[hurleybird]

It has good voice acting, cutscenes, and is nicely polished, but there was also a lot I didn't like about this release. The story was a bit weak. The vishnan arc was lame, and you made the shivans feel very anti-climatic and hollow.

Spoiler:

The bit with the vishnan and Shivan ships talking together made me facepalm.

The mission design was far too straightforward linear, to the point were one non-critical capital ship being destroyed failed multiple missions. Good mission design means multiple potential outcomes from missions.

Spoiler:

The war with earth at the end was also a disappointment. It would have been nice to have more subtlety than "Oh no, command is evil and wants to invade earth because they're too religious and peaceful". There's absolutely no intrigue in that at all.

Don't get me wrong, it was a fun experience, and I'm glad you guys made it. But it seems a shame that you put in so much work and did so many things JUST RIGHT, only to bring the end experience back down to merely average with a poorly thought out story.

[General Battuta]

Right, a few things to clear up in that post.

First off, hurleybird, this is a rerelease of a campaign from a few years back. It was the sole and original work of Darius - not of a team. This version is just a polished up and voice acted version of that.

To address a few specific points:

The vishnan arc was lame, and you made the shivans feel very anti-climatic and hollow.

To be honest, I wasn't a big fan of the Vishnans myself originally, but after learning more about them and knowing future plans, I'm happy with them. They'll grow on you.

The mission design was far too straightforward linear, to the point were one non-critical capital ship being destroyed failed multiple missions. Good mission design means multiple potential outcomes from missions.

Au contraire. There is no way for the Blue Planet story to work if even a single ship is lost, because each vessel plays a role in later missions.

If each mission contained a branch for the loss of every possible combination of ships, then every later mission would need multiple dialogue stages to account for this, as well as missions built to account for the possible presence or absence of every permutation of ship.

It is not remotely practical.

You may not have noticed, but every ship from the first mission is maintained throughout the campaign. All the ships are critical.

The war with earth at the end was also a disappointment. It would have been nice to have more subtlety than "Oh no, command is evil and wants to invade earth because they're too religious and peaceful". There's absolutely no intrigue in that at all.

Another area where I would have once agreed with you, but where you're now badly wrong. In fact you're about as far from right as it gets. Start here.

Take a moment to read through this forum and you'll find so much intrigue on that point that nobody can seem to agree who's in the right and who's in the wrong.

only to bring the end experience back down to merely average with a poorly thought out story.

The story was not altered from the original release a couple years ago. While I'm personally in agreement with your critiques, between the thousands of words of prose information now online and the upcoming War in Heaven I think they're largely satisfied.

And the last thing this story was is 'poorly thought out.' You may disagree with stylistic choices, but on a structural level in terms of foreshadowing, it's marvelously subtle and complete. You can see the upcoming GTVA invasion as early as the first playable missions if you pay close attention, and the Vishnans are foreshadowed nearly as early on.

While I'm happy with many elements of your critique, you're conflating 'I don't like it' with 'it was done wrong.' Blue Planet isn't for everyone. The story requires a lot of attention, but the rewards are there.

[Herra Tohtori]

It has good voice acting, cutscenes, and is nicely polished, but there was also a lot I didn't like about this release. The story was a bit weak. The vishnan arc was lame, and you made the shivans feel very anti-climatic and hollow.

Spoiler:

The bit with the vishnan and Shivan ships talking together made me facepalm.

Let's just say that the motives of vishnans and shivans will become clearer in the future...

The mission design was far too straightforward linear, to the point were one non-critical capital ship being destroyed failed multiple missions. Good mission design means multiple potential outcomes from missions.

Grand scale rebalancing or re-writing the missions was not in the agenda. The storyline was set, and you should be aware that multiple outcomes in a campaign like this that concentrates around a small group of ships that appears in practically all missions means a LOT of branching, which would have been out of our resources even if we had wanted that. If one ship got destroyed, it should naturally carry over to the next mission. Which, if you know anything of probabilities, means a lot of permutations very fast...

Besides, there are multiple outcomes. You can either keep Nehru alive or let him die...

Spoiler:

The war with earth at the end was also a disappointment. It would have been nice to have more subtlety than "Oh no, command is evil and wants to invade earth because they're too religious and peaceful". There's absolutely no intrigue in that at all.

I know it's frustrating being a pawn when the game makes no sense, right? But you're informed on a need to know basis, pilot... Just trust the command to know what they're doing.

 

Don't get me wrong, it was a fun experience, and I'm glad you guys made it. But it seems a shame that you put in so much work and did so many things JUST RIGHT, only to bring the end experience back down to merely average with a poorly thought out story.

Well, the storyline is not for everyone, as has been stated already multiple times. I'm glad you enjoyed it, though.

Ach curses, good General was faster.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

(Also, I chuckled a bit when I saw myself in the credits, as I had this three-line blob of text consisting of seven or eight bit parts.  I guess auditioning for every random pilot line pays off. )

I had two lines. You're still better off than me.

[General Battuta]

The mission design was far too straightforward linear, to the point were one non-critical capital ship being destroyed failed multiple missions. Good mission design means multiple potential outcomes from missions.

I'm still a bit bemused by this critique since the original FreeSpace and FreeSpace 2 missions, which are presumably the very definition of 'good mission design', do nothing of the sort.   Ships that can die in those campaigns by and large never appear again whether or not you saved them.

[Dilmah G]

Eh, let it go, the man can have his opinion.

Although, I'd have to agree, the war with Earth is something you will come to understand more of in the future. I for one, would have approved the plans if I was a Staff Officer at the time, knowing what I do. That, and I'm heavily biased pro-GTVA. 

[manwiththemachinegun]

Speaking of further tweaks, I also enjoyed the fact that the two 'special guest appearence' ships at the pentultimate mission actually engage each other now. Before, they were rather omninus just hanging in space, but having them slugging it out just made the situtation seem that much more desperate.

[General Battuta]

Sorry if we came off too strong, then, there's no problem with opinions. And clearly there's no way he could have already read all the prose dossiers about the reasons behind the war.

As we're fond of saying, Blue Planet isn't for everyone. But it's worth thinking about. I'll see if I can dig up my first review of Blue Planet, because to be honest I think it was nearly identical to his (minus the mission critique.)

Speaking of further tweaks, I also enjoyed the fact that the two 'special guest appearence' ships at the pentultimate mission actually engage each other now. Before, they were rather omninus just hanging in space, but having them slugging it out just made the situtation seem that much more desperate.

A lot of people have problems with the 'talking ships'. But they do manage to impart a fair amount of mythology without resorting to infodumping. I've come to think it's rather clever. And the Shivan voice acting makes them pretty scary - they're terse, blunt, and alien.

[Herra Tohtori]

A lot of people have problems with the 'talking ships'. But they do manage to impart a fair amount of mythology without resorting to infodumping. I've come to think it's rather clever. And the Shivan voice acting makes them pretty scary - they're terse, blunt, and alien.

"We... do."

[-Norbert-]

Speaking of further tweaks, I also enjoyed the fact that the two 'special guest appearence' ships at the pentultimate mission actually engage each other now. Before, they were rather omninus just hanging in space, but having them slugging it out just made the situtation seem that much more desperate.

Are you sure? On my end they always shot at each other (after the conversation was over) both in the original release and the 3.6.10 adapted version, allthough there was this annoying bug that stoped the music tracks after a few seconds. I'm really glad that one is gone for good.

[MatthTheGeek]

I agree, the super-juggernauts-or-whatever at the end did fire on each other, on both the old release on the DC. Must have been an issue on your side.

[Mongoose]

Gah, that's the one thing I forgot to mention: I really liked the vocal effects for the Vishnans and Shivans.  That sort of echoing, ethereal sound you assigned to the Vishnans fit their identity as extra-dimensional preservers, and I liked how you layered the comm node effect under the Shivan dialog to give it that extra bit of menace.

[manwiththemachinegun]

I agree, the super-juggernauts-or-whatever at the end did fire on each other, on both the old release on the DC. Must have been an issue on your side.

Huh, in my last version of BP they never fired on each other. This time, they were trading broadsides.

Yay for me then.

I loved that the Shivans just keep upping the ante as far as the survival of the human race goes. For the sake of drama, it should always be possible to blunt and cripple the Shivan advances, whether it is destroying the Lucifer or killing the Santhanas. And yet the freaky little bugs STILL keep coming up with stuff that leaves everyone wondering, "how the hell are we even going to survive this next battle?" The juggernaught fleet was a class moment of, "they have not yet begun to fight".

It doesn't always have to be a size thing. The, "oh crap their fighters have shields," or "oh crap they can use unstable nodes" made the Shivans just as intimidating as the scale of their fleet.

The GTVA is getting better at killing them, and with the Vishnans they now have allies. But the oh crap factor what makes the Shivans memorable. And if humanity screws the pooch in this civil war, we may end up losing their help all together.

[Colonol Dekker]

I for one, would have approved the plans if I was a Staff Officer at the time, knowing what I do. That, and I'm heavily biased pro-GTVA. 

 
Me too. . . . . . but with less V.
 

[Droid803]

There's a typo in one of the Uglies' tech-room description - "oast" instead of "past" (or last).
Several sentences in Species.tbl don't have spaces after period.Like so.

Makes MS Sam hiccup. Nitpick FTW.

[hurleybird]

I'm still a bit bemused by this critique since the original FreeSpace and FreeSpace 2 missions, which are presumably the very definition of 'good mission design', do nothing of the sort.   Ships that can die in those campaigns by and large never appear again whether or not you saved them.

I agree with you. The best mission design I've seen is the BTRL demo where very little things in each mission would have consequences in subsequent missions. Of course, that was over a very small number of missions. As the size of the campaign grows, the different combination of consequences grows exponentially. This is why massive and deep RPGs tend to be buggy out the gate.

Another good design is to have winning and losing paths, with in between missions so the player can move sideways from on path to the other. AKA, the Wing Commander mission structure. You can get multiple levels of depth as well, besides determining which path you're on, your performance on specific objectives can have specific consequences down the line, or not.

If you're going to make a game or campaign without meaningful consequences, the least you can do is give the illusion that there are consequences. Most retail FS/FS2 missions work in this way, so that you hear how it was a bad thing that you let a bunch of escorts die, or a good thing that you saved them all, but there are no meaningful consequences besides that. This is also the Bioware philosophy, where you can have 5 dialog options that each give the same response to the person you're talking to. For the most part it works: if the player doesn't go back and check the other responses it might really feel like there are meaningful consequences even when they are completely absent.

BP on the other hand, doesn't even give the illusion of consequences. Each mission must be completed exactly or you lose. It's worse design than any of the alternatives.

[General Battuta]

No offense, but I'm guessing you haven't done much FRED work. There's not a single FreeSpace campaign (except maybe Uncharted Territory?) that does what you're suggesting, and there's good reason for it.

Neither of the above alternatives could work, since the BtRL style only works on a very small scale - in fact nothing that happens in the first BtRL mission really impacts the second on the level of number of ships, never mind the presence of an entire warship.

The branching Wing Commander style could never work since there would be no way for the branches to merge: you couldn't have a dead ship come back to life.

You cite the main FS2 campaign as giving an 'illusion of consequence', but the only reason that works is because the ships never reappear no matter what you do.

BP actually provides far more meaningful consequences: it allows you to succeed. In retail FS2 you can neither succeed or fail, since saving a ship has no impact.

There's just no way to bring a dead ship back, and no way to build a mission that works and is fun both with a ship and without it.

BP's persistent fleet is considerably more ambitious than anything in the retail FS2 campaign, and for that ambition to be realized, the missions need to be set up the way they are.

Or, put more simply: BP takes exactly the same approach that the retail FS2 campaigns do, namely, that all critical ships must be saved. You seem to be under the impression that some of the ships are somehow 'non-critical', but they aren't. For later missions to work, every warship has to make it through.

[asyikarea51]

pro-GTVA

Oh yeah. XD

It sucks that I don't know of any peaceful ways to deal with Earth without the politics of the "OPEN" party getting in the way. I can see why they had no choice, WIPE THE UEF OUT OF THE SKY!!! (Though I am bothered by the potential chance that someone in high command simply got greedy like AoA suggests, rather than going to war purely on the reason of driving home the point of how important it is to prepare for Shivan threats)

Shivans are waiting outside and they dare to stay "OPEN" 24/7?!?!? Screw that, if the universe is that cold-hearted, then damn well better get more guns just for the race to stay alive!!! VIS PACEM PARA BELLUM!!!

----------------------------

(please note that I completely ignored the existence of the

Spoiler:

Vishnans/Brahmans/First Time/whatever/etc

completely for the duration of all the words above, albeit in a "broken the 4th wall" sense. there are many things in BP's storyline that don't really "click" with me, but this is just one of many different takes on post-Capella anyway.)

[General Battuta]

Oh, and @Hurleybird:

So far as I know there are only a few missions (three? four?) with the conditions you've outlined, which is a far cry from 'each mission' as you claim.

Anyway, since I'm worried this is all coming out too hostile, if you want to outline a specific set of suggestions for how you think the missions could have been done instead, I'll be happy to consider them. But I have to warn you, unless you've done FREDding yourself, it's probably going to be impractical.

Consider Forced Entry. Assuming the Sanctuary, Temeraire, and Solace as story-critical ships, that leaves the Labouchere, Bretonia, and Duke as ships that could be lost.

If they were, in any permutation:

1) All later missions with this battlegroup would need to be altered to account for these losses, in all possible permutations. That means 7 new initial mission states in addition to the default state (if I did my math right.)

2) None of these ships could ever participate in dialogue chains, or be mentioned in briefings after Forced Entry without using lots of alternate briefing stages (exponentially more as the campaign wore on.)

3) You would need to build 7 different hostile attack patterns instead of 1 for all later missions involving this group.

4) The number of hostile warships would need to change dynamically based on how many of these ships were alive.

It's a nightmare. And that's just for one mission.

[manwiththemachinegun]

Meh, branching mission paths in space sims tend to be more trouble than they're worth. I'd rather have epic set pieces that having that effort broken up into multiple missions to show 'choice'.

No reason for you guys to burry yourselves under more work than you have to. You still have a third part of this story to put out someday right?