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Topic-icon Great game but I refuse to play this without checkpoints

  • Starzboy77
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11 years 5 months ago #8330 by Starzboy77
The difficulty in this game is already high. I've played every wing commander since I was kid and all the Freespaces. The combat in this game is not easy. Some ships are difficult to hit and the room for error is small at best.

While I don't dislike hard games, the fact that we have to restart at the beginning of the mission is a bad move on the developers end. This is a game. Games should be fun. It shouldn't consist of having to spend 5 to 10 minutes to get just back to where you were to then have to repeat over and over again until you get it right. I'm sorry, but while this is an incredibly well-developed game and I would love to play it, I will not put myself through this anymore. My time is valuable and I don't see why such a simple request is being refused by the developers. Give US the choice to relive the entire voice chatter and set up to each battle or not.

I've read comments on this board about how the game is hard and this was intended. BAD MOVE! I'm now 30 years old and don't have the time to waste on the set up for each mission just because I died. Again, this is a game and should be meant to be fun and entertaining. I see nothing fun, nor entertaining about this design choice. This should be a simple fix. I'm not asking to skip voice chatter. I'm asking to restart the mission at the last nav point/auto pilot manuever. That should not be a huge undertaking and until this is implemented, I won't play. Again, I would love to play but won't subject myself to this amount of frustration any longer.

Don't ruin so much work and time on your end by being so close minded to not offer you fans the choice to restart at the last nav point and not the beginning of the mission. Please...
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11 years 5 months ago #8332 by X3N0-Life-Form
It's not exactly that the devs don't want to implement a "restart at the last nav" or "skip dialogue" feature, it's just that they don't have time to go over the 50 missions again to implement these features, then retest the missions to make sure nothing broke in the process.

The game spend over 10 years in the making, and while it really shows it off in terms of content (ships, writing, amount of missions, voice acting, prerendered briefings, etc.), some parts also show their age. Among them, the absence of a checkpoint system, a feature that appeared roughly two years ago in Freespace mods, and has been improved since then. Dialogue skips also appeared at the same time. Meanwhile, WCS had probably almost finished making the missions, and was about to go into testing phase.

And now that Saga is out, the devs have started moving on with their lives. They just can't spend that much time on WCS again. I'd say that now it's our turn to improve upon what they gave us. Well, they did mention they would probably release another patch recently, but heavy stuff like checkpoint and dialogue skips is now on our hands. Hell, if I had time, I'd start implementing some of this stuff myself.

;tldr: Technically, it's doable, but time consumming and too recent to have been included in the original WCS release.

ps. I really understand your frustration, it took me months to actually finish the game. At some point I actually snapped and hacked a mission to get past it.
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11 years 5 months ago #8334 by pigsonthewing
the pussification of our society continues. Remind me again which wing commander had this checkpoint system? If you two can't handle going through a mission without a checkpoint holding your hand you should try turning the difficulty down to very easy. Starting over should be a consequence for failure since there is no branching campaign like in the old days. The game is fine the way it is, the problem is you.
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11 years 5 months ago #8335 by X3N0-Life-Form
Well, that wasn't a very diplomatic reply, but hey, there are [censored] everywhere.

No checkpoint in WC: no, it was the 90s, the concept of having a dual progression saving system (in mission + overall campaign) didn't exist. People are used to this now, but I personally can live without it.

Just start over, it's how it was happening in old WC: wrong, the game flow was significantly different:
-->old WC: dialogue with shipmates (skippable), briefing (skippable), in flight (unskippable, chatter is kept to a minimum, little to no down time)
-->WCS: briefing (skippable), in flight + dialogue with squadmates (unskippable, "long" dialogues may occur at any point in the mission, good combat chatter, up to 5 minutes of downtime)

I honestly would have started over the "escort armaggeddon" until I beat it while staying on insane, but after the 20th or 30th time I had to listen to MD's intro, I reduced the difficulty to medium or easy, still lost a ship, and that was it, I turned everyone invincible an sit through the whole thing (I was actually really close to beating the mission twice, but one of the friendly capships TKed another with its CSM, that was hilarious, though rage inducing^^).

tldr; IMO, unskippable cutscenes in video games are a plague that should have been eraticated ages ago. WC's cutscenes were skippable, WCS's equivalent being in the middle of the mission (the prerendered cutscenes and briefings don't count), they are (currently) unskippable.

Is there any point that either of you would like to discuss in more details? I'm not sure I covered everything, and some of what I said is subject to one's own point of view.

Have a nice day.
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11 years 5 months ago #8343 by zero0w
You can always lower the difficulty level.

I would say the ability on skipping conversations probably can help a bit for gamers who are making multiple mission retrials, but overall the fun of challenging missions are well worth the extra miles and effort. Due to the fact that some of the conversations would change the mission goals in middle of the flight, I see perhaps this is the reason the dev made the gamer to go through it.

The price of freedom, is eternal vigilance.
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11 years 5 months ago #8360 by KeldorKatarn
Guys, we always welcome feedback... but you realize that it is a bit... peculiar in lack of a better word... to tell the developers of a free game that you refuse to play it?

Do you honestly expect any other reaction than... "So what?"

As for the reasons for the lack of checkpoints, both the design decisions and technical limitations have already been explained.
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11 years 4 months ago #8448 by damson

KeldorKatarn wrote: Do you honestly expect any other reaction than... "So what?"

:lol:

I always admired your straightforwardness Keldor. :arrow:

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11 years 4 months ago #8474 by KeldorKatarn

damson wrote:

KeldorKatarn wrote: Do you honestly expect any other reaction than... "So what?"

:lol:

I always admired your straightforwardness Keldor. :arrow:


It's a blessing and a curse ;)
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11 years 4 months ago #8480 by webe123
Just because a game is FREE does NOT mean it cannot be improved upon.

I think checkpoints would have been a great idea, because this game is hard, that is simply a fact.
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11 years 3 months ago #8522 by Brucifer
I do agree that the game is challenging, and even great dialog gets old the 13th time you hear it. Still I made it through the game in a five days and didn't have to skip any missions, or hack any, so it was challenging but not frustratingly difficult for me. That being said in my future attempts to earn every medal and defeat the higher difficulty settings, I'm sure the lack of a dialog skip will start to become somewhat irksome. If one of the more computer savy folks out there can come up with one as a patch I'm sure it will be widely used. As for check points, I am of the opinion that it would make failure too easy to accept. Blowing an objective on the last leg of a long mission is annoying, but it should be, it creates some degree of pressure and anxiety which I believe a combat game should have, and a sense of accomplishment and relief when you finally succeed.
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