Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by alexlesuper 1070 days ago
I have hope that Blizzard revives the Starcraft franchise. The RTS genre needs some love atm.
5 comments

A lot of the StarCraft guys have already left and formed their own company (frost giant). They are making a quasi spiritual successor to StarCraft called StormGate.
Maybe it'll be great but this doesn't inspire confidence:

> Stormgate® is a _free-to-play_ real-time strategy PC game...

Single-purchase retail like Starcraft 1 & 2 simply doesn't make sense as an exclusive revenue source for small studios anymore, you're not likely to sell enough copies. The revenue isn't there. You've got to sell cosmetics, battle passes, or (barf) put in a gacha system. I'm not happy about it as a game dev but it's the reality. Even big games like Destiny 2 rely heavily on those microtransactions to rake in the cash. :(

This is especially bad for multiplayer where you need high player counts so people can get into matches quick. Indie multiplayer games HAVE to be free or very inexpensive.

At first glance it looks/feels a lot more like Total Annihilation / Supreme Commander than StarCraft. Very robot focused. A sense that Armada and Cortex are very balanced. StarCraft has a more asymmetrical set of factions, where their strengths, economies, units, etc. at least feel more distinct.
I hope they decide to revive Heroes of the Storm, even dedicating a small team to continue putting out content would be a massive win. The previous team had a ton of content that was nearly ready to ship before leadership canned the project.
As a long time Age of Empires 2 fan, the RTS genre feels stronger to me now than it has at any point in the last decade.

But I'm definitely down for MS to release another great RTS title.

Introducing "StarCraft Royale"! Now with 900% value gem pack if you buy in the first week after download.