Starcraft released with limited to no social aspects at launch. People in the beta assumed it would be rediculas that Blizzard would release the game with no such features, so it generally went ignored and people gave a response "It's only Beta and will be fixed at Launch dont be silly "Well what happened? They released SC2 with limited/no socialization Tools.
At launch, realizing SC2 was a barren wasteland of a community, the people showed there dismay on the forums until eventually the bad PR was to much for blizzard to handle. They eventually Patched in Chat Channels.
Sc2 finally had Chat Channels(Private Chat,Spam Filters etc). But the damage was done. Battle.net touted as an online SOCIAL platform failed to deliver and instead created a barren wasteland from day 1. Back in Starcraft 1 having a designated Chat Channel was key to creating a fun environment to play in at the start. People would join and challenge others to 1v1,2v2,3v3, FFA, test builds and "shoot the S**T" so to speak. Do not under estimate the need for humans to be social. If people are social in a chat room they are logged into your gaming platform and exposed to a BLIZZARD GAME and thus creating a greater attachment for future releases from the company for the game you love.
When SC2 was launched it was a headache to form games together with your friends. People hated the Social Aspect. It was not uncommen to ask others to message someone on there friends list or to ask if SO and SO was playing Starcraft 2. We had a commen meeting place and this was demolished from the start.
Right now having just logged on SC2 the total games played is 14000 world wide. To me this seems like an obvious failure for a title with a rich past.
People are Social by nature. Facebook/World of warcraft have an insane about of socialization tools and it shows in popularity of the titles.
Diablo 3 not learning from the mistakes of Starcraft 2
After almost 2 years Dustin Browder(lead designer SC2) acknowledge players feel lonely and awkward on Battle.net and hears the concerns of the fan base. Patch 1.15 will improve the interface with minor improvements that go a long way. It took starcraft 2, 6 MONTHS to impliment Chat Channels that were nothing like Battle.net 1.0 in functionality and presentation.
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Blizzard hears the cries of fans and obviously reads the complaints. If this was not the case Starcraft 2 would still just have Auto-Matchmaking and nothing more.
If Diablo 3 releases in its current state you can multiply the current complaints, about the lack of Social Tools in Diablo, to sky rocket.
In statistics, a sample is a subset of a population. Typically, the population is very large, making a census or a complete enumeration of all the values in the population impractical or impossible. The sample represents a subset of manageable size. Samples are collected and statistics are calculated from the samples so that one can make inferences or extrapolations from the sample to the population.
Right now people are voicing there concerns about the interface of Chat Channels and the ingame skill ui(off topic) and ,in regards to chat, seems to go unanswered by Blizzard with almost no improvements Patch after Patch. Even if 50 testers out of the vocal 200 that post on the forums on a regular basic express there dislike of Battle.net, when the game goes live , as mentioned in the above quote, expect a HUGE outcry from the customers like
"WHERES ARE MY AVATARS?"
"WHY CAN I NOT IGNORE X BOT"
"I TRY TALKING BUT MY TEXT IS PUSHED OFF SCREEN IN .0003 SECONDS"
"WHY AM I AUTO ASSIGNED A CHANNEL , EG TRADE 1,2,3,4 ALL MY FRIENDS ARE IN TRADE 2"
"WHY NO PRIVATE CHANNELS??"
Small Improvements that go a long way but Ignored
Its painfully obvious blizzard's implimentation of Chat Channels is an after thought and not a priority(odd considering this game will be played by MILLIONS online) . What gives me this impression?
No Spam filters, No /ignore, Pure White Text not seperating Player names from Text written.... and the obvious? NO PRIVATE CHAT CHANNELS.
All of these listed features are present in EVERY Blizzard game.
The code is already finished and the expertise is obviously their.
What is the hesitation for promoting Social Dynamics on Battle.net?
You do not want bots? I get it. But why not give users a means to entire another channel or actively block said bots? It doesnt make sense unless you
want to make the Chat experience for the user as painful as possible.
Where is the Blizzard that holds value to quality? If you didnt want people to socialize just make it obvious and dont impliment Chat Channels and face the negative PR that comes with it. But if your going to release a feature AT LEAST GIVE IT YOUR ALL.
You're delaying PVP because it does not live up to your High Standards yet Chat seems like an after thought. Where is the Blizzard devoted to quality I used to love?
I dont know about you, but I dont plan on talking to anyone for a good 2 weeks during release while I level. I bought Diablo 3 to kill demons, not have FaceBook 2.0
I'm not saying that I support their decision or philosophy but I am willing to suggest that they just don't care. That doesn't mean I don't care because I do and share some of the same concerns you do. Yet ever since the beta has started the concerns for public chat channels has been a great one on the official forums with the same comparisons to Starcraft II being made. Blizzard responded with chat channels very similar to the ones in SC2 but people still not seem to be satisfied.
It appears their excuse is "Everything is set for launch any change will delay release". Well that's a reasonable excuse for PVP yet adjusting the chat channel interface / functionality is not something that will further delay release. Especially if concerns were addressed as they were raised.
Again, it's my conclusion that Blizzard doesn't care and seems that is not an integral part of the game or their current design philosophy.
For me personally it won't effect me that much. I rarely use chat channels in any game that I play. I do agree and replied to this post however because I do feel it is one valid concern the community has.
I already talked about this in another thread where someone posted his rant about Battle.net II on another website. I think that thread was deleted, either because the OP posted a link to another site or because I talked about insider info on how Blizzard first wanted Battle.net II to be something you would pay money for.
I don't feel like typing all of that out again. lol
EDIT - The bottom line is that after Blizzard failed to make Battle.net II into something you paid for, they decided to give you the bare minimum as an online service, while quietly titling it just plain old Battle.net again. Posting about it won't make any changes.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Some people tell me I'm going to hell. I just let them know that I've already packed my bags!
Who needs private channels and bots when you can form player groups? Besides, you cant compare the old b.net to the new one since its more secure and relevant. Saying that b.net 1>2 is just stupid in my opinion. It was good for the time it was released and 10 years after that, but enough is enough. Blizzard are trying to create a better social gaming experience by applying automatic aspects to the dynamics of Battle.Net... Its just how its supposed to be. I dont see anything wrong with how D3 is integrated into B.net 2.0.
I agree, and I also think you should post this somewhere on Blizzard's forums where they can read it. They don't read these.
I remember back when WC3 was popular, chat channels in B.Net were a huge deal. I always had my go-to private channel that my friends would automatically go to when they logged in, and we would chat and find a game to play (this was before DOTA came around and people actually played other games).
I'd be disappointed if we didn't have at least a WoW-style private chat channel creation system, in which you type '/join YourCustomChannelName' and you have your own channel.
I've never played SC2, so I've never seen B.Net 2.0, but I have heard of SC2's mistakes in regard to sociability, and do hope they make DIII better for it.
The current social aspect of Diablo 3 consists of:
Chatting:
-People rarely talk in game.
-People can't properly talk outside the game
-No group talks/ guild chats. Which limits me to talk to a max of 3 friends at the same time, IF IM PLAYING THE GAME.
Trading:
- No more trading games.
- A random store with a lot of goodies, which magically find their way to players without any communication or interaction between players. (Called the Auction House)
all in all: Blizzard forged a wonderful co-op experience inside the game world, but whilst doing so they totally neglected the co-op experience outside the game world. Which should be a massive meeting place for the players, however it now seems you are placed in an iron cage with little room to maneuver. [/claustrophobic]
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t...
I tend to chuckle at any topic suggesting Blizzard is "stupid". =)
Please don't post topic titles in full caps, and I would say the bolded words are a very cheap way to make your point seem powerfull.
Right now people are voicing there concerns about the interface of Chat Channels and the ingame skill ui(off topic) and ,in regards to chat, seems to go unanswered by Blizzard with almost no improvements Patch after Patch. Even if 50 testers out of the vocal 200 that post on the forums on a regular basic express there dislike of Battle.net, when the game goes live , as mentioned in the above quote, expect a HUGE outcry from the customers like
Right... spoken by someone who doesn't actually have any understanding of statistics.
A sample has to be representative of the total population. The battle.net message board, by nature, draw in mostly people who are outspoken against something. Therefore no inference to the tendencies of the population can be made.
For example, I may be a very vocal person. But if I see chat channels, and am fine with them, I won't go to a message board to tell people I'm fine with them. But if I find something I dislike, I will put time and energy into pointing that out.
A common mistake people seem to be making is that if Blizzard doesn't post a "mea culpa, mea mea culpa, we really fucked up here, sorry" that they don't notice/don't care/don't test stuff internally. This also gives rise to the ridiculous belief that Blizzard "suddenly decided to add chat channels to starcraft 2" after much public outcry.
Believe it or not, Blizzard has a pretty fair idea of what it's doing. It's us making worst case scenario assumptions (and then holding them as truth) that makes them seem like they are as clueless as a bananaslug on a trampoline.
its the same story whit LoL, it got more players then WoW atm and still... you dont "feel" like it does, there is the epic big chats, long list of games... :/
those small improvements you listed that would go a long way are in sc2 chat btw...
and look where that went, no where.
You guys ask for better chat functions but don't even bother using them is hilarious.
If you want to see how a real chat channel works then go on the old battle.net. That's what people are asking for.
its just a chat box for christ sakes lol...
Evidently it's not just a chat box, otherwise Battle.net 2.0 would be just as good as Battle.net 1.0 with regards to social aspects
yes its just a full screen chat box that was the only socializing option back with sc1 d2 wc released. Now we have this thing called voice chat and playing with friends on bnet 2 work just the same way so... it just works better when im playing with friends. I admit i used irc back then with my quake clan but again that goes back to chatting as the only social option.
"Right now having just logged on SC2 the total games played is 14000 world wide. To me this seems like an obvious failure for a title with a rich past."
I'm sorry? This is a blatant lie. The top SC2 player in Europe has 1074 games played for the current season (as of 25/03/2012). Not to mention all the custom games played and fun games played outside of the ladder, being as there is 7 leagues (8 including practice) with thousands of active players in each region leads me to doubt very much that total games played worldwide is 14000.
Currently on twitch TV there is 109 SC2 channels, many people stream it daily playing it for 4+ hours.
SC2 has one of the best communities currently in the E-Sports scene and this isn't because of chat channels this because of people like Day 9 and DJ wheat, tastosis and many many others promoting SC2 and helping others learn. With leagues like NASL and MLG helping to give the game massive foundation, passing off checks that are worth $10,000 dollars for on-line tournaments rather often.
SC2 isn't a failed game, it's the most successful e-sport currently on the planet, rivaled only by SC.
To form a game with my friends was in from day 1, I’ve never used these chat channels and nor does anyone i know use them (i have over 50 friends/clan members on SC2). Any Tournament play is done via our forums, like most tournaments.
The only thing that blizzard messed up with was being able to challenge strangers to 1v1 without friending them in customs, this was a major slip up but was implemented shortly after release, not 6 months.
Next time you make a point, please refrain from making baseless facts and spouting fiction and creating an angry mob for no reason, you've greatly annoyed me with this post because you show no understanding of SC2 and it's community yet your core argument is based around it.
You could of just said D3 was in need of help with chat functionality, which you are indeed correct about whichs leads me to the topic at hand.
Diablo 3 does need help in the chat area, but not as much as you are making out. Diablo lacks a way to talk to a group of friends easily on the fly. Friends list in D2 was great for this, being able to message my entire friends list worked pretty well.
However times have changed and functionality such as WoW GCHAT (and other games a like) have come a long and I think clans would fit nicely in Diablo 3, allowing you to chat to your clan members in a global chat from anywhere such as the AH, In-game and character selection.
If I'm not mistaken, I think he's talking about 14,000 games going on at a given time, not the number of games played in the season so far, which is what it sounds like you might be inferring from his post, though I could be wrong.
I was never a Starcraft fan, I can't get into the RTS genre, but he's not the first person I've seen quote low numbers of games going on at a given time, when on Diablo 2, when I last got on (it's been a long while) I seem to remember there being hundreds of thousands or more games going on.
One of Blizzard's strengths, in my opinion, has always been a sense of community and the social aspects of their games, it's why I played WoW as long as I did, even after I didn't enjoy it very much any more, and it's what kept me going in Diablo 2 for years at a time. I would hope that Blizzard would continue to play to that strength.
Just logged onto SC2 and took this. Wonder what those ppl are doing and why there are private channels that stay there on log off and on and all the options OP says is missing? I did this to other post that cried about chat and no one had anything to say. Is this NOT chat?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
In statistics, a sample is a subset of a population. Typically, the population is very large, making a census or a complete enumeration of all the values in the population impractical or impossible. The sample represents a subset of manageable size. Samples are collected and statistics are calculated from the samples so that one can make inferences or extrapolations from the sample to the population.
"WHERES ARE MY AVATARS?"
"WHY CAN I NOT IGNORE X BOT"
"I TRY TALKING BUT MY TEXT IS PUSHED OFF SCREEN IN .0003 SECONDS"
"WHY AM I AUTO ASSIGNED A CHANNEL , EG TRADE 1,2,3,4 ALL MY FRIENDS ARE IN TRADE 2"
"WHY NO PRIVATE CHANNELS??"
All of these listed features are present in EVERY Blizzard game.
It appears their excuse is "Everything is set for launch any change will delay release". Well that's a reasonable excuse for PVP yet adjusting the chat channel interface / functionality is not something that will further delay release. Especially if concerns were addressed as they were raised.
Again, it's my conclusion that Blizzard doesn't care and seems that is not an integral part of the game or their current design philosophy.
For me personally it won't effect me that much. I rarely use chat channels in any game that I play. I do agree and replied to this post however because I do feel it is one valid concern the community has.
you should post this in the battle.net forums
Yeah. Just don't post in all caps on the battle.net cause they'll instantly lock and won't even read the contents.
I don't feel like typing all of that out again. lol
EDIT - The bottom line is that after Blizzard failed to make Battle.net II into something you paid for, they decided to give you the bare minimum as an online service, while quietly titling it just plain old Battle.net again. Posting about it won't make any changes.
yah I posted it , unfortunately its ridden with trolls
Who needs private channels and bots when you can form player groups? Besides, you cant compare the old b.net to the new one since its more secure and relevant. Saying that b.net 1>2 is just stupid in my opinion. It was good for the time it was released and 10 years after that, but enough is enough. Blizzard are trying to create a better social gaming experience by applying automatic aspects to the dynamics of Battle.Net... Its just how its supposed to be. I dont see anything wrong with how D3 is integrated into B.net 2.0.
I remember back when WC3 was popular, chat channels in B.Net were a huge deal. I always had my go-to private channel that my friends would automatically go to when they logged in, and we would chat and find a game to play (this was before DOTA came around and people actually played other games).
I'd be disappointed if we didn't have at least a WoW-style private chat channel creation system, in which you type '/join YourCustomChannelName' and you have your own channel.
I've never played SC2, so I've never seen B.Net 2.0, but I have heard of SC2's mistakes in regard to sociability, and do hope they make DIII better for it.
and look where that went, no where.
You guys ask for better chat functions but don't even bother using them is hilarious.
Chatting:
-People rarely talk in game.
-People can't properly talk outside the game
-No group talks/ guild chats. Which limits me to talk to a max of 3 friends at the same time, IF IM PLAYING THE GAME.
Trading:
- No more trading games.
- A random store with a lot of goodies, which magically find their way to players without any communication or interaction between players. (Called the Auction House)
all in all: Blizzard forged a wonderful co-op experience inside the game world, but whilst doing so they totally neglected the co-op experience outside the game world. Which should be a massive meeting place for the players, however it now seems you are placed in an iron cage with little room to maneuver. [/claustrophobic]
Please don't post topic titles in full caps, and I would say the bolded words are a very cheap way to make your point seem powerfull.
Right... spoken by someone who doesn't actually have any understanding of statistics.
A sample has to be representative of the total population. The battle.net message board, by nature, draw in mostly people who are outspoken against something. Therefore no inference to the tendencies of the population can be made.
For example, I may be a very vocal person. But if I see chat channels, and am fine with them, I won't go to a message board to tell people I'm fine with them. But if I find something I dislike, I will put time and energy into pointing that out.
A common mistake people seem to be making is that if Blizzard doesn't post a "mea culpa, mea mea culpa, we really fucked up here, sorry" that they don't notice/don't care/don't test stuff internally. This also gives rise to the ridiculous belief that Blizzard "suddenly decided to add chat channels to starcraft 2" after much public outcry.
Believe it or not, Blizzard has a pretty fair idea of what it's doing. It's us making worst case scenario assumptions (and then holding them as truth) that makes them seem like they are as clueless as a bananaslug on a trampoline.
its just a chat box for christ sakes lol...
yes its just a full screen chat box that was the only socializing option back with sc1 d2 wc released. Now we have this thing called voice chat and playing with friends on bnet 2 work just the same way so... it just works better when im playing with friends. I admit i used irc back then with my quake clan but again that goes back to chatting as the only social option.
If I'm not mistaken, I think he's talking about 14,000 games going on at a given time, not the number of games played in the season so far, which is what it sounds like you might be inferring from his post, though I could be wrong.
I was never a Starcraft fan, I can't get into the RTS genre, but he's not the first person I've seen quote low numbers of games going on at a given time, when on Diablo 2, when I last got on (it's been a long while) I seem to remember there being hundreds of thousands or more games going on.
One of Blizzard's strengths, in my opinion, has always been a sense of community and the social aspects of their games, it's why I played WoW as long as I did, even after I didn't enjoy it very much any more, and it's what kept me going in Diablo 2 for years at a time. I would hope that Blizzard would continue to play to that strength.