Lets face it BI didn't deliver

[CyclonicTuna 87]

Now Arma 3 has been released for a while, and I've had time to play around with everything this is my conclusion:

Bohemia Interactive didn't deliver on the release of Arma 3.

Simply put Bohemia didn't release a product that was better or up to par with the switch from Arma 1 to Arma 2. For months they have been promoting Arma 3 as the most stable release yet, having said that almost everyone at Bohemia was working on the project. But it is still filled with bugs, glitches and overall unfinished gameplay.

There is still a horribly designed action and command menu that has hardly seen any improvment if any over previous titles. Its something that Bohemia should have adressed a long time ago, perhaps even in Arma 2. Its a really gameplay killer and one of the reason I believe why many people are actually scared away from the Arma series when they see gamplay because all the realism and simulation in the world isn't gonna make up for the fact that you have to go thrue dozens up on dozens of menu's the prevorm even the simpelest tasks that come naturally in other tactical shooters. It has nothing to do with the complexity or the realism of Arma, its just poorly designed.

Now if there was great gamplay to enjoy most people might look past that, and with certain training and skill you could actually somewhat master the controls of Arma. But also the gamplay in general has hardly improved over Arma 2. We still get horrible AI, that either puts a bullet thrue tha canopy of your jet at 3000 meters of the ground, or can't be bothered by your presance if you left a bootprint on the back of their skulls.

And the pathfinding, well don't even get me started on that, UAV's flying in a circle anyone?

We also have a staggering lack of gamecontent over Arma 2. Not only do we get less weapons and vehicles but much of the independent features and models seem to be copied over from the other factions. At least in Arma 2 there was a distinct difference between the weapons and vehicles of each faction, each having its strengths and weaknesses that complimented each other. But in Arma 3 it hardly matters for which faction you choose, bringing it closer to mainstream shooters like Battlefield.

And as many already noticed the "most optimized and polished title yet" assertion is a load of bull. Arma 3 has the same horrible optimiziation as all the previous titles. Let alone the cluncky controls and "physics". I mean what physics exactly? As I see it bombs dropped from a plane still float to the ground like a brick sinking underwater.

Then there are other anomalies like connection issues, bad collission detection, strange vehicle damage hitdetection and plain laughable war effects. I mean the effects, aside from some sounds and muzzleflashes, were ported straight out of Arma 2. Even in Arma 2 they were pretty bad. Luckely we have the people behind the J.S.R.S and Blastcore mods that can somewhat fix this. But really Bohemia should have either hired those guys or surpassed them in Arma 3.

If we forget about things like the lack in content and take Arma 3 at face value its not really an improvement over Arma 2, but not really a worse game either. Its seems more of a brushed up verison of Arma 2 with a bigger map. I'll give the developers that, the map is bigger and we have underwater enviroments. But they're not gonna tell me that took 4 years to make.

All these things are then again reinforeced by the fact that the community is outdoing the developers in terms of quality and quantity. Features that BI could've come up with and implemented themselves are being made by fans who do this unpaid in their spare time. And franqualy the community is the only thing that is holding the Arma series up at this point. If it wasn't for the people creating additional content for the Arma series it would've died out a long time ago.

Which brings me to my next point. Eventhough the community is creating better cotent than BI themselves, they are not given the complete control and freedom over the RV engine that they need, and deserve. Really Bohemia is sort of digging its own grave here.

If any developer reads this I would take away from my story that you should either improve your game by a lot, or change your marketing from "Most stable polished release yet", to "We're pretty sure we're not gonna be able to deliver but still gonna try so we'll give you a bigger island".

[NeuroFunker 11]

what doesn't fit here into "disspointed at full release content", or "the game is dumbed down" thread?

[iceman77 18]

tldr - There's already dedicated "arma3 is bad" threads.

[Sandy* 10]

Well lets see:

- This is the most stable Arma release ever. Did you even play the previous titles upon release? Things are really good even compared to the current state of Arma 2, 4 years after release.

- I don't remember any menu/command improvements being promised so where's the "failure to deliver"?

- The reason for Arma 2's huge catalog of guns, vehicles and such is that a lot of them were refurbished Arma 1 / OFP content. I guess they didn't want to yet again deliver the same stuff that we've been playing with for over a decade.

Its seems more of a brushed up verison of Arma 2 with a bigger map. I'll give the developers that, the map is bigger and we have underwater enviroments. But they're not gonna tell me that took 4 years to make.

Arma 2 was pretty much a brushed up version of Arma 1. Arma 1 was pretty much a brushed up version of OFP. Seeing a pattern here.

And yeah, the current state of the game isn't a product of 4 years of development towards the same goal (you might have heard of the Greece incident as well as change in lead designers).

[Tonci87 163]

People can excuse the current state of Arma 3 as much as they want but yes I think that something went really wrong during the development process and that therefore we don´t have the Arma we expected.

Arma 3 is still in Beta as far as I´m concerned.

[CyclonicTuna 87]

Well lets see:

- This is the most stable Arma release ever. Did you even play the previous titles upon release? Things are really good even compared to the current state of Arma 2, 4 years after release.

- I don't remember any menu/command improvements being promised so where's the "failure to deliver"?

- The reason for Arma 2's huge catalog of guns, vehicles and such is that a lot of them were refurbished Arma 1 / OFP content. I guess they didn't want to yet again deliver the same stuff that we've been playing with for over a decade.

Arma 2 was pretty much a brushed up version of Arma 1. Arma 1 was pretty much a brushed up version of OFP. Seeing a pattern here.

And yeah, the current state of the game isn't a product of 4 years of development towards the same goal (you might have heard of the Greece incident as well as change in lead designers).

- I have, and I'm seeing the same bugs and glitches, besides the fact that it still rapes your computer.

- It shouldn't have been promised because BI should have figured out by themselves that the current menustructure doesn't work. Its not a feature to fix something that is broken.

- That doesn't make it right to brush up something AGAIN...

- Then they should've pushed it back instead of releasing it undone. The whole point of being an independent developer is that you get to make the calls. Meaning that when BI released Arma 3 that they considered it as finished, which in term implies that they would have calculated the Greece incident into their development as a delay.

Edited October 6, 2013 by CyclonicTuna

[bigshot 64]

People can excuse the current state of Arma 3 as much as they want but yes I think that something went really wrong during the development process and that therefore we don´t have the Arma we expected.

Arma 3 is still in Beta as far as I´m concerned.

Calling it a Beta is somewhat generous TBH...me thinks it's closer to Alpha than anything else right now....the real problem is that this franchise as a whole since 2001 has always been in a constant state of Alpha/Beta...it just seems to never end in a good way. By the time the community gets a "near" finished product (usually 18-24 months after release) the hype begins on a newer version. Just seems we're never out of Beta, ever.

[Sandy* 10]

- I have, and I'm seeing the same bugs and glitches, besides the fact that it still rapes your computer.

Examples?

- It shouldn't have been promised because BI should have figured out by themselves that the current menustructure doesn't work. Its not a feature to fix something that is broken.

The challenge here is that the menu system needs to support simple scripting/modding, so a system that would be limited by certain keys/gestures etc doesn't work. If you have an idea of a menu system that could achieve all this I guess you should post it.

- That doesn't make it right to brush up something AGAIN...

Content wise, they didn't. They made fully new stuff. But you complain that the game doesn't have Arma 2's content catalog which is the product of a decade of work.

People can excuse the current state of Arma 3 as much as they want but yes I think that something went really wrong during the development process and that therefore we don´t have the Arma we expected.

You mean what you expected.

I never expected anything but new content, so while there are certain things I would've liked to have in the game that are still missing, I'm positively surprised. :)

[CyclonicTuna 87]

Examples?

I gave examples in my original post. Horrible AI, bad effects, bad physics etc. Keep your eyes open, I shouldn't have to give examples, you should see this yourself when you play the game.

And I wouldn't be to disappointed with the small selection of weapons if they actually felt diffrent like they did in Arma 2. But they're basically all the same, just with a diffrent skin.

[Sandy* 10]

I gave examples in my original post. Horrible AI, bad effects, bad physics etc. Keep your eyes open, I shouldn't have to give examples, you should see this yourself when you play the game.

How are any of these things "bugs and glitches" ?

Bad or lack of design perhaps, but not bugs and glitches. Unless you actually have something to specify?

[Tonci87 163]

How are any of these things "bugs and glitches" ?

Bad or lack of design perhaps, but not bugs and glitches. Unless you actually have something to specify?

The Game has completely broken 5.1 and 7.1 Sound, how is that? Care to point me to any other game that has that on release?

There are issues and Bugs that have been present since the Alpha and BIS didn´t bother to fix them because they had to get the game out of the door.

Looking at the available vehicels and the copy-paste assets I have to think that somewhere around the start of the Alpha someone remembered that they can´t sell the game without a few vehicels.

[-=seany=- 5]

We also have a staggering lack of gamecontent over Arma 2. Not only do we get less weapons and vehicles but much of the independent features and models seem to be copied over from the other factions. At least in Arma 2 there was a distinct difference between the weapons and vehicles of each faction, each having its strengths and weaknesses that complimented each other. But in Arma 3 it hardly matters for which faction you choose, bringing it closer to mainstream shooters like Battlefield. .

My main gripe in Bold ^

Arma3 is good and has many nice improvements, but you do manage to pretty much sum up the major problems that BIS really needs to look at.

All these things are then again reinforeced by the fact that the community is outdoing the developers in terms of quality and quantity. Features that BI could've come up with and implemented themselves are being made by fans who do this unpaid in their spare time. And franqualy the community is the only thing that is holding the Arma series up at this point. If it wasn't for the people creating additional content for the Arma series it would've died out a long time ago.

Unfortunately we have actually even seen the Devs use the above as an excuse for not including glaringly obvious features that modders had done in the previous versions of Arma...eg FCS for tanks etc etc etc.

The Game has completely broken 5.1 and 7.1 Sound, how is that? Care to point me to any other game that has that on release?

There are issues and Bugs that have been present since the Alpha and BIS didn´t bother to fix them because they had to get the game out of the door.

This is something I don't see mentioned too often, but bloody hell, Arma 3 must have one of the most confusing sound scapes I have ever heard in a video game, especially with headphones on. You can't tell where the heck anything is coming from or what distance it is.

Edited October 6, 2013 by -=seany=-

[chortles 263]

- The reason for Arma 2's huge catalog of guns, vehicles and such is that a lot of them were refurbished Arma 1 / OFP content. I guess they didn't want to yet again deliver the same stuff that we've been playing with for over a decade.

I pretty much saw this interpretation in Maruk's Report In! Q&A... TL;DR: "Arma 2 was an anomaly content-wise, probably won't do that again".

Arma 2 was pretty much a brushed up version of Arma 1. Arma 1 was pretty much a brushed up version of OFP. Seeing a pattern here.

And Arma 2 concept-wise was admittedly "let's try something closer to Game 2 but actually producible instead of a pie-in-the-sky fantasy".

People can excuse the current state of Arma 3 as much as they want but yes I think that something went really wrong during the development process and that therefore we don´t have the Arma we expected.

DnA pretty much said this in that whole "letter from and response to CiA" post thread debacle.

[bad benson 1733]

i agree with almost everything yet i fail to see how this requires a separate thread and how anything of this hasn't been said before.

but since it's here:

as always i'm torn. yes arma 3 has a lot of improvements that you didn't mention and to me it feels like a bigger step than from arma 1 to 2 just alone for the animations and physics (eventhough the implementation is pretty lame). but still it's really hard for me to not be frustrated by the lack of reasonable decisions. even from a financial stand point i still can't see any reasons why they would release it in this state.

yes UI is disappointingly outdated and still the same. but that i expected.

yes many parts of the game aren't groundbreakingly improved (or at all). also expected.

but why on earth not release it later? it almost feels like the team couldn't bare the pressure and had to release it as a gesture of relief for themselves. almost like they live in a bubble.

why is MP still a disaster? yes bad servers and bad scripting. yadayada. how did it work in arma 2 then? i fail to see how the engine changes create a need for different scripting methods. except maybe the fact that it can handle less units :rolleyes:

for me the new look and feel improvements have just enough charm to not make me abandon it all together. the thing is. i see the potential. the problem is that BI games always came short of their potential even after patches. people act as if arma 2 was packed with lots of features and improvements over time. that's not true. it was simply made "bug free" and actually playable over a long period of time. let's hope the steps will be bigger this time from patch to patch. some vague dev statements suggest at least the intention for that is there.

but still. not another thread needed :p

[metalcraze 290]

Content wise, they didn't. They made fully new stuff.

Little Bird from TOH

KA-60 from PMC DLC

L-159 from ACR DLC

Dozens of objects and textures reused from OA on Altis

So try again.

Well lets see:

- This is the most stable Arma release ever.

When ArmA3 got released it was just as buggy as any other ArmA. E.g. 5th of March. Sure you can pretend it was a "community alpha". Just like you can pretend that ArmA3 is released now and not just an extended beta.

And yes when you cut out most of the features and don't even include a campaign - there's not much to be buggy.

But what's the point in a stable game when the only thing you can do in it is sightseeing? Everything else in it is so barebones it gets boring after an hour of play.

Edited October 6, 2013 by metalcraze

[Sandy* 10]

The Game has completely broken 5.1 and 7.1 Sound, how is that?

We're discussing legacy bugs from the earlier games. Are these such?

[-=seany=- 5]

We're discussing legacy bugs from the earlier games. Are these such?

No they are worse, they are newly introduced...

[[frl]myke 14]

I think we alread have enough open threads in which people can post their disappointment. I don't think we need another one.