If they make it a time based thing then there should be a limit so that a game stops gaining points from a source after 2 hours. So a map couldn't be boosted by having a friend log in and afk in the game. 2 hours per person would limit that. Some longer maps like the open rpgs that were prevalent on wc3, but 2 hours in a day is still a decent chunk of time for a person to spend playing a single map in a day, so even orpgs wouldn't suffer too much under that restriction. Certainly much less than number of plays.
Unfortunately true. I've often mentioned Blizzard in the same breath as talking about how Apple goes all nazi on regulating and controlling everything. I mean, hell, they tried to make a line of headphones that are only compatible with iPods, and they wanted to make all iPods only compatible with their headphones. Luckily, when they tried to patent it the patent office told them that its illegal to do that because its monopolization, but the fact that Apple even tried to do that is insane. And now when that comes to mind, so does Blizzard, which is a sad, sad thing for me, a player who has poured months of hours into WoW, wc3, and Diablo.
Do you understand what you're writing? The whole 'they could say the same about you', literally says that colt&I need to grow tougher skin and need to get over map names. We're the ones who don't care if offensive names are used, so saying we're the ones who need tougher skin doesn't make any sense at all, which is the point we're making that you are ignoring so that you don't have to admit your comment wasn't logical.
I don't know how Blizzard will actually go about splitting map types apart, but in an earlier post I brought up a list of preset categories of which authors can choose 2 or 3, along with a category named "Original" or "Creative" or "Unique", for maps that introduce entirely new elements into the Modding community.
I agree with Colt, overly sensitive people need to stfu, get tougher
skin, and get over it, but it's irrelevant here for the above reasons.
The people that have a problem with it could say the exact same thing to
you.
Anyhow, you guys are completely missing the point, there is only 1
advantage to custom names, and that's the ability to show game
parameters. If blizzard decides they don't want custom names, then there
are other ways to handle the situation.
Custom names are not a requirement at all, but it would probably be nice
- only if they are going to police it.
Again, agreed with Colt, that was a retarded comment. Not in the 'thats stupid' way people usually mean it, I mean a mentally handicapped person would make a comment that makes so little sense.
And actually, you're missing the point. How about the fact that I spent a good paragraph saying why game types are essential and how it could work? Virtually the only response you've made to my posts, is the aforementioned, senseless comment.
It would require virtually no policing. I feel like a broken record here, but maybe if I keep repeating myself you'll bother to read what I'm saying. Putting in a filter requires no policing. It's like a law that enforces itself. And with a very basic 'offensive name' reporting function, users themselves would be able to decide if things not caught by the filter are offensive. "Blizzard DotA - no b!tch @ss noobs" Hmm, that looks offensive and is blatantly avoiding the word filter, right click the server name, left click report, done. Putting in a simple system where 5 or so reports leads to a 24 hour ban with an automated email that simply says the user was banned for being reported for an offensive server name and that further bans will be longer and may result in a permanent account ban. Also have the email include the server name that got the person banned.
Allow a person to email Blizzard to have their ban looked at to see if it was a legitimate(sp?) ban or if it was just trolls or a group of hateful players, and there we go, we have a working custom server name feature that requires little active policing on the part of Blizzard. I doubt there will be many players who email Blizzard to contest their ban when they are responding to an email that says they hosted "Blizzard DotA - no b!tch @ss noobs". Yes, there will be some, but not many.
I made quite a long post before so maybe the information was lost, so I'll repeat.
Advertisement spam in SC2 won't happen, and if it does, report, report, report, and the advertiser loses their account, and the $60 they paid for the game, its that simple. Now that you don't find key's laying around for sc2 like you did wc3, chances are we won't see ad spam. If we do, we can report the account and after enough reports, it could theoretically get flagged for blizzard to take a look at personally, or for them to be autobanned. It plagued warcraft 3 in later years, but it won't plague sc2. EDIT: Oh, and for every account Blizz bans for ad spamming, they made $60, and that $60 isn't using up server space. So if any of it does happen, even with cost of employees including, Blizz is actually profiting from their attempts at ad spamming.
I agree with Colt, overly sensitive people need to stfu, get tougher skin, and get over it, but it's irrelevant here for the above reasons.
As another example of why game types won't work, I'm working on rebuilding Wintermaul Wars from wc3. I plan to eventually put in game modes. If you are a WMW Tournament vet, you'll know what I mean. Greed increases gold income speed, hyperspeed makes units move faster for a more difficult game, superspeed allows unlimited sending of units at the other team if you have the $, again for higher difficulty, and lifesteal is self-explanatory and leads to longer games with more tug-of-war. I always hosted that game and would generally go with greed and lifesteal enabled. With a game type system, I'd have to submit the map with greed enabled alone, and in every combination with the other game modes. Or, I can host, put Greed&Lifesteal in the name, and Blizzards precious server space is conserved, and I still get my game modes without making it unnecessarily complicated.
I posted this same post on the relevant topic on the official forums, but figured I'd also post it here in hopes of having a higher chance of KratsAU seeing it, and for he sake of the posters here who haven't checked the official forum.
You keep saying you don't think they'll put in custom server names, but I have a couple ideas on how this really could work.
1.Word Filter - They already have a filter on published maps, why not just take the same filter, and run custom map names through it? As for filter avoidances like spacing words out or using symbols, you could use #2.
2.Suspend/Report System - People can report maps with names that are either advertisement spam(which, due to the fact that you have to have a code-activated account to get onto B.net, I think that advertisement spam is a very remote fear) or avoid the filter in some way. If a single server is reported, say, 3 times, the user gets a 24 ban on hosting and can only join maps others host. If this happens 3 in a 2 week period, they get a 1 week hosting ban, or something along those lines. EDIT: I know Blizzard wouldn't like leaving this in players' hands, but we don't want to see advertisements or offensive names either, and if we see an ad or filter avoidance and reporting them is just a right and a left click away, I think enough players will take the initiative to make a difference.
Due to the way you set up the image for checking individual servers, the host would have no reason to include the map name in the title, therefore cutting down on the character limit Blizzard would implement on server titles. They could put a 10 character limit on server names, and because you have to click on the map name to even see the server, people still know what options are being chosen and what the map is. For searching specific servers, it wouldn't be hard to search the map name, then from there look through the server listing.
I hope my ideas have been helpful. I have been against the popularity system 100% since I saw it, but reading through your thread and seeing what the system could be like with some modding gives me renewed hope for Bnet 2.0.
EDIT:Also, a worry of mine as to game type sorting is that letting the author input the game type leads to infinitely redundant categories. (example: TD, Tower Defense, Turret Defense, etc...) If Blizzard were to only allow preset categories, it wouldn't allow for the flexibility that original maps would require. If theres a Hero Arena with strong RPG or TD elements to it, the author would be torn as to which category to select. Allowing the author to select multiple categories to put the map into would create it's own problems, with authors selecting every category to increase exposure.
So maybe a preset list of game types, with the author being able to list their map as only 2 game types, with there being an 'Original' or 'Unique' category for authors with especially creative maps. To use one of the above examples of original maps, the author could put Hero Arena - Original.
0
If they make it a time based thing then there should be a limit so that a game stops gaining points from a source after 2 hours. So a map couldn't be boosted by having a friend log in and afk in the game. 2 hours per person would limit that. Some longer maps like the open rpgs that were prevalent on wc3, but 2 hours in a day is still a decent chunk of time for a person to spend playing a single map in a day, so even orpgs wouldn't suffer too much under that restriction. Certainly much less than number of plays.
0
Unfortunately true. I've often mentioned Blizzard in the same breath as talking about how Apple goes all nazi on regulating and controlling everything. I mean, hell, they tried to make a line of headphones that are only compatible with iPods, and they wanted to make all iPods only compatible with their headphones. Luckily, when they tried to patent it the patent office told them that its illegal to do that because its monopolization, but the fact that Apple even tried to do that is insane. And now when that comes to mind, so does Blizzard, which is a sad, sad thing for me, a player who has poured months of hours into WoW, wc3, and Diablo.
0
@KratsAU: Go
Do you understand what you're writing? The whole 'they could say the same about you', literally says that colt&I need to grow tougher skin and need to get over map names. We're the ones who don't care if offensive names are used, so saying we're the ones who need tougher skin doesn't make any sense at all, which is the point we're making that you are ignoring so that you don't have to admit your comment wasn't logical.
0
@WhiskeeGX: Go
I don't know how Blizzard will actually go about splitting map types apart, but in an earlier post I brought up a list of preset categories of which authors can choose 2 or 3, along with a category named "Original" or "Creative" or "Unique", for maps that introduce entirely new elements into the Modding community.
0
Again, agreed with Colt, that was a retarded comment. Not in the 'thats stupid' way people usually mean it, I mean a mentally handicapped person would make a comment that makes so little sense.
And actually, you're missing the point. How about the fact that I spent a good paragraph saying why game types are essential and how it could work? Virtually the only response you've made to my posts, is the aforementioned, senseless comment.
It would require virtually no policing. I feel like a broken record here, but maybe if I keep repeating myself you'll bother to read what I'm saying. Putting in a filter requires no policing. It's like a law that enforces itself. And with a very basic 'offensive name' reporting function, users themselves would be able to decide if things not caught by the filter are offensive. "Blizzard DotA - no b!tch @ss noobs" Hmm, that looks offensive and is blatantly avoiding the word filter, right click the server name, left click report, done. Putting in a simple system where 5 or so reports leads to a 24 hour ban with an automated email that simply says the user was banned for being reported for an offensive server name and that further bans will be longer and may result in a permanent account ban. Also have the email include the server name that got the person banned. Allow a person to email Blizzard to have their ban looked at to see if it was a legitimate(sp?) ban or if it was just trolls or a group of hateful players, and there we go, we have a working custom server name feature that requires little active policing on the part of Blizzard. I doubt there will be many players who email Blizzard to contest their ban when they are responding to an email that says they hosted "Blizzard DotA - no b!tch @ss noobs". Yes, there will be some, but not many.
0
I made quite a long post before so maybe the information was lost, so I'll repeat.
Advertisement spam in SC2 won't happen, and if it does, report, report, report, and the advertiser loses their account, and the $60 they paid for the game, its that simple. Now that you don't find key's laying around for sc2 like you did wc3, chances are we won't see ad spam. If we do, we can report the account and after enough reports, it could theoretically get flagged for blizzard to take a look at personally, or for them to be autobanned. It plagued warcraft 3 in later years, but it won't plague sc2. EDIT: Oh, and for every account Blizz bans for ad spamming, they made $60, and that $60 isn't using up server space. So if any of it does happen, even with cost of employees including, Blizz is actually profiting from their attempts at ad spamming.
I agree with Colt, overly sensitive people need to stfu, get tougher skin, and get over it, but it's irrelevant here for the above reasons.
As another example of why game types won't work, I'm working on rebuilding Wintermaul Wars from wc3. I plan to eventually put in game modes. If you are a WMW Tournament vet, you'll know what I mean. Greed increases gold income speed, hyperspeed makes units move faster for a more difficult game, superspeed allows unlimited sending of units at the other team if you have the $, again for higher difficulty, and lifesteal is self-explanatory and leads to longer games with more tug-of-war. I always hosted that game and would generally go with greed and lifesteal enabled. With a game type system, I'd have to submit the map with greed enabled alone, and in every combination with the other game modes. Or, I can host, put Greed&Lifesteal in the name, and Blizzards precious server space is conserved, and I still get my game modes without making it unnecessarily complicated.
0
I posted this same post on the relevant topic on the official forums, but figured I'd also post it here in hopes of having a higher chance of KratsAU seeing it, and for he sake of the posters here who haven't checked the official forum.
You keep saying you don't think they'll put in custom server names, but I have a couple ideas on how this really could work.
1.Word Filter - They already have a filter on published maps, why not just take the same filter, and run custom map names through it? As for filter avoidances like spacing words out or using symbols, you could use #2.
2.Suspend/Report System - People can report maps with names that are either advertisement spam(which, due to the fact that you have to have a code-activated account to get onto B.net, I think that advertisement spam is a very remote fear) or avoid the filter in some way. If a single server is reported, say, 3 times, the user gets a 24 ban on hosting and can only join maps others host. If this happens 3 in a 2 week period, they get a 1 week hosting ban, or something along those lines. EDIT: I know Blizzard wouldn't like leaving this in players' hands, but we don't want to see advertisements or offensive names either, and if we see an ad or filter avoidance and reporting them is just a right and a left click away, I think enough players will take the initiative to make a difference.
Due to the way you set up the image for checking individual servers, the host would have no reason to include the map name in the title, therefore cutting down on the character limit Blizzard would implement on server titles. They could put a 10 character limit on server names, and because you have to click on the map name to even see the server, people still know what options are being chosen and what the map is. For searching specific servers, it wouldn't be hard to search the map name, then from there look through the server listing.
I hope my ideas have been helpful. I have been against the popularity system 100% since I saw it, but reading through your thread and seeing what the system could be like with some modding gives me renewed hope for Bnet 2.0.
EDIT:Also, a worry of mine as to game type sorting is that letting the author input the game type leads to infinitely redundant categories. (example: TD, Tower Defense, Turret Defense, etc...) If Blizzard were to only allow preset categories, it wouldn't allow for the flexibility that original maps would require. If theres a Hero Arena with strong RPG or TD elements to it, the author would be torn as to which category to select. Allowing the author to select multiple categories to put the map into would create it's own problems, with authors selecting every category to increase exposure.
So maybe a preset list of game types, with the author being able to list their map as only 2 game types, with there being an 'Original' or 'Unique' category for authors with especially creative maps. To use one of the above examples of original maps, the author could put Hero Arena - Original.