Omenroad is not the DLC this game needs

[Amoc]

I haven't played this game in a couple of years, but flabbergasted that with the bones that this game has, absolutely nothing has been done in terms of story or narrative since the last mini-campaign.

In two years, they've delivered a shallow armour pack that changes almost nothing, and now we're getting a combat challenge gauntlet. I couldn't be less interested.

The story and the atmosphere is 50% of this game. The combat is well-done but it's not good enough to stand alone. This is a big swing and miss from my perspective.

[psionusoid]

The omenroad DLC will include (an omenroad-style) campaign.

Many of the random events have been reworked in the last couple years, and there are also a handful of completely new ones.

EDIT: There's also a modded full campaign: Memories of the Past

[Du-Vu]

The announcement does say there's going to be story content, it's just not what they're beta-ing. And I want to say the last two official campaigns both actually came out since release, didn't they? As ^ says, there've been quite a few new and rewritten events. The game was well supported in its first two years, not to mention early access.

Seems premature to write off the DLC, and definitely unfair to say the company, which started as only like six devs, is doing "absolutely nothing" now, after all the work that's already in the base game. I'm not as into combat for its own sake, but I get that it's an audience. If Worldwalker want a break from writing heady prose and want to build on their combat system and make it something that could stand alone, good for them.

[Amoc]

Okay, fair enough. It hasn't been "absolutely nothing". That being said, the in-game events are hardly deep storylines that drive anything forward. They're flavor, and they can be interesting, but they're repetitive.

I just feel like the devs are missing the point of what made the game so interesting in the first place. Elana and the Moth was the high point of the game, and there's so much that could be done along those lines for relatively little investment.

[psionusoid]

I think nearly everyone would like there to be more campaigns, but I'm not sure what you mean by "relatively little investment". At this point in the game, I was under the impression that writing events was the most time-consuming part of development.

[Amoc]

I find that very hard to believe.

[Derpykat5]

Originally posted by Amoc:

I find that very hard to believe.

It's not easy to write events. Not from a coding standpoint, but from a design and effort standpoint. It takes real effort to design a scenario, write all the dialogue (especially when you consider there's unique dialogue for different personality and relationship values), and design all the panels, balance the outcomes (if any), etc. It's not easy.

[Ammy]

Regarding the campaigns being the hardest part to design well. I kinda agree with the Devs on this one. There is a reason in the almost 3 years the game has been out that we haven't even gotten full on new campaign mods, like there is the one mentioned earlier in the thread but thats kinda been it. These things take a lot of time to make coherent and consistant.

I would also argue that after you finish the base campaigns, the main charm of this game are the random campaigns, and the heroes you make along the way. As a result, personally? I'm looking forward to Omenroad. It's going to hit a lot of boxes for me in terms of replayability while waiting for a hopefully full on Campaign DLC in the future.

[Amoc]

Originally posted by Ammy:

Regarding the campaigns being the hardest part to design well. I kinda agree with the Devs on this one. There is a reason in the almost 3 years the game has been out that we haven't even gotten full on new campaign mods, like there is the one mentioned earlier in the thread but thats kinda been it. These things take a lot of time to make coherent and consistant.

I think the reason is that they've chosen to focus on other things. I can certainly understand that there's a bit of extra effort in designing encounters, music, art and dialogue for a video game than just typing it off on the keyboard, but they're still just short stories. We're not talking about huge narratives spanning hundreds of pages. The fact that modders have been able to implement full-length campaigns in relatively short periods of time should tell you something, even if they're not on par with Elana and the Moth in quality.

I would bet that the bigger issue is designing enemies, abilities and environments.

Originally posted by Ammy:

I would also argue that after you finish the base campaigns, the main charm of this game are the random campaigns, and the heroes you make along the way. As a result, personally? I'm looking forward to Omenroad. It's going to hit a lot of boxes for me in terms of replayability while waiting for a hopefully full on Campaign DLC in the future.

I enjoyed the random campaigns for a little bit, but they're aimless and they get so repetitive that (IMO) there's no reason over just replaying a story campaign.

[Du-Vu]

Originally posted by Ammy:

Regarding the campaigns being the hardest part to design well. I kinda agree with the Devs on this one. There is a reason in the almost 3 years the game has been out that we haven't even gotten full on new campaign mods, like there is the one mentioned earlier in the thread but thats kinda been it. These things take a lot of time to make coherent and consistant.

I would also argue that after you finish the base campaigns, the main charm of this game are the random campaigns, and the heroes you make along the way. As a result, personally? I'm looking forward to Omenroad. It's going to hit a lot of boxes for me in terms of replayability while waiting for a hopefully full on Campaign DLC in the future.

Yeah, I'd tend to agree. It takes time to implement stories at the quality they've been able to come out with so far, and I wouldn't want that level to drop. The style here is deceptively simple -- a lot of atmosphere, and a particular kind of wistfulness that could have felt forced or artificial in someone else's hands. I like that the modding workshop is open, but even some of the most popular can feel pretty immersion-breaking when they come up, at least for me.

[melindusty]

Listen, a central part of this game for me is the drip, and I definitely got that from the skins update.

[Amoc]

Good for you, I guess. I'll sit here waiting for a new story campaign. I've zero interest in what they've offered since the last one.