I am a player of BI games from OFP CWC. Heres what I think.

[wgaf 10]

I'm glad they're doing the right thing by releasing the arma2 content to the community to port into arma3. It would have been inexcusable for them to prevent it being ported in.

It's still lousy that people will have to download and activate this stuff as addons, rather than have it included in the core of the game, and will limit the number of people who will play on arma3 servers, but it's better than the nothing the game 'shipped' with.

[chortles 263]

I'm glad they're doing the right thing by releasing the arma2 content to the community to port into arma3. It would have been inexcusable for them to prevent it being ported in.

Ehh, I don't believe that the devs ever considered preventing a community port (beyond "not releasing the Arma 2 models"), it's just that the-powers-that-be clearly weren't interested in putting resources and personnel-time into "official porting".

[3havoc 10]

@Thesneak: please for the love of all things nice, please structure your posts better, more succiently and to be less of a wall of text.

There are legit grievances but acting like man-children is creating new problems than fixing anything, sure people have to let out their fustrations but some of the crap that is posted right now is something I would expect from a spoilt children not adults.

Personally I would prefer if BI was more open about problems that were encountered which lead to why the game is in it's current state by being more transparent with its community, I am sure the majority would be more understanding of the issues that caused what feels like some pretty big cuts happening. That is how I feel about the current situation.

[chortles 263]

Personally I would prefer if BI was more open about problems that were encountered which lead to why the game is in it's current state by being more transparent with its community, I am sure the majority would be more understanding of the issues that caused what feels like some pretty big cuts happening. That is how I feel about the current situation.

Some devs have suggested that it's something they might be able to go into more detail about one day (as opposed to the vague official acknowledgments).

[eymerich 11]

Some devs have suggested that it's something they might be able to go into more detail about one day (as opposed to the vague official acknowledgments).

Really?

font?

[zukov 490]

today i'm woke up and again with the fairy tale of A2 contents...... the dust in the our eyes works well

Mark spanel maybe has to say us , when will deliver the game that we have bought

so far in my hard drive i have 1 editor and a quite unfinished assets

[thesneak 0]

Well hey, there is a go cart track in altis, and Benny has been reduced to putting Go karts in the light vehicle purchase menu. That sort of helps with the no Bike thing.

I'm the Kinda guy who would rather own a Chevy Nova '74 454 and a Trans AM 400 Firebird with my own garage and paint booth as opposed to leasing a 2008 Lotus Esprit with a maintenance plan.

I'm not saying I don't like the game, I do.

I was nevr happy with all the water and no ships, But then again, you could never really use the water much anyway. Now you can, and it's a main selling point, and still no ships. The artillery load out is nice, but I could have already scripted them in to any game, and I'm no scripter. get map pos, get pos set pos are 1st on the list of scripting Arma for dummies.

!AliveArma (weak, awesome, new) This select o.

[Harbinger2456 10]

Some devs have suggested that it's something they might be able to go into more detail about one day (as opposed to the vague official acknowledgments).

Yeah, when they're safely away in some third world island paradise, living on all the money we paid for this half-done product.

[pd3 25]

Yeah, when they're safely away in some third world island paradise, living on all the money we paid for this half-done product.

Ouch.

[aoshi 1]

that is a humor post right? because is was laughing hard!

[[evo] dan 79]

I'm with you on this one. While I won't call it the worst release, the things that have happened in the period since the Alpha released until today had certainly altered my views regarding the statements BI makes. Sure, this Alpha/Beta might have been a success for BI in regards to sales and the eyes that those sales generated, but with the appearance of threads like this daily, it doesn't seem at all that those who made it a success for BI are regarding it as such. Perspective is a bitch I suppose.

In regards to content, while sure, it can be said "90% of the content is new models instead of recycling", I find that this time the problem is different, this time content isn't partly recycled from the previous titles, this time it's being recycled within itself, which is what I suppose makes it taste and appear so bad. It feels like the creativity and talent that went into most assets in the game ended up being diluted by such minor repetitive things. It's a bit like texture tiling effect, if the eye gets attracted towards the obviously repetitive bits within the texture, it simply looks bad.

Feedback tracker failed in my eyes for the Alpha/Beta, top voted issues since the FT tracker started are limbo tickets which will never happen but they'll never be closed because nobody wants to say "no". Besides BI QA using it to catch emergency issues, you're more likely to get a bug noticed by the people who matter by making a thread in the forum or posting in one of the megathreads. Suggesting any slightly involved change was either met with the ticket being a limbo ticket or outright fear of breaking other things or "yeah, that might take a long time to do". It's basically there to serve as a "low-hanging fruit" repository.

I still fully support the decision to go with Steam and I doubt I will ever switch back to stable as it's awesome to receive daily builds on the dev branch.

I'm cautiously hopeful that it will be used to it's full incredible potential.

I'm indifferent towards whatever setting they decided to use.

I'm incredibly impressed by the scale of Altis.

I love the music.

I love the radio protocol.

I love where the inventory went but they overlooked certain things.

I feel like the sound effects stalled out.

I love the "new control feeling" but once again, it stalled out due to the animation limitations and the way the old system rears it's head in certain places.

I dislike the limitations that results from the way animations are handled.

I'm surprised they haven't explored that further.

I love the new IK additions.

I dislike the interaction clumsiness and the complete reliance on the action menu.

I love the inclusion of PhysX configured vehicles and all the potential configuration options for such.

I dislike the way vehicles handle and still feel weightless.

I'm surprised by the lack of PhysX ropes.

I love the Steam Workshop integration for missions.

I'm disappointed at the stalemate that the entire Steam Workshop vs Modders is at.

It's surprising to see the opening a can of worms right after the release with the "monetizing addons thing". I'd love for the modders to get more monetary support for providing top-notch content but there are a lot of problems that will need full scale perpetual BI involvement if it is to happen. I'd rather see them supported monetarily in other ways. Especially with the currently unresolved issues in regards to the Steam Workshop and the general nature of the modding community. I feel like it's needlessly rocking the boat at this point.

The tolerance Alpha/Beta labels gave BI are now gone, there are no more excuses to be had. Now, once again, it's down to the modding community to hold the fort for a couple of years.

^ This, hits the nail right on the head I am afraid, pretty much covers everything I am feeling for this game atm (apart from rage of the physx crashs)

[clydefrog 3]

I'd like to know what the "alpha is alpha" and "beta is beta" people have for an excuse these days.

[David77 10]

I'd like to know what the "alpha is alpha" and "beta is beta" people have for an excuse these days.

We're still here. Arma3 is in early release :o. There hasn't even been one official patch yet. I'm going to like to know where all of the "arma3 is bad" threads have gone in months / years from now when the game is in it's prime. I think it's safe to speak for everyone (probably not =P) when I say Arma1 release was worse. Arma2's release wasn't much better.

Atleast arma3 is still arma though. In that, the community is going to make the game however good they want it to be. Also, aside from predecessors (if you will), there aren't too many large scale military sand boxes to play around with. Not to mention ones that look this good. I'm personally content atm & loving all of the new commands / functions.

I'm glad we've a feedback tracker. While some think it's only repository for limbo tickets, you have to realize sifting through 50 "I want a jump key" requests everyday or other redundant feature requests don't help with progression.

Edited September 20, 2013 by David77

[clydefrog 3]

Also, aside from predecessors (if you will), there aren't too many large scale military sand boxes to play around with. Not to mention ones that look this good. I'm personally content atm & loving all of the new commands / functions.

And that is a problem, BI have no competition to push them to do things better.

[tortuosit 486]

I'd like to know what the "alpha is alpha" and "beta is beta" people have for an excuse these days.

"With ArmA you bought a framework"

"BI is well known for long term supporting and fixing bugs"

Anyway. The more content we will see (by modders of course), i.e. like ACE, top notch missions, Islands, weapons etc., the more we will enjoy ArmA 3. BTW ppl, give Namalsk more attention :) Make more missions for it! Namalsk has to be the first native A3 port. And Podagorsk! And Lingor. And Chernarus. And ... ;)

Edited September 20, 2013 by tortuosit

[Sniperwolf572 758]

I'm glad we've a feedback tracker. While some think it's only repository for limbo tickets, you have to realize sifting through 50 "I want a jump key" requests everyday or other redundant feature requests don't help with progression.

I'm glad we have it too, if anything due to more "officialness" than CIT was. But I'm sorry to say, you are incorrect. Out of any 50 duplicate tickets regarding any issue, FT community moderators or a couple of guys from BI QA will close 49 of them so nobody has to bat an eyelash at them and one will be marked as reviewed, signaling to BI that it might be worth to look at to decide what to do with it further.

If we analyze a few of the the top voted tickets, which have had the most exposure and have certainly been seen and noticed, it goes like this:

• Deploying a weapon / proper use of bipods - Limbo. They've talked up a storm around this with "simulation fever" and whatnot. We know the BI stance and it's "maybe after release", "we'd like to do it but there are more important things".
  
• Low CPU/GPU Utilization - Limbo ticket for people to whine about performance in a single place. There are plenty of BI opinion plastered on the forum in regards to this, even from Marek himself. We know they don't consider "more usage == moar framez". It will stay open and assigned just not to cause backlash. We know they might attempt to inject placebo code to appease the "usage monitors" and see what happens.
  
• Firing from vehicles - Limbo ticket for a potential future expansion feature. We know that they'd like to do it. Again, they will not outright say no.
  
• No female soldiers models available - Limbo drama circlejerk ticket. This ticket is a load of work if BI wants to do it right. We might see something along the lines of Arma 2 civilians at some point if they want to bother at all.
  

You can go through most of them like this and realize either that they will not happen because they're either too big, too much effort, too controversial or out of scope for what BI wants to do with Arma 3.

[ragerh 10]

This post is very very true. Now the devs are making excuses why its so bad lol

We are spoiled? how about, no! Your a company, making a product, we pay for. You don't spoil us. Believe me you don't. We are spoiling you buying this unfinished spaghetti code crap.

Also if a client is unhappy about your product, i wouldn't go saying to people that it is "butthurt".

What this guy said is 100% true and if you deny it, you obviously haven't played the game or know anything about the game.

"Remember, A3 is NOT "content complete". There IS more to come."

A3 is NOT complete!!

we will probably get milked for dlc to add content that should be there in the first place, or maby just a 100% working "final" release

what this guy did is not picking holes in content, its stating facts. I suggest using it to better the game.

Edited September 20, 2013 by Ragerh

[sulman 12]

Some folk think that they will be taken seriously if they mention Flashpoint, that game is the definition of "rose tinted glasses". Amazing game 14+ years ago, but now it's rubbish. The op at the very least makes his points in a fun manner, he's not crying and whining about it, so fair play.

Actually, I have the GOG version running (perfectly!) in Wine on Linux and Mac, and you know what? It's still very, very good indeed. I would go as far as to say, for the solo player, it's competitive with anything around nowadays.

[NeuroFunker 11]

This post is very very true. Now the devs are making excuses why its so bad lol

We are spoiled? how about, no! Your a company, making a product, we pay for. You don't spoil us. Believe me you don't. We are spoiling you buying this unfinished spaghetti code crap.

Also if a client is unhappy about your product, i wouldn't go saying to people that it is "butthurt".

What this guy said is 100% true and if you deny it, you obviously haven't played the game or know anything about the game.

"Remember, A3 is NOT "content complete". There IS more to come."

A3 is NOT complete!!

we will probably get milked for dlc to add content that should be there in the first place, or maby just a 100% working "final" release

what this guy did is not picking holes in content, its stating facts. I suggest using it to better the game.

Bringing campaign episodes, with new weapons, and jets as FREE dlc, seems like an ideal way to milk their fans!

[ragerh 10]

Lets see how long it stays free lol

[NeuroFunker 11]

well, if you excpecting all further dlcs tobe free, tath might be wrong.

[oggoeg 3]

Bringing campaign episodes, with new weapons, and jets as FREE dlc, seems like an ideal way to milk their fans!

Oh yeah, and aren't they now thinking about PAYING mod makers to create quality content (Or did I misunderstand it?) and releasing A2 MLODS?

BI you monsters!

[ragerh 10]

O no, im def not expecting that. Id just like to not pay for things that should have been in the game in the "final release".

That's like paying twice for the same product and that would mean they are taking advantage of us and not giving a crap anymore. Just releasing any old bs and we must be happy.

There should still be some standard of quality. But anyways this isnt my issue to start with. I just agree with most everything the original poster said.

[sulman 12]

Disagree. I use it to show that I've been around for all the bugged releases in the past 10 years and thus knew what to expect. The fact that I got even less than the little I was expecting based on my prior experience goes to show that this is the worst release yet (in my opinion). That being said I assume that there are good reasons for it turning out the way that it did. I only express my disappointment in the hopes that they will go "maybe in the future we shouldn't do things this way."

I don't know. I think it's pretty decent, actually, and my main interest is single player. Give me a good SP mission any day, and I will happily play for hours. The content doesn't worry me that much, because this problem is solvable with a little time.

I couldn't enjoy Armed Assault, or Arma 2 on release for a long time as I just did not have the hardware, so with each one, I stuck with the previous game until I had money to upgrade. The upside to this was that I tended to end up playing a mature version.

To be specific about earlier versions:

Operation Flashpoint & Resistance:

Still the greatest for single player. I go back to it regularly, even today. I suspect you agree, given what you've done since.

Armed Assault & Queens Gambit:

I had to wait a while to enjoy these two. I loved Sahrani; it is a great island to just potter about on in missions. The scoped weapons and player models were terrific (a major change from OFP, for those that remember) but the actual game mechanics felt little different to OFP, and the terrain graphics had the feel of being OFP in a pretty skirt and lipstick. APC's & Tanks that had progressive damage from RPG's is nice, too. Still a shock to be blown to bits by a single RPG while riding in a BMP during the Flashpoint scenarios.

The single player was a disjointed disappointment, but I wonder if that was familiarity with the predecessor; the missions themselves aren't actually that bad. If anything, dare I say Armed Assault's biggest problem was that it was very much more of the same? It is still a great thing to go back to because it looks good on modern hardware, and runs like lightning. It's still on my hard drive.

QG was a neat little campaign. Given the success of Resistance I was surprised BI didn't try something similar. It would have shifted copies, for sure.

Armed Assault was the last game that didn't suffer from the truly irritating foliage problem that plagues Arma 2 & 3; that is to say the abstracted LOS model that the AI uses was relatively close to what the human player actually sees. OA alleviated this a little bit, because, er, desert.

Armed Assault is the least loved game, and I think that's sad, because in a way it gave people everything they wanted at that time. Mod and mission support a mere fraction of what followed for A2. Just check Armaholic - there's no comparison.

Arma 2/OA

Messy on release. Chernarus was a triumph; it (still) looks fantastic. Plodding performance, not hugely alleviated even now. Situational awareness is made much harder because of the more cluttered environment Playability suffered a little bit and being shot at by units you can't see is not much fun. I go back to A2 a lot as well, and this still gets on my nerves more than anything else. It is not uncommon for AI units to gain LOS through a actual forest, which is rather dreary. AI movement improvents very welcome, but they still saunter about in formation and only with later patches did they start to really improve.

The campaign promised much, but didn't deliver. What happened? It started out as the best thing since OFP. Then, 2/3rds the way through, BI appeared to just give up and turn it into a series of warfare missions, which was - in my opinion - very poor form.

I loved OA. It still looks great, manages to be contemporary, and the mod support is off the charts. The single player missions were fun and well-designed for the most part.

---------------------

Against such a backdrop, it's easy to be mad at the lack of content for A3, but I don't think it's that simple. Clearly a lot of man hours went into stuff outside of player toys, because BI know that is what they do best -the community will always do a better job with models and objects. We have a working set at the moment - it's not fantastic but it is completely usable. Certainly, in A3 you have a game that for the infantry user feels far better than anything before; the OFP-era clunk is completely gone.

I'm pissed about the lack of scenarios, and I do think that is inexcusable on release. It is important to have a good campaign that puts the player in the game and the environment; otherwise you have all this freedom and no idea what to do with it. It is the only way to really showcase things.

I will wait and see what happens with the first release.

Edited September 20, 2013 by Sulman

[Azzur33 1]

Sometimes I feel like reading some kind of a political/conspiracy theory/UFO forum with all this distrust of the ones in charge.

Yet it is just a game forum.

The opening post was humoristic yes. Lots of mistakes and very little respect of other peoples work, though.

Written in mildly controlled rage.

Unfair and offensive, but witty.

That must really encourage BIS to work 24/7 to make all your dreams come true.

I'm a player of BI-games from OFP CWC too.

Here's what I think:

A3 is the most solid and promising game of the series from the start.

I'm happy I bought this game.

I was a bit suspicious of the "greek" theme, and even more of the "future" one.

I'm still not a great fan of the future setting, but the "greekish" environment is a great choice.

Maybe some people would have been happier if BIS would have just ported the A2-stuff - all the weapons and vehicles we so well know already - with some polishing to A3, ..and the good old USA-Russia conflict, too.

Maybe then BIS could have focused more on the things like all-satisfying realistic-ish vanilla medical system, fast-roping, females, shooting from (some of) the vehicles, and ..hmm what else. Or not. Differend guys do differend things at the studios.

Well, maybe then they would have received angry posts like "Where's your creativity?", "US-Rus again?", "They are like EA, same as A2, but with some more eye-candy", we'll never know.

I'm having fun with it, the futuristic setting doesn't bother me that much anymore (as long there is some WW2- and present day mods on their way, too).

I look forward to what's coming.