So I wondered how many people are really out there who like the idea of a Co-op Campaign Map. Everytime I ask people to playtest Co-op Campaign Maps I have found on the battle net, 95% just say nothing as if that kind of Map is boring or not worth the time.
I guess there are some people who are working on such kind of maps, but... are there really enough people who want to play these maps? It takes so much time to create and polish a Co-op Campaign Mission to make it exciting to play, but in the end only a few people play it? How disappointing.
So, what are the reasons why there are so few people who are interested in cooperative Campaign Missions?
Like you said. Its extremely difficult to create a polished and exciting co-op Campaign. That however, is an understatement.
Its ridiculously challenging to create a co-op campaign thats not only polished, but also fun and with enough possible replay-value.
Some games are built around this concept. Red Alert 3, for example, Co-op campaign orientated. Failed miserably in my opinion.
The premise around the concept itself is also very much boring for the player. I personally dont like holding hands with someone and fighting solely against (easy, predictable)AI. Its just not exciting enough. No real reward or challenge/Measure of skill/Competition etc. That aside, You would have to be genius to come up with a good (creative/original/unique)story and progression of plot, So as to entertain and immerse the player.
Anyway, if its one thing Im certain of, that being no one will ever possibly create an amazing Co-op Campaign. Not going to happen. Ever.
A sure fire way to make a map successful and give it replay value is to use bank rewards, giving people new units/abilities to show off to their noob ally who does not have them yet. Look a Night Special Forces, I wasted half my life trying to get that Stone Zealot and I don't even regret it!
@Oatin: Go
... Anyway, if its one thing Im certain of, that being no one will ever possibly create an amazing Co-op Campaign. Not going to happen. Ever.
Depends on what you're looking for. On one hand a co-op campaign will be popular for the sole reason that two players are easy together and such maps tend to be great fun to play with a (RL?) buddy. On the other hand, they pretty much completely lack replayability and will never stand up to Nexus Wars because of that.
I'd say you'd have a fairly steady amount of players - while the maps will not constantly be played, I'm pretty sure there is actually a lot of interest for it. The interest is just never gathered because nobody really registers the amount of "2 palls playing it through together". I'd be all up for making one though, and have wanted to for ages.
I would definitely be willing to play some fun co-op campaign maps. You are right Eternal, the co-op on red alert wasn't fun. Maybe Oatin can make a better one?
If you decide to start a co-op map project, I'd be willing to give you tons of ideas. just PM me
Anyway, if its one thing Im certain of, that being no one will ever possibly create an amazing Co-op Campaign. Not going to happen. Ever.
I assume here you're talking about Coop Campaigns in RTS games specifically. Otherwise, I will kindly point you towards:
Magicka
Half-Life (the entire campaign from HL1 to EP2, albeit slightly modified, can be played in coop seamlessly through mods, and it's tons of fun)
Neverwinter Nights (mostly the first, though the second still qualifies - throw in a good DM, and you just cranked up both replayability and immersion to epic levels beyond anything else mentioned in this post)
Magicka
System Shock 2
Did I mention Magicka? Seriously. I'd even be surprised if no one tries to remake Magicka in SC2.
Honorable Mentions: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell series has coop mini-campaigns of various kinds and gamemodes in at least two of its titles. They might not be campaigns proper, and their story definitely could be a lot better, but hey, they're fun. Left 4 Dead and its sequel also deserve mention. The story is badly portrayed ingame, but I believe that's simply a design decision, because the actual backstory and the world events are rich and immersing when you really delve into them and look for them. They're just kept out of view of the players during gameplay. Finally, WH40k: Dawn of War II has some really good coop gameplay that lets you play through the whole campaign together. However, some of the content is fairly average, and replayability is almost non-existent.
So yeah, so far Co-op Campaigns are one of the gameplay types that require the most development time and effort, and usually are the least efficient application of this effort out of several other options. However, this is not because of the inherent properties of those campaigns, but merely because of different expectations both from the developers and from the players as to "how" a coop campaign should be, and if those issues are overtaken (or conveniently ignored and made self-invalidating, as in Magicka's case), a coop campaign can shine for twice its worth in developer effort.
I've only listed above whatever I could think up off the top of my head. I'm sure there's more that I either don't remember or don't know about.
TL;DR: There are quite a few good coop campaigns out there. It's not impossible to make one. If you want to make one, go ahead. Just keep in mind that it's hard to keep a playerbase on coop content alone, and the initial investment in time and energy to make something good is much steeper than other mediums, though later on the effort-vs-fun ratio cranks back up much higher once more and more polish and fleshing-out is done.
I've personally spent more time playing the RA3 co-op campaign than I have spent playing the SC2 counterpart.
The way the missions are set out gives you 2 different standpoints to play from, which alone increases replayability. My only real gripe was that the campaign (in both games) are so easy.
I tried making the SC2 campaign co-op myself, but ran into some really weird problems that I've never seen before with any other map.
@EternalWraith: Go
I assume here you're talking about Coop Campaigns in RTS games specifically.
Of course;p.
@Eiviyn
Well, yeah. While I did not really enjoy RA3 co-op campaign(Missions/Terrain was kinda bland, and the story), I will say that the Starcraft 2 single player campaign is indeed utterly terrible;p.
I find it interesting that you say Co-op campaigns will never work. This to me is unrealistic. where as a simple game like "a zillioncabagilion Zerglings" has a massive re-playability on bnet because your playing with other people. I highly doubt it would be where it is if you played on your own.
Whilst there is a massive audience out there for the 1v1 ladder, I would say majority of people enjoy the team play option more, If you put your mind to it and design it properly, there is no reason why there can't be the re-playability factor on bnet.
I would definitely be willing to play some fun co-op campaign maps. You are right Eternal, the co-op on red alert wasn't fun. Maybe Oatin can make a better one?
If you decide to start a co-op map project, I'd be willing to give you tons of ideas. just PM me
Actually I'm remaking a Wings of Liberty Mission, but with an entirely different gamplay. There will be no Mission before or after this Map. That's because - as I said before - it takes so much time to polish a Co-op Campaign Mission. The story will the same as in the original mission, but much more will happen than in the original one.
I'm asking these questions to myself everyday because it's not easy to motivate myself when it seems that not many people will play this map. I have received good critics from my testers, but still... I'm a prefectionist. Damn it!
I've created a couple of campaigns for WC3 and I'm working on a co-op campaign for SC2 myself. I do it first and foremost for myself. I wouldn't create any map that I wouldn't like to play myself, everybody else is secondary. With that in mind, my campaign is designed with both singleplayer and coop modes. The hardest thing is to balance these two.
Both players have to have different units/skills without making one player feel less helpful than the other.
Both players should want to cooperate willingly but neither should depend entirely on the other.
A single player shouldn't feel overburdened by controlling a two-player force, and in coop-mode neither player should feel a lack of skills when controlling only half the size of a force.
etc.
I welcome these problems as challenges and I sincerely believe they can be overcome with the proper planning. I'll also tell you that there is ALWAYS room for well-made singleplayer scenarios/campaigns. There is something very rewarding when accompanying a group of characters through different playstyles, objectives and challenges that stretch over several missions. It's a very different playstyle from the usual funmaps. And now IMAGINE a player could share this experience with a buddy!!
I personally don't design my maps with replayability as a main focus and instead I focus on making a good as possible one-run-through-experience. It should be like watching your favorite movie over and over again.
So:
1.Don't give a f* about how many people play your map. Make so you would want to play it yourself.
2.Don't give a s* about replayability. Good maps will be replayed even if the experience is the same.
3.Don't give a r* a* about the popularity system. Upload your project on a website and count the download numbers.
To give this thread a little twist; does anybody know about good 2 (or 3) player co-op Starcraft 2 campaign-like maps? Have you folks come upon a couple yet? I'd love to give some of 'm a try, but all we really have atm is Left 2 Die.
My friend and I created a 5 players co-op map a while back, but it ain't a campaign, it's a dungeon very similar to an instance in wow. We were hoping that patch 1.2 would fix the popularity system once and for all...that didn't happen. Anyways it's on the first page of Co-op vs AI of the customs games "Dungeon - Guardians of Fire", if i may say so it's pretty polished.
I was planning on making a 2 player coop campaign for SC2 but I just got upset because of the limitations on the bugs in SC2. lately I've kind of found my way back and I want to make atleast a map instead of an entire campaign. I remember having tons of ideas still lying around in like .txt format. I even made a bunch of terrain sets (most of them I lost in a HDD crash) but I still have some of them left!
If you want some help with terraining, balance or ideas I'm around! I don't play on the ladder and haven't for a long time, but when I did I was high platinum, which can be a nice addition if you want to balance your map for all sorts of difficulties. Since you can do all these funky things in the editor depending on what difficulty you chose.
Greets Jum-Jum \o
EDIT:
Something funny to note is that I gave up on my project ages ago, and I just felt like randomly searching the forums for "coop campaign" and I find this. Fate clearly!
Oatin's co-op mission is unbelievable and is a good example of what a good Co-op should be
but personally i think probably an easier format for a co-op mission would be something like "Breakout" or to a lesser extent "ghost of a chance", having one player control a single unit and use it to surgical effect against heavy defenses to allow a larger less surgical force to achieve an objective (with of course situations that dictate a less surgical surge :P)
I have thought about converting the map into the mode you have described, but currently I'm so mad about the performance issues I'm encountering since the very beginning. I'm very sad that I couldn't manage to create such a Co-op Mission because over and over again I ran into 'lag walls' and tried everything to find the issues, but the more I tried the more I had a feeling that something in the engine was messing up... But I think I will never know. I have a feeling that such maps are doomed to have limitations. To make a Co-op Mission that is entertaining is a big challenge, perhaps a bigger challenge than making all the other custom maps that are on battle.net.
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So I wondered how many people are really out there who like the idea of a Co-op Campaign Map. Everytime I ask people to playtest Co-op Campaign Maps I have found on the battle net, 95% just say nothing as if that kind of Map is boring or not worth the time. I guess there are some people who are working on such kind of maps, but... are there really enough people who want to play these maps? It takes so much time to create and polish a Co-op Campaign Mission to make it exciting to play, but in the end only a few people play it? How disappointing. So, what are the reasons why there are so few people who are interested in cooperative Campaign Missions?
@Oatin: Go
Like you said. Its extremely difficult to create a polished and exciting co-op Campaign. That however, is an understatement.
Its ridiculously challenging to create a co-op campaign thats not only polished, but also fun and with enough possible replay-value.
Some games are built around this concept. Red Alert 3, for example, Co-op campaign orientated. Failed miserably in my opinion.
The premise around the concept itself is also very much boring for the player. I personally dont like holding hands with someone and fighting solely against (easy, predictable)AI. Its just not exciting enough. No real reward or challenge/Measure of skill/Competition etc. That aside, You would have to be genius to come up with a good (creative/original/unique)story and progression of plot, So as to entertain and immerse the player.
Anyway, if its one thing Im certain of, that being no one will ever possibly create an amazing Co-op Campaign. Not going to happen. Ever.
Surely its interresting when playing with RL friends, but I doubt such maps will ever get high on the popularity list.
I, however, am also working on a co-op map but I am not expecting it to get popular
A sure fire way to make a map successful and give it replay value is to use bank rewards, giving people new units/abilities to show off to their noob ally who does not have them yet. Look a Night Special Forces, I wasted half my life trying to get that Stone Zealot and I don't even regret it!
I shall remember that.
Depends on what you're looking for. On one hand a co-op campaign will be popular for the sole reason that two players are easy together and such maps tend to be great fun to play with a (RL?) buddy. On the other hand, they pretty much completely lack replayability and will never stand up to Nexus Wars because of that.
I'd say you'd have a fairly steady amount of players - while the maps will not constantly be played, I'm pretty sure there is actually a lot of interest for it. The interest is just never gathered because nobody really registers the amount of "2 palls playing it through together". I'd be all up for making one though, and have wanted to for ages.
I would definitely be willing to play some fun co-op campaign maps. You are right Eternal, the co-op on red alert wasn't fun. Maybe Oatin can make a better one?
If you decide to start a co-op map project, I'd be willing to give you tons of ideas. just PM me
I assume here you're talking about Coop Campaigns in RTS games specifically. Otherwise, I will kindly point you towards:
Honorable Mentions: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell series has coop mini-campaigns of various kinds and gamemodes in at least two of its titles. They might not be campaigns proper, and their story definitely could be a lot better, but hey, they're fun. Left 4 Dead and its sequel also deserve mention. The story is badly portrayed ingame, but I believe that's simply a design decision, because the actual backstory and the world events are rich and immersing when you really delve into them and look for them. They're just kept out of view of the players during gameplay. Finally, WH40k: Dawn of War II has some really good coop gameplay that lets you play through the whole campaign together. However, some of the content is fairly average, and replayability is almost non-existent.
So yeah, so far Co-op Campaigns are one of the gameplay types that require the most development time and effort, and usually are the least efficient application of this effort out of several other options. However, this is not because of the inherent properties of those campaigns, but merely because of different expectations both from the developers and from the players as to "how" a coop campaign should be, and if those issues are overtaken (or conveniently ignored and made self-invalidating, as in Magicka's case), a coop campaign can shine for twice its worth in developer effort.
I've only listed above whatever I could think up off the top of my head. I'm sure there's more that I either don't remember or don't know about.
TL;DR: There are quite a few good coop campaigns out there. It's not impossible to make one. If you want to make one, go ahead. Just keep in mind that it's hard to keep a playerbase on coop content alone, and the initial investment in time and energy to make something good is much steeper than other mediums, though later on the effort-vs-fun ratio cranks back up much higher once more and more polish and fleshing-out is done.
I've personally spent more time playing the RA3 co-op campaign than I have spent playing the SC2 counterpart.
The way the missions are set out gives you 2 different standpoints to play from, which alone increases replayability. My only real gripe was that the campaign (in both games) are so easy.
I tried making the SC2 campaign co-op myself, but ran into some really weird problems that I've never seen before with any other map.
Of course;p.
@Eiviyn
Well, yeah. While I did not really enjoy RA3 co-op campaign(Missions/Terrain was kinda bland, and the story), I will say that the Starcraft 2 single player campaign is indeed utterly terrible;p.
I find it interesting that you say Co-op campaigns will never work. This to me is unrealistic. where as a simple game like "a zillioncabagilion Zerglings" has a massive re-playability on bnet because your playing with other people. I highly doubt it would be where it is if you played on your own.
Whilst there is a massive audience out there for the 1v1 ladder, I would say majority of people enjoy the team play option more, If you put your mind to it and design it properly, there is no reason why there can't be the re-playability factor on bnet.
Actually I'm remaking a Wings of Liberty Mission, but with an entirely different gamplay. There will be no Mission before or after this Map. That's because - as I said before - it takes so much time to polish a Co-op Campaign Mission. The story will the same as in the original mission, but much more will happen than in the original one.
I'm asking these questions to myself everyday because it's not easy to motivate myself when it seems that not many people will play this map. I have received good critics from my testers, but still... I'm a prefectionist. Damn it!
I've created a couple of campaigns for WC3 and I'm working on a co-op campaign for SC2 myself. I do it first and foremost for myself. I wouldn't create any map that I wouldn't like to play myself, everybody else is secondary. With that in mind, my campaign is designed with both singleplayer and coop modes. The hardest thing is to balance these two.
I welcome these problems as challenges and I sincerely believe they can be overcome with the proper planning. I'll also tell you that there is ALWAYS room for well-made singleplayer scenarios/campaigns. There is something very rewarding when accompanying a group of characters through different playstyles, objectives and challenges that stretch over several missions. It's a very different playstyle from the usual funmaps. And now IMAGINE a player could share this experience with a buddy!! I personally don't design my maps with replayability as a main focus and instead I focus on making a good as possible one-run-through-experience. It should be like watching your favorite movie over and over again.
So: 1.Don't give a f* about how many people play your map. Make so you would want to play it yourself. 2.Don't give a s* about replayability. Good maps will be replayed even if the experience is the same. 3.Don't give a r* a* about the popularity system. Upload your project on a website and count the download numbers.
To give this thread a little twist; does anybody know about good 2 (or 3) player co-op Starcraft 2 campaign-like maps? Have you folks come upon a couple yet? I'd love to give some of 'm a try, but all we really have atm is Left 2 Die.
@Mozared: Go
My friend and I created a 5 players co-op map a while back, but it ain't a campaign, it's a dungeon very similar to an instance in wow. We were hoping that patch 1.2 would fix the popularity system once and for all...that didn't happen. Anyways it's on the first page of Co-op vs AI of the customs games "Dungeon - Guardians of Fire", if i may say so it's pretty polished.
@Mozared: Go
Hey, Mozared. I'm glad that you are on Europe! Because currently I'm looking for testers in this region. I will contact you as soon as possible. =)
Hey,
I was planning on making a 2 player coop campaign for SC2 but I just got upset because of the limitations on the bugs in SC2. lately I've kind of found my way back and I want to make atleast a map instead of an entire campaign. I remember having tons of ideas still lying around in like .txt format. I even made a bunch of terrain sets (most of them I lost in a HDD crash) but I still have some of them left!
If you want some help with terraining, balance or ideas I'm around! I don't play on the ladder and haven't for a long time, but when I did I was high platinum, which can be a nice addition if you want to balance your map for all sorts of difficulties. Since you can do all these funky things in the editor depending on what difficulty you chose. Greets Jum-Jum \o
EDIT: Something funny to note is that I gave up on my project ages ago, and I just felt like randomly searching the forums for "coop campaign" and I find this. Fate clearly!
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Curse PremiumI've been debating on whether to do this type of thing based on the C&C4 gameplay.
(no, C&C4 is not bad its just not C&C)
Oatin's co-op mission is unbelievable and is a good example of what a good Co-op should be
but personally i think probably an easier format for a co-op mission would be something like "Breakout" or to a lesser extent "ghost of a chance", having one player control a single unit and use it to surgical effect against heavy defenses to allow a larger less surgical force to achieve an objective (with of course situations that dictate a less surgical surge :P)
@deathkad: Go
I have thought about converting the map into the mode you have described, but currently I'm so mad about the performance issues I'm encountering since the very beginning. I'm very sad that I couldn't manage to create such a Co-op Mission because over and over again I ran into 'lag walls' and tried everything to find the issues, but the more I tried the more I had a feeling that something in the engine was messing up... But I think I will never know. I have a feeling that such maps are doomed to have limitations. To make a Co-op Mission that is entertaining is a big challenge, perhaps a bigger challenge than making all the other custom maps that are on battle.net.