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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

#491

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If the developers of the game ever actually played the game, and experienced /2 or /guild, what we wanted was 4chan/reddit with the pretty visuals of Dal in the background and an occasional puzzle/challenge. Instead the developers thought we wanted more to do (anyone wanna do dailies? lol), more pretty colored loot, and dungeon clears (without really "earning it"). My favorite moments (and most hours spent) in that g…

I think that’s the thing they missed - WoW in the end is a glorified IRC client and removing every excuse to actually chat beyond your normal group stagnates those groups and the community dies. A game like WoW shouldn’t be made so “everyone can do everything” either - sure it’s nice to see a raid but I never really felt the need - I had enough fun plugging along at my own pace.

Remember when they accidentally enabled a server wide chat channel and put everyone by default in it? Those were the best times of WoW if you ask me.

Of course, they removed it after a while, too much interaction between players is bad mmmkay?

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

#492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you also have a warped understanding of SR and climbing. >50% winrate doesn't guarantee climbing, because SR change is not constant and depends in your chance to win in every particular match. The better you play the lower SR reward (because your chance to win is higher). That's exactly why elo hell exists and that's exactly why purchasing a new account allows you to climb instantly. And the last fact is the reason w…

I understand the system perfectly true: SR change isn't constant, delta SR after a game is based on the difference between your MMR and SR SR is essentially irrelevant, MMR is the only number that matters your SR oscillates around your MMR, essentially at random MMR also has a confidence value, "elo hell" is where you can't win enough to unstick the confidence value if you win more than 50% consistently the confidenc…

"then your SR will follow it" is a wrong assumption. SR will only increase if you win. And while MMR increases, you receive fewer and fewer SR points per win.

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

#493

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…

God, yah, D3 really is an imbecile's game. It's _hard to fail_ at it, to the point that it's completely forgettable. I beat it once, and I tried playing it through again with a friend, and it was just so utterly dull that we shut it off out of frustration.

It's worse... because even if you up the difficulty there are only two outcomes: you either have good enough gear to survive or you don't. There's nothing you can do except grind for better gear.

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

#494

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D3 is really, really fun. It started out at launch ok at best. Pretty grindy, and slow. One or two playthroughs was enough for most people. Nowadays though the endgame is definitely on my top 10 list. Once you hit level 70 and get an armor set finished with some Kanai's Cube and start leveling up your legendary gems... Oh man

D3 is a good game marred by a sub-par launch.

Interesting, I played at launch so perhaps I ought to check it out again.

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

#495

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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…

I think you are touching on some interesting points, but don't go deep enough. (Just as a point of reference I played up until the hamster release) I would say that the core design of characters with cooldown skills and very powerful ultimates that need to be chain to team wipe opposition ARE the crux of why everything is impossible to do right in the Overwatch. I have played ladder for first few seasons and its esse…

Very similar thing plays out in MOBAs. CC is always powerful because it removes agency. Getting killed with no counter isn’t fun. Playing against a ton of healers isn’t fun. Yet for all those things in combination it’s a lot better than a counterstrike-like experience of whoever sees the pixel first wins.

Having a mechanic that forces fights during inopportune times helps, that’s why I tend to like Mobas with creeps and side objectives. That’s something that OW could add that might force a less “everyone push down mid” mentality.

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

#496
How they handled the Hong Kong issue was totally stupid [1]. But I doubt it was the main reason why many gamer stopped playing their games. To me it's either this or the Diablo mobile game fiasco.

[1] - https://slate.com/technology/2019/10/hong-kong-hearthstone-b...

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

#497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m excited to see life in the Diablo franchise after (personal opinion) the abomination that was Diablo 3. 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 imagi…

Am I the only person who really liked Diablo 3? I introduced my wife to it as her first game in the genre, and we’ve spent a lot of hours making team runs through hard dungeons. For sheer “let’s kill 300 things at once” endorphin hits, it’s great.

I thought it was fun for what it was, but that it was sold and pushed as something it wasn’t. And overall (just my opinion) lacking gravitas.

For one it felt too easy. Some of this was likely console controller vs. mouse - and so maybe not the game itself’s fault - but it felt like point-and-click turned into just click, making it more one dimensional.

And two, I felt less weight/permanence in character building decisions. One of my favorite aspects of d2 is specialized builds, that you can screw them up, and generally delaying spending skill/stat points until certain. I thought d3 character customization felt more cosmetic and like my choices ultimately didn’t matter as all builds were so strong. Like it didn’t matter how I allocated points on my tree in the same way it felt like navigation and attack, described above, had lost some nuance. And that seems off to me when every character pretty much plays as a gear-independent caster.

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

#498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's why buying low mmr accounts for a couple of bucks is a thing, you get tens if not hundred+ relaxing matches for few cents each

Maybe things have changed, but up until recently Smurf detection usually didn't work all that well

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

#499
post #468

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> 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…

>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. Flying should never have been allowed in WoW, period. Beyond the whole issue of players skipping content in zones artists spend months building, the mechanism severely distorts gameplay. A player being able to hover, des…

Hi, yeah that would be me, the guy who "skipping content in zones artists spend months building" and you know why?

I do not give a rat's ass about the "artists spend months building" anything, I just need to be there, pick something up or kill something and I am out.

With all respect for those who enjoy the "zones artists spend months building", I am here (WoW) just to beat stuff up in a repetitive & predictable way. Until today, I have NO idea in what zone what dungeon is, or what the background of the story is of that particular monster that lives there. I have never seen a cinematic in full, turn off the sounds and run graphics at to the lowest level possible so I see stuff that is relevant (fire) and am not bothered with cosmetics (grass). And I have been p[l] aying this game (on and off) since over 10 years.

It is just a nice time waster which allows for easy & cheap boosting so I can show up with the same gear as the addicts.

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

#500
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think after Mists of Pandaria I stopped playing wow as an MMO and just focused on doing single player stuff for the past many years. To me there is a significant difference in something requiring to farm an instance 50-100 over when you have time vs. doing it over 50-100 days because of daily lockouts. That is just not fun and and disrespectful to me as a player. I don't always have the same free time every day and…

I hate how many different grinds there are in this expansion for legendary weapons and such. Mythics are okay. WoW is just like my home away from home I go to explore lore and goof off for an hour or two a week. The lore and world is very rich. It’s fun to level and do stuff on occasion. It’s fun to collect specific armor and mounts at times. I just don’t enjoy all the grinds and kind of refuse to do them.

I find it equally demoralising but simply let some expert do these things for a couple of hours a week and find my characters all geared up and ready to go when I feel like playing.

May I ask why you don't just simply let these brain dead grinds be done by someone else?

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