Stormgate - sci-fi/fantasy RTS from ex-Blizzard devs

[Multidirectional]

I have like 26K matches played in SC2, countless hours spent and I never even touched a single player campaign.

I couldn't even get into RTS genre and always was utterly horrible at it, until I finally started playing against people. At first I kept thinking I need to play the campaigns of every RTS I tried first to get the hang of it and shit. And then get bored and drop them somewhere in the middle of campaign usually. Or in very rare instances where I would actually finish the campaign, I would quit after playing few skirmish matches. I really thought I just plain dislike RTS games for many years and that maybe I was just too dumb to get them too. Only when I was already in 30s I decided I need to try this mp RTS shit. Started with AOE III for about a year and even though I was playing like clueless moron I could immediately tell that games are way more interesting and exciting than any matches vs bots I had in RTS before. I was stuck there on same low-ish rank for over a year. I was even using my left hand to control camera while selecting shit to build with my mouse lol. Well I had fun regardless. Until I migrated to SCII which finally forced me to start using my left hand to click hotkeys and control camera with mouse, the boy became a man. Since then for about 5-6 years I haven't needed another RTS and still having a great time with it. I enjoyed derping in low leagues for first few years and now still derping around Diamond III level, which is a mid league, with all races though zerg is definitely my best one. I think the responsiveness of units and just how good combat feels in general has kinda ruined most other RTS for me at this point.

This Stormgate shit so far does not look at all like something I will want to switch to. Since it's free I will try it anyway, of course. I did like a lot of shit they were saying when it was still all talk. I can definitely get behind an idea of a less frustrating version of SCII, somewhat lower speed/lethality and such. And maybe less bullshit like teleporting or invisible units would be my preference lol. But at least from watching videos so far, Stormgate looks downright boring at times. And SC II, while occasionally frustrating, is at least never boring to me.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Hopefully story is more Sc1 and less Sc2..

The writing SC1 is hardly an improvement. I get that there’s lots of childhood nostalgia for it, but the writing is terrible.

 

[ArchAngel]

Hopefully story is more Sc1 and less Sc2..

The writing SC1 is hardly an improvement. I get that there’s lots of childhood nostalgia for it, but the writing is terrible.

Compared to other RTS games it is one of the best

 

[Lyric Suite]

Hopefully story is more Sc1 and less Sc2..

The writing SC1 is hardly an improvement. I get that there’s lots of childhood nostalgia for it, but the writing is terrible.

Compared to SC2 it's a literary masterpiece.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Hopefully story is more Sc1 and less Sc2..

The writing SC1 is hardly an improvement. I get that there’s lots of childhood nostalgia for it, but the writing is terrible.

Compared to other RTS games it is one of the best

I would say Red Alert 3 has it beat with Tim Curry. “I love you sarge!” ain’t got nothing on his line delivery.

 

[ArchAngel]

Hopefully story is more Sc1 and less Sc2..

The writing SC1 is hardly an improvement. I get that there’s lots of childhood nostalgia for it, but the writing is terrible.

Compared to other RTS games it is one of the best

I would say Red Alert 3 has it beat with Tim Curry. “I love you sarge!” ain’t got nothing on his line delivery.

Nah, RA3 story is so good I remember none of it lol

 

[Lyric Suite]

How can you forget Tim Curry desperatly trying to hold his laughter back at the absurdity of the lines he had to say:

 

[J1M]

I liked the Dota maps in the SC2 campaign.

Stormgate looks really boring, but they have the correct business model.

Different factions should be more different. Not trivial things like building power zones, but significant differences.

Examples:
-a faction that never expands or uses resources but accelerates at a linear pace; has a unit that can destroy resource nodes used by other factions

-a faction that builds a different building for each unit type instead of the standard infantry/vehicle/aircraft buildings

-a faction that has a single building per settlement that is upgraded over time like a hive city

-a faction with basic units that can fly and advanced units that walk

-a faction where base building and unit creation is automated; the player only needs to focus on micro

-a faction with an alternate victory condition, perhaps inspired by 4x games

-"best of X" matches which involve an overworld map to frame the map selection and influence global conditions such as weather

-a faction based around the antithesis of SC2 design: a competitive low-APM option; no busywork; no high penalty for a couple of seconds of inattention

 

[ArchAngel]

I liked the Dota maps in the SC2 campaign.

Stormgate looks really boring, but they have the correct business model.

Different factions should be more different. Not trivial things like building power zones, but significant differences.

Examples:
-a faction that never expands or uses resources but accelerates at a linear pace; has a unit that can destroy resource nodes used by other factions

-a faction that builds a different building for each unit type instead of the standard infantry/vehicle/aircraft buildings

-a faction that has a single building per settlement that is upgraded over time like a hive city

-a faction with basic units that can fly and advanced units that walk

-a faction where base building and unit creation is automated; the player only needs to focus on micro

-a faction with an alternate victory condition, perhaps inspired by 4x games

-"best of X" matches which involve an overworld map to frame the map selection and influence global conditions such as weather

-a faction based around the antithesis of SC2 design: a competitive low-APM option; no busywork; no high penalty for a couple of seconds of inattention

They can do that for coop mode. Even Sc2 played around with mechanics like these for Co Op

 

[Blutwurstritter]

Hopefully story is more Sc1 and less Sc2..

The writing SC1 is hardly an improvement. I get that there’s lots of childhood nostalgia for it, but the writing is terrible.

Compared to other RTS games it is one of the best

I would say Red Alert 3 has it beat with Tim Curry. “I love you sarge!” ain’t got nothing on his line delivery.

Nah, RA3 story is so good I remember none of it lol

The RA3 campaigns are pretty short but good fun, the mission design is decent. If I had to criticize something, its the difficulty. Its a tad too easy on highest difficulty. The story is forgettable, however, it is entertaining and does that very well. The silly yet charming videos alone make it worth a playthrough.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

I liked the Dota maps in the SC2 campaign.

Stormgate looks really boring, but they have the correct business model.

Different factions should be more different. Not trivial things like building power zones, but significant differences.

Examples:
-a faction that never expands or uses resources but accelerates at a linear pace; has a unit that can destroy resource nodes used by other factions

-a faction that builds a different building for each unit type instead of the standard infantry/vehicle/aircraft buildings

-a faction that has a single building per settlement that is upgraded over time like a hive city

-a faction with basic units that can fly and advanced units that walk

-a faction where base building and unit creation is automated; the player only needs to focus on micro

-a faction with an alternate victory condition, perhaps inspired by 4x games

-"best of X" matches which involve an overworld map to frame the map selection and influence global conditions such as weather

-a faction based around the antithesis of SC2 design: a competitive low-APM option; no busywork; no high penalty for a couple of seconds of inattention

You're not the first to make suggestions in this vein. There have been numerous RTS that have experimented with things like multi-level maps and so on. AoE, C&C, SC, CoH, and TA all have wildly different pathfinding mechanics that play into how tactics and strategies work. Turn radius, directional armor, cover, territory maps, etc. Rising Kingdoms from 2005 lets you select buildings from the HQ and then auto-assigns a worker to do it. Etc. RTS has been experimenting ever since it started, e.g.:
https://www.thegamer.com/rts-mechanics-changed-genre-outdated/

The main problem isn't with ideas and implementation. The problem is that RTS is the most expensive and time-consuming genre to develop, full stop. A key part of that is that every dev has to reinvent the basics: networking code, AI, pathfinding, etc. because Unity and Unreal don't support it out of the box. If you fail at launch, then you cannot fix it later. I have seen numerous interesting RTS bomb at launch and then get forgotten. It's very frustrating.

Much of this would wreck multiplayer balance and thus would be more appropriate for pure PvE. 80% of RTS players only play PvE, including SP and co-op. That's an untapped market that RTS devs have consistently ignored for decades, to the point that the SC2 team was blindsided by co-op's success.

Anyway, as interesting as these ideas sound, I don't realistically expect that Frost Giant will implement them.

 

[thesheeep]

A key part of that is that every dev has to reinvent the basics: networking code, AI, pathfinding, etc. because Unity and Unreal don't support it out of the box.

There are RTS engines by now solving most of this. Like the Spring RTS engine.
Problem is, it doesn't come with the visual fidelity many would expect a fresh RTS to have, nor the flexibility of the engine to add custom things, so using that engine will likely forever remain in the realm of indies where people generally don't care that much about the latest bells and whistles.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I've seen popular games with way shit graphics than Spring RTS i don't think visual fidelity is the issue.

 

[Johannes]

If you had a professional team, you could add a lot of custom stuff to Spring according to your needs. But it can be hard to assess for a given design, whether it's better to do that or use other tools. Idk what would the latest bells and whistles mean in this context though.

 

[Venser]

Stormgate Makes Its Public Debut at Steam Next Fest

Hello, Stormgate Founders,

We have super exciting news to share as we gear up for a major moment in the Stormgate journey.
Stormgate will be part of Steam Next Fest!

Steam Next Fest takes place February 5–12, during which we will be opening up access to our closed beta, including full access to our ranked 1v1 and 3P co-op vs. AI modes. This marks the first time we have opened the gates to the public, offering everyone an opportunity to get their hands on the RTS we’re building with the support of our incredible community.

Early Access for Kickstarter Backers

To our incredible Kickstarter Founders, as thanks for your support, those of you who pledged to receive a Deluxe Founder’s Pack and above will get in ahead of the pack with a few days of early access to the Steam Next Fest closed beta. This is your chance to jumpstart your experience in Stormgate before the public gets in. You will also continue to have access after Steam Next Fest for the duration of the closed February beta and during all future testing phases, including the first opportunity to playtest our third faction (later this year).

 

[ArchAngel]

Well Steam decided to stop working on Win 7 in the meantime so I will not be playing this for now but I am going to watch it on twitch for sure.

 

[-M-]

SC2 writing is pretty bad but the campaign missions are way more fun and interesting than in the original starcraft 1 and broodwar.

Replayed the series recently and the design very much peaked in Brood War. Wings of Liberty has some decent missions but everything after is increasingly worse. The two major problems with SC2 are:

1) The rather lame "choose your planet" approach forces missions to be designed where most can be solved by simply massing whichever combat unit you just unlocked. Diamondbacks, Reapers, Goliaths, Vultures, Wraiths, Firebats, and Medivacs are all units designed to be effective for a single mission and then just about worthless afterwards. It's like every mission is just a tutorial for a new unit to stress how cool they are and very few work in synergy with the rest of your army against a competent enemy.

2) Every mission is timed, usually through some gimmick (wall of fire, waves of shuttles, etc.). SC2 sacrifices battling an enemy using the RTS systems of the game so you can instead battle a clock. It's the type of thing that's fine to do occasionally but becomes transparently obvious what Blizzard design philosophy is here when they do it nearly every mission.

The design just gets lazier in the Zerg and Protoss campaigns where Kerrigan is a one-man army (even moreso than most hero units) making the standard Zerg units impotent, and you start fighting wave of enemies that are spawned in (rather than produced at buildings). Not to mention the increasing reliance on fighting the damage sponge hybrid units.

SC1 wasn't perfect, but there was definitely a lot more effort put into the general design of the levels.

 

[Venser]

Just got into the beta, installed the game and played a few minutes vs AI. I'm too tired now but tomorrow I'll give it a proper try.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Actually a very successful Kickstarter. Think they achieved all of the stretch goals as well.

28,143 backers pledged $2,380,701 to help bring this project to life.

 

[ArchAngel]

Basically nobody is streaming this on twitch, not even Sc2 players.

This is DOA game.

 

[Venser]

Basically nobody is streaming this on twitch, not even Sc2 players.

This is DOA game.

lmao dude...The closed beta is still under NDA. On the game title screen it literally says that you shouldn't share video or screenshots

 

[ArchAngel]

Basically nobody is streaming this on twitch, not even Sc2 players.

This is DOA game.

lmao dude...The closed beta is still under NDA. On the game title screen it literally says that you shouldn't share video or screenshots

So few people that are streaming are breaking NDA?

 

[Venser]

Those who streamed it in the past had some kind of approval from Frost Giant, they tweeted their streams too.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

I have like 26K matches played in SC2, countless hours spent and I never even touched a single player campaign.

This was me with Starcraft 1, I didn't give a shit about the campaign I just wanted to battle other players online (still kind of a novelty then). I played the main campaign like 10 years later and it was meh.

 

[Jaedar]

1) The rather lame "choose your planet" approach forces missions to be designed where most can be solved by simply massing whichever combat unit you just unlocked. Diamondbacks, Reapers, Goliaths, Vultures, Wraiths, Firebats, and Medivacs are all units designed to be effective for a single mission and then just about worthless afterwards. It's like every mission is just a tutorial for a new unit to stress how cool they are and very few work in synergy with the rest of your army against a competent enemy.

Eh. There is some truth to this, but it's also exaggerated. Reapers are actually best on the hellion mission, as an example.
I think it's also a bit of a mental thing, you can win every mission by spamming just marines if you were so inclined. I think the best way to approach it is to just build the army you want. For a lot of people that is "I want to play a mission designed specifically to make the most out of this niche unit", but if you don't like it you can go for a balanced composition instead.

2) Every mission is timed, usually through some gimmick (wall of fire, waves of shuttles, etc.). SC2 sacrifices battling an enemy using the RTS systems of the game so you can instead battle a clock. It's the type of thing that's fine to do occasionally but becomes transparently obvious what Blizzard design philosophy is here when they do it nearly every mission.

I think this is not true for most of WoL (there are plenty of timed missions, but far from all), but it is more true for LotV. I'm a bit torn on it: on the one hand "turtle for 20 minutes and then move out with your army of doom" tends to be the standard RTS sp design (and is how most missions in sc1 work), and I think it is worse than one that forces you to actually go out onto the map and play the game. But it can get repetitive to not be allowed to play at your own pace either.