An objective look on ArmA III's initial release content.

[da12thMonkey 1943]

Ok, let's get started.

Firstly, aircraft

http://imageshack.us/a/img547/8706/2xx8.jpg

As you can see, A3, though do not lack in rotary, does indeed lack some fixed winged support.

Are you sure about the Arma 1 stats on this one?

The Su-34 was added in the V.104 patch for the wider EU release (~Feb 2007) but wasn't in the original Czech release, and the A-10 came in the V1.08 patch a couple of months after the game finally received a North American release. So that's either 2, or 3 aircraft at launch depending on what territory you lived in (the two in the CZ release being the Harrier and Camel).

[Binkowski 25]

I think people are just mad we didn't get a tractor.

No traktor made me rage.

[mistyronin 1181]

No traktor made me rage.

Yeah to me the lack of the tractor is a mistake that can't be forgiven; it was in all the previous Armas, there's is no excuse. It's just unbelievable.

I think we all deserve an explanation.

[suprememodder 11]

Very good post. It really does put things in perspective.

One thing though, there were two unconfirmed shotguns that were seen in previous official footage: The M1014 and the KSG-12. If I find any pictures I'll post them.

http://www.imfdb.org/images/f/f5/Arma3_-BenelliM4.JPG

http://www.imfdb.org/images/c/c7/Arma3_ksg.jpg (591 kB)

actually there were a few of little cool thing mia from the full release seemingly for no apparent reason.

shotguns, as you mentioned. a shemagh(seen in a screenshot of a crewman), female civilian(s). the fact that they were shown very early on doesn't make sense either, you'd think they'd have been polished and completed. and these are just the things that were noticed.

[sektor 2]

Some things are wrong with the full release, and statistics will not fix that.

[Binkowski 25]

Yeah to me the lack of the tractor is a mistake that can't be forgiven; it was in all the previous Armas, there's is no excuse. It's just unbelievable.

I think we all deserve an explanation.

It is unbelievable. I am weeping in sorrow.

[nodunit 397]

Hi.

I'm not here to bitch, moan or cry, lol, but IMHO the difference between Arma2's and Arma3's copy/paste is in Arma 2(just like its predecessors) bluefor and opfor had their own equipment. In ArmA3 things have been copy/pasted to different factions.

If you cant understand the difference there then I guess there really isn't anyway to explain it...

Alternatively you could you know..try. I'm not beyond reason but I'd prefer something more informative than "copy paste" because that doesn't clear up anything, doesn't even address which method of copy n paste it is.

So I went ingame to try some things out and I see why I was wrong now, I was looking mostly at non autonomous vehicles. There is no denying they got lazy there by giving them the same things across the board, I also noticed in the weapon crates that all sides used the same launcher, they all had the same SDAR (this one I could excuse since its a unique weapon), theres no arguing with the unmanned vehicles, not even the strongest fanatic could rightly defend that, even the blueforce and redfor had different UAV's in Arma 2.

And of course despite having different chassis on their artillery and AA, they share the same turret setup which struck me as odd, otherwise the cars, IFV's, tanks, helicopters, jet (pfftkchchkckh) and normal weapons seem to be different.

Edited September 14, 2013 by NodUnit

[nes4day 2]

Very good post. It really does put things in perspective.

One thing though, there were two unconfirmed shotguns that were seen in previous official footage: The M1014 and the KSG-12. If I find any pictures I'll post them.

http://www.imfdb.org/images/f/f5/Arma3_-BenelliM4.JPG

http://www.imfdb.org/images/c/c7/Arma3_ksg.jpg (591 kB)

Right, thanks, though I'm not sure if the M1014 is there as an actual thing or just a placeholder. Anyway, I will see if I get around to fixing it.

Are you sure about the Arma 1 stats on this one?

The Su-34 was added in the V.104 patch for the wider EU release (~Feb 2007) but wasn't in the original Czech release, and the A-10 came in the V1.08 patch a couple of months after the game finally received a North American release. So that's either 2, or 3 aircraft at launch depending on what territory you lived in (the two in the CZ release being the Harrier and Camel).

Thanks for letting me know. That explains a few mental blocks I've been having, I could've sworn I was going crazy over when the Su-34 was introduced :P

Alternatively you could you know..try. I'm not beyond reason but I'd prefer something more informative than "copy paste" because that doesn't clear up anything, doesn't even address which method of copy n paste it is.

So I went ingame to try some things out and I see why I was wrong now, I was looking mostly at non autonomous vehicles. There is no denying they got lazy there by giving them the same things across the board, I also noticed in the weapon crates that all sides used the same launcher, they all had the same SDAR (this one I could excuse since its a unique weapon), theres no arguing with the unmanned vehicles, not even the strongest fanatic could rightly defend that, even the blueforce and redfor had different UAV's in Arma 2.

And of course despite having different chassis on their artillery and AA, they share the same turret setup which struck me as odd, otherwise the cars, IFV's, tanks, helicopters, jet (pfftkchchkckh) and normal weapons seem to be different.

The reused chassis I can live with (since it's the same faction's vehicles), so are the turrets (though I would've preferred if they were just a little bit different). But the same UAV/UGV across the three different factions really get me annoyed.

[Fulcrum90 10]

Sorry, but this post is bullshit. Should we forget ArmA II and only remember OFP? "Hey Arma III sure has more content than Operation Flashpoint!!" xD. Yeah great.

No one does this with any other game series, why should we do it with ArmA III? "Yeah the content sucks compared to ArmA II, but hey ArmA II just was too good!"

Every game series aspires to improve itself with the next iteration, and if it fails people notice. Remember the shitstorm surrounding Dragon Age 2? Perfect example.

(For people who dont know: Dragon Age 1 had multiple characters, huge story, giant world free to explore. Dragon Age 2 limited the player to one character, and the story only took place in one city and some copy & pasted dungeons. Now its considered a failure, and Bioware promised to do better next time...)

[Westonsammy 1]

Yeah to me the lack of the tractor is a mistake that can't be forgiven; it was in all the previous Armas, there's is no excuse. It's just unbelievable.

I think we all deserve an explanation.

Screw an explanation, I say BI owes us a amphibious battle tractor, painted bright red with flames and the like, with rotatable M134 mounts, a 120mm cannon and a max speed of 400 kmh (we need to outclass that ludicrously fast hatchback)

[nes4day 2]

Sorry, but this post is bullshit. Should we forget ArmA II and only remember OFP? "Hey Arma III sure has more content than Operation Flashpoint!!" xD. Yeah great.

No one does this with any other game series, why should we do it with ArmA III? "Yeah the content sucks compared to ArmA II, but hey ArmA II just was too good!"

Every game series aspires to improve itself with the next iteration, and if it fails people notice. Remember the shitstorm surrounding Dragon Age 2? Perfect example.

(For people who dont know: Dragon Age 1 had multiple characters, huge story, giant world free to explore. Dragon Age 2 limited the player to one character, and the story only took place in one city and some copy & pasted dungeons. Now its considered a failure, and Bioware promised to do better next time...)

I'm afraid you have me at a loss here, I did not say anything about forgetting A2 and only counting OFP, and as the figures have shown, A3 has the most rotary, the biggest usable maps, the most SP missions, and also superior in many aspects to that of A1 and lacking some to that of A2, this was presented as a fact only post with some of my opinion down there with it for discussion. I'm not sure what you're going on about here.

Screw an explanation, I say BI owes us a amphibious battle tractor, painted bright red with flames and the like, with rotatable M134 mounts, a 120mm cannon and a max speed of 400 kmh (we need to outclass that ludicrously fast hatchback)

Seconded:yay:

[dmarkwick 261]

Sorry, but this post is bullshit. Should we forget ArmA II and only remember OFP? "Hey Arma III sure has more content than Operation Flashpoint!!" xD. Yeah great.

No one does this with any other game series, why should we do it with ArmA III? "Yeah the content sucks compared to ArmA II, but hey ArmA II just was too good!"

Every game series aspires to improve itself with the next iteration, and if it fails people notice. Remember the shitstorm surrounding Dragon Age 2? Perfect example.

(For people who dont know: Dragon Age 1 had multiple characters, huge story, giant world free to explore. Dragon Age 2 limited the player to one character, and the story only took place in one city and some copy & pasted dungeons. Now its considered a failure, and Bioware promised to do better next time...)

So, to summarize (just to make sure I understand), every iteration of ArmA MUST have more assets than the last one in order to seem better?

As has been mentioned before, ArmA2 had a ton of assets, many of which were brought in from ArmA1. This could happen because ArmA2 was essentially the same game as ArmA1. ArmA3 represents a different game, therefore new assets. Its initial release has seen it released with somewhat balanced assets, suitable for sandbox gameplay where imbalance if required is the result of mission design. We all know that the full release of ArmA3 is a 4-stage process: initial release followed by (at least) 4 DLCs. This represents a new release format for ArmA which almost everyone is complaining about.

[13islucky 10]

Screw an explanation, I say BI owes us a amphibious battle tractor, painted bright red with flames and the like, with rotatable M134 mounts, a 120mm cannon and a max speed of 400 kmh (we need to outclass that ludicrously fast hatchback)

How about a 35-person capacity, like a... bus as well?

[Fulcrum90 10]

As has been mentioned before, ArmA2 had a ton of assets, many of which were brought in from ArmA1.

This argument is brought up so often, and I wonder: WHY SHOULD WE CARE? I dont give a fuck about why ArmA 2 had so many diverse units, I dont care that they brought them over from ArmA 1, I dont give a shit that they found a pot of gold and were able to afford more modellers. The only thing that matters is: They were there.

Many units, and very diverse ones for each faction on top of that. BIS should have looked at that and said "Allright guys, we need to live up to that with ArmA 3". Instead they didnt, delivered only a handful of vehicles, which are not diverse at all.

I'm afraid you have me at a loss here, I did not say anything about forgetting A2 and only counting OFP, and as the figures have shown, A3 has the most rotary, the biggest usable maps, the most SP missions, and also superior in many aspects to that of A1 and lacking some to that of A2, this was presented as a fact only post with some of my opinion down there with it for discussion. I'm not sure what you're going on about here.

Wow the most SP missions? (But now campaign). The biggest maps? Great...

People are upset about the lack of units, but most of all about the lack of DIVERSITY. Operation Flashpoint, ArmA 1, ArmA 2, each had diverse units. You immeditaly knew you were fighting agains BlueFor or OpFor. If Operation Flashpoint would be like ArmA III, the Soviets wouldnt have any T-72 or T-80 tanks. Instead they would use reskinned M1A1s.

Edited September 15, 2013 by Fulcrum90

[metalcraze 290]

Those graphs don't show all the truth since they don't account for a lot of copy-paste which brings the amount of vehicles even lower.

And not only visual one. For example M2A1 and T-100 have exactly the same loadouts and crew basically making them the same tank but with different skins.

Same goes for cars. All three cars are the same and only commander's sight on AAF's car makes the only difference.

[dmarkwick 261]

This argument is brought up so often, and I wonder: WHY SHOULD WE CARE? I dont give a fuck about why ArmA 2 had so many diverse units, I dont care that they brought them over from ArmA 1, I dont give a shit that they found a pot of gold and were able to afford more modellers. The only thing that matters is: They were there.

If the argument is brought up so often then you're probably also aware that there are technical reasons why the ArmA2+ content was not all dragged over to ArmA3.

But - if you don't care, then you don't care. You just want.

Many units, and very diverse ones for each faction on top of that. BIS should have looked at that and said "Allright guys, we need to live up to that with ArmA 3". Instead they didnt, delivered only a handful of vehicles, which are not diverse at all.

They went another direction: they delivered a new technical standard for units & vehicles and made entirely new stuff. Also, coupled with this, they introduced a new release mechanism which is: initial release + 3 DLCs. The initial release sees a minimal asset release suitable for either balanced or imbabalced gameplay (subject to mission design). Many people seem to either ignore, not understand, or simply not like this.

[Fanatic72 181]

ohh...what exactly are those new technical standards? New textures and buggy physx? But no innovation in armament, weapon and protection systems? And no interiors? great....

Like the guy said...the only thing that matters is if the content is present and not if its an updated unit from the previous game.

[dmarkwick 261]

ohh...what exactly are those new technical standards? New textures and buggy physx? But no innovation in armament, weapon and protection systems? And no interiors? great....

Like the guy said...the only thing that matters is if the content is present and not if its an updated unit from the previous game.

If that's the only thing that matters, then I suggest the game you want already exists - and has done for some time. It really sounds like you just want to buy ArmA2 again.

[Fanatic72 181]

No you just try to make this discussion about the A3 as a whole even though we are talking about the content only. And in that case it is how he said.

[metalcraze 290]

They went another direction: they delivered a new technical standard for units & vehicles and made entirely new stuff.

Like L-159 from ACR, little bird from TOH and KA-50 from PMC.

Also, coupled with this, they introduced a new release mechanism which is: initial release + 3 DLCs. The initial release sees a minimal asset release suitable for either balanced or imbabalced gameplay (subject to mission design). Many people seem to either ignore, not understand, or simply not like this.

You mean they failed to finish the game in 3 years since it doesn't even have a campaign and had to split that into 3 parts instead of releasing it as a whole? What an awesome new scheme indeed.

[Primarch 10]

People are upset about the lack of units, but most of all about the lack of DIVERSITY. Operation Flashpoint, ArmA 1, ArmA 2, each had diverse units. You immeditaly knew you were fighting agains BlueFor or OpFor. If Operation Flashpoint would be like ArmA III, the Soviets wouldnt have any T-72 or T-80 tanks. Instead they would use reskinned M1A1s.

They'd use Leopard 2A4's. The vehicles are far too similar in A3 and are played the exact same way. You can't find any cons or pros in the different factions.

[Fulcrum90 10]

They introduced a new release mechanism which is: initial release + 3 DLCs. The initial release sees a minimal asset release suitable for either balanced or imbabalced gameplay (subject to mission design). Many people seem to either ignore, not understand, or simply not like this.

Hey buddy.

If I crash my car into a wall, I do not "introduce a new parking mechanism". I have an accident.

If a game company releases a game that severly lacks in content and has to release three thirds of it in DLCs, they do not "Introduce a new release mechanism" they simple didnt finish their game.

Points for the Marketing Blabla though.

[dmarkwick 261]

You mean they failed to finish the game in 3 years since it doesn't even have a campaign and had to split that into 3 parts instead of releasing it as a whole? What an awesome new scheme indeed.

I guess you come into the "don't like it" crowd then. Surprise surprise :)

[4 IN 1 0]

does the chart excludes DLC? because it is generally bad idea to include all DLC content and compare something that had built over the years and compare to a flashy released game.

I would also want to express again that IMO the biggest problem is not the number of contents, but the functionality of the said content that makes the game rather pointless at the moment.

[dmarkwick 261]

Hey buddy.

If I crash my car into a wall, I do not "introduce a new parking mechanism". I have an accident.

If a game company releases a game that severly lacks in content and has to release three thirds of it in DLCs, they do not "Introduce a new release mechanism" they simple didnt finish their game.

Points for the Marketing Blabla though.

Thanks for the points. In a forum that likes to attach simplistic dismissals of opinions as "marketing", "fanboyism", "whining", "entitlement" etc, you'll forgive me if I decide to write off your own :)

In the interests of decorum (and forum rules) I'll decline to mention which dismissal type I employed ;)