Campaign feedback thread

As above, that's how campaigns work in lot's of games. Carrier mode will be this what you're talking about.

- Anyway, rock climbing doesn't fit in "senseless destruction" title.
- When you pass all the scenarios of certain campaign, having ability to choose which one we wanna play, i.ex. we finished whole campaign, and then we could choose to play challange #7 only, instead of having to redo 6 previous scenarios to play that 7th one.
- to remember the best score, you know i.ex. you got 740pts in 1st try, and you wanna correct it, but then you actually do it worse than before and you got like 500pts, so to save the best of attempts instad of last attempt.
- Ability to skip/reduce slow-motion in some cases, when you repeat lot's of times i.ex. "Cliff Ram" that could be helpfull

sorry for my english I'm falling a sleep

 

Everything's nice, especially for a first outing of the new feature. I will say that you should be careful with the static camera angles seen in some of the rock climbing/crawling episodes of Senseless Destruction. Too many of those would get irritating quick, especially where it makes it harder to drive.

Feature-wise, I'd say that a chapter select is a must. As a content creator, forcing the player to play through a consecutive series, rather than taking it at their own pace, is one of the issues that makes me leery about creating one such campaign of my own. Other, lesser features that I'd want to see are the ability to span multiple episodes across different maps, or the ability to define possible alternate outcomes, which change which scenario gets loaded next.

 

I rather enjoyed the campaigns. My thoughts:

Loves:
The fancy aesthetic with the lettering
Certain missions having a fixed camera angle
Beautiful application of Slow-mo
The scoring system is doing very well

Potential Improvements:
Being able to select an individual mission
Having the game remember the highest score achieved instead of the last one gotten
Certain Senseless Destruction modes I would have preferred a normal driving camera (the truck hillclimb one for instance)
Certain missions were too easy, some too hard: I feel it shouldn't be impossible to get full points (Moonhawk cliff) but shouldn't be first time easy (cannon ball shot)

The Burnside bridge mission was my favorite, and I'd love to see more difficult variations of it.
The cannon modes have much potential, I just wish we had more iterations and more difficulty in lining up the shots.

Overall I feel that these campaigns will be a nice option to have next to/integrated into the career mode.

 

As for feedback:
I hadn't tried it until today. However I must say that I am very pleasantly surprised and will be awaiting the next campaigns. The c&b instructor reminded me of coach frank from skate 3, however far less confident and enthusiastic

All of below is based on Training.

What I liked:

• The sound effects on the menu's are awesome. One of those little things that makes a game feel so much more polished. The sound of getting top rank is super satisfying.
  
• The UI is very very nice. BeamNG seems to have had a bit of an identity crisis in the past with more UI revisions than I can clearly remember. Some of them were clunky, others didn't look that good. However I am very pleased with the general theme that you are using for the campaign. Perhaps updating the rest of the UI to match this more closely would be neat?
• The difficulty. I am actually very impressed with this. By making it very difficult to get above 900 points on certain training exercises it actually makes them more fun. Normally in driving games the tutorials tend to be a little dull and boring because they are so easy. For me this is awesome, however I cannot speak for new players, hopefully it is still rewarding to them by providing lots of opportunity and strong feedback.
• The writing. I'm not gonna lie, it's not the most gripping edge of your seat writing I have ever read (and I read mostly academic stuff). However it has a style and a charm about it which is really nice, so while it isn't keeping me in suspense of the next text box, I am reading them all cause they are pretty well made. The artwork of the instructor also helps a tonne.
• The sweep overs and text on them are really nice. Really useful to see the tracks before playing them and the text makes it much easier to see what is supposed to happen.

Ideas/suggestions:

• Perhaps it would be neat if the instructors comments were also based upon past performance. For example the instructor could perhaps get more and more nervous with each level if the player crashes a lot. It must be said that this isn't really a big deal though. So perhaps 3 different possibilities per each level:
  • Player is in general doing well: If the player did well over the past 2 events then they get the good text
    
  • Player is in general doing badly: If the player did badly over the past 2 events they get the bad text
    
  • Player is improving: If the player is showing an improving trend currently

Alternatively making different result tiers having different text would also be neat. So a different response based on the result currently obtained. Which would likely be far easier to implement and more practical as well as being easier for the user to understand.​

• Single button restart. Currently it is 2 mouse clicks to restart a level, making it a single button (with an obvious button mapping for controllers) would make it much faster and easier to navigate the UI. For example on a 360 controller 'a' = continue; 'x' = restart ; 'b' = menu. Alternatively keep 2 buttons and put them in the same place on the screen and add controller mappings to the buttons.
• The arrow direction boards. Currently they have no clipping which makes it feel a little unfinished. Perhaps giving them a very simple jbeam so that they respond when hit would be neat. Not sure how that would affect performance though.
• Not being able to replay a single part of a campaign kinda sucks. A level select menu would be neat, perhaps you could only provide it after its been completed once?
• Saving high scores is something that I would really expect for this type of score based gameplay.
• Online leaderboards could be neat. I really enjoyed them on RoR so would likely be fun in BeamNG too.

Issues:

• Cones still seem to count after the finish line, presumably to make the slalom finish line reliable. The issue is that on Training 9 (RWD) if you hit a cone a couple meters after the finish line your lap is invalid, while smashing it into a barrier doesn't seem to matter. So perhaps making that sort of behaviour more consistent would be nice.

 

• What did you like?

Its cutscenes actually felt kinda like cutscenes.

• What was meh?

The way scoring worked, the fact that you had to wait for the full camera cinematic to loop to be able to play, even when restarting the scenario

• What could we do better?

Not much. Maybe add a list of all the missions? or do it like in Gran Turismo and make it able to pick each individual mission?

• What was a problem or blocking?

Small tips as to, say, where to go in the training to have better times, or where to hit cars to damage them more, would be much better

• What feature would you like to see in the future?

An actual full SLRR/NFS-style career with actual freeroaming, AI cars, and no mission structure

• How can we polish the experience a bit more?

Dunno. Better FPS optimization? There isn't much i can think of because mostly there wasn't much done other than structured single missions. Maybe polish the UI a little bit more?

 

What did you like?
I can for sure say I liked the 'senseless destruction' campaign. The driver training was good, but it took years for me to get it down pat as I'm on keyboard (because the moonhawk one really messed me up)
What was meh?
The drag race bit. I feel we already have enough similar stuff like it, and I think it didn't sit well in Senseless destruction.
What can we improve on?
CAMERAS. During the rock climbing bit in Senseless destruction, the camera couldn't be moved, and drove me nuts as I would've loved an orbit cam right then and there. Having the option to choose would be great.
Not being able to choose a specific level to re-do once you've done the whole campaign (sometimes I just want to do the one specific level, not all of them).
Wording of the scenarios, sometimes it was unclear what was required to beat it.
What was a problem/blocking?
Lack of time on the moonhawk course in driver training. Couldn't get it done, even after about 10 tries (got the rest of them fine).
What feature would you like to see in the future?
Vehicle (when you've beaten it with all default vehicles) and level selection (again, when you've finished it all).
How can we polish the experience a bit more?
Skippable intros, ability to choose levels when you've finished the campaign.

 

First off, thank you for all of your work on the campaigns. It's awesome to see BeamNG to come together as more of a game experience after all of this time, and I like that you gave attention to racing and crashing both equally rather than leaving either side of the fanbase behind the other. With that said, here's my feedback.

• What did you like?

I played through both campaigns a few times, I most enjoyed the presentation with the lines and text overlays on the terrain, the nice camera work in the intro cinematics, the more unique use of props in Senseless Destruction, the scripted nature of the exploding car in 02 Drag Race which still managed to have a natural random element to it, and the high but reproducible level of challenge for getting all perfect scores in Driver's Training. I also like that the sound design is starting to come together into something much more cohesive.

• What was meh?

Some of the issues I experienced personally, and others I saw while looking over other videos. From other videos, I'd say the instructions were sometimes too vague. The very first event of Driver's Training didn't specify that the goal was to stop as late as possible, just to brake at the signs. That doesn't encourage you to improve beyond the signs and caused misunderstandings for people who played Gran Turismo, where stopping as early as possible inside the zone rewarded the best time. "Stick to the limits on the signs to guarantee your success" in Training 5 was another one, as the wording doesn't naturally encourage finding the fastest line at corner entry or exit, and some people thought the limits were hard objectives instead of guidelines. The descriptions should be framed for someone who hasn't attempted the event before and give some clear tips on what may improve your time. It's more a driver proving ground than Driver's Training without that advice. I also thought the flow was slightly off with event progression. Something like 03 Tight Road Course coming before individual technique showcases and simple corner events like Lane Changing and Corner Speeds didn't feel natural. Senseless Destruction was more self-explanatory with instructions, but 08 Downhill didn't specify damage as a goal and others didn't mention damage as a penalty.

Speaking of 08 Downhill, that and 02 Drag Race on Senseless Destruction seemed impossible to perfect, and I don't believe I've seen any video where it's been done. 04 Cliff Ram seemed excessively fussy with damage scoring too. The only other perfect score I saw on that event besides my own came from someone literally causing a texture spike in the van from the impact, but I'm not sure how hard it is to adjust scoring for those with how damage works in the game. 07 Crawl was also incredibly frustrating to perfect because of the unnecessary camera views. It works in a neat way with simple goals like in 05 Suspension, but it just felt like a massive nuisance with something as complex as rock crawling with a manual transmission and wasn't satisfying to improve at.

• What could we do better?

Said a lot up there, but to summarize: More detailed instructions that naturally encourage faster driving habits and provide advice for people who want to keep trying to improve in Driver's Training. No unmentioned penalty or score criteria in Senseless Destruction. Difficulty balancing to make sure events can be completed with 100% points. A very high challenge past gold is fine, but 04 Cliff Ram is so strict that it nearly feels random when you get 100%, 08 Downhill feels like it could never be 100% outside of a freak accident, and 02 Drag Race feels like the time got rounded down to something legitimately impossible to achieve with the given car.

Rest of my suggestions are mostly game design stuff. Saving best scores is a must, and a local leaderboard to keep scores for multiple campaign playthroughs would be a good idea as well. Some way to pick campaign events individually after your first playthrough would also be very helpful. All of this would also make the UI lagging issues on 02 Drag Race, 03 Bridge, and 11 Highway or any other kind of unexpected crash much less irritating as you wouldn't lose progress. More in-depth breakdowns of the points would be very useful as well for more heavily score based campaigns like Senseless Destruction. I'd like to have details on what "Damage" means so I understand how I missed full points and can strategize to improve it, or how the points were split between the Moonhawk and Vanster on 04 Cliff Ram, the distance from perfectly accurate I am on 09 Jump, things like that. It would be much more incentive to keep improving at events because you can gauge how you're doing in objective ways.

• What was a problem or blocking?

No saving progress combined with the UI glitching and even occasionally crashing the game on Senseless Destruction made for some fun ruining moments. Driver's Training never had anything as severe happen in any of my playthroughs.

• What feature would you like to see in the future?

Leaderboards is an obvious one. A multiseat campaign could be amazing, and points driven turn-based multiplayer could probably work too. Ideas like starting in the middle of an intersection and having to get as many drift points as possible, who can drive farther on two wheels, who can travel the farthest distance over a rough field in a limited time, etc. Might even be able to setup some interesting co-op ideas where you're both trying to rack up the most damage points in a mutual head-on collision, or trying to sandwich a car in the most devastating way possible. If there was a way to have an auto-scrolling camera view following behind the players, maybe some kind of formation stunt driving. Splitscreen would make for even more possibilities, but don't want to get ahead of myself. Being able to pick the short racing circuits in Driver's Training for Freeroam would be great (unless there's already a way to do that). A smaller thing, I would like an official telemetry HUD mode with pedals and steering that could easily be pulled up in competitive scenarios mode, as custom HUDs seem to get lost sometimes in Campaign and I wouldn't want to be forced to turn off competitive leaderboards (providing it'll work that way) just to transparently show what I'm doing in my recordings.

• How can we polish the experience a bit more?

Some musical touches in the event intros and fanfare during scoring might add even more to the presentation. Music during events would probably be fine too as long as racing music is optional (I wouldn't want it during the driving portion of Driver's Training while I'm trying to hear my car for example). Gran Turismo 5 had in-game music and the license medal fanfare tied together, which meant you had to turn off the fanfare to drive without music and ended up with a very sterile experience. Displaying your best medal and scores for the Campaigns when you highlight them would be nice to see with leaderboard (local or otherwise) implementation. Improved engine sound design and variety would also add to the game experience as a whole.

 

1. The smooth camera transitions, creativity in the different goals.
2. Not at all, the missions/goals were on point with what I expected and it exceeded my expectations if anything.
3. If the goal of a mission isn't clear from just looking at it, maybe a better job explaining.
4. Not understanding how exactly we are scored on points received. For 'Senseless Destruction' I assumed it was do as much damage possible in as little time and in 'Driver Training' it was as little time as possible. In future campaigns where the goal might not be as clear it could really help.
5. The ability to see what the campaign consists of and how many stages in total it is, was guessing at how long they were when I went through for the first time.
6. If possible, make achieving the goal simpler than it already is, can't go too far on that.

 

1) The variety was great, and each level felt unique. Though the levels are simple, the difficulty is perfect for replay-ability.

2) The way that the game determines how "damaged" a car is is flawed or un-intuitive to the user. A crumpled ball is considered to be minimally damaged if it still runs and "drives", but one hard hit to the front with no other damage will be considered ruined. Some system for weighing mechanical damage against visual damage would go a long way towards making it more intuitive.

3) I get that you guys are still experimenting with the cool new camera angles, but if you are going to lock us to one angle for an entire event, please limit yourself to just first person or something. Having to rock crawl or tackle a jump course in first person would be a unique challenge, but driving a car while watching from an inconvenient camera angle is not the kind of challenge that most people find fun. For the cinematic crashes and jumps I have no complaints, but if i'm supposed to be driving the car, I want to at least be tied to the car I'm driving.

4) The inability to go back and retry levels after you have moved on was a bummer. It kinda ruined the whole skip level ability. Other than that the campaigns ran great for me.

4) As stated in the above, the ability to retry previous stages would be nice, and some form of limited vehicle select would be cool too, even if it was only for certain levels.

5) The campaigns looked great to me. I have no complaints with your presentation of each level.

 

I liked the variety, the action cameras, the varying degree of how hard they were AND how the info about every events was set up around the track!

N/A

More, more, more

I noticed that the dragcar in the dragrace seemed to react differently at different computers, for example a Yourtubers race had the dragcar run off the track every time, while on my computer it manages to keep on the road although burning like hell.

More crash into other cars events

Hmm... dont know right now

Take care guys (as in dev's, not men).

 

I really like the xampaigns bit sometimes they are pretty easy like the one with the bolide and some are quite hard

 

• What did you like? Having some sort of task to achieve.
• What was meh? The cliff ram (Impossible).
• What could we do better? Having each campaign have a variety of maps and different locations.
• What was a problem or blocking? Nothing major.
• What feature would you like to see in the future? An option for campaigns with maps that don't burn my PC.
• How can we polish the experience a bit more? An option to use the camera freely in the crashing scenarios.

 

• What did you like?

Clean, animated start screens, with clear directions.

• What was meh?

Weird camera angles on Senseless Destruction, making it hard to drive. Excessive use of slow-motion on Senseless Destruction's "jump into a wall" scenario. And the exception to the clear directions statement: The semi scenario where it's unclear if distance or damage is wanted.

• What was a problem or blocking?

Occasionally had the UI process unresponsive for up to 30 seconds, only during campaigns.

 

Looks like I'm the only one who liked the locked camera angles. I thought it added an extra challenge.

 

I think what you can work on is the driver training one. At running around 15 FPS normally (yeah my computer is slow but it not completely slow), and the timer goes too fast for slow computers, and you know people do have slow computers, and I think it would be better if you would help it hit people at 20 FPS so people who hit 20 FPS can actually do the scenario. Just my 2 cents.

 

You should really add some way to choose a level instead of doing all levels at once. I suggest adding a story mode, but I am certain you are already working on that. For the rest the campaign was pretty fun. Keep up the good work!

 

It was AMAZING!!!

 

Personally, I think the campaigns are GREAT fun and I cannot wait for you to add more. It's a thumbs up from me!

 

My game crashes on the last level of Driving Training. I don't know what went wrong. Prob my 4GB of ram :^) im bottlenecking it so much rn

I have DEEZ SPECS
CPU: FX-6300
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 960 SSC
RAM : 4GB (Cuz bottleneck)