The WC grape board

FlashFire82

Spaceman
Ladies and gentlemen,

Alright... I'm a die-hard WC fan... I've had WC on the brain since childhood... but let's face it... we all occasionally have something to complain about with these games...

I'll get the ball rolling...

WC1 - Great concept with promotions and medals... outstanding graphics for the time it was created. Plot and character development was little shallow, though.

Armada - Wing Commander is famous for great AI and intense battles... Why did Origin decide that WC:Armada didn't deserve any of that?

Privateer - Great game... could've used a little more ship variety though.

Well that's the start of my gripes... please don't think that this is anti-WC or WC-bashing... I absolutely adore the games... but I'm just looking for a little variety on the WC discussions.
 
WC1)Plot and character development was IMO just as complex as in the alter WC games, but it wasn't as "in your face" as in the later WC's it actually leaves more to you imagination than with the other games while still giving you more than enough overall involvement. I like that alot, in fact more than any later WC concept.

Armada) I didn't remeber the WC AI being overly bright in any of the games. :p
Though it appeared subpar in Armada, true. IIRC the ships always attacked the same way, they tried to get headon.
As for the battles, that's due to the ship types present in Armada. There was rather little variety in the capships section, thus giving you mostly dogfights only.

Privateer) Ship variety isn't necessarily good - just check out Privateer 2, all the ships feel the same there, and Freelancer, most ships feel the same and evenlook the same. In Privateer every ship was unique, and youcould spend a lot of time with upgrading it, not like in most other Privateer wannabe's where your ship is obsolete after a few missions.
 
Lynx said:
Privateer) Ship variety isn't necessarily good - just check out Privateer 2, all the ships feel the same there
If they all feel the same, that isn't exactly variety ;) Saying Privateer 2 proved variety isn't good isn't quite true, since by your admission it didn't have variety.
 
Yeah, but most people tend just to think ship variety=more ships.

My point is that the ship ammount was perfectly balanced for Privateer. You could spend ages just on upgrading the Tarsus.
 
lol, biggest gripe, eh? I love the WC series, but my biggest gripe is the implementation and use of capships in all WC games. Even the largest and most "fearsome" capships could be defeated without too much trouble by a light fighter (indeed, some WC missions come to mind where you couldn't win unless you killed 3+ destroyers/cruisers/carriers with an Arrow or Scimitar) unless the ship had (IMO) a cop-out like phase shields where you straight up couldn't even scratch the sucker unless you used torps. Even in the phase shield instance, the capship being torped often was at most a minor threat to your personal safety once it's fighter escort was gone. Additionally, aside from WC2, there really was no meaningful capship-capship combat (or even a reason for capship-capship combat given how easily a capship (or even a fleet of capships) could be killed by a single fighter).- I guess to sum up, it would have been nice if larger WC capships actually could defend themselves against small scale fighter actions and that the non-carrier capships had an actual purpose and the ability to carry out that purpose (e.g. serious fighter suppression or anti-capship) instead of just being a different type of target to kill/defend at a given navpoint. (anyway, that's my 2 cents- and who knows, it looks like my WC gripe is addressed in the Saga mod, which is kinda cool.)
 
Armada - Wing Commander is famous for great AI and intense battles... Why did Origin decide that WC:Armada didn't deserve any of that?

I don't think Wing Commander was ever famous for great AI. Regardless,people do tend to forget that Armada was developed as a *multiplayer* game. Everything else was a late addition -- the strategy mode stuff was created because they decided there wasn't a market for a multiplayer video game.

(It's a great game, too, it just existed before there was an audience for such things -- if they'd done Armada a few years later we'd be playing it right now.)
 
My biggest gripe: no new official WC games for years. It sounds like a kiss-up answer, but it's true.
In game, I would have liked to have more wingmen at once during WC1-4. There were a few missions where you had more, and I really liked that. Flying in big wings, and hearing the chatter from other wings flying with you, was one of the things I really liked about Prophecy. I know there were limitations to the earlier game engines, but I would have settled for one less enemy ship in each big engagement if it meant I could have just one more wingman. Ideally, I would have liked to fly in wings of 4 most of the time, with one major wingmen and a few minor, expendable characters in the other slots.
 
I wanna say Privateer seems really repetitive. But I just think that's cause I play that game a ton. I just wish there was more than one song for when you're in battle.
 
I find your attempts at humor "really repetitive"
 
To all "need more ships at Privateer" guys: Ever tried the fan project Privateer Remake? It still needs some work, but it'll sure be great in the final release. Who knows, if you do good, you might suddenly get some new ships.

Anyways, the biggest gripe are the lack of ship numbers in any WC except Prophecy and maybe WC4. I mean, they send TWO Rapiers against the big bad important base in Venice and no reinforcements whatsoever.
 
Armada - Wing Commander is famous for great AI and intense battles... Why did Origin decide that WC:Armada didn't deserve any of that?

I don't really agree with this gripe, and I've seen it pop up quite a bit lately... Armada's AI was just as repetetive as the original WC's, and none of the early games have exactly great AI. But Armada provided us with something better... actual human opponents! And as for intense battles, you haven't had intense until you've just taken out your friend's Goran in an Arrow. THAT is intense.
 
Oh I agree that Armada's multiplayer capability was a quantum leap in the field of Wing Commander... But still... if you didn't play it on "Ace" difficulty, all you did was chase the other ship in a circle... most of the time it was worthless to tail it because all it would do is AB slide and then play chicken.
 
Interesting thread... let's see.

WC1: I thought the Dralthi-flying part of the storyline was pretty lame... that's about it.

WC2: Small nitpicks here and there... the Concordia asking for help when it was being attacked just by a wing of Sartha or whatever, things like that. And where'd SO3 go? :(

Priv: Perfect game, except that every single ship was plain gray. Might not matter much when you have high detail ships and colored lighting and whatnot like in today's games, but on tiny sprites it just looked boring.

P2: Stupid navigation system which broke the gameplay, inability to haul cargo in your own ship killed several gameplay points (Why do pirates even attack you?), and faction relations seemed nonexistent.

WC4: No cockpits... why on Earth did they do that, considering WC3 had the best looking cockpits ever?

WCP/SO: AI got much too stupid. Also, specially in SO, the variety in weapons/missiles was blown out of proportion, which made them all seem the same (as opposed to WC1, where you would look at your weapons display and instantly know who your best friends were :cool: ). I also thought the Plasma-gun thing was pretty lame, reminded me of WC1's Dralthi missions.
 
WC4: No cockpits... why on Earth did they do that, considering WC3 had the best looking cockpits ever?

Boy, oh, boy, do I ever agree with this. And they touted it as some sort of amazing feature at the time! The takeoff and landing scenes, too. Yes, Wing 4 team, people turn off both when given the chance... but they're still absolutely necessary for creating the mood of the game.
 
Agreed, the WC4 "cockpit", while useful, was UGLY. I really loved the WC3 cockpits, even though I turned them off. But they were there whenever I wanted to look at them :)
It would be cool to have a full virtual cockpit nowadays. Like in Flight sims, where you can seamlessly look around, read displays and press buttons.
 
Got to agree here...I remember by astonishment and indignation when first seeing the removal of my beloved cockpits. How dare they! That's one of the key ingredients to adding the element of story atmosphere. At least armada still had the good ole cockpits! Although the combat AI has been discussed, I don't think that's specifically the main complaint of Armada. It did have what was considered a weak strategy AI for the campaign and armada modes of play. It would just build random ships and attack randomly, never pressed its advantages and never built fortresses etc. I remember I beat ten of the enemy's heavy fighters in my arrow by just leading them back to the cover of my carrier. Haha, Armada was perhaps the only game that had kickass flak coverage...that's the way it should have been.
 
Oh man. I thought I was the only one who was disappointed with the "functional" WC4 cockpits. The WC3 ones were rendered so beautifully! They still look fantastic even by today's standards.
 
Maj.Striker said:
Haha, Armada was perhaps the only game that had kickass flak coverage...that's the way it should have been.


That was a definate plus of WC:A. Wish other wing commanders had that. Books mention flak guns, but after WC2.. they replaced it all with lasers... and thats just not the same..
 
Bandit LOAF said:
... The takeoff and landing scenes, too. Yes, Wing 4 team, people turn off both when given the chance... but they're still absolutely necessary for creating the mood of the game.
When I think back about WC4 now and what my initial thoughts/gripes were at the time of its release, I can't seem to recall noticing the (quite glaring, in retrospect) omission of take-off and landing scenes, as I was swept up by the excitement of just getting the game and actually being able to get decent peformance on my fairly standard pc at the time.

I'm sure that I must of registered this omission during some point at the time, but it was obviously not as significant a concern to me then as one that I needed to imprint on my mind as a priority point of reference for future discussion. But I definately agree with LOAF, these scenes should be staple components of the game and really add to the atmosphere and experience associated with Wing Commander games, albeit that some, perhaps many people found them repetitive. In WC3 and WC4 I would find the "Corridor Continuity" scenes tiresome after a few viewings and would always skip them, yet in WC3 I did enjoy watching the take-off and landing scenes each time, especially the "Scramble version."

Cheers,


BrynS
 
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