Starcraft 2 UI Update

Starcraft 2 just got a massive UI update with patch 1.5! It looks pretty good I think actually, however, the first thing that I didn't like was the switching of the 2 buttons in the top left labelled 'starcraft' and 'arcade'. They used to be single player and multi-player buttons, and the multi-player one used to be on the right, whereas now you have to click the left, a minor problem but still is kind of annoying.

Anyway, say you want to play online vs others. This is the menu you choose which type of game you want to play (1v1, 2v2, 3v3 etc...)


Again, in this one I think it looks great but there is quite a lot that could be done to improve it. For starters I think that the game modes should start with 1v1 on the left, and the get higher, rather than start at 4v4 and get lower, I think that would just make more sense but again it's only minor. The one thing that I think definitely needs changing here, is how obvious what race you've chosen to play is. In this picture I've chosen protoss because I think it stands out the most, but it's still easy to have it clicked on zerg by mistake and que seeing as the other races pictures don't stand out as much, I think the other pictures should dim once you've chosen a race.

Something I like about this UI, though, is that it tells you when the season ends, so you don't have to wait until someone posts it on Reddit to find out. This is pretty useful as if the end of the season is coming up you can know in advance and grind out some games to hit #1 in your league and hopefully set up for a promotion next season!

Next is the new profile pages;


I really don't like these. For a start, the account in this picture is currently in gold league 1v1. However, the page clearly says that it's in platinum (a higher league). This is because that accounts personal highest league in 1v1 was platinum, but is extremely misleading when trying to look at what league someone is currently.

Something else I'd really like to see put in on this page is a win/loss ratio, so you can see how you're doing and whether you are likely to be promoted. Currently only masters league players get shown their wins/losses and I'd like to have that option also, even if it was private so that other people couldn't wind you up about it.

Finally, the new page for your match history;


This is probably the part of the update I like most. It's great just how many matches this actually shows now, compared to when it only used to show 10. Also I think the new text they've used is a lot easier to read. The only thing I dislike about it really, is that replays are now saved in a different format, so if you use a programme like SC2gears to save all of your replays into a folder for you, they won't be being saved for a while until that gets patched, but you can still save them in-game and view them there, so it's nothing major!

All in all I think the patch was definitely needed, and was, for the most part, a success. Hopefully Blizzard will fix the small things and add some more, even more needed features (maybe even LAN support?) who knows? But anyway, if they do, I'll most likely make a new post on it, or just update this one, so until then ciao!