What might have caused the decline of StarCraft 2 numbers?

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Timecodes:
00:00 intro
00:40 Balance
03:20 Region lock
08:30 Monetization
11:20 RTS Decline
Sources:
Our own various videos from the channel
Best SC2 of 2014 - The Best of Starcraft II 2014
Best of SC2 2016 - • The Best of StarCraft ...
Best SC2 of 2015 - • The Best of StarCraft ...
WCS 2012 highlights - • WCS Europe Finals High...
Arc Warden Dota 2 - • "Mastering the Arcane ...
CS GO Revolver OP - • CS:GO - When the Revol...
WarChest Video 1 - • Zerg Cerberus Units Bu...
WarChest VIdeo 2 - • StarCraft II - War Che...
WarChest Video 3 - • StarCraft II: War Chest
Dota 2 join the battle - • Dota 2 - Join the Battle
SC2 Hots trailer - • StarCraft II: Heart of...
SC2 Lotv trailer - • StarCraft II: Legacy o...
Dota 1 gameplay - • DOTA 1 - SNIPER GODLIK...
Artosis Cast BW - • MASSIVE Attack! | CNSL 7
CoH 2 gameplay - • [CoH2][1v1] Propaganda...

[@EsportsStoryteller]

How balance patches affect StarCraft - kzbin.info/www/bejne/rn66emBpaZV3gsUsi=YRZkIEuObaE3iVwW 🔷Check out Our new Project FGC Storyteller - www.youtube.com/@fgcstoryteller 🔷 Check out my personal channels - www.youtube.com/@Gaming_Essays & www.youtube.com/@RTSCasts Timecodes: 00:00 intro 00:40 Balance 03:20 Region lock 08:30 Monetization 11:20 RTS Decline

[@disieh]

One thing that has changed between 2010 and 2024 is the sheer amount of stuff competing for our attention. When your choice to do something is between IRL stuff, social media, mobile games, PC games, music streaming and video streaming, I don't see it all that odd that SC2 and RTS got proportionally less popular. Coop game takes 20-25 mins. Ladder requires hundreds of hours of effort until it begins to resemble fun. Campaign missions can take 1h+ easily if you don't know what you're doing. Also, we do not have people saying what they enjoy about the game, we just generally have people who bitch and moan how much they hate playing the game and keep playing nevertheless. Bitching and moaning doesn't tend to attract excitement. Despite me hating how losing makes me feel, I still love the rhythm part of the game. Long macro games are kinda like Guitar Hero, Rocksmith or Beat Saber sort of experiences.

[@OHOHOHCOME]

I didn't realize that beginners didn't enjoy the game. Back when I practiced SC1, there was no such thing called rank matchmaking, so I was constantly pitted against people better than me and my winrate was something like 10% for like the first 200 games that I played. Now that was "not fun", but I kept playing anyways. To have players complain that ranked match making is not fun really confuses me because the only way that could happen is if you are pitted against better players, which I don't think happens in modern games like SC2.

[@disieh]

@@OHOHOHCOME That's kinda the issue though, most people are not like that. When faced with "oh I'm not getting anywhere with this", they'll just go do something else. Unless the game keeps luring you in. For most people the lure used to be "well my friends are doing it, so its gotta be good". I frankly think the ranked matchmaking complaints stem from different source. To me your first 200 games throwing hard opponents is different from your 10k-12k games suddenly throwing much harder opponents despite MMR staying the same. I think most of the reddit discussions complain about the latter and not about the former.

[@owenthailand]

"Ladder requires hundreds of hours of effort until it begins to resemble fun" It's a type right? you meant to say unfun.

[@irisvonpadoru830]

If swarm host issues were addressed early, a lot of their players would be retained.

[@JohnMelon-qg9tj]

Grow up

[@tsundude4320]

​@JohnMelon-qg9tj do you think before you write?

[@JohnMelon-qg9tj]

@@tsundude4320 The two processes go hand in hand, so, yeah.

[@WarningStrangerDanger]

I maintain that swarmhosts just needed to function like carriers. If they cost minerals to replace their "interceptors," they would work just fine.

[@Pacifica.Obscura]

Bro. I’ve been playing SC for 24 years. I’ve had friends who played die, have kids. Life changes. StarCraft numbers never went down. Life just kept happening. I’m 33 and StarCraft has and will be the biggest part of my life when I’m gone. We were young, energized, and excited for the community we all had.

[@baziloneil1271]

The numbers did go down though.

[@krioni86sa]

RIP to you and your friends and kids

[@RetroCube]

That’s sweet and a lovely comment you made, but there’s less players than before, which means the numbers did in fact decline.

[@krioni86sa]

@@RetroCube you are so sweet and caring. your dad loves you very much he is willing spend the night with you then the next day your hole hurts

[@RetroCube]

@@krioni86sa wow i want to bleach my eyes after reading this comment, thanks

[@havior6617]

Thank you for the video, very interesting! As a Brood War player I want to reply to 12:30 I personally don't think SC2 is too casual, quite the opposite in fact. I believe Brood War is in many aspects more casual. SC2 in it's design, and especially later in development with LotV feels like it is extremely streamlined and focused on optimization. The fact that it is mechanically easier to do stuff in SC2 puts even more focus on mathematical optimization of builds and timings. I'd argue that this makes SC2 less appealing to the casual gamer, since the only correct response to a well executed and optimized stategy is to have a well executed and optimized build yourself. In Brood War, you have far more room to manouver around problems due to the mechanical difficulties, different scaling of economy and variety of openings. When playing both Brood War and SC2 with friends that haven't played either, they often have a better time messing around with the game in BW. In SC2, the one who manages to do something somewhat viable tends to absolutely roll over more inexperienced players. As for high level players, it would make no sense to call SC2 more casual. Sure, you might be able to pay more attention to your army in SC2 because of streamelined macro mechanics, but it is still extremely hardcore. But for the actual casual gamers, BW as a game (!) is more welcoming.

[@tugbars4690]

I totally agree, you nailed it. I used to be very good in SC2, and I realized that my improvement was solely focused on memorizing timings and build orders. It wasn't the micro that was making me win games, it was just memorizing things and executing them like a robot. That was boring, that made me quit the game. Also I think that zerg by default designed in such way that it is always goig to be either OP or totally underpowered.

[@nightmareTomek]

I also agree. I think the engine made things easier, so the devs decided to implement 10x as many chores to do. It's extraordinarily fast and punishing with it's explosive economy and unit TTK, imagine playing Need for Speed on 16x speed, and one tiny mistake and your mineral line evaporizes. Or you don't take the optimal expanding build order and you can never catch up with macro and you will get rolled over. Also because on every pathway of every map every death ball can close the distance to the enemy all at once, a myriad of interesting things don't matter anymore. Map design doesn't matter. Unit strengths are streamlined. No more interesting unit interactions, just a numbers game. The game is dull.

[@alwayssupporttouhouproject6726]

As long as the player number decreases in SC2 are roughly equal to the player number increases in all the new RTS coming out we'll remember SC2 as the best competitive RTS of all time while being glad we have plenty to play in the future that could come close to it.

[@scottbowers7431]

it cant be the best competitive rts when broodwar exists/ is still more active lol

[@codywotring8973]

@@scottbowers7431 the best competitive rts is the one with the largest pro scene and most viewers during tournaments. Also SC2 is unequivocally the most mechanically challenging game created. Brood war may have possibly more ladder players, we dont know the numbers. But SC2 still has more in general.

[@mcmarkmarkson7115]

@@scottbowers7431 broodwar is the best. Its a national sport in south Korea. No other esport even managed to become a national sport like that.

[@2nerC9]

@@codywotring8973 You are wrong Brood wars had an entire TV channel dedicated to it. It had way more attention too and it was the unchallanged peak of RTS...

[@model84]

@@codywotring8973 BroodWar was streamed on 2 public TV channels and national bank was sponsoring the pro league, you're seriously comparing sc2 to it? and no, Brood War is unequivocally the most mechanically challenging game created. The Korean Army even created special team for the drafted guys to play BW in proleague. Besides check Afreeca vies in Korea bw vs sc2, most pro players went back to BW

[@aaabatteries9948]

I've always thought that Blizzard made a huge mistake by never making 2v2 or even 3v3 tournaments a thing. If you look at every major esport pretty much all of them have Team element to it. I get that it might not have been as competitive and balanced as 1v1 was, but they could've still tried. By having a competitive Team games scene it would make players who don't enjoy the 1v1 aspect still play the game. It's hard to take Sc2 team games seriously when there is no professional scene for it whatsoever.

[@Maver1ck101]

Fighting games are 1v1, and yet the genre is in the best state it has ever been in. Fighting game players are calling it a new golden age of the genre. I don't buy that team-based argument whatsoever.

[@aaabatteries9948]

@@Maver1ck101compared to other esports, it's not as popular. It might be in its golden age sure but it still doesn't get the same attention and viewership as other team based esports. Im not saying that 1v1 doesn't work, im just saying that games that are team based tend to do better as esports, in terms of playerbase and viewership ofc.

[@Maver1ck101]

@@aaabatteries9948 So what? Not everything has to be team-based just for the sake of viewership. Tennis is 1v1 and less popular than football. And yet you have hundreds of pros happily making a living off of it, and sponsors continue to sponsor tournaments. Not every esport can be as popular as League of Legends, and that's okay.

[@WarningStrangerDanger]

​@@Maver1ck101I love 2v2 in fighting games, too.

[@Maver1ck101]

@@WarningStrangerDanger No fighting game has 2v2 yet, at least none that I'm aware of. 2XKO will be the first one to have a 2v2 mode.

[@testtestjimmy]

Dead game? more like the Golden Age. My understanding is that the community has taken over balance and maps? If so the guys who love this game will polish it and it will live forever.

[@Bananaman-jm4xl]

Dude the game was released 14 years ago. Are there any video games that old that don’t experience a decrease in players and popularity? If there are it’s a tiny percent of all the games out there.

[@Crossovahh]

Two words for you: counter strike That game just grows and grows, the golden standard of eSports. But you are right, it's extremely rare and a testament to Valve having 2 huge 'timeless' eSports titles.

[@oftankoftan]

@@Crossovahh CS has a new iteration every few years.

[@FreeAgent99]

And still people are playing SC2, I never have a problem matching with someone, and I’m a noob.

[@Bananaman-jm4xl]

Same here

[@nightmareTomek]

But it's still way less players than it could be.

[@caelestigladii]

People are still playing RA2. AoE2, Diablo2, etc. They still have active multiplayer communities too.

[@FreeAgent99]

@@caelestigladii 👍🏼 Im old GenY, I don’t have the time to get into other games and my APM is terrible, so I stick with SC2 probably and play with my friends until I’m 80.

[@caelestigladii]

@@FreeAgent99 When I said "active", I don't just mean old millenials like us. I meant young players, too. I believe RA2 has a world series, albeit on a scale much smaller than that of popular games.

[@spn]

look guys, the reason it just didnt do well is because most people just prefer an "EASIER" to play game. They preferred to control 1 UNIT rather than a whole army.

[@Yukiyu77]

I can only speak for myself and my friends. We quit playing because, once all was said and done, we thought SC2 was just worse than Brood War. Even now, that I've been watching a few games of SC2 and BW after a long time of not caring about either, I find myself enjoying the BW matches more. In SC2 there are things I thought were pretty good, but overall I think we lost too much cool BW stuff. Even in small stuff, like spells and their names, BW outshines them. For example, neither the infestor or viper can compare to how cool the defiler was. His spells felt perfect for the army. Dark Swarm and Plague sound cool and powerful, compared to fungal growth or blinding cloud.

[@kevinc2332]

SC2 is too hard to learn for new people, especially when you have really good people already playing. It's not fun if you're new to this game

[@coulombs465]

Easy answer: ZERG Swarm host meta ruined most of late HotS and Zerg winning about 60% of the prize money since LotV makes it ultimately boring, with awful mirror match-up finals. The decline of sc2 in Korea after the match-fixing scandals as well as the decline of esports team-houses combined with the utter dominance of Zerg in the non-GSL format made sc2 less interesting for viewers.

[@nightmareTomek]

I think it's because all games are the same since Heart of the Swarm. I would watch ZvZ, if there were new things happening often enough. The game is strategically imbalanced though, it's only balanced statistically.

[@mikaeusbznd744]

It is ao frustrating the fact that the most skilled players is doomed to lose to Zerg because of balance. Looks like Blizzard is cool with justo Zerg being overpower and having all the answers. Its more of a boss fight than a competition.

[@baumanmarketinggaming]

As a Starcraft 2 co-op content creator I have to say it's really sad that it's the most 'dead' part of Starcraft 2, despite being the biggest Blizzard's source of income from Starcraft, if not the only one because I don't think a lot of people are buying campaigns these days, maybe some Direct Strike premium content, but I know a lot of guys still buying co-op commanders. By 'dead' I mean that nothing new is getting introduced since Blizzard practically left us in 2020. The only thing was some bug fixes made by community member TangorCraft some 2 years ago & given to Blizzard just to upload. So we have to take over to get at least new weekly mutations, I made some & tested but am not a coder, so need help with that. That's the first step, 2nd step will be some changes to commanders, 3rd step probably some new maps! Anybody with programming & coding knowledge please join!

[@user-dv5ts3de8e]

As a casual player I need a mode without abilities. For people with low APM like myself its frustrating to control an army, where almost every unit needs manual control to be effective.

[@Sir_Tomoyuki]

I'm still waiting for part 2 of the Terran mech series! Hopefully, Gumiho gets more mention! Glad you brought him up in his game against MMA in the previous video on maps!

[@YouTubeHallMonitor]

It's very hard for a casual fan to absorb pro level play and so games become repetitive and boring and people will naturally lose interest. The more you invest into the game though, the more you learn to appreciate when spectating. But with how difficult and frustrating that experience can be, it's a commitment most are never going to make. It's also why I believe the level of respect for pro level play amongst the die hards is so great and there's rarely a toxic die hard fan. We put them on a pedestal, deservingly so.

[@LetterB2]

@3:00 "Zerg was the most OP race" Shows Protoss pushing Zergs shit back in.

[@m1tchziLLa]

Widow mines made me quit back in the day.. still love watching it though!

[@JimmyLazer1337]

and mech + liberators and protoss air for me (yes i played zerg)

[@derekbutts2660]

Yeah I could deal with a lot but widow mines were the most brain dead shit you couldn't even do anything about. Them killing workers was just the worst gameplay.

[@Trattato68]

​@@JimmyLazer1337What's making me lose the desire is that every game you have to go crazy with micro/macro and always have to keep up with the shenanigans that the terrans can do. The Protoss and Zerg are limited so little information is enough to understand what they wants to do, while seeing a Terran building or the number of refineries is not enough to understand what he wants to do effectively

[@WarningStrangerDanger]

I really feel like they shouldn't have kept adding harassment units with each expansion, but adding structures like the shield battery and sensor tower was healthy for the game. If LotV introduced things that streamlined macro or gave players better information, it would have been better received by the average player. Most people really hate harassment from 3-10 minutes at the start of each game.

[@baziloneil1271]

One thing SC2 was missing was a good "Use Map Settings" interface. The way it was done in BW was much better and led to endless possibilities. They kind of stunted the ability to fill a lobby in SC2

[@cypress2647]

the worst imbalance era was terran during the extremely early days of wings of liberty, and I will die on this hill

[@askingwhyisfree7436]

Starcraft is like chess. You can't change it too often or it loses its status. It requires more mental power than mobas. You can't apply moba balance changes to starcraft. They treated the game like moba. People play mobas because they like the characters and the changes don't change the player's mind that much. Chess have never been changed and it should be the same with games like starcraft. Rts and mobas will never be the same and it shouldn't be treated the same.

[@pse2020]

Its a hard game to master... The esport scen got stolen from other bigger games, and when they tryed to make some casual modes in the game it didnt really make a big splash... Blizzard didnt teally know what to do with the ip, what direction they wanted to go. Also i feel its a huge misstake to remove units. They should have added and kept the once already in. That would give players more options and create some uniqe playstyles.

[@gingerbeargames]

i dipped out from watching the pro scene after the match fixing thing went down. Had only really been brought in to enjoying watching because of total biscuit and especially shoutcraft. It just felt that after the match fixing went down everything was just slowly winding down and blizz didn't seem to care.

[@aligater100P1P]

The key thing is it's hard for new player to get in that also applies to arcade games. While new people are accepted it depends strongly on the game mode and if there are options to play easy nations or factions or ship for example. So that they can learn but that needs determination. The thing is it will always happen that you fight someone who got a ton of expirence and no matter what you do you cannot win. Speaking as one with expirence for risk:ww1/oh no it's... and star battle. While in the first one it's really hard for new guys and the later ones are more newbie friendly.

[@NguyenMinh-ld2xi]

I started watching Starcraft 2 matches last year and now get acquainted with its design. But honestly, Starcraft 1 is easier to keep track and follow the strategies... Starcraft 2's armies are more diverse but I prefer the graphics of Starcraft 1, Zerg race has only around 10 units but they are very disturbing. Starcraft 1 was considered as difficult for the new players and I guess Starcraft 2 is even harder

[@gurkan2202]

SC is not a game, it is a war simulation. It is hard and stressful this leads to less players comparing to other games and not profitable enough for the company.

[@zeil2ify]

thats super easy to answer: it was a hard game in the beginning into fully unplayable for casuals in its current state, absolutly amazing game, but esport only, watching is fun, playing is tilting level 90000

[@i6100i]

Oh..the video ends at the depressing part, I should watch this after the part 2 is out😅

[@sguevar87]

Still waiting on Polt's video ,🤣

[@chrisbelos2834]

selling the same game 3 times at full cost made people angry and most didn't buy the "expansions".

[@nightmareTomek]

I disagree completely. I don't think some mobas or the game being too hard or some scandals were the downfall of SC2, and kinda tired when people spread this opinion. It's the gameplay and balance and design choices that drove players away. When I look at Broodwar on Artosis' channel, each match is entirely different, something new is happening all the time. It also feels way more strategic despite having way less units. SC2 feels like maps don't matter because the deathball can close the distance all at once through one pathway anyway, so there's no point in choosing one pathway over the other. The game has too many escape mechanisms, units can poke, do damage and retreat in time with enough micro, so there's no reason to actually have fights, it's really just poking and retreating the whole game long. It has too much emphasis on backstabbing into mineral lines instead of fighting over map areas. So only fast units are built, too. Making mistakes is a lot more punishing due to how quickly everything moves and dies, you look away at the wrong moment and your mineral line is gone. And due to how explosive the economy is, it feels like Need for Speed on 16x speed. And too many chores. All in all it's too hard to do anything before being maxed, by the time you cross the map the opponent has 2x as much, and if you mess up macro or these chores you're horribly behind economically. These things in combination just cause every game to be exactly the same, since around Heart of the Swarm released. And people are bored. When their wishes were completely ignored during Legacy of the Void beta a lot of players just dropped the game. I did, too. The game is garbage, it's not designed to be fun. I wish, now that Blizzard is owned by Microsoft, that they start some action on Starcraft again. They could make SC3 with the SC2 engine, just rebuild the races from the ground up with having these pitfalls im mind.

[@Eliteownage]

I'm looking forward to all the new RTS games coming from former SC2 devs.

[@krioni86sa]

It will suck

[@blinkey9962]

For me a lot of it has to do with the game only changing with each expansion. They should do more, change things around, units etc.

[@zathrasyes1287]

StarCraft II is by far the very best game ever up to date. The game of Maru Solar with the nuke (13:00) was a banger.

[@adalgisounoqualunque9033]

No idea but I am sure that the entire developing team leaving to go buy milk had absolutely nothing to do with it

[@taewoosuh9323]

If only they kept updating Coop missions, a lot of the casual players would have stayed.

[@Technoanima]

The real problem is Blizzard dropped the ball when they tried monopolize the scene.

[@razorback9999able]

Combined with the fact that there are no serious competitors to SC2 at all

[@nbaumg]

we have games played data since 2016 and its mostly even. I think theres a core group of hardcore players that will be here for many years to come

[@flapjacktv2165]

awesome video! starcraft64 is what got me into RTS long live sc2

[@nulface487]

the real life meta is adhd i got an ad for the dumbest "tower defense" snake game on this video

[@HappyTofu2424]

1. No content creators- Husky, HD, Psy, Destiny, etc. All those people who we used to watch in 2010/2011 are gone. Besides yourself and maybe 2 other people, there are barely any content creators for SC. Contrast that to a game like Chess where Hikaru and Gotham post daily videos following huge tournaments and also of them stomping noobies. Also have people like Anna Cramling and the BotezSisters who add sex appeal to an otherwise very boring scene LOL Starcraft does not have that sex appeal charm though. 2. A lot of the top players who were popular from before have retired or moved on. From following basketball I can tell you that a lot fans are more loyal to an individual player than a team or game. This is definitely true in Starcraft where the player > team/game. Once a player you like leaves it creates much less incentive to watch. 3. Balance issues- a lot of it is centered around how dominant Zerg has become and how weak Protoss has become. 4. Game is hard to play and it is a solo game so different than a lot of other hard games to play. Also it requires fast movements unlike a solo game like chess or Hearthstone or any MMORPG game. 5. General e-sports decline. League of Legends has had same prize pool for a number of years now. E-sports has declined as there are quite a lot of games but very few companies willing to put in money. E-sports just never took off the way it was projected too. 6. Blizzard doesn't support now. I follow Super Smash Bros Melee too and you can see the clear decline in a game that has to be crowdfunded and is not supported by the creator. Fans can only prop up a game for so long. Starcraft has it better than Melee at least- online play is widespread and tournaments till have decent prize pools. 7. Blizzard took FOREVER to jump on the freemium model. Things like skins and voice packs took WAY too long for Blizzard to jump on. Every single game followed that model except Starcraft, I don't understand why for the life of me.

[@keizan5132]

Only two things I disagree with is chess being a boring scene. Chess is so beautiful and fascinating there's always a new game to analyze despite its obvious limitations and we do have content creators in SC2 like Harstem, Lowko, Livibee, ZergGirl... They just haven't gotten that big 'cause the game itself is not that big. All of the other makes absolute sense to me.

[@Fanaro]

According to Thor from PirateSoftware, who worked at Blizzard, a horse in WoW earned more money than Starcraft 2 made all time.

[@norberthiz9318]

thats not what he said, he only said wings of liberty. Also he never showed any evidence that even that is true. Wings sold like 6 million copies I belive and the game cost 60 bucks. There is absolutely zero chance that mount sold that much, I don't know how much the mount cost but even if it was 60 bucks which i really doubt, there is no shot more then 6 million people bought it

[@Esteban-ss6wq]

For the same reason mmorpg games died aswell. They are just too difficult for the new generations and they want it easy. My two favorite games of all times are an RTS and a MMORPG so when I see these massive Mobas I realize they took the easy parts of each genre and made them a game.

[@pencilswordfish]

Honestly, after yeeeears of other developers' attempts at RTS games over the past half decade I can honestly say that many of us have been too harsh on SC2. Even looking at Stormgate, with modern tools available to it, it seems like not that much of a leap if at all from SC2.

[@tsundude4320]

Fun to watch, stressful to play

[@realenew]

sc2 competitive side is somehting only a few can enjoy i think, i myself think i have a better shot at being a moba pro than rts pro. However, the single player/casual side of rts is still good. I think one of the mistake of blizzard management is to neglect their single player/casual/story side.

[@HenriqueRJchiki]

modern zoomers can only play garbage like fortnite nowadays, true games that require brain processing power like starcraft and other rts were simply sidelined because of it.

[@1wayroad935]

Comments like this are about the worst things you can say. Insulting others based on "my toy is better than your toy" just makes you look lesser than the people you are trying to make fun of. In short, act like you have the brain processing power you claim to need to play RTS.

[@HenriqueRJchiki]

@@1wayroad935 Ok zoomer, GM Terran in Starcraft 2. Enjoy your fortnite though.

[@krioni86sa]

Fornite is the greatest game of all time

[@WarningStrangerDanger]

The people who can/would play RTS games are not leaving it for these other games. I would rather play a single-player game like Pikmin 4 or They are Billions than any single MOBA out today.

[@krioni86sa]

@@WarningStrangerDanger why sis?

[@blessyou3999]

I would add the point: casual != top play. You see a tournament, but there is a difference to ladder. casual is much more cheese/ timing attack/ turtle (!). Or how certain comps are played on other lvl. best example PvZ: late game -> carrier/ Ht/ archon, have fun if you are not 6k+ Zerg.

[@DestroManiak]

Dont pepecry because it is over, widepeepohappy because it happened.

[@REgamesplayer]

Blizzard was notorious for bad balance and still is, because they do not know how to balance competitive strategy. What they are doing is really bad. They wait for longest time doing nothing and then hit unit with multiple nerfs at the same time. Often some of those nerfs being unjustified. Likewise, they can buff unit way too much. These giant swinges are inherently bad, because balance is very delicate thing and Blizzard do not know how to balance with a chisel. They would take a maul and hit it on an offending party. Then they would go to hibernate, leaving balance as a wreck. The correct path is to apply specific nerfs to the core of the problem with small balance patches and follow closely how meta develops.

[@caelestigladii]

Banelings And then come widow mines. Insta-delete units are bad imo.

[@w0tnessZA]

Attention spans aren't what they use to be.

[@dinkobilic9078]

To all complaining how Zerg was imbalanced, let me just mention few names that were ragdolling through the tournaments: Taeja, Boxer, MMA, Polt, Maru, Marine King, MVP....give me a f ucking break, Zerg was the least of the problems. I agree about swarm host tho....

[@rpgfan8650]

I've been wondering what if we get a SC1&2 Steam and GOG release without a forced Battlenet requirement. I mean if we look at AOE series nowadays I almost feel like RTS is slowly getting back to its glorious good old days, especially when there are so many rushed trash games released these days I feel like more gamers are slowing going back to the classic formula or remakes/remasters

[@georgehelyar]

Hots and dota made me quit. Dota was free and it's easier to control a single hero and blame your losses on your team, while hots wanted more money for a pretty bad meta. Just getting back into sc2 now to teach my son.

[@Zoykzmc]

Completely disagree about the Korean thing, I don't think that anyone can enjoy starcraft, but not when their country does not win in tournaments. What does where tournament players come from have anything to do with the game?

[@krioni86sa]

That is why this uploader is an idiot

[@HYDRAdude]

SC2 peaked with GomTvT and the infestor/broodlord meta killed it.

[@werxx7]

it was always unbalanced torture the player so normal people leave this game everytime. no balance no money just torture

[@SuperMontsta]

What causes the decline? The fact that its like 30 years old and not really updated

[@krioni86sa]

Brood war

[@lordlopikong6940]

Don't think a games competitive scene would result in the downfall of starcraft2. Just cause people's favorites like serral, byun, or Maru leave the game it won't mean people will stop playing(that's another story for starcraft2 viewers only) lots of games are still alive and popular even without a competitive scene like tf2 and Skyrim. Sc2 just fell out as a genre not as a game. It's like quake. The only way to revive startcraft2 or the rts genre in general is to have some miracle super famous influencer play the game consistently, gaining attraction form normal gamers, like how chess became popular again because of some twitch streamers

[@markmuller7962]

Meanwhile StarCraft 1 is bigger than LoL now in Korea

[@NguyenMinh-ld2xi]

Its graphics is easy to follow. The Starcraft II makes me a little bit uncomfortable

[@REgamesplayer]

Starcraft 2 is alive for the same reason Warcraft 3 is alive of Brood Wars still kicking. There is simply no better alternatives on the market. It is either it or nothing at all.

[@bduddy55555]

Pretty much every party involved with SC2 eSports was incompetent, greedy, or both.

[@KoufalKoufax]

game is just hardcore, most people today have very short attention span and want everything less effort, unlike broodwar and SC2 people just want everything simple.

[@suleymanbabak1973]

I quit playing starcraft 2 because the community was too toxic and the game wasn't relaxing enough. If you didn't play a match at the edge of your ability you lost every time.

[@davidcroteau7374]

Cheesers abound. It's hard to get an enjoyable macro game on ladder.

[@jinjinBW]

Not inevitable. Other niche games have plenty of viewers and BW in korea isn't as big as league but has plenty of viewers even though points you made here applies as much to bw as well. The issue is lack of content cycle/creation as well as adapting streaming culture to being more attractive for general audience/youtube content. Bw had this exact problem as well and pros adapted few times to adjust and gather new audience, while sc2 always has remained tryhard 1v1 streaming and only recently has KZbin kinda branched out to different stuff like coop and trollgame stuff. You can look at players like rain, soulkey, MC, TY, s0s, dear,true ect swapping to bw due to more stable streaming scene due to this environment rather than tournament/result focused 1v1 scene in sc2. This is taking away personality and talent on top of losing a gamer. The real difference maker is people changing and making effort to shake up status quo to bring in new audience actively and keeping up with interest. Bw in past was serious 1v1 only type of stream and gradually evolved to mix in both serious 1v1 and group content to stay in curve. Sc2 simply didn't adapt and lost viewers over time

[@JustDisc]

I always had the issue playing Zerg VS Terran. So many more options for the Terran and some really OP units. Especially that f-ing scan wherever you want. That was just my experience

[@windwindy5356]

Well terran has scan but zerg has tumor that can spread all over the map and act as free out posts with no energy cost of a scan.

[@bayushiteishiru6291]

Time.

[@marjiman_rts]

Cheesy. That's what pushed me away. What's the worst part? Terrain dropping mines on your probes. Even gold noobs do it for quick elo 🤭 Nobody wants to learn. They want elo

[@Insomnia1234o00o]

Because people don't like watching a 2 races game.

[@zihuatenejo]

MOBAS i.e. league of legends and Dota2, that is what destroyed the rts era

[@javierestevez9680]

i need Life matches of sc2 all the good matches of life were remove from youtube

[@javierestevez9680]

as GM i think its super boring all races can kill u any time of the game with a good timing or rush and u cant even play 16 hatch on your nat all the games (at gm). I prefer dota2 RN.

[@krioni86sa]

15 hatch

[@javierestevez9680]

@@krioni86sa this map pool 80 % its 14 hatch .

[@krioni86sa]

@@javierestevez9680 13 hatch 92% sis. look at the stats properly

[@1wayroad935]

StarCraft doesn't have the advantages of other competitive multiplayer games, such as having more players. Moreover, it no longer has really interesting personalities who can draw new fans. Most Korean pros can be swapped with one another and the international pros aren't really interesting people either. It's not like the FGC that have thuggery to lean back on. Lastly, the lack of big name content creators dedicated to StarCraft hurt it as well. The days of Husky, Day9, and even TotalBiscuit are long gone. All in all, it's just a game that has been left behind by the times.

[@firestarter000001]

I dont think you are up to date with wahts happening in sc2. Content creators like Harstem, Pig, WinterStarcraft imho are top of the line.

[@nonAehT]

that swarmhost meta. i remember i would watch a lot of sc2 in those days (never actually played it actively in multiplayer) but once the swarmhost meta arrived, everytime a zerg was playing i would just turn off the stream and find something else to do.

[@NaZtRdAmUs]

I think I stopped watching SC2 due to burn out it seemed like I needed to spend a few hours everyday just to keep up with all the different tournaments and KZbin content etc.

[@gorantua2712]

I think its safe to say that game is difficult to play even as a casual compared to lets say...whats popular these days ? League of Legends for example....league is most bot friendly game and bots love it

[@DarthMizaru]

I mean, like 13 years without SC3 does that.

[@killlersano]

May be the fact that is a fuckin 16 yo game.

[@ianjasperang3941]

its not easy to play compare to other games that why its not about technically issue wake up bruh

[@Broockle]

Blizzard abandoning all its game and going to shit really didn't help.

[@adept7497]

It's to fast and bland. Play command& conquer generals and you know what fun is. Imagine building workers manually almost the entire game lmao, sc2 too classic and hence outdated.

[@user-im7tq8hq6l]

Personally, i stopped watching because games are too samey and i dislike most of the casters. I much prefer watching Brood War these days even though i never played it.

[@Eudaimonia239]

Ded game lol, but in all seriousness, I think what killed sc2 for me was the appeal to competitive hardcore gamers, the game is just not fun and it becomes extremelly punishing to new audiences. I dont think there is a clear solution to this, but its a miracle it lasted this long. Just enjoy its memories and move on, I just hope the sc community stop being so elitist, make a game that is fun to play and watch across time, not something that is competitive from the get go and it must be hard unnecessarily. Fun and retention should be the priority not selling a pipe dream of becoming flash while 98% of players just want to have fun.

[@AdmiralBison]

I just want to play Star Craft BW/II on my handheld gaming PCs. IF greedy Activision-Blizzard would ever sell it DRM-Free on GOG, with full controller support for $200 I'd buy it all in a heart beat.

[@Mija-ox4sk]

actually, RTS games are very low on numbers, "StarCraft" is a great name to be marketed as a new game but SC3 never comes out, on another matter actual SC gameplay is NOT FUN and only several players can be good at the game, its plagued with micromanagement to the point that is stressing instead of being "fun" that's why is no longer for a mass public.

[@guivolp]

I love starcraft 2 but I abandoned playing it to play dota 2 that is much more enjoyable playing (fun), but I still watch tournaments of SC2. Therefore, irritating my eyes and hand with starcraft 2 micro and larva injection frenzy never more

[@bryantw846]

I love watching StarCraft because of the intense APM and decision making at every moment. I don’t play it for those same reasons.

[@JustDisc]

Yeah, when I got to the diamond levels, it became so critical to not make a clicking mistake. The slightest wrong move would cost you the entire game after 30 minutes of play. I just got tired of it

[@MadDash84]

@@JustDiscDo you think the game would have been better if every unit and building in the game had an HP increase by a marginal amount? Like not huge, but just enough so that things don’t insta-die. As a Zerg player, one of the most frustrating things has always been the utter annihilation of my entire army due to one poor decision or mismicro. Allowing players more time to react and change tactics would have made the game a lot more casual friendly IMO.

[@EMDRONES]

Slow brains these days stupidest excuses Iv ever heard just say I’m not good so I play casual don’t blame a perfect game for your small brain and lack of determination to learn and be good at something 2024 Ezpz or give up

[@jadoyon]

Protoss never winning any major tournaments or leagues is the main reason I stopped watching professional SC2. As a Protoss player I was fed up seeing Protoss get trounced.

[@Jimmyni-kk4em]

It's a dead game.

[@firestarter000001]

yeah for 8 years at least, according to poeple like you.

[@Jimmyni-kk4em]

@@firestarter000001 don't deny it