Blizzard dies and Bobby rides

I've seen other games do the same when their population begins to crater. There was a BR game called Scavengers that made a lot of bad design decisions that resulted in the game being a ghost town. Until suddenly one day when matchmaking wasn't ass and your team would populate with players who didnt have mics, but would do basic chat messages (usually friendly or trying to set expectations) and usually be responsive to your pings. Was pretty clear they were bots, but the illusion was convincing enough if you didnt look too closely

Yeah they wouldn't need to bother with disabling gen chat.

They got robocallers that can persuade retirees to part with their social security numbers, I'm sure they could've made their AI be able to talk shit convincingly over general chat.

with hacks like blizzard you just never know. these guys are bankrupt on both ethics and implementation.

There is a reason Titan never saw a beta.

To help soothe the pain, here is a nice cover of a song from the good ol' days

Exactly why you can't remove Battle.net Ukerric SC1 was a classic and gives Kotick a permanent foothold into your home.

We're still banging on SC1 BGH a few times a year.

xmod2 said:

EOMM is some darks art shit like esoteric morality, where it really relies on no one finding out you're doing it.

Once people know that's what you're doing, their behaviors shift and your 'churn' calculation will change as a result.

Click to expand...

Big Phoenix said:

All matchmaking is garbage;

Click to expand...

I've worked on team multiplayer games with matchmaking systems, and it is highly unlikely Riot and other PvP games are using EOMM. Everything he describes is an inherent part of MM systems due to variability, randomness, and psychology. Solo queuing in a team game has decently high variability (people don't always play exactly the same) even with a large pool of players to match from and that variability causes a significant amount of randomness which is far more streaky that people think it is.

If you throw in other psychological factors such as optimal reward scheduling (people like to win more often than they lose which is impossible in a skill based match-matchmaking system) and loss aversion you will understand that people will always hate team games with skill-based matchmaking systems even if they work perfectly.

Cybsled said:

To help soothe the pain, here is a nice cover of a song from the good ol' days

Click to expand...

This song is incredible.

Ukerric said:

I'm not into RTSes at all. I got a free copy of SC2 which I never ever registered on B.Net, and although I tried WC3 at the time, I quickly removed it from my then-PC.

I want my strategy games measured in Minutes-per-Turn, not Actions-Per-Minute.

Click to expand...

apples and oranges on APM between SC1 and SC2. but the APM in SC1 can definitely get pretty high by mid-game.

i just avoided the traditional official ladder maps. BGH has far lower APM. And you can get away with not bothering to compete in the APM war in BGH due to the play style of the map, every enemy behaves the same way and it's very predictable how the game will unfold because there is a certain type of gameplay the map forces. Almost sets a ceiling on APM. It was the most relaxing map for me. 4v4 if you just wanted the pressure off of you to contribute or compete in APM. I wasn't a big fan of 2v2 BGH at all. Felt too much like a ladder game.

I stopped playing all ladder and ranked maps after like a week of owning the game.

SC1, you had sunken defense & snipers that were great fun. Some pretty cool RPG's created too where you could get a hero with unlimited + upgrades. That and money maps where all the crystal mines were stacked on each other, that was some good non-RTS RTS gaming

Cybsled said:

To help soothe the pain, here is a nice cover of a song from the good ol' days

Click to expand...

It’s incredible what quality music can do for player enjoyment.

BoozeCube said:

If you aren't playing 8 player BGH maps are you even playing Starcraft?

Click to expand...

Was that the money map? All I remember is the engine could not handle if all 8 players had full army's. You'd have entire carrier fleets that... couldn't fire because the engine wouldn't even process the interceptors flying around shooting

k^M said:

Was that the money map? All I remember is the engine could not handle if all 8 players had full army's. You'd have entire carrier fleets that... couldn't fire because the engine wouldn't even process the interceptors flying around shooting

Click to expand...

All my friends stopped playing because we would just slam Carrier and Battlecruiser fleets at each other on Moneg Maps, and I made a bunch of High Templars and electrocutued them all to death.