Last bit first:
> If you know the best is behind you, you will look upon the rest of the mission as a waste of time.
Clearly then, at least SOME part of any multi-stage mission is going to be a waste of time, because it's inarguable that the current UE format suffers from it as well. That being the case, which would you rather replay: the fun and challenging parts, or the mindless "dead air" parts?
To follow on from your action movie parallel, consider a horror movie. There, the suspense factor is orders of magnitude higher, simply BECAUSE things aren't so utterly predictable. Neither holds up particularly well once you replay the mission, but I'd argue that the UE approach is STILL inferior because it's "okay, we did the preamble, so now that we've killed the bad guy we know it's all over". With the inverted approach, you still have no idea what's coming AFTER that objective until you've actually passed it.
The way I see it, if your ship's been pounded in an EARLY stage, even a 2Manta 4Moray encounter in a later one holds some degree of threat, especially if you lost a wingman by then.
IMO, the "inverted" design actually wins on all counts: it provides a higher proportion of NEW experiences in the fail-replay scenario; more interesting gameplay FOR the replayed parts; and more tension after the key stage has been completed.
I guess we just have different philosophies.
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The WC3 argument's a bit weak given that the campaign is basically a staging activity to GET you to the point where you can make that last run (rather Star Wars, now that I think about it). It's an internally-valid concept for the macro behaviour of a game, and I do think it remains so on a micro level, i.e. "take out patrols 1 and 2, then attack the destroyer NAV, weaken its coverage, and finally take out the destroyer itself". I don't think that UE's missions particularly HAVE that behaviour though. They come across as "this bit was bolted on at the end because otherwise the mission is too easy", and THAT'S the piece that just seems wrong. A lack of coherence, if you will.
Hrm. You know, I think I've got this all straight in my head now. That's what's really been bothering me: certain missions just feel "faked", and blatantly so.
You can try to pass it off as "well, the enemy are Doing Stuff too", but I'm having a really hard time buying into that as a good reason.
I guess it might just be because it's a pretty one-sided deal: other than M1 (sorry, I was counting them wrong before) you have these situations where something "unexpected" happens but YOUR side is still following the script. It's kind of the worst of both worlds.
I mean, look at 5A. "Erm, guys: there's a fucking destroyer here. It's over a mile long, and it's magically come through the jump point in the 5 minutes since we were here last. Gosh, could we afford to scramble a wing in support?!"
"Sorry Colonel, while that is without question the sensible response, y'know, seeing as how we're at war nstuff and the last thing we want is that destroyer deciding to make a run at US... but it would make things too easy, so no."
9 at least has the "radio silence" excuse.
(Does the secondary objective actually have a gameplay impact? Would be nice if failing it meant a larger fighter complement at NAV2 or initially at the JP, but I didn't check).
I thought 5A was a lot of fun BTW (although I did indeed trade off a transport against risking a lucky shot forcing me into a replay
) but that doesn't change the underlying "this just isn't quite right" feel of it.
That's what my problem is with 7A as well (apart from the luck factor) - it's the blatant artificiality of it. What's the comm blurb before you head off? "This thing's 5KM long" or something? Well, obviously the smart thing to do then is send you off to investigate without even refuelling first. I mean, what with the carrier and its SAR's
sitting right there, under no threat whatsoever. Honestly, if the BW captains were THAT retarded, they'd have had the shortest secession in history...
Okay, I'm happy now. I think I've finally got a handle on WHY some parts of UE just don't work for me. Making the missions difficult is good: I've never really had a problem with that part of the philosophy. Where it all falls down is when you end up so blinkered by "HOW do we make this difficult enough?" that coherent design falls out of focus.
I don't have a magic solution to that. Frankly, I expect it's inevitable that it'll creep in to at least some degree given UE's goal of "not being a sucking cakewalk like WCP", but I guess what it comes down to is simply "cheating" on the mission design. Whenever you end up forcing something in EXPLICITLY to make a mission harder, regardless of whether it fits or not and especially when it's handled in a way that utterly defies any degree of common sense, you really can't hide it. It's ALWAYS going to be jarringly obvious, and come off as "fake".
I'm guessing that's why I don't have a problem with M3: it may be a LONG mission, but it has the coherence that some of the others lack. The pieces all fit: there's no element clearly tacked on just because "it would be too easy otherwise".
Or something like that.
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