SC2 is Not Blizzard Quality (Feedback) [Archive]

Eloderung

03-18-2010, 07:08 PM

First of all, my history: Starcraft II is my fourth blizzard beta test (War3 TFT, BC, WotLK, and now SC2). I am an avid blizzard fan, having played Blizzard games for well over a decade, starting with WarII in the mid90's and playing every title inbetween for a significant amount of time. As far as RTS goes, I consider myself fairly decent, having obtained top20 ranking in RT on WarIII @ Azeroth on two different occasions.

I do not believe that Starcraft II is up to Blizzard quality due to a number of issues. I'll try to go over each as simply and succinctly as I can in this post; this is my honest feedback after having experienced beta for a while now.

Meta-beta Discussion

Perhaps I just haven't had all that much experience with beta tests in Blizzard's RTS department, but this beta test doesn't feel anywhere near as useful or meaningful as previous beta tests. To me, it seems like blizzard has already locked in every feature present in the game today, and they refuse to change anything except for a few minor balance adjustments here and there. Things like Battle.net features (will get into this later), the lack of multiplayer replays, the hard-counter system seem locked-in and unchangeable. Blue-tester communication is much lower than previous beta tests, especially compared to the WoW tests, where community blizzard team members would often respond to player issues. In WoW beta tests, you'd even get direct player-dev communication on quite a number of occasions, and I remember that being responsible for some pretty important and big changes in both BC and WotLK (priest talent tree development in BC/Wrath, Mirror Image in WotLK, many other big class changes, and some other important discussions resulted directly from a dev going onto a class board and talking about the class with players). Blue communication is as light here as it is on the normal boards, which strikes me as extremely odd for a beta test that can make or break a game's success. No, not every issue needs to be responded to. The problem is, however, that it seems like the largest issues brought up by dozens of players on this boards across multiple threads are ignored.

In addition, the huge number of features not being tested in beta (both not available currently and those that won't even come in until release) worries me. In WoW beta tests, almost all content and features of an expansion are tested in beta and are opened up at one point or another. Even half-finished content and features. In SC2, we only have 1v1, 2v2, FFA, and melee games. No Galaxy (which according to blue, will barely graze by us at the end of beta, hardly enough time to make sure it's good to go for the community at large), and as a result little custom game testing whatsoever. No 3v3/4v4, with a recent interview stating that the latter won't even come before retail. No cross-game whispering - is it supposed to work perfectly fine once retail hits without any public testers stress testing the system? No achievements for anything - players are WONDERFUL at finding out how to abuse achievements, and make sure that a system is good to go for launch. Not testing the single player campaign is perfectly fine for obvious reasons, but the sheer number of features unavailable elsewhere worries me that this game might launch with a whole host of bugs that testers could have squashed.

The WoW team puts out a Public Test Realm for even the smallest of patches for good reason; people are really skilled at breaking stuff, making a patch (or in this case, an entire game) as solid as it can be for release. There is no reason for blizzard to not make sure that their most anticipated game launch in quite a while isn't as well-tested as it can be.

Summary: we should be beta testing the full SC2 online experience. We need player-dev communication and more blizzard-player dialogue in general. This beta test doesn't feel anywhere near as useful as previous blizzard beta tests that I've participated in. Don't be afraid to listen to player feedback on BIG issues.

Battle.net 2.0

It's sub-par. There's really no kind way for me to put that. Sure, it has a lot of nice new bells and whistles, both in the client now and coming down the road for retail, but it doesn't hold a candle to b.net 1.0. No chat channels and little use of the chat prompt really hurts Battle.net 2.0 for the millions upon millions of veteran users who are bound to end up in Starcraft I. What if I don't want to open a separate Instant Messenger tab to read my friend's short message wishing me good luck in my next ladder game? What if I want to whisper somebody without first friending them, and then defriending them later? What if I'm carrying multiple conversations and simply am more comfortable with /r and tabbing? As far as I know, these are not possible in the main Battle.net 2.0 "lobby" due to a lack of a chat prompt and chat channels.

(cont.)

Eloderung

03-18-2010, 07:09 PM

I was hoping that open chat channels would come into the game eventually, but a recent interview confirms that these won't be in at all. Bad decision. For every single blizzard game, I was greeted by a chat channel upon connecting to Battle.net. Even if there was some spam on occasion or no conversation, there were people. Lots of people. I was entering into the battle.net community. Now, I enter into a barren, lifeless wasteland.

Sure, the friend functionality will be improved, but the new Battle.net seems to discourage finding new people to play with and have fun in the game with. I won't be able to ask random strangers to play certain custom maps, ask people about the game, or anything like that without open chat channels. My friends list on SC2 will more or less be a mirror of my friends list in WoW.

And on that note, I probably won't even log into SC2 when I have free time - the interface for chatting and managing friends on WoW is far superior to that of SC2 right now. And if I'm on WoW, I probably won't be as willing to play SC2 games, especially since my SC2 buddy list will be more barren than it would without chat channels.

The new chat system is great if you want to leave messages for friends who are offline. That works great for Facebook. But SC2 is not Facebook, and communication tends to happen more often in real-time than it does through a semi-persistent wall post about your current mood or whatever available for people to see, and the current system is bad for that.

Facebook is popular because it provides a platform for meta-life discussion, not because of its chat system. Emulating it for SC2 won't make the game any more popular, nor is Facebook-like chat even suitable for an online action game. Don't let the new Facebook-like features destroy the familiar, tried-and-true backbone of Battle.net 1.0.

Summary: Don't alienate older customers with Battle.net 2.0. Some of the new features are nice, but allow battle.net 1.0 features to coexist side by side new features - give us chat channels, a chat prompt, and all the relevant old slash commands / whisper system to use if we so wish.

Latency

Here's a big issue that has seen no blizzard response whatsoever. The innate latency built-in to every single game played over battle.net 2.0. It's been around since battle.net 1.0. It's no better than it was 12 years ago, which is heavily disappointing.

Many other RTS or RTS-like games have transcended this problem over the past 12 years (see Heroes of Newearth). In other RTS games online, you can be across the continent from the server you are connecting to, and you'll get <.1s unit response times if your connection is solid. Unfortunately, even if you're right on top of the SC2 servers physically (after talking to my SC2 beta friends in California) there is still a good ~.3s innate latency built into everybody over battle.net.

Why does SC2 have more latency when controlling a few zealots in battle in 1v1 than a different company's RTS game, where 10+ players are all pulling 200+ RPM with dozens of units in a massive 5v5 battle? And to those who say "SC2 and HoN are different games, you could never achieve such low latencies in SC1" I merely need to say one phrase: Warcraft III Delay Reducer, a third party program that can easily cut the unit response times by a half or more when playing custom games over battle.net.

SC2's server-client architecture is outdated. It needs to be brought up to date. When one person lags, the entire game should not lag. The game can be kept in lock-step (what you see is what happens server-side unless you're lagging) while maintaining <.1s unit response times for most everybody, as HoN has shown the world. People who disconnect should be able to reconnect to games. I would much rather have my partner disconnect for two minutes, than for the entire game to freeze up for a minute until my partner is auto-kicked for good, for the rest of the game.

The current infrastructure also makes it impossible for Oceanic players or players with poor connections to even participate in SC2. If you have a bad connection, you affect everyone else, and you can't play SC2. The current infrastructure seems to be designed to help people with bad connections keep up with the game, but it ends up being the complete opposite - if you're lagging, you are an outcast in that game and are the target of much player anger. This is especially true now that the game broadcasts messages like "Marineplayer1 is slowing down the game."

In HoN, if you lag or disconnect, nobody else is affected. It's just like WoW, or D2, or any other game made after the 90's really. You have five minutes to reconnect at your leisure, again, without affecting anybody else in the game.

(cont.)

Eloderung

03-18-2010, 07:10 PM

Sure, the latency in SC2 is on-par with what you find in SC1 and WarIII. So? Those games were made ages ago. It's 2010 now, and the server-client architecture really needs to be brought up to date. I was expecting far, far better with SC2, but I am sorely disappointed.

In addition, the latency has some pretty big implications for custom games as well. That third person action shooter that blizzard touted so proudly at Blizzcon? I highly doubt such a game would be possible in a multiplayer environment, with .3-.4s unit responses tacked onto all actions in the game. Sure, the latency will work just fine for DotA clones, tower defenses, and all the usual game types we're accustomed to, but without this latency problem fixed (at the very least, as an option for custom games) the amount of creativity that will come out of custom games will be limited.

Summary: HoN-like latencies please. If HoN-like latencies are not possible for ladder, allow it as an option for custom games that we host. At least do something to make lag/disconnects/etc. more 2010 and less 1998, like incorporating the features found in Warcraft III Delay Reducer into the base game (dynamically alter the innate latency to accommodate connections).

Shoving Galaxy into a Corner

I don't have any hard statistics on me, but I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of blizzard RTS players primarily play said games for Use Map Settings / custom games. Which is why I'm surprised to find that Galaxy will be coming, according to the latest Blizzcast, at the very tail end of the beta. Why deny beta testers the ability to start disseminating the information about Galaxy to the eager map makers sitting around outside of beta? Is Galaxy really so perfect that it is completely free of bugs? What harm is there in having Galaxy out and around as early as possible so that user-created content can begin making its way out into the world, so that the huge custom map playerbase out there will have something to do when retail hits?

As important as Blizzard has made this feature out to be, the Galaxy editor almost seems like it has been forgotten for the beta test. If the information in the latest Blizzcast was wrong, and Galaxy will indeed see a lot of testing time, then feel free to correct me. And if the Blizzcast was correct, then Blizzard should really reconsider the value of Galaxy to its users, and act accordingly in making sure that the Galaxy editor is the best editor that it can possibly be.

Summary: custom games are an integral part of blizzard RTS games. Don't miss this opportunity to beta test the Galaxy editor well.

Rock Paper Scissors in Space

The hard counter system. It is the one thing that makes SC2's gameplay less fun than that of SCI.

To paraphrase some other posts I've read in the past few weeks from Platinum players:
"Which units you build is more important than what you actually do with them in battle."
"In every game, each race will follow only a small handful of strategies to win a game. The only time these flowcharts change is in response to which units the opponent builds."
"When my units are fighting battles, it's usually more important for me to manage my base than it is to micro well in combat."
"You scout, you win. You don't scout, you lose. It doesn't matter how well you play or how badly your opponent plays, if you don't have the proper counter you're guaranteed a loss."

When certain units get double damage bonuses against certain other units, it makes the game a lot less fun. Yes, I know Starcraft is all about counters, every strategy having a counter and whatnot. But SC2 strategy just falls apart. Very few units synergize well with one another, but when they do, it tends to be far more overpowered than similar tactics in SCI (roach + hydra swarm, M&M&M, etc.
) due to the hard counter system.

The SCI system of counters was far better. It was less reliant on "This unit blows this other units up because he for some reason hits twice as hard against light infantry" and more reliant on "This unit has X ability which is particularly effective against Y unit in Z situation".

I'm only a top-end Gold league player in RT, but generally every race and every person will follow one of two different flowcharts, in every single game. If someone is creative and tries to do something creative (like tech up to DTs quickly), they'll lose. If you're a zerg player and you don't start up with a lot of roaches early, your team will lose. And so on.

Oh, and having every map be an enclosed plateau leading down into a natural expansion before branching out in the world definitely does not help encourage different strategies. I don't remember SCI ladder maps being so... similar to one another.

Summary: ladder games get repetitive, fast. Creativity is punished in SC2 whereas it was rewarded in SCI. And I don't think any amount of small balance changes will fix this.

(cont.)

Eloderung

03-18-2010, 07:11 PM

Other Thoughts

Don't get me wrong, I think Starcraft II is a solid game. But given my experiences in beta so far and what blizzard has explicitly stated in Blizzcast/interviews/etc., I just don't think Starcraft II will quite match that "blizzard" quality of game I've come to expect from this great company over the decade. The multiplayer portion of this sequel would have been fine if it was released eight years ago... but now, and especially post-WoW, I'd expect far more quality, innovation, robustness, and performance out of a blizzard game. No, I do not have unrealistic hyped expectations of this game; after looking at the battlereports and everything, it was clear that this game would feel very similar to Starcraft I and would have a lot of the same general gameplay mechanics. However, I was expecting the much-anticipated battle.net 2.0 experience to be much, much, much better than it is now (really, no open chat channels? Facebook chat?). I was expecting the server-client architecture to match or exceed the performance of other games on the market now of same/similar genre, such as HoN. I was expecting all of the old nuances of SCI/battle.net to go away, such as one player with a slow connection ruining the gameplay experience for the other seven in the match. I expected this game to take relevant, applicable ideas from WarIII/SCI/WoW/other games and build and improve upon them.

Dalcyon

03-18-2010, 07:12 PM

Celsian

03-18-2010, 07:13 PM

OP: I didn't read any of your posts.

Can someone summarize?

Edit: Holy !@#$. OP you're dead on. From the lobby to the hard counters I agree with this guy word for word. It's a lot to read, but it's worth it. Blue's, take notice, this guy is trying to save you some lost customers.

Kralic

03-18-2010, 07:14 PM

Joneleth

03-18-2010, 07:15 PM

At work, I had someone come in asking for an "anti-radiation" pad for her laptop so she won't get cancer from her computer.That is actually a valid concern.

Seronic

03-18-2010, 07:16 PM

hi priest from illidan, amirite?

But really. It's 2 weeks into beta. Give it time. Do they release an entire raid to test on ptr servers? No, usually a boss or so at a time (But it's been so long since I've actually checked how ptr's work on wow now that it could ahve changed).

They want people to focus on certain things before others.

Toridas

03-18-2010, 07:17 PM

I was able to download a hack to do something in warcraft 3, therefore it should be a feature of starcraft 2!

Yaji

03-18-2010, 07:18 PM

At work, I had someone come in asking for an "anti-radiation" pad for her laptop so she won't get cancer from her computer.

I had someone else come in that adamantly refused to go unto the internet because other people were watching but loved the streaming tv sites.

Love it.. I had someone come in and see me working on a laptop that was open and asked me if i was worried about dying from touching all that heavy metal.. I lol'd and said, I think there are far more likely things that will kill me than the residue left over from manufacturing a laptop motherboard.. I work on 1 a month, not 1000 a day.

People are silly.. "Don't breathe the air, man, it's got cancer in it."

Eloderung

03-18-2010, 07:19 PM

A lengthy rant that put together a lot of posts already made. I can't stand the comparison of HoN, different game different game hosting system, yes we get it HoN is godly to most,. I am a fanboy due to this post. This is the beta things will get better. HoN has a "better" beta because if that game flops it is the end of their compan(Yes Blizzard is a huge company, but they are also working on a lot of games at the same time). SC2 can take a slower step in their beta to get the results they want. Yay for those third party programs hosting off your computer and not battle.net! You get awesome ping if the host is near you if not well might as well be battle.net or worse.

You can run custom games on Warcraft III over battle.net with a third party program (Warcraft III Delay Reducer) and you'll get latencies significantly better than what you'd get in ladder games on WarIII, or in SCI games of any type, and similar latencies to HoN minus the lag box completely freezing the game.

It's already been done, on a blizzard RTS, over blizzard-produced Battle.net 1.0, by no-named third party programmers.

Also, the latency in the first minute of a 1v1 game managing only your probes is the same latency you experience in http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h314/kaikulu/massinfestor1.jpg this situation. Which heavily suggests that the latency is artificially created by the game. Why should I get a .3s delay when there are 10 units total in the entire game with two players, and also get a .3s delay when I have 50 infestors and 150 infested terrans battling another army in a four-way FFA?

Joneleth

03-18-2010, 07:20 PM

game isnt what i wanted blah blah bnet doesnt have chat system it makes me sad in the pants because i cant talk trash to the scrub i just 4 pooled.+1

hon is a better game(?) the blues arent around, beta is bad.com, i cant beat mass marauders or mass roaches. etc etc. stuff~ +2

No i didn't read the post either. i just sorta scanned the first line of every paragraph.. if that, and noticed it was just another whiny guy complaining about stuff.+3

You'rre out!

Dalcyon

03-18-2010, 07:21 PM

Zaq

03-18-2010, 07:22 PM

This is a great post and accurately captures alot of issues and concerns people have. Blizzard would due well to head some of this advice.

Kralic

03-18-2010, 07:23 PM

You can run custom games on Warcraft III over battle.net with a third party program (Warcraft III Delay Reducer) and you'll get latencies significantly better than what you'd get in ladder games on WarIII, or in SCI games of any type, and similar latencies to HoN minus the lag box completely freezing the game.

It's already been done, on a blizzard RTS, over blizzard-produced Battle.net 1.0, by no-named third party programmers.

Also, the latency in the first minute of a 1v1 game managing only your probes is the same latency you experience in http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h314/kaikulu/massinfestor1.jpg this situation. Which heavily suggests that the latency is artificially created by the game. Why should I get a .3s delay when there are 10 units total in the entire game with two players, and also get a .3s delay when I have 50 infestors and 150 infested terrans battling another army in a four-way FFA?

If a .3s delay is really a big deal... Most people learn to cope with lag in a game, yes it could be better it will probably get better when they deem it fit to throw battle.net onto a server with better architecture. (The delay does not have any hold in how I play the game these days)

Petey

03-18-2010, 07:24 PM

First off... TL;DR

Never post something this long again. If it takes that much rambling to get your point across, you have a problem with your command of the language.

You compared SC2 to WoW's beta, and how SC2 is only testing a small portion of the game. SC2 has been out < 1month, and I believe has 3-4 more months to go in testing. Do you think that because your beloved 3v3 and 4v4 cluster fks aren't available now, they never will be?

However, I was expecting the much-anticipated battle.net 2.0 experience to be much, much, much better than it is now (really, no open chat channels? Facebook chat?). I was expecting the server-client architecture to match or exceed the performance of other games on the market now of same/similar genre, such as HoN. I was expecting all of the old nuances of SCI/battle.net to go away, such as one player with a slow connection ruining the gameplay experience for the other seven in the match. I expected this game to take relevant, applicable ideas from WarIII/SCI/WoW/other games and build and improve upon them.

It is pretty obvious Battle.net 2.0 isn't done, hence the greyed out buttons, and locks on lots of the features. Do you think that when those get unlocked and are completed, you might have a different perspective? Wild guess.. this might happen later on in the beta?

I have played ~125-150 games I believe, and I can't say I agree about the lag. I have had very minimal problems.. and the only instance I can remember, the player disconnected very early on and the rest of the game went fine (was FFA so it didn't hurt).

You also said you thought SC2 would draw on other games of this genre, and previous Blizzard games. If you compared SC1 and SC2 side by side, and then compared the differences to certain games like WC3/TFT/C&C, it strikes me that you might see a strong correlation. The changes (improvements or not) seem to stem a lot from WC3 (rally points, mbs, auto-mining, etc). Maybe you had an idea in your head of what the game should be, and because it isn't there you aren't satisfied.

Obviously you aren't looking at the game objectively, and understanding what has been done and why it was done, because you have a very skewed perception. You also seem to just say things without thinking about them, which probably is why critique turned into a couple thousand word essay.

Greyhame

03-18-2010, 07:25 PM

I don't understand why people pass judgement at such an early stage. Not even all the multiplayer features are implemented.

One thing i'd like to note though is that doesn't SC1 multiplayer get boring after a while too? Isn't it rock, papers, scissors as well?

Mostly because people like to complain. Others because they feel that if they don't complain about a beta that has only part of its features added that they will never ever be added unless it's in beta at this very moment.

Eloderung

03-18-2010, 07:26 PM

game isnt what i wanted blah blah bnet doesnt have chat system it makes me sad in the pants because i cant talk trash to the scrub i just 4 pooled.
hon is a better game(?) the blues arent around, beta is bad.com, i cant beat mass marauders or mass roaches. etc etc. stuff~

No i didn't read the post either. i just sorta scanned the first line of every paragraph.. if that, and noticed it was just another whiny guy complaining about stuff.

for the people that are constantly complaining about balance and things being "locked" ... understand that blizzard is expecting to put 2 more "expansions" into sc2 which will obviously have new units every time... now.. if they balanced now , knowing they were going to rebalance in another year for the new units.. that would be retarded. would bemore work for them for no reason........ get it? crazy huh?

HoN has significantly lower latencies / unit response times than SC2 even when significantly more action is going on within a game.

That's all I said in my post. Are you going to disagree with that point?

Please tell me, why would decreasing the latency on Starcraft II be detrimental to the game?

In Counterstrike, .2ms delays kill the gameplay. In HoN, SCII-like latencies kill the gameplay. In SCII, high latency... makes the game better?

Have you ever played SCI or War3 over LAN? It's amazing. There are <.1s ms delays. SCI and War3 are incredible with HoN-like latencies. Why should blizzard not lower the latency in SC2 as much as they can? Third party programmers have shown that it's possible over Warcraft III on battle.net.

I don't understand why people pass judgement at such an early stage. Not even all the multiplayer features are implemented.

One thing i'd like to note though is that doesn't SC1 multiplayer get boring after a while too? Isn't it rock, papers, scissors as well?

Yes, SCI was like Rock Paper Scissors. Except that the paper could dodge the scissors, and bash it from behind and eventually win if it played well enough.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXq8ukH65GQ&feature=related

Good luck doing that sort of micro anyways with .3s delays, in any case.

Riot

03-18-2010, 07:27 PM

has blizzard ever made a bad game? Have some trust

Wyndrunner

03-18-2010, 07:28 PM

Greyhame

03-18-2010, 07:29 PM

Also, comparing an MMO beta to a RTS mutliplayer beta is a bit of a stretch. Just because they do the WoW beta a certain way does not mean that the SC2 beta must also be the same way.

Zaq

03-18-2010, 07:30 PM

has blizzard ever made a bad game? Have some trust

The issue is not that it's bad, it's that it's mediocre.

It would be a darn shame if SC2 turns out to be just another game and not something legendary.

Celsian

03-18-2010, 07:31 PM

Mostly because people like to complain. Others because they feel that if they don't complain about a beta that has only part of its features added that they will never ever be added unless it's in beta at this very moment.

Allow me to direct you to: http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=23425528912&sid=5000

Celsian

03-18-2010, 07:32 PM

Also, comparing an MMO beta to a RTS mutliplayer beta is a bit of a stretch. Just because they do the WoW beta a certain way does not mean that the SC2 beta must also be the same way.

Of course not pumpkin, his point is that the MMO beta is seemingly more effective... So why would they use an inferior strategy if they are trying to achieve the same thing? Namely user satisfaction.

Sunshine

03-18-2010, 07:33 PM

Great post! I agree with just about everything.

Especially where the blues have been this entire time. Where the hell are they?

Greyhame

03-18-2010, 07:34 PM

Allow me to direct you to: http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=23425528912&sid=5000

That doesn't really invalidate my point. Yes I know what beta is for, but posts like this are not really helping what the purpose of this portion of beta testing is for, which is multiplayer balance.

Of course not pumpkin, his point is that the MMO beta is seemingly more effective... So why would they use an inferior strategy if they are trying to achieve the same thing? Namely user satisfaction.

Because they are not testing the same things?

Thebaron

03-18-2010, 07:35 PM

I'm only a top-end Gold league player in RT

RT

Aw man... and I was really enjoying these posts.

Kralic

03-18-2010, 07:36 PM

Petey

03-18-2010, 07:37 PM

Great post! I agree with just about everything.

Especially where the blues have been this entire time. Where the hell are they?

It'd be better if you didn't post. After you post something like this, you should take a couple months off:

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=23425464051&postId=234233665247&sid=5000#3

It is pretty obvious both of your brain cells wont ever work at the same time.

Legedi

03-18-2010, 07:38 PM

wow. I've really been impressed with the beta so far and I'm not at all surprised that there are tons of features not in, since this beta is centered around balancing.

Turn your beta card in, there's a million people who would be grateful to be here.

I don't understand the sense of entitlement on a free beta.

EDIT: also, I don't see latency as an issue at all, in any of the near 100 games I've played. Units respond to my clicks as fast as I expect them to.....which seems to be instantaneous.

I think OP feedback is great. He is being very constructive in his criticism and trying to improve the game. It's not one of the hundred "OMG Protoss suck now that zealots lost 10 shields!" post I've been seeing today.

I'm most concerned that there has been little blue feedback so far. It's hard to know what information they are finding useful and what people could really focus on.

Evan

03-18-2010, 07:39 PM

Just because Blizzard doesn't tell you their game plan (and rarely, rarely do) doesn't mean there isn't logic. If you follow all the blue posts you'll realize what masterminds are really at play behind the scenes. You can control people with psychology and in their business, it's how they get the job done. Blizzard constructs situations in which the people in the beta will test the specific areas they want tested rather than waste their time. You probably don't have chat because look at b.net. People just sit there idling for hours doing jack. You don't have 3v3 or 4v4 because, well, that's not skill. It's fun, but it's no where near as critical as 1v1, 2v2. God bless them for 4 person ffa and hosting matches that aren't rated. I'm also very happy that while I can't fight a difficult computer, I can at least learn the tech and structure of the different races so I can counter them better. Blizzard is intentionally leaving out a lot because they want us to focus on the primary aspect of multiplayer that is pertinent. The game is a blast right now and if you spent any quantity of time reading the boards you'd see all the valuable feedback on them but you'd also see certain changes are very delicate to make, such as tuning the mothership into something that isn't a floating pile of cow pie. As for Thor, see above, only with feet, and a sexy voice.

If you're still having doubts as to why Blizzard approaches their betas so much different than previous ones, use CoT Hyjal and BT (WoW T6) as examples. The content went on farm by leading guilds way too soon. No the fights weren't the originals but it was shall we say, a minor set back.

Trust me, we are frustrated like you, and yes, we all want 3v3, 4v4, vs computer (hell mode ai please) as well as to test the single player, but I also want to fly, shoot lasers out my eyes, and strangulate politicians half way around the world from the comfort of my own home (heaven forbid my butt print leaves the couch).

It takes a long time to make changes and Blizzard doesn't need to post their round table meeting notes (Colbert suggests whining about this in your next multipage note!). Fixing current concerns will not happen over night, yes that would be my bullet point. We just started beta, and I for one, am rarely disappointed by Blizzard. Often times when I read new patches I'm thrilled with the changes they made. It's a @#$%ing shame how long it took them to fix warlocks but @#$%, look at them now! Give it time and be patient. We've all waited 6 years, what's a little longer?

Essentia

03-18-2010, 07:40 PM

War3 > SC2 in the current state, IMO

Celsian

03-18-2010, 07:41 PM

Because they are not testing the same things?

The goal of both beta's is to strike the best balance possible between different entity's (in WoW it's classes, in Starcraft 2 it's races...) So yes, they are testing the same things. So why would you go to players for help in one, and ignore them in another? The only thing I can figure is it's because they're compiling a gigantic file with every ladder result since the start of beta...

Anyone who's ever taken a college level research course will tell you that no amount of data, no matter how accurate, will get you anywhere without interpretation. That's what we're here for. To assist with the interpretation. The only problem is our feedback is falling on deaf ears.

Eloderung

03-18-2010, 07:42 PM

has blizzard ever made a bad game? Have some trust

The worst blizzard games are still pretty good.

That doesn't mean blizzard shouldn't make mediocre games, by their standards.

wow. I've really been impressed with the beta so far and I'm not at all surprised that there are tons of features not in, since this beta is centered around balancing.

Turn your beta card in, there's a million people who would be grateful to be here.

I don't understand the sense of entitlement on a free beta.

EDIT: also, I don't see latency as an issue at all, in any of the near 100 games I've played. Units respond to my clicks as fast as I expect them to.....which seems to be instantaneous.

Beta is not free entitlement. If your only feedback is "Your game is perfect!", then you're not doing your job well. Look at how far WoW has progressed in the past few years as a result of constant feedback.

No game is perfect, and there is always room for improvement.

Also, comparing an MMO beta to a RTS mutliplayer beta is a bit of a stretch. Just because they do the WoW beta a certain way does not mean that the SC2 beta must also be the same way.

As stated in the first paragraph, I also had the pleasure of beta testing TFT and all relevant beta discussions are made with those experiences in mind as well.

So why would they use an inferior strategy if they are trying to achieve the same thing? Namely user satisfaction.

Yup.

Let me put it this way. If blizzard put the game out right now, with all of their promised retail features, it'd still probably be up there for sales. If they listened to all of the important feedback on these boards, this game might absolutely explode in popularity even more, resulting in millions of new followers for Blizzard.

Keep in mind that WoW has over 11.5 million concurrent subscribers. The most popular MMO before WoW had 500,000 subscribers. They originally designed the game to be hardcore, but now it is a more casual/accessible to MMO for more people and it is INSANELY popular - these changes happened because of player feedback, and nothing else. That is blizzard quality. SC2 should revolutionize a player's online RTS experience, not put out "just another sequel." That is what I mean by SC2 not being blizzard quality.

Evan

03-18-2010, 07:43 PM

Eloderung

03-18-2010, 07:44 PM

Aw man... and I was really enjoying these posts.

Hey, you can just go read the feedback from platinum-level players if me being in gold league somehow invalidates my points.

Dreuel

03-18-2010, 07:45 PM

Static

03-18-2010, 07:46 PM

Wait so in games you need under 5 ms to be good at them online? Every online game I have played if i had 30-50 ms latnency i would be really happy.There's a big difference between 300 ms and 30-50 ms. 300ms makes the sort of micro he displayed next to impossible. If you have to wait a third of a second for your marines to follow your command, they'll eat an extra lurker spine and explode in a nice gooey red splash.

Celsian

03-18-2010, 07:47 PM

Wrong on several levels and I don't know where to begin. Suffice it to say you assume they can't interpret it. You assume they are ignoring you. And best of all, you assume your input is accurate.

If they're not in there every game dealing with what players are dealing with then they quite simply can't interpret anything other than "Terran seems to win 50% of the games." Great, that really helps them balance units...

I assume nothing, the point was already made that Blue's are far more active in WoW Beta tests than in this Beta test.

My particular input is not accurate, but the community as a whole's input will be, for no other reason than the customer is always right. If all of our opinions are weighed jointly together, the most important points will stand out. No one individual will have all the answers to the balance issues, but as a group we'll come up with some pretty intelligent feedback.

Greyhame

03-18-2010, 07:48 PM

The goal of both beta's is to strike the best balance possible between different entity's (in WoW it's classes, in Starcraft 2 it's races...) So yes, they are testing the same things. So why would you go to players for help in one, and ignore them in another? The only thing I can figure is it's because they're compiling a gigantic file with every ladder result since the start of beta...

Anyone who's ever taken a college level research course will tell you that no amount of data, no matter how accurate, will get you anywhere without interpretation. That's what we're here for. To assist with the interpretation. The only problem is our feedback is falling on deaf ears.

No, they are not testing the same things. You can't shut off parts of WoW the way you can with an RTS because of the way the game is designed. They are completely different kinds of games, and the testing for them would not be the same no matter how similar they looked from an outside perspective. Right now, they are testing mutliplayer, not chat channels, not the ability to play against the computer, etc.

And for your feedback, it's fine as long as you understand what you are doing at the moment. Some of the complaints here don't make sense because that's not what this part of the testing is for. Understand what you are testing before you get up in arms about things that you are not testing.

Dreuel

03-18-2010, 07:49 PM

If they're not in there every game dealing with what players are dealing with then they quite simply can't interpret anything other than "Terran seems to win 50% of the games." Great, that really helps them balance units...

Actually, they probably have the entire contents of every replay available to them. Both aggregate statistical data and individual game data about who's building what when, what build orders are leading to victory in which leagues, how many people are teching up to this or that advanced unit, etc.

Pretty sure that all the commands for every ranked game are routed through their server, at the very least to detect and combat cheating, but it also allows these kinds of statistics to be collected.

Strimen

03-18-2010, 07:50 PM

Wait so in games you need under 5 ms to be good at them online? Every online game I have played if i had 30-50 ms latnency i would be really happy.

Umm I think you have your units confused. 30ms = 0.03s

He said the delay is 0.3s which would mean 300ms. Still happy? Thats like playing CS:S from some where in Australia on a server in Germany on a fricken awsome day.

Kralic

03-18-2010, 07:51 PM

Let me put it this way. If blizzard put the game out right now, with all of their promised retail features, it'd still probably be up there for sales. If they listened to all of the important feedback on these boards, this game might absolutely explode in popularity even more, resulting in millions of new followers for Blizzard.

Keep in mind that WoW has over 11.5 million concurrent subscribers. The most popular MMO before WoW had 500,000 subscribers. They originally designed the game to be hardcore, but now it is a more casual/accessible to MMO for more people and it is INSANELY popular - these changes happened because of player feedback, and nothing else. That is blizzard quality. SC2 should revolutionize a player's online RTS experience, not put out "just another sequel." That is what I mean by SC2 not being blizzard quality.
I agree with this somewhat... You have to realise that WoW also generates money every month for them on top of new sales. SC2 will not do this for them. The feedback they use is sometimes good, bad and stupid that later gets taken out. Blizzard's standpoint on a game like WoW is you can offer constructive feedback but do not feel that you are entitled to changing the game because you pay a monthly fee. In the end Blizzard is going to do what their team wants to do.

Blizzard is going to make a sequel to the most successful RTS, they do not need to do radical changes or make it new and inventive, people will buy it for online competitiveness, online custom maps, singleplayer and other various game modes. They pretty much said when it was announced it was going to be a graphical upgrade to sc1 and be more focused on esports. If they are going to do a radical change to the RTS genre they will most likely make a new game franchise name to use for it.

Static

03-18-2010, 07:52 PM

Originally posted by Celsian.lucas

If they're not in there every game dealing with what players are dealing with then they quite simply can't interpret anything other than "Terran seems to win 50% of the games." Great, that really helps them balance units...Noooot really. They have a large team that's very familiar with this game by now. If people have concerns that they can bring forward, they should be able to analyze them and evaluate those concerns through replay or in-office play. And I think you are vastly simplifying the tools that they have to observe the balance of power, though having never sat in the Blizzard Starcraft 2 Beta Control Room© I can't say for sure.I assume nothing, the point was already made that Blue's are far more active in WoW Beta tests than in this Beta test. They've applied three new builds since the beginning of the test two weeks ago. This doesn't exactly spell lack of concern to me.

My particular input is not accurate, but the community as a whole's input will be, for no other reason than the customer is always right. If all of our opinions are weighed jointly together, the most important points will stand out. No one individual will have all the answers to the balance issues, but as a group we'll come up with some pretty intelligent feedback.Vocal minority blah blah blah. "The customer is always right." is a silly maxim. The customer is very frequently wrong and doesn't know what the best thing for them is. Tester feedback can be useful, but more often than not, people who don't see a problem with something won't feel the need to rail on and on in the forums about how it's doing just fine, thanks.

Coryo

03-18-2010, 07:53 PM

I agree with the OP's post, ESPECIALLY when it comes to the hard counters. I truly feel that they take away a lot of the fun from the game. I think all bonus damage should be removed, along with light and heavy armor. Different attack and armor types worked well with WC3, but I think that the SC series should remain as more of a soft countering game.

Static

03-18-2010, 07:54 PM

Originally posted by Coryo.coryo

I agree with the OP's post, ESPECIALLY when it comes to the hard counters. I truly feel that they take away a lot of the fun from the game. I think all bonus damage should be removed, along with light and heavy armor. Different attack and armor types worked well with WC3, but I think that the SC series should remain as more of a soft countering game.I feel the need to point out that bonus damage did essentially exist in the original Starcraft. Units were classed as small, medium or large, and damage as concussive, explosive, or normal. Depending what size of unit was being hit with what damage, it would do a certain percent of its listed values. This is why vultures shot the hell out of zerglings, zealots, marines, and firebats, and do poorly against larger things. This is why goliaths only seem to do half damage to mutalisks.

http://blogs.pitch.com/plog/the_more_you_know2.jpg

Beta

03-18-2010, 07:55 PM

OPs post is based entirely around the fact that the SC2 beta is the lowest quality that Blizzard has done in the past.

Since this is a lie, I am not going to read 3 posts worth of bull. WoW beta and even release afterward was of far lower quality than SC2.

Eloderung

03-18-2010, 07:56 PM

I agree with this somewhat... You have to realise that WoW also generates money every month for them on top of new sales. SC2 will not do this for them. The feedback they use is sometimes good, bad and stupid that later gets taken out. Blizzard's standpoint on a game like WoW is you can offer constructive feedback but do not feel that you are entitled to changing the game because you pay a monthly fee. In the end Blizzard is going to do what their team wants to do.

The thing is, that's never stopped them from the past. Even Diablo II received a content update just a few weeks (months?) ago via a patch. Blizzard still has a legacy content team that still actively patches and monitors games that have been out for years and years. They still run battle.net even though it doesn't generate revenue in the same way WoW does.

That's what separates blizzard from other developers, and that is what their fans have come to expect.

Also, keep in mind that HoN is going to charge a one-time $30 per client, and they're going to do so with dedicated servers running every single game with the <.1s delays for nearly all of its players. If S2 can do it, so can Blizzard, especially since blizzard has done incredible things for its fanbase in the past and S2 has not.

I can't speak for everyone, but just having <.1s delays and the ability to reconnect to custom games would make SC2 feel "revolutionary" for me, at least for the custom game aspect of Starcraft.

Oh by the way: for everyone who doesn't believe me about latency, see http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=114753

Celsian

03-18-2010, 07:57 PM

the ability to reconnect to custom games would make SC2 feel "revolutionary" for me

QFT

Or even Ladder games.

Mindless

03-18-2010, 07:58 PM

I agree the galaxy editor is the most important thing about SC2 and should be beta tested. So I think it should be in the beta for at least 2 months.

Static

03-18-2010, 07:59 PM

Originally posted by Mindless.mindless

I agree the galaxy editor is the most important thing about SC2 and should be beta tested. So I think it should be in the beta for at least 2 months.Why are you trying to delay the release of my beloved single player?

Celsian

03-18-2010, 08:00 PM

Why are you trying to delay the release of my beloved single player?

lol, he wants his story time, don't inhibit that!

http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/funny-pictures-kitten-bedtime-story.jpg

Static

03-18-2010, 08:01 PM

Originally posted by Celsian.lucas

lol, he wants his story time, don't inhibit that!

http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/funny-pictures-kitten-bedtime-story.jpgSee, he gets it.

Pwn

03-18-2010, 08:02 PM

Originally posted by Eloderung.eloderung

In HoN, if you lag or disconnect, nobody else is affected. It's just like WoW, or D2, or any other game made after the 90's really. You have five minutes to reconnect at your leisure, again, without affecting anybody else in the game.

(cont.)

Oh god that would be wonderful in this, especially that I get random disconnects.

I just lost a match I was going to win because I disconnected. Literally less than a second from being considered winner.

Chalon

03-18-2010, 08:03 PM

I'm not really that surprised that they aren't testing 3v3 or 4v4. Their primary focus is game balance for this beta test, and 3v3 and 4v4 are brackets that simply never will be balanced. Hopefully the Galaxy Editor does get some beta testing, because it sounded like it was up in the air whether or not it would be out before release.

As for the chat channels, I think not having default "SC2 Battle.net West Channel 25" etc channels is not really a big deal. But they really do need to deliver the topic-focused channels that Rob Pardo referred to at Blizzcon. Having something like race-specific strategy channels and the like, which are still public and easily accessible will help a lot. I think when most people say they miss chat channels they don't really care about those default ones you get thrown into.

As for the latency, basically the best you can hope for is them reducing the inherent latency value. It's just a constant value stored somewhere in memory, that's how the 3rd party apps worked in WC3 or SC BW. You aren't going to get them to rewrite the system to make it not lock stepped or allow people to reconnect after 5 minutes, but at the very least say, cutting the built-in latency in half would be easy to do and definitely be an improvement.

I'm almost certain the game already has the capability of increasing the latency if necessary (that's what happens when it says "so and so is slowing down the game"), so it really wouldn't be that harmful to reduce the amount. Still won't help people that have pings over 1s (from Australia or what have you), but for most of us it would be helpful.

As for the strategies/balance, I do think there is definitely some room for improvement, but I would also say there's at least some options. I don't feel like every single game I'm using the exact same strategy. There's probably 3-4 strategies (as Protoss) that I can choose early in the game, and then later on based on scouting them I make changes of course. I think it's difficult to compare the nuance of the strategies to SC1 though, given that it took something like 2-3 years for SC1 to be balanced as it is in its current state, and people have had so many years to come up with strategies.

There are some clear balance issues right now, but I also think they are balance issues that don't necessarily have quick and easy solutions. Look at the Phoenix. Right now it's pretty weak, but if they made it strong, Protoss would have clearly the best air options. Similarly, Roaches are too strong right now, but if they nerfed them and left it at that, then Zerg would be pretty inept in the early game.

Fors

03-18-2010, 08:04 PM

I don't think there's any problem with the beta process so far.

Contrary to what you believe THEY HAVE made big changes. Ask any Protoss player.

And I don't think you can compare the BC and WotLK betas to this one for three reasons:

1. WoW was already an established game when those betas rolled around, so it made sense for those betas to already have a lot more features going than this one did. If I recall correctly in the original WoW beta you could only level from 1 to 20 for the first couple months. People complained that back then the beta was 3/4 incomplete as well.

2. MMORPG compared to an RTS?

3. WoW is a HUGE venture with much more employees than Starcraft has... at least for now.

Fors

03-18-2010, 08:05 PM

I'm not really that surprised that they aren't testing 3v3 or 4v4.

And about this...

I don't believe that they will ever balance the game for 4v4. Maaaaaybe for 3v3, but even that is a long shot. If they ever do include 3v3 and 4v4 into the beta test it will be to weed out bugs with the game, battle.net, the ladder, or the maps.

Kralic

03-18-2010, 08:06 PM

Last point(or first) for me in this article; This is Phase 1 of the Sc2 Beta.

Fors

03-18-2010, 08:07 PM

In HoN, if you lag or disconnect, nobody else is affected. It's just like WoW, or D2, or any other game made after the 90's really. You have five minutes to reconnect at your leisure, again, without affecting anybody else in the game.

This makes no sense. First of all, all those examples are RPG games that for the most part are not competitive in the same way that SCII is.

Second of all, if SCII allowed people to do this you could forever grief people by disconnecting and reconnecting until they leave the game and concede you the victory. And if you say "well, just let the game keep going until they lose/reconnect" it won't matter because this game is fast paced enough that if you go afk for even 1 minute chances are that's going to cost you the game so it would be a worthless feature and a waste of programming.

Fors

03-18-2010, 08:08 PM

About chat channels:

I do believe that they would be a great addition to Battle.net 2.0 and I really really hope that they do show up at some point.

With that said... this is a beta test. Blizzard doesn't need us to waste our time in chat channels all day hanging out with friends. Blizzard DOES need us to be playing games and exploring as much as we can about what they've given us so that we can discover bugs/errors and give feedback.

Hurtlock

03-18-2010, 08:09 PM

"You scout, you win. You don't scout, you lose. It doesn't matter how well you play or how badly your opponent plays, if you don't have the proper counter you're guaranteed a loss."

I don't scout and I still win.

Steverweaver

03-18-2010, 08:10 PM

You are all a bunch of whining babies.. The beta just started 3 weeks ago.. I'm sure they are far from balancing it and adding in new features. I think you should wait untill the end of the beta period to make these assumtions of not testing anything. I'm sure they know what they are doing.. and i'm sure that the things everyone is whining about are being fixed.. everything can't be fixed instantly. They have to do a little at a time... they can't just remake the whole game from scratch again.

Mindless

03-18-2010, 08:11 PM

Newcomplex

03-18-2010, 08:12 PM

Blizzard quality in a pvp game marked by a very simple concept that is entirely devoid of superflous or un "gamey" functions. It is marked by a simplistic concept, but structured in a way that each individual component is both independent and cohesive towards the whole. Starcraft, at heart, is almost purely a PvP game. What we are testing...is only pvp.

Your experiences in WoW are irrelevant. WoW is structured in an entirely different way, PvE is a significant feature. It is arguably the core feature. WoW is a game where pieces can be removed, and isolated from the whole. For instance, I could analyze the spell mirror image without any regards to any other factors but impact on mage DPS, and the DPS expected of a mage. Starcraft is not. One cannot isolate a single spell, and change it. Changing it changes the entire game. By removing 5 seconds off a early game buildings build time, it will literally result in changes throughout the entire game.

Newcomplex

03-18-2010, 08:13 PM

If they're not in there every game dealing with what players are dealing with then they quite simply can't interpret anything other than "Terran seems to win 50% of the games." Great, that really helps them balance units...

I assume nothing, the point was already made that Blue's are far more active in WoW Beta tests than in this Beta test.

My particular input is not accurate, but the community as a whole's input will be, for no other reason than the customer is always right. If all of our opinions are weighed jointly together, the most important points will stand out. No one individual will have all the answers to the balance issues, but as a group we'll come up with some pretty intelligent feedback.

And you think they don't record every single game you play, looking at trends, personally watching outliers, randomly watching a select sample, and using data mining tools to analyse them?

Are you implying that they have to watch your game LIVE, and talk to you while your trying to macro in order to get meaningful data? Are you retarded?

Mindless

03-18-2010, 08:14 PM

What the #%!@ bro. Are you retarded?

Calling some kid retarded does not make you look any smarter. Try to keep your opinions more civilized.

Kraal

03-18-2010, 08:15 PM

I believe the point the OP was making about the WoW beta was about blue presence and communication with the community. They are different types of games with different needs, but better communicaiton with the community benefits ANY beta (or even release for that matter).

Just look at the threads in this forum. VERY many would be avoided by a few simple answers to the tune of "We're aware this could be a problem and looking into it for a future build", "We've considered this but we don't like it", "We've seen some sign of this, but we need more data to make a decision on it, so if you want to help test out ___ in the games you play."

As far as chat channels, I don't think people would have an issue with them not being in YET if we got some kind of feedback about being able to expect them in a later phase. People aren't bringing up chat channels so much because they're not unlocked yet, but rather because multiple sources from Blizz seemed to point towards the fact that they will no have open chat channels. It's never too early to express how important the inclusion of a feature is when most communication we got on the topic seems to point that it won't be included.

Newcomplex

03-18-2010, 08:16 PM

Calling some kid retarded does not make you look any smarter. Try to keep your opinions more civilized.

No, but having a valid point does. I don't care how nice you are over the Internet, if your still incoherently wrong, your still wrong.

Redscare

03-18-2010, 08:17 PM

On the paper rock scissor argument I want to add that SC1 has 12 years of metagame surrounding it. This game has been kinda out for 2 weeks and you're mad that people haven't become proficient enough to do stuff like in the video posted?

Stuff like Void rays beating marines or BCs beating corrupters is always going to be hard, but given time for people to play and a community to surround it, you could see this stuff happening eventually in very skilled hands.

Celsian

03-18-2010, 08:18 PM

No, but having a valid point does. I don't care how nice you are over the Internet, if your still incoherently wrong, your still wrong.

If by valid point you mean that Blizzard actually watches even some of the thousands of replays that are produced every hour from this game alone, then you sir, are wrong.

Honestly, you think they watch them? lol.

Redscare

03-18-2010, 08:19 PM

If by valid point you mean that Blizzard actually watches of the thousands of replays that are produced every hour from this game alone, then you sir, are wrong.

Honestly, you think they watch them? lol.

I imagine there is software scanning them for certain bits of data.

Avatar

03-18-2010, 08:20 PM

For the record, Elo is a solid tester and consistently gives very detailed feedback. I happen to disagree with some of his arguments here, but I'm not going to stoop to ad hominem attacks because of that.

A beta test is not about upholding the fanboy banner. It's about serious critique with the goal of making a better game. Anyone who thinks that an opinion of "I don't like this, I think it should change" amounts to nothing more than whining and that such feedback is worthy of a banning needs to take a step back and take good hard look at the point of all of this.

If you seriously disagree with the OP's arguments, then make your point and move on. Serious feedback should never be disparaged, no matter how much it may sting.

Dreuel

03-18-2010, 08:21 PM

If you seriously disagree with the OP's arguments, then make your point and move on. Serious feedback should never be disparaged, no matter how much it may sting.

Much of his feedback is about how the beta is being administered and not about the game itself. I don't know that that's appropriate given that his goals for the beta may not line up with Blizzard's goals.

Duffman

03-18-2010, 08:22 PM

HoN has significantly lower latencies / unit response times than SC2 even when significantly more action is going on within a game.

That's all I said in my post. Are you going to disagree with that point?

Please tell me, why would decreasing the latency on Starcraft II be detrimental to the game?

In Counterstrike, .2ms delays kill the gameplay. In HoN, SCII-like latencies kill the gameplay. In SCII, high latency... makes the game better?

Have you ever played SCI or War3 over LAN? It's amazing. There are <.1s ms delays. SCI and War3 are incredible with HoN-like latencies. Why should blizzard not lower the latency in SC2 as much as they can? Third party programmers have shown that it's possible over Warcraft III on battle.net.

Yes, SCI was like Rock Paper Scissors. Except that the paper could dodge the scissors, and bash it from behind and eventually win if it played well enough.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXq8ukH65GQ&feature=related

Good luck doing that sort of micro anyways with .3s delays, in any case.

Good latency (on the internet) for cs was about 20-30 ms or below. Remember, a millisecond is a thousandth of a second.

Honestly, achieving anything below 100 ms consistently online is good. This will get better as networks put in better equipment, but blizzard can't make packets get there any faster.

Now, if you want LAN latency (which is < 5 ms usually, but not as fast as .1) for custom games that happen to be in a LAN, then I can understand.

As far as a laggy player slowing down the whole game, I'm sure it was a debated issue at blizzard. Would you rather lag badly for 10 secs early game and fall severely behind, or still have a chance because the game 'paused' for you while your connection sorted itself out?

Eloderung

03-18-2010, 08:23 PM

This makes no sense. First of all, all those examples are RPG games that for the most part are not competitive in the same way that SCII is.

Second of all, if SCII allowed people to do this you could forever grief people by disconnecting and reconnecting until they leave the game and concede you the victory. And if you say "well, just let the game keep going until they lose/reconnect" it won't matter because this game is fast paced enough that if you go afk for even 1 minute chances are that's going to cost you the game so it would be a worthless feature and a waste of programming.

If you disconnect and reconnect yourself on HoN, it's not griefing.

If you disconnect and reconnect yourself on WoW, it's not griefing.

If you disconnect and reconnect yourself on <insert any modern game here with a client-server architecture model>, it's not griefing.

In each of these cases, the only person that suffers from a bad connection is the person with the bad connection.

And you don't even know what HoN is. It's not an RPG. It's a RTS. Not the same form of RTS as Starcraft but it's an RTS nonetheless. There is also plenty of competitive play in HoN, including pro leagues and professional games on beta. There are many times within a game where far more action/commands are going off at once in HoN than in SC2 even in intense 2v2 battles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZa1Y2dzzrg&feature=related you could never pull off this sort of micro in SC2, ever. Especially if LAN play is not introduced. Notice the delay between his clicks and actions responding on the screen. Go into a 1vcomputer custom game and try to do the same thing with a starting probe. You can't. It's impossible. That's the whole point of http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=114753 , ICCUP, WarIII Delay Reducer, etc.

Michael

03-18-2010, 08:24 PM

Good post OP. Your post is constructive and don't listen to these trolls who are calling you a baby or whining.
There just some people who will call you a whiner or baby just for giving your opinion.

I currently feel like the meta game and the current game play isn't correct. It feels way too rock, paper, scissors style gameplay. There also no room for trying different strategies.

However, in solo matches, there shouldn't be a reconnect option. Only in arranged(pre-made) and custom games.

Petey

03-18-2010, 08:25 PM

How can it be considered a good post? It is riddled with logical errors, and isnt based on actual information. He made numerous erroneous claims that he didn't back with facts. I'm not defending the game, I am defending logic and reason. Lots of the positions he took would be refuted, that is neither a good post, nor is it constructive.

Mindless

03-18-2010, 08:26 PM

However, in solo matches, there shouldn't be a reconnect option. Only in arranged(pre-made) and custom games.

And why not? I think there should be a 1min timer to count down to a reconnect. And if that min is up then its game over. And if it took him 30 sec to rejoin next time he disconnects it will only last 30sec.

Michael

03-18-2010, 08:27 PM

Johan

03-18-2010, 08:28 PM

Eloderung

03-18-2010, 08:29 PM

I didn't read all your posts but I want to point out some major errors in your complaints about the beta being sub-par:

Both WoW BC / WOTLK and WC3TFT were expansions to an already completed and tested game. Starcraft 2 is a brand new game being tested on a brand new battle.net client; of course not all the functions are going to be available right away. It sounds like you either don't remember or don't know how the original vanilla WoW beta test ran. When WoW vanilla first released, only the level 1-10 Eastern Kingdom content was available. You could only play a Human, Dwarf, or Gnome for a few weeks. Eventually they patched in the Horde characters and tested that. Not all of WoW was open to testing at the beginning of the beta.

So your notion that all of Blizzard's betas release with all the functions is completely false, only the expansions do.

When WoW beta testing began, they didn't say "We're not going to put in any content or levels past 20, have fun with what you have."

BC beta started with much content not available, and the same with WotLK. All blizzard betas start out like this, with a small amount of content/features that slowly ramps up.

However, there are very clear and very big differences in how these betas have been handled / are being handled.

Blizzard has made it clear what will and will not be in the beta, like they do with most of their betas for most features. They have stated that Galaxy editor will come at the tail end of beta (see: http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=23425583845&sid=5000 ). They have stated that 3v3/4v4 won't be coming until retail, and that there will be no open chat channels (see: http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=23425588844&sid=5000 ). They have stated single player will not be included (no problems here, as I stated in my OP). They have stated that achievements will not be coming in beta (don't have a source, but I'm sure half the forums can confirm that for you or find that statement).

The difference being, in these beta there were little features available at the start and said features were slowly released and integrated into beta. In SC2, there are little features available, but very few additional features will be included. We confirmed will not be getting 3v3 or 4v4, achievements, chat channels in beta. We confirmed won't be getting cross-game chat until release. We confirmed won't be getting Galaxy until shortly before release, if at all.

I can't test Galaxy or any of those features listed above. I have a feeling, however, that Galaxy will be an integral part of SC2 post-release, and in the many years to come. It's almost as if the custom game and mapmaking communities from SC1/War3 are still alive and well today, and that these facets of the game are extremely important for many in the community.

How they're conducting SC2 beta is like how minor patches are tested on WoW. And maybe I'm delusional, but the release of one of blizzard's most anticipated sequels should be treated with far more care than patch 3.3.4 on WoW's Public Test Realm. The first impressions of millions upon millions of fans - melee/ladder fanatics, mapmakers, custom game aficionados, and achievement nerds - are at stake with SC2's release. Just a thought.

Johan

03-18-2010, 08:30 PM

Double posting but meh:

I read the article now and I disagree with most of what was stated. Most of his complaints are based around this being a beta test it seems.

However, I do agree that communication with the community would be very nice. One of my favorite new developers is Riot, the developer of League of Legends. They're a small company of ~60-70 people yet they have, by far, the best communication with the community I've ever seen. They are constantly patching their game, adding in new content and addressing issues on their forums. There have been times where literally half the threads on the front page of their general forums have a "Riot post", the equivalent to a blue post. It's not just community managers who talk with the community. Interns, Web designers, game coders, even the president of the company interacts with the community and addresses their concerns. It's truly very impressive and something I wish more great companies would do more often.

Divine

03-18-2010, 08:31 PM

They have stated that achievements will not be coming in beta (don't have a source, but I'm sure half the forums can confirm that for you or find that statement).

source: http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=23425588844&sid=5000

Also, Blizzard is currently setting the new battle.net release date to around April and here are the scheduled contents:

-Achievements
-Community related contents
-Player's detailed connection info
-Player's detailed game history
-Friend's friend invite contents

Eloderung

03-18-2010, 08:32 PM

source: http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=23425588844&sid=5000

You can scratch achievements off my list of complaints, then. I completely missed that in reading over your article.

I believe the rest of my information in that section is accurate as can be though.

Still ties back into the "lack of communication" part though. The first two weeks of a WoW beta are absolutely bristling with blue activity.

Divine

03-18-2010, 08:33 PM

You can scratch achievements off my list of complaints, then.

I believe the rest of my information in that section is accurate as can be though.

Still ties back into the "lack of communication" part though. The first two weeks of a WoW beta are absolutely bristling with blue activity.

i agree completely about the communication problem... why did I have to translate an article from Korean website to get a new info about chat channel and those new things coming to battle.net 2.0

I'm not complaining in a sense where I don't like the work I have to put in for translations because I'm happy to deliver news from Korean side as fast as I can and I like when people say "thanks for translation" but the fact that .. the time it took for Koreans to put up the article, me finding it and translating it... they have nothing put up regarding it.. even tho the VP announced some major things.. not to mention it's already been a bit since the Q&A session now.. 2 days I think since it's Mar. 4th Korean time

Dreuel

03-18-2010, 08:34 PM

why did I have to translate an article from Korean website to get a new info about chat channel and those new things coming to battle.net 2.0

This is not new info -- it's been available on Youtube from the Q&A at the end of Blizzcon 09's battle.net session, along with more info not in that interview.

Divine

03-18-2010, 08:35 PM

This is not new info -- it's been available on Youtube from the Q&A at the end of Blizzcon 09's battle.net session, along with more info not in that interview.

i went to blizzcon 09.. they never announced that in April they'd release battle.net 2.0 with achievements and they never clearly told us that there would be no public chat channels...

Distract

03-18-2010, 08:36 PM

did they even get around to unlocking all the features on it yet?

Eloderung

03-18-2010, 08:37 PM

This is not new info -- it's been available on Youtube from the Q&A at the end of Blizzcon 09's battle.net session, along with more info not in that interview.

A good bit of it is new.

Dreuel

03-18-2010, 08:38 PM

they never clearly told us that there would be no public chat channels...

You've misremembered. Here's the recording. The person who asks the question steps up to the microphone at about 1:34:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nic_H9oBNaI

The guy asks about chat channels. After some clarification of the question, the battle.net project manager says "no there won't be chat channels." Then, Rob Pardo jumps in to clarify that they're working on something to fill that gap that won't be available at release and won't exactly be an open chat channel, rather than just leaving it as a "no."

Also, the information in that panel (from parts 1-14) covers a lot more detail than did that interview, and in a lot more depth. I don't see anything that was in that interview that wasn't mentioned in that panel, except maybe the April date.

Rowdy

03-18-2010, 08:39 PM

Oh, and having every map be an enclosed plateau leading down into a natural expansion before branching out in the world definitely does not help encourage different strategies. I don't remember SCI ladder maps being so... similar to one another.
Ramped mains and defensible naturals put tech and economic strategies on the table. These features are consistently present in Starcraft II and competitive Starcraft I maps because they increase potential for variety and add options to the game. The new maps are an acknowledgment that Starcraft I's ladder maps, quickly left behind by high level players, were one-dimensional and imbalanced.

I'm not saying variation in map design is bad. I'm not even saying the occasional one-dimensional map is bad. But I am saying that most maps, even if they favor one style over another, ought to allow for a variety of strategies. You can't expand early without a natural. A base across the map is not defensible. You can't skip a tech tier without a choke. You need favorable terrain to survive a rush when you have fewer low tier units. The current map style allows these strategies to exist without forcing them into a position of superiority.

There is still room for variation. The natural on Desert Oasis is distant from the main and open to attack from two wide angles. The ramp on Scrap Station is harder to hold against a determined rusher. The air approach is the same distance as the land approach on Steppes of War and much shorter on Desert Oasis. The third expansion is deep in the center of the map on Blistering Sands and tucked into a second natural on Kulas Ravine. Attack and scouting patterns are wildly different from map to map. Some maps have island expansions. Others have destructible back doors. Four-player maps offer dynamic games based on players' random spawn positions. All of these features offer game-changing variety without extinguishing entire avenues of strategic pursuit.

I don't understand the constant criticism of the new map style. Similarity does not necessarily destroy strategy. Variation does not necessarily breed it. Blizzard's map designers aren't afraid to innovate. They're just not willing to sacrifice a versatile style for a simplistic one.

Baked

03-18-2010, 08:40 PM

my only major beefs is the chat rooms and the hard counters. I don't mind the idea of a counter, but the counters in sc2 are too strong, in most cases.

for instance in sc1... vultures were a good counter to zealots.. but if you upgraded speed and micro'd your units correctly, you still had a good chance at winning a fight.

Rowdy

03-18-2010, 08:41 PM

Also, this:

I feel the need to point out that bonus damage did essentially exist in the original Starcraft. Units were classed as small, medium or large, and damage as concussive, explosive, or normal. Depending what size of unit was being hit with what damage, it would do a certain percent of its listed values. This is why vultures shot the hell out of zerglings, zealots, marines, and firebats, and do poorly against larger things. This is why goliaths only seem to do half damage to mutalisks.

http://blogs.pitch.com/plog/the_more_you_know2.jpg
And this:

On the paper rock scissor argument I want to add that SC1 has 12 years of metagame surrounding it. This game has been kinda out for 2 weeks and you're mad that people haven't become proficient enough to do stuff like in the video posted?

Stuff like Void rays beating marines or BCs beating corrupters is always going to be hard, but given time for people to play and a community to surround it, you could see this stuff happening eventually in very skilled hands.
Starcraft I had hard counters. Soft counters are the subtle and creative strategies and tactics that develop over time to avoid or overcome hard counters. We're a few weeks in. Brood War is as old as we were when we started playing it. It's premature to be calling this game's micro simplistic.

Frozen

03-18-2010, 08:42 PM

Seriously. Nobody cared about Melee in SC2, it's all about the custom games.

Joshsuth

03-18-2010, 08:43 PM

ITT: The public shows its disdain for reading.

I commend the OP for taking the time to express valid concerns at the time he should be expressing them: the beta.

Dreuel

03-18-2010, 08:44 PM

Seriously. Nobody cared about Melee in SC2, it's all about the custom games.

Balancing the 1v1 game is a good way to make sure the races are where they should be, and presumably that's why they're doing it in the beta.

Eldacar

03-18-2010, 08:45 PM

1. This post is in the wrong forum, if you want the blues to actually read and address your concerns id suggest posting them in the correct forum. "Feedback - Suggestions/Balance" If the way the CM's operate on every other blizz forum is any indication, when they come across this post they will simply move it without reading it and ask you to post in the correct forum next time.

2. You make some valid points, but its really hard to pass judgment this early in the beta. Part of that is due to a problem you addressed in that we cant test features that we dont have access to. Its hard to offer good constructive feedback when we dont know which of our concerns will be addressed by features blizz has waiting in the wings and just hasn't released. Its kind of a catch 22, we cant offer that much good feedback because all the features arnt in, but if we wait until all the features are in it will be too late to change anything major most likely.

3. Regarding latency, everything put forth so far is just hearsay, circumstantial observations, and logical deductions. No one here has any clue how this game, or HON, or SC1, or WC3 is actually coded, or how their back end network infrastructures operate. There may very well be good reasons beyond whats apparent to us for why these games operate the way they do. With the extremely limited information we do have its hard to offer any constructive feedback beyond the fact that you arnt satisfied, and would like it to change, which may or may not be realistically possible.

Also one note regarding HON, it is a very very VERY specialized game when compared with the level of flexibility and complexity SC1 and WC3 have, and that SC2 will likely improve upon. Flexibility almost always comes at the price of performance, not just in games, but in almost anything. SC2 and Battle.net need to be able to function while performing vastly different tasks from map to map, game type to game type.

4. I agree with you that we need more communication from the developers and the CM's. However I also know that for blizzard, communicating anything of substance to us is a complicated process. They simply cant have a casual conversation with us because their words get picked apart, twisted out of context, and often times the communication ends up causing more harm then good.

I personally feel that Blizzard should increase their level of communication despite that, and that with more communication they would find less and less people picking apart their words.

Toridas

03-18-2010, 08:46 PM

Regarding latency, everything put forth so far is just hearsay, circumstantial observations, and logical deductions. No one here has any clue how this game, or HON, or SC1, or WC3 is actually coded, or how their back end network infrastructures operate.

What? The OP is an EXPERT on these things as he states in every single post he makes on these forums.

He's also an expert in illegal servers and third-party hacks with all his iccp/delay reducer talk

Eloderung

03-18-2010, 08:47 PM

What? The OP is an EXPERT on these things as he states in every single post he makes on these forums.

He's also an expert in illegal servers and third-party hacks with all his iccp/delay reducer talk

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=114753

Run this test yourself and post your own results. I personally have ~100ms in HoN and ICCUP, and ~350ms in SCI, WarIII, and SC2 on b.net.

Are you afraid of the truth?

Ironically, people are reporting that european servers only have an innate built-in latency of only 100ms, while american beta testers are reporting the usual 250ms latency from WarIII/SCI.

Outofranch

03-18-2010, 08:48 PM

Outofranch

03-18-2010, 08:49 PM

The job of a beta tester is to criticize?

Bump.

Emrim

03-18-2010, 08:50 PM

Cool review. Will read later. I just got in. Hopefully they will give us a little taste of the single player campaign. I'm 100% new to starcraft and need to learn the ropes, along with the lore.

And soon I will troll the starcraft OT.... mwhaahhahaha

Dirkydu

03-18-2010, 08:51 PM

Not to get too off-topic, but if you're not going to read the entirety of the thread or at least all of the OP don't bother posting. FFS there's some good back and forth in here that's getting completely convoluted by idiots and morons who either don't have the capability or the attention span to stick with the conversation and reply with something intelligent.

I'm no expert with latency, but it's been suggested that Blizzard is keeping alot of the data from the games for review and collection. Is it possible the latency we're seeing in Beta is a result of this increased collection and not an accurate representation of what we'll be seeing in live? Just a thought.

Edit: This wasn't directed at the post above (Emrim), btw but rather earlier posts "you're retarded Bro," and such.

Eloderung

03-18-2010, 08:52 PM

I'm no expert with latency, but it's been suggested that Blizzard is keeping alot of the data from the games for review and collection. Is it possible the latency we're seeing in Beta is a result of this increased collection and not an accurate representation of what we'll be seeing in live? Just a thought.

Hopefully, but the latency in SC2 is so similar to that of SCI and WarIII on battle.net (both of which have been proven to run at significantly lower latencies via ICCUP/WC3DR), it's really hard to assume that this problem stems from some sort of debugging mode.

Also considering the number of statistics that are gathered in-game by HoN and WoW, and that I've never seen a blizzard beta product running with higher latency than its correspondent retail product...

Primoris

03-18-2010, 08:53 PM

Wait so in games you need under 5 ms to be good at them online? Every online game I have played if i had 30-50 ms latnency i would be really happy.

I'm sure its been pointed out, but the.3 and .5 he mentioned is 300ms and 500ms. 300 - 500 ms is quite laggy.

Noxman

03-18-2010, 08:54 PM

I believe you are legitimately concerned about SC2. However, you cannot compare Blizzards WoW BETA a game which falls on a much larger scale(and still released a little buggy) to a genre that they have already done before.

We don't need to test the campaign. It's single player and it doesn't need any balancing, it strictly for telling the story.

We don't need to know if we can talk to wow players over the battlenet system, if it doesnt work right away we will live trust me, we made it this far.

We don't need blues to respond to all our concerns, they already stated they have systems in place that can help identify current trends and imbalances. If Zerg players win 90% of the time with Roaches on all divisions they will see that without 40 threads talking about it.

The game is already extremely polished and DOES feel like Blizzard quality. Every other company would have released the game in its current state a year ago or earlier. I dunno I think you are just itching to play the entire game before its launch. I like some surprises.

Silver

03-18-2010, 08:55 PM

Originally posted by Petey.dolcegabbana

First off... TL;DR

Never post something this long again. If it takes that much rambling to get your point across, you have a problem with your command of the language.

You compared SC2 to WoW's beta, and how SC2 is only testing a small portion of the game. SC2 has been out < 1month, and I believe has 3-4 more months to go in testing. Do you think that because your beloved 3v3 and 4v4 cluster fks aren't available now, they never will be?

It is pretty obvious Battle.net 2.0 isn't done, hence the greyed out buttons, and locks on lots of the features. Do you think that when those get unlocked and are completed, you might have a different perspective? Wild guess.. this might happen later on in the beta?

I have played ~125-150 games I believe, and I can't say I agree about the lag. I have had very minimal problems.. and the only instance I can remember, the player disconnected very early on and the rest of the game went fine (was FFA so it didn't hurt).

You also said you thought SC2 would draw on other games of this genre, and previous Blizzard games. If you compared SC1 and SC2 side by side, and then compared the differences to certain games like WC3/TFT/C&C, it strikes me that you might see a strong correlation. The changes (improvements or not) seem to stem a lot from WC3 (rally points, mbs, auto-mining, etc). Maybe you had an idea in your head of what the game should be, and because it isn't there you aren't satisfied.

Obviously you aren't looking at the game objectively, and understanding what has been done and why it was done, because you have a very skewed perception. You also seem to just say things without thinking about them, which probably is why critique turned into a couple thousand word essay.

Actually, his critique was dead-on, very thoughtful, and in depth in his explanations. If you don't like to read, don't come to the forums.

To everyone else who is saying he's just whining, or give it time, do you not know why we are here? If Blizzard is already magically planning on doing everything the OP suggested, then they can read this and smile because they're on the ball. If they're not, they can take this into consideration and (hopefully) add it into the game later on in the beta.

We are here to provide feedback. This post is a superb example of well-written feedback. If you don't like to read, too damn bad. The fact that everyone here jumps on someone who is writing negative feedback is just astounding. This game isn't perfect, far from it, and I completely agree with the OP.

Bottle

03-18-2010, 08:56 PM

HoN has significantly lower latencies / unit response times than SC2 even when significantly more action is going on within a game.

That's all I said in my post. Are you going to disagree with that point?

Actually, yes.

HoN = 10 Players and 10 units with maybe 6 units per lane x 6 (both sides) 36. + or - the naturals, maybe 80 total units.

SC2 = 2 to 4 players and 300 to 800 units.

If you are actually decent with either games, you'll have higher APM, probably around 100-150. The major difference here is in HoN, you're controlling 1 unit. In SC2, that APM is being applied across maybe a hundred units at one time.

More action = SC2

Period.

Eloderung

03-18-2010, 08:57 PM

Actually, yes.

HoN = 10 Players and 10 units with maybe 6 units per lane x 6 (both sides) 36. + or - the naturals, maybe 80 total units.

SC2 = 2 to 4 players and 300 to 800 units.

If you are actually decent with either games, you'll have higher APM, probably around 100-150. The major difference here is in HoN, you're controlling 1 unit. In SC2, that APM is being applied across maybe a hundred units at one time.

More action = SC2

Period.

That doesn't explain how HoN with 10 players in the middle of a battle has significantly lower latency than I do at the start of a 1v1 with 5 probes and 5 drones total on the entire game map.

That also doesn't explain how my latency in SC2 in the situation above is identical to my latency in SC2 in this situation: http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h314/kaikulu/massinfestor1.jpg . Yes, I fraps'd it and counted the frames: same exact latency with 50 infestors and 100 infested terrans in a 4-way FFA battling another army, as I do with 5 drones and 5 probes on the entire map in a 1v1.

You can also have 800 units battling on-screen on SCI via ICCUP and you will get HoN-like latencies. Well, I haven't tested this, but judging from my experiences in ICCUP the latency with 800 units in one big battle on there would be significantly less than what you'd find in SC2 at the start of a game.

I wouldn't make a big deal about comparing SC2 latencies to HoN latencies if ICCUP/WC3DR did not exist. But those two things do exist, and they prove that lower latencies in SC1/War3 are possible, and given how similar the delay is in SC2 compared to previous blizzard titles, it's very reasonable to believe that lower delays in SC2 are also possible.

Tehschoolbus

03-18-2010, 08:58 PM

This is a great post and accurately captures alot of issues and concerns people have. Blizzard would due well to head some of this advice.

+ whatever the highest number that exists is

Jrange

03-18-2010, 08:59 PM

If you disconnect and reconnect yourself on HoN, it's not griefing.

If you disconnect and reconnect yourself on WoW, it's not griefing.

If you disconnect and reconnect yourself on <insert any modern game here with a client-server architecture model>, it's not griefing.

In each of these cases, the only person that suffers from a bad connection is the person with the bad connection.

And you don't even know what HoN is. It's not an RPG. It's a RTS. Not the same form of RTS as Starcraft but it's an RTS nonetheless. There is also plenty of competitive play in HoN, including pro leagues and professional games on beta. There are many times within a game where far more action/commands are going off at once in HoN than in SC2 even in intense 2v2 battles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZa1Y2dzzrg&feature=related you could never pull off this sort of micro in SC2, ever. Especially if LAN play is not introduced. Notice the delay between his clicks and actions responding on the screen. Go into a 1vcomputer custom game and try to do the same thing with a starting probe. You can't. It's impossible. That's the whole point of http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=114753 , ICCUP, WarIII Delay Reducer, etc.

And how exactly does that work? Maybe you need to explain exactly what happens in HoN that makes disconnects only affect the disconnected player.

I don't know how in a modern competitive game anyone can NOT be affected by someone else's bad connection. In WoW during PvP or PvE a bad connection can completely turn the tide of a battle. It's a crap shoot on how bad it affects them, but it ALWAYS affects everyone. A lost healer or tank and the whole raid is screwed. Even losing a DPS or CC can make life very difficult.

How exactly would you handle DCs in SC2? Do you just sit there waiting for the other player to come back? Or does it leave their units there free to be attacked? In 2v2 one person having to macro and micro 2 different armies is at a major disadvantage. I don't see how exactly you expect them to handle this.

Eloderung

03-18-2010, 09:00 PM

And how exactly does that work? Maybe you need to explain exactly what happens in HoN that makes disconnects only affect the disconnected player.

It's like every other modern game.

I'm not a network engineer, but from my understanding, Starcraft verifies that what people see is exactly what everyone else sees before proceeding. In most modern games, the server will run a game, and that information will be sent out to every client. If you do not see the information because of a lag spike or your connection stops or for whatever other reason, everything on your screen stops moving (because the information from the server is not reaching you and your client, and your client does not have the authority to determine what is happening action-wise), but nobody else in the game sees an interruption because the information is still streaming to everybody.

To my knowledge, all actions in HoN all take place server-side. That is, nothing your game client does can change the game directly. You can only input commands that tell the server-side game what to do; that action is processed there, and the results are sent back to your client. If you lag, everything stops.

HoN's network coding is probably very exceptional. I have never once seen desync on any player except myself during a lag spike. That is, I use a melee-range ability on another hero, and it will ALWAYS go off and in under .1s.

I don't know how in a modern competitive game anyone can NOT be affected by someone else's bad connection. In WoW during PvP or PvE a bad connection can completely turn the tide of a battle. It's a crap shoot on how bad it affects them, but it ALWAYS affects everyone. A lost healer or tank and the whole raid is screwed. Even losing a DPS or CC can make life very difficult.

What I mean is that when one person lags, everybody else lags.

The effects of that lag will still be noticed regardless of what model is used. I.e., if I have high packet loss, I'm not going to be healing well in WoW - but my high packet loss is not going to freeze the game for everyone else, it will just continue for everybody but me.

Again, I'm not a network engineer, but from what I've read the "one person lags = everybody lags" is also the same reason why a 250ms built-in innate delay exists in game models like SCI, WarIII, and SC2.

How exactly would you handle DCs in SC2? Do you just sit there waiting for the other player to come back? Or does it leave their units there free to be attacked? In 2v2 one person having to macro and micro 2 different armies is at a major disadvantage. I don't see how exactly you expect them to handle this.

I don't know about you, but if I disconnect for two minutes and are able to reconnect to a game, I'd have a better chance of winning than if I disconnect for one minute and 100% lose my game to my opponent.

In HoN, the person who disconnects automatically shares ally control. This control is revoked as soon as the person reconnects, even if it happens four minutes later. It could work the same in a team game - I would MUCH MUCH MUCH rather micro/macro two bases for a few minutes than completely lose my teammate for the rest of the game.

I've played plenty of competitive (blizzard and otherwise) games where the game does not pause when one person lags, and it has been fine. High-end arena in WoW, lvl90+ Diablo II hardcore characters, HoN, high-end raiding... sure, lag spikes happen and occasionally cause issues or a loss. But personally, losses from lag spikes in arena/hardcore characters are very small compared to how many games/matches/etc. I've played in the long run. And I've even gotten some wins from opponents lagging to counteract some of my own losses from latency issues.

In the end, I would much rather have <.1s unit responses and the occasional loss due to a lag spike that lasts between 1 and 60 seconds during an intense section of a game that makes or breaks a match, than the alternative of .3-.4s constant delays and protection from lag spike losses between 1 and 60 seconds during that small fraction of a game that may or may not decide the outcome of said game.

In other words, the "lag box" system as it is now protects against very few losses, but it comes at a huge price of having the existence of a lag box and constant high unit response times. The "lag box" model might even cause more losses than the lack of such a system in team battles, because once your teammate disconnects for a minute, he is gone for GOOD under the current system.

Tehschoolbus

03-18-2010, 09:01 PM

And how exactly does that work? Maybe you need to explain exactly what happens in HoN that makes disconnects only affect the disconnected player.

I don't know how in a modern competitive game anyone can NOT be affected by someone else's bad connection. In WoW during PvP or PvE a bad connection can completely turn the tide of a battle. It's a crap shoot on how bad it affects them, but it ALWAYS affects everyone. A lost healer or tank and the whole raid is screwed. Even losing a DPS or CC can make life very difficult.

How exactly would you handle DCs in SC2? Do you just sit there waiting for the other player to come back? Or does it leave their units there free to be attacked? In 2v2 one person having to macro and micro 2 different armies is at a major disadvantage. I don't see how exactly you expect them to handle this.
Obviously you would have the game handle it EXACTLY the same, except that if the player comes back online, they can resume control of their previously controlled units. Right now how it works is that if your partner disconnects, they have to play 2 teams. So then you would have it work like that, but add in the first sentence in this paragraph.

ooommmggg

And about the lag. I think that the major issue is that everyone's screens are frozen in place while the lag occurs. I would suggest that the other players are allowed to queue up commands while there is lag, that would then be carried out when the game continues. If everybody's screens weren't frozen still then they'd be less disoriented by that part of play.

Chalon

03-18-2010, 09:02 PM

There's no point asking for them to rewrite the network architecture to allow people to return after long disconnects, or make it not lock stepped. It's not going to happen, it would require a rewrite of core networking logic that's not happening this close to ship.

What's a much more reasonable request and what we should be asking for is a reduction in the built-in latency, especially if the European servers are already running with a lower built-in latency as suggested by the teamliquid testing.

Furthermore, I'm already almost certain there is built-in latency adjustment if someone is running slower than the current latency value, so if they set it 100ms instead of 250ms, and one of the players in the game couldn't handle it, the game would just be able to revert back to 250ms.

Unfortunately, the one thing this won't fix is the oceanic players reporting 1s+ delays when issuing commands. I'm not sure if that's due to a combination of ping and packet loss or what. Unfortunately, in a network architecture like SC2's packet loss is extremely detrimental to its performance.

Jrange

03-18-2010, 09:03 PM

I can see that In 2v2, but in 1v1, if they are lagging that badly, or get DCed the game is already over.

But yes, the lag box is very annoying.

Martin

03-18-2010, 09:04 PM

OP is pretty much dead on. Starcraft II while feeling like a nice solid game, feels stale for a blizzard game. I found myself getting bored playing because it tuns into x +2 = 4 solve for x type of game where there is only 1 or 2 correct answers for dealing with situations.

Tehschoolbus

03-18-2010, 09:05 PM

I can see that In 2v2, but in 1v1, if they are lagging that badly, or get DCed the game is already over.

But yes, the lag box is very annoying.

Not all games are like this. My sparring partner gets dropped from time to time because of his ISP. It's not lag, its just a random drop. It's not like its an impossibility either... It happens to me too, and I live across the country and use a different ISP. Think about laptops too.. wireless connections can be hazy sometimes and might go out for a minute and then come back in for an hour. The game wouldn't be already over if the other player can manage until they get logged back in. Usually the disconnect only lasts about a minute and then you're good again.

I'd be perfectly happy if they could add an "Uninterrupted Gameplay" setting for custom games, where if one person lags the entire game continues unabated. Instead of a lag box, just treat that player as AFK and not sending commands for the duration of his/her lag spike and allow the person to reconnect at will from battle.net (again, any network-savvy person is free to correct me here if this is not possible).
Anything is possible when it comes to programming, and definitely this.

Chalon

03-18-2010, 09:06 PM

It's like every other modern game.

I'm not a network engineer, but from my understanding, Starcraft verifies that what people see is exactly what everyone else sees before proceeding. In most modern games, the server will run a game, and that information will be sent out to every client. If you do not see the information because of a lag spike or your connection stops or for whatever other reason, everything on your screen stops moving (because the information from the server is not reaching you and your client, and your client does not have the authority to determine what is happening action-wise), but nobody else in the game sees an interruption because the information is still streaming to everybody.

Starcraft 2 uses a mostly peer-to-peer lockstep model. You will never get the "every player in a vacuum" result in a peer-to-peer model.

HoN uses a server/client model with client prediction. As I've said before, this model would not work in SC2. HoN's networking programmers are not doing anything that hasn't already been done for many other genres. It's just for their particular type of RTS, that model can work.

I'll link you this article about network architectures (the article is new, some of the examples are old).

http://gafferongames.com/networking-for-game-programmers/what-every-programmer-needs-to-know-about-game-networking/

Here's what it says about peer-to-peer lockstep.

The basic idea is to abstract the game into a series of turns and a set of command messages when processed at the beginning of each turn direct the evolution of the game state. For example: move unit, attack unit, construct building. All that is needed to network this is to run exactly the same set of commands and turns on each player’s machine starting from a common initial state.

...

The next limitation is that in order to ensure that the game plays out identically on all machines it is necessary to wait until all player’s commands for that turn are received before simulating that turn. This means that each player in the game has latency equal to the most lagged player. RTS games typically hide this by providing audio feedback immediately and/or playing cosmetic animation, but ultimately any truly game affecting action may occur only after this delay has passed.

...

in RTS games the game state consists of many thousands of units and is simply too large to exchange between players. These games have no choice but to exchange the commands which drive the evolution of the game state.

EDIT:
To my knowledge though, HoN is also a lock-step model - it has all the characteristics of that model as opposed to games like WoW, where some desync can occur due to client-side actions. Again, I'm not a network engineer - somebody correct me if I'm wrong - but why can't the server simply treat somebody under a lag spike / disconnect the same way as a player who is sitting there AFK and not sending any commands to the server? After coming back from a small lag spike in HoN, your game resyncs just fine with the server, and you continue as normal.

It's by definition not a lock-step model. If it were a lock-step model your lag would affect everyone else.

What they probably do is once the server detects you have desynced, rather than playing everything in rapid sucession, as happens in WoW, they just reset you to the current state once your spike is over. It wouldn't be that hard to leverage reconnection code in that case. Note, I haven't played HoN very much so I wouldn't be able to tell you for sure.

Tehschoolbus

03-18-2010, 09:07 PM

Chalon

03-18-2010, 09:08 PM

@Chalon

Okay, networking aside, they could still have an action queue that would allow users to enter as many actions as they want into the queue, which would then all be pushed when the game resumes. Think of if you could set game speed = 0. The player would still be able to shift-click to do different actions but nothing would ever happen because the game speed is 0. I know that technically the actions would be communicated over the network but I'm just saying that's how it would look to the user.

But if you just hit a lag spike, and allowed all players to enter an infinite number of commands while waiting for the spike to resolve, you're more than likely going to overload whoever's connection caused the lag spike in the first place. So basically the game would indefinitely stutter.

Tehschoolbus

03-18-2010, 09:09 PM

Eloderung

03-18-2010, 09:10 PM

Starcraft 2 uses a mostly peer-to-peer lockstep model. You will never get the "every player in a vacuum" result in a peer-to-peer model.

HoN uses a server/client model with client prediction. As I've said before, this model would not work in SC2. HoN's networking programmers are not doing anything that hasn't already been done for many other genres. It's just for their particular type of RTS, that model can work.

I'll link you this article about network architectures (the article is new, some of the examples are old).

http://gafferongames.com/networking-for-game-programmers/what-every-programmer-needs-to-know-about-game-networking/

Here's what it says about peer-to-peer lockstep.

EDIT:

It's by definition not a lock-step model. If it were a lock-step model your lag would affect everyone else.

What they probably do is once the server detects you have desynced, rather than playing everything in rapid sucession, as happens in WoW, they just reset you to the current state once your spike is over. It wouldn't be that hard to leverage reconnection code in that case. Note, I haven't played HoN very much so I wouldn't be able to tell you for sure.

HoN seems to have all of the advantages of lock-step with none of the disadvantages. The thing is, I've never seen desync with anything in the game except when I personally have a lag spike. My melee abilities never not go off if somebody else is in melee range, in intense battles. Abilities are responsive. There's a reason a lot of people say the game network coding must be pretty amazing.

Whatever they do, it should be a model for SC2's network architecture. Blizzard should be the best game designers out there, not second-rate, in any area of their games.

S2 will only be charging $30 per HoN client, a one time fee, and they're going to host every game.

Chalon

03-18-2010, 09:11 PM

I see what you mean by that. However, does that mean that it's safe to say a user is capable of overloading the game by creating a bot that would enter infinite random actions? If there's protection against a hack like that then there should be some sort of way to deal with this situation.

Maybe if the action queue is sent out over a period of time. Say, over a period of a second. That would allow for a few batches of actions to be sent out. Plus, units have a maximum number of actions anyways, so the number can't be "infinite" but rather [commandable objects in game] * [max queuable commands]

It's possible one could lag the game by issuing a lot of commands, though in reality I'm sure there is some limit to the number of commands it will accept. I don't know though, personally I'd prefer the lag box over that solution.

HoN seems to have all of the advantages of lock-step with none of the disadvantages. The thing is, I've never seen desync with anything in the game except when I personally have a lag spike. My melee abilities never not go off if somebody else is in melee range, in intense battles. Abilities are responsive. There's a reason a lot of people say the game network coding must be pretty amazing.

it's hard to speculate without knowing exactly what is client authoritative and how the prediction works.

One of the games I worked on was very melee-focused but also used a lot of client prediction, using a dedicated server/client model, and we did a good job of hiding desyncs for the most part. and this was with 16 networked players and potentially 20-30 AI, which is about the same load as HoN.

As I've said before, though, you can't really compare HoN's model to SC2's. If you say, tripled the number of player-controlled units in HoN I'd suspect you'd find their model would no longer work too well.

So that's sort of the problem. The networking model in HoN works very, very well for that type of game but it just can't work when you have potential for even only 2 players at 200 supply.

Accordion

03-18-2010, 09:12 PM

Awesome post and definitely sums up the general feel of the beta.

A reply from Blizzard on whether these are even issues or not would be a great start. As is, it seems like they are satisfied simply trying to balance the game with minor changes in each patch. This gives off a feeling that they think the rest of the game is complete, it's somewhat troubling for the future of the game. At this rate, it feels like SC2 might go the way of WC3 unless some things are addressed.

Eloderung

03-18-2010, 09:13 PM

A reply from Blizzard on whether these are even issues or not would be a great start. As is, it seems like they are satisfied simply trying to balance the game with minor changes in each patch. This gives off a feeling that they think the rest of the game is complete, it's somewhat troubling for the future of the game. At this rate, it feels like SC2 might go the way of WC3 unless some things are addressed.

Yup, a little response goes a long way, even if it's "Sorry, we can't do anything about the latency."

Jester

03-18-2010, 09:14 PM

That is actually a valid concern.

It actually isn't. Wi-fi signals are non-ionizing, meaning they lack the required energy to damage molecular bonds.

Chax

03-18-2010, 09:15 PM

I was hoping that open chat channels would come into the game eventually...
I think almost everyone will agree that a chat channel would be a great idea ESPECIALLY in a Beta test.
Great place to talk live about bugs, strat, set up games, MEET other players.
In HoN, if you lag or disconnect, nobody else is affected... You have five minutes to reconnect at your leisure, again, without affecting anybody else in the game.
If you disconnected for one minute in most SC2 games you would loose. Game over, the end. I think automatically giving allies their friends units is good enough. I've won a game despite my ally dropping because I was given access to his units.

I might not be a skilled enough player, but I feel the game is certainly Blizzard quality. Yes there are balance issues, yes BNet could use an update, and I do feel that BIG feedback should be taken into consideration, but overall I am very happy with what we have so far.
I think people are underestimating how big of a deal SC2 is, and how much work is required to make this game live up to it's predecessor.
I want to give Blizzard a big round of applause for all they've done so far.
*Applause*

Eloderung

03-18-2010, 09:16 PM

If you disconnected for one minute in most SC2 games you would loose. Game over, the end. I think automatically giving allies their friends units is good enough. I've won a game despite my ally dropping because I was given access to his units.

In HoN you're given control of your allied units until the person reconnects.

So somehow, you will win more games if your partner is dropped for good after a one minute grace period, as opposed to having your partner able to reconnect after a disconnect?

I'm not sure I understand your logic.

HoN: Partner disconnects for two minutes, you gain allied control of his units, he reconnects and gets control back.
SC2: Partner disconnects for two minutes, you gain allied control of his units, but he is never, ever able to reconnect.

Tehschoolbus

03-18-2010, 09:17 PM

In HoN you're given control of your allied units until the person reconnects.

So somehow, you will win more games if your partner is dropped for good after a one minute grace period, as opposed to having your partner able to reconnect after a disconnect?

I'm not sure I understand your logic.

HoN: Partner disconnects for two minutes, you gain allied control of his units, he reconnects and gets control back.
SC2: Partner disconnects for two minutes, you gain allied control of his units, but he is never, ever able to reconnect.
This is exactly what I said!.............................

To be honest I'd rather see more blue posts than anything. Did blizzard go "omg we've got this far.. but alas maybe we shouldve thought ahead and just make another MMORPG cash cow. Eh, screw starcraft 2, mmo time!" and then just forget about us? The only blue posts i seem to see are on unimportant topics. People will post bugs and on one in like 15 or 20 posts they'll go "thanks. we're looking into this." They never try to address any issues. I can see how they might fear saying the wrong thing.. but there's a way to calm the public's thirst by at least letting us know they're thinking about us.

I'd really feel like there's a point to my existance and feedback on this beta if they would give us feedback in return. Seriously.... they just handed out a patch and what did it contain? Upgrade times and zealot hp change. Seriously?

Eloderung

03-18-2010, 09:18 PM

Yea, as I said, this just feels too much like WoW on the Public Test Realms for a small patch, not the beta test of one of the most anticipated games of the decade :[

Burgerofdoom

03-18-2010, 09:19 PM

Agreed with all except the rock paper scissors part.

Eloderung

03-18-2010, 09:20 PM

Agreed with all except the rock paper scissors part.

May have been a slight exaggeration, but it's definitely more true (in my opinion) for SC2 than it was for SCI and WarIII.

Also, last "bump" from me before I let this discussion die. Interested in hearing more thoughts on the subjects.

Nephrahim

03-18-2010, 09:21 PM

Bobreeda

03-18-2010, 09:22 PM

Inoob

03-18-2010, 09:23 PM

I'm sorry but... that's kind of crazy.

Warcraft III had hard counters out of it's ass. Light armor was weak agienst siege and Peirceing damage, Heavy armor takes more damage agienst magic attacks, Medium was weak agienst normal damage, ext.

Stacraft I ALSO had hard counters. There were three different attack and armor types.

theres a difference between hard counters in war3 and sc2. yes there were hard counters in war3 but htey werent as extreme, and if they were, you always had the ability to take out the hard counter units very easily with another unit, but... if the other player used his hard counter units very very well he could still do tons of damage... but even if you didnt have hard counter units and you outplayed the other guy then you could slow him down a ton until your counter units arrived.

for example.

bat riders are very effective against air... but stupid weak against ground and have very low health so they die super fast ( or suicide ). but they can be used for hit and run tactics because with an upgrade they are very useful against buildings. there was a ton of depth to the games "hard counters" because they werent as extreme and there were tons of ways to tackle the problems. and one of those ways was through good gameplay skill.

knights vs sorcs.... knights will be able to take out sorcs no problem, but if used effectively, you should be able to disable those knights and run your units back to safety while building up a bunch of units to help out with taking out those knights. now, combine some counter to knights and those sorcs and the player with all knights is doomed unless hes got some way of disabling your sheep magic/slow. etc.

theres many more layers to counters in war3 versus in sc2. how many ways do you have to deal with cloak? its an on or off ability, theres no shades to gray in sc2 it seems.

Eloderung

03-18-2010, 09:24 PM

I do agree with your post, but it's only 2 weeks into beta. do you remember the beta phase of SC 1? Hardly the game we love and know today. Blizzard is really good at making games, but they're even better at perfecting them.

here's an example of what i mean:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

Blizzard has also learned substantially over the past few years.

WoW expansion betas are a perfect example of this. The d2 legacy content team is a perfect example of this. The SCI team that perfected Starcraft years and years after release is an example of this.

SC2 is not. It's a regression from much of the progress that has turned blizzard into the amazing game company its fans worship and adore for being different than every other developer out there.

People bash me for comparing this beta to WoW betas, but really, there's no reason to do so. If this beta were being handled by the WoW team, blizzard would have made dozens of posts already about current issues in the community, both by the usual CM folk and the developers who have the power to directly make changes to the game. They would have announced that dynamic/variable innate built-in latency mechanisms would be put into place to provide ICCUP/WC3DR-like latencies in SC2 without sacrificing current playability for anyone. They would have acknowledged that they screwed up with battle.net 2.0, something which the WoW team isn't afraid to do if a feature is wildly unpopular or doesn't work out like they thought it would. There would have been blizzard-hosted discussion threads on WHY battle.net 2.0 feels inferior to b.net 1.0, on the latency issues, and on people's opinions of the new counter system compared to the old counter system.

I don't suppose you remember what happened to Starcraft after its first showing? How everybody mocked it for being Warcraft in Space? How blizzard revamped the entire game more or less to appease fans? Perfect example of what I'm talking about.

WoW betas also are often five months long or longer to fix everything up before release. Blizzard has already stated this beta will be on the shorter side, around 3 months, with many, many features not being touched until retail (confirmed by the Korean interview). The progress made so far (four patches which include zero new features/content, and only very minor balance adjustments) has been minimal compared to all other betas I've participated in; it doesn't seem like they're taking many of the concerns posted by many, many people in the community seriously.

My point is, the last RTS that blizzard released was built upon the knowledge they gained in making Starcraft I and the years that followed. Battle.net 1.0 in WarIII was an improvement over that of SC1, custom games and the editor were wildly better, and blizzard listened to people in making WarIII a great game. I don't see why they're not doing the same for SC2. It's like they took everything that worked for them, threw it out the window, and decided to take random features from Steam/Xbox Live/Facebook which have little to no relevance or usefulness to their own community, and mash it all together into one service then call it an improvement.

I've never known blizzard to rush a title out the door like they seem to be doing with SC2 right now. Let's only make minor balance adjustments, not test most of the game features so that we can get this beta out of the door and on the shelves within 3 months. Doesn't sound like the same folk at blizzard who would scrap entire games (Ghost, WC Adventures) if they weren't going to be blizzard-quality to the customers. Doesn't sound like the same people who are redesigning the entirety of lvl1-60 zones/continents/quests/etc. for WoW, in an expansion pack, in addition to providing the same amount of high-end content and new features that regularly occur in an expansion pack.

If I see any sort of blizzard response stating that "We're aware that our testers are very unhappy with battle.net 2.0, how do you all feel about X, Y, and Z features that we will now add to try and remedy this?" or "We'll try to fix the latency, we'll be pushing this out in the next patch" or "We'll probably lengthen this beta test so that we can get some tester time on Galaxy", a lot of my criticism will die down. That is what I expect from blizzard beta tests now, the same sort of player-dev interaction that made WoW so popular in betas and after release. Sure, it's only been two or three weeks of beta, but I get the feeling that two or three months of SC2 beta will accomplish less than two weeks of a WoW expansion beta.

Leviathan

03-18-2010, 09:25 PM

Blizzard better add a chat channel system before the game is released, or else their reputation is forever tarnished in my eyes. I can imagine them ruining Diablo III in such a way as well. If they @%## that up, I'm done with video games.

Rsb

03-18-2010, 09:26 PM

Beta test is meant to test these things...
It hasn't even been live for a week, and you want to crit everyone with your virtually useless wall of text. Props though: successful troll is successful.

Raydude

03-18-2010, 09:27 PM

I agree with the OP since he does make some good points, but it is still only the start of the beta, hopefully it'll get better, by us ranting and criticizing. The hard counter is the only thing that really bothers me the most in sc2.

BTW, I heard when you lag in Hon and it doesn't affect anyone else is due to the fact that it uses player server clients or something like that, allowing each player to play the game as if they're the host, then send the data to the real server. There's no "real" host for the games in HoN.

*inserting really interesting rant*
From the creators of the GHost bots, bring to us, the next generation reconnection breakthrough via third party. Icefrog's beeing testing it with Dota it's WORKING, yay for community, serious hardcore boo for battle.net, since I really don't see a difference between old one and new one except a better matchmaking/league system and NO CHAT ROOMS AT ALL. Yes blizzard plans to replace it with something as announced, but no, they failed to listen AGAIN. The community STRONGLY wants a chatroom, not anything else, even if it's something else, tell us what the heck it is. This lack of "blue" communication with testers is really annoying.

e: I would love to see a blue respond to this thread, seriously, to prove to us they at least care about our criticism of the current beta game. And seriously, calling someone a troll without explaination cause he's pointing out the how unresponsive the blues are being is just dumb.