Will Bohemia finally improve ARMA's PVP to attract New Players?

[pathetic_berserker 4]

I don't understand. Are there not enough fragfest button mashing games yet?

Oh there are enough,for sure, and I'd appreciate it if I didn't feel the need to buy one just to have a different kind of fun. And I don't believe it should be implied A3 needs to become 'one of those' in anyway short of some well designed missions out of the box. I actually went out and bought BF3 when all the ArmA PvP fun deserted my region, and I still regret it.

[celery 8]

Guys, who are you actually arguing against here? Nobody has proposed to make an arcade shooter out of Arma 3, yet you're acting like there's a whole movement out there to make sure it happens. Reading this thread makes me go FPDR with all the false assumptions and strawman arguments just because two mainstream shooters have been mentioned in the context of how popular they are.

[NoRailgunner 0]

Right, BIS can make their own awesome missions! Or one could also ask 'Will or should CoD/BF compete with A3'? Btw why are some people more interested in joining on a 50+/80+ playing servers and assuming that missions that allow only 20/30 players or less are "crap"/"bad"/"shitty/"lame"?? Are the mass multiplayer games automatically better just because they are popular or (over)hyped?

[Dragonshot 1]

just because two mainstream shooters have been mentioned

C'mon Celery, someone starts a thread about competing with games that thrive on quickscoping and trickshotting and you seriously expect everyone here to approve.

[Bee8190 10]

Right, BIS can make their own awesome missions! Or one could also ask 'Will or should CoD/BF compete with A3'? Btw why are some people more interested in joining on a 50+/80+ playing servers and assuming that missions that allow only 20/30 players or less are "crap"/"bad"/"shitty/"lame"?? Are the mass multiplayer games automatically better just because they are popular or (over)hyped?

...Its not about ''compete'' with COD-BF3 or whatever really, Its more about including some quick yet decent, re-playable (almost cod-bf3) like missions. Overhaul of controls wouldn't hurt either. (which is being worked on) so we (who wish more diversity in PvP etc) are half way there.

As of joiniing the most populated servers, ppl want to simply hop in and gun, transport, support...whatever. Most propably assume that with full-ish servers the game(play) is already pretty established and they won't need to seed the server or look for enemies on huge maps.

Edited May 12, 2012 by Bee8190

[Dragonshot 1]

Its not about ''compete'' with COD-BF3

You do realise this thread title is Will Bohemia let ARMA finally compete with Call of Duty and Battlefield? right?

[metalcraze 290]

Right, BIS can make their own awesome missions! Or one could also ask 'Will or should CoD/BF compete with A3'? Btw why are some people more interested in joining on a 50+/80+ playing servers and assuming that missions that allow only 20/30 players or less are "crap"/"bad"/"shitty/"lame"?? Are the mass multiplayer games automatically better just because they are popular or (over)hyped?

Moar players more fragz for me lul

Why else would u play a shootah?

This is a shootan game so it's about picking a gun and start killing everyone no

re-playable (almost cod-bf3) like missions

Replaying same 1-2 corridors is fun in them "missions".

[xeno 234]

I think it's not so much about competing with the mentioned titels but that BIS finally should wake up and put more effort into MP.

That includes making and maintaining MP missions too. The community can do only a part of it and only relying on the community will change nothing.

It's frustrating to work around the many MP problems or waiting months/years to get problems fixed. Or having features in the game which do not work at all in MP or are crippled in MP.

Maybe that can't be solved for A3 but hopefully for A4 (if there will be an A4).

SP is not what drives games these days anymore or keeps them alive for years but MP, imo.

Xeno

[Bee8190 10]

Moar players more fragz for me lul

Why else would u play a shootah?

This is a shootan game so it's about picking a gun and start killing everyone no

Replaying same 1-2 corridors is fun in them "missions".

Exactly. Believe it or not, I neither feel playing ultra realisticaly 24/7 so if I can spawn in the walley and pick up the shotgun and shoot all em zombies for a while, I can find fun in that too

[NoRailgunner 0]

I'm sure BIS devs are able to make and include some typical + unique A3 'quick yet decent, re-playable missions'. But should BIS focus only-mostly on "it could be popular" or more on "let's create something new that is userfriendly and works out of the box"? Its bad if players die just because they suddenly fall down between walls or got injured because some other object/AI collision don't work.... some features/modules are nice but someone put a blind eye on it in "QA/bugfixing/tweaking office" @BIS HQ.

[metalcraze 290]

Exactly. Believe it or not, I neither feel playing ultra realisticaly 24/7 so if I can spawn in the walley and pick up the shotgun and shoot all em zombies for a while, I can find fun in that too

You are in luck then. There are games made just for that.

[Bee8190 10]

You are in luck then. There are games made just for that.

No, there aren't. Just becouse some ppl want to play with respawn doesn't mean they have to resort to console port. I still want the fancy graphics, ragdoll, physX, lighting, ballistics, big operation combat area and all of the things but still being able to hop in and out of the mission whenever I need or is simply convenient for me.

I will play no-respawn whenever I got time for it, over weekends usualy, that is.

Thank you

[-=Grunt=- 10]

ballistics, big operation combat area and all of the things but still being able to hop in and out of the mission whenever I need or is simply convenient for me.

Warfare mode is just like that. It's a good in-between when it comes to arcade and realism in a game mode. If you're into a bit of PvP and PvE together that is...

[celery 8]

C'mon Celery, someone starts a thread about competing with games that thrive on quickscoping and trickshotting and you seriously expect everyone here to approve.

Did the italics of "in the context of how popular they are" make it invisible for you? Because the OP has excplicitly said many times now that he doesn't mean it the way you want him to mean.

[max power 21]

Candy is popular because it's candy.

[tremanarch 6]

Warfare mode is just like that. It's a good in-between when it comes to arcade and realism in a game mode. If you're into a bit of PvP and PvE together that is...

warfare mode is the best Multiplayer scenaria since mankind. Really. The only Prob. is that the AI must be good, and the CPUs also.

But from theory, Oh Dude, this mode is I ever wanted. You can run with your own squad. You can go solo with fancy machines, or you can build several squads doing several thing all over the map..

[jackrabbitslim7 10]

Sorry if this sound stupid but how do you build several squads without being commander ?

I agree that warfare mode is a very good mode, you have freedom, and the randomness force you to adapt and use tactics sometimes you find an empty city, then you face 5 tanks !

About pvp if you play arma 2 without OA you can play on a Russian server (advance and secure) the server is active most of the day and is quite fun (but I find it hard not to be killed, don't expect the coop difficulty).

[LockDOwn 0]

Did the italics of "in the context of how popular they are" make it invisible for you? Because the OP has excplicitly said many times now that he doesn't mean it the way you want him to mean.

Exactly again.

I want to see ARMA support MP PvP out of the box for new players and "unskilled" players like myself that sit around and HOPE someone makes a good one and hosts it. On top of that, you hope many have not given up by that time and then even know how and where to look for it so the server is not underpopulated.

ARMA uniqueness could offer MP PvP in a in a true simulation game. Something not offered anywhere else. Me not having the technological know how prevents me on how that would actually be done but having some made out of the box and letting players then make their own maps on the same game premises would only grow this game for the better in my opinion. And it would still let original AMRA players still make their own games too.

[katipo66 94]

Ive mentioned this before on similar threads but ill mention it again here, as a gameplay mode i always thought Dragon Zens Advancing Power would be a great option for PVP.

Although it is made for single player (but plays like MP) i think it is a great concept online play in the armaverse if most of the SP elements were stripped and its only left with the push forward function.

[batto 17]

If by official you mean BIS hosted, i'm sorry to burst your bubble but will surely NOT happen.

Why is it so unrealistic?

And please tell me, how did all the other games that tried to compete do that? By being innovative, or by copy-paste?

Mostly by copy-paste I guess. That's why we don't play it. Correct?

Please tell me, what other PvP game would you like to compare Arma with? (maybe not the current situation, but a perfect one from your point of view).

The perfect one: Something like ARMA & R6 (the good ones) combined with PvP modes like: Hostage rescue & Target destroy (Counter-Strike), Onslaught (UT), CTF, ... + something new & innovative on medium and small (CQB) scale.

Key hunt: http://dev.xonotic.org/projects/xonotic/wiki/Key_Hunt

That just inspiration. I don't want to play Qauke in ARMA ;-). But (team) deathmatch could be fun too (note that BIS put one very small DM mission in A2 too).

aren't there other military games out there that you can play with a lot of ppl? 64ppl would most likely suffice i guess (even if you push towards 128 in arma).

I want a lot of PvP running but games should have appropriate team size (say max 8 per team on CQB scale). Currently the PvP is one PR server + cap&hold on Sunday AFAIK. I'm not counting private servers because I don't have time to organize such games with 0 friends that play ARMA.

Edited May 14, 2012 by batto

[PuFu 4600]

Why is it so unrealistic?

Because BIS would have NOthing to gain from it. From a commercial POV, it would be a bad idea rather than a good one. The amount of money BIS would need to put into hosting is just not worth it.

Collocation for your own hardware goes around 50Eus, renting towards 100 (for a boxed server) per month. Obviously, for it to work, BIS would need at least 5-10 of those. That is money ill spent.

All other games where you see Official Servers means the developers are getting money for those servers to be up. How? Simply by signing contracts with a limited number of server-renting companies, giving only those the server files. By contract agreement, they are forced to run a x% of their rented server number as Official Servers. That goes for all EA shooters in the last 6-8 years (BC/BC2/BF3, crysis etc), as well for the COD franchise since MW.

Currently the PvP is one PR server + cap&hold on Sunday AFAIK.

That is mainly because of a lack of demand.

I'm not counting private servers because I don't have time to organize such games with 0 friends that play ARMA.

get a few "game friends"? None of the ppl i know in real life play it either. That never stopped me having a good time with it, that is since 2001.

[metalcraze 290]

What's the difference between BIS server and a community server? Why is community server bad?

There's absolutely no need for official servers.

More people won't just come and play with you just because there will be OFFICIAL word somewhere in server's name if people are not interested in playing.

The main problem is that some people try to treat ArmA like a yet another casual shooter when asking for "official servers! official game modes!". ArmA has always been mostly about a bunch of people gathering and having tactical organized fun. Chaotic public gaming is secondary because the game works best with the teamwork. The game is not "BF2 on steroids".

But even then I see a lot of public servers having 30+ players on evenings. Why do you need more?

I'm not counting private servers because I don't have time to organize such games with 0 friends that play ARMA.

That's not a big deal. Go to unitedoperations.net - they play both coop, pvp and DayZ as a group, They can have up to 80 people every day if you care about numbers. They also use comms to play in an organized way. They have tutors that will explain to you something you don't understand. They play other MP games too. Finding people to play with online is not hard.

There are also communities like ShackTac, TacticalGamer, Comrades in Arms that you don't even have to join like clans.

Edited May 14, 2012 by metalcraze

[batto 17]

Because BIS would have NOthing to gain from it. From a commercial POV, it would be a bad idea rather than a good one. The amount of money BIS would need to put into hosting is just not worth it.

Collocation for your own hardware goes around 50Eus, renting towards 100 (for a boxed server) per month. Obviously, for it to work, BIS would need at least 5-10 of those. That is money ill spent.

All other games where you see Official Servers means the developers are getting money for those servers to be up. How? Simply by signing contracts with a limited number of server-renting companies, giving only those the server files. By contract agreement, they are forced to run a x% of their rented server number as Official Servers. That goes for all EA shooters in the last 6-8 years (BC/BC2/BF3, crysis etc), as well for the COD franchise since MW.

Gain is customer satisfaction by 24/7 running servers. During my A3 spamming one guy ranted that he wanted to play CTI in NA but there is no server with good ping. He's just another guy that threw A2 away. It all depends on good will of community. Customer satisfaction is best ad. Another gain is that BIS could place ads in PvP servers. In Counter-Strike on certain maps there are billboards where admins can put ads. It's not intrusive, it's part of map in fact.

And please don't lecture me on cost of running servers. You live in the past. Today you can rent virtualized servers (in teh cloud) for much less money than 100 Euro. Today you can get 2 CPU server with 512 MB RAM and 15 GB storage for 50 Euro PER YEAR.

get a few "game friends"? None of the ppl i know in real life play it either. That never stopped me having a good time with it, that is since 2001.

That's not it. You can't easily get 16 game friends and easily organize such games so it fits everyones time.

[[frl]myke 14]

And please don't lecture me on cost of running servers. You live in the past. Today you can rent virtualized servers (in teh cloud) for much less money than 100 Euro. Today you can get 2 CPU server with 512 MB RAM and 15 GB storage for 50 Euro PER YEAR.

Ah, i see a professional there. Please tell me, do you think such a server could run a ArmA 2 server (since we don't know yet A3 requirements but i doubt they will be lower)? What network connection does this server have? Traffic limits?

To rent a server to host A2 (or A3 for that matter) which can hold more than a few players (are 64 enough?) you pay easily 100€ per month. Now how many server would it need? While i write this, there are 3282 players online playing (source: http://arma2.swec.se/server/list). Let's assume a server would be set up to handle 64 players: 3282/64=51.28125, rounded up to 52 servers. One server costs 100€: 52*100€=5200€ monthly or 62400€ per year.

Do you think that 52 servers will be enough on A3's release day? I don't think so. I think raising by factor 10 would be more realistic....624'000€ per year. What do you think, how long could BIS keep these server open before they hit insolvency?

[batto 17]

Myke;2149554']Ah' date=' i see a professional there. Please tell me, do you think such a server could run a ArmA 2 server (since we don't know yet A3 requirements but i doubt they will be lower)? What network connection does this server have? Traffic limits?[/quote']

Go to wedos.com and check for yourself. You can check Amazon EC2 too while at it. The rest of your post assumes that you need to pay 100 Euros per month so I'm not going to comment on it. Wake up, it's 2012. (And yeah, I happen to be highly educated expert with professional enterprise business experience in this area).

I also knew nothing about dedicated A2 servers. But it seems like the 50 Euro per year server could be enough:

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Armed_Assault:Dedicated_Server#Installation

See how smart I am? I can argue without knowledge.

Edited May 14, 2012 by batto