I've already thought about this a couple of times, in my opinion mission makers are the guys that give our addons life, it makes no sense for an addon maker to be making addons all over the place and that not being able to make good missions and play with them.
Because of that and for some months, I've been reading some tutorials, and I've been checking how you guys do it and I've also been making a lot of questions in the forum and to my mission makers friends to try and learn something.
So far I've been able to make 4 missions with some quality, can't say it's an Anmac, Toadlife,Archangel ... mission because it ain't, but they have some fair quality probably a 6 or 7 maximun for an ofpec reviewer.
I would like to put them here for people to test and help me, but the amount of addons I use just makes it unberable, since I'm an addon maker, for me using addons is a must in all of them, it's nice to be able to make missions and use my own work in them.
Now back to topic, I think you guys are totally right, we miss some nice missions, we have Anmac,Tomb,Toaldlife,Sui,Archangel,Icarus and some more kicking A** but we need more, I've been downloading some missions and I've seen a lot of crap lately, people should be more carefull with their work, the realism factor, the joy of playing the mission, the history, the events all of those should be carefully thought, it's already the third or fourth time that I try a mission that runs like this:
You must kill an enemy officer, ok, you start the mission, you run almost 700 miles finnaly you get to the perimeter no action so far, you killl three enemy soldiers, you enter the perimeter you shoot the officer and the mission is over, cool Great Mission ;D
Now that I've learned the basic for making missions I realise that it takes at least 10 days to make something with quality and this 10 days can easily be turned into 3 or 4 weeks, if you intend to make custom sounds,random events, a nice cutsene, a mission with a lot of surprises that even surprises you when playing it for the 100th time ;D
The amount of units doesn't mean a nice change of fire
and a lot of action, it's a lot better to be walking and all of the suddent see an enemy unit in a high position spotting you and calling for help while some more attack you from an undefended flank or walking on a road, and get an enemy tank in front of you who was hidding behind some trees...
It takes a little bit of imagination and a good organised plan to make a good mission, than the more you know about editing the better, sometimes I find myself in a situation like "It would be nice to make this here, but how am I gonna make this?",ok there I go read and ask ;D
Normally I wright in a paper my idea for the mission, the events that will happen, the best spots of engagement, normally before starting I put myself in the field and I start marking the best places for events, the best places to hide soldiers or vehicles, I start studying the field, always try to give a nice photograpy behind where things hapen, when the player as to walk more than usual instead of making it boring, I make some nice events like a radio call, an enemy helicopter flying around and everybody needing to hide... that sort of things...
I think some missions need more imagination and more work , not that thing today I will make a mission, more like today I'm gonna start a project...
just my two cents