Multiplayer dying fast??

[das attorney 858]

Lets be honest, changes had to come to this forum eventually, the banal sentiment of you and others, made it happen. A club of players thinking this was the centre of the universe when it came to the series. Its not, it had something around 6-8000 members two years ago or so, out of how many copies sold (hard copies), in the past decade or so.

Best to open your eyes and look around, the majority don’t come on these forums because of the likes of yourself, not the new comers, double standards was the norm on here.

The 'its my and my opinion only that count' days, have gone, that's good for the forums, they are alive now with new members and ideas, not all good, but in lots of ways, better than it was.

It wasn't a complaint Chris. I challenge you to find one post I've made complaining about new members on this forum.

I was making the point to PG that this forum is full of new players, same as the Steam forums are.

In fact I think it's a good thing that there are new members. Lot's of interesting stuff by new members like Hypnomaniac, WindWalking, IanSky and all sorts of other new people.

[bvrettski 10]

maybe it is too hard for you to understand?

Also, half of thos request are not that game breaking at all if they are never implemented.

Nope and neither is "Tweaking of dust effects created by infantry" Something I would never have noticed and hope to god I never spend time looking for or at when I'm in game. I couldn't give a rats bottom about it and the other thousands of little tweeks that eat up man hours of development time. Add to that list, pollen, dust, snakes, rabbits, birds, bees, dragonflies, beams of light etc. I'd rather have a whole game that plays well than a lot of pretty effects that serve zero purpose in the overall gaming experience. Besides someone had to fix the snakes so they couldn't open doors in one patch. Good use of man hours there.

However, back to the original point of this thread, no P vs P multiplayer IS a game breaker if they choose not bring any offical content to it and in that case its time to move on and find an actual game to play and not a contentless, game engine / construction set to tinker with.

Edited November 23, 2013 by Bvrettski

[progamer 14]

Maybe I'm not understanding this correctly but are you suggesting that posting in the issue tracker would have a better / more direct effect on getting BIS to focus on multiplayer (or any issue for that matter)?

I seriously doubt it. To date I have't seen a single suggestion in that list addressed. I take it back they did deal with the Physx issue a bit because the game was broken for large numbers of people.

Deploying a weapon / proper use of bipods - Nope

Low CPU/GPU Utilization - Nope

Firing from vehicles - Nope

Female soldiers models should be available in the game - Nope

New technique for rendering grass at far distance - Nope

Feature Request: 3D Optics using Picture-In-Picture engine capability. (Red Orchestra Style) - Nope

Sophisticated considerations on how to get rid of the blurry mid range textures - Nope

Add ability to climb onto/over objects - Nope

Some sort of melee? - Nope

Realistic Wounding System - Nope

Easy way to significantly improve the clunky action menu - Nope

Bullet-in-chamber accounting - Nope

Grenade throwing is unrealistic (too fast) - Nope

[Feature request] Fast Roping - Nope

Agree or disagree with these issues / features, I dont care, but when the change logs and patch notes include things like:

Tweaking of dust effects created by infantry

Hit of ground by rifles should be now better visible on medium and low particle quality

New underwater effect for smoke grenades

Divers and their equipment has been visually tweaked

...and the issues that would seem more important in terms of the overall game go by the wayside then I don't get the feeling BIS really give two cents about whats in the issue tracker....or what is said in these forums. They are just outlets for us players to use and for them to gather ideas going forward.

At the end of the day I wouldn't put too much faith in the tracker system. Unless your "issue" has suddenly made the game catastrophically unplayable for a large number of people. BIS isn't going to take it on until they choose to..if they even care to.

That issue I linked is the multiplayer issue hub that Dwarden made more easily keep track of multiplayer related issues. As for those other tickets, things take time and cannot instantly be done because BI is a smaller dev team when compared to most games.

Edited November 23, 2013 by ProGamer

[L3TUC3 32]

Nope and neither is "Tweaking of dust effects created by infantry" Something I would never have noticed and hope to god I never spend time looking for or at when I'm in game. I couldn't give a rats bottom about it and the other thousands of little tweeks that eat up man hours of development time. Add to that list, pollen, dust, snakes, rabbits, birds, bees, dragonflies, beams of light etc. I'd rather have a whole game that plays well than a lot of pretty effects that serve zero purpose in the overall gaming experience. Besides someone had to fix the snakes so they couldn't open doors in one patch. Good use of man hours there.

However, back to the original point of this thread, no P vs P multiplayer IS a game breaker if they choose not bring any offical content to it and in that case its time to move on and find an actual game to play and not a contentless, game engine / construction set to tinker with.

Environmental designers/artists and others still need to do their part on improving the game in their respective areas. You seem under the impression that game development is a jack of all trades kind of thing where raw manpower can overcome any obstacle instantly. I can assure you a modeller does not necessarily know how to program an effective wounding/healing mechanic. I too would much rather see more improvement to the game systems that aren't particularly working well or seem neglected, but those are best left to the people in their respective fields.

I don't know how BIS assigns it's time and manpower to various issues, but assuming all out neglect is overly dramatic considering the hints during sitreps and other outlets. I am willing to venture a guess most of the attention is going to the campaign content at the moment.

[bvrettski 10]

You seem under the impression that game development is a jack of all trades kind of thing where raw manpower can overcome any obstacle instantly.

As a commercial artist that has worked on PC, PS2 and PS3 games I can assure you I understand how these projects roll. Companies hire and staff based upon their needs at the time. Every man hour spent making pollen fly costs X number $$$. Thats money that could go into content, code optimization, mission development, gametypes or a whole host of other places that could push the game closer to completeness.

Someone, somewhere at BIS had to say..Yes!!!..lets tackle "dust effects created by infantry" in the next patch. That's important. Its a priority. Stan... get right on that, ok?! LOL

In the mean time I'd like to have a game to play....

Edited November 23, 2013 by Bvrettski

[L3TUC3 32]

As a commercial artist that has worked on PC, PS2 and PS3 games I can assure you I understand how these projects roll. Companies hire and staff based upon their needs at the time. Every man hour spent making pollen fly costs X number $$$. Thats money that could go into content, code optimization, mission development, gametypes or a whole host of other places that could push the game closer to completeness.

Someone, somewhere at BIS had to say..Yes!!!..lets tackle "dust effects created by infantry" in the next patch. That's important. Its a priority. Stan... get right on that, ok?! LOL

In the mean time I'd like to have a game to play....

I see what you're getting at now. I just hate to say that looking at the game and dev timeline something happened that severely impacted productivity. Be it bad management, budgeting, something else or a combination. A lot of goals were missed and quite a few unfinished or WIP. The game wasn't finished at release, that much is obvious as per BIS' own admission.

Historically though, BIS always had a long term support plan for it's arma titles, so it's safe to assume that it's been budgeted in already. I'm betting a lot of these small insignificant tidbits are part of this by the maintenance staff. But the majority of the production capacity is still locked in trying to bring the game to it's original intended release state! To get there, it will probably be another 6 months (my estimation) if not longer before the campaign and any other important feature that was slated for release originally has been caught up to. After that's been done there's probably more leeway for other things to be worked on.

[progamer 14]

I see what you're getting at now. I just hate to say that looking at the game and dev timeline something happened that severely impacted productivity. Be it bad management, budgeting, something else or a combination. A lot of goals were missed and quite a few unfinished or WIP. The game wasn't finished at release, that much is obvious as per BIS' own admission.

Historically though, BIS always had a long term support plan for it's arma titles, so it's safe to assume that it's been budgeted in already. I'm betting a lot of these small insignificant tidbits are part of this by the maintenance staff. But the majority of the production capacity is still locked in trying to bring the game to it's original intended release state! To get there, it will probably be another 6 months (my estimation) if not longer before the campaign and any other important feature that was slated for release originally has been caught up to. After that's been done there's probably more leeway for other things to be worked on.

Things did happen. Let me list them:

1. A court case which is still active.

2. Physx was harder to implement then the developers thought and had setbacks.

3. Changes in project lead.

4. The dayz phenomenon.

I may be missing one or two things though.

Arma 2 was made up of:

1. Many years of polish.

2. Shared assets with VBS.

3. Assets from a failed game.

4. An expansion pack.

[igor drukov 0]

Not that I want to enter the fray or anything - just throwing in my half a penny (I am well aware my opinion is a bit extreme, so be warned!):

As much as I endorse every single claim listed by Bvrettski, I can't help thinking - as a self-conscious and outdated vet from an older generation - that one other reason why the game is generally underrated and unfairly dissed is the following: the sort of typical gameplay (in my very humble opinion) OFP offered - at least the one that got me hooked as opposed to Counter-Strike or the other popular FPS of the time - was absence of JIP and limited respawning options.

Waiting for everybody (friends and good-willed strangers alike) to be ready before you started the mission and feeling your heart beat for fear of dying helped create the sense of brotherhood I have never ceased to like and look for.

I'm quite fascinated by the discrepancy between the number of people asking for more realism and the missions these people play, which more often than not feature unlimlited respawn and a sort of gameplay which other games, frankly, do better.

If this game is what it is supposed to be - an affordable infantry simulation - then somebody has got to explain to me why having someone pop in your squad while in the middle of an operation, or why getting slaughtered somewhere and reappearing in full gear some five clicks away 10 seconds later, contributes anything to enhancing realism.

I do respect all sorts of gameplay, and of course their fans (and by all means I do not intend to start some sort of flaming war), and clearly the fact that BIS games can offer so many different sorts of gameplay is to be commended - but I for one think that if there's anything this game does best (because that's what it was created for in the first place, and no other game does it) - that's P v P, T v T or COOP with no respawn.

And that's the sort of missions BIS should make and offer, because that's where its edge is.

[7mary3 10]

Yeah, my group used to play 1 life Infiltration. Made you be really careful and fight far more realistically. Hate the COD spray fire everywhere, and run around like a chicken with your head cut off. Then they brag that they got 100 kills ( and only died 40 times ). Lol.

[-Coulum- 35]

As a commercial artist that has worked on PC, PS2 and PS3 games I can assure you I understand how these projects roll. Companies hire and staff based upon their needs at the time. Every man hour spent making pollen fly costs X number $$$. Thats money that could go into content, code optimization, mission development, gametypes or a whole host of other places that could push the game closer to completeness.

Someone, somewhere at BIS had to say..Yes!!!..lets tackle "dust effects created by infantry" in the next patch. That's important. Its a priority. Stan... get right on that, ok?! LOL

In the mean time I'd like to have a game to play....

Yes but at the same time I can only assume different things have differing ease of implementation. For example I want better ai far more than I want soldiers kicking up dust. But soldiers kicking up dust costs a penny to fully implement. Where as ai costs a hundred bucks to improve by 1%. Which is more cost effective. I don't believe the devs are just straight up ignoring what people are saying but rather balancing what is and isn't possible at the given moment. It actually appears to me that they invested too much into things that weren't feasable originally and had to regroup and restart at one point in the arma 3 development.

[icebreakr 3157]

I was disappointed with ArmA 3, and returned to ArmA 2 very quickly.

This, +1. We've spent 2 weeks in A2, boy I missed the good ol' content.

Main reason for temporarily quitting A3 is not the content or scifi weaponry, but the fact that AI is still after numerous fixes cheating like a bastard and is superprecise -> usually giving 1 shot to a head/torso from 700m away with a normal rifle, while you probably can't even spot them. They aim for torso, but usally they hit a head when prone ;)

[bvrettski 10]

Yes but at the same time I can only assume different things have differing ease of implementation.

Absolutely but at what point do you say I think instead of making these flowers grow towards the sun in real time, we should maybe create some more playable content for the areas of the game that keep people wanting to play our game?

Edited November 24, 2013 by Bvrettski

[NeuroFunker 11]

This, +1. We've spent 2 weeks in A2, boy I missed the good ol' content.

Main reason for temporarily quitting A3 is not the content or scifi weaponry, but the fact that AI is still after numerous fixes cheating like a bastard and is superprecise -> usually giving 1 shot to a head/torso from 700m away with a normal rifle, while you probably can't even spot them. They aim for torso, but usally they hit a head when prone ;)

well, what about having PvP matches then? My team does coop for tactical, and teamplay tranings, and we do frieday satureday sunday games, where usualy 70 ppl at friday and 100 and 110-20 at sunday playing. You do simple not need AI there, and its really damn enjoyable.

[galzohar 31]

...with no respawn.

Yeah, my group used to play 1 life Infiltration. Made you be really careful and fight far more realistically. Hate the COD spray fire everywhere, and run around like a chicken with your head cut off. Then they brag that they got 100 kills ( and only died 40 times ). Lol.

But then they have a game mode like DTAS, but it ends up being difficult filling a server with it. Common complaints (which mostly contradict each other) include:

- Fighting on average between 5-10 minutes is not enough. I get bored as I need to wait for next round or wait for attackers to attack me when I am on the defending team. This is only fix-able if you start players right next to each other.

- 10 minutes is not enough time! I want to play more slow and tactical. But of course they then complain that they get bored on defense waiting for attackers to attack them.

- We want to use the entire island. And of course with no respawns that means you will still only see a very small portion of it regardless, it'll just take you much longer to actually find an enemy and get killed.

- We want progression/unlocks/score/loot. Doesn't work when you live only once, and in general breaks the whole tactical/realism concept.

- We want persistence (not round system, but rather continue to move from objective to objective), even though it wouldn't allow for not having respawns, as with no respawns game would be over during the fight over the first objective when 1 team is eliminated.

Regarding the AI in COOP, just use the proper scripting commands to set their skills such as precision and they won't hit the broad side of a barn if you wish. Maybe their defaults should have been more reasonable and less buggy, but it's definitely not something that cannot be rather easily worked around by the mission maker. If you give A2 AI the same stats that A3 AI have by default, they will make you complain about the exact same things.

[13islucky 10]

Nice, so following this mind we will never have Bipods (or any other kinda of core feature) because it takes "too long"?

( Anyway, I'm still laughin for the "trowing grenade" system. That's absolulty garbage. Who ever had the task on that should be fired. )

That's not what I meant. What I meant is that we'll be seeing these minor updates much more often than the bigger core ones because (assuming that they are working on them) they are completed faster. So even if they were working on both, tweaking some dust effects would take significantly less time than making bipods.

[iceman77 18]

;2562620']Iceman77 keep your stuff to PM. Completely offtopic.

If someone is going to come here and make false claims & throw around the words "haters" and "fanboys" I'm going to say something. Because it's bullshit.

On topic:

There's plenty of great Mp modes coming. I for one am looking forward to tactical battlefield.

Edited November 24, 2013 by Iceman77

[katipo66 94]

What's needed is some form of official game modes that's standardized with no downloading mods, personally I'd prefer them to be pure PVP/TVT or with the option to use AI as fillers until players join, I now doubt anything like this is ever going to happen.

Galzohar rightfully asked what it is we actually want, well this has been answered 10 fold in discussions prior to Alpha regarding what people want to see as game mode types, this has either been completely ignored with no intention of providing anything or they just don't have time because they are still actually making the game first.

Is there no one at BI with any vision in this area?

Edited November 24, 2013 by Katipo66

[sxp2high 22]

...but the fact that AI is still after numerous fixes cheating like a bastard and is superprecise...

That was very frustrating in the beginning, but its not the case anymore. The AI is very tolerable now. 0.3-0.5 Ai Skill works good, not overpowered, nice firefights.

Keep in mind that there is a "bug" with spawned units always being at 1 skill regardless of the server settings, which makes those missions pretty much unplayable. Must be countered using setSkill.

[iceman77 18]

It'd take a fair amount of work to draw players from the user made missions they currently play. BI would have to come up with something ground breaking and just plain awesome in that case. I would love if they did that, but I really doubt they will, as making such a mode(s) would require alot of work. Maybe too much?

---------- Post added at 22:02 ---------- Previous post was at 22:01 ----------

That was very frustrating in the beginning, but its not the case anymore. The AI is very tolerable now. 0.3-0.5 Ai Skill works good, not overpowered, nice firefights.

Keep in mind that there is a "bug" with spawned units always being at 1 skill regardless of the server settings, which makes those missions pretty much unplayable. Must be countered using setSkill.

For sure. I noticed aiming accuracy and aiming shake really do wonders.

[dnk 13]

Deploying a weapon / proper use of bipods - probably a lot harder with the new animation system and lack of collision on weapons than it was in A2. Also, I've done it in A3 already.

Low CPU/GPU Utilization - seems like there have been a lot of improvements in performance in the past 6 months. Did you ever consider that this might just not be easily fixed? That it might be something they can't do much about without a total engine rewrite? What do you want BI to say if that's the case, "sorry, our engine ultimately is somewhat flawed?" In what universe do companies do this, and should anyone blame a company for not taking a shotgun to its own foot?

Firing from vehicles - perhaps this adds ~0 to gameplay but would take 50+ hours to implement

Feature Request: 3D Optics using Picture-In-Picture engine capability. (Red Orchestra Style) - they came up with a compromise solution. That wasn't enough, only 100% perfect is to be accepted by the community!

Add ability to climb onto/over objects - in another thread a dev said that he was working on this and it would be released eventually

Some sort of melee? - adds ~0 to gameplay and would take 50+ hours to implement - it's a modern war simulator where melee is used about 0.1% of the time...

Realistic Wounding System - seems like this is already partially implemented (leg wounds restrict movement, arm wounds increase sway), and the full implementation (with UI changes) would be unnecessary, excessive, or even put off a lot of the fans (who don't like a UI cluttered with gamey graphs). Ultimately, if you break a bone, you're out of the fight, and for this game that means "dead". Also, if there was serious community desire for this, it could be modded easily enough I'd think (with certain optimizations).

Bullet-in-chamber accounting - pretty exceptionally minor issue, no? Should be able to be modded easily if you really want it. Perhaps you can just ask the devs to add a script function to allow you to check the number of rounds in a magazine and adjust them through another function (check_magazine_quantity & set_magazine_quantity). Modding it would be easy as 1,2,3 then.

Grenade throwing is unrealistic (too fast) - the devs disagree with you on realism-gameplay balance perhaps?

[Feature request] Fast Roping - I've done it in A3 already.

I would like the others, but again a lot of it comes down to (resources / tasks) and much of this just requires too much of the former while BI has too much of the latter already on its plate. Also, you skipped the part where we've passed the alpha stage and new features are very unlikely. At this point, you're mostly arguing for the next game's features. Name other FPS games that add new features like these post-release that weren't already WIP at release. BI got swamped during the runup to release, they didn't have the resources to take on all these new community ideas, and that's really it. I'm not sure you understand the software development cycle clearly enough...

[snippies] you're either a hater or a fanboy.

{ insanely disrespectful and full of insult tantrum that has nothing constructive }

Go find some of those circles in my/others logic and, you know, argue cogently if you disagree. Talking OT shit about random people without being constructive is just derailing flamebaiting. You doing that here?

If someone is going to come here and make false claims & throw around the words "haters" and "fanboys" I'm going to say something. Because it's bullshit.

On topic:

There's plenty of great Mp modes coming. I for one am looking forward to tactical battlefield.

Yeah, but BI didn't make it, so it doesn't count. Nothing counts unless BI themselves do it. That's the argument. Many of the complaints of BI inaction (on features) have been, are being, or can easily be solved by modders, but BI didn't do it, so they're terrible at pleasing customers... A lot of new (and some old) players not realizing that for this series the community is easily 50% of the development team (especially for scenarios), and complaining because they feel the paid-developers are taking advantage of the modders. Or it's (some) modders complaining because BI won't hire (at the expense of firing a working dev) a direct mod-community representative to keep them up to date on everything the dev team is doing. That or BI just won't confess to failure so these same people can attack them relentlessly for it, as they do for every minor perceived slight and failure up till now.

The idea that BI has very limited resources and has spent them mostly for this release, which is finished feature-wise, and that the extremely long list of community ideas that came up 6-12 months ago was almost totally unimplementable given their budget/staff/deadlines is not to be considered. I mean, the community asked for the moon, BI clearly couldn't provide it, and now some want to hit them over the head about their inabilities, portraying it as "community betrayal" or whatever.

There are issues with the game, some players are having big issues, and some features need to be ironed out. I have faith that BI will work in good faith to remedy these situations, but I also recognize reality and the fact that it might take longer than 1 week to fix deeply entrenched issues with the engine or coding.

The thread is about how "MP is dying fast".

Ah, never take this stuff at face value. The thread is really about "complain about BI". You can disprove any single point, and in the end it will continue on a new track about "missing features", "poor community interaction", "not pleasing customers", or [insert personal peeve here]. Edited November 24, 2013 by DNK

[Tonci87 163]

This, +1. We've spent 2 weeks in A2, boy I missed the good ol' content.

Main reason for temporarily quitting A3 is not the content or scifi weaponry, but the fact that AI is still after numerous fixes cheating like a bastard and is superprecise -> usually giving 1 shot to a head/torso from 700m away with a normal rifle, while you probably can't even spot them. They aim for torso, but usally they hit a head when prone ;)

I know what you mean but I´ve managed to get the AI precision just right for me, you need to experiment a little bit.

The biggest problem is not that the AI is too accurate but that they are overly accurate when wounded. I think anybody knows this situation: You hit an AI, he does that stupid flinch move and one-shoots you in the head right after that.

This is the main problem with AI atm.

Seriously BIS, why can´t you let the AI go into ragdoll after they´ve been hit? Is there a technical reason?

[galzohar 31]

What's needed is some form of official game modes that's standardized with no downloading mods, personally I'd prefer them to be pure PVP/TVT or with the option to use AI as fillers until players join, I now doubt anything like this is ever going to happen.

Official probably won't happen. At least nothing actually good. Though who knows, maybe BIS is preparing a big surprise (but don't count on it). Then again there are many servers running such missions that comply with your demands, yet they obviously aren't good enough or else we wouldn't be here complaining. Obviously, what people want is a lot more complex than "no downloading of mods", or else what is already out there would already be fitting with their demands. My claim is that the demands of the players currently cannot be satisfied simultaneously as there isn't a group of more than a small number of players that would actually want the same thing. Everything you make will have a very large % of the players complain that it's not what they are looking for. So you end up with good game modes that have no players playing and generic crap that fits the masses that just want to roam around, shoot stuff and collect money/experience/loot.

Seriously BIS, why can´t you let the AI go into ragdoll after they´ve been hit? Is there a technical reason?

Well, basically AI work like players but controlled by the engine, with as few gameplay-affecting differences as technically possible. Do you want your own soldier to go into ragdoll whenever you get shot? I don't think so. Or maybe you do, but then that should be a general suggestion on the feedback tracker and not something specific to AI.

[bvrettski 10]

It'd take a fair amount of work to draw players from the user made missions they currently play. BI would have to come up with something ground breaking and just plain awesome in that case. I would love if they did that, but I really doubt they will, as making such a mode(s) would require alot of work. Maybe too much?

Yup...when your late to the party its hard to find anyone to dance with....

The entrenched and long time Arma players are devoted to their favorite gametypes at this point. Communities have developed small core following around their custom missions. The window of opportunity on earning new players is closing fast but imagine if the game had released with say 4-6 different game types ranging from close combat, small area, fighting to full map large scale all out war with a few variations scaled appropriately for different server sizes. Imagine if the game had been mature enough, well coded enough and optimized enough to play these gametypes with up to 100 players.

We already have samples of good gametypes ranging from CTF to Sector Control to Domination. Iceman's Warfront is a good example of a game type that can be scaled from small areas to the entire map if desired. The advantage of officially released and supported missions are that they should be complete and not WIPs. They should be rock solid and well defined not WIPs like most user created missions that have any following. They should have been tested to perform well at the games release so that the momentum of the game grows and excites people to play. User created missions should offer players ever more options to explore but not be left to form the foundation of the Arma multiplayer experience.

I also understand the impulse to always be original and that anything we have seen before in another game might be taboo to the dedicated Arma fanboy but if that's your criteria for worthy gametypes then good luck. You can sit on A3 until the next DayZ springs up. That may never happen again.

Releasing half hearted, copy and paste, slapped together, multiplayer missions, that are copies of official A2 missions is only going to tick people off at this point. Its not going to earn BIS a single new player if they are disposable sample missions. Anything worthy of release should have been on the board for months if not years..drawn up, designed, brainstormed, tested and restested etc.There should have been a game design team on it. In other words if your just now patching something together to fill in a missing piece then don't bother. You might as well just let us live with the disappointment.

Its just not a priority for BIS apparently. Any momentum they had from the likes of DayZ and Wasteland, via A2, has been lost and maybe the bottom line is that they don't have the money, the focus, or the vision to put together a full game. When you put out a half finished game and admit its a long term WIP then your left preaching to the chior of dedicated Arma fans who are willing to hum along and deal with the shortcomings of it.

New players are going to go find a game to play because in the end they are here to game and have fun.....not to wait a few years and beta test for BIS. Its one thing to commend BIS for their long term commitment to the game and a whole other thing to release a game that a WIP for the foreseeable future.

PS. I forgot to throw in that core code issues, overall performance, the computational overhead of a giant map and AI issues don't help multiplayer either...that is if BIS had actually created any P vs P gametypes for more than 30 players. Maybe that's why they only released those small coops.

I'm rambling here now...LOL

Thanks to everyone who has added something worthwhile to this discussion.

Time for me to stop beating a dead horse and find a game to actually play. Game on!!

Edited November 24, 2013 by Bvrettski

[bad benson 1733]

i personally don't think BI have to reinvent the wheel to make something good. it's more about accessibility and quality. like for example UIs, team supporting mechanics like squad respawn, presentation to make it feel more alive etc. i don't think the popular usermade missions are THAT amazing and hard to compete with. people just go to stuff that they know how to play and get enjoyment out of. make it fun, it's that simple. to me most classic PvP modes (none of that wasteland stuff) are just too boring for a big game like arma. they are often really dry and simple. i'd love to see frontlines progress in a more meaningful way. maybe make vehicle spawns dependant on holding a factory or something. also having some subtle voice acting to make the stuff more alive like "we have captured flag X" can do a lot to make it feel less dead and sterile.

i don't like that attitude of giving up because people will moan. what is that? it's their job to try to make accessible and entertaining gameplay. it can as i said be sometimes be achieved by simply making something that is open about how it works and is designed (UI, sound etc) in a way that is intuitive (can still be complex) and not with cryptic, dusty 2001 style UI.

i mean arma wants to be THE war game and it's huge but still there's no incarnation of these thoughts in the MP department. i don't care about the excuses. they haven't tried in years. it's annoying. get some balls, try some stuff, change it according to feedback. is it that hard?

so called "casual shooters" like bf4 have a commander while arma that has a huge map has nothing like it, eventhough it could probably make much better use of that concept. it's time to look around what the others do. get some inspiration. try out interesting concepts instead of whining how much work it is and finding excuses or say that complainers are the reason to not try. what a weak attitude. this game could be special but they aren't even trying.

i'd love to see a DLC with maybe some new factions that is only focusing on MP using these. with some mechanics specifically designed for MP. i watched some bf2 pr footage the other day and it was great how people were locking down a backyard by building small fortifications and stuff. this game needs more things like that. it's devovling into a crappy FPS on a way too big map for its own good otherwise.

[7mary3 10]

Personally, I wish they would just ditch the ancient Arma engine and move to Outerra. It would be starting over in some respects, but they would still have their art assets. I bet they could make a good deal with the Outerra people who would probably be happy to have them.

*me dives for cover!