(Backstory: Around Wednesday a patch was rolled out - now the game will not open for many players, instead showing only a dialog/error box:
“The installed version of your graphics driver is old and will prevent Starcraft: Remastered from running properly. Visit starcraft.com/drivers for information on how to upgrade your graphics driver.”
Many players have now updated their graphics drivers (or found that their drivers are already up to date), but it has not solved the problem or changed anything for them, they’re still locked out of the game, and still presented with the same dialog box.)
Hi! I need my laptop for work purposes, so I don’t want to take any unnecessary risks by updating my graphics drivers, and risk breaking/changing something that I need for work. (And, many people have updated their graphics drivers and reported that they are still locked out of StarCraft, i.e. still getting the error/dialog box that says to update graphics drivers.)
Showing a warning box is fine if it’s just a warning, but please add a button to “Start Game Anyway”, which could maybe start the game with SD graphics if necessary And if we’re supposed to be testing the PTR version due to our old videocards, then maybe the dialog box should ask people to consider trying the PTR
But I don’t think there should be any reason to lock people out of the game completely, why is that being done? And why has the patch not been rolled-back yet, at least as a temporary fix? If there are so many people who can’t play anymore, doesn’t it make sense to roll-back the patch for now?
(And for me personally, I play using the SD graphics already - I actually prefer them, and also my laptop’s videocard is too slow to handle the HD graphics anyway.)
So, like the topic title suggests: Instead of preventing people with older graphics cards from playing the game entirely, what about just disabling HD graphics for them (at least just for now, as a quick and/or temporary fix), so at least people can still play? (Or, what about just starting starcraft with HD off initially, but having HD still available to turn on? Or, like, what about not removing any functionality at all? Maybe there’s a technical reason why HD can’t be done with old drivers, I get that I can understand if there’s a blacklisted list of drivers that were found to consistently crash the game when in HD during PTR for example. But, I don’t see any point in completely preventing people from opening the game? Just because other people with the same drivers had problems with HD? Or just because the drivers don’t appear on an approved whitelist?)
I plan to download the 6.6 gigabyte PTR and report whether the PTR version works or not. Does the PTR allow Ladder or custom games vs non-PTR opponents? It sounds like it doesn’t
(Also to note: For a couple months I’ve been checking for the PTR in the Region dropdown (earth icon) and not finding it; just yesterday I found out the PTR is actually in a dropdown to the left of that! XD Oops lol. I’m curious, was it there all along, all this time I’ve been checking? Upon research, looks like PTR was open from mid-May to end of June, yet I never saw it when I looked for it lol. At every patch I was also checking the patch notes, to see if PTR opening was announced - it was never announced in the patch notes. It seems the closing of the PTR was announced in the patch notes, but not the opening of the PTR.)
(Regardless, as far as I can gather, the PTR did not have the “graphics driver is old” error, and did not warn users that they would be unable to play in the future because of their graphics drivers. So, even for people who did try the PTR, this new issue this week has come upon them completely without warning, correct?)
Hope this issue can be resolved quickly - I think a dialogue box blocking people from starting the game is pretty uncalled for. Think of the players now locked out of participating in tournaments and practicing for tournaments! Or the players who play with their friends, who can no longer join their friends to play! Hope this can be fixed soon! Thanks!
I’d also like to say, I’m a programmer and game developer myself, so I definitely empathise with your team’s struggles with hardware/software/graphics/driver issues But I’m also very passionate about User Experience design, and always try to think of the players first I think that locking people out of such an important game, especially with such little warning, could have been avoided entirely with better resources and planning, and enough people on the team so someone can be dedicated to these kinds of things - things which seem very obvious to me (and to many other players too - strategy game players can be pretty smart haha)
For many, BroodWar is considered the best game ever made hands-down, AND the best e-sport - I think BroodWar deserves better I’m hoping there will be a suitable short-term fix (and maybe the PTR will help things for some players?), but I also think BroodWar deserves better in the long-term, and that more resources and staff should be dedicated to such a legendary and important game. In my opinion, a decision to drop support for older videocards (and for laptops in general, new & old) should not have been made in the first place. (Laptops and “old” videocards from ~2015, preventing people from playing a game from 1998). I’m VERY grateful for the Custom Hotkeys and Ladder that Remastered has brought (and the Worker Count in replays lol, and showing both players’ minerals/gas/supply in Observer mode) - but in terms of being able to play BroodWar on Laptops and on “old” hardware from 2010-2015, please, please try to avoid breaking things in such an unnecessary way!
Update:
I just downloaded the PTR - turns out it copies 6.6 GB on my HD, but only downloads ~60 MB, so it only took a few minutes
Just tried the PTR (all my options and hotkeys were reset to default but I know that’s normal), tried singleplayer vs comps. For the last couple months, in-game singleplayer has seemed very choppy and laggy - but in the PTR today it seemed very smooth Very happy about that Seems it has brought performance back to its old level from several months ago, or possibly even better.
Just played an online custom match on PTR too, seemed fine. Only about 1-3 other people online though. And I’m still locked out of the real non-PTR, and for what reason? Hope it gets rectified soon!