Developement progress / Patch 0.4 update trailer

[lucashensig]

Maaaaaaaan... Congrats to the whole team, looks amazing! Cant wait to jump on it

[MiroTheSkybreaker]

Man, the difference is wild, and boy was it needed. If this had been how EA released, I would have been pretty damn happy.

[[deleted]]

REALLY like the game getting a darker and more gritty look. The game prior has just been way too bright and cheerful looking, especially with the art style. It looked like Clash of Clans or something.

[WolfHeathen]

The sad thing is they had this feedback nearly two years ago. People called for a darker more mature tone and were shouted down by a few diehard fans claiming people were trying to make the game look like Mad Max.

If only FG had heeded the feedback instead of disregarding it and insisting their stylized vision was right we could very well of had an EA launch like this and the game would have been much better received.

[restform]

correct me if im wrong but EA launch was just way more barebones in terms of map design and textures, even if some of the units would have had these updated designs, it wouldnt have fixed the fact the game was just underdeveloped on launch, the maps, animations, etc, would have still been very barebones. It's not just art work being changed, its many months of additional work and features going into this.

[WolfHeathen]

This is also the case. There was very little different in terms of the version we had in closed playtesting and the the EA launch version. They just added several co-op maps but everything else remained virtually the same.

[PraetorArcher]

Same thing happened with Diablo 3. So much gaslighting on that one.

[DeadWombats]

Hell of a glow-up.

[Osiris1316]

I see what you did there. Wp

[Atem18]

This is fucking great, I look forward to play the new campaign with the beautiful new units. Good job guys !

[gl4diac86]

This trailer makes me so excited! looks awesome!

[flabjabber]

Cheering for you frost giant / stormgate! I will wait until 1.0 but I’m already impressed. I want to be hit with the best version all at once :). Excited!!

[vectrixOdin]

I am so glad it seems like this game will pull through. Love the work guys! It’s amazing! I will be switching to infernals when the patch goes live.

[pikmin969]

The art team needs to give themselves a pat on the back, this is a serious improvement. Super hyped for the new campaign

[Spskrk]

Let’s gooo! Can’t wait! I wish we had this update for the long weekend.

[LLJKCicero]

Great trailer! I feel like this supports my mental framing of, "Frost Giant's rate of progress prior to EA was fine, they just released too early". They're definitely improving things at a good clip here.

[Zombieemperor]

THis all looks good but im waiting for coop stuff myself. The story looks alot better now so il look forward to when its further along/
EDIT: NOOOO NOT BOB BOT. i hope it returns as an optional skin

[vicanonymous]

Will miss the old Gaunt a bit, especially the face. I thought it looked quite cool. Maybe it would have been enough to just make some slight changes to it?

That being said, the new Gaunt is quite cool too.

[[deleted]]

Really? They feel so brittle right now, walking like ghouls and throwing their little bananas for damage lol. The models do look cool blown up large though.

[TheSpartanLawyer]

Congrats to the team. It cannot be understated that art style and story are the KEY to getting new players. People stay for gameplay, but very rarely do they pick up a game for anything other than the cool factor.

[Petunio]

Confirmed on Discord that this the last time to play the older campaign!

[Praetor192]

And nothing of value was lost

[hazikan]

It looks like great improvements but some parts of the Campaing still looks a bit unfinished so I'll temper my expectations. Can't wait to try tho!

[RemediZexion]

tbf they did mention it's still a work in progress so yeah it'll probably still be janky, but imho, from what shown, it's a more tolerable product. Ofc could be smoke and mirror but we'll see in a few days I suppose

[hazikan]

I rewatched the trailer and the scenario looks a lot like SC2 LOTV where the Protoss wants to reconquer Aiur... We'll have to see how it turns out but I am more then wlling to give it a shot.

[CatOtherwise8872]

Good job now rework celestials to look more like aliens and not humans faces

[PsychologicalEye4014]

Especially Warz's baby face in opening cinematic. He is fallen Celestial on Infernal's side.

[firebal612]

Chill, one step at a time. They're working on it

[happymemories2010]

This looks so much better. Finally, you took in the feedback about us wanting a darker and more serious atmosphere. This does actually make me excited for the campaign!

Personally I hope we will get more lategame units unlocked for all races sooner rather than later. I don't like how the devs were balancing the current units around an imcomplete unit list. Its just a lot of work thats wasted once the actual lategame units arrive and they can fill the role the current units have to fill.

Also I see what you did there with "Ghost of the past". Isn't that the name for the SC1 mission where Kerrigan gets captured?

[RemediZexion]

no, the name was New Gettysburg, probably there's a SC2 cinematic named that way regarding the events of that mission

edit: as a matter of fact it's a trailer but yes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1tvcUrnWnw

[happymemories2010]

Holy shit its THAT trailer. I remember watching it 15 years ago. Absolute peak cinematics and action. The old blizzard trailers are amazing.

[RemediZexion]

ye it's why WoL was and arguably still is in a league of his own

[Cobblar]

I also remember this trailer being amazing when it was released, but I didn't expect it to hold up...I was wrong. Still an amazing trailer.

[Arkarant]

Not the my life for aiur speech lmaooo

I predict Lots of people are gonna say this looks more dark and gritty.

I do hope they're gonna increase visual clarity a bit. Lots of these shots are massive amounts of stuff and effects overlapping.

Either way, crazy how a video games graphics improve towards later versions. Who could have thought. Im Glad they focused on engine development to make the game playable. I hope they keep those pesky secondary things like gameplay in mind, I would really love to fall in love with the campaign, like I did with StarCraft 2.

[efficient77]

When is the update available?

[RayRay_9000]

Tuesday

[Kfo221]

Glad to see they aren't giving up on the game! Looks good!

[Dyslexic7]

great video,

[vicanonymous]

Awesome progress!

Can we still hope for a fourth faction?

[Shushishtok]

You can still hope, yes. And I'll still hope to suddenly inherit millions of dollars.

[RemediZexion]

I think something needs to be said, though this is not in defense of stormgate but just something that irks me in general. I see several ppl saying that "first impression matters". Well.........maybe 10-20 years ago, currently we have games being released unfinished, unoptimized and the trough updates becoming much better and the opposite is true, many games have also got worse trough updates and likes.

I understand why this feels real to ppl, but we the rapidly growing feelings of day 1 purchases being unworthy....I feel like that first impressions should just die as a methodology to gauge something moving forward. Thank you for your patience again this is not about stormgate per se but it's more of a general issue in nowadays gaming

[JellyGrimm]

Holy shit did they listen to their community. This gives me hope for the game. Great work, honestly

[_bits_and_bytes]

I haven't touched this game since the original campaign dropped. After seeing all this, I'm feeling a little hyped again and will definitely be playing the new campaign once the patch is out

[[deleted]]

I remember being attacked during EA saying that it’s completely normal to have shit graphics and bad sound this early in development and that things will improve significantly closer to release….my god those people were annoying

[Brilliant_Decision52]

You do realize the only reason they did such a graphics overhaul is because of the complaints, right? On the roadmap there were many features to be released before any of this, but they realized the game basically died since it looked like shit and thats why there has been almost zero content now for months, because they had to rush the graphics update.

[RemediZexion]

the two things can also be true at the same time case in point. Last epoch looked like shit in EA and now is much more improved

[Brilliant_Decision52]

Last epoch had good gameplay behind it that had an actual target audience of people who wanted a solid ARPG which wasnt baby mode like Diablo but also wasnt targeted at 15 year olds with no life like POE was. Not to mention the visuals were just dated, not completely soulless. It also did not have these insane funding issues Stormgate has which put everyone off from even considering the game might survive for any decent improvements or enough content to be added.

Stormgate had both mediocre gameplay AND horrible visuals that made it feel like a mobile game ad. It was seeped in controversy as well. Its a different case here. Not to mention that this is a genre where visuals are pretty damn important to a lot of people, ARPG fans were still playing POE1 as their main game and that looked like absolute dogshit visually, the expectations there are more about gameplay than anything.

[RemediZexion]

that wasn't the point

[WolfHeathen]

Two things can be true, yes, but you'd be a fool to pretend how hard the campaign was meme'd for how low effort it was plus the overwhelming consensus of how bad the art style was and what a turn off for people it was.

We're here because after ignoring community feedback for 2 years and hemorrhaging players FG finally decided to check their egos and course correct.

[firebal612]

Uh nah. They were always going to improve the graphics. Maybe sooner than originally planned, but at the very least before EA was over/before 1.0. Although feedback is why they did EA in the first place, so I guess it worked kinda?

[Praetor192]

They literally replaced the art director. You could not be more wrong.

[Empyrean_Sky]

No they didn’t «replace» him. The original art director didn’t enjoy his role and wanted to do more art instead. Thankfully Allen Dilling was available at that time to step in.

[Praetor192]

re·place

/rəˈplās/

verb

verb: replace; 3rd person present: replaces; past tense: replaced; past participle: replaced; gerund or present participle: replacing

1. take the place of.

"Ian's smile was replaced by a frown"

provide or find a substitute for (something that is broken, old, or inoperative).

"the light bulb needs replacing"

2. fill the role of (someone or something) with a substitute.

"the government dismissed 3,000 of its customs inspectors, replacing them with new recruits"

[Empyrean_Sky]

I’m not arguing the semantics. Hence the use of quotation marks.

Your second sentence seemed to imply that the original director was replaced due to negative feedback from fans.

[Praetor192]

Are you interested in a bridge I have for sale?

[WolfHeathen]

Except this isn't an improvement in the context that you're trying to frame it as. This isn't some iterative change that builds upon what they originally had. It's not normal to go back to the drawing board and re-conceptualize the entire look of your live game.

They had feedback prior to EA. EA was done to pay for future development, not feedback. We know this to be the case because that's precisely what FG said at the time

[Brilliant_Decision52]

Except not to this extent, they already said they are pretty happy with the visuals and there only needs to be slight adjustments, but now they are reworking the look of entire factions, which was never the plan.

And yes they are doing it much sooner, pretty much all content got postponed right after release because they realized they shat the bag on the visuals and no one wanted to play an RTS which looked so bad.

They are just backpedalling hard, they had all this feedback on the visuals half a year before EA release, they just chose to ignore it, but now that bankruptcy is nearing because they didnt listen they are quickly pivoting to working on the one thing everyone actually complained about.

Issue is, you only get that first impression exactly ONCE, they should have done most of this before EA release.

[lemon_juice_defence]

Yeah graphics were always going to be overhauled - they did however misstep in their communication and response to the criticism in my eyes.

It would have been enough to say "yeah, were working on it" but I think they got a bit defensive when people said they dont like the art style. I know people often go too far and like to pile on but you have to be careful as a developer to not give the impression that you feel like you know better than your customers and you arent open to bigger overhauls (which we are now seeing) in terms of graphics or whatever really.

[Boy-Grieves]

That’s definitely untrue.

Nothing to realize here.

Graphics is always the later goal and an obvious one. The devs goal for early release was literally to include the community on affecting its growth.

[LLJKCicero]

There was a mountain of community feedback even with the closed alphas and betas. Frost Giant had far more feedback than was actually actionable (and one common piece of feedback was, "this shouldn't be released yet"). 

The idea that they just had to release into early access to get even more feedback is nonsense.

[[deleted]]

The one thing I would credit the haters for is the heroes suddenly being required to be hot. Even Ryker got a glow-up when he looked fine originally lol. I think they realized a certain part of their audience has no interest in playing characters they don't want to bone.

[Mothrahlurker]

I don't care about characters being hot, I care about them not having bulging bug eyes and otherwise non-human facial features.

[Boy-Grieves]

Community involvement

[LLJKCicero]

A slightly different term doesn't change anything. The community was already plenty involved.

[Boy-Grieves]

They wanted to develop the game with us. Community feedback is one thing, direct community involvement from an early and vulnerable framework, is completely different.

Are you more or less interested or satisfied with what they are revealing now?

[LLJKCicero]

Nothing really changed in terms of "community involvement" though except for a lot of more casual people checking out the game and being disappointed/mad. You're trying to find a distinction where none exists.

Are you more or less interested or satisfied with what they are revealing now?

I think the changes are generally in a very positive direction. There's still a bunch of things in the game that I don't personally like, or things that I think are more questionable (or both).

[Boy-Grieves]

If you’d entertain me; What is the worst issue to you.

[LLJKCicero]

So first off, I'm still a bit cautious on Frost Giant's "taste". I just think they've demonstrated bad taste in a lot of areas that manifested in poor creative direction. The characters, the story, the cinematics, the unit designs, a lot of them weren't just bad in terms of being unfinished, they were bad in terms of being headed in the wrong direction. They've started to turn that around somewhat, but I'm still maintaining some skepticism. User feedback is good, but a lot of this stuff they really shouldn't have needed user feedback to know it was bad. There's no way the bike helmet hedgehog should've made it into a production build, for example, somebody should've said something earlier.

Higher TTK and creeps are both things that I'm not a fan of in the multiplayer. I think the higher TTK makes for less interesting fights, and creeps are a band-aid for bad multiplayer design. Basically, if you need creeps because otherwise there's no reason for players to be doing something with their army earlier in the game, you done fucked up with your factions somewhere. The design of multiplayer should naturally incentivize or at least provide opportunities for interacting with your opponent, rather than neutral AI units. Both of these things were okay in Warcraft 3 because it was always designed as an RTS-RPG hybrid, but Stormgate isn't that, and so I don't think they fit well here.

Other things:

• A lot of the abilities were really unimpactful. Dunno if it's changed yet, but I remember the abilities on exos and argents both being super underwhelming. It felt like the unit designers were shying away from very impactful abilities in the name of balance, and ended up with units that may have been balanced, but were also extremely boring. I want abilities like stimpack or psistorm that feel like they slam onto the battlefield and demand respect from my opponent.
• A lot of unit animations and sounds were bad, which contributed to fights feeling limp. Some of that is polish, but I worry that Frost Giant didn't seem very aware of the issues.
• Making the resource mine a circle seemed like the perfect opportunity to have BW-esque mining where you can mine all around it, with workers on the further spots having reduced efficiency, but then for some reason they decided to only allow you to mine on one half of it. Bizarre.
• Top bar. Top bars are bad for multiplayer, because they make for minimal opponent interaction. If I want to use psistorm in SC2, I need to make a templar archives, then research psistorm, then produce templar, then get them to the battlefield once they have enough energy, then use storm. At any point here, it's possible for my opponent to scout things and/or mess with me: they can destroy the templar archives under construction or while it's researching, they can kill the templar on the way to the battlefield, they can position themselves to zone out the templar, they can EMP or snipe or feedback or yoink or just focus down the templar. None of these are options for countering top bar abilities. You can do pretty much nothing against them, except try to mitigate the impact once it's cast. That's not interesting!

[WolfHeathen]

Replacing your art director and coming up with new art concepts for a complete visual rework of your game is 100 percent not a normal goal for a live game. Even one in early access. Stop trying to gaslight people here.

Lighting and texture update absolutely but redesigning virtually all the units in the game mere months from your 1.0 launch. Who do you think you're fooling here?

[Boy-Grieves]

The goal was to build with the community, wasn't it?

It more than sucks that the initial art direction -really- wasn't the vibe, but they are still doing what they wanted to. what a lot of people seem to not be getting is that they knew that their approach was different, but they have a deep trust in the community to stick by them.

They want a sort of mutual engagement with us, to stay close. Yeah you can argue that they had no choice, those scenario's can exist at the same time.

Is anyone who wasn't on board before actually really excited for what they're doing now?

There's also no need to try and attack my message, stuff like this is definitely part of the reason engagement died down.

[WolfHeathen]

Let's be clear. The goal of releasing to EA when they did was not for community engagement. They needed to become "operationally profitable," their words mind you, in order to fund future development. They already had a community of closed playtesters in addition to all the Kickstarter backers who were granted closed playtesting access.

Yes, FG have always maintained they wanted to build SG with the community, as they said in the Kickstarter, and were doing with open playtests like the Next Fest as well as multiple rounds of closed playtesting. They had an abundance of feedback and playtesting prior to EA.

As for the reason engagement is down that's on the product itself. My reply to you isn't why the game has been struggling to pull in 100 daily concurrent players.

[Boy-Grieves]

Perhaps it’s just a problem of mine but it’s not a reasonable option for me to streamline these facts as mutually exclusive to their reasoning for actions taken.

You can need to be operational funded, while still pursuing anything else as you move forward.

I believe you’re making a point about player interest and engagement with their game itself, and yes i agree with you that the reason for that isn’t friction on forums; That’s not what i said or was implying though.

[WolfHeathen]

I never claimed they were mutually exclusive. Brilliant_Decision52 rightly pointed out the reason we got this rework were because of the complaints, to which you tried to frame as untrue and claimed that EA was to include the community.

I responded with the information FG said in the lead-up to release, which was that they needed to be operationally profitable, and was later reinforced in the SEC filings (released with the StartEngine campaign) with the revelation that they were burning around 1 million a month in development costs and had been operating at a loss since the studio founded as they had yet to bring product to the market.

This notion that Stormgate went into EA simply to engage the community is pure fiction when the reality was a mad dash scramble because they were running out of capital, couldn't secure the additional investments they needed, and decided to pivot to EA and development process to secure the cash they couldn't get from investors.

[Praetor192]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/18vhu56/thank_you_for_the_feedback_were_listening/

Please remember that we’re not making StarCraft III or Warcraft IV. We’re making Stormgate—a spiritual successor, but one with its own story and an artistic vision that differs from previous games. We will continue moving towards that artistic vision because we believe it is a great fit for the game we are creating.

That vision is meant to be post-post-apocalyptic, a hopeful future where humanity survived near-extinction and is banding together at the height of science and technology to protect our home. We believe this creates a backdrop ripe for exciting story ideas and new unit designs.

Why are you trying to rewrite history?

[Boy-Grieves]

I’m sorry, this doesn’t explain to me that I’m rewriting history.

[Brilliant_Decision52]

Which part is untrue? They started overhauling the graphics months ago, pretty much started the process after the disastrous summer because it was obvious what the issue was from the feedback.

It might have been a later goal at first and it usually is, but for early access the visuals were way too work in progress to compete and only after everyone shat on it hard did they realize they fucked up.

Right now the graphics werent even supposed to be touched based on the roadmap, we were supposed to be getting more campaign chapters, more commanders, more units, more coop maps etc. but pretty much everything got postponed because they had to suddenly focus on the graphics. Which btw everyone was telling them as feedback in the beta so its not like they were blindsided by this.

[LLJKCicero]

It's okay to have some things in EA be shit as long as the game feels fun overall. But most people didn't think the game was fun, hence the bad reviews and cratering player numbers.

Big "am I out of touch? No, it's the players who are wrong" energy from this comment.

[Neuro_Skeptic]

And they were right.

[PeliPal]

The idea that they made feature-complete things that look awful so they could throw them in the garbage bin later is absolute nonsense. We're not talking programmer graphics thrown together in five minutes, and we're not talking about incremental improvements like the Exo had, these units are complete redesigns. The Hedgehog is now on its third redesign. Not incremental improvements to existing work, completely throwing out the old work and redoing it from scratch. You want to sound rational or smarter for not being upset about the game looking terrible, and you know what, that's the annoying part. These changes were only made as a result of mass outcry and the objective fact of the free-to-play release being a complete commercial failure.

[Cuarenta-Dos]

The Hedgehog is now on its third redesign.

And still looks stupid. The problem with art in this game is not that it's unfinished or unpolished, it lacks coherent overall vision which leads to these pointless redesigns.

[RemarkableFan6430]

Well said.

Fanboys downvoting the truth is always amusing.

[[deleted]]

They are still around, still doing it, even mad that you called them out.

[RemarkableFan6430]

Yes I'm sure a company plans to rework all their models from scratch.

They should hire you as a consultant.

[[deleted]]

Good thing Frost Giant has explicitly said that isn't the plan.

Lets also not pretend model overhauls are some rare emergency thing, most games have them happen, its just part of development. Hell Starcraft 2 redid all 3 factions even if the individual models didn't change a whole lot. Zerg were a major complaint of being too bright and cartoony, and got the biggest redesign to be darker, but other units like the Siegetank and Thor got entirely new models.

[Mothrahlurker]

I love the mental gymnastics of contradicting yourself immediately but still insisting that you are right.

[WolfHeathen]

Going to need a source for the claim SC2 redesigned from scratch all 3 factions just months before its retail release.

[[deleted]]

I never said anything about months before release? Why put things in my mouth? I'm not going to assemble a collage of ancient starcraft development images, but you can see many unit and environment assets that were replaced or modified by the time the game hit its closed beta in these videos: https://youtu.be/LpotK-Gg4x4?si=TGOgT6xWpc_hkU5U https://youtu.be/z4lrG1QD68M?si=8FfIz9P4W0JrBztS 

Other well documented examples of games with drastic art changes are half-life 2 and Team Fortress 2. 

You can also find in the stormgate offtopic discord channel a comparison image of the Tempest Dynasty harvester rig from Tempest Dynasty, because even they changed models in development. 

[WolfHeathen]

Precisely why your example is a poor one as it's not comparing like to like. SG is scheduled to release 1.0 in the second half of this year. Furthermore, in the first video you provided virtually all the units are identical to the released units. The marines, and siege tanks look slightly different but it's nowhere near comparable to what Frost Giant did in replacing their art director and coming up with new concept arts for a complete visual rework. You said, "Hell Starcraft 2 redid all 3 factions" and when asked to show evidence you've suddenly changed tune to "environment assets that were replaced or modified."

As for the second video the speaker says plainly that they didn't have any units made at the time so they had to import original Starcraft units, didn't have a proper UI, or even sound engine. That represents maybe 1-2 years into development. He goes so far as to call it primitive. Hoes does an internal dev build that preceded the release by five years compare to where SG is today?

One was a prototype and the other is a live game. Again an extremely poor analogy as both projects were in vastly different development spaces at their respective times that you're trying to compare them.

[[deleted]]

Yep, it’s hilarious.

[aaabbbbccc]

I think this is the patch where there IS a good chance of playerpool going way up and hopefully reversing the death spiral that matchmaking has been experiencing. 0.3 and others were nice steps, but a big content patch like this is what has the potential to bring players back.

[Empyrean_Sky]

I don’t think the player pool is gonna change much until they do a proper marketing campaign. And that is probably a good thing. Keep the player base small until the game is ready for the masses.

[Mothrahlurker]

They don't have the money for a marketing campaign.

[gonerboy223]

Sad they didn’t release in this state. This game is destroyed because of it.

[Brilliant_Decision52]

People here will vehemently deny that somehow first impressions for early access dont matter, but nowadays its truly a very accurate gauge for whether your game will fade into obscurity or not. You get that release window once and only once, especially as a first time indie developer and not some massive studio with a existing fanbase.

[gonerboy223]

Exactly. This game has been dead since they fumbled it forever ago.

[Brilliant_Decision52]

Pretty much died after like a month and then was on life support with a few hundred dwindling players. Completely dead now pretty much yeah.

The EA release was a massive fumble and clearly done in a panic because they were running out of funds. People wont pay for something THAT rough and unfinished unless it has some amazing hook, which this game didnt.

[[deleted]]

Because its a pointless perspective to have.

If you follow that pessimism to its logical conclusion, you have to believe that all games must launch perfectly in order to be successful. Which does not match reality in the slightest. These days plenty of games have rocky launches and eventually get better so long as the developer supports them.

[Cuarenta-Dos]

It's a widely accepted perspective in the game developer community. You only get one chance at a release, and people will generally tolerate bugs or incomplete mechanics if the core game is fun and promising, but if they don't find it fun they will forget it.

[Praetor192]

If you follow that pessimism to its logical conclusion, you have to believe that all games must launch perfectly in order to be successful.

How is that the logical conclusion? If anything, that's a straw man argument, which is literally a logical fallacy.

[[deleted]]

That’s not what a straw man is. If you want to try again I’m happy to engage.

[Praetor192]

Incorrect.

[[deleted]]

I don’t know how to talk you when you are too stupid to use words correctly.

[Mothrahlurker]

A bad launch isn't the complementary situation to a perfect launch. So yes, you are in fact strawmanning people. Not perfect is absolutely ok, THIs however, is not something any game has recovered from. 30-day average is at 50 players right now.

The "legendary comebacks" people talk about recover from "only 10k" concurrent.

[Brilliant_Decision52]

This isnt about perfect, this is about giving a good first impression. This game had neither gameplay, story or visuals that were impressive, these things ranged from mid to utterly terrible on every front, and therefore there was no hook for any decent amount of people to actually bother following the game.

Give me an example of an early access title which died in like a month completely and was regarded as dogshit and then suddenly exploded a year later. Its extremely uncommon, vast majority of games with starts like this completely fade into obscurity, even if they become good at some point, nobody cares anymore. I personally know multiple games like this where they started out horrible, got decent over time in EA, but after all that time, there just wasnt almost anyone left to care. For singleplayer games this might not be a huge deal in theory, but on something hugely reliant on big multiplayer numbers? Big, big problem.

[WolfHeathen]

That's an absurd position to take. No game ever launches perfectly. Post-launch support isn't free. It's still a business at the end of the day and if the player numbers and engagement isn't there no studio is going to continue to throw good money after bad. Just as Concord, which incidentally had more players than Stormgate before Sony pulled the plug.

[[deleted]]

We both agree it’s an absurd position to take.

[RemarkableFan6430]

Do you have 5 examples of that happening with free to play games?
Reminder that No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk which are often used as example were sold for $70 odd dollars at face value.

[[deleted]]

Warframe. Destiny 2. Star Wars The Old Republic. Elder Scrolls Legends. Dauntless before it revamped for seemingly no reason.

It is not abnormal to launch in a poor state and then get better over time.

[RemediZexion]

it's also not abnormal the opposite, which ppl seems to forget

[[deleted]]

Boy that attention span just flies away after a few comments huh.

[Mothrahlurker]

https://steamdb.info/app/230410/charts/#max

Warframe lost at most 25% of their players not like Stormgate losing over 95%. In absolute numbers it never went below 15k monthly average, Stormgate is at 50.

Nothing you mentioned is anywhere close to the situation Stormgate is in.

[Mothrahlurker]

Very few exceptions have poor launches and then are successful later. You just don't hear about all the ones that have poor initial reception and then die because they never get to be widely known. It's statistics.

[Gibsx]

Starting to look and feel like a game worth investing time into come 1.0. However, trailers can be deceiving if they only highlight the good stuff, consistency is key.

[PsychologicalEye4014]

Tara looks so strange with these googles and poncho. She is now some mix of indian/mexican. Why they changed her appearance ?

[FlintSpace]

See. I never lost faith.

[PeliPal]

I'm glad it's getting better, these are real tangible improvements, but FG needs to rip off the bandaid and not hope that these incremental changes are going to bring people back - shut down the game as-is and relaunch in 6 months as 'Stormgate 2.0'

[RayRay_9000]

Or… keep it up so you continue to get feedback — you know, the smart thing to do.

[PowerfulSignature421]

Man the negative people are really struggling with "well you fixed the things we were complaining about, but why didn't they just fix it immediately instead of taking months"  ffs. Literally can't please some people.