Stormgate Dev Tracker

This response comes from the folks involved in our leaderboard system:

"Yes, we do have goals to show where you stand on the leaderboard by Nation, World Region, World. For Early Access, the Leaderboard will only support World. This is a topic we'd love some feedback on. How would you like us to determine the nation you represent? We've discussed options from auto-detection to having players self-identify, each has its pros and cons.

We have several internal plans for addressing smurfing, but most of this will come only after we launch Early Access. No explicit details to share yet."

Gerald here again: I'll add a funny side note, but I used to work alongside the guy at Blizzard who first popularized the term "Smurfing". Ha!

To clarify: We are serious about competitive integrity so our 3v3 mode (which we're still figuring out the exact details) is not currently slated to use the Gear system at all because we don't want it to impact fairness or competitive play. We're still iterating (as focus on 3v3 will come later in development), but that's the lens through which we're looking at the mode.

You'll still "own" the Hero for 3v3 and 3P co-op, but it will work quite differently in 3v3 as we want that mode to feel fair. Not pay to win.

Thanks for asking -- please allow me to clarify. It's not 25€ for three missions.

The $25 USD Early Access pack includes the first paid chapter of the Vanguard campaign (3 missions) plus additional content like the Amara Hero and the Vanguard gold army accent. You will also be able to purchase all three Vanguard campaign chapters (containing at least 9 story missions) for $25 in the in-game store.

As for expected playtime, this will vary widely from person to person--if you're a first-timer, for example, it might take you significantly longer to complete the missions vs. an RTS pro. You may also replay the missions cooperatively (we are adding co-op to campaign later in Early Access), or want to come back and tackle them again several times at different difficulties. We are planning to include easter eggs and other fun reasons to explore these missions.

Our goal is for the campaign missions to be fun, first and foremost, and for them to feel worthw...

It's incorrect to say that very few people like this style and implementation.

For example, a recent community poll had playtesters rate the game from 1-10 in many areas, including Graphics, and the majority expressed that they like the art with the most frequent ratings being 6 and 8. Art is subjective, and the majority of players tell us they like the art (acknowledging of course that key areas like our map terrain have not been "artified" as we've been focused on gameplay testing).

The nature of online discussion is that players who don't like what they see are more likely to post a critique because they'd like to see change. (Someone who likes something will just give it a thumbs up and move on without making a post.)

We made the decision to bring the community along with us through the development process, and the unfortunate side effect is that players who don't understand game development are comparing our work-in-progress to finished or near-fi...

You can purchase individual chapters (each containing 3 or more missions, and playable solo and co-op (in the future)), which we currently have priced at $10 USD (not accounting for any possible regional pricing.)

Plenty of Early Access games had a 1.0 launch that brought in many more players. Just look at Baldur's Gate III, which was in EA for 3 years, followed by an incredible 1.0 launch.

Early Access for us is a full development phase--not a polished final product. If you want a polished final product, we encourage you to come back a year (or more!) later for 1.0!

The map critiques are understandable, but the fact is we decided to go with Early Access because it's a better way to make games--getting feedback from the community is going to accelerate development as we continue to 1.0. Spending resources on map terrain now just isn't smart or efficient. We are aggressively testing these maps and any effort we put into hardening the art on the maps will likely be thrown away with each redesign or major change, so we aren't investing resources there.

Making the maps pretty is a final step before we call them finished, but as we're actively designing and testing maps, it's a distant concern compared to so many other dev priorities that are more foundational, and which will help us make a better game overall. We're looking at the big picture and have a vision of the long journey ahead vs. short term wants.

As for lore, we're just getting started. The novella was really positively received and we have plans to tell many more stori...

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, playtesters! We all appreciate everything you've done to help make Stormgate a better game. We have a lot of exciting changes in store for Early Access that I think you'll enjoy, but our job isn't finished--we're going to rely on you to continue playing and sharing your feedback so that we can continue to evolve the game as we head towards our 1.0 release!

Defeating Evil with the power of friendship has only led to awful unpopular stories like in Halo, Legend of Zelda, Baldur’s Gate 3, Destiny, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Warcraft, StarCraft, Kingdom Hearts, Yakuza, Final Fantasy, Star Wars… ;)

Not in the slightest.

Yes.

🔵vs ⚠️vs🟥

Just to be clear, we haven’t paid any streamers to promote Stormgate. Our support from content creators had been earned/organic and unpaid.

Please presubmit your Qs, mate—you shouldn’t be reading AMAs at 3am!

Let’s do this, r/Stormgate!

We’ve finally shared a first look at our third faction, the Celestial Armada, with the public.

We’ve also announced that Stormgate Early Access will begin on August 13. We’re even kicking things off on July 30 as a show of our appreciation to our Kickstarter backers, playtesters, and new Steam supporters.

With so much excitement building around the game, we think it’s about time for another AMA!

We’re bringing together a bunch of our devs to answer your burning questions here on r/Stormgate this coming Friday, June 14, 2024 at 10:00-11:00 AM PDT / 1:00-2:00 PM EDT / 7:00-8:00 PM CEST.

The team has a game to...

I created the song... well, I entered the prompts and Suno made it.

Yep, Celestials are being actively tested and iterated on by our design team.

BuddyBot is my best friend. I can't wait to see him grow along with the rest of our game.

August 13 is the START of Early Access, not the end.

July 30 is the kickoff of a sneak preview period, but Early Access officially begins on August 13.

Just want to confirm that we saw this post and devs are discussing internally. Thank you for providing the suggestions!