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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.
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Northern Ireland23313 Posts
On July 31 2024 23:31 SoleSteeler wrote: Go to steam, bottom left corner click "Add a game" then click "Activate a product".
Much obliged!
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United States32978 Posts
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.
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.
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yeah...... the game's competitive balance is horrible, I regret buying the early access. LOL
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What have you been losing to?
The weirdest loss I had so far was Celestial mirror... I fast expanded and then... got rushed by 2 arc ships + 5-6 morph cores... that was a bit jarring. I may have double fast expanded
I was messing with the settings and the game looked HORRIBLE. All blurry/pixelated. Couldn't figure it out for a bit - eventually realized it was one of those settings where you can change the sharpness... I had it set to "performance". Switched it to "auto" and it looks good again.
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On August 01 2024 09:10 Waxangel wrote:Show nested quote +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. 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. 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"
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On August 01 2024 10:34 SoleSteeler wrote:What have you been losing to? The weirdest loss I had so far was Celestial mirror... I fast expanded and then... got rushed by 2 arc ships + 5-6 morph cores... that was a bit jarring. I may have double fast expanded I was messing with the settings and the game looked HORRIBLE. All blurry/pixelated. Couldn't figure it out for a bit - eventually realized it was one of those settings where you can change the sharpness... I had it set to "performance". Switched it to "auto" and it looks good again.
Vanguard player here, go figure. Celestial is probably in a fine place, more like OP. LOL
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On August 01 2024 10:11 PurE)Rabbit-SF wrote: yeah...... the game's competitive balance is horrible, I regret buying the early access. LOL whats bad about it? im enjoying my experience a lot. and if u think another race is too op why not switch to them yourself? its not like this game has been out for 14 years like starcraft and youd have to learn a lot, everyone is still making their own build orders and trying things.
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On August 01 2024 01:23 StasisField wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2024 22:10 Biedrik wrote:On July 31 2024 07:42 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: - The campaign doesn't truly prepare you to play a real multiplayer match (maybe in later, unreleased chapters) For better or for worse, that's how most single player RTS campaigns are, no? One of their goals for onboarding new RTS players was to prepare people for multiplayer through the campaign.
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.
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On August 01 2024 10:43 Husyelt wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2024 09:10 Waxangel wrote: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. 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. 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" Everything looks boring and like it's made up of a combination of plastic and play-doh. I remember a few months back (not exactly sure when) when they received a wave of criticism about the art style FGS said something to the tune of, "We like the art style. This is what we're going with." So this is what we're stuck with. Hopefully they can bring this boring, plastic art style to life and give it some personality.
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On August 01 2024 17:14 Yurie wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2024 01:23 StasisField wrote:On July 31 2024 22:10 Biedrik wrote:On July 31 2024 07:42 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: - The campaign doesn't truly prepare you to play a real multiplayer match (maybe in later, unreleased chapters) For better or for worse, that's how most single player RTS campaigns are, no? One of their goals for onboarding new RTS players was to prepare people for multiplayer through the campaign. 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. Yeah I'm not sure how they hope to achieve this. They're right to target new player onboarding. It's a big problem for the genre. But doing it in a campaign where the missions are released in packs over time seems to make incorporating the campaign into the onboarding process even harder than it already is.
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Honestly, I'm not impressed. My hope for this game has been dwindling for a while now and I don't really have many good things to say about it and I don't know why I'd play Stormgate over any other RTS I already enjoy. The lore, campaign, factions, and characters are bland, unoriginal, and a little cringe. The coop mode doesn't hold a candle to SC2's. I hate the look of the game. There's still no 3v3 (that and coop were going to be my game modes of choice now that I'm older and don't care much for playing competitive multiplayer nowadays). 1v1 is okay I guess. The one thing I really enjoy is the music for the Celestials. I really want a new RTS to thrive but I don't think this is it. I hope I'm wrong. I'll check back on the official launch of EA for a day 1 patch and see if we get any big, sweeping changes that might change my mind.
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I also question if the majority of campaign players want to be prepared for multiplayer. Yes as a developer you want them to flow through into multiplayer because that is the only thing that keeps them along long term and hopefully spending money long term but if by prepping campaign players you lose the actual pve players who have no interest in online you end up losing more then your gaining.
And you need to draw them in quickly with your campaign. a bad intro that later turns into a good campaign with payed dlc is useless if everyone has already left over your bad intro.
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Northern Ireland23313 Posts
On August 01 2024 18:00 Gorsameth wrote: I also question if the majority of campaign players want to be prepared for multiplayer. Yes as a developer you want them to flow through into multiplayer because that is the only thing that keeps them along long term and hopefully spending money long term but if by prepping campaign players you lose the actual pve players who have no interest in online you end up losing more then your gaining.
And you need to draw them in quickly with your campaign. a bad intro that later turns into a good campaign with payed dlc is useless if everyone has already left over your bad intro.
As the saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.
Less important I feel for the hardcore looking a new RTS fix, they might pop back in for some later build.
But for intrigued newcomers? I mean they’ll try it, some may dig it some may not. But if your stated goal is to bring in new players, well nailing it early is kind of your only way to do that. There are few exceptions to this, they do exist but they’re pretty damn rare.
I mean I think Frost Giant absolutely know this too, I don’t think this method of launching was actually the plan.
It feels a game with a niche of a niche audience, basically RTS vets who are so burned out on SC(s) or AoE or WC3 that they just want something new to play, and don’t wanna dip back into those games again.
From the fair few folks I know in our local communities the feedback has been a lot better from pretty serious SC2 players in the Masters+ bracket than RTS newbies or casuals.
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On August 01 2024 14:04 CicadaSC wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2024 10:11 PurE)Rabbit-SF wrote: yeah...... the game's competitive balance is horrible, I regret buying the early access. LOL whats bad about it? im enjoying my experience a lot. and if u think another race is too op why not switch to them yourself? its not like this game has been out for 14 years like starcraft and youd have to learn a lot, everyone is still making their own build orders and trying things.
Don't really think anyone cares about what is overpowered, more so that some things that are fundamentally broken.
We went from a cycle of gaunt infest snowballing with no counter play an an even worse version on a race that does not have to build a single worker. This is expedited even more on certain maps.
Outside of that I will say that I do like how maps influence and force you to learn multiple openings.
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On August 01 2024 18:11 WombaT wrote: It feels a game with a niche of a niche audience, basically RTS vets who are so burned out on SC(s) or AoE or WC3 that they just want something new to play, and don’t wanna dip back into those games again.
As someone who is kinda burned out on SC2, Stormgate seems too derivative and uninteresting lore-wise for me to get invested in it. It somehow makes my burnout just transfer from SC2 to Stormgate because there is no new challenges for the brain, no new patterns to discover and crack - it's more of the same familiar thing. It's like someone took tic-tac-toe and changed crosses and circles to squares and triangles. It takes only a few minutes for my brain realize it already knows this game and got bored of it long ago. As much as I would like to get involved, something is missing there.
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On August 01 2024 18:00 Gorsameth wrote: I also question if the majority of campaign players want to be prepared for multiplayer. Yes as a developer you want them to flow through into multiplayer because that is the only thing that keeps them along long term and hopefully spending money long term but if by prepping campaign players you lose the actual pve players who have no interest in online you end up losing more then your gaining.
And you need to draw them in quickly with your campaign. a bad intro that later turns into a good campaign with payed dlc is useless if everyone has already left over your bad intro.
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.
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the biggest mistake is the scope, and their decision to go UE5. Nothing so far show off the capability of UE5, and we ended up with a game that doesn't look good, poorly optimised, and netcode that doesn't even feel that different than battle aces.
They probably used the cartoonish graphic to make it easier to optimise and less demanding.
But the biggest sin of all (and one that makes me question is this really the ex blizzard core team), is the horror UI. I don't know who desgined it and how it got a pass.
Huge wasted space with the command card, with a 2D unit portrait, and top bar ability taking up even more vertical spacing.
Meanwhile zerospace is using tab button to switch build/unit command card, BA has an almost full transparent UI (it's the first RTS game that FOV feel unrestricted)
Another one is the cutscenes, not just the ingame but also the cinematic. Wonky camera angles, constant camera shake (way too strong), terrible facial expressions and poor motions overall. I expected it to be bad from the few marketing videos they released but it's disappointing to see.
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On August 01 2024 18:22 Slydie wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2024 18:00 Gorsameth wrote: I also question if the majority of campaign players want to be prepared for multiplayer. Yes as a developer you want them to flow through into multiplayer because that is the only thing that keeps them along long term and hopefully spending money long term but if by prepping campaign players you lose the actual pve players who have no interest in online you end up losing more then your gaining.
And you need to draw them in quickly with your campaign. a bad intro that later turns into a good campaign with payed dlc is useless if everyone has already left over your bad intro.
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. Adding on to that, 1v1 almost inevitably develops into something different than anyone could predict. A campaign mission might be able to convey the general sense of what a 1v1 match is like (both sides start with nothing and race to build more), but the players always end up taking the multiplayer in a direction that the developers didn't foresee.
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I assume they would have much rather worked on the game worry-free for another year or so before entering Early Access. But unfortunately, they needed to begin monetizing now. Some areas of the game are suffering from it.
It doesn't actually matter much in the grand scheme of things, but paying the Tim's $250K/each annually doesn't look good for a studio in the pre-revenue stages. Hurts any sympathy they may be looking for. Gone are the days of pictures of Blizzard devs working in some tiny studio, wires and computers everywhere grinding away trying to produce their early games. (I know COL in California is very high)
It would be a big shame if this game isn't allowed to develop further due to lack of capital. They can't expect the RTS community to fully fund them before delivering on the AAA quality people expect. I was happy to pay $60 USD for the ultimate founders kickstarter, but I'm not going to be spending every dime I can on this game. I'll probably buy Warz, but not until I level every other commanders to max, etc. I plan on buying the campaigns as they are released.
If they really take the feedback they've gotten to heart and fix some of the bigger issues, if the 1v1 is a hit, etc. - I can see them turning it around. It's just if they can get to that point!
I actually don't think the campaign is that bad, both story and gameplay wise. The cinematics were neat enough too. But I didn't have high expectations to begin with, and I don't expect some groundbreaking story either. The audio is definitely off, and I found Amara's voice acting a little... weak. As I mentioned a couple days ago, it'd be nice to have a more fleshed out backstory. WTF happened since this gate opened 20 years ago? Is there anything at all? Who the hell are the Warhawks?
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