Introducing Frost Giant Studios - Page 3
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SmoKim
Denmark2 Posts
If Frost Giant (and Dreamhaven) both develops a "Competitive RTS", it could force Blizzard to invest alot more in RTS. So this could might be a win-win. Or Blizzard could ignore everything and loose the last genre where they are still king (if only by default). Very interesting news. Excited to see what the future will bring. | ||
ZerglingSoup
United States0 Posts
On the other hand, I hope the development gameplan clearly defines the scope, role and limitations around community feedback. Otherwise, I can see this easily ending up being a rudderless project that spends years chasing its own tail. I really hope the creative director is empowered to thoughtfully veto community input and wall off major design decisions in favor of fulfilling their own cohesive vision. RTS as a genre tends to elicit very passionately irrational input from players and it would be a shame to see that dynamic derail or bog down the development process. Finally, while I 100% understand the theory behind following audience trends, I'm not convinced that a fortnite-meets-fall guys rts is going to really make a lasting mark. So my biggest wish is that their game or universe or whatever they are creating gets its own soul. RTS is a genre with a lot of depth, closer to an RPG than a FPS or racing game. It should have the capacity to be cute, but it also needs the capacity to be dark, to be poignant, to be irreverent, to be touching and to be a whole range of other things that makes a great game worth coming back to again and again. If manic pixie lootbox games are what is being represented as a model for audience tastes, I could easily see this falling into the deep fissure between two very different audiences that ultimately want two very different things, no matter how much you try to "onramp" them into each other. This is all just food for thought. I am already signed up for the newsletter and will definitely have my hat in the ring to be a game tester and all that and I'm looking forward to playing whatever it is this studio puts out! | ||
Shuffleblade
Sweden0 Posts
Game developers haven't really got this yet, but you can't release the next big hit if you just keep copying the recent big hits. I see a lot of posters and community figures discussing how this game should work (or how they want it to work) micro/macro balance, economic system and how fast paced the combat will be. To me the thing I am curious about, which will decide if I like this game or not is how it feels to play. I am sure that even features of RTS that I dislike can become great if designed right. An economic system, while obvioustly interesting will likely say nothing about if you will like the game or not. The question is how the economies are balanced and how the game feels to play, its macro cycles and flow in different matchups. One huge factor about how an RTS feels to play is where the game puts its strategic decisions, sc2 are a lot about build orders, scouting and the units that hard counter eachother. Is that the direction this will go, or will be more similar units with more soft counters, that will make it harder to make units actually feel different and unique but it takes away the rock-paper-scissors which is not an enjoyable feel. In sc2 scouting is easy but also very important, for example I found it hilarious that proxies have become so huge, recently even walling in early as terran. 'This shows how starcraft 2 revolves heavily around scouting, if you dont scout you can just die therefore in sc2 they made scouting easy. What strategy rose to prominence after years of mapping out the game, ways to deny scouting. The second popular thing, natural deniers, ebays or pylons to block expansions. Relatively cheap investments that removes or limits the opponents options, so even if they scout and now what they want to do they might be unable to greed or hit the kind of timing they would want. A long rant perhaps but its so fasncinating to me, real time strategy game, a game about decisions and what frost giant needs to do is figure out where do they put the decisionmaking that makes it into a strategy game while keeping micro/macro as smooth mechanics and dont ever rely on hardcounters. As a final comment I hope they manage to make the game about small skirmishers without turning into a harass fiesta like Blizz did with starcraft 2. | ||
Swisslink
0 Posts
Anyway, this news is great. StarCraft II might have had its flaws and some of them might not have been adressed properly, but overall it is still the most popular RTS in recent years for a reason. I‘d love to see what they come up with and I hope the competitive aspect won‘t be ignored. RTS for me has always been about the complexity. And while there are good games that have been simplified to make it more enjoyable for newcomers, I really hope we have completely distinct races, we have a proper resource system and we have a proper base building system in place. I | ||
Cinskywind1
0 Posts
I've tried multiple RTS over the last 10 years but always come back to SC2 since it's still the best. I'm still hoping Sc2 continues on, but damn a new RTS designed by the people involved in SC2 would be amazing. Still hoping to see great things from Dreamhaven but looking forward to what these guys can do. I do like their statement on their site: "Strategically expand the audience. First appeal to the core audience, then also provide a great experience to strategy gamers at large. Establish a strong main before taking the natural. " No 1 base, canon rush for these guys then? | ||
Excalibur_Z
United States249 Posts
On October 21 2020 11:30 BLinD-RawR wrote: pretty interesting to see Frost Giant on TL. It makes sense. Monk is on the team after all  On October 21 2020 21:14 Swisslink wrote: Tasteless‘ comment on this situation kinda worried me in regard to Blizzard in recent years. Apparently the developers at Blizzard wanted to create new RTS games, but Activision refused to greenlight them? If that is actually the case (and I trust Tasteless here) this is a really bad prospect for the future of StarCraft and WarCraft, imo. And it left me confused, because StarCraft sold millions of copies. What the fuck do they even want? Most developers would probably be happy to have such a succesful game in their portfolio. Anyway, this news is great. StarCraft II might have had its flaws and some of them might not have been adressed properly, but overall it is still the most popular RTS in recent years for a reason. I‘d love to see what they come up with and I hope the competitive aspect won‘t be ignored. RTS for me has always been about the complexity. And while there are good games that have been simplified to make it more enjoyable for newcomers, I really hope we have completely distinct races, we have a proper resource system and we have a proper base building system in place. I Activision's focus has always been on maximizing revenue via long-term installments, since those proven streams have made them into an effective and consistent publisher. I believe it's not outside the realm of possibility that they reviewed Starcraft 2's revenue model and determined that it appealed to a niche audience (no console users, limited casual appeal) that only became increasingly niche with each expansion pack (since not everyone will adopt). Couple that with the Galaxy Editor being more complex than StarEdit or WorldEdit (high barrier for entry) resulting in a hindered custom game scene, and it doesn't sound like a new RTS would have been as profitable as other ventures. Co-op helped open the game up to casual players a little bit more, but the fact that they're not continuing development on that mode must mean it's a minor or neutral undertaking. Just guessing here as a project manager myself. | ||
BLinD-RawR
ALLEYCAT BLUES548 Posts
On October 21 2020 23:59 Excalibur_Z wrote: It makes sense. Monk is on the team after all I mean this is more like Frost Giant in as a whole not just one of our own coming here which is when I say it like this, quite awesome. looking forward to all the work including theory crafting as the project progresses in the years/months to come. | ||
dUTtrOACh
Canada20 Posts
Five-mil can buy a little quality or a lot of shit, and it can't possibly be enough to make the next trip-A RTS. Hopefully the funding well doesn't dry up. Best of luck to the developers in this ambitious endeavour. | ||
atchosvk
0 Posts
I wonder if this will put pressure on Blizzard to deliver with Starcraft/Warcraft franchises in the future. While MOBAS and FPS are dominating the esports scene, Blizz is still king of RTS - mostly because there really is no alternative (not saying there isn´t alot of great RTS games, but they are very different from Blizzard games) I agree that Blizzard is still the King but in all honesty the job was done by their former employees and executives. What remains of blizzard organization is just a bunch of greedy people that do not give a shit about players experience. They tend to lean torwards the most profitable business model and that's obviously not RTS. Also look at what they are doing in WoW, the content is shit, there are now transmogs in micro transactions on top of subscriptions etc.. Blizzard is led by Greed. End of the story. | ||
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