Monk Fills in the Details on the Stormgate Gameplay Reveal

Yesterday we got our first, long-awaited glimpse at real, 1v1 gameplay from Stormgate. And as exciting as it was to finally see units blowing each other up, the real action is always in the developer interviews. Kevin ‘Monk’ Dong, Lead Co-Op Designer at Frost Giant, gave us an incredibly insightful, 90 minute sit-down with Back2Warcraft following the big reveal on the PC Gaming Show, and hearing about all the carefully reasoned game design considerations that went into the few minutes of footage we saw brings much more depth to the onscreen action. Of course, it’s still early “pre-alpha” days, so everything is still subject to evolve and change. But for the first time we get to talk about a game, rather than some abstract, imagined thing we’ve all been trying to assemble in our heads.

Technical Foundations

From the outset, Frost Giant has faced a major challenge: create an RTS that actually feels good to play. There simply is no off-the-shelf game engine capable of the high unit counts, complex pathing, and deterministic gameplay required for a high performing RTS, which has sent Frost Giant down the daunting path of building these pieces themselves - the big news today is that it works. With these core pieces now functional, Stormgate is now moving into a phase of rapid iteration and feature development at a pace that "blows [Monk's] mind." Even the gameplay footage we just saw (which came from a roughly one month old build of the game) is out of date, as things are being quickly refined and iterated on. Expect to see things evolving fast from here on out.

The technical hurdles haven’t all been leapt just yet, however. The scripting components are currently being worked on, which will enable triggered events and more complex unit behaviors. Other game modes such as the campaign and 3 player co-op (dubbed “3vE”) will need this piece of the engine in place. This is, in fact, part of the reason why 1v1 is being developed first. From a technical perspective, it’s actually simpler.

Resources

Frost Giant seems to be pouring a great deal of thought into everything that’s gone into the game so far, and the resource economy is a great example of that. We now know there are two basic resources: Luminite, a plentiful resource needed to build everything in the game, and Therium, a more restricted resource needed for tech and later game units. And while that may sound familiar, it gets interesting from here on out.

Luminite won’t spawn in the always perfect, stamped-out 8 mineral concaves we see in SC2. Rather it will be a more organic feeling singular deposit (similar to a gold mine in WC3), but segmented into 4 nodes. Each faction will have their own relationship with Lumanite, having to build structures with unique mechanics in order to mine it. The collection rate won’t scale linearly with worker count either; as more workers are added, the collection rate per-worker will diminish.

Therium may appear in the form of a generator (and potentially others, like an underground vein), often blocked by some kind of destructible object. Unblocking the Therium will begin spawning deposits onto the ground, which means that while it could be mined immediately with a few workers, it could also be allowed to build up and then mined with a large number of workers at once.

Workers will also spend a relatively longer amount of time mining vs simply being in transit, which should make long distance mining more feasible, although this may be specific to the human faction.

Taken together, the resource design should allow for more flexible and organic maps, more diverse strategies in terms of base and worker count, and a deeper asymmetry in terms of faction mechanics and strategy. The non-linear mining rate also softens the impact of worker harass, since losing 50% of the workers at a given base might only lower income by 30%.

Creep camps and mid-map objectives

While some WC3 fans may be disappointed to hear that heroes will not be in 1v1 (don’t be too sad; they’ll be in all the other game modes), it should be some comfort that creep camps absolutely will. In fact, a lot of effort is going into making the middle of the map more interesting than just “the place where we kill each other”. Creep camps should provide incentive to be active on the map, and the creeps will respawn, meaning the incentive won’t disappear after the early game. Killing creeps may provide resources, area buffs (think xel’naga watch tower or heal fountain), or player-wide buffs such as increased production rate or bonus attack vs buildings.

Another interesting map feature are trees. They won’t be a harvestable resource, but they function as sight blockers, a sort of unit-filter that only allows small units to pass through, and will also be destructible once certain units or tech has been unlocked.

Units and factions

Although there were some tantalizing clues about the Infernal Host, the game is currently focused on the human faction, now officially titled the Vanguard. Vanguard will be an approachable faction, designed to be durable, strong on defense, and familiar feeling to new players. Similar to Terran in SC2 there will mechanical units as well as biological, and players can choose their direction. In fact, the gameplay footage we saw was a Vanguard vs Vanguard (VvV?) matchup between Monk, playing mech, and TLO, playing bio.

The Vanguard units themselves seem to be focused on interesting movement and attack patterns, with less focus on spellcasting. The Vulcan, for example, (a large, tier 2 AOE unit) shoots in a line (similar to a Hellion), has a windup, and can jump over friendly units. If it encounters an enemy unit during it’s jump, it stuns the enemy unit and it’s own movement is stopped. So while it has the ability to dive into a fight or retreat, being surrounded by enemy units will pin it down.

Monk describes this type of unit as a “mover and shooter”, which contrasts with the often spellcaster heavy gameplay in SC2. This seems to synergize with the pace of fights, with the average time-to-kill of Stormgate tuned to almost exactly twice that of SC2 and half that of WC3. This is evident even in the few minutes of gameplay footage we saw, with TLO dodging Atlas fire (a powerful artillery cannon) by picking up his Vulcans with an Evac, and Exos (basic, rifle-carrying infantry) kiting SCOUTs (a cute robot dog with lazer eyes) around a corner, trying to avoid their stun. For more info about what we know about the various human units, make sure to check our full rundown.

Another interesting bit of info around unit design; all units are intended to be viable in the lategame. The Lancer (a melee unit with extended range), for example, will take damage up to a value of 20 after the "Lancer Shields" upgrade is researched. Any additional damage beyond 20 will be halved (so 30 damage becomes 25), allowing this basic unit better survivablity against high damage units. This, combined with a lesser focus on powerful late game air units should lead to some refreshingly diverse and interesting compositions as games progress.

If, like me, you’ve all but committed to your Infernal Host tattoo, you may have to wait a bit longer. There’s currently no hint of the Infernal Host in the gameplay footage, and the upcoming closed alpha testing won’t include it either. It also sounds like the campaign will be from the human perspective when the game gets a more public release, with other factions following later.

Despite that, the little bit of info we did get this week still makes the Infernal Host sound awesome. In contrast to the smaller unit counts and more defensive posturing of the Vanguard, the Infernal host will more embody “the swarm”. There will, however, be different viable playstyles, including one with fewer, more powerful units. We also got hints of their “Demon Shroud” slowly encroaching on the map. Awesome.

Making the game feel good

To round it out, Frost Giant is maintaining their focus on making the game feel approachable, intuitive, and just generally good to play. Supply structures, for example, will be fewer in number, require more decision making around where to place them, and have mechanics that make small mistakes less devastating. The Vanguard’s supply structure, the Habitat, will likely have some ability to increase it’s supply instantly after being built, similar to a supply calldown in SC2. Rather than serving as a badge of bad macro, however, it might provide a buff to a nearby unit or building, softening the pain of the mistake. Another example, borrowed from Age of Empires, is that every player starts with a dedicated scouting unit. This aligns the “correct” action in the game with the roles of the units, rather than expecting a new player to somehow learn that they need to sacrifice a worker unit to gain intel.

Some other QOL improvements include being able to see what units, buildings, and tech is currently in production, and units being automatically placed into control groups as they spawn.

The Takeaway

This has already been an extremely exciting week for Stormgate, with more to come. Testing (albeit small and private) is right around the corner, and game development seems to be moving fast. And while there’s certainly a massive amount of game yet to be built, getting access to all the rationale and game design going into it is such a rare treat. We can only hope we continue to get this kind of detail and insight as the game moves forward.

Getting Involved

If you want to engage with the Frost Giant developers and get information from them as they post it, you should sign up for their newsletter, head on over to /r/Stormgate on reddit, and sign up for the beta and wishlist the game on steam!