Campaign Mission Designs and Ideas

[Footman16]

Hi guys,

as some of you may know I am a campaign creator and in my most recent project The Path to Valour there was a wide range of missions and gameplay loops from fighting over Control Points to stopping Blight Spread and repairing boats.

For my next project whilst I'm not sure I will seek to be as creative and unique I still wanted to get some input and feedback on what kind of ideas or things you guys would like to see.

Background
My thoughts for this next campaign is to tell the story of the Human WoW Classic Storyline (For example here is the Elwynn Forest/Northshire questline), this means the Defias and the Dark Horde. Whilst you play as Stormwind with Marshall Reginald Windsor as the main hero. This would allow me to introduce the Kingdom of Stormwind to Warcraft 3 to perhaps give better context for their existence to Warcraft 3 players but also to other projects and campaigns that feature this Human Kingdom. The gameplay will be your standard mix of Base Building RTS and Dungeon Crawler missions just like a vanilla blizzard campaign. I'll give a brief outline of what my thinking is in terms of structure.

Act 1
Cinematic - Drums of War
Cinematic - Stormwind Introduction
Mission 1 - Northshire Abbey
Mission 2 - Stormwind City
Interlude

Act 2
Mission 3 - Introduction to Westfall
Mission 4 - Sentinel Hill
Mission 5 - Deadmines
Interlude

Act 3
Mission 6 - Redridge Mountains
Mission 7 - Burning Steppes
Mission 8 - Blackrock Mountain
Mission 9 - Stormwind Palace
Finale Cinematic

So as we can see we've got some good variation in locations which can be looked up on Warcraft Wiki, but within each of those missions I was wondering what kind of gimmicks or enemies or events you guys would like to see and play through. For example, in the Burning Steppes I was wondering if perhaps a stealth mission to kill the Orc Captains could be fun with different methods of invisibility and stealth available from potions, to disguises, to even a caster with invisibility.

The Defias in particular are a bandit faction seeking to undermine Stormwind from within and Westfall is a large area of yellow farmlands with Harvest Golems going crazy and so I feel like there's lots of potential there to do interesting things. One idea I had was to make their units and buildings permanently invisible at night without either certain units with lanterns or friendly buildings nearby and have a mission set at night trying to find them and take them out.

The Stormwind City mission will be similar to my Stromgarde City mission where you can explore and find lots of things to do. I'm also keen to add the Stormwind Stockade to the mission and re-create it.

Either way, this isn't set in stone, and there's only been a bit of pre-prep work done, so I'm always open to ideas and suggestions!

 

[deepstrasz]

I definitely think you know what you're doing. For me, if every level is different then that's very attractive. Doing mostly the same thing in every map is boring and mind stalling.

For the kobolds quest, you could have something to do with closing parts of the cave from where they come at you. So, you'd have to do it fairly quick not to get outnumbered and overpowered. A catch could be that blocking the entryways would require explosives that could get you stuck (either permanently or temporarily requiring your troops to destroy rock chunks or similar).

 

[Shadow44]

Hi! I've had a thought. It would be cool to see a campaign—maybe one already exists—where you can create your own faction build, similar to how you build a character in games like Diablo. This would give players the option to play the campaign more than once. Of course, that would involve a ton of work to implement.

For example, my build would be based on cheap units like militia, which would have synergy with a priest, allowing me to play aggressively from the beginning of each mission. Additionally, the number of farms would increase their stats. The hero could have some items that also contribute to this build. For fun, let's say one is called 'Empty Purse,' which, when used, forces the militia to pay taxes, causing them to rebel. The player loses control of them for 30 seconds, and they go on a rampage, destroying everything in their path.

Of course, this is just an example. The whole campaign would require much more planning and a completely different approach. It's also a known fact that allowing players to create a "broken" build would be fun for them. This idea just came to me; maybe someone will find these thoughts useful. Best regards and good luck with your next project.

 

[OutsiderXE]

I think the the story should have a clear villain/finale and doesn't feel open-ended like WoW. The defias should have their own tech-tree. Like a bandit sub-faction.

Mission 1: Basic training, kobolds quest like deepstrasz said. Find Defias Bandanas.
Mission 2: No base. Could be semi open world, with multiple quest givers and different puzzles and fetch quests, and you get attacked by bandits which are Defias

 

[deepstrasz]

I think the the story should have a clear villain/finale and doesn't feel open-ended like WoW.

It's a subject me and my lead custom campaign designer had a sort of argument over. I disagree every story should have a specific narrative line as a basis on which everything else is placed upon. Not all plots have to be predestined or set in stone. For instance, you might want to explore someone's life, a chronicle, which for instance can mean various events happening to the protagonist(s) without needing to be linked in any way (something like you'd have a series where in season 1 it's about something and in the next season about something else but the same main character(s) participate).

So, while Footman16's story could end with Onyxia's demise, it doesn't have to be about it or focus on it. Much stuff can happen to our character(s) like solving the Defias problem and so on.