I've noticed no-one posted this yet, and I wonder if it's because the main platform they're using to advertise it is KickStarter. So, pursuant to TL's rules I won't link that, but I'll copy-paste the game info here. Scarlett, CatZ, and PiG are all working on this game, and it looks great!
ZeroSpace is a cinematic RTS with an epic sci-fi story where your decisions determine the fate of the galaxy. No two matches play the same thanks to nearly limitless combinations of factions, mercenary units and heroes, introducing unparalleled strategic depth and player expression to the genre.
ZeroSpace is driven by our profound love for Real-Time Strategy. This passion is our everyday fuel and propels us in our mission to reignite and redefine the genre, and key members of our team have roots in pro play and RTS game design.
We're excited to welcome you to a meticulously crafted universe of exploration and immersion; boasting one of the most diverse sets of factions seen in the genre amidst a galaxy-wide crisis in the Milky Way.
We're making an RTS that any gamer can approach and enjoy thanks to clever and intuitive interface design, while still giving hardcore RTS competitors a limitless ladder of skill expression to master in PvP, a campaign mode, and a massively multiplayer co-op mode.
We are crafting expansive lore that harbors deeply engaging stories - You’ll discover these in a campaign where your choices matter, featuring branching narratives and RPG elements similar to games like Mass Effect or Baldur’s Gate.
ZeroSpace is already well under development, and has been funded solely by our team up to this stage. We’re now opening things up to the community to help us refine and polish the experience. We need your help to make ZeroSpace your favorite RTS!
Keep reading to learn more about ZeroSpace, our team, and our goals.
ZeroSpace launches on Steam, and will deliver, including stretch goals:
An open world campaign with 13 main story missions, 14 hero loyalty missions, and 40 side story arcs. 3 hours of cinematic cutscenes and interactive dialogs where your choices dictate the game’s outcome. 4 main factions, with 10 units and 9 buildings each. (base-game) 6 mercenary factions, with 4-5 units each. (base-game) 14 heroes from various factions in campaign mode, or select one to lead your multiplayer games. (base-game) 1v1 and 3v3 ranked versus matches, or play against AI . (base-game) A truly unique cooperative multiplayer (base-game) mode that includes a shared, persistent galaxy for an entirely new massively multiplayer experience.
Build a base, gather resources, train units, research upgrades.
Meet 14 heroes that have their own skills and play styles that stand out from the normal faction and mercenary units.
Gain experience and level up your faction by capturing Control Towers. Then unlock and unleash powerful support skills including:
Protectorate's Airstrike
The Grell's Tree of Life ultimate ability
Choose mercenary groups to support your army. Their units can be purchased at the Mercenary Compound. The chosen mercenary group also unlocks additional heroes and talents to choose from.
Dread Raider mercenaries
Dive into a world teeming with mystery and danger. Traverse diverse planets aboard your upgradable mothership, guided by a choice-driven RPG system. Face moral quandaries: do you save a once-hostile planet or leave it to perish against formidable forces? As you journey, enhance your vessel, recruit heroes, and navigate complex relationships. Will your allies admire or despise you? Are you ready to lead mankind?
Build deep relationships with your crew and the heroes you enlist during the campaign.
Navigate an expansive galaxy map, brimming with dialogue opportunities and regions to explore or dominate.
Cooperative missions is a mode where 3 players fight against AI in campaign-like missions. This open-ended mode is inspired by the success and replayability found in StarCraft II Co-op.
Galactic Warfare takes your role beyond a traditional commander. Join guilds, form alliances, and partake in a galactic sized tug of war that is set on a persistent galaxy map that hosts thousands of players. Conquer space stations, planets, and more in either co-op or competitive style battles!
Galactic Warfare is a stretch goal. While our team has experience creating large, connected multiplayer worlds, achieving this ambitious goal requires the additional support from passionate backers like you.
Our core multiplayer philosophies revolve around player expression, match up variation, multiple avenues of engagement, streamlined gameplay, and well-paced game volatility. We’re building a game with lots of strategic depth - like mixing primary factions with a second faction and special hero to craft something unique to your play style - to make sure no match ever feels the same or meta-gamed.
We've been testing our versus mode for over 2 years with leaders in the RTS community like PiG, GiantGrantGames, CatZ and more recently, Scarlett. We're excited to bring you a truly deep and thrilling competitive experience.
Versus is set to be our primary competitive mode. Our goal is to release two major game-transforming updates annually, with periodic balance tweaks as needed. Right from the outset, players can expect comprehensive ranking systems and leaderboards. For the hardest of the hardcore RTS veterans, we've ensured fully customizable hotkeys and adaptable in-game menus tailored to meet your preferences.
Best of 3 Show-match between Fatman and Maguro:
Set in the Orion arm of the Milky Way in 4050, ZeroSpace thrusts you into a universe where diverse alien and human factions vie for dominance. The fragile peace, upheld by the inter-species Keeper Council, is on the brink, threatened by enigmatic events. As the human Prefect of the Protectorate, you're summoned to join the Council and unravel a cosmic mystery, encountering unknown aliens and journeying through uncharted space.
Command a diverse crew, each hailing from unique cultures. Engage them as mission companions, converse to uncover their histories, and embark on loyalty quests tailored to their personalities. Every hero crew member brings a distinct play style aligned with their character, enriching your tactical options.
Choose from 4 base building factions and 6 non-base building mercenary factions. Each one having their own unique gameplay style.
Protectorate: A military branch that is in charge of protecting human worlds. They are experts in all manner of combat environments. Grell: A symbiotic alien bug species that aids in the growth of Koru plants by suppressing competing alien flora. In return, they draw nourishment from the Koru. Noted for their world-terraforming abilities, they exhibit aggression towards other species.
The Xol take to embodiment through polymeric-metals, and this malleability gives them the ability to merge with one another into completely different units to increase their power level and strategically changing their identity and utility.
Lore background:
"The Xol started as an advanced general “AI”, created for the purpose of serving their Masters, who eventually abandoned them. Often misunderstood as villainous beings, they have been on a long quest of self-discovery, starting by embodying their once trapped minds into the physical realm, allowing them to learn through experience and pursue their new found ambitions."
Gameplay overview:
"The Xol take to embodiment through polymeric-metals, and this malleability gives them the ability to merge with one another into completely different units to increase their power level and strategically changing their identity and utility.
This flexibility makes the Xol in ZeroSpace a highly adaptable faction. With just a small pool of base units, they’ll be able to create complex and specialized armies in turn. Tentatively, Xol units will also have the ability to 'split' and assume their former identities when tactically called for."
As we enter the final days of the ZeroSpace Kickstarter, we’re excited to introduce the fourth playable faction in ZeroSpace: The Legion.
The Legion offers a unique blend of gameplay mechanics focused on three versatile heroes, powerful customizable tanks, and basic units called Thralls. Players must carefully manage how they spend flux, as upgrading heroes and tanks to their maximum potential requires significant flux investment.
Watch Grant’s gameplay video for details on the Legion:
Lore
“The Imperion sat in his iron chair, a remnant of old age molted brown and red, symbolizing the strength of their heritage. It was the Idals who led them through conflict after conflict as the victors of history, and they must be revered. The Imperion closed his eyes and recited the first verse of the Idals, sharpening his mind and allowing him to think more clearly. There were 367 verses in total, and he recited one each day, resting for one day after reciting them all. He did not know why there were 367 verses, but that was how it had always been.
The galaxy had almost been cleansed, with all species that could be uplifted already uplifted. Those that were incompatible with the Idals were redone. Only a few synthetics remained. They needed to be eradicated as they had no essence, only capable of what they were programmed to do.
The Danrubics posed the final threat to the Imperion, as they held ancient knowledge, possibly of the Idals' weakness. They had already committed the worst atrocity a synthetic could achieve by overthrowing their masters and participating in mass genocide.
Those masters were once a proud race with knowledge beyond even the Imperion's understanding, but their ways led to the arrival of the Danrubics, whom the Imperion had warned would be their downfall. Now, it was his responsibility to clean up the mess.”
____________
There’s only a few days to go to back ZeroSpace on Kickstarter. If you haven’t already, we hope you’ll consider, and if you have, we’d love if you shared the news with your friends. Every dollar that you put into the project helps us achieve our vision of delivering the incredible, next-gen RTS the community deserves.
Marran: A military faction that protects their worlds and hardly ventures beyond. They focus on community and security, but can easily be compared to the Protectorate in values.
Valkaru: A pro-war species that splits its people into two sides and battles to see which side is stronger. They are known for starting wars with other species as well.
Dread Raiders: A scavenger faction dwelling on the galaxy's outskirts. While broadly perceived as villains, they operate with a 'Robin Hood' ethos, redistributing wealth to ensure the prosperity of fringe human colonies.
New Merc Factions: The Koru and The Savage Kingdom.
Greetings, Commanders.
🦾We’ve got just over two more days to go, we’re excited to show off two new mercenary factions! 🦾
📺 Check out the video of the lore and the units of these two factions here:
📚The Koru Lore: “On each planet inhabited by the Koru, there exists a singular, conscious plant network that flourishes in water-rich environments, extending its roots and vines deep into the surface. Adapting to overcome their vulnerability to environmental changes, the Koru have the ability to manipulate their surroundings, employing animated roots to instigate phenomena like earthquakes and river diversions.
For eons, they have maintained a symbiotic relationship with the Grell, who act as their protectors and assist in uprooting other vegetation and terraforming, while receiving nourishment from the Koru in return. Each Koru presence on a planet is a distinct consciousness, spreading its cognitive functions across the entire world through its network of neural roots. Though the specifics of their interstellar propagation remain a mystery, it is believed that they spread by embedding their seeds in either spacecraft or living hosts, occasionally lying dormant within a host until conditions are suitable for germination. “
📚The Savage Kingdom Lore:
“For millennia, the Savage Kingdom has worshiped a mythic Leviathan whose last sighting dates back a thousand years. Infusing ancient ritualistic practices with cutting-edge biotechnology, they practice what others call “blood magic”. This practice involves the precise extraction, amplification and infusion of bio-energetic substances to enhance their physical and cognitive abilities. This harmonious yet fearsome blend of science and mysticism safeguards their civilization, situated on the precipice between the spiritual and the empirical, ever awaiting the return of their cosmic deity.“
_______
The Arandhi:
Arandi Lore:
“Beyond the boundaries of familiar space, the Arandi Empire stands as a testament to time and knowledge. Living far beyond mankind's domains, the Arandi are the oldest known empire in the galaxy.
As a civilization, the Arandi have reached self-sustaining levels to where the expansion of their borders is trivial and exceedingly uninteresting to them. Instead, they like to explore the cosmos; meeting new sentient life-forms and learning their ways, with the hope to bond together in celebration of their common origin as children of the stars. The Arandi are unmistakable in appearance, with flowing tendrils used in varied tasks, some as complex as connecting to and operating advanced technological machinery.
The Arandi's mastery over interdimensional energy is a marvel to behold. With it, they reshape the very fabric of existence—warping physical objects or traveling vast distances in the blink of an eye; there are whispers that the Arandi have even found a way to escape death. Yet, this formidable power is shrouded in secrecy, zealously guarded by their leadership trio, the Triarchs. Their relationship with the Endari, kin who share a similar energy mastery, is fraught with tension and distrust, casting a complex web of interstellar politics.
While their pursuits are largely peaceful and introspective, one should not be fooled. The Arandi's military, though rarely venturing beyond their borders, possesses technological might that remains unrivaled, serving as a silent reminder of their dominion in the galaxy."
We've teamed up with another accomplished studio to bring you the best game possible. With top-tier expertise leading versus, campaign, and coop modes, our combined team comprises over 35 seasoned developers deeply passionate about both the RPG and RTS genres.
Our teams come with a proven track record in the gaming industry. Members from Starlance Studios contributed to the creation of 'Guardian Kingdoms', a head-to-head mobile RTS, notably featuring 20 vs 20 real-time guild battles. Ironward successfully developed the renowned 'Red Solstice' franchise, which has been well-received on Steam.
These videos are not on their main campaign page, likely because they want you to subscribe to the channels. Which makes sense! So go subscribe to these channels to help the project.
GiantGrantGames - ZeroSpace Trailer:
GiantGrantGames - Introduction to Zerospace:
WinterStarcraft - Campaign and Multiplayer Gameplay
BeastyQTSC2 - Trying Out ZeroSpace RTS First Look!
PiG - NEW RTS?! First gameplay look - SC2 PROS helped design this INSANE NEW RTS | ZeroSpace //TheDougler Comment: This is a 1v1 between Grant and Scarlett, casted by PiG. Worth checking out!
//TheDougler Comment: I hadn't expected this post to end up being the official ZeroSpace post! I'll happily take on the role of custodian of this post and have tidied it up and updated it accordingly, and will continue to do so until the end of the campaign.
12-Sept-2023: Removed my comment at the beginning of the post:
I've noticed no-one posted this yet, and I wonder if it's because of the main platform being used to advertise it. So, pursuant to TL's rules I won't link that, but I'll copy-paste the game info here. Scarlett, CatZ, and PiG are all working on this game, and it looks great!
12-Sept-2023: Added The Xol, Get to Know the Grell, and External Videos, added this update section, updated social media links, updated the Team info. Also some minor formatting improvements.
17-Sept-2023 Added The Legion, The Koru, and The Arandhi. Changed the Mercenary Factions image and Main Factions Image.
This genuinely looks amazing, I'm more interested in the single player than the multiplayer at this point.
However, the backer rewards mention "choice of 4 legendary hero skins" - which to me signals that this will be a live service game. As much as I love the look of this, I think I'm going to sit it out until it releases.
I like the first look of this. It looks really similar to SC2... I hope not too similar. I mean, the danger of Blizzard/Activision trying to stop this project seems quiet real. What units/characters seem really similar: Ultralisks, Zerglings, Captain+bridge==Raynor, woman with shield==Nova, dude in trailer == Artanis/protoss, ...
Units move smoothly and responsivev - units are microable! At the same time it appears they arecreative in terms of new mechanics/abilities.
I think there is one thing missing though; Strong positional defensive units. In order to obtain gameplay where players can defend multiple locations at once, it has to be possible to position a few units to defend a location cost effectively against any number of units. If this design does not exist, the gameplay will reward grouping units together.
However, definitely the most interesting upcoming RTS out there.
Looks way more ambitious than Stormgate, and seems to draw inspiration from WC3 in all the good ways that Stormgate didn't (heroes, mercenaries, creep/objectives over the map, etc.), while still looking more fast paced than Stormgate and closer to SC2.
I'm concerned about the number of races, if each race will have enough units/depth, and if each race will have enough of a unique identity... also balance could be very hard, i imagine that each race will be more similar and have less crazy macro mechanics than SC2 in order to make balance more realistic.
The biggest thing making me not feel fully invested in this is the art style... it feels like Mass Effect or something, not the kind of art style I'd expect for an RTS. I really liked older Blizzard artstyle, where things look cool, especially WC3, but even stuff like SC2 and Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls.
It feels like a lot of the races have similar aesthetics, like lots of vehicles/robots... i wonder if it was too hard to make one race more ice themed, one dark themed, and give them elements that clearly stand out?
I hope it does well, because I love RTS as a genre. That being said, strategic depth is not something that necessarily comes from a broad array of choices. In fact, having too many bells and whistles often reduces strategic depth. A game like Go, for example, is incredibly deep, and does not have 17 factions and 5 subfactions to choose from. It doesn't need mercernaries and creeps and heroes leveling up and out-of-game progression. Those types of things increase the breadth of decisions a player can make without increasing a game's depth whatsoever.
My immediate impression of the game after watching a few matches on YouTube is that it feels more tactical than strategical.
With 4 factions and then sub-faction choices as well, and the high number of skirmishes & interactions with creeps and the enemy units, and two game-changing updates a year, being good at this game will be way more like playing improvisational jazz than composing a symphony. It seems like most new RTS’s are going in this direction. But going too far in this direction is not gonna be ideal imo.
Things need to be static enough that people have time to work on something specific for a while without it becoming outdated by the time they master it. This is true for other genres of games but especially true for developing strategies in RTS’s. My prediction for a game like this is that developing skills will be way more important than developing strategies.
Still it’s absolutely a game I would play. It has easily crossed that bar. It looks fun and it obviously has a very high skill ceiling. Those are the two most important things, regardless of genre, so it’s on the right track to something great.
With 4 factions and then sub-faction choices as well, and the high number of skirmishes & interactions with creeps and the enemy units, and two game-changing updates a year, being good at this game will be way more like playing improvisational jazz than composing a symphony. It seems like most new RTS’s are going in this direction. But going too far in this direction is not gonna be ideal imo.
Right, but going online to pick up the strategies which are better to abuse and staying on top of the meta will also be really important. 4-way asymmetrical balance without at least one broken MU is impossible to achieve, as shown in WC3.
I'm not sure this game in the end will be for me as it definitely seems to try to bridge the gap between SC2 and WC3 which I'm assuming is what they were aiming for, but as a BW guy I'm not seeing anything so far that makes me personally super excited.
I hope the project works out well for everyone involved and what you've made does look great! Hopefully a lot more emphasis moving forward gets put on the programmers and the people in the background making the game themselves along with the more well known personalities because the TL tweet that I followed to get here makes it look like it's only the personalities making it, but there's definitely a lot more people involved!
On August 19 2023 23:24 NonY wrote: Excellent OP write up, thank you
My immediate impression of the game after watching a few matches on YouTube is that it feels more tactical than strategical.
With 4 factions and then sub-faction choices as well, and the high number of skirmishes & interactions with creeps and the enemy units, and two game-changing updates a year, being good at this game will be way more like playing improvisational jazz than composing a symphony. It seems like most new RTS’s are going in this direction. But going too far in this direction is not gonna be ideal imo.
Things need to be static enough that people have time to work on something specific for a while without it becoming outdated by the time they master it. This is true for other genres of games but especially true for developing strategies in RTS’s. My prediction for a game like this is that developing skills will be way more important than developing strategies.
Still it’s absolutely a game I would play. It has easily crossed that bar. It looks fun and it obviously has a very high skill ceiling. Those are the two most important things, regardless of genre, so it’s on the right track to something great.
I totally agree on the need for RTS games to be more static and less ever changing, to let each player advance to the max based on gameplay (like the RTS version of Chess just with different races and limited set of different maps) similar to bw (but still doesnt need constantly changing maps)
On August 19 2023 23:24 NonY wrote: Excellent OP write up, thank you
My immediate impression of the game after watching a few matches on YouTube is that it feels more tactical than strategical.
With 4 factions and then sub-faction choices as well, and the high number of skirmishes & interactions with creeps and the enemy units, and two game-changing updates a year, being good at this game will be way more like playing improvisational jazz than composing a symphony. It seems like most new RTS’s are going in this direction. But going too far in this direction is not gonna be ideal imo.
Things need to be static enough that people have time to work on something specific for a while without it becoming outdated by the time they master it. This is true for other genres of games but especially true for developing strategies in RTS’s. My prediction for a game like this is that developing skills will be way more important than developing strategies.
Still it’s absolutely a game I would play. It has easily crossed that bar. It looks fun and it obviously has a very high skill ceiling. Those are the two most important things, regardless of genre, so it’s on the right track to something great.
I totally agree on the need for RTS games to be more static and less ever changing, to let each player advance to the max based on gameplay (like the RTS version of Chess just with different races and limited set of different maps) similar to bw (but still doesnt need constantly changing maps)
I think having constantly changing maps is good for the game, one of the major issues I had with SC2 is most maps had to fit a specific formula and in most cases the map never actually made a huge amount of difference to how the games played out after maybe WOL due to the way games were balanced. Part of the major problem and reason for this was warp gate. Hopefully this game stays as far away from warp tech as humanly possible to give maps a reason to actually be different.
With 4 factions and then sub-faction choices as well, and the high number of skirmishes & interactions with creeps and the enemy units, and two game-changing updates a year, being good at this game will be way more like playing improvisational jazz than composing a symphony. It seems like most new RTS’s are going in this direction. But going too far in this direction is not gonna be ideal imo.
Right, but going online to pick up the strategies which are better to abuse and staying on top of the meta will also be really important. 4-way asymmetrical balance without at least one broken MU is impossible to achieve, as shown in WC3.
Yeah, I think you are right. There are some games where you can get a lot of value by not following what's popular and instead developing your own strategies. And there are other games where you're better off going with the flow of what everyone else is doing, and focusing on execution and tactics rather than try to change more fundamental things about how the game is approached.
Without talking at length about what I think "tactical" is and what I think "strategic" is, I guess my post isn't totally clear. But for a lot of reasons this game strikes me as one that will reward players who never play an original strategy but rather have great tactics and adaptability.
Again I'd reiterate I'm not saying I think a game like this is fatally flawed (if my observation is even correct -- I could also be very wrong about how the game will turn out). I'm just describing my impression of the nature of it. Could be very fun but I wouldn't want to fall in love with one particular unit or style of play in the game. It seems more like a game where a jack-of-all-trades player is rewarded for being the best at whatever is currently in favor.
What was shown was great. I really liked the not-zerg plant race. All that plant and symbiosis stuff is way more creative than the usual swarm race you can see in almost every sci-fi game.
I think all those of those explosion and projectile particles could be toned down a little, It looks cool at first glance but might make some fights unreadable, both for the player and the spectator.
Seems interesting! I like that the game seems to reduce clicks for macro mechanics, the queue function is quite nice, these workers seemingly building automatically, etc. I also like that there seems to be an objective on the map instantly + the hero you get, though i hope that they push this a little more. Definitely also enjoy the comeback mechanic in the energy you get when your units die. Also pretty interesting that upgrades are basically choices between two (maybe that should be even more over time) effects where you lock yourself in, that alone + the mercenaries you have to choose imo goes against nony's interpretation that strategy won't be as important tbh. Where i see myself being the most critical so far is in the art design and animation. Ofc especially for the latter things will still change a lot, but i am not really feeling most of these designs tbh. "Cheap" doesn't quite describe it, but from factors like originality, readability and polish, there is imo a lot of room to improve on it.
I think Nony made a good point, it looks like the game is more about tactics than macro and I don't know how I feel about that. Sure there will be builds but it seems like this game really wants there to be battles and skirmishes everywhere as the primary focus with heroes. I will try it but I don't feel much StarCraft with this one.
It seems much more like a WC3 game than a SC2 game. 4 races, heros, units have more HP and battles last a while and can span across the map, creeps/objectives, mercenaries. Though I love WC3!
On August 20 2023 09:28 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: It seems much more like a WC3 game than a SC2 game. 4 races, heros, units have more HP and battles last a while and can span across the map, creeps/objectives, mercenaries. Though I love WC3!
Agreed. It looked really awesome to me until I saw all of that stuff. This clearly isn't my type of game but I wish it the best regardless.
Looks cool, as a BW player it looks a lot more interesting than any of the other new RTSs I've seen since SC2. Worried about the 4 races + heroes + mercenary factions though... just seems like sooo many variables for balancing and such (wc3 never really got balance right IIRC). But since the focus seems more on casual team games and co-op/single player I guess that's fine.
On August 20 2023 22:50 iPlaY.NettleS wrote: it looks more promising than stormgate
Mainly because StormGate hasnt shown anything.
Or because the people behind stormgate are most of the people who players think "screwed up StarCraft II". At least with Scarlett involved you know there will nothing even resembling Protoss in this game.
On August 20 2023 22:50 iPlaY.NettleS wrote: it looks more promising than stormgate
Mainly because StormGate hasnt shown anything.
Or because the people behind stormgate are most of the people who players think "screwed up StarCraft II". At least with Scarlett involved you know there will nothing even resembling Protoss in this game.
No, but there will be lots of buffs and even undocumented buffs to the race she favors
I do Agree this looks morefun than stormgte, it looks much further in development. I doubt that is actually the case though, so it just speaks how stormgate has barely shown anything.
I do think this looks a little bit more deriavative though. And I'm not a fan of heroes.
I'd agree this looks more like Starcraft 2, but with heroes added. Not sure if I necessarily want that... there's a reason I stopped playing Starcraft 2... and went back to Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition & a small trip back to Brood War for nostalgia's sake. Stormgate I literally have no opinion on yet (reserving my judgment) because like you've all said, they've essentially shown jack shit all... release some full battlecasts!
What other RTSes are coming... Tempest Rising, is clearly a Command & Conquer spiritual successor, and it might be fun. There's also some footage of it on Youtube. Some peeps got access to the first tutorial mission and it looks acceptable for a C&C clone. Age of Mythology: Retold might(?) come out this year. If Microsoft puts in the same level of polish into it as they did into AoE2:DE it should be a straight cocaine line up the nose, while going down memory lane of our childhoods...
Looks cool but seriously for a lot of the stuff I saw in the video it looked like they straight ripped assets out of SC2 and just touched them up a bit.
On August 22 2023 11:26 Malongo wrote: Yay! to 4 races, Nay! to heroes. Yay! to mercenaries (I think it's like an ally faction?) Nay! to control towers.
On August 22 2023 06:54 Latham wrote: I'd agree this looks more like Starcraft 2, but with heroes added. Not sure if I necessarily want that... there's a reason I stopped playing Starcraft 2... and went back to Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition & a small trip back to Brood War for nostalgia's sake. Stormgate I literally have no opinion on yet (reserving my judgment) because like you've all said, they've essentially shown jack shit all... release some full battlecasts!
What other RTSes are coming... Tempest Rising, is clearly a Command & Conquer spiritual successor, and it might be fun. There's also some footage of it on Youtube. Some peeps got access to the first tutorial mission and it looks acceptable for a C&C clone. Age of Mythology: Retold might(?) come out this year. If Microsoft puts in the same level of polish into it as they did into AoE2:DE it should be a straight cocaine line up the nose, while going down memory lane of our childhoods...
Anymore I'm forgetting?
I tried out Godsworn yesterday, its pretty good and also interesting setting-wise.
On August 20 2023 09:28 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: It seems much more like a WC3 game than a SC2 game. 4 races, heros, units have more HP and battles last a while and can span across the map, creeps/objectives, mercenaries. Though I love WC3!
I think Stormgate is gonna feel more WC3'ish than Zerospace. The heroes didn't seem too impactful and rather when I think of Wc3 I think of really slow-paced with lots of time to micro a unit before it dies. I think Zerospace in terms of speed is more like 70% Starcraft and 30% wc3 which imo is a more appropriate ratio.
Not sure I'm seeing things wrongly. But the units vs units engagements feel like SC (excluding the heros/abilities), but the unit vs building feels like War3
After watching a few games of this, it honestly made me less interested in the game. The pacing is just off imo, there don't seem to be units which would slow down the gameplay a little (though ofc this is probably mostly related to the economy rates), everyone is just building units which are fairly fast paced with constant action. A lot of action is great, but at least to me this feels like the equivalent of a marvel film where there is no space for downtime of any sorts, which makes everything appear less significant than it probably is (because there is no ebb and flow, no real dramaturgy to it). I also just really don't like the unit appearances, they feel mostly uninspired, as if taken from other games and meshed together. For as much as i like some design decisions on some level (for example making macro easier), there is also some form of void due to it. Eco Harassment in this game is just boring, while i think sc2 might go overboard with some things, there is at least a sense of tension and anticipation to see how well certain harass will do vs how well it is defended. In this game this just doesn't happen, things are too abstract, there is no moment of "oh will he lose 10+ workers", it's "oh one or two of these mineral things will be destroyed, hmm".
So yeah idk, in the abstract i like many things about it, but looking at the gameplay they have presented so far, it all feels very sameish.
On August 25 2023 01:39 Hildegard wrote: For now I'm unable to form an opinion because I found the games hard to follow. The mini map as well as the spectator mod are not optimized, yet.
That plays into it for sure, but imo it's hard to follow mostly because of a lack of real identity in these factions AND units (so many units look very sameish + merc units being used by anyone just removes a lot of faction identity. Scarlett playing the plant faction while driving around these cars, sorry but that's just unappealing, it doesn't fit together; much of this is down to arguably generic and uninspired unit aesthetics though). Plus the pacing of the game is weird, it seems like you really wanna macro up to like 3 bases instantly, and then you just pump a lot of units, trading them all over the place with other units / hero abilities and there really isn't anything else going on outside of that. I am not sure if this is mostly down to people not having figured out other approaches, but there is no real interesting harass going i'd say, there are basically no flying units seemingly which could add some new avenues for gameplay, it doesn't seem like there are any strong defensive units which can slow the game down a litte, so far the gameplay i have seen is action action action with no real sense for 'pacing'.
When i say pacing here i really mean a sense of structure, with different 'sections' which feel differently from each other, tools which allow each game to feel very differently too depending on what one goes for. Now maybe this game allows that, but from what i have seen (about 6ish games) they felt very similar to each other, both in how they generally played out and interactions between the races (this could be down to the lack of identity).
Idk, if i was very harsh i'd say that this game feels more like a mod to me tbh, which isn't that exciting.
On August 25 2023 01:39 Hildegard wrote: For now I'm unable to form an opinion because I found the games hard to follow. The mini map as well as the spectator mod are not optimized, yet.
That plays into it for sure, but imo it's hard to follow mostly because of a lack of real identity in these factions AND units (so many units look very sameish + merc units being used by anyone just removes a lot of faction identity. Scarlett playing the plant faction while driving around these cars, sorry but that's just unappealing, it doesn't fit together; much of this is down to arguably generic and uninspired unit aesthetics though). Plus the pacing of the game is weird, it seems like you really wanna macro up to like 3 bases instantly, and then you just pump a lot of units, trading them all over the place with other units / hero abilities and there really isn't anything else going on outside of that. I am not sure if this is mostly down to people not having figured out other approaches, but there is no real interesting harass going i'd say, there are basically no flying units seemingly which could add some new avenues for gameplay, it doesn't seem like there are any strong defensive units which can slow the game down a litte, so far the gameplay i have seen is action action action with no real sense for 'pacing'.
When i say pacing here i really mean a sense of structure, with different 'sections' which feel differently from each other, tools which allow each game to feel very differently too depending on what one goes for. Now maybe this game allows that, but from what i have seen (about 6ish games) they felt very similar to each other, both in how they generally played out and interactions between the races (this could be down to the lack of identity).
Idk, if i was very harsh i'd say that this game feels more like a mod to me tbh, which isn't that exciting.
The cars for the plant faction truly felt weird. Regarding faction identity, asymmetric design without (or few) hard counters and without a dominating best strategy seems incredibly hard to achieve. They probably fell into the same trap like many before them and published something that looks kind of okay for marketing reasons. But I think to stand out and actually hype people a (RTS) game needs to be exceptional.
However, if this game has enough time I think it might get there, especially with the feedback from professional players they now get. But if this is close to the final product, then absolutely yes, this game will not work.
I think it wouldn't be so jarring if those cars moved on tracks instead of wheels and had skins matching the faction they're supporting, e.g. green camo for the plant race.
On August 24 2023 22:37 The_Red_Viper wrote: After watching a few games of this, it honestly made me less interested in the game. The pacing is just off imo, there don't seem to be units which would slow down the gameplay a little (though ofc this is probably mostly related to the economy rates), everyone is just building units which are fairly fast paced with constant action. A lot of action is great, but at least to me this feels like the equivalent of a marvel film where there is no space for downtime of any sorts, which makes everything appear less significant than it probably is (because there is no ebb and flow, no real dramaturgy to it). I also just really don't like the unit appearances, they feel mostly uninspired, as if taken from other games and meshed together. For as much as i like some design decisions on some level (for example making macro easier), there is also some form of void due to it. Eco Harassment in this game is just boring, while i think sc2 might go overboard with some things, there is at least a sense of tension and anticipation to see how well certain harass will do vs how well it is defended. In this game this just doesn't happen, things are too abstract, there is no moment of "oh will he lose 10+ workers", it's "oh one or two of these mineral things will be destroyed, hmm".
So yeah idk, in the abstract i like many things about it, but looking at the gameplay they have presented so far, it all feels very sameish.
There has to be some positional strong units in the game (units that are cost effective against any number of opposing forces in certain positions). Without that I agree it's gonna be repetitive quite fast.
I noticed the same thing as you on the worker harassment thing as I was watching some more gameplay. The little we saw of harassment in this game was fairly boring. Economy harassment generally adds an interesting element to starcraft and at least some variety.
I worry that Zerospace has the wrong focus when it comes to adding variety. They believe that variety can come from combining mercs with different heroes. However, that seems to be "micro"-variety as opposed to playstyle variety. By playstyle variety I am thinking defensive vs harass vs aggressive.
If everything is similarly mobile and cost efficiency only comes down to micro, it becomes dull quite quickly.
To me it looked like they intentionally reduced the importance of worker harass. The "oooh!" moments are supposed to come from landing skillshots in skirmishes near economically important areas of the map. Something like teamfights near map objectives in MOBAs, where your goal is to get stuff that will make you slightly stronger in the future.
Mobas have uhhh positional variety too where some unit compositions are good in face to face battles while others are focused on outmaneuvering your opponents and striking where they're weak.
I'm not sure it's what I want to see in RTS but it's not like they're strictly dumbing the gameplay down. They're putting emphasis on different things.
On August 25 2023 20:17 Sent. wrote: To me it looked like they intentionally reduced the importance of worker harass. The "oooh!" moments are supposed to come from landing skillshots in skirmishes near economically important areas of the map. Something like teamfights near map objectives in MOBAs, where your goal is to get stuff that will make you slightly stronger in the future.
Mobas have uhhh positional variety too where some unit compositions are good in face to face battles while others are focused on outmaneuvering your opponents and striking where they're weak.
I'm not sure it's what I want to see in RTS but it's not like they're strictly dumbing the gameplay down. They're putting emphasis on different things.
No question that overpowering harass options in Sc2 became a bandaid fix to encourage multitasking and action. A more sound game encourages actual engagements. But I still think harass is fun and is supplementary to the core gameplay.
A big problem of mine is also that i simply don't see a lot of interesting micro in the game. For as much focus as there is on unit interactions in zerospace (which i actually like, i have argued for allocating the attention towards pvp interactions a lot), what i actually see of it looks pretty bland. The abilities don't pop enough to make it exciting and there seems to be a big focus on abilities to begin with, as i've not seen a lot of variety of micro outside of that tbh. Surrounds / body blocking doesn't seem to be what they are going for at all, i've not seen any dropship kind of micro, i've not seen unit interactions in this game which felt interesting to me yet to say it bluntly. I will once again stress that i think a big part of that could be the unit aesthetics and animations, as changing that could make the same interactions feel more satisfying without a doubt, but i don't think it is only that either.
edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6apDeo7zejg Here is catz casting a bo3 between two devs, and yeah idk, doesn't seem inspiring to me. Just cannot connect to the lack (imo) of pace / rhythm in regards to the gameplay. Things happen, but nothing feels significant or exciting.
> Here is catz casting a bo3 between two devs, and yeah idk, doesn't seem inspiring to me. Just cannot connect to the lack (imo) of pace / rhythm in regards to the gameplay. Things happen, but nothing feels significant or exciting.
How good were the devs? Looked like diamond level to me with very sluggish reactions. I also think micro interactions can be tweaked/refined over time. Adding dropship micro later on should be straight-forward.
I am much more worried about the gameplay primarily being balls of army moving around. I think that's much harder to properly address down the road.
You can't tell how good they are from those games. Harstem's play in his own video about Zerospace was sloppy too and he's a sc2 pro. PiG uploaded a game between Scarlett and GiantGrantGames and she did show some nice micro micro but if I didn't know it was her it might as well be nice diamond player micro.
On August 25 2023 20:17 Sent. wrote: To me it looked like they intentionally reduced the importance of worker harass. The "oooh!" moments are supposed to come from landing skillshots in skirmishes near economically important areas of the map. Something like teamfights near map objectives in MOBAs, where your goal is to get stuff that will make you slightly stronger in the future.
Mobas have uhhh positional variety too where some unit compositions are good in face to face battles while others are focused on outmaneuvering your opponents and striking where they're weak.
I'm not sure it's what I want to see in RTS but it's not like they're strictly dumbing the gameplay down. They're putting emphasis on different things.
No question that overpowering harass options in Sc2 became a bandaid fix to encourage multitasking and action. A more sound game encourages actual engagements. But I still think harass is fun and is supplementary to the core gameplay.
Worker harass should be done by sending in a small force, a dropship or a burrower/nydus type of mechanic that delivers normal units inside the enemy base. Not specialized anti-worker units that can decimate a mineral line in 2 seconds when you're not looking. One of the biggest reasons I quit Starcraft 2 was because of ridiculous, unfun units such as Oracles, Blue Flame Hellbats and Vipers being added into the game.
> Here is catz casting a bo3 between two devs, and yeah idk, doesn't seem inspiring to me. Just cannot connect to the lack (imo) of pace / rhythm in regards to the gameplay. Things happen, but nothing feels significant or exciting.
How good were the devs? Looked like diamond level to me with very sluggish reactions. Not sure average Sc2 game would display a lot more micro. I also think micro interactions can be tweaked/refined over time.
I am much more worried about the gameplay primarily being balls of army moving around. I think that's much harder to properly address down the road.
That's just one example, there were also games being played by scarlett and catz, which ofc looked a little more higher quality because the players are better, but i've not seen anything interesting there either. I just posted this one because i think most people wouldn't have seen it.
Well i think these things are all connected tbh, it's very difficult to try and isolate say the big clumping from uninteresting unit interactions to micro potential and even as i said, how it is presented (unit aesthetics and animation design) right now as one really hasn't enough experience with it. But just from a spectator pov, it feels fairly uninteresting to me, and i think all of these things play some role in that.
On August 25 2023 20:17 Sent. wrote: To me it looked like they intentionally reduced the importance of worker harass. The "oooh!" moments are supposed to come from landing skillshots in skirmishes near economically important areas of the map. Something like teamfights near map objectives in MOBAs, where your goal is to get stuff that will make you slightly stronger in the future.
Mobas have uhhh positional variety too where some unit compositions are good in face to face battles while others are focused on outmaneuvering your opponents and striking where they're weak.
I'm not sure it's what I want to see in RTS but it's not like they're strictly dumbing the gameplay down. They're putting emphasis on different things.
No question that overpowering harass options in Sc2 became a bandaid fix to encourage multitasking and action. A more sound game encourages actual engagements. But I still think harass is fun and is supplementary to the core gameplay.
Worker harass should be done by sending in a small force, a dropship or a burrower/nydus type of mechanic that delivers normal units inside the enemy base. Not specialized anti-worker units that can decimate a mineral line in 2 seconds when you're not looking. One of the biggest reasons I quit Starcraft 2 was because of ridiculous, unfun units such as Oracles, Blue Flame Hellbats and Vipers being added into the game.
Idk, typically there is overlap. Are mutalisks harass units? For sure, but you also could use them in engagements (the more mutas got cycled out in tvz the less interesting the matchup became imo). In bw in particular i think the micro potential of them was fantastic, though there they really were more of a harass unit tbh, at least in zvt. I also think the current state of the oracle is quite fun, a good micro player's usage of it looks quite different from people who aren't able to move it as smoothly, and there is some potential for other usage too with its spells. Where i generally agree is that a lot of the units seem to be a little too strong for casual play in particular when it comes to the ability to kill workers fast, ideally that would be toned down a little (though it's also a problem of sc2 pacing in general), but i don't think that having a general strength in harass is a problem per se. It's more a balancing thing than anything else imo.
On August 25 2023 20:17 Sent. wrote: To me it looked like they intentionally reduced the importance of worker harass. The "oooh!" moments are supposed to come from landing skillshots in skirmishes near economically important areas of the map. Something like teamfights near map objectives in MOBAs, where your goal is to get stuff that will make you slightly stronger in the future.
Mobas have uhhh positional variety too where some unit compositions are good in face to face battles while others are focused on outmaneuvering your opponents and striking where they're weak.
I'm not sure it's what I want to see in RTS but it's not like they're strictly dumbing the gameplay down. They're putting emphasis on different things.
No question that overpowering harass options in Sc2 became a bandaid fix to encourage multitasking and action. A more sound game encourages actual engagements. But I still think harass is fun and is supplementary to the core gameplay.
Worker harass should be done by sending in a small force, a dropship or a burrower/nydus type of mechanic that delivers normal units inside the enemy base. Not specialized anti-worker units that can decimate a mineral line in 2 seconds when you're not looking. One of the biggest reasons I quit Starcraft 2 was because of ridiculous, unfun units such as Oracles, Blue Flame Hellbats and Vipers being added into the game.
Surprised you didn't mention Widow Mine. Widow mine harassment is the most unfun thing to play against. Look away for 2 seconds and all your workers are gone.
Most harass in Sc2 feels better when players are on multiple bases with 80+ workers. In these situations harass isn't usually game-ending.
In fact, the whole game in Sc2 feels better when economy is much stronger for both players as they have an easier time replehensing their armies. I wish RTS game devs dared to be truly innovative and let players start the game with a reasonably strong econ because early gameplay can be way too volatile (and unskillful in terms of rewarding mechanics).
Well i think these things are all connected tbh, it's very difficult to try and isolate say the big clumping from uninteresting unit interactions to micro potential and even as i said, how it is presented (unit aesthetics and animation design) right now as one really hasn't enough experience with it. But just from a spectator pov, it feels fairly uninteresting to me, and i think all of these things play some role in that.
In my ideal game, army sizes are larger, map is large, players work to secure and defend certain terroritories around the map using defensive/positional units + static defense. While simultaneously fighting on other parts of map to secure new areas. That type of gameplay can only work if it's possible for a few units/static defense to cost effectively defend against a much larger army.
If positional units are not cost effective in small numbers or don't exist, the only way you encourage multitasking is through overpowering harass-options in Sc2. I generally am in favor of overpowered medivacs and Warp Prism, but I want that to coexist along side units that can do well in small numbers (but that tends to be immobile).
ZeroSpace appears to have neither atm. Dropships/Banshees/Muta-type of units should be somewhat easy to add in/integrate into any type of RTS game if the devs want more harass.
However, getting the whole type of positional units right is much harder.
To improve how micro feels and look they can work on aesthetics, skill-shots, exactly how much damage they deals and ideal reaction time without adding any more multitasking. So I think micro and multitasking are somewhat separate problems. The latter being harder to fix (aside from overpowering harass-options).
One of the things that stuck me when watching sample game is how weird these wheeled vehicles behave (unrealistic, really) and was wondering why no RTS incorporates different speeds for units on different surface types, which would actually make the decision of walker vs wheeled vs tracked more interesting. Then again maybe RTS can't possible contain such mechanic.
On August 28 2023 03:59 nimdil wrote: One of the things that stuck me when watching sample game is how weird these wheeled vehicles behave (unrealistic, really) and was wondering why no RTS incorporates different speeds for units on different surface types, which would actually make the decision of walker vs wheeled vs tracked more interesting. Then again maybe RTS can't possible contain such mechanic.
I just LOVE the ambition and ingenuity behind that. I've updated the OP here to include a link to them, as well as some of the other things that have been added to the ZeroSpace kickstarter campaign page in the last few weeks.
Players are already in-training by separate coaches
Team Scarlett: DeMu & SortOf Team CatZ: Clem & Fitzyhere
I watched some more stuff and decided to back this up on KS. Good stuff.
Although accidentally I'm doing it while sitting in my old Root Gaming t-shirt. Kudos to you, Catz.
Much love to you, thanks on all 3 fronts!
Hey CatZ let me know if there's anything you'd like me to change on the OP here, I didn't expect this to end up being the main post about ZeroSpace! I was just genuinely surprised when I checked TL the first day, like eight hours into the campaign, and I hadn't seen anything yet. But I'm kind of stoked to fanboy out like the good old days and I'll be more consistent with updating this now.
Also, do you (or anyone else here) know whether I can add the kickstarter info to the main page? Back in the day that'd probably be a no-go, but I could see them making an exception for a new RTS, and maybe times have changed.
Lastly, my buddies and I occasionally have group SC2 tournaments, and whenever a new player joins, one of my friends will at least once try to proxy hatch them, because they saw some of your famous proxy hatches back in the day. So thanks for that haha.
The game looks much better than i expected. My major concerns are: There are no positional units. There is no high ground Bonus. I dislike the merc Camps beeing Part of the starting location. It might be imposisible to scout that. Why not use merc Camps like in wc3? I cannot Tell yet, but how is deathball prevented?
I just LOVE the ambition and ingenuity behind that. I've updated the OP here to include a link to them, as well as some of the other things that have been added to the ZeroSpace kickstarter campaign page in the last few weeks.
Players are already in-training by separate coaches
Team Scarlett: DeMu & SortOf Team CatZ: Clem & Fitzyhere
I watched some more stuff and decided to back this up on KS. Good stuff.
Although accidentally I'm doing it while sitting in my old Root Gaming t-shirt. Kudos to you, Catz.
Much love to you, thanks on all 3 fronts!
Hey CatZ let me know if there's anything you'd like me to change on the OP here, I didn't expect this to end up being the main post about ZeroSpace! I was just genuinely surprised when I checked TL the first day, like eight hours into the campaign, and I hadn't seen anything yet. But I'm kind of stoked to fanboy out like the good old days and I'll be more consistent with updating this now.
Also, do you (or anyone else here) know whether I can add the kickstarter info to the main page? Back in the day that'd probably be a no-go, but I could see them making an exception for a new RTS, and maybe times have changed.
Lastly, my buddies and I occasionally have group SC2 tournaments, and whenever a new player joins, one of my friends will at least once try to proxy hatch them, because they saw some of your famous proxy hatches back in the day. So thanks for that haha.
Hey Dougler!
I think it looks great, thank you!
I don't know if you can add the KS link but we're nearly done so no worries.
roflmao cheers and love to you and your proxy-hatching friend, that's awesome :D
I think it's too early to tell for both games. From a viewer perspective, SG is easier to follow right now but looks a bit more dull. ZS is difficult to follow but if you have all the info in your head about skills, units, mercs, heros etc it might be good
I just LOVE the ambition and ingenuity behind that. I've updated the OP here to include a link to them, as well as some of the other things that have been added to the ZeroSpace kickstarter campaign page in the last few weeks.
a lot of people don't know this, but the Xol were created by Dr. Eldon Tyrell. + Show Spoiler +
i just made that up myself.
Ladies and gentlemen, The origin story of the Xol is not for the faint of heart.
On December 29 2023 20:30 RogerChillingworth wrote: Zero Space lookin sweet from the recent showmatches shown on twitch !
edit: changing my post, it did look chaotic at first glance but watching a streamer do commentary of it i found it pretty easy to grasp ahold. I still think there may be too many units/heroes that make it feel kind of overwhelming but i guess i also play league with over 100 so that sorta goes out the window.
It looked too chaotic. I much prefer death balls because it feels like you're building a powerful army even if it is seen as "less skillful." Most people play games for fun and fantasy to be honest and I think it's important not to forget that.
Lost me at 'much prefer deathballs' xD. I liked how the game revved up slowly and it was pretty micro based for a while. can't speak for late game tho. think some of the animation/art could use some tweaking, like the streams of missiles have too long/opaque of a line. But pretty good overall i'd say.
I'm in the alpha the last couple weeks and it became my most played RTS of 2023. Looking forward to the 2024 alphas and betas. It is already a fantastic RTS to play even through the expected bugs and oddities, it being an alpha.
Looks like they're ready to do a big streaming phase in the coming weeks, including a $10,000 tournament with Wardi. Definitely something to check out to see if this is a 'real' competitor in the RTS space.
On January 02 2024 04:51 VelRa_G wrote: I'm in the alpha the last couple weeks and it became my most played RTS of 2023. Looking forward to the 2024 alphas and betas. It is already a fantastic RTS to play even through the expected bugs and oddities, it being an alpha.
any way to sign up for alpha/beta for this or how did you get into it?
Criticism aside: Technically it's in good standing, and aesthetically interesting. Diversity appears plentiful with room to grow apart over time from the influences its drawn from.
Criticism: Heroes in the pvp matchup is not my thing. Unless there was parity for players that chose not to build heroes, I don't see my self playing pvp. This was my experience with WC3; I ended up playing through the campaign, and skipping pvp and played dota/(angel) arena customs instead. The pvp experience with heroes has never interested me, even in the sc2 campaign. Though as a WC3 viewer the pvp hero choices/ micro/ meta was kind of captivating. I've have grown a hero-less taste for RTS over 30years, and gravitate towards a SC1 style rather than a hero incorporated matchup.
Other than that it would be presumptuous to criticize anything further until a Beta wraps up. Good luck going forward.
On January 02 2024 04:51 VelRa_G wrote: I'm in the alpha the last couple weeks and it became my most played RTS of 2023. Looking forward to the 2024 alphas and betas. It is already a fantastic RTS to play even through the expected bugs and oddities, it being an alpha.
any way to sign up for alpha/beta for this or how did you get into it?
The only way to get in is to back them on Backerkit:
On January 04 2024 04:43 Waxangel wrote: Looks like they're ready to do a big streaming phase in the coming weeks, including a $10,000 tournament with Wardi. Definitely something to check out to see if this is a 'real' competitor in the RTS space.
Is that somewhere on YT? Didn't find anything and can't watch twitch here
There are some casted matches going up on Youtube if you search for recent Zerospace stuff. Right now the battle is just for reaching Top 16 on the ladder, devs excluded, so no formal tournament yet.
So, I just saw a video about this game last night and looked it up over lunch, then came back to it over dinner. It looked pretty cool, if derivative, and a lot of little things felt off. Then I saw they uploaded a dev talk a few days ago, which was pretty cool. For a few minutes.
The very first thing being discussed is art, specifically a new ground effect and a discussion about if it's possible to add a glowing effect to a unit's eyes when they use a certain ability. The artist gives a response that makes it seem like a difficult or time-consuming thing to do, which felt odd to me.
Having never made glow effects or light emissions on a 3D model, I was able to find several very clear and simple 1- to 10-minute tutorials about adding glowing objects and creating emissive layers (Unreal Engine, Substance Painter, even StarCraft 2 and the custom texture swap testmap from back in the day that also lets you test specular, emissive, and normal layers). If the model already has eyes, most of the big name modeling programs and game engines let you create an emissive layer and apply it directly to the eye geometry if they are individual objects (primitive modeling, i.e. spheres set into the model's head) or manually stretch the layer/mask over the eye areas if they are not separate (digital sculpting, i.e. adding and subtracting virtual clay from the model's head). Then, just use a shader to make it glow/bloom (there seem to be many shaders already in the game) and animate the shader/opacity with the rest of the attack animation or separate animation. You can even add other textures or noise or animations over the emission layer to give sparkling, liquid, or hazy effects, or add a pupil or dilation or glow-in-the-dark effect for eyes. An even simpler effect might even be to just add a light source or glowing particle over each eye that can be turned on/up with the attack animation. If the artist(s) can model and animate all the rest of the units and effects in the game, it doesn't make sense to me that glowing eye effects would be anything but trivial and take a few minutes (maybe hours, maybe) to make for that unit.
The next topic is CatZ asking who removed a special effect from a unit and why it was removed.
In less than 9 minutes into the dev talk, it looks like the game is lacking any substantial overall direction, and has no art director. Why is CatZ, the "lead versus designer," in charge of making mockups for special effects? Why is any gameplay designer doing any amount of art directing? Shouldn't the art director be taking input from the designers and making concepts themselves or giving that work to another artist who can spend a day or two making special effects and emissive layers for various units and testing their animations (or giving it back to the art director for approval before handing it off to an animator to work on the emission animations)? Why is the art director seemingly absent from the art meeting about special effects and attack animations? Does the game even have an art director? The Kickstarter page doesn't mention anyone except the ex-Blizz artist that curated a piece of AI art for their promo poster, so I guess not.
Why is there such a big emphasis on the art if the game is supposedly in "alpha" anyway? Shouldn't the designers be using gray cubes and blobs or placeholder units at this point while the artists are polishing their concepts and making a bunch of temporary models while things are still being changed all the time? (Seemingly because it isn't in alpha at all but nobody understands what an alpha is anymore outside of marketing jargon so shrug.)
Aside from all of these yellow and red flags, I strongly feel like these meetings don't need to be streamed, or rather shouldn't be. Nobody outside the team (or maybe the highest-tier Kickstarter backers) needs to see these team meetings and weekly design documents/tasks, and the team doesn't need random people watching over their shoulder while trying to work. If they want to give people a peek into the development process, they should put out a video or Kickstarter post summarizing what they've been discussing and working on the past month (look at other Kickstarters for board games, big tabletop games, little open source tech projects, etc. if you need examples). Another alternative would be to prepare a presentation for a livestream with the goal to show off some new things, ask viewers for input or to vote on polls for flexible things, or just have someone collect questions to discuss at the end of the stream.
Who even approved of making these meetings public? Was the whole team asked about it beforehand? It feels so unneccessary.
Leaving the dev talk on for a few more minutes while typing this out didn't help things. When talking about special effects covering the ground, someone points out "if you're covering the whole battlefield in DPS zoning, you can't avoid it anyway, so [having an effect on the ground] doesn't really matter." Then says "you gotta make that gameplay balanced in the sense that there are still places you can go..." It feels like this person is hand-waving a complex issue and putting it on the shoulders of one person when every RTS I've ever seen has had these probelms countless times with countless effects and designs that need several iterations and community playtests to solve.
The game being called an alpha or close to a beta but having so many (apparently) final models and textures also seems to be causing issues with community communication, specifically with playtesters and viewers complaining about bugs/glitches when something just doesn't have an animation yet (buildings under construction appearing complete before their progress bar is full discussed in the dev talk, some other random comments about stuff on other Reddit posts and videos of other people playing the game) or is basically a proof-of-concept unit and they weren't paying attention to the UI or watching at their replay before messaging the devs about an unfinished asset. On the other hand, why not just use big conspicious labels in place of animations until the assets are all closer to being finished like so many other alpha/beta tests?
And a bit later in the video "can we change flowers to mushrooms?" Or, regarding a hero unit, "they are two commandos, so I'm not sure how they would look in-game... probably just an oversized commando, or something like that ... if you have an idea for a commando hero, then maybe [we could] bring them in" coming from, again, the "lead versus designer." There needs to be an art director managing this stuff. And a game director managing the needs of the single-player side and the versus side. It seems like there is literally no design/development being done or barely considered for the single-player campaign or co-op modes, which seemed like what the majority of the Kickstarter was for (and is what the majority of players will play if those modes ever exist).
Not to mention how units have colorful textures but no team colors. Another priority that seems backwards.
I was wary about the game because of its awful AI poster image (and the genuinely gross comments from people praising it in the Steam discussions) and character portraits (even the Xol hero is obviously AI generated with maybe a little amateurish photoshopping over the top), units that look like StarCraft 2 marine and ultralisk ripoffs, maps that look like they were ripped from the SC2 world editor, the generic look of so many other units and outfits, the sluggish and floaty game feel, not having lower system/graphics requirements, selling signed posters of AI art on the Kickstarter, the previous games from the dev team(s) being so small in scope and lacking polish...
After seeing some Kickstarter and Steam updates, then this dev talk and a casted game, it really looks like a mess that's only serving to attempt to clone StarCraft 2 with hero units and complicated factions.
The rollercoaster looked pretty cool until I got up close and saw the running paint lines and loose bolts. Seeing a new post in a few months to a year with a lot of progress (and a new splash image made by an actual artist, or even a hobbyist who isn't as lazy or shameless as the one using their Blizz cred to sell regurgitated AI art) might get me to pay attention to this. Or if they just decided to rearrange and slow down development to better fit the team they have. If it's really an indie game with as small of a team as it seems, why rush with tournaments and polishing at this stage? They clearly need time to figure things out at every level from the top to the middle and very bottom so we don't look back on the game years from now and ask "oh yeah, what the hell happened?"
My biggest disappointment with the project is that none of the big names on the team doing their dream jobs get me excited because their work/potential is so strongly overshadowed by so many issues.
As the community feedback director, I will direct your post to the eyes of our director of directors to inform about directing the director to direct the direction of the game.
But sarcasm aside, yeah I agree it's slightly odd to stream this - they'll run it how they want and can; that's a good thing. It hasn't raised enough money so far to pay the bills if I understand correctly, so let them be passion-driven to glory or death.
On January 18 2024 08:46 blunderfulguy wrote: And a game director managing the needs of the single-player side and the versus side. It seems like there is literally no design/development being done or barely considered for the single-player campaign or co-op modes, which seemed like what the majority of the Kickstarter was for (and is what the majority of players will play if those modes ever exist).
possibly misleading consumers via Kickstarter messaging? You could be correct, however, a more thorough investigation is required to make a determination on the issue you bring up here. Time will tell if consumers were mislead during the Kickstarter campaign. This time next year, we'll know what's up.
I don't get how people are always so charged up about instantly donating to Kickstarter the nanosecond it is offered. I am waiting until the last day of Stormgate's Kickstarter to decide whether or not to donate. My decision will be 10,000X more informed than the people who donated to Stormgate on day one. If I donate Frost Giant will have access to my money just as fast as anyone donating on day one of the campaign.
Just watched artosis’ breakdown video and while I wish the game beat of luck it seems too complicated to find an audience. 4 factions, multiple heroes, multiple upgrades for every unit, a big ability tree, AND multiple mercenary factions that mix and match with the factions every match? Just seems like too much, even for rts fans. Also seems impossible to balance.
I think they need to get rid of the mercenaries or the heroes to streamline things a bit but i have a big feeling those are in there for “Games as service” purposes so that they can keep adding in more of each.
On January 19 2024 04:16 Ideas wrote: Just watched artosis’ breakdown video and while I wish the game beat of luck it seems too complicated to find an audience. 4 factions, multiple heroes, multiple upgrades for every unit, a big ability tree, AND multiple mercenary factions that mix and match with the factions every match? Just seems like too much, even for rts fans. Also seems impossible to balance.
I think they need to get rid of the mercenaries or the heroes to streamline things a bit but i have a big feeling those are in there for “Games as service” purposes so that they can keep adding in more of each.
I watched another match to look a little closer with a different perspective but I couldn't really convince myself to walk back on many opinions, and formed more criticisms about the faction and talents systems that just seemed messy before.
It's the kind of messy that makes me wonder if the designers really playtested the game before making the decision to go in that direction, or if they just did it for the sake of having as many combinations as possible to show off a big number for marketing or monetization like you say.
Even if they did playtest and think about them a lot and don't plan on exploiting it all for microtransactions, it feels like way too much to have to choose two factions then talents or global abilities before the game starts, and then choosing a hero and tech path while figuring out what every single unit ability is and managing a big army (or even trying to watch big armies of multiple units all around the map). It looks like a design/balance nightmare for two or even three people (seemingly CatZ and Scarlett with Maguro for co-op and map design according to the Kickstarter blurbs) because, mathematically, it is a balancing nightmare.
Adding pick and ban systems before the game starts or having soft pick/ban systems during the game (i.e. Warcraft 3 tavern or Dota items) can only do so much.
I thought the global abilities/talents system was an out-of-game account progression system but it's actually an in-game progression system on top of the army comp and tech tree decisions. Most players, once they figure out what's going on with the factions or the tech trees or the talent trees, will probably plan out all of their progression before the game starts and let hard counters and cheese builds happen. Or they'll have fun doing all kinds of crazy things for a while then leaving to play the next flashy game of the month or their old comfort game. I feel like it needs to be broken up and simplified somehow, like the commander abilities in Company of Heroes (pick a tree, one simple choice every few minutes that either gives you a global ability or a new unit, only five or six things per tree iirc), or giving each faction or mercenary group its own super simple progression path with only one or two actual choices, or merging it with the tech tree to be one complicated system instead of two separate complicated systems. Or just removed for now, and changed and developed for a while into something unique for co-op or single-player, then possibly brought back later.
Like, maybe just make some of this stuff dead simple, straightforward, with much fewer choices in- or out-of-game, and slowly add mechanics/systems and choices over a year or three while focusing on core gameplay priorities. But it seems like SC2 pros are starting to use all the systems and are going to start playing in tournaments soon, so maybe they feel stuck in this messy design situation (if they're even thinking about it anymore).
I agree with a lot of the "it looks complicated but not deep" opinions, and disagree with the comments praising its innovations, strategic/tactical or otherwise. Personally, I also don't like this style of "lots of choices to make, lots of possible combinations" direction with strategy games. Even though a lot of stuff looks like MOBA stuff slapped onto SC2, it feels so different from Dota 2 (a game I actually really like) and so much messier even though I've only been watching 1v1 games.
The same goes for the visuals. It doesn't look like each "major" faction has a cohesive aesthetic (the blue and gray boxy humans also have some tan and purple curvy units), and every player has one major faction and one minor faction. Looking at SC2, there was a big emphasis on making sure you could tell which upgrades every unit had just by looking at them which helps all players figure out what's going on with their opponents, but every unit in this game has so many possible upgrades that I can't imagine it being feasible unless the team/budget is way bigger than it seems. Although LoL and Dota 2 don't do this (afaik), each hero in those games only does a few things (or one thing you care about), there are only five big units per side with a lot of overlapping attributes within each hero type/class/role, and most other units/creeps don't have any special abilities and their passive attributes like armor types are clearly visually communicated and aren't really important at most levels of play.
I'd be curious to see how gold to diamond league matches play out, I guess for scientific purposes, not because I think it'd be fun to watch two people suffer through. I also don't actually want to play it myself yet at all despite thinking "okay, that's kinda cool" or "that could have been a great visual direction to go with" a few times.
On January 19 2024 04:16 Ideas wrote: Just watched artosis’ breakdown video and while I wish the game beat of luck it seems too complicated to find an audience. 4 factions, multiple heroes, multiple upgrades for every unit, a big ability tree, AND multiple mercenary factions that mix and match with the factions every match? Just seems like too much, even for rts fans. Also seems impossible to balance.
I think they need to get rid of the mercenaries or the heroes to streamline things a bit but i have a big feeling those are in there for “Games as service” purposes so that they can keep adding in more of each.
I watched another match to look a little closer with a different perspective but I couldn't really convince myself to walk back on many opinions, and formed more criticisms about the faction and talents systems that just seemed messy before.
It's the kind of messy that makes me wonder if the designers really playtested the game before making the decision to go in that direction, or if they just did it for the sake of having as many combinations as possible to show off a big number for marketing or monetization like you say.
Even if they did playtest and think about them a lot and don't plan on exploiting it all for microtransactions, it feels like way too much to have to choose two factions then talents or global abilities before the game starts, and then choosing a hero and tech path while figuring out what every single unit ability is and managing a big army (or even trying to watch big armies of multiple units all around the map). It looks like a design/balance nightmare for two or even three people (seemingly CatZ and Scarlett with Maguro for co-op and map design according to the Kickstarter blurbs) because, mathematically, it is a balancing nightmare.
Adding pick and ban systems before the game starts or having soft pick/ban systems during the game (i.e. Warcraft 3 tavern or Dota items) can only do so much.
I thought the global abilities/talents system was an out-of-game account progression system but it's actually an in-game progression system on top of the army comp and tech tree decisions. Most players, once they figure out what's going on with the factions or the tech trees or the talent trees, will probably plan out all of their progression before the game starts and let hard counters and cheese builds happen. Or they'll have fun doing all kinds of crazy things for a while then leaving to play the next flashy game of the month or their old comfort game. I feel like it needs to be broken up and simplified somehow, like the commander abilities in Company of Heroes (pick a tree, one simple choice every few minutes that either gives you a global ability or a new unit, only five or six things per tree iirc), or giving each faction or mercenary group its own super simple progression path with only one or two actual choices, or merging it with the tech tree to be one complicated system instead of two separate complicated systems. Or just removed for now, and changed and developed for a while into something unique for co-op or single-player, then possibly brought back later.
Like, maybe just make some of this stuff dead simple, straightforward, with much fewer choices in- or out-of-game, and slowly add mechanics/systems and choices over a year or three while focusing on core gameplay priorities. But it seems like SC2 pros are starting to use all the systems and are going to start playing in tournaments soon, so maybe they feel stuck in this messy design situation (if they're even thinking about it anymore).
I agree with a lot of the "it looks complicated but not deep" opinions, and disagree with the comments praising its innovations, strategic/tactical or otherwise. Personally, I also don't like this style of "lots of choices to make, lots of possible combinations" direction with strategy games. Even though a lot of stuff looks like MOBA stuff slapped onto SC2, it feels so different from Dota 2 (a game I actually really like) and so much messier even though I've only been watching 1v1 games.
The same goes for the visuals. It doesn't look like each "major" faction has a cohesive aesthetic (the blue and gray boxy humans also have some tan and purple curvy units), and every player has one major faction and one minor faction. Looking at SC2, there was a big emphasis on making sure you could tell which upgrades every unit had just by looking at them which helps all players figure out what's going on with their opponents, but every unit in this game has so many possible upgrades that I can't imagine it being feasible unless the team/budget is way bigger than it seems. Although LoL and Dota 2 don't do this (afaik), each hero in those games only does a few things (or one thing you care about), there are only five big units per side with a lot of overlapping attributes within each hero type/class/role, and most other units/creeps don't have any special abilities and their passive attributes like armor types are clearly visually communicated and aren't really important at most levels of play.
I'd be curious to see how gold to diamond league matches play out, I guess for scientific purposes, not because I think it'd be fun to watch two people suffer through. I also don't actually want to play it myself yet at all despite thinking "okay, that's kinda cool" or "that could have been a great visual direction to go with" a few times.
Both of your posts are loaded with what I think are somewhat myopic assumptions, I don't have a lot of time to address everything in detail, and I suspect this won't get through to you anyway, but just to touch on a couple of things, especially those pertaining to me as an individual:
Why does a game designer have input on art? Is there an art director?
Yes, we do have an art director - we have meetings and syncs with every department scheduled throughout the week. I take my feedback and feedback pertinent to my team and work with them to implement and execute on a shared vision. Marv, product owner / game director, whose vision we're all executing on, was also on this meeting, and is also in most other meetings with department heads.
I have input on loads of areas, lead versus designer is just a title, this is a start-up and I am the type of person who thrives in making connections in many different areas - my role is actually very similar to what I did in my 4 years at Blizzard while I was a consultant in Irvine (though that was more limited in scope / time). Without going into detail, I can say that I had input and worked in -many- areas of the game (SC2), pertinent to this discussion, I did art/mock-ups for in-game UI and I even had a presentation on exactly that at a StarCraft 2 community summit - so there's even witnesses galore. Even at a large enterprise like Blizzard this isn't a foreign process - of course I also worked on design/balance but for some people who get immersed in projects it's much more useful to navigate and explore in many directions and get different vantage points - maybe this won't easily register with you if you prefer to operate with more of a 1 track mind.
In reality, you need people with high level overviews of projects and situations to make sensible decisions that are pertinent to many different areas of any enterprise - maybe this isn't your experience in the workforce, but it very much is mine - I enjoy making connections and that means varying interests; areas of expertise follow suit.
For example in sc2 I've been simultaneously a pro player, streamer, designer, team owner, influencer, commentator / analyst, content producer, coach, team captain, blizzard game consultant etc. and in the time that I focused on any of it, I succeeded at all of it. As a player / in game I also explored very many different areas vs iterating on 1 track like many prefer to do and excel at doing, there's simply room and value to be found in all sorts of approaches to problems and life, it's of course easy to think that 'your way' is the best way, but it's also when you make authoritative statements and assumptions that you close yourself from perspective and ultimately growth in any area.
As far as art, to further address your "concern", I went to school for and have a degree in Media Arts and Animation as well as Graphic Design.
I also played RTS for 25 years, and have probably played more ZeroSpace than just about anyone and I am the lead game designer - so idk that you can be much more qualified than I am to propose a direction on the legibility of an ability in-game.
For instance, I can tell not just "that" I can't properly see or register an ability, I can also tell (and show) exactly why - where the Art director talented as they are has a different vantage point that is complimentary in other areas and can produce with their team an asset that satisfies my needs as a player / designer and fits our in-game aesthetic direction. Working together, we can produce a better product - I don't see anything wrong with that process, yet you seem to think that people are only capable of or should only have input in 1 type of task? I'm really curious what in your life experience / at work has you convinced in thinking this narrowly.
To your other, from my vantage point, myopic assumption/criticism: "Why are they not addressing campaign?"
Because this was one of our -versus design- meetings (??????????) You just got insights from the video into a tiny portion of what's going on internally in -one- meeting of -one- department and extrapolated all of these weird conclusions. We have 35+ developers and I work with most of them, It's a concerted effort making a game, not just delivering individual disjointed pieces to assemble a larger one.
Marv (and many of our developers) have been in the industry and had successful ventures in game development for decades, enough to have excess millions of dollars to get us off the ground self-developing - so to flip your questions on you; why do you think you are better qualified to make harsh assessments on how we should or shouldn't operate, or what does or doesn't work? You made so many other wrong assumptions I really don't have the time or energy to touch upon, but as a general piece of advice, 'googling' a solution out of context or your depth of understanding in a specific situation to then think you're an expert on a subject is a trap I recommend you try to stop falling for. I can make a unit's eyes glow in 5 minutes, again I studied art, animation, modeling - that doesn't mean it's right for the game or situation, there are performance costs and other issues that go well over my head and (i'll now allow an assumption I think is fair) also yours after a google search. That's is why I asked someone with 25 years experience in engineering / programming who also has the widest overview of our systems and capacities and the way they're set-up. (NOT an artist as you assumed btw, but just add that to the tally of incorrect leaps you made)
I apologize if my honesty in responding comes across harsh; I don't expect i'll convince you of anything and I am most definitely not interested in a back-and-forth with you today as I have other things to do and I don't expect everyone will like the game or it's direction, but by large, loads of people do and in general feedback has been overwhelmingly positive from almost everyone who's gotten their hands on the game, so I just wanted to clear things up for others reading to get a different perspective.
I'll file this under "how not to respond to criticism" for future reference the next time my art gets criticized by a stranger on the internet and I get emotional about it. Or maybe "a lesson in how not to community manage."
On January 19 2024 04:16 Ideas wrote: Just watched artosis’ breakdown video and while I wish the game beat of luck it seems too complicated to find an audience. 4 factions, multiple heroes, multiple upgrades for every unit, a big ability tree, AND multiple mercenary factions that mix and match with the factions every match? Just seems like too much, even for rts fans. Also seems impossible to balance.
I think they need to get rid of the mercenaries or the heroes to streamline things a bit but i have a big feeling those are in there for “Games as service” purposes so that they can keep adding in more of each.
I watched another match to look a little closer with a different perspective but I couldn't really convince myself to walk back on many opinions, and formed more criticisms about the faction and talents systems that just seemed messy before.
It's the kind of messy that makes me wonder if the designers really playtested the game before making the decision to go in that direction, or if they just did it for the sake of having as many combinations as possible to show off a big number for marketing or monetization like you say.
Even if they did playtest and think about them a lot and don't plan on exploiting it all for microtransactions, it feels like way too much to have to choose two factions then talents or global abilities before the game starts, and then choosing a hero and tech path while figuring out what every single unit ability is and managing a big army (or even trying to watch big armies of multiple units all around the map). It looks like a design/balance nightmare for two or even three people (seemingly CatZ and Scarlett with Maguro for co-op and map design according to the Kickstarter blurbs) because, mathematically, it is a balancing nightmare.
Adding pick and ban systems before the game starts or having soft pick/ban systems during the game (i.e. Warcraft 3 tavern or Dota items) can only do so much.
I thought the global abilities/talents system was an out-of-game account progression system but it's actually an in-game progression system on top of the army comp and tech tree decisions. Most players, once they figure out what's going on with the factions or the tech trees or the talent trees, will probably plan out all of their progression before the game starts and let hard counters and cheese builds happen. Or they'll have fun doing all kinds of crazy things for a while then leaving to play the next flashy game of the month or their old comfort game. I feel like it needs to be broken up and simplified somehow, like the commander abilities in Company of Heroes (pick a tree, one simple choice every few minutes that either gives you a global ability or a new unit, only five or six things per tree iirc), or giving each faction or mercenary group its own super simple progression path with only one or two actual choices, or merging it with the tech tree to be one complicated system instead of two separate complicated systems. Or just removed for now, and changed and developed for a while into something unique for co-op or single-player, then possibly brought back later.
Like, maybe just make some of this stuff dead simple, straightforward, with much fewer choices in- or out-of-game, and slowly add mechanics/systems and choices over a year or three while focusing on core gameplay priorities. But it seems like SC2 pros are starting to use all the systems and are going to start playing in tournaments soon, so maybe they feel stuck in this messy design situation (if they're even thinking about it anymore).
I agree with a lot of the "it looks complicated but not deep" opinions, and disagree with the comments praising its innovations, strategic/tactical or otherwise. Personally, I also don't like this style of "lots of choices to make, lots of possible combinations" direction with strategy games. Even though a lot of stuff looks like MOBA stuff slapped onto SC2, it feels so different from Dota 2 (a game I actually really like) and so much messier even though I've only been watching 1v1 games.
The same goes for the visuals. It doesn't look like each "major" faction has a cohesive aesthetic (the blue and gray boxy humans also have some tan and purple curvy units), and every player has one major faction and one minor faction. Looking at SC2, there was a big emphasis on making sure you could tell which upgrades every unit had just by looking at them which helps all players figure out what's going on with their opponents, but every unit in this game has so many possible upgrades that I can't imagine it being feasible unless the team/budget is way bigger than it seems. Although LoL and Dota 2 don't do this (afaik), each hero in those games only does a few things (or one thing you care about), there are only five big units per side with a lot of overlapping attributes within each hero type/class/role, and most other units/creeps don't have any special abilities and their passive attributes like armor types are clearly visually communicated and aren't really important at most levels of play.
I'd be curious to see how gold to diamond league matches play out, I guess for scientific purposes, not because I think it'd be fun to watch two people suffer through. I also don't actually want to play it myself yet at all despite thinking "okay, that's kinda cool" or "that could have been a great visual direction to go with" a few times.
I don't have a lot of time to address everything in detail
So why are you here wasting time commenting, then? Did somebody call you and ask? I don't need your immediate feedback, and even said I think it's better if the game gets an update post/video every month or so instead of these very weird windows into messy development life.
Why does a game designer have input on art? Is there an art director?
Yes, we do have an art director - we have meetings and syncs with every department scheduled throughout the week. I take my feedback and feedback pertinent to my team and work with them to implement and execute on a shared vision. Marv, product owner / game director, whose vision we're all executing on, was also on this meeting, and is also in most other meetings with department heads.
I have input on loads of areas, lead versus designer is just a title, this is a start-up and I am the type of person who thrives in making connections in many different areas - my role is actually very similar to what I did in my 4 years at Blizzard while I was a consultant in Irvine (though that was more limited in scope / time). Without going into detail, I can say that I had input and worked in -many- areas of the game (SC2), pertinent to this discussion, I did art/mock-ups for in-game UI and I even had a presentation on exactly that at a StarCraft 2 community summit - so there's even witnesses galore.
Cool story, bro. And the featured artist who also worked on SC2 shoved out some garbage AI art for the Kickstarter and Steam page. Their experience in the industry doesn't make their art or methods immune to criticism and, in my opinion, kind of makes certain criticisms or expectations more valid.
Even at a large enterprise like Blizzard this isn't a foreign process - of course I also worked on design/balance but for some people who get immersed in projects it's much more useful to navigate and explore in many directions and get different vantage points - maybe this won't easily register with you if you prefer to operate with more of a 1 track mind.
What part of me analyzing several different aspects of the game from multiple perspectives makes it seem like I operate with a 1 track mind or don't immerse myself in projects?
In reality, you need people with high level overviews of projects and situations to make sensible decisions that are pertinent to many different areas of any enterprise
Did you miss the parts where I said it looks like the game is lacking exactly that—directors, art directors, people following clear visions, themes, and directions with all the visual and gameplay designs—implying that it's important?
For example in sc2 I've been simultaneously a pro player, streamer, designer, team owner, influencer, commentator / analyst, content producer, coach, team captain, blizzard game consultant etc. and in the time that I focused on any of it, I succeeded at all of it. As a player / in game I also explored very many different areas vs iterating on 1 track like many prefer to do and excel at doing, there's simply room and value to be found in all sorts of approaches to problems and life, it's of course easy to think that 'your way' is the best way, but it's also when you make authoritative statements and assumptions that you close yourself from perspective and ultimately growth in any area.
So, me saying it feels like there are better ways to design/develop this game to better appeal to different types of people/players doesn't count as a different perspective so you should close yourself off from it?
This comes across as really narcissistic, tbh, it sounds like a tirade from one of my hypocritical parents or the abusive relationship I recently had where they would bring up stuff like this as a way to try to talk over me or distract from the actual topic. Or maybe it's like a kid interrupting the conversation to talk about all the gold stars they've gotten this week, which, good for those kids, but you're not one of them so why do I care. It's bad communication even if it isn't that toxic or that naive.
As far as art, to further address your "concern", I went to school for and have a degree in Media Arts and Animation as well as Graphic Design.
Okay, good for you dude. To me and lots of other people, the game's UI still sucks and its art direction is inconsistent in some areas or comes across as a SC2 ripoff in others. Maybe keep working on developing the game instead of telling people your life story that isn't really relevant?
I also played RTS for 25 years, and have probably played more ZeroSpace than just about anyone and I am the lead game designer - so idk that you can be much more qualified than I am to propose a direction on the legibility of an ability in-game.
I would argue that you might also have the most narrow perspective on the game and getting alternate opinions from people outside yourself and your team is an important part of art and design and is especially important if not explicitly necessary for multiplayer game development.
For instance, I can tell not just "that" I can't properly see or register an ability, I can also tell (and show) exactly why - where the Art director talented as they are has a different vantage point that is complimentary in other areas and can produce with their team an asset that satisfies my needs as a player / designer and fits our in-game aesthetic direction. Working together, we can produce a better product - I don't see anything wrong with that process, yet you seem to think that people are only capable of or should only have input in 1 type of task? I'm really curious what in your life experience / at work has you convinced in thinking this narrowly.
This transition and paragraph isn't very coherent to me. Where did I say you shouldn't work together? I literally called out someone in the dev talk for not seeming very collaborative on a topic that I feel demands a high degree of sustained cooperative iteration.
To your other, from my vantage point, myopic assumption/criticism: "Why are they not addressing campaign?"
Because this was one of our -versus design- meetings (??????????) You just got insights from the video into a tiny portion of what's going on internally in -one- meeting of -one- department and extrapolated all of these weird conclusions. We have 35+ developers and I work with most of them, It's a concerted effort making a game, not just delivering individual disjointed pieces to assemble a larger one.
Way to blow my thoughts out of proportion. And using your word of the day again, and the question mark spam, nice.
Since you couldn't tell, I wasn't literally only talking about the dev talk in all of my comments. Looking at other updates, there didn't seem to be anything significant related to single-player modes, and the dev talk made it seem like nobody was working on the campaign right now because everything from glitchy units to special effects and making new hero models was being discussed predominantly with regards to versus mode or alluded to as if the other modes don't exist, which I felt was weird. If the single-player and co-op modes actually are being worked on or the Kickstarter backers actually decided together that they want the team to focus on versus mode first, that's great, maybe talk about that or make an update focused on that next week or month or however often the team thinks is best.
If none of my criticisms apply to any other dev meeting you've ever had with this team, then why are you trying so hard to prove them wrong instead of ignoring it and confidently moving on? To me, that's a big red flag that you might not be confident in your approach or in your team, or you are stressed from overwork, or both, or something else is going on.
Teams of hundreds of developers with multi-million dollar budgets have put out terrible games plenty of times, as have teams of very few people with no money, and in this case the game sometimes looks and feels like a bunch of disjointed pieces assembled together. But thanks for giving me a slightly better idea about how many people are working on this project.
Marv (and many of our developers) have been in the industry and had successful ventures in game development for decades, enough to have excess millions of dollars to get us off the ground self-developing
Good for you, so happy for your combined success. Maybe you can use all that money on lessons for taking criticism better or hiring a community or PR manager. Or maybe Marv can talk about the game or whatever some time to give you a break.
why do you think you are better qualified to make harsh assessments on how we should or shouldn't operate, or what does or doesn't work?
Big assumption there. It was some afternoon thoughts from someone who calls themselves "blunderful" on internet video game forums, I'm at least that self-aware most times. Literally never said I was better qualified to make harsh assessments, I just made some observations and communicated my feelings about those obersations.
And again, there is actually an argument to be made that you could be too invested or have too specific of a perspective to evaluate everything very well all the time. But if you don't think my ideas are worthy for your consideration, you can choose to not follow them or not listen to them in the first place. It's a forum post (or social media post, or whatever the case may be for other criticisms you might encounter in the future), not a legally binding contract.
You made so many other wrong assumptions I really don't have the time or energy to touch upon, but as a general piece of advice, 'googling' a solution out of context or your depth of understanding in a specific situation to then think you're an expert on a subject is a trap I recommend you try to stop falling for. I can make a unit's eyes glow in 5 minutes, again I studied art, animation, modeling - that doesn't mean it's right for the game or situation, there are performance costs and other issues that go well over my head and (i'll now allow an assumption I think is fair) also yours after a google search. That's is why I asked someone with 25 years experience in engineering / programming who also has the widest overview of our systems and capacities and the way they're set-up. (NOT an artist as you assumed btw, but just add that to the tally of incorrect leaps you made)
Again, I never said I was expert. But I do know enough about 3D modeling, texturing, shaders, and animation as a hobbyist that it felt weird for anyone to hem and haw over making glowing eyes given the amount of fairly well-polished assets in the game (a testament to the work done so far that you seem to have completely missed), so I did some research which made it look like my gut feeling was correct. I literally watched multiple people teach others how to do emissive layers in multiple engines and the comparatively janky SC2 world editor in a few minutes, reminding me of how I did it a decade ago when it was much more complicated to learn compared to now, so I pointed it out. Now, you're criticizing me for that while also saying you could make a unit's eyes glow in 5 minutes? So I was right that it is very easy and not at all time consuming to do and, thus, not worth hemming and hawing about?
If it might not be right for the game or situation then why did you tell someone to do it? Do you think it was a bad decision? I must be missing where that part of the paragraph came from.
And did you really miss the parts where I said there are some cool things about the game and some of the art? I guess they were footnotes and easy to gloss over, so whatever. Well, to make it more clear, here you go: it looks like a StarCraft 2 ripoff in so many ways from the elevated terrain and ramps to the high-quality doodads and floor textures as well as several unit models that I'm surprised these assets weren't ripped from an unreleased update for StarCraft 2 or Heroes of the Storm by Blizzard, which is a big compliment to all the environment and 3D character artists who, unlike the 2D character portrait artist's AI art curating, should feel genuinely proud of their work so far.
I apologize if my honesty in responding comes across harsh; I don't expect i'll convince you of anything and I am most definitely not interested in a back-and-forth with you today as I have other things to do and I don't expect everyone will like the game or it's direction, but by large, loads of people do and in general feedback has been overwhelmingly positive from almost everyone who's gotten their hands on the game, so I just wanted to clear things up for others reading to get a different perspective.
Ah, I see, you were just being honest to me and just wanted to "clear things up for others", ohhh, that changes everything! I went back and edited some of my responses after reading this again.
This whole post comes across as extraordinarily desperate and is tremendously unprofessional, not like an experienced or confident or open-minded team leader. I almost typed "or a communicative one" but it's in fact very communicative, just about all the wrong things in my opinion.
(Everyone not liking everything is a given, you don't magically get brownie points for pointing that out, c'mon.)
Why make this whole rant if you don't actually care about my criticisms and also don't have the time? Or ,why not respond to someone else's comments? Why type so many lines talking about yourself and your past instead of the 35+ other people and the work they're doing on the game, or focus on what you're doing in the present or near future?
The more I read from this the more it comes across as a con artist trying to distract people and hide something. I didn't even say the game looks like complete shit like plenty of other comments I've seen all over the place, and actually took the time to look at it and think about it on a deeper level instead of hand waiving aside its entire existence. If you're working hard on the game and cooperating with a team of people who are also working hard, there shouldn't be any reason to make this post.
It makes me wonder if you felt the need to interrupt the thread to prevent someone else from replying to my post and agreeing or making more critcisms. I've written "criticism" so many times it doesn't look correct anymore, leading me to edit then unedit it, leading it to look even more incorrect to me, leading me to googling how it's spelled but it still looks incorre-
Cheers / Bye.
Oh my gosh, I'm honored. I genuinely haven't gotten a seemingly, arguably toxic-looking cheers/bye in so long! lol I honestly love that, that's amazing. I love this forum. It's hard to believe I'm still visiting it after... 12 (?) years, no, that can't be right...
CatZ, take a deep breath (not one of those huffy short breaths, an actual deep breath or two) and go work on your game, dude. Maybe take a break from social media or ask for an extra day off work to decompress (and, just a suggestion, don't spend your day off doom scrolling on forums, or copy-pasting replies excusing low-tier AI art on social media, a little bit of social media and replying is fine but it can seriously effect your mental health even then).
Maybe also make a mental note to not shoot yourself and your game or your team in the foot with posts like this in the future. I, for one, am honestly going to be extremely suspicious about its development and your involvement with it compared to some other universe in which you didn't make this post and I'm happily forgetting about the game or my criticisms and getting subconsciously primed for excitement when a big update comes into my field of view later on. Oh but I forgot you really don't care about my presumably unexperienced opinion. Well, nevermind all that, then.
Cheers.
Okay, not cheers, that's just me consciously shit-posting one time, my bad my bad, I couldn't help it. I'll try to do better next time, sorry, nobody needs that when they're stressed.
Hey, I just realized sometimes even bad exposure can still be exposure, so maybe this was actually good for the game in the long run! Valid strategy, valid strategy, even if I'm not a fan of it myself. And it seems like the game could use a little more exposure compared to its main competitor, so, cool. A positive nugget from a different perspective I hadn't yet realized, there ya go team.
On January 19 2024 11:57 blunderfulguy wrote: don't spend your day off doom scrolling on forums, or copy-pasting replies excusing low-tier AI art on social media, a little bit of social media and replying is fine but it can seriously effect your mental health even then).
I suggest the ZeroSPace people turn the mysterious, inegmatic, unknowable "Art Director" into a plot point. They can create a plot thread along the lines of "Who Is John Galt?". Instead it will be "Who Is The Art Director?"
@ROOTCatZ Is there any website where I can read something about the tournament Winter Bash? Is there a game wiki or anything besides the challonge tournament tree? Found nothing on the ZeroSpace Twitter about the winner or did I miss something?
Man, I had really gotten my hopes up about Stormgate, but it's falling through fast. I'm increasingly getting behind ZeroSpace, better graphics, more creativity, and the team seems hungrier to make a great product than Stormgate. Stormgate is starting to look like a crash grab that's trying to coast off of the early declaration of being the great successor to Blizzard RTS.
After playing the zerospace alpha last month and stormgate during their open beta here's my plan going forward
Play zerospace Watch SC2
I'm pretty convinced people are going to love playing it once they get their hands on it. I don't feel the need to make any excuses for it to my friends like I do with SG. I believe you will all see what I'm talking about about when you get to play and compare them.
In my opinion It's the modern iteration on SC2 that SG should have been. A ton of energy and attention is going into SG that should be focused on ZS if we want a new RTS to succeed
Is there a way I can say this game looks cool without mentioning Stormgate? I thought it'd be easy but it seems hard for everyone else
Admittedly it's very, very hard.
I don't feel the need to make any excuses for it to my friends like I do with SG.
I know what you mean! The macro is very nice especially, and the micro is way more interesting.
Heroes are very nice as well. These aren't WC3 heroes. They're the core focus for early game micro. Then they sort of fade into the background, still useful, but more supporting. Legion being a bit of an exception, since they can have 3 simultaneously.
Xol faction also looks like it'll bring a totally new level of weirdness. Not Grey Goo morphidians weird, not Earth 2160 morphidians weird, but sufficiently new in the SC2 spiritual successor space.
Looks like ZeroSpace is entering a new Alpha phase with a lot of new units and gameplay updates. Also, they're doing some giveaway events + hosting another $10k tournament to help promote it.
Man all the new stuff is so fun. Arandi is a bit cracked rn but in general I just love all the innovation. It's like a great festive soup of RTS mechanics. Still a lot of refining required, but so much fun.
Pretty interesting new development with ZeroSpace planning to have a PvE/coop 'massively multiplayer' mode. Basically, looks like a persistent, neverending campaign that players can participate in and grind like any other PvE game. Really interesting to see if they can actually implement this with all the features they want (seems REALLY ambitious).
Obviously, things could change (if it ever gets completed at all), but not really sure about the pseudo-PvP aspect where different player factions compete for control of planets by grinding PvE missions. I feel like this kind of competition probably isn't appealing to the PvE RTS crowd (esp the kind that don't have time grind mass games), and the game would prolly be better served with a Helldivers style persistent campaign where they're all working together against a non-player enemy.
Pretty interesting new development with ZeroSpace planning to have a PvE/coop 'massively multiplayer' mode. Basically, looks like a persistent, neverending campaign that players can participate in and grind like any other PvE game. Really interesting to see if they can actually implement this with all the features they want (seems REALLY ambitious).
Obviously, things could change (if it ever gets completed at all), but not really sure about the pseudo-PvP aspect where different player factions compete for control of planets by grinding PvE missions. I feel like this kind of competition probably isn't appealing to the PvE RTS crowd (esp the kind that don't have time grind mass games), and the game would prolly be better served with a Helldivers style persistent campaign where they're all working together against a non-player enemy.
I like this system. PvE players are very grindy and it's better than only having a hero level up, and then the game sort of ends with a maxed level hero.
It looks interesting at least. Wouldn’t be exactly what I had in mind but I’ve long felt some kind of persistent, MMO-ish PvE could be fantastic if anyone can pull it off
That's interesting but feels like a massive pivot and a weird take on a "real-time grand strategy" or MMORTS concept.
"Just like joining the Horde or Alliance in World of Warcraft" feels totally inaccurate, pointless, annoying.
I can imagine joining planets to play co-op commander or solo challenge scenarios that contribute to faction/race progress on that planet and give you buffs/rewards for victories on the planet/sector, or some of your team's tech choices and epic construction projects persisting on the planet/map. It does remind me of pipe dreams people used to shared about a Planetside 2 or Battlefield 2142 style RTS/MOBA, or pieces of we imagined could happen with Dust 514 and EVE. Helldivers RTS is also a new craving, of course.
I think I'd rather have this as a grand strategy layer to a solo campaign, or as vignettes in supplemental stories you can progress with solo or online play instead of a full-on multiplayer grand strategy grindfest mode that will inevitably be dominated by one faction/guild on the server/sector.
Right now it looks like SC2 co-op with extra fluff around commander levels and an excuse to say "it's like WoW." Maybe some more developments could make it really special.
Neat update apparently free from new AI art or blockchain junk aside, after remembering how nice some of the map textures were and wondering what else has been happening with the game visually or mechanically, scrolling through pages and pages of "wishlist us!" and AI-generated robot image spam on twitter didn't exactly help my repeatedly crushed-then-renewed-then-crushed-again sense of possible hope for the future of RTS.
There was this a couple weeks ago, though:
The ice environment looks cool except for the giant mounds of smooth blue resin. Get some ripples or frosting or chunks of opacity in them and I bet they'd look great.
On September 20 2024 01:58 blunderfulguy wrote: That's interesting but feels like a massive pivot and a weird take on a "real-time grand strategy" or MMORTS concept.
"Just like joining the Horde or Alliance in World of Warcraft" feels totally inaccurate, pointless, annoying.
I can imagine joining planets to play co-op commander or solo challenge scenarios that contribute to faction/race progress on that planet and give you buffs/rewards for victories on the planet/sector, or some of your team's tech choices and epic construction projects persisting on the planet/map. It does remind me of pipe dreams people used to shared about a Planetside 2 or Battlefield 2142 style RTS/MOBA, or pieces of we imagined could happen with Dust 514 and EVE. Helldivers RTS is also a new craving, of course.
I think I'd rather have this as a grand strategy layer to a solo campaign, or as vignettes in supplemental stories you can progress with solo or online play instead of a full-on multiplayer grand strategy grindfest mode that will inevitably be dominated by one faction/guild on the server/sector.
Right now it looks like SC2 co-op with extra fluff around commander levels and an excuse to say "it's like WoW." Maybe some more developments could make it really special.
Neat update apparently free from new AI art or blockchain junk aside, after remembering how nice some of the map textures were and wondering what else has been happening with the game visually or mechanically, scrolling through pages and pages of "wishlist us!" and AI-generated robot image spam on twitter didn't exactly help my repeatedly crushed-then-renewed-then-crushed-again sense of possible hope for the future of RTS.
The ice environment looks cool except for the giant mounds of smooth blue resin. Get some ripples or frosting or chunks of opacity in them and I bet they'd look great.
I think it's cool to introduce a grander scale to this. Helldiver 2 is a good game but what really caught people was the galactic war and fight for planets. If you can catch that spark and put it in a RTS? Great! But, and that is a BIG BUT, the RTS gameplay in itself has to be great as well. Feature complete, fluent, fun. Otherwise this "MMO-lite" mode will be a waste of money better spend on the game itself. To the above: I don't really see Helldivers 2 as an RTS but could be great as a turn based tactical game like Commandos or Jagged Alliance. You got your Helldivers with different loadouts and different skills and stuff. And sometimes things go horribly wrong lol
Upcoming Playtesting Dates Mark your calendars! We have three playtesting phases coming up, and we can't wait to get you back into the game.
1. Alpha Test: November 1-8 This will be a closed alpha test. We are trying out a lot of changes, some of them very experimental, so your feedback during this phase will be crucial as we fine-tune core gameplay mechanics.
2. First Beta Test: November 15-21 Our beta phase will allow for a more polished experience. We welcome streaming during this period to help spread the word about ZeroSpace!
3. Free Demo Weekend: November 22-24 To cap off our testing phase, we're opening the gates to everyone! This 72-hour demo will give players a taste of what ZeroSpace has to offer.
Don’t have early access yet? Consider supporting us on Backerkit! A pledge level of Solar Monarch or higher gets you instant access to the beta, while Sector Overlord or higher gets you into the alpha: https://bit.ly/ZeroSpaceBackerKit
During each playtest, please share your thoughts, report bugs, and suggest improvements by joining our Discord! Your input during these playtests will be invaluable in helping us create the best possible gaming experience. We can't wait to see you in-game and hear your thoughts!
In the meantime, check out the community-built website, zerospace.gg, for information on unit stats, maps, ZeroSpace basics and more! You guys are awesome and we definitely have one of the best communities out there!
Thank you for your patience and support of our project. This would not be possible without you! The feedback, excitement, and discussions we see from all of you help to keep our team invigorated and aiming to create the best RTS experience possible!
Seeing some streams Catz was doing, looks kinda interesting.
I don’t really know what the fuck is going on, but I think design wise it looks better than Stormgate which I guess is the main competitor. There seems to be a ton of consistent skirmishing around objectives too. UI looks quite clean too.
There seems to be some quite cool unit interactions too. There some merc riflemen who have to set themselves into a like of fire to maximise their DPS, and you can direct that zone. But they have to remain stationary to do this.
There’s some things that SEEM QoL improvements too, but I’m not sure if it’s just variable voice lines or w/e
There’s a ‘enemy spotted’ and an ‘enemy in range’ prompt, versus the usual ‘you are being attacked’ which I quite like. But I’m not sure if it’s just an additional voice line to denote these same things, or a prompt that enemies are entering your sight range.
If it’s the latter I quite like it, you still have to swap to the minimap to figure where enemies are, but it’s a nice early warning system versus ‘there are things in your mineral line and they’re attacking you’
I’m still not super sure, that seems nice.
A lot of other stuff it’s hard to tell just from a stream and would have to try myself.
On February 21 2024 11:40 TheDougler wrote: Man, I had really gotten my hopes up about Stormgate, but it's falling through fast. I'm increasingly getting behind ZeroSpace, better graphics, more creativity, and the team seems hungrier to make a great product than Stormgate. Stormgate is starting to look like a crash grab that's trying to coast off of the early declaration of being the great successor to Blizzard RTS.
I forgot I wrote that... Think I nailed it.
Had a fun weekend of ZeroSpace. It's got a lot going for it! Just feels incredibly empty at the moment, but that will change, I think.
I really hope GiantGrantGames makes a badass video that gets his whole audience playing it during the free weekend coming up.
Also hope they have a good campaign, that would help a lot, though I'm fairly optimistic about that.
Giant Grant Games is such an unfortunate name though. I always think of Path of Exile... which is Grinding Gear Games and alreadys has the abbreviation of GGG solidly locked in
On November 18 2024 22:15 Zealgoon wrote: How's the shape of the game right now? I hope they don't release a super half-baked demo like Stormgate did in February.
It's MUCH, MUCH better than Stormgate in terms of development. I've been playing it for a bit and I really like what they're doing, and I'm excited for their campaign.
Looks like at release it's going to have all of the following going for it:
1. Galactic Warfare co-op mode (I really like this). 2. 2 player survival horde mode (also looks really cool). 3. A real campaign with RPG elements. 4. Versus with 4 main factions and 7 mercenary factions. 5. Really beautiful graphics and visual design (in my opinion).
Stormgate had like 70% of a working ladder, that's about it.
So, it's going to be a hell of a lot better than Stormgate, I can say that easily. But, that's not a high bar to clear. How big and revolutionary will it be? That's honestly really hard to say. It's a hell of a lot better than Stormgate though, I can tell you that.
On November 18 2024 22:15 Zealgoon wrote: How's the shape of the game right now? I hope they don't release a super half-baked demo like Stormgate did in February.
It's MUCH, MUCH better than Stormgate in terms of development. I've been playing it for a bit and I really like what they're doing, and I'm excited for their campaign.
Looks like at release it's going to have all of the following going for it:
1. Galactic Warfare co-op mode (I really like this). 2. 2 player survival horde mode (also looks really cool). 3. A real campaign with RPG elements. 4. Versus with 4 main factions and 7 mercenary factions. 5. Really beautiful graphics and visual design (in my opinion).
Stormgate had like 70% of a working ladder, that's about it.
So, it's going to be a hell of a lot better than Stormgate, I can say that easily. But, that's not a high bar to clear. How big and revolutionary will it be? That's honestly really hard to say. It's a hell of a lot better than Stormgate though, I can tell you that.
I watched some streams on youtube and wasn't terribly impressed with what I saw: - Galactic War: idk if I'm missing something but isn't this mode just playing the same mission again and agaim, and eventually the faction with the most free time wins? - Survival Mode: feels like it's basically just a coop mission. Nice, but nothing groundbreaking. - Campaign: not implemented right now afaik - Graphics: it's fine but still very unpolished. It does look MUCH better than Stormgate but that says a lot more about SG than ZS
To be clear, I'm not talking about the eventual release; I'm talking about the demo that is going to be playtested tomorrow. I think Stormgate's first public demo was extremely bad and had a very negative effect on the game's potential customers, so I hope ZS won't repeat the mistake. Not that SG's "official" release was any good, but still.
On November 18 2024 22:15 Zealgoon wrote: How's the shape of the game right now? I hope they don't release a super half-baked demo like Stormgate did in February.
It's MUCH, MUCH better than Stormgate in terms of development. I've been playing it for a bit and I really like what they're doing, and I'm excited for their campaign.
Looks like at release it's going to have all of the following going for it:
1. Galactic Warfare co-op mode (I really like this). 2. 2 player survival horde mode (also looks really cool). 3. A real campaign with RPG elements. 4. Versus with 4 main factions and 7 mercenary factions. 5. Really beautiful graphics and visual design (in my opinion).
Stormgate had like 70% of a working ladder, that's about it.
So, it's going to be a hell of a lot better than Stormgate, I can say that easily. But, that's not a high bar to clear. How big and revolutionary will it be? That's honestly really hard to say. It's a hell of a lot better than Stormgate though, I can tell you that.
The massive multiplayer mode announcement together with other plans made me quite worried about the game's development process because to me it looks like biting off way more than they can chew. Hope I'm wrong.
Tried this for a bit today with a friend. Much better than what I expected. Don't have the time to write a detailed essay right now, but if you're interested in a new RTS at all you owe yourself to check this one out. This game is so much better than Stormgate it's not even funny.
On November 24 2024 15:59 TheDougler wrote: Looking forward to hearing your thoughts about it when you do have time Zeal!
It's not just the time, I'm not good at writeups like that in general, but I'll try to describe what I liked.
Controls are pretty good. Faction level is cool. Mutally exclusive upgrade is cool. Mercs are cool. The creeping and presence of heroes turned me off initially, but when I played the game they didn't feel disruptive (mostly because heroes don't have an outsized impact on gameplay, and there's barely any creeping). Graphics are surprisingly polished for a game in early beta, it already looks better than Stormgate (admittedly just about anything looks better than Stormgate). Hard to comment on balance and multiplayer game flow since I played exactly one skirmish game against a real human and it's too early anyway, but I liked the overall concept.
Unlike Stormgate, this game is at least attempting to have a coherent world setting. Not that Terran fighting Vegatable Zerg fighting WH40K Chaos is particularly cool or innovative, but at least they aren't making you fight GIANT CHICKEN to acquire a WOODEN CATAPULT in a sci-fi setting, or shoving unfunny jokes down your throat every other minute in co-op.
The biggest thing, though, is that I felt the project itself was been managed more competently. I don't work in the game industry, I just feel that Zerospace is getting along faster than its competitors. IIRC, the game is scheduled to enter public beta by the end of 2025, so we're currently a year away from it's release, but they already have 3 races fully playable with (mostly?) complete unit rosters, 3 fully playable co-op missions, and a survival mode UMS. For comparison, Stormgate's public demo 6 months before its release featured 2 races, no T3 tech, and exactly one co-op mission; Immortal (which is also offering a public demo this weekend, in case anyone is not aware) doesn't even have an AI you can play against. This makes me hopeful that Zerospace is actually being developed on schedule, and won't be stuck in development hell until the devs run out of money so they have to rush an unfinished product out (like Stormgate).
Not everything is good, though; the UI is very rough, there's a lot of bugs, and unit clumping is as bad if not worse than SC2. I also disliked how derivative a lot of the units were; there's a guy who literally is a ravager (even looks the same).
I enjoyed the play test, it was actually a really fun weekend playing. At first I was pretty turned off but once I got to understand the mechanics a little better I started to enjoy the game a lot more, just like any other game I guess.
Overall thanks for the opportunity to try it and it was great!
Yeah I had lots of fun in the open beta as well, shame it clashed with immortal gate of pyre. Both games have way better thought out system than stormgate. Immortal with the third resource system, zerospace with the massive customisation tree, battle aces with deck building.
I only played a couple games against the AI. Lots of stuff going on, but I'm excited to try more later. Hopefully the campaign is fun and gradually introduces all the concepts to make onboarding an easy experience!
On November 27 2024 22:29 SoleSteeler wrote: I only played a couple games against the AI. Lots of stuff going on, but I'm excited to try more later. Hopefully the campaign is fun and gradually introduces all the concepts to make onboarding an easy experience!
That’s my big hope as well. There’s a lot going on so a good campaign to introduce it is gonna be key.
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