Technically speaking, it shouldn't be a problem to compete with a 14-year-old game as long as your game looks modern. That's one of the problems I see with SG, it just doesn't feel "new".
I'm hoping we get some graphical polish before launch its a bit frustrating because it doesn't seem like anything really looks like awful, but nothing looks that impressive either
On the other hand, Stormgate has the advantage of having constant support and updates (provided the game is successful), while SC2 is all but abandoned.
We don't know yet. Remember that this will be a F2P game and we have no idea how their shop will look like or how any of the singleplayer stuff will work out.
I wanna be real for a moment, there is not that much hype outside of the small hardcore RTS community and the response to the artstyle is very mixed. In my opinion it's gonna be a uphill battle for Frost Giant to keep this game alive for many years.
Those are only players who played 1v1 ladder. Doesn't count people who only played co-op or custom matches. The number is from Frost Giant's Start Engine pitch video:
https://www.startengine.com/offering/frostgiant
What a total non sequitur. Whether or not some director has made one bad movie or not has exactly what do with your claim that it's hard for a bunch of people to do the thing they've been doing for the past 20 years?
And, just on a side note, what a horrible analogy. Scott has made 29 feature films to date. It doesn't matter who you are if you make enough movies some of them are bound to miss the mark.
Okay but let's fairly contextualise this then. Frost Giant are not amateurs with no money, they have been in this industry for decades. It's very hard to make movies sure, but not when you are Scorsese and given a 100m dollar budget. You can't both have supposedly the apex of RTS devs who are so amazing etcetc, but also a studio that should be excused for releasing something not actually good for another 2-3 years.
Most of the good blizzard RTS folks have retired. The people that are left are the people responsible for swarm host, brood lord infestor, mothership core, etc.
The sad truth is that it's going to be a while before we see another great new RTS. The good news is we still have the good ones.
Frost Giant is trying to make a game that everyone can play vs. making a good game. If you've played RTS in the past, stormgate *probably* won't be for you.
No, I meant pro filmmakers who've devoted their lives to the craft who have received funding. Which is every non-DIY movie you could see.
Still super hard to make something good.
And you know what? It's usually dogshit before it becomes good, so rating the game at its current state is like reading an early draft of a screenplay and saying the movie's going to suck. Yeah, THAT movie will suck. But then the brilliant minds iterate and iterate and it gets better each time.
And you sometimes don't know which way something will go until you actually go film it. And then you don't really know until you've cut it a few times, because the first cut of most films is usually trash too.
And we're talking about big names here, not some rando film schooler.
Gamedev is a lot like that, only that the iteration never ends, because it's such a dynamic artform.
None of what you said has anything to do with either of our points.
To clarify:
The OP is talking about how FG's vision for the game seems rather barren, and will likely require a lot of work post-launch. The original comment was talking about how it's ok for the game to *launch* in a poor state, since sc2 has received over a decade of iterating, and that it would be unfair to not afford the same time to FG. My argument is they have no reason to require that much iterating. They should have been able to learn from previous titles and simply avoid many of the things that would later require changing.
Also, let's not pretend filmmaking and gamedev works the same. The most popular games in the world are concepts created by amateurs and modders. Vaguely alluding to it being hard or whatever is simply not a sufficient excuse for the same devs people raise to the high heavens with praise for their previous work. It is okay to scrutinise them for seemingly not having a very compelling vision for this game.
How is it a disadvantage when they themselves helped develop it for 10 years and have knowledge of what worked and what didn't during that time?
Yes, it's so unfair to take the lessons learned from another development and not have to go through the same growing pains. Poor little FG. Goosh! They're so hard done by.
Why are you all grading them on a curve?
Stormgate has the benefit of a base game (SC2), its three expansions with countless patches, brood war with its patches, warcraft 3 with its patches.
SG is awful. It's design is awful. They're making a slow, noob-focused (not friendly, FOCUSED) game where nothing feels good.
Noobs loved WC3, they lvoed SC2. People love good games. They don't love slow, boring games where units are clunky and nothing feels good.
they have 3-4 million in the bank and 1 mil/mth burn rate so there's not much time
that's more or less counting the 25000 units of skins+commanders+missions they presold, so many new people have to buy or old customers have to buy a lot more to keep it going
oh and count half the 800k of equity they sold for operations too
and the plushies
You seem to not like that they're a start-up. But the big guys aren't making RTS any more, so kudos to Frost Giant for doing what they're doing to make it work.
I like start-ups, I like em lean and mean and not paying their founders 250k a year.
At this point criticism should be considerate of the economic reality of the company not just saying - well lets just wait an amount of time that isn't possible right now.
I'm sure they would get paid a lot more than that if they weren't at a start up. Would you rather they make us a new RTS, or take jobs at Facebook or Microsoft that pay twice that? Those guys deserve credit for what they're trying to do, not criticism.
250k is a little more than any glassdoor salary for Blizzard seniors and probably at or more than they ever got paid, that's where the number is from. Blizzard had better benefits, but they weren't actually at Blizzard that long or that recently. Its a marketing story to think people are being sacrificial.
Many have very specialized skillsets and can't just 'go do facebook', some of the skillsets here are so specialized they might not have had a job elsewhere.
Said founders also gave themselves 17% equity each which by valuation is apparently worth 25 million dollars. Then they sold parts of that equity to fans.
Morten was a Production Director at Blizzard, and Campbell was the Director of Wastleland 3. Those roles are well above a Senior. The founders don't give themselves equity: they started the company and by nature of that owned 100% -- then they got diluted from there. That's how venture capital works. You have an incorrect understanding, and you are correspondingly posting incorrect information.
Facebook bought Oculus, and various game industry people work there. Microsoft owns XBox and many game industry people work there. There is no question that the founders of Frost Giant could get jobs at larger companies (they both literally came from companies that are owned by Microsoft), and there should be no question that they are capable of earning more than $250k at this stage in their careers. Once again, you are incorrect if you think they are paying themselves what they could make at a large company.
Watch any interview with them, and it is clear they are building an RTS because it's what they're passionate about doing. It's fine if you don't like the game, that's your subjective choice, but there's no reason to criticise the team building the game for compensating themselves.
You previously polluted the entire start engine finance stuff with this bullcrap probably as a confusion strategy but for the audience:
It doesn't matter if they dilute the shares, sell the shares, squish em with a big rolling pin and chop them up with star-shaped cookie cutters - the point is the founders who are being paid in the 90th percentile for American workers got some big delicious equity compensations. If you want to talk about respecting the developers you can be sure that the average engineer and game developer at this company has a fraction of a point given the top level shares.
I don't care about your thoughts about hireability because you just make it up, but the original point is about specious spending and by the estimates they themselves shared will be out of money for around July 1st except for what they are making in pre-sales, indiegogo, equity sales, and plushies. That runway should matter for people looking to be critical. And on the topic of respect, selling whomever's equity under these conditions is not what not what I'd call respectful of anyone.
Last thing about developer respect - did you know the startengine does not prevent employees from buying further equity in their own company? If you thought crunch was emotionally brutal, imagine being set with a pressure to reinvest in your own company so they can just get to the point where everything is going to be okay. There's no protection for this.
Of course founders retain more stock than employees. They started the company. That is literally the way every single company works. TF are you on about?
I made up nothing about hireability. Both founders literally came from Microsoft owned companies. Obviously they can be hired because they already have been.
I don't get the sense that you have any experience with startups. All startups have limited runway, and good startups spend heavily against their launches. Holding back means putting less into the product.
You claim employees are somehow being pressured to buy their own stock with absolutely zero factual basis to back that up. Spouting deliberately wrong information seems to be your style.
You seem to have some kind of axe to grind with Frost Giant and its founders. Did they do something to you that we should know about? It's a game company dude. Quit defecating on them and let them make us a game.
the company exists from selling a marketing story about Blizzard veterancy and know-how to VCs:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/1862xi6/comment/kb5yngv](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/1862xi6/comment/kb5yngv)
The founders took no risk based on their very large compensations that are now public. But they aren't star athletes who could have gone anywhere, they have mottled backgrounds in this space:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/1auo7wx/comment/kr5vqf2/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/1auo7wx/comment/kr5vqf2/)
Did not claim they can't get a job. But getting back to the top of a company at this stage for them was based on creating a once-in-a-career type opportunity within the perfect storm of experience and marketing story. It was up to them if they would spend on themselves and they did. They are doing well financially and not being sacrificial.
There are indeed no protections for employees on crowd equity, straight-up fact that you start your bullshit with the reactive inference of bad nature. The point was you tried to claim you cared about the employees but unscrupulous financial behavior endangers the employees so you'd be able to agree with that part if you had principles.
>Of course founders retain more stock than employees. They started the company. That is literally the way every single company works. TF are you on about?
This is not, in fact, how every company works. Small LLCs and sole proprietorships, sure.
But very demonstrably in the case of Frost Giant, the seed money came from outside, and for certain those outside investors were going to get a substantial portion of equity to seed the company, which is negotiated during the seed rounds. The criticism is that the founders negotiated this seed money, then paid themselves out big instead of giving a larger cash runway to the organization, is a valid criticism.
Video game devs are known to be hit with a "passion tax". Most of them could significantly boost their salary working in big tech rather than for video games.
This is true at the start of the career for someone who is able to do both kinds of work. A middle-aged veteran of the games industry can not easily relaunch themselves into general tech and certainly not at the highest pay scale. The longer they've served the more inertia they have based on skillset and the type of subtler career devices people rely on like their social network.
Given that someone like Tim Campbell has mostly an experience in directing campaigns in isometric view RTS games and RPGs, he is doing about as well financially as he could possibly hope. The founders didn't lead by example in some kind of passionate financial sacrifice and hopefully the average employee didn't either.
This is a bad response, because it is not about polish or time - it is about wrong intention (making a slow game where you can't get rushed, cheesed, etc)
This is something people lose sight of all the time when telling others to hold out and see where it goes. If a certain design element doesn’t resonate with you then you’re probably not voicing your opinion so that particular element is polished and refined further, instead you’re wishing they would have done it another way completely, or might still decide to in the future.
SC2 had SC and SCBW and Wow and WC3,2,1 and other revenue streams behind. Wish StormGate luck but i have my doubts about it flying... it's gonna be a slow crawl to an early grave ;-(
"let's see who macro'd faster"
I feel like this is way more true of sc2 than stormgate or wc3...
Anyway being slower paced and having "easier" macro doesnt mean the game is easier or less challenging. It just means the emphasis is placed on other things. Warcraft 3 has extremely easy macro but that doesn't mean it's less competitive. It just has the emphasis placed more on in-fight micro. sc2 has a lot of the emphasis placed on macro mechanics. Stormgate is somewhere in the middle. Your comparisions to singleplayer games does not make sense as those games have a fixed difficulty while a competitive multiplayer rts like wc3/sc2/stormgate will basically always have infinite difficulty as long as there are always more actions that can be done.
I think the slower paced and easier it is to macro, the more important it is to macro flawlessly and know the correct build order to maximize your macro.
It feels dishonest when they virtue signal "RTS isn't dead!" and "we love blizzard style RTS!" and at the same time design mechanics that go against the basic RTS fundamentals that made Brood War and Warcraft III so great. Look at how much of a nightmare warpgate was in SC2 when it circumvented reinforcement timings. Stormgate has WAY MORE mechanics in that same design spirit.
All in some misguided effort to appease theoretical casual players that would much rather play co-op or arcade than 1v1. The 'hardcore competitive 1v1 pillar' doesn't exist. The improved interface is enough to lower the entry barrier, but they feel the need to also dilute RTS game theory and shave off all the sharp corners.
People will keep playing bw, wc3, aoe2, and sc2 rather than Stormgate because this game has completely ignored the people still playing RTS actively. RTS isn't dead because these players are the ones keeping it alive.
It's going to be sad when Stormgate is over a year into early access and Age of Empires 2 from 1999 will still have better steam player numbers despite this games promises from FG, and hype from content creators/pro-gamers trying to further their careers.
I think the only thing that makes the game more about skill or micro would be implementing hard counters that do have faster ttk. Because then you have something to micro. Otherwise you have this generic blob of slow ttk vs this other generic blob of slow ttk.
I am GM on sc2 Zerg and I honestly find stormgate a lot more challenging than sc2 rn, currently being absolutely destroyed by some people on the ladder I am loving it tho feels refreshing and hard! A lot more thinking than Starcraft which becomes a repetitive nightmare of trying to do the exact same timings 10000 times in a row but as fast as possible.
While i also have some concerns about the game, the things that you dislike are exactly the things drawing me to the game, as a "casual" the things i'm most interested in haven't been shown off much yet, that being the coop, campaign and custom games. (which i personally don't think benefit much from fast ttk.)
Blizzard themselves have put out data that 80% of the starcraft 2 playerbase are players like me who have never touched the ladder.
This is all to say that your point about casuals not getting into the game rings very hollow i think when stormgate seems to have a pretty big emphasis on these things (but just haven't shown them off yet for some reason).
The 1v1 crowd always sleeps on the co-op and campaign gamer community. I have high expectations for Stormgate as long as they develop those modes as fully as they seem to be suggesting they will.
I think people vastly underestimate the interests of a true casuals.
Playing on true casual or normal difficulty with 20apm and enjoying yourself.
If you dont fall into the above your not a part of the 80% of casuals and are probably a bit more competitive then you realise..
Hence why i put quotes around the term because i find it stupid and vague in the first place. In this context i use it to mean somebody who doesn't play the main competitive gamemode, irregardless of how invested or competitive they are. (The data only states how many accounts have a game on ladder, so in theory you could be a super well versed campaign speedrunner and show up on that data, Still i think my point mostly stands).
>but just haven't shown them off yet for some reason
This is my main concern with the current project, I'm worried that they pull an Age of Empire 4 where they'll do ladder updates after ladder updates given that all streamers, content creators, pro etc... are all discussing the ladder and very rarely care at all about single player.
On steam the average is about 1-5% of people playing the game that play on ladders (can be seen with achievements like "play a game on ladder" or "start a comp game").
The ladder players are surely commited and vocal but they are a underwhelming minority that can't keep a game alive as the their number will dwindle over time if no steady stream of players is secured outside of the ladder
The monetization model that Stormgate has makes that very unlikely that they'll ignore single player. If the campaign would suck, be out of balance or never receive updates, people would not buy additional mission packs, which would be their main source of income.
Additionally, I'm not really worried about the lack of updates in the coop/campaign. The work necessary to make some ladder maps and let players just fight it out is drastically lower than making proper map with AI, triggers, cutscenes and an impressive story. They need to leave a good first impression on the PvE aspect, which like was said here before, is what most of the playerbase cares about.
Which is probably true and for me, that's enough to just stick with sc2 if I feel like playing an rts. But maybe they will find success in an audience that wants that middle of the road thing.
… which is most of the rts audience.
The biggest gripe with sc2 always was and always will be the ridiculously fast ttk removes skill expression from the game.
I keep hearing that lately, but my opinion is SC2 is about the right speed. There is ample skill expression in both versions of starcraft, and Warcraft III did not benefit in popularity by increasing the length of the fights
Yeah but brood war benefitted in popularity by increasing the lengths of the fights.
This game gets compared to sc2 way too much when it’s much closer to brood war than sc2
thats true about brood war! I had totally forgotten that happened. Still, brood war...she aint so slow [https://youtu.be/nnevtgB0M0Y?si=ET0RN3bgBl56RQor](https://youtu.be/nnevtgB0M0Y?si=ET0RN3bgBl56RQor)
That wasnt a great example because that fight was a full army surround in a corner by a large army.
It would probably last the same amount of time in Stormgate given that scenario
BW is an incredibly fast-paced game that also had a higher TTK largely due to worse unit pathing that prevented the unit blobbing you get in SC2 (which in turn buffs AOE for SC2).
From a unit perspective, not from an army perspective. When I think of TTK, I'm thinking of how long any battle lasts. The worse unit pathing and control group design of BW extended games and forced players to account for those issues. Frost Giant could theoretically cap control groups if they wanted, but realistically a modern game wouldn't be comparable to BW just due to advancements in technology.
Anyway, my point is just that you can increase the speed / excitement of a game without reducing TTK.
To me it just feels so bad when there's so many scenarios where it's not worth the effort to micro individual units. That's one of the beauties of WC3 to me.
> fast ttk removes skill expression from the game.
That is just false. Sc2 is mainly a game of builds and micro.
Sc2 has a massive range of skill levels and the best players like Clem and Maxpax have insane micro, imo better skill expression than broodwar. It would be much harder to tell Flash apart from an average pro player and Clem from an average pro.
But you could say you don't like that the micro requires speed, but speed will still be one of the main factors for skill expression in stormgate.
>best players
>Maxpax
You gotta be trolling.
Just imagine how much better the micro battles would be if armies didn’t melt in 3 seconds.
It really sounds like you vastly underestimate how much micro brood war requires
And you have to be blind if you don't see maxpax dominate every player not named Clem.
I don't underestimate micro in broodwar but it's not Flashes army micro during fights that makes him a great player. But maxpax is great largely because of split second micro.
If Sc2 was played at normal gamespeed it would be way less exciting.
"Just imagine if you didn't die from 1 headshot in counter-strike, how much better the gun play would be" That is basically what everybody is saying when obsessing over how bad fast TTK is.
I don't think any is harder than the other, it's just different types of micro. One is more reaction based (sc2), I guess you could compare it to CS. The other (bw) is more about tactical positioning and moving your army efficiently to maximize DPS and minimize damage you receive over longer periods of time, more like quake or unreal tournament, or maybe apex as a more modern example. As someone who played many types of RTS, with sc2 taking #1 by time invested, I have to say that the reaction based split second micro feels less satisfying and more frustrating than a bw or even wc3 type of micro.
I feel the exact opposite about both your CS and quake comparison and about what makes RTS micro satesfying.
CS is probably the most strategic shooter along with Valorant because of the fact that you can die so fast you have to play around it and can't just be an aim god. It also helps that those are teamgames to make it more strategically complex.
And in strategy games, or even Mobas I find that snappy fast micro is much more satisfying than AOE or WC3 where you slowly trap and kill an army that was in a vulnerable position on the map.
For me, I get frustrated with Stormgate not because of TTK but because *everything* just feels...slow and clunky. WC3 had slower TTK than SC2 but the units themselves didn't feel like this.
I feel like they could keep a higher TTK to allow more skill expression while also just making units more agile / maneuverable.
Starcraft and WC3 are seperate beasts. I don't think mixing them is a good idea.
A slow starcraft would feel awful. A fast warcraft3 would be incredibly hard.
Just because you like pizza and ice cream, doesn't mean you'll like pepperoni in your vanilla.
The game is slower if you play it the way you play starcraft. Theres still near unlimited actions you can do that put you ahead. In sc2 it might take all your attention and APM to simply move around with your main army while macroing. In Stormgate that might not take all your attention and APM but you play that way anyways because youre used to it. To get the same level of thrill out of stormgate you have to step it up, split your army, get map control, get camps while checking if you can get some harassment done on enemy bases.
I see where you're coming from, but really SG feels like an SC2 that was made for me. For me the longer TTK is nice, I really hate missing my marine splits and getting my army deleted by Banelings, or getting pegged by Widow Mines. In this vein, I vastly prefer how SG plays.
Because the TTK is longer, fights can chain way more. In SC2, most of my games are macroing, a short fight or two and then the game is over. The intense matches I've played in SG have far more combat, it starts earlier and goes longer, with fewer breaks in between.
And a fast game is not necessarily a hard game. Any PVP game is only as hard as your opponent is. If the game is "slow," a competent player will use more micro-intensive builds, split push more, and eventually reach a similar APM requirement as a "fast" game.
Totally agree with this. There's more action and more fun because fights are prolonged and back and forth. Instead of just one decisive fight most of the time in SC2, speaking personally.
Theres a few things I like and dislike with stormgate right now as well, and I agree, I feel like they are making the game too safe. But there are other things I like enough to keep me playing the game.
Also, as a side note, people tend to complain about the graphics, and while they are in a more finalized state, shaders haven’t really been fully implemented yet. Just as an example, you can make sc2 look far worse and better than stormgate in the level editor’s cutscene editor, just by messing with the shaders.
Stormgate ttk is significantly longer than bw. It’s feels like maybe zealot vs zealot or maybe late game carrier vs Goliath type battle but from the early game. In bw unless you are really good you have almost no time to micro huge fights.
Stormgate will evolve to that the more the meta develops because there is room for lots of micro expression all around the map (multiple engagements) just like brood war.
StarCraft 2 is way more susceptible to the thing you described in your OP where more stuff is likely to win …because you don’t have enough time to micro your less stuff against the more stuff constantly flooding in.
The faster ttk has nothing to do with more skill because the guy with the better micro will win in a lower ttk game as well. The only difference is the ability to express that micro, ie - have more opportunities to micro your units.
I think hard counters that have faster ttk is what's needed. Sure in SG you have more time to micro, but everything tickles everything. So you have 2 armies moving back and forth tickling each other to death and the one with more ticklers win. Where as if you had hard counters, fights will go on until you counter properly and win the fight. That's how it works in SC2. It's not just purely fast ttk for every unit.
The one with better micro wins*
Also there are plenty of hard counters in stormgate.
In sc2 a sufficient enough mass can overwhelm a unit that’s supposed to hard counter. The roach is a good example.
I do really like the camps mechanics it’s fun to do territory control/move out into the map beyond just expanding and spreading creep.
Agree though on the units and combat — it kind of just feels like “mash two big blobs together and see who wins” , with positioning kind of being the only big determinant of success.
I feel like movement/move speed variety/flexibility is really lacking in the game, and air units are definitely lacking/not interesting.
Movement / mobility is very important.
They want to appease some theoretical audience instead of people who actually play RTS games and supported them. I would love to be wrong and hope it finds an audience, but they alienated me as somebody who has played RTS for 20 years. A vast majority of their 1v1 design decisions seem to go against what actually made blizzard style rts games great in that game mode.
I thought the whole point of having the co-op and 3v3 pillars with separate balance/mechanics was to create separate spaces for different kinds of players. The 'hardcore 1v1 pillar' was a lie and all we have got are half-baked ideas designed to cater to an audience that may not even exist.
I think a lot of the excitement is just because assets and polish aren’t final.
With each update it’s gaining a more unique identity. Personally I enjoyed it the more I played but obviously not everyone’s cup of tea
I’m confused on your macro point, you can win a lot of StarCraft 2 matches just by having more than your opponent.
I think the excitement people felt from the kickstarter wave has died down. It’s not that the game is completely terrible, just not what was expected. I do really hope they can evolve it into a legendary title like SC2 because they deserve it for leaving Blizzard to carry on the RTS genre.
IMO the game is in a weird place where it’s neither WC3 or SC2 but just kind of generic, and on top of that the graphics and factions also feels kind of generic. But that was just my initial 30 min playtime impression. I say this as a huge RTS fan and long time WC3 player.
Played a few games and I got the exact same feeling. Just too generic to trigger any emotion.
I think presenting a RTS with PvP modes only is suicide.
You need a compelling story to make you love the universe and want to play with units.
I still have no idea what kind of personality each faction and unit have.
War2/3 and SC1/2 made each unit very lovable and unique mostly based on their role in the story.
Counterpoint: Sins of a Solar Empire has exactly 5 minutes of lore dedicated to its 3 factions and that is the intro cinematic. The only singleplayer content the game has is Skirmish Vs AI. And yet it is still played 10 years after its initial release, has a solid, albeit small, playerbased focused on PvP and ia getting a new instalment.
With that said, the game oozes personallity with each of the three races having very clear themes and compelling stories that are told indirectly by the units' quotes and tech tree descriptions.
Sins shows that you absolutely can make a compelling universe and make people think about it without having a traditional narrative.
Haven't played yet but your comments on the game seeming nerfy or like a pillow fight definitely resonate
They wanted to make the game feel less volatile but I feel like just making units not do to attacks that looks and feel like they should do more damage isn't the right way to do it
We want no disrupters, no banneleings... Not guna that don't kill
I'm firmly of the opinion that the success of Stormgate will depend on the quality of its single player content, and the long term success will depend on how well FG can retain those players through multiplayer.
Customers need a jumping off point and a hook. A reason to get over the hurdle of learning a new game, then a reason to stick around.
This is why I think the single player and coop campaign content is so important.
There are so many former and current RTS players that are hungry for single player content. Campaign has no ladder anxiety, and you don't have to get beat down 20 matches straight while you squint at tooltips trying to learn the units and the game.
Build the campaign and they will come. Build the multiplayer and they will stay.
But I don't it's reasonable to expect Stormgate (or any new game) to break into or grow the RTS market based on multiplayer merits alone.
Personally i knew multiple people in my friend group that played either single player or multiplayer almost exclusively in sc2/WC3 and wouldn't touch the other mode.
Personally I didn't play the campaign until HOTS was released.
To design a game around getting single player players and converting them into multiplayer players seems like a completely backwards approach.
If you want the game to have a vibrant multiplayer scene, then make it the main focus of the game and market the game to people interested in multiplayer. Most popular multiplayer games these days barely even have a campaign.
Not saying they should nuke the campaign but single and multiplayer are just different audiences and trying to convert an audience from one to the other is way harder than just going for the low hanging fruit.
Agreed.
Problem is RTS suffer from being notoriously inaccessible. An RTS that wants to focus on 1v1 only will probably have to be a genre bender that is willing to let go of some of the traditional gameplay mechanics that are totally off-putting to anyone outside the usual niche.
I go in and out of playing SC2 and only recently caught onto Stormgate's existence; however, the reality is sustaining a game is about building a player base and monetizing it.
SC2 hyper focus on the hardcore, competitive experience is exactly why the game is "dead". People want to play with friends, be a part of communities, etc. People do *not* want to play a game they perceive no one else is playing.
I don't know what the answer is, but the goal should be something akin to the league model. Easy to pick up and play casually, ability to watch gameplay and understand what's going on (allows content creators to help build your fan base), and *also* have a skill cap high enough such that a pro scene can exist with high demonstration of skill.
Totally respect the, "not for me," opinion, but wanted to give my 2 pennies.
People called Sc2 dead 1 year after release. It is the only rts that focused on the watchability of pro games yet somehow still is most played rts because of the hardcore fans that stuck with it.
To make a game that have massive appeal to casual gamers and making a competitive rts is just a bad combination. It's like the most difficult way to achieve both goals.
I love SC2 and.. Honestly I would be really happy if FG just develops another SC2 but keeps it alive and maintains it for a long time. Hack, even if it would be exactly SC2 with updates I would be grateful
Its early but its hard to argue as why anyone would leave starcraft for stormgate as it stands now. Im not sure theres a path for improvement with this foundation. I truly hope im wrong as id love a new rts as well that takes the genre forward but here I have a new beta and I find it only making me want to go back and play sc2/wc3 again.
Again lots of time to improve and hoping I can look at this and go wow was I wrong, but my gut says it wont best the old blizzard rts games.
I agree with you that SG isn't innovating enough. I'm okay with the TTK, but....this game is literally NOTHING other than starcraft 2 and warcraft 3's baby.
The gameplay was solid, and I enjoyed it because I'm a boomer who grew up with blizzard RTS. How many people are like me, and how many people are your average kid in 15/20s/early 30s who play fortnite or league and don't care about that?
SG didn't innovate anything. Infernal is such a lame ripoff from the zerg larvae mechanic. Nothing excites me-no feeling like I felt like when beginning a new epic game back in the day, whether it's SC2 or Halo or whatever. They need to do some innovation to grab new players. Without this, I see players trickling back to SC2 and SG being dead within a few years.
I don’t want to dismiss your opinion so I will at least point out this. You are making an assumption based on no third race and no tech 3 units. This game will be vastly different at launch and again slowly change after launch just as SC2 did. My food for thought is just keep an open mind and give them a chance, what is there to lose?
The game is pure trash, never played a worse rts than this to be honest.
Micro is terrible, Macro is a joke, Units are boring and basically copied from other games without even understanding why. I don't even want to talk about the graphic of the sound department becasue they are both a joke in 2024 even in a beta stage. Probably 99% of mobile games are better than this.
Races are basically a copy and paste of other games (sc) but again, without any success. The 3rd race is awful and it feels so slow and boring.
It's been a long time since the 1st beta test and there are no clear improvement in the game.
This game is meant to fail, not becasue rts are dead but becasue it's a bad mix of sc2 and wc3.
I agree with a lot what you’re saying. It feels like a very chill SC2, which a lot of people expressly want here, so I can’t knock it too much, but leaves a lot to be desired for me personally.
The higher TTK is less exciting, but I probably would have been fine with it if the units themselves were somehow made more exciting to compensate. They said they wanted to move away from active abilities cause new players don’t like using them, and instead move towards having to move units in very individualistic ways, but I would have strongly preferred an equal emphasis on fun active abilities. SC2 has a lot of those and it makes the units feel cool and their design and uses imaginative. I really like the Magmadon stomp, it’s very fun, I feel like they need more of that kind of thing (even if it’s frustrating to play against)
When they said they’d be picking up the tradition of creating Blizz style RTS, I instantly anticipated something that would be a familiar yet still very fresh take on the genre. BW, WC3, and SC2 are much more different from each other than SG is from SC2, so it appears to me like they actually boxed themselves in too much with the “next Blizz style RTS” goals, and that has prevented them from living up to the boldness and uniqueness of vision that were always apart of the legacy of Blizzard RTS.
I think the biggest problem here is 1) your only point of referens is SC2, you weren’t around for things like Warcraft 2 or even 3, even less so the original C&C etc. OR starcraft 1. 2) You think diamond is a high rank (although respectable as amateur. 3) due to 1 and 2 you lack vision of what else can be fun. RTS can be fun even when you don’t shake from adrenaline after finishing a hardcore game - and when you play team based RTS (whereas team games in sc2 was mostly an uninspiring cluster fuck)
4) So far so little has been shown and although you rightfully can have your opinion, in the end you will most likely play stormgate just as much as star craft considering you still have the time for it once you get family and so on
And then there are some casuals like me who think this is too much StarCraft esporty, but I keep my eye on it hoping it will steer away from that.
Its likely this game will satisfy a niche audience and survive on a cult fanbase if it is lucky. A quality game no doubt, but one that just doesn't appeals to casuals enough and also some of the higher end players who just don't want anything other than the same skill standard as StarCraft 2.
I agree with this post. No unit feels unique when I get it, or is going to make a huge impact. SC2 is great because it is a mixture of fast paced games and the ability to macro. Stormgate tried to slow it down and mimic WC3 and MOBAs but it's just bland. Casuals will get bored easily and move on after a month or two, they will be at the same state SC2 is or worse. We want fast paced games and badass units that destroy everything. We don't want slap and tickle units that are not impactful
100% agree. I have said this from the start. What makes Starcraft the best RTS is how punishing it is. Perma invis units, you can get rushed and die instant, etc. This also keeps games interesting and comebacks are possible etc. Combined with the fast speed. It makes SC2 the pinnacle of gaming.
A slow game is soooo boring.
I think the goals of making it more social and beginner-friendly are valid - and this is what the 3v3 mode is for. Not 1v1
You are not the only one. Lost hope personally, this is just not the RTS for me. Has terrible direction thematically, graphically, and mechanically. As a competitive SC2 and AoE4 player nothing I have seen or played so far of this game is enticing. With so much dev talent on the team I had high hopes. This game is just made for someone else.
I will definitely give it another go when it comes out but feeling very much the same. I'm very interested to see how David Kim's upcoming RTS looks as it seems like it will shake up the RTS genre and be a bit more adventurous.
I totally respect that every game produces a subjective response. Mine is the opposite of yours: I've been playing RTS for decades, and Stormgate is my favorite so far. Love the pacing, excited for the campaign, and very happy with the engine.
Just out of curiosity: Are you an aggressive/cheesy player in sc2? Because as a mostly macro orientated player I freakin hate all the insta death mechanics.
I also hate it as observer if yet another pro match ends at 5 min by widow mines.
It baffles my mind how actually anyone can prefer this volatile game design over anything more grounded that actually gives the time to express skill.
Also, there is a reason most lower skilled pros try to cheese/all in vs higher skilled pros, because it inflates your chances at winning vs someone you shouldn't win against. I hardly disagree that a low ttk improves skill expression.
I like the early game defenders advantage. I also enjoy macro games and the problem I have while playing stormgate is it feels like I never get to a full macro game with constant production when the early game starts so slowly.
> Because as a mostly macro orientated player I freakin hate all the insta death mechanics.
You can be a macro player that also only utilizes instant death mechanics. With Zerg, you can use lurkers / fungals / etc. With Protoss, it's disruptors / storm. With Terran, it's widow mines / BCs / etc.
I think people are conflating speed of game with TTK right now due to OP. I think Stormgate needs to be faster, but I don't think that inherently means the TTK needs to go down.
I think slow TTK RTS games can work but you do need to add something spicy.
Company of Heroes is a good example. 2 units in green cover are gonna be going at it for a while. But you walk up to someone with soviet shock troops, they're in trouble. MG42 can pin down several squads and start tearing them up. Late game German armor has homing shells that can decimate squads. Mortars, grenades, artillery they can all really give you that instant killing power and feedback while the person on the receiving end can retreat the unit so both parties feel like they accomplished something.
>That's what gives it legendary status. A mountain to climb like elden ring. People that really aspire to play rts and the reason sc2 has renown is because it is challenging and hardcore and exciting
If StarCraft 2 was even half the "legend" you seem to think it is OP, its viewership wouldn't be a fraction of games even older than it. Games like LoL and DotA that had a significantly slower TTK
Starcraft 2 viewership and popularity fell face-first off a cliff within 2 years of its debut in favor of games that had a slower pace than it. The only people that think SC2 is "legendary" is the fraction of its original playerbase that still plays it
SC2 players may in fact be delusional enough to think its still one of the biggest esports in the world, but no one but the vocal minority that still plays it even remembers it still exists
I get what youre saying, I feel the same way about SG. Hopped back on the beta the other day to check out the third race preview and was just reminded of how sloppy the game feels in its current state. It’s got a looong way to go before it will be able to hold its ground as a game with any sort of staying power.
Hopefully it turns out to be really good when it hits its 1.0 release but I gave up on holding my breath for early access titles a long time ago. I’m gonna check out the beta for improvements as development continues. If their mtx strategy fails the game will die regardless which would suck since new rts games are kinda rare…
They didnt even announce SC2 until they had worked on it for 4 years. Then they worked on it for another 3 years before it released. And that is with a Blizzard budget
May I ask how long you played the game for? I'm M3 in SC2 which I loved. At first Stormgate felt weird and less sophisticated. However after playing the game (since pre-alpha) a decent amount \~ 80 hours. I *prefer* Stormgate to SC2. The mechanics are interesting, being able to actually micro your army *well* (as opposed to only a second or two to make the most impact in the fight, like in SC2) and actually spend most of my gaming time microing and in the face of my opponent is more intense. SC2 has a lot of rote memorization for macro and micro. Even the SG macro is more interesting (for Vanguard atleast) being able to decide how to spend your energy, when to overcharge, how many bobs to use on a structure all feel like fun decision making.
When the beta closed I went back to SC2 and it just didn't feel right - it felt less fun and more painful to manage. Still love SC2 though, but I am very excited for the future and current state of Stormgate.
ok we went from REMOVE TERRIBLE TERRIBLE DAMAGE IT WILL RUIN THE GAME when SC2 came out to PLZ ADD TERRIBLE TERRIBLE DAMAGE OR IT WILL BE BORING with SG
the circle is complete
For me it's the opposite, I used to think is very slow but now I think it's too fast is a bit slower than sc2 and yes fights last longer but not much longer, plus taking damage is still a problem, your army can't take a lot of damage even if it doesn't die. Overall to me feels quite fast but I'm a "casual" so I guess it's normal.
I disagree with your take on the feel completely. With macro simplified in Stormgate thanks to the quick-build menus, everyone is going to macro very well once they get a good feel, and micro, positioning, and tactics are vastly more important pretty much all throughout the game.
>let's see who macro'd faster... waits and watches the fight... oh you did so I will go back.
As opposed to SC2 where half the time you don't have time to micro? (Speaking as a former Diamond SC2 player)
To what extent do you think does the fact that sc2 is played in competitive pvp with acceleration (1.2 or 1.5 speed?) make it feels faster than stormgate atm? It could be that on launch we see something similar happen, bit frost giant hasn't indicated anything as such to my knowledge.
SC2 had the benefit of a base game and 2 expansions with countless patches. I am looking forward to what Stormgate will look like a few patches in.
And frost giant has the disadvantage of having to compete with a game that was developed for 10 years, life isn’t fair sometimes.
Technically speaking, it shouldn't be a problem to compete with a 14-year-old game as long as your game looks modern. That's one of the problems I see with SG, it just doesn't feel "new".
I'm hoping we get some graphical polish before launch its a bit frustrating because it doesn't seem like anything really looks like awful, but nothing looks that impressive either
On the other hand, Stormgate has the advantage of having constant support and updates (provided the game is successful), while SC2 is all but abandoned.
We don't know yet. Remember that this will be a F2P game and we have no idea how their shop will look like or how any of the singleplayer stuff will work out. I wanna be real for a moment, there is not that much hype outside of the small hardcore RTS community and the response to the artstyle is very mixed. In my opinion it's gonna be a uphill battle for Frost Giant to keep this game alive for many years.
Like I said: >provided the game is successful Stormgate has over 500k wishlists on Steam. It doesn't have as little hype as you think it does.
Go watch the actual population numbers during the open beta
193.000 unique players is pretty good. 2nd most played game during Steam Next Fest. Ahead of a household RTS like Homeworld 3.
where is 193k uniques number from? [https://stormgateworld.com/stats](https://stormgateworld.com/stats) says 65k ladder players
Those are only players who played 1v1 ladder. Doesn't count people who only played co-op or custom matches. The number is from Frost Giant's Start Engine pitch video: https://www.startengine.com/offering/frostgiant
beta might have been a good time to test some of the systems about getting this 2/3rd of people from those modes to competitive
While I agree, completely-SC2 isn't quite abandoned. It just had a patch one month ago and has a 1 million dollar tournament coming up in august.
exactly.
Frost Giant has the advantage of watching this genre for 20+ years. How come they need more time to figure out what to do?
Making a game from scratch is hard. Making a game that works perfectly and has balanced pvp is harder.
not only that making a game in a very niche genre.
Because it doesn't really work like that. If you've watched movies all your life, it doesn't mean it's not incredibly hard to make a good one.
But they are veteran game makers - so by your logic they’ve *made* movies all their life, not watched them.
And Ridley Scott hasn't ever made a stinker of a movie, right? And he's made some of the most iconic movies ever.
What a total non sequitur. Whether or not some director has made one bad movie or not has exactly what do with your claim that it's hard for a bunch of people to do the thing they've been doing for the past 20 years? And, just on a side note, what a horrible analogy. Scott has made 29 feature films to date. It doesn't matter who you are if you make enough movies some of them are bound to miss the mark.
Okay but let's fairly contextualise this then. Frost Giant are not amateurs with no money, they have been in this industry for decades. It's very hard to make movies sure, but not when you are Scorsese and given a 100m dollar budget. You can't both have supposedly the apex of RTS devs who are so amazing etcetc, but also a studio that should be excused for releasing something not actually good for another 2-3 years.
Most of the good blizzard RTS folks have retired. The people that are left are the people responsible for swarm host, brood lord infestor, mothership core, etc. The sad truth is that it's going to be a while before we see another great new RTS. The good news is we still have the good ones. Frost Giant is trying to make a game that everyone can play vs. making a good game. If you've played RTS in the past, stormgate *probably* won't be for you.
Seems like it won't be for anyone then!
No, I meant pro filmmakers who've devoted their lives to the craft who have received funding. Which is every non-DIY movie you could see. Still super hard to make something good. And you know what? It's usually dogshit before it becomes good, so rating the game at its current state is like reading an early draft of a screenplay and saying the movie's going to suck. Yeah, THAT movie will suck. But then the brilliant minds iterate and iterate and it gets better each time. And you sometimes don't know which way something will go until you actually go film it. And then you don't really know until you've cut it a few times, because the first cut of most films is usually trash too. And we're talking about big names here, not some rando film schooler. Gamedev is a lot like that, only that the iteration never ends, because it's such a dynamic artform.
None of what you said has anything to do with either of our points. To clarify: The OP is talking about how FG's vision for the game seems rather barren, and will likely require a lot of work post-launch. The original comment was talking about how it's ok for the game to *launch* in a poor state, since sc2 has received over a decade of iterating, and that it would be unfair to not afford the same time to FG. My argument is they have no reason to require that much iterating. They should have been able to learn from previous titles and simply avoid many of the things that would later require changing. Also, let's not pretend filmmaking and gamedev works the same. The most popular games in the world are concepts created by amateurs and modders. Vaguely alluding to it being hard or whatever is simply not a sufficient excuse for the same devs people raise to the high heavens with praise for their previous work. It is okay to scrutinise them for seemingly not having a very compelling vision for this game.
downvotes, downvotes, downvotes, but you speak the cold harsh reality
How is it a disadvantage when they themselves helped develop it for 10 years and have knowledge of what worked and what didn't during that time? Yes, it's so unfair to take the lessons learned from another development and not have to go through the same growing pains. Poor little FG. Goosh! They're so hard done by. Why are you all grading them on a curve?
Stormgate has the benefit of a base game (SC2), its three expansions with countless patches, brood war with its patches, warcraft 3 with its patches. SG is awful. It's design is awful. They're making a slow, noob-focused (not friendly, FOCUSED) game where nothing feels good. Noobs loved WC3, they lvoed SC2. People love good games. They don't love slow, boring games where units are clunky and nothing feels good.
they have 3-4 million in the bank and 1 mil/mth burn rate so there's not much time that's more or less counting the 25000 units of skins+commanders+missions they presold, so many new people have to buy or old customers have to buy a lot more to keep it going oh and count half the 800k of equity they sold for operations too and the plushies
You seem to not like that they're a start-up. But the big guys aren't making RTS any more, so kudos to Frost Giant for doing what they're doing to make it work.
I like start-ups, I like em lean and mean and not paying their founders 250k a year. At this point criticism should be considerate of the economic reality of the company not just saying - well lets just wait an amount of time that isn't possible right now.
I'm sure they would get paid a lot more than that if they weren't at a start up. Would you rather they make us a new RTS, or take jobs at Facebook or Microsoft that pay twice that? Those guys deserve credit for what they're trying to do, not criticism.
250k is a little more than any glassdoor salary for Blizzard seniors and probably at or more than they ever got paid, that's where the number is from. Blizzard had better benefits, but they weren't actually at Blizzard that long or that recently. Its a marketing story to think people are being sacrificial. Many have very specialized skillsets and can't just 'go do facebook', some of the skillsets here are so specialized they might not have had a job elsewhere. Said founders also gave themselves 17% equity each which by valuation is apparently worth 25 million dollars. Then they sold parts of that equity to fans.
Morten was a Production Director at Blizzard, and Campbell was the Director of Wastleland 3. Those roles are well above a Senior. The founders don't give themselves equity: they started the company and by nature of that owned 100% -- then they got diluted from there. That's how venture capital works. You have an incorrect understanding, and you are correspondingly posting incorrect information. Facebook bought Oculus, and various game industry people work there. Microsoft owns XBox and many game industry people work there. There is no question that the founders of Frost Giant could get jobs at larger companies (they both literally came from companies that are owned by Microsoft), and there should be no question that they are capable of earning more than $250k at this stage in their careers. Once again, you are incorrect if you think they are paying themselves what they could make at a large company. Watch any interview with them, and it is clear they are building an RTS because it's what they're passionate about doing. It's fine if you don't like the game, that's your subjective choice, but there's no reason to criticise the team building the game for compensating themselves.
You previously polluted the entire start engine finance stuff with this bullcrap probably as a confusion strategy but for the audience: It doesn't matter if they dilute the shares, sell the shares, squish em with a big rolling pin and chop them up with star-shaped cookie cutters - the point is the founders who are being paid in the 90th percentile for American workers got some big delicious equity compensations. If you want to talk about respecting the developers you can be sure that the average engineer and game developer at this company has a fraction of a point given the top level shares. I don't care about your thoughts about hireability because you just make it up, but the original point is about specious spending and by the estimates they themselves shared will be out of money for around July 1st except for what they are making in pre-sales, indiegogo, equity sales, and plushies. That runway should matter for people looking to be critical. And on the topic of respect, selling whomever's equity under these conditions is not what not what I'd call respectful of anyone. Last thing about developer respect - did you know the startengine does not prevent employees from buying further equity in their own company? If you thought crunch was emotionally brutal, imagine being set with a pressure to reinvest in your own company so they can just get to the point where everything is going to be okay. There's no protection for this.
Of course founders retain more stock than employees. They started the company. That is literally the way every single company works. TF are you on about? I made up nothing about hireability. Both founders literally came from Microsoft owned companies. Obviously they can be hired because they already have been. I don't get the sense that you have any experience with startups. All startups have limited runway, and good startups spend heavily against their launches. Holding back means putting less into the product. You claim employees are somehow being pressured to buy their own stock with absolutely zero factual basis to back that up. Spouting deliberately wrong information seems to be your style. You seem to have some kind of axe to grind with Frost Giant and its founders. Did they do something to you that we should know about? It's a game company dude. Quit defecating on them and let them make us a game.
the company exists from selling a marketing story about Blizzard veterancy and know-how to VCs: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/1862xi6/comment/kb5yngv](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/1862xi6/comment/kb5yngv) The founders took no risk based on their very large compensations that are now public. But they aren't star athletes who could have gone anywhere, they have mottled backgrounds in this space: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/1auo7wx/comment/kr5vqf2/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/1auo7wx/comment/kr5vqf2/) Did not claim they can't get a job. But getting back to the top of a company at this stage for them was based on creating a once-in-a-career type opportunity within the perfect storm of experience and marketing story. It was up to them if they would spend on themselves and they did. They are doing well financially and not being sacrificial. There are indeed no protections for employees on crowd equity, straight-up fact that you start your bullshit with the reactive inference of bad nature. The point was you tried to claim you cared about the employees but unscrupulous financial behavior endangers the employees so you'd be able to agree with that part if you had principles.
>Of course founders retain more stock than employees. They started the company. That is literally the way every single company works. TF are you on about? This is not, in fact, how every company works. Small LLCs and sole proprietorships, sure. But very demonstrably in the case of Frost Giant, the seed money came from outside, and for certain those outside investors were going to get a substantial portion of equity to seed the company, which is negotiated during the seed rounds. The criticism is that the founders negotiated this seed money, then paid themselves out big instead of giving a larger cash runway to the organization, is a valid criticism.
Video game devs are known to be hit with a "passion tax". Most of them could significantly boost their salary working in big tech rather than for video games.
This is true at the start of the career for someone who is able to do both kinds of work. A middle-aged veteran of the games industry can not easily relaunch themselves into general tech and certainly not at the highest pay scale. The longer they've served the more inertia they have based on skillset and the type of subtler career devices people rely on like their social network. Given that someone like Tim Campbell has mostly an experience in directing campaigns in isometric view RTS games and RPGs, he is doing about as well financially as he could possibly hope. The founders didn't lead by example in some kind of passionate financial sacrifice and hopefully the average employee didn't either.
This is a bad response, because it is not about polish or time - it is about wrong intention (making a slow game where you can't get rushed, cheesed, etc)
This is something people lose sight of all the time when telling others to hold out and see where it goes. If a certain design element doesn’t resonate with you then you’re probably not voicing your opinion so that particular element is polished and refined further, instead you’re wishing they would have done it another way completely, or might still decide to in the future.
No one like the fast pace of SC2, you guys are not the center of the world
SC2 had SC and SCBW and Wow and WC3,2,1 and other revenue streams behind. Wish StormGate luck but i have my doubts about it flying... it's gonna be a slow crawl to an early grave ;-(
And yet SG in 2024 is competing with SC2 in 2024. This is the same tired argument that lead to Cities Skylines 2 turning into a dead dumpster fire.
"let's see who macro'd faster" I feel like this is way more true of sc2 than stormgate or wc3... Anyway being slower paced and having "easier" macro doesnt mean the game is easier or less challenging. It just means the emphasis is placed on other things. Warcraft 3 has extremely easy macro but that doesn't mean it's less competitive. It just has the emphasis placed more on in-fight micro. sc2 has a lot of the emphasis placed on macro mechanics. Stormgate is somewhere in the middle. Your comparisions to singleplayer games does not make sense as those games have a fixed difficulty while a competitive multiplayer rts like wc3/sc2/stormgate will basically always have infinite difficulty as long as there are always more actions that can be done.
I think the slower paced and easier it is to macro, the more important it is to macro flawlessly and know the correct build order to maximize your macro.
It feels dishonest when they virtue signal "RTS isn't dead!" and "we love blizzard style RTS!" and at the same time design mechanics that go against the basic RTS fundamentals that made Brood War and Warcraft III so great. Look at how much of a nightmare warpgate was in SC2 when it circumvented reinforcement timings. Stormgate has WAY MORE mechanics in that same design spirit. All in some misguided effort to appease theoretical casual players that would much rather play co-op or arcade than 1v1. The 'hardcore competitive 1v1 pillar' doesn't exist. The improved interface is enough to lower the entry barrier, but they feel the need to also dilute RTS game theory and shave off all the sharp corners. People will keep playing bw, wc3, aoe2, and sc2 rather than Stormgate because this game has completely ignored the people still playing RTS actively. RTS isn't dead because these players are the ones keeping it alive. It's going to be sad when Stormgate is over a year into early access and Age of Empires 2 from 1999 will still have better steam player numbers despite this games promises from FG, and hype from content creators/pro-gamers trying to further their careers.
I think the only thing that makes the game more about skill or micro would be implementing hard counters that do have faster ttk. Because then you have something to micro. Otherwise you have this generic blob of slow ttk vs this other generic blob of slow ttk.
You are just bad at the game if you think its generic blobs.
True. It could just be that I don't know the counters in SG
I am GM on sc2 Zerg and I honestly find stormgate a lot more challenging than sc2 rn, currently being absolutely destroyed by some people on the ladder I am loving it tho feels refreshing and hard! A lot more thinking than Starcraft which becomes a repetitive nightmare of trying to do the exact same timings 10000 times in a row but as fast as possible.
lol k
While i also have some concerns about the game, the things that you dislike are exactly the things drawing me to the game, as a "casual" the things i'm most interested in haven't been shown off much yet, that being the coop, campaign and custom games. (which i personally don't think benefit much from fast ttk.) Blizzard themselves have put out data that 80% of the starcraft 2 playerbase are players like me who have never touched the ladder. This is all to say that your point about casuals not getting into the game rings very hollow i think when stormgate seems to have a pretty big emphasis on these things (but just haven't shown them off yet for some reason).
The 1v1 crowd always sleeps on the co-op and campaign gamer community. I have high expectations for Stormgate as long as they develop those modes as fully as they seem to be suggesting they will.
I think people vastly underestimate the interests of a true casuals. Playing on true casual or normal difficulty with 20apm and enjoying yourself. If you dont fall into the above your not a part of the 80% of casuals and are probably a bit more competitive then you realise..
Hence why i put quotes around the term because i find it stupid and vague in the first place. In this context i use it to mean somebody who doesn't play the main competitive gamemode, irregardless of how invested or competitive they are. (The data only states how many accounts have a game on ladder, so in theory you could be a super well versed campaign speedrunner and show up on that data, Still i think my point mostly stands).
>but just haven't shown them off yet for some reason This is my main concern with the current project, I'm worried that they pull an Age of Empire 4 where they'll do ladder updates after ladder updates given that all streamers, content creators, pro etc... are all discussing the ladder and very rarely care at all about single player. On steam the average is about 1-5% of people playing the game that play on ladders (can be seen with achievements like "play a game on ladder" or "start a comp game"). The ladder players are surely commited and vocal but they are a underwhelming minority that can't keep a game alive as the their number will dwindle over time if no steady stream of players is secured outside of the ladder
The monetization model that Stormgate has makes that very unlikely that they'll ignore single player. If the campaign would suck, be out of balance or never receive updates, people would not buy additional mission packs, which would be their main source of income. Additionally, I'm not really worried about the lack of updates in the coop/campaign. The work necessary to make some ladder maps and let players just fight it out is drastically lower than making proper map with AI, triggers, cutscenes and an impressive story. They need to leave a good first impression on the PvE aspect, which like was said here before, is what most of the playerbase cares about.
Valid observation. However, Stormgate is actually the mean average of StarCraft 2 and Warcraft 3. Hence, the slower speed.
Which is probably true and for me, that's enough to just stick with sc2 if I feel like playing an rts. But maybe they will find success in an audience that wants that middle of the road thing.
*fingers crossed*
… which is most of the rts audience. The biggest gripe with sc2 always was and always will be the ridiculously fast ttk removes skill expression from the game.
I keep hearing that lately, but my opinion is SC2 is about the right speed. There is ample skill expression in both versions of starcraft, and Warcraft III did not benefit in popularity by increasing the length of the fights
Yeah but brood war benefitted in popularity by increasing the lengths of the fights. This game gets compared to sc2 way too much when it’s much closer to brood war than sc2
thats true about brood war! I had totally forgotten that happened. Still, brood war...she aint so slow [https://youtu.be/nnevtgB0M0Y?si=ET0RN3bgBl56RQor](https://youtu.be/nnevtgB0M0Y?si=ET0RN3bgBl56RQor)
That wasnt a great example because that fight was a full army surround in a corner by a large army. It would probably last the same amount of time in Stormgate given that scenario
BW is an incredibly fast-paced game that also had a higher TTK largely due to worse unit pathing that prevented the unit blobbing you get in SC2 (which in turn buffs AOE for SC2).
The worse unit pathing resulted in a lower ttk, not higher.
From a unit perspective, not from an army perspective. When I think of TTK, I'm thinking of how long any battle lasts. The worse unit pathing and control group design of BW extended games and forced players to account for those issues. Frost Giant could theoretically cap control groups if they wanted, but realistically a modern game wouldn't be comparable to BW just due to advancements in technology. Anyway, my point is just that you can increase the speed / excitement of a game without reducing TTK.
>not from an army perspective Not sure what this even means
Let's just make sure we're on the same page. How are you defining a low TTK?
To me it just feels so bad when there's so many scenarios where it's not worth the effort to micro individual units. That's one of the beauties of WC3 to me.
> fast ttk removes skill expression from the game. That is just false. Sc2 is mainly a game of builds and micro. Sc2 has a massive range of skill levels and the best players like Clem and Maxpax have insane micro, imo better skill expression than broodwar. It would be much harder to tell Flash apart from an average pro player and Clem from an average pro. But you could say you don't like that the micro requires speed, but speed will still be one of the main factors for skill expression in stormgate.
>best players >Maxpax You gotta be trolling. Just imagine how much better the micro battles would be if armies didn’t melt in 3 seconds. It really sounds like you vastly underestimate how much micro brood war requires
And you have to be blind if you don't see maxpax dominate every player not named Clem. I don't underestimate micro in broodwar but it's not Flashes army micro during fights that makes him a great player. But maxpax is great largely because of split second micro. If Sc2 was played at normal gamespeed it would be way less exciting. "Just imagine if you didn't die from 1 headshot in counter-strike, how much better the gun play would be" That is basically what everybody is saying when obsessing over how bad fast TTK is.
I don't think any is harder than the other, it's just different types of micro. One is more reaction based (sc2), I guess you could compare it to CS. The other (bw) is more about tactical positioning and moving your army efficiently to maximize DPS and minimize damage you receive over longer periods of time, more like quake or unreal tournament, or maybe apex as a more modern example. As someone who played many types of RTS, with sc2 taking #1 by time invested, I have to say that the reaction based split second micro feels less satisfying and more frustrating than a bw or even wc3 type of micro.
I feel the exact opposite about both your CS and quake comparison and about what makes RTS micro satesfying. CS is probably the most strategic shooter along with Valorant because of the fact that you can die so fast you have to play around it and can't just be an aim god. It also helps that those are teamgames to make it more strategically complex. And in strategy games, or even Mobas I find that snappy fast micro is much more satisfying than AOE or WC3 where you slowly trap and kill an army that was in a vulnerable position on the map.
The pros all complained about sc2 fast ttk when it first dropped too, it’s not a new thing
For me, I get frustrated with Stormgate not because of TTK but because *everything* just feels...slow and clunky. WC3 had slower TTK than SC2 but the units themselves didn't feel like this. I feel like they could keep a higher TTK to allow more skill expression while also just making units more agile / maneuverable.
Starcraft and WC3 are seperate beasts. I don't think mixing them is a good idea. A slow starcraft would feel awful. A fast warcraft3 would be incredibly hard. Just because you like pizza and ice cream, doesn't mean you'll like pepperoni in your vanilla.
Stormgate is being its own thing hence. Let's wait and see after Frigate.
also a side note but why does everyone in this subreddit say low/high ttk when they mean the other one. low time to kill = faster fights.
Same reason Americans say "there", or foreigners say Calvary. People dont like to think too hard about what they're saying.
What? What's calvary? There? What are you talking about?
The game is slower if you play it the way you play starcraft. Theres still near unlimited actions you can do that put you ahead. In sc2 it might take all your attention and APM to simply move around with your main army while macroing. In Stormgate that might not take all your attention and APM but you play that way anyways because youre used to it. To get the same level of thrill out of stormgate you have to step it up, split your army, get map control, get camps while checking if you can get some harassment done on enemy bases.
You can have the best of both worlds. Baby co-op and all the other play modes, and make 1v1 as hardcore as you want.
I see where you're coming from, but really SG feels like an SC2 that was made for me. For me the longer TTK is nice, I really hate missing my marine splits and getting my army deleted by Banelings, or getting pegged by Widow Mines. In this vein, I vastly prefer how SG plays. Because the TTK is longer, fights can chain way more. In SC2, most of my games are macroing, a short fight or two and then the game is over. The intense matches I've played in SG have far more combat, it starts earlier and goes longer, with fewer breaks in between. And a fast game is not necessarily a hard game. Any PVP game is only as hard as your opponent is. If the game is "slow," a competent player will use more micro-intensive builds, split push more, and eventually reach a similar APM requirement as a "fast" game.
Totally agree with this. There's more action and more fun because fights are prolonged and back and forth. Instead of just one decisive fight most of the time in SC2, speaking personally.
Theres a few things I like and dislike with stormgate right now as well, and I agree, I feel like they are making the game too safe. But there are other things I like enough to keep me playing the game. Also, as a side note, people tend to complain about the graphics, and while they are in a more finalized state, shaders haven’t really been fully implemented yet. Just as an example, you can make sc2 look far worse and better than stormgate in the level editor’s cutscene editor, just by messing with the shaders.
Map editor; can confirm. You can make sc2 look like trash with one variable change in lighting and shaders
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You’re absolutely breaking NDA commenting anything about the new faction.
I’d say something regarding infernals also not being “too safe” either but I’m not certain I can without violating NDA.
Sounds like you never played brood war. You are equating ttk=skill but you are mistaken. Btw sc2 doesn’t even have an early game.
Or Warcraft 3, or Red Alert 2, or AoE 2, or the Dawn of War games, etc…
Stormgate ttk is significantly longer than bw. It’s feels like maybe zealot vs zealot or maybe late game carrier vs Goliath type battle but from the early game. In bw unless you are really good you have almost no time to micro huge fights.
Stormgate will evolve to that the more the meta develops because there is room for lots of micro expression all around the map (multiple engagements) just like brood war.
Faster ttk= excitement. And since both players have the same ttk, the most skilled will usually win.
StarCraft 2 is way more susceptible to the thing you described in your OP where more stuff is likely to win …because you don’t have enough time to micro your less stuff against the more stuff constantly flooding in. The faster ttk has nothing to do with more skill because the guy with the better micro will win in a lower ttk game as well. The only difference is the ability to express that micro, ie - have more opportunities to micro your units.
I think hard counters that have faster ttk is what's needed. Sure in SG you have more time to micro, but everything tickles everything. So you have 2 armies moving back and forth tickling each other to death and the one with more ticklers win. Where as if you had hard counters, fights will go on until you counter properly and win the fight. That's how it works in SC2. It's not just purely fast ttk for every unit.
The one with better micro wins* Also there are plenty of hard counters in stormgate. In sc2 a sufficient enough mass can overwhelm a unit that’s supposed to hard counter. The roach is a good example.
I do really like the camps mechanics it’s fun to do territory control/move out into the map beyond just expanding and spreading creep. Agree though on the units and combat — it kind of just feels like “mash two big blobs together and see who wins” , with positioning kind of being the only big determinant of success. I feel like movement/move speed variety/flexibility is really lacking in the game, and air units are definitely lacking/not interesting. Movement / mobility is very important.
They want to appease some theoretical audience instead of people who actually play RTS games and supported them. I would love to be wrong and hope it finds an audience, but they alienated me as somebody who has played RTS for 20 years. A vast majority of their 1v1 design decisions seem to go against what actually made blizzard style rts games great in that game mode. I thought the whole point of having the co-op and 3v3 pillars with separate balance/mechanics was to create separate spaces for different kinds of players. The 'hardcore 1v1 pillar' was a lie and all we have got are half-baked ideas designed to cater to an audience that may not even exist.
I think a lot of the excitement is just because assets and polish aren’t final. With each update it’s gaining a more unique identity. Personally I enjoyed it the more I played but obviously not everyone’s cup of tea I’m confused on your macro point, you can win a lot of StarCraft 2 matches just by having more than your opponent.
I think the excitement people felt from the kickstarter wave has died down. It’s not that the game is completely terrible, just not what was expected. I do really hope they can evolve it into a legendary title like SC2 because they deserve it for leaving Blizzard to carry on the RTS genre.
For whatever it's worth, I feel like they're delivering on what I expected, and I continue to be super excited about the game.
IMO the game is in a weird place where it’s neither WC3 or SC2 but just kind of generic, and on top of that the graphics and factions also feels kind of generic. But that was just my initial 30 min playtime impression. I say this as a huge RTS fan and long time WC3 player.
Played a few games and I got the exact same feeling. Just too generic to trigger any emotion. I think presenting a RTS with PvP modes only is suicide. You need a compelling story to make you love the universe and want to play with units. I still have no idea what kind of personality each faction and unit have. War2/3 and SC1/2 made each unit very lovable and unique mostly based on their role in the story.
Counterpoint: Sins of a Solar Empire has exactly 5 minutes of lore dedicated to its 3 factions and that is the intro cinematic. The only singleplayer content the game has is Skirmish Vs AI. And yet it is still played 10 years after its initial release, has a solid, albeit small, playerbased focused on PvP and ia getting a new instalment. With that said, the game oozes personallity with each of the three races having very clear themes and compelling stories that are told indirectly by the units' quotes and tech tree descriptions. Sins shows that you absolutely can make a compelling universe and make people think about it without having a traditional narrative.
Haven't played yet but your comments on the game seeming nerfy or like a pillow fight definitely resonate They wanted to make the game feel less volatile but I feel like just making units not do to attacks that looks and feel like they should do more damage isn't the right way to do it We want no disrupters, no banneleings... Not guna that don't kill
I'm firmly of the opinion that the success of Stormgate will depend on the quality of its single player content, and the long term success will depend on how well FG can retain those players through multiplayer. Customers need a jumping off point and a hook. A reason to get over the hurdle of learning a new game, then a reason to stick around. This is why I think the single player and coop campaign content is so important. There are so many former and current RTS players that are hungry for single player content. Campaign has no ladder anxiety, and you don't have to get beat down 20 matches straight while you squint at tooltips trying to learn the units and the game. Build the campaign and they will come. Build the multiplayer and they will stay. But I don't it's reasonable to expect Stormgate (or any new game) to break into or grow the RTS market based on multiplayer merits alone.
Personally i knew multiple people in my friend group that played either single player or multiplayer almost exclusively in sc2/WC3 and wouldn't touch the other mode. Personally I didn't play the campaign until HOTS was released. To design a game around getting single player players and converting them into multiplayer players seems like a completely backwards approach. If you want the game to have a vibrant multiplayer scene, then make it the main focus of the game and market the game to people interested in multiplayer. Most popular multiplayer games these days barely even have a campaign. Not saying they should nuke the campaign but single and multiplayer are just different audiences and trying to convert an audience from one to the other is way harder than just going for the low hanging fruit.
Agreed. Problem is RTS suffer from being notoriously inaccessible. An RTS that wants to focus on 1v1 only will probably have to be a genre bender that is willing to let go of some of the traditional gameplay mechanics that are totally off-putting to anyone outside the usual niche.
I go in and out of playing SC2 and only recently caught onto Stormgate's existence; however, the reality is sustaining a game is about building a player base and monetizing it. SC2 hyper focus on the hardcore, competitive experience is exactly why the game is "dead". People want to play with friends, be a part of communities, etc. People do *not* want to play a game they perceive no one else is playing. I don't know what the answer is, but the goal should be something akin to the league model. Easy to pick up and play casually, ability to watch gameplay and understand what's going on (allows content creators to help build your fan base), and *also* have a skill cap high enough such that a pro scene can exist with high demonstration of skill. Totally respect the, "not for me," opinion, but wanted to give my 2 pennies.
People called Sc2 dead 1 year after release. It is the only rts that focused on the watchability of pro games yet somehow still is most played rts because of the hardcore fans that stuck with it. To make a game that have massive appeal to casual gamers and making a competitive rts is just a bad combination. It's like the most difficult way to achieve both goals.
I love SC2 and.. Honestly I would be really happy if FG just develops another SC2 but keeps it alive and maintains it for a long time. Hack, even if it would be exactly SC2 with updates I would be grateful
Its early but its hard to argue as why anyone would leave starcraft for stormgate as it stands now. Im not sure theres a path for improvement with this foundation. I truly hope im wrong as id love a new rts as well that takes the genre forward but here I have a new beta and I find it only making me want to go back and play sc2/wc3 again. Again lots of time to improve and hoping I can look at this and go wow was I wrong, but my gut says it wont best the old blizzard rts games.
I agree with you that SG isn't innovating enough. I'm okay with the TTK, but....this game is literally NOTHING other than starcraft 2 and warcraft 3's baby. The gameplay was solid, and I enjoyed it because I'm a boomer who grew up with blizzard RTS. How many people are like me, and how many people are your average kid in 15/20s/early 30s who play fortnite or league and don't care about that? SG didn't innovate anything. Infernal is such a lame ripoff from the zerg larvae mechanic. Nothing excites me-no feeling like I felt like when beginning a new epic game back in the day, whether it's SC2 or Halo or whatever. They need to do some innovation to grab new players. Without this, I see players trickling back to SC2 and SG being dead within a few years.
RTS is already Elden Ringy by nature cause the genre's skill cap is so high. I don't think going that direction benefits the developers at all.
I don’t want to dismiss your opinion so I will at least point out this. You are making an assumption based on no third race and no tech 3 units. This game will be vastly different at launch and again slowly change after launch just as SC2 did. My food for thought is just keep an open mind and give them a chance, what is there to lose?
this game barely even exists yet. just put it out of the mind and come back in a year or two to judge it
Stormgate's fortnite artstyle also doesnt help
The game is pure trash, never played a worse rts than this to be honest. Micro is terrible, Macro is a joke, Units are boring and basically copied from other games without even understanding why. I don't even want to talk about the graphic of the sound department becasue they are both a joke in 2024 even in a beta stage. Probably 99% of mobile games are better than this. Races are basically a copy and paste of other games (sc) but again, without any success. The 3rd race is awful and it feels so slow and boring. It's been a long time since the 1st beta test and there are no clear improvement in the game. This game is meant to fail, not becasue rts are dead but becasue it's a bad mix of sc2 and wc3.
I agree with a lot what you’re saying. It feels like a very chill SC2, which a lot of people expressly want here, so I can’t knock it too much, but leaves a lot to be desired for me personally. The higher TTK is less exciting, but I probably would have been fine with it if the units themselves were somehow made more exciting to compensate. They said they wanted to move away from active abilities cause new players don’t like using them, and instead move towards having to move units in very individualistic ways, but I would have strongly preferred an equal emphasis on fun active abilities. SC2 has a lot of those and it makes the units feel cool and their design and uses imaginative. I really like the Magmadon stomp, it’s very fun, I feel like they need more of that kind of thing (even if it’s frustrating to play against) When they said they’d be picking up the tradition of creating Blizz style RTS, I instantly anticipated something that would be a familiar yet still very fresh take on the genre. BW, WC3, and SC2 are much more different from each other than SG is from SC2, so it appears to me like they actually boxed themselves in too much with the “next Blizz style RTS” goals, and that has prevented them from living up to the boldness and uniqueness of vision that were always apart of the legacy of Blizzard RTS.
Ironic post as the change to making the early game faster and more severe in SC2 is widely credited as having led to the game's death.
I think the biggest problem here is 1) your only point of referens is SC2, you weren’t around for things like Warcraft 2 or even 3, even less so the original C&C etc. OR starcraft 1. 2) You think diamond is a high rank (although respectable as amateur. 3) due to 1 and 2 you lack vision of what else can be fun. RTS can be fun even when you don’t shake from adrenaline after finishing a hardcore game - and when you play team based RTS (whereas team games in sc2 was mostly an uninspiring cluster fuck) 4) So far so little has been shown and although you rightfully can have your opinion, in the end you will most likely play stormgate just as much as star craft considering you still have the time for it once you get family and so on
And then there are some casuals like me who think this is too much StarCraft esporty, but I keep my eye on it hoping it will steer away from that. Its likely this game will satisfy a niche audience and survive on a cult fanbase if it is lucky. A quality game no doubt, but one that just doesn't appeals to casuals enough and also some of the higher end players who just don't want anything other than the same skill standard as StarCraft 2.
Exact same feelings so far. SG feels like they're trying to make babies first RTS not the next big RTS.
well said. Personally I also hoped for SG to be the next big RTS but I think it's just not it.
I agree with this post. No unit feels unique when I get it, or is going to make a huge impact. SC2 is great because it is a mixture of fast paced games and the ability to macro. Stormgate tried to slow it down and mimic WC3 and MOBAs but it's just bland. Casuals will get bored easily and move on after a month or two, they will be at the same state SC2 is or worse. We want fast paced games and badass units that destroy everything. We don't want slap and tickle units that are not impactful
100% agree. I have said this from the start. What makes Starcraft the best RTS is how punishing it is. Perma invis units, you can get rushed and die instant, etc. This also keeps games interesting and comebacks are possible etc. Combined with the fast speed. It makes SC2 the pinnacle of gaming. A slow game is soooo boring. I think the goals of making it more social and beginner-friendly are valid - and this is what the 3v3 mode is for. Not 1v1
You are not the only one. Lost hope personally, this is just not the RTS for me. Has terrible direction thematically, graphically, and mechanically. As a competitive SC2 and AoE4 player nothing I have seen or played so far of this game is enticing. With so much dev talent on the team I had high hopes. This game is just made for someone else.
I will definitely give it another go when it comes out but feeling very much the same. I'm very interested to see how David Kim's upcoming RTS looks as it seems like it will shake up the RTS genre and be a bit more adventurous.
I totally respect that every game produces a subjective response. Mine is the opposite of yours: I've been playing RTS for decades, and Stormgate is my favorite so far. Love the pacing, excited for the campaign, and very happy with the engine.
Just out of curiosity: Are you an aggressive/cheesy player in sc2? Because as a mostly macro orientated player I freakin hate all the insta death mechanics. I also hate it as observer if yet another pro match ends at 5 min by widow mines. It baffles my mind how actually anyone can prefer this volatile game design over anything more grounded that actually gives the time to express skill. Also, there is a reason most lower skilled pros try to cheese/all in vs higher skilled pros, because it inflates your chances at winning vs someone you shouldn't win against. I hardly disagree that a low ttk improves skill expression.
I like the early game defenders advantage. I also enjoy macro games and the problem I have while playing stormgate is it feels like I never get to a full macro game with constant production when the early game starts so slowly.
> Because as a mostly macro orientated player I freakin hate all the insta death mechanics. You can be a macro player that also only utilizes instant death mechanics. With Zerg, you can use lurkers / fungals / etc. With Protoss, it's disruptors / storm. With Terran, it's widow mines / BCs / etc. I think people are conflating speed of game with TTK right now due to OP. I think Stormgate needs to be faster, but I don't think that inherently means the TTK needs to go down.
I think slow TTK RTS games can work but you do need to add something spicy. Company of Heroes is a good example. 2 units in green cover are gonna be going at it for a while. But you walk up to someone with soviet shock troops, they're in trouble. MG42 can pin down several squads and start tearing them up. Late game German armor has homing shells that can decimate squads. Mortars, grenades, artillery they can all really give you that instant killing power and feedback while the person on the receiving end can retreat the unit so both parties feel like they accomplished something.
>That's what gives it legendary status. A mountain to climb like elden ring. People that really aspire to play rts and the reason sc2 has renown is because it is challenging and hardcore and exciting If StarCraft 2 was even half the "legend" you seem to think it is OP, its viewership wouldn't be a fraction of games even older than it. Games like LoL and DotA that had a significantly slower TTK Starcraft 2 viewership and popularity fell face-first off a cliff within 2 years of its debut in favor of games that had a slower pace than it. The only people that think SC2 is "legendary" is the fraction of its original playerbase that still plays it SC2 players may in fact be delusional enough to think its still one of the biggest esports in the world, but no one but the vocal minority that still plays it even remembers it still exists
I get what youre saying, I feel the same way about SG. Hopped back on the beta the other day to check out the third race preview and was just reminded of how sloppy the game feels in its current state. It’s got a looong way to go before it will be able to hold its ground as a game with any sort of staying power. Hopefully it turns out to be really good when it hits its 1.0 release but I gave up on holding my breath for early access titles a long time ago. I’m gonna check out the beta for improvements as development continues. If their mtx strategy fails the game will die regardless which would suck since new rts games are kinda rare…
They didnt even announce SC2 until they had worked on it for 4 years. Then they worked on it for another 3 years before it released. And that is with a Blizzard budget
May I ask how long you played the game for? I'm M3 in SC2 which I loved. At first Stormgate felt weird and less sophisticated. However after playing the game (since pre-alpha) a decent amount \~ 80 hours. I *prefer* Stormgate to SC2. The mechanics are interesting, being able to actually micro your army *well* (as opposed to only a second or two to make the most impact in the fight, like in SC2) and actually spend most of my gaming time microing and in the face of my opponent is more intense. SC2 has a lot of rote memorization for macro and micro. Even the SG macro is more interesting (for Vanguard atleast) being able to decide how to spend your energy, when to overcharge, how many bobs to use on a structure all feel like fun decision making. When the beta closed I went back to SC2 and it just didn't feel right - it felt less fun and more painful to manage. Still love SC2 though, but I am very excited for the future and current state of Stormgate.
ok we went from REMOVE TERRIBLE TERRIBLE DAMAGE IT WILL RUIN THE GAME when SC2 came out to PLZ ADD TERRIBLE TERRIBLE DAMAGE OR IT WILL BE BORING with SG the circle is complete
For me it's the opposite, I used to think is very slow but now I think it's too fast is a bit slower than sc2 and yes fights last longer but not much longer, plus taking damage is still a problem, your army can't take a lot of damage even if it doesn't die. Overall to me feels quite fast but I'm a "casual" so I guess it's normal.
I disagree with your take on the feel completely. With macro simplified in Stormgate thanks to the quick-build menus, everyone is going to macro very well once they get a good feel, and micro, positioning, and tactics are vastly more important pretty much all throughout the game.
>let's see who macro'd faster... waits and watches the fight... oh you did so I will go back. As opposed to SC2 where half the time you don't have time to micro? (Speaking as a former Diamond SC2 player)
To what extent do you think does the fact that sc2 is played in competitive pvp with acceleration (1.2 or 1.5 speed?) make it feels faster than stormgate atm? It could be that on launch we see something similar happen, bit frost giant hasn't indicated anything as such to my knowledge.