I wish there were more maps

The whole quadrillion mutators and prestiges is nice and all, but the map pool could rly be increased. Many mutators also arent super fun and the difficulty difference is enormous for some.

I’d even pay for a mappack, honestly. I mean I bought all these commanders but what I really wished for was more maps

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Hundreds of users would design coop maps for free, just like they do with custom maps and arcade maps. Bliz could even offer a monthly competition with some free skins or something as a prize to the winner to get users to design new coop maps. The winner could even be chosen by the players so 0 effort for Bliz even in picking it.

All they would have to do is announce a contest. Then at the end of the contest add the winning player map to the available coop maps. But they’re too lazy to even do that. It wouldn’t take very many resources at all. Do this monthly for a year and the maps would double in number.

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Numerous problems with this…

1- They did that in the past. IIRC, 2 of the latest missions were from contests. Even the most well designed missions/maps would still require intervention from the developers to properly balance and tweak.

2- All of the missions have full voice lines. They would need to hire voice actors to go through the whole mission’s worth of those. And then repeat that for the other 10 spoken languages the game supports.

3- Can they charge for these missions? If not, there’s even less incentive to make new missions. If they can, they have an uphill battle there, as we’ve had players complain about paying a mere $5 for COs. Coop may have been a peak popularity during 2017 to 2018, but even as Coop started winding down, it didn’t seem to have enough buyers to make it worth the while.

4- Unless someone has numbers to back that up, I feel the amount of available man hours from the map designing community isn’t really that much. It would still fall well short of what’s really needed for anything decent. At least not at the rate you mentioned for sure.

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I think the real problem is ABK isn’t working on developing SC2 anymore. I wish they could’ve left coop to be as fluid as ladder when it comes to maps so we can have some community added maps and maybe even commanders.

Players are smart enough to vote on map difficulty. And designers are smart enough to design maps to be challenging but not impossible. Apparently you don’t go to the arcade maps much. If it’s impossible no one plays those arcade maps. If too easy people lose interest.

Also you seem to think Bliz has these great programmers while the community is a bunch of schmucks. If anything I’d say the opposite. I can prove it with just a few examples.

  1. Everytime there is a “patch” bliz programmers aren’t smart enough to just have a tiny 100 kb patch file that adds/deletes lines of code. Instead they’ll have you download the entire 30MB file all over again even if the only change was one additional line of code. That my friend is the definition of poor programming and wasting bandwidth.

  2. There are still a lot of the same bugs in the game that were there 10 years ago. Even when Bliz did care and support the game, they weren’t smart enough to fix those problems. Things like inability to join lobbies. Having someone quit a lobby and now the lobby only has 7 player slots instead of 8, etc.

  3. They aren’t smart enough to make content downloadable on demand. For instance if I don’t speak Swahili, why do I need to download all the Swahili language files when Bliz adds it as a new language? Or if I don’t play ladder games, why do I need to download 300 MB of new ladder maps every season? I haven’t touched a ladder game in over a year. The idea of install on demand has been around for 30 years yet Bliz hasn’t figured it out yet.

Disagree with your other points. Voices are nice but definitely not required. Also, there’s plenty of player designed arcade maps that have voices. Also computers can now render voices or as inthe past, Bliz had employees that doubled as voice actors. Regardless, I would rather have some new maps even if there is no canned 15 second voice intro repeated every single time.

Yes you’re right it all comes down to $ with Bliz. And yes there is an incentive. If there were more coop maps, people would be more inclined to shell out $ for commanders. That’s just common sense.

And yes people complain about having to pay $ for something Bliz is no longer supporting. However, there are several SC2 arcade maps where people voluntarily are still to this day, giving developers money to continue designing and developing such as the custom map: Keystone (arcade map).

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100% agree with you “Iceman” Been saying this same thing since I got back into Sc2, if Blizzard won’t make any more maps please let the community do it!!! I’m so sick to death of these maps & would prefer more maps than more commanders.

There’s a bit to unpack here.

It’s not a simple as making a new map and having it pasted onto Battlenet. Anything that requires backend coding (aka development), which a new map would, requires coding staff on the back end. And unfortunately, there aren’t any. The dev division known as Team 1 (which SC2’s devs were part of) was eliminated several years back. The members either were transferred to other franchises or left altogether.

Additionally, development costs money, time, etc. So they are not going to randomly grab people off other projects or spot-hire new people to develop content every time people ask for it. Even if they did, they’d have to be trained first (with much of it being self discovery/taught since there’s little to none of the previous SC2 devs still at Bliz), which costs additional resources. That’s the unfortunate reality of being out of development.

Iceman,

Very often those lines of code are compiled in binaries. Thus, they can’t just be individually replaced. The changes need to made to the source file, recompiled and then pushed out as a whole. So it’s not always as simple as you perceive.

And also, come on, Iceman. First, you are not privy to everything that is in any individual patch. Second, there’s been 100s of patches to SC2 in its lifetime that weren’t a redownload of the entire game.

Ah yes, the cliche ‘players are smart enough to direct development’ rhetoric.

That’s simply not the case, but not because of, or a lack of, smarts. The issue is there are too many opinions, many subject to the Dunning Kruger effect and other assorted biases. There will never be a consensus from a large community.

A great example was the experiment the SC2 devs did about 7-8ish years ago. With all the mouths running non-stop, could the players actually handle development decisions? To find out, Bliz chose something minor to test the theory. A poll was held to vote on the next season’s map pool. The result was a map pool so reviled, that after a week Bliz had to take it down and replace it with what they were originally going to go with.

Thank god it was something innocuous and easily reversible that the players fubar’d.

As to you other points about the real “schmucks”, you seem to believe that SC2 was created in a time when custom installs were simple and common. Now a days, sure. But back then when online games were still in their exploding phase, not so much.

Recently Bliz has started moving into on-demand downloading. But expecting them (and disparaging them) because they didn’t go back and retrofit their old games, along with all the backend systems/networks that support them, just demonstrates that you have no core insights into corporate business.

Your perception about bug fixing also demonstrates that you aren’t familiar with QA processes in a programming environment. Not every bug is an easy fix. And fixing them at all is predicated on replicating them internally. If they can’t be, there’s no where to start the fixing process.

Not to mention bugs are always prioritized with larger impact being focused on first. Meaning, there are often lower impact bugs that could never be addressed simply due to being out ranked by constant higher priorities.

And lastly,

You don’t.

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Ever had to bugfix something? Even a moderately complex spreadsheet can take a few hours to find the issue, let alone fix it. Now expand that to 100 workers, all with their own way of writing code, millions of lines of said code, with a decade of changes to it.

Frankly, any game made within the last 30 years is a miracle it even runs.

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Leviathan:

You can make all the excuses you want for Blizz. You’re obviously a Bliz apologist and they can do no wrong.

Again the whole reason to have a player developed map was to involve close to 0 Bliz resources. I shouldn’t have to repeat this 3 times but apparently I do.

Regarding players won’t like the new player developed map. Fine simple fix. First of all, one can select which map he wants to play when starting a map. In the event a player is doing a “random map” selection, which I often do, simply make a new choice which is “random bliz only” and “random including player dev maps”. Simple. Or don’t big deal, I don’t love every Bliz coop map equally. I’m sure I won’t love every player dev map equally. But I do think I’d enjoy some variety and I would bet nearly everyone would love the choice to try some new player dev maps and if they don’t like them, they never have to play them again. No biggee. Also even with Bliz coop maps, I defintely enjoy some more than others and some I can finish in 15 minutes while others take nearly 40 minutes so they aren’t all equally difficulty or even close. Same goes for campaign missions, etc. That’s called life and people having differing tastes. Not sure why this is so complicated for you to understand.

Regarding your garbage excuse for Blizz wasting massive amounts of bandwidth and making us DL entire files instead of patch files. Again, this goes down to good programming skills. A good programmer would have no trouble issuing a patch file. I’ve been gaming since the 80’s and this was a common thing even back in those days. I could download a patch that was literally 0.1% of the size of the file being patched. Why? Because bandwidth wasn’t taken for granted like modern companies seem to take it for granted.

I never said I had to redownload the entire game with each patch, but I guess that is a good way to sensationalize your objections so you can pretend they are legitimate. Bliz does however, make us download the entire file of any file affected even if it is to add one line of code. Also there have been multiple instances where it leaves the massive download file on my harddrive and doesn’t delete it. Not to mention the failed installations which required wiping the entire game and re-downloading it. Heck Blizzard recently (in the last 12 months) changed the directory where the custom maps were saved on the HDD and I noticed I was having to redownload every custom map when I went to play it any time after the date of a previous patch along with bank files being ignored. I checked my HDD and noticed that Bliz had added a new subdirectory level between the final location and I had to manually go in and move the original folder up one level to the new subdirectory. If you don’t think this is sloppy programming that should never happen then you really are sold out for Bliz.

Regarding the numerous bugs that have been there for 10 years, I really don’t think they are as minor as you think. Players not being able to enter lobbies is a pretty significant bug and should have been fixed 10 years ago. You play off these major bugs as something like a spelling error just a minor detail.

You love to bash the “bad judgment” of the players, but Daniel Kim did more to destroy the brand than anyone and he was in charge of the entire program at Bliz. There’s a reason that the original SC is still popular in Korea. A lot of the players just couldn’t handle all the one dimensional gimmicky units that Daniel’s genius brought to the game. So sorry not buying the idea of all knowing bliz and nothing knowing users.

And again for the umpteenth time, no one is forcing users to use the player developed maps. They’re welcome to continue with the same 8 coop maps from now until Microsoft trashes the servers. Just like the arcade maps, if you only want Bliz developed arcade maps, by all means continue playing Auir Chef and Starjeweled. No one is forcing anyone to play Desert Tank Battles or Star Battle. Go and check the arcade and report back to me on how many of the arcade games being played today are Bliz creations and how many are player creations. That’s really all we need to know to compare my idea vs yours on coop maps.

Nice catchy straw man argument along with a screenshot showing the “installation language” for first time complete game install and comparing that to what I actually said which was having to download a patch on an already downloaded installation in order to continue playing. If you really want to play dumb, I could easily go back to the patch history and point out a dozen patches which involved adding additional languages to the continue game play that were not optional downloads.

So really, I’m not sure if you’re intentionally being obtuse to try to defend a poorly run company, or you really are this oblivious and actually believe what you say.

If you actually have a legitimate objection to what I actually said, I’d love to hear it, but so far ll you’ve done is shill for Blizz and twist my words and their actions to meet your goal of dismissing a common opinion which is what the OP has said and that I’ve heard from dozens of other players.

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Yes I’ve bugfixed things. Nothing this big but I’ve also never been paid 10’s of millions of $ to make and maintain a game.

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New co-op missions, mutations, heck even Amon’s surprises awaiting them.

I’m sorry, Icemam, but I’ve done nothing of the sort. My response was solely facts that are applicable to any progamming situation, and recounts of historical events. Nowhere did I apologize, make excuses, shill or in any way defend Blizzard or their decisions one way or the other.

What concerns me is your propensity to rely on ad hominem to make your points. You open with it and sprinkle it through out your reply. All that does is demonstrate that you feel your points are not strong enough to stand on their own; that you feel you need to distract by attacking something besides the actual counterpoints.

You also have a propensity to alter the discussion when rebutted instead of addressing the counterpoints directly. This additionally demonstrates that you weren’t able to address the counterpoints directly so you needed to deflect by altering the narrative.

All this ultimately shows that you’ve already made up you mind and are not willing to hear anything that might threaten your position.

But I will oblige you, this time.

No where was I talking about whether or not people would like it. I was only addressing your assertion that something as simple as voting would be effective for development in a situation like this. Nothing more.

I made no “excuse”, Iceman. I only corrected your exaggeration. You don’t know the full extent of what’s in any patch, therefore you have no basis to judge its size. Nothing more.

Again, this idea that earlier games and modern games are of the same complexity.

As to the rest of your response about patches, I already explained why patches are larger than the individual lines of code, so I will not do so again.

What I said was neither a matter of what I think, nor did I play anything off. Again, it’s what the developer determines the impact levels are combined with the ability to recreate them internally. Nothing more.

First, you are now speaking as if you represent everyone, which you know full well you don’t. If SC2 was so universally panned, it wouldn’t have risen to such popularity, let alone become the industy flagship.

Second, and I’ll make this perfectly clear, I never made any claim about Bliz doing everything right, implicitly or explicitly.

Having said that, I’ll provide another example of a community lead project, which is closer to home. On the Asia region, the community replicated Coop with the addition of a host of new commanders. Because players had been asking for new commanders, it was big news when it was released. However, it was quickly discovered that the new commanders were massively overpowered (among other design issues) and as result, it died down to just another game in the arcade.

Again, nothing of the sort. First, you specifically mentioned having to install languages you don’t need, which is not true.

Second, my pic is not of the initial install. The languages can be swapped in and out at any time. The pic I provided is after the initial install. It literally says “Modify Installation” on the UI.

How can you accuse anyone of playing dumb here, Iceman? All while jumping straight to strawman without making any effort to find out if the picture I provided was initial install or post install. All while not knowing that all languages are not required at install (and not installed by default), and can be swapped in and out on demand at any time?

I do apologize for stating that you think every patch is the size of the entire game. Looking back, I see you said 30MB, whereas I read it as 30GB. So there was no intentional attempt to “sensationalize” or “pretend” anything.

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Ah yes Nexus Coop. I thought it would be the future with all the new and flashy stuff but just like food, having too much of a good thing is bad and I never really went forward to playing with it and went back to classic coop. It’s just overly complicated and convoluted for me.

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Game… Is… No longer… Supported.

None of your points matter. ANY kind of implementation is going to cost money… Money they ain’t putting into an old game. Seriously, what’s stopping you from playing Nexus? That has a ton of player development going on with it… And it STILL doesn’t have a bunch of extra maps.

If you think it’s so easy to do, help Nexus make some extra maps.

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Balance is always a mess. Coop could use more, but as is, it ain’t too shabby. Every time I look at the balance updates for Ladder/Versus, I can’t help shake my head. Not necessarily b/c they did a bad job, but it IS a lot of work!

The only things I knew of Nexus Coop were…
—it was like a “tier 2” level of power. “Tier one” would be Coop, and “tier zero” would be Versus/Ladder and sort of the baseline.
—Some of it was buggy, but it’s overall quite playable
—we have other missions on there
No voice lines. I don’t care about these either, but I doubt Blizzard would want their own coop missions to NOT have these though
—we have 3 or more new COs on there

… for me, the big factor is time. I like firing a game of Coop for the FWotD XP bonus, and perhaps a few more from time to time. Usually do the Mutation (esp. if it’s an easier one).

Otherwise, if I move away from Coop, it’ll be to resume my Campaign progress, and resume my game from Diablo 3.

I"m not going to waste too much time repeating myself since you’ve got a mental block or something going on and none of your “points” brings up anything new that hasn’t been addressed multiple times, such as “too much blizzard resources”. Your claimed “ad hominem attacks” which are hardly that, are just me pointing out your willful ignorance of listening to and comprehending what I’ve said. A true ad hominem attack would involve me insulting you (calling you names, etc), which I have not done once.

The one new point you brought up is a totally irrelevant is new player dev commanders being OP comparison. And again if we apply that to the maps, yes some new created maps may be more or less difficult than some of the others. Shock (again), that’s the way the current maps are. Again, I have to keep repeating myself to you, there are some maps I can finish while taking a 5 minute snack break in 20 minutes and others that I struggle to eek out and need 40 minutes. So yea there will likely be variability. And again, it wouldn’t be hard to have a check box that says “original bliz only” and “all maps including player maps”) when starting the game map randomly. Otherwise level can be selected as it already can be. So yea if player maps are too easy/hard and people don’t want them, fine.

Of course you neglect to mention there are already like 16 commanders but only 8-10 maps. How’s that for balance? I’d rather have 6 commanders and 20 maps TBH. The reason there are so many commanders (well more than would make sense given the small pool of maps) is that Bliz is looking after the almighty dollar at every turn. They think they can extract $6 for each one of those. However as already has been stated, which you can’t address is the point that having more playable maps actually increases the liklihood that Bliz can get the $6 for a commander sale.

Sorry but any decent programmer knows how to create a patch file which will either add or delete lines of code from a massive file. Blizzard doesn’t apparently know how to patch a file. But given all the 12 year old major bugs (entering a lobby, et al) and the massive drain on resources due to inefficient programming (one needs a top of the line gaming computer (with top of the line graphics card) of today to run a 12 year old game without massive lag and other gaming issues-----even on a lower in-game graphics setting), that doesn’t surprise me.

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Come now, Iceman, let’s not start tweaking the definitions of words to fit your soapbox. There’s no “true” ad hominem. It is or it isn’t. Things like “Not sure why this is so complicated for you to understand”, “I’m not sure if you’re intentionally being obtuse”, etc are attempts to reference my intellectual capacity to artificially bolster your position.

You’ve been claiming that I haven’t addressed your points, but I did in my initial reply here. You just didn’t like the answer, didn’t like the reality of things. Once you went off the rails with the accusations, references to my mental state, exaggerations, trying to dodge being corrected, etc, that was all there was left for me to address.

But again, Iceman…

In the end, it will require development to add new maps to coop. A lot of resources or zero; a good programmer or bad; it doesn’t matter. Even your vaunted idea of adding a option to use Bliz maps or not would require further development. No shilling, no defending. Just plain fact which is independent of opinion or judgement.

With the game being almost three years out of development, there is no one to do that coding, nor is Bliz going to spot-develop SC2 every time the community wants something.

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I do appreciate the No True Scotsman to the Ad Hominem though. But yeah, it took long enough for them to implement community made patches because there isn’t really anyone looking at SC2 anymore.

The development effort for maps is quite small, compared to e.g. new commanders.

Some community map gurus could certainly make cool new maps… but most importantly, the amount of work required from blizz devs to test and check the map would be quite small too.

And even that small amount can be eliminated… if they introduced a new map category, say Coop-test-realm, where people can play and rate community made maps, the best one each week or month could be added to the normal coop map pool automatically.

Yes that requires some initial development, but after that, coop gets good new maps as long as the community keeps producing them.

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With Blizzard’s history, it’s important to not expect a lot from a poor old corporation that is utter garbage (at the top).
Some of these posts genuinely do sound like apologia, no offense.

Blizzard is more than capable to do a lot of things, but for a long time their culture was not exactly respecting of the playerbase. I am not surprised that so many people are still unhappy with Blizzard and rightfully so.

The lack of development for something that was obviously popular enough to justify a level of support flies against everything Blizzard used to be (and what made us love the company) and really comes across as the Activision side of the business. The greed is so obvious.

They didn’t need excuses. They needed to not be a crappy company before getting bought out by Microsoft. Maybe they will do something.