Suggestion: More Ant Choices in Campaign

TheRexYo

Queen
In a previous post I mentioned how the campaign's replayability is rather low, making the otherwise brilliantly-designed mode a bit dull after a few playthroughs. I've been thinking of ways to counter this, in hopes that the developers can use these ideas as a foundation for either solving the problem or designing their own solutions. One of the things that I noticed about the campaign is that the progression is relatively linear - there are few choices when it comes to units beyond upgrades and minor improvements. One way to fix this is to simply give the player more unit types to choose from. There are already quite a few ants in the game, so why not allow the player to unlock them as an alternative to other units in their respective tiers?

Take the first tier for example. At the moment, the player will only be able to use Black Ants in that tier. With the new system, they could choose to buy Slave-Maker ants, which would cause the tech tree to block access to Black Ants, since they both appear in the same tier.

This would give the player a greater sense of choice when it comes to gameplay, and would increase replayability since the player would want to try out units they didn't use in their first playthrough.
 
It’s a very good idea. It could change not the campaigns itself (I mean the missions will be the same with wood ants black ants etc...) but it’s very interesting to use your idea to have different freeplay experience when you play with your formicarium colony and of course a different experience when you try to beat the evil scientist. Very good! I suggested few weeks ago to be able to replay the missions as a different specie ina way that won’t alternate the campaign. For exemple, when you beat level 2.2 in Campaign, you unlock the same mission in extra mission menu part. If you select it, you would be able to replay the mission you beated but as a different specie. For example, play again rising tide 2.1 as black ant. Your idea to alterate the formicarium player experience and this idea of replaying main mission as different specie could add to the game a lot of life
 

Durburz

Worker
This idea would be nice just to add more diversity, complexity and replay-ability to the game. I can imagine this is already in the planning, just not first priority. Fire ant development should go first too imo, as I am looking forward to playing new campaign maps. I think at this point I have beat all levels at least 50 times, with the exception of 1.2, which I have played easily over 100 times if not quite a lot more. Also @Graziani31 you are beating an ant colony that is just as much of a victim of the evil scientist as your colony is, they don't represent an "evil" faction or anything.
 
This idea would be nice just to add more diversity, complexity and replay-ability to the game. I can imagine this is already in the planning, just not first priority. Fire ant development should go first too imo, as I am looking forward to playing new campaign maps. I think at this point I have beat all levels at least 50 times, with the exception of 1.2, which I have played easily over 100 times if not quite a lot more. Also @Graziani31 you are beating an ant colony that is just as much of a victim of the evil scientist as your colony is, they don't represent an "evil" faction or anything.
You right, both colonies are living the same trouble !
 

TheRexYo

Queen
Another interesting thing to note is that, if this idea were implemented, players might have a chance to learn (through experience and tech-tree descriptions) about some of the lesser known features that are found on the unplayable ants. For example, take the Slavemaker's upgrade stat curve, which (at least in the stat docs) is the best out of any ant species. Most people don't know about it, so they think of them as completely weaker than Black ants, when in fact they're far better when upgraded.
 

person111

Colony
Ecosystem Beta Tester
exactly, while black ants are superior to slave maker ants when level one and two but the slavemakers make a good comeback when upgraded to level 3.
 

MikeSlugDisco

Community Manager
Staff member
Community Manager
It's a nice thought, but there would be significant design challenges in changing levels for different kinds of ants, as well as some assets that would need to be redone (significant amount of voice lines, for example) and balance for levels with more than variations of the same kind of ant.

In short - I think right now we'd rather crack on with finishing the campaign.
 
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