Stormgate is not the next generation of RTS, not even close. It is essentially just what we had before (un)cooked differently. I do not give the game any bright future
@@iBlagg8 Bullshit he's the actual guy in charge of pvp balance. he looks like he's half the age of the guy interviewing him. This is just a rank-and-file employee who got bullied in to sitting down for the interview his bosses didn't want but felt like they had to do. Creative Assembly did the same thing when they sat a guy down to be the "head of AI programming" in TW: Rome 2. Like just ask yourself, why would a game in early access be better than starcraft 2 which has had DECADES to smooth itself out? why would it look better, play smoother, or have more polished balance or mechanics? No, the game isn't ready yet. Why should it be? You wanted this guy to get skewered in this interview, well, i don't think he deserves that. The game is exactly where anyone with any idea of what it takes to make a RTS would expect it to be at this stage. Maybe marketing got ahead of themselves and the game ended up over-hyped, but i think it will still turn out fine as long as they can maintain funding.
@@ditch_magnet sorry my bro but you're kind of deluded. SC2 was a much better more complete and well designed game in it's ALPHA stage. There's footage, "battle reports" (casts of devs playing against each other, which I loved to watch when I was anticipating the game's release and even rewatched not that long ago because they were enjoyable) and so on from the Alpha stage, as well as SC2 also had a beta period where people were playing the game, and Then of course loads of people like myself bought the game on release, and I LOVED it btw, No memorable or big issues from the release of the game and certainly nothing that overshadows how great the game seemed overall, the game didn't need decades to be "smoothed out" and incomparable to Stormgate, it was a more complete game even in early Alpha.
As a nobody in the game industry and a starcraft worshiper i would advise stormgate developers to change the art direction. Review the shapes and pallete of color for each race and add 2d details to enhance the details and textures of maps, structures and units. A common complaint is the look of the game
absolutely agreed. There is something wrong with the art. It just ain't it. I think it needs a total overhaul. Nothing in the game feels cohesive, or like it's from the same universe. It's just like a hodge podge of random ideas. Very few things are cool, or make me feel excited to look at. It's just very uninspired and drags the rest of the game down. Whoever is in charge of art direction needs to be replaced yesterday, they are not good at their job, whatever their vision is, what's in the game sucks. It's not the quality that's bad, but the ideas.
If they don't change the art it's not getting played that's the same thing that killed mvci. People care about the game and characters being readable at a glance and having enough visual cues for us to remember what they do. To be fair the amorphous boring glob monsters that every race has do accurately represent the current gameplay so...
Man this felt like total soft serve fluff. Common tasteless, you know what the community sentiment is right now. Push back a bit, give them some harder questions. Be our voice back to them, not an extension of the developers.
dude, don't die on this hill for the sake of hyping the hill SG devs decided to repeat the success of SC2 1v1 but forgot that SC2 people got hooked on SC1 first (and SC2 successively), the story, the campaign, the gfx, the music and AFTER that the 1v1, and other modes nobody cares about the SG characters, nobody cares about the story, people go meh about the "stylized graphics", Frank Klepacki isn't going to make the setting by himself the success of BW and SC2 didnt came from progamers, it came from 10 apm casuals loving the single player who wanted more of SC, but because there was 100s of thousands casuals it distilled into progaming scene progaming SG will be watched by SG progamers, just look at yt views, look at steamcharts, how viable is this long term SG is going to end up as that "great 1v1 experience" nobody plays "this game made me wanna play SC2 again" sums it up
SC1 became popular because of low requirements, unique factions and the meta was more diverse (most important point). SC lore is just good enough and follows good tropes unlike stormgate that is the boring alien and celestial demons that have been done multiple times.
I feel like you don't get it. The 1v1 mode is what is easiest to make. The foundation that everything else get's build upon. You don't need AI functionality, special mechanics, cinematics, etc. Which is why you can play 1v1 right now, but not a lot of campaign. It's not because they don't focus the campaign, it is because of the nature of developing an RTS. The campaign we have right now, is their first draft fresh out of the oven. Even SC2 spend the last 3 years of development on Story, optimizitation and polish. That is after 4 years of prior development. What the heck do you expect a smaller studio with less resource to achieve in 3 years??? Like honestly, this is a problem with your expectation, not FG development. Also, nostalgia is a giant factor playing into people loving the campaigns of BW and SC2. Don't underestimate that. As for the graphics, that part I agree with. Even tho I personally don't mind stylized that much, a lot of fans do and FG should react to that for sure.
Given the mixed reviews of Stormgate, I'm pretty disappointed at the questions in this interview. There seemed to be zero tough questions here. For people following this game and really wanting it to be great the conversations here seemed to just be a lot of fluff and none of the common complaints were brought up. I was really hoping to get some insight on how they were taking all the user feedback, what directions they are planning to take, etc. But the interview just seemed to be set ups to give generic canned take on RTS. Would be been great to dive into specifics, mistakes and learnings and how stormgate planned to address these things. Most people following stormgate, myself include, see a lot of potential in the idea of a spiritual successor to our favorite games, but have a lot of concerns of the current state. Obviously we're still in pre-release, but even still the general response -- even from people that were extremely excited for the game -- is that there are a lot of improvements needed. Many streamers / youtubers who were planning on playing a lot of Stormgate have pulled back and decided to wait given the current state. Yet this interview did not give that impression at all. It seems almost like a paid marketing mock interview rather than what I was hoping which was delving into community feedback and answering some hard questions.
Obviously this was recorded slightly before that if you actually listened, this is part of the problem, people don't listen. Tim did an interview that's much more current about their plans. The only mistake really was that the campaign was far too undercooked, but that's to be expected as an early game when they're trying to show us everything from the beginning stages for feedback. You can't expect a finished game when they've told you its an early unfinished game, that's the definition of stupidity, you either give feedback and help them build or you wait, that's the nature of community build game development processes. I guess another slight mistake was thinking the community would be receptive to helping them at all stages, but it's a slight rejection because players actually don't understand what in development means or listen so they have to switch their tactics, it's tough for them.
@@DrawAndErase My feedback was about the interview not to bash on SG. I don't mean any of these things in a hateful way. I want stormgate to succeed. I understand Stormgate is in pre release. Yes, the campaign isn't currently the best mode of the game, but there's a wide set of let downs surrounding 1v1 as well -- which I personally care most about -- the conversations are wide ranging in terms of user feedback. My main point was that the interview felt like a missed opportunity to go deeper into specifics. I did realize after posting this, as you pointed out, that this was filmed before it was fully released to all users which does slightly change things. But the main points of my feedback remain. A lot of people care about Stormgate because we want it to be great and are trying to keep tabs on it and this interview could have been a lot better imo. I'd just like for the next time someone who gets a chance to talk for 30 minutes with the game developer leads to go a bit deeper. Even before pre-release people had already had a chance to Beta test and many people have already played the game or kept up on watching videos and there were lots of very specific feedback that have carried over into the current phase. I watch a lot of interviews in general and like that format. Good interviews asks good questions that viewers care about and I just felt like that was missing substantially here and that leaves a feeling of disappointment. Also the fact that it was released weeks after recording is a let down since there have already been multiple patches since then and it would seem obvious to me that an interview released weeks after a major event like full user release would be missing the mark on whatever the current conversation would be weeks / months later. If frost giant is doing things correctly, one would expect that user feedback would be influencing direction, so this interview probably should have been released earlier so it didn't confuse people. Again -- to sit down to watch a long form interview only to find out that not only are none of the many hot topics of conversations addressed, but also the interview is completely out of date at this point is disappointing. Not trying to bash Tasteless or stormgate, but hopefully honest feedback can be constructive.
@michaelrevell1501 fair enough you're right that the questions were quite surface level, and yes it was filmed before free release so it's outdated now. They're doing things the right way, but players are rejecting the community builds and want a finished game so it's going to hurt their process in general if they start to work backwards. I'm a game designer and artists and have had clients push us to do things the wrong way which hurts rollout. They will be aware of issues, but letting personal biases get in the way or emotional doom bringing isn't going to make the game do well. People will just move on and it will be lost because of the community not Frost Giant. If you see their notes they are listening and will adjust their direction based on player feedback. We will have to see what happens, but when I last played it it had no celestial, no tier 3 units, no camp art, nothing really so they are making progress even if people don't like it
Stormgates biggest flaw is its art style (of which it has none of in game) you could go so much harder on the style and individuality of each race but instead their all flat and bland. It really fails to draw people in and keep them interested. The games art is not memorable and the races are not stylized enough for people to get invested in them.
This interview is so generic, it feels like an interview they could have done a year ago. No conversation of specific interactions that are happening now.
Totally agree, at the same time it's not Tasteless job to absolutely dismantle Stormgate in a critical interview. They probably know by this point that the game was released too early, and the truth is there's ALOT of competition on the horizon. Zerospace, Gates of Pyre, Tempest Rising, BAR, Mythology Retold, Sanctuary, DORF and I've probably missed quite a few. I think they will have more than enough incentive to listen to the more critical parts of the fandom.
Can't help but disagree with Kevin on a lot of points like players "not understanding why they lost, only to click and see the opponent had 3/3!!" Isn't that like... a good learning point? a strategic decision your opponent made that you didn't account for, and can improve upon in the future.. pay more attention.. opportunity to out-macro... decide which upgrades youde like to invest in, and when yourself? Is clicking on an enemy unit a few times a game REALLY too hard for the audience they are targeting, AND YET they are focusing so much on Esports 1v1? So much of this answer begs more questions and leaves me scratching my head man..These are exactly the kind of gameplay design decisions that are leaving the entire game feeling shallow, lifeless, bland, and underwhelming but...still a good interview i guess. Tasteless classy as always
A true next gen RTS would have unit designs change through the game to reflect the upgrades, and make it clear to new players without having to click on units. One day maybe a game like that will come
Monk is clearly bad at game design. Seems more like a numbers guy, but his explanation for everything just helps me understand why the game feels so flat.
Also weird because I cannot really pinpoint what this game does well to attract new players... As far as I can tell it's not doing anything so I had to conclude they weren't really focusing on that but to hear him talk makes it sound like it's a chief design focus. I just cannot see it.
The issue is not that you have to click on the enemy unit to see it. The issue is that it is not properly communicated anywhere and is super hidden away. You wouldnt even know you have to click on an enemy unit and then *hover* over a stat pannel to see that. Unless you spend 2 hours a day on the sc2 reddit you might not learn that at all and are just left with frustrating losses where you keep losing fights and don't know why. I do agree that the game loses strategic depth without these upgrades and has to make an effort elsewhere to get that back. I do also think they are on the right track with the upgrades they do have.
Tasteless, I genuinely think you need to move on from Stormgate. You're damaging your brand by continuing to plug a game that the RTS community has pretty firmly rejected. Just my 2 cents.
I hate to say it but the game is just not for me and that's fine as long as there are people who enjoy it. I'll stick to sc2 and battle aces. hopefully zerospace is good but SG isn't for me in it's current form.
I do not enjoy them talking about fixing things that aren't broke, and what they DONT want in their game While ignoring whats actually going on in the 1v1 meta
I thought it made a lot of sense. What he didn't touch on is the strategical depth that you lose when you don't include them. But I am coaching a new player in sc2 right now and it is actually very unintuitive for them to get upgrades. It doesnt feel like they do anything. Its not exciting or organic at all. Im just kinda left repeating "you just kinda have to get them, otherwise you fall behind".
I would say it is the opposite. Most people who play the campaigns want "shiny" 3-3 units. To the point where they would not even make an army before their units are maxed and fully upgraded. That is the point at least in Warcraft 3. Grubby mentionned it a lot when Tyler1 was streaming his tournament, with many "newbs" and casual players, who agreed with this statement.@@skipp3252
@@skipp3252it's not that exciting to new players bc it's not visually obvious how good they are. If you show them that video where a 3/3 bc solo 3 other unupgraded bc, all of a sudden, it becomes pretty crazy.
He never mentioned how upgrades can funnel a player into a particular branch of tech, which an opponent can then use against them. It's more the fact there's 3 of them in a row, taking more time and resources with each level.
The upgrades: it allows another way to make the game dynamic in terms of power. Right now, # of bases is so important. what if you can't expand? upgrades can bring you back into a game. it's another way to make an investment that will have an impact on power dynamics. removing them makes the game less interesting. you can easily avoid the issues monk brought up about upgrade visibility.
My issue with increasing ttk from SC2 is that the ttk between normal units was never the thing that made losing your entire army to a single Disruptor shot frustrating. The existence of Disruptors was frustrating. Before units like that show up, ttk in SC2 feels absolutely fine. If anything, it's a lot easier to keep track of damage in a fight when death happens in an easily countable number of hits. I'm going to keep saying the same thing everywhere I can, just repeat what the Ravager does. A unit that forces micro out of an opponent, but it's very doable micro and they just maybe have to do a lot of it and that's your advantage. Nothing undodgeable, nothing too devastating, just a nice little skill check ability.
I recently had an argument with someone who defended the Disruptor and said it's the best balanced it could ever be, while I tried to explain to him the concept of fun. But even without the Disruptor units are dying fast in SC2, worst offenders in my opinion are stimmed Marines. They die fast, but if they don't due to a lack of splash, they pulverize things faster than the Disruptor shot needs to detonate. And the Ravager ability, I hate using it because it's so spammy, and it forces both sides to babysit their armies.
@@nightmareTomek I love marines. They're a super fun unit and make for fun gameplay from both sides. Marines splitting against tanks and banelings and so on is one of the most iconic micro ever. and blowing marines up with AoE splash is super fun and them forcing an AoE splash response tbh makes for good gameplay. Also, the "low" TTK of SC2 really makes the micro more fun and skill-based with a high skill ceiling, which is fun because you really feel like you're expressing yourself and expressing your skill completely in every fight interaction
@@tambaz2276 And that's why I hate them. If you can outmicro strategically placed units like tanks, then the game isn't an RTS anymore, but a real-time-microing-competition. And if APM is the only thing you can express yourself in SC2, then players who like to express themselves in something different will leave. And they did in droves during LotV beta. The game could have been way more popular, but by now there aren't any left that want to express themselves in any other way than with micro, and it will never grow. Sure, Marines running from Banelings is a cool interaction, the problem is only that every TvZ for the last 10 years had 1000 of these and NO OTHER type of interactions. No idea how you don't find that extraordinarily boring.
@@nightmareTomek Micro is a huge part of SC2 and its the best part as well. Its the most fun and arguably most expressive part, and its hardly based on APM at all, tho its also largely about how well you macro behind it and manage both tasks. and theres loads of other types of interactions lol, and yeah it doesnt get boring at all its extremely fun to play and has loads of skill expression
@@tambaz2276 If you don't demand from a game anything except APM, then yes. As I already said, SC2 has only players left that don't demand anything other than APM. And it's not "arguably", stop phrasing your opinion like a fact. Or if you can't, then put your opinion somewhere where the sun doesn't shine.
For me Stormgate is not what I was expecting misses a lot in the visuals, the feeling of surprise in a match and the idea of a OMFG in fights. The game feels extremely unfinished. Hope they step up and change A LOT of things in game. I want this game to be the next big thing, at the moment doesnt feel like it.
First thing Monk says "we dont want people to lose their entire army from banelings/disruptor" - good - however then he says "still keep explosive aspect of the game" - there are no explosive aspects of the game that all players to show skill or swing momentum - see Day9's most recent video
not even allowed to upgrade units to actually make them more effective because apparently the playerbase is too confused by "clicking on units to check upgrades"
I saw the day9 stuff and I really thought what he meant was decisiveness. Because there are explosive moments in the game but there isn't decisive, key moments in the game. And really explosive fights are really shit balancing if you ask me, doing 1 thing shouldn't be the end all, be all of any engagement (like how SC2 had it). StarCraft is still going strong after 20 years because it has several decisive moments and elements. Decisive builds, decisive micro moments, decisive moves on the map, decisive scouting, decisive scans, decisive expansions, I mean I could just go on and on. Artosis is dead wrong when he said that the game isn't strategy first and foremost.
day9 explicitely said, that there are "sparking" moments in the game, there are just not enough of them. Fights *mostly* feel dull and unimpactful. But they do exist for sure and there is no reason why it couldnt get better in the future.
this perspective is literally anti-fun, with no risk there can be no reward. it's like trying to make a new version of Chess where you can't blunder your queen, or an FPS with no headshots. it's like bowling with bumpers or biking with training wheels. less risk = less fun, period. this game will stay boring until they reject this way of thinking.
He says +1/+1 is difficult to understand for newer players because you have to click on the units to realize why you lost the game. Here’s an idea: +1 makes units shot red lasers. +2 makes them shoot green lasers. +3 makes them shoot blue lasers. Now people understand why blue lasers units are stronger than red lasers units. The problem with his argument is that he doesn’t seem to have thought about the game at all. He is so fixated on continuing to work on SC2 that he cannot see the forest for the trees. It’s like someone else said: Frost Giants seem to be a place for Blizzard rejects to show that they were held down by the overwhelming bureaucracy and executives at Blizzard and that they really could have created a *better* game than SC2 if there were free to run wild. However, it appears as though they’ve shown the complete opposite; they have shown that they can’t build a game without the help of Blizzard infrastructure. In the end, Stormgate has been one large marketing campaign for Blizzard, paid for by desperate SC2 fans and executed by disgruntled former Blizzard employees.
@@JustinK0 Yeah will the cut the 26 year old game some slack. But lets talk about the new game. The one with a 40 million dollar budget, years of retrospect to learn from, far better tools for game design, and team the size that made wc3.
Warcraft is Lord of the Rings and Starcraft is Warhammer 40k - the two best fantasy and sci-fi universes in the world. These RTS games are popular because they hooked into popular culture and the absolute best fantasy themes humans have produced. You can't make a poorly textured anime game with ridiculous factions and units, and expect the same result because "the balance is good". The soup is no good, it doesn't matter what ingredients you add.
Agreed. Look at magic the gathering. The first editions were so unbalanced, some of the early cards are forever banned in all formats(ahem black lotus). Yet it still became incredibly popular. Why? The fantasy of playing the different colors and themes was incredible. The card art was amazingly evocative. The characters and storylines compelling. The balance and refinements to gameplay occured in parallel over time. I'm not sure how FG could have missed this.
@@mrcookies409 Part of that is also OP stuff being really fun. It kills the game long term, but it's actually really good for short term first impressions. Going for balance before everything is a bad idea, since it steers you towards making everything bland.
@@La0bouchere Eh I am not sure og magic was designed with that in mind. They probably just wanted to make cool stuff and realized they needed to balance the game more when it got more popular and people started taking it more seriously. A game can come out balanced but also have plenty of flavor. SG severely lacks the later.
I like Tasteless, but I hate interviews like these. We need someone to be the interview villain who asks tough questions. How did you manage to interview the lead PvP dev and not ask him about the dog spam problem that has seen multiple bad iterations? At this point giving feedback feels pointless as many things haven't been addressed despite much feedback. We need a big personality in the community to hamper down the points to their face, this was a great opportunity but ya blew it.
@@hypers829 I feel like this game is doomed with this guy in charge... he's at least in the wrong role if he's useful at all I swear he's the perfect definition of ex-blizzard team reject
I expected to see alcohol under the desks, looks of extreme panic, and people chain smoking cigarettes. But then I realized this video was before the release. To be a fly on that wall now..
This kinda looks to me like total annihilation with cartoonish graphics and over simpified mechanics. I love tastetosis and SC but man, this does not make me want to try the game.
Honestly the game feels more cookie cutter than Total Annihilation. Total Annihilation had the percentage production reduction based on if you were overspending, radars that showed enemy units on a minimap and almost unlimited unit numbers. Stormgate has... Creep camps? Units splitting on death I guess? It's just like not that interesting
nerf the darn dog already. why would u give it 2x damage to light units? for 50 resources? why does the Exo unit have automatic built in overkill protection??
They probably need to take the game offline and come back when it's closer to done. If the goal was to launch the game extremely early so they can make sweeping changes, this should be communicated.
They can't afford that lol Why do you think they released it so early in the first place? Don't tell me you actually buy into the "developing together" PR talk They also said themselves that they are reliant on the game doing well in EA
@@SoulShiinaearly access doesn't mean much about the state of the game. Some go EA and are almost done, and EA is mostly for bugs and final ajustements, here it's more included in the development process, having regular feedbacks to adjust their development cycles.
It was communicated, it's been public information for years. The whole idea was to have it available for tests as soon as it was playable at all, and then stay up for 1-2 years before it gets to a polished state.
Monk's justification for not having +1/+1 upgrades is probably the weakest I've ever heard. Stormgate will without a doubt have +1/+1 upgrades in the future.
The amount of negativity around the game is far too severe but they seriously need to actually figure out what this game is supposed to be. There is no cohesive vision that I can discern at all. It's mostly just a mash up of Blizzard RTS, nothing original, nothing innovative, nothing novel.
Way too late to fix that problem. Don't have the money to completely scrap what they have and start over, which is what a lack of that single vision would require. Now it's all about trying to ram square pegs into round holes, and, that can work. Riot did it for years.
@@mgs85 I don't think that it's to late to make a cohesive vision, but there's a lot of work to be done. They have assets that can be used, and an engine that works pretty well. But there's no real core concept, and no real vision that draws you in - and that's the big problem right now, because new players are going to go to the campaign missions first, and the campaign missions don't do *anything* to help with that vision at all.
Questions for developers. There have been trolls all over the internet saying that developers lied about being fully financed for full development and full release. The main accusation is that they were only financed up to Early Access release. And dependent on Early Access revenue for actual full release. What is the current financial status of the development to full release? And how much does Early Access revenue affect the possibility of the game getting scrapped/shut down without ever releasing? Just to be clear, the purpose of these questions are meant for clarification to doomsday trolls. Next is a common notion that Early Access release is not a playtest, but a full release that should be held up to the standards of a completed game. Early Access by definition implies the game has not released. Although Early Access is a form of release, it is not a release of the game. However, multiple trolls are overtly claiming this game has released. As in a full release like any other game. For example, complaints that the game feels rough and unfinished. And getting upset about imbalance. Although I can agree with some of the specific feedback in regards to specific problems. The general approach seems to me like complaining about a building under construction having no walls or roof. I have no expectations on balance at this stage of development and early phases of widescale playtesting. I would like elaboration on how users should approach Early Access. As if this is the final release of the game and what failure/success should be based on? Like the game is officially released. Or approach it as an unreleased game in development available for play testing. How should users interpret Early Access release in relation to games that are fully released.
Completely disagree about the atk/def upgrades. Having an upgrade advantage is a power fantasy that makes you feel strong and gives you a window to bully your opp Army. And from a viewers perspective, there’s a lot of drama around seeing the upgrade timings in pro matches. Atk/def upgrades work in tandem with unit specific upgrades by giving a basic unit the potential for a huge power spike
I'm happy to wait and let Stormgate cook for a bit but I'm concerned that in this day and age if you don't hit the ground running on release, even "early access" release, you're dead. The market is just too saturated for people's attention spans. Happy to support Tasteless and Arty, always will be, but I just don't know if SG has a future that's bright.
I do not agree with the idea of having no upgrades for attack and armor either. The fact that the argument is 'it's not new player friendly to see your opponent has more upgrades than you' is pretty surprising to hear. Loved your cat getting in the way towards the end :P
I really got into RTS after the Christmas Bash for Starcraft Remastered and since then Ive played all major ones with my favorite being starcraft BW. RTS needs what MOBAS bring, slow ramp up with high skill expression moments. No other RTS has skill expression like BW, and while it wasnt by design it still works. League has wave control, BW has worker mineral boosting and worker creation/ commands.
Good job asking the easiest questions ever and ignoring all the glaring problems happening atm. This could’ve been a great opportunity for stormgate to do some damage control in an interview like this but instead it’s just double down on hype we don’t care about anymore since the issues are so large. 👍
Having battles last longer sounds good in theory but Day9 brought up a good point that it gives good players a bigger advantage because pros will always win a longer micro battle.
@@user-im7tq8hq6l I think the logic behind making battles longer like I wasn't paying attention all my units died in 2 seconds in SC2. You could just solve it by not making units like widow mines, baneling, storm. Maybe make battles longer by just 1 hit. Like if they figured out on average, things die in sc2 from 3 hits. Then make it 4 for stormgate.
@@user-im7tq8hq6l Well, a better player will always win, no matter if it's longer or shorter. Longer means more mistakes, but if it's too short you don't get any feedback from a mistake, you may not even know you're making one. It's immediately too punishing and that's frustrating and stressful for players.
Armor and weapon attacks in SC2 provide break points which, fine they introduce knowledge checks that are a bit opaque, but it’s hard to replicate because you can’t give a siege tank an upgrade that lets them 2 shot roaches. I think we’ve gone too far in the direction of spelling everything out. I had a lot of hope that the team knew what they were doing back when monk appeared on the pylon show. I no longer have much hope tbh. I wonder how long it will take for them to make the game more explosive, either by changing the design or just literally decreasing ttk across the board, or if they’re also sticking to their guns on this one even though a lot of people have complained that impact is clearly lacking.
i cant believe the audio director had the guts to show his face after how bad of a job he did so far not saying the 2 other did a good job , but man...
They don't show face: "OMG, no communication!" They show face: "OMG, the audacity, how dare they show their face?!" There's no winning with some people.
I never imagined the RTS OGs of all gaming communities to have such low regard for integrity (in favor of a quick cash out?). Would John Madden start covering street craps? Whoever does get influenced into even looking this game up will immediately see the mixed reviews, hesitate to install, and form resentment towards said influencer. Digital seppuku really. I'm critical because I love gaming, and I love your previous work. If I didn't care, then I wouldn't care.
Is there another RTS being made by some former Blizzard Starcraft devs they should cover instead? Is there a brand new Stacraft or Warcraft RTS in development at Blizzard? Is EA developing a brand new Command & Conquer? There are no other projects out there with the same potential.
@@Oj_Stimson Which ones? I can't think of another classic style RTS project that's as high profile or well funded as Stormgate. I can only think of smaller indie projects that don't have the same potential no matter how well they turn out.
@@sheepfly People seem to be confused why this game is getting coverage, and those are the obvious reasons. Tasteless and Artosis have also covered other games too like Battle Aces and ZeroSpace. It's weird for people to be upset they are covering upcoming RTS games when their careers are playing, streaming, and casting RTS games. GSL isn't going to be around forever. Tasteless should be branching out and getting involved with new games like Stormgate and Battle Aces.
They need a Lead Art Director instead of a Lead Competitive Director. The vast majority of RTS players are not "competitive" Keep in mind 90% of players who actually play ladder in SC2 are below Diamond league. It doesn't matter if the game is competitive if it flops day 1. The first thing almost everyone does in the first hour of playing Stormgate is to immediately mute the Sound and the Music. Because it's horrible and distracting. And that's diehard RTS fans. If you don't think that's an issue you need to fix IMMEDIATELY there are problems.
I think Kevin is missing the point of regular upgrades. The loss of an interesting layer. Observing armies collapse TOO quickly and suspiciously checking upgrades. The ability to remember upgrades in the midst of micro. It’s completely erasing the skill set of judging how battles SHOULD go.
Yeah its really dumb. Upgrades add and enhance SO MUCH of the game on so many different levels, and even if what the dev was saying about them was true, its okay because you don't NEED them to win as a new player anyway. If I'm in bronze and my opponent has 3/3 marines and I have no upgrades, it's not going to matter when I storm them all to death.
Frost giant feels like they are kind overstretched and mismanaged SG completely ..They have smaller budget then AAA company but everything they are doing are trying to be like AAA.. They should be focused as smaller company on one mode and make that one mode epic...but they wanted 1V1 CO-OP Campaign and now 3v3 and nothing is good but everything is mid or belove average.. As for grades : Engine is A ,A+, Fantasy is D D- Space marines vs Diablo vs Robots angels, GFX are D D-.Sound is D.. Modes : 1v1 is B B+, Co Op is B+ A-, Campaign is D D-..
@@awagnow yes there are a lot of people who were against it, but it's not like it was all of it. Some, like me are happy it's functionally good - you can clearly see what is what. A lot of critical feedback also in this domain was kinda of just "make it better". Which is not very helpful. As far as just art style, and specifically "make it less cutesy" they clearly attempted that. So that is more like failure to implement not just ignoring outright. What was outright ignored is the expectation this game will have AAA graphics.
@@daPawlakI guarantee lots of people have them actionable feedback. They probably looked at what that would actually cost and decided they could get the game sold without it. They are going to find out they are wrong like every other aaa game that has tried to do that
@@BinxyBrown lol this is not a AAA game. And as far as not graphics related feedback I don't agree, they make changes based on what people say all the time.
Some interesting thing would be different upgrades for a unit you can switch to another upgrade and during the time of the switch the previous upgrade is removed and it needs 1 minut or so to change it to the other upgrade. So you buy upgrades that just increase the number of possible equipments of an unit. And you can switch between these different equipments and so it will be interessting and not overpowered you have no equipment while changing from on to the other.
Kevin: we want a slightly longer time to kill, and avoid armies getting one shot. Let's make units take 30+ hit to die instead, that will do it The game feels like playing warcraft 3 without the hero units to burst right now. It's unfun
@@trumpwonBIGLYbad take. I'd argue campaign and factions are the most important things most people look at when playing rts. Competitive is a smaller aspect of rts .
its incredible how professional tasteless is. 10/10 interviewer. he is such an inspiration when it comes to dedication and becoming the best at what you love
Really enjoyed these interviews! I play Warcraft 3 on w3champions for the past couple of months now and it really is the best ladder I've ever played on even with a relatively small playerbase, so it's great to hear that Frost Giant is working with them. It's fun to check in with SG every once in a while, and I hope they realize their vision so I can play a new top tier RTS.
you have not seen bronze league heroes my friend. theres an extremely common theme throughout most of the episodes of players just not using the stat boost upgrades but getting stim/hi-sec auto tracking
Can they pleas fix th performance issues that AMD processor users are having where they are dropping down to 20-30fps during fights. It runs horribly bad, can run other games at high-ultra settings, this game i cant even run at lowest.
i'm highly disappointed in the current state of the game haven't touched it in weeks, maybe will never again either it was basically a constant decline since they first showed ingame footage. i don't think it will succeed at all, if not for a major overhaul
If the Stormgate team's goal was to make combat longer, but only a little longer than Starcraft II, they have not achieved that goal yet. Combat looks like it takes four times as long as comparable combat in Starcraft II. It looks slow, sluggish, and painfully so. Maybe the issue isn't so much the length of combat but instead the boring slow burn of combat. Combat plays out like a story with no high points and no low points. Boring. If the Stormgate team was taking feedback seriously, they would be in an existential crisis for survival and clearly defining the absolute must-have changes over the next year or so, leading up to "release". All I see is everyone at Stormgate just acting like things are great and moving forward as expected.
Huge failure. I played the game to a high level but it's just so basic like there's no X factor. It's just microing around bland units over and over. At least Celestials has Dark prophecy which is like Storm in BW but you hardly ever see it at high level. Like they really didn't think thigns through. At high level there is no Tier 2 units or T 3 units. Everyone just rushes every game and it's not worth it to tech.
Pushing pvp is probably some of the dumbest ideas for growth. SC custom or SC2 co-op is why people enjoyed them to begin with. Let the meta shapes itself unless something is completely broken is a better approach. SC is not balanced via race, but via map, so why not take that philosophy to have asymmetric advantages instead? Giving every race an "early game" "mid game" and "late game" is a really great idea to make everything feel dull.
Yeah they completely misunderstood what makes RTS games appealing. It's the fact that you're controlling appealing units in an interesting world. Starcraft and Warcraft are Lord of the Rings and Warhammer 40k - the best fantasy and sci-fi universes in the world. Universally loved for their brilliant themes that hit home on every level. You can't just make a cartoon anime universe and think people are going to like controlling your bad models on a poorly textured map because "the balance is good".
@@zacrusk5274a good campaign is what hooks in many players and gets them to even try the game. You can't make it only a pvp game and rely on selling that to an audience that already has plenty of access to that sort of experience
And you're wasting yours too. Your comments won't change anything, people don't really care much about randos on RUclips that don't even know how to make a video game.
Im very impressed with their game engine. Seems like there arent many bugs and the pathing and AI seem good. Everything else looks like garbage. Gameplay 3/10 graphics -10/10 sound design 4/10
I don't see why there's so much fuss about Monk's approach to balancing in Stormgate. From what I gather, the aim is to make the game more accessible to new players, which is crucial for the game's long-term success. Stabilizing a casual player base is essential for maintaining a competitive scene; without casual players, competitive gaming wouldn't exist. They often transition into competitive players and are the main audience for competitive content. It's also intriguing to hear about the flexible tech/upgrades, allowing players not to be locked into risky early-game decisions. It seems like they're experimenting with gating certain tech/upgrades to enhance build diversity, particularly in the late game, but it's still too early to judge. As for the leaderboard, it’s clear they’re paying attention to community feedback.
If I make to old age such that it claims my life and I disappear, I'll know that day has come when I hear the faint whisper of Tasteless behind me..."Well listen-"
Hey Tasteless, I'm a game developer and a long time fan of both you, SCBW, SC2, and stormgate. I am here for Stormgate's future. I would love to see it grow and develop. I think we could see more questions about if the response to Stormgate has hurt the team emotionally. I want to hear pointed questions about the vision of the future of Stormgate and if its been achieved thus far. I havent heard much commentary from the Stormgate team what the core vision of the mechanics of the game is. I think the community feels like there is no core vision. There is nothing solid there to hold on to. We want to know what the core mechanic evolution is about.
How would asking about the emotional response to criticism be productive though? If they say it affects them people will interpret it as admitting defeat and if they don't the team is "ignoring criticism".
Guys I love your project and I love frostgiant but please stop Stormgate Early Access - Make a clear cut and try to cook something fresh - Come up with something new. As hard as it might get. Early Access showed us clearly => this game has failed alrdy => SHIFHT NOW :D
I'm not an expert on how game development companies manage their finances and maybe what I will suggest is downright impossible... but the one and ONLY thing that could save this game right now (because it does have some good mechanics worth saving) is if they would make some kind of "Mea Culpa" post acknowledging ALL the criticism (specially about the art style and graphics), then say that they will address it, then take the game DOWN, and then invest in COMPLETELY overhauling the visuals of the game... maybe not every asset in terms of shape and size but definitely the textures, the sharpness, the jarring "Pixar-ness" or " Fortnite-ness" of the whole aesthetic... Only THEN will it have a chance... EVERYTHING in this game is simply missing visual appeal... The minimap is the only thing with some visual sharpness to it. Everything else is SO flat, dull, and it all seems like it's made of plastic. All the characters fighting on the screen look like they are TOY versions of their real counterparts that exist somewhere else... Same thing with the trees and the terrain, it all looks like a plastic toy. Whoever green lit this aesthetic deserves to NOT be in charge of anything for a LONG TIME.
I feel like this game is getting a lot of needless hate. Is it perfect? No, but there is a really good and fun competitive game here. The dev team does seem to really care and what to put out a great product. It just seems like the SC diehards are actively rooting for this game to fail and that is super short sited. The success of Stormgate will only help improve the RTS scene and that is something we should all want. Please keep up the great work Tasteless!
Kevin Dong is the only creative and skilled person on that team. The concepts, art, factions, models, textures and every other part of the game are embarrassing.
@hypers829 it needs some work but players smoother than sc2, more fun to micro, easier macro, seems like next gen rts for me. But it's early access so obviously some things aren't finished. Give it a year or so and this thing will be pumping hard. Have faith
Can't wait for 3v3 gameplay. Already 1v1 is very fun, co-op looks promising but it has desperately too few maps. Camping is clearly just a failure right now. As for graphics - I like it's clear what is was. While I understand why a lot of people just don't want to even approach it cos of graphics for me personally it's just not important concern. I get it's super important for some other people, it does not matter for me other then clarity of situations, and for this it is really good already. I like they plan consistent update's and don't give up. Personally I am extremely glad that it's free to play early access, cos I enjoy the game in the state it is but I get why it's just not the state of product they would want to approach. If this was a ready game I would still have plenty fun with it but overall be disappointed cos it's clearly lacking in a lot of ways. I get though that it's actual early access not the typical steam early access meaning nearly done game.
pros, cons the game is lacking - good and DEEP lore - proportions and beauty in the art - short legged females, arms that are the size of the body, generic - cool looking units in RTS mode. argnety look like insects, rolling zealots? toy cars? the only cool unit is lancer the game pros - unit control and responsiveness - new ideas and optimizations - campaign implements new mechanics so in short the game can tank severely if they dont address the gaps
Agreed, Frost Giants should focus on making a good game with good lore instead of hard-selling on this "Spiritual sucessor to past RTS + future of esports" narrative
Stormgate is mechanically BRILLIANT. The 1v1 balance is magnificent. The problem is that virtually everything else is absolute trash. The faction concepts are comical. The graphic style and models are awful. The unit concepts and ideas are boring and inappropriate, and the textures and terrain look abysmal. There's no way to salvage all that now..
Oh ye Vanguard vs Vanguard Dog vs dog micro battles for the entire game is so brilliant and genius. Celestials expanding to the entire map, and scanning everything, proxying outside your base at the 3 minute mark is so genius. Kri being an auto win unit vs vanguard is so magnificent. What are you talking about? The game's balance is boring and stale as hell, people have oversold the quality of 1v1.
Dog vs dog is about the unit, and I already said unit design is abysmal. I'm talking about the overall match development and balance. It's great. Everything else is trash.
Stormgate is not the next generation of RTS, not even close. It is essentially just what we had before (un)cooked differently.
I do not give the game any bright future
I don't expect Tasteless to roast the dev's but some tougher questions could have been asked here. Especially of the 1st dev in charge of PvP
I could be wrong here but didn't he do these interviews right when EA dropped?
look how young that dude is. this is a typical case of hype getting ahead of reality. The game is gonna take time. Let them have it.
@@ditch_magnet that is such a weak excuse, hey fans we put a young person in charge of pvp you need to wait until they're experienced!
@@iBlagg8 Bullshit he's the actual guy in charge of pvp balance. he looks like he's half the age of the guy interviewing him. This is just a rank-and-file employee who got bullied in to sitting down for the interview his bosses didn't want but felt like they had to do. Creative Assembly did the same thing when they sat a guy down to be the "head of AI programming" in TW: Rome 2. Like just ask yourself, why would a game in early access be better than starcraft 2 which has had DECADES to smooth itself out? why would it look better, play smoother, or have more polished balance or mechanics? No, the game isn't ready yet. Why should it be? You wanted this guy to get skewered in this interview, well, i don't think he deserves that. The game is exactly where anyone with any idea of what it takes to make a RTS would expect it to be at this stage. Maybe marketing got ahead of themselves and the game ended up over-hyped, but i think it will still turn out fine as long as they can maintain funding.
@@ditch_magnet sorry my bro but you're kind of deluded. SC2 was a much better more complete and well designed game in it's ALPHA stage. There's footage, "battle reports" (casts of devs playing against each other, which I loved to watch when I was anticipating the game's release and even rewatched not that long ago because they were enjoyable) and so on from the Alpha stage, as well as SC2 also had a beta period where people were playing the game, and Then of course loads of people like myself bought the game on release, and I LOVED it btw, No memorable or big issues from the release of the game and certainly nothing that overshadows how great the game seemed overall, the game didn't need decades to be "smoothed out" and incomparable to Stormgate, it was a more complete game even in early Alpha.
As a nobody in the game industry and a starcraft worshiper i would advise stormgate developers to change the art direction. Review the shapes and pallete of color for each race and add 2d details to enhance the details and textures of maps, structures and units. A common complaint is the look of the game
absolutely agreed. There is something wrong with the art. It just ain't it. I think it needs a total overhaul. Nothing in the game feels cohesive, or like it's from the same universe. It's just like a hodge podge of random ideas. Very few things are cool, or make me feel excited to look at. It's just very uninspired and drags the rest of the game down. Whoever is in charge of art direction needs to be replaced yesterday, they are not good at their job, whatever their vision is, what's in the game sucks. It's not the quality that's bad, but the ideas.
this was a common complaint from the very start. They've committed now, it's not gonna change.
@@Strauss- Well, the game seems to be DOA already so..
If they don't change the art it's not getting played that's the same thing that killed mvci. People care about the game and characters being readable at a glance and having enough visual cues for us to remember what they do.
To be fair the amorphous boring glob monsters that every race has do accurately represent the current gameplay so...
man.. if only... we have said this 100k times. fix the art and the game will bloom, make it edgy, cool, a bit more realistic
Man this felt like total soft serve fluff. Common tasteless, you know what the community sentiment is right now. Push back a bit, give them some harder questions. Be our voice back to them, not an extension of the developers.
Does he know tho? I'm not sure tasteless bothers reading reddit. As the greatest human on earth he may be too good for that
he probably does, but the key word you're using is "right now". He already said at the start of the interview that it was done before the launch
@@jackawaka Why didn't he post it sooner then?
@@nightmareTomek I don't know, could be anything. Life events, scheduling, got put on the backlog for editing but more interesting videos popped up.
dude, don't die on this hill for the sake of hyping the hill
SG devs decided to repeat the success of SC2 1v1 but forgot that SC2 people got hooked on SC1 first (and SC2 successively), the story, the campaign, the gfx, the music and AFTER that the 1v1, and other modes
nobody cares about the SG characters, nobody cares about the story, people go meh about the "stylized graphics", Frank Klepacki isn't going to make the setting by himself
the success of BW and SC2 didnt came from progamers, it came from 10 apm casuals loving the single player who wanted more of SC, but because there was 100s of thousands casuals it distilled into progaming scene
progaming SG will be watched by SG progamers, just look at yt views, look at steamcharts, how viable is this long term
SG is going to end up as that "great 1v1 experience" nobody plays
"this game made me wanna play SC2 again" sums it up
SC1 became popular because of low requirements, unique factions and the meta was more diverse (most important point).
SC lore is just good enough and follows good tropes unlike stormgate that is the boring alien and celestial demons that have been done multiple times.
seeing ma boy frank klepacki working on stormgate got me so excited. but even that has been disappointing :(
I feel like you don't get it. The 1v1 mode is what is easiest to make. The foundation that everything else get's build upon. You don't need AI functionality, special mechanics, cinematics, etc. Which is why you can play 1v1 right now, but not a lot of campaign. It's not because they don't focus the campaign, it is because of the nature of developing an RTS.
The campaign we have right now, is their first draft fresh out of the oven. Even SC2 spend the last 3 years of development on Story, optimizitation and polish. That is after 4 years of prior development. What the heck do you expect a smaller studio with less resource to achieve in 3 years??? Like honestly, this is a problem with your expectation, not FG development.
Also, nostalgia is a giant factor playing into people loving the campaigns of BW and SC2. Don't underestimate that.
As for the graphics, that part I agree with. Even tho I personally don't mind stylized that much, a lot of fans do and FG should react to that for sure.
I recall blizzard showing their stats that more than 80% of RTS players only play the campaign or something like that.
Plot Twist: Stormgate is terrible on purpose to make people appreciate SC2 more and revive SC2
Given the mixed reviews of Stormgate, I'm pretty disappointed at the questions in this interview. There seemed to be zero tough questions here. For people following this game and really wanting it to be great the conversations here seemed to just be a lot of fluff and none of the common complaints were brought up.
I was really hoping to get some insight on how they were taking all the user feedback, what directions they are planning to take, etc. But the interview just seemed to be set ups to give generic canned take on RTS.
Would be been great to dive into specifics, mistakes and learnings and how stormgate planned to address these things.
Most people following stormgate, myself include, see a lot of potential in the idea of a spiritual successor to our favorite games, but have a lot of concerns of the current state. Obviously we're still in pre-release, but even still the general response -- even from people that were extremely excited for the game -- is that there are a lot of improvements needed. Many streamers / youtubers who were planning on playing a lot of Stormgate have pulled back and decided to wait given the current state.
Yet this interview did not give that impression at all. It seems almost like a paid marketing mock interview rather than what I was hoping which was delving into community feedback and answering some hard questions.
This is so damn accurate, as much as I love Tasteless and lots of the peopel from Frost Giant.
Obviously this was recorded slightly before that if you actually listened, this is part of the problem, people don't listen. Tim did an interview that's much more current about their plans. The only mistake really was that the campaign was far too undercooked, but that's to be expected as an early game when they're trying to show us everything from the beginning stages for feedback. You can't expect a finished game when they've told you its an early unfinished game, that's the definition of stupidity, you either give feedback and help them build or you wait, that's the nature of community build game development processes.
I guess another slight mistake was thinking the community would be receptive to helping them at all stages, but it's a slight rejection because players actually don't understand what in development means or listen so they have to switch their tactics, it's tough for them.
@@DrawAndErase My feedback was about the interview not to bash on SG. I don't mean any of these things in a hateful way. I want stormgate to succeed.
I understand Stormgate is in pre release.
Yes, the campaign isn't currently the best mode of the game, but there's a wide set of let downs surrounding 1v1 as well -- which I personally care most about -- the conversations are wide ranging in terms of user feedback.
My main point was that the interview felt like a missed opportunity to go deeper into specifics.
I did realize after posting this, as you pointed out, that this was filmed before it was fully released to all users which does slightly change things.
But the main points of my feedback remain.
A lot of people care about Stormgate because we want it to be great and are trying to keep tabs on it and this interview could have been a lot better imo.
I'd just like for the next time someone who gets a chance to talk for 30 minutes with the game developer leads to go a bit deeper. Even before pre-release people had already had a chance to Beta test and many people have already played the game or kept up on watching videos and there were lots of very specific feedback that have carried over into the current phase.
I watch a lot of interviews in general and like that format. Good interviews asks good questions that viewers care about and I just felt like that was missing substantially here and that leaves a feeling of disappointment.
Also the fact that it was released weeks after recording is a let down since there have already been multiple patches since then and it would seem obvious to me that an interview released weeks after a major event like full user release would be missing the mark on whatever the current conversation would be weeks / months later.
If frost giant is doing things correctly, one would expect that user feedback would be influencing direction, so this interview probably should have been released earlier so it didn't confuse people.
Again -- to sit down to watch a long form interview only to find out that not only are none of the many hot topics of conversations addressed, but also the interview is completely out of date at this point is disappointing.
Not trying to bash Tasteless or stormgate, but hopefully honest feedback can be constructive.
Tasteless does not want to get his mom fired... LOL
@michaelrevell1501 fair enough you're right that the questions were quite surface level, and yes it was filmed before free release so it's outdated now.
They're doing things the right way, but players are rejecting the community builds and want a finished game so it's going to hurt their process in general if they start to work backwards. I'm a game designer and artists and have had clients push us to do things the wrong way which hurts rollout.
They will be aware of issues, but letting personal biases get in the way or emotional doom bringing isn't going to make the game do well. People will just move on and it will be lost because of the community not Frost Giant.
If you see their notes they are listening and will adjust their direction based on player feedback. We will have to see what happens, but when I last played it it had no celestial, no tier 3 units, no camp art, nothing really so they are making progress even if people don't like it
Stormgates biggest flaw is its art style (of which it has none of in game) you could go so much harder on the style and individuality of each race but instead their all flat and bland. It really fails to draw people in and keep them interested. The games art is not memorable and the races are not stylized enough for people to get invested in them.
The biggest flaw is that the game is boring.
It’s not just art the whole thing lacks character or charm
The biggest flaw is that units play and interact with each other as bland as their art is.
Just the environment textures changing as a race expands would do a lot for the game.
This interview is so generic, it feels like an interview they could have done a year ago. No conversation of specific interactions that are happening now.
Totally agree, at the same time it's not Tasteless job to absolutely dismantle Stormgate in a critical interview.
They probably know by this point that the game was released too early, and the truth is there's ALOT of competition on the horizon.
Zerospace, Gates of Pyre, Tempest Rising, BAR, Mythology Retold, Sanctuary, DORF and I've probably missed quite a few. I think they will have more than enough incentive to listen to the more critical parts of the fandom.
They said at the start of the interview that it was done before the early access launch
Can't help but disagree with Kevin on a lot of points like players "not understanding why they lost, only to click and see the opponent had 3/3!!"
Isn't that like... a good learning point? a strategic decision your opponent made that you didn't account for, and can improve upon in the future.. pay more attention.. opportunity to out-macro... decide which upgrades youde like to invest in, and when yourself? Is clicking on an enemy unit a few times a game REALLY too hard for the audience they are targeting, AND YET they are focusing so much on Esports 1v1? So much of this answer begs more questions and leaves me scratching my head man..These are exactly the kind of gameplay design decisions that are leaving the entire game feeling shallow, lifeless, bland, and underwhelming
but...still a good interview i guess. Tasteless classy as always
A true next gen RTS would have unit designs change through the game to reflect the upgrades, and make it clear to new players without having to click on units.
One day maybe a game like that will come
Monk is clearly bad at game design. Seems more like a numbers guy, but his explanation for everything just helps me understand why the game feels so flat.
Also weird because I cannot really pinpoint what this game does well to attract new players... As far as I can tell it's not doing anything so I had to conclude they weren't really focusing on that but to hear him talk makes it sound like it's a chief design focus.
I just cannot see it.
It isn't a strategic decision it is just better macro
The issue is not that you have to click on the enemy unit to see it. The issue is that it is not properly communicated anywhere and is super hidden away. You wouldnt even know you have to click on an enemy unit and then *hover* over a stat pannel to see that. Unless you spend 2 hours a day on the sc2 reddit you might not learn that at all and are just left with frustrating losses where you keep losing fights and don't know why.
I do agree that the game loses strategic depth without these upgrades and has to make an effort elsewhere to get that back. I do also think they are on the right track with the upgrades they do have.
Tasteless, I genuinely think you need to move on from Stormgate. You're damaging your brand by continuing to plug a game that the RTS community has pretty firmly rejected. Just my 2 cents.
I hate to say it but the game is just not for me and that's fine as long as there are people who enjoy it. I'll stick to sc2 and battle aces. hopefully zerospace is good but SG isn't for me in it's current form.
You should try immortal gates of pyre too.
I do not enjoy them talking about fixing things that aren't broke, and what they DONT want in their game
While ignoring whats actually going on in the 1v1 meta
Not a fan at all of his explanation of why there are no attack and armor upgrades for units.
I thought it made a lot of sense.
What he didn't touch on is the strategical depth that you lose when you don't include them.
But I am coaching a new player in sc2 right now and it is actually very unintuitive for them to get upgrades. It doesnt feel like they do anything. Its not exciting or organic at all. Im just kinda left repeating "you just kinda have to get them, otherwise you fall behind".
He will cave and eventually implement upgrades
I would say it is the opposite. Most people who play the campaigns want "shiny" 3-3 units. To the point where they would not even make an army before their units are maxed and fully upgraded. That is the point at least in Warcraft 3. Grubby mentionned it a lot when Tyler1 was streaming his tournament, with many "newbs" and casual players, who agreed with this statement.@@skipp3252
@@skipp3252it's not that exciting to new players bc it's not visually obvious how good they are. If you show them that video where a 3/3 bc solo 3 other unupgraded bc, all of a sudden, it becomes pretty crazy.
He never mentioned how upgrades can funnel a player into a particular branch of tech, which an opponent can then use against them. It's more the fact there's 3 of them in a row, taking more time and resources with each level.
The upgrades: it allows another way to make the game dynamic in terms of power. Right now, # of bases is so important. what if you can't expand? upgrades can bring you back into a game. it's another way to make an investment that will have an impact on power dynamics. removing them makes the game less interesting. you can easily avoid the issues monk brought up about upgrade visibility.
My issue with increasing ttk from SC2 is that the ttk between normal units was never the thing that made losing your entire army to a single Disruptor shot frustrating. The existence of Disruptors was frustrating. Before units like that show up, ttk in SC2 feels absolutely fine. If anything, it's a lot easier to keep track of damage in a fight when death happens in an easily countable number of hits.
I'm going to keep saying the same thing everywhere I can, just repeat what the Ravager does. A unit that forces micro out of an opponent, but it's very doable micro and they just maybe have to do a lot of it and that's your advantage. Nothing undodgeable, nothing too devastating, just a nice little skill check ability.
I recently had an argument with someone who defended the Disruptor and said it's the best balanced it could ever be, while I tried to explain to him the concept of fun.
But even without the Disruptor units are dying fast in SC2, worst offenders in my opinion are stimmed Marines. They die fast, but if they don't due to a lack of splash, they pulverize things faster than the Disruptor shot needs to detonate.
And the Ravager ability, I hate using it because it's so spammy, and it forces both sides to babysit their armies.
@@nightmareTomek I love marines. They're a super fun unit and make for fun gameplay from both sides. Marines splitting against tanks and banelings and so on is one of the most iconic micro ever. and blowing marines up with AoE splash is super fun and them forcing an AoE splash response tbh makes for good gameplay. Also, the "low" TTK of SC2 really makes the micro more fun and skill-based with a high skill ceiling, which is fun because you really feel like you're expressing yourself and expressing your skill completely in every fight interaction
@@tambaz2276 And that's why I hate them. If you can outmicro strategically placed units like tanks, then the game isn't an RTS anymore, but a real-time-microing-competition. And if APM is the only thing you can express yourself in SC2, then players who like to express themselves in something different will leave. And they did in droves during LotV beta. The game could have been way more popular, but by now there aren't any left that want to express themselves in any other way than with micro, and it will never grow.
Sure, Marines running from Banelings is a cool interaction, the problem is only that every TvZ for the last 10 years had 1000 of these and NO OTHER type of interactions. No idea how you don't find that extraordinarily boring.
@@nightmareTomek Micro is a huge part of SC2 and its the best part as well. Its the most fun and arguably most expressive part, and its hardly based on APM at all, tho its also largely about how well you macro behind it and manage both tasks. and theres loads of other types of interactions lol, and yeah it doesnt get boring at all its extremely fun to play and has loads of skill expression
@@tambaz2276 If you don't demand from a game anything except APM, then yes. As I already said, SC2 has only players left that don't demand anything other than APM.
And it's not "arguably", stop phrasing your opinion like a fact. Or if you can't, then put your opinion somewhere where the sun doesn't shine.
For me Stormgate is not what I was expecting misses a lot in the visuals, the feeling of surprise in a match and the idea of a OMFG in fights. The game feels extremely unfinished. Hope they step up and change A LOT of things in game. I want this game to be the next big thing, at the moment doesnt feel like it.
The engine is great, the base is great, they have the tools. Now let's see them build an actual game. Fun, pacing, etc etc
its almost as if thats the point of the early access to get feed back a year or more before the game actually comes out.
“This unfinished game feels unfinished.”
First thing Monk says "we dont want people to lose their entire army from banelings/disruptor" - good - however then he says "still keep explosive aspect of the game" - there are no explosive aspects of the game that all players to show skill or swing momentum - see Day9's most recent video
not even allowed to upgrade units to actually make them more effective because apparently the playerbase is too confused by "clicking on units to check upgrades"
Its a complete nonissue, not even meta
I saw the day9 stuff and I really thought what he meant was decisiveness. Because there are explosive moments in the game but there isn't decisive, key moments in the game. And really explosive fights are really shit balancing if you ask me, doing 1 thing shouldn't be the end all, be all of any engagement (like how SC2 had it).
StarCraft is still going strong after 20 years because it has several decisive moments and elements. Decisive builds, decisive micro moments, decisive moves on the map, decisive scouting, decisive scans, decisive expansions, I mean I could just go on and on. Artosis is dead wrong when he said that the game isn't strategy first and foremost.
day9 explicitely said, that there are "sparking" moments in the game, there are just not enough of them. Fights *mostly* feel dull and unimpactful. But they do exist for sure and there is no reason why it couldnt get better in the future.
this perspective is literally anti-fun, with no risk there can be no reward. it's like trying to make a new version of Chess where you can't blunder your queen, or an FPS with no headshots. it's like bowling with bumpers or biking with training wheels. less risk = less fun, period. this game will stay boring until they reject this way of thinking.
He says +1/+1 is difficult to understand for newer players because you have to click on the units to realize why you lost the game. Here’s an idea: +1 makes units shot red lasers. +2 makes them shoot green lasers. +3 makes them shoot blue lasers. Now people understand why blue lasers units are stronger than red lasers units.
The problem with his argument is that he doesn’t seem to have thought about the game at all. He is so fixated on continuing to work on SC2 that he cannot see the forest for the trees.
It’s like someone else said: Frost Giants seem to be a place for Blizzard rejects to show that they were held down by the overwhelming bureaucracy and executives at Blizzard and that they really could have created a *better* game than SC2 if there were free to run wild. However, it appears as though they’ve shown the complete opposite; they have shown that they can’t build a game without the help of Blizzard infrastructure. In the end, Stormgate has been one large marketing campaign for Blizzard, paid for by desperate SC2 fans and executed by disgruntled former Blizzard employees.
guys. its only the first game. stormgate 2 will be good.
Starcraft 1 has a lot of issues and its still a good game,
@@JustinK0 we talkin about Stormgate, my guy
@@JustinK0 Yeah will the cut the 26 year old game some slack. But lets talk about the new game. The one with a 40 million dollar budget, years of retrospect to learn from, far better tools for game design, and team the size that made wc3.
Warcraft is Lord of the Rings and Starcraft is Warhammer 40k - the two best fantasy and sci-fi universes in the world. These RTS games are popular because they hooked into popular culture and the absolute best fantasy themes humans have produced. You can't make a poorly textured anime game with ridiculous factions and units, and expect the same result because "the balance is good". The soup is no good, it doesn't matter what ingredients you add.
Agreed. Look at magic the gathering. The first editions were so unbalanced, some of the early cards are forever banned in all formats(ahem black lotus). Yet it still became incredibly popular. Why? The fantasy of playing the different colors and themes was incredible. The card art was amazingly evocative. The characters and storylines compelling. The balance and refinements to gameplay occured in parallel over time. I'm not sure how FG could have missed this.
WarCraft is Warhammer fantasy though, it's not lord of the rings. Like, at all.
@@mrcookies409 Part of that is also OP stuff being really fun. It kills the game long term, but it's actually really good for short term first impressions.
Going for balance before everything is a bad idea, since it steers you towards making everything bland.
@@La0bouchere Eh I am not sure og magic was designed with that in mind. They probably just wanted to make cool stuff and realized they needed to balance the game more when it got more popular and people started taking it more seriously.
A game can come out balanced but also have plenty of flavor. SG severely lacks the later.
I like Tasteless, but I hate interviews like these. We need someone to be the interview villain who asks tough questions. How did you manage to interview the lead PvP dev and not ask him about the dog spam problem that has seen multiple bad iterations? At this point giving feedback feels pointless as many things haven't been addressed despite much feedback. We need a big personality in the community to hamper down the points to their face, this was a great opportunity but ya blew it.
this kevin guy makse zero sense about upgrades
Yeah, the dude is catering to people who can't read, like bro it's not that complex.
@@hypers829 I feel like this game is doomed with this guy in charge... he's at least in the wrong role if he's useful at all I swear he's the perfect definition of ex-blizzard team reject
I expected to see alcohol under the desks, looks of extreme panic, and people chain smoking cigarettes. But then I realized this video was before the release. To be a fly on that wall now..
You saw the guy taking the chair out at the start?! They’re selling the furniture and the guy bringing his dog to work - they’re phoning it in!
Feel like monk is the wrong guy to talk too. His part is doing good right. We need to know about the art and game design.
Ah yeah that would be a great interview: the people seem to dislike the art direction, could you please make some better models.
This kinda looks to me like total annihilation with cartoonish graphics and over simpified mechanics. I love tastetosis and SC but man, this does not make me want to try the game.
Honestly the game feels more cookie cutter than Total Annihilation. Total Annihilation had the percentage production reduction based on if you were overspending, radars that showed enemy units on a minimap and almost unlimited unit numbers.
Stormgate has... Creep camps? Units splitting on death I guess? It's just like not that interesting
@@yaboykirby7789 celestials has an energy mechanic similar to the production reduction. Vanguard has the radars.
nerf the darn dog already. why would u give it 2x damage to light units? for 50 resources? why does the Exo unit have automatic built in overkill protection??
They probably need to take the game offline and come back when it's closer to done. If the goal was to launch the game extremely early so they can make sweeping changes, this should be communicated.
This would've been acceptable as a limited alpha, but it is not acceptable as a full release early access
They can't afford that lol
Why do you think they released it so early in the first place? Don't tell me you actually buy into the "developing together" PR talk
They also said themselves that they are reliant on the game doing well in EA
It was communicated, clearly, several times. Some are just really dense.
@@SoulShiinaearly access doesn't mean much about the state of the game. Some go EA and are almost done, and EA is mostly for bugs and final ajustements, here it's more included in the development process, having regular feedbacks to adjust their development cycles.
It was communicated, it's been public information for years. The whole idea was to have it available for tests as soon as it was playable at all, and then stay up for 1-2 years before it gets to a polished state.
I misread future as funeral, but maybe that would've been more accurate
Monk's justification for not having +1/+1 upgrades is probably the weakest I've ever heard. Stormgate will without a doubt have +1/+1 upgrades in the future.
upgrades can be universal for all units, or transferable
we need more Dog fights in the VvV match up!
i was reading Dong fights
DORF realtime strategy conflict looks amazing
The amount of negativity around the game is far too severe but they seriously need to actually figure out what this game is supposed to be. There is no cohesive vision that I can discern at all. It's mostly just a mash up of Blizzard RTS, nothing original, nothing innovative, nothing novel.
Way too late to fix that problem. Don't have the money to completely scrap what they have and start over, which is what a lack of that single vision would require. Now it's all about trying to ram square pegs into round holes, and, that can work. Riot did it for years.
@@mgs85 I don't think that it's to late to make a cohesive vision, but there's a lot of work to be done. They have assets that can be used, and an engine that works pretty well. But there's no real core concept, and no real vision that draws you in - and that's the big problem right now, because new players are going to go to the campaign missions first, and the campaign missions don't do *anything* to help with that vision at all.
The negativity is an important signal that people won't be playing the game, however appropriately severe you deem it is irrelevant.
Questions for developers.
There have been trolls all over the internet saying that developers lied about being fully financed for full development and full release. The main accusation is that they were only financed up to Early Access release. And dependent on Early Access revenue for actual full release. What is the current financial status of the development to full release? And how much does Early Access revenue affect the possibility of the game getting scrapped/shut down without ever releasing? Just to be clear, the purpose of these questions are meant for clarification to doomsday trolls.
Next is a common notion that Early Access release is not a playtest, but a full release that should be held up to the standards of a completed game. Early Access by definition implies the game has not released. Although Early Access is a form of release, it is not a release of the game. However, multiple trolls are overtly claiming this game has released. As in a full release like any other game.
For example, complaints that the game feels rough and unfinished. And getting upset about imbalance. Although I can agree with some of the specific feedback in regards to specific problems. The general approach seems to me like complaining about a building under construction having no walls or roof. I have no expectations on balance at this stage of development and early phases of widescale playtesting. I would like elaboration on how users should approach Early Access. As if this is the final release of the game and what failure/success should be based on? Like the game is officially released. Or approach it as an unreleased game in development available for play testing. How should users interpret Early Access release in relation to games that are fully released.
Did he really say, the Legacy of the Void campaign was his favorite?
Completely disagree about the atk/def upgrades.
Having an upgrade advantage is a power fantasy that makes you feel strong and gives you a window to bully your opp Army. And from a viewers perspective, there’s a lot of drama around seeing the upgrade timings in pro matches.
Atk/def upgrades work in tandem with unit specific upgrades by giving a basic unit the potential for a huge power spike
I'm happy to wait and let Stormgate cook for a bit but I'm concerned that in this day and age if you don't hit the ground running on release, even "early access" release, you're dead. The market is just too saturated for people's attention spans.
Happy to support Tasteless and Arty, always will be, but I just don't know if SG has a future that's bright.
It doesn't even seem ready for early access.
I do not agree with the idea of having no upgrades for attack and armor either. The fact that the argument is 'it's not new player friendly to see your opponent has more upgrades than you' is pretty surprising to hear. Loved your cat getting in the way towards the end :P
I really got into RTS after the Christmas Bash for Starcraft Remastered and since then Ive played all major ones with my favorite being starcraft BW. RTS needs what MOBAS bring, slow ramp up with high skill expression moments. No other RTS has skill expression like BW, and while it wasnt by design it still works. League has wave control, BW has worker mineral boosting and worker creation/ commands.
Good job asking the easiest questions ever and ignoring all the glaring problems happening atm. This could’ve been a great opportunity for stormgate to do some damage control in an interview like this but instead it’s just double down on hype we don’t care about anymore since the issues are so large. 👍
Nick, I wish these interviews were longer.
Having battles last longer sounds good in theory but Day9 brought up a good point that it gives good players a bigger advantage because pros will always win a longer micro battle.
If the better players don't have an advantage, that's a pretty big problem for a competitive game lol
@@user-im7tq8hq6l I think the logic behind making battles longer like I wasn't paying attention all my units died in 2 seconds in SC2. You could just solve it by not making units like widow mines, baneling, storm.
Maybe make battles longer by just 1 hit. Like if they figured out on average, things die in sc2 from 3 hits. Then make it 4 for stormgate.
I mean the better player SHOULD win the game no?
@@twisteraustralus i think youre the blind one :)
@@user-im7tq8hq6l Well, a better player will always win, no matter if it's longer or shorter. Longer means more mistakes, but if it's too short you don't get any feedback from a mistake, you may not even know you're making one. It's immediately too punishing and that's frustrating and stressful for players.
Armor and weapon attacks in SC2 provide break points which, fine they introduce knowledge checks that are a bit opaque, but it’s hard to replicate because you can’t give a siege tank an upgrade that lets them 2 shot roaches. I think we’ve gone too far in the direction of spelling everything out.
I had a lot of hope that the team knew what they were doing back when monk appeared on the pylon show. I no longer have much hope tbh. I wonder how long it will take for them to make the game more explosive, either by changing the design or just literally decreasing ttk across the board, or if they’re also sticking to their guns on this one even though a lot of people have complained that impact is clearly lacking.
Agree. The TTK being so massive currently just leads to further deathballing issues.
i cant believe the audio director had the guts to show his face after how bad of a job he did so far
not saying the 2 other did a good job , but man...
kinda chad
They don't show face: "OMG, no communication!"
They show face: "OMG, the audacity, how dare they show their face?!"
There's no winning with some people.
@@HighLanderPonyYTit's almost like people just want to be upset about shit and yell "DOA"
@@HighLanderPonyYT why dont you play stormgate instead of commenting here ? you and the 950 other players needs you !!
I think Day9 nailed it when he said the game lacks exciting banger moments during fights - that's the number 1 thing they have to get right
I never imagined the RTS OGs of all gaming communities to have such low regard for integrity (in favor of a quick cash out?). Would John Madden start covering street craps? Whoever does get influenced into even looking this game up will immediately see the mixed reviews, hesitate to install, and form resentment towards said influencer. Digital seppuku really. I'm critical because I love gaming, and I love your previous work. If I didn't care, then I wouldn't care.
Is there another RTS being made by some former Blizzard Starcraft devs they should cover instead? Is there a brand new Stacraft or Warcraft RTS in development at Blizzard? Is EA developing a brand new Command & Conquer? There are no other projects out there with the same potential.
@@nankam there actually is 3 of them lol
@@Oj_Stimson Which ones? I can't think of another classic style RTS project that's as high profile or well funded as Stormgate. I can only think of smaller indie projects that don't have the same potential no matter how well they turn out.
@@nankamlike any of that matters 😂😂😂
@@sheepfly People seem to be confused why this game is getting coverage, and those are the obvious reasons. Tasteless and Artosis have also covered other games too like Battle Aces and ZeroSpace. It's weird for people to be upset they are covering upcoming RTS games when their careers are playing, streaming, and casting RTS games. GSL isn't going to be around forever. Tasteless should be branching out and getting involved with new games like Stormgate and Battle Aces.
these are the things we can do without come on. Im talking to you
Shout, shout , let it all out
They need a Lead Art Director instead of a Lead Competitive Director. The vast majority of RTS players are not "competitive" Keep in mind 90% of players who actually play ladder in SC2 are below Diamond league. It doesn't matter if the game is competitive if it flops day 1.
The first thing almost everyone does in the first hour of playing Stormgate is to immediately mute the Sound and the Music. Because it's horrible and distracting. And that's diehard RTS fans. If you don't think that's an issue you need to fix IMMEDIATELY there are problems.
I think Kevin is missing the point of regular upgrades. The loss of an interesting layer. Observing armies collapse TOO quickly and suspiciously checking upgrades. The ability to remember upgrades in the midst of micro. It’s completely erasing the skill set of judging how battles SHOULD go.
Yeah its really dumb. Upgrades add and enhance SO MUCH of the game on so many different levels, and even if what the dev was saying about them was true, its okay because you don't NEED them to win as a new player anyway. If I'm in bronze and my opponent has 3/3 marines and I have no upgrades, it's not going to matter when I storm them all to death.
Alexander Brandon is their Audio Director!!! 😱
i just wanna make sure everyone understands it is impossible to change keyboard scroll speed and the default speed is unbearably slow
Frost giant feels like they are kind overstretched and mismanaged SG completely ..They have smaller budget then AAA company but everything they are doing are trying to be like AAA..
They should be focused as smaller company on one mode and make that one mode epic...but they wanted 1V1 CO-OP Campaign and now 3v3 and nothing is good but everything is mid or belove average..
As for grades : Engine is A ,A+, Fantasy is D D- Space marines vs Diablo vs Robots angels, GFX are D D-.Sound is D.. Modes : 1v1 is B B+, Co Op is B+ A-, Campaign is D D-..
Well if that 250k salary figure for top people is accurate, they're mismanaged too.
"We are glad to listen players feedback but we are not changing the main problems listec in your feedback".
Which specific issues are like that?
@@daPawlak Artstyle. Though I know they can't change it at this point, they got that feedback years ago and decided to ignore it.
@@awagnow yes there are a lot of people who were against it, but it's not like it was all of it. Some, like me are happy it's functionally good - you can clearly see what is what. A lot of critical feedback also in this domain was kinda of just "make it better". Which is not very helpful.
As far as just art style, and specifically "make it less cutesy" they clearly attempted that. So that is more like failure to implement not just ignoring outright. What was outright ignored is the expectation this game will have AAA graphics.
@@daPawlakI guarantee lots of people have them actionable feedback. They probably looked at what that would actually cost and decided they could get the game sold without it. They are going to find out they are wrong like every other aaa game that has tried to do that
@@BinxyBrown lol this is not a AAA game. And as far as not graphics related feedback I don't agree, they make changes based on what people say all the time.
ya fire that guy (monk)
fire everyone. the game is so bad lol
Newer players don't know what firing means, just say take away his job instead.
The game is flaccid AF
“Your credibility of over a decade or this small stack of money, sir?”
“I’ll be taking the money.”
Some interesting thing would be different upgrades for a unit you can switch to another upgrade and during the time of the switch the previous upgrade is removed and it needs 1 minut or so to change it to the other upgrade. So you buy upgrades that just increase the number of possible equipments of an unit. And you can switch between these different equipments and so it will be interessting and not overpowered you have no equipment while changing from on to the other.
Kevin: we want a slightly longer time to kill, and avoid armies getting one shot.
Let's make units take 30+ hit to die instead, that will do it
The game feels like playing warcraft 3 without the hero units to burst right now. It's unfun
those infernal nerfs make the IvV matchup really hard.
"Monk is the guy in charge of the 1v1" Well I guess he's the guy that got 99% of the budget apparently.
as he should, 1v1 is the only thing that matters
@@trumpwonBIGLY doesnt matter much to the people that actually pay money for these games
whats funny to me , is that he talks much more about starcraft and how starcraft is great instead of how is own game is great lol
@@trumpwonBIGLYbad take. I'd argue campaign and factions are the most important things most people look at when playing rts. Competitive is a smaller aspect of rts .
@trumpwonBIGLY if it's the only thing that matters then it won't work out.
is this an old interview or is this from today/
this interview took place during the showdown i believe
~2 weeks ago, I think. Since they mentioned the early access release date.
its incredible how professional tasteless is. 10/10 interviewer. he is such an inspiration when it comes to dedication and becoming the best at what you love
great interview, but lol what
A.i much?
😂😂😂
Really enjoyed these interviews! I play Warcraft 3 on w3champions for the past couple of months now and it really is the best ladder I've ever played on even with a relatively small playerbase, so it's great to hear that Frost Giant is working with them. It's fun to check in with SG every once in a while, and I hope they realize their vision so I can play a new top tier RTS.
I feel like Testeless does not listen to what the guy is saying but he shoots the questions and then he things about boobs :)
Really cool insights. Definitely likeable people. I very much hope that Frostgiant goes on a long journey. Thanks a lot for sharing!
To a casual, upgrades are more of a " I like this unit, I want to make it better". They're detached from actual casuals
you have not seen bronze league heroes my friend. theres an extremely common theme throughout most of the episodes of players just not using the stat boost upgrades but getting stim/hi-sec auto tracking
this guy has no idea what hes saying or what hes doing. really concerned about the direction of the game with this guy involved
Can they pleas fix th performance issues that AMD processor users are having where they are dropping down to 20-30fps during fights. It runs horribly bad, can run other games at high-ultra settings, this game i cant even run at lowest.
i'm highly disappointed in the current state of the game
haven't touched it in weeks, maybe will never again either
it was basically a constant decline since they first showed ingame footage. i don't think it will succeed at all, if not for a major overhaul
If the Stormgate team's goal was to make combat longer, but only a little longer than Starcraft II, they have not achieved that goal yet. Combat looks like it takes four times as long as comparable combat in Starcraft II. It looks slow, sluggish, and painfully so. Maybe the issue isn't so much the length of combat but instead the boring slow burn of combat. Combat plays out like a story with no high points and no low points. Boring. If the Stormgate team was taking feedback seriously, they would be in an existential crisis for survival and clearly defining the absolute must-have changes over the next year or so, leading up to "release". All I see is everyone at Stormgate just acting like things are great and moving forward as expected.
Huge failure. I played the game to a high level but it's just so basic like there's no X factor. It's just microing around bland units over and over. At least Celestials has Dark prophecy which is like Storm in BW but you hardly ever see it at high level. Like they really didn't think thigns through. At high level there is no Tier 2 units or T 3 units. Everyone just rushes every game and it's not worth it to tech.
what rank is high level for you?
Pushing pvp is probably some of the dumbest ideas for growth. SC custom or SC2 co-op is why people enjoyed them to begin with. Let the meta shapes itself unless something is completely broken is a better approach. SC is not balanced via race, but via map, so why not take that philosophy to have asymmetric advantages instead? Giving every race an "early game" "mid game" and "late game" is a really great idea to make everything feel dull.
No. Just no. Please don’t pretend to be a sc player. You know nothing
Yeah they completely misunderstood what makes RTS games appealing. It's the fact that you're controlling appealing units in an interesting world. Starcraft and Warcraft are Lord of the Rings and Warhammer 40k - the best fantasy and sci-fi universes in the world. Universally loved for their brilliant themes that hit home on every level. You can't just make a cartoon anime universe and think people are going to like controlling your bad models on a poorly textured map because "the balance is good".
@@zacrusk5274a good campaign is what hooks in many players and gets them to even try the game. You can't make it only a pvp game and rely on selling that to an audience that already has plenty of access to that sort of experience
Director went from "1v1 anxiety" to dealing with team anxiety. oof
Maybe if people on the internet, especially in this community, where not so mean and so toxic, it wouldn't be like that. I dunno.
@@Frodonsake24😂😂😂😂 great joke
@@sheepfly yeah I know. Gaming community is so nice and chill, really.
No future....
Why does Tasteless look so dead inside from this interview?
Lmao shhh
Because he sold his soul to the devil, and as he grows older , he will look more and more depleted
he was forced to cast stormgate
He is overselling his enthusiasm because he thinks he owes it to his friends who work at FG.
because the greatest human on earth can clearly sense the flatness of stormgate and the sillyness of the kevin dong
Your wasting your breath and time. Stormgate is currently sitting at 942 players on steam.
yeah and that's during a big tournament and on a weekend. the game is dead already lol
@@Oj_Stimson DOA, Dead on Arrival.
Wow! So many players and the game is not even out yet! Amazing success so far!
And you're wasting yours too. Your comments won't change anything, people don't really care much about randos on RUclips that don't even know how to make a video game.
Why go to videos of a game you’re not interested in just to hate? Making games is hard, early access means they’re fixing stuff over time.
Why they seem to skip 2v2??? 😔
Im very impressed with their game engine. Seems like there arent many bugs and the pathing and AI seem good. Everything else looks like garbage. Gameplay 3/10 graphics -10/10 sound design 4/10
Who the heck gives this game a 10/10 on graphics wtf? Bizarre to be so supportive of that and so critical on the other things
@@eyeofhorus1301 He said -10 lol. Isn't the engine just Unreal Engine though? Unless you mean the netcode.
I don't see why there's so much fuss about Monk's approach to balancing in Stormgate. From what I gather, the aim is to make the game more accessible to new players, which is crucial for the game's long-term success. Stabilizing a casual player base is essential for maintaining a competitive scene; without casual players, competitive gaming wouldn't exist. They often transition into competitive players and are the main audience for competitive content. It's also intriguing to hear about the flexible tech/upgrades, allowing players not to be locked into risky early-game decisions. It seems like they're experimenting with gating certain tech/upgrades to enhance build diversity, particularly in the late game, but it's still too early to judge. As for the leaderboard, it’s clear they’re paying attention to community feedback.
Idk, casuals don't play 1v1, they play co-op. My friend watches co-op gameplay even.
This studio will close soon sadly, should’ve had enough money to fund developing another game after this one. You are screwed
If I make to old age such that it claims my life and I disappear, I'll know that day has come when I hear the faint whisper of Tasteless behind me..."Well listen-"
Tasteless is the greatest human being to ever walk the face of this earth.
Glazing much?
@@ezmoneyy149 not nearly enough
@@ezmoneyy149 Whoosh.
@@ezmoneyy149 No its true if you can't see that tasteless is the greatest human in history then you have no taste
The game just feel, boring and very unfinished
Hey Tasteless, I'm a game developer and a long time fan of both you, SCBW, SC2, and stormgate. I am here for Stormgate's future. I would love to see it grow and develop. I think we could see more questions about if the response to Stormgate has hurt the team emotionally. I want to hear pointed questions about the vision of the future of Stormgate and if its been achieved thus far. I havent heard much commentary from the Stormgate team what the core vision of the mechanics of the game is. I think the community feels like there is no core vision. There is nothing solid there to hold on to. We want to know what the core mechanic evolution is about.
How would asking about the emotional response to criticism be productive though? If they say it affects them people will interpret it as admitting defeat and if they don't the team is "ignoring criticism".
as much as i wish to support Tasteless but stormgate aint it chief
Guys I love your project and I love frostgiant but please stop Stormgate Early Access - Make a clear cut and try to cook something fresh - Come up with something new. As hard as it might get. Early Access showed us clearly => this game has failed alrdy => SHIFHT NOW :D
Kevin is a cutie
you are very cutie😍
I'm not an expert on how game development companies manage their finances and maybe what I will suggest is downright impossible... but the one and ONLY thing that could save this game right now (because it does have some good mechanics worth saving) is if they would make some kind of "Mea Culpa" post acknowledging ALL the criticism (specially about the art style and graphics), then say that they will address it, then take the game DOWN, and then invest in COMPLETELY overhauling the visuals of the game... maybe not every asset in terms of shape and size but definitely the textures, the sharpness, the jarring "Pixar-ness" or " Fortnite-ness" of the whole aesthetic... Only THEN will it have a chance... EVERYTHING in this game is simply missing visual appeal... The minimap is the only thing with some visual sharpness to it. Everything else is SO flat, dull, and it all seems like it's made of plastic. All the characters fighting on the screen look like they are TOY versions of their real counterparts that exist somewhere else... Same thing with the trees and the terrain, it all looks like a plastic toy.
Whoever green lit this aesthetic deserves to NOT be in charge of anything for a LONG TIME.
I feel like this game is getting a lot of needless hate. Is it perfect? No, but there is a really good and fun competitive game here. The dev team does seem to really care and what to put out a great product. It just seems like the SC diehards are actively rooting for this game to fail and that is super short sited. The success of Stormgate will only help improve the RTS scene and that is something we should all want.
Please keep up the great work Tasteless!
they can care all they want, the game still sucks
Conflating criticism for hate.
Yeah, SC2 was equally rough in beta. It was clunky and slow and ugly.
I don't know if Stormgate has enough resources to polish it as SC2 did, though.
😂😂😂😂 hate
This guys dumb. Bad game is fucking bad. Then calls it needless hate. LOL.
Game is cooked.
Very
Yeah I don't even want to watch this video because it feels sad. 1.5k player peak in Steam during the weekend. Just cut your losses...
The moment I lost hope was when we learned of the burn rate
Kevin Dong is the only creative and skilled person on that team. The concepts, art, factions, models, textures and every other part of the game are embarrassing.
it's not cooked is the problem
The devs sound like they already made the next top RTS. We will see... we will see...
love the hiring of w3 champs!
People love to hate on this game, i was skeptical at first, but its really fun tbh, and it feela modern and inprovement of rts
Hate 😂😂😂
Ikr, gives me DoW 3 vibes. The "fans" buried that. Sometimes, they can be the worst.
People tend to hate bad games, especially if they were promised a spiritual successor to their most beloved games.
@hypers829 it needs some work but players smoother than sc2, more fun to micro, easier macro, seems like next gen rts for me. But it's early access so obviously some things aren't finished. Give it a year or so and this thing will be pumping hard. Have faith
Where are the improvements?
Can't wait for 3v3 gameplay. Already 1v1 is very fun, co-op looks promising but it has desperately too few maps. Camping is clearly just a failure right now.
As for graphics - I like it's clear what is was. While I understand why a lot of people just don't want to even approach it cos of graphics for me personally it's just not important concern. I get it's super important for some other people, it does not matter for me other then clarity of situations, and for this it is really good already.
I like they plan consistent update's and don't give up. Personally I am extremely glad that it's free to play early access, cos I enjoy the game in the state it is but I get why it's just not the state of product they would want to approach. If this was a ready game I would still have plenty fun with it but overall be disappointed cos it's clearly lacking in a lot of ways. I get though that it's actual early access not the typical steam early access meaning nearly done game.
😂
@@sheepfly OMG someone likes a game you don't like, how dare they 🤣
@@daPawlakyou can like it all you want, I just find it funny 😂
@@sheepfly weird sense of humor but ok
Stormgate has no future beyond your hype, you should have called yourself Brainless...
LOL burn
pros, cons
the game is lacking
- good and DEEP lore
- proportions and beauty in the art - short legged females, arms that are the size of the body, generic
- cool looking units in RTS mode. argnety look like insects, rolling zealots? toy cars? the only cool unit is lancer
the game pros
- unit control and responsiveness
- new ideas and optimizations
- campaign implements new mechanics
so in short the game can tank severely if they dont address the gaps
Optimisation ? Everybody has CPU performance problem. Their is no 3v3 because it simply cant run proprely.
Agreed, Frost Giants should focus on making a good game with good lore instead of hard-selling on this "Spiritual sucessor to past RTS + future of esports" narrative
complete waste of an interview
Game fucking sucks, i needed 1 min to make up my mind... not touching that garbage.
Stormgate is mechanically BRILLIANT. The 1v1 balance is magnificent. The problem is that virtually everything else is absolute trash. The faction concepts are comical. The graphic style and models are awful. The unit concepts and ideas are boring and inappropriate, and the textures and terrain look abysmal. There's no way to salvage all that now..
"mechanically BRILLIANT" lol? "The 1v1 balance is magnificent" sarcasm?
have you seen the pathing?
Oh ye Vanguard vs Vanguard Dog vs dog micro battles for the entire game is so brilliant and genius. Celestials expanding to the entire map, and scanning everything, proxying outside your base at the 3 minute mark is so genius. Kri being an auto win unit vs vanguard is so magnificent. What are you talking about? The game's balance is boring and stale as hell, people have oversold the quality of 1v1.
@@hypers829 why are you going bio vs kri?
Dog vs dog is about the unit, and I already said unit design is abysmal. I'm talking about the overall match development and balance. It's great. Everything else is trash.