[Feature Request] Comments in Replays and Replay Upvoting

This seems to me to be a very lightweight request that would cost little in developer time - but I also can't see the back end of how replays are implemented

The basic idea is that when watching a replay viewers could place pings and attach text to them. Other viewers of replays could see those pings as they watched. Pings could be color coded by team color of the participants of the match and a separate color for non participants.
Paired with that could be a simple (ideally) system for interesting or well commented replays to 'float up' a list, providing an approximation of a meritocracy. This could be in the form of an upvote system, a sort of 'upset index' that would promote replays based on how unlikely Glicko considers the result to be, or both.

Has this been suggested before and I'm beating a dead horse? What does the community, and potentially devs, think?

Well I think it would be pretty easy to embed things like this in the chrono cam, just like soundcloud does with their music tracks.

ofc i have no idea how compelx the chrono cam is, but since notifications are pretty much the same thing it should be easy.

I dont think this is actually worth time to develop though.

This is why I think it is potentially worth the developer time:

• It is cheap (again, to the best of my knowledge)
• Provides an integrated method for observing and *comprehending* high level play, reducing the imposing steepness of the learning curve
• Provides a way to engage with community members who don't actively use the forums or pachat.
• Provides a way of filtering the wall of replays in the replays tab, so that play that has some educational or entertainment factor is more visible.

edit*
It may be easy to slip in with an upcoming 'resume anywhere' patch. They are working on replays currently anyway.

And who shall it be to admin the comments people put on replays?

A downvote button?
Or the same person who moderates the titles of custom games?

I dont think anyone would bother to do that. And what if the person themself is troll? I believe this was one of the arguments uber made for an officially sanctioned global chat, in that they would need moderators

It never is. Never ever ever eeeeeeeeeeeever. No such thing as a 'small' programming job. Always assume that whatever feature or suggestion is going to leave the coders with PTSD, so should only be implemented if it's REALLY worth it.

A feature like this i personally do not think is worth it, like others have said its likely going to need moderators, since the community is full of assholes :3

As a programmer I can confirm that is BS. If your code is well designed and documented, every programming job that is not trying something completely new is a small programming job.

As a programmer I can confirm that is BS.

As a amateur programmer I say that is may be BS.

As a professional programmer I say this is BS

As a semi-professional programmer I say:

Code:

break;

I'm not sure who is calling BS on what lol

I made a horrible generalization there and I am clearly wrong.
I stand by, however, that good design, modularization, and documentation makes easy things easy and hard things easier. "Small" or "Large" programming jobs are relative, both exist.

There clearly isn't a lot of support for my suggestion

Code:

thread.yield();

On a tangent: would it be possible to record chat logs from a match into the replay itself?

I don't think so, but a service similar to what PA stats does probably could record all the messages players send and then play them back as a replay plays.

Why shouldn't that be possible?

It think the replay format actually does support arbitrary events, so chat messages, pings, and even unit selection events could be stored.

I'm not exactly sure whether it supports variable length events, but I would assume so, as most movement commands etc. are variable length as well. Unless of course, these commands are being saved on a per-unit base.

Ahh yes of course it would be possible, but I was speaking from a modder's perspective.