Slight hijack, but - good luck, magnusblitz!
And, for what it’s worth - I’d actually recommend taking it relatively easy a few days before the exam. No harm in taking the day before you head to New York (or wherever your bar is) to play some Starcraft. You’re going to be spending the whole summer prepping, after all.
-Mr. Excellent, Esq.
What is Blizzard doing to this game? The core is solid enough, but all of the ancillary parts like Battle.net are getting worse with every patch.
Every time they add a new feature, it makes it more likely to have problems. I’m bummed to not be playing now, but that’s life in a beta.
I’m just glad I’m not the only one who can’t get in tonight and is feeling whiny about it. “It’s Beta, this is what Beta is for.” I know, I know!
I didn’t so much mean the server problems as how ridiculous the friends list is.
Yeah, this part is baffling. The design for the new battle.net is incredible in its total lack of usability. As of this current version, you cannot do anything at all in the game with anybody not on your friends list outside of the random match system. There are currently only three ways to add someone to your friends list: use their email address with their real name and other immense amount of information the “Real ID” system gives to everyone, use the facebook friends list to perform the same function, or to encounter them inside the game in some way like being in a random match, or being in the same ladder division as you. This last method is currently the only way to NOT open up RealID.
This means that unless you’re willing to give out your battle.net account email address and all the attendant privacy issues of the RealID system, it is near on impossible to communicate with or play the game with someone. Their ‘social’ system is as effective as a brick wall at letting you socialize. It really does appear that the design team involved with this has never come within fifty miles of an online multiplayer game for the last two decades because this focus on RealID and a little walled-off experience restricted to your circle of RL friends is pretty much exactly the opposite of why anybody plays anything online.
SC2 the game is fine and dandy, and even the bnet matchmaking system is of superior quality, but when you find out how many hoops you have to jump through just to play someone you know, your jaw hits the floor. If it goes live like this they are going to be roasted.
So, Pyramus and Thisbe will have no trouble, then?
Yeah, but Pyramus is a Bottom-ranked player.
That’s because he gg’s at the first sign of trouble.
Yay!
Agreed. Though dropping the identifier was a giant leap in the right direction. Unfortunately I’ve seen some posters claim that’s only temporary. But none of them come up with links for where they heard it so I’m hoping they’re just making it up.
The identifier served the useful purpose of making usernames unique while letting the “common” name be non-unique. I didn’t see any problem with it, myself. It’s certainly preferable to the alternatives, which are either unique short names, or the system currently in place, which is a total inability to refer to anyone by name at all.
Not that I, personally, have a problem with my desired name being already taken 
but my friends Phoenix and donut do.
I believe this is the last weekend for the beta.
They reset the ladder last night.
I went 4-1 on my “new” placement matches.
Woooohoooo, Gold League!
It’s gonna be a long 2.5 months from beta end till the proper release, this game is so great.
Aren’t they reopening the beta a week or two before release?
Seems an odd time to end the beta with the bug where many ladder games just don’t count for no discernible reason is still here. That’s one I’d think they’d want to get rid off and test thoroughly since it’ll piss off a lot of people come release.
Hope this doesn’t count as a zombie thread, but -
The beta is back open as of 7.8.2010! Proper AI opponents have been added!
…
Though, after playing a bit (all vs. AI) I’m a bit disappointed. The AI is good in direct combat, but it sucks in exploration and mounting a proper offense.
I just quit a solo Lost Temple 2v2, GameHat+AI vs. AI+AI (all AI “hard”)
The AI did a handy job wiping out my partner. I held for a bit but they overwhelmed my main base and expo.
But I had shuttled an SCV to one of the corner expos. I held that expo easily with nothing but missile turrets, one battle cruiser, one viking and two ravens for at least 20 minutes.
The AI would launch sporadic weak forays, these were easily beaten back.
Sure, I would have eventually lost when the corner resources ran out. But I couldn’t expand, couldn’t rebuild, and any decent human player or team could have easily overwhelmed me. The stupid “hard” AI just kept throwing a few units at a time against my island fortress. Waste of time. After about 30 minutes I got bored and just surrendered.
I hope the AI gets a bit better before release (just 3 weeks!) Sure, it’s not the main draw but I felt deeply disappointed that Blizzard quality couldn’t produce an AI opponent that could just root me out of my fortified corner. And I was only two difficulty levels below the hardest!
Hmm…I remember with Starcraft, I could handily beat two AI opponents by myself, but I never got good enough to beat 3 at a time. If this has the same level of difficulty for AIs, I’d be okay with that.
I never got to where I could do 1 vs. 3, but a buddy of mine and I did get to where were could more often than not beat 2 vs. 6, at least on defensively-laid-out maps.
And I’ve never understood why AIs have the problem that GameHat describes. It seems like pretty basic tactics to say “if a force of size X failed to win a battle, next time build up to a force of size X+Y before attacking”.
You know what would be really cool? If the game were released with a modular AI, and tools for users to create or modify their own AI routines. Then, you could have tournaments between the AIs, or even enter them into the same tournaments as the human players, and every so often release a patch to make the best AIs available to everyone.
While the beta was down, there were several AIs made by players that were actually half-decent, I hear. I believe GreenTea was one of them.
The AI isn’t as incompetent as SC1’s, but it obviously wasn’t a serious point of development. The “Very Hard” does a passable job of early/mid game offense in that it’ll fairly efficiently crank out a sizable force and push with it, making it reasonably useful for testing a build against that very thing. As long as you don’t exploit its its vulnerability to rushes or its eagerness to fling itself against impenetrable defenses, it can teach some useful lessons in developing an economy into the midgame. The micro is inhumanly good, of course, but it falls apart on strategy and will never deviate from its pre-ordained build, making it a bit of a trap in teaching complacency.
That said, when the bnet matchmaking is as good as it is, I can’t much blame them for not worrying too much about AI. Not even the hobbyists can invest enough time to make one really competitive with even mid-level human players. The AI fills its niche of basic mechanics play well enough, but all the real play should and easily can be done against other players.
I haven’t noticed the Very Hard AI really microing at all, other than general attack/retreat.