I don't recall arguing this. The Data Editor is the most complicated part of Galaxy Editor. I get that. I also get that this editor has much more potential. I wasn't arguing any of this.
You don't have to sacrifice user-friendliness to get more complexity (a good example would be having both GUI and JASS in the World Editor), and especially with an in-game map editor, you most definitely shouldn't.
Level editors are a chance for the gamer to take part in the gaming creation. It's as much a tool as it is another part of the game itself. A window into the mindset of the developer. It should welcome, and entice.
I remember replaying Portal with the developer's commentary on. It was an unforgettable experience. I was blown away by the things I took for granted on my first playthrough. I remembered saying to myself, "I bet somewhere out there, someone played this and seriously considered a career in game design."
The original Staredit had this spark of inspiration. World Editor has this as well. But by the time you reach Galaxy Editor, it becomes rather obvious that their target user has changed. They only want to target people who already mod games. Granted, it's not a bad business strategy. Custom editing was what made the lucrative Tower Defense industry, and many people bought WC3 just to play Defense of the Ancients. It's practical to want to bring out the big guns at this point. But they're killing the inspiration that made it happen.
Here is the real argument. Blizzard in times past has always given us editors
they used to make their game. They always happened to be user friendly because they liked it that way. However, the Data Editor was what they used the make the UI of the SC2 bnet engine.
That's a feat, being able to recreate that for a new system making a mod. But because of the way actors are set up(puppeteers, not puppets), the Data Editor seems hard, because of the many options that wc3 modders found all in one field. This spread-out nature is actually
better organized than the warcraft III system.
But I think the kind of people having the most problems, are the people who transferred from warcraft III. Look at like this: If you were new to it, you start with a fresh slate, and that fresh slate makes you moldable, with knowledge, even the tiniest bit of another editor, "you" being below the "point", as mentioned earlier, will make it much harder to learn the new editor. Also, just to put it out there, I would say the editor is easier to learn at twelve because your brain is more moldable.
Finally, I would have to say that if you're not very good at the warcraft III world editor, you're going to have a hard time "tech swapping" to the Starcraft II editor. But in the NA custom game section, we have sidescrollers, sheep tag, a well designed base defense FPS, a debating game, and any number of original games, and I am surprised, as a wide number of modders in warcraft had been european and asian, but these europeans/asians are not transitioning from what I hear of the popularity system, either that, or the european gamers haven't figured out how to "cheat the system". But that's another matter.
T-t-t-t-that's all folks.
