Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

massivelyop.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 557 posts

Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

#111

Post by TulliusCicero »

jandrese wrote: post #33
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #8

I can't say what's driving all the playerbase losses but: They stopped development on Diablo 3 a long time ago. It doesn't have the staying power of more modern online games where new content is added continuously. They stopped development on HotS, which never achieved the same level of pull as League of Legends. Overwatch faces stiff competition from Valorant and other competitive small team FPSes, and also has over…

Blizzard kinda killed the RTS genre with Starcraft 1. It's basically the perfect RTS so everything that came after it seems inferior. Even Starcraft 2. There are still niches for specialized audiences, like historical battles with a more strategic bent, but for mass market RTS nothing has been able to beat a 23 year old game.

I love BW but it's still far from perfect. Even if things like single build select and max 12 unit select were okay at the time and worked decently within the game's design, they're still incredibly clunky choices. Honestly, even playing it in its heydey, I already disliked the 12 unit select.

> It's basically the perfect RTS so everything that came after it seems inferior. Even Starcraft 2.

SC2 had a bunch of design choices that seemed to reflect a shallow understanding of what made BW actually super good. Like, how incredibly tightly units clumped together should've been picked out as an obvious flaw immediately, but instead they never fixed the underlying issue and just patched up some of the negative impacts via econ changes.

Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

#112

Post by Jetrel »

jandrese wrote: post #33
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #8

I can't say what's driving all the playerbase losses but: They stopped development on Diablo 3 a long time ago. It doesn't have the staying power of more modern online games where new content is added continuously. They stopped development on HotS, which never achieved the same level of pull as League of Legends. Overwatch faces stiff competition from Valorant and other competitive small team FPSes, and also has over…

Blizzard kinda killed the RTS genre with Starcraft 1. It's basically the perfect RTS so everything that came after it seems inferior. Even Starcraft 2. There are still niches for specialized audiences, like historical battles with a more strategic bent, but for mass market RTS nothing has been able to beat a 23 year old game.

Speak for yourself; I can't stand SC1 after all the quality-of-life features they added to 2.

There's nothing dumber and more immersion-breaking than watching 15 dragoons get stuck in a small opening because the game's pathfinding is the very best the mid-90s has to offer. Or watching a reaver's scarab just ... get stuck, on the way to a target. They solved all of this crap (and a whole lot more) in SC2, and I can't go back.

Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

#113

Post by nottorp »

From my point of view, Blizzard has been slowly going downhill for ages. Some whines in chronological order:

WoW died for me when they introduced the random dungeon finder in Cataclysm and cut down the player-to-player interaction outside dungeons by 99%.

Starcraft 2 ... might have been polished and all, but honestly I don't see much difference from Starcraft 1. Also, I don't like memorizing openings (either chess or a RTS) and the multiplayer is toxic enough. Been called a stupid noob a lot, especially when i won :)

Diablo 3... i sometimes play that when i feel like doing something that doesn't require even one active neuron. It's about like watching TV.

Hearthstone was fun until I realized it's like MTG and you have to spend real money to improve your card collection.

They made WoW classic unplayable with their decision to cram 10x as many people on one server (and refusal to fix it). Then WC3: Reforged came up. So two botched remakes/updates.

Their other titles don't run on Macs, so considering how good the current titles are, I didn't even look. Heard that the Diablo 2 remake will be Windows only as well.

So... i guess good luck to them. They have to do A LOT to convince me they're worth my time now.

Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

#114

Post by dragontamer »

jandrese wrote: post #33
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #8

I can't say what's driving all the playerbase losses but: They stopped development on Diablo 3 a long time ago. It doesn't have the staying power of more modern online games where new content is added continuously. They stopped development on HotS, which never achieved the same level of pull as League of Legends. Overwatch faces stiff competition from Valorant and other competitive small team FPSes, and also has over…

Blizzard kinda killed the RTS genre with Starcraft 1. It's basically the perfect RTS so everything that came after it seems inferior. Even Starcraft 2. There are still niches for specialized audiences, like historical battles with a more strategic bent, but for mass market RTS nothing has been able to beat a 23 year old game.

For a "perfect" game, Dragoon / Goliath pathing is sure awful.

Starcraft 2 units really do "what you want" most of the time: automatically balling up into groups or "dancing" together. From one perspective, elite Starcraft1 players who memorized "The Magic Box" and other engine-level pathfinding behaviors saw this as an abomination: other players can gain the same skills now without practice.

On the other hand... lets be frank. Dragoon / Goliath pathfinding was bullshit from Starcraft1. The extraordinary measures you'd have to take to become a competitive player who uses those (ie: Magic box memorization. Dragoon Dance practice. Etc. etc.) was fundamentally unfun.

This is coming from me: someone who did put in the effort to properly dragoon dance / Muta stack / etc. etc. We all do things to seek a competitive edge against our opponents.

-------------

The work / reward ratio needs to be there in some extent. But it can't be so large to turn beginners away. I'm not sure if anyone's found the proper balance yet, but Starcraft2 definitely was better from that perspective.

EDIT: I'm also a big fan of fighting games. Hyper-fighters, like Blazblue or Guilty Gear, have a nice auto-balance called combo proration. Combos are clearly the best way to play, but each combo makes the rest of the combo exponentially do less damage (!!!). This means that a 50 hit combo in BlazBlue will probably only do 10% more than a 20 hit combo, despite the huge difficulty curve in executing. The bulk of the damage is from the attacks before proration kicks in. This allows for the expert-community to practice for those 50-hit combos, while not necessarily granting huge 250% bonuses over beginners. A casual player may only decide to learn the 20-hit combo and still be 90% of the way to playing like an expert (compared to experts who have to work far, far harder to get the last 10% of damage).

Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

#116

Post by nemothekid »

AlexandrB wrote: post #82
void_mint wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't say what's driving all the playerbase losses but: "The Blizzard Way" doesn't work anymore. Fortnite releases content monthly/quarterly. Massive updates with huge out-of-game tie-ins, changing worlds, in-game events, etc. Other games have changed to match/compete. CoD and Valorant both implement similar season-pass style systems. Blizzard, on the other hand, insists on delaying/cancelling games, releasing "o…

This analysis is probably correct, but it's also depressing as hell because Fortnite is a shallow, money-hungry game. Nothing like Blizzard's best work from the past (Diablo 2, Starcraft) that could be played for years with no "season passes" or other MTX.

I don't think there will ever be another successful game without "season passes" or other MTX. Overwatch may be used as a singular reason in the industry why the old model doesn't work.

Fortnite can afford to keep artists and programmers on staff to develop a huge amount of content because they have consistent money coming in. This isn't the case for OW and I hypothesize this is why they struggled to crank out new content.

Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

#117

Post by DanHulton »

lsiebert wrote: post #45

It's anecdotal, but I know at least five or six people who stopped playing blizzard games, especially HS, after they punished a player and staff for expressing support for Hong Kong in a post tournament interview. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy

I'm one of those people, but let me tell you, they have made it very easy on me. They haven't made anything even vaguely interesting in years.

Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

#118

Post by brutal_chaos_ »

aaomidi wrote: post #41
TOSSAWAY_1 wrote: post #19

I quit playing overwatch and hots when they sided with SJWs (and by extension censorship and china). I also skipped tlou2 and other big titles. I'm old enough to stand up against censorship and for the right to use ugly speech. I'm not saying I expect blizzard to not exercise its rights as a private company, but I am saying I dont support companies that dont support unfettered free speech.

Good, players like you leaving makes the game a better and safer place for everyone. Players like you, and Blizzard's inaction to do something about it is why I left. Players Overwatch with my girl friends has been the worst experience. Players any multiplayer game as a woman just seems to be toxic. I expected more from Blizzard here.

I'm with the GP, companies aren't there to censor (unless it's a kids game). I don't like the toxic nature of many who play games, but at most the company should look into harassment / abuse, not censor words. My reasoning is Poe's Law. One could be using a would-be censored word or phrase to describe something in a non-offending way. A farmer might say, "I have several bitches to sell, would you be interested?" Here, bitches is used appropriately to describe female dogs. My example may be shite, though I hope the point is made.

(Nevermind the use of exposure therapy to make certain words/events less impactful on an individual)

Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

#119

Post by de_keyboard »

nawgz wrote: post #38
sergiotapia wrote: post #6

Their games just don't feel like labors of love anymore. They feel like icky skinner boxes through and through. Every aspect of their games are a/b tested up the ass to convert as many MTX as possible and personally it's a total turn off. I downloaded Warzone and tried it out this weekend and uninstalled after 2 matches, it just felt off. Hard to describe. Like a AAA graphics Candy Crush. yuck!

Haha, Warzone is a great game with one of the worst UI/UX designs I've ever seen. As a player who got it 5 months ago or so, I fully disagree with your assessment. It has a horrible and confusing store, no pay-to-win aspects, and solid gameplay with some actual decent depth. I am in no way condoning Activision, and I think their approach to Warzone maintenance has been pretty horrible (they are just turning a corner…

I was disappointed with Warzone.

* Best load-outs are faster to unlock with the paid game, so it is semi play-to-win

* Warzone client is MASSIVE (seriously, like fill your entire SSD massive) because it installs other games alongside

* Servers are awful, with extremely low tick-rates, so movement and shooting feels pretty ropey

* A general sense of sameyness crept in after a few hours. I have a hunch that this is due to a low skill ceiling to the mechanics. Whilst I'm sure this makes the game more accessible to a wider audience, I found it left me with no sense of progression. Like eating a Big Mac rather than a nourishing meal.

Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

#120

Post by TulliusCicero »

Jetrel wrote: post #112
jandrese wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blizzard kinda killed the RTS genre with Starcraft 1. It's basically the perfect RTS so everything that came after it seems inferior. Even Starcraft 2. There are still niches for specialized audiences, like historical battles with a more strategic bent, but for mass market RTS nothing has been able to beat a 23 year old game.

Speak for yourself; I can't stand SC1 after all the quality-of-life features they added to 2. There's nothing dumber and more immersion-breaking than watching 15 dragoons get stuck in a small opening because the game's pathfinding is the very best the mid-90s has to offer. Or watching a reaver's scarab just ... get stuck, on the way to a target. They solved all of this crap (and a whole lot more) in SC2, and I can't…

Dragoon pathing is actually a bug where the dragoons think they're smaller than they are IIRC. They just never patched it because it ended up becoming a part of the accepted balance.
Post reply on HN