- Is there any plan to test basic things like Time To Kill, unit speed, overall pacing of the game or what we have now i set in the stone?
Yes, we are planning to test Time to Kill in an upcoming patch. The thinking now is to slightly reduce the TTK by a notch or two to accelerate combat and see how that feels.
- Is there any attempt to redesign Creep Camps or are they set in stone?
Creep Camps are an early design and one we plan to continue experimenting with and refining going forward. We plan to do some work to make these camps fit within our universe more cohesively–what you see now is largely a gameplay placeholder for testing purposes and lacks the visual design and worldbuilding that we’d like them to express in our final iteration.
The rewards they provide and how important they are to the flow of any given match are also areas that we are going to closely examine as development continues.
- Is there a plan to add some more mechanics to macro and make macro require similar attention in every faction in 1v1?
We are also planning to examine our macro mechanics, though it could be that with our goal of keeping the factions highly asymmetric, that some approaches are more complex or involved than others, which we think is a strength of the game. Too early to go into too many details, but we’d like to hear from players what they’d like to see regarding macro mechanics for the specific factions.
- Is FG happy with early game units interactions in 1v1? This is a question more about gamedesign, less about balance.
We generally like that players have something to do early on and believe that “starter” units for scouting and early engagements and creeping make the game feel interesting and exciting. That said, there is a drawback in terms of approachability, particularly for new players, of not having a more extended “ramping up” period–our game encourages you to be active, scouting and creeping from the get-go.
We’re still examining this and expect to be figuring out what the ideal early game looks like for quite some time.
- Does FG treat 1v1 as a game mode for the core audience, or do they design it hoping that casuals will play 1v1? (spoiler alert: casuals will not play 1v1).
Campaign (first) and co-op (second) are far more appropriate “casual”-friendly modes, though one can argue that RTS as a whole is not a genre built for casual players. We’re not making a match-three puzzle game–we want to make a game with rich depth and satisfying levels of complexity from both a mechanical gameplay perspective as well as from a design standpoint. The goal for systems like BuddyBot and for our Quick macro Panel is not to eliminate that depth, but to make engaging with it more approachable for more players.
- Is the gathering resources part of the game finished?
The way resources are gathered is not final. We still plan to revamp our resources and examine the systems around them.
- Will we see a high ground advantage?
Maybe?
- Will campaign chapters be bigger, or will we be left with chapters of 3 short missions?
The goal is for the campaign chapters to be bigger and to have more depth, and to add systems like a hub level between missions to make the campaign richer and more engaging. We are putting a lot of work into the campaign and look forward to sharing this progress next year.
- Does FG see a need for global novelty in gameplay that could be a concrete reason to play SG? (play SG because we have cool mechanics that are not in RTS games you play every day)
Regarding innovation, we are going to make improvements and refinements where they make sense. We believe a faction like the Celestials embodies our vision for how to bring something fresh and new to the table. That said, with Stormgate, we aim to make a new game that carries forward the gameplay traditions of some of our past favorite RTS games, not to completely reinvent the wheel.
For us, this is a balancing act. Our team has decades of combined experience developing this style of game. Now, we have an exciting opportunity to create an all-new universe and tell new stories while honoring the timeless gameplay that came before us. Familiarity is good–we love this style of game and believe the world is a better place with more new RTS games. We aren’t ready to abandon our favorite game genre, and we firmly believe that players aren’t ready either.