Arma 3: Interview with Ivan Buchta, Creative Director of Bohemia Interactive

[Zipper5 74]

I can't believe some of you think getting rid of the AI is the right thing to do. I swear I'm losing braincells by the second reading such posts...

[purepassion 22]

aaahhh finally somebody said it.

+\infty

i mean.... just... why in hell would you want to do that!?!?!

[metalcraze 290]

I have played ofp, and the AI have more pre-programmed capabilities, but basically have the same intelligence. The only other type of pre-programmed capabilities that we could give them are better road management, and building management. Otherwise they are still robots who lack any creativity a normal human has.

Will a human player patrol for 2 hours, not suspecting an incoming attack?

Will a human player drive a convoy, not suspecting an incoming attack?

Will a 100 of human players be there to attack an enemy position?

I don't see any creativity on public PVP servers either (apart from some creative ways to do a teamkill) - does that mean they should not learn how to play or not be allowed to play?

I want you to really think about this... What has BIS done that has catered towards PVP? Please tell me, because the only thing close is RTS warfare.

There are a lot of missions where reds kill blues for frags.

There are CTF missions, there are team vs. team missions like A&D/AAS.

Just like in any other shooter. Except even more - you can have any type of the mission. If you feel they are not what you want create your own mission.

Default coop missions in ArmA games suck donkey balls - but instead of crying all the time on forums we create our own.

Otherwise lobbies and JIP problems all point towards coop focus.

I don't understand how having JIP problems (of which I'm unaware) helps coop either.

Lobbies? What's so PvP unfriendly about them? You select the team, you select your role in it - you play.

TVT is really fun, but the game does not posses enough organizational capabilities for a casual player to participate in such events, thus you are forced to join realism groups and TG. No offense to them, as they are necessary.

Surely you wanted to say a casual player doesn't posses enough organizational capabilities?

I mean VON in ArmA2 is beyond horrible so we, the coop'ers, have to organize people using a separate software called Teamspeak 3. And look we don't cry all the time about it.

It is impossible to just casually come and play COOP because it will be a disorganized mess.

See somehow we came to a point where the game isn't really friendly to COOP players as well. Can I start crying now about how BIS ignores us, poor COOP players?

Edited July 3, 2011 by metalcraze

[NoRailgunner 0]

What has core AI development to do with creating pvp missions?

Seems that some pvp players can't stop bitchin about AI and somehow the fun other players do have with A2OA. Well they still have the choice - improvise, adapt, overcome + win or move away. What are you waiting for?

[tacticalnuggets 24]

I dont understand why people fail to understand the meaning of what focusing on cooperative gameplay means. Going back down the line of posts you will clearly see that I post this. I dislike that. Coop is mature enough and does not need anymore focus. AI does not need anymore focus. PVP NEEDS focus. MP robustness NEEDS focus. Please stop throwing around insults and assumptions about people, metalcraze. And the easier said than done phrase "make it yourself" is usually said by people who have no clue what they are talking about.

Focus is an abstract term and I have no idea how people draw abolishing AI and coop from the sentence, "I think they should instead focus on pvp".

[metalcraze 290]

I dont understand why people fail to understand the meaning of what focusing on cooperative gameplay means. Going back down the line of posts you will clearly see that I post this. I dislike that. Coop is mature enough and does not need anymore focus.

But what if I disagree? Have you actually read my post? It's impossible to casually play COOP! BIS is focusing on PvP too much!

Please stop throwing around insults and assumptions about people, metalcraze.

I don't insult or throw assumptions about anyone. I simply don't understand what PvP focus do you need (because you can have any kind of PvP you can dream of right now) and why exactly must everyone who doesn't want to play PvP all the time suffer from it?

And the easier said than done phrase "make it yourself" is usually said by people who have no clue what they are talking about.

No what I'm saying is that if it is impossible to cater to your personal exquisite taste for which more than a thousand of DM, AAS, A&D, CTF, TDM, CTI and other more teamwork-oriented PvP missions are not enough - you and your buddies always have an editor.

But your logic is - noooo I'm too lazy to make a mission for my needs, please BIS can you please nerf totally unrelated COOP gaming?

Focus is an abstract term and I have no idea how people draw abolishing AI and coop from the sentence, "I think they should instead focus on pvp".

Because they are not focusing on COOP? Because AI is one of the core aspects of the whole series? Because some people haven't had a good SP experience since OFP in the series?

Edited July 3, 2011 by metalcraze

[habnor 19]

Did Ivan say that no real soldier would ever use suppressive fire or was it translated wrong? If he did I am a bit scared that the developers have no military experience or even ever seen a combat war clip. Sorry for some reason that just stuck out like a sore thumb to me.

[sparks50 0]

What is it about these pvp threads that seems to get the utmost stupidity out of everyone?

Habnor: No, he said blind-fire is not something a soldier would do on a regular basis.

Suppressive fire is to fire in an attempt to keep the enemy from firing back.

Some interesting answers by Ivan, and it was really nice of this site to provide an English translation.

Now if only some Czech sites would do the same^^

Edited July 3, 2011 by sparks50

[Hurby 0]

Now if only some Czech sites would do the same^^

As if you would have ever looked there if it wasn't for the ArmA series. It's pretty much the only series where we get at least the same amount of press coverage and information as the English speaking world :rolleyes:

[sparks50 0]

The Czech Republic has been the birth place of many awesome games, I don't think you have any reason to complain :)

Remember that English is a lingua franca(bridge language). I am from Norway.

Edited July 3, 2011 by sparks50

[4 IN 1 0]

@metalcraze

[Hurby 0]

The Czech Republic has been the birth place of many awesome games, I don't think you have any reason to complain :)

Remember that English is a lingua franca(bridge language). I am from Norway.

I'm just saying that the only reason you would go to a Czech gaming site would be because of select few games, sites that write natively in English almost always have better coverage. Really, right now it would just be a waste of resources for them. They don't need to write in lingua franca for their target group (the Czechs).

[kylania 568]

What is it about these pvp threads that seems to get the utmost stupidity out of everyone?

Fixed that for you. :)

[KorpeN 0]

Fixed that for you. :)

Stop trolling. Or go play with your bots. Both have the same essence.

@BIS: Yes it's very clever focusing on coop. It is as clever as the AI of ArmA series. Keep ignoring the PvP community and you ll find 20 servers max running Domi, or evo, or any other insanity-test mission.

[Daniel 0]

Mate, if you represent the PvP community, i'd go on ignoring you too, not that I think BIS is. If you want to inspire some change, you're going to have to be a little bit more constructive.

Edited July 5, 2011 by Daniel

[maddogx 13]

I wonder how exactly BIS is ignoring the PvP community?

This is a genuine question, btw. Can someone give concrete examples?

[dmarkwick 261]

All this time and I never suspected there was a vein of resentment from the PvP community :) or indeed any kind of co-op vs PvP thing.

I guess I kind of imagined that successful co-op or PvP was about players setting it up themselves.

[Daniel 0]

There isn't. Apart from a few malcontents who seem to think they are the PvP community.

[kylania 568]

Stop trolling. Or go play with your bots. Both have the same essence.

@BIS: Yes it's very clever focusing on coop. It is as clever as the AI of ArmA series. Keep ignoring the PvP community and you ll find 20 servers max running Domi, or evo, or any other insanity-test mission.

You've proven my point exactly, thank you.

[carlostex 38]

I've made a PvP mission, or TvT whatever and it was a success in my gaming community. We played it and had a lot of fun, everybody enjoyed it when we wanted to go at each other.

Anyway i can do almost everything i want with this game. I hope PvP'ers stop bitchin about the game, i can understand that people who only started playin' Arma 2 don't understand the essence of this game.

Buy Arma X, and play Cold War Crisis campaign.

[.kju 3245]

sorry to repeat this again, yet as people just ignore/skip it and call every person liking PvP an idiot (like it's done the other way around too) .. great quality around here .. as always one could almost say

---

To make it clear again:

OFP and arma offer a great base for COOP _AND_ PvP play _AND_ many other custom gameplay like RPG.

That said what Ivan says sounds more like they focus on the SP content again.

No more COOP campaign (good decision to reduce complexity to be able to provide a working campaign this time).

Or where do you read any specifics for a focus on COOP - what could that even be? Especially COOP "only".

Improvements in interface, netcode, VOIP and all similar topics would help ANY MP play.

---

The lack of player base is what people complain about.

The reasons are the all too well known issues of MP play arma has.

Now if they say and promote the game as NON pvp game,

it will certainly not help the MP numbers as people reading this think:

"okay skip arma III - it will be not about pvp play".

Simple, no?

Edited July 5, 2011 by .kju [PvPscene]

[Maio 293]

I've made a PvP mission, or TvT whatever and it was a success in my gaming community. We played it and had a lot of fun, everybody enjoyed it when we wanted to go at each other.

Anyway i can do almost everything i want with this game .....

There is nothing stopping players from creating their own PvP missions just like he did . If the stock BIS maps are to big for you even thought Utes and the Desert map fall into the PvP friendly category , download a smaller user made map like Mana and play on that one .

We are getting a new player movement system that will hopefully make CQB ( especially PvP) more enjoyable .

The netcode is being improved ...

What more do you want ?

[solidsnake2384 10]

I hope they fix the ragdolls. The explosion ragdoll effects are nice but when they get shot they just drop down. Not even taking into affect the force and path of they bullet. They just drop on the ground. If someone gets shot in the head from the front they should fall backwards.

[Big Dawg KS 6]

The lack of player base is what people complain about.

The reasons are the all too well known issues of MP play arma has.

Now if they say and promote the game as NON pvp game,

it will certainly not help the MP numbers as people reading this think:

"okay skip arma III - it will be not about pvp play".

Simple, no?

The lack of player base won't really be remedied by improvements to the gameplay. The problem is that the community is immensly divided in both the missions they prefer to play and the mods/addons/expansions/DLCs they use. IMO the best BIS can do is implement some system to facilitate finding people to play with or host their own public servers (maybe PvP only servers, Coop only servers, etc...) with only vanilla content.

[Steakslim 1]

I hope they fix the ragdolls. The explosion ragdoll effects are nice but when they get shot they just drop down. Not even taking into affect the force and path of they bullet. They just drop on the ground. If someone gets shot in the head from the front they should fall backwards.

Not necessarily true, and the physics in the demonstrations where not final anyways, Ivan said so himself in the videos.