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Czech Republic12129 Posts
On March 05 2021 11:06 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On March 05 2021 10:29 Archeon wrote:
The fact that I both enjoyed UT to play and the unreal engine during college to build is the only thing keeping me from constantly shitting on epic. Exclusivity is a bane for consumers and their launcher is significantly lacking in comparison to steam. They could easily put the money they pay publishers to release only on their platform to more quickly develop mod support and reviews.
Steam is by no means perfect, but it's easy to use, gives me a powerful user-based review system to check for game qualities beyond a pretty trailer and has a good user system and guides. Epic in the meantime uses spyware and delays titles on other shops. It's easy to see why I mostly stay away.
And I really don't mind competition and if we can get higher payments to studios and devs great, but the exclusive deals are a thing that always pissed me off back when I had a console and really don't want to see now too on the PC market.
In my ideal world I'd get GoG's download service with steam's mod support and review system and Epic's price share. But Epic and GoG are years behind steam's platform in terms of ease of use and feature list. Yeah I mean fuck that and I’m unsure what Epic are doing there, but Jesus the amount of hate they get for the act of trying rather than the act of failing is what’s mental to me. I think the success of Fortnite (which in fairness gets undue hate for no good reason, me and kiddo played our first online games together there and had a great time) has melted Epic’s brains in terms of, well anything structurally cohesive. + Show Spoiler +I don’t know if you played the aborted UT game, but I think it had a ton of potential and its model was pretty creative. I was super excited because I do like mods, but I like playing the stock game too. At least based on the pitch and the pre Alpha they were going to provide a base game to work around, mod support and paid and unpaid assets like cool models so the community could add to the pile either for free or it’d be charged and they and Epic would take a slice.
I’m guessing honestly looking at Quake Champions and how it did the numbers weren’t there and it was canned, but the proposed model was great (indeed Starcraft could benefit from adopting it now).
But it was at least a good idea, IMO anyway, I’m not sure where Epic’s good ideas have been recently.
It seems patently obvious to me that, with the bigger cut for devs already pushing that direction and the fact you own a widely used game engine that you make the Epic store a combination of a curated indie/mid-range dev heaven and a modders paradise. Hell maybe even throw some Unreal Engine tutorials and learning materials up there.
You fucking OWN A GAME ENGINE and you don’t have mod support? It’s not so much not making the most of your biggest actual USP as forgetting it exists at all. It’s baffling
I’m not expert, tell me if that makes less sense than what they’re doing now. Methinks if they hadn’t got the fuck you money from Fortnite they’d by necessity be being way smarter in this domain.
I think multiple store fronts/launcher makes sense, just not too many. I fucking despise most publisher-specific launchers because they’re utterly pointless bloatware with fuck all purpose.
You can’t be all things to everyone though, hence the need for at least a few. If your store is easy to upload anything to, a place for anyone of any means to try get their game traction, then eventually you’ll end up with so much trash that it becomes difficult for the good stuff to punch through. If you gate and quality control every potential item for sale then eventually that process becomes too slow to process plenty of things meritorious of a place in your store.
Anyway yeah, rambly. Unlike me.
I think if you have Steam as the general purpose launcher for most of PC gaming, Epic doing what I vaguely outlined it should do, and GOG being a haven for well-restored retro games and its other qualities and niches then that’s a pretty good PC gaming ecosystem.
You really don’t need more, or less indeed.
Their trying is the fact they go on the bad boy of the business path.
They tried to fuck up crowdfunding when backers were told to suck it, we just used you as a no interest loan, screw you(Phoenix Point).
PC players are not exactly great when it comes to somewhat reasonable exclusivity(e.g. EA & Origin some time ago). Epic bought their exclusivities, didn't develop/publish them.
Then they put games on a sale without approval of the owners.
Like I'm no expert but to me it seems Epic doesn't care
The irony is that when Epic announced their client everybody was hyping it and expected that big changes are coming. And it's what, 2 years later? And what exactly changed? We get some free games on Epic? Great! Anything else? I didn't notice. Oh, wait, yeah, now there are lewd games on Steam. Not sure if we can link this to the Valve v Epic fight, but I approve 
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On March 05 2021 08:01 WombaT wrote:
What’s GoG doing better? I had it fucking forever ago and still buy the odd retro game (usually old point and clicks). Be tempted to reinstall when I get gaming regularly again! plus I heard some of their older games tended to be better in compatibility and features with modern PCs
You can link all your launchers (steam, epic, ubisoft, EA, whatever) to GoG and then GoG shows all your games and all your friends across all launchers. When you then start a game from GoG it just prompts the adequate launcher and starts the game. That's why GoG is said to be the launcher of launchers.
Another thing I used for Cyberpunk for example is that GoG doesn't differentiate between game versions. I bought a malaysian version for Cyberpunk, paying 40 € instead of 60 € (because prices in Europe, especially Germany are hugely inflated) and then you can just switch to your local language or play in English
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Also, GoG is (mostly) DRM-free.
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On March 05 2021 18:29 Simberto wrote:
Also, GoG is (mostly) DRM-free.
I think that's a nice feature. You can basically download all the installers and keep them on a separate drive or something. Then even if GoG goes out of service you will still have access to your stuff.
You can also share it with friends no problem.
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ATVI pulled in $6.5B in 2019 and $8.07B in 2020. Operating margins are way way up. They are rolling.
On February 20 2021 05:21 Archeon wrote:
But Blizz is also a slowly sinking ship that lost most of it's valuable human resources, so I really don't mind if the Saudi crown throws their money away.
Kotick doesn't need humans ... he just needs IP. He can get humans any where. 
On February 05 2021 16:31 [X]Ken_D wrote:
Blizzard is a shell of their former selves.
A company that has no employees and nothing but IP is familiar territory for Robert Kotick. I am confident Kotick and his team will leverage Blizzard's IP very well. They might not be games I personally enjoy, however, I can't think of anyone else who could leverage the Starcraft IP for more cash than a Kotick led team.
On February 05 2021 16:31 [X]Ken_D wrote:
For me the decline of Blizzard began with Starcraft 2.
approximately speaking, i concur with your timeline.
i suspect ATVI was dissatisfied with the ROI from SC2 in July 2010 and started calling more shots. This became noticeable with the release of Diablo 3 in May 2012.
I'm really happy with SC2, however, it appears ATVI's involvement began to increase right around SC2's July 2010 release.
ATVI involvement isn't all bad. ATVI and Bungie split up. Its not like Destiny2 became 1000X better after the break up. I'd say Destiny2 is somewhat better.. However, it is also about 20% more expensive with lots of invasive microtransactions. You can "buy" a season level for 100 Silver, basically $0.75 USD. LOL
I think ATVI's promotional build up for the Destiny franchise is one of the best marketing campaigns in the history of the video game industry. That level of promotion and marketing is valuable.
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Canada11350 Posts
"They might not be games I personally enjoy, however, I can't think of anyone else who could leverage the Starcraft IP for more cash than a Kotick led team."
Well, that's not exactly exciting. I looked through what Activision makes- there's nothing there for me. Sitting on IP made by someone else and lacking a vision for what it could be might net you some money, but long term you end up with considerably less money and a burned up IP (See EA and the Command & Conquer series). GG Westwood and GG Blizzard- best of the 90's developers, in my opinion.
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Yeah imo there's quite a large disconnect between what at least old time blizzard fans want and what atvi produces. I honestly can't think of a company that'd be worse for the sc IP, because sc is precisely the kind of lovechild that received a lot of attention and didn't generate off the charts revenue.
After sc2 everyone also would expect sc3 to be a hd triple A title with a ton of budget and I can't really see that being a worthy investment for Atvi with the RTS market being as dead as it currently is, especially since RTS players aren't overly fond of lootboxes, level-ups and console play on average.
Like blizz got a ton of flag just for trying to release one of their IPs on the smartphone, imagine they'd put lootboxes that affect gameplay into sc3 or would release map packs. Atvi's typical monetization models don't work at all with the way long term blizz fans want their games to be.
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Czech Republic12129 Posts
The irony is, that while EA gets a lot of hate(and rightfully so), they realized they need to split their games between (let's say) hardcore gamers and casual gamers. They realized, that hardcore gamers hate to see microtransactions, don't like "games as a service"(read in Jim Sterling voice) and prefer good single player while causals don't care. That's why Jedi Fallen Order exists. And that's why it doesn't have any monetization. At the same time EA isn't ashamed to pull some bad moves for their more casual gamers - Madden, FIFA etc. because they know these players will buy it anyway, pay the microtransactions anyway. Basically the difference between a Starcraft and a Call of Duty fan.
ATVI needs to realize this before it's too late. Blizz games generated shitton of money. While the modern "monetization" won't work, it's not a loss and if it is then there's something seriously wrong considering the sales numbers.
Also Blizzard got hate for mobile Diablo because they teased the Diablo fans for Blizzcon and didn't realize(WTF?) that their most hardcore fans are PC gamers. So yeah, you get hate when you ask for it Nobody would care about mobile Blizzard games had they done it in more sensible way and not - come to Anaheim if you're a Diablo fan. Lulz, you thought we would give you Diablo 4? Trolling is a art, guys!
They can please both groups if they respect the hardcore group. You can release mobile games if you don't give the hardcore base finger. You can release heavily monetized games if you give your hardcore gamers something to play with. But if you select to ignore the hardcore fans - yeah, you will receive a plenty of hate, who would have known! It's like that for decades! Sorry, we're new to the internets :D
Edit> the naming of the groups isn't ideal, but I couldn't get any better.
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On March 08 2021 17:51 Archeon wrote:
Yeah imo there's quite a large disconnect between what at least old time blizzard fans want and what atvi produces. I honestly can't think of a company that'd be worse for the sc IP, because sc is precisely the kind of lovechild that received a lot of attention and didn't generate off the charts revenue.
After sc2 everyone also would expect sc3 to be a hd triple A title with a ton of budget and I can't really see that being a worthy investment for Atvi with the RTS market being as dead as it currently is, especially since RTS players aren't overly fond of lootboxes, level-ups and console play on average.
Like blizz got a ton of flag just for trying to release one of their IPs on the smartphone, imagine they'd put lootboxes that affect gameplay into sc3 or would release map packs. Atvi's typical monetization models don't work at all with the way long term blizz fans want their games to be.
Well, a SC3 or WC4 can not be just more of the same. It would need
- Singleplayer campaign, cinematics and stuff
-> Get players in
- Singleplayer/ Coop GAAS type of deal which could also be used for some sort of ladder/ PvP
-> Keep players payin up the moneys
- Normal ladder 1v1, 2v2 ,...
-> "Hardcore" players
In this second part they need new ideas. They could go into a bit of a Moba thing. I'm thinking like Warcraft 3 kinda heroes in lootboxes or sth. Or completely new idea that nobody wanted and is now in high demand like Dota Underground and whatnot
Edit: The Coop and play with/against friends is kind of a must these days. And it needs to be "easy" to understand so it can generate twitch views and stuff
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Sure, before Atvi bought them: Old Blizzard. After Atvi bought them: New Blizzard.
Tongue in cheek aside I think it was gradual and related to the normal "we made a ton of money, let's try to appeal more strongly to a larger audience." That isn't the only factor, but it is one of the likely factors why f.e. Sc2's writing is so corny and doesn't make much sense on a closer look. There's a barrier when projects stop being the lovechild of a small tight-knitted crew and need more professional management, with all the hooks attached to that like stricter time tables, less influence of singular people and more mainstream influences.
And I'm sorry, Sc:Remastered was a quick cashgrab, like almost every remastered game. They saw that AoE2 HD sold, checked their Sc player numbers in SK and decided that they can cheaply throw a graphics update on the market and get some money out of it. Same reason EA suddenly decided to remaster CnC after the IP was dead for multiple years.
I don't mind experiments tbh, I played and mostly liked DoW3 and keep an eye on Immortal and on d4 although I still doubt that the more MMO-esque model suits diablo, but we'll see. But I prefer serious world building and decent writing over the greatest strategist of hell spamming my fantasy transmitter with his plans so I can ruin them before they can do serious damage and Raynor being imprisoned with his loaded gun. And I want a finished fully playable game on PC where I pay only once, ideally with a decent campaign.
And maybe if your IP's world is grimdark keep it grimdark. Imagine Games Workshop decided that their 40k endgame plot was that Alpharius becomes a living god of good in the form of a giant glowing naked winged human that fights the chaos gods with Kame-Ha. Like GW is already immensely corny, don't one up them on stuff like endtimes.
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Northern Ireland25270 Posts
On March 09 2021 03:59 Archeon wrote:
Sure, before Atvi bought them: Old Blizzard. After Atvi bought them: New Blizzard.
Tongue in cheek aside I think it was gradual and related to the normal "we made a ton of money, let's try to appeal more strongly to a larger audience." That isn't the only factor, but it is one of the likely factors why f.e. Sc2's writing is so corny and doesn't make much sense on a closer look. There's a barrier when projects stop being the lovechild of a small tight-knitted crew and need more professional management, with all the hooks attached to that like stricter time tables, less influence of singular people and more mainstream influences.
And I'm sorry, Sc:Remastered was a quick cashgrab, like almost every remastered game. They saw that AoE2 HD sold, checked their Sc player numbers in SK and decided that they can cheaply throw a graphics update on the market and get some money out of it. Same reason EA suddenly decided to remaster CnC after the IP was dead for multiple years.
I don't mind experiments tbh, I played and mostly liked DoW3 and keep an eye on Immortal and on d4 although I still doubt that the more MMO-esque model suits diablo, but we'll see. But I prefer serious world building and decent writing over the greatest strategist of hell spamming my fantasy transmitter with his plans so I can ruin them before they can do serious damage and Raynor being imprisoned with his loaded gun. And I want a finished fully playable game on PC where I pay only once, ideally with a decent campaign.
And maybe if your IP's world is grimdark keep it grimdark. Imagine Games Workshop decided that their 40k endgame plot was that Alpharius becomes a living god of good in the form of a giant glowing naked winged human that fights the chaos gods with Kame-Ha. Like GW is already immensely corny, don't one up them on stuff like endtimes.
I don’t think anyone is under many illusions about remasters, I don’t begrudge the devs maybe getting to get a light shone on their baby. Publishers get some money, and it can help with momentum and keeping communities revitalised.
Relatively cheap, basically everyone benefits if they are done well.
That’s really my specific issue, when your relatively simple remasters aren’t as good as they should be (SC:R) or a complete fucking disaster what are you doing?
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On March 09 2021 06:03 barcodos wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2021 03:59 Archeon wrote:
Sure, before Atvi bought them: Old Blizzard. After Atvi bought them: New Blizzard.
Tongue in cheek aside I think it was gradual and related to the normal "we made a ton of money, let's try to appeal more strongly to a larger audience." That isn't the only factor, but it is one of the likely factors why f.e. Sc2's writing is so corny and doesn't make much sense on a closer look. There's a barrier when projects stop being the lovechild of a small tight-knitted crew and need more professional management, with all the hooks attached to that like stricter time tables, less influence of singular people and more mainstream influences.
And I'm sorry, Sc:Remastered was a quick cashgrab, like almost every remastered game. They saw that AoE2 HD sold, checked their Sc player numbers in SK and decided that they can cheaply throw a graphics update on the market and get some money out of it. Same reason EA suddenly decided to remaster CnC after the IP was dead for multiple years.
I don't mind experiments tbh, I played and mostly liked DoW3 and keep an eye on Immortal and on d4 although I still doubt that the more MMO-esque model suits diablo, but we'll see. But I prefer serious world building and decent writing over the greatest strategist of hell spamming my fantasy transmitter with his plans so I can ruin them before they can do serious damage and Raynor being imprisoned with his loaded gun. And I want a finished fully playable game on PC where I pay only once, ideally with a decent campaign.
And maybe if your IP's world is grimdark keep it grimdark. Imagine Games Workshop decided that their 40k endgame plot was that Alpharius becomes a living god of good in the form of a giant glowing naked winged human that fights the chaos gods with Kame-Ha. Like GW is already immensely corny, don't one up them on stuff like endtimes. Its truely scary how you list those assumptions as facts
Sure, totally different to how everyone else argues in the internet. I'm sure you've never seen nor done that.
On March 09 2021 06:37 barcodos wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2021 06:17 WombaT wrote:On March 09 2021 03:59 Archeon wrote:
Sure, before Atvi bought them: Old Blizzard. After Atvi bought them: New Blizzard.
Tongue in cheek aside I think it was gradual and related to the normal "we made a ton of money, let's try to appeal more strongly to a larger audience." That isn't the only factor, but it is one of the likely factors why f.e. Sc2's writing is so corny and doesn't make much sense on a closer look. There's a barrier when projects stop being the lovechild of a small tight-knitted crew and need more professional management, with all the hooks attached to that like stricter time tables, less influence of singular people and more mainstream influences.
And I'm sorry, Sc:Remastered was a quick cashgrab, like almost every remastered game. They saw that AoE2 HD sold, checked their Sc player numbers in SK and decided that they can cheaply throw a graphics update on the market and get some money out of it. Same reason EA suddenly decided to remaster CnC after the IP was dead for multiple years.
I don't mind experiments tbh, I played and mostly liked DoW3 and keep an eye on Immortal and on d4 although I still doubt that the more MMO-esque model suits diablo, but we'll see. But I prefer serious world building and decent writing over the greatest strategist of hell spamming my fantasy transmitter with his plans so I can ruin them before they can do serious damage and Raynor being imprisoned with his loaded gun. And I want a finished fully playable game on PC where I pay only once, ideally with a decent campaign.
And maybe if your IP's world is grimdark keep it grimdark. Imagine Games Workshop decided that their 40k endgame plot was that Alpharius becomes a living god of good in the form of a giant glowing naked winged human that fights the chaos gods with Kame-Ha. Like GW is already immensely corny, don't one up them on stuff like endtimes. I don’t think anyone is under many illusions about remasters, I don’t begrudge the devs maybe getting to get a light shone on their baby. Publishers get some money, and it can help with momentum and keeping communities revitalised. Relatively cheap, basically everyone benefits if they are done well. That’s really my specific issue, when your relatively simple remasters aren’t as good as they should be (SC:R) or a complete fucking disaster what are you doing? "relatively simple remasters". What? Starcraft: Remastered had to be the hardest to code game ever. You have to publish a 1998 game with mostly the same code without being allowed to change anything. And that only because the community DEMANDS it
Oh wait.
Why would not being allowed to change anything make it harder? Like naturally I don't have the source code, but Blizz did in 2009 when they still patched the game, so why would you not just recycle most of the code? It's not like they need to reverse engineer the wonky pathfinding, they still had it. Hell I played Sc1 after it came packaged with Sc2, so the code ran ~7-8 years ago on vista.
Most of the time the assets like sprites are just stored in a game path, so you can literally override the old sprites with the new ones. And AFAIK one of the main criticism of the community was that Blizz didn't do enough in terms of online features.
My paragraph you answered to is based on experiences I made with development as well as multiple ones I read from people who's studio got bought by big publishers or who went through these processes with similar results to the ones we can see. And yes, I don't have a source that AoE2:HD's success influenced the decision to publish Sc:BW, but EA, MS and Atvi all deciding that they want to remaster their oldie-RTS a short time after a successful rerelease of AoE2:HD seems a bit suspicious.
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Because the studio updated the sprites, got steam workshop running, connected it to steam and introduced ELO. Which apparently made it successful enough to get bought by MS and asked to develop a Definite Edition and add-ons.
And yes it's far from Sc2 peak time, but I doubt we'll ever see a RTS with comparable numbers. RTS have mostly flopped after Sc2, so keeping production cost low seems reasonable. It's not like Sc:R has a huge playerbase outside of SK.
Sure they needed to get the old netcode running on their new server. How large do you think the dev team for that was? How many thousands of hours do you think they invested into that? Sc:BW was still a thing in SK, so it's not like the old netcode wasn't running on a somewhat modern system.
Like you are seriously underestimating modern game development if you don't think that remastered are cheap projects by fairly small teams. The AoE2 HD team was basically an indie dev. Not sure how that's comparable to developing a new double or triple A game, which is what Atvi and Blizz normally do.
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On March 08 2021 15:12 Falling wrote:
"They might not be games I personally enjoy, however, I can't think of anyone else who could leverage the Starcraft IP for more cash than a Kotick led team."
Well, that's not exactly exciting. I looked through what Activision makes- there's nothing there for me. Sitting on IP made by someone else and lacking a vision for what it could be might net you some money, but long term you end up with considerably less money and a burned up IP (See EA and the Command & Conquer series). GG Westwood and GG Blizzard- best of the 90's developers, in my opinion.
SC2 is a far more graceful exit from the RTS genre than C&C4.
ATVI has taken way better care of its RTS IP than EA has. Its not close. SC2 was one of if not the best selling RTS of all time. C&C4 was an embarassment.
Thing about Kotick is he is smart enough to exit a genre on top. Retire as undefeated champion. That gives the Starcraft brand a kind of strength C&C can never touch.
Lumping EA in there with ATVI is a huge stretch. EALA jammed out C&C4 in under a year. ATVI funded SC2 for an eternity before releasing the game. ATVI then supported it for a decade. C&C4 came out in March 2010 while SC2 came out in July 2010. C&C4 lobbies were a ghost town months after its release. SC2 is 11+ years old and I can still get games with opponents right at my level.
ATVI isn't afraid to spend money on long dev cycles.
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This all seems a rather moot discussion because nobody can provide any numbers (sales, development budget, ....)
I for one don't play/ buy remasters at all and I don't understand the "hype" around it and why everyone does it. Same way I don't read a book twice or watch a movie twice. The only remaster/ remade I would buy would be one where I never had the original. And even then I rather look for a new game.
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Why are you saying it's not? 10k concurrent players isn't bad in any way, considering that RTS games were never as popular as genres like FPS. C&C remaster has 1k concurrent players. CoH1 1k, CoH2 4k. I mean, it was pretty obvious from the start that they'll never reach numbers like Dota 2 or CS:GO. What were you expecting?
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EPT
