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Northern Ireland26795 Posts
On July 31 2025 21:56 ETisME wrote:
Agreed with many points above as well
And it's perfectly fine to have a different TTK, but it needs to have all the other bits and pieces to work well with it
SC2 is extremely well designed around fast pacing, clump/declump, and smooth patching, low TTK and rebuild time etc
SG to me, never nailed it quite right for both playing and viewing
Good points, I think many critics of SC2 semi-diagnosed the problem, but not fully. It’s not just TTK.
1. TTK gets more brutal with scale.
2. Not all unit interactions are as frustrating as others.
3. IMO some of the frustrating stuff has to exist if you have an extremely responsive engine, and give Terran incredibly microable, massable, high DPS ranged units.
SC2 has some of the most satisfying skirmish micro at lower supplies of any RTS, across factions and with many different units it just becomes harder to do as much meaningful micro at big supplies.
Let’s take the Colossus and the Disruptor, and assume their strongest versions. Against 1 or 2, you can flank well, take a good engage, maybe dodge a ball. Against 6? The TTK being high just sees your army melt before it can do that much, so you need whatever counter unit. Which is often less fun.
However, it’s not just that dynamic. It’s also how easy the terrible terrible damage is to execute versus mitigate that’s frustrating to many. Or, the demands of engagements.
As Toss main whose Terran off is (was) about as good, TvZ is pretty mechanically demanding, and unforgiving but in a way that feels fun. There’s more trading, there’s less of having an unkillable ball that eventually you have to deal with. I think a super fun dynamic and a bit underrated is creep, and Terran having an edge off creep, and Zerg having one on creep. Do you risk pushing deep, or do you play it too safe and take your foot off the Zerg throat? I think the micro interactions are great here as well. I can’t remotely do them at the level the top boys do of course, but I’m surprisingly adept at splitting bio. You’ve got flanks, you’ve got trying to bait mines, you’ve got retargetting mines, you’ve got bane splits to counter your splits. You’ve got stutter step on the retreat, you’ve wraparounds to try and lock you in.
I think that’s pretty good stuff, and it’s all with a high TTK.
TvT is probably a better example again in terms of it not purely being a TTK issue. I fucking hate the modern TvT early game, but I’m certainly not alone in enjoying a good marine/tank mirror. Marines melt to tank fire, and really melt to tanks with attack upgrades. People don’t tend to complain about this TTK, although some find it boring. But not the same terrible terrible damage complaints, not nearly. Why is this? Simply because you can’t A-move with tanks, and you can outmanoeuvre it, it feels hard, but pretty fair. Conversely, if a Toss gets a potent deathball, they can just walk around with it, unless they really fuck up, it tends to be a problem you have to deal with eventually.
Which brings me to point 3, which ties into Frost Giant’s approach. They didn’t learn that lesson, but they lowered the TTK at the same time.
Now, those who didn’t lose as much faith in SG may correct me and the meta has shifted or whatever, when I was last fully engaged and checking things out, one thing really stood out. Ranged units, functionally similar to bio hitting critical mass and just kiting everything to death. Sure they’d kill things slower because of the TTK, but a similar dynamic. However, you have some counters, but you don’t have nearly as many as SC2 does. End result if you’re playing someone who’s got a certain level of micro and they don’t fuck up, it felt incredibly fucking hard to actually do anything, and just as frustrating as anything in SC2.
You see something similar at lower levels in WC3 when pally/rifle got popular. Survivability + endless kiting is frustrating if there’s not a counter play that’s similar in execution required.
I think with a modern engine, you need to consider what that does to ranged units and how they outscale melee massively. If you don’t have other potent counters it can get pretty oppressive.
Marines have potent damage output, and are amongst the most microable units in all of RTS, but they’re damn squishy. Archers in WC3 are quite squishy too, decent damage output but one of their main weaknesses is their turn speed. They’re strong but you can’t just endlessly stutter step with them.
I feel Frost Giant maybe didn’t factor all of this in, because I’m seeing similar mistakes to SC2, but with less upside.
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On July 31 2025 23:24 WombaT wrote:
Now, those who didn’t lose as much faith in SG may correct me and the meta has shifted or whatever, when I was last fully engaged and checking things out, one thing really stood out. Ranged units, functionally similar to bio hitting critical mass and just kiting everything to death. Sure they’d kill things slower because of the TTK, but a similar dynamic. However, you have some counters, but you don’t have nearly as many as SC2 does. End result if you’re playing someone who’s got a certain level of micro and they don’t fuck up, it felt incredibly fucking hard to actually do anything, and just as frustrating as anything in SC2.
You see something similar at lower levels in WC3 when pally/rifle got popular. Survivability + endless kiting is frustrating if there’s not a counter play that’s similar in execution required.
I think with a modern engine, you need to consider what that does to ranged units and how they outscale melee massively. If you don’t have other potent counters it can get pretty oppressive.
Marines have potent damage output, and are amongst the most microable units in all of RTS, but they’re damn squishy. Archers in WC3 are quite squishy too, decent damage output but one of their main weaknesses is their turn speed. They’re strong but you can’t just endlessly stutter step with them.
I feel Frost Giant maybe didn’t factor all of this in, because I’m seeing similar mistakes to SC2, but with less upside.
Most of the counters are currently functioning well. (Some critical mass air situations are probably the only major outliers.)
Assuming we're referencing let's say Exo in place of the marine:
Vanguard has Vulcan & Atlas
Infernal has Hellbourne & Hexen (Necrotic Hexfield)
Celestial has Saber & Animancer (Dark Prophecy)
All of those pretty much dunk on the unit extremely hard. Brute charge and Kri roll can also be solutions, but if it's only brutes you should be very mindful of the engagement (with the current version the skill gap has to be large if infernal is struggling anyway).
Argent is similar but a bit more problematic. (Heavy tag, mineral only. Better vs Vulcan, worse vs rest of the non casters)
I doubt it stays in its current form long term. Having a +2 range upgrade available by itself is wild, let alone adding 25% damage to it.
Also not sure why a "heavy" unit is the most nimble out of all of the non speedy units.
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On July 31 2025 16:32 TaShadan wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2025 16:13 Hider wrote:On July 31 2025 15:28 ETisME wrote:
It's clear why they failed. It's because their vision of things like longer TTK just didn't work out well, and they are basically salvaging whatever they can but ends up with a completely weird spot.
The logic was "people say Sc2 is too fast and unforgiving". "But Wc3 is probably too slow". The sweet stop must be in the middle. I was always quite sceptical of that. Not that I thought it couldn't work but I felt like the high speed of Sc2 functioned as a band-aid fix to make the game feel good. With a lower speed you need to add a lot more micro interactions that feels satisfying and rewarding. And I don't think they accomplished. Casting a Psi storm on Marines and one-shotting them feels damn good. Casting an ability that ticks their damage to 30% less so. It's one of those cases where I understand their reasoning, but it's too simplistic. And they gradually realized these things - but way too late. The sweet spot already exists. Broodwar. AT least in terms of DPS, time to die (units and buildings), speed of units, build speeds etc.
I kinda agree. And I think what Brood War has is:
* Effectively lower DPS because unit spreads out more (this is really hard to implement with sc2 type pathing)
* Super overpowered abilities - but not spamable (at least hard to do so).
When I look at Stormgate. I don't even mind the TTK in terms of basic unit damage too much. However, give me something exciting. The battles aren't exciting. Some of the new Stormgates provide a bit - but I need ALOT more.
My philosophy for a "next-gen RTS" would be try something like this:
* Sc2 type responsiveness and intelligent pathing.
* Slightly lower TTK than sc2 for basic attacks.**
* Strong natural defenders advantage but with lots of battles out on the map. Losing a single skirmish won't matter too much.
* Super strong abilites. And I want to be very creative with new types of abilities I want players to do something that looks and feels awesome and can change the outcome of the battle if done and timed well. (and has counterplay)
* Movement-based micro is the primary APM component of the game.
This would be my receipt and it is inspired by a combination of BW, Sc2, but also MOBA's. Some of the abilities in MOBA games I think are quite cool and I wonder if part of the concepts could be adapted to RTS games. For instance, I have some ideas for "assasin-type" units that can go in and out to snipe stuff. High burst but very fragile and super high skillcap units.
I am well aware that it wouldn't be everyones prefered RTS game. I am not making everyone happy - I am trying to make a game that works well for a specific target group.
Am I confident it would work? NO, but my plan would be to get to a stage where I could verify my hypothesis and test and reevaluate as quickly as possible.
Frostgiant did the opposite. Never had an idea in mind for what they actually wanted, and didn't try to adapt fast but just "assumed" it would work out.
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On August 01 2025 05:17 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2025 16:32 TaShadan wrote:On July 31 2025 16:13 Hider wrote:On July 31 2025 15:28 ETisME wrote:
It's clear why they failed. It's because their vision of things like longer TTK just didn't work out well, and they are basically salvaging whatever they can but ends up with a completely weird spot.
The logic was "people say Sc2 is too fast and unforgiving". "But Wc3 is probably too slow". The sweet stop must be in the middle. I was always quite sceptical of that. Not that I thought it couldn't work but I felt like the high speed of Sc2 functioned as a band-aid fix to make the game feel good. With a lower speed you need to add a lot more micro interactions that feels satisfying and rewarding. And I don't think they accomplished. Casting a Psi storm on Marines and one-shotting them feels damn good. Casting an ability that ticks their damage to 30% less so. It's one of those cases where I understand their reasoning, but it's too simplistic. And they gradually realized these things - but way too late. The sweet spot already exists. Broodwar. AT least in terms of DPS, time to die (units and buildings), speed of units, build speeds etc. * Effectively lower DPS because unit spreads out more (this is really hard to implement with sc2 type pathing)
Design wise I'm a bit curious if there are ways to make the unit groupings less powerful without nuking the pathing AI back to 90s.
I don't think units need to be in as complete of a sync as they are in SC2. In a way it's pretty ridiculous how smooth the marine studder stepping is and how small their collisions are. Bumping the collision sizes a bit, adding some turn rates and acceleration and maybe making the ball deform a bit when moving could lead to interesting stuff.
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I hope that the next patch removes the cloning stormgate unit... I find it really boring to watch. If it could only clone an enemy unit, that might be a little more exciting.
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my gut instinct when playing the early alpha, and from the results that have emerged since then, is that the whole Stormgate project lacks strong direction and leadership. the writing, art and gameplay design were confused and bland to begin with. every reveal since then has included a direct or indirect apology for the initial confusion and blandness. as a hardcore RTS player, this does not fill me with confidence. as a casual or non-RTS player, there is very little here to hook me in and get me excited about the genre
I think the early development started without an interesting premise, and without a clear and compelling idea of what the finished product would look like. huge ambitions for a team that couldn't realize them. the only thing that seems to have been realized is the budget.
making a next-gen RTS game in 2025 can't be done with so much carelessness. they had lots of ex-Blizz employees, but no strong leaders among them it seems. what we have now is the result of years squandered in confusion and lack of direction. Frost Giant should have known exactly what kind of RTS they wanted to create from the outset. TTKs? creeps? story? race design? I don't know man. we'll make it up as we go. the lack of a character in this game speaks for itself in the trailers
"Hell, it's about time we fight for some of the things that are maybe worth fighting for. I don't know what those things are - but if I did, there would be some serious butts to kick!" - John Stormgate, the main character of Stormgate
this should have been the game that rallied the whole RTS fanbase behind it, when you consider the how long it's been since the last RTS milestone (sc2). I hardly hear Stormgate being talked about in other RTS communities for wc3 or starcraft - and when it is talked about, it's a mixed or negative response.
when this game is released, the people who play wc3 will continue playing wc3. the people who play bw will continue playing bw. the people playing sc2 will continue playing sc2. why? because you're going to need a 10/10 RTS to pull people away from the other 10/10 RTS games they're playing
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So I watched Giant Grant Games 2 stormgate videos... + Show Spoiler +He doesn't seemed too impressed. Even calling the final boss of the last video mission boring. Stormgate gave him special privileges to try it early and he is still calling it bad. This is not looking good for the games future and remember the disaster on early access launch? Only it will be worse this time since the vanguard campaign is "final" and they are not gonna redo it. History could be repeating itself.
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On August 02 2025 09:43 CicadaSC wrote:So I watched Giant Grant Games 2 stormgate videos... + Show Spoiler +He doesn't seemed too impressed. Even calling the final boss of the last video mission boring. Stormgate gave him special privileges to try it early and he is still calling it bad. This is not looking good for the games future and remember the disaster on early access launch? Only it will be worse this time since the vanguard campaign is "final" and they are not gonna redo it. History could be repeating itself.
He also said bosses in RTS games are hard to do and he really enjoyed the rest of the mission (infiltrating etc)
If I had to guess, I would say he's like the campaign maybe 7/10? I watched the first two videos. I'll avoid the next ones since I don't want to spoil myself. I'll watch em after
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On August 02 2025 06:41 SHODAN wrote:
making a next-gen RTS game in 2025 can't be done with so much carelessness. they had lots of ex-Blizz employees, but no strong leaders among them it seems. what we have now is the result of years squandered in confusion and lack of direction. Frost Giant should have known exactly what kind of RTS they wanted to create from the outset. TTKs? creeps? story? race design? I don't know man. we'll make it up as we go. the lack of a character in this game speaks for itself in the trailers
In a way the methods - at least in gameplay design - may be something they brought over from Blizzard and SC2. SC2 went through 2 sizeable expansions, a handful of redesigns outside the expansions themselves and tons of balance and map shuffling beyond that. The way Blizzard supported the game was massive compared to Brood War or WC3 and a lot of the SC2 iterations could've got stale pretty fast it Blizzard didn't pour more resources to adjusting the game.
Meanwhile now they don't have the Blizzard resources and need to nail some parts of the stuff on the first try.
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On August 03 2025 00:56 SoleSteeler wrote:Show nested quote +On August 02 2025 09:43 CicadaSC wrote:So I watched Giant Grant Games 2 stormgate videos... + Show Spoiler +He doesn't seemed too impressed. Even calling the final boss of the last video mission boring. Stormgate gave him special privileges to try it early and he is still calling it bad. This is not looking good for the games future and remember the disaster on early access launch? Only it will be worse this time since the vanguard campaign is "final" and they are not gonna redo it. History could be repeating itself. He also said bosses in RTS games are hard to do
Yeah. He did. But the community and players don't really care if something is hard to do. They care if it's fun or not. Overall when I combine both videos he just didn't seem genuinely super impressed to me. Before that he was making fun of the story saying + Show Spoiler +"I hope they wrap this up quickly. If the rest of the story is about finding this key I'm going to be very, very disappointed."
You have to remember, it's likely he was biting his tongue at least a little bit throughout. Even if he was told not to hold back and give honest feedback one likely would at least a little, because they are grateful to Frost Giant for this opportunity, they don't want to see a new RTS fail, and so they are charitable. That's why I am mainly concerned.
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Northern Ireland26795 Posts
I haven’t finished my watch, he seemed reasonably ok with the gameplay side of things from what I saw
He did poke fun at bits of the story and writing, which is fair enough given it’s incredibly tropey and generic, and the dialogue isn’t exactly snappy. Is it just me or is the Amara/Blockade dynamic basically just Arthas/Uther 2.0
Another problem I have is it’s so, so fucking serious, in a way that I find jarring given the art style especially. This isn’t new I’ve said it many times, but the rework doesn’t seem to have addressed this particular personal gripe of mine. WC3 and SC campaigns were generally pretty serious too, but there’s some snappy exchanges, some comic relief at times.
On the flipside, SC2’s campaign is the shit in most ways, but many, many have issues with its overall narrative, so I don’t think it’s any kind of kiss of death. And no, I’m not claiming Stormgate’s campaign is remotely at SC2’s overall level.
I’d also add Grant has played an absolute shit-ton of campaigns, so the overall bar is pretty high.
As a caveat to the above, I only watched a bit of the Grant play through, so it may improve in some of the areas I’ve complained about. I’m still on the fence on getting it or not, and I don’t wanna be spoiled if I do.
The gameplay does look pretty fun, and a decent fix of Blizz-style RTS campaigns
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On August 03 2025 07:22 WombaT wrote: I’m still on the fence on getting it or not, and I don’t wanna be spoiled if I do.
I'm in the same boat right now. Undecided. I need more feedback to come in. If people really love it, then I'll get it. But definitely a wait and see situation for me.
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Northern Ireland26795 Posts
On August 03 2025 07:55 CicadaSC wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2025 07:22 WombaT wrote: I’m still on the fence on getting it or not, and I don’t wanna be spoiled if I do. I'm in the same boat right now. Undecided. I need more feedback to come in. If people really love it, then I'll get it. But definitely a wait and see situation for me.
Yeah, for me if a handful of my SC buddies in our local scene are enthused enough to stick around for at least a few months I’m 100% jumping in too.
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That community map showcase video is just bad.
Massive lag and visual cluster in few of them, and only the MOBA map looks like a custom game.
Is it really that hard to just run a few maps with community and record it locally?
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On August 02 2025 04:56 SoleSteeler wrote:
I hope that the next patch removes the cloning stormgate unit... I find it really boring to watch. If it could only clone an enemy unit, that might be a little more exciting.
I'm worried they'll just make it not work on t3 but yeah it should just get axed
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Also First stormgate should he non combat rewards only. Then just add another intermediate stormgate spawn to include the combat ones with a slight hp buff.
I'd just make the first stormgate rewards something like:
-100 luminite cost instant expansion(no bonus workers), resources are paid when you build it.
-lesser shadowmark (20% production/charge increase
-300/100 resources
Make those the static 3 initial choices and call it a day.
The combat units are too oppressive in most cases and lead to either snow all victories or forced turtling.
So many easy fixes available, can't wait to see the crickets on the 5th.
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They're doing an ama on reddit..
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On August 01 2025 15:46 Bacillus wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2025 05:17 Hider wrote:On July 31 2025 16:32 TaShadan wrote:On July 31 2025 16:13 Hider wrote:On July 31 2025 15:28 ETisME wrote:
It's clear why they failed. It's because their vision of things like longer TTK just didn't work out well, and they are basically salvaging whatever they can but ends up with a completely weird spot.
The logic was "people say Sc2 is too fast and unforgiving". "But Wc3 is probably too slow". The sweet stop must be in the middle. I was always quite sceptical of that. Not that I thought it couldn't work but I felt like the high speed of Sc2 functioned as a band-aid fix to make the game feel good. With a lower speed you need to add a lot more micro interactions that feels satisfying and rewarding. And I don't think they accomplished. Casting a Psi storm on Marines and one-shotting them feels damn good. Casting an ability that ticks their damage to 30% less so. It's one of those cases where I understand their reasoning, but it's too simplistic. And they gradually realized these things - but way too late. The sweet spot already exists. Broodwar. AT least in terms of DPS, time to die (units and buildings), speed of units, build speeds etc. * Effectively lower DPS because unit spreads out more (this is really hard to implement with sc2 type pathing) Design wise I'm a bit curious if there are ways to make the unit groupings less powerful without nuking the pathing AI back to 90s. I don't think units need to be in as complete of a sync as they are in SC2. In a way it's pretty ridiculous how smooth the marine studder stepping is and how small their collisions are. Bumping the collision sizes a bit, adding some turn rates and acceleration and maybe making the ball deform a bit when moving could lead to interesting stuff.
I think there's space to make units moronic intentionally without it nuking pathfinding to the 90s.
Take scbw goons as an example - Yeah they path like idiots and derp into each other, but for most of us we're willing to accept that goons are just morons and its up to us to make them not morons. It's the unintentional consequence of 90s pathfinding that made them morons, but it doesn't have to be.
Units like zerglings have space for 'moronic personality' in this way with ideas like them en masse clawing over/past each other to get to the head of the pack (mechanically making the mass of units slower than an individual one / smaller pack) or them having pea brains and refusing to remain idle, wandering off if left in one spot... There's all kinds of stuff you could do to make them worse a-moved than they would be precisely controlled.
Obviously the problem is making this fun and not hellish, but if your goal is interesting diverse units that don't just feed the deathball, I think 'unit personality' is what you can shoot for.
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On August 04 2025 10:19 Fleetfeet wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2025 15:46 Bacillus wrote:On August 01 2025 05:17 Hider wrote:On July 31 2025 16:32 TaShadan wrote:On July 31 2025 16:13 Hider wrote:On July 31 2025 15:28 ETisME wrote:
It's clear why they failed. It's because their vision of things like longer TTK just didn't work out well, and they are basically salvaging whatever they can but ends up with a completely weird spot.
The logic was "people say Sc2 is too fast and unforgiving". "But Wc3 is probably too slow". The sweet stop must be in the middle. I was always quite sceptical of that. Not that I thought it couldn't work but I felt like the high speed of Sc2 functioned as a band-aid fix to make the game feel good. With a lower speed you need to add a lot more micro interactions that feels satisfying and rewarding. And I don't think they accomplished. Casting a Psi storm on Marines and one-shotting them feels damn good. Casting an ability that ticks their damage to 30% less so. It's one of those cases where I understand their reasoning, but it's too simplistic. And they gradually realized these things - but way too late. The sweet spot already exists. Broodwar. AT least in terms of DPS, time to die (units and buildings), speed of units, build speeds etc. * Effectively lower DPS because unit spreads out more (this is really hard to implement with sc2 type pathing) Design wise I'm a bit curious if there are ways to make the unit groupings less powerful without nuking the pathing AI back to 90s. I don't think units need to be in as complete of a sync as they are in SC2. In a way it's pretty ridiculous how smooth the marine studder stepping is and how small their collisions are. Bumping the collision sizes a bit, adding some turn rates and acceleration and maybe making the ball deform a bit when moving could lead to interesting stuff. I think there's space to make units moronic intentionally without it nuking pathfinding to the 90s. Take scbw goons as an example - Yeah they path like idiots and derp into each other, but for most of us we're willing to accept that goons are just morons and its up to us to make them not morons. It's the unintentional consequence of 90s pathfinding that made them morons, but it doesn't have to be. Units like zerglings have space for 'moronic personality' in this way with ideas like them en masse clawing over/past each other to get to the head of the pack (mechanically making the mass of units slower than an individual one / smaller pack) or them having pea brains and refusing to remain idle, wandering off if left in one spot... There's all kinds of stuff you could do to make them worse a-moved than they would be precisely controlled. Obviously the problem is making this fun and not hellish, but if your goal is interesting diverse units that don't just feed the deathball, I think 'unit personality' is what you can shoot for.
The way I'm thinking it, there could be a sweet spot where groups behave a bit like some highly viscous material. Still flowing predictably, but not fluid enough to retain full mobility and efficiency compared to their singular counterparts. A-moving should rarely be better than A-move with smaller adjustments.
Maybe even something artificially stupid like applying an acceleration penalty to bigger unit balls could do something. That would mean that small unit groups are agile and bigger deathballs have more mass that requires time to accelerate and slow down. It might make things really volatile though, all your assests are bunched together in one ball and now you can't even control it precisely anymore.
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Isn't there many counters to blobs?
1. Change unit acceleration/size etc to work against it.
2. Have a lot of AoE and allow players easy ways to not group if they want to. Making higher tier units bigger so the AoE doesn't impact them as much. (BAR solution)
3. Change the map to have a lot of features that splits units up or forces the player to split them up to not lose. For example reduced unit speed uphill, which will stretch out a blob.
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I guess i will check it out for the campaign again. After that? We will see.
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EPT
