Stormgate: Is RTS Still Relevant in 2024?

I love Real Time Strategy games, and Stormgate tries to bring some innovations to the genre while still being faithful to the Starcraft and Warcraft origins. But does it succeed? Can Stormgate find its place on the market, or is it simply trying to reignite nostalgia from fans at a lower budget? Let's discuss this and a lot more in this video.
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[Phoenix-scdi]

I just pray they put a lot of effort into campaigns. The multiplayer community is passionate, but way smaller then what you could net with a good campaign, especially if it's coop and mayhaps even a bit replayable.

[MarkAndrzejewski]

If you want rts then you should play beyond all reason

[francis]

Immortal Gates of Pyre would perfectly answer this question you asked. Of course, RTS genre is still relevant

[visoroverwatch]

By the time Stormgate finally catches up to SC2's level, SC3 will be out.

[joeman]

As a fan of SC i have to say that Stormgate is a game i might have been interested 10 years ago. Not now

[PhantomHarlock]

The weak character and unit design hurt the game, because you dont feel very compelled to play. And about gameplay, people complaing that SC2 is too fast, but this is what make SC2 so cool to watch.

[zeoncrystal]

Personally I think the biggest problem that plagued the development of this game was that they wanted to do so many things but ended up overextending themselves so much that a lot of things feel incomplete.

Speaking mostly as someone who mostly focuses on competitive StarCraft, Stormgate just doesn't hit the same notes and a lot of it can be attributed to what just feels like listening too much to players who didn't really vibe too much with StarCraft wanting to get rid of most of what made the gameplay in that game besides the smooth pathing. I get that the high lethality of StarCraft (and I'm talking both 1 and 2) can be intimidating for players less experienced in the franchise but FrostGiant went so far in the opposite direction that fights feel like units slapping each other with pool noodles or super soakers.

StarCraft 2 had a number of units that were very polarizing and did alienate a lot of players but those units also had a lot of spectacle to them that made them fun to play with. Pretty much all of the mainline esport competitive games all have that big flashy thing where if you had the chance to use it you just feel powerful. Ie: Burst assasins in League or the AWP in Counter Strike.

Warcraft 3 is famously known for being the exact opposite (or near opposite) of the time to kill spectrum to SC2. However playing that game the lower TTK just isn't felt as badly as Stormgate as WC3 doesn't focus on large armies. It focuses on a few units that all have distinct abilities making the game more about micro (controlling your units) over macro (management of your base, resources and production). Even WC3 has some level of burst potential because they knew players liked to be able to blow stuff up. For example: The combo of the spells Death Coil and Frost Nova from the Undead faction against a Human faction opponent. The Human army has a few Sorceresses that could cast the spell Slow to weaken your army. By using Coil+Nova you have the potential to kill one of the Sorcs alleviating some of the stress your army might have had in a fight and because the game doesn't have big StarCraft level army sizes it feels better.

Stormgate in turn has higher unit counts than StarCraft, and lower TTK than WarCraft 3 that army fights just feel very awkward with how slow units die. Of course they were deliberately trying to avoid a lot of the stress from StarCraft in which if you made 1 wrong move the game could be over. But honestly that's what makes a game like that so good, it puts you on the edge and pumps your adrenaline.

To make a bit of an analogy I'll use the fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan in Revenge of the Sith. Take away the context of why the 2 characters are fighting and focus only on the fact that they are in combat. Both characters are: Using a lightsaber, a powerful weapon that can cut almost anything except another lightsaber. Are both very skilled fighters, and were teacher and student and so they know the other's moves very well. Just 1 wrong move for anyone of them and the fight is over and so they both do everything they can to not not just die. Now replace the lightsabers with Styrofoam swords and you kill the decisions both characters have to make in a fight. The Anakin vs Obi-Wan duel we see on the film is what StarCraft feels like, Styrofoam swords is what Stormgate feels like.

There are a lot of other things I personally take issue with regarding Stormgate such as the poor sound design (compare the sounds in Stormgate to the sounds in WC3 and both StarCraft 1 and 2), The UI (although I believe they are working to improve that), or the unfinished factions. The Art Style is ok when it comes to the top down view you generally have in an RTS game but using it for cutscenes while also having some realistic looking environments makes it look like those old youtube videos in the early days where you just have a camera in your room while you play with legos. My guess is that they were very inspired by the stylized look of WC3 but also seemed to forget that the stylized look in WC3 works because EVERYTHING was stylized so it all fit in together. StarCraft 2 also had an artstyle many StarCraft 1 players weren't all too happy about but at least that only ever existed when you were actually playing the game, not when you were watching a cinematic.

I do definitely agree that by doing early access it gives them a chance to hear criticisms and hopefully have a better sense of direction moving forward. But as with many things in life first impressions are everything and it doesn't seem like Stormgate has been having a good impression as of late. I just hope FrostGiant can turn things around, cause I do think this game has potential.

[BookFurnace]

Thanks for the video, but I must correct you. Snow Play is not a map editor, it's an RTS specific engine for handling network and pathfinding-related issues. Basically it's for unit responsiveness and masking ping.

It does not detract from your main point. They do plan to release a map editor as well.

[TehAntares]

Stormgate could use an entire essay to cover all its missteps. To put it short, the game has no identity, it feels like a copycat of SC2 mashed with WC3, the story... "exists", the business model is questionable, the art design is fairly disliked, the game as a whole is unfinished and unpolished (you know, everybody's talking about it), and the overemphasis on e-sport is a great way to alienate the casual player base (seriously, the rule is that no one can make an e-sport title right from the beginning and expect a success).
With this all, and even after tons of work in the future, Stormgate will likely never be the "great next-gen RTS title" it aspires to be.

[Oncus]

I would have loved much deeper insights considering being a game dev was mentioned so many times. Explaining how EA works and how SC is positioned is very much known by the majority of people who follow Stormgate. After watching the video, I am still in the dark on what you think are Stormgates biggest flaws: Why specifically it isn't tailored to new players? Why was the reception so bad? What would they need to do to improve to capture the right audience?

[MidniteCathedral]

As an RTS player who's really into the singleplayer and campaign mode, I feel like they've dropped the ball on the campaign thus far. Out of the six missions currently released, there's a couple decent missions that are built well, but the overall story and most of the missions feel like a pale imitation of what came before instead of trying to forge a new path. Here's hoping that these are just growing pains and the campaign will get more interesting as it goes on.

[victorcamara]

I really like to see your comments about the design game... Do it more, man!! Huuulll!!

[UlissesSampaio]

They could still be profitable by capturing a share RTS market. Though imo Total War is peak RTS (though maybe a small niche).

[chiefrockacl]

why would i play stormgate if i can play sc2

[arajin]

honestly I don't like how this game is trying to be starcraft, the artstyle alone would make me pick SC over stormgate. But as a fellow programmer I always respect the direction developers take with their product, I hope they achieve what they want.

[rogerbabin]

I've heard the SC2 clone comments and it doesn't resonate with me one bit. This is a genre of game that's massively unrepresented.
There's been room for dozens of quality AND successful Souls-like games, Hearthstone clones, Vampire Survivors clones, 4x clones, tactics clones and more. I see little reason why having one moderately high quality StarCraft 2 clone come out after more than 10 years is a bad idea. I suppose its possible this genre is so incredibly niche and entrenched that there truly is no room for more...but its absolutely worth trying.

For what its worth I'm the type of RTS player who plays for the campaign. I've played the SC2 campaign probably 8 times by now and I've revisited the C&C franchise a bunch as well. I'm starving for other games to play with strong campaign design. I buy the game...play the campaign...maybe dabble in skirmish for a day or two...uninstall and the come back in a couple of years if the game is good enough to do it again maybe on a higher difficulty next time.

[hideshisface]

RTS is absolutely relevant - but overfocus on live service multiplayer isn't. This is going to be the death of this game.
This, and various other issues.

The self-proclaimed "next gen RTS" looks like inferior copycat of Warcraft 3 mashed with StarCraft 2. 22 and 14 year old games respectively. If this is the best they could come up with for "next gen RTS"... It is dead on arrival.
It has "snatching that call of duty crowd" mentality written all over it.

I'll be honest - RTS as it is now is infested with copycat titles. Everyone tries to be either "the next" Age of Empires, Command and Conquer, Star Craft or Warcraft, and occasionally the next Company of Heroes and Supreme Commander.
There is no innovation beyond single gimmicks.
The genre needs its own equivalent of Doom 2016 to be honest - like it swept away "grey military shooters", RTS needs something to rip apart the old tired schemes, make the thing lively and fresh again.

[catra]

First point out of gate is FLAT Wrong. Regardless of genre NO ONE looks at StormGate and thinks I want to play that. The initial first glance impression isnt " O this is cool what is this" trying a new genre is a secondary thought to the first statement

[gowzahr]

One thing that I think would really help the devs would be to put together a video showing what the art style will look like when it's fully polished.
Then they could say, this is what you can expect the game to look like at launch. Now, you may ask, why doesn't the game look like that now? Because it would be a huge waste of time and effort to apply this level of visual polish to everything when most of it will be cut before the final release. So again, while much of what is in the game now lacks polish, you can expect that everything that makes the final cut will have the level of polish you see here in this demonstration.

[roslolian]

My main issue is the bad graphics given the lack of originality in the game. Human, Angels, Demons omg what a unique trio of races surely we havent seen that before. If you are gonna come out with a tired and generic premise then it better come with a shiny coat of paint instead we have Torchlight 2 the RTS. There's no reason for me to play this over SC2 or even other rts like Sins of the Solar Empire 2.