1. Hire DrSuperGood/Evil and or OneTwoSC to oversee the scene. Or one of the guys who made a 3rd party editor.
Blizzard's own people have proven that they have absolutely no idea what they are doing. Simply giving feedback hasn't been and isn't going to do jack squat.
There is this extremely underused tab call the "data navigator" that is underused for the simply reason that it is useless. Yet even though I first tried to talk the developer in question out of it, then threw a fuss, the result was the same. I don't know how much time was wasted on that when so many other things easier to implement would have been more useful.
No the solution is to put the scene under the overall control of the community. Give David Kim or someone else the entire melee scene (including ESports) and let one of the community's own oversee the development of the arcade and put Dustin Browder on top of both aspects. Giving them equal status as equal departments will go a long ways to improving the situation.
A good share of this issue was both the result of certain personalities as well as the organization itself. The Battle.net team is responsible for too much and the 1-size-fits-all approach backfires in almost every case regardless. Have the individual game development teams be responsible for designing and implementing the front-end of battle.net for their respective games and have the battle.net restricted to improving the back-end and occasional assistance to the game development teams.
Over half of all the issues in StarCraft 2 are caused by Battle.net and that seems to be largely outside the StarCraft 2's development team's control. At least let me actually be responsible for screwing it up if nothing else.
And this is the nth request for feedback now and almost none of it has been implemented? I mean sure there is a percentage based armor system but no one is going to use it since its backwards from the WarCraft 3 system.
I'm probably forgetting a lot of things but here is my list for now at least. Prioritization was difficult for some of these. Also FockeWulf relax buddy, it takes time to address game issues particularly when it's not their top development priority.
Priority 1: Map Size Limit Increase
The map size limits keep getting raised and it's great! However ambitious projects still lack space, especially when using custom art/sound assets (An image or sound clip can take up to a few MB per file!). The more space the more you can do with the map.
Priority 2: Server Side Bank Data/ Player Data
Makes it more difficult for players to hack/cheat games. Allows for Global Leaderboards, Special Global Achievements/Rankings. Potentially could be used for Monetization in games in the future (Example: Player X buys 10,000 gold for $1. When the transaction ends 10,000 gold is added to the player gold total in their server side bank data.)
Priority 3: More than 3 Cliff Levels
Allows for more complex maps. Makes puzzle and/or exploration based games have more features, depth, and space. Puzzles and Exploration can require people to traverse many floors and do various things to objects on that particular floor. Can also be used for more complex cover systems in games as well.
Priority 4: Named Game Lobbies
Allows people to specify how they plan to play a game that has multiple modes. For instance a lobby could be called (High Level PvP) and another one for the same game could be (Rush New Characters). Would make it easier to get what you want done when you play a game that has a lot of flexibility in how it is played.
Priority 5: Improved Cutscene Editor
Allow easier texture swapping, actor commands, effects, custom animations. The cutscene editor can be a lot more useful if it allows more customization. Also improved ease of use would always be appreciated.
Priority 6: Allow Doodads to be added/placed through triggers
This would allow people to have dynamic maps that can change every play through. Allows environments to be more interesting and unpredictable. This can be done already with units but would be preferable to do with doodads.
Priority 7: Allow changing Terrain Textures through triggers
If possible to implement this would also allow for people to have more variety with their map environments. A Volcano based map could be changed into a Tundra based map later on when the players revisit the area for instance.
Priority 8: Improved Cutscene Editor
Allow easier texture swapping, actor commands, effects, custom unit animations, etc. The cutscene editor can be a lot more useful if it allows more customization. Also ease of use would always be appreciated.
Priority 9: Increased Map Terrain Tileset Limit
Raise from 8 Terrain tiles to something like 16 or even 12 can greatly enhance Aesthetics and variety of environments for a map. It also helps not only custom arcade map makers but melee map makers as well.
Priority 10: Map Space Limitation Increase
Increase the maximum space for a map from 256 X 256 to a larger number such as 512 X 512. This is useful for maps that want to allow players the ability to explore areas. 256 X 256 is restrictive for ambitious projects.
Priority 11: Improved Actor Rotation (Spinning)
Make it easier for actors to be rotated around in a clockwise and counter-clockwise rotation in real time during gameplay.
Well, technically you can just import the texture you want with the same name of the texture you want to swap it with. The "game goes apeshit" bug has long been fixed.
I hope this still counts but how about an importer for their Art Tools? May not necessarily apply to the editor but definitely applies to arcade games.
Just like in the campaign, simply going from one map to another with all players. Also linking to the same map will simply restart the game. (Optimize this function for better loading-time as well. This would make it much easier for people to rematch).
2. Different modes for controlling lag:
In melee games this makes sense, but for so many other genres, like a MOBA or an RPG, it shouldn't pause the game, or make everyone else lag. Just stop all inputs from that player while everyone else can play on. When the player reconnects, give him control back. Also a few trigger-events to go with this: "Player Disconnect", you could then make his hero be controlled by the AI until "Player Reconnects".
3. Optimize the game for something other than the default camera-view.
It is perfectly legitimate to not optimizing your game for anything but the way it can be played, but you obviously knew that custom maps where not all going to use the standard view. I am not entirely sure what it is that is hitting performance so badly when you rotate the pitch slightly upwards, but it's really bad. This combined with how the lag-system works makes any form of first-person to third-person view impossible to play online. I know this is possible to fix, but might be hard to implement if all your graphics-engine guys are working on something else now. Just reduce the quality of the terrain further away from the camera as well as not rendering small doodads before it is in near range.
Please link Blizzard to this thread. There's a lot of good suggestions here.
Well there's already plenty of fixes to the arcade that been pointed out so here's a few tweaks to the editor (and engine) that would be really helpful:
1 - [Terrain Editor] Cliff Levels
Enable the ability to place more than 3 cliff levels. If that's not possible, then at least enable use of the lowest cliff level instead of it being permanently unpathable all the time.
2 - [Terrain Editor] Lasso Tool
Painting vector terrain, especially if you try to paint in a straight line that is not isometric is such a pain. Terrainers shouldn't be forced to use doodads to cover up jarring tile edges. This also gives the Fill tool a lot more utility compared to now where it's only useful for cliff levels.
3 - [Data Editor] 3D Pathing
I still don't really understand how games like C&C Generals and Tiberium Wars were able to pull off making bridges have 3D pathing enabled and could be disabled by destroying the bridge, yet WC3/SC2 to date has not been able to do so despite having far more efficient pathing (compared to the buggy-as-hell SAGE) and being released much later. Reworking the entire pathing system is obviously out of the question since it would take too much time, but at least enable mappers to create bridges in the data editor that can be traversed under and over it.
4 - [Terrain/Data Editor] Fog Regions
It was an excellent change to be able to place up to 4 lighting regions, now do this for fog as well.
5 - [Terrain/Data Editor] Tile Limit
WC3 supported (unofficially) up to 16 different tiles on any map. Obviously having 16 tiles now isn't as important anymore as tiles can be blended but you can only go so far with blending the tiles. 8 is still very restrictive in terms of what tiles you can choose. A hybrid terrain that combines more than two climates and looks unique and diverse without visible tile duplication is not possible. Increasing the limit to 12 or even 16 would definitely solve this problem.
WC3 supported (unofficially) up to 16 different tiles on any map. Obviously having 16 tiles now isn't as important anymore as tiles can be blended but you can only go so far with blending the tiles. 8 is still very restrictive in terms of what tiles you can choose. A hybrid terrain that combines more than two climates and looks unique and diverse without visible tile duplication is not possible. Increasing the limit to 12 or even 16 would definitely solve this problem.
Oh, and if I recall correctly, you could change tiles with triggers, thus you could have potentially unlimited tiles. Very sure you can't do that in SC2.
I hope this still counts but how about an importer for their Art Tools? May not necessarily apply to the editor but definitely applies to arcade games.
I actually asked the devs about this, and they said "They would have no use for it, so its up to the community to create a 3rd party importer" NOTE: Quote may be partially inaccurate but is overall the same meaning.
even that wouldnt get me back thou...still interesting to see if they could somehow make arcade more popular. I think it could be totally possible if there really was new gamemod like dota ( super awesome and super fun to play, unlimited replay value ). And having a mod of that calliber wont be happening at this point imo.
Even if they make all of these listed changes it will not be enough at this point.
The fact remains that in the customer's minds StarCraft 2 was a huge disappointment The game has been uninstalled and they have moved on. They are no longer checking back. Even Blizzard's emails (when they bother to send them out on time or at all) promoting events and features are no longer being opened.
Blizzard's PR also needs to be revamped and new rules of who can overrule who written. Like that "Cloaken" feller. He may be the top dog in the PR department but he essentially censored one of Blizzard's own developers twice. That's a no-no regardless of whatever "chain of command" exists in Blizzard. If someone with the "developer" tag decides its worth having a discussion in a thread the community management needs to be strictly hands off. He inflicted a lot of PR damage on his own company by those moves.
Then there is this gig about Blizzard strictly favoring a very few mappers. Now I don't have a problem with the few who are getting the blue posts. Most of them are very skilled mappers. And nor do I expect to ever get a blue post myself. But there are almost a dozen mappers per page who are also having issues who have been given the cold shoulder. This has got to stop. It alienates many mappers. Hell it played no small part in my own alienation. Being ignored when I was having issues that I could not solve (in fact no one could solve) was bad enough. Learning that Blizzard was giving attention to a select few mappers when I and others were being hung out to dry was a very sobering experience. And then there was Blizzard deciding the art tools were to be a sales pitch for HotS. They have still not been released. And I'm convinced they never will. They were fully ready by a year after WoL was released and instead they decided to hold them back. Really, really stupid on their part.
Ok I need to stop writing this out. Reminding myself of how I set up to fail (my fault for being stupid enough to believe them, their fault for not keeping a promise) is going to make my language a little bit harsher.
I think the point is what does the modding community need. They have no use using time to modify the art tools and give them to us now. It's not really about them though its the community that really needs them. I think they might be upset with kit bashing maybe.
Agreed. There's so much untapped potential with custom models, we just need the means to access their files to learn from.
I just hope they allow the Blizzard Allstars model. With all the news of making it standalone, it worries me that they'll go 180 on it and lock away all the models server-side for some 'pay per hero' system.
So what would be enough for you? You present things in way more dramatic way than they are... Like some desperation and no one shares that. In fact, those opinions here if fulfilled will do the mapmaking into greater thing than War3 or anything else had, what more? I am not taking part in another 'SC2 is dying' drama.
Quote:
Hire DrSuperGood/Evil
Yeah right, DSG is as much of an elitist as I am, he is even fine with pretty much all the way the game is and just moves on from there, but for being devil's advocate let's say there are problems, regardless of his and my elitism. -
I have always used triggers and I would say give all the things that now are done with a work around and included in Libraries - direct triggers like Spinning, some Use Item Orders because the current ones don't work well. Change PITCH and ROLL of actor in Data (yeah all - not just Doodads). Like I often times needed to change PITCH of UNITS...
Search field for the Text Editor
Single Player browse your own maps in-game like any older game
Bnet Profile Portraits in Bnet animated like in war3
Eimtr your accusations both fall far short of the mark and are meaningless anyways.
So what if they actually improve the editor and fix the remaining issues with battle.net?
Where are the players? And why is Blizzard taking this kind of interest now?
Oh I have my own huge list of things that need to be fixed.
One of the big problems I am seeing with all of these replies is that nearly all of them are technical. We can already do things that WarCraft 3 never could. And some of the mappers have produced a genuinely superior product from anything in WarCraft 3. And who is playing it? In WarCraft 3 you could host a semi popular tower defense and have it fill and start in 10 seconds or less.
Bottom line: Almost none of these suggestions are going to improve the situation by themselves. Mechanics are one thing. Having people to play the maps is another. And as I had said people have written off the game. And instead of accusing me of starting another "SC2 is dying drama" why don't you instead wake up and realize that it is a problem that needs to be solved if StarCraft 2 is going to recover.
Hiring someone from the community is probably not the best idea from the technical results it will produce (although I question whether anyone in Blizzard can do a better job) but the impression it will leave on the average customer will be very valuable. Any recovery is going to depend as much on public relations as it will on technical aspects.
Lets assume that Blizzard is given another chance by the players. Great.
So lets say the arcade is in the condition its in now and they all flock back to try it out.
What will happen? Oh wait we saw this before after the 1.5 patch came out. 90% of the players don't go for the open lobbies list but instead look at the featured list. And when they get bored of that they well... leave. It was that CaveOfWonders guy that I think accurately stated how the current UI layout actually works in practice. If a bunch of players flocked back right now the recovery would most likely not last. Too many of the maps, or variants of, are still there from the days of WoL Beta. Heck many of the most popular maps are not using HotS assets even now?
Blizzard is lacking in organization and direction. To make matters worse they are being secretive when they need to be the opposite. Is there going to be a public backlash if they start actually interacting with their customers? Oh yes. The "negativity" was the direct result of their willful decisions and they will be wading through a shitstorm.
Well its either they bite the bullet or they are going to have serious sales issues in the future. Taking a look at what is happening it looks like Vivendi is going to be selling off its majority share of Activision Blizzard, meaning figures like Robert Kotick gain almost total control. And there is a lawsuit with Vivendi trying to do one last milk of Activision Blizzard before they sell the stocks and another stock holder not liking the fact.
And then there is the ATVI Q2 report showing a drop of some 400 million in revenue since the same time last year. So they may very well be trying to finally monetize the arcade. I actually support this provided it is implemented correctly. However I don't think they are really capable of doing that. What do I base this on? Exclusively on their track record over the last 3 years.
Do they have a plan to implement this? Do they have a plan to recover the arcade? This whole thread might mean they have finally run out of ideas (and considering how stupid most of those ideas were, thank god).
So lets say they formulate a plan. Will it work? Does any part of the plan even remotely correspond to reality? Do they have a track recording of formulating good "plans" in any aspect of the arcade to date?
There's a lot more to this and going out and accusing me of a "SC2 is dying drama" only shows your ignorance of what is going on.
1. Hire DrSuperGood/Evil and or OneTwoSC to oversee the scene. Or one of the guys who made a 3rd party editor.
Blizzard's own people have proven that they have absolutely no idea what they are doing. Simply giving feedback hasn't been and isn't going to do jack squat.
There is this extremely underused tab call the "data navigator" that is underused for the simply reason that it is useless. Yet even though I first tried to talk the developer in question out of it, then threw a fuss, the result was the same. I don't know how much time was wasted on that when so many other things easier to implement would have been more useful.
No the solution is to put the scene under the overall control of the community. Give David Kim or someone else the entire melee scene (including ESports) and let one of the community's own oversee the development of the arcade and put Dustin Browder on top of both aspects. Giving them equal status as equal departments will go a long ways to improving the situation.
A good share of this issue was both the result of certain personalities as well as the organization itself. The Battle.net team is responsible for too much and the 1-size-fits-all approach backfires in almost every case regardless. Have the individual game development teams be responsible for designing and implementing the front-end of battle.net for their respective games and have the battle.net restricted to improving the back-end and occasional assistance to the game development teams.
Over half of all the issues in StarCraft 2 are caused by Battle.net and that seems to be largely outside the StarCraft 2's development team's control. At least let me actually be responsible for screwing it up if nothing else.
And this is the nth request for feedback now and almost none of it has been implemented? I mean sure there is a percentage based armor system but no one is going to use it since its backwards from the WarCraft 3 system.
I'm probably forgetting a lot of things but here is my list for now at least. Prioritization was difficult for some of these. Also FockeWulf relax buddy, it takes time to address game issues particularly when it's not their top development priority.
Priority 1: Map Size Limit Increase
The map size limits keep getting raised and it's great! However ambitious projects still lack space, especially when using custom art/sound assets (An image or sound clip can take up to a few MB per file!). The more space the more you can do with the map.
Priority 2: Server Side Bank Data/ Player Data
Makes it more difficult for players to hack/cheat games. Allows for Global Leaderboards, Special Global Achievements/Rankings. Potentially could be used for Monetization in games in the future (Example: Player X buys 10,000 gold for $1. When the transaction ends 10,000 gold is added to the player gold total in their server side bank data.)
Priority 3: More than 3 Cliff Levels
Allows for more complex maps. Makes puzzle and/or exploration based games have more features, depth, and space. Puzzles and Exploration can require people to traverse many floors and do various things to objects on that particular floor. Can also be used for more complex cover systems in games as well.
Priority 4: Named Game Lobbies
Allows people to specify how they plan to play a game that has multiple modes. For instance a lobby could be called (High Level PvP) and another one for the same game could be (Rush New Characters). Would make it easier to get what you want done when you play a game that has a lot of flexibility in how it is played.
Priority 5: Improved Cutscene Editor
Allow easier texture swapping, actor commands, effects, custom animations. The cutscene editor can be a lot more useful if it allows more customization. Also improved ease of use would always be appreciated.
Priority 6: Allow Doodads to be added/placed through triggers
This would allow people to have dynamic maps that can change every play through. Allows environments to be more interesting and unpredictable. This can be done already with units but would be preferable to do with doodads.
Priority 7: Allow changing Terrain Textures through triggers
If possible to implement this would also allow for people to have more variety with their map environments. A Volcano based map could be changed into a Tundra based map later on when the players revisit the area for instance.
Priority 8: Improved Cutscene Editor
Allow easier texture swapping, actor commands, effects, custom unit animations, etc. The cutscene editor can be a lot more useful if it allows more customization. Also ease of use would always be appreciated.
Priority 9: Increased Map Terrain Tileset Limit
Raise from 8 Terrain tiles to something like 16 or even 12 can greatly enhance Aesthetics and variety of environments for a map. It also helps not only custom arcade map makers but melee map makers as well.
Priority 10: Map Space Limitation Increase
Increase the maximum space for a map from 256 X 256 to a larger number such as 512 X 512. This is useful for maps that want to allow players the ability to explore areas. 256 X 256 is restrictive for ambitious projects.
Priority 11: Improved Actor Rotation (Spinning)
Make it easier for actors to be rotated around in a clockwise and counter-clockwise rotation in real time during gameplay.
@Imperfect1987: Go
Your post reminded me of something minor I would like to see "Eventually".
The ability to dig through terrain, creating terrain bridges with pathing under them, or quarrys that can have textures painted on the tops. :)
Well, technically you can just import the texture you want with the same name of the texture you want to swap it with. The "game goes apeshit" bug has long been fixed.
I hope this still counts but how about an importer for their Art Tools? May not necessarily apply to the editor but definitely applies to arcade games.
1. Linking Maps:
Just like in the campaign, simply going from one map to another with all players. Also linking to the same map will simply restart the game. (Optimize this function for better loading-time as well. This would make it much easier for people to rematch).
2. Different modes for controlling lag:
In melee games this makes sense, but for so many other genres, like a MOBA or an RPG, it shouldn't pause the game, or make everyone else lag. Just stop all inputs from that player while everyone else can play on. When the player reconnects, give him control back. Also a few trigger-events to go with this: "Player Disconnect", you could then make his hero be controlled by the AI until "Player Reconnects".
3. Optimize the game for something other than the default camera-view.
It is perfectly legitimate to not optimizing your game for anything but the way it can be played, but you obviously knew that custom maps where not all going to use the standard view. I am not entirely sure what it is that is hitting performance so badly when you rotate the pitch slightly upwards, but it's really bad. This combined with how the lag-system works makes any form of first-person to third-person view impossible to play online. I know this is possible to fix, but might be hard to implement if all your graphics-engine guys are working on something else now. Just reduce the quality of the terrain further away from the camera as well as not rendering small doodads before it is in near range.
Please link Blizzard to this thread. There's a lot of good suggestions here.
Well there's already plenty of fixes to the arcade that been pointed out so here's a few tweaks to the editor (and engine) that would be really helpful:
1 - [Terrain Editor] Cliff Levels
Enable the ability to place more than 3 cliff levels. If that's not possible, then at least enable use of the lowest cliff level instead of it being permanently unpathable all the time.
2 - [Terrain Editor] Lasso Tool
Painting vector terrain, especially if you try to paint in a straight line that is not isometric is such a pain. Terrainers shouldn't be forced to use doodads to cover up jarring tile edges. This also gives the Fill tool a lot more utility compared to now where it's only useful for cliff levels.
3 - [Data Editor] 3D Pathing
I still don't really understand how games like C&C Generals and Tiberium Wars were able to pull off making bridges have 3D pathing enabled and could be disabled by destroying the bridge, yet WC3/SC2 to date has not been able to do so despite having far more efficient pathing (compared to the buggy-as-hell SAGE) and being released much later. Reworking the entire pathing system is obviously out of the question since it would take too much time, but at least enable mappers to create bridges in the data editor that can be traversed under and over it.
4 - [Terrain/Data Editor] Fog Regions
It was an excellent change to be able to place up to 4 lighting regions, now do this for fog as well.
5 - [Terrain/Data Editor] Tile Limit
WC3 supported (unofficially) up to 16 different tiles on any map. Obviously having 16 tiles now isn't as important anymore as tiles can be blended but you can only go so far with blending the tiles. 8 is still very restrictive in terms of what tiles you can choose. A hybrid terrain that combines more than two climates and looks unique and diverse without visible tile duplication is not possible. Increasing the limit to 12 or even 16 would definitely solve this problem.
Oh, and if I recall correctly, you could change tiles with triggers, thus you could have potentially unlimited tiles. Very sure you can't do that in SC2.
@ObsceneCereal: Go
That works, but not exactly what I had in mind.
@GhostNova91: Go
I actually asked the devs about this, and they said "They would have no use for it, so its up to the community to create a 3rd party importer" NOTE: Quote may be partially inaccurate but is overall the same meaning.
still not f2p?
even that wouldnt get me back thou...still interesting to see if they could somehow make arcade more popular. I think it could be totally possible if there really was new gamemod like dota ( super awesome and super fun to play, unlimited replay value ). And having a mod of that calliber wont be happening at this point imo.
@MasterWrath: Go
Yea, it can be done another way, if dialog model camera supported rtt (now it doesn't show it). Or any way blizz would find easiest.
First point can be also be better if they add functions to directly access the terrain mesh nodes.
@GhostNova91: Go
If they won't add the importer, they could at least release more model sources with the final version of Art Tools.
Even if they make all of these listed changes it will not be enough at this point.
The fact remains that in the customer's minds StarCraft 2 was a huge disappointment The game has been uninstalled and they have moved on. They are no longer checking back. Even Blizzard's emails (when they bother to send them out on time or at all) promoting events and features are no longer being opened.
Blizzard's PR also needs to be revamped and new rules of who can overrule who written. Like that "Cloaken" feller. He may be the top dog in the PR department but he essentially censored one of Blizzard's own developers twice. That's a no-no regardless of whatever "chain of command" exists in Blizzard. If someone with the "developer" tag decides its worth having a discussion in a thread the community management needs to be strictly hands off. He inflicted a lot of PR damage on his own company by those moves.
Then there is this gig about Blizzard strictly favoring a very few mappers. Now I don't have a problem with the few who are getting the blue posts. Most of them are very skilled mappers. And nor do I expect to ever get a blue post myself. But there are almost a dozen mappers per page who are also having issues who have been given the cold shoulder. This has got to stop. It alienates many mappers. Hell it played no small part in my own alienation. Being ignored when I was having issues that I could not solve (in fact no one could solve) was bad enough. Learning that Blizzard was giving attention to a select few mappers when I and others were being hung out to dry was a very sobering experience. And then there was Blizzard deciding the art tools were to be a sales pitch for HotS. They have still not been released. And I'm convinced they never will. They were fully ready by a year after WoL was released and instead they decided to hold them back. Really, really stupid on their part.
Ok I need to stop writing this out. Reminding myself of how I set up to fail (my fault for being stupid enough to believe them, their fault for not keeping a promise) is going to make my language a little bit harsher.
@ObsceneCereal: Go
I think the point is what does the modding community need. They have no use using time to modify the art tools and give them to us now. It's not really about them though its the community that really needs them. I think they might be upset with kit bashing maybe.
@Zolden: Go
Agreed. I feel like custom models is a huge plus for mods and there isn't enough support on all fronts.
Agreed. There's so much untapped potential with custom models, we just need the means to access their files to learn from.
I just hope they allow the Blizzard Allstars model. With all the news of making it standalone, it worries me that they'll go 180 on it and lock away all the models server-side for some 'pay per hero' system.
@FockeWulf: Go
So what would be enough for you? You present things in way more dramatic way than they are... Like some desperation and no one shares that. In fact, those opinions here if fulfilled will do the mapmaking into greater thing than War3 or anything else had, what more? I am not taking part in another 'SC2 is dying' drama.
Yeah right, DSG is as much of an elitist as I am, he is even fine with pretty much all the way the game is and just moves on from there, but for being devil's advocate let's say there are problems, regardless of his and my elitism.
-I have always used triggers and I would say give all the things that now are done with a work around and included in Libraries - direct triggers like Spinning, some Use Item Orders because the current ones don't work well. Change PITCH and ROLL of actor in Data (yeah all - not just Doodads). Like I often times needed to change PITCH of UNITS...
Search field for the Text Editor
Single Player browse your own maps in-game like any older game
Bnet Profile Portraits in Bnet animated like in war3
@Eimtr: Go
Eimtr your accusations both fall far short of the mark and are meaningless anyways.
So what if they actually improve the editor and fix the remaining issues with battle.net?
Where are the players? And why is Blizzard taking this kind of interest now?
Oh I have my own huge list of things that need to be fixed.
One of the big problems I am seeing with all of these replies is that nearly all of them are technical. We can already do things that WarCraft 3 never could. And some of the mappers have produced a genuinely superior product from anything in WarCraft 3. And who is playing it? In WarCraft 3 you could host a semi popular tower defense and have it fill and start in 10 seconds or less.
Bottom line: Almost none of these suggestions are going to improve the situation by themselves. Mechanics are one thing. Having people to play the maps is another. And as I had said people have written off the game. And instead of accusing me of starting another "SC2 is dying drama" why don't you instead wake up and realize that it is a problem that needs to be solved if StarCraft 2 is going to recover.
Hiring someone from the community is probably not the best idea from the technical results it will produce (although I question whether anyone in Blizzard can do a better job) but the impression it will leave on the average customer will be very valuable. Any recovery is going to depend as much on public relations as it will on technical aspects.
Lets assume that Blizzard is given another chance by the players. Great.
So lets say the arcade is in the condition its in now and they all flock back to try it out.
What will happen? Oh wait we saw this before after the 1.5 patch came out. 90% of the players don't go for the open lobbies list but instead look at the featured list. And when they get bored of that they well... leave. It was that CaveOfWonders guy that I think accurately stated how the current UI layout actually works in practice. If a bunch of players flocked back right now the recovery would most likely not last. Too many of the maps, or variants of, are still there from the days of WoL Beta. Heck many of the most popular maps are not using HotS assets even now?
Blizzard is lacking in organization and direction. To make matters worse they are being secretive when they need to be the opposite. Is there going to be a public backlash if they start actually interacting with their customers? Oh yes. The "negativity" was the direct result of their willful decisions and they will be wading through a shitstorm.
Well its either they bite the bullet or they are going to have serious sales issues in the future. Taking a look at what is happening it looks like Vivendi is going to be selling off its majority share of Activision Blizzard, meaning figures like Robert Kotick gain almost total control. And there is a lawsuit with Vivendi trying to do one last milk of Activision Blizzard before they sell the stocks and another stock holder not liking the fact.
And then there is the ATVI Q2 report showing a drop of some 400 million in revenue since the same time last year. So they may very well be trying to finally monetize the arcade. I actually support this provided it is implemented correctly. However I don't think they are really capable of doing that. What do I base this on? Exclusively on their track record over the last 3 years.
Do they have a plan to implement this? Do they have a plan to recover the arcade? This whole thread might mean they have finally run out of ideas (and considering how stupid most of those ideas were, thank god).
So lets say they formulate a plan. Will it work? Does any part of the plan even remotely correspond to reality? Do they have a track recording of formulating good "plans" in any aspect of the arcade to date?
There's a lot more to this and going out and accusing me of a "SC2 is dying drama" only shows your ignorance of what is going on.
Please leave the "drama" to the other thread. This one is for suggestions, and suggestion for improvements to battlenet and editor.
@DogmaiSEA: Go
Got the same email too. I'd be happy to help relay what people here suggest.
More terrain textures than 8.
Trigger than can tell what type of terrain texture someone is in.
Multi-level footprints or just remove footprints all together and allow us to use physics to create walls and floors.
I drool over what I could make with that.