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

#391

Post by mywittyname » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:42 AM UTC

freshair wrote: post #214

mywittyname wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Brands have value insofar as the consuming public recognize those brands, right? I'd wager that Diablo is most famous for the first two games which both came out 20 years ago, and that the enthusiast segment of the market recognizes this brand more than the casual segment (who, by nature of being casual, know less about historic games.) In the enthusiast/pc segment of the market, Diablo may still be a valuable brand.…

You'd be surprised at the cache that old IPs have with young people who've never played them before. Young people have still heard about the legendary games from places like YouTube but may not have the capability to play them.

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

#392

Post by dleslie » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:42 AM UTC

freshair wrote: post #214

mywittyname wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Brands have value insofar as the consuming public recognize those brands, right? I'd wager that Diablo is most famous for the first two games which both came out 20 years ago, and that the enthusiast segment of the market recognizes this brand more than the casual segment (who, by nature of being casual, know less about historic games.) In the enthusiast/pc segment of the market, Diablo may still be a valuable brand.…

Precisely; when consumers think of Diablo, what images conjure up? I expect segments:

1. What's Diablo?

2. Diablo 2 was great!

3. I played Diablo 3 but tired of it...

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

#393

Post by jszymborski » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:45 AM UTC

I doubt there are many of us, but I played a lot of Hearthstone for 3 years but ditched it after they banned a player for making a pro-democracy statement[0].

As I said, I don't think many players left hearthstone on account of this, but I do think it's one example of the many ways large publishers like Activision aren't capable to serve the communities they've acquired due to the many perverse incentives that comes with huge companies.

[0] https://www.vox.com/2019/10/8/20904433/blizzard-hong-kong-he...

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

#394

Post by kanwisher » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:47 AM UTC

bob1029 wrote: post #160

What I don't understand is the financial equation around AAA studios like Blizzard. Our software company is not even 10 people big and we are able to deliver extremely high quality software multiple times per day to many customers, while supporting a wide range of business contexts. The annual budget for our whole team is something like $750k. Our part of the AWS bill is less than $400/m, but we seem to make due and…

The art team alone for a game would be 2-3x the size of the development team. I wouldn't compare a sass team to a game team at all

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

#395

Post by dleslie » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:48 AM UTC

nottorp wrote: post #113

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.

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

#396

Post by jszymborski » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:52 AM UTC

lsiebert wrote: post #45

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

I'm one of those who left in protest (played compulsively for around 2-3 years, bought every expansion for at least 1.5), and frankly it heartens me to see so many here in the replies who left for the same reason.

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

#397

Post by LanceH » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:53 AM UTC

chimeracoder wrote: post #366

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…

> 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 comb…

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.

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

#398

Post by nickik » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:55 AM UTC

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #8

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…

> Starcraft 2 is basically dead

I just started playing. Awesome game.

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

#399

Post by chimeracoder » Thu, May 06, 2021, 3:00 AM UTC

LanceH wrote: post #397

chimeracoder wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 comb…

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.

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

#400

Post by jimbob45 » Thu, May 06, 2021, 3:02 AM UTC

kanwisher wrote: post #394

bob1029 wrote: post #160

What I don't understand is the financial equation around AAA studios like Blizzard. Our software company is not even 10 people big and we are able to deliver extremely high quality software multiple times per day to many customers, while supporting a wide range of business contexts. The annual budget for our whole team is something like $750k. Our part of the AWS bill is less than $400/m, but we seem to make due and…

The art team alone for a game would be 2-3x the size of the development team. I wouldn't compare a sass team to a game team at all

That’s hardly the limiting factor there. Just use placeholder art and save the artists for the best ideas. Or just create context-free art that the devs have to bake in.

Edit: although you are right and you make a good point.