The trouble with getting people into Arma

[PuFu 4591]

Actually I do see as I'm OA/ACE server administrator as well. :p But I get the point. :)

the "you" was a generic one. Not meant directly towards you. I usually use "one" as it is even more generic.

[Minoza 11]

the "you" was a generic one. Not meant directly towards you. I usually use "one" as it is even more generic.

Yeah I figured it out in the meantime and edited my post. XD I'm a bit slow today, weekend and all...

[JdB 151]

while i do agree with you on the fact that mods and the likes don't need to be hosted on the same server as you are trying to connect, what you, as a user don't see with SIX is where those files are being downloaded from. Which is in fact from a number of community own and paid servers (about 7-8 last time i looked into it.). This is the only aspect i am not sure how it would be handled if BIS implements such a system, as in hosting mods (especially since for armaholics and the likes, deep mirroring without going through the website is bad for business as it doesn't turn into revenue that makes it possible to keep the servers alive).

That's really my main concern with automatic mod downloading for missions. Let's say you are new to the community looking for realism. So you choose to play a mission that uses ACE because it has a name that suggest realism (tag or something). The information about the mod itself is basic, nothing like a newspost or forum thread but hey, it's automatic and free so why not give it a try. You play the mission for 5 minutes, but really feel they've taken realism too far, so you delete the mod. That's loads of bandwidth wasted, all of which needs to be paid for not by the people buying the game, many of whom think that doing some research into mods to find the ones that suit them is too much work, but by a few people hosting servers (whether resource or MP server) and having to shell out more money each month because of ever increasing bandwidth usage. Additionally for MP server hosts this would mean renting a second server as using the game server to also host the addons and mods will decrease performance (considerably). As nice as it sounds to have automatic installation of required addons and mods, there are too many downsides for the few people making the automation possible (not that most would care of course as long as they get everything handed to them on a golden platter). Installing addons and mods should be easier, but imo this should firstly be done in the enabling/disabling process, being made possible to do it from within the game without restarting for addons and restarting only when an actual mod is installed, automatically so you don't have to quit the game and then run the executable manually. The game only loads the addons that are enabled into memory, so people can just use one single dump-Addons folder for addons if they want to, and they won't have to move files in and out of folders each time. Taking a few minutes out of your life to learn about modfolders is clearly too much for a lot of people, and in some cases it's not a practical system for those that do know how to work with them either.

Edited March 10, 2012 by JdB

[wamingo 1]

it wouldn't hurt if the server filter for Expansions just filtered the ones with unofficial addons... Right now it's useless.

Of course, it would be even better, if it could filter just the servers with incompatible addons.

aaand I kind of wish they hadn't called it "expansions", it seems misleading to me.