It depends on your definition of the word 'hard'. Nothing in the galaxy editor is so hard that someone wanting to understand it will simpy fail at it. If you want to, you can learn yourself terraining, triggering and data editing in a couple of days. In that sense mapping is a bit of a bland 'profession', as anyone wih the drive to do so could create something to challenge the top maps currently around.
That's not to say tutorials and the like aren't helpful, though.
About the popularity system, they are on the right tract. Even the "join lobby by hosted" option is not going cut it. It is simply going to send us in the other direction, where once we play a map we cannot find it again. With the release of bookmarks and the "fun or not" rating system, that is somewhat fixed. If you like a map, you can bookmark it and rate it "fun" if you play it. If they then add in the "join by currently hosted" feature, then players could tell if a map is fun based on how many bookmarks it has and what it's rating is. If a map isn't widely considered to be fun, why play it? If only a small group of people enjoy the map, they should start a party and play it privately. If a game is fun, it will be bookmarked, rated high, and played often. Then this game will no longer be displayed on the front page of the "join by currently hosted" to give other games a chance. The "popular" filter isn't going anywhere, but Blizzard is on the right tract. Give them some credit, they know what they are doing.
Yes you have, if you would think. If a game is on the first page, that means it is fun. Complex/Fun for casual gamers. Just because Desert Strike and Nexus Wars are not the most complex games out there, I've got news for you. They are VERY fun. All of the first page games are fun, or else they wouldn't be on the first page. A game doesn't have to be super complex to be fun. I know that I personally enjoy SmashCraft for example, but a lot of my friends do not. It has about 200x the amount of work into the game, it just isn't a genre a ton of people want to play. Quit wineing and understand that if you game is fun, people will bookmark it and it will become popular. And advertisments are necessary. If a game is advertised, people will play it. People who release a game and just type in "Hey play this game" in the chat channels are doomed to fail. Just saying.
Whats all the fuss about it being "hard." I don't get it, maybe wc3 was easy, but I think galaxy edit is perfectly reasonably hard for the power it gives you.
People whine about the data editor being hard... Its not. Yes, there's a metric fuckton of different fields, so what? A lot of them are straightforward. Follow a hero tutorial to the end and you've practically learned the entire data editor, and the things you haven't learned are some specific things you just have to ask some other people for or find more specific tutorials for (Like custom movers), but you can put the rest together yourself.
Know that saying "Quality over quantity"? Well, if it were "difficulty over quantity", the data editor would be more quantity than difficulty (I didn't make any sense here, did I?).
You've got a lot of fields. a lot of SIMPLE fields (Well, there's a fair share of complicated ones as well, but mostly we've got simple ones), and the number scares everyone away. Yea, to make a simple unit you've got to do a lot more work than in wc3, but I don't remember you being able to set the exact button locations for the command card independently for each unit, you weren't able to use Texture Select by ID, I don't think there were even behaviors, and you definitely didn't make a rainbow archon (The idea might be silly, but you go ahead and make a rainbow unit in wc3 without triggers). Let alone abilities, you had to use triggers in wc3 afaik. You couldn't make attacks like the colossus' or void rays.
The data editor is better than the wc3 version, the only advantages the wc3 one had were the speed and the newb friendlyness. I won't stop you from blaming the data editor for scaring away a lot of potential mappers - It's something that's not quickly understood, you have to spend a week or two without any clue, but after that it's easy. Problem is, people aren't willing to spend the time to get to know the editor and just immediately slap a "Too hard" sticker on it and leave.
I can't wait to do that sc2streamster episode where I teach Moz how to use the data editor and show that it's not that bad...
Sorry if I sounded harsh somewhere :) Just wanted to voice my opinion on the data editor and I mightve gone a bit overboard.
About the pop sys... Weren't we over that? Yea, it sucks, so what? There's tons of maps on the bottom of the list that are great, so don't say there aren't. Card Shuffle, HeroLineWars, catalyst (all of em), VoidCraft, Room Wars, Snipers Promod, The Final Frontier 2, Blood Marathon, I think even my map gates of darkness deserves a spot somewhere on pages 3-5, and these maps I named are in a wide range of polish and simplicty/complexity. Final Frontier 2 is ridiculously hard to learn but well made, Room Wars is ridiculously easy to get into and fun, etc.
Get over this bloody thing. Blizzard isn't gonna fix the pop sys before the marketplace comes. Just wait till the HotS beta hits (or whenever the marketplace comes), if the marketplace sucks as well, feel free to complain.
EDIT: SOOOOO many posts while I was writing... Dammit.
I agree with Taco and Moz as well
@Lonami: Go You must be really bad at mapping in order to think that the
WC3 editor was better than SC2's editor. . . especially the Data Editor.
. .
Anyone who tries to argue the point that we're behind the WC3
progression is foolish. Are you really trying to say that 1 year after
launch people had large communities dedicated to making WC3 Maps? That
those same communities had already created tutorials for large portions
of the editor? That Blizzard actually cared enough about UMS to even TRY
to fix their stupid mistakes?
Oh yeah, that's right. . . none of the above is true.
As someone who has written tutorials (and will eventually write more), I
find it shocking that so many of you seem to think we're developing
slowly. Um, hello? My first month here I gave you guys attachments,
custom movers, in depth actors, etc! Just imagine if Helral, OneTwo,
Beider and so forth hadn't been creating the tutorials that they did?
Many of you would STILL be failing your way through the editor if not
given up.
People are mistaken when they think that good maps haven't been
published in a while. The sad reality is that there are A LOT of good
maps that have been published, but the popularity system killed them and
you never got the chance to experience them.
We, as a community, really need to exercise more patience. I get that
we're in the age of "NOW" but that will never be how anything works.
I used to teach Spanish people (I had a clan just for it) about basic mapmaking. They weren't genius, and they were awful with triggers, but they were able to make nice maps. Now, even after all that experience, they can't. The data editor is awful. Does it give good results? of course it does, where did I said it doesn't?
Results and possibilities aren't the problem of Galaxy Editor. The process is. Stuff that could be simpler isn't.
By the way, I really wish we could actually write the data editor stuff as some decent code. I wouldn't lose the shitload of time I lose with it currently (and half of the time I don't even understand what I'm doing, but well, I haven't had the time to pick a good tutorial and see what's everything for [suggestions are welcome, summer will be long]).
Maybe a "noob mode" is what we need right now, so the number of mappers grows. I look back at the noob kid I was when I started with W3, and I know I couldn't make a thing on SC2.
About the popularity system, they are on the right tract. Even the "join
lobby by hosted" option is not going cut it. It is simply going to send
us in the other direction, where once we play a map we cannot find it
again. With the release of bookmarks and the "fun or not" rating system,
that is somewhat fixed. If you like a map, you can bookmark it and rate
it "fun" if you play it. If they then add in the "join by currently
hosted" feature, then players could tell if a map is fun based on how
many bookmarks it has and what it's rating is. If a map isn't widely
considered to be fun, why play it? If only a small group of people enjoy
the map, they should start a party and play it privately. If a game is
fun, it will be bookmarked, rated high, and played often. Then this game
will no longer be displayed on the front page of the "join by currently
hosted" to give other games a chance. The "popular" filter isn't going
anywhere, but Blizzard is on the right tract. Give them some credit,
they know what they are doing.
I think you're wrong, and I'll give you an example: Banana Cheaters on EU. I like that map, but I never find anyone to play with. The lucky times when joining a game finds me players, its afk retards. I'm forced to go to a channel and wait for people that actually care to check channels often to be able to play. I'm sure same happens with lots of maps.
With W3-style list integrated with the others, I could play these "less popular" maps easier. Right now, if I want to play 1 of 20 maps like Banana Cheaters, I have to check loads of chat channels and join randomly to find players.
W3-system had the flaw of being 90% dota, but still, you had other maps between the dotas. With how SC2 is built now, they could reduce all those dotas to 1 line, and display custom maps with a waiting lobby better. Just sort them by slots left. With this system, I could be able to join games with 1-2 slots left and start playing instantly.
It's been said over and over. People can't play games that aren't on the first few pages of popularity. Want to play a multiplayer game on page 9? No one will join it. How can a community grow when the smaller games are unplayable? I would not spend a year making a custom map that might end up being impossible to play without a premade group.
It's clear that they need a hybrid system between SC2 popularity and the WC3 games lobby. If no one joins a game for 30-60 seconds, the game can be flagged as "looking for more" and it would appear on a new tab that shows recently created games that need players. Ideally you'd also be able to sort these "looking for more" games based on which lobbies have been looking for the longest time, or need the most/fewest slots filled, or just sort the list by popularity.
I like that map, but I never find anyone to play with. The lucky times when joining a game finds me players, its afk retards.
Edit: This gave me another idea. You could flag your game as "looking for more" and also flag it to only reveal to other players who have bookmarked the game. On the looking for more list, you could set it to only show games that you have bookmarked and/or games that are only looking for other bookmark players. This would let you attract people who (hopefully) already know something about the game and liked it enough to bookmark it. You'd have a more exclusive group of players, and hopefully no afk retards.
It would also be nice to have a 5 star rating system on published maps. It could even be restrictive, like requiring that a player has been in a map for more than 5 minutes for three games before it can be rated.
The SC2 editor itself is complicated, but I think if players had more visibility into fun smaller projects it would get more people excited to try to learn the editor and make their own games.
And finally, time is a huge factor. It can take a year or longer to make a great game. I'd say give it more time, but with the rocky start for the first year there may not be very many newcomers to give the community fresh ideas.
Maybe a "noob mode" is what we need right now, so the number of mappers grows. I look back at the noob kid I was when I started with W3, and I know I couldn't make a thing on SC2.
Hide advance fields? I have always used it to speed up my work when I'm doing basic stuff, but I suppose hiding advance fields is a "noob mode"
No no no, stop. You are missing the point. What you are saying is the problem with the system you are suggesting. If you allow players to join games randomly, then you run into the problem that if a player joins a game they don't like, they will just leave. Do I think a "join by hosted" is a good idea? YES!! It is a fantastic idea, and one that MUST be implemented. I never said that games that aren't on the front page aren't fun, I simply said that games on the front page are. Most games that are not on the front page are garbage and should not be played. If a couple of players are sitting in a lobby waiting for people to join, but the map sucks, then why should people looking to have fun join those games? If anything, a "BETA Testing" filter should be added, which doesn't filter by popularity at all.
One more thing I would like to point out is that this community is very... special. The common opinion here is often quite different than the actual global opinion of the SC2 community. I would say that half of the community doesn't even know what custom games are! The idea that there is an entire section of the game that has a bunch of modded maps that are actually good just doesn't make sense. I know that before I showed a lot of my friends that play SC2, they had no idea.
In other words, you may like Banana Cheaters, but maybe an average gamer wouldn't. I know that I tell my friends about the map and the most common response I get is "That sounds so stupid, I am never playing that." One of my friends even said "If the game doesn't have "Wars", "Strike", or any other intense action verb in the title, I won't play it. Unfortunately, that is the viewpoint of many people who play SC2 custom gamers.
Also, one more thing. Maybe Banana Cheaters is a great game. Maybe it is not. (I for one know that it is). What I do know is that the game appeals to a VERY small audience, and thus will have a relatively low rating, and relatively low bookmark count. You don't want to play with "AFK retards" anyways, so why not find a group of people who like the game and play with them? Just like SmashCraft, not all games are meant to have a huge community following it. If a game is fun, it will be rated highly. If it is not, it will not be. If it is fun, it will be bookmarked. If not, it will not be. It is that simple, and there is no way to argue that. The reason why that is not entirely the case now is because of the absence of the "join by currently hosted" filter. Add that, and everything will work out. Add a "Beta Lobbies" filter, or a "Just for Kicks" filter that won't filter by popularity, and it is even better.
Also, not everyone is meant to make maps. If you don't want to take the time to learn the editor, then your map doesn't deserve to be played. End of story. That is a general statement that applies to everyone. If you don't want to figure out the editor, and you think that it is too complex, leave it to the people who like the new freedom the editor gives them, and stop whining. Last time I checked, making WC3 maps hasn't been banned. If you are so emotionally attached to WC3, keep making WC3 maps!
To be fair... I wouldn't mind a simple button in the top overlay that one could click that would simply hide all the advanced functions of the editor. Specific brush functions for terrain, fields you never use in the data editor, really specific actions, conditions and events in triggers... That's something that'd be easy to make and would probably help a lot of the newer mappers out.
I think a noob mode or something like that would be good. Maybe not something that lets you hide fields, but lets say a special "Unit editor" that lets you create a unit, weapon and associated actors in one place and merges all the important fields, like it was in wc3, and leaves out all the advanced fields. You can still open the usual data editor and change the other values, but use the Unit editor to create very simple units. You won't be able to remake the colossus or something like that, but you know, make units like marines and zerglings.
While I do think this likely would be valuable in spurring new mapmakers into joining the community, I think Blizzard has better places to direct their resources at the moment. I think a working marketplace or improved B.net custom map interface would do more for the community than n00b friendly editor
Before TFT, the WC3 RoC editor was limited. Once the expansion came out, butt ton of stuff was made available on the editor. If you wanted to make a spell with the RoC editor, you'd be hairless by the time you finish the map. TFT's batch of changes is what allowed maps like Dota and Footmen to flourish.
However, Sc2's editor doesn't really lack in functionality, it lacks in simplicity. I'm hoping Blizzard would focus on making Galaxy simpler in HotS instead of what they've done with World Editor, which added functionality. That's what I believe will make it catch up to WC3s scene
Also, not everyone is meant to make maps. If you don't want to take the time to learn the editor, then your map doesn't deserve to be played. End of story. That is a general statement that applies to everyone. If you don't want to figure out the editor, and you think that it is too complex, leave it to the people who like the new freedom the editor gives them, and stop whining. Last time I checked, making WC3 maps hasn't been banned. If you are so emotionally attached to WC3, keep making WC3 maps!
No, not really....
Just because the map editor is non-newb friendly doesn't mean you have to get all superior to everyone else and say "unless you can use it leave". Personally I only hate the data editor, and in all honesty it's annoying to the point where I've been really put off to finish any map.
Not everyone gives a shit about every data field in the data editor, and that's the issue here. Blizzard treated every single field equally when they're not, and also connected things in an odd fashion. I understand the data editor just fine, it's just annoying as fuck to deal with so I don't bother.
A "Noob Friendly" version of (at least) the data editor would benefit the mapping community greatly, as not only would new people not be put off as much. But veterans of mapping will also have a more enjoyable time making their maps and not feel like it's a chore.
I still hope (well "hope" sonds too positive, maybe "fear"? dunno), that all the mentioned problems are just a part of a thought - through marketing strategy by blizzard.
They released WoL with tools and functionalities just awesome enough to be able to see the power, but annoying enough to make us complain all day and cry for updates on their part. Then they feed us some bread crumbs in the form of small patches, fixing some of the urgent issues.
And then, when HotS comes out, they have this huge update, which fixes like half of all the problems, just to make sure, everyone buys HotS and just doesn't stick to WoL. The other half of fixes comes with LotV, forcing everyone to buy it again, while they themselves had the final version up and running all the time for themselves.
@grenegg: Go
I would agree completely with you.
It depends on your definition of the word 'hard'. Nothing in the galaxy editor is so hard that someone wanting to understand it will simpy fail at it. If you want to, you can learn yourself terraining, triggering and data editing in a couple of days. In that sense mapping is a bit of a bland 'profession', as anyone wih the drive to do so could create something to challenge the top maps currently around.
That's not to say tutorials and the like aren't helpful, though.
About the popularity system, they are on the right tract. Even the "join lobby by hosted" option is not going cut it. It is simply going to send us in the other direction, where once we play a map we cannot find it again. With the release of bookmarks and the "fun or not" rating system, that is somewhat fixed. If you like a map, you can bookmark it and rate it "fun" if you play it. If they then add in the "join by currently hosted" feature, then players could tell if a map is fun based on how many bookmarks it has and what it's rating is. If a map isn't widely considered to be fun, why play it? If only a small group of people enjoy the map, they should start a party and play it privately. If a game is fun, it will be bookmarked, rated high, and played often. Then this game will no longer be displayed on the front page of the "join by currently hosted" to give other games a chance. The "popular" filter isn't going anywhere, but Blizzard is on the right tract. Give them some credit, they know what they are doing.
Great to be back and part of the community again!
@TacoManStan: Go
So the maps on page one with 99999999 bookmarks are the funnest?
I STILL haven't seen a suggestion that would solve the systems problems.
@grenegg: Go
Yes you have, if you would think. If a game is on the first page, that means it is fun. Complex/Fun for casual gamers. Just because Desert Strike and Nexus Wars are not the most complex games out there, I've got news for you. They are VERY fun. All of the first page games are fun, or else they wouldn't be on the first page. A game doesn't have to be super complex to be fun. I know that I personally enjoy SmashCraft for example, but a lot of my friends do not. It has about 200x the amount of work into the game, it just isn't a genre a ton of people want to play. Quit wineing and understand that if you game is fun, people will bookmark it and it will become popular. And advertisments are necessary. If a game is advertised, people will play it. People who release a game and just type in "Hey play this game" in the chat channels are doomed to fail. Just saying.
Great to be back and part of the community again!
Agreed.
@ProzaicMuze: Go
Agreed as well.
People whine about the data editor being hard... Its not. Yes, there's a metric fuckton of different fields, so what? A lot of them are straightforward. Follow a hero tutorial to the end and you've practically learned the entire data editor, and the things you haven't learned are some specific things you just have to ask some other people for or find more specific tutorials for (Like custom movers), but you can put the rest together yourself.
Know that saying "Quality over quantity"? Well, if it were "difficulty over quantity", the data editor would be more quantity than difficulty (I didn't make any sense here, did I?).
You've got a lot of fields. a lot of SIMPLE fields (Well, there's a fair share of complicated ones as well, but mostly we've got simple ones), and the number scares everyone away. Yea, to make a simple unit you've got to do a lot more work than in wc3, but I don't remember you being able to set the exact button locations for the command card independently for each unit, you weren't able to use Texture Select by ID, I don't think there were even behaviors, and you definitely didn't make a rainbow archon (The idea might be silly, but you go ahead and make a rainbow unit in wc3 without triggers). Let alone abilities, you had to use triggers in wc3 afaik. You couldn't make attacks like the colossus' or void rays.
The data editor is better than the wc3 version, the only advantages the wc3 one had were the speed and the newb friendlyness. I won't stop you from blaming the data editor for scaring away a lot of potential mappers - It's something that's not quickly understood, you have to spend a week or two without any clue, but after that it's easy. Problem is, people aren't willing to spend the time to get to know the editor and just immediately slap a "Too hard" sticker on it and leave.
I can't wait to do that sc2streamster episode where I teach Moz how to use the data editor and show that it's not that bad...
Sorry if I sounded harsh somewhere :) Just wanted to voice my opinion on the data editor and I mightve gone a bit overboard.
About the pop sys... Weren't we over that? Yea, it sucks, so what? There's tons of maps on the bottom of the list that are great, so don't say there aren't. Card Shuffle, HeroLineWars, catalyst (all of em), VoidCraft, Room Wars, Snipers Promod, The Final Frontier 2, Blood Marathon, I think even my map gates of darkness deserves a spot somewhere on pages 3-5, and these maps I named are in a wide range of polish and simplicty/complexity. Final Frontier 2 is ridiculously hard to learn but well made, Room Wars is ridiculously easy to get into and fun, etc.
Get over this bloody thing. Blizzard isn't gonna fix the pop sys before the marketplace comes. Just wait till the HotS beta hits (or whenever the marketplace comes), if the marketplace sucks as well, feel free to complain.
EDIT: SOOOOO many posts while I was writing... Dammit.
I agree with Taco and Moz as well
I used to teach Spanish people (I had a clan just for it) about basic mapmaking. They weren't genius, and they were awful with triggers, but they were able to make nice maps. Now, even after all that experience, they can't. The data editor is awful. Does it give good results? of course it does, where did I said it doesn't?
Results and possibilities aren't the problem of Galaxy Editor. The process is. Stuff that could be simpler isn't.
By the way, I really wish we could actually write the data editor stuff as some decent code. I wouldn't lose the shitload of time I lose with it currently (and half of the time I don't even understand what I'm doing, but well, I haven't had the time to pick a good tutorial and see what's everything for [suggestions are welcome, summer will be long]).
Maybe a "noob mode" is what we need right now, so the number of mappers grows. I look back at the noob kid I was when I started with W3, and I know I couldn't make a thing on SC2.
I think you're wrong, and I'll give you an example: Banana Cheaters on EU. I like that map, but I never find anyone to play with. The lucky times when joining a game finds me players, its afk retards. I'm forced to go to a channel and wait for people that actually care to check channels often to be able to play. I'm sure same happens with lots of maps.
With W3-style list integrated with the others, I could play these "less popular" maps easier. Right now, if I want to play 1 of 20 maps like Banana Cheaters, I have to check loads of chat channels and join randomly to find players.
W3-system had the flaw of being 90% dota, but still, you had other maps between the dotas. With how SC2 is built now, they could reduce all those dotas to 1 line, and display custom maps with a waiting lobby better. Just sort them by slots left. With this system, I could be able to join games with 1-2 slots left and start playing instantly.
It's been said over and over. People can't play games that aren't on the first few pages of popularity. Want to play a multiplayer game on page 9? No one will join it. How can a community grow when the smaller games are unplayable? I would not spend a year making a custom map that might end up being impossible to play without a premade group.
It's clear that they need a hybrid system between SC2 popularity and the WC3 games lobby. If no one joins a game for 30-60 seconds, the game can be flagged as "looking for more" and it would appear on a new tab that shows recently created games that need players. Ideally you'd also be able to sort these "looking for more" games based on which lobbies have been looking for the longest time, or need the most/fewest slots filled, or just sort the list by popularity.
Edit: This gave me another idea. You could flag your game as "looking for more" and also flag it to only reveal to other players who have bookmarked the game. On the looking for more list, you could set it to only show games that you have bookmarked and/or games that are only looking for other bookmark players. This would let you attract people who (hopefully) already know something about the game and liked it enough to bookmark it. You'd have a more exclusive group of players, and hopefully no afk retards.
It would also be nice to have a 5 star rating system on published maps. It could even be restrictive, like requiring that a player has been in a map for more than 5 minutes for three games before it can be rated.
The SC2 editor itself is complicated, but I think if players had more visibility into fun smaller projects it would get more people excited to try to learn the editor and make their own games.
And finally, time is a huge factor. It can take a year or longer to make a great game. I'd say give it more time, but with the rocky start for the first year there may not be very many newcomers to give the community fresh ideas.
Hide advance fields? I have always used it to speed up my work when I'm doing basic stuff, but I suppose hiding advance fields is a "noob mode"
@Lonami: Go
No no no, stop. You are missing the point. What you are saying is the problem with the system you are suggesting. If you allow players to join games randomly, then you run into the problem that if a player joins a game they don't like, they will just leave. Do I think a "join by hosted" is a good idea? YES!! It is a fantastic idea, and one that MUST be implemented. I never said that games that aren't on the front page aren't fun, I simply said that games on the front page are. Most games that are not on the front page are garbage and should not be played. If a couple of players are sitting in a lobby waiting for people to join, but the map sucks, then why should people looking to have fun join those games? If anything, a "BETA Testing" filter should be added, which doesn't filter by popularity at all.
One more thing I would like to point out is that this community is very... special. The common opinion here is often quite different than the actual global opinion of the SC2 community. I would say that half of the community doesn't even know what custom games are! The idea that there is an entire section of the game that has a bunch of modded maps that are actually good just doesn't make sense. I know that before I showed a lot of my friends that play SC2, they had no idea.
In other words, you may like Banana Cheaters, but maybe an average gamer wouldn't. I know that I tell my friends about the map and the most common response I get is "That sounds so stupid, I am never playing that." One of my friends even said "If the game doesn't have "Wars", "Strike", or any other intense action verb in the title, I won't play it. Unfortunately, that is the viewpoint of many people who play SC2 custom gamers.
Also, one more thing. Maybe Banana Cheaters is a great game. Maybe it is not. (I for one know that it is). What I do know is that the game appeals to a VERY small audience, and thus will have a relatively low rating, and relatively low bookmark count. You don't want to play with "AFK retards" anyways, so why not find a group of people who like the game and play with them? Just like SmashCraft, not all games are meant to have a huge community following it. If a game is fun, it will be rated highly. If it is not, it will not be. If it is fun, it will be bookmarked. If not, it will not be. It is that simple, and there is no way to argue that. The reason why that is not entirely the case now is because of the absence of the "join by currently hosted" filter. Add that, and everything will work out. Add a "Beta Lobbies" filter, or a "Just for Kicks" filter that won't filter by popularity, and it is even better.
Great to be back and part of the community again!
@Lonami: Go
Also, not everyone is meant to make maps. If you don't want to take the time to learn the editor, then your map doesn't deserve to be played. End of story. That is a general statement that applies to everyone. If you don't want to figure out the editor, and you think that it is too complex, leave it to the people who like the new freedom the editor gives them, and stop whining. Last time I checked, making WC3 maps hasn't been banned. If you are so emotionally attached to WC3, keep making WC3 maps!
Great to be back and part of the community again!
@Lonami: Go
What good would a noob mode be really.
Yes its all rather time consuming but so was wc3 map making.
I mean really what cant you figure out how to do.
To be fair... I wouldn't mind a simple button in the top overlay that one could click that would simply hide all the advanced functions of the editor. Specific brush functions for terrain, fields you never use in the data editor, really specific actions, conditions and events in triggers... That's something that'd be easy to make and would probably help a lot of the newer mappers out.
I think a noob mode or something like that would be good. Maybe not something that lets you hide fields, but lets say a special "Unit editor" that lets you create a unit, weapon and associated actors in one place and merges all the important fields, like it was in wc3, and leaves out all the advanced fields. You can still open the usual data editor and change the other values, but use the Unit editor to create very simple units. You won't be able to remake the colossus or something like that, but you know, make units like marines and zerglings.
@TheAlmaity: Go
While I do think this likely would be valuable in spurring new mapmakers into joining the community, I think Blizzard has better places to direct their resources at the moment. I think a working marketplace or improved B.net custom map interface would do more for the community than n00b friendly editor
@hawkerhurricane: Go
Wont argue with that, Id definitely prefer their coders to work on Bnet or something else than this
Before TFT, the WC3 RoC editor was limited. Once the expansion came out, butt ton of stuff was made available on the editor. If you wanted to make a spell with the RoC editor, you'd be hairless by the time you finish the map. TFT's batch of changes is what allowed maps like Dota and Footmen to flourish.
However, Sc2's editor doesn't really lack in functionality, it lacks in simplicity. I'm hoping Blizzard would focus on making Galaxy simpler in HotS instead of what they've done with World Editor, which added functionality. That's what I believe will make it catch up to WC3s scene
No, not really....
Just because the map editor is non-newb friendly doesn't mean you have to get all superior to everyone else and say "unless you can use it leave". Personally I only hate the data editor, and in all honesty it's annoying to the point where I've been really put off to finish any map.
Not everyone gives a shit about every data field in the data editor, and that's the issue here. Blizzard treated every single field equally when they're not, and also connected things in an odd fashion. I understand the data editor just fine, it's just annoying as fuck to deal with so I don't bother.
A "Noob Friendly" version of (at least) the data editor would benefit the mapping community greatly, as not only would new people not be put off as much. But veterans of mapping will also have a more enjoyable time making their maps and not feel like it's a chore.
I still hope (well "hope" sonds too positive, maybe "fear"? dunno), that all the mentioned problems are just a part of a thought - through marketing strategy by blizzard.
They released WoL with tools and functionalities just awesome enough to be able to see the power, but annoying enough to make us complain all day and cry for updates on their part. Then they feed us some bread crumbs in the form of small patches, fixing some of the urgent issues.
And then, when HotS comes out, they have this huge update, which fixes like half of all the problems, just to make sure, everyone buys HotS and just doesn't stick to WoL. The other half of fixes comes with LotV, forcing everyone to buy it again, while they themselves had the final version up and running all the time for themselves.
"just a part of a thought - through marketing strategy"
thank you, i agree and thank you (once more) for typing it.. me <3 you