Bringing SC2 into this century

General Discussion
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Yo!

Why can’t we voice chat in game?
Could… should… Maybe its just in my imagination, but I could have sworn I used to be able to voice chat in a Star Battle Custom Map over 10 years ago. (Could be my imagination)
But, really… why not now already?

How come I’m not able to see what Custum Map my friends are currently playing?

How come there isn’t more Custom Maps with Premium benefits? Insentives… I mean, come on… that’s basically untapped potential.

How come there are so many Custum Maps that nobody plays, and… is it ever, ever, ever… responsible for any interuptions… any at all… having so many?
I don’t know… anything… about computers and data banks, but, shouldn’t these maps just expire if no one is actively working on updating them? Don’t they take up space somewhere?
If they would expire, or expire more quickly, or if all Custom Maps required developers to do a simple checklist every so often on essential aspects… that would create a more competitive atmosphere on the development side, and thus produce better and better content.
Right? Thats how life works, or no?

Customization!
One FREE idea for you, Blizz! (Hire This Guy)
“Customizable Banners”
Okay, okay… this probably isn’t necessarily an unheard of idea, but come on already… I’d probably throw $5 at you just for the option of it.

So… I get that this game has been around a while… maybe developers aren’t interested in giving SC2 attention because of how long, and, all the other possibilites that may exist for them… maybe it’s just a sobering idea that SC2 has pretty much reached the ceiling for its possibilities and requires… ahem a sequal ahem… an overhaul…
I mean, even navigating the menus seems super basic… like, in the not being efficient sense… Limited. Clunky. Lack of Customization. Not Intersting.

I can’t see what Custom Map my Friends are playing? No Voice Chat?
It’s been over 10 Years since I… imagined this…
I don’t understand.

Thats all I can really think of right now. Feel free to chime in, anyone.

Thanks✌️

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So you’re not imagining this! This was a real thing! You could Voice Chat with anyone that was in your Party and could temporarily join a party with the players you were randomly thrown into game with!

However, it did not really work. The way it grabbed your microphone caused many microphones to have their settings overridden, ignored, etc., for some reason beyond my imagining.

It was also very much the case that most people didn’t use the feature well and it was very ripe for abuse, such that every single person I talked to by 2012 had disabled the feature entirely.

Because this requires Blizzard to do work, for the maps with these incentives to both be popular enough to play them tons, and for those incentives to be themselves… well-designed; not predatory?

The real answer is probably because people complained immensely about having micro-transactions added to custom maps, because people already complained quite a bit about developers doing things to their maps for people who paid them money without Blizzard having a foot in it.

And also because Co-Op Commanders took Blizzard by storm with its success, diverting resources into it at massive pace.

I vehemently disagree - why would they? Not all maps need updates to be good maps. I still play SC2 maps that haven’t been updated in over 5 years; I still play hardware games from 20 years ago…

A .sc2map file is very well made, so it doesn’t take up that much space - even if you load it up with tons of content, as long as it doesn’t have new models, voices; it’s hard to make a map over like 8 megabytes from my understanding.

Simple data storage is not super expensive - servicing that is, but you already have to have a good system in place for handling the popular maps, storing a thousand unpopular maps creates no hardship besides “spend $100 on a big disk”. A hideous level of simplification, but that is how that roughly works.

I do not see how the menus are limited, except in so much as there’s… not that many menus? Which I’d argue is a good thing.

The only menu that I know of that really feels ‘clunky’ is the profile and skins selection menu, all the others are weird because they’re in service of very large sweeping things or extremely specific ones.

I think that not being able to customize a menu is a good thing in context. Imagine if you hide a tab and forget how to un-hide it!

It’s not like SAI, Krita, Photoshop; where knowing what tools you need is important and there are hundreds of tool buttons, there’s a menu that opens a menu. It’s the whole bit about how drop down and hamburger menus are good except when they aren’t; and in SC2’s navigation’s case, each menu switches you to a new full-screen menu when picking an option so that you can read text and figure out what you wanted to play?

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As someone who loves voice chat and being social in games in fact the only reason I play some this is not the one it would be so bad plus its an old dead game they are not really in the adding features business for it anymore.

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A couple of these I can answer.

A while back, Bliz consolidated all the individual in-game chat functions into the Bnet app. As such, you can even see the gap in SC2’s Options menu where the Chat category used to be.

There might have been more premium content planned. But when Bliz retired SC2 in Oct of 2020, all development ended. As for something like a sequel, not only was SC2 itself retired, but the entire SC franchise was as well. All SC and SC2 staff was either reassigned, laid off or quit.

Not so much an answer, but more of an opinion: I don’t think this is a good idea. There’s plenty games that haven’t been updated in a long time that are still played.

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To add to this, Coop was in its infancy - Blizzard has previously stated that, originally, they were expecting to do a lot more DLC campaign missions like Nova Covert Ops, but didn’t realise just how popular their Coop would become (which legitimately surprises me, but w/e). Thus, much of their focus switched from Arcade (which also involved dealing with many of the mod makers, since the original premium arcade maps were actually done by people outside the company) and Campaigns, to coop.

To further add to this; maps generally only “expire” when they become buggy and problematic due to patches or updates that render previous versions unplayable anyway. Some game-modes that have been around for a long time are still playable today (and should be!) because they have relatively few bugs, or at least few exploitable bugs. Old game modes and maps should continue to be playable because people enjoy playing them!

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Thanks for that.

So, its just over then? Nothing more out of the Star Craft Universe? We just pick at the bones of a couple classic RTS games until we all get bored of doing that?
Sigh

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Now that Microsoft is letting Blizzard work on whatever it wants again, its been suggested that they have ideas for more Starcraft projects, but they would need to assemble a team who wants to work on it, and hammer out the ideas into an actual game before they announce anything for sure.

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There’s always the possibility that the SC franchise is rekindled. In the retirement announcement, Bliz did say that they would evaluate the future of the franchise. But so far, there been no word since the retirement in 2020.

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:ok_hand:

I thought so…
I remember it being a little buggy… but, how hard of a process is it to just get that actually working correctly? I mean, science and stuff, right? I really think they missed the boat on that one.

Its nice that its simple, but I just see it being very primitive as far as what I imagine is possible nowadays.
Another feature I dont understand not being implemented is being able to have multiple parties going… I could be in a party with one, be in game with them, and hold a seat in another and organize a larger party and merge them. If it happened to be that all these parties were going to different lobbies, you could just suspend your presense and stay connected. At the very least carry on a conversation with a different group.
Not that I have enough friends for that to be a reality… but it might be a way to make some…

Yeah, that’s probably it.

I do like that there are so many Custom MODs and Maps, and you never know when you might stumble onto a new favorite.
It just seems to me that if Blizz is really done with SC altogether as a project, that being more proactive with insetives for developers who are still working, encouraging consistant maintenence on their maps, would keep those of us who do still play, playing… and not in a buggy game, or one that’s unfinished or hasn’t even come close to it’s full potential yet.

Like I said, I get that we’re way pass the height of SC popularity. Everything trends. I honestly don’t see the standard design of the PC itself surviving the next 50 years. No way no how with how the entire human species is trending torwards mobile connections/virtual reality/and the necessity to survive as a species in general. And 50 years… I
think I’m being generous with that.
There were a few occasions, I actually sought-after and purchased a Nintendo 64 and all my favorite classic 64 games again just to play them for nostalgic purposes (Starcraft was one of 'em) and I had a blast!
People in the future will not be doing that with Starcraft if Blizz allows this lore to just fizzle out here and now without reviving it in some format. I can say for, at least myself, the day I never have to use a computer again… I never use a computer again. That’ll be easy for me… someone who had to learn it growing up, forget about it completely with youngsters who are learning mobile devices and tablets right now.

I guess we’ll see. Some of the SC books are actually pretty good.

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