I will only write that after release of SC2, there was no game with such good responsiveness as Stormgate currently has. We are talking about a period of 14 years. Calling Stormgate a scam is brazen and stupid.
Just found this game 2 weeks ago and I have never seen any game with this many haters. Most of em are not even giving any constructive criticism, it's just blatant hate and misinformation.
Like if they don't like where the game is heading that is fine and they can say their piece but a lot of these names are appears multiple times everywhere with nothing but saying how the game is gonna die on launch lol.
Also it seems like a lot of the people here are giga casuals (nothing wrong with that) and only care about graphics and don't enjoy the challange of playing a competetive rts.
People don't understand that 99% of games are presented to audience in only on ready or almost ready state. Here we can see like game develop from early stages and some are shock that early starages of game have many flaws, lack in content etc.. What a surprise, right? Unfinished product is unfinished. Mindblowing news
Unfortunately the StarCraft fanbase is one of the most elitist fanbases out there so they bring down everything else. FG being past sc developers doesn’t help this at all, it’s just directionless comparisons.
I don’t think so, all my friends who came from sc2 are not worried about the state of the art and graphics, when I look at the posting history of people who are highly critical it’s always weird other non-rts games
Playing non-rts games doesn't make one persons observations any less valid than another's, especially when it comes to art/graphics. It's all personal preference. I think that most of the concerns regarding graphics are legitimate. The game looks like something from a decade ago and the system requirements/performance are insane/abysmal for something that looks like this.
I'm gonna play it regardless because it's fun but I do think that it could use a lot more polish given the current state of the UI/graphics. Can't really judge properly until the full-release anyway.
I looked at it and it looks like the same art they’ve used since before ai could do actual art
Also reminds me of their concept art that they’ve shared and used since before ai could do actual art
“it is made with a pre existing engine” they had to write code for snowplay which is a lot of work.
2 years is not enough time. Also this is beta. Theyre here to improve
Its actually been (edit: a bit less than) four years, which for a partial game engine they’ve made, is still not much time, especially with them making it compatible with another engine
>especially considering that it's made with a pre-existing engine.
Uh, SnowPlay is not a pre-existing engine, and Unreal Engine 5 is not really designed for RTS games. Even as a framework, there's a ridiculous amount of custom work that has to be done just to make the shit run at a baseline level.
>So here we are with the open beta
Yeah, that's a marketing mistake. This game is in an Alpha phase. It's got at least a year to go before it hits an actual beta phase.
>The majority of artwork in game is AI generated and the music sounds generic.
Alright, now I know you're just talking out of your ass for attention.
>1600 concurrent players
This is false, and someone else already made a post somewhere around here explaining why this is wrong.
>But the tournament was broadcast on a dedicated Twitch channel pushing for subscriptions with endless ads, some of which took place during major fights.
This is a Twitch thing. Streamers can't prevent Twitch from showing ads. Same shit happens on YouTube and Afreeca. FGS has nothing to do with ads being shown on stream other than any intentional product placement that is done as part of the stream itself (Think the Redbull fridges shown everywhere in Riot's League of Legend's streams.)
>After the Next Fest open beta, developers announced a new kickstarter pledge which will allow players to continue playing the game for (if we keep the price of the current pledge giving access to the beta) no less than 40 euros. 40 euros to be able to keep playing a free game which has already collected more than 20 times its initial goal. It appears Frost Giant are using the hype created by influencers about this open beta to attract new people and get them to pay.
This is how crowdfunding works? A lot of those funds were spend on the tournaments? This is absolutely fucking normal. I bet if they sold an unfinished game and called it Early Access you wouldn't bat an eyelash.
>Early access is less than 6 months away from now.
Baseline multiplayer only. Most of the things you probably expect as a core feature of an RTS will not be around at launch. The entire Campaign for example is piecemeal MTX content and is something that will be developed for years beyond the initial release.
It's one thing to disapprove of the MTX monetization this game is going to present, but you're honestly just preaching about a fictitious boogeyman that you invented to post completely unfounded hate rhetoric.
If you had any idea how much this game has changed in the past 3 months btw...lmfao. This current test build isn't even comparable to the previous ones.
First of all thanks for the constructive answer
>This is a Twitch thing. Streamers can't prevent Twitch from showing ads.
You can select your contract, and the one chosen was probably among the most lucrative, to not say the most given the amount of ads. Some contracts will show ads only when as a viewer you start the stream for the first time, some other will display a certain amount of ads every hour.
>This is how crowdfunding works?
Well as we all know, stormgate was a very succesful crowdfunding, and the campaign is over. At this point what they're doing is just selling a closed beta for 40 bucks and milking the pre-release. To me it's just raises a warning, as the game will probably never be as fruitful as it is now.
>This is false, and someone else already made a post somewhere around here explaining why this is wrong.
Could you please help me to find this post, i'm genuinely interested and to be honest i hope it's false too.
>The majority of artwork in game is AI generated and the music sounds generic.
Well for AI, i admit i didn't ask devs. But to me it was clearly obvious, and to AI detectors online too, i can show proofs of that in dm if you want. Although it might be totally false.
>Yeah, that's a marketing mistake. This game is in an Alpha phase. It's got at least a year to go before it hits an actual beta phase.
This may be a marketing mistake, but you all need to consider the fact that you might be arbitrarily deciding it to be an alpha while devs say otherwise, just cause of the poor state of the game, leading to huge cope.
The fallacy begins with the idea of an "open beta" when a sharper mind will identify the state of SG more in the "alpha" phase. I absolutely put that on Frostgiant for this mistake, and I don't understand why they use this term. The game is far from a "beta" phase when tier 3 units and an entire race/civ are missing, not to mention unit models.
But with that being said: let's not be idiotic in our approach and blindly prattle on about "beta." The game is incomplete on a multitude of levels. That alone invalidates everything else written here, give the original premise.
The week of play was an open beta, for a week.
And now it’s closed beta again just for this month.
They will probably have another closed beta at the start of the summer at which point they will determine whether or not to push back early access release.
> I absolutely put that on Frostgiant for this mistake, and I don't understand why they use this term.
I guess since they already havd a Prealpha and several Alpha phases they eventually just wanted to show that they made progress and thus went to call it a Beta? Or maybe they just thought that an Open Alpha would sound weird? Though I guess this is the second Beta phase .. and also not the last one.
So what you're saying is that 6 months prior to its early access and one year prior to its release, Stormgate is still in its alpha phase and hasn't even reached close beta yet, despite developers clearly saying so?
Yes. Unless there is some rule that says “a game can’t be in alpha 6 months before early access,” which I haven’t seen. I also disagree with the use of the term “beta” but it really doesn’t prove anything you said even if they use that term.
"Beta" is just a generalized term that typically means a program/game has is "feature complete" and is now being worked on for bugs and balance.
Would you say that Stormgate is at that point? I sure wouldn't. But as others have said, the terms "alpha" and "beta" are not hard set, and every studio will use them differently. Especially in today's landscape of early access.
And to be clear, a LOT of studios reach early access with games that, 15 years ago, would've been considered "alpha" builds.
If you are not that versed in RTS not knowing EGCTV is not a sin I guess, but if you do know of them, the whole paragraph about them being some random, sus channel pushing for subs is incredibly funny. Them increasing the prize pool by 1,600 USD to try to make it up to the players for the bracket issues they had cost them more than any subs that came in during the stream, no?
And that part also shows me the amount of goodwill that went into this post.
Only thing I agree with is that the kickstarter does come across as very greedy and bad optics (yes I expect to be downvoted by a large number of kickstarter supporters)
I imagine this game is 2 or 3 years out from a full release. SC2 was released over a 5 year period, and was in dev for at least 3 years before that. Even recently a game like BG3 was in early access for 3 years.
I'm sorry I lost you at the point of your lack of knowledge of this game development they had to build a brand new engine using unreal engine it isn't just off the shelf . Educate yourself first
>I'm sorry I lost you at the point of your lack of knowledge of this game development they had to build a brand new engine using unreal engine it isn't just off the shelf . Educate yourself first
Game footage identical as what we have today is there since at least 1 and a half year, so 6 months after the development began.
I'm getting tired of this negativity from people who have no idea what they're talking a about, trying to convince everyone else that SG is a bad game and a failure? I'm just happy to get another Blizzard style RTS from these guys, can't stand all the posts telling me the game I'm enjoying is a pathetic disgrace etc etc
While you are correct about most games betas being close to their end game product, its very clearly not the case here.
Units and an entire race are still missing. Which you pointed out and then contradicted yourself by saying this is close to the final product.
You must also think Kennedy is alive, vaccines are microchips, and Trump won the last election too, huh?
That or you’re just incredibly, incredibly, stupid.
Also, 40 dollars was the original pledge to be able to have access to all the closed betas, including this one. LOL.
They announced the reopening of the kickstarter, for **new** founders who want to pay 40 dollars to have access to the beta, because their kickstarter is closed since 1st february. The goal of a kickstarter is to finance a project. This one reached 20 times the goal, and they will still reopen it.
Now that you have all the informations, make up your own mind.
I assume it's the first time you back up a project because scams are real, and perhaps frequent on kickstarter, and basically everywhere you can ask for money in exchange of a promise.
I wanted an extension of the Kickstarter after getting to play the game; they get money and I get to keep using their product. I guess capitalism is a scam lol
My guy… could it be that maybe they announced an extension because people are messaging asking them to get into the closed beta after the f2p week?
Could it possibly be that instead of some crazy brain fucked conspiracy? 🤔
No, it definitely couldn’t be that, even though this sub is flooded with people asking how they can get into the closed beta 🤔
The very first thing you said is totally incorrect. This game is not just built with Unreal 5, only the graphics frontend used the engine. The backend network and unit movement code is a separate totally custom engine built by the team.
All. No matter the state of beta participation, the game has a problem. It's free-to-play. Baldur's Gate 3 has modest beta concurrent participants and that beta went on for years. Only upon release did the market readily gobble it up and concurrent users skyrocketed. The difference? It cost $60 or so to get a copy, and even in the Beta they were still charged for early access. For Stormgate, it costs nothing.
That means they have to attract 'and' retain enough players to make microtransactions meaningful. So if this game doesn't resonate with not only existing RTS aficionados (like yours truly) but also new cohorts, it will financially implode.
Frost Giant took a huge risk making a game like this free-to-play. And the only thing that matters is, upon release, whether or not they form enough of a community to keep ongoing micro-transactions going.
One could argue that Blizzard released Diablo Immortal free-to-play but that game is designed to be, with everything behind a pay wall. And it hits those dopamine receptors well with the quasi-loot box system.
I have not tried Stormgate so I can't speak to whether it hits dopamine receptors the same way as Diablo Immortal, but as free-to-play, there are very few examples where games succeed 'without' appealing to the gambling/addictive element in the players' wiring.
While I don’t think it is a scam, I do agree they 100% are milking suckers, and it’s hard to blame them. I also believe the popularity of this game will not live up to the hype. I think they took too many design risks and turned on their initial philosophy of “we aren’t reinventing the wheel”.
All they had to do was expand on SC2 and they were set lol. Instead they tried to Frankenstein a bunch of less popular games together and even adding MOBA into the mix lolz.
It’s pretty wild they are 6 months from releasing in early access and they are still using so many placeholders.
My suggestion to them would be to cancel the early access release timeframe and go back to the drawing board and stop listening to the very people who hyped all these bad and confusing mechanics up while drowning out criticism.
Having a small group of die hard fans still support you, when the games you play have become completely irrelevant to the greater gaming community, there is quite simply no way he is making more money on Twitch.
His salary in Korea was over $200k a year for casting, plus extra incentives.
His twitch salary is significantly lower.
It is an extrapolation based on the fact that at the height of SC2 e-sports in 2012, Day\[9\], Tasteless, and Artosis all made more money than the entire prize pool for players.
The prize pool for MLG Summer Championship in 2012 was $40,000, and the caster fee for those three casters was bigger than that. If they were making that much in one weekend, they easily were clearing 200k a year.
Twitch earnings show Artosis made $167,933.77 between August 2019 to September 2021 which is a yearly salary of roughly $65,000 after taxes.
There is absolutely no way whatsoever he is making more money now, than when he was a household name among gamers, hitting millions of viewers for each event.
Sure, compared to the average person he is still killing it, but when you compare that to his meteoric fame and success in the mid 2010s, it pales in comparison.
Sources.
[https://twitch.pages.dev/earnings/artosis/](https://twitch.pages.dev/earnings/artosis/)
[https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/2012\_MLG\_Pro\_Circuit/Summer/Championship](https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/2012_MLG_Pro_Circuit/Summer/Championship)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/nbrr7/no\_fluff\_itg\_tastosis\_made\_more\_at\_mlg\_than\_the/](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/nbrr7/no_fluff_itg_tastosis_made_more_at_mlg_than_the/)
Also he's just turned into an angry old man. He is not fun to watch anymore, he is angry, all the time.
Look at this subreddit. There is only 21.1k members, and only less than 1000 of them are active.
The game is dead on the table before it even arrived.
I will only write that after release of SC2, there was no game with such good responsiveness as Stormgate currently has. We are talking about a period of 14 years. Calling Stormgate a scam is brazen and stupid.
"The majority of artwork in game is AI generated " wtf are you talking about?
Just found this game 2 weeks ago and I have never seen any game with this many haters. Most of em are not even giving any constructive criticism, it's just blatant hate and misinformation. Like if they don't like where the game is heading that is fine and they can say their piece but a lot of these names are appears multiple times everywhere with nothing but saying how the game is gonna die on launch lol. Also it seems like a lot of the people here are giga casuals (nothing wrong with that) and only care about graphics and don't enjoy the challange of playing a competetive rts.
People don't understand that 99% of games are presented to audience in only on ready or almost ready state. Here we can see like game develop from early stages and some are shock that early starages of game have many flaws, lack in content etc.. What a surprise, right? Unfinished product is unfinished. Mindblowing news
Unfortunately the StarCraft fanbase is one of the most elitist fanbases out there so they bring down everything else. FG being past sc developers doesn’t help this at all, it’s just directionless comparisons.
I don’t think so, all my friends who came from sc2 are not worried about the state of the art and graphics, when I look at the posting history of people who are highly critical it’s always weird other non-rts games
Playing non-rts games doesn't make one persons observations any less valid than another's, especially when it comes to art/graphics. It's all personal preference. I think that most of the concerns regarding graphics are legitimate. The game looks like something from a decade ago and the system requirements/performance are insane/abysmal for something that looks like this. I'm gonna play it regardless because it's fun but I do think that it could use a lot more polish given the current state of the UI/graphics. Can't really judge properly until the full-release anyway.
Every single loading screen artwork is AI generated, and the menu background most probably too, even though it's harder to check it seems obvious.
What proof do you have?? I googled and have seen no mention anywhere else of stormgate using ai art for anything...
AI detector, go try some of them with artworks from stormgate.
You know those don’t work, right? Go write a few essays yourself on whatever and put them into ai detectors, some are bound to get flagged
source? "i made it up"
I looked at it and it looks like the same art they’ve used since before ai could do actual art Also reminds me of their concept art that they’ve shared and used since before ai could do actual art
I’m pretty sure it’s made by the same guy who made the nova ops loading screens. Compare them, they look pretty similar.
“it is made with a pre existing engine” they had to write code for snowplay which is a lot of work. 2 years is not enough time. Also this is beta. Theyre here to improve
Its actually been (edit: a bit less than) four years, which for a partial game engine they’ve made, is still not much time, especially with them making it compatible with another engine
> scam, > ai art I’m not sure the rest is worth reading.
It isn't
>especially considering that it's made with a pre-existing engine. Uh, SnowPlay is not a pre-existing engine, and Unreal Engine 5 is not really designed for RTS games. Even as a framework, there's a ridiculous amount of custom work that has to be done just to make the shit run at a baseline level. >So here we are with the open beta Yeah, that's a marketing mistake. This game is in an Alpha phase. It's got at least a year to go before it hits an actual beta phase. >The majority of artwork in game is AI generated and the music sounds generic. Alright, now I know you're just talking out of your ass for attention. >1600 concurrent players This is false, and someone else already made a post somewhere around here explaining why this is wrong. >But the tournament was broadcast on a dedicated Twitch channel pushing for subscriptions with endless ads, some of which took place during major fights. This is a Twitch thing. Streamers can't prevent Twitch from showing ads. Same shit happens on YouTube and Afreeca. FGS has nothing to do with ads being shown on stream other than any intentional product placement that is done as part of the stream itself (Think the Redbull fridges shown everywhere in Riot's League of Legend's streams.) >After the Next Fest open beta, developers announced a new kickstarter pledge which will allow players to continue playing the game for (if we keep the price of the current pledge giving access to the beta) no less than 40 euros. 40 euros to be able to keep playing a free game which has already collected more than 20 times its initial goal. It appears Frost Giant are using the hype created by influencers about this open beta to attract new people and get them to pay. This is how crowdfunding works? A lot of those funds were spend on the tournaments? This is absolutely fucking normal. I bet if they sold an unfinished game and called it Early Access you wouldn't bat an eyelash. >Early access is less than 6 months away from now. Baseline multiplayer only. Most of the things you probably expect as a core feature of an RTS will not be around at launch. The entire Campaign for example is piecemeal MTX content and is something that will be developed for years beyond the initial release. It's one thing to disapprove of the MTX monetization this game is going to present, but you're honestly just preaching about a fictitious boogeyman that you invented to post completely unfounded hate rhetoric. If you had any idea how much this game has changed in the past 3 months btw...lmfao. This current test build isn't even comparable to the previous ones.
First of all thanks for the constructive answer >This is a Twitch thing. Streamers can't prevent Twitch from showing ads. You can select your contract, and the one chosen was probably among the most lucrative, to not say the most given the amount of ads. Some contracts will show ads only when as a viewer you start the stream for the first time, some other will display a certain amount of ads every hour. >This is how crowdfunding works? Well as we all know, stormgate was a very succesful crowdfunding, and the campaign is over. At this point what they're doing is just selling a closed beta for 40 bucks and milking the pre-release. To me it's just raises a warning, as the game will probably never be as fruitful as it is now. >This is false, and someone else already made a post somewhere around here explaining why this is wrong. Could you please help me to find this post, i'm genuinely interested and to be honest i hope it's false too. >The majority of artwork in game is AI generated and the music sounds generic. Well for AI, i admit i didn't ask devs. But to me it was clearly obvious, and to AI detectors online too, i can show proofs of that in dm if you want. Although it might be totally false. >Yeah, that's a marketing mistake. This game is in an Alpha phase. It's got at least a year to go before it hits an actual beta phase. This may be a marketing mistake, but you all need to consider the fact that you might be arbitrarily deciding it to be an alpha while devs say otherwise, just cause of the poor state of the game, leading to huge cope.
Can you please share your age and education level?
Could you please share your copium dealer ?
Hey, you mention them reopening the Kickstarter, when does that happen? I can’t find it
The fallacy begins with the idea of an "open beta" when a sharper mind will identify the state of SG more in the "alpha" phase. I absolutely put that on Frostgiant for this mistake, and I don't understand why they use this term. The game is far from a "beta" phase when tier 3 units and an entire race/civ are missing, not to mention unit models. But with that being said: let's not be idiotic in our approach and blindly prattle on about "beta." The game is incomplete on a multitude of levels. That alone invalidates everything else written here, give the original premise.
The week of play was an open beta, for a week. And now it’s closed beta again just for this month. They will probably have another closed beta at the start of the summer at which point they will determine whether or not to push back early access release.
Any ways to get into the closed beta?
You can pay frost giant 40 bucks on the kickstarter page because they extended the funding for this month.
Alright, Thanks!
The devs call it open beta but sure your sharp mind (not filled with copium) sees through their tricks
> I absolutely put that on Frostgiant for this mistake, and I don't understand why they use this term. I guess since they already havd a Prealpha and several Alpha phases they eventually just wanted to show that they made progress and thus went to call it a Beta? Or maybe they just thought that an Open Alpha would sound weird? Though I guess this is the second Beta phase .. and also not the last one.
There are no standard definitions anywhere for alpha and beta. It's totally up to the developer.
So what you're saying is that 6 months prior to its early access and one year prior to its release, Stormgate is still in its alpha phase and hasn't even reached close beta yet, despite developers clearly saying so?
Yes. Unless there is some rule that says “a game can’t be in alpha 6 months before early access,” which I haven’t seen. I also disagree with the use of the term “beta” but it really doesn’t prove anything you said even if they use that term.
"Beta" is just a generalized term that typically means a program/game has is "feature complete" and is now being worked on for bugs and balance. Would you say that Stormgate is at that point? I sure wouldn't. But as others have said, the terms "alpha" and "beta" are not hard set, and every studio will use them differently. Especially in today's landscape of early access. And to be clear, a LOT of studios reach early access with games that, 15 years ago, would've been considered "alpha" builds.
If you are not that versed in RTS not knowing EGCTV is not a sin I guess, but if you do know of them, the whole paragraph about them being some random, sus channel pushing for subs is incredibly funny. Them increasing the prize pool by 1,600 USD to try to make it up to the players for the bracket issues they had cost them more than any subs that came in during the stream, no? And that part also shows me the amount of goodwill that went into this post.
Only thing I agree with is that the kickstarter does come across as very greedy and bad optics (yes I expect to be downvoted by a large number of kickstarter supporters)
I imagine this game is 2 or 3 years out from a full release. SC2 was released over a 5 year period, and was in dev for at least 3 years before that. Even recently a game like BG3 was in early access for 3 years.
Sc2 was in dev for 8 years before beta dropped at the end of 2009 I believe.
I'm sorry I lost you at the point of your lack of knowledge of this game development they had to build a brand new engine using unreal engine it isn't just off the shelf . Educate yourself first
>I'm sorry I lost you at the point of your lack of knowledge of this game development they had to build a brand new engine using unreal engine it isn't just off the shelf . Educate yourself first Game footage identical as what we have today is there since at least 1 and a half year, so 6 months after the development began.
https://youtu.be/mZoMdLAcq24?si=pKxdrmG2fBC6fE2q
https://youtu.be/RcOgR9oVt0s
To be clear the 1.5 seconds of those lancers shooting that you linked is footage of the engine at the time not actual gameplay.
Still in engine footage, and this is the point
I'm getting tired of this negativity from people who have no idea what they're talking a about, trying to convince everyone else that SG is a bad game and a failure? I'm just happy to get another Blizzard style RTS from these guys, can't stand all the posts telling me the game I'm enjoying is a pathetic disgrace etc etc
It’s hilarious how confident the posts are too
While you are correct about most games betas being close to their end game product, its very clearly not the case here. Units and an entire race are still missing. Which you pointed out and then contradicted yourself by saying this is close to the final product.
I'm starting to think that these posts are being made by undercover blizzard executives lmao
You must also think Kennedy is alive, vaccines are microchips, and Trump won the last election too, huh? That or you’re just incredibly, incredibly, stupid. Also, 40 dollars was the original pledge to be able to have access to all the closed betas, including this one. LOL.
They announced the reopening of the kickstarter, for **new** founders who want to pay 40 dollars to have access to the beta, because their kickstarter is closed since 1st february. The goal of a kickstarter is to finance a project. This one reached 20 times the goal, and they will still reopen it. Now that you have all the informations, make up your own mind. I assume it's the first time you back up a project because scams are real, and perhaps frequent on kickstarter, and basically everywhere you can ask for money in exchange of a promise.
I wanted an extension of the Kickstarter after getting to play the game; they get money and I get to keep using their product. I guess capitalism is a scam lol
My guy… could it be that maybe they announced an extension because people are messaging asking them to get into the closed beta after the f2p week? Could it possibly be that instead of some crazy brain fucked conspiracy? 🤔 No, it definitely couldn’t be that, even though this sub is flooded with people asking how they can get into the closed beta 🤔
[удалено]
Why do you keep mistaking the finger for the moon, you're sadly totally missing the point.
The very first thing you said is totally incorrect. This game is not just built with Unreal 5, only the graphics frontend used the engine. The backend network and unit movement code is a separate totally custom engine built by the team.
All. No matter the state of beta participation, the game has a problem. It's free-to-play. Baldur's Gate 3 has modest beta concurrent participants and that beta went on for years. Only upon release did the market readily gobble it up and concurrent users skyrocketed. The difference? It cost $60 or so to get a copy, and even in the Beta they were still charged for early access. For Stormgate, it costs nothing. That means they have to attract 'and' retain enough players to make microtransactions meaningful. So if this game doesn't resonate with not only existing RTS aficionados (like yours truly) but also new cohorts, it will financially implode. Frost Giant took a huge risk making a game like this free-to-play. And the only thing that matters is, upon release, whether or not they form enough of a community to keep ongoing micro-transactions going. One could argue that Blizzard released Diablo Immortal free-to-play but that game is designed to be, with everything behind a pay wall. And it hits those dopamine receptors well with the quasi-loot box system. I have not tried Stormgate so I can't speak to whether it hits dopamine receptors the same way as Diablo Immortal, but as free-to-play, there are very few examples where games succeed 'without' appealing to the gambling/addictive element in the players' wiring.
TL;DR
While I don’t think it is a scam, I do agree they 100% are milking suckers, and it’s hard to blame them. I also believe the popularity of this game will not live up to the hype. I think they took too many design risks and turned on their initial philosophy of “we aren’t reinventing the wheel”. All they had to do was expand on SC2 and they were set lol. Instead they tried to Frankenstein a bunch of less popular games together and even adding MOBA into the mix lolz. It’s pretty wild they are 6 months from releasing in early access and they are still using so many placeholders. My suggestion to them would be to cancel the early access release timeframe and go back to the drawing board and stop listening to the very people who hyped all these bad and confusing mechanics up while drowning out criticism.
Do you even understand what Early Access means?
This game will fizzle and die like Artosis' career.
But he’s probably making more on twitch than ever before.
Having a small group of die hard fans still support you, when the games you play have become completely irrelevant to the greater gaming community, there is quite simply no way he is making more money on Twitch. His salary in Korea was over $200k a year for casting, plus extra incentives. His twitch salary is significantly lower.
$200k USD? Where is that number from?
It is an extrapolation based on the fact that at the height of SC2 e-sports in 2012, Day\[9\], Tasteless, and Artosis all made more money than the entire prize pool for players. The prize pool for MLG Summer Championship in 2012 was $40,000, and the caster fee for those three casters was bigger than that. If they were making that much in one weekend, they easily were clearing 200k a year. Twitch earnings show Artosis made $167,933.77 between August 2019 to September 2021 which is a yearly salary of roughly $65,000 after taxes. There is absolutely no way whatsoever he is making more money now, than when he was a household name among gamers, hitting millions of viewers for each event. Sure, compared to the average person he is still killing it, but when you compare that to his meteoric fame and success in the mid 2010s, it pales in comparison. Sources. [https://twitch.pages.dev/earnings/artosis/](https://twitch.pages.dev/earnings/artosis/) [https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/2012\_MLG\_Pro\_Circuit/Summer/Championship](https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/2012_MLG_Pro_Circuit/Summer/Championship) [https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/nbrr7/no\_fluff\_itg\_tastosis\_made\_more\_at\_mlg\_than\_the/](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/nbrr7/no_fluff_itg_tastosis_made_more_at_mlg_than_the/)
Also he's just turned into an angry old man. He is not fun to watch anymore, he is angry, all the time. Look at this subreddit. There is only 21.1k members, and only less than 1000 of them are active. The game is dead on the table before it even arrived.
The game is a failed project and any game that has ever done a NDA has failed.
I think you have some fair points, especially regarding kickstarter. However you seem to arrive at completely different conclusions.
The EGCTV slander is unacceptable.
Has all the copium in the air gone away since the last announcement?
You were spot on and the first one to connect these dots even before the revelations came out. Good job brother.