The trouble with getting people into Arma

[PLRSniper 3]

To be quite honest. The reason MY friends never gave the game a fair chance was because of the clunky controls. It had nothing to do with it being too hard to get into the game and running it but more around the fact new players feel absolutely paralyzed.

Even a player without hands would have greater success in CoD/BF than they do in OFP/ArmA games. Not due to the fact CoD/BF is easier but because of the character controls.

If BI studio can make the controls feel more natural then i am sure more casual gamers could get into the title and play it the way it's meant to be played. There's nothing wrong with a realistic simulator but when you feel like a man without arms and legs controlling your character you quickly lose interest in the game. It just feels so offset from reality where we can walk, run and jump without having to think twice about it.

Another way of saying it is... Where in real life we just DO it, in ArmA we have to make a complicated instruction set to simply point the weapon at another person.

[onlyrazor 11]

Agreed. Especially with that split second delay between input and movement.

[160thSOAR 10]

I got into this game all on my own. Here's basically what happened to me.

Back in the days when BFBC2 was the battlefield game everyone was playing, I happened on a post talking about some "super-boring military simulator" called ArmA2. I ignored the super-boring part of that sentence and went for the military simulator part, searched for ArmA2, and came up with ... nothing really that helpful. I couldn't find anything that told me exactly what the game was like, and I was too dumb to search for videos. I was afraid it might be like CoD, but with rifles that kill in one shot instead of five. (Yes, I was a total idiot back then.) So I searched for ArmA2 Guide, came up with dslyecxi's TTP2 and read through the whole thing. What really got me into the game was the vehicles - I saw that there were a zillion of them, and it made me happy. :)

So I tried to buy the game. There were all these different versions of ArmA, and I had no idea what was what. It took me about half an hour to find out that ArmA2 CO was ArmA2 and OA combined. Luckily, Steam didn't give me any trouble installing the game.

The first thing I did was jump into the campaign. I couldn't hit a barn door with my rifle (on average, it was taking me three shots to hit one target on the carrier), and it took about 5 minutes for me to figure out how to vault an obstacle. Razor Team rode the Venom in, and I was like "Finally, action!" Unfortunately, I had no idea what my AI was shooting at. I shot three enemies through the entire mission. I got to the point where Miles is shot, then realized I had no idea what I was doing, and quit the campaign.

I started looking for some way to get my skills up, and found Boot Camp. I did some of the Boot Camp missions, which helped me understand the very basics of the game. It still took me a week just to pass the vanilla firing range, though. It was still a long time before I managed to do anything useful in combat. For the first week or so of playing MP, I would just shoot my rifle in the same direction everyone else was shooting, because I had no idea what to shoot at. Luckily, I managed to find magnified scopes and use those.

Total Time Invested: 2 months or so

Hair-Pullingly Frustrated Moments: At least 15 or so

End Result: Priceless

[antoineflemming 14]

To be quite honest. The reason MY friends never gave the game a fair chance was because of the clunky controls. It had nothing to do with it being too hard to get into the game and running it but more around the fact new players feel absolutely paralyzed.

Even a player without hands would have greater success in CoD/BF than they do in OFP/ArmA games. Not due to the fact CoD/BF is easier but because of the character controls.

If BI studio can make the controls feel more natural then i am sure more casual gamers could get into the title and play it the way it's meant to be played. There's nothing wrong with a realistic simulator but when you feel like a man without arms and legs controlling your character you quickly lose interest in the game. It just feels so offset from reality where we can walk, run and jump without having to think twice about it.

Another way of saying it is... Where in real life we just DO it, in ArmA we have to make a complicated instruction set to simply point the weapon at another person.

Agreed. Especially with that split second delay between input and movement.

So true. And this split second crap isn't just for infantry. It's for vehicles and aircraft too. This has to do both with the way BIS does animations (good thing they're changing their animation system) AND the animations themselves. Like I've said before, yeah it's a steep learning curve to be able to do EVERYTHING ArmA offers. BUT, it doesn't take learning EVERY single aspect of ArmA to actually play the game. Basically, if a player learns how to place friendly and enemy groups in an editor (no different than learning the menu of any other game) and how to set one unit as the player, then they can play the game basically like any other FPS. The difference is how the game feels, the responsiveness of the controls, the movement of the character.

If BIS were to replace the current animation system with a COD system, and add in floating hands, so that the player could do constant 180 degree turns, and all the arcade stuff, AND still have all of the trademark ArmA features, the game would STILL be ArmA. Yeah, go ahead and accuse me of blasphemy or heresy, but it's true. Why? Because it's the features that ArmA has, the hardware that the player can simulate in-game, that defines ArmA, not the speed at which the player can move and react.

The point is this: I'm not trying to say that BIS should make their game like COD and add floating hands. But there is this notion that everything has to be slow-paced for a simulator or that, because the most important thing in a simulator is the set of features it offers, then other aspects, such as graphics, or sound quality, or animations, have to be sacrificed because that's what most simulators do. The animations in ArmA3 can be as fast as that in standard FPS games and still be just as realistic. Just because the game is a simulator does not mean that the animations have to be clunky. And ArmA doesn't have to set itself apart by having clunky animations, or a poorly-designed menu, or weapons not in those games JUST because COD or BF have certain weapons, or fluid animations (3rd person animations), or they have nice looking menus. I'm not just making up this stuff. These are all arguments I have seen on this forum that counter either a suggestion for more fluid animations, or a new menu layout, or certain weapons like the FN F2000 being in ArmA3. So you guys are absolutely right. And this is the biggest turnoff for me, the only reason I still play MW3 and BF3.

If this game felt better movement- and control-wise, then many more newcomers would feel comfortable with ArmA.

[feralcircus 2]

I like ARMA's simulation of the characters weight shift (inertia) and ideally should be simulated more :-)

I like the fact that the character progressively and realistically accelerates to top speed when running.

The characters in COD would all be suffering from whiplash (acceleration / deceleration trauma) if they moved like that in real life in real life lol

[Smurf 12]

ArmA chars don´t have inertia, they stop at the same time you let the button go and sometimes they still play the running animation while still. I don´t recall many games having this inertia stuff, RO1 and 2, maybe RnL and Crysis .

BTW: IMO the best movement\animation system ATM is RO2's one, by far.

[thechaos 1]

BTW: IMO the best movement\animation system ATM is RO2's one, by far.

Yes, there are some very interesting things in this game - such as blind fire from covers.

[kylania 567]

There's blind fire from cover in ArmA2 already.

*gets behind cover*

*turns to a noob*

"Noob, shoot around that corner!"

[Smurf 12]

Yes, there are some very interesting things in this game - such as blind fire from covers.

And that is one of the most useless of all. I barely use it ou see someone using it (maybe because ATM its too easy to score a hit ingame; wait until RoClassic) and the only kill that I have using blind fire is with a bolt action rifle.

What I actually mean is that you can: go prone, low crawl, run crawling, high crawl (while aiming) stand, high stand (while aiming) and run standing; There is also others "heights" while you go in cover.

And the collision system is also good, the weapon get pushed back when you are near to a object or wall and when you go against a wall the soldier holds the rifle against his body.

There is also the support\deploy weapon system which is intuitive and really makes the diference.

Would love to see some or all of those things in A3.

[tacticalnuggets 24]

I like ARMA's simulation of the characters weight shift (inertia) and ideally should be simulated more :-)

I like the fact that the character progressively and realistically accelerates to top speed when running.

The characters in COD would all be suffering from whiplash (acceleration / deceleration trauma) if they moved like that in real life in real life lol

How often have you moved around in your life because I am not a very fast runner, but I was a defensive line man in american football for a while and we could accelerate faster than in game.

[thechaos 1]

And that is one of the most useless of all. I barely use it ou see someone using it (maybe because ATM its too easy to score a hit ingame; wait until RoClassic) and the only kill that I have using blind fire is with a bolt action rifle.

What I actually mean is that you can: go prone, low crawl, run crawling, high crawl (while aiming) stand, high stand (while aiming) and run standing; There is also others "heights" while you go in cover.

And the collision system is also good, the weapon get pushed back when you are near to a object or wall and when you go against a wall the soldier holds the rifle against his body.

There is also the support\deploy weapon system which is intuitive and really makes the diference.

Would love to see some or all of those things in A3.

As I already said in another tread - our small ArmA 2 community use brilliant SMK Animations for all this staff. It's not perfect, but it added a lot of amenities and experiences in our mp sessions. Of course, if ArmA 3 will have this staff officially - it will be very very good.

[feralcircus 2]

How often have you moved around in your life because I am not a very fast runner, but I was a defensive line man in american football for a while and we could accelerate faster than in game.

Your Protective foam padding weighs around 20-30lbs (probably less if more modern)

The average soldier carries arround (im estimating) 50-100lbs

So if an olympic sprinter can accelarate from 0 to 30km/h in 3 sec (wearing nothing but lycra) the soldier will be much more restricted.

As i said i'd... like it to be simulated more depending on the players load.

[smookie 11]

If this game felt better movement- and control-wise, then many more newcomers would feel comfortable with ArmA.

But then I would expect massive flame from arma veterans etc. The problem is to find a good balance but on the other hand you can't go both ways at the same time. Its a tough job:)

[antoineflemming 14]

But then I would expect massive flame from arma veterans etc. The problem is to find a good balance but on the other hand you can't go both ways at the same time. Its a tough job:)

Wait. What? You would be flamed if you made the controls and movement better? Or because of the newcomers (who are familiar with COD and BF)? Anyway, good luck! Hope you find the balance (and that it's more towards the side of quick-reaction movement) :)

[xeno 230]

BTW: IMO the best movement\animation system ATM is RO2's one, by far.

Yep, that's true. It simply feels fluent even though you have inertia and whatnot.

Currently everytime I try to play ArmA I end up 5 minutes later pressing ALT-F4 because I can't stand the animation system anymore.

In ArmA it feels more like that the game is steering/controlling your avatar and not you, the player. What the series needs is some major overhaul in that area. Not adding awkward new animations but completely change the animation system. It needs direct control for the player.

Xeno

[Chrissd21 10]

It could be a community thing.

For instance, I like music that most people would classify as "noise", the heathens. The Mars Volta for instance, a prog rock band that most people can't stand. Or Shining, a Norwegian "Black jazz" band. Something like John Zorn, fairly avant garde free jazz and entirely disconsonant. So when introducing people to this band, I start of small, say Miles Davis. Work up to Ella Fitzgerald, let people wrap their heads around be bop, the idea that the voice is an instrument and not merely a speaker. Then keep going up, Free The Robots, electronic jazzy hip hop. Eventually I get to Zorn's album Spy Vs Spy and from there anything is possible.

So if you want to convert people to ArmA, do it the same way. First CoD for the "You are the war" idea, then Battlefield for the squads and open battlefields. After that would be Ghost Recon, a more hardcore FPS than Battlefield but still not at the ArmA level. Then and only then do you introduce them to ArmA. Make sure they go through the campaigns first, or give them a mod with more story in it and less of a sandbox. Slowly opening up the world instead of dumping it on them all at once. ArmA is the FPS equivalent of the spreadsheet games. Europa Universalis, where taxation isn't a slider with five values, it's twenty sliders with thirty values each and detailed discussions on inflation and various accountant talk. You don't dump that on someone unless you know they're the type of person who's going to like those games, you introduce it slowly.

Changing the game to suit the people who need to be spoon fed into existence merely serves to alienate the people who make the game what it is in the first place, at which point we've got another CoD clone and half of us are demanding refunds. Bugs and such can be eliminated, animation work can be fixed, but I don't want another stabby-stabby-shotgun-one-man-hero game. I've got a few of those already and I don't play ArmA for that reason.

tl;dr

Wine tasting, you don't give someone a four hundred year old bottle and expect them to know the difference between that and the two dollar swill they picked up, you teach them to cultivate their taste and learn to appreciate the finer things in life. ArmA is the five hundred year old bottle which is only for the deserving. The masses can be taught to appreciate it or they can stick to their normal rubbish.

[feralcircus 2]

changing the game to suit the people who need to be spoon fed into existence merely serves to alienate the people who make the game what it is in the first place, at which point we've got another cod clone and half of us are demanding refunds. Bugs and such can be eliminated, animation work can be fixed, but i don't want another stabby-stabby-shotgun-one-man-hero game. I've got a few of those already and i don't play arma for that reason.

!!!perfect!!!

[jumpartist 0]

It could be a community thing.

ArmA is the five hundred year old bottle which is only for the deserving. The masses can be taught to appreciate it or they can stick to their normal rubbish.

MAn sometimes I feel like the ARMA engine IS 500 years old.

I for one feel like this is the biggest reason why people drop arma in the first 10 minutes of playing. It just feels terrible. Its clunky, its slow, it breaks easy. All the things that modern games dont do. If they could just fix the "Clunky" feel than you would have DROVES of people playing it.

The problem now is. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. So now BIS is a bit backed into a corner. If they don't come out swinging, than I fear ARMA3 will be down for the count. Alot of people think you cant teach an old dog new tricks. Will BIS listen to the community and get rid of antiquated features like their terrible animation system or that god forsaken scroll wheel?

Those things will be the first things people see and feel. If they aren't top notch. Say good bye to all those players

[lukio 18]

I once played OFP (on a buddys PC at a LAN) and had no idea what to do at all. He said something about "You have to breathe!". I told him that of course I was breathing, then he said "no stupid - in the game. Press CTRL + G before shooting." WTF? was my expression when I saw the keybind config. You need 100 keys just to play?

Several years later I'm a bit older and decided to give ARMA 2 another look as it was discounted on Steam.

Game runs fine with 45 FPS, Steam updates the newest version, all looks well. Now comes the big issue. I play shooters / FPS games with ESDF, not WASD. So I spent around 2 hours reconfiguring my keys because the descriptions are horrible and I had to check the settings in-game. (Optics mode vs. Optics for example).

Then my first single-player game (after finishing the basic tutorials with shooting range). A landing in Utes, very dramatic with Aircraft Carrier and chopper landing. Wow! Action! Yeah Kickass! I run up the hill and am told to "Go. To. THAT. House". Which house? There are several? Oh I have a new waypoint. Why not just go to current waypoint? Hm. Oh well I walk to the waypoint. Suddenly I get shot, I am down. Oh right its a simulation, not a shooter. Then why the f**k do you create a mission that could be confused like a gugn ho mission from a generic war FPS?

This happened several times until I understood that "Go to that house" means "take cover and move VERY slowly towards that house, then carefully check the corners with lean."

I kind of rage quit after still being killed by some stray bullet from an opponent that was probably 1 km away lying in the grass and disguised as a shrubbery.

I think this is what scares off many people from ARMA, especially if they have no idea what its about. Now after playing several weeks I understand how to look for enemies, scan the horizon, find decent cover (not just concealing) and actually am able to aim and hit an enemy, even if he is moving.

Unfortunately I never learned this stuff by following the extensive and very "Hit the ground running" ingame tutorials and this is one of the issue that makes the game very inaccessible. The game takes certain understanding of the mechanics for granted and just throws you into the battlefield like CoD or Halo (or any other generic FPS), but actually you need to be a) very aware of your surrounding b) move carefully and c) learn to look out for and use cover at all times. Now it strikes me really odd that after just starting the game the first scenario I play has me doing the work of a specialized deep recon unit, whereas I basically only know how to do an obstacle course and shoot an M-16 without killing anyone behind me. I'm not even going to start on how there are 10'000 keys to configure and how the descriptions are almost meaningless (The difference between Prone and Evasive Prone would be another example that was not comprehensible at all).

--- tldr ---

Make the game more user friendly with better usability.

Less clunky keybinds, better descpriptions.

Tutorials that actually set the awareness mindset needed to survive 1 Minute in the battle.

Do not create any tutorials or scenarios that have a CoD-ish action style and give a false impression

Multiplayer / Coop with a hotseat system (like L4D2 on a small scale with 4-8 players) would be very useful. I still am afraid to join some huge server game because my skills still are mediocre at the most.

The horrible "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" run sound, do soldiers have their own invisible coconut soundmakers with them all the time? Listen to the first 30s of this clip, this is what comes to my mind each time I run in ARMA 2.

(Also wtf with the paranoid forum settings and the almost illegible captchas, sometimes in Arabic? Trying to scare people away on purpose?)

Edited February 19, 2012 by Lukio

[Tonci87 163]

You played Trial by fire. its a very hard scenario even for experienced players.

BIS should definately tell the player that it is very important to stay in cover.

[ProfTournesol 956]

Trial By Fire is exactly the mission that must be played by the new players to understand how this game works. You just can't run and gun, it doesn't really need more explanations, even for other FPS players.

[[frl]myke 14]

@Lukio

well written and articulated post. I hope you don't mind if i take it as example to show the most common mistakes that happen. Please don't take it personal.

What happened to Lukio is a good example what pleayers do wrong: they think it is about them, anything that happens will happen to entertain them. Wrong!

It is war. The AI is not there to entertain the player but to fulfill their very own task. Now taking the situation described by Lukio but let us look from the opponents side. So you're sitting on your island and if you're not deaf and blind, you know there is a carrier close to your coast and they're surely not here for vacation. You hear a helicopter landing nearby and you know it isn't one of yours...

Now let's go to pplayers view: do you still think you just can walk around the beach without being noticed and shot at?

These are AI, not bots.

Again Lukio, this is not adressed to you, just general speaking.

[lukio 18]

Trial By Fire is exactly the mission that must be played by the new players to understand how this game works. You just can't run and gun, it doesn't really need more explanations, even for other FPS players.

Prior to this mission the player though should already have an understanding of the basics, throwing people into cold water usually is acceptable for generic shooters, but for simulations I'm not sure this is the best approach. At least not only after doing a very simple obstacle course and firing 20 rounds off an M-16. The importance of cover and noise level is very significant in this game, yet it isn't explained anywhere. On top of that this mission very much starts off like a action FPS "run and gun" mission, delivering a false impression.

You played Trial by fire. its a very hard scenario even for experienced players.

BIS should definately tell the player that it is very important to stay in cover.

Yes it was Trial by Fire and up till now I've never managed to make it through without getting wounded, but maybe that is part of it .

---------- Post added at 12:35 ---------- Previous post was at 11:39 ----------

Myke;2108759']@Lukio

[...]I hope you don't mind if i take it as example to show the most common mistakes that happen. Please don't take it personal.

Not at all.In the meantime I know I was approaching it wrong, but the game or intro to this mission also gave me no indication or guidance towards this mindset. Quite the contrary as I wrote - its all about cliché going in and kicking ass / being the boss, which is completely counterproductive imo.

[iratus 71]

Part of the problem is: Many new players see Arma as just another FPS. They think something like "it's like Battlefield but requires more tactics". But ArmA is more a simulator than a FPS and the gameplay is verry different to say Battlefield or even Red Orchestra. When people enter Arma with this missconception, they run into a variety of problems.

For example a buddy of mine was upset because he had no knife. He asked me what he is supposed to do if he runs out of ammo and i said "just pick up magazines/weapons from a dead soldier". Because he is used to Battlefield and such, he is used to disapearing bodies so he never thought about being able to pick up magazines from dead bodies. Funnily that wasn't even in a situation where there was any reason to use a knife, he still had about 300 or 400 bullets for his machinegun and it was no stealthy, sneaky mission. He missed the knife only because he is used to have one in all those other games.

Those new players often also get their ass kicked repeadetly because they never have learned to play a game like Arma (i.e. stay in cover, scan the surroundings for enemies, engage targets at 300m with an assault rifle ect.). On the same time they may view themselves as expierienced FPS players, thus assume subconsciously something has to be wrong with the game if they aren't as good as they are used to.

Back in the days of Cold War Crysis this wasn't that much of a problem, since back then there wheren't that many shooters. People hadn't that many expectations how a shooter has to be. Therefore they aproached the game more open minded and took what it had to offer whithout moaning about all the things that where different to other games. Nowadays it seems necessary to somehow point out that Arma different gameplaywise from all those modern military shooters.

[Tonci87 163]

Part of the problem is: Many new players see Arma as just another FPS. They think something like "it's like Battlefield but requires more tactics". But ArmA is more a simulator than a FPS and the gameplay is verry different to say Battlefield or even Red Orchestra. When people enter Arma with this missconception, they run into a variety of problems.

For example a buddy of mine was upset because he had no knife. He asked me what he is supposed to do if he runs out of ammo and i said "just pick up magazines/weapons from a dead soldier". Because he is used to Battlefield and such, he is used to disapearing bodies so he never thought about being able to pick up magazines from dead bodies. Funnily that wasn't even in a situation where there was any reason to use a knife, he still had about 300 or 400 bullets for his machinegun and it was no stealthy, sneaky mission. He missed the knife only because he is used to have one in all those other games.

Those new players often also get their ass kicked repeadetly because they never have learned to play a game like Arma (i.e. stay in cover, scan the surroundings for enemies, engage targets at 300m with an assault rifle ect.). On the same time they may view themselves as expierienced FPS players, thus assume subconsciously something has to be wrong with the game if they aren't as good as they are used to.

Back in the days of Cold War Crysis this wasn't that much of a problem, since back then there wheren't that many shooters. People hadn't that many expectations how a shooter has to be. Therefore they aproached the game more open minded and took what it had to offer whithout moaning about all the things that where different to other games. Nowadays it seems necessary to somehow point out that Arma different gameplaywise from all those modern military shooters.

I really think that is one of the main problems.