I think its time to start releasing actual gameplay footage for these reasons:
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RTS games always look best from the perspective that they are played from - top down. The large resource needs that RTS require mean they never look as good as say, an FPS. These cinematic shots that are being put out aren’t cinematic - frankly they are often ugly. The game looks a lot better in gameplay, from the little we have seen.
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Focusing on gameplay over cinematics will help direct the conversation away from graphics and onto gameplay, which is the strength of the RTS genre. I’m pretty tired of talking about graphics. My own post is making me sigh a bit. But without much actual gameplay, it is difficult to talk about other things.
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Conversations about strategy and tactics will help to generate hype as it fuels creative imagination. People will begin to visualize playing as say, The Mongols, and theorycrafting on rushes and the like. I remember with both Warcraft 3 and Starcraft, a big part of my hype train involved looking over individual units and their abilities and just imagining.
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There’s so much material here for frequent footage. Its not like you need to save gameplay footage because you might run out. You don’t have to go all out with full match showcases to start. You can do unit showcases. Age showcases. But show it as top down actual gameplay please, not this cinematic stuff that just doesn’t suit RTS well at all.
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If negative feedback does develop from seeing gameplay, it could be useful. Right now, most feedback of any meaning that you are receiving is graphical - and even that is a bit questionable because it comes from people who have not seen gameplay. And graphics and gameplay cannot be neatly separated in an RTS. But showing gameplay could help people to identify potential balance issues or things not yet thought of. Or maybe as people’s creative inaginations get flowing, it can trigger your own.
Hope you take this into consideration. I’d love to see excitement for this game begin to take off and in my opinion this cinematic footage is not doing it like gameplay would.