https://web.archive.org/web/20240222174934/https://www.pcgamer.com/stormgate-developer-frost-giant-studios-is-now-asking-fans-to-invest-in-the-company/
>37 millions not enough to enter early access
>invest in our company so we can cover the marketing costs
>3rd race not even out
>already wasted gorillion cash on fancy starcraft streamers and tournaments
LMAO
Trainwreck in the making
>"Modern AAA game budgets are often measured in the hundreds of millions, and that's not counting marketing budgets," Frost Giant communications director Gerald Villoria said after the Kickstarter campaign went live in January.
reminds me of Planetary Annihilation
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 CRIME Shirt $21.68 |
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look I'm interested in the game and I like RTS play, but these people are getting pretty wienery for a dead genre
genuinely pathetic, hope they crash and burn
Invest now !
>millions of strategy gamers
lmao great opening line
LOL, this shit is so fricking dead its not even funny
Is this an actual investment or an '''''''''''''''''investment''''''''''''''''''?
>millions of strategy gamers have been longing for the next great RTS
I'm pretty sure they all killed themselves after Reforged
5% extra rewards for the *test the water investors* guise ! Buy now, invest now !
Don't you want another asiaticclick 2 ?
>The reason AAA are so bad is due to most of their budget going into marketing
>Stormgate is pretty much wasting most of its budget on marketing
So much for indie developers being "the industry's last hope"
Another Immortals of Avenoslop situation here
>The reason AAA are so bad is due to most of their budget going into marketing
Where does this moronic myth come from and why do people keep parroting it after the insomniac leak?
Makes sense. A game like Baldur's Gate 3 is an indie title after all costing only 100+ millions.
yea no. i tried the open beta and it was awful. nobody is gonna play that or spend money on it
How the frick do you turn 37 million dollars into the most generic looking SC2 clone ever? They could have made something NEW instead of copy pasting the same old shit they did back at blizzard.
By putting most of it into high californian salaries of generic moba artists
+
buying off esports commentators
+
making tournaments with prize pools before the game is even out of alpha
On the salary point, this seems to be a common issue. Do devs just refuse to live outside of high cost of living areas that require inflated salaries? You'd think that the availability of high speed internet and remote work would make the need to stick to a tech hub questionable.
>Do devs just refuse to live outside of high cost of living areas that require inflated salaries?
No, actually. They move to those areas specifically to be closer to the tech companies. It's a kind of self-perpetuating cycle. Companies set up shop in California to "be closer to the labor pool" and aspiring developers move to California to "be closer to the companies they want to work for".
To break the cycle somebody has to be the first one to move out of California.
Why don't smaller companies then just work from home. Almost everywhere in the USA has high speed internet and you don't need to be in a office to work on a computer
DORF looks so fricking comfy, holy shit. I hope the campaign will be fun
To be fair dorf is basically openra mod, but it sure as frick looks much more interesting and distinct than bargain bin sc2 aesthethics that stormgate is going for.
>sc2 aesthethics
SC2 looks a lot better than Stormgate; they went for the globohomo/fortnite style
Holy shit this looks so fricking good. Thank you for posting, anon. Wishlisted.
why do I find it more like a Red Alert 2 Remake than a Starcraft 2 rip-off??
I think DORF is the closest being developed. There is something for almost everyone this year, from age of mythology to rise of nations, to tiberium sun and surprisingly a lot of C&C Generals inspired games:
This whole list is just couple games being remade over and over again. I don't have a problem with taking ideas from old games, but they are not even trying to make anything new. It's like some old game with new skin.
Yeah i kinda agree, most of them feel like someone REALLY liked an old RRTA and its trying to make more of it. Not a bad thing per se, but if you are looking for something new the genre seems to he creatively bankrupt. I think at this point its hard to make a RTS that doesnt feel like one of the “big ones” even the starship troopers one that came out a few years ago felt like a CnC mod (it was fun though)
I mean there are Fragile Existence and Falling Frontier that really tries to push things forward, granted both are vaporware and promise probably too much to succeed but still. There is general blend of genres happening too, with several games looking to borrow significantly from 4x and factory autism. We probably not getting something entirely out of left field like Achron for quite awhile though.
The problem is that i think most gameplay combinations have already been done.
Unit composition
1) squad based
2) unit based
Economy
1) base building
2) no base building
Resources
1) resource + power (like CnC)
2) multiple resources (AoE)
Combat
1) rock paper scissors (aoe)
2) pure damage (cnc)
99% of rts fall into a combination of those variables, there are some im missing but thats all i can think about now.
Okay Eternal empires sounds interesting if it has all those features that he says it will have
>Animated unite frams.
FRICKING KINO
HOLY FRICKING SOUL OVERLOAD
>old school "claymation" style unit portraits
>pre-rendered art that doesn't look like plastic
This is going to be good.
Dust front is the only new RTS game that looks promising to me. Its got something that i feel DORF is lacking, really GOOD feeling tank shots. Like that huge blimp in the DORF video fires this tiny lil projectile stream. A lot of the big tanks seem to have the same problem, its a huge barrel on the tank but a tiny yellow dot comes out of it? Or sometimes its a thin yellow line. Its very close to being kino so I hope that I can astral project this to the dev.
Here is the Dust front video, looks very nice too.
>single player focus
Now you have my attention dimon.
SOULverload
By spending it all on marketing.
I mean, lets say they all gave themselves 6 figure salaries. thats like what 3 million a year to pay everyone? that still gives them like 10 years to make the game what the frick.
No one was having fun though
This looks fricking sick. Imagine if this comes out and somehow manages to become the next Brood War.
> How the frick do you turn 37 million dollars into the most generic looking SC2 clone ever?
woke mind virus. they continue to hire 20 women or blacks, so that they can talk about how diverse and progressive they are, to do the job 1 white guy could do in half the time
Holy frick that color contrast is terrible.
You can trust us! We have 1 guy who isn't fat on our team !
Please !
We worked on SC2 and Diablo 4 ! We are amazing devs and artists !
>bunch of ex Blizzard devs
I guess breast milk doesn't come cheap
Cara's purpose is to be milked
cara laforge is tasteless and day9s mom.
i've never seen nepotism go in reverse before.
Honestly I don't care for nepotism. I would hire my mom to help out with something, but her funneling cash into him is also very likely.
It's 37 million now. Honestly these tools still think they are working for blizzard and getting 100k + salaries.
You are supposed to tone it down and reduce expectations. I bet they bought an expensive office in California too.
Somehow Day9 looks older than his mom now
>guys I worked on WC3:Reforged !
>Gameplay Engineer
>Warcraft III Reforged
What fricking gameplay were you engineering?
He invented a new computer from his room
Engineering doesn't mean design, it means programming. He was part of the team that went through the code to make sure it worked and updated what needed updating in accordance with the specifications of whoever was actually in charge of the design
Warcraft 3 still ran on modern hardware. Reforged actually made performance worse. So once again, why the frick would you ever willingly list that shit?
It looks good on a CV, I guess? I'm expecting the game to bomb
Yes, junior Java backend
Nice 🙂
How long does it take to develop or upgrade an inhouse-engine?
Are you working in aaa game company too?
Developing and upgrading engines is generally the work of a life.
A studio's happy if they got one actual engine engineer.
I'm not in game dev, so I don't fully know. But it naturally depends on the resources put into it, and how extensive the planned changes are. If you're trying to do AAA graphics you need a lot of manpower and a lot of time, which is why most devs turn to per-existing engines. Way, way, way less work, and you don't need to train employees on something new. But for a Reforged-type upgrade, it's not that much work on the programming side (assuming good documentation). Maybe a year or two? I can't tell you how much was actually changed, though, so it's really hard to guess
Are you a prof. dev?
>SC2, WC3:R
>look up writer, pic related
lol
>Dong
Lel
"FROM THE CREATORS OF..." is such an infallible scam holy hell
Why is Bloodstained on that list? I didn't care for the 3D graphics, but the gameplay's up there with the best of the genre
>Why is Bloodstained on that list?
Because it's a very mediocre game, worse than the average metroidvania indie available on Steam.
No it's not what the frick? It is easily the best modern metroidvania available.
>Because it's a very mediocre game
Your opinion.
The irrefutable fact is that Bloodstained was a success, commercially and critically, unlike everything else in that list.
>worse than the average metroidvania indie available on Steam
You either have a large stash of hidden metroidvania gems on your account or you are just full of shit. I don't see your games recommendations so that drops one out
>worse than the average metroidvania indie available on Steam.
Please recommend me some, because I can't find any metroidvanias on Steam worth playing outside of the 3-4 big titles everyone's heard of
You still forcing Bloodstained with the others? Unlike the rest Bloodstained delivered what was promised, it is still getting updates to this very day, sold over a million copies, and most of all got a sequel announced.
The same can't be said about everything else in that list.
bloodstained has no business being on that list
it did exactly what they said plus more, are still updating it, and its actually a good game and very much like the castlevania games unlike most indie "metroidvania" games that aren't even metroidvanias
it doesn‘t come even close to capture the art design and setting of castlevania
it feels like a cheap and cringe anime take on it
>muh art
it is mechanically 1000 times more interesting than SotN which is half of 1 good game.
You homosexuals ass still pairing Bloodstained with the other confirmed failures? The game being massive success, with a sequel on the way, hurt you personally or something?
The people who made your favorite games 20 years ago are now middle-aged, too lazy to do any real work, and expect 5 times the monthly pay for their contributions to management and design
>many of them are rich and retired
Yeah if you want them you have to pay. Duh.
Noone wants them, they're supposed to be retired? Hmmm
Bunch of frickin no names looting dumbasses tbh
never heard of this game till now
never heard/played any of these games either
Wanted:Dead is based though. I didn't know anyone famous worked on it I thought it was all slavs.
Monark was pretty good although it bombed commercially due to zero marketing and very niche appeal.
bloodstained was really fricking bad and everybody on the planet would hold the same opinion if the dev team was anonymous
Another half-assed "spiritual successor" and genuinely one of the ugliest pieces of shit I've ever played
It doesn't look that bad, it just looks like an obscure 360 japanese game.
t. Tendie who played the notoriously broken Switch version and refuses to play games outside of their toy console
Remove Bloodstained. I get you, but it's not bad.
>Bloodstained
Delivered what was promised (except for native Linux support, which I am still salty about as it was a BASE non stretch goal, but it was basically japanese autism to not look into Linux until 2 years later and the publisher fricked off) an Iga basically took ages delivering it WITHOUT CHARGING rather than saying "prease each new feature $15 DLC". Many of the features were 'games within games" like classic mode and others. While the game wasn't perfect (I'm a bit pissed that the 3rd character is a fricking guest character from child of light! we never got Johannes or Gebel playable, but at least Zangetsu was reasonable) , it is pretty great. Their only pay DLC will be some new costume fanservice stuff + a whole separate SImon's Quest mode starring Dominique!
>Star Citizen
This was known to be Chris Roberts maximum autism title and there's nothing quite like it especially if you are there for immersion - if you're not, frick off its not for you there's plenty of "push E and pop magically into the wienerpit" or "cargo is just a list of shit on a display somewhere" type games. . I have more fun with it than fully finished slop and if it wasn't for outdated memes and JURINALISTT garbage Ganker probably would too as its exactly the kind of autism you claim to want - being made by an oldgay white guy who's dream is not being watered down for typical consumption. Yeah its a true alpha , but its coming along and well worth it.
>Phoenix Point
>Callisto Protocol
>Yooka Laylee
None of these were horrid, they just didn't stack up parity/universally improve upon to their inspiration and/or they had a significant change in some feature that wasn't what those who wanted the inspiration expected. Callisto is a good example here, once you figure out the "punch out dodging" it becomes a different sort of game, but trying to play it just like Dead Space will make you pissed.
some of the others really were garbage though or had major problems
>Phoenix Point
>None of these were horrid
half of that project was just smoke and mirrors, felt like half the features promised in the kickstarter pitch turned out to not be in the release, and part of them where turned in to payed DLC, and this is well AFTER they took 2.2mill of epic money
That may be true - I hated that they took the Epic faustian bargain. However by the time the enhanced/definitive edition or whatever came to Steam, it seemed a lot of issues were fixed . I grant that the development could have been a shitshow, but eventually the game itself was decent enough for an XCOM-alike by the time I got it in a HUmble Choice or something and it had all the content included and on Steam.
One of the big issues in kickstarter games is they have to keep promising more and more features to keep the ball rolling. "just $10k more dollery doos and we will add X to the game!"
Ultimately, all this shit gets tacked onto the game and its awful, and sometimes its even a detriment to the game. Ill buy a game and there will be all these little mechanics in it that are just so half assed. Then when I look up the game it will turn out to be a kickstarter game, and of course all these awful gameplay elements are just backer reward extras.
I understand that this shit is sometimes necessary to fund your game but god damn does it cripple the final product. There was this game called potionomics that jumps to mind, a hundred little minor game play elements that add nothing to the game when the coregame play loop needed so much more attention.
I think the problem is that its okay to add additional features as stretch goals but you have to actually support the core and them alike, properly. That's what's advertised
>We need $10K more and we can add this mechanic or feature
Suggests that the costs are that's the cash it would take for additional development time and resources etc.. not that they'll just throw it all into a big pot, add the new thing to the whiteboard, and slap it all together without much difference or care given so that the base game systems don't get the time they need because they have to now design a fishing minigame or some shit.
>Potionomics
its one my wishlist somewhere but I got the impression it was basically a lesbian schlick-fest art-first title with a light coating of recettear or moonlighter on it?
>its one my wishlist somewhere but I got the impression it was basically a lesbian schlick-fest art-first title with a light coating of recettear or moonlighter on it?
If you are looking for a recettear game, this is a very dumbed down version of it. Don't get it if you are looking for a challenge. That said lots of people here on Ganker said it was too hard so I don't know maybe im just a god. I can't even say its a dating sim or a story rich game because literally every element in the game is half assed. So if you want a "all in one but master of none" game then go for it but you will find every element individually lacking in substance. Succeeding at any one part of the game doesn't even feel rewarding because of how the goals and progression is set up. In recettear you are basicly challenged to make more and more money constantly and the game lets you do it how you want, in potionomics there is a set goal every month and once you meet it nothing after matters. I challenged myself to hit the max gold cap (what you need to pay off the bank) and nothing actually happens and the game never acknowledges it. It just tasks you with winning the "contest" at the end of the game which rewards you with the money you need to pay the loan. So all this extra money is meaningless.
You know, that's too bad. IT seems like the kind of thing described should be able to be fixed in updates, definitive edition expansions and the like? Conversely there are some "managed a thing and make money, + do something else' games are seem to be pretty solid from Moonlighter to the more recent Dave the Diver, where there is side stuff to do but its all pretty cohesive and fun with an effect on the mainline game requirements and plots.
Laylee
If it didn't have that horrible stamina everyone uses anymore.
>Bloodstained
Weak bait.
fixed it.
I'm honestly quite proud to report that I have not played a single one of these.
Godus killed my parents and raped my daughter.
Phoenix point was a disappointment because they over promised and under delivered, but I still had fun.
*disclaimer: I didn't pay for it
>puts a f2p game that got axed before it was even released on his note
Why would you?
so basically except for the guy that worked on warcraft 3, nobody worked on an actual good game.
>StarCraft 2
>Diablo 4
>WC3:Reforged
WTF: All games I didn't like
is 30 million dollar snot enough to make a fricking RTS?
Might be the case of these people being used to working at multi billion dollar companies where millions are thrown around like it's nothing. Never developed good sense for budgeting. Or it's just basic scam and they're paying themselves huge salaries to retire early. I don't know
Not merely one devil at their backs, but a whole squad of them.
why would Riot games invest in this company.
If anyone shouldn't it be Tencent?
Name a good chink rts?
what the duck is stormgate
an RTS that will most likely be DoA
Why is it that so many former Blizzard developers fail to set up new studios?
Because Blizzard is still a legendary studio, even if everything they've made in the last decade has been absolute ass. So you have developers who think "having worked at Blizzard" means something, not realizing that having worked at Blizzard in the last decade probably only means you're a bad developer. Inflated ego + low talent = failure
Because you have to manage business, development, make something worth a shit, AND get fans on board (nobody knows you). Basically if you don't have a stellar game that can push through the noise of AAA crap then you're fricked.
If you count all the wow expansions, blizzard has made more shitty games than actually good ones. Its as legendary as “activision” at this point, that merger was poetic in nature.
>Because Blizzard is still a legendary studio
The last game they made that I liked is over 20 years old, and none of the people working there now had anything to do with it.
You should probably try actually playing video games rather than hating things to fit in on Ganker
Legendary Shit still shit
Because they're not the "former Blizzard developers" you are imagining. You are thinking of people who designed the actually good Blizzard games from the 1990s and early 2000s, but these are Bliz devs who got hired circa 2010 or later.
This was far and away the worst demo I played during Nextfest. Immediately removed it from my wishlist after playing one match. It's complete garbage, they can frick off and go bankrupt. Good riddance.
I need though that money, to pay my bills
OT Guys - Anyone here who has a friend who works at dice?
You a kid bro
>blew 25 million dollars on a RTS
How?
i boughted
Well at least they got the money laundering and stealing money part right.
like actual invest, buying stocks
or "invest" as in zero accountability crowd funding.
Actual invest, like Deadfire did.
>like Deadfire did
Deadfire?
They actually payed out to their investors?
Deadfire lost money, but they did pay out.
I wonder if they're still paying out now, considering that the game did sell after like years or something.
https://www.reddit.com/r/projecteternity/comments/9uqx8w/first_dividend_recieve_for_poe2_fig_investing/
Dunno what they payments are currently like.
kek, I still don't see any reason to play this instead of SC2. I'll keep posting it until someone give me a good reason.
Also, M$, please, rehire the directors/writers/artists from the Heroes of the Storm and SC2 and port SC1 into SC2. Port WC1, 2 and 3 into the same engine too.
There is no reason. People are kind of bored, but this isn't better.
Dust could be style over substance, though.
>Dust could be style over substance, though.
Depending on the price, thats not really that much of an issue for me. Ill pay for a game that lets me shoot 100000000 artillery shells even if its shallow.
>fancy starcraft streamers and tournaments
DOA
pandering to esports = death sentence
Indie developers committing to the same mistakes AAA devs do is truly a baffling phenomenon. Fricking pic is free and open-source.
FAF>BAR
I tried Zero-K and BAR and while the shield units are nice, I'm really not that much into either.
Space RTS games are always surreal in some way. Spinning camera makes things really messy.
Ahh, a fellow FAFgot. Ive been meaning to play BAR (I love opensource games and want the people behind them to get praise), would you be willing to go into more detail about what you didn't like? Or is it just a feeling I'll have to check by playing it?
Also not an RTS but if you like advanced wars/FE I'd highly recommend wesnoth.
>0 AD
If anyone likes RTS and open source ones, 0 AD is basically an Age of Empires style historical strategy title that's come along quite well if you like that style of play.
>wesnoth
Is pretty fantastic. Its more like HOMM than FE/advance wars last I checked, there's no animated attacks between units and it doenn't have the FE / Shining force etc...style targeting either. Unless someone made a conversion patch thatadded which would be great, as wesnoth has great player campaigns. I am interested if someone would have made any FE type titles that are open source or even indies, but I do know a couple that are decent commercial
>Vestaria Saga
Kaga-made old school FE. 2 games so far I think?
if you want Advance Wars-ish then it seems to be (all commercial0
>Wargroove
>Wargroove 2
I don't recall if they ever alllowed for totally custom unit, portrait, model , tile etc..assets or not. SOmeone said that the original Wargroove did eventually so the mod campaigns aren't just all recolors or variants of units with different stats etc. Supposedly 2 is more expansive in its mechanics - I enjoyed 1 but its war more Advance Wars than Fire Emblem some thought it would be, but has a fantasy setting.
>Tiny Metal
>Tiny Metal Full Metal Rumble
These are anime-esq Advance Wars modern military settings, by a JP autist dev. Its pity they rarely put either on sale and/or get it out there with advertising as both are pretty damn good.
9-bit armies releases literally tomorrow
>Wargroove
boring. Most of the time it made me want to play AW instead.
the biggest budget AW clone was probably Battle Worlds: Kronos but its forgotten
Both BAR and Zero-K feel like barebones suppcom.
There is an extreme state of rock-paper-scissors in them. Pick the wrong type of unit in your attack and you might lose everything to a specific counter.
Also the UI in multiplayer is ass, especially once people start writing notifications on the map, notifications which stay long time.
Cats grow that size, you promote from feeder to food
Generic piece of crap.
ENTER
The only worthwhile RTS of 2024
unfortunately the beta was a complete flop and indicated that it's going to be a soulless moviegame with bad ui and shallow uninspired "gameplay" mechanics reminscent of a phone game.
I'm very fricking afraid of the story after 2 and Deserts' constant S'jet wankery.
You know what I really don't get? Why are they already making several balance patches when the game isn't even complete? Imagine SC2 without t3, Terran bio would just rek everything, but it doesn't because the game isn't meant to work like that. Aiming for perfect balance at all stages of the game will make for very stale games.
>b-but they can change it
Sure, but then why waste time now when they are already running out money.
There's fricking no way that it'll be better than SC2 anyways.
>invest
Do you get a share in the company
so far, sc2 legacy of the void mogs the frick out of the game, in every respect
>unit designs
>art
>race design
>mechanics
>overall graphics
They are wasting everyone's money making a worse version of WC3/sc2.
nice way to waste money and somehow its not free 2 play after 35 million either, nah bro, this is going on my game-shelf cancer compilation if anything. p.s. it also looks like shit and poo combined. embrassingly bad. they should commit kys in studio. shit looks like garbage crawled back inside on trash day.
Stormgate looks pretty good.
You can tell within 10 seconds of watching the gameplay that it was never going to be a game that had any sort of actual success.
SC2 gameplay just completely blows it out of the water.
sc2 is a very bad game compared to brood war, yet it found success. I mean, people STILL played it after they put out HoTS.
SC2 notoriously underperformed, especially in South Korea. Blizzard wanted a new esport like Brood War, but the asiatics ignored the sequel and latched onto League of Legends instead.
The problem is the specs on the game. In East Asia most people play on toaster computers at a net cafe. Most cafes cannot afford to buy dozens of beefy gaming rigs. This is why older, less graphic-intensive games are still very popular in East Asia. Age of Empires 1, for example, has millions of active players in Vietnam. Which is the reason Microsoft bothered to do a definitive edition for it, but like Blizzard they didn't realize the people playing it mainly play it because they own machines that are 15 years old on average.
...did I say pretty good? I meant pretty bad
my brain is fried
>kill the RTS genre with Starcraft 2
>company goes to shit with lootboxes and rape
>quit and form a smaller studio
>make Starcraft II again but worse and even more soulless
All that money went to the DNC.
Maybe if it looked better and had an original aesthetic it would have been better received...
Scam confirmed.
35 million and it looks like a fricking mobile game?????????????? Get fricked Black folk. I hope you developers are on here and reading everyone shitting on you. You guys suck dick.
I watched some games on YouTube and it looks ugly and boring. I can get over ugly but boring is terminal.
>Scam Citizen 2.0
This should be good.
Star citizen is in its own category of being a scam
This just feels like a bunch of incompetent uncreative people doing the best they can. I mean, there's an rts here. You can play with others, you can build units and you can go into their bases and kill all of their dudes. It's just not very fun. Star citizen is not even above the level of walking simulator while having the greater share of an actual fricking billion dollars for funding
I'm looking at this more like a catalyst. Considering that 10k+ c**ts are out of a job and the AAA space is imploding what is to say that this isn't the birth of a new meta. From the creators of X, Y Z invest your hard earned cash now to get in on the ground floor with the next big thing. Early access is plagued with the last 10 years worth of frickups and scam artists. Yet you can have gamers pretending that gamers to play the role of shareholder without being legally obligated to them. Combine this with parasocial marketing mixed with the impressionable audiences of influencers and you have a wealth of morons with money to spend. Scam Citizen already proved that this model pays out in dividends if you can foster a cult like following seeing that most companies were well trained in the arts of turning brands into a religious following. It is a natural evolution to the new era of development. Have the players pay for the development and pay once more when it comes out half baked and filled to the brim with every money grubbing trick in the book. Anyone who doubts the plan is further subject to ridicule by members of the community elevated into positions of power via discord roles and special badges.
37 million is nowhere near whatever amount SC has managed to amass.
This. It's nothing more than a product to sell to these people, there's zero passion or creativity involved.
How is it that Relic, despite their laughable incompetence and poor decision making, still manage to do better than like 95% of other devs trying to make RTS games?
This has the stench of non-gamers trying to get a payday before shutting down the game.
Frick you, throw in your own money if you really want to release the game. Not subsidizing bad decisions.
>Already diluting after the first round of investment
>Product isn't even out
>Market is almost non existent and shrinking
>Invest goy! you'll get your money back for sure! we're the next blizzard!
You're a moron if you invested in this at all, and that includes the reddit kickstarter. Some of the top guys at this company are multi-millionaires. If they didn't have enough faith in their company to front the initial investment what makes you think they're ready to take this to the finish line?
Imagine going to Vegas soon and hitting up all your friends and senpai for money promising you'll hit it big and everyone that gave you money will double it when you come back. Except you spent it all on hookers coke and blackjack, thats what this is.
Hmm, let's see what they're planning to spend it on.
>What our funding didn't cover was many of the extras and special amenities that are only possible with big publishing budgets, such as a physical Collector's Edition of our game and expanding our beta pool."
>The funds raised through this equity campaign, Frost Giant CEO Tim Morten said in the announcement, "will bolster a strategic marketing campaign, setting the stage for Stormgate's early access launch this summer."
Ah, of course, absolutely necessary.
the game will flop. And the reason for it is because it's not a game, it's an esport. It does not have a story, it does not have cool characters, it does not have SOVL.
The reason why starcraft and warcraft became great games is because people enjoyed the game and were emotionally invested in the characters and story.
I'm convinced that you need a turbo autist like Metzen to shill the scenario for a game like this for it to have any traction with large audiences.
Basically this. It's why every RTS fails. The gameplay is only a selling point to koreans and a very niche audience who still play these games. You'll never get your money back trying to appeal to these people alone. You need actual story and characters people care about. RTS doesn't have any "wow" factor by itself. You need something that draws people in.
One of these is to have an interesting concept. Iron Harvest had a cool concept but the game sucked. Another way is to just have interesting characters and a story which is why Blizzard was able to make two successful RTSs. I admit that it's much harder now that the genre is mostly dead, but it died because of a lack of innovation and talent. Total War took it in a new direction (before they shot themselves in the foot). RTS could still exist if it weren't for the fact that they chased the Esports and Korean meme. Esports chasing will always kill a game. Nobody cares about asiatics and turbo autists playing a videogame. It's the biggest ponzi scheme in the gaming industry other than GAAS.
Starcraft and Warcraft III had:
>A memorable single player campaign with cool story and characters.
>Great multiplayer that could be played against bots and other players.
>A custom map maker that allowed for creating tons of custom modes.
It feels like a watered down Starcraft with some WC3 hero unit stuff mixed in. But it doesn't have any of the flavor of either SC or WC3. It has no grit at all. It's super sanitized and overly cartoony. The units look like plastic toys. All of this could be forgiven if it at least had a good story and characters, but all we have in the beta is multiplayer with no campaign.
We know a campaign is in the works, but the fact that we have absolutely nothing to show for it right now is a very, very bad sign. It suggests to me that they've done nothing more than rough outlines of what the story will be, and will only really bother writing it in the last few months of development before release, and the scenarios will be hastily constructed out of whatever tools they have built with their map editor (which is also supposed to be in the final version of the game).
In other words the development of this game feels totally backward from WC3 and SC.
The factions they offer aren't interesting, there's no mechanical depth, the gameplay is stagnant regurgitation.
Moduwar holds far more promise
this is just them hedging their bets for when their niche genre niche game fails. Theyre basically going to use your money to make the safety net for this guaranteed dud of a game
Why is sc2 generally considered to be so much worse than bw?
deathball and lower skill ceiling.
Brood war has a better campaign storyline
But it's mostly just old BW players mad that their game is less popular
it didnt have real custom game support til its American audience had completely moved on and its tools were garbage anyhow. Even if most people dont play custom games/arcade, it adds such a stupid amount of longevity to your otherwise weening relevance. My buddy hasnt played real dota 2 in years, but he still hops on custom games
I don't know if there's any one thing. But I think one reason why brood war was such a superior esport is the colorful and distinct sprites with clean spacing between units makes it so much easier to follow the action. There are big, gross overpowered spells and abilities that make it exciting to watch, and in spite of it the game is remarkably well balanced compared to pretty much any rts ever. The game just looks so much fricking better than all its competition at the time and competes with modern 3d games on different merits. The campaign has cool and interesting characters and we get to see them experience tragedy and forge unusual bonds of friendship and rivalries. The scenario is really engaging, and the cinematics were years ahead of their time. Personally I just kinda feel like it was lightning in a bottle.
>completely soulless
>story was moronic and influenced by WoW
>multiplayer was the same shit just with better UI
>death balls
>custom maps were gimped by Blizzard's greed
>Blizzard picked a fight with the main Korean esports org
>content was carved out and turned into overpriced expansions
>MOBAs were more fun and easy to get into
I prefer 2 instead of 1. For starters the game AI path is much better, the graphics look better. It's a different game from SC1 though, the tone of story, specially. I believe it looks like that because Blizzard went through a "standardization" of the artstyle, which Diablo 3 went through too. I really, really like this artstyle, it's very different though, from what was before.
Here are a list of reasons Starcraft 2 made me swear to never give Blizzard another cent:
>released with 1/3 of a campaign
>charged full retail game price for the next 2 campaigns ($180 to get all 3!)
>forced to create a battlenet account and be online to even play campaign
>campaign drops several plot points from Brood War and is generally not a satisfying sequel to its events (way too much Kerrigan wank, even more than Brood War which I thought would be impossible)
>felt way too "clean" and not nearly as dark and bloody as the original SC or BW
>game felt way too spammy and repetitive, with micro being increasingly useless and fights became blobs of units smashing into each other
>absolutely dogshit path-finding
I never bothered to even finish the campaign, I uninstalled and have never bought another Blizzard game. The fact the people at Frost Giant made SC2 (and WC3 Reforged) is, to me, a mark against them, not in their favor.
All of these too.
>Absolute dogshit pathfinding
Did they upgrade it over time or do you have no idea of what you're talking about?
Everything about it was made to be more light-hearted and easily digestable for the widest possible audience. From art and music to the tone of the story.
On the gameplay side, a greater focus was put on busywork that only serves to bloat your APM (larva injecting, mules, etc), the units act like bumper cars which, while a good idea on paper turns the armies into the infamous deathballs instead of forcing the players to spread their forces out across the map and be present on mutiple fronts.
I like SC2 a lot anyway, but the departure from the original style is very unfortunate.
>instead of forcing the players to spread their forces out across the map and be present on mutiple fronts.
Which is kinda funny because the sign of a really, really, really strong player is not falling into the deathball formula
These days you'll have a main group, a bunch of drops going off 3 places at once, spellcasters all over the place. The enemy has to respond in turn because a single deathball leaves your bases open and cause you to lose. Even protoss doesn't want to deathball anymore despite that being the joke about how the race plays for 10 years
Can anyone outside of the very very top end of players do this? Not well, but I don't think anyone outside of those tournament players can speak on the balance of a game
>only use strong wyman for all the marketing
no thx, get fricked
>get 23 times what youre asking for
>still need more money
>for a game thats gonna have mtx
rich people have no fricking clue what it takes. even if this shit was successful it likely wouldnt turn a profit.
wasted gorillion cash on fancy starcraft streamers and tournaments
Ohhh. . . i've seen this before. Why not instead throw a couple thousand on big name streamers to advertise their game instead of tournaments or commentators?
this shit leaves me feeling as though i'm looking at a bus with low res textures irl. what the frick
They should probably try something other than the disgusting 2005 art style that shizzard never let go of
>get 37 gorillion dollars
>piss it away to make a W3 mod
game development is a scam
Sounds like they used/are using the money to push marketing because they have no money to make an actual game. Idiots.
What's with RTS games and grifters? This isn't even the first half-assed money-grubbing RTS that's pulled this kind of shit.
RTS players want the same high they got in the 1990s and nothing can deliver on it. The game industry has simply evolved too much from what it was when those games were made. The modern industry cannot produce Age of Empires 2, or Brood War, or any of the other games of that style. It can only make shitty esports bait.
The vast majority of RTS fans don't give a shit about actually playing competitive multiplayer. They just want a good single player/co-op experience and the esportsgays will watch koreans play at most. Somehow every single company in the world takes this as single player means nothing and every RTS needs the most autistic 1v1 hyper competitive dick measuring contest ever devised. Thus the current absolute state of the RTS genre.
What people seems to forget is that catering to the competitive scene is more than just a marketing focus, it actually has an effect on the game itself. A balanced game is not necessarily a fun game, RA2 Yuri revenge would have never existed if any thought was placed into multiplayer balance, they just focused on making the wackiest, most entertaining units possible and they hit jackpot with that mentality. “Im goong to have a faction based off entirely on mind control” just cant work competitively, but its really fricking fun.
It's because esports brings in tons of advertisers.
WHY DO GAMES KEEP GETTING WORSE IF THE DEVS KEEP GETTING PAID MORE AND MORE!?!??!?
I am excited for this game, buy it you homosexuals.
Its F2P you moron
oh. frick you too
>Ask in the youtube comments why stormgate is like starcraft2 with a wc3 skin
>everyone be saying its original, new and fresh
Holy frick, why is it so fricking hard to make a RTS game?
Just fricking copy anything that came out before 2008
>Supcom
>C&C Generals
>Dawn of War 1/2
>AoE3
Despite AoE3 getting shit on I really love the setting
Not enough games take place in that era and its sad
I love slowly funding and building up my homeland. Never played it in multiplayer though
I know right? It was different and special and there were plenty of cities and different nation with all their uniqueness.
Weird vibes but ok, I think its worthy of being a C&C game, its just a different setting.
>Generals
RA2 was the last good C&C game.
I agree, Generals was a fantastic game but not a CnC game.
RTS got the shit end of the stick by being one of the hardest genres to get rightAND also having an obnoxious fanbase in the vein of arena shooters. You won't buy new shit anyways so why bother
Agree, but one can only hope. I think we'd might get some proper RTS games in 10-15 years.
how hard is it to plow all the money into the game and run a lean 1-man social media campaign with the purposes of going viral with the right streamers?
why does an indie developer need to spend ludicrous amounts of money paying off starcraft players?
I still think Rise of Nations boundries idea was a step forward in RTS design and its economic gameplay, Its a shame no other game ever copied it.
I like Northgard's attempt at trying to coral the game into a more macro centric rts. But it has many issues like how the later factions are insanely overtuned, or the fact that micro can still be used to gain an advantage which makes the game feel stupid.
do people even care about starcraft 2 players? I only watch artosis highlight videos because he's funny in the same way as low tier god.
>artosis
>sc2 player
lol lmao even
Generally nobody gives a shit, we are way past the absolute kino of kespa team games and large than life Jaedong vs Flash rivalries.
if you are a dev trying to make the next big rts you do, sc2 is still the biggest and by far.
about a year ago there was posted an estimated that anywhere from 1.6 to 2.2 million people play sc2 1v1 ladder a month.
>Killed themselves focusing in on twitch sports tournament shit
The omega strikers special.