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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

#541

Post by TMWNN »

pythonaut_16 wrote: post #536
TMWNN wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

A well balanced stamina mechanic would be a great way to implement flying. (Something along the lines of Valheim and Breath of the Wild's stamina mechanics) With some tuning not only would it prevent complete flyovers, it could actually be really fun and add another option for progression. Like a basic mechanic where climbing altitude quickly consumes stamina, while gliding consumes it slowly. Add thermal drafts to s…

>A well balanced stamina mechanic would be a great way to implement flying.

I like the suggestion. I suspect, however, that making flying harder could only have happened before flying first appeared in the game, and that Blizzard has calculated that any such move now would cost too many players to be worthwhile.

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

#542

Post by _carbyau_ »

Aerroon wrote: post #478
_carbyau_ wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"people don't want "fair" though, they want to win about 2/3rds of the time" This is why I think PvE is more sustainable for a player base and more conservatively solid as a business plan. WoW for instance. But then by definition it isn't PvP and isn't going to get the same player base.

Designing a game around PvE is hard though. It's difficult to create an AI challenge that's interesting and can simultaneously challenge extremely good and mediocre players without feeling impossible. I think the future of PvE games is going to be in AI. If game developers could put a DeepMind-playing-StarCraft level of AI into games without immense cost, then it's going to change games quite a lot. It wouldn't be pe…

Better AI is always a good thing in PvE, but as you say, hard to do.

I think the immediate future is asymmetrical roles for humans.

For example, one side is playing FPS for a Kill/death ratio basically, the other side is a single person playing RTS for a win/loss ratio.

IE Mechwarrior team deathmatch. Team of multiple human FPS players against a single human MechCommander-with-basic-AI-team.

It'd give scenarios more flexibility and allow for human intelligence to combat the meta.

And allow the FPS people to get a 2 or 3 to one kill ratio.

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

#543

Post by raydev »

Kaze404 wrote: post #433
raydev wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you expand on what about it is so interesting to you? My only experience with Fortnite is watching my 13 year old brother practice crazy fast building, and every time I can't help but wonder why they'd rather play that than Apex Legends. I sincerely don't understand.

Grinding fast builds helps you when you're fighting. :) Boxing someone and then editing a hole to shoot them is sort of "top tier" gameplay.

In general, not only do you have to shoot people as in a typical FPS, but you have additional defenses you can put up (builds), you can use those builds for mobility and gaining height quickly, Epic constantly rotates the weapon set, they add/remove mobility items all the time which forces you to change how you move across the map, and the map changes.

And then when I just want to chill there are all sorts of non-fight challenges and (relatively shallow) lore to chase down.

It's never not interesting, and if you like grinding and seeing your own skills and reaction times improve, it's all there

edit: I should link some videos.

1. One of the best players in the game right now getting 25+ kills in ranked play (ignore the rich kid chatter, he's 16 and already made nearly a million in comps which makes him insufferable sometimes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhTCEEeLvdk

2. One of the best teams placing 2nd in the last FNCS, what typical "endgames" look like in tournaments (lots of yelling): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLFCmOFAf_w

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

#544

Post by LanceH »

chimeracoder wrote: post #399
LanceH wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2/3's of the player base disagrees that healers and support are fun. Well more than the majority prefers dps. If I were going to single out one thing that I've never seen anyone mention it is that shields are 1 way only. It makes tanks too powerful and stable, thus support is needed, thus dps is third tier.

> 2/3's of the player base disagrees that healers and support are fun. [citation needed] > Well more than the majority prefers dps. Well more than the majority of characters are DPS characters. If Blizzard provided the same variety in tank and support characters that they do in DPS, there'd be more of a draw to play those roles.

The extremely lengthy queues and support and tanks playing like dps indicate i'm correct.

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

#545

Post by redisman »

donio wrote: post #540
redisman wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s at a similar patch cadence and size as Warcraft 3. The fall from the good times has been pretty severe

It is slower than we'd like it to be but the breakneck pace of the first couple of years with a new hero ever 3 weeks wouldn't have made sense in the long term either. It was necessary early on to fill out the roster but what the game needs at this stage is regular balance patches and reworks.

I didn’t expect new heroes very often but just the dev team seems to be like 2 people these days

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

#546

Post by taneq »

schlupfknoten wrote: post #475
taneq wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Trust me, you think you want it, but you don't" - Blizzard, about vanilla WoW, a year before releasing WoW Classic.

Was it really a year before? I thought it was many years earlier that he said that.

Sorry, you're right - it was announced the next year but took several more years to release. (I believe that was said at Blizzcon '16 based on eg. https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/4dqtvj/you_think_yo... and WoW Classic was announced at Blizzcon '17 https://diaryofdennis.com/2017/11/04/official-vanilla-world-...)

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

#547

Post by nottorp »

411111111111111 wrote: post #539
nottorp wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and how do you find a guild? Apply out-of-game? Play only with r/l friends?

Either through the ingame recruitment tool, whispering guilds from wowprogess that are recruiting Or even city chat. Blaming lfg/lfr for the current wow community is misguided at best. The rewards from it are just too low for it to have such a large impact. I mean the game has become pay to win at this point as you can pay real money for ingame gold... Which you can use to get carried through mythic raid/pvp/m+, givi…

Funny, back when I was playing we recruited people after meeting them in PuG instance groups. If they were fun to play with we tried.

We specifically did PuGs with 4 people from the guild and one random for recruiting ;)

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

#548

Post by skystarman »

ineedasername wrote: post #294
skystarman wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardcore gamers love to trash ATVI/Blizz but they are without a doubt dominant gaming developer/publisher in the business, and it's really not even close unless you count Tencent. Ask people on HN if they like CoD and they'd laugh at you but the games are IMMENSELY popular every release and they print cash for ATVI.

When people bash Blizzard, they aren't bashing them based on their revenue or market penetration. A bad opinion of Blizzard does not translate into also believing they are failing to generate revenue or attract players. They have plenty of other reasons to bash Blizzard.

This isn't what I was saying.

My point was that these criticisms never acknowledge that ATVI is massively successful and the critics are always in the minority.

They assume because a few hundred on a message board said something the entire company is a failure and everyone agrees.

For the record I agree with most of the criticism...I also acknowledge what I want isn't necessarily what others want.

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

#549

Post by skystarman »

krageon wrote: post #485
skystarman wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardcore gamers love to trash ATVI/Blizz but they are without a doubt dominant gaming developer/publisher in the business, and it's really not even close unless you count Tencent. Ask people on HN if they like CoD and they'd laugh at you but the games are IMMENSELY popular every release and they print cash for ATVI.

Lots of people like terrible games. Even if it makes the publishers a ton of money, I don't need to care about that and in fact I don't.

Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it's terrible.

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

#550

Post by fighterpilot »

dragontamer wrote: post #523
fighterpilot wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I agree, the balance for pro level has almost no bearing on lower leagues who suck. I think the reason people stopped playing is that it's really really hard (tiring) and it's not a team based game and can get quite lonely.

Even in Starcraft:Brood War days, it was common to learn from stronger players by playing 2v2 (where Strong+Weak player goes up against Strong+Weak player). Starcraft 2 added "Archon Mode", where you can 2vs1 (Weak+Weak player vs Strong player), controlling the same team. There were far more opportunities to play teams in Starcraft2 than Brood War. And the 2v2 was always an option in Starcraft 2 anyway.

It's still a lonely experience. Social and player discovery was badly done. 2v2 play was lonely too, it doesn't feel like a team game when you're getting rushed 2v1 at 8:00 clock time and your teammate is far away building their early econ. Compare that feeling to DoTA or counter strike which really feel like team games and not like two 1v1s that happen to be on the same map
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