Stormgate Dev Tracker

In terms of base building, two key sources of inspiration include Warcraft III and They Are Billions.

In Warcraft III, the placement of all your buildings matters a lot, and different buildings have different levels of vulnerability, leading to varied harassment and interaction among the factions.

They Are Billions takes this concept to another level where every building has unique abilities/adjacency bonuses, and base-building is almost half the game. That being said, we recognize that They Are Billions is a single-player RTS and thus the player can be expected to pay a greater % of his attention to this particular aspect of the game. But it is interesting to think about how much of this we can translate into a multiplayer RTS.

Yes! Our current focus is designing fair, balanced, and interesting units for the versus modes. But along the way, we’ll certainly have wacky ideas that end up on the cutting room floor, which will end up in our PvE modes. This doesn’t apply to just units, but also for potential abilities as well, for example, how the Adept has slightly different abilities across all the various modes of SC2. For a new RTS that has multiple modes, I think the process you’re describing often comes organically.

I'm a sucker for any new Pokemon release, so while I've had my fair share with Arceus this year, I still can't wait for Pokemon Violet/Scarlett.

As many of us hail from SC2, deathballs are a constant topic in our minds. First, to preface this topic, we aim to at least rival the crisp pathfinding found in SC2 that allows players to engage in the game with minimal frustration. That being said, we recognize that this style of pathfinding does encourage deathballs, so from this starting point, it’s all about finding strategies to mitigate these deathballs. Without going too much in-depth into each of the options, here are just some things we’re looking at:

• Designing units with “does this deathball” as one of the items on our mental checklist
• Relatively higher unit radii to reduce DPS density
• Reining in unit range to reduce DPS density
• Lowering the power level/providing strong counters to air units to reduce DPS density
• Territory-control focused units and structures
• Territory-control abilities
• Units that can be very effective when pulled apart from the deathball...

Coming from the starting point of StarCraft II, we’re going to be tackling replayability from multiple angles:

The first is customization. StarCraft II had both the Mastery and Prestige systems of customization, which allowed you to customize commanders via four vectors with two to three choices per vector. In Stormgate, we aim to greatly expand the number of customization options you’ll be able to play around with. Combine this with a shift to three players and a greater focus on cooperation opportunities in Stormgate unlocks even more ways to play the game!

Second, we’re going to look at lethality in order to enable endlessly scalable difficulties. SC2 Co-op was built on the foundation of highly lethal SC2 units. And because of this high lethality, it became unintentionally balanced around deleting waves instantly either via your units’ high DPS or very powerful “nuke”-style calldowns. One of the side effects of this was that we could never make debuffs feel good ...

And from the bottom of my filthy developer heart, thank you for sharing your story.

Co-op especially has a very place in my heart, and from both me and the team, we can't wait to share with you what we've been working on tomorrow. =)

Discussion Topic - 2022/6 - Approaches to Game Launch and Beyond

The way in which games are developed and released has changed a lot over the years. Several distinct approaches to launching and supporting a game with post-release content have emerged over time. We’d like to discuss some of the more common models and get your perspective on them as a player.

The “Old-School” box model

Launching a game with a single primary content release is about as close to the old standard of physical boxes lining store shelves as it gets. Remember those? Some of us miss those boxes and the goodies inside, like art books, mouse pads, and cloth maps. Having a physical connection to the game feels great, and it’s easier to display a box on your bookshelf than a digital game key.

The main advantage of this approach, whether it’s physical or digital, is that a lot of content is released right away. From a player perspective this usu...

In February, we discussed some of our thoughts and plans for our editor and the experience of creating and playing custom maps within our game. We also asked you to share your experiences with player-created content, and what you would like to see from our tools and custom game experience.

As usual, you provided us with a great deal of fantastic feedback, and we have gone through all of it. The discussion even spanned multiple forums–in addition to the Reddit thread, we also heard from RTS fans on the SC2Mapster Discord, and on the ...

User-generated content (UGC) is one of several pillars we view as essential to creating the next great RTS game. We hope the breadth of this topic inspires discussion from a wide range of perspectives. Please feel free to offer your thoughts and opinions on any or all of the discussion areas below. While things like YouTube tutorials and community-organized events could be considered UGC, for the purposes of this discussion we’re focusing on player-created maps, mods, and custom games.

Legacy & Community

Desert Strike, Aeon of Strife, Defense of the Ancients, Cat vs. Mouse, Diplomacy, Micro/Macro, Mini-Game Party, Mafia, Castle Fight, Phantom, Bounds, Risk II, Bunker Wars, Nexus Wars, Golems, 4v4 Micro Jungle, Hamsters vs. Space Vacuums . . . we could go on and on. Players have now been creating and enjoying custom RTS game experiences across four different decades!

The legacy of UGC in RTS games is beyond comparison. Entire game genres, suc...

A little over a month ago, we posted our most recent discussion topic asking for your thoughts on esports, the tools that support them, their structure, and the surrounding communities. We feel the overall feedback we received on that topic is aligned with our plans, and below we’d like to highlight a few thoughts on some specific topics that were discussed.

Replays and Spectating

Spectating is the first step to celebrating highly skilled play, so it’s great to see many of you asking for a robust and accessible replay system to support player development, and we’re excited to work towards improving these systems. /u/demiwraith brought up downloading professional replays to learn from and practice alongside, and...

In November, we asked for your opinions on different aspects of competitive map design. We read every response to these posts and greatly appreciate the time and thoughtfulness of this community. Below we share our thoughts on some of your comments.

/u/_Spartak_ highlighted the dichotomy between faction asymmetry and map variability. If factions are significantly different, such as in the way their units function, it can be challenging to have a variety of maps that remain relatively balanced. For example, in the StarCraft franchise, the Zergling by itself forces a significant amount of map design considerations due to its impact on all matchups, particularly regarding the size and shape of choke points around the natu...

We love esports at Frost Giant and we’re committed to fostering a robust esports ecosystem for our upcoming RTS. We’re keeping esports in mind from the very beginning of development.

To position our game for esports success, we’re drawing on everything we learned from working on previous successful esports franchises, including StarCraft and Warcraft. We’re also looking at the best examples of competitive games outside of RTS—including traditional sports as well as other game genres like MOBA, fighting games, and competitive shooters. 

We believe esports are for everyone, and there should be opportunities for players of all skill levels, not just high-stakes professional tournaments. We want to support the entire range of organized competitive play, from smaller-scale, grassroots tournaments to pro play. Organized competition will make our game more fun for everyone, streamline the path to pro for players who aspire to play professionally, and contribute significant...

Yep