Altis: Criticism and Suggestions

[Kakarotto 0]

I feel like several of the larger towns/cities in Altis lack features that make them distinct from other towns/cities. This is in part because of the limited number of unique buildings in game. In Chernarus it is quite easy to tell what city you are in/near just with a glance due to the unique layout and presence of certain buildings, and while part of it surely is that we just need to get used to this new map, I think Altis may be somewhat lacking in this regard.

[Victim9l3 11]

Caves, caves, and more caves. I searched the entire island and only found 1 place that I could kind of call a cave. It's big enough for vehicle to go under and out the other side. There are similar on an island but like 5 feet across. And one on island off stratis about 10 feet, but this map would be perfect.

The dry lake bed is awesome. Having an actual landing strip like there is now is good so AI can land but humans can pretty much land anywhere on it. Leave it alone.

My criticism is the FOB's. 90 % are terrible. Stratis set the bar for FOB's. Especially Maxwell and a few others. But most here are garbage. A couple random h barriers that are so far apart they are undefendable. There are a few good ones but those too are way too spacious. The placements don't make sense. one cargo house here. another one 50 feet away then a building 50 feet in another direction with H barriers scattered around as an after thought. Most are buried in the ground and stand about 3 feet tall.

My best advice would be to eliminate the ridiculous ones and make the good ones something to be proud of. They (along with a lot of properties scattered around the country) seem to have been made spacious just to stretch out the terrain so you wouldn't have to spend another year placing buildings and FOBs and properties that actually look real. It's all too open.

I will take some pictures to show you.

My last thing advice is also important. Some of the coolest sites for combat are the rocky hills and the castles. Unless you play single player. There are no positions on any parts of the castle. So AI will not walk on to it. They stay on the grass. Once in a while one guy might follow you because the ground is right under the castle walkways. Not only can they not get on the castle, they only stay on certain spots in the grass because walls are under them. Same as the rocks. AI will go under that cave but they refuse to walk on a space that is 30 by 30 meters with only acouple small rocks. Those rocky hills are perfect but AI won't walk in between spaces because bigger rocks are underneath.

Can't there be some kind of path finding scripts done for certain ai unfriendly spaces? To tell them to move forward no matter what is there? I mean they already walk through EVERYTHING. Maybe there can be a certain "follow me" command where all ai units walk exactly where the human leader walks. Like his actual foot prints. That way you can use the command to get AI past a difficult spot then release them on other side.

I know you have your job to do and you do it well. keep up the good work. These are my suggestion and they are very important to me and possibly other as well. Thank you

[BadHabitz 235]

Its fairly common to see cellphone antenas painted all green or some dark color.

In my area of the world they actually add fake foliage and try to make cell towers look like palm trees.

[dav 22]

May I suggest removing the beach sun shades, they are too colorful and don't suit the atmosphere. Perhaps more farm equipment as suggested would add to the immersion, different scatters of birds in flocks too.

[Zorg_DK 10]

I like the idea of tall grass or wheat fields that you can hide in when crouched, but visible in when standing up..

[MisTyK 12]

Wheat fields or some culture plant would be nice too.

And more for a possibility to get cave system. We cant make cave ATM but dev must work on !

The only caves i have see its just ground 0 + covered by hundred of rock.

But there a lot of issue with rock cave, you can stay block in rock, you can see trhought rock and see in/out cave, if you use chemlight in, the object and ground out is lightned or if you use car light out at night the cave is in light, there is no real dark cave,...

Or ground 0 + cave model http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e215/djfrogstar/tunnel01.jpg

City sewer, pool, cellar, cave, road tunnel and some other

Dont ask to add it to altis, but in map editor ( like vbs* ) make is possible to use the " under map "

*VBS2 v1.50Underground spaces Full support for underground spaces placed in Visitor 4, OME or RTE Trenches, basements, sewers, caves, tank ditches are all now supported

Edited September 1, 2013 by MisTyK

[dale0404 5]

Don't know what the fascination is with caves tbh.

Just get ALL the doors open in the hospital and let me get in that church!! Maybe a bit of furniture would be nice just to spruce up the place...

[KeyCat 131]

A minor one but noticed a couple of free floating power lines (2-3 missing poles) just a few hundred meters NW of the large airport.

/KC

[smokedog3para 365]

I can definitely say that not all the buildings are enterable.

Neither should they be but the doomsayers on here are a little bit annoying...

@ dale your not doom saying are you after you were happy with what you saw from pre altis on the other thread when we mentioned use able buildings to be in game and not static scenery objects you moaned at us lol and they say leopards can't change their spots

My thoughts are when flying the sat image shows lots of green foilage but there is hardly any foilage placed on the green areas of sat image, it makes it look out of place i know there is grass but it looks like small patches are bushes from the sky and there is no bushes on the ground were these patches are.

more feature buildings and make them actually fully use able

actual crop fields as at the moment how could altis have farming land but not have 1 crop field

Wooded areas need more bushes and foilage around or near them hills need more rocks and bushes for a bit of cover especial on the green sat image areas on hills and rocks on sand texture.

more terrain detail fences that end with a post not like the invisible ones we have at present.

more fences / rockwalls around the farming fields

less sunbeds and umbrellas if it is/was a war zone who the hell would book a holiday to come into a war zone.

Edited September 1, 2013 by SmokeDog3PARA

[dale0404 5]

@ dale your not doom saying are you after you were happy with what you saw from pre altis on the other thread when we mentioned use able buildings to be in game and not static scenery objects you moaned at us lol and they say leopards can't change their spots

Hmm, just checked my spots and they haven't changed, anyway...

I am extremely happy with Altis and no one should not be happy apart from the doomsayers out there. But, it is slightly annoying that you cant fully enter some of the "iconic" buildings on the Island.

[minimalaco 30]

I like the idea of tall grass or wheat fields that you can hide in when crouched, but visible in when standing up..

Emmmmmm....

[fabio_chavez 103]

Emmmmmm....

loooooool

[will(uk) 10]

Driving a damaged vehicle up close to the car repair workshops should part-repair the

vehicle (and fully repair if the player/AI is a repair specialist).

[Bee8190 10]

Altis is mindblowing!!

It's so easy to just drive around and spend good few hours doing so. It is appreciated that so many buildings are now enterable and the helipad/s on top of hospital are nice touch. Beautiful island all around and cities are bigger than I'd hope for. Again, I am most impressed BI, no wonder it took fair bit of time making it ;)

Some minor suggestions - :)

now, I wish these big buildings were open up even more and perhaps some industrial buildings /areas, little more variety in buildings would be nice to have but it's in no way deal breaker. Something that is easy to notice and as well mentioned by others is the absence of any life on said islands though. It's is beautiful yet feels quite empty, although I imagine this is not easy to deal with as it sounds easy at first but -

What if there were dogs barking in every 2nd or even 3th town? We would not need to see them but when passing in a vehicle or on foot it would add great deal to said immersion at literally no cost.

Same goes for chickens and chicken / rooster sounds. As matter of fact it would be great to see them randomly spawn near roads and let them just do there thing ;) ( headlessly running around and making noises, avoiding being stepped on or run over lol )

I also miss the absence of any wind, which is little odd when taking a trip all the way up to the wind turbines and when on foot :) .My another suggestion would be to increase ''rattle'' noises of vehicles ( I know the hunter has some but they quite subtle ) while driving around and hearing radio would bring it to another level of immersion

Great stuff so far though

[nanucq 22]

I really do LOVE Altis, it's a masterpiece on every aspect, thank you BIS.

The only thing that I would suggest is adding some furniture into building, some tables, chairs etc etc. Actually they feel empty, too unrealistic. Broken stuffs would do the trick :p

[Zorg_DK 10]

Emmmmmm....

Yeah... I see the problem. :)

[TheMightyMooseKing 10]

I believe the new Altis map to be one of the best ArmA maps up to date, it's very versatile and it looks really realistic, you can definitely see that it resembles a real life island, unfortunately however I have two issues with it:

Mid/Long Range Terrain textures, they just seem to be very blurry even on maximum graphics settings.

The Salt lakes are dry every time of the year.

Other than that I really enjoy playing on this new map and it definitely shows what the ArmA 3 engine is capable of.

[old_painless 182]

The amount of locked down structures is somewhat of a letdown - brings back sad memories of Chernarus, where you couldn't use anything. For instance, the facility at 082108 is great looking and would let itself to an interesting scenario. But totally locked down - ladders everywhere, none of which you can climb, doors to the strange silo-like structures that don't open. Seems like a rushed job in parts, unfortunately.

Hope that some of the post-release content can be to finalise Altis - a great place but still needs more opening up

[chrisb 196]

I was expecting Altis to be good, BI do terrains really well, so in that respect it doesn’t disappoint.

Performance wise, o.k. provided your not wanting anything too large scale, the type of mission I play would have been fine, maybe reduce AI numbers a little.

But that was expected, a good terrain, no, a great terrain. Just the rest of the game, lumbering vehicles, awkward character movements, medical, etc.. and of course ‘AI’, still bad.

But yes, Altis looks great..

[novemberist 2]

I think those guys are in for some big disappointment ;)

http://www.arma3.com/images/screenshots/large/arma3_e32013_screenshot_08.jpg

Or may I take this as a hint that some more buildings will be made enterable?

[Ash712 1]

I think those guys are in for some big disappointment ;)

http://www.arma3.com/images/screenshots/large/arma3_e32013_screenshot_08.jpg

Or may I take this as a hint that some more buildings will be made enterable?

LOL!

I know I was disappointed that I could not enter it... :(

There's no reason not to make it, and the other 2 buildings (hospital and office building) fully enterable.

[cadmium77 16]

I like that half of it is flat; great tank battles are coming. Long range fights at 3 to 6 miles. There's some mountains for infantry but armor will be awesome in this game. Lots of room to roll.

[EDcase 87]

I would like so have had more undulations and gullies in the flat area. About human height (single ground polygon) to provide a bit of cover for more tactical approaches to towns etc.

[gonza 8]

Hello,

Wee need some Tony Montana houses (on top of mountains)

Bigger mountains.

Bigger bridges.

And a nuclear power plant would be cool.

Great job this map is really good.

Edited September 4, 2013 by gonza

[Reaper_Jackal 10]

Would be great to see the Military camps get as much love and attention as those on Statis. They lack the character and detail of camp Rogan/Maxwel and just feel terribly rushed and poorly set out (huge gaps between cover, no razorwire, etc), it would take hours of work for mission makers to get these to a usable state.