EPTStormgate/Frost Giant Megathread - Page 139
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CicadaSC
United States1986 Posts
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Gorsameth
Netherlands22577 Posts
BG3 EA was no issue because there was no doubt that Larian would be able to finish the game. Stormgate EA is potentially a problem because they currently don't have the money to finish the game. If EA is a 'failure' aka they don't earn enough money, the game doesn't get finished. And yes sure without EA the game wouldn't be finished either, but that isn't much of a consolidation to the people who want more RTS games to play. | ||
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Fango
United Kingdom8987 Posts
The entire point of EA is to get an income stream rolling to fund completing the game, it's not a unique situation for Frost Giant. I agree that EA games never getting finished is a problem in the games market in general, but I also think it's clearly the best way for independent studios to make games. It's basically the only way to make a game with a decent budget | ||
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Fango
United Kingdom8987 Posts
On July 10 2024 21:47 CicadaSC wrote: stormgates outline for their esports plan got released. i think it all sounds good. they mentioned before they wanted to use a warchest system to fund it, so why not? its basically the same situation as gsl being funded via patreon. anyone saying its rushed should remember this is not until 2025. the map editor, all units etc should all be in game by then. the only thing they will really have to focus on besides esports is balance and maintenance. (and ofc if they wanna add a 4th race) Huh so for 2024 they're want to be supporting grassroots and community organised events, and doing invitationals with korean streamers and content creators (I assume foreigner ones as well). Then for 2025 they want to support an actual circuit with a big championship after the games release. Can't really criticise the model, they're specifically not investing real money and resources until the rest of the game is done. | ||
NonY
8751 Posts
'Grassroots' is normal people from the community who aren't looking to make a profit or make a career out of it, but rather are making personal sacrifices to put together a competition, using personal gear and personal money and volunteer work. Support from the game studio itself can be the key piece to make it viable, like contributing to a prize pool when no sponsor can be found or when crowdfunding is low. And tbh I'll be shocked if FGS is actually gonna support true grassroots efforts financially. Something like earmarking $20,000 to toss twenty $1,000 prize pool contributions to various events in 2024 would be valuable imo but I just can't imagine they've done that. And then there are gray areas like individual content creators who definitely are making a career out of it, but they aren't a full-on production company and have no aspirations to develop such a thing, but rather they're looking for content for their own personal Twitch and YouTube channels. I don't mind classifying such people as grassroots either. So if PiG, Artosis, Nathanias, etc, want to host some competitions but they'd be losing money by putting up the prize money themselves, I think they should be eligible for support from FGS too. But this article "revealing" the plans is not clear about what it means to support a tournament. Is it financial support or is it just coordinating patches and downtime and making a tweet about it? What's also interesting to me is the idea that we're getting a world championship at the end of the year, as if only one can exist. That must imply that FGS would actually suppress a second organization's attempt to run a world championship. I don't really understand exactly what power is being leveraged, where it's being leveraged, how it's being leveraged, etc. In all likelihood it's a moot point but I guess ultimately my observation here is that they're trying to tread the line between being unorganized and organized in 2024 and it could be a bit messy. But maybe it won't be. | ||
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iamperfection
United States9648 Posts
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MegaBuster
167 Posts
![[image loading]](https://cms.stormgatenexus.com/content/images/2024/07/1902a2507c65104c1.jpg) revealed at a private Kakao Games press event, the text says the following: "Development of a Korean-style hero. A Korean-style hero designed and developed by a concept artist from Seoul. Currently in the design development stage (concept art preview). Scheduled for release after July early access (exact date to be determined)" Onlookers said South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol, who was present, became quite emotional and thankful. When asked for comment he tearfully said "Finally my country's birthrate will be fixed because this shit will send people fleeing from the pc bangs". | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17805 Posts
On July 10 2024 10:32 MegaBuster wrote: What do you think that 'working with the community' would be? They unsealed the Storm-files recently so you can walk through all the beta feedback discussions. Here's the most (and perhaps only) serious one from the last beta cycle. 'Feedback from 16 top players on ladder' https://discord.com/channels/1101590942076653660/1243574616161521726/1243574616161521726 The opening post here is a summary of a survey sent out to top ladder players. Its enormous and useless, just laden with milquetoast PC appraisals. Its like having to watch 100 of those bad post-victory NFL player interviews consecutively. ('both teams played hard' 'both teams played hard' 'both teams played hard'.) Lorimbo — a top player who was not polled, weighs in later in the thread. I think Lorimbo is great. He is an up and comer who has suffered from SC2 being at its media saturation point, and he stands to break out with any new RTS game that does not suck. I think this gives him a tension and desperate honesty since he wants the next game to not suck. He made the best Stormgate podcast and has lots of lively incisive things to say. Look at this part: https://discord.com/channels/1101590942076653660/1243574616161521726/1243657828338503750 Of course Lorimbo is met with toxic positivity and shitlording as it's the Stormgate community after all but I'm more interested with how Frost Giant themselves are oriented towards feedback. In public the only person who engages with feedback really is monk, and well good for him, but he's super cagey and insecure in this case. Beyond that there's barely any developer interactions with feedback at all across the whole beta phase. If that's going to be their engagement style for early access I reckon there's not much substance to them citing Larian and their process. I encourage people to go investigate what that actually looked like. Larian descended to their communities level with many voices present and they used a much more comfortable and interested engagement style. It was real care not fake care. Also from that discussion look at these time frames for making stuff, doesn't this pop your eyes out? What is even going on with that? Why is everything so truncated and so last minute? I have no clue what they get up to really. Reading that whole discussion turned my brain into spaghetti and I had to suck it back into my head. Thx for taking the time to post this. Keep in mind this is the most 'mission driven' team with whom Tim Morten has ever worked. As they get better and better with UE5 they should be able to crank out and refine more content with fewer and fewer employees. This can allow the other employees to focus on their esports agenda. | ||
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Fango
United Kingdom8987 Posts
On July 11 2024 04:18 NonY wrote: But this article "revealing" the plans is not clear about what it means to support a tournament. Is it financial support or is it just coordinating patches and downtime and making a tweet about it? What's also interesting to me is the idea that we're getting a world championship at the end of the year, as if only one can exist I'm a bit unsure about this world championships idea getting thrown around. The only sources I've found only are translated from Korean to say "a global championship is planned for 2024". That could mean anything from a "World Championship title" along the lines of a Blizzcon or EWC, to "A tournament that has players from multiple regions". I can't read Korean well enough to know what the original quote says so maybe someone can chime in better. As for grassroots organizers, Frost Giant talked about making Stormgate as social as possible, and integrating esports into the game client through mass observing and people being able to drop in/out. If they have that ready it would be easy for them to promote any small competitions in the client itself (as well as their social media). And by grassroots I mean more like the Olimoleague, Wardi Team league, or KSL weeklies. They can also support smaller competitions by giving them EPT points or whatever the equivalent is. There's a lot they can do beyond dumping prize pools around. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland27362 Posts
On July 11 2024 06:00 Fango wrote: I'm a bit unsure about this world championships idea getting thrown around. The only sources I've found only are translated from Korean to say "a global championship is planned for 2024". That could mean anything from a "World Championship title" along the lines of a Blizzcon or EWC, to "A tournament that has players from multiple regions". I can't read Korean well enough to know what the original quote says so maybe someone can chime in better. As for grassroots organizers, Frost Giant talked about making Stormgate as social as possible, and integrating esports into the game client through mass observing and people being able to drop in/out. If they have that ready it would be easy for them to promote any small competitions in the client itself (as well as their social media). And by grassroots I mean more like the Olimoleague, Wardi Team league, or KSL weeklies. They can also support smaller competitions by giving them EPT points or whatever the equivalent is. There's a lot they can do beyond dumping prize pools around. That would be cool, definitely something Blizzard dropped the ball on by not implementing it in later iterations | ||
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TelecoM
United States10847 Posts
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BeoMulf
United States94 Posts
On July 11 2024 12:20 TelecoM wrote: Are you able to play Stormgate if you purchase the early access on Steam? Or do you have to wait until July 30th? If you've been playing in any of the playtests, backed at a founder level on Kickstarter, or bought one of the Founders packs on Steam, you're able to play July 30, otherwise you need to wait until Aug 13. The servers aren't up right now, so no one is able to otherwise play | ||
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CicadaSC
United States1986 Posts
On July 11 2024 04:18 NonY wrote: What's also interesting to me is the idea that we're getting a world championship at the end of the year, as if only one can exist. That must imply that FGS would actually suppress a second organization's attempt to run a world championship.. I mean... maybe? im pretty sure theyre just gonna let anyone run any tournament then at the end of the year host their own and just call it a world championship for namesake, because it is officially pushed by them and not the "grassroots" community. 2025 will likely be different where u qualify throughout the year, accumulate points etc. | ||
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Harris1st
Germany7403 Posts
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abuse
Latvia1946 Posts
On July 10 2024 21:24 Fango wrote: You could say that about any game that's had an EA period? They always suck and are unfinished at first, but the community feedback means when the game finally releases it's better than it could have otherwise been. "you need a dedicated community and a fun game" They have both of those. The gameplay is fun and the RTS community has been invested in every playtests so far. Frost Giant would otherwise need to do years of internal playtests and not be earning any money during this period. Blizzard managed it because they had infinite money from wow and other games coming in. You could, but my point is that EA does not work for a RTS game with the aspirations that Stormgate has. I thoroughly disagree about the dedicated community and fun game part, and all of my friends who played the game during the previous tests share my view, unfortunately, and while I understand it's not shared by everyone, It is very fair to say that a lot of people felt disappointed enough to lose all excitement for the game, the 3rd race, the AMA and the rushed launch (every single person I've talked to after the time we played, said the game needs a lot of time in the oven still), just keep knocking the impression and potential of the game down even more. I'm not going to pretend like I know much about their finances, and how many years of internal playtests they would need to do, but I do know that it needs more than it has had, and while all of my friends were excited to try Stormgate, nobody will be playing the EA version of it and nobody is excited for what Stormgate will be like in 5 years when it is finally ready, while we would be willing to give it another shot if it came out Q1 2025 or something, when it could realistically have enough time in the oven to have some actual progress in the right direction. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17805 Posts
On July 11 2024 23:23 abuse wrote: You could, but my point is that EA does not work for a RTS game with the aspirations that Stormgate has. I thoroughly disagree about the dedicated community and fun game part, and all of my friends who played the game during the previous tests share my view, unfortunately, and while I understand it's not shared by everyone, It is very fair to say that a lot of people felt disappointed enough to lose all excitement for the game, the 3rd race, the AMA and the rushed launch (every single person I've talked to after the time we played, said the game needs a lot of time in the oven still), just keep knocking the impression and potential of the game down even more. I'm not going to pretend like I know much about their finances, and how many years of internal playtests they would need to do, but I do know that it needs more than it has had, and while all of my friends were excited to try Stormgate, nobody will be playing the EA version of it and nobody is excited for what Stormgate will be like in 5 years when it is finally ready, while we would be willing to give it another shot if it came out Q1 2025 or something, when it could realistically have enough time in the oven to have some actual progress in the right direction. Your post makes a lot of sense and is 100% grounded in reality. I am not disputing any of it. However, there is a perspective you are not seeing. The longer a software engineer works in UE5 the better they get. This applies to all software engineers working on any development framework.. not just UE5. Frost Giant's game making team is probably an order of magnitude better than it was 2 years ago. So they should be able to implement changes very easily with far fewer staff members compared to what they could achieve two years ago. Look at the miracles developers are performing making games like Borderlands3 on the Nintendo Switch. This is because they have so much experience working with the tech they can pull off things thought impossible only a few years ago. This same improvement trend applies to UE5 development. The UE5 tools are getting better and the software engineers are getting better. The future is so bright.... I gotta wear shades! | ||
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Fango
United Kingdom8987 Posts
On July 11 2024 23:23 abuse wrote: You could, but my point is that EA does not work for a RTS game with the aspirations that Stormgate has. I thoroughly disagree about the dedicated community and fun game part, and all of my friends who played the game during the previous tests share my view, unfortunately, and while I understand it's not shared by everyone, It is very fair to say that a lot of people felt disappointed enough to lose all excitement for the game, the 3rd race, the AMA and the rushed launch (every single person I've talked to after the time we played, said the game needs a lot of time in the oven still), just keep knocking the impression and potential of the game down even more. Why? Why does EA not work for an RTS like it can for every other game? Your reasoning seems to be that the game is unfinished and unpolished and EA will put people off, but that applies to literally every game that's had an EA period. As for fun, I played the test version and found it much more fun than SC2. It still rewards all the same ideas of good multitasking, map presence etc, but the fights last longer than 5 seconds and there aren't 25 different ways to instantly lose in the first 10 minutes. The gameplay is the only solid part they have so far, at least to me. And you may not enjoy the game personally, but denying it has a community would be objectively incorrect. They had a playtester discord active 24/7 during the tests, quite a few pros and semi pros were active non-stop (PartinG, Kiwian, Mixu, Skillous, Mana, and others). Don't assume everyone dislikes the game just because reddit and TL are full of negative comments. 90% of them are about art style and finances, not feedback on the gameplay | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17805 Posts
The core RTS communities of the other big Steam RTS games are not going to move over to Stormgate because there is not enough content yet. Frost Giant is going to have to add a metric tonne of new content to get AoE2 players or CoH players or C&C players to give them money. Hearts of Iron 4 goes on sale for $20 all the time and it has a tonne of content. Hopefully, Frost Giant delivers. | ||
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CicadaSC
United States1986 Posts
On July 12 2024 01:57 JimmyJRaynor wrote: The current Stormgate community that enjoys the game is a very different consumer relative to the average Steam action/strat player. The core RTS communities of the other big Steam RTS games are not going to move over to Stormgate because there is not enough content yet. Frost Giant is going to have to add a metric tonne of new content to get AoE2 players or CoH players or C&C players to give them money. Hearts of Iron 4 goes on sale for $20 all the time and it has a tonne of content. Hopefully, Frost Giant delivers. I mean you say that, but as someone who was part of a core RTS community, I just try new RTS games when they come out because good ones are so few and far in-between. I played StarCraft, then I played AOE 4 when it came out, now I'm trying stormgate. I think a lot of the core RTS might be like this. Idk about casual RTS fans. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17805 Posts
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