What Makes a Good Arma Campaign?

[IndeedPete 1038]

Let them suffer, I'd say. The most tense experiences I've had in really difficult situations. Just leave the player some room to manoeuvre so he can try different approaches when he fails. Be sure to set up fair save points so it doesn't become too frustrating.

Difficulty in Arma is a complicated thing. Sometimes in a mission your squad gets wiped out by single enemy who happens to be in a good position, and other times the same mission feels like a cakewalk. It's pretty hard to come up with good and reliable troop sizes and AI skill settings. To be honest, I rarely notice a difference between different AI skill levels. In my opinion, a lot of the complaints about the AI being super accurate come down to players either not understanding the detection system or blatantly standing upright in an open field. It's a bit of a learning curve.

 

Because I could never be bothered to fiddle around with individual skill levels in the editor, I tend to use a script to set some basic levels. (Just in case it actually affects the gameplay. :D) I found these numbers on the forums years ago.

 

 

params [ ["_unit", objNull, [objNull]], ["_skill", 0, [0]] ]; switch (_skill) do { case 0: { _unit setSkill ["aimingSpeed", 0.05]; _unit setSkill ["spotDistance", 0.05]; _unit setSkill ["aimingAccuracy", 0.02]; _unit setSkill ["aimingShake", 0.02]; _unit setSkill ["spotTime", 0.1]; _unit setSkill ["spotDistance", 0.3]; _unit setSkill ["commanding", 0.3]; _unit setSkill ["general", 0.2]; }; case 1: { _unit setSkill ["aimingSpeed", 0.1]; _unit setSkill ["spotDistance", 0.1]; _unit setSkill ["aimingAccuracy", 0.05]; _unit setSkill ["aimingShake", 0.05]; _unit setSkill ["spotTime", 0.2]; _unit setSkill ["spotDistance", 0.4]; _unit setSkill ["commanding", 0.4]; _unit setSkill ["general", 0.3]; }; case 2: { _unit setSkill ["aimingSpeed", 0.15]; _unit setSkill ["spotDistance", 0.15]; _unit setSkill ["aimingAccuracy", 0.1]; _unit setSkill ["aimingShake", 0.1]; _unit setSkill ["spotTime", 0.3]; _unit setSkill ["spotDistance", 0.5]; _unit setSkill ["commanding", 0.5]; _unit setSkill ["general", 0.6]; }; case 3: { _unit setSkill ["aimingSpeed", 0.2]; _unit setSkill ["spotDistance", 0.2]; _unit setSkill ["aimingAccuracy", 0.2]; _unit setSkill ["aimingShake", 0.2]; _unit setSkill ["spotTime", 0.4]; _unit setSkill ["spotDistance", 0.6]; _unit setSkill ["commanding", 0.6]; _unit setSkill ["general", 0.7]; }; case 4: { _unit setSkill ["aimingSpeed", 0.3]; _unit setSkill ["spotDistance", 0.3]; _unit setSkill ["aimingAccuracy", 0.3]; _unit setSkill ["aimingShake", 0.3]; _unit setSkill ["spotTime", 0.5]; _unit setSkill ["spotDistance", 0.8]; _unit setSkill ["commanding", 0.8]; _unit setSkill ["general", 0.9]; }; default {["Skill level %1 not recognised! Must be 0-4!", _skill] call BIS_fnc_error}; };

 

[lexx 1363]

It's really complicated, because with the wrong tweaks, you can end up making it way too easy for everyone (except the ones standing upright on an open field, heh). I, too, played campaigns already where the AI was just way, way too good. Either because of skill level, or because the mission designer didn't gave me enough cover objects (being flat on ground on an open field doesn't really improve your situation).

 

I like the option of adding / removing soldiers based on difficulty. But if I go by recent feedback, I'd only remove enemies in *higher* difficulty settings... as they appear more skilled, and are naturally a higher threat.

[Mynock 244]

As someone who sucks at the game...

 

Difficulty becomes an issue when I go to serious effort to put myself at a tactical advantage and still get wasted by the AI easily. If I'm running across an open field into the fire of 8 static positions, sure, I deserve to die. But if it's night, the enemy has no NVGs, it's foggy, I sneak around to flank, and a guy spins around 300m from me and pops off 3 shots and kills me, I'm going to be pretty disappointed and likely won't touch the campaign or mission again.

 

Basically, give me a realistic chance to complete a task first or second try, and I'll enjoy it. If I do something stupid then fine I didn't deserve to complete it first try, but if it's starting to feel overly difficult trying to complete a task "properly" then I'm going to shut the game off. I imagine most people are similar to me in the fact that, I don't want to replay the same segment of a mission 10+ times because I keep dying for two reasons: 1 it's frustrating as a casual player, 2 it gets boring quick doing the same thing that many times in a row only to not be able to progress.

 

Another thing I think helps in single player is to give the player good teammates. Doesn't mean they need to be in god mode, but adjust some of their stuff with setSkill that will assist the player, like spotting distance and time, that way the player at least knows there's enemies about and makes the AI teammates actually feel important to the player like they're watching his/her back.

 

Only other thing I can think of is, remind players somehow they can change their difficulty settings to custom and turn the AI all the way down, which as far as I can tell works independently of the mission, so it can help.

 

Edit: Also, don't overestimate easiness of a mission being an attraction. For some reason the easiest mission I ever made is my most popular; however, it was designed with casual players in mind as well looking for a quick 30min mission.

[ProfTournesol 956]

Exactly like Mynock.

[Mynock 244]

Another thing I thought of actually related to mission design, is what type of mission it is too. If I'm assaulting a town or something in the middle of an ongoing war campaign and bright afternoon sunshine, yeah it's going to be harder because the enemy should know I'm coming. If it's a super sneaky black ops mega-beard operating operator operation in the pitch black dark against a bunch of farmers not expecting me using 50 year old weapons against me, with all of 'Murica's military might, I better steamroll that mission first try or I'm going to think it's a little goofy.

 

Edit: Or another example, if it's an ambush mission lets say, maybe set the enemy AI skill to be quite poor, and then use a trigger or event handler to delay bumping up their skill until after maybe 20-30sec into the ambush. That would simulate some confusion of the enemy upon the ambush. If I rocket a truck and the enemy AI jump out, ID my location in 0.5 seconds, and return highly accurate fire, I'm going to be like wtf and quit the mission...

[lexx 1363]

Making it too easy isn't the way to go either. In my opinion, if you're making a mission that won't challenge players much, you better put some extra A+ presentation to it. Music, dialog, sound effects, etc. all that jazz, the full package. Because if you're letting me steamroll through a (as example) "assault x"-scenario, without additional candy, I'm very likely going to be bored as well.

 

/edit: As it happens to be, I replayed Apex campaign mission 4 again today. Apparently BI adjusted the amount of CSAT spec-ops you'll encounter in solo mode, because when I played this the first time, they totally wrecked me from all sides. While the respawn timer annoyed the heck out of me, it still made for a pretty tense mission (although, yes, what Mynock wrote above does apply here as well-- too many reloads = very bad). So that replay today had me like 4 or so spec-ops now, which I easily steamrolled. This now had way, way too little impact on me. Totally lost the tense atmosphere (even though the initial version was a tad too hardcore).

[ProfTournesol 956]

Yeah but most of the missions rely on AI ability to snipe you, not on clever mission design.

[Mynock 244]

27 minutes ago, lexx said:

Making it too easy isn't the way to go either.

 

I'm not saying make it too easy. But if 98% of players can't finish the mission first or second, maybe third try, chances are you'll get those comments about "360 no scope AI."

 

On the flip side, I make missions because I enjoy making them, and have learned to give 0 effs about what people think of them because I've found a vast majority of the Arma playbase to be hypocritical, so I'm not after SWS ratings and praise from internet people for anything I make. Different motives for the creator = different designs for missions/campaigns.

[joostsidy 685]

Arma 3 is a game that requires patience, I think a lot players (me included sometimes) don't have enough patience to think things through, to take a thorough approach and try a couple of times.

 

I've created a lot of single player missions, this is my difficulty style:

- The missions take 60-120 minutes

- My mission are fairly hard but can be played with one life, no respawn or save/load

- I do use playable unit on squad members, so you might have multiple 'lives' depending on the size of your squad

 

- I adjust main skill level, but I'm still tweaking them:

      - Special forces: 100 (ha!)

      - Military: 50, 40, 30

      - Militia: 30, 20, 10

 

- I've noticed that with a lot a randomization, missions can become extremely difficult. I use some adaptions to keep it playable.

     - I limit the amount of patrols, so you can encounter an enemy patrol on a jungle path, but if you manage to defeat it, you can be reasonably sure it's the only one and you don't have to spend much time crawling through the jungle

     - Same in towns: I used to spread enemies all over town basically. I now randomly select a couple of buildings and occupy them. To help even more, I may position a vehicle to mark an occupied building. So with some observing of the town, you can identify the 'hot spots'.

     - I use a script that randomly turns turrets on vehicles and static MG's. Sometimes I configure them to look around, but never 180 behind, so with skill, you can sneak up on them from behind.

     - A very cool feature is to have some buddies 'recruitable'. So if your squad gets decimated, you have to retreat before you get yourself killed and recruit your buddies to fill up your squad and try again.

     - Using artillery or CAS as an option that gives a penalty but can be used if you cannot complete the mission with less destruction.

     - I use flee script that makes units run away if their number is below x amount, so battles are not 'to the last man'.

[andersson 285]

Difficult is good and can be scaled. But when a mission becomes impossible due to preffered difficulty settings I get sad. Then the situation is not life like, then it's gamey and it is designed for hud and other help. A mission in the armed assault campaign is a good example of this. There is no way to defeat a base full of armor and enemies by yourself withna rocket launcher, except by grinding it over and over until you statisticly manage to survive, or to turn on all hud and other help settings. 

But a hard mission which is believable and demands skill or patient is good imho.

[joostsidy 685]

15 minutes ago, andersson said:

... There is no way to defeat a base full of armor and enemies by yourself withna rocket launcher...

 

But a hard mission which is believable and demands skill or patient is good imho.

I agree, a lot of missions are too ambitious and too much RAMBO IMO.

 

I make the mistake myself too. I had some missions where I continually kept dying at the most exciting part where I had to clear some houses. That is.. until I realized that trying to CQB a house garrisonned by professional soldiers that know that you are coming is not a workable strategy. I found that I had more success by surrounding the house with my squad and blasting the house with 40mm grenades through the windows and only move in to neutralize the last confused survivor. At first glance this is less fun and more work, but it the end it feels more rewarding to systematically break down the enemy's defenses.

[IndeedPete 1038]

One thing I thought about earlier when playing Lexx's CSAT campaign (good stuff by the way, you guys should try it) is that friendly AI can be a significant factor in perceived diffculty. I want to scream in terror at my screen every time I'm in a vehicle with an AI crew. I don't know if AI behaviour and skill are affected by a player being in command but I've had multiple instances where I was in a tank's commander seat, an enemy in plain view, but the gunner AI didn't detect him yet and I wasn't able to report the enemy or set him as target. In a real life situation or co-op game, I would just talk to the gunner but with Arma's terrible commanding UI, it's often impossible to react in time. All I can do is sit there, watching the enemy getting out its rocket launcher, hoping that the AI gunner detects and fights him in time. Same problem with telling the AI to prioritise targets, such as AT-carriers or machine gunners. And let'st not talk about AI driving. Trying to keep your own vehicle behind good cover during a fight is next to impossible if you're not driving yourself.

 

Similar goes for stealth missions with AI teammates. I tend to just leave them at the start and do everything myself as they tend to get detected quite fast. They just don't know when to crawl, when to fully stop, or when to sprint into hiding.

[lexx 1363]

The tank vehicle AI is extremely weird, imo. At times - me being the commander - it is enough to just look into the direction of an enemy to have your gunner engage the target. Heck, in third person you just have to point the camera at a target. Then other times, you can hammer the T key, but the gunner is slow as a snail and won't react at all. I'm not exactly sure what is the cause for that. Maybe too many possible targets on screen will confuse the gunner... no idea.

 

That's exactly why I was handing out the Apex RPG instead of the vanilla AT launcher... You can take a few hits of them without dying, which makes the experience less frustrating and also adds to the tense atmosphere (getting more "effect explosions" from non-vehicle weapons around the player). This worked out well, imo, because before I did this, you got wrecked instantly almost all the time. Reloading became hotkey-worthy. I don't think there are other effective ways to handle the difficulty when operating armored vehicles (or at least know of any that make some sense). If you simply place less AT soldiers, then the enemy is no threat at all, so that's no solution either.

[Mynock 244]

Lexx if you're getting people saying your campaign is too hard my guess would be it's because the majority of players don't play in vehicle roles often if ever, so it becomes an extremely steep learning curve immediately. Also...

 

Spoiler

The first infantry based mission, the assault on the factory to steal the tanks, even being very careful my entire AI team got wasted in seconds, and it became an overly challenging 1 v 25 situation that took me over 90 minutes to finally finish. I had to basically be super careful, kill a guy, run away to cover, save game, go find next guy, die, reload game, try again, over and over and over and over...

 

That's as far as I've made it. But I'll say it's already borderline too hard for someone like me, even using "proper" tactics and playing very methodically.

[lexx 1363]

See, and that's what I can't understand. Now I know I made the mission, so I know what to expect, but... I finish this thing in 10 to 15 minutes. It's no big deal for me at all, I don't even have to command the ai in detail, and I don't even need a savegame. I rush in, get stuff done, rush out. If it would be me, the mission is already too easy (but like I said.. I made that thing, so I know all the details of course). The APC will have left the base a lot quicker now as well, so faster players also won't really encounter it anymore in combat (unless they open fire right away).

 

By now I've tweaked the mission already a bit with giving "real" armor to the player + a better weapon, as well as changed some enemy placements, etc. Since then I haven't heard any reports about it, so I guess that did it to some extend. In any case, for the next patch I've planned more enemy loadout tweaks (SMGs for the punny guards and crew members), so that should tone down the difficulty even more.

[XerXesCZ 89]

37 minutes ago, lexx said:

See, and that's what I can't understand. Now I know I made the mission, so I know what to expect, but... I finish this thing in 10 to 15 minutes. It's no big deal for me at all, I don't even have to command the ai in detail, and I don't even need a savegame. I rush in, get stuff done, rush out. If it would be me, the mission is already too easy (but like I said.. I made that thing, so I know all the details of course). The APC will have left the base a lot quicker now as well, so faster players also won't really encounter it anymore in combat (unless they open fire right away).

 

By now I've tweaked the mission already a bit with giving "real" armor to the player + a better weapon, as well as changed some enemy placements, etc. Since then I haven't heard any reports about it, so I guess that did it to some extend. In any case, for the next patch I've planned more enemy loadout tweaks (SMGs for the punny guards and crew members), so that should tone down the difficulty even more.

 

Well lexx, I think your campaign isn't THAT MUCH hard. It is challenging, of course, but it isn't unplayable (playing on Adept settings).

[Mynock 244]

47 minutes ago, lexx said:

See, and that's what I can't understand. Now I know I made the mission, so I know what to expect, but... I finish this thing in 10 to 15 minutes. It's no big deal for me at all, I don't even have to command the ai in detail, and I don't even need a savegame. I rush in, get stuff done, rush out. If it would be me, the mission is already too easy (but like I said.. I made that thing, so I know all the details of course). The APC will have left the base a lot quicker now as well, so faster players also won't really encounter it anymore in combat (unless they open fire right away).

 

By now I've tweaked the mission already a bit with giving "real" armor to the player + a better weapon, as well as changed some enemy placements, etc. Since then I haven't heard any reports about it, so I guess that did it to some extend. In any case, for the next patch I've planned more enemy loadout tweaks (SMGs for the punny guards and crew members), so that should tone down the difficulty even more.

 

You must be significantly more talented than me at the game then. Like XerXesCZ said, it's not unplayable, but it's not easy for me either. I'm pretty bad, but I'm sure others are worse than me, perhaps that's where the comments about difficulty are coming from.

 

Also, keep in mind the Steam Summer Sale just happened, so a lot of new people are likely just getting around to trying out user made stuff now and modifications, so inexperience combined with a campaign that gives the player a lot of stuff to keep track of (commanding infantry and commanding a vehicle at the same time is a chore, especially when new to Arma and the controls) may be influencing people's comments.

 

Edit: Keep in mind nothing I have made is any good. These are my opinions. Every mission I've ever made is basically trash, so my opinions shouldn't carry any weight really.

[Wiki 1558]

3 hours ago, IndeedPete said:

One thing I thought about earlier when playing Lexx's CSAT campaign (good stuff by the way, you guys should try it) is that friendly AI can be a significant factor in perceived diffculty. I want to scream in terror at my screen every time I'm in a vehicle with an AI crew. I don't know if AI behaviour and skill are affected by a player being in command but I've had multiple instances where I was in a tank's commander seat, an enemy in plain view, but the gunner AI didn't detect him yet and I wasn't able to report the enemy or set him as target. In a real life situation or co-op game, I would just talk to the gunner but with Arma's terrible commanding UI, it's often impossible to react in time. All I can do is sit there, watching the enemy getting out its rocket launcher, hoping that the AI gunner detects and fights him in time. Same problem with telling the AI to prioritise targets, such as AT-carriers or machine gunners. And let'st not talk about AI driving. Trying to keep your own vehicle behind good cover during a fight is next to impossible if you're not driving yourself.

 

Similar goes for stealth missions with AI teammates. I tend to just leave them at the start and do everything myself as they tend to get detected quite fast. They just don't know when to crawl, when to fully stop, or when to sprint into hiding.

 

That's why I am always driver in a vehicle (to avoid bad pathfinding) and always ready to switch to gunner seat as soon as I can see a target.

Never use the commander seat.

[lexx 1363]

56 minutes ago, Mynock said:

Edit: Keep in mind nothing I have made is any good. These are my opinions. Every mission I've ever made is basically trash, so my opinions shouldn't carry any weight really.

 

Well, players opinion is at least as important (if not more, actually). It's what was said already before-- if you have to reload a scene 10 times to make it, then it's very likely not very good.

 

PS: I just played through the last mission of "Survive" / A3 campaign and I didn't have to save and load once. Compared to the initial release, it has been a pure cake walk now. I remember how especially the mortars and the later CSAT paradrop were annoyingly hard.

[OMAC 254]

23 hours ago, wiki said:

 

That's why I am always driver in a vehicle (to avoid bad pathfinding) and always ready to switch to gunner seat as soon as I can see a target.

Never use the commander seat.

 

Especially if you are alone in a vehicle, commander seat is very useful if the seat has MG and enemy infantry are in vicinity, as you are positioned higher than gunner and can see over blocking objects sometimes...  

[Wiki 1558]

6 minutes ago, OMAC said:

 

Especially if you are alone in a vehicle, commander seat is very useful if the seat has MG and enemy infantry are in vicinity, as you are positioned higher than gunner and can see over blocking objects sometimes...  

Yeah, I meant as commander role.

Yes of course, if there is a gun for the commander I will use it. But nothing more