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Comment by bluefirebrand | Hacker News Reader

Most gaming trends don't last very long, especially now that every game company is trying to get into that space.

If you're a top player at one game but then that game stops doing tournaments, it is probably a hard decision whether to walk away or learn a new game.

Yes, a lot of motor skills might transfer over but a lot of knowledge is lost.

EG: League of Legends and DOTA 2 are similar games but different metas, different characters, some different mechanics entirely. It's enough of a gulf that you have to put in a lot of effort to cross over, especially at the high end.

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I completely agree, but it was very interesting to watch a top professional of Starcraft2, "HeroMarine", take over as the top player of the newest Age of Empires.

That's pretty cool. I imagine a lot of the concepts are the same, just a lot of learning which units to use, when to use them, counter matchups, hotkeys and such.

But there's definitely a lot of parallels between the games.

It's a lot more basic than that. Everyone can steal game knowledge by just copying what other people do, but the ability of progamers to click quickly and accurately and efficiently divide their attention and context switch between multiple things is way harder to copy. If you've never seen the first person view of a Starcraft 1 progamer, you should watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfAU2lw6BrQ#t=6m8s

It's the same with FPS games. Top players easily spot the tiniest movement, have really fast reflexes and are good at tracking. This transfers between FPS games.

For sure. I've been casually playing RTSs since starcraft 1 (1998ish) and love RTS to this day even though they've slowly waned in popularity as consoles took over. Most are very similar especially in fundamentals. Gather resources, build, expand, and push. They usually just have a different coat of paint of it. What rules supreme in all RTS are the APM (actions per minute).

I'm bummed we don't have more of them.

I'm trying to follow the transition of Beastyqt from SC2 to AoE4, and they are very different games. I still don't understand AoE4 to well, but IIUC in AoE4 there are no nukes that destroy your whole army in an instant, so you must watch every single army continuously to avoid traps like in SC2.

Fighting games and RTS tend to have a ton of carryover, with players like ChrisG, Sonicfox and Justin Wong competing in every new fighter release.

I think a significant proportion of the top AoE4 players came from SC2. BeastyQT, MarineLord, DeMuslim...I think it is only TheViper who came from AoE2 (and, I believe, he also was an SC2 player...another one was Hera, who quit the game after one tournament).

But it is very similar with RTS, there is a huge crossover (although one factor here is that AoE4 isn't popular with a lot of the AoE2 crowd, another factor is that AoE4 has been a bit of a flop...pro games are getting terrible views so many are just choosing to stay on AoE2).

Starcraft and AoE are both micro-heavy RTSes with similar overall economic dynamics. I can totally see that skill carrying over.

There is very little comparison between the micro aspects of SC2 and aoe. SC2 requires many more APM at the high end and microing individual units is much more important

I think you have mixed up players - it was beastyqt who made the switch from Starcraft 2 to become the top AoE player. HeroMarine is still playing Starcraft 2 professionally at a very high level.

They probably meant marinelord

eSports trends last long time if the game developers care.

League of Legends still kicking it. Dota2 still kicking it. CSGO still kicking it.

These three been the top eSports games for over a decade now.

CSGO is getting wrecked by Valorant. It’s basically dead in the water in the US and will be out internationally soon too. CSGO is stuck in the past, can’t make obvious quality of life improvements, and Valorant is polished in a way that I’ve never seen so many women get into a competitive video game.

Was CS ever popular in the US? I thought the US was always more into Call of Duty.

Call of Duty was for casuals and CS was for tryhards. Yes, CoD was more popular because of that.

CS was very popular in the US twenty years ago.

The Call of Duty competetive scene is basically nonexistent and probably even beat by games such as Farming Simulator, which has more active esports teams.

Wait, what?

https://steamcharts.com/app/730#All

Where on that chart is CSGO getting wrecked?

Apr. 2020 was peak daily players, 857k, the exact month Valorant Beta was released. They're trending down to 563k as of the last 30 days, down 34% in just 2 years. Valorant is posting 1.5m and has only been trending upwards. Maybe "dead" is exaggerative but long term trend is clear with Riot's compared to Valve's stewardship.

I have no idea how you can come to that conclusion based on that data.

valorant is too new of a game to tell, overwatch was pretty big back in the day too

apr 2020 was peak daily players because of lockdowns.

I don't know about steam but if you look at the twitch numbers (which probably correlate more with esport from a pro/money perspective) CSGO does look to be declining since its peak in 2020[0] (which I'd wager was due to some huge event or the pandemic) and is consistently less popular than Valorant.

0. https://twitchtracker.com/games/32399

Those are exceptions. Even the most dedicated devs cannot control the wider market or gamer interest. While they can build and cater to communities people will inevitably leave or age out.

And markets are getting crowded. Select older brands have some nostalgia factor propping them up too.

>if the game developers care.

Or, in the case of Super Smash Brothers Melee, if the game developers spend a decade trying to kill the scene but it just won't die.

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