[sc1f]eonzerg Profile Blog Joined February 2010 Belgium 5927 Posts #21 i guess is very easy to answer him, they are making events not for the BW TL community or atleast the 4 posters we have but a global scene.So when they are making events they shouldnt take 4 posters feedback in consideration.the people complaining wants to see something different,so i think is hard to please them,i will just go with the 10k 5k etc viewers and keep doing the same,it works for them.



Honestly why blizzard will care about some posters complaining the old BW legends and sc2 personalities are going to SC:R events ? just look at this like the youtube likes dislikes , 10000 likes and 10 dislikes,and is not a secret most of the times the threads are exploding just cuz drama is fun,u will never find them posting on calm threads with events like STPL or haveatyou or that filthy etc etc,but if there is drama everyone is in.



But i think is important blizzard heard us about the feedback we have for the game,cuz we are the people that wanna keep playing this game and want it to last forever ?

jinjin5000 Profile Joined May 2010 Korea (South) 871 Posts #22 I mean, faust, from a newcomers perspective to bw scene, criticism to scr seems 100% valid though.



If you are doing remastered product, you should be expecting modern gaming standards with the same old gameplay with some enhancement here and there, like graphics and hotkeys. However, scr has failed to deliver modern netcode standards to an old game.



I started BW when remastered was announced, and joined shieldbattery, a 3rd party BW app that used their own netcode, and went into remastered expecting that kind of gameplay. Smooth gameplay vs people within reasonable distance of you. Modern netcode standards in old game.



It is in no way upgrade from fan made services from latency/gaming perspective. Yes, visuals got better, but so many features are missing, including clan system, replay functions, categorization, ect.



Combine that with actual scr launch that was universally underwhelming with extreme lag problems, custom game problem, bugs, ect "Best Mind Shuttle Best Mind Shuttle" -Telecom, 2010-present, I hate Telecom

Dazed. Profile Blog Joined March 2008 Canada 3301 Posts #23 So we bullied a corporation into incompetence? Ok... Never say Die! ||| Fight you? No, I want to kill you.

SCC-Faust Profile Blog Joined November 2007 United States 3719 Posts #24 I agree with you all. I don't necessarily take iNcontroL's quote at face value, but I believe it to be true in some form.



I'm mostly just saying there definitely is a problem somewhere regarding how Blizzard views the SC:R community, and I believe it would be in everyone's best interest to understand the problem better. I do not personally think they are withholding events because of what a few people said. Despite that, it would be extremely elucidating if someone could expand on what iNcontroL meant in his quote specifically because the last thread it was mentioned in was closed due to a lot of pointless arguments, and I just thought to myself that this is a huge claim to make and most people glossed over it.



And if we are going to talk about lack of Blizzard updates and events, I think that is the first place we should look. It isn't Blizzard themselves saying it, but it is a respected member of the community who has direct contact with Blizzard and it is by far more constructive to reflect on that than have this topic go to 12 pages with everyone getting progressively angrier and pointing fingers every which way. I want to fuck Soulkey with a Zelderan.

Gorgonoth Profile Joined August 2017 United States 458 Posts #25 On March 30 2018 10:16 SCC-Faust wrote:

I agree with you all. I don't necessarily take iNcontroL's quote at face value, but I believe it to be true in some form.



I'm mostly just saying there definitely is a problem somewhere regarding how Blizzard views the SC:R community, and I believe it would be in everyone's best interest to understand the problem better. I do not personally think they are withholding events because of what a few people said. Despite that, it would be extremely elucidating if someone could expand on what iNcontroL meant in his quote specifically because the last thread it was mentioned in was closed due to a lot of pointless arguments, and I just thought to myself that this is a huge claim to make and most people glossed over it.



And if we are going to talk about lack of Blizzard updates and events, I think that is the first place we should look. It isn't Blizzard themselves saying it, but it is a respected member of the community who has direct contact with Blizzard and it is by far more constructive to reflect on that than have this topic go to 12 pages with everyone getting progressively angrier and pointing fingers every which way.

I think your right Faust. It isn't like a few salty threads directly = withrdrawl of support for the community. But It certianly can't help when Blizzard looks and sees a continuous trend of un-productive negativity. I think its something people need to think about. However I dont think that our hope for blizzzard to help scr is totally over. Yes, its been dark for a few months, but its quite possible something big will be announced during the SC20 anniversary. I think your right Faust. It isn't like a few salty threads directly = withrdrawl of support for the community. But It certianly can't help when Blizzard looks and sees a continuous trend of un-productive negativity. I think its something people need to think about. However I dont think that our hope for blizzzard to help scr is totally over. Yes, its been dark for a few months, but its quite possible something big will be announced during the SC20 anniversary.

ortseam Profile Joined April 2015 977 Posts #26 I don't think this has to do as much with Blizzard, but with content creators.E.g. FilthyRake and BaseTrade tried to get tournaments going with a lot of negative responses in the forum threads/ twitch chat. If you check out the threads, I'm pretty sure the aggressive/negative posters outweight the positive/welcoming ones. Combined with BW's low popularity and viewership in the foreign scene, it's pretty easy to see why a content creator/ tournament organizer would think twice before commiting resources to foreign BW. I would like to hear Schamtoo's opinion on this, I remember he faced similar problems when he started.





WGT-Baal Profile Blog Joined June 2008 France 2523 Posts #27 You make a good point Faust and for events I can see where Incontrol is coming from but this is not (and should not) be linked to the actual state of the game, on the technical side of things. The latency and various other problems that kogeT detailed are all very legit problems, regardless of the supposed toxicity of the scene (and isnt that being a bit childish? Do you really think the LoL scene, for example, is the friendliest place in the world?).



A lot of people were VERY patient with SCR, including myself, but now this patience is wearing thin. If the game were on Steam you can bet the number of returns would have been massive. Empty PR is not going to fix it, and at this point I would rather hear Blizzard say "ok it s harder than we thought, we dont have the ressources for that team, sorry'' and move on and let the community find its way back together than making empty/dubious promises with super vague deadlines.

Former WCG ref, WGTour.com and Fra-A admin. Clan ash Bwcl-D leader, TDR NW Team NEU captain

fazek42 Profile Blog Joined April 2011 Hungary 423 Posts Last Edited: 2018-03-31 01:00:57 #28 On March 30 2018 22:15 WGT-Baal wrote:

You make a good point Faust and for events I can see where Incontrol is coming from but this is not (and should not) be linked to the actual state of the game, on the technical side of things. The latency and various other problems that kogeT detailed are all very legit problems, regardless of the supposed toxicity of the scene (and isnt that being a bit childish? Do you really think the LoL scene, for example, is the friendliest place in the world?).



A lot of people were VERY patient with SCR, including myself, but now this patience is wearing thin. If the game were on Steam you can bet the number of returns would have been massive. Empty PR is not going to fix it, and at this point I would rather hear Blizzard say "ok it s harder than we thought, we dont have the ressources for that team, sorry'' and move on and let the community find its way back together than making empty/dubious promises with super vague deadlines.





Mmm, that'd be so nice... Blizzard handing it over to the community... Thanks for the hard work, but since you guys at Blizz obvuously don't have the resources to actually finish this game and deliver the stuff that you promised to deliver a year ago...



It's time for the community to take over. Did I hear it correctly that Iccup is working on getting remastered to work? Mmm, that'd be so nice... Blizzard handing it over to the community... Thanks for the hard work, but since you guys at Blizz obvuously don't have the resources to actually finish this game and deliver the stuff that you promised to deliver a year ago...It's time for the community to take over. Did I hear it correctly that Iccup is working on getting remastered to work?

SCC-Faust Profile Blog Joined November 2007 United States 3719 Posts #29 We're getting to the point where this is not all the algorithm's fault.



Originally it was, along with a bundle of other issues, but eventually we'll have to step back and say "Whoah, the algorithm doesn't suck, there is just no one playing anymore". Why people aren't playing anymore, well, I bet everyone can make wild guesses as to why that is the case. I was looking at server numbers compared to 2016 Fish days and even when SC:R first launched in the first few months. I know I brought this up like 3 months after release and Grant Davies did say according to their statistics, the player base was increasing, which I have no doubt was true. But that is by far no longer the case.



I'm at the point where I don't even feel like looking/posting on Teamliquid because of these threads and the state of the game. And you have people who come in and look at this from an outside perspective and think we're whiny entitled brats when Blizzard threw the first stone and it is just one blow after another. Yeah we're pissed, and yeah I bet Blizz isn't happy with our feedback or demeanor, but holy shit never have I played a game by an AAA company where I have to fucking pay for a VPN to find matches. And the audacity of personalities to come in and tell us how to act is actually beyond all parody. A Remastered release managed to actually DECREASE the playerbase within a year, killed the ability to find matches appropriately with no ladder alternative, and we're still waiting for the first season of ladder to start almost a year after it came out. In any bigger gaming community this wouldn't even be close to acceptable. I want to fuck Soulkey with a Zelderan.

iPlaY.NettleS Profile Blog Joined June 2010 Australia 3608 Posts #30 The only recent blue post i have seen on the blizzard forum was in reply to a question asking when 2/2 matchmaking will be available.Reply was sometime in 2018 so more likely Q3/Q4 by which time there will clearly not be population to support it.



The recent addition of TR24 options and 90%+ of custom games on korea being on TR24 means nobody outside korea can realistically play custom 1/2/3/ums there, even with a vpn.



I like the new graphics but i would play on the old graphics, it doesn't make a difference to me.The addition of widescreen is the biggest plus in remastered for me.If someone could get widescreen mode in iccup or sb i would prefer playing on there, with old graphics if needed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7PvoI6gvQs

SuGo Profile Joined March 2013 United States 652 Posts #31 Well, they did say earlier, one of their software engineers posted ... saying another MM tweak is on its way.

mLtySC Profile Joined September 2016 68 Posts Last Edited: 2018-03-31 04:49:00 #32 The last time I played ladder I hit shamtoo 3 times in a row and then quit. Will probably give ladder another go when I get my pc fixed, but that was kind of frustrating.

Radivel-X17 Profile Joined January 2006 Canada 137 Posts #33 If a gaming company is unable to separate player negativity from constructive criticism, then there is something wrong with the process within the company.



Every public endeavor (gaming, political, news, etc) will encounter negativity. Does negativity halt all process? No, probably because the people or organizations facing negative comments understand that it comes with the territory (or in some cases, just lie through it). Blizzard is fully capable of handling negative reviews.



Someplace in their HQ building, there is a process diagram for SCR. Odds are it has schedules, release dates, project plans, daily meetings, dealings, progress updates, and more. This is how large professional IT companies work. It isn't like they wake up one day and are like, oh, gee, maybe I should work on some latency today! Tra la la la! Let me get my coffee first! No, they know what they're doing, while those out here waste their time talking about how they know this and that and the next thing and because Blizzard doesn't employ actual sorcerers, they're useless and hate the community. Everything you hear that gets posted is SPECULATION, as in, something made up because whomever decides to voice their opinion seems to have it in their head that they know what's going on behind those HQ walls.



What do we know?

Well, Blizzard there's this statement:

Sigaty, who says the pressure of succeeding StarCraft was “always looming” in his mind as he produced its sequel, won’t commit to making StarCraft III, but he will confirm that the franchise has a future beyond Remastered matches.

“We definitely will revisit this world again,” Sigaty says, adding that he sees StarCraft as critical to the “core of Blizzard’s DNA.”



So, go ahead. That's a quote. Speculate as much as you want about it. :D X17 is still active, you know. But not really for BW, just in general. Check my profile for info, or join our Discord at https://discord.gg/dez6nHw

jinjin5000 Profile Joined May 2010 Korea (South) 871 Posts #34 On March 31 2018 13:48 mLtySC wrote:

The last time I played ladder I hit shamtoo 3 times in a row and then quit. Will probably give ladder another go when I get my pc fixed, but that was kind of frustrating.



yea, schamtoo is a big bully yea, schamtoo is a big bully "Best Mind Shuttle Best Mind Shuttle" -Telecom, 2010-present, I hate Telecom

GrantTheAnt Profile Joined November 2017 7 Posts #35



The upside is that we get a direct line, and I believe we're quite candid (as much as we reasonably can be). The downside is that posting takes time - and that steals time away from development. So it's a balancing act - we can't just bash out a rapid fire answer on a forum because misplaced words can be interpreted in ways we never intended, so we need to spend a little more time with our responses. The more time spent typing in a forum is less time spent typing code. Hence why I'm posting this outside core hours.



I believe we have great coverage of reading feedback on the Blizzard forums, and I'd say pretty good coverage of TL. I understand that us not responding to every point and every thread may make people think we haven't read it. Chances are we have. Chances are it's been immediately discussed and/or put into a tracking list for further investigation and possibly action.



On the video dev updates, I agree it's been a little longer than it should be. We've actually been working on the next one recently, so it's coming soon(TM).



On 1v1 MM, it's been an ongoing battle to find an algorithm and a balance that works globally for SCR. We've always strongly believed that a global MM is essential for SCR to survive globally. Our initial algorithm was returning too many high latency matches. We solved that with a major change, but I agree that we over corrected. Since then we've rolled out 2 further tweaks (one yesterday) to bring us back towards a happy medium. I am convinced that the algorithm we're now using is the right direction, and - unlike our previous algorithm - it can get us to a good place for everyone. But, being honest, that's still going to take some more time and experimentation.



On numbers & concurrency, we do have some headaches. Namely, that most of our population is in Korea (no surprises), and that overall it's still (and has always been) a relatively low population compared to more recent games. It's also compounded by Korea having incredible internal connectivity, and by comparison, most of the rest of the world does not. So Koreans get to MM for the most part now in an experience not dissimilar from playing on LAN. Understandably the rest of the world wants this too. And providing as close as we can to that is of course the challenge. But, I really don't think we're facing any new problems in this area from launch (other than perhaps the bar is now higher given the optimizations we've made to the network subsystem vs 1.16 - which has allowed TR20 and TR24 over the internet and without 6112 port forwarding any more). I guess what I'm saying is, in my view, MM in the foreigner scene is as solvable via the algorithm as it has ever been.



We really are doing everything we can to make MM a great experience for everyone. Obviously we've talked to other Blizzard teams about their experiences, but taking that further, last week I visited GDC and sat down with the head of the matchmaking team at Activision to canvas their ideas and harvest their many years of experience. I was buoyed by the meeting as it really seemed like we were doing a lot of things right. It was also evident that we are facing some unique problems with SCR - we want low latency, skill relevant matches without having substantial player concurrency where most of our players are in one region with incredible connectivity, and we want to get games in a reasonable time frame. In saying that, I'm also aware that different players have different views on what's most important, and so maybe there's a world where we offer a preference button in the MM on whether you want to optimize on search time, skill, latency, or a "balanced" option.



It's certainly not ideal that folks are having to use VPNs to confuse or circumvent the MM algorithm. TR/latency prediction is super difficult, even more so globally. We've been investigating how we can improve the latency/TR prediction we use to configure the MM algorithm on a per-client basis. After last week's meeting, we're also going to get access to a vast database of latency data from the Activision MM crew plus their research on latency calculation which may also help us improve those areas of the algorithm.



TLDR the MM is still a major priority for us, as it has been since launch. Please keep the feedback coming, and rest assured we are reading it and working on it. We're still here, and we're always listening. I acknowledge that it's an ongoing cause of angst that we're not posting/communicating as actively as we'd like to, and you'd like us to. This is because - unlike many other teams at Blizzard - the dev team are communicating directly. There are good reasons why other teams don't work like us in this respect, and I'm sure we cause endless stress for our PR/community teams in working this wayThe upside is that we get a direct line, and I believe we're quite candid (as much as we reasonably can be). The downside is that posting takes time - and that steals time away from development. So it's a balancing act - we can't just bash out a rapid fire answer on a forum because misplaced words can be interpreted in ways we never intended, so we need to spend a little more time with our responses. The more time spent typing in a forum is less time spent typing code. Hence why I'm posting this outside core hours.I believe we have great coverage of reading feedback on the Blizzard forums, and I'd say pretty good coverage of TL. I understand that us not responding to every point and every thread may make people think we haven't read it. Chances are we have. Chances are it's been immediately discussed and/or put into a tracking list for further investigation and possibly action.On the video dev updates, I agree it's been a little longer than it should be. We've actually been working on the next one recently, so it's coming soon(TM).On 1v1 MM, it's been an ongoing battle to find an algorithm and a balance that works globally for SCR. We've always strongly believed that a global MM is essential for SCR to survive globally. Our initial algorithm was returning too many high latency matches. We solved that with a major change, but I agree that we over corrected. Since then we've rolled out 2 further tweaks (one yesterday) to bring us back towards a happy medium. I am convinced that the algorithm we're now using is the right direction, and - unlike our previous algorithm - it can get us to a good place for everyone. But, being honest, that's still going to take some more time and experimentation.On numbers & concurrency, we do have some headaches. Namely, that most of our population is in Korea (no surprises), and that overall it's still (and has always been) a relatively low population compared to more recent games. It's also compounded by Korea having incredible internal connectivity, and by comparison, most of the rest of the world does not. So Koreans get to MM for the most part now in an experience not dissimilar from playing on LAN. Understandably the rest of the world wants this too. And providing as close as we can to that is of course the challenge. But, I really don't think we're facing any new problems in this area from launch (other than perhaps the bar is now higher given the optimizations we've made to the network subsystem vs 1.16 - which has allowed TR20 and TR24 over the internet and without 6112 port forwarding any more). I guess what I'm saying is, in my view, MM in the foreigner scene is as solvable via the algorithm as it has ever been.We really are doing everything we can to make MM a great experience for everyone. Obviously we've talked to other Blizzard teams about their experiences, but taking that further, last week I visited GDC and sat down with the head of the matchmaking team at Activision to canvas their ideas and harvest their many years of experience. I was buoyed by the meeting as it really seemed like we were doing a lot of things right. It was also evident that we are facing some unique problems with SCR - we want low latency, skill relevant matches without having substantial player concurrency where most of our players are in one region with incredible connectivity, and we want to get games in a reasonable time frame. In saying that, I'm also aware that different players have different views on what's most important, and so maybe there's a world where we offer a preference button in the MM on whether you want to optimize on search time, skill, latency, or a "balanced" option.It's certainly not ideal that folks are having to use VPNs to confuse or circumvent the MM algorithm. TR/latency prediction is super difficult, even more so globally. We've been investigating how we can improve the latency/TR prediction we use to configure the MM algorithm on a per-client basis. After last week's meeting, we're also going to get access to a vast database of latency data from the Activision MM crew plus their research on latency calculation which may also help us improve those areas of the algorithm.TLDR the MM is still a major priority for us, as it has been since launch. Please keep the feedback coming, and rest assured we are reading it and working on it. Blizzard

TelecoM Profile Blog Joined January 2010 United States 10263 Posts #36 On April 01 2018 06:49 GrantTheAnt wrote:

We're still here, and we're always listening. I acknowledge that it's an ongoing cause of angst that we're not posting/communicating as actively as we'd like to, and you'd like us to. This is because - unlike many other teams at Blizzard - the dev team are communicating directly. There are good reasons why other teams don't work like us in this respect, and I'm sure we cause endless stress for our PR/community teams in working this way



The upside is that we get a direct line, and I believe we're quite candid (as much as we reasonably can be). The downside is that posting takes time - and that steals time away from development. So it's a balancing act - we can't just bash out a rapid fire answer on a forum because misplaced words can be interpreted in ways we never intended, so we need to spend a little more time with our responses. The more time spent typing in a forum is less time spent typing code. Hence why I'm posting this outside core hours.



I believe we have great coverage of reading feedback on the Blizzard forums, and I'd say pretty good coverage of TL. I understand that us not responding to every point and every thread may make people think we haven't read it. Chances are we have. Chances are it's been immediately discussed and/or put into a tracking list for further investigation and possibly action.



On the video dev updates, I agree it's been a little longer than it should be. We've actually been working on the next one recently, so it's coming soon(TM).



On 1v1 MM, it's been an ongoing battle to find an algorithm and a balance that works globally for SCR. We've always strongly believed that a global MM is essential for SCR to survive globally. Our initial algorithm was returning too many high latency matches. We solved that with a major change, but I agree that we over corrected. Since then we've rolled out 2 further tweaks (one yesterday) to bring us back towards a happy medium. I am convinced that the algorithm we're now using is the right direction, and - unlike our previous algorithm - it can get us to a good place for everyone. But, being honest, that's still going to take some more time and experimentation.



On numbers & concurrency, we do have some headaches. Namely, that most of our population is in Korea (no surprises), and that overall it's still (and has always been) a relatively low population compared to more recent games. It's also compounded by Korea having incredible internal connectivity, and by comparison, most of the rest of the world does not. So Koreans get to MM for the most part now in an experience not dissimilar from playing on LAN. Understandably the rest of the world wants this too. And providing as close as we can to that is of course the challenge. But, I really don't think we're facing any new problems in this area from launch (other than perhaps the bar is now higher given the optimizations we've made to the network subsystem vs 1.16 - which has allowed TR20 and TR24 over the internet and without 6112 port forwarding any more). I guess what I'm saying is, in my view, MM in the foreigner scene is as solvable via the algorithm as it has ever been.



We really are doing everything we can to make MM a great experience for everyone. Obviously we've talked to other Blizzard teams about their experiences, but taking that further, last week I visited GDC and sat down with the head of the matchmaking team at Activision to canvas their ideas and harvest their many years of experience. I was buoyed by the meeting as it really seemed like we were doing a lot of things right. It was also evident that we are facing some unique problems with SCR - we want low latency, skill relevant matches without having substantial player concurrency where most of our players are in one region with incredible connectivity, and we want to get games in a reasonable time frame. In saying that, I'm also aware that different players have different views on what's most important, and so maybe there's a world where we offer a preference button in the MM on whether you want to optimize on search time, skill, latency, or a "balanced" option.



It's certainly not ideal that folks are having to use VPNs to confuse or circumvent the MM algorithm. TR/latency prediction is super difficult, even more so globally. We've been investigating how we can improve the latency/TR prediction we use to configure the MM algorithm on a per-client basis. After last week's meeting, we're also going to get access to a vast database of latency data from the Activision MM crew plus their research on latency calculation which may also help us improve those areas of the algorithm.



TLDR the MM is still a major priority for us, as it has been since launch. Please keep the feedback coming, and rest assured we are reading it and working on it. We're still here, and we're always listening. I acknowledge that it's an ongoing cause of angst that we're not posting/communicating as actively as we'd like to, and you'd like us to. This is because - unlike many other teams at Blizzard - the dev team are communicating directly. There are good reasons why other teams don't work like us in this respect, and I'm sure we cause endless stress for our PR/community teams in working this wayThe upside is that we get a direct line, and I believe we're quite candid (as much as we reasonably can be). The downside is that posting takes time - and that steals time away from development. So it's a balancing act - we can't just bash out a rapid fire answer on a forum because misplaced words can be interpreted in ways we never intended, so we need to spend a little more time with our responses. The more time spent typing in a forum is less time spent typing code. Hence why I'm posting this outside core hours.I believe we have great coverage of reading feedback on the Blizzard forums, and I'd say pretty good coverage of TL. I understand that us not responding to every point and every thread may make people think we haven't read it. Chances are we have. Chances are it's been immediately discussed and/or put into a tracking list for further investigation and possibly action.On the video dev updates, I agree it's been a little longer than it should be. We've actually been working on the next one recently, so it's coming soon(TM).On 1v1 MM, it's been an ongoing battle to find an algorithm and a balance that works globally for SCR. We've always strongly believed that a global MM is essential for SCR to survive globally. Our initial algorithm was returning too many high latency matches. We solved that with a major change, but I agree that we over corrected. Since then we've rolled out 2 further tweaks (one yesterday) to bring us back towards a happy medium. I am convinced that the algorithm we're now using is the right direction, and - unlike our previous algorithm - it can get us to a good place for everyone. But, being honest, that's still going to take some more time and experimentation.On numbers & concurrency, we do have some headaches. Namely, that most of our population is in Korea (no surprises), and that overall it's still (and has always been) a relatively low population compared to more recent games. It's also compounded by Korea having incredible internal connectivity, and by comparison, most of the rest of the world does not. So Koreans get to MM for the most part now in an experience not dissimilar from playing on LAN. Understandably the rest of the world wants this too. And providing as close as we can to that is of course the challenge. But, I really don't think we're facing any new problems in this area from launch (other than perhaps the bar is now higher given the optimizations we've made to the network subsystem vs 1.16 - which has allowed TR20 and TR24 over the internet and without 6112 port forwarding any more). I guess what I'm saying is, in my view, MM in the foreigner scene is as solvable via the algorithm as it has ever been.We really are doing everything we can to make MM a great experience for everyone. Obviously we've talked to other Blizzard teams about their experiences, but taking that further, last week I visited GDC and sat down with the head of the matchmaking team at Activision to canvas their ideas and harvest their many years of experience. I was buoyed by the meeting as it really seemed like we were doing a lot of things right. It was also evident that we are facing some unique problems with SCR - we want low latency, skill relevant matches without having substantial player concurrency where most of our players are in one region with incredible connectivity, and we want to get games in a reasonable time frame. In saying that, I'm also aware that different players have different views on what's most important, and so maybe there's a world where we offer a preference button in the MM on whether you want to optimize on search time, skill, latency, or a "balanced" option.It's certainly not ideal that folks are having to use VPNs to confuse or circumvent the MM algorithm. TR/latency prediction is super difficult, even more so globally. We've been investigating how we can improve the latency/TR prediction we use to configure the MM algorithm on a per-client basis. After last week's meeting, we're also going to get access to a vast database of latency data from the Activision MM crew plus their research on latency calculation which may also help us improve those areas of the algorithm.TLDR the MM is still a major priority for us, as it has been since launch. Please keep the feedback coming, and rest assured we are reading it and working on it.

Probably the longest or biggest 'Blue Post' I've seen, or post by a Blizzard employee on TL or on the Battle.net forums period, Thank you for this statement, it is really great to have you guys at Blizzard working so hard to get this game we love to the level playing field we all want.



Thank you for your hard work, determination, and transparency here with this post! Probably the longest or biggest 'Blue Post' I've seen, or post by a Blizzard employee on TL or on the Battle.net forums period, Thank you for this statement, it is really great to have you guys at Blizzard working so hard to get this game we love to the level playing field we all want.Thank you for your hard work, determination, and transparency here with this post! AKA: TelecoM[WHITE] Protoss fighting

Mandugi1 Profile Joined October 2017 7 Posts #37 mm works wonders now(im in U.S. WEST) THANK YOU BLIZZARD GRANT

SuGo Profile Joined March 2013 United States 652 Posts Last Edited: 2018-04-01 01:57:01 #38 On April 01 2018 06:49 GrantTheAnt wrote:

We're still here, and we're always listening. I acknowledge that it's an ongoing cause of angst that we're not posting/communicating as actively as we'd like to, and you'd like us to. This is because - unlike many other teams at Blizzard - the dev team are communicating directly. There are good reasons why other teams don't work like us in this respect, and I'm sure we cause endless stress for our PR/community teams in working this way



The upside is that we get a direct line, and I believe we're quite candid (as much as we reasonably can be). The downside is that posting takes time - and that steals time away from development. So it's a balancing act - we can't just bash out a rapid fire answer on a forum because misplaced words can be interpreted in ways we never intended, so we need to spend a little more time with our responses. The more time spent typing in a forum is less time spent typing code. Hence why I'm posting this outside core hours.



I believe we have great coverage of reading feedback on the Blizzard forums, and I'd say pretty good coverage of TL. I understand that us not responding to every point and every thread may make people think we haven't read it. Chances are we have. Chances are it's been immediately discussed and/or put into a tracking list for further investigation and possibly action.



On the video dev updates, I agree it's been a little longer than it should be. We've actually been working on the next one recently, so it's coming soon(TM).



On 1v1 MM, it's been an ongoing battle to find an algorithm and a balance that works globally for SCR. We've always strongly believed that a global MM is essential for SCR to survive globally. Our initial algorithm was returning too many high latency matches. We solved that with a major change, but I agree that we over corrected. Since then we've rolled out 2 further tweaks (one yesterday) to bring us back towards a happy medium. I am convinced that the algorithm we're now using is the right direction, and - unlike our previous algorithm - it can get us to a good place for everyone. But, being honest, that's still going to take some more time and experimentation.



On numbers & concurrency, we do have some headaches. Namely, that most of our population is in Korea (no surprises), and that overall it's still (and has always been) a relatively low population compared to more recent games. It's also compounded by Korea having incredible internal connectivity, and by comparison, most of the rest of the world does not. So Koreans get to MM for the most part now in an experience not dissimilar from playing on LAN. Understandably the rest of the world wants this too. And providing as close as we can to that is of course the challenge. But, I really don't think we're facing any new problems in this area from launch (other than perhaps the bar is now higher given the optimizations we've made to the network subsystem vs 1.16 - which has allowed TR20 and TR24 over the internet and without 6112 port forwarding any more). I guess what I'm saying is, in my view, MM in the foreigner scene is as solvable via the algorithm as it has ever been.



We really are doing everything we can to make MM a great experience for everyone. Obviously we've talked to other Blizzard teams about their experiences, but taking that further, last week I visited GDC and sat down with the head of the matchmaking team at Activision to canvas their ideas and harvest their many years of experience. I was buoyed by the meeting as it really seemed like we were doing a lot of things right. It was also evident that we are facing some unique problems with SCR - we want low latency, skill relevant matches without having substantial player concurrency where most of our players are in one region with incredible connectivity, and we want to get games in a reasonable time frame. In saying that, I'm also aware that different players have different views on what's most important, and so maybe there's a world where we offer a preference button in the MM on whether you want to optimize on search time, skill, latency, or a "balanced" option.



It's certainly not ideal that folks are having to use VPNs to confuse or circumvent the MM algorithm. TR/latency prediction is super difficult, even more so globally. We've been investigating how we can improve the latency/TR prediction we use to configure the MM algorithm on a per-client basis. After last week's meeting, we're also going to get access to a vast database of latency data from the Activision MM crew plus their research on latency calculation which may also help us improve those areas of the algorithm.



TLDR the MM is still a major priority for us, as it has been since launch. Please keep the feedback coming, and rest assured we are reading it and working on it. We're still here, and we're always listening. I acknowledge that it's an ongoing cause of angst that we're not posting/communicating as actively as we'd like to, and you'd like us to. This is because - unlike many other teams at Blizzard - the dev team are communicating directly. There are good reasons why other teams don't work like us in this respect, and I'm sure we cause endless stress for our PR/community teams in working this wayThe upside is that we get a direct line, and I believe we're quite candid (as much as we reasonably can be). The downside is that posting takes time - and that steals time away from development. So it's a balancing act - we can't just bash out a rapid fire answer on a forum because misplaced words can be interpreted in ways we never intended, so we need to spend a little more time with our responses. The more time spent typing in a forum is less time spent typing code. Hence why I'm posting this outside core hours.I believe we have great coverage of reading feedback on the Blizzard forums, and I'd say pretty good coverage of TL. I understand that us not responding to every point and every thread may make people think we haven't read it. Chances are we have. Chances are it's been immediately discussed and/or put into a tracking list for further investigation and possibly action.On the video dev updates, I agree it's been a little longer than it should be. We've actually been working on the next one recently, so it's coming soon(TM).On 1v1 MM, it's been an ongoing battle to find an algorithm and a balance that works globally for SCR. We've always strongly believed that a global MM is essential for SCR to survive globally. Our initial algorithm was returning too many high latency matches. We solved that with a major change, but I agree that we over corrected. Since then we've rolled out 2 further tweaks (one yesterday) to bring us back towards a happy medium. I am convinced that the algorithm we're now using is the right direction, and - unlike our previous algorithm - it can get us to a good place for everyone. But, being honest, that's still going to take some more time and experimentation.On numbers & concurrency, we do have some headaches. Namely, that most of our population is in Korea (no surprises), and that overall it's still (and has always been) a relatively low population compared to more recent games. It's also compounded by Korea having incredible internal connectivity, and by comparison, most of the rest of the world does not. So Koreans get to MM for the most part now in an experience not dissimilar from playing on LAN. Understandably the rest of the world wants this too. And providing as close as we can to that is of course the challenge. But, I really don't think we're facing any new problems in this area from launch (other than perhaps the bar is now higher given the optimizations we've made to the network subsystem vs 1.16 - which has allowed TR20 and TR24 over the internet and without 6112 port forwarding any more). I guess what I'm saying is, in my view, MM in the foreigner scene is as solvable via the algorithm as it has ever been.We really are doing everything we can to make MM a great experience for everyone. Obviously we've talked to other Blizzard teams about their experiences, but taking that further, last week I visited GDC and sat down with the head of the matchmaking team at Activision to canvas their ideas and harvest their many years of experience. I was buoyed by the meeting as it really seemed like we were doing a lot of things right. It was also evident that we are facing some unique problems with SCR - we want low latency, skill relevant matches without having substantial player concurrency where most of our players are in one region with incredible connectivity, and we want to get games in a reasonable time frame. In saying that, I'm also aware that different players have different views on what's most important, and so maybe there's a world where we offer a preference button in the MM on whether you want to optimize on search time, skill, latency, or a "balanced" option.It's certainly not ideal that folks are having to use VPNs to confuse or circumvent the MM algorithm. TR/latency prediction is super difficult, even more so globally. We've been investigating how we can improve the latency/TR prediction we use to configure the MM algorithm on a per-client basis. After last week's meeting, we're also going to get access to a vast database of latency data from the Activision MM crew plus their research on latency calculation which may also help us improve those areas of the algorithm.TLDR the MM is still a major priority for us, as it has been since launch. Please keep the feedback coming, and rest assured we are reading it and working on it.



Mr. Grant from Blizzard:



This is great.



Even just seeing that someone from Blizzard directly is responding to a post -- I have to be honest, as someone who is extremely cynical ... I am happy to see a post from you.



Would you mind commenting on the new MM tweak you guys made yesterday (e.g. what exactly is the change/happy medium) that you addressed in your post? I'm sure there will definitely be more feedback on top of what I've stated below.



FEEDBACK: After testing a few games -- which is not a good sample size -- it seems marginally better. And still getting queued up against foreigners who are -100/-200 pts below with 200+ second queue times (better than 1000 seconds). I think the "Aggression" of MM searches needs to be widened so we can match vs Koreans. There are many foreigners who can get TR12 or TR14 against koreans and play happily. That is the real happy medium that needs to happen. If you're a foreigner who can't get that sort of latency against koreans, then the MM won't pair you because you'll never hit a good TR while it searches for a match. But those of us who have pretty good ping to KR should not be punished.



As a last note, if you're up to date on "Fish server" which was a very popular korean server during the 1.16 days, the BEST latency on that server was our current TR14 (the koreans called it #L2 + low lat hack ... just to give some background in case you're not familiar). So introducing concepts of TR16++ are just icing on the cake. We need to simply aim for TR12; even TR14 was still something that was introduced in the latter part of 1.16 before SCR came out. Food for thought. For reference, I'm a 2300+ MMR player, and there's folks in these threads posting higher than myself who can chime in on behalf of the more competitive foreigner community as well. Thanks for your acknowledgement and we hope to assist or answer any other questions you may have.



-SuGo This is great.Even just seeing that someone from Blizzard directly is responding to a post -- I have to be honest, as someone who is extremely cynical ... I am happy to see a post from you.Would you mind commenting on the new MM tweak you guys made yesterday (e.g. what exactly is the change/happy medium) that you addressed in your post? I'm sure there will definitely be more feedback on top of what I've stated below.After testing a few games -- which is not a good sample size -- it seems marginally better. And still getting queued up against foreigners who are -100/-200 pts below with 200+ second queue times (better than 1000 seconds).If you're a foreigner who can't get that sort of latency against koreans, then the MM won't pair you because you'll never hit a good TR while it searches for a match. But those of us who have pretty good ping to KR should not be punished.As a last note, if you're up to date onwhich was a very popular korean server during the 1.16 days,even TR14 was still something that was introduced in the latter part of 1.16 before SCR came out. Food for thought. For reference, I'm a 2300+ MMR player, and there's folks in these threads posting higher than myself who can chime in on behalf of the more competitive foreigner community as well. Thanks for your acknowledgement and we hope to assist or answer any other questions you may have.-SuGo

Golgotha Profile Blog Joined January 2011 Korea (South) 8319 Posts Last Edited: 2018-03-31 23:44:53 #39 It's crazy that the head dev does this for the community. Thank you for always trying to communicate with us. Sc:r is in good hands. Have faith folks.

Muirhead Profile Blog Joined October 2007 United States 550 Posts #40 Such an exciting response!! starleague.mit.edu

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