Comrades in Arms Discussion Board

Hey guys, see the message I received on the BI forums and my reply (scroll left to see all). I really feel bad for the guy and of course he's not the only one. He just had the courage to send a PM.
Mission makers invest so much time for us to have fun. We have over 1000 missions made by guys who ask nothing but feedback in return. It takes only a small effort to reply on a mission thread, we should all at least do that. Without these guys we wouldn't be here... and a 'thank you' is all that it takes to keep them making missions...
I will post directions to mission makers threads here on the forum, I hope it will help you guys find their threads and reply there.

Well, I can relate, and it is a general problem. My FHQ Remington pack has over 1000 downloads but hardly any feedback. I got a bit of feedback on the release thread, but hardly anything in terms of PM's. It can be quite discouraging.

At least there have been 1000 downloads, that's something that keeps me going.

I don't really think this is going to change substantially. IIRC, Leoptarn (the guy that made the Blender export plugin) quit the support for it since he got no feedback (well at least I did thank him for it )

Armaholic should have a "Like" button. Most people will not go through the effort of registering and rating an addon, but a "Like" button might help. Same for the BIS forum. I've seen this on some forums, that might make it easier for people or give them more incentive to express their gratitude.

~~ Alwarren

[size=1em]I agree on the sentiment but I think it's more a problem of the "big" ARMA community (centered around armaholic and BI forums) versus the smaller groups. The noise created in the former will always drown 90% of the missions and only the big or somewhat "special" stuff will get any response (e.g. Escape from Chernarus, Forgotten Few and obviously stuff like domination etc.).[/size]

[size=1em]The mission makers that are creating "standard" missions (and are not exclusively in-house) will always have a hard time getting any feedback. I think in that case it's important  to establish contact with one or two groups they'd expect to like their missions. This can work both ways obviously, by either a mission maker contacting the group or a member of the group giving the mission maker a ping and redirecting him to their forums and/or a dedicated feedback thread (without a dedicated feedback thread criticism can be encouraged through after action reports.)[/size]

I guess it's a general thing. Most people are not bothering giving feedback if the mission (or anything, really) don't generate really strong feelings (Either good or bad). So most, while maybe enjoying the mission, are not bothering to say so.

I just thought about spending one free morning on registering on armaholic and other sites, and sending thank yous to missions makers whose missions we have played. Then I realized, that I have absolutely no idea whose missions we are playing, we have played, and when we have played. Of course a "thank you for your awesome missions" is helpful. But I think I'll start to, at least every once in a while, take notes about the missions we play. Just write up the maker, mission name and some little things that come into my mind.


At least then the "thank you" should really have a meaning, and it might encourage the mission maker to try to make more and better missions.


And Variable, our spiritual and physical leader, if it's not a too big thing to do, you could ask everyone for their opinions on the missions in debriefing. And write even something down about the missions. And on spare time maybe send some notes to the mission makers.


Of course it would be better if everyone even once in a while tried writing something up so a single person wouldn't get all the work. But I guess the main thing is that the makers get the feedback.


And on my behalf, I'm sorry that I haven't been active on giving feedback and thanks to the people who deserve them. I'm not able to do anything for this particular matter in the near future, but I sure hope you guys will. and I will, sure as hell, make amends when I'm again back in business!

Everything that was said here is true and the analysis of the problem is correct. However, the aim here is not fix the community as a whole, just us. If we few will give feedback (not one person, but all or most of us, since numbers do count in this respect), this thread had achieved its goal.

(12-31-2012, 06:24 PM)Bubba link Wrote:I just thought about spending one free morning on registering on armaholic and other sites, and sending thank yous to missions makers whose missions we have played. Then I realized, that I have absolutely no idea whose missions we are playing, we have played, and when we have played. Of course a "thank you for your awesome missions" is helpful. But I think I'll start to, at least every once in a while, take notes about the missions we play. Just write up the maker, mission name and some little things that come into my mind.

CiA resources provide all the data you need in order to find the mission topic you search. First, we have the mission list, that we put a lot of effort to keep updated and helpful. It includes also the authors' names. Second of all, there's the CiA page on the SWEC statistics site that logs all the missions we play on the server. All you need to do is bookmark the page, and after a coop night look for the missions you liked on it. Then a Google search will do the rest (just remember to remove the underscores). And most importantly - I'm always available to help and can probably answer all of your questions regarding the origins of the missions on the server. Just find me online (I'm available 24/7) or PM me.

Yeah, there's situations where some mission makers, because they felt like that no one admire, acknowledge, or notice their work, they felt like they spent countless of hours doing nothing, but wasting their time. I find mission editing fun as well as playing, the finish result is rewarding, especially when you know someone will play and enjoy it. There's also other situations which is less common than the no feedback situation where people just give a mission maker the ",,/,," (some guy called me a shitty map maker back in starcraft 1 but then its my first few time so yeah it did suck, it was mainly for spawning stuff purposes but a nice learning experience). I heard Xeno, the creator of domination, completely stop working on domination completely because everyone was sending him hateful messages (now domination isn't the greatest experience ever, it was overpopulated pre-DayZ time and was the most popular thing because it was easier to setup for pubs than regular coop missions, but he was a great scripter and a very helpful guy who allow anyone to use pieces of his work if they please).

I asked one of my friend who use to make some zombie missions (because that's what he likes best) but never release them (he was still quite amateur that time, still some stuff he doesn't know), if he ever would be interested in making some more and his reply was he got 0 interest and what's the point of making them just to be appreciated by no one anyways.

As for me, unlike what normal people should do and start out small. I didn't intend on editing missions yet after failing multiple times on hammer sdk for alien swarm (approximate how long it would take me to complete what I wanted... another 0.5 - 1 years for one level at my knowledge) and left 4 dead (screwed up the pathfinding for AIs). I got fed up with domination so I found generalcarver's group to play with. They played coop missions that he make, not domination, but arcady with revive. My first time playing ARMA ever, so I was pretty bad, plus used only an xbox controller and keyboard because I had no trackball and I don't use a mouse because it would make my wrist worse than it already is. So, he kicked me off the next time I wanted to play without a reason why, I prefer someone told me straight up why I'm off. I started making mission after that. I always view that modding scene and editing scene are the heart and soul of keeping a game alive and lively. The editor didn't seem so bad. Of course the first time making a mission, I had to bug fix over and over and over. Throwing stuff down the editor is the easy part, the scripting is more of the hard part (until you get use to it and got yourself a template to reuse). I tend to play with revive before 1.60 because whoever I play with tend to complain about AI warps and cheap shots and then it usually consist of playing with a guy who rambos too much, a whiny kid who cry everytime he dies, and then a few guys who are decent so revive seems like the only way to have less ragequitting for me . I did play no revive/respawn missions before with some people, but it was only me and some other guy and someone have to lead a bunch of AIs which wasn't too great. I kind of wanted to put terrorist hunt from rainbow six in ARMA because I like that gamemode back on Rainbow Six. I did got a few feedback, but the way I made it, it wasn't too great. The optional respawn trick gets abused easily with people rejoining, and the extra parameters, I put a bit too much option that it got arcadey so that didn't work out too well in the end.

After haven't playing with my other old group for a while (who plays domination in a small group constantly <it gets repetitive with too much walking here and there>) because they died off and after all the AI fixes from patch 1.60, I felt like playing regular old school coop missions again. It was fun last time I played with one friend besides the micromanage the AI and when I played with a few guys on the demo, so I see you guys still play that. Of course I'll get feedback on regular old school coop mission with no respawn revive stuff seeing that the interest lies within CiA and I did like sander's missions and the way he made them pretty much bug free. One feedback to me is good enough to keep going, I rather have feedback on the missions to know what needs to be fix and how to make things better so seeing and knowing that you guys have interest in these missions, I decided to make the mission pack that I did. I did depbo some of sander's mission to see how he made them because I remember having JIP issues with briefings back then. Instead of making the task for just the players (because that causes JIP issues which was probably some of the issues I notice in was it Kildar's?) I named it and assign task to each individual player unit (didn't use taskmaster because I tried it but didn't really know how).

Well, eventually I will stop making missions for a bit as I'll get busy with real life stuff and my awkward schedules at time. I hope there's enough guys who feel encourage enough to make some standard coop no revive/respawn missions by ARMA 3 instead of just all focusing on large scale respawning mission within a mission kind of mission.

Great post, Variable - thanks for putting it up. It's good to get this perspective. I'll do my part, going forward.

For those mission makers who read through this thread, thank you.

And, while I'm at it, to any Germans who happen past: Thanks for Ritter Sport bars, those blocks of chocolate-grid happiness! (holidays, ended up with a few. . . )

(01-03-2013, 05:35 PM)Anguis Viridis link Wrote:And, while I'm at it, to any Germans who happen past: Thanks for Ritter Sport bars, those blocks of chocolate-grid happiness! (holidays, ended up with a few. . . )

You're welcome

Ritter Sport and Heckler&Koch guns... German inventions

You got to do what you love to do, no matter what audience or critics say. Being a musician sometimes the only feedback I got is a guitar feedback and it can even sound bad.

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.ph...n-missions

I think Wiki's response on why he quit mission making can reflect on this.

Yeah, it's really sad that people do not seem to want to comment on missions, even if they didn't like them. And worst of all, I am guilty of it as well

By the way, where do you guys comment on the missions? Bohemia forums? Armaholic?

Wherever the author released it. If he published it in more than one source then I use this hierarchy:
1. CiA forums
2. BI forums
3. Armaholic forums
4. Armaholic mission page
5. Steam workshop mission page

Maybe posting the BI or other link for each mission in the Debriefing thread would be the best way to encourage feedback, as a fair few people read and contribute to that, so if they could just click on a link I think that would result in more feedback being given.

I know it seems terribly lazy if people can't be bothered to check the played mission list, then google the mission name and find the thread themselves to post feedback, especially considering the amount of work that goes into making a mission but people just get busy/tired or get distracted with other stuff and forget, so the easier we can make it to post feedback the more likely that people will do so.

I was wondering whether it would be a good idea to put the mission link in the Missions list (column J) so that it's easy to find for this purpose and for future reference as well? I don't mean for all the existing missions, as that would be a stupid amount of work but when adding new missions, if whoever's doing so has the link handy then it would be easy to do.

I noticed Steam has a thumbs up button to rate a mission, which I hope authors can see the results from as this will allow people who can't think of anything to say to at least click that to show their appreciation.