Comrades in Arms Discussion Board

Hi all.

Since this topic came up on the chat yesterday, I wanted to bring it up here for some more discussion. The relevant quote from the chat is this. For context, my statement was it would be boring for a helicopter medevac crew to stand by on base and wait for action, to which the reply was this:

Quote:[12.09.2014 22:22:46] Carson: no different than doing missions now where we run to get to a locations (sometimes too far imo) .. theres natural downtime
[12.09.2014 22:23:25] Alwarren (Hans-Joerg Frieden): It'S a difference whether you are moving through enemy terrain with the chance of getting attacked or sit around in an airbase not knowing what is going on.
[12.09.2014 22:25:28] Carson: I'd disagree, waiting for action tends to be the same process -- waiting. Besides, I never said waiting at a base

So my question is, what is everybody's view on distances in mission making? IS it true that you have to get right into the action? Because plainly, that is not how I feel about it.

Now, bear with me for a moment. I am not saying that a mission where you drop right into the action is bad, quite the contrary. I just object to the notion that "getting there" is waiting and therefore boring. Some of my missions, like "Airport Security" on Takistan, are mostly about "getting there". Or as another example, "A Man of Faith" has a rather extended part at the beginning that is just about maneuvering around to avoid patrols and enemy installations. I like that part. I like it because to me, the tension of not getting seen and the danger of getting jumped by them is part of the appeal of the Arma game series, as opposed to the non-stop action of other games like Battlefield. I like these "getting there" parts also because it is part of the experience, even if nothing happens.

You might remember that one time I said I like to create the sense of danger by presenting danger right at the beginning of the mission. Most of the time I try to make sure that people encounter enemies very early on, even if they are not a real threat to them, to create the sense of enemy territory. That will ensure that there is a certain background tension/suspense even if you don't encounter enemies around every corner.

Another mission I really liked was "Operation Lojack" from Arma 2, by W0lle, which is apparently a remake of an old VBS mission. The premise is that an officer has been kidnapped by insurgents and you have to locate him with the help of a beacon he carries with him and a locator device that shows the approximate direction to the beacon and the strength of the signal. Most of that mission is walking/jogging along trying to find the officer, and the area is heavily patrolled so you are in constant risk of getting attacked. I played this mission a number of times with Varanon. I remember one occasion were we played at night, with an insurgent patrol passing only a few meters by without having spotted us, and me lying there with sweaty hands hoping they won't turn around.  Another instance was a mission that Varanon had started to design were we played a lost squad after a plane crash that had to get back to friendly lines, and I remember hiding in a bush next to the road while a BMP-3 passed right in front of my nose... pants-pissing suspense, I can tell you.

I agree that I do not want to jog three kilometers over empty, open fields like we had it once in a mission. But I do not feel like getting to a mission site is boring by itself. It can be made boring, for example, by staying in the same places for extended periods of time just looking around, or taking mile-long detours to avoid contact.

Anyway, I'd like to hear your opinions about it. For example, does "Game of Drones" have too much walking in it? After all, you need to find what you are looking for first. Did "Greenback Mountain" have too much walking it it? Please share your thoughts, I'd be very interested to hear.

Well, I'd agree that having players to wait for something to happen is boring, I did that with Delta in Bomberman 3 and to make up for that, rescuing them is the first thing that needs to be done, the rescuers start in position and the convoy doesn't travel far.

I recall that mission where a 4man team was supposed to clear an entire town and a 8-10man team was supposed to sit in a convoy until they completed that, that's definitely boring as hell.

If the mission is 'travel X km to get to Y' that may be all walking, but that's the point of the mission. What's boring is 'destroy X and Y but first walk the 5km to there'.

Personally, I try to design missions so the first objective is no more than a good kilometer away, so that the enemy patrols can be on their way and you have enough space to maneuver into a position you want, but for more I try to give vehicles.

(09-13-2014, 02:33 PM)Outlawz7 link Wrote: [ -> ]If the mission is 'travel X km to get to Y' that may be all walking, but that's the point of the mission. What's boring is 'destroy X and Y but first walk the 5km to there'.

I agree, in principle. I don't think that any distance traveled on foot should be longer than at most 2 km or less, anything above that is going to take too long. I was more referring to the time to the first target...

Things obviously depend a lot on the setup of the mission.

This is an interesting topic. I think that traveling to a mission area can indeed be boring if there's nothing happening in the way. That something - like you said - can be engaging or avoiding enemy patrols. Same goes for waiting.

That said, I've noticed that whether or not something is boring is closely related to play style. If an MP team must walk 1 km in enemy territory, team A might run side by side the whole way with SHIFT+W watching the distance meter tick down to zero and team B might send a point man in front and some scouts covering the sides while communicating and pausing along the way. Same goes for waiting: team A might lay a couple of mines on the road for the convoy and hide behind rocks while team B might send a scout along the road to provide a heads-up.

I personally try to keep the distances short, like under 400 m or try to limit line-of-sight to the enemy at the start of the mission. Of course it's a different thing if the mission is something like escaping from the enemy or delivering intel to point x.

I don't mind the walking if it's meaningful. And by meaningful I don't mean lots of foot patrols because fighting your way through lots of patrols and not getting hit by an armored QRF (or any superior force QRF) just doesn't make sense and feels unrealistic to me, and sneaking through multiple infantry patrols becomes dull after a while.


Meaningful transit is witnessing enemy routine in the back country, seeing checkpoints, some civilian vehicle movement and some enemy armor patrols. These usually stick to roads. Enemy OPs are to be expected in vantage points and not just some idiots walking in the nowhere in column formation like we used to get in missions by a known community author.


A good example would be that great mission with the objective to laser designate the radar dome on Altis. And what did the ingress so great? The Ifrit patrols on the roads (they were even unarmed).


With all that, transiting to the objective could be fun.


Having said all that, I wouldn't want to play only missions that require you to infiltrate enemy screens in order to get to your objective. Actually, this type of missions should be the minority, to my opinion. We play no-respawn and very long missions can get frustrating for those who wait and even for those who play, and even without this reason, sometimes we just want to go ahead already and shoot someone in the face. that's why in the chat I wrote that we need more missions that have us quickly engage and/or blow up some shit and then extract.


Don't get me wrong, I love missions with a long preparation phase - insertion, gearing up, infiltrating, performing the mission objective and pulling out. Most of those made by CiA people are great, and do feel exciting in all phases (I agree that adding some fast action at the beginning is a prime factor in that). What I am concerned with is the percentage of these missions in our missions list versus the other "light attack" mission type.

All good points so far, i don't have much to add, just some thoughts.

Personally i don't have time to play, but when i do, i want to have an "Experience". I don't want something just to fill up time, but this is just me and in ARMA custom missions is hard to know what your experience is going to be, is not like you know all authors and their style. This is why is very hard for me to play sandbox type of missions, where you do same thing over and over again or 4 hours mission which tries to mimic real life too hard, is just lack of time for me and a matter of taste.

As, i think, Varanon said at some point is about player's experience. If a long walk improves immersion, helps creating the mood and set the right atmosphere  is ok, but the player has to be in the right mood for that too.
Another variable is the players interaction which is pretty hard to quantify or predict unless you narrow down the niche of players you address to.

Sometimes you start a game or a movie cuz you know what to expect from that game/movie and you want to have a certain experience, if you start an action movie and all you get is romance/drama and that could be frustrating.

When it comes to playing a ARMA missions is a gamble, many times you don't know what to expect, you want stealthy mission and you find action or vice-versa.

There is no recipe for making good missions or movies, is just talent and skills. You may acquire skills learning but when it comes to talent is a bit more difficult.

So, I'd say follow your guts, do what pleases you, usually that does the trick for players as well. Just "help" the targeted niche of players to slide into experience, they'll do the rest. Don't try to please everyone.

(09-13-2014, 12:53 PM)Alwarren link Wrote: [ -> ]So my question is, what is everybody's view on distances in mission making? IS it true that you have to get right into the action? Because plainly, that is not how I feel about it.

I don't view that I have to necessarily get right into the action, but if there's a lack of those kind of missions, there would be a problem for a quick warm up, diversity, or something I'm in the mood at the time for. You don't necessarily have to get right into the action, but there's a shortage of those mission.

(09-13-2014, 12:53 PM)Alwarren link Wrote: [ -> ]I agree that I do not want to jog three kilometers over empty, open fields like we had it once in a mission. But I do not feel like getting to a mission site is boring by itself. It can be made boring, for example, by staying in the same places for extended periods of time just looking around, or taking mile-long detours to avoid contact.

If its empty fields of nothingness, it sucks. Getting to the mission site isn't boring if I'm constantly under fire, or the fear of being detected when trying to be sneaky. If I'm in the mood for it then its fine (I guess it depends on people's mood whether they want a long or quick mission as well). I sometimes get a bit pissy looking at my watch if I had to be somewhere sooner or later on a long mission or sometimes I'm not in the mood.

(09-13-2014, 12:53 PM)Alwarren link Wrote: [ -> ]Anyway, I'd like to hear your opinions about it. For example, does "Game of Drones" have too much walking in it? After all, you need to find what you are looking for first. Did "Greenback Mountain" have too much walking it it? Please share your thoughts, I'd be very interested to hear.

I was fine with Greenback Mountain. I wanted to beat the mission and I had a few approaches on doing so. I take detours if things doesn't seem to go as plan. It does make it easier to lead if the other leader also takes more initiative on attacking on manuevering. It was fun, shooting everywhere we go.

Game of Drones, I'll say I wasn't in too much of a big mood for that one at the day (well leading it that is, but I just hop on the leader slot since no one took it). It was a fresh open approach on finding an AA then finding the drone in the sky and shoot it down. Its basically finding a needle in a haystack, but without the haystack and the needle glows brightly in the sky so you can see it. Sometimes or some days, I may have problem coordinating and have a hard time making a decision on the best course of action trying to give order to 2 squads at once. I like Game of Drones, but I'm not capable of leading it.



With all that said, mission with more distances is fine, but since they take longer than quick actions, for a more equilibrium level of missions and diversity, the quantity of quick action missions should be larger than longer missions. Longer missions can be fun, but playing 3 in a row can start to get frustrating, then people can lose the mood. It takes long so more exhausting on the energy. I think a good way to start would be an easy quick action for morale boost and warm up. Follow up with a longer mission for the second one. The third one can probably be decent range, long distance, or a difficulty fast action. Fourth can be a cool down fast action of varying difficulty.

Anyways, its not that I don't like longer missions, it is just sometimes on my schedule, I don't have the time for 2-3 in a row. Sometimes time gets limited. Longer missions can be fun, but the variety of shorter missions are just, low.

Game of Drones is not what I would consider to be a long march mission. The search area is right next to us when we start and it is full of surprises that have direct connection to the mission and its objectives. It is a great mission. Greenback mountain was also a great mission. The fact that we were constantly engaged made it unique and thrilling.

However both of the above are what can be called "a great endeavour" type of missions. As phantom correctly points out, you can't have more than one of this kind per evening. Right now, most of the missions we have for our current player count are such missions. It would be great if we would have more "lite" missions that offer a shorter version of action packed experience.

Fuiba's missions are perfect in this sense, they are not frustrating long and every single moment of them is full with meaning. Maybe it has something to do with them being part of a campaign story but it also has a lot to do with the rather short ranges and the type of the objectives at hand which were composed in a way that made every mission memorable. All that together made the Versus campaign missions ideal to me.

(09-13-2014, 05:44 PM)alias link Wrote: [ -> ]As, i think, Varanon said at some point is about player's experience.

It was me who said that For me, the experience counts, not the kill count or the number of rounds I shot. In so far, I don't mind downtimes, especially when they come in between more action-y sequences. Juxtaposition, I suppose. Too much of either will either overload or bore you.

Problem is, or seems to be, that people have different ideas about what a good experience is. That's what I am trying to find out

I am fully aware that there must be a good mix of different missions. Which is one of the reasons I grew tired of Sander's missions, because they tend to have the same setup all around. I agree that a certain type of mission can only be played once on an evening, also because they tend to take long and hence you can't really fit enough of them into a mission.

Guess Varanon is right, time for the Arma 3 Snack Pack #1

Thanks you all for your input.

(09-14-2014, 12:09 AM)Alwarren link Wrote: [ -> ]Guess Varanon is right, time for the Arma 3 Snack Pack #1

Yay! I got fond memories of FHQ Arma 2 Snack Pack...