Here are some big changes I have already made to chapter 1 and some comments on why those changes happened:
- Removed some enemies in the Spider area: I don't want to distract the player from his main quest too much early on. Rhonin doesn't have many abilities and no allies at start, so fighting many spiders alone was a bit monotonous.
- Decreased number of rescueable villagers in the first optional quest from 11 to 6 and removed a part of the village: This optional quest was too dominant within the early area of the campaign. There was no added value and too many weak units too control. Players can now buy units from a Tavern to help out. They add more variety to gameplay than the villagers could; The taverns also make the gold more useful.
- Completely recreated Vereesa's starting area: Again, this area was way too linear and monotonous and the gnolls just felt random and too static. I replaced them with bandits and added a lot of mini-events (enemies fleeing, fighting or talking to each other). This should make the enemies feel more alive.
- Moved the guards of the business man to the wolves in the seconds optional quest: You no longer have to fight the business man and his guards. Instead you have to go out and kill his hunters before they kill the wolves. This quest requirement should feel more challenging now. Still working on it to make the entire quest more exciting.
- Removed final area with fire pits, bandits and spiders: You now remain in the village, experience the chaos of the villagers running around. Your objective is to kill 6 Grunts, all while trying to avoid the dragon. The dragon is no longer invulnerable but it's too strong to fight. There are Flare Guns in the area which can be used to stun the dragon for some time.
I cut around 50% of playtime. It seems a lot, but I still need around 20 minutes for a Hard playthrough, including all optional quests and cinematics, not including testing the classes. I think this is a very good time for the first map in a campaign. It's not too long and gives you a sense of success early on. But most importantly, I has a lot less "fat" now, meaning that the encounters with enemies are more interesting, more varied, and have more meaning to them.
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Plans for Chapter 2:
In my opinion, the best aspect of Chapter 2 is its varied encounters. Alarm-Towers, patrolling ogres, reading books, and others. This is good and I don't want to change them, but I want to change the rhythm in which they appear. Right now you would avoid 3 alarm-towers in the beginning, then 3 groups of ogres, then read the books. I want to mix the order of these things much more. E.g. first, you would avoid a tower, then fight a group of ogres, then read a book, and only after that you would avoid another alarm-tower,fight ogres and read another book.