(Review Completed) [SP] Steal Qilin

[nightjay99]

Author: nightjay


Version:
1.0

Required Addons:
None

Mission Description:
FIA have acquired a Qilin from CSAT and is guarding it with highly classified intel, steal the qilin and bring it to the hideout

Features:
-Random spawn points of the car
-Quick fun

Known Bugs: None

ChangeLog:
N/A

Steam Workshop Download:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2365621084

Feedback:
Please review this mission and let me know your feedback positive or negative and improvements (changes or anything that could be added)

Thank you Enjoy

[Gruntage]

Been a long time since I reviewed a mission  . As I had some free time I decided to load the mission up tonight and have a play through it.

I wasn't sure how much detail you wanted in terms of feedback. This is a difficult mission to review because whilst the mission doesn't have a lot of substance, it does exactly what it says on the tin; it provides quick fun and has a reasonable amount of replayability. It's certainly not a complex mission but it doesn't really need to be.

Having said that, there are plenty of improvements you can make. I will list some of them here but ultimately it's up to you whether you want to implement them. I'll say straight up that you have a mission that is indeed bug free, and therefore I can proceed with the onsite review if you want. But I'd be remiss as a reviewer if I didn't at least put forward some ideas for improvement.

Before I go into that however, let's do this in the traditional format.

Overview

Decent overview; does its job. Room for improvement? Sure. The image could be made more enticing; more action-packed for instance. It's good that the image relates to the mission but you needn't stop there. If it were me, I would try and get a shot with me speeding away with the Qilin with perhaps one or two guys shooting at me. I'd bust out the ol' photoshop and make it more movie-like.

Intro

None. I do believe that no matter how simple a mission is, there is always room for some sort of introduction cinematic. One idea that immediately springs to mind is perhaps showing how the FIA acquired the Qilin in the first place. Maybe showing how we've come to learn of the Qilin's whereabouts. These things work wonders in elevating a mission's quality and indeed, the quality of the story being told. Like I said earlier, it's up to you whether you wish to add any cinematics. Just would be nice to see.

Briefing

In a word, brief  . In more words, it's an unremarkable brief that does concisely explain the point of the mission. It is essentially parroting what the overview says unfortunately. Also like the overview, there is room for improvement. I understand that this is a simple mission, but I still think that there should be some progress made towards immersion. What does this mean? Well, basically answering questions that the player may have; such as 'why is the Qilin so important?','Why is this intel so important?', etc. I believe that a brief should be...brief, but I think maybe this brief could do with having more substance.

Mission

So now we get to the mission at hand. Like I said at the beginning, this mission is designed to provide quick fun for the player, and that is what I got. I hadn't played Arma in a while so this felt good to play.

I pretty much went for a stealth approach up until I got shot in the face by a static MG  . That's why you should check those corners kids  . I wasn't sure if there would be any repercussions for eliminating enemies; maybe an alarm would go off and reinforcements would arrive. Or perhaps the enemy troops would rush to protect the Qilin. Once I learned that this wasn't the case I was able to clean up the town pretty quickly.

In fact, now would be a good time to mention some areas for improvement. The town didn't seem very well defended despite the value of the Qilin. I think it would be good to increase the enemy presence. Maybe have the odd vehicle passing through. What we're lacking right now is threat. The threat the enemy pose to the player right now is pretty minimal. Realistically the enemy would be going crazy if their prize Qilin was under threat of being stolen.

I'm not saying that this mission should be a stealth mission - though having one guy going solo would seem to suggest this - but there should be some punishment (or challenge?) for being noticed and/or going in all guns blazing.

In summary, the town is basically a bit too sparse and could do with a lot more. Maybe give the player the option of doing the mission at night? Maybe put some enemies in buildings? Instead of putting guys in the static MGs at the start, have some guys man the MGs when the player is detected; at the moment the gunners are just standing there looking a bit bored. Maybe put some form of alarm system in place? Have some reinforcements arrive to help protect the Qilin should the alarm be raised.

I understand though that these things were not present in the original OFP mission, but does that mean that these things don't have a place? Would you not still have quick fun if these things were in place? Just some food for thought.

Outro

None. I will admit here that perhaps an outro is maybe unnecessary, or at least not as important as an intro.

Summary

I bet this is a lot more than you'd expect from a mission of this size  . I apologise if this is overly critical. Like I said, there are improvements that could be made and I felt that I should put them forward at least. There aren't any issues that would stop the mission from working as far as I can tell, so we can proceed with the review if you like. Let me know what you'd like to do. It would be great to see this mission develop into something more, but I do understand if you'd prefer to keep this mission close to the original OFP version.

Thanks,
Gruntage

[nightjay99]

Great feedback, the more critical the better! I will add some more substance to the mission itself, but I probably wont add an intro as my cinematic skills are horrible and don't have a lot of time to do it.

But let's keep this in beta and I'll probably update it a few times to make it a bit more challenging as I agree it is a bit to easy, except for maybe that MG that got you. I'll take your points into consideration while making a version 2 of this. I'm probably going to add more randomization to make it harder. Because that way you wont always remember where they are.

ya this mission is a bit easier than the original steal the car mission in OFP back in 2001. But none the less still has the same vibe.

I'll start working on updated version this weekend and have it ready soon and i'll try make the town more lively.

Updated Note: 1/8/2022: You think the MG was in a good spot, you're going to hate me with this new update  Post new version soon still working on it.

Updated version 2.0: Check it out guys let me know if it got more difficult.

[Gruntage]

Alright so I've had another look at this one, and I straight away notice the increase in difficulty. I have to admit I stopped playing after 30 minutes because holy cow it's hard now. I think we've gone from one extreme to the other  .

Before I go any further on that, I'll address the other things that have changed and give feedback on those.

Overview

I don't think anything has changed here. Still a decent overview though.

Briefing

Good to see some more substance added here. Overkill is certainly avoided. Perhaps more links to markers would be a nice addition.

Mission

Alright so let's talk about the positive stuff right off the bat. The village is definitely a lot more alive than before and is more believable. The wildlife was a nice touch. I was surprised to see the dead sniper in front of me and I certainly made use of his sniper scope  .

Now, as I said I only played the mission for about half an hour before stopping and I wasn't able to complete it. Not because a bug stopped me but because of the shear amount of punishment I was receiving by playing. Balancing is a very difficult part of mission making because it can mean the difference between too easy and too hard. A good rule of thumb is to go for what makes sense narratively. For example, does it make sense for the village to have as many guards as it currently does? At the moment, I would say yes to some extent.

However, does it make sense to have a sharpshooter lying prone outside and behind the starting house with his sights trained on the street? Honestly, I'd be inclined to say no. It feels like he knows im in that building and he was waiting for me to leave. What I'm trying to get across here is that difficulty for its own sake is not really the way to go.

You can have a hard mission but unit placement and the amount of units needs to be logical. I did like the addition of the machine guns at the entrance the town, and it makes sense to have these. I do question though, how did the player manage to get into the starting house without the dude inside spotting him? And why would the player choose to hide in that house strategically? What is it about that particular house that made the player want to go inside? The player is essentially cornering himself. Personally, I would put the player outside the village and let him decide where to infiltrate. At the moment the decision on where to infiltrate is made already, and it doesn't leave many options. You might think I'm overthinking all of this but I'm very much a perfectionist when it comes to mission making (it's why I haven't released anything in 10 years  ). Literally, I question everything and how it relates to the story being told.

To sum up, I'm glad that the challenge has increased, but right now it feels very punishing and the fun factor (for me at least) ebbed away very quickly. It feels like the difficulty has been increased arbitrarily, like units are in annoying places just because they are, it doesn't seem like there's a reason for it. It's like playing coop online but you're the only one taking a village  . It doesn't help that the AI have incredible accuracy and their awareness is so good that they can see you through walls...or at least that's how it feels.

Sorry for my little rant here. Balancing is tough, there's no denying that. Sometimes it's not the removal of units that fixes balancing issues but where they are placed. I think you have to go from one extreme to the other in order to find the middle ground. I daresay some people will play this mission and say that I'm full of sh*t and that I need to 'get gud'. That's fair enough; I'm only offering my personal take.

Hope this is useful 

Gruntage

Additional:

I wonder whether it would be better for the mission to take place either at dawn or at night. It seemed a little strange to be conducting what is essentially a stealth mission in broad daylight. Makes you wonder how the player was able to bypass the machineguns 

[nightjay99]

Thanks for the feedback again.  I decided to keep the player in the same spot and reduced the difficulty. As the snipers were a bit ridiculous    

Changelog:
-Reduced car spawn points to 3 (Should i add more?)
-Reduced snipers to 1 (unknown location in town) 
-Reduced infantry (should i add more?)
-Added diaries
-changed time to early morning
-Added CSAT reinforcements from nearby base if detected, they take a few minutes to get there so you have plenty of time to leave with the car unless you want to take them on.

Future changes
I may change the image and may add more if we think it's good idea depending on which part of mission.

Let me know what you think is it balanced now, to easy, needs more difficult?

p.s. also try raising the alarm, so you can test out the reinforcements, dont forget about the ammo cache at the start of mission so you have AT.

[RichUK]

Hi Nightjay and Gruntage 

Well done for submitting an ArmA3 mission Nightjay and to you Gruntage for your feedback 

I will try and look at it myself in the next couple of days.  You might like to look at my one here if you have time:

https://www.ofpec.com/forum/index.php?topic=46712.msg262539#msg262539

I would be interested in any feedback...

Thanks RichUK

[Gruntage]

So I've played through this a couple of more times and so I can give some more feedback.

Briefing

Nice to see some new additions to the briefing. It does a decent job of setting the scene.

Mission

So my experience this time around is much more positive. I'll say right away that I think the balancing is more or less spot on. I had two playthroughs of this; the first one was over pretty quickly because the Qilin was in the first place I looked: the western side of the village. I wasn't able to get a complete view of the mission during this playthrough so I went again for a more thorough look.

The second playthrough was much more interesting as I was able to see the reinforcements come in. I must say, you really don't want those reinforcements coming in  . I imagine some daredevils out there will want to take them on. I think the challenge is good and I think they can be left as they are. But, I didn't want to go up against the reinforcements so I loaded an earlier save and approached the north-east side of the village. I came across a patrol pair and I was able to pop them both very quickly before the alarm could be raised. I spotted the Qilin not far from them. Because on an earlier save I knew where the sniper was, I knew I'd have to drive the Qilin in full view of his window...but I was able to get a cheeky shot from a few hundred metres and took him out in one. After that I grabbed the Qilin and raced out of town.

There are a couple of points I should mention though. The first is the inconsistency of the alarm being raised. I noticed a few times that the enemy would fire a few rounds at me and yet the alarm wouldn't go off. Realistically, if any shots were fired in that village the alarm would be raised immediately. This is easily fixed though by putting 'FIRED' eventhandlers in every enemy soldier. This does of course mean that the player has to make sure he nails his shots in order to stop the alarm going off.

It's also worth putting in a 'FIRED' eventhandler in the player's init too, to check to see if the player is using a silenced weapon or not, and have the alarm be raised if he isn't. The would make sure that the player can't go throwing grenades and the alarm not go off. This adds to the realism of the mission and raises the stakes.

One other minor thing was at the start of the mission the radio message should come from West HQ, and not the player.

In answer to your concerns regarding the number of vehicle spawns, I honestly think that 3 is enough. I don't think you need to add anymore or remove anymore troops from the village. I'm not sure if they're of random amounts though, and I was only seeing a few of them.

Atmosphere-wise I think the mission is great - it has a mountain-village feel to it. As I said, the wildlife is a nice addition and the changing of the time to dawn works well.

Overall

In summary I think the mission is pretty good for its size and objective. It's quick, it's challenging and fun. It's a nice callback to some of the SP missions in the OFP menu. There aren't any bugs as far as I can see. I still think it would be nice to have an intro of sorts to complete the package. I'd also like to see a better and more enticing image for the overview, and I wonder if it would be beneficial to have an image of the Qilin in the briefing too, just so the player knows for sure what he's looking for.

If you like, we can review this one, but maybe you'd like to get some other perspectives before we do.

Overall, good work!


Thanks,
Gruntage

[nightjay99]

I think it should be ready now Gruntage. If you want to give it a quick playthrough again , it's ready for final review and posting to the mission depot, that's about as good as I'm going to get it, as I don't have a ton of time to do too much work on it.

Everything is pretty much the same, tweaked a few things but that's about it...Changed the image but I'm not a great photographer or cinematic lol, so you'll have to deal with my visual design flaws. 

I can make pretty good mission but super advanced stuff I'm lost.

Note: The editor is not easy to debug things in as you have to always manual test everything and even a small mission like this can take hours to debug and make sure it runs smooth, again which is why I don't have much time to make big mission only small ones.

But hopefully it turned out good. So again it's ready for final review and posting to mission depot on this site.

Note: Takes about 5mins to play if you're not detected up to 15min if you're detected.

Thanks again 

[Gruntage]

No worries I'll get to the review this weekend  .

You're right about the editor; I do find that any project I undertake has to be 'stress-tested' to make sure every element works consistently. Doesn't exactly motivate oneself to commit to a project.

I'll play through the mission again as part of the review process and I'll report back should I find anything gamebreaking  .

Thanks,
Gruntage

[nightjay99]

Ok sounds good, take your time, ya it should be good, as said it's about as good as it gets for this exact mission, anything else added if anything would be bling 

I think my steal the car mission is better than the OFP steal the car mission haha 

[Gruntage]

This mission has been reviewed and is now available from the Missions Depot

[NightJay0044]

thank you Gruntage, awesome job , prepare for more of my missions.