Originally posted by
Sniec
Nah the reasons are very simple. Pick company of heroes for instance, what are the differences between 2 and 3? Graphics are the same, historical settings are the same, there were some changes in the campaign sure, but that's it. Why would I play coh3 if it's released badly? No reasons, I can go play coh2, still a great game. Same for aoe4, if it sucks, I can play aoe2, because it's still a great game and it offers very similar things.
Let's consider stormgate for instance, a game that prides itself for returning to the roots of RTSs in terms of gameplay, what's its offer? Just StarCraft in 2023, if it sucks I can play sc2, still a great game.
So I would say it's a mix between old games holding on really well and little space for new rts games to innovate on the genre. The main factor remains the gameplay and the technical polish, like unit responsiveness, pathfinding algorithms ect, and that's something you must do really well to succeed.
“What’s its offer?”
The things you point out as what’s most important—gameplay, responsiveness, path finding—an improvement in these specific areas is what we’re offering (just to start). James Anhalt, our chief architect is largely responsible for why SC2 feels so much better to play than anything else out there.
He spent the first year of Frost Giant’s existence building SnowPlay, our tech that turns UE5 into a best-in-class RTS engine. We are up to three times as responsive as SC2, as measured by tick rate. Our game is different because even at our pre-alpha state, it just feels great to play.
(See recent hands-on experiences from PC Gamer, VentureBeat, Grubby, TLO, Neuro, etc. for outside opinions, but you’ll be able to judge for yourself with no risk because we’re free to play.)
If you want to know more about SnowPlay, this interview dives deeper into the tech, but the summary is that we aim for Stormgate to be the most responsive and fun to play RTS: https://screenrant.com/james-anhalt-tim-morten-interview-snowplay-technology-stormgate/
If you want to just keep playing SC2, we are grateful—we want SC2 to still be played forever and we hope players like you stick around. But we also have plans to continue moving the genre forward—we weren’t done making RTS games after SC2.
So we’re in the early stages of building Stormgate, a new RTS set in a new game universe. We plan to release years of campaign chapters; 3P co-op vs AI that we’re not adding after-the-fact like SC2 co-op commanders; a powerful new editor for building mods, maps, and custom games; fully integrated competition for players of all skill levels; and a bespoke 3v3 mode with Heroes.
We’re psyched to see so many people who enjoy Blizzard-style RTS games telling us they’re ready for a new RTS from our team—one with new single player and co-op campaigns, new units and factions and gameplay to master, and one that we plan to support for years to come.
We hope you’ll check it out.
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