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

[Polygon 11]

Just complete 1st part of campagin. Guys who can explain the dev's logic.

1. Miller ask the group of survivors: Collect guns and equipment -> Only 1 boy loot the dead bodies (player)

2. Lots of veehicles during the campagin (your squad can clean almost all island with this arsenal). But noone is using the captured enemy vehicles.

3. Loot as many as you can. But will be better if you dont use the trucks for transporting ammo to base

4. Completed the mission and get good equipment, after briefing spawned near ammo with default equip (NV googles and silencer dissapeared)

5. Final mission - escape. I see mi-48, shoot him (he landed). Why we need repair the good helicopter? Better if our squad will continue run under rain of mortar fire.

This "sandbox" makes me cry. Really.

P.s. Sorry for my bad English

Vehicle may compromise survivor position on Stratis? Maybe they have GPSs mounted which are hard to remove lol.

+1 to all your points. by utilizing all abandoned vehicles, player could run over most of the enemies easily. how's that instead of the oldschool bullets?

At some points, 'Survive' has no logic like Maxwell full of bright lights at night and later Miller surprised why attacked by arty... Common sense, shmuck.

I didn't actually see anyone of survivors properly patrolling / scouting outskirts of Maxwell for safety, too. everyone relaxed, in one piece.

But OFP CWC campaign had its flaws too. perhaps it was technical limitations of the time, perhaps not.

[msy 22]

Just complete 1st part of campagin. Guys who can explain the dev's logic.

1. Miller ask the group of survivors: Collect guns and equipment -> Only 1 boy loot the dead bodies (player)

2. Lots of veehicles during the campagin (your squad can clean almost all island with this arsenal). But noone is using the captured enemy vehicles.

3. Loot as many as you can. But will be better if you dont use the trucks for transporting ammo to base

4. Completed the mission and get good equipment, after briefing spawned near ammo with default equip (NV googles and silencer dissapeared)

5. Final mission - escape. I see mi-48, shoot him (he landed). Why we need repair the good helicopter? Better if our squad will continue run under rain of mortar fire.

This "sandbox" makes me cry. Really.

P.s. Sorry for my bad English

1. If you think ARMA3'S AI sucks you, you can quit. Why you don't cry when I rob someone's car in GTA and leave my old car, others won't take it instead? Because GTA is more famous?

2. Did you think a low rank footmen team should handle on armored vehicles well and this is real?

3. It is not OFP:R which fight is for freedom. It is fight to survive. And the game time is only less than 2 days. It is not a protracted war.

4. This must be some game program issue which should be fixed.

5. I think it is unreasonable and irrational too.

Last: the first episode is a AI LEADER introducing part. If this can be a sandbox to let you play as you want, I want to know What's your military rank? where's your discipline? Why you can be so cool when you are not leader? If you have question you can say but you must obey orders! that is army!

Finally, when you have right to lead, you can order your AI teams not go across the forest.

Edited November 4, 2013 by msy

[antoineflemming 14]

1. If you think ARMA3'S AI sucks you, you can quit. Why you don't cry when I rob someone's car in GTA and leave my old car, others won't take it instead? Because GTA is more famous?

2. Did you think a low rank footmen team should handle on armored vehicles well and this is real?

3. It is not OFP:R which fight is for freedom. It is fight to survive. And the game time is only less than 2 days. It is not a protracted war.

4. This must be some game program issue which should be fixed.

5. I think it is unreasonable and irrational too.

Last: the first episode is a AI LEADER introducing part. If this can be a sandbox to let you play as you want, I want to know What's your military rank? where's your discipline? Why you can be so cool when you are not leader? If you have question you can say but you must obey orders! that is army!

Finally, when you have right to lead, you can order your AI teams not go across the forest.

Well the AI isn't perfect...

[enex 11]

Well the AI isn't perfect...

and is never gonna be.AI is the hardest part of game design, especially the one in sandbox environment.

[NeuroFunker 11]

Just complete 1st part of campagin. Guys who can explain the dev's logic.

1. Miller ask the group of survivors: Collect guns and equipment -> Only 1 boy loot the dead bodies (player)

2. Lots of veehicles during the campagin (your squad can clean almost all island with this arsenal). But noone is using the captured enemy vehicles.

3. Loot as many as you can. But will be better if you dont use the trucks for transporting ammo to base

4. Completed the mission and get good equipment, after briefing spawned near ammo with default equip (NV googles and silencer dissapeared)

5. Final mission - escape. I see mi-48, shoot him (he landed). Why we need repair the good helicopter? Better if our squad will continue run under rain of mortar fire.

This "sandbox" makes me cry. Really.

P.s. Sorry for my bad English

about 5. Are you sure, there were atleast 1 pilot in your squad, who could controll machine, what he never flew? Never knew, being a pilot in one country, makes you able to operate all machines over the world.

[Grek 10]

1. If you think ARMA3'S AI sucks you, you can quit.

i dont think about AI. AI is good. dont complain A3 and gta (please, lol)

2. I think "when professional soldiers train in their camps, they train to drive on light vehicles too (anyway, we have a mission where driver transport us for correcting mortar fire (need to destroy 3 towers), so, at least we have a driver.

3. I dont complain OFP:R(ohh old good days) and A3.

4. There is a notice: your ammunition has ben changed for mission automatically for mission (or something like this, i play in RU version), so its not a issue or bug. Problem in this: i DONT want change it automatically.

5. maybe, maybe not. but i dont talk about reasons, i talk about possiblity to get in any vehicle what i see.

Think about this: if you want to survive, you equip with best and most powerful weps/ vehicle what you see.

Just IMHO.

Sorry for my bad English. Peace

[bonchie 39]

Except that it is way more linear and way less story driven. 3 hours of gameplay with 0 replay value is a joke.

We haven't seen the full campaign yet for starters. Once the player starts taking command, possiblities will of course open up by default (just like OFP's campaign).

The first 1/3 to 1/2 of OFP's campaign was simply "go to point a, shoot at stuff, retreat to point b" or the like. It was totally linear.

Your nostalgia is getting in the way.

Edited November 4, 2013 by bonchie

[Grek 10]

I hope next parts of campagin will be more realistic and less linear "Do what devs says to do".

At this time its look like introducion or trainig before real war starts.

Edited November 4, 2013 by Grek

[NeuroFunker 11]

i dont think about AI. AI is good. dont complain A3 and gta (please, lol)

2. I think "when professional soldiers train in their camps, they train to drive on light vehicles too (anyway, we have a mission where driver transport us for correcting mortar fire (need to destroy 3 towers), so, at least we have a driver.

3. I dont complain OFP:R(ohh old good days) and A3.

4. There is a notice: your ammunition has ben changed for mission automatically for mission (or something like this, i play in RU version), so its not a issue or bug. Problem in this: i DONT want change it automatically.

5. maybe, maybe not. but i dont talk about reasons, i talk about possiblity to get in any vehicle what i see.

Think about this: if you want to survive, you equip with best and most powerful weps/ vehicle what you see.

Just IMHO.

Sorry for my bad English. Peace

не ÑоглаÑен)))

Ofcourse if you have a possibility, to equip the best, you do. But if thats something, you have not been trained to use, that makes zero sense to allow you to do so.

[Grek 10]

pay attention to the control devices hunter, Strider, and Ifrit. you can not come up with something new: transmission, steering wheel, pedals

Edited November 8, 2013 by Grek
edited

[maddogx 13]

не ÑоглаÑен)))

Почему же? обрати внимание на приборы ÑƒÐ¿Ñ€Ð°Ð²Ð»ÐµÐ½Ð¸Ñ Ð¾Ñ…Ð¾Ñ‚Ð½Ð¸ÐºÐ¾Ð¼ Ñтрайдером и ифритом. что-то новое придумать нельзÑ: коробка передач, руль, педали.

§13) Write in English

Please write only in English on the public forums. Avoid writing in any other language or any kind of slang or txt speak since the majority of the members most likely won't understand. In private messages you are of course welcome to write in any language you wish.

Please edit your posts accordingly. :)

[NeuroFunker 11]

Почему же? обрати внимание на приборы ÑƒÐ¿Ñ€Ð°Ð²Ð»ÐµÐ½Ð¸Ñ Ð¾Ñ…Ð¾Ñ‚Ð½Ð¸ÐºÐ¾Ð¼ Ñтрайдером и ифритом. что-то новое придумать нельзÑ: коробка передач, руль, педали.

pls, don't write russian at least not the whole message, pm me if anything. Only english here.

[Grek 10]

Please edit your posts accordingly. :)

sorry. done

[Polygon 11]

We haven't seen the full campaign yet for starters. Once the player starts taking command, possiblities will of course open up by default (just like OFP's campaign).

The first 1/3 to 1/2 of OFP's campaign was simply "go to point a, shoot at stuff, retreat to point b" or the like. It was totally linear.

Your nostalgia is getting in the way.

no nostalgia here and you're dead wrong.

Montignac Must Fall (CWC camp) was the first mission (7-8th overall?) with 2 different endings progressing the storyline and it happened quite early.

further content was quite varied, flexible, and opening opportunities. however, in most cases realism was sacrificed for better gameplay and pretentious scenarios / situations. that's a viable approach to some degree in game design.

you can take the risk, but don't stretch too far as A3 devs did in Tipping Point mission - paratroopers landing in front of a hostile squad and nearby armed boats. they didn't fire and player's squad leader wanted to have some fun shooting before leaving Stratis. bad design. period.

not sure how self-critical / -aware BIS designers are. probably not much.

[antoineflemming 14]

I hope next parts of campagin will be more realistic and less linear "Do what devs says to do".

At this time its look like introducion or trainig before real war starts.

In real war a soldier does what he is told to do. You don't have unlimited freedom. Nor can you just steal an enemy helicopter. If you don't like the linear nature of the story, then you don't really want realistic war. Because your missions, unless they are FRAGO'd, are linear and straight-forward. Do this at this location at this time. Anyone complaining about how linear the story is really doesn't want realistic war. They want a sandbox campaign.

[Grek 10]

In real war a soldier does what he is told to do. You don't have unlimited freedom. Nor can you just steal an enemy helicopter. If you don't like the linear nature of the story, then you don't really want realistic war. Because your missions, unless they are FRAGO'd, are linear and straight-forward. Do this at this location at this time. Anyone complaining about how linear the story is really doesn't want realistic war. They want a sandbox campaign.

There is 2 criterias:

1. ingame freedom (how you can interact with objects ingame)

2. Orders from leader (leader tell you get into the car, or not)

Ima talking about ingame freedom (anyway your leader can shout to you "DISEMBARK!" lol)

[katipo66 94]

I hate the campaign (again) for me the voice acting is some C grade Hollywood papa bear shit :)

It seriously makes me feel stupid having to listen to it and does nothing at all to immersion, it's like let's throw some "generation kill" banta in there to make it legit and it comes out as just grating and sounding dumb to the point where I don't wanna play it.

Would be nice if I could remove it and just had the realistic radio chatter you hear when starting a mission and ANN news feeds to tell the story, Same story every campaign for me but not caring as the campaign is the very last reason I'd buy the game and if it was the only thing in the game I wouldn't touch it.

I think I'm just an old bugger and it takes a bit more convincing .P

Edited November 4, 2013 by Katipo66

[maturin 12]

For once the voice-acting and storytelling is quite good. The atmosphere and the format clicks together nicely and makes me forget some of the silly situations. I especially love the whole fog of war aspect, and the Half-Life style of exposition.

But I'm sorry, but there are a few mission makers that just need to be taken out and shot. They either have no conception of how their own game works, or never played their own fucking pile of awfulness.

I'm not trashing any particular mission. The missions on the whole are rather good. There are just moments where idiotic and disastrous situations are UNAVOIDABLE because of waypoints given to the friendly AI? It invariably means either dead teammates or a frustrating pile of reverts. It's all frequently hijacked by moments of unparalleled and AVOIDABLE absurdity.

The worst offender: Wet Work when emerging from the water right on goddamn top of four enemies. WTF did you expect to happen? Not even a professional FPS player could gun down all four from a standing position! You have to wait for your invincible teamleader to suicidally banzai charge the lot of them, soaking up hundreds of MG rounds and making us stare your shitty unrealistic mission design in the face. Why the hell didn't we detect the enemy and quietly move off to find some cover? Half a dozen reverts, shaking my head at this filth.

The most total reverts was the beginning of Tipping Point, where the last survivors of our highly trained NATO force decides on a fucking HUMAN WAVE ATTACK into enemy defenses with no cover except some bushes. No base of fire. No flanking. No plan. It can only end in slaughter. Are our teammates orcs from LotR?!?

Actually, I take back what I said earlier. The stupidest moment is in the battle for Mike 26. We have to beat off an enemy counter attack. Yet for some reason the game slaps down a waypoint RIGHT ON TOP of the approaching enemies, 1.5km distant. My jaw dropped in incredulous dismay as my team leader sprinted past MULTIPLE LAYERS OF PREPARED HESCO DEFENSES to have a meeting engagement in the middle of a road. We knew they were coming. They had no cover. We did. BIS, what genius in your company decided that the mission should climax with a 19th CENTURY LINE BATTLE? Only small, so I guess it's more of a cowboy standoff in the middle of the street. Obviously, my teammates all die, as I struggle to lay down smoke in a vain struggle with this idiotic design.

I never really get angry at BIS, but this is just inexcusable.

Edited November 4, 2013 by maturin

[Nardypants 1]

My thoughts exactly. The storyline is really badly written and predictable:

• Being alone with my Team Leader, I knew he was going to die pretty soon. Shocker... not.
  
• Having to kill an officer, I was pretty sure it would be a useless failure, classic shocker...
  

The stupidest thing about those two events is that they didn't serve much... there was no time to bond with the team leader, and the consequence for not killing the right officer was intangible.

Personally, I thought it was the weakest of all BI campaigns I have played so far. Illogical decisions driving the plot and inconceivable combat procedures, coupled with completely useless weapon choices made for a totally unenjoyable experience. I give it a 3/10.

[RSF TheCapulet 59]

Actually, I take back what I said earlier. The stupidest moment is in the battle for Mike 26. We have to beat off an enemy counter attack. Yet for some reason the game slaps down a waypoint RIGHT ON TOP of the approaching enemies, 1.5km distant. My jaw dropped in incredulous dismay as my team leader sprinted past MULTIPLE LAYERS OF PREPARED HESCO DEFENSES to have a meeting engagement in the middle of a road. We knew they were coming. They had no cover. We did. BIS, what genius in your company decided that the mission should climax with a 19th CENTURY LINE BATTLE? Only small, so I guess it's more of a cowboy standoff in the middle of the street. Obviously, my teammates all die, as I struggle to lay down smoke in a vain struggle with this idiotic design.

Take out all of the initial defenses with mortars, while still having some mortar rounds left, and that whole situation can be avoided. And I don't mean in the sandbox do as you please sense either. Mission is actually scripted for it.

[antoineflemming 14]

For once the voice-acting and storytelling is quite good. The atmosphere and the format clicks together nicely and makes me forget some of the silly situations. I especially love the whole fog of war aspect, and the Half-Life style of exposition.

But I'm sorry, but there are a few mission makers that just need to be taken out and shot. They either have no conception of how their own game works, or never played their own fucking pile of awfulness.

I'm not trashing any particular mission. The missions on the whole are rather good. There are just moments where idiotic and disastrous situations are UNAVOIDABLE because of waypoints given to the friendly AI? It invariably means either dead teammates or a frustrating pile of reverts. It's all frequently hijacked by moments of unparalleled and AVOIDABLE absurdity.

The worst offender: Wet Work when emerging from the water right on goddamn top of four enemies. WTF did you expect to happen? Not even a professional FPS player could gun down all four from a standing position! You have to wait for your invincible teamleader to suicidally banzai charge the lot of them, soaking up hundreds of MG rounds and making us stare your shitty unrealistic mission design in the face. Why the hell didn't we detect the enemy and quietly move off to find some cover? Half a dozen reverts, shaking my head at this filth.

The most total reverts was the beginning of Tipping Point, where the last survivors of our highly trained NATO force decides on a fucking HUMAN WAVE ATTACK into enemy defenses with no cover except some bushes. No base of fire. No flanking. No plan. It can only end in slaughter. Are our teammates orcs from LotR?!?

Actually, I take back what I said earlier. The stupidest moment is in the battle for Mike 26. We have to beat off an enemy counter attack. Yet for some reason the game slaps down a waypoint RIGHT ON TOP of the approaching enemies, 1.5km distant. My jaw dropped in incredulous dismay as my team leader sprinted past MULTIPLE LAYERS OF PREPARED HESCO DEFENSES to have a meeting engagement in the middle of a road. We knew they were coming. They had no cover. We did. BIS, what genius in your company decided that the mission should climax with a 19th CENTURY LINE BATTLE? Only small, so I guess it's more of a cowboy standoff in the middle of the street. Obviously, my teammates all die, as I struggle to lay down smoke in a vain struggle with this idiotic design.

I never really get angry at BIS, but this is just inexcusable.

Unless they rewrite their AI to make tactically sound decisions, again, they need to motion capture and script the movements of the AI. Script them to get online and prone. Script them to lay down a base of fire. Script them to flank to the left and take up an assaulting position. Script a textbook squad attack and other types of attacks/maneuvers. That's what they need to do. I know plenty will hate that, but it's currently the only way for the AI to actually behave in a realistic manner. Because while the AI take a lot of factors into consideration, they are far from realistic and far from behaving believably. And honestly the only way to talk about a solution is to talk about the AI and AI scripting and AI behavior, and that's really the topic of another thread.

[bonchie 39]

Montignac Must Fall (CWC camp) was the first mission (7-8th overall?) with 2 different endings progressing the storyline and it happened quite early.

That mission was completely linear. Go here, shoot, get in this truck, go here, shoot, etc. There was no sandbox in that mission. It had two endings but it was still linear. The mission after it was the first one where you had some choice of action, but you weren't under anyones command at that point.

In Survive, you are under someones command. That demands a linear approach just like OFP's missions where you were under someones command demanded a linear approach.

Personally, I've got no issue with it.

further content was quite varied, flexible, and opening opportunities. however, in most cases realism was sacrificed for better gameplay and pretentious scenarios / situations. that's a viable approach to some degree in game design.

you can take the risk, but don't stretch too far as A3 devs did in Tipping Point mission - paratroopers landing in front of a hostile squad and nearby armed boats. they didn't fire and player's squad leader wanted to have some fun shooting before leaving Stratis. bad design. period.

not sure how self-critical / -aware BIS designers are. probably not much.

The ending of Tipping Point was the worst part of the episode. I agree. But overall the campaign flowed nicely.

As future episodes put you in command, missions will get less linear.

---------- Post added at 05:58 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:28 PM ----------

Frankly, I'm surprised so many seem to hate the campaign, especially after how many seemed to hate Red Harvest.

The voice acting was the best of any BI campaign ever, including OFP (I mean come on...Koslowski crapping his pants?). The missions weren't buggy and actually worked. The storyline flowed and was well written, clearly setting up for something bigger later.

I mean, it's not a masterpiece, but it's pretty dang good.

Edited November 4, 2013 by bonchie

[Nardypants 1]

The missions weren't buggy and actually worked. The storyline flowed and was well written, clearly setting up for something bigger later.

We definitely haven't played the same game... I had retarded bugs happen to me 3 times, all linked to scripting (classic BI mission borking). They required restarting the missions completely. The worst was when

I had to blow up the blackfoot, but the damn medic who failed to save the pilot would just stand there instead of retreating. Blowing the helicopter would fail the mission because of FF and there was nothing I could do to fix it aside from starting from scratch. It took two restarts too.

As for being well written, I guess that's subjective, but if I can say I consider a BFx story better written, that's saying a lot about this one. That plus the staging mission mechanics that are completely useless and just waste our time makes it pretty poor IMO.

[maturin 12]

Unless they rewrite their AI to make tactically sound decisions, again, they need to motion capture and script the movements of the AI. Script them to get online and prone. Script them to lay down a base of fire. Script them to flank to the left and take up an assaulting position. Script a textbook squad attack and other types of attacks/maneuvers. That's what they need to do. I know plenty will hate that, but it's currently the only way for the AI to actually behave in a realistic manner. Because while the AI take a lot of factors into consideration, they are far from realistic and far from behaving believably. And honestly the only way to talk about a solution is to talk about the AI and AI scripting and AI behavior, and that's really the topic of another thread.

That's overkill, and motion capture everywhere is out of their means, I'm pretty sure.

Just don't give them stupid waypoints. The AI can make its own decisions well enough when you give it a cohesive group and some logical instructions that aren't 'sprint face-first into the enemy and engage on any open field without cover.'

---------- Post added at 01:57 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:55 AM ----------

Take out all of the initial defenses with mortars, while still having some mortar rounds left, and that whole situation can be avoided. And I don't mean in the sandbox do as you please sense either. Mission is actually scripted for it.

Uh... so?

Taking out all towers with only rounds is astonishingly lucky and has nothing to do with player skill. And just because an idiotic design decision can potentially be avoided doesn't make it any less idiotic.

[chortles 263]

The problem is that based on what Zipper5 explained of how the mission was built, the three main remedies would be to either:

1. Revert mortar accuracy to something at least approaching its prior state (the very state that devs changed away from due to "user feedback"), since that would corresponding affect the mortars for this mission.

2. Replace the mortar impacts with scripted explosions generated at the user's point of aim and thereby not subject to the state of "sandbox" mortar accuracy.

3. Just change the Task so that instead of trying to kill specific guards you're basically told "here's eight rounds, do as much damage as possible with them". <- my suggestion