The Death of Starcraft II Custom Games

So I just found out that I will pretty much never get to play any great custom maps due to Blizzard's system of ranking maps by popularity. Since we HAVE to download maps from Bnet 2.0, I will never be able to play the magnificent Final Fantasy mod that I saw ( YouTube - Starcraft 2 Mod - Final Fantasy 0.2) since the only way for it to be accessible is if I'm friends with the map maker and he hosts it for me, or that it somehow gets enough popularity on Bnet 2.0 to get through the 47 variations of tower defense and tug of war.

Seriously, I love how the new system gets rid of the annoying DOTA spams on WC3, but that's not gonna do a thing since anyone can publish someone else's work by renaming the map. Then the renamer is credited with the map, and it's the reason why the same exact tower defense games are under 8 different names and take up 8 out of the top 20 spots. Ridiculous. Even worse, they don't even show any maps after the top 50. So yea, if an excellent map is made, but the host doesn't have a huge friend list, you guessed it, the map will stay buried and will never be seen by the public.

Also, as some of you may have noticed, Ultimate Tank Defense was banned from Bnet 2.0. They gave no warning, and were completely unforgiving. They banned the map, but more importantly, they banned the creator from ever publishing a map to Bnet 2.0 again. They didn't tell him what he did wrong, and didn't give him a chance to fix his map. They just said that the map contained inappropriate content and banned it, and him, without warning. What is this fascist nonsense? Yes I know it's rated Teen, but ONLINE INTERACTIONS ARE NOT RATED AND THEREFORE SHOULD NOT BE MODERATED LIKE THIS. Yes, I can see why they'd take down a map with pr0n, but who cares if Ultimate Tank Defense says the word "bad a$$?" The campaign itself uses worse words than a$$.

I like SC2, but my interest is slowly degrading as I pretty much bought the freaking game just for the custom maps, and now I came to the sad realization that my beloved custom maps will never see the light of day to more than a handful of people.

If Blizzard doesn't fix this, they're gonna lose a lot of potential customers for the future expansions. I was really really hyped for this excellent map editor, but now, I'm having a lot of doubts. If it doesn't get fixed, it'll essentially be a waste of $60 for me, as I don't care a single bit about the regular ladder matches.

 

they will fix it Soon™, just wait it out and Blizzard will fix the custom settings layout.

and lol you bought this game JUST for the custom games? that's soo silly

oh ya, you can play that custom map in the Map Editor fyi.

 

I think blizzard is trying to enforce ab almost "buy your friends, buy your fun"concept. Essentially sure, you can play the maps you want but only those you friend, only on the maps you buy, and if you want to play the"famous"maps you're going to have to "buy" the creators"friendship"

 

Oh, wait till the SC2 version of dota is actually out, then you will see Bnet 2.0 become Dota server 2.0, with every game being dota hosted by different people...

 

They better fix it soon. What's so silly about buying it just for custom? Yes I played the campaign and it was good, but the custom are what makes the experience great. And how am I supposed to play that custom map if I can't even download it? Are you saying that I should make it myself? Because I don't have a clue how to make a map T_T

If that happens I will ragequit by defenestrating my copy of SC2.

 

You can download any unpopular map that has been published, but you need to know the map name and search for it in the create a custom game screen.

The search sucks though, you have to match the beginning of the map name exactly. Like if you search "bunker" you will get results for "bunker defense" and "bunker wars" but you won't get results for "super bunker defense", "enfo's bunker wars", etc....

 

Meh that sucks. Their system is way too protective.

Also, I'm still amazed at how ESRB give it a T rating. It clearly deserves a M-rating in my opinion. I guess they modified some things in the game in order to qualify for 13+ & allow kids to buy the game alone. The PEGI rating is 16+

 

I bought warcraft 3 just for custom games as well, I don't see why is anyone buying it for custom games silly, custom games are huge part of sc2/wc3, ironically, hardcore ladder is for the minority in actual fact.

 

What! Exploding hydra heads with the brains spilling out is very appropriate for a 13 year old!

 

sometimes the map makers will release the map on bnet and some sc2 mapping sites soooo,

download the custom map, load it up into the SC2 Map Editor, then go to "Test Document" (menus) and it will load up sc2 and you can play the map.

 

Unfortunately you can only play downloaded maps in the editor, so no multiplayer.

If for some reason though the person that put it on the site didn't publish it, you can use the downloaded file to publish it yourself.

 

the new system has to be gotten used too. It has advantages and disadvantages over the old system.

I think it works better though and has more potential.

First of all, maps go by map name and not game name now. So that fixed the horrible game names. I think this was a priority for them to make bnet more friendly and grown up.

Next is how maps are just listed one time and auto fill games with a match making service. This means if DOTA is the #1 most popular map like it is for WC3 you do not have 5 pages of DOTA maps listed all under different names. You may have to scroll through 47 maps to find that one unpopular map but atleast only one of them is DOTA.

I think as more players play, and more maps are created this will work out a lot better than the old system and long term should be the most important goal not the just launched short term.

Also as already stated you can search for a map. The search does not seem too picky to me like explained above. I like Standard Tower Defense. I just typed in "defense" and it found the map as one of the first results.

I think the only downside to the popularity system is that if you do search for or start an unpopular game its very hard to get random people to join you. So you only real way to play that map is by inviting friends.

For that reason I ask you all to join our friends database (see my sig) as it makes SC2 a better and more enjoyable experience.

Really I had no better luck finding and getting players on a rare map on the old system than I did the new one. You created a game and it went to the top of the list under recent games, and within 15 seconds 40 dota games pushed you to the bottom of a list.

I do have some ideas that I think would make things a lot better than they are now and would help extract a fuller potential out of the new system.

- Extend the games list from the small current amount of search results to about 40-50 so you dont have to keep clicking show more over and over. In fact make this a user definable variable.

- Add game list filters/categories.

> Alphabetical Order - Not only let us browse by popularity, add in others like alphabetical order so you can find random stuff or hunt for something by name that you dont quite rememeber.

> Map Creator Name - Add one for Map creator name. Say you know somebody that makes maps and his maps are always really good, if you can browse/search by his name you may find other maps that person made that you will enjoy.

> Recently Hosted - Add a "recently hosted" filter, this one would probably be the largest help to getting random people to join your game if your hosting an unpopular map, under this view it would show the maps chronologically as they are hosted by somebody so a rare never played map would be at the top of the list if you just hosted it. Use a smart system much like the popularity system as to where it will not show the same map on the list more than once for say 50 entries and if somebody hosted a map already created by somebody that is not full flag that person letting them know they can join another game waiting for players or atleast fill the first hosted game with players first when somebody joins that map.

 

I think the popularity system is fine as it is, but there just needs to be more choices. As of right now, the great unheard maps are always buried down there, but if there were more filters then some of the maps will probably get some kind of recognition.

 

LoL, yeah that is silly. I bought the game because blizzard does not make bad games. I know im going to get my monies worth.

 

I haven't read the entire thing but if you haven't, I'd go to blizzard's forums and tell them how you feel if its that affecting your gameplay experience that strongly as I'm sure there are others that will feel the same (if they don't already have a thread started), even though they have already stated generically that this new B.net is still new and will be iterated on heavily to find something that'll make people happy (PR talk), it's good to have more specific feedbacks

 

Hahaha, good joke! That made me laugh, thanks for the chuckles !

 

Name a bad game they made...

Nothing, huh? Nothing is perfect but they haven't made an outwardly bad game. Just cause you get owned in the arena doesn't mean Blizzard is a bad creator

 

There are a lot of threads with hundreds, if not thousands by now, of posts telling Blizzard to fix/change some of the things. Result? Zero blue posts and the whole entire section is pretty much ignored. The feedback thread started by a blue has since been abandoned by the blues.
They're pretty much ignoring the whole custom games community right now.

EDIT: I just found out that they've locked one of the most popular threads criticizing Activision and Blizzard. No reason given, no moderator posting of any rules violated. Just down right locked, and soon going to be buried. Real classy Activision Blizzard, real classy.

 

Yes lets leave up a thread on our private forums bashing our company and such. Seems like brilliant idea...

The thing ive learned to look at when it comes to people complaining on Blizzard forums is that for every 1 person that posts a negative statement, there are 10 content customers who are happy with the status quo. People with something to complain about are 10x more likely to hop on a forum and complain.

I personally love everything about the new Bnet, works great. Oh and I saw that guy who had his map, Ultimate tank Defense, banned, ranting on another forum about it. And frankly i can tell from the fact he couldn't complete a sentence without some sort of curse word how his map would be banned.

 

Blizzard failed on so many levels with this game but it sounds like they will fix some of these problems in the near future with patches while the rest we will just have to live with.

 

Diablo was horrible, SC2? Lol, what a phailure. WoW, while popular, is just like any other lamo MMO.

They've made plenty of games that are widely successful, but don't equate that to being "good". Next thing you're going to start telling people is that Windows 7 from Microsoft is the second coming of Jesus because it's the best selling OS of ALL TIME.

Please .

Don't bet on it...

 

Just saw a blue post saying that they know their Bnet 2.0's system sucks right now. Great to know that Blizzard is here and they still care

Take that Bobby Kotick.

 

hahaha you must be a comedian.... or do you mean you were horrified by pixelated diablo? it's just a game, don't be scared

 

To be fair, WoW is not just like any other lamo MMO, more like other lamo MMO are all copies of WoW. WoW revolutionized the MMO game genre from a Korean MMO dominated leveling grind fest genre, to a community and teamwork based MMO that inspired almost every single MMO following it.

 

These are all great arguments, I'm with you

Told ya not to worry They're iterating on it, this isn't final.