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    posted a message on Demographics

    24, physics student, got a nice opportunity to work on a map I had been a fan of for quite a while.

    Posted in: General Chat
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    posted a message on SC2 Performance since 3.0

    If you are having performance issues since 3.0 then you might want to check whether your sc2 client runs in 32 or 64-bit mode. I had to change from 64 to 32, since 64 runs significantly worse for me, too.

    Posted in: General Chat
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    posted a message on Water

    Have you tried placing water on a fresh and empty map, too? Do you get the same problems then?

    Also about crashing:

    I experience a significant increase of crashes when having open more then one map at the same time. But when I don't, I have crashes very rarely.

    Posted in: General Chat
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    posted a message on Ah Good old Sc2mapster

    out of curiosity, have there been notable attempts of pushing sc2 ladder out of its throne with an arcade map?

    Posted in: General Chat
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    posted a message on Ah Good old Sc2mapster
    Quote from EternalWraith: Go

    This game is just ridiculously fast paced to be enjoyable. Korean simulator 2.0. Blizzard seeking to make the greatest esport ended up killing the majority of the casual player base.

    Interesting... the fast pace was why i originally got involved with starcraft. Because Dawn of War Soulstorm (support) an Dawn of War II (concept) were a let down to me. I loved dawn of war dark crusade for its fast pacing, 3 minutes into the you could allready fight all over the map if you wanted to... good ol' days.

    And slower paced strategy games like supreme commander (though it has an awesome revival in the community organized forged alliance for ever project (servers, patching and so on)) or sins of a solar empire have their own problems in multiplayer exactly because of their slow pace. I used to think games like sc2 and dow1 were great rts's for multiplayer because of their fast pace :/.

    You are not wrong though, I tried to pick up laddering like three times in total for sc2 and stopped enjoying it enough in the end. It was essentially the point were I realized I wouldn't be happy with staying in plat but wouldn't be happy with putting more effort in for learning multitasking and macro management better.

    Posted in: General Chat
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    posted a message on Lobby trolls, kick features and starter accounts
    Quote from houndofbaskerville: Go

    people on bnet make it so.. not anything any dev would implement will change that

    bnet like any other community conists of many different kinds of people. There is nothing you can change about that. Which kinds of people hold power or more precisely in which way you can exercise power is defined by the system. bnet currently gives power to spoilers (trolls lobby blockers, what ever we wanna call them). 1 single person can make tens of people play 2v3 matches instead of 3v3.

    1 single person can also occupy the lobby which everyone autojoins to and possibly block or deter even more people. People integrated in the community can deal with this by making private games, but what about the people outside the established community? Devs can change the system. It is hard, since the system is complex. But I believe it is possible.

    Quote from houndofbaskerville: Go

    this is not game heart (lol) the one all fix all fits all sizes unfair monopoly dumb solution

    No. It isn't. It doesn't make spoilers go away (I will go with 'spoilers' from now one, given your sentence about these being people not searching game interaction, I know we are talking about the same people). But it can be a solution to limit spoilers ability to block lobbys, if done right. That would be a move in the right direction.

    It is not a solution to 2v3 for example. These are our job. We can't make 2v3 go away, but we can make it playable. We can design our system such that one can't entirely ruine stuff for 5 others at a time.

    Quote from houndofbaskerville: Go

    if one wants to play with "anyone" on net .. one is accountable for his acts

    That's how it should be. But if I was spoiling frequently and then made a new free account, how would I be accountable for what I did? How would I be accountable even without changing accounts? People know one of my names but with another name I could allways come back and play with them as if nothing happened. Accountability is essentially dead with free accounts.

    But I would like to bump another idea I thought about:

    Quote from zuPloed: Go

    [...] it would be nice to have the kick feature actually keep the kicked person from joining the game he was kicked out of for 30 to 60 seconds and automaticly redirect him to another lobby or make his own lobby if there are no other open ones or join another existing one (but can still be reinvited in case of missclick).

    Couldn't that even work instead of removing the kick feature? If someone is kicked he can't come back within 30 or so seconds. If the kicked person was the lobby holder you have a fair chance to have someone serious in your game. If the kicking person was the holder, you don't have to care about being pushed back into his lobby and are actually serviced to a new lobby.

    In essence it is even the same idea as using private lobbies. You just go somewhere else instead of confronting the spoiler.

    It is not a solution to unlimited free accounts, but it might be a solution to make the kick feature less abusable.

    Posted in: General Chat
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    posted a message on Lobby trolls, kick features and starter accounts
    Quote from houndofbaskerville: Go

    instead of blizz sending a simple message to him/her/it telling that user to stop or he will be ip banned from battlenet...

    [...]

    Multiplayer games require dedicated social people to make it work, thinking otherwise is wishing everyone had a personal OS all the time with them on internet and in real life.. serving as a cane / crutch of sorts to allow unneeded rest from though processes and relinquishing social manners / normal basic republican civil demeanour required to play such MULTI player games!

    Let's suppose for a second that neither blizz nor map developers have the motivation/manpower/time to reform all lobby holders by personal interaction (for whatever reason), what is the best solution under these circumstances?

    I don't buy the argument, that there is no technical solution that is better then the current one. Sure it might still be abusable, but the impact, that the possible abuse has can be lessened.

    And making one more assumption: let's say we could (or had) conceive(d) such a better technical solution, shouldn't try to conceive (/implement) them, because it helps the many who would actually enjoy playing the maps if it wasn't for lobby holders?

    Posted in: General Chat
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    posted a message on Lobby trolls, kick features and starter accounts
    Quote from Rohime: Go

    @KorvinGump: Go I'd be more inclined to suggest that "free" accounts can host arcade games, but should not get host privileges. ie; a free account host cannot kick people ... but if people do legitimately need kicking from lobby (long time penders - an issue which has basically gone away - or people that continually invite penders to stop the lobby from starting), then host can be passed to somebody on a paid account, who has those rights.

    Because of that, I think that disabling kicking for everyone wouldn't work out in the end.

    Another variant would be the person who joins over and over again until he is finally in, when the game starts and then he does the trolling ingame when it starts and leaves early. For that reason it would be nice to have the kick feature actually keep the kicked person from joining the game he was kicked out of for 30 to 60 seconds and automaticly redirect him to another lobby or make his own lobby if there are no other open ones or join another existing one (but can still be reinvited in case of missclick).

    Couldn't that even work instead of removing the kick feature? If someone is kicked he can't come back within 30 or so seconds. If the kicked person was the lobby holder you have a fair chance to have someone serious in your game. If the kicking person was the holder, you don't have to care about being pushed back into his lobby and are actually serviced to a new lobby.

    Otherwise I am not strictly against restricting free accounts from host privileges. That way the holders has to put some money on the line at least... However I think there would still be many ways to circuvent it if you are intent on lobby holding.

    Posted in: General Chat
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    posted a message on Editor is a tough life

    Another way of learning the editor would be working on something existing. I consider myself lucky in that I am able to work on a map I had been a fan of for a couple of years.

    Some of the first things I did were bug fixes and actually managing to find some data values in the editor. It has been a little over then a year by now and I think it is save to say, that I learned about the editor faster then I would have on my own. In fact I pobably wouldn't have given the editor a second look (my first look was about an hour long when sc2 wol was freshly out).

    By now I would say, that I understand the majority of things going on in this map though most of the things I make are still reproduced from some existing mechanics. But I am much less intimidated by the idea of starting a map of my own now.

    If making things from scratch sin't your thing, maybe you can also find a similar arrangement with someone.

    Posted in: General Chat
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    posted a message on Question about banning systems
    Quote from houndofbaskerville: Go

    "trolls" if you must call it that (i don't agree with that meaning on that word but whatever..)

    Well, it is the most popular slang for it i guess. Why do you disagree and/or rather what do you imagine i am referring to as troll?

    On a sidenote, ignoring and using bnets host kick is what I have been advocating to the players until recently. Maybe the ..."trolls" are not that persitent, but the problem of some being there has proven quite persistent. That's why I am now trying to explore more active solutions.

    Posted in: General Chat
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    posted a message on Question about banning systems

    Thanks for all further replies.

    Good luck to mafia :)

    I have been trying to ignore trolling for almost a year now, but recently more and more people are bringing trolling to my attention.

    By trolling I here stricktly mean joining a game with the intention of sabotaging the team they joined.

    I guess what I will explore is a mix/combination of a vote-kick system and afk-detection + rebalancing... Players can vote for a player to be on probation and if the map detects trolling it will deploy countermeassures on its own.

    I am wondering if it's smart or the opposite to leave the player on probation in the dark about vote/probation and countermeassure (as far as possible).

    + I like the idea of trolls trolling on without realizing they do no harm anymore

    - But it might actually piss them of more once they realize or spark feelings about unjust treatment

    I think that solution is good for several reasons:

    1. Doesn't require a lot of attention from my side.
    2. It is no direct action I take against trolls but it is executed by players and game mechanics instead.

    Could someone comment more on the downsides of votekicks and whether they apply more or less for my idea?

    Posted in: General Chat
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    posted a message on Question about banning systems

    Thanks for the reply, a little clarification:

    - I am not asking about the technical how-to. But whether it really helps or is just offset by them making new free accounts

    - Disadvantaging them wont really work since it is a teamgame and the trolls focus on disadvantaging their own team, making the match unfun due to the resulting unbalance between the two teams

    Maybe I should also exten with a third question:

    What can vote kick do, what can it not do?

    Again it's not about the technical level, I think I can handle that, but will it solve or reduce the the problem.

    Banning fast is also not that trivial, since I wouldn't really have time to ban the same persons 3 times an evening for example.

    Posted in: General Chat
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    posted a message on Question about banning systems

    Hi,

    I am currently considering trigger-based ban-(/auto-kick)-lists. The most recent and relevant threads I found are those:

    http://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/general/off-topic/71069-unwanted-player-question-and-concern/#posts http://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/development/triggers/73266-permanently-ban-player-arcade-map/

    both more then a year old.

    The particular questions would be about your experience with:

    a) Blizzard enforcing the TOS about restricting access

    b) Success of actually getting rid of trolls that way

    Last time I read above threads I got disencouraged enough to let it rest until now :/

    It's kinda disheartening to tell people to outlast the trolls when they go as far as asking mappers in their region for example code to provide to me.

    Thanks for answers in advance, zuPloed

    Posted in: General Chat
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