Holy crap, if you don't like a single player campaign, just don't play it. There are loads of us who want a single player campaign, don't come and tell us what we want and do not want, it's not a voting contest.

The guy is just wanting to make sure the developers will be doing a campaign at some point. He obviously didn't know that there will be, as an expansion, which for that matter will not be free.

Yes, once they add scripting to the game, we can expect some campaign mods. Until then we're all out of luck. The sandbox mode, in my opinion, is only half or not even that much of what I consider fun in a game.

You should respect that, just as much as we respect that you don't want a campaign.

Holy crap, if you don't like a single player campaign, just don't play it. There are loads of us who want a single player campaign, don't come and tell us what we want and do not want, it's not a voting contest.

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Irony!

Not everyone like to play online. And skirmish against comp gets boring. Thats why you need a campain.

Alpha Centauri doesn't have campaign, it's sandbox. Just as Civilization (excluding the scenarios, which we will be able to design with the Forge tools for Sins) didn't have a campaign. Games of this scale simply don't work properly within the confines of a tight storyline.


As for 'not a vote', if this is a petition, we are allowed to speak up on our opinion the same way the pirate issue was (and still is) being discussed. Instead of flaming, bring out your arguments!

If you want more story, I'd rather have an elaborate booklet with background and additional lore, the same way Warhammer armybooks were always done. (The good, old ones, with 100+ pages instead of the 21st century leaflets )

Just like to throw in a 'Campaigns would be awesome' and say it's good to hear there are plans for them. Even the most sandboxy game can't be hurt by having a campaign and fleshing out the races and their backstories would make playing them much more fun (right now it's basically play the race who you play best as, with a campaign in place it might be play the race you like most, even if they're not ultra powerful).

And to counter the storm of Sandbox not needing a campaign stories I refer you to Sim City's scenarios, Civilization's Scenarios and Empire at War's (yes that game does count as sandbox) decent campaigns, not to mention Galactic Civilizations (I enjoyed those campaigns quite a bit actually, working on finishing the last of the Dark Avator ones).

A campaign would make this game better for me. It would give me objectives to achieve, and would provide a pay-off for achieving the objectives by way of narrative, cut scenes, etcetera.

Keith,

+1 to you.

I agree, they are a new company, just releasing their first game, they need to fix as many problems as they can (as the game does have a few issues that need to be ironed out), as well as supporting modders and multiplayer.

Can't people just wait?

Doesn't anyone remember the joy that was Homeworld's single player campaign? It was beautiful - it gave the game so much depth to actually play as the Hiigarans and experience their struggle. Homeworld on its own would have been so stale - just ships in space, with resources. Playing that campaign (even only once) was well worth it. It was like reading a good novel - you read the novel once, but the characters and their experiences stick with you. It even coloured the skirmishes for me - seeing the ion cannon frigates reminded me of trading with the Bentuusi to acquire the technology in the first place.

In short, just because you only play the campaign once doesn't mean it's of no or limited value. It gives a richness and depth to the game world that carries over to all the rest of your play sessions, well after the campaign itself is over.

A campaign will make more people interested in the game.

If its already planned for then Im happy!

If not, then it should be!

We can go into great detail why an interactive story is important:

a) more people will buy the game to play through the story
a story makes people more interested in the game!
c) People care more about games that they feel connected to.

right now the game is pretty much skirmishes only against an AI opponent. storyline is similar, but, expanding on the detailed backdrop of the solar empire wouild be nice.

Thanks for all the replies! Keep em coming!

A single player campaign would be terrific, but they're hard to develop for 4X games.

I'm with Wizaerd. I'm a fan of these games, but I don't pick new ones up too easily. A campaign really allows one to get the game fed to them in pieces, and gives the player time to understand each piece.

I went through the tutorials, and while they're ok, they don't have enough cohesion. So when I started my first sandbox game, I really felt out of sorts. A first mission of the campaign could be a really tiny map, with only a few ships and tactical items at my disposal to build. Then I could get used to those things, go on to the next mission, and that would throw a few more items and upgrades for me to work with. Eventually you'd work up to having to use research and the Black Market.

The more I think about it, the more I realize how much more I'd like this game off the bat if it worked in this way. And this is BECAUSE I'm not a hardcore strategy gamer. But I am a gamer, and all the aspects of the game interest me, so what harm does it do to spoonfeed me a bit in this way?

Actually GalCiv2's campaign could've benefited from this as well. I believe it did do it to some degree (if I recall, not all options on the tech tree are available in the early missions), but locking out more things early on would make it even easier.

At its heart, this game is still RTS, and RTS games truly benefit from this sort of model. It simply isn't enough like Civilization or Master of Orion to work in a pure sandbox-y sort of mode.

-HM

That post made my punctuation hurt.