I think you overestimate, not the other way around. People will only look for and use third party tools if they have a problem, but even then, most people will actually just move on to another game if they run into these kinds of problems rather than try to fix them. People are fickle like that. Also, most people don’t even participate in communities like this. You and I talking here, along with everyone else, we’re a minority still. Same thing goes with player retention in other ways. Dunno if its still accurate or not, but several years after WoW came out, it was reported that something like 2/3 of people who pick up the game don’t even make it to level 10 before quitting- and that’s something you can do in the first few hours of the game.
In the end, all I can tell you is I didn’t use it, nor did i even hear about it until this very thread. And I played a LOT in the first several years of the game’s existence. Perhaps if I had problems, I might have came across it while searching for solutions. But I never had a big enough problem with network performance that I felt the need to find external solutions. And it’s a pretty safe bet that if I, a not-very-serious player that still invested quite a bit of time in the game, did not know about or discover it before now, that typical players usually didn’t either.
What we’re dealing with here is confirmation bias. You used the thing, and people you know used the thing, thus you think “everybody” used it. But if you only look at people that fall into the same category as you, you’re going to get a biased view of the situation.
This is a chicken and egg thing. But I can promise you that most people who have played and quit reforged did so because the game was broken in myriad ways- not because (or at least just because) their ping wasn’t optimal. Most of the people who have refunded the game either couldn’t launch it at all, or had severe performance problems, or constant crashes. I don’t know one person who quit purely because their ping was higher than it was in some other game. I’m not saying that ping wasn’t a problem with anybody or that nobody quit because of it, but, you guys are higher skill players, you’ve made that pretty clear, and your standard for ping and probably other performance metrics is higher than that of the average player. So even that dozen players you refer to is still likely outside of the majority. And in general, higher level players feel like there are more of themselves than there actually are.
Again: I’m not saying we don’t deserve better ping. I’ve never said that. Please don’t misconstrue me there. But in the grand scheme of things, it is, for most people in most cases, a very minor issue compared to other problems with the game. I personally only have an issue if I get into a KR-hosted match. 80-90ping on USW and ~120 on EU, I find both to be totally playable. The game itself colors games with a ping under 100 green, as in “good,” and pings over that yellow as in “OKish.” And that’s exactly how I feel about it. Not sure what the cutoff is before it colors it red, but every KR game ive seen has a ping over 300- that’s near a third of a second and is enough to make it feel like you’re dragging your units through a few feet of mud. And never outside of a KR game have I felt like ping made me lose a game. Leavers and game start disconnects have been a FAR worse problem for me than ping could ever be.
but I’d argue Wc3 was popularized by competitive and serious gamers.
I don’t really agree. Look at all the people who come on this forum and they talk about issues with the campaign and maybe custom games like footie frenzy and stuff like that. Serious players don’t care about the campaign, they care about competition. They probably beat the campaign in the first few days after the game came out and then forgot about it.
Any extent to which this is true owes to the fact that RTS games in general are more complex and taxing than many other genres. But the campaign on normal is really quite easy, even for people not that used to RTS games.
It’s easy to say stuff like this when you personally are invested in the scene. But VERY few games out there are principally populated by invested, hardcore gamers.
Also side note, while I’m not super serious about this game, I am far, far from a casual gamer. This is just not my main game, even though it’s one I had a passion for for quite some time.