Re: Campaigns revisited

[Jens Granseuer <jensgr@gmx.net>]

On 13.03.2004 10:11, Dave Fancella wrote:
> On Saturday 13 March 2004 02:16 pm, Jens Granseuer wrote:
> > b) Campaigns in multiplayer
> > b1) When playing a campaign against the computer, maps will get
> > harder the farther the campaign progresses. This means that later
> > maps will not be balanced for multiplayer.
> 
> Is it really necessary for the maps to get harder the farther the campaign 
> progresses?  Not that I object, the underlying assumption is usually that the 
> player gets better with each progressive map.  I ask because I'm really in to 
> story-driven games, and it makes sense to me that the maps should only get 
> harder or easier if the story requires it.  Some campaigns make perfect sense 
> that the maps would get more complicated, because the assumption is that the 
> player is playing the FNA, and the FNA and the revolution in general should 
> be growing with each victory, allowing for more units to be put in the field 
> and larger battles fought, hence the battles themselves get more complicated, 
> although not necessarily harder.

They don't _have_ to get harder, of course. That's just what is usually the
case in almost any sort of game. It's entirely up to the mapper, though,
so anyone can handle this differently if they feel like it. Maybe I should
have just said that there will be unbalanced (for multiplayer) missions.

> > b2) Multiplayer campaigns get really complex. When playing
> > against the computer the player will only advance to the next map
> > if he wins. You can still have branches (e.g. a map with two main
> > objectives, and choose the next map depending on which one the
> > player accomplished). In multiplayer you'd basically need to
> > provide a branch for each map. That doesn't seem feasible.
> 
> The two main problems I see with branching are the pure number of maps needed 
> and making sure the story is always consistent in any path the players go 
> through.  So that makes branching for two player campaigns somewhat beyond 
> the current level of development, but not an unachievable goal in the future.  
> Is it possible to allow for branching now, but have campaigns single player 
> so that we could allow two-player campaigns later with branching?  You know, 
> later when there are more maps?

Yes, we can do that. I do however also see a conceptual issue with
two-player campaigns. Consider P1 winning the first engagement, P2 the second,
P1 the third, P2 the fourth, and so on until -- when? You keep walking the
campaign on an imaginary 'undecided' line, leaning towards neither side.
How do you resolve such a campaign?

> Well, to be honest I think that every map should be in a campaign, which is 
> why I think that single-map mode should open up every map for play.  :)

Assuming we go for tighter coupling of maps in a campaign this would make
it harder to contribute. Of all the maps currently in the distribution,
none really fit together seamlessly. Sure, they all share the general
background story but there's no red thread which would make them a
logical succession of missions.
So right now we don't have any campaigns at all and it's probably reasonable
not to expect a quick change here.

> > c) Difficulty for campaign maps in multiplayer (single-map) games.
> > As mentioned before, campaign maps tend to be biased. Do we just
> > accept that as it is or can we do something about it? If we live
> > with it, I guess that means we need to keep the (1) or (2) player
> > markers in the map list.

[...]

> Anyway, I'm not certain that campaign maps have to biased, but how biased the 
> maps are depends entirely on how good the AI is, so my thinking here is that 
> since the intent is to make the AI much better and more configurable then 
> it's too early to be able to really fine-tune a map for the AI vs. a human 
> player and it's entirely possible that the target AI is good enough that the 
> balance issue won't be an issue at all.

I agree it all hinges on the AI. The intent to make it better is all nice,
but (no offense to anyone) that intent has been there since the very first
incarnation which happened quite a while ago, and until there is an improved
version I can grab and play against we'll have to work with what we have.
And that means we have biased maps. And they are not going away. At least,
that's the way I prefer to look at it. If they do, fine, but I won't
believe it until it's happened.

Jens