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On June 09 2015 22:44 SinO[Ob] wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2015 05:22 BronzeKnee wrote:On June 09 2015 03:38 SinO[Ob] wrote:
How can you compare a company who has one game to support and the others that have platforms and so much huge games. And in different genres.
Let Riot, the one trick componey, far from Blizzard and Valve plz. (I'm proud of this jk.) Why does that matter? If a company has 10 games and a staff of 100 people, why should we expect less support than a company with 1 game and 10 staff? And if the company with 10 games only has 50 staff, maybe they need more staff if they can't support their games? In the end the company making the game is responsibly solely for supporting the game they make. It doesn't matter how many employees they have, how much money they make, how many games they make and what genre the games they make are in. Companies are responsible for supporting their products and we as consumers should hold them to it, not make excuses for why they can't support their games. Imagine if car companies could escape responsibly for honoring warranties by stating they make too many models, don't have enough staff, or that that they make trucks not cars and because those are different genres they don't need to honor the warranty. None of that makes any sense. Blizzard can be compared and should be compared to Valve and Riot regularly. Anyone who says otherwise and uses the above arguments, is just a Blizzard apologist seeking to absolve them of their responsibilities as a company. You misunderstood my point. I can see a comparison between Valve and Blizzard. Because they are actually at the same spot. Dealing with a lot of different games and aspect in gaming community (Platforms / Sell / Games / Even now hardware for valve). But Riot do have one game to deal with. And of course, if you want to talk about utopia, all companies should have the same interest and investement in every aspect of their market at everytime (And I'm pretty sure they do want to). The fact is, they can't. Blizzard and Valve doesn't have 1 billion people working in their companies. Money is not unlimited. So when you have more franchise it gets harder to have them all always on top. Because market changes, community expect new things in every game, people inside leaving/coming or just changing projects. If you can't understand that there is to much factors to take account of, to run perfectly all those games. Well, you underestimate the amount of work they have to deal with. I'm not a Blizzard blind fanboy. I'm just tired of seeing people try to compare things that can't be compare. Riot is not a new company anymore. This is a HUGE thing now. So they can easily focus all of the team on THE ONLY ONE project. Easier to coordonate and to make it evolving. I don't say either that Riot don't have good ideas. Of course, they have. Just stop thinking that everything is at the same level. Riot 1 game 1000 employees. Blizzard 6 games 4.700 employees
You've just described a company with bad project management and/or company leadership that don't know what to do to keep themselves relevant.
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On June 08 2015 13:09 covetousrat wrote:Theyre too busy doing thisIm not joking. This is seriously what I think. Too busy on Hearthstone and Heroes of the storm while spending 10 minutes a day on LOTV. LOTV looks totally disappointing with all those new units and gameplay. I don get any WOW effect except maybe Lurker.
I hope your not serious with this post, tell me you dont even know there are different teams for different projects within blizzard, geez cant believe ppl are this stupid....
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On June 09 2015 23:30 jotmang-nojem wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2015 22:44 SinO[Ob] wrote:On June 09 2015 05:22 BronzeKnee wrote:On June 09 2015 03:38 SinO[Ob] wrote:
How can you compare a company who has one game to support and the others that have platforms and so much huge games. And in different genres.
Let Riot, the one trick componey, far from Blizzard and Valve plz. (I'm proud of this jk.) Why does that matter? If a company has 10 games and a staff of 100 people, why should we expect less support than a company with 1 game and 10 staff? And if the company with 10 games only has 50 staff, maybe they need more staff if they can't support their games? In the end the company making the game is responsibly solely for supporting the game they make. It doesn't matter how many employees they have, how much money they make, how many games they make and what genre the games they make are in. Companies are responsible for supporting their products and we as consumers should hold them to it, not make excuses for why they can't support their games. Imagine if car companies could escape responsibly for honoring warranties by stating they make too many models, don't have enough staff, or that that they make trucks not cars and because those are different genres they don't need to honor the warranty. None of that makes any sense. Blizzard can be compared and should be compared to Valve and Riot regularly. Anyone who says otherwise and uses the above arguments, is just a Blizzard apologist seeking to absolve them of their responsibilities as a company. You misunderstood my point. I can see a comparison between Valve and Blizzard. Because they are actually at the same spot. Dealing with a lot of different games and aspect in gaming community (Platforms / Sell / Games / Even now hardware for valve). But Riot do have one game to deal with. And of course, if you want to talk about utopia, all companies should have the same interest and investement in every aspect of their market at everytime (And I'm pretty sure they do want to). The fact is, they can't. Blizzard and Valve doesn't have 1 billion people working in their companies. Money is not unlimited. So when you have more franchise it gets harder to have them all always on top. Because market changes, community expect new things in every game, people inside leaving/coming or just changing projects. If you can't understand that there is to much factors to take account of, to run perfectly all those games. Well, you underestimate the amount of work they have to deal with. I'm not a Blizzard blind fanboy. I'm just tired of seeing people try to compare things that can't be compare. Riot is not a new company anymore. This is a HUGE thing now. So they can easily focus all of the team on THE ONLY ONE project. Easier to coordonate and to make it evolving. I don't say either that Riot don't have good ideas. Of course, they have. Just stop thinking that everything is at the same level. Riot 1 game 1000 employees. Blizzard 6 games 4.700 employees You've just described a company with bad project management and/or company leadership that don't know what to do to keep themselves relevant.
pretty sure both riot blizzard (and valve) are all relevant and do still bring in some of the best games there are for their respective genre.
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On June 09 2015 21:21 sh1RoKen wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2015 19:36 Hider wrote:
The double harvest tournament showed it was just HotS with slightly empowered cheese. Guess what guys if expanding means you get an advantage, not expanding means you will be at a disadvantage and vice versa! It is actually just a difference in wording.
The issue with Double Harvest isn't that its a bad economy, but rather that its been "advertised" as the big savior. For some reason people think that its the economy that magically made it possible to split your army around the map while still having lots of actions in BW. In reality though, the main reason was how units and abiliites were designed.
my prediction is in 5 years that new incarnations of Pacman Championship Edition generate more revenue than every RTS game combined in 2020.
I disagree. I think the RTS genere has lots of potential, but developers are just making the complete wrong type of games. For some reason they all think that an RTS either should contain on of two elements: (1) Lots of base-building/repetitive actions (2) Very slow-paced (unresponsive units, slow movement). I believe that when developers realize that there is no target group for that type of design, but that alot of people actually enjoy some of the "high skilled" moments of Sc2 (such as bio vs Muta/bling) that the genre can grow again. My theory is the majority of the (competetive and casual) target group simply wants to control units and have fun with that. Microing the units should feel simple and should have almost an infinitely high skillcap while containing lots of counterplay. Riot for example does a good job of allowing players to focus on the champion vs champion interactions without having to worry too much about "macro", "timings" or "hardcounters" (at least not if your a "casual player"). Stuff like I didn't look at my army for 2 seconds cus I was building a supply depot and therefore lost my whole army and thus the game should get removed in a future RTS. Also scenarios like I build X 10 seconds to late and therefore instalost to my opponents timing attack/cheese is not a great thing for an esport and is terrible for the casual experience. In my opinion, the MOBA genre is a lot closer to its "maximum potential" than the RTS genre. The developers working on Riot and Dota (Icefrog I guess) have been more competent than the RTS-developers which has improved the genre faster. I guess that and the F2P-business model which has created a proper incentive structure for developers to make enjoyable multiplayer games (rather than singleplayer games). Just the fact that Starcraft 2 is by far the best RTS despite all of the obvious flaws should indicate how good a proper RTS game with competent developers could be. Every single word is true. Nothing really matters if the game is fun to play and constantly evolving and supported by developers. This "casual" thing must be bringed into starcraft or we will die as a competitive game due to the lack of casual players who watch streams, visit tournaments and buy some skins from time to time. Blizzard can do 24 workers start and 5 minerals per base if they want to, noone will care. But right now it fills like a job. Mutas accidentally flied into 3 Thors while you were injecting for 1,5 seconds -> lose. Bio was stormed while you were queuing new unints for 1 second -> lose. Games must be easier to play and harder to master nowadays. But new Distruptor, Lurker and Liberator design are just saying: "We will fucking destroy your anus if you allow yourself being only 99% concentrated on the game for 0.5 seconds. And you can't do anything after that due to the lack of comeback mechanics! We want you to SUFFER for every single mistake you make!" While DotA is just "Make yourself comfortable in this massage chair while we are serving this cool beer for you"
Yeh, so I don't actually think there is anything wrong with the "kill a lot of units very quickly"-design in it self.. You do need AOE-based units in an RTS in order to make sure that a small army can beat a larger army size!
Rather the issue is that they can make the game end very quickly. This isn't as much an issue in League for instance due to the fact that your always looking at your champion + the defenders advantage is very high. This means that even if you make a splitsecond error, you only get behind, but if you play well for the rest of the game you can still win it.
In my opinion, future RTS games needs to create a much higher defenders advantage so you don't automatically lose if your opponent has a 20-30% larger army than you while at the same time add an incentive to be out on the map in order to avoid extreme turtling.
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Riot is thriving due to LoL. Valve has successfully transformed itself into a service provider company. Blizzard? Seems they're living off past glory nowadays.
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I have played more lotv than most people, I feel. 100 games about. Low masters level.
I personally love it. At first I was skeptical about the cyclone, but I'm starting to enjoy using it. At this point I like all of the new units. The massive buffage to Zerg doesn't make a ton of sense to me, I don't get why quite so many but obviously that will get pulled back a bit.
I feel Protoss is totally fine. And seriously I have over 1500+ wins as a diamond toss in WOL. I love the direction they're taking toss. The colossi nerf is amazing. The disruptor is a little underwhelming, but the adept is cool as fuck.
I really wish they would have added another bio unit, but I really do see a place for bio/tank and bio/liberator in certain matchups and think that's really exciting.
The economy changes are awesome. Game starts immediately and games that feel like 20 minute games in hots are like 9 minute games in lotv. That's badass.
Overall I feel like the game still feels a lot like hots, in that personally I do still play on 3 base a lot til main is drying out and I do still have maxed army fights a lot. But nearly every game I do end up taking a fourth eventually, more so than hots.
As a big sc2 fan this is great. It feels like the same game with new compositions and strats, and just more fast paced.
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On June 09 2015 23:54 jotmang-nojem wrote:
Riot is thriving due to LoL. Valve has successfully transformed itself into a service provider company. Blizzard? Seems they're living off past glory nowadays.
lol
With Heroes being the exception, each current Blizzard game dominates its own genre.
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Blizz has a tough job with SC2. Balancing the temptation to make it more 'casual friendly' to appeal to a broader fan-base while at the same time not pissing off the hardcore players. There has to be a middle ground somewhere, but you can't make everyone happy.
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On June 10 2015 03:16 ElMeanYo wrote:
Blizz has a tough job with SC2. Balancing the temptation to make it more 'casual friendly' to appeal to a broader fan-base while at the same time not pissing off the hardcore players. There has to be a middle ground somewhere, but you can't make everyone happy.
They aren't neccasarily mutually exclusive. Changes such as "no ebay requirement" on turrets makes the game much more casual friendly and improves the competititve experience as well.
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On June 09 2015 22:44 SinO[Ob] wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On June 09 2015 05:22 BronzeKnee wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2015 03:38 SinO[Ob] wrote:
How can you compare a company who has one game to support and the others that have platforms and so much huge games. And in different genres.
Let Riot, the one trick componey, far from Blizzard and Valve plz. (I'm proud of this jk.) Why does that matter? If a company has 10 games and a staff of 100 people, why should we expect less support than a company with 1 game and 10 staff? And if the company with 10 games only has 50 staff, maybe they need more staff if they can't support their games? In the end the company making the game is responsibly solely for supporting the game they make. It doesn't matter how many employees they have, how much money they make, how many games they make and what genre the games they make are in. Companies are responsible for supporting their products and we as consumers should hold them to it, not make excuses for why they can't support their games. Imagine if car companies could escape responsibly for honoring warranties by stating they make too many models, don't have enough staff, or that that they make trucks not cars and because those are different genres they don't need to honor the warranty. None of that makes any sense. Blizzard can be compared and should be compared to Valve and Riot regularly. Anyone who says otherwise and uses the above arguments, is just a Blizzard apologist seeking to absolve them of their responsibilities as a company. You misunderstood my point. I can see a comparison between Valve and Blizzard. Because they are actually at the same spot. Dealing with a lot of different games and aspect in gaming community (Platforms / Sell / Games / Even now hardware for valve). But Riot do have one game to deal with. And of course, if you want to talk about utopia, all companies should have the same interest and investement in every aspect of their market at everytime (And I'm pretty sure they do want to). The fact is, they can't. Blizzard and Valve doesn't have 1 billion people working in their companies. Money is not unlimited. So when you have more franchise it gets harder to have them all always on top. Because market changes, community expect new things in every game, people inside leaving/coming or just changing projects. If you can't understand that there is to much factors to take account of, to run perfectly all those games. Well, you underestimate the amount of work they have to deal with. I'm not a Blizzard blind fanboy. I'm just tired of seeing people try to compare things that can't be compare. Riot is not a new company anymore. This is a HUGE thing now. So they can easily focus all of the team on THE ONLY ONE project. Easier to coordonate and to make it evolving. I don't say either that Riot don't have good ideas. Of course, they have. Just stop thinking that everything is at the same level. Riot 1 game 1000 employees. Blizzard 6 games 4.700 employees
This doesn't make sense. You don't need an insane amount of people or money to make a video game and all of the managerial stuff you mentioned is handled by a board of directors in both Riot AND Blizzard, or a sub-board for each game, in Blizzard's case, so your argument doesn't hold much value. Unless one just started working in a company, it is very rare to see one change teams or projects in a software company. In some companies, like Google, one has to be re-interviewed in order to transfer. You don't seem to understand of how separate these teams are or their autonomy on their projects.
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On June 10 2015 00:35 TronJovolta wrote:
I have played more lotv than most people, I feel. 100 games about. Low masters level.
I personally love it. At first I was skeptical about the cyclone, but I'm starting to enjoy using it......
As a big sc2 fan this is great. It feels like the same game with new compositions and strats, and just more fast paced.
when i'm serious i can get up to top 10 Diamond, but no higher.
so i'm not the same level as you.
my experience is similar to urs...its hella fun and its more fast paced.
it seems like half the RTS team is ex-C&C guys so i'm not surprised the game is taking this turn towards "something fast and fluid with base building that does not feel like a chore"
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On June 09 2015 19:36 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +
The double harvest tournament showed it was just HotS with slightly empowered cheese. Guess what guys if expanding means you get an advantage, not expanding means you will be at a disadvantage and vice versa! It is actually just a difference in wording.
The issue with Double Harvest isn't that its a bad economy, but rather that its been "advertised" as the big savior. For some reason people think that its the economy that magically made it possible to split your army around the map while still having lots of actions in BW. In reality though, the main reason was how units and abiliites were designed. Show nested quote +
my prediction is in 5 years that new incarnations of Pacman Championship Edition generate more revenue than every RTS game combined in 2020.
I disagree. I think the RTS genere has lots of potential, but developers are just making the complete wrong type of games.
good luck getting funding for a AAA level , RTS game.
the free market has spoken... and it did so 10 years ago and the corporate publishing gods have adjusted their outlook accordingly.
The company Day9 works with got 2.5 million in funding. It'll be interesting to see what becomes of it. My heart wants it to be a smash success and Day9 becomes filthy stinkin' stupid rich and keeps making RTS games for the rest of his life off of the momentum of the game becoming a billion dollar franchise.
My head tells me we're basically in the 1985 time period of Dot-Eating-Maze-Game genre.
RTS games had their time in the sun when its fundamental mechanics were novel, new, and thought provoking, even fascinating.
Similar to dot-eating-maze games in 1980.
But, its now over. People are bored with the genre and the fundamental mechanics that make an RTS game what it is. Just like Dot-Eatin-Maze games by 1985.
Even though the best dot eating maze games were being released.. it didn't matter. it was over.. the people had moved on.
Ms Pacman was better than Pacman in every way and made 25% of what Pacman made.
Making a better game does not necessarily mean every one will want to play it.
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the free market has spoken... and it did so 10 years ago and the corporate publishing gods have adjusted their outlook accordingly.
When Grey Goo can get funding despite having incompetent designers whom doesn't know the difference between macro and micro, it shouldn't be (theoreticaly) impossible for competent designers with a well thought out analysis of the different target groups (their needs, size and how to satisfy them).
But, its now over. People are bored with the genre and the fundamental mechanics that make an RTS game what it is. Just like Dot-Eatin-Maze games by 1985.
No people are bored with how developers have made RTS games. From spending the last couple of years studying the elements that makes Sc2 relatively succesful and LOL very succesful, I believe you can deduct what a proper RTS should contain.
Below is what a succesful RTS should contain in my opinion:
- Easy to learn
- Great business model
- Lots of interesting micro interactions
- Units move relatively fast and are responsive
- The game is focussed around controlling units, and the macro element is minimized/removed.
- The game is forgiving to play due to a signfiicant defenders advantage but still provides incentives for players to be out on the map in order to have action.
It's not impossible - in fact its very likely - that the free market makes errors in the short-to-medium term. But I don't see any logical reason for why a lot of players wouldn't be interested in playing a game that is as easy to learn as a MOBA, but is focussed around controlling multiple units instead of one hero. In fact, as time goes on players will probably get sligtly tired of the "one hero" approach and look for a new experience but in the same genre (ARTS).
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France9034 Posts
On June 09 2015 23:54 jotmang-nojem wrote:
Riot is thriving due to LoL. Valve has successfully transformed itself into a service provider company. Blizzard? Seems they're living off past glory nowadays.
Yeah, HearthStone and HotS are totally "past glory".
Oh and people are totally not waiting for Overwatch, no........
/irony
Oh and HS especially was reaaaally different in how it came to life.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Bizz fanboy (I don't like, nor wait for any of the games I mentioned), but saying they live on past glory is ridiculous. WoW excepted (and it does not look that good as well), their "past glory" isn't what really work currently:
- Diablo 3: not nearly as popular as its predecessor (though the extension improved that, but that still not on the same level, when you have Path Of Exile dubbed "what should have been Diablo 3" with a really good popularity).
- Starcraft: we're pretty much all okay with the fact it's clearly not a very profitable license.
- World Of Warcraft: the more it ages, the more wee see a pattern, with the game having hit its peak near 2010/2011 IIRC, and now gradually losing players. The release of Warlords of Draenor saw a huge bump in players, that were all gone after a few months, which shows that WoW doesn't retain its players that much anymore.
The only thing you could say they live off which belongs to their "past glory" is their universes. But universes don't create games single-handedly...
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Diablo 3: not nearly as popular as its predecessor (though the extension improved that, but that still not on the same level, when you have Path Of Exile dubbed "what should have been Diablo 3" with a really good popularity)
Pretty sure that's actually not true. D3 is much more played than PoE. D3 also sold better than D2.
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Russian Federation1607 Posts
On June 10 2015 17:07 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +Diablo 3: not nearly as popular as its predecessor (though the extension improved that, but that still not on the same level, when you have Path Of Exile dubbed "what should have been Diablo 3" with a really good popularity) Pretty sure that's actually not true. D3 is much more played than PoE. D3 also sold better than D2.
Diablo 3 is the 3rd best selling PC game to be correct. And where is Path of Exale?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_games
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United States4883 Posts
On June 09 2015 19:36 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +
The double harvest tournament showed it was just HotS with slightly empowered cheese. Guess what guys if expanding means you get an advantage, not expanding means you will be at a disadvantage and vice versa! It is actually just a difference in wording.
The issue with Double Harvest isn't that its a bad economy, but rather that its been "advertised" as the big savior. For some reason people think that its the economy that magically made it possible to split your army around the map while still having lots of actions in BW. In reality though, the main reason was how units and abiliites were designed.
Just wanted to comment on this and clear any misconceptions up  .
DH is simply an alternative economy solution that is designed to allow a player with more expansions to actually gain more money. In other words, you can literally look at the minimap and tell who is winning based on the number of bases they have and how much map control they have. This doesn't mean that colossus deathballs or low-potential units are somehow magically made interesting, it simply means that there is counterplay to 3-base turtling via expansions. That said, it's not a fix-all solution for the problems in SC2, but it's definitely a step in the right direction towards a positionally balanced game ^^.
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France9034 Posts
On June 10 2015 17:07 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +Diablo 3: not nearly as popular as its predecessor (though the extension improved that, but that still not on the same level, when you have Path Of Exile dubbed "what should have been Diablo 3" with a really good popularity) Pretty sure that's actually not true. D3 is much more played than PoE. D3 also sold better than D2.
Oh? Did that change? I remember it being massively played at the release, and then reports that players were quickly bored with it and did not stay much. For PoE, that was indeed an assumption, but its popularity is there. I'll look up if I find some figures about that. Do you have any sources, by any chance?
On June 10 2015 19:15 Jenia6109 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 10 2015 17:07 Hider wrote:Diablo 3: not nearly as popular as its predecessor (though the extension improved that, but that still not on the same level, when you have Path Of Exile dubbed "what should have been Diablo 3" with a really good popularity) Pretty sure that's actually not true. D3 is much more played than PoE. D3 also sold better than D2. Diablo 3 is the 3rd best selling PC game to be correct. And where is Path of Exale? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_games
Yeah, in terms of units sold. But then Starcraft 2 is up there at the 13th place, but I would say it's not the 13th most played game today. So there's that also. And PoE is a Free-To-Play, so not on that list obviously. Just like League Of Legends..
That's why figures about actually playing players would be more relevant here.
EDIT: I realise that in this case, that's actually enough, sales numbers, to talk about profitability (which was the original topic), so my bad...
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Yeah, in terms of units sold. But then Starcraft 2 is up there at the 13th place, but I would say it's not the 13th most played game today. So there's that also. And PoE is a Free-To-Play, so not on that list obviously. Just like League Of Legends.
I think the twitch viewer-numbers between D3 and POE gives a decent indication of which game is the most played.
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EPT
