Is Arma3 still the "Flagship"

[Tonci87 163]

Some facts

money=devtime=money

ArmaCO sold like crazy because of DayZ.

Features that should have been in A3 won't make it into the game.

Well guys the community was quite unsure if it is a good or a bad thing when Arma CO sales skyrocketed because of DayZ. The majority agreed that more sales will mean more money for BIS and therefore more Devtime for Arma3.

Thats why some people were quite confused when important features like the 3D Editor were removed from the confirmed Features list because they can't be finished in time.

Today BIS announced that there will be a stand alone DayZ game.

What if A3 devtime was redirected to the new Project? What if BIS focuses on features that are important to both games and not on stuff that would make A3 more awesome? Obviously DayZ doesn't need an 3D Editor or improved AI.

So here are some simple questions:

Will A3 Devs work on DayZ instead of A3?

Have A3 funds been redirected to the new Game?

[dmarkwick 261]

Will A3 Devs work on DayZ instead of A3?

They'll work on the ArmA3 engine, same as before.

Have A3 funds been redirected to the new Game?

Who knows, none of my business :)

[kylania 568]

Obviously BIS developers were redirected to DayZ. Rocket wasn't hired to make DayZ, it started in his "free time". Now it's his job, as a project lead, instead of whatever he was originally hired to do.

That's a missing resource. ArmA3 has had features cut due to missing resources. :confused:

So yes, at least one dev team and project lead and presumably money to pay said devs have indeed been redirected from whatever they were supposed to do to work on DayZ instead. Maybe not from A3 granted, but from something.

[SnowSky 12]

well I don't think that it will harm the A3 project.

I think this would only mean that they will set a higher priority on the RV Engine (as more and more games depend on it).

The core loves and sticks to ArmA - I guess it is possible to say that there is a constant community around ArmA - which will bring in a passable amount of money.

Sure - if the community shrinks - they would have to count more on DayZ and Carrier Command.

The economic aspect is always a factor. But we won't live better if they'd say "We only produce arma until we have to close our studios".

I think, we as community should support the developers by letting them the freedom to try new ways and modes. I'm sure that there are even a lot of hardcore arma players which would love, buy and play dayZ.

Would you like to do always only the same work? Let them play around with their fantasy :).

[JojoTheSlayer 35]

Just hope both games can benefit from each other rather than the DayZ Retail game being similar to Iron front by not having access to the latest RV engine features.

[Colossus 2]

ArmA 3 uses RV4, which I would say is quite a priority. Most likely both DayZ and a possible VBS3 will be using this engine.

Carrier Command: Gaea Mission is just around the corner, so that should release a few people and resources.

Besides that, well.. I think BI can manage revolving what people and resources they have when they need to. They have already been juggling three games (Take On Helicopters, ArmA 3 & CC:GM) at one time, so how is this different, resource wise?

[metalcraze 290]

I don't know man. Tell that to 3D editor maybe?

[.Taffy 10]

An interesting question. Financially I suppose Day Z will become the flagship title, principally, I imagine Arma may well remain the game that BIS holds most dear. It's where it all started and they've stuck to the same ideals and direction all the way. However the dissapointing discovery that the 3d editor would not ship with the game does raise eyebrows. They delayed the game and announced the move to PhysX 3 around the same time that Arma started hitting the top of the Steam bestseller list, if memory serves. Was this delay a desicion to take the time to improve Arma 3 using the Day Z windfall? Or was it caused by the need to push people and resources into the Day Z standalone ahead of the announcment?

[Messiah 2]

The tin foil hat brigade strikes again.

[SASrecon 0]

I wouldn't worry too much about lost devtime due to BIS devs changing from Arma3 to DayZ, before I gave DayZ a go myself I was watching very many gameplay videos about it and came across a few interviews with rocket where he mentioned that he received a lot of help offers from his fanbase to help develop and expand the DayZ experience and so many even, that he turned down the majority and 'cherry-picked' a handful with the most experience to form his team - I would say many people from the DayZ team are community modders etc. rather than integral Arma3 devs.

[edit] and tbh without Arma3 there's no DayZ(2) right? so of course Arma3 is going to be the flagship title.

[ruhtraeel 1]

I will be very dissapointed if ArmA 3 goes the direction of DayZ. DayZ is still an extension of ArmA's engine, and in my opinion, the engine with it's base features such as the 3D editor, should be of first priority. It would only make sense if you perfected the engine before you thought about a mod for it, so to avoid what happened to DayZ itself, where the mod was quite decent, but was marred by programming issues.

Hell, DayZ may have been created using the editor first. I strongly believe that the engine and it's features, and also the original game should be worked on first before DayZ, because when programming for the original game and the engine, both ArmA 3 and DayZ benefit. However, cutting time out of ArmA 3 and the engine features itself doesn't benefit ArmA 3; only DayZ.

[_michal 10]

With DayZ and Arma3 on the front burner it looks like Take On: Helicopters is already 'done'. :( We are waiting for a patch since May... Some fixes to Hinds DLC would be very welcome too...

[maturin 12]

*sigh*

Cue the preliminary panic and wide-eyed, insistent faces mouthing 'say it ain't so, BIS!'

Answer:

YES.

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

As long as ArmA III delivers the same consistency as ArmA 2 did in terms of island and unit quality, then I don't see a problem. Of course, extended simulation could face the axe: realistic armour, projectile ballistics, jet physics and some other things.

Keep ragdoll physics in mind - this will be the biggest change to the series since time immemorial and if done right should overshadow (almost) any cons the game might have, as viewed through the prism of the sim community.

[chortles 263]

Keep ragdoll physics in mind - this will be the biggest change to the series since time immemorial and if done right should overshadow (almost) any cons the game might have, as viewed through the prism of the sim community.

I'm still reminded of what RiE/Jay Crowe told PC Gamer about ragdoll physics in ARMA 3: "Welcome to the late Nineties!"

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

I'm still reminded of what RiE/Jay Crowe told PC Gamer about ragdoll physics in ARMA 3: "Welcome to the late Nineties!"

Heh, but the lack of proper physics simulation had been somewhat "warranted" in OFP/ArmA's case due to the complexity of the systems involved. In any other game such clunky animation/kinematics would spell disaster, so they had to adopt it early on for the lack of features in other areas! :)

[chortles 263]

In any other game such clunky animation/kinematics would spell disaster, so they had to adopt it early on for the lack of features in other areas! :)

I'm not surprised, especially when a common refrain from those for whom DayZ was their first-ever encounter with ARMA was "love the concept, but there's so much to dislike about the implementation." Obviously BI wasn't going to turn ARMA 3 into a zombie game, and what those first-timers fell in love with was the concept of "brutally hardcore gameplay" (if not quite in the vein of Dark Souls) done differently from merely turning down player characters' Health, but I'm of the belief that BI was still listening on that feedback of "so much to dislike about the implementation" and incorporated this feedback into ARMA 3 development and priorities.

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

Shame on me, I had almost forgotten to mention underwater/sea warfare in addition to physics.

The OFP concept is bullet-proof - land, air and sea in a sandbox and it has found its users, to expand, though they do have to fine-tune it with eye candy and aesthetics to suit the... player of unrefined tastes, but at the same time not to degenerate any of its key features of simulation. :)

The next step from this concept would be quite a leap - procedural terrain, game world/space generation with the use of real-life textures, Newtonian physics among other things. There are several such engines already in development, though the majority of them would be most suited for space simulator games.

Edited August 7, 2012 by Iroquois Pliskin

[sniper pilot 36]

Very Sad imho- But I guess Everyone has their price, and everyone sells out eventually. :803:

[chortles 263]

Very Sad imho- But I guess Everyone has their price, and everyone sells out eventually. :803:

... so DayZ is COD4? :D

[instagoat 133]

Very Sad imho- But I guess Everyone has their price, and everyone sells out eventually. :803:

DayZ isn´t a sellout game just because it´s successful. It´s risky, and by no means guaranteed success just because the mod was successful. As far as games go, the formula is as good as untested in the mainstream (basically a MMO roguelike zombie apocalypse survival simulator). The last games of a similar type were made in the mid to late 90s and then died off because nobody wanted to put up with them anymore.

I think Arma 3 will remain BI´s main stud in the stable, but right now I´m afraid for its success for other reasons than resources being switched over to DayZ. My main worry is that it´s a game that, basically, nobody really cares about because the game concept of "military battlefield simulator" isn´t appealing to anybody. (If it were, people would be searching them out on their own more.) That, and there is no marketing apart from really dry and a little bit boring videos from what amounts to tech demos. Granted, the game is still in alpha, but I am still worried.

Features have been taken out: that´s a normal process of development, and I´m not surprised. What surprises me is the amount of effort some of these features seem to take, despite marginal impact on gameplay. (At least I don´t see massive gameplay impacts possible by a 3rd party physics engine, ragdoll or improved amount of lightsources). The only two BIG changes that´ve been somewhat prominently featured are the new movement/animation system, and the gear and inventory layout systems. About the story, we know next to nothing, and what we know is in flux. That is another point of anxiety for me: I am an SP person. I am hoping for a decent campaign (missions at least to the standard of BAF/pre-warfare Harvest Red missions or CWC/Resistance missions. Then there´s the AI, etc, etc, etc.

To be honest, I´m a little bit scared of what I am going to see at gamescom, if I manage to get hands on with the game at all.

[Guest Ti0n3r]

"Development and updates of the mod will continue in parallel with the development of the game, so anyone who is playing the mod now will be able to continue to do so. The project will follow the Minecraft development model; fast iterations with the community alpha available for a heavily discounted price."

Definitely "sell out", this is exactly what Activision did with Call of duty.

[lolipoyi 10]

I really hope it still is! I mean, look how many people are still playing the arma series, look at its community, look at the modders doing awesome stuff none of the devs could have even imagine of and all of that over several years... I hope BIS knows its true community and delivers some quality in Arma3. It would be a real shame to see a game like Arma suffer again from poor execution. I would be happy to tell them, go ahead and push the release date back one more time in orther to deliver the features they had already promised us, as Im assure most of you would also agree, because we plan to play this game over and over and over again as we did with all series. Arma games last years, is its true beauty. We´ve done enough waiting.

Hm... was I too hard? Sorry but I really want to see Arma shine as it is, a mil-sim, our only mil-sim. So, with that said and if you excuse me, I´ll uninstall my ranting module and pretend none of this ever happenend... *I´M OUT*

[chortles 263]

DayZ isn´t a sellout game just because it´s successful. It´s risky, and by no means guaranteed success just because the mod was successful. As far as games go, the formula is as good as untested in the mainstream (basically a MMO roguelike zombie apocalypse survival simulator). The last games of a similar type were made in the mid to late 90s and then died off because nobody wanted to put up with them anymore.

According to the developers of The War Z, they had also been uncertain about whether the concept would fly, and it took DayZ to prove that yes, it could in fact catch on like wildfire.

My main worry is that it´s a game that, basically, nobody really cares about because the game concept of "military battlefield simulator" isn´t appealing to anybody. (If it were, people would be searching them out on their own more.)

... so the same thing that's "threatened" every Armaversum game? How is ARMA 3 supposed to be worse off than its predecessors (OFP:CWC/ARMA: CWA, ARMA, ARMA 2, TOH) in that?

Features have been taken out: that´s a normal process of development, and I´m not surprised. What surprises me is the amount of effort some of these features seem to take, despite marginal impact on gameplay. (At least I don´t see massive gameplay impacts possible by a 3rd party physics engine, ragdoll or improved amount of lightsources). The only two BIG changes that´ve been somewhat prominently featured are the new movement/animation system, and the gear and inventory layout systems.

Why shouldn't they be featured, they were the two easiest to show off differences compared to ARMA 3, and the two most likely to get newcomers to think "oh hey this might be cool to play and not clunky/unintuitive like DayZ is". :rolleyes:

As for the story though... honestly, I've been thinking that it's just an excuse for OPFOR to have gear and vehicle parity with BLUFOR this time (see Celery's posts in the multiplayer balance thread), and I wouldn't be surprised if online multiplayer is being looked at as the focus for this version, i.e. on TvT.

[Smurf 12]

Just wanted to pass by and inaugurate my new avatar. :j: