For The Devs: Main Campaign?

[GrandMajora]

So, going off the website, it seems like the gameplay mechanics heavily revolve around the idea of a custom, sandbox narrative for the players to explore and enjoy as they evolve their empire.

Does this mean that the game will not feature a main campaign story, like the previous games of the series did? I admit, I'm having a bit of difficulty trying to imagine how the two features would feasibly work together. But without a main campaign, it sounds like the game might just plop you down in the world after generating your faction and say "alright, do whatever!"

[Kain]

At best, It probably will be something like we saw in PF. It's obvious to me that Triumph rather want to go for something like the big X4 games like Stellaris, CK or Victoria, with no real narrative campaign.

[Jo]

Which is best IF the opportunities for varied emerging story telling are there.

[Kain]

Yeah, I'd hate to visit new places over the span of my single-map story.

[BlackNyasher]

I kind of afraid they turned campaign into the Galactic Empire-mode from Planetfall so you will be playing your own race and your own no-name wizard-lizard on random maps with some special conditions, randomly facing story-related events and canonical charaters as your oponents, in some kind of story-driven sequence (like you're not gonna face the event X until you successfuly finished events A, B and C, and the way it goes and characters you side/oppose all depends on your choices in said events which's availability depends on your race's traits). Can be done as the list of "achievements" you need to complete during your playthroughs before you can advance to the next "act" of the story (something like finish the game on the world with trait A or beat the event B during any mission).

Maybe it allows to play "campaign" like this even in multiplayer where to face this "event X" all players must finish the events "A", "B" and "C" with their race in previous sessions (so they could be surprised to find out they all completed this events and found themself in the middle of the armageddon).

So it could be done very cool and turn AoW into some kind of MMOTBS where you can decide for yourself to complete whole campaign experience in multiplayer, but i am not sure something like this can be done earlier than in AoW5 or even 6 after Planetfall 2.

[zeshoot]

Well, to me PF 'campaign' sukk hard comparing to AoW1-3. Story was well written in 1st 3 games, characters moved on (some), had good weight, tension, good/evil vibe, each races were having it place.
Planet Fall story - tried, got bored. Especially the latest empire system. Kinda fell off of interest. Pick a race/tech and play like random scenario.
I hope they will do proper, regular campaign - like link it to previous games. And if they do Empire/Kingdom mode - well, imma play random scenarios instead, or players made maps/scenarios probably, hell, even maby gonna make my own if editor gonna be there and be good.
I did some hard hours in 1st AoW map creations, even with scripted maps/places that spawn events. That was lots of fun making. Damn, sweet early 2000, how many good games were then - AoW, Homeworld, Myth series, Die by the sword, Soul Reaver, Disciples 1-2...Good old days. ;)

[BlackNyasher]

Well, will be hard to do the campaign worse than the one from Planetfall (even tho potentially the idea/concept wasn't bad, but delivered poorly)

[Multifaced]

I really enjoyed the campaigns in AOW3, so it would be a real shame if no effort was made to make ones at least capable of rivalling those from aow3. Ideally I'd like to see improvements upon the campaings from AOW3.

This company has recently had a history of cutting back, streamlining and simplifying the games to obviously appeal more to the mainstream and common consumer.

So with that theme, I am not too hopeful to expect a game that will deliver the improvements I would have liked to see from a game to follow up AOW3.

But despite my skepticism, it remains to be seen. Will only really know once in depth gameplay footage becomes available from people who aren't just hype npcs

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

The AoW3 campaign was one of its most criticized features. Many players found it too hard and too frustrating. (Especially the "lose if a hero dies" mechanic.) Others found it boring because of how it was all about having strong heroes and early rushes. The AoW3 forums still have a regular trickling influx of people getting stuck and complaining.

More importantly, many players only ever play the campaign in games. So these players would never see the game as it was designed to be played: on open maps where you can build your own empire.

The planetfall campaigns seem to have been designed to fix exactly this issue. They look and feel like skirmish maps with extra quests and storylines. Because of this I found them much more fun to play.

But they also lost the parts that made the AoW3 campaigns (and AoW1/2/sm for that matter) memorable: hand-crafted beautiful maps tied to the story.

We'll have to wait and see what AoW4 does. From comments so far I'm guessing it won't be a linear campaign. Maybe instead independent story maps or something? We'll see. But I'm hoping we'll at least get that hand-crafted and designed look back.

[zeshoot]

Hand-crafted with locations and heroes is the key imho. That made me and I bet many players so into AoW. The connection between me-story-characters I'm in charge and the choices I take. I love event triggering hit boxes on general maps, spawning special chars/units/stacks (Disciples mode). It makes fantasy game more sucking me in. But that's me. Open maps were always here so no need of doing it within story driven campaign.

[Peats]

The next dev diary will focus on Lore and Story Realms.
We will have more info on the 2nd of February, a week from now. I doubt we'll get any details before then.

[CalvinHobbes]

Originally posted by zeshoot:

Hand-crafted with locations and heroes is the key imho. That made me and I bet many players so into AoW. The connection between me-story-characters I'm in charge and the choices I take. I love event triggering hit boxes on general maps, spawning special chars/units/stacks (Disciples mode). It makes fantasy game more sucking me in. But that's me. Open maps were always here so no need of doing it within story driven campaign.

I agree, hand-crafted scenarios are key. I don't mind a few dynamically generated scenarios, especially if they are optional, but the majority should be story related and hand-crafted.

[Central]

some more info was posted in the faq:

Will there be a campaign?
"Story and lore are very important in AoW4. The game is centered around Magehaven, from which the Godir travel to magical realms within the Astral Sea. The Godir are a cast of ancient Wizard Kings and newly ascended Mortal Champions, which together form the Pantheon.
The Godir venture to a variety of realms to investigate and conquer. Some of these realms are "Story Realms", which construct an unfolding plot. Through these Story Realms the campaign is integrated into the Pantheon system. You can compare the structure to an open world RPG, where our story Realms are like the main plot, and the other realms are more like side missions and/or exploring the wilderness of the universe.

We are going to have a dedicated Dev Diary with more details about Lore and Story Realms next week, Feb 2nd. Keep an eye on the Forum on Thursday! "

Will there be an option for co-op in the campaign?
"The Story Missions are exclusively single-player, but players can of course play Special Challenge Realms in co-op."

Source

[GrandMajora]

Also, the devs have stated that the 'canon' ending for AoW 3 had the Shadowborn successfully release the Wizard Kings from their prison.

Based on what we've seen so far, I guess we can infer that to mean that either the Elven Court destroyed the Common Wealth and enslaved humanity, or the Common Wealth destroyed the Elven Court and fell prey to decadence, leading to them exhausting their resources.

[BlackNyasher]

Poor wizards gonna be beaten once more

I starting to think being wizard is the worst job in the world

[Central]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Also, the devs have stated that the 'canon' ending for AoW 3 had the Shadowborn successfully release the Wizard Kings from their prison.

Based on what we've seen so far, I guess we can infer that to mean that either the Elven Court destroyed the Common Wealth and enslaved humanity, or the Common Wealth destroyed the Elven Court and fell prey to decadence, leading to them exhausting their resources.

how did we get to the point where humanity would be enslaved by the elven court?