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Maybe I was a little harsh in my last post. I don't want to silence people's criticism. There's stuff to be critical of. It's just weird—and i've mentioned it before—when most of a thread feels devoted to attacking the company and the people who work there. The people who are doomin' on Frost Giant seem to have taken over the thread instead of having a place in it.
I'm sure it's rooted in good intentions, like people are indirectly reppin Zero Space or something. I don't know. Maybe I'm blind and have drank the kool-aid. Maybe everyone over at Frost Giant is actually a vampire and wants to feed us into their blood banks. From my POV, they're good people. They are not, however, immune to making some mistakes along the way. It doesn't make me want to throw eggs at their house, it just makes me want to speak up and steer them back on track as much as I can. There's a difference. I want Stormgate to succeed. I also want Zero Space and D.O.R.F. and Tempest Rising to succeed. Like I dno, if I'm aiming my barrel at someone it's probably never going to be Tim Morten. Like jeez, can we get MegaBuster and Jimmy and all you guys to throw some molotovs at British Petroleum? Boeing? Verizon wireless? They have to have a forum somewhere.
The only reason I'm bitter (now more apathetic) about the whole situation is that I'm not seeing anything groundbreaking. Now, it doesn't need to be, but if RTS wants to pull in new people or do something truly innovative, they have to figure out a game mechanic that actually is and not sell it as such. If their early access or final product comes out as an actual fun experience or is even slightly innovative, then I'd be more than happy to say "well, looks like I was wrong about all of it".
But I've seen too many creatively bankrupt things in the last decade to think this will be anything different. Like, you could do so much more with resource incomes other than rocks laying on the ground to be mined.
Anyway, I like your point Uldridge. Thank you for sharing. I hope the imagination and creativity is pushed. I hope we see this stuff develop in the next year. Actively lobbying for this stuff actually does feel like it has significant impact. Most studios play their cards a lot closer to their chest, it feels like.
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I'm still very positive on Stormgate and hope it's successful, but since this thread is 90% negative I avoid posting in it now. I'm enjoying playing the game but if I feel the need to talk about it, I just turn to the Discord (which is pretty active I would say).
I believe the criticisms about FGS are all valid, and I think anyone who invests money should do their homework. If they do invest, I hope it works out for them.
I don't feel sorry for people who invest money and it doesn't work out, because it's pretty clear (to me, at least) that there's a decent chance of no return and losing 100% of your principal if you do invest. That's the nature of investing in startups...
I also don't feel that there is anything misleading about the risks of investing in FGS. But again, in my opinion as someone who works in investing.
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agreed on all counts.
this is the kind of post i should have made a while ago. instead, i've been a little apeish in the other direction XD
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The nature of investing in startups that you are hinting at is the saying — high risk high reward — what this looks like is that they'll let you lose but not let you win.
You do have to wonder about the 'home work' capabilities of people investing now when their major competitor (Uncapped) is set to unveil in a week. So you can literally hold your investment with no draw back until getting this big piece of information. I guess though that there have been some time frames where you get BONUS stocks for investing — which are of course included in the investment total and present more misleading information that is persuasive as to the investment's validity.
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If someone is posting criticism in this thread because they invested their personal money in it and do not like what they see and the product that is being made, that is personal; however, the facts where very clear from the beginning. And FG is making a videogame, you can like the erriatic creation or not, at the end of the day this is not some kind of scam or anything, they are delivering on what they said they would do.
If you are investing your money into something it is your responsability to check and understand what you are doing and what can be expected, not the other way around.
Unless they are promising you more money in return, then yes, that would be your average pyramid scheme.
However this is not the case. They promised in game things. That has yet to be seen if they deliver on that.
The case here to me seems to be a combination of the following:
1. More people than not say this game sucks, right off the bat, in its current form, as in what has been released to the public at large.
2. Claiming to be part of the blizzard family and then delivering at its current stage something that is blizzard sub par.
3. A confusing agenda, high expectations and low end game results.
4. No support from current major pro gamers
And probably something else I left out.
I never invested money into this game; I considered when there was that fundraiser pledging 1 dollar, but then I thought better of even that. But then again I personally have never bought a game on pre release, so I do not risk that way.
I recall in 2001 I bought Warcraft and that came with a free demo, of starcratbroodwar, only the first 3 missions of course. I was captivated, but played for at least 3 weeks before begging my mother to buy it for me. Played the sc2 campaign but never played sc2 again, I found it pretty naive and boring.
Bottom line for me is I got interested in stormgate because of all the claiming of being the future of rts and that people who worked at blizzard are making this game interviews. That was enough for my full attention and expectation. I played on open beta and my feeling was that these people where once upon a time artists, and now that they are probably corporate artists. Can’ t blame them for wanting to make a decent amount of money and have a life.
But it seems to me their videogame is trying to be the perfect balance between pleasing everyone and old blizzard nostalgia. I doubt that they play the game themselves after working hours. Broodwar creators where gamers and nerds first of all, they loved to play and mess around. Frost giant does not give me that impression. My impression is that when they actually decided to start creating this game it was more about success, rather than art, ideas, concepts and just raw coolness. With broodwar my impression was let’s make marines shoot a machine gun in space against mindless aliens.
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Northern Ireland25363 Posts
Hey it’s a fine, perhaps arbitrary line but I’m fine when people who are a target audience provide criticism of an upcoming product.
When it’s ’I’ve already written this project off months ago but I want to keep shitting on it regardless’ it can get a tad obnoxious.
And yeah I get that it’s a hard line to straddle elegantly, absolutely.
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Shout out to the SC:Evo team, the SC2 vs BW mod, for releasing something that was more exciting, more popular, and created more buzz and interest than the Stormgate Frigate beta. The modders made something with a better feel for gameplay and cooler looking RTS units in a very comparable environment to Stormgate.
I say this because some of these same modders attempted to join Frost Giant but were denied, others would have dropped everything to work on a new StarCraft-like RTS if they even knew it possible.
Frost Giant did almost all of its hiring through non-public back channels in order to create a 'Blizzard Credential' so this formed a barrier for any of these folks to put forth their talent. Beyond that there was a complete disinterest from the Blizzard oldheads to make use of this incredible and special resource in building a new company.
For some reason its considered better to recruit someone who used to be on the Hearthstone or Overwatch teams to falsify a credential rather than giving the SC2 modders a chance — the same modders who after working in the editor for a generation now, basically knew more about the SC2 engine than anyone shy of 1-2 people at FG.
I guess recruiting non-Starcraft ex-Blizzard folks means something to uninformed VC dudes in garnering an investment but the people they did end up hiring would have been completely outclassed by these modders. Members of the Frost Giant team sit around in the SC2Mapster Discord using the body of knowledge that said modders have generated to facilitate their task of cloning the SC2 Engine. Ironically this information all needed to be reverse-engineered because the StarCraft 2 team wouldn't help these people a bit. Still they would never consider hiring any of these people because Frost Giant sees them as a lesser caste.
Frost Giant gushes over the potentials and power of their community and modders but from behind closed doors they just see them as an exploitation-worthy resource.
In posting this I am reminded of an SC2 modder who I constantly see pouring out amazing unit concepts again and again. They have an incredible talent which would be so valuable in creating a new RTS and their commitment and knowledge to SC2 stuff is noteworthy. Still they will continue languishing in obscurity never being worthy of an ex-Blizzard knighthood. You could say oh but maybe its a hobbyist, no these are straight-up NEETs, probably from international markets that would be elated to work on Stormgate and who would have represented significant savings from the bloated old Californias who have to eat three $50 burritos a day. (Not that the modders don't deserve every fucking dollar and speck of equity that the oldheads get.)
Frost Giant left these folks in the dark. They should have interviewed every single senior modder in the SC2 community in building a new company. You know why they didn't? Because they exploited these people so many times over the course of SC2 that they internalized that if anyone in their community made something actually really good — then they'd just steal it from them anyways. They see them as less. Its very very fitting and expected that Stormgate got eaten up by the SC: Evo mod during this last important beta phase.
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Northern Ireland25363 Posts
SC:Evo is fun, all it does is blend two existing games together.
If it were be played seriously it would be completely broken, it’s a fun novelty
But yeah Frost Giant suck for not hiring modders who literally just threw BW and SC2 together in a mod
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Northern Ireland25363 Posts
‘They should have interviewed every single senior modder in the SC2 community in building a new company.’
Stuff like this is just, ridiculous. All of them? To what purpose?
People are complaining they don’t have a vision as it is, so why would asking literally everyone what they want fix that?
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I didn't mean interview them to ask them what to do, I mean interview them to HIRE them. That would be from a pool of like 5-10 people for reference, you seem to have some misconception about the scale of the whole endeavour of sc2 modding. The names in the mod group are some of the same people who rebuilt and maintained the whole SC2 mod community when it was falling apart, generated documentation on all the editor, made art tools and giant gobs of reusable content for mods, made an online portal for the arcade, made safety and obfuscation tools so people could protect their maps, made a custom campaign tool before Blizzard did, pushed all the game data to github, made plugins for IDEs to make SC2 scripting better, and more.
The rest of what you are saying is off-base respectfully because it assumes the scope of the mod was to make something esports ready to go in terms of balance rather than create a bunch of RTS units that are fun and performant. SC2: Evo is intended for streamers to make videos with and players to make tournaments that are somewhere in the continuum between absolutely competitive and just being fun (a spot most fans constantly talk about in terms of what a new RTS should target).
They also didn't 'blend things together' so much as engaged in the same detailed design and programming of effects in a SC2 model data engine that Stormgate is doing (usually more sloppily). They nailed it, its a credit to the project if it feels seamless — and they made something more exciting than the stuff added to Stormgate across the last beta.
In terms of vision, they do have it, but they need not act out their own, nor did I say they should be in charge of Frost Giant. Still if you wanted a source for diligent, good RTS craftspeople who have a specialization in this one very specific thing that you might have needed if you were making a new company to do this one very specific thing, well then this group of people was overlooked. (Again.)
Do you think Stormgate would have liked to see Jaedong play their beta? Because he's streaming SC: Evooooo
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Northern Ireland25363 Posts
On May 26 2024 01:25 MegaBuster wrote:
I didn't mean interview them to ask them what to do, I mean interview them to HIRE them. That would be from a pool of like 5-10 people for reference, you seem to have some misconception about the scale of the whole endeavour of sc2 modding. The names in the mod group are some of the same people who rebuilt and maintained the whole SC2 mod community when it was falling apart, generated documentation on all the editor, made art tools and giant gobs of reusable content for mods, made an online portal for the arcade, made safety and obfuscation tools so people could protect their maps, made a custom campaign tool before Blizzard did, pushed all the game data to github, made plugins for IDEs to make SC2 scripting better, and more.
The rest of what you are saying is off-base respectfully because it assumes the scope of the mod was to make something esports ready to go in terms of balance rather than create a bunch of RTS units that are fun and performant. SC2: Evo is intended for streamers to make videos with and players to make tournaments that are somewhere in the continuum between absolutely competitive and just being fun (a spot most fans constantly talk about in terms of what a new RTS should target).
They also didn't 'blend things together' so much as engaged in the same detailed design and programming of effects in a SC2 model data engine that Stormgate is doing (usually more sloppily). They nailed it, its a credit to the project if it feels seamless — and they made something more exciting than the stuff added to Stormgate across the last beta.
In terms of vision, they do have it, but they need not act out their own, nor did I say they should be in charge of Frost Giant. Still if you wanted a source for diligent, good RTS craftspeople who have a specialization in this one very specific thing that you might have needed if you were making a new company to do this one very specific thing, well then this group of people was overlooked. (Again.)
Do you think Stormgate would have liked to see Jaedong play their beta? Because he's streaming SC: Evooooo
It’s a novelty, a completely broken novelty at that. Literally all it is is a blend of two existing games.
What wisdom are Frost Giant meant to be gleaning from this?
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Its not the wisdom its the people. The people who are talented developers of Starcraft-like stuff, and just made a bunch of Starcraft-like stuff better than Frost Giant made their Starcraft-like stuff and for 0$ instead of something like $33 million (of their total $35 million) dollars.
And its a statement of how Frost Giant did not and would not hire these people because their only hiring impetus was pretending to be Blizzard. Despite this they only ended up with like 3 developers who worked on Wings of Liberty, 2 people who worked on WarCraft 3 and nobody who invented a zergling, zealot, or marine. If they wanted authenticity there's nothing that fits that more than the hiring modders who have been submerged in the SC2 engine for much longer than their team had been.
Modders got treated like shit through a smile by the StarCraft 2 team and they continued it to their startup.
Do you know what the main innovations Stormgate uses in order to hit their credo of 'lowering the skill floor, heightening the skill ceiling' is? Its stuff salvaged from TotalBiscuit's Axiom mod which was commissioned by SC2 modders (including parts of the design, I believe TB brought things to the table but was cool enough to let the modders bring their ideas), so the 'quick macro' and 'auto unit groups' and all that stuff are all inspired by that group pushing it in front of the SC2 team for both the novel parts and the parts which were reclaimed from older RTS. At this point in Stormgate's development this is the only NOVEL part in terms of systems that attempts to solve the skill floor, skill ceiling stuff at all.
(None of the people who made that mod work at Frost Giant)
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they see me mega-bustin, dey hatin
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On May 26 2024 02:53 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2024 01:25 MegaBuster wrote:
I didn't mean interview them to ask them what to do, I mean interview them to HIRE them. That would be from a pool of like 5-10 people for reference, you seem to have some misconception about the scale of the whole endeavour of sc2 modding. The names in the mod group are some of the same people who rebuilt and maintained the whole SC2 mod community when it was falling apart, generated documentation on all the editor, made art tools and giant gobs of reusable content for mods, made an online portal for the arcade, made safety and obfuscation tools so people could protect their maps, made a custom campaign tool before Blizzard did, pushed all the game data to github, made plugins for IDEs to make SC2 scripting better, and more.
The rest of what you are saying is off-base respectfully because it assumes the scope of the mod was to make something esports ready to go in terms of balance rather than create a bunch of RTS units that are fun and performant. SC2: Evo is intended for streamers to make videos with and players to make tournaments that are somewhere in the continuum between absolutely competitive and just being fun (a spot most fans constantly talk about in terms of what a new RTS should target).
They also didn't 'blend things together' so much as engaged in the same detailed design and programming of effects in a SC2 model data engine that Stormgate is doing (usually more sloppily). They nailed it, its a credit to the project if it feels seamless — and they made something more exciting than the stuff added to Stormgate across the last beta.
In terms of vision, they do have it, but they need not act out their own, nor did I say they should be in charge of Frost Giant. Still if you wanted a source for diligent, good RTS craftspeople who have a specialization in this one very specific thing that you might have needed if you were making a new company to do this one very specific thing, well then this group of people was overlooked. (Again.)
Do you think Stormgate would have liked to see Jaedong play their beta? Because he's streaming SC: Evooooo It’s a novelty, a completely broken novelty at that. Literally all it is is a blend of two existing games. What wisdom are Frost Giant meant to be gleaning from this?
Did you read the first paragraph of his post. He lists a bunch of things these people accomplished over the years, prior to SC:Evo.
Tbh, I do think Megabuster has a point. It's not particularly out there that game companies specifically hire third party talent, i.e. modders, tool creators, community figures etc. Usually that happens for continued development a while after a game has already been launched, when a community and modding scene has been established, or for the development of a sequel. In Frost Giant's case I would argue their situation is somewhat similar to developing a sequel - at least that is how they market themselves. So it would make sense for them to look at the modders from SC2 and try to get them on board. Tbf, we don't know if they tried and the modders declined, do we?
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On May 26 2024 01:25 MegaBuster wrote:
I didn't mean interview them to ask them what to do, I mean interview them to HIRE them. That would be from a pool of like 5-10 people for reference, you seem to have some misconception about the scale of the whole endeavour of sc2 modding. The names in the mod group are some of the same people who rebuilt and maintained the whole SC2 mod community when it was falling apart, generated documentation on all the editor, made art tools and giant gobs of reusable content for mods, made an online portal for the arcade, made safety and obfuscation tools so people could protect their maps, made a custom campaign tool before Blizzard did, pushed all the game data to github, made plugins for IDEs to make SC2 scripting better, and more.
The rest of what you are saying is off-base respectfully because it assumes the scope of the mod was to make something esports ready to go in terms of balance rather than create a bunch of RTS units that are fun and performant. SC2: Evo is intended for streamers to make videos with and players to make tournaments that are somewhere in the continuum between absolutely competitive and just being fun (a spot most fans constantly talk about in terms of what a new RTS should target).
They also didn't 'blend things together' so much as engaged in the same detailed design and programming of effects in a SC2 model data engine that Stormgate is doing (usually more sloppily). They nailed it, its a credit to the project if it feels seamless — and they made something more exciting than the stuff added to Stormgate across the last beta.
In terms of vision, they do have it, but they need not act out their own, nor did I say they should be in charge of Frost Giant. Still if you wanted a source for diligent, good RTS craftspeople who have a specialization in this one very specific thing that you might have needed if you were making a new company to do this one very specific thing, well then this group of people was overlooked. (Again.)
Do you think Stormgate would have liked to see Jaedong play their beta? Because he's streaming SC: Evooooo
All credit to this, and I am very interested in Evo. However, I don't think that Stormgate's primary problem would be solved with their experience or skills.
I see Stormgate's problem being a complete lack of vision/creativty/ambition in terms of figuring out what a next-gen RTS is supposed to contain.
How do you make exciting gameplay that both competitive gamersr and casuals are interested in? As I see it this requires innovation ala going from cellphones to the iphone. Stormgate is more of a modified cellphone that isn't even stricly better than the older cellphones.
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Furiosa
Honestly I felt quite let down. It's a great movie for what it is, but not quite up there with Fury road.
There's a lot more character driven plot this time around, we follow Furiosa from her childhood to the one in fury road.
Furyroad pretty much let the action lead the story.
It had far more good action set pieces, one minute you think X is going to happen, X did happen but failed and turn into Y. The movie keeps you guessing and never quite know what will happen next.
Furiosa lost this magic, and throughout the entire movie, there's only one long chase that gets your blood pumping.
But that being said, it's still one of the best action movies in recent years no doubt. And if you are more into having a story, then this is it.
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On May 26 2024 20:09 Hider wrote:
....
I see Stormgate's problem being a complete lack of vision/creativty/ambition in terms of figuring out what a next-gen RTS is supposed to contain.
How do you make exciting gameplay that both competitive gamersr and casuals are interested in? As I see it this requires innovation ala going from cellphones to the iphone. Stormgate is more of a modified cellphone that isn't even stricly better than the older cellphones.
aside from the ambition one i agree, it seems that they started with the hopes that the million dollar idea (both gameplay and setting/story wise) comes over time, and meanwhile they work on the fundmentals, and i am not sure if they found it.
so far it looks more like its going to be a very solid RTS game, and it might even be a very important intermediate step to the next big thing in RTS, especially if the decide to let others use their engine (SC2s engine is still the best RTS engine out there imho, and some of those guys are at FG)
but i dont think its going to be the next big thing in esports, it can on the other hand still make some decent money if they manage to give us a nice campaign that draws folks in, so i dont think it as black or white as some here might want to see it.
i do agree that their marketing wasnt great (i really dont get the nda stuff for example), but that is always very easy to say with hindsight
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On May 26 2024 22:32 uummpaa wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2024 20:09 Hider wrote:
....
I see Stormgate's problem being a complete lack of vision/creativty/ambition in terms of figuring out what a next-gen RTS is supposed to contain.
How do you make exciting gameplay that both competitive gamersr and casuals are interested in? As I see it this requires innovation ala going from cellphones to the iphone. Stormgate is more of a modified cellphone that isn't even stricly better than the older cellphones.
aside from the ambition one i agree, it seems that they started with the hopes that the million dollar idea (both gameplay and setting/story wise) comes over time, and meanwhile they work on the fundmentals, and i am not sure if they found it. so far it looks more like its going to be a very solid RTS game, and it might even be a very important intermediate step to the next big thing in RTS, especially if the decide to let others use their engine (SC2s engine is still the best RTS engine out there imho, and some of those guys are at FG) but i dont think its going to be the next big thing in esports, it can on the other hand still make some decent money if they manage to give us a nice campaign that draws folks in, so i dont think it as black or white as some here might want to see it. i do agree that their marketing wasnt great (i really dont get the nda stuff for example), but that is always very easy to say with hindsight
I meant in ambition in terms of the competitive game-design (ambitious would be striving for something that could revolutionize the genre). In terms of their overall things they want to support (co-op, multiplayer, campagin etc - yes they are very ambitious).
so far it looks more like its going to be a very solid RTS game, and it might even be a very important intermediate step to the next big thing in RTS, especially if the decide to let others use their engine (SC2s engine is still the best RTS engine out there imho, and some of those guys are at FG)
If they can create a system where it's easy to make mods and integrate this with some type of matchmaking/ladder system, then it might have potential. But I am still sceptical.
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The custom map stuff can not make them a dollar. Don't expect it to receive any sort of focus in this back to wall financial situation when its the least monetizable piece.
The editor is also not implemented yet — Dave Fried, the only WarCraft 3 designer other than Tim Campbell, left the company because he can't program and there was no scripting component ready yet. So all of the early campaign missions have been made in Unreal visual scripting or code
And then there's the fact that this is the team that bumped the priority of Starcraft mod stuff beneath everything before. Additionally they were part of the big brain trust which decided to never ship the editor for Heroes of the Storm, instead opting for first party custom games like a version of ARAM they made themselves. (This was a decision to insulate themselves from modders making their game into a proper DotA-like with items and uhhhh fun.)
Also there's no comment or discussion yet if they will continue their practice of 'we instantly own everything you made and all its IP the second you upload anything'.
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EPT
