Stormgate - sci-fi/fantasy RTS from ex-Blizzard devs - now on Early Access

[Jaedar]

Blizzard's genius lay in how well it selected the things it took (Games Workshop's lore and look, Westwood's basic gameplay model), how well it refined them, and how high a level of polish it put on top of them (especially in voice acting). Neither the Steam page nor the cinematic elicits any positive reaction from me. It feels like they are trying to borrow from Blizzard, but that second-order borrowing doesn't seem particularly effective. A vaguely Diablo-Zerg hybrid fighting a vaguely Terran-Protosss hybrid with in a low energy MOBA-style cinematic has no particular resonance or impact. And the screenshots just look bad -- some weird fishbowl camera thing going on, no particular art direction in sight.

Arguably sc2 was already doing second order borrowing (it is just running stuff from the original into the ground, while making few/no additions. Taldarim are cool though), and sc2 also had a presumably insane budget that a new company can't match.

But well, it's going to be f2p, so there's no way I won't try it, and aside from the cinematic it doesn't look like it's borrowing moba game design (yet anyway).

 

[Venser]

 

[Feyd Rautha]

If it will use the contemporary Blizzard artstyle I wont touch it. Diablo and Starcraft looked good but from Warcraft 3 and onward their games have just looked like shit.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

against the real big bad evil guy

Let me guess - it will be a white straight man.

No, it will be space satan.

 

[Olinser]

I'm ultra skeptical of this. It was incredibly short on actual gameplay and details, which always concerns me.

And being a bit older, the trailer gave me an ULTRA Hellgate: London vibe. Where, exactly like this, they spent an awful lot of time producing a high-cost cinematic trailer instead of gameplay.

I'm willing to give it a chance but I'm definitely not optimistic right now.

 

[Jaedar]

And being a bit older, the trailer gave me an ULTRA Hellgate: London vibe. Where, exactly like this, they spent an awful lot of time producing a high-cost cinematic trailer instead of gameplay.

The hellgate london cinematic was actually great though, whereas the one stormgate presented felt like something a MOBA might put out to announce a new character.

Try it. It's free.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Lyric Suite]

People actually liked Dark Reign?

Are you serious? Dark Reign was great. One of the thoughest single player campaigns in an RTS ever. The last mission was a mindfuck.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Other than the Campaign Designer for The Frozen Throne, none of these guys worked on anything older than SC2. They'd have put it in their resume otherwise. Why are we getting excited, again?

Because SC2 is a great game (except for butthurt storyfags).

The story is so utterly abysmal it takes away from any positives the game may have, which is some decent unit design (though not on a level with SC1) and great skirmish AI.

Ho, and don't forget the unmitigated gimped disaster that was Battle.net 2.0.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Other than the Campaign Designer for The Frozen Throne, none of these guys worked on anything older than SC2. They'd have put it in their resume otherwise. Why are we getting excited, again?

Because SC2 is a great game (except for butthurt storyfags).

The story is so utterly abysmal it takes away from any positives the game may have, which is some decent unit design (though not on a level with SC1) and great skirmish AI.

Ho, and don't forget the unmitigated gimped disaster that was Battle.net 2.0.

Yeah, the story was terrible. tbh I don’t see how they could tell good stories with the poor foundation they had. But I digress.

Anyway, I hope Stormgate has a better story. Micky Neilson is the writer and he doesn’t have much writing to his credit aside from tie-ins for the Blizz games which were bestsellers based on name brand alone. But I strongly doubt he could ever be as incompetent as Metzen. But if he does screw up then I’ll be able to avoid it in advance

 

[Multidirectional]

Interview with UI designer.

 

[Multidirectional]

The story is so utterly abysmal it takes away from any positives the game may have

Somehow the quality of the story doesn't impact my 1v1 ladder experience one bit. Nor when I'm playing team games. And for those things the game is great, one of best multiplayer games I've ever played.
Sucks for people who only play campaign I guess, but I don't understand why anybody would prefer that over standard game mode. Campaign seems way more boring to play to me.

 

[Venser]

I don't care about the story, just about if it's gonna be a good and satisfying esports game. I have 24K ranked games played in SC2 and never even touched the single player.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Somehow the quality of the story doesn't impact my 1v1 ladder experience one bit. Nor when I'm playing team games. And for those things the game is great, one of best multiplayer games I've ever played.
Sucks for people who only play campaign I guess, but I don't understand why anybody would prefer that over standard game mode. Campaign seems way more boring to play to me.

Fair enough. If you don't care about campaign then it's not a problem. If you do...

Anyway, I keep seeing people say that they want the story to be more SC1 than SC2 because SC1 is better. Which I don't agree with. Although fans remember SC1's plot fondly, it's nowhere near as good as fans claim it is. Childhood nostalgia and headcanon obscures that. If Stormgate was that level of quality, it would be seen as horrible by the modern adult fandom without nostalgia goggles.

 

[Multidirectional]

I don't care about the story, just about if it's gonna be a good and satisfying esports game. I have 24K ranked games played in SC2 and never even touched the single player.

I do like what I heard from that UI designer in interview. I am all for making these games simpler to control. SC2 already has better controls than all the other RTS I've played, except for Supreme Commander (too bad it bores the shit out of me), but no doubt they could be made even better. Automated control groups and a macro panel are ideas I'm certainly down with. Losing a game because I fucked up the control group thanks to miss click while trying to add units/buildings to it is never fun, nor do I learn anything valuable from a loss like that.

Of course it's just one aspect of the game and it remains to be seen whether races they come up with are actually fun to play and interactions between units are as fun as in SC2.

 

[Olinser]

Somehow the quality of the story doesn't impact my 1v1 ladder experience one bit. Nor when I'm playing team games. And for those things the game is great, one of best multiplayer games I've ever played.
Sucks for people who only play campaign I guess, but I don't understand why anybody would prefer that over standard game mode. Campaign seems way more boring to play to me.

Sure. But if that's what they want to do, then they shouldn't have a story campaign at all.

That's what annoys people. Is that they advertise this crap about 'non-linear story', and it's just an excuse to not HAVE a meaningful story, despite their claims.

Like Elden Ring. That had barely even an excuse plot, and yet what did all the advertisements say? STORY WRITTEN BY GEORGE R R MARTIN!!!!!!!!!

 

[Multidirectional]

Yeah I'm 99% sure that storyfags have nothing whatsoever to look forward to with this game.

Anyway, I keep seeing people say that they want the story to be more SC1 than SC2 because SC1 is better. Which I don't agree with.

SC1 story is nothing special, but it at least has superior atmosphere to SC2. All that "Kerrigan is with the good guys now" shit is definitely more retarded than anything in SC1. Not that these things matter enough to make me prefer playing SC1 with its controls from hell.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

SC1 story is nothing special, but it at least has superior atmosphere to SC2. All that "Kerrigan is with the good guys now" shit is definitely more retarded than anything in SC1.

I would argue that SC1's story/lore is at war with itself. The plot of episode 1 terran campaign is a fairly generic good rebels vs evil empire story with some apocalyptic alien invasions going on in the background and... okay, the first problem we run into right off the bat is that the story is treating the apocalyptic alien invasions as a background element. The poor writing only compounds from there, but I'll spare you the details.

It boggles my mind that fans keep putting this story on a pedestal more than two decades later while discussing a different game. It's not just nothing special, it reads like the writer had no idea what to do with the premise. It's a terrible model for Stormgate's story to follow and this should be obvious.

 

[Multidirectional]

Maybe, I don't remember all of it now. I just recall replaying original three campaigns when I got SCR about 5 years ago and thinking the atmosphere was definitely superior to SC2. Either way I think playing RTS for the story is fucking retarded and if gameplay isn't your first top 10 priorities when playing these games you should just stay the fuck out of that genre altogether. Of course this is a forum full of storyfags so plenty of people won't agree with me.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Maybe, I don't remember all of it now. I just recall replaying original three campaigns when I got SCR about 5 years ago and thinking the atmosphere was definitely superior to SC2. Either way I think playing RTS for the story is fucking retarded and if gameplay isn't your first top 10 priorities when playing these games you should just stay the fuck out of that genre altogether. Of course this is a forum full of storyfags so plenty of people won't agree with me.

I actually do agree with you. Like MOBA, RTS doesn't need story and quite frankly I would be much happier now if back in the day SC never had a story. That said, my problem isn't that the story is bad. I could accept that just fine, just like I accept that water is wet and the sky is blue. My problem is all the people telling me that I'm wrong and a fake fan for thinking so. I got roped into so many fucking stupid flame wars with bad faith participants. Banned from several discords for not shutting up. Really aggravated my existing PTSD. Now I actively hate the SC IP, I think the storyfags are all fucking idiots with shit taste, and I get really peeved whenever some nostalgiafag praises that shit writing.

So I hope that the story of Stormgate is as awful as possible and pisses off the storyfags. I'm spiteful like that. Altho I expect that if it is terrible, then storyfags will just doublethink their way around it like they do for SC1; altho I don't expect this will be as successful in adulthood as it was when these players were children who first played, since children have the worst taste and form nostalgic attachments most easily whereas adults are much more discerning.

It's really cathartic to share my true feelings, particularly my intense hatred of SC storyfags who refuse to acknowledge the many flaws and put the story on a pedestal that it clearly doesn't deserve. Fuck them. Also, sorry if I offend anyone. I'm really passionate about coherent worldbuilding and my experiences with being gaslit by SC fandom were so fucking horrible that I have a tendency to paint with a broad brush.

 

[Multidirectional]

I'll be happy if story isn't garbage, as long gameplay doesn't suffer for it.

 

[Olinser]

Yeah I'm 99% sure that storyfags have nothing whatsoever to look forward to with this game.



SC1 story is nothing special, but it at least has superior atmosphere to SC2. All that "Kerrigan is with the good guys now" shit is definitely more retarded than anything in SC1. Not that these things matter enough to make me prefer playing SC1 with its controls from hell.

Wings of Liberty was a great campaign. The story was mediocre but serviceable, and the whole 'lul Jimmy can totally redeem Kerrigan' was laughably horrible, but the gameplay of the campaign itself was great. Heart of the Swarm was a dumpster fire from all perspectives because of how horribly unbalanced Kerrigan was, and Legacy of the Void was even worse with the ludicrously OP global abilities.

 

[hello friend]

Who are these people? How do you keep running into the fan police - I can't even surmise where people like that would hang out. SC1 story is not amazing by any stretch, it's better than a lot of rts games but it isn't top tier. I thought it was, but when I went back to play it again I realised it wasn't. However, comparing SC2's story favourably to it is such a strange take. SC2 story started off bad and only got worse. Wings of Liberty is one thing, but in Heart of the Swarm with the queens going rogue - really? Queens? They should have found an excuse to bring cerebrates back instead, maybe the swarm became too large or too spread out for kerrigan to manage on her own, or perhaps she needed to create some cerebrate-like lifeform in order to spread the swarm to an area where there was psychic interference of some sort, and the cerebrates eventually go rogue after a disruption in communication. Queens, though. That's the dumbest shit. But it gets worse. Legacy of the Void was the most anime, retarded and least interesting possible way they could have gone with the Xel'naga as set up in SC1. SC2 has fantastic mechanics, and honestly from a gameplay perspective the campaign has a lot of cool scenarios. But man, that story is something else.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Who are these people? How do you keep running into the fan police - I can't even surmise where people like that would hang out.

The official starcraft forums, for one. A scattering of other places. I don't visit those places anymore. Haven't done so in years.

They should have found an excuse to bring cerebrates back instead,

They legally can't. The cerebrates were retconned away after a legal dispute with Games Workshop that was settled out of court, even tho GW had no legal grounds to do so. It's still in force to the present, so cerebrates can never return to the franchise unless Microsoft's lawyers dispute the agreement. I know it's stupid but that's the deal.

But man, that story is something else.

Here's my idea for a story: reboot it. Start with the UED fighting off a zerg invasion, learning about them, then the protoss show up and start glassing terran planets, the UED send a counterinvasion of protoss space in revenge for the genocide, etc. Practically writes itself. Don't use space magic, don't make humans leaders of the zerg (i.e. don't introduce Kerry), don't introduce xel'naga, and you should be good.

 

[hello friend]

They legally can't. The cerebrates were retconned away after a legal dispute with Games Workshop that was settled out of court, even tho GW had no legal grounds to do so. It's still in force to the present, so cerebrates can never return to the franchise unless Microsoft's lawyers dispute the agreement. I know it's stupid but that's the deal.

hahaha that's amazing

the cerebrate ecosystem were one of the coolest things about the zerg