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So, as I alluded to in my recent postings in Celebration of FS, I found WCS to be somewhat off the mark in terms of being an enjoyable game. I also promised to expand on this, which I shall do now.
Before I go into the criticism though, let me say that while there are many things WCS gets wrong, there is one thing it absolutely nails, and that is graphics. Even though the models show their age (And a lack of artistic bravery regarding reinterpretations of the existing designs), it's still remarkably pretty, and some of the comm anis are really really good.
That being said however, this game is let down by lackluster efforts in most other areas, most importantly in terms of gameplay, campaign design, and writing.
Let's look at these points individually.
Gameplay
Playing through the prologue and the first few main campaign missions, it became apparent that the writers and designers never really had any intentions to abandon the rigid structure exhibited there, with each mission starting and ending at a hangar deck with varying numbers of waypoints in between. While this technically is closer to the reality of carrier-based combat, its only function in this game is to bring the pacing of a mission to a screeching halt while waiting for everyone to leave the hangar and the autopilot allowing you to proceed to the next waypoint. There are several instances where this time goes by unused; This could have been useful if there were story stuff happening here, but it doesn't.
Once you're on patrol, things don't really get better. Once you've reached the mission area, you're forced to fight through various waves of enemies (And may I just say how incredibly irritating the "waves" mechanic is?), until you're again told to go to the next waypoint, with either doing more combat, or doing nothing at all.
FS2 understood that, while a few seconds of dead time at the beginning of a mission are probably a good idea (only to shake it up to great effect later on), it shouldn't get in the way of enjoyment. WCS is filled with filler material that doesn't need to be there, similar to its source material.
There is also a distinct lack of player agency. The problems WCS tells you to solve rarely offer you the opportunity to choose different approaches; it doesn't even give you a choice of which tools to use to tackle a mission. When a modern jet pilot is heavily engaged during a patrol and manages to fight his way out, but sustains damage in the process and has to expend a significant portion of his main armament, he is expected to use his own judgment on whether or not to continue the patrol, but this is a choice we aren't given. Missions proceed linearly from start to finish, and what you do does not shape the narrative in any significant way.
This, of course, is something that would have been fine 5, or 10 years ago, but I figure that we can demand more now.
Campaign design
A lot of what I said above also ties into this. Not only is WCS incredibly linear on a mission-to-mission basis, it's the same on the macro level. There's a really nice concept in modern game design called "Differences in kind", short segments in which gameplay is completely transformed to break up the monotony and allow for different perspectives on the story and the world. WCS, of course, never does this (At least as far as I can work out).
Writing
Oh my god the writing. When it's not bland, it's atrocious, and when it's not atrocious, the line delivery is cringeworthy. The characters we're introduced to after the prologue are completely unlikable, and the protagonist still being called "rookie" even after single-handedly killing dozens upon dozens of Cat fighters is jarring, to say the least.
So what are we going to do about it?
It is my firm belief that we can tell a good, engaging story using the bare bones of the concept WCS was working on. I envision a much shorter, sharper game that uses the foundations of WCS' work, but does a better job at using the capabilities FS2_Open gives us, as demonstrated in recent campaigns and games like Diaspora, Dimensional Eclipse, Antagonist, BP, or ST:R. Over the next few days, I will be posting a campaign outline and what I believe we can do here.
Let us deconstruct WCS, and see what we can come up with when combining the Wing Commander universe with modern gameplay and storytelling sensibilities.
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Nice idea. I'd suggest to, for example, allow waypoints in most missions to be approached in any order you desire. WC3 did it that way (you could bring up a map and target different waypoints), but couldn't exploit it to the fullest. I don't mind having to fly a lot of patrols (afterall, it is similar to what a real carrier pilot usually does), but they could be somewhat more varied and without waves of enemies. Rather, the enemies should be all present from the start and appear further away, somewhat like in a real air engagement. As for pacing, I suggest making the new carriers use Diaspora-style catapult launch, launching the whole flight into space in one go. It wasn't in WC3, but the Ranger-class was old and we could say it simply didn't have this (flying a single mission from a Ranger, with lack of catapults commented on could be a nice touch). Also, WCS could really use a Concordia-class carrier, which is said in WC4 manual to be the main Confed carrier during the war, yet is nowhere to be seen in WCS.
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Well you obviously have my support and all the WCSOpen resources available for this. When my RL calms down a bit, I should be able to polish WCSOpen. I should probably set up a svn as soon as I have time, if only so someone else can work on it while I'm RL-busy.
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Is it just me or does this assessment seem very harsh? "Lackluster efforts in most other areas" on something that took ten years? And I always got the sense you're not supposed to like the characters. Humanity is on it's knees. Only the strong have survived and they've been turned into a bunch of hardbitten, jaded people who are certainly going to be unlikeable for the most part. They've seen thousands of you come and go, you're nothing to them. I won't go into that any more because I know you and I have very different ideas about the subject of writing.
Also, why reinterpret existing designs? Surely taking the originals and simply upgrading them is the best thing to do?
Don't get me wrong, I think a lot of what you have to say is interesting and I will be looking forward to seeing what you want/plan to do, but you make it sound like some half-baked thing that was thrown out with little or no effort put into it, at least that's how it comes off to me.
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Is it just me or does this assessment seem very harsh? "Lackluster efforts in most other areas" on something that took ten years?
That's actually the point. For something that took ten years, the result is rather underwhelming, to put it nicely. On nearly all accounts, including features, execution and mission design. Not even mentioning the overall attitude of the team.
I'd also like to mention that The E's analysis of WCS is actually shared by most WC fans I've spoken to on the SC community. It's not just a matter of seeing things through the lens of a decade of improving on execution and mission design.
EDIT: As someone who's dug deep into WCS files, I can tell you the whole mod is just a pile of bad decisions taken against common sense. Some of this judgement could be attributed to hindsight, but some of the biggest ones (like the fork, and the quantity-over-quality approach in mission design) always were obvious from the start of the project.
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And I always got the sense you're not supposed to like the characters. Humanity is on it's knees. Only the strong have survived and they've been turned into a bunch of hardbitten, jaded people who are certainly going to be unlikeable for the most part. They've seen thousands of you come and go, you're nothing to them.
Which is basically what Lorna Simms was, except the WiH writers actually put some thought into her rather than making her a boring asshole.
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Yeah. Also, keep in mind that this kind of approach feels somewhat "non-WC-ish" to me. Wing Commander is firmly on the "idealistic" side of the scale, unlike the more cynical WiH. WCS could've chosen to portray the darker side of the war, but it isn't always done. The worst thing about WCS is it's inconsistency. Sandman's personality, as well as that of his wingmen, changes from act to act, sometimes even more often. It's as if different parts of the campaign were written by different people, without any sort of coordination or even communication besides skimming through what's been made so far. Considering sheer length of development, this was probably the case. 10 years and 40 missions is long enough for this to happen even if one or two authors were actually working on the campaign. With good writers and enough time, 40 missions are quite doable. X-Wing: Alliance main campaign hits a whooping 53 missions, while still being enjoyable and definitely not boring. It does boast more assets than WCS, but the most important thing is that mission design is much more varied, especially the "family" missions.
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That's actually the point. For something that took ten years, the result is rather underwhelming, to put it nicely. On nearly all accounts, including features, execution and mission design. Not even mentioning the overall attitude of the team.
Well I would be lying if I said I wasn't also underwhelmed with it in that context. But I've always put it down to being a gameplay-above-all-else player. I thought everything else outside of it was great.
I'd also like to mention that The E's analysis of WCS is actually shared by most WC fans I've spoken to on the SC community. It's not just a matter of seeing things through the lens of a decade of improving on execution and mission design.
This is interesting. I remember something shortly after the release the team being dissatisfied with the reception the mod received here on HLP, and saying something vaguely to the effect of they didn't design it for us, they designed it for WC fans, and they love it.
So is this a shift in view towards it? After all, that was shortly after release.
As someone who's dug deep into WCS files, I can tell you the whole mod is just a pile of bad decisions taken against common sense. Some of this judgement could be attributed to hindsight, but some of the biggest ones (like the fork, and the quantity-over-quality approach in mission design) always were obvious from the start of the project.
Would you care to elaborate? The fork I presume is the deviation away from HLP. The missions I also agree with you on, although there is some quality in there, there are a lot of forgettable missions.
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"The fork" is the split of the codebase from FSO/SCP. i.e. they have their own codebase and it has not been released, they don't have any features created by the SCP since the fork, and the SCP doesn't have any of their features.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_%28software_development%29
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Yeah. Also, keep in mind that this kind of approach feels somewhat "non-WC-ish" to me. Wing Commander is firmly on the "idealistic" side of the scale, unlike the more cynical WiH. WCS could've chosen to portray the darker side of the war, but it isn't always done. The worst thing about WCS is it's inconsistency. Sandman's personality, as well as that of his wingmen, changes from act to act, sometimes even more often. It's as if different parts of the campaign were written by different people, without any sort of coordination or even communication besides skimming through what's been made so far. Considering sheer length of development, this was probably the case. 10 years and 40 missions is long enough for this to happen even if one or two authors were actually working on the campaign. With good writers and enough time, 40 missions are quite doable. X-Wing: Alliance main campaign hits a whooping 53 missions, while still being enjoyable and definitely not boring. It does boast more assets than WCS, but the most important thing is that mission design is much more varied, especially the "family" missions.
Hmmm. I probably didn't notice this effect so much since I stop-started my way through the campaign over a long period. I certainly do stand by the big glaring fault of being a rookie all the way through, even if you do mean nothing to the other wingmen, this still should have been enough to get noticed in that respect.
Oh, and it's got 50 missions, 55 plus the prologue.
"The fork" is the split of the codebase from FSO/SCP. i.e. they have their own codebase and it has not been released, they don't have any features created by the SCP since the fork, and the SCP doesn't have any of their features.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_%28software_development%29
Thanks. That's what I meant, although I can certainly see why you might think I didn't, I didn't know how to say it properly. :)
Thanks for the elaboration.
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Yeah. Also, keep in mind that this kind of approach feels somewhat "non-WC-ish" to me. Wing Commander is firmly on the "idealistic" side of the scale, unlike the more cynical WiH. WCS could've chosen to portray the darker side of the war, but it isn't always done. The worst thing about WCS is it's inconsistency. Sandman's personality, as well as that of his wingmen, changes from act to act, sometimes even more often. It's as if different parts of the campaign were written by different people, without any sort of coordination or even communication besides skimming through what's been made so far. Considering sheer length of development, this was probably the case. 10 years and 40 missions is long enough for this to happen even if one or two authors were actually working on the campaign. With good writers and enough time, 40 missions are quite doable. X-Wing: Alliance main campaign hits a whooping 53 missions, while still being enjoyable and definitely not boring. It does boast more assets than WCS, but the most important thing is that mission design is much more varied, especially the "family" missions.
55 missions is very long for FSO-style campaign design, and the format really begins to come under strain when pushed that far. It can work, as FS2 and Derelict show, but it's not to be attempted lightly. The fact that Star Citizen's launching with a 50-mission campaign is not encouraging in light of this.
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Yeah, a 25 to 30-mission campaign is far less likely to outstay its welcome the way a 50-mission campaign does.
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Although I haven't played WCS (or any WC, for that matter), I must say I'm highly intrigued by this idea and look forward to watching it develop, even if I don't have any of the skills needed to help out.
FWIW, I vaguely remember the critics' reviews of WCS on release to be positive but not glowing.
For comparison, FS2 is 30 campaign missions + 6 training missions + 5 extra missions from the 2 SOC loops.
EDIT: E, just curious, what do you expect in the way of code changes needed? Or is that TBD until the campaign storyline and gameplay features are hammered out?
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It's TBD, but at the moment, I can't see a particular need for code changes.
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I only played the prologue, but assuming that the autopiloted waypoint-to-waypoint encounters featured there are the mainstay of WC gameplay, I think you could make things a lot more interesting by putting the player in complete control of the full fighter wing (like you would be a Wing Commander or something). You could start by taking advantage of the full campaign-persistent team loadout features, but I'm thinking more along the lines of in-mission decisions like letting the player choose how far they want to explore, whether to send damaged wingmen home to protect them, whether to risk going into known hotspots for a chance to gather valuable recon/complete bonus goals, etc.
It would be pretty cool to have something like the hub mission from Tenebra, but have it be the actual combat mission, so you launch from the same starting position over and over, but the mission treats you differently depending on how you have fared in previous attempts. For example, the player could choose to be very careful and always feel out new locations by taking just a small recon wing that can withdraw once you've seen the enemy's strength, or they could loadout based on the sketchier data from the briefing and try to complete long term objectives in fewer runs, which might make the overall war effort go better or get you more supplies or something. It might be smart to press an advantage in some situations so the enemy can't regroup and bring up reinforcements, but you could also be walking into a trap. Likewise, you can try to keep morale (AI class) high by personally leading all the sorties and making sure you keep all of your wingmen alive, or you can send your other squadrons off on simultaneous strikes to try to keep the enemy too busy to be able to attack your carrier.
Three or four of these strategically robust repeating missions with some one-offs for variety in between (or interrupting) them could make for a pretty neat campaign, and there could be some intrinsic replay value to it as it might take a couple runs to get a feel for how each mission reacts to the player's actions, and they would naturally want to see what happens if they come back and do it "right" from the start, or just see how bad they can screw things up and still win. I think the gameplay would have to have a much quicker tempo than that of the prologue to avoid tedium with the added repetition, but the really boring stuff like the launches and autopiloting probably should be addressed no matter what type of campaign you make, so whatever. Looking forward to reading your ideas!
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Is it just me or does this assessment seem very harsh? "Lackluster efforts in most other areas" on something that took ten years? And I always got the sense you're not supposed to like the characters. Humanity is on it's knees. Only the strong have survived and they've been turned into a bunch of hardbitten, jaded people who are certainly going to be unlikeable for the most part. They've seen thousands of you come and go, you're nothing to them. I won't go into that any more because I know you and I have very different ideas about the subject of writing.
Unlikable, yes, distant, of course, all of these are things you would expect to see. But there's a difference between having such a character in your story, and having all characters be like that. When you write wingmen who will stick with you for some time, it's a really really bad thing if the player isn't given a reason to care about them. In BP, we tried to give the people around you distinct personalities so that you would care about them, their opinions and their eventual fates. WCS misses this crucial step (at least for me).
That noone around you seems to be willing to ackknowledge your skills and results is part of this issue.
Also, why reinterpret existing designs? Surely taking the originals and simply upgrading them is the best thing to do?
Again part of the experience I got working on BP. In WCS, one of the first things said to you in the Prologue is "Look at all these capital ships. It's your job to protect them, they're way more important than you"; yet those same ships never really do much except catch torpedoes. That's something I feel should be addressed, it should be shown on-screen that there are good reasons why these things are still around.
but you make it sound like some half-baked thing that was thrown out with little or no effort put into it, at least that's how it comes off to me.
The impression I get is that over the course of WCS' development, certain things were essentially abandoned when they were good enough, with not much in the way of feedback or internal review. They certainly did their homework with regards to testing these things to make sure the missions work, but I doubt there was much thought given to bugtesting, reviewing and revising the writing. These are all understandable flaws, but flaws nonetheless, and at least for me, they ruin a lot of the work and effort that went into this, like all those rendered briefings and stuff.
I only played the prologue, but assuming that the autopiloted waypoint-to-waypoint encounters featured there are the mainstay of WC gameplay, I think you could make things a lot more interesting by putting the player in complete control of the full fighter wing (like you would be a Wing Commander or something). You could start by taking advantage of the full campaign-persistent team loadout features, but I'm thinking more along the lines of in-mission decisions like letting the player choose how far they want to explore, whether to send damaged wingmen home to protect them, whether to risk going into known hotspots for a chance to gather valuable recon/complete bonus goals, etc.
Blaise Russel demonstrated what you can do here, and I would really like to explore this concept in at least a few missions. My plan, as far as it goes at this stage, is to abandon the "single protagonist" campaign and go for a more multiangled narrative so that you can experience more facets of the war than just the fighter pilot's perspective. Being able to have input on mission planning, or even capital ship control, is something I would like to see (Of course, that's contingent on finding places in the story where such an approach would be appropriate).
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For a fan game that I belive took the WC formula and made something very interesting out of it with really decent attempt at character development, I highly reccommend that youall take a look at Standoff. It took a few years less then Saga to complete and, like diaspora the went in the episodic release format which worked well for them. I belive it to be a far more polished and enjoyable experince with some really fun missions. Especially on the loosing path missions where the missions really got creative. Like the main Wing Commander Games the Episodes are in a branching mission format which let the player make the decission to end a patrol early or not complete a mission because they were damaged or out of weapons. To think they had that kind of story telling and mission design you talk about in the 1990 dos era.
It shares a lot in common with Saga in that it takes place in a time where all hope should be lost, a gigantic Kilrathi fleet (That is logically setup, and not from nowhere) is on it's way to earth and little you do seems to stop them, but unlike Saga it doesn't delve into the cynical, hoplessness with misrable one note characters. It maintains that heroic WC idealism.
Really, take a look at it for ideas. Its a fun play through, and will give you a really good idea of what IS wing commander in your quest to make a better, modern, WC game.
http://standoff.solsector.net/
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I enjoyed BR's campaign, but I do think that the concept isn't exactly my taste. It's sort of strange for one person to dictate tactically what should the fleet do (playing the admiral) and at the same time be the squadron leader of Alpha Wing of every single mission (playing the disposable leutenant, apparently available for every single mission he himself dictates!).
The same sort of thing happens in BP, but in a different way, where Laporte is the do-it-all-in-every-single-way, be it commanding a simple sortie, or a full blown destroyer battle, or commanding a cruiser against Destroyers and habitats, or venturing in psycho-Nagari adventures.
Now I take all that with a smile and a "why dafuq not? it's fun!", it's a ****ing game for christ sakes, but if someone brings up "believability" or character building and so on, my brain just explodes with the inconsistencies.
This "Alpha 1" is now being promoted from being that one pilot who can save the universe to become the admiral, the commander, the cruise pilot, the stealth pilot, the bomber pilot, the psycho-probing connection between species.... it's hilarious if you think about it.
"Ah, that's all fine and dandy Luis, but what would you do about it? I mean, these things are the way they are in BP so we can have these amazing different gamestyles, to show different angles of the plot, and yeah to be fun! Are you suggesting that FS should go back to one-style boring campaigns? What a loser!"
Yeah well you know we can have the cake and eat it too, without any writing revolutions of any kind. Just adopt the "multiple personality RPG" style! Why not? You'll have "the" sniper character, you'll have "the" admiral character, you'll have "the" cruiser commander character, and they can all have their own stories, their own personalities. You can change who "the player" is as he goes along the campaign. They can even screw with each other ("you" the admiral putting the "you" squadron leader in trouble, in which case "you" will say nasty things to "yourself" in-mission, or the reverse, "you" half-****ing up a mission and then "you" the admiral having to cope with this miserable failure of that god damned pilot, and other fun intersections!). The end result might be amazing and it avoids this OTT "protagonist does it all by himself" shenanigan.
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I liked the narrative structure The E suggested when the topic of a Sanctuary campaign came up, where you just make the campaign into a series of short vignettes following a single character in their own predicament.
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Yes I like that too.
I also imagined a mod where the final moments of "Apocalypse" in FS2 could be extended into a full fledged campaign with lots of different vignettes with a lot of different gamestyles, problems, objectives and personalities, like being part of the probe squadrons near the Sathanas' fleets, or being part of the fleeing cruisers, or being part of an opportunistic high-risk pirate squadron, or belong to a hidden small NTF contigent in the system. They would then smash their heads against each other, while you would "rotate" your own roles. There would be some surprises at the final 3rd of the campaign...it could be fun!
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tbh that setting interests me a lot more simply because it doesn't necessitate the use of fs1 ships
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Yeah, a 25 to 30-mission campaign is far less likely to outstay its welcome the way a 50-mission campaign does.
You know, regarding WCS, some of the missions are extremely long, like 30-40mins. I’ve thought WCS would actually benefit from having more missions, breaking those big ones up into several smaller ones. It kind of kills the enthusiasm when you have to replay a mission you've just spent 30-40mins on then you die.
Unlikable, yes, distant, of course, all of these are things you would expect to see. But there's a difference between having such a character in your story, and having all characters be like that. When you write wingmen who will stick with you for some time, it's a really really bad thing if the player isn't given a reason to care about them. In BP, we tried to give the people around you distinct personalities so that you would care about them, their opinions and their eventual fates. WCS misses this crucial step (at least for me).
That noone around you seems to be willing to ackknowledge your skills and results is part of this issue.
Yes, I agree with this, really they're not all unlikeable are they, some are nice enough. But yeah, that "you're still a rookie" thing is grating. At the very end I took it to be some sort of running joke, but even if that is a joke, it still goes on far too long, and I would certainly appreciate that being put to bed.
Again part of the experience I got working on BP. In WCS, one of the first things said to you in the Prologue is "Look at all these capital ships. It's your job to protect them, they're way more important than you"; yet those same ships never really do much except catch torpedoes. That's something I feel should be addressed, it should be shown on-screen that there are good reasons why these things are still around.
Of course they were talking I think more about the fact you’re screwed without a carrier to land on, and the lives that will be lost if a capital ship is destroyed, not the military value of such ships.
So are you thinking more to rebalance the gameplay, rather than change the look of the models? Rebalancing the game would be number one for me. I actually rebalanced a lot of the missions myself, but this really only involved lifting the invulnerability from the ally ships, and then if necessary tinkering with the ships in the mission, adding or taking away ships on either side or adjusting AI levels. I never really did anything with the capital ships.
This tinkering showed me some glaring balance issues in the game. You’ve already hit on the capital ships, but the fighters are badly balanced too. Once you take off that invulnerability and see them pitted against each other, it becomes obvious that heavy fighters and bombers are king and the rest is fodder. The gap is so glaring that there would be no need to build anything but bombers. Bombers kill fighters and capital ships much more efficiently than anything else in the game. They’re packed with those lethal missiles, and have all the manoeuvrability they need to lock them on targets and even dogfight.
The campaign gives me the impression that fighters have somewhat obsoleted capital ships, and it's all about carrier warfare. Especially the part where Deathfang is enraged that his fleet is destroyed by the fighters from three seperate carriers, and he didn't get the fleet battle he wanted.
Carriers obviously have their role, and their lack of bite is understandable. I think for the most part the capital ships are just fine in terms of how much bite they have. It's just how fragile they are. Oh and get rid of that ability to fly inside them and gut them from the inside, that's a glaring flaw. I’d like it if that ability was closed off. Fighting from the outside, fighters have a hard time with capital ships, but bombers tear them apart, with one torpedo enough for lighter classes. It's similar fighter to fighter, one missile is enough to do for lighter classes. I would consider toning both of these right down (missile and torpedo power.) We have our homage to Wing Commander in Wing Commander Saga, so I would like it if this was optimised to be gameplay first, even if it meant tinkering with things and making it “not quite Wing Commander.” One thing, you’ve already talked about it is the waves, something Wing Commander basically runs on, sending waves and waves and waves at you, all the games do it. No game of this genre comes close in my experience to the blatant use of the concept of waves. Even though the navpoint thing does give you the illusion somewhat that it’s not just waves and waves, but you still get waves at individual navpoints. You could do away with/tone right down this waves thing in the remix quite comfortably and I‘d be surprised if there were any complaints.
The impression I get is that over the course of WCS' development, certain things were essentially abandoned when they were good enough, with not much in the way of feedback or internal review. They certainly did their homework with regards to testing these things to make sure the missions work, but I doubt there was much thought given to bugtesting, reviewing and revising the writing. These are all understandable flaws, but flaws nonetheless, and at least for me, they ruin a lot of the work and effort that went into this, like all those rendered briefings and stuff.
Hmmm, you’ll have more ability to make such a judgement on this than me. But this seems a much more fair-minded assessment than the lacklustre thing. I too was very impressed with the missions purely from a technical standpoint how much FREDding and testing must have gone into them is surely insane.
Blaise Russel demonstrated what you can do here, and I would really like to explore this concept in at least a few missions. My plan, as far as it goes at this stage, is to abandon the "single protagonist" campaign and go for a more multiangled narrative so that you can experience more facets of the war than just the fighter pilot's perspective. Being able to have input on mission planning, or even capital ship control, is something I would like to see (Of course, that's contingent on finding places in the story where such an approach would be appropriate).
This sounds interesting.
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You know, regarding WCS, some of the missions are extremely long, like 30-40mins. I’ve thought WCS would actually benefit from having more missions, breaking those big ones up into several smaller ones. It kind of kills the enthusiasm when you have to replay a mission you've just spent 30-40mins on then you die.
There's such a thing called checkpoints. You'd think that with the whole waypoint-based mission design, WCS would be idea for implementing checkpoints. But from what I've seen of WCS (ie everything and a half), reducing player frustration was low on their list of priorities, if not right on their list of things to actively avoid.
I too was very impressed with the missions purely from a technical standpoint how much FREDding and testing must have gone into them is surely insane.
Facts disagree with you. A simple playthrough makes it obvious that at least 90% of WCS mission design involves heavy amounts of copy-pasting.
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WCS missions are a testers' dream, because there is so very little nonlinearity in them. Actually complex missions are something else entirely.
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There's such a thing called checkpoints. You'd think that with the whole waypoint-based mission design, WCS would be idea for implementing checkpoints. But from what I've seen of WCS (ie everything and a half), reducing player frustration was low on their list of priorities, if not right on their list of things to actively avoid.
Yes, checkpoints and dialogue skips alone, if you did nothing else to the campaign, would be a huge improvement.
I still haven't played a mission involving checkpoints yet, but now that my 3.6.12 problems are solved, I should get to that eventually. Someone (I think it was Axem, but I'm not sure) said that you can play individual checkpoints from the techroom, and if so, I'm all for it.
Facts disagree with you. A simple playthrough makes it obvious that at least 90% of WCS mission design involves heavy amounts of copy-pasting.
WCS missions are a testers' dream, because there is so very little nonlinearity in them. Actually complex missions are something else entirely.
Hm. I guess you can chalk that one up to my inexperience.
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Yes, checkpoints and dialogue skips alone, if you did nothing else to the campaign, would be a huge improvement.
I've heard that dialogue skips at least were explicitly turned down, as sitting through dialogue was meant to be a punishment for failing the mission.
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Like I said,
reducing player frustration was low on their list of priorities, if not right on their list of things to actively avoid.
Those guys simply fail basic game design.
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Like I said,
reducing player frustration was low on their list of priorities, if not right on their list of things to actively avoid.
Those guys simply fail basic game design.
Remember I talked about rebalancing some of the missions? Mission 24. You have to endure 5mins of chatter in that one before you even get started. It won't surprise you that I haven't done that one, I was just like urgh... and skipped past it.
This is something I thought about with regard to testing though. When the Saga team was testing mission 24, would they have had to sit through those 5mins every time?
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I agree. Dialogue skipping and checkpoints are a must for the remade Saga. Checkpoints in particular should be easy, since WCS' mission format lends itself to them perfectly. Just save after each checkpoint is cleared, simple as that. That way, there'd almost nothing to store in variables (even ship positions can be fixed, it won't be noticeable at that point).
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This is something I thought about with regard to testing though. When the Saga team was testing mission 24, would they have had to sit through those 5mins every time?
I guess skipping dialogue is something which, like cheats, they consider a 'developer tool' which must be removed before release.
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Well I think you guys hit the major flaw with Saga's design. Take a look at a WC game, any even that fan made one I linked too earlier: there isn't a whole lot of dialog in mission during the action (some, granted, but not 15 minutes worth). Any actual military would tell these guys to get off the radio and use it for essential conversation only. In wing commander the story is driven inbetween missions and during the briefing. And of course the player has the option to ignore parts they don't want to sit through. Instead the player must sit through hours and hours of unskipable dialog in mission to account for story, increasing mission length upwards to 40 mins (god forbid you die late in mission and have to sit through all that again.) when the player should be playing the game. That is, after all, the whole point of the autopilot system, to be cinematic way to get the player into the action. Immersion is one thing, but when it breaks logic and playability, it is rather unimmersive. Too bad the writing is what it is.
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Note, we're hitting an engine limitation here. There's no real way to do interactive out-of-mission cutscenes in FS2. They were always a huge part of Wing Commander, and without them, you need to find alternate, less immersive methods of telling the story. It's one of my major complaints about FS2, too. Aside from the mainhall, the rest of the ship could as well be nonexistent. That probably helped modding (cutscenes are difficult to make), but it takes away from immersion. While one could probably do a set of cutscene for each mission with a large enough budget, the amount of work needed for that is staggering. Also, they still wouldn't be interactive. Allowing that would probably require an immense amount of coding.
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While true, it wouldn't be easy. FS2 just wasn't designed with character driven story telling in mind. And shoehorning it in the way WC saga does midmission just doesn't really work. It is annoying, illogical, and cumbersome. Characters simply wouldn't say the same stuff while on the job in the cockpit that they would outside of it. And despite FS logic, the person on the comm of capships isn't the guy in charge of the capship. Comm officers are people, not ships! They just don't stand there yelling on the horn while the bridge comes down around their ears. (Diaspora suffers from this too) Its all fine in FS2 but as soon as you start writing about people, you have to take these things into consideration.
A mod certainly has to get creative with the FS2 limitations. Perhaps if saga stuck with the reading bits in between missions as in the prologue, only had a narrator and voice actors to play it out. With some decent sound editing for environment, that would have been enjoyable. Also there are ways of doing cutscenes on the cheap, say Ace Combat style with Ken Burns type still images and voice acting under it. Or modders can just get really creative with the briefings. Just something to get what you want across with out sacrificing game play.
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Just wanted to point out, with these techniques you can get a story telling style similar to WC2.
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Agreed about the comm officer. In fact, that's one thing WC3 and 4 did better than most games and FS2 mods. Rollins (the Victory's comm officer) was a fully developed character, really likable and fun. Lt. Sosa in WC4 was also quite important (though she was more than a comm officer, justified considering the state of the Intrepid). In just about every other game, it's either as if the captain is speaking to you, or the capships are completely impersonal.
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You know what would be a great idea for a mission in some campaign? What if a capship com were disabled during a firefight, but the ship was still mostly intact and functioning?
WC4 almost did this with the intrepid with the destroyed bridge. Perhaps the Comm Officer is injured and it takes a second for someone to respond. One can think of a lot of reasons to make it real. Take this one step further characters, being people and not ships, are fragile and can be killed without the whole ship blowing up. Limitations in writing aren't only in Saga. I applaud BTRL when you found the captan's viper and it was intact but she was dead in it. Holy Cow! It's like a first in a space game. Although Wing commander did have it's share of characters be killed outside of the cockpit.
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There are some things that can be done even with pre-existing FS tools to facilitate more out-of-mission character development. The fiction viewer provides for readable long-form text passages, and if there was the ability to integrate animations or video into it, you could probably do some really creative stuff. (I'll go ahead and assume that this would be a ***** to implement code-wise, though.) You can even do a lot just with command briefings...if you set up an animation and play a corresponding audio clip, you have ready-made multiple-stage cutscenes.
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Fiction viewer is the best we have for now. You could do extended inter-mission cutscenes since retail, but the amount of work required for making a WC-style "interactive movie" like that would probably be prohibitive.
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Since we're talking about WCS plot issues (and I'd like to say that overall I loved WCS): What did you think about Avatarr? I could maybe see him doing what he did on ship, but to me it seemed he flirted with the women too much during actual missions (and sometimes it bordered on harassment).
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I haven't looked at those parts yet, but given the general quality of the dialogue writing, I shudder to think about it.
This is definitely getting handled differently here though.
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I haven't looked at those parts yet, but given the general quality of the dialogue writing, I shudder to think about it.
This is definitely getting handled differently here though.
You're going to hate Avatarr. With a passion. He's got a one track brain. Avatarr is my least favourite character.
But Avatarr shows up less than half way through, how far did you get? I thought you must have played the whole thing to make this thread.
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Some more thoughts, Avatarr might worm his way under my skin, but
because of that, it makes it all the more satisfying when the women put him in his place.
The best Saga has to offer definitely comes in the second half of the campaign, so you should keep playing.
Finally, if there's one thing you do, above all else, for me, that damn missile alarm must have it's volume TURNED DOWN. I absolutely hate it, it's so much louder than everything else. I can only imagine how disruptive it must be if you have to play near someone else who's watching a TV or something and that thing comes blasting out, but aside from that I simply hate it and it still makes me jump from time to time, and it was downright stressful playing with it there to begin with for quite a long while, it still is somewhat stressful.
If a little patch could be made for Saga to bring it into line with everything else, I would be very grateful indeed.
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So I'm not the only one who things Psychopath is more tolerable and professional than Avatar? ;)
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He may be a psychopath (ha, ha) but at least he's focused on the mission. Avatarr, not at all.
And dear God, M.D. is the worst of them all. He's like House, but without anything that makes House funny and likeable, like actual witty comments or the few glimpses of the human being buried under the apathy and outright misanthropy.
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It looks like the Saga team had a few good ideas for characters, but once it came to writing them, epic fail ensued. :) I can see how all those people could've been written as likable, but they aren't.
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making all your characters assholes does not imo constitute good character concepts
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Making them assholes resulted from bad writing. I can see what they wanted - a Casanova, a Doctor House expy, a slightly crazy guy... Only that they didn't pull it off right. This could have worked, if the writing was better.
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My FS2 modding favorites are still the Derelict wingmen.
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you have to love the pairing of Mackie and Gormless Kid
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Have I remembered the personalities of the Derelict wingmen correctly (it's been a while since I've played):
Alpha 2 (Mackie)-sarcastic and cynical
Alpha 3-plucky eager new warrior
Alpha 4-no-nonsense veteran
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alpha 4 was iirc a wildcard, there were a few people occupying the position (including Really Gormless Kid)
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Concerning Psychopath, I was kind of surprised (after seeing the epilogues of each character) that Psychopath didn't join the Black Lance and Tolwyn.
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I wasn't. I figured he was the kind of psychopath who'd tell guys like those to take their invitation and insert it sideways into the place the sun doesn't shine.
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But they would have offered him a chance at more killing right?
Could it be Psychopath had at least a glimmer of a moral compass? ;)
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The Black Lance are pretty much universally acknowledges as deplorable sociopaths (they are pretty much the Waffen-SS in space) by WC fans. So having any kind of protagonist character helping them commit massacres is a no-no.
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Don't forget that Venom (from the Jim Bowie and the leader of the Galahads) joined the Black Lance, although he decided to testify against Tolwyn in the end.
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I guess what I was asking was: if someone from WCS was likely to join the Black Lance, wouldn't Psychopath have seemed likely to do that?
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Probably so. Though he would either get disgusted and (try to) leave quickly, or testify against them like Venom did.
Also, I've got another bit that WCS Remix could try to correct: The absence of Concordia-class carriers from the Confed fleet.
http://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/Concordia-Class_Fleet_Carrier
It looks much like Yorktown, except it's much larger, close in size to Jutland. I think that if we asked Scooby to make it, he'd model it distinctive enough. Maybe WCS:R could even feature TCS Princeton from WC4 as a cameo.
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Or even WC4's Lexington. If my information is correct, she was put back into service between the Battle of Earth and the destruction of Kilrah. And during the Freya missions of WCS:DD, a TCS Lexington is mentioned and it's unlikely that it is the Lexington from WC: Armada since she was never recovered.
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Yeah, the original Lexington did get fixed before the war ended, but somehow, I don't think she'll be on the front lines so soon. Anyway, it'd be really nice to have the Concordia-class in WCS. It's supposed to be a Confed workhorse, pretty much how Jutland is depicted in WCS:DD.
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I thought I might make couple of comments. First with regard to the Concordia-class carriers you might want to talk to Deathsnake as I believe he was working on one for his "Last Line of Defense" mod.
The other thing is that, Lorric, I think you have me to blame for the missile alarm. When I started as a Beta tester on WC:SAGA they had a different missile launch warning sound. The problem was if your shield were being hit, for example from a bomber's tail gun, the shield hit sound drown out the sound of that launch warning. Compounding that issue was the fact that if you were in a very close, shield bumping range guns engagement the "Collision" indicator on the HUD blotted out the visual "Launch" warning. It was found in beta testing that when playing missions where turret fire and/or close engagement were prevalent players were not getting warning of missile launches. If I recall correctly I was the one that made the initial report on the issue that was confirmed by other tester as an issue. That is how the present missile launch warning sound, one that better cut through battle noise, got into the game.
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The other thing is that, Lorric, I think you have me to blame for the missile alarm.
Make your time... :mad2:
Heh. It is nice to know why it was done. Thanks for telling me. :)
I do utterly hate that missile alarm all joking aside. I very much hope it is done away with.
I don't know how you would program it, if you can, but you'd think a launch warning would override a collision warning. You don't need a collision warning to know you've collided with something.
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Hello,
im pretty new to WC in general, and WCS. I think im only half way through the game (currently the Hermes is behind the Front-Lines to resupply and I have to fight some stealth fighter), but am I the only one who currently thinks that the Characters are great?
I mean, I love (I think its Venom who is so sexually fixated that he makes only such kind of speaks) and Psychopath is great too. Even Greywolf, who calls me Dorothy was great and the Dialouges between Sandman, Assassin and Ninja are sometimes pretty good atm. Dunno how it evolves.
But one thing im sad about the Main-Campaign. In the Prolouge, after a Mission I had a Computer with some kind of Logbook. I miss that, because it tells so much more about the story and about what happens.
Best Regards
Auva
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Yes, regarding the characters, especially Avatarr (the sexually fixated guy), there has been lots of controversy.
Well, I did enjoy most of the characters. Especially the prologue ones are more fleshed out and at some point more mature than in the demo release of WCS.
One of the few characters I disliked was Greywolf, because he is a bully. It's a pretty long story why I don't like bullies.
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Yes, regarding the characters, especially Avatarr (the sexually fixated guy), there has been lots of controversy.
Well, I did enjoy most of the characters. Especially the prologue ones are more fleshed out and at some point more mature than in the demo release of WCS.
One of the few characters I disliked was Greywolf, because he is a bully. It's a pretty long story why I don't like bullies.
Funny though, I like Greywolf, because I don't think he is a bully, but I think the situation has made him in that kind, seeing his friends and everyone dying everday around him changes people. Furthermore, Sandman comes to the Squadron and starts crying like a girl, what do you expect from a group of battle hardened Pilots. :) But thats just my point of view and I respect your opinion and can understand it!
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As an ex-member of the team (left a 1 and 1/2 years before the release), I am obviously happy that they actually managed to release it.
I also think that graphics and the basic dogfighting and combat gameplay are spot on, being everything that WC3 wanted to be.
Regarding the writing: While I was never a fan of the strict linearity and the problematic character relationships (especially the whole rookie-thing, goddamnit I am the best ****ing pilot around!), I found the general tone of the writing as well as the language used and display of military tactics (in WC logic) exceptionally well done. The two problems are the discrepancy between gameplay and character actions and the simple fact that all the real character interaction was taking place in fiction between the missions. And no one wanted to read through tons and tons of novel-like text.
Gameplay and mission design: This is definitly the biggest problem and while there are tons of brilliant ideas and stand out moments, the linearity and complete lack of choices or meaningful strategic decision making makes the campaign a chore in many areas. Ejecting and aborting missions is a feature that is definitly missing, along with different outcomes. When I joined the team, I was hoping that WCS would improve on the classic WCs in that regard with more fine-grained consequences, instead that feature was never realized (although there was a time when it was planned, same as ejecting and taunting).
And then there are some missions which are not even borderline anymore, starting with the fighter-transfer mission.
(Developer secret: There was a time when we played some real fun multiplayer matches with Hellcats and Arrows...)
I definitly see all the big complaints. And since almost everything of I did for WCS back in the day is not part of the released version, I also do not feel that responsible. Just disappointed. I would endorse a better WCS but will not be a part of its development.
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(Developer secret: There was a time when we played some real fun multiplayer matches with Hellcats and Arrows...)
I guess that was before they broke the **** out of multi.
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:bump:
Well, we're over a year since this campaign remix thread was created. I was and still am very interested, and I wonder, did it ever get into any kind of development? If so, how far along? Is it still going? If not, could it still happen at some stage, or has the idea been abandoned?
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You sparked some recognition. I had forgotten about this. Also #curious
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I must admit to being intrigued to find out if this went beyond the general concept stage