Campaign Episode 1: SURVIVE - Feedback thread ** SPOILER WARNING! **

[novemberist 2]

That's true, but it does raise a rather interesting question:

If the NATO forces on Stratis were basically already on their way out, and the AAF+CSAT apparently wanted them "gone" (or dead, whatever), why did they not just wait a few days for them to actually pull out? That way NATO would also be gone, but there would have been no risk of retaliation. Those extra few days of NATO presence don't seem like enough reason to start killing people who are leaving anyway...

"Oh, you're leaving next week? NOT GOOD ENOUGH!" *shoots him in the face*

Doesn't make sense to me.

As far as I can tell, there was no logical reason for them to start massacring the NATO forces instead of simply waiting a few days and avoiding an unnecessary conflict. (Unless the whole point was to spark a conflict, but... why? :confused:)

Maybe it will be cleared up in the last two episodes, but as it stands this seems to be a huge plot goof.

Yeah, I was thinking the same. AAF (and CSAT) act really weird and illogical overall, i think. Why let me and the guy in the MRAP pass the roadblock in the first place, just so they have to hunt me through the forest 2 minutes later, when they could have conveniently killed/captured us there. Why do CSAT helicopters not engange toward the end of the episode, when they have my squad on the serving platter?

[mistyronin 1181]

Yeah, I was thinking the same. AAF (and CSAT) act really weird and illogical overall, i think. Why let me and the guy in the MRAP pass the roadblock in the first place, just so they have to hunt me through the forest 2 minutes later, when they could have conveniently killed/captured us there. Why do CSAT helicopters not engange toward the end of the episode, when they have my squad on the serving platter?

What if their plan is precisely to neutralize NATO troops in the zone? The AAF does the dirty work in Altis-Stratis, and the CSAT for its side start attacking NATO soldiers all around the globe.

But I agree on the helicopters, unless they are trying to make prisoners.

[novemberist 2]

What if their plan is precisely to neutralize NATO troops in the zone? The AAF does the dirty work in Altis-Stratis, and the CSAT for its side start attacking NATO soldiers all around the globe.

But I agree on the helicopters, unless they are trying to make prisoners.

Well they seem to attack all NATO troops on Stratis at once all of a sudden, so by bother letting me get away a couple of seconds earlier? Maybe that would have raised attention too early, but the guy in the MRAP had already hit a mine/IED at that point anyway, so it doesn't seem to have been a matter of exact timing either...

[metalcraze 290]

Did you not walk up to the soldier's standing around in Maxwell and listen to them give pieces of information about what is going on during this conflict? I'm not going to give out spoilers, but basically it was a "mop up mission" to clear Stratis while NATO pulls out. Also, the Island of Stratis isn't really geared for Tanks and such....too rocky...too many hills. As for the Green Forces, it sounds like they are a rag-tag bunch of soldiers wanting their Island back....they most likely don't have armored stuff.

Yes all those choppers, planes and APCs they have (incl. standing in bases you attack with nobody ever trying to man an armed car or APC to defend it) are just for show, I know. AAF is so rag-tag they probably killed their own armor crews to show how rag-tag they are.

In fact armed choppers never attack anyone too. Mi48 is flying around? Yeah whatever. CSAT put a blind and deaf gunner in there who doesn't even react at me firing at that chopper.

Edited October 25, 2013 by metalcraze

[NeMeSiS 11]

But I agree on the helicopters, unless they are trying to make prisoners.

I assume they dont engage is for gameplay reasons: Just 1 of those helicopters can completely destroy a large infantry force even when piloted by the AI. 5 guys without heavy weapons would be a piece of cake and no fun for the player.

Though it would look a lot better it they just let the thing fly away after dropping those troops, currently it looks somewhat ridiculous.

I also think that a bit more non-combat introduction at the beginning of the campaign would not hurt. I didnt exactly get what the setting was and i still have no clue why there was any tension in the first place. The video in the beginning was too confusing, rather laggy for some reason and didnt telly me anything except for the rough location of the island. All the other scenes were gone before i could process what i was looking at.

[metalcraze 290]

I assume they dont engage is for gameplay reasons: Just 1 of those helicopters can completely destroy a large infantry force even when piloted by the AI. 5 guys without heavy weapons would be a piece of cake and no fun for the player.

Except they attacked in OFP and it was never a problem. It's called 'professional mission design', a term sadly not very familiar to the current team. But since OFP BIS and ArmA3 BIS are totally unrelated devs coupled with everything else in missions being just as badly designed it's not very surprising.

A game has AA weapons. Why not put them to use? How hard can it be in a "sandbox". We had them when the game was still a "simulator".

[HKFlash 9]

What if their plan is precisely to neutralize NATO troops in the zone? The AAF does the dirty work in Altis-Stratis, and the CSAT for its side start attacking NATO soldiers all around the globe.

But I agree on the helicopters, unless they are trying to make prisoners.

Atract U.S. attention to the Mediterranean so the Chinese get to face weaker forces in the Pacific? Sounds like a plan.

[NeMeSiS 11]

Except they attacked in OFP and it was never a problem.

You clearly have not played around with infantry vs those helicopters in the editor.

The occasional strafing with rockets in OFP was nothing compared to this. The choppers should just have pretended to leave the scene for business elsewhere instead of hanging around, problem solved without affecting gameplay. A bossfight was not needed in this mission.

[metalcraze 290]

Anti-air weapons?

Whole campaign is wasted on dull generic assault rifles that are nothing but MX (forced on you at the start of every mission even if you switched the gun) and nothing but them, here's the opportunity to finally utilize at least some other type of weapon. And what does BIS do?

Assault choppers can't shoot and fully ignore threats.

In OFP they were no less deadlier. The current team working on missions for ArmA3 is just terrible at what it does. They could've at least read some feedback about showcases since alpha and not repeat the same amateur design mistakes. But I guess they think their design is perfect. Since they can't learn from their own mistakes - the rest of episodes will be just as terrible. And it's sad.

[carlostex 38]

Except they attacked in OFP and it was never a problem. It's called 'professional mission design', a term sadly not very familiar to the current team. But since OFP BIS and ArmA3 BIS are totally unrelated devs coupled with everything else in missions being just as badly designed it's not very surprising.

A game has AA weapons. Why not put them to use? How hard can it be in a "sandbox". We had them when the game was still a "simulator".

FPDR

You are complaining about a campaign that is still dev branch. You complain, and complain, and complain...

You complain about the devs... Who are you to question the current team professional integrity?

The game was never a simulator. That's why it's a freakin' game!

[barakokula31 10]

It took me 5 hours, but I'm done. I'm DONE!

I really liked the last mission. I was killed by mortars only once or twice, but what I really liked was shooting down a Kajman with an unguided PCML. The Kajman took two 150mm PCML HEAT rockets to the face like a boss, but the third one got him.

I also fu**ing hate cliffhangers!

[NeMeSiS 11]

Anti-air weapons?

Whole campaign is wasted on dull generic assault rifles that are nothing but MX (forced on you at the start of every mission even if you switched the gun) and nothing but them, here's the opportunity to finally utilize at least some other type of weapon. And what does BIS do?

Assault choppers can't shoot and fully ignore threats.

In OFP they were no less deadlier. The current team working on missions for ArmA3 is just terrible at what it does. They could've at least read some feedback about showcases since alpha and not repeat the same amateur design mistakes. But I guess they think their design is perfect. Since they can't learn from their own mistakes - the rest of episodes will be just as terrible. And it's sad.

In OFP you ran away from choppers at roughly the same point in the campaign. Halfway the campaign you got a lot more freedom and could murder an entire base even though you were a prisoner, then proceed to take down an attacking Mi24* with some stolen RPGs/BMP/whatever you wanted. But the beginning was just the same kind of handholding we got now, and i dont see a problem with that.

If it continues to be like this in episode 2 or 3 you have a point. Currently i kinda feel you are just complaining for the sake of complaining, especially since you used the ArmA1 campaign as an example of something positive. :p

*Which is not nearly as dangerous as the mi48, you clearly have not tried this. Running from an angry Mi48 is impossible, and fighting it is only possible if you have a lot of friends that will sacrifice themselves while you look for something to take it down. If they added a waypoint that would make it fly away after dropping those units you would not be this angry anyway.

[rehtus777 10]

That's true, but it does raise a rather interesting question:

If the NATO forces on Stratis were basically already on their way out, and the AAF+CSAT apparently wanted them "gone" (or dead, whatever), why did they not just wait a few days for them to actually pull out? That way NATO would also be gone, but there would have been no risk of retaliation. Those extra few days of NATO presence don't seem like enough reason to start killing people who are leaving anyway...

"Oh, you're leaving next week? NOT GOOD ENOUGH!" *shoots him in the face*

Doesn't make sense to me.

As far as I can tell, there was no logical reason for them to start massacring the NATO forces instead of simply waiting a few days and avoiding an unnecessary conflict. (Unless the whole point was to spark a conflict, but... why? :confused:)

Maybe it will be cleared up in the last two episodes, but as it stands this seems to be a huge plot goof.

I have a theory:

One of the Soldier's in the camp hinted that China / Pacific Theater was hot. Also, I heard one of the Soldier's say, "What's going on? Are we in WW3?" So, Iran and China are blitzing Europe..... the boys in Altis / Stratis are caught in the middle of that blitz and it's all just bad "timing" for those on Stratis. But you make a good point, I hope they saw that flaw in their story....or ...... we 'think' we see a flaw, but it will not be so.

---------- Post added 10-26-2013 at 12:01 AM ---------- Previous post was 10-25-2013 at 11:50 PM ----------

Yes all those choppers, planes and APCs they have (incl. standing in bases you attack with nobody ever trying to man an armed car or APC to defend it) are just for show, I know. AAF is so rag-tag they probably killed their own armor crews to show how rag-tag they are.

In fact armed choppers never attack anyone too. Mi48 is flying around? Yeah whatever. CSAT put a blind and deaf gunner in there who doesn't even react at me firing at that chopper.

I haven't finished the campaign yet, so I don't know about all the armed vehicles not being used by NATO or CSAT. But, if those CSAT Armed vehicles are somewhat high tech, the NATO drivers should not be able to drive or use their weapons in the vehicle do to a lock of the weapons / engine. It is 2035 and maybe those vehicles won't start without some type of "password" / "Retina Scan" / or whatever lock they may have on it. It might take the engineers hours or days to crack the lock...who knows. Again, you're too over critical. Just relax and enjoy the story / game-play / Scenery.

As for rag-tag, from what I've seen the Green Army is acting like a bunch of "Gorilla Fighters." The soldiers at Maxwell (or Lacey in the Chopper at the start....can't remember) hinted that the Green Army are a bunch of animals that massacred their own people.

Anyway......... just enjoy it.

Edited October 26, 2013 by rehtus777

[MavericK96 0]

Campaign seems fun so far, but the AI ubervision/accuracy issue is just exacerbated in this.

[rehtus777 10]

Campaign seems fun so far, but the AI ubervision/accuracy issue is just exacerbated in this.

Adjust the "Skill" level of the AI in the Configure / Game / Difficulty part of the game. Make the AI "Super AI" or give them more skill.

Edited October 26, 2013 by rehtus777
Made my point more clear.

[nerdwing 13]

No game-breaking bugs during my run. Also enjoyed the dialogue throw-backs to OFP in the first few missions :P

Still concerned about small arms weakness though, as well as grenades.

[rehtus777 10]

One other thing for the Dev's: You need more "American Speaking Actors" in the game. I really like the guy's voice who plays "Staff Sgt. Adams" at the beginning (he's a believable actor), but we hear his voice all the time. In the very very beginning during the AAN TV broadcast, we here the same voice of "Staff Sgt. Adams" used as the narrator of that broadcast. Maybe you could use the same voice, but run it through a synthesizer and change the pitch or something like that....or..... you could have me make an mp3 file of my voice and I will email it - put me on your payroll. :p You would have a guy with a Kansas Twang (Southern Twang) in his voice. lol. Just kidding about that last part....but the actor for "Staff Sgt. Adam's" voice is over-used.

Edit: BTW, I loved "Staff Sgt. Adam's" character.... very funny dialogue..... he had me laughing for the 1st 10 minutes of the game.

Edited October 26, 2013 by rehtus777
Accuracy Correction

[DasBoot 10]

First 2 missions are good, but the 3rd mission won't load up for me. It goes to the Camp Maxwell loading screen, and never stops loading. Both the loading bars fill up but the game never opens. The game doesn't crash either, I can still ALT+Tab out and check my task manager, it says the game is running. If there is a solution to this could we possibly get that mentioned as an edit in one of the posts on the first page? I don't seem the be the only one having this issue.

[chortles 263]

I'd love to hear what you think would be a great campaign, since I've seen a variety of official campaigns and you label them all shit.

Therein lies my issue with the complaining by metalcraze... it pretty much sounds like the only campaign that he'd want is pretty much CWC in Arma 3/RV4 (read: "CWR3"), but when he's declaring that the current devs aren't even capable of doing it because they're not the OFP: CWC devs... well, the latter are (I believe metalcraze even said as much) just plain gone and not coming back, and it's been that way for something like over a decade now, so... it just comes off as very self-defeating complaining for the sake of complaining.

But I guess they think their design is perfect.

Considering the overwhelmingly positive reaction both on and off of the BI forums, why wouldn't the devs see it as "mission accomplished"?

Pun intended...

In response to your guys' feedback, the mechanics of this particular mortar sequence have been revised. You should see it in the next dev branch update.

... considering the topic of the rest of this post (metalcraze complaining about Arma 3 mission devs and "being too COD-like"), I LOL'd. A lot.

metalcraze, the Arma 3 devs have been reading feedback for "Survive"... and the consensus on this thread alone has been, with more than one user outright saying it, "best since CWC". Why wouldn't they continue down this path? (To say nothing of the possibility that it was set months back and subject to only so much tweaking allowed...)

Edited October 26, 2013 by Chortles

[rehtus777 10]

First 2 missions are good, but the 3rd mission won't load up for me. It goes to the Camp Maxwell loading screen, and never stops loading. Both the loading bars fill up but the game never opens. The game doesn't crash either, I can still ALT+Tab out and check my task manager, it says the game is running. If there is a solution to this could we possibly get that mentioned as an edit in one of the posts on the first page? I don't seem the be the only one having this issue.

Do you have any mod's loaded up? If so, one of them might be messing with the game. I have the sthud, bloodmist, VTS wind, VTS Weapon resting, and JSRS Sound loaded up....and it works like a charm.

[MavericK96 0]

Adjust the "Skill" level of the AI in the Configure / Game / Difficulty part of the game. Make the AI "Super AI" or give them more skill.

Thanks for the advice, but it's more of a problem with being realistic than just toning down the AI to be dumber. It's been discussed ad nauseum elsewhere, but I just noticed it a lot in the campaign so far.

[Westonsammy 1]

Just finished the entire episode, thought it was very well done, especially when compared to the ArmA 2 campaigns.

Also, my moderately spoiler-filled thoughts on almost all parts of the episode

The Plot-

I thought the plot was set up pretty well, what you were supposed to know was made clear, and the amount of questions left unanswered, instead of frustrating me as it did some others, left me anticipating the second episode even more. I also like the cliffhanger ending, which too contributed to that anticipation. Although in terms of choice, I really had hoped for multiple paths in the episode, like what ArmA 2 did. During the first mission, when you get the chance to run to the ghosthawk to extract, I thought there would be some sort of other issue that would pop up, and you would have to choose between staying or leaving (like in the 3rd ArmA 2 mission). Instead a jet just strafes it D:

The gameplay-

Even though the gameplay was not very varied in terms of combined arms, I thought BI did a very good job of switching up the infantry combat. The first mission is very "lone wolf" and panic style, with you and your TL trying to figure out what the fuck is going on and what you are going to do while the situation is rapidly changing (although I would have liked more stealthy segments here). The second mission then gives you some generic squad-on-squad combat, which is good for just easing the player into the game. The next 4 missions that follow then include a diver mission that has you insert via SDV, a defend mission where you have to set up mines around the downed blackfoot you were set to destroy, a base assault mission that has you use some (very inaccurate) mortar support, and finally a copy of the infantry showcase mission (really disappointed me when I realized what it was, but I think newbies will be happy with it), that nevertheless has you use a drone to spot some targets for friendlies. And then it ties the episode up in a neat little bow that includes a night op (with NVG's, IR lasers and all) and a pretty epic final assault mission that includes enemy arty, and a massive aerial invasion. I also felt the episode had some very balanced combat, with both NATO and AAF forces being evenly matched in almost every engagement (not always in terms of numbers, but in terms of equipment, positions, and timing). As for the lack of combined arms gameplay, I feel that BI is saving this for the later episodes, which will seem to features a bigger conflict on Altis.

The length-

I felt that this episode was a bit shorter than I expected, it only took me about 4 hours on veteran to complete. But I also feel as though this is because of the infantry focus, the fact that the entire episode is barely 24 hours long, and the location of Stratis, which is not that large. Because of the possible increase in scope, map size, and assets available in the next two episodes, I think those will be much longer than this one was.

The realism/immersion-

The episode kept it pretty realistic, with only a few very minor incidents breaking the immersion (such as the saluting and blind gunship issue) but 99% of the time, the episode was VERY immersive, my favorite moments include the CSAT invasion (when the epic track started playing, and the artillery and paratroopers started falling, it was awesome, minus the fact that I had to restart that segment 20+ times due to a now-fixed bug D:) Tension is also kept through out the episode, with the constant (scripted) threat of AAF jets in the air, and that of the enemy having a much more substantial force then you on the island, all contribute to that feeling of being guerillas that have been cut off from their main force, and are trying to stay alive and SURVIVE while still bringing the fight to the enemy. Voice acting is also the best its been in the ArmA series :D

The bugs-

As I said earlier, there are almost none, and those that were present before are now patched or about to be patched. And anything immersion-breaking or buggy, BI has ample time to fix.

Spoiler-free TLDR: Awesome episode, VERY playable, almost no bugs.

[rehtus777 10]

Thanks for the advice, but it's more of a problem with being realistic than just toning down the AI to be dumber. It's been discussed ad nauseum elsewhere, but I just noticed it a lot in the campaign so far.

I thought you meant the AI Units were too weak and you wanted them to be better troops. You might try WW_AICover mod...it works pretty good. The last couple of months have brought big improvements with the AI by BIS. In ArmA 2, it was really bad....AI running in circles....getting stuck.... acting really stupid. Then in ArmA 3, it got better and now BIS is tweaking it to where it's a whole lot better. Sure, it's not perfect, but the AI are improving. I only caught them being stupid a couple of times in the Campaign..... I was pleased with the AI overall.

[alias1001 10]

I played through the entire thing with no problems! Great job gents! I even Jumped in my chair a few times it was THAT good!!! Keep up the AMAZING work.. Once again as with the very first OFP I have bought every single Title by BI and expansion and always worth every single penny! Thank you!!!!!:):):):):)

[RSF TheCapulet 59]

Regarding the gunship at the last mission, am I really the only one who took it out immediately after seeing it coming in for a landing every time? I had to go back and play it again just to realize it wasn't out for blood.

Also keep in mind, that heli flying around is reporting your position to AI.