Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2014 4:33 am Post subject:
Wall of text feedback/suggestions (spoilers ahoy)
Hey! First off, I want to preface by saying this is one of the most enjoyable mods I've ever played -- if not THE best Command and Conquer mod. The work done here on building an interesting campaign (and more importantly, an interesting world to set the campaign IN) is quite spectacular. I often found myself playing just to see what the next environment looked like and what the next weird situation I was going to find myself in was going to be -- good design there. I honestly wish this was the direction CNC had gone down instead of what it became under EA.
So that being said, there are some things that I wanted to bring up to hopefully help you guys improve what you already have.
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1. The most glaring and obvious thing that threw me off was the nature of the two campaigns. I wasn't sure if they were supposed to be mutually exclusive (a la most CNC campaigns) or if they were two sides of one continuous story. Moreover, I really enjoyed the GDI campaign and the sense of progression within, but the Nod campaign really got on my nerves repeatedly because it frequently contradicted events or suppositions from the GDI campaign. Even if these campaigns are mutually exclusive, it is frustrating to see GDI get a Railgun platform way before I ever had access to it in the storyline. In general, it was obvious that GDI was way upgunned above similar points in the GDI campaign -- which were story objectives.
2. The Nod campaign also lacks a clear sense of timescale. The GDI campaign has a nice jump from the TD era into the future -- the NOD one doesn't. I have no idea when most of the events took place other than the end levels which obviously parallel the GDI timeline. There wasn't a whole lot of opportunity to use the TD Nod units, which would have been nice.
3. More coherency/consistency in the Nod plot. The GDI campaign felt like it built up to something: first you were on the run in the TD era, then you slowly built up your forces and took the fight back to Nod, then you had to fight your allies, and then it was building up to a climactic showdown at a Nod facility. The Nod campaign does not. It's plot is just basically a scattered collection of missions loosely linked together with the exception of the NB missions.
4. The forgotten are a minor faction, but they have units in the code. Why not throw these in somewhere on one or two of the missions to further expand the setting?
5. This might be beyond you, but: FMV cutscenes, if done well. They'd really help expand the gaps in story between the missions. Also really nail down TI as something special.
6. Is it even possible to use the GloboTech sidebar right now with the way things work? Forgive me, I'm more of an RA2/YR guy and didn't feel like putzing around with the factions to see if any of them actually loaded from sidec03.mix.
7. NOD 15: The concept is completely flawed and counter intuitive because of the weird way stealth works in the mission (ie, I can kill civs with an airstrike and GDI takes a nap, but as soon as a tank is barely visible it's all over but the crying). Also, being able to sit so long once you know the timer starts upon capturing the warehouse, and gaming the set up to wipe out as much as you can before the timer starts. Not even sure I could beat it if I hadn't done that.
8. FINALLY, a bit of random conjecture.
I wondered why the GloboTech officers kept fighting GDI even after it was clear they'd suffered several defeats and GDI was on the verge of taking them out. It's made clear that GT rebuffs GDI's communication attempts after the incident, which seems like something they'd want to at least try. But then on GDI Mission 8, there is the Nod psychic corps -- I started to wonder if there was a connection. Perhaps Nod is in control of GT officials by that point with psychic tech, but still needed to stage an incident to make a war more plausible. Once it happened, the Nod plants in GT leadership were able to ensure the war continued even if it meant GT's destruction.
1. The two campaigns are supposed to be intertwined, and so far they are except for a couple of exception that will be taken care of before the final release. One of these is, like you said, that some units are still used in the wrong missions instead of being available later in the campaign. The other one and probably the biggest contradiction is the way the GDI insurrection happens, i.e. GDI mission 10 vs. Nod mission 10. I might replace the Nod mission with something else once I get more important stuff done.
2. This is partly because of the same problem I stated in #1, some of the units are still used in wrong missions. The first Nod missions will be edited to include more of the TD era units. All buildings in these missions will be replaced with TD buildings too once we have them ingame.
3. I think I have to disagree with you here. The first half of the Nod campaign is about how Nod first discovers that GT is helping GDI get back on their feet and later try to stop their progress by attacking their important locations around the world, like the GT depot in Nod mission 6 for example. But after they notice the two are growing too strong together, they cause the GDI insurrection. The later half is about the Nod faction split-up, which took place soon after the GDI insurrection.
However, I do think that the storyline could be explained a bit better in some cases, we still need to expand the mission briefings a little bit.
4. You're right, they should be used in some of the missions. I just keep forgetting. Pun not intended.
5. I agree, and there have been some ideas about FMV's that would play during the missions and introduce new units for example. But this is up to our FMV artist Henskelion.
6. I'll leave this to someone who knows more about this stuff.
7. Nod 15th has its problems, like the ones you mentioned. Those will be taken care of.
8. It's been discussed that GT should surrender in the end of GDI 13th instead of fighting to the last man like Nod fanatics. This would make sense because at that point GT has clearly lost the war between them and GDI and has no reason to fight back anymore. _________________
Twisted Insurrection's Lead Campaign Developer QUICK_EDIT
6. I'm not sure if the Spawner or whatever but maybe if its possible to load alternate Side Mixes pre-missions to make that possible if not? Meh... _________________ ~ Excelsior ~ QUICK_EDIT
Thank you for your extensive feedback. Q45 has already summed most (pretty much all) of your questions up with very well put answers so I'm just here to say a few words about your feedback in general and share some information with you.
First of all, in regards to your 6th question, codes supplied by Spawner allow us to use custom interfaces / UI / Graphics for additional sides (see DTA's Allies and Soviets for example), at the moment, we are not using them but we plan to in the future which is why the files are present. I intend to begin planning out a GloboTech campaign of sorts once we have gotten more important jobs out of the way.
Secondly, this isn't soley based on one of your statements but rather a lot of things you mentioned in general, but we do plan to add many, many more missions to the campaign; Not just at the end, but in-between. There are a few tiny plot-holes and things that can be improved upon and we have come to realize it after this release thanks to lots of extensive public feedback.
Q45 has worked very hard to change a lot of his missions around to better suit the public input and we are both very pleased with the results so far. We have also been drafting some mission ideas for some more unit introduction maps as this is something I feel the mod could do with more of.
Discovering a unit in your sidebar and trialing and erroring it to see what it does best and what it doesn't isn't that good of a learning curve for players, so we are looking to add missions that will teach players how to use some certain units (A Dragonfly mission and a Marauder mission are already in the works). We'll be adding more missions with these intentions once we get the time, not just for GDI, but for Nod too, the Scorpion didn't get a real introduction either which was a poor oversight on my behalf as it's Anti-Air ability isn't very well known. Twisted Dawn units will also be more prominent in the early base-building missions too, such as giving Nod the Ratel-20 APC before the Termite is introduced and allowing GDI to construct their APC's before the WASP is introduced. You catch my drift, right?
Not only will new missions be added to thicken the plot and to lengthen out the campaign, but a lot of other missions are being updated all the time to improve them and the general story. If you play the original campaign that was released with Public Beta 5 and then play the campaign as of today you will see some remarkable changes based on public input.
Thanks again for your input, hope to hear from you again! QUICK_EDIT
Great to hear the plans for the campaign. I wondered myself if introducing the units couldn't be done more effectively for a learning curve, but I also didn't know if you were aiming to cater towards everyone or just the hard core C&C guys who don't care about how hard it is. In general I am very impressed by all of your professionalism on the team. Keep up the good work.
I also made you guys a tvtropes page... let's just say I was bored at work and leave it at that. Didn't think it merited it's own topic.
Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2014 9:44 pm Post subject:
Re: Wall of text feedback/suggestions (spoilers ahoy)
redfox34 wrote:
5. This might be beyond you, but: FMV cutscenes, if done well. They'd really help expand the gaps in story between the missions. Also really nail down TI as something special.
Guess this is my field, since I'm the one doing the cutscenes. While using actual live action is questionable, given that none of us are actors and making correct props for everything would be difficult and expensive, the suggestion of using CG cutscenes to provide story narrative has been considered. There's just the problem of workload... it's enough work as it is creating all the models, textures and animations necessary for the brief victory/failure cutscenes that occur after each mission, but making cutscenes that would last several minutes each would be an absolutely massive amount of work for one guy. So, unless TI acquires another CG animator I can work with, story cutscenes probably aren't going to happen anytime soon. QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 22 Nov 2010 Location: Iszkaszentgyorgy, Hungary
Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2014 10:03 pm Post subject:
You could just simply go and place sound triggers everywhere as narration or smth. That's a lot easier to do. _________________ "If you didn't get angry and mad and frustrated, that means you don't care about the end result, and are doing something wrong." - Greg Kroah-Hartman
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Past C&C projects: Attacque Supérior (2010-2019); Valiant Shades (2019-2021)
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WeiDU mods: Random Graion Tweaks | Graion's Soundsets
Maintainance: Extra Expanded Enhanced Encounters! | BGEESpawn
Contributions: EE Fixpack | Enhanced Edition Trilogy | DSotSC (Trilogy) | UB_IWD | SotSC & a lot more... QUICK_EDIT
Nah, I was only really interested in reading the TI Article. I would like to point out however that the one regarding Sensors isn't exactly true on the grounds that the Nod Radar doubles as a Sensor (with shorter range). Also, GloboTech never got it's name from Small Soldiers (despite the fact that I know the film), that's just a really bizarre coincidence. QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 22 Nov 2010 Location: Iszkaszentgyorgy, Hungary
Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2014 5:26 pm Post subject:
TVTropes is da best! TVTropes FTW! Ask Dutchy if confirmation needed. _________________ "If you didn't get angry and mad and frustrated, that means you don't care about the end result, and are doing something wrong." - Greg Kroah-Hartman
=======================
Past C&C projects: Attacque Supérior (2010-2019); Valiant Shades (2019-2021)
=======================
WeiDU mods: Random Graion Tweaks | Graion's Soundsets
Maintainance: Extra Expanded Enhanced Encounters! | BGEESpawn
Contributions: EE Fixpack | Enhanced Edition Trilogy | DSotSC (Trilogy) | UB_IWD | SotSC & a lot more... QUICK_EDIT
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