Lack of good usermade SP content

[Wiki 1558]

Hey guys.

 

Is it just me or do you also lack good SP content?

 

I mean, with thr workshop, we have plenty of content, but these are usually MP or Coop content.

 

There is not much SP oriented content (mission or campaign) and even less good quality.

 

For example, we have things like Deliverance, the Last, Resist, Callsign minotaur... but these are very rare.

 

Usually, SP mission have very few dialogs, no briefing, etc...

 

Maybe it's just me and I have too high expectency, dunno...

 

What good quality SP content do you have in mind?

[Wiki 1558]

So far, IMHO of course, here are some:

 

Resist by Kydoimos

Callsign Minotaur by Lexx

The Last by Sarge Studio

Deliverance by Sarge Studio

Operation Greek Fire by oksmanTV

In Our Time and Bell Tolls by ted_hou

 

These are very high quality content.

But very few since the game release in 2013

[.kju 3245]

first and foremost effort, but also things like replay value, many more playing with friends these days, lack of respawn, AI issues

compared to OFP (story based or persistent) mission making has not become easier but rather more complex and more effort

 

[stburr91 1008]

3 hours ago, Wiki said:

So far, IMHO of course, here are some:

 

Resist by Kydoimos

Callsign Minotaur by Lexx

The Last by Sarge Studio

Deliverance by Sarge Studio

Operation Greek Fire by oksmanTV

In Our Time and Bell Tolls by ted_hou

 

These are very high quality content.

But very few since the game release in 2013

 

 

I agree with you that there is generally a lack of high quality SP content.

 

With that said, the examples you listed are mission/campaigns that took time, skill, and effort (and in some cases money) that every few people have. For example, Callsign Minotaur by Lexx must have taken hundreds of hours, and if I remember correctly, Lexx spent a couple of thousand Dollars/Euros of his own money to pay for voice actors. 

 

As a mission maker myself, I know that creating even relatively straight forward missions can take tens of hours. My latest mission took between 10-12 hours to create, and it's a mission that takes less than 10 minutes to play. It's an interesting mission, with some interesting game play, and is quite challenging.  It has a level of detail that many mission don't have, and after a few days of being released, it only has 237 total subscribers, 7 total ratings, and 1 comment. 

 

There is also a general lack of interest in SP missions, and very little, to essentially no feedback for SP mission makers. People don't even bother to take the few seconds to comment, or rate missions, so there really is almost nothing in return for mission makers other than the satisfaction of creating something that didn't exist before you created it.  

 

I understand that there is little feedback for most mission makers, so I don't do it for some kind of recognition, or public accolades. 

 

However,  for all the mission makers out there, if you play a mission, and you enjoyed it, please take a few moments to comment, and rate the mission. It's really all the mission makers get in return for their many hours of time spent creating a mission.  

[JohnKalo 657]

@Wiki

@.kju

@stburr91

 

Coop and SP are kinda the same thing if it is an SP/MP Coop.

 

Now as aforementioned, editing a mission becomes harder and harder due to the AI among other things. I mean, relying on AI to make a mission/campaign is not a good idea like at all. Even simple way-points of theirs are ignored by them. And if one Get In way-point is ignored then the whole mission can be wrecked apart. That is why I have changed briefings simply because the AI was unable to cope with a mission's story-base. And when you do decide to deal with the AIs weaknesses you come to a point where you have to test many things again and again so as to be sure. I know editors that have just given up simply because they cannot deal with this constant trial and error strategy, not because of lack of skills but because of bugs and glitches. 

 

Also, when no feedback is provided the editor sees all his work hours have like, not recognition, but not even a comment saying everything went well. The mission is okay. Due to that they stop editing and going through the masochistic process of dealing with the AI and the scripts. Why go through such a thing when there is nobody there telling you that they enjoyed the mission? Now maybe this is not because players disregard editors but because of them not realizing how tough and time consuming it is to create a mission. 

 

The above being followed by the vast recognition addon-makers have cause yet another issue. The addons are great but there is nobody using them in missions. Then addon creators ask editors to create missions but since nobody will provide even basic feedback they are simply like no thanks.

[Wiki 1558]

I must honestly admit that this is one of the reasons I quit editing.

 

I had a weariness of making mission, trying to find new original ideas, etc....

But also that, making a mission is time eating and when you spend hours and hours trying to make something good but most of the comments (when you have some) are "this is crap" with no feedback at all...

Got tired of this.

 

The workshop is a good idea to share things, however the community there is quite ungrateful (on the steam workshop).

 

Anyway, that is not the point here.

Just that ArmA 3 is 5 years old now (more if you take the alpha and beta into account) and very few good quality SP content made it through.

That's a pity

[EO 11277]

Let's hope BI's "Old Man" project delivers for the lone wolfs out there...

 

 

[Wiki 1558]

2 minutes ago, EO said:

Let's hope BI's "Old Man" project delivers for the lone wolfs out there...

 

 

Agreed.

However, they say it will be an open world...

[EO 11277]

30 minutes ago, Wiki said:

Agreed.

However, they say it will be an open world...

 

If it's structured in a similar fashion to MGS5's take on "open world", I'll die a happy man. 

[joostsidy 685]

I have a whole bunch of single player / coop missions that I play myself and with my friends. I think they are fun, but they have almost no story and can be quite difficult. I sometimes think of publishing them but I'm afraid only very few people will like them, so my motivation is low for this. And publishing takes time, you have to kind of 'clean up' the mission to make it suitable for play without further instruction.

[Wiki 1558]

3 minutes ago, joostsidy said:

I have a whole bunch of single player / coop missions that I play myself and with my friends. I think they are fun, but they have almost no story and can be quite difficult. I sometimes think of publishing them but I'm afraid only very few people will like them, so my motivation is low for this. And publishing takes time, you have to kind of 'clean up' the mission to make it suitable for play without further instruction.

 

Indeed.

Providing quality content takes time.

That also explains why there is not much SP (and I mean pure SP) content.

[dale0404 5]

I have a couple of SP missions, might want to take a look :)

 

Links:

 

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=177977245

 

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=173377160

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Give me a year of paid leave and I'll have some more missions out. Doing things to a high standard takes a lot of time and effort, and it's not really compatible with working full-time and raising a family.

 

At the end of the day, it's a labour of love, otherwise I'd never have made any scenarios, but making quality content is a time-sink on par with some black holes.

[haleks 8212]

Another problem when it comes to SP, in my opinion : if you are going to have the player interact with NPCs, it is important to have "alive" NPCs.

Usually it involves a mix of ambient animations and dialogues, limited to cutscenes most of the time. That alone takes a lot of time and effort.

 

Outside of cutscenes though, it's near impossible to make a life-like NPC, the AI in Arma has zero personnality - meaning that anything else than a stricly military scenario will feel awkward. Actually, the only types of scenario where the AI does seem credible are "special top secret operations" ones, where the AI has a good reason to be so silent. On a personal note : I don't have high hopes for BI's Old Man content.

 

I reckon it's part of the reasons we see less SP content and more and more COOP stuff. Playing Arma 3 alone can be a weird experience compared to other games.

[Rydygier 1317]

Yes. Indeed, Arma 3 isn't tailored for this kind of cinematic narration, requiring authentic in details, human-like behavior, meaningful gestures, not mentioning facial/body expression. A kind, that mimics movies. Should Arma be tailored for it? Don't know, but IMHO the best/wisest, scenario creator may do (if he is after best result with minimum hassle) is to take into account this fact when planning new mission. Like a sculptor considering, what his new creation will present and in what manner, who has to his disposal only one kind of material, that allows to form only some shapes with limited accuracy and is hard to bend into another type of shapes. Some things are easier to sculpt in the clay, while other - in the wood or stone.

 

One way is to try to bend the material to own vision anyway, while the second way is rather to bend own vision to the material specificity, to use it in the way, where it shines most and expected results are best. One can go both paths, but first one is much more labor-intensive, requires more skill and results aren't optimal. The latter has also this advanage, it helps to find an idea to follow, because it limits possibilites. Like a piece of wood, which shape by its limits dictates the topic of the sculpture. There's also the third way of course - change the matrial. 

 

So again, the question is, is Arma a good type of material to shape it into SP scenario without extra hassle and frustration? IMO, depends, what kind of SP scenario. Not the one, I described at the beginning. But often same/similar thing may be narrated using other means. AI not good in acting? Well, use voice acting instead, sometimes text even, as the carrier, of whatever you're trying to tell.

 

Glitches and that kind of unexpected obstacles additionally limit flexibility of Arma, and experience is needed to anticipate and avoid them, to know, what's possible, and what's not, what's worthy of time and effort, and what's hopeless. 

 

Anyway, being unable to fulfill own vision due to limitations of the material for sure may be frustrating, discouraging and makes another good reason, why there's so few high quality SP content (or why it is so hard to find in the ocean of... the rest). MP is different story, a story created on the fly by the players, only put into rough frames of gameplay context. Universally easier to do (with exception of MP scripting being harder to handle and less reliable than SP scripting), as the narrative quality of the mission relays mostly on the players, not the creator. Arma 3 seems to be better in this easier path, which is not surprising. Sadly for me. But luckilly personally I prefer kind of SP stuff, that also avoids advanced cinematic dramaturgy and bases rather on "emergent story", driven by imagination, fed by procedural mechanisms rather than hand-shaped, rigid story line. This approach also lifts replayablity higher. But this of course is a matter of personal preferences and taste, also such approach demands more as for scripting skill etc. and in fact may be equally if not more time consuming, depends on the scope of the envisioned concept. 

 

Lastly, as for cinematic approach, the higher fidelity of visuals, the higher expectations as for fidelity of the visual narration - the contrast between them provokes mental discomfort. That's the another difference between OFP times and Arma 3. 

[dmarkwick 261]

I only play SP, and really only my own SP missions. I seem to have a different outlook than those expressed here. For me, a mission I make has to be replayable by me, the mission creator.

 

I do this by introducing a very basic player goal against a randomised background noise. I use tools like DAC to create randomness within limits, so for example I'll have a central area controlled by DAC with all kinds of randomised patrols and enemy. I then either use DAC to move another opposing force through that area, or maybe manually do that part.

For my own team I'll often have a base team of some size (8, say) consisting of the most important group types (AT, AA, Machine gun etc), have two of each. Then each unit will have a 50% chance of spawning at mission start. In this way I have a different makeup of team members to think about. Sometimes no AT will spawn at all, other times I'm short of AA or machine guns, or medics or whatever. It makes me approach the same mission in different ways.

If the enemy and friendly forces are all similarly randomised (which you can do with DAC) then I also don't know the positions, number, and makeup of the AI entities.

I then give myself some simple goal within this chaotic environment, and every time it's a different experience.

 

Add to this randomised weather, fog & time of day etc,, plus the idea of selecting everything & just moving it all around the map I can play the same mission 50 times before moving on.

[lexx 1364]

 

23 hours ago, JohnKalo said:

Coop and SP are kinda the same thing if it is an SP/MP Coop.

 

Singleplayer or "Singleplayer and COOP" makes a big difference. As soon as there is the potential of more than one player, the whole approach to mission design changes. Suddenly you have to think about the respawn system, you have to think about content that pleases multiple players (at the same time), you have to think about the difficulty and balance, depending on the open-ness of the mission you have to know and expect the position of each player at all times, you have to bugtest the mission with multiple people (in mind),.... It's really not "just slap a couple open player slots into my singleplayer and done", it's a whole lot more work and you WILL be limited in terms of story development.

 

IMO people tend to throw the COOP-mode through the room way too easily nowadays. Me personally, once I see a "SP/COOP" on the workshop, I usually ignore it right away.

 

On 12.8.2018 at 4:23 PM, stburr91 said:

There is also a general lack of interest in SP missions, and very little, to essentially no feedback for SP mission makers. People don't even bother to take the few seconds to comment, or rate missions, so there really is almost nothing in return for mission makers other than the satisfaction of creating something that didn't exist before you created it.  

 

I understand that there is little feedback for most mission makers, so I don't do it for some kind of recognition, or public accolades.

 

22 hours ago, Wiki said:

There is also a general lack of interest in SP missions, and very little, to essentially no feedback for SP mission makers. People don't even bother to take the few seconds to comment, or rate missions, so there really is almost nothing in return for mission makers other than the satisfaction of creating something that didn't exist before you created it.  

 

I understand that there is little feedback for most mission makers, so I don't do it for some kind of recognition, or public accolades.

 

This is very true. In case anyone from BI is reading this, here is my proposal for the future:

 

After playing a scenario from the workshop, open a popup with a thumbs up and thumbs down icon. Once you press either, a comment input field will be available and you can type in your thoughts. If you vote negative, you also get a list of pre-defined options to tick, to state why you've voted negative. This way *everyone* is encouraged to rate and give feedback, which is very important for mission creators. Without this... barely anyone gives a damn.

 

 

@dmarkwick: Sure, this can work out, but these randomly generated scenarios will never have any kind of deeper story to tell... and I think this is what @Wiki mostly meant when starting the thread. I'm in the same boat here, I want something to feel and characters to care about. They don't have to spew an unlimited amount of dialog or force whatever lame story down your throat or such, but at least *something* should be there. Of course, such content also requires a lot more work... And we aren't in 2001 anymore, you can't just put down a couple waypoints and expect the convoy to go (hehehe), I'm pretty sure player expectations have drastically increased as well. Oh well.

 

The worst feeling is seeing a shitty, quickly mashed together mission having thousands of subs, while your content, that you've spend maybe weeks on, will sit at somewhere 500 or less. :D It's just... well, maybe bad marketing, who knows.

[stburr91 1008]

43 minutes ago, lexx said:

The worst feeling is seeing a shitty, quickly mashed together mission having thousands of subs, while your content, that you've spend maybe weeks on, will sit at somewhere 500 or less. :D It's just... well, maybe bad marketing, who knows.

 

 

Yes indeed, its disappointing to see poorly done missions have thousands of subs, while better missions struggle to get a few hundred subs. 

 

I agree with you that there should be a popup at the end a mission to rate, and comment, it would be helpful for mission makers.  

[R3vo 2654]

I used to build singleplayer scenarios but eventually gave up. It takes alot of time to create some quality content and usually they are then not played very often.

For good singleplayer content BIS would have to give us better tools, easy modules for animations and cutscenes etc. and obviously a better AI and control over the AI. (Commanding Menu)

 

However, over the last years I have collected a collection of scenarios I enjoyed. Many of them are serveral years old and might not work anymore as they were supposed to.

 

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=556514704

(Singleplayer Scenarios)

[Rydygier 1317]

More effective mechanisms (probably community-based, maybe using exsposure system with weighted voting depending on reviewer reputation built via community votes from players confirming, so "this guy recommends good stuff indeed, listen to him") to exhibit and promote well made Workshop stuff would be most welcome. The idea alone to find just like that anything worthy in this sea of content is... discouraging. Such lists (thanks!) and asking people on the different forums about their personal findings seems the only somewhat effective way for those not willing to spend a lot of time just to sift perls. 

[R3vo 2654]

9 minutes ago, Rydygier said:

More effective mechanisms (probably community-based, maybe using exsposure system with weighted voting depending on reviewer reputation built via community votes from players confirming, so "this guy recommends good stuff indeed, listen to him") to exhibit and promote well made Workshop stuff would be most welcome. The idea alone to find just like that anything worthy in this sea of content is... discouraging. Such lists (thanks!) and asking people on the different forums about their personal findings seems the only somewhat effective way for those not willing to spend a lot of time just to sift perls. 

Not only that, but BIS did little to nothing to encourage players voting for missions and writing comments etc.

We have tons of achivements, but none which say "Vote on XXXX amount of missions/mods to unlock this achivement" (That's just an example)

 

In the end however I believe we have to accept that zombie, coop and king of the hill missions will always get more attention (votes, comments) and therefore, even well built Arma 3 sp mission will be burried underneath them, at least in the workshop.

[Undeceived 392]

The suggestion that @lexx brought up is good and we really could use a bit of support by BIS when it comes to rating and giving feedback to mission  designers.

 

What I really miss though (and unfortunately I don't have the needed time for it) is a good web page that reviews scenarios. I loved e.g. the OFPEC.com times because you could find quality stuff there - no matter if it was campaigns or single missions. The reviews were detailed and extensive, showing up pros, cons and special details. Yes, it took the rewiever a lot of time but the value for the players and the community was enormous.

 

 

[Undeceived 392]

On 12.8.2018 at 4:23 PM, stburr91 said:

However,  for all the mission makers out there, if you play a mission, and you enjoyed it, please take a few moments to comment, and rate the mission. It's really all the mission makers get in return for their many hours of time spent creating a mission.  

 

THIS!!

 

This is what I ALWAYS do, as I perfectly know that mission designers get almost no feedback.

 

And knowing how a negative rating can hurt (given that only a few people rate) sometimes I give the creator feedback while I do NOT rate the mission down. Instead I tell him that he will get a thumb up from me if he improves the respective part of the mission.

 

 

(Oops, sry for the double post...)

[Vandrel 10]

On ‎8‎/‎11‎/‎2018 at 7:14 PM, Wiki said:

Hey guys.

 

Is it just me or do you also lack good SP content?

 

This has been a thing for ArmA/OFP forever.  Vast majority generally stick to MP.

[mmm 35]

I'd really like to have a proper dynamic, full map, persistent campaign that's not a one man army mission. Quite frankly I don't believe I'm going to see a really polished one within the lifecycle of ARMA 3 with all the fundamental limitations, I guess that will be the aspiration for SP aspect of this game franchise. Even it is just to take some meaningful steps toward that goal will probably require some serious effort from BIS itself. DUWS, WLA, Antistasi, to my knowledge they are all focused effort by their builders over years of time, but as commendable as their attempts are IMHO they're all still far from perfect in so many ways, especially for SP.

 

BIS have been even more modest so far with their official contents, probably in recognition of the limitations with ARMA 3 itself. The guerilla chapter had a few elements but really the overall official campaign is more or less isolated missions stringed together. Interesting enough final "game over" mission can be played as island conquest(or set your own goal) over multiple sessions and longer hours, though it's far from proper open world campaign and it will eventually crash/be unstable like any session that has run long enough. Tac-Ops was even less open evebn if there are technically "multiple endings". APEX had even no proper SP, that's until now. I'm keeping my expectations for the "old man" project modest, but I'm hoping they can surprise me in a positive way.