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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

#361
They have struggled for developing new franchises and serious for more than a decade, but eventually, they still get some hit with HearthStone, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch. Just not as dominating as what they previously did.

But in these years they don't seem to even try to develop new franchises at all. All they do is just shitty remasters - it seems to me that the equity holders want the suck all the value from the brand and the company and then just get rid of it. So disgraceful.

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

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I can tell where I'm not wanted. Enjoy! Edit: sorry I caught this before your edit to include popular buzzwords like "toxic". Good for you, I'm actually looking for games and experiences that are outside the realm of sanitized things my mother would like. And I'm sorry about your girlfriend, it was likely my girlfriend giving her so much shit. She's a real sailor when she gets going. And mean too!

“Girl friends” isn’t the same as “girlfriend”, and your mother does not represent all mothers. It seems aaomidi is recounting personal experience, and from my own experience, when a person earnestly uses “toxic” to describe how other participants behave it is often an apt description. If you are human, you’re a person with emotions. When a person describes something you might enjoy as toxic, are you able to pause and…

From my experience I've heard the word toxic in common parlance for about eight years and its just part of a common trend for the common mind.

The same minds that gave me shit for plainly stating that light speed wasn't sexist in a 1982 class room, I'm sure.

I prefer the 'toxic avenger' style usage from the past.

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

#363

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?

It's going to get real awkward when he realizes his comment was flagged, thus prohibiting his "free speech"...

Im so confused as to why theres a subset of people who seem to think i am against companies running as the please? Is it because my opinion is so opposite yours?

I agree, run your clubs and businesses as you want. I will do the same. I support Blizzard in this respect, I just wont with my dollars or time.

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

#364
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I feel like CCP's vision is always ten times that of its capability. Walking in Stations would've been achievable for a larger, more funded studio. But CCP has never been able to put out something on that scope. (EVE itself is simple, in comparison to WiS, from a game development standpoint, and that took over a decade to get where it is.)

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

#365
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

> you are basically forced to do non-LFR raiding, rated PvP, or mythic+ dungeons to actually progress your gear at all.

Those things are the game though and pretty much always have been. Raids, dungeons, or PvP. If you don't want to do any of them why would you have ever picked up WoW.

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

#366

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…

> 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

Healers and tanks are fun! The problem is that they keep introducing balance changes that make it incredibly frustrating to play certain tanks/supports. With DPS, this isn't an issue, because there are literally more DPS characters than there are healers and supports combined, so there are more to choose from.

If they made the experience of playing tank/support more consistent, or if they actually expanded the pool of tanks/supports by having more than 8 tanks and 7 supports, there would be more interest in playing those roles.

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

#367

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…

The problem is that "The Blizzard Way" is not what Activision Blizzard has actually been doing for the past many years.

Diablo 3 was a rocky launch, and the always online requirement was indicative of poor choices by management. Recall, that they wanted a healthy real money auction house (presumably to take their percentage off the top), and always online is typically utilized to block piracy. Of course, anyone with a brain and not currently trying to get a promotion knows, that piracy is a distribution problem. D3 came back into popularity with the Reaper of Souls expansion, a lot of the early problems in the game were fixed, and it still today is incredibly fun to play. In addition, the tone deafness of "do you guys not have phones?" tells you everything you need to know. Some dude at the top saw that mobile is a big trend (good job!), then drew from a hat a name of a Blizzard game, then blessed that title with his brilliance.

Heroes of the Storm, they tried to push as an esport, and invested heavily into... everything except the game itself. What happened to build it and they will come? The truth is, it is a very fun MOBA, it fixes a lot of the problems of the entire genre. In doing so, it rewards team play so much more than being a lone hero. You would think it helps the competitive scene, but in the case of the MOBA playerbase that's often the most toxic and egocentric, it doesn't mesh well. They could have easily enjoyed having the most player friendly, low toxicity MOBA experience that tons of people crave. But no, if there wasn't a world championship scene on par with League of Legends, it wasn't worth Blizzard's time.

Hearthstone had some problems catering to China but I do think with the recent battle pass system and the increased in game economy, there are some great steps in the right direction. Good turnarounds in the monetization area for sure.

Overwatch you would be surprised to know has some very impressive player numbers even now, for a game that gets no updates. Now that Jeff Kaplan is gone, I'm afraid the last of the best of original Blizzard are gone. I really, really, really hope Overwatch 2 is good. I will give it a few solid chances and I will revisit it. I fear the worst though, I don't think Jeff would leave his baby like that.

Warcraft 3 Remastered was a disgrace by management. Truly. You could have literally, and I mean literally, took Warcraft 3 source code, and dropped in touched up models, sounds, and textures. It would have sold like crazy. That's it, no excuse. Why did they have to reinvent the wheel, with a team comprised mostly of interns and fresh college graduates, rush it, with no communication with the delays, oh and did I mention that the main menu is an unoptimized web app running on chromium?

The story of Activision Blizzard is monetization for the sake of monetization alone, and management decisions formed solely on the basis that they sound good to other managers. Overwatch had the pleasure of being shielded by Jeff Kaplan, so it suffered less than it had to. The other large projects usually launch like crap, but after management has had their way with the game for the first year or two, the devs slowly but surely bring it back and make it fun at the very least. Do they have the financial resources on their side? No. But be damn sure they will improve and polish the core gameplay loops.

I have watched this slow death since around 2014 at least, but it's hard to know where along the way the roots became so badly damaged that Blizzard became destined to be EA-like.

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

#368
post #218

From my point of view, Blizzard has been slowly going downhill for ages. Some whines in chronological order: WoW died for me when they introduced the random dungeon finder in Cataclysm and cut down the player-to-player interaction outside dungeons by 99%. Starcraft 2 ... might have been polished and all, but honestly I don't see much difference from Starcraft 1. Also, I don't like memorizing openings (either chess or…

So true about WoW. Dungeon Finder and Raid Finder made it so you didn't need to find people or be in a guild to do these things. They also took the sense of enormity out of the world because you don't have to physically go places anymore. The deeprun tram, boats, zepplins were all such elegant solutions to create a breathtakingly open and connected world, and flying mounts & dungeon finder killed the feeling so quick…

> Dungeon Finder and Raid Finder made it so you didn't need to find people or be in a guild to do these things.

I used to feel this way more but in the past couple of times I picked the game up Raid Finder and Dungeon Finder were completely irrelevant to myself and every player I interacted with. I did 0 Raid Finder and like 2 queued dungeons on my raid geared characters.

Having a guild is more important than ever in my opinion as relying on getting invited to pug groups is very frustrating. Especially if trying to gear up a character later in the expansion.

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

#369
post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I find smurfing funny. I’ve never tried it in overwatch, but in other games with good match making smurfing doesn’t last very long. You rise to the level of incompetence really fast. I think the last time I smurfed in LoL I got about a dozen games before I started to hit a wall, which was like half as long as my previous attempt.

I actually wonder a little if smurfs in a game like overwatch with a steep starting cost are tracked and treated special to keep that revenue stream.

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

#370

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

This was me as well. I was actively playing Starcraft 2 up until then and logged at least 10 hours a week. I still miss the sense of purpose from trying to hit master, and following the esports side of it, listening to streams and YouTube videos, etc. I couldn’t play or watch again in good conscience.

It felt like a big personal sacrifice at the time, but I’m glad to see that it added up into a noteworthy headline here, even if there are other reasons for player decline.

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