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Blizzard Unveils Custom StarCraft 2 Game Types, Encourages Map Design
The first of the Blizzard-made maps is a humorous creation called Aiur Chef, an eight-player free-for-all in which players collect “ingredients” from around the map that are required for recipes, which each grant various rewards, such as points, items, and special powers. You compete against an opponent for a high score, and while you can’t kill each other, you are able to hinder the collection of ingredients through effects like stuns and slowing effects. Each of the three rounds has a “theme ingredient,” and you can see units running around carrying pots and drumsticks and rolling pins. There’s a new UI window showing which ingredients you have left to collect.
Another custom game, titled Left 2 Die, is based on one of the missions in the single-player campaign where players were swarmed by hordes of zombies every night, using daylight hours to rebuild and go on the offensive. Blizzard received enough positive feedback about that particular mission that they decided to go ahead and make a standalone version (tipping their hat to Valve's Left 4 Dead in the process). It's a co-op game, and as you mow down zombies you collect Zerg Biomass to buy upgrades for your army (upgrades that are shared, so you don’t have to worry about competing with your partner). There are new zombie units to contend with, inspired by those in Left 4 Dead, but adapted so they make sense in an RTS.
Next is a game called Starjeweled, which sections off half of the UI into Blizzard’s interpretation of the popular Bejeweled puzzle game. When you match a group of similar symbols, they disappear and grant you resources to spend on units, which then go out and try to attack an enemy base.
Perhaps the most notable of Blizzard's custom games is what they call Blizzard DOTA, based on the hugely popular Warcraft 3 mod Defense of the Ancients. In teams of five, players will control Heroes that can buy items, gain experience and level up, while the map constantly spawns waves of monsters from both bases. The heroes will be a collection of notable Blizzard characters from various games.
During the panel about the map tools, the Starcraft 2 team was very focused on introducing map makers to the basics of development. They talked about the necessity of making the first few minutes of a custom game easy to understand for new players, since getting massacred while being utterly confused is not an experience most players will want to repeat. They also encouraged map makers to take a more active role in soliciting and responding to feedback. Blizzard relies heavily on iteration, and they think the community would benefit from doing so as well.
Blizzard was insistent that the custom maps they will be releasing are part of an ongoing process to keep making new maps and custom games for players. One of their big goals for the immediate future is to keep demonstrating what their map editor is capable of and getting assets in the hands of players to facilitate building. To that end, the custom games they’re building will be unlocked, so the community will be able to look at the internals and modify whatever they see fit. (And speaking of security, they're working on better safeguards to keep people from copying others' maps, should the creators wish to keep them private.) Another reason they built the maps was to see in what areas the editing tools were lacking, so they could continue to add and streamline functionality.
The game itself is amazing and I have had a lot of fun playing it, throughout the beta and the release, but I am really sad at how Bnet 2.0 turned out. The so called "social experience" is not social at all. Hard to meet and talk to new people because there are no chat channels. There's no guild support. You can't name your own custom games (what the fuck????).
Facebook integration is great and all, but I hardly have any friends that play the game. Most of the people I played with in the original game I met on Bnet in.... chat channels. The whole thing is just so ass backards and feels like a hack.
Not interested in being a slave to the Blizzard content masters.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Sounds kind of like the mini games in PvZ
Nevermind that there's already a good DOTA, Storm Of The Imperial Sanctum...
You can play as the M.U.L.E.!!
I'm really hoping that someone will come up with a version of The Elements. It was a hugely popular custom map during SC1's first few years.
All of your content gets loaded onto Blizzard's infrastructure. There is no local storage. If they don't like your map/gametype -- for any reason -- they can wipe it from existence. Why do they do this? Because they can .
This is awesome news. There were several custom map types in SC1 that have become a genre in itself (tower defense, mass, impossible scenarios, etc). The SC2 map editor has much more flexibility and should provide many more interesting variants of the game!
...so it would run better on wine.
Cheers!
Throw in LAN play. That MIGHT convince me to. There are big LAN parties around the U.S., blizzard. You know this, right? Don't give us some lame "piracy" excuse, because it's not working.
I call lazy b.s.
the way custom maps are published has always been horrible in bnet 2.0 so far. you find a really good custom you like one of three things happen to it...
1.creativity in bnet is limited as if you try innovative controls bnet 2.0 lags any form of custom interface beyond fun playability.
2. The map maker deletes the map. thus preventing any one from ever playing it again.
3. It gets deleted by blizzard for random offensive content that isnt even offensive... thus preventing any one from ever playing it again.
thus every custom i have played and enjoyed has fallen into one of the two above categories, causing myself to not like any custom games any more on bnet 2.0 as the way blizzard handles it is horrible.
Just review the EULA, not only do they stipulate that they own all content uploaded to battle.net. They also pass apple-esk divine judgement of randomness on what qualifies to be publically playable.
Basically they gave their would be mod community the a giant middle finger.
Bear in mind that for a while, Blizzard has been taking orders from people whose positions of power came from the success of the Shrek video game franchise and Guitar Hero. If you're expecting these people to understand the value of a grass roots developer community, think again. It's not just that they are hostile, it's that they just plain don't get it. And if you've ever been down the org chart from someone who makes decisions like this, you understand that you really don't get the opportunity to explain it to them, or if you try, they still don't get it (and you end up with even *less* power.)
I don't know, but I'm guessing that a lot of the talent that Blizzard had, moved on to greener pastures and we're seeing the consequences of that in their games.
The kicker is that these decision makers are probably right. They are probably driving a quarter or two of unprecedented growth for the company.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Blizzard (over)charges US$60 for their new game, disallows LAN play, cuts off their player base (Seriously? Get caught cheating in SC2 and you're not allowed to play anymore? In single player?), can't deliver new product (what part of this, exactly, isn't just a rehash of the existing franchise, with newer graphics?), and now wants everyone to get excited about map editing? Back in the days of Q2 and Unreal, I could see that... map editors where new and exciting tech back then... but the current RTS market? Even for a huge franchise (but now shrinking, due to Blizzard's slipshod handling of this latest entry), a map editor is less of a "wow factor" than an obvious and expected component in an RTS. No map editor? Multiplayer lasts for a few months, then stops. Without new maps, your game lasts only as long as you are actively (and expensively) promoting it. Duh.
in lieu of announcements about Heart of the Swarm, the devs are using Blizzcon to showcase the map-editing tools
Right... Call me when they have something worth looking at, because as far as I can tell, StarCraft2 isn't.
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I seriously doubt Activision has that kind of pull. There's a reason it was a merger and not a purchase. Blizzard could have given Activision the finger if it didn't think the terms of the merger left them with more control, not less.
It's not just that they are hostile, it's that they just plain don't get it.
Yep, the same way they just "don't get" that removing the ability to play on a LAN breaks the game for many buyers.
The same way they "don't get" that they are killing the potential longevity of this game with their draconian control measures.
The same way they "don't get" their entire user base.
I have purchased several copies of damn near every game Blizzard has made for the last 2 decades. I haven't been on battle.net since the days of Diablo I.
I (and the other 3 members of my family) used to be huge WoW players.
I don't see any Blizzard games on the current (or near future) market that grab enough interest (now that I see what they did to StarCraft) to entice me to spend more than about $20 on anything they've got. $60 is ridiculous, especially since they're requiring me to go online to activate single-player mode, I can't just drop in at a LAN party and play, I can get banned (and locked out of single-player mode) for cheating in single-player... The list goes on. Blizzard, you really dropped the ball with this one.
If the problem is that your developers (or whoever is actually steering your company) "just don't get it", you better find someone who does... fast.
The kicker is that these decision makers are probably right. They are probably driving a quarter or two of unprecedented growth for the company.
... followed by an amazing swan-dive that will drag the entire company into the gutter. Good job looking at the short term, fellas!
--
"We'll show those pirates what for! We'll alienate our customer base, and bankrupt ourselves! Let's see them steal our intellectual property after that!"
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Yes I can see how it is horrible to not be able to release your own combined nazi-rape-penis map to the masse
Yeah, that's not how the Real ID thing seems to have gone. People who know Blizzard employees regularly reported during the forums fiasco that it was essentially 100% opposed by Blizzard staff, but that Activision declared it was a "marketing" issue and thus under their control.
So far as I can tell, if Blizzard had a vote, Real ID would be a nickname-based system that people actually liked, not an adjunct to Facebook.
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When I read they were introducing new map types and play modes, my first hope was that they'd bring back team melee.
And before someone says it's already in the game, it's not. It was a really innovative way to play RTS as a team, and it's a shame they haven't included it. If you don't remember the mode from the original, have a look at the thread on the forum asking for its return.
It's really annoying that half the units from Starcraft 1 are only available in the single player mode. So what if there's capability/tech overlap. I want my Goliaths damnit!
ITT: noobs complaining about SC2 On battle.net: about 1,000,000 players currently playing StarCraft II I think Blizzard knows what the users care about most.
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
$60 is ridiculous
USD $88.15 is even worse. Just because I live in Australia.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
I am a pretty big rts fan. Even though I don't play all that much computer games and even though I run Debian on my desktops I actually purchased copies of Warcraft III and Starcaft. I believe those are among the very few games I ever bought. And the only Windows games I bought within the last ten years (I got myself Tribes 2 and Civilization CTP from Loki and UT2004, all for Linux). I was really looking forward to Starcraft 2 and even considered a Windows partition or a purchase of Crossover Games (Wine on steroids for money). Since I don't follow game news I never thought Blizzard would become one of THOSE companies.
I will definitely buy a copy of Starcarft 2 as soon as I can play it whenever and whoever I want. But now? I tell my friends not to buy Blizzard anymore. They are free to pirate that crap.
I thought Blizzard got it, when a recent (within the last two years or so) patch for Warcraft III removed the need to have an original cd in the cd drive bay. I guess I was wrong. Blizzard can kiss my behind.
You stifle creativity.
I wonder how popular this game will be in 10 years.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
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I'm glad I didn't listen to the guy on /b/ who said to "get this game" when I asked in a thread about whether its custom maps were up to snuff compared to WC3.
Captcha: Dietrich sucker
If anything, I bet Blizzard will go from strength to strength and become more profitable than ever.
A few people might not like it, but the rest of the world won't have a problem with it. If geeks on Slashdot rant about something being locked down and not open, you can bet that it's going to go on to be really successful.
How about a Touhou-like bullet hell shooter?
I seriously doubt Activision has that kind of pull. There's a reason it was a merger and not a purchase. Blizzard could have given Activision the finger if it didn't think the terms of the merger left them with more control, not less.
You assume that the concerns of those guiding the merger were gaining or maintaining control. How do you know they don't have less control, but more money?
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Until then, my stance doesn't change: FUCK YOU, BLIZZARD.