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Recently posted this on the battle.net forums: http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6621402467
Introduction
This thread I will be laying out one of the problems with the WoL Campaign: variety of mission types. I will also suggest what to learn from WoL and apply it to HotS campaign. I want to say that the story will not be touched in this analysis at all, so please refrain from discussing that here. Please feel free to correct my interpretations of the mission types and leave a constructive comment.
Definition of the different mission types and their focus
+ Show Spoiler +In my view, you can split all missions into 5 groups:
A. Expand/Conquer type missions - This type of mission will have you expand a lot, and take over the entire map by killing all opposing forces.
- Focus: Macro, strategy and somewhat micro
B. Base defense type mission - On a mission like this you will most likely not expand, only focus on defending one base while being cost efficient until objective is complete.
- Focus: Cost effectiveness and defense
C. Few expansions, mission has a certain twist to it. - Here you will have to remain on one or two bases, while something out of the ordinary is going on, which you have to tend to.
- Focus: Protecting/Acquiring something
D. Acquiring resources type mission - This type of mission requires cost effectiveness while resources are scarce. You need to collect enough minerals to fulfill the objective.
- Focus: Cost effectiveness
E. Hero/Squad type mission - Here you lead a hero unit, and/or a small squad of units through a maze-type layout. No resource gathering will take place in these missions.
- Focus: Micro
Categorization of WoL missions with mission types
I will from this point only refer to the different mission types as their corresponding letters: A - E (see above for definition).
You can skip this section if you want, it's a bit of a read. If so, go to the next headline: "Distribution of mission types".
+ Show Spoiler +
Following are all the missions in WoL campaign, their assigned mission type (A - E) and the reasoning for this.
Mission 1: Liberation Day
Type: E
Reasoning: Typical Squad type map, lead a small force with Raynor to victory.
Mission 2: The Outlaws
Type: A
Reasoning: Though it is a introductory mission, it is mainly a conquer map.
Mission 3: Zero Hour
Type: B
Reasoning: A textbook defense type map, hold out until the timer runs out.
Mission 4: The Evacuation
Type: C
Reasoning: Low amount of bases, and the twist is you have to save most of the colonists.
Mission 5: Smash and Grab
Type: C
Reasoning: Low amount of bases, the twist is you have to get the artifact before the zerg reaches it.
Mission 6: Outbreak
Type: C
Reasoning: Low amount of bases, the twist: defend at night, raid during day.
Mission 7: The Devil's Playground
Type: D
Reasoning: Textbook resource acquiring. Also with a small twist, but it is not the main thing of the map.
Mission 8: The Great Train Robbery
Type: C
Reasoning: Low amount of bases, the twist is to raid trains with fast moving units.
Mission 9: Welcome to the Jungle
Type: C
Reasoning: Low amount of bases, the twist is to get the terrazine gas while protoss defends it.
Mission 10: Cutthroat
Type: D
Reasoning: Mostly this game is low economy, at the beginning it is all about resource collection. Later it becomes an elimination game. I thought D was most fitting.
Mission 11: Safe Haven
Type: C
Reasoning: Low amount of bases, twist is the mothership that is there to destroy all colonists while the player has to keep it from doing so.
Mission 12: Havens Fall
Type: C
Reasoning: Low amount of bases, similarly to the previous one, the players objective is to keep the colonists safe while destroying the infestation.
Mission 13: The Dig
Type: B
Reasoning: While the map has few expansions, I see this as a defense for a certain amount of time map.
Mission 14: Engine of Destruction
Type: C
Reasoning: Low amount of expansions, the twist is the gigantic Thor moving on its own, while you have to protect it.
Mission 15: Breakout
Type: E
Reasoning: Typical Hero/Squad mission, you control only Tosh in order to release the prisoners.
Mission 16: The Moebius Factor
Type: C
Reasoning: Low amount of expansions, the twist is that you have to destroy the Datacores before Kerrigan gets to them.
Mission 17: Whispers of Doom
Type: E
Reasoning: Typical Hero mission, you control Zeratul in order to retrieve all the prophecy fragments.
Mission 18: A Sinister Turn
Type: C
Reasoning: Low amount of expansions, the twist is the Hybrid that comes to attack every few minutes.
Mission 19: Echoes of the Future
Type: A
Reasoning: Initially you only start on one base, but there are quite a few expansions to take on the sides. Makes this map more like a conquer/expand map.
Mission 20: In Utter Darkness
Type: B
Reasoning: Base defense until you are eliminated.
Mission 21: Media Blitz
Type: A (unsure, please discuss this one)
Reasoning: I'm a bit torn on this one. It does have a surprise attack in the beginning, but transitions over to become kind of an expand/conquer type. Still unsure.
Mission 22: Piercing the Shroud
Type: E
Reasoning: Typical hero/squad type map. Infiltrate the biolab to uncover its secrets.
Mission 23: Supernova
Type: C
Reasoning: Without the fire and low resources, this map would be an A. But since you can never establish an economy, it's basically a C.
Mission 24: Maw of the Void
Type: C
Reasoning: Few resources, few bases. The "disintigrators" of protoss is the twist.
Mission 25: The Gates of Hell
Type: C
Reasoning: Very few expansions, you are basically on a rescue mission.
Mission 26: Belly of the Beast
Type: E
Reasoning: Typical hero/squad mission. You lead Raynor, Tychus, Swann and Stetman into the lava tunnels to destroy the zergs nydus capabilities for the final mission.
Mission 27: Shatter the Sky
Type: A
Reasoning: This is more of an A than a C in my opinion. There are more expansions than the other C's, and the twist is only a one time feature.
Mission 28: All In
Type: B
Reasoning: You basically defend on one base until the Xel'Naga artifact is charged (it's on a timer).
Distribution of mission types
+ Show Spoiler +Here are the results of the distribution of mission types for WoL:
Mission type
A: 4 (14%)
B: 4 (14%)
C: 13 (47%)
D: 2 (7%)
E: 5 (18%)
Total missions: 28
As we can see, there is a predominance of type C - "Few expansions, mission has a certain twist to it." I view this as a problem. There should be somewhat of an even distribution between type A and C, while B and E are slightly fewer and D being only very few (if any).
Ramifications of these numbers
+ Show Spoiler +If we want newer players to have a cleaner transition into the understanding of StarCraft 2 Multiplayer, there should definitely be more opportunities to expand and actually get to the late-game. By late game I mean taking lots of expansions, macroing up a big army and just eliminating the opponent (who is also on lots of bases). Currently, what the WoL campaign is teaching the new players is mostly 1-base play. And while that is fine, they should also be taught the power of expanding.
What to change for Heart of the Swarm
+ Show Spoiler +These are suggested values that would provide more of a varied gameplay, while still maintaining a good balance between the mission types:
A: 31% - Expand/Conquer type missions
B: 14% - Base defense type mission
C: 30% - Few expansions, mission has a certain twist to it
D: 7% - Acquire resource type mission
E: 18% - Hero/squad type mission
As you can see, B, D, and E are unchanged, while the distribution of A and C have been evened out. This is one of the problems with WoL, game-play wise.
Summary
The only thing to change about the distribution of mission types in WoL when we transition into HotS, is to have more "type A -Expand/Conquer type missions" and fewer "type C - Few expansions, mission has a certain twist to it". Heart of the swarm can definitely greatly enhance the campaign experience for all of us. The HotS campaign should definitely teach our newer players more about the power of expanding, rather than 1-basing.
Closing thought
By no means am I saying that the missions are bad in Wings of Liberty. I'm rather saying that the balance between them is not right.
Thank you very much for reading this lengthy post, and let us hope for a better HotS experience!
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
Currently, what the WoL campaign is teaching the new players is mostly 1-base play. And while that is fine, they should also be taught the power of expanding.
I find it incredibly annoying that this was copied and pasted but otherwise good point I suppose, personally when I started WoL I expanded very little and relied on one base for a long time (i.e. how I played WC3) and didn't know about expanding early for at least a few months of playing.
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Thought it was good to put it in the summary, but I guess you are right. I'll rephrase it. My experience was the same when I first played WoL, and only now when I've played quite a bit am I comfortable with expanding.
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I personally thought the distribution of WoL campaign missions was the most well designed campaign I've ever played. Every mission was unique, there were very few of the "build army and a-move" missions. If I wanted those, I'd go play any of the other RTS campaigns out there. But what I want, is for every mission to have a unique feel to it. I can't say enough how much I loved the WoL campaigns because of this.
Instead of ruining the campaign with too many repetitive missions, they should expand the challenges. One of them was about expanding early and holding off attacks. Maybe add more of those elsewhere, but not in the campaign. Maybe even add something like a multiplayer tutorial that goes over the importance of expanding and building workers.
Let's be honest, if you add more build a few bases and attack missions, all the bronze level players that you are trying to help will do, is to build a fleet of BL/corruptors or BCs or carriers off of one base. Adding more of these missions isn't going to help them.
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Singleplayer isn't designed to prepare you for multiplayer, it's designed to offer variety and gameplay experiences. The singleplayer experience in RTS's gets stale (try playing 1v1 vs computer 30 times in a row), therefor custom maps with unique objectives and obstacles need to be created in order to keep things fresh.
The "Type C" is actually just Blizzards effort to create gimmick style maps to diversify gameplay. Remove the "few expansions clause" and call it RTS gameplay with a twist. I believe it was Blizzards design philosophy to make every mission different, in essence, each mission is "Type C" and you are merely drawing attention to coincidental connections to multiplayer.
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On February 13 2013 04:30 convention wrote:
I personally thought the distribution of WoL campaign missions was the most well designed campaign I've ever played. Every mission was unique, there were very few of the "build army and a-move" missions.
in a way i miss those "melee" style missions. but at the same time the sc2 ai is shit-awful, so in a way im glad there weren't too many of those.
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On February 13 2013 04:30 convention wrote:
I personally thought the distribution of WoL campaign missions was the most well designed campaign I've ever played. Every mission was unique, there were very few of the "build army and a-move" missions. If I wanted those, I'd go play any of the other RTS campaigns out there. But what I want, is for every mission to have a unique feel to it. I can't say enough how much I loved the WoL campaigns because of this.
Instead of ruining the campaign with too many repetitive missions, they should expand the challenges. One of them was about expanding early and holding off attacks. Maybe add more of those elsewhere, but not in the campaign. Maybe even add something like a multiplayer tutorial that goes over the importance of expanding and building workers.
Let's be honest, if you add more build a few bases and attack missions, all the bronze level players that you are trying to help will do, is to build a fleet of BL/corruptors or BCs or carriers off of one base. Adding more of these missions isn't going to help them.
I'm not saying the missions were badly designed. On the contrary, I really liked them. I would like these missions, but with more expansions on them, more macro feel. I don't have anything against this "with a twist", but I don't like that almost all missions are low economy.
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On February 13 2013 04:33 a176 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2013 04:30 convention wrote:
I personally thought the distribution of WoL campaign missions was the most well designed campaign I've ever played. Every mission was unique, there were very few of the "build army and a-move" missions. in a way i miss those "melee" style missions. but at the same time the sc2 ai is shit-awful, so in a way im glad there weren't too many of those.
But we can always play the melee style missions as custom games easily. I don't want to pay for a campaign, when I could just play custom games and get the same experience. Also, what RTS game has better ai than SC2?
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This thread comes far too late for blizzard to change their campaign anyway, so I dont know what's exactly the goal here?
On the other hand, the purpose of campaign isnt to introduce to multiplayer. You didnt even get to play Zerg once in wol campaign. THey've made a special training mode to introduce to multiplayer, and that mode makes you gradually have to play faster and with bigger economy.
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i dont see how this is a problem.
it looks like blizzard wants to make the campaign and multiplayer different, and put all the twists and interesting 1base play in the campaign so you can screw around and have fun, and not worry about macro
when you want to play multiplayer, its a different game, and you have to learn to play differently
dont forget they have all those little tips duing the loading screen now, so if newbs want to transition from campaign to multiplayer its a little easier
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Campaign is not, shouldn't be, and was never supposed to be a training for multi-player. There is a training mode, challenge mode, a practice league, and an vs. AI mode for that. The campaign should provide an alternative; a story and unique gameplay.
Having replayed the quite well-made remake of the original campaigns after finishing WOL has made me realize what a leap in quality Blizzard made with SC2. In Vanilla and Brood War, a mission usually came down to destroying the enemy, where the only real challenge was the limits of your patience. You just defended until you had a large enough army, and attacked. If you lost, you probably attacked too soon. The difficulty was also "turned upside down", because the longer you play a mission such as that, the easier it becomes, as your army grows bigger and the enemy's decreases in size. That is not the case in WOL. The trains became harder to catch in The Great Train Robbery, even if your army increased. The artifact was harder to defend at the end of All In than the beginning. Ok, there were exceptions, but on the whole, I found it to provide adequate challenges, particularly on Brutal.
The missions in WOL were as good as they could be. Your categorization doesn't really take into account all variables, and I also find it to have a bit of an odd focus. You shouldn't look at distribution, but purpose. The purpose of the missions should be a reflection of Raynor's Raiders. And who are they? Well, the Raiders are a small group of Terrans who have limited supplies and technology, and the missions shouldn't contradict that. And luckily, they don't. In a "typical" WOL-mission (I hesitate to use that term, but it works), you get in, do what you are supposed to do, then get out. Rarely do you face an enemy head-on. On Agria, you merely evacuate the colonists. On Tyrador, you swoop in with Medivacs and get out. To break into New Folsom, you use stealth. And so on. When you destroy a base, it's either small, like in The Outlaws or you're getting help from, say, a giant wall of fire. Once you face the Zerg or Protoss head-on, it's with the assistance of the Dominion.
If we should want something from HOTS, it's missions that reflect the nature of Kerrigan's Swarm. That means no hold-outs, but full-on attacks where you are forced to be on the offence. The deviation is the kind we've seen demonstrated in the latest preview, where a small larvae single-handedly infests a Protoss ship. The other missions seem particularly Zergy as well, as you have to attack fast to avoid Protoss escaping, or use Kerrigan to gather eggs before Za'gara does.
I have confidence in Blizzard. HOTS looks great from a campaign gameplay perspective, and hopefully it will live up to my expectations.
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The WoL Mission design was actually pretty flawless Imo. They changed the paces many times and every Mission felt different. And in some of your C maps I had 3+ expansions, guess it depends on your playstyle.
And I have no doubt they will fit HotS Mission design to Zerg.
But yes I do hope that Zergs will get some you start with 4+ bases and better get them connected via Nydus fast Missions. On the other hand HotS sounds like a travel through the Universe campaign like Wings. So not sure if there is alot of room to create such Missions.
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On February 14 2013 01:03 Dante.StarCraft wrote:
Campaign is not, shouldn't be, and was never supposed to be a training for multi-player. There is a training mode, challenge mode, a practice league, and an vs. AI mode for that. The campaign should provide an alternative; a story and unique gameplay.
Having replayed the quite well-made remake of the original campaigns after finishing WOL has made me realize what a leap in quality Blizzard made with SC2. In Vanilla and Brood War, a mission usually came down to destroying the enemy, where the only real challenge was the limits of your patience. You just defended until you had a large enough army, and attacked. If you lost, you probably attacked too soon. The difficulty was also "turned upside down", because the longer you play a mission such as that, the easier it becomes, as your army grows bigger and the enemy's decreases in size. That is not the case in WOL. The trains became harder to catch in The Great Train Robbery, even if your army increased. The artifact was harder to defend at the end of All In than the beginning. Ok, there were exceptions, but on the whole, I found it to provide adequate challenges, particularly on Brutal.
The missions in WOL were as good as they could be. Your categorization doesn't really take into account all variables, and I also find it to have a bit of an odd focus. You shouldn't look at distribution, but purpose. The purpose of the missions should be a reflection of Raynor's Raiders. And who are they? Well, the Raiders are a small group of Terrans who have limited supplies and technology, and the missions shouldn't contradict that. And luckily, they don't. In a "typical" WOL-mission (I hesitate to use that term, but it works), you get in, do what you are supposed to do, then get out. Rarely do you face an enemy head-on. On Agria, you merely evacuate the colonists. On Tyrador, you swoop in with Medivacs and get out. To break into New Folsom, you use stealth. And so on. When you destroy a base, it's either small, like in The Outlaws or you're getting help from, say, a giant wall of fire. Once you face the Zerg or Protoss head-on, it's with the assistance of the Dominion.
If we should want something from HOTS, it's missions that reflect the nature of Kerrigan's Swarm. That means no hold-outs, but full-on attacks where you are forced to be on the offence. The deviation is the kind we've seen demonstrated in the latest preview, where a small larvae single-handedly infests a Protoss ship. The other missions seem particularly Zergy as well, as you have to attack fast to avoid Protoss escaping, or use Kerrigan to gather eggs before Za'gara does.
I have confidence in Blizzard. HOTS looks great from a campaign gameplay perspective, and hopefully it will live up to my expectations.
I totally agree. Most talk about the WoL campaign focuses around the lackluster story-telling, lame love story, and the amount of missions which don't feel integral to the story. The feeling is always BW campaign >>> WoL campaign. While I agree that the BW storytelling was better than WoL storytelling, I think in terms of mission design the WoL campaign is far, far better than BW.
I think Dante described it really well so I don't have too much to add, except that having a large number of "C" missions, each of which is unique and offers a different experience than just "sit back, macro up, and go kill everything on the map", is really really good campaign design.
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@FeyFey: While you will travel in HOTS as you did in WOL, you will be staying on planets longer, opening the potential for bigger bases. For instance, open the Beta editor and you'll see there are three different Korhal tilesets (platform, wastes and city). The are two Kaldir missions too, and I think there are 3 on Zerus (source).
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China6330 Posts
For my limited HotS campaign play experience, you will have a very near base to expand to, at least for the ones I've played, there are at least one expansion on the map, so it's safe to say HotS campaign is quite different on this matter.
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On February 14 2013 01:42 JDub wrote:
I totally agree. Most talk about the WoL campaign focuses around the lackluster story-telling, lame love story, and the amount of missions which don't feel integral to the story. The feeling is always BW campaign >>> WoL campaign. While I agree that the BW storytelling was better than WoL storytelling, I think in terms of mission design the WoL campaign is far, far better than BW.
I think Dante described it really well so I don't have too much to add, except that having a large number of "C" missions, each of which is unique and offers a different experience than just "sit back, macro up, and go kill everything on the map", is really really good campaign design.
I also thought the missions in WoL were really well done. They were all different in some way or another and I really liked how the missions were built to showcase a particular unit or playstyle. Besides, the single player experience is a terrible introduction to multiplayer on so many levels, its not even worth trying to sync them up. You have special campagin only units, permanent (and *crazy* op) upgrades on units and buildings, missions that start you out with production facilities already in place, and so on. If you *really* wanted to make the single player campaign a better introduction to multiplayer it would have to be the same mission over and over on different maps with incrementally harder opponents and a little bit of story bracketed around the beginning and the end.
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I personally love the defend your one base and be as cost effective as possible, and the micro missions most. Those are experiences you don't get anywhere else, and are always my favorite.
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This is an interesting perspective. I also believe there will be ramifications, especially for casuals and new players picking this game up from scratch. Whole WoL's plot was dragged out, i feel the entire mechanics of the campaign had the good old school new unit per mission feeling and encouraged experimentation with console upgrades. Each mission had sufficient variation to make it diverse enough.
There are clear issues with casuals/new players for multi-player, in the sense that it becomes a detriment to those not familiar with the mechanics of ladder and become frustrated when what they've learned in campaign barely scratches the surface of competitive play, this drives enjoyment away from these players. Bearing that in mind, i feel that Hots does a good job addressing the difference in play styles through the new training system. I'm not sure if you've seen the video, but it provides a step-by-step progression with appropriate tutelage in expanding, controlling army, etc, which i feel is incredibly helpful and it looks like a very big step up of WoL's tutorial.
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Wings of Liberty is about a relatively small, but elite guerrilla army. Of course, most of their missions must be about taking something or maiming the adversary, and then going away.
The A type missions are: Outlaws, where you destroy a tiny Dominion acampment; Media Blitz, which is an hybrid mission accoriding to your definition; Echoes of the Future, a hybrid too, IMO, and not a Terran mission; and Shatter the Skies, where you have "half the [Dominion] fleet" helping you and still fits WoL thematically, since its about destroying a strategic base.
You see, I'm not discussing story here, but the campaign's theme. Nevertheless, I must agree with you that more A type missions could happen and still thematically fit WoL. Shatter the Skies is a nice example of a "destroy all enemy buildings" mission can be about guerrilla strategy. I feel there could be more missions like that even before Valerian joins Raynor; but not as much as you suggested.
Another thing to consider is that the developers were thinking of doing something different from SC/BW, where most of the 54 missions where A types, with one or another Bs and Es. I really love the original campaign, but almost everyone agrees it gets boring sometimes. Trying to distance the new product from that, the developers did a lot of C types: which are more dynamic in design. The problem is that they overdid that to the point of people complaining about missions being "gimmicky".
Not to mention the C missions lost part of their novelty because you could MM a move most of them thoughlessly.
Dustin Browder said many times HotS is going to be more agression focused than WoL, because Kerrigan is a conqueror, not a pirate. So I think your wish will be granted  Also, I think they learned new tricks from the WoL experience. I believe the C maps will be more balanced, and the A maps will have more flavour and strategy to them, like Echoes of the Future and Media Blitz did.
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Thank you all for your input.
I'd first like to make it clear that I love the WoL campaign and all of its missions individually. There is no doubt that the game-play variety in WoL is far superior to the game-play variety in SC1/BW. That being said, I understand that the theme of WoL campaign is revolved around the Raynors Raiders, which are a small group of elite soldiers, but I'm sure they could fit both categories of A and C into the story somehow. Something to explore would definitely be the combination of the "twist" from type C, and the conquer/expand from type A.
Going back to SC1/BW, the majority of the missions were definitely type A, which felt a bit stale. In my opinion, SC1/BW campaign definitely needed more type C missions.
I would also like to make it clear that it is definitely not the "twist" that I have a problem with. On the contrary actually. The twist served as refreshing types of game-play that has not been touched very much in the StarCraft universe. The problem is the lack of expansions and lack of "kill the entire map" type scenarios. While SC1/BW consisted of mostly these types of missions, I feel like the A-scenario was mostly neglected in WoL.
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EPT
