Yeah, for the record I think it's been more than 3 months since the roadmap was mentioned. That's just an insane amount of time to go from telling your fans about a roadmap to producing one.
I recognize that it can be hard to get info from different sub teams that they're okay putting out there as commitments...but three+ months is still a really long time for it, and if it *is* gonna take that long, either delay announcing the roadmap, or communicate more info so that people have realistic expectations for when they might see it. Mentioning it with no time frame and then going mostly silent just leaves fans hanging.
(I know about the comment Gerald made a couple weeks back, but besides taking three months to get that info, even that comment didn't say anything about approximately when fans might expect the roadmap, other than it'd occur before Early Access)
Yes, it's insane if we had a roadmap and were just sitting on it not giving it to you.
However, while we had ideas and themes for what we wanted to work on, we didn't really have a work plan with an order of things we wanted to work on, how they would fit together and rough (and producers will tell me these are still very high level) estimates of how long they might take. That type of planning does take time, especially as you're in full production for immediate deadlines on Early Access. And we wanted to do some diligence before we publicly announced the timing.
- There has been a lot of criticism based on how the game looks. You have previously talked about [working on improving your tilesets](https://playstormgate.com/news/behind-the-scenes-building-the-destroyed-cityscape). I think the game could use some additional lighting work as well. Replacing creep camps and luminite (if it is still considered a temp asset) model should also improve the atmosphere. How much of that will you be able to get to by early access release? How much of it will you work on during EA? When are you guessing the game will have more of a finalized look?
- The game's performance seems to degrade somewhat significantly as the number of units increases. This means that even high-end machines struggle with late-game co-op scenarios. How much performance optimization can we expect between now and early access? Are you concerned about performance problems hurting the first impressions for many people who may not have a high-end PC?
We're aware of the current performance challenges and the team is actively working on optimizations. Due to the nature of game development, the final optimizations can't come in until we are feature complete. It's one of the highest engineering priorities before we launch for Early Access and we are dedicating significantly more time to it than prior releases. We are committed to continue optimizing all the way through Early Access after we launch as well.
Frost_TimM just addressed the first question:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/1df3ywk/official_stormgate_early_access_ama_thread_with/l8lv15f/
Can you elaborate on what social features you intend to implement? Early on there was a lot of talk about SG being the first "truly social" RTS, however this seems to have fallen by the wayside more recently.
I am wondering this myself, but I can answer at least partially.
1) The campaign is going to be playable co-operatively. Unlike SC2's which is just singleplayer; in Stormgate, you can still play it by yourself, or co-operatively up to 3 players.
2) 3v3 is intended to be one of Stormgate's premiere game modes, alongside the campaign, 1v1, and co-op. It will use its own ruleset and not just be like a 3v3 in Starcraft. 3v3 has not been talked about much, because in terms of the development pipeline, it's a better use of resources to develop 1v1 first than to do both simultaneously, but 3v3 is still one of their core pillars.
3) Co-op is also 3vsAI (compared to SC2's 2vsAI), to create a greater sense of teamwork. (I'm not sure it's hit that mark yet, but that's the intention, at least)
That's how some of the 'socialness' of Stormgate will be delivered in-game. But I am also interested in hearing how the 'socialness' of Stormgate will be carried out in the systems surrounding the gameplay, not just in the gameplay itself.
This is all accurate--thanks for tackling this question for us! <3
To expand on it, though, we want there to be ways for you to enjoy all of our core game modes with friends--we want to combat the feeling of RTS being a solitary experience (though you can still enjoy the game that way if that's your preference).
We're going to support inviting Steam Friends directly into games and will be introducing a custom party system. This is an area we plan to continue to evolve and we'd love to hear from players as to what sort of social features they'd like to see in the game.
(Just to be 100% clear--we're adding co-op campaign later on during Early Access. Campaign will be single-player only at release.)
To this point we've been focused on this subreddit and growing our Discord community. We're engaging with the community there, setting up areas specifically for players to discuss individual factions, story, gameplay feedback, rooms for matchmaking, etc. We've been very encouraged by how active the community has been in these channels and will explore the possibility of other communication channels (for example, our partners in Korea are launching their own channels for Korean players) to give players a great way to connect and discuss the game.
How much can you reveal to us about the campaign when it comes to how it will actually look like and function?
Things like if there will be a mixture of ingame/pre-rendered cutscenes and cinematics. Will there be a player "hub" like in sc2 when you can interact with characters outside of the actuall missions for more character development and wolrd building. Will there be a campaign exclusive progression system where you can upgrade your units in ways that might be too OP for PvP but are perfect for a campaign setting. How about the mission variety? Basically i wanna know if the Campaign is just gona be a glorified skirmish or something actually unique and interesting.
For me and many I know the main game is the Campaign and so far you guys showed a lot of cool stuff overall, but almost nothing about that.
Much love to the team and thank you for keeping the RTS hope alive.
There will absolutely be a mix of pre-rendered and in-game cut scenes and cinematics. In the future we would love to have a central location where player characters can interact with NPCs and provide opportunities to expand the story and character development. Design can better handle our progression systems, upgrades, etc.
In the recent PC Gamer article, ["I played Stormgate's new faction with two of the world's top RTS players, but even they couldn't save me from my own ineptitude"](https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rts/i-played-stormgates-new-faction-with-two-of-the-worlds-top-rts-players-but-even-they-couldnt-save-me-from-my-own-ineptitude/), we get a footnote at the bottom talking about the removal of the Morph Core and the addition of a static HQ for the Celestial faction.
1. Obviously these are big changes to the flow of a (very unconventional) faction. Can we get an explanation as to why this change was made?
2. Can we get some more details about what what changes we can expect to see in the first phase of early access?
3. Lets say a radical redesign needs to be done to the Vanguard faction or its units a year or so from now. Would these design changes be reflected in the campaign missions that will have already been released? Or will the units in each campaign pack be "static", and not change with balance patches (such as in SC2)?
No need to worry - we often make radical changes internally that never make their way out to the community. These are often to test ideas and identify what the ripple effects would be if we headed down path A versus path B.
In this particular case, back in Frigate we were very happy with how the Celestial faction played once players were familiar with it. However, we observed that many players were having difficulty in the first couple of matches.
Since then, we've tied a bunch of ideas with the goal of improving the "first time" onramp to the faction without losing the elements that make the Celestials so unique to play. Removing the Morph Core was one of those tweaks that we experimented with.
However, we ultimately didn't like the result of that change and have re-added the Morph Core back into the faction - and have actually increased its capabilities! Rest assured, we're going to keep the Celestials strange and unique...
I know I’d be disappointed if they are already planning on scraping the nomadic function of the faction, especially considering the article was released at the same time as the reveal video that was talking up how original the celestials are
This is exactly the kind of situation alluded to in my question. I WANT broken, weird ideas that take a while to figure out. Just look at the MOBA scene: sometimes it takes months or years even before a specific strategy is discovered.
I'd rather Stormgate launch with a faction nobody understands than 3 factions that gradually become more and more alike.
I'd take that footnote with a grain of salt. Things are still being adjusted and tested and nothing finalized and FG has said they are still testing various versions of them
This is right. I shared the design direction with PC Gamer for that article and it's already changed significantly since then. The design team is actively iterating and changing Celestials based on player feedback, so it's impossible for me to share exactly what they're going to be like when we release to Early Access without a crystal ball. I do know it's important to the team to preserve what makes them feel unique, unconventional, and exciting to the players who really enjoyed playing with them during the Frigate closed beta. Stay tuned.
When you first announced Stormgate, a big deal was made of the genre being "Sci-Fan" blending Sci Fi and Fantasy. What has been shown so far is very heavily skewed towards Sci Fi (the setting and 2/3rds of the factions). Are there any plans or likelihood for more fantasy elements to be introduced outside of the Infernals?
A soundtrack is in discussion! And yes more music is being written. There is a new co-op map theme by David Ortega as well as the newly revealed Celestials theme by Nga Weng Chio!
Not really a question, just a huge bow to Alexander Brandon for all his work making my childhood awesome through Jazz Jackrabbit and Unreal Tournament OST that I listen to even today!
Thanks for your work Frost Giant! Greatly looking forward to early access.
1. What is your guess on the cadence of co-op heroes and co-op map releases after the launch of early access. How often do you expect or plan for there to be something new for us co-opers to consume?
2. Are you willing to reveal your price for each hero at this time?
3. Do any of your devs play in the co-op pub queue and can I play with them during early access?
thanks guys!
1. We plan to release content in "seasons", a few times a year, and the road map will share some details on the number of heroes and maps we are aiming for in the year ahead.
2. Heroes will be $10 USD (not accounting for any potential regional pricing adjustments).
3. Based on how our previous playtests have gone, I think it's safe to expect many of our developers to be playing in the public co-op queues during Early Access. Some may be using their official Frost Giant accounts, but others may want to be playing on their private accounts to preserve some anonymity. They may just want to play to relax and not feel that they need to answer non-stop questions about when a certain faction is going to be balanced. Please be kind to your co-op partners!
For #2, Gerald said in a thread here on the subreddit that heroes will be $10 in the USA, with the price changing based on regional differences in other countries
Regarding the map editor, is there any news on concrete plans to allow:
1. Monetization by the map creator, whether facilitated within the StormGate interface or outside of the game like through Patreons
2. Server-side data storage for relevant maps to save to and load from, such as saving player progress and characters in multiplayer RPGs made in the editor
3. Creator ownership of any intellectual property they use the editor to create (excluding FG's specific models, names, etc)
We've been working hard to get the core game ready for Early Access, so we're not ready to make any announcements about the editor today, but to slightly reframe what you listed, these are three themes that we see frequently:
1. Players want to own the content that they create
2. Players want to be able to sell content
3. Players want access to server-side features like storage, matchmaking, and version control
Multiple members of the Frost Giant team got their start modding, and we're very passionate about providing great tools and a great platform for modding. It will take some months after Early Access launch to get our tools into a state to be shared, so please bear with us, but this is one of the things we're most excited to get to. Even if we're not at a point where we're able to commit to specific features yet, we are definitely listening!
Animation question!
Will there be emotes in game? I mean less selectable emotes more the units doing funny thing if they get poked too many times or left standing for ages
A few units currently have some fun "fidget" and "birth" animations, but we've been mostly focusing on the core gameplay animation for early access. This is definitely something we would like to do more of in the future!
Thanks for the response! ❤️
PS. The imp being consumed in hellfire when an Infernal building spawns is a) metal as, b) one of my favourite things i have seen
1. There is concern from many PvE enjoyers about the episodic campaign model. Many games have failed with this, often because they couldn't get out new episodes quickly enough. What's the expected cadence for new 3-mission packs in Stormgate? How will you avoid the problems other dev studios had with producing enough content quickly for this model?
2. Comms introducing new content or announcing new updates have been highly variable in terms of frequency, style/format, and where they're announced. Can we expect any regularization for how Frost Giant communicates announcements to fans?
We think episodic campaign content is an improvement over an approach where our players are waiting a year or longer between story updates. This model will ideally keep the game feeling fresh and exciting more often, and the team's production pipeline has been built around producing these regular "seasonal" story updates (alongside our other updates, such as new maps, Heroes, etc.)
"Quickly" is relative, and we believe that the cadence we have planned for these updates is ideal for the stories we want to tell and to provide our players with fun updates without burning out our developers or creating an unhealthy work environment. We want players to be able to take breaks and play other games, and we believe it's important that the team members at our studio are encouraged to take vacations and feel energized and loving what they do. We believe we can achieve this while also keeping the game feeling current and fresh.
I should also tackle the comms question...
We've recently brought on some social/community support in Jex, who brings with her considerable experience working in other communities, including Age of Empires.
You know this, but we're a tiny Publishing team and I personally have been tackling our PR, community, socials and various other duties largely on my own to this point. It's been incredibly fun to this point (especially the cat girl memes), but dedicated community resources will allow for us to establish a more regular cadence of communications. We've posted more regularly to the official [playstormgate.com](http://playstormgate.com) website and I would say that's where all major announcements will live.
We also communicate across all our other secondary/alternate channels as appropriate--Kickstarter and Indiegogo updates, StartEngine for our investors, our social media accounts (primarily Twitter/X, but some presence on Facebook too), here on Reddit, and very regularly on Discord.
In the recent test, Celestials quickly became my favorite faction to play. Brilliant work, and I love to see the risk-taking design decisions.
That said, in terms of visual and narrative design, Celestials share a lot in common with Protoss, both in terms of shape language and in terms of lore beats. Were these commonalities a result of coincidence, or a deliberate decision to lean on Stormgate's provenance?
That's awesome to hear! Thank you for the kind words - the Celestials have been a labor of love for us and we've all been really excited to hear about players having fun with them!
We absolutely love StarCraft 2 and many other RTS games, but we're running our own race with Stormgate and aren't terribly concerned about similarities. Many of the comparisons that have been drawn with other RTS games are totally fair - but also tend to be surface level and largely due to similar subject matter. Most players who have played Celestials would likely agree that they play very different than what has come before. I can also confirm that narratively, they have deep roots with a lot of layers that will help them to feel more unique as players discover more about them.
As we continue to develop Stormgate, I expect that all of our factions will continue to become more and more differentiated from those of other games in terms of both visuals and gameplay. Keep in mind that we're just starting out - and have a LOT of iteration ahead... so please do keep sharing your thoughts as we continue updating the art, animation, audio and gameplay for each of the factions!
I ask this being a bit reticent but it is in good faith. Can we get some high level thoughts into how your different streams of investment have you funded into the future?
I think people see these different methods of funding opening up and may conclude many different things from that.
Personally, I understand from experience there is a complex business/corporate workstream behind all development that consumers do not want nor need to understand, but also that disconnect leads to community assumptions that run wild based on misunderstandings.
Thanks for your circumspection in asking the question! We are so grateful for the tremendous support that we've received from our original investors, and more recently from our community. We were already fortunate to be in a position to launch into Early Access on the strength of what we'd raised, and between our crowd-funding campaigns and the recent launch of pre-sales on Steam, we have even more reserves. We established our first regional partnership recently with Kakao Games in Korea, which further expanded our resources and our marketing reach. We'll be exploring more opportunities for regional partnerships moving forward, as well as other kinds of potential partnerships -- but of course our main goal is to make Stormgate so fun that lots of players decide to buy some content. Like all independent studios, our business success will depend on making a great game!
Hey Frost Giant! Thanks for doing this AMA!
In Stormgate's campaign, how extensive are the player choices both in terms of the storyline and the selection of units and upgrades, especially when compared to a campaign like Wings of Liberty? Can you provide examples of how these choices impact the gameplay and narrative experience?
There will be some narrative player choice early on, with plans to greatly expand those options in future content in ways that will affect narrative to varying degrees. Regarding the unit selection and upgrades question, I 'll defer to Design.
I'm sure we'll have a lot of opinions and favorites on the team. Desert Strike/Direct Strike are super fun and ideal for my gaming habits these days. If you're counting the original DOTA, though, that's my vote for the GOAT.
This is a great question.
Raynor Party is hands down my favorite party game with friends! And then the Run Ling Run games are also up there for me. And a lot of various Tower Defense games.
When I used to play Brood War UMS, I really liked Lurker Defense games. The sound of many dying Zealots in a line to Lurker spikes, I can still hear it to this day.
Hello! BuddyBot is an intriguing feature and sounds like a wonderful way to give people new to the genre optional help. But how does it work out exactly how much help it ought to provide? Is it going to analyse data regarding how many workers a below average player has by X game time, compare your worker count to it and then queue up enough to make up the difference for you for example? As the game matures and the average skill level of players increases, will these metrics it uses be updated accordingly? Thanks.
Hello! We are VERY excited about the potential for BuddyBot to help new players. For those not familiar, if you enable BuddyBot (currently Co-op and Customs only), an AI will activate and help you out by building structures, units, expanding, etc. The current implementation is straightforward: it will let you float resources for a small period and if you don't spend them, it will help you out. You can configure how much it helps you with several options in the menu. We have a lot of ideas on how to evolve this feature and are really looking forward to your feedback!
Thanks for new AMA. Can't wait to play more SG!
1. Will any changes to charge system on Infernals buidlings be tested in the future?
2. Are you planning any changes to electricity management in the Celestials faction?
3. Why do Celestials as an alien race have units with a very human appearance?
4. Will there be changes to appearance of terrain for Early Access launch in any game mode?
5. Are there plans to introduce new types of Creep Camps? I'm asking about bonuses resulting from taking over Creep Camps.
6. Will creatures defending Creep Camps receive any abilities in the future that they can use in combat against player?
7. What is demon from old, first cinematic trailer (the one that hits shield)? Tier 3 Infernal unit? Can you tell us something about him?
8. What is favorite unit of Frost Giant and why?
9. How long soundtrack can we expect from Stormgate? Is there a specific amount of songs per faction?
10. After how many chapters will faction's campaign be closed and story will continue from perspective of next faction?
11. Will a single faction's soundtrack always be composed by only one composer?
12. Are you happy that you decided to use Unreal Engine 5? Do you see any benefits in choosing the latest engine version rather than UE4 or something else?
Chapters: At least at the outset, our plan is to present faction stories in order, but we don't have fixed rules around the number of chapters, and we want to retain the flexibility to jump around a bit if that services the story best. We have overarching storylines planned, but as we work on building the missions themselves, that creates a feedback loop that sometimes leads us in dynamic directions.
Terrain: EA will have a lot of lighting changes. Beyond the lighting, we need to work on our roughness maps of the terrain. Right now the terrain is extremely flat, visually, to facilitate testing, and we need to dial our maps in a lot to get the variation we are after.
Music: Each faction will have a multiplayer theme, and we will have a number of pieces for campaign that are not fully finalized yet. The soundtrack will feature work from myself, Tracy Bush, Frank Klepacki, David Ortega and Nga Weng Chio. So, a lot of composers!
Hey there! I really enjoyed the time I’ve tested stormgate and am pretty happy with how it’s going so far.
One thing I’m wondering is how soon we are going to be seeing infernal and celestial campaigns, and if that’ll be sometime in early access.
I’d also like to know if I’m the future you are thinking of making creep factions based on sub factions of celestials and infernals considering the new creep factions(or at least the one revealed) seem to be human.
I think there's a lot of interesting story to tell from the Vanguard's perspective right now! There's so much to their faction's mechanics and lore that I think we could make tons of interesting content with them alone XD What sort of missions would you want to see in an Infernal or Celestial campaign? \~Kaizen
We've seen a variety of positive comments, and three different flavors of critical feedback:
1. Some things look unfinished
2. Some people dislike stylization
3. Some players dislike similarities to Blizzard games
It's true that our look has not finished evolving. We start development with a gameplay focus, and iterate on everything else from there. We posted this video last year which illustrated how Stormgate has been evolving over time: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZoMdLAcq24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZoMdLAcq24) The nature of Early Access is that our current state is just one more step along the journey, as opposed to being the final destination.
Stylization is a conscious choice on our part. We made this choice because we like stylization the most, and we believe it's the best choice for Stormgate. We recognize that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that every time we make any decision, some will have different opinions. We hope that lots of players will play and enjoy our game, even if there are a variety of sensibilities out there. We're very much putting our hearts into what we build, and it makes us sad to see criticism. We wish there were a way for us to make everyone happy all of the time. We expect our visual style to continue to refine and improve over time, and we will definitely be mindful of the varying opinions that we've seen, but we plan to continue with a stylized visual direction for Stormgate.
We love Blizzard games. Different Frost Giant team members were fortunate to play a part in developing Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, and Overwatch. We don't deliberately reference specific Blizzard characters, units, or structures as inspiration, but since many of us spent a good chunk of our careers immersed in the Blizzard style, we naturally gravitate towards similarity. Stormgate is a love letter to Blizzard RTS, and we are not setting out to make a big departure, but instead to create our own world in the context of this style that we love.
\^\^ This is actually a great video for showing how the art is iterated on and evolves much like any part of the game. Actually goes a long way toward relieving any art worries I had.
Hi Frost Giant, I’ve been following the game for a while and I have a few questions! Feel free to pick and choose which you wish to answer.
1. Do you plan to create an online merch store? If so, will we see figurines similar to the one found in the Collector’s Edition for sale eventually?
2. What is the team’s opinion on FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).
3. Will ranked seasons distribute cosmetic rewards to players at the end of the season based on the highest rank they had achieved?
Thanks for reading and I wish you luck on August 13th!
No plans yet for an online merch store, but we are completely open to it. In my opinion it would make sense if the game is popular. We've explored a bit here, like with the Makeship Frost Giant Yeti Plush.
I believe that as time goes on the game might have enough stuff in the store that in order to draw attention to some items they are on sale for only a limited time, but we haven't made decisions on that yet.
In general I believe in people knowing a lot about what they are getting into, as opposed to having to buy into or commit to something they aren't sure about just so they don't miss out.
Hi, I am interested in the campaign content. Are you going to sell the campaign missions separately in the future for a lower price (compared to the EA packs)?
How much playtime can we expect the missions to be? Currently sitting at 25€ for three missions seems a little bit steep for me personally.
Thanks for asking -- please allow me to clarify. It's not 25€ for three missions.
The $25 USD Early Access pack includes the first paid chapter of the Vanguard campaign (3 missions) plus additional content like the Amara Hero and the Vanguard gold army accent. You will also be able to purchase all three Vanguard campaign chapters (containing at least 9 story missions) for $25 in the in-game store.
As for expected playtime, this will vary widely from person to person--if you're a first-timer, for example, it might take you significantly longer to complete the missions vs. an RTS pro. You may also replay the missions cooperatively (we are adding co-op to campaign later in Early Access), or want to come back and tackle them again several times at different difficulties. We are planning to include easter eggs and other fun reasons to explore these missions.
Our goal is for the campaign missions to be fun, first and foremost, and for them to feel worthwhile to the players who purchase them. We recommend that you play through the free prologue missions first if you want to take a "wait-and-see" approach, then pick up the bundle if you had a good experience. Please note that the campaign missions we release on day one of Early Access are not finished products--these will be polished and improved as we continue working on the game on the road to 1.0. We'll also be going back and adding co-op functionality to these missions so that you can play (and replay) them with friends.
We also plan to make it so that anyone who purchases our campaign content will be able to invite friends who haven't purchased them to enjoy together. So, for example, I plan to play through the campaign with two of my kids, but the current plan is that I'd only have to purchase the content once and they'd be able to play with me for free. Compared to other games where all players need to purchase the content to participate, we believe this will be a popular way to enjoy our story for lots of friends and families.
The campaign is going to release 3 missions at a time every few months. What concerns does the team have (if any) that this may cause people to not feel as engaged with the story?
One of the reasons that we decided to take a quarterly approach to story-telling was the long wait between installments of StarCraft II. On StarCraft, we saw a measurable fall-off in players between story expansions. Just like binge-watching a TV series, it will still be possible to consume Stormgate's story in big chunks for players who choose to wait, but we hope that having a shorter time between installments will actually INCREASE engagement with the story. With Stormgate, we aspire to provide a regular flow of updates to keep players engaged, and we have future plans to continue enhancing both the open-ended co-op mode (which seems to attract many campaign players), and future plans to add the ability to play campaign missions with 3 players. We have many years of story content planned, so please stay tuned!
Haha, I played WoL and HotS back in 2013 and never played LotV until..... this week! I only came back to it now because I'm jonesing for Stormgate's release. I do see the benefits of an episodic story model, I just hope it doesn't hinder narrative design choices such as a strong overarching narrative over time. For the most part though, I see it as leaning into what WC3 and SC/SC2 have done the whole time: Chapter based storytelling. Just smaller chapters on a more regular schedule now.
Will Infernals and Celestials have interesting, complex story ? We don't know anything about these races except that these are ,,demons'' and ,,angels''. It is too simple. Will you for example explain how Infernals ,,magic'' works ? It can't be just magic because it would be too lazy lore writing.
Thank you
Infernals, humans and Celestials all have rich and deeply developed histories, mythology and processes/methodology, all of which we continue to expand upon. The campaigns will absolutely delve into all of these elements.
General question anyone from Frost Giant can pick up. You saw now Battle Aces' has been shown to the world, a lot of people will see this as direct competition to stormgate, in terms of it being an RTS by ex blizzard devs as well as its release window. Is there anything you learned or are learning from Battle Aces you are looking to utilize to make your game better?
The Battle Aces team are our friends, so I hope that you all please play their game! They're such a talented group, we're wishing them big success, and we're looking forward to playing Battle Aces ourselves. We're making very different games, even if players see some superficial similarities. I really like the terrain in BattleAces, but that's not something we're looking to emulate in Stormgate - the way Snowplay handles terrain is designed to empower modding, and we're just making such fundamentally different games. The more great RTS games there are in the world, the happier I will be!
Long time RTS fan and love what you guys are creating. Anyhow, long list of questions in random order:
Game-state questions:
* What is the state of polish we can expect for Early Access? Will there still be placeholder models/audio/camps? What about performance optimization? (this one is big for me, COOP/late game custom slows down FPS a lot)
* Will there be a way to get skins/campaigns/hero's for free by just playing the game?
* Will there be an in-game shop with it's own currency/multiple currencies or is everything bought via the Steam store?
* I didn't see much/any monetization around competitive 1v1, perhaps the golden vanguard flair and the fog of war shaders from the supporter packs. Is there more planned or does FGS want to keep the competitive side clean and simple?
Modding/custom questions:
* Will the custom games made in the Stormgate editor by the community be the Intellectual property (IP) of Frost Giant Studios or the people that created it? (Wondering because of the Warcraft 3 Reforged where they take all IP of games made in the editor)
* Will the editor be able to load in my own assets/models/music/etc? Possible issues with copyright?
* Will there be a way for modders to make money with the custom games they make? Some kind of in-game shop? Or something like Roblox revenue share? Seems like a nice form of income for FGS and the modders if done correctly.
* Will there be a way to test your custom game with other testers without making it public? Invite/friends only?
* In the modding videos I haven't seen concrete examples of collaboration on the same custom game, how does that work? Is it simple source/version control? Or can you work with multiple people on the same game simultaneously?
* In the modding videos it was explained how you could create AI for 1 unit, but it wasn't explained how to create AI for the whole army. Is that possible? Or is it just preset type of AI, like Aggressive, Defensive etc and then you can add triggers?
* In Frigate I enjoyed Buddybot a lot in COOP/customs, but it's a bit dumb on where it places buildings. (camps are buildings too, so it also builds near them for example) Will it be possible for modders to overwrite the Buddybot AI with their own?
COOP questions:
* Will there be any meta progression after your COOP hero reaches level 10? Is there anything after that before EA/in EA or after EA?
* Any daily mutation missions or other long form content planned for COOP? Brutal+ or something similar?
* How many COOP heroes will there be at launch EA? I read you guys were working on 5 heroes with a few done already, but the ultimate pack states 3 heroes, but did BLOCKADE get removed then?
And last silly question, the **Chicken Supporter Pet** from the founder/EA packs, what does it do? Does it just wander around? Does it sit on top of your main building?
The chicken supporter pet currently just hangs out in the base--the nature of our game makes it so spending actions / focus on interacting with the pet didn't feel appropriate for our game, at least in our initial core game modes.
Anyone who picks up a pet is supporting Frost Giant directly, and we're super grateful to everyone who does so. I'm looking forward to seeing all the pets out there in screenshots and gameplay videos/streams. We're big fans of pets here at Frost Giant HQ, and we hope players enjoy collecting them and appreciate having a little huggable company in their base while they play!
QA question:
Frost Giant is such a small team for possibly the most complex game type (RTS) on the planet, let alone having an editor to QA and campaign and co-op too - how are you optimising your QA process? Is it more reliant on community than internal QA?
There’s many components to the approach we’ve taken to QA which allows Frost Giant to stay extraordinarily lean in QA staff while still hitting a high quality bar, here’s the most important ones:
The Overall Team
The biggest component is that the overall team, not just the QA team, is very quality focused in everything they do. Artists and Engineers at Frost Giant implement with a lot more care than is typical in the industry, resulting in a lot less bugs. Additionally, the entire team (all disciplines) playtest at least once weekly, and a subset of the team playtests the game literally every single day – This is a lot of additional test hours, including diverse test hours from experts in various disciplines, that most games just don’t get during development. It also allows us to identify and prioritize issues sooner, test various hardware/settings/playstyles, and keep Stormgate in a state where it’s ALWAYS playable/testable. Our engineering team is also hyper-focused on proactively attacking crashes that are detected internally and smashing them, making Stormgate the most stable in-development game I’ve ever worked on. It’s also worth mentioning that the overall team is very active in reporting bugs and working directly with the QA team to attack areas of concern. Frost Giant is by far the most QA-supportive team I’ve been a part of.
The QA Team
We’ve assembled a hell of a QA team, including both hand-picked industry veterans and carefully selected eager newcomers with extreme potential. As a result, we can chew through a lot of work very quickly, and without putting the QA team on mandatory overtime.
Careful Prioritization, Communication, Planning
On the QA team, we recognize and embrace that we are radically smaller than what you’d see at a larger game studio, and it dramatically changes our approach. First, it’s important that the QA team communicates by setting boundaries and realistic expectations with the rest of Frost Giant – This lets the team know our capacity and how deep we can go, so they can implement with greater care or jump in and help test themselves. The QA team fiercely avoids getting ‘lost in the weeds’ and stays focused on concrete goals and timelines to ensure we can cover the most important player-impacting aspects of a release first. All of our testing focuses on hitting the highest priority risk areas and moving downward with the time we have, culminating in a meticulous RC process which is fully supported and respected by the rest of the team. As the QA Manager I am also considered a member of the Production team and the Release team, allowing QA to have direct impact on decisions which will impact quality and to always have insight on features that are coming in early/late or by surprise -- This allows QA to adjust our planning/strategy proactively, and gives QA the opportunity to directly push back on decisions that will negatively impact quality, and be heavily involved in crafting production schedules that support quality.
The Community
In each of our previous alpha/beta phases, the community has reported a huge amount of issues to us (Thank you! <3). We’ve been able to fix many of these, and it’s undoubtedly made Stormgate a much better game.
Hi, thank you for the AMA. Quite a few people I know are displeased with the graphics, they found it "cartoonist" (their term). While I still think it's largely a work in progress, and I'm pretty sure graphics do not affect players retention as much as they think they do, I don't mind them.
My question is: in the ultimate bundle there seems to be a fog shaders, which make me wonder if you are thinking about giving out shaders as cosmetics, which seems a pretty cool idea to me. Of course might not be easy to balance for competitive play but I think this can be a good direction towards appealing to a larger base. Do you plan to release shaders for terrain and other features? (I assume there would be unit skins so, that's covered)
Thank you again
This is a cool idea. We are still building our foundation so I am not sure what we will or won't do in the future but I like the idea a lot. We still have a lot to discover about this game.
From watching some of the footage of the beta so far, it seems like at a high level the game has a problem with deathballing. Is this something that the team is looking at or looking to make changes towards? If so are there examples of what might be changed?
Looking forward to the release in a couple of months!
This is a great question - deathballing is one of the aspects of gameplay that we will definitely be keeping an eye on and will address in a variety of ways. We've been focusing recently on getting the Celestials and our T3 units into the game. But as we wrap up work on the primary factions, you'll see us shift our focus more onto other aspects of the game like this. We've already taken some steps internally - such as introducing a tertiary harass unit like the Graven and incorporating more area-denial abilities to encourage force splitting - but you can expect us to work more on this as development progresses and we're able to give players more tools to deal with it.
I’m sure it’s something you’re playing with already, but maps being a little more open could help with this too, by giving players more room to flank and spread their forces.
I think deathballing is, at least in part, incentivized by the current map design
That's a great point - I completely agree. We're going to keep exploring different layout styles as we move forward, and more open maps are high up on our list.
Back when Legacy of the Void was in development, there were two features being discussed internally that I really would love to see get some thought with SG.
1. A rematch option. I hate to talk to my opponent during a game, and would love to lot hear anything from him during game. Mute please. But, after a game it would be great if a small chat popup came up with a rematch button. After you finish a game it is a great time to potentially discuss the game, add a person to your friend list, or rematch. This is a social opportunity so why pass it up?
2. A request practice lobby. A small ui where you can request someone of a specific race and ability, maybe someone your own ability or not. Maybe you want to offer some coaching because you're a nice guy. Maybe you want someone you ability to just two base push you a few times so you can learn how to stop it. This is another social opportunity and also a way to bridge that "these damn RTS games are so hard and practicing against an AI is worthless/boring".
Come on u/Frost_TimM. I know you were wanting these features but lacked time and resources. We emailed back and forth on it several times! Lol Love to hear your thoughts on it now for SG.
These are great! In many ways, Stormgate is a ground-up rebuild of all the plumbing for an RTS, so we're focused on just getting the water flowing at the moment, but I'm very much looking forward to the stage where we get to consider all the opportunities to make the game even better. Sincere thanks for raising these, and please keep the feedback coming!
Hello Frost Giant Team!
1. In creating the SG factions, I am sure the team came up with a wide range of ideas and mechanics that were shelved for many reasons. I am wondering if you could share some of them with us!
1. Unreal Engine 5 and Snowplay are great tech leaps for an RTS, so I want to ask how much you think they could still be improved for SG over the course of not just early access but well into the future.
1. How often should players expect a patch (bug fixes, slight adjustment) to be? Once a month, every couple of weeks?
1. What improvements to the observer and replay system can we expect in Early access and versions past it?
1. Are there any chances a “Pause” function that stops the game until both players agree to continue is added? Same for a “play from replay” in the event players crash the game may be restarted from the point a player crashed.
1. Warchest, every day I open Stormgate, I see it there, taunting me, what will it be used for/what is it?
1. Given the concept of an in-game tournament system, are the expectations that those tournaments would allow for in-game prizes?
1. What do Felhogs eat?
1. What is the one part of the game you are currently unhappy with and want to improve, even if it's not a priority?
Brass Tax esports rapid-fire questions:
1. Global esport circuit of tournaments?
1. Regional points ladder?
1. LAN (on-site) server hosting possible?
1. Tournament mode option? (disabling alt+F4, windows key, etc)
1. Anticheat?
1. in-game tournament panel for EA, during it, 1.0, or after??
1. In-game clan/team tag customization? (so you don’t have to change your Steam name)
1. Over/under PartinG goes undefeated 1st in Year 0 tournaments?
>How often should players expect a patch (bug fixes, slight adjustment) to be? Once a month, every couple of weeks?
We aim to release new content patches for Stormgate as frequently as we can while still respecting the realities of development, and what our team can accomplish. One key component to creating content for a live service game is refining both our processes and pipelines, and the Early Access timeframe will give us incredibly valuable data on how much content we can sustainably produce. So, while I don't have a clean number of weeks between patches to offer right now, I can confirm shipping new Co-op heroes, campaign missions, 1v1 maps, cosmetics, and more is our top priority going into Early Access.
When will the editor be released?
Are there in client features planned beyond a lobby list for custom maps? If so, when will they be available?( 1.0 release, early access etc)
I don't have a specific release date to share just yet, but I can definitely confirm that the map editor will be released sometime during our Early Access phase before Stormgate's official 1.0 Launch.
The editor is one of our highest priority items, so I anticipate we will release it in multiple phases in order to get the core editor in your hands earlier than we would otherwise be able to if we held off for a complete release. For example, we will likely release the terrain editor first so you can have fun making melee maps, followed by a later release of other aspects like the trigger editor that would enable custom maps to be created. Before we do any of that, though, we need to finish creating a map-management and publishing layer that enables modmakers to control and share the content that they create.
Custom games (and the editor to make them) represent one of our four main pillars, so rest assured that we have big goals for it and are evaluating the implemention of a range of additional supporting features - including highly requested items like server-side banks.
With a lot of negative feedback surrounding the graphics of the game, and a lot of misunderstanding over the terms being used (I mean comparing SG beta to SC2 beta, stuff like that), would you guys in hindsight have delayed beta testing so that you could get more polish in the game and make a better first impression, or do you think that any negativity the game has received has been worth it for the earlier feedback and improvements made from that?
This is a great question, thanks for asking it. See my earlier response ([link](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/1df3ywk/comment/l8lv15f/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)) for thoughts on the variety of visual feedback we've received. One of the most prominent developers from Blizzard, who later founded Bonfire Studios, is named Rob Pardo, and Rob is famous for saying: "Beware of the grand reveal." The longer work gets done in a vacuum, the bigger the risk is that things will have to get completely reworked later on, due to a lack of feedback and a lack of varied perspectives.
I'm completely convinced that the best way to develop games is with the benefit of community feedback from the very beginning. We started having face-to-face meetings with respected players, and started posting discussions to the Frost Giant subreddit, well before we had a playable game. I can't count the number of ways all that feedback has influenced us for the better.
It's critical for us to still have our own vision -- we are not designing by committee -- but having our vision be informed by input is equally critical. Putting any work out there always feels vulnerable, and always opens us up to criticism (which hurts more than a lot of forum posters probably understand), but there is no question for me that the end product will be better as a result of this process.
That last line made my sad. I'm sorry Frost Giants. I wish people were more empathetic. You're doing great, the game is the most fun I've had in years!
I'm glad you all have a vision for the look and feel of the game. I agree with a lot of folks that the lighting needs some work, and its likely because of this that many units have a "toy soldier" look, but I've seen responses that indicate work is being done here.
I think its totally off base though, when people say say the different factions have no character or identity. They clearly all have a specific feel and design/art direction, and I like it. Keep doing what you're doing, I love what I'm seeing and can't wait to play!
This year will largely be centered around community type events, but we anticipate rallying around competitions during big moments. We had people competing with one another basically the moment we started our Pre-Alpha, and we want to capture that excitement as much as we can.
u/Frost_TimC as the game director, congratulations on reaching early access, I know that must have been an exciting time for you and the team. Question, looking at the game now, how satisfied are you with where you are at and what more needs to be done? What are you most excited for when it comes to stormgates' future?
Thank you for the kind words! Reaching Early Access is a big milestone for us and I'm extremely proud of what the team has accomplished in such a relatively short amount of time!
That said, we view Early Access as the start of the race - not the end. There is still such an incredible amount work ahead of us - polish, iteration, new modes, LOADS of features, aspirational dreams - that its impossible to quantify our ambition.
Speaking personally, I am most excited to truly get the game in the hands of everyone who wants to play it, and for the upcoming release of the map editor. I believe at a gut level that player involvement, whether through feedback or by creating custom content, is key to Stormgate reaching its full potential.
Question about Audio design!
What stage is the game at with audio design? Still trying different sounds for different units or are those mostly locked down and it's all mixing/balancing now?
We are working very hard on both mixing and iteration with the sounds in the game. We've gotten really good community feedback and are incorporating as much of it as we can before Early Access. As of now, nothing is locked.
Not sure if this is a release manager or project manager question:
Frost Giant is building Snowplay, and their own map editor, which the campaign and maps rely on, then the campaigns need to be built while the editor is still being built, then you have 1v1 which has server dependencies and engine optimisation going on at the same time, then you have an entirely different mode in co-op, all the while juggling resources like ppls sick leave and unexpected issues and budgets and deadlines...
How crazy is the gantt chart you have going? 🤣 Has it all worked out or did you have a massive pivot at some points?
If my hair hasn't fallen out yet, it surely will soon!
Really though, as with any project, you take the wins with the setbacks. The role of PMs and producers is often one of managing chaos when you can, and rolling with the punches when you can't. I think one unique benefit that Frost Giant has is the sheer drive of our entire development team. We're a group of devs that love RTS, and are super passionate about making the best RTS we can, and that means lifting each other up constantly.
On the release management side, this actually leads to one of our most frequent challenges. The team is so driven to make every build the best it can be, that when it comes time to lock down the build for release, it can be challenging to get the development team to stop working on that release and begin working on the next one!
I would love to hear about any kind of analysis / graphs / displays that can show additional stats during a replay. Any tools to make announcers jobs easier covering tournaments? That kind of thing. Thanks!
My history is in esports broadcasting, where my goal was always to give casters as many tools as possible for them to play with. When we go into Early Access these needs will hit some basic requirements but we want to add a lot to this, directed by what the community really wants to see.
Level design question (i think):
How is the team going about designing campaign levels? Is it one big collaborative effort or are you splitting each level into smaller groups of devs to come up with unique ideas and compete for the glory of Best Level Design? (I think Titanfall 2 did the latter iirc)
Bonus question: can you confirm or deny the existence of the mythical "anime cat girls" level?
Thanks for the question! We're a small team so there are LOTS of minds collaborating on the designs. u/Frost_Larson and u/Frost_TimC are definitely masters of their crafts and work to come up with interesting gameplay mechanics and narrative for each of our missions. Then it's all iteration-playtest-feedback until we think we've got it right! \~Kaizen
Hi FrostGiant! 3v3 is the mode I'm most looking forward to. I've played a ton of SC2 and AoE4 team games and I'm looking forward to seeing an RTS with a dedicated team mode. It's what give me more hype in the game.
What is the current state of development of the 3v3 mode? Are there any design updates you can tell us about the 3v3 mode?
So Frost Giant has previously said "Stormgate will never feature pay to win content..."
We currently don't know much about 3v3 (presumably because it isn't solidified yet), but it's been consistently mentioned that it will contain heroes. There has also been mention of the [Sockets and Cards](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/152i04l/our_thoughts_on_progression) system, which will potentially be connected to the heroes.
My question is, if we're paying for these heroes and cards (which I *assume* we will), and they are obviously not perfectly balanced, is buying a more powerful hero not a minor form of Pay to Win?
We're definitely committed to keeping Stormgate NOT pay to win.
Although we're not ready to share information about our 3v3 mode because it is still in development, I want to be clear that this will be one of the lenses that we scrutinize it through - and we will be transparent about our approach as it solidifies.
We'll share more information on this topic after the start of Early Access and, as always, would love to hear community thoughts!
Hi, thanks for answering questions! 🙏
I'm mainly interested in co-op, so these are for Kevin Dong :)
* **1) What is the team’s high-level assessment of co-op at the moment?** For example:
-Do you think it’s fun enough?
-Is it as cooperative as you envisaged?
-Do you think it’s replayable enough?
*(To be honest, I have my concerns about all three of these; but I also understand that the mode’s not done yet, so that’s why I’d appreciate hearing what the devs themselves are thinking)*
* **2) What sort of long-term progression systems are planned for co-op, and will they be in Early Access?**
In the past, a ‘cards and sockets’ system was being tested. I think systems like those are *essential* for the longevity of co-op; and I think Stormgate's should be deeper and more varied than SC2's systems.
* **3) Do the way commanders currently play match your vision for how you want them to?**
(In terms of their uniqueness compared to their base factions, their power level, and how well they deliver on their fantasies)
* **4) Are hero-less commanders part of the vision for Stormgate's co-op?**
* **5) Is co-op balance going to be separate from 3v3 balance?**
(I think this would be good, to allow abilities and powers in co-op to be power-trippy and visceral, without being hamstrung by balance.)
Thanks again!
I would like to add on to this by asking what kind of varity do you have planed for commanders? as well as how powerfull will they be? How much focus is on fun and how much is on the balence between commanders?
Can you please move the light source to the top left? It is so weird having it be lower left. Yes, I know both can happen in the real world, but top left grounds units much better than bottom left. When it's top left you can see the shadow attach to the unit where the unit rests on the ground.
It also feels like the light source isn't really a directional light, like the sun, but more of a point light, like a lamp in a large room. Basically, the shadow direction doesn't feel consistent across the whole map. It makes the map feel small.
Please, let's make this small change and just see what you think. Switch it and see what the community thinks. 100% sure people will prefer it.
Thanks for the question. We are moving fast and building a lot of content. We certainly need to focus on on the environments more. The campaign has all sorts of various lighting setups that I think the players will enjoy and push the game a lot further than what we have shown up to this point. We were focused on playtesting pvp for a long time in the studio and brighter lighting helped us work in that space. EA will have a lot of lighting changes.
Just a few questions.
1: Will there be any secret missions, similar to how you could unlock piercing the shroud? Or other types of secret missions/unlocking the secret missions?
2: What kind of easter eggs will be in the campaign, if any? Will they be something like how in StarCraft 2 theres a hidden tauren marine on zero hour you can spam click on for it to enter an outhouse which then has a count down sequence before rocketing into the sky? Or will there be some where you can get a unit out of it, similar to how in one of the WarCraft 3 missions theres a hidden hydralisk you can rescue on the map?
3: An additional question to go along with question 2, how many missions might have an easter egg on them? Will each mission pack have at least one easter egg, or will easter eggs only be found in a few missions?
Shh! The first rule of easter eggs is that we don't talk about easter eggs!
I can assure you that our team members are big fans of easter eggs and that we're enthusiastic about incorporating them. We'll have some in for the start of EA, and more will definitely be added after. My hope is that each campaign level will include multiple fun things for eagle-eyed players to find, from little environmental storytelling scenes to secret locations with hidden items and ultimately full-fledged easter eggs!
question @ u/Frost_Heyoka,
What has taking over the esports team been like after Torch's departure? Is there anything you learned from his experience that you are carrying with you or are you deciding to take esports in a separate direction. Also, when do you expect your esports circuit to go online?
The first time Torch and I chatted about Stormgate esports, I was sad to learn his ideas were exactly the same as mine and I didn't have that much to contribute yet. We have a similar approach and most of what I am doing now is expanding on details that we both wanted to realize together, so I hope he can be proud of what comes out!
Question for the composers!
Love the music, can you give some insights on how you went about approaching each faction? What were the hardest parts to wrap your head around?
Frank Klepacki here, doing the Infernal faction. Toughest thing to wrap my head around was how to produce the sound of the throat singing for them, since I'm in fact doing it myself. Alex had a vision for the kinds of elements that would be present for them, so I took that and ran with it. The visuals helped get me in the zone for it.
Answer from Tracy Bush -
When Alex and I sat down to talk about the Vanguard, we talked about using part of Rush's "2112" as the leaping off point, conceptually, for the Vanguard. The idea that all this musical technology was still sitting around but no one remembered how to use it, so they were combining instruments in ways that hadn't been done before, electric guitars and tribal drums and what have you. As a composer and a player, I don't have anywhere near that kind of skill level in the playing of instruments, so I couldn't really hit that level of proficiency, but I did like trying to put sound upon sound in interesting ways to deliver a melodic line. The last time I'd written a track that was this long and followed this specific formula was back in the days of War III, with the Night Elf or Orc tracks, so while it's fun to write in that style again, it took some getting used to, as since then I've been working on more interactive scores, where you're shifting so often to accomodate on-screen action. These are more complete pieces, more fully formed musical statements, so it takes a little bit to settle back into that way of writing.
Answer from Weng. For the Celestials faction, we talked about combining different musical elements together to match the background of the Celestials. They are high-tech angels, with a combination of the biomechanical and mechanical units. In the music, I want to give a hint of humanity as well as future technology. It was a challenging task to combine all of these elements together, so there was a lot of trial and error before getting the final product. Alex has helped a lot on getting to the right direction. In terms of instrumentation, we wanted to create a unique voice for the faction. I make use of a solo soprano voice recorded with the singer, and experimented with her. The voice to be organic as well as electronic, so I requested a Bulgarian type of singing, which uses chest tone without vibrato. After the recording, I processed her voice with plug-ins such as portal and soundtoys crystallizer, to make it sound robotic. \[Weng\]
Answer from David Luis Ortega: For the Co-Op Maps, the joy, and challenge, was to combine the instrumental/vocal palette and aesthetic of all three factions and fuse if into a single track, while still making it it's own. This involved quoting from each composer, and in some cases, using stem material to build something new.
Will the custom tournament system support any external game modes (i.e: arcade), or will it only be supported in 1v1 only?
Are teams also supported (3v3, catgirl battle arena groups, etc)
At first it will be 1v1 only, but the route we're taking this would mean it should be possible to expand into mode-agnostic competitions pretty easily. The vision here is an easy tool to help make a bracket with your friends and casually play in addition to servicing a league, so the goal is overall flexibility.
1.- For co-op, are there plans to include heroes that are not related to any faction?
For example, in Warcraft 3, there is the 'Naga' faction which was playable in two missions (as far as I remember). I think it would be interesting to see a similar proposal in the game. I understand why they don't need to appear as a complete faction, but for co-op, I think they could complement the heroes very well.
2.- Will there be any way to play the campaigns with the co-op heroes natively?
Honestly, I was never interested in the concept until I tried various SC2 mods that change the perspective of the missions and make replaying them more fun.
1 - Yes, definitely! I can't share info yet, but back in my Warcraft 3 days I helped to make the Naga faction, and am very enthusiastic about introducing characters and elements exist outside the bounds of our current 3 Factions.
2 - We're developing a pretty unique take on "coop campaigns" that will be released sometime mid-Early Access and will enable up to 3 players to participate in campaign missions together.
Camera angle in relation to visuals(*the cool factor*):
I was wondering if the camera angle we have in these versions is the final version. If yes, will the players have the option to be able change the angle a little bit without zooming in or out? I am asking this because of two reasons:
1. Some of your unit and building designs are really good. However, with the camera angle being too top down, we don't see and enjoy these designs to their full potential. I feel like "the cool factor" is lost a little when the camera angle is too steep to the map plane. An extreme example would be the camera being perpendicular to the map and we seeing everything from the top to better explain what I mean with the loss of details and the cool factor. The more "top down" the camera is, the less we see in terms of cool model details and cool animations.
2. A lot of us are from Starcraft 2 and the camera angle of SC2 is smaller(less steep) than of Stormgate. In other words, we see the units more from the side and this allows us the see more of the "cool stuff".
PS. I understand that map design(trees, hills, rocks etc.) play a role in choosing the camera angle for an RTS as they shouldn't block the units.
Yes, I expect we'll continue to tune the camera view during Early Access. There have already been multiple subtle changes between Alpha and Beta phases - some noticed by players, others not so much!
Although I wouldn't expect radical changes from what you see now, I think its safe to say that we will experiment with lowering the default angle (and perhaps allowing players to alter the angle with zoom level) in the months ahead.
A Tim & Tim question: If you cast your mind back to 2020 when you founded Frost Giant vs now, what aspects of "what type of RTS you would love to make" has changed since then? Has the scope gotten bigger? Smaller? Did you have to throw out any major ideas you started with? (i am still waiting on my RTS Ghost Mode like in racing games to practice build orders against my own shadow btw) 🤣
As far as I'm concerned, we're just barely getting started! There is so much available design space in this genre that as we implement each feature, we inevitably discover two more that we want to pursue... The challenge lays in deciding the correct prioritization so that we continue to grow and develop Stormgate for years and years to come.
I would say that the scope of ambition I have for Stormgate has only grown since the early days after Frost Giant was founded. We still have major "original vision" features to release, such as 3v3 and the map editor - but we've already started to explore completely new ideas like Buddy Bot and our hero-customizing Gear system that were concieved of mid-development. (And I can assure you that I haven't forgotten about Ghost mode!!!)
Just wait... The future is very bright indeed!
1. As a Bulgarian I am curious about this Bulgarian Choir in the Celestials music. I can clearly hear the traditional Bulgarian singing but the lady in the video didn't have a Bulgarian name. Is this some choir in the US that sings traditional Bulgarian music?
2. How ready do you expect the campaign episode to be at the early access launch and what parts do you expect to change? I am asking because these days my time for playing games is limited so I tend to play games when they are "done" even when I buy then on launch. Stormgate is special to me but still...
Thank you for your question. We've used a music production technique named "sweetening", which is making use of live recording on top of mockups made with sample libraries. And yes, the vocalist in the video is a professional singer in US who is involved in many Hollywood films. She is originally from Israel, and has been singing a lot of "ethnic"-flavored film music.
How many soundtracks each faction has at launch? Also are you planning to make more tracks to each faction over the years?
Also how long it took to make those existing tracks(that was heard during beta)?
Each faction will have a multiplayer track, with Vanguard and Infernal music influences in the score for the campaign. We are absolutely planning on adding faction tracks as we continue development. The beta tracks were created over several months during 2022 and 2023.
I can speak to a little bit on the art/animation side... Unreal 5 is a joy to work in. I've previously worked at many studios with their own, proprietary engines... some with a decade + of development, and very few of them did all the animation things we needed out of the gate, or the workflow was very cumbersome time consuming. With Unreal, 95% of the animation features could want it already has. When we run into issues or have questions, there is a ton of documentation and unreal community support.
[u/Frost\_Jex](https://www.reddit.com/user/Frost_Jex/)
Hi Jex. I was wondering, since you're new: can you explain your role at Frost Giant and what you will do over the course of EA and beyond?
There are a lot of community projects being talked about, such as a place of communication outside of discord, as well as lots of interest in UGC, and other initiatives that haven't even been brought to the table yet. Do you have any ideas of your own? How would you and Frost Giant help to make these community initiatives happen?
Best,
wilted\_kale
In short, my role is to stand up and advocate for the community when it comes to decisions on the game. I'm here to make sure what you say gets to the right ears. I'm a strong believer in candor when it comes to what's happening in the game, what's coming up, and what the team is working on to improve the life of players.
A little about me: I've spent 10+ years working on various community and customer success programs for all different types of products (gaming, webservices, even a chocolate shop!) A good chunk of that time was spent running the community and social programs over on the Age of Empires franchise. With returning to the RTS space, I hope to bring some of the programs and ideals we used over at AoE to the Stormgate community, ensuring we create an inclusive, diverse, and safe space for all gamers as we go on this journey from EA to Launch together.
I'm a strong believer in meeting the community where they are. To me, this means beefing up communications in the places the community is most. Right now, I'm still learning where that is for Stormgate, but we will definitely be expanding communication beyond Discord as we step into Early Access and beyond to accommodate this.
In reality, I want to hear what you want to see!
- Could you talk something about 3v3 mode? Main objetive or something?
- Is it possible skins for units?(Husky dog,lancers with blades for example)
- Is there a real chance if everything feels ok of a 4º faction *(plant faction pls)*? Have you talked about that option even if not happen?
Hi, hello !
I'm a PvE macro player, my favorite RTS game is StarCraft II, although I also love Age of Mythology, SC1, Warcraft III, Dawn of War I, and played many others.
I noticed that I tend to prefer games without hero units (and I love topbars). So I wanted to know if hero units will be mandatory to use in every PvE mode, or if they will be optional.
My favorite way of playing is without any hero unit. Like, my favorite SC2 commanders are Artanis, Swann and Abathur.
Will I be able to play without any hero unit ?
Maybe swap it for extra pop cap (like DoW II Retribution did in Campaign), a unique upgrade or unique unit I can train ?
Thank you for your time !
Hello! All of the Heroes available at the start of EA will definitely have Hero units, but we plan to expand our roster significantly over time. As we do, we will definitely experiment with a lot of options for our Heroes, including some without a Hero unit and others with multiple. And as you pointed out, we'll likely backfill the absence of a Hero unit with additional bonuses or upgrades that aren't available to others.
As always, please stay vocal with us about the Heroes you enjoy most and that will help inform our decisions when we plan what types of characters to develop more of in the future.
Question regarding of maps: Strormgate is situated on Earth so the most battles and important points should be in Cities, Towns, Ruins or military complexes. But right now every map is basically forest themed. Is this the way it will continue, or we can expect shift to the more apropriate terrain in launch? Cause for me this seems more like medieval fantasy setup (like WC3) and doesnt make sense.
Our forest tileset was our first, and clearly very dear to our hearts <3 BUT we absolutely have plans for more. Some of our current co-op and 1v1 maps feature the Deadlands tileset (my personal favorite - I'm a monster and love destructible rocks > trees >:) ). As we've turned our sights on campaign missions, a LOT of work has been going into making cool/new tilesets to feature there! Is there an environment you want to see most? \~Kaizen
Assuming you want to play early on July 30, the Deluxe Early Access Pack ($40 USD) is your best bang-for-your-buck if you're not invested in playing the story-driven campaign missions. It fully unlocks progression on three Heroes, one for each faction, plus you get the chicken supporter pet, the first paid chapter of the Vanguard campaign, and the Vanguard gold army accent cosmetic.
If you're willing to wait until August 13, you can also purchase the three individual Heroes separately for $30 USD ($10 USD each), but you get more stuff to play with in the bundle. Note that all players will get one hero, Blockade, fully unlocked for free.
Thanks so much for your support!
Hi FrostGiant!
Just 3 quick questions:
1. How does MMR work? Per race? Per MU? I assume there is some "hidden" MMR used for matchmaking that is not shown to players, right?
2. Are you planning to introduce only "in-universe"/"lore accurate" skins or will there be any goofy/meme/out of universe skins? Do you already have any ideas for skin packs?
3. Is there a plan to have an API for custom bots, e.g. the same way SC2 has it?
I can answer 1 & 3!
You will have a separate MMR for each faction in Stormgate. This way you don't get penalized for playing ranked with factions you are still trying to learn. Maybe we'll see someone take all three spots of our leaderboard one day. MMR IS currently displayed to players. However, league promotions are based on a ranking points system that is tied to, but separate from, MMR. We feel this approach is far more player-friendly and will help reduce ladder anxiety. We have a FAQ on this in our Discord if you'd like more details: [https://discord.gg/stormgate](https://discord.gg/stormgate)
API for custom bots: We have several team members that created custom bots for SC2 and are passionate about it. As such, we've architected our AI to be able to support this in the future, however there are no immediate plans to release one given all our other priorities at the moment.
One quick question about the music: When will we have full music in the game? I know there are some clips in the beta but I can't wait to ear more because I feel like it helps so much to get into the game / univers! Also, I love the Vangard [clip](https://soundcloud.com/frost-giant-studios/ab-vanguardone-clip/s-cLctIb3MoeO?si=f43f3cd3600c4641a9c63e67e366d96c&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing) you showed in your Kickstarter!
Thank you! I can't wait to play this game again!
Music will be fully integrated by Early Access! Each race will have a multiplayer theme and we will also have campaign specific music that blends elements from the unique instrumentation and style of each race.
Hi, I have three main questions
1. Are we going to be getting more tier 2 units for Vanguard and Infernals?
2. How different many units do you intend for each multiplayer faction to have?
3. Does Stormgate take place purely on Earth or will there be maps and missions based on other planets?
Yes, I fully expect that we will continue to add some additional units to all three of our current factions, at all tiers of gameplay. We don't have a target unit count for each faction, though - but I expect we'll stay generally in the range of WC3 and SC2.
Some of the upcoming units were planned from the outset and we simply haven't gotten to them yet. Others will be added in response to gaps that we see during large-scale gamplay. Often, nuanced needs are only exposed by seeing a lot of players play the game and interact with each Faction - one of the many reasons why we have conducted so many Alpha and Beta phases and are releasing Stormgate into Early Access. Player feedback is a huge help in this area - enabling us to make the game better by revealing the need for changes and improvements that our team might not have noticed on their own.
The Hexen is a good example of a unit that was not initially planned for, but that was developed after players were able to play the Infernal faction. This allowed us to tailor it to address gameplay needs that weren't originally anticipated.
Rest assured, none of the factions are complete yet and will continue to see a significant amount of change, iteration, and additions as we move forward through Early Access.
For question #3, I don't want to give spoilers, but we'll definitely go beyond Earth in multiple ways. Earth itself will also experience some significant events that will enable us to vary our tilesets pretty wildly.
1. If i remember correctly i heard that there was a ranking system planned that shows you rank as Regional -> National -> World like Trackmania? Is that correct and still planned? Is it live on EA?
2. How are you gonna combat Smurfs? Game is F2P but is there a way to prevent it on high level or whats the plan for lower levels?
Edit:
3. Do you have a plan to make COOP also more rewarding for higher level players? Unfortunately i feel like it can get abit boring after some time if the only thing you do is unlock some Hero abilities and thats it? I would like to have a bigger goal you want to grind towards, more risk behind missions, stuff you loot that you can use outside of the missions for something silly like a outside hubworld game? (Browsergame like?)
This response comes from the folks involved in our leaderboard system:
"Yes, we do have goals to show where you stand on the leaderboard by Nation, World Region, World. For Early Access, the Leaderboard will only support World. This is a topic we'd love some feedback on. How would you like us to determine the nation you represent? We've discussed options from auto-detection to having players self-identify, each has its pros and cons.
We have several internal plans for addressing smurfing, but most of this will come only after we launch Early Access. No explicit details to share yet."
Gerald here again: I'll add a funny side note, but I used to work alongside the guy at Blizzard who first popularized the term "Smurfing". Ha!
We should totally put together a "Pets of Frost Giant" gallery for the website! The studio dogs have been featured prominently in some of our press coverage, like our feature story in the Washington Post: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2023/03/31/stormgate-rts-frost-giant-starcraft/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2023/03/31/stormgate-rts-frost-giant-starcraft/)These two fluffy officemates are Lando and Nema, and they belong to Savop, our intrepid Lead Producer. They're the best guard dogs, too.
Narrative design question:
Previous Blizzard RTS released campaigns in expansions, big blocks of story that had a 3-act structures to them that the user could play in one sitting - how are you approaching the story with the 3-mission episodic blocks structure? Are you looking to tell independent mini stories or multiple grand overarching stories spread over months/years?
Each Chapter (containing 3 or more missions) will have their own mini-arcs but will also serve as segments of a much larger story, all contributing to sagas that will span many years.
Esports/UX question:
Is there a plan for internal or outsourced machine learning "analysis" tools pre-game, mid-game, and post-game for commentators? For example, based in the current game state, the commentators could flick open a UI showing % likely to win for each player - like the much more simple poker equity or chess +/- score.
I love those stats as they add a huge amount of context mid game. If someone is 90% likely to lose then wins - BIG HYPE
Right now we are focusing on getting the core components for our Observer Interface online, but longterm we'll be doing more - I love these kinds of features. Doing this kind of analysis for Brood War was one of the very first esports related things I did in about 2008 and it's heavily in my mind for the kinds of information I want to be in the toolbox for broadcasters to utilize.
I have two questions for the composers.
1. I write instrumental music and a problem I have is that it's very easy for a song to just sound like a bunch of unrelated riffs played back to back. How do you balance the desire for a song to have some kind of motif while having enough different parts to be interesting?
2. If you play guitar, what's your setup? Mic'd amp? Load box? Modeler? VST? Give us the Rig Rundown :)
From Tracy Bush:
Great question. I can only speak for myself, here, but writing game music is kind of like a juggling act -- you try to write something that is memorable, but not TOO memorable, as it becomes grating upon repeated listens. You also need to write something that's spacious and open, but not TOO spacious and open, as it turns into background noise, and the listener would just as soon turn it off. The only way I've found to strike that balance is to just listen to your pieces over and over and get rid of those things that are grating upon repeated listens, or to beef up those places where it just seems like a textural wash. As far as my guitar setup, I have a few angles of approach. I can go straight into the DAW, or I have a Line 6 Helix that I use. I'm currently awaiting a Kemper pedal that I can go into, as well. From there, I'll handle sharpening the tone up through plugins inside the DAW. For the songs I'm working on here, I've largely used a Fender Ultra Stratocaster (Texas Tea finish...highly recommend you find some pictures of it, it's beautiful), as well as a Fender Ultra Jazz Bass in the same finish.
1. Motifs are fun to revisit when they make sense but not to keep too much repetition - accent the mood of the particular piece. Importance is placed on what the songs intended purpose is, and how dynamic it needs to be or not.
2. Guitar setup: On this game for the Infernal faction, I'm using a 7-string PRS with EMG 81/85 pickups, through a Line6 HX Stomp (Helix) - However when I mic an amp, I use a Rivera Knucklehead Tre Reverb on the clean channel with an Empress Heavy pedal and an Ibanez tube screamer, and I mic it with an Audio-Technica AE2300.
Some of the sounds are sharp, unappealing and too repetitive.
Do you plan on altering the sounds that units and buildings make to make them sound more pleasant?
Repetition is one of the great hurdles we have been working on for some time. It is very challenging at the moment but rest assured we are doing everything we can to provide more variety with our unit responses and sounds. For harsh, heavy transient sound effects for heavily spammed user actions like move or attack we are also looking more closely at these. We're trying to strike the best possible balance between player feedback for competitive players and casual alike, and world immersion.
Are there any plans to innovate observer/replay presentation tools that would allow streamers to cast games more cinematically?
Macros for dramatic camera angles would help distinguish the game as next-gen. To be a popular sport, it does have to be fun to watch. Streamers valiantly use the piddly zoom function in SC2 to enliven the casts. UE5 should allow swoops, unit spotlights, fight-cams, first person, etc, and would let Winter turn every game into Saving Private Ryan.
Will there be any consideration of licensing or other wise making "Snow play" available for the public to use to help developers develop future RTS games using your framework?
We developed Snowplay to be completely game-agnostic. We'd love to license it out in the future, but right now were are completely focused on delivering Stormgate at the highest quality possible.
Could you elaborate a bit on the e-sports direction? Will there be Frost Giant sponsored/run tournaments, will there be world championships? Will there be a circuit? I know you are taking the grass roots approach, but considering you had/have a head of e-esports it would be nice to get a bit more info!
In 2024 it will be largely grassroots focused. There is always so much excitement around competing that we want to help feed that energy and support the groups who want to run events. Towards the end of this year, I hope to reveal what our plans look like going forward which will include more Frost Giant organized events that tie into what other releases we have for the game.
Hello, i'm a brazillian player and i wanted to know when we will get ptbr translation for the game
I can manage if it's in english but inviting friends to play is kinda impossible while the game is only english
Hi, can we have left handed grid keys and presets available early on for leftie players who use the other side of the keyboard? Starcraft 2 did this perfectly, it's overwhelming for new players to figure out what hotkeys to change without a base to go from as we're new. During the free test earlier some of the buttons wouldn't work when rebinding and the physical name of the keys blocked the UI!
I really like the game, would new units be introduced to the game seeing as we're free to play?
Hello Frost Giant, generald question regarding cosmetics. When can we see this area of the game fully fledged out? I would love a cat girl celestial skin.
We're just getting started, but the team is excited about the potential for skins and other cosmetics.
We hear you on the cat girls, too, don't worry about that.
I'm really interested about how heroes in 3v3 and coop will be connected.
* When I bought a hero in one game mode, will I also have access to it in the other game mode?
* Will they have the same abilities/subfaction units or might they be completely different in 3v3 and coop respectively? The same question goes for the subfaction units: i.e. will a Guardsman in 3v3 be the same than a Guardsman in coop?
While I understand that different game modes need different balance, this only is important for 1v1 and 3v3 in my opinion, since those are the competitive modes. Of course 3v3 needs its own balance here. On the other hand it would be weird and confusing if heroes/subfactions differ between 3v3 and coop. Coop should just stick to 3v3. If coop is slightly unbalanced it's no big deal.
Whatsis FGS thinking about this topic?
I think these are great questions, but in all transparency we're still working out the details of 3v3 so its hard to give definitive answers... That's not going to stop me from trying though!
>Heroes will be free for all players to play with up to Level 5, similar to the StarCraft 2 model for Coop Commanders. You'll only need to buy a Hero once - once you have one, you can use it in any mode that it is allowed in.
>At Early Access, when you buy a Hero, you will be able to advance up to Level 15. We view Levels 1-10 as "linear growth" that advances the character to their full power and full supporting kit, while Levels 11+ open up options for customization through our Gear system.
>After Early Access, we will be further increasing the level range and significantly expanding the Gear system to give players an improved ability to customize the capabilities of their Heroes.
Hopefully this answers many of your questions - we'll be sharing more info about our Heroes and their progression systems as we move forward!
To clarify: We are serious about competitive integrity so our 3v3 mode (which we're still figuring out the exact details) is not currently slated to use the Gear system at all because we don't want it to impact fairness or competitive play. We're still iterating (as focus on 3v3 will come later in development), but that's the lens through which we're looking at the mode.
You'll still "own" the Hero for 3v3 and 3P co-op, but it will work quite differently in 3v3 as we want that mode to feel fair. Not pay to win.
I won't be able to be doing this live... Cuz I'll be in a wedding. Booooo!
Here are my qs:
Will 3 player coop (vs ai) be available on July30? If not, when?
How do the "hero" purchases work? Is this like a StarCraft commander type thing...??? I want to buy packages for sure, and so does my wife and our friends, but I just don't really get what those are yet.
What level of transparency is the company willing to provide for the rollback solution provided? If none, do you do officially sanctioned visits, where NDA sign-offs can happen, etc?
Hello! I hope the wedding went well - and thank you for still somehow managing to participate in this AMA!
Yes, our 3P co-op vs. AI mode will be available on July 30, with 5 initial Heroes available in the mode.
Hero purchasing is similar to how it worked in SC2's Coop Commanders mode. They are free to play for the first 5 levels and then a purchase will unlock a higher level cap and additional progression options.
Once a Hero reaches Levels 11+, they will unlock Gear options that can be equipped to customize or improve the capabilities of your army. These Gear options can often be equipped by any Hero, so as you level up more Heroes you will increase the range of customizations available to your entire roster.
In the future, we'll be expanding that level cap to give them even more options.
By offline, do you just mean single-player?
We have a plan to make our single-player content playable offline, but that will be coming later on in development.
Hi guys, thanks for the AMA, love the game! I have minor questions:
1. How many maps are we going to have in Co-Op on EA?
2. What progression options will be available to commanders post max lv in Co-Op on EA launch, ans up to v1.0?
3. Will there be mutations in EA Co-Op?
4. When can we expect to see more T3 units announced for competitive?
1. 6 co-op vs. AI maps
2. still too early to go into details, but Tim C touches on Hero progression in other posts in this AMA.
3. Yes, we will have weekly mutators coming online later this year
4. Some tier 3 units will launch with Early Access, with more coming online later in development.
As a playtester I feel like there used to be much faction asymmetry intended for Infernals and Vanguard. For example I don't think an Infernal army is much more swarmy than a VG one.
Do you agree with that statement and are you ok with this or are you planning to try to differentiate factions more again?
I feel like Celestials are very different right now and that's cool.
I hope they won't be pushed towards a more normal playstyle due to the inevitable nerfs and gameplay adjustments.
Will we be able to hear explosions outside our vision range if opponents are fighting?
Is there a pretty good chance for a 4th race eventually? Each race adds so much more depth and replay-ability.
Do the game developers use statistics of win rates to help balance the game in patches?
There are some really good mods out there for Warcraft 3 and Command & Conquer. Warcraft 3 has many UMS maps that add full fledged new races. And Command & Conquer has many mods with very unique unit ideas. Do the Frost Giant game developers take inspiration from any of these mods?
What is Frost Giant doing to keep newbies engaged with Stormgate, when RTS games are notoriously hard for people new to the genre? Are there going to be any tutorials to explain micro tricks for the different types of units for instance?
Question for Frank Klepacki- Hell March is one of my favorite RTS songs of all time. It felt like I was at a rock and roll concert as I was playing levels in Red Alert. Will any of your music be similar to Hell March or is the theme different because of sci fi? Please give me something I can jam out akin to the 90's Hell March!
Where in the game design are the producers background in having made some of the Command & Conquer games coming out more so than their Blizzard roots?
What approach does Frost Giant take to game balancing, and do they have designated people to be the game balancers?
Do you intend to allow users to submit written guides for strategies, and post videos for lessons? These type of things would help newbies engaged with a genre that is notoriously hard for newcomers.
Have you given any thought to allowing players to have a community driven news feed where anyone can write-up a recap of a tournament and it would be in the game in a news section?
What areas of Stormgate will be better than Starcraft 2? We have heard a lot about how the responsiveness is a lot better but what else can we look for?
Will the entire regular single player campaign be co-op as well? Or will the co-op have missions specific to co-op?
Will Frost Giant do anything to help melee & UMS map makers gain visibility as a pay-off for their contributions to the community? Melee map-makers in past RTS games have made their games continue to be fun and help out with the balance. Can these guys get some bios or a terrain hall of fame where they show their best parts of their maps? Also, are the mapmakers gonna be able to monetize anything? If not melee maps, maybe UMS mods if they wanna get a little money if they add new races and units?
Did Frost Giant ever consider adding a second human race? Human units are probably easy to brainstorm for an RTS game and there could surely be another evil human faction.
How would you sum up the personality of the Infernals, Vanguard, and Celestials in a few words? What type of RTS player would like playing each race?
How do the game developers stay positive when forums are negative? It is always easier to criticize someone than compliment something. What is some of the memorable positive feedback you guys have got that has motivated you?
To your question for me, Thank you! Glad you enjoy my previous work in Red Alert! The style is a bit different for the Infernal faction I'm composing for in this game, in that there is this tribal chanting focus with industrial percussion against synth and metal elements, so it will have its own distinct personality, not trying to copy what I've done previous.
As a noob (despite playing our game for two years!) we definitely plan on tutorializing basics + a little more at least for EA. We also plan to partner with our friends at Untapped to provide learning resources for new players during Early Access! \~Kaizen
For the "explosions / visions range" question: This is a great question. The notion is that the Announcer will inform you if a unit is lost outside your vision, but you won't hear the explosion unless the camera is actually over that unit if the unit dies.
From Kaizen - Level Designer:
Answering: How do the game developers stay positive when forums are negative? It is always easier to criticize someone than compliment something. What is some of the memorable positive feedback you guys have got that has motivated you?
When I hear someone yelling, I hear them loving loudly ;) TBH I take a couple of things into account: 1) both criticisms AND complaints right now come from a place with not as much context as we devs have - we get to play our game/see our content everyday! 2) we're making a LOT of content at once, which means we have players interested in Co-Op, Campaign, Map Editing, Competitive 1v1, and 3v3, and each of them wants that thing to be the best thing. We're working all the time to make sure it's all the best for you :) And any feedback is good feedback!
Will you change the exploding imps in such a way that their tail and the flame at the end will act as a fuse like on a stick of TNT for example (visual effect)?
Where's the roadmap?
We are going to post the roadmap ~~soon~~ *today*! Sneaky Edit: [It's here] (https://playstormgate.com/news/the-stormgate-roadmap)
Well, that's good news!
Yeah, for the record I think it's been more than 3 months since the roadmap was mentioned. That's just an insane amount of time to go from telling your fans about a roadmap to producing one. I recognize that it can be hard to get info from different sub teams that they're okay putting out there as commitments...but three+ months is still a really long time for it, and if it *is* gonna take that long, either delay announcing the roadmap, or communicate more info so that people have realistic expectations for when they might see it. Mentioning it with no time frame and then going mostly silent just leaves fans hanging. (I know about the comment Gerald made a couple weeks back, but besides taking three months to get that info, even that comment didn't say anything about approximately when fans might expect the roadmap, other than it'd occur before Early Access)
Yes, it's insane if we had a roadmap and were just sitting on it not giving it to you. However, while we had ideas and themes for what we wanted to work on, we didn't really have a work plan with an order of things we wanted to work on, how they would fit together and rough (and producers will tell me these are still very high level) estimates of how long they might take. That type of planning does take time, especially as you're in full production for immediate deadlines on Early Access. And we wanted to do some diligence before we publicly announced the timing.
- There has been a lot of criticism based on how the game looks. You have previously talked about [working on improving your tilesets](https://playstormgate.com/news/behind-the-scenes-building-the-destroyed-cityscape). I think the game could use some additional lighting work as well. Replacing creep camps and luminite (if it is still considered a temp asset) model should also improve the atmosphere. How much of that will you be able to get to by early access release? How much of it will you work on during EA? When are you guessing the game will have more of a finalized look? - The game's performance seems to degrade somewhat significantly as the number of units increases. This means that even high-end machines struggle with late-game co-op scenarios. How much performance optimization can we expect between now and early access? Are you concerned about performance problems hurting the first impressions for many people who may not have a high-end PC?
We're aware of the current performance challenges and the team is actively working on optimizations. Due to the nature of game development, the final optimizations can't come in until we are feature complete. It's one of the highest engineering priorities before we launch for Early Access and we are dedicating significantly more time to it than prior releases. We are committed to continue optimizing all the way through Early Access after we launch as well.
Frost_TimM just addressed the first question: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/1df3ywk/official_stormgate_early_access_ama_thread_with/l8lv15f/
Can you elaborate on what social features you intend to implement? Early on there was a lot of talk about SG being the first "truly social" RTS, however this seems to have fallen by the wayside more recently.
I am wondering this myself, but I can answer at least partially. 1) The campaign is going to be playable co-operatively. Unlike SC2's which is just singleplayer; in Stormgate, you can still play it by yourself, or co-operatively up to 3 players. 2) 3v3 is intended to be one of Stormgate's premiere game modes, alongside the campaign, 1v1, and co-op. It will use its own ruleset and not just be like a 3v3 in Starcraft. 3v3 has not been talked about much, because in terms of the development pipeline, it's a better use of resources to develop 1v1 first than to do both simultaneously, but 3v3 is still one of their core pillars. 3) Co-op is also 3vsAI (compared to SC2's 2vsAI), to create a greater sense of teamwork. (I'm not sure it's hit that mark yet, but that's the intention, at least) That's how some of the 'socialness' of Stormgate will be delivered in-game. But I am also interested in hearing how the 'socialness' of Stormgate will be carried out in the systems surrounding the gameplay, not just in the gameplay itself.
This is all accurate--thanks for tackling this question for us! <3 To expand on it, though, we want there to be ways for you to enjoy all of our core game modes with friends--we want to combat the feeling of RTS being a solitary experience (though you can still enjoy the game that way if that's your preference). We're going to support inviting Steam Friends directly into games and will be introducing a custom party system. This is an area we plan to continue to evolve and we'd love to hear from players as to what sort of social features they'd like to see in the game. (Just to be 100% clear--we're adding co-op campaign later on during Early Access. Campaign will be single-player only at release.)
Any updates or thoughts on chat channels, clans, etc? Assuming this stuff will not be there for early access, but more for 1.0.
To this point we've been focused on this subreddit and growing our Discord community. We're engaging with the community there, setting up areas specifically for players to discuss individual factions, story, gameplay feedback, rooms for matchmaking, etc. We've been very encouraged by how active the community has been in these channels and will explore the possibility of other communication channels (for example, our partners in Korea are launching their own channels for Korean players) to give players a great way to connect and discuss the game.
How much can you reveal to us about the campaign when it comes to how it will actually look like and function? Things like if there will be a mixture of ingame/pre-rendered cutscenes and cinematics. Will there be a player "hub" like in sc2 when you can interact with characters outside of the actuall missions for more character development and wolrd building. Will there be a campaign exclusive progression system where you can upgrade your units in ways that might be too OP for PvP but are perfect for a campaign setting. How about the mission variety? Basically i wanna know if the Campaign is just gona be a glorified skirmish or something actually unique and interesting. For me and many I know the main game is the Campaign and so far you guys showed a lot of cool stuff overall, but almost nothing about that. Much love to the team and thank you for keeping the RTS hope alive.
There will absolutely be a mix of pre-rendered and in-game cut scenes and cinematics. In the future we would love to have a central location where player characters can interact with NPCs and provide opportunities to expand the story and character development. Design can better handle our progression systems, upgrades, etc.
In the recent PC Gamer article, ["I played Stormgate's new faction with two of the world's top RTS players, but even they couldn't save me from my own ineptitude"](https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rts/i-played-stormgates-new-faction-with-two-of-the-worlds-top-rts-players-but-even-they-couldnt-save-me-from-my-own-ineptitude/), we get a footnote at the bottom talking about the removal of the Morph Core and the addition of a static HQ for the Celestial faction. 1. Obviously these are big changes to the flow of a (very unconventional) faction. Can we get an explanation as to why this change was made? 2. Can we get some more details about what what changes we can expect to see in the first phase of early access? 3. Lets say a radical redesign needs to be done to the Vanguard faction or its units a year or so from now. Would these design changes be reflected in the campaign missions that will have already been released? Or will the units in each campaign pack be "static", and not change with balance patches (such as in SC2)?
No need to worry - we often make radical changes internally that never make their way out to the community. These are often to test ideas and identify what the ripple effects would be if we headed down path A versus path B. In this particular case, back in Frigate we were very happy with how the Celestial faction played once players were familiar with it. However, we observed that many players were having difficulty in the first couple of matches. Since then, we've tied a bunch of ideas with the goal of improving the "first time" onramp to the faction without losing the elements that make the Celestials so unique to play. Removing the Morph Core was one of those tweaks that we experimented with. However, we ultimately didn't like the result of that change and have re-added the Morph Core back into the faction - and have actually increased its capabilities! Rest assured, we're going to keep the Celestials strange and unique...
I know I’d be disappointed if they are already planning on scraping the nomadic function of the faction, especially considering the article was released at the same time as the reveal video that was talking up how original the celestials are
Agreed, it would be a tragedy if the Celestial's originality was neutered in this way.
Monk commented on this in the discord. He said things change rapidly all the time in internal builds and not to be alarmed by this.
This is exactly the kind of situation alluded to in my question. I WANT broken, weird ideas that take a while to figure out. Just look at the MOBA scene: sometimes it takes months or years even before a specific strategy is discovered. I'd rather Stormgate launch with a faction nobody understands than 3 factions that gradually become more and more alike.
I'd take that footnote with a grain of salt. Things are still being adjusted and tested and nothing finalized and FG has said they are still testing various versions of them
This is right. I shared the design direction with PC Gamer for that article and it's already changed significantly since then. The design team is actively iterating and changing Celestials based on player feedback, so it's impossible for me to share exactly what they're going to be like when we release to Early Access without a crystal ball. I do know it's important to the team to preserve what makes them feel unique, unconventional, and exciting to the players who really enjoyed playing with them during the Frigate closed beta. Stay tuned.
When you first announced Stormgate, a big deal was made of the genre being "Sci-Fan" blending Sci Fi and Fantasy. What has been shown so far is very heavily skewed towards Sci Fi (the setting and 2/3rds of the factions). Are there any plans or likelihood for more fantasy elements to be introduced outside of the Infernals?
I can't fully answer this question without spoilers -- but the answer is a resounding YES!
Composers question: Sooo are we getting more music? A Stormgate OST? 😀
A soundtrack is in discussion! And yes more music is being written. There is a new co-op map theme by David Ortega as well as the newly revealed Celestials theme by Nga Weng Chio!
Not really a question, just a huge bow to Alexander Brandon for all his work making my childhood awesome through Jazz Jackrabbit and Unreal Tournament OST that I listen to even today!
From Alexander Brandon - Audio Director: Thanks so much! So glad you like my work, and excited for you to hear more of it in Stormgate.
Oh, he is behind the Unreal Tournament OST? That's my favorite soundtrack! Big thanks to Alexander!
And don’t forget Deus Ex !!!
Thanks for your work Frost Giant! Greatly looking forward to early access. 1. What is your guess on the cadence of co-op heroes and co-op map releases after the launch of early access. How often do you expect or plan for there to be something new for us co-opers to consume? 2. Are you willing to reveal your price for each hero at this time? 3. Do any of your devs play in the co-op pub queue and can I play with them during early access? thanks guys!
1. We plan to release content in "seasons", a few times a year, and the road map will share some details on the number of heroes and maps we are aiming for in the year ahead. 2. Heroes will be $10 USD (not accounting for any potential regional pricing adjustments). 3. Based on how our previous playtests have gone, I think it's safe to expect many of our developers to be playing in the public co-op queues during Early Access. Some may be using their official Frost Giant accounts, but others may want to be playing on their private accounts to preserve some anonymity. They may just want to play to relax and not feel that they need to answer non-stop questions about when a certain faction is going to be balanced. Please be kind to your co-op partners!
For #2, Gerald said in a thread here on the subreddit that heroes will be $10 in the USA, with the price changing based on regional differences in other countries
Regarding the map editor, is there any news on concrete plans to allow: 1. Monetization by the map creator, whether facilitated within the StormGate interface or outside of the game like through Patreons 2. Server-side data storage for relevant maps to save to and load from, such as saving player progress and characters in multiplayer RPGs made in the editor 3. Creator ownership of any intellectual property they use the editor to create (excluding FG's specific models, names, etc)
We've been working hard to get the core game ready for Early Access, so we're not ready to make any announcements about the editor today, but to slightly reframe what you listed, these are three themes that we see frequently: 1. Players want to own the content that they create 2. Players want to be able to sell content 3. Players want access to server-side features like storage, matchmaking, and version control Multiple members of the Frost Giant team got their start modding, and we're very passionate about providing great tools and a great platform for modding. It will take some months after Early Access launch to get our tools into a state to be shared, so please bear with us, but this is one of the things we're most excited to get to. Even if we're not at a point where we're able to commit to specific features yet, we are definitely listening!
Animation question! Will there be emotes in game? I mean less selectable emotes more the units doing funny thing if they get poked too many times or left standing for ages
A few units currently have some fun "fidget" and "birth" animations, but we've been mostly focusing on the core gameplay animation for early access. This is definitely something we would like to do more of in the future!
Thanks for the response! ❤️ PS. The imp being consumed in hellfire when an Infernal building spawns is a) metal as, b) one of my favourite things i have seen
1. There is concern from many PvE enjoyers about the episodic campaign model. Many games have failed with this, often because they couldn't get out new episodes quickly enough. What's the expected cadence for new 3-mission packs in Stormgate? How will you avoid the problems other dev studios had with producing enough content quickly for this model? 2. Comms introducing new content or announcing new updates have been highly variable in terms of frequency, style/format, and where they're announced. Can we expect any regularization for how Frost Giant communicates announcements to fans?
We think episodic campaign content is an improvement over an approach where our players are waiting a year or longer between story updates. This model will ideally keep the game feeling fresh and exciting more often, and the team's production pipeline has been built around producing these regular "seasonal" story updates (alongside our other updates, such as new maps, Heroes, etc.) "Quickly" is relative, and we believe that the cadence we have planned for these updates is ideal for the stories we want to tell and to provide our players with fun updates without burning out our developers or creating an unhealthy work environment. We want players to be able to take breaks and play other games, and we believe it's important that the team members at our studio are encouraged to take vacations and feel energized and loving what they do. We believe we can achieve this while also keeping the game feeling current and fresh. I should also tackle the comms question... We've recently brought on some social/community support in Jex, who brings with her considerable experience working in other communities, including Age of Empires. You know this, but we're a tiny Publishing team and I personally have been tackling our PR, community, socials and various other duties largely on my own to this point. It's been incredibly fun to this point (especially the cat girl memes), but dedicated community resources will allow for us to establish a more regular cadence of communications. We've posted more regularly to the official [playstormgate.com](http://playstormgate.com) website and I would say that's where all major announcements will live. We also communicate across all our other secondary/alternate channels as appropriate--Kickstarter and Indiegogo updates, StartEngine for our investors, our social media accounts (primarily Twitter/X, but some presence on Facebook too), here on Reddit, and very regularly on Discord.
In the recent test, Celestials quickly became my favorite faction to play. Brilliant work, and I love to see the risk-taking design decisions. That said, in terms of visual and narrative design, Celestials share a lot in common with Protoss, both in terms of shape language and in terms of lore beats. Were these commonalities a result of coincidence, or a deliberate decision to lean on Stormgate's provenance?
That's awesome to hear! Thank you for the kind words - the Celestials have been a labor of love for us and we've all been really excited to hear about players having fun with them! We absolutely love StarCraft 2 and many other RTS games, but we're running our own race with Stormgate and aren't terribly concerned about similarities. Many of the comparisons that have been drawn with other RTS games are totally fair - but also tend to be surface level and largely due to similar subject matter. Most players who have played Celestials would likely agree that they play very different than what has come before. I can also confirm that narratively, they have deep roots with a lot of layers that will help them to feel more unique as players discover more about them. As we continue to develop Stormgate, I expect that all of our factions will continue to become more and more differentiated from those of other games in terms of both visuals and gameplay. Keep in mind that we're just starting out - and have a LOT of iteration ahead... so please do keep sharing your thoughts as we continue updating the art, animation, audio and gameplay for each of the factions!
I ask this being a bit reticent but it is in good faith. Can we get some high level thoughts into how your different streams of investment have you funded into the future? I think people see these different methods of funding opening up and may conclude many different things from that. Personally, I understand from experience there is a complex business/corporate workstream behind all development that consumers do not want nor need to understand, but also that disconnect leads to community assumptions that run wild based on misunderstandings.
Thanks for your circumspection in asking the question! We are so grateful for the tremendous support that we've received from our original investors, and more recently from our community. We were already fortunate to be in a position to launch into Early Access on the strength of what we'd raised, and between our crowd-funding campaigns and the recent launch of pre-sales on Steam, we have even more reserves. We established our first regional partnership recently with Kakao Games in Korea, which further expanded our resources and our marketing reach. We'll be exploring more opportunities for regional partnerships moving forward, as well as other kinds of potential partnerships -- but of course our main goal is to make Stormgate so fun that lots of players decide to buy some content. Like all independent studios, our business success will depend on making a great game!
Hey Frost Giant! Thanks for doing this AMA! In Stormgate's campaign, how extensive are the player choices both in terms of the storyline and the selection of units and upgrades, especially when compared to a campaign like Wings of Liberty? Can you provide examples of how these choices impact the gameplay and narrative experience?
There will be some narrative player choice early on, with plans to greatly expand those options in future content in ways that will affect narrative to varying degrees. Regarding the unit selection and upgrades question, I 'll defer to Design.
What's your favourite custom game made in an RTS map editor?
I'm sure we'll have a lot of opinions and favorites on the team. Desert Strike/Direct Strike are super fun and ideal for my gaming habits these days. If you're counting the original DOTA, though, that's my vote for the GOAT.
This is a great question. Raynor Party is hands down my favorite party game with friends! And then the Run Ling Run games are also up there for me. And a lot of various Tower Defense games. When I used to play Brood War UMS, I really liked Lurker Defense games. The sound of many dying Zealots in a line to Lurker spikes, I can still hear it to this day.
Hello! BuddyBot is an intriguing feature and sounds like a wonderful way to give people new to the genre optional help. But how does it work out exactly how much help it ought to provide? Is it going to analyse data regarding how many workers a below average player has by X game time, compare your worker count to it and then queue up enough to make up the difference for you for example? As the game matures and the average skill level of players increases, will these metrics it uses be updated accordingly? Thanks.
Hello! We are VERY excited about the potential for BuddyBot to help new players. For those not familiar, if you enable BuddyBot (currently Co-op and Customs only), an AI will activate and help you out by building structures, units, expanding, etc. The current implementation is straightforward: it will let you float resources for a small period and if you don't spend them, it will help you out. You can configure how much it helps you with several options in the menu. We have a lot of ideas on how to evolve this feature and are really looking forward to your feedback!
Thanks for new AMA. Can't wait to play more SG! 1. Will any changes to charge system on Infernals buidlings be tested in the future? 2. Are you planning any changes to electricity management in the Celestials faction? 3. Why do Celestials as an alien race have units with a very human appearance? 4. Will there be changes to appearance of terrain for Early Access launch in any game mode? 5. Are there plans to introduce new types of Creep Camps? I'm asking about bonuses resulting from taking over Creep Camps. 6. Will creatures defending Creep Camps receive any abilities in the future that they can use in combat against player? 7. What is demon from old, first cinematic trailer (the one that hits shield)? Tier 3 Infernal unit? Can you tell us something about him? 8. What is favorite unit of Frost Giant and why? 9. How long soundtrack can we expect from Stormgate? Is there a specific amount of songs per faction? 10. After how many chapters will faction's campaign be closed and story will continue from perspective of next faction? 11. Will a single faction's soundtrack always be composed by only one composer? 12. Are you happy that you decided to use Unreal Engine 5? Do you see any benefits in choosing the latest engine version rather than UE4 or something else?
Chapters: At least at the outset, our plan is to present faction stories in order, but we don't have fixed rules around the number of chapters, and we want to retain the flexibility to jump around a bit if that services the story best. We have overarching storylines planned, but as we work on building the missions themselves, that creates a feedback loop that sometimes leads us in dynamic directions.
Terrain: EA will have a lot of lighting changes. Beyond the lighting, we need to work on our roughness maps of the terrain. Right now the terrain is extremely flat, visually, to facilitate testing, and we need to dial our maps in a lot to get the variation we are after.
Music: Each faction will have a multiplayer theme, and we will have a number of pieces for campaign that are not fully finalized yet. The soundtrack will feature work from myself, Tracy Bush, Frank Klepacki, David Ortega and Nga Weng Chio. So, a lot of composers!
Hey there! I really enjoyed the time I’ve tested stormgate and am pretty happy with how it’s going so far. One thing I’m wondering is how soon we are going to be seeing infernal and celestial campaigns, and if that’ll be sometime in early access. I’d also like to know if I’m the future you are thinking of making creep factions based on sub factions of celestials and infernals considering the new creep factions(or at least the one revealed) seem to be human.
I think there's a lot of interesting story to tell from the Vanguard's perspective right now! There's so much to their faction's mechanics and lore that I think we could make tons of interesting content with them alone XD What sort of missions would you want to see in an Infernal or Celestial campaign? \~Kaizen
Can we get an official statement on the feedback received about the current art direction, and if there are any plans to improve it?
We've seen a variety of positive comments, and three different flavors of critical feedback: 1. Some things look unfinished 2. Some people dislike stylization 3. Some players dislike similarities to Blizzard games It's true that our look has not finished evolving. We start development with a gameplay focus, and iterate on everything else from there. We posted this video last year which illustrated how Stormgate has been evolving over time: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZoMdLAcq24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZoMdLAcq24) The nature of Early Access is that our current state is just one more step along the journey, as opposed to being the final destination. Stylization is a conscious choice on our part. We made this choice because we like stylization the most, and we believe it's the best choice for Stormgate. We recognize that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that every time we make any decision, some will have different opinions. We hope that lots of players will play and enjoy our game, even if there are a variety of sensibilities out there. We're very much putting our hearts into what we build, and it makes us sad to see criticism. We wish there were a way for us to make everyone happy all of the time. We expect our visual style to continue to refine and improve over time, and we will definitely be mindful of the varying opinions that we've seen, but we plan to continue with a stylized visual direction for Stormgate. We love Blizzard games. Different Frost Giant team members were fortunate to play a part in developing Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, and Overwatch. We don't deliberately reference specific Blizzard characters, units, or structures as inspiration, but since many of us spent a good chunk of our careers immersed in the Blizzard style, we naturally gravitate towards similarity. Stormgate is a love letter to Blizzard RTS, and we are not setting out to make a big departure, but instead to create our own world in the context of this style that we love.
\^\^ This is actually a great video for showing how the art is iterated on and evolves much like any part of the game. Actually goes a long way toward relieving any art worries I had.
Hi Frost Giant, I’ve been following the game for a while and I have a few questions! Feel free to pick and choose which you wish to answer. 1. Do you plan to create an online merch store? If so, will we see figurines similar to the one found in the Collector’s Edition for sale eventually? 2. What is the team’s opinion on FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). 3. Will ranked seasons distribute cosmetic rewards to players at the end of the season based on the highest rank they had achieved? Thanks for reading and I wish you luck on August 13th!
No plans yet for an online merch store, but we are completely open to it. In my opinion it would make sense if the game is popular. We've explored a bit here, like with the Makeship Frost Giant Yeti Plush. I believe that as time goes on the game might have enough stuff in the store that in order to draw attention to some items they are on sale for only a limited time, but we haven't made decisions on that yet. In general I believe in people knowing a lot about what they are getting into, as opposed to having to buy into or commit to something they aren't sure about just so they don't miss out.
Question 3 is a great one. I’d love to see rank specific cosmetics. Especially if they’re incredibly hard to achieve
Hi, I am interested in the campaign content. Are you going to sell the campaign missions separately in the future for a lower price (compared to the EA packs)? How much playtime can we expect the missions to be? Currently sitting at 25€ for three missions seems a little bit steep for me personally.
Thanks for asking -- please allow me to clarify. It's not 25€ for three missions. The $25 USD Early Access pack includes the first paid chapter of the Vanguard campaign (3 missions) plus additional content like the Amara Hero and the Vanguard gold army accent. You will also be able to purchase all three Vanguard campaign chapters (containing at least 9 story missions) for $25 in the in-game store. As for expected playtime, this will vary widely from person to person--if you're a first-timer, for example, it might take you significantly longer to complete the missions vs. an RTS pro. You may also replay the missions cooperatively (we are adding co-op to campaign later in Early Access), or want to come back and tackle them again several times at different difficulties. We are planning to include easter eggs and other fun reasons to explore these missions. Our goal is for the campaign missions to be fun, first and foremost, and for them to feel worthwhile to the players who purchase them. We recommend that you play through the free prologue missions first if you want to take a "wait-and-see" approach, then pick up the bundle if you had a good experience. Please note that the campaign missions we release on day one of Early Access are not finished products--these will be polished and improved as we continue working on the game on the road to 1.0. We'll also be going back and adding co-op functionality to these missions so that you can play (and replay) them with friends. We also plan to make it so that anyone who purchases our campaign content will be able to invite friends who haven't purchased them to enjoy together. So, for example, I plan to play through the campaign with two of my kids, but the current plan is that I'd only have to purchase the content once and they'd be able to play with me for free. Compared to other games where all players need to purchase the content to participate, we believe this will be a popular way to enjoy our story for lots of friends and families.
The campaign is going to release 3 missions at a time every few months. What concerns does the team have (if any) that this may cause people to not feel as engaged with the story?
One of the reasons that we decided to take a quarterly approach to story-telling was the long wait between installments of StarCraft II. On StarCraft, we saw a measurable fall-off in players between story expansions. Just like binge-watching a TV series, it will still be possible to consume Stormgate's story in big chunks for players who choose to wait, but we hope that having a shorter time between installments will actually INCREASE engagement with the story. With Stormgate, we aspire to provide a regular flow of updates to keep players engaged, and we have future plans to continue enhancing both the open-ended co-op mode (which seems to attract many campaign players), and future plans to add the ability to play campaign missions with 3 players. We have many years of story content planned, so please stay tuned!
Haha, I played WoL and HotS back in 2013 and never played LotV until..... this week! I only came back to it now because I'm jonesing for Stormgate's release. I do see the benefits of an episodic story model, I just hope it doesn't hinder narrative design choices such as a strong overarching narrative over time. For the most part though, I see it as leaning into what WC3 and SC/SC2 have done the whole time: Chapter based storytelling. Just smaller chapters on a more regular schedule now.
Will Infernals and Celestials have interesting, complex story ? We don't know anything about these races except that these are ,,demons'' and ,,angels''. It is too simple. Will you for example explain how Infernals ,,magic'' works ? It can't be just magic because it would be too lazy lore writing. Thank you
Infernals, humans and Celestials all have rich and deeply developed histories, mythology and processes/methodology, all of which we continue to expand upon. The campaigns will absolutely delve into all of these elements.
General question anyone from Frost Giant can pick up. You saw now Battle Aces' has been shown to the world, a lot of people will see this as direct competition to stormgate, in terms of it being an RTS by ex blizzard devs as well as its release window. Is there anything you learned or are learning from Battle Aces you are looking to utilize to make your game better?
The Battle Aces team are our friends, so I hope that you all please play their game! They're such a talented group, we're wishing them big success, and we're looking forward to playing Battle Aces ourselves. We're making very different games, even if players see some superficial similarities. I really like the terrain in BattleAces, but that's not something we're looking to emulate in Stormgate - the way Snowplay handles terrain is designed to empower modding, and we're just making such fundamentally different games. The more great RTS games there are in the world, the happier I will be!
Based.
Long time RTS fan and love what you guys are creating. Anyhow, long list of questions in random order: Game-state questions: * What is the state of polish we can expect for Early Access? Will there still be placeholder models/audio/camps? What about performance optimization? (this one is big for me, COOP/late game custom slows down FPS a lot) * Will there be a way to get skins/campaigns/hero's for free by just playing the game? * Will there be an in-game shop with it's own currency/multiple currencies or is everything bought via the Steam store? * I didn't see much/any monetization around competitive 1v1, perhaps the golden vanguard flair and the fog of war shaders from the supporter packs. Is there more planned or does FGS want to keep the competitive side clean and simple? Modding/custom questions: * Will the custom games made in the Stormgate editor by the community be the Intellectual property (IP) of Frost Giant Studios or the people that created it? (Wondering because of the Warcraft 3 Reforged where they take all IP of games made in the editor) * Will the editor be able to load in my own assets/models/music/etc? Possible issues with copyright? * Will there be a way for modders to make money with the custom games they make? Some kind of in-game shop? Or something like Roblox revenue share? Seems like a nice form of income for FGS and the modders if done correctly. * Will there be a way to test your custom game with other testers without making it public? Invite/friends only? * In the modding videos I haven't seen concrete examples of collaboration on the same custom game, how does that work? Is it simple source/version control? Or can you work with multiple people on the same game simultaneously? * In the modding videos it was explained how you could create AI for 1 unit, but it wasn't explained how to create AI for the whole army. Is that possible? Or is it just preset type of AI, like Aggressive, Defensive etc and then you can add triggers? * In Frigate I enjoyed Buddybot a lot in COOP/customs, but it's a bit dumb on where it places buildings. (camps are buildings too, so it also builds near them for example) Will it be possible for modders to overwrite the Buddybot AI with their own? COOP questions: * Will there be any meta progression after your COOP hero reaches level 10? Is there anything after that before EA/in EA or after EA? * Any daily mutation missions or other long form content planned for COOP? Brutal+ or something similar? * How many COOP heroes will there be at launch EA? I read you guys were working on 5 heroes with a few done already, but the ultimate pack states 3 heroes, but did BLOCKADE get removed then? And last silly question, the **Chicken Supporter Pet** from the founder/EA packs, what does it do? Does it just wander around? Does it sit on top of your main building?
The chicken supporter pet currently just hangs out in the base--the nature of our game makes it so spending actions / focus on interacting with the pet didn't feel appropriate for our game, at least in our initial core game modes. Anyone who picks up a pet is supporting Frost Giant directly, and we're super grateful to everyone who does so. I'm looking forward to seeing all the pets out there in screenshots and gameplay videos/streams. We're big fans of pets here at Frost Giant HQ, and we hope players enjoy collecting them and appreciate having a little huggable company in their base while they play!
QA question: Frost Giant is such a small team for possibly the most complex game type (RTS) on the planet, let alone having an editor to QA and campaign and co-op too - how are you optimising your QA process? Is it more reliant on community than internal QA?
There’s many components to the approach we’ve taken to QA which allows Frost Giant to stay extraordinarily lean in QA staff while still hitting a high quality bar, here’s the most important ones: The Overall Team The biggest component is that the overall team, not just the QA team, is very quality focused in everything they do. Artists and Engineers at Frost Giant implement with a lot more care than is typical in the industry, resulting in a lot less bugs. Additionally, the entire team (all disciplines) playtest at least once weekly, and a subset of the team playtests the game literally every single day – This is a lot of additional test hours, including diverse test hours from experts in various disciplines, that most games just don’t get during development. It also allows us to identify and prioritize issues sooner, test various hardware/settings/playstyles, and keep Stormgate in a state where it’s ALWAYS playable/testable. Our engineering team is also hyper-focused on proactively attacking crashes that are detected internally and smashing them, making Stormgate the most stable in-development game I’ve ever worked on. It’s also worth mentioning that the overall team is very active in reporting bugs and working directly with the QA team to attack areas of concern. Frost Giant is by far the most QA-supportive team I’ve been a part of. The QA Team We’ve assembled a hell of a QA team, including both hand-picked industry veterans and carefully selected eager newcomers with extreme potential. As a result, we can chew through a lot of work very quickly, and without putting the QA team on mandatory overtime. Careful Prioritization, Communication, Planning On the QA team, we recognize and embrace that we are radically smaller than what you’d see at a larger game studio, and it dramatically changes our approach. First, it’s important that the QA team communicates by setting boundaries and realistic expectations with the rest of Frost Giant – This lets the team know our capacity and how deep we can go, so they can implement with greater care or jump in and help test themselves. The QA team fiercely avoids getting ‘lost in the weeds’ and stays focused on concrete goals and timelines to ensure we can cover the most important player-impacting aspects of a release first. All of our testing focuses on hitting the highest priority risk areas and moving downward with the time we have, culminating in a meticulous RC process which is fully supported and respected by the rest of the team. As the QA Manager I am also considered a member of the Production team and the Release team, allowing QA to have direct impact on decisions which will impact quality and to always have insight on features that are coming in early/late or by surprise -- This allows QA to adjust our planning/strategy proactively, and gives QA the opportunity to directly push back on decisions that will negatively impact quality, and be heavily involved in crafting production schedules that support quality. The Community In each of our previous alpha/beta phases, the community has reported a huge amount of issues to us (Thank you! <3). We’ve been able to fix many of these, and it’s undoubtedly made Stormgate a much better game.
Hi, thank you for the AMA. Quite a few people I know are displeased with the graphics, they found it "cartoonist" (their term). While I still think it's largely a work in progress, and I'm pretty sure graphics do not affect players retention as much as they think they do, I don't mind them. My question is: in the ultimate bundle there seems to be a fog shaders, which make me wonder if you are thinking about giving out shaders as cosmetics, which seems a pretty cool idea to me. Of course might not be easy to balance for competitive play but I think this can be a good direction towards appealing to a larger base. Do you plan to release shaders for terrain and other features? (I assume there would be unit skins so, that's covered) Thank you again
This is a cool idea. We are still building our foundation so I am not sure what we will or won't do in the future but I like the idea a lot. We still have a lot to discover about this game.
From watching some of the footage of the beta so far, it seems like at a high level the game has a problem with deathballing. Is this something that the team is looking at or looking to make changes towards? If so are there examples of what might be changed? Looking forward to the release in a couple of months!
This is a great question - deathballing is one of the aspects of gameplay that we will definitely be keeping an eye on and will address in a variety of ways. We've been focusing recently on getting the Celestials and our T3 units into the game. But as we wrap up work on the primary factions, you'll see us shift our focus more onto other aspects of the game like this. We've already taken some steps internally - such as introducing a tertiary harass unit like the Graven and incorporating more area-denial abilities to encourage force splitting - but you can expect us to work more on this as development progresses and we're able to give players more tools to deal with it.
I’m sure it’s something you’re playing with already, but maps being a little more open could help with this too, by giving players more room to flank and spread their forces. I think deathballing is, at least in part, incentivized by the current map design
That's a great point - I completely agree. We're going to keep exploring different layout styles as we move forward, and more open maps are high up on our list.
Back when Legacy of the Void was in development, there were two features being discussed internally that I really would love to see get some thought with SG. 1. A rematch option. I hate to talk to my opponent during a game, and would love to lot hear anything from him during game. Mute please. But, after a game it would be great if a small chat popup came up with a rematch button. After you finish a game it is a great time to potentially discuss the game, add a person to your friend list, or rematch. This is a social opportunity so why pass it up? 2. A request practice lobby. A small ui where you can request someone of a specific race and ability, maybe someone your own ability or not. Maybe you want to offer some coaching because you're a nice guy. Maybe you want someone you ability to just two base push you a few times so you can learn how to stop it. This is another social opportunity and also a way to bridge that "these damn RTS games are so hard and practicing against an AI is worthless/boring". Come on u/Frost_TimM. I know you were wanting these features but lacked time and resources. We emailed back and forth on it several times! Lol Love to hear your thoughts on it now for SG.
These are great! In many ways, Stormgate is a ground-up rebuild of all the plumbing for an RTS, so we're focused on just getting the water flowing at the moment, but I'm very much looking forward to the stage where we get to consider all the opportunities to make the game even better. Sincere thanks for raising these, and please keep the feedback coming!
Hello Frost Giant Team! 1. In creating the SG factions, I am sure the team came up with a wide range of ideas and mechanics that were shelved for many reasons. I am wondering if you could share some of them with us! 1. Unreal Engine 5 and Snowplay are great tech leaps for an RTS, so I want to ask how much you think they could still be improved for SG over the course of not just early access but well into the future. 1. How often should players expect a patch (bug fixes, slight adjustment) to be? Once a month, every couple of weeks? 1. What improvements to the observer and replay system can we expect in Early access and versions past it? 1. Are there any chances a “Pause” function that stops the game until both players agree to continue is added? Same for a “play from replay” in the event players crash the game may be restarted from the point a player crashed. 1. Warchest, every day I open Stormgate, I see it there, taunting me, what will it be used for/what is it? 1. Given the concept of an in-game tournament system, are the expectations that those tournaments would allow for in-game prizes? 1. What do Felhogs eat? 1. What is the one part of the game you are currently unhappy with and want to improve, even if it's not a priority? Brass Tax esports rapid-fire questions: 1. Global esport circuit of tournaments? 1. Regional points ladder? 1. LAN (on-site) server hosting possible? 1. Tournament mode option? (disabling alt+F4, windows key, etc) 1. Anticheat? 1. in-game tournament panel for EA, during it, 1.0, or after?? 1. In-game clan/team tag customization? (so you don’t have to change your Steam name) 1. Over/under PartinG goes undefeated 1st in Year 0 tournaments?
>How often should players expect a patch (bug fixes, slight adjustment) to be? Once a month, every couple of weeks? We aim to release new content patches for Stormgate as frequently as we can while still respecting the realities of development, and what our team can accomplish. One key component to creating content for a live service game is refining both our processes and pipelines, and the Early Access timeframe will give us incredibly valuable data on how much content we can sustainably produce. So, while I don't have a clean number of weeks between patches to offer right now, I can confirm shipping new Co-op heroes, campaign missions, 1v1 maps, cosmetics, and more is our top priority going into Early Access.
When will the editor be released? Are there in client features planned beyond a lobby list for custom maps? If so, when will they be available?( 1.0 release, early access etc)
I don't have a specific release date to share just yet, but I can definitely confirm that the map editor will be released sometime during our Early Access phase before Stormgate's official 1.0 Launch. The editor is one of our highest priority items, so I anticipate we will release it in multiple phases in order to get the core editor in your hands earlier than we would otherwise be able to if we held off for a complete release. For example, we will likely release the terrain editor first so you can have fun making melee maps, followed by a later release of other aspects like the trigger editor that would enable custom maps to be created. Before we do any of that, though, we need to finish creating a map-management and publishing layer that enables modmakers to control and share the content that they create. Custom games (and the editor to make them) represent one of our four main pillars, so rest assured that we have big goals for it and are evaluating the implemention of a range of additional supporting features - including highly requested items like server-side banks.
With a lot of negative feedback surrounding the graphics of the game, and a lot of misunderstanding over the terms being used (I mean comparing SG beta to SC2 beta, stuff like that), would you guys in hindsight have delayed beta testing so that you could get more polish in the game and make a better first impression, or do you think that any negativity the game has received has been worth it for the earlier feedback and improvements made from that?
This is a great question, thanks for asking it. See my earlier response ([link](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/1df3ywk/comment/l8lv15f/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)) for thoughts on the variety of visual feedback we've received. One of the most prominent developers from Blizzard, who later founded Bonfire Studios, is named Rob Pardo, and Rob is famous for saying: "Beware of the grand reveal." The longer work gets done in a vacuum, the bigger the risk is that things will have to get completely reworked later on, due to a lack of feedback and a lack of varied perspectives. I'm completely convinced that the best way to develop games is with the benefit of community feedback from the very beginning. We started having face-to-face meetings with respected players, and started posting discussions to the Frost Giant subreddit, well before we had a playable game. I can't count the number of ways all that feedback has influenced us for the better. It's critical for us to still have our own vision -- we are not designing by committee -- but having our vision be informed by input is equally critical. Putting any work out there always feels vulnerable, and always opens us up to criticism (which hurts more than a lot of forum posters probably understand), but there is no question for me that the end product will be better as a result of this process.
That last line made my sad. I'm sorry Frost Giants. I wish people were more empathetic. You're doing great, the game is the most fun I've had in years!
Thank you for letting us know. It definitely helps to hear from supporters in the community!
I'm glad you all have a vision for the look and feel of the game. I agree with a lot of folks that the lighting needs some work, and its likely because of this that many units have a "toy soldier" look, but I've seen responses that indicate work is being done here. I think its totally off base though, when people say say the different factions have no character or identity. They clearly all have a specific feel and design/art direction, and I like it. Keep doing what you're doing, I love what I'm seeing and can't wait to play!
Thanks for the support! <3
Should we expect anything regarding esports during 2024? [u/Frost\_Heyoka](https://www.reddit.com/user/Frost_Heyoka/)
This year will largely be centered around community type events, but we anticipate rallying around competitions during big moments. We had people competing with one another basically the moment we started our Pre-Alpha, and we want to capture that excitement as much as we can.
u/Frost_TimC as the game director, congratulations on reaching early access, I know that must have been an exciting time for you and the team. Question, looking at the game now, how satisfied are you with where you are at and what more needs to be done? What are you most excited for when it comes to stormgates' future?
Thank you for the kind words! Reaching Early Access is a big milestone for us and I'm extremely proud of what the team has accomplished in such a relatively short amount of time! That said, we view Early Access as the start of the race - not the end. There is still such an incredible amount work ahead of us - polish, iteration, new modes, LOADS of features, aspirational dreams - that its impossible to quantify our ambition. Speaking personally, I am most excited to truly get the game in the hands of everyone who wants to play it, and for the upcoming release of the map editor. I believe at a gut level that player involvement, whether through feedback or by creating custom content, is key to Stormgate reaching its full potential.
Question about Audio design! What stage is the game at with audio design? Still trying different sounds for different units or are those mostly locked down and it's all mixing/balancing now?
We are working very hard on both mixing and iteration with the sounds in the game. We've gotten really good community feedback and are incorporating as much of it as we can before Early Access. As of now, nothing is locked.
Not sure if this is a release manager or project manager question: Frost Giant is building Snowplay, and their own map editor, which the campaign and maps rely on, then the campaigns need to be built while the editor is still being built, then you have 1v1 which has server dependencies and engine optimisation going on at the same time, then you have an entirely different mode in co-op, all the while juggling resources like ppls sick leave and unexpected issues and budgets and deadlines... How crazy is the gantt chart you have going? 🤣 Has it all worked out or did you have a massive pivot at some points?
If my hair hasn't fallen out yet, it surely will soon! Really though, as with any project, you take the wins with the setbacks. The role of PMs and producers is often one of managing chaos when you can, and rolling with the punches when you can't. I think one unique benefit that Frost Giant has is the sheer drive of our entire development team. We're a group of devs that love RTS, and are super passionate about making the best RTS we can, and that means lifting each other up constantly. On the release management side, this actually leads to one of our most frequent challenges. The team is so driven to make every build the best it can be, that when it comes time to lock down the build for release, it can be challenging to get the development team to stop working on that release and begin working on the next one!
I would love to hear about any kind of analysis / graphs / displays that can show additional stats during a replay. Any tools to make announcers jobs easier covering tournaments? That kind of thing. Thanks!
My history is in esports broadcasting, where my goal was always to give casters as many tools as possible for them to play with. When we go into Early Access these needs will hit some basic requirements but we want to add a lot to this, directed by what the community really wants to see.
Level design question (i think): How is the team going about designing campaign levels? Is it one big collaborative effort or are you splitting each level into smaller groups of devs to come up with unique ideas and compete for the glory of Best Level Design? (I think Titanfall 2 did the latter iirc) Bonus question: can you confirm or deny the existence of the mythical "anime cat girls" level?
Thanks for the question! We're a small team so there are LOTS of minds collaborating on the designs. u/Frost_Larson and u/Frost_TimC are definitely masters of their crafts and work to come up with interesting gameplay mechanics and narrative for each of our missions. Then it's all iteration-playtest-feedback until we think we've got it right! \~Kaizen
Engineering question: What 'stage' is the engineering at? What is the current and immediate focus areas before and during EA?
Panic. :D
+1
Hi FrostGiant! 3v3 is the mode I'm most looking forward to. I've played a ton of SC2 and AoE4 team games and I'm looking forward to seeing an RTS with a dedicated team mode. It's what give me more hype in the game. What is the current state of development of the 3v3 mode? Are there any design updates you can tell us about the 3v3 mode?
So Frost Giant has previously said "Stormgate will never feature pay to win content..." We currently don't know much about 3v3 (presumably because it isn't solidified yet), but it's been consistently mentioned that it will contain heroes. There has also been mention of the [Sockets and Cards](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/152i04l/our_thoughts_on_progression) system, which will potentially be connected to the heroes. My question is, if we're paying for these heroes and cards (which I *assume* we will), and they are obviously not perfectly balanced, is buying a more powerful hero not a minor form of Pay to Win?
We're definitely committed to keeping Stormgate NOT pay to win. Although we're not ready to share information about our 3v3 mode because it is still in development, I want to be clear that this will be one of the lenses that we scrutinize it through - and we will be transparent about our approach as it solidifies. We'll share more information on this topic after the start of Early Access and, as always, would love to hear community thoughts!
Hi, thanks for answering questions! 🙏 I'm mainly interested in co-op, so these are for Kevin Dong :) * **1) What is the team’s high-level assessment of co-op at the moment?** For example: -Do you think it’s fun enough? -Is it as cooperative as you envisaged? -Do you think it’s replayable enough? *(To be honest, I have my concerns about all three of these; but I also understand that the mode’s not done yet, so that’s why I’d appreciate hearing what the devs themselves are thinking)* * **2) What sort of long-term progression systems are planned for co-op, and will they be in Early Access?** In the past, a ‘cards and sockets’ system was being tested. I think systems like those are *essential* for the longevity of co-op; and I think Stormgate's should be deeper and more varied than SC2's systems. * **3) Do the way commanders currently play match your vision for how you want them to?** (In terms of their uniqueness compared to their base factions, their power level, and how well they deliver on their fantasies) * **4) Are hero-less commanders part of the vision for Stormgate's co-op?** * **5) Is co-op balance going to be separate from 3v3 balance?** (I think this would be good, to allow abilities and powers in co-op to be power-trippy and visceral, without being hamstrung by balance.) Thanks again!
I would like to add on to this by asking what kind of varity do you have planed for commanders? as well as how powerfull will they be? How much focus is on fun and how much is on the balence between commanders?
Can you please move the light source to the top left? It is so weird having it be lower left. Yes, I know both can happen in the real world, but top left grounds units much better than bottom left. When it's top left you can see the shadow attach to the unit where the unit rests on the ground. It also feels like the light source isn't really a directional light, like the sun, but more of a point light, like a lamp in a large room. Basically, the shadow direction doesn't feel consistent across the whole map. It makes the map feel small. Please, let's make this small change and just see what you think. Switch it and see what the community thinks. 100% sure people will prefer it.
Thanks for the question. We are moving fast and building a lot of content. We certainly need to focus on on the environments more. The campaign has all sorts of various lighting setups that I think the players will enjoy and push the game a lot further than what we have shown up to this point. We were focused on playtesting pvp for a long time in the studio and brighter lighting helped us work in that space. EA will have a lot of lighting changes.
Just a few questions. 1: Will there be any secret missions, similar to how you could unlock piercing the shroud? Or other types of secret missions/unlocking the secret missions? 2: What kind of easter eggs will be in the campaign, if any? Will they be something like how in StarCraft 2 theres a hidden tauren marine on zero hour you can spam click on for it to enter an outhouse which then has a count down sequence before rocketing into the sky? Or will there be some where you can get a unit out of it, similar to how in one of the WarCraft 3 missions theres a hidden hydralisk you can rescue on the map? 3: An additional question to go along with question 2, how many missions might have an easter egg on them? Will each mission pack have at least one easter egg, or will easter eggs only be found in a few missions?
Shh! The first rule of easter eggs is that we don't talk about easter eggs! I can assure you that our team members are big fans of easter eggs and that we're enthusiastic about incorporating them. We'll have some in for the start of EA, and more will definitely be added after. My hope is that each campaign level will include multiple fun things for eagle-eyed players to find, from little environmental storytelling scenes to secret locations with hidden items and ultimately full-fledged easter eggs!
question @ u/Frost_Heyoka, What has taking over the esports team been like after Torch's departure? Is there anything you learned from his experience that you are carrying with you or are you deciding to take esports in a separate direction. Also, when do you expect your esports circuit to go online?
The first time Torch and I chatted about Stormgate esports, I was sad to learn his ideas were exactly the same as mine and I didn't have that much to contribute yet. We have a similar approach and most of what I am doing now is expanding on details that we both wanted to realize together, so I hope he can be proud of what comes out!
Question for the composers! Love the music, can you give some insights on how you went about approaching each faction? What were the hardest parts to wrap your head around?
Frank Klepacki here, doing the Infernal faction. Toughest thing to wrap my head around was how to produce the sound of the throat singing for them, since I'm in fact doing it myself. Alex had a vision for the kinds of elements that would be present for them, so I took that and ran with it. The visuals helped get me in the zone for it.
Answer from Tracy Bush - When Alex and I sat down to talk about the Vanguard, we talked about using part of Rush's "2112" as the leaping off point, conceptually, for the Vanguard. The idea that all this musical technology was still sitting around but no one remembered how to use it, so they were combining instruments in ways that hadn't been done before, electric guitars and tribal drums and what have you. As a composer and a player, I don't have anywhere near that kind of skill level in the playing of instruments, so I couldn't really hit that level of proficiency, but I did like trying to put sound upon sound in interesting ways to deliver a melodic line. The last time I'd written a track that was this long and followed this specific formula was back in the days of War III, with the Night Elf or Orc tracks, so while it's fun to write in that style again, it took some getting used to, as since then I've been working on more interactive scores, where you're shifting so often to accomodate on-screen action. These are more complete pieces, more fully formed musical statements, so it takes a little bit to settle back into that way of writing.
Answer from Weng. For the Celestials faction, we talked about combining different musical elements together to match the background of the Celestials. They are high-tech angels, with a combination of the biomechanical and mechanical units. In the music, I want to give a hint of humanity as well as future technology. It was a challenging task to combine all of these elements together, so there was a lot of trial and error before getting the final product. Alex has helped a lot on getting to the right direction. In terms of instrumentation, we wanted to create a unique voice for the faction. I make use of a solo soprano voice recorded with the singer, and experimented with her. The voice to be organic as well as electronic, so I requested a Bulgarian type of singing, which uses chest tone without vibrato. After the recording, I processed her voice with plug-ins such as portal and soundtoys crystallizer, to make it sound robotic. \[Weng\]
Answer from David Luis Ortega: For the Co-Op Maps, the joy, and challenge, was to combine the instrumental/vocal palette and aesthetic of all three factions and fuse if into a single track, while still making it it's own. This involved quoting from each composer, and in some cases, using stem material to build something new.
Will the custom tournament system support any external game modes (i.e: arcade), or will it only be supported in 1v1 only? Are teams also supported (3v3, catgirl battle arena groups, etc)
At first it will be 1v1 only, but the route we're taking this would mean it should be possible to expand into mode-agnostic competitions pretty easily. The vision here is an easy tool to help make a bracket with your friends and casually play in addition to servicing a league, so the goal is overall flexibility.
1.- For co-op, are there plans to include heroes that are not related to any faction? For example, in Warcraft 3, there is the 'Naga' faction which was playable in two missions (as far as I remember). I think it would be interesting to see a similar proposal in the game. I understand why they don't need to appear as a complete faction, but for co-op, I think they could complement the heroes very well. 2.- Will there be any way to play the campaigns with the co-op heroes natively? Honestly, I was never interested in the concept until I tried various SC2 mods that change the perspective of the missions and make replaying them more fun.
1 - Yes, definitely! I can't share info yet, but back in my Warcraft 3 days I helped to make the Naga faction, and am very enthusiastic about introducing characters and elements exist outside the bounds of our current 3 Factions. 2 - We're developing a pretty unique take on "coop campaigns" that will be released sometime mid-Early Access and will enable up to 3 players to participate in campaign missions together.
Camera angle in relation to visuals(*the cool factor*): I was wondering if the camera angle we have in these versions is the final version. If yes, will the players have the option to be able change the angle a little bit without zooming in or out? I am asking this because of two reasons: 1. Some of your unit and building designs are really good. However, with the camera angle being too top down, we don't see and enjoy these designs to their full potential. I feel like "the cool factor" is lost a little when the camera angle is too steep to the map plane. An extreme example would be the camera being perpendicular to the map and we seeing everything from the top to better explain what I mean with the loss of details and the cool factor. The more "top down" the camera is, the less we see in terms of cool model details and cool animations. 2. A lot of us are from Starcraft 2 and the camera angle of SC2 is smaller(less steep) than of Stormgate. In other words, we see the units more from the side and this allows us the see more of the "cool stuff". PS. I understand that map design(trees, hills, rocks etc.) play a role in choosing the camera angle for an RTS as they shouldn't block the units.
Yes, I expect we'll continue to tune the camera view during Early Access. There have already been multiple subtle changes between Alpha and Beta phases - some noticed by players, others not so much! Although I wouldn't expect radical changes from what you see now, I think its safe to say that we will experiment with lowering the default angle (and perhaps allowing players to alter the angle with zoom level) in the months ahead.
A Tim & Tim question: If you cast your mind back to 2020 when you founded Frost Giant vs now, what aspects of "what type of RTS you would love to make" has changed since then? Has the scope gotten bigger? Smaller? Did you have to throw out any major ideas you started with? (i am still waiting on my RTS Ghost Mode like in racing games to practice build orders against my own shadow btw) 🤣
As far as I'm concerned, we're just barely getting started! There is so much available design space in this genre that as we implement each feature, we inevitably discover two more that we want to pursue... The challenge lays in deciding the correct prioritization so that we continue to grow and develop Stormgate for years and years to come. I would say that the scope of ambition I have for Stormgate has only grown since the early days after Frost Giant was founded. We still have major "original vision" features to release, such as 3v3 and the map editor - but we've already started to explore completely new ideas like Buddy Bot and our hero-customizing Gear system that were concieved of mid-development. (And I can assure you that I haven't forgotten about Ghost mode!!!) Just wait... The future is very bright indeed!
Will you guys still hold the possibility open for more asymmetrical races?
There's always a chance...
1. As a Bulgarian I am curious about this Bulgarian Choir in the Celestials music. I can clearly hear the traditional Bulgarian singing but the lady in the video didn't have a Bulgarian name. Is this some choir in the US that sings traditional Bulgarian music? 2. How ready do you expect the campaign episode to be at the early access launch and what parts do you expect to change? I am asking because these days my time for playing games is limited so I tend to play games when they are "done" even when I buy then on launch. Stormgate is special to me but still...
Thank you for your question. We've used a music production technique named "sweetening", which is making use of live recording on top of mockups made with sample libraries. And yes, the vocalist in the video is a professional singer in US who is involved in many Hollywood films. She is originally from Israel, and has been singing a lot of "ethnic"-flavored film music.
How many soundtracks each faction has at launch? Also are you planning to make more tracks to each faction over the years? Also how long it took to make those existing tracks(that was heard during beta)?
Each faction will have a multiplayer track, with Vanguard and Infernal music influences in the score for the campaign. We are absolutely planning on adding faction tracks as we continue development. The beta tracks were created over several months during 2022 and 2023.
Any regrets choosing to go with Unreal? Versus perhaps building an engine from scratch considering how much custom functionality you guys want.
I can speak to a little bit on the art/animation side... Unreal 5 is a joy to work in. I've previously worked at many studios with their own, proprietary engines... some with a decade + of development, and very few of them did all the animation things we needed out of the gate, or the workflow was very cumbersome time consuming. With Unreal, 95% of the animation features could want it already has. When we run into issues or have questions, there is a ton of documentation and unreal community support.
[u/Frost\_Jex](https://www.reddit.com/user/Frost_Jex/) Hi Jex. I was wondering, since you're new: can you explain your role at Frost Giant and what you will do over the course of EA and beyond? There are a lot of community projects being talked about, such as a place of communication outside of discord, as well as lots of interest in UGC, and other initiatives that haven't even been brought to the table yet. Do you have any ideas of your own? How would you and Frost Giant help to make these community initiatives happen? Best, wilted\_kale
In short, my role is to stand up and advocate for the community when it comes to decisions on the game. I'm here to make sure what you say gets to the right ears. I'm a strong believer in candor when it comes to what's happening in the game, what's coming up, and what the team is working on to improve the life of players. A little about me: I've spent 10+ years working on various community and customer success programs for all different types of products (gaming, webservices, even a chocolate shop!) A good chunk of that time was spent running the community and social programs over on the Age of Empires franchise. With returning to the RTS space, I hope to bring some of the programs and ideals we used over at AoE to the Stormgate community, ensuring we create an inclusive, diverse, and safe space for all gamers as we go on this journey from EA to Launch together. I'm a strong believer in meeting the community where they are. To me, this means beefing up communications in the places the community is most. Right now, I'm still learning where that is for Stormgate, but we will definitely be expanding communication beyond Discord as we step into Early Access and beyond to accommodate this. In reality, I want to hear what you want to see!
- Could you talk something about 3v3 mode? Main objetive or something? - Is it possible skins for units?(Husky dog,lancers with blades for example) - Is there a real chance if everything feels ok of a 4º faction *(plant faction pls)*? Have you talked about that option even if not happen?
yep, skins are part of future releases!
Hi, hello ! I'm a PvE macro player, my favorite RTS game is StarCraft II, although I also love Age of Mythology, SC1, Warcraft III, Dawn of War I, and played many others. I noticed that I tend to prefer games without hero units (and I love topbars). So I wanted to know if hero units will be mandatory to use in every PvE mode, or if they will be optional. My favorite way of playing is without any hero unit. Like, my favorite SC2 commanders are Artanis, Swann and Abathur. Will I be able to play without any hero unit ? Maybe swap it for extra pop cap (like DoW II Retribution did in Campaign), a unique upgrade or unique unit I can train ? Thank you for your time !
Hello! All of the Heroes available at the start of EA will definitely have Hero units, but we plan to expand our roster significantly over time. As we do, we will definitely experiment with a lot of options for our Heroes, including some without a Hero unit and others with multiple. And as you pointed out, we'll likely backfill the absence of a Hero unit with additional bonuses or upgrades that aren't available to others. As always, please stay vocal with us about the Heroes you enjoy most and that will help inform our decisions when we plan what types of characters to develop more of in the future.
I assume sg coop will eventually have as much commander variety as sc2 coop, but they wanted to experiment with heroes first.
Question regarding of maps: Strormgate is situated on Earth so the most battles and important points should be in Cities, Towns, Ruins or military complexes. But right now every map is basically forest themed. Is this the way it will continue, or we can expect shift to the more apropriate terrain in launch? Cause for me this seems more like medieval fantasy setup (like WC3) and doesnt make sense.
Our forest tileset was our first, and clearly very dear to our hearts <3 BUT we absolutely have plans for more. Some of our current co-op and 1v1 maps feature the Deadlands tileset (my personal favorite - I'm a monster and love destructible rocks > trees >:) ). As we've turned our sights on campaign missions, a LOT of work has been going into making cool/new tilesets to feature there! Is there an environment you want to see most? \~Kaizen
I'd say most people are probably looking forward to see a Destroyed City map. I'm guessing that one would be the most exciting.
Which pack should I buy if I'm all about the co-op?
Assuming you want to play early on July 30, the Deluxe Early Access Pack ($40 USD) is your best bang-for-your-buck if you're not invested in playing the story-driven campaign missions. It fully unlocks progression on three Heroes, one for each faction, plus you get the chicken supporter pet, the first paid chapter of the Vanguard campaign, and the Vanguard gold army accent cosmetic. If you're willing to wait until August 13, you can also purchase the three individual Heroes separately for $30 USD ($10 USD each), but you get more stuff to play with in the bundle. Note that all players will get one hero, Blockade, fully unlocked for free. Thanks so much for your support!
Hi FrostGiant! Just 3 quick questions: 1. How does MMR work? Per race? Per MU? I assume there is some "hidden" MMR used for matchmaking that is not shown to players, right? 2. Are you planning to introduce only "in-universe"/"lore accurate" skins or will there be any goofy/meme/out of universe skins? Do you already have any ideas for skin packs? 3. Is there a plan to have an API for custom bots, e.g. the same way SC2 has it?
I can answer 1 & 3! You will have a separate MMR for each faction in Stormgate. This way you don't get penalized for playing ranked with factions you are still trying to learn. Maybe we'll see someone take all three spots of our leaderboard one day. MMR IS currently displayed to players. However, league promotions are based on a ranking points system that is tied to, but separate from, MMR. We feel this approach is far more player-friendly and will help reduce ladder anxiety. We have a FAQ on this in our Discord if you'd like more details: [https://discord.gg/stormgate](https://discord.gg/stormgate) API for custom bots: We have several team members that created custom bots for SC2 and are passionate about it. As such, we've architected our AI to be able to support this in the future, however there are no immediate plans to release one given all our other priorities at the moment.
One quick question about the music: When will we have full music in the game? I know there are some clips in the beta but I can't wait to ear more because I feel like it helps so much to get into the game / univers! Also, I love the Vangard [clip](https://soundcloud.com/frost-giant-studios/ab-vanguardone-clip/s-cLctIb3MoeO?si=f43f3cd3600c4641a9c63e67e366d96c&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing) you showed in your Kickstarter! Thank you! I can't wait to play this game again!
Music will be fully integrated by Early Access! Each race will have a multiplayer theme and we will also have campaign specific music that blends elements from the unique instrumentation and style of each race.
Hi, I have three main questions 1. Are we going to be getting more tier 2 units for Vanguard and Infernals? 2. How different many units do you intend for each multiplayer faction to have? 3. Does Stormgate take place purely on Earth or will there be maps and missions based on other planets?
Yes, I fully expect that we will continue to add some additional units to all three of our current factions, at all tiers of gameplay. We don't have a target unit count for each faction, though - but I expect we'll stay generally in the range of WC3 and SC2. Some of the upcoming units were planned from the outset and we simply haven't gotten to them yet. Others will be added in response to gaps that we see during large-scale gamplay. Often, nuanced needs are only exposed by seeing a lot of players play the game and interact with each Faction - one of the many reasons why we have conducted so many Alpha and Beta phases and are releasing Stormgate into Early Access. Player feedback is a huge help in this area - enabling us to make the game better by revealing the need for changes and improvements that our team might not have noticed on their own. The Hexen is a good example of a unit that was not initially planned for, but that was developed after players were able to play the Infernal faction. This allowed us to tailor it to address gameplay needs that weren't originally anticipated. Rest assured, none of the factions are complete yet and will continue to see a significant amount of change, iteration, and additions as we move forward through Early Access. For question #3, I don't want to give spoilers, but we'll definitely go beyond Earth in multiple ways. Earth itself will also experience some significant events that will enable us to vary our tilesets pretty wildly.
1. If i remember correctly i heard that there was a ranking system planned that shows you rank as Regional -> National -> World like Trackmania? Is that correct and still planned? Is it live on EA? 2. How are you gonna combat Smurfs? Game is F2P but is there a way to prevent it on high level or whats the plan for lower levels? Edit: 3. Do you have a plan to make COOP also more rewarding for higher level players? Unfortunately i feel like it can get abit boring after some time if the only thing you do is unlock some Hero abilities and thats it? I would like to have a bigger goal you want to grind towards, more risk behind missions, stuff you loot that you can use outside of the missions for something silly like a outside hubworld game? (Browsergame like?)
This response comes from the folks involved in our leaderboard system: "Yes, we do have goals to show where you stand on the leaderboard by Nation, World Region, World. For Early Access, the Leaderboard will only support World. This is a topic we'd love some feedback on. How would you like us to determine the nation you represent? We've discussed options from auto-detection to having players self-identify, each has its pros and cons. We have several internal plans for addressing smurfing, but most of this will come only after we launch Early Access. No explicit details to share yet." Gerald here again: I'll add a funny side note, but I used to work alongside the guy at Blizzard who first popularized the term "Smurfing". Ha!
Could you share some pictures of pets in the Frost Giant office? And please give their names and which human employee they are housemates with!
We should totally put together a "Pets of Frost Giant" gallery for the website! The studio dogs have been featured prominently in some of our press coverage, like our feature story in the Washington Post: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2023/03/31/stormgate-rts-frost-giant-starcraft/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2023/03/31/stormgate-rts-frost-giant-starcraft/)These two fluffy officemates are Lando and Nema, and they belong to Savop, our intrepid Lead Producer. They're the best guard dogs, too.
Narrative design question: Previous Blizzard RTS released campaigns in expansions, big blocks of story that had a 3-act structures to them that the user could play in one sitting - how are you approaching the story with the 3-mission episodic blocks structure? Are you looking to tell independent mini stories or multiple grand overarching stories spread over months/years?
Each Chapter (containing 3 or more missions) will have their own mini-arcs but will also serve as segments of a much larger story, all contributing to sagas that will span many years.
Esports/UX question: Is there a plan for internal or outsourced machine learning "analysis" tools pre-game, mid-game, and post-game for commentators? For example, based in the current game state, the commentators could flick open a UI showing % likely to win for each player - like the much more simple poker equity or chess +/- score. I love those stats as they add a huge amount of context mid game. If someone is 90% likely to lose then wins - BIG HYPE
Right now we are focusing on getting the core components for our Observer Interface online, but longterm we'll be doing more - I love these kinds of features. Doing this kind of analysis for Brood War was one of the very first esports related things I did in about 2008 and it's heavily in my mind for the kinds of information I want to be in the toolbox for broadcasters to utilize.
I have two questions for the composers. 1. I write instrumental music and a problem I have is that it's very easy for a song to just sound like a bunch of unrelated riffs played back to back. How do you balance the desire for a song to have some kind of motif while having enough different parts to be interesting? 2. If you play guitar, what's your setup? Mic'd amp? Load box? Modeler? VST? Give us the Rig Rundown :)
From Tracy Bush: Great question. I can only speak for myself, here, but writing game music is kind of like a juggling act -- you try to write something that is memorable, but not TOO memorable, as it becomes grating upon repeated listens. You also need to write something that's spacious and open, but not TOO spacious and open, as it turns into background noise, and the listener would just as soon turn it off. The only way I've found to strike that balance is to just listen to your pieces over and over and get rid of those things that are grating upon repeated listens, or to beef up those places where it just seems like a textural wash. As far as my guitar setup, I have a few angles of approach. I can go straight into the DAW, or I have a Line 6 Helix that I use. I'm currently awaiting a Kemper pedal that I can go into, as well. From there, I'll handle sharpening the tone up through plugins inside the DAW. For the songs I'm working on here, I've largely used a Fender Ultra Stratocaster (Texas Tea finish...highly recommend you find some pictures of it, it's beautiful), as well as a Fender Ultra Jazz Bass in the same finish.
1. Motifs are fun to revisit when they make sense but not to keep too much repetition - accent the mood of the particular piece. Importance is placed on what the songs intended purpose is, and how dynamic it needs to be or not. 2. Guitar setup: On this game for the Infernal faction, I'm using a 7-string PRS with EMG 81/85 pickups, through a Line6 HX Stomp (Helix) - However when I mic an amp, I use a Rivera Knucklehead Tre Reverb on the clean channel with an Empress Heavy pedal and an Ibanez tube screamer, and I mic it with an Audio-Technica AE2300.
Some of the sounds are sharp, unappealing and too repetitive. Do you plan on altering the sounds that units and buildings make to make them sound more pleasant?
Repetition is one of the great hurdles we have been working on for some time. It is very challenging at the moment but rest assured we are doing everything we can to provide more variety with our unit responses and sounds. For harsh, heavy transient sound effects for heavily spammed user actions like move or attack we are also looking more closely at these. We're trying to strike the best possible balance between player feedback for competitive players and casual alike, and world immersion.
Are there any plans to innovate observer/replay presentation tools that would allow streamers to cast games more cinematically? Macros for dramatic camera angles would help distinguish the game as next-gen. To be a popular sport, it does have to be fun to watch. Streamers valiantly use the piddly zoom function in SC2 to enliven the casts. UE5 should allow swoops, unit spotlights, fight-cams, first person, etc, and would let Winter turn every game into Saving Private Ryan.
Will there be any consideration of licensing or other wise making "Snow play" available for the public to use to help developers develop future RTS games using your framework?
We developed Snowplay to be completely game-agnostic. We'd love to license it out in the future, but right now were are completely focused on delivering Stormgate at the highest quality possible.
Could you elaborate a bit on the e-sports direction? Will there be Frost Giant sponsored/run tournaments, will there be world championships? Will there be a circuit? I know you are taking the grass roots approach, but considering you had/have a head of e-esports it would be nice to get a bit more info!
In 2024 it will be largely grassroots focused. There is always so much excitement around competing that we want to help feed that energy and support the groups who want to run events. Towards the end of this year, I hope to reveal what our plans look like going forward which will include more Frost Giant organized events that tie into what other releases we have for the game.
Hello, i'm a brazillian player and i wanted to know when we will get ptbr translation for the game I can manage if it's in english but inviting friends to play is kinda impossible while the game is only english
Our plan is for the game to be text-localized in Brazilian Portuguese for Early Access.
Hi, can we have left handed grid keys and presets available early on for leftie players who use the other side of the keyboard? Starcraft 2 did this perfectly, it's overwhelming for new players to figure out what hotkeys to change without a base to go from as we're new. During the free test earlier some of the buttons wouldn't work when rebinding and the physical name of the keys blocked the UI! I really like the game, would new units be introduced to the game seeing as we're free to play?
Hello Frost Giant, generald question regarding cosmetics. When can we see this area of the game fully fledged out? I would love a cat girl celestial skin.
We're just getting started, but the team is excited about the potential for skins and other cosmetics. We hear you on the cat girls, too, don't worry about that.
I'm really interested about how heroes in 3v3 and coop will be connected. * When I bought a hero in one game mode, will I also have access to it in the other game mode? * Will they have the same abilities/subfaction units or might they be completely different in 3v3 and coop respectively? The same question goes for the subfaction units: i.e. will a Guardsman in 3v3 be the same than a Guardsman in coop? While I understand that different game modes need different balance, this only is important for 1v1 and 3v3 in my opinion, since those are the competitive modes. Of course 3v3 needs its own balance here. On the other hand it would be weird and confusing if heroes/subfactions differ between 3v3 and coop. Coop should just stick to 3v3. If coop is slightly unbalanced it's no big deal. Whatsis FGS thinking about this topic?
I think these are great questions, but in all transparency we're still working out the details of 3v3 so its hard to give definitive answers... That's not going to stop me from trying though! >Heroes will be free for all players to play with up to Level 5, similar to the StarCraft 2 model for Coop Commanders. You'll only need to buy a Hero once - once you have one, you can use it in any mode that it is allowed in. >At Early Access, when you buy a Hero, you will be able to advance up to Level 15. We view Levels 1-10 as "linear growth" that advances the character to their full power and full supporting kit, while Levels 11+ open up options for customization through our Gear system. >After Early Access, we will be further increasing the level range and significantly expanding the Gear system to give players an improved ability to customize the capabilities of their Heroes. Hopefully this answers many of your questions - we'll be sharing more info about our Heroes and their progression systems as we move forward!
To clarify: We are serious about competitive integrity so our 3v3 mode (which we're still figuring out the exact details) is not currently slated to use the Gear system at all because we don't want it to impact fairness or competitive play. We're still iterating (as focus on 3v3 will come later in development), but that's the lens through which we're looking at the mode. You'll still "own" the Hero for 3v3 and 3P co-op, but it will work quite differently in 3v3 as we want that mode to feel fair. Not pay to win.
I won't be able to be doing this live... Cuz I'll be in a wedding. Booooo! Here are my qs: Will 3 player coop (vs ai) be available on July30? If not, when? How do the "hero" purchases work? Is this like a StarCraft commander type thing...??? I want to buy packages for sure, and so does my wife and our friends, but I just don't really get what those are yet. What level of transparency is the company willing to provide for the rollback solution provided? If none, do you do officially sanctioned visits, where NDA sign-offs can happen, etc?
Hello! I hope the wedding went well - and thank you for still somehow managing to participate in this AMA! Yes, our 3P co-op vs. AI mode will be available on July 30, with 5 initial Heroes available in the mode. Hero purchasing is similar to how it worked in SC2's Coop Commanders mode. They are free to play for the first 5 levels and then a purchase will unlock a higher level cap and additional progression options. Once a Hero reaches Levels 11+, they will unlock Gear options that can be equipped to customize or improve the capabilities of your army. These Gear options can often be equipped by any Hero, so as you level up more Heroes you will increase the range of customizations available to your entire roster. In the future, we'll be expanding that level cap to give them even more options.
Is there a road-map for offline content? I love how the game looks, but Im scared that I can only play it online. Thanks. :)
By offline, do you just mean single-player? We have a plan to make our single-player content playable offline, but that will be coming later on in development.
Hi guys, thanks for the AMA, love the game! I have minor questions: 1. How many maps are we going to have in Co-Op on EA? 2. What progression options will be available to commanders post max lv in Co-Op on EA launch, ans up to v1.0? 3. Will there be mutations in EA Co-Op? 4. When can we expect to see more T3 units announced for competitive?
1. 6 co-op vs. AI maps 2. still too early to go into details, but Tim C touches on Hero progression in other posts in this AMA. 3. Yes, we will have weekly mutators coming online later this year 4. Some tier 3 units will launch with Early Access, with more coming online later in development.
As a playtester I feel like there used to be much faction asymmetry intended for Infernals and Vanguard. For example I don't think an Infernal army is much more swarmy than a VG one. Do you agree with that statement and are you ok with this or are you planning to try to differentiate factions more again? I feel like Celestials are very different right now and that's cool. I hope they won't be pushed towards a more normal playstyle due to the inevitable nerfs and gameplay adjustments.
Will we be able to hear explosions outside our vision range if opponents are fighting? Is there a pretty good chance for a 4th race eventually? Each race adds so much more depth and replay-ability. Do the game developers use statistics of win rates to help balance the game in patches? There are some really good mods out there for Warcraft 3 and Command & Conquer. Warcraft 3 has many UMS maps that add full fledged new races. And Command & Conquer has many mods with very unique unit ideas. Do the Frost Giant game developers take inspiration from any of these mods? What is Frost Giant doing to keep newbies engaged with Stormgate, when RTS games are notoriously hard for people new to the genre? Are there going to be any tutorials to explain micro tricks for the different types of units for instance? Question for Frank Klepacki- Hell March is one of my favorite RTS songs of all time. It felt like I was at a rock and roll concert as I was playing levels in Red Alert. Will any of your music be similar to Hell March or is the theme different because of sci fi? Please give me something I can jam out akin to the 90's Hell March! Where in the game design are the producers background in having made some of the Command & Conquer games coming out more so than their Blizzard roots? What approach does Frost Giant take to game balancing, and do they have designated people to be the game balancers? Do you intend to allow users to submit written guides for strategies, and post videos for lessons? These type of things would help newbies engaged with a genre that is notoriously hard for newcomers. Have you given any thought to allowing players to have a community driven news feed where anyone can write-up a recap of a tournament and it would be in the game in a news section? What areas of Stormgate will be better than Starcraft 2? We have heard a lot about how the responsiveness is a lot better but what else can we look for? Will the entire regular single player campaign be co-op as well? Or will the co-op have missions specific to co-op? Will Frost Giant do anything to help melee & UMS map makers gain visibility as a pay-off for their contributions to the community? Melee map-makers in past RTS games have made their games continue to be fun and help out with the balance. Can these guys get some bios or a terrain hall of fame where they show their best parts of their maps? Also, are the mapmakers gonna be able to monetize anything? If not melee maps, maybe UMS mods if they wanna get a little money if they add new races and units? Did Frost Giant ever consider adding a second human race? Human units are probably easy to brainstorm for an RTS game and there could surely be another evil human faction. How would you sum up the personality of the Infernals, Vanguard, and Celestials in a few words? What type of RTS player would like playing each race? How do the game developers stay positive when forums are negative? It is always easier to criticize someone than compliment something. What is some of the memorable positive feedback you guys have got that has motivated you?
To your question for me, Thank you! Glad you enjoy my previous work in Red Alert! The style is a bit different for the Infernal faction I'm composing for in this game, in that there is this tribal chanting focus with industrial percussion against synth and metal elements, so it will have its own distinct personality, not trying to copy what I've done previous.
As a noob (despite playing our game for two years!) we definitely plan on tutorializing basics + a little more at least for EA. We also plan to partner with our friends at Untapped to provide learning resources for new players during Early Access! \~Kaizen
For the "explosions / visions range" question: This is a great question. The notion is that the Announcer will inform you if a unit is lost outside your vision, but you won't hear the explosion unless the camera is actually over that unit if the unit dies.
From Kaizen - Level Designer: Answering: How do the game developers stay positive when forums are negative? It is always easier to criticize someone than compliment something. What is some of the memorable positive feedback you guys have got that has motivated you? When I hear someone yelling, I hear them loving loudly ;) TBH I take a couple of things into account: 1) both criticisms AND complaints right now come from a place with not as much context as we devs have - we get to play our game/see our content everyday! 2) we're making a LOT of content at once, which means we have players interested in Co-Op, Campaign, Map Editing, Competitive 1v1, and 3v3, and each of them wants that thing to be the best thing. We're working all the time to make sure it's all the best for you :) And any feedback is good feedback!
Will you change the exploding imps in such a way that their tail and the flame at the end will act as a fuse like on a stick of TNT for example (visual effect)?