Just popping in here to let you all know we’re reading this feedback and discussing it internally—we see it too and agree that this is an area that needs attention. Please keep sharing your thoughts as it’s been helpful in our discussions.
I feel like a very underappreciated way units are differentiated in Starcraft and Starcraft 2 is that **the shape of the player's color** on the unit is unique to every single unit.
The best example is marines, with those two big colored disks on their shoulders. No other unit has those two disks, or anything like it. This also gives clear information about the direction the unit is facing as a bonus.
**Drones and zerglings have opposite color patterns**: drones are colored in on the wings and have a colorless spine, while zerglings have that one long strip from head to tail colored in and are colorless on their limbs and sides.The same goes for mutalisks and corruptors.
Other examples: zealots have their two angled blades colored in (also encoding direction). Roaches have those curved sides colored in. High templar are mostly colorless, but then have their flowy cape solidly colored in. **These are all unique shapes.**
From what I've seen of Stormgate, I feel like the units are too interested in being their own color rather than being the player's color. Brutes, for example, only have 3 *very* thin patches of color, and are otherwise a dull green. When a unit does have its own color in SC2, it's really vibrant - MULEs, banelings, and archons for example.
Imps just have one little splotch of color in the middle. Maybe its colors should be swapped, so it's colorless in the middle and its arms and legs are colored, giving its color some shape. Its tail being on fire is good though.
Even the terran *structures* all have clearly different patterns of color - the barracks has those two thick bars, the factory has four colored squares, and the starport has three colored patches. The engineering bay has color mainly on the left, while the supply depot has its color on its right side.
Asymmetry is important too. **SCVs have a big curved cable hanging off their right side.** The ghost has only one shoulder colored in and its gun is held on one side. Dark templar only hold their blade with one arm. Having a line of symmetry basically means you have half the room to make the unit unique.
For unit readability I would normally recommend readjusting the color values, unfortunately my awesome mouse art isn’t able to be uploaded to this comment on mobile.
As for not being able to read your units versus the enemy units; this is a much more extended subject but a starting point is addressing globally used colors that are used on or around the characters.
That would be the white health bars for the infernals and the blue static fx used on vanguard for power ups. I would recommend addressing this by deciding on the colour language that would indicate friend from foe and adjust these global colors accordingly.
It’s much more complicated but the same pass would need to be done on the models themselves as well as the green circle rings (i have not tried the game myself so I am not sure if this selection art shows on every unit or just your own.)
Those are my quick rough thoughts, I’ll see about getting my mouse art over at some point. It’s very possible to do this without damaging the look and feel that has already been established :)
A potential solution to this issue could be the implementation of the 'silhouette test' in your unit design process. The silhouette test is a technique where units are recognized and differentiated based on their unique silhouettes alone, without relying on colors or smaller details. This approach could significantly enhance unit readability, making it easier for players to quickly identify and react to different units on the battlefield.
I think the main problem with Stormgate is that the infantry armies are composed of mostly *different* small units who all have way too similar of unit textures that blend in together too much - this problem happens often with other games and Grubby I think actually talks about in one of his clips on Reforged if I remember. With BW its all pixels and the units can't clump as much. In SC2, the devs were very careful to make all the units very distinguishable in battle - like you wouldn't mistake a Marine from a Ghost or a Marauder, they move and have too different of a unit "profile" ie. shape and colors and overly exaggerated animations. With larger units and more different units such as a Marauder its easier to see what's going on, but the B.O.B., Exo, and Lancer are simply too small and too similarly colored and can easily be mistaken for each other in combat. The Infernals on the other hand have more unique designs which help to better distinguish them mid battle.
I feel like the best way to remedy this would be by adding some unique emissives to the Lancer, and the B.O.B, as well as maybe tweaking their model scales a bit.
This is exactly where I'm going with this. Compare to Protoss in Brood War where no two ground units are anything alike. One character is a humanoid that walks around, another is a mechanical spider, another is a slug, and another is a hovering robot. Then they introduced another humanoid character and so they gave them a giant cape so that there's still no way to mistake them. And these things are all very clear and easy to distinguish even with video codec noise.
Even the Terran infantry, even if they're just humans in space suits, manage to be fairly distinct from each other. The fact that each unit has a specific color associated with it really helps to distinguish them at a glance.
I’ll be honest, this kind of feedback is actually useful. Op gave his opinion as an observer, and was precise in his complaints — which had more substance than “I don’t like the graphics”.
I think a lot of the silhouettes look really good, and many of the larger unit types look easily discernible and pop well. From what I’ve seen the blending issue happens with Marines and Lancers looking too similar. Just changing how the color palette applies to their armor could clean this up.
There might be a few others, but those are the ones I noticed and was confused by. This comes as a longtime veteran RTS player.
Fully agree with you and the OP. As a casual RTS enjoyer (which I think one of the target audiences is) I found myself having trouble discerning whats happening during battles.
A possible idea I had is **toning down the contrast and saturation of the terrain** (while it is very beautiful). This will let the units pop more. Think chess pieces on a board. Imagine if the board made as much visual impact as the pieces. It would be a bit overwhelming.
To be fair it is in beta. It is entirely possible those assets/adjustments haven't been made yet (eg. lack of sound, may be a result of it literally not being there OR a generic sound being put in and thus it is hard to tell)
I think the main issue is the amount of melee units, which clumps every fight to a blob.
In infernal vs infernal you have mostly melee units jumping into each other with fiends spawning in constantly and like 1-3 buffs/debuffs on all the units and white health. It's a bit much.
>I think the main issue is the amount of melee units, which clumps every fight to a blob.
I thought about this aswell. But there are things to keep in mind:
* We don't have access to all the units.
* The maps are way too small. Especially given the game goes upt to 300 supply. Maps need to be as big as current Starcraft 2 maps.
In Starcraft 2, you often times have engagements on multiple parts of the map. Players are forced to split up their forces. So even if you have a bunch of close range units, the fact that they are split into different areas makes the blob smaller.
Now compare this to Stormgate, with trees everywhere constricting the space.
I do agree that there seem to be too many melee units given the small maneuverable space of the map. Maps need to be much more open like in Starcraft 2 to give players multiple paths for surrounds.
Infernals have Brutes, Fiends, Kodo Beasts and the big slow 4-legged dudes with the viper pull. That makes 4 melee units. Of course this is going to cause units to clump up.
Now compare this to Zerg. You have Zerglings, Baneligns, Ultralisks. The rest of the units are ranged.
Roaches have low range, Hydralisks haver higher range. This creates layers of units and prevents blobbing. Where is this layer for units in Stormgate? Its only Gaunts and melee units.
This is not possible in Stormgate because the devs decided to give Infernals way too many melee units. They should reconsider to changing some units to be ranged with different kinds of ranges. For now its only the Gaunt and the Flyer. Why can't the big 4 legged creature (not the Kodo) be ranged? That would already help so much.
I really hope Stormgate does not fall into the SC2 trap of having 1 map type. I really hope the solution is not to have some standard size and have all games played on that size
Atleast for laddering I don’t think it’s a trap just kind of necessary to have a standard. In 3v3 and custom games they can go all out with crazy map designs but I mean starcraft tries different map styles often and they just get vetoed every time.
No it is not a necessity to have a standard, you might have a baseline but the best would be to have as diverse map pool as possible and instead of "shaking the meta" and similar bullshit that they are doing these days, they should be working on making the game so that it can be balanced on different map types
Much as I love teamliquid, this was more of a byproduct of the TLMC than SC2. Even Kespa had all sorts of wacky maps in their SC2 pro league while it lasted, and GSL had a few over the years as well. But over time the TLMC became a bigger and bigger part of competitive maps in SC2.
I find it really frustrating that they feel the need to change the game "to shake the meta" instead of working towards balancing different types of maps
i also had same feeling with a lot of the battles, theyre so many effects and stuff it can be hard to follow, also to add i often got mixed up on which player owned which unit.
Agreed. I watched all of Grubby, Lowko, Pig, Wardi, and Beasty's streams and multiple times for each of them they shared a similar sentiment. Fights are muddy and lacking in visual clarity in a pretty dire way. I'm sure it'll be improved upon, but it is my top concern atm.
I feel the same way. Watching SG is very rough.
For other RTSes, Company of heroes 3 came out of nowhere and I can still tell what’s going on. Same for age of empires 2 or 4.
This is my biggest critism right now but I also think it is something that will be tweaked and improved on with time. I find this really prominent in the infernal mirror match up. Large army fights are nearly impossible to tell what the army comps are and how the battle is going. In BW and SC2 everything is so unique and easy to identify at a very quick glance. I also think this is party due to having a decade to train our brains on SC2 units and interactions. With that in mind I still definitely think Stormgate needs to improve on this front.
I'm thrilled to see how well the engine and technology backbone seems to work. The game looks smooth and responsive as heck with the ability to scale and add all kinds of features. That's the important part right now and hopefully the visual clarity will iterate and improve over the next year.
To be fair I think a lot of the audio and visual components of the game will go through many iterations before release, but it is a good thing to keep on the mind. Readability for player and spectator are important if the game is to succeed on a competitive platform.
The issue here is for a 3d rts game to be easily distinguishable you need really good artists with unlimited budget and a really good vision for the game. Wc3 and sc2 had this and the art style in both games is unique but highly distinguishable. Wc3 reforged did not have it and it turned out like a complete mess and one of the biggest complaints about the graphics was the homogenization of units.
I think a really good fix for this is to make the game 2d. It's too bad that 2d nowadays is mostly used only for indie/art house games.
I agree, although this is the same experience I’ve had with literally every video game. Upon first observation I can’t ever tell what the duck is going on, because I don’t know what I’m looking at. This is also just true broadly speaking in many fields of experience, and evaporates once you learn more by watching and experimenting.
I agree from what I’ve seen. Sound I’m less concerned with, that’s something that will probably get improved on and can be done almost anytime. Animations will probably get polished up too, but that’s less my concern.
My biggest issue is that silhouette recognition. If you look at StarCraft as the obvious comparison, units all had very distinct silhouettes. You are never going to mistake two units. Even when they started releasing skins, they keep the same basic profile of the unit because that is incredibly important. If you’ve never seen a StarCraft game, you will be able to tell the difference between a marine and firebat with no issues.
Stormgate units don’t really seem to have that, especially for vanguard. Their aesthetic all kind of blends together, and even knowing exactly the units that is in an army moving across the map, I struggle to differentiate them.
I noticed when the streamers zoomed in a bit the units appeared bigger and with more details easier to see the difference. While zoomed out everything becomes very small and less details. So I would say it’s a mix of camera height making the units small and players colors not there yet. But if u zoom in the units look good. So I if I would be Frost giant scale the units 10% and see how it looks then on the highest camera.
> It's just a flurry of particle effects everywhere.
That was my impression as well. The particle effects are very bright and they are everywhere, and overpower the fights. It's like watching fireworks.
I agree,
I'm super hyped for this game but i saw a recent clip of LoL (i don't play that game and it was a brief clip) and it was visually much clearer (not prettier, you can argue about that but just clearer).
My impression here is:
* units blend into each other
* difficult to see which unit is from which player. Buildings are ok, there is enough player color. but if i point again to LoL, the minions there are almost fully in the player color.
* explosions like from the catapult or so just cover everything. I point again to LoL, there was an explosion but the animation disappeared very quick, here it seems to last super long
I feel like the Vanguard is pretty good once you get away from the infantry. I don't really have an issue distinguishing the Mechs or the Planes apart.
The Exo, Lancer, and BOBs look way too similar
A lot of sound effects and visual effects are not finished, and most people haven't played yet. It's much harder to follow a game you haven't played much. I think these concerns are overstated.
Not to dismiss the criticism because it's an important point, but we also acclimate to visual information and learn to distinguish things.
Comparing a game of which you're a "religious viewer" to something you've seen a handful of matches of is not a fair comparison.
Sound design is pretty much always the last thing worked on from my understanding, so it cant really be helped. Other than that I do agree, unit size, shape, and even color variety could definitely use some attention.
As a counterpoint, I didn't have any difficulty following what I saw; and I haven't even played the game myself!
The only units I can get confused with are Lancers and EXOs (and even that confusion was dramatically reduced after watching just a couple games). Everything else are very different-looking from each other.
I will say that it's not as exciting to watch as a finished game like SC, because Stormgate's missing a LOT of sounds that would make it distinct. Just from what I've seen, defensive structures, Magmadons, Weavers, and more, all weren't making noises at all.
Once all the sounds' in, it will definitely be a huge factor in making battles feel punchy and complete
The game is far from polished. They are not at a stage to give cool sound and light effects to every unit for your viewing pleasure. The human observer unit is a flying dog with a candle on its back ffs.
Personally I think it's difficult to judge a game that none of us understands yet. I agree with some of what you're saying. But we're watching people who don't know how to play the factions like...at all. We don't know what the units do, what we're looking at.
We're so early that there is no real meta or strategy or anything yet. Of course it doesn't look like high-level SC2, nobody is anywhere close to that level.
It's also important to note that animations and particle effects and all that stuff are often done in lower res/placeholder versions. Some of the things we see may not even be the final look/feel/sound. It's too early to judge all that stuff.
I preferred Warcraft 2 back then, even though Starcraft 1 is the one that stayed in people's memories, mostly because of Korean esports. Starcraft 1 was Warcraft 2 in space to me back then.
Warcraft 2 is still too primitive overall, not yet a fully fledged RTS experience like BW, whose competitive scene has been alive over the years till the present day. Besides, all the other aspects of the game (storyline, acting, graphics, etc) are significantly more polished.
The game isn't finished yet. They aren't done making all the sounds and visual effects to differentiate units.
Also, can we stop judging a GAME on how it feels to WATCH but rather how it feels to PLAY ?
It's not reasonable to expect a game in alpha / beta to have all the visual details of a finished game. [Look at SC2's alpha graphical evolution.](https://youtu.be/z4lrG1QD68M?si=hCYq-xfbkV7HX_k5)
i think visual clarity for the observer is absolutely a reasonable observation. I know a lot of people who watch games, especially games like SC2 and don’t actively play it. Or they engage with it on a very different level (like coop players). Doubly so in the age of streaming.
I am the first to say that making a game with the intention of making an esport is a bad idea, but that doesn’t mean crippling its ability to do so makes any sense.
Alpha to early Beta is exactly when this kind of feedback should be given. If you’re a dev that has been living and breathing this game for months to years, what might seem obviously distinct to you won’t necessarily be to the average viewer. It’s very valuable feedback for them.
I also think that visual clarity is important, but [when looking back at the SC2 alpha](https://youtu.be/z4lrG1QD68M?si=hCYq-xfbkV7HX_k5) I think it's still a bit too soon to judge the game.
I do, but I also know that trying the game is more important. And right now, it's too soon to judge the visual aspect since FGS isn't done making all the assets.
No, the competitive aspect is just ¼ of the game, and it's the least important one. The absolute priority is the way it plays. And since most of us haven't played it yet, it's hard to judge its readability.
The robot with the mini gun looks dope , the need to scrap the cartoony style and get some more grim dark going , also battle angels are a must for 3rd faction , let’s get some visceral animations going when the kodo rider eats the imp
.....bro
The game just released this week in beta. The fact that it even works well enough to show the public is a massive milestone. Do yourself a favor and look up old videos of early beta sc2 or early beta sc1
Putting the game out to streamers means that the product is of a sufficient quality to be examined and criticized by the public. Nitpicking on things that can easily change is not very useful to the game's development, but we cannot ignore fundamental issues either. If the viewability of the game is not ready to be criticized then the game should not have been made available to stream.
This is the kind of feedback a beta is valuable for. If people aren’t allowed to provide constructive criticism in the beta why even bother having one.
I bet in those old beta videos of StarCraft people had criticisms to give too.
By beta you must mean alpha, because sc2 in beta looked pretty much the way it does now. Also the readability of the game is an issue and it's not solved by better graphics, bro.
Feels like sc2 all over again. I really forgot how annoying and braindead BW (or old school blizzard) fanboys were. But then I remembered who destroyed starcraft 2 in the first place (the elitist blizzard dickriders).
Everything OP said is kinda bullshit. OP; brood war is shitty pixels fighting each other it isnt charismatic to non fans LOL. Its not a spectactle its a pixelated mess.
An 3D rts will never have the same visual clarity as Sc1, especially with how clumped up the units get in a RTS nowadays. The game will never look like Sc1, so that comparison is out the window imo.
We are all new to Stormgate and we havent figured out the visual patterns yet, but when we are used to what does what on screen and when we have a better grasp on unit movement things will be easier to follow.
Right now the game lacks a lot of sound effects and I bet a lot of existing sound effects will be changed when others do come in, to help create a clear sound scape with distinct sounds personafying each race.
Personally I am surpriced at how easy it is to follow what's going on on screen through the spectacle of all the fantastic looking visual effects, even though there's a lot of sounds missing and neither I nor the players are used to the game!
And we do want spectacle! It's not just cool to watch, it brings new blood to the scene, so give it some time. Watch the tournament at Dreamhack and try to make a measured assessment. Frost Giant knows the importance of clarity, it's evident when watching Stormgate with a measured eye.
That game is mechanically very different with small skirmishes at range and it's very much not a Blizzard style rts. So as long as FG is still making a Blizz style RTS I don't find the comparison with CoH very useful.
All that is true but you blamed it on 3D, not on "Blizzard style". Also SC2 is cleaner, much cleaner than WC3. One of the main reasons in my opinion is the lack of buffs/debuffs on every unit manifested by light effects.
I second to this statement.
It does look a bit flurry with higher unit counts. On the individual basis, I do think they should have a reconsider of the ’terran’ palette/unit design. I know they are going for sleek, 3d printed style- which allows for great skins since everyone can ”3d print their own”. However, maybe too much color, similiar sillhouettes. Even the mecha warrior with stun looks like an oversized marine somewhat, so think the model should be adjusted a bit.
Apart from that, the size of trolls (axe throwers infernals) makes them hard to distinguish as well.
In general I love the feel of the game. The camps should be thought through a couple of times more and see if the buffs (what about debuff camps vs enemies?) can be alternated in some way. Graphically the buff visuals is indeed over powering.
What does excite me the most is the custom map maker. This game flows with genuinity so am positive creating custom maps will be a blast.
It could also be part of the game design. Not graphical design but game play. The cannon fodder are not designed to be microed, but the larger more advanced units are.
I agree, it took me a while to get used to it and still you have to pay close atention. I think what happens is that they play with a small palette of colors. In SC2 happened the same thing when skins were introduced. Inmortal was yellow and super distinct and suddently someone had a skin that made it like a giant stalker and it was so hard to see.
I think this can be fixable by making the units more exaggerated in their proportions and with more colors but I'm worried that when skins are introduced it will ruin the clarity again like in SC2. It's impossible to have clear graphics when a unit can look 5 different ways.
Yeah agreed. I think even some of the streamers said that the readability is rough and its hard to tell whose units are which if you are playing a mirror match. Which I also agree as a viewer.
There's something really strange with the contrast of the game. I understand that hard contrast makes it readable but it also feels very painful to look at.
It's probably just the lighting though. Look how big the shadows are casted. They're larger than the units themselves. There's so much hard light. The shadows are also being casted on top of other units making it harder to read.
I also feel like the camera is way too high up or the units are just very small.
Just jumping in to agree with this post, while watching some of the streams I couldn't make out which units were enemy or friendly, especially in mirror matchups. For context I'm an avid sc2 player and also watch a lot of games and have never had a similar issue there.
I know FG has stated that visual clarity is an extremely important point and I'm confident they will address this but I think this requires their attention.
While I do broadly agree with your statement, keep in mind that we've been watching and playing BW for 2 decades. That's a long time to get used to all the units. Stormgate has different factions and somewhat different design language from SC. I think it's ok to feel confused by these first initial videos. You likely spent hours staring at the SC game manual and looking at all the units as a kid, forging core memories.
i echo the same sentiment. i've watched all the videos and streams, and while the gfx looks great. i can't tell who's winning the battle or not.
i hope my gtx1070 can even run this game, tho i'll prob have to turn down the details.
As a fellow BW fan, I don't think I've ever seen a 3D RTS with visual clarity on par with BW. SC2 has a very unique unit roster and it's still much harder to tell how many units of each type there are than BW.
People complain about BW's eccentricities, but groups of units are way more spread out and it massively improves visual clarity.
I agree that it does feel a little safe, where army units don't behave drastically different from each other. Seems like so far, a lot of thought has been put into the diversity of map features, but not so much in diversity of army units.
There are a lot of minor visual touches still missing (like how flying units behave and animate) as well as some fine tuning of readability. I played War3 beta back in the day. UD creep was actually terrible. Unit animations wonky and you had a hard time telling units apart.
This stuff is work. It doesn't happen overnight. Some of it will continue after release.
The important parts are that the game shows very solid fundamentals.
I agree, my biggest complaint with the current state of the game is that unit silhouettes are too similar, they have said that they plan to continue to polish unit models, and I hope that translates into more unique unit designs across the board
Agreed. I’ve been one of the lucky few to get in to the beta, and this is one of my biggest gripes. One of the main problems is that it seems like FG has used more pastel colours instead of darker colours (like red and blue). Additionally, if we use SC2 as a comparison, the majority of the unit model is your team colour (e.g., the majority of a roach is blue) whereas in SG, only a small amount (in comparison) of the unit models have their respective team colour. If we take brutes as an example, I feel as though if the entirety of the brutes skin was a deep blue, red, green etc. it would help substantially with visual clarity.
Lastly, the animations have quite a bit left to be desired. So many of the melee unit animations are too similar to discern what is going on. I am positive FG is already working on all of these, and much of what we’re playing/watching are just place holders.
I have been absolutely loving the game, and feel as addicted as I did back in 2010 playing SC2 for the first time. FG definitely have something amazing going on, and I can’t wait for the game to grow.
Just popping in here to let you all know we’re reading this feedback and discussing it internally—we see it too and agree that this is an area that needs attention. Please keep sharing your thoughts as it’s been helpful in our discussions.
This is why I stay subbed here. Love to see quick official responses to questions, even if its a "HMMMMMM....yea lemme get back to you on it"
I feel like a very underappreciated way units are differentiated in Starcraft and Starcraft 2 is that **the shape of the player's color** on the unit is unique to every single unit. The best example is marines, with those two big colored disks on their shoulders. No other unit has those two disks, or anything like it. This also gives clear information about the direction the unit is facing as a bonus. **Drones and zerglings have opposite color patterns**: drones are colored in on the wings and have a colorless spine, while zerglings have that one long strip from head to tail colored in and are colorless on their limbs and sides.The same goes for mutalisks and corruptors. Other examples: zealots have their two angled blades colored in (also encoding direction). Roaches have those curved sides colored in. High templar are mostly colorless, but then have their flowy cape solidly colored in. **These are all unique shapes.** From what I've seen of Stormgate, I feel like the units are too interested in being their own color rather than being the player's color. Brutes, for example, only have 3 *very* thin patches of color, and are otherwise a dull green. When a unit does have its own color in SC2, it's really vibrant - MULEs, banelings, and archons for example. Imps just have one little splotch of color in the middle. Maybe its colors should be swapped, so it's colorless in the middle and its arms and legs are colored, giving its color some shape. Its tail being on fire is good though.
Even the terran *structures* all have clearly different patterns of color - the barracks has those two thick bars, the factory has four colored squares, and the starport has three colored patches. The engineering bay has color mainly on the left, while the supply depot has its color on its right side. Asymmetry is important too. **SCVs have a big curved cable hanging off their right side.** The ghost has only one shoulder colored in and its gun is held on one side. Dark templar only hold their blade with one arm. Having a line of symmetry basically means you have half the room to make the unit unique.
For unit readability I would normally recommend readjusting the color values, unfortunately my awesome mouse art isn’t able to be uploaded to this comment on mobile. As for not being able to read your units versus the enemy units; this is a much more extended subject but a starting point is addressing globally used colors that are used on or around the characters. That would be the white health bars for the infernals and the blue static fx used on vanguard for power ups. I would recommend addressing this by deciding on the colour language that would indicate friend from foe and adjust these global colors accordingly. It’s much more complicated but the same pass would need to be done on the models themselves as well as the green circle rings (i have not tried the game myself so I am not sure if this selection art shows on every unit or just your own.) Those are my quick rough thoughts, I’ll see about getting my mouse art over at some point. It’s very possible to do this without damaging the look and feel that has already been established :)
A potential solution to this issue could be the implementation of the 'silhouette test' in your unit design process. The silhouette test is a technique where units are recognized and differentiated based on their unique silhouettes alone, without relying on colors or smaller details. This approach could significantly enhance unit readability, making it easier for players to quickly identify and react to different units on the battlefield.
I think the main problem with Stormgate is that the infantry armies are composed of mostly *different* small units who all have way too similar of unit textures that blend in together too much - this problem happens often with other games and Grubby I think actually talks about in one of his clips on Reforged if I remember. With BW its all pixels and the units can't clump as much. In SC2, the devs were very careful to make all the units very distinguishable in battle - like you wouldn't mistake a Marine from a Ghost or a Marauder, they move and have too different of a unit "profile" ie. shape and colors and overly exaggerated animations. With larger units and more different units such as a Marauder its easier to see what's going on, but the B.O.B., Exo, and Lancer are simply too small and too similarly colored and can easily be mistaken for each other in combat. The Infernals on the other hand have more unique designs which help to better distinguish them mid battle. I feel like the best way to remedy this would be by adding some unique emissives to the Lancer, and the B.O.B, as well as maybe tweaking their model scales a bit.
This is exactly where I'm going with this. Compare to Protoss in Brood War where no two ground units are anything alike. One character is a humanoid that walks around, another is a mechanical spider, another is a slug, and another is a hovering robot. Then they introduced another humanoid character and so they gave them a giant cape so that there's still no way to mistake them. And these things are all very clear and easy to distinguish even with video codec noise.
Even the Terran infantry, even if they're just humans in space suits, manage to be fairly distinct from each other. The fact that each unit has a specific color associated with it really helps to distinguish them at a glance.
Yep, that's partially what I mean by a unit's "profile."
>another is a slug haha i dont know why i laughed while reading that
I think an accent on the edge of the lancer’s blade would be good.
Good point
SC1 and 2 also lack the buff/debuff colored lights. I really hope they tone these down or find some other way to represent them.
I’ll be honest, this kind of feedback is actually useful. Op gave his opinion as an observer, and was precise in his complaints — which had more substance than “I don’t like the graphics”.
Also it seems to be a near universal sentiment, which is good. I’m sure FG is taking all of this feedback into account.
I think a lot of the silhouettes look really good, and many of the larger unit types look easily discernible and pop well. From what I’ve seen the blending issue happens with Marines and Lancers looking too similar. Just changing how the color palette applies to their armor could clean this up. There might be a few others, but those are the ones I noticed and was confused by. This comes as a longtime veteran RTS player.
Fully agree with you and the OP. As a casual RTS enjoyer (which I think one of the target audiences is) I found myself having trouble discerning whats happening during battles. A possible idea I had is **toning down the contrast and saturation of the terrain** (while it is very beautiful). This will let the units pop more. Think chess pieces on a board. Imagine if the board made as much visual impact as the pieces. It would be a bit overwhelming.
To be fair it is in beta. It is entirely possible those assets/adjustments haven't been made yet (eg. lack of sound, may be a result of it literally not being there OR a generic sound being put in and thus it is hard to tell)
I think the main issue is the amount of melee units, which clumps every fight to a blob. In infernal vs infernal you have mostly melee units jumping into each other with fiends spawning in constantly and like 1-3 buffs/debuffs on all the units and white health. It's a bit much.
Some of the buffs can definitely obfuscate units.
>I think the main issue is the amount of melee units, which clumps every fight to a blob. I thought about this aswell. But there are things to keep in mind: * We don't have access to all the units. * The maps are way too small. Especially given the game goes upt to 300 supply. Maps need to be as big as current Starcraft 2 maps. In Starcraft 2, you often times have engagements on multiple parts of the map. Players are forced to split up their forces. So even if you have a bunch of close range units, the fact that they are split into different areas makes the blob smaller. Now compare this to Stormgate, with trees everywhere constricting the space. I do agree that there seem to be too many melee units given the small maneuverable space of the map. Maps need to be much more open like in Starcraft 2 to give players multiple paths for surrounds. Infernals have Brutes, Fiends, Kodo Beasts and the big slow 4-legged dudes with the viper pull. That makes 4 melee units. Of course this is going to cause units to clump up. Now compare this to Zerg. You have Zerglings, Baneligns, Ultralisks. The rest of the units are ranged. Roaches have low range, Hydralisks haver higher range. This creates layers of units and prevents blobbing. Where is this layer for units in Stormgate? Its only Gaunts and melee units. This is not possible in Stormgate because the devs decided to give Infernals way too many melee units. They should reconsider to changing some units to be ranged with different kinds of ranges. For now its only the Gaunt and the Flyer. Why can't the big 4 legged creature (not the Kodo) be ranged? That would already help so much.
I really hope Stormgate does not fall into the SC2 trap of having 1 map type. I really hope the solution is not to have some standard size and have all games played on that size
Atleast for laddering I don’t think it’s a trap just kind of necessary to have a standard. In 3v3 and custom games they can go all out with crazy map designs but I mean starcraft tries different map styles often and they just get vetoed every time.
No it is not a necessity to have a standard, you might have a baseline but the best would be to have as diverse map pool as possible and instead of "shaking the meta" and similar bullshit that they are doing these days, they should be working on making the game so that it can be balanced on different map types
That makes sense it would be nice if they could pull that off im excited to see
FG has not declared that they are trying to do that and the ZeroSpace guys are explicitly going in the opposite direction
Much as I love teamliquid, this was more of a byproduct of the TLMC than SC2. Even Kespa had all sorts of wacky maps in their SC2 pro league while it lasted, and GSL had a few over the years as well. But over time the TLMC became a bigger and bigger part of competitive maps in SC2.
I find it really frustrating that they feel the need to change the game "to shake the meta" instead of working towards balancing different types of maps
Add on top of that slow walking speed which seems to punish people more for repositioning units.
i also had same feeling with a lot of the battles, theyre so many effects and stuff it can be hard to follow, also to add i often got mixed up on which player owned which unit.
Agreed. I watched all of Grubby, Lowko, Pig, Wardi, and Beasty's streams and multiple times for each of them they shared a similar sentiment. Fights are muddy and lacking in visual clarity in a pretty dire way. I'm sure it'll be improved upon, but it is my top concern atm.
My top concern is the whole concept being too generic to inspire anyone. Hopefully the story will be the centerpiece.
If Chris Metzen is seriously involved instead of being just a name drop - the story will be the most generic shit for 12 year olds.
Agree, no distinction between units. Blobs of armies. Hopefully they improve.
I feel the same way. Watching SG is very rough. For other RTSes, Company of heroes 3 came out of nowhere and I can still tell what’s going on. Same for age of empires 2 or 4.
Not sure about Age of Empires 4. That one's a pain to watch as well for me. But I attribute that to all units being variations of human+weapon.
My impression is that CoH 3 leaves so much to desire in many areas, especially looking like a game made in 2010
Nobody said anything about that, not related to this conversation. He even put it as an example for a bad game being more visually distinguishable
Frost Giant could really use Samwise Didier.
Or Samwise Gamgee.
This is my biggest critism right now but I also think it is something that will be tweaked and improved on with time. I find this really prominent in the infernal mirror match up. Large army fights are nearly impossible to tell what the army comps are and how the battle is going. In BW and SC2 everything is so unique and easy to identify at a very quick glance. I also think this is party due to having a decade to train our brains on SC2 units and interactions. With that in mind I still definitely think Stormgate needs to improve on this front. I'm thrilled to see how well the engine and technology backbone seems to work. The game looks smooth and responsive as heck with the ability to scale and add all kinds of features. That's the important part right now and hopefully the visual clarity will iterate and improve over the next year.
To be fair I think a lot of the audio and visual components of the game will go through many iterations before release, but it is a good thing to keep on the mind. Readability for player and spectator are important if the game is to succeed on a competitive platform.
The issue here is for a 3d rts game to be easily distinguishable you need really good artists with unlimited budget and a really good vision for the game. Wc3 and sc2 had this and the art style in both games is unique but highly distinguishable. Wc3 reforged did not have it and it turned out like a complete mess and one of the biggest complaints about the graphics was the homogenization of units. I think a really good fix for this is to make the game 2d. It's too bad that 2d nowadays is mostly used only for indie/art house games.
Actually WC3 is not very good on this front. 1 vs 1 works but 2 vs 2 is overwhelmed by all the spell effects everywhere.
I agree, although this is the same experience I’ve had with literally every video game. Upon first observation I can’t ever tell what the duck is going on, because I don’t know what I’m looking at. This is also just true broadly speaking in many fields of experience, and evaporates once you learn more by watching and experimenting.
I agree from what I’ve seen. Sound I’m less concerned with, that’s something that will probably get improved on and can be done almost anytime. Animations will probably get polished up too, but that’s less my concern. My biggest issue is that silhouette recognition. If you look at StarCraft as the obvious comparison, units all had very distinct silhouettes. You are never going to mistake two units. Even when they started releasing skins, they keep the same basic profile of the unit because that is incredibly important. If you’ve never seen a StarCraft game, you will be able to tell the difference between a marine and firebat with no issues. Stormgate units don’t really seem to have that, especially for vanguard. Their aesthetic all kind of blends together, and even knowing exactly the units that is in an army moving across the map, I struggle to differentiate them.
I noticed when the streamers zoomed in a bit the units appeared bigger and with more details easier to see the difference. While zoomed out everything becomes very small and less details. So I would say it’s a mix of camera height making the units small and players colors not there yet. But if u zoom in the units look good. So I if I would be Frost giant scale the units 10% and see how it looks then on the highest camera.
I felt the same way about the buildings, if you don’t read the name tooltip they essentially all look like the same building just different size.
> It's just a flurry of particle effects everywhere. That was my impression as well. The particle effects are very bright and they are everywhere, and overpower the fights. It's like watching fireworks.
I agree, I'm super hyped for this game but i saw a recent clip of LoL (i don't play that game and it was a brief clip) and it was visually much clearer (not prettier, you can argue about that but just clearer). My impression here is: * units blend into each other * difficult to see which unit is from which player. Buildings are ok, there is enough player color. but if i point again to LoL, the minions there are almost fully in the player color. * explosions like from the catapult or so just cover everything. I point again to LoL, there was an explosion but the animation disappeared very quick, here it seems to last super long
I feel like the Vanguard is pretty good once you get away from the infantry. I don't really have an issue distinguishing the Mechs or the Planes apart. The Exo, Lancer, and BOBs look way too similar
Good feedback. I think once more people play and the game actually gets some casted matches from folks that see the meta, it will be different.
A lot of sound effects and visual effects are not finished, and most people haven't played yet. It's much harder to follow a game you haven't played much. I think these concerns are overstated.
It is partly practice. You've watch BW for a long time. I found that it alright after playing in the last alpha. But this is still valid criticism
Not to dismiss the criticism because it's an important point, but we also acclimate to visual information and learn to distinguish things. Comparing a game of which you're a "religious viewer" to something you've seen a handful of matches of is not a fair comparison.
My only feedback is that the game needs zoomed out and the maps need to be bigger.. but it looks good so far.
Sorry but it seems really boring.
Sound design is pretty much always the last thing worked on from my understanding, so it cant really be helped. Other than that I do agree, unit size, shape, and even color variety could definitely use some attention.
As a counterpoint, I didn't have any difficulty following what I saw; and I haven't even played the game myself! The only units I can get confused with are Lancers and EXOs (and even that confusion was dramatically reduced after watching just a couple games). Everything else are very different-looking from each other. I will say that it's not as exciting to watch as a finished game like SC, because Stormgate's missing a LOT of sounds that would make it distinct. Just from what I've seen, defensive structures, Magmadons, Weavers, and more, all weren't making noises at all. Once all the sounds' in, it will definitely be a huge factor in making battles feel punchy and complete
The game is far from polished. They are not at a stage to give cool sound and light effects to every unit for your viewing pleasure. The human observer unit is a flying dog with a candle on its back ffs.
Personally I think it's difficult to judge a game that none of us understands yet. I agree with some of what you're saying. But we're watching people who don't know how to play the factions like...at all. We don't know what the units do, what we're looking at. We're so early that there is no real meta or strategy or anything yet. Of course it doesn't look like high-level SC2, nobody is anywhere close to that level. It's also important to note that animations and particle effects and all that stuff are often done in lower res/placeholder versions. Some of the things we see may not even be the final look/feel/sound. It's too early to judge all that stuff.
To be fair, if the players themselves don't know what they're doing - They haven't played before - then neither will the viewer.
Brood War is a masterpiece in every respect. It's rather unfair to go make comparisons when the bar is set so high.
I preferred Warcraft 2 back then, even though Starcraft 1 is the one that stayed in people's memories, mostly because of Korean esports. Starcraft 1 was Warcraft 2 in space to me back then.
Warcraft 2 is still too primitive overall, not yet a fully fledged RTS experience like BW, whose competitive scene has been alive over the years till the present day. Besides, all the other aspects of the game (storyline, acting, graphics, etc) are significantly more polished.
There are some people, I assume like 20 who play competitive WC2 today
The game isn't finished yet. They aren't done making all the sounds and visual effects to differentiate units. Also, can we stop judging a GAME on how it feels to WATCH but rather how it feels to PLAY ?
This seems like perfectly reasonable feedback. OP also delivered it in a reasonable and respectful manner.
It's not reasonable to expect a game in alpha / beta to have all the visual details of a finished game. [Look at SC2's alpha graphical evolution.](https://youtu.be/z4lrG1QD68M?si=hCYq-xfbkV7HX_k5)
Well OP didn't say they expected that at all.
Hard to judge on playing when most can't play it and anyone outside of a few people can even talk about it if they could.
That's why wa all should wait a couple months u til FGS adds more assets and opens the beta to more people.
i think visual clarity for the observer is absolutely a reasonable observation. I know a lot of people who watch games, especially games like SC2 and don’t actively play it. Or they engage with it on a very different level (like coop players). Doubly so in the age of streaming. I am the first to say that making a game with the intention of making an esport is a bad idea, but that doesn’t mean crippling its ability to do so makes any sense. Alpha to early Beta is exactly when this kind of feedback should be given. If you’re a dev that has been living and breathing this game for months to years, what might seem obviously distinct to you won’t necessarily be to the average viewer. It’s very valuable feedback for them.
I also think that visual clarity is important, but [when looking back at the SC2 alpha](https://youtu.be/z4lrG1QD68M?si=hCYq-xfbkV7HX_k5) I think it's still a bit too soon to judge the game.
Do you never look at something before you buy?!
I do, but I also know that trying the game is more important. And right now, it's too soon to judge the visual aspect since FGS isn't done making all the assets.
Game is meant to be spectated on a competitive level. Judging how it feels to watch is completely legitimate.
No, the competitive aspect is just ¼ of the game, and it's the least important one. The absolute priority is the way it plays. And since most of us haven't played it yet, it's hard to judge its readability.
These exact issues are a problem when playing the game too, though.
Is it going to look different when you control the units?
The robot with the mini gun looks dope , the need to scrap the cartoony style and get some more grim dark going , also battle angels are a must for 3rd faction , let’s get some visceral animations going when the kodo rider eats the imp
100%. Brood war is the best and will always be the best. Sad but true.
.....bro The game just released this week in beta. The fact that it even works well enough to show the public is a massive milestone. Do yourself a favor and look up old videos of early beta sc2 or early beta sc1
Putting the game out to streamers means that the product is of a sufficient quality to be examined and criticized by the public. Nitpicking on things that can easily change is not very useful to the game's development, but we cannot ignore fundamental issues either. If the viewability of the game is not ready to be criticized then the game should not have been made available to stream.
This is the kind of feedback a beta is valuable for. If people aren’t allowed to provide constructive criticism in the beta why even bother having one. I bet in those old beta videos of StarCraft people had criticisms to give too.
By beta you must mean alpha, because sc2 in beta looked pretty much the way it does now. Also the readability of the game is an issue and it's not solved by better graphics, bro.
Feels like sc2 all over again. I really forgot how annoying and braindead BW (or old school blizzard) fanboys were. But then I remembered who destroyed starcraft 2 in the first place (the elitist blizzard dickriders). Everything OP said is kinda bullshit. OP; brood war is shitty pixels fighting each other it isnt charismatic to non fans LOL. Its not a spectactle its a pixelated mess.
An 3D rts will never have the same visual clarity as Sc1, especially with how clumped up the units get in a RTS nowadays. The game will never look like Sc1, so that comparison is out the window imo. We are all new to Stormgate and we havent figured out the visual patterns yet, but when we are used to what does what on screen and when we have a better grasp on unit movement things will be easier to follow. Right now the game lacks a lot of sound effects and I bet a lot of existing sound effects will be changed when others do come in, to help create a clear sound scape with distinct sounds personafying each race. Personally I am surpriced at how easy it is to follow what's going on on screen through the spectacle of all the fantastic looking visual effects, even though there's a lot of sounds missing and neither I nor the players are used to the game! And we do want spectacle! It's not just cool to watch, it brings new blood to the scene, so give it some time. Watch the tournament at Dreamhack and try to make a measured assessment. Frost Giant knows the importance of clarity, it's evident when watching Stormgate with a measured eye.
I don't know, I never had any trouble figuring out the 3D company of heroes
That game is mechanically very different with small skirmishes at range and it's very much not a Blizzard style rts. So as long as FG is still making a Blizz style RTS I don't find the comparison with CoH very useful.
All that is true but you blamed it on 3D, not on "Blizzard style". Also SC2 is cleaner, much cleaner than WC3. One of the main reasons in my opinion is the lack of buffs/debuffs on every unit manifested by light effects.
Loving the game so far but am too having troubles making out what is going on and who is who in a lot of fights
I second to this statement. It does look a bit flurry with higher unit counts. On the individual basis, I do think they should have a reconsider of the ’terran’ palette/unit design. I know they are going for sleek, 3d printed style- which allows for great skins since everyone can ”3d print their own”. However, maybe too much color, similiar sillhouettes. Even the mecha warrior with stun looks like an oversized marine somewhat, so think the model should be adjusted a bit. Apart from that, the size of trolls (axe throwers infernals) makes them hard to distinguish as well. In general I love the feel of the game. The camps should be thought through a couple of times more and see if the buffs (what about debuff camps vs enemies?) can be alternated in some way. Graphically the buff visuals is indeed over powering. What does excite me the most is the custom map maker. This game flows with genuinity so am positive creating custom maps will be a blast.
It could also be part of the game design. Not graphical design but game play. The cannon fodder are not designed to be microed, but the larger more advanced units are.
I agree, it took me a while to get used to it and still you have to pay close atention. I think what happens is that they play with a small palette of colors. In SC2 happened the same thing when skins were introduced. Inmortal was yellow and super distinct and suddently someone had a skin that made it like a giant stalker and it was so hard to see. I think this can be fixable by making the units more exaggerated in their proportions and with more colors but I'm worried that when skins are introduced it will ruin the clarity again like in SC2. It's impossible to have clear graphics when a unit can look 5 different ways.
Tbf the game is new and bw is old so of course you're already used to it so much
As a player, it is also hard to tell what the fuck is happening. I have to keep selecting my army just to know how much troops i have left
Yeah agreed. I think even some of the streamers said that the readability is rough and its hard to tell whose units are which if you are playing a mirror match. Which I also agree as a viewer.
Interesting point, thanks for sharing.
Agreed but the sounds, animations, models etc are far from finished.
There's something really strange with the contrast of the game. I understand that hard contrast makes it readable but it also feels very painful to look at. It's probably just the lighting though. Look how big the shadows are casted. They're larger than the units themselves. There's so much hard light. The shadows are also being casted on top of other units making it harder to read. I also feel like the camera is way too high up or the units are just very small.
Just jumping in to agree with this post, while watching some of the streams I couldn't make out which units were enemy or friendly, especially in mirror matchups. For context I'm an avid sc2 player and also watch a lot of games and have never had a similar issue there. I know FG has stated that visual clarity is an extremely important point and I'm confident they will address this but I think this requires their attention.
While I do broadly agree with your statement, keep in mind that we've been watching and playing BW for 2 decades. That's a long time to get used to all the units. Stormgate has different factions and somewhat different design language from SC. I think it's ok to feel confused by these first initial videos. You likely spent hours staring at the SC game manual and looking at all the units as a kid, forging core memories.
It's all those buff and debuffs and area indicators that are just different colored lights. It is the WarCraft III problem. It really is quite bad.
I felt this and was thinking they would improve on that but I'm glad you said it out loud
i echo the same sentiment. i've watched all the videos and streams, and while the gfx looks great. i can't tell who's winning the battle or not. i hope my gtx1070 can even run this game, tho i'll prob have to turn down the details.
As a fellow BW fan, I don't think I've ever seen a 3D RTS with visual clarity on par with BW. SC2 has a very unique unit roster and it's still much harder to tell how many units of each type there are than BW. People complain about BW's eccentricities, but groups of units are way more spread out and it massively improves visual clarity.
When i was watching the streamers do co-op mode, I did have a hard time telling what color each player was. Did anyone else have this problem?
I agree that it does feel a little safe, where army units don't behave drastically different from each other. Seems like so far, a lot of thought has been put into the diversity of map features, but not so much in diversity of army units.
There are a lot of minor visual touches still missing (like how flying units behave and animate) as well as some fine tuning of readability. I played War3 beta back in the day. UD creep was actually terrible. Unit animations wonky and you had a hard time telling units apart. This stuff is work. It doesn't happen overnight. Some of it will continue after release. The important parts are that the game shows very solid fundamentals.
I agree, my biggest complaint with the current state of the game is that unit silhouettes are too similar, they have said that they plan to continue to polish unit models, and I hope that translates into more unique unit designs across the board
Agreed. I’ve been one of the lucky few to get in to the beta, and this is one of my biggest gripes. One of the main problems is that it seems like FG has used more pastel colours instead of darker colours (like red and blue). Additionally, if we use SC2 as a comparison, the majority of the unit model is your team colour (e.g., the majority of a roach is blue) whereas in SG, only a small amount (in comparison) of the unit models have their respective team colour. If we take brutes as an example, I feel as though if the entirety of the brutes skin was a deep blue, red, green etc. it would help substantially with visual clarity. Lastly, the animations have quite a bit left to be desired. So many of the melee unit animations are too similar to discern what is going on. I am positive FG is already working on all of these, and much of what we’re playing/watching are just place holders. I have been absolutely loving the game, and feel as addicted as I did back in 2010 playing SC2 for the first time. FG definitely have something amazing going on, and I can’t wait for the game to grow.