No animation on changing firing modes. Bug or feature?

[Zatan13th 10]

I'm talking about relatively small additions like an animation..

For you, it is just an animation. But for dev team, even for the modmaker, it is not just an animation.

To implement this, as I have said above, you need to make the character's gesture animated properly for each firearm mechanism.

Don't you think it is ridiculous? if your character moved his right thumb for switching the fire mode, but the fire selector is located on the middle-right side of receiver(AK) or the bottom-left of the gun butt (bullpup).

[adanteh 58]

That's why I said that for this thing it would be too much work for the actual ability. I'm just a bit annoyed by the fact that everyone goes on the Arma auto-mode saying "Add it with a mod". I understand dev time is limited, so I'm not going to worry about stuff like this, but when the community comes up with something good I would love to have it implemented officially by the devs. That probably depends on the modmaker though, if they would actually appreciate their work getting integrated into the base-game.

[qbert 10]

I'm gonna have to go with the idea of a sound. Something simple, like a "click" when you hit F and go from one mode to the other. I do think that if the devs were up to it, and willing, it'd be cool to have a little animation similiar to how your character pulls the trigger when you click the mouse, except when you hit F, you see his thumb pop up for a second. I'm not saying it's easy, but the animation doesn't have to be extreme, where it halts actions. It could be a very subtle, and mostly a cosmetic thing. Doesn't even have to move the gun.

That being said, a sound makes the most sense if we're realistically thinking of this as something that will happen. Unless we're lucky of course. :)

[tet5uo 4]

Riiiiiigh, so if something isn't in OFP it means why bother put it in a later generation game?

With that logic, ARMA 3 would look and act the exact same way OFP does, which would make it a pretty pointless product.

Most of the fans on this forum would defend this game to the death if it was rendered in ASCII art. They can't take any criticism no matter how valid it is without getting angry and defensive.

It's pretty pathetic and makes most normal people not want to give any feedback on the game for fear of angering the fanboys living under their bridge.

[rundll.exe 12]

What you don't get is that some of these people have been around for almost 10 years, supporting (and building!) this serie when the majority of FPS gamers were spitting on it, judging it ugly, crappy, full of bug,...

Then comes the day of the release of a new sequel and hundreds of new faces appear (usually coming from more arcade shooters) on this forums and require this or that (again, usually features present in arcadish FPS) to be implemented in game.

And this is the perfect example. People stating it would be more realistic to have a animation for firing mode selection just don't understand what they are talking about.

Gameplay wise it would add NOTHING to realism. It's just another useless, exagerated piece of eye candy people are used to see in other games.

There are far more important things devs should be working on at the moment than those kind of animation.

You might see the arma community as very conservative, it's not.

It's true that many among us have always been afraid that BIS would eventually drop the simulation aspect and go with a more mainstream gameplay, more appealing to the masses.

There are dozens of CoD/BF like shooters, there's only one ArmA and we don't want to loose it.

Also keep in mind about any suggestion made here in the last couple of weeks has already been discussed to death in the last few years.

That might also explains why some of the "vets" seems to be tired with this constant flow of "new" suggestion.

Yes, we've been around longer than you do but that doesn't make us better or smarter person.

But we might have a better understanding of what ArmA is and should be about if it wants to remain a "true" sequel to the serie.

Playing this serie for a decade gave to some of us the ability to better foresee how a feature will affect the gameplay, how it might be exploited or how it could be usefull to mod or mission making.

By buying ArmA, people have made the deliberated choice to try something new, something completely different than any other FPS on the market.

Now it's up to them to adapt themselves to this new style of gaming and not constantly trying to make it look and feel like any other FPS.

Offtopic:

If it wasn't above the allowed size, This would be in my signature by now...

I get sad when I see "new" people (I have to judge by posts, sorry) bashing the "old" people for being conservative. They're not, they just understand what it takes to change something so seemingly simple, and what impact is has. Mostly because they know how the game mechanics work, and how they have evolved from OFP.

Ontopic then:

What you guys seem to forget, is all the different weapons that have the switch in a slightly different position. Not to mention custom mod by the community. Making an animation for each, and blending them with the dozens of stance states is not trivial.

And what if the switch is on the other side of the weapon? On the top? No, that's not realistic, but it should still be possible to create something like this, because that's what the game is all about: modding freedom.

And what about range adjustment, don't we need an animation for that? Shooting m203? Raising the iron sights? Taking of the suppressor? putting a new scope? I'll let you draw your own conclusion.

So we can all agree that a sound would be a good compromise, and is very easy to implement. Maybe putting a feedback ticket for this is a good start

[Varanon 892]

[... long post shortened... ]

By buying ArmA, people have made the deliberated choice to try something new, something completely different than any other FPS on the market.

Now it's up to them to adapt themselves to this new style of gaming and not constantly trying to make it look and feel like any other FPS.

Well said!

A fire mode switch animation would be nice to have, but not a deal breaker if it's not there. What I find more interesting is the fact that the fire mode lever can now be animated on a weapon, so if you prefer playing without any hud, the fire mode lever on the weapon now provides the missing visual feedback

[Alwarren 2765]

I don't want to start promoting my addons, but you'll probably can guess that it is coming now. My latest M4 pack has a working fire selector switch, which, IMO, is much more important than the anim itself. Why? Dragon Rising had a hardcore mode which removed all HUD elements, but it was unusable since you normally have other feedback. To know what fire mode your gun is on, or how many bullets are left in the mag, you will have to have some feedback since you would have that in reality as well. The M4's fire select switch will change position depending on the fire mode your weapon is on, so a theoretical ACE for Arma 3 could remove all of the HUD elements and you would still be able to verify the fire mode.

That is, IMO, much more important than an arbitrary "reach-out-to-switch" type of anim, and is already possible (in the same vein, it flips up the grenade launcher sights when the GL is selected).

[Macadam Cow 1]

Most of the fans on this forum would defend this game to the death if it was rendered in ASCII art.

Nope. I'm just going to talk about myself here but when BIS announces a new sequel the first things that matters for me are :

- Is it still an open world, can I go anywhere on the map without being blocked by an invisible wall ?

- Is it still mod-friendly ?

- Is the gameplay still "simulation-oriented" ?

- Does it still have the mission editor ?

If the answer to all these question is "yes" then, for me, the game is a success. Those features are the backbone of this serie for a decade now.

Dropping just one of these would make me, and probably hundreds of others, incredibily mad at BIS, I'd trully feel betrayed.

Fortunately for us, BIS seems to know that very well and they've never tried to get rid of those features.

That's one of the main reason this community is so faithfull in its devs, they've never threated us as milking cows.

BIS provided lite version of their DLC'sto avoid the fragmentation of the online community.

They've added content to their games (vehicles, campaign, etc), for free, when no one was asking for it. Just like that, a gift !

They're quite unique in the video game industry.

Now, I admit some of the "old timers" might seem a bit rude sometimes, no one is perfect !

But you have to realise we've been dealing with this for years.

Years and years of suggestion on how to dumb down the game or make it more similar to other FPS.

You can have a look at other sims forums (Eagle Dynamics, VRS,...), you won't see these kind of suggestions.

The problem with ArmA is it's the only one of it's kind (simualtion) in it's own category (FPS)

So we have a constant flow of people who are completely unfamiliar with simulation, let alone infantry simulation, requesting for this or that to change because it's present in XXX game for YYY years

or because, let's face it, it's just too fucking hard in comparison their previous FPS.

When you see someone stating that "no one really play this game for the single player" it just shows how ignorant this person is and after 10 posts like that some people start to get mad.

I, and I'm pretty sure this is true for many others, have spent thousands of hours playing this serie in single player. Between the mission editor, the new mods and maps, etc there're just so many things to do !

Edited March 21, 2013 by Macadam Cow

[tet5uo 4]

How does improving the animations take anything away from the core game that you love? I don't understand this fear of any change.

[Alwarren 2765]

How does improving the animations take anything away from the core game that you love? I don't understand this fear of any change.

It doesn't but development resources are limited and right now there are other things that need more attention. BIS has to prioritize what actually adds to the game, and animations for switching fire mode, while admittedly a neat thing to have, are an optical eye candy that isn't strictly required. The game works without, and not much is lost. Remember that things like that do not only need to work with standard weapons, but also with anything that modders add.

[tet5uo 4]

It doesn't but development resources are limited and right now there are other things that need more attention. BIS has to prioritize what actually adds to the game, and animations for switching fire mode, while admittedly a neat thing to have, are an optical eye candy that isn't strictly required. The game works without, and not much is lost. Remember that things like that do not only need to work with standard weapons, but also with anything that modders add.

No, this is true. Prioritizing the issues should of course be their stance. But I don't think I'd mind if it got looked at some day.

[mmaruda 20]

I do agree that performance, bug fixing and stability are priorities, but in the end we all want a better experience. I think that animation improvement is something that has been overlooked for too long in the series and seeing how A3 made a step forward, we should hope it gets even better. Sure, fire mode changing animation does not influence gameplay, but with simulators, it's the details that make them great. I really hope that despite the naysayers arguments, BIS will continue to improve the anims (jumping over fences thing needs to change).