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[Phantom]
Mexico2170 Posts
This is the D.O.R.F trailer for reference: That being said, the first part of the gampley trailer of storm gate this video is really good. I really wonder why they didn't show that more in depth. The battles look much better. From 0:11 to 0:43. Watch it multiple times as it has different engagements. It seems to me they do need better marketing. | ||
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Vindicare605
United States16087 Posts
Having a lot of cool micro shit in the game that only the top players can pull off is great to watch, and it's one of the reasons I love to watch it. But it doesn't really mean anything when I'm trying to play the game myself. I have friends that love to watch Starcraft 2 that don't play it because they don't find it fun. Spectators that watch esports are cool to have, but they are not the ones that are going to be the main supporters of the game in the long run. For all of the flak I give League of Legends and DoTA2 for being "boring" to watch, mostly because I'm comparing them to SC2. They are WAY more successful as both esports and as games in the long run because their simplified gameplay is more appealing to people to actually play. (and because they are team games which I already mentioned is also something Stormgate is trying to appeal to also) From everything I've seen from Frostgiant they are taking a LOT of those lessons that they've learned from why MoBA's stole SC2's place in the esports scene to heart when they are developing this game. Not all of these decisions are going to appeal to hardcore RTS fans, and they're not supposed to. | ||
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NewSunshine
United States5938 Posts
On June 13 2023 02:57 [Phantom] wrote: I agree a trailer in the style of what D.O.R.F showed, or at least an expanded version of the Monk vs TLO showmatch would have done better to hype the game. This is the D.O.R.F trailer for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nMW35hGtBU That being said, the first part of the gampley trailer of storm gate this video is really good. I really wonder why they didn't show that more in depth. The battles look much better. From 0:11 to 0:43. Watch it multiple times as it has different engagements. https://youtu.be/cq4M38TychE?t=11 It seems to me they do need better marketing. I have to say I was expecting something along the lines of a battle report like SC2 had, showing the state of the game through a staged showmatch to demonstrates units, maps, and mechanics. We got snippets from a battle report instead. It's a good reveal, it gives us more to chew on, and it definitely shows some solid fundamentals for a new RTS. Maybe my expectations were off, but I was ready for it to get a little more airtime. | ||
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Hider
Denmark9404 Posts
On June 13 2023 02:04 The_Red_Viper wrote: I honestly don't think so. Most other rts games aren't just slower, they actually don't allow you to micro your units all that much because they don't have the same responsive feeling to them. Slowing it down compared to sc2 isn't fundamentally the issue, wc3 was, bw was, they both worked well for what they tried to be. Sc2 also works well for what it tries to be, but many people think that it is too unforgiving in its speed and ttk, i think it is too. You just need to compensate by giving the player something interesting to do, that could be more multtiasking all across the map as well, without many abilities, as one example. I agree with you. Most RTS games are atrocious. Most people's reaction to it has been in the "not bad but not exciting"- category which definitely is an improvement. I can see that they clearly identified and have created micro opportunities. However, I don't think we should just dismiss the lack of excitement because it's early days or just a short game-play highlight video. It is the most essential part and any marketing material that they present needs to highlight it. QoL improvements in contrast are much less essential and it's my impression they had too much of a focus on this and not enough focus on ensuring a high micro skillcap. For the current pace to be able to be "exciting" they need to be smarter/creative with the unit-design. Whereas in contrast Marines can be super high skillcap in Sc2-speed, the skill-cap will be much lower for those types of basic interactions in slower pace games. On the additional multitasking. My concern is that I think lower unit counts will lead to gameplay with less multitasking. One of the my favorite parts of any starcraft was tvz mech bw late game. With zerg trying to break down the terran mech with drops and attacks everywhere and terran having his army thinly spread all over multiple bases. With 2 supply tanks total unit count size is quite large whereas in Sc2 usually you never reach those army sizes with mech. I wouldn't have been so worried about the reduction in speed if they had maintained or even increased army sizes relative to Sc2. I wanna see gameplay with players having positions and fighting for control over 5+ parts of the map at the same time. | ||
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Xamo
Spain880 Posts
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ProMeTheus112
France2027 Posts
As for the hype stuff I'm not worrying, I remember the first alpha footage of war3 that was shown, it was so different from war3 now lul. Same with SC but I only saw it years after. Will see, the potential is there and they're iterating on everything so. | ||
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_fool
Netherlands678 Posts
I was getting less and less hyped due to a severe lack of "space trucker" vibe. It all looked a bit clean to me. But ambiance and lore can still be added, and we don't know a lot about the other factions. As for the battles, coming from SC2 it feels like everything has +5 armor  But maybe I should embrace the slower pace? Seeing how I lose 20-30 lings to bad engagements, it might even be good for me | ||
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Hider
Denmark9404 Posts
On June 13 2023 03:00 Vindicare605 wrote: Here's a lesson Starcraft 2 has taught me after 13 years of following it and playing it. Having a lot of cool micro shit in the game that only the top players can pull off is great to watch, and it's one of the reasons I love to watch it. But it doesn't really mean anything when I'm trying to play the game myself. In any sport, this is simply wrong. We all love to watch the best of the best and are inspired by them. Kids watch messi and try to drible like him. They can't, but it without any question it makes players more motivated to play. You confuse the skillcap with skillfloor. A high skillfloor and a large amount of things to know before you can even play the game is bad. A high skillcap is a must, however. Any competitive multiplayer game without a reasonably high skillcap will fail. In game-design everyone (including frostgiant) strive for the the classic motto of "easy to learn hard to master." So you need to figure out how you make the game less complex in some ways while maintaining/increasing the skillcap in other ways. For all of the flak I give League of Legends and DoTA2 for being "boring" to watch, mostly because I'm comparing them to SC2. They are WAY more successful as both esports and as games in the long run because their simplified gameplay is more appealing to people to actually play. (and because they are team games which I already mentioned is also something Stormgate is trying to appeal to also) MOBA's are absolutely a prime example of my point. DOTA/LOL figured out where they want to have a skillcap and where it's not needed. (In contrast HOTS struggled partly because its skillcap was too low - they removed certain parts of the game and didn't compensate adequately in others) Imagine if it was a requirements to spend noticeable APM to convert gold into items in a MOBA. That would be stupid and be pointless but RTS are so used to it and think its an essential part of the game. It's not. What people want do in MOBA's is controlling your hero and they make a great game around that part. The same concept can be applied to RTS. Make it as easy as possible for the target group to focus on the thing they find fun and create a high skillcap around that. You don't do that by reducing the skillcap of the essential parts of the game. You do it by reducing the skillfloor of all the nonessential parts. | ||
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Vindicare605
United States16087 Posts
How do you have cool micro shit in the game that only the top players can do, and then be the focus of balance of the game so that casuals can still feel like they have a chance at playing it? Classic example: Marines vs Banelings. This interaction forms a core dynamic in every single TvZ. It's gnarly to watch in pro games, in fact it was one of the things that got me into watching pro SC2 from the start. But it feels REALLY fucking bad in every TvZ match for the Terran to HAVE to learn to control his marines like that if he wants to have a chance at surviving against a unit that requires FAR less effort to control on the other side. So then Blizzard tries to throw Terran a bone later in SC2's life by introducing Widow Mines which creates the opposite interaction the other way, where now Zerg has to work twice as hard to micro against a unit that requires very little effort to control, but it's fine because the pros can do it and you have Banelings anyway so it's fair. It's a fair interaction because both players suffer, and it's tailor designed around the high skill cap of the game, but both players are miserable at lower levels because they are required to pull off these higher level micro tricks in order to get anywhere in their progress as players. I'm using this example specifically because Banelings and Widow Mines are two of the most commonly complained about units by lower level players in SC2, and while their interactions are SUPER fun to watch when higher level players are using them they are absolutely painful for newer players to play around or even most players that aren't Master's level honestly. These units are the result of balancing the game around "cool micro shit" at the top level and it having a negative impact on the game's accessibility. There's other examples of this all through SC2. Psi Storm, Vipers, EMP, Disruptors, Liberator harass, the list goes on. I can't use Brood War as a fair comparison because the greatest barrier to entry in that game is just learning how to play around the 25 year old engine that fights the player as much as possible. | ||
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Vindicare605
United States16087 Posts
And when Stormgate is going free to play from the jump, Frostgiant needs to entice players to actually want to PLAY the game, not just watch it. | ||
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The_Red_Viper
19533 Posts
I will always go back to the example of new players and where they spend their attention, they spend it generally on units, wanting to do things with them and then someone has to tell them that this is actually the wrong way to play for them. THAT is the problem On June 13 2023 03:02 Hider wrote: I agree with you. Most RTS games are atrocious. Most people's reaction to it has been in the "not bad but not exciting"- category which definitely is an improvement. I can see that they clearly identified and have created micro opportunities. However, I don't think we should just dismiss the lack of excitement because it's early days or just a short game-play highlight video. It is the most essential part and any marketing material that they present needs to highlight it. QoL improvements in contrast are much less essential and it's my impression they had too much of a focus on this and not enough focus on ensuring a high micro skillcap. For the current pace to be able to be "exciting" they need to be smarter/creative with the unit-design. Whereas in contrast Marines can be super high skillcap in Sc2-speed, the skill-cap will be much lower for those types of basic interactions in higher pace games. On the additional multitasking. My concern is that I think lower unit counts will lead to gameplay with less multitasking. One of the my favorite parts of any sc2 was tvz mech bw late game. With zerg trying to break down the terran mech with drops and attacks everywhere and terran having his army thinly spread all over multiple bases. With 2 supply tanks total unit count size is quite large whereas in Sc2 usually you never reach those army sizes with mech. I wouldn't have been so worried about the reduction in speed if they had maintained or even increased army sizes relative to Sc2. I wanna see gameplay with players having positions and fighting for control over 5+ parts of the map at the same time. Maybe not fully dismiss, there are valuable things to be learned from a reaction, but people reacting generally also don't really know WHY they react the way they do. We simply lack too many variables right now, i think pointing out that it is only one faction, so a mirror which oftentimes is the least liked to begin with, and we only saw a bunch of units, and we didn't see all the elements of the game in a decently finished state either (how creeping affects it, how spread out the game can be, etc), all of that affects it. AND something people don't consider as much, even just the presentation affects things, more polished animations, more polished sounds, more polished designs, all of that affects how one reacts to exactly the same gameplay too. I personally share a fascination with bw tvz lategame where the zerg tries to break the terran through a multitude of tactics which stress multitasking, for sure. Frost giant at least has said that they want people to spread out, there is a real economic advantage to that, they also said that there is more variance in unit counts in the game than there is in sc2. How that actually looks like, well we don't know. I tend to think that basic micro interactions is where a lot of depth can be generated from, not in flashy spells. Spells are good for flavor, to feel some form of power progression, but ultimately it's how you move your units, in what shapes, how to are able to spread them or clump them up for focus fire, how you dodge things, or pull weak units back, how you potentially block pathing of the enemy units, that stuff is where the real core of it lies. That has to feel smooth, that has to feel good, that has to create interactions where a high variance of outcomes is possible. If "marines" are a little slower, do a little less dmg per se, then you might simply be able to do other things with them on top of something like stutter stepping, if they don't die as fast, you could focus on better targetting of important units while being less afraid of trading some of them off when they tank dmg, etc. If the macro of the game doesn't force you to constantly 'micro manage' it with most of your inputs, you can do a lot of things on that front. So yeah, idk, it really depends on the overall design choices and where they lead. | ||
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Vindicare605
United States16087 Posts
On June 13 2023 04:23 The_Red_Viper wrote: I think that example illustrates well the failings of 'terrible terrible damage' moreso than it does speak against micro. People actually want to micro their units, the problem is that failing at it is too punishing (and more importantly imo, that doing so while NOT macroing is even more punishing than losing the units in the first place). I will always go back to the example of new players and where they spend their attention, they spend it generally on units, wanting to do things with them and then someone has to tell them that this is actually the wrong way to play for them. THAT is the problem That's the other reason I picked that example. Your macro could be clean on either side of the match as either the Terran or the Zerg player and a bad mine/baneling hit can completely swing the game in the direction of your opponent. This kind of interaction forms a huge part of what makes SC2 so fun to watch, but this kind of high stakes, blink and you miss it, punishment is exactly the kind of thing that scares players from ever wanting to start a new game up. I'm just saying. You can't be single minded in this pursuit of what is "cool" and "fun to pull off/watch" at the expense of everything else. That was the approach that SC2 used in its development, and we've seen the long term negatives of it play out. | ||
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Hider
Denmark9404 Posts
On June 13 2023 04:08 Vindicare605 wrote: So here's where this falls apart Hider. How do you have cool micro shit in the game that only the top players can do, and then be the focus of balance of the game so that casuals can still feel like they have a chance at playing it? Classic example: Marines vs Banelings. This interaction forms a core dynamic in every single TvZ. It's gnarly to watch in pro games, in fact it was one of the things that got me into watching pro SC2 from the start. But it feels REALLY fucking bad in every TvZ match for the Terran to HAVE to learn to control his marines like that if he wants to have a chance at surviving against a unit that requires FAR less effort to control on the other side. So then Blizzard tries to throw Terran a bone later in SC2's life by introducing Widow Mines which creates the opposite interaction the other way, where now Zerg has to work twice as hard to micro against a unit that requires very little effort to control, but it's fine because the pros can do it and you have Banelings anyway so it's fair. It's a fair interaction because both players suffer, and it's tailor designed around the high skill cap of the game, but both players are miserable at lower levels because they are required to pull off these higher level micro tricks in order to get anywhere in their progress as players. Yeh, fair points. There are flaws in how Sc2 has designed certain interactions. I feel I could write a book about all my complaints about the game - but yet it's my favorite game of all time, because it gets the overarching feeling of unit control overall correct. Thus, my general focus would shift to this: How can I make an average league of legends gold player with no prior RTS experience enjoy the multiplayer aspect of the game while simultaneously ensuring as high a skillcap as possible. These are some of the ideas I have to accomplish this: 1. It's "okay" if you have no clue what you are doing in your builds. Buying suboptimal items in LOL doesn't autolose the game. It can in starcraft - if you are both noobs but you play against someone that just does a simple rush build you have no clue how to defeat --> you autodie. As I understand, frostgiant devs have agreed with this concept so that's definitely a large step in making it easier to get into. 2. Projectile duration can be increased in many situations. Specifically on the widow-mine, it's too frustrating to play against. I don't think that's "cool" or well-designed. Also, not a fan at all on how cloaked units work in Sc2. You can make "spellcaster" or aoe-damage in RTS games feel somewhat better to play against with some redesigns. Riot Games makes a 100 patches a year and has a tons of designers tweaking the numbers of every variable of every champion. Imagine how could RTS unit design could be with a fraction of the same attention. 3. Allow players to spend as much time as possible controlling your units. If you didn't have to go back to your base to lift of your buildings to switch techlab with reactor you may have had more time to react to the banelings coming towards you. I think the genre would have a much easier time attracting the MOBA audience if it went further on reducing APM requirements than Stormgate is doing. I am thinking automated unit production and the only types of buildings you produce are static defense or variations of that. 4. Strongly encourage players to take positions all over the map and increase defenders advantage + increase total army sizes. Imagine you have 7 bases/sources of income and your army is spread out to defend it. You lose one skirmish and one access to your income. But you still have 6 left and that was only a small part of your army. Perhaps you can even do a counter-attack somewhere else to even it out. This type of dynamic will make the gameplay much more backward and more forgiving. Suddenly making a micro-mistake won't be as punishing. 5. General QoL improvements. For instance I don't want to click through control groups to get to the desired ability to cast. My focus on the micro-skillcap is more related to what I call "movmement"-based micro and not "spam"-based micro. Movement-based micro meaning that you move your units in small group or individually in relation to what the opponent is doing. And probably some other stuff i forgot about. E.g. units that can't do anything against other units (like maurauders can't shoot air units or you need detection vs cloak or you are dead. I think tweaking some of those interactions could make the gameplay easier to get into) Overall I don't think you can get the game to make the skillfloor nearly as low as LOL, but I think you can get much much closer than Sc2 is while maintaining the skillcap. | ||
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Hildegard
Germany306 Posts
On June 13 2023 02:30 Vindicare605 wrote: If they're using a FTP game model, keeping players playing is FAR more important than just attracting them to the game in the first place. If you're using a traditional sales model, you just want players to buy the game, and if they stay and buy microtransactions all the better. But they are using a model where anyone can pick the game up for free. They need to be able to get those players playing and invested so that they support the game through micro transactions. Attracting them means nothing if they don't stay and play. And if the game is good and players are playing, word of mouth will draw people in. If the esports scene is good and the game is free to play and accessible, that will draw people in. It's a different sales model. On another angle, look at what's happening to SC2. The pro scene is shrinking every year, not only because of a drop in support from sponsors but also because SC2 isn't appealing to new players to come and play. If they want an esport to thrive long term they need to be able to keep drawing new players in, keeping and developing them, and having a long term structure in place to keep the game funded and profitable so that they can keep sponsoring the esports scene. It makes perfect logical sense to me why the focus would be to make a game that people are able to play for free, that is easy to learn for new players but has a high skill ceiling for competitive play. Now whether or not you can actually pull that balance off, that's a completely different question altogether. But I can see the logic in that being the goal they are trying to shoot for. That is all well and good if people actually play the game. For e-sports slower engagements won't be all that helpful because the attraction for viewers is that the game can end at any moment. That means the less punishing the less exciting for viewers. And Starcraft is probably the only computer game that more people watch than play. But that's not the point. For casual gamers this game does not compete with other RTS games but with a huge amount of titles from different genres. Stormgate doesn't stick out. The design is generic, the story so far sounds too weak for a Netflix show that gets cancelled immediately. And "space demons" as the second faction sounds about as innovative as wanting to become an influencer. | ||
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Vindicare605
United States16087 Posts
The design is generic, the story so far sounds too weak for a Netflix show that gets cancelled immediately. That's true of League of Legends and DoTA2 as well, ESPECIALLY when they both launched. It didn't turn out to be deal breakers at all. Making sure the game is fun is a lot more important than any of those other things. You can worry about growing the lore, and improving the aesthetic as the game matures. | ||
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The_Red_Viper
19533 Posts
On June 13 2023 04:31 Vindicare605 wrote: That's the other reason I picked that example. Your macro could be clean on either side of the match as either the Terran or the Zerg player and a bad mine/baneling hit can completely swing the game in the direction of your opponent. This kind of interaction forms a huge part of what makes SC2 so fun to watch, but this kind of high stakes, blink and you miss it, punishment is exactly the kind of thing that scares players from ever wanting to start a new game up. I'm just saying. You can't be single minded in this pursuit of what is "cool" and "fun to pull off/watch" at the expense of everything else. That was the approach that SC2 used in its development, and we've seen the long term negatives of it play out. I think this kinda assumes that it is much more fun to watch things die on screen constantly (and fast at that), that this is where the hype comes from. I think that is somewhat true (it is more dramatic), but i think the bigger reason something is hype is the expectation one has vs the reality. It is hype if something unique happens. Messi was hype because he did things noone else could, and we are simply more familiar with what one can do with a football due to cultural reasons, everyone has some expectations for it. For games this isn't really true, you have to learn all of that depending on the game with only certain triggers being similar (mostly through certain tropes in gaming). What i mean with that is this: There really is no big reasons for why banelings have to be this strong vs bio from a purely "hype" pov, they have to be because of balance. If they did a lot less dmg, it could still be hype if they hit well in another vesion of the game, or if the other person dodged them well. Sure, a certain impact has to be there, otherwise it becomes meaningless, but sc2's approach is as extreme as it can be basically, which i don't think is needed. A nice teamfight in a dota game doesn't necessarily kill the hero from full to 0 in one second, it still is hype if everything comes together nicely. Because as a viewer one has expectations around it, one can interpret what is happening in comparison to many other team fights one has seen. | ||
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Hildegard
Germany306 Posts
On June 13 2023 04:50 Vindicare605 wrote: That's true of League of Legends and DoTA2 as well, ESPECIALLY when they both launched. It didn't turn out to be deal breakers at all. Making sure the game is fun is a lot more important than any of those other things. You can worry about growing the lore, and improving the aesthetic as the game matures. DoTA2 was built on an existing community and was one of the first free to play multiplayer games. That stood out, but it doesn't in 2023. Not sure about LoL, never followed that game. | ||
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Hider
Denmark9404 Posts
I tend to think that basic micro interactions is where a lot of depth can be generated from, not in flashy spells. Spells are good for flavor, to feel some form of power progression, but ultimately it's how you move your units, in what shapes, how to are able to spread them or clump them up for focus fire, how you dodge things, or pull weak units back, how you potentially block pathing of the enemy units, that stuff is where the real core of it lies. That has to feel smooth, that has to feel good, that has to create interactions where a high variance of outcomes is possible. Spells are certainly an area where I think blizzard has struggled. In general spells should do either do one of the following: 1. Encourage movement-based micro or 2. Allow some type of new tactical-based opportunity. I think there zero cases of the latter in Sc2 (?), so that's really a hypothetical but I think it could work in some situations. Spells also shouldn't be APM-intensive. We want players to spend as much of their APM moving their units around. Spells should encourage more of that, not take focus away. Psi Storm is an example of something that encourages movement-based micro. Targeted healing-based abilities belong in team-based games, not 1v1-focussed RTS games. Because that's an example of an ability where you don't encourage movement-based micro but rather press abilities instead. Spells should have counter-play, abduct for instance is imo the worst designed ability in all of starcraft. One stupid thing about Sc2 is that spellcasters have a too low supply count and 200 max energy. Why do they have 200 max energy? It results in mass spammings in fights. That's another example of how poorly tuned certain parts of Sc2 balance is. In genreal I like skillshots and "over time aoe effects". But I also think there are a lot more concepts that can be taken from MOBA's and adapted/tweaked into RTS games. If executed well it could certainly grant some extra flavor and uniqueness into RTS battles Although I agree the core RTS micro should be the foundation of the game. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16797 Posts
On June 13 2023 03:41 Hider wrote: In any sport, this is simply wrong. We all love to watch the best of the best and are inspired by them. Kids watch messi and try to drible like him. They can't, but it without any question it makes players more motivated to play. in basketball, baseball and hockey the #1 motivator to play... is that the game one is playing in ... at that very moment ... is fun. If the game itself is not fun for its own sake... in the very moment one is playing ...hardly anyone will stick with it. In Hockey no one played like Wayne Gretzky before... or since. In baseball, any one under 235 lbs can not hit like the greatest hitter of all time: Barry Bonds. In fact, hitting like Barry Bonds is pretty boring. Almost no one can play basketball like Lebron James. These sports have high player counts because they are just plain fun to play. Great games are fun at many different levels of play. Great game designers can pull off the difficult feat of making a game fun for all levels of player. We'll soon find out if these guys are as good as people like Browder, Pardo, and Kim. I wonder what guys like James Naismith and Abner Doubleday would have to say about 21st century game designers. | ||
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Manit0u
Poland17356 Posts
Neo from Back2Warcraft interviewed one of the devs. Pretty crazy that Stormgate is supposed to have a tick rate of 64 where SC2 had 22.4 and WC3 8. This means it'll be almost 3x more responsive than SC2 when it comes to issuing commands. | ||
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