How do I know this? It’s easy! All you have to do is look at the games played for the past year: https://i.imgur.com/XEPdIPh.png
Yikes! It went from 295k/day to 174k/day. So in the past year it has lost 121k games/day aka 41% of its popularity. SC2 is definitely a dead game. It’s in a death spiral from stagnant gameplay, the worst balance ever recorded (thanks protoss), and devs who are completely silent about the numerous problems.
How do I know it’s caused by balance issues? That’s another easy one. Here is the same chart only overlayed with ladder representation numbers: https://i.imgur.com/yOYz955.png
Do you really think it’s a coincidence that the game’s numbers are tanking at the same time Protoss dominance on the ladder has hit unprecedented levels? Give me a break. A neanderthal could put 2+2=4 together. The insane imbalance of Protoss is quite literally putting the game into a death-spiral. The game’s popularity was actually really good back in mid 2019 when Protoss only had a small lead on the ladder, but as Blizzard buffed Protoss through the roof, the game’s popularity has fallen precipitously as a result.
Based on the rate the game is losing there are roughly 524 days until it hits 0 games/day. PPP: enjoy your ruined game while there are still players who play it!
Think it might have something to do with the game no longer creating new content, and the soon to be announced Age of Empires 4; one of the first classic base builder rts AAA games to see a release in a long time that isn’t some limp spinecrawler of remaster or another clash of assault your wallet clans. Mongolian horse archers will be the new stalkers.
I don’t know if that’s the reason, but I think this is the result of many things and not a single one like OP is saying. First, the amount of games per day got so high because covid, lockdown, many people trying the game, other players playing more. 1 year ago there was the same amount of games as today but now the situation is getting better, no lockdown, there is a vaccine and people can get out. And then, in one year tons of new releases happen, even two new consoles on the market, we don’t know the impact of all those new games. And of course, the announcement of no content is something that scared a lot of people.
It’s not realistic thinking that the amount of players and games per day are not gonna change without drastic changes,since years the trend is less games per season, we only needed a deadly worldwide plague to getting more games per day. Even if the game was perfectly balanced, eventually many players would leave the game, not everyone wants to play the same game for years specially if it’s a 1v1 competitive game, even getting older makes you play less and starcraft player base is apparently pretty old, I used to play around 15-20 games per day at my peak, now I play maybe 20 games per week if I feel it, most of the time I want to play non serious single player games.
That may contribute however it’s clear balance heavily affects how often people play the game (no surprise there). PvZ favors protoss and zerg is the least played race both in # of players and in # of games played on average per player. So fewer people play zerg and those that do play it less than those who play P/T.
That’s for drop-dead 0. The game is already dead in the sense that none of your friends play it anymore & the ladder queue times are horrendously long & the system can’t find good opponents for you.
It’s only going to get worse and the ladder system / arcade / etc will be unplayable long before it reaches 0 games/day. There’s already a lack of talent both in the people who play the game & in the content creators (map creators etc) as a result of mass-migrations to other games. Imagine what it will be like 1 month from now with 6% fewer games played each day. Two months it will be 12%. Three months and 18%.
A healthy game would have millions of games per day, would be GAINING this many per day, and would have decades of future life left in the product. This is a half-sunk, RAPIDLY sinking ship.
The game was doing great until the a-wall protoss buffs. The games/day has dropped immediately & proportionally to Protoss’ overperformance on the ladder. It turns out that when a game is designed poorly to give your opponents massive advantages, it’s not fun to play and people don’t play it! Wow! Amazing!
When the game was balanced in mid 2019, it actually hit an ALL TIME HIGH for LotV. You don’t need massive changes. You just gotta make the game fair. It’s literally that easy.
The facts don’t lie kid. Also a person who bases his beliefs on facts cannot be described as “delusional” as that is a complete contradiction of the definition of the word:
Delusional. 1 characterized by or holding idiosyncratic beliefs or impressions that are contradicted by reality or rational argument, typically as a symptom of mental disorder
So when your beliefs are based on facts they are not contradicted by reality, in fact the opposite is true.
I don’t think it’s surprising that the numbers are dropping, although I’d argue for different reasons. We are in an age where players expect live service with frequent updates (and actual communication), and Blizzard already announced that they have ceased all development. Attention spans are pretty low and expectations are high; new games are constantly coming out and people jump around often. Then factor in how RTS games are no longer popular.
I bet you a huge drop off occurred within 1 month of the announcement that the game was essential end of life. I know I quit for like 5 months once they made that announcement and only in the last month have returned.
PvZ favors Protoss enormously. Fewer people play Zerg and those who do play Zerg play fewer average games than those that play Protoss. There are 60k zergs and 70k protoss. If you bump up the number of zergs by 17% and increase the number of games that zerg players play by 21% (aka making zerg as popular as protoss) you’d increase the number of games played per day by 21k. That’s roughly 17% of the game’s decline that can be attributed to balance.
Balance heavily affects the popularity of not just the game, but each race. That’s just the fact of it.
Yep. Right after buffing Protoss to setting (im)balance records. A race has never achieved 45% in GML until now. In mid 2019 the game was actually quite balanced. Blizzard decided to burn what was left of SC2 to the ground with completely insane buffs to Protoss that completely broke PvZ and set Protoss soaring in GML.
It’s called a base trade, sweetie. The queens are slow. You make shield batteries in your nat. You sack your third. Your voids wreck all of his buildings then recall. This isn’t rocket science, it’s Protoss. It’s hard to find something simpler than Protoss in fact. Maybe checkers? I dunno that one’s actually pretty complicated by comparison. Tic tac toe is a better comparison and Protoss always goes first
