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 Early poll this time, my AC6 collectors edition is finally coming in tomorrow and I want to have as much out of the way as possible for that.
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Sep 4, 2023 15:16
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Ace Combat 6 came out in like, 2007 i'm glad it's getting a revival and all but it seems weird to see this much hype for it 
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Sep 4, 2023 19:04
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I hope we keep delaying the Haven mission as much as possible.
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Sep 4, 2023 19:13
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Haven is, besides Great Train Robbery, the most fun mission in the game for nukes, so I'm cool with that any time now. It'd be funny to see just how long we can put it off though.
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Sep 4, 2023 19:18
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BisbyWorl posted:Early poll this time, my AC6 collectors edition is finally coming in tomorrow and I want to have as much out of the way as possible for that. Enjoy your mech-ing! bladededge posted:It'd be funny to see just how long we can put it off though.
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Sep 4, 2023 19:30
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Gun Jam posted:Enjoy your mech-ing! We can just opt not to do the mission until we reach the Point of No Return and proceed into the endgame, but that would mean we couldn't use the unit Haven unlocks, which is kind of important. It's not 100% irreplaceable in the campaign but it's really good at its job.
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Sep 4, 2023 20:06
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Kith posted:Which raises even more questions - none of which should be answered. The internet is a series of tubes, and Nova is flexible. Psion posted:Ace Combat 6 came out in like, 2007 Go dance with the angels. Redeye Flight posted:We can just opt not to do the mission until we reach the Point of No Return and proceed into the endgame, but that would mean we couldn't use the unit Haven unlocks, which is kind of important. It's not 100% irreplaceable in the campaign but it's really good at its job. I remember back in 2010 I wasn't super sold on the unit, but it grew on me over time and now I like it better than Goliaths (barring the whole shoot two things at once thing).
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Sep 4, 2023 20:15
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Gun Jam posted:Can we just straight up abandon 'em? The way the mission structure works is that the first three Mar Sara missions (Outlaws/Liberation/Zero Hour) are required, then the Mobius Foundation missions are the only hard-required content. The other mission chains (Tosh, Haven, Matt's missions, Pondering) are optional, but you need to have a certain number of missions completed to unlock the next Mobius mission. Don't remember the exact numbers, but in practice, you need to do like 3 of those 4 mission chains start to finish to have enough completed missions to unlock the finale. The speedrun totally ignores the entire Haven chain (unnecessary units) and also skips In Utter Darkness (20 minutes that can't be sped up), but needs to do every other mission to meet the final-mission unlock criteria.
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Sep 4, 2023 22:42
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SIGSEGV posted:I hope we keep delaying the Haven mission as much as possible. By the time Raynor gets there Mengsk has finally pulled Desperate Alliance 2 and won fame and undying loyalty across Dominion Space. 
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Sep 5, 2023 01:31
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Having bad things really happen if you don't take warnings of impending disaster seriously, Deus Ex HR style, might have improved the campaign in several ways, forcing the player to make hard decisions about what to prioritize. The Pondering chain's egregious unbalancing of the campaign progression wouldn't be egregious at all if while staring at the crystal a bunch of colonies got snacked by Kerrigan in her pursuit of biomass or whatever she's supposed to be up to. (I'm not sure what her goals are. Does the zerg faction have any right now?) That would require a larger number of missions, though. Also, the designers being willing for players to not necessarily see everything in their game, or in the worst case for players being able to actually fail the campaign or make it significantly harder with enough bad decisions.
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Sep 5, 2023 02:25
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I don't think it'd require a larger number of missions, but it would definitely involve multiple sets of dialogue, triggers, unit routines, etc.
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Sep 5, 2023 03:06
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bladededge posted:(I'm not sure what her goals are. Does the zerg faction have any right now?) I know it's been quite a while since we've done a "main" mission (Tychus's line), but they were really rubbing their chins over Kerrigan seeming to be going after the artifacts too, and now Moebius HQ is under attack by Kerrigan. So presumably she wants the macguffin pieces we've been collecting because question mark? I guess we'd have to go save Tychus's golden goose to learn more.
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Sep 5, 2023 03:11
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Felinoid posted:I know it's been quite a while since we've done a "main" mission (Tychus's line), but they were really rubbing their chins over Kerrigan seeming to be going after the artifacts too, and now Moebius HQ is under attack by Kerrigan. So presumably she wants the macguffin pieces we've been collecting because question mark? I guess we'd have to go save Tychus's golden goose to learn more. I'm sure they'll be fine. Kerrigan will just wait patiently until we get done messing around with all the side quests. Honestly this reminds me how many games with time pressure in the narrative are allergic to including time pressure in the gameplay.
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Sep 5, 2023 04:41
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The only games that come to mind for me are Mass Effect 2 and 3, which had missions where the end results got worse the longer you put them off after they were made available, or outright failed offscreen (with significant consequences).
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Sep 5, 2023 04:54
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Oh there's plenty, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 for a start, and the game still wants you out there and loving about, Skyrim also, really it's the ones that don't do it that get interesting.
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Sep 5, 2023 04:58
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SIGSEGV posted:Oh there's plenty, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 for a start, and the game still wants you out there and loving about, Skyrim also, really it's the ones that don't do it that get interesting. What was the time pressure thing in Skyrim?
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Sep 5, 2023 05:22
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Regalingualius posted:The only games that come to mind for me are Mass Effect 2 and 3, which had missions where the end results got worse the longer you put them off after they were made available, or outright failed offscreen (with significant consequences). Even then, those had very specific "if you start mission C, missions B and A will fail" triggers rather than actual time based ones. Of course, the 90s were the absolute heyday of limiting narratives - Star Control 2 is a classic example, where the enslaving/genocidal Ur-Quan fleets take over new systems every couple of days, eliminating entire sidequests and nations. And it kind of sucks to play without a guide, because it's painfully easy to slip past those deadlines when combined with other 90s design elements like "quests don't tell you where to go."
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Sep 5, 2023 06:10
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I don't think I'd like it if doing some missions made others time out. Unless the game is particularly good I'm not going to play it more than once, and also what if the units I get from the mission I did turn out to suck? It would just drive me to looking up a guide. It's the sort of thing that can work if it's what the game is about. You could have a "what kind of Jim Raynor are you?" thing where the game is much more character/story focused and nature of your rebellion depends on what you do, or you could have some depressing and stressful story about how you can't do everything. But if the reason for making missions autofail is just that it's not realistic for Kerrigan to hang around waiting for you to rob a train or ponder a crystal, I don't care, I can just suspend some disbelief.
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Sep 5, 2023 07:14
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Caught up with the thread; it's been a fun read. You can add me to the list of goons who were disappointed with WoL; I got to the final mission when I played so very long ago and just gave up because the narrative had me di disinterested, even though some of the missions were inventive. I've never heard good things about the sequels, either. This confirms that the canon choice SA makes is supporting Tosh. You chose well, everyone.
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Sep 5, 2023 09:28
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Qwertycoatl posted:I don't think I'd like it if doing some missions made others time out. Unless the game is particularly good I'm not going to play it more than once, and also what if the units I get from the mission I did turn out to suck? It would just drive me to looking up a guide. For sure. SC2 straight up isn't built for that kind of narrative. I think it would have been cool if it was, but the campaign would have looked very different from what we got. I generally like trade-offs in games because things like Mass Effect (have enough war score) or Fable 3 (have enough money) are really only asking you to pay out-of-game time to reach the best ending state. Which isn't all that much of a choice--it just means the game is longer than it may initially look. That kind of design is never good if you're a one-and-done player though--nothing with mutual exclusivity will allow for a single-run-see-everything game. At least for me though, I'm fine with that tradeoff sometimes. VostokProgram posted:What was the time pressure thing in Skyrim? I think it was awkwardly phrased--narratively there's a time pressure in that there's dragons rampaging all over the province. Mechanically, however, you can put off even getting the flagship shout until you've cleared almost every other piece of content in the game with zero consequences. (I know this because in my first playthrough I accidentally did this.)
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Sep 5, 2023 10:27
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bladededge posted:in the worst case for players being able to actually fail the campaign or make it significantly harder with enough bad decisions. What would actually happen in practice is first-time players would still do all the side missions to see the content, get hosed over, realize they're hosed, and just leave pissed-off. They're not restarting the 20+ hour campaign, they're not reloading a save from 5 missions ago, they just walk away angry. That said, there is an argument for doing what games normally do and making it feel like there's time pressure through dialogue (but without affecting the actual gameplay) - putting off Haven's missions makes Hanson more and more frantic about "people are dying out there! we need to help my people!", if you go several missions ignoring Matt's train robbery he questions whether Raynor is getting distracted from the primary goal of fighting Mengsk. Etc. Doesn't affect the missions, just gives it a different feel to the player.
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Sep 5, 2023 12:45
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You could also just make them harder (and have npc dialogue reflect this like the above poster said in the last part) the later you do them, to compensate for the powerups you get by doing other missions first. Not a lot harder, just enough to make it seem like yeah by putting this stuff off we wasted some opportunities etc. In the story
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Sep 5, 2023 13:16
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MagusofStars posted:
I hate when games do this If you talk big about urgency, it better be actually urgent.I agree that actual time limits need to be properly explained, but I would be fine with something like "you can do 3 arks out of 5, pick wisely".
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Sep 5, 2023 13:46
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Honestly though it would be easier just to structure the campaign the same way the later two do - you choose to commit to a mission chain then just have to play it out all in a row. You can make it as urgent as you like since you have to do the next mission next anyway, until the specific problem is solved for good and you can move on to a new one. Actually thinking about it you could fold in the artifact thing and have each chain include unearthing one of the artifact pieces, so you build it up over the course of the campaign until you hit the final chain.
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Sep 5, 2023 13:55
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Personally I think if you're going to give side missions like these you should just set your plot up to not need time pressure, which really isn't that hard. Something like Highfleet does time pressure in a reasonable way, the fuzzyness of the gameplay means you have to make your own choice, in a campaign of this style it's just a calendar / time management game in which you sigh and refer to a guide to see what's possible because you don't have the metrics to act otherwise. So here, blizz did the right thing.
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Sep 5, 2023 13:55
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I know that Starlancer did have a thing where you could do poorly or even fail missions, and it would make subsequent missions harder until it would eventually just game over if you failed too much. I can't remember what kind of mechanism there was for reversing those failures, but given that I never finished it - and I did everything in the original X-Wing no matter how difficult - I guess it must have been pretty onerous.
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Sep 5, 2023 14:08
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Qwertycoatl posted:It's the sort of thing that can work if it's what the game is about. You could have a "what kind of Jim Raynor are you?" thing where the game is much more character/story focused and nature of your rebellion depends on what you do, or you could have some depressing and stressful story about how you can't do everything. Imagine I was a smartass and put an image of Jim with the face of the Detective from Disco Elysium superimposed over his (or vice versa) here
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Sep 5, 2023 14:16
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Regalingualius posted:Imagine I was a smartass and put an image of Jim with the face of the Detective from Disco Elysium superimposed over his (or vice versa) here This would be funny, and also Difficulty: Impossible for Blizzard to accomplish in any of its eras. Would also dovetail nicely with the scrapped 'alcoholic Jim' arc.
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Sep 5, 2023 14:21
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gently caress does Tychus care?
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Sep 5, 2023 14:24
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SIGSEGV posted:Personally I think if you're going to give side missions like these you should just set your plot up to not need time pressure, which really isn't that hard. Something like Highfleet does time pressure in a reasonable way, the fuzzyness of the gameplay means you have to make your own choice, in a campaign of this style it's just a calendar / time management game in which you sigh and refer to a guide to see what's possible because you don't have the metrics to act otherwise. So here, blizz did the right thing. It's notably hard to get right, though. Often there's either a way to "beat" the pseudo-time limit and essentially have infinite time or it's so gruelling you're locked into one optimal playstyle if you want to be able to beat the game. I would rather just have binary choices "oh no! there's only time to raid a train or save haven!!!" or a no pressure. Like, it's great when it works it just usually does not.
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Sep 5, 2023 14:25
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PurpleXVI posted:It's notably hard to get right, though. Often there's either a way to "beat" the pseudo-time limit and essentially have infinite time or it's so gruelling you're locked into one optimal playstyle if you want to be able to beat the game. I would rather just have binary choices "oh no! there's only time to raid a train or save haven!!!" or a no pressure. Like, it's great when it works it just usually does not. I think binary choices work best too, unless the missions are mostly interchangeable and you're not able to accidentally get yourself into a state where you can complete part 1 of a chain but can't finish part 2 because you ran out of time. They'd also need to probably decouple unit unlocks from missions as well and put them into a point buy menu. Because otherwise you're going to run into that awful state where you picked your 8 missions out of 12 but the unit you wanted to unlock was behind the 9th and instead you got a couple units you never use. But that's at odds with what I think was a good choice (independent of execution ) of using the mission design to showcase the unit that mission introduces...
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Sep 5, 2023 14:35
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Probably just repeating things other people have said mashed together, but the way I see it there's two good options, both rarely taken. A) Have time pressure in both narrative and gameplay, and build the game around it so that it's fair. Tell the player the rules of the pressure, and so on. Often this is achieved in strategy games by having an opposing faction that acts on the overworld as you act; you do a mission, they do something too. In that way the player chooses carefully what they want to do first so as to keep a step ahead. B) Just don't have time pressure, or have minimal time pressure. Too many games try to include it to make things seem high-stakes, but given the explosion of "cozy" games lately, that's clearly not necessary. Just let us have fun without pretending that there's a cataclysm happening somewhere offscreen. People brought up Skyrim, and Oblivion is very guilty of this poo poo too (oh no, it's a full scale invasion that is content to just sit around convenient choke points for you to shut down!  ), but consider Morrowind. The bad guy's plans are still in a sort of infiltration stage, moving slowly to build up power before striking, and you can thwart them at that stage before it becomes an actual war. Still plenty of intrigue and conflict, but you can be the one on the offense, and you can choose what speed that offense takes. A far better game in my opinion than those that followed it, mechanical advances notwithstanding.
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Sep 5, 2023 14:36
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Unit Spotlight: Ghost Overview:
Surprisingly, Ghosts and Spectres aren't just simple swaps of each other and have their own niches. The Ghost gains a bit more health over the Spectre, but has a slightly lower base DPS and movement speed to compensate. They have a stronger anti-Light bonus instead of anti-Armored, but again, anti-Light isn't that vital of a niche. Abilities  Cloak
 Snipe
If you haven't realized it yet, the final missions are going to be against the solely Biological zerg. This turns Snipe into a universal delete button. You can snipe down dangerous targets like Ultras, Banelings, and Brood Lords while making the Ghost's, dare I say it, anti-Light damage actually useful by letting them quickly clean up Zerglings without burning more energy.  Tac Nuke Strike
Armory Upgrades  Ocular Implants
The current generation also includes an automated targeting system that instantly calculates atmospheric pressure and wind shear, greatly increasing the effective sniping range of the Ghost. A surprisingly potent buff that keeps Ghosts even farther away from combat and out of trouble. This stacks with a Bunker's innate +1 and Projectile Accelerator, giving them a whopping 10 range. This can be really important in some missions, as Brood Lords just barely fall within that at 9.5. This means that if a zerg mission is throwing Brood Lords at your base, you can throw a handful of Ghosts into your Bunker line and let them shoot down any Brood Lord instead of needing to actively send out defenders to keep it from sieging down your defenses. It'll take a while, sure, since they'll only be doing their base damage, but that's one less thing you need to actively manage in the middle of a fight.  Crius Suit
Yet again, same as the Spectre's upgrade. At least the devs made sure to keep their core features the same. Field Manual Artwork  
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Sep 5, 2023 14:37
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Warmachine posted:But that's at odds with what I think was a good choice (independent of execution tbh if it meant that I could actually use the tech tree through the campaign, rather than going through basically tutorial levels for 2/3 of the campaign, I'd go for it
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Sep 5, 2023 15:08
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Important note against the Ghost's snipe: It has absolutely ZERO cooldown. You can use it as fast as you can target it. And anyone who's ever watched Giant Grant Games' infamous first "Deathless" video knows... there are keybinding tricks you can pull to launch those snipes impossibly fast.
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Sep 5, 2023 17:30
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Yeah Snipe is completely broken and a big part of it is Zerg being the endgame map enemy, so you can just hose down almost every single priority target if you can mass snipe them quickly enough.
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Sep 5, 2023 19:43
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Wing Commander: Prophecy had a branching campaign as well, but that was based on if you were able to hit certain objectives or not. The odd thing (that I remember, anyway) is that if you did badly at missions, the next missions were even harder, so really, once you start losing, you're going to go on losing. It makes sense from a story perspective, but really sucked from a gameplay perspective.
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Sep 5, 2023 21:24
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Colony Wars did the same until the third. Also the third Colony Wars was, ehh, not good.
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Sep 5, 2023 21:40
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The Wing Commander series had 'branches' that could go into 'bad' states by default if you failed missions/failed specific ones. IIRC in one of them (I think 2) you could go to the 'failed' path if you failed the first/tutorial mission in the game. Those games being extremely hard you often had total failure playthroughts in campaigns beyond you just being randomly shot down in missions.
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Sep 6, 2023 02:45
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I remember Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries had different paths if you failed some of the main missions, one mission it's actually *good* to fail since that leads to you getting some good gear.
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Sep 6, 2023 13:01
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