On June 17 2026 09:12 ChillFlame wrote: P.S. There are a couple of mysteries surrounding SG that I still haven't solved. For example, everyone was talking about how smooth and responsive the game was. It was second only to SC2, with the potential to surpass it.
Did I play some other game? It was ALWAYS terrible mechanic-wise. From the first rounds of beta to the EoS. Units never did what I told them to do. And I'm fine with SCBW (or even stupid WC2 dragons :D). Some of the inputs didn't register, animations were out of sync, stupid global matchmaking added delay, Systems like auto build or autogrouping never worked properly. It was really unpleasant to play.
I am pretty sure that was real people, not bots or Tim's alt accounts. And I used to see this argument quite a lot. Did they really find the game one of the best mechanically, or did they lie to themselves because of the personal investment?
I understood most of the takes of SG's fans, even if I didn't agree. But this one is not just how the game feels. I'm pretty sure it's provable and quantifiable.
I think we can divide the "OMG Stormgate's engine is SO SMOOOOOOTH" people into two categories:
1. Starcraft II "influencers" like Neuro who a) really wanted Stormgate to be awesome and succeed so that he could have an early advantage in a brand new scene and b) were only shown local-only demonstrations at Frost Giant headquarters, with zero network latency, top-end hardware, and carefully controlled conditions.
2. Stormgate fanboys who believed everything people in the first category said, because they really really wanted to believe it.
The existence of these two categories of people makes it really difficult to figure out when, for example, the famous "dropped inputs" bug first appeared in Stormgate. It's still around today (Tim Morten even acknowledged it for the first time ever in his recent interview with Harstem) so clearly it wasn't something that was added accidentally in a late patch and could easily be fixed. It seems like some fundamental problem with the engine itself.
But until we had people like Uthermal who were skilled enough to actually notice dropped inputs and produce a video that demonstrated them, nobody ever talked about this issue.
There were other issues that persisted as well, such as unit pathing problems. This is a difficult problem to solve in any RTS game. But again, nobody ever really pointed these issues out, and instead just pretended that Stormgate's pathfinding was superior to Starcraft II. This also lasted until someone actually released a video showing the issues.
Some people in category 2 also loved to ignore the above issues in favor of promoting features that Stormgate had that Starcraft Ii didn't, such as rollback netcode. While this was technically a new achievement for RTS games, and potentially could make things better when playing someone on the other side of the world, I really think all the time and effort here was wasted. Instead, they should have spent that time optimizing the boring regular netcode.
On June 17 2026 09:12 ChillFlame wrote: P.S. There are a couple of mysteries surrounding SG that I still haven't solved. For example, everyone was talking about how smooth and responsive the game was. It was second only to SC2, with the potential to surpass it.
Did I play some other game? It was ALWAYS terrible mechanic-wise. From the first rounds of beta to the EoS. Units never did what I told them to do. And I'm fine with SCBW (or even stupid WC2 dragons :D). Some of the inputs didn't register, animations were out of sync, stupid global matchmaking added delay, Systems like auto build or autogrouping never worked properly. It was really unpleasant to play.
I am pretty sure that was real people, not bots or Tim's alt accounts. And I used to see this argument quite a lot. Did they really find the game one of the best mechanically, or did they lie to themselves because of the personal investment?
I understood most of the takes of SG's fans, even if I didn't agree. But this one is not just how the game feels. I'm pretty sure it's provable and quantifiable.
I think we can divide the "OMG Stormgate's engine is SO SMOOOOOOTH" people into two categories:
1. Starcraft II "influencers" like Neuro who a) really wanted Stormgate to be awesome and succeed so that he could have an early advantage in a brand new scene and b) were only shown local-only demonstrations at Frost Giant headquarters, with zero network latency, top-end hardware, and carefully controlled conditions.
2. Stormgate fanboys who believed everything people in the first category said, because they really really wanted to believe it.
The existence of these two categories of people makes it really difficult to figure out when, for example, the famous "dropped inputs" bug first appeared in Stormgate. It's still around today (Tim Morten even acknowledged it for the first time ever in his recent interview with Harstem) so clearly it wasn't something that was added accidentally in a late patch and could easily be fixed. It seems like some fundamental problem with the engine itself.
But until we had people like Uthermal who were skilled enough to actually notice dropped inputs and produce a video that demonstrated them, nobody ever talked about this issue.
There were other issues that persisted as well, such as unit pathing problems. This is a difficult problem to solve in any RTS game. But again, nobody ever really pointed these issues out, and instead just pretended that Stormgate's pathfinding was superior to Starcraft II. This also lasted until someone actually released a video showing the issues.
Some people in category 2 also loved to ignore the above issues in favor of promoting features that Stormgate had that Starcraft Ii didn't, such as rollback netcode. While this was technically a new achievement for RTS games, and potentially could make things better when playing someone on the other side of the world, I really think all the time and effort here was wasted. Instead, they should have spent that time optimizing the boring regular netcode.
For me, yeah I remember the missed inputs, but it didn't feel that smooth to me. I always said that. When you run around zergling, it feels like you are controlling a zergling. Units in stormgate don't move that good to me. Idk how else to describe it. Like remember when they first showed off their demonstration of their engine with all those balls moving around? It felt like those balls gliding just with a skin on top. Not like how a unit should feel. I think movement feels better in both StarCraft and also league of Legends. This movement in Stormgate reminded me of dota2 which I hated.
On June 17 2026 09:12 ChillFlame wrote: P.S. There are a couple of mysteries surrounding SG that I still haven't solved. For example, everyone was talking about how smooth and responsive the game was. It was second only to SC2, with the potential to surpass it.
Did I play some other game? It was ALWAYS terrible mechanic-wise. From the first rounds of beta to the EoS. Units never did what I told them to do. And I'm fine with SCBW (or even stupid WC2 dragons :D). Some of the inputs didn't register, animations were out of sync, stupid global matchmaking added delay, Systems like auto build or autogrouping never worked properly. It was really unpleasant to play.
I am pretty sure that was real people, not bots or Tim's alt accounts. And I used to see this argument quite a lot. Did they really find the game one of the best mechanically, or did they lie to themselves because of the personal investment?
I understood most of the takes of SG's fans, even if I didn't agree. But this one is not just how the game feels. I'm pretty sure it's provable and quantifiable.
I think we can divide the "OMG Stormgate's engine is SO SMOOOOOOTH" people into two categories:
1. Starcraft II "influencers" like Neuro who a) really wanted Stormgate to be awesome and succeed so that he could have an early advantage in a brand new scene and b) were only shown local-only demonstrations at Frost Giant headquarters, with zero network latency, top-end hardware, and carefully controlled conditions.
2. Stormgate fanboys who believed everything people in the first category said, because they really really wanted to believe it.
The existence of these two categories of people makes it really difficult to figure out when, for example, the famous "dropped inputs" bug first appeared in Stormgate. It's still around today (Tim Morten even acknowledged it for the first time ever in his recent interview with Harstem) so clearly it wasn't something that was added accidentally in a late patch and could easily be fixed. It seems like some fundamental problem with the engine itself.
But until we had people like Uthermal who were skilled enough to actually notice dropped inputs and produce a video that demonstrated them, nobody ever talked about this issue.
There were other issues that persisted as well, such as unit pathing problems. This is a difficult problem to solve in any RTS game. But again, nobody ever really pointed these issues out, and instead just pretended that Stormgate's pathfinding was superior to Starcraft II. This also lasted until someone actually released a video showing the issues.
Some people in category 2 also loved to ignore the above issues in favor of promoting features that Stormgate had that Starcraft Ii didn't, such as rollback netcode. While this was technically a new achievement for RTS games, and potentially could make things better when playing someone on the other side of the world, I really think all the time and effort here was wasted. Instead, they should have spent that time optimizing the boring regular netcode.
That's the thing. Usually, die-hard fans praise the best parts of their games. They might or might not acknowledge its shortcomings, but they don't pretend their game is the best because of it.
There are contested areas and holy wars, sure (like SCBW/SC2 artstyle one), but I don't recall somone saying SC2 artstyle is the best part of the game. EDIT: (And SCBW fans saying they have the best pathing ever)
I guess people were just too hyped up. They bought the idea of "The best RTS in everything since SC2", so they kept rolling with it, because it sucks to be wrong.
It's fascinating in a way. I'd understand if it was a new-gen crowd without a proper frame of reference, but no, the same people were comparing SG with SC2 and telling it played only slightly worse. The power of belief is insanely strong.
I started playing BAR roughly the same time, and the difference was astounding.
8v8 is the default gamemode. There are hundreds of units on the screen, and there are people from across the globe. It plays miraculously well. The engine is good, the netcode is good, the optimization is good, and it's an alpha of an open-source game made by volunteers. It's more complex, too. The whole insanity has physics and ballistic projectiles.
Yet you won't see many people (except me :D) who would go around RTS communities telling BAR is the best RTS ever. Usually, it has 1k+ CCU https://www.beyondallreason.info/active-battles , which is much more SG usually had, yet players are much more modest, and discussions are more grounded.
100% it was rollback and the marketing FrostGiant made around it
Just like people still say StormGate "had potential" or can be saved or whatever, plenty of people fell for the narrative Tim et al. spun up around their technical work being a "next gen" differentiator.
In retrospect, yeah this was basically another wasted effort on their part. All evidence points to their engine being worse at running an RTS than the competitors, including open source BAR.
Day[9]'s mom is awesome, but that thread is somewhat disingenuous. It makes it seem like this is some sort of weird one-off error, but in fact every single person who bought things on the Stormgate in-game store has lost everything they bought.
When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Steam purchases are stored on Steam. You go to Steam and redownload a game you already bought, no problem. Steam knows because the data is on Steam's servers, tied to the player's Steam account.
But in-game store transactions (which Frost Giant set up deliberately to be the best way to purchase the campaign, so they could avoid Steam's 30% fee) were stored on Stormgate's servers. Which, as we know, have gone to Server Heaven. All that data on player in-game store purchases is just gone, erased, oblivionized. And there's no way for the game to check to see if they exist. The only reason this hasn't come up more widely is that very few people who bought the campaign on the in-game store have ever bothered to replay it.
To be fair, Cara Laforge hasn't worked for Frost Giant for a while and probably has no idea about what's happened. She sees the post on Reddit as a customer support issue that isn't being handled, when in fact it's a systemic issue that Frost Giant literally has no way to fix.
Also, Day9, her son, rated the game a 1/10. That is ruthless honesty.
That was quite the moment for Stormgate. And it was just after the EA release, at the height of all the hype by so many Starcraft II "influencers". Day[9] has always been clear that when a game is released, even in Early Access, he will evaluate that game based on what it is, not what it could be. It's the Total Biscuit philosophy of game reviews.
It's also worth noting that even after the "release", Day[9] didn't bother to play the game again. Not even in 2026, his "Year of RTS". If he had, he probably would have rated it as better, maybe a 3 or a 4 out of 10. But he knew that you don't just go from a 1/10 to a 10/10. That never happens. Tim Morten loves to talk about how Baldur's Gate 3 was criticized for its Early Access release, but he just can't fathom that Baldur's Gate 3 was awesome right from the very first frame. Their EA release was clearly incomplete, but it wasn't bad the way Stormgate was.
Isn't it the usual practice to have a own store front etc to avoid steams 30% cut? I mean there are a lot of games which are available on multiple launchers. I don't think if you buy a mount in D4 that steam will get a cut
Day[9]'s mom is awesome, but that thread is somewhat disingenuous. It makes it seem like this is some sort of weird one-off error, but in fact every single person who bought things on the Stormgate in-game store has lost everything they bought.
When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Steam purchases are stored on Steam. You go to Steam and redownload a game you already bought, no problem. Steam knows because the data is on Steam's servers, tied to the player's Steam account.
But in-game store transactions (which Frost Giant set up deliberately to be the best way to purchase the campaign, so they could avoid Steam's 30% fee) were stored on Stormgate's servers. Which, as we know, have gone to Server Heaven. All that data on player in-game store purchases is just gone, erased, oblivionized. And there's no way for the game to check to see if they exist. The only reason this hasn't come up more widely is that very few people who bought the campaign on the in-game store have ever bothered to replay it.
To be fair, Cara Laforge hasn't worked for Frost Giant for a while and probably has no idea about what's happened. She sees the post on Reddit as a customer support issue that isn't being handled, when in fact it's a systemic issue that Frost Giant literally has no way to fix.
Also, Day9, her son, rated the game a 1/10. That is ruthless honesty.
That was quite the moment for Stormgate. And it was just after the EA release, at the height of all the hype by so many Starcraft II "influencers". Day[9] has always been clear that when a game is released, even in Early Access, he will evaluate that game based on what it is, not what it could be. It's the Total Biscuit philosophy of game reviews.
It's also worth noting that even after the "release", Day[9] didn't bother to play the game again. Not even in 2026, his "Year of RTS". If he had, he probably would have rated it as better, maybe a 3 or a 4 out of 10. But he knew that you don't just go from a 1/10 to a 10/10. That never happens. Tim Morten loves to talk about how Baldur's Gate 3 was criticized for its Early Access release, but he just can't fathom that Baldur's Gate 3 was awesome right from the very first frame. Their EA release was clearly incomplete, but it wasn't bad the way Stormgate was.
Isn't it the usual practice to have a own store front etc to avoid steams 30% cut? I mean there are a lot of games which are available on multiple launchers. I don't think if you buy a mount in D4 that steam will get a cut
the key is that it has to be at the same price as it is on Steam. If you are running your game through Steam they can start to make demands. Even if you are not running anything on Steam Valve can decide to remove it from their store.
EPT
