My suggestion would simply be, keep the pop list for creating games, but for joining just shows games that are currently waiting to be played, in other words if there is more than 0 players in the lobby for it.
So basically, when hosting a game it's the pop system, and when looking for a game, it's the old WC3 way. I'd be content with this, atleast I could find games people were actually playing.
Honestly, the popularity system of itself isn't bad, its the rest of the custom game list that is. Why does it list EVERY map EVER made on the Join list? Thats fine for the Hosting list, but to be honest the Join list should only show maps that currently have somebody in the game lobby.
This would make the list small enough to actually be USEFUL while still allowing players to try new maps by hosting them.
Allowing it to be sorted by author, title, creation date, host date, ect. In edition to being sorted by popularity would be swell too.
Now, my main idea: Instead of having the different settings show up as separate maps, they should be categorized into one. You could extend or collapse it to see the sub-settings. The sub settings could also be extended\collapsed to show all of the different lobbies open, their hosts, and a optional "Additional information" line of text the host could specify.
Would it be so hard to automatically request the next games when you hit the bottom? I guess not.
Yeah I thought about that, but it's really not that different to a "Show More" button, and a "Show More" button is better UI design because it's easily understandable.
They are probably just best listing them all and everyone just suffer the slower loading times - then again since there is no pinging server involved it shouldn't take as long as server lists from other games. It really depends how many players are accessing the custom game list and how often, they should have these sort of stats by now.
Make it like what Valve has done to Team Fortress 2. You have your good old tried and true server lists that can be sorted in whichever way you want, plus you can turn that into a simple list which will group all the servers by maps (what blizzard tried to do) achieving what we have now in Bnet 2.0 without the popularity sorting.
Make it like what Valve has done to Team Fortress 2. You have your good old tried and true server lists that can be sorted in whichever way you want, plus you can turn that into a simple list which will group all the servers by maps (what blizzard tried to do) achieving what we have now in Bnet 2.0 without the popularity sorting.
Not a bad idea, but won't that just result in heaps of the same game showing up? Is there an advantage to that?
With games like TF2 it's a bit different, because you actually have different servers in different locations hosting each game, so it's useful to split up the list as you want to join the server with the lowest ping, or find your ISP's server etc.
With blizzard it's a little different since they actually host all of the games.
If I'm going to join a custom bnet game, it doesn't really matter which game I join. If I want to play with friends, I create a part and join as party. So in what situation do you need to list all of the custom game (including duplicates) separately?
(not saying it's a bad idea or anything, just trying ti understand why/what advantage you actually get out of it).
Well basicly the way it worked <sub> u just had a Window on the side with all games Created by players! , that updates every 10 sec with new created maps or maps that have been refreshed to Get more players to join</sub>
cause now the problem is : if u have a GREAT map u love playing , but its on page 10 , your gona have like 1% of the people on B-net who will actually go see maps to page 10 , meaning <sub> U COULD WAIT FOR HOURS to play your fav map . old system dint have this problem </sub>
evan if its a map that only 10 people will play , it still gets put uptop for 10 sec so u get a chance to see what is available
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?
Not a bad idea, but won't that just result in heaps of the same game showing up? Is there an advantage to that?
With games like TF2 it's a bit different, because you actually have different servers in different locations hosting each game, so it's useful to split up the list as you want to join the server with the lowest ping, or find your ISP's server etc.
With blizzard it's a little different since they actually host all of the games.
If I'm going to join a custom bnet game, it doesn't really matter which game I join. If I want to play with friends, I create a part and join as party. So in what situation do you need to list all of the custom game (including duplicates) separately?
(not saying it's a bad idea or anything, just trying ti understand why/what advantage you actually get out of it).
You can turn simple list on, which will do what you want it to do, group all the servers by map, which is what we have now with bnet 2.0 without the popularity sorting.
It's a win-win situation, can't go wrong with what is known to already work.
That's fine, but it doesn't answer the question why there is a need to see the individual games? Like I said, I'm not saying it's a bad idea or anything, just wondering why you actually need to see individual games. It's a pretty standard thing with game servers lists to do that, but normally there are other reasons that don't apply to battle.net/starcraft 2
Thumbs up for the original post and the fourth (EDIT: I accidentally said second before) post in the thread. I like KratsAU's ideas for improving the popularity system, but at the same time Colt brings attention to the necessity of a WC3 system. We just need to have the option for both KratsAU's improved popularity system and a simultaneous WC3 system.
Okay guys, I did a quick mockup including some suggestions, I have tried to work within limits of what I think blizzard might actually consider doing. So I haven't done anything like custom hosting names, which I really don't think is ever going to happen.
By default the game would only list games that people are actually hosting, and you can select a game a press join to join one of the available games, or you can expand the game list for an individual game and pick and individual host to join. This can be useful to join different game modes of a specific game, or if you want to find a specific host.
It might be a good idea for the default sorting to basically always list the most recently created game at the top. So if you go ahead and start a game of your new map, it's going to appear at the top of the list until someone else creates a new game of something. This would make it easier for new maps to get noticed.
Initial Join Screen
Game Details Screen
When you optionally expand a game to show individual hosted games
That's fine, but it doesn't answer the question why there is a need to see the individual games? Like I said, I'm not saying it's a bad idea or anything, just wondering why you actually need to see individual games. It's a pretty standard thing with game servers lists to do that, but normally there are other reasons that don't apply to battle.net/starcraft 2
you don't "need" to see individual games, but you can see them if you want to. And the reason you would want individual games is for (off the top of my head):
Game mode purposes (no pick, all random, etc.)
Number of players in lobby maybe you don't want join a game that has 1/13 players, but you want to join one with 12/13.
Thanks, see the post above yours (third image). I included the ability to expand a game list to see individual games which should hopefully cover most of your points.
The expanded list could have some extra things, like show whether or not a game is password protected.
Yup, i like that picture, actually that's what first came to mind when blizzard announced their custom game system back in the day before beta... Go post that on the Bnet forums and ask people to rate it so blizzard can see it.
Okay guys, I did a quick mockup including some suggestions, I have tried to work within limits of what I think blizzard might actually consider doing. So I haven't done anything like custom hosting names, which I really don't think is ever going to happen.
By default the game would only list games that people are actually hosting, and you can select a game a press join to join one of the available games, or you can expand the game list for an individual game and pick and individual host to join. This can be useful to join different game modes of a specific game, or if you want to find a specific host.
It might be a good idea for the default sorting to basically always list the most recently created game at the top. So if you go ahead and start a game of your new map, it's going to appear at the top of the list until someone else creates a new game of something. This would make it easier for new maps to get noticed.
Initial Join Screen
Game Details Screen
When you optionally expand a game to show individual hosted games
This looks great. I hope you continue to make photos like these to convey to Blizzard precisely what we're looking for. I just wanted ask you a question though, do you agree that there needs to be some way for new maps, or old maps that simply aren't played much anymore, to be hosted in a visible system (like the WC3 refresh system, or any other method you can think of that would allow users to visibly host maps that are currently not popular)? If so, can you (and anyone else reading this) think of a way to make this work that Blizzard might consider implementing? If not then the WC3 system will always work, but just curious what people can come up with.
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.
You need to be careful though, because let's face it we could very well end up with thousands of different maps, 90% of them not very good. In this case you don't really want to give any sort of priority to maps that people simply don't want to play.
I think this is kind of the intention of blizzards current system, so they did have the right idea, they just lacked supporting features to make it work, and overlooked things like bot boosting. But it is actually a bit of a challenge to come up with the ideal system. Regardless of the system you do use, you are going to need some external promotion of your map if you really want it to become popular (with or without the popularity system), simply because there is going to be alot of competition.
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.
Anyhow, I'll take a few more suggestions/comments before I post this on the official forums. I'm thinking we need to show a flag whether a map is password protected in the expanded list, and it might be nice to have a toggle to optionally show/hide passworded games. This might not be necessary though unless there is alot of them.
So basically, when hosting a game it's the pop system, and when looking for a game, it's the old WC3 way. I'd be content with this, atleast I could find games people were actually playing.
Honestly, the popularity system of itself isn't bad, its the rest of the custom game list that is. Why does it list EVERY map EVER made on the Join list? Thats fine for the Hosting list, but to be honest the Join list should only show maps that currently have somebody in the game lobby.
This would make the list small enough to actually be USEFUL while still allowing players to try new maps by hosting them.
Allowing it to be sorted by author, title, creation date, host date, ect. In edition to being sorted by popularity would be swell too.
Now, my main idea: Instead of having the different settings show up as separate maps, they should be categorized into one. You could extend or collapse it to see the sub-settings. The sub settings could also be extended\collapsed to show all of the different lobbies open, their hosts, and a optional "Additional information" line of text the host could specify.
Yeah I thought about that, but it's really not that different to a "Show More" button, and a "Show More" button is better UI design because it's easily understandable.
They are probably just best listing them all and everyone just suffer the slower loading times - then again since there is no pinging server involved it shouldn't take as long as server lists from other games. It really depends how many players are accessing the custom game list and how often, they should have these sort of stats by now.
Best way to do it!!!<
MAKE IT LIKE STARCRAFT 1!!!
What did you like about it?
Make it like what Valve has done to Team Fortress 2. You have your good old tried and true server lists that can be sorted in whichever way you want, plus you can turn that into a simple list which will group all the servers by maps (what blizzard tried to do) achieving what we have now in Bnet 2.0 without the popularity sorting.
@zakariahliklikleh: Go
Yeah now that I think about it, that's not bad.
This'll work. :D
Not a bad idea, but won't that just result in heaps of the same game showing up? Is there an advantage to that?
With games like TF2 it's a bit different, because you actually have different servers in different locations hosting each game, so it's useful to split up the list as you want to join the server with the lowest ping, or find your ISP's server etc.
With blizzard it's a little different since they actually host all of the games.
If I'm going to join a custom bnet game, it doesn't really matter which game I join. If I want to play with friends, I create a part and join as party. So in what situation do you need to list all of the custom game (including duplicates) separately?
(not saying it's a bad idea or anything, just trying ti understand why/what advantage you actually get out of it).
Well basicly the way it worked <sub> u just had a Window on the side with all games Created by players! , that updates every 10 sec with new created maps or maps that have been refreshed to Get more players to join</sub>
cause now the problem is : if u have a GREAT map u love playing , but its on page 10 , your gona have like 1% of the people on B-net who will actually go see maps to page 10 , meaning <sub> U COULD WAIT FOR HOURS to play your fav map . old system dint have this problem </sub>
evan if its a map that only 10 people will play , it still gets put uptop for 10 sec so u get a chance to see what is available
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?
You can turn simple list on, which will do what you want it to do, group all the servers by map, which is what we have now with bnet 2.0 without the popularity sorting. It's a win-win situation, can't go wrong with what is known to already work.
That's fine, but it doesn't answer the question why there is a need to see the individual games? Like I said, I'm not saying it's a bad idea or anything, just wondering why you actually need to see individual games. It's a pretty standard thing with game servers lists to do that, but normally there are other reasons that don't apply to battle.net/starcraft 2
Thumbs up for the original post and the fourth (EDIT: I accidentally said second before) post in the thread. I like KratsAU's ideas for improving the popularity system, but at the same time Colt brings attention to the necessity of a WC3 system. We just need to have the option for both KratsAU's improved popularity system and a simultaneous WC3 system.
Okay guys, I did a quick mockup including some suggestions, I have tried to work within limits of what I think blizzard might actually consider doing. So I haven't done anything like custom hosting names, which I really don't think is ever going to happen.
By default the game would only list games that people are actually hosting, and you can select a game a press join to join one of the available games, or you can expand the game list for an individual game and pick and individual host to join. This can be useful to join different game modes of a specific game, or if you want to find a specific host.
It might be a good idea for the default sorting to basically always list the most recently created game at the top. So if you go ahead and start a game of your new map, it's going to appear at the top of the list until someone else creates a new game of something. This would make it easier for new maps to get noticed.
Initial Join Screen
Game Details Screen
When you optionally expand a game to show individual hosted games
you don't "need" to see individual games, but you can see them if you want to. And the reason you would want individual games is for (off the top of my head):
@zakariahliklikleh: Go
Thanks, see the post above yours (third image). I included the ability to expand a game list to see individual games which should hopefully cover most of your points.
The expanded list could have some extra things, like show whether or not a game is password protected.
@KratsAU: Go
Yup, i like that picture, actually that's what first came to mind when blizzard announced their custom game system back in the day before beta... Go post that on the Bnet forums and ask people to rate it so blizzard can see it.
This looks great. I hope you continue to make photos like these to convey to Blizzard precisely what we're looking for. I just wanted ask you a question though, do you agree that there needs to be some way for new maps, or old maps that simply aren't played much anymore, to be hosted in a visible system (like the WC3 refresh system, or any other method you can think of that would allow users to visibly host maps that are currently not popular)? If so, can you (and anyone else reading this) think of a way to make this work that Blizzard might consider implementing? If not then the WC3 system will always work, but just curious what people can come up with.
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.
You need to be careful though, because let's face it we could very well end up with thousands of different maps, 90% of them not very good. In this case you don't really want to give any sort of priority to maps that people simply don't want to play.
I think this is kind of the intention of blizzards current system, so they did have the right idea, they just lacked supporting features to make it work, and overlooked things like bot boosting. But it is actually a bit of a challenge to come up with the ideal system. Regardless of the system you do use, you are going to need some external promotion of your map if you really want it to become popular (with or without the popularity system), simply because there is going to be alot of competition.
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.
Anyhow, I'll take a few more suggestions/comments before I post this on the official forums. I'm thinking we need to show a flag whether a map is password protected in the expanded list, and it might be nice to have a toggle to optionally show/hide passworded games. This might not be necessary though unless there is alot of them.