Everything We Know About Frost Giant's New RTS: Stormgate (And My Thoughts About It)

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Seems like a good analysis of the product so far

👍︎︎ 4 👤︎︎ u/EriCannonfrreal 📅︎︎ Jun 10 2022 🗫︎ replies

Did they confirm yet if it's yes or no on Hero Units?

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/BigLupu 📅︎︎ Jun 10 2022 🗫︎ replies

grant made a video already?

makes sense

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/ws04 📅︎︎ Jun 11 2022 🗫︎ replies
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at the end of july 2020 the 5.0 patch launched for starcraft 2. this would be the largest update in years a host of campaign achievements balance updates and the enormous commander prestige system all launched but this update would also signal the end of support for starcraft 2. it was the beginning of what would be a very turbulent time with blizzard and the crew keeping the game alive were quitting after the patch there was silence until october when on artos's pylon show there was an announcement a new company was being formed to make an rts frost giant studios which okay sure there are a handful of small rts developers right now people keep flailing and failing at making a hit in the genre they're gonna have to bring something pretty impressive to the table to make people care so when i heard the ceo was the production director of legacy of the void they had my curiosity and when i heard the president was the campaign designer of warcraft 3 the frozen throne they had my attention but that's not all they also have starcraft 2's former lead engineer a program manager at blizzard esports a lead artist and principal artist for starcraft 2 in diablo 4 a lead designer and creator of game heart the lead co-op designer for starcraft 2 a pair of immensely qualified server and gameplay engineers and a two times new york times bestselling author um these guys might be legit but to get started they need more than talent they need some oh they already have five million dollars from their first round of funding okay this isn't some fan project frost giant came out told us they were legit and were looking to make the next great blizzard-like rts and then completely vanished off the face of the earth for the next year and a half but now they're back and they brought stormgate so what exactly has frost giant shown us what are they keeping to themselves and what are they going to have to show off in the future to make stormgate a success a week before the public release there was a showing to journalists community leaders and for some reason me most of the information i'm going to go over here is from that initial presentation we only got five minutes of footage in summer game fest compared to an hour and a half deep dive in the private showing so if you're feeling a bit lukewarm after seeing the initial reveal hopefully this video will help you form a bit deeper of an opinion on stormgate first we were shown a cinematic a young woman explores some sort of ancient ruin with a fleet of probes after finding the relic she was searching for a demon appears and attacks and then the cinematic ended for us and we were told we have to wait for summer game fest to watch the whole thing i'm really pissed right now because it was a total cliffhanger and i want to see her fight a demon grant from the future here now that i've seen the full cinematic honestly i think it was the weakest part of their presentation overall i liked the theming and the tempo of the cinematic was good as well my main complaint comes from the sound design listen here [Music] it's currently lacking that visceral oomph that you want from the shots in the impacts if i had to make a guess this cinematic wasn't originally supposed to be done yet but then they were offered a slot in summer games fest and they rushed it it just doesn't feel finished one thing worth noting is that this isn't a pre-rendered cinematic it's an in-engine cut scene this means that we weren't watching stormgate's version of this but their version of this that would make me feel better if it wasn't the actual trailer the setting of the game is a post or mid-apocalyptic earth futuristic humans opened a portal and demons came to say hi this means that instead of the traditional knights and sorcerers versus demons we have high-tech humans fighting them is this literally the setting of doom yeah but does it matter not at all if they execute it well fantasy vs sci-fi is an underexplored theme in strategy games and i'm all for it so what exactly is frost giant looking to create with stormgate taking a look at the screenshots the terrain in the game is bright and colorful and the clarity is good also this skull doodad is awesome and i love it they have a focus on readability trying to make it easy to differentiate units in the middle of a pitched battle this is obviously great it can be very disorienting in an rts when all of your units blob together into a mush and you can't tell how much of what you have the aesthetic does look a little bit mobile game to me but these are just screenshots hopefully when we have more doodads and we can see things moving that feeling will pass but i also can't say it's not an issue because they didn't give us any gameplay footage we just have still images to work with for now this is about all we know about visual design units and features are going to be readable and unique the color tone is bright and cut scenes will take on the darker aspects of the world while the aesthetic of a game is important i completely understand why they didn't focus on it in the presentation so let's get into the meat and potatoes of stormgate the gameplay frost giant has four core pillars that they see as equal importance in storm game the campaign cooperative play ranked play and last but not least something called uh user generated content never heard of it beyond the four pillars they talked heavily about what i honestly would consider a fifth pillar the social experience which frost giant has very accurately understood is lacking in modern rts but pillars are useless unless they're connected carrying the weight of a game equally the large majority of players are story only and if a game wants long-term success stormgate is going to have to keep bringing these players back and back again the first barrier to entry is normally price and stormgate is not going to have a problem there the game is free to play and the first campaign is free as well this is not at all a surprise frost giant's president tim morton was one of the main champions in the fight for starcraft 2 to go free to play the game is looking to follow a seasonal update schedule which i'll talk about later and the story mode releases look to come at the beginning of each season as well they didn't go into specifics about how the campaign will actually be but it's a fair assumption that it will follow the blizzard-like rpg formula i'm personally hoping that there will be a return to the between mission hub system starcraft 2 but the missions themselves will be larger and reward exploration more like warcraft 3. overall the information here is light but there are a few things i would love to see out of the story an initial focus on world building and character-specific conflict will go a long way to helping flesh out this new ip gaming stories in general have a lot of this guy bad my guy good which works for a lot of first person or third person stories but rts is unique in a storytelling space because by nature of its mechanics you're always going to end up playing as all the factions eventually and things are more interesting when every faction has a little bit of good and a little bit of bad both in morality and the people that make it up in terms of the amount of story content they've already said that there's multiple years worth of planned stormgate content and they haven't ruled out the idea of telling the story in other forms of media as well which i want to say is a good thing but i've literally never read a video game book before in my life despite there being tons of them i just read the plot on the wiki like everybody else after the campaign comes co-op this looks to be very similar to the cooperative commander's mode of starcraft 2. each player picks a unique faction and they battle together to defeat a super powerful computer opponent stormgate is using the newly released unreal 5 engine and because of that co-op is going to be able to support up to 3 people hopefully with minimal lag additionally they want to design each faction in a more synergistic way if you've ever played starcraft 2 co-op you would probably agree that the combo play between many of the commanders is very minimal most games are two players acting independently slaying their way through missions without regarding each other frost giant is looking to design factions with a bit more combination play in mind each player bringing their commander's toolkit to create a hole that is greater than the sum of its parts initially when i heard this i liked it a lot as somebody who's playing commander exclusively with viewers when i'm streaming where coordination is high it seems like a ton of fun i do fear that in a quick match setting with random allies well i don't play mobas for a reason while most people are nice a few bad encounters early on in a co-op player's life could really soil the experience if you get an unresponsive ally or queue up with people who don't speak the same language as you things could really suck overall i think it's a good change but there's going to be some hurdles to jump over to get it to its maximum potential traditionally playing versus the ai and rts has been seen as the casual option but stormgate is looking to break the mold with ranked leaderboards for the top tier of cooperative play if you want to be competitive but don't like playing against other people this might be a really cool way to strut your stuff overall this is a great change though it did get me thinking about my distaste of high-level starcraft 2 co-op the majority of high-level organized co-op in starcraft 2 is a lot of spawn camping preventing enemies from ever organizing attack waves laying minds and such to invalidate sections of gameplay when things get extreme the mode is more focused on memorization of timings than dynamic play i personally don't enjoy that as much so if i could put one thing on my stormgate co-op wish list it would be for a bit more variety in how the ai works so the difficulty would come from engaging a ridiculously powerful foe not figuring out how to invalidate them before they attack that's it for pve content but what about some good old-fashioned player versus player unsurprisingly the core competitive mode is going to be one versus one solo play has been the competitive core for rts for its entire esports history and stormgate is no exception but what about other ranked modes if you're a modern rts player this might come as a surprise but while team games were never the main focus of competitive rts they used to be a legitimate part of it for example two v2s were always so important in starcraft 1 that pro league one of the premier events for the game always had a 2v2 section to the competition team games were also significantly more important to warcraft 3. the hyper focus on 1v1 is a modern shift frost giant understands this and they have an interesting take on it their opinion is that you can't create a balanced environment for 1v1 2v2 3v3 4v4 and free for alls at the same time so they're going to focus on one team mode 3 vs 3. this is where i get a bit excited again as someone who spends a ton of time interacting with a casual side of the community i identified a huge problem the bridge to get people into ranked play naturally didn't exist traditionally games just expected you to finish the campaign and then jump into the completely different ranked environment and be cool getting crushed 50 games in a row as a new player but frost giant has obviously put a good deal of thought into this you start off in the campaign finish that check out the three-player co-op where you either bring some friends to play with you or meet some people while playing that co-op and boom you've naturally formed a three versus three team with people who you are already used to communicating and working with because co-op requires more coordination and then if you'd like three versus three maybe you'll give one versus one a try when your buddies are offline this natural progression system makes sense to me it shatters the barriers that get erected around the various game modes making switching between them easier than ever to top it off stormgate's progression system is designed to give you rewards no matter which game type you play you aren't forced to play any mode you don't want to frost giant really seems to understand that every player's experience is different what they enjoy is different than everyone else and the best thing they can do is to make all the modes accessible not to force everybody into every game mode and not to ignore everything besides one versus one by technically cutting down on the number of supported game modes in my opinion they're actually increasing the number of viable game modes that they're supporting instead of letting team games fall by the wayside they also said that 3v3 would act as the test bed for their new mechanics for example if they wanted to test out an objective based system they would toss it in 3v3 for a bit and see how people like it this is a great way to get around another massive barrier that each competitive game has had recently you can't rock the boat too much because there's a host of professional players whose livelihood are at stake if you accidentally break the game for a bit they might not be able to afford rent even if that short term break would have been a long term positive using 3v3 as a testbed is a fantastic way to continue innovating the game while maintaining a healthy competitive scene and frost giant does plan on having a competitive scene they're planning on both running an in-house esports league focused on one versus one and provide incentives for others to run stormgate tournaments i think this is very important there have been attempts in the past to lock down esports to official tournaments and it sucks i love an open esports environment back in 2010 right after starcraft 2 launched there was this german guy who wanted to run his own tournament so he scrounged up 500 euros for prizes and invited a bunch of european pros to his flat for a tournament it was a wild chaotic and stupid mess and it was so much fun that he did it again and again and again the home story cup by take tv is now one of the most beloved tournaments in the scene and the formula has been so successful that they've spread it to a ton of other games as well it shouldn't be a surprise that when a company says they're going to let users generate content i'm totally on board the initial focus for esports is going to be one versus one but they won't rule out the potential for three vs three if it ends up being popular they also said that they want to reward people for both watching and participating that'd be really nice for me because i watch way too much esports and i don't get anything out of it some additional things that i would like to see in ranked play is the inclusion of triggers remember how when starcraft 2 was previewed they showed off the rising and falling lava and it was the coolest thing ever and then it turned out the game didn't support that on ladder maps and the best we got was destructible rocks yeah let's not repeat that mistake i'm not asking for gimmick ladder maps i'm asking that for when somebody has an amazing idea a year after the game launches it can actually be tried and implemented you got a future proof you know my other desire is that they take care to make the transition from 3 player co-op to 3 vs 3 as smooth as possible this is likely to be a very rough point for a lot of players and will lead to a large drop-off guaranteeing that the skills players learned while working together in co-op actually transfers over to 3 vs 3 will be important in making sure players feel comfortable in a more competitive environment we don't have a whole lot of information about the user-generated content pillar mostly because the entire point is that we make the stuff not them they did say a few things about the map editor though modders are going to have full access to the complete editor that frost giant uses not a dumbed down version it's going to be designed with both an easy mode for learning and quick fixes and a full mode for expert users the terrain editor specifically in most map editors is an enormous burden stormgate said that they're trying to make a fast used one hopefully this cuts down one of the most monotonous and time intensive things in map making these are all good changes and to make sure that things launch well i'm personally going to push frost giant to make sure that during the closed beta they get mod makers then who are allowed to test things out in the editor mod makers are often very overlooked and i think their feedback is massively important those are the four pillars of the game but i didn't manage to talk about everything else so here's a bit of a rapid fire of the rest they want to focus on lowering the skill floor without impacting the ceiling to do this there are a couple things they're testing for example a quick macro system that is in the interface instead of having to collect buildings automatic control groups and workers returning to work after building a structure but none of these things are set in stone for the most part these seem fine to me people argued that these sort of changes would ruin starcraft 2 and make it too easy and then it didn't and they also argued that it would make warcraft 3 too easy and it didn't if you make things smoother for a good player they'll just find even more things to do there's also going to be more of a focus on ground combat big air fleets as an end game army is not going to happen i think this is great ground units are cooler because terrain is interesting and air doesn't have that there's also not going to be any boats i think this is great ground units are cooler because terrain is interesting and the ocean just doesn't have that the target game duration is 20 minutes yeah good luck with that frost giant gamers do not take well being told how long their matches should be while you were busy deciding on the 20-minute number there are already turrets being built in your base they want to return rts to being a social experience where you can meet friends and teammates this is great i often hear people yearn for the good old days of clans and big chat lobbies but frost giant also recognizes you can't just copy paste old systems the internet is very different than it was in 2002 and a modern social experience has to utilize third-party tools like discord but at the same time they need to not integrate themselves too much so if those apps stop being popular stormgate isn't shackled by a brick remember back in 2012 skype was a big thing imagine how annoying it would be today if a game forced you to log into skype to talk to people it would be horrible striking a balance here is key this one is an important one they agree that good pathfinding is essential but they also recognize that it leads to death balls where entire maxed out armies are moving together in one giant blob to help stop this they're looking at various forms of area control like siege tanks and potentially non-lethal forms of zone control i'm really excited to see what they come up with for non-lethal ideas zone control units are essential for a healthy game but it's not fun to accidentally step into a line of artillery and have your army vaporized because you weren't looking for half a second if they can find a balance that would be amazing the game is going to be free to play and the first campaign will come with it but additional story elements will be paid skins will be sold and there's no nfts sorry gamestop bros this isn't the game for you i hope they look at some sort of season pass system where you're rewarded for that season no matter which version of the game you play and you get that season's story mode as part of the bundle the a la carte system of buying individual skins or skin packs doesn't really appeal to me that much i personally would find a skin set that i like and then i would buy it and i would never have a reason to look at the store again and then i'd end up playing the game for like five years straight and having paid 10 total dollars and i don't think that's good for them in the long run they didn't go into detail about how resources are going to work but it does look like they're using two resources and a supply system at least in their testing right now and they did mention that they're interested in the tree type system that warcraft 3 uses meaning that bases aren't an ornately laid out pile of resources but instead some of the resources are more integrated into the map i like this watching good players come up with an interesting expansion strategy because they need to min max a resource like wood could be really cool but it's a subtle enough mechanic where it doesn't really impact the average player at all that's it for gameplay so let's talk about the big question can they actually make this game and when can we play it frost giant has said that they currently have 35 million dollars in the bank and are looking to start closed beta in summer of 2023. the 35 million is expected to last them until the product launches and not any further so what's my opinion on all of this from an audio and visual standpoint i'm honestly sort of underwhelmed i think that strong sound design is incredibly important for evocative feelings inside of an rts and currently the cutscene is lacking that i would also prefer a more stylized experience one that doesn't evoke feelings of the app store but in terms of them describing their goals on gameplay mechanics i felt that frost giant did press a lot of the right buttons they were able to repeatedly talk about problems in their past work and the genre in general and then they proposed reasonable fixes to those problems now it would be naive to say that all these fixes are going to work and some of the fixes are bound to create completely unforeseen problems of their own but iteration and problem solving is exactly what the genre needs right now they're also being realistic about their budget 35 million sounds like a lot of money but for a full release these days it's pretty reasonable for a true aaa experience until i see actual in-game footage of stormgate being played i'm going to avoid the hype making their vision into a reality is going to be a difficult journey for them but we do know that they have the tools the experience and the passion to create something amazing i wish frost giant the best of luck and i'm excited to see some actual gameplay but i swear if their gameplay showcase is the same as the cinematic where they build it up and then it cuts off right before the big battle i'm going to
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Channel: GiantGrantGames
Views: 160,548
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Id: RTukaMin730
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Length: 19min 34sec (1174 seconds)
Published: Thu Jun 09 2022
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