It's nice to see some long form feedback, I miss the pages of forum threads in the past for other maps. I've completed this campaign and can now weigh in via text.
I certainly respect your preferences, but there's not much reflective of design critique. Rather, here was just a bloated comment about how things were too easy for you except for that one time that they weren't because you didn't predict a hold out mission ending in quite a predictable flood-of-units kind of way like they usually do. WoL casual has enemy units with halved health, that's major hyperbole. You may also want to avoid saying stuff like "this was good, but I have low standards" when trying to sell your viewpoint. Anyway, saying most of the gameplay is not engaging is entirely subjective at best, blatantly dishonest at worst. Easy and Interesting are not mutually exclusive of each other.
That being said, I'm not blindly tone policing. I do agree with the point you made that bosses having too much health. To followup on that, the stakes could be higher such that the player can't take as many hits, especially on higher difficulties, and/or removing the tips explaining what all the enemy abilities do. I do recall a bit of backtracking in the first Terran mission to collect bonus objectives, but otherwise am not sure where else. I also liked the puzzles during the Moloch mission, that was easily the majority of the playtime. Avoiding detectors was easy and they could probably just move a bit faster to compensate, but that was just to bridge small gaps between stuff, like you mentioned.
The hotkey UI changes could be underappreciated, but they outright change the way heroes are used in a simple, concise way that reduces garbage clicks, which most RTS's suffer from. There's a lot of potential there for any other creators to consider using this system with multiple spellcasters.
I think some narrative moments like two certain characters dying in the latter part of the campaign felt rushed and need a few extra moments to let them sink in - I don't think more lines are necessarily even needed. Otherwise, the voice performances are easily the best of any usermade campaign I've played. Shoutout to the actual map launcher, a semi-interactable one at with some branching paths, which is something I've only ever seen from Enslavers Redux.
As a whole, the terrain drips with detail and a fun story left in limbo for 20 years was finished in a way that was not hammy or lame (harder than it sounds...). The story is fun, particularly with atmospheric start screens, and the gameplay is diverse and accessible, which is not the boogeyman folks that play the game a lot make it seem to be.
In closing (TL;DR): DO NOT PLAY Thoughts in Chaos if you are TChosenOne, I wish I could have written this before it was too late! The man knows what he likes and that is a wonderful thing; I genuinely hope he finds more of what he is looking for because more and different stuff is good stuff. DO PLAY Thoughts in Chaos if being maximally challenged is not your top/only priority as an RTS player (to clarify, I'm *not* passive aggressively saying that is a bad thing) because practically every other aspect is quite polished - the quality is multifaceted from many angles - and you will likely enjoy the ride.
Visit my channel where I showcase custom content! Send me a PM or respond to my YouTube thread if you'd like to see your map/s on my channel (eventually!)
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It's nice to see some long form feedback, I miss the pages of forum threads in the past for other maps. I've completed this campaign and can now weigh in via text.
I certainly respect your preferences, but there's not much reflective of design critique. Rather, here was just a bloated comment about how things were too easy for you except for that one time that they weren't because you didn't predict a hold out mission ending in quite a predictable flood-of-units kind of way like they usually do. WoL casual has enemy units with halved health, that's major hyperbole. You may also want to avoid saying stuff like "this was good, but I have low standards" when trying to sell your viewpoint. Anyway, saying most of the gameplay is not engaging is entirely subjective at best, blatantly dishonest at worst. Easy and Interesting are not mutually exclusive of each other.
That being said, I'm not blindly tone policing. I do agree with the point you made that bosses having too much health. To followup on that, the stakes could be higher such that the player can't take as many hits, especially on higher difficulties, and/or removing the tips explaining what all the enemy abilities do. I do recall a bit of backtracking in the first Terran mission to collect bonus objectives, but otherwise am not sure where else. I also liked the puzzles during the Moloch mission, that was easily the majority of the playtime. Avoiding detectors was easy and they could probably just move a bit faster to compensate, but that was just to bridge small gaps between stuff, like you mentioned.
The hotkey UI changes could be underappreciated, but they outright change the way heroes are used in a simple, concise way that reduces garbage clicks, which most RTS's suffer from. There's a lot of potential there for any other creators to consider using this system with multiple spellcasters.
I think some narrative moments like two certain characters dying in the latter part of the campaign felt rushed and need a few extra moments to let them sink in - I don't think more lines are necessarily even needed. Otherwise, the voice performances are easily the best of any usermade campaign I've played. Shoutout to the actual map launcher, a semi-interactable one at with some branching paths, which is something I've only ever seen from Enslavers Redux.
As a whole, the terrain drips with detail and a fun story left in limbo for 20 years was finished in a way that was not hammy or lame (harder than it sounds...). The story is fun, particularly with atmospheric start screens, and the gameplay is diverse and accessible, which is not the boogeyman folks that play the game a lot make it seem to be.
In closing (TL;DR): DO NOT PLAY Thoughts in Chaos if you are TChosenOne, I wish I could have written this before it was too late! The man knows what he likes and that is a wonderful thing; I genuinely hope he finds more of what he is looking for because more and different stuff is good stuff. DO PLAY Thoughts in Chaos if being maximally challenged is not your top/only priority as an RTS player (to clarify, I'm *not* passive aggressively saying that is a bad thing) because practically every other aspect is quite polished - the quality is multifaceted from many angles - and you will likely enjoy the ride.
Visit my channel where I showcase custom content! Send me a PM or respond to my YouTube thread if you'd like to see your map/s on my channel (eventually!)