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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

#251

Post by srg0 »

mbesto wrote: post #86

It's worth noting that this is specific to Blizzard . They have: - an MMO (not a growth area compared to other genres) - a FPS that tried to create a unique twist - a card game that essentially created a new genre (with a commercial ceiling) - remastered classics Compared to the rest of the market that is growing in the following areas: - large mobile presence - MOBA (HotS has been discontinued) - battle Royale

counterpoints:

- HS is strong on mobile

- OW is arguably a MOBA/FPS hybrid

- CoD/warzone is the most streamed battle royale on twitch

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

#252

Post by vsareto »

paulmd wrote: post #84
reedf1 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

eve online's formula is... controversial. the significant IRL time grind (doesn't necessarily need to be actively played, your skills train even when offline like an idle simulator...) was always a controversial game design point since it meant newer players were permanently less skilled than older players, they could never catch up... but CCP made it so you could just pay to get higher skill points, which isn't grea…

Doing the FPS + MMO integration was a risky step, but they get points for trying because that was pretty creative back in its time.

Like walking-in-stations, (now in Star Citizen and Elite: Dangerous) they seem to be pioneers back in the day but didn't get much credit for it because the execution was so important.

I'm fine with EVE having pay-for-skill points now because you were always able to buy accounts and that was actually scam-free. You'd need to buy a lot of PLEX back then to pay for one with real money though.

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

#253

Post by uncoder0 »

bob1029 wrote: post #160

What I don't understand is the financial equation around AAA studios like Blizzard. Our software company is not even 10 people big and we are able to deliver extremely high quality software multiple times per day to many customers, while supporting a wide range of business contexts. The annual budget for our whole team is something like $750k. Our part of the AWS bill is less than $400/m, but we seem to make due and…

Have you ever seen the source code for AAA games? It's quite intense stuff.

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

#254

Post by captaincurrie »

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…

[dead]

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

#255

Post by bluefirebrand »

worker767424 wrote: post #123
nickstinemates wrote: post #3

Not surprising, Blizzard has lost its way and its brand doesn't mean what it once did. The fall from grace started with the advent of paid services, and in game cosmetic shop in WoW and all of the issues surrounding the launch of Diablo 3 (let alone the disaster that is OWL/Overwatch, complete abandonment in HotS, etc.)

Maybe it's not that it lost its way, it's that they made very good games that people wanted from 1998-2005, made reasonable followups, but what people want from games has moved on.

I don't think what people want has moved on so much as what seems to make the most money from games has.

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

#256

Post by Reason077 »

jkeuhlen wrote: post #185
Reason077 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hearthstone actually gets regular, huge updates now days. Far more than it did in the first few years. Just today they dropped a surprise update for Battlegrounds. It's clear there's a major, constant effort going into developing new expansions, new game modes, etc. They've figured out a clever model of rotating out the old content to make room for more new stuff. No doubt Hearthstone is very profitable for Blizzard!…

Didn't they just copy the MtG model on cycling content for competitions? I could be wrong but I thought it was almost exactly what Wizards of the Coast starting doing in the early days of Magic.

Quite possibly. I'm not familiar enough with MtG to say. But it keeps the game fresh, while conveniently (for Blizzard) also ensuring the fans keep paying.

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

#257

Post by esturk »

asdff wrote: post #133

IMO video games are fundamentally unstable and everchanging things, because the customer base is continually growing out of it. Not to say adults wouldn't love to play, but how many people do you know that realistically have the time to get into videogames like the did in highschool, playing wow until sunrise fueled with energy drinks? Practically no one, especially people with families or a 9-5 job that punishes lac…

That's to say in less words that Blizzard never figured out the formula. This is because they focused on niche genres that doesn't appeal to kids.

Take Mario and Pokemon for example. Those IP will always attract new players for years to come. The formula is simple but it works.

In contrast, people aren't as crazy about RTS games as they use to be.

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

#258

Post by hengri »

mrgordon wrote: post #210
alpaca128 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They stopped development on HotS, which never achieved the same level of pull as League of Legends. Which to me isn't surprising as HotS' way to stand out from the rest is also why it's not fun long-term. At first it seems cool that every map in the game has a unique objective that the teams compete around. But the game is balanced in a way that you either win that objective 2-3 times or you lose the game, with rar…

I strongly disagree. The maps add tons of variety and the objectives force you to have team battles instead of just one vs one landing to last hit minions all game. Shared XP is another part of making it less about winning your one lane The issue is they were late to MOBAs and made the game entirely free so there was no reason to really support the game. Eventually the finance people notice

If that was true, we would still be using myspace and friendster.

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

#259

Post by pizza »

ev1 wrote: post #243
nemothekid wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

But they did address that a bit by re-adding open queue, also flex queue helps a little bit if say one day you wouldn't mind playing tank and then another day you just wanna go strictly dps. But I guess it should be fairly straightforward to expect people playing first person shooters to want to play mostly damage characters, and there's probably no easy queue-based fix for that.
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