StarCraft II

[Malakili]

So, I know a lot of you folks who bought SC2 weren't necessarily doing so for competitive play and were looking forward to the custom maps and such.  Well, it is has been a long time coming, but pretty soon patch 1.5 is going to hit with a totally overhauled system for finding custom games/maps in SC2 so I thought it was worth a bump here for those of you who might have the game but haven't been paying attention recently:

Long version: http://us.launcher.battle.net/en-us/sc2/patch?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=launcher&utm_campaign=d3&utm_content=left-banner

Relevant Stuff:

The StarCraft II Arcade has arrived! To make way for this new feature, significant changes have been made to the StarCraft II user interface. Two new buttons have been added: the Arcade button, which will act as a portal to a brand new custom games experience that features dramatic improvements in finding, rating and playing custom games, and the StarCraft II button, which will provide access to classic single player and multiplayer experiences, including the StarCraft II campaign, multiplayer ladder, melee maps and more.
Arcade Button:
A new Arcade button has been added to the main Battle.net navigation panel at the top-left of the user interface. Custom games once found in the Custom Games interface will now be found here with an improved interface and tools. Players now have more flexibility to find, play, and review custom games, more quickly and easily than ever before.
The Spotlight page displays new or up-and-coming games. Players can visit the Spotlight to browse featured games, new games on the rise, and top-rated games as reviewed by the community.
Players can search for games based on genre, popularity, star ratings, newness, and recent spikes in popularity.
Each custom game in the Arcade is represented by a game icon. The game icon contains a large game image (provided by the creator), and includes the game’s name and star rating. Hovering over the icon displays the game description.
Clicking on a game icon brings players into the Game Info page, the main portal for each game in the Arcade. This page contains summarized information about a custom game, including a description, screenshots, play instructions, reviews, and other information. The Game Info page consists of several sections:
Overview: This contains the game description and a set of screenshots that show off the action.
How to Play: This is where players will find instructions (basic and advanced) and how to win. There is also space for additional images to supplement the game instructions.
Patch Notes: This is where the game creator can list updates that have been made to the game, so that players can see how the game is growing and improving.
Review: After playing, players can give a game a star rating and enter a text review. Once enough ratings have been submitted, the game receives an Average Star Rating that displays on the game icon. Players can also mark other players' reviews as "Helpful" which will ensure that the best reviews rise to the top.
Tutorial: Game creators can now publish tutorials for their creations. If a tutorial exists for a game, a "Play Tutorial" button will appear on the Game Info Page, which can be clicked to immediately launch the tutorial.
There is now a "Join Chat" button on the Game Info Page that allows players to join a channel named after that Arcade game.
The new Open Games List displays games that have players, but aren't full and ready to start yet. This should help players identify active games and find partners or opponents more easily.

[Ragnoros]

About damn time.

[Margalis]

This is like a year too late for me.

[Ironwood]

Reusing Valve innovation since 1709.

[Typhon]

Are there any decent DOTA-style maps?

[Chimpy]

-post removed for incoherence.

[Malakili]

Are there any decent DOTA-style maps?

Hero Attack is pretty decent, but it doesn't have quite the polish that stand alone MOBAs have made me accustomed to.

[Malakili]

As a follow up, this patch was deployed today.  It is a pretty hefty patch.  It also switches SC2 over to the same streaming patcher/launcher as WoW and Diablo 3.

[Ingmar]

Cool, I will have to remember to give this a go later.

[Tairnyn]

Squadron Tower Defense is a romping good time.

[K9]

Looks like the Heart of the Swarm Beta is up and running.

[Ironwood]

Source on that ?  And is there a way in ?

(See, if I get into Beta, I don't actually break my rule of no more blizzavision products.  )

[Malakili]

In your blizzard account settings you can set yourself as interested in betas for their products.  You probably already are, but you can check it out.  Right now only media/pro gamers/etc are in as far as I know.  General invites will be going out at some point.  Also during the original SC2 beta once people were in that gave out friend invites, so that could be another way in down the road.  Also, the beta is multiplayer only.

[Ironwood]

My best mate (female) used to be shagging someone at Blizz and we used to get free beta that way.

Now they've broken up, it's horrible.

 

[trias_e]

I've been playing this game regularly since it came out.  I better get in this damn thing.  I deserve something for 2 years of suffering.  (This is only somewhat a joke.)

[K9]

Heart of the Swarm, now with levelling

Seems like fluff, but a grind nonetheless

[Malakili]

Heart of the Swarm, now with levelling

Seems like fluff, but a grind nonetheless

The responses I'm seeing to this announcement has been overwhelmingly positive so far and it is baffling.  I guess a lot of people feel a lot of anxiety over playing SC2, and they say this will give them a reason to play.  The idea being that they know they'll at least get some positive feedback even when they lose, whereas right now I guess it can be a little harsh.  Nonetheless, I don't really feel like there can be a huge population out there that is just on the cusp of playing multiplayer SC2 that will suddenly jump back on board because now they can unlock some extra portraits even when they lose.

Heart of the Swarm does actually look pretty decent though.  This is hardly one of the main features.

[rrazcueta]

I stopped playing SC2 because after running through silver to gold to diamond I started losing a LOT and didn't know how to get better. I was also really drunk when I was running the ladder, and playing sober I would play even worse. So I just bought a bunch of games on Steam and lamented on my fun time of pwning newbs after doing what Day9 told me to do.

When HotS comes out they should just make Wings of Liberty free to play with a ton of advertisements.

[Malakili]

I stopped playing SC2 because after running through silver to gold to diamond I started losing a LOT and didn't know how to get better. I was also really drunk when I was running the ladder, and playing sober I would play even worse. So I just bought a bunch of games on Steam and lamented on my fun time of pwning newbs after doing what Day9 told me to do.

When HotS comes out they should just make Wings of Liberty free to play with a ton of advertisements.

The "problem" with the ladder is that when you are playing at a certain level, you WILL lose 50% of your games.  This is less of aproblem early on, because the worse you are, the easier it is to get better.  By the time you hit diamond you are in the top 20% of all players by definition, and getting into masters takes jumping up into the top 2% of all players.  That takes some serious work, and Diamond is really the most you can hope for unless you put in some serious dedication or happen to be some kind of savant. 

There does come a point, I think, where most people hit a ceiling though.  Or in other words, I have a feeling that it isn't just about it taking 100 hours of playing/learning to get better at some point, but it takes consistent dedication towards those 100 hours.  So, if you could put that in over 3 weeks and play *that* regularly, you could continue improving.  But given that those 100 hours are probably spaced over several months, you just never play enough consistently to build the fine tuned muscle memory and knowledge of timings (which is something that are constantly evolving) to actually improve more.

Learning a language is the best analogy I can think of.  In the beginning you can learn a ton even if you are only taking a couple of classes a week.  But at some point, you really need to go and immerse yourself in the language/country for an extended period to get over the hump.

[Fordel]

It's been proven time and again that people love them some fucking loot. Even if it's just a decal.

[Ingmar]

Heart of the Swarm, now with levelling

Seems like fluff, but a grind nonetheless

The responses I'm seeing to this announcement has been overwhelmingly positive so far and it is baffling.  I guess a lot of people feel a lot of anxiety over playing SC2, and they say this will give them a reason to play.  The idea being that they know they'll at least get some positive feedback even when they lose, whereas right now I guess it can be a little harsh.  Nonetheless, I don't really feel like there can be a huge population out there that is just on the cusp of playing multiplayer SC2 that will suddenly jump back on board because now they can unlock some extra portraits even when they lose.

Heart of the Swarm does actually look pretty decent though.  This is hardly one of the main features.

The response is all positive because there's no downside.

[Malakili]

Heart of the Swarm, now with levelling

Seems like fluff, but a grind nonetheless

The responses I'm seeing to this announcement has been overwhelmingly positive so far and it is baffling.  I guess a lot of people feel a lot of anxiety over playing SC2, and they say this will give them a reason to play.  The idea being that they know they'll at least get some positive feedback even when they lose, whereas right now I guess it can be a little harsh.  Nonetheless, I don't really feel like there can be a huge population out there that is just on the cusp of playing multiplayer SC2 that will suddenly jump back on board because now they can unlock some extra portraits even when they lose.

Heart of the Swarm does actually look pretty decent though.  This is hardly one of the main features.

The response is all positive because there's no downside.

Ok, fair enough, fair enough.  But what I really mean is that I'm surprised it isn't more neutral at the very least.  I've seen a lot of "Wow, this is great, this will really get me laddering again!" and so forth.   I don't think they *shouldn't* add it, because as you say, there isn't a downside.  But at the same time, it adds nothing either (to my mind).  I know people love seeing bars fill up.  But I at least like bars filling up to mean something.  Realistically, this is just a new portrait that unlocks every X number of games you play.  It literally might as well just be a counter which counts the number of games you've played.  I guess there are some people out there who could be fooled into something like "Level 4 Zerg" meaning something, but to my mind it is just that - being fooled.

[Megrim]

The reason that people aren't 'excited' about it, imo, is that the core gameplay is still shit. Or to be more precise and less inflammatory, not as good as Brood War.

I mean, I had a good laugh when I saw the previews for the next expansion, and they featured... a whole bunch of things that got taken out of the original, because the new design team at Blizzard wanted to be special unique snowflakes and make transformers toys.

=(

[Malakili]

 

If there are issues with SC2 gameplay they have more to do with mining efficiency and unit pathing (both sort of the same problem actually).  The pathing is so good in SC2 that there is basically no downside to the "death ball."  As such, huge armies fight at really high efficiency even with very little unit control by the player.  In Brood War units were stupid as shit, which meant that there was a practical limit to how many units you wanted to put in one area just on the principle that they would bump into each other too much and not actually fight.  As a result, armies would spread out a lot more, there was more incentive to have multiple smaller armies out on the map, and most of all, a smaller group of units could stand up against a bigger group of units if that bigger group didn't have good positioning.   

SC2 is still the best RTS on the market right now though, which probably says more about the state of the RTS market than anything.

[Setanta]

I would really like this to be an insta-buy for me.

Blizzard/Diablo 3 and the levelling system make it a resounding "if it ever goes on sale at 50% off in 20 years when there isn't a better game around then I might buy it".

I play for the jump in game as I did with SC/BW and to a lesser extent SC2.

[rrazcueta]

I stopped playing SC2 because after running through silver to gold to diamond I started losing a LOT and didn't know how to get better. I was also really drunk when I was running the ladder, and playing sober I would play even worse. So I just bought a bunch of games on Steam and lamented on my fun time of pwning newbs after doing what Day9 told me to do.

When HotS comes out they should just make Wings of Liberty free to play with a ton of advertisements.

The "problem" with the ladder is that when you are playing at a certain level, you WILL lose 50% of your games.  This is less of aproblem early on, because the worse you are, the easier it is to get better.  By the time you hit diamond you are in the top 20% of all players by definition, and getting into masters takes jumping up into the top 2% of all players.  That takes some serious work, and Diamond is really the most you can hope for unless you put in some serious dedication or happen to be some kind of savant. 

There does come a point, I think, where most people hit a ceiling though.  Or in other words, I have a feeling that it isn't just about it taking 100 hours of playing/learning to get better at some point, but it takes consistent dedication towards those 100 hours.  So, if you could put that in over 3 weeks and play *that* regularly, you could continue improving.  But given that those 100 hours are probably spaced over several months, you just never play enough consistently to build the fine tuned muscle memory and knowledge of timings (which is something that are constantly evolving) to actually improve more.

Learning a language is the best analogy I can think of.  In the beginning you can learn a ton even if you are only taking a couple of classes a week.  But at some point, you really need to go and immerse yourself in the language/country for an extended period to get over the hump.

I think the real solution is a competitive ladder and a casual ladder. In other online games that have that kind of time investment (rounds of FPSes mostly) there are rotating game types so even if you're losing you're not really grinding the same loss over and over again. No name FFAs? Comp stomps? Random Blizzard approved arcade games? How about bringing back weird stuff like mineral maps? Make a ladder button for this (and the traditional ladder as well), and you'll see people playing SC2 more casually. People playing on the traditional ladder will still play people on the custom ladder, but every once in a while the custom ladder folks will separate and play their own games that are less serious and have people typing and talking SC more. If you're going to the park to play some recreational basketball, it's not all 5 on 5 games. Sometimes you're just shooting around talking with other people, practicing.

[Malakili]

Well, they are at least adding an unranked ladder.  Not quite what you are talking about, but at least it'll take some of that stress away of playing a couple games and worrying about tanking your ranking because you aren't feeling 100% sharp.  This is the single biggest reason I don't choose to play SC2 when I don't choose to.  I'm simply exhausted and I feel like tanking my rank if I only have an hour to play at the end of a day which has left me without the mental/physical precision to play at my "normal" level.

[Fordel]

SC in general, is just a stressful game to play. There are no natural 'breaks' in a active game. The game just keeps scaling up and up and up requiring more and more of your concentration as the game goes on longer and longer.


Like in a Dota game, if you die, you have 20-60 seconds to collect yourself. Or there are times when you are running back to fountain to pick up an item or heal up or whatever, where you can be on auto pilot. There are natural lows in the action/attention required.


With SC, outside of that first 2 minutes of SCV building, the game DEMANDS all your attention, or you lose.

[Ingmar]

Yeah I think that's my problem with it.

[Rasix]

My problem is that old man APM makes you watch a game you should win and lose because you can't keep up with it.  I just can't keep up with all of the micro.  It's also why my potential champ pool in DOTA2 removes anything with a pet or illusions.    (as an aside, it's partially why I'm back playing lol.  No micro requirement at all.)

Brain says yes, fingers say no.  Brain then poses the question: "shouldn't you be relaxing about now?".

And yes, a typical game of SC2 is pretty much a 15 minute long panic attack.  I just can't do it anymore.

[Ingmar]

Clearly you should be playing Blood Bowl. 

[Malakili]

SC2 can be played pretty competitively with only about 60 APM, which isn't actually that quickly.  The problem is that playing at a lower APM is more possible when you have good habits.  If you are panics and trying to do 10 things, then you will hit a lot of wrong keys (wasted APM), where as if you hit all the right keys, then you can get by on much less.  Of course, the paradox is that if you play enough to build the muscle memory, you probably also play enough to get faster.  Some lower tier pros play only in the 110 range.

[Samwise]

SC2 can be played pretty competitively with only about 60 APM, which isn't actually that quickly. 

One click or whatever per second still sounds to me like a quick pace to keep up for half an hour or more.

[Trippy]

APM is totally misleading. If you watch a pro actually play they'll click on the same fucking spot like a billion times to move one group of units (i.e. spam clicks). That's why their APMs are so high.

[lamaros]

They're just keeping their hand in for those moments when you have to actually do a lot of things.