I start to think SC2 arcade has less players every days.
Indeed, when I want to play to a map, whatever it is, even if it has more than 3000 rates, I don't find anybody (and I don't create private lobbies...).
Uberena, Snipers Promod, Team Monobattle, Pictionary etc etc... I never find any players for those maps, although they are pretty nice.
So, wtf is going on? I remember, about a year ago, anybody could create a great map and get featured, getting many rates. And if we started a lobby of a popular game, we could find players quite quickly. But now, it seems that everybody plays to DS or Probes Vs Zealots 2... This is so sad, even more when I see there are so many nice projects out there, who will maybe never get featured and fall into oblivion :(
A game's past popularity isn't really relevant when it comes to getting a lobby started, as the top played list is much cleaner and easier to look at and provides an icon of the game. Whereas the open games list is really just a text wall in disguise. The top played list also provides a guarantee that you'll be able to fill a lobby within 1 second (page 1) to a few minutes (page 3). In other words, a game's current popularity is the biggest factor in lobby time (actually, past page 5 it probably doesn't matter at all). Some people say it's because you have to 'hacer clic' an extra time to get to open games, but I think it's just the overall poor look of the open games list.
While I do think "dead" is a silly concept; as sc2 is always making cash for blizzard and has a good deal of player, and we have no true way of determining the total number of arcade players and the frequency of their playing over time... welll... shots in the dark...
I will like to comment though that I went through the list of 80 maps that made it into this contest. Very few of them are actually played. Honestly; the arcade is just as stale now as it was 3 years ago. 3 years ago we have the excuse "well, there just isnt that much variety" which is no long quite so true. There are hundreds of games that enough people would consider fun enough to actually be played once a day. The sc2 hosting system is better than wc3 had; until yeh know, 100% bot hosting came along.
As mentioned above, it is difficult for a clear showing of arcade popularity over time, other than observation. I will say though; that at 10AM there is only 1 page of games being hosted. I understand that that is pretty much "down time" for the server. I also feel as though I have an equal chance of finding a game on warcraft 3.
Playing wc3 through the very slow and painful decline over 4 years, I can tell you what it looked and sounded like...
Man, these bots are killing the variety of hosted maps! People are gonna be leaving soon if this keeps up.
School is starting, kids are busy, that is why wc3 is losing popularity; it is nothing new, they will come back.
Winter break! Never seen so many people online!
Mid terms, man is it hard to find a game that one of the most popular ones.
Damn, pretty much need to pay for a bot to host games now, people who arent into main stream games are outta here.
Summer time, people are busy, fewer players; they will be back when the novelty of nice weather wears off.
---rinse---repeate---try again
Every year, we went through those same cycles; losing players along the way. I have been watching the same thing happen here; at about the same pace. I am sure if the forum statistics were posted; they would show a slowly declining trend over the past few years.
The short:
I think WoW is the only game, released in the past decade, which gained players as time went on (past the first year) as opposed to losing them. In the modern era of video games; that is pretty well unheard of. "Dying" is a natural part of life.
Well it's true that there are way less players in summer, people have better things to do than playing SC2 while it's sunny :D
But the bad thing is that there are many nice games that are not enough played, and maps like DS are ok but they have too much players. I have already seen people who play only these games, they have never played any Starcraft ladder game. It's pretty weird and it shows that the more a map is played, the more it will be played and it sux, I don't like that system. I'd even say it "feeds the troll" in some way.
You can't tell me the guy who created Desert Strike (regardless of previous DS, let's consider it's the first DS that has ever been created) needed as much time to make his map as idk, Stardrive for example, or many maps featured here, but still it's more popular.
I would have thought that nice maps like Snipers Promod would still have fans playing it but no. So I'm wondering what's the point of making a map nowadays, spending hours and hours trying to make a nice map without bugs if nobody bothers playing it :/
Released my contest entry 13 days ago. It's gotten 636 unique reviews (as of time of posting) since then. The arcade certainly feels alive enough!
Still takes mere seconds to get any page 1 map going. Honestly there are few real, full games that can boast such quickness of filling up a game lobby.
I think the arcade is doing fine, and I think it's going to be fine for a long time.
Well dude, forcely once you released the most played Arcade map, your other projects can only be popular too, if they are well done.
If you create a map that requires more than 6 players it will never get popular since there will be never enough players for it, except if you are somehow lucky.
Regarding the increase in moders while the game's coming of age draws closer.
The thing is it takes time for development to happen, while people are losing interest in the game, modders gain interest. SC2's fate will be similar to wc3's, the game will eventually be a walking zombie, let's not say dead as the community of artists and a few nostalgiacs will keep it going. At some later point in time there will be a couple of people attempting to make something outrageously outstanding for a game that overstayed its welcome. For starcraft 2 it's happening sooner but the death rate is also a lot faster.
Another thing I want to point out is the complexity of the sc2 engine which isn't really something you can learn about at the snap of a finger and what I mean here is the advanced stuff like ambient occlusion, shadow mapping, parallax, using projectors, physics, etc, which seriously takes some time and commitment to get used to regardless of the obvious lack of information and tutorials (tutorials which are under development). As a terrainer, modeler and game artist I can safely say that sc2 is a powerful game with vast capabilities for a RTS.
Editaj: As a post apocalyptic predicament, the sc2 sites that won't be sc2 actively related will become dating sites for nerds and people with other sexual tendencies, you will mostly see threads like "Picture/Photo Thread - pictures of yourself or, What would you date?". I am not exaggerating as I come from such a place :P also how I found my dumpling! : D
Today's players can choose from a plethora of games (Minecraft, League of Legends etc.). Back in the WarCraft III days, the custom games were one of the better options to experience vastly-different multiplayer stuff. Now, it is just one out of many options.
Considering all that, the "dead" Arcade is still going strong. Heck, people are even giving new, unknown maps a try (my map didn't get a full house of 12 players yet, but I'm still grateful for the few that joined at all).
Sure, eventually even StarCraft II will be reduced to a sizable playerbase, but not anytime soon. At the very least, there's still Legacy of the Void to look forward to, which might bring in one last surge of activity (and hopefully, FINALLY proper campaign support). So not all is lost.
While few celebrate the status quo (because they alone reap benefit from blizzard's decisions) .. i find (as a meager uploader) that the arcade is dead
there is no consensus, no emulation, no community..
but no one cares what i think
As a player, pc is still alive and kicking (even without anyone tending to it)
.. new players join regularly
and have for years (on eu)
.. i wouldn't call that dead.
pc is the living proof that the page 1 system is flawed and will eventually serve no one (not even pretentious map posters who just got lucky in the draw (and worked hard at it, no question about that))
I mean, do you guys mapping for money/food? whata subject of speculation.. I like game development as most of you, but i'm non-programmer. So i have no other better option than sc2 editor, especialy considering quality of assets/lore of blizzard games. And i even don't mapping i just learning how to do things and having fun. Why even bother how popular sc2 is?
I mean, do you guys mapping for money/food? whata subject of speculation.. I like game development as most of you, but i'm non-programmer. So i have no other better option than sc2 editor, especialy considering quality of assets/lore of blizzard games. And i even don't mapping i just learning how to do things and having fun. Why even bother how popular sc2 is?
A lot of people on here make similar statements. If you enjoy making games, who cares?
This is true in a sense, and it would be silly to argue against it. There is however another viewpoint for many people, players and modders alike:
We like communities. We like to socialize. We enjoy coming together over a game we all enjoy, playing it together, discussing it together, and competing with each other. If a game is not popular; there is no group to play with, no friends to enjoy the company of, no discussion about said game.
The majority of people who map, do so because they feel that their game is fun. they want to play their game with other people, and start a community, and enjoy the company of people who also enjoy said game. Lower player base=lower chance that people will play their game. It is hard to stay motivated, when page 2 maps are desolate.
It is the true problem with popularity, and there is nothing blizzard can do about it. People want to socialize. If you spend 15 minutes waiting for a game to fill, and then it is full of people who have never played it; where is the social aspect? Half of them will leave 5 min in because they dont understand/enjoy it (They do not get anything from the social aspect of the game). You will spend most of the game explaining how to play it; and you will likely never see those players again.
i only bought this game because i thought it would be like wc3, just in the sc2 world with an improved editor but i was soo wrong. bnet 2.0 , who doesn't like to think back to the days where we could connect our sc2 with facebook but didn't have chatrooms. or the good old days where the editor crashed every 30 minutes, hey wait that was yesterday. or where features of the editor didn't work well, like duplicating things, hey it still doesnt. back then at least we could play mineralz and so do we today, and now the clue, we can do so even on other regions!!!. and ofc who doesn't like buying a new graphic card because it was set wrong for sc2, though worked for all other games.
basically, what i wanted to say. they had the knowledge (with wc3) but still did everything different. this was fail by design.
but still i am here, haven't found anything better yet.
I start to think SC2 arcade has less players every days. Indeed, when I want to play to a map, whatever it is, even if it has more than 3000 rates, I don't find anybody (and I don't create private lobbies...).
Uberena, Snipers Promod, Team Monobattle, Pictionary etc etc... I never find any players for those maps, although they are pretty nice.
So, wtf is going on? I remember, about a year ago, anybody could create a great map and get featured, getting many rates. And if we started a lobby of a popular game, we could find players quite quickly. But now, it seems that everybody plays to DS or Probes Vs Zealots 2... This is so sad, even more when I see there are so many nice projects out there, who will maybe never get featured and fall into oblivion :(
@Repliquant: Go
A game's past popularity isn't really relevant when it comes to getting a lobby started, as the top played list is much cleaner and easier to look at and provides an icon of the game. Whereas the open games list is really just a text wall in disguise. The top played list also provides a guarantee that you'll be able to fill a lobby within 1 second (page 1) to a few minutes (page 3). In other words, a game's current popularity is the biggest factor in lobby time (actually, past page 5 it probably doesn't matter at all). Some people say it's because you have to 'hacer clic' an extra time to get to open games, but I think it's just the overall poor look of the open games list.
Still very much the case.
It seems to me like game creation is more active than it's been in a while. However, I don't know about the Arcade player base.
edit: 300th post! edit2: Never mind, it's back to 288...
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Curse PremiumAnother one of these.
While I do think "dead" is a silly concept; as sc2 is always making cash for blizzard and has a good deal of player, and we have no true way of determining the total number of arcade players and the frequency of their playing over time... welll... shots in the dark...
I will like to comment though that I went through the list of 80 maps that made it into this contest. Very few of them are actually played. Honestly; the arcade is just as stale now as it was 3 years ago. 3 years ago we have the excuse "well, there just isnt that much variety" which is no long quite so true. There are hundreds of games that enough people would consider fun enough to actually be played once a day. The sc2 hosting system is better than wc3 had; until yeh know, 100% bot hosting came along.
As mentioned above, it is difficult for a clear showing of arcade popularity over time, other than observation. I will say though; that at 10AM there is only 1 page of games being hosted. I understand that that is pretty much "down time" for the server. I also feel as though I have an equal chance of finding a game on warcraft 3.
Playing wc3 through the very slow and painful decline over 4 years, I can tell you what it looked and sounded like...
Man, these bots are killing the variety of hosted maps! People are gonna be leaving soon if this keeps up.
School is starting, kids are busy, that is why wc3 is losing popularity; it is nothing new, they will come back.
Winter break! Never seen so many people online!
Mid terms, man is it hard to find a game that one of the most popular ones.
Damn, pretty much need to pay for a bot to host games now, people who arent into main stream games are outta here.
Summer time, people are busy, fewer players; they will be back when the novelty of nice weather wears off.
---rinse---repeate---try again
Every year, we went through those same cycles; losing players along the way. I have been watching the same thing happen here; at about the same pace. I am sure if the forum statistics were posted; they would show a slowly declining trend over the past few years.
The short:
I think WoW is the only game, released in the past decade, which gained players as time went on (past the first year) as opposed to losing them. In the modern era of video games; that is pretty well unheard of. "Dying" is a natural part of life.
Skype: [email protected] Current Project: Custom Hero Arena! US: battlenet:://starcraft/map/1/263274 EU: battlenet:://starcraft/map/2/186418
Well it's true that there are way less players in summer, people have better things to do than playing SC2 while it's sunny :D
But the bad thing is that there are many nice games that are not enough played, and maps like DS are ok but they have too much players. I have already seen people who play only these games, they have never played any Starcraft ladder game. It's pretty weird and it shows that the more a map is played, the more it will be played and it sux, I don't like that system. I'd even say it "feeds the troll" in some way. You can't tell me the guy who created Desert Strike (regardless of previous DS, let's consider it's the first DS that has ever been created) needed as much time to make his map as idk, Stardrive for example, or many maps featured here, but still it's more popular.
I would have thought that nice maps like Snipers Promod would still have fans playing it but no. So I'm wondering what's the point of making a map nowadays, spending hours and hours trying to make a nice map without bugs if nobody bothers playing it :/
Released my contest entry 13 days ago. It's gotten 636 unique reviews (as of time of posting) since then. The arcade certainly feels alive enough!
Still takes mere seconds to get any page 1 map going. Honestly there are few real, full games that can boast such quickness of filling up a game lobby.
I think the arcade is doing fine, and I think it's going to be fine for a long time.
Well dude, forcely once you released the most played Arcade map, your other projects can only be popular too, if they are well done.
If you create a map that requires more than 6 players it will never get popular since there will be never enough players for it, except if you are somehow lucky.
@Repliquant: Go
From that list of top 12 maps, I know Squad TD, Marine Arena, Mines and Magic, Eras Test and Mineralz all have more than 6 players.
I do get what you're saying though. Releasing a player vs player map that has a large lobby requirement is going to be rough.
Regarding the increase in moders while the game's coming of age draws closer.
The thing is it takes time for development to happen, while people are losing interest in the game, modders gain interest. SC2's fate will be similar to wc3's, the game will eventually be a walking zombie, let's not say dead as the community of artists and a few nostalgiacs will keep it going. At some later point in time there will be a couple of people attempting to make something outrageously outstanding for a game that overstayed its welcome. For starcraft 2 it's happening sooner but the death rate is also a lot faster. Another thing I want to point out is the complexity of the sc2 engine which isn't really something you can learn about at the snap of a finger and what I mean here is the advanced stuff like ambient occlusion, shadow mapping, parallax, using projectors, physics, etc, which seriously takes some time and commitment to get used to regardless of the obvious lack of information and tutorials (tutorials which are under development). As a terrainer, modeler and game artist I can safely say that sc2 is a powerful game with vast capabilities for a RTS.
Editaj: As a post apocalyptic predicament, the sc2 sites that won't be sc2 actively related will become dating sites for nerds and people with other sexual tendencies, you will mostly see threads like "Picture/Photo Thread - pictures of yourself or, What would you date?". I am not exaggerating as I come from such a place :P also how I found my dumpling! : D
Today's players can choose from a plethora of games (Minecraft, League of Legends etc.). Back in the WarCraft III days, the custom games were one of the better options to experience vastly-different multiplayer stuff. Now, it is just one out of many options.
Considering all that, the "dead" Arcade is still going strong. Heck, people are even giving new, unknown maps a try (my map didn't get a full house of 12 players yet, but I'm still grateful for the few that joined at all).
Sure, eventually even StarCraft II will be reduced to a sizable playerbase, but not anytime soon. At the very least, there's still Legacy of the Void to look forward to, which might bring in one last surge of activity (and hopefully, FINALLY proper campaign support). So not all is lost.
@JademusSreg: Go uhuh....
Why does this topic keep coming back?
@JademusSreg: Go
The thread was semi-rezzed, so it's not 'again', but rather... the same topic passing by.
That said, .
@JademusSreg: Go
Actually, its the arcade that is dead, not the horse. From henceforth, the phrase will be changed to "beating the dead arcade".
While few celebrate the status quo (because they alone reap benefit from blizzard's decisions) .. i find (as a meager uploader) that the arcade is dead
there is no consensus, no emulation, no community..
but no one cares what i think
As a player, pc is still alive and kicking (even without anyone tending to it)
.. new players join regularly
and have for years (on eu)
.. i wouldn't call that dead.
pc is the living proof that the page 1 system is flawed and will eventually serve no one (not even pretentious map posters who just got lucky in the draw (and worked hard at it, no question about that))
glhf until bnet3° for Lotv
I mean, do you guys mapping for money/food? whata subject of speculation.. I like game development as most of you, but i'm non-programmer. So i have no other better option than sc2 editor, especialy considering quality of assets/lore of blizzard games. And i even don't mapping i just learning how to do things and having fun. Why even bother how popular sc2 is?
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Curse PremiumA lot of people on here make similar statements. If you enjoy making games, who cares?
This is true in a sense, and it would be silly to argue against it. There is however another viewpoint for many people, players and modders alike:
We like communities. We like to socialize. We enjoy coming together over a game we all enjoy, playing it together, discussing it together, and competing with each other. If a game is not popular; there is no group to play with, no friends to enjoy the company of, no discussion about said game.
The majority of people who map, do so because they feel that their game is fun. they want to play their game with other people, and start a community, and enjoy the company of people who also enjoy said game. Lower player base=lower chance that people will play their game. It is hard to stay motivated, when page 2 maps are desolate.
It is the true problem with popularity, and there is nothing blizzard can do about it. People want to socialize. If you spend 15 minutes waiting for a game to fill, and then it is full of people who have never played it; where is the social aspect? Half of them will leave 5 min in because they dont understand/enjoy it (They do not get anything from the social aspect of the game). You will spend most of the game explaining how to play it; and you will likely never see those players again.
/end rant
Skype: [email protected] Current Project: Custom Hero Arena! US: battlenet:://starcraft/map/1/263274 EU: battlenet:://starcraft/map/2/186418
@GlornII: Go
i only bought this game because i thought it would be like wc3, just in the sc2 world with an improved editor but i was soo wrong. bnet 2.0 , who doesn't like to think back to the days where we could connect our sc2 with facebook but didn't have chatrooms. or the good old days where the editor crashed every 30 minutes, hey wait that was yesterday. or where features of the editor didn't work well, like duplicating things, hey it still doesnt. back then at least we could play mineralz and so do we today, and now the clue, we can do so even on other regions!!!. and ofc who doesn't like buying a new graphic card because it was set wrong for sc2, though worked for all other games.
basically, what i wanted to say. they had the knowledge (with wc3) but still did everything different. this was fail by design.
but still i am here, haven't found anything better yet.
The arcade is okay.
You need to differentiate dead from 'hardly any new maps are rising in popularity'.
Nope its all over: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/13348544724#1
No reasonable fan boy will be able to explain away the damage this has done.
Blizzard is just another Activision Studio.