Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread - Page 146

On August 01 2024 02:19 SoleSteeler wrote:
Yeah, Warz being paid was pretty clear based on what Spartak said above. 3 heroes bought + 1 free is what Kickstarted provided. any new ones would be paid.

I think Warz being day 1 just caused confusion regarding that.

The competitive crowd seems to have an overall positive reaction to 1v1 (>75% based on what i see). I wonder if FGS will address concerns over the campaign. Considering these games make a lot of their costs back through campaign and the "casual" player base, they really need to listen to that feedback. Hopefully they aren't too disheartened, not for their sake, but for ours A good game that people like is only a positive thing.

On August 01 2024 09:10 Waxangel wrote:


Yeah, there are portions of the competitive SC2 crowd who genuinely like the game, beyond the underlying 'gotta support this for competitive RTS to have a future' sentiment. Unfortunately, the game's success is predicated on drawing in the more casual RTS audience, and it seems like they're turned off by the game giving you an absolutely terrible first impression with its graphics.

The graphics are a pretty interesting/unfortunate story to me. There was consistent feedback ever since gameplay was publicly revealed was that there was something off to the game's look, and while FG did diagnose and fix some issues, they didn't seem to be able to fix what feels like a more core, high-level problem (I don't have the artistic language to describe these kinds of things).

I have to wonder if this is just an issue of design/art being hard, with even the creators themselves finding it hard to diagnose the specific aspects of their work that aren't clicking (I don't mean "it looks like a mobile game," that's an outcome, not a cause). Or, perhaps by the time they knew what was wrong and how to fix it, they were simply past the point of no return in terms of budget and schedule.

On August 01 2024 10:43 Husyelt wrote:

Gotta agree. Hate to shit on a new RTS, but the aesthetic is just too flat, across multiple levels. Lighting is flat and makes all the terrain appear plasticy. Materials/textures are not varied enough and compounds the plastic feel. The blurred af terrain materials are just awful im not going to lie. Battle Aces has a similar aesthetic but they do a better job adding in some contrast with the hard lines, almost sketched into the terrain and on units. Battle Aces looks like they attempted something like a mix of Ghibli and Borderlands. Storm Gate looks like they went with an anti aesthetic, like remove any artistic direction as possible, give me the "moba with zero character to the look pls ty"

On August 01 2024 17:14 Yurie wrote:


I honestly think you cannot do that without multiple difficulties where the higher ones force you to play quickly. In campaigns forced deadlines are usually not positively received so having that for more challenging difficulties could salvage reviews if that is a main goal. I personally think the AoE 2 challenge missions prepare you more for multiplayer than all the other campaigns combined. SC2 also has that, those type of things are curated to get you specific skills. A campaign should promote free form solutions, which doesn't work in a set multiplayer meta.

On August 01 2024 18:22 Slydie wrote:


As the famous RTS youtube video stated, custom maps are also extremely important to retain casual players.

I think the different phases of 1v1 is hard to teach through a campaign; you either run around with whatever army you are given, or turtle up to build the biggest, baddest army you can and roll over the enemy. Neither work well when you have to constantly balance between defending, attacking, expanding, teching and building army, and it is crucial to know the timing windows of every unit.