I can already say within 5 seconds of seeing the cinematic that I hate the art style. It looks safe and family-friendly, aimed for kids or young teens, marvelish. Bland.
I miss the Starcraft: Brood War aesthetic. Gritty, grounded, but with style. Even though it's 2D and dated, looking at that game still makes me all tingly...
@@DoktorNaibmys yep. That was made in resemblance to style of John Cameron's Aliens - dark, futuristic, mysterious, dangerous. Hard to imagine same folks followed this kid's park esthetic we see in the game.
@ntr86 I appreciate (and was even a little bit surprised) that they went with the same aesthetic for Alien Romulus. In terms of plot ot was really very bad, but it looked great. Especially in 2024 where all sci-fi movies have the Apple store look.
I honestly believe the biggest flaw in many modern RTS's is mission design. Pretty much every campaign mission in Starcraft 2 had some form of mechanic that would rush the player and put them under time constraints. It's ok to do this occasionally and certainly isn't anything new or unwelcome, but when it is done every single time it gets old and frustrating really fast. It annoyed the hell out of me cause sometimes I just wanted to take my time to build a big base and take over the map. It ruined the mission progression and power balance that I think of a lot of people enjoyed. Starting each mission turtling in a corner of the map, slowly growing stronger until you could strike out and claim more resources, expanding your influence while shrinking the enemies. Growing more powerful until the tables had turned and now the enemy was trapped in their base while you amassed your army and destroyed them in one final strike. It was a nice progression of power that was satisfying to see through. And, because the player wasn't rushed, often the enemy bases were pretty powerful fortresses, that took careful planning to pick apart and break. Red Alert had amazing map design for this, leaving just enough weaknesses in enemy bases for you to exploit. Now every mission forces you to go hard and go fast every single time and, because of this, the mechanics of the game had to be balanced around those rush mechanics, which also pigeonholed multiplayer balance into that sort of furious high APM gameplay as well. I just want to build a big monolithic base and with walls and towers and turrets and patrols. Is that too much to ask?
That is a very solid point and never thought of it like that! More Modern RTS like SC2 don't have those long missions where you start off with a small base and have to take on 2 or 3 other opponent built up bases nearlyas much. Those missions would take such a long time but once you beat them man was it every satisfying. its good to have healthy mix of mission types, because those time constraint missions can be fun once in a while like you say. Thanks for supporting the channel!
and of course if you are shown a timed objective (often with fog of war revealed over it) why would you go and explore? warcraft 3 second human mission did it amazingly, there were several hidden secrets, some barely telegraphed and hidden by out-of-place trees, that you could cut down revealing another path to explore with even voiced dialogue for finding whats there
For RTS games, one of the criteria I have for whether or not the worldbuilding is great is something I call the RPG check. Simply, would you want to play an RPG in the setting, either tabletop or CRPG? If the answer is no, then chances are the worldbuilding isn't interesting enough. People like to talk about skill-based mechanics in RTS games and the depth of the balance, and those are important but if the setting and atmosphere aren't quite up to par, chances are the campaign, story and factions are all going to be bland as well. I don't think it's a coincidence that people love Starcraft, Warcraft, Warhammer and even the LotR RTS games did really well. RTS games need to have an interesting and fleshed out world that the conflict takes place in. 9 times out of ten if you took somebody's favourite setting from a tv series or movie that had factions in conflict in it, and made an RTS out of it, people would rush to play it. Stormgate doesn't pass the RPG check for me.
Stormgate's flaw was trying to make a game for the purposes of an esport and building its foundation upon that. I haven't kept up on things but last time I checked (around a month ago) they still have yet to add full customization of hotkeys.
Developers should take a look at Red Alert 2, and understand why it's still being played to this day, even with for non-seasonal RTS players. The problem I see with new & modern RTS games, is that they often put in complex mechanics, to a point players have to remember each unit abilities & etc. This is coming from a gamer who often plays RTS back in my younger days. RTS games just needs to be simple & easy to understand. It's a thing that the Civilization franchise has been doing for the past 2-3 decades. Moba on the other hand, is much more different of terms of unit control and micro/marco management, Moba is pretty much close to Real-Time Tactics in terms of it's design philosophy.
That is a good point. I mean I personally don't mind the RPG aspects and abilities but it has to be done right, and shouldn't be the sole emphasis of the game/match. I agree with you Red Alert 2 is easy to understand and a very smooth game mechanically! Thanks for commenting and watching!
Starcraft has shitton of abilities that are hard to use because its outdated interface and it is far more played than ra2. So people are not afraid of active abilities.
One main aspect would be procedurally generated maps so players with the explorer type can express their skills through guessing patterns correctly and scouting gets an additional level through scouting resources, paths to the opponents, places to easily defend and attack, etc. Also, many different map types and biomes like in Age of Empires 2 and 4 would be nice to have. That increase the diversity and this increases the replayability. A lot of different tile sets like in Starcraft 2 would be also cool. The next main aspect is the possibility of building bases with an economy that distinguishes between factions and playstyles (power plants like pylons that support a limited amount of structures with energy would open up more strategic decisions). In addition, the possibility of defending bases through defensive structures and walls to buy time would increase the possibility of comebacks. This would also support 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, 5v5, and 6v6 games because teammates can't be easily focused by 2 or more opponents (Like in Age 2 for example). The third main aspect is action-packed and atmospheric music and unit sound like in C&C 1, C&C 2, and Starcraft. The last main aspect is a cool and serious faction design. I think many people like creatures from hell, but angels are pretty boring. An evil AI faction like Replicas from Stargate and or Terminator would be cool. So to have 2 evil factions is something new and would create an interesting interaction between infernals and the evil AI because you can easily explain why both fight against each other and are not allied. The evil AI wants to conquer the universe so they want to kill all infernals and all vanguards. Rest: The current unit design in terms of mechanics and micro potential is actually good but can be improved more.
To me everything about Stormgate just feels off graphics wise. Since the first teasers I just chalked it up to rough/beta stage graphics, pre-release SC2 was similarly fugly until they refined it, now I realize this IS the game's intended look and feel. They're really leaning toward the WC3 side of chunky unit size, detail, and animation and honestly I kinda hate it. I hope they do find success in carving out a niche but it's not for me.
Great video title, completely agree. It's also like they didn't dare make something too original in all aspects and ended up with bland. I also see a trend where they want to focus on 1 v 1, while all statistics show that most individual players play campaign. Get people into your game before you go esports!
I remember there was a video around somewhere on TH-cam of "signs a game will fail" one of them were "if the game is being made by ex devs of a successful game who departed from company and made their own studio" basically back4blood situation same here I think. Now on the "younger generations not being interested in RTS" I would say thats not entirely true? I met a decent bunch of 14-25 aged people who mainly play RTS , no RTS isn't as dead as you think it is simply its dwarfed by the much more casual call of duty and fifa. I hope this game succeeds I don't want it to fail it may be the RTS to bring back another golden age of RTS games I mean we got the age series remasters an upcoming warcraft 2 remaster , 2024 is a good year for RTS all we need is tempest rising being a success and this.
When I watched Day9 play this, I could not stop laughing at every single character design (in game model). They are all somehow awful, even for low detail models.
It is hard to come up with a complete new universe with 3 unique factions. Either go for realism or a cartoonesk style like warcarft 2 and 3. Stromgate looks just clunky chunky.
lol that is what I thought of when I first witnessed the back and forth between him and Amara. It was nearly as good as Arthas and Malganis' bickering. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Arthas story wasn't that original either, maybe for people who don't read fantasy, because it was a copy-paste of Elric of Melniboné - Moorcock popularized that whole trope of cursed sentient weapons that make people do bad stuff in modern fantasy.
Stormgate is another example of corporations taking over the gaming industry and worrying too much about maximizing their sales by simply copying phormulas that already exist and making everything as safe as possible. The result is a soulless and boring game without any character.
exactly, they tried to copy blizzard even the name is similar, and people were just like, ehh i rather play this 20 year old game, its a lot better. its so hard to compete with sc2, it cost 100 million to make, it was made by the brightest minds, those minds after they left blizzard went to work for nvidia, apple, tesla, twitch, amazon, etc. stormgate did not hire 1 single 180iq mathematician to balance this shit game.
from Blizzard to Frost Gigant (both ice topics) they created a game copied from sc2 but much much worse, with a lack of understanding in math and how to balance 3 races. even the units say the same thing than in sc2. the campaing is the same but worse. the ladder, filled with AI instead of real players. in bronze, all peoploe doing the exact same build? all of them hitting an all in at the same time? weird huh? how come all the new players already come with mechanics and all ins? 99.9% of my ranked games were against a fucking AI. this game is disgusting, as a sc2 master, as a aoe veteran, as a dota and lol entusiast, this game fucking SUCKS. rather play comand and conquer or even SPORE ajajajajaj
The genre of RTS has really plateaued. 30 years of "control units on an isometric grid" hasn't really brought any big innovations recently. The better innovations have been combining genres. RTS + RPG = warcraft 3. Maybe combine RTs with grand strategy somehow and make it multiplayer.
i had a dream of coding a game that mix rts with a shooter. do you know minecraft? they have the F5 key that changes how you view your character, you can chose 1st person view, or from top and so on. so this would be cool if you had a figt (imagine long 2-3 minutes fights like warcraft 3) and you could change your snipers pov to be in his eyes like a shooter game and snipe and put headshots on the oponent units by clicking their heads and doing extra damage. shooter rts would be amazing, imagine going inside the queen to headshot the reaper.
@@alviworld There have been games like that, I think one is coming soon.. doesn't really gel with people very well purely because it's a contrasting genre
@@DanteVerde-pt9zc i dont think you, a random dude, can tell what people will or will not like. drown your ego dude, your opinions are stated like you know for sure how the entire world think and that is just absurd.
Terrible art, horrifically bad AND unbalanced gameplay, outlandishly weird factions (and that does NOT work), and on top of that obvious DEI crap. Story is bland, art is bland, idea is bland. Terrible. Massive rework needed to salvage anything.
I can already say within 5 seconds of seeing the cinematic that I hate the art style. It looks safe and family-friendly, aimed for kids or young teens, marvelish. Bland.
My thoughts exactly. That art style works best for mobile games that need to be child friendly. Thanks for watching and commenting!
I miss the Starcraft: Brood War aesthetic. Gritty, grounded, but with style. Even though it's 2D and dated, looking at that game still makes me all tingly...
Little Tikes RTS
@@DoktorNaibmys yep. That was made in resemblance to style of John Cameron's Aliens - dark, futuristic, mysterious, dangerous. Hard to imagine same folks followed this kid's park esthetic we see in the game.
@ntr86 I appreciate (and was even a little bit surprised) that they went with the same aesthetic for Alien Romulus. In terms of plot ot was really very bad, but it looked great. Especially in 2024 where all sci-fi movies have the Apple store look.
I honestly believe the biggest flaw in many modern RTS's is mission design. Pretty much every campaign mission in Starcraft 2 had some form of mechanic that would rush the player and put them under time constraints. It's ok to do this occasionally and certainly isn't anything new or unwelcome, but when it is done every single time it gets old and frustrating really fast. It annoyed the hell out of me cause sometimes I just wanted to take my time to build a big base and take over the map.
It ruined the mission progression and power balance that I think of a lot of people enjoyed. Starting each mission turtling in a corner of the map, slowly growing stronger until you could strike out and claim more resources, expanding your influence while shrinking the enemies. Growing more powerful until the tables had turned and now the enemy was trapped in their base while you amassed your army and destroyed them in one final strike. It was a nice progression of power that was satisfying to see through. And, because the player wasn't rushed, often the enemy bases were pretty powerful fortresses, that took careful planning to pick apart and break. Red Alert had amazing map design for this, leaving just enough weaknesses in enemy bases for you to exploit.
Now every mission forces you to go hard and go fast every single time and, because of this, the mechanics of the game had to be balanced around those rush mechanics, which also pigeonholed multiplayer balance into that sort of furious high APM gameplay as well.
I just want to build a big monolithic base and with walls and towers and turrets and patrols. Is that too much to ask?
That is a very solid point and never thought of it like that! More Modern RTS like SC2 don't have those long missions where you start off with a small base and have to take on 2 or 3 other opponent built up bases nearlyas much. Those missions would take such a long time but once you beat them man was it every satisfying. its good to have healthy mix of mission types, because those time constraint missions can be fun once in a while like you say. Thanks for supporting the channel!
and of course if you are shown a timed objective (often with fog of war revealed over it) why would you go and explore?
warcraft 3 second human mission did it amazingly, there were several hidden secrets, some barely telegraphed and hidden by out-of-place trees, that you could cut down revealing another path to explore with even voiced dialogue for finding whats there
They are billions?
Stormgate: when being an esport is more important than being fun.
For RTS games, one of the criteria I have for whether or not the worldbuilding is great is something I call the RPG check. Simply, would you want to play an RPG in the setting, either tabletop or CRPG? If the answer is no, then chances are the worldbuilding isn't interesting enough. People like to talk about skill-based mechanics in RTS games and the depth of the balance, and those are important but if the setting and atmosphere aren't quite up to par, chances are the campaign, story and factions are all going to be bland as well. I don't think it's a coincidence that people love Starcraft, Warcraft, Warhammer and even the LotR RTS games did really well. RTS games need to have an interesting and fleshed out world that the conflict takes place in.
9 times out of ten if you took somebody's favourite setting from a tv series or movie that had factions in conflict in it, and made an RTS out of it, people would rush to play it. Stormgate doesn't pass the RPG check for me.
It was predictable but most sc2 bloggers were paid to promote this game. Dont see any of them playing it now
wtf is this story. Do the devs have NOTHING to say ? Really ?
I really want Stormgate to succeed. But so far it has been a let down.
Me too...
Stormgate's flaw was trying to make a game for the purposes of an esport and building its foundation upon that.
I haven't kept up on things but last time I checked (around a month ago) they still have yet to add full customization of hotkeys.
Developers should take a look at Red Alert 2, and understand why it's still being played to this day, even with for non-seasonal RTS players.
The problem I see with new & modern RTS games, is that they often put in complex mechanics, to a point players have to remember each unit abilities & etc. This is coming from a gamer who often plays RTS back in my younger days.
RTS games just needs to be simple & easy to understand. It's a thing that the Civilization franchise has been doing for the past 2-3 decades. Moba on the other hand, is much more different of terms of unit control and micro/marco management, Moba is pretty much close to Real-Time Tactics in terms of it's design philosophy.
That is a good point. I mean I personally don't mind the RPG aspects and abilities but it has to be done right, and shouldn't be the sole emphasis of the game/match. I agree with you Red Alert 2 is easy to understand and a very smooth game mechanically! Thanks for commenting and watching!
Starcraft has shitton of abilities that are hard to use because its outdated interface and it is far more played than ra2. So people are not afraid of active abilities.
One main aspect would be procedurally generated maps so players with the explorer type can express their skills through guessing patterns correctly and scouting gets an additional level through scouting resources, paths to the opponents, places to easily defend and attack, etc. Also, many different map types and biomes like in Age of Empires 2 and 4 would be nice to have. That increase the diversity and this increases the replayability. A lot of different tile sets like in Starcraft 2 would be also cool.
The next main aspect is the possibility of building bases with an economy that distinguishes between factions and playstyles (power plants like pylons that support a limited amount of structures with energy would open up more strategic decisions). In addition, the possibility of defending bases through defensive structures and walls to buy time would increase the possibility of comebacks. This would also support 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, 5v5, and 6v6 games because teammates can't be easily focused by 2 or more opponents (Like in Age 2 for example).
The third main aspect is action-packed and atmospheric music and unit sound like in C&C 1, C&C 2, and Starcraft.
The last main aspect is a cool and serious faction design. I think many people like creatures from hell, but angels are pretty boring. An evil AI faction like Replicas from Stargate and or Terminator would be cool. So to have 2 evil factions is something new and would create an interesting interaction between infernals and the evil AI because you can easily explain why both fight against each other and are not allied. The evil AI wants to conquer the universe so they want to kill all infernals and all vanguards.
Rest:
The current unit design in terms of mechanics and micro potential is actually good but can be improved more.
To me everything about Stormgate just feels off graphics wise. Since the first teasers I just chalked it up to rough/beta stage graphics, pre-release SC2 was similarly fugly until they refined it, now I realize this IS the game's intended look and feel. They're really leaning toward the WC3 side of chunky unit size, detail, and animation and honestly I kinda hate it. I hope they do find success in carving out a niche but it's not for me.
My first impression is SC2 when I see Stormgate. Those are going to be some big shoes to fill!
I wish we can eventually say as good or almost. I would be ok with that. so far it's been a let down. Thanks for the comment and watching!
Great video title, completely agree. It's also like they didn't dare make something too original in all aspects and ended up with bland. I also see a trend where they want to focus on 1 v 1, while all statistics show that most individual players play campaign. Get people into your game before you go esports!
I remember there was a video around somewhere on TH-cam of "signs a game will fail" one of them were "if the game is being made by ex devs of a successful game who departed from company and made their own studio" basically back4blood situation same here I think.
Now on the "younger generations not being interested in RTS" I would say thats not entirely true? I met a decent bunch of 14-25 aged people who mainly play RTS , no RTS isn't as dead as you think it is simply its dwarfed by the much more casual call of duty and fifa.
I hope this game succeeds I don't want it to fail it may be the RTS to bring back another golden age of RTS games I mean we got the age series remasters an upcoming warcraft 2 remaster , 2024 is a good year for RTS all we need is tempest rising being a success and this.
Come on man that art style is awful. The characters look and move like cheap action figures. It's impossible to take seriously.
When I watched Day9 play this, I could not stop laughing at every single character design (in game model). They are all somehow awful, even for low detail models.
really low poly, i dont know how units bug so hard if they are made with like 4 triangles each.
great information
It is hard to come up with a complete new universe with 3 unique factions. Either go for realism or a cartoonesk style like warcarft 2 and 3. Stromgate looks just clunky chunky.
Malganis... I mean Marlocv. Lol that made me crack up. Yea the story is not good. Hopefully they can at least nail the gameplay mechanics.
lol that is what I thought of when I first witnessed the back and forth between him and Amara. It was nearly as good as Arthas and Malganis' bickering. Thanks for watching and commenting!
great video gained a fan🔥
I'd play it still, since blizzard hasn't made any new rts content.
Stormgate has been lame. I am currently hopeful about Zerospace
Looks like Warcraft for Children
Arthas story wasn't that original either, maybe for people who don't read fantasy, because it was a copy-paste of Elric of Melniboné - Moorcock popularized that whole trope of cursed sentient weapons that make people do bad stuff in modern fantasy.
LOL! Online only! You can't play even campign without internet access! and as soon you are disconnected you would be dropped from play in 20 seconds
Stormgate is another example of corporations taking over the gaming industry and worrying too much about maximizing their sales by simply copying phormulas that already exist and making everything as safe as possible. The result is a soulless and boring game without any character.
exactly, they tried to copy blizzard even the name is similar, and people were just like, ehh i rather play this 20 year old game, its a lot better. its so hard to compete with sc2, it cost 100 million to make, it was made by the brightest minds, those minds after they left blizzard went to work for nvidia, apple, tesla, twitch, amazon, etc. stormgate did not hire 1 single 180iq
mathematician to balance this shit game.
i was excited for this game and then the art style was revealed and i lost all interest and knew the game was gonna be trash
from Blizzard to Frost Gigant (both ice topics) they created a game copied from sc2 but much much worse, with a lack of understanding in math and how to balance 3 races.
even the units say the same thing than in sc2. the campaing is the same but worse. the ladder, filled with AI instead of real players. in bronze, all peoploe doing the exact same build? all of them hitting an all in at the same time? weird huh? how come all the new players already come with mechanics and all ins? 99.9% of my ranked games were against a fucking AI. this game is disgusting, as a sc2 master, as a aoe veteran, as a dota and lol entusiast, this game fucking SUCKS. rather play comand and conquer or even SPORE ajajajajaj
The genre of RTS has really plateaued. 30 years of "control units on an isometric grid" hasn't really brought any big innovations recently. The better innovations have been combining genres. RTS + RPG = warcraft 3. Maybe combine RTs with grand strategy somehow and make it multiplayer.
i had a dream of coding a game that mix rts with a shooter. do you know minecraft? they have the F5 key that changes how you view your character, you can chose 1st person view, or from top and so on. so this would be cool if you had a figt (imagine long 2-3 minutes fights like warcraft 3) and you could change your snipers pov to be in his eyes like a shooter game and snipe and put headshots on the oponent units by clicking their heads and doing extra damage. shooter rts would be amazing, imagine going inside the queen to headshot the reaper.
@@alviworldinteresting. wut would lurkers and melee units see?
@@alviworld There have been games like that, I think one is coming soon.. doesn't really gel with people very well purely because it's a contrasting genre
@@DanteVerde-pt9zc i dont think you, a random dude, can tell what people will or will not like. drown your ego dude, your opinions are stated like you know for sure how the entire world think and that is just absurd.
Cool game is it on Xbox?
Nah its only on Steam as of right now. Don't think this RTS will ever be ported to console though. Thanks for the comment!
Terrible art, horrifically bad AND unbalanced gameplay, outlandishly weird factions (and that does NOT work), and on top of that obvious DEI crap. Story is bland, art is bland, idea is bland. Terrible. Massive rework needed to salvage anything.
Gen Z... No surprise they can't follow along with rts 😅
Hahaha😂
My first impression is SC2 when I see Stormgate. Those are going to be some big shoes to fill!
It's too bad because they are missing out on a lot!