Apex Protocol Difficulty Improvements

[Zipper5 74]

 

 

Hey everyone. :)

 

Thanks to your feedback, we've recently published a few changes to the Development Branch targeted specifically at improving the management of difficulty settings for "Apex Protocol", the co-operative campaign we released as part of Apex. These new difficulty options focus on 2 key areas: Respawn and Revive. Lobby Leaders can choose from a range of options for each setting, which will be applied for all clients and carry over between sessions. These settings are as follows:

 

Respawn:

• Always - Players will always be able to respawn after being killed.
• Limited - A maximum of 3 Respawn Tickets are shared between all players. Tickets are awarded by completing Tasks.
• Disabled - Upon death, players will only be permitted to spectate those who are still alive.

Revive:

• Always - Everyone can revive each other with no limitations.
• First Aid Kit - Reviving a player requires a First Aid Kit, which will be consumed upon their revival.
• Medic Only - Only units with a Medikit can revive.
• Disabled - Revive will be disabled entirely.

As such, we've made changes to both the Campaign Lobby and Respawn Menu (pictured above) to support these changes. Though fully functional, their presentation is still work-in-progress.

 

For now, we would like to ask you to focus specifically on balance; at any point during your session, does the mission feel too difficult? Or, alternatively, too easy? If so, please send us your feedback. We'd like to ask you to include the mission(s) you were playing and your chosen settings in your post, so that we can better narrow-down the problem and focus on any potential improvements. We are currently targeting the upcoming 1.64 Update for the deployment of these improvements to the default branch.

 

Thanks! :)

[Wiki 1558]

Ok, thanks for this topic.

 

Respawn limited: I think you should allow up to 4 tickets - as there are up to 4 players ---> 1 for each player.

 

Not about the respawn / revive concept, but you should change the loadout system and allow the players to choose their gear (put a crate or something).

[cosmic10r 2331]

Great stuff!!!

Thanks for listening and improving this.

Looking forward to testing it out!

[inlesco 233]

Excellent initiative, guys! As always, BIS listens and does something, just like CDPR :)

[.kju 3244]

Looks good. An option for tickets for revive would have been nice to limit it that way too.

[IndeedPete 1038]

Ah, this sounds a bit more reasonable. Good start, great to see our feedback was read and considered.

[arziben 23]

Question: could we get a respawn time adjusting option ? Because what puts me off from playing the campaign solo (again) is having to wait 30 seconds doing nothing. Since I can't reload my save. _{(ifyouknowhatImean)}

[froggyluv 2136]

 Call me Skeptical Suzie but is this campaign gonna now really be calibrated for all amount of Players: 1-4 (big hint on the 1) in a meaningful and challenging way?

 

 Thats what we're buying -a well thought out mission/campaign thats been well calculated to be hard but doable by utilizing resourceful thought. Operation Flashpoint/Resistence was somewhat hard but totally enjoyable -the difficuiltness and shared experience we all had in those first two campaigns is what created the legacy of this game and lifelong memorable experiences. A standard of diffculty needs to be set, that is the namesake of the genre and all other training tools should be on the periphery, not the core.

[Stalkermaster2015 60]

So what about Singleplayer? Are there plans to update this so that those people can play that mode with the rebalanced difficultly.

I appreciate that you are considering our feedback, but when I read the title I thought there would be an emphasis on the difficultly. Hopefully the next set of feedback after this is the Sp portion as it isn't fun having to kill 50+ solders by yourself.

Keep up the good work and look forward to seeing the next set of changes.

[Private Evans 498]

If you choose first aid kit only, will the medic still be able to revive using his med kit? Also will enemy soldiers and hideouts provide enough med packs to loot ?

 

thx for this and keep it up :)

[R3vo 2654]

Medic Only - Only units with a Medikit can revive.

 

Does that mean that only units with unit trait medic can revive, or every unit with Medikit? The first one would make more sense.

[Zipper5 74]

If you choose first aid kit only, will the medic still be able to revive using his med kit?

Yes. The presence of the Medikit in the Paramedic's inventory means that, so long as he keeps it, any First Aid Kit he has on his person will not be consumed upon reviving someone. :)

 

Does that mean that only units with unit trait medic can revive, or every unit with Medikit? The first one would make more sense.

From a purely technical perspective, every unit that has a Medikit will be considered a "medic" when playing with this setting. However, from a practical perspective, the only class that has a Medikit on them is the Paramedic class. Since player corpses are deleted when they respawn, the only way for a unit other than a Paramedic to get a Medikit is if they manage to loot his body in the period between his death and respawn, or if the Paramedic gives it away for whatever reason.

 

At this point in time, we're satisfied with either of these situations being possible. In fact, if there is enough co-ordination between players to be naturally sharing their Medikits, we consider that to be a cool example of co-operative gameplay. :)

[fn_Quiksilver 1636]

Main improvements I would like to see for difficulty:

 

- AI seemed to have knowsabout of the players at all times once contact started. I would like AI to maneuver toward player but not have knowsabout. Reason is once they have knowledge, they snap very quickly to the player when in line of sight, felt slightly annoying. Instead consider a thread to update groups waypoint position to near the player (or better, 100m infront of the players travel direction (sample player pos and extrapolate direction)). The combat was not fun when all the AI (even the skinny ones in barefeet and no radio) knew exactly where the players were after breaking contact. 

 

- In the mission at lumberyard, run back to LZ through trees was just brutal, had a number of teammates exit the session during this part. AI were not maneuvering, just standing in place in dense jungle with full knowledge of player through trees. Again, I would prefer "cheating" for maneuvering, not for target awareness.

 

- Accuracy. Put the aimingaccuracy for most units between 0.05-0.10.

[2nd ranger 282]

- In the mission at lumberyard, run back to LZ through trees was just brutal, had a number of teammates exit the session during this part. AI were not maneuvering, just standing in place in dense jungle with full knowledge of player through trees. Again, I would prefer "cheating" for maneuvering, not for target awareness.

 

Yeah, that part is ridiculous. Perfect example of what is wrong with AI spotting. i.e. not being affected by environmental conditions or weather. The fact that the AI can see through the leaves of that big tree with the vines on the sides doesn't help either.

[OMAC 254]

The option (RC branch) to disable respawns, and thus the possibility of failing missions, are important improvements to the campaign, especially for solo play.  But still the campaign needs an option to play with AI teammates for missions to be believable in SP.  Although I highly doubt that such a change will be made, I can nevertheless hope!  ;)

[EUROF 0]

Respawns must be every time in player decision guys thet improve the Gameplay a lot.

[carver-usmc 10]

Can anyone explain how to implement the updated campaign lobby and revive/settings menu into a custom mission I have tried searching everywhere and I like the UI in the lobby with the ability to approve the mission and adjust settings on the fly before mission launch.