On May 03 2024 18:17 _Spartak_ wrote: There will be more onboarding tools when the game is released. Obviously it will be overwhelming if you jump into a standard 1v1 match. Most players will play the campaign/tutorial initially and those are not in yet.
On May 04 2024 10:20 MegaBuster wrote: They've said that RTS campaigns aren't good for teaching people to play and we will be given innovative new 'onboarding' and tutorialization tools that will cause uncontrollable exponential growth in RTS competency. A stormgate player will basically cough on someone and BAM new RTS player. Its going to be like the renaissance except nobody will have to read any books this time.
And these tools are coming, they are there and have not been shown at all because of CORPORATE ESPIONAGE — no doubt someone would steal them, so they must be held close to the chest and not used in the betas and demos where people also need to learn the game.
The skill floor of the game will rise, and rise glorious to the heavens and we will all ride it up and up and up.
Do you ever get tired being relentlessly cynical about everything to do with this project?
Campaigns generally don’t prepare you well for melee multiplayer, this is patently a correct thing FG have identified
its not cynicism we are manifesting
hold my hand and lets use our energy to summon the innovative new ways of teaching RTS that are coming
On May 03 2024 18:17 _Spartak_ wrote: There will be more onboarding tools when the game is released. Obviously it will be overwhelming if you jump into a standard 1v1 match. Most players will play the campaign/tutorial initially and those are not in yet.
On May 04 2024 10:20 MegaBuster wrote: They've said that RTS campaigns aren't good for teaching people to play and we will be given innovative new 'onboarding' and tutorialization tools that will cause uncontrollable exponential growth in RTS competency. A stormgate player will basically cough on someone and BAM new RTS player. Its going to be like the renaissance except nobody will have to read any books this time.
And these tools are coming, they are there and have not been shown at all because of CORPORATE ESPIONAGE — no doubt someone would steal them, so they must be held close to the chest and not used in the betas and demos where people also need to learn the game.
The skill floor of the game will rise, and rise glorious to the heavens and we will all ride it up and up and up.
Do you ever get tired being relentlessly cynical about everything to do with this project?
Campaigns generally don’t prepare you well for melee multiplayer, this is patently a correct thing FG have identified
its not cynicism we are manifesting
hold my hand and lets use our energy to summon the innovative new ways of teaching RTS that are coming
Yes. It’s just relentless cynicism. Many, many folks find bridging the gap between playing a campaign and playing melee a chasm. I didn’t myself but I can absolutely recognise it.
You’re just bitching for the sake of it at this point, give it a rest.
Maybe they don’t deliver it ultimately, but why would they deliver it now? The only people playing the game in its current build are RTS die-hards who don’t need it.
I don’t see the point of even being in this thread for a game you seemingly have no interest in or desire to reasonably evaluate.
On May 03 2024 02:25 CicadaSC wrote: How are we feeling about stormgate now that we are only a few months away from release? Obviously it's not finished but do u think it has potential to be popular and maintain that popularity after release? Could it be an esport that rivals SC2 and AOE?
One thought that came to me the other day after thinking about how they say they aim for an easier barrier of entry. While they often talk about mechanic related stuff, I feel like the barrier of entry is much higher than BW or even SC2 when it comes to the stuff you are bombarded with from the start of your very first match. You have to manage some extra ressource, extra spells not associated with a unit or building, creep camps and every unit has special upgrades and abilities beyond +1 att/+1def. Some stuff is hidden away in menues. I honestly hoped for some innovative ideas to make an RTS more approachable after they first announced the game - even though they seemed to have no idea how they could achieve it back then. But they had time to brainstorm and all they came up with so far is reducing the mechanical barrier of entry but increasing the info dump to an even more overwhelming level. I don't think this makes sense. You can play BW at 20 APM. But if you overwhelm the player when they first start the game, it will turn off a lot of people. Not saying that's bad in general, I just don't think it makes the game more approachable to a wider audience but the opposite to that effect.
I was talking about this last night with a friend - there's just so many different options available from the very start of the game and it feels like you're at a breakneck pace from the very beginning.
Compare to WC3 or Zerg in Starcraft where you have one production building and two unit types at tier 1 - Zerg has Lings and Hydras/Roaches, Human has Footmen and Riflemen, Undead Ghouls and Fiends, etc. At tier 1 for Vanguard in Stormgate you have two separate production buildings with four different types of units, as well as a starting unit that needs to be microed/controlled while you are macroing. As you said, all the special upgrades are pretty complicated. It's really difficult to read anything and learn as a new player because there's simply so much information to process and the game ramps up really quickly.
Had the same feeling when I was in last beta. And that is coming from someone who has played a multitude of RTS. How on earth someone new or not as familiar to the genre is supposed to manage this I have no idea
That's not true about Vanguard. From the open beta that everyone could play, it was a barracks and 2 units at tier 1.
Anyways, for a game that's trying to carry the torch of RTS and also feed competitive players, you should probably expect day 1 of learning 1v1 (in the beta no less) to come with some discovery. Things should be intuitive but it's a Blizz-style RTS: there are new things going on and stuff to explore. It's part of the fun.
I'm not doing the stormgate shuffle again where if you ask about something's unfinishedness plainly you get told to wait because its coming, and if you say it any sort of figurative or fun way you get accused of witchery.
But can close watchers of the project at least agree on the following terra firma:
Through major marketing pushes across many podcasts, interviews and statements they have indeed made significant claims that they will have real, systematic, new ways of teaching players how to play RTS. That the early mantra of this project was 'lower skill floor, heighten skill ceiling' and that they will have real ways to do that.
Because at this point we have automated control groups, slower combat, some deliberate choices with unit design but these are not instructional tools or modes or methods — so there's a greater expectation of stuff coming right? Like they are on the hook for some kind of stuff right?
Like as an example - during one of their early podcast they got a comment from the CEO of Shopify who said to make a Mario Kart style ghost race but for doing your build orders — they went HOLY COW we are doing that one for sure! Like that kind of stuff. Like maps, modes, little sticky notes of your build order on your screen — they said enough to constitute a promise right?
Because you'd want to test it. I've made this kind of stuff for games, software, and literally StarCraft and you want to test instructional stuff the most.
Through major marketing pushes across many podcasts, interviews and statements they have indeed made significant claims that they will have real, systematic, new ways of teaching players how to play RTS. That the early mantra of this project was 'lower skill floor, heighten skill ceiling' and that they will have real ways to do that. .
Mate it is Marketing. Lieing to you, to get you to give them money is their job. Their only job. Welcome to planet earth. Get used to it.
On May 02 2024 05:28 nforce wrote: I'm not the one to pay for a pre-order on a free to play game but I enjoyed watching YT vids and Twitch streams of the game and was under the impression that this Frigate patch would be available to streamers/YT too so it was a bit of a disappointment to learn that it was fully NDAd.
I understand and feel for them, but in terms of marketing and generating hype, especially off of a something that looked like quite a successful Steam Fest/beta phase, they seem to be shooting themselves in the foot. Especially with 2024-5 being so RTS heavy. We'll wait and see, meanwhile there's bronze protoss cheese for me to rage to.
I wonder what the release schedule is? Is Immortals gates of pyre gonna release this year? They been in development for longer than Stormgate and must also be running out of funds (though I assume they are vastly more responsible than Frostgiant).
Zerospace I think first will release next year?
David Kim's new game probably closed beta towards the end of the year? Release 2025?
Zerospace will go into closed beta sometime this year, scheduled for end Dec. Personally I think the multiplayer side is already good enough for a full v1.0 launch. Haven't faced any bug at all. Won't be surprised if they decided to move up the beta date. That being said this isn't a free to play game, probably not as big of a threat.
I heard gate of pyre has a massive update coming this year, not sure if that means beta or what.
Thanks. Do you think Zerospace multiplayer is in a comparable state to Stormgate atm?
Zerospace multiplayer is very polished imo.
There are two complaints I have. 1. The team colour is just not very distinct, and I think they don't have a good way to fix it unfortunately. 2. Walking animation. They sometime look like they are skating. I heard they will improve it soon.
On May 01 2024 22:29 nforce wrote: Not asking to break NDA but if anyone's playing the new build - Yay or Nay?
That would be breaking the NDA. NDA isn't only about sharing screenshots and videos.
Why did they put this in the NDA? In general I think it's silly for any game that is not testing in absolute secret (i.e. keeping the test itself secret). But here I can see my Steam friends play Stormgate, lol. Like, are they breaking the NDA if they don't put their profile to private?
It is not breaking the NDA to say you are in the beta or playing the game. It would be breaking the NDA to talk about how the game or the third faction feels etc.
On May 05 2024 23:24 _Spartak_ wrote: It is not breaking the NDA to say you are in the beta or playing the game. It would be breaking the NDA to talk about how the game or the third faction feels etc.
I honestly do not understand why customers accept all this early access, open beta, and NDA bullshit. Or why the devs think it is a good idea to release an unfinished flawed game. Imagine if Starcraft was originally released with only zerg and terran, and that battlecruisers/ghosts and guardians/defilers were not part of the game. And that the game was filled with bugs. Even if Blizzard then eventually updated the game, the magic wouldn't be there upon first playing it.
This is what I so do not get. The most fun part of playing a game is when you play a brand new game for the first time. Why ruin this experience? It is not that development in compute and graphics are now so competitive that you cannot delay releasing your game.
I kinda get early access if you are an indi developer and there's absolutely no other way to fund your game. I kinda get needing to have a closed beta for a multiplayer game to test server load. I get you want to control what gets released to the public, to generate the most amount of hype with a carefully crafted PR strategy.
I get that loot boxes and in-game monetization make a ton of money.
But I just don't get early access with NDAs on top. It is literally customers paying to beta test a game, which should be a paying job. And it ruins the experience your customers have when first playing your game.
On May 06 2024 06:21 Diermait wrote: I honestly do not understand why customers accept all this early access, open beta, and NDA bullshit. Or why the devs think it is a good idea to release an unfinished flawed game. Imagine if Starcraft was originally released with only zerg and terran, and that battlecruisers/ghosts and guardians/defilers were not part of the game. And that the game was filled with bugs. Even if Blizzard then eventually updated the game, the magic wouldn't be there upon first playing it.
This is what I so do not get. The most fun part of playing a game is when you play a brand new game for the first time. Why ruin this experience? It is not that development in compute and graphics are now so competitive that you cannot delay releasing your game.
I kinda get early access if you are an indi developer and there's absolutely no other way to fund your game. I kinda get needing to have a closed beta for a multiplayer game to test server load. I get you want to control what gets released to the public, to generate the most amount of hype with a carefully crafted PR strategy.
I get that loot boxes and in-game monetization make a ton of money.
But I just don't get early access with NDAs on top. It is literally customers paying to beta test a game, which should be a paying job. And it ruins the experience your customers have when first playing your game.
What?
It's a beta.
Reading through this thread makes clear to me how little players actually know about game development. It's common for games to feel significantly unfinished until right up to release.
This is why most game devs that have betas and early access but internally they know it's actually a soft launch. Like Starcraft 2's beta was actually just the finished game which is why they couldn't make the drastic changes needed to fix it. This practice of calling soft launches "betas" has successfully confused players to the point where when they see an actual beta they throw a fit because it's "obviously unfinished".
Yeah, it's a beta.
The biggest mistake Frost Giant made in terms of marketing is being honest about releasing an actual beta. Turns out players are much dumber than they anticipated.
On May 06 2024 06:21 Diermait wrote: I honestly do not understand why customers accept all this early access, open beta, and NDA bullshit. Or why the devs think it is a good idea to release an unfinished flawed game. Imagine if Starcraft was originally released with only zerg and terran, and that battlecruisers/ghosts and guardians/defilers were not part of the game. And that the game was filled with bugs. Even if Blizzard then eventually updated the game, the magic wouldn't be there upon first playing it.
This is what I so do not get. The most fun part of playing a game is when you play a brand new game for the first time. Why ruin this experience? It is not that development in compute and graphics are now so competitive that you cannot delay releasing your game.
I kinda get early access if you are an indi developer and there's absolutely no other way to fund your game. I kinda get needing to have a closed beta for a multiplayer game to test server load. I get you want to control what gets released to the public, to generate the most amount of hype with a carefully crafted PR strategy.
I get that loot boxes and in-game monetization make a ton of money.
But I just don't get early access with NDAs on top. It is literally customers paying to beta test a game, which should be a paying job. And it ruins the experience your customers have when first playing your game.
What?
It's a beta.
Reading through this thread makes clear to me how little players actually know about game development. It's common for games to feel significantly unfinished until right up to release.
This is why most game devs that have betas and early access but internally they know it's actually a soft launch. Like Starcraft 2's beta was actually just the finished game which is why they couldn't make the drastic changes needed to fix it. This practice of calling soft launches "betas" has successfully confused players to the point where when they see an actual beta they throw a fit because it's "obviously unfinished".
Yeah, it's a beta.
The biggest mistake Frost Giant made in terms of marketing is being honest about releasing an actual beta. Turns out players are much dumber than they anticipated.
Last beta was more technical alpha than anything else. And different game have different definition as to what is considered as a key milestones to be called alpha/beta.
Stormgate without any campaign or third race with tonnes of placeholders and incomplete race, as the last beta was, more akin to late alpha than anything else. Very generous to call it beta.
On May 06 2024 06:21 Diermait wrote: I honestly do not understand why customers accept all this early access, open beta, and NDA bullshit. Or why the devs think it is a good idea to release an unfinished flawed game. Imagine if Starcraft was originally released with only zerg and terran, and that battlecruisers/ghosts and guardians/defilers were not part of the game. And that the game was filled with bugs. Even if Blizzard then eventually updated the game, the magic wouldn't be there upon first playing it.
This is what I so do not get. The most fun part of playing a game is when you play a brand new game for the first time. Why ruin this experience? It is not that development in compute and graphics are now so competitive that you cannot delay releasing your game.
I kinda get early access if you are an indi developer and there's absolutely no other way to fund your game. I kinda get needing to have a closed beta for a multiplayer game to test server load. I get you want to control what gets released to the public, to generate the most amount of hype with a carefully crafted PR strategy.
I get that loot boxes and in-game monetization make a ton of money.
But I just don't get early access with NDAs on top. It is literally customers paying to beta test a game, which should be a paying job. And it ruins the experience your customers have when first playing your game.
What?
It's a beta.
Reading through this thread makes clear to me how little players actually know about game development. It's common for games to feel significantly unfinished until right up to release.
This is why most game devs that have betas and early access but internally they know it's actually a soft launch. Like Starcraft 2's beta was actually just the finished game which is why they couldn't make the drastic changes needed to fix it. This practice of calling soft launches "betas" has successfully confused players to the point where when they see an actual beta they throw a fit because it's "obviously unfinished".
Yeah, it's a beta.
The biggest mistake Frost Giant made in terms of marketing is being honest about releasing an actual beta. Turns out players are much dumber than they anticipated.
The issue with "its ok to be shit its just a beta" is that SG is dependant on outside investment to survive and an obviously unfinished beta does nothing to instill confidence in the games long term success.
If they dont hit it out of the park on the early access launch they are done, as their public financials have shown.
On May 07 2024 15:52 _Spartak_ wrote: It is a beta for the early access release (which is also an incomplete product itself), not a beta for 1.0 release.
Yeah but again it's all vague.
EA can be for adding polish and additional content/adjustment like against the storm or manor lords.
Or like games that are what should have been early beta like silica, which stormgate belongs, where most things are barebone
On May 07 2024 15:52 _Spartak_ wrote: It is a beta for the early access release (which is also an incomplete product itself), not a beta for 1.0 release.
Yeah but again it's all vague.
EA can be for adding polish and additional content/adjustment like against the storm or manor lords.
Or like games that are what should have been early beta like silica, which stormgate belongs, where most things are barebone
Manor Lords is a perfect example of a game that went to early into EA. That game is so far from finnished, let alone polished it isn't even funny. That it gets any sort of hype or recognition is a farce and i don't get why people don't call it out for that. Farthest Frontier, in the same genre, also went the EA rout but actually was pretty decent, aside from some bugs, even 2+ years ago.
On May 07 2024 15:52 _Spartak_ wrote: It is a beta for the early access release (which is also an incomplete product itself), not a beta for 1.0 release.
Yeah but again it's all vague.
EA can be for adding polish and additional content/adjustment like against the storm or manor lords.
Or like games that are what should have been early beta like silica, which stormgate belongs, where most things are barebone
Manor Lords is a perfect example of a game that went to early into EA. That game is so far from finnished, let alone polished it isn't even funny. That it gets any sort of hype or recognition is a farce and i don't get why people don't call it out for that. Farthest Frontier, in the same genre, also went the EA rout but actually was pretty decent, aside from some bugs, even 2+ years ago.
If people are having fun they don't feel the need to complain.
EPT
