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

#501

Post by me_me_me » Thu, May 06, 2021, 12:38 PM UTC

taurath wrote: post #495

me_me_me wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

CS as a pixel hunter is very shallow view of the game, its like saying that Starcraft is just click per minute competition or football just kicking a ball.

CS is about reading opponent, creating opportunities and reacting to what is happening.

Pixel hunting is very last step.

That said, DotA is by far the best esport to watch if and only if you played it before and can follow what's happening.

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

#502

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 06, 2021, 12:40 PM UTC

ericbarrett wrote: post #97

uyt wrote: post #17

I am pretty hyped about playing d2 again with "Diablo 2 Resurrected". But I guess it's a bad sign that the most exciting thing they have going is a remake of a 20 year old past glory.

I'm way less excited for D2R. I was a hardcore Diablo 2 player, but the D2 endgame was spamming Diablo runs over and over, Cow Level farming, and one or two other things I've forgotten; not exactly dynamic content. Path of Exile has taken D2 game design to the next level, and the level after that, and even that game is aging (PoE2 is in the works). Obviously World of Warcraft Classic is the counter-example that will…

[deleted]

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

#503

Post by koheripbal » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:08 PM UTC

jayd16 wrote: post #273

jvzr wrote: post #145

Blizzard died the day it was bought by Activision. It has been descending into mediocrity ever since. Many executives left, and many studios/teams inside Blizzard have been shuffled around and between projects, unlike Blizzard's doctrine of old (tight teams focused on a project until it's great or must be stopped -- Blizzard's infamous "Soon(tm)"). World of Warcraft is still being milked till it dries up (and I'm say…

Blaming Activision is too convenient. Activision is pretty hands off of its studios creatively. The truth is a lot of the good developers left, their new mmo Titan was a massive flop that was rolled into Overwatch, HotS wasn't very compelling, and Diablo 3 never had a compelling endgame to be a "forever game" with constant revenue, Hearthstone was a creative grass roots effort that has since been hit with heavy compe…

I don't see any new IP development at all. All I see is dev of existing IP.

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

#504

Post by ladyattis » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:27 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #149

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 think this is more of the enthusiasts vs. causal user conundrum. Gaming has made the transition to a mature industry where mass market appeal is more profitable than a great product aimed at enthusiasts. I can't really blame either side. It sucks for enthusiasts who want games that are complex, to be offered a watered down experience full of MTX. But it sucks for studios when they sink a 10xs the money into produci…

I think the problem is that big corporations always demand big returns in gaming not realizing for every smash hit there's usually many flops to middling successes. If they would stop trying to make just one product for one class of consumer and actually diversify their products then they'd have more reliable income rather than chasing fads like fools. It's been frustrating to see the likes of Activision, Ubisoft, and etc just constantly fail on something that doesn't really take much innovation nor really any 'vision' to achieve.

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

#505

Post by brianwawok » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:30 PM UTC

ronsor wrote: post #66

vntx wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Riot is developing a MMO based on Runeterra. It will be interesting to see how that pans out.

These days I'd be weary of running anything Riot puts out since they got that new kernel anti-cheat.

What's the flipside, you want to play with cheaters?

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

#506

Post by bitexploder » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:39 PM UTC

FreshFries wrote: post #500

bitexploder wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That is just a different type of game at that point. It is all relative and I don't play competitively. Virtually all of the content is accessible at some lower difficulty level, so it doesn't really matter what the stats are on my gear if I can do the content I want.

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

#507

Post by naravara » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:40 PM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #146

SiempreViernes wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose they mean in the commercial sense, new RTS games certainly don't drive industry leading sales for instance. Certainly in the context of talking about a publisher like Blizzard nothing but raw profit is of any concern. Arty ambitions is the something for the game studios that appear and die off, not for the publisher that seeks to endure.

To me it just looks like they aren't trying very hard. SC2 did something very smart with its last expansion with the coop mode, and it became very popular despite being only sort of fleshed out. I could easily see that kind of game mode making for a hit RTS if it was the central focus, and had the standard MMO-lite stuff like loot and missions and raids and story and customizable units/armies and support for other gr…

Immortal is being built with competitive 2v2 and 3v3 play specifically in mind in addition to 1v1 duels. It should be interesting to see how a pro-scene around that would play out. More combos, more team play, more personality clashes might all make for better eSports engagement. I'm sure PvE modes will be available too.

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

#508

Post by naravara » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:41 PM UTC

me_me_me wrote: post #487

confidantlake wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing wrong with being a solid niche imo. Classical music will never sell as big as pop, but there will always be musicians and concerts keeping it alive on a smaller scale. No reason the same can't happen with RTS.

But the industry wants all the money, and right now. They are focusing on games that can monetize user-base actively via micro-transactions and subscriptions RTS games are not really capable of this. Last example i can think of is CoH 2, which was disappointing and the 'pay to win' commanders drove me away from it quickly. Plus i think original CoH is much superior game in terms of balance and fun.

Fighting Games have a smaller, but devoted niche that does well enough. The games are more expensive and they do seasonal or annual content pack releases that are also quite expensive, but the player base is devoted enough that they will pay. They make up for lack of volume with higher margins that their fans will support. I see no reason RTS can't go the same way.

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

#509

Post by naravara » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:46 PM UTC

joycian wrote: post #477

dragontamer wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like, how incredibly tightly units clumped together should've been picked out as an obvious flaw immediately Pretty much everyone who used air-units in SC1 abused the "tight" formations of Muta-stacks (or other SC:BW air units). In most fights: tight formations are incredibly superior to loose formations. (Obviously Corsairs / Valkyries changed that, but typical hit-and-run tactics are better when stacked) Automati…

Are there no widely used flak/AoE weapons that heavily punish tight formations?

There are plenty. The problem is that it's created a game dynamic where battles turn in an instant. You either dodge the splash and your army melts theirs or you eat the splash and your army evaporates in a flash. The game feels really swingy and punishing when whoever gets the right angle auto-wins.

In contrast to Brood War, where battles tend to unfold as an aggregate of smaller engagements happening simultaneously all around the map, Starcraft 2 hinges a lot on positional play with two giant armies dancing around and probing each other trying to engage at an advantageous position. And then once they get drawn into an engagement it's just BOOM! ZAP! POW! and it's over. If you blink you could miss it.

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

#510

Post by joppy » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:48 PM UTC

me_me_me wrote: post #484

tokipin wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

On the other hand, one of the things I like so much about Overwatch and TF2 is the importance of mobility and crazy movement patterns - with some characters you can be flying around the map, ending up in odd places, and characters usually have enough HP to be in a good fight with someone when they land.

By contrast CS offers nothing like this - movement is always strictly along the ground/ladders/stairs etc, and gunfights are more like who saw who first. It just feels boring to play in comparison - sure the tactics are interesting, but there’s nothing like the feeling of freedom you get from some other games.

I’d like there to be more of a focus on games that are fun to play, in terms of movement and combat mechanics just feeling awesome. Horizon Zero Dawn is another great example of making combat awesome.