Soulless missions

[Anklebiter]

Hi folks,

 

The biggest critique of DCS I have heard is that the campaigns are soulless and sterile.

 

This has also been leveled against IL-2.

 

Rich media and gaming has merged long ago to define a new artform. Gamers have always loved combat sims. With VR, sims are seeing a renaissance.

 

Now is the time to address that gap, and rich media is the place to start. Gamers are paying attention again.

 

We are talking about major dollars for devs, and with economy of scale, cheaper prices for entry.

 

I'm firmly in the Matt Wagner camp that a hand-crafted campaign can offer way more immersion than any dynamic campaign.

"Can" being the operative word here.

 

Such a campaign would require the skills of a highly imaginative person, with a huge commitment in time.

(Hats off to those of you who have achieved this in DCS.)

 

I'd like to think that I can make a contribution here.

 

My suggestions:

 

• Audio and video during campaign briefings. This is just video gaming 101.
  
• Machinima: Full camera control for the builder at any time.
  
• Machinima: Full control of the plane at any time
  

I get that with the new command X:Set Command you could achieve most of this. But talk about a pain in the ass!

 

Opportunity knocks ED....

Edited July 31, 2018 by Anklebiter

[EasyEB]

A bombastic video briefing won't help much if the mission is just five tanks in the middle of a field waiting to be bombed.

[John C Flett]

Soulless missions are poorly designed missions. Nothing to do with cinematics.

 

 

IL2 BoS is a title I feel suffers from this as missions are rarely anything more than the players flight, a target and an enemy CAP.

 

 

This used to be true of SU-27, LOMAC and earlier DCS. These days most designers have added so much in radio comms and AI activity that missions are much more alive and interesting and I really don't feel that DCS suffers too much from this.

 

 

I'm sure there is still plenty of room for growth but I'd rather see it in other areas than those you've suggested. Infact, in many games these sequences you talk about are the kind of thing I'm usually looking to "skip" through.

[animaal]

Most of the little missions I create for myself could be described as soulless, because I think that's likely to be most realistic. I would imagine that real-life mission planners aim to "get in and get out", with minimal excitement and every action pre-scripted.

 

 

 

I find that while many of the DCS DLC campaigns are great fun (and great value!), I can't help thinking that this fun is sometimes at the expense of realism. In real life, would a single actor have a major a continued influence over the entire campaign? I also find that many campaigns/missions are like movies - I'm waiting for the "expected surprise" that leaves me with a narrow opening to victory.

 

 

 

Having said that, I'm currently working through the Viggen Red Flag campaign, and it feels very real/immersive. Without wanting to spoil it for others, you feel like you're following a carefully coordinated plan as part of a large team, playing a small but important part in each mission.

[Grimes]

It is more or less the symptom of a number of facets. Chief among which is little change in how mission briefings can be presented over the years. The small jpg showing maps, radio frequencies, or other information simply doesn't cut it. Even as something as basic as a power point presentation with voice over and slides would be an improvement. Ideally look at Arma with manipulable map, an HTML like link system to focus on a specific point on a map, and user created marks for reference.

 

Other stuff comes down to the campaign system which is "just" a collection of stand-alone missions. Its quite easy to disconnect between one mission and the next. Whether it be the march of time, events, or object persistence each having an impact on the next mission.

 

To an extent also just the scoring system and debrief. Generally the "score" is obfuscated in the mission logic itself, so its easy to not fully understand why you got the score you got. Also for DLC campaigns you can't figure it out since the triggers aren't visible.

[Yoda967]

This is a great thread!

 

 

I'm still trying to get my arms around the "language" of the ME, and it's tough. I worked for the military as a war game scenario designer for more than 20 years, so I have plenty of ideas...but the way I *think* something should/can be done isn't always how DCS lets you do it. Some things I consider essential apparently can't be done at all.

 

 

"In real life, would a single actor have a major [and] continued influence over the entire campaign?" My take: No. The average fighter pilot isn't going to be a decision maker beyond their own mission planning. Conceptually, EPSOM gets this right. A good campaign should have things going on outside the player's scope and control.

 

 

I agree with Wags' "hand crafted campaign" ideas to a point, but I think the best possible campaign experience lies in the middle between the well-crafted script and the dynamic. I like the idea of a story-driven campaign, as well. Immersion can be greatly enhanced by creating characters for the people players encounter in the campaign, and if your wingman gets shot down in mission 2, you should have a different wingman for the rest of the campaign, which means a different voice saying "Two" and a different side number on the aircraft in formation with you.

 

 

In campaign scripting terms, that means creating multiple, nearly identical missions to account for aircraft losses AND the objectives met/unmet during prior missions. To use EPSOM as an example again, the first mission launches with two flights of 4 aircraft under the player's leadership. To avoid "magical" replacement of aircraft losses and account for a single Spitfire lost in mission 1, the campaign designer needs to create as many as 8 versions of mission 2 (one for each position filled by the replacement aircraft). If there were two losses in mission 1, there'd need to be 16 versions of mission 2...but as a campaign designer, there's no way of knowing how many losses the player may suffer. At some point, you run out of replacements, and that's part of the campaign scripting process. How far can you continue with those limited assets?

 

 

I get the desire for video briefings, but that would require a MUCH higher level of effort to produce than the simple slide shows we have now. Do we need an actor to do the briefing? What sort of costume does he or she need? How will the slides be integrated? What are the production values on the set? Will it look like a carrier squadron ready room or a shore-based briefing room? Will there be other actors visible in any of the shots?

 

 

I think the objective of a DCS campaign designer should be to create exactly what animaal describes in the Viggen Red Flag campaign, where the player feels like part of a large team, playing a small but important part of a much larger, largely invisible whole.

Edited July 31, 2018 by Yoda967

[Zayets]

I agree with the fact that briefing for campaign and missions can include more elements such as video briefing or at least a different format for the mission map and objective. Personally, I still struggle with the logic of how campaign missions are advancing or going back to stages.

[Pikey]

There's multiple different mission styles, am not sure which the OP is mentioning, if they are SP based or MP based, sandbox or rigid "one use" scripted affairs.

 

Some of the limitations are to the miz size and game design, which is downloaded by every client before joining. So rich media is very limited and YT links in briefing are unusable for folks in VR trying to copy paste is impossible.

 

Things divide once you determine what you are trying to achieve. Generally, any mission designer that is not doing the ED 1-10 linear campaign for money, is trying to achieve variety and randomness inside the one mission for replay ability, and thus rich media briefings are generally provided by the community that is hosting the mission.

 

I.e. in a virtual squadron there will be a rich media briefing for all players, sometimes multiple brefings. An example of the way (back in 2015 admittedly) I did it, would be to provide the "commanders intent" along with a play guide to the section leaders and then they breif their sections separately. It could also have multiple briefs like redfor and a bluefor commanders breif. Rich media would be presented then, with photographs taken in earlier recce flights. Thus the entire thing is driven outside the miz.

 

But I guess you aren't talking about that, so the SP version is the highly scripted and immersive but inflexible mission with all the design limitations that this brings. And here is your problem: To do a non sandbox, single player mission with rich media would require a game redesign and would make the many hours of effort be fairly non replayable (ie 3-4 times before it got boring).

 

Now the reason the community posts these basic missions is because they come from the era that is trying to satisfy that need, but they dont want to put in 2-3 weeks worth of effort at home to do it. So they start with these and then move on to scripting, sandboxing and randomisation with vast replayability, for multiple players.

 

So the community begins to learn that if they want to spend the least time, for the maximum results, they make sandbox multiplayer missions and stop reeling out fixed flightplans and linear single use missions that get used very few times and thrown out.

 

For example, I spend a several weeks instead on a sandbox and then we always use the same mission. We can have training on anything, randomised targets, optionally put a cap or incoming bombers to defend. Anything less is a waste of my time. One shop stop is the goal.

 

And this is why you see what you see. It's an evolution of mission designers and you are seeing the wrong part of that evolution. Frankly the time needed for these more or less rules out very good missions being distributed and the monetization of the process as a DLC doesn't quite help.

[BaD CrC]

I agree that we could use a slightly improve briefing editor than a couple of 512x512 pictures with plain text (not even the slightest formatting available). Very 1990.

On the other hand, the soul of a mission if what the mission designer is putting in it, not how it is presented.

Mission with soul are mission with traffic on the airport, AI aircraft flying around, static elements, radio coms, triggers that can change a situation, an objective or simply catch the pilots by surprise. And we already have all this in the ME.

[DUSTY]

Depends on what the individual user is after!

 

The most immersive Combat simming I've ever done has been BMS dynamic campaign missions with a large MP strike package. No need for fancy movies or voice overs - all that is needed is a realistic and dynamic scenario that requires planning, communication and that immersive feel that you don't quite know what's coming.

 

Sadly my experiance with DCS is that there are relatively few community missions that satisfy my personal desires for highly realistic scenarios where the mission isn't scripted to death.

 

The most fun and immersive DCS missions I've played have had replay-ability built into them and just a genuinely good, realistic scenario. Finding a balance between a well structured mission and something that is not overbearing and leaves no room for thinking outside the box by the pilot who ultimately flies the mission.

 

Some really good examples IMO were the Red Flag A-10 campaign and missions like Bactria by Habu23 and anything by Joyride!

 

Less is more in my opinion.

[unipus]

I find both highly scripted missions (Eastern Friendship is a great recent example) and dynamic emergent ones can be more than satisfying, when the proper effort is put in.

 

Unfortunately in DCS this very often seems like a case of overcoming the tools, rather than being in harmony with the tools. The briefings, as has been mentioned many times here, are somewhere between lackluster and truly inadequate. The lack of the basic Mission Planner function in any kind of multiplayer is insult to injury. I look back on something as ancient as Wing Commander and remember feeling fully immersed in the briefings and the ongoing drama of the squadron environment itself, as simple as it was. Unfortunately there's no way to get there with tiny images inside a modal that just seem like a step in the way of "Fly Mission," rather than a critical part of it. In a multiplayer squadron I'd just as soon skip it and make everyone watch a completely external presentation.

[Anklebiter]

And here is your problem: To do a non sandbox, single player mission with rich media would require a game redesign and would make the many hours of effort be fairly non replayable (ie 3-4 times before it got boring).

 

I'm not sure this has to be true.

 

To clarify the original post, my target is a single player campaign, that *might* be played in coop.

 

The vast majority of video gaming is played single player. I would suspect this holds true for DCS, although I have no data to back that up. Let's assume this is a fact. If so, the dollars lie in single player.

 

DCS is doing a number of things right. Fantastic planes are coming in fast, the 2.5 update offers incredible visuals and VR. Oh yes, VR.

 

(Isn’t this the holy grail of video gaming? Being able to fly, drive or walk all on a multiplayer server in VR? Isn’t this the dream of Star Citizen that so many people bought into?)

 

I digress. The complaint against scripted campaigns is based on the historical fact that most games offer that one campaign and that's it. With the mission builder, DCS might allow folks to download a brand new story every Friday night for the low price of $10.

 

The mission builder is damn close to allowing this. The market offers excellent incentive for highly imaginative people to put in an effort.

 

 

Yeah, that's huge.

 

Video gaming 101. The radio is good. This matches the emails and story vehicle of games from System Shock through Prey.

 

The x:set command action is also good. As a builder, I can take control of the user plane and do what I will with it, including showing other views. During mission, I could add spice.

 

I would have to program each and every keystroke to allow this though, including flight! Pretty damn hard to use. Please make something simpler, or perhaps there is another way for in-mission "cut scenes" I don't know about. //edit

 

Mission briefing is sorely lacking. Need voice, and some video capabilities. Let me set up context!

 

That's about it. Not so much.

 

DCS is all about excellence. Of course you will skip story if it sucks. That's not what we are talking about. Success is keyed off excellence, and the difference between a worthy effort and excellence can be so small.

Edited August 2, 2018 by Anklebiter

[Anklebiter]

Please refer to this thread, current on the main DCS 2.5 forum as an example.

 

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=217043

 

 

This can be fixed with just a little bit of loving from the ED folks.

[NineLine]

Hey guys, good discussion but we need to leave the examples of other games out of it. Thanks guys.

[funkyfranky]

On the other hand, the soul of a mission if what the mission designer is putting in it, not how it is presented.

Mission with soul are mission with traffic on the airport, AI aircraft flying around, static elements, radio coms, triggers that can change a situation, an objective or simply catch the pilots by surprise. And we already have all this in the ME.

Yes, very true. We have everything to make really good immersive missions - in principle!

 

The real problems arise when you want to add a bit of randomization, i.e. create a mission that you could play 10 times and each time something slightly different happens. For example, aircraft block each other on the taxi way and cant take off ==> mission impossible, ground vehicles get stuck in buildings ==> mission impossible etc. The list is rather long actually but this is not the place.

 

Hence, for a working mission you need to do a lot of testing to ensure that the A"I" is doing what they are supposed to do and not acting in a silly way. Many things have to be just "right" or for one reason or another the mission goes FUBAR.

 

Of course, to check that everything works is a lot of effort and not many people are willing to take that on. Therefore, what you get are often missions where a few targets are placed somewhere on an open field for the player to drop some bombs ==> soulless missions. QED.

 

Also scripting bugs do evidently have a rather low priority. Best example is the S_EVENT_PLAYER_ENTER_UNIT event which is broken for clients since the release of DCS 1.5 (yes 1.5). This might look like a small detail, but this event is needed in many situations. Alone on the MOOSE Discord channel, people who are just getting into scripting and mission design have asked how to use this event in the past two weeks a couple of times. Now instead to create valuable content for the sim, these guys spend a good portion of their time to look for workarounds or just give up again.

 

Closing on a positive note, a lot of good stuff is there already. Now it's time to make it work better :)

[EasyEB]

Hey guys, good discussion but we need to leave the examples of other games out of it. Thanks guys.

 

Why? If we as mission designers can get ideas of what works and is fun couldn't that work to all our favour?

 

I'm not trying to push your buttons here or anything. We constantly try to make your employers product better, so I just don't see the point of Voldemorting other games that we can draw inspiration from. I spend all of my gaming time in DCS, either playing it or making missions so I'm in the dark on what people do in other games, and any input on what the players want is valuable to us. There's very few things that straight up can't be done in DCS so it's really up to our imagination. Why not help it in any way we can?

[Delta99]

I think the point about other games was to get ideas of what is possible and what has been done elsewhere etc.

 

And if DCS can do something similar it would be awesome.

[Pikey]

Simple technical reasons. Such as having to download the miz containing said rich media. All the sounds and pictures are costly on disk space, and MP forces a re-download of it from the server. So it's SP only for that.

 

 

 

There's also massive limitations on what you can force in a game that is Multiplayer. Things like failures, certain cockpit access, gates are only available in SP as player, not MP.

 

 

 

Not sure how rich you want, but we have sounds in game, and pictures in the briefing, only. Anything more, like an in game browser would need a heavily tested game change to allow URL's and media players to present. Might be quite tricky to allow mission designers to provide external links to unknown URL's. Then look at all those PDF's supplied in campaigns, are we reading them all in the kneeboard? you may as well brief prior to the mission, Cockpit briefings are a bit restrictive. Doesn't need to be in game.

 

 

 

To do a great mission and get it to a DLC level quality takes a long time. To create video cutscenes isn't trifling either. Not sure where your external camera views was going, but I find that a bit scary to be pulled out of a VR scene during a mission. Even the rubbish I do for myself will take a good 6 hours for ten minutes, if I am fast. So increasing the existing workload for a DLC mission... Let me just say, from this I am 100% convinced you have no idea of the workload involved, so for a 2-3 shot 45 minute experience, the return on your investment for time (from the creators point of view) isn't worth it, hence, the drive towards dynamism.

 

 

 

Sure there's no harm in asking for more with less. I get asked that every day at work. But I get paid for that. I'd rather genuinely bring more for more people for free, than something that will never get remembered. People remember servers. Blue Flag is a mission file. It's given me more more than 100 hours playtime alone. It's got rich media briefings, web apps, PDF's and forums. DDCS, TAW, 104th, many others. I can't remember any single campaign anymore. Single use missions might be popular, but those people play them once but the fastest way to play something new you haven't tried is to jump in alongside a human player. It doesn't always have to be true, but the basic makeup of DCS hasn't changed ever, in many years and I don't see any radical change to approach on the horizon.

 

 

You are right, the money is in SP. But the desire to produce SP is not in the long term community's minds. The community is MP.

 

 

 

I'm not sure this has to be true.

 

To clarify the original post, my target is a single player campaign, that *might* be played in coop.

 

The vast majority of video gaming is played single player. I would suspect this holds true for DCS, although I have no data to back that up. Let's assume this is a fact. If so, the dollars lie in single player.

 

DCS is doing a number of things right. Fantastic planes are coming in fast, the 2.5 update offers incredible visuals and VR. Oh yes, VR.

 

(Isn’t this the holy grail of video gaming? Being able to fly, drive or walk all on a multiplayer server in VR? Isn’t this the dream of Star Citizen that so many people bought into?)

 

I digress. The complaint against scripted campaigns is based on the historical fact that most games offer that one campaign and that's it. With the mission builder, DCS might allow folks to download a brand new story every Friday night for the low price of $10.

 

The mission builder is damn close to allowing this. The market offers excellent incentive for highly imaginative people to put in an effort.

 

 

Yeah, that's huge.

 

Video gaming 101. The radio is good. This matches the emails and story vehicle of games from System Shock through Prey.

 

The x:set command action is also good. As a builder, I can take control of the user plane and do what I will with it, including showing other views. During mission, I could add spice.

 

I would have to program each and every keystroke to allow this though, including flight! Pretty damn hard to use. Please make something simpler, or perhaps there is another way for in-mission "cut scenes" I don't know about. //edit

 

Mission briefing is sorely lacking. Need voice, and some video capabilities. Let me set up context!

 

That's about it. Not so much.

 

DCS is all about excellence. Of course you will skip story if it sucks. That's not what we are talking about. Success is keyed off excellence, and the difference between a worthy effort and excellence can be so small.

[Anklebiter]

"You are right, the money is in SP. But the desire to produce SP is not in the long term community's minds. The community is MP."

 

 

Yeah, I get that multi-player is a hoot and that personally you are sold. It may be that there is room for both types of mission builders in this community, but since I am so new, that is yet to be seen.

Edited August 4, 2018 by Anklebiter

[WinterH]

Dynamic missions/campaigns, better / more diverse AI, and/or at least a stable scripting system > fancy video game / hollywood types of set piece missions.

 

They both have their place, but given a choice, I vastly prefer the former.

 

BTW, the for whole SP vs MP thing, the former also makes multiplayer a much more interesting proposition, and would open up so many possibilties. It would also save the DCS multiplayer from airquake image that has been stuck on it so far. So its inclusion is a win-win for both SP and MP camps.

 

Thankfully, dynamic campaigns are at least confirmed to be planned by ED.

Edited August 4, 2018 by WinterH

[David OC]

Dynamic missions/campaigns, better / more diverse AI, and/or at least a stable scripting system > fancy video game / hollywood types of set piece missions.

 

They both have their place, but given a choice, I vastly prefer the former.

 

BTW, the for whole SP vs MP thing, the former also makes multiplayer a much more interesting proposition, and would open up so many possibilties. It would also save the DCS multiplayer from airquake image that has been stuck on it so far. So its inclusion is a win-win for both SP and MP camps.

 

Thankfully, dynamic campaigns are at least confirmed to be planned by ED.

 

That's what is very interesting about this...

 

Quote

"RPS: MBot’s dynamic campaigns for DCS World seem popular. Have they influenced ED’s thinking at all?

 

"Matt: While we certainly applaud his efforts, we have much bigger plans for DCS World on this front. We are pursuing much more ambitious plans that incorporate community, cause-and-effect continuity, strategic and tactical goals, player performance tracking and rewards, and accounting for time periods." Article

EndQuote

 

Like to know more about that idea.

[Anklebiter]

"Dynamic missions/campaigns, better / more diverse AI, and/or at least a stable scripting system > fancy video game / hollywood types of set piece missions.

 

They both have their place, but given a choice, I vastly prefer the former."

 

 

But what if both were possible? Honestly, the current mission builder seems to be pretty decent for single player dev. Maybe add a few more bells as suggested and leave the dynamic campaign to some form of persistent subscription model?

[NineLine]

That's what is very interesting about this...

 

Quote

"RPS: MBot’s dynamic campaigns for DCS World seem popular. Have they influenced ED’s thinking at all?

 

"Matt: While we certainly applaud his efforts, we have much bigger plans for DCS World on this front. We are pursuing much more ambitious plans that incorporate community, cause-and-effect continuity, strategic and tactical goals, player performance tracking and rewards, and accounting for time periods." Article

EndQuote

 

Like to know more about that idea.

 

When they are more set and clear on what it will all detail, they will, but mission design is very important to ED.