In regards to campaign...

[karghul]

This is something that was already discussed through and through in these forums, but just want to put my two cents here. As an RTS enjoyer, some of the games that I remember best are Warcraft 3, Populous the Beginning, CnC Tiberium Wars, Sacrifice, Starcraft 2, Age of Mythology, even They are Billions etc. All of them had one thing in common: good story-driven campaign modes. Even in Supreme Commander I only went through campaign missions.

I was once redditing comparable successes of Age of Empires series. One player argued, I think convincingly, that the reason why 2nd was most succesful was due to good solo missions. Most RTS fans actually don't go past single player, but from that playerbase, the competitive and online groups emerge and stay strong. I will buy Sins 2 anyway, I really liked first one. But certainly I haven't spent as much time on it as was the potential. Skirmish is just... something is missing.

That's all, thank you for reading!

[Frogboy]

That is a good point and something worth discussing.

With Sins of a Solar Empire II, we discussed at length whether to include a campaign or not. We have, as you can imagine, been dying to go through the story of the Vasari for a long, long time.

However, we also wanted to keep the price of the base game down and we know that a substantial % of our player base don't play campaigns. As one example, I've never played a single StarCraft campaign mission even though I have tens of thousands of hours into StarCraft 2 (Diamond 1 player).

Thus, the decision was made that we would launch with a $49.99 (instead of a $59.99) price tag (it'll be on sale for $39.99 for the first couple weeks on Steam) and then make the campaign its own DLC we release later. This way, the people who want the campaign can et the campaign and the people who don't care aren't required to pay for it as part of the base game.

Obviously, we will get dinged in reviews for this since it is pretty expected for games to have campaigns nowadays (and that's a larger issue of metacritic reviews often not taking the price of a game into account when reviewing).

We think this way, everyone ends up getting what they want. :)

[Mr.Person]

So a campaign is confirmed as a DLC at a later time? Interesting.

[NatEff3ct]

Can't wait!

[Sifer2]

Well that's kind of unexpected to get such an honest explanation, and a random future campaign announcement on the Steam discussion boards lol. We even got the launch price too. Maybe this means a release date is coming soon.

One thing I would like to point out though since Starcraft was mentioned is Blizzard themselves later released data showing the majority of their Starcraft players only ever played the Campaign then didn't even touch multiplayer. It's why they went back, and added in the Co-Op mode. It's been a hot topic among RTS veterans in recent years with some feeling like a Campaign isn't needed just because they personally are hardcore players who never play it. But the data shows lot's of casual players out there do. So I think it's a good decision to do a Campaign but hopefully it's done well, and marketed like a second launch when it happens so you actually get those casual players.

[Mr.Person]

Originally posted by Sifer2:

One thing I would like to point out though since Starcraft was mentioned is Blizzard themselves later released data showing the majority of their Starcraft players only ever played the Campaign then didn't even touch multiplayer. It's why they went back, and added in the Co-Op mode. It's been a hot topic among RTS veterans in recent years with some feeling like a Campaign isn't needed just because they personally are hardcore players who never play it. But the data shows lot's of casual players out there do. So I think it's a good decision to do a Campaign but hopefully it's done well, and marketed like a second launch when it happens so you actually get those casual players.

That may be true for something like StarCraft, but Sins is a bit different still. Starcraft skirmishes are almost entirely designed for PVP multiplayer, and the campaign was for the solo PVE players.

In Sins, both PVP and PVE players can enjoy the same mode. I probably have 1,600 hours between the sins games (not all on Steam) and all of it was PVE/Co op comp stomping. Really only the hardcore 5v5s community do PVP, but they also find it very enjoyable.

I'm still of the opinion that using all the cash and talent to make a singleplayer campaign that most will only play once or twice rather than using it to add more content or further refine the main mode isn't a great idea.

But I'm not a Sins dev or have the analytics :P

[Lywelyn]

hmm RTS with post released campaign as DLC later on could be seen as blasphemy at best from a lot of RTS fans, but at least we have transparency here. We'll see how pricey the campaign will be for what kind of content it'll provide , time will tell. not much a big deal tho, sins never had a campaign to begin with, we had lore from the cutscenes which was good enough i guess.

what time tell us already tho , is that You can hardly compared Sins and starcraft, or else, since these games are very diferent aside from some similarity.

i would like to know the justification for the price difference from EG store and steam.
most of the folks on the forum could care less since the game will provide enought play time worth of 40 USD. nevertheless, why is it 5-10 bucks lower on Epic store ?

[Mr.Person]

Right now I'm assuming its because of a pre-launch discount, once it releases on Steam it'll be the full release, so the price will probably go up, as I assume it also will on Epic. Many early access games do this.

[Frogboy]

Price will be the same on both.

Sins isn't an RTS like StarCraft. Each game is a campaign unto itself really.

But we do get that there's a lot of lore here and we really want to get into that lore as it is, well, vast and more intricate than we can express in the normal game modes.

We also think it'll help explain some of the things coming up. It should be noted that Sins II is not including a 4th race...

Almost all our efforts have been spent basically making a new Sins game from scratch and putting in a lot of effort to make it still look similar to Sins I (hence, the irony when someone says it looks *too* much like Sins I -- that was not an easy thing to accomplish given that they're all new models and an all new engine -- the goal was to make it look as close as we could to Sins I visually but with all the benefits of a brand-new 2024 3D engine).

[Lywelyn]

i say from what i've seen so far from the store page, so far that's a pretty nice job done, we all can't wait to get our hands on it !

[»ƲßƐƦ«]

Originally posted by Frogboy:

Price will be the same on both.

Sins isn't an RTS like StarCraft. Each game is a campaign unto itself really.

But we do get that there's a lot of lore here and we really want to get into that lore as it is, well, vast and more intricate than we can express in the normal game modes.

We also think it'll help explain some of the things coming up. It should be noted that Sins II is not including a 4th race...

Almost all our efforts have been spent basically making a new Sins game from scratch and putting in a lot of effort to make it still look similar to Sins I (hence, the irony when someone says it looks *too* much like Sins I -- that was not an easy thing to accomplish given that they're all new models and an all new engine -- the goal was to make it look as close as we could to Sins I visually but with all the benefits of a brand-new 2024 3D engine).

The game plays very well, and has a total annihilation feel to it. A campaign would def be something worth doing right and getting it into our hands ASAP. Replay value of Sins II is great, but it's def no SCII rts on the multiplayer front, the games are much larger and longer in scope, and require multiple sessions usually. Which is why a campaign could really round out title gracefully. Adding more alien races down the road with more storied DLCs would keep me coming back for more!

[Bozz 💀]

so if we keep this logic the campaign is going to be 10$ ?

[Mr.Person]

Probably closer to $15-$20

[Velovar]

Originally posted by karghul:

As an RTS enjoyer, some of the games that I remember best are Warcraft 3, Populous the Beginning, CnC Tiberium Wars, Sacrifice, Starcraft 2, Age of Mythology

Wow even Populous and Sacrifice, are you me?

[Trainwreck]

Just follow through with a campaign... people will pay. Dont try to innovate too much...Warhammer 40k DoW series learned real quick how to alienate their players.
Make a true sequel, the game doesn't need to be anything else than what it is. It was never a total annihilation/supreme commander scale, game... dont try and make it one.

[Nightskies]

Surely campaign elements can become options in skirmishes. It was mentioned that a single skirmish game can be like a campaign- intent taken as to the length of a game- but more accurately, that a single major battle shouldn't determine the outcome of the game.

So, if some of the new mechanics created are synergistic with a skirmish, say "pre-generated empires" starting with 10 colonies, missions and intrigue generated objectives, or civilian related events ('refugees from a recently conquered colony'), all optional, these can meaningfully contribute to a multiplayer match too.

The campaign itself doesn't have to be a mostly macro-driven experience like many other RTS campaigns are. It could instead be more akin to Titanfall, a chain of games that eventually includes an online matchup (if players are available).

I would prefer it were macro-driven though, it would be better for storytelling.

There's a lot of potential for story too. They should be eager to tell the Vasari story, it already has the makings of a less often told tragedy, but one major element that is perfect for an epic: rising from defeat to seek a better future.

Looking at it from a design PoV, this provides a change of task to an extent- constantly doing balance work and creating new toys can get monotonous. Changing the focus to creating unambiguous 'bad guys' for the heroes to beat up can feel really damn refreshing. Even if its a tragedy like Arthas' culling of Stratholm. I know 90% of you will know what I'm talking about... Wouldn't it be great if we can refer to a hero/villan of the Vasari, or the Advent, or perhaps a TEC charismatic leader we can remember?

While that isn't as intense a memory as a personal matchup that was so intense and close that it would live in memory, these stories are more relatable and enrich our lives. We can talk about Arthas, but to tell someone "I'll always remember this one game that was really intense..." ... You get the picture, I think.

For one, I eagerly await the story that the able development team has to tell.