Questions...Questions...Questions....

[NightPhoenix]

It's a question of presentation and UI. I agree that we probably don't explain campaign logic of the new vanilla campaign well enough (but then again, past games did not explain it well either, try to play PG without campaign trees created by fans). Releasing this game was a mammoth effort, and in pre-release crunch such things get overlooked. Fortunately, it's easy to fix in patches. Once again, this has nothing to do with fundamental design decisions which we've taken and which I've explained above.

Nice, hope to see designers play with these for a bit. I think there are many interesting options that are available.

Prestige gate is a separate topic (it can be removed from the campaign without changing other design considerations which I explained above) and it is controversial in its own right. I added prestige gates as an integral measure of player's efficiency in the course of entire campaign, as opposed to efficiency on some very local and limited sections of it. Another idea was to make it a prestige sink. We know very well from experience that better players accumulate more prestige, not only because of capturing flags, forcing surrenders and finishing missions faster, but also because of taking less losses and making better purchase and upgrade decisions. Prestige gate is a very generic method to cut off weaker players and let stronger ones proceed. And I believe that it is actually quite precise and fair.

Note also that prestige gates depend on difficulty level. On Major prestige gate does not exist. On Colonel (default difficulty) it's a "symbolic" 1000 prestige which most players will be able to afford. It only becomes steeper on top difficulties, where, yes, I expect the players to show consistently efficient play, battle after battle, in order to win the war.

Nice, I agree. I think that syphoning prestige can very well be used as a means to make the game harder in this sense. Totally agree with this opinion.

It's a game and any approach can be criticized as artificial and unrealistic. But I would argue that:

- The situation which you describe (4990 vs 5000 prestige) is MUCH less likely. Players who pick adequate difficulty usually swim in prestige by the time prestige gate arrives. Snowballing of prestige is a pretty fundamental thing in this kind of games, and with the concept of prestige gates we acknowledge and embrace this fact.

- You can earn extra prestige anywhere you want in the course of the campaign, it's a very open-ended requirement. You can barely win some harder battles, and compensate for it elsewhere. At the same time, this requirement forces you to stay focused on efficiency at all times.

- In this situation which you describe you can proceed by selling/downgrading one unit in your army, which actually makes this prestige barrier quite "soft" and "fuzzy" instead of "hard". Downgrading your army will not work only if you are WAY below the limit, in which case you probably deserve your defeat.

I understand that my example isn't realistic and could technically be remedied by selling off a unit etc. I wanted to use an extreme example to show that slightly less is not worthy of winning the war, but the exact amount is. That this is just as binary as the MV/DV system. You have to remedy that you didn't do well enough. But because it's not very transparent (i'm suddenly confronted with this prestige cap), it might cause me to have to replay multiple scenarios to do better, if not the entire campaign. I'm not judging whether a certain prestige cap of 1000 or 5000 etc is fair or hard, cause that's dependent on the player. But by not making this known in advance i think it can create more frustration than the MV/DV system where you were confronted with penalties for not doing too well more often and was much more clear. If i play up till Stalingrad, like 14 missions, and only then realise im not good enough for the victory path. That would really suck.

This is also a completely separate question which is related to campaign design rather than the fundamental issue of victory grades. I mentioned above that in my opinion all-DV path in PG and PzC was the shortest, least historical and arguably least interesting of all. It was our deliberate decision to NOT provide such campaign paths in PzC2. Even if we did not change anything else and DVs/MVs continued to happily exist, we would still find ways to exclude this branch from the campaign (like GC does).

Each campaign is created with certain design goals in mind. Some of our design goals for Panzer Corps 2 vanilla campaign were to provide lots of possible paths, which were all balanced in terms of length, with scenarios evenly distributed across years, and with not too many fictional battles. Because of these design goals, we delayed historical/fictional branch as much as possible. For example, we had Sea Lion '40 in our plans for a very long time (because it's such an iconic what if), but ultimately scrapped it, because it either makes the campaign too short, or too lopsided (too much early war content, too little late war content), or too heavy on fictional battles. We twisted it this and that way, but it just did not fit. Yes, campaign design is about compromises.

I don't want to go into campaign design issues too much here. Vanilla campaign is what it is. It's not going to change. It's different to how we approached PzC vanilla campaign, and this was our deliberate decision. Some people like it, others don't. Wehrmacht campaign is in no way representative of campaigns which we'll create next (like PzC vanilla was in no way representative of what came in GC).

That an all DV path was the shortest, sure we can agree. Whether it was least interesting, that's everybodies personal opinion. I get the feeling that the developers/designers etc. posting on the forums don't like this branch, that's fine. Personal preference is not worth discussing, like discussing whether you should like/dislike brussel sprouts. Me? I like the losing paths most, at least not total defeat, but one where say the Germans beat the Allies off Italy, or stop them at Normandy or something in the middle. Those missions are most fun to me. At least, if the story is properly built around it, and defeating the allies at normandy actually has that consequense.

I understand that it was a design choice to make the PzC2 campaign linear, with little a-historical battles. Whether a certain (ahistorical-)scenario is included is not really a meaningful debate and can't be changed regardless. In regards to why i'm bringing up these questions is that i do think it's important to have this kind of flavor in the game, where winning the battles for better or worse has some visible effect, either through a major/minor victory system where the game tells me there are different consequences to winning better, or by having alternate history endings. Now If i win at Normandy in PzC2 i still lose the war in France regardless. That's a design choice, fair enough. But if i don't speak out, then it'll never be known that there are also people that might not like such a system that much. And then there will be comments like "NOBODY likes the old system" which i think is a false assumption.

It's a question of presentation and UI. I agree that we probably don't explain campaign logic of the new vanilla campaign well enough (but then again, past games did not explain it well either, try to play PG without campaign trees created by fans). Releasing this game was a mammoth effort, and in pre-release crunch such things get overlooked. Fortunately, it's easy to fix in patches. Once again, this has nothing to do with fundamental design decisions which we've taken and which I've explained above.

Definitely, it has nothing to do with design choices. But rather about the effects of the choice to make a DV/MV path with prestige at Stalingrad/Moscow only combined with the prestige cap. That people might get frustrated for suddenly not being confronted with the choice to take the path they want. Since the implementation of a prestige necessesity is something completely new, maybe it's a useful addition for the manual for example.

[Rudankort]

I think we can't forget the people who play a campaign multiple times here. if i finish the campaign on Field Marshall, doing all DV's i will get both trophies. However if i redo the campaign on Field Marshall and go for a different branch, either losing or a different victory path, this is not represented in the steam data. So it would in reality be quite hard to say, what percentage actually does see the losing path content. If all people, after winning the main campaign immediately stop playing and do nothing else, this indeed applies, but i think that's not the case. No hard data is present of this, but i would find it hard to believe that most/all players would say "Well i won in USA, might as well throw the game in the bin now, nevermind all the other content"

Like I said, what I've given was an illustration, not a proof. I don't have hard data, nobody else has it either. However, all experience which I have with this series, talking to people and reading their discussions, leads me to just one conclusion: most people play for DV and don't settle for "inferior" MV. We see a similar issue with difficulty levels - people almost never pick a level called "easy", because it implies that they are "dumb". Consequently, my design decisions are based on this conviction.

As for taking a different branch on the next playthrough, I guess some people do it, but the very idea that I need to deliberately play for MV/loss to take a certain path makes me cringe. Like in the "optimal" path in PG you needed to go to Sealion but deliberately take MV there. In what way is it a good game design? I'm really glad that in Panzer Corps 2 players will never need to do this kind of a thing.

In Pzc2, after each mission the message is clear: you win this mission. In PzC1 the message (for DV) was: You have done very well, congratulations, good job! You took Moscow! That's a very different approach psychologically, and one that i think can't be ignored. Storyline matters.

We might have underestimated importance of "more flowery" congratulations after a victory for some people. Even though this means little for me personally, I'll keep this in mind.

Outcomes in Panzer General: 1: not defeating poland - 2: not defeating France 3: Barbarossa defeat 4: Losing at Sevastopol 5: Allies breaking through at Anzio 6: Berlin defeat 3x (allied & Soviet & combined)
And Victory 7: Washington 8+9: Beating UK, Soviets at budapest/Berlin 10+11: Beating Soviets, Allies at D-Day/Ardennes and two Neutral ones at beating the Berlin scenario from both sides and beating the allies & soviets at ardennes & budapest. So thats a total of agruably 13 outcomes.
In PzC2 there are 2 if you want to see a campaign conclusion: Berlin or Washington. (Because there are no end briefings for missions, just a loss doesn't count) I just win or lose scenarios and have to assume something happens.

I'm very curious when you played Panzer General last time. In theory yes, it had debriefings and could give all those outcomes slightly more substance. In practice, I've just looked through a bunch of them, and both briefings and debriefings are extremely short, dry and repetitive there.

For example, these are Poland briefings. 2-3 sentences, literally.

Your first mission in operation Fall Weiss, the conquest of Poland, is to capture the key cities of Kutno and Lodz by September 10th. This keeps open the possibility of conquering Poland before the French and British can launch an attack on Germany. If these objectives are taken before September 10th, additional forces may be available to you for the assault on Warsaw.

Your next assignment is to take Warsaw and several nearby Polish cities by no later than September 30th. Intelligence warns us that the French and British are preparing for an attack towards the Rhine within 2-3 weeks, so it is important to take all of your objectives as soon as possible.

Now debriefings. Major victory:

Your success in Poland has impressed the General Staff.

Minor victory:

The General Staff is pleased by your success in Poland.

Loss:

As you were unable to capture your objectives as ordered, France and England have launched an offensive against Germany that has forced us to suspend the attack on Poland. Your services are no longer needed.

Is that it? Is it what makes PG succeed where PzC2 fails in your opinion? Personally, I think that our texts for Poland contain much more storytelling than this, and this trend continues for subsequent scenarios as well. Not to mention much more advanced briefing interface. But the feeling of immersion is a very personal thing, so let's just agree to disagree on this point.

The choice that people are presented with has little meaning - You play Warsaw North or South, then the follow up mission and always go to Norway. It's a road, splitting, but coming together again in a few minutes to continue along its linear path.

In terms of storytelling this branching does not do any more (or any less) than in the past "panzer" games, you end up conquering Poland, Norway, France etc. anyway. The reason why these branches exist is different. As you noted yourself, the choices become very meaningful later (victory vs. defeat, Africa vs. Barbarossa, later in the war Eastern Front vs. Western Front). And when you replay the campaign to see these different branches, we wanted to provide more variety on the first stage of the campaign as well. We ended up providing enough branching to allow two full playthroughs without seeing a single repeating mission. I think, this feature is pretty unique in this kind of games, and even if it does not give much in terms of immersion and storytelling, in terms of gameplay it's very important.

[Rudankort]

I understand that my example isn't realistic and could technically be remedied by selling off a unit etc. I wanted to use an extreme example to show that slightly less is not worthy of winning the war, but the exact amount is. That this is just as binary as the MV/DV system.

To some extent yes, it is still binary (might be hard to completely avoid without major redesign of the game in the direction of grand strategy). But there are important differences as well. For example, in case of DV, there was zero incentive to finish earlier than DV limit (in fact, you would likely be hurting yourself if you did). In case of prestige, having enough to pass the gate does not make it useless to accumulate more.

But by not making this known in advance i think it can create more frustration than the MV/DV system where you were confronted with penalties for not doing too well more often and was much more clear. If i play up till Stalingrad, like 14 missions, and only then realise im not good enough for the victory path. That would really suck.

"In principle", without considering how likely you are to emerge below the limit, how many scenarios you'll need to replay etc. - yes, I agree with this statement. How big of a problem this creates in practice remains to be seen.

That an all DV path was the shortest, sure we can agree. Whether it was least interesting, that's everybodies personal opinion. I get the feeling that the developers/designers etc. posting on the forums don't like this branch, that's fine.

I believe that "short victory" path was objectively bad from game design persepctive. To take PG as an example (since it seems the most familiar to you), by taking this path you never saw late war equipment of britain or russia, only fought US units in one mission, only used cool german late war equipment in one mission, there was a huge jump of technology which made you to upgrade your entire force and skip lots of german units, you skipped Africa entirely, spent too little time with your units (and so did not "connect" enough to them) and so on. We could argue about criteria of what makes a certain sequence of scenarios good or bad but this is far from "personal taste" thing.

I understand that it was a design choice to make the PzC2 campaign linear, with little a-historical battles.

I would argue that this campaign is far from linear, and includes much more fictional battles than PG. Though we kept fictional/historical ratio reasonable.

Whether a certain (ahistorical-)scenario is included is not really a meaningful debate and can't be changed regardless. In regards to why i'm bringing up these questions is that i do think it's important to have this kind of flavor in the game, where winning the battles for better or worse has some visible effect, either through a major/minor victory system where the game tells me there are different consequences to winning better, or by having alternate history endings.

OK, I see where you are coming from. Indeed, there is little in the new campaign in terms of "intermediate" outcomes of the war, and if this is something which you enjoy most, we have failed to cater to your tastes. I did not consider this important enough for two reasons.

First, most campaigns in the genre are linear, and don't offer even the number of outcomes which Panzer Corps 2 offers. And most people seem to be happy with this status quo and never complain.

Second, and even more importantly, over years we have come to conclusion that people prefer longer campaigns. Once again, there is no hard data, but the sheer popularity of Grand Campaign, less popular disconnected DLCs in Armageddon, and then OoB experience (where connected trilogies seem to work much better than disconnected campaigns) all led us to believe that longer campaigns are the best. There are many rational arguments for this as well: you spend more times with your units, see them grow, gain stars, awards and heroes; you have enough time to play with all different types of equipment, you spend enough time with each opponent, and so on. Hence our approach where we don't "cut short" the campaign.

The way it worked in PG was, OK you win Normandy. Now you can no longer play western front scenarios and only play eastern front ones. So you've just eliminated the choice and made campaign more linear. Now, you win in the east as well. You've just exchanged more scenarios which you could enjoy with your beloved core, for two sentences patting you on the back. We did not consider these uses cases important enough, and that's why new campaign does not include them (and so apparently does not work for you as well as it could). Sorry for that. Once again, it has nothing to do with our general dismissal of DV/MV, because I don't have a problem with using "optional/bonus objectives" (which seem more acceptable for people to miss, compared to "inferior" minor victory) where it is needed.

Upd: I have been thinking about it, and I'm curious. If we look at an extreme example (as you like it), imagine that you are playing a linear campaign, and half-way through you do something and the game tells you - ok, so you won, congratulations. And you return to the main menu and don't see the rest of the campaign. Why would you want to do it? When there are parallel branches, it's understandable, because on the next play-through you might take a different branch. But why interrupt the content half-way, what's the point? To be honest, this whole approach with alternative endings looks more like another attempt of PG to do something which looked good on paper but never really worked in practice. When you played PG, did you actually see all those outcomes which you've enumerated? Did you do it by accident, or deliberately playing for a certain outcome?

[SineMora]

The stats don't surprise me as I don't think I've ever taken a MV in PzC1 w/o intentionally aiming for a specific branch. I'd rather see the optional objectives made harder to achieve than they are right now, however, because while I agree that you should demand more from experienced players (those of us playing on FM/Generalissimus) prestige gate can be an unwelcome hard block. For example, I was very comfortable with the amount of prestige I'd built up on the way to Gazala (on Generalissimus, going in blind), so I was intentionally allowing my forces to fight harder to improve their experience at the cost of prestige (because there's no point hoarding tens of thousands of prestige; the Grand Campaign in PzC1 was rough in that sense but I doubt the same is true here) only to be hit by a 10000 loss after completing the mission -- I was lucky to have just enough to complete repairs for Egypt, but had I known about that I'd obviously have been less liberal with my losses in the previous North African missions.

That said, the optional objectives feel too easy to achieve as they are, and there should be a clear difference in difficulty between simply clearing the scenario and achieving the optional objectives too. I also appreciate that there is now -- though often minor -- incentive to finish scenarios quicker, instead of intentionally camping around to maximise your prestige, which was ridiculous and gamey.

On the note of gamey prestige: Have you considered disallowing capture bonuses for victory hexes you control at the start of the scenario? Because rewarding failure to defend critical locations by intentionally letting the AI capture them so you can capture them for the first time occupation bonus is a little weird.

[Kerensky]

Ima just respond to this first before dealing with the Berlin wall, because i like doing the easy part first.

Whether the previous system was flawed is i think up for debate. As i will respond later to Rudankort i'll make a short answer here. If more people finish the campaign with all Major victories, isn't that maybe what most people want and enjoy? Why do something you don't like (it's a game, not a chore or work)? I think that if more people finish a game with only major victories, there is a reason for this. Afterwards, people are done with what they want to see most, they do the rest, probably the "losing path". On what can be seen as a succes - Looking at a recent game Unity of Command 2. Only 6,9% of people managed to finish their campaign till the end (it doesn't branch - no bad ending) 6,8% of players finished the campaign with a significant number of "major victories". The campaign is long +20 missions. Leading me to think that most people don't see the game through regardless if it's very long. Most of your audience doesn't see through so many battles. The Grand Campaign confirms this 0,4:% of players manage to see it through. 11% of players managed to go through the first one, 11 missions?. Leading me to think that shorter (but not too short) is probably better when it comes to a base game, trying to reach as big an audience as possible to see it through. In PzC2 you need to go through what 19 missions minimum for the base game to get to the end? I think we'll see that a similar low number will be able to finish. For the "short" PzC wehrmacht campaign, although the real numbers are up for debate, only a small number seems to have finished it in some form, say less than 25%. I wouldn't be surprised if that number is much lower on PzC2 base game, looking at the numbers from the Grand campaign and a similar "long" game Unity of Command 2.

Going all victory in PzC wehrmacht is - Poland, Norway, Low Countries, France, Sealion, Barbarossa, Early Moscow, USA, USA, USA.
I think the "optimal" victory path was this -> Poland, Norway, Low Countries, France, Sealion (MV), Barbarossa, Kiev, Moscow 41', Sealion 42', USA, USA, USA , making 12 missions instead of 10
In Panzer General, the all DV path was 9 missions only, but had 16 missions as the optimal "victory" path.

Ultimately, i think everything depends on what you see as flawed, or baggage, i don't know what that conclusion is based on and of which content in particular is spoken. I think that saying that "nobody misses the old systems"...did you guys do a survey amongst PzC1 players with a reasonable sample group? What does "the old system" mean? Or are the designers, people who do the coding etc, tired of "the old system"? I mean to say that, i don't know what it means, or how that's determined. If you think that more people seeing most of the content you created is good, then shorter seems better. In such a case, more branching - for more different outcomes seems better compared to a longer linear path (in the sense that you can't finish early, and there are only 2 outcomes in the war) as in PzC2. The Grand Campaign in this sense seems to attract mostly a smaller hardcore fanbase. At least the steam statistics lead us to believe that.

A wise man once told me statistics are like a certain article of clothing. What they reveal is interesting, what they hide is vital.

There's a key point missing in your argument. DLC achievement completion requires DLC ownership. DLC ownership is not factored into the calculation.
When I started working years ago, it was considered that if 20% of your player base bought into your DLC addon content, it was considered a very successful player retention rate. Maybe times have changed since then, but it's what I still use as my gauge of successful DLC acquisition rates.

So by that metric... if 20% of the people who bought the game bought the DLC. If 11% of the total population finished the first Grand Campaign... that actually means about 50% of people who own that content finished it. That's actually exceptionally high, as evidenced by the % of players who didn't even finish the baseline campaign.

It was flawed because the system fought against how people approach video gaming. They're playing to win/relax/have fun. Only the ultra minority of gamers are so hardcore they are here for a miserable/brutal/tough time. As seen by completion rate of any campaign on 'Manstein' difficulty 0.5%. This is evidenced by my fellow posters, who explained in much more eloquently.

[Edmon]

Prestige gate is a separate topic (it can be removed from the campaign without changing other design considerations which I explained above) and it is controversial in its own right. I added prestige gates as an integral measure of player's efficiency in the course of entire campaign, as opposed to efficiency on some very local and limited sections of it. Another idea was to make it a prestige sink. We know very well from experience that better players accumulate more prestige, not only because of capturing flags, forcing surrenders and finishing missions faster, but also because of taking less losses and making better purchase and upgrade decisions. Prestige gate is a very generic method to cut off weaker players and let stronger ones proceed. And I believe that it is actually quite precise and fair.

The problem here is, if you don't know about this in advance, then really good players such as myself get caught out by a 10,000 prestige gate because we understand we can spend excess resources to gain experience. Hording resources is called "floating" in strategy games and it is bad strategy. Money in the bank does nothing for you. Some float is ok for safety, but tons of it (10,000 worth) is a massive float and would be a sign to me of a good, but not great player.

Here is how this problem is described in starcraft:

"Float
Having an excessive amount of Minerals or Gas in the bank. This is often a sign of poor macro-management, although it can happen once a player reaches maximum Supply. It can also happen intentionally when saving up for a specific moment, such as waiting for a Spire to complete in order to make a large number of Mutalisks at once."

In this game, prestige can be "spent" on all kinds of things and not just "replacing units" in the traditional sense. You can spend prestige by deliberately fighting lots of additional units (especially with infantry) and replacing them in battle with elite replacements as a method for training up specific units to 5 star status. In other words, if your a really good player, you by and right should be using your prestige to grind your units up to 5 stars whenever possible. Only if you reach the point that all your units are maxed out, would floating then actually be a good strategy (and largely because you then have reached the point where there is literally nothing to spend it on, which to me seems quite unlikely).

If you finish the game with 60,000 prestige and a 2 star army and I finish it with 4,000 and a near universially 5 star army, who played better?

I would say the person that invested and didn't float has put themselves in a vastly better position should these two theoretical players then have to fight each other. I have yet to find the game where there isn't some benefit to not floating. But the gate encourages it and to me that seems kind of bad...

But I know this decision is unlikely to change, making players aware that it is coming will take some of the sting out of it, when you are playing to a really high standard and then the wheels come off due to it.

[ErissN6]

What's all this about? It's not clear in the title.

[Kerensky]

What's all this about? It's not clear in the title.

Rose tinted glasses.

The more reasonably lengthed version of this discussion is here:
viewtopic.php?f=464&t=98032

[ErissN6]

The more reasonably lengthed version of this discussion is here:
viewtopic.php?f=464&t=98032

Okay, that's why he opened a new thread instead of using this, which was opened before.
Please people, learn how to write a title, be polite with us so we don't have to read wall of texts to guess what about.
I think it is even in the rules of every forum. I know I'm not in the rules, I should instead report to a moderator.

[NightPhoenix]

people almost never pick a level called "easy", because it implies that they are "dumb". Consequently, my design decisions are based on this conviction.

Sure, i get that. Makes sense. Though i never said anything about the difficulties being wrong or something. As you've responded to my other forum posts you know my main point of critique for this game is that i'm missing the story, the flavor of the war. When people play a boardgame for example say: Monopoly, all players adhere to the same rules of the game, they imagine themselves in the role they took. Buying the places as if they were spending real money, collecting rent etc. There is a lot of imagination going on. The same applies for videogames. You imagine yourself being the general assigning the forces as you see fit, conquering Poland, holding the city of Stalingrad, liberating France etc. And because of the design choices i'm missing that feeling in this game. Whether that's because the MV/DV system is gone, or whether the end briefings are gone, who can tell. And i just wanted to convey that message. Developers come and say nobody cares about the choices they made, well that's just not true. Some people feel there were good things in the old games, that now are gone. It's not so bad to have a discussion about why they are gone, and whether that's really a good thing. I'm having fun at least.

We might have underestimated importance of "more flowery" congratulations after a victory for some people

Psychology 101: Giving people compliments motivates them and makes them happy. Let's not act as if the notion of wanting to recieve compliments for a job well done is strange or petty. At least that's the tone i get from this. PzC2 has none after completing a mission. Maybe an incidental line in the next mission about your victory.

I'm very curious when you played Panzer General last time. In theory yes, it had debriefings and could give all those outcomes slightly more substance. In practice, I've just looked through a bunch of them, and both briefings and debriefings are extremely short, dry and repetitive there.

Here is your chance to shine, improve on what they did so poorly in Panzer General.

Is that it? Is it what makes PG succeed where PzC2 fails in your opinion? Personally, I think that our texts for Poland contain much more storytelling than this, and this trend continues for subsequent scenarios as well. Not to mention much more advanced briefing interface. But the feeling of immersion is a very personal thing, so let's just agree to disagree on this point.

Again, i never said that the briefings in PzC2 that we have are bad. Frankly i think they are quite good and i like it. BUT they only brief you on the tactical situation and not on the consequenses of your actions on a larger scale. I'll repeat myself. After Warsaw (2nd mission) - Did Poland collapse? Did the Russians invade as well? Why do i have to attack Norway? Did we take Denmark? These are things i don't know because there is no endgame briefing informing me of these things. Yes i know what happened historically, but this is part of that immersion i talked about. I don't want to have to search up on wikipedia what happened after every mission.

To play the devils advocate: It was apparently a design choice not to tell people what's going on in the war, but it was a design choice to implement the Soviet SU-6 AA/AT tank (T-26 variant) as a unit in the game, of which there was only 5 tanks total made. I mean, which player cares about having that into the game?

In terms of storytelling this branching does not do any more (or any less) than in the past "panzer" games, you end up conquering Poland, Norway, France etc. anyway. The reason why these branches exist is different. As you noted yourself, the choices become very meaningful later (victory vs. defeat, Africa vs. Barbarossa, later in the war Eastern Front vs. Western Front). And when you replay the campaign to see these different branches, we wanted to provide more variety on the first stage of the campaign as well. We ended up providing enough branching to allow two full playthroughs without seeing a single repeating mission. I think, this feature is pretty unique in this kind of games, and even if it does not give much in terms of immersion and storytelling, in terms of gameplay it's very important.

In terms of gameplay, it doesn't do more or less, but it does in storytelling, even if Panzer General had 1 line for failing or 1 word changed based on MV/DV (like PzC1 had sometimes too), PzC2 has none. (And you did pick the absolute worst part of the text from PG as comparison but nevermind that.) Yes you can replay the campaign twice and not see the same scenario and that's unique. I personally don't really care about being different for the sake of being different. More content is not always better. But because i'm missing that storytelling element the different branch feels more like another task right back at the start of the war where i already was before, than an exciting new mission. I'll restate here, i don't think the game is bad. It's okey. But this was just the missing element that would've made it really great for me, if that storytelling element fell into place.

[MickMannock]

Again, i never said that the briefings in PzC2 that we have are bad. Frankly i think they are quite good and i like it. BUT they only brief you on the tactical situation and not on the consequenses of your actions on a larger scale. I'll repeat myself. After Warsaw (2nd mission) - Did Poland collapse? Did the Russians invade as well? Why do i have to attack Norway? Did we take Denmark? These are things i don't know because there is no endgame briefing informing me of these things. Yes i know what happened historically, but this is part of that immersion i talked about. I don't want to have to search up on wikipedia what happened after every mission.

To play the devils advocate: It was apparently a design choice not to tell people what's going on in the war, but it was a design choice to implement the Soviet SU-6 AA/AT tank (T-26 variant) as a unit in the game, of which there was only 5 tanks total made. I mean, which player cares about having that into the game?

I'm having great fun with the game, but I think above is a very good point. I enjoy storytelling very much and that could be improved upon. But the standards are high, cause the bar got higher with the Grand campaigns. It's not fair to compare Vanilla campaign with Grand campaign, but there is a bit lacking, as stated above. That is also the reason why I harp so much about the heroes, which could be a valuable storytelling tool also.

[NightPhoenix]

First, most campaigns in the genre are linear, and don't offer even the number of outcomes which Panzer Corps 2 offers. And most people seem to be happy with this status quo and never complain.

But PzC2 offers only 2, Win or lose is the outcome. And even that is not certain. We have to assume for ourselves that winning the final battle in the US leads to a german victory, for all we know they might've been stockpiling A-bombs in Canada and blowing the Reich to smithereens 15 minutes after we return to the main screen. And yes, i know that most people wouldn't speak up about that kind of thing. But that doesn't mean it's not there, or maybe people never thought that the game might be improved that way. I havent seen anybody who praises the PzC2 game for their multitudes of potential outcomes either.

Second, and even more importantly, over years we have come to conclusion that people prefer longer campaigns. Once again, there is no hard data, but the sheer popularity of Grand Campaign, less popular disconnected DLCs in Armageddon, and then OoB experience (where connected trilogies seem to work much better than disconnected campaigns) all led us to believe that longer campaigns are the best. There are many rational arguments for this as well: you spend more times with your units, see them grow, gain stars, awards and heroes; you have enough time to play with all different types of equipment, you spend enough time with each opponent, and so on. Hence our approach where we don't "cut short" the campaign.

The way it worked in PG was, OK you win Normandy. Now you can no longer play western front scenarios and only play eastern front ones. So you've just eliminated the choice and made campaign more linear. Now, you win in the east as well. You've just exchanged more scenarios which you could enjoy with your beloved core, for two sentences patting you on the back. We did not consider these uses cases important enough, and that's why new campaign does not include them (and so apparently does not work for you as well as it could). Sorry for that. Once again, it has nothing to do with our general dismissal of DV/MV, because I don't have a problem with using "optional/bonus objectives" (which seem more acceptable for people to miss, compared to "inferior" minor victory) where it is needed.

Well, if you call it differently, such a thing would be great as well. An immediate example of such a thing comes to mind immediately that would work great from story perspective for example. Taking significant territory in Poland (secondary objective - extra cities) might allow for more territory to be held by the Germans in the split with the Russians, might mean they don't have to give up infuence over Lithuania or something similar. Doesn't need to be called Minor/Major victory, but if you have different end-briefings based on this you create a ton of storytelling. Doesn't even have to be represented later into the game necessarily. I'm a big fan of the Grand campaign, even as long as it takes. But that's in big part because the game connects really well in storyline perspective.

Upd: I have been thinking about it, and I'm curious. If we look at an extreme example (as you like it), imagine that you are playing a linear campaign, and half-way through you do something and the game tells you - ok, so you won, congratulations. And you return to the main menu and don't see the rest of the campaign. Why would you want to do it? When there are parallel branches, it's understandable, because on the next play-through you might take a different branch. But why interrupt the content half-way, what's the point? To be honest, this whole approach with alternative endings looks more like another attempt of PG to do something which looked good on paper but never really worked in practice. When you played PG, did you actually see all those outcomes which you've enumerated? Did you do it by accident, or deliberately playing for a certain outcome?

Yes, i would. If the storytelling is good. (let's not debate the storytelling in PG) You will get excited to discover the other possibilities and branches. I want to see what happens how the war might have ended if things went differently. I already know what happens after i defeat the Warsaw scenario in PG. Poland Falls and we need to secure Norway (Or not if you got a MV - it falls upon another general then) Having a variant of Fall Weis and Warsaw doesn't change that outcome. Same for PzC2. The parallel scenario is just another means to the same end, and thus not so interesting (for me). You cut it off in the middle only from that particular stories perspective. You "won" the war by invading America. Okey great, but now i want to know what happens if i don't take Moscow on time! Maybe i can still turn the war around, even if i failed to take moscow. Okey maybe i'll have another chance after taking Stalingrad...... What happens if i lose Moscow the third time, can i achieve anything yet? In PG i deliberately played again to look for those different outcomes, what happens if....what if? And those possibilities were there (regardless of whether that was done well).

[NightPhoenix]

A wise man once told me statistics are like a certain article of clothing. What they reveal is interesting, what they hide is vital.

There's a key point missing in your argument. DLC achievement completion requires DLC ownership. DLC ownership is not factored into the calculation.
When I started working years ago, it was considered that if 20% of your player base bought into your DLC addon content, it was considered a very successful player retention rate. Maybe times have changed since then, but it's what I still use as my gauge of successful DLC acquisition rates.

So by that metric... if 20% of the people who bought the game bought the DLC. If 11% of the total population finished the first Grand Campaign... that actually means about 50% of people who own that content finished it. That's actually exceptionally high, as evidenced by the % of players who didn't even finish the baseline campaign.

It was flawed because the system fought against how people approach video gaming. They're playing to win/relax/have fun. Only the ultra minority of gamers are so hardcore they are here for a miserable/brutal/tough time. As seen by completion rate of any campaign on 'Manstein' difficulty 0.5%. This is evidenced by my fellow posters, who explained in much more eloquently.

Alright fair enough, but that's just telling you how great the Grand Campaign was, not neccessarily that they liked how long it was or anything else like you say. It was 11 missions if i'm not mistaken, significantly shorter than the shortest PzC2 path.
I believe the Grand Campaign was so good because it was able to immerse players into the war, by it's briefings, but also by map and mission design. Leading people to relax/have fun/(win?). I also got the impression that it's much harder than the Wehrmacht campaign, especially the later DLC years, so i'm happy that more people finished a subjectively harder campaign than i originally thought.

If the reasoning is: Grand Campaign = Long. Grand Campaign did well so long is good. (same applies for it being linear or anything else ofc.) That might be a case of correlation but not necessarily causation, the same might apply to most of the other data being used from steam. But i would ask other more eloquent people about that. Would be interesting to see what they thought was so great about the Grand Campaign though.

Rose tinted glasses.

I thought we were building a wall here?

[NightPhoenix]

The more reasonably lengthed version of this discussion is here:
viewtopic.php?f=464&t=98032

Okay, that's why he opened a new thread instead of using this, which was opened before.
Please people, learn how to write a title, be polite with us so we don't have to read wall of texts to guess what about.
I think it is even in the rules of every forum. I know I'm not in the rules, I should instead report to a moderator.

Let's not make it bigger than it is. You had to click on the post and read part of my first post. Like literally 30 seconds. Is the title bad? Maybe, i had a lot of questions about a broad range of topics. So that's why i called it questions.
Sorry for wasting your time.

[Rudankort]

Okay, I have a feeling that we've started going in circles here, so with your permission I'm going to quit this discussion. Too many things to do, and too little time. I think that for anyone interested in dev's perspective I have thoroughly explained why things were done the way they were done and not the other. And if I had to start making the vanilla campaign from scratch, I have not heard anything which would prompt me to design it significantly differently. However, I did take note that you guys would like to see more storytelling in the game, and I have no objections to that. We'll see what can be done about it.

[NightPhoenix]

I don't think you need my permission for that. But sure, started to take pretty long anyways. Shame i wasn't able to make you guys see differently, even if it wasn't about the main pzc2 camapaign anymore regardless, since that was already done. At the very least, that some people might find the storytelling imporant has gotten through, and i'll take that as a consolidation price.

[Kerensky]

Alright fair enough, but that's just telling you how great the Grand Campaign was, not neccessarily that they liked how long it was or anything else like you say. It was 11 missions if i'm not mistaken, significantly shorter than the shortest PzC2 path.
I believe the Grand Campaign was so good because it was able to immerse players into the war, by it's briefings, but also by map and mission design. Leading people to relax/have fun/(win?). I also got the impression that it's much harder than the Wehrmacht campaign, especially the later DLC years, so i'm happy that more people finished a subjectively harder campaign than i originally thought.

If the reasoning is: Grand Campaign = Long. Grand Campaign did well so long is good. (same applies for it being linear or anything else ofc.) That might be a case of correlation but not necessarily causation, the same might apply to most of the other data being used from steam. But i would ask other more eloquent people about that. Would be interesting to see what they thought was so great about the Grand Campaign though.

Well that's the thing about the Grand Campaign. It's less and it's more. Each piece is easier to consume on its own. And as a result of focusing content, the overall quality of it rises. The ability to link the smaller pieces together, well that made it especially unique.

Fun fact, before the Grand Campaign, Slitherine as a publisher wasn't really a fan of DLC content. Look at their game catalogs pre-Panzer Corps, and post-Panzer Corps. Now it seems everything has DLC, and OOB even went so far as to have DLC that link into other DLC. They just announced part 2 of 3 of their Soviet Linked Campaign I believe.

Panzer Corps Grand Campaign is the MCU of Slitherine Games. It's the big hit that started the trends we now see in their games.
Also, ironically enough, it was made from many small individual pieces that came to form a greater whole. Kinda like all the little Marvel movies, and then the big Avengers title.

Okay maybe that's a bit presumptuous for me to say. Obviously MCU success is unparalleled in entertainment.
And Grand Campaign was built on the shoulders of the already big hit Panzer Corps base game, of course.

Rose tinted glasses.

I thought we were building a wall here?

It's all from that same time period right?