Differences between making missions for A2 and A3?

[Thirith]

Not sure whether this is the right place for posting this; if any of the mods think it's better suited to A3 Discussion, please feel free to move the thread.

Due to fer's recent post about 'parking your A2 assumptions and getting to know A3 for what it is', I'm curious: do the Folk ARPS mission creators find that they approach making A3 missions differently from making missions for A2/OA? If so, what are the differences, and are they motivated by the environment you've got at your disposal, the equipment, the changes in gameplay, or the toolkit that BI has provided you with?

[wolfenswan]

Honestly, I've had to adapt a lot and it's still a learning process for me.

I CHOOSE YOU BULLETIN LIST

• Perfomance
  It's a lot better now, but perfomance used to be crapeola. Even now, one can't dump the numbers of AI we saw in A2 and expect a comparable perfomance. And don't get me started about towns. COOPs in the bigger ones are always... interesting. Anyway, speaking of
• AI & Challenge
  Due to all kinds of factors the AI is a bigger threat to players, which basically boils down to "you need less of them to kill more of us". Which is good for perfomance but takes some time to get used to as a mission maker (and as a player too, probably. TK soldiers on the other side of the hills used to be target practice, not a threat). Firefights tend to be longer and feature more dakka due to less accurate guns and thanks to the AI mods we're using. Firefights in adversarials are usually a lot of fun and intensive.
• Vehicles
  Vehicles are a lot sturdier now, which imho. is a good thing. The crawling tin-boxes we know from A2 were fun but pretty much expected to blow up upon contact with the first RPG-dude. Now most vehicles can actually be put to use as proper IFVs rather than keeping them way behind as sorts of mobile MMGs. And with some tweaking it's easy to prevent them from being absolute overkill, e.g. I like to turn the CSAT Marids into armored APCs by disabling their thermals and their GMGs. Helicopters are also a lot better imho, as pilots aren't shot out within 5 minutes of contact. Especially the light attack helos (orca, hellcat and little bird) fit well within FA's style of play and I think could see more use.
• Movement
  Stamina is a massive change from A2 and needs to be considered. Players are still learning not to loot everything that isn't nailed down (no fun when your entire FT can't maneuver because everyone's carrying an AR, a RPG and assorted ammo). Terrain plays a big role here (sprinting long stretches of land and climbing hills is tiresome) and Missionmakers need to consider that.
• Terrain
  Early on I really didn't like the terrain of Altis. It seemed too baren and boring. Then I realized it's not the terrain itself but what the map tells you about the terrain. In Arma2 the map used to show every small wall, tree etc, in ARMA3 most of these details are left out. Thus, it takes more time to scout for a good mission location but overall the terrain is easily as if not more diverse than Chernarus. The only thing that annoys me is that the only two nice forest areas are broken up by hills but given the lack of trees on Lemnos I'm happy they at least added those.
• ZEUS
  Frankly, we haven't made enough use of ZEUS yet. I used to dismiss it as a nice tool for groups with lower player count than us. We should look at using one (or more) curators regularly in our missions. While "From the scratch" scenarios aren't an option for us due to the time it would talk to set them up, it reliefs mission-makers from the problem of having to anticipate and cater for possible player actions. They can focus on providing an interesting AO and objectives with a central garrison, statics, vehicles etc. A ZEUS player can then react to player movement within the mission and also provide an interesting experience for them by directly controlling the AI. Lots of other possibilities here as well but those can be discussed elsewhere.
• Editor
  The editor is a lot slicker than it used to be. The provided modules and other tools are generally working (which wasn't quite true in A2) and I'd hazard to see it's a lot more straightforward to a beginner mission-maker than it used to be. "Under the hood" things have improved considerably but if you don't really bother with coding for ARMA3 chances are you won't notice.
• Gear
  The complaining about futuristic gear has certainly colored the ARMA3 experience. Frankly, I don't care that much and while I dig the Cold War equipment I'm not that obsessed about it that I couldn't tolerate wielding the guns in A3. The gun-play is certainly better for various reasons (stances, general accuracy and amount of dakka put out) and I'm enjoying the firefights a lot more. I've already written about vehicles above but must say that I rather like the look of both the CSAT and AAF factions (sans the former's silly helmets). NATO is a bit boring but that was true for most ARMA2 BLUFOR forces as well.

Tl;dr
Early on I wasn't overly impressed due to the poor perfomance, seemingly boring equipment and apparently plain terrain. Then I realized I was being a cranky old conservative who didn't want to experience new things (thanks fer!), had a short hiatus and approached A3 again with a more open mind and am now enjoying it more and more. Sure, it's still a bit awkward at times and maybe not always the same quality we've gotten used to during ARMA2. But then again, we're growing with the game (and what's BI putting into it is impressive, all complaints aside) and have the chance to build a new legend of our countless tales of incompetence experience from the ground up. Can't say I don't like the sound that.

[fer]

Excellent post, comrade Wolfenswan. Couldn't agree more