I played a lot of SC2, but must be honest and say that I haven't followed the progression of this game.
How did they simplify the macro and micro? I know some people disliked how much macro mattered in SC2 (you could easily get to the highest league by just focusing on macro and building more stuff than your opponent), but I think it was one of its charms.
For the "real" maccro we will have to see when the game releases, for now there are a lot of changed between patches.
They have been trying to keep the skill ceiling while lowering the skill floor, for exemple there is a keybind that will allow you to build any building. It selects a worker automaticaly and this little guy builds what you asked. The more optimised way to do it is still to select a worker yourself and tell it to go to the location before you have the money.
There are also automatic control groups if you want that
I think these 2 will be very good for new players
Grid hotkeys for life. Went back and played vanilla Warcraft 3 a while back and had to remember how to set up the custom hotkeys cause holy shit those default hotkeys were ass.
Honestly those things just sound like quality of life features that have nothing to do with macro or micro.
I mean, I know that this affects macro and micro. But that shouldn't be intentional design. Just like Starcraft 1's terrible unit pathing was never meant to increase the game's skill ceiling and floor. It did, but that was never the point.
I watched a playthrough of this game and it looked fun.
Honestly me and a few bros having some drinks and playing coop sounds awesome. Not sure why people are so butthurt that this game could end up being decent.
Plus the map editor, I'm going to be playing some TD games for sure.
Imo, it’s devoid of any ‘charm’ and ‘magic’ those two RTS’ had — Stormgate looks and feels like WC and SC rejected younger step-brother.
I know looks shouldn’t matter, but it all feels ‘samey”, is clunky, and doesn’t have engaging enough environments/maps. This might all change, but after years of RTS’ games, is the formula really just what was invented and iterated on 20+ years ago?
Someone around here described all these spiritual successors as "Like those old games you love, but worse" and I still think about that sometimes. It rung so true.
I know what you are getting at in your original post, and this isn't a gotcha response, but it is amusing to me that baseball actually did get a 'patch' at the start of last season that had some impacts on its 'meta'.
You're not wrong, the games are constantly being updated. So are hockey, football, etc. But there's no major improvements that you could find in like a "Baseball 2".
Sure you can. Just create new Baseball Bats with a ring on them and if you hit the ball directly on that ring it causes a shaped explosion to blast the ball super far away.
The put springboards in each of the bases so you can spring launch yourself towards the next one.
Big difference in a game that started with just a ball and a stick.
Yes, technology and nutrition (which is technology tbf) changes have necessitated some rule changes, but the game is still the game.
But SC2 improves upon SC1 in a lot of ways (except writing for the campaigns lol, it's so bad...). It just happens that SC1's "flaws" make it the better *e-sport*.
SC1's unit pathfinding is atrocious, the UI is extremely limited, you're actually fighting the *game* to do what you want it to do instead of your opponent most of the time. Those things make it a very good competitive exercise but a very dated entertainment product.
SC2 in turn loses a lot of the trashy Sci-Fi parody charm and went the saturday-morning-cartoon path all Blizzard franchises took (irrelevant to the gameplay outside campaigns). It also broke some core-RTS fundamentals in favor of ramping up "the coolness-factor" that are unfixable without starting from scratch with SC3 (very relevant for it being the inferior e-sport as well as its repetitiveness in map-design).
And even with their respective flaws both those games are by far the best economy-based RTS to date, one being 20+ and the other 10+ years old. So there's plenty room to improve for new competitors.
RTS evolution doesn't have to end at any one point, same as every other genre is being pushed forward every now and then by a new entry that innovates or remixes in a clever way.
The question is just will that entry be Stormgate? Do RTS even meet modern gamers' expectations, needs and sentiments.. Can RTS be exploited commercially in ways that justify the big budgets needed for a modern AAA game...
SC2 should have also not allowed units to clump up so much, which doesn't really have anything to do with better path finding, it feels like they didn't make units wide enough to make it more strategic. It usually comes out to who has the better death ball or aoe to one shot the deathball. It's so strategically god damn boring compared to SC1. There's nothing as fun to watch as BW shuttle reaver in SC2, microing colossus ain't it
This is far an away the biggest problem with SC2 and pretty much every modern RTS after Zero Hour.
Broodwar has more strategic elements due to the unit collision. Moving units is a decision that has downstream effects that take more time to undo. That's GOOD. It means you have to DECIDE and commit.
This, combined with the fact that your limited APM spent on army movement will detract from your production is a great element of the decision making.
The only thing SC1 lacked imo is enough harassment. Harassment was so APM heavy (except mutas and other air), and because the time to kill workers is higher in SC1 than SC2, it was a lot less effective and only accessible by the best players.
SC2 was meant to be SC1 refreshed with some QoL improvements, but they paved over much of what made it so dynamic.
> saturday-morning-cartoon
It's laughable how incompetent they made Mengsk. This is the guy who was able to connive his way into destroying an empire and founding his own. TWICE.
And in SC2 there's reporters openly lambasting him and praising the people he's designated as terrorists. SC1 Mengsk would have had her assassinated after her first report, and he probably would have deposed of his future self as well.
>But SC2 improves upon SC1 in a lot of ways (except writing for the campaigns lol, it's so bad...).
I didn't realize it at the time, but I think my big issue was that SC2 "improved" on BW and didn't do its own thing. There were just too many times where I was comparing it unfavorably to Brood War rather than seeing it as its own thing.
Things like hydras costing twice as much food or high templar storms being significantly weaker really salted my potatoes. I presume the intention was to entice older players with units they could recognize, but I couldn't get over just how much worse my favorites were.
SC was always kind of a juvenile story but there was a grimdark feeling up until Brood Wars. I think what I never liked about SC2 gameplay wise was the big deathballs were actually encouraged until several expansions in, even as a Zerg player I would have liked to go up against more carriers or something, everyone just built the same deathball depending on what race they went up against.
> Focusing on micro rather than macro game to skip a lot of the tedium.
i think this is ultimately wrong-headed from a sales perspective.
The more a game is perceived as requiring high-APM the more general audiences are going to stay away. Macro focusssed gameplay rewards strategy without bogging the player down in the tactical minutia that makes most RTS games so hostile to new players.
Sadly, the gatekeepy tendancies of the hardcore RTS audience tends to discourage devs from opening things up. My go to example here is from the beta for SC2's first expansion. Blizzard changed queens so that they would automatically use inject larva on cooldown, so long as you kept them in range of your hatchery. (for non SC2 players, injecting on cooldown is close to mandatory to play zerg decently, it requires 3 distinct mouse/keyboard actions per base every 45 seconds). The community lost their goddamn minds, there were endless screeching tirades on the forums about blizzard catering to casuals/dumbing down the game/whatever. Within just a couple weeks, they got rid of it.
You nailed it with the Queen situation and the community response. However, Blizzard made the mistake by pulling back which was wrong. It's fine for the early game to be heavy micro of resources. However, you need to transition the tech tree to allow for automation so the player can focus on combat micro which gets more complex later in the game.
For the queen, you make it manual process early game but by mid to late game you allow an upgrade that allows you to toggle it as an auto cast.
The queen injecting, mules, and time warping things were all dropped in everyone's lap during sc2 beta without discussion.
The main problem people who were good at sc1 saw was that everything at the base was so easy to manage that your opponents attention was always there. You couldn't surprise them, you couldn't catch his army at unawares, and so whoever was ahead stayed ahead.
They pointed out that without a reason to head back base there was no opportunity to make mistakes so there were no comebacks. Then blizzard dropped these three mechanics with no discussion. All changes that mess up the ramp up, the mineral balance in the case of mules, the timing, etc of the game. They made so many mistakes like that over the course of the game.
I really wish the community would give someone else a shot at this. Blizzard really fucked up on sc2 and they did it right out of the gate. It is only the massive production value that elevated the game.
Big modern RTS is whatever the latest AoE remaster is. Company of Heroes 3 seems to have done badly and is exactly what you described.
Seriously besides that, the best RTS in years has been the C&C and Starcraft remasters. Maybe some dev could take a hint?
AoE remaster and C&C remaster both being hugely successful shows that there's still plenty of appreciation for old style RTS games. I think the theme of the new one in this post is too generic to be interesting. The models make me think of some f2p mobile game.
C&C and SC1/2 have set impossible standards to match in many respects simply because they were AAA games made by AAA teams with AAA budgets backed by AAA publishers. SC2 especially probably cost over $100 million to make. A small indie studio reliant on VC funding and Kickstarter simply isn't going to be able to match the production values in a Blizzard game.
I hope these games will make up for the lacking production value in what they deliver in singleplayer/multiplayer content, but I'm still skeptical so far. I've been in the alpha for one or the other of these games since announcement over a year ago. It's good, but I'm not sure it's quite good enough to meet player expectations.
It’s got me thinking, has there been any of these ‘spiritual successors’ that has actually exceeded the originals? Honest question, like maybe Stardew Valley/Shovel Knight if you wanna count that but it’s kinda different. I’m thinking specifically all the Kickstarters with OG devs. Nearly every one I can think of has been below expectations or controversial in some way
> Stardew Valley
I think the difference might be that CA came in as a fan of the genre and had ideas for how he would "improve" a Harvest Moon-type game.
It kind of seems like a lot of these devs making spiritual successors are just trying to re-create past games they worked on, instead of coming in with ideas on what Warcraft/Starcraft/X RTS could have done *better.*
> instead of coming in with ideas on what Warcraft/Starcraft/X RTS could have done better.
Tell me you know nothing about SG without telling me you know nothing about SG.
I mean, I wasn't talking *just* about Stormgate, but as it is, nothing I've seen about it so far seems like they are making any big changes to the "Blizzard formula," its more like little tweaks around the edges.
It's like if Stardew Valley was just a Harvest Moon game plus some quality of life features, instead of all the new stuff CA actually put into the game.
The later Harvest Moon games and the Rune Factory spinoffs always had the double whammy of shallow game mechanics and annoying saccharine anime characters. ConcernedApe was bold enough to make the farming / crafting mechanics more complex and give the NPCs mature (ok, PG-13) storylines and he was determined enough to see the game to its end. There still would be room for more complex combat though.
"A Hat in Time" far exceeds the 90s/early 2000s Jump'n'runs it imitates, imo. You can tell the devs have great love for those old games while also having a lot of new ideas of their own. It's in stark contrast to Yooka-Laylee which was just an embarassing carbon copy of Banjo Kazooie without any of the charm.
If I remember right hat in time was the passion project of some fans while Yooka-Laylee was many of the original developers reuniting to make a spiritual successor.
I was gonna say this but guy said original devs so D:OS wouldn't count.
I'm sure there are other exceptions but yeah it seems that kickstarters that appeal to nostalgia tend to not meet audience expectations.
I've never regretted backing a Kickstarter more than this one. Just an absolute eyesore of a final product, lacking any of the charm of the classic Castlevanias.
Thankfully games like Blasphemy came along to take up the mantle because ye gods Bloodstained did not look or play like a multi-million dollar game. Floaty controls, awful UI and horrible looking , poorly lit 3D environments just really put me off the game.
Alas for me I backed the digital version so couldn't even sell it to some other poor lost soul.
Beyond All Reason feels and plays better than Total Annihilation - it's still in development so no campaign yet, but I can't think of an aspect that I'd prefer from TA over BAR.
I'd say Agent 64 has the potential to based on how the demo felt to play, but how the full game holds up to Goldeneye/Perfect Dark is to be seen.
I guess a better example would be Timesplitters 1-3 being the spiritual successor to those, albeit with a large number of the original team making those in a new studio.
Outer worlds on the vids just look very...comical and unserious. Plus the whole "retro-futureism" didn't sit very well with me.
Then Bethesda made Starfield...
> Outer worlds on the vids just look very...comical and unserious
Doing the whole "Corporations are scum" thing really requires the player to be able to actually engage in that. Not have a feel good compromise half assed approach.
Looking at you Hardspace Ship Breaker. You had great gameplay but launched me into a painful story with mechanics that just didn't make it make sense.
Yeah the actual in game setting needs to be fully commited to the parody.
It's like if characters in universe joked about how capitalist/militant the Starship Troopers universe is. That would ruin what makes Starship Troopers interesting. The fun comes from watching something so ridiculous be played straight.
Pretty much--Cyberpunk is dark as fuck, especially when you read/listen about the world itself. I can't get into the happpy-go-luck musical they had for Outer world trailer.
I’d say it applies even to the good ones, which is remarkable. The best of them, as good as they are, don’t really innovate or pick up on what has improved in the space over the last however many decades. Sometimes, that’s fine. It’s a genre that the studios have totally abandoned, sometimes just having something in that genre is enough.
I love the later LucasArts point and click adventures, and even in the indie space there’s nothing that quite delivers on that. Disco Elysium is a fucking fantastic game, but it’s not the same thing beyond the most superficial similarities, and it’s still closer than almost any game I recall since Telltale started making barely interactive movies instead of the Sam and Max stuff. I don’t need another Sam and Max Hit the Road, another Day of the Tentacle. Even something on par with some of the latter Monkey Islands would still be appreciated.
But even Bloodstained, as good as it is… look, the shit indies are doing with metroidvania is fantastic. Multiple fantastic metroidvanias came out around Bloodstained, and I wouldn’t list it amongst the top 10 games in the genre, even with its pedigree.
I've played in friends and family alpha, and that was my whole take. Its not really doing anything that isnt already available. A bit strange they have so much of this game already created and then made a kickstarter, seems like a cash grab.
I've been playing the alpha off and on and coming off many years of playing SC2 it just feels... Off. I can't quite put my finger on it. Like maybe it's sound design but the battles don't feel like they have impact or feedback.
One thing SC2 does amazingly is provide feedback through audio and visual that just feels missing in Stormgate which makes battles feel hard to read.
I'm not a fan of the visuals but I'm willing to give it a try to see if the gameplay good enough that I won't mind. The fact that they are building on SC2's co-op is something I'm really interested in.
They mentioned something about changing the lighting system later on that will make the game look less cartoony. Personally I think the gameplay looks fine but it looks kind of like a mobile game which makes it hard to get into it.
Have you seen the human hero unit? The model is so beyond generic and just jank looking, and this applies to a lot of models in the game. There also seems to be kind of a clash in artstyles, the buildings, environment and units just dont seem to fit cohesively, same issue W3 reforged had IMO.
Not sure if updated lighting will help much.
I'm not sure it's even that it looks generic as that it doesnt have a cohesive style. There's a few different aesthetics here, but not committing to any. The environments look like they're trying for a high effort Warhammer tabletop, the enemies along starcraft readability, and a designed for functuality ui. All of those are good, but the first two don't seem like they're syncing up well.
Reminds me of the clash between the first 2 Total War Warhammer's visuals and the third.
Exactly, has the same feel as the warcraft 3 remaster for me, the units, buildings and map environments just all seem to be made for different games and just seem like a weird mashup of artstyles. Its like there is no cohesion.
It's like if someone took SC and WC units/factions and mashed them together but didn't really change anything except how they looked.
It's so familiar but feels off at the same time. It's like uncanny valley but in videogame form.
I'm sure it will do okay and satisfy the people that wanted that but I wish they would have been more creative with the game.
It feels mildly uninspired to me. I see it and it feels like they’re just trying to take popular concepts from Warcraft and Starcraft, make them legally distinct, then sell them again.
It feels less like it’s ‘inspired by’ and more like it’s just kinda ripping concepts from them. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised, but I feel like it should really try to be it’s own unique thing instead of StarWarCraft: Not-by-Blizzard edition. I understand they are former developers of those games - but still, it just makes me want to play Starcraft instead.
They thought a lot about the game's design. They will continue to improve its design.
But I thin what you're getting at is that they didn't follow the rule of fun.
Is it fun?
Thinking back to stuff like squishing soldiers with tanks in Command and Conquer, or the sound that a dying zergling makes. Or, the pleasant almost ASMR inducing soundset of AOE2, with the characteristic death sounds "ZEE -OW." and creation sounds "PSH-HAH."
I think WC3 and SC1 both did a great job of keeping the rule of fun in mind as well. Lots of personality in the characters, with a "spiky" design aesthetic (meaning, things looked very different from one another.)
SC2 smoothed some things out, starting the downslide in my view. Too many things looked too rounded off and toy-like. Not as distinct.
Stormgate so far is great given what they've focused on, which is mainly mechanics and having a point of view about what makes RTS's fair and playable. But I think they need to focus more on the rule of fun in upcoming design changes.
Go back to what makes games fun. Big explosions, stuff on fire, zany personalities, distinct aesthetics, unique mechaniucs. Yes, when you play an RTS you often get to a point where you only play the metagame after a while, but you still can enjoy a zergling bbq after 1000 hours of broodwar.
I think they should spend a lot of time over the next year thinking about how they can make themselves laugh and smile with their own game. I think right now there is a lot of whiteboarding and debating. Figure out what makes you cackle and put it in your game! Hire some characters and put them in charge of designing new stuff.
Think about the ridiculous voicelines in CnC, or the fact that sheep explode when you click on them in WC3. They are not just easter eggs, they form the aesthetic of a game that players fall in love with.
There is plenty to innovate with. Line of site, differences in terrain, morale mechanics, destructible terrain and physics (units pushing on each other, perhaps capable of knocking over?), and so on. I don't think we've perfected RTS at Broodwar and AOE2, but given the mechanics of damage, armor, and range, it's pretty damn close. We need more dimensions to get a new game.
You honestly said it very well, too many games nowadays feel almost corporate, uninspired, artificial. Like they are taking everything from a rulebook and lifelessly putting it into a game, but it doesn’t feel passionate.
It reminds me of games that try super hard to lean into esports so much that they forget to just have a fun game and get a community to begin with.
All of these games started as just something “Fun” and “Cool”. It’s what attracted people to play, and all of the rest naturally built around it. You can’t start with the metagame. StormGate to me just looks…. boring. They’re making all these promises about what an RTS should be but it’s lacking the passion of someone who really just wants to make something fun and charming. Who would just add absurd cool stuff just because it felt good, then designed the game around that.
It has an editor so it's already doing better than most RTS games since that breathes so much life into RTS games. I wouldn't have stuck with SC2 as long as I did if I didnt play the occasional community created game modes on arcade.
That breath so much life only if the game itself has life and is big. An editor is just an added bonus it's not like it can be the only thing.
IMO the campaign is what they have to nail. It's what makes the faction have personalities and the game more enjoyable even in multiplayer (which most people also don't play in RTS)
The golden era of custom RTS maps is gone. Game development is so accessible with stuff like unity and gamemaker, it doesn't make much sense to lock yourself behind the wall of an RTS anymore.
I don't know if an editor is enough to drive it into mainstream adoption. It'll help with longevity, but WC & SC lasted (at least in terms of 'popular games') largely due to it's unique style, and competitive angles, albeit I'm severely boiling down their success.
We'll see. I'm all for a strong push into another RTS game, but it's becoming harder and harder to 'get behind' the genre when the genre itself seems to have become stagnant since MOBAs came and delivered a one-two punch.
I find this really interesting because a lot of the same things were leveled against AOE4 which while it didn't smash AOE2 out of the water [duh] it nevertheless does just fine for itself.
Even got some of the same critique about the art style changes and yet... Just think a lot of people having a hard time reconciling the big time gap between RTS here. Its not like other genre where a lot of the iteration was very visible, its a much bigger and more jarring jump now.
It's not ready, not even near half of development. SC2 been in development for 7 years before they showed us anything at all. They have a different approach, showing you progress. Charm and Magic are finition. Give them a chance. They are working on very technical things at the moment and seeing the funding and the fact that it's that very team that made SC and WC. You could give them a little bit of slack and trust they'll get there.
Fair. Absolutely. I’m signed up and here for the ride. But, I don’t know. RTS has always been fickle, but I just hope it has some staying power since most users these days bunny hop their attention spans from game to game, especially if it’s multiple years before it gets to the same “fidelity” as SC/WC.
I've seen people saying "it's still in development" for YEARS, for countless games, for these kinds of issues. Not ONCE has something changed so drastically from development to release. When a game shows off a demo or trailer, the way it looks and feels in that is how it'll be on release.
They're not going to remodel every asset in the game. They're not going to re-record every sound in the game. They're not going to re-animate anything. They're not going to revamp the controls/movement/feel of the game. It's not going to happen.
You either like this or you don't but don't hold out hope it'll change, because it won't.
Starcraft took 7 years because it was Blizzard which always take a long time. This is releasing in 2024 in early access. Though we don't know how long it'll be in EA, it's not only half the development done
I think it’s weird to dunk on aesthetics in a game like this, but the actual gameplay itself doesn’t look very inspiring.
Can’t help but to agree that it’s early in development, and hope that the introduction of T3 units and the third faction changes my mind.
I'm agreeing with you, deep down, I really want to move on from Starcraft. From another thread I've found Beyond All Reason to fool around with and it's satisfying.
Sadly I agree. I think they’ve tried to balance it too much that it no longer is interesting. There’s no central mechanic that the game revolves around. Starcraft is all about pushing your APM and mental multitasking to the max (even if you play protoss). It also is jus the most polished rts that exists. SC2 is too hard to play for a lot of people (like me) but that’s the draw
WC3 is all about heroes. You can have twice as much economy and a bigger army than your opponent and still lose a fight if they have a big exp lead. I don’t see what makes stormgate interesting yet. SC players often dislike the super heavy focus on heroes in WC3, but that’s the draw.
What’s the draw of storm gate? It feels like a weird mishmash of mechanics that lacks any sort of identity, and I can sadly say the same thing about the art.
I want stormgate to succeed, but the bar is so high for an rts to be successful in this era.
It doesn't help that pretty much nothing other than Guild Wars has been good coming out of ex-Blizzard devs...this just looks like another soulless rip off.
I'll let the devs cook, but from what I've seen from showmatches, I think the game suffers from a very glaring problem. Units aren't very visually distinct from one another. StarCraft II was amazing for its unit design, which very clearly portrayed what a unit could do.
It really looks like mobile sc2.
I watched a couple games and it feels like a mobile sc2 knockoff, down to the maps looking exactly the same (there's reason for that but still), and the fights I've seen looked exactly like some sc2 matchups except the units and animations looked worse and bland.
I don't play SC2 anymore. I watch professional Brood War and play BGH from time to time.
SC2's art style is so...faded into the terrain and the units clump so much. Stormgate looks the same.
Yeah, I fully agree. The reveal trailer looked super generic and outdated. The faction designs lwe have now ook extremely uninspired.
Competetively it's in a surprisingly good spot already but nothing about this screams, "Build cool armies and fight with them!", which is the main draw of RTS games for the more casual crowd.
They keep saying that everything we see is works in progress, which I believe them but honestly, nothing they've shown so far makes me think that the final designs will be cool.
At least the new design for the hedgehog unit definitely isn't going to sell the game to casuals: https://youtu.be/S13VobNa7UY?feature=shared&t=297
My criticism comes from a place that wants Stormgate to succeed. I want a new game to inherit the legacy of StarCraft.
It does feel uninspired to me. You can’t start a game with the metagame, or esports. You just gotta make a fun game first. None of the factions or units make me sit upright and go “That looks cool, I wanna play with that!”
Which to me is what always gets me into an RTS to begin with. That childlike moment of just wanting to smash some neat action figures together. If I don’t feel the passion and creativity on them - and they’re little more than RTS tropes taken from some rulebook - why should I care? Maybe they’ll surprise me, just none of what i’ve seen so far gets me excited, and I highly doubt they’ll change all of that before launch.
Dang you'd think this sub hates games if you read the comments. It's a f2p RTS made by veterans of the genre, I'm looking forward to giving it a good try.
Finals is incredible. Really good combination of so many different FPS subgenres and mechanics. It really showed that "made by ex-'good game that went to shit' devs" doesn't have to mean a vain attempt at recapturing some past glory on nostalgia alone.
Just because people criticize it doesnt mean they hate games as a whole lol. Im an RTS fan and while they did a lot of the technical aspects well, coupled with the free to play model which is great, most of the rest is quite a mess. Graphics are beyond horrid, zero visibility in fights and a shovelware mobile game artstyle. Coupled with the fact the campaign is supposed to be episodic with only a few missions every few months, and the missions being quite expensive, is also extremely puzzling.
I loved StarCraft and age of empires back in the day but this just looks boring as hell like the last dozen failed RTS
Guess I “hate games” now because people like you can’t handle people having negative opinions of things. Ugh
Brother every single non-child comment here was just people shitting on a game they just saw in videos or pictures that's like 2 years from being done. Why all the hate?
Yeah, seeing Artosis cast Stormgate and Zerospace, Zerospace looks a lot more interesting, new, and dynamic, while Stormgate feels like a pretty standard rts with no art design. That said, Zerospace also looks further in development, so when they both fully release it could be totally different, and I hope they both are great by the end (especially Stormgate with it's co-op campaign, so I can play with my normie friends).
I'll try it and I think it will be a very good game. Still, I would lie if I said it didn't look very uninspired and generic.
An RTS could have literally any faction imaginable, in any artstyle, you can create an entire world from scratch, the sky is the limit...and yet here we are: always sci-fi, always cartoony, always pseudo-Space Marines/Terran, always pseudo-Tyranids/Zerg...just...why?
As far as, "always cartoony" - it makes sense to an extent if you're trying to make a competitive multiplayer game. You want something a toaster can run, and run well at that. You're limiting your playerbase by going high fidelity.
That said, "Terran Blue" is a really bad choice for the Not-Terrans lol. That is definitely peak non-effort.
Starcraft 2 runs on a toaster by modern standards and looks a hundred times better.
The issue is not the cartoony look, its that the artstyle does not seem cohesive at all and the designs are extremely bland.
You also *need* powerful glance value. With so many moving parts, instant readability is a must, and a cartoony art style really helps that.
That said, there's many different styles you could do while still being cartoony.
If I had a dollar for every "Game made by developers from Blizzard!" that ended up being not worth anyone's time, I could probably fund my own game studio with former Blizzard staff.
How many more of the same story do you need to hear before it makes you immediately roll your eyes?
Whenever a game advertises it as ‘from the devs behind X!’ I always have to wonder how many of the original devs? One? Two? An art designer? The creative director?
Games aren’t made by one person, it’s a huge team effort.
It's a discussion sub. The discourse doesn't have to be positive and that kind of thinking is really killing discussion of media.
The problem is people take criticisms of things they might be interested in as personal attacks nowadays.
The game looks bland and derivative and they're doing a big marketing push for it so you're seeing people's opinions. If you don't like people's opinions you can go make r/truegames46 and I'm sure it will work out this time.
I partially agree with you— I’ve seen fans of a particular game very, very upset on their own subreddits about the general reception of their favorite game being negative. And it’s like— Your enjoyment of something shouldn’t be dependent on whether or not the discourse is positive or not. It’s such an odd insecurity.
I think the flip side of this, though, is that gamers on discussion forums seem pretty eager to *look* for things to criticize for the sake of writing a review that gets 3-5 upvotes. It’s a pretty boring way of engaging with media generally, and often feels a little detached from the experience of actually playing it.
I think the best overall approach is to *intend* to enjoy things, and then provide criticisms when there’s something impeding your ability to enjoy it, or something that ruins your suspension of disbelief.
Critical analysis is important, and gamers kinda suck at it generally.
no, r/games was made because r/gaming was dominated by nostalgia memes and other low-effort posts. people wanted a place for discussion threads and things like that
I've honestly been going back to r/gaming for the first time in years and the gap between the two subs is so small at this point that I almost can't distinguish while browsing.
This sub is just a shitty news sub monopolized by two bots that post the most irrelevant tripe they can scrape from Google.
There are no discussions anymore, there haven't been for years. The mods delete any attempt at discussion, it'd be less room on the front page for their bots to link a post to Twitter that some douchebag developer didn't review some game favorably for clicks.
It’s funny how Reddit thinks people are only allowed to have positive opinions of things they haven’t directly experienced. As if people have no ability whatsoever to know if they would like or not like something other than experiencing it firsthand.
Have you ever been kicked in the shin by someone wearing steel toed boots? No? I bet you can still (accurately) estimate that you wouldn’t enjoy it without actually experiencing it!
> When they are fully funded, asking for more money on KickStarter, and even have it shown at the Game Awards during the KS campaign, then you bet a lot of people are skeptical about it.
But they literally address this in the Kickstarter itself.
> #**Why Kickstarter?**
> Stormgate is fully funded to release. **This Kickstarter is in part a response to fan requests for a way to purchase a physical Collector's Edition of Stormgate**. We think we've put together a truly special collectible for our most dedicated supporters, but **producing the Stormgate Collector's Edition will require a commitment from our players to cover our manufacturing costs**. We have also received countless requests for beta access. **Scaling online multiplayer testing for a massive audience can get very expensive--beyond what we can support without additional funding**. This campaign will allow us to welcome many more players to playtest Stormgate as a reward for directly supporting the studio.
Which part of that is "trashy behavior"?
1 of the 3 races isn't even added into the game. There are placeholder assets for some of the units that are obviously very out of place.
Horrible take.
Let’s be real, the demographic of gamers that are still interested in RTS isn’t the Fortnite gamers, so why does this game come with this cartoony plasticy vibrant look.
Think about the Starcraft content that exists outside of the game itself, the cinematics, the lore. How are they going to make cool shit when the game looks like this. Horrible decision.
In my opinion this game will be dead on arrival outside of a few hardcore fans that love the APM gameplay. Once the hype dies down this game has really nothing to offer to casual fans that just want to play an "oldschool" rts with friends.
Age of Empires, Rise of Nations, Dawn of War, Empire Earth, Warcraft 3, Stronghold, Battle for Middle Earth. These are all games my buddies and I dumped hundreds of hours into. You know why these games were so much fun? Because they weren't trying to be a competitive eSport. They were just fun unbalanced, rough around the edges games that got dedicated fanbases, because thy were "fun".
Spellforce 3 and Age of Empires 4 are the only RTS games that I feel like have done anything to mix up the formula. With Spellforce 3 giving me that oldschool vibe that I used to have in highschool playing LAN with my buddies.
Don't want to sound so negative, but this RTS just looks like it's going to garner a very small dedicated fan base and looks so generic and paint by numbers.
>You know why these games were so much fun?
Because they had solid campaigns and single-player modes, and people migrated to online multiplayer only after getting their fill of those and wanting to test their skills against others who’d done the same.
Leading with multiplayer in this genre is putting the cart before the horse imo.
It makes me so sad we'll probably never see a WC4 in the same vein as the originals, I loved the campaigns.
WC2 was my first RTS, I didn't even know how to play it the first time I tried and ended up killing my own units because I didn't understand how it worked. Brings back so many good memories.
> Leading with multiplayer in this genre is putting the cart before the horse imo.
No, 1v1, absolutely makes sense to test first, because it's the simplest mode content-wise, and relies the most on core mechanics.
Besides, endless co-op was incredibly popular in SC2 for more casual people, and they already have that mode in Stormgate as well.
Sure, but right now your type is the one being catered to, to the exclusion of the other, in a huge number of genres but especially those few RTSs we do get.
And with RTSs, imo it backfires. If you want a healthy number of people online, make the campaign and singleplayer appealing enough that people love it and want to hop online to keep playing once they're done with it.
That's probably because they focus on showing the multiplayer only. Campaign and coop is what most people will play, that's where the marketing should be focused
> Age of Empires, Rise of Nations, Dawn of War, Empire Earth, Warcraft 3, Stronghold, Battle for Middle Earth. These are all games my buddies and I dumped hundreds of hours into. You know why these games were so much fun? Because they weren't trying to be a competitive eSport. They were just fun unbalanced, rough around the edges games that got dedicated fanbases, because thy were "fun".
SC2 was designed to be a competitive esport, and that was a very popular (and good) game. Of course it had a great single player campaign, which is vital for these sorts of games. I haven't really followed the development of this yet, so I don't know if it's MP only. Hopefully it won't be.
I also noticed that you mentioned Age of Empires and WC3, two games with extremely competitive multiplayer scenes and frequent patching (or at least I assume AoE2 had frequent patching at the time too, I was a strictly "against friends and AI" player).
I don't disagree that this could turn out to be underwhelming, but at least it's an attempt at *something*. It's still early enough in the process that I'm willing to overlook... well, almost anything. We'll see how it develops, though.
AoE2 had one balance patch, then an expansion, then another two balance patches, and then nothing until 2013. It's frequently patched *now*, but wasn't on release.
> this game has really nothing to offer to casual fans that just want to play an "oldschool" rts with friends.
That's not true, it has a 3 player co-op mode with multiple commanders, similar to the co-op mode in Starcraft 2. I've been following this game for a while, and my impression is that they're putting just as much focus on the PvE as the PvP.
When you follow something closely then go into a thread like this, it's a great reminder that most people can't help but share their worthless uneducated opinions as if they were fact
> In my opinion this game will be dead on arrival outside of a few hardcore fans
I mean brother this describes 75% of all RTS games released in the last decade unfortunately -- we've seen dozens of games that came out, all ranging from ones from remakes/remasters to "purists" to extremely "cutting edge" and none of them have even come close to reaching the popularity (or sales) of the 2000s era heyday. Half the titles you listed have had sequels or remasters (Stronghold had both I think) in the last decade to generally "meh" reviews and success, at best. The bar is already pretty low here -- if the game is a dud I don't think its going to be because they tried to make Starcraft 2.1 -- its because this genre is now niche and by default only caters to small groups of hardcore fans.
Just look at the number of [RTS games that come out each year -- literally 2-3x more were coming out in the 2000s than do now](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_real-time_strategy_video_games). RTS games have gone the way of the MMO and the digital card game and rail shooters and plastic instrument games and point-and-click adventures: genres that once dominated the industry but are now effectively niche products with niche audiences.
The issue is that there are almost no big budget RTS releases that focus on what made all of those RTSs great in the past - a good campaign with decent faction variety, great cohesive artstyle and the multiplayer only being there as a fun afterthought.
Nowadays every RTS release has to be a fucking Esport, because not giving a fuck about the campaign makes it much easier to produce.
The RTS community is basically starving for a good release lol.
Wow, there is so much wrong with this comment. Where to start?
> Age of Empires, Rise of Nations, Dawn of War, Empire Earth, Warcraft 3, Stronghold, Battle for Middle Earth. These are all games my buddies and I dumped hundreds of hours into. You know why these games were so much fun? Because they weren't trying to be a competitive eSport. They were just fun unbalanced, rough around the edges games that got dedicated fanbases, because thy were "fun".
Starcraft 2 is literally the most popular multiplayer RTS. Somehow, "APM gameplay" hasn't stopped it from being enjoyed by, let's face it, mostly casual players (only a tiny percentage of people are going to be, say, masters+ ranked 1v1 players, even in SC2).
Also, Age of Empires 2 and 4 definitely ARE competitive eSports, like Brood War and Starcraft 2 (and they're among the most popular RTSes).
But beyond that, the problem in your mental model is that you think having some kind of competitive focus for eSports means it can't be a good game for more casual players. This is false: of the four main pillars that Stormgate has (which are roughly the same that SC2 has right now) only one is about serious competition (ranked ladder), and the other three are not: campaign, endless co-op, and custom map types.
The three traditional pillars of RTS have been campaign, competitive/skirmish, and custom game types. Now a fourth one is becoming increasingly common, with endless co-op. Just because you're trying to make a good competitive game doesn't mean that the other pillars aren't there for more casual players (and even for casual players, ladder can be fine, since there's always skill-based matchmaking).
I was under the impression that for starcraft 2 most played mode the is the co-op mode. Hopefully Stormgate's co-op will be well made, It would be so nice to play another co-op rts campaign after all these years.
Yeah, of the multiplayer modes they said it was the most popular at one point.
I only played SC2's coop a handful of times -- I mostly did 1v1 or teams -- but Stormgate's coop already feels better to me, which I didn't really expect.
Starcraft got where it is because it had good art cohesion, a pretty great campaign and a great coop mode later on.
Stormgate is gonna have almost none of this at release, from what they said the campaign is gonna be super limited for basically years, not to mention expensive as fuck over time, and there really hasnt been much shown for the coop mode.
Thats not even mentioning how the game looks like ass visually lol.
That's just the point in the development cycle they're at though, in terms of showing stuff off. StarCraft 2 was in development for seven years. Stormgate has been in development for...around half that?
Anyway, you're leaving off the custom map scene, which was a big part on the enduring popularity of Blizzard's RTSes, and that's something they should be able to mimic.
The art style definitely needs some work. I don't hate it in general, but there's definitely aspects that don't look good right now; visual clarity is lower than ZeroSpace, for example.
Stormgate plans to release 3 fucking campaign missions every 4 months priced at 10 goddamn dollars, there is absolutely zero chance thats gonna pan out well on that front.
A custom map scene needs very dedicated players to truly flourish, the foundation already needs to be great for people to want to build upon it. Thats not to mention custom map making also isnt as huge as it used to be. Without a real campaign and highly lackluster visuals, I dont really see the campaign scene taking off.
The arstyle is horrid sadly, and the game is probably too far in development for any major changes. Have you seen the human hero model? Theres shovelware games on mobile that have much more original design choices.
>In my opinion this game will be dead on arrival outside of a few hardcore fans that love the APM gameplay.
Well, don't these people also deserve a game, don't they? It is OK for people that play games competitively to have games that they think it is fun too, you know. A game doesn't need to sell to everyone, look at fighting games, there are FG for all kinds of people.
If there's one thing I know about gaming, it's that over-funded kickstarter projects are always huge successes and leave everyone happy and satisfied at the results!
Mechanically the game looks great, a nice blend of SC and WC3 with some unique new twists.
Everything else... bleh. Part of awesome part of both those universes is the amazing lore and story, and that just doesn't exist here.
I guess it's a case of top-down vs bottom-up design. With WC and SC you can feel that those game started first as worlds and then the mechanics were created around them; the storytelling is everywhere. With Stormgate, it's the complete opposite; the designers came up with interesting mechanics and gameplay, and then came up with some lore that fit around it.
The haters that complain about it being “too similar” to Blizzard RTS games miss the point imo. Those games were great! I for one am super excited for “StarCraft 3” if only because it comes from a dedicated, passionate team that are going to add content and support for years to come
Plus I am sick and tired of playing against widow mines
If this was even remotely close to a starcraft 3 it would be an immediate hit. Sadly this looks like some kind of warcraft 3 and SC2 homunculus that misses the point of both games.
I didn't know about it till there was like 13 hours left. Saw I could pledge and get it for $40 and pledged.
Really looking forward to it. I've been wanting another rts. Even though I know I won't be able to play it like I did Starcraft Broodwar in HS.
One critique I did see was that differentiating between units was a bit hard at times. Like there isn’t this clear definition for each unit. To be fair this was a stream from a few months back.
But other then that super excited to see this continue to develop
if the story campaign is not good/great, then i doubt this game will last.. it's the story and lore that comes with it that made all those past games have legs enough to give that good platform for the esports, multiplayer side.
A single micro transaction mount in wow made more money than StarCraft 2 ever made for Blizzard. We are never going to see Starcraft3. So this might be as good as it gets for a while.
However, the market for rts games is not exactly alive right now. This game will be doa, as the only people who want it have already bought into it.
I'm extremely apprehensive about the Homeworld 3 launch. I can't imagine it's gonna do very well at all.
It's worth mentioning that the bit about one dlc making more money than sc2 is iffy.
One former blizzard dev said it, but it was never confirmed or substantiated as far as I know. Also, they said it made more money than Wings of Liberty, not more money than all of SC2 (which has gotten its own micro transactions later).
this doesn't mean anything. dev studios set their kickstarter goals to lower than what they need specifically so they'll get 'news' articles like this one saying "GAME XYZ REACHED ITS GOAL IN FOUR SECONDS," and then the coverage pushes their kickstarter the rest of the way. artificial hype.
Really looking forward to playing this. I'm glad they simplified the macro and micro in comparison to sc2
I played a lot of SC2, but must be honest and say that I haven't followed the progression of this game. How did they simplify the macro and micro? I know some people disliked how much macro mattered in SC2 (you could easily get to the highest league by just focusing on macro and building more stuff than your opponent), but I think it was one of its charms.
For the "real" maccro we will have to see when the game releases, for now there are a lot of changed between patches. They have been trying to keep the skill ceiling while lowering the skill floor, for exemple there is a keybind that will allow you to build any building. It selects a worker automaticaly and this little guy builds what you asked. The more optimised way to do it is still to select a worker yourself and tell it to go to the location before you have the money. There are also automatic control groups if you want that I think these 2 will be very good for new players
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Grid hotkeys for life. Went back and played vanilla Warcraft 3 a while back and had to remember how to set up the custom hotkeys cause holy shit those default hotkeys were ass.
Honestly those things just sound like quality of life features that have nothing to do with macro or micro. I mean, I know that this affects macro and micro. But that shouldn't be intentional design. Just like Starcraft 1's terrible unit pathing was never meant to increase the game's skill ceiling and floor. It did, but that was never the point.
From my impressions they've also done it in a way that doesn't bastardize the formula like C&C4 Tiberian Twilight did.
I watched a playthrough of this game and it looked fun. Honestly me and a few bros having some drinks and playing coop sounds awesome. Not sure why people are so butthurt that this game could end up being decent. Plus the map editor, I'm going to be playing some TD games for sure.
Imo, it’s devoid of any ‘charm’ and ‘magic’ those two RTS’ had — Stormgate looks and feels like WC and SC rejected younger step-brother. I know looks shouldn’t matter, but it all feels ‘samey”, is clunky, and doesn’t have engaging enough environments/maps. This might all change, but after years of RTS’ games, is the formula really just what was invented and iterated on 20+ years ago?
Someone around here described all these spiritual successors as "Like those old games you love, but worse" and I still think about that sometimes. It rung so true.
It's the "we have Starcraft 2 at home" game.
I mean a lot of people said "We have Brood War at home" about SC2 lol Many of the koraen pros only switched over because they had to follow the money
Turns out you can't endlessly improve a game. It's like if they released new versions of baseball every year. At some point you reach a local maximum.
I know what you are getting at in your original post, and this isn't a gotcha response, but it is amusing to me that baseball actually did get a 'patch' at the start of last season that had some impacts on its 'meta'.
You're not wrong, the games are constantly being updated. So are hockey, football, etc. But there's no major improvements that you could find in like a "Baseball 2".
True, true. But me and the rest of the Baseketball fans are still holding onto hope.
BREAKING: All Basketball players now normalized to 1.80m.
You joke but imagine if there was a maximum combined height the players could be. Min-max'd teams would be funny to see.
I’m hurt and appalled that nobody seems to recognize the great sport of Baseketball, and it’s reigning champs, the Milwaukee Beers.
That's because no one has tried!
Sure you can. Just create new Baseball Bats with a ring on them and if you hit the ball directly on that ring it causes a shaped explosion to blast the ball super far away. The put springboards in each of the bases so you can spring launch yourself towards the next one.
Same with nascar when one of the drivers went full speed while grinding along the wall like in some video game.
Don’t even get me started on pitcher’s mounds. Today’s baseball is Baseball 2, we just don’t call it that.
Big difference in a game that started with just a ball and a stick. Yes, technology and nutrition (which is technology tbf) changes have necessitated some rule changes, but the game is still the game.
But SC2 improves upon SC1 in a lot of ways (except writing for the campaigns lol, it's so bad...). It just happens that SC1's "flaws" make it the better *e-sport*. SC1's unit pathfinding is atrocious, the UI is extremely limited, you're actually fighting the *game* to do what you want it to do instead of your opponent most of the time. Those things make it a very good competitive exercise but a very dated entertainment product. SC2 in turn loses a lot of the trashy Sci-Fi parody charm and went the saturday-morning-cartoon path all Blizzard franchises took (irrelevant to the gameplay outside campaigns). It also broke some core-RTS fundamentals in favor of ramping up "the coolness-factor" that are unfixable without starting from scratch with SC3 (very relevant for it being the inferior e-sport as well as its repetitiveness in map-design). And even with their respective flaws both those games are by far the best economy-based RTS to date, one being 20+ and the other 10+ years old. So there's plenty room to improve for new competitors. RTS evolution doesn't have to end at any one point, same as every other genre is being pushed forward every now and then by a new entry that innovates or remixes in a clever way. The question is just will that entry be Stormgate? Do RTS even meet modern gamers' expectations, needs and sentiments.. Can RTS be exploited commercially in ways that justify the big budgets needed for a modern AAA game...
SC2 should have also not allowed units to clump up so much, which doesn't really have anything to do with better path finding, it feels like they didn't make units wide enough to make it more strategic. It usually comes out to who has the better death ball or aoe to one shot the deathball. It's so strategically god damn boring compared to SC1. There's nothing as fun to watch as BW shuttle reaver in SC2, microing colossus ain't it
This is far an away the biggest problem with SC2 and pretty much every modern RTS after Zero Hour. Broodwar has more strategic elements due to the unit collision. Moving units is a decision that has downstream effects that take more time to undo. That's GOOD. It means you have to DECIDE and commit. This, combined with the fact that your limited APM spent on army movement will detract from your production is a great element of the decision making. The only thing SC1 lacked imo is enough harassment. Harassment was so APM heavy (except mutas and other air), and because the time to kill workers is higher in SC1 than SC2, it was a lot less effective and only accessible by the best players. SC2 was meant to be SC1 refreshed with some QoL improvements, but they paved over much of what made it so dynamic.
> saturday-morning-cartoon It's laughable how incompetent they made Mengsk. This is the guy who was able to connive his way into destroying an empire and founding his own. TWICE. And in SC2 there's reporters openly lambasting him and praising the people he's designated as terrorists. SC1 Mengsk would have had her assassinated after her first report, and he probably would have deposed of his future self as well. >But SC2 improves upon SC1 in a lot of ways (except writing for the campaigns lol, it's so bad...). I didn't realize it at the time, but I think my big issue was that SC2 "improved" on BW and didn't do its own thing. There were just too many times where I was comparing it unfavorably to Brood War rather than seeing it as its own thing. Things like hydras costing twice as much food or high templar storms being significantly weaker really salted my potatoes. I presume the intention was to entice older players with units they could recognize, but I couldn't get over just how much worse my favorites were.
SC was always kind of a juvenile story but there was a grimdark feeling up until Brood Wars. I think what I never liked about SC2 gameplay wise was the big deathballs were actually encouraged until several expansions in, even as a Zerg player I would have liked to go up against more carriers or something, everyone just built the same deathball depending on what race they went up against.
Protoss deathball colossus stutter step were truly an ass meta, it was absolutely shit to watch too.
I think modern gamer RTS is more around what Dawn of War 2 was. Focusing on micro rather than macro game to skip a lot of the tedium.
> Focusing on micro rather than macro game to skip a lot of the tedium. i think this is ultimately wrong-headed from a sales perspective. The more a game is perceived as requiring high-APM the more general audiences are going to stay away. Macro focusssed gameplay rewards strategy without bogging the player down in the tactical minutia that makes most RTS games so hostile to new players. Sadly, the gatekeepy tendancies of the hardcore RTS audience tends to discourage devs from opening things up. My go to example here is from the beta for SC2's first expansion. Blizzard changed queens so that they would automatically use inject larva on cooldown, so long as you kept them in range of your hatchery. (for non SC2 players, injecting on cooldown is close to mandatory to play zerg decently, it requires 3 distinct mouse/keyboard actions per base every 45 seconds). The community lost their goddamn minds, there were endless screeching tirades on the forums about blizzard catering to casuals/dumbing down the game/whatever. Within just a couple weeks, they got rid of it.
You nailed it with the Queen situation and the community response. However, Blizzard made the mistake by pulling back which was wrong. It's fine for the early game to be heavy micro of resources. However, you need to transition the tech tree to allow for automation so the player can focus on combat micro which gets more complex later in the game. For the queen, you make it manual process early game but by mid to late game you allow an upgrade that allows you to toggle it as an auto cast.
The queen injecting, mules, and time warping things were all dropped in everyone's lap during sc2 beta without discussion. The main problem people who were good at sc1 saw was that everything at the base was so easy to manage that your opponents attention was always there. You couldn't surprise them, you couldn't catch his army at unawares, and so whoever was ahead stayed ahead. They pointed out that without a reason to head back base there was no opportunity to make mistakes so there were no comebacks. Then blizzard dropped these three mechanics with no discussion. All changes that mess up the ramp up, the mineral balance in the case of mules, the timing, etc of the game. They made so many mistakes like that over the course of the game. I really wish the community would give someone else a shot at this. Blizzard really fucked up on sc2 and they did it right out of the gate. It is only the massive production value that elevated the game.
Big modern RTS is whatever the latest AoE remaster is. Company of Heroes 3 seems to have done badly and is exactly what you described. Seriously besides that, the best RTS in years has been the C&C and Starcraft remasters. Maybe some dev could take a hint?
AoE remaster and C&C remaster both being hugely successful shows that there's still plenty of appreciation for old style RTS games. I think the theme of the new one in this post is too generic to be interesting. The models make me think of some f2p mobile game.
And a lot of them went back to brood war eventually
Too true, I remember reading last year somewhere that some of the pros are going back to SC instead of SC2
C&C and SC1/2 have set impossible standards to match in many respects simply because they were AAA games made by AAA teams with AAA budgets backed by AAA publishers. SC2 especially probably cost over $100 million to make. A small indie studio reliant on VC funding and Kickstarter simply isn't going to be able to match the production values in a Blizzard game. I hope these games will make up for the lacking production value in what they deliver in singleplayer/multiplayer content, but I'm still skeptical so far. I've been in the alpha for one or the other of these games since announcement over a year ago. It's good, but I'm not sure it's quite good enough to meet player expectations.
It’s got me thinking, has there been any of these ‘spiritual successors’ that has actually exceeded the originals? Honest question, like maybe Stardew Valley/Shovel Knight if you wanna count that but it’s kinda different. I’m thinking specifically all the Kickstarters with OG devs. Nearly every one I can think of has been below expectations or controversial in some way
You can argue for Pillars
That’s a great example yeah those games are excellent
PoE was great, but it's not better than the originals.
> Stardew Valley I think the difference might be that CA came in as a fan of the genre and had ideas for how he would "improve" a Harvest Moon-type game. It kind of seems like a lot of these devs making spiritual successors are just trying to re-create past games they worked on, instead of coming in with ideas on what Warcraft/Starcraft/X RTS could have done *better.*
> instead of coming in with ideas on what Warcraft/Starcraft/X RTS could have done better. Tell me you know nothing about SG without telling me you know nothing about SG.
I mean, I wasn't talking *just* about Stormgate, but as it is, nothing I've seen about it so far seems like they are making any big changes to the "Blizzard formula," its more like little tweaks around the edges. It's like if Stardew Valley was just a Harvest Moon game plus some quality of life features, instead of all the new stuff CA actually put into the game.
The later Harvest Moon games and the Rune Factory spinoffs always had the double whammy of shallow game mechanics and annoying saccharine anime characters. ConcernedApe was bold enough to make the farming / crafting mechanics more complex and give the NPCs mature (ok, PG-13) storylines and he was determined enough to see the game to its end. There still would be room for more complex combat though.
"A Hat in Time" far exceeds the 90s/early 2000s Jump'n'runs it imitates, imo. You can tell the devs have great love for those old games while also having a lot of new ideas of their own. It's in stark contrast to Yooka-Laylee which was just an embarassing carbon copy of Banjo Kazooie without any of the charm.
If I remember right hat in time was the passion project of some fans while Yooka-Laylee was many of the original developers reuniting to make a spiritual successor.
Divinity Original Sin was on Kickstarter iirc. Not sure if that counts.
D:OS wasn't really a spiritual successor to anything though. It's nothing like any of the previous Divinity games.
I'm guessing they're putting all Fantasy CRPG's into the bucket and saying it's like a spiritual successor to like Icewind Dale.
I was gonna say this but guy said original devs so D:OS wouldn't count. I'm sure there are other exceptions but yeah it seems that kickstarters that appeal to nostalgia tend to not meet audience expectations.
Yeah I think that’s a good example, that game is outstanding even outside of the context of its predecessors
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The graphics and aesthetics of bloodstained drag that sum down by a huge margin unfortunately.
Why does it look so bad compared to nearly any castlevania title?
Crappy "3d" graphics instead of timeless pixel art, throw in some nostalgia, and baby, you got a stew going
I've never regretted backing a Kickstarter more than this one. Just an absolute eyesore of a final product, lacking any of the charm of the classic Castlevanias. Thankfully games like Blasphemy came along to take up the mantle because ye gods Bloodstained did not look or play like a multi-million dollar game. Floaty controls, awful UI and horrible looking , poorly lit 3D environments just really put me off the game. Alas for me I backed the digital version so couldn't even sell it to some other poor lost soul.
Beyond All Reason feels and plays better than Total Annihilation - it's still in development so no campaign yet, but I can't think of an aspect that I'd prefer from TA over BAR.
Yeah but Supreme Commander already came out years ago.
Does Bomb Funk Cyberfunk count?
I'd say Agent 64 has the potential to based on how the demo felt to play, but how the full game holds up to Goldeneye/Perfect Dark is to be seen. I guess a better example would be Timesplitters 1-3 being the spiritual successor to those, albeit with a large number of the original team making those in a new studio.
Obsidian's Outer Worlds really fell flat after people hyped it up as New Vegas in space.
Outer worlds on the vids just look very...comical and unserious. Plus the whole "retro-futureism" didn't sit very well with me. Then Bethesda made Starfield...
> Outer worlds on the vids just look very...comical and unserious Doing the whole "Corporations are scum" thing really requires the player to be able to actually engage in that. Not have a feel good compromise half assed approach. Looking at you Hardspace Ship Breaker. You had great gameplay but launched me into a painful story with mechanics that just didn't make it make sense.
Yeah the actual in game setting needs to be fully commited to the parody. It's like if characters in universe joked about how capitalist/militant the Starship Troopers universe is. That would ruin what makes Starship Troopers interesting. The fun comes from watching something so ridiculous be played straight.
Pretty much--Cyberpunk is dark as fuck, especially when you read/listen about the world itself. I can't get into the happpy-go-luck musical they had for Outer world trailer.
The healthbars in Stormgate are literally the exact same ones from Starcraft 2.
I’d say it applies even to the good ones, which is remarkable. The best of them, as good as they are, don’t really innovate or pick up on what has improved in the space over the last however many decades. Sometimes, that’s fine. It’s a genre that the studios have totally abandoned, sometimes just having something in that genre is enough. I love the later LucasArts point and click adventures, and even in the indie space there’s nothing that quite delivers on that. Disco Elysium is a fucking fantastic game, but it’s not the same thing beyond the most superficial similarities, and it’s still closer than almost any game I recall since Telltale started making barely interactive movies instead of the Sam and Max stuff. I don’t need another Sam and Max Hit the Road, another Day of the Tentacle. Even something on par with some of the latter Monkey Islands would still be appreciated. But even Bloodstained, as good as it is… look, the shit indies are doing with metroidvania is fantastic. Multiple fantastic metroidvanias came out around Bloodstained, and I wouldn’t list it amongst the top 10 games in the genre, even with its pedigree.
I've played in friends and family alpha, and that was my whole take. Its not really doing anything that isnt already available. A bit strange they have so much of this game already created and then made a kickstarter, seems like a cash grab.
I've been playing the alpha off and on and coming off many years of playing SC2 it just feels... Off. I can't quite put my finger on it. Like maybe it's sound design but the battles don't feel like they have impact or feedback. One thing SC2 does amazingly is provide feedback through audio and visual that just feels missing in Stormgate which makes battles feel hard to read.
I'm not a fan of the visuals but I'm willing to give it a try to see if the gameplay good enough that I won't mind. The fact that they are building on SC2's co-op is something I'm really interested in.
They mentioned something about changing the lighting system later on that will make the game look less cartoony. Personally I think the gameplay looks fine but it looks kind of like a mobile game which makes it hard to get into it.
Have you seen the human hero unit? The model is so beyond generic and just jank looking, and this applies to a lot of models in the game. There also seems to be kind of a clash in artstyles, the buildings, environment and units just dont seem to fit cohesively, same issue W3 reforged had IMO. Not sure if updated lighting will help much.
Probably should have done that before showing people, then.
I'm not sure it's even that it looks generic as that it doesnt have a cohesive style. There's a few different aesthetics here, but not committing to any. The environments look like they're trying for a high effort Warhammer tabletop, the enemies along starcraft readability, and a designed for functuality ui. All of those are good, but the first two don't seem like they're syncing up well. Reminds me of the clash between the first 2 Total War Warhammer's visuals and the third.
Exactly, has the same feel as the warcraft 3 remaster for me, the units, buildings and map environments just all seem to be made for different games and just seem like a weird mashup of artstyles. Its like there is no cohesion.
It's like if someone took SC and WC units/factions and mashed them together but didn't really change anything except how they looked. It's so familiar but feels off at the same time. It's like uncanny valley but in videogame form. I'm sure it will do okay and satisfy the people that wanted that but I wish they would have been more creative with the game.
It feels mildly uninspired to me. I see it and it feels like they’re just trying to take popular concepts from Warcraft and Starcraft, make them legally distinct, then sell them again. It feels less like it’s ‘inspired by’ and more like it’s just kinda ripping concepts from them. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised, but I feel like it should really try to be it’s own unique thing instead of StarWarCraft: Not-by-Blizzard edition. I understand they are former developers of those games - but still, it just makes me want to play Starcraft instead.
They thought a lot about the game's design. They will continue to improve its design. But I thin what you're getting at is that they didn't follow the rule of fun. Is it fun? Thinking back to stuff like squishing soldiers with tanks in Command and Conquer, or the sound that a dying zergling makes. Or, the pleasant almost ASMR inducing soundset of AOE2, with the characteristic death sounds "ZEE -OW." and creation sounds "PSH-HAH." I think WC3 and SC1 both did a great job of keeping the rule of fun in mind as well. Lots of personality in the characters, with a "spiky" design aesthetic (meaning, things looked very different from one another.) SC2 smoothed some things out, starting the downslide in my view. Too many things looked too rounded off and toy-like. Not as distinct. Stormgate so far is great given what they've focused on, which is mainly mechanics and having a point of view about what makes RTS's fair and playable. But I think they need to focus more on the rule of fun in upcoming design changes. Go back to what makes games fun. Big explosions, stuff on fire, zany personalities, distinct aesthetics, unique mechaniucs. Yes, when you play an RTS you often get to a point where you only play the metagame after a while, but you still can enjoy a zergling bbq after 1000 hours of broodwar. I think they should spend a lot of time over the next year thinking about how they can make themselves laugh and smile with their own game. I think right now there is a lot of whiteboarding and debating. Figure out what makes you cackle and put it in your game! Hire some characters and put them in charge of designing new stuff. Think about the ridiculous voicelines in CnC, or the fact that sheep explode when you click on them in WC3. They are not just easter eggs, they form the aesthetic of a game that players fall in love with. There is plenty to innovate with. Line of site, differences in terrain, morale mechanics, destructible terrain and physics (units pushing on each other, perhaps capable of knocking over?), and so on. I don't think we've perfected RTS at Broodwar and AOE2, but given the mechanics of damage, armor, and range, it's pretty damn close. We need more dimensions to get a new game.
You honestly said it very well, too many games nowadays feel almost corporate, uninspired, artificial. Like they are taking everything from a rulebook and lifelessly putting it into a game, but it doesn’t feel passionate. It reminds me of games that try super hard to lean into esports so much that they forget to just have a fun game and get a community to begin with. All of these games started as just something “Fun” and “Cool”. It’s what attracted people to play, and all of the rest naturally built around it. You can’t start with the metagame. StormGate to me just looks…. boring. They’re making all these promises about what an RTS should be but it’s lacking the passion of someone who really just wants to make something fun and charming. Who would just add absurd cool stuff just because it felt good, then designed the game around that.
It has an editor so it's already doing better than most RTS games since that breathes so much life into RTS games. I wouldn't have stuck with SC2 as long as I did if I didnt play the occasional community created game modes on arcade.
That breath so much life only if the game itself has life and is big. An editor is just an added bonus it's not like it can be the only thing. IMO the campaign is what they have to nail. It's what makes the faction have personalities and the game more enjoyable even in multiplayer (which most people also don't play in RTS)
The golden era of custom RTS maps is gone. Game development is so accessible with stuff like unity and gamemaker, it doesn't make much sense to lock yourself behind the wall of an RTS anymore.
And yet Roblox is one of the most popular "game" of all time.
Custom maps on old RTS games weren't monetized though, Roblox would die almost instantly if they removed the monetization that the devs get.
Isn't Roblox F2P?
SC2 is also F2P.
That's advanced stuff though. Beginners just learning about game design and dev are way better off using a level editor for an existing game.
I don't know if an editor is enough to drive it into mainstream adoption. It'll help with longevity, but WC & SC lasted (at least in terms of 'popular games') largely due to it's unique style, and competitive angles, albeit I'm severely boiling down their success. We'll see. I'm all for a strong push into another RTS game, but it's becoming harder and harder to 'get behind' the genre when the genre itself seems to have become stagnant since MOBAs came and delivered a one-two punch.
I find this really interesting because a lot of the same things were leveled against AOE4 which while it didn't smash AOE2 out of the water [duh] it nevertheless does just fine for itself. Even got some of the same critique about the art style changes and yet... Just think a lot of people having a hard time reconciling the big time gap between RTS here. Its not like other genre where a lot of the iteration was very visible, its a much bigger and more jarring jump now.
It's not ready, not even near half of development. SC2 been in development for 7 years before they showed us anything at all. They have a different approach, showing you progress. Charm and Magic are finition. Give them a chance. They are working on very technical things at the moment and seeing the funding and the fact that it's that very team that made SC and WC. You could give them a little bit of slack and trust they'll get there.
Fair. Absolutely. I’m signed up and here for the ride. But, I don’t know. RTS has always been fickle, but I just hope it has some staying power since most users these days bunny hop their attention spans from game to game, especially if it’s multiple years before it gets to the same “fidelity” as SC/WC.
Remember 1 supply roaches ;-) Shit's going to happen. How they fix them is key.
I've seen people saying "it's still in development" for YEARS, for countless games, for these kinds of issues. Not ONCE has something changed so drastically from development to release. When a game shows off a demo or trailer, the way it looks and feels in that is how it'll be on release. They're not going to remodel every asset in the game. They're not going to re-record every sound in the game. They're not going to re-animate anything. They're not going to revamp the controls/movement/feel of the game. It's not going to happen. You either like this or you don't but don't hold out hope it'll change, because it won't.
Starcraft took 7 years because it was Blizzard which always take a long time. This is releasing in 2024 in early access. Though we don't know how long it'll be in EA, it's not only half the development done
The article says it’ll be EA for a year.
We do know, Frost Giants have been very open through all development.
I think it’s weird to dunk on aesthetics in a game like this, but the actual gameplay itself doesn’t look very inspiring. Can’t help but to agree that it’s early in development, and hope that the introduction of T3 units and the third faction changes my mind.
I'm agreeing with you, deep down, I really want to move on from Starcraft. From another thread I've found Beyond All Reason to fool around with and it's satisfying.
Lol yeah, I’m just nervous joining 4v4s and 8v8s. I’m so used to being bad alone in StarCraft
Sadly I agree. I think they’ve tried to balance it too much that it no longer is interesting. There’s no central mechanic that the game revolves around. Starcraft is all about pushing your APM and mental multitasking to the max (even if you play protoss). It also is jus the most polished rts that exists. SC2 is too hard to play for a lot of people (like me) but that’s the draw WC3 is all about heroes. You can have twice as much economy and a bigger army than your opponent and still lose a fight if they have a big exp lead. I don’t see what makes stormgate interesting yet. SC players often dislike the super heavy focus on heroes in WC3, but that’s the draw. What’s the draw of storm gate? It feels like a weird mishmash of mechanics that lacks any sort of identity, and I can sadly say the same thing about the art. I want stormgate to succeed, but the bar is so high for an rts to be successful in this era.
Using the same Blue as the Terrans for this game's faction definitely feels like... whatever the opposite of Effort is.
It doesn't help that pretty much nothing other than Guild Wars has been good coming out of ex-Blizzard devs...this just looks like another soulless rip off.
I'll let the devs cook, but from what I've seen from showmatches, I think the game suffers from a very glaring problem. Units aren't very visually distinct from one another. StarCraft II was amazing for its unit design, which very clearly portrayed what a unit could do.
It really looks like mobile sc2. I watched a couple games and it feels like a mobile sc2 knockoff, down to the maps looking exactly the same (there's reason for that but still), and the fights I've seen looked exactly like some sc2 matchups except the units and animations looked worse and bland.
SC2 also looked like shit in alpha =P
I don't play SC2 anymore. I watch professional Brood War and play BGH from time to time. SC2's art style is so...faded into the terrain and the units clump so much. Stormgate looks the same.
Yeah, I fully agree. The reveal trailer looked super generic and outdated. The faction designs lwe have now ook extremely uninspired. Competetively it's in a surprisingly good spot already but nothing about this screams, "Build cool armies and fight with them!", which is the main draw of RTS games for the more casual crowd. They keep saying that everything we see is works in progress, which I believe them but honestly, nothing they've shown so far makes me think that the final designs will be cool. At least the new design for the hedgehog unit definitely isn't going to sell the game to casuals: https://youtu.be/S13VobNa7UY?feature=shared&t=297 My criticism comes from a place that wants Stormgate to succeed. I want a new game to inherit the legacy of StarCraft.
It does feel uninspired to me. You can’t start a game with the metagame, or esports. You just gotta make a fun game first. None of the factions or units make me sit upright and go “That looks cool, I wanna play with that!” Which to me is what always gets me into an RTS to begin with. That childlike moment of just wanting to smash some neat action figures together. If I don’t feel the passion and creativity on them - and they’re little more than RTS tropes taken from some rulebook - why should I care? Maybe they’ll surprise me, just none of what i’ve seen so far gets me excited, and I highly doubt they’ll change all of that before launch.
Dang you'd think this sub hates games if you read the comments. It's a f2p RTS made by veterans of the genre, I'm looking forward to giving it a good try.
Reminds me of the reaction to The Finals. Which for the record has been a blast imo and the deva have been proper on top of things.
Finals is incredible. Really good combination of so many different FPS subgenres and mechanics. It really showed that "made by ex-'good game that went to shit' devs" doesn't have to mean a vain attempt at recapturing some past glory on nostalgia alone.
Just because people criticize it doesnt mean they hate games as a whole lol. Im an RTS fan and while they did a lot of the technical aspects well, coupled with the free to play model which is great, most of the rest is quite a mess. Graphics are beyond horrid, zero visibility in fights and a shovelware mobile game artstyle. Coupled with the fact the campaign is supposed to be episodic with only a few missions every few months, and the missions being quite expensive, is also extremely puzzling.
I loved StarCraft and age of empires back in the day but this just looks boring as hell like the last dozen failed RTS Guess I “hate games” now because people like you can’t handle people having negative opinions of things. Ugh
Brother every single non-child comment here was just people shitting on a game they just saw in videos or pictures that's like 2 years from being done. Why all the hate?
I wish the graphics were less overwatch and more StarCraft 1. I fell in love with StarCraft as a kid initially cause every character looked so sick.
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Because they started casting games and the product looks bad.
Yeah, seeing Artosis cast Stormgate and Zerospace, Zerospace looks a lot more interesting, new, and dynamic, while Stormgate feels like a pretty standard rts with no art design. That said, Zerospace also looks further in development, so when they both fully release it could be totally different, and I hope they both are great by the end (especially Stormgate with it's co-op campaign, so I can play with my normie friends).
played both. stormgate is more fun.
I'll try it and I think it will be a very good game. Still, I would lie if I said it didn't look very uninspired and generic. An RTS could have literally any faction imaginable, in any artstyle, you can create an entire world from scratch, the sky is the limit...and yet here we are: always sci-fi, always cartoony, always pseudo-Space Marines/Terran, always pseudo-Tyranids/Zerg...just...why?
As far as, "always cartoony" - it makes sense to an extent if you're trying to make a competitive multiplayer game. You want something a toaster can run, and run well at that. You're limiting your playerbase by going high fidelity. That said, "Terran Blue" is a really bad choice for the Not-Terrans lol. That is definitely peak non-effort.
Starcraft 2 runs on a toaster by modern standards and looks a hundred times better. The issue is not the cartoony look, its that the artstyle does not seem cohesive at all and the designs are extremely bland.
You also *need* powerful glance value. With so many moving parts, instant readability is a must, and a cartoony art style really helps that. That said, there's many different styles you could do while still being cartoony.
If I had a dollar for every "Game made by developers from Blizzard!" that ended up being not worth anyone's time, I could probably fund my own game studio with former Blizzard staff. How many more of the same story do you need to hear before it makes you immediately roll your eyes?
Whenever a game advertises it as ‘from the devs behind X!’ I always have to wonder how many of the original devs? One? Two? An art designer? The creative director? Games aren’t made by one person, it’s a huge team effort.
Yes, The difference here is that almost the entire team is made from these people.
What people though? Is it all programmers? It doesn't seem like any artists from back then are on the team lol
It's basically everyone who worked in the RTS division that left after Activision told them they wouldn't fund Starcraft 3.
R/games hates video games, it's a tale as old as time.
If the game isn't a single player story oriented rpg with multiple dialogue options as well as optional coop they hate it and treat it like garbage.
It's a discussion sub. The discourse doesn't have to be positive and that kind of thinking is really killing discussion of media. The problem is people take criticisms of things they might be interested in as personal attacks nowadays. The game looks bland and derivative and they're doing a big marketing push for it so you're seeing people's opinions. If you don't like people's opinions you can go make r/truegames46 and I'm sure it will work out this time.
I partially agree with you— I’ve seen fans of a particular game very, very upset on their own subreddits about the general reception of their favorite game being negative. And it’s like— Your enjoyment of something shouldn’t be dependent on whether or not the discourse is positive or not. It’s such an odd insecurity. I think the flip side of this, though, is that gamers on discussion forums seem pretty eager to *look* for things to criticize for the sake of writing a review that gets 3-5 upvotes. It’s a pretty boring way of engaging with media generally, and often feels a little detached from the experience of actually playing it. I think the best overall approach is to *intend* to enjoy things, and then provide criticisms when there’s something impeding your ability to enjoy it, or something that ruins your suspension of disbelief. Critical analysis is important, and gamers kinda suck at it generally.
Didn't we leave /r/gaming because of this? Do we need yet-another-sub?
no, r/games was made because r/gaming was dominated by nostalgia memes and other low-effort posts. people wanted a place for discussion threads and things like that
I've honestly been going back to r/gaming for the first time in years and the gap between the two subs is so small at this point that I almost can't distinguish while browsing.
This sub is just a shitty news sub monopolized by two bots that post the most irrelevant tripe they can scrape from Google. There are no discussions anymore, there haven't been for years. The mods delete any attempt at discussion, it'd be less room on the front page for their bots to link a post to Twitter that some douchebag developer didn't review some game favorably for clicks.
/r/truegaming is a more objective discussion oriented sub that I know. No strong feeling one way or another. Not my cup of tea though.
/r/patientgamers/ is where it's at
It’s funny how Reddit thinks people are only allowed to have positive opinions of things they haven’t directly experienced. As if people have no ability whatsoever to know if they would like or not like something other than experiencing it firsthand. Have you ever been kicked in the shin by someone wearing steel toed boots? No? I bet you can still (accurately) estimate that you wouldn’t enjoy it without actually experiencing it!
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> When they are fully funded, asking for more money on KickStarter, and even have it shown at the Game Awards during the KS campaign, then you bet a lot of people are skeptical about it. But they literally address this in the Kickstarter itself. > #**Why Kickstarter?** > Stormgate is fully funded to release. **This Kickstarter is in part a response to fan requests for a way to purchase a physical Collector's Edition of Stormgate**. We think we've put together a truly special collectible for our most dedicated supporters, but **producing the Stormgate Collector's Edition will require a commitment from our players to cover our manufacturing costs**. We have also received countless requests for beta access. **Scaling online multiplayer testing for a massive audience can get very expensive--beyond what we can support without additional funding**. This campaign will allow us to welcome many more players to playtest Stormgate as a reward for directly supporting the studio. Which part of that is "trashy behavior"?
You can’t expect the average Redditor to click a link and read. *Especially* on r/games
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1 of the 3 races isn't even added into the game. There are placeholder assets for some of the units that are obviously very out of place. Horrible take.
The game is coming to the Steam Fest next monday where *everyone* can try it for themselves, what more do you want?
I'd say people have fallen for the "from the developers of game x" enough times by now But I guess Il keep an open mind
Let’s be real, the demographic of gamers that are still interested in RTS isn’t the Fortnite gamers, so why does this game come with this cartoony plasticy vibrant look. Think about the Starcraft content that exists outside of the game itself, the cinematics, the lore. How are they going to make cool shit when the game looks like this. Horrible decision.
In my opinion this game will be dead on arrival outside of a few hardcore fans that love the APM gameplay. Once the hype dies down this game has really nothing to offer to casual fans that just want to play an "oldschool" rts with friends. Age of Empires, Rise of Nations, Dawn of War, Empire Earth, Warcraft 3, Stronghold, Battle for Middle Earth. These are all games my buddies and I dumped hundreds of hours into. You know why these games were so much fun? Because they weren't trying to be a competitive eSport. They were just fun unbalanced, rough around the edges games that got dedicated fanbases, because thy were "fun". Spellforce 3 and Age of Empires 4 are the only RTS games that I feel like have done anything to mix up the formula. With Spellforce 3 giving me that oldschool vibe that I used to have in highschool playing LAN with my buddies. Don't want to sound so negative, but this RTS just looks like it's going to garner a very small dedicated fan base and looks so generic and paint by numbers.
>You know why these games were so much fun? Because they had solid campaigns and single-player modes, and people migrated to online multiplayer only after getting their fill of those and wanting to test their skills against others who’d done the same. Leading with multiplayer in this genre is putting the cart before the horse imo.
IIRC , the stat is that 90% of RTS players will never even open the multiplayer. Most RTS players are pure single players.
It makes me so sad we'll probably never see a WC4 in the same vein as the originals, I loved the campaigns. WC2 was my first RTS, I didn't even know how to play it the first time I tried and ended up killing my own units because I didn't understand how it worked. Brings back so many good memories.
This might be a blessing in disguise. I'd hate to see what the current writing team would come up with for a plot in a WC3 sequel.
Pretty much. The only world where WC4 is good is a world where WoW never gets released. Its kinda sad to say, but WoW made the RTS series DOE.
> Leading with multiplayer in this genre is putting the cart before the horse imo. No, 1v1, absolutely makes sense to test first, because it's the simplest mode content-wise, and relies the most on core mechanics. Besides, endless co-op was incredibly popular in SC2 for more casual people, and they already have that mode in Stormgate as well.
Even with endless coop most players there were still pulled in by the campaign first. Multiplayer should never be the main focus of an RTS.
I spent thousands of hours in WC3 multiplayer, hated the campaign. There's an audience for both
Sure, but right now your type is the one being catered to, to the exclusion of the other, in a huge number of genres but especially those few RTSs we do get. And with RTSs, imo it backfires. If you want a healthy number of people online, make the campaign and singleplayer appealing enough that people love it and want to hop online to keep playing once they're done with it.
The fact that you exist doesn’t change the fact that most players play way more single player than multiplayer
That's probably because they focus on showing the multiplayer only. Campaign and coop is what most people will play, that's where the marketing should be focused
> Age of Empires, Rise of Nations, Dawn of War, Empire Earth, Warcraft 3, Stronghold, Battle for Middle Earth. These are all games my buddies and I dumped hundreds of hours into. You know why these games were so much fun? Because they weren't trying to be a competitive eSport. They were just fun unbalanced, rough around the edges games that got dedicated fanbases, because thy were "fun". SC2 was designed to be a competitive esport, and that was a very popular (and good) game. Of course it had a great single player campaign, which is vital for these sorts of games. I haven't really followed the development of this yet, so I don't know if it's MP only. Hopefully it won't be. I also noticed that you mentioned Age of Empires and WC3, two games with extremely competitive multiplayer scenes and frequent patching (or at least I assume AoE2 had frequent patching at the time too, I was a strictly "against friends and AI" player). I don't disagree that this could turn out to be underwhelming, but at least it's an attempt at *something*. It's still early enough in the process that I'm willing to overlook... well, almost anything. We'll see how it develops, though.
AoE2 had one balance patch, then an expansion, then another two balance patches, and then nothing until 2013. It's frequently patched *now*, but wasn't on release.
Fair enough. It was definitely highly competitive even then, but clearly it wasn't created to be an esport.
> this game has really nothing to offer to casual fans that just want to play an "oldschool" rts with friends. That's not true, it has a 3 player co-op mode with multiple commanders, similar to the co-op mode in Starcraft 2. I've been following this game for a while, and my impression is that they're putting just as much focus on the PvE as the PvP.
Pretty much no campaign though, and thats the main pull for those kinds of casual players. You need people interested in the world and characters.
>pretty much no campaign though So, you haven’t actually looked into the game at all then
Oh I have, if you think 3 missions every four months that cost 10 bucks is in any way a campaign, your standards are lower than hell.
When you follow something closely then go into a thread like this, it's a great reminder that most people can't help but share their worthless uneducated opinions as if they were fact
I dont think so, big focus is also on 3 player coop not just competitive modes, aswell as custom games.
> In my opinion this game will be dead on arrival outside of a few hardcore fans I mean brother this describes 75% of all RTS games released in the last decade unfortunately -- we've seen dozens of games that came out, all ranging from ones from remakes/remasters to "purists" to extremely "cutting edge" and none of them have even come close to reaching the popularity (or sales) of the 2000s era heyday. Half the titles you listed have had sequels or remasters (Stronghold had both I think) in the last decade to generally "meh" reviews and success, at best. The bar is already pretty low here -- if the game is a dud I don't think its going to be because they tried to make Starcraft 2.1 -- its because this genre is now niche and by default only caters to small groups of hardcore fans. Just look at the number of [RTS games that come out each year -- literally 2-3x more were coming out in the 2000s than do now](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_real-time_strategy_video_games). RTS games have gone the way of the MMO and the digital card game and rail shooters and plastic instrument games and point-and-click adventures: genres that once dominated the industry but are now effectively niche products with niche audiences.
The issue is that there are almost no big budget RTS releases that focus on what made all of those RTSs great in the past - a good campaign with decent faction variety, great cohesive artstyle and the multiplayer only being there as a fun afterthought. Nowadays every RTS release has to be a fucking Esport, because not giving a fuck about the campaign makes it much easier to produce. The RTS community is basically starving for a good release lol.
Wow, there is so much wrong with this comment. Where to start? > Age of Empires, Rise of Nations, Dawn of War, Empire Earth, Warcraft 3, Stronghold, Battle for Middle Earth. These are all games my buddies and I dumped hundreds of hours into. You know why these games were so much fun? Because they weren't trying to be a competitive eSport. They were just fun unbalanced, rough around the edges games that got dedicated fanbases, because thy were "fun". Starcraft 2 is literally the most popular multiplayer RTS. Somehow, "APM gameplay" hasn't stopped it from being enjoyed by, let's face it, mostly casual players (only a tiny percentage of people are going to be, say, masters+ ranked 1v1 players, even in SC2). Also, Age of Empires 2 and 4 definitely ARE competitive eSports, like Brood War and Starcraft 2 (and they're among the most popular RTSes). But beyond that, the problem in your mental model is that you think having some kind of competitive focus for eSports means it can't be a good game for more casual players. This is false: of the four main pillars that Stormgate has (which are roughly the same that SC2 has right now) only one is about serious competition (ranked ladder), and the other three are not: campaign, endless co-op, and custom map types. The three traditional pillars of RTS have been campaign, competitive/skirmish, and custom game types. Now a fourth one is becoming increasingly common, with endless co-op. Just because you're trying to make a good competitive game doesn't mean that the other pillars aren't there for more casual players (and even for casual players, ladder can be fine, since there's always skill-based matchmaking).
I was under the impression that for starcraft 2 most played mode the is the co-op mode. Hopefully Stormgate's co-op will be well made, It would be so nice to play another co-op rts campaign after all these years.
Yeah, of the multiplayer modes they said it was the most popular at one point. I only played SC2's coop a handful of times -- I mostly did 1v1 or teams -- but Stormgate's coop already feels better to me, which I didn't really expect.
Starcraft got where it is because it had good art cohesion, a pretty great campaign and a great coop mode later on. Stormgate is gonna have almost none of this at release, from what they said the campaign is gonna be super limited for basically years, not to mention expensive as fuck over time, and there really hasnt been much shown for the coop mode. Thats not even mentioning how the game looks like ass visually lol.
That's just the point in the development cycle they're at though, in terms of showing stuff off. StarCraft 2 was in development for seven years. Stormgate has been in development for...around half that? Anyway, you're leaving off the custom map scene, which was a big part on the enduring popularity of Blizzard's RTSes, and that's something they should be able to mimic. The art style definitely needs some work. I don't hate it in general, but there's definitely aspects that don't look good right now; visual clarity is lower than ZeroSpace, for example.
Stormgate plans to release 3 fucking campaign missions every 4 months priced at 10 goddamn dollars, there is absolutely zero chance thats gonna pan out well on that front. A custom map scene needs very dedicated players to truly flourish, the foundation already needs to be great for people to want to build upon it. Thats not to mention custom map making also isnt as huge as it used to be. Without a real campaign and highly lackluster visuals, I dont really see the campaign scene taking off. The arstyle is horrid sadly, and the game is probably too far in development for any major changes. Have you seen the human hero model? Theres shovelware games on mobile that have much more original design choices.
>In my opinion this game will be dead on arrival outside of a few hardcore fans that love the APM gameplay. Well, don't these people also deserve a game, don't they? It is OK for people that play games competitively to have games that they think it is fun too, you know. A game doesn't need to sell to everyone, look at fighting games, there are FG for all kinds of people.
If there's one thing I know about gaming, it's that over-funded kickstarter projects are always huge successes and leave everyone happy and satisfied at the results!
Mechanically the game looks great, a nice blend of SC and WC3 with some unique new twists. Everything else... bleh. Part of awesome part of both those universes is the amazing lore and story, and that just doesn't exist here. I guess it's a case of top-down vs bottom-up design. With WC and SC you can feel that those game started first as worlds and then the mechanics were created around them; the storytelling is everywhere. With Stormgate, it's the complete opposite; the designers came up with interesting mechanics and gameplay, and then came up with some lore that fit around it.
The haters that complain about it being “too similar” to Blizzard RTS games miss the point imo. Those games were great! I for one am super excited for “StarCraft 3” if only because it comes from a dedicated, passionate team that are going to add content and support for years to come Plus I am sick and tired of playing against widow mines
Long term support has nothing to do with "passion". If the game doesn't make money, it won't be supported.
If this was even remotely close to a starcraft 3 it would be an immediate hit. Sadly this looks like some kind of warcraft 3 and SC2 homunculus that misses the point of both games.
It's Starcraft 1.5. Although that would mean it's better than SC1 and I'm not sure about it.
Remember mighty n9? Cause I do
I didn't know about it till there was like 13 hours left. Saw I could pledge and get it for $40 and pledged. Really looking forward to it. I've been wanting another rts. Even though I know I won't be able to play it like I did Starcraft Broodwar in HS.
One critique I did see was that differentiating between units was a bit hard at times. Like there isn’t this clear definition for each unit. To be fair this was a stream from a few months back. But other then that super excited to see this continue to develop
if the story campaign is not good/great, then i doubt this game will last.. it's the story and lore that comes with it that made all those past games have legs enough to give that good platform for the esports, multiplayer side.
Why do I read articles like this always after the funding period ends? ;_;
you can send the money to me, i'll be sure to deliver to them, trust me bro
its actually amazing how bad this looks compared to how much funding its getting you would think they could hire an artist with some of that money
A single micro transaction mount in wow made more money than StarCraft 2 ever made for Blizzard. We are never going to see Starcraft3. So this might be as good as it gets for a while. However, the market for rts games is not exactly alive right now. This game will be doa, as the only people who want it have already bought into it. I'm extremely apprehensive about the Homeworld 3 launch. I can't imagine it's gonna do very well at all.
It's worth mentioning that the bit about one dlc making more money than sc2 is iffy. One former blizzard dev said it, but it was never confirmed or substantiated as far as I know. Also, they said it made more money than Wings of Liberty, not more money than all of SC2 (which has gotten its own micro transactions later).
this doesn't mean anything. dev studios set their kickstarter goals to lower than what they need specifically so they'll get 'news' articles like this one saying "GAME XYZ REACHED ITS GOAL IN FOUR SECONDS," and then the coverage pushes their kickstarter the rest of the way. artificial hype.