Standard MMO Demographics. They vary slightly but most sources are 82-83%, with 46-48% of that being “PvP’s On conditions”. Basically, People will pvp if they dont lose anything.
LoL utilizes this principle.
Basically, there is two requirements for a pvp game to be successful. The lowest unskilled player must be competitive (Able and likely to kill the high end player). LoL uses this concept
if you are not careful you can do, but the room for skill allows the pro to walk all over a large amount of Aces (in this case 1v5) if they know what they are doing and are careful.
SC does not utilize these concepts. Its Power creep causes these things to be if not near impossible. Basically skill plays about a 2-5% Factor in this game. this game is more
about builds and knowing how to use them, as opposed to knowing what to do in what situation, in fact the only situation i can think of that properly applying in a large way
is interceptor vs interceptor duels (and very specific ones at that), most other times its push a button and walk away (Ie pulsar, cloak etc).
Counter strike has a FPS Niche, buts population is no where near, say LoL (the leading active population-based game in the world now, with around 32 million players a day).
LoL is the most successful game in the industry.
basically this means, if we really want this game to become popular and serious, the tiers need to go, and things need to be more radical. In other words we need to see things like
regenerative shielding that can completely negate weapons like RF Blasters, but in return are weak to things like singularity cannons. The tech variance and uniqueness needs
to be dialed up greatly. However the situation is a little more complex than this, and requires lots of changes.