UI still sub-par 2 years later. Why don't we care? - Repost

[Gwypaas]

Original thread http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=308482 (Repost should be OK since author endorses reposts on battle.net forums and Reddit.)

On February 03 2012 04:56 Shockk wrote:

This topic has received a lot of attention over the last few days not only here on TL, but also on Reddit and the official forums. If you're new to the discussion, please add your voice. Should you agree, please support it by keeping the threads alive and the discussion going. And whether you're new to the topic or returning, please check out the links, videos and pictures at the end of this post. We've collected - amongst others - a variety of suggestions and concepts, videos from Idra, Tasteless and Husky, and some comedy gold as well.
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Counting the beta, SC2 will be two years old in March - and the game's interface has barely developed over that span. While the lack of LAN support is the major issue for most people (as frequently demonstrated in tournaments with connection issues), I feel that the general feel and usability of the new battle.net UI are just as frustrating for the average user.

Sure. We've seen some improvement with chat being added. But it's telling that we had to ask for that in the first place. And we have vague promises for the map marketplace / arcade to fix the completely broken custom game scene with HotS. But there's so much more.

Personally, the game's UI discourages me from playing on a daily basis. When the new battle.net was developed, we were promised that we'd "never want to be offline again". But every single time I log on, I feel utterly alone, maybe play a game or two, and then leave again. Both in SC/BW and WC3, I'd idle around forever, hang out in channels or waste time in custom games.

So what's different?

Communicating and socializing is too hard

Imagine this ... (credit: Goblinoid)
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Chat. It still sucks. Simple commands like /w outside of games would make life tremendously easier. Real channels would be great. Or sending messages to my whole friends list. At the moment, any act of communication is a hassle; I either have to navigate through my friends list (which could be a lot more accessible too, by the way) to message people; I have to clumsily navigate through menus to send messages to other folks (or add them to my list); I even have to click through menus to ignore or report people.

Everything could be so much easier with a decent chat interface, yet we seem to be stuck with the farce of a system we currently have.

Clan support (+clan channels). This rocked in WC3. You had a place to meet with friends and clan mates, and you could even moderate your channels. You actually had a sense of community while online.

Automated tournaments. Where are they? Why was such a great feature removed? Despite losing quickly in most of them, I often played them in WC3. You got to meet new people, had a competition that wasn't ladder, and had an incentive to play for the portraits.

Simply playing the game can be hard at times.

Or how about that? (credit: Goblinoid)​

A working custom game system. Despite the chaotic first impression, WC3's system worked. All the SC2 popularity system does is kill any incentive to play maps that aren't on the first two pages. Also, Blizzard's attitude of blocking development instead of encouraging it have led to a custom scene that's pretty much dead. The vocal criticism of the ridiculous limits on map developer freedom have died down because most developers have stopped developing and caring.

I had hoped to see countless maps by now, exploring the boundaries of the map editor and creativity, but all we have are some DotA clones, some TD maps and nothing too exciting else.

AT vs. RT issues in team games. While team games are looked down upon by many, they nontheless enjoy a large following. The strict separation of AT and RT from WC3 was scrapped for SC2 in favor of short queue times, but despite having a matchmaking system implemented, it's still prone to abuse and frustration. Things like 2/3man ATs signing up for 3/4man RTs is just one example of many. Currently, the team ladders are a sick joke and the results / ratings and the general activity reflect the utter neglect with which this issue has been treated.

Analyzing is overly hard as well.

Remember Warcraft 3's online statistics?
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Shared replay watching. It was such a great feature in SC/BW. Requested since beta, and we'll probably never see it.

Statistics. Where are they? Why can't I see my race-specific %, or my odds on certain maps? And why are lower league players belittled by having their losses hidden, even when everyone knows that those people still here after two years must have realized that it's a competetive game and losing is part of the deal?

The whole league system. Sure, we all know how and why the MMR works right now. But why scrap the system that worked so great in WC3? Right now, we can't compare anyone (regardless of whether you think ladder matters or not). Grandmaster league helped, but only if you're looking at pros. I can't even judge whether I'm better than my buddy or not, because we're both in meaningless divisions of pointless leagues, and our MMR is invisible.

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Things went wrong when Blizzard decided to develop the new B.Net from scratch, and to employ a casual game / console developer for the job. I have nothing personal against Greg Canessa, but I feel it shows that he developed for PopCap and Xbox Live before. That by itself needn't have been a bad thing, but why for the love of all that is holy did everything that worked well in previous games have to be removed? Hell, the better part of Blizzard's fame came from releasing games with fantastic interfaces and great functions, yet SC2 is a step back (or several) compared to 2003's WC3 or even 1998's SC.

And why all this? Well, of course because it works for Blizzard. Enough people were happy with what they got, not enough people cared. The folks who just bought the game for the campaign obviously didn't bother with the menu much, and the competetive 1vs1 crowd basically just needs a working matchmaking system (which is great, btw, and the only redeeming feature). But there's a huge number of players interested in socializing, custom maps and analyzing their play. Those that haven't left have grown complacent or jaded with Blizzard's ignorance.

The adding of chat and the scrapped forum real-ID feature have shown what players can achieve when the voice concerns; the complete lack of development in the meantimes is a great sign of how little will suffice for the majority to accept their fate.

This game could be so much better.

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Feel free to repost this wherever you like.
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• How Battle.Net 2.0 could look like, credit to Goblinoid - Pictures
• Goblinoid's thread here on TL
• Yet another concept by Goblinoid: Pt. 1, Pt. 2

• This thread on Reddit
• This thread on the official US forums (english)
• This thread on the official EU forums (english)
• This thread on the official EU forums (german)
• Inconsistencies in SC2's UI, as pointed out by paralleluniverse here on TL
• Comparison of work force and developer shift, by OneTwoSC on sc2mapster
• The Battle.Net project on Reddit
• MoreGG.sc - 1vs1 and custom game finder
• MichaelJLowell's blog on Battle.Net 2.0's development.
• Battle.Net - Promoting E-Sports. A concept by Falling.

• 
  http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/3229033487#1
  http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/2830983472#9
  http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/2548785767?page=10#198
  http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/1866386981#10
  http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/628080361?page=2#26
  http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/375110613#10
  http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/248296366#9
  http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/189279348#7

• Differences between B.Net 1.0 and 2.0., summarized in one (large) picture.
  
• Husky: The State of Battle.Net 2.0 (05/2010)
  
  
  Spoiler

  [video=youtube;M-r_uCaFxg8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-r_uCaFxg8[/video]
• Husky's video on Warcraft 3's Battle.Net UI (02/2012)
  
  
  Spoiler

  [video=youtube;rOkywsDvL2w]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOkywsDvL2w[/video]
• IdrA and Tasteless on Battle.Net 2.0 (06/2010)
  
  
  Spoiler

  [video=youtube;F3W4CPucxr4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3W4CPucxr4[/video]
  Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYm4p3lB3UY
• Smix' musical parody / criticism on Battle.Net 2.0
  
  
  Spoiler

  [video=youtube;Xyd6zdvxV6E]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyd6zdvxV6E[/video]
• SC2 won't have LAN - comedy/parody video
  
  
  Spoiler

  [video=youtube;_UFA1ieWA8s]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UFA1ieWA8s[/video]
• Great t-shirt criticism:
  
  
  Spoiler

  

Thanks to everyone who has kept and still keeps the discussion here, on Reddit and especially on the official forums alive. Shoutout to Boomz on EU and PoweRForgeD on US for posting on the official forums; both threads there have reached "popular" status. Keep it up!

My own take on this is that I agree with everything he said, battle.net 0.2 is horrible at the moment and we need to vote with our wallet, demand that Blizzard implements the features we want before we buy the game. With the recent extreme greediness Blizzard has shown our strongest weapon right now is to take away the money they so desperately want.

 

[Accname]

I dont agree with everything there.
But with most of it.

The custom game system of wc3 was actually pretty good in my opinion, the one of starcraft 2 is a joke compared to it. I liked to play wc3 and just jump into a random game from the list. Of course, i could do that with starcraft 2 now but the chances are low somebody will join because its too deep down in the list.

The chat? its okay. Its not too bad, i know worse, but i definitely think it can improved.
The clan system? Hell, why didnt they implement that!? as if they didnt notice that all pro-players are inside a clan, or team...

But other then that i am currently satisfied with how it is. But on the other hand, i am not really playing too much.

 

[Siretu]

I think the chat is pretty bad but it wasn't much better in Warcraft 3.

I don't really care about clans or automated tournaments.

I really dislike the custom game system. I'm hoping it will improve drastically in HotS with the release of the marketplace. We'll see what happens...

I don't really care about having arranged teams meet random teams. Most of the time it works fine in my experience but I guess it doesn't work fine all the time.

I'd imagine shared replays are hard to implement from a technical view because of how it's currently done. I recall them saying something like that anyway. I hope they implement it at some point but it's not a huge issue for me.

Statistics are not that important. There are 3rd party programs that gives all the statistics you could wish for and more(SC2 gears)

The whole league system could be improved but I don't think it's as bad as most make it out to be. There are problems with it, yes, but it's not completely broken.

 

[YourFace]

I have to agree with the chat system, custom game, and clan system. The "channels" in are terribly done, and you can barely even talk to people because of the text limit. The chat interface is small, and you don't really get to meet people. It makes the game feel a lot like a single player game. The clan system was cool, but most of the people in the wc3 chat channels are afk anyway.

The custom games system has significantly become worse as Accname said, you only get to play the "popular" games since no one actually joins the lesser known ones. In Warcraft 3, you got a variety of custom games since everyone joined or made games they liked(whether it was good or bad) and it gave a lot of variety. Plus the popular games were filled up quickly anyway, so you could join either one. You actually had a choice.

I feel like Blizzard didn't really take player or beta input very seriously(i ranted on the sc2 forums all day back in beta), and the custom game system was a big fail. There's only around 5 custom games that I like or people would join. Most of the games don't have the effort or strategic genius that wc3 games had. Anyway that's all I have to say about the system. I hope to see improvements in the expansion pack, though i doubt there will be any at all.

 

[Gwypaas]

Updated OP and fixed the embedded videos.


Though the problem is that it was the chat and clan system in WC3 which kept the game alive until SC2 was released, I know for certain that I would never have kept playing WC3 beyond the first months without the clan and custom game system, and the is the reason I completely stopped playing SC2 unless I log on with some IRL friends talking on Skype just dicking around in customs or team games together, and they feel the same way. We had been looking forward to SC2 for months and then when it came we had some fun together and then it just grew boring and we quit playing, all of us, it's no coincidence.

Edit - Bashiok the community manager of D3 who expresses Blizzard's stance on actually making Bnet 0.2 something wortwhile is..... I don't even want to think about it.
From Twitter:

Some user "@Bashiok could you elaborate a bit mor on why exactly blizzard thinks that a general open chat channel like inn D2 or SC1 is a bad idea?
Bashiok: "@CaptRaven The good is minuscule compared to the bad, and we have to actually support these things..."


Some other user "@Bashiok any plans for any guild/clan features?"
Bashiok: "@Millerjoeblue We'd love to offer some kind of support for social groups, but it's on a wish list at the moment."

And again "@Bashiok I have a question about friends and chat in D3. Is it possible to add someone to a friends list? Also, is there a global chat?"
Bashiok: @Varastus21 Yes there's multiple different types of friends lists. Global chat like you want to spam all your friends? no."

And again "@Bashiok thats a bummer wanted to ask when the EU beta keys were coming . But a real question, can you play Diablo 3 offline?"
Bashiok: @QuriousAlonsus No.

And again "@Bashiok thanks for your answer. so chat channels are still part of the game?"
Bashiok: "@kultbot They're in there right now. Unless people are expecting general open channels? We've consistently said we won't have those."
Hello arrogance and Blizzard out of touch with community.