What ever happened to simple missions?

[galzohar 31]

Playing online, I've been quite disappointed with most missions. While a lot seem to have a LOT of much appreciated effort put into them, they just end up too big, too long, too complicated, and most importantly too much beating around the bush and too little combat.

What ever happened to America's Army style missions, or COD4 S&D gametype? Something simple like:

- 2 teams, spawn 1KM away from eachother or 5KM if vehicles are available, and add a bit of distance if there are a lot of players in the game.

- 4-6 minute time limit for the attacking team to complete an objective and for the defending team to hold them off (I've personally tested 3 minutes as more than enough to decide a fight over a hill when starting 500m away from it).

- Objective being anything from destroying a tactical vehicle, destroying a structure, stealing an object, hacking into a computer etc. Whatever ends up the most balanced and isn't totally dumb and/or unrealistic.

- No respawns. This is supposed to be a realistically played gametype, and is short enough that you won't sit out for too long.

- Preferably a nice loadout system that lets you choose pretty much whatever you want before the round starts, rather than having to pick it up from ammo boxes every round, thus wasting everyone's time. Nothing gets restricted as nothing is actually overpowered in this game, and if it is the mission needs tweaking, not the weapons.

- Preferably randomly located attacker starting spot and defender+objective location, while keeping their distance between them at about the above listed amounts, and marking both starting points on the map for both sides.

- Preferably adding to / replacing score with "rounds win / lost" as that's what people should really care about in this kind of gametype.

While I have absolutely no clue how to make missions past the "drag and drop units/triggers/waypoints/etc in editor", it does seem like the above is a LOT more simple than just about any mission I've seen online, yet nobody actually seem to have bothered to make it. Granted it would need tweaking but it won't be hard to tweak considering the simplicity.

While it's a very simple concept, since it's as realistic as a fun mission can be, it would require teamwork and real tactics to win.

[Murklor 10]

Well people like big. Now if only big wasnt as buggy as Domination and Evolution so you can barely play them...

But yeah I havent really seen many missions on the servers. Evo/Dom is freakin campaigns!

The only smaller mission I tried was an pvp AAS map, but people playing had no f**king clue what AAS was, they couldnt even get inside a capture area with the extra help of the minimap. 25 players yet 2 players (one friendly ie me and one enemy) inside the one contested flag and zero inside the other :rolleyes:

[Peonza 10]

Same to me, I expected some nice ofp-style missions where you wander around with team doing objectives , and without respawn, to make your "life" even more valuable. And what I get? 98% servers filled with those stupid cti evo domination maps , with teleports included, mass respawns and some kind of buildings and buyable vehicles

[galzohar 31]

You can't have missions where you wander around with team doing objectives AND have a challenging mission AND not have respawns. Non boring missions by definition mean that you will most likely die after not a whole lot of fighting, because otherwise it's not challenging. And no I don't define learning AI patterns a challenge, not to mention how horrible it gets when you try make "big" in PvP. No respawns only work with realistic missions. Getting sent from objective to objective being expected to survive 10 battles straight is not realistic. Attacking an objective and being happy that at least some of your team members survived, or that you got steamrolled and lost everyone - that is a realistic mission, at least when both sides are equal and not the nowaday common army/SF vs the incapable insurgents/terrorists.

Realistic missions are actually much easier to make from the technical side of things... It just takes some more careful thought (not more thought, just more careful thought) in the design to keep it both gameplay and realism on high levels.

Edited July 7, 2009 by galzohar

[cm 0]

lol, the people who play dom/evo seem to be missing the point of this game.

I love no respawns, but some missions can take 2-3 hours, and no one is willing to sit and wait that long. The best way to counter this is revive. It's realistic, and keeps everyone in the action.

[galzohar 31]

I've yet to see a realistic 2-3 hour long missions. 2-3 hour long missions that can work with no respawns (that is, give you a chance to win) rely on you spending the grand majority of those 2-3 hours traveling and the grand majority of the remaining time doing easy fights against AI where he has no chance if you're doing things correctly.

In a team vs team game, there's no way you can make anything realistic that'll last more than 5 minutes, and even if you can, it'll be unplayable (without respawns). You can make realistic missions while keeping them short, simple and playable, and you can make realistic missions that are long, complicated and frustratingly unplayable.

The above concept is extremely simple, as realistic as you can get with no respawns, and very playable as shown by many games before (specifically America's Army and COD4 S&D gametype is the closest to this concept).

[Red_Barron 0]

I'm all for what you are advocating generally. Even in the OFP days many mission makers had a formula for mission making (especially for Co-ops) that consisted of too many objectives (clear towns x, y, and z) filled with a company sized force in/around each objective, and the player count being that of a squad sized element alone, or with a powerful piece of equipment or two (tank, attack helo etc).

A good mission to me (be it Co-op or Adversarial/TvT/PvP) is short and concise. By short I mean something that takes an hour tops. By concise I mean the objective of the mission should be focused like a laser beam. Attacking and securing a town (ONE town) is a great example. One objective and that's it. Now there might be things you need to do in order to make completing that objective easier (like take out a shilka/AA site or two so you can call in CAS), but they should be minor/secondary and not necessary to complete the mission. Take note that this mission concept could be either a Co-op or PVP easily.

- Preferably a nice loadout system that lets you choose pretty much whatever you want before the round starts, rather than having to pick it up from ammo boxes every round, thus wasting everyone's time. Nothing gets restricted as nothing is actually overpowered in this game, and if it is the mission needs tweaking, not the weapons.

I would have to disagree with you on this part. A big part of mission design should incorporate what weapons each side is outfitted with. It does make a difference. If certain people have scoped weapons and others don't, or if one side has NVG's and another doesn't, that can make a huge difference to the mission (in a positive/challenging way if done intentionally and well by the mission maker). If you take my example mission above, if everyone had access to Javelins on the attacking side, the Shilkas would be much less of a problem than if you had nothing but satchels to destroy them with. Another example would be a force of Marines with RCO's on their rifles, SAW's, and a LAV versus a force of insurgents with nothing but RPG-7's with VL rockets, iron sighted AK's, and a few iron sighted RPK's. Restricting weapons can make for a more dynamic and interesting mission.

With regards to this:

What ever happened to America's Army style missions, or COD4 S&D gametype? Something simple like:

and particularly this:

- Preferably adding to / replacing score with "rounds win / lost" as that's what people should really care about in this kind of gametype.

The way Arma handles missions is not really conducive to AA/COD4 style repeating missions. In those games, missions are played over and over in a row with no additional setup time. The only time you have an interruption to your gaming is when the server changes maps (missions). In Arma, every time you start a mission everyone has to slot up into the appropriate slots. JIP is not a good option for the kind of missions you and I would like to see. Thus, when your simple mission is over, you have to go through the process of re-slotting up every time, and you lose any ability to have a "rounds won/lost" counter because the server does not record events that happened in the previous mission.

A savvy mission maker could do something clever with respawn where no one respawns until the "round" is over, winners and losers are determined, and the mission is "reset" (and possibly moved to a new random location). The mission doesn't actually end, but the game starts over and everyone is respawned or let loose from a cage or something and a new round begins. This would need a controlled respawn however, and JIP would be something attractive, because it would emulate the AA/COD ability to hop into a mission mid-round. But then you are in many ways moving away from Arma style missions you and I would like to see, and moving closer to some sort of CS style game play.

Unfortunately, Evo/Dom style games which drag on for hours are what populates most public servers. On the other hand, short concise missions require more work in ways to get started. Constant slotting up between missions, formulating and disseminating a plan, getting people to follow the plan, solid communication before, during and after the mission, reading multiple briefings, and other factors make it hard to do these types of missions on public servers. In some ways playing many good quality, short missions takes more patience than playing Evo/Dom (at least in those you can hop in and out at your leisure).

[kylania 568]

What ever happened to America's Army style missions, or COD4 S&D gametype?

You would play America's Army or COD4 if you wanted that style of gaming. Seems pretty simple to me. :)

[.kju 3242]

Try Arma2_Advance_and_Secure (AAS).

[galzohar 31]

I didn't want the style of gaming of AA or COD4. Just used their gametypes as an example. Though AA3 is actually pretty decent on the realism aspect, though it does also miss other things that Arma 2 has.

There are a lot of ways to do a realistic mission, but only a few ways to do it and keep it playable, and even fewer to make it playable in team vs team.

[Murklor 10]

Unfortunately, Evo/Dom style games which drag on for hours are what populates most public servers. On the other hand, short concise missions require more work in ways to get started. Constant slotting up between missions, formulating and disseminating a plan, getting people to follow the plan, solid communication before, during and after the mission, reading multiple briefings, and other factors make it hard to do these types of missions on public servers. In some ways playing many good quality, short missions takes more patience than playing Evo/Dom (at least in those you can hop in and out at your leisure).

Well in a way Evo/Dom are just a bunch of packed together short missions... Much like you described with the "ingame reset" of a mission. I dont really think its so much patience required for shorter mission, rather that your attendance is required from the start.

JIP is what makes an online game popular... Ugh, I remember when OFP lacked JIP. We ran through Gamespy. It took like 1 hour to set up a mission, 20 minutes to fail it, then another hour to get into the lobby again and have someone quit while the game was just about to start, ruining the mission :rolleyes:

[Cato Larsen 10]

Well i would say if you wanted simple missions like OFP missions.

They had a lot of good ones btw. Specially the FDF WW2 missions.

Hope FDF would bring that back. But anywhoooo.

you could go make them yourself, you could get someone to work with you to make them, or you could give it just a little bit o time to have the community release them.

ArmA 2 is still quite new and making missions and testing them to make sure they work is timeconsuming at least.

Releasing a lot of minor missions in a hurry might just give the community a lot of missions that works fine for the creator but not at all when played on dedicated or hosted by others.

They will come out for sure, but I would say give it a month or so more.

[jonneymendoza 10]

im hoping their will be more battlefield type misssions in different maps. whilst the default map is massive and conatins lots of different terrrain and villages, i would like some maps based on alfganistan or more urban cities as well.

maybe create a map of a small famous city? how big is this map? bigger then say umm london?

[galzohar 31]

I'd buy the "give it time" argument if it wasn't for all those huge, overly-complicated missions that are coming out that require a LOT more testing and bug-proofing than a simple mission as described here would.

I tried making my own but there are too many things I don't know how to do ATM, and I'm not even talking about a scoring system or game resetting scripts. Just a plain "spawn here, attack this, win/lose, time run out, restart" is beyond my current knowledge and is not exactly listed in any documentation I actually managed to find with the limited time I have ATM. Maybe after I finish my exams...

A mission resetting script actually doesn't sound all that complicated for one who knows how to actually create/destroy/move units/triggers/waypoints. If you can make scripts that do any of those things, you can basically have the whole mission generated by a script and then re-generated every round. But considering I couldn't even find how to write ANY command that will run on mission launch, again that's beyond my current knowledge.

While creating maps could have awesome results, the point of this thread is "simple but yet extremely realistic and very playable", and map making is anything but simple.

If a mission is short enough, you don't need JIP. Right now most missions require me to wait at least 5 minutes (either by traveling or waiting for others to give me a ride) to get to the action anyway, so waiting for a (maximum) 5 minutes mission to end shouldn't be a big deal.

Edited July 10, 2009 by galzohar

[jonneymendoza 10]

why cant people just develope similar sized COD maps and make mission for those instead of what seems to be teh default arma 2 map being bigger then the city of london. of course it will prove to be difficult to do so but if people can make a brand new map that is small then where on to something.

[Big Dawg KS 6]

You don't need a small island to make nice short & simple missions. Don't worry guys there are still some people (well at least me) who are making OFP style coops. I do agree however that I'm not a fan of these large scale "take the entire island" missions (especially Evolution... yuck), with the exception of MFCTI of course. The problem with these types of missions is that they're just not very MP oriented. Because they're so huge you rarely even encounter other players. They encourage people to just go off on their own and just do their own thing. At least these are the things I try to avoid when I make missions, while at the same time a try to promote teamwork and intense/consistant action (another problem with large scale missions). Now if only I could find people willing to help me test these missions... :j:

[whisper 0]

You're looking into what was labelled as A&D (Attack & Defense) mainly in OFP/ArmA.

Few groups played it, tbh (I think the finnish guys liked that :) ), and if you don't see them, it's probably because of ArmA1 history of playing mainly Evolution/Domination, Warfare and Berzerk types of maps.

Personnaly, I don't see much point in replicating exactly another game, because this other game will be more suited. Being inspired, sure. Being the same, why? ArmA will do a worse job at it.

[Trenchfoot 10]

Now if only I could find people willing to help me test these missions... :j:

I think most of these large missions get tested by guilds or clans (GoC). I have had problems testing MP missions and starting out I may look into joining a GoC that is friendly to testing my missions. When you think of it this can be advantageous because a mission editor can be a great asset to a GoC.

[galzohar 31]

Who said replicate other games? Pointing out other games that have a gametype that is similar to what I was describing doesn't in any way mean I was asking for those games to be replicated in Arma 2.

Making coops of all types (especially not very realistic ones) is not really that hard design-wise (not talking about scripting/actually building it, but rather making a concept that will work). Making a player vs player mission while keeping things realistic is a much much bigger challenge.

An attack/defense gametype, when done right, is by far the best in terms of realism and making realistic tactics useful, and again when done right doesn't make you bored as hell between rounds nor during the round, because it actually simulates one of the interesting parts of combat rather than the boring ones.

It seems like just about every time someone says he doesn't like something about a mission, the automatic response of people is "go back to COD4". However they're playing the evo/domination which are as realistic as a COD4 campaign when you respawn at the start of the level every time you die and run back to where you were, HOLD which is pretty much COD4's domination on a large map or the standard BF2 gametype, or CTI which is most of the time more like a taxi driver game than a war game. A lot of other missions I didn't specify also seem to love having those taxi driver game features.

Regarding kit restrictions, if you're making some sort of a theme and want to be 100% loyal to that, sure, but keep in mind that if you're giving yourself a lot of significant factors that will need to be balanced (usually at the cost of realism). I generally prefer to avoid this as much as possible and assume the players' squads are organized the way they see fit, and not the way you force them to organize themselves. Of course you're not going to give them tanks or nuclear weapons, but giving them their choice of MG/M203/rifleman/AT/sniper distribution based on the mission can save you a lot of trouble. If everyone are picking the exact same weapons then your mission probably needs to be somewhat redesigned.

Short missions are easier to make, easier to test, easier to balance for player vs player, and at the same time play much more realistically.

Edited July 10, 2009 by galzohar