Bohemia Interactive @ E3 2013 - DISCUSSION

[EricM 0]

Arma 2 system was removed because it simply did not work as designed (ex: Multiplayer).

Dragging and carrying people out of the line fire and such was really cool in A2. I would have thought that it'd be actually easier to implement with ragdoll now in than before.

Really a loss here.

[chortles 263]

Neither in PMC nor in any other Arma game had player any automatic health regeneration. I'm not sure where you have the information from, but it's incorrect.

I was wondering due to metalcraze's claim about "health regen of PMC", unless you're asserting that he just got that wrong.

About the current health system implementation - yes, it's not perfect and yes, it should be further improved. On othe other hand, the presence of first aid kits gives designers greater flexibility in balacing their missions. You can remove them from enemies, leave them only to some, put them to cargo boxes, award them after completing objectives, etc. Nobody says you should stick with the default state, which is anyway not final (who will carry the kits and how much will they weight is still subject to change).

I believe his complaint was that the FAKs somehow invalidated or made redundant an "actual" Medic, not least because the 'classes' in the Editor seem to basically be equivalent to default loadouts without unique abilities of their own, but then again I imagine that this was for flexibility's sake for the mission-maker? (That is, to not be restricted to having to base their units off of said classes.)

It's one thing if the current implementation is WIP (as, truthbetold, anything about Arma 3 before full release really is) but... I just want to check if "FAKs as a default self-treatment method in lieu of Medics" is intentional?

[Alwarren 2767]

Neither in PMC nor in any other Arma game had player any automatic health regeneration. I'm not sure where you have the information from, but it's incorrect.

Not like Call of Duty, but wasn't the player successively healed until a certain level?

About the current health system implementation - yes, it's not perfect and yes, it should be further improved. On othe other hand, the presence of first aid kits gives designers greater flexibility in balacing their missions. You can remove them from enemies, leave them only to some, put them to cargo boxes, award them after completing objectives, etc. Nobody says you should stick with the default state, which is anyway not final (who will carry the kits and how much will they weight is still subject to change).

The major concern I (and I suppose metalcraze) have is that the system doesn't punish enough. Healing is almost instantaneous, and the consequences of being injured are not severe enough.. In Arma 2, when you were on the ground, your actions where severely limited (only hip fire, only crawling, no 'nades). All of that is gone with the current health system.

---------- Post added at 11:32 ---------- Previous post was at 11:28 ----------

.I tended to think that this was because RV4's code base is not only just older but more "locked in" than DayZ standalone's

If that were the case (which I honestly don't believe) then why not leave the old first aid system in? That was mostly implemented in the three modules anyway, and fixing it for MP would be much better than coming up with a damage/first aid system that is basically negligible. Even an extremely simple Injury system would be fine if it were more punishing , but yeah, I am going to invoke the name Battlefield 3 again, this is more like BF3's system that just drains the color out of your view, or Red River's/Dragon Rising.

[metalcraze 290]

Not like Call of Duty, but wasn't the player successively healed until a certain level?

In one of PMC missions (the on-rails car minigun one) I even got shot 4 or 5 times consequently from .50 cal mounted on Taki's jeep and still didn't die (not all bullets at once though, with a few seconds of interval). In other missions I've got shot with normal weapons many times. And I could get shot again and again provided it didn't happen all at once.

How else can I explain this if not by health regen?

The major concern I (and I suppose metalcraze) have is that the system doesn't punish enough. Healing is almost instantaneous, and the consequences of being injured are not severe enough.. In Arma 2, when you were on the ground, your actions where severely limited (only hip fire, only crawling, no 'nades). All of that is gone with the current health system.

Exactly. It's like for each step ArmA3 has taken forward it took 2 steps back.

At least if BIS is not able to improve medic system in 3 years (with ACE and DayZ lending the hand on that), don't make it non-existent.

Saying that consequences aren't severe enough is true. In 2001 OFP getting wounded mattered a lot. You did your best not to get shot to begin with. In streamlined and accessible ArmA3 wounds don't matter almost at all. FAKs make medic take a back seat for the first time in the series. Since even with First Aid module in ArmA2 you still retained all the negative effects from getting shot, even though anyone could stop your bleeding.

And removing FAKs from soldiers will not help to balance anything. If you will survive after getting hit - there are still no negative effects to that. The only consequence is the guarantee that you won't survive the next hit due to ArmA3 wounding being stripped down to a basic 100% hp system - is all. Very "authentic" this one is.

I tended to think that this was because RV4's code base is not only just older but more "locked in" than DayZ standalone's

Except before DayZ even happened ArmA3 was in development for 2 years.

ArmA2 was in development for 2-2.5 I think and look at the huge difference between it and ArmA1.

Edited June 16, 2013 by metalcraze

[Maxzy 12]

If you will survive after getting hit - there are still no negative effects to that.

Not true. Your aim is much more shaky and you have a blood loss - after some time passes you lose ability to run.

[metalcraze 290]

Never really noticed shaky aim after getting shot

Guess the rest is there but I didn't wait that long without just pressing MMB.

[moricky 211]

In one of PMC missions (the on-rails car minigun one) I even got shot 4 or 5 times consequently from .50 cal mounted on Taki's jeep and still didn't die (not all bullets at once though, with a few seconds of interval). In other missions I've got shot with normal weapons many times. And I could get shot again and again provided it didn't happen all at once.

How else can I explain this if not by health regen?

I must dissapoint you, there are no such measures in place. Nowhere in PMC campaign is player automatically healed.

By all means go check mission and module scripts by yourself, it's not that we can hide these things ;)

If you were running the game with mods, there's a chance some of them interfered with the damage system and made player less vulnerable.

And removing FAKs from soldiers will not help to balance anything. If you will survive after getting hit - there are still no negative effects to that. The only consequence is the guarantee that you won't survive the next hit due to ArmA3 wounding being stripped down to a basic 100% hp system - is all. Very "authentic" this one is.

Not true. When you have wounded legs, you can only walk, running and sprinting is impossible. With wounded hands, you aim shakes uncontrollably. It's been like this since OFP (with exception that player was forced to lie down with wounded legs there). Again, go check it by yourself; shooting a soldier's legs or arms and team switching to him to observe the effects is something you can do in editor quite simply.

[Tonci87 163]

Did I get this right, it will not be possible to drag wounded teammembers?

I think only the Medic and the Squadleader should have those medkits by default (the squadleader should have only one)

[metalcraze 290]

I must dissapoint you, there are no such measures in place. Nowhere in PMC campaign is player automatically healed.

I just launched PMC 04 Transportation mission. It took enemies 8 shots to kill me. Since no health regen is present - then it's definitely player having some unrealistically tough skin. Same as when PMC campaign was included into OA patch by mistake.

By all means go check mission and module scripts by yourself, it's not that we can hide these things ;)

DLC pbos are encrypted, no mission.sqm in PMC lite, unless I revert to 1.56

If you were running the game with mods, there's a chance some of them interfered with the damage system and made player less vulnerable.

No mods right now either. All the latest ArmA2 beta and latest PMC patch.

Not true. When you have wounded legs, you can only walk, running and sprinting is impossible. With wounded hands, you aim shakes uncontrollably. It's been like this since OFP (with exception that player was forced to lie down with wounded legs there). Again, go check it by yourself; shooting a soldier's legs or arms and team switching to him to observe the effects is something you can do in editor quite simply.

I will.

Edited June 16, 2013 by metalcraze

[SimonSays 1]

hmm so only FAK´s, no medical system no more. ACE did this best again for MP, wish they would have used some features from it.

Edited June 16, 2013 by SimonSays

[Wolfstriked 11]

I understand the reason for making medics become less important as it makes the game a faster more action packed experience.There is servers now that allow anyone to revive you,MHQ trucks to be deployed anywhere removing the need for transport to the objective etc.This makes the game very fast and action packed compared to how slow feeling a more realistic system would be where if you die it can take a long time to see any action again.This means that the COD crowd can jump right in and jam away and that is great but I really feel that BIS should tie medic duties to difficulty levels.At veteran and elite levels we should have Dayz type medical system.

[roberthammer 582]

I think the ACE medic system was the best - it worked and it is simple , nothing too complex like BIS is worry about

atm you can take like 10 FAKs and you dont need medic anymore ... , that is just bad and arcade idea , atleast FAK could heal you less/stop bleeding (not instant heal to 100%) and

then medic could heal you more but that should take a lot of time like ACE mod did

[metalcraze 290]

OK did tests as per Moricky's suggestion.

Shot a dude 3 times in the leg with a pistol. Teamswitched to him. He was still able to walk. Applied his FAK. He started being able to run again like nothing has happened.

Then I proceeded to shoot him in the hand. His shake increased but it's still almost completely eliminated simply by holding breath, making him able to shoot enemies almost on par with a fully healed unit.

The only other "negative" consequence was an increased vignette effect which is just like with "fatigue" is completely harmless.

I'm sorry but this is still a lot worse than OFP and here is why:

If a mission will have FAKs (which, let's be honest, the majority will) it will give medics, which are already boring in previous vanilla games to begin with, a back seat.

Medics and FAKs take only 3-4 seconds to heal (and yet you still can't break the animation).

A soldier with 3-4 bullets in his leg still can walk and a mere FAK gives him the ability to run again.

Getting hit in the hand makes almost no difference, holding breath eliminates any negative effects and going prone eliminates negative effects even without holding breath.

And when compared to ArmA2 First Aid module, DayZ and ACE medic system where a wounded soldier would bleed out if untreated (and in ACE the soldier was even bleeding out faster if he was moving) it doesn't stand a chance either.

Again I shot the dude 3 times in a leg. Then sped up the time 4x, waited 2 minutes which equals to 8 minutes real time. With 3 holes in his leg the dude still didn't die even though he was leaving blood trails (and only for a very short time).

And wasn't it possible to bleed out in Dragon Rising (of all games!) too?

I'm sorry but how is this not a move towards a casual player?

Edited June 16, 2013 by metalcraze

[Zatan13th 10]

I don't agree about A3 has worse medical system than A2.

A3 has better than A2 in many way just check the config file, it has many parameters to be configured. A2 seems better because its medical modules -not from the bare bone code itself (which is not much different from OFP).

One thing which is missing from A3 is an unconscious status which I think BIS will added it later soon.

[Smurf 12]

Pity. There even was\is some new drag\carry animations on the viewer.

Watchout with all this "Maybe after release" thing. TkoH FM, dynamic shadows, first aid system, underground structures, what else?

[danil-ch 165]

When you have wounded legs, you can only walk.

It's a very controversial change at least in current form. It would be look normal if there was limping animation like in VBS.

[fragmachine 12]

Just found this when reading DayZ interview: http://kotaku.com/dayz-fans-sent-us-questions-for-the-games-creator-we-513010392

Will shooting at and hitting another persons gun break their weapon/scope/magazine?

Yes. Weapons are entities now, they're just like a vehicle, so they have their own damage and everything.

I think it would be great if ArmA 3 would provide destructible handheld weapons. On other hand that would happen quite often I think - and - problem is that not much peoples out here want features to be simulated on weapons like this one or jamming.

[Messiah 2]

A nice feature, but from my point of view, you've addressed the 'why not' of it for ArmA. It's a very applicable feature in a survival/scavenging based game such as DayZ, but in ArmA 3 it's just going to become a huge annoyance.

[chortles 263]

At least if BIS is not able to improve medic system in 3 years (with ACE and DayZ lending the hand on that), don't make it non-existent.

If that were the case (which I honestly don't believe) then why not leave the old first aid system in?

I believe neokika's statement was meant to imply either that "we ran out of time to put it back in"... or "we ran out of time to do the system we wanted/may-have-mentioned but just throwing in A2's was ruled out"... at least, those are the only two ways that I've found to go from the explicitly-stated premise that "currently there is no time".

Except before DayZ even happened ArmA3 was in development for 2 years.

ArmA2 was in development for 2-2.5 I think and look at the huge difference between it and ArmA1.

That's got a pretty simple explanation: Maruk was pretty open in that one 2011 devblog "From Flashpoint to Arma" and at least two separate interviews about how ArmA1 was nowhere near a labor of love for BI post-Codemasters but rather from the decision "to take as much of the new engine improvements as possible from OFP: Elite for Xbox (most notably the streaming of data into memory and pixel shaders) and create a game partly based on revamped Cold War Crisis assets. The result is now known as Arma (initially titled OFP Rearmed). Unlike “Game 2â€, this would have to be created relatively quickly, within a budget and most importantly on time."

Considering the attitude towards that whereas Arma 2 was meant to be "close to the original ambitions of “Game 2â€, but sill would be something feasible to manage", I'm really not surprised at how much greater of a leap there was between ArmA1 and Arma 2 than between A2 and A3... as for the DayZ comparison, I see not only the client-server architecture change but, frankly, the much narrower intended gameplay concept of DayZ (which, come to think of it, reminds me of DCS now).

atm you can take like 10 FAKs and you dont need medic anymore ... , that is just bad and arcade idea , atleast FAK could heal you less/stop bleeding (not instant heal to 100%)

The thing is, I haven't actually seen bleeding in the current Health/injury/medical system and -- admittedly this one is if the "Wasteland Health meter" is accurate -- from what I've seen, the FAKs don't take people to 100% Health.

Mind you, at least Gaia/Moricky's outright said that the FAKs are WIP (i.e. "weight" for carrying capacity purposes).

Did I get this right, it will not be possible to drag wounded teammembers?

As I said, the engine supports it at least on the mission/script level (I had it as an action menu choice in a MP mission) but it's not in by default. :(

[zimms 22]

In the

video from the E3, Jay mentions (at about 5:50) that every vehicle in Arma 3 has fully modeled interiors.

Well, does that mean tanks too? :rolleyes:

[Steakslim 1]

In the

video from the E3, Jay mentions (at about 5:50) that every vehicle in Arma 3 has fully modeled interiors.

Well, does that mean tanks too? :rolleyes:

don't get your hopes up.

[Wolfstriked 11]

I think its all vehicles or he would of said all vehicles except tanks.

[bonham 10]

Yes, in an earlier interview Jay mentioned that in ArmA 2 only some vehicles had fully modelled interiors and they were aiming for ArmA 3 to be more polished in that aspect. He specifically said that vehicles will have interiors.

[maddogx 13]

Pity. There even was\is some new drag\carry animations on the viewer.

Watchout with all this "Maybe after release" thing. TkoH FM, dynamic shadows, first aid system, underground structures, what else?

I don't remember dynamic shadows being confirmed anywhere, after release or otherwise. Where did you read/hear that? :)

(If you're referring to Damu's post from last summer about wanting to implement deferred lighting, I think we can safely disregard that by now.)

[kernriver 4]

To return briefly to medic system discussion, I don't think that FAK's are a problem, the problem is what they do. FAK is just that, a First Aid kit, it should only prevent bleeding out. After applying it, you shouldn't be able to run around like nothing happened. That's where medic comes in.