Did this land with a hollow thud and flatline?

[ko]

Less than 1000 concurrent players. No one talks about the game anywhere. No trace of excitement.

It seems to have flubbed the landing and cratered into nothingness.

(I honestly couldn't remember the name for a while when I tried to recall the name of the game).

I still can't figure out who this game is for. As a fan of traditional RTS battles (Westwood/Blizzard style) I really see nothing but a mishmash of clashing themes that could as well be from different games. There's no cohesiveness to the faction designs, the visuals are boring and uninspired... I yawn just looking at it. The story setup and characters... well, it does nothing for me. It is beyond "been there done that".

I remember being blown away when I first fired up StarCraft back in the day. Ugly as those animations are today, they set a mood and delivered a memorable universe that the gameplay matched from beginning to end.

What does this game do?

[Kern]

Originally posted by ko:

(I honestly couldn't remember the name for a while when I tried to recall the name of the game).

We don't talk about it enough, but for a game, they have chosen the most generic name possible...

[Jack_Burton]

For a new RTS IP on Steam from a small Indie studio, 1000 concurrent players after a couple of weeks of mixed review is excellent.

Look around on Steam. Other than the established IPs (AoE, COH, etc.) there aren't many if any at all with this level of player engagement. And they go F2P in 4 days.

[ratfromthemoon]

Extremely generic name and character design (I thought this was an FPS when I saw the Steam capsule poster/visual), RTS is also very intimidating to get into for an average player. Most people who are interested in this game this early are SC players and they are not easy to please

[Nazrogal]

I played the first mission... and now I am sad that I backed them on kickstarter.

[Spartan dropkick]

This is for SC2 players mostly interested in a new multiplayer and competitive game. There is a scene growing from various SC2 streamers like WinterSC, Lowko, and coverage by Tasteless, who are giving it a go and also shilling it.
If you want flavour, badass arsenals, and unique characters with CNC style cutscenes and story wait for Tempest Rising.

[DDkiki]

Originally posted by Jack_Burton:

For a new RTS IP on Steam from a small Indie studio, 1000 concurrent players after a couple of weeks of mixed review is excellent.

Look around on Steam. Other than the established IPs (AoE, COH, etc.) there aren't many if any at all with this level of player engagement. And they go F2P in 4 days.

"Small indie studio" on a leash of a korean corpo with giant financial support. Can you people at least stop lying that they are small devs lol. Especially after they were hyping themselves as epic ex-bliz devs.

If you want actual small studio made RTS look at Godsworn.

[Larkis]

Originally posted by DDkiki:

Originally posted by Jack_Burton:

For a new RTS IP on Steam from a small Indie studio, 1000 concurrent players after a couple of weeks of mixed review is excellent.

Look around on Steam. Other than the established IPs (AoE, COH, etc.) there aren't many if any at all with this level of player engagement. And they go F2P in 4 days.

"Small indie studio" on a leash of a korean corpo with giant financial support. Can you people at least stop lying that they are small devs lol. Especially after they were hyping themselves as epic ex-bliz devs.

If you want actual small studio made RTS look at Godsworn.

44 Millions are nothing when you need to write the core engine and make all the artwork themself. I agree that today aa lot people can ceate awesome games with using free Assets and Engines. I love Stuff like Manor Lords. But to be fair they just get free avaible assets and stitch them together. That is not bad, please dont missunderstand me. Its awesome what they can do.

But it is a completly different thing when you start at the zero point and need to do everything on your own team.

[Naamtar]

Originally posted by ko:

What does this game do?

Attracts whiny know it all boomers that think they understand video game development.

[BOPMASTER420]

Originally posted by Larkis:

Originally posted by DDkiki:

"Small indie studio" on a leash of a korean corpo with giant financial support. Can you people at least stop lying that they are small devs lol. Especially after they were hyping themselves as epic ex-bliz devs.

If you want actual small studio made RTS look at Godsworn.

44 Millions are nothing when you need to write the core engine and make all the artwork themself. I agree that today aa lot people can ceate awesome games with using free Assets and Engines. I love Stuff like Manor Lords. But to be fair they just get free avaible assets and stitch them together. That is not bad, please dont missunderstand me. Its awesome what they can do.

But it is a completly different thing when you start at the zero point and need to do everything on your own team.

Hi!

Unreal has a lot of support for RTS out of the box.
Frost giant has done a great job with a lot of new stuff (like netcode! which UE5 replication out of the box probably helped with…) but claiming they had to rewrite the entire engine is a little silly. I am sure they made modifications, but based on the fact that they haven’t figured out yet how to customize hotkeys, I’m inclined to believe they have very limited experience in UE5. A lot of that money probably paid for devs to take some classes on UE5.

I think part of the problem with stormgate is just that there’s a lot of bullshitting going on both publicly and privately within frostgiant. Hopefully we weather the storm and everyone communicates more directly, but it is very odd that this the game we got for 40 mil.

[Abyssus_j]

In terms of general interest, Twitch Tracker and Steam Charts tells an interesting story.

[worldnotgone2012]

Originally posted by BOPMASTER420:

Originally posted by Larkis:

Hi!

Unreal has a lot of support for RTS out of the box.
Frost giant has done a great job with a lot of new stuff (like netcode! which UE5 replication out of the box probably helped with…) but claiming they had to rewrite the entire engine is a little silly. I am sure they made modifications, but based on the fact that they haven’t figured out yet how to customize hotkeys, I’m inclined to believe they have very limited experience in UE5. A lot of that money probably paid for devs to take some classes on UE5.

I think part of the problem with stormgate is just that there’s a lot of bullshitting going on both publicly and privately within frostgiant. Hopefully we weather the storm and everyone communicates more directly, but it is very odd that this the game we got for 40 mil.

Kinda amazing that they managed to burn this much money and have this to show for it.

[XartaX]

Well it seems like it's stopped crashing for now. 1K~ concurrent players seems to be what they can realistically get for now. And of course there will probably be some more people when F2P opens.

And saying 1K concurrent players to mixed reviews is good for a game with 40M in investments is crazy delusional (Mechabellum has almost 2K right now and is tiny in scope and funding in comparison). But they have a chance to improve it.

[mrowland]

Originally posted by Naamtar:

Originally posted by ko:

What does this game do?

Attracts whiny know it all boomers that think they understand video game development.

Boomers are in nursing homes or sailing on cruises in their retirement years. They don't even know how to turn their VCRs off, let alone play video games.

[Daimos]

IMO, that 1k players on average is mostly old SC2 pros, who are practicing for a possible new line of business. I know that Parting plays this (#1), on ladder I saw MaNa (Protoss from Poland), etc.

[jonoliveira12]

Originally posted by mrowland:

Originally posted by Naamtar:

Attracts whiny know it all boomers that think they understand video game development.

Boomers are in nursing homes or sailing on cruises in their retirement years. They don't even know how to turn their VCRs off, let alone play video games.

Silly people do not understand what "boomer" even means. They think it is just a derogatory term for people older than them.