Grubby's Thoughts On Stormgate (Open Beta)

After playing about 20 or so games of Stormgate, let's dive into my thoughts on the game so far. We'll cover gameplay, music, lore, UI and everything in between!

Grubby's Thoughts On Stormgate (Open Beta) (Live on 4-February-2024)

#Stormgate #Review #Beta

[jacksonjstewart]

Thanks for being honest even with FrostGiant in chat. importance may not seem obviously important over gameplay, but is what gets you invested enough to sink into gameplay.

[Xoot]

Grubby is extremely smart and handsome, because his opinion aligns with my own.

[trassage]

For me, the universe is a big selling point for the game. It has to be believable, logical, well thought-out and with a distinct style that glues everything together. The human race looks like it's taken from sci-fi genre, demons are taken from fantasy genre, and while this is a PC game, its graphic style is more suitable for mobile phones. It feels too safe. Sadly. I hope the gameplay and the third race stiches it all together but right now I don't feel invested in the game even one bit. But I want to.

[MaybeBlackMesa]

No soul. There's not a single WC3 unit that's not bursting with personality, and most SC units are beloved, like Marines, SCVs, etc. There's more to a game than systems.

[ice_fox]

The gameplay and control has high potential, but the look needs a LOT of love. It's not good when the entire map ground looks like a blurry piece of spray painted cardboard, and the units and buildings look like plastic GI Joe playsets.

[gunkanjima]

As for visuals, I see a lot of people comparing it to “the early days of SC2” which I find odd because those early days still had fantastic graphics. Like you said it looks a bit “Pixar-ish”

[hellzpawn]

I was sooo hyped about this one, BUT after the 2 betas, I dont know, for me it looks and plays "souless", like they took mechanics of War3 and SC2 mixed them up and wait for what sticks, doesnt have its own personallity. Even every content creator I saw dont call the factions for their true name they call them 'terran and zerg" lmao, I dont see any innovation, they are selling the ' we are old Blizzard devs" way too much trying to capitalize on a dead AAA horse. The models look way to clean and cartoony for a setting of a space demon invasion, I dont want Doom levels of grit or gore but cmon a little more creativty?, also units need more impact in animations and sounds, like when terran marines shoot or siege tanks enter siege mode or yamato cannons in battlecruisers, are so iconic, sadly graphics and presetantion also sell games, how UE5 looks like a moblie game? Hope they can crank their artstyle to 11, because SC2 and War3 refunded still hold up pretty well, ngl.

[nestedmistake]

The thing to learn from this (for any game devs looking at the harsh / negative reactions) is that the player base is like a pyramid; at the bottom you have the biggest amount of people that are either new to the genre or very casual; looking for something cool to play and don't care about competitiveness / high level of play; there doesn't seem to be much there for these type of players (perhaps the first few singleplayer campaign missions might have been good to include in a beta?). This problem can either be skin deep (too early in development) or it can go right to the core (if the game is made for pure competition / esports and doesn't care all that much about casual play); we can't tell for sure at this point but it's not looking like they care much about the singleplayer mode / concept at this stage. One thing to keep in mind is that a percentage of casual players will eventually climb the pyramid and become competitive / interested in high level of play so it's (usually) important that this pyramid base exists if you want to reach a wide audience. For the devs; it may not be too late to hire a designer that has singleplayer / campaign strengths to help pull things together as currently it just looks like a bunch of functioning systems without much game design (outside of competitive play); if you aren't already doing so.

The other main thing I'd take away from this is that messaging is important; this is not a beta, not even close. If you see the devs responses they say it's very early in development still so shouldn't this be called a pre-alpha? When you call something a beta it should be pretty much done outside of bug fixing, balancing and polish. Early access games launch at various different stages (prototype, pre-alpha, alpha, beta, completely finished) so maybe that's muddied the waters a bit? But either way; definitely don't call a pre-alpha game a beta as people will have much higher expectations in general.

[auspex]

After the initial announcement of the game I was quite hyped about it and really looked forward to getting my hands on it. But after giving the beta a try I have to say my hype switched to a mix of disappointment and concern.

Disappointment because the way this plays and feels just gives me absolutely no reason to play this game over SC2. I love the SC2 coop mode and the beta demo of Stormgate was such an absolute letdown.

And I feel concern because, according to a mod on the steam forums of Stormgate, the game is supposed to go into early access this summer. So that basically means what we saw in the demo is what we'll get then. To be honest, I don't see the game surviving for long if it's like what we were presented in the demo.

To put it bluntly, after the demo i felt like that one meme of a kid asking for Starcraft 2 and the mom says no, we have Starcraft 2 at home already. And Stormgate is the "Starcraft 2 at home" meaning it feels like a cheap budget version of SC2.

[EnraGEsen]

The hype arround stormgate got me back into following the sc2 esports scene so I'm thankful for that xD

[flufychickens]

Honestly after playing the beta i just felt meh about it. Nothing terrible but nothing great. Felt like i had to force my self to que just after a few games

[skwasigr]

I enjoyed that grubby uses paint to read out what could be a text file

[shnorkeythefourth]

When I saw it the first time I thought “so it’s terrans vs Diablo set on a Warcraft stylized art and map”

It’s mixing the three blizzard games in personally the worst way for me. The story could make up for it, but that depends on if story matters to them or if they’re focusing purely on the hardcore esports scene

[tranquilitydove]

Pixar-esque art style. That's exactly it. I played the open beta a little bit, I'm not the biggest fan of 1v1 but the coop was fun. I just really dislike the art style. It just feels too silly, and it dosen't mix well.

[peterp]

If I'm being honest this game just looks like a shittier version of starcraft. Like a bigger version of a fanmade project that could never reach triple A quality. The game feels cheap and soulless as if people who aren't creative enough were pushed to make something up, so they come up with some generic shit. I can't imegine it being popular ouside of some older guys who are bored playing sc2. Especially with sc being free to play. I think it would've been a lot better idea to make a game similar to WC 3 because WC 3 is too old now, there's a market. Or just making something really innovative instead of just copying blizz games. Maybe that would've helped with the creativity problem. I'm sorry for being so harsh, it's still a good game, but the developers should wake up if they wanna succeed. Because it's good, but sc 2 is a lot better while being free and the RTS market is severely limited. However, I wish best of luck to the guys working on it.

[tfahey]

Playing as demons doesnt feel like playing as demons.

[daledadolphin]

I don’t understand the point of a game in a very difficult genre that is just a rehash of other games that are struggling for players. I feel like you called it out under innovation very well, but this is the biggest issue for me. There’s not enough going on visually or lore wise to make up for the lack of innovation in the gameplay. There’s just no reason to play the game at the moment

[keagancollins]

nice review. one comment on the lore: it looks like they are doing the doom story where humans get too greedy and open a portal to hell while trying to generate energy(also social commentary on human impact on climate change). Third faction will definitely add some depth to lore too (probably will be sci fi angel type faction also like angels from doom). I will spend far more time engaging with the multiplayer aspect of the game but I really hope they are able to make a story that will impact people the way the brood war, warcraft 3 and especially age of empires stories impacted me as a kid. This is a tangent but age of empires got me obsessed with history as a kid, to the point I aced every history class and almost became a history major in college. People poo poo on rts single player campaigns but they should not just be an afterthought, they shape the perception and impact of a game.

[schapel]

They should address the art style / graphics issue ASAP. Pretending it's not a problem is a big mistake. And the worst part about it is we all know why it look the way it does. Someone sold them on the idea that "kids like this stuff, bla bla" ... find me a kid who's old enough to play RTS who doesn't like guns, badass trucks and dinosaurs.

But maybe they are right... just recently Blizzard, instead of making D4 more cartoon like its predecessor (it's all about the kids, remember?), they went back to the darker setting and they sold little to no copies... wait, what's that?
"Diablo IV became the fastest-selling game in Blizzard Entertainment's history."

Oh.... that's unexpected... what happened to all the

[zionellis]

They have mentioned that they plan to release the campaign in 3 mission segments similarly to how the Nova campaign from SC2 was released.

I personally am not satisfied with this decision since I know it just won't ever give the compelling experience or value of a fully complete and realized campaign similar to that of say WC3 (Of which is the kind of campaign I dream to see again). It's wild to think that War3 reign of chaos gave 37 missions over 4.5 race campaigns for the cost of $60 while currently the $60 tier from FG's Kickstarter includes 9 missions total for a single race which is going to be cut up into three, 3 mission segments. This is not even mentioning the expansion Frozen Throne which adds another 22 missions not even including The Founding of Durator bonus campaign.
I know games today just can't offer the same level of value, just to acknowledge that.
As for quality, there is no way to know if quite yet if the quality will be on par but I don't feel like I need to worry about that much with this team. Still, cutting it up may hinder the experience even if the overall quality of each individual mission is amazing.

Enough about my own thoughts though, I am curious to know what you think and feel about their plans for the campaign. Perhaps your outlook might be a bit brighter than mine? :)