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Co-op Campaign: APEX PROTOCOL

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game saves work in multiplayer environment, so that argument is invalid.

 

not really... because how do you handle JIP progress resume...

 

You have a save but your buddy doesnt... so does he warp forward to where you are at or do you restart the mission... either is undesirable...

 

they are clearly designed to be single mission playthrough coop... but linked through the wider campaign to tell the story

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It was stated to be a coop campaign, so that's not a surprise at all. Pretty sure the "problem" now stems from the fact that folks expected a coop campaign like Harvest Red, as example. That means, even if you play it alone, you aren't alone. And you feel involved, and you have a lot freedom in most missions. Apex Protocol does not offer that. If you play alone, you are alone. You don't feel involved, because it's always the other team talking and you do not have the amount of freedom as some of the old missions gave you (you can do various stuff in the missions, just not something like talking to the people, trying to find hints and clues for something, roam the area more or less free, etc. etc. it's all made and streamlined specifically for a fast coop experience).

 

Now don't get me wrong, I don't think that it's bad to have Apex Protocol be a fast and streamlined coop experience. It's nice to get a fast entry and stuff... but yeah, at the same time it just feels lacking in depth. Like a combination of ArmA3 mechanics and Left4Dead gameplay or something.

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lol... well funny story

 

i have an Ai automedic 3 man team on call at any given moment... so of course I called them up on second playthrough of first mission... partly because of as you say... it feels very Rambo being alone taking out 3 patrols... 

 

was actually kind of overkill ... They lit up the syndikat guys badly... although to be fair... the syndikat guys are pretty disadvantaged with no NV etc... 

it didn't feel balanced for a player and 3 ai... altho the ai team has its own setskill set decently high... hard to say...

 

and to be fair i only got to T objective before getting super sloppy and being killed...

but it was deffo to the other extreme where I didnt feel much sense of urgency or difficulty

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lol... well funny story

 

i have an Ai automedic 3 man team on call at any given moment... so of course I called them up on second playthrough of first mission... partly because of as you say... it feels very Rambo being alone taking out 3 patrols... 

 

was actually kind of overkill ... They lit up the syndikat guys badly... although to be fair... the syndikat guys are pretty disadvantaged with no NV etc... 

it didn't feel balanced for a player and 3 ai... altho the ai team has its own setskill set decently high... hard to say...

 

that might be due to difficulty scaling though. as in the campaign thinking you are alone but you weren't. i'd love to see AI mates and i think it's totally in the realm of possibilities.

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that might be due to difficulty scaling though. as in the campaign thinking you are alone but you weren't. i'd love to see AI mates and i think it's totally in the realm of possibilities.

 

thats a good point

would definately need to be scaled for team members then in SP

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It was stated to be a coop campaign, so that's not a surprise at all. Pretty sure the "problem" now stems from the fact that folks expected a coop campaign like Harvest Red, as example. That means, even if you play it alone, you aren't alone. And you feel involved, and you have a lot freedom in most missions. Apex Protocol does not offer that. If you play alone, you are alone. You don't feel involved, because it's always the other team talking and you do not have the amount of freedom as some of the old missions gave you (you can do various stuff in the missions, just not something like talking to the people, trying to find hints and clues for something, roam the area more or less free, etc. etc. it's all made and streamlined specifically for a fast coop experience).

 

Now don't get me wrong, I don't think that it's bad to have Apex Protocol be a fast and streamlined coop experience. It's nice to get a fast entry and stuff... but yeah, at the same time it just feels lacking in depth. Like a combination of ArmA3 mechanics and Left4Dead gameplay or something.

I somehow have the feeling, as said before, that the fact that they couldn't finish the revive feature on time (right now it's only usable by players, not the AI) may have something to do with the issue. In that case it would be easily fixable once it's finished. 

In any case I think the PR for the expansion has been a bit weird, and quite different to what BI got us used to, not only different from past games but also different to the Arma 3 vanilla and DLCs release (may be related to the change of project leadership). But IMHO BI should have explained properly and with time that the new co-op wouldn't be as the previous co-op campaigns from the series. Most of the APEX issues seem to be related to the lack of information pre-release. 

With few optional AI mates (that could be done with the enable checkbox as in the normal A3 MP), the AI revive function, saves enabled for MP (as in most A3 MP missions), and a reduced amount of AI enemies but with increased skill, it would definitely improve it. With all that working, an option to disable the Respawns and / or limit them by tickets would be splendid. 

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I somehow have the feeling, as said before, that the fact that they couldn't finish the revive feature on time (right now it's only usable by players, not the AI) may have something to do with the issue. In that case it would be easily fixable once it's finished. 

In any case I think the PR for the expansion has been a bit weird, and quite different to what BI got us used to, not only different from past games but also different to the Arma 3 vanilla and DLCs release (may be related to the change of project leadership). But IMHO BI should have explained properly and with time that the new co-op wouldn't be as the previous co-op campaigns from the series. Most of the APEX issues seem to be related to the lack of information pre-release. 

With few optional AI mates (that could be done with the enable checkbox as in the normal A3 MP), the AI revive function, saves enabled for MP (as in most A3 MP missions), and a reduced amount of AI enemies but with increased skill, it would definitely improve it. With all that working, an option to disable the Respawns and / or limit them by tickets would be splendid. 

 

I'll guess so. True, probably. 

 

And regarding PR: Up until now we had exactly *zero* information about the campaign (well except "it will be a coop campaign"). Basically the information policy was non-existent. First we get no info about anything for months, then suddenly all object content is on the dev-branch and then a bit later the missions are released. We got exactly one trailer and a few concept arts + screenshots inbetween. From one day to the next it was no information to all information. That's a weird PR plan, in my humble amateur opinion.

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 Lets be frankly honest here - I dont know for sure whether the Co-op Multiplayer format statement was there when I preordered or not - but one of the Dev's could have simply told us. Obviously its a shift from what we expected and to say 1-4 man team and then send the Player off to Rambo land is just disingenuous in my book. Ive run a business for 20 years and im always frank with my clients -if i change format pre-contract signing -i simply let them know.

 

 Its really not that much to ask from a pretty diehard loyal community

 

PS: Benson still owe you some beer money -now you can buy Apex or just get lagered :P

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You have a save but your buddy doesnt... so does he warp forward to where you are at or do you restart the mission... either is undesirable...

 

 

How is it any different with the respawn system?

The respawn system is in mission, not in the main menu.

 

 

what with all the "dirty boxing" today? i have no trouble reading. i just can't address every single post in amazing detail just because my opinion happens to differ from the circle jerk. there is no need to refute anything because i agree save games are better in certain cases.

but, you can still make something without them that isn't shitty. not everything is black and white you know? grey areas and shit.

 

maybe it's easy to "convert" the campaign to save games. but if it was it might have been already like that. yes i'm assuming the current design is opposed to (on some technical level) using the inbuilt save game system hence it being deactivated (instead of being there and barely working). assuming, i could totally be wrong and i wouldn't be against save games for SP, why would i?

 

i think it would be way more productive to suggest things that make the current system, which is designed for coop as has been announced, better.

 

i'm with metalcraze after playing one quick round of the first mission. it seems really grindy in some way. i would prefer some type of seperation of respawn points into checkpoints so basically the mission would restart, if the last man standing doesn't reach the next checkpoint or something. like in insurgency where the rest of the team watches you hoping you survive. but i guess not much will change.

 

did anyone notice how exactly stuff scales with player count? do enemies just get stupid or bad at aiming or do they also get less?

Perhaps you could address the actual points presented instead of writing tl;dr posts that you couldn't even call a suggestion but just being contrarian for the sake of it.

I have no idea where you get the black and white crap as my suggestion is exactly what you're hinting at: a solution that is based on an existing working system, and it's a system that can already solve any problem that arose from implementing the flawed respawn in the first place.

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 Lets be frankly honest here - I dont know for sure whether the Co-op Multiplayer format statement was there when I preordered or not - but one of the Dev's could have simply told us. Obviously its a shift from what we expected and to say 1-4 man team and then send the Player off to Rambo land is just disingenuous in my book. Ive run a business for 20 years and im always frank with my clients -if i change format pre-contract signing -i simply let them know.

 

 Its really not that much to ask from a pretty diehard loyal community

 

PS: Benson still owe you some beer money -now you can buy Apex or just get lagered :P

 

I don't feel that has any relevance. I realised it was a CO-OP campaign when I pre-ordered. Which is a totally fine thing, many games offer that and it's fine. But there are two things I'd to point out.

 

Firstly, it can be played in SP; it is in the menu as "Play as Singleplayer" and thus, I judge it like an SP campaign. That CO-OP will give us some drawbacks on narrative and gameplay - fine, that is what I expected. Just like with all the other CO-OP campaigns BI created. But still, I expect more from "playable in SP" than a the whacky workaround of hosting a local server and all the disatvantages it brings, like no pause on Esc, no savegames, etc.

 

Secondly, even for a CO-OP campaign, it is not all that good. Quite the opposite actually. The mechanical flaws I pointed out (respawn making it too easy, very casual, and actually quite boring to play) and the - so far - lackluster mission design are still there, irrelevant if played alone or with friends. It just is a really bad experience so far. And I'm not sure we can say that this is all due to it being unfinished. This exploitable respawn mechanic is a major design flaw and should have been addressed a long time before public (DevBranch) release. What I played so far is, compared to the East Wind, a step back in all directions. And that is quite sad.

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Mission 1 , freed the cop, found out about radio tower. Enemies on radio tower had some problems spawning I guess? Many of them were just bunched up in this spot.

Likewise when I played it. I could kill all with a single grenade.

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Okay, there are a lot of people getting angry at each other here and getting close to being warned by moderators.You know who you are.

 

This thread is for feedback for the campaign-not if you thought it was something else,or it should have been something else or complaining at each other about differing opinions.

 

If someone wants to start a seperate thread about being annoyed at the way this campaign is structured, go ahead.I'll be posting on that thread myself as I play totally SP and this structure does not suit me very well.

 

Anyway-let's try to give some actual technical feedback for the campaign and stay civil to each other please.

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Played the first mission in SP. Love the atmosphere, had a very great feel to it. Lots of tension raiding the objectives, good production value overall.

It does feel as if the scaling system is not really working correctly? There were quite some enemies during the first mission. Not sure what the amount should be when the scaling is active? I think the radio tower had about 9 enemies for example, fighting an uphill battle and guarded bunkers 1 vs 9 is quite hard. Not sure if it should be less with the scaling? Also when the two jeeps drive by they had about 8 enemies who all jumped out and started shooting me. That's quite tough when on your own (and forces you to respawn basically).

I do agree that respawn and no friendly squad AI is not really suitable when playing the "SP" version. Respawn does kill the tension and doesn't give you a real penalty. Died about 5 or 6 times at one of the objectives and just spawned over and over again to fight the remaining enemies.

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 Can we please get rid of the respawn in the campaign ?

Edit: Or even better, make it selectable if you want respawn or not. I don't want it, you mileage may wary

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cyiyjfB.jpg?2

 

Clearly this image proves ArmA3 needs to go 64 bit since it ran out of numberspace for score

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How is it any different with the respawn system?

The respawn system is in mission, not in the main menu.

 

 

Perhaps you could address the actual points presented instead of writing tl;dr posts that you couldn't even call a suggestion but just being contrarian for the sake of it.

I have no idea where you get the black and white crap as my suggestion is exactly what you're hinting at: a solution that is based on an existing working system, and it's a system that can already solve any problem that arose from implementing the flawed respawn in the first place.

 

dude. how about you list those amazing points again instead of repeating yourself and just accusing me of random stuff repeatedly. what points did i not address that are directly related to my points? i mean for someone telling others they are unable to read or lazy it's kind of astonishing how vague and not at all related to what i wrote your statements are.

at least quote specific things i said because so far there is not much to go by to engage a meaningful discussion with you. and yes i didn't read, memorize and address every single post so far, obviously. why would you even expect that? why would i need to, to make these specific points i made?

 

if you want them to change stuff you might want to focus on making a good case for your view towards BI instead of engaging half assedly in this witch hunt.

 

all i was saying, just for you again, is that it's unrealistic to ask for save game implementation into something that is obviously designed for coop/mp.

 

you act like it's so simple to just put it ontop of something that is intended to work totally different.

thinking save games work well in a coop/mp campaign is pretty outlandish tbh. yes an SP version would be nice. i said that before. but i don't see it happening just because it would need to work pretty differently. happy to be proven wrong though.

 

now to you since you seem to have it all figured out. how exactly WOULD it work? how do you make the two things (respawn and SP saving) play well together without a large amount of extra work that goes into making two versions?

let's get productive here. or are you just asking for a second version of the campaign? or even worse are you just saying "i want this, now go figure it out BI"...?

starting to feel like you haven't put much thought into it. based on some scripting and mission making experience i just don't see it working well or at all without a second different version of the campaign.

 

ontopic: we just played some and we also got this weird forward spawning of a team member after death. with something this "streamlined" i think it would make more sense to use simple on squad mate respawn to avoid these weird situations. preferibly with an enemy close restriction a la classic insurgency (arma mission). overall repsawn needs meaningful restrictions because as metalcraze has pointed out it totally kills team play when respawn makes you totally independant.

 

it would also be appreciated to get a quick run down by a dev on how exactly things work internally so it's easier to give specific feedback.

same goes for difficulty scaling. is it enemy numbers? is it aiming skill? would really love some more details from the devs on this.

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Well managed to play through it today with a group of people.

 

Things I found so far:

 

Voice over: the voice was sometimes played multiple times in a row

Like in mission 2 ambush when the guy staring with a S was singing it repeated each line 4 times over.

Intro video's, some times you stay stuk on the intro screen

You know the red one with the partisipans on there

The voice and text was not going in sync in the intro video's

in other cases of voice and text the text went so fast that the voice was lagging behind.

Mission 6 was not completeble for us. after we did all the objectives nothing would happen! we had to eventually skip the rest of the mission to go to mission 7, miller was just standing there watching the tele in that csat ir tent and didn't do anything.

Scope consistency... the sharpshooter class was having difficulty with the scopes.

in the keystone mission you have him a NV scope but its getting day there. meaning that NV issn't always prefereble and in one mission you supplied him with a ERCO and a ERCO in the backpack. thats a bit double up, is it not better to give him a MOS?

Respawn... way to long... and your revive bleedout is way to short.. you bleed out in 5 seconds making it impossible most of the time for your teammates to revive you and then you have to wait those got horrible 30 seconds to respawn... could you not turn it around? 30 seconds to bleed out and 5 seconds to respawn?

 

apart from that i really loved the campain, cutscene's that where working are awesome and I liked the feel of the mission

The device is in safe hand... PLEASE tell me that there is gonna be another expansion with a massive china map where you are gonna invade china with the eastwind device :ph34r:

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ontopic: we just played some and we also got this weird forward spawning of a team member after death. with something this "streamlined" i think it would make more sense to use simple on squad mate respawn to avoid these weird situations.

it would also be appreciated to get a quick run down by a dev on how exactly things work internally so it's easier to give specific feedback.

I also had a few times that a new spawn point was available in a forward area. Simplest solution was simply not choosing that new spawn point, but spawning on a previous one where I actually already had been. You don't HAVE to use a spawn point that gives you an advantage ;)

Squad mate respawn will probably be an issue if you play it on your own as you don't have any team members. Maybe they should remove the spawn points very close to the objectives? So if you die near an objective you always have to pick a spawn point that's at least a few hundred meters back (which will at least punish you also a bit for dying, instead of spawning right back into the action?). So maybe less spawn points and all further from the objectives...

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all i was saying, just for you again, is that it's unrealistic to ask for save game implementation into something that is obviously designed for coop/mp. you act like it's so simple to just put it ontop of something that is intended to work totally different.

thinking save games working well in a coop/mp campaign is pretty outlandish tbh. yes an SP version would be nice. i said that before. but i don't see it happening just because it would need to work pretty differently. happy to be proven wrong though.

 

now to you since you seem to have it all figured out. how exactly WOULD it work? how do you make the two things (respawn and SP savng) play well without a large amount of extra work that goes into making two versions? let's get productive here. or are you just asking for a second version of the campaign? or even worse are you just saying "i want this, now go figure it out BI"...?

starting to feel like you haven't put much thought into it. based on some scripting and mission making experience i just don't see it working well or at all without a second different version of the campaign.

 

 

Use the lobby that's already used for any other multiplayer session, which enables loading a save or restarting the mission altogether, which is you know a native functionality built into the engine.

on the mission side of things: either scrap the respawn system completely and bring back prefixed slots, or just enable it for the first time a player occupies a slot/mission start so you could pick your starting loadout.

as for the saves themselves could have it save after completing an objective for all I care, anything would make more sense than an infinite respawn system.

The revive system should stay in place as it actually promotes cooperative play and still punishes the players for making mistakes.

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all i was saying, just for you again, is that it's unrealistic to ask for save game implementation into something that is obviously designed for mp/coop

Every campaign in every game I've ever played in my life in my life (including MP compatible games) has a save option.

This is unpresidented, or at the very least, not the norm.

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I also had a few times that a new spawn point was available in a forward area. Simplest solution was simply not choosing that new spawn point, but spawning on a previous one where I actually already had been. You don't HAVE to use a spawn point that gives you an advantage ;)

Squad mate respawn will probably be an issue if you play it on your own as you don't have any team members. Maybe they should remove the spawn points very close to the objectives? So if you die near an objective you always have to pick a spawn point that's at least a few hundred meters back (which will at least punish you also a bit for dying, instead of spawning right back into the action?). So maybe less spawn points and all further from the objectives...

 

i'd prefer a proper game mechanic solution though over just ignoring an obvious flaw. maybe respawn points could be generated dynamically close to squad mates or near the last death spot but further from the closest enemy to make it work for lone wolves.

 

 

Use the lobby that's already used for any other multiplayer session, which enables loading a save or restarting the mission altogether, which is you know a native functionality built into the engine.

on the mission side of things: either scrap the respawn system completely and bring back prefixed slots, or just enable it for the first time a player occupies a slot/mission start so you could pick your starting loadout.

as for the saves themselves could have it save after completing an objective for all I care, anything would make more sense than an infinite respawn system. (gotta agree here, not a fan of what i saw at work so far)

The revive system should stay in place as it actually promotes cooperative play and still punishes the players for making mistakes.

 

 

i agree on the respawn being far from optimal how it is now but i still don't see how save games fit in there, at least for MP. or are you talking about for single player only? if not, consider that a main feature listed by the devs is "drop-in drop-out" design. loading and saving the mission state globally for everyone goes 100% against that. i feel like the idea is more a continuous flow. although it seems like they tried to achieve that by any means possible.

 

i'd love to see a checkpoint system combined with how Celery did it in Chernarus Apocalypse. that could work well with the slots approach too. maybe have revive limited by a certain number, preferably one time. then if you die again you spectate until the remaining survivors reach the next checkpoint. if they don't you have to restart. pretty much like l4d, nazi zombies (sniper elite DLC) and everything else that works well. nothing better than cheering for the last man standing hoping he'll reach the next one safely. that would then pretty much work out of the box with autosave on those checkpoints like you described without having to repace and rebalance the whole thing.

 

but still, a pretty different design to the current one. but we've been surprised by BI's flexibility before. maybe it'll happen.

 

so far it seems almost like you can't lose and you keep grinding until it's done. but i could be wrong. maybe the mission ends when everyone is dead at the same time, like in Escape which works well that way too. just didn't happen to us yet. that would at least add SOME sense of danger, challenge and achievement once you overcame it.

 

 

 

Every campaign in every game I've ever played in my life in my life (including MP compatible games) has a save option.

This is unpresidented, or at the very least, not the norm.

 

not sure we're talking about the same thing. you got an example? i was talking about games along the lines of l4d. obviously there is persistent progression but that's pretty different to classic save games. i mean at this point it's becoming about semantics. are we talking about a checkpoint system or are we talking about that SP-feeling that has been requested at the start of the thread. feels like things are getting mixed up here.

...

 

anyone else having super unresponsive enemies? could totally be the mods the host was running but just making sure, if it's a known issue.

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Intro video's, some times you stay stuk on the intro screen

You know the red one with the partisipans on there

 

This is because the videos aren't in yet.

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After 3 missions I can't continue. Just horrible, especially for SP players.
Simple missions, guided, no team mates, pure Rambo style, no savegames, respawn points, waiting times, no secondary tasks ...

Where are missions like Razon Two, Manhattan, Bingo Fuel?. Tanoa is one of the best, if not the best terrain ever made, with the worst campaign.

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