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Khanstant posted:this seems backwards and people who suck at shooters are a bigger market to aim for than the niche of aggressive trigger pullers who value being really good at playing gun violence simulators a really specific way. Yeah, making a competitive fps for people who hate the concept of competitive fps went real well
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 10:06 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 02:39 |
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Arzachel posted:Yeah, making a competitive fps for people who hate the concept of competitive fps went real well Yes, it did extremely well. The fact that they squandered it all later doesn't change it's initial success from before they tried to go full esports on it.
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 10:41 |
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Khanstant posted:this seems backwards and people who suck at shooters are a bigger market to aim for . not really? call of duty, battlefield, counterstrike, etc are all way bigger than any product blizzard has put out. call of duty has drummed up something like 30 billion dollars for activision. there's a reason it's not called blizzard-activision.
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 10:49 |
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Corbeau posted:Yes, it did extremely well. The fact that they squandered it all later doesn't change it's initial success from before they tried to go full esports on it. You can tell yourself it was the ~evil esports~ and not people brought in by the art and character design deciding that they don't actually want to play a pvp game lmao
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 10:51 |
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Theoretically at least that's why they wanted to make a PvE mode for the sequel. They probably should've detached it from the PvP though.
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 11:18 |
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overwatch's decline was nothing to do with 'focusing on esports', it was just a lack of new content compared to its competitors that eventually turned into a complete content drought once they announced ow2, & a total failure to meaningfully balance the game until rather recently, which alienated people as the meta just repeatedy shifted from one over-centralising & not particularly fun optimal strategy to another over and over very slowly. just stagnation all around
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 11:33 |
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Khanstant posted:this seems backwards and people who suck at shooters are a bigger market to aim for than the niche of aggressive trigger pullers who value being really good at playing gun violence simulators a really specific way. blizzard spent all the post-launch patches nerfing and changing things to appease the esports competitive super gold rank whatever players. they got rid of hero dupes and nerfing the hell out of the fun classes that let bad players have fun and hang around average players and esports ragers. Sometimes deleting characters by just wiping skills or rewriting the character. I think the last time I played Mercy couldn't even resurrect anymore or some poo poo lol Except, the first decline in player base was when they introduced Brigitte. A low-skill-ceiling hero that blew up the existing e-sport meta completely. It went from a twitch shooter with a heavy emphasis on dive to…the glorious triple-tank meta that everyone hated, pro and average player alike. They definitely did not create Brigitte to make Overwatch League more exciting. You couldn’t tell what they were going for really. And that ties back into the actual thread topic: the dysfunction that seems to have been at the heart of Blizzard all along. They didn’t seem to know or care what they were doing because they were too busy getting smashed and going on cubicle crawls.
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 11:40 |
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Minrad posted:not really? call of duty, battlefield, counterstrike, etc are all way bigger than any product blizzard has put out. call of duty has drummed up something like 30 billion dollars for activision. there's a reason it's not called blizzard-activision. isn't the point of cod that you can basically be piss-drunk and still play? it and battlefield can be hardcore but I don't think that's what most of their audience is there for, otherwise shooters would be evolutions of quake and ut right now
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 12:42 |
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Good Dumplings posted:isn't the point of cod that you can basically be piss-drunk and still play? This applies to all games that I play.
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 12:59 |
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stev posted:This applies to all games that I play.
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 13:01 |
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Good Dumplings posted:isn't the point of cod that you can basically be piss-drunk and still play? it and battlefield can be hardcore but I don't think that's what most of their audience is there for, otherwise shooters would be evolutions of quake and ut right now The general populace really likes the pseudo-realistic oorah military fps. The times that even CoD and BF have dipped into scifi stuff haven't been remotely as popular as guys in camo in a desert or a favela with m16s and ak-47s. I don't think it's really a matter of being a serious or hardcore game, since counterstrike can be an enormously tryhard game to play and that's still ridiculously popular.
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 13:05 |
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This is like reading people arguing whether Mario Kart 8 or Gran Turismo Sport is better and trying to illustrate the faults of one by pointing out the successes of the other. Overwatch was fine at launch for the audience it was targeting (casual FPS players of various skill levels who appreciate a variety of play styles and like the ability to be Credit To Team even if their ability doesn't match their enthusiasm), and that turned out to be a pretty big audience. Not CoD big, but that's an absurd target to set as a standard. It eventually sucked for the same reasons every Blizzard property started to suck: a total lack of focus meant the initially-promising design got pulled in a bunch of different directions in ways that ultimately didn't please the existing fanbase and failed to draw in anyone else. Blizzard loses confidence in their product and aimlessly tweaks it into the grave; sunrise, sunset.
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 13:32 |
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HopperUK posted:I mean a lot of people do play healers and support classes though. I would pay premium comic money to see the tf2 comics get a proper ending
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 13:38 |
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Is there a chance all this lawsuit stuff will affect the release schedule of Diablo 4? I wouldn't think so, but if I knew for sure, I wouldn't be asking.
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 14:01 |
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Bioshuffle posted:Is there a chance all this lawsuit stuff will affect the release schedule of Diablo 4? I wouldn't think so, but if I knew for sure, I wouldn't be asking. Didn't the lead producer get shitcanned? I reckon it's an extremely weird project to be working on right now.
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 14:07 |
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Regalingualius posted:Looks like he also wrote the most METAL of the Lords of War cinematics for WoD Ah yes, the halcyon days of "the brief hype period before Blizzard utterly gave up on developing WoD shortly before it even released." I don't remember, was Kargath surviving the initial encounter ever actually implemented during development, or was it just sound/dialogue files that never got used?
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 14:12 |
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Deki posted:I would pay premium comic money to see the tf2 comics get a proper ending I think about "I know, ja? Why does anyone go to medical school?" every time I deal with a useless doctor.
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 14:18 |
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Dick Burglar posted:Ah yes, the halcyon days of "the brief hype period before Blizzard utterly gave up on developing WoD shortly before it even released." I don't remember, was Kargath surviving the initial encounter ever actually implemented during development, or was it just sound/dialogue files that never got used? Kargath meets you in the (actually pretty good) intro questline of WoD, which introduces the various Warlords and sets them up. You fight an arena encounter with him involved, escape, and then he gets pissed about you running away; it's actually a decent attempt at setting up an antagonist that the player has a personal history instead of the usual parade of boss candidates such as Lord Vaxulon The Corrupted, Random Guy You've Never Seen Before This Raid Opened. Then you go to Highmaul and Kargath is there as the first boss of a raid he has almost nothing to do with beyond "there is an arena and Kargath was an arena fighter", you fight him there and kill him permanently, the end.
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 14:21 |
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How WoD started: Kargath: Kill your 100 as I trap you in this arena! You: *kills a lot* Kargath: I only counted 99! Khadgar: Then I guess we still owe you one! How WoD ended: Grom: thank goodness draenor is free from demonic oppression so I can continue the regular genociding and conquering Bonus BfA: Grom: oh no I'm being genocided by the people I used to genocide
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 14:29 |
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Vengarr posted:Except, the first decline in player base was when they introduced Brigitte. A low-skill-ceiling hero that blew up the existing e-sport meta completely. It went from a twitch shooter with a heavy emphasis on dive to…the glorious triple-tank meta that everyone hated, pro and average player alike. It was so bizarre. They built a hero that basically just deleted Tracer from the game when at the time I believe she was wildly popular at all levels of play.
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 15:20 |
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Bioshuffle posted:Is there a chance all this lawsuit stuff will affect the release schedule of Diablo 4? I wouldn't think so, but if I knew for sure, I wouldn't be asking.
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 16:30 |
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Always a delight to see discussion of a dead(-ish) game get immediately piledrived by like four or five people who always, always blame it on the kids and their esports.
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 16:43 |
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yeah its not like blizzard has a habit of mishandling esports so badly that it straight-up inspired legislation
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 16:50 |
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As with most things, the realities are multi-tiered and complex. Were some people turned off by a perceived or actual e-sports focus? Yep. Were some people turned off by the seeming "dumbing down" of mechanics in favor of casual players? Sure. I honestly think that most people, myself included, just... moved on. In that aspect in particular I agree with Blizzard's decision to start work on a sequel or at least a substantial update. Lots of players really like the PvE elements and a campaign is a great way to start to flesh out the characters and extend that aspect of the game, which is obviously a large part of OW's broad appeal. You can argue about timing, sure, and they seem to have decided to smother the remaining enthusiasm for OW1 which is probably an eyebrow-raising decision as you start trying to spin up hype for a sequel, but they've also had a TON of talent drain over the past few years, including leadership roles on the project.
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 16:50 |
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Pirate Jet posted:Always a delight to see discussion of a dead(-ish) game get immediately piledrived by like four or five people who always, always blame it on the kids and their esports. Probably not the kids and their esports, bur rather a company desperately trying to get in on that ad money and competitive circuit dollerydoos by pushing the esport angle more than the "people like this game" angle. I don't think anyone actually minds the idea of competitive leagues and tournaments, but it's best if they arrive organically via the game just being something people enjoy rather than a company trying to cultivate it. Also: Kith posted:yeah its not like blizzard has a habit of mishandling esports so badly that it straight-up inspired legislation
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 16:57 |
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Kith posted:yeah its not like blizzard has a habit of mishandling esports so badly that it straight-up inspired legislation Not what I was saying, which was mocking people who think the very concept of esports is bad. Obviously Blizzard did mishandle the esports angle of Overwatch, as evidenced by the fact that it‘s dying.
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 16:59 |
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sethsez posted:Blizzard loses confidence in their product and aimlessly tweaks it into the grave; sunrise, sunset.
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 17:03 |
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Good Dumplings posted:isn't the point of cod that you can basically be piss-drunk and still play? it and battlefield can be hardcore but I don't think that's what most of their audience is there for, otherwise shooters would be evolutions of quake and ut right now CoD is incredibly accessible. But it still has a bunch of people who whine that they don't like it because they actually have to aim and shoot. Overwatch introduces healers and tanks for these people. Here's what I mean, millions of people who suck at shooter games play CoD and they loving love it. Hell casual players love counter strike and valorant and those games are more hardcore than Overwatch too. Overwatch is just boring and they kept making it worse by making everything either a bullet sponge or have a million shields (goats). But to actually answer your question, no the point of of cod isnt that you can be piss drunk and still play. The point of CoD is to rack up sick nasty kills and trickshots. Pirate Jet posted:Always a delight to see discussion of a dead(-ish) game get immediately piledrived by like four or five people who always, always blame it on the kids and their esports. lmao for real
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 17:18 |
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A Warframe/Destiny style Overwatch with a heavy solo/co-op focus and PvP as a forgettable afterthought would be interesting.
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 17:23 |
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Rogue AI Goddess posted:A Warframe/Destiny style Overwatch with a heavy solo/co-op focus and PvP as a forgettable afterthought would be interesting. That was probably Titan.
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 17:58 |
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I really liked the sound of what Titan almost was before it was poo poo canned half a job simulator / clark kent sim and half a super hero shooter
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 18:12 |
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honestly the idea of being a civilian in like, social zones and non-combat situations sounds strangely compelling. it actually gives a reason why everyone is being civil instead of whipping out their Super Powers all the time though on the other hand it raises the Powerpuff Girls issue of "superpowers are fun to use and if you can fly/levitate why not just do that instead of walking like a pleb"
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 18:54 |
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Yeah, the fact that they weren't able to make a compelling game out of that concept feels like more a condemnation of the team than the concept being bad. Back when Titan was canceled and Overwatch was fresh, we gave Blizzard the benefit of the doubt--how could ~*~Blizzard~*~ not know how to make a fun game? But maybe we shouldn't have. Especially since IIRC the Titan team was largely moved over to World of Warcraft and, well, you all know how that went. Dick Burglar fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Sep 29, 2021 |
# ? Sep 29, 2021 19:18 |
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Dick Burglar posted:Yeah, the fact that they weren't able to make a compelling game out of that concept feels like more a condemnation of the team than the concept being bad. it may have been they could have made something compelling, just they had no idea how to monetize it to the standards upper management wanted vs the cost to develop
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 19:38 |
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Titan wasn't fun to play, according to Morhaime. Who knows if the team felt differently - in the end the game wasn't allowed to proceed because executives pulled the plug on it after years of being stuck. The year before it was cancelled the project got rebooted with the reason being that they were "making large design and technology changes to the game". So maybe it was also not performing well and the development tools were causing problems, which is why they downsized the game from 100+ people when it was in full production.
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# ? Sep 29, 2021 23:18 |
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ErrEff posted:Titan wasn't fun to play, according to Morhaime. Who knows if the team felt differently - in the end the game wasn't allowed to proceed because executives pulled the plug on it after years of being stuck. One of the last builds before the project was cancelled still involved a purely client-authoritative network model. The game was hosed for a lot of reasons and most of that seemed to stem back to someone defining the term "idea incubator" as "throw a bunch of poo poo into a dark room for 6 months and check back to see if any tasty mushrooms had miraculously appeared". It's one of those hearsay stories that sounds too dumb to be true until you line it up with the number of already-documented restarts and do overs nearly every other blizzard title's run into over the years, turns out cube-crawling harassers don't necessarily make for the best managers, people or product, just because they're your drinking buddies
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# ? Sep 30, 2021 00:07 |
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To clarify, I probably should have said a "perceived focus on eSports." I don't mean to say that eSports are bad, seeing OW playing on TV in a bar was cool, actually, and I am not going to delve into any balance concerns, but it feels like there was a limited amount of content for casual players to consume, players like me who would have been happy with a little story content outside of the "once every April" lore drop. Doing things like... advancing the plot, or having a plot, or just showing the characters interacting in new ways, would be nice. Instead there were OWL updates, OWL skins, etc etc. It FELT like Blizz just cared about OWL. I was excited for the promise of a whole rear end PvE mode with story content, and if OW2 came out in 2020, or even early 2021, I would have eaten that poo poo up. But now the ship has sailed for ABK, at least for me.
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# ? Sep 30, 2021 00:12 |
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mutata posted:As with most things, the realities are multi-tiered and complex. Were some people turned off by a perceived or actual e-sports focus? Yep. Were some people turned off by the seeming "dumbing down" of mechanics in favor of casual players? Sure. I honestly think that most people, myself included, just... moved on. In that aspect in particular I agree with Blizzard's decision to start work on a sequel or at least a substantial update. Lots of players really like the PvE elements and a campaign is a great way to start to flesh out the characters and extend that aspect of the game, which is obviously a large part of OW's broad appeal. You can argue about timing, sure, and they seem to have decided to smother the remaining enthusiasm for OW1 which is probably an eyebrow-raising decision as you start trying to spin up hype for a sequel, but they've also had a TON of talent drain over the past few years, including leadership roles on the project. A large part of people "moving on" is because of Blizzard's bungling of their support of the existing product, though. Multiplayer games in the present day live or die in large part based on a perception if the game is being supported and updated or not. HotS is a really good example here - the game is still up and you can play it right now, but as far as the vast majority of players were concerned, it died when they put it on maintenance mode. You really can't expect a multiplayer game to remain broadly popular nowadays unless you're either releasing a new version constantly(the CoD model) or you're continually pushing updates and new content for the playerbase to consume(the Fortnite model). Blizzard tried to abandon the latter in favor of the former but they are absolutely terrible at actually releasing new products on a timely basis.
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# ? Sep 30, 2021 02:53 |
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I don't completely agree generally, but I do agree you can extend the lifespan of a game by supporting it well (obviously). Even Counter-Strike has moved on to a few sequels though. Games with huge, years long tails are the exception.
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# ? Sep 30, 2021 02:58 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 02:39 |
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mutata posted:I don't completely agree generally, but I do agree you can extend the lifespan of a game by supporting it well (obviously). Even Counter-Strike has moved on to a few sequels though. I'm not sure I can think of a hugely successful multiplayer game that doesn't get new content/balancing on the regular these days. Even older games like CSGO still get new cosmetics and patches periodically. It's only going to become more common to expect games to constantly have new content being pumped into the players' retinas in the era of Fortnite.
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# ? Sep 30, 2021 06:36 |