Early Access Preview: Learnings and Feedback

Hi, everyone, Tim Morten here.

Two days ago, Stormgate was released publicly into Early Access. This was a huge milestone for us. Early Access is a new experience for the team, but I genuinely believe in the benefits of using feedback to drive development.

We want to thank all of you who have been supportive of our team and of Stormgate.

Remember: this is only the beginning of our journey. Our Early Access launch formally begins on August 13 when we open up the game for free to all players and we still have a long road ahead. We expect to be in Early Access for at least a year of active development before we believe we’ll be ready for 1.0. That won’t be the end, either, as we plan to release new stories and more content for years to come.

Here are a few highlights we’d like to share after our preview release:

Stable launch: We were able to bring together players from all around the world and, despite a few initial hiccups, achieved 98.6% uptime for our servers.
Campaign is the most-played mode: Of the many thousands of total games played, campaign made up about half, followed by custom games. We are excited for the future of our ever-evolving campaign and will be dedicating a lot of time to improving them in the future. More on that below.
More playtime = more fun: We found this interesting–though it may seem obvious–but Steam reviewer data indicates that the more players take the time to sink their teeth into the game and explore the various modes in Stormgate, the more they tend to enjoy it. You’ll find Reddit posts to this effect too, where players’ opinions improved after actually spending some time with the game.

Our Ultimate Thanks

Some of our most dedicated supporters expressed disappointment when they saw that we had a Hero available for sale on day one. We tried to make the content in our Kickstarter bundles clear during the campaign, but we understand that many players looked at our “Ultimate” bundles on Kickstarter (and Indiegogo) as the path towards purchasing all of the gameplay content we’d have available for our Early Access release.

We want our backers to feel rewarded, so as a thank you, will be granting the next* paid Hero we release to everyone who backed Stormgate on Kickstarter or Indiegogo at the Ultimate Founder’s Pack tier and above, for free.

We also aim to grant that next paid Hero for free to everyone who purchased or purchases the Ultimate Early Access pack on Steam. Please note that this process will require additional engineering work and may be something we will have to fulfill after the release of that Hero.

*(Why not Warz? We need to grant the next paid Hero for free because players have already purchased Warz and we are unable to make him free retroactively.)

We’re Acting on Feedback

Early Access provides us with critical feedback that will help us continue iterating and improving the game. Here are some of the issues we’re already taking steps to address in the months to come:

Audio and Visual Feedback

We saw negative reaction to character models in the cut-scenes, particularly Amara, and to real-time segments not having animated mouths. We have changes planned based on this feedback, which will take time to implement. The current implementation was definitely something we considered “Early Access” and not “final.”
We heard feedback about inconsistent audio levels, repetitive announcer lines, and spammy unit response lines. These will be improved.
Some players dislike our stylized art direction and, as I noted in our last AMA, we’re going to continue to refine our look, but we’re committed to a stylized direction. We think it’s the right creative choice for Stormgate.

Customizable Hotkeys

These are coming, though implementation in Unreal takes time. This will include fully re-bindable hotkeys, including adding support for modifiers.

Campaign Improvements

We'll be adding a pause function to the campaign. We’re also beginning planning for a save/load system that will work in tandem with our existing checkpoint save system.
The models you see in our cutscenes are the game models that were designed to be seen from top-down gameplay perspective. We’re going to look at our production timelines and schedule production on animated faces and other improvements for our models sooner than originally planned. This is significant work for our team, but we understand that many players feel the characters in our cutscenes are a critical part of the campaign experience.

Financial Projections

I read the thread where someone tried to project Frost Giant's possible financial outcomes. Those projections were wildly inaccurate. Like any business, Frost Giant needs to make products that people decide to purchase in order to succeed. We're trying very hard to do that, and we're grateful to be well-funded relative to most start-ups, including many who never get to see their game in players’ hands.

We’re Just Getting Started

We’re encouraged by how the game is performing during this limited preview period. The feedback we’re getting, positive and negative, will help us make the next great RTS. We look forward to opening Stormgate to a wider audience, and getting more valuable feedback, when we open up the game for free to everyone on August 13.

Everyone at Frost Giant is deeply grateful to the community who support Stormgate. This game is our passion project, and we're continuing to work hard to make it shine. Your feedback is tremendously valuable--we are listening. Please keep the suggestions coming, bear with us, stay respectful, and GLHF!