Thinking about Mission of the Month again

[crashdome 1]

Last year this time, we at SoW tried out a "Mission of the Month" program for OFP whereby anyone could submit a *simple* mission based on one of two themes that were suggested.

The whole goal was to increase activity in mission making and progress learning for the new people by giving them simple missions to work from or tweak.

It went over really well and we had alot of support, but interest faded quickly as mission making in OFP faded in general. We are thinking about instituting it again and even making it available to the general public (no user registration required).

Here is what happens:

Every month, we pick two themes with a basic tactical or strategic premise (e.g. "Hasty Ambush"). A few minor requirements or rules to keep the mission on track are listed but general freedom is encouraged. We accept submissions over the course of that month and allow them for download by everyone.

There are no prizes or contests.

It provides an open environment for new guys and old alike to actively try their hand at mission making without the added pressure of everything being required (briefing, cutscenes, etc..) for submission. We understand there will be bugs and objectives simple, but that is the point: to allow others to take something and learn from or expand upon!

This type of program survives only based on the content provided, so we would need to have some people actually making missions for it to be successful. Because of this, I am looking for feedback from some of you Mission Makers out there to see if you are interested in helping out the new guys and building a few *simple* missions?

[Infam0us 10]

Aye, this idea sounds really good mate ... although perhaps a months to long? Perhaps every two weeks ... but I would definately like to see a system like this take place

[crashdome 1]

Hmm.. how about instead of two themes per month.. maybe one theme twice a month (1st and 15th of every month)? ...but submission is available for a duration of one month?

....or would two themes at beginning of month be enough to hold everyone over for the entire month?

[EDIT] Now that I think about it... one month may be long, but you will need a break to play all the new submissions! So, two themes per every 1st of the month it is!

[Infam0us 10]

Hehe ... I look foward to it, will be able to upload the best voted mission monthly / weekly to our Public server to enjoy and test

[Big Nasty 0]

Perhaps you guys are new to mission making.

Every two weeks is nowhere near enough time to create a complete mission and have it tested and released. Even a month is really on the limits.

I would suggest staggering your themes so that you delcare a topic and allow two months before you vote for that particular moth's winner. Then on the second month you suggest a new topic, and so on.

I know you guys would really love to see and play new missions but in the format you currently suggest, those missions will be very poor in quality and very few in numbers.

[crashdome 1]

Perhaps you guys are new to mission making.

Every two weeks is nowhere near enough time to create a complete mission and have it tested and released. Even a month is really on the limits.

I would suggest staggering your themes so that you delcare a topic and allow two months before you vote for that particular moth's winner. Then on the second month you suggest a new topic, and so on.

I know you guys would really love to see and play new missions but in the format you currently suggest, those missions will be very poor in quality and very few in numbers.

Perhaps we've already done this before?

If you reread what our goal is, you will see that we are not looking for highly-polished and complex missions.

Last time we tried this, we had no problem creating several missions in a one month period of time. In fact, we had most people *waiting* for the next month's themes.

[Serclaes 0]

I think thats a very good idea. But i'm interested in your criterias, how do you want to judge which mission is better?

[celery 8]

Is this just for coop missions?

[crashdome 1]

I think thats a very good idea. But i'm interested in your criterias, how do you want to judge which mission is better?

There are no prizes or contests.

Read the first post people!!

Is this just for coop missions?

I could see a mission which had AI on both sides yet all were playable (in case you wanted to switch sides or fill with all human) but certainly that is up to the mission maker I suppose. I am not against anyone making any specific type of mission. The only rules are usually that the mission be about the topic specified. Whether you can muster an adversarial MP mission out of it is certainly up to you!

[Big Nasty 0]

I don't see the point of wanting to play missions that are not highly polished. Surely the point of getting the community to build missions is so we can all play good missions and have other people want to make missions because they have played good ones from your contest.

Granted you might not want super complex stuff but polished must be a must.

[crashdome 1]

Quote[/b] ]The whole goal was to increase activity in mission making and progress learning for the new people by giving them simple missions to work from or tweak.

Quote[/b] ]There are no prizes or contests.

I am not saying a mission has to be crap to be submitted. I am just saying this is NOT an OFPEC Mission depot where you submit you missions for review or ranking. It is a place to put a mission which may perform a certain task. The idea is that some new mission maker may one day WANT to make a really good mission and needs something to start from... or perhaps they really liked the way the AI reacted in one of these simple missions and wish to see how it was done.

I don't know how many times I must reiterate that this is not a contest!!

Your mission will not be reviewed.

Your mission will not be ranked.

Your mission will not be judged.

Highly polished is certainly a wonderful thing, but that is not the idea. The idea is that you might read one of the themes and decide you want to make a brief mission that resembles these ideas. You maybe do not want to write a cutscene or briefing. Maybe you just want to show people a way to perform some task in mission making. Maybe you want them to have a really good mission!

It doesn't matter.

Think of it like a library. Some books are short stories or poems and some are full length novels.

[crashdome 1]

As a followup...

Am I barking up the wrong tree? Is everyone saying they will submit missions only if this is a contest? ...because I can certainly make it that.

I just figured I would get more content be making it more flexible and less stringent.

[Billabong81 0]

I think this is a great idea Crash. I think having a contest each month would be cool, just so people could know which missions are the really good ones when they are looking for something to quickly DL and play.

[crashdome 1]

OK, maybe a user rating system w/ comments? Instead of mission contest with ranked winners... how about the regular 5 star rating system?

This way you can have several 4-5 star missions?

[nubbin77 0]

Part of the reason for this initiative is because there is a phenomenon that occurs with most missions I start on - and we are of the opinion that this happens quite often to a lot of other people as well.

You start to make a fun mission and enjoy playing it and get to a stage where its 80-90% finished. But you never release it because you don't have the motivation to finalize the last 10-20% of the mission (briefings, backstory, readme's, general polish, and extensive testing). The mission may be perfectly fun and enjoyable, but not "releaseable" in the normal sense of expectation. With this, if you have a general theme, its pretty obvious what needs to be done (with a few markers or small quick briefing).

Call it laziness, or whatever, but I have a hard time with the last couple days of mission creation, mostly because I have played my own mission 50-100 times already to make sure it works, at which point I'm burnt out on it. I don't care about the briefing any more, I want to work on something else. Therefore the mission sits on my hard drive and dies.

I think if we have a platform for releasing missions in the 80-90% stage and you get some feedback, you can get some sense as to where to go with it:

"Hey the mission is a turd"... Ok, I won't bother working it further

"Hey the mission is really good, but I have a bug at this point" or "I'm not sure where I should go at this point" or "Hey an airstrike option would be really nice to have at this point". - that kind of feedback is helpful and can motivate me to complete the mission.

Not all missions take months to create. You can have some fun with 25 minutes in the editor. Spend 5-6 hours and you can make something almost releaseable.

[Drongo69 117]

Perhaps the submitted missions could be made available for other people to polish and re-release. I understand the "last 20% burnout" factor, it prevented me from finishing a bunch of stuff for OFP.

Who knows, perhaps inspired folks could take a bunch of submitted missions, polish them up and make a pretty good campaign out of them.

[Serclaes 0]

What i meant is, to make it THE mission of the month, you need to judge it among others, hence criterias etc.