Streaming nowadays can make or break the longevity of a game. Streaming is important because it is free commercialism for a game and that brings in & maintains player base. Streamers are also good with organizing fun community events that otherwise wouldn’t happen for the community.
Sometimes games “look good” on stream or are “easy to watch & understand”, which brings in a lot of streamers. An example of this would be something like a popular fps, which generally always makes for good exciting quality streaming that even your grandmother could understand & follow the moment she began watching the stream.
Then other times we have games that feel great to play but aren’t so great to watch on stream for several reasons. These kinds of games struggle to maintain attention from any serious streamers because they get less views when streaming it. This is bad because streamers are free commercialism which propagates & maintains player base. Not only do we want streamers but we need them.
Now let’s be honest about D2r and how it will look on stream in the long haul. In the beginning we’re going to have thousands of people streaming this game, with a handful of prominent streamers in the mix I’m sure. This will be great initially. The first full release ladder will be exciting on stream. And actually, PvM in even Diablo 2 Legacy streams rather well for a much older arpg, better than most modern arpgs actually. Streaming D2 PvM is easy to understand for anyone who tunes in, even if they don’t know the game well. it is also easy to follow and understand what is happening on the screen. This is all good. Where I see a problem is that in the long haul, no one is going to watch a guy MFing routinely going in and out of games and doing the same thing on repeat every 10 minutes, unless his dialogue is absolutely genius. This leaves the bulk of D2 PvM stream interests within resets and the race/journey to hell completion. ← This can actually be quite entertaining to watch. Well it will be initially. But in the long haul, people will begin to care much less about D2 PvM on stream. It’s gonna start out hot and dwindle.
Of course there are all of these ways for streamers to try and bait views such as through contests, community events, doing something weird like “I am playing through with Poison Dagger Necro!” but this is all try hard gimmick. What will there be left to stream that is interesting in the long haul?
It’s going to be PvP. PvP has always been a large part of what made Diablo 2 what it is, so of course streamers are going to want to stream PvP. The only problem here is that D2 is one of those games that doesn’t look so good on stream in PvP. Playing Diablo 2 PvP and watching Diablo 2 PvP are two very very different things. The action is so jumpy and fast that when you are not the person behind the mouse & keyboard, understanding what the player is doing is not very intuitive at all and that makes things confusing to watch. You also don’t get much of a chance to really see the opponent he is fighting because the stream will only focus on the player’s head who is streaming. This is also no good for quality viewing. Remember, we WANT streamers and streamers are going to want to stream PvP. But streamers are going to need something worth streaming.
My suggestion for Blizzard is that they implement some kind of measure or measures that will allow streamers to get better footage in PvP so that it is easier to watch and follow, and provides a higher quality viewing experience on stream. We need the streaming of end-game PvP for every reason, but that PvP needs to look good on stream or not many will care to watch. A few ideas that I have here:
- A player could enter a spectate mode while standing in town, and remotely toggle between the screens of different players dueling in the Blood Moor. So if I were to click the Sorc’s name, I get to watch the Sorc from his screen as if I were playing the Sorc. Then I can click the Necro’s name that he is fighting, and it will toggle me over to the Necro’s screen so we can stream that guy for a minute before clicking on the Farcast Zon’s name to go see & comment on what he is doing. The way things are as of now, there is no way for a Streamer to follow anything or anyone outside of his own screen.
- During spectate mode, there is a free movement camera option that allows you to zoom around the Blood Moor and watch what others are doing without actually viewing things from their player screen. It would essentially be a free roam camera that moved around real fast like if a player had 300% frw or something like that. Again, these kinds of option would allow streamers to follow matches with commentary and properly cover things like community organized tournaments. With the way things are now, we can only stand in town while watching two other guys on the mini map. There is no way to cover anything PvP wise, unless you are the person dueling.
- If this is even possible, it would be AMAZING to be able to go into that spectate mode and zoom waaay out, far enough to where you could see just about half the Blood Moor, and watch what everyone was doing in their duels at the same time on one screen. ← If that could be done, I would imagine that D2r Team PvP would probably become a very real scene for people to follow. But with the way things are now, trying to stream Team PvP is a mess ^^
But yeah, any enhancements to the viewability of streaming PvP would be excellent.
I think it would be more accurate to say that it’s unpopular because it takes time to learn and you need to really understand builds and gearing, gear up correctly etc. I’d also agree that things like telestomps and dsyncs can be a confusing viewing experience but with commentators all that can be explained pretty easily.