The popularity system is fine and works perfectly. Blizzard wanted a way for players to find the most popular maps. The problem is that it shouldn't be the ONLY WAY to look for maps. I hope people recognize this.
Ideally we get a chatroom (hahahahaha, lololololol, etc.), but in more realistic suggestions:
I think a good idea is if you've had a game open to the public for more than, say, one minute, you could check a box "request more players." People looking for a game would also have an option "show only maps requesting more players." That way you can filter to games which take more than a minute to open AND have players already waiting in the lobby.
It would be similar to the functions which already exist, "Open to Public" and "Show Only New Maps."
It basically filters out the extremely popular maps *AND* the maps where nobody is waiting around. This check box allows players to make games and not have to wait around forever/invite only your closest friends.
Also, the obvious suggestion: Allow you to search based on the name of the map for join game.
Regarding new maps, I'm actually thinking there needs to be a separate mechanism to support this, possibly separate from the server list. Kind of a "Whats New in Custom Maps" on the main page. Alternatively maybe a new column for Released Date/Updated Date in the server list, but there is only so much screen real estate to go around.
Agreed, it would be best if they had their own section that includes a Release/Update Date column.
Yeah it's a bit tricky with new maps etc, but that's why I was thinking with the default sorting, if the latest hosting game is always at the top of the list. This way let's say you go and dig up a map that no one has played for a few months, you create a new custom game with this map, and it is at the top of the list at least for a very short while.
Ah. I didn't see your default sorting idea. Actually I just searched for it in your main thread again and I couldn't find it. Anyway, this is a good idea, though it is pretty much the Warcraft 3 system. As for worrying about a flood of low quality maps being hosted, I don't think this will be much of an issue. 'Better' maps will generally appear towards the top of this list more often anyway because higher quality maps are bound to be hosted more frequently then lower quality maps. The good thing about this sorting method though is that less known maps will be able to appear on page one, just for less time then more popular maps. This way, more popular maps are still recognized and easy to find, but new maps still appear.
Colt's idea about allowing hosters to tick a box to request more players after 1 minute (essentially marking the map as a currently unpopular map, and then allowing players to search for maps 'requesting more players' is a nice one. Basically, this is a way of filtering out popular maps and allowing users to discover maps being hosted that aren't already well known.
EDIT:
only read this if you were confused by my statement 'higher quality maps are bound to be hosted more frequently' as I worded that rather poorly
Upon reading this again I realize it is somewhat ambiguous. What I mean by 'higher quality maps are bound to be hosted more frequently', I am trying to say 'A map that is of high calibre will be hosted more by a greater number of individuals and therefore all popular high quality maps will still continuously appear at the top of the list'. My original statement was rather vague in that it could be misinterpreted to mean 'more different high quality maps will be hosted because people inherently host higher quality maps in general'. That is NOT what I was trying to say as I'm sure a lot of low quality maps will get hosted. These maps just won't be hosted as often or by as many different people as a high quality map will.
Nice pics; I wouldn't doubt blizzard is already working towards something like that. You'd be amazed how little we know and how far they probably are...
Nice pics; I wouldn't doubt blizzard is already working towards something like that. You'd be amazed how little we know and how far they probably are...
Thanks for making me realize that the popularity system could go from awful to convenient with just a few key changes. These are essentially everything I would need to be happy with the system:
Don't show maps without active game lobbies.
Enable user rating and allow sorting by average user rating.
Either allow my own rating to take priority in my listing and/or allow me to keep an ignore list of maps.
Allow me to keep a list of favorites. These maps should not show up on the standard map list.
With this system, I can discover new cool maps all day long. If I want to play it frequently, I just move it to favorites. If I don't want it clogging up my list, I move it to ignore. Ignore is essentially just a copy/paste of favorite functionality, so I can still join maps from that list when I feel like playing them for whatever reason. The favorite list also means that I never have to search around, or cause load on the game list server when I want to join the game I play 30 times a day.
Popularity * rating would be a more common listing method, but it's essential that plain rating is possible. This means that new maps can enter the lists without the current catch-22. Being able to choose the relative weighting of rating vs. popularity would be even better.
Additional suggestions and cool ideas from others:
The popularity formula could also be improved a lot, which would help both popularity and (popularity * rating) listings, as well as make boosting way less viable. Here's a simple alternative:
Quote:
Instead of each hosted 5+ min game giving a "popularity point", each unique player contributes with popularity points equal to log10(minutes played) for the day.
That automatically scales popularity with number of players in the game, and to some extent the game length. It also requires the map to be popular with many unique accounts: A user playing 15 minutes in a day, would contribute 70% more than one playing 5 min/day, and one playing 60 min/day would contribute 50% more than that. Yet a map maker logged into his own map 24/7 (botting or hosting repeated games no longer serves a purpose) adds less than 5 times as much as one additional user playing for 5 minutes.
It's slightly more technically advanced, but should be feasible with just a few kb of extra storage per player account. You only need to store a player's playtime stats for maps he has played within the last week, and you only need to update a player's contribution to the popularity score when the player finishes a game on that map. The map itself doesn't even need to have the player data stored - it just needs to subtract score for player's previous playtime and add score for player's new playtime. The computation effort involved as each game ends should be less than a second's worth of hosting the average SC2 map.
Forbiddian's request players suggestion is awesome for discovering new maps, as well as letting new maps earn the initial few ratings to start entering the lists. Alternately, seeing the number of active games and being able to specifically search for maps with only 1 hosted game, would serve the same purpose.
RSS map feeds is an awesome idea. Going to any map site and simply clicking a link that adds the map to your favorites list, allowing you to host/join it would have an immense cool factor and would be extremely practical, all the while helping the distribution of new exciting maps, overcoming the safety issue of having people download the open map file (assuming map locking becomes more solid), and sparing Blizzard's hardware the thousands of republishings people make in order to host a map.
Passing feedback in a sort of comments thread for each map would also be a cool feature, but be careful with making it way too low effort - we all know the quality of average Youtube comments. If added, make sure the map maker has tools and filters to identify and the truly constructive comments. Some options would be to allow users to rate each other's comments and/or allow players to sign their feedback with their real-ID instead of their character name. Also make sure the map maker has a way to establish further contact with whoever left a useful comment.
Also great work on your own interface, and on initiating constructive debate. I hope you'll have a lot of strong suggestions to bring over to the official forums.
I like those images, cool ideas tbh, much better customization than this "list" 6 years old put up for us. How hard can it be to let users sort the list by different values?
Regarding those wc3 etc. style maps, they should make sth like tabs on top (they're wasting lots of space with those stupidly large buttons they have atm) for Normal game list, latest created, and +- favorites.
Ahh yeah I thought about favourites at some point then completely forgot about them, thanks for reminding me.
I'll make some tweaks to the images and then post them on the official NA forums. Once I've done that, if everyone keeps posting positive comments on the official forums, bumping the thread and things like that, at least we will have put in a fair effort, and hopefully someone takes notice even if it isn't in the short term.
But what would happen if there were 10 pages of maps being hosted?
Wouldn't it be the exact same problem, you would still need to go to
page 10 to find that map?
The main difference between the old system and the new one seems to be
that the new system shows all maps regardless of whether anyone is
playing them, which can result in pages of maps no one is playing or
wants to play.
Did the old system always put the newest hosted map at the top of the
list?
it did , and it dint work on a PAGE system <sub> it was 1 page that basicly had an infinit scroll </sub> and new created maps just apeared on top or on the update
Okay guys, new set of images here. I will update the original post, but keep them here as well for reference incase there are more changes (but there probably wont be).
Changes include:
New Favourites column, where you can flag any game as favourite or not
New "Show favourites only" tickbox
Show the Favourite in the detail popup
Added properties to the expanded games list, allowing you to see if a game is public, private and has a password.
Fourth image showing the favourites in action
Initial Join Screen
Game Details Screen
When you optionally expand a game to show individual hosted games
I am thinking I might create a post on the official forums titled "BattleNET 2.1 Images". That would probably provoke enough people to view it and hopefully bump it if they like what they see.
If it gets enough attention someone from blizzard might sneak a peak and pass it onto someone - keep in mind I wouldn't be surprised if they have something in the plan already.
Then again, sometimes developers miss obvious things.
I dont like the tick to "expand and show hosted games". Whats the point of that?. If I click join, I just want to join any available game. Nobody will join lesser filled games then. The current system automatically places you well.
Private games with friends is already available through invite only, So password protected games are also irrelevant.
I dont like the tick to "expand and show hosted games". Whats the point of that?. If I click join, I just want to join any available game. Nobody will join lesser filled games then. The current system automatically places you well.
Private games with friends is already available through invite only, So password protected games are also irrelevant.
You don't have to expand the list to join the game, just select it and press join as you do now.
The ability to show private games can still be useful, it's alot easier than inviting all of your friends to a game which can be quite painful since the party size is restricted to 4.
I think favorites should be a separate list entirely - that is, they should be hidden from other sortings, or I should at least be able to toggle it to be so.
When I want to browse through hundreds of not-yet-popular niche maps, I'm going to list them by rating alone. The only way I can keep on browsing and finding new games quickly, is if I can remove the games I like (by sending them to favorites) and those I don't like (by personally giving them a low rating or sending them on some ignore list). That way, I can keep discovering new maps all day long, without having to skip past many pages of high-ranked favorites at the start, every time I want to join a game.
Hmm. I don't think they should be taken out f the list permanently once they are in your favourites, but you can have an option to hide favourites from the list, and possible have a separate list as well.
Server lists that have favourites normally still list them, but often do have a separate list too.
I like all the changes you've made, and would not change anything, also, if Blizzard gives themselves some time, which they usual does, they could really make this new stuff look slick :)
Right now the filtering options as well as any real choose but the map is non-existence.. Making us able to choose our favorite host, mode and to view a short description about what kind of game the hosts expects from the players, will give all maps much better re-playability :)
Please bump it and keep it positive, and press the LIKE button at the top right of the post to give it more attention.
I will do the same on the SEA forums as I have access there as well, but I don't have access to the EU forums, so if someone wants to make a post there linking to the above post or something appropriate that would be great.
I added this on the blizzard forums, but I thought I should post it here too.
I think you should take the line that says: name, category, games, ect. and move it down. Then take the popularity and move it above that line. Make it a tab that you can select like in chrome or firefox and add additional tabs like, favorites, new, featured, random, melee, ect.
I like it overall very well done.
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@KratsAU: Go
The popularity system is fine and works perfectly. Blizzard wanted a way for players to find the most popular maps. The problem is that it shouldn't be the ONLY WAY to look for maps. I hope people recognize this.
Ideally we get a chatroom (hahahahaha, lololololol, etc.), but in more realistic suggestions:
I think a good idea is if you've had a game open to the public for more than, say, one minute, you could check a box "request more players." People looking for a game would also have an option "show only maps requesting more players." That way you can filter to games which take more than a minute to open AND have players already waiting in the lobby.
It would be similar to the functions which already exist, "Open to Public" and "Show Only New Maps."
It basically filters out the extremely popular maps *AND* the maps where nobody is waiting around. This check box allows players to make games and not have to wait around forever/invite only your closest friends.
Also, the obvious suggestion: Allow you to search based on the name of the map for join game.
Agreed, it would be best if they had their own section that includes a Release/Update Date column.
Ah. I didn't see your default sorting idea. Actually I just searched for it in your main thread again and I couldn't find it. Anyway, this is a good idea, though it is pretty much the Warcraft 3 system. As for worrying about a flood of low quality maps being hosted, I don't think this will be much of an issue. 'Better' maps will generally appear towards the top of this list more often anyway because higher quality maps are bound to be hosted more frequently then lower quality maps. The good thing about this sorting method though is that less known maps will be able to appear on page one, just for less time then more popular maps. This way, more popular maps are still recognized and easy to find, but new maps still appear.
Colt's idea about allowing hosters to tick a box to request more players after 1 minute (essentially marking the map as a currently unpopular map, and then allowing players to search for maps 'requesting more players' is a nice one. Basically, this is a way of filtering out popular maps and allowing users to discover maps being hosted that aren't already well known.
EDIT:
Upon reading this again I realize it is somewhat ambiguous. What I mean by 'higher quality maps are bound to be hosted more frequently', I am trying to say 'A map that is of high calibre will be hosted more by a greater number of individuals and therefore all popular high quality maps will still continuously appear at the top of the list'. My original statement was rather vague in that it could be misinterpreted to mean 'more different high quality maps will be hosted because people inherently host higher quality maps in general'. That is NOT what I was trying to say as I'm sure a lot of low quality maps will get hosted. These maps just won't be hosted as often or by as many different people as a high quality map will.
Nice pics; I wouldn't doubt blizzard is already working towards something like that. You'd be amazed how little we know and how far they probably are...
:D
Yeah I wouldn't be surprised either.
Thanks for making me realize that the popularity system could go from awful to convenient with just a few key changes. These are essentially everything I would need to be happy with the system:
With this system, I can discover new cool maps all day long. If I want to play it frequently, I just move it to favorites. If I don't want it clogging up my list, I move it to ignore. Ignore is essentially just a copy/paste of favorite functionality, so I can still join maps from that list when I feel like playing them for whatever reason. The favorite list also means that I never have to search around, or cause load on the game list server when I want to join the game I play 30 times a day.
Popularity * rating would be a more common listing method, but it's essential that plain rating is possible. This means that new maps can enter the lists without the current catch-22. Being able to choose the relative weighting of rating vs. popularity would be even better.
Additional suggestions and cool ideas from others:
The popularity formula could also be improved a lot, which would help both popularity and (popularity * rating) listings, as well as make boosting way less viable. Here's a simple alternative:
Forbiddian's request players suggestion is awesome for discovering new maps, as well as letting new maps earn the initial few ratings to start entering the lists. Alternately, seeing the number of active games and being able to specifically search for maps with only 1 hosted game, would serve the same purpose.
RSS map feeds is an awesome idea. Going to any map site and simply clicking a link that adds the map to your favorites list, allowing you to host/join it would have an immense cool factor and would be extremely practical, all the while helping the distribution of new exciting maps, overcoming the safety issue of having people download the open map file (assuming map locking becomes more solid), and sparing Blizzard's hardware the thousands of republishings people make in order to host a map.
Passing feedback in a sort of comments thread for each map would also be a cool feature, but be careful with making it way too low effort - we all know the quality of average Youtube comments. If added, make sure the map maker has tools and filters to identify and the truly constructive comments. Some options would be to allow users to rate each other's comments and/or allow players to sign their feedback with their real-ID instead of their character name. Also make sure the map maker has a way to establish further contact with whoever left a useful comment.
Also great work on your own interface, and on initiating constructive debate. I hope you'll have a lot of strong suggestions to bring over to the official forums.
I like those images, cool ideas tbh, much better customization than this "list" 6 years old put up for us. How hard can it be to let users sort the list by different values?
Regarding those wc3 etc. style maps, they should make sth like tabs on top (they're wasting lots of space with those stupidly large buttons they have atm) for Normal game list, latest created, and +- favorites.
@EjnarH: Go
Ahh yeah I thought about favourites at some point then completely forgot about them, thanks for reminding me.
I'll make some tweaks to the images and then post them on the official NA forums. Once I've done that, if everyone keeps posting positive comments on the official forums, bumping the thread and things like that, at least we will have put in a fair effort, and hopefully someone takes notice even if it isn't in the short term.
On that note, can any one think of the best title for the forum post ont he official forums? Keep in mind that they can't be as long as these forums.
I was debating whether or not to put BattleNET 2.1 in the topic, something like that might peek peoples interest.
it did , and it dint work on a PAGE system <sub> it was 1 page that basicly had an infinit scroll </sub> and new created maps just apeared on top or on the update
Okay guys, new set of images here. I will update the original post, but keep them here as well for reference incase there are more changes (but there probably wont be).
Changes include:
Initial Join Screen
Game Details Screen
When you optionally expand a game to show individual hosted games
When you tick show favourites only
I am thinking I might create a post on the official forums titled "BattleNET 2.1 Images". That would probably provoke enough people to view it and hopefully bump it if they like what they see.
If it gets enough attention someone from blizzard might sneak a peak and pass it onto someone - keep in mind I wouldn't be surprised if they have something in the plan already.
Then again, sometimes developers miss obvious things.
Sounds good to me. Give it a shot. Hopefully, Blizzard will listen.
I dont like the tick to "expand and show hosted games". Whats the point of that?. If I click join, I just want to join any available game. Nobody will join lesser filled games then. The current system automatically places you well.
Private games with friends is already available through invite only, So password protected games are also irrelevant.
You don't have to expand the list to join the game, just select it and press join as you do now.
The ability to show private games can still be useful, it's alot easier than inviting all of your friends to a game which can be quite painful since the party size is restricted to 4.
I think favorites should be a separate list entirely - that is, they should be hidden from other sortings, or I should at least be able to toggle it to be so.
When I want to browse through hundreds of not-yet-popular niche maps, I'm going to list them by rating alone. The only way I can keep on browsing and finding new games quickly, is if I can remove the games I like (by sending them to favorites) and those I don't like (by personally giving them a low rating or sending them on some ignore list). That way, I can keep discovering new maps all day long, without having to skip past many pages of high-ranked favorites at the start, every time I want to join a game.
Hmm. I don't think they should be taken out f the list permanently once they are in your favourites, but you can have an option to hide favourites from the list, and possible have a separate list as well.
Server lists that have favourites normally still list them, but often do have a separate list too.
I like all the changes you've made, and would not change anything, also, if Blizzard gives themselves some time, which they usual does, they could really make this new stuff look slick :)
Right now the filtering options as well as any real choose but the map is non-existence.. Making us able to choose our favorite host, mode and to view a short description about what kind of game the hosts expects from the players, will give all maps much better re-playability :)
Hi guys,
I have put a thread up on the official NA forums here: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/933033355
SEA Thread: http://sea.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/82298231
Please bump it and keep it positive, and press the LIKE button at the top right of the post to give it more attention.
I will do the same on the SEA forums as I have access there as well, but I don't have access to the EU forums, so if someone wants to make a post there linking to the above post or something appropriate that would be great.
I added this on the blizzard forums, but I thought I should post it here too.
I think you should take the line that says: name, category, games, ect. and move it down. Then take the popularity and move it above that line. Make it a tab that you can select like in chrome or firefox and add additional tabs like, favorites, new, featured, random, melee, ect.
I like it overall very well done.