grieferbastard@hotmail.com

There's about 8K, little over, SP focused mods in the Steam workshop. About 11k MP focused mods. It's a pretty close split. The top *several* pages of highest voted and most downloaded mods on the Steam Workshop are almost all SP content. That's not a coincidence and it's not unique to ARMA 3, was much the same with ARMA 2. One common mistake in the gaming industry is the idea that you can 'nudge' players into playing a certain way. Like getting people who want to play SP to play MP instead. That rarely goes well, there really isn't a historical example of success at it. People play games how they want and tend to push back very hard when they feel pushed, compelled or even misled. I'm not privy to the reasoning, logic and intent of anything that BI does and I don't want to come across as implying I do - I consider myself a big Bohemia Interactive fan, I love a lot of the games they've made and being dissatisfied with APEX doesn't change that. I just want to share how it's been perceived and what my concerns are. SP content is more expensive to create than MP content. In MP the players *are* the majority of the content. Less VA required, less complex missions, less AI to setup and resolve for. I get there's a lot of business decisions behind things but I don't think it's unreasonable to look at what content players are creating and recognize reasonable trends there - a big chunk of people still play SP at least in part and had an expectation that APEX would meet that as well as other ARMA titles have. OA being a great example of an expansion with campaigns, etc. ARMA 3 though has been moving pretty consistently away from SP and into MP and APEX carries that further still by functionally eliminating any real SP support from BI for the new content. If you're main interest is SP then APEX is a $35 map pack you're getting in the hopes that a modder will, at some point, make a mod that would be fun to play that uses the content. After some exchanges on the Steam forum got me thinking on it I confess - I refunded APEX (my first Steam refund) and will wait for it to be on sale in 6-18 months, pick it up for $15 or so and by then I'm sure there will be mods for fun SP content. Until then there's some great player made islands and mods already around to play for free, weapon packs and other content to use. $35 for a map, content and campaign isn't a bad deal. $35 for a map and the hope someone will mod it into something to play, not so much. Mainly I just wish the complex and helpful responses we've seen in this thread from the devs identifying the move away from SP would have been presented before APEX was released. That the whole 'yeah, it's MP only now and doesn't play much like it used to and is way, way more casual of a campaign [respawns etc] than anything we've made before' didn't come out until after release gave it a bad taste. Ah well. Honestly, it's my own fault for preordering. I swear 9 times out of 10 that tends to be a poor choice. Better to wait, see reviews.

I'll agree the map is amazing - stunning design. Campaign and respawn system is horrible, the 'we don't really do SP anymore' thing is a let-down. Wish that'd been more clear up front. The vehicles, content, vehicle in vehicle changes, all that is good and especially the map will be core to the mods that will make the game worth playing. If you only are into ARMA for the MP then you will see a lot of value in all of it. If you play it SP you'll potentially see the value in the map and new content if modders start taking it as default content. Dear god the respawn thing though. You pick a new character class after you die - Rifleman, Scout or Anti-Tank. No AI companions to use but there are immortal AI NPCs who'll come along on some missions and kill everyone for you!

@Zipper5; I really appreciate you taking the time to respond to people here. I get that business decisions are business decisions and I don't think there's any point or logic to players trying to argue with you about 'but your save system isn't logical'. I'm pretty confident you were there for the development and we weren't but you're taking the time to help explain. I just want to add my voice to some others though and say the decision to toss support for single player (and be honest here, that's exactly what you're doing but not wanting to say) was a real surprise kick in the teeth. The SP campaign for ARMA2, OA, ARMA3 were all exceptional. A bright ray of light in a CoD clone and arena shooter universe. You've made a real milisim that is everything that everyone else isn't. Which is why the whole respawn, pick a character class bit is just terrible. Not just 'less fun' but flat out terrible. I play a lot of MP. Overwatch is amazing, I even like MW:O and a few other fringe shooters. That's a pretty crowded market though and having ARMA, the last great holdout of shooters that want to be more than 20 disposable minutes now and again change to be... designed around 20 disposable minutes in a coop shooter was rough. No AI, respawns? I... really? Respawns? Pick Rifleman/Scout/Anti-Tank loadouts? Are we going to have weapon rank unlocks next? I'm not asking to be sarcastic I'm asking because I'm genuinely concerned. APEX is a *huge* divergence from what ARMA has been prior. Which in its way is okay. The market you want to chase changes, business needs change, game designs change. It can be unfortunate to be part of the 'yeah, we don't want your business anymore' slice of things but that's the nature of gaming. Just would have been great if you'd said ahead of time 'yeah, not really any support for SP in APEX and possibly going forward. We're a MP/coop game now'. I'd have shrugged, cursed the fickle fates and moved on. I would have refunded it (my first ever refund on Steam) but I decided that maybe modders will still support SP content and find a way to fix it or at least use the content for actual SP mods, plus 1 bad expansion after years of giving me things I loved to play isn't grounds for going all crazy ex about it. Just... wish you'd have been honest up front. Made it clear that it wasn't designed for SP and that the new update doesn't really support SP and that BI may not really be supporting SP going forward. Please don't say 'well you can play coop content solo' is the same. That's like me saying just playing my friends copy of ARMA3 is the same as buying my own. No, no it really isn't. One is me actually buying a copy of the game, the other is me playing it but you not getting paid for it. MEH. Moving forward it would be great if you're planning on wildly deviating from all prior game design and principles to chase a new market you let people know before you sell them the content.