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Stormgate-F2P RTS from ex-Starcraft devs

mr_stibbons

mr_stibbons

Location
Canada
As the title says, a new RTS has been finally announced from Frost giant, a studio formed by a bunch of ex-Blizzard devs who managed to get out before the shit hit the fan over there (as far as I'm aware). The game is free to play, and launching with a campaign(where you will have to pay for more chapters), PVP, a map editor, and a variant of starcraft 2's co-op mode. The dev's have done a few interviews with various youtubers and outlets, and most of their philosophizing I am pretty positive about. Open beta starts next summer.

On the other hand, the revealed units and setting aren't terribly inspiring, we have only promises about the monetization, we haven't seen the game in action, and it's got the most generic video game name I've ever heard of. I'm cautiously optimistic, but there's a lot of ways this could go wrong.

Website at https://playstormgate.com/
 
I'm fairly sure there is a warhammer or Age of Sigmar gamr with that name.

But hopefully its good, since more rts games would be good.
 
Frost giant studios... Booo, I had this name first!

Anyway, The units are looking pretty generic, but I always want more RTS so fingers crossed that its good.
 
After years of hyping up the third faction, Frost Giant finally released a reveal video, and…

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxZquPgbCYg
…they are literally just techno-angels. Wow. What a surprise. A protossy faction that contrasts zergy demons. Who woulda thunk it.

Jokes aside, while I'm certainly disappointed about this being as uncreative as it is, I think I like this faction the most of the three. Vanguard are the boring terrans as always, and Infernals are just not zergy enough for me, what with their demonic ritual-styled buildings instead of fleshy, pulsating outgrowths of the Zerg.
 
Rgal said:
…they are literally just techno-angels. Wow. What a surprise. A protossy faction that contrasts zergy demons. Who woulda thunk it.
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With a touch of the Masari from Universe at War: Earth Assault with their dual-mode light and dark dichotomy. I doubt I'll care to play this since, as you said, it's pretty uncreative.
 
Stopping just at "Techno-angels" is a way to make it sound lame on purpose but like, it's all in the execution. There's a lot more juice behind the mechanics than 'hurr durr, angels vs demons' makes it sound*. You can certainly pick out bits and pieces and go 'oh, the buildings warp in like protoss' but the celestials are no more protoss than the WC3 undead were zerg, just because both their buildings had to be dropped on transformed terrain.

* Edit to elaborate: I was a backer and have actually played them a bit.
 
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SerGregness said:
Stopping just at "Techno-angels" is a way to make it sound lame on purpose but like, it's all in the execution. There's a lot more juice behind the mechanics than 'hurr durr, angels vs demons' makes it sound*. You can certainly pick out bits and pieces and go 'oh, the buildings warp in like protoss' but the celestials are no more protoss than the WC3 undead were zerg, just because both their buildings had to be dropped on transformed terrain.

* Edit to elaborate: I was a backer and have actually played them a bit.
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Oh, absolutely. Celestials' unique mechanics, especially economy-related, are very interesting and I am looking forward to playing them when the game is finally public. I was talking more about the fluff which is, indeed, uncreative no matter how you try to spin it.
 
So. August 13, the day of free launch! Time to free up some hard drive space and check out Stormgate.

…stuck in the ping loop. That's fine, protondb has a workaround for that…
…looking smooth for now! Wait, never mind, starting with in-game cutscene everything looks incredibly choppy. That's fine, I'll just lower quality to the minimum…
…okay, this is better, but there's noticeable lag between issuing commands and unit's response. It's not anything like "12 second delay" some people reported on having when there's more than 300 units in the game, but doesn't feel great. I guess my PC counts as "low-spec" nowadays, so let's try disabling rollback…
…aaaaand the game just crashes once I start the mission and skip briefing. Wonderful.

Needless to say, I do not enjoy the game in its current state. And I didn't even reach the memetic "let your allies join you to lose" moment!
 
The newest patch, 0.2, promised better optimisations for low-spec GPUs, so I thought I'd give the game another try.

Results:
  • apparently you have to apply the ping loop workaround every time you turn the PC on. That's a bit annoying.
  • in-game cutscenes are still very choppy, even at the lowest quality. Lowering framerate limit all the way down to 30FPS helps.
  • the actual game is responsive this time! At least when using "Play Stormgate — Recommended" launch option. When launching "Play Stormgate — DX11", however, the game refused to acknowledge right-clicks, although attack-moving by pressing "A" and left-clicking the ground works as expected.
  • played the first mission of Chapter 0 twice to the completion. Both alternative endings work without issue, choppy cutsenes aside.
 
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