If Apex camp. disappointed you, what were your expectations?

[OMAC 254]

Was that Lt. James who came in the chopper near the end, blasting away at bad guys on the ground?  I guess that was NATO fire support, eh?  I was so busy cleaning house with my minigun-equipped little buggy   B)  that I missed most of that radio dialog.  I wish they had postponed all that scripted action until a quieter time when I could have paid more attention to it.  But hey, that activity adds replay value.

[bonchie 39]

Am I missing something with the campaign?
 

When we play the first mission, there's no cutscene before, no explanation of who "keystone" is, etc. Should I be seeing something?

[angel24marin 34]

Am I missing something with the campaign?

 

When we play the first mission, there's no cutscene before, no explanation of who "keystone" is, etc. Should I be seeing something?

First mission is the first part of the 5 mission. It's like a flashback.

[2nd ranger 282]

 

A thing I kind of noticed myself on the campaign is that it starts if I remember correctly like August 15/16th, 2035. If you go back to the east wind campaign and chose the Paradise Found mission, that is set at the date of August 10, 2035 so with that, it would mean the apex protocol thing starts less than a week after East Wind.

 

Then later in the apex protocol campaign (don't remember what mission) but the voice over/cutscene depicts that miller and the CTRG have been stationed in tanoa for WEEKS, which in that case wouldn't be possible - how could Miller be in two places at once? Then in the final End Game mission towards the end you will notice a familiar voice and person. Lt. James makes his appearance, which if going by the ending of east wind (depending on which ending) isn't Lt. James dead, since even if you don't go see him he would still succumb to his wounds when he first contacts you he sounds like hes wounded.

 

so I think storyline perspective they got some continuity issues.

 

 

 

Yeah, the Miller extraction takes place on August 14 2035, and the last time anyone sees him on Altis is somewhere around August 2nd, yet he claims in Apex that he has been in the Horizon islands for 4 weeks. Also, I always thought that CSAT had developed the Eastwind prototype on Altis, but an AAN video places the Pacific tsunami disaster sometime in May.

[Guest]

I barelly played the specific Apex content, but noticed a general degradation in game FPS, something that either the lowest settings can't solve.

[inlesco 233]

Here's an "what-if" scenario given the fixed resources BIS had for Apex camp.: from what I read in this thread, the majority wanted a camp. that presents some dynamic elements - depending on player's tactical and moral choices, am I right?

 

A simple example from OFP's 2001 camp.: in one mission, you're leading a Black Ops squad to locate and eliminate a secret enemy encampment. There are 3 suspected locations, plus following enemy supply routes may lead you to the encampment immediately.

 

But there's never a hint that you should follow supply routes - you have to come up with this idea by yourself. Personally, I love not-too-hinty gameplay like this.

 

So, once you destroy the secret encampment, you escape and in the following mission - where you lead a full tank platoon, there'll be no air support for the enemy available - thanks to the Black Ops.

 

I bet BIS could've dedicated more resources to elements such as this instead of investing into nasty-lookin' briefing intros, etc. It'd be a wise choice to sacrifice production values for replayability and overall mission dynamics.

[DaViSFiT 21]

I really miss the CO part  and with the new island its more and more infantrie sided. :mellow:

 

About coop camp:

- CO parts

- using more stuff that arma offers, using all the new stuff offered

- different storylines that happen on your actions

- bigger, longer, complex. More then just "kill XY and run to exfil"

- difficult of the campain comes only from accuracy of enemy soldiers. I never thought of "uhh, that was our fault, we did something wrong". It always "How did enemy see me that fast and kill me with 1 shot?".

- Respawn? What about longer bleeding to death times and less of this arcadish respawn stuff that lets you respawn directly to the action?

- Its coop 4, so please let us do different stuff (and not those 4 different weapon and loadout). Something with CO or actions that needs teamplay!

- it was NOT a challenge

[Guest]

Community missions can't save the day? May be missions was not priority on this content update.

[TrueCruel_Nobody 35]

I expected the same style as the East Wind campaign (ofc not as long as that one), but it came completely different and with only 7 missions.

 

The only thing I like about AP is that you can play it in CoOp, but not more. The rest was about average.

[sic-disaster 311]

Honestly, I don't mind basic setups for missions. CWC didn't have very complicated missions, but that campaign was grand. It was the story telling and the feeling of being a small part in a big machine but with his own personal storyline and diary that did the trick for me.

[froggyluv 2130]

 If you ask me they've gone absolutely the wrong way on moving forward.

 

 Imagine had the headline been

 

                                                      APEX

 

FEATURING:

   ~A completley new and improved AI system.

   ~ Brand new control and action menu and system - no more spammed actions and a beautiful new design.

   ~ Advanced Commands such as Defend, Garrison, Stalk with playbook of Urban, Jungle, Open lands tactics.

  

   ~ New reaction system and RPG like attributes. Now Snipers will act like snipers, Machinegunners like machinegunners, pilots like pilots. Spec Ops have different animations, radio protocol and tactics. Predefined or random squad leader personality types ie Brave, Maniac, Aggo, Tepid..

   ~ Whole new realistic wounding and morale system with dragging making a come back.

  ~ Optional psychological component - troops can be overwhelmed with losing troops too quickly or too much exposure to friendly gore (oh yes, we added that too!)

 ~ Compelling branching storyline with the option to *Cough!* play as co-op with friends instead

[whatsupdoc_1_27 20]

Only issue I have, because I play Wasteland, is there is not enough flat land. Why? Because our server clan build pre fab bases for Opfor, Blufor and Independent. Now I have to build the bases over the water or use a script to hide the trees and buildings just to build a base on areas there are flat lands so we can save our vehicles and crates and such....Other than that I love the jungle...

[almanzo 144]

I kind of bought Apex for the COOP campaign, as I didn't expect my community to adopt to Apex for a long while anyhow. I got the DLCs and has never been able to use any of them for the same reason, as long as everyone doesn't have it, it's not feasable to use in a community.

I had very low expectations though, as the campaigns since OFP has gone downhill, but I still was dissappointed. Someone here mentioned that they have opted for a story driven campaign instead of a gameplay driven campaign. While I both find it weird that there should be a choice between the two, now that they have choosen a story driven campaign, they should at least has made sure the story was good and play on the strenghts and uniqueness of the game. Unfortunately, they didn't. It is by far the least engaging story I've ever played in an ARMA game, and it is among the most booring campaigns of any game ever in terms of the story. Even compared to the shitfest that was the Battlefield 4 campaign, but it makes the very same mistakes Battlefield 4 made.

They think we all want to run around as heroes saving the day by ourselves. As such, they try to create a scenario where one tiny team of 4 people conduct a series of operations that somehow has an impact on a global scale... Fuck that, it's not relatable and it's very unlikely. What made Cold War Crisis great, regardless of it's flaws, it's inconcistencies and it's development was that in CWC they told the story through the players eyes instead of trying to make the story about the player himself. The story was about confusion, fear, anger, injustice and revenge. You where just a regular Joe, fighting against a foe with unknown origin and intentions, knowing that you mattered close to nothing in the larger picture... 

But you did matter, just not in a geopolitical sense. You mattered to your squadmates and you mattered to the very few civillians you encountered. It was a story of how war impacts regular people. I will allways remember when you return to Everon taking back the coast with the epic sound track in the background with the lyrics "taking it back, taking it back, yeah!". You felt that you where a part of something larger, and that was both empowering and intimidating at the same time. It was more about survival of you and your friends than it was about killing Guba, you where just a part of it.

It was great because of the same reasons Band of Brothers is great, it was about regular soldiers (and spec ops was casted as what they are; specialists, not super human one team armies) and their experience of war. Killing Hitler had little to do with the war of individual soldiers in World War II, what matters was you, your friends and killing individual opponents before they could kill you. In OFP you where small and vulnerable, and encountering a tank was shit scary. It was large scale, but in small pieces. In the first mission of the game you had infantry, helicopters and tanks working together from the get go, it was playing to ARMAs strenght, being combined warfare.

And then you had the different characters allowing you to play both infantry, pilot and tank crew. It's not required that you include that, but if you are going to make an infantry focused campaign, make sure it focuses on how you as an infantry is just a tiny piece in a complex machinery. 


Gameplay comes into this as well. Playing as a grunt is a nice way of easing people into it. Later in the game, allow the player to command and as long as the objectives are set, allow the player freedom. Make recon valuable, as someone else pointed out with the supply lines in the spec ops mission in OFP, and allow for at least some level of planning. There was none of that here, no contact before the AO, but once you got there enemies came from all over the place. 

A coop campaign shouldn't have respawns in my opinion, or at least should have the option to turn respawn off and be scaled accordingly. You can't punish someone for dying if it was no way to counter that death though, and at a lot of times I felt like the mission makers cheated me. Furthermore, the amount of enemies spawned are also quite ridiculous, I had over 20 kills in general in the missions when playing with friends. I'm guessing the enemy numbers where around 60-80 AI at least, and even some vehicles. That's just insane. If you stayed alive for an entire mission, you didn't even have enough ammo to kill all the enemies you had to kill.

Oh, and no civillians... I never understood why I should care about anything in this campaign. Why am I killing these pirates again? Am I going to meet someone they have wronged? How am I going to care if I'm not able to relate to any of the characters in the entire campaign at all?

Aaaand beside the voice work, I hated the cut scenes too. A bunch of macho tacticool lingo and nonsense bullshit with satelite imagery and so on. No context, no emotion, just nameless dudes talking about something dull. 


 

[chortles 263]

If you ask me they've gone absolutely the wrong way on moving forward.

 

 Imagine had the headline been <what froggyluv wanted follows>

At that point you could forget about them giving us a release date. :P

 

Incidentally, looking back at how many responses here specified an expectation based on or preference for Harvest Red and Manhattan in particular reminds me of dev comments on the forums during and after Arma 3's early access period that suggested that certain VIPs (former community included) were far less enamored of both than current community -- if not necessarily having DO NOT DO THIS on a whiteboard underneath MANHATTAN -- and that this difference influenced The East Wind...

[IndeedPete 1038]

At that point you could forget about them giving us a release date. :P

 

Incidentally, looking back at how many responses here specified an expectation based on or preference for Harvest Red and Manhattan in particular reminds me of dev comments on the forums during and after Arma 3's early access period that suggested that certain VIPs (former community included) were far less enamored of both than current community -- if not necessarily having DO NOT DO THIS on a whiteboard underneath MANHATTAN -- and that this difference influenced The East Wind...

 

Did they provide any reasoning as to why Manhatten was so bad that it made it on the no-go list? I thought it was one of the best missions in Harvest Red. If it worked that is, the bugs have been atrocious. How many hours were spent just waiting for this one girl to go to the fucking church to arrest her and she never showed up? :D

[lexx 1331]

Did they provide any reasoning as to why Manhatten was so bad that it made it on the no-go list? I thought it was one of the best missions in Harvest Red. If it worked that is, the bugs have been atrocious. How many hours were spent just waiting for this one girl to go to the fucking church to arrest her and she never showed up? :D

Yeah, neither can I really understand this right now. Either people were so pissed off about it because of all the bugs (I remember them too), or people expected something different back then as well, which pissed them off and spawned the "don't do this ever again!" stance.

 

/Edit: To clarify a bit. I don't think a mission like Manhatten *has* to come back or something the way it is. I do like the Hub system in A3 a lot as well- if not more so. It allows missions to be shorter / more clear and straight forward. Also it greatly helps the performance, as each mission is set in a limited area. The only thing it is kind of lacking was... well... more missions.

[Guest]

I need to say Tanoa run smooth and is amazing.

 

This was my problem: Window FullScreen Mode.

I changed to real FullScreen and fps problems stoped.

 

Be carefull, if you minimize the game low fps can come back. If this happens just minimize again until its fixed.

[Rydygier 1302]

Not really disappointed, as I didn't expected much for me knowing, it's coop focused, nevertheless made an approach. But in every game I play I expect ability to freely save my progress. Without it - refused to continue after second death in the first mission, so can't tell, how this campaign fits my expectations, but for sure Tanoa setting begs for certain kind of gameplay with jungle as important actor. Instead such linear campaign, frankly, I would love to see some highly replayable dynamic/procedural SP scenario making good use of Tanoa and new factions. Some (anti-)druglord warfare or jungle guerrila or whatever of that sort or even better something fresh, exploring new directions in the gameplay (treasure hunt?). I don't know, why they abandoned this path of standalone dynamic missions after some early experiments in Arma 2. They made a sandbox and then they are keep making linear gameplay in it. Kinda waste of potential to me. Well, their game, their preferences, their decision. Many people prefer linear campaigns too, so it's just IMHO. In fact I like classic campaigns too, when well done, just some other types of gameplay are even better for me.  

[chortles 263]

Did they provide any reasoning as to why Manhatten was so bad that it made it on the no-go list? I thought it was one of the best missions in Harvest Red. If it worked that is, the bugs have been atrocious. How many hours were spent just waiting for this one girl to go to the fucking church to arrest her and she never showed up? :D

Nailed it, though I imagine that difficulty to implement without bugs -- and broadly 'ambition vs. polish' -- was a factor. In particular I recall Zipper5 alluding -- I believe on the Steam forums -- to greater difficulty in ensuring bug-free co-op (and personal affinity for SP) as a factor in why The East Wind was SP-only, despite the changes of direction that some of you may have perceived in his and pettka's replies in the main Apex Protocol thread.

[UkropyPrivyet 32]

I have no problem with the Special Forces setting of the campaign like many might, but to me the three major problems of the campaign are: length, scale, and depth. The campaign is abysmally short when you compare it to the main game or even to Bohemia's past DLCs, the scale of the campaign is tiny, with combat rarely going beyond your squad to include four or five more soldiers from the 2nd CTRG team in the area, and the depth of the campaign is basically non-existent. The problem is that, even in multiplayer, you feel like the sole asset on the island even when you know for a fact that there's another CTRG team 300m away from you at all times. Sure, they talk to you on the radio, but other than that they don't really do anything until a "major part" of the campaign comes up. At least one person other than me has said that Tanoa doesn't feel like a battlefield, and I wholly agree with that. Tanoa just so happens to be the environment, but there's never any action outside of where you are. You're not a soldier in a larger fight, you are the fight. Nothing happens unless you're there to make it happen. 

 

Most of all, I just wanted a campaign that would further the story, and I really didn't even get that. The campaign to me seems like the devs got tired of writing anything for the CSAT forces so they decided to end it with "CSAT BASICALLY BTFO FOREVER, AMERICAN DONGS CONFIRMED FOR LARGE" with a big old cliffhanger on the Eastwind device. No major skirmishes with CSAT (again? really?) and a typical "bad guy, here's why" faction to fight with the thin string that "CSAT IS BEHIND EVERYTHING" in something reminiscent of the ramblings of a conspiracy theorist. 

[neofit 65]

I think a lot of people would be somewhat please if the campaign stayed the same but simply has a proper SP mode added with saving. I was never expecting a full harvest red sized campaign here-I knew it was only going to be about 7 missions.So basically the size of one chapter from the East Wind. But I was expecting a normal SP experience, and at least one or two of the "scouting" missions that were introduced in the A3 campaign. They are a perfect way to allow the player to get familiar with the new Island.

I couldn't have said it better. I was expecting a proper SP experience, with pausing and proper saving and reloading. Not everyone has friends or co-workers who not only play this game, but play it when you can or want as well.  Just like in East Wind, I was expecting a series of missions that would introduce me to the history, map and factions. Why TF are half the names in Dutch, half in French, all road signs in French, all store names in English? As it is now, I am seeing user missions about some syndikat doing something, except that, having completely lost interest in a zero persistence campaign during the first mission, I have no idea who these are.

[ineptaphid 6413]

I couldn't have said it better. I was expecting a proper SP experience, with pausing and proper saving and reloading. Not everyone has friends or co-workers who not only play this game, but play it when you can or want as well.  Just like in East Wind, I was expecting a series of missions that would introduce me to the history, map and factions. Why TF are half the names in Dutch, half in French, all road signs in French, all store names in English? As it is now, I am seeing user missions about some syndikat doing something, except that, having completely lost interest in a zero persistence campaign during the first mission, I have no idea who these are.

Yup. Although at the moment I am so happy with Tanoa that I dont care about the campaign now. I dont think I can ever go back to Altis again...Tanoa is just so beautifully detailed. :) And there is a lot of fantastic missions being released on the workshop. It does not excuse the crap campaign,but it does soften the blow.