The public server and missions, an update
If you have played on the public server you will have no doubt experienced issues with enemy spawns in the ALiVE missions, with increasing regularity. Enemy appearing just in front of players, platoons of T-80s spawning, etc. Just prior to the Contact DLC, it had deteriorated to the point where we had to support larger operations with a dedicated Zeus, just to delete the overabundance of spawning enemy. Post Contact DLC the vast majority of our missions had to be pulled due to further technical issues.
Since last summer we have been developing OSOD our own AI and mission framework, with the aim of at some point phasing it slowly onto the public server as the base for a series of new missions. This all changed with the failure of our ALiVE missions. We’ve had to rapidly accelerate this process and over the past 4 weeks, to get some reliable and hopefully enjoyable gameplay back onto the public server.
Developing and testing, well balanced and enjoyable new missions capable of running 24/7 is a difficult and time-consuming process. In order to get at least some variety in the short term, we have had to push missions to “live” far earlier than we are comfortable with. Offloading some of the testing onto the players has enabled us to at least get 3 missions released with more in development in a very short period of time.
We do appreciate that from a player's perspective this is far from ideal. However, the feedback that you are generating is extremely valuable to us and allows us to hopefully rapidly improve the quality of the missions. So please keep the feedback coming, using the mission-specific thread on the forums.
In the short term, we plan to create 5-6 new missions, that are all very diverse, with different maps, opposition, logistics, and tasks. We’re also creating more diversity within each individual mission, both so that restarts of the same mission will present different challenges, and also the direction that you exit the main base will determine in some cases the types of combat you experience. To add to the diversity, you’ll also notice that not every vehicle asset will be available within every mission, this is deliberate.
In the medium term, the number of missions will hopefully be further increased, a little, but the emphasis has changed from previously. We’re now attempting to build more depth into each mission rather than a having a larger number of simpler missions. Our maintenance load increases with each mission, so we can spend more time per mission, if the number of missions are reduced. Also, OSOD provides the capability to add more depth to missions than was previously possible with ALiVE.
What does it mean for the old missions and old maps? In time, some may be reworked with OSOD, whilst the remainder will be archived. We appreciate that there is a sentimental value associated with many of the old missions, but we have to be realistic. Currently, ALiVE is on its knees and many of these old missions are based on A2 maps that are dated (and unsupported in some cases), that compare poorly to the range of new A3 maps. Also, many of the reported issues with AI seeing and firing through terrain is not a fault of the AI but rather issues with certain assets on some of these older maps. Once we have this initial round of missions created, we’ll then determine which of the original missions are most popular and which if any to port in some way to OSOD.
That brings me round to the modset. A few weeks ago Jetrise raised a concern that the size of our public server modset was detrimental to our recruitment process. Santa ran the numbers and concluded that 3CB, RHS, and other mods that are core to our play-style account for the majority of the modset size, so any significant reduction in size is not possible. That does not mean we need to keep infrequently used assets and unused maps in the public modset. Over the next couple of weeks, you’ll see a significant drop in the number of mods in the public modset (5 were dropped last week). As part of the cleanup process, we’ll drop the majority of the maps that are not currently supported by the “live” or in development missions. We’ll then add some back as new missions become available.
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