Poll: Who takes longer to develop games, Blizzard or Valve?
- Thread starter Eric the Orange
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I never said anything about Valve not testing or polishing their games. What you have to remember is that Valve games usually consist of just a handful of maps and a few single characters (up to nine in TF2) along with what few variations they have with weapons. (In the case of TF2, I'm not counting hats as I'm talking just the base game, not add-ons). You also have to remember that most of Valve's games uses the same or similar game engine/s. So they basically have the same formular, they just need to skin characters effectively. That cuts out a lot of testing time due to knowing how to do it already.Eric the Orange said:
In the case of D3, you have to not only account for the massive map areas, but also that they have to test every combination of graphics for armour and weaponry to make sure that each piece of armour and every weapon type created works together and doesn't glitch the character. Add to that the storyline and destructible surroundings work well. That's a highly expancive testing range to deal with.
All in all, they both have similar problems, the difference being that Valve produces shorter games for the more action-orientated player, whereas Blizzard produces more long-term games that take longer to finish, thus they have a lot more testing to do per game.
I think simple math would help figure this one out.
From what I understand, Blizzard was sitting on Diablo 3 for a very long time.
Though I did come to a conclusion about Valve. The reason why they're holding off on Half life 3/episode 3 is simple; they know it's not gonna be that good and live up to the hype, but it's hard to tell your ravenous fan base that they really shouldn't be looking forward to it.
Half life 2 and all the episodes were good games... at the time. But the style of gameplay and traveling between point to point has been done time and time again, but much better. The only thing it really has going for it is atmosphere and character development.
But then again, Valve can redefine a series when it wants. Just look at Portal 2. Arguably better than the first one.
Though with a simple puzzle game like Portal, fixing up an extremely basic blank slate couldn't have been tremendously challenging. A game like Half life which has most likely reached it's peak will only go downhill.
But back on topic, I'm not much of a Blizzard kind of guy. World of Warcraft just seems intimidating to get into, Starcraft is very much for a select group of people (RTS's are not very healthy for a guy with limited amount of game time), and Diablo doesn't even sound fun, just addicting.
From what I understand, Blizzard was sitting on Diablo 3 for a very long time.
Though I did come to a conclusion about Valve. The reason why they're holding off on Half life 3/episode 3 is simple; they know it's not gonna be that good and live up to the hype, but it's hard to tell your ravenous fan base that they really shouldn't be looking forward to it.
Half life 2 and all the episodes were good games... at the time. But the style of gameplay and traveling between point to point has been done time and time again, but much better. The only thing it really has going for it is atmosphere and character development.
But then again, Valve can redefine a series when it wants. Just look at Portal 2. Arguably better than the first one.
Though with a simple puzzle game like Portal, fixing up an extremely basic blank slate couldn't have been tremendously challenging. A game like Half life which has most likely reached it's peak will only go downhill.
But back on topic, I'm not much of a Blizzard kind of guy. World of Warcraft just seems intimidating to get into, Starcraft is very much for a select group of people (RTS's are not very healthy for a guy with limited amount of game time), and Diablo doesn't even sound fun, just addicting.