321–330 of 557 posts
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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.…
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
Which was and still is a completely artificial controversy pushed by certain interest groups. Blizzard is a private company, it's their tournament, their platform. If they don't want that to be instrumentalized as a political platform then they have every right to disallow that. For another, very recent, example of this: The International Olympic Committee just issued a strict warning against wearing BLM apparels, or…
That's a broad claim to make. I have seen plenty of prevailing opinions and discussion the other way; commonly referencing Tommie Smith, prior country boycotts and similar events.
In any case, I think it's reasonable for Americans to think that US companies should not sacrifice American ideals on the alter of foreign profits by cowtowing to (perceived) regressive demands of foreign countries.
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…
It's because the current culture at Blizzard is dominated by theorycrafting eggheads who believe that the poor, misguided players aren't playing the game "properly" and need to be told what to do.
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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…
For me, as someone who played OW just to have fun, what pushed me away was just the lack of things to do. No mode diversity meant stuff got stale really fast. Remember OW was supposed to be a different game, one that they cancelled. They reused a lot of the assets and so on and hashed them together with the ultra-popular genre of the time. It mostly worked at the start but it was pretty clear to me after a little whi…
Overwatch has one of the best custom game mode designers I've seen in a game since Garry's Mod. The amount of things that people are able to do with the custom games in Overwatch is incredible and I'd recommend checking them out if that's what you're looking for.
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.
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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...).
Over watch gameplay and especially movement is largely the issue here.
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
Which was and still is a completely artificial controversy pushed by certain interest groups. Blizzard is a private company, it's their tournament, their platform. If they don't want that to be instrumentalized as a political platform then they have every right to disallow that. For another, very recent, example of this: The International Olympic Committee just issued a strict warning against wearing BLM apparels, or…
Blizzard has released only the WoW expansion and some minor hearthstone expansions in the last 3 years. They have not really pushed any major IP releases. Acti-Blizzard is as profitable as ever though largely because of the MTX they've baked into COD and other games, their mobile games, and things like their overseas market penetration working out for them. That combined with the fact they've lost a significant amoun…
But I’ve really lost trust in the company and have a hard time imagining Diablo 4 being much better than Diablo 3.
Diablo 2 Resurrected looks intriguing and seems to be going about things in the right way, involving the community, etc. but I believe it’s a contract job by a third party? I have a hard time imagining Blizzard proper ever making a single-player, offline-friendly game.
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I'm unsure if the RTS genre is in a waning phase. AoE2 is still a top-20 game every day on Steam. Granted, it's a 20-year-old game. Maybe that shows new entrants can't make it; or maybe it shows there aren't enough good new entrants. StarCraft 2 is not as popular as it was, but would still be in the top 20 games if it were on Steam. We'll see if AoE4 gives the genre a kick. Initial reactions are somewhat lukewarm bec…
I recently started playing AoE2 again with my brothers after basically a 15 year gap, and it's a lot of fun. I was surprised to see such an active community. I've heard AoE4 will be more like AoE2 than AoE3 was, so I'm totally considering picking it up at some point if my brothers do. The game has aged really well with its design. We are all casual gamers, and it's nice to have something to play with people who aren'…
1) the release of the HD and Definitive Editions of the game, with graphics and gameplay that still hold up
2) availability on popular game stores like Steam (though it's a Microsoft game)
3) continuous balance patches, content updates, and occasional DLC
4) talented Twitch streamers and YouTubers casting games, commentary, and analysis (See T90Official and Spirit of the Law)
5) an active, mature, and welcoming player base on Reddit, Twitch, Discord, etc
6) frequent and varied tournaments with increasing prize pools (the recent Hidden Cup had the highest prize pool for an AoE2 tournament in 20 years)