Blizzard being a generally terrible developer aside, I don’t think you’re right about this.
RTS is not a very popular genre all things considered, and the ARTS/MOBA variants are dominated by DOTA and League of Legends.
You also can’t play RTS games on consoles.
A lot of fans of StarCraft still wish they saw StarCraft: Ghost see the light of day. Arguably the franchise is very much underdeveloped. The IP and story would work well for many game genres that haven’t been explored.
If StarCraft 3 comes out it would only be popular in South Korea and possibly not all that popular at all even there.
> If StarCraft 3 comes out it would only be popular in South Korea and possibly not all that popular at all even there.
Given that StarCraft 2 still hasn't fully displaced BroodWar, I shudder to think of the uphill battle a StarCraft 3 would face.
Really, in this era of live service games, it would make more sense to release a client refresh (multithreading + anniversary graphics) for SC2, and an expansion pack of new campaigns...
You realize people said the exact same stuff before SC2, right? Saying it's a dead genre, nobody is going to buy it so they won't make it, etc. And yet SC2 was extremely successful. I predict SC3 would be equally successful if Blizzard can do a good job making it (which is not certain these days).
Halo Wars sold 16.7% of Halo 3’s first week sales according to Wikipedia.
It was commercially successful but not in a mainstream mass audience kind of way.
Yes, it proved that RTS can be done on a controller (arguably, StarCraft 64 kind of sort of proved that, too), but if you’ve ever played StarCraft 2 I think you’d agree that particular style of RTS is really not possible without a keyboard and mouse. The game is almost entirely revolving around maximizing your actions per minute.
I also think the RTS genre is very much less popular today and then it was at that time.
> The game is almost entirely revolving around maximizing your actions per minute.
Maybe for top tier play, but apm wasn’t really needed for regular play.
Just to debunk this myth, it used to be possible to get to diamond with 80-100 apm (which is very easy to achieve), efficient builds, fundamental rush defense, and a-move.
Not sure about now, but it was doable for many years.
Halo Wars is also not much of an RTS. While it does have base building, the SP campaigns are full of RTT-like missions. It is actually a very fun game that stands way above compared to a more “by the numbers” implementation of, for example, Command & Conquer 3. Halo Wars found a much better balance and is a much more polished console experience.
Nailed it. People want patched versions of the same RTS. AoE4 came out a few years ago as an IMO fantastic RTS which smoothed over many of the idiosyncrasies of AoE2. From a multiplayer perspective, it was doomed from the start, for not being AoE2. I couldn't even convince my friends to play it with me. (Everyone is still playing AoE2, and expansions + patches are still regular)
BTW AoE4 is nowhere near doomed, i play AoE4 multiplayer regularly and hear this often. AoE4 has about half the number of daily players (12-15K) that AoE2 does, but it’s easily enough to play multiplayer. It also gets regular DLCs and updates and has had a stable playerbase for years now. Basically its less popular and many AoE2 players will never switch, but it’s an active game.
That is a quote from the lead developer of WoW about how everyone asking for classic wow thought they wanted it but wouldn't actually play it. Then blizzard made classic wow and it was a huge hit.
There is also a disconnect between "customers" and "players". I am under the impression that RTS games have proven harder to monetize in an ongoing manner, or at least harder relative to the effort required to build and maintain them. That doesn't mean there isn't a solution, and this is just one person's limited perspective... but it seems to be the case thus far.
What evidence do you have that this is the general sentiment among 'customers' rather than your own? Genuinely asking, I too would have preferred an RTS but my sense is the player base for RTS is much smaller than a shooter.
I've played quite a few hours of Blizzard games throughout the years and as much as I loved the starcraft universe RTS is just not approachable for me. So I can vouch as one person who is really excited to get a taste of the universe outside the RTS genre.
That said, whether the game itself will be good is still TBD.
In the very same conference they announced WoW Forever. So whatever it is, it's not necessarily systemic, because they seemed to have nailed that audience.
What’s wrong with doing different things with an IP?
Halo was originally conceived as an RTS, then turned out to be a successful FPS. Then they made a fairly successful RTS too.
Everything Blizzard does is met with such absurd hostility. Gamers pay $60 for 100+ hours of entertainment and still feel like they’re getting screwed at every turn.
Are they disconnected from its customers in current year?
They may be alienating the core audience that made them who they are, but I don't think they're disconnected from their customer base, which has changed. RTSes are not popular and they are not platform-agnostic like an FPS is.
From Blizzard's perspective, this "we" isn't worth the trouble in terms of sales figures. The audience for RTS has fragmented quite a bit into other niches and Blizzard wants to do huge releases with great ROI for their IP, not pay fan service to us.
People may not want to admit this, but RTS is a thing of the past. There haven't been a big, successful release of a brand new RTS for years. Most recent releases are remasters of games from decades ago. There is no money in another RTS, and Blizzard understands that.
If you don't believe me, read some books and articles -- this has been well analyzed and discussed.
Sorry but you are the one disconnected from the reality of today's gaming market.
Honestly as someone who grew up playing SC, WC3 etc... it gets kinda old. If you have played one, you have played them all. I totally welcome an FPS in the Starcraft world and something fresh from Blizzard.
Let's not kid ourselves that it would be a good RTS. Starcraft 2 + expansions is a very poor game compared to brood war. If you haven't watch the ASL it's definitely worth a gander:
I'm still amazed that Blizzard dropped the ball on recreating the same environment that enables dynamic play, instead it's always a formation of rock paper scissors with very little nuance in between.
Starcraft2's problem was that it was 3 separate games with incredible patches that completely changed everything.
The balance team had no idea of the game they wanted StarCraft 2 to be. By the time it all settled down the community went back to SC:BW.
I'm positive there was some combination of SC2 patches that was amazing, if only the patch/balance team stuck with it. I don't know which set of patches that was though.
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I have ranted before about deathballs. Beginners want deathballs but advanced players want something deeper than a deathballs.
For all of their faults, SC:BW and AoE2 are anti-deathball. SC:BW is somewhat "accidentally" anti-deathball because of map bumping and poor patching.
AoE2 has incredible siege and defensive emplacements (castles and bombard cannons and siege onagers) that counter deathballs, above and beyond SC2 anti-deathball options.
The AoE2 deathballs unit, the Crossbowman (line) needs like 30+ units before it really starts to feel oppressive, and universally everyone has rams and mangonels to kinda deal with them (or Skirmishers).
I haven't touched it in ages. But I always felt that it SC2 was more successful in taking out APM and "Deathball" mechanics. I remember a lot of cheese options and nuances. I guess there is just a big spread between balancing the pro players and the bronze league fuckers like myself. I have more nostalgia for SC:BW but only played online thanks to SC2 matchmaking. I think making an RTS that ticks all the boxes is incredibly difficult.
> But I always felt that it SC2 was more successful in taking out APM and "Deathball" mechanics
On "Deathballs", no. SC2 always allowed the player to select all military. SC2 always had smoother patching and better programmed "flocking" behavior.
In SC:BW, it's an APM feat to simply control 12 Dragoons/Goliaths/Siege Tanks across a bridge. Meanwhile, a hundred SC2 Stalkers can easily chain-blink across the same terrain no issues.
In SC:BW, the bad patching and bumping is part of the balance. In SC2, all units moved too smoothly and too easily, as such deathballs are always easier to setup.
SC2 allowed players to easily control Deathballs, so then they tried to balance that by making splash attacks more powerful.
In contrast, it's literally impossible to control a deathballs in SC:BW, because you can only ever select 12 units. Literally impossible to control more units (and even then, those 12 units were extremely wonky around bridges or other terrain features).
In SC:BW, the deathballs debate is innately moot. No human can control a deathballs anyway so it's not even a debate. Like controlling 48 zerglings is a feat reserved for top pros.
Further, because control of 48 zerglings is so hard, pros who COULD do it use the 4x groups of Zerglings on increasingly divergent points of the map (harassing multiple bases), rather than concentrating their efforts in one area. Might as well "tax the opponents APM" by attacking multiple locations if you have such good unit control or APM.
Sometimes SC2 was anti APM. Other times, SC2 adds chronoboost / MULEs for no other reason than to eat up APM and provide an outlet for physical clicking and increase APM.
As it ends up, SC2 is randomly anti-APM and pro-APM, depending on the patch, depending on the year.
By swinging back and forth trying to cater to both camps, all that was accomplished was confusion and ultimately a loss of trust between players and the balance team. In many regards, the community swinging back to SC:BW or AOE2 is because we don't like patches that change the game so dramatically.
AOE2 seems to have hit the correct balance point, major changes that the community desires (ex: Longswords being viable after 25 years of constant buffing) but never so major that it fundamentally alters the game the community likes.
Or ex: being brave enough to throw out all sea units / Naval Battles and basically start over from scratch. (Kind of a big change but one the community actually enjoyed).
-------
SC2 patches were more random feeling and more knee jerk.
I'll have to look into AoE2, never knew it was that in-depth. I only played it as a child, also played BW as a child and that stuck as I still play it periodically since remastered came out.
Since you seem to be tapped into the AOE2 scene, any tournaments you'd recommend checking out?
Can you explain why this is your personal hell? I don't see it as any different than sports like tennis or games like chess. Some things can have extremely long lifespans with dedicate player bases, what's the problem that video games have adapted for this too?
Or is it more about unwilling to try newer things? As someone who plays video games I can agree with this, I always felt odd about the modern "forever" games like fortnight or dota or lol. At some point you want to move onto newer things, I understand that feeling.
If you mean career wise, that I understand but these types of things happen for niche interests. How would you prevent personalities from developing in decade long cultural events? I suppose that's the problem with niche hobbies, new blood is exciting but uncommon while sometimes you want people to move on and let others get their moment in the sun.
I guess they’re wanting to go after the void Bungie left with Destiny?
I can’t tell if this is too late a move though or if there will be a void and a desire still by the time this releases.
Is there any other studio working on releasing a similar game already since it was obvious Destinys life was short lived for a while with Bungies focus on Marathon?
It’s funny because that’s word for word what blizzard said after years of people asking for WoW Classic. Which ultimately they ended up making and is very successful. Sometimes people know what they want.
Don't get me wrong, I'm excited for a StarCraft shooter despite it not being StarCraft at all (I enjoy the universe). I wanted StarCraft: Ghost back in the day, and this feels like a taste of that dream.
That said, targeting a release of 2030 is wild to me. Look at the Astra game dev hype that's hitting twitter right now. Yes it's all filtered to the best possible examples / yes people are not one shotting these things, but still it's very clear that LLMs are beginning to be very capable at game dev in a way that doesn't look/feel like ass.
LLMs are going to become more capable over time. I think most of us can agree that eventually they'll be competitive with AAA developers given enough GPU cycles. I would argue that given rate of improvement, we're looking at that point coming in the next year or two.
It's just starting to be capable of making assets in blender / unreal. Given this rate of advancement, what is the state going to be like 4 years from now? It really feels a bit like the "travelling to distant stars" problem, where at some point it's faster to wait for better engines than to leave now. I worry that by the time this gets released, the market is going to be flooded with fully custom AAA games that are hyperniche. 4 years out is a long, long time to wait, and it's a longer time to bet on success / market dynamics.
I just read the book Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment by Jason Schreier (without having played any of their game or being aware that BlizzCon is around the corner). It seems they'll repeat their own mistakes.
I am getting more and more pessimistic about these studios and their AAA works. Every game is now a gamble with multi year effort with hundreds if not thousands of staff behind it. If a game doesn't sell, and that happens more than once, layoffs are coming. And for Blizzard specifically, it'd better be an online game that's going to be a multi billion dollar cash cow they can keep milking for years. If not, they would not work on the game in the first place.
Of course they have released many great games, but as the history has proven, you can't just keep coming up with new games that are original, fun if not addictive and also make money, especially with the fierce competition today.
Which makes me think I should spend more money/time on indie games than the action/adventure game from big studios that are increasingly repetitive and boring. We need more, smaller studios to give us something new.
Matches my experience. Indie games can be delightful, full of Easter eggs and heart that the dev(s) build for the fun of it. I just played through Hollow Knight for the first time and man, what a great experience.
I just started playing with building a game in Godot with Fable 5.1 last weekend and the pace is crazy. Obviously there's a world of difference between what looks playable on my machine and what a AAA studio with the best human artists and developers can put out, and I appreciate that they still exist and put in the first class effort, but... yeah. A 3-year timeline while this is going on seems out of touch with what's going on in the world.
Apparently 6 years is not an uncommon development cycle for AAA right now. For a random example, Ghost of Yotei which is also an open world game, was in development for 4 years. That game is a sequel too, and I think Sucker Punch is probably less dysfunctional than Blizzard at the moment. Still it might have been premature to announce it at this stage.
I'm not a gamedev so I might be wrong, but my friend showed me in 2020 a quick 30 minute tutorial in unity. In this time he made a basic 3d shooter game. The first video is the type of game a teenager would have made 20 years ago and the second one is of course a lot more impressive, but I believe the game engine is doing a lot of the heavy lifting there.
This is pretty typical for a new blizzard game. For example Diablo 3 and 4 were both announced 4 years prior to release. Not saying it’s good or bad, but it’s not unusual.
I came to say the same - I remember it being an excruciatingly long wait for SC2, which was also apparently over 3 years between announcement and release [0]
The strongest pitch at BlizzCon was WoW Forever, I think.
It's finally cementing Classic as a format with its own set of disciplines, and I believe it'll draw a lot of players back from Turtle, Ascension, etc. which have seen interest in recent years.
I'd love to see Blizzard work with the community projects [0][1][2] that underpin most private servers to release first-party (or "blessed by Blizzard" third-party) engine tooling (the way they used to with games like StarCraft and Warcraft) for WoW as a whole.
Doing that would be a lot easier than continuing this cycle of having to revamp things every few years to keep pace with what their arch enemy (the private server community) is doing.
Some players would argue that private servers are where the most interesting ideas for the WoW franchise are coming from, and that Blizzard haven't made experiences that are compelling enough to justify paying their subscription to play on official servers for a long time. WoW Forever is probably changing that for a lot of people, obviously, but for how long?
Consider, also, solo creators [3] who want to work on passion projects (with no intent to hurt Blizzard's bottom line by running a public server and "stealing" their players with their own intellectual property.) Why should they have no support whatsoever from Blizzard to create new games/experiences within WoW?
It's worth remembering that entirely new genres of games emerged from the communities of earlier Blizzard titles, like tower defences and MOBAs. And they turned out to be famously missed opportunities for Blizzard. Why haven't they learned this lesson yet?
I watched the live reveal and thought it looked cool. I played a lot of the RTS growing up and remember being hyped for Ghost, so seeing an FPS in the Starcraft universe is interesting. More interesting to me than another RTS, which I personally would not play (just not an interesting genre to me anymore).
Starcraft 2 is the only game I still play from time to time. Yes, you can probably make more money making a shooter, but there is a reason Starcraft is such a cultural phenomenon.
It just makes me sad that every decision nowadays is driven by profit and there is just very little courage left to do something else.
It doesn't exist to me unless there's a gameplay trailer. Might as well just be some dude on the bus downtown next to me telling me about his idea for a game.
4chan's /v/ has been slamming Blizzard pretty hard. It is interesting to see but not at all surprising. The current roster of Blizzard leadership is chasing something that alienates their core fanbase (as opposed to core audience), whatever is left of them.
For me, two things:
1) Going to Diablo 5 without even having Diablo in Diablo 4 is strange. I don't know the reasoning behind this. I'm assuming the recent acquisition by Microsoft made them have to put out a set of new trailers and this was one of them. Anything to please the shareholders to prevent themselves from getting canned. I don't know for sure, just a hypothesis.
2) Starcraft's trailer, to me, was WH40K in almost every way. It was uncannily not Starcraft. This is partly because, while Blizzard basically killed Starcraft from inside, Warhammer grew massively and now has a presence across many game genres (and table top of course). In a lot of cases, franchises such as Dawn of War, Space Marine, and so on and so forth. WH40K took the gamers "back" from SC, in a sense, since Starcraft and Warcraft cribbed too much from WH early on anyway. Nowadays a new genre could be invented and Warhammer would have some random developer able to license their IP and build a game around it, and it would have a fan base from day one. As an IP, Warhammer fucks.
It is very strange to see Starcraft lean into a competitor like this rather than stand on their own with the character and narrative development they have established. The trailer was very off-putting in its tone and somewhat uninteresting. At the very least WH40K has a grimdark vibe with its whole "there is only war" attitude. Starcraft never had that as part of its cachet.
Compared to SC2's "Hell it's about time" which ties nicely into the campaign that actually makes sense, this trailer leaves a lot to be desired.
I saw them in store a couple of weeks ago. I was taken aback as well since I do not read gaming news anymore and had no idea they expanded into this. They look like a cheap imitation of WH40K which I just found baffling. Do they not know who their competitors are? Who is their target audience?
> What is everyone’s favorite RTS right now? Hobby / non-competitive
"From Glory To Goo" is a small indie RTS+tower defense+base building+automation which has great value for its price. WARNO is pretty great nowadays, if you're into "modern" military RTS, online community is a bit up their own ass sometimes though, but what online community isn't, better with friends! Beyond All Reason is also great and entirely free and open source, and runs great even for really huge maps and games, totally worth a try if you've never played it and like RTS.
> Anything worthwhile on mobile?
Never heard of anyone playing RTS games on mobile :P Sorry
To me they're different, one I'd put mostly in the "automation" category (Factorio), the other base-building/defense. You have units you can control for example, in From Glory To Goo, and it's quite literally about getting rid of the "Goo", while in Factorio the "aliens" are more a side-activity in that you have to deal with them.
No gameplay footage and a release date in the next decade. Blizzard is just testing the waters to see if there’s any interest in yet another shooter. Or rather if the StarCraft franchise still has clout.
20-25 years ago I’d be certain Blizzard has some aces up their sleeves. Today not so much. They probably do this to respond to pressure from corporate overlords.
Incredible to see how disconnected Blizzard is from its customers. One more shooter, when we wanted the next RTS.
Blizzard being a generally terrible developer aside, I don’t think you’re right about this.
RTS is not a very popular genre all things considered, and the ARTS/MOBA variants are dominated by DOTA and League of Legends.
You also can’t play RTS games on consoles.
A lot of fans of StarCraft still wish they saw StarCraft: Ghost see the light of day. Arguably the franchise is very much underdeveloped. The IP and story would work well for many game genres that haven’t been explored.
If StarCraft 3 comes out it would only be popular in South Korea and possibly not all that popular at all even there.
> If StarCraft 3 comes out it would only be popular in South Korea and possibly not all that popular at all even there.
Given that StarCraft 2 still hasn't fully displaced BroodWar, I shudder to think of the uphill battle a StarCraft 3 would face.
Really, in this era of live service games, it would make more sense to release a client refresh (multithreading + anniversary graphics) for SC2, and an expansion pack of new campaigns...
> You also can’t play RTS games on consoles.
You can, see StarCraft 64.
Starcraft 64 is infamously terrible and is evidence that RTS games don't work on consoles.
I rented it at blockbuster, loved it, bought it, and then played many hundreds of hours on it. I don’t know if I agree with your statement as written.
That said, I don’t know if I would even touch a RTS on a console these days. So maybe I agree in spirit.
SC64 has an 80 on Metacritic. Re-evaluate your statement with evidence.
> You also can’t play RTS games on consoles.
Pikmin.
You realize people said the exact same stuff before SC2, right? Saying it's a dead genre, nobody is going to buy it so they won't make it, etc. And yet SC2 was extremely successful. I predict SC3 would be equally successful if Blizzard can do a good job making it (which is not certain these days).
> You also can’t play RTS games on consoles.
You certainly can. See Halo Wars.
Halo Wars sold 16.7% of Halo 3’s first week sales according to Wikipedia.
It was commercially successful but not in a mainstream mass audience kind of way.
Yes, it proved that RTS can be done on a controller (arguably, StarCraft 64 kind of sort of proved that, too), but if you’ve ever played StarCraft 2 I think you’d agree that particular style of RTS is really not possible without a keyboard and mouse. The game is almost entirely revolving around maximizing your actions per minute.
I also think the RTS genre is very much less popular today and then it was at that time.
> The game is almost entirely revolving around maximizing your actions per minute.
Maybe for top tier play, but apm wasn’t really needed for regular play.
Just to debunk this myth, it used to be possible to get to diamond with 80-100 apm (which is very easy to achieve), efficient builds, fundamental rush defense, and a-move.
Not sure about now, but it was doable for many years.
Halo Wars is also not much of an RTS. While it does have base building, the SP campaigns are full of RTT-like missions. It is actually a very fun game that stands way above compared to a more “by the numbers” implementation of, for example, Command & Conquer 3. Halo Wars found a much better balance and is a much more polished console experience.
> You think you do, but you don't.
Nailed it. People want patched versions of the same RTS. AoE4 came out a few years ago as an IMO fantastic RTS which smoothed over many of the idiosyncrasies of AoE2. From a multiplayer perspective, it was doomed from the start, for not being AoE2. I couldn't even convince my friends to play it with me. (Everyone is still playing AoE2, and expansions + patches are still regular)
BTW AoE4 is nowhere near doomed, i play AoE4 multiplayer regularly and hear this often. AoE4 has about half the number of daily players (12-15K) that AoE2 does, but it’s easily enough to play multiplayer. It also gets regular DLCs and updates and has had a stable playerbase for years now. Basically its less popular and many AoE2 players will never switch, but it’s an active game.
That is a quote from the lead developer of WoW about how everyone asking for classic wow thought they wanted it but wouldn't actually play it. Then blizzard made classic wow and it was a huge hit.
They basically only did it because the private servers had enough of a userbase that they felt obliged to get that money for themselves afaict
Product Market Fit rarely flatters the egos of visionary product managers.
^^ i think this is pretty fucking insightful, yeah
you can't be the next steve jobs without some acrimonious counterpoint that shows unique and true vision
angels eat that shit up. see also: theranos, et al
I wonder how ICCup was able to stay online for so long? Hosted out of Russia?
Blizzard released sc2 and people Happily switched over. I think at sc2 peak, maybe 10% still played sc1 and 90% played sc2
I think I have over 5000 hours on SC2, played since day 0 until fewer years ago.
SC1 was full of pathfinding bugs
There is also a disconnect between "customers" and "players". I am under the impression that RTS games have proven harder to monetize in an ongoing manner, or at least harder relative to the effort required to build and maintain them. That doesn't mean there isn't a solution, and this is just one person's limited perspective... but it seems to be the case thus far.
What evidence do you have that this is the general sentiment among 'customers' rather than your own? Genuinely asking, I too would have preferred an RTS but my sense is the player base for RTS is much smaller than a shooter.
Who are they targeting? With SC IP, I’d assume they are targeting SC fans, who probably want more RTS.
If you’re trying to launch a cool new shooter, why use SC IP?
I've played quite a few hours of Blizzard games throughout the years and as much as I loved the starcraft universe RTS is just not approachable for me. So I can vouch as one person who is really excited to get a taste of the universe outside the RTS genre.
That said, whether the game itself will be good is still TBD.
In the very same conference they announced WoW Forever. So whatever it is, it's not necessarily systemic, because they seemed to have nailed that audience.
While I can feel the pain, the truth is somewhat less outrageous and more somber: Customers for a Blizzard scale RTS simply do not exist.
What’s wrong with doing different things with an IP?
Halo was originally conceived as an RTS, then turned out to be a successful FPS. Then they made a fairly successful RTS too.
Everything Blizzard does is met with such absurd hostility. Gamers pay $60 for 100+ hours of entertainment and still feel like they’re getting screwed at every turn.
Are they disconnected from its customers in current year?
They may be alienating the core audience that made them who they are, but I don't think they're disconnected from their customer base, which has changed. RTSes are not popular and they are not platform-agnostic like an FPS is.
From Blizzard's perspective, this "we" isn't worth the trouble in terms of sales figures. The audience for RTS has fragmented quite a bit into other niches and Blizzard wants to do huge releases with great ROI for their IP, not pay fan service to us.
You are wrong. People that remember the cancelled StarCraft Ghost are excited for this.
I’ve been waiting for a rehash of StarCraft Nova or whatever it was called forever - speak for yourself.
A full WarCraft III expansion is more than I expected in what has become such a niche genre
People may not want to admit this, but RTS is a thing of the past. There haven't been a big, successful release of a brand new RTS for years. Most recent releases are remasters of games from decades ago. There is no money in another RTS, and Blizzard understands that.
If you don't believe me, read some books and articles -- this has been well analyzed and discussed.
Sorry but you are the one disconnected from the reality of today's gaming market.
Honestly as someone who grew up playing SC, WC3 etc... it gets kinda old. If you have played one, you have played them all. I totally welcome an FPS in the Starcraft world and something fresh from Blizzard.
Let's not kid ourselves that it would be a good RTS. Starcraft 2 + expansions is a very poor game compared to brood war. If you haven't watch the ASL it's definitely worth a gander:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIpLl2W2chg
I'm still amazed that Blizzard dropped the ball on recreating the same environment that enables dynamic play, instead it's always a formation of rock paper scissors with very little nuance in between.
Starcraft2's problem was that it was 3 separate games with incredible patches that completely changed everything.
The balance team had no idea of the game they wanted StarCraft 2 to be. By the time it all settled down the community went back to SC:BW.
I'm positive there was some combination of SC2 patches that was amazing, if only the patch/balance team stuck with it. I don't know which set of patches that was though.
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I have ranted before about deathballs. Beginners want deathballs but advanced players want something deeper than a deathballs.
For all of their faults, SC:BW and AoE2 are anti-deathball. SC:BW is somewhat "accidentally" anti-deathball because of map bumping and poor patching.
AoE2 has incredible siege and defensive emplacements (castles and bombard cannons and siege onagers) that counter deathballs, above and beyond SC2 anti-deathball options.
The AoE2 deathballs unit, the Crossbowman (line) needs like 30+ units before it really starts to feel oppressive, and universally everyone has rams and mangonels to kinda deal with them (or Skirmishers).
I haven't touched it in ages. But I always felt that it SC2 was more successful in taking out APM and "Deathball" mechanics. I remember a lot of cheese options and nuances. I guess there is just a big spread between balancing the pro players and the bronze league fuckers like myself. I have more nostalgia for SC:BW but only played online thanks to SC2 matchmaking. I think making an RTS that ticks all the boxes is incredibly difficult.
> But I always felt that it SC2 was more successful in taking out APM and "Deathball" mechanics
On "Deathballs", no. SC2 always allowed the player to select all military. SC2 always had smoother patching and better programmed "flocking" behavior.
In SC:BW, it's an APM feat to simply control 12 Dragoons/Goliaths/Siege Tanks across a bridge. Meanwhile, a hundred SC2 Stalkers can easily chain-blink across the same terrain no issues.
In SC:BW, the bad patching and bumping is part of the balance. In SC2, all units moved too smoothly and too easily, as such deathballs are always easier to setup.
SC2 allowed players to easily control Deathballs, so then they tried to balance that by making splash attacks more powerful.
In contrast, it's literally impossible to control a deathballs in SC:BW, because you can only ever select 12 units. Literally impossible to control more units (and even then, those 12 units were extremely wonky around bridges or other terrain features).
In SC:BW, the deathballs debate is innately moot. No human can control a deathballs anyway so it's not even a debate. Like controlling 48 zerglings is a feat reserved for top pros.
Further, because control of 48 zerglings is so hard, pros who COULD do it use the 4x groups of Zerglings on increasingly divergent points of the map (harassing multiple bases), rather than concentrating their efforts in one area. Might as well "tax the opponents APM" by attacking multiple locations if you have such good unit control or APM.
Sometimes SC2 was anti APM. Other times, SC2 adds chronoboost / MULEs for no other reason than to eat up APM and provide an outlet for physical clicking and increase APM.
As it ends up, SC2 is randomly anti-APM and pro-APM, depending on the patch, depending on the year.
By swinging back and forth trying to cater to both camps, all that was accomplished was confusion and ultimately a loss of trust between players and the balance team. In many regards, the community swinging back to SC:BW or AOE2 is because we don't like patches that change the game so dramatically.
AOE2 seems to have hit the correct balance point, major changes that the community desires (ex: Longswords being viable after 25 years of constant buffing) but never so major that it fundamentally alters the game the community likes.
Or ex: being brave enough to throw out all sea units / Naval Battles and basically start over from scratch. (Kind of a big change but one the community actually enjoyed).
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SC2 patches were more random feeling and more knee jerk.
I'll have to look into AoE2, never knew it was that in-depth. I only played it as a child, also played BW as a child and that stuck as I still play it periodically since remastered came out.
Since you seem to be tapped into the AOE2 scene, any tournaments you'd recommend checking out?
I feel bad for these people man. Flash, Tastosis. I get they’re doing what they enjoy, but holy shit that is not a life I want to live.
Can you explain why this is your personal hell? I don't see it as any different than sports like tennis or games like chess. Some things can have extremely long lifespans with dedicate player bases, what's the problem that video games have adapted for this too?
Or is it more about unwilling to try newer things? As someone who plays video games I can agree with this, I always felt odd about the modern "forever" games like fortnight or dota or lol. At some point you want to move onto newer things, I understand that feeling.
If you mean career wise, that I understand but these types of things happen for niche interests. How would you prevent personalities from developing in decade long cultural events? I suppose that's the problem with niche hobbies, new blood is exciting but uncommon while sometimes you want people to move on and let others get their moment in the sun.
SC1 may have been harder but it's not better.
It's more fun to watch, which is what matters to the small dedicated fan base.
I guess they’re wanting to go after the void Bungie left with Destiny?
I can’t tell if this is too late a move though or if there will be a void and a desire still by the time this releases.
Is there any other studio working on releasing a similar game already since it was obvious Destinys life was short lived for a while with Bungies focus on Marathon?
>"when we wanted the next RTS."
You think you do, but you don't.
It’s funny because that’s word for word what blizzard said after years of people asking for WoW Classic. Which ultimately they ended up making and is very successful. Sometimes people know what they want.
>"It’s funny because that’s word for word what blizzard said after years of people asking for WoW Classic."
Indeed, that's the joke
Money talks, bullshit walks.
> a target release date of 2030
Don't get me wrong, I'm excited for a StarCraft shooter despite it not being StarCraft at all (I enjoy the universe). I wanted StarCraft: Ghost back in the day, and this feels like a taste of that dream.
That said, targeting a release of 2030 is wild to me. Look at the Astra game dev hype that's hitting twitter right now. Yes it's all filtered to the best possible examples / yes people are not one shotting these things, but still it's very clear that LLMs are beginning to be very capable at game dev in a way that doesn't look/feel like ass.
LLMs are going to become more capable over time. I think most of us can agree that eventually they'll be competitive with AAA developers given enough GPU cycles. I would argue that given rate of improvement, we're looking at that point coming in the next year or two.
To emphasize this point, a year ago GPT-5 got released. This was the type of game it would make: https://youtu.be/yTHo7tMborY?t=324
This is the type of game Astra is making: https://youtu.be/GuO_Eo34C8E?t=348
It's just starting to be capable of making assets in blender / unreal. Given this rate of advancement, what is the state going to be like 4 years from now? It really feels a bit like the "travelling to distant stars" problem, where at some point it's faster to wait for better engines than to leave now. I worry that by the time this gets released, the market is going to be flooded with fully custom AAA games that are hyperniche. 4 years out is a long, long time to wait, and it's a longer time to bet on success / market dynamics.
I just read the book Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment by Jason Schreier (without having played any of their game or being aware that BlizzCon is around the corner). It seems they'll repeat their own mistakes.
I am getting more and more pessimistic about these studios and their AAA works. Every game is now a gamble with multi year effort with hundreds if not thousands of staff behind it. If a game doesn't sell, and that happens more than once, layoffs are coming. And for Blizzard specifically, it'd better be an online game that's going to be a multi billion dollar cash cow they can keep milking for years. If not, they would not work on the game in the first place.
Of course they have released many great games, but as the history has proven, you can't just keep coming up with new games that are original, fun if not addictive and also make money, especially with the fierce competition today.
Which makes me think I should spend more money/time on indie games than the action/adventure game from big studios that are increasingly repetitive and boring. We need more, smaller studios to give us something new.
Matches my experience. Indie games can be delightful, full of Easter eggs and heart that the dev(s) build for the fun of it. I just played through Hollow Knight for the first time and man, what a great experience.
I just started playing with building a game in Godot with Fable 5.1 last weekend and the pace is crazy. Obviously there's a world of difference between what looks playable on my machine and what a AAA studio with the best human artists and developers can put out, and I appreciate that they still exist and put in the first class effort, but... yeah. A 3-year timeline while this is going on seems out of touch with what's going on in the world.
Apparently 6 years is not an uncommon development cycle for AAA right now. For a random example, Ghost of Yotei which is also an open world game, was in development for 4 years. That game is a sequel too, and I think Sucker Punch is probably less dysfunctional than Blizzard at the moment. Still it might have been premature to announce it at this stage.
I'm not a gamedev so I might be wrong, but my friend showed me in 2020 a quick 30 minute tutorial in unity. In this time he made a basic 3d shooter game. The first video is the type of game a teenager would have made 20 years ago and the second one is of course a lot more impressive, but I believe the game engine is doing a lot of the heavy lifting there.
"Set to launch 2030"
Why even bother to announce this now? I only see downsides in mentioning something that far out.
“First time?” Buster Scruggs meme
Maybe to protect the project from internal politics?
Meanwhile Nintendo announced Ocarina of Time remake out November
This is pretty typical for a new blizzard game. For example Diablo 3 and 4 were both announced 4 years prior to release. Not saying it’s good or bad, but it’s not unusual.
I came to say the same - I remember it being an excruciatingly long wait for SC2, which was also apparently over 3 years between announcement and release [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft
It's typical one or two decades ago, but I doubt it will go well in today's world.
All I could think about watching the trailer was that this must be a game based on Starship Troopers.
The strongest pitch at BlizzCon was WoW Forever, I think.
It's finally cementing Classic as a format with its own set of disciplines, and I believe it'll draw a lot of players back from Turtle, Ascension, etc. which have seen interest in recent years.
I'd love to see Blizzard work with the community projects [0][1][2] that underpin most private servers to release first-party (or "blessed by Blizzard" third-party) engine tooling (the way they used to with games like StarCraft and Warcraft) for WoW as a whole.
Doing that would be a lot easier than continuing this cycle of having to revamp things every few years to keep pace with what their arch enemy (the private server community) is doing.
Some players would argue that private servers are where the most interesting ideas for the WoW franchise are coming from, and that Blizzard haven't made experiences that are compelling enough to justify paying their subscription to play on official servers for a long time. WoW Forever is probably changing that for a lot of people, obviously, but for how long?
Consider, also, solo creators [3] who want to work on passion projects (with no intent to hurt Blizzard's bottom line by running a public server and "stealing" their players with their own intellectual property.) Why should they have no support whatsoever from Blizzard to create new games/experiences within WoW?
It's worth remembering that entirely new genres of games emerged from the communities of earlier Blizzard titles, like tower defences and MOBAs. And they turned out to be famously missed opportunities for Blizzard. Why haven't they learned this lesson yet?
0: https://github.com/mangos
1: https://github.com/TrinityCore
2: https://github.com/azerothcore
3: https://www.youtube.com/@Yafrovon
Impressive. They managed to turn the hype video in a more depressing parody of Starship Troopers.
Are we finally going to get StartCraft: Ghost ?
ikr, that's the first thought I had too. Looking forward to Warcraft Adventures next. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warcraft_Adventures:_Lord_of_t...
Nobody wanted this. This is so off base. This is Microsoft operating at an insanely incompetence.
Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49677715
I watched the live reveal and thought it looked cool. I played a lot of the RTS growing up and remember being hyped for Ghost, so seeing an FPS in the Starcraft universe is interesting. More interesting to me than another RTS, which I personally would not play (just not an interesting genre to me anymore).
Starcraft 2 is the only game I still play from time to time. Yes, you can probably make more money making a shooter, but there is a reason Starcraft is such a cultural phenomenon.
It just makes me sad that every decision nowadays is driven by profit and there is just very little courage left to do something else.
4 years out, and only a cinematic trailer. It's a lot to take on faith at this point, though I do hope its good
It doesn't exist to me unless there's a gameplay trailer. Might as well just be some dude on the bus downtown next to me telling me about his idea for a game.
4chan's /v/ has been slamming Blizzard pretty hard. It is interesting to see but not at all surprising. The current roster of Blizzard leadership is chasing something that alienates their core fanbase (as opposed to core audience), whatever is left of them.
For me, two things:
1) Going to Diablo 5 without even having Diablo in Diablo 4 is strange. I don't know the reasoning behind this. I'm assuming the recent acquisition by Microsoft made them have to put out a set of new trailers and this was one of them. Anything to please the shareholders to prevent themselves from getting canned. I don't know for sure, just a hypothesis.
2) Starcraft's trailer, to me, was WH40K in almost every way. It was uncannily not Starcraft. This is partly because, while Blizzard basically killed Starcraft from inside, Warhammer grew massively and now has a presence across many game genres (and table top of course). In a lot of cases, franchises such as Dawn of War, Space Marine, and so on and so forth. WH40K took the gamers "back" from SC, in a sense, since Starcraft and Warcraft cribbed too much from WH early on anyway. Nowadays a new genre could be invented and Warhammer would have some random developer able to license their IP and build a game around it, and it would have a fan base from day one. As an IP, Warhammer fucks.
It is very strange to see Starcraft lean into a competitor like this rather than stand on their own with the character and narrative development they have established. The trailer was very off-putting in its tone and somewhat uninteresting. At the very least WH40K has a grimdark vibe with its whole "there is only war" attitude. Starcraft never had that as part of its cachet.
Compared to SC2's "Hell it's about time" which ties nicely into the campaign that actually makes sense, this trailer leaves a lot to be desired.
> Warhammer grew massively and now has a presence across many game genres (and table top of course)
StarCraft now also has its own figurine tabletop game. No idea what it's worth though: https://starcraft-tmg.com/
I saw them in store a couple of weeks ago. I was taken aback as well since I do not read gaming news anymore and had no idea they expanded into this. They look like a cheap imitation of WH40K which I just found baffling. Do they not know who their competitors are? Who is their target audience?
I'm okay with them generating some popularity with the franchise. That would benefit any potential RTS later.
2030 though... isn't that like 8 years away?
2030? I see they changed how one spells “Daikatana”.
John Blizzard is gonna make us his bitch!
bobby kotick already did that and retired with the insane gains he made
WARHAMMER 40.000: SPACE MARINE 5 (i guess real studios will crank out two more of those before this one is released...)
What is everyone’s favorite RTS right now? Hobby / non-competitive. Anything worthwhile on mobile?
> What is everyone’s favorite RTS right now? Hobby / non-competitive
"From Glory To Goo" is a small indie RTS+tower defense+base building+automation which has great value for its price. WARNO is pretty great nowadays, if you're into "modern" military RTS, online community is a bit up their own ass sometimes though, but what online community isn't, better with friends! Beyond All Reason is also great and entirely free and open source, and runs great even for really huge maps and games, totally worth a try if you've never played it and like RTS.
> Anything worthwhile on mobile?
Never heard of anyone playing RTS games on mobile :P Sorry
Took a peak at From Glory To Goo
Doesn't it look like a copy of Factorio? Is the game play different?
To me they're different, one I'd put mostly in the "automation" category (Factorio), the other base-building/defense. You have units you can control for example, in From Glory To Goo, and it's quite literally about getting rid of the "Goo", while in Factorio the "aliens" are more a side-activity in that you have to deal with them.
AoE2. Whether you can label that non-competitive is questionable, however.
So, it's a Helldivers reskin that's going to be 10 years late to the party?
trying to reconcile AGI timelines with this video games timeline
I like how they killed him instantly, its an old SC meme where the space marine pops out and is insta killed.
But really, aren't there enough first person shooters? But a huge lack of RTS's. Lets have a new Star Craft Real Time Strategy game.
Maybe if the First Person Shooter works out, they will spend the money on an RTS.
Blizzard has always had some of the best cinematics in the industry. They're usually 100x better than the actual game. I wish they had a movie studio.
I was wondering how Blizzard's best creative minds would ruin an RTS and make it live service...
AFAIK the majority of people responsible for their legacy RTS games have left, so I figure they feel less capable of even trying.
They announced a new expansion for Warcraft III this past weekend actually. So they are definitely still trying : )
It’s already out
It's not a live service: https://wccftech.com/blizzard-starcraft-shooter-rejects-live...
I'll believe it when I see it- 2030 is a ways off! Diablo IV looked good initially too!
> At the very least, what we are building right now is not a seasonal game.
Looks like StarCraft meets Starship Troopers but without that extra pinch of irony which likens this trailer to a fascists wet dream.
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49677715
OMG!
No gameplay footage and a release date in the next decade. Blizzard is just testing the waters to see if there’s any interest in yet another shooter. Or rather if the StarCraft franchise still has clout.
20-25 years ago I’d be certain Blizzard has some aces up their sleeves. Today not so much. They probably do this to respond to pressure from corporate overlords.
2030 lol