The Frost Giant employee that made the comment in my twitch chat and I talked, he made it super clear to me that he had in fact watched all of Jason's video, and that he was aware of the rest of his issues. Pretty much everyone is upset about performance, so it's just the thing he focused on in the chat. I stand by what I said in the video, but I believe they know the rest of Jason's issues, they're just very focused on performance. Also, I really want a 7800x3d.
Love the video and the fact you didn't shy away from saying what you thought. Just so you know coop brutal + 1-6 isn't fixed mutations but rather chooses random one from a pool so there is a lot of variations just from playing brutal +
One of the coop mission where you have to stop the conveys from getting to a fort is unplayable on brutal or higher, once the 3 players have massed their armies the game freezes crashes every time because the game can't handle that many units, to suggest that this is a spec issue is absurd.
"Reinventing the wheel, but square" is a good way to sum up most of Stormgate. They took what worked, saw issues, "fixed" those issues, then forgot about all the extra issues that their "fix" created. Had high hopes for Stormgate. Turns out the pedigree of the names behind the studio is the only reason to even look twice at it. I'll maybe check in 5 more years to see if they have anything worth actually playing. Until then, all my 20+ year old RTS games are still playable and fun.
""Reinventing the wheel, but square" is a good way to sum up most of Stormgate. They took what worked, saw issues, "fixed" those issues, then forgot about all the extra issues that their "fix" created." That's how you know they were Blizzard devs
It's more akin to the old devs trying to recapture that lightning in a bottle that they produce in their prime. Like rockstars chasing the dragon of their youth when they're 30 years past their due date. It's sad to watch.
The pitch that StarCraft building construction confirmation makes is different per faction Terran is a "ka-thunk", like big pieces of metal framework being thudded down on the ground Zerg is a "squish" when you place a hatch/extractor/etc. Protoss is a warp sound which makes sense for how probes make buildings Never thought about enjoying that difference until you pointed out, but it makes macro a lot more satisfying when you can hear your work being done as you do it. It's like a mini reward hit that you did something right and it's an asset for you moving forward. Great video and respect for the effort and detail put into it!
I absolutely hate how people panned your opinion. If people knew you they’d know that you try to be an incredibly optimistic and positive guy in all facets of life. Appreciate the kind words.
very true, audio engineering is under rated. The sentinel sound effects & VFX is just .... glittery princessy. the building models don't look like they have an intended purpose. I think the creative direction could have been a lot more vivid in imagination to begin with, to distinguish not only each faction but each unit and building within the factions.
They tried appealing to everybody, and ended up appealing to nobody. This setting could've been one of the most bad ass settings of all time, but they decided to go with "fidget spinner" as their graphical inspiration
I think yet another angle you didn't get to but I think Grubby covered pretty well (and absolutely given the length of your video you must be forgiven for not having time) is about the units in the vanilla game being captivating even on their own. Blink is cool. It's unfair. Against the Easy AI if I gave you Blink for the first time you'd say "this is busted" and you'd just blink around the place. Stim is busted. It's unfair. You feel awesome the first time you stim over your opponent's army. A warp prism? Yeah, now pylons CAN MOVE. A reaper? Infantry that flies. The list goes on. Even though it didn't end up being unit-defining, colossi walking up and down cliffs made people gasp when it was revealed. The thing all these units (with at most one ability btw) have in common is that there is something cool and captivating about them that makes me want to use them. They don't just do a bit more damage under certain passive conditions. That's just math; I want to use my units and feel powerful using them, not watch them.
Yeah I tried to cover what I've played I think the section on the exo is a good example of this. If I went through everything it probably would have been double in length. Gameplay is just not fun, can't shake the feeling. Lord knows I've tried.
Finally decided to play Starcraft 2 campaigns again and I can say that every unit in the campaigns, including the observer, felt cooler to me than Stormgate's units.
@@hilkmeister1382 The way they introduce them in the campaign is perfect too. New mission, new unit! And that unit is typically pretty effective at helping to complete the current mission, allowing you to see how they work and what they're good at.
On the listening to starcraft note, I listened to every single ASL and only watched a few matches. I was driving 10 hours a day and I knew what was going on in every single match. Incredible game
I lost all faith when they released the financials. Having the two top guys paying themselves $250,000 for what what advertised as a ''passion project'' is ridiculous. There is no way they have the time or money left to make this a success. Stormgate - The 40 million dollar placeholder
The $250k a year isn't that insane but it is incredibly sad that people spent $40m on a game that's absolutely going to fail. Money straight down the drain.
I've had quite high hopes for Stormgate. But after they released the game, I realized that the game is DoA. And I don't care if it is beta or whatever. You can PAY MONEY for the game, you have an ingame shop where you can PAY MONEY for stuff. Sure, if there would be small glitches, some problems with graphics and stuff - that could be fixed for sure. But EVERYTHING I saw from this game was between mediocre and horrendously bad. The campaign - one of the most importan things for an RTS that wants to be successfull - is atrocious. It's so bad that for a few days I halfway expected that the Devs came up and said: APRIL FOOLS JOKE! Here is the real campaign. If I compare the campaign of Stormgate to that of Warcraft or Blizzard, my best analogy is the following: It's like comparing Serral to a Diamond Zerg player. Sure, both have the same tools. And somehow both are doing similiar things. But at the same time, the plat player just sucks at everything. Serral makes every singel thing a hundred times better. Creep spread, army movement, micro, macro, scouting... You realize that the Diamond player tries to do the same things, he just isn't capable to do it. And the same istrue for Stormgate. Everything is just infinitly worse than what we have in WC3 and SC. I am not only talking about graphics, but storytelling, dialogue, characters, sound design, voice actors as well. And that is stuff that is not expensive. BTW: Stormgate is not a low budget project. It has a budget of 40 - 50 million. I have no idea where this money went. Sorry for the rant, but I am just disappointed by Stormgate. The game is already dead and I would not be surprised if it gets "concorded" soon.
Yea is see no future for this game sadly. It's just too much to fix and even then, it would just be an average game. Why would anyone play this over SC2 for instance?
My main issue with Stormgate is: i don't see much reason to play it. Since Stormgate doesn't bring anything really new to the table, why should i bother? As much as Blizzard tries to destroy their own IPs, Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2 still pretty solid games. I would rather play these than a SC2/WC3 low budget rip off.
Love it or hate it, that's the main reason I like the approach of Battle Aces. They at least went for something totally different. So far, Stormgate feels like a SC2/WC3 hybrid that's not as good as either game.
@@macedindu829 was not a fan of battle aces but after playing both for 2 hrs, battle aces didn't leave me falling asleep. It was just bland. And did no justice to the animes that they tried to rip off.
"This is a post-apocalyptic Earth, why is it smiling?" I gotta say, I don't feel that's the issue - it's just thoughtlessly executed. There's huge tonal dissonance in the game overall, but the smiling robot in particular COULD be integrated fine. Look at Fallout, for example - there are goofy little robots in that setting, but since they're relics of the pre-apocalypse there's a justification for why they don't fit the tone of the world, and that clash only adds to the world building. If the Vanguard's robots were some ramshackle, repurposed happy-go-lucky butler-bots that had to be shoddily reprogrammed for wartime because humanity's just that desperate for resources, THAT could have worked. But they put about as much thought into the worldbuilding as everything else in the game, which is to say, none.
Honestly the unit sizing just drives me insane. I hate how slim some of these units are, so it was an easy pot shot to take. My main criticism is how hard they are to select.
@@UpATree Yeah I don't actually disagree with your point at all, just saying it's not like they couldn't have made it work. Like most of the game - the reason it's so frustrating is because it's easy to see how they could've done it better.
It's basically just for pros who want active balancing and development but don't care about the casual side of things like the campaign, co-op, graphics, visual & sound design.
Visual and sound design are important for competitive pros as upatree went over in depth in the video we all just watched. It's not about caring what the units look like so much as being able to tell at a glance what the opponent's army composition is, and what is actually happening during a battle instead of your entire screen being covered in spell effects. Sound cues let you know all sorts of information, like if you selected the right thing, hit the right button, or can't perform a command for some reason. He explained all of this and how Stormgate is currently failing at it
Just my two cents: I think the biggest problem with Stormgate was that FG specifically set out to make *the most competitive* rts and not specifically a *fun* rts
That's not true at all. If they wanted to make a competitive RTS there would be no creep camps, There would be no banelings. No scout units that also do heavy damage. Atlas would act like siege tanks. They wouldn't have a goofy mechanical race like celestials. The races would be more uniform. It. 's actually the complete opposite.
I despise games that seek to bypass casual players and go straight into competitions. It's for sure just my opinion but I think you are 100% correct in that you should set out to make as fun a game as possible and then let a scene form around that instead of trying to immediately force a competitive scene with tight balancing. But that gets into my, again opinion (and a casual's opinion at that), that balance is super overrated in competitive games. It's what eventually killed Overwatch for me. They kept tweaking and tweaking and tweaking and suddenly the game isn't nearly as fun and they had to change how the entire game works by switching to 5v5. Of course not enough balance is also bad but that's part of what makes game development difficult.
That's the exact opposite of how they marketed it. Most of the feedback I've seen has been that the competitive 1v1 is promising, but the majority of people are disappointed with the lackluster campaign and co-op that were highly advertised as major features but now look to be stapled-on, overpriced DLC.
No. Be honest. It's problem is cause it simply sucks!! In every way! In. Every. Way. It doesn't shine. It doesn't shine in any way. Does it excel on any way?? Tell me please. Pleaseeeee.
Sound is an interesting one. It's so distinct in SC1/2 that you can listen to a game with just sounds and casting like an old timey radio baseball sportscast and know what's happening. Turns out it was hard to notice it's importance until it was missing.
SC1's sounds are so good I HAVE followed matches while doing something else, just by the sounds alone, not even with a caster explaining things, just raw gameplay.
@@KaiserMattTygore927 A lot of the best video games have this. Good sound effects, voicer actors, voice lines, and music. Stormgate has none. Maybe like 4/100 voice lines are very good.
It's not a bad design by itself. It's a flying unit. Flying units is not a bad game design - it's good, when it's not out of place. But making a whole race out of it is... wrong.
I didn't say that, but in the case of the mothership core, it was a bad design specifically because it was a flying unit that had an attack and came way too early for too little cost. Making it so the Protoss could preasure for no cost and could delay observers etc forever.
@@TheDasErdinger It's not the attack that was the problem. It costed as much gas as 2 Stalkers, but had the dps of one. It could only help fend of Zerglings and unsupported Zealots, but was useless for attacking. The unit itself was not the problem. The real problem were its abilities, and Blizzard's insistence on making it turn buildings into siege cannons.
The game unfortunately feels like it has a rather large amount of baffling design decision along with a huge identity crisis. It’s something between WC3 and SC2, except without any of the polish/quality either of those two games have. WC3 has a rather slow time to kill, but makes up for it by having very high impact abilities & a “wow factor” on heroes. SC2 has extremely good micro-ability on units, and is very fast. No idea what the “wow factor” or the reason to play stormgate over either is
It's ugly. It's slow. It brings nothing new to the genre. It's a huge problem when someone plays Stormgate and says, "I'd rather play SC2 or War3". Hell, I think most RTS players would rather play AoE4 than Stormgate.
IIRC part of what FGS did when they started was ask about what people liked about RTS, and a lot of the responses was all about criticisms of SC2 so they believed those players too much without really hearing the other side of the coin. Yea SC2 has its own issues but it also has a lot of strengths, it can become what is considered one of the best RTS games ever without those.
@@TravisHowrish-v2c Yea even in the most chaotic fights in SC2 you can make out stuff very clearly. Stormgate might've been better off if they just created something barebones instead of trying to overwhelm the player and themselves with all the ideas they had.
I think the more precise definition is Warcraft 3 with SC2 design choices. Literally I can't see anything but WC3 there, with some sc2 small design choices here and there.
graphics matter because they affect theme/immersion and yes - warcraft 3 and SC1 & 2 have proved that immersion in rts matters - its what attracts casuals and players that have no interest in playing competitively but want their next gen hardware costs to matter - they need to fix their gfx and themes - they're oriented towards children, not adults - and they're marketing towards adults - its idiotic
I think you should be careful about saying "immersion", immersion is a specific feeling, and RTS tends to be less immersive. What do you think "immersion" means? And here I'll defend Stormgate once, their graphics are not "oriented towards children". Do you think stylized graphics are inherently marketing towards children? Warcraft III is EXTREMELY cartoonish graphics, especially compared to WC1 and 2. You could say the same about that, but I think everyone would agree it is not for children. That's not saying they are well made, just... that they aren't "oriented for children".
@@SioxerNikita Immersion is fine to use in this context. Being immersed with the story and setting was strong with SC1 and 2, especially in the campaign.
Certainly feels like the SG devs may have only been janitors at Blizzard, but definitely not responsible for any of the fun, addictiveness and magic of SC2
So true about sounds. Probably biggest reason i come back to AoE 4 from time to time is how great of a work their sound team did. The music, the sounds of battle, the sounds of galloping cavalry, speech progression from age to age, just so good and immersive.
@@UpATree Great video, man. I listened to all of it, and your articulation of the sound and graphical design and gameplay gave me a good idea of what it's like to play even though I myself haven't played a second of it (but not for any reason than I just don't have the time). I do hope Frost Giant turn it around. Maybe they can Cyberpunk it, y'know?
3 years of mutations (and we're on 3rd repeat now i think?), something like 4 years of prestiges, mastery/ascensions being added at the same time that mutations were, 10 years of commanders and maps. Even though i dislike Stormgate (completely lost interest in it since i saw the very first trailer), it's somewhat unfair to compare a completely new game to all those years of SC2 coop development (and then abandonment). Even if SC2 coop had 6 commanders at the start (and 1 was added almost immediately after, i think) while Stormgate has 3 now. Yet, UpATree's point of SC2 being much more value for the money value stands... Even if it's due to simply being out for longer, one still gets more value for their money in SC2 than they would in Stormgate. People at Frost Giant need to try harder, or they will end up like Petroglyph, releasing mediocre games that people buy only because they have the "made by ex-Westwood devs" label (in this case, ex-Blizzard).
I laughed hard at that cheeky little "Starcraft II Now Playable" notification at 37:28. Like "Yeah, we know what you really want to play, don't worry - I got you covered."
Look to Age of Empires 4 for just how immersive great sound design can be. Squads emit sound as an entity, but individual unit types still manage to maintain their identity amongst the chaos. Armies clashing sounds like something out of hollywood.
Feels like SG got released waayy before it should have. Upon seeing good-looking RTS's like ZeroSpace or Tempest Rising, they probably got nervous that other would steal the spotlight, so they cared more about getting the spotlight on themselves (at the wrong time). Should've just let the other games do their thing, and then come in swinging with SG when love for the RTS genre was restored by other games. "Now, the people who made SC2 and WC3 bring you THE rts you were REALLY waiting for!" ...instead of this unfinished crap.
Regarding creep camps, when I 1st tried creep camps something just felt off and unfun about them. So I then compared them to creep camps from WC3. Watched a whole bunch of WC3 tournaments, streamers, played games and I realized that WC3 creep camps serve very deep purposes that aren't in Stormgate. WC3 doesn't have 2 resources it has 4: Gold, Lumber, Items, Experience. 2 of those (Gold and Lumber) come from basic worker harvesting, the other 2, items and exp generally come from killing neutral creeps. When a player in WC3 goes to kill a creep camp he gains: some gold, exp on his heroes, and an item. Not just that, neutral creeps could also be guarding valuable locations on the map, such as: an expansion location, a market to buy and sell items, a fountain of health etc. Stormgate creeps on the other hand, don't serve a deep purpose at all. Why are there passive income towers? Why are the things it gives so basic, bland and boring? The only interesting one is the siege camp cause it adds something to how you want to play. I get there's no heroes (in 1v1) so obviously you can't get exp or items but there's so many ways to make the camps feel better to play with alongside interacting with your opponent. For example instead of passive income towers, why not have a creep camp be guarding a very rich area containing 2 mines. Or (because they thought 1-2-3 unit attack and armor upgrades was boring) they could have a camp that buffs your attack or armor for a bit so that you can go for a kill move. Anyways my 2 cents regarding that aspect, agree with basically everything you said in the video. Especially the sound design and if you want compare the Lancer's attack sound to the Footman from WC3.
Creep camps are also actually threatening and engaging in WC3. You want to plan out the right units for the camps so you can gain the edge fast in early mid game and not lose a bunch of units or have a hero in poor health. It becomes a skill expression task. Creeps have strong abilities to mess you up. High risk high reward is never boring in gaming. On top of that, the fact that they are finite and so are the items; gives added importance to and incentment to find and clear the creeps or alternatively creep jack or intercept an opponent caught in a rough spot. Nothing of this can apply in Stormgate.
@@dennisthorson4159 Yea, the fact that a creep camp you're taking can be stolen by for example a Wind Walk Blademaster makes things exciting. People want that power fantasy and Stormgate doesn't give that.
Warcraft 3 also has a huge amount of denying as a gameplay mechanic, creep don't respawn so you are to deny your opponent items and experience. This also comes into play in micro as you are denying your opponent kills to further demonstrate skill.
I loved RTS as a kid/teenager, but I was never remotely interested in competitive play, nor were anyone I knew who also loved RTS games. We would watch competitive starcraft both 1 and 2, but Id only ever play the campaign. Infact, playing the campaign is what made me wanna watch the Esport, it made me interested in the IP. For RTS games to truly make a comeback, they need to stop marketing them as these esport events and make games that are broadly appealing with a cool campaign, fun casual modes and creative gameplay. I'm not saying Esport should not be a consideration, but if you solely focus on making an Esport in a niche market, it's not gonna work.. you need the interest of a larger audience from which the esport can organically grow. Warcraft 3 was huge for people in my age group.. but, very few people actually cared about the normal game.. it was all about the custom maps and the cool campaign.
In reality, the only level of eSports you should consider, is making the spectator tool really good. When you build a game around eSports you appeal to a very tiny minority. Even ranked players don't play it like an eSport, but usually it is the wide appeal that makes it interesting as an eSport later, and if you make the spectator tool really good, casters can create interesting story telling via good casting.
Thank you, Sal. I always appreciate your perspective on things. I tried it once it was free, and I couldn't make heads or tails of it, and it was not fun. Not even the campaign was tolerable. Boring and laggy, and you have to pay for more of that to "finish the story"? No thanks. I hope they fix it. I need a new game to take SC2's place in my life.
36:51 Strategy Game Designer here. Strongly agree with all of your points there. I think another important issue here is also how the "weight" is distributed on Stormgate's Vanguard units. The Atlas has its legs as its most massive "bits". The Vulcan has skinny tall legs. StarCraft 2 units are stubbier and have a general art style that puts the center of the unit forward, which makes units look stubbier/fatter, but it also helps distinguish them better. Compare the SC2 Ultralisk to the SC1 Ultralisk. And look at the skinny units in SC2. They still have a stubbier element to them, and even then, they are units that can bend the rules without much consequence to readability, because they won't be produced as much as the other ones, and/or because they usually tend to be really tall or flying units, like the Colossus or Viper. The lighting is also more contrastful in SC2. The darks are darker and the lights are lighter. The units also stand out from the background, as well. Stormgate has a plastic look to it, and everything is sort of washed out. The colors in SC2 pop out less than they did in the alpha version of the game, sure (when it was announced), but they're still pretty "poppy" and more readable than Stormgate's. And yeah, I was thinking the same - I can read the MedTechs a lot better than the rest. EDIT: I feel mostly "whelmed" by the Vanguard designs.
@@UpATree I certainly can, thanks for asking! :) It's called Aeon Wars: Maschinen Crisis. There was a demo out earlier this year for it. We're reworking the game right now (the title might change as well), I started 2 months ago and I'm essentially working off of what they've already built, but we've already had talks about unit readability, proper map lighting, unit size and color/texture, proportions, artstyle - all those things came up. And StarCraft 2 is a huge influence for us, too, as is Warhammer 40K. I'm also hoping we can get our individual units to stand out a bit more by the time we ship the game. And mind you, we're closer to a turn-based tactics game where people can zoom in on the field of battle and take their time to play, but we still want to be extremely readable. To be honest - I'm kinda saddened to see that Stormgate fumbled things, as some of the devs are good friends of mine and our studios are acquainted with one another. But I wish them well and hope they turn things around. I'm kind of glad a lot of the criticisms I had about it as well is shared. Your video has been on point so far. I think you're making some excellent points and I'm also glad that people like you, Day9 and Jason have made extensive feedback videos on it, among others.
Feedback is great, and you put a lot of thought into it. But I really missed some footage of the things you are pointing out while you are pointing them out.
I can feel and understand this frustration so much and i agree with EVERY POINT. I can't understand why this turned out like this. What where they thinking, like so much of this has nothing to do with money or anything, its just bad decisions, and a lot of it
What you said about soul really stuck with me. There’s a million things you could say this about, but what I immediately thought of is the Infernal production system. To simplify it’s kind of like each of their production structures has its own ‘larvae’ charges. Why? What is this telling me? When I have a bunch of Zerg larvae and then I get to watch all the roaches pouring out of the eggs to go attack you really feel something, this makes sense, it grabs you. The Infernal system feels like a way to try to twist that and be clever but nothing more, this doesn’t feel like anything to me, there’s no story to it (even if there is some lore justification).
I stopped playing because they were asking 10 dollars for each individual campaign missions. I have been playing age of mythology retold happily since.
If you turned your frustration down by 20% in order to make the video, you would in fact need to increase it by 25%, not 20%, to return to baseline frustration.
very well put-together video, dude. you've basically encapsulated all my grievances with the game and, in a sense, drawn out the lessons we can learn about game design from it
After talking about the sound design in Stormgate, i watched a random game of ZvT and minimized the tab. and yea you were 100% right. without even looking i knew which units were fighting and dying. i hope Stormgate would be a better game in the future but uhhhhhhhh. its most likely just gonna fizzle out by March.
It’s interesting to consider the visual clutter as a result of the lack of audio / tactile feedback. All of these things (including actual unit design-not just visual fidelity) are supposed to work together. Your feedback is highlighting an apparent lack of focus and maturity on all of the design aspects of game dev. I hope FG hires someone who can fix this. The amount of placeholder indicates that FG thinks design, visual fidelity, UX, and audio are secondary to something else, but these things are 85% of what makes someone want to play a game at all. I’ve been playing since the second beta and it’s sad to see so little change on some of these core problems over all this time 😢
Something that I think would be cool for the Exo's and Marines would be a squad option. When in a squad they are commanded as one (ie, click one, all are selected) and have 2 formations. Ranks and Line. Ranks: They try to take a square formation, but in particular, attacking the front units will keep advancing forward until the rear can fire. (Pro: faster engage and fire fields overlap for retarget, Con: range & AOE vulnerable) Line: They try to take a line/concave formation. (Pros & Cons are switched)
The best new rts is not a better Starcraft oder a better Warcraft. It is the perfect mixture of all benefits of Age of Empires, C&C Generals, Starcraft and Warcraft. Currently it is way too much Starcraft and Warcraft and too less C&C Generals and Age of Empires. For example: How good are airplanes in C&C Generals. They feel very good to use and to defend etc. Why no these types of units in Stormgate? Its just one of many examples.
My biggest issue with Stormgate is that most games when they say they are inspired by another game you can see the inspiration but you can also see there's enough differences that make the game and the units feel unique. Stormgate doesn't do that. Every race in Stormgate quite literally feels like some cheap knockoff toy made in a Chinese factory to leech off an established franchise. Instead of "Star Wars" it's "Star Conflicts." The Vanguard are knockoff Terran, the Infernal are knockoff Zerg and the Celestials are knockoff Protoss. They made absolutely ZERO effort to make these races feel unique in any fashion. I mean the Exo is quite literally Stormgate's version of making a legally distinct marine from Terran in SC2. I only played for a week during the open beta back in may or whenever and during every game I played I kept thinking "man this is just SC2 but dumbed down and worse in every single way imaginable." - The sound design is worse - Hotkey system is a fucking mess - The game on max graphics looks worse than Starcraft 2 on low - The races all are very clearly their versions of the Starcraft 2 races. Really makes the game feel like it was made by kids on deviantart making their legally distinct sonic the hedgehog OCs. It's a shame because when I played the game during the beta it looked very raw and unfinished. The graphics on max still looked disgusting, the units and mechanics all felt like very early in development or even placeholder assets. I gave all that shit the benefit of the doubt but the game is in the exact same state. The game genuinely feels like they tried so hard initially to be a Starcraft clone and then realized how much effort and difficulties they would encounter and just did the college student version of "ehh fuck it, I'll take the C. It's passing I don't care about this class"
@@hu-ry Bruh, I watched and played so much SC2, I was banned from playing tournament prediction brackets because I predicted the outcome of 5 MLG's in a row.
@@ZverseZ Yeah WoL was a good time to be an SC2 fan. Then the mass exfiltration during HOTS where anyone who mattered left SC2 entirely. If you can get someone as obsessed and autistically fixated on your product as Day9 (among others during HOTS) to quit on his own, you've fucked up somewhere along the way.
Oof some brutal stuff here, the comment about the other streamer's hardware from FG is a bad look. And something seemingly minor that stands out to me is the "in the rear with the beers" voiceline. If they are going to so blatantly ape SC2 then they need to either be better or different and ideally both. It's borderline unprofessional. It actually blows my mind that they added that in. They're just rubbing SC2 in our faces while failing to excede any aspect of the game.
Christ, this cannot be emphasized enough. How about that "strap yourselves in boys" blatant reference? This project DESERVES to fail, the recipe that has been used should by all rights guarantee it.
Right? Literally every content creator has made a "dis is y stormgate bad" video at this point. I don't like the game, but damn guys, the horse has been beaten to death a few times over by now. Let's move on
While it's represented different in terms of visuals, the Thor's ground attack in SC2 essentially has what you describe as the Atlas problem imo, albeit to a lesser degree. The Thor has to acquire a ground unit for about 0.6 seconds before firing. If the unit it acquired is killed, even if it completed 99% of that acquire time, it must restart when it acquires another unit to attack.
If have to test it but if its in “firing mode” and the unit dies doesn’t it just start firing? Also its less impactful because its not a projectile, but yeah people bitch about how clunky the thor is. Its just so jacked people kind of just accepted it
@@UpATree Yeah, the Thor's raw stats are insane, so the jank helps counterbalance. And a number of other factors make it less nonsensical, like not being a projectile, as you mentioned. And especially not a delayed projectile.
Best I can tell, the issue is more significant on atlas as it hinders its primary role. Whereas for Thor, anti ground, especially against smaller ground unit where this problem would be prevelant, is not its primary purpose, so it is merely a minor inconvinence as opposed to prohibitive.
There are a few units in SC2's campaign that have the Atlas problem similar to the Thor. Specifically the Khaydarin Monolith tower from the LotV campaign has a charge up before attacking that gets reset if the unit its targeting dies before the attack can complete. The Firebat has a similar problem, where the damage point on its attack is different than most bio units, so there's about a half a second of it targeting a unit before the fire comes out and damage is dealt. This causes an odd effect where Firebats in front of a bunch of Marines while fighting slow Zerglings never actually attack. They target the closest Zergling, which dies before the damage happens because it gets killed by the Marines first, as it is also the closest unit to the Marines, so the Firebat switches targets, only for the same thing to happen. This is usually fixed in custom campaigns by changing the Firebat's damage point and/or giving it stimpack.
this is actually the reason why SC1 firebats are actually very strong and SC2 campaign firebats suck ass. The charge/wind-up time to fire is so atrociously long that firebats almost never shoot, esp with their range. Thors have it a little easier between being anti-air focused and also having OK range; still feel much worse than siege tanks who pivot in half the time and then BOOM for huge damage.
It's nice to see a video that doesn't just shit on the game but actually provides proper criticism and detailed explanations in a way that makes me believe the game still has a chance with enough time and effort. And even though there's a lot of issues that point towards incompetence within the dev team, which is worrying, I still feel like they are actually listening and willing to redesign major parts of the game from scratch whenever there is no other solution to a problem. I'm convinced that pretty much every current issue is fixable, but the big question is if they have enough resources to take the time to make it happen. I really hope they are able to pull off a no man's sky, where years down the line, over many free updates, the game can become something that stands on its own.
me when they REVEALED Stormgate "SICK!! NEW RTS GAME? MADE BY SC2 DEVS? I HOPE IT DOESNT LOOK LIKE FORTNIT-... FUCK!!!!!" straight into: "we are sad that ppl dont like the artstyle but we like it and we're not gonna change it :) "
I believe that your last point is tackling the root issue. The game has no soul. It feels like the devs just brainstormed wacky shit together (most of the stuff being things they remember from the past), and hoped it would work out. And now it's too late to do an 180. Which makes me really sad, because I want to like this game so hard. I'm sure if there's ever a powerful map editor, someone will correct all the mistakes...
At least zerospace has nice visuals/aesthetics. I was 100x more interested in watching a bit of it a few months ago than anything I've seen from Stormgate.
Every time I watch this game to consider trying it out, I'm always left with the feeling that I'd rather just go play wc3, so many details (like audio cues) feel totally left out or half-baked.
It doesn't sum it up. SC1 is way better than this. I'd say it's WC 1.5 , it's better than WC1 but worse than WC2 in some aspects and better in other... But not as captivating and not as good art design as WC2 so it's a WC 1.5
As a game dev, this stuff is all good info. It's easy for programmers to have blind spots because they know how it should work. So, when they play test, they automatically use the units while working around the problems. Devs can subconsciously see the problems as gameplay obstacles.
Modern RTS and gaming in general fumbled the absolute shit out audio design, nothing is readable nor impactful. Meanwhile build just ONE Siege Tank in Brood War and every single sound that thing makes, would scare the shit out of every unit in every game of this era.
My guess is that the bob smiles so kids will like him, because it's mostly kids who play video games, and the developers wanted to attract them. But as far back as I can remember from my childhood, I’ve always loved aliens, blowing up a body and seeing the splatter like bolognese flying everywhere, and the Cronenberg-style arts like in The Fly
I mean.. I was six/seven when I first played StarCraft 1 on the N64, the art style was partially what hooked me back then. 30 year old me now couldn't imagine kid me, playing SG for more than a day before quietly dropping it.
I hate Frost Giant. They sold this game on their "experience" and they are utterly amateurish in how they have made this game. I look at how nicely Star Lance is doing with Zero Space, how it's shaping up with a fraction of the budget and none of the "experience" and I cannot help but hate the Stormgate devs that advertise (read: lie) to my face about how knowledgeable and informed and capable they are. The way Frost Giant has handled Stormgate, I firmly believe in 2 things as a result of their actions: A. Blizzard's money is what carried mediocre designers and developers through to excellent reputations. B. The formative years in gaming (the 90s) allowed a lot of mediocre people to enter into and stay in the industry. It's so nice seeing the millennials at Star Lance produce something worth actually buying, eschewing all of the BS marketing that came from these old men at Frost Giant who want to feel like rock stars again. 40 million dollars over 4 years and this is what they have to show for it? Pathetic, down to the last detail. I'm waiting for this entire thing to crash and burn so that Zero Space and Battle Aces can finally get some breathing space.
I’m reasonably certain the devs are developing the game the same way they worked on SC2. Just without any of the “vision”, meaning the game feels very much designed by a committee rather than a coherent game fulfilling an idea/vision Meanwhile, they are working with the dev cycle of sc2, which took 7+ years to develop, while not being able to afford development time that long. Meaning what is being shown in early access right now is, well, half baked stuff, aka equivalent of what SC2 was in 2007-8, years before release
It's not only that they are developing like they have 7 years, from what I know they are also spending their money as if they were still working at blizzard. They are churning through money at an insane rate while being an indie studio.
It feels like they took all the cool or interesting ideas from every other RTS on the market and mashed them into one. What resulted was a game with a bunch of systems that don't work well together. Virtually everything in SG is something other RTS have done before. The vision was 'next gen' so I guess it has to have _all the things_
You know, it's sort of hilarious how I'm 40 min through a 2 hour video on a game I don't even play or really plan on playing. Hell, I hadn't even realized it was available to play yet. I thought those RUclipsrs just had early access like how some games do it. And I think a lot of this video (At least up to this point) more or less explains why I wasn't hyped into the game. I've been pretty adamant about how I'm not the biggest fan of StarCraft, but I respect it. It's an amazing game and I watch a ton of content for it. It's just not an RTS I enjoy playing. Stormgate takes the good parts of StarCraft and makes them bad. Why would I want to play a bad copy of StarCraft? I'd just play the game they're miserably trying to imitate instead.
I've never uninstalled SC2 other than for reformatting purposes. I love SC2 its my favorite game of all time. I played Stormgate twice and now refuse to play it ever again. Its a piece of shit and will never replace SC2. The Team at stormgate wont ever recreate sc2.
A lot of my thoughts are the same as yours. Good luck to them - maybe it will improve over time like HotS did (the MOBA not the SC2 expansion) but hopefully it will improve fast enough that it doesn't meet the same fate as HotS.
In other words, we invested top dollar into a worse quality than tiny indy devs. Have they even heard SC1? Sc1 is a better game visually, audiologically, and in terms of gameplay still and it's from 1998, and this isn't even taking on the fact that SC2 is 1000x better in every possible way. They mismanaged the shit out of this.
On the whole quick build thing: it really isn't that it's a bad mechanic, I actually think it's an understandable change for people who haven't played RTSs before, hot keys and controls can absolutly get overwhelming. It's the fact that you cannot turn it off that makes it a detriment, make it like buddy bot; an option. It's like riding a bicycle, you want training wheels on till you can ride without them, they save you from falling down all the time, and face planting on the ground. If you're just now learning RTS's this is great, lets you focus on other things that are more enjoyable. If it's not your first RTS's you're putting them on a motorcycle, going on a straight line isn't going to matter, but those turns are going to kill you.
Its not a bad mechanic. Its actually an improvement. It just has so many instances where you have to not use it, its very hard to keep track. I tried hard to get that across.
As one commentator once said, Sound design of RTS unit is super important, you will hear same voice lines during hundreds of hours of gameplay, and if there are good voice lines you will rember it, if there is bad voice line, you will hate it. This is where CnC, Ages of and Craft series so good, you are not annoid by same sound but you feel familiarity. Prostagma anyone?
i would even say sound design is important in every game. I mean what defines a game? Its SOUND, VISUALS and INTERACTIVITY. So if 33% of the game is really subpar then the other 2/3 really have to carry it.
@@pallingtontheshrike6374 That is an absolute silly response. Sound is very important in the game, and it sucks for deaf people not to have the 2/3rds.
@@SioxerNikita platitudes are silly in general, but sue me lol sound is as important as the genre and the game itself make it; if you can carry the information and experience without sound, you don't need it; if you can't, you do.
37:29 I love the coincidentally-popping "StarCraft II now playable", as if the game was sentient and knew that it was more "playable" than Stormgate lol
The thing I have to say is this, and it's probably an unpopular view: SC2, in a lot of ways, wasn't a super well designed game. Its biggest strengths were mostly things that it inherited from BW, and it polished and modernized some aspects of gameplay and UI. But it was not inspired in the way BW was inspired. Its design philosophy seemed to have been, "We're going to make it kind of like a modernized BW but we're going to change some things also." In other words, it was kind of weirdly directionless. Or, more to the point, LACKING VISION. The weird redesign of protoss is a great case study in this. I say this because the feeling I get with Storm Gate is that they took this exact same visionless-redesign philosophy and applied it to SC2. But here they don't have the benefit of pre-existing IP, so they had to make a visionless new IP on top of it all. It's a little like taking an original song and making an old-school tape recording from a fuzzy radio, and then you get a buddy to play your tape recording on some local radio station and make another low-quality recording of THAT. It's this weird distorted attempt at aping something without being too on-the-nose, and it's the secord order of that at this point. It's directionless and has design issues, and these are things they themselves aren't going to be able to fix because they don't have it in them.
Great post! So glad to see people showing that there are in fact PLENTY of us who understand what made the good stuff good. These guys are gonna learn some hard lessons. It may seem negative to some but the criticism is actually inspiring to me. To me it says, one day we'll see that the glory days of RTS are still to come.
I agree with pretty much everything in the video. I think that the biggest mistake by stormgate was to extremely underestimate the amount of work that was needed to make a very good 1v1 sc2-like rts + a good campaing + a good coop experience, which is very surprising considering that most of the team is made of people with 15+ years of experience. As a side note: you often mention "how could this possibly go through QA?" as a QA myself I can tell you that 99% of the time issues are flagged by QA, but because of production/management/time-constraint those issues end up in the live version anyway. and people like myself who raised a warning months in advance are just very sad.
Man i feel this so much even though i only played so little, the funny thing is i quit because i leveled up blockade to lvl4 in coop. The reason? you get an upgrade to the lancers....yes the tier 1 frontline unit. its get replaced with a tier 2 unit.... so i have no frontline at the start of the battle because exos are trash overall. i tried to find a build order to quickly get to tier 2 but it just feels bad to not creep in the early game cuz you get left behind by your allies and the attack waves are just so strong without lancers to tank. I just dont understand why you dont let me build the new lancer at tier 1 and not lock it to tier 2. Best example for this is locking zealots behind cyber core while your stalkers are weak as templar. Its just feels bad to play
The graphic and sound design difference, between stormgate and SC2/WC3 reminds me of what happened between Advance Wars 1 and 2 and the Reboot Advancce wars 1+2 game. Back in the older games, the units looked like actual soldiers, tanks and planes and it had some satisfying sound design, from machine gun fire, to rockets, to artillery etc. In the reboot it all gets the "toy soldier treatment" which is god awful and tone deaf.
I have never been hyped for a game like I was for Stormgate. I went straight for the campaign and I was so exited. Then I saw that the first mission was basically starcraft 2 WOL's first mission and that the main character is Litterally Tracer (same animations and same guns, same tp). When the game was ''released'' i gave it another try and i kept going. SPOILER**** The main character's new attack animations is ''stolen'' from Sivir (league of legends). Like it is Literally the same weapon model, the same movements and the same attack animations. After that, I gave up on the game.
Don’t know your real name - only familiar through Harstem I’m a boring Masters NA player - The algorithm seems to have fully blessed me with this today. Damn. I pretty much fully agree - there are so many aspects of this game that I utterly shake experiencing. I feel like the overall polish is so lacking that no other aspect of the game can salvage the experience as a whole for me. Builds - pacing - unit (model) design - etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. Everything is not only NOT ideal - it isn’t unique or defined within itself. There is little continuity in decision making behind so many of these things. Etc. LOL I just wish the devs had some semblance of direction in and consistency between these design aspects 😝
1750MMR and 300+ games and I'm having fun with Stormgate. Lots of valid criticisms and that's okay, the game is clearly labeled as still in development. I think a lot of what UpATree mentioned are very fixable. Good stuff to get to 1.0!
Stormgate should answer these 2 questions 1. Give me a reason to move from Starcraft 2 to Stormgate, what awsome feature and play mode do you have while they don't. This answer will pull people into your game. 2. What technology barrier do you have to prevent SC2 from copying your said above advantage to their side. This answer will stick players in your game. Up to now, these 2 question has not yet been answered. Art and performance can be reworked completely, these 2 cannot.
it feels like they tried to design the game first and then pidgeon-hole a world into it rather than crafting an organic and compelling world and then designing based on that universe and style.
That's what a lot of people do now. It's called being too lazy to start at the bottom and work up. Inventing your second floor before building the first is going to see a lot of diminishing returns in the artistic and media departments in years to come. And it'll be well deserved.
@@ManallLockhartyeah it’s unfortunate. You can tell that brood war and StarCraft 2 had a passionate group of people that had a concrete vision of what they wanted to express. The world they built IS the soul of the game. I don’t understand why stormgate hasn’t been able to find a single unique or inspired idea. Why are there slimes and taurens together? Why is the game silly and toy like but supposed to be a post apocalyptic hellscape? There’s no cohesive vision here,
What is wrong with Stormgate can but summed up with this: Both Stormgate and Deadlock are in early access. One of those games has monetization, one of those games is in a well presented state. The game in the well presented state is monetization free.
I gave Stormgate a pass up until the game was made available to the public and they allowed things to be purchased. It's embarrassing in it's existing state, and that state only harms the longevity of the game.
I don’t think comparing a studio with 30 million dollars worth of backing to a multi-BILLION dollar company that essentially has a monopoly on computer gaming is fair. Not defending storm gate but that is a very unfair comparison .
@basicbiker4775 while this would normally be a good counter, frost giant has repeatedly told us the game is funded through release with private funding. When money is taken off the table optics are all that's left.
@@SSPsGoku1 yes this was definitely a mistake to put in monetization so early on. I guess problem with SG how it's right now is there are some all in fans who are extremely supportive and some haters who probably at one point were looking forward to it but at some later point decided it needs to fail and now actively work towards that. According to Frost Giant version of events they decided to put in monetization so early on based on the first group feedback in the end it turned out to be great ammo for the second group. For me, I did not support them at any point of development, started playing game with free early access release and enjoy it a lot. Plenty criticism of UpATree is valid, I guess I just don't mind most of them since it's early access. I focus on other parts and, for me at least it's very interesting new take on "blizzard-style RTS". So I did not care about it earlier but now I do want it to succeed. I hope that PR problem they caused themselves with rushing monetization (they should have not released campaign yet at all) won't kill it. If they really do have enough cash for to go on until release then they will have plenty opportunities to win back undecided, with 3v3 being next good window for that.
Someone should tell all the people that this game is not finished and in early access or have to explain to the people what early access means. To mention all this things is ok, but to blame Stormgate or Frost Giant for it makes no sense. Its like blaming you why you haven't finished the youtube video you want to upload next year. Baldur's Gate 3 was 3 years in early access. So you can return in 3 years like all other players of Stormgate. For a collection what is missing this video is okay. It touches a lot of things, but even miss some much more important things like auto generated maps. There is absolutely no downside to have that in addition to hand crafted maps. It's especially important for modding. The psositive impacts from auto generated maps to Stormgate would be huge. For example scouting will have a bigger skill ceiling. It adds much more diversity to the game. It open up new map types like Nomad from Age of Empires.
In 3 years Frostgiant Studios is no more according to their own financial records that are public and their statements on their funding situation. This issue trancended opnion and became factual some weeks back. This is literally where the cognitive dissonance is with most people right now, everywhere. If FGS can pull up a statement; a big one, like a 50 million dollar donation big one, then a lot of people will start calming down again over the ensuing months.
yeah game might not be finished, but devs arent listening to feedback, and negative stuff ppl is pointing will still be there. id say about 90% of ppl disliked the artstyle being plastic fortnite... and they are NOT changing it....
Sound in visual entertainment is close to the taste of food. A meal is best when it looks and tastes good. You can get by with bad looks but good taste.
Theres a lot to compare with cooking and developing games. Ive always seen the mechanics of the game as the basic ingredients. Thats the thing you base the entire course on, it needs to be good quality and not have flaws. But the art/sound/UI thats all the ingredients, the details of the game and those are actually the part that makes the whole thing work, the thing that makes you want more.
The blizzard map design make it very hard to make runbys while fighting with the army in the middle of the map. Because there are so much cliffs and little entries and forests and deep water etc. so you can also make runbys with flying units.
The irony is, Frost Giant has THE video named "why the next big RTS will fail" on their channel and it talked thoroughly about the importance of single player campaign. Annnd they started the early access with 3 free and 3 paid missions, none of them good and there's really nothing eye-catching like SC2's upgrade system. I doubt if they can finish fixing so many problems within a year--this game needs a lot more time in the oven and I just don't think their management is thinking straight. As a RTS player (having a blast in Age of Mythology rn) I really want to see more RTS games succeed, but Stormgate's chance is slipping away real fast.
@@vinceb8123 It's an early access version of a comment, very common practice nowadays. I'll totally fix everything about it within a year or two, promise!
EXO's move speed ability seems closer to zealot's charge in terms of use. Only triggering in combat does make it less useful than stim (and it being the most obvious comparison doesn't help), but it doesn't mean it must be useless. Except zealots are mele units, and charge allows them to close into the enemy and start attacking faster. On the other hand, EXO's move speed only triggering when they've already hit something means that it's not actually useful most of the time it's active, as the unit is sitting still attacking at that point.
This is a great point. I just hate the lack of utility, and the lack of decision making. The zealot's base speed without charge (but with the upgrade) is also much faster, making it feel a lot better to use.
@@UpATree absolutely!! Making an ability useful (and usable) in many situations can make it more fun. Making it impactful whenever it's used can also make it fun. EXO's "stim" fails in both fronts.
The campaign really needed to start an act with the fall of humanity and the father character (don't know if this gets talked about yet in the video). Show how desperate humanity is. They just kick off this artifact so quickly. SC1 slowly builds up the zerg and introduces the protoss through the campaign. WC3 had two prior games to build up the horde and other lore.
Sadly, devs released game in EA too early. My biggest problems are pathfinding and the fact that game sends you to a main menu after every match in coop and PVP, so you have to select mode that you want to play again. Now it feels that they jost don't know what to fix first. They say that now they want to fix models for main compaign but people will not replay missions because of it. Maybe now one of the commanders in coop will look better but it was important when game was released, when people talked about it and it got new players. Now they need to keep old players and give people a reason to return to it. It is all just dissapointing. The more you play, the more problems you see and they frustrate you to a point where you don't want to continue. I hope that miracle will happen and updates will actually save this game, but player count makes it less and less likely.
me channeling my inner Snape and asking the devs: "Tell me Mr. former bliz dev, what do you get if you mix in good game design and a good story?" "How about good sound design and visceral gameplay?" "How about unit design and visual identity?" clearly, fame isn't everything...
The Frost Giant employee that made the comment in my twitch chat and I talked, he made it super clear to me that he had in fact watched all of Jason's video, and that he was aware of the rest of his issues. Pretty much everyone is upset about performance, so it's just the thing he focused on in the chat.
I stand by what I said in the video, but I believe they know the rest of Jason's issues, they're just very focused on performance. Also, I really want a 7800x3d.
You really destroyed Frost giant. Haha they really f'ed up by not apologizing haha
Love the video and the fact you didn't shy away from saying what you thought. Just so you know coop brutal + 1-6 isn't fixed mutations but rather chooses random one from a pool so there is a lot of variations just from playing brutal +
@@Lazycat410 Yeah I've always just played weekly mutations, I only queued a brutal+ to compare to SG. Makes sense the mutations are random, thanks!
One of the coop mission where you have to stop the conveys from getting to a fort is unplayable on brutal or higher, once the 3 players have massed their armies the game freezes crashes every time because the game can't handle that many units, to suggest that this is a spec issue is absurd.
@mojoe87, and they are aware of it and working on it.
"Mum just watching one more video before bed"
He’s here!! 😮
God...
?
"Reinventing the wheel, but square" is a good way to sum up most of Stormgate. They took what worked, saw issues, "fixed" those issues, then forgot about all the extra issues that their "fix" created.
Had high hopes for Stormgate. Turns out the pedigree of the names behind the studio is the only reason to even look twice at it. I'll maybe check in 5 more years to see if they have anything worth actually playing. Until then, all my 20+ year old RTS games are still playable and fun.
Try Beyond All Reason, a Total Annihilation remake that's in alpha now.
""Reinventing the wheel, but square" is a good way to sum up most of Stormgate. They took what worked, saw issues, "fixed" those issues, then forgot about all the extra issues that their "fix" created."
That's how you know they were Blizzard devs
Check out Beyond All Reason and AoE4. Both new RTS that are fantastic.
@@SgtBrutalisk BAR is a solid choice. Lots of QOL in BAR that just doesn't exist in any other RTS.
It's more akin to the old devs trying to recapture that lightning in a bottle that they produce in their prime. Like rockstars chasing the dragon of their youth when they're 30 years past their due date. It's sad to watch.
The pitch that StarCraft building construction confirmation makes is different per faction
Terran is a "ka-thunk", like big pieces of metal framework being thudded down on the ground
Zerg is a "squish" when you place a hatch/extractor/etc.
Protoss is a warp sound which makes sense for how probes make buildings
Never thought about enjoying that difference until you pointed out, but it makes macro a lot more satisfying when you can hear your work being done as you do it. It's like a mini reward hit that you did something right and it's an asset for you moving forward. Great video and respect for the effort and detail put into it!
I absolutely hate how people panned your opinion. If people knew you they’d know that you try to be an incredibly optimistic and positive guy in all facets of life.
Appreciate the kind words.
very true, audio engineering is under rated. The sentinel sound effects & VFX is just .... glittery princessy.
the building models don't look like they have an intended purpose.
I think the creative direction could have been a lot more vivid in imagination to begin with, to distinguish not only each faction but each unit and building within the factions.
Stormgate is "we have Starcraft at home"
🤣 but mommmm
starcraft 3 at home
They tried appealing to everybody, and ended up appealing to nobody. This setting could've been one of the most bad ass settings of all time, but they decided to go with "fidget spinner" as their graphical inspiration
Looks like a cartoon from 2003
That's an insult to cartoons from 2003
I have to say, the models look really toy-like, and even the recognisability between the troop types is poor
To everybody? To themselves.
Well put.
Stormgate IS a placeholder.
Ya the whole thing feels that way
*$41M placeholder
The devs are placeholders at this point lmao
@hypers829 I mean your not wrong they might have been hoping to have gotten bought out by now lol
@@fearan9406 too bad for them the fed raised interest rates lol
I think yet another angle you didn't get to but I think Grubby covered pretty well (and absolutely given the length of your video you must be forgiven for not having time) is about the units in the vanilla game being captivating even on their own. Blink is cool. It's unfair. Against the Easy AI if I gave you Blink for the first time you'd say "this is busted" and you'd just blink around the place. Stim is busted. It's unfair. You feel awesome the first time you stim over your opponent's army. A warp prism? Yeah, now pylons CAN MOVE. A reaper? Infantry that flies.
The list goes on. Even though it didn't end up being unit-defining, colossi walking up and down cliffs made people gasp when it was revealed. The thing all these units (with at most one ability btw) have in common is that there is something cool and captivating about them that makes me want to use them. They don't just do a bit more damage under certain passive conditions. That's just math; I want to use my units and feel powerful using them, not watch them.
Yeah I tried to cover what I've played I think the section on the exo is a good example of this. If I went through everything it probably would have been double in length.
Gameplay is just not fun, can't shake the feeling. Lord knows I've tried.
For sure
Finally decided to play Starcraft 2 campaigns again and I can say that every unit in the campaigns, including the observer, felt cooler to me than Stormgate's units.
Great summary. The units in StarCraft are very satisfying to use.
@@hilkmeister1382 The way they introduce them in the campaign is perfect too. New mission, new unit! And that unit is typically pretty effective at helping to complete the current mission, allowing you to see how they work and what they're good at.
On the listening to starcraft note, I listened to every single ASL and only watched a few matches. I was driving 10 hours a day and I knew what was going on in every single match. Incredible game
Yeah, listened to GSL couple of years ago. You get absolute clear picture of game and commentary, even the korean ones 😂😂😂 GEGEEEE 😂😂😂
I lost all faith when they released the financials. Having the two top guys paying themselves $250,000 for what what advertised as a ''passion project'' is ridiculous. There is no way they have the time or money left to make this a success.
Stormgate - The 40 million dollar placeholder
👍👍
The $250k a year isn't that insane but it is incredibly sad that people spent $40m on a game that's absolutely going to fail. Money straight down the drain.
250k? That's a lot of passion right there
I've had quite high hopes for Stormgate.
But after they released the game, I realized that the game is DoA. And I don't care if it is beta or whatever. You can PAY MONEY for the game, you have an ingame shop where you can PAY MONEY for stuff.
Sure, if there would be small glitches, some problems with graphics and stuff - that could be fixed for sure.
But EVERYTHING I saw from this game was between mediocre and horrendously bad.
The campaign - one of the most importan things for an RTS that wants to be successfull - is atrocious.
It's so bad that for a few days I halfway expected that the Devs came up and said: APRIL FOOLS JOKE! Here is the real campaign.
If I compare the campaign of Stormgate to that of Warcraft or Blizzard, my best analogy is the following:
It's like comparing Serral to a Diamond Zerg player. Sure, both have the same tools. And somehow both are doing similiar things. But at the same time, the plat player just sucks at everything. Serral makes every singel thing a hundred times better. Creep spread, army movement, micro, macro, scouting...
You realize that the Diamond player tries to do the same things, he just isn't capable to do it.
And the same istrue for Stormgate. Everything is just infinitly worse than what we have in WC3 and SC.
I am not only talking about graphics, but storytelling, dialogue, characters, sound design, voice actors as well.
And that is stuff that is not expensive.
BTW: Stormgate is not a low budget project. It has a budget of 40 - 50 million. I have no idea where this money went.
Sorry for the rant, but I am just disappointed by Stormgate.
The game is already dead and I would not be surprised if it gets "concorded" soon.
Yea is see no future for this game sadly. It's just too much to fix and even then, it would just be an average game. Why would anyone play this over SC2 for instance?
I also have no idea where the money went on this game. Stormgate feels like a straight up scam at this point.
I bought the $60 and only played 1 day of 1 beta. I fell for it lol
I mean thats a ridiculous statement, but I understand your emotional state.
What does DoA mean?
My main issue with Stormgate is: i don't see much reason to play it. Since Stormgate doesn't bring anything really new to the table, why should i bother?
As much as Blizzard tries to destroy their own IPs, Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2 still pretty solid games. I would rather play these than a SC2/WC3 low budget rip off.
Love it or hate it, that's the main reason I like the approach of Battle Aces. They at least went for something totally different. So far, Stormgate feels like a SC2/WC3 hybrid that's not as good as either game.
@@macedindu829 was not a fan of battle aces but after playing both for 2 hrs, battle aces didn't leave me falling asleep. It was just bland. And did no justice to the animes that they tried to rip off.
"This is a post-apocalyptic Earth, why is it smiling?" I gotta say, I don't feel that's the issue - it's just thoughtlessly executed. There's huge tonal dissonance in the game overall, but the smiling robot in particular COULD be integrated fine. Look at Fallout, for example - there are goofy little robots in that setting, but since they're relics of the pre-apocalypse there's a justification for why they don't fit the tone of the world, and that clash only adds to the world building.
If the Vanguard's robots were some ramshackle, repurposed happy-go-lucky butler-bots that had to be shoddily reprogrammed for wartime because humanity's just that desperate for resources, THAT could have worked. But they put about as much thought into the worldbuilding as everything else in the game, which is to say, none.
Honestly the unit sizing just drives me insane. I hate how slim some of these units are, so it was an easy pot shot to take. My main criticism is how hard they are to select.
@@UpATree It's not easy to rant for 2 hours straight and get every single thought perfectly conveyed.
I think you did a pretty damn good job.
@@UpATree chasing your own tail like a dog got a whole new meaning thanks to FrostGiant.
@@UpATree Yeah I don't actually disagree with your point at all, just saying it's not like they couldn't have made it work. Like most of the game - the reason it's so frustrating is because it's easy to see how they could've done it better.
@@UpATree you are spot on with the bobs. fallout this fallout that, i see every time when i hear the "bob". (that fucking name)
I hope these stormgate devs find a gate through this storm.
They will. The gate is called bankruptcy.
@@allanshpeley4284 Abandon all hope ye who enter
@@allanshpeley4284Back to flipping burgers.
You really are under every vid. Rent free.
@@HighLanderPonyYT Sorry for the loss of your money bro. I just tell it how it is.
I don't understand the value proposition of a game that is trying SO hard to be StarCraft, but is worse in every single way.
It's basically just for pros who want active balancing and development but don't care about the casual side of things like the campaign, co-op, graphics, visual & sound design.
Visual and sound design are important for competitive pros as upatree went over in depth in the video we all just watched. It's not about caring what the units look like so much as being able to tell at a glance what the opponent's army composition is, and what is actually happening during a battle instead of your entire screen being covered in spell effects. Sound cues let you know all sorts of information, like if you selected the right thing, hit the right button, or can't perform a command for some reason. He explained all of this and how Stormgate is currently failing at it
Just my two cents: I think the biggest problem with Stormgate was that FG specifically set out to make *the most competitive* rts and not specifically a *fun* rts
These are the same people who made the exact same mistake with SC2. Make it a competitive Esport, fun be damned.
That's not true at all. If they wanted to make a competitive RTS there would be no creep camps, There would be no banelings. No scout units that also do heavy damage. Atlas would act like siege tanks. They wouldn't have a goofy mechanical race like celestials. The races would be more uniform. It.
's actually the complete opposite.
I despise games that seek to bypass casual players and go straight into competitions. It's for sure just my opinion but I think you are 100% correct in that you should set out to make as fun a game as possible and then let a scene form around that instead of trying to immediately force a competitive scene with tight balancing. But that gets into my, again opinion (and a casual's opinion at that), that balance is super overrated in competitive games. It's what eventually killed Overwatch for me. They kept tweaking and tweaking and tweaking and suddenly the game isn't nearly as fun and they had to change how the entire game works by switching to 5v5.
Of course not enough balance is also bad but that's part of what makes game development difficult.
That's the exact opposite of how they marketed it. Most of the feedback I've seen has been that the competitive 1v1 is promising, but the majority of people are disappointed with the lackluster campaign and co-op that were highly advertised as major features but now look to be stapled-on, overpriced DLC.
No. Be honest. It's problem is cause it simply sucks!! In every way! In. Every. Way. It doesn't shine. It doesn't shine in any way. Does it excel on any way?? Tell me please. Pleaseeeee.
Sound is an interesting one. It's so distinct in SC1/2 that you can listen to a game with just sounds and casting like an old timey radio baseball sportscast and know what's happening. Turns out it was hard to notice it's importance until it was missing.
SC1's sounds are so good I HAVE followed matches while doing something else, just by the sounds alone, not even with a caster explaining things, just raw gameplay.
@@KaiserMattTygore927 A lot of the best video games have this. Good sound effects, voicer actors, voice lines, and music.
Stormgate has none. Maybe like 4/100 voice lines are very good.
They saw the mothership core, one of the worst design decisions ever made and thought, hey let's make a whole race out of that!
It's not a bad design by itself. It's a flying unit. Flying units is not a bad game design - it's good, when it's not out of place. But making a whole race out of it is... wrong.
I didn't say that, but in the case of the mothership core, it was a bad design specifically because it was a flying unit that had an attack and came way too early for too little cost.
Making it so the Protoss could preasure for no cost and could delay observers etc forever.
@@TheDasErdinger It's not the attack that was the problem. It costed as much gas as 2 Stalkers, but had the dps of one. It could only help fend of Zerglings and unsupported Zealots, but was useless for attacking. The unit itself was not the problem.
The real problem were its abilities, and Blizzard's insistence on making it turn buildings into siege cannons.
Streamer, Please win the video game.
The day he wins the video game is the day he'll love his subs
The game unfortunately feels like it has a rather large amount of baffling design decision along with a huge identity crisis.
It’s something between WC3 and SC2, except without any of the polish/quality either of those two games have.
WC3 has a rather slow time to kill, but makes up for it by having very high impact abilities & a “wow factor” on heroes.
SC2 has extremely good micro-ability on units, and is very fast.
No idea what the “wow factor” or the reason to play stormgate over either is
It's ugly. It's slow. It brings nothing new to the genre. It's a huge problem when someone plays Stormgate and says, "I'd rather play SC2 or War3". Hell, I think most RTS players would rather play AoE4 than Stormgate.
IIRC part of what FGS did when they started was ask about what people liked about RTS, and a lot of the responses was all about criticisms of SC2 so they believed those players too much without really hearing the other side of the coin. Yea SC2 has its own issues but it also has a lot of strengths, it can become what is considered one of the best RTS games ever without those.
The funny part is it’s not just the gameplay, StarCraft 2 (released in 2010) also looks better both artistically and in graphic fidelity.
@@TravisHowrish-v2c Yea even in the most chaotic fights in SC2 you can make out stuff very clearly. Stormgate might've been better off if they just created something barebones instead of trying to overwhelm the player and themselves with all the ideas they had.
I think the more precise definition is Warcraft 3 with SC2 design choices. Literally I can't see anything but WC3 there, with some sc2 small design choices here and there.
This is a 2 shirt video.
LMAO. Those 6 words said about 1000.
It's clear that their models are trying to follow a certain design language, I just think that the language they chose is absolute shiiiiiiiiit.
You seem like a cool dude. Please don't torture yourself with 1418 more games lol
I'd struggle to do that with an actually good game.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Underrated comment
I quit after 2 and a half games.
graphics matter because they affect theme/immersion and yes - warcraft 3 and SC1 & 2 have proved that immersion in rts matters - its what attracts casuals and players that have no interest in playing competitively but want their next gen hardware costs to matter - they need to fix their gfx and themes - they're oriented towards children, not adults - and they're marketing towards adults - its idiotic
I think you should be careful about saying "immersion", immersion is a specific feeling, and RTS tends to be less immersive. What do you think "immersion" means?
And here I'll defend Stormgate once, their graphics are not "oriented towards children". Do you think stylized graphics are inherently marketing towards children? Warcraft III is EXTREMELY cartoonish graphics, especially compared to WC1 and 2. You could say the same about that, but I think everyone would agree it is not for children. That's not saying they are well made, just... that they aren't "oriented for children".
@@SioxerNikita Immersion is fine to use in this context. Being immersed with the story and setting was strong with SC1 and 2, especially in the campaign.
@@ezetThen explain what you think immersion is?
Certainly feels like the SG devs may have only been janitors at Blizzard, but definitely not responsible for any of the fun, addictiveness and magic of SC2
This is really starting to look like a back to blood and left for dead situation
This video makes me want to play Starcraft 2 so much.
So true about sounds. Probably biggest reason i come back to AoE 4 from time to time is how great of a work their sound team did.
The music, the sounds of battle, the sounds of galloping cavalry, speech progression from age to age, just so good and immersive.
Company of Heroes had really satisfying sounds so not surprised another RTS by Relic is also good in that regard.
THREE years. THREE years' worth of unique mutations.
Sorry man ill get it right next time. I hope uniquely mutations catches on.
@@UpATree Great video, man. I listened to all of it, and your articulation of the sound and graphical design and gameplay gave me a good idea of what it's like to play even though I myself haven't played a second of it (but not for any reason than I just don't have the time).
I do hope Frost Giant turn it around. Maybe they can Cyberpunk it, y'know?
3 years of mutations (and we're on 3rd repeat now i think?), something like 4 years of prestiges, mastery/ascensions being added at the same time that mutations were, 10 years of commanders and maps.
Even though i dislike Stormgate (completely lost interest in it since i saw the very first trailer), it's somewhat unfair to compare a completely new game to all those years of SC2 coop development (and then abandonment). Even if SC2 coop had 6 commanders at the start (and 1 was added almost immediately after, i think) while Stormgate has 3 now.
Yet, UpATree's point of SC2 being much more value for the money value stands... Even if it's due to simply being out for longer, one still gets more value for their money in SC2 than they would in Stormgate.
People at Frost Giant need to try harder, or they will end up like Petroglyph, releasing mediocre games that people buy only because they have the "made by ex-Westwood devs" label (in this case, ex-Blizzard).
I laughed hard at that cheeky little "Starcraft II Now Playable" notification at 37:28.
Like "Yeah, we know what you really want to play, don't worry - I got you covered."
BASED LOL
Look to Age of Empires 4 for just how immersive great sound design can be. Squads emit sound as an entity, but individual unit types still manage to maintain their identity amongst the chaos. Armies clashing sounds like something out of hollywood.
The game WILL be discontinued 1st quarter 2025
Warp gate was the worst thing ever done to Protoss, and Stormgate decided "let's do that again but on KETAMINE!"
Feels like SG got released waayy before it should have. Upon seeing good-looking RTS's like ZeroSpace or Tempest Rising, they probably got nervous that other would steal the spotlight, so they cared more about getting the spotlight on themselves (at the wrong time). Should've just let the other games do their thing, and then come in swinging with SG when love for the RTS genre was restored by other games. "Now, the people who made SC2 and WC3 bring you THE rts you were REALLY waiting for!" ...instead of this unfinished crap.
I do think BW and SC2 marine sounds are up there with Doom 2's super shotgun on how good they make you feel.
agree. they are legendarily satisfying
I'd say the Hexa shotgun from the doom2 mod complex, but nobody will get that reference lol
Regarding creep camps, when I 1st tried creep camps something just felt off and unfun about them. So I then compared them to creep camps from WC3. Watched a whole bunch of WC3 tournaments, streamers, played games and I realized that WC3 creep camps serve very deep purposes that aren't in Stormgate. WC3 doesn't have 2 resources it has 4: Gold, Lumber, Items, Experience. 2 of those (Gold and Lumber) come from basic worker harvesting, the other 2, items and exp generally come from killing neutral creeps. When a player in WC3 goes to kill a creep camp he gains: some gold, exp on his heroes, and an item. Not just that, neutral creeps could also be guarding valuable locations on the map, such as: an expansion location, a market to buy and sell items, a fountain of health etc.
Stormgate creeps on the other hand, don't serve a deep purpose at all. Why are there passive income towers? Why are the things it gives so basic, bland and boring? The only interesting one is the siege camp cause it adds something to how you want to play. I get there's no heroes (in 1v1) so obviously you can't get exp or items but there's so many ways to make the camps feel better to play with alongside interacting with your opponent. For example instead of passive income towers, why not have a creep camp be guarding a very rich area containing 2 mines. Or (because they thought 1-2-3 unit attack and armor upgrades was boring) they could have a camp that buffs your attack or armor for a bit so that you can go for a kill move.
Anyways my 2 cents regarding that aspect, agree with basically everything you said in the video. Especially the sound design and if you want compare the Lancer's attack sound to the Footman from WC3.
Creep camps are also actually threatening and engaging in WC3. You want to plan out the right units for the camps so you can gain the edge fast in early mid game and not lose a bunch of units or have a hero in poor health. It becomes a skill expression task. Creeps have strong abilities to mess you up. High risk high reward is never boring in gaming. On top of that, the fact that they are finite and so are the items; gives added importance to and incentment to find and clear the creeps or alternatively creep jack or intercept an opponent caught in a rough spot. Nothing of this can apply in Stormgate.
@@dennisthorson4159 Yea, the fact that a creep camp you're taking can be stolen by for example a Wind Walk Blademaster makes things exciting. People want that power fantasy and Stormgate doesn't give that.
Warcraft 3 also has a huge amount of denying as a gameplay mechanic, creep don't respawn so you are to deny your opponent items and experience.
This also comes into play in micro as you are denying your opponent kills to further demonstrate skill.
👍👍 you've made a better design choice in your comment than the whole ex blizzard team did with a 50 mil budget. lol.
I loved RTS as a kid/teenager, but I was never remotely interested in competitive play, nor were anyone I knew who also loved RTS games. We would watch competitive starcraft both 1 and 2, but Id only ever play the campaign. Infact, playing the campaign is what made me wanna watch the Esport, it made me interested in the IP. For RTS games to truly make a comeback, they need to stop marketing them as these esport events and make games that are broadly appealing with a cool campaign, fun casual modes and creative gameplay. I'm not saying Esport should not be a consideration, but if you solely focus on making an Esport in a niche market, it's not gonna work.. you need the interest of a larger audience from which the esport can organically grow.
Warcraft 3 was huge for people in my age group.. but, very few people actually cared about the normal game.. it was all about the custom maps and the cool campaign.
In reality, the only level of eSports you should consider, is making the spectator tool really good.
When you build a game around eSports you appeal to a very tiny minority. Even ranked players don't play it like an eSport, but usually it is the wide appeal that makes it interesting as an eSport later, and if you make the spectator tool really good, casters can create interesting story telling via good casting.
People wake up and drink coffee listening to news or some morning music. Me? I listen to this.
The morph core sound had me dying laughing
Thank you, Sal. I always appreciate your perspective on things. I tried it once it was free, and I couldn't make heads or tails of it, and it was not fun. Not even the campaign was tolerable. Boring and laggy, and you have to pay for more of that to "finish the story"? No thanks. I hope they fix it. I need a new game to take SC2's place in my life.
Go play age of mythology retold, probably. There's some other up and coming RTS that are promising as well
@@EB-bl6cc Juggernaut Jason had a really positive review of Age of Mythology Retold. Definitely want to check that out.
36:51 Strategy Game Designer here. Strongly agree with all of your points there. I think another important issue here is also how the "weight" is distributed on Stormgate's Vanguard units. The Atlas has its legs as its most massive "bits". The Vulcan has skinny tall legs. StarCraft 2 units are stubbier and have a general art style that puts the center of the unit forward, which makes units look stubbier/fatter, but it also helps distinguish them better. Compare the SC2 Ultralisk to the SC1 Ultralisk. And look at the skinny units in SC2. They still have a stubbier element to them, and even then, they are units that can bend the rules without much consequence to readability, because they won't be produced as much as the other ones, and/or because they usually tend to be really tall or flying units, like the Colossus or Viper.
The lighting is also more contrastful in SC2. The darks are darker and the lights are lighter. The units also stand out from the background, as well. Stormgate has a plastic look to it, and everything is sort of washed out. The colors in SC2 pop out less than they did in the alpha version of the game, sure (when it was announced), but they're still pretty "poppy" and more readable than Stormgate's.
And yeah, I was thinking the same - I can read the MedTechs a lot better than the rest.
EDIT: I feel mostly "whelmed" by the Vanguard designs.
Thanks for your take, can you say what game!
@@UpATree I certainly can, thanks for asking! :)
It's called Aeon Wars: Maschinen Crisis. There was a demo out earlier this year for it.
We're reworking the game right now (the title might change as well), I started 2 months ago and I'm essentially working off of what they've already built, but we've already had talks about unit readability, proper map lighting, unit size and color/texture, proportions, artstyle - all those things came up. And StarCraft 2 is a huge influence for us, too, as is Warhammer 40K. I'm also hoping we can get our individual units to stand out a bit more by the time we ship the game. And mind you, we're closer to a turn-based tactics game where people can zoom in on the field of battle and take their time to play, but we still want to be extremely readable.
To be honest - I'm kinda saddened to see that Stormgate fumbled things, as some of the devs are good friends of mine and our studios are acquainted with one another. But I wish them well and hope they turn things around. I'm kind of glad a lot of the criticisms I had about it as well is shared. Your video has been on point so far. I think you're making some excellent points and I'm also glad that people like you, Day9 and Jason have made extensive feedback videos on it, among others.
Feedback is great, and you put a lot of thought into it. But I really missed some footage of the things you are pointing out while you are pointing them out.
I can feel and understand this frustration so much and i agree with EVERY POINT. I can't understand why this turned out like this. What where they thinking, like so much of this has nothing to do with money or anything, its just bad decisions, and a lot of it
What you said about soul really stuck with me.
There’s a million things you could say this about, but what I immediately thought of is the Infernal production system. To simplify it’s kind of like each of their production structures has its own ‘larvae’ charges. Why? What is this telling me? When I have a bunch of Zerg larvae and then I get to watch all the roaches pouring out of the eggs to go attack you really feel something, this makes sense, it grabs you. The Infernal system feels like a way to try to twist that and be clever but nothing more, this doesn’t feel like anything to me, there’s no story to it (even if there is some lore justification).
man I never actually audited the sounds, but holy fuck that's bad when you actually notice it lol
I stopped playing because they were asking 10 dollars for each individual campaign missions.
I have been playing age of mythology retold happily since.
If you turned your frustration down by 20% in order to make the video, you would in fact need to increase it by 25%, not 20%, to return to baseline frustration.
It’s funny cause it’s true
very well put-together video, dude. you've basically encapsulated all my grievances with the game and, in a sense, drawn out the lessons we can learn about game design from it
After talking about the sound design in Stormgate, i watched a random game of ZvT and minimized the tab. and yea you were 100% right. without even looking i knew which units were fighting and dying. i hope Stormgate would be a better game in the future but uhhhhhhhh. its most likely just gonna fizzle out by March.
It’s interesting to consider the visual clutter as a result of the lack of audio / tactile feedback. All of these things (including actual unit design-not just visual fidelity) are supposed to work together. Your feedback is highlighting an apparent lack of focus and maturity on all of the design aspects of game dev. I hope FG hires someone who can fix this. The amount of placeholder indicates that FG thinks design, visual fidelity, UX, and audio are secondary to something else, but these things are 85% of what makes someone want to play a game at all.
I’ve been playing since the second beta and it’s sad to see so little change on some of these core problems over all this time 😢
Something that I think would be cool for the Exo's and Marines would be a squad option. When in a squad they are commanded as one (ie, click one, all are selected) and have 2 formations. Ranks and Line.
Ranks: They try to take a square formation, but in particular, attacking the front units will keep advancing forward until the rear can fire. (Pro: faster engage and fire fields overlap for retarget, Con: range & AOE vulnerable)
Line: They try to take a line/concave formation. (Pros & Cons are switched)
Stormgate is a spiritual successor to Starcraft. But at the same time Stormgate is what would parents tell tell kids that "we have Starcraft at home"
Every time I read the words spiritual successor I automatically assume it's shit
The best new rts is not a better Starcraft oder a better Warcraft. It is the perfect mixture of all benefits of Age of Empires, C&C Generals, Starcraft and Warcraft.
Currently it is way too much Starcraft and Warcraft and too less C&C Generals and Age of Empires.
For example: How good are airplanes in C&C Generals. They feel very good to use and to defend etc. Why no these types of units in Stormgate? Its just one of many examples.
My biggest issue with Stormgate is that most games when they say they are inspired by another game you can see the inspiration but you can also see there's enough differences that make the game and the units feel unique. Stormgate doesn't do that. Every race in Stormgate quite literally feels like some cheap knockoff toy made in a Chinese factory to leech off an established franchise. Instead of "Star Wars" it's "Star Conflicts." The Vanguard are knockoff Terran, the Infernal are knockoff Zerg and the Celestials are knockoff Protoss. They made absolutely ZERO effort to make these races feel unique in any fashion. I mean the Exo is quite literally Stormgate's version of making a legally distinct marine from Terran in SC2. I only played for a week during the open beta back in may or whenever and during every game I played I kept thinking "man this is just SC2 but dumbed down and worse in every single way imaginable."
- The sound design is worse
- Hotkey system is a fucking mess
- The game on max graphics looks worse than Starcraft 2 on low
- The races all are very clearly their versions of the Starcraft 2 races.
Really makes the game feel like it was made by kids on deviantart making their legally distinct sonic the hedgehog OCs.
It's a shame because when I played the game during the beta it looked very raw and unfinished. The graphics on max still looked disgusting, the units and mechanics all felt like very early in development or even placeholder assets. I gave all that shit the benefit of the doubt but the game is in the exact same state. The game genuinely feels like they tried so hard initially to be a Starcraft clone and then realized how much effort and difficulties they would encounter and just did the college student version of "ehh fuck it, I'll take the C. It's passing I don't care about this class"
Couldn't have said it better
Pro tip: the folks who are working on Stormgate are the same folks who ran SC2 into the ground
Why did anyone expect anything different
damn you really know nothing about sc2 then
@hu-ry I'm assuming he's talking about HotS and LotV?
Wings of liberty had a great campaign
@@hu-ry Bruh, I watched and played so much SC2, I was banned from playing tournament prediction brackets because I predicted the outcome of 5 MLG's in a row.
@@ZverseZ Yeah WoL was a good time to be an SC2 fan. Then the mass exfiltration during HOTS where anyone who mattered left SC2 entirely.
If you can get someone as obsessed and autistically fixated on your product as Day9 (among others during HOTS) to quit on his own, you've fucked up somewhere along the way.
Oof some brutal stuff here, the comment about the other streamer's hardware from FG is a bad look. And something seemingly minor that stands out to me is the "in the rear with the beers" voiceline. If they are going to so blatantly ape SC2 then they need to either be better or different and ideally both. It's borderline unprofessional. It actually blows my mind that they added that in. They're just rubbing SC2 in our faces while failing to excede any aspect of the game.
Christ, this cannot be emphasized enough. How about that "strap yourselves in boys" blatant reference? This project DESERVES to fail, the recipe that has been used should by all rights guarantee it.
TBH the free beta weekend killed all my hype for this game. I've not been able to bring myself to play it since then.
ditto
I can’t believe they were actually stupid enough to release this to the public in this state. They killed their own game.
yeah dont bother theres like more than 10 better rts games available.
Hello streamer, when will you be releasing the Stormgate video?
I audibly laughed
Right? Literally every content creator has made a "dis is y stormgate bad" video at this point. I don't like the game, but damn guys, the horse has been beaten to death a few times over by now. Let's move on
@@EB-bl6cc And yet, you're here.
While it's represented different in terms of visuals, the Thor's ground attack in SC2 essentially has what you describe as the Atlas problem imo, albeit to a lesser degree. The Thor has to acquire a ground unit for about 0.6 seconds before firing. If the unit it acquired is killed, even if it completed 99% of that acquire time, it must restart when it acquires another unit to attack.
If have to test it but if its in “firing mode” and the unit dies doesn’t it just start firing? Also its less impactful because its not a projectile, but yeah people bitch about how clunky the thor is. Its just so jacked people kind of just accepted it
@@UpATree Yeah, the Thor's raw stats are insane, so the jank helps counterbalance. And a number of other factors make it less nonsensical, like not being a projectile, as you mentioned. And especially not a delayed projectile.
Best I can tell, the issue is more significant on atlas as it hinders its primary role. Whereas for Thor, anti ground, especially against smaller ground unit where this problem would be prevelant, is not its primary purpose, so it is merely a minor inconvinence as opposed to prohibitive.
There are a few units in SC2's campaign that have the Atlas problem similar to the Thor. Specifically the Khaydarin Monolith tower from the LotV campaign has a charge up before attacking that gets reset if the unit its targeting dies before the attack can complete. The Firebat has a similar problem, where the damage point on its attack is different than most bio units, so there's about a half a second of it targeting a unit before the fire comes out and damage is dealt. This causes an odd effect where Firebats in front of a bunch of Marines while fighting slow Zerglings never actually attack. They target the closest Zergling, which dies before the damage happens because it gets killed by the Marines first, as it is also the closest unit to the Marines, so the Firebat switches targets, only for the same thing to happen. This is usually fixed in custom campaigns by changing the Firebat's damage point and/or giving it stimpack.
this is actually the reason why SC1 firebats are actually very strong and SC2 campaign firebats suck ass. The charge/wind-up time to fire is so atrociously long that firebats almost never shoot, esp with their range. Thors have it a little easier between being anti-air focused and also having OK range; still feel much worse than siege tanks who pivot in half the time and then BOOM for huge damage.
It's nice to see a video that doesn't just shit on the game but actually provides proper criticism and detailed explanations in a way that makes me believe the game still has a chance with enough time and effort. And even though there's a lot of issues that point towards incompetence within the dev team, which is worrying, I still feel like they are actually listening and willing to redesign major parts of the game from scratch whenever there is no other solution to a problem.
I'm convinced that pretty much every current issue is fixable, but the big question is if they have enough resources to take the time to make it happen. I really hope they are able to pull off a no man's sky, where years down the line, over many free updates, the game can become something that stands on its own.
me when they REVEALED Stormgate
"SICK!! NEW RTS GAME? MADE BY SC2 DEVS? I HOPE IT DOESNT LOOK LIKE FORTNIT-... FUCK!!!!!"
straight into: "we are sad that ppl dont like the artstyle but we like it and we're not gonna change it :) "
The art design is truly horrendous
I believe that your last point is tackling the root issue. The game has no soul. It feels like the devs just brainstormed wacky shit together (most of the stuff being things they remember from the past), and hoped it would work out. And now it's too late to do an 180. Which makes me really sad, because I want to like this game so hard. I'm sure if there's ever a powerful map editor, someone will correct all the mistakes...
Hopefully zerospace learns from these mistakes...
At least zerospace has nice visuals/aesthetics. I was 100x more interested in watching a bit of it a few months ago than anything I've seen from Stormgate.
Every time I watch this game to consider trying it out, I'm always left with the feeling that I'd rather just go play wc3, so many details (like audio cues) feel totally left out or half-baked.
they had the chance to make warcraft 4 and make more money than a normal human can spend.
they instead choose to make starcraft 1.5
sums it all up.
Bruh, SC1 is far better than this dumpster fire. Stormgate is SC0.3 equivalent
It doesn't sum it up. SC1 is way better than this. I'd say it's WC 1.5 , it's better than WC1 but worse than WC2 in some aspects and better in other... But not as captivating and not as good art design as WC2 so it's a WC 1.5
As a game dev, this stuff is all good info. It's easy for programmers to have blind spots because they know how it should work. So, when they play test, they automatically use the units while working around the problems. Devs can subconsciously see the problems as gameplay obstacles.
Modern RTS and gaming in general fumbled the absolute shit out audio design, nothing is readable nor impactful.
Meanwhile build just ONE Siege Tank in Brood War and every single sound that thing makes, would scare the shit out of every unit in every game of this era.
My guess is that the bob smiles so kids will like him, because it's mostly kids who play video games, and the developers wanted to attract them. But as far back as I can remember from my childhood, I’ve always loved aliens, blowing up a body and seeing the splatter like bolognese flying everywhere, and the Cronenberg-style arts like in The Fly
I mean.. I was six/seven when I first played StarCraft 1 on the N64, the art style was partially what hooked me back then.
30 year old me now couldn't imagine kid me, playing SG for more than a day before quietly dropping it.
Ur a dummy
I guess kids have changed these days. We grew up way earlier back in my childhood.
I hate Frost Giant. They sold this game on their "experience" and they are utterly amateurish in how they have made this game. I look at how nicely Star Lance is doing with Zero Space, how it's shaping up with a fraction of the budget and none of the "experience" and I cannot help but hate the Stormgate devs that advertise (read: lie) to my face about how knowledgeable and informed and capable they are. The way Frost Giant has handled Stormgate, I firmly believe in 2 things as a result of their actions:
A. Blizzard's money is what carried mediocre designers and developers through to excellent reputations.
B. The formative years in gaming (the 90s) allowed a lot of mediocre people to enter into and stay in the industry.
It's so nice seeing the millennials at Star Lance produce something worth actually buying, eschewing all of the BS marketing that came from these old men at Frost Giant who want to feel like rock stars again. 40 million dollars over 4 years and this is what they have to show for it? Pathetic, down to the last detail. I'm waiting for this entire thing to crash and burn so that Zero Space and Battle Aces can finally get some breathing space.
I’m reasonably certain the devs are developing the game the same way they worked on SC2. Just without any of the “vision”, meaning the game feels very much designed by a committee rather than a coherent game fulfilling an idea/vision
Meanwhile, they are working with the dev cycle of sc2, which took 7+ years to develop, while not being able to afford development time that long.
Meaning what is being shown in early access right now is, well, half baked stuff, aka equivalent of what SC2 was in 2007-8, years before release
It's not only that they are developing like they have 7 years, from what I know they are also spending their money as if they were still working at blizzard. They are churning through money at an insane rate while being an indie studio.
@@shaedeymamlas5496 I agree but how did they plan their budget? What did they think would happen when they run out of money in a couple of years?
Preach
It feels like they took all the cool or interesting ideas from every other RTS on the market and mashed them into one. What resulted was a game with a bunch of systems that don't work well together. Virtually everything in SG is something other RTS have done before. The vision was 'next gen' so I guess it has to have _all the things_
You know, it's sort of hilarious how I'm 40 min through a 2 hour video on a game I don't even play or really plan on playing. Hell, I hadn't even realized it was available to play yet. I thought those RUclipsrs just had early access like how some games do it. And I think a lot of this video (At least up to this point) more or less explains why I wasn't hyped into the game. I've been pretty adamant about how I'm not the biggest fan of StarCraft, but I respect it. It's an amazing game and I watch a ton of content for it. It's just not an RTS I enjoy playing. Stormgate takes the good parts of StarCraft and makes them bad. Why would I want to play a bad copy of StarCraft? I'd just play the game they're miserably trying to imitate instead.
I've never uninstalled SC2 other than for reformatting purposes. I love SC2 its my favorite game of all time. I played Stormgate twice and now refuse to play it ever again. Its a piece of shit and will never replace SC2. The Team at stormgate wont ever recreate sc2.
A lot of my thoughts are the same as yours. Good luck to them - maybe it will improve over time like HotS did (the MOBA not the SC2 expansion) but hopefully it will improve fast enough that it doesn't meet the same fate as HotS.
HotS improved until the inclusion of Overwatch characters, then it was completely downhill from there.
In other words, we invested top dollar into a worse quality than tiny indy devs. Have they even heard SC1? Sc1 is a better game visually, audiologically, and in terms of gameplay still and it's from 1998, and this isn't even taking on the fact that SC2 is 1000x better in every possible way. They mismanaged the shit out of this.
The whole game looks like a placeholder. There is nothing that looks refined, polished, well executed.
On the whole quick build thing: it really isn't that it's a bad mechanic, I actually think it's an understandable change for people who haven't played RTSs before, hot keys and controls can absolutly get overwhelming. It's the fact that you cannot turn it off that makes it a detriment, make it like buddy bot; an option.
It's like riding a bicycle, you want training wheels on till you can ride without them, they save you from falling down all the time, and face planting on the ground. If you're just now learning RTS's this is great, lets you focus on other things that are more enjoyable. If it's not your first RTS's you're putting them on a motorcycle, going on a straight line isn't going to matter, but those turns are going to kill you.
Its not a bad mechanic. Its actually an improvement. It just has so many instances where you have to not use it, its very hard to keep track.
I tried hard to get that across.
As one commentator once said, Sound design of RTS unit is super important, you will hear same voice lines during hundreds of hours of gameplay, and if there are good voice lines you will rember it, if there is bad voice line, you will hate it. This is where CnC, Ages of and Craft series so good, you are not annoid by same sound but you feel familiarity. Prostagma anyone?
vulume
i would even say sound design is important in every game. I mean what defines a game? Its SOUND, VISUALS and INTERACTIVITY. So if 33% of the game is really subpar then the other 2/3 really have to carry it.
@@hu-ry deaf people:
@@pallingtontheshrike6374 That is an absolute silly response.
Sound is very important in the game, and it sucks for deaf people not to have the 2/3rds.
@@SioxerNikita platitudes are silly in general, but sue me lol
sound is as important as the genre and the game itself make it; if you can carry the information and experience without sound, you don't need it; if you can't, you do.
37:29 I love the coincidentally-popping "StarCraft II now playable", as if the game was sentient and knew that it was more "playable" than Stormgate lol
I felt that sigh at the start sal.
The thing I have to say is this, and it's probably an unpopular view: SC2, in a lot of ways, wasn't a super well designed game. Its biggest strengths were mostly things that it inherited from BW, and it polished and modernized some aspects of gameplay and UI. But it was not inspired in the way BW was inspired. Its design philosophy seemed to have been, "We're going to make it kind of like a modernized BW but we're going to change some things also." In other words, it was kind of weirdly directionless. Or, more to the point, LACKING VISION. The weird redesign of protoss is a great case study in this.
I say this because the feeling I get with Storm Gate is that they took this exact same visionless-redesign philosophy and applied it to SC2. But here they don't have the benefit of pre-existing IP, so they had to make a visionless new IP on top of it all. It's a little like taking an original song and making an old-school tape recording from a fuzzy radio, and then you get a buddy to play your tape recording on some local radio station and make another low-quality recording of THAT. It's this weird distorted attempt at aping something without being too on-the-nose, and it's the secord order of that at this point. It's directionless and has design issues, and these are things they themselves aren't going to be able to fix because they don't have it in them.
Great post! So glad to see people showing that there are in fact PLENTY of us who understand what made the good stuff good. These guys are gonna learn some hard lessons.
It may seem negative to some but the criticism is actually inspiring to me. To me it says, one day we'll see that the glory days of RTS are still to come.
@@ManallLockhart Honestly, Zero Space and the new David Kim game both seem to be headed in a much more exciting direction.
I agree with pretty much everything in the video. I think that the biggest mistake by stormgate was to extremely underestimate the amount of work that was needed to make a very good 1v1 sc2-like rts + a good campaing + a good coop experience, which is very surprising considering that most of the team is made of people with 15+ years of experience.
As a side note: you often mention "how could this possibly go through QA?" as a QA myself I can tell you that 99% of the time issues are flagged by QA, but because of production/management/time-constraint those issues end up in the live version anyway. and people like myself who raised a warning months in advance are just very sad.
Maybe they hit regression button 1 week before EA launch.
Sal I have a 7800x3d, a 7900GRE, and was a KS backer. Let me know if you want some benchmarks.
Thank you for this. I may take you up on it. If I need to I will also do it myself, but I shouldn't have to. Very much appreciate the help though
Man i feel this so much even though i only played so little, the funny thing is i quit because i leveled up blockade to lvl4 in coop. The reason? you get an upgrade to the lancers....yes the tier 1 frontline unit. its get replaced with a tier 2 unit.... so i have no frontline at the start of the battle because exos are trash overall. i tried to find a build order to quickly get to tier 2 but it just feels bad to not creep in the early game cuz you get left behind by your allies and the attack waves are just so strong without lancers to tank. I just dont understand why you dont let me build the new lancer at tier 1 and not lock it to tier 2. Best example for this is locking zealots behind cyber core while your stalkers are weak as templar. Its just feels bad to play
The graphic and sound design difference, between stormgate and SC2/WC3 reminds me of what happened between Advance Wars 1 and 2 and the Reboot Advancce wars 1+2 game.
Back in the older games, the units looked like actual soldiers, tanks and planes and it had some satisfying sound design, from machine gun fire, to rockets, to artillery etc. In the reboot it all gets the "toy soldier treatment" which is god awful and tone deaf.
I have never been hyped for a game like I was for Stormgate. I went straight for the campaign and I was so exited. Then I saw that the first mission was basically starcraft 2 WOL's first mission and that the main character is Litterally Tracer (same animations and same guns, same tp). When the game was ''released'' i gave it another try and i kept going. SPOILER****
The main character's new attack animations is ''stolen'' from Sivir (league of legends). Like it is Literally the same weapon model, the same movements and the same attack animations. After that, I gave up on the game.
Don’t know your real name - only familiar through Harstem
I’m a boring Masters NA player - The algorithm seems to have fully blessed me with this today. Damn.
I pretty much fully agree - there are so many aspects of this game that I utterly shake experiencing. I feel like the overall polish is so lacking that no other aspect of the game can salvage the experience as a whole for me.
Builds - pacing - unit (model) design - etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. Everything is not only NOT ideal - it isn’t unique or defined within itself. There is little continuity in decision making behind so many of these things. Etc. LOL
I just wish the devs had some semblance of direction in and consistency between these design aspects 😝
1750MMR and 300+ games and I'm having fun with Stormgate. Lots of valid criticisms and that's okay, the game is clearly labeled as still in development. I think a lot of what UpATree mentioned are very fixable. Good stuff to get to 1.0!
Stormgate should answer these 2 questions
1. Give me a reason to move from Starcraft 2 to Stormgate, what awsome feature and play mode do you have while they don't. This answer will pull people into your game.
2. What technology barrier do you have to prevent SC2 from copying your said above advantage to their side. This answer will stick players in your game.
Up to now, these 2 question has not yet been answered.
Art and performance can be reworked completely, these 2 cannot.
it feels like they tried to design the game first and then pidgeon-hole a world into it rather than crafting an organic and compelling world and then designing based on that universe and style.
That's what a lot of people do now. It's called being too lazy to start at the bottom and work up. Inventing your second floor before building the first is going to see a lot of diminishing returns in the artistic and media departments in years to come. And it'll be well deserved.
@@ManallLockhartyeah it’s unfortunate. You can tell that brood war and StarCraft 2 had a passionate group of people that had a concrete vision of what they wanted to express. The world they built IS the soul of the game. I don’t understand why stormgate hasn’t been able to find a single unique or inspired idea. Why are there slimes and taurens together? Why is the game silly and toy like but supposed to be a post apocalyptic hellscape? There’s no cohesive vision here,
What is wrong with Stormgate can but summed up with this:
Both Stormgate and Deadlock are in early access. One of those games has monetization, one of those games is in a well presented state. The game in the well presented state is monetization free.
I gave Stormgate a pass up until the game was made available to the public and they allowed things to be purchased. It's embarrassing in it's existing state, and that state only harms the longevity of the game.
I don’t think comparing a studio with 30 million dollars worth of backing to a multi-BILLION dollar company that essentially has a monopoly on computer gaming is fair. Not defending storm gate but that is a very unfair comparison .
@basicbiker4775 while this would normally be a good counter, frost giant has repeatedly told us the game is funded through release with private funding.
When money is taken off the table optics are all that's left.
@@basicbiker4775 45 millions+
@@SSPsGoku1 yes this was definitely a mistake to put in monetization so early on. I guess problem with SG how it's right now is there are some all in fans who are extremely supportive and some haters who probably at one point were looking forward to it but at some later point decided it needs to fail and now actively work towards that. According to Frost Giant version of events they decided to put in monetization so early on based on the first group feedback in the end it turned out to be great ammo for the second group.
For me, I did not support them at any point of development, started playing game with free early access release and enjoy it a lot. Plenty criticism of UpATree is valid, I guess I just don't mind most of them since it's early access. I focus on other parts and, for me at least it's very interesting new take on "blizzard-style RTS". So I did not care about it earlier but now I do want it to succeed. I hope that PR problem they caused themselves with rushing monetization (they should have not released campaign yet at all) won't kill it. If they really do have enough cash for to go on until release then they will have plenty opportunities to win back undecided, with 3v3 being next good window for that.
From an unreal engine user: visual glitches are the hardest thing to deal with. But hotkey managements is super easy. Barely an inconvenience.
Someone should tell all the people that this game is not finished and in early access or have to explain to the people what early access means. To mention all this things is ok, but to blame Stormgate or Frost Giant for it makes no sense. Its like blaming you why you haven't finished the youtube video you want to upload next year.
Baldur's Gate 3 was 3 years in early access.
So you can return in 3 years like all other players of Stormgate.
For a collection what is missing this video is okay. It touches a lot of things, but even miss some much more important things like auto generated maps. There is absolutely no downside to have that in addition to hand crafted maps. It's especially important for modding. The psositive impacts from auto generated maps to Stormgate would be huge. For example scouting will have a bigger skill ceiling. It adds much more diversity to the game. It open up new map types like Nomad from Age of Empires.
In 3 years Frostgiant Studios is no more according to their own financial records that are public and their statements on their funding situation. This issue trancended opnion and became factual some weeks back. This is literally where the cognitive dissonance is with most people right now, everywhere. If FGS can pull up a statement; a big one, like a 50 million dollar donation big one, then a lot of people will start calming down again over the ensuing months.
yeah game might not be finished, but devs arent listening to feedback, and negative stuff ppl is pointing will still be there.
id say about 90% of ppl disliked the artstyle being plastic fortnite... and they are NOT changing it....
First impressions are everything and Frost Giant has dropped the ball by making the first impressions remind us of Reforged and not Starcraft 2.
Sound in visual entertainment is close to the taste of food. A meal is best when it looks and tastes good. You can get by with bad looks but good taste.
Theres a lot to compare with cooking and developing games.
Ive always seen the mechanics of the game as the basic ingredients. Thats the thing you base the entire course on, it needs to be good quality and not have flaws.
But the art/sound/UI thats all the ingredients, the details of the game and those are actually the part that makes the whole thing work, the thing that makes you want more.
The blizzard map design make it very hard to make runbys while fighting with the army in the middle of the map. Because there are so much cliffs and little entries and forests and deep water etc. so you can also make runbys with flying units.
The BOBs would be way more tolerable if their vibe was more like pathfinder from Apex - a sincerely programmed robot in a postapocalyptic setting
Nothing to talk about, game is DOA and team is obviously incompetent. Total disaster of a game.
Yep. It will be dead and forgotten within a year.
The irony is, Frost Giant has THE video named "why the next big RTS will fail" on their channel and it talked thoroughly about the importance of single player campaign.
Annnd they started the early access with 3 free and 3 paid missions, none of them good and there's really nothing eye-catching like SC2's upgrade system.
I doubt if they can finish fixing so many problems within a year--this game needs a lot more time in the oven and I just don't think their management is thinking straight.
As a RTS player (having a blast in Age of Mythology rn) I really want to see more RTS games succeed, but Stormgate's chance is slipping away real fast.
I think you're mixing something up with that - that video was from giantgrantgames, who as far as I know has no relationship with frost giant.
@@asdfqwerty14587 oh you are right, memory never been my strong suit and it's been so many years. But again yeah he is right on this one.
Yeah no need to throw a "i think" in there or edit the comment, just spread your misinformation, don't even worry about it
@@vinceb8123 It's an early access version of a comment, very common practice nowadays. I'll totally fix everything about it within a year or two, promise!
EXO's move speed ability seems closer to zealot's charge in terms of use. Only triggering in combat does make it less useful than stim (and it being the most obvious comparison doesn't help), but it doesn't mean it must be useless. Except zealots are mele units, and charge allows them to close into the enemy and start attacking faster. On the other hand, EXO's move speed only triggering when they've already hit something means that it's not actually useful most of the time it's active, as the unit is sitting still attacking at that point.
This is a great point. I just hate the lack of utility, and the lack of decision making. The zealot's base speed without charge (but with the upgrade) is also much faster, making it feel a lot better to use.
@@UpATree absolutely!! Making an ability useful (and usable) in many situations can make it more fun. Making it impactful whenever it's used can also make it fun. EXO's "stim" fails in both fronts.
The campaign really needed to start an act with the fall of humanity and the father character (don't know if this gets talked about yet in the video). Show how desperate humanity is. They just kick off this artifact so quickly.
SC1 slowly builds up the zerg and introduces the protoss through the campaign.
WC3 had two prior games to build up the horde and other lore.
Sadly, devs released game in EA too early. My biggest problems are pathfinding and the fact that game sends you to a main menu after every match in coop and PVP, so you have to select mode that you want to play again. Now it feels that they jost don't know what to fix first. They say that now they want to fix models for main compaign but people will not replay missions because of it. Maybe now one of the commanders in coop will look better but it was important when game was released, when people talked about it and it got new players. Now they need to keep old players and give people a reason to return to it. It is all just dissapointing. The more you play, the more problems you see and they frustrate you to a point where you don't want to continue. I hope that miracle will happen and updates will actually save this game, but player count makes it less and less likely.
me channeling my inner Snape and asking the devs:
"Tell me Mr. former bliz dev, what do you get if you mix in good game design and a good story?"
"How about good sound design and visceral gameplay?"
"How about unit design and visual identity?"
clearly, fame isn't everything...