So Arma 3 is out now, does it set the standard for future releases in the series?

[chortles 263]

As it stands there's not a lot in the way of hard coded mechanics that can be changed as of Arma2. And typically implementations such as the ones I would want changes to aren't often facilitated for with traditional dev tools.

Based on this explanation, I don't believe that BI Tools has ever publicly released such an "expanded SDK", so it would be out of practice for a release "above and beyond" the BI Tools; to my knowledge BI has never implied that one would be forthcoming for the series.

Yeah, which is why I'm more interested in gauging the opinions of other users at this point. I'm not going to nag them, but I wanted to open a discourse on it before I put the subject to rest.

I find this an oddly phrased request, since what your OP calls for is an essentially-unknowable to said "other users"... all we can do is guesstimate. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if it is unknowable to the devs themselves... not for want of trying, but rather because Arma 4 is so hypothetical that there's no way they could actually know.

[pd3 25]

Based on this explanation, I don't believe that BI Tools has ever publicly released such an "expanded SDK", so it would be out of practice for a release "above and beyond" the BI Tools; to my knowledge BI has never implied that one would be forthcoming for the series.I find this an oddly phrased request, since what your OP calls for is an essentially-unknowable to said "other users"... all we can do is guesstimate. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if it is unknowable to the devs themselves... not for want of trying, but rather because Arma 4 is so hypothetical that there's no way they could actually know.

It was mostly a potential solution for the current issue that has driven a rift in the community, knowing that those specific aspects of the game which draw the most ire from certain individuals are - at current ones that cannot be changed.

And yeah, everything about another game in the series is conjecture to say the least, I was looking more for some inferences or clues as to any potential there might be.

A lot can happen in between now and another game in the series, including a project being started by a competitor which may in the very off chance, be more to my liking.

[chortles 263]

And yeah, everything about another game in the series is conjecture to say the least, I was looking more for some inferences or clues as to any potential there might be.

Therein lies what I find 'off' about your OP -- to some extent there's an amount of plain bullshitting in any answer that "other users" could actually give you in trying to answer your OP in a non-flamebait way. :( That's why my answer is so qualified, because it feels like a loaded question... and because there's no real way to answer in the affirmative or the negative, again, without making shit up.

All I can add beyond my previously stated inferences is my observation that Maruk (as both CEO of the development studio and CEO of the publisher) clearly didn't get the devs to make it a "September 12 priority", whether or not he even tried... again, an "unknowable" to me. I can offer my own interpretation that he didn't seem to act when mentioning (seemingly without prompting) the failed attempt in Gamespot's E3 2013 floor livestream as if implementation was a pet item for him... or maybe he'd already "made his own peace with the failure in private and moved on", I don't know and I can't know without him actually weighing in, and therefore I can't even 'properly' forecast!

[pd3 25]

Therein lies what I find 'off' about your OP -- to some extent there's an amount of plain bullshitting in any answer that "other users" could actually give you in trying to answer your OP in a non-flamebait way. :( That's why my answer is so qualified, because it feels like a loaded question... and because there's no real way to answer in the affirmative or the negative, again, without making shit up.

You can generally get an idea for these things based on mostly objective intuition of others involved, so long as there isn't a "political" bias.

Again, anyone who considers this flamebait is looking for a reason to get upset. Most of the people here are adults and I would presume could easily dismiss anything I said that was perceived to have little merit or relevance. I can't nor will be responsible for the feelings of an adult who chooses to get that upset over a comparatively innocuous critique.

I've received infractions before for rhetoric I've applied that I believe were merited, in spite of my personal position, and I personally don't believe anything I've said thus far - would.

It was an inquiry in the off chance that others might have insight that I didn't. I knowingly stated I didn't and looked to others for their opinions for me to aggregate and build a conclusions of my own.

Anyone who feels emotionally disturbed by that sort of inquiry is, again looking to be so offended.

All I can add beyond my previously stated inferences is my observation that Maruk (as both CEO of the development studio and CEO of the publisher) clearly didn't get the devs to make it a "September 12 priority", whether or not he even tried... again, an "unknowable" to me. I can offer my own interpretation that he didn't seem to act when mentioning (seemingly without prompting) the failed attempt in Gamespot's E3 2013 floor livestream as if implementation was a pet item for him... or maybe he'd already "made his own peace with the failure in private and moved on", I don't know and I can't know without him actually weighing in, and therefore I can't even 'properly' forecast!

In all fairness, a few months back it seemed as if the release was inevitable and that existing mechanics beyond what had already been implemented with the exception of optimizations, possibly some content/bugfixes was pretty much writing on the wall.

There's really not much else they could do with this release beyond overspending on development when it seemed it was as good as it was going to get for the most part.

Again, it's not really so much an issue of concrete answers, but whether it seems there's a sense of flexibility in overall design philosophy that in my opinion - will dictate the course of future games.

I'm not well apprised of the personal goings on of employees, rationalizations for certain decisions, etc. Although any input I receive and conjecture from others who may be better apprised is helpful.

[grillob3 11]

Pd3,

After reading this:

MAREK SPANEL – CEO-"Originally, we were playing around with the idea of bringing the authenticity of the Arma series to a more sci-fi futuristic setting. This resulted in a couple of experiments, even along the lines of Arma meets aliens." There is Halo and Unreal Tournament for that already!

I do understand you! Arma 2 is years ahead! And i was expecting something more ACE level for arma 3 vanilla!But i guess mods (paid maybe) will have to do the job!...and its not time or whatever that they dont have...if you watch videos from DAYZ game video devblog you will see that they have all the weapons(maybe vehicles) models in high quality that could easily be ported/added to arma 3!

I like arma 3 but i do feel that is a step back so far.

When i first go arma 2 i was so impressed, but arma 3 i thing is far off from a real war simulator.

But maybe time, modders or evern BIS will change things.

Edited September 17, 2013 by Grillob3

[pd3 25]

Pd3,

After reading this:

MAREK SPANEL – CEO-"Originally, we were playing around with the idea of bringing the authenticity of the Arma series to a more sci-fi futuristic setting. This resulted in a couple of experiments, even along the lines of Arma meets aliens." There is Halo and Unreal Tournament for that already!

I do understand you! Arma 2 is years ahead! And i was expecting something more ACE level for arma 3 vanilla!But i guess mods (paid maybe) will have to do the job!...and its not time or whatever that they dont have...if you watch videos from DAYZ game video devblog you will see that they have all the weapons(maybe vehicles) models in high quality that could easily be ported/added to arma 3!

I like arma 3 but i do feel that is a step back so far.

When i first go arma 2 i was so impressed, but arma 3 i thing is far off from a real war simulator.

But maybe time, modders or evern BIS will change things.

I don't think modding will redress these problems.

Graphically I think A3 is fine, great actually.

Gameplay wise is another story, and certain aspects which are critically lacking cannot be easily changed.

If it's true that perhaps the development cycle "ran out" and they had to pack it up as neatly as possible and bring it to market, that may mean there's a faint hope for things in the future.

As mentioned, there's a lot I wasn't aware of.

I still think if BI can get away with this release being profitable, that they may for the sake of utility simply not bother advancing any gameplay tech in the future. This would suck, but this is definitely the most reasonable presumption.

[Birdy890 0]

A3 was just the straw that broke the camels back to some people.

I still support BI, no doubt as their product is worth paying for and they'd proven themselves over the years of service they provide to the community they pay attention to.

I know I sound cheap by saying this, but I feel that A3 wasn't ready for a release.

not just because of content (know that they will release more as time goes on just look at their history of support for their fans) but I feel like the gameplay has been cheapened to a degree that might require a total overhaul of the movement systems and gameplay dynamics.

I hope they get around to fixing it, but it doesn't help to sit around and moan about it.

[chortles 263]

Again, it's not really so much an issue of concrete answers, but whether it seems there's a sense of flexibility in overall design philosophy that in my opinion - will dictate the course of future games.

I'm not well apprised of the personal goings on of employees, rationalizations for certain decisions, etc. Although any input I receive and conjecture from others who may be better apprised is helpful.

Unfortunately I can't give anything beyond conjecture and anecdotes which may shape your own conjectures, nor can anyone else that isn't a dev. I believe that what anecdotes I do know but didn't post already shaped the attempted summaries I gave you, that my anecdotes may not actually change your conjectures substantively, and that any answers I give you will similarly be lacking in foresight beyond what I've tried to offer. If you in fact "just want to know if I should simply not bother anymore"... then frankly, you may just have to accept that making that decision will essentially be a leap of faith.

I'm sorry that I didn't find myself able to help better than the above. :(

If it's true that perhaps the development cycle "ran out" and they had to pack it up as neatly as possible and bring it to market, that may mean there's a faint hope for things in the future.

As mentioned, there's a lot I wasn't aware of.

I still think if BI can get away with this release being profitable, that they may for the sake of utility simply not bother advancing any gameplay tech in the future. This would suck, but this is definitely the most reasonable presumption.

Admittedly "the development cycle "ran out" and they had to pack it up as neatly as possible and bring it to market" is my general belief as to what happened to Arma 3. For example, it was outright stated by DnA as the new project lead going Steam-exclusive was because there was a de facto deadline (and I admittedly suspect that he was tapped as project lead specifically because of how high priority this had come), and I definitely noticed an emphasis from him and to some extent from other devs on not launching in the same manner as Arma 2, as well as bits like the release data-lock, i.e. fixes that were fixed too late wouldn't appear in the September 12 launch build. As for the bit about the development crunch from DnA and RiE "binning" the 2011 and 2012 work of Arma 3 and thus the unofficial answer to 'what have the devs done in three years of development' being essentially 'throw out the first two years and only work for less than a year on the current game'... yeah, probably not going to hear the details on that for a while beyond the vague allusions to a 'change of direction'.

(For what it's worth, "we can't know how much Maruk wanted what Pd3 wants, only that he definitely didn't want it as much as he wanted Arma 3 launching within his desired release window, and if his E3 behavior is indicative of his take on Arma 4 then he may well feel the same -- that even if he doesn't mind a successful implementation, it's just not 'release day essential' to him" is one of the observations-that-I-feel-don't-really-add-to-or-change-the-answer that I was talking about.)

P.S. RiE has alluded to 'infinite' development time not being helpful, but I don't recall any dev treating the development turmoil as a positive; I imagine that internally it's more viewed through a "lessons learned" lens.

Edited September 17, 2013 by Chortles

[pd3 25]

(For what it's worth, "we can't know how much Maruk wanted what Pd3 wants, only that he definitely didn't want it as much as he wanted Arma 3 launching within his desired release window, and if his E3 behavior is indicative of his take on Arma 4 then he may well feel the same -- that even if he doesn't mind a successful implementation, it's just not 'release day essential' to him" is one of the observations-that-I-feel-don't-really-add-to-or-change-the-answer that I was talking about.)

Well, in the end you're going to want your game to meet the deadline set. That's just how things like that go, other upsets including reallocation to projects such as DayZ in all likelihood did not help. I cannot say I'm happy about that, but I'm entitled to my own opinion on it.

I think honestly a bit more transparency about what was being attempted and WHY it wasn't feasible probably would have allayed or at least put to rest a lot of the hand-wringing and anxiety some players had during it's development.

Seriously, I think a lot of people might've initially had a bit of a rage-out and then would have put the issue away and either dealtwithit.gif or walked away.

I really don't believe in that respect they would be hurting their reputation as a company, the people who have supported BI over the years have a slightly closer relationship and sense of affiliation than I would imagine a lot of other franchises. After all it spans larger than a decade.

And considering the amount of people willing to accept this divergence in gameplay design, I think it would have simply prevented a lot of complaints.

Seriously, a lot of the "ticket wars" that were conducted by core fans of the series would likely have been dropped if there were a bit more transparency.

We don't deserve it, but it would've been nice.

[chortles 263]

(Disclosure: I admittedly feel that DayZ was favored over Arma 3 insofar as how often Rocket was allowed to slip release dates and even eventually declare that he'll just stop giving out the things because of the bad PR from missing them, whereas Arma 3 had a much more clearly-defined public development schedule... that is, that after the release date slips from Q2 2012 to Q4 2012 to "who the hell knows", I believe that Q3 2013 was essentially a "last chance" for the Arma 3 devs, and I also believe that the "spring alpha, summer beta, autumn/fall launch" phasing was part of that lack-of-leeway.)

The lack of transparency you described is actually why I've made jokes about "Bohemia Interactive: Still Learning About This Social Media Doohickey Thing". :lol:

As far as "reallocation to projects such as DayZ", it's no secret that both DayZ and BI's sudden "mainstream" prominence blindsided Maruk and the company, nor is it one that at one point (if not longer) BI simply didn't know what to do with what they had on their hands -- that is, for a while there wasn't a vision of "what's next for DayZ?" up until the prominent hacking in 2012 and Rocket's eventually growing public advocacy for a standalone game... which, at one point, had Eurogamer seemingly trying to start shit between Maruk and Rocket. :lol:

One tidbit from that interview and repeated in some others that interests me was the sheer lack of "breathing room" -- that is, seeing as at one point the whole 'persistence between servers' aspect was dependent on a shared hive and Rocket's was the only authorized one, for seemingly the first time (I may be missing the OFP or Arma 1 days) Bohemia Interactive finally had "official servers"* and necessarily needed to allocate people to maintain them. I got the sense that BI was just collectively unused to this ongoing demand (something accounted for in more "AAA" game studios maintaining official online multiplayer infrastructure) and, as Rocket outright admitted, what passed for a DayZ team in those days was so occupied by said ongoing maintenance that they didn't even really find time to strategize the path forward or think of the future.

The point of the above anecdote in my use is, it really does feel like there's a "polish" to how the AAA game studios comport themselves as far as PR and explaining themselves that Bohemia are still picking up... just in an inconsistent, uncoordinated, "bits and pieces" fashion, leaving room for slipping-through-the-cracks, and I wouldn't be surprised if the sort/level of transparency that you're looking for is one of those. As it stands, it's only because of my poring through these forums and Rocket's Reddit remarks about Arma 3 that I know as much of just how burdened the Arma 3 devs have been (and Rocket has never spoken negatively of them in public) or other details that BI could and maybe even should have been putting out there. The handling of the "no campaign at launch" reveal is definitely an example of BI not having this PR thing down to the extent that they 'should', because it's a pretty clear case of the devs not getting ahead of the story but rather letting it get ahead of them (in the reveal being done by a third-party gaming Web site article instead of being revealed first by the devs who could then have proceeded to spin the hell out of it). Individual dev thinking may be unknowable, but "lessons (hopefully) learned internally" can be inferred... for example, I read some points that I thought were much more important and relevant than many BI forums users' fixation on the talk of "paid user-generated content" in Maruk's recent interview, specifically his characterization of the Arma series' evolution and thus what I infer to be the lessons that he learned about developing the series, both lessons for developing Arma 3 with and lessons learned from the development thereof.

For further disclosure, I should note that despite my time on these forums, I find it at least as important if not even moreso to keep an eye out on other forums in regards to Arma 3, i.e. their Arma 3 threads, to take the pulse of Arma 3 players -- long-time or not -- who are not on these forums; how they react to what they find out about Arma 3 development both pre- and post-development, what strikes them the most, why they take to some things or react differently than vocal members here beyond a binary "arcadey vs. realism" dichotomy (for example, there are fans of the first aid module outside of these forums ;))...

* I find this an important bit because one thing I'm struck by when commenting on the Steam game hub's Discussion board for Arma 3 is how often I felt a need to point out to those I thought to be newcomers that unlike so many online games, Arma 3 has no official servers and that the closest the series ever came to such was the time when there was only an "authorized" public hive for DayZ -- hence what I may have characterized as "no quality control from BI over MP missions or servers".

Edited September 17, 2013 by Chortles

[PlacidPaul 11]

What a ridiculous thread. You cannot make a assessment on gameplay without playing the game! Gameplay is not a compilation of features.

Is there multiple military sandbox games on the market right now that I don't know about? Is there a reason you can't spend a couple bucks on this game?

This thread is identical to many on codemasters years ago (judging without playing). We would all be better if there was multiple military sandbox games on the market. All your thoughts on what the game needs have no weight without playing it. Play it then tell us what you think it would be better with, not the otherway around.

Edited September 17, 2013 by PlacidPaul

[NeuroFunker 11]

yep, i thought it's just another "convince me to buy" thread, but then it morphed to one of many "i'll tell you how bad arma 3 is" thread, only with one extra - the OP didn't even played arma 3, lol wat?

[chortles 263]

Re: accusations of DayZ favoritism over in the since-closed Reality Check thread, I found some interesting insights on Arma 3's devs from this post by a former dev (had the BI avatar and all at one point):

You have to understand though that it's something new and fresh at least for the senior developers who have been making nothing but the same old milsim for over ten years. When DayZ was released in 2012, all they talked about on lunch breaks was DayZ and their own stories within it. :)

EricM presents a more flattering take on Arma 3 development compared to DayZ standalone, although one that acknowledges what was lost:

Meanwhile DayZ is stuck into dev limbo, and I've been playing Arma 3 since April.

DayZ seem to be suffering the feature creep that RIE and DNA have been fighting for so hard (at the cost of drastic and unfortunate cuts, I agree) since last year. As a result, Arma 3 is out and DayZ is pushed back again.

Both DNA and RIE seem to be focused on making the basis more solid (even if more limited) before expanding the possibilities. Rather the opposite of standard BIS development up to now (DayZ included). That's understandable despite the negative side effects (3D editor where art thou?).

Slowly trying to clean up the AI code, FSM, animation, controls... baby steps.

We all have our pet peeves, and indeed, without the context of a campaign and story element, the game does feel a bit "sterile" at the moment for me. The gear tab is still missing in the mission editor, and commanding interface is still bonkers though (still no easy access to categories without knowing them by memory, about 30% of actions I probably have never used since OFP demo, and a few I'm still longing to see included : "land" order when in flight for instance). I know most workarounds, but this is still plaguing my experience.

And some statements from Dwarden re: "resourcing" of Arma 3 with programmers:

again what maddox said is sort of his personal view on things, he don't know about multiple new programmers on team,

that there're are two studios (instead of one from A2/OA time) working on A3 and that 'some' of the 'old school' programmers still work on A3 ...

if somene decides he want to do somethething else (e.g. not another arma) it's his choice ...

actually who else than SUMA would be the best choice for so low level architecture changes DayZ alike MMO model needs

anyway DayZ was in pre-production (pre-alpha) state up until now,

so these claims how it drains major resources away from Arma 3 were just from people who don't know

the never enough excellent programmers is fact and problem any bigger game development studio facing ;)

SUMA is still sorting issues on Arma 3, he is primarily 'engine' supervisor ...

the A3 lead programmer is still one of the oldies ...

so don't claim something inline of 'veteran programmers being replaced with rookie' that's just flat out incorrect

they're addition to existing ones ;) ...

[pd3 25]

yep, i thought it's just another "convince me to buy" thread, but then it morphed to one of many "i'll tell you how bad arma 3 is" thread, only with one extra - the OP didn't even played arma 3, lol wat?

It really isn't. I can't say this enough, I genuinely have no desire to buy this game, I wanted a discussion on whether A3 was to establish a precedent for future design standards in the series.

---------- Post added at 07:11 ---------- Previous post was at 06:47 ----------

The lack of transparency you described is actually why I've made jokes about "Bohemia Interactive: Still Learning About This Social Media Doohickey Thing". :lol:

I don't even know if they actually wanted people to know how chaotic things were as a result of everything from staff to projects being in a state of flux. The unfortunate byproduct of this was basically a steamroller mentality which seemed to possibly be: "Let's just go full steam ahead and worry about problems later". I think some people were more perceptive to this than others and felt possibly slighted by this strategy.

As far as "reallocation to projects such as DayZ", it's no secret that both DayZ and BI's sudden "mainstream" prominence blindsided Maruk and the company, nor is it one that at one point (if not longer) BI simply didn't know what to do with what they had on their hands -- that is, for a while there wasn't a vision of "what's next for DayZ?" up until the prominent hacking in 2012 and Rocket's eventually growing public advocacy for a standalone game... which, at one point, had Eurogamer seemingly trying to start shit between Maruk and Rocket. :lol:

My only problem with this is it seemed largely that any avails of garnering mainstream notoriety and funds, had a net benefit of SFA for certain types of players who have been around for a while, clearly telling people who want to be paying customers to "fuck off" is terrible business model, however given the challenges inherent to development and their supposed attempt to address issues I had taken concern with (to no appreciable avail by their assessment), still left myself and others with a negative perception of the whole thing.

One tidbit from that interview and repeated in some others that interests me was the sheer lack of "breathing room" -- that is, seeing as at one point the whole 'persistence between servers' aspect was dependent on a shared hive and Rocket's was the only authorized one, for seemingly the first time (I may be missing the OFP or Arma 1 days) Bohemia Interactive finally had "official servers"* and necessarily needed to allocate people to maintain them. I got the sense that BI was just collectively unused to this ongoing demand (something accounted for in more "AAA" game studios maintaining official online multiplayer infrastructure) and, as Rocket outright admitted, what passed for a DayZ team in those days was so occupied by said ongoing maintenance that they didn't even really find time to strategize the path forward or think of the future.

Additionally, I really didn't play DayZ at all, and I was not aware until a while back that the mod actually required servers to authenticate to. Was there any point at which it was just a server side mod?

This kind of blindsided me and something I wouldn't necessarily welcome as a standard for the Arma series as it seems to conflict directly with the inherent philosophy of user modifiable/generated content.

The main problem these new users have and need to realize is that, that's really what allowed this game to survive amid such stiff, high budget competition. Enforcing strict multiplayer moderation would IMO result in measures that would hamstring the addon community, and custom map creators. In all, a terrible thing from my perspective. Maybe BI can make some servers for the newer people, I don't know how they could justify that cost, however I believe in the tried and true method of finding a group of people you can trust and enjoy playing with.

The point of the above anecdote in my use is, it really does feel like there's a "polish" to how the AAA game studios comport themselves as far as PR and explaining themselves that Bohemia are still picking up... just in an inconsistent, uncoordinated, "bits and pieces" fashion, leaving room for slipping-through-the-cracks, and I wouldn't be surprised if the sort/level of transparency that you're looking for is one of those. As it stands, it's only because of my poring through these forums and Rocket's Reddit remarks about Arma 3 that I know as much of just how burdened the Arma 3 devs have been (and Rocket has never spoken negatively of them in public) or other details that BI could and maybe even should have been putting out there. The handling of the "no campaign at launch" reveal is definitely an example of BI not having this PR thing down to the extent that they 'should', because it's a pretty clear case of the devs not getting ahead of the story but rather letting it get ahead of them (in the reveal being done by a third-party gaming Web site article instead of being revealed first by the devs who could then have proceeded to spin the hell out of it). Individual dev thinking may be unknowable, but "lessons (hopefully) learned internally" can be inferred... for example, I read some points that I thought were much more important and relevant than many BI forums users' fixation on the talk of "paid user-generated content" in Maruk's recent interview, specifically his characterization of the Arma series' evolution and thus what I infer to be the lessons that he learned about developing the series, both lessons for developing Arma 3 with and lessons learned from the development thereof.

Like I said before, I think maybe they simply felt it might be like airing out dirty laundry, and felt like it wasn't good for business to do so. Which, you know, is fair enough.

I think privately though, at least amid the community, there could have been a bit more frank about the viability of certain lynchpin features that may have caused a rift, but I suppose from a financial standpoint it may have been of negligible importance anyhow.

For further disclosure, I should note that despite my time on these forums, I find it at least as important if not even moreso to keep an eye out on other forums in regards to Arma 3, i.e. their Arma 3 threads, to take the pulse of Arma 3 players -- long-time or not -- who are not on these forums; how they react to what they find out about Arma 3 development both pre- and post-development, what strikes them the most, why they take to some things or react differently than vocal members here beyond a binary "arcadey vs. realism" dichotomy (for example, there are fans of the first aid module outside of these forums ;))...

I can't really contribute much to this sentiment really, I think listening to outsiders rave about features I disliked would've resulted in a net increase of my blood pressure and little else.

Contrary to what some defenders of these new changes might be saying, it really seems that there's emphasis on increasing the pace of the gameplay beyond which purely tactical decisions are the decisive factor.

That bothers me, and there being an absence of meaningful alternatives is just rotten from my perspective, the game for me constituted a refuge from that sort of mentality.

* I find this an important bit because one thing I'm struck by when commenting on the Steam game hub's Discussion board for Arma 3 is how often I felt a need to point out to those I thought to be newcomers that unlike so many online games, Arma 3 has no official servers and that the closest the series ever came to such was the time when there was only an "authorized" public hive for DayZ -- hence what I may have characterized as "no quality control from BI over MP missions or servers".

Again, quality control in that sense to me has a zero sum effect on user creativity with regard to both addon and mission creation.

I don't know what else to say except that such attitudes would have nothing but a metastatic influence on everything that was inherently "good" about the series from my perspective at the expense of trivialities that can be mitigated by not being lazy (aka finding a decent group of people to play with).

In all, I believe that there may be hope for future installments in the series, hopefully they learn from and possibly address some problems and limitations apparent in A3 and provide a more balanced range of options for different types of players. It really seems like there were key periods of time which were very much a chaotic "cat rodeo" as it were in terms of streamlining productivity.

However at this point I'm simply not going to invest much more thought on it than that, it's years now before anything else will be made beyond expansion content, so I'll keep my eyes out for alternatives as much as anything else.

Edited September 20, 2013 by Pd3

[chortles 263]

I don't even know if they actually wanted people to know how chaotic things were as a result of everything from staff to projects being in a state of flux. The unfortunate byproduct of this was basically a steamroller mentality which seemed to possibly be: "Let's just go full steam ahead and worry about problems later". I think some people were more perceptive to this than others and felt possibly slighted by this strategy.

Truthbetold I don't believe that it was so much "steamroller mentality" as it was "we are running out of time that we're NOT going to get any more extensions on -- from the fans maybe, but not from the publisher!"... and Arma now just being BI's flagship product instead of the product, with "the Arma devs" now being but just one dev team under the BI publishing umbrella, even if it is still the most prominent product and dev team.

Additionally, I really didn't play DayZ at all, and I was not aware until a while back that the mod actually required servers to authenticate to. Was there any point at which it was just a server side mod?

This kind of blindsided me and something I wouldn't necessarily welcome as a standard for the Arma series as it seems to conflict directly with the inherent philosophy of user modifiable/generated content.

The main problem these new users have and need to realize is that, that's really what allowed this game to survive amid such stiff, high budget competition. Enforcing strict multiplayer moderation would IMO result in measures that would hamstring the addon community, and custom map creators. In all, a terrible thing from my perspective. Maybe BI can make some servers for the newer people, I don't know how they could justify that cost, however I believe in the tried and true method of finding a group of people you can trust and enjoy playing with.

Keep in mind that BI doesn't seem to have any intention of going the "official servers" route for Arma -- which would mesh with DnA's own comments about some things being acceptable for DayZ, not Arma (albeit that was when he was justifying Arma not using the "MMO-style client/server architecture" like DayZ standalone, with the claim that it would inhibit client-side modding).

It also wasn't server authentication, but rather that your character's status (i.e. location, inventory, and so on, though not vehicles or tents) would carry over between game servers connected to "the hive" (the central database), hence the persistence. Eventually private hives sprung up, but of course with character status only carrying over between game servers connected to that hive; hence while you had "official servers", that was only in the sense that they would connect to the official ("public") hive.

Like I said before, I think maybe they simply felt it might be like airing out dirty laundry, and felt like it wasn't good for business to do so. Which, you know, is fair enough.

I think privately though, at least amid the community, there could have been a bit more frank about the viability of certain lynchpin features that may have caused a rift, but I suppose from a financial standpoint it may have been of negligible importance anyhow.

Truthbetold I believe that there's a fine line between "a bit more frank" and "abandon all hope" or speaking ill of other devs, and so the devs may have collectively chosen to play cautious, hence all the "no promises" talk, "no ETA", "something we'd like to do", only vague allusions to what went wrong in pre-2013 development besides the Greek incident -- but, considering that my own sense was that by late 2012 Arma 3 development had hit "crisis mode" and DnA was essentially tapped to make something publishable out of what he was left with, I can see why the devs might see it as "airing out dirty laundry". :(

In all, I believe that there may be hope for future installments in the series, hopefully they learn from and possibly address some problems and limitations apparent in A3 and provide a more balanced range of options for different types of players. It really seems like there were key periods of time which were very much a chaotic "cat rodeo" as it were in terms of streamlining productivity.

However at this point I'm simply not going to invest much more thought on it than that, it's years now before anything else will be made beyond expansion content, so I'll keep my eyes out for alternatives as much as anything else.

Pretty much what I'd advise you at this point as well. Play Arma 2 if you like, look for alternatives on the side (looked at Ground Branch lately?) and then just look for "Arma 4" in a search engine in a few years. :p

I'll agree that I would hope for future installments for the series that they address problems and limitations apparently in A3, but truthbetold I don't think that we'll know "the real story" for quite some time, much less what lessons were learned internally, and based on Maruk's interview, some of the things that some people didn't like about Arma 3 development in 2013 seem to be here to stay, i.e. Steamworks and digital distribution, Steam Workshop (with intend to expand from missions-only to addons/mod distribution through SWS), public alphas and betas, paid DLCs, and possibly limited-at-launch content in favor of emphasis on polish, prioritizing certain gameplay aspects over others... and maybe a "what can we accomplish in time for the deadline" mentality.

[spanishsurfer 58]

I haven't seen much of the release, but what I have from a pure mechanics standpoint is massively disappointing. I'll be honest I probably won't even buy A3, perhaps If there is by some twist of fate a way to rectify some of the more abhorrent features that come standard without having to go full ACE-level complexity. I mean the guns don't even seem to have any appreciable "wobble" to them anymore, not only can players aim with pixel perfect "stop on a dime" precision, but they're all like walking RANSOM rests.

This dude hasn't even played the final game and he has the balls to complain!? Ha!

Can we close this thread!?

[NeuroFunker 11]

This dude hasn't even played the final game and he has the balls to complain!? Ha!

Can we close this thread!?

yes, i found it's weird too, he doesnt play it but complain.

[chortles 263]

As he tried to make it clear in the OP, it's less about Arma 3 and more "can I expect future Arma games to be this bad so I can stop holding out hope and move on from this series"...

[pd3 25]

This dude hasn't even played the final game and he has the balls to complain!? Ha!

Can we close this thread!?

Your flame bait is duly noted.

---------- Post added at 09:07 ---------- Previous post was at 08:29 ----------

Truthbetold I believe that there's a fine line between "a bit more frank" and "abandon all hope" or speaking ill of other devs, and so the devs may have collectively chosen to play cautious, hence all the "no promises" talk, "no ETA", "something we'd like to do", only vague allusions to what went wrong in pre-2013 development besides the Greek incident -- but, considering that my own sense was that by late 2012 Arma 3 development had hit "crisis mode" and DnA was essentially tapped to make something publishable out of what he was left with, I can see why the devs might see it as "airing out dirty laundry". :(Pretty much what I'd advise you at this point as well. Play Arma 2 if you like, look for alternatives on the side (looked at Ground Branch lately?) and then just look for "Arma 4" in a search engine in a few years. :p

I can say this because it seemed as if they were trying amid obvious difficulties, so whether they opt for the financial expedience of assuming a new paradigm in development (similar to that of the larger budget developers which seemed to have not made really any progress mechanics wise since the mid 00s barring simple aesthetics) - or they will see merit in stepping far enough outside the box to differentiate themselves.

It remains to be seen, but again, at least the seemed to "try".

[nettrucker 142]

IMO it's all about if your able and willing to ignore the flaws this series is suffering since OFP.

What I observed, were the difficult game releases after the split from Codemaster which I definitely approved . . . I mean the split, due to Codemasters business attitude.

I mean the OFP releases were not without problems but with Armed Assault the situation worsened.

ArmA 2 was a complete disaster. Performance was a huge problem and the campaign was broken beyond repair.

Arrowhead release was a lot less problematic.

ArmA 3 seems to have a lot of problems but for different reasons. Altis might be a jewel and the lightning and movement have been improved but I see the same old problems popping up since OFP. Performance is always a major problem it seems that not much has changed in that regards. I see a lot of unhappy people on the forum and I don't regret for not having purchased ArmA 3. Yeah I know my loss!!!!! Is it really a loss?

Anyway I don't know the details what happened since they started working on ArmA 3 but something happened along the way which changed BIS business attitude. Yeah I know conspiracy theories . . .

Since a lot of community members are always arguing and bragging about BIS being a business, but meeting the set release deadline of ArmA 3 was a bad choice IMO. It should have been postponed. IF you are a professional developer I don't expect a release like ArmA 3. BIS has never, ever failed before, in delivering content in former game iterations, this time they did, as far as I could understand from reading the Arma 3 section. No campaign? well . . . I mostly do SP, not having a campaign is not excusable to me especially at release, What about new people to the game people who are not familiar with the editor? Not everyone is into MP which seems to suffer significant performance problems.

We all know about the Greek incident and I feel personally very sorry for Ivan and Martin but shit you can't just stop developing because 2 important members of your stuff are missing due to an unfortunate circumstance. I wished that would have never happened but it has.

Second what happened that made them throw away 2 years of development and start nearly from scratch. how many features got axed in the process? I remember the thread being quite long.

I had high hopes that BIS would get it right with ArmA 3 but they didn't IMO. I've always supported them as best as I could but this time it's not going to happen. Hey in the end I'm a paying customer to them . . . nothing else.

I always ignored all the negative aspects of BIS games until today but as I said I was a mindless fanboy myself maybe even worse than a lot of others. That's now a quite embarrassing thing to me to admit for being honest.

What I want to say is that BIS changed . . . the community is changing and for being honest I'm feeling more and more alienated with what is going on.

But that's just me.

[chrisb 196]

Snip..

I always ignored all the negative aspects of BIS games until today but as I said I was a mindless fanboy myself maybe even worse than a lot of others. That's now a quite embarrassing thing to me to admit for being honest.

What I want to say is that BIS changed . . . the community is changing and for being honest I'm feeling more and more alienated with what is going on.

But that's just me.

Being a fan is not a problem, being a blind fan can be, although we’ve all done that before at some stage in our lives, about something or other.:)

I agree with a lot of what your saying there in your post.

[rye1 21]

BIS have fans?

[Enrico 1]

IMO it's all about if your able and willing to ignore the flaws this series is suffering since OFP.

What I observed, were the difficult game releases after the split from Codemaster which I definitely approved . . . I mean the split, due to Codemasters business attitude.

I mean the OFP releases were not without problems but with Armed Assault the situation worsened.

ArmA 2 was a complete disaster. Performance was a huge problem and the campaign was broken beyond repair.

Arrowhead release was a lot less problematic.

ArmA 3 seems to have a lot of problems but for different reasons. Altis might be a jewel and the lightning and movement have been improved but I see the same old problems popping up since OFP. Performance is always a major problem it seems that not much has changed in that regards. I see a lot of unhappy people on the forum and I don't regret for not having purchased ArmA 3. Yeah I know my loss!!!!! Is it really a loss?

Anyway I don't know the details what happened since they started working on ArmA 3 but something happened along the way which changed BIS business attitude. Yeah I know conspiracy theories . . .

Since a lot of community members are always arguing and bragging about BIS being a business, but meeting the set release deadline of ArmA 3 was a bad choice IMO. It should have been postponed. IF you are a professional developer I don't expect a release like ArmA 3. BIS has never, ever failed before, in delivering content in former game iterations, this time they did, as far as I could understand from reading the Arma 3 section. No campaign? well . . . I mostly do SP, not having a campaign is not excusable to me especially at release, What about new people to the game people who are not familiar with the editor? Not everyone is into MP which seems to suffer significant performance problems.

We all know about the Greek incident and I feel personally very sorry for Ivan and Martin but shit you can't just stop developing because 2 important members of your stuff are missing due to an unfortunate circumstance. I wished that would have never happened but it has.

Second what happened that made them throw away 2 years of development and start nearly from scratch. how many features got axed in the process? I remember the thread being quite long.

I had high hopes that BIS would get it right with ArmA 3 but they didn't IMO. I've always supported them as best as I could but this time it's not going to happen. Hey in the end I'm a paying customer to them . . . nothing else.

I always ignored all the negative aspects of BIS games until today but as I said I was a mindless fanboy myself maybe even worse than a lot of others. That's now a quite embarrassing thing to me to admit for being honest.

What I want to say is that BIS changed . . . the community is changing and for being honest I'm feeling more and more alienated with what is going on.

But that's just me.

We're a lot more than you think about agree your opinion!

It would take just more consistency on the part of users to understand their impropriety ...... but whit are talking about videogames ... and everything is permitted!

There will be always somebody enthusiastic that will answer that to him the game run smooth and it's enjoy about this fantastic title and he dont know what are you talking about it!

Being a fan is not a problem, being a blind fan can be..........

Yeap....Blind fans...right!

Regards

Edited September 21, 2013 by Enrico

[pd3 25]

IMO it's all about if your able and willing to ignore the flaws this series is suffering since OFP.

I've never really thought that the series "suffered" much even from the old days, If anything I've always thought the game was pretty solid, if anything I thought it in fact didn't suffer from a lot of the annoying recurrent design ideas that plagued military shooters prevalent at the time.

Sure it wasn't "perfect", but I couldn't say it was bad, I played the PC gamer demo for OFP on a friend's computer - way back in the day, and knew immediately that I was going to go out and buy a 2000 dollar computer specifically to play it.

There are certain things that in this day and age I just can't abide by, and not advancing the way games such as this address weapon handling, especially a game such as this that is supposed to be "a cut above" the FPS wargaming morass - is simply not acceptable.

The time is right for a considerable leap forward in terms of simulating this aspect as it is THE most important aspect outside of physical ground based movement, of the genre.

What I observed, were the difficult game releases after the split from Codemaster which I definitely approved . . . I mean the split, due to Codemasters business attitude.

Yeah, I agree, and applauded BI for departing from under the umbrella of Codies, as I felt they would have just raped the franchise in favor of more commercial elements.

Kind of why I react so badly when I see attempts to broaden market appeal at the expense of core demographics in this series now.

I mean the OFP releases were not without problems but with Armed Assault the situation worsened.

ArmA 2 was a complete disaster. Performance was a huge problem and the campaign was broken beyond repair.

Arrowhead release was a lot less problematic.

Yeah, I was lucky enough to purchase Arma after CO had been released, the addon community had flourished and a lot of the problems that people had complained about seemed mitigated or in many cases nonexistent from my perspective.

Like I said, I can't ever fault BI for bugs or time constraints related to content, they're usually sorted out as things move along.

I do remember last year steam massively fucked up A2 for me and I couldn't run it for some reason, that's about the most aggravation I've ever experienced from the game. Still, conscious design decisions that move in the opposite direction of what I would call "progress" is painful to watch.

I would say that A2 was FAR better performance wise than Armed Assault though, AA was just holy crap bad performance.

ArmA 3 seems to have a lot of problems but for different reasons. Altis might be a jewel and the lightning and movement have been improved but I see the same old problems popping up since OFP. Performance is always a major problem it seems that not much has changed in that regards. I see a lot of unhappy people on the forum and I don't regret for not having purchased ArmA 3. Yeah I know my loss!!!!! Is it really a loss?

I've always been resigned to the fact that this game is not like most others, I don't honestly believe that the performance issues have so much to do with a lack of optimization as they are a consequence of a game that tries to create highly detailed, large scale environments with dynamic AI. That's one thing I really don't feel all that empathetic about, I would rather have the game have higher system requirements and more complexity of gameplay than turn it into another mass produced military FPS. My computer I'm running right now more than decently accommodates A2, however prior to knowing what was going to happen with A3 gameplay wise, I was planning on buying another 2000+ dollar ball-tearer of a machine just to run it well.

I come to expect that from the series, more simply means and "costs" - more.

Anyway I don't know the details what happened since they started working on ArmA 3 but something happened along the way which changed BIS business attitude. Yeah I know conspiracy theories . . .

Yeah, ever since what happened with Bethesda after Daggerfall, and suddenly becoming acquired by Zeni Max and summarily scrapping development in favor of Xbox pandering has always left me with a sense of paranoia about that.

Since a lot of community members are always arguing and bragging about BIS being a business, but meeting the set release deadline of ArmA 3 was a bad choice IMO. It should have been postponed. IF you are a professional developer I don't expect a release like ArmA 3. BIS has never, ever failed before, in delivering content in former game iterations, this time they did, as far as I could understand from reading the Arma 3 section. No campaign? well . . . I mostly do SP, not having a campaign is not excusable to me especially at release, What about new people to the game people who are not familiar with the editor? Not everyone is into MP which seems to suffer significant performance problems.

My main complaint is ballistics/damage, weapon handling, personally, I think that BI could or rather SHOULD make campaigns additional paid content. Sorry if that pisses you off, and I genuinely don't intend that sentiment to do so, but while I've enjoyed their campaigns, I enjoy dynamic gameplay FAR more.

ThompsonB and his Flashpoint series for A2 is simply amazing, as is battlezone. The replay value on both of those is top notch and if BI were to release anything "out of the box" I think it should be a multplayer/singleplayer accessible user-configurable dynamic mission in much the same vein.

I suppose it really comes down to priorities, but campaigns are cumbersome affairs, you have to pay for voice actors, you have to write out the story, you have to test and re-test the missions to ensure they're not fatally bugged. They really eat up a lot of development time, and I would be perfectly fine shelling out a bit of money for a decent, well written campaign.

For me the main complaint about BI's release this time around is not addressing core gameplay issues, full stop. Without those being tolerable if nothing else, my expectations just come screeching to a disappointing halt.

Still, as mentioned before, I understand that development for A3 was a shit show and they did seem to try to fulfill some ambitions with regard to my biggest concerns, I'm not mad at them, just a little sad that it ended up this way.

Should it at all ever been addressed in some way in the future, I may consider getting it, but as is, I just can't justify it.

We all know about the Greek incident and I feel personally very sorry for Ivan and Martin but shit you can't just stop developing because 2 important members of your stuff are missing due to an unfortunate circumstance. I wished that would have never happened but it has.

It happened, it added to the instability of what already seemed to be a turbulent time for development, I can't lay fault if it did have any appreciable impact on the game we see today, shit happens.

Second what happened that made them throw away 2 years of development and start nearly from scratch. how many features got axed in the process? I remember the thread being quite long.

For real? :butbut:

I wasn't aware of that, damn.

I had high hopes that BIS would get it right with ArmA 3 but they didn't IMO. I've always supported them as best as I could but this time it's not going to happen. Hey in the end I'm a paying customer to them . . . nothing else.

Kind of how I feel, but make no mistake, I don't believe they should all lose their jobs and go out of business because I'm dissatisfied. It's really hard not to feel at least a bit betrayed, even if it wasn't intentional.

It would be one thing if the market was flush with alternatives, but this has always mostly been a niche product that seems to be losing it's niche.

I always ignored all the negative aspects of BIS games until today but as I said I was a mindless fanboy myself maybe even worse than a lot of others. That's now a quite embarrassing thing to me to admit for being honest.

I don't qualify myself as a mindless fanboy, I genuinely believed in and enjoyed all of BI's products. From OFP onward I was always trying to get new people to get the game and play it with them. Even though there's always room for improvement, I could easily overlook some of the issues simply because they were the best product on the market for what I was looking for. Period.

What I want to say is that BIS changed . . . the community is changing and for being honest I'm feeling more and more alienated with what is going on.

But that's just me.

Yup, I read you there.

I know this seems kind of like a flame-bait'y sentiment, but I genuinely believe millennials as a demographic seem to not really have the same discriminating taste that previous generations had before them.

It's pretty much how Microsoft was able to launch it's console whilst dumbing down and cannibalizing the PC game market to pawn off to relatively newer consumers who had no idea what the industry was or where it was headed prior to them getting involved.

We're seeing the effects now as games like CoD still rely on expanding ring ballistics/weapon handling which is at this point a throwback to the 16 year old rainbow six series.

And yet their core consumer base sees nothing wrong with it. Augh.

[ProfTournesol 956]

@pd3 and nettrucker : come on guys, maybe you should simply try the game to make your own idea ? It's far from being as bad as it may seem by reading all those complaints.