I miss the days of RTS games. Used to play a ton of frozen throne, and was getting back into it when Blizzard announced the remaster. Then in the act of launching the remaster they brought down the online ladder, causing me to leave the game and never return. To me it's because they want to be a multibillion dollar company and all their moves have to align with that. It's no longer good enough to make a solid game that devs and fans love and make a decent profit. It's all about the billions, often leads companies to do stupid things.
Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
211–220 of 557 posts
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#212Imagine my shock. Blizzard hasn’t released any new game since Overwatch, and that was in 2016. They have been able to keep their old games going to some extent with updates and expansions, but it’s mostly just been more of the same stuff, no innovation. Not much better on the Activision side. Other than umpteen versions of Call of Duty and re-releases of old games, the only memorable game they’ve done of late is Destiny (1 & 2). You can’t just keep rehashing the same old formula if you want to keep up with the market.
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#213If not for World of Warcraft Classic, how bad would this be?
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#214"Do you guys not have phones?" -Blizzard staff in 2018, in response to booing fans upset that Blizzard wouldn't make a PC version of a game those same fans obviously wanted to play. This company has been contemptuous of their players for years. They fell into that classic trap of "If we [do something that will alienate all our customers] we can get 10x as many customers from [untapped market]" As anybody should have…
I think this is more of the enthusiasts vs. causal user conundrum. Gaming has made the transition to a mature industry where mass market appeal is more profitable than a great product aimed at enthusiasts. I can't really blame either side. It sucks for enthusiasts who want games that are complex, to be offered a watered down experience full of MTX. But it sucks for studios when they sink a 10xs the money into produci…
Brands have value insofar as the consuming public recognize those brands, right? I'd wager that Diablo is most famous for the first two games which both came out 20 years ago, and that the enthusiast segment of the market recognizes this brand more than the casual segment (who, by nature of being casual, know less about historic games.) In the enthusiast/pc segment of the market, Diablo may still be a valuable brand. But in the casual/mobile segment of the market, the Diablo brand is relatively unknown and relatively worthless.
Trying to sell games to mobile/casual gamers is fine, but they probably should have invented a new brand for the purpose (like they did with Hearthstone) instead of burning an old brand for little gain.
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#215Earlier 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.
[dead]
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#216"Do you guys not have phones?" -Blizzard staff in 2018, in response to booing fans upset that Blizzard wouldn't make a PC version of a game those same fans obviously wanted to play. This company has been contemptuous of their players for years. They fell into that classic trap of "If we [do something that will alienate all our customers] we can get 10x as many customers from [untapped market]" As anybody should have…
you're presenting this a little bit disingenuously. expectations were high that diablo 4 would be announced in 2018, and instead there was the announcement of a partnership to develop a mobile version of diablo. folks were upset and the presenter reacted poorly.
the following year diablo 4 was announced and much was forgiven. the mobile game is still not out (in closed beta rn) and early reports are good.
you can fault blizzard for thinking its core fans at blizzcon would be excited about a mobile game, but if you are a game developer with a popular IP you're making a huge mistake not developing for mobile, as it will be the majority of the global gaming market for the foreseeable future.
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Overwatch faces stiff competition from Valorant and other competitive small team FPSes, and also has overlapping audiences with battle royale FPSes. The competition isn't driving away people from Overwatch. The game is incredibly stale, and IMO, is probably the death knell of full price online games. There has been little to none new content and changes to the game. The competitive community has always complained a…
The problem is not how Overwatch was maintained, the problem is that the core formula isn't fun. Forcing two tanks, two healers, two DPS characters leads to eight minute DPS queues. But if you don't force this kind of team composition, the game becomes incredibly unfun for the team that has five DPS characters and no tank. You'd figure that this would drive DPS players to switch to the other roles, to reduce the time…
It's about power spiking. Blizzard committed to designing without power spikes and gamers prefers power spikes.
Maintenance requires switchups to these dynamics, but when you have created a system that's devoid of these events, your game is going to be stale no matter what you do. New maps, new characters, etc.
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#218From 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…
So true about WoW.
Dungeon Finder and Raid Finder made it so you didn't need to find people or be in a guild to do these things. They also took the sense of enormity out of the world because you don't have to physically go places anymore. The deeprun tram, boats, zepplins were all such elegant solutions to create a breathtakingly open and connected world, and flying mounts & dungeon finder killed the feeling so quickly.
I do think the best thing they've done in WoW recently though, for bringing some of that discovery back, is adding secret events and global puzzles. Going into Gnomeregan, seeing a small hidden button, pressing it and having a lvl ?? boss show up and obliterate my max level character was just awesome. And I had a ton of fun doing the Uuna quest-but-not-really.
But so much of the game has just stopped being fun.
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#219I 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.
> 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.
The overall market killed the RTS genre because everybody has a pretty clear idea of exactly how much money you're going to make selling an RTS and it's not that high. RTS games don't port well to consoles or mobile, and that's the majority of people and revenue.
Blizzard killed the RTS genre by completely optimizing for e-sports click-fests at the expense of everything else. A pox on their house.
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#220I 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…
All of this started with the Activision buyout. They wanted to milk the cow as much as possible, outsourcing ALL. It is not working.