Share your first Arma3 Beta Impressions (all first impression type posts here pls)

[Sixgears2 1]

Sorry m8 but if you give 8/10 right now,,,,,,how much you give to ArmA 2?....100/10?:bounce3:

I dont undestand you.

What you found so ....WOW?..

The better graphic texture?...the new future about scuba?...That's mind that if the final version, about arma 3, it's look like now, you will be ready and enjoy to buy it?

Because 8/10 it's high score...you have been very,very generous about it.

There are some many intresting things that let's HOPE a great game,but if you check to 360°,currently, you get many smokes but just for a poor fast-food!

It seems to me like you're accepting so many compromises to play it.

Well, I think the game is highly enjoyable and fixes nearly every issue I had with ArmA 2 (except the flawed engine). Does that clear things up?

Not entirely sure what you were going for with the fast food thing...

[chortles 263]

Enrico, that post wasn't even coherent :rolleyes: I'm in agreement with ak1287 and Sixgears2.

[Allen7 1]

im just disappointed with the graphics, I wish they were much better...

[Enrico 1]

Enrico, that post wasn't even coherent :rolleyes: I'm in agreement with ak1287 and Sixgears2.

Hi there!

Ok guys...excuse me if I do not follow your enthusiasm!....YET!

I only hope that the day of the release of ArmA 3 you dont come back in Troubleshooting thread whit :

Hey!wtf!....... something wrong or miss here!Why....etx..etx

.... because it would be really embarrassing for those are convinced for----> 8.5 now and 5.0 ArmA 2!

And no money back for who saing...WoW..AWESOME....EPIC....THE BEST...I CANT WAIT....etx..etx LOL!:rolleyes:

See you for the time of ArmA 3 Official Edition.

Regards

Edited April 12, 2013 by Enrico

[ak1287 1]

Hi there!

Ok guys...excuse me if I do not follow your enthusiasm!....YET!

I only hope that the day of the release of ArmA 3 you dont come back in Troubleshooting thread whit :

Hey!wtf!....... something wrong or miss here!Why....etx..etx

.... because it would be really embarrassing for those are convinced for----> 8.5 now and 5.0 ArmA 2!

And no money back for who saing...WoW..AWESOME....EPIC....THE BEST...I CANT WAIT....etx..etx LOL!:rolleyes:

See you for the time of ArmA 3 Official Edition.

Regards

Okay. I still can't quite understand what you're saying, but I think I get the gist.

First off, I'm not sure exactly what problems I'd be coming back to the troubleshooting boards with; most of the crashes I've had have been fixed, and at this point I don't have any major issues. I think Arma 3 Alpha handles better, and plays better, and overall IS better than Arma 2. Now, I sunk WAY too many hours into Arma 2, so it's not that I didn't play the game; it's that I thought the game was too clunky, the graphics were too muddy, and the weapons handling was too wonky.

Second, it's disingenuous to compare a finished product to an unfinished product; Arma 2 has had over 3 years of modding and patching to become the game it was, and I still think there's way too many problems.

[Enrico 1]

Okay. I still can't quite understand what you're saying, but I think I get the gist.

First off, I'm not sure exactly what problems I'd be coming back to the troubleshooting boards with; most of the crashes I've had have been fixed, and at this point I don't have any major issues. I think Arma 3 Alpha handles better, and plays better, and overall IS better than Arma 2. Now, I sunk WAY too many hours into Arma 2, so it's not that I didn't play the game; it's that I thought the game was too clunky, the graphics were too muddy, and the weapons handling was too wonky.

Second, it's disingenuous to compare a finished product to an unfinished product; Arma 2 has had over 3 years of modding and patching to become the game it was, and I still think there's way too many problems.

Sorry for my english,,,,,,,,I will try to explain better!

Frist one:

ArmA 3,in alpha,the only things that you can to do,also after update patchs 0.52,it just run like Buster Keaton movie to shoot any bot whitout get a minimum decent gameplay because or dosent work or must to be fix.

The A.I squad dosent follow your command,and the a.i enemies dosent check for a cover position when you open the fire, but just run like Forest Gump style, or change the position, from stand up to prone position....that's all!

The weapons to crounch position(forget it the stand up position) shake like if you get the azimer ,and in prone position, it's a still enough drunk for call it...real!

The veicols run like whitout physical and to keep the controlls it's like drive on the ice road, and the Flight Model chopper (My God!).......ARCADE is efeumism!

The weapons still shot the terrain in prone position ,like in armA 2,also if your scope, or metall aim, it's free view in front you!

It's very hard undestand the enemies from the friendly, because, they use the same uniform...i want see you in night vision how much time you spend before open fire...and if you spend too much....bang...time over!

If you get distance view setting to 2000 mt the terrain over 1000mt it's unwatchable,you need set the distance view about 3500mt if you wont see a normal texture like to 500 mt...but your frame rate will drop about to 35 % less!

The effect about explosion or destroy objects could be nice may be in Mission Impossible movie...but so far to be ..realistic!

The sprint run about infantry it's so ridicule,look like if the game it's been set to time acceleration to X6...and also the posture in Crounch,it seems that the soldier has lost something in the ground!

...and so on!

Second one:

If you are impressive for the nice texture,and because dosent crash no more,or less and run smooth :),i am enjoy it,it's alpha version (that's mind very...very lite).

Indeed, what we have now:

A very small map with four buildings.

Two-division of soldiers with same uniforms.

Four-five weapons.

Two vehicles.

two helicopters

We will see the perfomance in ArmA 3 official edition,and also if ArmA 2 get always some bugs...do you know some serie about Bohemia where the products it's been perfect before launch the next one?..OPF?--ArmA I?...are you sure?I dont think so!Keep in mind it for ArmA III to Arma IV!

I dont know your hardware PC, but about my self ArmA 2 run very well and smooth and if you can run on all High setting and nice filter antialasing...BEH!....ArmA 2 still makes a look good and you get a awesome infinite option for to do wat you wont!

I dont care about beautifull texture and so many extra option in ArmA 3,because if i looking for it there are titles whit very gorgeous graphic but so far for call it....simulator and or realistic!

Anyway!

I have bought ArmA 3 alpha just to help the company to finish the product, because i like so much this series...but plz.....dont tell me that right now it's awesome,because if this is ArmA 3...i really wont my money back,but this time seriously!

Regards

Edited April 13, 2013 by Enrico

[chortles 263]

The limited content is very obvious and BI was perfectly up-front about that; however it's been seemingly clear that due to BI's focus on infantry during the alpha, the "simulation" of the vehicles is very much a placeholder and NOT final (we hope)... although that one dev confirming that TKOH flight model will be in the final release only for DnA to walk that back to a de facto "maybe" (by saying that it's not guaranteed that the A3 vanilla helicopters will use it) is cause for concern...

Still, overall this situation is nothing to worry about, really, considering that Arma 2 just didn't have a public alpha for us to compare against anyway.

[Enrico 1]

The limited content is very obvious and BI was perfectly up-front about that; however it's been seemingly clear that due to BI's focus on infantry during the alpha, the "simulation" of the vehicles is very much a placeholder and NOT final (we hope)... although that one dev confirming that TKOH flight model will be in the final release only for DnA to walk that back to a de facto "maybe" (by saying that it's not guaranteed that the A3 vanilla helicopters will use it) is cause for concern...

Still, overall this situation is nothing to worry about, really, considering that Arma 2 just didn't have a public alpha for us to compare against anyway.

I agree!

I am not worry about the actual situation alpha, also because there are so many nice gamers that are doing a good job of bringing the various bugs and improvements to bring this sequel in the right direction:

http://feedback.arma3.com/my_view_page.php

And I dont think that Bohemia staff follow the idea about the,,,,,FRIST IMPRESSION...but something more deep in a more suitable location like upstair link.

Regards

Edited April 13, 2013 by Enrico

[Koukotsu 2]

Right away I noticed that the movement/controls have improved considerably over Arma 2; that sometimes "awkward" Arma 2 feeling is almost completely gone and Bohemia has thankfully managed to avoid drifting into "run and gun" shooter territory as well.

I spend less time fighting with my mouse and keyboard now but I still won't be "720 no-scoping" anyone in Arma 3 anytime soon either, which is a very good thing!

...and wow, I love the volume of the sound effects, I nearly leaped out of my chair the first time I fired my rifle. It really adds to immersion/realism. Finally, a game where the guns are actually loud and don't just produce a pathetic little "snapping" sound like so many other titles. I hope they don't decide to tone that down in the future, because it's a wonderfully visceral experience in it's current state.

I could go on forever about all the things I love about this game, but instead I'll just state the only major downside I can think of at the moment, and that's the performance in certain situations... but I'm not exactly running this game on a super powerful gaming PC so I can't complain much.

It just seems that sometimes the most trivial little things can cause my framerate to plummet, such as bullet impact particle effects.

Oddly enough, 8x anti-aliasing is just as demanding as no anti-aliasing. That's a real head-scratcher, lol.

When I consider how nice it looks already plus the overall size and scale of everything it actually performs nicely on my humble little PC though, as long as I avoid massive firefights in locations with dense object populations it remains quite playable with a mixture of high/standard settings and a reasonable view/object rendering distance of 1800.

Overall, I'm very satisfied though, even in this limited alpha form Arma 3 has so much more depth than the average shooter out there. I'm so thankful to have a developer like Bohemia Interactive that still makes "true" PC games around. ;)

[CptMacMillan 20]

So, ArmA III.

First off I should mention that I started playing ArmA games back in 2011, with the release of ArmA II Free and the amazing flexibility of the game I became quite attached to it, so much that I joined a tactical realism unit, experience with previous games (Operation Flashpoint to be precise) got me quite disappointed, however ArmA II's simplicity and design make it a flexible/easier and more entertaining way of playing OFP. As such, most of my experience comes from playing ArmA II 2011's stages of development, good hours went into it from playing the campaign, to multi-player, to editing and scripting.

Now, most of my gripes with ArmA II were the same gripes everyone else had, clunky controls, dodgy gameplay, awkward design and bugs, not to mention the lack of a few things like proper physics and an actual ragdoll-like engine, the way the game was designed by BI was pretty damn confusing, even the tutorials weren't clear enough in a few things, and other components components lacked tweaking, not to mention the performance, which was atrocious.

Now, finally having the chance of playing ArmA III (on it's 0.54 build, lite) makes me think that this game will make me sink way more time than before, and more time than any other game I've played. There are amazing things; the controls are sharp, realistic and intuitive, so is the movement and the overall feel of the game but is not as arcade as to think of an FPS, rag-doll physics are great on a game like this, so is the new item carrying system, new edition tools, game GUI is better than ever, so is the performance considering the scale and the quality of the game, even the AI is way better, is more organic and reacts better, is also more tactical, is still an Alpha and there are so many cool things about it, more flexibility in the edition (which hasn't introduce JAVA yet, that might come in the future, or might adopt a similar Object Orientated Programming scheme, which I don't mind), new graphics engine makes the game feel more sharp, but more realistic, diving is great, so is flying and

while the driving model could use some tweaking is still great as it is.

ArmA III exceeds my expectation from the series, and from a PC game even. Having owned ArmA II and OA makes me think that I've been playing the best games for PC in the last few years, and I feel that ArmA III might very well be one of the best games of 2013, the way the game is design, the way the game is structured, how it plays, how it runs, how it reacts to the player, every aspect of it has been taking care of, sure it can do with more work, however as it is, and on it's current shape it's shaping to become a really great experience for PC, I can't wait to see the full Altis, and everything that the games will be offering in the upcoming months.

I'm pretty exited about this game, and I'm just waiting for the 25th so I can finally purchase the full Alpha and start messing with Chernarus and Takistan, worthy of revisiting with the new engine.

[chenhaoyu 10]

Having purchased the Alpha on steam and had no problems launching the game I can say as a fan of the series since the launch of OFP I was overwhelmed by my experience today. There will come a time for criticism of this release but for now the developers deserve my gushing praise.

- It runs beautifully! Remarkable improvements over Arma 2 on my mid-range machine, something entirely new to me in my experience with Arma games.

- It feels amazing! From the recoil of the firearms to the fluidity of the animations, I cannot believe what you have acheived in this regard.

- It sounds authentic! I love what you have done with the chat, it sounds much more fluid and the introduction of names instead of just numbers is a huge improvement.

- It has enormous potential! I can hardly wait to see the modding scene by the time this hits beta.

It has been a rough ride as a fan of the Arma series, and I admit that I had my doubts over this project; but I wish you all the success you deserve with this title. May your critics be stunned by the amount of polish you have put into this.

- It runs beautifully! Remarkable improvements over Arma 2 on my mid-range machine, something entirely new to me in my experience with Arma games.

- It feels amazing! From the recoil of the firearms to the fluidity of the animations, I cannot believe what you have acheived in this regard.

- It sounds authentic! I love what you have done with the chat, it sounds much more fluid and the introduction of names instead of just numbers is a huge improvement.

- It has enormous potential! I can hardly wait to see the modding scene by the time this hits beta.

---------- Post added at 05:07 ---------- Previous post was at 05:05 ----------

Yeah! I like this

[fred41 42]

... i am currently playing around with the Arma 3 Alpha DEV build and i am (especially with the new todays update) very impressed from the great atmosphere the game now offers.

The graphic is simple spoken: overwhelming and authentic too (with the new midrange textures), the sound is very atmospheric and the character animations are natural and conclusive.

Very good work at all in the area of audio-visual.

I think, there is still a bit potential left, in the area of script-processing engine (better balanced use of todays multicore cpu should be possible, multithreading).

Especially on high populated servers, that could be a point, where i personally hope we will see a bit improvement in the release.

In some stressfull situations, the synchronisation of simulation and rendering, seems to be not perfect (low FPS, short freezes).

So my conclusion is: A very great lunch for Arma 3 Alpha, so i am expecting a very great release at all. Thank you for your creative work :)

Edited April 16, 2013 by Fred41

[katipo66 94]

Not my first imppression but my thoughts so far...

I think the alpha has been my best arma experience, mainly because like everyone else I'm excited about the possibilities it's going to bring, firing weapons feels very real especially with machine-guns at night with nv, and with that I really enjoy night missions in A3, especially close to the light house, looks awesome!, and although there's still criticism of the AI I personally think they are pretty damn good or at least a step up from their A2 cousins, for starters I hardly ever see them most times.

I can't wait to play this on my future new gaming system, with arma 2 I spent the majority of time messing around in the editor, i hope to be doing a lot more playing of A3 in both MP and SP.

Also can't wait for the stalker guys to get into it, I see there's already a terminator mod underway. :dancingbanana:

My only small gripe now would be the Opfor helmets, I'm just not convinced... And is the stand out irritation, probably as I play opfor as much as blufor, even the blufor helmets seem dubious!?

I just feel happy in the whole direction BIS are going with it and confident that this game will be legend!!

Edited April 16, 2013 by Katipo66

[st00f 10]

The good:

Graphics: The game looks GREAT. The models and textures are above-par.

The performance: The game runs well, even on a dual-core processor. I'm impressed.

UI: improved a lot too. I like the new inventory.

The BAD:

Downgrade in versatility from ArmA 2: ArmA 2 had a very large array of vehicles, planes, tanks, boats, everything. It all worked together to make the simulation feel very open-ended. Right now we have only a few helicopters, no planes, no tanks, and a couple trucks. This sucks, because I mainly bought ArmA 3 because I loved the aerial warfare in ArmA 2 and hoped for an improved aerodynamics engine, improved cockpits, and generally better air warfare. I haven't seen any of this yet. This is worrying because even though the game is in Alpha, we haven't heard much about the vehicles at all. Either Bohemia is hiding a lot from us, or we're fucked.

[Wraithranma 10]

This was my first times playing Alpha :)

[chortles 263]

Downgrade in versatility from ArmA 2: ArmA 2 had a very large array of vehicles, planes, tanks, boats, everything. It all worked together to make the simulation feel very open-ended. Right now we have only a few helicopters, no planes, no tanks, and a couple trucks. This sucks, because I mainly bought ArmA 3 because I loved the aerial warfare in ArmA 2 and hoped for an improved aerodynamics engine, improved cockpits, and generally better air warfare. I haven't seen any of this yet. This is worrying because even though the game is in Alpha, we haven't heard much about the vehicles at all. Either Bohemia is hiding a lot from us, or we're fucked.

Wow did you completely miss the official community preview video explanation. :eek: It was outright said (complete with Jay Crowe narrating) that the game is infantry-focused while in alpha and the focus shifts more to (heavier) vehicles in beta.

[DevonOO7 10]

Love the Alpha so far.

I love the improvements to movement, the new stance system, and the amazing new lighting, but there are a few things that i hope get corrected in the final game. First of all the AI, it works well enough but it's still not great. All of the cool indoor buildings along with the slick movement and stances make ARMA 3 ideal for indoor combat, yet the AI doesn't understand or know how to react inside a building. The new underwater areas are cool, but maybe a little unnecessary. I hope submarines are implemented but other than that I don't really care. Other people have commented on how the foliage looks, yeah it is a little ugly. Physics is another big feature in the game, I think the vehicle physics need to be tweaked a bit, so I don't feel like I'm driving on the moon. The ragdoll looks pretty bad, if you look at the game Grand Theft Auto 4, a game that came out in 2008, it had very realistic ragdoll (using the euphoria engine). Not that ARMA 3 needs to have the same quality physics as GTA 4, but it does make ARMA's seem pretty behind the times. The squad control hasn't really improved from ARMA 2, but hey I'm kinda used to it, so it doesn't bother me too much. The last thing I wanted to talk about was the audio, which is amazing! Guns make a powerful sound when being shot, car engines roar, boats crash through the waves, and helicopters slice through the air.

I'm very excited for the beta release, and i love the consistent updates. Keep up the good stuff.

[Saac 10]

Love the Alpha so far.

I love the improvements to movement, the new stance system, and the amazing new lighting, but there are a few things that i hope get corrected in the final game. First of all the AI, it works well enough but it's still not great. All of the cool indoor buildings along with the slick movement and stances make ARMA 3 ideal for indoor combat, yet the AI doesn't understand or know how to react inside a building. The new underwater areas are cool, but maybe a little unnecessary. I hope submarines are implemented but other than that I don't really care. Other people have commented on how the foliage looks, yeah it is a little ugly. Physics is another big feature in the game, I think the vehicle physics need to be tweaked a bit, so I don't feel like I'm driving on the moon. The ragdoll looks pretty bad, if you look at the game Grand Theft Auto 4, a game that came out in 2008, it had very realistic ragdoll (using the euphoria engine). Not that ARMA 3 needs to have the same quality physics as GTA 4, but it does make ARMA's seem pretty behind the times. The squad control hasn't really improved from ARMA 2, but hey I'm kinda used to it, so it doesn't bother me too much. The last thing I wanted to talk about was the audio, which is amazing! Guns make a powerful sound when being shot, car engines roar, boats crash through the waves, and helicopters slice through the air.

I'm very excited for the beta release, and i love the consistent updates. Keep up the good stuff.

This is basically all my thoughts wrapped up into one. I eagerly await the "Beta" phase so I can see the difference between that and this alpha stage. My favorite things in ARMA3 thus far are the stance modifier and maneuverability of your soldier so that you use cover the absolute best way possible. AI is the most annoying thing at the moment but updates to that have been steady and I'm not worry about it since you guys seem to be right on top of it.

[kartog 10]

Good: Love the game style, Weapons are good, love the attachments, vehicles, helicopters, multiplayer missions. Overall, the game is awesome

Bad: Performance issues, getting 25-55 fps but laggs anyway :P. But well, i didn't expect anything more from an Alpha hh :).

Overall, i'm quite sattisfied :P :P

[the1freeman 1]

Definitely agree with the colors and vegetation textures, specially the maritime pine trees. I live in Italy as well and I find Chernarus' colors and vegetation more photorealistic. Don't transform a military simulator in a friggin' comic book hoping to sell more. It's already been done in other games and got heavily criticized .

[Cedry2k 10]

Arma 3 is just beautiful ! Really great job with graphics and animations . But still , I have performance issues , guess most will be fixed since this is just alpha .

[chortles 263]

Arma 3 is just beautiful ! Really great job with graphics and animations . But still , I have performance issues , guess most will be fixed since this is just alpha .

You should post which build you're running (stable or dev) and, in the latter case, whether or not you're playing at in-game-nighttime, the most recent dev build had really noticeable FPS drop at nighttime.

[knightswatch 10]

Are you being serious? Did you actually just complain about the 'Alpha version' of its lack of vehicles, weapons, etc? It seems like you've played Arma 2, so would you have ever stopped to think that perhaps Alpha was just Arma's way of showing some of their most "complete" things. Basically, just a "test" to show players the preview of whats to come? If Arma 2 had all types of things, freaking obviously Arma 3 would have similar amounts or more. Not to mention, if you took the time to quickly look at the pictures on the site, you would notice many things they haven't released on an ALPHA. I'm just trying not to be annoyed at how you somehow did not think to even read slightly somewhere about what's to come, before doing your "review".

[razor_rv 10]

i like the alpha very much, i'm happy to have purchased the supporter edition!

i hope the game will be great like the 2 was!

[mr_sev 10]

Having only really experienced Arma2 via the tutorials and DayZ, I'm pretty new to the series. I have to say that I absolutely love the direction Arma3 is going. It is much more approachable compared to Arma2 (I tried playing some solo coop missions in OA and was completely lost).

I'm probably spent most of my time playing Ahoy World coop and really enjoying the experience.

The Good:

- The in-game UI and Menu systems don't look like they're from 2005 anymore. They look fantastic

- Overall graphics, textures and the world environment are visually stunning.

- Player movement is fluid and realistic

- The built-in voice does the job well. Still don't understand why most FPS leave this as an afterthought

The Bad:

- Enemy AI feels like it's cheating more than it should be.

- Lack of night vision scopes, flare guns (apart from GL), throwable/holdable flares and holdable glowsticks makes night missions impossible. By the time you get close enough to use red dot sight, the moment you open fire you're pretty screwed. The option to engage from range disappears

- The compass is too big to leave up all the time

- Enemy movement can appear jerky, though I suspect that's more to do with lag

- The armoured vehicles (hunters) almost feel too armoured

- The performance on my Nvidia GTX 680 (i7 CPU, 16GB RAM, SSD) is pretty poor. It autodetected my specs and put everything to Ultra. I had to customise everything to a mix of reduced draw distance, and standard and high settings to get a stable 20-35 FPS

- Some areas (Agia Marina for example), while moving around in first person with sights up, my FPS drops down to 10-15. Incredibly laggy... feels like it's the first person + sights more than just the buildings

I feel there's incredible potential in the engine. If I had to say my two main issues - enemy AI and performance.