jinzor

Yeah, if they haven't already replaced CTRG's black MX-series weapons with SPAR-16s (maybe even in the East Wind campaign as well - only for owners of APEX) then they should - it would make a lot more sense.

Yeah but they didn't use SPAR-16s on Altis, only on Tanoa? Also, that visual depiction of...

Okay so, weeks ago I played the Laws of War story campaign. There was a segment where... So yeah, I really don't get this bit. Was this talk of...

Made a start? It'd be awesome to play this.

Any progress?

I've only just heard about this mission (I somehow missed it when I used to play ArmA II), it sounds like it's going to be absolutely amazing! Can't wait to play it on MP with my buddies.

1. For the "hard" variant, perhaps revive should be off to provide more of a challenge to the player / provides an experience closer to the original? The easier variants should definitely have revive functions. 2. That's up to you, I wouldn't mind a bit of randomness if you're willing to implement it. 3. I'm not sure at the moment, I'll try to think of some. Did you have any ideas of existing modules that could be implemented? 4. I'm not sure, it's up to you. 5. I'll have a think about it, maybe even re-visit some of the missions in the old campaign to remember things that were wrong with them. I do remember that I had a major issue with the cutscenes (the ones that occur in between missions) in the original IF campaigns - they were just terribly paced and prone to lagging. Perhaps they should be in video format, like the ones in APEX / Operation Black Gauntlet (PMC)?

I would definitely love a port of Antistasi to IFA3, if possible. It is currently - in my opinion - the best dynamic co-op mission made for ArmA 3. I believe it is also quickly becoming one of the most popular missions out there as well. I think that it'd be perfect for a Polish guerilla fighter scenario.

Yes, that would be an amazing idea! I would definitely lend my support as a tester to such a co-op campaign mod, and a video series with me and my friends immediately upon final release to advertise them. I've been dying for a good co-op campaign ever since the failure of APEX's, and I'm sure many people feel the same as I did about it. There are hardly any community-made co-op campaigns for A3, and this would fill a huge niche - perhaps has the potential to get lots of small groups of players into IFA3 as well. In my opinion, either campaign would be fine to play in IFA3 co-op, but the German one I thought was a slightly better experience than the Russian one when I last played it many years ago (it had a better story, more interesting missions - especially the one where you had to get back to friendly lines while commanding the squad for the first time - etc). Regarding co-op mechanics: • Revive - YES - This is definitely a must. At least, there should be an option in the parameters for players who want it. Revive mechanics in most co-op games add in a sense of reliability upon other players to stick with other players, just incase they fall. In my opinion, it improves the co-op experience. • Respawn - NO - A respawn mechanic should definitely be a big, fat "no". Or again, at the very least, an option in the parameters - able to turn it off. After witnessing that design decision in APEX's campaign, I have no desire for that to be in my co-op playthroughs. It totally kills any sense of risk / accomplishment as there would be no ability to fail the mission. Mission designers shouldn't be afraid of allowing a player to fail. If a player is afraid of being killed outright while another player is still alive which leaves them with nothing to do, then the revive mechanic should make it so that a downed member stays downed permanently until revived - if all players are down, then the mission automatically fails since nobody is there to revive anyone.

4:21 is exactly what I've always wanted from an official ArmA campaign.

I don't think you give "younger boys" enough credit in their ability to figure out new game mechanics / concepts by themselves or in facing new challenges. And like IndeedPete is saying, there's nothing wrong with adding options - this campaign, at the moment, desperately needs extra parameters (e.g. disable spawn) to appeal to an even bigger crowd which includes their core audience, who play the official ArmA content on a regular basis and who actually care about ArmA's content. At the moment, it only caters to those who have no interest in experiencing what ArmA is really about, which I had no desire in supporting until it was revealed to me on the dev branch what I'd be getting. If there are options available to make it more difficult for the more slightly more experienced players or veterans of the series, then everyone will be satisfied.

I'd like to raise a point that nobody has really brought up yet: CO-OP Apex Protocol is a very bad example of a co-op campaign made in recent memory of the series. Remember that there have been a few campaigns in the past, such as Harvest Red and Operation Black Gauntlet, that have been really fun to play with a few other people by your side. I'm not saying a campaign should be focused completely on co-op, but having the option in there would be great for people, such as myself, who'd like to play with a few friends within a self-contained, well-presented storyline, as well as having the option to play it in SP. It's better than just playing a single, short scenario which hasn't got much meaning on its own all the time. If you also have to command a few dudes with you all the time in the SP as a squad leader, why not replace them with actual, real players who have brains and can look after themselves? So far I haven't seen a single co-op campaign produced by the community. Perhaps the next campaign project that somebody starts up should step up to the challenge and show BIS how it ought to be done?

Agreed. While BIS have managed to pull off massive, beautiful landscapes in ArmA 3, they haven't properly utilized them to reveal their real potential in the official content. All of their missions just feel small, linear and generic. I didn't mind what happened with East Wind - that needed to get pumped out after the rough patch in development (plus, it's an alright starting place for beginners to understand the core gameplay mechanics - including the separate showcase content) - but future official scenario / campaign content needs to get interesting again, otherwise I'm just going to totally ignore their stuff and wait for decent community missions to come out instead.

It'd be fantastic if East Wind got a co-op option similar to previous ArmA campaigns (host plays Kerry, three nameless guys just follow / assume vision of Kerry during cutscenes - they're just tagging along for the ride). This is because, when I played with my three friends on Apex Protocol (who are only interested in ArmA for the multiplayer - we played Harvest Red, Operation Arrowhead together in previous titles, which they enjoyed), they were completely confused as to the pacing of the Apex Protocol story - to them, it seemed to just start without any sort of explanation to the situation or goal of the campaign and made absolutely no sense. I was the only one of the group who actually started and completed East Wind - it felt natural that Apex Protocol was really just an ending to East Wind's story rather than a self-containing story of itself. When I was explaining all of this to them, their first question to me was - "is it co-op?" - to which I replied that it wasn't. But... why does East Wind have to not be co-op? I think it could definitely work, a lot of things would need to be altered to fit the other three players, but it could work - it would tie in nicely with Apex Protocol as well, and immediately provide 20 or more missions of official co-op content (I always thought that the "Patrol" sections needed extra squad members any way).

Before I give actual feedback, let me say this. The more I play this new co-op campaign, the more I wish ArmA II's "Harvest Red" or "Operation Black Gauntlet" style of co-op campaign came back. I believe that they were, in terms of story progression and mission structure, the best co-op campaigns made by BIS. Sure, they were a bit buggy at times, the presentation was wonky (i.e. the voice acting, music and stiff animations), and immediately failing the mission outright when one of you died was frustrating, but its sheer scale for allowing a variety of different strategies and tactics (short-term and long-term), its challenging nature and the fact that you could fail an objective or the mission yet still complete the chapter to finish the rest of the campaign made them unique. You also had to make decisions that could come back to help you later / bite you in the arse, or suffer from poor strategy / time management. Multiple, meaningful endings was icing on the cake. It was like everything you did mattered, which felt very immersive in that regard. Even Operation Arrowhead had that as well (but was a weird 4-player co-op experience - would have been better suited for 10 players instead due to its scale and multiple squads, otherwise it just felt like each player was playing by themselves. It wasn't user-friendly for beginners, who didn't know how to command, either). With that in mind, here's the actual feedback on this campaign. In Apex Protocol, you have none of what I mentioned above - no consequential story / mission structure, more of the same boring missions which we've all played a million times before (start here, run there, shoot them, run to extract - *yawn*), and most importantly - it has no challenge. You literally cannot fail with the new infinite respawn mechanic. Without any of these things, it just makes the campaign dull. It lacks depth and difficulty - dying has no negative consequence as you can just immediately come back up and ignore what happened - it doesn't punish you for recklessly throwing away your life, which can encourage newer players to play recklessly in other gamemodes (they'll have a shock when they realise that most other ArmA missions are completely different - usually if you die, you will fail). There isn't much point having this new revive mechanic if you can just respawn in half a minute even closer to your designated objective. It would have been better to let anyone incapacitated last for a while in that state (maybe 2 or 3 minutes rather than 10 seconds). If everyone dies, the mission is called off and you have to restart. That would immediately add a sense of challenge and difficulty to the missions. If you're playing by yourself or with missing players, you should definitely have the option to take command of AIs if you wish - where the AI can also pick you back up if you get incapacitated. Some people do like the experience of commanding a squad. Without a doubt, the infinite respawn thing I think is just terrible and should be reverted back one of the previous setups in co-op scenarios (e.g. when all players die out, the mission fails), otherwise there is no sense of failure, therefore boring. ArmA's co-op campaigns, even single player campaigns, have previously been about, and should always be about, making decisions which can have an affect on your overall playthrough and final outcome, ranging from best to worst (minimum of three - good, neutral, bad). In this campaign, just like in East Wind, we are told exactly what we have to do in a linear fashion, with no decision making at all. The only sort of decision you and your team can make is how you wish to approach a given objective - go on the hill and snipe them from a distance until they're thinned out, or rush in full guns blazing? That's okay, but there is still no over-arching decision making or long-term strategies to be made at all which I feel massively benefited previous ArmA campaigns. You can't even fail for time - if you leave your game running for three hours with no enemies to shoot you, nothing will happen. Royal Flush, Harvest Red, Operation Arrowhead and Operation Black Gauntlet all had that, even Operation Crimson Lance had a bit of it as well, and they all felt like unique experiences worth revisiting to see how your next playthrough would go out. East Wind and Apex Protocol feel a little more well-presented and stable (voice acting, music etc), but they feel way less immersive (not because of its future setting), and not worth replaying. I'd take a campaign with wonky presentation and a variety of outcomes / consequences / interesting mission objectives over a campaign with mediocre presentation and linear progression / generic mission objectives, that could have been put together by the community in a month or two, any day. If that's the direction that they're going to take for future official ArmA campaign installments, then you can count me out. I forgave East Wind due to that fiasco with the two devs being imprisoned which may have hindered development. I praised them for eventually delivering the campaign, even if it wasn't that good compared to the previous ones and not the one that they had originally planned to do (it was originally meant to be a sort of open-world, RPG-style campaign), but this was just unacceptable. It has really hurt my faith in BIS' ability to produce good, interesting scenarios - ones which require real thought and effort to succeed in anymore. If this co-op campaign was meant to symbolically be the "APEX" (meaning the highest point of achievement) of ArmA 3's official multiplayer content, then that's really sad. EDIT: Sorry for being negative in this post, but I am being genuinely honest here (if nobody criticises it, how will mistakes be corrected?). The co-op campaign as it stands, in my opinion, is just bad. It's not a good representation of what ArmA is about. It felt embarassing having to type up my thoughts on this as well, since I was actually looking forward to this campaign. I've been waiting for a good co-op campaign experience in ArmA 3 ever since East Wind.