Let's Improve: Custom Game Interface Categories

Let's Improve will be a series of forum posts created by Gifted in an attempt to take the efforts and mindset of the community beset with concern and drive it to find solutions. On-topic discussion will be required and discussion regarding the goal in sight are commendable. There are enough obstacles in our path, let's not create more for ourselves.

Understand this will be a moderated discussion that may involve deletion of posts and updated lists. Stay on subject with your suggestions and brainstorm. This is a thread with a purpose.

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If you wish to skip the subject matter and go straight to the question, it will be put in post 2.

Subject Matter:

There is a large concern in the community over many of the facets of Battle.net. Specifically some people are worried with the user interface of the custom games section. It's obviously in a beta form but with the removal game names and the combination of games into a single line, the ability to filter what games you are or are not looking for is something they've confirmed.

At Blizzcon, Dustin Browder referenced that we'd be able to filter out unwanted games, in fact he said "If you wanted to, you could never see another DOTA ever again". He also referenced that if a game was offensive, you could report it to a GM and they'd be able to look at it and decide if it was offensive enough to remove. This shows intent to have the list managed in some form.

Going forward with the mentality that battle.net will incorporate filters as they described, we can assume that a goal for the system involves us to be able to make certain games appear or disappear per our wants. For this to work, every game will have to have two fields that we can sort, one is "generic" while the other is "game specific".

The "game specific" field I'm referencing is Mode. This would set parameters in the game on the list. This would mean that 4-5 DOTAs could show on the list, one for "Random Hero" another for "Choose Hero", etc. [EDIT: An alternate question is added to allow people more "room to breathe" on this subject. Be aware that in this suggestion/theory, the developer would be able to create additional modes with ease, they would merely have a way of unifying the most common modes to allow easy filtering.]

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Today's Specifics:

The "generic" field that will be involved in today's discussion is Category. As of right now, it seems that the category can be written up any way the game author deems it. This will create very large problems when filtering is implemented correctly. The difference between tower defense, towerdefense, td, red's td and defense can be very difficult for the user to sort though and provides a very unfriendly manner to move through.

Let's move forward with the following suggestion. Let's imagine that categories out there can be set, with a final option to "suggest a new genre" for a game. If the list is comprehensive enough, every developer should be able to select a relevant item from a list unless it's "Other" and at that point suggest the name for a new genre. It would then show up as "Other (suggested name)" on the list.

This would allow them to have their game easily findable, while allowing user input/developer input to try and create a new genre. In this environment, we should consider what a proper "list" of categories/genres are.

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Additional Notes:

If there is ever a point that someone feels that something should require a "sub-category" then realize that this is a mode. If a person says something that could be a "sub-category" I will list it as a mode potential, which may assist in a future discussion of this type.

Question: What Categories would work in Battle.net 2.0 Custom Game Selection Interface if the above suggestions are true?
Alternate Question: What Modes do you think will be common enough to put as a default suggestion for the developer of a custom map?

Current list:

• Tower Defense
• Shooter (First Person Shooter, Third Person Shooter)
• Racetrack
• Melee
• Base/Bunker Defense
• Quest/RPG
• Minigame Collection
• Card Games
• Capture the Flag
• Other (Specify Genre)
  
• Sheep Tag (Temporary Name)
• LOTR, WW sims, "Conquest" maps (Temporary Name)
• Risk Maps (Temp Name, possibly same as LOTR/Conquest section?)
• DOTA (Temporary name)

Sub-Category/Modes:

• Single-Player, Multiplayer Teams, Multiplayer FFA
• Random Hero Selection, Choose Hero Selection
• Competitive, Co-operative
• In Testing

Temp Section!!

• Third Person Shooter

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You have double posted :o

But anyways this was a good read ^^

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Originally Posted by Gifted

This is a thread with a purpose.

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Originally Posted by Perfecttear

You have double posted :o

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Originally Posted by Gifted

Question: What Categories would work in Battle.net 2.0 Custom Game Selection Interface if the above suggestions are true?
Alternate Question: What Modes do you think will be common enough to put as a default suggestion for the developer?

Current list:

• DOTA (Temporary name)
• Tower Defense
• First Person Shooter
• Third Person Shooter
• Racetrack
• Melee
• Base/Bunker Defense
• Quest/RPG
• Other (Specify Genre)

Sub-Category/Modes:

• Single-Player
• Multi-Player
• Random Selection
• Choose Hero
• In Testing

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Co-op should be added to the subcategories. There needs to be distinction between multiplayer battles and multiplayer co-op missions.

Gifted: Added

I don't see the point having first person shooter ans third person shooter in 2 different category. Do you think this kind of game will be popular enough to justify this?

- Noted

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Originally Posted by Gt2slurp

I don't see the point having first person shooter ans third person shooter in 2 different category. Do you think this kind of game will be popular enough to justify this?

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That makes sense. Maybe "shooter" should be a main category that has "first person shooter" and "third person shooter" as sub-categories.

- Noted/Good Suggestion

In answer to both OP questions: I think Melee will definitely be common enough to warrant a suggestion of this type. I also like quest/rpg and tower defense for the UMS player.

Where is FFA? I suppose it could be considered part of melee, but I prefer to have a separate option. I've been gang beaten/backstabbed by supposed team players who were colluding for cheap wins in SC1 and/or were doing so on their own. I digress from the topic a bit, but if their isn't going to be a FFA, at least grant us the option of locking the teams.

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Orignally Posted by SonofCHaos

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Originally Posted by Gt2slurp
I don't see the point having first person shooter ans third person shooter in 2 different category. Do you think this kind of game will be popular enough to justify this?

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That makes sense. Maybe "shooter" should be a main category that has "first person shooter" and "third person shooter" as sub-categories.

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I concur.

Lastly, a question: would quest/rpg cover UMS maps that run like standard single player campaign type maps? They would be quests in all technicality, but I just want to be clear.

- Noted, campaign could be different, putting it up above, we can examine it later.

I would like to have a custom meele and a meele as two different games. (where in meele there are no units changed at all it's like the laddermaps but you might have done yourself) Where the custom meele is a meele like map that you have edited units or made a wc3 / sc1 meele map.

Tower Defense - In there now
Tower Wars - Would be classified as Tower Defense
Maze TD - Would be classified as Tower Defense
Arena (is that third person shooter?) - Give examples of what arena games you can think of?
Battleship/Battletank - Would be classified as Base Defense
Tag Game (like the sheep tag or the island map on wc3) - Noted
Movie - Define Example
Minigame Collection - Noted
Maze Escape - Would be same as minigame


(just to name a few, I am just thinking about wc3 map styles here)

I think it will be better to have a few to many then to have a few to less at start, then the ones not needed can be filtered out. Or even better there can be the standard categories and then an "extended" showing all kind of map styles.

If I recall, LOTRish maps had a following in SC1. Diplomacy and WW sims were popular as well - the three of them could have their own category. Something to do with geography specific conflict, be it real world or fictional. 'Warfare' is the first thing that comes to mind, but it doesn't necessarily capture the style of game.

As this involves one side defending a central point, I guess it could be "base defense". Base defense would involve hero defenses afterall and in this case you were still defending central points. BUT... it could also be argued that base defense is based against CPU... I'll throw these up as a temp name and maybe we'll find other examples that match it well.

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Originally Posted by Twilice

I think it will be better to have a few to many then to have a few to less at start, then the ones not needed can be filtered out. Or even better there can be the standard categories and then an "extended" showing all kind of map styles.

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Yeah, that would be cool. So an example would be like this:

Category
--Sub-category
----Game mode

Start from few general game styles then branch out to more specific game types.