StarCraft 2 to Support Priced Maps, Mods

[wacko]

I will say having implemented parts of this system so far, I share many of the concerns you all speak of and do bring them up as someone who is part of the maps/modding community. My current job at Blizzard is working on the Starcraft 2 map editor and while i was on Battle.net some of my job was working on how maps and mods got pulled from Starcraft 2 to Battle.net and it will not suck.

[Zyn]

Even though I don't like this whole thing with a StarCraft II map marketplace entirelly, which I am sure not many does either (as we're used to maps being free since the first custom maps for any Blizzard game), there's still something inside me that says "Wait a second ... so if I put down some effort to make a good map, and it gets high ratings and reviews, I can have a small income". And that might be the one reason I'll pick up StarCraft II on release. But then I never finish anything.

[2d-chris]

Hopefully it's more about custom campaigns than a single map, it doesnt take much time or effort to make the odd multiplayer map using their tools but an entire story driven campaign or actual mod would be awesome.

[sarge mat]

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3175732

Might have plans for more than just paid maps.

[Skjalg]

I dont really see how this can suck in any way.

All it does is It makes it easier for people to distribute their work (for free or for a few bucks). If you are so afraid that the marketplace will get cluttered, then why use it? It's not like you pay extra for the marketplace, its just a new feature.

[wacko]

if it you take the paid for map possibility out of it, it makes finding maps much easier, part of the goal is to just allow players to have the ability to find the stuff that is played a lot and furthermore prevent people from ripping people's maps off from the start.

[Jetsetlemming]

I suppose this couldn't be too bad if it had a) Creator profiles so you could search by the maker of a map you liked, including maybe an info button ingame, so if I'm playing a good map I don't recognize online I can easily find its name, author, more stuff he's done, and maybe even give it a rating ingame, b) Search by price so you can get the free maps easily, and c) User ratings and reviews, again, with search by rating. Worthless, overpriced maps just won't get played, won't get reviewed, and won't clutter up the place when you look for free content, while the best stuff will get reviewed, and their creators will get recognized so their more in depth, payed stuff would get a chance.

Of course, I think the biggest hurdle for the payed maps is I'm pretty sure, at least anecdotally from my experience, most people playing online games get custom maps through automatic server downloads when they're playing a server running a map they don't have. That's not an option for the non-free maps (probably).

[wacko]

I would like to highlight that I am not saying this is how it is or how it will be, but just an idea around the feature.

well even more so one of the concerns I have is what happens when you have a map that was free, they update it and now it cost something ? do you get grandfathered into having the free map or do you have to pay? I think with either solution you piss people off. I think the goal is to drive people to using the feature and not make them feel like they need to buy maps or they can't play the game. One of the big issues behind pay for custom content, and mainly the reason I think we do not find a lot of companies doing it in the mod/map space is most people would want to get money for their stuff right ?! I mean even the guys who make crap wants something for their time, but you soon find out most people playing this stuff are not willing to pay for it. So we have often looked away from charging for player created content in this space because you end up creating a necessity around having to pay in order to play; so then no one ends up playing it. This also leads to shit like we see in DOTA or Dust where you have 50 version of the same fucking map, and in this case it would because people do not want to play the premium version of the map.

Well then how do you fix this issue? well you allow the players to drive the pay for content and then allow the map maker to make a choice and not feel as if they are locked into having people pay for the map, but if they make that choice they may be committed to it. An example of this would be, say I make a map called "Lost Temple Zerg PWNS YOU BITCHES", this map gets played by a lot of people and eventually ends up somewhere in the top 10 of most played maps. As the author of this map I am notified through some system that my map has gained enough popularity and that I now have the option of making it a premium map, at which point I do and then my map now cost something in order for a person to play it. And as a premium map I may get featured on some main page, etc...

[Jetsetlemming]

I think a change between free to payed without an actual content change for the map, just a popularity benchmark, would piss users off even more. They'd end up favoring the stock maps since they know there won't be a point down the line where suddenly they have to shell out to keep playing that same map they've had on their hard drive for a couple months.

[Zyn]

That's what I was thinking how you go from free to premium maps, but wasn't as fleshed out as you say now, during BlizzCon, leaving many people scared that a map is flagged either Free or Premium when available and that's written in stone. Would suck to cough up some money for a map, to find out it sucks balls. And I bet there will be many of those due to fortune-seeking "I used the editor for 2 minutes!"-people.

Instead on jumping on the "This sucks!"-bandwagon, I look at the possibilities of this new system, whatever it might end up as.

Maybe I should start sketching down ideas...

[Crayfish]

Tools are looking nice:

[Jetsetlemming]

Tools are looking nice:

Holy crap, that's good enough for me. Day one purchase for sure.

[Skacky]

Yeah this editor kicks ass. I laughed out loud when I saw the Lost Viking thing, so amazing.

I'm gonna spend hours and hours doing stuff in this editor.

[2d-chris]

Nice v nice, starcraft editor got me into level design I suppose ;P

[wacko]

what i find funny is they did not even show any of the actual editor LOL they just showed what you could do with it LOL