Stormgate Dev Tracker

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

Map design, along with healthy faction and unit balance, is one of the most significant factors in maintaining a robust competitive RTS ecosystem. Maps are one way in which RTS games keep matches exciting and fresh. New maps introduce features that may change the way allies or opponents interact, promote the use of a particular strategy, or diminish the effectiveness of other strategies. Builds become more or less effective depending on factors like overall size, rush distance, and starting locations. At the end of the day, maps greatly influence the competitive meta.

In the StarCraft and Warcraft franchises, maps have evolved to include certain staple features that are necessary for maintaining faction balance, such as standardized resource availability, main/natural sizes and layouts, expansion/creep distances, and so on. Certain design elements are targeted towards specific factions, such as hiding spots for Zerg Overlords, limiting Terran’s ability to build in the cente...

Two months ago, we asked you all for your experiences with social features in games: how you’ve used those features to interact with other players, which features provided you the best experience, and how those features could translate into an RTS game. Now we’d like to share some of the highlights of that thread and our own perspective on many of the topics discussed.

In our original post, we touched on the prevalence of third party platforms, like Discord, Reddit, Twitch, and YouTube, that have enabled communities across gaming titles. As /u/RoxasofXIII pointed out, the developers of these tools are exclusively focused on refining and improving them, so they tend to be streamlined and efficient in their ability to co...

For those of you following our YouTube channel, we’ve been producing a series of videos designed to give you a sneak peek at our development process. For our next video, however, we’d like to turn the conversation over to you, our community. Since Frost Giant’s launch, you’ve had many questions. Now, we’d like to give you an opportunity to ask the Frost Giant team directly, with answers coming in an upcoming video filmed from ...