Age of empires 2 a decades old game with 30k+ players online right now on Steam and still receiving regular updates and a DLC coming soon. Not to mention the other 10k players divided on aoe3 and mythology.
That’s a great lesson for Blizzard. Maybe next time you guys learn from your mistakes and give more love to this legendary franchise called Starcraft and such a beautiful genre like RTS.
Microsoft even doubling down on their bet for RTS with the new Aoe4 coming on 2021.
It would be foolish to think that Activision plans to grow SC2.
SC2 is what I’d call the last bastion of Blizzard (every other franchise has been touched by Activision in a major way). IAPs and loot box systems have been introduced to all others:
========================================================================
The only thing that Activision did for SC2 was to:
If you thought that Activision was planning to grow the SC community through SC2, then they are probably looking at this and laughing their heads off. SC2, despite being such a longstanding game, may perhaps be profitable. But make no mistake to think that it is profitable enough for Activision to continue investing and upkeeping it properly. It isn’t.
========================================================================
Activision has been in the past few years attempting to remove all traces of Blizzard. In the end, their focus is profits first, players second… oh wait. Are players even in the equation? They definitely know the problems and limitations with SC2, but they are confident that this approach is what keeps investors happy. That is their choice of focus.
Imagine if WoW is down over these 2 holiday weeks, especially with Shadowlands’ launch. There will be a public outcry so big that it will make the Cyberpunk 2077 scandal pale in comparison. The company will activate every single engineer / technician to be called back to work regardless.
As for SC2, who cares about players?
Great analysis you made there. it’s a shame such a jewel like Starcraft being treated the way it is. For example, the game been broken since christmas and yet to be fixed.
It is capitalism and nothing else so far.
Nah sc deserve more then coop and dlc nova
Tell this to Activision. I understand your claims, and community ones (not just simple whines “I can’t play VS [insert race] because [insert unit], nerf them!”
Who cares . Age of empire can have 10000x more players I will still play and watch Starcraft .
That’s not the end of the world,eventually it will be fixed,there is no need to be a crybaby and wanting an instant fix during holidays.
Insecure people care about players. I would only care about the players once the 1v1 queue gets extremely long (20+ min), something that I doubt it will happen.
If AoE2 has 17k players, good for them.
Blizzard almost killed the RTS genre with Warcraft 3, but as soon as the competition died out, it showed it’s true face.
Blizzard was never good at making their own games, they just lifted everything from other people, and adapted it to their format.
What Blizzard WAS good at doing, was making it all fit together, and providing a clean, fluid gameplay experience.
Starcraft 1 was the only game they ever got really balanced, and it was by far their highest achievement.
Now that they messed up Starcraft with the second installment, it is time for more classic, actual RTS games, with lots of building and teching up, to rule the genre, and guide it to a better, less micro-finnicky, future.
SC2 is king aliev gaem.
No, it is dead, and deservingly so.
I hope a new RTS comes along soon. I don’t know how people enjoy AOE 2, it’s as cringy to micro as SC and it’s basically just playing one race (I know there’s slight variations between nations). Never mind the graphics. It’s also stupid how long you can draw out the games due to defender’s advantage. There is literally a better version of AOE 2 inside SC2. Even in the older days, SC2 had so much potential that Blizzard never tapped into. Just look at DOTA 2 (WC3 example). It’s disgusting to see how much potential has been thrown away…
Do you want something classic or something actual?, you can’t have both.
Classic RTS games are the only one that were actually strategical.
You could not micro your troops into over-effectiveness.
A single Catapult shot should always kill all the Archers it hits, a wall of Pikes should always stop Cavalry dead on it’s tracks.
The fact is, Starcraft is a mechanical RTS, not a strategic one. Speed on the keyboards matters much more than fast thinking, it is a game of reaction, not planning.
Starcraft 1 went around this by having powerful spells that would win fights mechanical skill simply could not. It kept snowballs out of the game.
Starcraft 2 eliminated those spells, in favour of sports-based mechanical gameplay, and died out for it.
For all their faults, games like Command & Conquer (up to Red Alert 3) and Age of Empires 2 kept truer to what RTS actually is, a game of strategically placed super hard counters, in which the best plan, not fastest hands, wins.
And the fans of the genre are finally starting to see it. Esports was one of the worst things that happened to this genre, the other being Warcraft 3 (MOBA mechanics).
Yes, I find it a bit boring from the competitive point of view. The games I have seen goes always follow the same pattern, many minutes getting sheeps and berries, many minutes getting wood, then making a wall with houses and wood, then spamming farms while making army. Every attack is done after a proxy castle is finished, fights are basically rally point with a bit of attack move. In sc2 the patters are there but there is action almost from the start and micro is gamechanging.
How is that different to sc2 counter system?, and how is shooting a catapult strategic while shooting any sc2 is not?.Sc2 has a clear counter system.
Sc1 was mechanically demanding, just moving the units require unit control, the player with the best mechanics will win every time. True there is no deathballs, but the game still requires good mechanics to land the spells, its not strategy,its mechanics, in sc2 these mechanics are softened.
Give these games to competitive players on the same level as koreans and you will see that they will turn the game into speed and mechanics.
Marines can survive Colossi shots in SC2, which is absurd. It is a unit designed specifically to destroy T1 light units, but with the magic of micro, the Marines can not only survive it’s attacks, but even destroy it.
Back in SC1, a Reaver would just smash a bunch of Marines in 1 second, the Marines needed support to engage it, micro would not help them win.
That is how different it is.
They won’t, they tried but could not. The fact that a nuke can just destroy a whole base, that resources are extremely limited, and that defenses are overwhelmingly stronger than units (as to compensate for lack of mobility), made these games much less mechanical.
You cannot beat a Castle with mechanical skill, it is designed to counter that. You need specialist units, and you need to protect them until the Castle crumbles; for example.
Lets wait for the game of Giant Frost Studios then
Hopefully a true successor to the Warcraft 2 and Starcraft 1 formula.
Those were GREAT games. I still replay them often.
Frost Giant isn’t ganna produce a product in at least 2 years, probably 5 years until they gave out a demo.
Dreamhaven or Small Yeti.