TRI_STATE_GLADIO [they/them]

Thats needlessly belligerent over something you don’t understand.

This is pedantic, but we do disagree and I don’t actually agree with your end thesis.

Far too many games these days feel like they aren’t built to have fun with, but are built to optimise, that your APM and Macro and Micro are the only things that matter, that in order to win you need to just be a more efficient cog in the game’s machine than your opponent, you can’t do anything to blindside them or surprise them to win, you can only ever win through being more optimal than your opponent, following the “correct” strategy better than they do

Again, there’s beauty to that and I really don’t agree that it’s even a problem. It’s a problem specifically for RTS games because it’s audience wants modding tools and tower defense. You are still dismissing the training of these elements as something negative, and not something requires effort and condition, which is fun in its own right

And like, this would be an understandable statement even if I wouldn’t agree with it pre-08 crash, but like, genuinely what games require like, training. SC2 doesn’t. CS:GO/TF2 don’t. Fortnite doesn’t. How many friendslop games (I mean that with no derision as someone who likes friendslop) have sold millions of copies out of nowhere? If you wanna complain that you can’t just roll people in a ranked queue or formal setting, there’s an alternative. The problem for Stormgate is that casual players don’t have a casual alternative, when that’s the only business model that seems to work right now with this genre.

Some of my fondest memories playing an RTS are when you do something silly and ridiculous, like rushing militia in AoE2, something that only works because it is so “suboptimal” that your opponent doesn’t even consider preparing for it.

Go on a pick up tennis court, and just exclusively bunt. Don’t try to volley, don’t try think about where your opponent is going to send the ball. Just lightly tap it every time. Ask them for another game after you do that.

Sincerely engaging with these games mechanics, as art unto themsleves, is fun. It is a form of art that challenges you to be better than you were the day before. It domesticates you like grain. There is artistry to what these games require of you and the decisions (I legit cannot think of any competitive game that is straight up just how many Monsters have you drank in a 24 hour period). It is a form of expression that is important to the medium. The act of going nutty in IIDX is as important to the art form as every Mother 3 and Disco Elysium.

Against buddies, who gives a shit, but against other people, “I’m going sit down, and take 15 minutes of someone else’s time trying to pull down their pants with something that exclusively works against new players”, is antisocial behavior. It’s not your fault, a lot of games encourage this by having matchmaking systems where your behavior doesn’t have meaningful social consequences. It’s why I despise most games where the primary bulk of the playerbase hangs out on a ranked ladder.

And before people jump down my neck, the problem isn’t “oh I got cheesed”. What you did exists in AoE2 in different forms. It’s more effective, it leads to more interesting decisions to be made from both players, and there’s more of a narrative to it for you, that you are personally involved with, than “oh they scouted me, guess the last 8 min don’t matter”.

Basically, I think that video games, especially multiplayer ones, should focus on being fun

But your problem isn’t “these units in the game are just Legacy of the Void units on ambien”, your problem stems from trying to design to design a competitive game in general. Stormgate requires less APM. Units do fewer things than SC2. You have to old off early aggression and other possibly frustrating elements in other RTS games much less. And it’s worse because of it. Games do not have any obligation to be something to be fun. They can be upsetting, and ugly, and annoying.

You might feel bad after playing a game and losing, and like, sit with it. See where it goes. This is not a viewpoint I had all of my life, it actually took me until my early 20s, but it’s wonderful. I lived in the middle of nowhere for years, the only queer community I had were through the communities that formed around these games. Do you have any idea how many top players of fighting games are trans women?

rather than being some kind of big money making e-sport.

This piece of shit game entered development proper after 2019/the esports bubble popped. Dont worry, that issue has been taken care of.

The lesson to be learned is “don’t chase investor money trying to sell franchise spots with a game that does nothing right and has no real identity”.

Whats frustrating is that, in an ideal world and with no offense towards you, this game would have been able to sustain itself without having to cater to you.

I’m as far away from you as they come. I either prefer a very casual game that’s accessible (as in, if you have a disability, you can engage with the game’s mechanics enough to hang with the homies) or I want the fucking deep end, and if you drown and complain, then you get what you deserve. Anything in the middle is just tedious and how you wind up with gameplay systems that reinforce antisocial behavior (see: DBD).

The issue is that Stormgate didn’t really appeal to anyone. In terms of fluff, it’s blatantly just Starcraft. Like I can’t imagine the themeing of this game appealing to anyone. How do I get anyone into this game? What fun modes are there? Why the fuck would anyone waste their time with this uninspired campaign? There’s so many ways to waste time in SC2 with the custom games or the co-op mode that you never have to learn what a build order is. For better and worse, it’s where a majority of the playerbase still is.

If I wanted to play SC competitively, I’d just play 2 or Brood War, both of which still have a very active community that you could engage with at a very high level without having to beg for games in a discord or something. The process of learning these games, regular build orders for each faction, timings, maps, etc is a rewarding experience and people that automatically dismiss those elements don’t understand that dance is art. There’s beauty to motion.

All that being said, I don’t wanna learn another RTS, especially if it’s like 20 percent different, and what they added sucks. I don’t wanna play a MOBA. Why are you asking me to creep? Why are the maps so garbage? They try to have these creep camps be a point where both players skirmish to try and get a resource advantage, kinda like WC3, but they’re so spread out that most games resulted in both players jacking off on their side of the map until it was time to deathball.

The individual units themselves also just don’t spark joy. There’s a lot of “X gets a 20 percent boost” or whatever flaccid garbage because they’re afraid of making gameplay mechanics that might be unbalanced, because that might push players away. Good job, dickheads, now you don’t have them in the first place. Make a cool game, have it break, balance it with a map pool that makes sense and adjust numbers.

Stormgate feels like it was for fucking nobody. “Hey, they should do another starcraft” is where the planning of this game began and ended. They stuck with safe gameplay design that still managed to fall into the design pitfalls of other RTS games, and anyone who’s felt the touch of a lover in the past five years is going to look at the end product, think it’s fucking lame, and play Fortnite with Homer and Cartman and all your favorite American heroes. Please stop cutting 50+ honkies paychecks to make this garbage.