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

[thesheeep]

The WC3 manual didn’t even bother to explore the possible internal politics and member states of each side. The plot was about epic heroes.

SC2 didn’t even have a manual, much less politics.

Blaming sequels for not explaining the internal politics again all over is a bit silly, tbh.
If you've played WC1 or at least WC2, you don't really need that - and those who came in first at WC3 could still look up the lore via internet and the previous games.

But yeah, SG doesn't explain anything, at all, going in.
You only get "some dude summoned demons, here's the daughter of his assistant 20 years later who looks like a frog, go play.".

There's definitely a thing like overexposition in games. SG does the opposite of that, which combined with the awful pacing in the missions (first mission is done in <10 minutes ) makes you detach from the story before it even really begins.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Blaming sequels for not explaining the internal politics again all over is a bit silly, tbh.
If you've played WC1 or at least WC2, you don't really need that - and those who came in first at WC3 could still look up the lore via internet and the previous games.

WC3 came out in 2002. The internet was still in its infancy then and game lore wikis weren’t a thing. If you hadn’t already played the previous games, then all you had was the WC3 manual to go on.

Anyway, that’s besides my point. The WC3 plot wasn’t about politics, it was about epic RPG heroes. The RTS part was tacked on at this point.

There's definitely a thing like overexposition in games.

It’s called an in-game codex and you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to. But if you want your IP to have any longevity before everyone gets burned out and loses interest, then you need to do some proper world building.

Warhammer and 40k is a good example. It’s been around for decades, has many hundreds of books, and hasn’t lost any steam or been driven into the ground like warstarcraft has. Female custodes are a drop in the bucket.

 

[Tyranicon]

Warhammer and 40k is a good example. It’s been around for decades, has many hundreds of books, and hasn’t lost any steam or been driven into the ground like warstarcraft has. Female custodes are a drop in the bucket.

There's a lot that you can rake Games Workshop over the coals for, but at least they're not Blizzard.

GW's IP also has the benefit of largely not being handled by video game writers.

And, if anybody's interested, there's several long ass essays on the main subreddit trashing the game's writing.

Personally I don't get the point of writing anything about it. Watching 30 seconds of their intro cinematic will tell you this game's writing chops. There's nothing more to say, I'm just here to watch the dumpster fire.

 

[ghardy]

If I was making an RTS nowadays, then I would put effort into the politics and organizations. It works wonders for 40k, after all.

Have you checked Tempest Rising? From what I gather, a modicum of effort has been applied to the setting and factions.

 

[ghardy]

GW's IP also has the benefit of largely not being handled by video game writers.

I think this is a good point.

What other games' stories or worlds were handled by non-gamers?
My intuition says that those games have to be RPGs or strategy games: they won't be FPSes. (But I could be wrong.)

 

[RaggleFraggle]

If I was making an RTS nowadays, then I would put effort into the politics and organizations. It works wonders for 40k, after all.

Have you checked Tempest Rising? From what I gather, a modicum of effort has been applied to the setting and factions.

Played the demo, yeah

 

[Camel]

WC3 came out in 2002. The internet was still in its infancy then and game lore wikis weren’t a thing. If you hadn’t already played the previous games, then all you had was the WC3 manual to go on.

Anyway, that’s besides my point. The WC3 plot wasn’t about politics, it was about epic RPG heroes. The RTS part was tacked on at this point.

Chris Metzen is a one trick pony but he perfected his trick with WC3 - three enemies put aside their differences and unite against a world-ending threat. The Human, Undead and the Night Elf Campaigns(my favourite) tell a great story about races, wars and heroes. I like RoC more than TFT and both campaigns are peak Blizzard. It didn't work quite as well in SC2 but WoL is one of the best RTS campaigns ever with imaginative missions, good plot, attention to detail.

Female custodes are a drop in the bucket.

There's a lot that you can rake Games Workshop over the coals for, but at least they're not Blizzard.

GW's IP also has the benefit of largely not being handled by video game writers.

GeeDubs are working hard to butcher and wokeify the Warhammer lore right now. Erda, inserting female Secret Service agents Custodes, wanting to make female Space Marines.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Chris Metzen is a one trick pony but he perfected his stick with WC3 - three enemies put aside their differences and unite against a world-ending threat. The Human, Undead and the Night Elf Campaigns(my favourite) tell a great story about races, wars and heroes. I like RoC more than TFT and both campaigns are peak Blizzard. It didn't work quite as well in SC2 but WotL is one of the best RTS campaigns ever with imaginative missions, godd plot, attention to detail.

Would you still enjoy peak Blizzard if it was retold today with original characters you had no nostalgic attachment to?

 

[Dayyālu]

GeeDubs are working hard to butcher and wokeify Warhammer lore right now.

GW only cares about the income. Economically they're doing spectacularly, between their tabletop and digital releases. They're essentially printing money. They do not care about ideology, never cared in the 30+ years of their existence and probably never will, they're not WoTC. Erda got skullfucked and murdered the following book after she was introduced because she wasn't liked. Everything GW does is for the bottom line.

Believe me, I'm a grog old enough that considers even the concept of playing Custodes a lore rape but GW gonna GW.


About Stormgate, after checking the vids I'm amazed by the.... well, art direction. Maybe I'm going to play this for funsies, but the cinematics linked in the previous page are puzzling at best. Some of the demons are adorable, some look like cartoony Disney villains and others like rejects from Doom Eternal. The humans look like the retarded cousins of Overwatch's art. When I see this I do not want to play 'em, RTS units beyond performance live and die by voice acting and striking imagery. Everyone remembers the Obelisks of Nod or the Starcraft Marine chatter. Stormgate ... puzzles me. For sure they didn't get the art people from Trench Crusade.

 

[Richard Leaks]

Just gonna repost this here

 

[RaggleFraggle]

GW only cares about the income. Economically they're doing spectacularly, between their tabletop and digital releases. They're essentially printing money. They do not care about ideology, never cared in the 30+ years of their existence and probably never will, they're not WoTC. Erda got skullfucked and murdered the following book after she was introduced because she wasn't liked. Everything GW does is for the bottom line.

Believe me, I'm a grog old enough that considers even the concept of playing Custodes a lore rape but GW gonna GW.

Has the rise of 3D printing and other competition made a dent in that? I've noticed that One Page Rules is making inroads in the miniatures market. They have a partner program and everything. Their Army Forge website allows other companies and individuals to post army lists.

 

[Dayyālu]

Has the rise of 3D printing and other competition made a dent in that?

In short? No. When a Guardsman squad is 40+ bucks for 10 plastic models, you're essentially printing money. Between that and gaming licenses (both Steam shovelware and mobile shovelware) they experienced only growth.

They don't care about femcustodes an' shit. I repeat, they aren't WotC that has been plagued by failed college baristas or Catalyst Game Labs that throws out Queer Stories in Battletech, GW is the devil you know that will only care about sales, bulldozing fan efforts and killing off female characters just because Pauldron Man sells. But enough about this, no offense.

 

[ArchAngel]

Just gonna repost this here

So the guy that was part of failed Generals 2 (Generals 1 is awesome and just needs a better engine) now came to ruin next big blizzard like RTS..

 

[ArchAngel]

Chris Metzen is a one trick pony but he perfected his stick with WC3 - three enemies put aside their differences and unite against a world-ending threat. The Human, Undead and the Night Elf Campaigns(my favourite) tell a great story about races, wars and heroes. I like RoC more than TFT and both campaigns are peak Blizzard. It didn't work quite as well in SC2 but WotL is one of the best RTS campaigns ever with imaginative missions, godd plot, attention to detail.

Would you still enjoy peak Blizzard if it was retold today with original characters you had no nostalgic attachment to?

Considering there is no RTS of any quality on the market I would enjoy it a lot. But I enjoy "cape shit" and grew up on crappy D&D novels (Drizzt and such).

Only new good RTS in last 10 years was Spellforce 3 and its expansions and that one is also more RPG.

Sins of Solar Empire 2 is coming soon, that is a game that does not focus on heroes.

As for you mentioning WH40k a lot, all their best stuff focuses on heroes as well. Most popular characters are Primarchs and their Civil Wars and WH40k RTS also revolved around hero commanders

 

[RaggleFraggle]

As for you mentioning WH40k a lot, all their best stuff focuses on heroes as well. Most popular characters are Primarchs and their Civil Wars and WH40k RTS also revolved around hero commanders

Over 99% of GW revenues come from miniatures sales. Customers don’t buy, build and paint army miniatures if they’re only interested in capeshit. The people who care about primarchs and heroes are tourists whose combined spending on Black Library books, if any (most read wikis and watch lorevids), is a drop in the bucket for GW revenues.

Saying Dawn of War focuses on heroes is a false equivalency. They’re still operating as members of their respective factions. Their factions still have cultures and ideologies that the heroes are subject to. The factions are not mindless zombies that are treated purely as accessory superpowers to the heroes. The entire universe doesn’t revolve around, say, Gabriel Angelos’ romance drama, as is the case in Blizz’s shitshow.

Whenever the BL writers screw up with their capeshitshow, which is fairly often, it doesn’t destroy the integrity of the entire IP because the faction cultures and politics are still there to provide solid foundation. This is why warstarcraft is complete crap now, while Warhammer is still going strong despite the primarch shitshow.

 

[-M-]

Just gonna repost this here

That page is full of red flags. Their Co-Op guy joined Blizzard in 2018 when 95% of SC2 Co-op was already set in stone. I think they released three new commanders and maybe one map.

It's like putting a cherry on top of a sundae and acting like you milked the cows and planted the cocoa trees.

 

[ArchAngel]

As for you mentioning WH40k a lot, all their best stuff focuses on heroes as well. Most popular characters are Primarchs and their Civil Wars and WH40k RTS also revolved around hero commanders

Over 99% of GW revenues come from miniatures sales. Customers don’t buy, build and paint army miniatures if they’re only interested in capeshit. The people who care about primarchs and heroes are tourists whose combined spending on Black Library books, if any (most read wikis and watch lorevids), is a drop in the bucket for GW revenues.

Saying Dawn of War focuses on heroes is a false equivalency. They’re still operating as members of their respective factions. Their factions still have cultures and ideologies that the heroes are subject to. The factions are not mindless zombies that are treated purely as accessory superpowers to the heroes. The entire universe doesn’t revolve around, say, Gabriel Angelos’ romance drama, as is the case in Blizz’s shitshow.

Whenever the BL writers screw up with their capeshitshow, which is fairly often, it doesn’t destroy the integrity of the entire IP because the faction cultures and politics are still there to provide solid foundation. This is why warstarcraft is complete crap now, while Warhammer is still going strong despite the primarch shitshow.

But we are not talking about tabletop but computer game. It does not matter what happens on tabletop (also I doubt 99% of money comes from that, there are a couple of really popular WK40k games and WH fantasy like Space Marine or Total War: warhammer).
And almost all their novels are about specific characters or groups, not about whole campaigns on planets or sectors.

From my understanding the people that play tabletop are a different group than those that enjoy the lore and products based on that lore (novels, lore books, RPG tabletop, computer games)

 

[Black]

lol
lamo

 

[rumSaint]

This game looks like bootleg Starcraft 2. Graphics is like from mobile game. Why everything is so dull and uninspired?

 

[Multidirectional]

Yeah I don't know how they were planning to attract even casuals who normally aren't interested in RTS, as they were claiming, with this shit art style. Guess none of those millions went into hiring serious artists. Warcraft III looks better while needing a fraction of PC power to run.

 

[abija]

Using the term "artstyle" discussing this game seems a bit forced. You can probably pick blindly from unreal/unity asset shops and get a better result.

 

[catfood]

lol
lamo

This is running on the lowest possible settings, right? RIGHT?

 

[luj1]

This looks worse than Warcraft III

 

[RaggleFraggle]

These are the in-game proportions:

 

[Tyranicon]

Are they supposed to be human or are they orangutan mixes?

Holy shit, how do you even conceptualize something so ugly.