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Northern Ireland26703 Posts
On August 15 2024 08:30 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +e2: Made a discord account for fun and joined SG Official. Damn, what an echo chamber. SG had no chance with that kind of feedback (or lack of) That has been one of the biggest problems IMO. They created the world's biggest echo chamber where it was impossible to give feedback in anything other than a public forum, where a tiny vocal minority of the community would then harass you for the next week for having posted it with an opinion that didn't match theirs. Even moderators got in on the harassment and ridicule of people posting feedback which was often genuine and good. Garbage in, garbage out.
I’ve only recently experienced it personally myself, barely using Reddit and whatnot, although I’ve seen it from afar!
Like, apparently having properly remappable hotkeys so the game is vaguely enjoyable to play with is either a luxury, or harder than one thinks to implement, and I should stop complaining because it’s early access. Yay great!
To be fair I think in time constructive criticism has been better enabled over time, IDK if it’s intentionally bending that way or hardcore stanning has become an untenable proposition for all but the most myopic
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
I think it has. <5k concurrents and 39% positive reviews from EA is a wakeup call to all that this feedback was actually valid and representative of the wider community, not just (as alledged often and loudly) a couple of idiots who need to shut up and L2P.
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On August 15 2024 08:30 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +e2: Made a discord account for fun and joined SG Official. Damn, what an echo chamber. SG had no chance with that kind of feedback (or lack of) That has been one of the biggest problems IMO. They created the world's biggest echo chamber where it was impossible to give feedback in anything other than a public forum, where a tiny vocal minority of the community would then harass you for the next week for having posted it with an opinion that didn't match theirs. Moderators didn't police the harassment and ridicule of people giving genuine and good feedback for the game, they joined in. Garbage in, garbage out.
This isn't really true at all? The discord has dedicated channels for feedback threads and just about everything people say about the game (art style, monetisation, hotkeys) was brought up over and over again. Many respected players like Mixu and Lorimbo have threads in there, and they've even put out anonymous surveys to playtesters on occasion
In many of the threads devs have been active talking about what people do and don't like.
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On August 15 2024 08:40 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2024 08:30 Cyro wrote:e2: Made a discord account for fun and joined SG Official. Damn, what an echo chamber. SG had no chance with that kind of feedback (or lack of) That has been one of the biggest problems IMO. They created the world's biggest echo chamber where it was impossible to give feedback in anything other than a public forum, where a tiny vocal minority of the community would then harass you for the next week for having posted it with an opinion that didn't match theirs. Even moderators got in on the harassment and ridicule of people posting feedback which was often genuine and good. Garbage in, garbage out. I’ve only recently experienced it personally myself, barely using Reddit and whatnot, although I’ve seen it from afar! Like, apparently having properly remappable hotkeys so the game is vaguely enjoyable to play with is either a luxury, or harder than one thinks to implement, and I should stop complaining because it’s early access. Yay great!
On the other hand topics like fully remappable hotkeys are done to death. There's nothing else constructive to say about them anymore
Every player or person who's discussed the game has said they want them, right from the first beta. And the devs have also said it's coming but they need to finish the UI groundwork first. They even pushed out mostly-but-not-fully remappable hotkeys between betas because it was so in demand.
The game is launching much earlier than any game should be comfortable doing. I'm not happy about hotkeys but realistically there's gonna be missing features getting filled in over the next year until 1.0
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On August 15 2024 09:03 Fango wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2024 08:40 WombaT wrote:On August 15 2024 08:30 Cyro wrote:e2: Made a discord account for fun and joined SG Official. Damn, what an echo chamber. SG had no chance with that kind of feedback (or lack of) That has been one of the biggest problems IMO. They created the world's biggest echo chamber where it was impossible to give feedback in anything other than a public forum, where a tiny vocal minority of the community would then harass you for the next week for having posted it with an opinion that didn't match theirs. Even moderators got in on the harassment and ridicule of people posting feedback which was often genuine and good. Garbage in, garbage out. I’ve only recently experienced it personally myself, barely using Reddit and whatnot, although I’ve seen it from afar! Like, apparently having properly remappable hotkeys so the game is vaguely enjoyable to play with is either a luxury, or harder than one thinks to implement, and I should stop complaining because it’s early access. Yay great! On the other hand topics like fully remappable hotkeys are done to death. There's nothing else constructive to say about them anymore Every player or person who's discussed the game has said they want them, right from the first beta. And the devs have also said it's coming but they need to finish the UI groundwork first. They even pushed out mostly-but-not-fully remappable hotkeys between betas because it was so in demand. The game is launching much earlier than any game should be comfortable doing. I'm not happy about hotkeys but realistically there's gonna be missing features getting filled in over the next year until 1.0
You realise hotkeys (and game control in general) is absolutely key (haha) in a first impression, and even more in an RTS. It s like the most basic of fundamentals and their target market has years/decades of experience with a fixed setup. Not having it is a bane and problematic from second 1 and in every single game thereafter
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
This isn't really true at all? The discord has dedicated channels for feedback threads
Yes, they do. That's what i said - it's all a public forum. Time and time again people have been attacked and ridiculed by loads of people on the server including moderators for giving important feedback about the game. People will constantly bump your thread to tell you that your feedback is bad, you should feel bad, and the developers should do the opposite of what you said. If you do respond it will turn into an endless argument because they keep coming back, and if you don't then most of the posts on your thread will be saying the opposite of what you did because your post was contrary to the circlejerk.
You can't give that feedback privately. It was never asked of me as a playtester to give meaningful private feedback either (those forms were very limited), nor was i given any way to reasonably do it (it's against the rules to message employees, as it probably should be - but there should be other ways to submit feedback).
Employee replies or acknowledgements are extremely rare. When they ninja patched a rootkit into their game at EA launch it took about 70 upvotes and 1300 posts on a thread over more than a week of real time before anybody from FG opened the thread, and they did so because of a moderator ping at one of the guys arguing that we were idiots for not wanting the rootkit rather than because of the feedback itself.
everything people say about the game [..] was brought up over and over again.
I gave walls of feedback about the UI and technical details about the game, much of which had never been said before, and it was archived and hidden from view without ever having any sign that anybody from FG read it. Some of it was important for the UI, yet trivial to fix (minutes of a single dev's time by my estimation) which aren't ingame after 4-5 months. I would have given much more if it was wanted and it could genuinely help the game, but the environment for providing useful feedback and having it considered in a useful way was not there.
I know that many more felt the same and privately expressed frustration with the company, community and the feedback mechanisms that were seemingly designed to create the biggest echo chamber of toxic positivity and weirdly niche opinions possible.
We were even halfway into making a standalone stormgate lgbt+ community because of near unanimous agreement about bigotry and harassment issues on the official server before most of us realised that it wasn't worth the bother with the game in its current state.
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Northern Ireland26703 Posts
On August 15 2024 09:03 Fango wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2024 08:40 WombaT wrote:On August 15 2024 08:30 Cyro wrote:e2: Made a discord account for fun and joined SG Official. Damn, what an echo chamber. SG had no chance with that kind of feedback (or lack of) That has been one of the biggest problems IMO. They created the world's biggest echo chamber where it was impossible to give feedback in anything other than a public forum, where a tiny vocal minority of the community would then harass you for the next week for having posted it with an opinion that didn't match theirs. Even moderators got in on the harassment and ridicule of people posting feedback which was often genuine and good. Garbage in, garbage out. I’ve only recently experienced it personally myself, barely using Reddit and whatnot, although I’ve seen it from afar! Like, apparently having properly remappable hotkeys so the game is vaguely enjoyable to play with is either a luxury, or harder than one thinks to implement, and I should stop complaining because it’s early access. Yay great! On the other hand topics like fully remappable hotkeys are done to death. There's nothing else constructive to say about them anymore Every player or person who's discussed the game has said they want them, right from the first beta. And the devs have also said it's coming but they need to finish the UI groundwork first. They even pushed out mostly-but-not-fully remappable hotkeys between betas because it was so in demand. The game is launching much earlier than any game should be comfortable doing. I'm not happy about hotkeys but realistically there's gonna be missing features getting filled in over the next year until 1.0
And the fear, and my fear is the game will be DoA by the time hits, because of certain mistakes being made.
It’s frustrating, I actually quite like the core, 1v1 looks like it could be a lot of fun but it’s actively frustrating to play because I can’t use controls I’m used to.
It’s not balance, or art design or things being a bit rough, least for me at this phase I don’t mind that so much.
At this juncture the playerbase is absolutely chock full of RTS PvP nerds looking for a new fix, the absolute most likely cohort to have all sorts of long-ingrained bespoke hotkey setups.
Not everyone was on the alpha builds, or the paid EA builds, for many of us this is our first hands-on, and our first shot at giving feedback. Making a good first impression is kind of critical at this juncture.
Like ‘we hear you we’ve known this was an issue since the first alpha’ isn’t really going to enhance my experience of the game. It’s not unheard of but very few games get too many shots at making a good impression.
The pity is I think it’ll eventually be a pretty great game, just either through choice or by necessity thrown out into EA way too early.
The one part of the game that kinda works presently, and has decent engagement is the part that’s entirely unmonetised. Also a pretty big chunk of people who’ve been following its progress.
Perhaps if they’d changed the model slightly so a modest 5-10 bucks got you the PvP mode, had that as the focus (for now) and had their resources less spread they’d be in a better position.
As is, campaign is ridiculously bare bones. Co-op is getting there but isn’t SC2 standard yet, and has performance issues. 3v3 isn’t even on the table yet and 1v1 PvP isn’t in a bad spot, but I’d heavily wager has suffered by trying to get the other modes out.
On the flipside I had almost zero interest in Battle Aces, I like my base building and macro dagnabbit! But it dropped, it tried to do its thing and it succeeded. Had way more fun than I thought I would, sure it was lacking things too but what was there was pretty polished
It’s not the biggest sample size in the world, it’s not tiny either. In my local communities Stormgate was the title of most interest, by far, if these in-development RTS games. It’s done nothing but drop down and down with each release chunk.
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On August 15 2024 08:41 Cyro wrote:
I think it has. <5k concurrents and 39% positive reviews from EA is a wakeup call to all that this feedback was actually valid and representative of the wider community, not just (as alledged often and loudly) a couple of idiots who need to shut up and L2P.
That's the meta in the entertainment space these days though. There's no such thing as valid criticism, it's all trolls and grifters and shut up and give us your money or we'll say that you're toxic.
I know the discourse around this game didn't go quite THAT far, but that's pretty much the environment that exists nowadays everywhere in both the cinema and gaming markets.
If I hadn't played this game myself in beta and seen for myself just how much I didn't like it I wouldn't have believed a single thing anyone on either side of the aisle said about it.
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AOE4 had a bad launch but recovered and is now, after several patches, an amazing game.
The difference is that AOE4 initially had issues with multiplayer, while the campaign and single-player modes were solid. Most people just play the campaign, so the game still sold very well and received good reviews.
Stormgate underdelivered in every aspect, especially the campaign. If they had focused on the campaign and co-op, they would have been in a much better spot
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On August 15 2024 12:05 Vindicare605 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2024 08:41 Cyro wrote:
I think it has. <5k concurrents and 39% positive reviews from EA is a wakeup call to all that this feedback was actually valid and representative of the wider community, not just (as alledged often and loudly) a couple of idiots who need to shut up and L2P. That's the meta in the entertainment space these days though. There's no such thing as valid criticism, it's all trolls and grifters and shut up and give us your money or we'll say that you're toxic. I know the discourse around this game didn't go quite THAT far, but that's pretty much the environment that exists nowadays everywhere in both the cinema and gaming markets. If I hadn't played this game myself in beta and seen for myself just how much I didn't like it I wouldn't have believed a single thing anyone on either side of the aisle said about it.
It's actually gone further than this on their subreddit. I've seen multiple posts of people saying the hate for the game seems coordinated like people are deliberately trying to make the game fail as part of an organized attack on Frost Giant.
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On August 15 2024 08:30 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +e2: Made a discord account for fun and joined SG Official. Damn, what an echo chamber. SG had no chance with that kind of feedback (or lack of) That has been one of the biggest problems IMO. They created the world's biggest echo chamber where it was impossible to give feedback in anything other than a public forum, where a tiny vocal minority of the community would then harass you for the next week for having posted it with an opinion that didn't match theirs. Moderators didn't police the harassment and ridicule of people giving genuine and good feedback for the game, they joined in. Garbage in, garbage out.
IIRC i saw one of your posts there, reasonable points, was dogpiled. Just great.
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On August 15 2024 08:53 Fango wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2024 08:30 Cyro wrote:e2: Made a discord account for fun and joined SG Official. Damn, what an echo chamber. SG had no chance with that kind of feedback (or lack of) That has been one of the biggest problems IMO. They created the world's biggest echo chamber where it was impossible to give feedback in anything other than a public forum, where a tiny vocal minority of the community would then harass you for the next week for having posted it with an opinion that didn't match theirs. Moderators didn't police the harassment and ridicule of people giving genuine and good feedback for the game, they joined in. Garbage in, garbage out. This isn't really true at all? The discord has dedicated channels for feedback threads and just about everything people say about the game (art style, monetisation, hotkeys) was brought up over and over again. Many respected players like Mixu and Lorimbo have threads in there, and they've even put out anonymous surveys to playtesters on occasion In many of the threads devs have been active talking about what people do and don't like.
Considering the presented product you are clearly wrong and the process didnt work.
On August 15 2024 14:54 StasisField wrote:
It's actually gone further than this on their subreddit. I've seen multiple posts of people saying the hate for the game seems coordinated like people are deliberately trying to make the game fail as part of an organized attack on Frost Giant.
If there was a way to short FGS, that would be the only way for such a thing.
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On July 16 2024 07:53 CicadaSC wrote:
I'm predicting concurrent players to reach over 5k concurrent immediately on launch. Which is really good when you consider AOE4, a more established name has 7k concurrents right now. The future is bright for RTS. Once features like map editor and arcade games hit the market that number will balloon. The vast majority of players are in fact casual not multiplayer ranked tryhards.
How did this prediction turned out?
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On August 15 2024 09:18 Cyro wrote:
When they ninja patched a rootkit into their game at EA launch it took about 70 upvotes and 1300 posts on a thread over more than a week of real time
That was so painful, so many people defending FGS who clearly had no fricking clue what they were talking about, like the guy/gal who thought that having access to kernel mode is not a bigger threat than having an windows admin account. Great example of "it takes about 10 times as much effort to debunk bullshit than it takes to spout it".
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I am not sure why they decided to release the game in this state, I played less than 10 games, and the feeling is I don't want to open the game at all to play, there wasn't anything feeling fun.
When AOE4 released I was hooked with that stuff, I was only pissed when they had game breaking bugs and was not fixed fast enough that got in the way of me playing fair game.
That's a different problem than what Stormgate has, the design for me a die hard RTS 1vs1 fan since 1998 is this game has no fun in it. Like it is really fun to create certain strategy style like timing attack or trying to macro and such. And certain units would create a timing window for OP push at different times. Like in AOE4 French with the knights, and when you figured out that knights with fast +1 armor can tank town arrow like no tomorrow, you can easily win games with Chinese, HRE and other civs too.
I think the stormgate public beta was actually the most hurtful in 2 ways:
1. how imbalanced the public beta build was, and the game had some fresh feel and fun at that time. Until I played enough game to see how broken and imbalanced the game was when I just can't win as vanguard vs the other faction, I don't even recall the name of the faction now. That's just how uninteresting the game is to me.
2. The game already had cheaters in public beta, and that was really a huge turn off too
And when the game released in EA....... those feeling still lingers in my mind a lot, and every time I played the game was like fighting a truama. I never played a game and felt this way before.
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i've read many complaints about Tim Morten making $250K per year. In 2010 a dozen University of Waterloo software engineering grads got over $100K with stupid perks. 2 guys made over $170K. There were 2nd and 3rd year students making $60/hour DURING CO-OP. In 2024, good software engineering grads are getting over $150K/year.
Right now, in the DC area, throughout NY and California most decent software engineers are billing $250/Hour. Ask micronesia what the US Navy is currently paying a good, experienced software engineer. Betcha its $250/hour or more.
One of my customers is an employment law firm. I won't say what they're paying me.. but i will say.. they bill at $1,200/hour. So you can guess what I'm getting paid.
This is not 1995 and Frost Giant is in one of the most expensive areas of the USA. To be totally fair, Tim Morten decided to place his company in a very expensive place. He could've easily moved to someplace far less expensive.
The real trick for most software engineers is to get paid $250+/hour while living in a super cheap place like... ohh.. i dunno.. upstate New York.
All things considered: $250,000/year ain't much for a guy with Tim Morten's experience and pedigree.
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On August 15 2024 16:11 PurE)Rabbit-SF wrote:
I am not sure why they decided to release the game in this state, I played less than 10 games, and the feeling is I don't want to open the game at all to play, there wasn't anything feeling fun.
When AOE4 released I was hooked with that stuff, I was only pissed when they had game breaking bugs and was not fixed fast enough that got in the way of me playing fair game.
That's a different problem than what Stormgate has, the design for me a die hard RTS 1vs1 fan since 1998 is this game has no fun in it. Like it is really fun to create certain strategy style like timing attack or trying to macro and such. And certain units would create a timing window for OP push at different times. Like in AOE4 French with the knights, and when you figured out that knights with fast +1 armor can tank town arrow like no tomorrow, you can easily win games with Chinese, HRE and other civs too.
I think the stormgate public beta was actually the most hurtful in 2 ways:
1. how imbalanced the public beta build was, and the game had some fresh feel and fun at that time. Until I played enough game to see how broken and imbalanced the game was when I just can't win as vanguard vs the other faction, I don't even recall the name of the faction now. That's just how uninteresting the game is to me.
2. The game already had cheaters in public beta, and that was really a huge turn off too
And when the game released in EA....... those feeling still lingers in my mind a lot, and every time I played the game was like fighting a truama. I never played a game and felt this way before.
The open beta pretty much solidified what I suspected, a very subpar RTS game.
Artstyle is pretty bad but it was way more than that.
The biggest tell for me is how much the creep and top bar abilities felt like a tacked on mechanics.
Sure the strategies will evolve around them, but that doesn't feel organic.
And the units don't really have fun synergies, and not much of any interesting engagements.
The amount of clustering and watching units getting stuck at bad pathing are just downright depressing as well.
I played a few games in EA, some bits have improved but overall it just feels more or less the same.
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On August 15 2024 16:34 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
i've read many complaints about Tim Morten making $250K per year. In 2010 a dozen University of Waterloo software engineering grads got over $100K with stupid perks. 2 guys made over $170K. There were 2nd and 3rd year students making $60/hour DURING CO-OP. In 2024, good software engineering grads are getting over $150K/year.
Right now, in the DC area, throughout NY and California most decent software engineers are billing $250/Hour. Ask micronesia what the US Navy is currently paying a good, experienced software engineer. Betcha its $250/hour or more.
One of my customers is an employment law firm. I won't say what they're paying me.. but i will say.. they bill at $1,200/hour. So you can guess what I'm getting paid.
This is not 1995 and Frost Giant is in one of the most expensive areas of the USA. To be totally fair, Tim Morten decided to place his company in a very expensive place. He could've easily moved to someplace far less expensive.
The real trick for most software engineers is to get paid $250+/hour while living in a super cheap place like... ohh.. i dunno.. upstate New York.
All things considered: $250,000/year ain't much for a guy with Tim Morten's experience and pedigree.
Depends on the type of startup. It's not even THAT rare for business owner to take a large paycut or even injecting their own money to get the company off the ground.
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Re:payment, who cares if it's rich investor money. But if you're doing a kickstarter for a passion project of yours that you're spearheading, it feels wrong to pay yourself a full regular salary, particularly if you're already rich up the wazoo as the Tims doubtlessly are.
Basically it's telling KS funders "We don't care much for what you guys wanted out of a big modern RTS and as a consequence didn't produce a game anyone wants to play, but at least we paid us more money per year than many of you will ever have in your lifetimes. Funnily enough this means the Stormgate project is a success for us regardless of the quality of product we put out because we got to pretend it's 2010 all over again for 2 years and did not experience any meaningfull loss except some slight opportunity cost. Mission accomplished."
(No, none of this applies to the non-founder workers that FGS hires, who should be paid a competitive salary; anyone worth hiring will insist on that anyway.)
Contrast that with for example Beyond All Reason, whose development is funded by its devs and is even FOSS software with no microstransations or such. Coincidentally they're probably also making a much better game, lol.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/v93eLq3.png)
