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Northern Ireland27382 Posts
On July 05 2026 06:28 Jeremy Reimer wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2026 08:14 ChillFlame wrote:
Even if you don't care if your game is fun, and making it balanced is your main goal, you have to take a lot of things into account. Game length, strategy and unit variety, skill expression, etc. BW ZvZ is 50% WR, by definition, but it lasts 5 minutes, and there aren't any units except lings, mutas, scourge, and hydras. Both players are always doing the same shit every game. I'm one of the few people who absolutely loves Broodwar ZvZ, and wouldn't want it to ever change. It always feels like every match is on a knife's edge, with one zergling or one drone possibly changing the outcome. Muta and scourge wars are fast, furious, and amazing. Getting one sunken down with zerglings, or leaving it standing with 1hp, could win or lose you the game. It's given us things like JvZ, which people are still debating the merits of today. Did he just get lucky with build orders? Or was he so amazing at the matchup that he could win every time he got a build order advantage and make it close even if he didn't? The answer, of course, is yes. And rarely, VERY rarely, you get a pro ZvZ match that goes into lategame, like that one game with Effort in ASL. And everyone loses their goddamn minds. You get defilers and ultras and even devourers, and you remember that game until the day you die. In contrast, Starcraft II's ZvZ is a lot more fair and has more combinations of things that can happen more often. But it's rarely memorable. The best parts are when one player seems to have the other's number, like Reynor did over Serral for a while, or Dark over Reynor. And I challenge anyone to remember even a single notable thing about Infernal vs. Infernal in Stormgate.
In fairness to Stormgate, the game died. So we never actually saw what it would have looked like if you had a vibrant player base pushing it to the limit.
Maybe there coulda been some cool stuff? Who knows?
Part of what makes SC(s) so great to watch is almost every bit of juice has been squeezed of the orange, and plenty of other great RTS titles don’t really have that.
I’ll add the rather obvious caveat that Stormgate kinda sucked and was a complete botch job
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guys just let it die
please?
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On July 05 2026 16:42 kAra wrote:
guys just let it die
please?
Yes, please.
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On July 04 2026 06:57 TelecoM wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2026 02:40 Hider wrote:
This is the guy who thinks a game is balanced if the win-rate on ladder is 50-50.
...? That does seem like a pretty fair way to determine balance in a game with a large sample size lol But I understand your point. ^_^
When a race gets imbalanced what happens is that the MMR of the players of that race increases as well. Hence why win-rates always move towards 50-50. The only thing ladder win-rates can tell is relative balance in matchups. I.e. zvt vs zvp.
IRC Dustin Browder also said in very early WOL that terran was balanced due to win-rates also being 50-50. They did however react quite early in WOL when nerfing terran. It was only because terran had a track-record of repeately figuring things out David Kim chose to delay the nerf in 2012.
I remember a nerf was originally planned in 2012, then MVP won IEM Cologne  IEM Season VII - Cologne (over far inferior zerg players) which made David Kim think: hmm maybe I shouldn't nerf zerg?
(Note the tournamen the used to justify balance being ok" had 4 zergs in the ro8 and 3 in the top4.)
This would be the equivalent today - let say hypothetically of protoss having dominated all tournaments for months with the lamest most unfun gameplay possible, then Maru wins a tournament with Harstem, Showtime and Mana in the top 4 and the main balance designer think the game is fine and "lets wait and see".
So David Kim gambled on the players being able to adjust and learn to beat broodlord/infestor. Even ignoring stats and if David Kim truly belived the game was balanced, it definitely warranted a redesign.
Again - we can all make mistakes. I made plenty of mistakes in 2012 and had wrong opinions in many areas. However, the level of the broodlord/infestor was at a completely different scale of catastrophy to anything I seen anywhere else in game-balance.
To make matters worse, IMO it was completely predictable. When snipe got nerfed in late 2011, terran had no counter to late game zerg. (Snipe was so broken pre-nerf that it literally went from zerg has no chance late game against a good terran to terran has no chance late game vs a good zerg).
It wasn't initially a problem because terran was so busted early game. However, when Queen range got buffed an equivalent Zerg late game nerf or terran buff was very obvious. Yet David Kim couldn't even see it after it happened over and over for months.
I know Queen Range buff got a lot of hate for being the cause of the patch-zerg era. But I think it was needed as zerg was way underpowered early game. It should just have been combined with late game nerfs to zerg.
How to use ladder stats to assess balance
A better proxy for balance is distribution across MMR. I.e. what percentage of all players within that race is master 1, GM etc.
Although that isn't perfect either as it may be that Terran attract more casual/beginner players. So to properly adjust for this you need a smarter approach. One approach could be you make a model that predicts the MMR of the player given amount of games played/other context (ignoring any race specific context).
And then you calculate adjusted win-rates based on what the MMR of the player should be given amount of effort put into the game. This assumes that on avg the players of protoss vs zerg vs terran are equally talented.
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On July 04 2026 07:12 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2026 06:57 TelecoM wrote:On July 04 2026 02:40 Hider wrote:
This is the guy who thinks a game is balanced if the win-rate on ladder is 50-50.
...? That does seem like a pretty fair way to determine balance in a game with a large sample size lol But I understand your point. ^_^ I still maintain SC2 was/is remarkably balanced considering how much crazy shit is in there and how different the factions are. Not perfect but pretty good for all its other flaws
One thing I would like to see is a tournament where we go back and play on old WOL patches.
If I had to guess protoss may be the most busted race with Khadarian Amulet until that got nerfed.
ZvT 0% win-rate until Queen range buff. (And I think that's barely an exaggeration). I don't see how Zerg could win any games at all against top terran players. Terran get ahead in economy every game. I think even with broken broodlord infestor terran still wins.
Back then players lacked the mechanical skill to properly abuse the imbalance and especially early WOL the build orders and strategies were horrible.
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On July 05 2026 16:42 kAra wrote:
guys just let it die
please?
What was not ever alive may never die. Or something like that.
I mean, yeah, it's way past time to let this go. The horse has been beaten into its component molecules. Barring some incredible news from Tim Morten about how he discovered money fairies in his back yard, there is nothing more to say about Stormgate.
I will miss the fun times I've had in this thread, though. It brought back nostalgic memories of now-vanished times, a more civilized age, when forums flourished.. Before social media came to destroy our minds. Of course we should forget how much nastiness, flaming, and trolling was in forums back then. Just remember the good stuff. That's the best kind of nostalgia.
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On July 06 2026 07:54 Jeremy Reimer wrote:
Of course we should forget how much nastiness, flaming, and trolling was in forums back then.
It actually never ended, just moved to Artosis' Twitch streams.
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I'm surprised this thread has been going on for as long as it has honestly, lol.
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I mean this thread has more replies and almost as many views as the whole Warcraft 3 thread
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Can we just close this thread already lol every day I open TL and see it, I almost hope for positive news, but since that is never coming....
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Northern Ireland27382 Posts
On July 06 2026 20:30 Harris1st wrote:
I mean this thread has more replies and almost as many views as the whole Warcraft 3 thread
And way, way more than other competitors in the genre and their threads, which is a shame.
I mean it made sense for a while because Stormgate was for many the big, exciting hope with the big budget and the visibility and hype.
Makes rather less sense when a game that’s certifiably DoA is still getting more traffic that some quite interesting projects, and people are migrating here solely to litigate their beefs with Reddit and Discord mods.
Me schedule didn’t really give me sufficient time to try the various Zero Space demos, it woulda been nice to have a more active thread there and hear what people thought about the most recent one.
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On July 06 2026 21:55 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2026 20:30 Harris1st wrote:
I mean this thread has more replies and almost as many views as the whole Warcraft 3 thread And way, way more than other competitors in the genre and their threads, which is a shame. I mean it made sense for a while because Stormgate was for many the big, exciting hope with the big budget and the visibility and hype. Makes rather less sense when a game that’s certifiably DoA is still getting more traffic that some quite interesting projects, and people are migrating here solely to litigate their beefs with Reddit and Discord mods. Me schedule didn’t really give me sufficient time to try the various Zero Space demos, it woulda been nice to have a more active thread there and hear what people thought about the most recent one.
I refuse to be beta tester for any upcoming games, be it RTS or otherwise, so I don't have much of an opinion yet on other games
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On July 06 2026 21:55 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2026 20:30 Harris1st wrote:
I mean this thread has more replies and almost as many views as the whole Warcraft 3 thread And way, way more than other competitors in the genre and their threads, which is a shame. I mean it made sense for a while because Stormgate was for many the big, exciting hope with the big budget and the visibility and hype. Makes rather less sense when a game that’s certifiably DoA is still getting more traffic that some quite interesting projects, and people are migrating here solely to litigate their beefs with Reddit and Discord mods. Me schedule didn’t really give me sufficient time to try the various Zero Space demos, it woulda been nice to have a more active thread there and hear what people thought about the most recent one.
You can still play the latest Zerospace demo.
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On July 06 2026 21:55 WombaT wrote:
Makes rather less sense when a game that’s certifiably DoA is still getting more traffic that some quite interesting projects, and people are migrating here solely to litigate their beefs with Reddit and Discord mods.
Well, even that is likely to die down now. The Stormgate Reddit gets about one new post every week (sometimes once every two weeks) and it's been six days now without even a single new comment on any of the existing threads. It's pretty much done.
As for Stormgate's Discord, that's looking like a ghost town these days. The same four people post the same memes with slowly diminishing frequency. If it wasn't for the guy posting the Flatworm Friday gif, the whole weekend might pass without anyone posting.
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I personally would like to know how the story truly ends. Then we'll need a new thread for Morten's next game, studio TBD.
And I still want to know what the first true red flags were for this project.
Was it the founders constantly playing up their Blizzard credentials?
What about the first question from the first interview with Frost Giant, which Jeremy Reimer posted pages ago:
Wax: You guys could have done anything after moving on from Blizzard, but decided on an RTS game. Why?
Tim Campbell: We're making an RTS? *laughs*
You were supposed to leave that kind of playing dumb behind in middle school, Tim. Maybe that was the clue that their sense of taste was questionable in general.
For me the presumption of success seemed way too strong from the start. It was like a bunch of (self-styled) successful music producers talking about their next hit single, which they hadn't even started yet. But, investors bought it, and like any startup you probably just need to fake it to make it.
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Closing this thread won't increase activity on other threads.
People discuss a dead game because they feel like it.
Not liking this thread is not a valid reason to close it.
And I know just a way to solve both problems with one move.
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On July 07 2026 01:29 crablogic wrote:
I personally would like to know how the story truly ends.
I agree. That was my primary justification for following the entire saga.
Normally, these things do end. Studios are shut down. Games are shuttered.
But sometimes things don't ever end. Take Shroud of the Avatar, for example. It was from a new studio led by Richard Garriott, the man who created Ultima in 1981 and influenced the direction of not only western RPGs, but to a lesser degree JRPGs as well. (We'll ignore the fact that it was largely a recreation of PLATO's DnD from the 1970s but on an Apple ][, let the old man have his old fame)
Garriott was a decent game designer by the standards of the 1980s, but he was a terrible manager and cared more about his own personal wealth than doing the work required to make good games. He blamed the failure of Ultima 8 on Electronic Arts (to which he sold his original company, Origin) painting them as the bad guys. Turns out the stupid direction and design of that game was entirely Garriott's fault.
Anyway, flash forward to 2013, and Garriott launched a Kickstarter for Shroud of the Avatar. People went nuts for it and pledged millions of dollars. Half of the backers thought it would be a modern take on the old single-player Ultimas. The other half thought it was going to be a successor to the groundbreaking MMO Ultima Online. It ended up being a lame mishmash of both. It wasn't good at being either type of game. Sound familiar?
By 2026, the game was barely limping along, with similar player numbers to Stormgate today (around 1 to 25 CCU, estimated fewer than 500 total monthly players worldwide). But it still made enough money to support one full-time employee, thanks to the predatory cash shop and the few remaining whales who hadn't died of old age yet.
Years ago, Garriott had sold the company to Chris Spears, one of his employees. Spears then also abandoned the project so he could go work on his own gaming startups. They all failed. A couple of days ago, Spears announced that he was back and working on Shroud. His new cunning plan is to fill it with AI slop. Thousands of code commits every day! AI voice acting for all the NPCs! AI generated quests!
So, yeah, some games just never seem to die, even though they probably should.
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There is beauty in a proper disaster.
That is my main reason for checking by this thread, and I don't think I am alone.
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A wild Tim Morten LinkedIn post has appeared!
On July 06 2026 Tim Morten wrote on LinkedIn:
Even though top-line game industry revenue remains healthy (largely on the strength of perennial titles), the business of building new game franchises in North America is in steep decline. At the top of the ecosystem, there are fewer new bets because budgets are so high that maximizing returns / minimizing risk must be the focus. The rest of the ecosystem is in a race to the bottom on budgets: oversupply justifies only small bets. VC for content is gone, publishers are looking for bargain bin pricing (on mostly finished games), and the actual budgets available from "project financing" funds are a joke.
For NA game-makers, I believe the implications are:
● More cuts to come, both at large companies and independent studios (the scope of the Microsoft RIF is sobering)
● North America will only support a fraction of prior development jobs; many will have to transition to other industries and/or relocate to lower-cost regions
● There will be substantially fewer new studios backed by VCs or publishers (garage studios working for sweat equity are about all that's possible)
● Fewer new IPs will be developed at big studios; this era is all about minimizing risk
● Large companies with existing successes will maintain North American teams -- but will primarily focus on established franchises, and slash other costs (eg - Sony, Microsoft, Riot, Epic, EA, TakeTwo)
● Already successful indies, largely from outside North America, can afford new bets (eg - Larian, CDPR, FromSoft, Sandfall, Arrowhead) with only select North American studios in a similar position (eg - Behaviour, That Game Company, Super Giant)
● There will be continued investment translating successful IP from other media into games (eg - IO Interactive, Second Dinner), and companies with owned IP will focus here (eg - Amazon, Netflix, Warner, Paramount, NBC/U, Hasbro/WotC)
● A handful of equity-funded bets are still playing out, with some chance for success (eg - That's No Moon, Absurd Ventures, Raid Base, Gardens)
● Roblox will continue to be a microcosm of growth, despite challenges with discovery and stickiness, and unfavorable creator rev share
● The use of AI tools will proliferate, and will empower a flood of low to mid-tier releases (unfortunately, also including slop) that cannibalize attention in much the same way YouTube cannibalizes from linear
● For high-tier content, even though AI will reduce team sizes and accelerate early iteration, AI will likely NOT yield substantial cost savings (token costs are meaningful and growing, polishing to release quality still requires substantial human time and effort)
● With an ever-increasing oversupply of content, consumers will be correspondingly increasingly selective and critical
● Competition for attention from other sources will only continue
My advice to fellow North American developers is to highly value jobs at companies with existing successes. If you encounter any well-funded new bets, those are unicorns to be cherished.
Nothing really new here, mostly just Tim being sad at the prospects for North American game developers. It sounds a bit like he is getting tired and frustrated. Doesn't really bode well for his continued fundraising efforts for Frost Giant.
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On July 07 2026 06:17 Slydie wrote:
There is beauty in a proper disaster.
That is my main reason for checking by this thread, and I don't think I am alone.
Sadly enough, this thread is the sole reason for me opening TL each morning
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EPT
