On June 04 2024 04:57 _Spartak_ wrote: "Innovative" is irrelevant to me. Also, getting excited when watching high-level play is also less of a concern for me than the game being fun to play yourself. This match is a good example of what I like about Stormgate:
From 9:30 minute onwards there is constant back and forth with little to no downtime and battles lasting for minutes at a time with both players doing little adjustments constantly to gain an edge. I find these types of battles much more interesting than SC2's "blink and you lose" battles, which are mostly about pre-battle positioning than in-battle adjustments. At least that's how it feels to me when playing and as I said, that's far more important to me than what pros feel when they are playing or how it feels like to watch.
Thanks for the link. I do think Stormgate probably plays out better in these "medium" sized armies where movement at least seems rewarded for both sides.
That said, there was no innovation here. This was mostly basic kiting slowed down. Without any doubt, this tyhpe of micro is indeed a fundamental part of an RTS and getting this right is important - but it isn't enough. I don't think there is a large playerbase that gets inspired and motivated to invest time to learn this game after this 2 minute clip. It's fair if you like it and if that's all you need but I think you represent a minority here.
Sc2 did at least attempt to add new type of micro comapred to Sc1, e.g. splitting, more efficient stutter steps, hellions, forcefields etc. (although not everything worked out well) .. Since Sc2 release we should have learned so much about competitive RTS gameplay and how to generate micro interactions. But I can't see a single new microinteraction that Stormgate has creaed that actually works well. What have the game-designers been doing for the past few years? There is so much room for innovation. MOBA's have hundreds of heroes with many different abilities - there should be some concept/ideas to learn there that potentially could be applied in some setting to an RTS.
Yes we can't copy-paste abilities directly from a MOBA into an RTS - but figure out some way to get cool and fun stuff incorporated into an RTS. (And make abilities easier to use - in Sc2 multiple different spellcasters add way too much complexity as it requires multiple control groups or complex tabbing.)
It's frustrating for me because I can think of many cool ideas that I believe has the potential to take RTS micro to another level. Instead, the companies that get 30M+ in funding and pay their owners big bucks don't seem to have any ideas or any inspiration beside slowed down Sc2.
It's not so easy. I didn't see you mention a single good idea but you said there are 1000+ things you can add, name three?
On June 04 2024 04:57 _Spartak_ wrote: "Innovative" is irrelevant to me. Also, getting excited when watching high-level play is also less of a concern for me than the game being fun to play yourself. This match is a good example of what I like about Stormgate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySANJG_BRFA From 9:30 minute onwards there is constant back and forth with little to no downtime and battles lasting for minutes at a time with both players doing little adjustments constantly to gain an edge. I find these types of battles much more interesting than SC2's "blink and you lose" battles, which are mostly about pre-battle positioning than in-battle adjustments. At least that's how it feels to me when playing and as I said, that's far more important to me than what pros feel when they are playing or how it feels like to watch.
Thanks for the link. I do think Stormgate probably plays out better in these "medium" sized armies where movement at least seems rewarded for both sides.
That said, there was no innovation here. This was mostly basic kiting slowed down. Without any doubt, this tyhpe of micro is indeed a fundamental part of an RTS and getting this right is important - but it isn't enough. I don't think there is a large playerbase that gets inspired and motivated to invest time to learn this game after this 2 minute clip. It's fair if you like it and if that's all you need but I think you represent a minority here.
Sc2 did at least attempt to add new type of micro comapred to Sc1, e.g. splitting, more efficient stutter steps, hellions, forcefields etc. (although not everything worked out well) .. Since Sc2 release we should have learned so much about competitive RTS gameplay and how to generate micro interactions. But I can't see a single new microinteraction that Stormgate has creaed that actually works well. What have the game-designers been doing for the past few years? There is so much room for innovation. MOBA's have hundreds of heroes with many different abilities - there should be some concept/ideas to learn there that potentially could be applied in some setting to an RTS.
Yes we can't copy-paste abilities directly from a MOBA into an RTS - but figure out some way to get cool and fun stuff incorporated into an RTS. (And make abilities easier to use - in Sc2 multiple different spellcasters add way too much complexity as it requires multiple control groups or complex tabbing.)
It's frustrating for me because I can think of many cool ideas that I believe has the potential to take RTS micro to another level. Instead, the companies that get 30M+ in funding and pay their owners big bucks don't seem to have any ideas or any inspiration beside slowed down Sc2.
It's not so easy. I didn't see you mention a single good idea but you said there are 1000+ things you can add, name three?
What do you think will happen if I mention an idea?
I could write down a lengthy comment explaining the interactions of it. Then other people find some way nitpicky angle while and explain why this can never work. Next, I will attempt to explain why hey are wrong and we can go back and forth for a while. Then a new poster who didn't read my initial comment will read my most recent comment and misunderstand the entire context that was presented in my initial post. And we succesfully derailed the entire thread and went nowhere.
Sorry I've been involved in too many internet arguments in the past. There is nothing I love more than to explain how I see my ideal RTS game in length - it's a huge passion of mine and if you go back years you can see probably thousands of sentences written by me on this very topic. But at this point I know the only outcome of this is I spent a lot of my own time convincing noone.
At the end of the day ideas are easy to have - but ideas without the execution are just worthless. I don't know if it was the execution Frostigant lacked or the ideas.
- a man who rips himself in half and has zerglings inside - Azmodans - siege tanks but they fire beachballs
Actually I think they did all these.
What Hider said rings very true if you spend your time around thinking around RTS unit design in this era. The space feels bountiful and teeming with possibilities. Citation of how far things have been pushed by MOBAs is enough. Stormgate even confirms this by applying the DotA2 Primal Beast's stomp ability to the Magmadon. The co-op hero Blockade has the Barbarian Whirlwind ability mirrored after Sonya from Heroes of the Storm. If you agree that these are adaptations of MOBA-stuff then you should believe that many of the 100s of new abilities that have shown up in the time since SC2's release should represent at least some possibilities.
The head-scratcher is in the empty nature of what they have. That Magmadon ability went into the game right before the Elelphant beta build and it was the most dominant part of that build. Even if they are making choices about what to put in the game there should be a kind of impression of many abilities that were tried and tossed. Both WC3 and SC2 have this in huge amounts, its part of what makes those editors so useful, you can repurpose all this scrapheap the developers left behind. (Up to whole races like the Naga for WC3)
The stuff that Stormgate has doesn't feel like the cream from a large amount of attempts in ability creation it just feels like the only things they've made.
the lower the lethality, the longer the engagements get dragged out, the more it turns into a ball vs ball situation without finetuned production rate.
All stormgate engagements are fairly low stake (with the exception of early dogs and the imp drop)
It's boring when one wins in mid game, there's barely any high stake micro in engagements. it's boring when it gets to late game, where it's just a giant clumps of stuff grinding it out. Hopefully will get fixed with T3.
If we compare that to WC3, it's a significant downgrade. WC3 has upkeep system to keep late game ball vs ball minimum. Hero system to go with merc camps. Expensive T2 and T3 units, and very impactful. Theorycrafting actually is fun because unit composition potential is very diversed.
Uhm, I like WC3 but that game is damn near the definition of Ball vs Ball aside from lategame Human tank spam? If anything WC3 is proof that you can have fun and engaging "ball vs ball" combat.
On June 05 2024 18:16 Velr wrote: Uhm, I like WC3 but that game is damn near the definition of Ball vs Ball aside from lategame Human tank spam? If anything WC3 is proof that you can have fun and engaging "ball vs ball" combat.
huh? WC3 units naturally don't clump, nor do you get the production rate, and it's a lot more zoomed in that make it more clumped than it is. WC3 is army vs army, where units are well designed around these engagements.
My definition of Ball vs ball would be like a PvZ, and stormgate mid to late game, which is just a massive clump of units vs clumps of units.
Wc3 is not popular today and was never popular as an rts, rather custom games. It's not a recipie for any success for future rts, it was criticized a lot during it's popular time for having severe limits on unit counts and most people didn't like the upkeep idea and creeping.
On June 05 2024 22:11 sertas wrote: Wc3 is not popular today and was never popular as an rts, rather custom games. It's not a recipie for any success for future rts, it was criticized a lot during it's popular time for having severe limits on unit counts and most people didn't like the upkeep idea and creeping.
It’s doing alright for numbers for how old it is. And it sold millions in its day, it was pretty damn popular for any RTS not called StarCraft’s standards. I’d have a difficult time not placing it in and around the top 5/10 most popular RTS’ ever made
Also Blizzard completely fucked up the Remaster. I doubt it would have completely reinvigorated the game if it was competently done, but it could have breathed a little life into it.
Whether one actually likes its core design is another thing entirely. Personally I do, I think it’s a rather rare example of an RTS with any kind of prolonged multiplayer scene actually deviating significantly from the core design that most others use.
One may not like WC3 but it clearly has a vision, and all the parts clearly fit into that particular vision, and actually work well together.
On June 05 2024 22:11 sertas wrote: Wc3 is not popular today and was never popular as an rts, rather custom games. It's not a recipie for any success for future rts, it was criticized a lot during it's popular time for having severe limits on unit counts and most people didn't like the upkeep idea and creeping.
It’s doing alright for numbers for how old it is. And it sold millions in its day, it was pretty damn popular for any RTS not called StarCraft’s standards. I’d have a difficult time not placing it in and around the top 5/10 most popular RTS’ ever made
Also Blizzard completely fucked up the Remaster. I doubt it would have completely reinvigorated the game if it was competently done, but it could have breathed a little life into it.
Whether one actually likes its core design is another thing entirely. Personally I do, I think it’s a rather rare example of an RTS with any kind of prolonged multiplayer scene actually deviating significantly from the core design that most others use.
One may not like WC3 but it clearly has a vision, and all the parts clearly fit into that particular vision, and actually work well together.
I consider MOBAs the natural conclusion of the WC3 vision, so I subscribe to the idea that it's a dead end for RTS.
Speaking of fresh ideas, the recent rash of SC1 vs. SC2 content on Youtube is very, very fresh. Highlights a lot of the differences in design philosophy between the two. Very cool to see those designs clash and interact.
On June 05 2024 22:11 sertas wrote: Wc3 is not popular today and was never popular as an rts, rather custom games. It's not a recipie for any success for future rts, it was criticized a lot during it's popular time for having severe limits on unit counts and most people didn't like the upkeep idea and creeping.
WC3 was huge, esp in china and to a lesser extent korea. I saw it at WCG in China (when i was a bw/sc2 ref) and all the seats were taken and the stream had huge numbers. wc3cl was also very vibrant for a while on WGT until we split sc and wc3.
Now I will agree with you that it didnt last that long relatively, 2v2 was bad and there were a lot of custom games, but calling it "not popular" is wrong. Less spopular than bw, the most popular rts of all time, sure. but still easy top5 best RTS of all time.
Also the campaign was actually great.
they fucked up reforged so hard though, truly a shame
I'm kind of not crazy about the art style. Like the situation felt serious almost like a diablo cinematic but the faces of the people look I don't know slightly cartoonist? Just felt like a mismatch.
On June 07 2024 05:27 iamperfection wrote: I'm kind of not crazy about the art style. Like the situation felt serious almost like a diablo cinematic but the faces of the people look I don't know slightly cartoonist? Just felt like a mismatch.
Yeah I think almost everyone thinks the characters looks dumb. I kind of get what they are going for though. Idk if anyone played final fantasy 14 a realm reborn but the villain kind of looks like someone you might face in there, and that game of course has a wide appeal.
On June 07 2024 05:27 iamperfection wrote: I'm kind of not crazy about the art style. Like the situation felt serious almost like a diablo cinematic but the faces of the people look I don't know slightly cartoonist? Just felt like a mismatch.
Ya, its weird that the game tries to be super serious. If it had more of a Borderlands not-so-serious tone the concept-art // cartoon type graphics would feel more congruent.
I think the daughters personality / voice did not fit what I had imagined, so that surprised me. I think the campaign could still be cool though. I imagine the first mission will be to escape the facility while fighting through hordes of infernals spawning.
I really want to see the infernal dogs we got in some teasers I hope it will make it into the 1v1 mode as well. Maybe like a channeling spell some caster can produce that can be interrupted?
Not a fan of the art style and character designs, but thankfully it looks very different in game from an RTS/top down perspective.
When actually playing or watching it's no more cartoonish than previous blizzard RTS. There's plenty of guts and blood spilled on the maps as well, which makes the cinematic here feel a bit out of place compared to the tone of the game.
That being said games like LoL, Valorant, and Overwatch are extremely popular. I don't like those art styles either but the average gamer does. The 3rd faction gets revealed in a few days as well which will likely be a different species
On June 06 2024 23:24 cha0 wrote: Calling WC3 ball vs ball is the most absurd take I've read in this entire thread.
I think they just misunderstood what people mean by "ball" tbh. In a strict sense it is singular army vs singular army, but it never feels like having one chunky a-move army on one hotkey. You CAN, but it isn't as efficient as a well controlled, well composed army.
For the most part your army won't split up in wc3, and harass is uncommon outside of hero units, summons, and the occasional Siege Engine or Garg tactic... I get where they're coming from calling wc3 'ball vs ball' but wc3 doesn't fit the negative connotations that phrase holds.
As for cinematic posted above, it does little to hype me. It looks like if the people that made the 3d star wars "Clone Wars" show got a hold of the Doom franchise and a minimal budget.
The tension between Uncapped and Frost Giant at this point is too much to handle. How can you tweet good luck to every single indie RTS that's come out for 4 years and not give DAVID KIM a fucking cheer? These fake nice secret sociopaths at Slop Giant, gosh darn!
EPT
I hope it will make it into the 1v1 mode as well. Maybe like a channeling spell some caster can produce that can be interrupted?
