What would you like BIS to focus on?

[armatech 8]

If you could change an element of the Bis game range what would you ask to be changed and why.

I personally would love to see the dedicated sever optimized and updated to Handel more data and have a user friendly interface with all setting bundled in the console. This would make it so that any server owner can easily setup a server with ease and have all the setting in front of them with out needing to dig into the Biki to find out of X dose and why Y is not doing whats its meant to do.

Edited September 11, 2010 by armatech

[Zipper5 74]

Great thread idea!

If I was to take the obvious answer of the AI out of the question, I'd say they should concentrate on the mission content. That includes the campaigns, the SP missions and the MP missions. They have done exactly what I'm looking for in Eagle Wing and Crimson Lance, but they were only added to the game after it's release and are not part of release version.

If they could make campaigns similar to or exceeding the excellence of Eagle Wing and Crimson Lance, and make them a little longer, then it would be perfect. One piece of advice I'd give to BIS is you don't have to make them MP compatible. It's a great feature to advertise, but it doesn't really work 100% in any of them so far, it makes for bland mission design sometimes, and can cause some severe performance headaches. Both Eagle Wing and Crimson Lance are SP-only (apart from mission 3 of Crimson Lance) and they're able to push it further in terms of quality as a result. The SP and MP missions of OA and the BAF DLC are already exactly how they should be, they just need to keep it up. :p

Edit: Just saw you added a poll but didn't put anything about the mission content. Are you able to add it?

Edited September 11, 2010 by Zipper5
Noted the poll

[armatech 8]

Great thread idea!

Edit: Just saw you added a poll but didn't put anything about the mission content. Are you able to add it?

Ill ask an admin to change one of them as thats a very good point

[Gunter Severloh 4051]

Nice idea,

I voted for Optimized Client FPS/Loading times, and whats not on the list is infantry animations

which never seems to change much or at all since Arma, and almost since OFP in some areas.

Personally It dont matter how cool, or realistic the units, and vehicles, and how beautiful an island is,

if you can run it because the loading times take forever, especially with CBA and its loading pages,

as well as a low fps rendering your game into a cartoon flip page animation then its pretty piontless,

like a ferrari without gas it just looks good , might as well hand it on the wall.

Whats not in the list and as I just mentioned is the animations,

i wont go into it as I have a topic here that i posted a week ago discussing it:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=106855

[armatech 8]

Nice idea,

I voted for Optimized Client FPS/Loading times, and whats not on the list is infantry animations

which never seems to change much or at all since Arma, and almost since OFP in some areas.

Personally It dont matter how cool, or realistic the units, and vehicles, and how beautiful an island is,

if you can run it because the loading times take forever, especially with CBA and its loading pages,

as well as a low fps rendering your game into a cartoon flip page animation then its pretty piontless,

like a ferrari without gas it just looks good , might as well hand it on the wall.

Whats not in the list and as I just mentioned is the animations,

i wont go into it as I have a topic here that i posted a week ago discussing it:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=106855

From what i see the animations have changed in every version of bis games i know this for a fact as the player models have changed and the old animations would not work on the new setup for exsample OFP units do not work correctly in arma, arma models do not work correclty in arma2. I understand the need for more animations and for a more random implamentation of them but they have changed.

[dmarkwick 261]

I'd like to see rendering improvements and optimisations. I'm pretty fed up of the alpha white textures shining in fog. I'd also like to see less LOD switching. To that end, maybe a few settings that the player can use to tune this switching to his PCs ability.

In fact, I'd like a new rendering engine :) something that can take effective advantage of newer techniques, particularly lighting techniques like deferred rendering allows.

I'd also like to tweak the game logic performance, I see a lot of script-lag due to custom scripts being queued for several seconds before executing, meaning that often AI do illogical things until their logic has "caught up" with events.

[Gunter Severloh 4051]

the animations have changed but, there still that arm flailing little thing that the guy does when reloading, or switching weapons some times, like in my last post in the link I posted the weapons animations really have not changed much in terms of weapon specifics.

the reaload animation, the animation to reload mounted static mgs, reloading rocket launchers, making stuff seen, like your actually doing something.

You dont see the actual missile being loaded into a javilen, you dont see it on an at4, RPG, Smaw, same for placing satchels, it magically appeers, same for mgs loading, the box magically disapeers, and reapeers.

The reloading animation has not changed very much in a prone position since OFP, the guy still has a slight variation in difference, I think OFP reload animation when the guy is prone was much simler then it is now, Arma was the worst, I dont understand what happened there, in Arma the guy flails his arms like hes swatting flies, and again same when hes switching weapons.

Its almost rediculous to be lying prone with a tac50 sniper rifle and you go to reload, and instead of taking a clip from one's pouch and adding, it and then rebolting, the guy leans over, same stuff in OFP, and Arma.

i dont mean to complain, or sound like I'm trolling but I'm getting the annoyed nostaligic bugs following me from the other games, and Im only talking about Arma 2, not OA or BAF as I dont own those, so I dont know how the animations are.

Another thing is the HDR, the screen going dim because its supposed to mimic the effects of going from dark room to a lit room, or dark room to outside then you get the effect, I think it should be made an option if you want that on.

I dont find it realistic, i can be in a forest running west with the sun going down and the Hdr comes on with the sun in front of me, you have this beautiful terrain and lighting effects then the HDr kicks in and makes everything dark. should only apply to when you leave a dark room, to outside, or a drak room, to a lit room, ect.,

HDR in Arma 2 is overkill its to much, either that its to sensitive.

[Devil Dogs SF 13]

I vote for more Islands, while the community makes wonderful maps BIS make such good maps themselves and I'd love more maps made by them, I'd happily pay for them.

[AnimalMother92 10]

Animations are the most important to me (real reloads plz), islands would be very nice as well. I'd like most the stuff to be worked on but OA made some good improvements in a lot of those areas already I think.

[froggyluv 2135]

Well since I cry almost weekly here like a lil girl for a better CQB experience, my answer is obvious: AI

The jump from OFP to Arma2's micro AI was a big one, AI can now manuever around obstacles better and lean in and out from corners - a big achievement for a game of this scale!

The combat experience from mid-range infantry is very good yet, when you start getting closer or surprise an enemy, the flaws start to surface. How i dream for one day checking the Beta Patch thread and seeing "New and revamped CQB AI" :eek:

Im talkin quick maneuvers, jumping out of a truck and whole squad taking positions at correct angles, using windows and houses by default, using small walls to quickly pop up/fire/duck, seeing far less prone and more crouched engagements...Wicked hardcore, frenetic action!!!

...that would be the flippen Muthaship of all improvements to me and i'd probably lose family, career and home over it :D

Edit- Also wish for an AI mesh similar to Mount and Blade's system for designing levels. You could literally wrap these around roof tops so the AI wouldn't plummet (unless of course, they wanted to) and many other useful features.

Edited September 11, 2010 by froggyluv

[dontknowhow 33]

more bug fixes and stability. I guess that means almost all the choices :-)

[armatech 8]

more bug fixes and stability. I guess that means almost all the choices :-)

This is not a BIS slamming post please keep comments on topic as i personally would like to know what the community would like to have added/improved.

On a side note Bis are adding new content and bug fixs almost every day.

[dontknowhow 33]

This is not a BIS slamming post please keep comments on topic as i personally would like to know what the community would like to have added/improved.

On a side note Bis are adding new content and bug fixs almost every day.

Might be my fault, but I can't see how my post was off topic. I would like BIS to focus on bug fixes and stability, what's wrong with that?

I'll skip the side note to avoid going into the slamming you don't like

[b00tsy 28]

Voted for more Islands: would like a big takistan like map that also contains caves/accessable mine, bridges, creeks/streams... well more diversity in general.

Voted for improved editor: I would like to see more easy to use modules included that now needs external scripting.

More objects and placable buildings and compounds, placable rocks and trees, build in terrain editor (flatten/raise land,) No [?] symbols for placable objects/buildings anymore as they are hard to position due to the offset. Offset is a general annoyance when placing objects on the map. If it looks like a sandbag wall is perfectly lined up on the map, it looks different in game and are not perfectly lined up. Result is that you have to check a zillion times in the preview to see if it is properly placed.

Build in feature to create groups/units that auto spawn on trigger conditions. So groups/units that are placed on the map, but stay ghosted/inactive until it is triggered to activate. That way you can still use the init box of the units too. I am having serious issues to get all that spawning to work and then also have the spawned units to perform actions. It would be so much easyer if you could just place the units that need to spawn at a certain moment/position/condition and even can use the init line of the units.

Customizable units in the editor. I would like to see a blank soldier where you can add custom gear to it with nice and simple drop down menu's.

Well more of that stuff.

Voted unit improvement: All the units now have a different skin, lots you can choose from, but you can't change the unit shape. The units are all the same size and all the same thinkness. Would be nice if it was possible to adjust your characters size,muscles, body fat. It would be more real if you play online and you see more diveresity in character shape. I doubt though that the OP was referring to this kind of improvement :)

Ohh and I want claymores in OA!

Edit: with bridges I ment bridges that you can blow up too. Would be great for missions to set as objective to blow up a bridge that is heavy defended by enemies. Would be a nice target for choppers and jets too.

Edited September 11, 2010 by B00tsy

[katipo66 94]

Id like them to look at WICT and DAC and maybe AAS and the possibility of being able to add some of those features into the editor by enhancing the triggers and markers?

Or maybe the ability to connect "Seized by" triggers and make them repeatable so that after one area is seized they move onto the next or move back to defend the previous depending on the situation..

What would be really nice would be an option to place triggers (bases/zones) on a map, give them ownership or priority, then placing a "spawn trigger!?" for each side with the ability to be able to tick of what unit types to be spawned.

WICT has given me the best (SP) gameplay ever in Arma and pretty much does all the above but it would be awesome to see these types of options implemented into the editor.

Edited September 11, 2010 by Katipo66

[nkenny 1057]

Animations, User Interface, and AI interaction.

-k

[tpw 2315]

My imaginary vote is really for anything on the poll as long as performance does not suffer. No point having incredible maps, totally human ai and total lifelike animations if it all runs at 6 fps. So my real vote is for fps improvements, especially doing something about the incredible framerate hit around buildings.

[b00tsy 28]

Lifelike animations are done/made with mocap (motion capture) and has no effect on fps, it runs as any animation, just looks way better.

[Decerto 10]

I voted for AI skills, but I would like that to reflect the pathing of AI driving vehicles as that is something that has always been a problem since Ofp and needs to be fixed as it is one of the most common complaints leveld at the game by people who play it for the first time.

[muttly 10]

We gotta push for a working bis 3d editer guys that would be awesome:D

[Dreahack 10]

can you focus on everything ^^ ???

[Dwarden 1125]

that's everyones wish ;)

[ubermachtig 0]

I'd definitely go with improving the FPS and loadingtimes. I still have the feeling we aren't harvesting 100% out of our computers with ArmA 2's engine.

[ProfTournesol 956]

1. A combat / behaviour mode to force AI team members to do what the player want EVEN UNDER FIRE (board vehicles immediately, move very quickly etc.)

2. Work on a flawless patching process, so that i don't have to reinstall the whole bunch every now and then

[Dreahack 10]

I cant believe that russians dont have better than the T90 !!!!

Can you add pls M110 SD version,snipin in Timurkalay is really sweet