So, about the campaign...

[Lunaire]

Put aside the story. Could be better but that is not what puzzles me. What does is, that it has nothing to do with what the game is about. You know, surviving massive hordes of enemies while defending your bastion. In the campaign, you rarely do that.(if ever)
Was it a different team, that did the campaign? I'm a little confused.

[Professional Gamer]

I didn't like the campaign for the same reason. I get that not every mission should be just a different variation of Survival mode, but whole campaign based on "pvp"(What I call it) was a little too much. It felt cumbersome to do missions and was rarely fun.

[ConnorTheCone]

I played the survival mode after the campaign and I found funny that they had to explain me everything about how the main game loop works.

And isn't like the survival follows the campaign timeline or something

[Lunaire]

Originally posted by Professional Gamer:

I didn't like the campaign for the same reason. I get that not every mission should be just a different variation of Survival mode, but whole campaign based on "pvp"(What I call it) was a little too much. It felt cumbersome to do missions and was rarely fun.

Well I like what you call pvp, in games that are supposed to be all about that. Here though, it's like the left hand didn't talk to the right hand. And if it's because of a narrative issue: A desperate fight against the apocalypse trying to link surviving settlements and scrounging for limited resources, is an appealing approach. No need to go full game of thrones and ignore the nightmares, for 90% of the campaign, which is what happened here.

"The king is a horrible person that treats his poople like crap so of course everybody is uppset. Oh and by the way, there's those monsters that are scorching the countryside but they're not enough of a threat to bother with them."
Or at least make it so, that we actually face armies of humans, if you want to go that route. The story will still be bad but at least the gameplay will fit the game.

P.S.: I honestly wished at least at some point for every single "hero" here to die asap. Not a single one of them was a good person, except maybe the archer guy but then, I don't even remember his name, maybe that's why.

[Buntkreuz]

I think for these games campaigns are an absolute waste of resources.
Could have rather gone into survival to flesh it out. 1 more faction, third hero for each of them, a few more buildings and units, 2 more biomes, a few more hardships, blessings and malices, more options, bigger maps and polishing.

If you think how work intensive it is to create such a campaign, this would have been very well possible.

Especially since the campaign is a one-off experience.

I would agree a campaign being a good idea, if it was more a conquest mode aka dynamic campaign, you know, more like Northgards Bifröst or Conquest, where you play several missions and earn a buff as a reward but each mission is the core survival mode but with a twist/unique goal.

And to be clear, im saying this as someone who invested more than 400 hours with AoE2DE alone on campaigns and scenarios.
So its not like they cant be something i like.

But even games like Northgard managed to stay unique and different in their campaigns, but keep the core gameplay loop.

[Hands]

i havent played past mission 2 of campaign (its really boring) but i would think its a prequel of events leading up to the survival mode, maybe? either way its really boring and looks absolutely massive. they missed the mark by not making each faction have 100% unique building and troops designs. i spent maybe 8-10 hours on my first survival mode match, died to the incredibly dumb end wave of 55,000 monsters from 5 spawn points and the only thing making me want to try again was the fact there were different playable factions. id figure they would give you unique buildings, troops in both mechanics and visuals to keep things interesting. instead, its a couple different troops and all the same buildings.

a lot about the design of the game confuses me. i was certainly not expecting a full blown RTS like starcraft but with the occasional death night where enemies run into the base. it is not a good hybrid imo and id rather it be tower defense base building with minimal to no troops to micromanage, or just a dedicated zerg faction that builds its own base and sends hordes like a traditional aggressive ai RTS pvp match.

[Lunaire]

Originally posted by Buntkreuz:

I think for these games campaigns are an absolute waste of resources.
Could have rather gone into survival to flesh it out. 1 more faction, third hero for each of them, a few more buildings and units, 2 more biomes, a few more hardships, blessings and malices, more options, bigger maps and polishing.

If you think how work intensive it is to create such a campaign, this would have been very well possible.

Especially since the campaign is a one-off experience.

I would agree a campaign being a good idea, if it was more a conquest mode aka dynamic campaign, you know, more like Northgards Bifröst or Conquest, where you play several missions and earn a buff as a reward but each mission is the core survival mode but with a twist/unique goal.

Well it could have been good but they fumbled it. So in this case, it's a waste of resources indeed. Especially since: if someone didn't do it's research, bought the game, did the campaign and didn't even try the survival mode because of it.
THAT being said: most RTS nowadays are doing poorly compared to "back in the days" mainly because of not enough efforts put into the campaigns, when there's even one to start with. When RTS were popular, the "skirmish mode" was an afterthought. Nowadays RTS aren't popular. Nowadays, skirmish mode is the main focus. Do the math. The RTS crowd hasn't diminished. It's just sleeping until studios put their priorities right once more.

I only hope I'll still be alive when they finally do. :P

[Lunaire]

Originally posted by Hands:

i havent played past mission 2 of campaign (its really boring) but i would think its a prequel of events leading up to the survival mode, maybe?

It's not. There is absolutely no link between the survival mode and the campaign.

[McGarnagle]

Originally posted by Lunaire:

Originally posted by Hands:

i havent played past mission 2 of campaign (its really boring) but i would think its a prequel of events leading up to the survival mode, maybe?

It's not. There is absolutely no link between the survival mode and the campaign.

damn and when i got into the beta i thought it was going to be single player survival mode
.... multiplayer works like garbage but its fun. too bad that the campaign isn't anything like the "real game"? and this is the problem ... what gameplay is the "real game" then?

[Lonestead]

Dunno I think its ok for a campaign. I already have survival mode. So I was happy campaign wasn't just another survival mode.

[Marcus Butthurticus]

Originally posted by Lunaire:

Put aside the story. Could be better but that is not what puzzles me. What does is, that it has nothing to do with what the game is about. You know, surviving massive hordes of enemies while defending your bastion. In the campaign, you rarely do that.(if ever)
Was it a different team, that did the campaign? I'm a little confused.

Its...a campaign? Play CnC or Starcraft. Their campaigns would barely have anything to do with the skirmish mode either.

[Lunaire]

Originally posted by Marcus Butthurticus:

Originally posted by Lunaire:

Put aside the story. Could be better but that is not what puzzles me. What does is, that it has nothing to do with what the game is about. You know, surviving massive hordes of enemies while defending your bastion. In the campaign, you rarely do that.(if ever)
Was it a different team, that did the campaign? I'm a little confused.

Its...a campaign? Play CnC or Starcraft. Their campaigns would barely have anything to do with the skirmish mode either.

You're right but as I mentioned in a previous post, those games were mostly about the campaign and skirmish was secondary. That's why they sold. That, Starcraft went on being mostly about the skirmish later on, is another story. Another example of a game that didn't change how it play for the campaign would be dawn of war, even though, again, it was mostly popular for it's campaign. Not to mention that both games you mention, didn't change the way you play them in the campaign vs skirmish mode.
The biggest problem of the campaign in this game, I think, is that they don't have the tools to make it more interesting because they designed the game around the survival mode and not around a classic CnC campaign, even if that's what they tried to do with the campaign. A bit more thought into how to make a campaign that would work with what was there in survival, would have saved them a lot of time.
Again, the story being poo, is not really what I see as out of place. It's the gameplay itself. "Let's just make a few static maps with corridors you have to progress through and slap on a random story, instead of using the mechanics we started with because we said we'd have a campaign but didn't say it'd be good or relevant." Is what it feels like.

[One Man Army]

You should treat the campaign of this game as a form of tutorial for the main mode that is survival. It gives some backstory about the world, the characters and what you are defending against.

I would love it if they had expanded more on it with more defense missions, but I guess with limited resources, we can't have everything.
It's better if they focus their resources on improving the survival mode and quality of life things, which is the meat of the game.

[Lunaire]

Originally posted by One Man Army:

You should treat the campaign of this game as a form of tutorial for the main mode that is survival. It gives some backstory about the world, the characters and what you are defending against.

I would love it if they had expanded more on it with more defense missions, but I guess with limited resources, we can't have everything.
It's better if they focus their resources on improving the survival mode and quality of life things, which is the meat of the game.

It doesn't teach you anything about the survival mode though... hence why you get tutorial popups during survival I guess. Like the day/night cycles. You also barely get to fight nightmares compared to how much you fight humans. So, I fail to see how it should be considered as a tutorial unless you're talking about camera movements but then, you don't need a full campaign for that.