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[Chazore]

green_sky said:

Not only is the focus on pvp but high level pvp players. So much of gameplay design and balancing is done for top 1-3% of players. I know that post was about RTS but am speaking in general for lot of other pvp or games that want to be esports.

Like for Overwatch. So much focus on Overwatch League and design the game around them. If no one is playing the damn game and enjoying it. They won't watch it.

Just my few thoughts.

You're on the money, and it's why over time I've been getting put off games that come out, that want to be balls to the wall hardcore PVP. I even disliked the time when WoW tried to turn itself into a PVP esport, but thank god that died off in the end.

I originally got into OW because I wanted to learn more of the character's backstories, since Blizz was using those for their marketing, but as we found out, they didn't really bother with that and focused entirely on turning the game into an esport, one that's basically dead at this point, and OW 2 is still trying to chase a dead fad. 

Captain_Yuri said:

As a person that has played Starcraft 2's single player, competitively played multiplayer and these days, casually play multiplayer for Starcraft 2 still, I think there needs to be a good mix of both. The Single player of RTS games is important for a lot of casual people but once that ends, the multiplayer is what keeps people talking and on going as seen by his very own charts of the starcraft 2's ladder matches. Age of Empires IV certainly made the mistake of focusing too much into the esports style especially for it's single player but the irony for AoE IV is that it's multiplayer is also pretty bad in comparison to AoE2 Definitive Edition as well.

AoE IV gives you like 8 civs vs AoE2DE gives you 39 civs after all the DLCs and such. AoEIV has a ton of balance issues. The minimap is a joke when it comes to readability. There is no ranked seasons and no user generated maps/mods. There's also no patrol move which is very essential for online. On top of that many of the basic functionality such as hotkeys and etc haven't even been implemented yet on AoEIV. And there's also lots of other issues while AoE2DE has all that and still getting updates. AoEIV still has a goodish roadmap that will fix many issues but it will be a while before it can ironically compete against AoE2DE.

But overall, I do think they need a good mix of both. What makes Starcraft 2, AoE2DE and such still relevant today is they both have a strong single player and a strong multiplayer on top of getting the basics right. AoEIV did both single player and multiplayer wrong not to mention it's visual style is pretty meh. Maybe one day they will fix it but from what I have tried and seen, it will be a long ways away.

There's definitely a mix, but I'm finding it hard to deny what the author was trying to point out via his collection of data, as well as an official at blizz stating who played the campaign vs who stayed for PVP, it kinda paints the picture that PVP RTS isn't really as big as it was cracked up to being.

All my fond memories come from me playing epic skirmish battles, the campaigns, the co-op vs AI fights, while my worst memories stem from the times I played PVP, the one time one of my friend's friend lost his collective shit because I beat him in a 4 players free for all, that he had to be taken outside the net cafe to chill himself out from strangling me (me and him never got on, but he was a colossal asshole to anyone but my two friends at that time).

The thing is, TLOU was renowned and remembered fondly for it's story and campaign, and while it did offer that side-line PVP mode, hardly anyone remembers that anywhere as much as the story itself. I remember Quake, UT, TF2 for their PVP, because those games were primarily designed with mostly PVP in mind (yes Quake had a campaign, but the story is so blaze' at this point that I can only remember the PVP matches).

I even watched a response vid to that guy's own vid, and even that SCII player points out that people both like playing the campaign and watching SCII LP's (but it's a mix of both, from campaign to PVP).

AoE IV like the author said, feels like it was designed with PVP in mind, which is why after all these years of waiting, we only get a few civs, poor physics, units the size of buildings and a UI that looks far too clean to be considered AoE UI, which tells me that it was all for PVP and not what AoE is known for.

I have a feeling that AoE IV has sold like shit compared to all the other versions, and I'm going to blame the lack of content and fixes (I also dislike the UI and poor physics and the part where it looks like a mobile RTS). I can't believe that after 3-4 years, MS still didn't give it their all for one of their beloved RTS IP's, but then again, look at Halo Infinite and how we're still freaking waiting for god damn co-op and other fixes (which again tells me that they are still focused on quantity, not quality and I fucking wish they'd knock that shit off, because this is why we've waited this long for stuff like Direct storage, the wasted Game bar, the fuddled game mode and GPU scheduling, all practically kicked out the door and not implemented on).

I do think that the next dev making a new RTS should at least put a bit more focus on crafting a memorable campaign, lore and units that stand out, and then focus on PVP, once the cool units are in play for skirmish/SP, and then cut out the cool OP units for PVP matches (I don't want a repeat of SCII and seeing cool units stripped away because of the PVP focus, as I find that cannibalistic from a game design perspective). 

Btw, if you have the time, here's that follow up response vid that SC II player did (the one that was in the author's vid, interviewing the Blizz dev):

It's actually neat to see this dude's perspective vs the author's.

Last edited by Chazore - on 26 March 2022