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Northern Ireland23371 Posts
On August 25 2024 02:39 RogerChillingworth wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2024 01:39 Tal wrote:
The patch is pretty disappointing. Feels like the kind of minor changes you’d use for a successful fully released game, not in the alpha stage where so much could be improved.
Vibe brought up a really good point in one of his recent videos about how finding ways to modify/talent up the shit you specifically like to build, and how you play, would go a long way in making the game more fun. Currently, it feels very difficult to differentiate players. It feels like the vast majority of people are doing the same thing, and unfortunately that -thing- isn't super compelling atm. Unit designs and tech trees are mostly to blame. There's also a lack of non-linear utility stuff in the game. Hexen mine is like the only thing I can think of. There could be more of this stuff. At any rate, I always read patch notes and feel like things are being sanded down instead of built up. The small buffs here and there don't fundamentally change any interactions. Unfortunately, most of the cool and fiery stuff in these games gets panned by players for being too OP or "unfun to play against" or whatever. The two that I can think of are the medtech's system shock ability (speedboost) and atlas-evac drop. I don't even know if system shock is still in the game but it had lots of potential to be cool when not used on exos (another problematic unit, ugh). It was a start at least. Things like this are fun. Hexen mine is fun. Give moar. People complain that we get Sc2-lite or whatever but at the same time are pretty quick to dismiss more interesting ideas.
That could be cool, I think you run into potential issues of readability, where you’re potentially having to learn a bunch of units, plus various custom variants to try and remember and parse.
But, as a central idea, that could be interesting aye! I mean in theory a faction fills a bit of identity, unit choices do that etc.
I agree with you I don’t really think the community helps itself. Give us cool tools, give it a bit of time to settle. Err on the side of ‘OP, but cool’ if one has to, adjust down the line.
From perusing the Reddit pretty frequently, no idea about the Discord, people seem far more vociferous about nerfing x, y and z anytime there’s an issue, than buffing underused things. But then will complain the meta is a bit bland with borderline monobattle comps at times. Borderline monobattles is a tad unfair I suppose
You know what’s OP as all, all fuck? Dark swarm in Brood War. It’s one of the most ridiculously strong abilities I’ve ever encountered in an RTS. But hey you’ve got a load of other incredibly potent tools elsewhere. Storm’s pretty nasty, Reavers pack a punch, and well the siege tank needs no introduction as maybe the most iconic RTS unit going.
Shit’s cool man.
Make some punchy, face-melting stuff. The alternative is just endless, endless tier 1 (later upgraded) just kiting everything, which we see a lot of.
I gotta say, they’re not always reinventing the wheel but there are units I do think are cool, do some fun things. Unfortunately at this time a lot of them are somewhat underused or niche.
Hexen, cool unit. Not too spammable, I like its spells. Helicarrier for me kinda fixes some of my general issues with capital ships. They often suck in small numbers, are oppressive in large ones. A-move friendly etc. Needs some tuning, I like the idea of having to manually aim bombing runs though.
A fair few others, I won’t be exhaustive but I do think there’s some good ideas there too.
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On August 25 2024 04:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2024 04:06 Hider wrote:On August 24 2024 19:17 Qikz wrote:On August 24 2024 11:28 Vindicare605 wrote:On August 23 2024 20:05 Spirral wrote:
With FG it felt all the time like they were targetting specifally me as the target audience for the game, but then they release something that feels completely off the mark, not even close. That's exactly where I'm at. I had every reason to be excited for this title. I'm exactly the player that Frostgiant should have wanted to play their game. And this game is a total miss. I'm genuinely disappointed. This isn't just another game that I can say "oh well, might as well move on to something else." This was supposed to be my new RTS. I was looking forward to dumping thousands of hours into this game, to being active in its community and to watching its esports scene grow and develop. And now I want nothing to do with it. If people are more passionate about voicing their displeasure with the game then that's why. It's because they actually expected something from it. Frostgiant has no one to blame for that but themselves. Funny thing is as a Broodwar guy this is exactly how I felt with SC2. I then went back to BW after a year or so lol. Sc2 was in hindsight a horrible game at the time. It definitely made some improvements over BW in terms of graphics and responsiveness but played out very poorly. Today I think the game quality is immensely better. Nah, in hindsight SC2 was incredible. Campaign was amazing with its various difficulty levels. 2v2 and other team games were great. Cinematics were incredible. The story that made Chris Metzen tear up was great with a super cool ending. And 95% of C&C and AoE 1v1 competitive playersthought 1v1 was really good. GameReplays.org downsized dramatically once the SC2 beta began. 1v1 play in RA3 , C&C3, and CoH could not compete. The weekly ConquerCup became the CraftCup and revenues skyrocketed for many months. 6 months after the game came out a weekly CraftCup with a $100 prize pool had 1100 participants. The CraftCup almost always had 500+ people. WoL did not sell all its copies on Day 1. Most got a good look at the game before buying it. The Retail Box and CE also blew C&C and AoE out of the water. ATVI did lots of great things promoting the game. I will never forget my July 26, 2010 all nighter at a great PC Bang. Everyone had a blast.
I was only thinking of multiplayer.
The way 1v1 meta played out was atrocious - far worse gameplay than BW: I understand every BW veteran that stayed with that game at the time.
I enjoyed at the time but it was more about the novelty and figuring things out.
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On August 25 2024 05:55 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2024 04:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 25 2024 04:06 Hider wrote:On August 24 2024 19:17 Qikz wrote:On August 24 2024 11:28 Vindicare605 wrote:On August 23 2024 20:05 Spirral wrote:
With FG it felt all the time like they were targetting specifally me as the target audience for the game, but then they release something that feels completely off the mark, not even close. That's exactly where I'm at. I had every reason to be excited for this title. I'm exactly the player that Frostgiant should have wanted to play their game. And this game is a total miss. I'm genuinely disappointed. This isn't just another game that I can say "oh well, might as well move on to something else." This was supposed to be my new RTS. I was looking forward to dumping thousands of hours into this game, to being active in its community and to watching its esports scene grow and develop. And now I want nothing to do with it. If people are more passionate about voicing their displeasure with the game then that's why. It's because they actually expected something from it. Frostgiant has no one to blame for that but themselves. Funny thing is as a Broodwar guy this is exactly how I felt with SC2. I then went back to BW after a year or so lol. Sc2 was in hindsight a horrible game at the time. It definitely made some improvements over BW in terms of graphics and responsiveness but played out very poorly. Today I think the game quality is immensely better. Nah, in hindsight SC2 was incredible. Campaign was amazing with its various difficulty levels. 2v2 and other team games were great. Cinematics were incredible. The story that made Chris Metzen tear up was great with a super cool ending. And 95% of C&C and AoE 1v1 competitive playersthought 1v1 was really good. GameReplays.org downsized dramatically once the SC2 beta began. 1v1 play in RA3 , C&C3, and CoH could not compete. The weekly ConquerCup became the CraftCup and revenues skyrocketed for many months. 6 months after the game came out a weekly CraftCup with a $100 prize pool had 1100 participants. The CraftCup almost always had 500+ people. WoL did not sell all its copies on Day 1. Most got a good look at the game before buying it. The Retail Box and CE also blew C&C and AoE out of the water. ATVI did lots of great things promoting the game. I will never forget my July 26, 2010 all nighter at a great PC Bang. Everyone had a blast. I was only thinking of multiplayer. The way 1v1 meta played out was atrocious - far worse gameplay than BW: I understand every BW veteran that stayed with that game at the time. I enjoyed at the time but it was more about the novelty and figuring things out.
Nah, WoL multiplayer worked great for years. Some laser focused on just BW might not have a taste for WoL brand of RTS. However. RTS generalists, RA3,C&C3, CoH,and DoW people loved it and moved over to it in droves.
And I farmed that mofo for 20 months.
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deadlock going full public aint going to help either.
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On August 25 2024 06:56 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2024 05:55 Hider wrote:On August 25 2024 04:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 25 2024 04:06 Hider wrote:On August 24 2024 19:17 Qikz wrote:On August 24 2024 11:28 Vindicare605 wrote:On August 23 2024 20:05 Spirral wrote:
With FG it felt all the time like they were targetting specifally me as the target audience for the game, but then they release something that feels completely off the mark, not even close. That's exactly where I'm at. I had every reason to be excited for this title. I'm exactly the player that Frostgiant should have wanted to play their game. And this game is a total miss. I'm genuinely disappointed. This isn't just another game that I can say "oh well, might as well move on to something else." This was supposed to be my new RTS. I was looking forward to dumping thousands of hours into this game, to being active in its community and to watching its esports scene grow and develop. And now I want nothing to do with it. If people are more passionate about voicing their displeasure with the game then that's why. It's because they actually expected something from it. Frostgiant has no one to blame for that but themselves. Funny thing is as a Broodwar guy this is exactly how I felt with SC2. I then went back to BW after a year or so lol. Sc2 was in hindsight a horrible game at the time. It definitely made some improvements over BW in terms of graphics and responsiveness but played out very poorly. Today I think the game quality is immensely better. Nah, in hindsight SC2 was incredible. Campaign was amazing with its various difficulty levels. 2v2 and other team games were great. Cinematics were incredible. The story that made Chris Metzen tear up was great with a super cool ending. And 95% of C&C and AoE 1v1 competitive playersthought 1v1 was really good. GameReplays.org downsized dramatically once the SC2 beta began. 1v1 play in RA3 , C&C3, and CoH could not compete. The weekly ConquerCup became the CraftCup and revenues skyrocketed for many months. 6 months after the game came out a weekly CraftCup with a $100 prize pool had 1100 participants. The CraftCup almost always had 500+ people. WoL did not sell all its copies on Day 1. Most got a good look at the game before buying it. The Retail Box and CE also blew C&C and AoE out of the water. ATVI did lots of great things promoting the game. I will never forget my July 26, 2010 all nighter at a great PC Bang. Everyone had a blast. I was only thinking of multiplayer. The way 1v1 meta played out was atrocious - far worse gameplay than BW: I understand every BW veteran that stayed with that game at the time. I enjoyed at the time but it was more about the novelty and figuring things out. Nah, WoL multiplayer worked great for years. Some laser focused on just BW might not have a taste for WoL brand of RTS. However. RTS generalists, RA3,C&C3, CoH,and DoW people loved it and moved over to it in droves. And I farmed that mofo for 20 months.
Wol was good but it didn't start amazing out of the gate. Competitive 2v2 was meh from the start and died shortly afterwards. we got the 4 gate protoss meta for a while at start too in 1v1.
Many problems with tournaments and bnet crashing.
Server lock, the miserably lonely bnet experience, no channel support, no clan support. This was one reason also bw and wc3 regular were a bit slow to switch.
A lot of things ran through ad hoc community fixing but also either luck or vision by the devs in adding functions. Because a lot of people tried it due to the starcraft name, everyone had a friend or colleague or classmate who was playing too, you added them on bnet and you could play and have fun, it somewhat bypassed the dead bnet issues thanks to the friendlist (which, to their credit, was done super well with either tag or email option, genius move).
The bnet app integration with other blizzard games helped a ton too. You could log in, dm folks and they d join you.
What they did have going for it for WoL itself though was amazing campaign (hots was ok, lotv was stupid, but wol was a masterpiece), mostly good qol in 1v1, a large player base so that the ladder was fun at all levels from absolute casuals to higher divisions (platinum was highest at first iirc? Not sure), and the absolute genius than 3v3 and 4v4 were great fun for everyone and worked mostly well from day 1. Casual 2v2 was also neat.
Personally i preferred bw for 1v1 then, or even cw/nw. But with friends i played the shit out of wol and early hots. With old friends who were bronze, colleagues etc. Something stormgate really messed up is that option to play across levels and have fun.
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On August 25 2024 05:48 WombaT wrote:
Shit’s cool man.
Make some punchy, face-melting stuff. The alternative is just endless, endless tier 1 (later upgraded) just kiting everything, which we see a lot of.
I like the concept of 'movers and shooters', but it worked the best in BW and WC3 where units had more special behavior. I'd love to play a snappy Warcraft 3, instead of a sluggish one, while still keeping that crusty pathing. But since we're not gonna get that, I feel like you gotta throw some cool stuff in to compensate. If it's a warcrafty game, then cool abilities and micro would be desirable, with body blocking and sweet saves and all that. If it's a starcrafty game, then it can have more of this out-of-combat APM, like mines and stasis traps, or moba-style map-manipulative macro, or a million other things. Even freakin walls in AOE had this going on, even if AOE walls are pretty ResidentSleeper and not super great gameplay.
There's a lot of very cool stuff that none of the modern RTS seem to be doing, for one reason or another. It really makes you wanna make your own game, even if it's a ridiculous idea. Perhaps just some visual simulation or something would be good enough. But man, it definitely feels more doable to make a spiritual successor to Blizzard RTS than some of these studios make it seem.
But shit man idk, I'm not in a great position to judge, having made 0 games in my life. I mostly just think about it. Obviously the whole thing is much more complicated than implementing a decent idea 1:1. Especially when you're working with a team.
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On August 25 2024 05:55 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2024 04:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 25 2024 04:06 Hider wrote:On August 24 2024 19:17 Qikz wrote:On August 24 2024 11:28 Vindicare605 wrote:On August 23 2024 20:05 Spirral wrote:
With FG it felt all the time like they were targetting specifally me as the target audience for the game, but then they release something that feels completely off the mark, not even close. That's exactly where I'm at. I had every reason to be excited for this title. I'm exactly the player that Frostgiant should have wanted to play their game. And this game is a total miss. I'm genuinely disappointed. This isn't just another game that I can say "oh well, might as well move on to something else." This was supposed to be my new RTS. I was looking forward to dumping thousands of hours into this game, to being active in its community and to watching its esports scene grow and develop. And now I want nothing to do with it. If people are more passionate about voicing their displeasure with the game then that's why. It's because they actually expected something from it. Frostgiant has no one to blame for that but themselves. Funny thing is as a Broodwar guy this is exactly how I felt with SC2. I then went back to BW after a year or so lol. Sc2 was in hindsight a horrible game at the time. It definitely made some improvements over BW in terms of graphics and responsiveness but played out very poorly. Today I think the game quality is immensely better. Nah, in hindsight SC2 was incredible. Campaign was amazing with its various difficulty levels. 2v2 and other team games were great. Cinematics were incredible. The story that made Chris Metzen tear up was great with a super cool ending. And 95% of C&C and AoE 1v1 competitive playersthought 1v1 was really good. GameReplays.org downsized dramatically once the SC2 beta began. 1v1 play in RA3 , C&C3, and CoH could not compete. The weekly ConquerCup became the CraftCup and revenues skyrocketed for many months. 6 months after the game came out a weekly CraftCup with a $100 prize pool had 1100 participants. The CraftCup almost always had 500+ people. WoL did not sell all its copies on Day 1. Most got a good look at the game before buying it. The Retail Box and CE also blew C&C and AoE out of the water. ATVI did lots of great things promoting the game. I will never forget my July 26, 2010 all nighter at a great PC Bang. Everyone had a blast. I was only thinking of multiplayer. The way 1v1 meta played out was atrocious - far worse gameplay than BW: I understand every BW veteran that stayed with that game at the time. I enjoyed at the time but it was more about the novelty and figuring things out.
What WOL had going for it, is it attracted tonnes of new players even if they weren't RTS players.
The BW playerbase absolutely pales against it, and it didn't matter whether they transition or not except for the Korea scene.
Very few titles in any genre have this privilege.
The "funness" of meta isn't even all that important.
Players grinding it together even if it's a tough game with pretty high skill floor and balance is not there.
It's the MOBA of its time and the general playerbase liked watching and playing it.
And then we have stormgate which failed to attach any big new playerbase, boring to watch or play, and that's building off progamers that are way more skilled than decades ago.
Well partly because we know what good RTS game looks like as well.
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Northern Ireland23371 Posts
On August 25 2024 12:32 RogerChillingworth wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2024 05:48 WombaT wrote:
Shit’s cool man.
Make some punchy, face-melting stuff. The alternative is just endless, endless tier 1 (later upgraded) just kiting everything, which we see a lot of.
I like the concept of 'movers and shooters', but it worked the best in BW and WC3 where units had more special behavior. I'd love to play a snappy Warcraft 3, instead of a sluggish one, while still keeping that crusty pathing. But since we're not gonna get that, I feel like you gotta throw some cool stuff in to compensate. If it's a warcrafty game, then cool abilities and micro would be desirable, with body blocking and sweet saves and all that. If it's a starcrafty game, then it can have more of this out-of-combat APM, like mines and stasis traps, or moba-style map-manipulative macro, or a million other things. Even freakin walls in AOE had this going on, even if AOE walls are pretty ResidentSleeper and not super great gameplay. There's a lot of very cool stuff that none of the modern RTS seem to be doing, for one reason or another. It really makes you wanna make your own game, even if it's a ridiculous idea. Perhaps just some visual simulation or something would be good enough. But man, it definitely feels more doable to make a spiritual successor to Blizzard RTS than some of these studios make it seem. But shit man idk, I'm not in a great position to judge, having made 0 games in my life. I mostly just think about it. Obviously the whole thing is much more complicated than implementing a decent idea 1:1. Especially when you're working with a team.
Shit is indeed hard, I don’t think I’ve ever come up with a unit idea that isn’t some kind of mishmash of units either I’ve experienced, or, some kind of unit that I then subsequently find exists in an RTS I subsequently find.
Outside of my ‘ball unit’ idea, still workshopping it. Essentially it’s some kinda ball, maybe a mysterious robotic sphere, maybe a cutesy alien armadillo. Essentially it doesn’t have an a-move attack, it kinda crushes things by you moving it around.
Its additional mechanic, you can link them with chain/fence like things so you can block off zones, or chase down enemies and ensnare them. The idea was to create a kind of force field style zoning mechanic, which I do like conceptually, but without the drawbacks, or what I consider downsides anyway. Tricky to micro, you can break the chains by focus firing parts of the chain etc.
That’s pretty shit, so yeah it’s tricky! Although I do think you could pull off some pretty sick plays and counter plays with such a unit.
We also have the problem (of sorts) that RTS games have their fundamentals pretty well understood, and people optimise the shit out of them way, way faster than they used to.
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its been years and years of no new high quality RTS that is similar to blizzard RTS. we finally got it, lets all hope for stormgate to succeed.
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On August 25 2024 06:56 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2024 05:55 Hider wrote:On August 25 2024 04:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 25 2024 04:06 Hider wrote:On August 24 2024 19:17 Qikz wrote:On August 24 2024 11:28 Vindicare605 wrote:On August 23 2024 20:05 Spirral wrote:
With FG it felt all the time like they were targetting specifally me as the target audience for the game, but then they release something that feels completely off the mark, not even close. That's exactly where I'm at. I had every reason to be excited for this title. I'm exactly the player that Frostgiant should have wanted to play their game. And this game is a total miss. I'm genuinely disappointed. This isn't just another game that I can say "oh well, might as well move on to something else." This was supposed to be my new RTS. I was looking forward to dumping thousands of hours into this game, to being active in its community and to watching its esports scene grow and develop. And now I want nothing to do with it. If people are more passionate about voicing their displeasure with the game then that's why. It's because they actually expected something from it. Frostgiant has no one to blame for that but themselves. Funny thing is as a Broodwar guy this is exactly how I felt with SC2. I then went back to BW after a year or so lol. Sc2 was in hindsight a horrible game at the time. It definitely made some improvements over BW in terms of graphics and responsiveness but played out very poorly. Today I think the game quality is immensely better. Nah, in hindsight SC2 was incredible. Campaign was amazing with its various difficulty levels. 2v2 and other team games were great. Cinematics were incredible. The story that made Chris Metzen tear up was great with a super cool ending. And 95% of C&C and AoE 1v1 competitive playersthought 1v1 was really good. GameReplays.org downsized dramatically once the SC2 beta began. 1v1 play in RA3 , C&C3, and CoH could not compete. The weekly ConquerCup became the CraftCup and revenues skyrocketed for many months. 6 months after the game came out a weekly CraftCup with a $100 prize pool had 1100 participants. The CraftCup almost always had 500+ people. WoL did not sell all its copies on Day 1. Most got a good look at the game before buying it. The Retail Box and CE also blew C&C and AoE out of the water. ATVI did lots of great things promoting the game. I will never forget my July 26, 2010 all nighter at a great PC Bang. Everyone had a blast. I was only thinking of multiplayer. The way 1v1 meta played out was atrocious - far worse gameplay than BW: I understand every BW veteran that stayed with that game at the time. I enjoyed at the time but it was more about the novelty and figuring things out. Nah, WoL multiplayer worked great for years. Some laser focused on just BW might not have a taste for WoL brand of RTS. However. RTS generalists, RA3,C&C3, CoH,and DoW people loved it and moved over to it in droves. And I farmed that mofo for 20 months.
The WoL brand? LIke 4 gate? Turtle into deathball? ZvZ you liked? All the cheese/all-ins. Even the "best of the best" WoL gameplay were bad if you back and rewatch them.
Besides muta-bling vs bio, tank - really wasn't that much good game gameplay WoL brought ot the table.
What WOL had going for it, is it attracted tonnes of new players even if they weren't RTS players.
WoL had a lot of excitement going for it. The presentation was very good.
And I think a lot of RTS games today misses the point. David Kim says he wants to establish a player-base before bringing "cool" units to the game.
But you get new players into the game by adding cool stuff - that shows off well in demoes/highlight-clips.
I watched some Path of Exile 2, and I think the characthers look awesome - makes me interested in it, even though I never played PoE1.
Imagine if instead the only change they made from PoE to PoE2 was to make the game easier for new players with simple/straight-forward characters - how well would that do for the hype level?
Sc2 had Dustin Browder who cared about "cool" and the presentation of the gameplay. This matters and its unfortunate that it appears none of the current RTS devs thinks of this aspect.
Dustin Browder probably cared a little too much about the visuals and didn't think enough on how it impacted the gameplay. (the colossues looked good but really didn't play out well). So you need someone that can think of cool ideas, cool visuals and how it leads to rewarding and interesting dynamics within the game.
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so ive been watching a few stormgatre streams yesterday, casters where adversting the game like their life depend on it.
maybe stormgate should spend their money not on stuff like this (bribing casters) but instead make some "bigger" tournaments where like everybody who passes R1 gets a co op comander or some shitty skin or whatever to motivate players to actually play this in this state.
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United Kingdom20270 Posts
On August 25 2024 18:26 kAra wrote:
so ive been watching a few stormgatre streams yesterday, casters where adversting the game like their life depend on it.
maybe stormgate should spend their money not on stuff like this (bribing casters) but instead make some "bigger" tournaments where like everybody who passes R1 gets a co op comander or some shitty skin or whatever to motivate players to actually play this in this state.
They're not being paid for it, but i think a lot of them do want to make casting the game into a job with monetary return and are motivated by that rather than being honest about the state of the game.
Frost Giant did do something along those lines to get people watching - they made twitch drops so that the only way to get certain skins and effects is to watch the game for X hours (i think it was 6) on Twitch during the start of early access. That hurts the game more than it helps IMO because of the exclusivity / FOMO part - it's a "watch our game NOW or else you'll never be able to get these cool things" which can backfire into pushing people away altogether.
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On August 25 2024 18:35 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2024 18:26 kAra wrote:
so ive been watching a few stormgatre streams yesterday, casters where adversting the game like their life depend on it.
maybe stormgate should spend their money not on stuff like this (bribing casters) but instead make some "bigger" tournaments where like everybody who passes R1 gets a co op comander or some shitty skin or whatever to motivate players to actually play this in this state. They're not being paid for it, but i think a lot of them do want to make casting the game into a job with monetary return and are motivated by that rather than being honest about the state of the game. Frost Giant did do something along those lines to get people watching - they made twitch drops so that the only way to get certain skins and effects is to watch the game for X hours (i think it was 6) on Twitch during the start of early access. That hurts the game more than it helps IMO because of the exclusivity / FOMO part - it's a "watch our game NOW or else you'll never be able to get these cool things" which can backfire into pushing people away altogether.
Yea, these streamers aren't hyping the game up because they're being paid they're doing it because if the game gets big they stand to benefit from being able to generate revenue from videos and livestreams.
I don't really blame them for it, but you just gotta take what they say with a significant grain of salt. I can't trust that their enthusiasm is for what the game is right now and not what they are desperately hoping it might some day be because they want a new source for content creation.
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United States33027 Posts
On August 25 2024 06:56 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2024 05:55 Hider wrote:On August 25 2024 04:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 25 2024 04:06 Hider wrote:On August 24 2024 19:17 Qikz wrote:On August 24 2024 11:28 Vindicare605 wrote:On August 23 2024 20:05 Spirral wrote:
With FG it felt all the time like they were targetting specifally me as the target audience for the game, but then they release something that feels completely off the mark, not even close. That's exactly where I'm at. I had every reason to be excited for this title. I'm exactly the player that Frostgiant should have wanted to play their game. And this game is a total miss. I'm genuinely disappointed. This isn't just another game that I can say "oh well, might as well move on to something else." This was supposed to be my new RTS. I was looking forward to dumping thousands of hours into this game, to being active in its community and to watching its esports scene grow and develop. And now I want nothing to do with it. If people are more passionate about voicing their displeasure with the game then that's why. It's because they actually expected something from it. Frostgiant has no one to blame for that but themselves. Funny thing is as a Broodwar guy this is exactly how I felt with SC2. I then went back to BW after a year or so lol. Sc2 was in hindsight a horrible game at the time. It definitely made some improvements over BW in terms of graphics and responsiveness but played out very poorly. Today I think the game quality is immensely better. Nah, in hindsight SC2 was incredible. Campaign was amazing with its various difficulty levels. 2v2 and other team games were great. Cinematics were incredible. The story that made Chris Metzen tear up was great with a super cool ending. And 95% of C&C and AoE 1v1 competitive playersthought 1v1 was really good. GameReplays.org downsized dramatically once the SC2 beta began. 1v1 play in RA3 , C&C3, and CoH could not compete. The weekly ConquerCup became the CraftCup and revenues skyrocketed for many months. 6 months after the game came out a weekly CraftCup with a $100 prize pool had 1100 participants. The CraftCup almost always had 500+ people. WoL did not sell all its copies on Day 1. Most got a good look at the game before buying it. The Retail Box and CE also blew C&C and AoE out of the water. ATVI did lots of great things promoting the game. I will never forget my July 26, 2010 all nighter at a great PC Bang. Everyone had a blast. I was only thinking of multiplayer. The way 1v1 meta played out was atrocious - far worse gameplay than BW: I understand every BW veteran that stayed with that game at the time. I enjoyed at the time but it was more about the novelty and figuring things out. Nah, WoL multiplayer worked great for years. Some laser focused on just BW might not have a taste for WoL brand of RTS. However. RTS generalists, RA3,C&C3, CoH,and DoW people loved it and moved over to it in droves. And I farmed that mofo for 20 months.
Considering that you're posting on this specific website, this is too much hindsight lionization of SC2's multiplay at launch.
Yes, launch StarCraft 2 was an excellent and very popular product in general, but when we're talking about just the competitive 1v1 mode, it wasn't quality that moved old-school RTS people there. It was simply the natural migration place of high-level Western players from various other RTS games who had been starved of any kind of pasture, let alone one as green as SC2.
2010's SC2 deserves a ton of credit for drawing in a fresh general audience and convincing them to play 1v1 RTS, but it did not win over the 'establishment.' People who had a realistic alternative—namely the Korean BW community—made it very clear this wasn't an obvious switch.
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On August 25 2024 20:56 Waxangel wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2024 06:56 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 25 2024 05:55 Hider wrote:On August 25 2024 04:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 25 2024 04:06 Hider wrote:On August 24 2024 19:17 Qikz wrote:On August 24 2024 11:28 Vindicare605 wrote:On August 23 2024 20:05 Spirral wrote:
With FG it felt all the time like they were targetting specifally me as the target audience for the game, but then they release something that feels completely off the mark, not even close. That's exactly where I'm at. I had every reason to be excited for this title. I'm exactly the player that Frostgiant should have wanted to play their game. And this game is a total miss. I'm genuinely disappointed. This isn't just another game that I can say "oh well, might as well move on to something else." This was supposed to be my new RTS. I was looking forward to dumping thousands of hours into this game, to being active in its community and to watching its esports scene grow and develop. And now I want nothing to do with it. If people are more passionate about voicing their displeasure with the game then that's why. It's because they actually expected something from it. Frostgiant has no one to blame for that but themselves. Funny thing is as a Broodwar guy this is exactly how I felt with SC2. I then went back to BW after a year or so lol. Sc2 was in hindsight a horrible game at the time. It definitely made some improvements over BW in terms of graphics and responsiveness but played out very poorly. Today I think the game quality is immensely better. Nah, in hindsight SC2 was incredible. Campaign was amazing with its various difficulty levels. 2v2 and other team games were great. Cinematics were incredible. The story that made Chris Metzen tear up was great with a super cool ending. And 95% of C&C and AoE 1v1 competitive playersthought 1v1 was really good. GameReplays.org downsized dramatically once the SC2 beta began. 1v1 play in RA3 , C&C3, and CoH could not compete. The weekly ConquerCup became the CraftCup and revenues skyrocketed for many months. 6 months after the game came out a weekly CraftCup with a $100 prize pool had 1100 participants. The CraftCup almost always had 500+ people. WoL did not sell all its copies on Day 1. Most got a good look at the game before buying it. The Retail Box and CE also blew C&C and AoE out of the water. ATVI did lots of great things promoting the game. I will never forget my July 26, 2010 all nighter at a great PC Bang. Everyone had a blast. I was only thinking of multiplayer. The way 1v1 meta played out was atrocious - far worse gameplay than BW: I understand every BW veteran that stayed with that game at the time. I enjoyed at the time but it was more about the novelty and figuring things out. Nah, WoL multiplayer worked great for years. Some laser focused on just BW might not have a taste for WoL brand of RTS. However. RTS generalists, RA3,C&C3, CoH,and DoW people loved it and moved over to it in droves. And I farmed that mofo for 20 months. Considering that you're posting on this specific website, this is too much hindsight lionization of SC2's multiplay at launch. Yes, launch StarCraft 2 was an excellent and very popular product in general, but when we're talking about just the competitive 1v1 mode, it wasn't quality that moved old-school RTS people there. It was simply the natural migration place of high-level Western players from various other RTS games who had been starved of any kind of pasture, let alone one as green as SC2. 2010's SC2 deserves a ton of credit for drawing in a fresh general audience and convincing them to play 1v1 RTS, but it did not win over the 'establishment.' People who had a realistic alternative—namely the Korean BW community—made it very clear this wasn't an obvious switch.
i.e. only korean BW community, which remained an anomy.
there's way more old school RTS than BW, and at some point you have to wonder why most of them never transitioned to BW.
It had "better" campaign, more custom games, social features etc. None of those really mattered.
Even before SC2, the core RTS played in SEA was not BW, it was WC3 TFT.
When I started going to PC bang like early 2000, you don't even see BW in all PC bangs, it's red alert 2 /AoE 2/ Battle of middle earth/ total war/ wc3 etc.
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United States33027 Posts
On August 25 2024 21:56 KingzTig wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2024 20:56 Waxangel wrote:On August 25 2024 06:56 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 25 2024 05:55 Hider wrote:On August 25 2024 04:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 25 2024 04:06 Hider wrote:On August 24 2024 19:17 Qikz wrote:On August 24 2024 11:28 Vindicare605 wrote:On August 23 2024 20:05 Spirral wrote:
With FG it felt all the time like they were targetting specifally me as the target audience for the game, but then they release something that feels completely off the mark, not even close. That's exactly where I'm at. I had every reason to be excited for this title. I'm exactly the player that Frostgiant should have wanted to play their game. And this game is a total miss. I'm genuinely disappointed. This isn't just another game that I can say "oh well, might as well move on to something else." This was supposed to be my new RTS. I was looking forward to dumping thousands of hours into this game, to being active in its community and to watching its esports scene grow and develop. And now I want nothing to do with it. If people are more passionate about voicing their displeasure with the game then that's why. It's because they actually expected something from it. Frostgiant has no one to blame for that but themselves. Funny thing is as a Broodwar guy this is exactly how I felt with SC2. I then went back to BW after a year or so lol. Sc2 was in hindsight a horrible game at the time. It definitely made some improvements over BW in terms of graphics and responsiveness but played out very poorly. Today I think the game quality is immensely better. Nah, in hindsight SC2 was incredible. Campaign was amazing with its various difficulty levels. 2v2 and other team games were great. Cinematics were incredible. The story that made Chris Metzen tear up was great with a super cool ending. And 95% of C&C and AoE 1v1 competitive playersthought 1v1 was really good. GameReplays.org downsized dramatically once the SC2 beta began. 1v1 play in RA3 , C&C3, and CoH could not compete. The weekly ConquerCup became the CraftCup and revenues skyrocketed for many months. 6 months after the game came out a weekly CraftCup with a $100 prize pool had 1100 participants. The CraftCup almost always had 500+ people. WoL did not sell all its copies on Day 1. Most got a good look at the game before buying it. The Retail Box and CE also blew C&C and AoE out of the water. ATVI did lots of great things promoting the game. I will never forget my July 26, 2010 all nighter at a great PC Bang. Everyone had a blast. I was only thinking of multiplayer. The way 1v1 meta played out was atrocious - far worse gameplay than BW: I understand every BW veteran that stayed with that game at the time. I enjoyed at the time but it was more about the novelty and figuring things out. Nah, WoL multiplayer worked great for years. Some laser focused on just BW might not have a taste for WoL brand of RTS. However. RTS generalists, RA3,C&C3, CoH,and DoW people loved it and moved over to it in droves. And I farmed that mofo for 20 months. Considering that you're posting on this specific website, this is too much hindsight lionization of SC2's multiplay at launch. Yes, launch StarCraft 2 was an excellent and very popular product in general, but when we're talking about just the competitive 1v1 mode, it wasn't quality that moved old-school RTS people there. It was simply the natural migration place of high-level Western players from various other RTS games who had been starved of any kind of pasture, let alone one as green as SC2. 2010's SC2 deserves a ton of credit for drawing in a fresh general audience and convincing them to play 1v1 RTS, but it did not win over the 'establishment.' People who had a realistic alternative—namely the Korean BW community—made it very clear this wasn't an obvious switch. i.e. only korean BW community, which remained an anomy. there's way more old school RTS than BW, and at some point you have to wonder why most of them never transitioned to BW. It had "better" campaign, more custom games, social features etc. None of those really mattered. Even before SC2, the core RTS played in SEA was not BW, it was WC3 TFT. When I started going to PC bang like early 2000, you don't even see BW in all PC bangs, it's red alert 2 /AoE 2/ Battle of middle earth/ total war/ wc3 etc.
I mean, this isn't even a disagreement? Pretty sure a lot of War3 players woulda stuck to the game if the opportunities were better. SC2 was just way more lucrative and interesting at the time—some War3 players grew to truly love it through the course of expansions and patches, but we've seen many of them return to their roots.
My entire point was that 2010 SC2 didn't become the most popular 1v1 RTS solely on its merits—a big factor was that it was the biggest and best supported RTS game in general.
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On August 25 2024 20:56 Waxangel wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2024 06:56 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 25 2024 05:55 Hider wrote:On August 25 2024 04:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 25 2024 04:06 Hider wrote:On August 24 2024 19:17 Qikz wrote:On August 24 2024 11:28 Vindicare605 wrote:On August 23 2024 20:05 Spirral wrote:
With FG it felt all the time like they were targetting specifally me as the target audience for the game, but then they release something that feels completely off the mark, not even close. That's exactly where I'm at. I had every reason to be excited for this title. I'm exactly the player that Frostgiant should have wanted to play their game. And this game is a total miss. I'm genuinely disappointed. This isn't just another game that I can say "oh well, might as well move on to something else." This was supposed to be my new RTS. I was looking forward to dumping thousands of hours into this game, to being active in its community and to watching its esports scene grow and develop. And now I want nothing to do with it. If people are more passionate about voicing their displeasure with the game then that's why. It's because they actually expected something from it. Frostgiant has no one to blame for that but themselves. Funny thing is as a Broodwar guy this is exactly how I felt with SC2. I then went back to BW after a year or so lol. Sc2 was in hindsight a horrible game at the time. It definitely made some improvements over BW in terms of graphics and responsiveness but played out very poorly. Today I think the game quality is immensely better. Nah, in hindsight SC2 was incredible. Campaign was amazing with its various difficulty levels. 2v2 and other team games were great. Cinematics were incredible. The story that made Chris Metzen tear up was great with a super cool ending. And 95% of C&C and AoE 1v1 competitive playersthought 1v1 was really good. GameReplays.org downsized dramatically once the SC2 beta began. 1v1 play in RA3 , C&C3, and CoH could not compete. The weekly ConquerCup became the CraftCup and revenues skyrocketed for many months. 6 months after the game came out a weekly CraftCup with a $100 prize pool had 1100 participants. The CraftCup almost always had 500+ people. WoL did not sell all its copies on Day 1. Most got a good look at the game before buying it. The Retail Box and CE also blew C&C and AoE out of the water. ATVI did lots of great things promoting the game. I will never forget my July 26, 2010 all nighter at a great PC Bang. Everyone had a blast. I was only thinking of multiplayer. The way 1v1 meta played out was atrocious - far worse gameplay than BW: I understand every BW veteran that stayed with that game at the time. I enjoyed at the time but it was more about the novelty and figuring things out. Nah, WoL multiplayer worked great for years. Some laser focused on just BW might not have a taste for WoL brand of RTS. However. RTS generalists, RA3,C&C3, CoH,and DoW people loved it and moved over to it in droves. And I farmed that mofo for 20 months. Considering that you're posting on this specific website, this is too much hindsight lionization of SC2's multiplay at launch. Yes, launch StarCraft 2 was an excellent and very popular product in general, but when we're talking about just the competitive 1v1 mode, it wasn't quality that moved old-school RTS people there. It was simply the natural migration place of high-level Western players from various other RTS games who had been starved of any kind of pasture, let alone one as green as SC2. 2010's SC2 deserves a ton of credit for drawing in a fresh general audience and convincing them to play 1v1 RTS, but it did not win over the 'establishment.' People who had a realistic alternative—namely the Korean BW community—made it very clear this wasn't an obvious switch.
These "westernized players" of which a huge portion were French and German tried Brood War and preferred RA3, C&C3, CoH, and DoW. These players were very active in the ConquerCup and HeroCup. They preferred these games over Brood War for competitive 1v1. GameReplays.org was very active on the 1v1 competitive multiplayer scene. The site collapsed when SC2 released. A huge portion of these players moved over to SC2.
Also, the migration did not occur "at launch". It occurred in March of 2010. It was like GameReplays.org got hit by an atomic bomb. When SC2 beta went offline in June until the July 27,2010 release date we were all jones-ing like heroin addicts in bad need of our next competitive 1v1 fix.
On August 25 2024 20:56 Waxangel wrote:
It was simply the natural migration place of high-level Western players from various other RTS games who had been starved of any kind of pasture, let alone one as green as SC2.
it was not a "natural migration". People moved on to a better 1v1 experience.
1v1 CoH people thought 1v1 WoL was better so they switched. 1v1 RA3 people, a game that sold 1 million units in 4 months, thought 1v1 WoL was better so they switched. 1v1 C&C3:KW people thought 1v1 WoL was better so they switched. All of these people tried BW and preferred other RTS games.
In March 2010, the SC2 iceberg hit the Titanic GameReplays.org and it sunk.
EA attempted to retain and grow their millions of C&C customers throughout Brood War. EA quit once they saw SC2.
The Google trends on GameReplays.org reflects the SC2:WoL iceberg.
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On August 25 2024 22:55 Waxangel wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2024 21:56 KingzTig wrote:On August 25 2024 20:56 Waxangel wrote:On August 25 2024 06:56 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 25 2024 05:55 Hider wrote:On August 25 2024 04:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 25 2024 04:06 Hider wrote:On August 24 2024 19:17 Qikz wrote:On August 24 2024 11:28 Vindicare605 wrote:On August 23 2024 20:05 Spirral wrote:
With FG it felt all the time like they were targetting specifally me as the target audience for the game, but then they release something that feels completely off the mark, not even close. That's exactly where I'm at. I had every reason to be excited for this title. I'm exactly the player that Frostgiant should have wanted to play their game. And this game is a total miss. I'm genuinely disappointed. This isn't just another game that I can say "oh well, might as well move on to something else." This was supposed to be my new RTS. I was looking forward to dumping thousands of hours into this game, to being active in its community and to watching its esports scene grow and develop. And now I want nothing to do with it. If people are more passionate about voicing their displeasure with the game then that's why. It's because they actually expected something from it. Frostgiant has no one to blame for that but themselves. Funny thing is as a Broodwar guy this is exactly how I felt with SC2. I then went back to BW after a year or so lol. Sc2 was in hindsight a horrible game at the time. It definitely made some improvements over BW in terms of graphics and responsiveness but played out very poorly. Today I think the game quality is immensely better. Nah, in hindsight SC2 was incredible. Campaign was amazing with its various difficulty levels. 2v2 and other team games were great. Cinematics were incredible. The story that made Chris Metzen tear up was great with a super cool ending. And 95% of C&C and AoE 1v1 competitive playersthought 1v1 was really good. GameReplays.org downsized dramatically once the SC2 beta began. 1v1 play in RA3 , C&C3, and CoH could not compete. The weekly ConquerCup became the CraftCup and revenues skyrocketed for many months. 6 months after the game came out a weekly CraftCup with a $100 prize pool had 1100 participants. The CraftCup almost always had 500+ people. WoL did not sell all its copies on Day 1. Most got a good look at the game before buying it. The Retail Box and CE also blew C&C and AoE out of the water. ATVI did lots of great things promoting the game. I will never forget my July 26, 2010 all nighter at a great PC Bang. Everyone had a blast. I was only thinking of multiplayer. The way 1v1 meta played out was atrocious - far worse gameplay than BW: I understand every BW veteran that stayed with that game at the time. I enjoyed at the time but it was more about the novelty and figuring things out. Nah, WoL multiplayer worked great for years. Some laser focused on just BW might not have a taste for WoL brand of RTS. However. RTS generalists, RA3,C&C3, CoH,and DoW people loved it and moved over to it in droves. And I farmed that mofo for 20 months. Considering that you're posting on this specific website, this is too much hindsight lionization of SC2's multiplay at launch. Yes, launch StarCraft 2 was an excellent and very popular product in general, but when we're talking about just the competitive 1v1 mode, it wasn't quality that moved old-school RTS people there. It was simply the natural migration place of high-level Western players from various other RTS games who had been starved of any kind of pasture, let alone one as green as SC2. 2010's SC2 deserves a ton of credit for drawing in a fresh general audience and convincing them to play 1v1 RTS, but it did not win over the 'establishment.' People who had a realistic alternative—namely the Korean BW community—made it very clear this wasn't an obvious switch. i.e. only korean BW community, which remained an anomy. there's way more old school RTS than BW, and at some point you have to wonder why most of them never transitioned to BW. It had "better" campaign, more custom games, social features etc. None of those really mattered. Even before SC2, the core RTS played in SEA was not BW, it was WC3 TFT. When I started going to PC bang like early 2000, you don't even see BW in all PC bangs, it's red alert 2 /AoE 2/ Battle of middle earth/ total war/ wc3 etc. I mean, this isn't even a disagreement? Pretty sure a lot of War3 players woulda stuck to the game if the opportunities were better. SC2 was just way more lucrative and interesting at the time—some War3 players grew to truly love it through the course of expansions and patches, but we've seen many of them return to their roots. My entire point was that 2010 SC2 didn't become the most popular 1v1 RTS solely on its merits—a big factor was that it was the biggest and best supported RTS game in general.
I wasn’t talking about pro players, I am talking about RTS players.
Most RTS players never transitioned to BW from any of the RTS games, including sc2.
If we are talking about 1v1 multiplayer then did BW fail in this regard because of a lack of merit or quality then?
Sc2 was hardest the easiest RTS game to pick up, and it didn’t have the “best campaign “ nor “social”.
In truth I feel like sc2 was constantly misdiagnosed and stormgate is partly the result of the non stop “time to kill” PTSD and ending up with such a dull game (and still has a lot of low time to kill moments)
Meanwhile gate of pyre is feeling like a league of legends born from dota. Zero space being heroes of newerth and battle aces is more like mobile legends
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Northern Ireland23371 Posts
On August 25 2024 22:55 Waxangel wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2024 21:56 KingzTig wrote:On August 25 2024 20:56 Waxangel wrote:On August 25 2024 06:56 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 25 2024 05:55 Hider wrote:On August 25 2024 04:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 25 2024 04:06 Hider wrote:On August 24 2024 19:17 Qikz wrote:On August 24 2024 11:28 Vindicare605 wrote:On August 23 2024 20:05 Spirral wrote:
With FG it felt all the time like they were targetting specifally me as the target audience for the game, but then they release something that feels completely off the mark, not even close. That's exactly where I'm at. I had every reason to be excited for this title. I'm exactly the player that Frostgiant should have wanted to play their game. And this game is a total miss. I'm genuinely disappointed. This isn't just another game that I can say "oh well, might as well move on to something else." This was supposed to be my new RTS. I was looking forward to dumping thousands of hours into this game, to being active in its community and to watching its esports scene grow and develop. And now I want nothing to do with it. If people are more passionate about voicing their displeasure with the game then that's why. It's because they actually expected something from it. Frostgiant has no one to blame for that but themselves. Funny thing is as a Broodwar guy this is exactly how I felt with SC2. I then went back to BW after a year or so lol. Sc2 was in hindsight a horrible game at the time. It definitely made some improvements over BW in terms of graphics and responsiveness but played out very poorly. Today I think the game quality is immensely better. Nah, in hindsight SC2 was incredible. Campaign was amazing with its various difficulty levels. 2v2 and other team games were great. Cinematics were incredible. The story that made Chris Metzen tear up was great with a super cool ending. And 95% of C&C and AoE 1v1 competitive playersthought 1v1 was really good. GameReplays.org downsized dramatically once the SC2 beta began. 1v1 play in RA3 , C&C3, and CoH could not compete. The weekly ConquerCup became the CraftCup and revenues skyrocketed for many months. 6 months after the game came out a weekly CraftCup with a $100 prize pool had 1100 participants. The CraftCup almost always had 500+ people. WoL did not sell all its copies on Day 1. Most got a good look at the game before buying it. The Retail Box and CE also blew C&C and AoE out of the water. ATVI did lots of great things promoting the game. I will never forget my July 26, 2010 all nighter at a great PC Bang. Everyone had a blast. I was only thinking of multiplayer. The way 1v1 meta played out was atrocious - far worse gameplay than BW: I understand every BW veteran that stayed with that game at the time. I enjoyed at the time but it was more about the novelty and figuring things out. Nah, WoL multiplayer worked great for years. Some laser focused on just BW might not have a taste for WoL brand of RTS. However. RTS generalists, RA3,C&C3, CoH,and DoW people loved it and moved over to it in droves. And I farmed that mofo for 20 months. Considering that you're posting on this specific website, this is too much hindsight lionization of SC2's multiplay at launch. Yes, launch StarCraft 2 was an excellent and very popular product in general, but when we're talking about just the competitive 1v1 mode, it wasn't quality that moved old-school RTS people there. It was simply the natural migration place of high-level Western players from various other RTS games who had been starved of any kind of pasture, let alone one as green as SC2. 2010's SC2 deserves a ton of credit for drawing in a fresh general audience and convincing them to play 1v1 RTS, but it did not win over the 'establishment.' People who had a realistic alternative—namely the Korean BW community—made it very clear this wasn't an obvious switch. i.e. only korean BW community, which remained an anomy. there's way more old school RTS than BW, and at some point you have to wonder why most of them never transitioned to BW. It had "better" campaign, more custom games, social features etc. None of those really mattered. Even before SC2, the core RTS played in SEA was not BW, it was WC3 TFT. When I started going to PC bang like early 2000, you don't even see BW in all PC bangs, it's red alert 2 /AoE 2/ Battle of middle earth/ total war/ wc3 etc. I mean, this isn't even a disagreement? Pretty sure a lot of War3 players woulda stuck to the game if the opportunities were better. SC2 was just way more lucrative and interesting at the time—some War3 players grew to truly love it through the course of expansions and patches, but we've seen many of them return to their roots. My entire point was that 2010 SC2 didn't become the most popular 1v1 RTS solely on its merits—a big factor was that it was the biggest and best supported RTS game in general.
I can’t remember whose quote I’m butchering, but quantity has a quality all of its own. Be it in war, or in multiplayer gaming.
SC2 can both be a great product, and its success perpetuating more success, it’s not a dig on the former to, as you say, point out the latter.
I’m not 100% sure why, I know some likely factors but it feels the multiplayer world is a lot more zero sum than in my youth. You’ve mega-games that have inconceivably large player bases if you’d traveled back and said to someone in the 90s/2000s. You’ll have a few titles in some genre that are vaguely viable, and the rest you’ll probably see lower player counts than many games I was trying in the 90s on dialup.
Despite them being quite a small fraction of player bases, I think aspirational competitive players, content creators and streamers definitely contribute. And they do probably drive perception, although how much I don’t know.
Many people wanna be on that loop, the excitement even if they don’t have those aspirations. Or at least benefit from it. In 2010 I enjoy SC2, but as an added bonus of it being the big, big game I get tournaments to watch weekly. I get vibrant forums, I get loads of high-quality guides to help me improve my game. This facet of the game crushed the competition, it was so, so potent that it compensated for SC2 basically having no social features in clients at launch.
I feel an oft-neglected facet of this is modern monetisation too. I feel it’s maybe neglected a bit in conversations on the topic, although it doesn’t hugely impact RTS
You don’t just have to be better than x f2p game, you have to be good enough for players to drop a game they may have put huge hours into, money etc and earned a whole load of in-game items.
It’s a big part of the reason, and IMO goes beyond pure enjoyment of a game, that players ‘main’ titles and are very difficult to dislodge. It’s not quite as extreme as sunk cost, but it’s not a million miles off.
I was more a UT man, but I played Quake(s) too. Unless I wanted to be really, really good at UT with its slightly different mechanics and fully dedicated to it, I don’t ‘lose’ anything in playing that other game. There’s no ‘I put 1000 hours unlocking things, 40 dollars on skins in this game,’ making me reluctant to branch out.
So I think in combination these kind of contribute to a state where you gotta be #1, or you’re nowhere.
I mean people talk about reversing the RTS to MOBA pipeline as a growth area, and perhaps it is. But a lot of MOBA players don’t even play multiple MOBA games for their competitive fix.
Of course as per usual I’m broad brushing and generalising, but it’s a tough space to crack for these, and other reasons
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