OMAC

I think that the paucity of pre-release info on Apex Protocol campaign was carefully planned and a smart move by BI, as the announced "1-4 player COOP campaign" was just enough info to hoodwink people expecting Harvest Red-like SP/COOP mechanics into pre-ordering Apex. If they had been more truthful pre-release, stating that there will be no saves, just respawns, and no AI teammates, quite a few people wouldn't have pre-ordered it, and there would have been a mild "explosion" of disbelief and ire on the forums, which couldn't be good for marketing hype and sales. They expected the angry/disappointed posts on the forums after release, but wanted to minimize such dissent pre-release. Why lengthen their headache by being truthful early? So, I think that the minimal pre-release info on Apex Protocol was part of a well-calibrated and successful plan to maximize pre-order sales. Its late release on Dev branch served to virtually eliminate pre-release dissent outside of one thread in Dev branch forums.

^ ^ Yep, I'll bet you're right.

Not mentioned here is the decision to invest LOTS and LOTS of dev time in creating the Challenges, which are a primary SP element of the game in addition to the Showcases and campaigns. What if this time had been spent creating SP combat Scenarios? A3 would be a much different, and much better, game if that had been the case, IMO, and much more in line with the great Arma heritage. Believe me, I am toning down my real opinions regarding this key decision to a great degree. I realize that this is a bit off topic, but this decision even impacted East Wind and the Showcases to some degree by diverting dev time away from them, I would think...

I played the heck out of them, but most are not of the enduring quality of OFP and A2 Scenarios. Some of the Showcases are outstanding (The Fixed Wing showcase for example), and all of them adequately serve their main purpose of introducing key gameplay and mission design elements, especially to new players. But the fact that the Scenarios section is only for user content gives away the fact that official SP single missions were not a focus of the devs for A3 as they were in previous games. Night and Infantry showcases should never have been released (or reused later) as they give away elements of the campaign, and make BI look lazy in that they released simpler preview versions/spoilers of campaign missions rather than purely original ones. In general, the showcases do not compare favorably with OFP scenarios as R3vo wrote, and A2CO Scenarios such as Eye for an Eye, The Jackal, Bear Rising, Trial By Fire, Steel Panthers, etc. But some of the awesomeness of those old missions stems from the atmosphere/terrains and the factions involved which are more memorable/relate-able than the 2035 factions. I do recommend trying to get the "Dodge This" achievement in the Marksman showcase. Quite fun, and it will hone your attack planning skills.

I agree. Just calling them Showcases instead of Scenarios suggests that they are not the real deal, and thus some will not even bother with them. Note that the Night and Infantry showcases are just poor copies/spoilers of campaign missions. The Tanks one is very uninspired, and it, along with Supports showcase, have endings which feel inorganic and overly scripted (like nearly all missions of Win Episode). Combined Arms is ok, but Marshall and NATO attack chopper get blown way too easily. I modified Combined Arms to make player commander of Marshall instead of a grunt, and you can plow through the base and reinforcements without breaking a sweat.

Thumbs up, big time. Knowing that BI has talented designers such as Jezuro makes it even more maddening that Apex Protocol turned out the way it did. I have had high regard for Jezuro ever since he dove into the broken A2 Freedom Fighters mission by DnA years ago and provided much-needed fixing and support. I would have thought that the intense interest generated by BI missions would have fired them up to continue to produce top-notch SP content. I wonder how many new threads concerning Apex Protocol will be made in that Official Missions forum? Not many, I'll bet, due to the simple, no-fail nature of the missions.

Bummer. Am I missing something? NATO and NATO (Pacific) vehicle skins are identical. The sand-colored vehicles are quite visible in the jungle. Perhaps NATO didn't have time to develop jungle camo in the story??

Yep. But I wonder why BI bothered to include NATO (Pacific) vehicles at all if they are identical to the regular NATO vehicles. Perhaps such skins will be added in the future?

Not in vanilla, no. You can also order an AI to open a subordinate's inventory using Action menu (F#-6) and take stuff. An idea for BI would be to add an action like you hold down the unit's F key and then point your mouse at an item on the ground, and when your mouse reaches the item, a "pick up item" icon appears.

After ordering the unit to move to a nearby point, I go to Map>Team>unit>Inventory and get him to drop items that I will pick up, or have him pick up items that I have dropped at that point. But the easiest way is to drop items and then use Action menu F#-6 to get him to pick up items, but that can be complicated in a battle zone as there are all kinds of items in there that can be hundreds of meters away. Another way is to transfer some items to a vehicle or crate, and then use F#-6-Inventory and he will (hopefully) go to the vehicle or crate you want and open his inventory so you can transfer items into it. If the AI has a backpack, you can go up to him and use Action menu to open his backpack and take stuff from it.

gubiu, I think you need to REVERT to start of Tipping Point and replay it, then the campaign will progress normally. Note that if you do this, you will only have one clip of ammo to start, which may be a bug. Apparently your loadout from your last Rearm task at Maxwell isn't transferred properly. But you'll be able to pick some more up from your dead comrades in short order. I encountered the same one clip situation when I replayed Wet Work about a month ago to test an issue.

^ ^ It wasn't at all obvious to me. Without the info in this thread, there is no way of knowing that there will be a convenient message indicating that you have alerted the enemy, and certainly not at which point in the mission that message can occur. I have only played the bugged version in Main branch.

An example of why I don't use Dev branch. I don't like having to post in Dev branch forum when I played Apex Protocol on Main branch, but this thread seems to be where most people, including Arma "old timers," are posting good comments about the campaign. The most foolproof way of staying true to your heritage is to provide solid and complex SP content of varying accessibility and difficulty as BI always has rather than abandon it for the campaign. For me, Arma is all about the missions and tactics. Great assets are wasted without creative, complex missions that require clear tactical planning. BI playable content should inspire the community by its novelty and creativity. BI can't just leave playable SP content creation to the community while still charging high prices similar to or greater than prices for past products. And this is after having only one SP mission for Marksman DLC, a real letdown, and essentially a ripoff. So I suspected this BS was coming. Again we have only one mission, End Game showcase, that is truly playable and believable in SP. Underestimating and ignoring your core community and legacy is a mistake, unless the devs come up with a completely new concept or paradigm, which BI has not done in this case. East Wind has some wonderful new elements, such as scouting missions. Even ACR had novel elements, such as flooding, dynamically-generated scenarios, and the narrowing search area map markers. A platform is not a game. Sometimes I wonder if BI can tell the difference any longer. Perhaps A3 team should forget about playable content and transfer to BI Sim. ;) It is clear that Arma as we know it has begun to die. BI wants Arma to move in an entirely new, low-cost, "accessible," run 'n' gun, kid-friendly, MP-only direction. MMO for Arma 4? I wouldn't be surprised at this point. There are repeated references to "groups" and "units" in your posts. Again giving away your MP-only focus and preference. This is extraordinarily maddening and disappointing to me, but not unexpected. Bile begins to rise in my esophagus. <_< I am deeply dismayed by the attitude of "Hey if you don't like our short MP run 'n' gun "campaign," make your own, suckers! You've got 3den, get busy! Even though you don't have a slew of paid, talented designers who eat SQF for breakfast every day, and no MOCAP and sound design studios, your campaigns will be just as good as ours! And, best of all, they will fit your playstyle perfectly!" Are you kidding me? :rolleyes: Hmm, what is my playstyle? Answer: CWC, Resistance, Armed Assault, Rahmadi Conflict, Queen's Gambit, Harvest Red, Eagle Wing, Operation Arrowhead, Crimson Lance, Black Gauntlet, Silver Lion, East Wind. Yeah, I guess Apex doesn't fit my playstyle. Yes, there are quite a few posts in these forums by MP-only people saying that they never play BI SP content. Those posts could have been ignored in order to stay true to your heritage. Heeding those posts was quite useful and expedient, as it removed the need to create another SP campaign, which is very, very hard work. Too hard for BI, apparently. But this MP-only style is a direction that BI really, really wants, has wanted for some time, and has hinted at it in various ways. I'll bet they feel that the industry and tastes are moving in that direction; the hard work involved with generating creative SP content just isn't worth the effort, but creating a nice 3d editor is, as it "supports the community." It also gets them off the hook (they hope) for drastically skimping on good SP content. BI clearly no longer has the desire, and perhaps not even the skill, to make high-quality, story-driven, complex, and original SP content. This achievement has been bugged and broken in Main branch since release. :rolleyes: <_< This is some maddening crap indeed. I don't understand this at all. It should have been left unsaid, as it makes matters much worse for "core users," and significantly dampens Arma morale among them. If you think it will alienate "core users," why release it? The answer was apparently "accessibility" to new users. Users for whom A3 was their introduction into the Armaverse have already played East Wind, most likely, and Apex will be a disappointment to them. Even if they are MP-only people and never played East Wind, they are well-versed in Arma mechanics from online play, and thus wouldn't need more instruction or other dumbed-down, "easily accessible" content. Apparently BI feels that removing many key Arma elements, such as commanding, results in improved accessibility. I disagree. Just look at CWC, Resistance, and even East Wind, where you start as a grunt and move up to command. I am heartened by the many excellent posts in this thread. It is clear to me that Apex Protocol has bombed out big time for anyone with serious Arma experience. For the sake of heritage and legacy, I hope BI adds better SP gameplay opportunities to Apex Protocol.

^ ^ Interesting. Without that knowledge, most people, including me, would have spent hours trying to stealthily kill the Viper operatives without alerting them, which is brutally difficult (at least on Veteran difficulty). If what you wrote is true, the achievement objective should be changed to something like, "Completed the 04 Heart of Darkness campaign mission without alerting the enemy during exfil." Such a change would save players lots of headaches.

I wonder how many more people will bash their heads against the hard wall of the bugged achievement until BI sends the fix to the main branch? :wacko:

Perhaps not by itself, but there have been quite a few other recent fixes to Apex playable content on Dev branch as well...

Since Apex release there have been lots of important fixes to Apex Protocol campaign in Dev branch, including a fix for the broken "None The Wiser" achievement. When will these fixes be moved to Main branch? Will we have to wait ~1 month until the next major update, or will there be a more rapid hotfix?

I wasted several hours trying to get this achievement also. But has the issue been fixed only in Dev branch? If so, when will the fix be applied to stable branch?

I expected a relatively short, expansion campaign about the length of Operation Arrowhead with the SP/COOP mechanics of Harvest Red. In Apex Protocol, I was satisfied in the former expectation, and wretchedly let down by the latter. I didn't expect many missions, but I was hoping for some very long, complex missions (think Bingo Fuel and Manhattan). And the failure to include quasi-dynamic scouting side missions and quests as pioneered in East Wind was another major disappointment, as others have noted. Hundreds of hours went into making Apex Protocol. Super-professional video content, cutscenes, and voice acting of absolutely top quality, true to BI legacy. Very good QA/QC, almost no bugs (one time a mission wouldn't progress due to a task that wouldn't complete). But much, or even all, of that work can be ruined and wasted because of the horrible, brain-dead decision to make the mechanics MP only with only respawn and revive. This crucial mistake at the top resulted in a grim, woeful chain of compromises and bad decisions that destroyed SP gameplay, and has damaged the great BI heritage (in my eyes, anyway). Some of these many compromises are the lack of scouting missions and the generally quite short, simple nature of the existing missions.

I am mystified as well. It appears as if they hate the great legacy and SP gameplay of their own game and will do anything to destroy it for the sake of kiddy FPS run 'n' gun MP crap. They need an official SP mission or campaign pack big time to restore their great heritage, which pettka "says" he cares about.

I agree with you on all counts. I am dismayed and disappointed by the MP-only nature of the "campaign," especially the poor quality of SP gameplay (solo only, no AI teammates), the lack of the normal saving system, all ammo/weapons restored on respawn, no ability to choose loadout at mission start, completely linear progression of story, and the short, simple nature of the missions. At least you can respawn at several fixed, well-paced points of your choosing. Perhaps the worst thing about Apex solo gameplay and the respawn system is that you can never fail a mission. On each respawn, enemies previously killed are still dead, so it gets easier with each respawn. Any noob can now hack away at the enemies in this way, and eventually make it through. With normal saves, this is not the case, and you have to hone your attack plan and make it work. I also agree that respawn is more unrealistic and definitely kills immersion more than loading a save. But, I guess I am more happy to have a way to play in SP, however flawed, rather than none at all. There are still some good Arma moments to be had, deep in the jungle. :ph34r: For me, official SP playable content was, overall, the aspect of Arma that I enjoyed and valued the most. So you can imagine how Apex makes me feel.

You can't quit a mission and come back to the same point in the mission later, regardless of difficulty, because of the respawn-only system. If you abort in the middle, you will have to restart that mission later. Once you finish a mission, the next one is unlocked. So the most you have to replay if you quit the game in the middle of a mission is one mission. And the missions are fairly short, so replaying one mission isn't a big deal. I'm playing on default Veteran.