Topic.
I’ve been on a SC2 break for past 4 years and only recently started playing again just after the last S4 warchest ended.
Stetmann has been the only new comm Blizz has offered since then.
Has it been completely random or a steady release every few months?
Don’t think any new ones have been tied into the warchest events either?
In older vids on YT I see people selecting their comm which much bigger icons when there was more room on the UI.
I wonder if they plan on releasing more and shrinking the icons even more. Looks like there is room for 2 more the way the current comm selection is set up.
Here’s the full record of commander release dates
https://old.reddit.com/r/starcraft2coop/wiki/history
3 Likes
Cheers, thx.
Looks like on average there is a new comm every 4 months almost. There have been some quite long windows too; up to 9 months between releases.
I feel like we are not going to be getting many more new ones as the frequency seems to go down year by year.
Dread to think what I’m starting here, but… okay. Usually when people try to make predictions about the future of Co-op these days there are two major pieces of background that come up. You might want them.
-
The lead Co-op designer changed early last year. It’s now Kevin Dong, who we all know as monk. He was a Starcraft fan and Co-op player (and speedrunner) first. Tychus, Zeratul and Stetmann were made by him (or by a team under him). In this time we’ve also had revamps of all the existing commanders, one new map (Cradle of Death: based on a contest-winning fan-made map) and had new Mutations restart. There’s also some datamined info suggesting they’re exploring a new challenge mode called Abominations.
-
Blizzard went through some financial and reputation-related woes late last year. I didn’t read that much about it, but I believe there were a lot of redundancies and it’s likely to have been the catalyst of some major changes of strategy.
2 Likes
Expect another commander for Blizzcon. That’s it for 2019.
4 Likes
I hear that there are only two this year. One is Stetmann, and another would be released at Blizzcon.
Do you guys think the longer intervals between commander release means the SC2 team is slowly giving up on the game and/or co-op mode?
I keep hearing the game is thriving in Korea/Asia but in N.America is has died down and considered a “dead” game given that it’s almost a decade old.
While I hope the above is not true the decreased frequency of comms and new maps makes me worried they’ve started to give up on this game.
SC2 has been around for a while, and it is far from a dead game. Majority of current age gamers consider any game without a Esports or big twitch viewer count to be a dead game.
The players numbers are not changing. SC1 was a game that you always got your friends into and could always come back to. SC2 is no different, especially in co-ops. Majority of SC2 RTS gamers don’t go on forums, watch videos, or look out for content via the web, they are just long time loyal fans who can never kill the time they spent in SC2.
1 Like
Starcraft, both the first and the second, is a game that I consistently comet back to every year. I don’t play it year round, and I will never be higher than gold, but it is always something I have enjoyed playing. So long as they keep the online servers up, I’ll keep coming back. I know several people like this. They don’t keep up on the latest update, and they don’t post on the forums, but they still come and play every few months.
I would actually say that the rebalancing of versus, and much it had changed between expansions, and then the big changes since the launch of LotV had been a big detriment to this. The arcade is a more familiar playground than versus now because they need to relearn the the gane because many units are different than they used to be.
Agreed.
I got so many people into SC1 back in the day when battle.net was first a thing and the occasional LAN party.
Although it’s hard to pinpoint, whenever I log on to SC2 over the past couple months there does seem to be fewer people/games played.
I feel you on this one. I’ve not played SC2 since approx 2014 and so much has changed now and none of my friends log into it or most other Blizz games.
1 Like
My guess is that’s just how it is. Starting off, there were only 7 COs. Releasing a new one would offer relatively tremendous amounts of new content. Releasing more of them helped keep the momentum going. We’re now at 16 COs. Each new CO adds comparably less. True, you’ll have “die hards” who play the hell out of the game and get bored again. But for many, the combination of CO pairings, + Missions, seem to have been sufficient.
Also, IIRC, we had 2 to 4 new Missions since Coop was first introduced.
We’ve actually had 10 missions added on top of the initial 5, so the numbers were pretty drastically increased. It’s just in the past two years the rate of missions has slowed significantly.
2 Likes
Right, and this is why I was wondering the initial pace of releases for comms and maps.
There seems to be more/better arguments for why we wont get a SC3, and while I hope that is not the case, when you combine that possibility with the decreased content of SC2 over past couple years it makes me worried about this franchaise’s future.
Tbh, I’d like to see a ‘SC2 Remastered’ sometime that updates the graphics/engines and ports over the same game modes we currently have.
SC2 is sitting on a very stable “content line” in a business model. Let me explain:
SC2 being the core RTS game stretching as long back as sc1 has endless dedicated players who we all know are on and off and new players get attracted easily through its various modes of gaming and mods, especially co-op. The “content line” is the base of players where you know as a statistical governed gaming company, is the sum of players on average that play daily. And for SC2 that is a very high number compared to most of the games currently through gamers of every genre.
Because SC2 is an RTS game it always has that somewhat casual, safe spot, favorite game that players always keep in their active gaming lists. And it being the game that it is reaches out to all type of gamers regardless of their personal likes be it horrors, sims, 4x, fps, etc.
Keeping the above in mind. It’s age is what helps it along. Cause no one expects immediate changes and Esports-grade attention. But Blizzard does keep it going, they are showing full attention to it. The speed that a game should upgrade at is often attempted to be set by the gaming community, if too many of them cry the game company who have their own initial plans and algorithms in place, have to attempt to change everything or they Anthem in the ground. Sorry had to.
I like many in my various gaming comms, all Notice commanders in SC2 coming in at a rate of 2~8 months. Next one will be in BlizzCon, which is understandable.
But BECAUSE THIS IS the type of game that it is as a faithful and long time gamer that’s had 20k-hrs in sc1, I might actually go to said BlizzCon for a first.
Unlike most public gathering gaming events Blizzard tends to have the most new faces and recycled member increase statistically then most other games currently out. That’s an Ace in my book. Lol.
Do you think they will be releasing another one by then? I suppose since it is Blizzcon they need to announce something for SC2 besides the expected warchest for next year.
Speaking of warchest; yes, I can see your point in that regard how they try to raise and bring in funds for e-sports.
We know how Activision is their obsession about making profits and I’m not exactly certain how profitable SC2 is these days? I know warchest events bring in some $$$ and they probably make a modest amount on coo-op commanders.
Perhaps you are right but I am hesitant to say this is factual. It will be interesting to look up the statistics on this sometime.
I can’t speak for SC2 much as most of my time over the years has been spent on WoW and D3 which both have seen drops in subs and amount of players.
Good luck to you with that.
Blizzcon and similar gaming events have never been my cup of tea so I could not imagine spending $ on a plane ticket/hotel just to be told my fav game franchise is coming to mobile, as a PC gamer.
Perhaps 2019 is going to be different but the past couple Blizzcons (mobile Diablo and no news at all the one before that) have been a let down.
I digress though, my issues with the con are not really SC2-related.
You know, when you cut up a text like that to individually address different points, you end up missing the point which is its sum. Hehe.
SC2 is a game, and as a game I treat it as such. I leave digressing, doubts, and forced emotions for the real world. I’m pretty content with Blizzard which is really the only reason I’d go, to show my respects. To each their own after all.
Cough cough
Lol. These days Blizzard likes us to think that co-op is completely dead then throwing a new Commander at us.
They don’t seem to like spiting me anymore either.