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Enjoyed this mission a lot. Not very shooty but atmospheric
Yeah, was a fun and pretty unique op. First time as SL in an age, hope I did decent enough.
Overall enjoyable, the atmosphere of the mission was great and I can tell you put a ton of effort into the set dressing, which absolutely works, but some feedback on storytelling and general mission design:
- Take more care in preparing the assets available for a mission. Having the only transport be a helicopter with only 16 seats when you know our average playercounts exceed this is sloppy and it wastes everyones time and shatters immersion seeing a chinook be conjured. Who’s the real cultists here?
- USE LOCAL SCRIPTS FOR LOCAL ACTIONS. "You searched the body"? Did I? What body? I’m out standing in a field watching for hostiles, again it shatters immersion having random hints pop up about actions other players are taking.
- Narratives and conversations in ArmA missions don’t really work. Having some adventure game esque investigations doesn’t work for platoon sized gameplay, as you end up with 2 or 3 guys searching a house whilst everyone else stands around doing nothing. Info gathered doesn’t filter down to your squad grunts either, I still don’t know what was actually discovered and what the locals told us, as I was out standing in a field watching for hostiles whilst the plot was happening.
- This one is more personal, but I don’t really enjoy music during actual action (intros are fine to set the tone) because I play ArmA for the gameplay, not the narrative. The tension you feel playing ArmA is because of the gameplay implications of what is going on, not because the music tells you it’s tense. Again it comes back to attempting to craft a narrative which is a flawed goal because ArmA jank and multiplayer will combine to ruin things, in this case my eardrums were blown out by heavy metal which informed me we were about to get attacked before I heard or saw any enemies, which also I watched spawn in front of my very eyes.
- In regards to the above two points, atmosphere is something you CAN craft very well during a mission, which you did do.
Something which is causing me to lose interest in ops as of late is the shift in focus I’m noticing in missions from gameplay to storytelling and setpieces. Obviously campaigns cam have some framing or plot, and special events like Christmas or Halloween are the exceptions to all the points above but generally it’s not why I play ArmA, which is the dynamic tactical gameplay. I try to design missions to be an open-ended puzzle with a few balanced tools at your disposal to be utilised in dismantling your opponent. Missions as of late feel very linear and like you’re just executing a plan the mission designer has set out for you.
I am going to look into local scripts. I might need to alter them a bit but this is my first big local project that involves heavy scripting and map editing. Not promising I can do them but I can atleast alter the message to reflect that someone found it.
In regards to your third point. I would love it if information is trickled down to every member. If you don’t know what is going on, ask your lead.
There will be much more music and custom textures and stuff and yes the campaign is different then other missions. I do agree. I love the basic missions where you get throw in the deep with just a "destroy this base" and you get to fill in how you do it. This campaign is not made for that though but I promise my next ones are.
I also think this relates to having generally more campaigns then we had even 6 months ago. 1 campaign every month might be a bit too much.
But this is something that we can bring up in the monthly meeting or post it on the brainstorming.
You could also say that tuesdays are available for campaigns, while fridays are not, for example.