Steam reviews sometimes can be quite something, but you can also find some interesting topics for discussions and blog posts randomly after checking some games. Review on the screenshot is from Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era and there are many that share this same sentiment – we want PvE content, but you focus on PvP. We already were talking about this on stream in the past multiple times, so seeing that review made me screenshot it and start a draft for this post.
This “phenomenon” appears in many genres, but I noticed in strategy games it manifests way too often, especially recently. Developers prioritize the competitive part of the game over everything else, sometimes pretty early in game’s development, causing a lot of discontent and sometimes even making the game flop. I mean we did see some high profile flops outside of strategies with studios trying to go competitive PvP from the get-go and even big budgets with good marketing couldn’t carry them.
For RTS games I feel StarCraft made an impact, there are lots of nostalgic people missing those days of RTS being peak e-sports, so developer being part of those people or just seeing that sentiment think that there is a demand. Then their game is out and it might be even good, but majority will still talk about old glorious days and skip that new competitive strategy game. I mean even veteran devs of StarCraft failed bringing back those glorious days with their new game, chances for some random studio to just kick that door and get everyone to get hyped about their game are super low. If there would be StarCraft 3 on the way, then maybe they could do that and start that e-sports scene super early with established fanbase and money to get people interested in competing.
And that’s one of the things that I think a lot of devs need to realize, especially for strategy games – if you want to go PvP/competitive, you need established fanbase, even lots of money can’t guarantee the success without fans. StarCraft, Age of Empires and other strategies, they didn’t start as e-sports games, a lot of old strategy franchises started before masses had easy access to multiplayer. They got competitive scene, because people loved the games and then realized that they are fun to play competitively later, with developers supporting that shift through balancing and other means. StarCraft 2 wasn’t just some e-sports game with full multiplayer focus, it still did have amazing campaign with epic cutscenes (I’m a first game player, still haven’t played 2, but I know these things about it).
When you release your game with just skirmishes, hoping that players will just fight bots or each other, you are already losing players, because they don’t care about your game yet. They already have games they know and care about to play skirmishes, yours need to hook them first and that’s where you need campaign first to get people on board. Show them what you have and then maybe they will be interested in staying around to compete and it still probably won’t be some crazy e-sports community, just some regulars enjoying the game together.
And if your game succeeded as PvP game initially (more common in non-strategy genres, like let’s say some extraction games), doesn’t mean that you don’t need PvE content. I think it’s worth trying to add some, because looking at some extraction games and their numbers when they implemented even some limited PvE modes – there is a big demand.
I feel like gaming nowadays got a lot of people on board, who prefer more chill experiences, people who like cozy and wholesome games, people who have lives and friends, who want to just play together to fun, without competition. Not to mention some are not super skilled, some maybe already getting older and not feeling confident about their skills (nah, totally not me), so they rather play PvE experiences. I even have this meme theory, that back in a day our lives were mostly chill and nice, so our escapism was brutal worlds full of violence and blood. Nowadays, our real lives have so much violence and blood, that our escapism is building farms and petting animals. Might be not just a meme theory to be honest. Look at the success of so-called friendslop games, give PvE singleplayer a chance, add co-op on top of competitive multiplayer!
Now returning a bit to original screenshot that started this post – it’s more complicated. Heroes of Might and Magic is an established franchise, there are people joking about e-sports in reviews, but they probably don’t know that HoMM3 has e-sports and it’s pretty massive. Olden Era was built with the help of that community and in big part for that community too. People playing multiplayer, streaming it, making YT videos about it are the ones who kept that game alive and relevant over these years. Sure people probably did like Horn of the Abyss mod campaigns with new factions (I sure did), but things that it added for multiplayer had way higher impact. So when Olden Era prioritizes multiplayer stuff I can understand it, I mean I even have a community member who still plays PvP on a regular basis. You can release all the campaigns, all the factions and then game will be forgotten after some time or you can keep the flame of decades old PvP community burning while slowly introducing PvE stuff to keep the game relevant. And it will remain relevant, because community was always around and happy with all the updates and improvements. I’m not mad at least, just waiting patiently for more campaign, I waited for new good Heroes game for that long, I can take few months no problems.
There is still one thing worth mentioning – PvP community is very vocal, like in case of some games (like Olden Era) I do believe community is pretty big, but quite often it might be actually small minority, but very loud one. When Fallout 76 was out there was a whole lot of noise about lack of hardcore, lack of PvP, lack of survival, so devs made a special mode that had it all and guess what? No one played that. Nowadays even those weak PvP, hardcore and survival feature got nerfed even more and game was doing great through all the years (even before Fallout show hype). Games that took inspiration from Heroes for example faced this situation I feel, getting some representatives of PvP community that came to their game to pressure them into switching focus to some PvP features. You got turn-based strategy – prepare simultaneous turns and a bunch of other industry standard things, if you want to cater to PvP crowd, but you need to always gauge how big is that crowd in your case. If somehow it is really massive – worth it, if not, then I’d say never do things at the detriment of your singleplayer/PvE content.
Just some of my observations and opinions, I guess reinforced by some saltiness seeing another new RTS releasing without proper campaign after enjoying the demo gameplay. I do think having interesting world, story and cool missions will attract more people than some PvP skirmishes no matter how good they are. Don’t forget that if it’s a premium game with a price tag, then you will need to have decent amount of people to buy the game to play that PvP, otherwise people will claim that the game is dead playing against same players.