do they have any good games still
I think that WoW is a good game for some kinds of players.
Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
341–350 of 557 posts
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#342I 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…
What is missing from the title is that revenue is up. They are wringing more cash out of fewer players. This could be aggressive monetisation driving people away, either directly due to how it feels or indirectly due to dev resources pushed into fancy hats instead of core content.
The article does say that Shadowlands and WoW Classic carried the torch for revenue. One is old-Blizzard quality I guess, the other pretty much as expected for a new WoW expansion. People are going to buy it. Whether or not they stick around is another story. It does note that they did not confirm if subscription numbers are rising or not in WoW (modern).
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...).
Maps get stale when they lack depth and an evolving meta. Map size, assets, etc are almost completely irrelevant. Over watch gameplay and especially movement is largely the issue here.
The meta is almost completely dependent on the hero balance at the time IME though, outside of Havana always having snipers at the top levels.
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#344Earlier 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 game is incredibly stale This is what I would describe as the state of Overwatch. After sinking thousands of hours in this game, I stopped playing my favorite game because Blizzard didn't care. 1. They pretty much gave up on any new content for OW2 development. 2. Competitive was broken from the beginning. Good behavior was rarely rewarded and bad behavior was rarely punished. Most of my games were grind really…
you have a warped view of how the MMR/SR systems function
essentially all that matters is your win-rate, if you can win more than 50% of your games over a reasonable stretch of time your MMR will increase and your SR will follow it
performance based SR is only a very small bonus (up-to diamond)
initial placement is essentially a guess: over 25 or so games your MMR will converge to where you're supposed to be
(4200 support main)
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
Surely that's exactly what overwatch ultimates are?
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#346I 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…
What is missing from the title is that revenue is up. They are wringing more cash out of fewer players. This could be aggressive monetisation driving people away, either directly due to how it feels or indirectly due to dev resources pushed into fancy hats instead of core content. The article does say that Shadowlands and WoW Classic carried the torch for revenue. One is old-Blizzard quality I guess, the other pretty…
The monetization in WoW is pretty invisible. Many games have a core of players who love playing no matter what and don't mind buying whatever new thing pops up on the store.
Everquest 2 is such a game. It is basically dead in terms of attracting new players, but people who love playing it have been keeping the parent company afloat for a while. IIRC, WoW and EQ2 came out at the same time. I can easily see Blizzard having the same fate in the not too distant future.
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#347It'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 true, but customers always vote with their wallets. It's been happening for decades and will never stop.
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Fortnite is a shallow Hate to take offense to this, but as someone who plays Fortnite competitively, it is absolutely not shallow. It's so much more than just another FPS.
I think Errant Signal has a great video [1] dissecting the appeal and breadth of content in Fortnite. It's not my cup of tea, but I certainly don't think you can call it "shallow". On the other side, Folding Ideas has a great video [2] (that the Errant Signal video references) dissecting the monetization systems in Fortnite and their negative aspects. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNukmNDq60Q [2] https://www.yo…
Absolutely, I won't argue the dark patterns to get kids to spend their parents' money. It's kinda gross that it's simply the industry standard now.
I just know it's by far the most interesting competitive real time game I've played in years.
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
Haha, Warzone is a great game with one of the worst UI/UX designs I've ever seen. As a player who got it 5 months ago or so, I fully disagree with your assessment. It has a horrible and confusing store, no pay-to-win aspects, and solid gameplay with some actual decent depth. I am in no way condoning Activision, and I think their approach to Warzone maintenance has been pretty horrible (they are just turning a corner…
I was disappointed with Warzone. * Best load-outs are faster to unlock with the paid game, so it is semi play-to-win * Warzone client is MASSIVE (seriously, like fill your entire SSD massive) because it installs other games alongside * Servers are awful, with extremely low tick-rates, so movement and shooting feels pretty ropey * A general sense of sameyness crept in after a few hours. I have a hunch that this is due…
* Plunder provides a similar ability to progress loadouts as either paid game
* it’s the biggest game I’ve ever seen and updates way too much. Feels like it ate my entire 1.2TB soft cap last month. Sadly the other games are also coming with +60-80gb on top of wz itself
* agreed
* in solos, it is a pretty terrible game, but the other modes require good team play and utility usage. I think there is a big skill gap, but the game is very slow paced, and it’s hard to objectively describe success. Is it frags? Placement? I suppose it depends on your goals. I can say watching streamers get 25 frags against top quality players shows you that aggression and mechanical skill are still rewarded in my opinion
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
oh it's fair, but extremely frustrating to lose after 60 seconds of overtime
To me those are the best games, it feels like you were evenly matched :) I hate getting just completely run over way more, personally.
people don't want "fair" though, they want to win about 2/3rds of the time
of course the numbers don't work when you're exclusively playing against other people
this is why smurfing is so popular