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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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I remember Browder being very enthusiastic about the every mission in the campaign being "a different minigame", in his words. We know Browder is a proud designer. I think he took this idea very seriously. So if we had 2 "conquer/expand" missions, it was already too much for him.
But of course, maybe they forgot how fun conquering feels. I think conquering missions will be a big thing in HotS. I just hope they use their design ingenuity to think of ways to add a different "twist" to each of them.
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On February 14 2013 01:03 Dante.StarCraft wrote:
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
This. Last year I had replayed WCII, WCIII and SC:BW campaigns, and I have to say: man, it was tough. Painful, at times. The only thing that kept me motivated is the great stories / storytelling.
Every campaign has its moments, but the majority of the missions were A type, with some really awful designs.
A Warcraft II mission briefing example:
"Good job crushing every single possible combination of human nation. But while you were attacking, Cho'gall and Gul'dan betrayed you to reach the tomb of Sargeras. Your new mission: destroy every single enemy colored orc entity (and yes, including every single of their oil tankers... those bastards won't steal MY oil). Make it haste, so you can travel to Dalaran to destroy again every single human nation there."
In all seriousness, A type missions, where your goal is to max out then a-move and win without any constraint o significant challenge are really boring because the IA can't compete with you in that situation.
You want a good macro mission? Take mission 3 of the Night elf campaign in WCIII RoC. In that mission your objective is to kill some guardians. You can build what you want and take an expansion if you desire. But you must kill them before the undead reach you (nearly 15 minutes in hard I think). That's a very good macro mission, because you have to be very efficient with your resources, army and upgrades to deal with the annoying orc encampment between you and the objective, and with the not-so-easy to kill guardians. That's good mission design, and fortunately it seems Blizzard has aknowledged that.
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I disagree.
Type A macro missions are boring and tend to have little variety. There usually isn't too many ways to vary the objectives of these missions. Having more Type C missions allows for greater variety. The mission structure of WoL is very good.
Campaign doesn't necessarily need to prepare one for ladder play, and I doubt that it could even if there were more Type A missions.
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maybe this feedback would be useful for LotV but HotS missions are probably 99.9% done at this point...
edit: The only real criticisim/input I have is that I don't like so many early game macro missions where you don't have full tech options...
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Macro missions are a type of mission like any other. There is "defend your position", "destroy a specific target", "installation", and there is "make an army and clear the minimap of enemy dots". Too much of this type of mission would obviously be a bad thing, but there can and should be a few of those among others.
Even "conquer" missions in WoL were more like surgical strikes, you could sometimes win without overpowering the enemy. When I first beat the PvP level on Brutal, I went through a part of the enemy base and had my force survive just long enough to destroy the prisons.
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I'm not going to talk about the story in WoL because it was terrible.
My main problem with the WoL missions is the fact that they are so unidimensional. Most of the times there's only one way to complete the mission; you have to use a specific tactic or unit. The problem is even worst because in the first half of the campaign you have most of your tech tree locked. Because of this, the whole gameplay feels very scripted. In my opinion this removes the excitement of trying to find the best tactic or unit composition. The tactic and unit to use is always clear is just a matter of execution.
By the way, in my opinion the best mission in WoL is Shatter the Sky.
What I hope to see in HotS is missions that allow for different tactics / units, but I'm not very confident about this given the mission previews.
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I agree fully warpish, different ways to fullfill the same objective type missions would be really fun, and on top of that offer replay value. I also think that you should have the entire tech tree unlocked after just a few missions, maybe after 5-8 or something like that. Might be difficult to work it into the story though.
Shatter the sky is a really nice mission for sure, personally my favorite is the Tosh mission.
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I enjoyed that every mission had another feeling, like you really perform a unique task. I think blizzard should not change campaign design to prepare players for multi player. Some of those players like some friends of mine are not interested in competitive play but they wanna have a great single player experience.
There might be better support of blizzard to train new players for multiplayer. They shall integrate mini games like the multi task trainer with achievements or make a build order trainer more easier to use than YABOT.
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I think this boils down to what the story is gonna be for HotS.
I think WoL missions depended on how the story was written. I think the story was written first and then the level designers made the missions around them.
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On February 16 2013 02:32 Don.681 wrote:
I think WoL missions depended on how the story was written. I think the story was written first and then the level designers made the missions around them.
I think it was the other way around. First the designers came with a concept ("let's make a giant laser you can use to accomplish the objective or burn the opponent"), then the writers tried to put something on it. There are plenty of missions that bring new things to gameplay but nothing to the plot.
Specifically, I don't think the Tal'darim missions and their dialogs would be literally exchangeable if the story had come first.
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Great post. You bought up something I never thought about.. Pretty interesting trends for missions.
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On February 16 2013 06:57 Telenil wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2013 02:32 Don.681 wrote:
I think WoL missions depended on how the story was written. I think the story was written first and then the level designers made the missions around them. I think it was the other way around. First the designers came with a concept ("let's make a giant laser you can use to accomplish the objective or burn the opponent"), then the writers tried to put something on it. There are plenty of missions that bring new things to gameplay but nothing to the plot. Specifically, I don't think the Tal'darim missions and their dialogs would be literally exchangeable if the story had come first. agreed. this approach was terrible for the story, but great for the missions themselves.
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On February 16 2013 07:14 Lobotomist wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2013 06:57 Telenil wrote:On February 16 2013 02:32 Don.681 wrote:
I think WoL missions depended on how the story was written. I think the story was written first and then the level designers made the missions around them. I think it was the other way around. First the designers came with a concept ("let's make a giant laser you can use to accomplish the objective or burn the opponent"), then the writers tried to put something on it. There are plenty of missions that bring new things to gameplay but nothing to the plot. Specifically, I don't think the Tal'darim missions and their dialogs would be literally exchangeable if the story had come first. agreed. this approach was terrible for the story, but great for the missions themselves.
Without insider information, I don't see how we can determine how the campaign was put together.
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I like about BW campaign that it has a lot macro games. Original campaign had very few of them, but in BW you get almost all units and macro from the start. That is great. Of course spicing it with some different missions is nice, but original SC campaign was lacking macro a lot. I hope hots will have more macro games compared to WoL.
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On February 16 2013 01:29 Warpish wrote:
My main problem with the WoL missions is the fact that they are so unidimensional. Most of the times there's only one way to complete the mission; you have to use a specific tactic or unit. The problem is even worst because in the first half of the campaign you have most of your tech tree locked. Because of this, the whole gameplay feels very scripted. In my opinion this removes the excitement of trying to find the best tactic or unit composition. The tactic and unit to use is always clear is just a matter of execution.
It depends on what you mean.
On Brutal and trying to get all achievements, there were specific routes I could have chose to get.
For example, I could save certain missions for later until I got certain units for them.
The tech tree being locked is the fun part IMO. For example, lets say you are trying to get an achievement (like the one where you have to clear out the infested terran on some planet) - You could wait until you get Battlecruisers and finish that mission if you wanted to.
(Of course that's an example. I forgot other examples but I remember sort of taking advantage of that aspect of the campaign to get most brutal achievements.)
(Edit - Okay now I remember. The one where you chased the trains. On Brutal, it would be difficult if you went to that mission right away [especially if you want to collect all the defiler bones and complete all the achievements, one which involves not letting any trains pass I think]. There are three alternatives to doing that and getting all the achievements - Get siege tanks, then do the mission "or" get Banshees and Vikings then do that mission "or" get solid upgrades for your all your units and structures. There's definitely many different ways to play the campaign, especially on brutal when you need to really use the best of everything to complete it, and all the achievements at the same time too.)
If the tech tree was unlocked from the beginning, you'd likely build the same units over and over again. (Most mech besides the goliath and siege tank were bad. Reapers would likely never be used at all as medics can't come with them an reach them. Ghosts and Spectres would also rarely be used, unless you had the permanent ghost upgrade. Thinking about it, most units are actually bad in single player. I'd probably never bother building most units if I had access to the whole tech tree in the beginning of the game.)
Also single player is and probably will never be able to teach or get casuals into playing MP correctly. The thing is, in MP you need to memorize a lot of BOs and everything is different almost every game. A lot of stuff can't really be taught in a single player environment. The difference between bronze and silver is probably mechanics (and single player, especially on brutal, does a good job at doing that). The difference between silver and masters is mostly game knowledge (knowing build orders, timings, what to do against certain situations, etc) which cannot be easily be taught in single player at all.
We have to remember Destiny's "you need to appeal to casuals to keep competitive play alive" (or whatever that topic was called). The single player experience is one of the greatest single player RTS experiences ever. Making it fun (not teach) is the #1 most important thing. Though honestly, SC2 is mostly a game about winning and not actually "playing it" to have fun. You need to win or progress up the ladder to have fun (for most people anyway). (That's why it's not a "casual friendly game" because if you're not winning, you're probably not having fun.) Brood War succeeded so well (especially in South Korea) because it had almost no competition at all. Nowadays though, there are so many other games you could play besides SC2. SC2 needs to succeed in making the game more fun to attract more players (like someone said - for anyone that isn't a pro player, SC2 is just a video game and video games are mostly about having fun).
If single player attracts casuals, and if they had fun with it, they're more likely to play and try multiplayer.
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The WoL missions were marvelously put together if you looked at it a-la-carte. The train job was fluid and made sense, the structure you went through, the slowly escalating difficulty, etc... it was beautiful.
Except...
WHY THE FUCK AM I DOING A TRAIN ROBBERY DURING A MISSION TO SAVE THE UNIVERSE!
Why is it so fucking hard for Raynor to side with the Protoss to burn down a colony? MISSION ONE OF SC1 was RAYNOR BURNING DOWN A COLONY!
Sure it made meta-sense to be doing side missions and what not, and sure those side missions were not needed; but instead of having 30+ missions worth of narrative telling me the rise and fall of Humanity in the brink of extinction--we get a handful of missions to explain Raynors story and 20+ missions of saving prisoners and killing zombies.
Now, each of those missions were designed great--but really now? Would you rather have 20+ side quests and a tiny story, or a HUGE story with a few side quests?
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I think it's hard to make missions that forces players to take many bases. If they leave enough resource in a base, casual players will simply turtle to 200/200 then push. If they don't, and really force players to expand, then such players aren't going to be able to defend all those locations at once. Remember, to them, expanding even once is already a big task, and in that perspective many of your C's are actually A's in those players' book. As for what Warpish says about campaign forcing you to use a specific composition, I respectfully disagree. In fact, I think too many missions can be done with MMM and 1ta click.
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1) What's with the hate on a positive thread meant to improve the game?
2) I agree the distribution was a bit off. As a macro oriented player I think more macro games make sense. Also HotS seems the perfect time to focus more on macro than army control. You are the ZERG!
Good thread.
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On February 21 2013 05:12 algorithm0r wrote:
1) What's with the hate on a positive thread meant to improve the game?
2) I agree the distribution was a bit off. As a macro oriented player I think more macro games make sense. Also HotS seems the perfect time to focus more on macro than army control. You are the ZERG!
Good thread.
What hate exactly? I feel like this thread spawned a pretty solid discussion about the campaign design.
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I liked WOL campain.
While true that missions didn`t offer a lot of varaety in terms of completion by themselves, there was a lot of it if you factor in the unlinear nature of campain, and that you could have totally different tech options depending on when you play the mission, and what upgrades you purchase.
That created more than enought varraety for me to do 3+ runs of WOL campain, which, for RTS campain, is huge replay value.
And i certainly do not want to see more type A missions, they tend to not be as fun as missions C anyway.
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TC's lumped all the interesting concepts in missions into one giant category, and then given all the really basic themes their own category. I really don't think most people want "macro" missions where you sit back and produce for 20 minutes before A moving. There's just no reason to make missions like that. It's poor design.
Missions should be dynamic, and WoL did a good job of keeping them all pretty unique with a lot of different ideas. This idea of too large a proportion of missions having little twists just strikes me as silly. It's those twists that make the missions fun.
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On February 21 2013 07:05 naastyOne wrote:
I liked WOL campain.
While true that missions didn`t offer a lot of varaety in terms of completion by themselves, there was a lot of it if you factor in the unlinear nature of campain, and that you could have totally different tech options depending on when you play the mission, and what upgrades you purchase.
That created more than enought varraety for me to do 3+ runs of WOL campain, which, for RTS campain, is huge replay value.
And i certainly do not want to see more type A missions, they tend to not be as fun as missions C anyway.
I found the missions were very well designed. My main gripe is the lack of narrative. Too much "oh, lets play with some toss here and do some piracy there." Which is a far cry from watching Fenix stare into his fading psi blade as he realized antioch had fallen and he was unable to protect it. It was a far cry from the realization that Kerrigan was not dead. It was a far cry from watching Arthas perform pre-emptive genocide, a far cry from watching Hellscream die in Thrall's arms.
I actually like the WoL missions better than BW or SC1 missions. More dynamic, more fun, etc...
But when you freed Ghosts? Stole from the protoss? Robbed a train? I didn't feel that emotional tug that I look for in campaigns.
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I was very happy with the WoL campaign, the missions were great! I don't think Raynor's Raiders would make sense to have many type A missions as several other people have said. There will almost certainly be more this campaign as it is about the Swarm!
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Millet, I don't really mean to rain on your parade, but what is the point of making this post / thread when HotS is just a few weeks before release and the missions / story have been finalized for probably over a year? Even though you are absolutely 100% right and I completely agree with you, your action, while maintaining the appearance of criticism / feedback, is in actuality an futile gesture with a hint of "look at me, I am so clever that I have made this discovery / connection."
Once again, it is not my intent to offend you, but I really do feel that you could have made much better use of your time as opposed to writing this thread and responding to comments.
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None taken Maxyim. I understood from the start that it was too late to make a post like this, for HotS. I only recently started thinking about this kind of thing, what with HotS coming out very soon. I did want to do the writeup at this time because I don't think I would have actually done it if I waited for LotV.
The point of this thread is not to boost my ego by any mens. I wanted to start a discussion and at the same time get my ideas out there, because frankly, no one else had touched this topic before. So why not contribute with an actual thread for once? And I don't think it should be frown upon to create a well constructed thread rather than just spew out the idea in a brutish fasion, like some people do.
I never expected any kind of change to HotS, no matter when I would have posted this honestly. All I wanted was to form a discussion revolving around this subject that I feel is interesting. I think I've succeeded with that.
Edit: I'd like to also point out that the extreme majority of discussion threads created on TeamLiquid has 0% effect on the actual outcome/change of the game.
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It might have been said, but about how you qualify your missions :
- You missed the Nova mission (definitely type E)
- Mission 18 is type A, at least, that's how I see it. You conquer two bases. Then you a-move your 200/200 archon/stalker/immortal + 1 high templar (feedback the hybrid!) in the ennemy base
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Last RTS campaigns I played was before WOL were AoE 3 and its expansions. Plentiful type A missions there felt, nicely speaking, exhausting. You sat in a base for 40 minutes and then moved with an unbeatable army to roll over the things your opponent had. Type B missions did not actually exist, but type C, D and E were all great.
Then I started WOL. Already the first few missions awesome. You had to hold a base against masses of zergs, you had to lead small groups of "guerillas" to raid a mining complex, you saved civilians from zerg invasions etc. If it had been more of type A missions I might actually never even had completed the campaign. Especially when casual RTS gamers play a campaign it is easy to fall back to the "I'll sit here and mass out 1000000000 of the best units possible. Then I'll click attack move to the other end of the map and go to do something else until after a while I come back see burning ruins of enemy base and that I lost one unit." mentality. WOL campaign fights against this very succesfully in my opinion. There are time limits integral to the mission, such as protoss mothership roaming around in the Safe Haven or the wall of fire in the Supernova. There are clever ways of introducing new units in the missions and the limited availability of tech and resources forces you to be creative and actually plan your doings.
In general I have a feeling that more type A missions would not be an improvement, those are the missions which enable casuals to play in ways that are clearly impossible and unsustainable in multiplayer e.g. by massing banshees off two bases. Similarly type A missions which would remind normal macro of multiplayer games could feel pointless to more competitive gamer, why would they want to repeat the usual ladder experience in singleplayer storymode as well.
Rather than adding more type A missions I would actually like to see even more type B and type C missions. Of course type B does not fit very well into the massing aggressive swarmyness of zerg, but could we have missions where we play the aggressive part of the type B mission? On the other hand these kind of missions would easily tend to bend towards type A's where massing an unbeatable ultra-super-killer-army gets rid of the enemy at once. Instead I would love to see something where multipronged lingwaves and drops should be used, and even then it would be more like chipping slowly away the defenses of hard-turtlet Dominion outpost or so. If anyone of you has played the Battle for Middle-Earth you'll know what I am speaking of when I say that missions such as the sieges of Minas Tirith and Helm's Deep would feel very zergy.
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I nearly want to agree with the OP. But when I think about it the biggest problem for me was not the amount of type C missions. Instead I don't like that in too many cases the special "twist" is nothing but a time limit of some sort. A sun/mothership chasing you, zerg slowly overwhelming defending protoss, civilians/Odin moving out at set times, harvesting resources faster than the enemy, defending your base for time x, Kerrigan taking a walk, and so on.
Type A missions may not have a lot of variety in their goals. On the other side they allow a more open map where you decide for yourself which base to attack next. And they let you play around with the new units and upgrades you unlocked. I really missed that in most missions since I had to fight against the clock.
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I don't think 'macro' missions are a good idea, becuase they really don't teach anyone proper macro. You can't really design an effective AI to teach proper macro in a single-player campaign context, unless you script the entire mission. Most players who aren't familiar with the concepts of macro (getting a larger army/more stuff/more abilities at an earlier time by cutting units early on and increasing production later) will instead opt to improve their tactical positioning (use better positioning/terrain advantages), build more defensive structures (relatively cheap force multipliers) and exploit the knowledge of losing from the previous game (if you know when exactly an attack will come, it's composition and it's direction...).
Most other campaigns I've played with encourage 'macro' missions one way or another (Dawn of War, Rise of Legends) have serious flaws. They get extremely repetetive, and there become specific weaknesses that are 'easier' to exploit that macro (rush AI with sharp 1-base timing, turtling super-hard with super cost-efficient units and a super-cost efficient position, exploiting lack of AI micro/positioning, knowing beforehand the direction/timing/composition of attacks after losing a few times, and tailoring army composition for perfect countering, etc.). I don't think you can feasibly shore up all such weaknesses, and all such non-macro based solutions to an AI that tries to force macro (that I can think of) are all ultimately easier than macroing properly.
For the record I really liked WoL's campaign from a mission design standpoint. It gave you great variety in missions, and excellent flexibility in approaching the campaign as a whole with the tech tree and upgrades (and ability to unbalance your units). I believe campaign missions should be first and formost fun. Variety is the spice of life in these types of campaigns, and WoLs campaign was packed full of lots of variety. Macro, though useful in multiplayer, can be fairly repetative after a few missions, and suffers from serious challenges in trying to 'force' a player to macro when other solutions at hand will likely be used first.
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EPT
