be on the main page
Along with...
Edit:
I added a picture that i edited to give the idea of what i'm looking for. Now I thats not a perfect set up but its more what i'm looking for.
Link to Original Image (I do not own the image below I simply edited it.)
The new interface they showed at BlizzCon is just horrible. The less maps in screen the worse.
Also, Fun or Not should be named "Now playing" and show lobbies of public games without full house for more than 1 minute.
@Lonami: Go
If the new interface looks like the image i posted above it will have more maps on the screen than the current one does. I think you have a point about fun or not it really should be called that. I doubt it will get renamed with the title update.
The UI should not have those big banners for promotion. They could just make new page for info about maps and promoting.
I think I would prefer something like.
Active lobbys on left side and most popular/bookmark on right side. Active lobbys would be those rotating ones. And preferably popular maps wont show up on the rotating list, since you can easilly join them from the popular thingy.
I think I would like less gategories is the best. You could then use drop down menu or something to filter more if you so wish.
Would be a good idea/solution.
I believe filters/categories would be a solution. Compare the Tower Defence popularity list with the Custom Game list. Chances that your map will be found in the Tower Defence list, is a hundred times bigger than in the Custom Games list. If they added more filters/categories, players would be able to browse lets say RPG maps, while mappers would have better chances to get their map seen.
This would not be the final solution, but could be used in addition to zenx1's suggestion about having active lobbies shown aswell.
So from what i just heard you guys will like to see something similar to the image below.
Note: Link to original image:
@gamemore: Go
This is (hopefully) the future popularity system. Looks very good.
@gamemore: Go
thats pretty great. If those things just rotate nicely and are active lobbys I think I could live with that.
Im not totally sure if I like the ratings showing...I suppose its fine (perhaps even option to disable rating or buffer that shows rating after like 20 ratings)
Its still pretty full, but I sort of still like it. Yea I have not really anything bad to say about that. Its really close to my vision of good custom map system.
In this case I believe its actually good thing to have somekind of banner below the rotating menu. You dont want to have 100 maps shown so the waiting time probly is a bit shorter.
Okay i edited the image from my last post. Take a look and tell me what you think.
Links to the Images used to make mine:
Original Image 1
Original Image 2
I think I liked the previous one better. That is pretty much perfect.
Its a bit hard to say how much stuff you can put to a window without being overwhelmed...and blizzard should have somekind of statistics how many people play custom games and based on that try to make a screen that would give enough players for all gategories.
That later option wouldnt be that bad either. with small adjustments They could add small buttons to change the popular maps to new and noteworthy/bookmarks/whatever. and needless to say that banner looks stupid. I guess one option would be add like 3 featured maps or something there...
There are couple different designs that are good in my opinion. And its pretty hard to say whats the optimal one. I would almost lean to the later one just because Im not sure how the traffic in custom game system would divide....hard to say indeed.
Things I would DEFINETLY ADD:
@zenx1: Go Yeah I agree with you on that point but i think their current traffic is thrown off with the current system. Everybody wants something better and with something better i think the traffic would completely change.
As for my last image i made I'd say the bottom area should be a very flexible in what it can provide to the player. Based on personalized settings the bottom could be the following.
Examples:
Here's a thought.
Sort the maps by pre-defined category (RTS, TD, DotA etc) and force the player to pick a category before he can search.
Then address the real problem; 80 pages of utter shit maps. There really needs to be some quality control. Anything. Convert that fun or not system into a "This map isn't listed unless at least one game has been completed with a score over 50%" or something. Really, people whine that nobody looks past page 1; there's a damn good reason. There's nothing there, and if there were, it'd be buried under mountains of trash.