Impeccable Game Feel

TL;DR: Frost Giant has a clear and concise idea of what makes an unit and by extension an army engaging to command and the changes they have made to lower skill floor are wisely exclusive to the high skill ceiling that comes with mastering an RTS. They accomplish this by making the floor for commanding aspects of macro/micro easier, but leave the optimization of that play firmly in the realm of manually commanding an army and economy, same as it ever was. This leaves skill expression untouched while guaranteeing a certain base competency for a new player.

Exciting week hasn't it been? Everyone's finally getting their hands on probably the most high profile attempt at an asymmetric Blizzard style RTS since StarCraft II and are giving their feedback. I want to give my two cents as well because, like many, want to see this game desperately succeed. Well, if I'm honest it's hard to tell. After all, it's very easy to judge Stormgate by what it doesn't have compared to a completed game with three expansions and 10 years of support.

I do think that most of the opinions on the subreddit are trending unfair, but I'm not here to offer more apologetics as in some regards that's admitting that the criticisms are correct. Instead, I want to highlight the aspect of the game that is most important to me and has me convinced that Frost Giant knows what they are doing. But to indulge in the current tug of war a bit, StarCraft II's demo presentation, while mostly all there, also looked pretty different to what Wings of Liberty would eventually become.

Anyway, the two examples I'm going to draw on are pretty granular and basic. We are going to be looking at constructing buildings with the new commands and the Vanguard's Lancer unit. Part of the reason for this is that I want to discuss something that everyone no matter their playtime has likely experienced, and also the fundamental design principles underlying their command is replicated everywhere else you look in the game.

New to these next generation of RTS games is careful consideration on how to manage macro/economy. Doing without it you get a MOBA, and doing with it only gets you city builders with tower defense elements, so to say that this is something important to get right is an understatement if you are making an RTS, especially a competitive one. Stormgate's approach to this is to have a dedicated row on your command card, Hotkeys Q-T, to manage your macro from constructing buildings, producing units or researching upgrades. For buildings specifically, the game will automatically send the nearest worker to make the building relative to where you place it. Gone are the days where you have to awkwardly hotkey something that gets your camera to your mineral line, select a worker and move it to where you need it to go right? Sorta...

This eliminates a lot of the tedium for player who is not to concerned about optimization and just wants to get buildings out, but if you are trying to make sure that you get your timings dead on, ensuring you are pulling a worker from a Therium line, or taking advantage of a race's unique building mechanics like B.O.B.s being able to assist one another in constructing a building, you need to take manual control. For example, the only way you are going to construct your Rax the moment you have the luminate available, and with two bobs working on it is if you pull two, and use the bottom row build commands unique to workers to construct the buildings while both are selected and not the built in macros that picks the closest worker from the top row of the command card.

When you notice this subtle but important touch you start to see examples of it everywhere. Stormgate's skill floor has been lowered to allow players to generally play at an adequate level without feeling like the game is aggressively fighting them to do the small things correct, but to make the absolute most of commanding your economy, and units you have to be deliberate. This to me is what makes an asymmetric style RTS the most engaging to play, taking the full advantage of the unique properties a faction's units bring to the table contributes the most to how a faction feels to play when they interlock and mingle on the larger scale. Thought is given to even given to units that by all accounts are meant to be a-move friendly, like the Lancer.

The Lancer is a unit that is most analogous to Protoss Zealot as a robust front-line option that at present is the go to option for Vanguard's early-game this iteration of Stormgate. As such it's very easy to assume that it's only purpose is to body block for Exos and squishier units in the back, and even has a passive that gives it an additional 3 damage reduction when struck. It's attacks however, have 2 range which is a just enough to kite melee units with a range of 0.1 or 0.5 and their attacks do splash damage in a line. Commanding them efficiently means that you can abuse the extra range to kite melee units that are slower and lower ranged than it, or positioning them in such away that their line cleaving attacks are hitting at many units as possible adding further delineation from a player who just a-moves them into their opponent or someone who is looking to win engagements by giving them extra attention in a skirmish.

I think it's evident that I can go on at this point, and Stormgate offers so many examples. To highlight a few in Infernals; having to choose when to activate Magmadon Tramples, prioritizing squishy targets with Gaunts to ensure that you are getting your infests, and Doombringers trading the ease of more traditional drop-ship design in favor of one that not only drops all units immediately but creates shroud for the units just continue to highlight that the designers have a firm grasp the fundamentals of engaging asymmetric RTS design. I don't doubt that this great foundation is going to be built up to something amazing on official release.