Lets talk about Stormgate! Thoughts, concerns, and the future?

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[TGMS]

In my opinion, the game takes too much inspiration from SC2 in ways in which it shouldn't take much inspiration, and it doesn't take enough inspiration in ways in which it should. The races are a straight up copy paste in terms of vibe and very inspired in design too, but they failed to capture the uniqueness of the original 3 races. The new protoss like race feels cheesy just like protoss, but doesn't feel good to play in the sense that you don't feel like you're outsmarting the enemy with your cheese, you just feel like you're cheesing for the sake of doing so. It's the difference between spamming a 50/50 in a fighting game vs. spamming a single move. Both are a kind of cheesing, but only one requires you to be kind of engaged in what you're doing. The Infernal race just doesn't feel like Zerg at all, and it doesn't have to, but if you're clearly making it look like Zerg, don't trick us Zerg fans. The mist isn't even a hundredth of the fun that creep was and it doesn't feel a millionth as good to spread. The feeling just isn't there, you don't feel like you're corrupting that zone so that your little ugly creatures can excel in it because it's their environment now, you just feel like "Ok now I get a buff in this zone, got it". The terran like race, which in my experience is the one that took the most inspiration from SC2, is just an easy to get into, but complex to branch out race, just like Terran. Doesn't feel unique at all. All of this and I haven't even mentioned the designs on the characters, which are a whole'nother conversation about how bad they can be in some cases... Game doesn't feel as fluid as SC2, doesn't feel unique in any department and honestly I just think this was the nail in the coffin of RTS's. I'll also say that elevating Frost Giant and Stormgate on the "RTS Savers" pedestal wasn't a good move, not by us fans and not by FG themselves.

[aviFlashbacks]

One thing is they advertised it as a “next gen social” RTS, which it does do some cool things, but I wouldn’t call it next gen (yet, might be in the future) as well as lacking pretty much every social feature, as well as a small character limit in in-game chat messages.

[sealboy]

The simplest answer is often the most accurate. People left immediately because the game is poor on all fronts. It’s DOA. They had to have run out of money and pushed this out raw product with heavy handed monetization, thinking they could hide under a goodwill early access tag.

[PhantomHarlock]

Stormgate side effect was that I lost a lot of trust with SC2 casts, while players like UThermal, Tyler and Grubby were honest.

[rafaelhungria]

What got me frustrated about this game was the lack of creativity. It's just like they smashed starcraft, warcraft and diablo together and called it a day.

[nickoslekkas]

Basset I think that you fumbled this one, there is much valid criticism for SG like performance, unit clarity, path finding, global mm being forced on everyone, creeps being more valuable than expanding, uninspired graphics/unit designs, ttk being too high, sound effects being atrocious and many many more things, do I want SG to fail? NO if anything I want SG to be such a massive success that it would force other triple AAA studios to come back and make rts games but every time I am playing SG I am asking myself why play this instead of sc2 and I really can't find a reason at it's current state.

[jamesreed]

In my observation, software that isn't good at release never gets good. Lack of revenue and employee turnover will stagnate development.

[danielskrivan]

I don't think the problems with Stormgate are the community's fault. The community was very positive when it was announced. As more and more information came out, the community's opinions steadily soured. "I don't like the cartoony style, but hopefully the gameplay is good" was the general thought for a while now. This criticism has been around for ages, and it's not been taken to heart.

They started off by making it sound like this was next-gen tech. Then the pathing is worse than SC1. So they update the pathing and make it somehow even worse. This isn't a problem with community feedback. It's a broken game with a good PR team. Now that the PR team can't sell it anymore, the game is dying.

[hellowill]

I was expecting something like Path of Exile. Where you have this small dev team that brings new ideas and blows Blizzard out.

[assault]

It's over. Especially when there are videos like this coming out lol

[YRimee]

No future, was hopeless game since the moment devs started to share some info about it (even before gameplay trailer) Still some sc2 PRO GAMERS continued to say smth like " Ah did you see sc2 beta? it was also worse than release" In the end we have a trash game with no future (again, was obvious from the beginning) . Lags, bugs, boring, raw, failed hybrid of many games (better if they focused on making like 80-90% of stuff from concrete game, be it sc2, than mixing everything to get a cocktail with fish and milk)

[CHIEFLUKE]

I lost interest once I realized it was literally Diablo and starcraft mixed together aesthetically. I was hoping for something a little more than just demons versus Angels versus humans. Also The story is predictable. We're going to have another Kerrigan or arthas moment and the "Xelnaga wall" in one of the cinematics sent me

[veniamingi]

Спасибо бассет, интересно смотреть тебя на двух языках)

[samirgomeznovelo]

They should have focused on the solo campaign, just like SC2 wings of liberty, then the multiplayer could be just some basic units, exactly as it happened with SC2 with each expansion, but here you are actually building the game one race at the time.

[nava]

I had high hopes for this game, but there is just nothing there for me right now. I was already iffy with the art style but figured if the gameplay was good I could over look it, but every single time I loaded up the game, something else would come up that I just did not like. Key binds, pathing, art style, sounds, tool tips, wait times, story, etc. it all just adds up to, why am I even playing this? Like, who is this game made for? I thought it was for RTS fans, specifically SC2 players past and present but the more I look the more I think this game is made for children.

[unrighteous]

"I have a strong feeling that Stormgate is the most underrated, poorly understood game that has been released recently..."

It's badly optimized (although the devs will just tell you your PC sucks), the pathing is ABYSMAL, and above all else it's just not fun. I'm more than willing to give the game a chance in the future, but it just sucks to play right now, and they want us playing NOW. They released the game NOW. They're charging money NOW. I don't want to play it now. What am I underrating? What am I not understanding? I'm legitimately curious. Show me where the fun is.

[PrimeBrawler]

Stormgate wants to be starcraft, but it's not. It's worse in every possible way.

[Frozen_Death_Knight]

As a backer, here is my opinion on what made the EA launch fail.

1) The developers set the expectations too high before launch and had to backtrack and set up WIP signs as a response to the very mixed feedback on the game's content.

2) It didn't have polished content besides 1vs1 that is also missing a lot of units. It's clear that the game has put more focus on 1vs1 so far at the expense of the rest, so the devs need to bring the other content up to par and even surpass it since Campaign, Co-op, Custom Games, and 3vs3 are what will make or break this game. The hardcore 1vs1 audience only survives on the back of the casual audiences that like to play other modes, since 1vs1 is not what most people play in an RTS.

3) Campaign was undercooked and rushed out the door for EA launch. "The Stand" mission where you guard the drill as you get swarmed is by far the best designed mission while the rest are either okay or just bad by being too short, having poor pacing, having unpolished gameplay ideas, and/or very poor presentation like graphics, story, voice acting, etc.

4) There is currently no hook that makes Stormgate unique from StarCraft 2 or WarCraft 3 whether it's Co-op, Campaign, or 1vs1. The game needs to make bold choices and explore new territories for it to get an identity that is distinct from those games. The 3vs3 mode having Heroes and new types of map objectives at least sound like new ideas being explored, so I am looking forward to that.

5) Graphical presentation is all over the place, with most of it being pretty bad if you play the Campaign. Character designs, 2D character portraits, placeholder UI, in-game cutscenes, and more are very underwhelming. At least with Amara's newly teased character model it makes me more hopeful about the art direction being salvageable, especially since the human models and the female ones specifically looked really bad at launch. They also have to address the unit designs that are pretty underwhelming and make playing each faction feel cool and thematic. The only reason I played Zerg in StarCraft 2 was because of the look and feel of the faction, so the devs need to focus on the cool factor before making it all feel fair and balanced.

6) The game lacks replayability if you don't play 1vs1. There isn't a good reason to revisit the Campaign after finishing it on Brutal (which can be finished in one sitting). Co-op is not fleshed out enough yet to make you come back besides doing higher difficulties. If you've played 20-30 hours you will have seen most of what the game currently offers.

7) Finally, the game lacks social features. This was a massive problem when StarCraft 2 launched and the problem is even worse in Stormgate by not even having online lobbies to talk to other people. The game needs to allow players to build communities for people to want to stay and play.

If the patch content is consistent and well received there is still hope for the game to succeed, but it is going to be a massive uphill battle to live up to the legacy of the older Blizzard RTS games.

[erfarkrasnobay]

8:50 Game has 4 years of development, and half of year in the alpha/beta/EA if they still need time to show their vision and they can't do this with 6 missions of campaign lots of Coop and PvP time - then they have no vision.

[AristotelisMelas]

From the moment it was revealed, every single SC2 content creator acted like Stormgate would cure cancer and end world hunger, to the point it started to seem a little sus, while all criticism was dismissed. I didn't see it, to me it looked bland, uninspired and had none of the qualities that made me fall in love with SC2. They tried so hard to make the next RTS e-sport that they forgot to make it fun. There's nothing in SG that makes me go 'I want to play this, this unit looks awsome to play with' and it doesn't seem like there will be. I'm glad you brought up AoM because that game does the exact opposite: completely unbalanced OP stuff everywhere with absolute chaos all around. And it's been the most fun I've had with RTS since early WoL. There are some deeper mechanics in there for competitive play but the core of the experience is pure, silly fun. I can throw meteors at your base while scorpion men kill all your villagers, or I can...stutter step not-Marines, I guess?