Rome:Total War has been released on mobile devices and Tropico is soon to follow. A stylus would seem to be able to approximate a mouse pointer.
Blizzards strange Blizzcon reveal
- Thread starter Bunkerkind Anni
- Start date
Rome:Total War has been released on mobile devices and Tropico is soon to follow. A stylus would seem to be able to approximate a mouse pointer.
Well not played it Total War mobile.
Just looked up some reviews tho :
https://www.pocketgamer.com/articles/072070/rome-total-war-review-a-legion-inside-your-ipad/ said:
As I said mouse keyboard enabled genres, to quote myself from a page or two back "it's why the RTS (real time strategy) genre came to be, a genre which removed previous turn based limitations."
Their solution was to use the pause button and make it no longer realtime? To move away from what mouse/kb enabled?
or
https://www.pockettactics.com/reviews/review-rome-total-war/ said:
or
https://www.pockettactics.com/reviews/review-rome-total-war-barbarian-invasion/ said:
So I dunno, I think I stand by mobile controls being inferior to mouse/kb, either resulting in developers moving to simplified controls, or a simplified interface or game.
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Anyone seen that footage of the Blizzcon,
where they present a mobile only game to a horde of PC gaming enthusiasts that where waiting for a new Diablo game to play.
i have never seen a game presentation gone so wrong.
felt like the country bar scene from blues brothers
I've heard about that. I had to laugh hard. This is 100% Blizzard. They've failed with start of Diablo 3 and never recovered from that. I've forgotten them long ago and never bought a game again from them since that very day.
I guess they worked out something for mobile to melk the cashcow. Microtransactions! A lot of them! This is what "games" are these days
I've heard about that. I had to laugh hard. This is 100% Blizzard. They've failed with start of Diablo 3 and never recovered from that. I've forgotten them long ago and never bought a game again from them since that very day.
I guess they worked out something for mobile to melk the cashcow. Microtransactions! A lot of them! This is what "games" are these days
Let's take our Bordeaux and add sugar, carbonation, and dilute it 50%. We can sell more of it in plastic bottles too! In fact, let's make it with grape extract instead, and take out all the alcohol. The new market is in soda pop, in Islamic countries where they've never had wine! [yesnod]
But we'll still call it "Bordeaux" because the brand has value!
I've heard about that. I had to laugh hard. This is 100% Blizzard. They've failed with start of Diablo 3 and never recovered from that. I've forgotten them long ago and never bought a game again from them since that very day.
I guess they worked out something for mobile to melk the cashcow. Microtransactions! A lot of them! This is what "games" are these days
Yeah, unfortunately, the old "from the gamers for the gamers" motto died when last D2 dev was sacked. They are totally disconnected with gamers' wishes and hopes and (like any other big company, sadly) just care about money. And they will earn plenty with new microtransaction-riddled "games", unfortunately. We lost. Blizzard died with the release of the last good game, 15, 20 years ago.
Activision Blizzard is known for creating successful games. Not good. Successful. It is a sad reality of this day. Same why Apple is successful. Create a crap product, but as long as you make it look cool, sheep will give you tons of money.
It's really sad to see where the gaming industry is heading.
Thank god for the last couple of "good guys" (until they go under or get bought and repurposed).
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Well, the first RTS were created, because turn-based strategy was considered being too complex and too difficult for the audience. TBS still happily survives, because it can be played on any platform with any control method. The first genre-defining FPS (DOOM) was originally intended to be an 3D role-playing game (dungeon crawler) and then was dumbed down until we ended up with the well-known FPS formula. FPS still successfully made their way into the world of game controllers, despite all the complaining.
So what are we looking at? Essentially what you end up with, when you design your gameplay around the default input devices of a certain platform. They didn't let you control DOOM with a mouse, because the mouse was the "most precise control interface". No, ball mouses weren't precise at all. They introduced mouse input into that game, because they didn't have anything else to work with beside a PC keyboard (which does anything but precise movement). Lightguns weren't a regular thing on a 1990s PC.
What are we going to end up with on touchscreen-based devices? Something different of course. Blizzard's future audience grew up with touch screens and doesn't know how to use obsolete input devices like mouses and doesn't want to learn them. So the gameplay of their games is going to change to adapt to the new conditions. And this is how it always was.
Ah come on. "From the gamers for the gamers" was never more than a marketing scheme. And people are disappointed because they fell for it.
Blizzard's fans are just confused, because humans naturally believe that brand loyalty is a mutual thing: "If you just love the brand enough, the brand owner will love you back." No, it won't! It will commercially exploit that loyalty as much as possible and then drop you in a second, once there is more money to make somewhere else. Just have a look at Star Citizen, which is a perfect example of bait and switch.
Brand loyality is strange thing in first place. I can like company and it's products and still not buy their newest one because I have no use or I don't like it. Fact I recognize brand doesn't mean I will give them outright pass. I will trust them more, sure, but I will still check reviews and feedback.
Such trust might be more bidirectional in local sense - your local pub, groceries, guy who does events. But big companies? They are looking for pure manufacturing and sales numbers.
And would you class Frontier as a big company?
From the product page
Directional controls.. such groundbreaking new technology that has never been do.. oh wait. Quickly access potions? We had that since 1995. Single tap loot equip? That is definitely not what a Diablo style game is about. You spend time comparing the gear not just equipping every shiny trash you find.
I think this is going to be the biggest point of contention for those who were outraged by the announcement. To them it probably sounds like they are dumbing Diablo down even more then they already did with D3.
If you check the product page, they advertise the classes with 4 skills. I really hope that is not the complete skill set, because customization goes out the window if that's the final product.
Directional controls.. such groundbreaking new technology that has never been do.. oh wait. Quickly access potions? We had that since 1995. Single tap loot equip? That is definitely not what a Diablo style game is about. You spend time comparing the gear not just equipping every shiny trash you find.
I think this is going to be the biggest point of contention for those who were outraged by the announcement. To them it probably sounds like they are dumbing Diablo down even more then they already did with D3.
If you check the product page, they advertise the classes with 4 skills. I really hope that is not the complete skill set, because customization goes out the window if that's the final product.
I understand the greed of companies wanting huge profits....but surely they can use that money to fund gaming projects like a new PC Diablo game. Then everyone is happy? Oh well it's the way of the world loyalty is a dirty word and it's all "brand new customers only" sort of thing.
They are big company who tries to engage with their customers in sensible way. They are certainly look for financial gain, but they are smart about it. And that's not just my opinion, there's numbers to back it up as well. I don't have to trust them, I buy their products when they are released and when they are good.
I don't have to like everything they do. But mostly I am ok with what I see.
How do you believe, that Activision-Blizzard's goal of operation is to make you happy?
They could fund an offline single player PC game and release it on physical media. Then some of the remaining 90s audience would be very happy. But you might realize, that Blizzard hasn't released an offline game since more than a decade. Since WoW everything is online, because it generates higher revenue. And now everything becomes mobile, because it generates higher revenue.
Blizzard is leaving PC behind, because for them the platform is obsolete. Sticking to obsolete platforms makes companies go broke, so of course, they move on.
That was the cry of Amiga users when companies such as EA, which were built on the Amiga platform, started moving exclusively to DOS/Windows.
Well, EA successfully screwed a lot of people on that platform so we'll just call it revenged served cold.
Well, EA successfully screwed a lot of people on that platform so we'll just call it revenged served cold.
Never did rate revenge that highly, the fact that EA has turned over Windows users helps Amiga users (yes, there are still some though I'm not one) not a jot.
'One may smile, and smile, and be a villain'.
Commodore and VGA killed the Amiga imho, not EA or anyone else. Had it not become an obsolete platform technologically, it'd have stood a chance, but since Commodore didn't plan ahead, they found themselves lagging behind. The move to mobile is different, it's not a more powerful platform but an ubiquitous and insanely popular one. It certainly has a bigger commercial value, but as long as the technological advantage is on the side of current pc/consoles, I can't see them going anywhere. If mobile platforms keep getting beefier though, who knows? Gaming laptops are a thing already, tablets aren't *that* far behind. But then it's just a change in form factor. At the end of the day, you still have a generic computing device that isn't under the control of a single vendor. We'll just have more bluetooth mice, keyboards and controllers.
IMHO its going a bit off-topic
@amigacooke - if you say we have to accept that the smartphone is the next generation gaming device, then lets say it metaphorical:
smartphone = electronic music
PC = Classical music
Blizzard hosted a classical concert party
the guest paid for listening to classical music
and blizzads band played electronic music as "highlight of the party"
you can argue what you want about what the future markets are - the fact is that they played the music to the wrong audience and wondered about the outcome.
@amigacooke - if you say we have to accept that the smartphone is the next generation gaming device, then lets say it metaphorical:
smartphone = electronic music
PC = Classical music
Blizzard hosted a classical concert party
the guest paid for listening to classical music
and blizzads band played electronic music as "highlight of the party"
you can argue what you want about what the future markets are - the fact is that they played the music to the wrong audience and wondered about the outcome.
That's actually quite a nice metaphore.
The problem is that Activision as a company lost interest in their "loyal audience", I think. If you were a company and had a choice between developing an AAA title for 500 million dollars with a proposition of it generating a 1 billion in the first year, or outsourcing and re-skinning a mobile game for 30 million, going to Asian market and generating 500 million revenue every month, what would you do?
We, as a PC and console gamers, are screwed. We are simply not worth it, to the big houses. That's where the game monetization came to.
From their own words - many of their best devs have been moved to work on mobile games for ALL of their IPs. That was said during press conference after the fiasco...I mean. Wow. Blizzard. What the hell are you doing.