This is a fantastic game with really unique and well-applied concepts. Please be sure to add a “Campaign” or Story arch with various challenges. I played through two environments, got to the farthest development point, then got bored. I have no interest in playing the game again only after having it for two weeks. I want a game like the old “1602 AD”, where the mechanics are the same, but because of the missions, there is a goal and challenge in each map. Otherwise, I fear people will likely get board after tiering up their city and then just stop playing and have no interest in continuing playing. This game has so much potential, and having missions can help you unlock it.
For example a mission could be You stumble upon a wilderness rich in gold ore, but there is little water supply. Build a frontier town with 300 inhabitants and sell 400 pcs of gold ore to traders to reach your objective to move further into the frontier. Don’t wait too long though, as raiders have heard of the gold in the area and they rapidly grow more powerful, more deadly than in other areas you’ve been in the past.
Devs have already said there’ll be no campaign for the game. Dev stream of 24th June 2022:
"Giblix: will there be a tech/development tree such as in the civ series? and is this just building on random maps or will there be a campaign such as Tropico/Anno have?
Zantai: We’re not planning to do a campaign, it is building a random map as you mentioned. In terms of tech tree we talked about doing something like that. I’m not sure we’ll do something like that for release, but maybe down the line."
I would any campaign would need to have been included early on in development.
The interest will continue in the game depends on the person, we are not all the same.
Games with campaigns and missions there are many, but you finish the campaigns and missions and it’s over, also sometimes they are tedious and even stressful.
For example, I like the game as it is, I sit in front of the PC, I think about how to optimize my city, and I only think about that while I build or move buildings, because I no longer like where they are, or they don’t work in that location .
I find it relaxing and entertaining. And if I want a bigger challenge, I search Google for game seeds, I look for a difficult one, with few resources or many enemies and I try to make a map in the worst conditions. It all depends on the perspective of each one, since not everyone likes the same thing.
So I understand where you guys are coming from but there is a limit to how much someone will be willing to play an “open world” game without pre-set scenarios and/or campaigns. Let’s compare two great games that take two very different approaches:
Anno 1602 AD - An old game, but a fantastic one. This compares well to FF because you have settlers that upgrade overtime after getting access to buildings/materials. Obviously FF is new and has better graphics and other complexities. 1602 was so addicting because of the many pre-set scenarios and the added benefit of having a map editor. FF is similarly complex to Anno 1602 AD, but has no missions or campaign and thus I predict it will be this game’s downfall (just my opinion) unless they fix this.
Don’t Starve (by Klei) - Fantastic open world game with base building and such. No campaign. Don’t starve doesn’t have a traditional “Campaign” so to speak, but it is incredibly fun and addicting. Resource gathering, crafting, building a base, etc. In the Don’t Starve “Hamlet” expansion, you can even build towns and commence in commerce. You don’t need a campaign for this game because it is SO complex. There are many characters to play as, the maps are HUGE, and each environment on the map is very unique (ie. underground, mantis hives, jungles, cities, etc.). So if FF became much more complex, with outposts, and armies, and allowing you to raid other cities, etc, then MAYBE this game will be good enough without a campaign. Granted, there will be a few die-hard fans of the game as is, but when it comes to the masses, FF will not do well unless it becomes much more expansive OR adds a campaign.
In Summary - FF is an amazing start, its very unique and creative- but it’s not captivating enough yet to be a good enough standalone game. (even the “Don’t starve” game, mentioned above, has a hidden campaign - you find a machine in a forest and activate it, and you start a 5 level campaign you can try to win before coming back to the open world, if you beat it then you unlock a new character).
The FF developers can learn a lot from both looking at Anno 1602AD as well as Don’t starve (by Klei) and deciding what route they want to take with this game. Either way, it needs some work. Just my two cents. But from a Beta version, I am very impressed. Great work FF team.
We’re not making a live service product. The concurrent players could drop to a couple hundred and it would have no impact on any particular individual’s enjoyment of the game.
The more recent Anno games feature a campaign, but they are also notoriously locked down. There is no mod support so the community can’t build their own ideas on top of them. We plan to open Frontier to modding and since it’s built in Unity, that’s a prospect that will have great potential for industrious modders.
If you are satisfied with the game and move on to enjoy other things, or maybe even come back in a few months when you get the itch to build a settlement again, is that such a bad thing? That’s been how I’ve played town builders for decades. I personally never cared about scenarios or campaigns because they artificially limit what you can do. I go in, work on a city until I am satisfied…come back another time, maybe with some new DLC that came out in the meantime. That’s obviously not how everyone plays though so I totally understand why some players want a campaign/scenarios. There is an appeal to having a series of clearly spelled out challenges to overcome.
That’s fair I guess, but Don’t Starve didn’t start out all that complex. It received 10 years of DLCs and updates, some of which you even bring up as why it doesn’t need a campaign in the first place; yet none of that was in the base game.
I mean, it’s already done well and we’re still in early access. I suppose “well” is a matter of perspective.
Fair response.
I think if FF is treated like Don’t Starve was by Klei, constant updates, expansions, etc. This will be a huge success. You’re right, it took many years for Don’t starve to become what it is, but with Don’t starve together they created HUGE revenue streams. So if that’s the vision, that’s fantastic, to continue growing and evolving - however you’ll need revenue streams. I personally am a product manager, (granted in a different industry), so i look at revenue potential, bottom line profit, and user numbers as an indicator for success. Because the more wealthy you get, the better the game will become - and we all want that. I want this to be successful and continue to grow, but that’ll require future revenue streams, (whether that be expansions, online multiplayer, premium content, etc.) not just player numbers.
If you are just selling a base game that will be modded by users, this current beta version doesn’t quite cut it. I am one of the traditional players that doesn’t trust mods, I want the real thing from the developer. I don’t have time to scour the internet for mods.
I would venture to guess that the game is doing well as early access because the trailer is fantastic, the concept is golden. But one of the primary goals of games are to give people a fun way to spend their time, and pay for that luxury. This game currently captured my attention for a lackluster 80 hours. Now i’m done. I’m bored, and looking back, the money I spent wasn’t worth it. So my overall rating of the game has dropped and i wouldn’t recommend it to any friends yet. That is why I believe this might flop - You need to capture peoples attention for longer than 80 hours. A campaign is a great way to do that (unless you add huge amounts of complexity over time like Don’t Starve). Just my suggestion.
But I’ll come back in 6 months, maybe in the full release it will be more comprehensive and change my mind. I certainly hope so
I agree that campaigns and missions can lock down a game like this and force players to play a certain way and as such I’m not a huge fan of them in games like this
BUT I also think purely “optional” scenarios that you access from the main menu could be fun for some people and, more importantly, allow players to face circumstances that they have perhaps never dealt with in their own builds. Scenarios are inherently different than “missions” in that they really should load a “game-in-progress” that the devs have created and then the player would have to figure out how to proceed. For example, the devs could build up to say 150 population, but there are no zero stores and raiders just stole most of the gold. The player would need to “save” the settlement by surviving for 5 years and reaching 200 population (or something like that - some end goal that should be reachable in a single gaming session/a few hours of gameplay)
Devs could even use community save-game submissions in these very forums for the scenarios, drastically decreasing the amount of work necessary to implement them in the game
I think the most important part though is that they be purely optional and not part of the base game experience. Some people really like playing scenarios. Some people really don’t (for example I have ~1000 hours in Cities Skylines and have never once even looked at a single scenario)
Product Manager jobs fits you well with this attitude But I strongly disagree - in gaming industry we all had our hearts broken too many times seeing devs ruined great games overwhelmed by (wealth) success. From legends like Blizzard, ending with dozens of small indie groups with unfinished products.
But I’d love to see missions or campaigns in FF too. Especially in the form of slow tech progression - I would enjoy hours of Tier 1 gameplay with just Foragers, and Hunters scouting the map
I suppose “well” is a matter of perspective.
But I strongly disagree - in gaming industry we all had our hearts broken too many times seeing devs ruined great games overwhelmed by (wealth) success. From legends like Blizzard, ending with dozens of small indie groups with unfinished products.