Co-op Campaign: APEX PROTOCOL

[lexx 1363]

You can read about it here.

[Wiki 1558]

Thx lexx :)

[neokika 62]

Bit off topic, but how can I get the text at the beginning of the missions (date, time and location)?

It's not the same as the on in East Wind.

 

Sure, function name is BIS_fnc_exp_camp_SITREP.

[
   [localize "STR_A3_Exp_m05_Sitrep_1", 2, 2],
   [localize "STR_A3_Exp_m05_Sitrep_2", 2, 6],
   [localize "STR_A3_Exp_m05_Sitrep_3", 1, 9, 1]
] spawn BIS_fnc_EXP_camp_SITREP;

[R3vo 2654]

Does anyone know the path of the handcuff icon, used for the holdAction in the first mission?

[ineptaphid 6413]

They post weekly sit reps. Should contain the information. You can subscribe to recieve updates from them without needing to own the game as well.

I really would not let the reaction to the APEX campaign put you off Arma. I play onjly SP and have now clocked almost 3000hrs by myself. That is before even looking at the multiplayer side. Remember this is one-short- campaign. There are literally thousands of excellent user made missions and full campaigns on the workshop-many with voice acting,cutscenes etc. Then there is the East Wind campaign-which is about 40 hours long and very good. There is the editor to make your own missions...There is no game that will give you as much value as Arma-one 5 hour campaign should not change that.

 

i suppose I will go back to the campaign today...I only played the first 2 missions-got very bored then and have been playing some excellent SP scenarios from the workshop since :)

[neokika 62]

Does anyone know the path of the handcuff icon, used for the holdAction in the first mission?

 

Check "A3\Ui_f\data\IGUI\Cfg\HoldActions\holdAction_unbind_ca.paa". ;)

[R3vo 2654]

Check "A3\Ui_f\data\IGUI\Cfg\HoldActions\holdAction_unbind_ca.paa". ;)

Thanks, much apprechiated!

[teabagginpeople 398]

On the mission in which you set the explosives. Can you change the objective to something more elaborate like find and destroy all crates.

Or is the other container crates optional? But that part broke.

Basically I have seen multiple times people standing at the destroy marker setting more explosives wondering why objective didn't clear and they just quit out. I didn't tell them for testing purposes after it happened to myself first time playing solo.

Maybe it's because I just skipped intro. Or perhaps this is already fixed on dev. Just reporting in case. As if not it's confusing.

[R3vo 2654]

On the mission in which you set the explosives. Can you change the objective to something more elaborate like find and destroy all crates.

Or is the other container crates optional? But that part broke.

Basically I have seen multiple times people standing at the destroy marker setting more explosives wondering why objective didn't clear and they just quit out. I didn't tell them for testing purposes after it happened to myself first time playing solo.

Maybe it's because I just skipped intro. Or perhaps this is already fixed on dev. Just reporting in case. As if not it's confusing.

 

I can confirm that. The task marker is sometimes at a very unfortunate place, e.g. directly on top of something that looks like a weapon cache.

[2nd ranger 282]

To be fair, the briefing does say you need to destroy all supplies in the vicinity of the lumberyard; then there is dialogue during the mission telling you to search all containers and warehouses; and whenever you are near one of the caches, another task icon appears over it to let you know you can destroy it.

[SaOk 112]

Its pointless to wait any proper official mission content especially for SP. Anything that actually requires playing the game, BIS have very little clue. They use years to make missions that can be done in few hours yourself in editor. There is no interest and the outcome stays very poor. The game sells with its name, consept and map. Mission content dosent matter at all even it should. They have no quality control at all. 3 years brought us 7 unorginal missions that should be made in one week by one man. Marek should be embarrassed, but he dosent seem to care. Are the mission maker devs mostly just being David Brents there?

[lexx 1363]

Hyperbole much? No matter you feel the quality of the mission content is, sure as hell you can't make these 7 missions in one week by one man. The quality would be piss poor in comparison, I'll guarantee it. Also it wouldn't have (good) voice over and it wouldn't have rendered cutscenes, neither would it have new animations. I am 100% sure the writing would be real bad as well (one of the biggest problems when it comes to user made missions).

[Variable 322]

Its pointless to wait any proper official mission content especially for SP. Anything that actually requires playing the game, BIS have very little clue. They use years to make missions that can be done in few hours yourself in editor. There is no interest and the outcome stays very poor. The game sells with its name, consept and map. Mission content dosent matter at all even it should. They have no quality control at all. 3 years brought us 7 unorginal missions that should be made in one week by one man. Marek should be embarrassed, but he dosent seem to care. Are the mission maker devs mostly just being David Brents there?

That is not entirely true and misses the complexity of BIS mission making.The East Wind campaign demonstrates that some mission makers in BIS are capable of making high quality missions. The campaign varies between crap missions and missions that are worthy of the OFP/Arma legacy. The "Survive" part is bad, doesn't make the slight sense, its missions lack imagination and depth and doesn't take enough advantage of the strengths of Arma. However, some missions in "Adapt" were truly gems. Apparently, most of the memorable missions were made by Jezuro (Bingo Fuel, Exit Strategy, Supply Network and Air Superiority).

This is just speculation, but maybe there are different forces within BIS that struggle to influence the game in different ways. Apex is a result of the dark side taking upper hand like when the fatigue system was removed :)

In any case, BIS, if he's still around, please promote Jezuro to supreme commander of your missions department.

[chortles 263]

Alternately, the people on the team were doing exactly what their respective leads and the project lead told them to...

[Variable 322]

Yes, of course that is a possibility too. Another worrying possibility is that the management failed to lead the team to better results. I highly doubt the people in charge are satisfied with what came out of Apex Protocol. There's some hints to reevaluating management processes in the latest SITREP. I wouldn't be surprised if these are a result of this outcome along with others.

[chortles 263]

Yes, of course that is a possibility too. Another worrying possibility is that the management failed to lead the team to better results. I highly doubt the people in charge are satisfied with what came out of Apex Protocol. There's some hints to reevaluating management processes in the latest SITREP. I wouldn't be surprised if these are a result of this outcome along with others.

Reminds me of a certain modder's quote that demanding BI hire big-name modders is no panacea for perceived Arma problems because instead of them doing 'their thing' that the community demand for their hiring came from, they'd just put to work doing what the existing management (that the community already didn't agree with) told them to.

[Alwarren 2767]

Reminds me of a certain modder's quote that demanding BI hire big-name modders is no panacea for perceived Arma problems because instead of them doing 'their thing' that the community demand for their hiring came from, they'd just put to work doing what the existing management (that the community already didn't agree with) told them to.

 

Does it matter? From the outside, we cannot tell anyway what exactly failed, but there are obvious signs THAT something failed. As Variable pointed out, the last SITREP even hinted at that.

 

It certainly isn't about the talents. I agree with Variable that there was a number of memorable missions in the East Wind campaign, I'd like to add "Moral Fiber" to the list since I thought it was an extremely cool mission. To the best of my knowledge it was done by Private Nelson, could be wrong though. The point is, does the management set constraints to work within, or do they leave creative freedom to the people doing the missions? In either case, what came out of APEX protocol is sub-par. All the other issues aside (for example, I was playing a mission and wanted to make a coffee, but damn, the thing doesn't have a pause function), objectively the missions in APEX protocol were all very similar, uninspired, and pretty boring all around. I know personal taste varies, but even die hard fans (and I AM a die hard fan) will have to agree that most of the missions consisted of isolated pockets of shootouts, either on objectives (like the first mission) or along a path (like the Keystone extraction). It's even done in such a way that people that did NOT take the straight way to the extraction boat met almost no resistance at all

 

Now I am the first to admit that making a mission that prepares for all eventualities is difficult, but this was a pretty glaring issue.

 

So, I am not trying to blame anyone specifically for the campaign. I am working in several teams, both professionally and for my Arma modding projects, and it always is a group effort. However, if something like APEX protocol comes out of it, then the procedures and responsibilities need to be reviewed. Something isn't functioning as it should, management or individual developers or whatever - it has to be found and corrected.

[lexx 1363]

So based on the latest SITREP, only 6.6% of players got the Steam achievement "Showtime", which triggers when you *try* at least 5 showcase scenarios. Based on this... Well, really can't blame them to get away from singleplayer content. The game is out for years and only 6.6% seriously tried to play the showcases?? How the hell is that even possible.

[SaOk 112]

I think the showcase name spoils the fun already to try those. Instead of having mysterious unique orginally named mission, its just another showcase. Or at least for me, it sounds there is just some unconnected quick demostration coming. Nothing more. Would be much more interesting if there would be proper smaller or bigger operations. When reviewing Apex I was first uninterested to try the end game showcase. Was big suprise it was actually a fun mission. So Apex had basically one good mission (+maybe the COOP campaign last mission's later part and 5min of that convoy ambush). 1.75 playable missions is not much for expansion.

[Wiki 1558]

+1 for both of you guys (lexx and saok)

[R3vo 2654]

So based on the latest SITREP, only 6.6% of players got the Steam achievement "Showtime", which triggers when you *try* at least 5 showcase scenarios. Based on this... Well, really can't blame them to get away from singleplayer content. The game is out for years and only 6.6% seriously tried to play the showcases?? How the hell is that even possible.

Base one that they should only support missions like Altis Life, Wasteland etc, since that is what most of the community plays, though not the one which is present here in the forums.

 

 

I personally enjoyed every showcase mission and would love to see more of those.

 

On the otherhand, I'd like it even more if BIS would finally give mission creators proper frameworks, so building missions with the quality of those from BIS is easier. (Multiplayer briefing, mp tasks, easier way to create voice actings, cinema cutscenes etc.)

[Alwarren 2767]

So based on the latest SITREP, only 6.6% of players got the Steam achievement "Showtime", which triggers when you *try* at least 5 showcase scenarios. Based on this... Well, really can't blame them to get away from singleplayer content. The game is out for years and only 6.6% seriously tried to play the showcases?? How the hell is that even possible.

 

I would guess that a lot of people played these when the game was in Alpha, so not everyone will be recorded. More people actually finished the Survive part of the campaign. Around 9 % makes for about 220000 people that played Single player. 20.9 % of players have subscribed to at least one workshop scenario. Considering that a lot of those playing multiplayer don't need to subscribe any scenario, it is safe to assume that a considerable portion of them played either local multiplayer with their friends, or single player.

 

Finally, I don't know how the system actually works, X percent of what? People that started the game at all? All keys sold? There is (according to Steam Spy) around 2.5 million sold copies of Arma 3. Not all of them are actually in anybody's account (key dealers etc), some people buy stuff and never play it (I remember something like the average player not having played around 30% of their games in their library), in general the percentages are a very poor measurement of how many people play single player.

 

However, if you look at it, there is very little playable content in general from BIS, regardless of single- or Multiplayer. You get a handful of "showcase" missions, couple of coop missions, the campaign, and End Game/Supply. BAF, PMC and ACR DLC's on Arma 2 all had a campaign of around 5 or more missions. The biggest chunk of playable content is the East Wind campaign. It started out alright (missions 1 and 2) but it quickly degraded into a "story" that didn't make sense for the most of Survive, and I would guess that a number of people gave up on it simply for that reason (I remember the last episode of Survive being bugged for a while and you couldn't save anymore, making the mortar fire at the end infuriatingly frustrating). I'm glad I didn't give up because for the most of Adapt, the campaign got really good (Win was short as a fart, unfortunately).

 

APEX was supposed to be playable in singleplayer and coop (Some people try to preach that it was meant to be coop only, but advertising something as "1-4 players" means I can play as good with one as I can with four, no need to talk around that). I don't know what kind of design goal it was to make it playable in one session other than "make it shorter than Win", but even for only six hours there was very little variation in it, very little to do, and mostly uninspired gameplay with a token tie-in to the East Wind campaign (who's narrative just stopped in the middle of it without any resolution or explanation).

 

So, bottom line, not a lot of either multiplayer or single player after East Wind.

[R3vo 2654]

(who's narrative just stopped in the middle of it without any resolution or explanation).

 

You can't imagen how much I hated that. The cutscenes were awesome, but they lacked background information.

[Wiki 1558]

Agreed.

We still dunno how NATO nor CTRG is aware of it, where they come from, who is in command, etc...

Plus, you never see NATO in Tanoa (okay, except 2 or 3 times for extraction...)

What is the poibt of all this?

[OMAC 254]

Apparently, most of the memorable missions were made by Jezuro (Bingo Fuel, Exit Strategy, Supply Network and Air Superiority).

In any case, BIS, if he's still around, please promote Jezuro to supreme commander of your missions department.

 

Thumbs up, big time.  Knowing that BI has talented designers such as Jezuro makes it even more maddening that Apex Protocol turned out the way it did.  I have had high regard for Jezuro ever since he dove into the broken A2 Freedom Fighters mission by DnA years ago and provided much-needed fixing and support. 

 

I would have thought that the intense interest generated by BI missions would have fired them up to continue to produce top-notch SP content.  I wonder how many new threads concerning Apex Protocol will be made in that Official Missions forum?  Not many, I'll bet, due to the simple, no-fail nature of the missions.