Really long and "story-driven" MP missions. Are they wanted???

[Pandy 0]

I love the MP missions to which players per take in a story driven missions. It gives a campaign feel, and boost activity for Arma2 units.

Great idea.

[madrussian 347]

My biggest problem sometimes is how one stupid move, or simply by being a natural jinx, can ruin the evening.

Isn't that somehow the essence of OFP/ArmA though? :)

That ONE shot putting you as a spectator for the remaining two hours of the mission. It just sucks. There is no sense of reward for playing it uber safe, when that bullet tracks you down.

Agreed, it's pretty crap to be completely out of it far from the end of the mission and have to sit and watch as your buddies complete the last two or three objectives. I call that Terminal Death Syndrome, and it often rears it's ugly head on longer coop missions. Revive, as you mentioned, is a nice way around this problematic scenerio (imo provided it's limited). Another method might be keeping the spectator, but giving the players playable reinforcements upon the completion of objectives (that make sense based on the mission), thereby giving the players limited opportunity to get back into the game. Haven't installed it yet, but Left For Dead works like that, right? In any event, I think we need to preserve the tension and fear or death this series provides, and without the possibility of getting wiped out early (all players dead), imo we lose something extremely fundemental.

Yes, you can't imagine how sore a loser I am, or how much I hate getting killed when I felt I didn't deserve it. :D

I know that feeling. :p

But it would be nice for a change if winning was determined by something else than destruction of the enemy.

Agreed, not enough mission makers attempt anything other than Destroy targets A, B, and C. Or worse yet, kill all enemy! (even that guy hiding in the shed that you'll never find.) :D

As for optionals, what I miss since we are a very small unit, is for missions to have a parameter control in the lobby that sets the amount of enemies, for those private moments. Many missions look awesome to play, but are totally unrealistic for our small unit to even attempt. So, number and difficulty controls would be very nice to have.

I strongly agree here about the optionals, and on the importance of being able to adjust enemy numbers. Way too many missions with unrealisitc expectations out there. Letting us adjust enemy numbers also has a huge added benefit for coop, as we can then scale the mission to the number of players.

Good points throughout your post.

[galzohar 31]

You're asking for having a fear of death without losing because you died. There is no way to have both, as unlimited respawns mean never losing, and any number of respawns from 0 to a lot will either result in a mission that is way too easy or result in a mission where you still lost because you died too much and again you get stuck watching the mission. A mission that is balanced for 1 life (shorter) will put you in the same position (in terms of how much time you spend "out of action" and how many times you "fail because you died") as a with multiple respawns that is balanced for that.

Of course, most mission makers seem to completely ignore balance and make it so that either it's just way too easy or you have to learn enemy positions in order to succeed. In that case having (unlimited or too many) respawns can reduce frustration a great deal (as the mission wasn't even designed to be possible with no respawns) but ruins the "let's do our best so we can win" as you can't realistically lose.

IMO missions should simply be designed so that they're challenging but not impossible, and in a way that prevents you from "learning" the mission by randomizing enemy positions. Long missions are often not a good thing - When was the last time you played a long mission that was actually both not boring (had enough action) and at the same time was challenging (required more than 1 attempt to complete but did not allow you to "learn" it)?

Edited October 28, 2009 by galzohar
unlimited respawns mean never losing

[madrussian 347]

You're asking for having a fear of death without losing because you died.

Yes, I do prefer more than one life on long missions. But only in the context of limited lives. The reality is that I want something I've not seen yet in any OFP, ArmA, or ArmA2 mission. More on that later.

There is no way to have both, as unlimited respawns means losing,

Huh? Did you mean to say that unlimited respawns means always winning?

...and any number of respawns from 0 to a lot will either result in a mission that is way too easy or result in a mission where you still lost because you died too much and again you get stuck watching the mission.

IMO, getting "stuck watching the mission" is only a bad thing when there's a lot of mission left, and you have no chance at getting back in. Even worse is no fear of death at all (i.e. unlimited respawn).

A mission that is balanced for 1 life (shorter) will put you in the same position (in terms of how much time you spend "out of action" and how many times you "fail because you died") as a with multiple respawns that is balanced for that.

IMO, there is a huge difference between "out of action", and "out of the game". If you're in a death cam mode but there's still the chance to get back in, that keeps you rooting for the living members of the group to keep going, because your getting back into the game hinges on their success.

Of course, most mission makers seem to completely ignore balance and make it so that either it's just way too easy or you have to learn enemy positions in order to succeed. In that case having (unlimited or too many) respawns can reduce frustration a great deal (as the mission wasn't even designed to be possible with no respawns) but ruins the "let's do our best so we can win" as you can't realistically lose.

Agreed with all points here. I personally won't go for unlimited respawn or unlimited revive because without the possibility of losing, I just get bored. :rolleyes:

IMO missions should simply be designed so that they're challenging but not impossible, and in a way that prevents you from "learning" the mission by randomizing enemy positions. Long missions are often not a good thing - When was the last time you played a long mission that was actually both not boring (had enough action) and at the same time was challenging (required more than 1 attempt to complete but did not allow you to "learn" it)?

Cipher does a pretty good job on all fronts here.

1. The terrain you are fighting on is completely different every time.

2. It is impossible to predict enemy positions. Sometimes you even run into them outside the markered "mission area". You'd be hard pressed to "learn" Cipher.

3. It's definitely NOT boring. There's an appropriate level of buildup on the way to the mission zone. And, as mentioned earlier, you have to keep your eyes open even on the way there.

4. There's a difficulty adjustment (among others) that adjusts enemy numbers. Important note here is that what may be balanced and enjoyable for one person may be frustrating for the next guy. The ability to adjust difficulty (enemy numbers and enemy accuracy) go a long way towards getting a good experience in this regard.

But even the mighty Cipher (in coop) still has the problem of the group getting down to just you and your buddy, you kick the bucket, and now you're out of the game and waiting to see whether he makes it through or not.

My proposal is to give the players a limited number of men (no respawn, no or limited revive), and give them more men upon completion of objectives. As players die, provided there are no friendly AI to take over as, they go into death cam, but they are by no means necessarily out of the game. If their remaining living buddies can pull through and complete the remainder of the current objective, extra men are added to the group (in a way that makes sense per the mission), and the players watching from death cam get to return to play in fresh bodies.

For LONG missions, this is by far the best way I've been able to come up with to strike a balance between Terminal Death Syndrome (which again is no fun on long missions when you go out early), and what I personally view as the absolute worst, Respawn-O-Matic, where you just keep playing until you win (and you win every time).

Now, why haven't we ever seen this balance between fear of death and frustration for longer missions? Well, the system I propose is not without some difficulty in implementing.

1. You have to come up with story or objective based reasons why the players are getting new group members.

2. It's not trivial to write the code for this system the first place. (i.e. It's much different than default group respawn, which does NOT allow you back into play once you're out. And TeamSwitch apparently does not work in MP.) I created something like the system I describe for OFP, but without the switchPlayer command offered starting with ArmA, the system was extremely complicated and had some visual glitches. (swapping units, etc). It did work though, and was not difficult to apply to missions. Just hard as hell to write the thing in the first place.

edit:

corrected spelling - including Cipher

Edited October 29, 2009 by MadRussian

[galzohar 31]

Cipher is highly random which is very nice, unfortunately it also has a totally random difficulty, so nothing guarantees that it's neither extremely easy nor impossible (on the same settings). Besides, not all places on Chernarus make up a good mission - imo most of the map is pretty crappy, and to make a good mission you have to hand-pick a location and then put as much randomness as you can into it. But other than that cipher is definitely a great idea.

I've seen someone posted a big platoon mission where you'd get your men back and rearmed after each objective is compelte. However when asked "what's the difference between this mission and a bunch of short missions?" the answer obviously was "there isn't any". Why work on a complicated respawn system when the end result is a bunch of smaller missions you could just make separately? Less scripting, same (or better) experience, and less constraints on stuff that your mission has to include/exclude.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Well, I for one enjoy playing (modified, not with a lot of armor to defeat, not awesome rewards) Domination. Longest single session time was about two full days. This was Arma1. On our MHQ relocation our chopper was shot down by strela soldier, near Mercalillo. MHQ and squad survived, and we had to walk towards a main target north of Passo Epone (not in default). 4km by foot iirc. Took us 3 hours just to get there due to multiple footmobile contacts. Tension was up the roof. Bloody awesome. And no casualties at this point.

So yes, missions can be long. And here I only talk about a single objective in a highly dynamic world of missions. I guess we all agree that mentioned mission (and similar) endorse stupid gameplay. I don't mind unlimited respawns or teleport at all. I wish there was a holding cell with a spectator script where you would sit after respawn. A timer governs how long you need to be here. Players that die alot will spend a lot of time here. Players that play safe, are rewarded with shorter respawn times. Timer could be based on class, i.e. sniper would have a lot longer base time than a SAW gunner. And for teamplay, an option to transfer respawn time to that player that really tries really hard but is just not very good. Mr. Solo Rambo Die-A-Lot would get annoyed with his increasing respawn times and find something else. Better for those trying to play serious anyway. Today such players aren't punished at all.

In our (not so) yearly main events, a single mission can take two to five hours to complete, during 4-5 days worth of gameplay campaign. This group consists of good gamers to ex military with very little computer skills, and have a hard time "grasping" Arma (well, only OFP so far). Even hardcore CS gamers that doesn't have a clue about tactical milsim gaming - but team leaders will guard and instruct their actions. We play with respawn here so that everyone can have a blast of a time, even the really bad players. It's up to the team leaders to make sure everyone plays safe and stick together. These games use other mechanisms to determine a lost objective than simply killing everyone in it. We might lose an objective if i.e. the enemy is able to reinforce a point, in which our force wouldn't be the one to tackle them anymore. If we lose too many objectives, or any key objectives, the mission is lost. This is usually materialized as lack of hardware when we start the next mission. The "game master" may enter a special menu where some hardware are removes, but in turn makes us fight less enemies (which none of the players know about). You get a sense of accomplishment when you do something right, and a sense of disappointment when you fail. But when you fail, the overall difficulty remains the same by removing some enemies if we now doesn't have the means to tackle more.

Win, and fight tanks with tanks.

Fail, and fight infantry with infantry.

You don't ever have to fight tanks with only infantry.

Which is important due to roleplaying and realistic gear availability.

So, for that group it is more important to have a hell of a time together, being social within the premises of a game, than doing everything by the book and trying to be uber serious and realistic. The more regular group I play with is only a tiny unit. Here the goal is completely different.