What Makes a Good Arma Campaign?

[Mynock 244]

I agree witcha when it's about usermade content.

When it's official / professional content, it's different.

Well, when it's something you're going to pay money for, of course you have expectations. That's a legitimate concern, and exactly the reason why I never asked for donations when I was making public content I was supporting. When it's something that someone has invested hundreds or thousands of hours into and they are receiving zero benefit from releasing it to the public, I tend to take the approach of thanking them for investing their time and effort into making something I had the opportunity to try, whether I like it on a personal level or not.

[MadocComadrin 12]

• MP only
• No manual or auto saves
• Only respawn available, for which all ammo and original weapons are restored, no matter how far you are into a mission
• No character development, so you don't know who you are
• Completely linear
• Little to no storyline connection between missions
• Some tasks will not complete, necessitating abort/restart

I don't think any of these are necessarily signs of a bad campaign. It may not be the campaign YOU want to play, but that does not make it bad. MP only can be frustrating, but it doesn't mean it's not quality work. I do consider it somewhat unfortunate that the modern trend in gaming is to focus on MP, but that doesn't make MP-only/focused games bad. Sometimes things are more fun when you have a decent amount of people cooperating.

As for no saves/respawn only (bolded to group them), this can work if the campaign is well designed around it and there's a good reason for it. I don't think the Apex campain was the best place for it, but it's NOT a sign of a bad campaign. The next three points also questionable. Complete linearity can be done quite well--it's when it's done poorly that it's bad (via monotony or tedium). You can also have a campaign where characters themselves aren't important (this can feed in to a respawn style of campaign--you play the faceless grunts).

Having little connections between missions isn't the worst either: you can tie things together in other ways.

Consider a campaign where you explore battles that happened about simultaneously as offensive, where you play as "just another grunt." Respawn, little individual character development, and limited connection between missions could work well, and you could still fold in emotional experiences. It's all about how you work with the perspective you choose, not WHAT one you choose.

As for the last point, I don't see how that figures into DESIGN. Technical issues are technical issues: that's the scripter's fault, not the designer's--even if it's a team of one.

[silentghoust 132]

I kinda disagree with a lot of the rambo arguments. Have you ever ran a motorized platoon using high command? It's pretty boring when your ordering squads to just clear towns why you sit on the high ground and watch. Considering a player is far better then the AI, it's impossible to not be a rambo that can kill entire squads if not more.

[IndeedPete 1038]

So, since I was asked to drop a statement, I shall do so. :) Please keep in mind that it's really fucking early here and I'm not a morning person at all. I'd like to divide my post into an SP and an MP section because I feel there are some fundamental differences between them when it comes to good design. Oh, and it's all personal views, no objective research or anything.
 
Singleplayer
What I need to get engaged in longer SP-content, as in campaigns, is first and foremost a story. I need some form of narrative in order to get into it. For example, I've tried both the "open-world" missions of Rydygier (Pilgrimage) and Saok (God dammit, I actually can't remember the name, sorry). Both are highly complex and very well done, I'm certain. However, I wasn't really able to get into any of them. Granted, they both have some form of basic narrative, a goal to achieve. I've finished Pilgrimage twice (or was it thrice?) but just to see what the fuzz was all about. I enjoyed the combat parts of it but found all the walking a bit lackluster because there was not enough of a story to motivate me. I think on one playthrough, I even cheated and teleported myself to locations to save time. Again, not a bad mission, quite the contrary, but I just couldn't get hooked. Resist on the other hand does the exact opposite. While the story might not be that original, it is very well executed, and ultimately motivated me to undertake multiple playthroughs.
 
On the topic of a linear vs. a non-linear story, I don't think one is necessarily better than the other. I highly value player choices resulting in consequences but there are some good reasons against having too much of that. Limited time / budget is one of the most important. Content that is not discovered by the player is content you've wasted your time on. Rule of thumb: the later you branch the story, the less work you have to do twice. Overall keeping different story branches consistent and equally enjoyable is something very hard to achieve. So there's nothing wrong with a linear narrative as long as it is well executed and interesting. Characters and their dialogues make the most of it. Also, as Rydygier mentioned before: it needs to be personal. There's nothing wrong with some political background to set the real story in. But in order to get into the character and the narrative, I need to feel something.
 
For M.E.R.C.S., I used a non-linear approach because that's just what I like to do. I also like to include extreme consequences like permanent death of main characters, or even of the player himself. Both in M.E.R.C.S. and in (WIP, currently halted due to life) Ice, players can end the campaign prematurely by making the "wrong" choice. Unfortunately, due to Arma's mission-based system, this results in players having to revert back to an earlier mission and replay some content in order to make that choice again. Which they might not want or don't have time to. Also, some comments indicate a part of my players didn't understand there was some form of branching. They went into the literal dead end and thought that's it. Because I as a creator failed to properly tell them they could revert their choice. However, when it works out, it's very rewarding for both the player and the creator. I know for a fact that there were some people out there who put up with all that shit just to discover all eight endings M.E.R.C.S. had to offer, and that made me really happy about my approach.
 
But even in a linear campaign, one can add a sense of choice. Gear selection and persistence is one thing relatively easy to achieve. I love to customise my character and progress with him. (Or having a proper character to begin with. Looking at you there, Apex Protocol.) I also really enjoyed the hub-based approach the East Wind offered. Even if it's linear, frequently returning to base and seeing how it gradually changes over time is something I like seeing. It's all about the details. I did that in Ice with one hub in particular. There's four missions to complete at that stage and the player can decide in which order to approach these. After every mission, he returns to the hub in which some minor thing is changed each time. People are in different locations, team mates that died in the previous mission are just not there anymore, objects have been moved, textures of laptop screens change, etc. The most significant detail is probably an old Offroad that actually gets spraypainted over  time. I created multiple textures to represent various stages of the painting progress. After completing three missions, the once old civilian Offroad has been turned into an armed version with improvised camo - which actually has some impact on how the next mission plays out as it will appear in it. (Again, the order in which these missions are played is determined by the player.)
 
What keeps me playing once I'm engaged is good gameplay. I tend to finish games and campaigns with good story and boring gameplay but that's obviously not ideal. The gameplay doesn't have to be super complicated but I want to have some variety. One thing that bugged me about Apex Protocol was the lack of mission variety. And for me, Arma 3 gameplay doesn't have to be realistic. (I couldn't tell anyway.) I don't mind things getting a bit crazy or unorthodox. Quite the opposite actually, I think good design keeps surprising the player, confronting him with new problems in every mission. From the top off my head, I've created one mission for Ice where the player doesn't actually fight but instead ships supplies from a depot to multiple front lines. It's a very simple and quite arcadish mechanic but it's fun and challenging nontheless as the mission fails if one outpost runs out of supplies. I think the craziest thing I did, as in confronting the player with unexpected problems, was that little math riddle I had in M.E.R.C.S. It came out of nowhere for most players and to this day I'm still haunted by frequent messages and forum posts calling for help in that mission. (I actually have a message template saved on my PC with the solution so I can just copypaste my answer and don't have to write it over and over again.) Players start the mission thinking it's yet another tactical shootfest and what do they find? The most hated enemy of all times: math. Some people think it's the best mission of the campaign, others probably quit at that stage. So, it was one of these risks only community content can take. Would I do it again? Probably, but I would need to improve communication and in-game help.
 
Other than that, good mission design in my opinion supports different playstiles but makes them equally worth in terms of rewards or punishment. Yes, one can go stealthy and tactical in Apex Protocol, but there is really no incentive to do so, no game mechanic to punish run'n'gun etc. Same goes for Deus Ex: Human Revolution for example. Playing a combat-centered character as opposed to a stealthy one is possible but just doesn't make any sense because its more diffcult and less rewarding. It's again content devs wasted time on most players will never discover. I think as a creator it's worth to get familiarised with the basic concepts of game theory. It helps to develop a critical view on one's concepts and mechanics. A mission supposed to be super stealthy only really works if there's some natural way to force the player to actually be stealthy. Fail states are also not a bad thing. Allow the player fuck-up from time to time.
 
Lastly, ambience tops it all off. Ambient animations, voice acting, music, locations, sounds, weather (I love weather shifts in missions by the way), etc. While VA is a cool thing to have, it is very hard to achieve. Resist does it quite well but then again, there were some professional paid actors involved from what I read. Certainly not a thing every hobby creator can do. To provide cheap (as in "no voice acting needed") background information as well as decision making, I like to present texts with a multiple choice system. Not ideal, but it works. However, music is still a miracle to me. Resist does it really well with its custom soundtrack (again something not everyone can do), East Wind's also good at it. It's just me who has no patience or skill to properly apply music. Luckily, the more open your content is, the less scripted music you need. I went full jukebox in M.E.R.C.S. which was a really bad design decision but in return, saved me some time. A game that is outstanding at using music is no doubt the new Doom. It's way of combining music and gameplay is bloody brilliant. Still get adrenaline rushes just by thinking about it.
 
Multiplayer
I just recently picked up Arma 3 MP in a clan. (Some shameless marketing incoming, we always need members. :D) While SP requires some careful planning, a lot of scripting, and endless testing to make it immersive, I found MP editing to be much less work. Players make the game. In the MP content I've created so far, I only loosely scripted events and let the great big frameworks out there (MCC, Alive) do all the work. I just set an objective, some enemies, and provide various tools for us to use - topped off with one or two twists per mission. The downside is that telling a tight narrative is virtually impossible. Never did I create a cutscene for one of our sessions. Background information is usually conveyed through briefings. Still, I feel MP actually provides a different form of immersion and complements SP for me.
 
At times, this very open (and a bit lazy) approach leads to really great and often hillarious moments. All of which are not scripted but instead dynamic effects of the great mod frameworks out there. Nothing beats the thrill of a no-respawn scenario where you don't know what's out there to kill you. This scenario here was made by another member and uses some very simple scripting to create an ambush and some basic defence. It also happend to be the first time I was in charge of a fire team. Good Lord, I was soaked in sweat by the time it was over. You think managing an AI squad is tough - try managing real people! Still, I absolutely loved the experience. What I personally like to do so is breaking up the established command structure, for example by scattering players around the map with little resources and make them regroup before going for the real objective. It leads to some reallly chaotic and immersive experiences. Again, constantly providing players with new problems is key.
 
I've also attempted to create a COOP campaign in that environment. I made three consecutive PMC missions, inspired by Arma 2's PMC DLC. We had limtied resources and vehicles, but gear persistence in return. We also had different ROEs compared to our normal games. I wasn't able to tell much of a story, usually just through briefings. But it wasn't really necessary as the players made most of it. And we had fail states; had to re-do two missions because we fucked up. And it was great to fail first and then manage to beat it together in the second try. :)

[Rydygier 1309]

I need some form of narrative in order to get into it.

 

So, in general one could say, there are those, who prefer to perceive the story (like reading a book), and those, who prefer to imagine the story (like observing something and coming up with fictional story, tha could explain, what's observed - what's called an emergent narration). The first need this "book", source of the story, the latter - that "something", a frame for their imagination. In fact, I think, most people like both things, just in different proportions. Same as good book leaves something for imagination, this skeletal frame for emergent narration is built on some pre-made storyline, another part of it are/could be dynamically occuring coincidences as natural result/possibility of procedural nature of such mission. For example, I saw Pilgrimage playthroughs, where player either constructed own narration and/or was truly immersed into gameplay in emotional way. From the other hand, I saw also such playthroughs, where player was bored/disappointed/not really immersed or undestanding, how/capable to be truly entertained. 

 

Which way mission maker should choose/prioritize? I think, in general, better outcome is when creator chooses the way, he personally prefer to play. 

 

There's also another thing. If we're talking about flaws of the own creations, the main flaw of Pilgrimage for me is well known "too easy late game" syndrome. Later stages has no longer that flavour of the beginning. Thing is, game places the player with very little assets against difficult and overwhelming situation. So, in natural way, player seeks, how to develop his character in meaning of power, which as for me makes the best part of the gameplay. There are ways to achieve that, so sooner or later what was nearly impossible become easy. What was precious, hard to get and thus rewarding finding, when you already collected lots of everything eg by looting dead enemies, becomes just another boring piece of junk. Only the partial remedy are some side challenges of very high difficulty. Alternative way is to increase the difficulty in proportion with player's power. It's dead end IMO. Gaining power becomes frustratingly pointless, if hostiles grow in power equally - in the end all efforts to increase power of the character make no difference. Plus, hard to logically explain such difficulty adaptation. Many games suffer that flaw. Question is, how to avoid that but keep character growth in possibilites (which is one of important motivators of doing things). How to avoid boredom of too easy gameplay, but keep so things get easier for the player due to character growth. Impossible? Perhaps by strict limiting boundaries of power possible to gain. Like placing only few rifles on the map in total, while most people use pistols only. A launcher? Maybe one. Armed vehicle? Forget it. Yet another way may be paper, stone and scissors rule. A tank? Be my guest. But they'll spot you from far and they have plenty of AT weaponry. Or growth not in raw power, but rather in variety of possibilites. Etc. 

[IndeedPete 1038]

Well, maybe I tend to waste my limited creative power to construct narrratives for my own work and at the end of the day just want to consume for a change. The same goes for silent characters in video games. Some people like it as they can project their own personality onto that character but I still prefer the completely voiced experience. In that sense, I tend to enjoy games more the better and complex their story is. As long as it is presented well. I'm for example not a friend of reading books within games, like one can do in the Elder Scrolls or Fallout. I briefly cross-read them but I really don't give a shit about the nine divines or anything along those lines. When it gets conveyed to me through voice acted characters though, I tend to get more involved. Mass Effect's still brilliant at creating and maintaining characters with really good voice acting.

 

I think the narrative should fit the scope of the game. To bring up Doom again, I didn't read a tiny bit of these little pieces of texts they scattered around. I honestly didn't care about the "story". This game was all about fast-paced, short-lived, and casual fun. As a result, I've never played it more than an hour without doing something else in between. (Also because my eyes got fatigued quite fast from that type of combat.) Arma offers a wide range of scenarios and as I said before, I don't need cutscenes in MP. In SP on the other hand, I value a tight narrative. Not too tight though, Deliverance for example annoyed the heck out of me with its constant cutscene interrupts. Just like modern AAA games where you can't walk ten metres without triggering some cinematic shite. Sparsely used but well executed, that's how I like my cutscenes.

 

And while we're at AAA, I find lots of these games so oversaturated with explosions, effects, and combat, it becomes dull. I've always liked about Arma that it's so quiet at times. But once shit hits the fan, the atmosphere is all over the place. Similar goes for the overused open world concept. I throw up a tiny bit every time Ubisoft announces yet another generic open world game. A shame considering what great games they could pull off with their resources.

 

I think one "problem" I had with Pilgrimage was that on every try, the RNG managed to put the body of my brother very close to my starting point. So I never got to experience the end game because I always finished after an hour tops.

[QuiGon 10]

My perfect ArmA campaign would be a campaign that is something between the Cold War Crisis and the Resistance campaigns with modern presentation (cinematics, voice acting, ...).

 

What i liked about the CWC campaign and would like to see again was:

- The setting. I'm a huge "fan" of the Cold War which was one of the reasons why I really liked Flashpoint 1985 ;)

- The story and especially the immersion. Following Private (later Lieutenant) Armstrong through the ups and downs of the war was a great experience. Beeing part of an ad-hoc task force to investigate an unkown military threat, discovering what it was, beeing pushed back and getting lost behind enemy lines, fighting with local guerillas, rejoining the NATO forces to hold the ground, turning the tide of war and finally finishing the enemy before the situation gets out of hand was just awesome.

- Different roles. I'm usally don't like to play differenct characters, but the CWC campaign is an exception, because there was the main story line with Armstrong and a few smaller ones that showed the conflict from different views which fitted perfectly into the overall campaign. That way it was possible to present all the different aspects of the game, without breaking realism (no super soldier who is tank driving, helicopter flying, air force black op)

- Different type of missions. CWC had it all: classic infantry engagements, mechanized missions, guerilla fighting, black ops, tank battles, air warfare, SERE

 

What i liked about the Resistance campaign on top of the CWC campaign was:

- Characters with personality.  While the CWC characters did have some personality (more than some of the later ArmA campaigns), it went much deeper in Resistance. I will never forget characters like Geronimo, Guba, Gastovski and especially Troska. Great times!
- A touching and well written story.

- The greatest resistance fighter feeling I've ever experienced in a game! The need to resist (fight) against suppression and the initial reluctance to do so was very convincing and to evolve from a small group of civilians to a battle proven guerilla force by capturing enemy equipment and hitting their weak spots was a great feeling. Of course, this doesn't fit into every campaign, depending on the scenario.

 

 

What both campaigns had in common was that they were pretty challenging and "military like" gameplay wise. Not some kind of casual "you can't loose" stuff (did anyone say unlimited respawns? ;)). A campaign that does all that (or at least some of that) and makes use of a modern presentation with motion capturing, cutscenes and authentic voice overs would be all I can dream of!

[Kydoimos 916]

Guys - these posts are awesome! :D

[kylania 568]

So far I haven't seen a single co-op campaign produced by the community. Perhaps the next campaign project that somebody starts up should step up to the challenge and show BIS how it ought to be done?

 

I believe technical restrictions might have contributed to that.  Up until recently the handling of locality in a co-op campaign was a nightmare.  However recent new commands and system overhauls have greatly eased the challenge of doing that, so now we're probably in a good place for a player made co-op campaign.

[QuiGon 10]

I believe technical restrictions might have contributed to that.  Up until recently the handling of locality in a co-op campaign was a nightmare.  However recent new commands and system overhauls have greatly eased the challenge of doing that, so now we're probably in a good place for a player made co-op campaign.

 

A multiplayer compatible saving system like in ArmA2 is still missing AFAIK, which is necessary for great coop campaigns (or even missions) IMHO.

[PuFu 4600]

to me (and what is totally lacking in apex mini-campaign anyways).

1. a good script and a background storyline - it doesn't need to be developed in a lot of detail (i actually prefer to fill the blanks myself), but there needs to be some of it in.

 

2. the individual missions need to be interconnected - they don't need to have a 1-2-3-4 logic, but they have to tell a bigger picture in the end. Some player triggered turn-arounds would also be lovely (developed below)

 

3. scale it down or up based on number of human players that play it (especially if it is i a MP campaign)

 

4. i have nothing against smaller scale (spec op) campaign as long as it does make some sense. I know everyone wants to shoot shit, but there are way to keep a balance between shooting and keeping your head down.

 

5. it needs!! context (which relates to point 1) - why, what, when, how, and for how long. It needs to be at least a bit in. 

 

6. allow players to fail the game in other ways but death. ok, i get the respawn system for MP in apex to some degree, but it has no and absolutely no point for SP. There is a reason i don't play public run missions on open servers (besides the amount of cunts available) = most do NOT allow players to loose. Loosing is part of life. There is no incentive otherwise to play it if you can win it no matter what. I cannot emphasize this enough

 

7. failing a mission doesn't necessary mean the end to a campaign. As long as you managed to stay alive, there should be other options to it. 

 

8. do not allow rambos. as in never ever ever. it is piss poor and there are other games that do that better. I know arma's stealth system works poorly, but still, there are ways around it, there are also ways to mitigate the amount of rambo moves a player can have.

 

9. Take advantage of the multiple roles and openness of this game....

 

10. voice acting cinematics etc are just the icing of the cake, not the cake itself. I would rather have the above and no voice acting that great voice acting and mocaped cinematics but poor content...

[OMAC 254]

I don't think any of these are necessarily signs of a bad campaign.

In the case of Apex Protocol, they are.  Especially the most important element of design, SP vs. MP.  Having an MP-only campaign as official content sends a very strong message.  One that I don't want to hear, or pay for.

 

As for no saves/respawn only (bolded to group them), this can work if the campaign is well designed around it and there's a good reason for it. I don't think the Apex campain was the best place for it, but it's NOT a sign of a bad campaign. The next three points also questionable. Complete linearity can be done quite well--it's when it's done poorly that it's bad (via monotony or tedium). You can also have a campaign where characters themselves aren't important (this can feed in to a respawn style of campaign--you play the faceless grunts).

Having little connections between missions isn't the worst either: you can tie things together in other ways.

Of course some of these elements could be used successfully in a campaign per se. But I have never played such a campaign, and several of the elements don't appear to be desirable in general, certainly not in an official BI campaign.  But when considered together, they have resulted in a bad campaign.  BI chose to take a new path in campaign design that is a major departure from all their past campaigns.  I consider this path an unfortunate mistake, in large part as I am able to compare it to past campaigns, which provided, with some exceptions, the most fun I have ever had gaming.  I sincerely hope that BI will return to their legacy SP +/- MP campaign design in the future.

 

As for the last point, I don't see how that figures into DESIGN. Technical issues are technical issues: that's the scripter's fault, not the designer's--even if it's a team of one.

Who cares whether the problem is related to design or scripting?  The point is, such bugs kill immersion and can ruin a campaign, especially one in which one must abort and restart rather than load a saved game.  Such a problem occurred for me in Apex.

[kbbw123 115]

I think it depends on the person creating it how the campaing looks, I for example don't wan't people to freerooam in the missions i create, there is an nice order in things setup in a way that you get the most immersion when you follow that path, I don't mind having an friendly AI there that is invinceble, if he is there is a reason for it, i don't mind having to work with selective gear if the creator choose it its needed for the mission. You might think me crazy but I'm a awesome moments kinda campaing guy I love by example the COD SP campaing purly because of its awesome voiceacting, awesome moments (not even cutscenes just points where there is like a chopper hovering above you eradicating the enemie's)

 

for me I need a proper story where people really thought of the story and did their absolute best to give you the feeling that your in the mids of all that awesomeness and that you have to go through it to see the end result if the awesomeness.

 

The again like I said, it depends on the creators choice, all missions are excelent because its how the creator chooses his mission to be, put the time in and gave it to you to play with ;)

[nkenny 1057]

Like many others have expressed, I too believe that Bohemia has not produced any better campaigns than Flashpoint's CWC. There were many elements that combined to make this the case: The setting, the gameplay, the characters and the authenticity of the scenario, and finally the novelty, i.e., context which CWC was released.  I think that the elements of a good campaign can be narrowed to two key points: (1) Leverage the strengths of the Arma engine. (2) Storytelling. Authenticity rather than accuracy.

 

(1) The strengths of the Arma engine has two further sub- components. (i) Arma is a beautiful game which offers unrivalled freedom of movement.  It is a great walk-about simulator, and from a tactical stand point, no other first person shooter game I know of offers tactical combat manoeuvres that span kilometers. A good campaign can showcase both the size and quality of the world all while offering challenging game play that employ the vicissitudes of terrain, time of day, and equipment available.  

 

( ii) Along similar lines. To make the gamer involved the world must look lived in. This was the strength of CWC and to a certain extent Arma2. The civilian populace and (especially in CWC) the day to day lives of the soldiers offered charming insight into their situation and provided a very effective settting backdrop for the events of the story. Indeed, getting this right seems more important than having the fog look perfect. Though personal standards for what is acceptable diverge considerably, there are unfortunately no excuses for poor voice acting. 

 

Campaigns which fail to leverage the technology of Arma alongside the immersive social/cultural terrain Arma can display are doomed to fail. Attempts to recreate CoD high-energy cutscenes likewise break with the pacing Arma excels at delivering.

 

(2) Trying to capture what good storytelling is, is  difficult. I think storytellers should aim to achieve authenticity rather than real world accuracy. By this I mean that trying perfectly simulate real life is not a useful aspect of storytelling-- indeed it may be a mistake(!). Instead, stories with robust internal structures and sensible logic capture our imagination. Look to the plethora of superhero movies and fantasy series to see this in effect. The viewer immerses him- or herself in the rich setting material. In the case of military themed scenarios what accounts for an immersive (authentic) experience may again differ wildly-- but these are challenges every storyteller faces. In other words, tell an internally consistent story with interesting immersive qualities to achieve authenticity. 

 

Another aspect of this is telling an effective story. Ones efforts will go to waste when the setting elements become too enigmatic or obscured from the viewers attention. I argue not for against weaving rich story tapestries, I argue in favour of using well known tropes to communicate effectively. Effective stories are also affective-- they capture, alter, hold hostage the mood of the viewer. Finally, once held, the attention must permitted time (and pacing) to develop and reach fruition. 

 

Campaigns need not be realistic, but they must tell effective stories with a high degree of internal consistency. Where realism is sought, it is in order to leverage familar tropes and elements both as inspiration and to reinforce the immersive environment within which the story is told. 

It must be frustrating as a developer to always have your first developments held as the gold standard. While I have a suspicion, though not investigated, that key persons involved in the CWC campaign are no longer with Bohemia-- the differing quality of their early work as compared to the latter is considerable. In short, I have found Bohemias recent attempts at campaign storytelling to be shit. Which is not to say that they are bereft of good designers-- as in particular some of their one-shot scenarios give excellent proof of their abilities! Indeed, some of my favourite examples of good mission design (with the context of the Arma engine) are found in Bohemias own work. The scenario "02 Eye for an eye", in Arma2 is well and truly excellent, capturing perfectly some of the ideas I have presented above.  It is a shame that this excellence does not applied to their campaign making. 

Which leaves us with the current state of Arma campaign and mission design. I do find Arma to be a wonderful COOP game, but is it necessarily the best platform to tell stories along the very popular "four heroes attack the world"-- genre?  I believe not. I believe these kinds of stories fail to capture the strengths of the Arma engine and experience.  Arma is not cinematic in an action sense, it is cinematic in vistas.  Arma gameplay is not high-speed twitch shooting, it is paced-- drawn out-- and tactical. Arma is at its best when it paints an authentic picture within a believable and compelling setting.  After discussing the past and present, it is only natural that we look to the future. 

In fact, Arma has the potential to tell stories of a different size and magnitude than other games. We need not four player hero-coops. We could have 10, 20, 30, platoon level,  player campaigns. Campaigns which explore, through a lense of authenticity the visual and cultural (societal) terrain that the Arma engine can give us.  One could argue that each new expansion does give the community the tools to make these things-- it is true-- but this is also something Bohemia is uniquely positioned to grasp, enhance and master.  Now that would have been a sight to see. 
 

I will now start Arma2 to play "Eye for an eye" again. 

-k 

[Wiki 1558]

I think it depends on the person creating it how the campaing looks, I for example don't wan't people to freerooam in the missions i create, there is an nice order in things setup in a way that you get the most immersion when you follow that path, I don't mind having an friendly AI there that is invinceble, if he is there is a reason for it, i don't mind having to work with selective gear if the creator choose it its needed for the mission. You might think me crazy but I'm a awesome moments kinda campaing guy I love by example the COD SP campaing purly because of its awesome voiceacting, awesome moments (not even cutscenes just points where there is like a chopper hovering above you eradicating the enemie's)

 

for me I need a proper story where people really thought of the story and did their absolute best to give you the feeling that your in the mids of all that awesomeness and that you have to go through it to see the end result if the awesomeness.

 

The again like I said, it depends on the creators choice, all missions are excelent because its how the creator chooses his mission to be, put the time in and gave it to you to play with ;)

+1

Totally agree here.

[lexx 1363]

Honestly, I've played a lot user made content, and I would rate most of it as bad, even some of the ones praised here. It's not that there was no real investment into the development, but because usually they are all over the place, without a real red line of some sort. Super bloated missions are a very common issue as well-- sometimes, less is more (oh and because of how ArmA is, they usually only run with arse-performance anyway). Especially the bigger campaigns, with 6+ missions tend to go overboard with certain scenes or mechanics, which makes them feel half-arsed (read that in a polite way, plz). Oh, and don't get me started on super long cutscenes if you don't have a mo-cap studio at hand. Please. Just don't.

 

Content creation should be seen like writing a book- it's not perfect before there is nothing left that can be removed: Get rid of everything bloated that isn't really, really necessary to have in the campaign.

[Wiki 1558]

lexx

I would be interested in your list of "good usermade content" and the the praised one you consider not that good :)

[lexx 1363]

Nah, I better don't. I remember there was a campaign that had me go though many minutes of unskippable cutscenes with stiff figures, until something started and then I died right away, because it was unforgiving as hell. Stuff like that is definitively bad.

 

Also it's not all super bad- you just feel that it's always user created content. Such moments can be more or less moderated with the creator only using elements he know he can present well. E.g. if you are unable to make a good looking cutscene, then don't. Anyway, point being- cut out all superfluous content that isn't 100% necessary for a campaign to work. In the end this will make the whole thing much better.

[skyace65 19]

For me there are 2 major things that matter most

 

1) take advantage of the open world, that's something The East Wind did fantastically especially in Survive, and is completely lacking in Apex Protocol 

2) variety, we've got a ton of weapons and items, show them off

 

That being siad East Wind and Apex have a major shortcoming for me, NO civilian interaction. It completely takes away from immersion in something like Adapt where you play as a bunch of gurillas. And while the lack of civillians in Apex missions doesn't feel as glaring, just walking around a civilian town in the beginning would have done wonders to the pacing and immersion, or maybe even a mission where we meet Blue Cap. 

 

As far as story goes I just want something interesting that feels authentic. East Wind was great until the ending which felt stupid, and Apex I feel suffers from bad pacing

[almanzo 144]

Like many others have expressed, I too believe that Bohemia has not produced any better campaigns than Flashpoint's CWC. There were many elements that combined to make this the case: The setting, the gameplay, the characters and the authenticity of the scenario, and finally the novelty, i.e., context which CWC was released.  I think that the elements of a good campaign can be narrowed to two key points: (1) Leverage the strengths of the Arma engine. (2) Storytelling. Authenticity rather than accuracy.

 

(1) The strengths of the Arma engine has two further sub- components. (i) Arma is a beautiful game which offers unrivalled freedom of movement.  It is a great walk-about simulator, and from a tactical stand point, no other first person shooter game I know of offers tactical combat manoeuvres that span kilometers. A good campaign can showcase both the size and quality of the world all while offering challenging game play that employ the vicissitudes of terrain, time of day, and equipment available.  

 

( ii) Along similar lines. To make the gamer involved the world must look lived in. This was the strength of CWC and to a certain extent Arma2. The civilian populace and (especially in CWC) the day to day lives of the soldiers offered charming insight into their situation and provided a very effective settting backdrop for the events of the story. Indeed, getting this right seems more important than having the fog look perfect. Though personal standards for what is acceptable diverge considerably, there are unfortunately no excuses for poor voice acting. 

 

Campaigns which fail to leverage the technology of Arma alongside the immersive social/cultural terrain Arma can display are doomed to fail. Attempts to recreate CoD high-energy cutscenes likewise break with the pacing Arma excels at delivering.

 

(2) Trying to capture what good storytelling is, is  difficult. I think storytellers should aim to achieve authenticity rather than real world accuracy. By this I mean that trying perfectly simulate real life is not a useful aspect of storytelling-- indeed it may be a mistake(!). Instead, stories with robust internal structures and sensible logic capture our imagination. Look to the plethora of superhero movies and fantasy series to see this in effect. The viewer immerses him- or herself in the rich setting material. In the case of military themed scenarios what accounts for an immersive (authentic) experience may again differ wildly-- but these are challenges every storyteller faces. In other words, tell an internally consistent story with interesting immersive qualities to achieve authenticity. 

 

Another aspect of this is telling an effective story. Ones efforts will go to waste when the setting elements become too enigmatic or obscured from the viewers attention. I argue not for against weaving rich story tapestries, I argue in favour of using well known tropes to communicate effectively. Effective stories are also affective-- they capture, alter, hold hostage the mood of the viewer. Finally, once held, the attention must permitted time (and pacing) to develop and reach fruition. 

 

Campaigns need not be realistic, but they must tell effective stories with a high degree of internal consistency. Where realism is sought, it is in order to leverage familar tropes and elements both as inspiration and to reinforce the immersive environment within which the story is told. 

It must be frustrating as a developer to always have your first developments held as the gold standard. While I have a suspicion, though not investigated, that key persons involved in the CWC campaign are no longer with Bohemia-- the differing quality of their early work as compared to the latter is considerable. In short, I have found Bohemias recent attempts at campaign storytelling to be shit. Which is not to say that they are bereft of good designers-- as in particular some of their one-shot scenarios give excellent proof of their abilities! Indeed, some of my favourite examples of good mission design (with the context of the Arma engine) are found in Bohemias own work. The scenario "02 Eye for an eye", in Arma2 is well and truly excellent, capturing perfectly some of the ideas I have presented above.  It is a shame that this excellence does not applied to their campaign making. 

Which leaves us with the current state of Arma campaign and mission design. I do find Arma to be a wonderful COOP game, but is it necessarily the best platform to tell stories along the very popular "four heroes attack the world"-- genre?  I believe not. I believe these kinds of stories fail to capture the strengths of the Arma engine and experience.  Arma is not cinematic in an action sense, it is cinematic in vistas.  Arma gameplay is not high-speed twitch shooting, it is paced-- drawn out-- and tactical. Arma is at its best when it paints an authentic picture within a believable and compelling setting.  After discussing the past and present, it is only natural that we look to the future. 

In fact, Arma has the potential to tell stories of a different size and magnitude than other games. We need not four player hero-coops. We could have 10, 20, 30, platoon level,  player campaigns. Campaigns which explore, through a lense of authenticity the visual and cultural (societal) terrain that the Arma engine can give us.  One could argue that each new expansion does give the community the tools to make these things-- it is true-- but this is also something Bohemia is uniquely positioned to grasp, enhance and master.  Now that would have been a sight to see. 

 

I will now start Arma2 to play "Eye for an eye" again. 

-k 

This!

In terms of mission design, I fall in line with the "less is more" approach. Large scale can be effective too, but the developers should realize that ARMA isn't a good game for creating hollywood-esque experiences with lots of explosions and over the top action. There is plenty of action to be had, but in very different ways. Open designs with objectives that can be approached from different angles is the way to go. If you can priorize your own assets at some level, that's good too. However, at least in my personal experience, the low tech assets are way more fun to master than having everything at your disposal. As such, it's more fun (in terms of vanilla content) to utilize a technical as insurgents than it is to do a mission in a hunter.

Storytelling:

 

So, on the topic of storytelling, and of the quote from Nkenny... I think what CWC did right was to not attempt to make the story about Armstrong or any of the other characters, but to have them be the eyes we experience the story through. The character with the most influence in OFP are Guba, and it wouldn't be interesting at all to play him. People with power are usually not on the front lines, so it's stupid to try to make the campaign about one single or a few very important characters. It's not genuine, at it gets old fast. You can have a character arc and a story for your protagonist though, but do not fall for the temptation it is to let the world revolve around him. In a game like this, it's best to allow the story to be told through the enviornment and the people around you. In addition, the stuff that isn't told is equally important, creating mystery and even fear of the unknown. Develop the character through dialogue, and give us an insight into his fear, his grief, his hopes and his happiness. Allow us to get to know him by observing him, but do not make him into a hero that saves the day by him self. He is just part of something that is bigger than he is. 

Introduce shorter, more personal storylines. Have a teammate become injured or meet a civillian you need to help. You might not save the world, but let the main protagonist be significant to those around him. His squad mates or any other people he encounters while on mission. Allow the main protagonist breathing space and let him feel that he matters to someone regardless of how insignificant he is in the larger picture. But also allow him to question himself, by forcing him to reflect upon his actions ("Why am I killing all of these people, when I do not even know what I am fighting for?" is a question that can be persued for example. For reference, there is a BBC documentary that is based on interviews with people from WWI, where several tell stories about feeling alienated or confused by having killed someone over a cause they didn't feel was noble in the least. For them, the political goals didn't matter at all, they fought for their lives, their families and their comrades). 

A good example of this kind of storytelling that isn't CWC but that is modern, look towards witcher 3. Even though Gerald is somewhat important, the story does not revolve around him. He is a support character in many ways, as he mostly are around to help Ciri. She is the most important character there, and especially in the Witcher 2, the main story isn't about Gerald at all, it's about the war between different factions. His impact is not that big in the grand scheme of things, but for the people around him he is important. Furthermore, the side quests in Witcher 3 are brilliant in that they are all shorter and smaller stories where you do infact matter a lot and have a huge impact... But not on the world itself, but on some (even though they are minor) characters that inhabit that world. Killing that waterhag doesn't matter at all in the grand scheme, but to that farmer with his family it's a question of life and death. Finding that missing girl in the forest won't stop the wild hunt, but it will mean the world to her mother and aunt. You'll catch my drift, think smaller and more personal. The most impactful stories are the once we can relate to. Most of us can relate to real human emotion, but struggle with abstract concepts such as saving the world or ending a war on our own. Use the main story as a backdrop to explore the human condition.

And for the love of god, women are important even if you find it to difficult to add them as soldiers. At least let us have women (and even children) civillians, and let us encounter civillians that are more than just backdrop or headless chicken running around. Make us care about them, after all, they are often the reason we are given for why we are there. Who cares about the fate of a bunch of silent, headless stupid men dressed as tourists running around in our line of fire? Make us actually care for them, let us know how this war has impacted them. Let us interact with them, let us experience their contempt or their love for us. Let them throw rocks at us and let them embrace us as heroes... Because to them, we are just that... Someone they hate for ruining their lives and for making their future uncertain, or someone who might liberate them from the horrors of war.

Work around the limitations as they did in the good old days. There are games 20 years old with way more limitations of what they can present in terms of story than what ARMA can that was brilliant examples of good story telling. Myst was able to create more of a story with 8 bit imagary and a few pages of text for instance.

[lugiahua 26]

For bad mission/campaign, I think super long missions are really bad, both SP and MP.

Some missions out there forcing you fight through several hours long, a whole company of enemies with just four men.
Not only it breaks immersion, it's usually overly difficult.

 

Instead making a giant mission with 10 objectives, breaking it down to several one hour or less smaller missions is better IMO

 

On the technical side, requiring too much additional mods is also bad.
We are not going to 5 clothing mods just to play a mission.

[AZCoder 921]

I think mods can be a tricky thing when designing a campaign. I love mods, but they need to be carefully chosen when developing a campaign.  As long as they fit the story and make sense, I'm ok with downloading them if I don't already have them. Other times I have looked at a campaign and wondered if all these mods are necessary. I sometimes struggle with what mods to include in my own work.

 

I've made a lot of notes from reading this thread, haha. I personally prefer story oriented campaigns with some degree of cinematics to help "show" the story. That's my preference, and I can understand that it may not be to everyone's liking. And while there're a lot of good ideas and advice in this thread, I would point out that unless you have made a campaign, you may not truly appreciate what an undertaking it is. I know many of the people here have made campaigns, so you know what I mean. I have spent the past 9 months working on my next campaign (a lot of that time is writing scripts), and I probably have another two months to go. As you get near the end, you start thinking about each mission, is it fun, is it balanced, will the players understand it, did I waste the past year of my life, and so on. At the end of the day, I want the campaign to be something that I enjoy playing. I think this goes a long way to making a campaign good. If you're testing you own missions and want to skip to the end, maybe they aren't that fun and should be re-evaluated.

 

One bit of advice. When building missions and campaigns, please run the game with show script errors on (or at least read the error log). I do a ton of scripting, so I always have show errors turned on, and I often see errors in other people's campaigns. I've played campaigns where I had to restart the game with errors turned off because I was constantly spammed over some variable that was never declared and a trigger that doesn't understand it.

[IndeedPete 1038]

Developing with mods is a huge risk. Especially long-term projects. I would refrain from building on mods where you don't fully trust the author to maintain them. Or create what you need yourself. At least when it comes to simple textures or scripts. Modelling and custom weapons are an entirely different thing.

[lexx 1363]

Usually if a mission requires more than one mod, I simply won't download it. Sometimes if it requires just a single mod, I won't download it. Then you see missions on the workplace who got a list of 5, 6 or 7 mods... urg. Sorry, but sad truth.

[IndeedPete 1038]

That's just another reason to create things yourself. Just make it part of the campaign and players won't need to download anything else.