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

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

#241

Post by georgeecollins »

apetresc wrote: post #226
Supermancho wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What are power spikes?

Power spikes are moments in the design of the game where one player/character is really powerful relative to another player / character. Sometimes in League of Legends heroes are designed to be kind of weak at the start or strong at the end. Sometimes a character is just really strong relative to others for a period of time because you unlock a power before the counters are unlocked, or you purchase a powerful item.

Power spikes can be fun because it can be fun to have a feeling of power, or see the balance change in your favor in a game. They can be frustrating because you can be faced with a power spiked player and feel helpless. It is a design choice with pros and cons.

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

#242

Post by Shadonototro »

They keep milking the same aging WoW userbase, of course it'll decline, since that demographic is becoming old enough to not care anymore

Their business decision to re-release WoW with WoW: Classic was a poor one

They should have made either a sequel, or a full REMAKE, not a lazy-milking-re-release, it just plain stupid

And let's not talk about the way they "reforged" Warcraft 3..

They print lot of money, but sadly it goes in the wrong pockets.. poor management, 0 vision for the future, stuck milking an aging player base

Doesn't sound great for the future

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

#243

Post by ev1 »

nemothekid wrote: post #203
vkou wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The problem is not how Overwatch was maintained, the problem is that the core formula isn't fun. This has been a criticism of Overwatch since day one. If the core problem was the actual core formula it wouldn't have grown so large to begin with. Millions of people wouldn't have billions of hours into the game in the first place if the core formula wasn't fun. I think you have a valid point, but I don't think it's w…

For the first year of overwatch, me and my friends played for hours. Every night. Every day.

Then they started restricting your team choices. You could no longer have two of the same hero.

You then had to be forced into meta-roles ONLY.

You then had to queue specific roles and were not allowed to pick anything else at all.

All lack of balance and content aside, what the hell?

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

#244

Post by talexy »

AmVess wrote: post #81
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…

In terms of WoW, I'm sure a lot of it is focusing on the top raiding guilds and leaving the casual player with few rewarding activities. Further, one of their most cherished metrics is how much time people spend doing a certain activity. Instead of making those activities more fun and rewarding, they made them take longer to complete and with fewer rewards. To top it all off, they are nearly completely deaf to their…

I think after Mists of Pandaria I stopped playing wow as an MMO and just focused on doing single player stuff for the past many years. To me there is a significant difference in something requiring to farm an instance 50-100 over when you have time vs. doing it over 50-100 days because of daily lockouts. That is just not fun and and disrespectful to me as a player. I don't always have the same free time every day and when I do get a couple of hours I can't farm due to lockouts.

Their WOW playerbase are getting older and if you don't treat them will respect even more will be lost. There are so many games out there right now, sure not of this genre, but they provide options for someone who wants to pick up gaming and not necessarily invest in WoW.

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

#245

Post by mobilio »

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 still play SC1:BW Remastered almost every day.

It's PERFECT!

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

#246

Post by kaliali »

TOSSAWAY_1 wrote: post #127
jodrellblank wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " I'm old enough to stand up against censorship and for the right to use ugly speech. " Then why are you hiding behind a throwaway account? > " I am saying I dont support companies that dont support unfettered free speech. " Which companies do you support? Are there any which support unfettered free speech on their platforms?

Because I can? I said nothing about anonymity. Odd... I'm from an age when anominity was a good thing. But do encourage all the current folks to move away from it, because I want to see them fail. Lol I dont support any social media company. Social media is a net negative for the human experience, but that's just my opinion. I'm just a person who found the internet more fun before it needed to be safe for day time te…

The internet was more fun until the crybabies and control freaks ruined it.

This site is like a Reddit for the Silicon Valley community, you're not going to find much support. They will soon completely fail though, their ideology doesn't create value. Just keep watching.

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

#247

Post by dragontamer »

TheCapn wrote: post #231
dragontamer wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... let…

I've always held that their patch/balance style is what ultimately killed SC2's scene compared to SC1. Just look at how many balance patches were required from SC2 vs. what they applied in SC1. While neither game is perfect IMO, letting the game mature without micromanaging it was a very important aspect of SCBW's success. Instead of mucking with units on a monthly basis they let things simmer and ultimately let bala…

That sounds more like a symptom as opposed to the underlying problem. A large number of patches isn't necessarily a bad thing, but an unstable meta is definitely bad.

So SC2 starts off with SCV-auto split, no more manual splitting at the start of the game (all players now can play the first 5-seconds of every game like a pro: no practice needed anymore) But then muscle-memory people wanted an edge, so they added MULEs / Spawn Larva / Chronoboost, giving players a muscle-memory / simple timer countdown to play with. Etc. etc.

Just back-and-forth changes like that was the real problem. The general balance patches had no idea for the final metagame they were actually going for. Did Blizzard want a game that rewarded manual effort (Juggle MULEs?)? Or did they want a game where manual-effort was minimized (Auto-Worker Split?)

In the end: Blizzard wanted both, even if the two designs contradicted each other. You really can't please both groups of players, but by switching back and forth between the two designs, they only really pissed off both camps over the long term.

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

#248

Post by bruiseralmighty »

Isn't this just a case of increasing irrelevancy?

I can't think of a single release from them I would describe as 'ambitious' other than Diablo Mobile which has the distinct honor of being dead before arrival.

Speaking anecdotally, no one I game with or any of the forums I go to talk about Blizzard games. Many of the Discord servers I play with used to be big into HotS and Starcraft I/II, but I don't hear a peep from them about either anymore.

Perhaps worst of all, several of the Path of Exile players I game with are no longer even worried about a Diablo 4 launch affecting the long term health of their favorite dungeon crawler. It's just expected that Blizzard will deliver a polished but shallow experience that will be over within two or three months at most.

Maybe they just aren't nimble enough anymore to leverage their huge war-chest of experience and cash.

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

#249

Post by emptysongglass »

reedf1 wrote: post #51
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried a bunch of MMOs since WoW... and despite newer engines and some neat features, they often end up just being... mostly WoW once the sheen wears off. I occasionally revisit WoW because if you're going to play a WoW clone, you might as well just play WoW.

You should try playing some older MMOs: EVE, Anarchy Online, Ultima Online, Runescape. All stuff fundamentally untouched by the WoW design - and they are much better for it IMO. When I've played these games, even 20 years on, I am completely stunned. Makes me realize how psychologically kneecapped we are by WoW.

No love for EverQuest? Any MMO I've played since hasn't held a candle to the world design and enduring sense of mystery and wonder EverQuest was able to spark in my fragile little boyhood heart.

I went back to play in a "static" group on the old school Project 1994 servers a couple years ago. Buncha strangers agreeing to meet online a couple times a week to play, drink some fancy beers and shoot the shit. No wonder lost. That thing is still a place of glory.

WoW was the beginning of the end for the genre, in my opinion. Everything about it was smoothed over in all the wrong places. The art design and worldbuilding were just not good, especially when you consider the lore was a hobbled together mess of inheritance. The Colosseum legionnaires of the Iksar in their jungle and swamped wilds or the truly monstrous trolls selling dwarf bits that could have been pulled straight from some Nordic fairytales: that's some love of the grim imagination.

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

#250

Post by tokipin »

nemothekid wrote: post #87
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…

> 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…

Overwatch is a frustrating game to play because they almost have it right. It's almost there, if they could just tweak a couple things. A good example is the overtime system. One of the worst ideas in games I've run into. For one, it creates artificial and spiky emotions in players, which just burns people out. It's amazing they don't realize basic things like that, which means they actually haven't had the right talent for a long while.

The company also has a lot of hubris. They spend tons of effort on things like trying to make healers and tanks fun. There's many good reasons to do that and they gave it a good try, but the conclusion should have been: we aren't able to make healers and tanks fun, let's try something else. Instead, they forced people to play them.

Other mistakes include not understanding "the meta." Once they think the meta is balanced in a game, they get conservative and don't want to tweak things too much. They don't realize that the meta is an equilibrium state found by the players. Change the game, a new meta will be found. They don't seem to get this and just let their games run stale because they think the competitive scene drives the player base, instead of the other way around.

Overall the facepalm factor has been too high for too long. Blizzard has always understood the science of game design, but since at least SC2 they lost the art.

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