And 1v1's probably will only last that long, 1v1v1...(x40)...v1, on the other hand, would last a lot longer. That being said, how often are FFA matches of any size casted seriously?
Uhm, you will be able to jump to certain points of the replay immediately, you won't have to start from the very beginning and wait till you reach 06:32:01 or any other advanced points in game... Also, the server for those big games will be in the cloud, so highly unlikely that something might "crash" like an ordinary PC at home... also since savegames/replays are all the same... you can always use the replay to jump back into the game and continue from there...
I support epic, mutli-hour (or even day) marathon games. Personal experience here but nothing is more epic than you and your buddies doing all weekend long LAN parties. PA match that lasts for hours? Even more of an Epic win! All day marathon of PA? F**k yea! Drop in / drop out ability, no preset limit to team sizes? This...will...own! However...If you get killed, would you not be able to just rejoin and start over? No doubt would need an option to block people from doing this as then every game would simply degenerate to sandbox mode. Dropping in / dropping out is an awesome...no uber...idea.
This isn't eSports. Of course eSports games are less than an hour long. However, with the whole client-server setup Uber are developing, there is definitely potential for having MASSIVE maps with waaaaay more players than your average RTS, who will be able to drop in and out, similar to your average FPS. I'm not sure whether or not this will actually be fun, but it will certainly be interesting to see whether or not it will work.
how would your online stats look during these games? i.e. if you log in 4th hour then logout 10th hour.
That's... a really good question. Maybe just efficiency metrics like "spent 50,000 metal on tanks and blew up 85,000 metal worth of tanks."
I've always been a big fan of factoring in time for metrics as it usually gives a more accurate picture of how good a player really is. For instance in an FPS someone might have a kill death ratio of 50:1 which sounds like they are a really good player but if you factor in time you might see that they are only getting 1 kill an hour and are actually really crap, they just camp in some map exploit that gives them a huge advantage when someone walks past. Score per minute usually works as a good metric, and you can fairly easily have most measurable factors affect score.
Just noticed someone used the term "in the cloud" to describe the PA servers being magically more resistant to crashing than desktop PCs. IT people everywhere just felt a chill go down their spines. Possibly the most misunderstood tech term ever. I winced. You know who you are. You are bad and should feel bad
They damn well should be, if only for the magical reason of being operated by someone competent. I'm pretty sure my home desktop is far less resistant to crashing than the cloud servers at my work, but that's purely because they've better redundancy, better software installed, and aren't used for everything and anything.
Redundancy true; hardware wise they'll stay up longer. But if there's a fault in the PA Server code it will crash on a Server as much as a desktop (this was my main point as it is by far the leading cause of crashes. Other factors will of course play into it). As a side note, if someone is hosting a game on their own desktop, that is just as much "in the cloud" [shudder] as far as your computer is concerned as running off dedicated server hardware. This is what makes the term so vague as to be useless in general usage. The term does have specific implications (eg. massively redundant large clusters of servers to handle web-based apps or storage), but the average non-techy doesn't know this and it often results in stunning face-palm and head-desk moments. (In case you didn't realise, this was just a non-serious light-hearted rant. I feel much better now.) /resume thread.
I used that term and could not care less, yes I am IT myself...so... I think everyone else understands "in the cloud", not everyone is IT. I take it that Uber will be checking their own servers... so everything should be fine. Also, cloud server are much stronger and have a better setup than most PCs at home... how many people with a single core Pentium 4 join large maps with 8 players in FA or SC2... imagine those people hosting their own server... The chances to possibly crash Ubers server and a private one at home are totally different.
so you call Starcraft 2 an average RTS where price pool of tournament can give you thousands of $ ? Ok.
This is great for those of us with families, especially young ones. I love my games, but family first (oh noes!).