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+--- Thread: Pet Peeves (/showthread.php?tid=3288)
Pet Peeves - Watchmen - 02-05-2016
So what are your personal pet peeves when it comes to mission design and editing? What particular things do you find annoying or just simply don't like to be in a coop mission. It could be anything, a line of code, a design choice, specific assets or faction, weather, etc...
This is not a discussion thread or anything to be taken seriously, just a place to share thoughts and opinions with others.
A few of my own:
Excessively long briefings about made up lore - I understand if an author's artistic style involves long winded plots to make the mission seem deep with narrative and compelling, but it is often arduous to go through paragraphs and paragraphs of story that have no relevance to the mission or the gameplay. What the focus should be on is the objectives and the details necessary to form an effective strategy
Uncreative transportation options - Too often I think mission authors would just plop a few empty hunters and point you to an objective a few clicks away with nothing inbetween. It is uncreative and does not take advantage of the potential of creating an experience of transitioning to the objective. There are so many other vehicles to choose from unarmed and armed and on top of that entities to place that add events to the experience. Give the players a gmg mrap with a truck and add patrolling enemies so the order of the convoy becomes important, add a mine clearing vehicle/ IED specialist and put some mines on the road, force guerrilas to use quad bikes and to take a detour through mountains to avoid around "hot" roads
Lack of UGV in missions - This is such a cool thing to use especially in conjunction with an infantry team. A team of 8 riflemen escorted by 2 UGV's could handle multiple light vehicle threats.
Using rain/fog/sunset just for the sake of using it - This is something that I find is especially prevalent on the steam workshop rather than the BI forums. Adding fog, rain and lowering the sun for no reason just makes it harder for players to see/hear and adds nothing to the mission experience. In fact it will turn off some players and give them an even more negative impression of your mission because they find weather effects annoying. This will obscure the meticulous design and details you put in your mission from being noticed
Re: Pet Peeves - Alwarren - 02-05-2016
(02-05-2016, 07:55 PM)Watchmen link Wrote: Excessively long briefings about made up lore - I understand if an author's artistic style involves long winded plots to make the mission seem deep with narrative and compelling, but it is often arduous to go through paragraphs and paragraphs of story that have no relevance to the mission or the gameplay. What the focus should be on is the objectives and the details necessary to form an effective strategy
That is a rather broad statement. The point is that it should be easy to extract the required information, specifically during the mission if you need the reference, but a long briefing is something you can skip if you don't want to read it. Personally, I prefer that over "attack enemy base".
Quote:Using rain/fog/sunset just for the sake of using it - This is something that I find is especially prevalent on the steam workshop rather than the BI forums. Adding fog, rain and lowering the sun for no reason just makes it harder for players to see/hear and adds nothing to the mission experience. In fact it will turn off some players and give them an even more negative impression of your mission because they find weather effects annoying. This will obscure the meticulous design and details you put in your mission from being noticed
How exactly do you define "just for the sake of using it"? Every parameter of the mission is a deliberate choice. I have a number of missions that have strong fog and/or rain, and I usually choose early morning as a setting, or early evening. How that is in any way a problem is seriously beyond me. It's a mood setter, just like having the mission take place at night, or on a flawless sunny day.
Well anyway, my pet peeves are
- Infantry grunts performing special positions. Yes, in Arma most people can jump into a helicopter and take off, but I simply cringe at it when it is expected from you in a mission. If I want players to steal a chopper, I will put a pilot in and if he dies, the mission is over. I HATE it with all-caps when such a specialized role like a helicopter pilot should be filled by a grunt.
- Constant intensity of action. If a mission is just a single firefight and nothing else, then it better be very short, or something is wrong. I mean, it is very well possible to have a mission were you are constantly engaged (one of my all-time favorite is such a mission) but there needs to be ups and down, periods of relative calm, otherwise the non-stop action drowns out all excitement and emotion. That is my major gripe with almost all modern FPS's like Call of Doody.
- Enemy Overspawn. Some missions pit a small group of players against a gazillion of enemies, without any form of support, and expect that to work. And even if it DOES work, it feels completely over the top.
Re: Pet Peeves - Watchmen - 02-05-2016
Please keep discussion away, I understand that you disagree with my opinions, regardless of how reasonable or not they are. I will refrain from replying because I don't want to promote discussion.
Re: Pet Peeves - Alwarren - 02-05-2016
(02-05-2016, 08:42 PM)Watchmen link Wrote: Please keep discussion away, I understand that you disagree with my opinions, regardless of how reasonable or not they are. I will refrain from replying because I don't want to promote discussion.
Maybe you should consider that you are a guest here, before you start telling ME what I can and cannot do on MY clan's forum.
Re: Pet Peeves - Watchmen - 02-05-2016
(02-05-2016, 09:10 PM)Alwarren link Wrote: Maybe you should consider that you are a guest here, before you start telling ME what I can and cannot do on MY clan's forum.Regardless of whether I am a member or not, don't you think we should hold ourselves to the same standards we hold others and not proverbially show our fists when we are in the wrong.
Use this thread ONLY to read the content of the first post and reply to confirm you have read and understood it. If you have any question use the [color=rgb(46, 66, 125)]dedicated discussion thread[/color].
Re: Pet Peeves - Alwarren - 02-05-2016
Taken to PM