That's a lot of work for a map that people might play once, maybe twice if they fail the first time. Maps in this category tend to last 2-3 weeks, then vanish.
I don't mean to shoot you down, but ideas are cheap; manpower is not, and StarCraft 2 maps take a lot of manpower. If you're not willing to learn the editor then the chance of someone else picking up the slack is low.
Regardless of what graphics "improvements" they have made, the fact is that those changes were largely useless. They've been wasted on a game that isn't growing.
StarCraft 2 should have as large or bigger player base at this point as when it was released. Its player base, for the most part, have already been playing some blizzard RTS for at least 3 straight years.
StarCraft 2 was supposed to be a golden age that never happened. They are focusing on E-Sports. Besides South Korea it isn't a safe investment. Furthermore in South Korea the E-Sports scene is a complete prop. The real reason it ever got that big has as much to do with shielding South Korea's youth from North Korean communist propaganda.
The viewer base for the largest tournament was under 150k viewers. Still a good number, but not a growing viewer base.
Do you have anything to back any of this up, or are you just pulling "facts" out of your...?
Bad rating/reviews system on the SC2 Arcade
No ability to give feedback to the editor without making a rating, toxic voting with no filters to 1 star rating, dumb people that votes 5 stars stupid maps, etc. Sure it's the reviewer fault but a good rating system tries to filter the toxicity by giving more importance to clever ratings. Direct feedback for the editor is still lacking.
I think ratings should be cut out and only show reviews, or have something like reviews and ratings being private to the author for feedback only.
Erm, why?
The star rating is great at highlighting unfinished or unplayable maps, something that you had no way of knowing without actually wasting your time trying the map out.
I can't afford reading every post anymore, so I can't really participate on anything else, but this is unrealistic. Blizzard, even after their "arcade overhaul", never supported the view that they were wrong to begin with. They still don't. With so many people ranting about SC2 and D3 they still keep the same tone in everything they say, and they won't change it.
With so many ladder players hating David Kim for the path SC2 ladder has taken, they still act like nothing is happening. Seriously, just check the post on any balance update thread. A good part of them isn't about the exact changes at all but the way the game plays. So if we consider they focus their attention on esports we should at least see a different reaction from what we have seen for the arcade complaints.
I could go on with suggestions on how to improve, but we all had these same suggestions years ago. The damage has been done, Greedyvision/Blizzard is what it is. You could ask me why I'm still around, and my answer is: I never modded to get popular, I mod because I like to see the result. I modded SC1 and never released what I created except for a single custom unit sprite. So the size of the player base doesn't matter to me.
You assume that players know what they want. They don't. I'd say 99% of players have no fucking clue about game design, and if you let the balance a game, you'd end up with every race/unit/class being nearly identical.
Hating the "guy" (I doubt any game has anything less than a team) for balance is just a normal part of how people vent because people refuse to blame themselves for their own inadequacies. Guy kicked my ass in WoW? Lol ghostcrawler. My map is on page 50? Lol popularity system.
I like StarCraft.
I like the popularity system.
I think bnet2.0 is in a good state now.
I think the lack of good player-designed maps is because the maps currently designed by players, are terrible. Will the mappers admit that? No.
The maps of mine that are on page 50, deserve to be there because they're bad.
Lastly, Blizzard clearly admitted they were wrong when they redesigned the ENTIRE bnet interface. I literally think your post could not be farther from reality.
Quote from Zolden:
I could add another inconvenience related to using any more dependencies except the WoL multiplayer. But it probably only matters for people who have a relatively old computer.
The problem is that switching between data tabs, using search, loading lists to pick an entry, editing some entries - all these processes take more time if you have dependencies added. The difference isn't big, but it can be felt, which is a bit annoying.
----
I'd recommend always having something in the search bar when using the data editor. Actor data especially. It it's cheap but it fixes this issue.
If you don't need to upgrade to HotS; don't. You'd be surprised at how few players own HotS. I'd estimate it at around 70% based on various sources that are too fickle to warrant mentioning. Either way, you're cutting out a sizeable fraction of players by making a HotS map.
The downside for any dependency is simple; increases map loading time and hence chance of a player being dropped. Dependencies, in rough order of size (biggest to smallest) are;
HotS Story
HotS Campaign
HotS Multi
Liberty Campaign
Liberty Multiplayer
Note that the increased loading time appears to only occur the first time a player loads a map, but it still matters.
Am I the only one around here who simply thinks the issue is that everything has been done already? There's maybe 5 semi-unique maps in the Arcade of which only 3 or 4 are polished and replayable enough to keep people interested. The reason shit was succesful in StarCraft and WarCraft 3 was because literally every map that came out was based around a concept that was then completely new, or was a new (often better) incarnation of a map that had come out slightly earlier.
I'm pretty sure it was down to the fact that you can pump out a fully functioning, well-terrained (as much as the engine would allow) and mechanically interesting wc3 map in literally a few hours. Wc3 maps were pumped out with such volume and frequency that it was inevitable that a sizable chunk of maps were fun.
This totally is not the case with sc2. In the time it takes to produce a single, good-quality sc2 hero unit, you could have produced a single, good-quality wc3 map.
I totally disagree about everything being "done already" too. Sc2 is a difficult platform to innovate on in comparison to wc3 purely due to the time-investment required to get a new concept functional. However, I also feel that unit spawn maps are a "genre" that absolutely has not fulfilled it's potential. Nearly every top map is a unit spawn map (including SquadTD here too, because I think it's more about making a proper unit spawn formation than a tower defence).
Even though you might be able to have more complex maps with a tutorial, complexity itself is not what you want in a map, you want depth.
It's easy to say that, but it's missing the point. A game, arcade or not, will have some level of complexity.
What we were discussing is how best to explain this complexity to the player. Something that, in my opinion, is a stumbling block for many arcade projects.
What the video is discussing is how best to make use of that complexity. A fine and proper goal, but that complexity still needs to be explained to the player.
It's true that overcomplexity can scare off people but do you think a tutorial map could cover that?
In my opinion, no. Tutorials just aren't a thing anymore in gaming as a whole.
What is, is gated content. New players are given a very narrow scope in which they can play.
Eg. an fps where you're given the easiest gun to use, against the easiest enemies to kill.
Eg. an rts like sc2. Just think about the sc2 tech tree for a moment. For the first few minutes of the game, your hand is being held without you even realising it. You're given just enough minerals for a worker, and the first unit you are presented with has, basically, just a big "build worker" button. It starts you there, and guides you with near zero scope into your first attacking unit. Only then does it let go of your hand.
Mechanics are introduced one step at a time in modern games. People have come to expect this. Demonstrating one mechanic at a time, and giving a player enough time to learn that mechanic before moving onto the next as part of the game itself is, in my opinion, far superior (and modern) than a tutorial.
Failure = not being popular map?
People used to make maps for fun.
I know popular maps will never go further in complexity, than like "rock paper scissors", but at least in W3 people played more complex maps....
In this context, I use the term "failure" to mean unpopular.
The thing with WC3 is that maps were indeed more complex, but the time required to learn them was low. Why? Hero maps were all the rage, and there were only 100-150 abilities which were generally just reused with different duration/damage/cooldown/graphics. Still, most players were already familiar with the abilities in wc3 which made learning fast.
Compare this to sc2. People are already familiar with the 50-60 sc2 units. Maps like Desert Strike are insanely popular because the time to learn it is near zero.
A complicated map needs to be easy to learn else it will fail. My point was that many (really, many, pretty much 100% of projects I see on sc2mapster) maps fall into this complexity trap, then blame players for not putting the time in to learning the map.
Yeah Eiviyn your right that is so fucking funny. Straight up hilarious as hell... Well I diden't want to go into details on why I chose to abandon the project, since I diden't want to spend any more time on a project I diden't feel like doing, but since you're being a dick about it: I would have loved to remove the thread completly, but since I'm a new member of this forum I diden't know how to. I ended up locking it, leaving me unable to change the previously statement, which was supposed to tell of my lost interest in the project, rather than the interest of the SC2 community. The main problem was the amount of help needed to finish such a project. To those of you who diden't support this arrogant asshole, I salute you. To you Eiviyn, go fuck yourself with a screwdriver!
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Excellent additions.
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That's a lot of work for a map that people might play once, maybe twice if they fail the first time. Maps in this category tend to last 2-3 weeks, then vanish.
I don't mean to shoot you down, but ideas are cheap; manpower is not, and StarCraft 2 maps take a lot of manpower. If you're not willing to learn the editor then the chance of someone else picking up the slack is low.
0
Do you have anything to back any of this up, or are you just pulling "facts" out of your...?
0
You behave like a child.
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Erm, why?
The star rating is great at highlighting unfinished or unplayable maps, something that you had no way of knowing without actually wasting your time trying the map out.
0
You assume that players know what they want. They don't. I'd say 99% of players have no fucking clue about game design, and if you let the balance a game, you'd end up with every race/unit/class being nearly identical.
Hating the "guy" (I doubt any game has anything less than a team) for balance is just a normal part of how people vent because people refuse to blame themselves for their own inadequacies. Guy kicked my ass in WoW? Lol ghostcrawler. My map is on page 50? Lol popularity system.
I like StarCraft.
I like the popularity system.
I think bnet2.0 is in a good state now.
I think the lack of good player-designed maps is because the maps currently designed by players, are terrible. Will the mappers admit that? No.
The maps of mine that are on page 50, deserve to be there because they're bad.
Lastly, Blizzard clearly admitted they were wrong when they redesigned the ENTIRE bnet interface. I literally think your post could not be farther from reality.
0
Quote from Zolden:
I could add another inconvenience related to using any more dependencies except the WoL multiplayer. But it probably only matters for people who have a relatively old computer.
The problem is that switching between data tabs, using search, loading lists to pick an entry, editing some entries - all these processes take more time if you have dependencies added. The difference isn't big, but it can be felt, which is a bit annoying.
----
I'd recommend always having something in the search bar when using the data editor. Actor data especially. It it's cheap but it fixes this issue.
0
If you don't need to upgrade to HotS; don't. You'd be surprised at how few players own HotS. I'd estimate it at around 70% based on various sources that are too fickle to warrant mentioning. Either way, you're cutting out a sizeable fraction of players by making a HotS map.
The downside for any dependency is simple; increases map loading time and hence chance of a player being dropped. Dependencies, in rough order of size (biggest to smallest) are;
HotS Story
HotS Campaign
HotS Multi
Liberty Campaign
Liberty Multiplayer
Note that the increased loading time appears to only occur the first time a player loads a map, but it still matters.
0
I'm pretty sure it was down to the fact that you can pump out a fully functioning, well-terrained (as much as the engine would allow) and mechanically interesting wc3 map in literally a few hours. Wc3 maps were pumped out with such volume and frequency that it was inevitable that a sizable chunk of maps were fun.
This totally is not the case with sc2. In the time it takes to produce a single, good-quality sc2 hero unit, you could have produced a single, good-quality wc3 map.
I totally disagree about everything being "done already" too. Sc2 is a difficult platform to innovate on in comparison to wc3 purely due to the time-investment required to get a new concept functional. However, I also feel that unit spawn maps are a "genre" that absolutely has not fulfilled it's potential. Nearly every top map is a unit spawn map (including SquadTD here too, because I think it's more about making a proper unit spawn formation than a tower defence).
0
It's easy to say that, but it's missing the point. A game, arcade or not, will have some level of complexity.
What we were discussing is how best to explain this complexity to the player. Something that, in my opinion, is a stumbling block for many arcade projects.
What the video is discussing is how best to make use of that complexity. A fine and proper goal, but that complexity still needs to be explained to the player.
0
In my opinion, no. Tutorials just aren't a thing anymore in gaming as a whole.
What is, is gated content. New players are given a very narrow scope in which they can play.
Eg. an fps where you're given the easiest gun to use, against the easiest enemies to kill.
Eg. an rts like sc2. Just think about the sc2 tech tree for a moment. For the first few minutes of the game, your hand is being held without you even realising it. You're given just enough minerals for a worker, and the first unit you are presented with has, basically, just a big "build worker" button. It starts you there, and guides you with near zero scope into your first attacking unit. Only then does it let go of your hand.
Mechanics are introduced one step at a time in modern games. People have come to expect this. Demonstrating one mechanic at a time, and giving a player enough time to learn that mechanic before moving onto the next as part of the game itself is, in my opinion, far superior (and modern) than a tutorial.
0
In this context, I use the term "failure" to mean unpopular.
The thing with WC3 is that maps were indeed more complex, but the time required to learn them was low. Why? Hero maps were all the rage, and there were only 100-150 abilities which were generally just reused with different duration/damage/cooldown/graphics. Still, most players were already familiar with the abilities in wc3 which made learning fast.
Compare this to sc2. People are already familiar with the 50-60 sc2 units. Maps like Desert Strike are insanely popular because the time to learn it is near zero.
A complicated map needs to be easy to learn else it will fail. My point was that many (really, many, pretty much 100% of projects I see on sc2mapster) maps fall into this complexity trap, then blame players for not putting the time in to learning the map.
0
It's easy to blame failure on the players instead of the map.
I've yet to see a map that deserved to be on page 1, that wasn't already. Including a lot of my own.
Most "high quality" maps have extremely dumb mechanics or overcomplexity that just make them a chore to play.
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You're angry and impolite
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Hah