Do away with 'Mission Success'

[epokha]

Can we stop using a simple trigger to toggle whether you have passed the mission or not?

 

Its unrealistic and annoying!

 

I'm sick of running out of weapons with one vehicle or aircraft thats bugged out remaining, RTB and then having to replay the mission again (which can take upto an hour or more).

 

It breaks the immersion when you are taking part in a massive campaign and then everything stops just for you so you can travel back in time to replay the mission.

 

I understand with some campaigns they are very story focused so you might not be able to do that. But in campaigns where you take part in a massive action like Cold War Warrior or Oil War as long as you hit some of your objectives (I don't care if instant mission success) and get to base alive it should keep going.

 

Sure if you miss most of everything you could be warned then eventually you fail the campaign that is fine - there's your motivation for getting your objectives completed. I guess without having a proper mission debriefing you can't do that? There is another wish of mine, an actual debriefing! If you had a proper debriefing even with out a totally dynamic campaign it would make a world of difference.

 

At the very least can we have a skip to next mission button? Then if we encounter a broken mission we can skip it.

 

Thank you for an awesome sim.

[winz]

Cold War Warrior only requires that you overfly your two "attack" waypoints. You don't have to destroy anything. :)

 

But now to the topic. I agree with you that this can be a huge immersion breaker, especially when some campaign missions task you with destroying unreasonable amount of enemies (I'm looking at you A-10Cs Push campaign) and failing to destroy that last one tank results in mission failure, forcing you to replay the same mission. And is especially irritating when the whole campaign is basically the same template repeated, with increasing amount of enemies and AA systems (once again A-10C Push campaign). This is where the lack of dynamic campaign is felt the most, because in ideal circumstances a dynamic campaign engine would look at what you acheived in your previous mission and create the next generic mission.

 

Some campaigns are working around this problem by offering more missions for campaign stage (A-10A Valley, Oil War), so when even when you fail (or draw, to be more precise) you don't fly the same mission again (but if you fail too many times, or are unlucky with the rng...). Or allowing the campaign to move backwards (Oil War), so the battle can end in a failure, draw, or win. But it is still too much 'black or white' especially when the result depends on your performance, not the preformance of your side (but on the other side, this approach makes mission design a lot harder).

 

But in more variate campaigns (like BS 1/2 Deplyoment or Su-25 : Revanche), where each mission has it's own, distinguish, setting and feeling there has to be a (reasonable) objective you have to acheive before you are allowed to move to the next mission. And such campaign should never, ever, progress backwards.

[Exorcet]

It's a result of how the campaigns are set up I guess. I agree with the mission failure/success. I think it should be you proceed to the next mission no matter what

 

You can edit missions though, so if you wanted you could simply put an auto success trigger at the start of each mission. You could also just use the add radio item to create you're skip mission button. Add a radio item that sets a flag that generates enough points for mission success.

[Weta43]

Can we stop using a simple trigger to toggle whether you have passed the mission or not?

 

Its unrealistic and annoying!

 

I'm sick of running out of weapons with one vehicle or aircraft thats bugged out remaining, RTB and then having to replay the mission again (which can take upto an hour or more).

 

It breaks the immersion when you are taking part in a massive campaign and then everything stops just for you so you can travel back in time to replay the mission.

 

I understand with some campaigns they are very story focused so you might not be able to do that. But in campaigns where you take part in a massive action like Cold War Warrior or Oil War as long as you hit some of your objectives (I don't care if instant mission success) and get to base alive it should keep going.

 

Sure if you miss most of everything you could be warned then eventually you fail the campaign that is fine - there's your motivation for getting your objectives completed. I guess without having a proper mission debriefing you can't do that? There is another wish of mine, an actual debriefing! If you had a proper debriefing even with out a totally dynamic campaign it would make a world of difference.

 

At the very least can we have a skip to next mission button? Then if we encounter a broken mission we can skip it.

 

Thank you for an awesome sim.

 

As you will have taken from the two posts after yours, what counts as 'success' in any mission is entirely at the discretion of the designer*, rather than a technical limitation of DCSW. Maybe you'd be better trying to convince the designers on the Mission and Campaign sub-forum : http://forums.eagle.ru/forumdisplay.php?f=165

 

* the designer can set any condition for success - particular objects 'dead', waypoints overflown, still alive when exiting the game, purely random chance - player was sensible enough to never leave the runway in the face of insurmountable odds - anything they want...)

[epokha]

As you will have taken from the two posts after yours, what counts as 'success' in any mission is entirely at the discretion of the designer*, rather than a technical limitation of DCSW. Maybe you'd be better trying to convince the designers on the Mission and Campaign sub-forum : http://forums.eagle.ru/forumdisplay.php?f=165

 

* the designer can set any condition for success - particular objects 'dead', waypoints overflown, still alive when exiting the game, purely random chance - player was sensible enough to never leave the runway in the face of insurmountable odds - anything they want...)

 

A appreciate mission designers can do what they want to do. But not having instant mission success (IL2 had it) or no 'skip to next mission' is plainly a limitation of DCS:World itself especially when so often something is broken in the mission.

[epokha]

Well thats the 4th time I've play the first mission in SU-25A Cold War Warrior (not to mention all the times I've played it months and years before). Always run out of weapons. I've overflown the waypoints, nothing. My wingman is useless, I can't get him to attack the convoy more than once before he goes off and does something stupid. 'Mission and rejoin' does nothing, I can't get him to attack individual targets. There is a four ship SU-25A flight attacking one artillery position, yet only 2 are assigned to attack the convoy?

 

How can I take out 10+ leopard 2s plus all the other vehicles in the convoy by myself?

 

This is the problem. If you recorded how many times people have played missions 75% of the time it would be the same missions, over and over again. In the end you lose interest and play another campaign, only to have the same thing happen again. If you can't pass the first mission in the campaign, how many missions does the SU-25A come with? 3?

 

Being able to skip the missions would fix this frustration. DCS is great, but its not good enough to make up for playing the same mission over and over again, where is the fun in that?

[epokha]

This thread should still be in DCS: Wishlist because the problem is not having the 'skip to next mission' button.

 

I don't presume to get to the next mission, even when you do everything right you cant take for granted you get to the next mission, there is always something that goes wrong.

 

Thats a problem with DCS: World itself not simply just how the missions are made.

[Grimes]

A appreciate mission designers can do what they want to do. But not having instant mission success (IL2 had it) or no 'skip to next mission' is plainly a limitation of DCS:World itself especially when so often something is broken in the mission.

 

What exactly was "Instant Mission Success"? I've hardly played IL2. My best guess was that it was a key combo that won a mission? Such ideas are not impossible in DCS. While playing the Huey campaign when it was still in beta, there were a few odd AI issues halting my progress. I went into the mission file and fixed issues if I could easily, and I also went into my logbook file and gave myself a victory to advance forward if some other issue was present. I've also just played campaign missions outside the campaign environment for the hell of it a few times. I tend to agree that the campaign system can be quite annoying. In truth I've only really completed the Huey campaign, but have played through most of Deployment and Operation Mededevedevedeve for the Ka-50, and I plan on playing the Mi-8 campaign once the aircraft is out of beta. Its just something about helicopter campaigns makes em more enjoyable to me...

 

The issue overall is a bit one of game design. Each campaign is a little different as are the victory rules depending on campaigns needs. The only automatic indication that a mission is a success is to view the score in game, but that is heavily dependent on however the score rules are setup in the mission. Some people use triggers and simply award the score if flag is true, others rely more heavily on the mission goals to be setup like triggers. Before I got into scripting I used mission goals as a poor man's math counter and it worked quite well. Because mission goals are so customizatable and the feedback of success is simply a numeric value the clarity of what your objective is and how points are awarded suffers. In truth it might not be the best option to outright tell people what they have to do. Literally the triggers for the first mission of Cold War Warrior are setup so that

all you have to do is take off from Sochi, get just outside a 1.6km zone centered at the airbase, and land. Don't need to kill anything, or fly to the target or anything. But that isn't any fun. 50 points for take off, 25 for landing. You also get 25 points for flying to the target area and then leaving the FLOT zone. All that is needed to advance to the next stage is 51 points.

So I suppose the intent of it is to allow the player some wiggle room if they fail to destroy the target. Outright showing the exact requirements kind of defeats the purpose of playing through a campaign.

 

I'd personally love to see some sort of control over GUI elements to be used specifically to update the player on what is going on with a mission objective. Its as much a problem in MP as it is one in SP, let alone campaign missions where the score actually matters. Such an idea would create more of a workload on a mission builder to set all that up correctly, but its something I greatly prefer over a number between 0 and 100 and having to open up the mission file to figure out how that number is assigned.

[epokha]

What exactly was "Instant Mission Success"? I've hardly played IL2. My best guess was that it was a key combo that won a mission? Such ideas are not impossible in DCS. While playing the Huey campaign when it was still in beta, there were a few odd AI issues halting my progress. I went into the mission file and fixed issues if I could easily, and I also went into my logbook file and gave myself a victory to advance forward if some other issue was present. I've also just played campaign missions outside the campaign environment for the hell of it a few times. I tend to agree that the campaign system can be quite annoying. In truth I've only really completed the Huey campaign, but have played through most of Deployment and Operation Mededevedevedeve for the Ka-50, and I plan on playing the Mi-8 campaign once the aircraft is out of beta. Its just something about helicopter campaigns makes em more enjoyable to me...

 

The issue overall is a bit one of game design. Each campaign is a little different as are the victory rules depending on campaigns needs. The only automatic indication that a mission is a success is to view the score in game, but that is heavily dependent on however the score rules are setup in the mission. Some people use triggers and simply award the score if flag is true, others rely more heavily on the mission goals to be setup like triggers. Before I got into scripting I used mission goals as a poor man's math counter and it worked quite well. Because mission goals are so customizatable and the feedback of success is simply a numeric value the clarity of what your objective is and how points are awarded suffers. In truth it might not be the best option to outright tell people what they have to do. Literally the triggers for the first mission of Cold War Warrior are setup so that

all you have to do is take off from Sochi, get just outside a 1.6km zone centered at the airbase, and land. Don't need to kill anything, or fly to the target or anything. But that isn't any fun. 50 points for take off, 25 for landing. You also get 25 points for flying to the target area and then leaving the FLOT zone. All that is needed to advance to the next stage is 51 points.

So I suppose the intent of it is to allow the player some wiggle room if they fail to destroy the target. Outright showing the exact requirements kind of defeats the purpose of playing through a campaign.

 

I'd personally love to see some sort of control over GUI elements to be used specifically to update the player on what is going on with a mission objective. Its as much a problem in MP as it is one in SP, let alone campaign missions where the score actually matters. Such an idea would create more of a workload on a mission builder to set all that up correctly, but its something I greatly prefer over a number between 0 and 100 and having to open up the mission file to figure out how that number is assigned.

 

Instant mission success was just in the difficulty settings for IL2. So the moment you entered the mission it would be successful. So you didn't get stuck, although I think it affected the end combat score (just like using simple engine management) but who cares its SP. The good thing with IL2 was that there were HEAPS of missions in the campaigns and the vast majority of them were not story based (More immersive). Once you play a story based mission more than once the immersion is gone. Plus they use elements that are unrealistic like using audio files to talk to you, not through the radio (usually in English, which jars with the idea your flying for the Russians).

 

The problem is what your expecting, as you say its not transparent. So sometimes, its when you killed something or at other times its when you land at the end. Or alot of the time, either an update breaks something to do with the triggers or the mission is just broken. You just don't know, so sometimes you don't have to RTB before exiting other times you have to. Sometimes you waste time flying back - for nothing! Unbeknownst to you, you missed something earlier on but weren't told about it. If you have to land successfully to finish the mission, tell us in the briefing.

 

Screenshots (recon) of the mission area should be built into the game, along with satellite view of the terrain - all the features of F10 that we don't get in the briefing. I know some airforces use a 3D virtual fly over of the target area to give pilots a better idea of the terrain. Then an actual debriefing, with a comment on what damage was done to the target etc, your performance - or gasp, tell at the end why it wasn't mission success, how it works at the moment, you go back to campaign view and you find out, oh look I have to do it all over again without any explanation.

Edited February 6, 2014 by epokha

[winz]

The problem is what your expecting, as you say its not transparent. So sometimes, its when you killed something or at other times its when you land at the end. Or alot of the time, either an update breaks something to do with the triggers or the mission is just broken. You just don't know, so sometimes you don't have to RTB before exiting other times you have to. Sometimes you waste time flying back - for nothing! Unbeknownst to you, you missed something earlier on but weren't told about it. If you have to land successfully to finish the mission, tell us in the briefing.

First, I disagree that story based missions are less immersive, first time playing through deployment or revanche was the most immersive sim experience for me, ever. There is a limit how far you can go with generated radio communication. Sure, the magic is somewhat gone after you're done with them, but that's the issue of replayabilty, not immersion...just my opinion.

 

These inconsistencies are there because the mission editor doesn't force anything, it doesn't have a set structure for a mission (which is good), so DCS, the engine, cannot communicate to you what you're expected to do, because the engine doesn't known. It is the responsibility of the designer to give you good mission briefing that is on one hand immersive and on the other hand gives you instructions about what you have to do for 'mission success'. And honestly I don't know how to immersively inform the player that 'he only has to take off, leave the starting are and land for the mission to succeed'. Maybe an information in the campaign description, informing the player about the general campaign structure...dunno.

 

Also, on one hand you talk about realism, on other hand you're irritated because you 'wasted your time flying back'. :)

Anyway, you can check your current mission progress any time by pressing ' key. When you see number 51+ then you can exit the mission and will advance to the next one.

[epokha]

First, I disagree that story based missions are less immersive, first time playing through deployment or revanche was the most immersive sim experience for me, ever. There is a limit how far you can go with generated radio communication. Sure, the magic is somewhat gone after you're done with them, but that's the issue of replayabilty, not immersion...just my opinion.

 

These inconsistencies are there because the mission editor doesn't force anything, it doesn't have a set structure for a mission (which is good), so DCS, the engine, cannot communicate to you what you're expected to do, because the engine doesn't known. It is the responsibility of the designer to give you good mission briefing that is on one hand immersive and on the other hand gives you instructions about what you have to do for 'mission success'. And honestly I don't know how to immersively inform the player that 'he only has to take off, leave the starting are and land for the mission to succeed'. Maybe an information in the campaign description, informing the player about the general campaign structure...dunno.

 

Also, on one hand you talk about realism, on other hand you're irritated because you 'wasted your time flying back'. :)

Anyway, you can check your current mission progress any time by pressing ' key. When you see number 51+ then you can exit the mission and will advance to the next one.

 

I don't mind consistently having to fly back, the annoying thing is that most of the time it counts for nothing and you have to do the whole again anyway. All I want is some sort of predictability.

 

Your right that saying that 'you must land' to complete the mission in the campaign description would be useful.

Edited February 6, 2014 by epokha

[John C Flett]

It's been interesting to read other people's thoughts on this.

 

For myself I've been starting to learn the mission editor tools and my feeling is that there is a huge amount of flexability in the tools but many missions seem to have some very frustrating design.

 

I've just finished the FC3 F15 campaign but I ended up having to edit about half the missions to make them work as I felt they should.

 

Some suffered from ( I felt ) excessive requirements ( Four F15s required to kill twelve enemy aircraft ), some unpredictable AI ( bombers / SEAD would abort failing the mission ) or simply setting key mission goals outside the players influence ( one mission tends to fail before the player is even airborne ).

 

I don't want to seem too critical of designers because all I have yet done is edit other peoples work. I'm sure if I get round to starting things from scratch I'll cause plenty of frustration for other players myself.

 

It's also worth noting that DCS world is hardly the only game to have problems in these areas, anybody who has played single player ARMA campaigns should know what I mean. Anything that relies so heavily on sophisticated AI and autonomous units is always going to struggle.

[Yurgon]

For myself I've been starting to learn the mission editor tools and my feeling is that there is a huge amount of flexability in the tools but many missions seem to have some very frustrating design.

 

Ultimately, the outcome of a campaign isn't of any importance for anyone other than the player. So why not leave it to the player whether to go along with the intended progress or force progress to the next stage?

 

The idea behind campaign progression obviously is to provide a challenge for the player. In an ideal environment, the player would have to master the challenges presented by the campaign designer. But in fact there may be lots of additional challenges and problems. Missions might be broken. Triggers might not work as intended. A DCS patch may have broken something.

 

And even stuff that no mission designer could ever prevent or foresee might come in, like power outage just before touchdown (which would have triggered mission success), or real life emergencies, or spilling water on the keyboard or a cat/dog/whatever chewing a cable.

 

Basically, when I get to the point where I end up editing the pilot profile in order to progress to the next mission, it would be so much easier to push a button "[OVERRIDE] Progress to next stage".

 

Actually, I would even appreciate a button "[OVERRIDE] Go back one stage" because I happened to unintentionally progress in a campaign when I left a mission because I needed to load a HOTAS profile or leave the house - but the mission was counted as a success.

 

Such override buttons would surely be an appreciated new feature for DCS. :thumbup:

[docfu]

I can see where the original poster is coming from in this. The idea of a non-linear campaign based on repeated success(because nobody wants to have to fly the same mission twice) isn't very popular.

 

Even in games like Doom, you always had cheats where you could skip to any mission in the game. They didn't stop you from playing the game at all, they just let you do more of what you want.

 

I hate to suggest this, because I know it's going to be taken the wrong way, but maybe DCS should take a page from Angry Birds:

 

1. Have a huge list of missions that are unlocked based on previous mission success.

 

2. Allow users to fly any mission they want that they have already unlocked.

 

(And dare I say it...)

 

3. Give the users a star rating so they have a reason to fly missions again and again to get better scores.

 

I don't think DCS's campaign style is necessarily bad...but it definitely isn't good for people who have limited time to play and can't afford to redo missions again and again.

 

P.S. Definitely want to see the piggies on enemy tanks...

[John C Flett]

Ultimately, the outcome of a campaign isn't of any importance for anyone other than the player. So why not leave it to the player whether to go along with the intended progress or force progress to the next stage?

 

Perfectly reasonable but I don't think that excludes wanting a fair challenge which reflects my performance. I myself have no problem with retrying a mission if I have failed in a reasonable objective but having to retry a mission over and over because an AI aircraft 100km from me didn't do its job is just frustrating.

[Yurgon]

Perfectly reasonable but I don't think that excludes wanting a fair challenge which reflects my performance. I myself have no problem with retrying a mission if I have failed in a reasonable objective but having to retry a mission over and over because an AI aircraft 100km from me didn't do its job is just frustrating.

 

I'm not quite sure why I quoted you in my previous post. As I look at it now, it sounds as if I was trying to contradict your point, which was not my intention. I edited the post a lot and when I submitted it, I wasn't actually referring to what you had written. :music_whistling:

 

I totally agree with your point, I like a good challenge, but it's really frustrating when other parts of the mission don't work out as planned and then keep me from progressing.

[A229th Reaper]

Just my two cents...

 

What we need is a Campaign where your goals are assigned a point value. The structure would go something like this... your campaign has 5 missions (each worth 20 points for a total of 100%) each mission would have goals (say 5 for example) each worth 20 points. If you complete 4 of 5 you would have 80% success for that mission, which would give you 16% overall campaign score. Replay or Move on to the next mission, (this should be able to be done with the 'Fly Again' or 'Quit' buttons on the debriefing screen) Now all the campaign designer has to do is define what is a successful campaign is... Say 72% overall (key thing here for the fun of it is not tell the player how much they need for success)

[Trooper117]

I don't need points in any mission, I don't need or want to 'have to' complete a certain task to allow me to continue in the on going war... all that does is emphasise that I'm playing a game, and any reality I'm trying to achieve has just been broken.

In real life not every sortie or tasking works out as planned, and often there are failures and losses. When these things happen, the pilot/unit/squadron has to continue the war the next day and every day thereafter, regardless of the outcome.

[A229th Reaper]

I don't need points in any mission, I don't need or want to 'have to' complete a certain task to allow me to continue in the on going war... all that does is emphasise that I'm playing a game, and any reality I'm trying to achieve has just been broken.

In real life not every sortie or tasking works out as planned, and often there are failures and losses. When these things happen, the pilot/unit/squadron has to continue the war the next day and every day thereafter, regardless of the outcome.

 

 

By your statement I take it that you have never used the pause key or quick the mission before it was finished. My hat is off to you for playing like that.

 

But if by some chance you have used those buttons, then your statement is 'moot' because using those buttons you will have broken the reality you are trying to achieve.

 

The Idea of a point system was not to tell you how many points you have, but to allow you to continue on with the campaign without being stopped for not compleating a mission successfully. With the point system you would not know if the campaign was a success until you finished it.

Edited March 25, 2014 by A229th Reaper

[andqui]

The way I see it, there are two options.

 

1) A dynamic campaign that generates new missions on the fly.

 

2) A linear campaign, consisting of a sequence of missions.

 

The current system of DCS, with fixed missions that jump to different ones based on "mission success" is half-assed and doesn't do a good job of either. It's such a shame to have such an in-depth sim, and keep trying to fly these campaign missions and figure out exactly what the mission designer wants you to do. It's like trying to unlock the next level of some silly video game. It's pointless and unnecessary.

 

Linear campaigns can be very good. The briefings and missions can be detailed and custom-made, along with other immersive things like radio chatter and the like. However, trying to force players to complete certain things to get to the next mission misses the point. Following the story and flying interesting missions is the point. I know the missions will be scripted, and it really doesn't matter to me if I know that the exact targets that the next mission assumed I destroyed weren't really destroyed. That's what a dynamic campaign is for. Not a linear campaign.

 

Look at the way Il2 works, for examples of how to do linear campaigns right. Campaigns consist of a set order of missions, that you fly sequentially. Finishing one missions means I get assigned the next one. There is no variation apart from the engine being able to randomly choose a mission from a pool of candidates for the next one. The mission designer can assign various conditions for success of a mission. If a certain setting, "no mission success" is off, then the player has to complete these objectives in order to progress. However, I always leave this off. The primary goal of a pilot is to get back on the ground safely. If one mission is a scramble against impossible odds, then I take off, and do my best. If I get shot down, oh well. If I take out a few bombers against the odds and return safely, fantastic, I did well. Then, on to the next mission, no matter what happens. If I'm forced to constantly replay the level because I "only" brought down 2/6 bombers, as opposed to the 4/6 the mission called for, it feels more like I'm trying to beat a Mario game than fly a complex aircraft. If the next briefing says something like "good job on those bombers", when I didn't get any of them, that's fine, I can still follow the story. But putting the player in impossible situations that no real or sane A-10 or Ka-50 pilot would face and demanding that they finish particular goals in order to progress is incredibly unimmersive.

[Trooper117]

If a set mission doesn't tick all the boxes so what? As stated that happens in real life.

Your mission success or lack of it should simply be logged in your pilots log book... then you have the option to move on with the next day in the war, or, if you aren't satisfied with your results you can fly the mission again...

It would be great to have a 'no instant mission success' button, so that we all have a choice on how we fly our own method of enjoying the game.