Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

Re:Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active player... by _carbyau_ on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @11:42PM (#27058930)

"people don't want "fair" though, they want to win about 2/3rds of the time"

This is why I think PvE is more sustainable for a player base and more conservatively solid as a business plan. WoW for instance.

But then by definition it isn't PvP and isn't going to get the same player base.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active player... by Aerroon on Thursday May 06, 2021 @04:20AM (#27060456)

Designing a game around PvE is hard though. It's difficult to create an AI challenge that's interesting and can simultaneously challenge extremely good and mediocre players without feeling impossible.

I think the future of PvE games is going to be in AI. If game developers could put a DeepMind-playing-StarCraft level of AI into games without immense cost, then it's going to change games quite a lot. It wouldn't be perfect, but you could have AI offer a challenge to players for longer without feeling unfair. (It's still AI that doesn't learn based on the player though, which means that the players would eventually figure out the puzzle of the AI.)

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Re:Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active player... by _carbyau_ on Thursday May 06, 2021 @06:39PM (#27069832)

Better AI is always a good thing in PvE, but as you say, hard to do.

I think the immediate future is asymmetrical roles for humans.

For example, one side is playing FPS for a Kill/death ratio basically, the other side is a single person playing RTS for a win/loss ratio.

IE Mechwarrior team deathmatch. Team of multiple human FPS players against a single human MechCommander-with-basic-AI-team.

It'd give scenarios more flexibility and allow for human intelligence to combat the meta.

And allow the FPS people to get a 2 or 3 to one kill ratio.

[ Parent | on HN ]