Beta isn't actually that far away

[gossamersolid 155]

In the latest sitrep (or whatever they are called), we were reminded that Beta is still targeted for Q2. If you take a look at what Q2 is, you'll see that it goes from April - June (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_quarter_of_a_calendar_year#Subdivisions).

Another small hint to when it is coming out is listed on the Steam store page for ArmA 3 regarding Alpha Lite:

3 Alpha Lite Invites – Introduce your friends to Arma 3 by inviting them to the free invite-only Arma 3 Alpha Lite (available from March 14, 2013 until June 18, 2013)

It has been previous mentioned that the Alpha Lite will be disabled before Beta release. My guesses is that the beta is aimed for somewhere between June 18th - June 30th. If you think about it, that's really not that far away.

Stay patient fellow arma players, beta isn't that far away!

[metalcraze 290]

It would be cool if beta came with a sneak peek of Altis - kinda like AA1 demo came with half Sahrani.

Attacking Mike26 is getting tedious.

[qbert 10]

They also hinted in the sitrep about adding content to the Alpha even before the beta. Regardless of when it's out, we should be seeing some awesome new things being added. At least that's my hope. :D

[byrgesen 1]

Its just awsome.

And your right, its actually not far away, YAAAH!!

Think we can all agree BI got stuff "in the back" for us and we will get our hands on it soon enough :)

[roberthammer 582]

Don't be so sure mate - there's a magic called "delay" :p

[sickboy 13]

Don't be so sure mate - there's a magic called "delay" :p

Or "valvetime" :p

[Tonci87 163]

Or "valvetime" :p

Don´t dare to mention that filthy word^^

Their "soonâ„¢" is already enough :p

[Lucasmnunesk 2]

I know that we have to wait for a quality product, but as anxious as i'm for the full release 2 months for the beta looks like a loooong time haha! But yeah we can't rush these things

[dmarkwick 261]

Personally the thing I'd like most is the new island. Stratis seems a little uninteresting :)

Oh and tanks and soldiers and planes and guns.... and helos... and etc.

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

Personally the thing I'd like most is the new island. Stratis seems a little uninteresting :)

Oh and tanks and soldiers and planes and guns.... and helos... and etc.

When you go back to Arma 2 and look at Utes, Stratis is a god send. It's huge, runs great, looks great, and makes for some awesome engagements. Not to mention as a Wasteland map it's pretty darn cool. I like it.

I'm curious what Altis is going to look like though? I realize it won't be anything like Chernarus, as we're now in the Mediterranean instead of like a Russian influence, but is it going to look like Stratis only bigger?

[mikey74 186]

Personally the thing I'd like most is the new island. Stratis seems a little uninteresting :)

Oh and tanks and soldiers and planes and guns.... and helos... and etc.

Yep ditto here. ITs nice looking, BUT more towns would be nice. Less outpost. but this is just mho... By the way What is wasteland map and where do I find it? Or is it already on my game? NM found wasteland. lol

[froggyluv 2136]

When you go back to Arma 2 and look at Utes, Stratis is a god send. It's huge, runs great, looks great, and makes for some awesome engagements.

This. For being the 'littler map' -Stratis is straight up studly. Scuba'ing up to a lit-up Agia Marina at night or enjoying sheer vertical drops (as opposed to Chernarus/Taki constant slopes) is pretty damn awesome. I prefer smaller detailed maps to more expansive but generic feeling ones, I guess I'm one of the few that still liked Proving Grounds :)

[chrisb 196]

Hope to enjoy ‘Altis’, peek maybe soon, who knows..

Smaller islands are nice, ‘Proving Grounds’ great for sneaky night combat with that undulating ground. Maybe could have done with being slightly larger with a couple more farms..

Still, not that much to loose its ‘Little’ status.;).

[SmallBlackSheep 0]

Altis will probably cut everyone's FPS in half lol

[WalkerDown 1]

It's 3 months.. an eternity for this type of industry... assuming they will respect the deadline (end of June).

[Ezcoo 47]

It's 3 months.. an eternity for this type of industry... assuming they will respect the deadline (end of June).

...that seems to be only a good thing (I'm talking about using enough time to actually finish the products before releasing them). If you take a look to the worth of game studios and publishers, you'll notice that there's positive correlation between rushed releases and the decrease in worth of the game studio and publisher, both in the history (eg. the great video game industry crash in '83) and nowadays. A good example of a publisher that rushes their releases and sells crap to their customers just to get as much money as possible with minimum effort in form of unplayable release versions, endless DLCs (that are partially bug fixes that should be included for free in the actual game) and yearly updates that are almost exactly equal to previous iterations is a publisher that has 2 characters in its name, that begins with "E" and ends to "A". Guess what company it is? One more tip: it was recently voted to be "the worst company in U.S." And its worth is decreasing despite of their attempts to try to get as much money as possible from the customers. There are no winners in current situation; both the company and the end users lose. The worth of the company decreases all the time and the players get lower quality products with much higher prices than before. And they are still going to continue with the same tactic...

Back to topic; I think that the beta is far. The full game is really far. But in general, it's just a good thing. Good games aren't made with finger snap.

Edited April 9, 2013 by Ezcoo

[MissionCreep 12]

Given the choice of close-to-complete set of gear/vehicle options and Altis, I'd choose more gear.

[Lucasmnunesk 2]

Yes, i would like that the game was finished now, but it doesn't mean that i would want a rushed game, so yeah i do want the game as soon as possible but it is just a wish and even if im bored of playing the alpha well i'll wait then, when the game is released i believe i won't regret the waiting!

[rehtus777 10]

Back to topic; I think that the beta is far. The full game is really far. But in general, it's just a good thing. Good games aren't made with finger snap.

The Beta will come out in late Spring or in the Summer of 2013 (that's only 2 to 4 months away). I've got over 120 hours on Stratis and I'm not bored with it......much still to do with the Editor, Singleplayer, and Multiplayer. The only thing I wish they would do is slowly give us a few new things (which I believe the new SitRep said was coming) to add more variety to the mix. But, they will release the Beta on time to keep the ball rolling and to keep people interested / hungry for the final. Now, as for the actual release of the final game.... my prediction: January 2014. Why? Well, I believe it's either August / September or they will wait for January because they don't want to compete with Battlefield 4 and the EA hype crap and ArmA 3 being lost in all the static of PS4..etc....etc.. I would hope they would release ArmA 3 two months before Battlefield 4 / PS4 and show those people what a real FPS simulator is all about. :p .... but perfection can not be rushed.

[WalkerDown 1]

I would hope they would release ArmA 3 two months before Battlefield 4 / PS4 and show those people what a real FPS simulator is all about. :p .... but perfection can not be rushed.

Everything.. but how you will justify the fact that BF4 will run at 60fps with a great gfx while ArmA3 at less than half of it? Most ppl will tell you this is crap (and some of them will be right), let's hope they will concentrate to fix this issue before everything else... beta, retail and launch politics apart.

[RuecanOnRails 10]

I don't think they have any set deadlines. If the game requires more time in alpha, it should get more time in alpha.

As much as I want to see a finished game, I do not want to see a game that is rushed suffers from game breaking glitches, bugs, and imbalance. I'll make an early prediction.. BF4 will suffer from all those. Not that you can compare a battlefield game to Arma. They are two completely different genres and different leagues. especially when it comes to fps comparison. Looking at the ground in arma 3 has the same complexity as any scene in BF3.

And I agree with rehtus777, Stratis offers so much in terms of content that I feel I've barely scratched the surface people who are getting bored of it already need to expand their view of statis (looking at people who only play wasteland). Arma 3 in it's current state can easily offer me a few more hundred hours of gameplay.

[rehtus777 10]

Everything.. but how you will justify the fact that BF4 will run at 60fps with a great gfx while ArmA3 at less than half of it? Most ppl will tell you this is crap (and some of them will be right), let's hope they will concentrate to fix this issue before everything else... beta, retail and launch politics apart.

I played ArmA 3 for about 50 hours when it first came out and then I brought up BF3 to see what the new maps were like (I hadn't downloaded them yet because I was in ArmA 3 mode :p).....I was in shock about how sub-par BF3 looked compared to ArmA 3.....there is no comparison, ArmA 3 kicks BF3's butt when it comes to gfx. BF4 will still be running on the Frostbite 2 engine and geared toward consoles....I'm not expecting to much of an upgrade or that it will be that much different than BF3 when it comes to graphics on the PC. That BF4 trailer looks stupid.....just another Hollywood Movie type single-mission..... follow the little Arrow and become Rambo. Yawn. I've done that to Ad Nauseum.

ArmA 3 beats BF3 on every level...game-play, graphics, editor, AI commands with VAC, ACRE, ACE, Mods, and etc. etc. EA ruined the Battlefield Series when it comes to game-play. As for the Frames Per Second, I get 60 fps easily on my computer with ArmA 3....if you want the 'eye candy' on a large sandbox, than you need to buy top end equipment to run it. I have an i5 Ivy Bridge with a GTX 680..... no problems here and I don't even overclock it (it holds 30-60 fps on high /ultra setting 4000 distance with 20 AI). If I overclock the CPU / GPU, I easily get 60 fps only because my monitor is set for 60 hz.

Edited April 10, 2013 by rehtus777

[On_Sabbatical 11]

DOes this mean that we should lose hope in seeing big changes made ?!

[WalkerDown 1]

I played ArmA 3 for about 50 hours when it first came out and then I brought up BF3 to see what the new maps were like (I hadn't downloaded them yet because I was in ArmA 3 mode :p).....I was in shock about how sub-par BF3 looked compared to ArmA 3

The quality looks almost the same for me, with A3 looks much more realistic in lighting, while compared to BF3 and its "hollywood filtered film effects" (that i personally hate, but i see many kids liking it alot.. cod guys.. :) ), but again the gfx counts nothing if everyone except few (you're one of those fews apparently) are not capable of having some acceptable fps. They are two totally different games and there's thousand reasons of why BF3 runs smoother than ArmA3 of course (mainly because of ArmA3 very old engine), but you cannot give any reason to the final customers, they won't accept it, they will only notice that BF3 runs at 60fps and ArmA3 runs at 25 at the best, on the same ring, and they will not accept any justification... this game will never hit the mass market (if not for the hype) if they doesn't solve this big performance issue.

[rehtus777 10]

The quality looks almost the same for me, with A3 looks much more realistic in lighting, while compared to BF3 and its "hollywood filtered film effects" (that i personally hate, but i see many kids liking it alot.. cod guys.. :) ), but again the gfx counts nothing if everyone except few (you're one of those fews apparently) are not capable of having some acceptable fps. They are two totally different games and there's thousand reasons of why BF3 runs smoother than ArmA3 of course (mainly because of ArmA3 very old engine), but you cannot give any reason to the final customers, they won't accept it, they will only notice that BF3 runs at 60fps and ArmA3 runs at 25 at the best, on the same ring, and they will not accept any justification... this game will never hit the mass market (if not for the hype) if they doesn't solve this big performance issue.

I have both games. I got a hold of BF3 in Alpha back in June of 2011 and it was terrible. Also, it took Dice 4 months to iron out all the bugs after the release in Oct. of 2011..... it wasn't stable until February or March of 2012.

Again, ArmA 3 game-play is superior to BF3. Example: I hate playing Close-Quarters and hitting the enemy in the chest 4 times to watch him dive around a corner.... pop back up and one shot me in the head - dead. ArmA 3 is more realistic...it's a simulator. ArmA 3 is in Alpha and is way ahead of the BF3 when they were in Alpha. As for Frame Rate...again....I'm not having any problems with my high end rig. Some players are reporting 80 to 100 fps.

One last thing: Have you checked Steam Lately? The ArmA series has owned Steam's top 10 list in sales for the past 11 months. DayZ and ArmA 3 have kept BIS in the top 10 for 11 months straight. Your theory about "hype" is wrong. Most people buy games by word of mouth or what the critics are saying. Check PC gamer or Rock, Paper, Shotgun....they all are giving ArmA 3 great reviews and it is only the Alpha.