"If your matchmaking is really good, it means that for every single game, you're kind of the edge of your seat," Pardo said. "After you play an hour or two of games like that, you're kind of exhausted. So we're actually talking about, 'Is that the right matchmaking approach?' You might want to add a little sloppiness to the matchmaking. Maybe that means sometimes you get stomped, but sometimes you have easier games. And sometimes you have the really competitive games. It's got better pacing.
(From http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/99211-Battle-net-S...)
So there's that interesting human element there--how wide do your want your matchmaking algorithm to get? Personally, I enjoy the nightmare intensity; it means I more easily get my fill for the night. Is only being able to play a few games at a time actually a bad thing? I guess it might be from Blizzard's perspective.
If you're in the beta, try playing 2v2 with a friend against the Internet. If you're losing you can at least lose together. Think of it as a co-founder ;)
It tries to match you as evenly as possible to start.
If you get hot, it will find better players.
If you lose a bunch, it will try matching you with worse ones.
(based on ranking)
I play platinum 2v2 and gold 1v1 and that's been what i've noticed. It feels like it's sorta testing out where you belong and fit in at every point in time. It also widens the matching if it can't find anyone rather than waiting... those games can get ugly fast in any direction.
PS - cheesy strats sometimes work on really good players because they forget how silly they are. I cannon rushed a guy sitting in the top of platinum league yesterday and I haven't seen anyone rage that hard in a while.
I can't think of any reason why I could get bumped down after a considerable winning streak other than a cron, especially since it always told me my opponent was a favorite over me and was presumably a higher Elo. It had to have been accounting for the 20 or so games I lost before I figured out what I was doing, otherwise I would have been bumped down far sooner.
(Bronze was a cakewalk, I won most games in a few minutes.)
Then they did a reset and now I'm in Silver and winning more than not. I might actually make Gold whenever the cron runs next.
The problem with the sloppy algo is that it's rarely fun. 45% of the time you're crushing the other team so easily that it's kinda boring. 45% of the time you have 0 shot of winning, and know this in a few minutes but it takes a half hour or more. 10% of the time it's close and then it's actually fun.
Their wiki says they make the matches harder when you pre-make with friends because they figure that you will be harder to beat. I got so tired of the uneven matchmaking that I can't bring myself to play it anymore.
You learn the most from close games. You learn nothing from beating someone much worse than you. And when you are destroyed by someone much better you also usually do not learn much because you are so far behind that usually you do not know what hit you.
who wants a game?
I can only assume that at retail with even higher numbers of players it will be even quicker to find a game.
If I'm still knee deep in Twilio code then, well, no Starcraft for me. If I'm launched and just waiting for Google to start ranking me, blocking on A/B test results, or otherwise not very active, well, I know how to make the waiting more pleasant.
Any fans should check out the HDH Invitational tournament underway: http://www.youtube.com/user/hdstarcraft , http://www.youtube.com/user/HuskyStarcraft (these guys sportcast SC games and consistently have more viewers than ESPN's youtube channel)
can't wait for it to come out. thankfully i have a social life, work, and other good things in my life now so i should be able to control myself :-)
I used to play SC1 back in the day, but haven't played that many games since (major exception being COD4 on hardcore/tactical servers).
The other difference is Koreans. They rule at SC.
SC also used more soft counters compared to AOE with more hard counters. What I mean by that is that in AOE (from what I remember, its been years), counters are more or less put down in stone. If your mass of pikemen ran into a mass of footmen, then your pikemen would more or less get raped. Same with cavalry charging into pikemen. No amount of micro will save you. In SC, even when your army has been countered (your muta swarm runs into a huge mass of medics and marines), it's possible (very hard, but possible) to snatch away at least a partial victory with the proper application of micro.
The games also feel completely different when the three races are fundamentally different, as opposed to being more or less the same with different bonuses and special units.
Whatever I put above has been clouded by the fact that I have never seen really high level AOE play, and have spent days of my life watching high level SC.
Say it with me:
I PROMISE NOT TO BUY SCII INSTEAD OF BUILDING MY COMPANY
I PROMISE NOT TO BUY SCII INSTEAD OF BUILDING MY COMPANY
I PROMISE NOT TO BUY SCII INSTEAD OF BUILDING MY COMPANY
I PROMISE NOT TO BUY SCII INSTEAD OF BUILDING MY COMPANY
I PROMISE NOT TO BUY SCII INSTEAD OF BUILDING MY COMPANY
Any idea how it would run on a 2008 Mac Pro with the base ATI GPU (2600 HD iirc)?
I'm pretty new to the game but I'm starting to get the hang of it, if anyone wants to skirmish or give me some tips my id is corohd.warpath
Forum with mac beta system reqs listing is at http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=24630623195&...
In general, folks have been able to run much higher graphic settings on windows in bootcamp than on the mac itself.
I just got myself off WoW.
Now this, and Diablo 3 coming later...
In other news, the Korean economy is expected to contract from August.
>According to Lee, there are almost 20,000 PC Bangs in Korea and they collectively make about 120 billion wons (about 100 million US dollars) every month. Lee has also stated that “This is not the only source of economic influence achieved by gaming. There are three cable channels for starcraft leagues and tournaments, as well as thirteen other professional teams. These game broadcasts have potentials to be exported into other countries, just like how Korean dramas were actively exported throughout Asia during 2002-2006.”
Then I got the SC2 Beta from a friend. Oh man, so awesome.
(Not addicted .. but oh so fun. Love Blizzard)
Boy did I waste enough time on battlenet.
Last night, at 7 PM, there were 25,000 people on Battle.net, so it's a fairly large beta.
Anyway, I'm planning on launching something I call the Starcraft 2 University (http://sc2uni.com), which (hopefully) will help people find tutors for personal training sessions (the idea comes from online poker where this is quite popular). I'd love some feedback on the idea - the site currently up is simply just for collecting some e-mails - none of my actual code is up yet (although I'm planning to go with this layout and "design language").
