FoA Release Date Discussion(?)

Grim Dawn General Discussion
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Meanwhile, the Age of Empires 2 remaster, now itself a six year old game remastering a 20 year old game, is enjoying unprecedented sales numbers and 30k concurrent players on Steam.

RTS genre is not dead at all. But it is too niche for the blockbuster chasing AAA industry that sees anything less than a second Fortnite as a failure.

Likewise, I don’t see the ARPG going anywhere. There is something magical about blowing up monsters and getting loot that scratches our lizard brains. I find it amusing that there are now companies riding on “reinventing the ARPG”. There are more successful ARPGs now than ever before in the genre’s history.

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Of course. Warcraft 3 is also getting a second youth, so to say. I have to admit that I’m getting misty-eyed seeing players like Moon, Grubby or Th000 playing… those guys are now 40 year old. And I’ve watched them 20 years ago. Crazy to think about it.

However, like you said, it’s too niche for AAA. There are no new/AAA RTS games being made. And that’s because the genre is dead.

Yeah, but would you predict AAA RTS demise when Warcraft 3 got released, or when Starcraft 2 was about to hit the shelves?

Fantastic, legendary titles. Which were pretty much the final stand of RTS genre. It died quickly afterwards.

Thanks to games like Grim Dawn.

But, we’re going through “endless difficulty greater rift ARPG spam” which looks strangely similar to “90000001 C&C clones” from early 2000…

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It’s not dead, but there’s only this game from 1999 (or what was it?) still hanging around in some reincarnated form :rofl:

I like the Age of Mythology remaster, for nostalgia reasons as well. Though they’ve added a bunch of new stuff that doesn’t really excite me.

Apart from that I haven’t seen any new and/or fresh games that scratched that itch for me. Who knows, maybe one day someone will come up with something new and exciting. :smiley:

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Age of Empires 2, Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2 are peak. I don’t think you can make a better RTS game, honestly.

I guess that there was no point in making more of those after we hit perfection, haha.

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DoW/Company of Heroes was gold too imo, even if i’m not a grand fan of the resource system

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I dont even like rts games,but I will still buy it just to support the making of grim dawn 2 lol

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I would say it’s because the industry is so determined the RTS is dead that they try reinvent it, fail, then say that this failure is evidence of its death.

The very fact that Age of Empires 2 is selling so ridiculously well today shows that there is an audience thirsty for experiencing those kinds of games. Age of Empires 4 peaked at over 70k concurrent on Steam alone and still has over 11k concurrent.

Age of Empires 4 and Tempest Rising, I would say, are the first RTS games in ages that tried to recreate what made RTS games classics. Rather than trying to be something “new”, they modernized Age of Empires and Command and Conquer. Seems like it’s working based on the player numbers. Certainly seems to be sufficient for Microsoft which is looking to do it again.

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I’m definitively going to try your RTS. I’m curious if you can make it “click”.

You seem to have nailed what makes ARPGs click. Well, at least for me. I know peeps are different ofc.

For me it’s the physics and pace.

GD is fast, but not too fast. Not zoom-zoom. And not slow like Souls. it sits in the perfect middle, where it should be.

And there’s the satisfaction of killing things (man, it sounds wrong :smiley:). The ragdoll effect. You hit stuff, it just flies and splatters on a wall. Simple stuff, but reminds me why I play video games: for the fun of it. And hitting sh*t and getting it ragdolled is the primal FUN i expect to see.

Loot was always secondary to me. I mean, sure I love me some good loot, but if killing things doesn’t click, no amount of loot saves the game for me.

Last Epoch… once again… is just a failure to me in the current state. it’s BORING. I click on things, they die, but there’s no weight, movement is floaty, physics are a joke. I just don’t feel it. And then you reach the empowered monos… ugh. I’ve already explained why they are crap. Once the regular player comes out of the LE S2 honeymoon phase, he’ll see it too.

Fingers crossed for GD2 in the future. With good physics, hearty engine, and not much focus on getting to Torment 90238913 or Corruption Level 35827580, which strangely enough is exact copy of Corruption 100 or Corruption 0, just with different back-end numbers. Which makes “progression” there just an illusion. Take away the numbers and it’s the same thing from day 1 to day 10000.

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Who can say. I know that we’re going to make an RTS that makes us happy (something between SC2 and AoE2 in terms of pace), and hopefully there will be enough other people out there who agree and it becomes a financial success.

We’re not a big studio, so we don’t need to ship 5 million copies to break even. By the metrics we need to hit, the RTS market is sizable and ripe with opportunity.

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You’ve done amazing things with the old, tired TQ engine, so I have high hopes for FF.

I guess the only thing I find missing is the skeleton parts flying everywhere.

Yeah, I know. You just can’t overdo it on TQ engine because it causes rubber banding. Which is why THQ nordic HEAVILY reduced it in the remaster.

But man, do I miss throwing a volcanic orb at a bunch of skeletons and having bones scatter everywhere.

THQ nordic even put a timer on how long sh*t can fly before it literally freezes mid-air… man… what a downer. What’s the point of optimization if it ruins the “flow”…

At least in GD I can still park zombies on top of trees.

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I think this sums it up pretty well what’s the difference between an enjoyable game and a boring game. Of course there’s more to it, with all the classes items and opportunities for fun builds etc, but if the main game loop is not fun, the rest doesn’t matter anymore. Same with RTS games, if killing stuff doesn’t hit right, it can get quite boring quite quickly. I had this with Rise of Nations. It wasn’t a bad game, strategy wise, and I tried to like it, but it just didn’t click for me when you got your units out and did stuff.

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Raptor: Call of the Shadows is excellent. Sky Force Reloaded/Anniversary captures some of that charm. I also want to say Gradius…III? through V are great too.

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I think Godsworn, just made by two developers is a much fun game than Age of Empires 4 and Tempest Rising, it shows when you have passion first, not after global financial success your game will outshine the big ones, because lets face it, when you play these so called AAA RTS games, do you feel there is any sort of passion into it?, without think to yourself man, did they just try a fast cash grab?

The only reason why Age of Empires 4 and Tempest Rising is doing good, is because they ride on the successful names of previous successful RTS games, like Age of Empires 2 and Command and Conquer series. But, this does not mean, they are in any sense good, sure not bad, but still not good. Age of Empires 4 is a huge downscale when compare to Age of Empires 2, in terms of fun and worth.

Godsworn actually reminds me of Grim Dawn somehow, I’m watching how that game grows, because i can tell you now, it’s light years much more fun to play that those games I’ve just mentioned.

I mean, a new, modern RTS, which can’t even support mass armies is a joke, while an old game, like Age of Empires 2 have huge armies, i mean, where does that make sense? isn’t new engines suppose to be better than older ones, hold much more worth in any means.

I’ve been playing RTS games since 1995 and it’s very sad to see there isn’t really any RTS today, that gives you that magical feeling when playing, the sole reason why they remastered these games is not because some don’t work on systems, no, because they can’t seem to design proper RTS anymore in my opinion. So i hope you guys, can pull something classic with your RTS.

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Why SC2 and not SC1 Zantai? if you say SC2, do you mean using the fast pace of that game?

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Well, Farthest Frontier is already a success having sold around 1.5 million copies last heard and still not quite out of early access. But FF is mainly a town building game with optional combat; it’s not an RTS.

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I’ve seen most people think FF is made with TQ engine, which is not true, they use Unity.

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Damn! YES! That was great, never managed to find it again because I was too young to remember the name of the game :smiley: Thanks, I’m going to have to give this one a go again.

Agreed. It didn’t look that appealing to me. Seems like they did a 3D version of AoE2, but with just less of everything.

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I’ve played Age of Empires 4, for about few hours then lost interest. It’s not about how many players they have, the game is just not fun compare to Age of Empires 2. They could of rather make an Age of Empire going into a space theme, that would of made more sense, but everything about Age of Empires 4 is just a downscale compare to Age of Empires 2. At this point, i think the Age of Empires 2 will be the best in the series.

Most new RTS games is not fun, which is sad to me, because RTS is my most favorite genre after ARPG. I hope crate pulls it off, i really do, but after knowing they are interested in Age of Empires 2 and StarCraft 2 is a 50/50 worrisome to me, but let’s see :slight_smile:

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The RTS will use Crate’s new generation of their game engine which is under development atm. So not the old TQ game engine.