Maybe it can put an end to some pain in designing units so disliked in SC2. Would that mean only 2 races? Hopefully not, they know we need at least 3. Also they talk about fantasy and sci fi colliding, this is not necessarily a bad thing but hmm think it like Heroes of the Storm but an RTS. Hopefully not unlockable with payment units like mobile strategies that are more or less a casino masked as a game. Let this be an real RTS like what we know them as. And it comes with an Editor
Itâs well understood in game design theory that the vast majority of people do not like mechanically stressful games like SC2. A good example of this is League of Legends. It is a fact that League and SC2 are both RTS games of different flavors, and that these differences make League about 3600x as popular as SC2.
SC2âs design has way too much emphasis on APM spam and this makes the game accessible only to the elite class of mechanically gifted snobs. If you were to reduce the APM requirements of SC2 by about 10%, youâd probably increase the number of people who play it by 10 fold. Any game designer is going to be keenly aware of this principle and it would be pure financial suicide to design a game like SC2.
SC2âs flavor of RTS has such an extreme emphasis on multitasking that there is a solid argument to be made that you canât even call it a strategy game anymore. Itâs definitely real time, but strategy plays a VERY minor role compared to mechanical tasks within the game like macro, multitasking, etc. SC2 is a new genre of video game called an âEAMâ or âEndurance and Multitaskingâ game, which has a minor strategical element. You could argue whether EAM is a sub-category of RTS or truly a new category of its own, but the extreme emphasis on mechanics most certainly puts strategy in the backseat.
APM has a correlation with win-rate on a per individual basis of 0.65. On a per league basis, APM has a correlation with win-rate of 0.98. Strategy is at most 5-10% of the skill in SC2.
Starcraft 2 does have many âcompetition for the sake of competitionâ designs like non-auto creep spreading, queen injections and supplies, things that have next to no strategic value but are not automated simply because they want you to outclick the opponent as a form of competition. This is utterly unsuitable for modern players. But this has nothing to do with what I said, that the visuals of stormgate are not AAA tier and look like somehting straight out of a casual phone game. Itâs like a generic indie game that doesnât stand out in any way.
Itâs totally fine that itâs not automatic. The problem is that there is too much of it to do. If they increased the range of the creep tumor by 1, and increased the cooldown to use the ability from 11s to 12s, it would cut the APM required to spread creep by 10%. Thatâs 10% fewer times you have to focus your multitasking on creep spread, allowing you to put your attention into the strategical elements of the game.
I dont think Batz has studied game design like I have but I agree with him, and I have been considered elitist. As I am not finding a problem to play games like SC2 but apparently many are.
So, even if I do not mind the difficulty, I play Brutal campaigns, 1v1 all the time, never casual stuff, playing Terran etc.
And I was struck when David Kim said âBest moments come from worker harassâ. Im like⌠really? And then came ENTOMB ability of Tempests, Oracle ability, well any unit designed to wipe 80 workers even mines, Disruptor drops or even templar drops if still done.
HotS and map Frost LE . Ive the best memories of âWorker harassâ, like some dude was ceaselessly alternating the units to just do something behind.
So yes, I will not advocate SC2 even as someone who doesnt mind the pace. Thats why for me War3 is best balance between skill and micro (even if it is micro than macro).
Even the Editor of SC2 was made as if you need university degree to know to do a lot of the editor specific things that you didnt know from War3 editor. Countless number of fields, 60% or 70% you do not even need these fields, they slow down your computer, make the editor crash, you type a word in search field and it freezes because it doesnt wait you to type the word, instead gives you all results with first letter âBâ and that slows down.
Everything in that game was made to be ridiculously tedious!
I currently have mixed feelings about (the presentation of) this gameâŚ
Most of us are hoping for some refreshment in the RTS-sector but after seeing the presentation Iâll reserve judgement until I have played it a bit.
Looking at the world it looks like an updated version of Warcraft III with a rather cartoonish style of units and Iâve got a gutfeeling thatâs going to be a little mismatch if your gametheme is science fiction.
Itâs also kinda hard for me to be enthusiastic atthe very early beginning of the story as well since once can already name dozens of games which find something in a crypt/dungeon/location after which hell breaks loose.
About the factions nothing seems to be very original too (yet). We have our terran race which looked like a reaper rescuing an archelogist, combined with some demonish race (undead? / zerg? âŚ) which will be probably the main adversary and I already got a hunge they discovered the protoss race: maybe they found the shield of Aiur after all .
The name also isnât very exiting imo: I guess they couldnât go with warpgate since it would be openly ripped off but apparently thatâs what the âstormgatesâ do: being portals to other worlds Like in :warcraft, world of warcraft, diablo I, II, III, oblivion, mass effect I, II, III, âŚ
In that aspect names like âWarcraftâ, âStarcraftâ, âLeague of Legendsâ, âHeroes of the stormâ, â Mass effectâ, and others pack more punch.
Letâs hope they come up with some more spicy content in the upcoming months because Iâm not hyped yet even if I want to be.
^ My first thoughts are also not very positive. I expected something like the Crossfire game in the other threads. When Wardi played it I saw something (if mirror match) that reminded me of banshee vs terran, some cyclone-like t hings but it still felt like a new sci fi RTS with similar mechanics to SC2. Also the graphics of Crossfire are what I imagine for a newer RTS, visibility of units is still good and terrain more realistic. But it is a pay to unlock game.
Good that this game by Frost giant is not pay to unlock but the graphics ⌠ugh I expected more like Crossfire graphics. Also im not sure about the plot either, I call it Diablo but as RTS. But then it is more like heros of the storm. Im not sure about the plot, if they make more races. Another I imagined is something like heroes of might & magic with all these different races but an RTS not turn based. Why didnt they go for something like that, the plot strange. Or why aliens arent really aliens, aliens are demons lol (some religious people claim that in ufology)
props for making it on UE5, I was about to check the new features of that engine myself. Best choice they could have taken.
Theyâre using pre-alpha assets, to be fair. The in-game footage was far from finalized. I have a feeling it wont look like that when its done. But I donât mind it being brighter.
We know next to nothing about the plot, and have seen very little of it. Im going to reserve judgement but Iâm damned excited to play nonetheless. Definitely props for building it in UE5 though, that had to have taken a ton of work to do because the UE5 engine is NOT built for RTS.
Use of UE5 was one of the things that I noticed which is a red flag. I am old school. Games I programmed were done using OpenGL and GLSL. Using an engine like UE5 has almost no appeal to someone who is capable of actually writing their own graphics engine.
UE5 has curb appeal because it has a lot of features that speed up early development, but, ultimately, slow down development or even halt it in the long run. A big and bulky engine will be hard to adapt for new and exotic applications, so itâs going to do the same old thing that every other game does which is based on that engine. Implementing simple features is fast but complex features are difficult because you have to work around the cumbersome engine.
A custom engine by comparison can have any feature you design it to and nothing more, making it lightning fast yet sufficient for your needs.
I would disagree with this in part on account of how heavy a role âfooling your opponentâ plays, many matches can be won simply by selling to your opponent the idea of you going for a different build than you really are. In a similar vein, the build you come up with, specific to the map and the matchup is also very important, moreso in SC1 but I do think it plays a role in SC2 as well. So I think, while the actual gameplay itself has zero strategical decisionmaking and relies entirely on execution, the planning that takes place before the match is noteworthy.
I understand this has narrow applications, especially since 99.9% of the playerbase just copies what the top 30 players come up with instead of making their own strategies. Still, players like Bly or Kiyj or Has or even meme-worth non pros like Florencio set themselves apart by their âstrategyâ solely. I understand this is more like tic-tac-toe than chess, but still.
My favorite example of âstrategyâ was when around a year ago in ASL Flash was playing a ZvZ on a three player map and he came up with a build that literally could not have been beaten by his opponent. This build only worked on this specific map, with both players exactly in the right spot out of the three, and it would not have worked if Flash hadnât been playing Random, and it also wouldnât have worked if he had been scouted first, but it was a literal 100% winrate build that couldnât have been beaten by any reasonable opening. If that isnât strategy, I donât know what is. (of course this was in BW)
Agreed, Mechs will always be cool but a 50 pound woman with a shield going up against neo-doomguard is both goofy and bad-looking. I hope they come up with much cooler designs for the demons because as is, this really might as well be a clash of clans unit, such a weird choice for your promo trailer.
Iâm also baffled by the fact that they started the project from the ground up in 2020 and theyâre putting a beta test version out in 2023! Thatâs such a ridiculously low amount of dev time, just think about the fact that SC2 was made over the course of a whole decade, with infinite money and the greatest talents in the industry. I wish that Stormgate manages to be something special, but Iâm not exactly hopeful.
I swear if itâs something cheesy like an SC2 arcade game ripoff, Iâm giving up on any future RTS right then and there. I have high expectations, but low hopes.
The cinematic was underwhelming initially⌠until I realised that itâs made in engine. And the assets we see on the steam page are all pre-alpha assets, so not finalized. Iâm honestly completely open to the game, and have signed up for the beta. Iâm excited one way or another and most of the other RTS really havenât caught my eye at all.
Rote memorization is something that humans in general are very good at. There is only one Beethoven, but loads of people play his songs on the piano. Creativity is rare and generally follows a pareto distribution - the square root of the people participating in an endeavor produce 50% of the creative output. Interestingly, there are about 50,000 unique ladder accounts and the square root of 50,000 is 223 aka the size of Grandmaster.
The problem is that the game is âfigured outâ and the best strategies and responses are already mapped out, so the game is about who can implement those strategies the best which is a question of mechanics. Map variation is supposed to shake up the meta, but doesnât to a sufficient degree. Most maps are quite reserved with many similarities to previous maps, or even outright copies of previous maps but with minor modifications. New maps arenât creative enough and variable enough to shake up the meta enough for strategy to play any role whatsoever.
There have been some minor strategic advancements but 99% of the game is mapped out. For example, Zergs discovered that lurkers are good at breaking positions, but not good at holding them. So, you charge in and clear a position, then leave it soon after. This is due to how lurkers are quite good at clearing out tanks and planetaries, as well as zoning out bio, but are weak, once burrowed, to snipes from ghosts. Lurkers create âno man landâ zones where neither terran nor zerg can control the territory. Zerg canât ever mine this base, but neither can the terran. Thatâs the only strategical advancement I can think of in recent history, and that was like a year ago.
UE 5 is the engine. However, given that the engine is designed to run other games, they have coded several different modules to make RTS games playable within UE5 as well.
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