Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by [deleted] » Wed, May 05, 2021, 10:51 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #154

slaymaker1907 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely agree and a lot of the popular WoW content creators (Bellular, T&E, etc.) seem to agree. They don't always mention casuals, but lack of progression is a major issue, particularly in Shadowlands. As a person spending too much time playing, you are basically forced to do non-LFR raiding, rated PvP, or mythic+ dungeons to actually progress your gear at all. Not to mention they seem to hate flying yet keep cre…

> Not to mention they seem to hate flying yet keep creating terrible zones unless you can fly. Yes, this is just an ongoing disaster. My sense from their communications over the years is that, when players fly through zones, that hurts the feelings of the artists, which Blizzard doesn't like. > There aren't clear routes between common locations like roads in Skyrim. I actually really liked how roads were handled in o…

[deleted]

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

#282

Post by skystarman » Wed, May 05, 2021, 10:52 PM UTC

phillryu wrote: post #156

freshair wrote: post #29

"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 feel like it's relevant to mention how huge Hearthstone is, and that's a mobile first game (at its best on iPad which is rare) that I feel is totally Blizzard tier quality with expected polish and substance to it, and both satisfied a lot of Blizzard fans + successfully tapped into that 10x market. There's fair criticism to how it monetizes but it still dominates its category for a reason, they continue to own it l…

Hardcore gamers love to trash ATVI/Blizz but they are without a doubt dominant gaming developer/publisher in the business, and it's really not even close unless you count Tencent.

Ask people on HN if they like CoD and they'd laugh at you but the games are IMMENSELY popular every release and they print cash for ATVI.

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

#283

Post by k12sosse » Wed, May 05, 2021, 10:53 PM UTC

jvzr wrote: post #208

icegreentea2 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, they did announce Diablo 4 for PC/Xbox/PS the year after the Diablo Immortal fiasco...

You are right. Plus, the Diablo 2 remaster announced at the same time as Diablo 4 (IIRC) Based on past track record, I don't hold much hope, though

D2 resurrected looks like it's lining up to be fun. The company that was outsourced to rebuild has said they didn't want to fix d2. They wanted to overhaul it's graphics and give it QoL. Same bugs. Same game.

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

#284

Post by obviouslynotme » Wed, May 05, 2021, 10:54 PM UTC

void_mint wrote: post #40

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…

> 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…

It still works. The problem is that when they used to delay titles, they came out as blockbusters. The death knell of Blizzard as a premier game maker was WoW. WoW became so amazingly profitable that Blizzard became "the WoW company." I remember being excited for Diablo 3 until I heard that they took away 8 player games so that D3 wouldn't compete with WoW. I never bought D3 and was completely unsurprised to find out no one liked it. No other game can survive in that company long term.

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

#285

Post by xxpor » Wed, May 05, 2021, 10:55 PM UTC

tokipin wrote: post #250

nemothekid wrote: post #87

Earlier 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…

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 tal…

This is the first time I'm hearing any complaints about the modern overtime system. It seems totally fair to me, the defending team has to actually win the final fight. What would you change about it?

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

#286

Post by skystarman » Wed, May 05, 2021, 10:59 PM UTC

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…

If this was as easy as you say Disney and other major media companies wouldn't have failed miserably at entering the gaming space.

It's like thinking if you have $100 Million and the right production schedule, crew, actors, and producers in place and they work really hard you'll have a major hollywood blockbuster!

Creative arts don't work like that.

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

#287

Post by xxpor » Wed, May 05, 2021, 11:01 PM UTC

nemothekid wrote: post #116

AlexandrB wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

I must be getting old. I don't get why everyone's so obsessed with new content or the lack thereof. Overwatch is already huge compared to older FPSes, adding more characters actively makes the game even harder to balance. New maps are incredibly hard to get right (Paris, HLC, Havana...).

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

#288

Post by imbnwa » Wed, May 05, 2021, 11:02 PM UTC

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…

> WC3 remastered flopped

Was really looking forward to playing Helm's Deep on Bnet like good ol times but alas

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

#289

Post by midoBB » Wed, May 05, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

jvzr wrote: post #208

icegreentea2 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, they did announce Diablo 4 for PC/Xbox/PS the year after the Diablo Immortal fiasco...

You are right. Plus, the Diablo 2 remaster announced at the same time as Diablo 4 (IIRC) Based on past track record, I don't hold much hope, though

Diablo 2 is as good as I remember it when I was younger. As for D4 I have no idea but they seem to flail around and rely on community feedback too much which is a worrying sign for me.

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

#290

Post by robotmay » Wed, May 05, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

bluescrn wrote: post #93

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.

If you've played a lot of WoW, you also spot glaring flaws in other games very quickly. Usually the 'feel' of combat/animation/movement just isn't up to Blizzard standards, and UIs are often very inflexible compared to WoW's moddable interface (without that, nobody would play healers for long!). Sometimes the travel timesinks are just unbearable (SWTOR), or the global cooldown feels glacial (FFXIV) And WoW keeps gett…

The FFXIV global cooldown is a bit weird in that it feels super slow until about lv50, where suddenly it doesn't feel slow enough. It's not the same for every class but using non-GCD abilities in between the cooldown becomes the primary rotation and it's _super_ challenging. I've been playing a lot of the Samurai class lately and the rotation is way more fun than I originally expected.