Tutorials/Campaign Critique

Since it came up as an issue of why ZK is weak and difficult to present to new players, I've decided to write in more detail about how/why the missions and campaign are terrible.

Yes, terrible, and "free" is only an excuse that does not fix the problem. So here goes.

Tutorials:

If you play any other RTS the tutorials are usually extremely simple.

Here's some stuff to look at. Here's how you control the camera.

Here's some units, here's how you select them. Ok now here's how you move them. Here's how you fight move, line move, etc. K Tutorial over, on to the next.

In ZK from the very first tutorial things are way overcomplicated. Moving a commander through a battlefield is not only onerous and stressful, but it fails to teach basic things like camera controls, fight move, line move, queueing commands and so on. In the second mission you get random unit counters thrown at you while you're trying to learn just to build mexes and solars and maybe produce your own damn glaives from the fac you took forever building since you got no plop, but no it won't even leave you alone enough to manage that. And then you get to fight a DDM!

FFS. Even for someone who has played RTS games before it's highly abrasive. Missions need to be simple and they should not try to teach more than one thing at a time.

And then even assuming they make it past that nonsense, once you hit the 1v1 CAI mission its like all your hopes and dreams get flushed down the toilet. Comparatively the previous mission (2v2) is a cakewalk and the most important things you need to win (basic eco and raiding) aren't taught in any of the previous missions. Not to mention you go from having almost nothing available to suddenly having every fac, item of porc and so on become available at once. For a newb to figure out that titan duel is a veh map, that they should scorcher rush, or for them to know how to manage their eco efficiently, just isn't going to happen and the result is brutal. Also difficult missions like that really need their own category, like the "challenge missions" in SC2.

Campaign:

The current campaign is really weak for a lot of reasons.

First of all the story is entirely incoherent to the player. The player doesn't know what the planetwars are, or what the empire is, or what the promethean is, or anything really. Those things are just thrown at you like you're supposed to accept that it will eventually make sense (which it never does). The only part of the story that really makes any sense at all is the part where you're conquering the random bot clans and leading them against the pseudo-empire, and only because that's what you spend the majority of the campaign doing. Everything else is incoherent gibberish completely lacking in context, starting from the first mission.

The fact that the campaign takes place after the planetwars is also a bad setting. The planetwars, the involved factions and the events surrounding them obviously are more interesting than what happens in some middle-of-nowhere bunghole a thousand years later. Particularly since the planetwars refer to an actual multiplayer campaign event type of thing it only makes sense that the campaign should introduce them.

Another issue is the complete lack of humanity anywhere in the script. Every mission Ada basically goes "Haha, some stuff happened but it was easy cause I'm a 1337 c0mm4nd3r from the empire! Serves you right, savages!". There's no real struggle in the story, no factions or people that you can identify with, no revelation of interesting events or history, nothing relatable at all.

In terms of gameplay the campaign missions tend to fall into one of two categories, either they're too easy or ridiculously difficult to the point of requiring some sort of gimmick to win. Also, while the campaign missions should be teaching players how to use each factory and how to counter things they're often set up such that units you really need are disabled, or such that the units you get are made useless.

For example in the mission on ravaged where you play shields, if you build thuglaw you can kill the null AI but if you do you die to the CAI which builds counters. If you build bandit/rogue you can win but you won't be able to kill the null AI because it has too much porc. You really need felon or racket, but both are disabled.

Another example is the jumpjets mission where the CAI is killing you with rogues and all you need is some puppies but they're disabled for no good reason. That mission was really an exhibition of bad design.

Another example is that tanks/veh mission where the CAI sits behind a wall of DDMs on hills. Not only is that mission ridiculously difficult but impalers are disabled when they're basically the only thing that could hit the DDMs. Because of that most of the units you can build are useless and you end up having to grind over it very slowly with wolverines and pillagers until you can punch a tiny hole in one side of the DDM wall to get to the CAI's fac. Eventually it enables silo but even getting a silo within range is ridiculously difficult and slower than just grinding over it.

Another example where the mission says one thing and does another is the king of the hill mission. The 'secret' to winning is to raid early on to give your allies the advantage, but the mission never tells you that. If you do what the mission says and just try to dump units/porc into the middle your allies die and you get run over and you're given no clues as to why.

I guess the major points are:

-Each mission should introduce something new. (and not just units but also concepts like eco, raiding, proper defense and how to use a given fac strategically)
-The units you get in each mission should all be useful and not be directly negated by the mission setup.
-If a mission produces situations that really demand a certain unit then that unit should not be disabled by default.
-The factory the player gets for a given mission should match the map well, and this should also be explained to the player so that they can learn what fac to build on what maps.
-Missions should gradually pit you more directly against the CAI, and eventually replace it with smarter AIs.
-Missions should try to avoid using contrived situations to provide difficulty. In other words the player's disadvantage should never be too severe or artificial.

I beat 2v2 mission with spiders.
Funny?
Right now, there should really only be 3tutorials, one which explains movements&UI, and one which teaches how to attack,defend,kite and what you should do VS something, instead of random plopped missions, third which shows you how to counter unit rushes, and destroying porc. Also, give tips and tricks instead of "go to this line"

quote: Now there's a real danger in dev typical-minding, but still I am having an extremely hard time applying either of those adjectives to "move through fairly weak resistance at your own pace".

A new player has no idea that the resistance is "extremely weak". All they see is a bunch of random crap going on that they think they're supposed to do something about when in reality all they're doing is moving to the goal.

quote: With the possible explanation of line move, all of this things are specifically described in text entries in Tutorial 1. (This is really rather inadequate; it needs to force the user to do those things at least once. But it is still taught.)

That's way too short to teach all of that stuff, and how are you supposed to learn line move with one single unit? Even if it did teach all of that the mission is way too distracting to remember any of it.

quote: There is no DDM in any of the first two tutorials. I recall past implementations (the old MoonQ10x tutorial, and possibly an older iteration of the glacies one) having DDMs, but in any case the point is that you do not fight them, you disable them with artillery and/or killing the grid links.

That may be true but it's still way too much crap for one tutorial. Newbs easily get lost and ZK's interface is infinitely too complex for newbs to be screwing around trying to learn unit counters at the same time. That should be a separate mission where all you learn is unit counters, which would also be much more fun anyway.

quote: This looks like a criticism of the post-apocalyptic genre in general. Which, as everyone knows, never has any interesting aspects (including politics and such) of its own and has never sold well.

Wat? No. Its a criticism of a shitty, unininteresting, badly told story. Don't change the subject. The pre-apocalyptic part is just easier to use because it has more substance, considering that every plot point in the post-apocalyptic world refers to some historical event or landmark from the pre-apocalyptic one. The problem is that the post-apocalyptic world has no story of its own or at least not one worth telling.

quote: So... make both, or switch builds?

Not enough time and resources. Not to mention that the only open expansion is the sunken base to the east, which is a pain to defend since you're blocked off of middle and don't have any heavy porc. Attacking the middle really isn't an option since even if you succeed you won't be able to take advantage of the resources before you die to the CAI.

quote: The point of the DDMs is (again) not killing them. Find gaps in their coverage (easy with defense ranges + global reveal of map) and go through, destroy pylons, get free rein of the map.

Except you have to spend half the game fighting off the CAI's eminent resource advantage and taking territory, which is split on 3 fronts which the CAI can attack freely from the safety of its DDM fortress. Oh, and defense ranges aren't enabled by default. You also get no scouting units capable of seeing into the DDM fortress and no global reveal unless you expect a new player to figure out how to cheat in order to beat your stupid mission. Also, even assuming you find exactly the pylons you need to kill, they're set too far back to reach with arty (not to mention that the DDMs get a range boost) and if you try to approach them with assaults they'll get slammed by not one but two DDMs plus some other porc and it's not like you have scythes or an eraser or ravens or anything that can bypass that. Also you have to pull off that impossible stunt while holding back the flood of CAI units which will attack you wherever you're least able to defend and it's not like you can afford to build a wall of porc across that huge exposed front and even if you do the CAI will just spam wolverines, gg.

Also the one opening in the wall that you can actually exploit is right next to the CAI's factory so even if you send units there you'll be fighting it head on with a resource disadvantage and the enemy still has other non-DDM porc to back it up.

Anarchid have you checked that? For all we know the campaign has a cutscene system which disable defense ranges and failed to reenable it. I'm more willing to believe aeonios, who just recently actually checked something.

I have not looked into figuring out how to run the campaign in a while so I am glad there is some feedback and discussion.

quote: I'M in for some tutorials in how to do things, but make it different for each E.g 1st is moving&Ui 2nd is building 3rd is units. Make em short&sweet

See what I mean?

quote: EErankAdminAnarchid have you checked that? For all we know the campaign has a cutscene system which disable defense ranges and failed to reenable it. I'm more willing to believe USrankaeonios who just recently actually checked something.

Actually I hadn't, and it has changed since I played the campaign. If I wanted to play the campaign now I'd have to look up the individual missions since the campaign no longer exists as a thing on the missions page. I don't even know if any of the missions work currently, as they very well may not.

Well I went back and replayed that veh mission with DDMs on the hills. Now that I have more experience it was dramatically easier and really barely took any work at all. The problem isn't necessarily the difficulty of the mission, but rather the cluelessness of newbies who need an explanation of how to do things if you expect them to do anything right at all.

Some notes of now vs then:

-When I was a newb I tried to win by taking all the expansions in the east and south. Now I didn't even bother, and hardly expanded for half the game. Instead most of my income came from reclaim, which was largely due to global build command which auto-reclaims wrecks without me having to specify anything.

-When I was a newb I tried to kill every single mex that the CAI had outside its porc fortress. Now I settled for killing the ones that were easy to reach and didn't bother with the rest.

-When I was a newb I was probably trying to build 2 banishers per reaper, or one banisher per reaper, which failed horribly. Now I know to build 1 banisher per 2 reapers which is much stronger. Note: banishers have changed since then.

-When I was a newb I didn't know any better than to run a big mob of panthers into a stardust. Obviously now I did not bother.

-When I was a newb the CAI's porc city just looked like a solid wall of porc. Actually it still does with the 9001 defense circles, but I happened to remember where the weak spot in the wall was so it was easy to target.

-When I was a newb attacking the pylons didn't even seem possible. Now I managed to kill its fac and most of its fusions and still had 2 reapers left with which I managed to break down its pylon chain and disable its DDMs.

-When I was a noob I had to grind over the CAI slowly with pillagers and wolverines because I did not know any better. Now I went straight after the enemy fac because I knew killing its fac would give me plenty of breathing room. After that I switched off my tank fac and over to LV and spammed wolverines leasurely to break down the CAI's front gate and keep it from retreating back into its porc. Then when I had enough wolverines I leasurely switched back to banisher/reaper and stomped it.

-When I was a newb I tried to connect all of my mexes and get overdrive. Now I connected only the nearby mexes and build windgens over the hill to the north for extra e.


In spite of how much hate I had for it the mission actually isn't bad. It's just bad if you're a newby because newbies will not get these sorts of things if you don't point them out. They try too hard, they do the wrong things, and even if you tell them what to do they may fail at it.

Some things that could be improved:

-Reassure the newb that they don't need to kill every mex, just most of the ones on the east side and in the middle.

-Point out that they should connect their nearby mexes with windgens. Emphasize that they should build windgens over the hill, but not to bother connecting mexes further than that.

-Warn the newb if they approach the stardust with panthers.

-When they trigger the "mobs of units attack" event, give them banishers and reapers at the same time, and give them 4 reapers instead of just 2 so that they get a realistic idea of what to build and also so they have an easier time getting past the wall later on.

-After the "mobs of units" event suggest that they use reclaim to even out their resource disadvantage. Also instruct them to build caretakers with a new worker if they excess. Remind them to expand but also that they don't need to expand everywhere, just where it's convenient and relatively safe.

-When they trigger the "city of porculon" event, pause the game and jump to a cutscene. In the cuscene show all the porc with reveal and also show the enemy's fac. Explain the strength of the DDMs and the weak point in the wall and the strategy for getting through it. Note that when I broke through the wall I used every panther, banisher, reaper and even the pillagers in one grand suicide run. The player needs to know that they should put no less than everything into the attack, and that killing the enemy fac will buy them some time afterwards.

-When they manage to kill the enemy factory jump to another cutscene and show them the enemy's pylons that they need to kill and explain as much.

-When the pylons are dead instruct them to shut down their tank fac and switch to LV for wolverines, and that they should switch back once they have enough wolvs (maybe with a separate event).

-Get rid of the silo nonsense. Silos are completely and utterly useless in this mission. If you're doing badly you'll never get a silo close enough and if you're doing well then it's totally unnecessary. If you wanted to make a hard mode version you might put a behe on one of the hills instead of a DDM and require them to kill it with a silo first, but that's a different situation entirely.

I think with clearer explanations like that newbs would have a much easier time figuring out what to do. As an experienced player missions are a way of conveying such knowledge to newbs, and this sort of situation is even relevant in team games, although usually not as extreme.

After some consideration and discussion with other devs I've decided to suspend work on the campaign indefinitely and just have some tutorial and challenge missions.

• The current campaign is a result of some old design decisions that are, in hindsight, more trouble (and require a greater investment) than they're worth right now.
• Doing a good, polished job of it requires things we don't have and are unlikely to get in the near future (2D artists, voice acting, and probably dedicated map[per]s).
• Perhaps more to the point, I haven't actually possessed the time or writing motivation to actually finish the campaign, or redo what needs redoing, for some time now.
• We don't really require a lot of SP content (c.f. any number of popular MP PvP games), and there are other things to work on that have a much better investment : value (and spoon : value) ratio at present.

So it goes on the shelf for now. Maybe it can be revisited at a later date (though even then a series of "short stories" is far more likely and practical than the grand overarching campaign that's been the ideal, at least for myself).
The game's story is Licho's caricature of "robots kill robots for no reason" until further notice.

quote: I think the planetwars lore/structure is a good thing to exist. It could perhaps provide some depth to standalone missions and related content.

Personally I don't think depth has ever been a requirement for standalone missions in any game, or if those missions do obtain depth it's basically never relevant to the game's own story.

On the other hand making standalone missions have a relationship to the campaign can cause problems. For example that one tutorial mission that's secretly the first campaign mission. If people don't realize that the tutorial mission is part of the campaign they may skip it accidentally, thus missing out on an important part of the story.

quote: You never need to explicitly say anything about the lore that you've decided on, it just needs to exist in the back of your brain (or, even better, a wiki page) where it can subtly bleed through into the mission work to give a sense of depth.

No. In every sense of the word NO. If you do some crap like that you will inevitably end up with PlaneScape, which is the worst piece of trash my poor hard drive has ever had the misfortune of containing. A proper campaign has a proper story with a proper exposition and properly introduces background stuff as needed so that the player doesn't need a stupid wiki to know wtf is going on. That's one of the biggest failures of the current campaign and it's a mistake that we don't need to repeat.

quote: The current campaign is a result of some old design decisions that are, in hindsight, more trouble (and require a greater investment) than they're worth right now.

Such as?

quote: Doing a good, polished job of it requires things we don't have and are unlikely to get in the near future (2D artists, voice acting, and probably dedicated map[per]s).

That's putting the cherry before the cake.

There's nothing to say that 2D art will actually be needed, as there are many ways of handling in-between-mission content (like 3D rendered cutscene videos which blizzard used in all of its past games with good success). There is probably more than one person here who could concievably make such videos.

We don't need voice actors without a story and script, and if we have those things then voice acting is just an extra feature and not an absolute necessity.

The last time I checked we also have plenty of mappers in the ZK community, myself included. If a map is needed it shouldn't take more than a week or two to get it produced.

quote: Perhaps more to the point, I haven't actually possessed the time or writing motivation to actually finish the campaign, or redo what needs redoing, for some time now.

Is there some rule that says "KingRaptor must do everything wrt the campaign"? I'm pretty sure that KingRaptor is not the only person who can come up with story ideas, nor the only person who can open mission editor files.

quote: We don't really require a lot of SP content (c.f. any number of popular MP PvP games), and there are other things to work on that have a much better investment : value (and spoon : value) ratio at present.

To the contrary the way I see it is that ZK is much too complicated to have newbs try to learn it by getting called lobsters in clusterfuck, and that it's probably a major barrier to player retention.

Additionally if you tried to teach everything through tutorials then it would just be boring and dry, which is equally bad because then people will just skip over them.

Having a proper SP campaign also adds a lot to the game's image of professionalism, and makes it obvious that the devs actually care about it. As opposed to, you know, just dumping the game on steam in hopes of magically getting tons of players. That's called "greed", or maybe "complacency", neither of which ever result in a good game (or a good anything else, for that matter).

quote: I'm pretty sure that KingRaptor is not the only person who can come up with story ideas, nor the only person who can open mission editor files.

Probably not, but he's the only one who ever has (with respect to the campaign, anyway, and as far as I know, which may not be very far).

I've toyed with the idea of creating a tutorial, stand-alone mission or mini-campaign in the past but never found the time.

I believe the point was to maintain a wiki for the benefit of developers to maintain lore and feels consistency, not as a reference for the player.

I think the old Google Code setup might have had a page along those lines, I don't know if it survived the transfer to Github though.