Campaign Episode 2: ADAPT - Feedback thread ** SPOILER WARNING! **

[daze23 1]

I find myself utterly frustrated with the Elite Warriors side mission

After killing 4 guys and systematically checking every building in Syrta (marking each house off in the map after clearing it) in 2 hours the mission remains unfinished. At one point I resorted to running around town in time compression hoping to draw fire to at least give me some indication of where they are. I cannot tell if I have missed something or the mission itself is broken.

This brings me to a global problem with all the side missions in Adapt and even some of the main missions.

There is a severe lack of;

1. Intelligence related to the mission

2. Criteria for accomplishment of any given of objective

Most of the time as the player I end up stumbling across the win condition instead of making conscious decisions to do things that bring me towards victory. If you tell me to go to the veterinary clinic to find "something" and I pick up a medikit that completes the mission as far as I am concerned that win condition happened completely arbitrarily and I haven't actually accomplished anything.

At varying degrees of experience with the ArmA series how is the player supposed to deduce that the medikit is somehow more important than say 10 FAKs? Keep in mind that in terms of campaign experience up to this point at no point has the campaign educated the player as to the utility and limitations of the medikit outside the ingame "manual".

And yet paradoxically Kerry seems to have a clairvoyant awareness of what constitutes victory even if you the player do not as evidenced by his inner monologue every time you kill that last enemy.

There is also no feedback as to how accomplishing any of these missions actually helps the resistance in a tangible way. So I just nabbed the smuggler cache, ok cool but what did that do? I brought back the medikit, does that mean I get medics in the next mission? In most triple-A sandbox games the rewards for side quests are telegraphed very clearly. Again, Kerry talking to himself is one thing but he doesn't tell you HOW winning made a difference.

The TLDR version;

1. Tell me what I need to do in order to win in certain terms that I made judge my competence towards that end.

2. If you aren't going to tell me, at least give me a hint (mission intel) so that I can at least make autonomous decisions in the right direction.

3. Telegraph how what I am doing relates to the world in a tangible sense.

Yes I just made a Deci & Ryan reference there.

I agree with your points. as far as Elite Warriors...

there are three groups. I found two in buildings and one in an 'alley'. one of the buildings was kind on the outskirts of town. I also found a lot of mines... the hard way.

I agree that it's weird you just keep searching until you somehow know you got all of them and the town is clear. the 'veterinarian' mission was awkward too, as I was able to complete it by grabbing some FAK's elsewhere (there are medikits elsewhere as well). and like you said, there's no tangible benefit to doing the side missions, other than a few (redundant) guns you can pick up, and some 'personal satisfaction'. for that matter, it seems there's no real 'branching storyline' when you fail various parts of missions.

[Tonci87 163]

I find myself utterly frustrated with the Elite Warriors side mission

After killing 4 guys and systematically checking every building in Syrta (marking each house off in the map after clearing it) in 2 hours the mission remains unfinished. At one point I resorted to running around town in time compression hoping to draw fire to at least give me some indication of where they are. I cannot tell if I have missed something or the mission itself is broken.

This brings me to a global problem with all the side missions in Adapt and even some of the main missions.

There is a severe lack of;

1. Intelligence related to the mission

2. Criteria for accomplishment of any given of objective

Most of the time as the player I end up stumbling across the win condition instead of making conscious decisions to do things that bring me towards victory. If you tell me to go to the veterinary clinic to find "something" and I pick up a medikit that completes the mission as far as I am concerned that win condition happened completely arbitrarily and I haven't actually accomplished anything.

At varying degrees of experience with the ArmA series how is the player supposed to deduce that the medikit is somehow more important than say 10 FAKs? Keep in mind that in terms of campaign experience up to this point at no point has the campaign educated the player as to the utility and limitations of the medikit outside the ingame "manual".

And yet paradoxically Kerry seems to have a clairvoyant awareness of what constitutes victory even if you the player do not as evidenced by his inner monologue every time you kill that last enemy.

There is also no feedback as to how accomplishing any of these missions actually helps the resistance in a tangible way. So I just nabbed the smuggler cache, ok cool but what did that do? I brought back the medikit, does that mean I get medics in the next mission? In most triple-A sandbox games the rewards for side quests are telegraphed very clearly. Again, Kerry talking to himself is one thing but he doesn't tell you HOW winning made a difference.

The TLDR version;

1. Tell me what I need to do in order to win in certain terms that I made judge my competence towards that end.

2. If you aren't going to tell me, at least give me a hint (mission intel) so that I can at least make autonomous decisions in the right direction.

3. Telegraph how what I am doing relates to the world in a tangible sense.

Yes I just made a Deci & Ryan reference there.

There is an alley between two houses with two guys in it. The alley is bloked by garbage canns and other stuff. I almost missed them too. When you find it simpy throw a grenade into it

[wattywatts 76]

I find myself utterly frustrated with the Elite Warriors side mission...

As you are not alone and ultimately this side mission was quite far from being as "enjoyable" as it should have been (especially for those who didn't even try to find a mine detector and return later :)), it received a major reconstruction today:

- fewer mines (still rather take a mine detector with you...)

- SF were repositioned

- there are some clues where you can find them, so you don't have to sweep all the houses

- when you succeed, all your effort shall be properly rewarded

[Lobstris 10]

For those of us who find the side missions a little too 'Rambo', any chance of them being reworked to allow the option of taking along AI colleague? Also any news on getting stuff saved in the crates - some AI git has nicked my NVGs again... :-)

[Wiki 1558]

ATTENTION BIS dev!!!

During the cutscene/briefing before going back to Stratis, when Stavrou explains that Nikos is held prisoner on Stratis etc... well, Stavrou is not well placed:

with the animation, he should be very close to the table, put his hands on it etc... whereas he's actually 1 or 2 meters away.

You should fix it and make it closer to the table.

[EBass 0]

Confirm Stavrou table animation bug.

Also confirm starting Attention Deficit with no squad, despite Miller telling me before I hit the shore "You're in charge of your own squad now" or some such. Either confusing line of dialogue needs changing, squad needs to be added OR if the player is not given a squad due to casualties in previous missions, this mechanic needs to be explained to the player.

---------- Post added at 00:31 ---------- Previous post was at 00:30 ----------

Confirm Stavrou table animation bug.

Also confirm starting Attention Deficit with no squad, despite Miller telling me before I hit the shore "You're in charge of your own squad now" or some such. Either confusing line of dialogue needs changing, squad needs to be added OR if the player is not given a squad due to casualties in previous missions, this mechanic needs to be explained to the player.

[machineabuse 11]

As you are not alone and ultimately this side mission was quite far from being as "enjoyable" as it should have been (especially for those who didn't even try to find a mine detector and return later :)), it received a major reconstruction today:

- fewer mines (still rather take a mine detector with you...)

- SF were repositioned

- there are some clues where you can find them, so you don't have to sweep all the houses

- when you succeed, all your effort shall be properly rewarded

Great to see that there is a response to this. :) I'm sure that what you guys have done has alleviated things but I did have a couple more thoughts;

1. Mine placement ought to be defensive in relation to the position of troops. This serves both the logic that the SF are covering themselves as well as allude to their position. They're not going to place mines where they don't need them obviously to prevent fratricide amongst their own.

2. Tell us how many we need to kill. FIA surely has HUMINT to tell us that.

3. Tell us why they are hiding and waiting in a shot up town. What did our dead comrades want there in the first place that they try to assault the town with technicals? In reality; the hypothetical counter to their tactics would be to wait outside the town and disrupt their resupply schedule.

[Maxzy 12]

Ok, here we go - from simple but immersive and pretty well made Survive we came back to broken and unplayable Red Harvest, I mean Adapt. How do I play side missions? Why my gear always gets taken from me? Where did my NVG gone - I need them to complete side missions in Bomos. Why is accidentally blown up supply truck didn't end mission with failure? Why those stupid fucking AI's don't listen to my commands and just stand there in the middle of the road where I just put explosive charge? Why do I have to use exploit to be able to finish Supply Network -

I replayed it 5 times from the beginning and I gotta say that it's impossible to escape unless you start moving in the right direction before attack begins. Chopper. Ifrit GMG, a whole company of soldiers - all shooting at you.

Too many unpleasant questions already and I only finished 5 missions. I gave 10/10 to Survive. To Adapt I give 0/10 for now and will not be playing further - have to wait in hope that most major bugs and mechanics will be repaired.

[five_seven5-7 56]

Ok, here we go - from simple but immersive and pretty well made Survive we came back to broken and unplayable Red Harvest, I mean Adapt. How do I play side missions? Why my gear always gets taken from me? Where did my NVG gone - I need them to complete side missions in Bomos. Why is accidentally blown up supply truck didn't end mission with failure? Why those stupid fucking AI's don't listen to my commands and just stand there in the middle of the road where I just put explosive charge? Why do I have to use exploit to be able to finish Supply Network -

I replayed it 5 times from the beginning and I gotta say that it's impossible to escape unless you start moving in the right direction before attack begins. Chopper. Ifrit GMG, a whole company of soldiers - all shooting at you.

Too many unpleasant questions already and I only finished 5 missions. I gave 10/10 to Survive. To Adapt I give 0/10 for now and will not be playing further - have to wait in hope that most major bugs and mechanics will be repaired.

Tell me about it, i play in elite with 0.83 skill. I thought clearing all scouting mission would result in a easier main missions, like arma 1, but no. And yes ours friendly aren't clever, try to kill the driver with rpg resulting in a explosion

One strategic i found was to put mines AP in the fields near the houses and in the return to hide the truck, just put mines all over the sand road. To escape the gunship, walk through the valley along the lines of trees, then climb the hill.

[myshaak 0]

Hey guys! I'm like the campaign so far, I have only three points to ask/clarify:

• When you return from a sidemission in a vehicle full of goodies, what happens to them?
  
• Does the campaign feature a weapon pool similar to OFP:Resistance?
  
• Are you supposed to scout the surroundings alone or can you make the team join you instead of just standing there in the middle of the camp?
  
• Can you build a vehicle pool?
  
• Are side missions relevant anyhow to the campaign progress?
  

To be honest I'm still spoiled from OFP:Resistance where I could salvage equipment in one mission knowing it will be available for the next one.

EDIT: My bad, it seems it has already been answered.

I'm afraid the first answer is no - we now have to focus on fixes, not new features.

The vehicles should also be saved, but there are some vital questions that haven't been answered yet:

- should all vehicles be saved? If yes, where to place them (most likely not, the base is not a car park :) )? If no, how to decide, which should be saved and which not?

- some cars have random texture (and offroads have random number of doors and rear mirrors). How to make it consistent across mission? If it's even possible.

- saving the car status - fuel, damage, cargo - should we give every enter-able vehicle an identity? If it gets immobilized somewhere, should it stay saved or should it be deleted after you return to base?

- how to make sure there will always be some vehicle near the base, so player won't have to walk few km on his own to get any and it won't look too artificial?

Edited January 23, 2014 by Myshaak

[Tonci87 163]

Tell me about it, i play in elite with 0.83 skill. I thought clearing all scouting mission would result in a easier main missions, like arma 1, but no. And yes ours friendly aren't clever, try to kill the driver with rpg resulting in a explosion

http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/471/542/069.jpg

One strategic i found was to put mines AP in the fields near the houses and in the return to hide the truck, just put mines all over the sand road. To escape the gunship, walk through the valley along the lines of trees, then climb the hill.

What worked for me:

I quickly placed my remaining satchel at the truck and put the timer on 40 seconds. Then I hoped into my teams offroad (my team was still in the back)and drove the hell out of there.

[five_seven5-7 56]

What worked for me:

I quickly placed my remaining satchel at the truck and put the timer on 40 seconds. Then I hoped into my teams offroad (my team was still in the back)and drove the hell out of there.

I haven't finish this mission...

No, the gunship always get me, either in open field or in a vehicle (offroad, quad bike). And when I think that I managed to overcome i´m caught at the factory by CSAT

[machineabuse 11]

What worked for me:

I quickly placed my remaining satchel at the truck and put the timer on 40 seconds. Then I hoped into my teams offroad (my team was still in the back)and drove the hell out of there.

I like your solution, pretty ingenious! Mine was pedestrian;

I sent my team ahead of me in the offroad and picked off the truck from the Northeastern treeline (uphill), I then broke line of sight and ran the treeline towards the exfil.

[Maxzy 12]

I like your solution, pretty ingenious! Mine was pedestrian;

I sent my team ahead of me in the offroad and picked off the truck from the Northeastern treeline (uphill), I then broke line of sight and ran the treeline towards the exfil.

So basically the only solution to successfully end this mission is to know what will happen next and to put yourself out of harm's way before anything happened. This is called plain and simple - bad game design.

[five_seven5-7 56]

So basically the only solution to successfully end this mission is to know what will happen next and to put yourself out of harm's way before anything happened. This is called plain and simple - bad game design.

Lol, i´ve always played OFP/Arma Series that way... :dance1:

[myshaak 0]

So basically the only solution to successfully end this mission is to know what will happen next and to put yourself out of harm's way before anything happened. This is called plain and simple - bad game design.

I don't agree, I think that's exactly the opposite of bad design. Bad game design is, at least in my eyes, knowing what will happen.

[Tonci87 163]

So basically the only solution to successfully end this mission is to know what will happen next and to put yourself out of harm's way before anything happened. This is called plain and simple - bad game design.

You missunderstood me. I only placed the satchel after it was told me to do so, then I hopped in the offroad and drove off.

[antoineflemming 14]

I don't agree, I think that's exactly the opposite of bad design. Bad game design is, at least in my eyes, knowing what will happen.

If you don't know what will happen, how can you then put yourself out of harm's way? In other words, the bad game design is requiring some foreknowledge of what's going to happen in order to succeed. Otherwise, you'll just end up in harm's way and dead. That's what MAXZY's saying. If that's the only way to succeed (knowing what's programmed to happen next) then it's faulty game design. You should be able to succeed without having to know where the enemy's coming from or whatever.

[maturin 12]

The second episode is far superior to the first so far. I really enjoy the scouting; all it needs is the ability to save gear (and ridden vehicles) with confidence and bring 2-3 guys along with you, as a full squad is a stiff challenge for a loaner. Oh, and positive consequences for completion.

So make sure before stable, you make it so everyone won't accidentally skip the first set of scouting missions!

Unfortunately, it's right what people say about the 'hit and run' missions. The AI is unable to disengage, guaranteeing the death of your whole team, and that's no fun. This applies to Supply Network and the FOB strike mission with the mortar.

[daze23 1]

I don't agree, I think that's exactly the opposite of bad design. Bad game design is, at least in my eyes, knowing what will happen.

I think the problem is you end up having to beat the mission through 'trial and error'. for me this often has to do with how the AI reacts. maybe you had an idea of what to do the first time, but then something about how the AI acts makes it so that plan won't work. so then you run through it again, not only knowing what's going to happen, but also making these concessions to get the AI to actually survive

[machineabuse 11]

If you don't know what will happen, how can you then put yourself out of harm's way? In other words, the bad game design is requiring some foreknowledge of what's going to happen in order to succeed. Otherwise, you'll just end up in harm's way and dead. That's what MAXZY's saying. If that's the only way to succeed (knowing what's programmed to happen next) then it's faulty game design. You should be able to succeed without having to know where the enemy's coming from or whatever.

Spot on bro.

That said, it can be fixed by delaying the arrival of the gunship

[myshaak 0]

If you don't know what will happen, how can you then put yourself out of harm's way? In other words, the bad game design is requiring some foreknowledge of what's going to happen in order to succeed. Otherwise, you'll just end up in harm's way and dead. That's what MAXZY's saying. If that's the only way to succeed (knowing what's programmed to happen next) then it's faulty game design. You should be able to succeed without having to know where the enemy's coming from or whatever.

Ah, ok, I think I understand now... however I don't think it applies to that particular mission, I survived it on my first run also using a timed satchel and by driving the pickup like mad and only had to reload because some NPC friendlies didn't drive far enough from the blast radius causing friendly fire...and I didn't like that. If the whole place got levelled by super heavy artillery you couldn't have known about then yes, I would be furious and agreed that this is the case for bad design, but I'm still not convinced that this is that case.

Also, I remember a mission from OFP Resistance with a similar ending - lot of paratroopers and attack choppers with you having nothing to defend yourself and just running for your lives.

[turin turambar 0]

Lol, i´ve always played OFP/Arma Series that way... :dance1:

Did you play Doom only with iddqd too?

[five_seven5-7 56]

Did you play Doom only with iddqd too?

the old good noclip.

what i basically do its to take advantage where the enemy will be, who ever in the OFP in Red Dawn mission, piloted the hind north to destroy the last scud or in the heli showcase flies directly to the place of mortar, instead of going to the base leaving the soldiers? You can´t create chaos theory in games, every game use a establish path, the exception are the random respawn places in fps. That´s why the mutiplayer aspect is more satisfactory for players than single player.

[lugiahua 26]

There is a gear glitch in "Breaking Even"

1. One of your guys does not have a vest, hence he can only carry a rifle and two mags.

2. If you restart this mission while in progress, the game resets your team's gear to default FIA ones.

---------- Post added at 23:07 ---------- Previous post was at 23:04 ----------

Ah, ok, I think I understand now... however I don't think it applies to that particular mission, I survived it on my first run also using a timed satchel and by driving the pickup like mad and only had to reload because some NPC friendlies didn't drive far enough from the blast radius causing friendly fire...and I didn't like that. If the whole place got levelled by super heavy artillery you couldn't have known about then yes, I would be furious and agreed that this is the case for bad design, but I'm still not convinced that this is that case.

Also, I remember a mission from OFP Resistance with a similar ending - lot of paratroopers and attack choppers with you having nothing to defend yourself and just running for your lives.

You are not required to blow up the ammo truck anyway.

I did this mission first time escaping on foot through the wood, helo is less likely to spot you that way