Hero missions suck and how to fix it

[nightelfranger]

I finally started playing the campaign after 100+ hours with the survival mode and Im very disappointed with the hero missions. I used to like these kind of missions a lot back in the wc3 days and they were still good with sc2. So why are they so bad here?

I think the game developers probably misunderstood what makes these missions enjoyable. Its not mashing attack move, its not running away and attack move. Only thing really satisfying with these missions in its current form is just different ways to watch masses of zombies die. But really the problem is that these game mechanics are not really the thing that makes these missions fun. What makes these missions fun is that you get to focus more on your hero characters that you like and play the game slightly differently. Here you dont really care about you hero characters because they have no personality and you dont even use them on normal missions. They dont have interesting special abilities that might change the game a bit. Like remember in blizzard games when you do these missions theres always something to make you take advantage of the specific abilities the certain hero has and you play with different hero characters on different missions. Only thing this game has it lets you "customize" your hero to kill zombies slightly more efficiently.

Another thing these missions could have is fast paced action and advance the lore. These have neither. Its just opening doors, shooting zombies, running away and repeating. Its a dead world so there is no interesting interaction or any real lore. Reading the signs don't really count. Diary note style would have at least allowed you to see the events from some elses perspective. And then if the mission wasn't boring enough it forces you to tile scan the entire map if you want to find all the extra points you can get. Tile scanning and A moving dont make a good game.

So options to make the hero missions better would be:
-make character op so you can breeze through the mission and at least enjoy zombie massacre
-remove the aweful tile scanning by clearly pointing out the loot
-add personality to heroes to make them more interesting
-allow you to play as hero characters on normal missions
-make your heroes more unique and add more heroes or more customization options for abilities
-add interesting interactions to missions
-add actual lore pieces to missions

Easiest option is to just trivialize the missions, but preferred option would be to make them better.

[Quineloe]

I think the train to give the game an actual story with characters of relevance has already left.

There will be no James Raynor in TAB.

[jussr]

So I ran into a bit of advice for tabletop DMs the other day that I think also applies to the hero missions in this game - basically that giving players choice isn't the same thing as giving them agency, and it's the latter which makes things fun for them. Giving us a choice of three closed doors to open is a choice, but it's not an interesting one for us when we have no real reason to pick one over the others; we may as well roll a die.

The signs outside of rooms telling us what they were used for are a great start, but they could do with being expanded upon because 1) the number/strength of enemies inside doesn't always correspond to what you'd expect from what the room was used for, and 2) we don't find enough resources around the base in logical locations to both inform and reward our choices.

Or to put it another way, which would you prefer?

You walk in and see three closed doors.

Door 1 sign: Courtyard. Warning: infected! Inside you find lots of zombies, which you kill before going back.
Door 2 sign: Showers. Rat traps have been set. Inside you find a box of grenades which you wish you'd had five minutes ago.
Door 3 sign: Kitchen. Inside you find four chubbies clustered right by the door and get murdered.


OR

You walk in and see three closed powered doors, as well as a crispy dead zombie and a sparking panel that looks like it's been chewed on. A camera high up in the corner has a little red light; it looks to be in working order. You think you can rewire the panel to divert power to one of the doors, but only by locking off the other two in the process (so that they can only be accessed later on, after working your way around to the back entrances).

Door 1 sign: Armory. Inside you find grenades/a rocket launcher/whatever.
Door 2 sign: Security office. Inside you find monitors which reveal all/much of the map when inspected, including enemies.
Door 3 sign: Cellblock. You can hear muffled shouting from behind this door; inside you find a few grateful soldiers who join you for the rest of the mission.

[yoyo]

hero mission are most of time boring, even with goods scenaristics ideas (harpy cell, the butcher,..) u must scan all object, kill every zombie for progress.

[DrOnline]

Honestly, I've been playing RTS's since Dune 2, and hero missions have NEVER been fun to me. Like - what happened to my RTS game of building, expanding, conquering, surviving assaults? I'm playing a super stripped down Diablo clone mobile phone game now? I never understood the appeal of these missions, in RTS games.

[ImaLittleInsane]

Game Needs Smith,Ava and McCauley.

[porphyra]

Yeah, the lack of unit special abilities, not just heroes bugs me a bit, definitely makes the hero missions a bit boring.
Coming from games like Warcraft and Starcraft, I'm missing the micro potential and variety that active abilities can bring.

It's even weirder that the heroes are so barebones both in personality and ability-wise, and their levelling options (which is basically just numbers boosting, nothing to give the hero more options or abilities), considering that Numantian actually have an RPG under their belt.
Honestly, I would have expected them to know better.

[ElectricBlue7331]

Yup. They're just a slog. My "so-called" hero is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ than a base ranger even after some upgrades. The level of micro that seems to be required (with a very poor tactile game) is out of control. Also, please add save anywhere. Add a Hardcore mode where you can't save scam but come on some missions take SOOOOO long and to make one little mistake after an hour and is rage inducing like no other.

[snuggleform]

At bare minimum add some "filler" ability even something generic/hackneyed like "stim pack" so you feel like there's more interaction with your hero than just him/her spamming gun attacks all the time.

Better yet add some kind of perk or something that just starts you off with an extra soldier or two so it doesn't feel so lonely/stupid most of the time.

The devs could learn a lot just by playing starcraft ONE "hero" missions in terms of design/playability. The worst starcraft I hero mission is better than the best TAB mission, and starcraft I is like...more than 20 years old.

[H. S. Thompson]

I agree with what most ppl here are saying. I really think the heores in TAB need active abilities and a proper skill tree to develop them. Just auto-attacking and attack-moving is completely braindead gameplay tbh. There needs to be an extra layer of tactics / strategy, which active abilities would add - could be anything from temporary movement/attack speed increase, to explosives, to setting traps / towers / obstacles for the zombies, to spawning temporary companions (could be contraptions/robots/trained animals/whatever). anything is better than the damn auto-attack tbh.

I also agree that some general variation to the gameplay of the hero missions would be great - some other objectives than just "explore, kill, collect, leave" . Maybe escape a self-destructing facility while the horde is sprinting towards you? Maybe fight some hostile survivors? Maybe even expand on this and have the hostile survivors capture the hero and then have a mission where you need to escape from them while employing both stealth and fighting? Maybe have a puzzle somewhere? Anything but the same damn grind of "explore, kill, collect" . It gets old very fast..

tl;dr: Make some active abilities for the heores. Make some variations to the gameplay loop of the hero missions / new objectives.

[Tom7i]

Personally, i like them just becouse they add that "Diablo" feel to a general strategy game and they break up the same old town building routine with something different.

TBH i've had a deja vu with this situation as another favourite game of mine had done something similar years ago.

There's an awesome Dungeon Keeper clone called War for the overworld, where you have to build dungeons for your minions and defend them.

The devs have put ONE hero mission in their campaign, where you have to search a dungeon with a couple of necromancers who then get undead minions by killing their enemies.
Needless to say, there had been much uproar about why such a type of mission is in their "dungeon builder" game in the first place, but those of us who liked something new and refreshing loved it.

As for the SP missions in TAB, i've noticed the same as with regular missions - the more you push on through and the more tech tree (hero points in this case) you add to your gameplay, the easier it gets.

Once you upgrade the heroes' speed, shooting speed and damage by doing a couple of missions, it actually gets easier later on. At least that's my take on it.

[TheJpanther]

I like them, don't change them.
Some special "skills" for the heroes could be a nice add on, but dont fk it up too much.

[Kezic]

I just wish ironman was off for hero missions because they take so long and there arn't really any complex choices to make that led to death just one missclick that caused you to instantly lose 20+ mins of progress.

[76561188078797539]

While I would have preferred to see more variation to the design of hero missions, I'd be OK with them if only heroes did much more damage than they do right now.

There's absolutely no entertainment in spending literal tens of minutes just watching your heroes "pew-pew" on single targets (Calliope) or small clusters (Butchman McButch).

Make them drop individual targets like real "heroes," increase aggro radius and noise attraction, and it'd probably fix a lot of the tedium without too much effort involved.

Basically, make fights faster but more dangerous, though I can imagine people Ironmanning on Apoc would probably have a few comments to add about it ;)

[Quineloe]

Honestly the fact that infected are *deaf* until you spot them is such a ham fisted bandaid to make this whole thing even playable it's unbelievable.

You literally get punished for exploring. Even improving your vision range is detrimental because of that.

[ImaLittleInsane]

Originally posted by Jaffers:

I just wish ironman was off for hero missions because they take so long and there arn't really any complex choices to make that led to death just one missclick that caused you to instantly lose 20+ mins of progress.

HAHA the misclick finally happened to me today after 30 mins of clearing (whoever thought "harpies in solo hero missions" should get slapped XD).