My first Tac-Ops DLC Impression

[kbbw123 115]

Be aware there might be some kind of rant in here, its not like me at all but I have to get it out before I start going beserk...

 

This is an honest review of my Tac-Ops DLC so far spoiler tag will be used in cases where there might be spoilers.

 

The first thing I have to say is that I love all the platform updates, the team dit an outstanding job with the new physix intregration making tanks feel like tanks, I love it!

 

So I was very pleased en then I thought: Lets try the missions then.

 

I am not a pro player but I know I can handle myself quite well in a combat situation in arma knowing that alone I can take on quite a few of AI's and have it easy if I play with my unit together. We also have a shared difficulty preset where there is no 3rd person and ai skills to 0.1 acc and 0.9 skill making them "Smart" but horrible shots for enjoyable firefights and a constant fear of enemies flanking

 

So the first mission I played was the one where you play as the FIA versus the rebels in 2026

Spoiler

It was quite enjoyable doing it easy in the first part doing all well and no casualties, I save the guy from dying and helped him to the hunters lodge all good so far

 

After that it was time to go to an advantage point on the hill overlooking the town, still all good, told the AI to hold fire as to not reveale our location. message comes in we are getting hit by mortar fire. I think well lets take them out! gets blasted to kingdome come on the hill he was hiding on by mortar fire...well can happen, bad luck next tme better.

 

Replay get on a diffrent hill again, went into a crouch position, got shot by a .50 sniper who was on a field with trees and bushes inbetween me and him, I had no sight he did...

 

Bit annoyed at this point bu thought meh.

 

After allot of effort managed to do the mission.

 

Mission after that was easy enough as I picked the sniper spot in the specops team and did quite well, managed to kill the strider and the  gorgan at the same time with a small charge and mortared the shit out of the rest. quite fun :)

 

Then I though, hm.. not bad! lets do the next one one malden, decided to take the infantry slot because "Synergie!"

 

Starts on a hill moves towards the first point nicly from cover to cover and starts to wonder why my AI teammates do not do the same... they seem to wonder what that small brik wall is...

 

Well either way getting close to the compound start engaging CSAT gets one shot no scope 360 headshot by an AI behind atleast 5 bushes and as much visability like a blind person  in an empty cave... okay can happen #AIFORTHEWIN

 

Again, thought to be smart and put the sniper on the hill overlooking, medic behind a rock cuz he dies to quickly AR and MG on support position with a wide engagement ark and free LOS and continue on with the AT and GL guy, gets to the first wall to take cover, two friendly AI's keep standing they get massacred I get: one shot no scope 360 headshot by an AI behind a sandbag... okay a bit annoyed again but I'll make this!

 

Tried a rush action see if I can just make the AI malfunction with superior force... gets whipedout in 5 seconds allong with all AI teammates....

 

Bit more annoyed... okay the secure appraoch doesn't work the brute force approach doesn't work well then lets try this, I send my entire squad there whilst covering from afar, all the enemies I could see are all dead, killed by me squad gets outside the first sandbags... gets annihalated by a single guy with a katiba that they can't seem to hit...

 

Rather heavy annoyed by now I do the same trick again but this time I stay closely behind them to pick of everyone they can't seem to hit. It looks like I have succes! we went to the next building, squad gets annihalated by a quilin, quilin starts shooting me through a bloody buildin....

 

*Drops mic* and goes out

 

Whilst I appreciate the time and effort that went into this mission pack there is a major flaw in that I can't understand didn't show up in initial testing: How the hell does goodlooking military orientet missions work with bloody AI's! I mean basic knowledge and military tactics don't work if you enemie has xray vision and magical homing bullets -.- (the last part I made up its more the have homing hands as the can make 100+ meter deadon 360 headshot...) Whilst military missions might be very doable in an PvP enabled situation as the enemies can't see you through the vegetation either AI's make the poorest choice for it... The only reason why units can make it in military situations agains the AI's is because they have medics who keep crawling from person to person healing them up all the time and its not uncommon for a group of AI's to completly annihalate any group during the combat either but walking through the walls and firing full auto and death aim...

 

So whilst I like the effort the Tac-Ops DLC is the worst DLC in ArmA's history (Yes Karts way way better) purly because common sense about AI's got lost in the lets make it look cool and realistic part (And I do say it give a realistic look and feel the missions until that point of the famous: one shot no scope 360 headshot)

 

*Drops mic again and walks out*

 

P.s.: I know I have the DLC bundle 2 but could I get a refund on only the Tac-Ops part?

P.P.S: This doesn't mean I do not look forward to the Tanks DLC

[lexx 1363]

Sometimes I wish folks would record how they play, because while I agree that the AI at times is making it not easy for the player, I did not experience Tac-Ops like the poster above. In fact, I'm pretty sure the ai has been tuned down a lot in this DLC, as I often didn't even needed to sprint into cover hastely. Vanilla A3 campaign had way, way, way more death-by-1-hit scenes for me than this one. Actually, I don't remember getting one-hit-killed in Tac-Ops at all. The "invisible / behind bushes" enemies are annoying, but usually I see them a little bit after hiding myself behind a tree.

 

IMO Beyond Hope features one of A3's best missions to date. I'll keep replaying it, also because Mavros is a kinda sympatic ass.

Stepping Stone is the one I had to reload the most, because of death by invisible bushes. I could get around this with changing my approaching angle, tho.

[neofit 65]

Hmm, I couldn't log in into these forums yesterday, I thought they were hammered by people reacting to the DLC. But either every thread has been deleted, or nobody really cares ;). Anyway, the last time I've heard BIS calling a campaign "SP" was in Apex, and it wasn't SP at all. Is this DLC mission pack really SP like the original campaign, and everything else BIS had done up to Apex, or is it a continuation of their attempt at "singleplayer-online" content with no pausing nor saving?

[Wiki 1558]

Laws of War was SP too ;-)

[teabagginpeople 398]

Yes it is straight up single player. This time when they say repayable it is in a more creative way. You can select a different unit example one mission you can play as the main force or the spec ops team. See it from the others perspective. 

 

I find it funny that the tac ops missions make good single player missions and may also have been more fun and interesting if used for apex mp /coop.  

[cosmic10r 2331]

I had exactly the opposite experience when i played.

 

By far the best SP I have played in Arma.

[Grumpy Old Man 3545]

Spoiler in the beginning of the first mission steel pegasus, landing zone nowhere:
 

Spoiler

 

In the very first mission before regrouping you run into that 3 man group near the beach, right before the mortar radio transmission triggers.

Every single time I load the autosave, sneak up to them, and open fire from roughly 30-40m, the guy to the left who is facing AWAY from me makes the grenade throw animation as soon as the group becomes aware of me (instantly after firing the first shot), THEN he turns towards me and the grenade explodes within 2-3m from my position with pinpoint accuracy.

 

 

Happens every time. Other than that I'm enjoying it, AI really seem to be easy and don't have any accuracy when compared to earlier official missions. To the point where you won't need using as much cover as needed in other missions.

 

Cheers

[semiconductor 309]

I had exactly the same experience as the OP. I have more than 4k hours in both Armas spent messing around the Editor or playing COOP missions so I though that I wouldn't have serious problems with AI commanding.

 

And yet I wasn't able to force myself to complete even the fist mission of "Beyond Hope" so far, it's just way to irritating and unenjoyable even for me. I'll give it another shot especially since there are people why miraculously had no issues with it but it seems that the mission is intentionally designed around tactics that are extremely hard to pull of with AIs. I would expect BI to do the opposite and go along with missions that are not that demanding tactics-wise because while AI can perform fine on their own, micro-managing them under such pressing conditions becomes an irritating disaster.

[jakerod 254]

There definitely isn't any crazy AI tactics required to beat Beyond Hope. I pretty much just got my guys into a position where they could only be engaged by one position at a time. Told them to hold fire, move to good positions, go prone, called out targets, open fired, repeat.

[lexx 1363]

The most I did was telling them to stop every once in a while. Also stealth mode and hold fire. Yes, they do open fire occasionally out of the blue for whatever reason, which is annoying, but that's really the only issue I had with them the whole time.

[stburr91 1002]

10 hours ago, jakerod said:

There definitely isn't any crazy AI tactics required to beat Beyond Hope. I pretty much just got my guys into a position where they could only be engaged by one position at a time. Told them to hold fire, move to good positions, go prone, called out targets, open fired, repeat.

 

 

This is good advice for how to use your AI teammates in general.

 

I played the first part of Beyond Hope, and had only one problem.

 

Spoiler

My problem was with the mortars, they kept dropping mortars right onto my position. I was unable to get my team to move fast enough to get away, and I, or my team were killed several times. I ended up just ordering my team to go prone in a group of trees, and I made a break for it by myself. I had to run for a 100-150 meters, then find cover, as the mortars would hit again. I had to repeat this process several times until I could reach the mortar position, and take them out. 

 

The amount, and accuracy of the mortars I was taking did seem excessive.  

 

 

[jakerod 254]

11 hours ago, lexx said:

The most I did was telling them to stop every once in a while. Also stealth mode and hold fire. Yes, they do open fire occasionally out of the blue for whatever reason, which is annoying, but that's really the only issue I had with them the whole time.

I can't guarantee that this is always the case but if your men are on hold fire and they suddenly go to open fire/engage at will that means the enemy has spotted them. They have a sixth sense about that. I guess the alternative was what was in OFP where they would stay on hold fire and let enemies walk right up to them and kill them.

[Mynock 244]

Other than having zero clue what to do or where to go at the beginning of LZ Nowhere which was frustrating for a bit until I got it fixed, I liked the DLC a lot. My only complaint/observation was 

Spoiler

the AAF troops and sympathizers in the beyond hope campaign seemed really accurate and hard to kill when compared with the CSAT forces in stepping stone. Now, I will say this: if that was intentional to create the feeling of being in an under-armed, desperate guerilla group vs being in a trained NATO team, then the effect worked because beyond hope was really hard, but I steamrolled most of stepping stone. Just not the best way to go about achieving that effect if that was the point in my opinion, especially when the logical progression is to do the campaigns in chronological order. I'd rather the difficulty ramp up over time minorly vs being really tough out of the gate and then getting easier.

 

[ProfTournesol 956]

Nah, in OFP they would return fire if fired upon (in green combatmode, hold fire). They only mode where the don't fire is blue (never fire).

[toiletuser 29]

this was one of my fav DLC's, very engaging and fun with great atmosphere!

If only there were more missions, and carrier ops campaign would be nice.

AI super aiming and x-ray vision is still annoying but overall excellent DLC, more DLC's like this please!

[Wiki 1558]

3 hours ago, toiletuser said:

this was one of my fav DLC's, very engaging and fun with great atmosphere!

If only there were more missions, and carrier ops campaign would be nice.

AI super aiming and x-ray vision is still annoying but overall excellent DLC, more DLC's like this please!

 

Tanks will be the last DLC.

You can only rely on community for more SP missions.

[AveryTheKitty 2626]

Just now, Wiki said:

 

Tanks will be the last DLC.

You can only rely on community for more SP missions.

 

I mean, Tanks DLC will most likely have a mission or two, but apart from that, yeah.

[toiletuser 29]

2 hours ago, Wiki said:

 

Tanks will be the last DLC.

You can only rely on community for more SP missions.

unfortunately!

But beside workshop which already give me a ton of amazing missions and few campaigns i have editor and create my own missions and campaigns, however that is time consuming and lately i don't have time,i did spent 2months for 4missions campaign which i still enjoy even new updates mess it up so i have to fix it regulary. Try it ;) it's called "COLLATERAL"

[jakerod 254]

On 12/3/2017 at 1:52 PM, ProfTournesol said:

Nah, in OFP they would return fire if fired upon (in green combatmode, hold fire). They only mode where the don't fire is blue (never fire).

Tell that to all my dead men. I think you're right when it comes to setting things in the mission editor but when giving commands to your AI they don't open fire unless ordered to.

 

9 hours ago, Wiki said:

 

Tanks will be the last DLC.

You can only rely on community for more SP missions.

That we know of.

This has been a great DLC though. I really enjoyed it. I got a bit frustrated in certain parts but Beyond Hope was some really good stuff and Steel Pegasus had some great atmosphere. Not sure why but I wasn't as big of a fan of Stepping Stone. It felt like it had less atmosphere or something. It was still enjoyable though and everyone who worked on any one of the Operations should be proud of the work.

[lexx 1363]

Probably because Stepping Stone is the most straight forward "go to x, do y" kind of mission set.

[cas 41]

Always nice to see new SP contend!

ARMA has always some surprises....

I did not expect anything special from the Laws of War addon and boy I was wrong: Some of the best missions in the arma3 series and new contend!

The Laws of War campaign felt realistic and the missions encouraged to explore the map.

 

And now with the new Tac-Ops addon I had big expectations:

Improved close quarter combat or improved high command?

No ... nothing

 

Tactical missions?

What is tactical about them? Pretty standard missions that play the same every time you play.

The missions are pretty difficult resulting in heavy use of save games... this leads to you facing exactly the same enemy's in the same locations.

Makes it feel like a tunnel shooter and highlights ARMAS week points for example  AI enemies spinning around when shot in the back and killing the player instantly.

 

All missions make you face a superior adversary, is this necessary to be fun?

I hate playing save games after you die but if you restart the missions they are basically the same again!

Where is the re-playability?

 

My "dream mission" for this addon would have been:

A big take this town/area mission, delay reinforcements and hold back a counter-attack.

Good AI battle plans including attack forces, blocking forces and support forces (including planes, drones, helicopters and artillery).

The battle should basically play out without player input.

After a set time the mission should end and there should be a real debriefing that describes the mission outcome: victory /draw/ defeat in relation to the losses on both sides.

The player can in the beginning chose one  of ALL the units that participate:

You can choose a simple soldier and follow the AI or command a squad and find a new path. You could command a helicopter or have a high command function where you control the support assets (artillery /CAS) from a drone and synchronize the troop movements via radio triggers.

The same mission could also be played as the defender...

This would be a true  "tactical" mission that would highlight ARMA´s strong sides: The high number of different assets the game offers, true combined arms, replayability and change of perspective.

It would not be crucial that you archive a certain goal (never a mission failed message that stops the scenario) the mission would come to an end no matter what and you could evaluate the debriefing. Sometimes you did good but the other AI units failed and the mission is still a defeat, or the other way around -many possibility's...

 

I made such missions for myself in the editor and I would love to see this made professionally!

 

Come on BIS I know you can surprise me!

Anyway thanks for the new SP content, it is still nice.