Bold move... I never thought they would ever do that as they kill a source of income shutting down the RMAH.
Well, before everyone gets all happy with the idea that Blizzard is doing this out of their own self-awareness of what their company image has become (and relatively bad their games are), they were likely expending enormous amounts of money on legal fees, staffing, fraud, and ensuring SEC compliance with 301a/301b (and who knows what else) that it likely wasn't profitable (at least enough) to maintain it in the long-term.
I know I made almost 5 figures (much less after dealing with PayPal being a terribad company) from running an Auto-Hotkey bot on two computers during the first few weeks of the AH by botting Justice Lanterns/Lacuna Prowlers/String of Ears and reselling them and many other people did too, so Blizzard was definitely raking in the dough early on - however, most of that dried up quickly after the first month and wasn't worth the effort after that. I wouldn't be surprised if they were losing money on maintaining the RMAH after the first six months.
This just gives them the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: redeem their name and claim that their making significant 'changes' while being able to get rid of something that isn't doing them much good anymore. That said, it's still a step in the right direction and many changes to RoS are good (ladder, better loot) but I'm skeptical until I see the final product a month at least a month out after release.
Edit: I should add that this doesn't bode well for those waiting on "Premium Map" system if they're getting rid of their RMAH infrastructure. I seriously hope people aren't mapping with the intent on making money directly from Blizzard's paid maps.
I reckon that on another level: I doubt any game had such a wide plethora of diversified models as Warcraft III.
I agree with your opinion, there's certainly a lot less room for innovation.
Thanks for your earlier comments even though you don't like TDs and that's okay :) Yes, we really didn't do an unique idea in itself, mostly just worked on refining it. Technically, it's not really that impressive and I'll be the first to admit it. It was originally created very early on back when documentation was poor and there wasn't a lot to go on and has since just recieved band-aids and coat of paints here and there, but the time requirement to redo a lot of it is just too much at this point. Most of the creativity comes from adding new builders and balancing quite a complex (and ever increasing) dynamic while having enough sense to vet ourselves and go "does this really add anything fun and is it intuitive?".
As for models, this is absolutely true that it's a factor; although a very very small factor. Even if we had the library that WC3 had, it wouldn't make that much of a difference but the cost for Blizzard would be astronomical since it's really time intensive.. Often I take a look at models/icons and go from there in terms of lore and what can be fitted to the theme of a unit or ability. We've already exhausted most of the available models (and some custom models from here) and while we can dick around with TextureSelectById to extend that a bit, it makes it very difficult to create a cohesive feeling to a map. I was working on an Enfo's Team-Survival esque map and had imported an assload of WoW models (which patch 1.3(?) or something broke and I lost motivation) because I really wasn't happy with the available content.
The problem started with Blizzard. And only they can fix it.
Moazared already touched on this, but no they can't fix it. Especially not now. Look, I have a lot of resentment towards Blizzard, albeit probably for different reasons than most other people, and they absolutely do deserve to be shit in quite a lot of ways which could easily fill up a page of which most people would concur; but even if they did everything "right" the mapping scene wouldn't be considerably bigger. PC gaming is radically different from the WC3-era and it's not their fault.
Name me one other map that compares to any of the ones I named above that currently exists in the Arcade. I'll start you off: Mafia, Battleships and Eiviyn's Catalyst and Magicide. That's it. Aside from those couple of maps, there's absolutely nothing even remotely 'new' on the Arcade, whereas WarCraft 3 gave life to multiple genres and genre-combinations. Sure, there's interesting maps, but nearly all of them have been done before in some fashion. It's the old "why play SOTIS if you can play League of Legends for free?" syndrome.
Exactly. I've mentioned this before but it bears repeating. Back in 2002-2007(maybe even till '08), PC gaming was in a pretty big lull. Most PC developers were canned by publishers, went bottom up, or became console only developers. We mostly had some shitty late ports at best, subscription-based MMO's (with various quality), and mods for games (HL1 mods, WC3 Maps, etc). The latter there was probably the majority of games played by us when we were younger, poor and lacked finances for an MMO, and lacked fancy computers to run those crappy ports.
Now, technology to run the latest games is incredibly affordable and even 5 year old hardware can run latest games quite well. Theres' a plethora of cheap indie games that can suck up a lot of time and way too many F2P games (some good, some mostly bad) so people aren't restricted to the third catagory so much anymore. I know my Steam backlog is insanely large as it is and ever growing. For me, it's a time constraint now and most customs don't warrant more than a playthrough or two.
Even the most popular SC2 maps aren't that popular. I'm the main developer for SquadTD and our actual community is pathetically small, I've tried to encourage a lot more in-game chat and forum use but it's just not happening as there really aren't that many people playing it. Sure Blizzard could have and should have done a lot of things better (more visibility to custom maps, better arcade system, open-lobbies from the getgo, etc) but there really just aren't that many people interested in playing custom maps that much anymore. And I doubt it's even a creativity issue at this point.
Wow that looks really good! That's quite an impressive UI you have going on. I don't think there are very many maps with that sort of professional polish. Just out of curiosity, how large is your team and how many hours would you estimate did you put into the map?
Plus I think a lot of casual people will look into editing hearing that the number 1 game is now open source.
Hopefully! I'm really hoping to bang out a clean custom UI, implement a tutorial/hand holding system for new people, and a clean up a lot of editor tags here and there first. Unfortunately I work at least 40-60 hours a week so it will probably be at least a month or more before I'd be happy (or rather, not embarrassed) with putting the source out there.
Although the Actor system still boggle the hell out of my brain so that will remain a mess :(
It's really super easy to open a SC2 map and it was how I learned; however, you are right that there aren't exactly a lot of examples to learn from. But it's also not the reason the mapping scene in a relatively stagnant state.
I will be releasing the Squadron Tower Defense source in about a month or so. It's not the most complex map, but triggers are written (more or less) cleanly and I do a lot of clever trigger and data work that I haven't encountered a whole lot. Hopefully it'll be of some help for people starting out.
EDIT: If anyone is starting out and REALLY wants it now, then send me a message.
So do I! That's why I joined to improve it :) As stated above none of my work is represented in the released version of Squad TD.
We should talk about that. I had originally planned to do an UI for it but then I got sucked into grad-school and left it with Swentz who was incompetent and broke too much stuff. That means I had to rollback to the last version I created (August 2012). I've now updated it to a more stable and balanced gameplay but lost some of the work you did because I didn't have any of the versions for the past 5 months or so. Shoot me an email or add me on Skype (celoisxar) if you're interested in getting it back in as I've had no way of contacting you.
I agree older lobbies should stay on top of the new ones, but I don't think it will do wonders for unpopular maps. We've been bashing blizzard all this time saying the popularity system was broken. Now we have open lobbies and some people insist to say its broken. Some wont be satisfied until their maps get popular somehow, THAT line of thought is broken.
I know my map will never be a popular map, so if I want a popular map I'd better start working on a new map that suits what the majority of players want to play. It's simple like that.
Agreed. There is still some work to be done with Open Lobbies, but people need to realize that they can't just expect their map to be Page 1 all of a sudden, and in fact maps on the 3rd+ page are even very played. Wait times on page 3+ maps are just more comparable to WC3 but people often forget that.
I think there is an air of unwarranted hate and jealousy towards page 1/2 maps because they are low-brow; yet most of these maps have up to thousands of hours+ poured into their creation which is a lot more than most maps that I've seen that people want to become popular. All of them are appealing and well-done for the most part. Keeping gameplay simple and easy to pick up can go along way and doesn't mean it's bad.
3) when you create a lobby of any map , enable a custom name of choice to go along with the map. ( to make it easier to get Specific game modes going such as (AR, AP etc)
4) PROFIT. All this garbage about reviews and ratings and top played and top rated and fun or not.. All are fucking flawed/terrible/rubbish ideas .
There is absolutely no question in my mind that Open Lobby game list should be The only way to find custom games in starcraft 2. If it stays the same, i see sc2 custom game scene completely dead within 1 year after legacy of the void.
Right now, hardly anybody uses open game lobby list, most auto default to either their bookmarks or go straight to the top played list and click 1 of the 10 maps displayed. I'd say the situation is no different now than what it was before the arcade patch, cept fancier UI
3) This is what Game Variants are for. It's very cool you can now select variants before you click "Play" which completely makes naming unnecessarily. There is no reason to have to name a lobby now and it's better this way. The only thing that should change is having a [+] option to expand showing all the different open lobbys for the map, preferably also listed on the Arcade page for the map at the bottom.
4) This is just silly. Top Rated/Played provides a very useful metric for new people to find maps that they may enjoy without having to wade through tons of terrible maps (WC3 had a TON of terrible maps, yet people also forget that). Sure, they do often self-reinforce to some extent but that is what spotlight/up-and-coming is for. Blizzard just hasn't spotlighted any maps (on NA anyways) yet, but I'm sure it'll be utilized in the future.
You are being extremely hyperbolic, the mapping scene isn't going to be dead by Legacy of the Void just because timmy2002 doesn't click the open games list to play your map. There is no reason for Open Games to be the only way to find maps, and it doesn't even need to be the default. I'd wager that the people that don't use it aren't going to like an underplayed complex map to begin with and probably aren't people that you're appealing to. When Blizzard used to reset the list, all the popular maps at the time still bubbled back up just fine so people clearly were able to Search and play their favorite maps all over again, and that's fine.
There are some improvements to be had to Open Lobbies and the front page could utilize Spotlighting better, sure, but the way it's setup mostly works and I think people should just focus on making better maps instead of QQing.
Can you find out if the dropped player is on a Mac?
Edit: Just to clarify why I'm asking, the map I develop for (Squadron TD) had an issue where Mac users were desyncing with mostly regularity. It turns out, Mac SC2 rounds off "Unit Property - Get Life Armor (Current)" slightly differently than Windows SC2 sometimes and then bam, Desync. Took forever to figure out the problem too and there may be similar issues with other properties as well if you use that anywhere.
False. Don't hate on the players, hate on the game. Almost every game issue that players complain about can be solved through hard work or clever design changes.
I've played Squadron TD many times and I agree that it's too hard to learn (took me about 3 plays to fully grasp all the concepts). The loading screen is completely wasted - as most loading screens are. It's bloated with version and patch info that nobody cares about, where it could be used to instruct new players about the game's basic rules (I haven't played recently, maybe it's different now). The game could also have hints floating over buildings and units, which would disappear when you successfully complete a task or maybe not appear at all after you've won your first game. I have this hint feature in my map, and I've gotten tons of comments about how easy it is to learn. My point is that I think the STD authors are either lazy and/or uncreative and/or apathetic about teaching the game to new players. I don't the community should settle for less - STD could be a lot better than it is.
This is insulting to say that we are lazy or uncreative. Tsjnsn created it the summer before he started college when he was younger, and since then has never has time to devote to do anything major to it so it was mostly stagnant for a year; many mappers have stopped their map in favor of college. I've just recently taken over Squadron TD development a few months back but I've also been busy and can only really code at night, and I will be going to grad school in 20 days so I will also have to give up development then as well.
That said, I agree that there are some difficulties learning the game, but compared to most maps out there I think it is fairly intuitive and easy to pickup as is - just hard to master. My prioritizes since taking over have just been on addressing bugs, balance and other features that the game needed done for awhile. I have plans for some framework in place for a Builder Tutorial/Guide feature as well as tip system for new people yet there is much to be done.
Your map Tower Defense Tycoon, does have an amazing tutorial/tip system and all maps should strive for something like that, but it is something almost every mapper overlooks on their first creation and it does take dozens of hours to make a great system like that.
0
Well, before everyone gets all happy with the idea that Blizzard is doing this out of their own self-awareness of what their company image has become (and relatively bad their games are), they were likely expending enormous amounts of money on legal fees, staffing, fraud, and ensuring SEC compliance with 301a/301b (and who knows what else) that it likely wasn't profitable (at least enough) to maintain it in the long-term.
I know I made almost 5 figures (much less after dealing with PayPal being a terribad company) from running an Auto-Hotkey bot on two computers during the first few weeks of the AH by botting Justice Lanterns/Lacuna Prowlers/String of Ears and reselling them and many other people did too, so Blizzard was definitely raking in the dough early on - however, most of that dried up quickly after the first month and wasn't worth the effort after that. I wouldn't be surprised if they were losing money on maintaining the RMAH after the first six months.
This just gives them the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: redeem their name and claim that their making significant 'changes' while being able to get rid of something that isn't doing them much good anymore. That said, it's still a step in the right direction and many changes to RoS are good (ladder, better loot) but I'm skeptical until I see the final product a month at least a month out after release.
Edit: I should add that this doesn't bode well for those waiting on "Premium Map" system if they're getting rid of their RMAH infrastructure. I seriously hope people aren't mapping with the intent on making money directly from Blizzard's paid maps.
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Thanks for your earlier comments even though you don't like TDs and that's okay :) Yes, we really didn't do an unique idea in itself, mostly just worked on refining it. Technically, it's not really that impressive and I'll be the first to admit it. It was originally created very early on back when documentation was poor and there wasn't a lot to go on and has since just recieved band-aids and coat of paints here and there, but the time requirement to redo a lot of it is just too much at this point. Most of the creativity comes from adding new builders and balancing quite a complex (and ever increasing) dynamic while having enough sense to vet ourselves and go "does this really add anything fun and is it intuitive?".
As for models, this is absolutely true that it's a factor; although a very very small factor. Even if we had the library that WC3 had, it wouldn't make that much of a difference but the cost for Blizzard would be astronomical since it's really time intensive.. Often I take a look at models/icons and go from there in terms of lore and what can be fitted to the theme of a unit or ability. We've already exhausted most of the available models (and some custom models from here) and while we can dick around with TextureSelectById to extend that a bit, it makes it very difficult to create a cohesive feeling to a map. I was working on an Enfo's Team-Survival esque map and had imported an assload of WoW models (which patch 1.3(?) or something broke and I lost motivation) because I really wasn't happy with the available content.
0
Moazared already touched on this, but no they can't fix it. Especially not now. Look, I have a lot of resentment towards Blizzard, albeit probably for different reasons than most other people, and they absolutely do deserve to be shit in quite a lot of ways which could easily fill up a page of which most people would concur; but even if they did everything "right" the mapping scene wouldn't be considerably bigger. PC gaming is radically different from the WC3-era and it's not their fault.
0
Exactly. I've mentioned this before but it bears repeating. Back in 2002-2007(maybe even till '08), PC gaming was in a pretty big lull. Most PC developers were canned by publishers, went bottom up, or became console only developers. We mostly had some shitty late ports at best, subscription-based MMO's (with various quality), and mods for games (HL1 mods, WC3 Maps, etc). The latter there was probably the majority of games played by us when we were younger, poor and lacked finances for an MMO, and lacked fancy computers to run those crappy ports.
Now, technology to run the latest games is incredibly affordable and even 5 year old hardware can run latest games quite well. Theres' a plethora of cheap indie games that can suck up a lot of time and way too many F2P games (some good, some mostly bad) so people aren't restricted to the third catagory so much anymore. I know my Steam backlog is insanely large as it is and ever growing. For me, it's a time constraint now and most customs don't warrant more than a playthrough or two.
Even the most popular SC2 maps aren't that popular. I'm the main developer for SquadTD and our actual community is pathetically small, I've tried to encourage a lot more in-game chat and forum use but it's just not happening as there really aren't that many people playing it. Sure Blizzard could have and should have done a lot of things better (more visibility to custom maps, better arcade system, open-lobbies from the getgo, etc) but there really just aren't that many people interested in playing custom maps that much anymore. And I doubt it's even a creativity issue at this point.
0
Wow that looks really good! That's quite an impressive UI you have going on. I don't think there are very many maps with that sort of professional polish. Just out of curiosity, how large is your team and how many hours would you estimate did you put into the map?
0
Hopefully! I'm really hoping to bang out a clean custom UI, implement a tutorial/hand holding system for new people, and a clean up a lot of editor tags here and there first. Unfortunately I work at least 40-60 hours a week so it will probably be at least a month or more before I'd be happy (or rather, not embarrassed) with putting the source out there.
Although the Actor system still boggle the hell out of my brain so that will remain a mess :(
0
It's really super easy to open a SC2 map and it was how I learned; however, you are right that there aren't exactly a lot of examples to learn from. But it's also not the reason the mapping scene in a relatively stagnant state.
I will be releasing the Squadron Tower Defense source in about a month or so. It's not the most complex map, but triggers are written (more or less) cleanly and I do a lot of clever trigger and data work that I haven't encountered a whole lot. Hopefully it'll be of some help for people starting out.
EDIT: If anyone is starting out and REALLY wants it now, then send me a message.
0
We should talk about that. I had originally planned to do an UI for it but then I got sucked into grad-school and left it with Swentz who was incompetent and broke too much stuff. That means I had to rollback to the last version I created (August 2012). I've now updated it to a more stable and balanced gameplay but lost some of the work you did because I didn't have any of the versions for the past 5 months or so. Shoot me an email or add me on Skype (celoisxar) if you're interested in getting it back in as I've had no way of contacting you.
0
Agreed. There is still some work to be done with Open Lobbies, but people need to realize that they can't just expect their map to be Page 1 all of a sudden, and in fact maps on the 3rd+ page are even very played. Wait times on page 3+ maps are just more comparable to WC3 but people often forget that.
I think there is an air of unwarranted hate and jealousy towards page 1/2 maps because they are low-brow; yet most of these maps have up to thousands of hours+ poured into their creation which is a lot more than most maps that I've seen that people want to become popular. All of them are appealing and well-done for the most part. Keeping gameplay simple and easy to pick up can go along way and doesn't mean it's bad.
3) This is what Game Variants are for. It's very cool you can now select variants before you click "Play" which completely makes naming unnecessarily. There is no reason to have to name a lobby now and it's better this way. The only thing that should change is having a [+] option to expand showing all the different open lobbys for the map, preferably also listed on the Arcade page for the map at the bottom.
4) This is just silly. Top Rated/Played provides a very useful metric for new people to find maps that they may enjoy without having to wade through tons of terrible maps (WC3 had a TON of terrible maps, yet people also forget that). Sure, they do often self-reinforce to some extent but that is what spotlight/up-and-coming is for. Blizzard just hasn't spotlighted any maps (on NA anyways) yet, but I'm sure it'll be utilized in the future.
You are being extremely hyperbolic, the mapping scene isn't going to be dead by Legacy of the Void just because timmy2002 doesn't click the open games list to play your map. There is no reason for Open Games to be the only way to find maps, and it doesn't even need to be the default. I'd wager that the people that don't use it aren't going to like an underplayed complex map to begin with and probably aren't people that you're appealing to. When Blizzard used to reset the list, all the popular maps at the time still bubbled back up just fine so people clearly were able to Search and play their favorite maps all over again, and that's fine.
There are some improvements to be had to Open Lobbies and the front page could utilize Spotlighting better, sure, but the way it's setup mostly works and I think people should just focus on making better maps instead of QQing.
0
@composure19d: Go
Can you find out if the dropped player is on a Mac?
Edit: Just to clarify why I'm asking, the map I develop for (Squadron TD) had an issue where Mac users were desyncing with mostly regularity. It turns out, Mac SC2 rounds off "Unit Property - Get Life Armor (Current)" slightly differently than Windows SC2 sometimes and then bam, Desync. Took forever to figure out the problem too and there may be similar issues with other properties as well if you use that anywhere.
0
This is insulting to say that we are lazy or uncreative. Tsjnsn created it the summer before he started college when he was younger, and since then has never has time to devote to do anything major to it so it was mostly stagnant for a year; many mappers have stopped their map in favor of college. I've just recently taken over Squadron TD development a few months back but I've also been busy and can only really code at night, and I will be going to grad school in 20 days so I will also have to give up development then as well.
That said, I agree that there are some difficulties learning the game, but compared to most maps out there I think it is fairly intuitive and easy to pickup as is - just hard to master. My prioritizes since taking over have just been on addressing bugs, balance and other features that the game needed done for awhile. I have plans for some framework in place for a Builder Tutorial/Guide feature as well as tip system for new people yet there is much to be done.
Your map Tower Defense Tycoon, does have an amazing tutorial/tip system and all maps should strive for something like that, but it is something almost every mapper overlooks on their first creation and it does take dozens of hours to make a great system like that.