Bohemia Interactive's ambitions are always set too high.

[windies 11]

This is what Ive been saying all along and I think it may be the case even without a boycott. The intial Founding Fathers or Brothers are completely burnt out with the whole military thing a long time ago. They talked about changing direction with a Western themed RPG and then plodded into strange territory with Take Ons, CC etc... I thought it strange when the underwater aspect was so strongly promoted and you could feel the excitement they had for this 'new frontier' while leaving old military grognards scratching their collective chins. Fixing a million requested fixes, expanding AI to new realms of indoor AI or role specific behaviors and playbooks just doesn't excite them methinks. You can in a sense tell that they're in a certain level of auto-pilot when bringing up a simple, easy to see problem with an AI such as reaction time or wrong weapon and they ask you for a repro..? If someone where at the wheel with a real passion for really fixing let alone taking the game to the next level, you would think they'd see the many glaring problems by a simple playtest.

I still enjoy the game but am pretty sure it will be the last full fledge title we'll ever see in the series.

So then it's OK to excuse what ArmA 3 is and the support it gets and the forms of support it gets simply because the developers are "burnt out"? Does that now nullify the criticism, the problems and the potential feedback? I don't get that attitude or that mentality, that because they're BI and you feel like they've provided you quality in the past and you're loyal to them, you feel it's OK to "give them a pass this time". You exude it by placating what's happening as the norm and just excusing away the issue's with poor excuses.

Even if it is the last full fledged title that we ever see, and I agree with you pretty strongly that that is a likely outcome, does that mean it's OK to just leave it in a state of stasis in terms of bugs, content, feature's and just the overall aspect of what makes it a "game" in the first place? Yea, some things do get done and there has been movement in some directions but quite frankly it's all been moving sideways rather than forward. It's always two steps forward, one step back and sometimes one step forward and two back.

One thing that seems to be common thought is that this will in all likelihood be the last standalone ArmA that we see and honestly the looking forward blog by Jay Crowe cements that idea to me because it's referred to as a platform rather than as a game, and while we've always kind of considered ArmA to be a platform for modding, I don't think that it's ever been so blatantly stated before. If that's the case though we really need some work put into the engine and put into the feature set in order to make this last. Otherwise it won't be a boycott that kills this game but the game and the engine itself.

---------- Post added at 00:10 ---------- Previous post was at 00:07 ----------

If Arma is no longer profitable, they can just kill it off. I for one rather make compromises than boycotting.

And the "how" is also important when you complain. Just bashing isn't going anywhere. There are people that are no longer taken serious because of the way they complain; not even necessarily about what.

That would be true if we were talking about DayZ here, but right now, Arma is the underdog to that. And demonstrating how bad it does financially isn't a solution. Especially when the passion is gone from the people that have to make the decision.

Then it's destined to die and ArmA 3 was a poor mans hurrah I guess. I dunno what else to say. I guess it was just a way to infuse startup funds into DayZ

[froggyluv 2136]

LOL, Windies i'm not saying that at all. I'm just merely observing what's happening and yes I personally have a certain level of resignation. I'm not excusing anyone or saying your criticism isn't valid -I criticized the AI neglect to no end but started to realize it's not that they don't see it, it's that their really not passionate about this project anymore. Like i said, I'm a pragmatist. When I watch David's weekly updates over at Wolfire (who's alpha i've now owned for 2 years), the guy is just excited about some new physics feature he just implemented or some new graphical shader tech -thats EVERY WEEK! Limit Theory, same thing as it just absolutely resonates. When's the last time you saw a BI dev shoot a vid about his new passionate development in AI? It ain't gonna happen mate.

Edit: I just wanted to clarify my saying 'resignation' on one end while 'I still enjoy it' on another as not to come off as Bi-Polar. I do enjoy the game as I don't suffer many performance problems and do enjoy some of the enhancements made to Arma2. Would I still be playing it without mods such as BCombat, SoS etc...probably not much. Where I am resigned is in that things like real AI progression, features such as 3d editor and better wounding mechanics and animation will ever manifest.

Edited January 29, 2014 by froggyluv

[NordKindchen 12]

Really?

http://media.pr2game.com/news/announcement/lashkar_gah_01.jpg

That's not how I remember Half-Life mods.

Just a very short answer:

I am talking about these pictures

http://media.pr2game.com/news/announcement/fools_road_02.jpg

http://media.pr2game.com/news/announcement/fools_road_04.jpg

Greetz

[roshnak 41]

The intial Founding Fathers or Brothers were completely burnt out with the whole military thing a long time ago. They talked about changing direction with a Western themed RPG and then plodded into strange territory with Take Ons, CC etc...

I certainly hope this isn't the case, but if it is then BIS is in real trouble because so many things that are needed to make Arma better are engine side enhancements. Unless they decide to start licensing engines, they will still be using the same engine that Arma is on with all the same problems that Arma has.

[antoineflemming 14]

This is what Ive been saying all along and I think it may be the case even without a boycott. The intial Founding Fathers or Brothers were completely burnt out with the whole military thing a long time ago. They talked about changing direction with a Western themed RPG and then plodded into strange territory with Take Ons, CC etc... I thought it strange when the underwater aspect was so strongly promoted and you could feel the excitement they had for this 'new frontier' while leaving old military grognards scratching their collective chins. Fixing a million requested fixes, expanding AI to new realms of indoor AI or role specific behaviors and playbooks just doesn't excite them methinks. You can in a sense tell that they're in a certain level of auto-pilot when bringing up a simple, easy to see problem with an AI such as reaction time or wrong weapon and they ask you for a repro..? If someone were at the wheel with a real passion for really fixing let alone taking the game to the next level, you would think they'd see the many glaring problems via a simple playtest.

I still enjoy the game but am pretty sure it will be the last full fledge title we'll ever see in the series.

This I must agree with. However, I don't think that's justification for giving them a pass, as Windies asked. I think that, when they're tired and burnt out, that they need to work on trying to expand and get bigger, and with that, bringing in someone new, someone fresh, who can approach the project with fresh eyes, who isn't burnt out with the series, and they need to start passing it on for new developers and new leadership to continue. I say they should try to expand and get bigger, because for those who are burnt out with the engine in general, and anything Arma related, they could move on to new project, and others within their company could take the reins if they have enough personnel to do so. Because part of why their ambitions for Arma 3 were too high, I'd say, is because they didn't have either the manpower, the skill, or both, to match their ambition. But I too get the sense that they're burnt out and not enthusiastic about Arma 3 as they were in 2011 and 2012.

I'd say they need to try to pull in talent from elsewhere, guys who have passion for the project. Someone who will revamp SP and MP as well. Create something that the community can be enthusiastic about. Because, as much as we may say that the developers seem to have a lack of passion, for the community that's even more so. SP more in the vein of AAA SP stories (focus more on story, not on showcasing mission types, well acted stories as well) while maintaining that core Arma gameplay and realistic story. MP, well, we need the developers to have a viable multiplayer component at launch. It's great to have these separate, private communities, but enough with leaving it up to the community to make the games what they are. Having a complete multiplayer component like other AAA games already have (not suggesting the exact modes, but having different types of public MP servers and modes, maybe matchmaking too, would be good). Suggesting this because it's what would make me more passionate about Arma. Not sure for others.

To do any of this, BI needs fresh talent and fresh leadership. And, since we've discussed the engine, that fresh talent and leadership would feel burnt out by the game, and would hopefully be up to the daunting task of revamping the engine. Other studios have done the same, and certainly it wasn't an easy task, so I'm not suggesting it'd be easy for BI. But knowing that BI were taking on that task of addressing RV's issues would make me a bit more interested in the game. As of now, I'm only interested because of the modding aspects, really. If I couldn't make mods, and if it weren't a sandbox, I wouldn't be here. As much as I love the realism and simulation nature, that's not enough to overshadow the glaring issues with the engine. Being one of the last almost fully moddable games does help keep me engaged. But I don't think that another Arma game can survive this engine, not in it's current state. It needs some work. And I'm not really too enthusiastic that there will be an Arma 4.

[calin_banc 19]

I know that, and infact i also wrote

"Sure, RV would benefit a lot from multi threading optimization, x64 exes and so on, but i wouldn't expect a miracle."

I still stand on my point tough.

Sure it will benefit from better code and better HW resources usage, but i wouldn't expect it all of a sudden (with all those things done) to run on a stable 120fps.

It will run depending on what hardware you have, by scaling, that's how an application should run. Far to many people praise the series for being to complex to run well, when in fact it runs bad because of old thinking and lack of "love" in changing that (single thread/core most of the time). Even the jokes with NASA are not fun anymore. :)

[nicolasroger 11]

Some people here a over reacting way too much. Game is not perfect but it is generaly pretty good. You are all talking like the devs stopped working on the game while the absolute opposite is true. Everyone here who is reasonable knows that.

Last arma game? Boycot anything coming out of Bis? Wow guys, wow.. You are painting a depressing future for sure. You might be right though, maybe some of you should take a break from the game and the forum and come back later. Lots of people are enjoying arma 3. The player count at the last campaign release was higher then at the game launch. Thats pretty good news if you ask me.

And for those who were asking: No, dev will most likly not answer your questions in this thread because there is just too much whining. They mostly come foward on constructive thread and I don't blame then at all. Also, the dev might look like they are less enthousiast about their game, but remember that before they were always sharing their enjoyement about the features they were working on and they got jumped on badly for that ("but you promised this and that! where are my things!!!!111!!|!" while some dev simply shared what they were working on). So they learned their lessons. Now we get most info through the SITREP and the likes.

[chortles 263]

I totally understand those points but seriously what else can we do?

Admit that "the Arma concept"'s day has been done since at least the DayZ standalone launch.

So how can we motivate BIS to allocate more ressources to Arma 3? Because that is the main problem to me.

I honestly believe that to at least some extent, that's out of the devs' hands at this point.

There simply aren´t enough people working on this game and more and more get transfered to other projects.

Which I'll note have fans that are way less likely to withhold money in lieu of a specific "standard"...

They aren´t going to abandon the game if we tell them that they have to do some serious work first before getting more of our money.

*coughACRcough*

I agree though with DM's perspective: if DayZ is actually "more money for less work" than Arma in part due to a less demanding customer base, and if devs are "burned out" on the idea of milsim to the point that they'd rather be putting in more effort (I don't say resources, I mean effort for a reason) into a "fresh" property with a rather different theme...

And the "how" is also important when you complain. Just bashing isn't going anywhere. There are people that are no longer taken serious because of the way they complain; not even necessarily about what.

Everything about this is so, so true... you could practically tell who it was just by the fact that devs were actually pushing back against them. Heck, at one point this game's creative director flat-out told someone to "continue to beat that dead horse", that someone having also made negative and disparaging remarks about specific devs' professional performance, decision-making, game design philosophies, and even their truthfulness...

This doesn´t seem to be the BIS I´ve known and trusted for so many years.

More like the BI you thought you knew...

The Creative Assembly really fucked up with Rome 2 and I don´t know if they fixed it. But if they did, then only because they knew that otherwise nobody would buy DLC = No more money. If it worked well for them, why not for BIS?

Because BI found a way to continue raking in money without having to follow the dictates of the demanding? ;)

Then it's destined to die and ArmA 3 was a poor mans hurrah I guess. I dunno what else to say. I guess it was just a way to infuse startup funds into DayZ

What a beautiful epitaph for Arma. :lol:

But I too get the sense that they're burnt out and not enthusiastic about Arma 3 as they were in 2011 and 2012.

I'm not sure what level of enthusiasm was seemingly there in 2011-2012, but it's not a secret that the winter of 2012 was a pretty low point, not just due to the arrests/jailings (an obvious given) but also other unspecified reasons that officially have only been alluded to by the project lead/creative director.

Far to many people praise the series for being to complex to run well, when in fact it runs bad because of old thinking and lack of "love" in changing that (single thread/core most of the time).

This too should be part of Arma's epitaph -- the seeds for the current state were laid years ago by Arma fans who (bluntly speaking) drank the kool-aid and mistook underlying faults for strengths.

@ antoineflemming and Alwarren: froggyluv's remark that "you could feel the excitement they had for this 'new frontier'" about underwater (and how promoted it was) is pretty telling, because it shows that the devs are (and were) perfectly capable of excited passion that is/was transmuted into effort... just for different things than what (some? many?) fans were excited and passionate for.

And for those who were asking: No, dev will most likly not answer your questions in this thread because there is just too much whining. They mostly come foward on constructive thread and I don't blame then at all. Also, the dev might look like they are less enthousiast about their game, but remember that before they were always sharing their enjoyement about the features they were working on and they got jumped on badly for that ("but you promised this and that! where are my things!!!!111!!|!" while some dev simply shared what they were working on). So they learned their lessons. Now we get most info through the SITREP and the likes.

This to date remains one of the greatest ironies of that "Axed Features" thread, that the experience of it seemingly taught the devs to do the opposite of what the posters in that thread seemed to want.

I don't think BI are too ambitious, just that they should have waited, dumped the underwater thing and released at a later date

And this right here was exactly not what was going to happen, DnA alluded to as much as soon as the Steamworks and cemented it with the confirmation that the campaign would be released post-launch: no more waiting, no 'releasing later for a fuller game', they were shipping in whatever state it was in by the pre-launch data lock. That ship sailed over a year ago.

More to the point, BI consciously made the decision to eat the PR hit from launching with no SP campaign than to eat the PR hit from slipping the release date a third time... and between "walking back features" or "walking back the release date", they instead walked back features rather than miss the release date. (Heck, if what froggyluv said about the devs' own excitement is true, then they wouldn't have "dumped the underwater thing"... and might have even sacrificed something else for it.)

[antoineflemming 14]

I'm not sure what level of enthusiasm was seemingly there in 2011-2012, but it's not a secret that the winter of 2012 was a pretty low point, not just due to the arrests/jailings (an obvious given) but also other unspecified reasons that officially have only been alluded to by the project lead/creative director.

Yeah, I'd say that was a large part of it. IDK, it's just that information was flowing regularly about the game, the community seemed real excited about the game, and the new prospects, there were the weekly dev blog updates, the frequent teases, could just be because I had a lot of enthusiasm about it (part of that was about the story, which I feel was more interesting than what the campaign has turned out to be).

[chortles 263]

could just be because I had a lot of enthusiasm about it

I admittedly believe that such enthusiasm probably colored the perceptions of a bunch of people on these forums...

The thing is that I distinctly remember "bumps on the road" in mid-2012 well before the arrests/jailings and the 'mum' winter (during which the project leads changed), suggesting that something was already going wrong development-wise but that things simply snowballed as 2012 went on until the 'low point' of winter 2012, and fueling my persisting belief that DnA was essentially made project lead to rescue the game from finally becoming "more trouble than it's worth" in Maruk's eyes.

At least with the campaign, the reason why the campaign went from that story to "what the campaign has turned out to be" is obvious, or at least the circumstantial evidence points to it being much the same reason as Limnos becoming Altis.

[windies 11]

It's not like I don't get the concept that they're burned out with ArmA, but why release ArmA 3 like it is now? I understand, but I'm also a consumer, a customer, not BI's friend or confidant or long time lover, I'm here because they sold me a product and I bought the product based on their advertising, marketing, and developer released statements. So as much as I can understand "Hey guys you're burned out I get it", I'm still a customer here with a product that feels half finished and a lesser quality and quantity than previous iterations of the product.

I know this game and this engine has much more potential than we see, but none of it matters until the developers focus on tapping into it and fixing the existing problems. That's really what needs to happen, because content be damned, if this is the last ArmA then as much as I hate to say it the community will more than likely keep content flowing. I don't think it's their job or their obligation by any means, but the community can't fix deep rooted engine issue's and source code issue's unless BI releases the source which I highly doubt will happen. That's really where the focus should be as far as BI themselves.

I was secretly hoping that this might actually be the ArmA game I always wanted, that it might fix some of the long standing issue's with the series and the engine. Anymore though I just kind of see it for what it is, and the way everyone makes it sound, we might as well just give up any hope and let BI be BI, let them move on to another project so hopefully they can pull the same thing more or less again with another series.

[chortles 263]

It's not like I don't get the concept that they're burned out with ArmA, but why release ArmA 3 like it is now?

I've heard at least one answer essentially suggest "because it was at some point too late to NOT release it"...

[dnk 13]

If this series was ever going to die, it would've been with A2 or OA. It nearly did, but I believe A3 sold pretty well, and clearly there's still a profitable market for the product, which means they're going to keep producing for it. Some of their devs ran off to do Kingdom Come, so I guess there's your "wild west RPG" group gone. I expect at least another major expansion, and if that does decently then another full title down the line. They've got a second series to work on now (SA), one which is paying for itself and then some, so there's no reason to drop the flagship, just branch out with additional ships.

The biggest problems with the game are:

1) too big of a map scope (50000km2 island and like 3 armored vehicles?)

2) poor performance (includes poor AI)

They can focus more on assets and less on A FULL-SCALE REPLICA OF AN ENTIRE COUNTRY for the next one. At some point, more is less.

The AI sucks because they've run out of processing room to improve it. This isn't so much a coding issue but a resource issue. You just can't do much more until you fix the performance side. That means multithreading/multicoring/CUDA/paralleling/etc. I think that's the biggest bump going down the road, because it's by far the most difficult thing to do.

Do note we're not going to hear much about that until it happens. They're going to keep very tight-lipped about any serious engine rewrites until it's a sure thing, and we all know why. So they may be well underway on that, or maybe they haven't even put it on the to-do list.

If it's the latter, well, A3 may very well be the final installment - that's a white flag. 2000s code (32-bit, single-core) has no place in 2015 or 2016. They should know already that they can't get away with that again. They've pushed it as far as it and the fans will go. Hopefully, the SA's money/resources give them enough to do such a rewrite and export the changes back to the Arma series later on.

But clearly, they're still committed to this series and improving it. It's just there's so much needs improving.

[chortles 263]

I agree with this sentiment: "Hopefully, the SA's money/resources give them enough to do such a rewrite and export the changes back to the Arma series later on."

I would however add that hopefully it's not only additional money/resources that the DayZ standalone bought BI but also TIME... I honestly believe that some posters here are actually too used to the usual "it's done when it's done" rule with mods and just can't reconcile the image of the previously-vaunted 'developer BI' with a 'publisher BI' that would dare to actually hold Arma 3 (and its devs) to a different standard where "the game MUST be released within a certain period of time."

I'll note that until the DayZ standalone public alpha release, BI saw no "DayZ SA" revenue at all, just "DayZ mod" and Arma revenue... therefore, Arma 3 couldn't actually benefit from the DayZ SA in that respect because there was no such income coming in yet, and BI has never publicly disclosed just how much revenue they made from Arma 2/OA/CO/etc. sales after DayZ went big. Ironically, until the DayZ standalone public alpha release, Arma 3 actually looked like it had had a better development because it had actually launched at all whereas DayZ practically came off to people as vaporware...

Edited January 29, 2014 by Chortles

[oryang 10]

Maybe it's time you learn to be grateful, SayJimwoo. I run Arma 3 on medium settings at 30~40 fps. (I've also bought Battefield4 which I get about 15fps and glitches which take up about 60% of my monitor; lol) So perhaps you could consider yourself lucky that you own such a high quality PC. I'm sure I don't speak for myself when I say that having some people complain about not being able to run a game on ultra settings at 60 fps really ticks me off, not to mention that it turns me green with envy :D

P.S. I'm very sorry if my comment ticked you off. I mean no offense whatsoever by posting my reply.

[roshnak 41]

Which I'll note have fans that are way less likely to withhold money in lieu of a specific "standard"

More likely they just haven't had time to experience a decade of a series with remarkably few advancements. It's not like the standards that people hold for this game are unreasonable. Most people just want it to be up to par with other modern video games in terms of features and performance. Some people have probably just heard "Maybe next game" a few too many times.

that someone having also made negative and disparaging remarks about specific devs' professional performance, decision-making, game design philosophies, and even their truthfulness...

I don't know who or what you're talking about specifically here, but I feel like professional performance and game design philosophies are totally fair game when criticizing a video game company, as long as you provide evidence to back up your statements.

This to date remains one of the greatest ironies of that "Axed Features" thread, that the experience of it seemingly taught the devs to do the opposite of what the posters in that thread seemed to want.

It's really the policy they should have had from the start. No good can come from announcing features that not only are you 100% sure you can get in game, but have already been almost entirely implemented. I might even go so far as to say you should wait until they are fully implemented. Best case scenario: people no what to expect. Worst case? Everyone is angry at you for not fulfilling promises.

I think the real problem people had in that thread was that BIS made all these announcements and then just kind of tapered off talking about them, almost like they hoped people would forget, which left a lot of people confused and frustrated. Not talking too much about what you are working on is a good policy in advance. It doesn't work nearly as well when applied retroactively.

I've heard at least one answer essentially suggest "because it was at some point too late to NOT release it"...

On the one hand, this sucks and I get it. On the other hand, though, this doesn't really make anything better. It might even make it worse.

[Tonci87 163]

The Problem wasn´t that they annonced features, not at all.

The Devs went forward and said "we´d like to do that, we plan to make this ,etc" This was totally fine by me. I enjoyed discussing those things.

The Problem is that no Dev bothered to come forward and explain that, and why a feature was axed. I really wouldn´t have been angry at them at all if that had happened.

We only learned that things were axed much later, the actual decisions were made much much earlier. Still no one bothered to pass that information until it was too late (eg. until they had our money). And that is why they got so much criticism. They could have avoided that, not by not telling anything in the first place, but by beeing open and honest all the time, not just when it is convenient.

[dnk 13]

More likely they just haven't had time to experience a decade of a series with remarkably few advancements.

What advancements do you want? Personally, I can't go back to A1/2 anymore. I'll play them in AiA, but that's it. I miss ACE, that too, but that wasn't BI of course. I'd always like more (I could list 20 things off the top), but I'm still aware that BIS is a small fry (so they can't do all that), and I really just want their tech to keep pace. If they can deliver a 2014-esque FPS game that actually runs well that's in the same genre/style as ArmA 1/2, I'm happy. I don't need 103 new systems per game or every latest/greatest bit of eye candy/physics (some yes, but not all). Just keep pace. They aren't, they never do, and it's becoming a bigger and bigger issue as "keeping pace" now requires a quantum leap into parallel processing and 64-bit.

Given the state of the game, I'm glad they cut features. Clearly, they had to. They should've cut more. They should've cut diving and underwater and focused on the core game more. My issue is they try to advance too much. I'm fine with a well-running "update" of past titles for each new release, with some new/upgraded assets and a new island. That's all. If they can add a new system or two, like stances or much improved AI, I'm very happy.

[Alwarren 2767]

We only learned that things were axed much later, the actual decisions were made much much earlier. Still no one bothered to pass that information until it was too late (eg. until they had our money). And that is why they got so much criticism. They could have avoided that, not by not telling anything in the first place, but by beeing open and honest all the time, not just when it is convenient.

Agreed. A lot of issues in the past could have been handled more gracefully with more open communication. But a lot of things were just swept under the rug, without notice, and only discovered later. In fact, especially during the Alpha in Beta phase the sentence "It's an Alpha" or "It's a Beta" became very common among those that wanted to defend the devs at all costs, I remember someone saying that in a post even ONE WEEK before the release... Only that after the release, the things discussed were still not in, and the mantra shifted to "Wait for the patch".

Take the campaign as an example, I can perfectly understand that it was done like it is, but were did we learn that there will be no campaign in the release version? From a video of a third party game reviewer. Instead of BIS coming out saying "Since we're short on time, the campaign will be released as a three-episode DLC", the involuntary reveal caused a lot of outcry. Totally avoidable; obviously some people would have still complained, of course, but the majority of shitstorms would have only smelled half as bad.

[NordKindchen 12]

The AI sucks because they've run out of processing room to improve it. This isn't so much a coding issue but a resource issue. You just can't do much more until you fix the performance side. That means multithreading/multicoring/CUDA/paralleling/etc. I think that's the biggest bump going down the road, because it's by far the most difficult thing to do.

This is abolutely not true. Many important problems of the AI can be fixed without much impact on performance as is proven by various mods for Arma 2 and Arma 3. Many other problems can be fixed by simple tweaks. For example you cant tell me it would be an enormous performance impact to implement a realistic accuracy for burst firing at distance in different stances for the AI.

Same as that the AI instantaniously shares the knowledge of your position once you are spotted (example: 10 AI soldiesr standing 500 meters away. One of them spots you. The other 9 start INSTANTLY firing at you. IT was even proven that this works through bushes - so you can be shot through bushes when you are spotted by an enemy AI with line of sight to you.)

These basic flaws are not connected to performance issues but to bad fine tuning.

Thats whats Armas problem is in nearly everything.

Example?

-The body armor system: Nice on the surface, but when you cannot kill someone with a shot to his plain face because the hitbox of the helmet is still over his face thats definately bad implementation!

-Armor system: The current system is based on HP while they have the ability of a Penetration related damage system lying underneat this. They just dont use it. And how long did it take the a single guy to mod something similar into the game? That should have been BIS job!

-Sittting in vehicles: You can sit and look out of the back of vehicles or the side of little birds but can you shoot? No! Because as BIS states: It is impossible to implement sth like this. (they really said this). Soooo....jeah...

....

-The new stance system: Its a good and nice idea! However the animations are not nearly finished!!! If you go into one of the new stances your soldier wont move his feed but instead hover above the ground like a manneqin fixed to a crane.

-The "new movement system": Arma 2 had an aiming deadzone. Arma 3 has this forced off. Good decision. However they broke their animation with it! Where before your soldier would move his torso left and right before attempting to move his legs, now with the new system your soldier will ONLY be able to move his body in its whole! This is highly unrealistic and looks rather bad for the trained eye. And on top of that it was even implemented right before the change and was broken after it.

-The effects: They are just laughable and they are just a plain copy from Arma 2. Even games like BC2 3 years ago had better effects. I am talking about better and not hollywood like ones. And yes I know Blastcore but thats BIS job and not Optical Snares in the first place.

I could go on but I am sure you see the pattern: There are a lot of good ideas but they are not worked out to the end.

And in my opinion its not that BIs has had to ambitious plans. They were quite realistic plans. But somehow they didnt manage to finish them right though.

Thats just my feeling after a year of Arma Alpha testing.

Best regards

[dnk 13]

Agreed that you could tweak the AI better, but they're still going to be dumb as rocks in a lot of situations because coding for such situations would take a bigger performance hit. That was my point. But, yes, I'd like to see those AI tweaks.

Regarding the rest, they already had a ton of feature creep and then cut. It's nice that they've decided to continue implementing some of these systems (awkwardly at first), but a few of those issues I don't mind, hell never noticed. The poor explosion effects suck, but again with the too-many-featuritis. I hope it gets improved down the line, but given the performance issues we already have, having complex explosions with tons of particles doesn't work so well.

[NordKindchen 12]

Thats again a misunderstanding=) Good effects dont necessairly need a big performance hit. Neither do they need tons of particles.

I can garantee you that you can build good effects without any of the above. However thats something that requires a lot of skill and love for detail to do.

I wish there would be a tutorial on chaning effects out there. I actually even asked Optical Snare to maybe create a small tutorial but I got no answer.

[chortles 263]

I don't know who or what you're talking about specifically here, but I feel like professional performance and game design philosophies are totally fair game when criticizing a video game company, as long as you provide evidence to back up your statements.

Yeeeeeah, see, this certain person wasn't delivering on that front either. ;)

Not talking too much about what you are working on is a good policy in advance. It doesn't work nearly as well when applied retroactively.

Agreed, although in an odd way this somewhat validates some of the thinking behind AAA "yearly franchise" game development starting concurrent or so soon after the latest installment... then again, if BI didn't talk up features until they'd already been implemented, you'd probably get accusations of vaporware...

On the one hand, this sucks and I get it. On the other hand, though, this doesn't really make anything better. It might even make it worse.

In what sense? Admittedly such an explanation isn't supposed to magically "make anything better"...

I ask this since the devs have alluded to "the state of the game" having bottomed out during the winter of 2012 (although during said season, Rocket/the DayZ SA were also in a really bad way)... but I have gotten the sense that, as others have voiced, at some point not only did it it become too late to hope for better, whether or not fans realized it, but also at some point it became too late to flat-out cancel the game... and at some point I'm pretty sure that it became too late for BI as a publisher to even delay the game (i.e. possibly due to contractual obligation) as well.

Edited January 29, 2014 by Chortles

[windies 11]

As Tonci put it, the reason people were up in arms over the axed feature's was because of how that information was released and the timing of that information, I.E. after they got our money. It's not that BI promised feature's and failed, though I'm sure there would still be some criticism, not nearly the amount and lengths of what they saw post ArmA 3 alpha/beta.

No one has a problem with a developer saying, "We want to try to implement this", but what's annoying is when you're sold something with the "loose" promise that X feature will be in and then find out 6 months later that it won't be and you find out from a 3rd party source. It just makes it look bad.

[-Coulum- 35]

When I watch David's weekly updates over at Wolfire (who's alpha i've now owned for 2 years), the guy is just excited about some new physics feature he just implemented or some new graphical shader tech -thats EVERY WEEK! Limit Theory, same thing as it just absolutely resonates. When's the last time you saw a BI dev shoot a vid about his new passionate development in AI?

I can't really tell whether its lack of passion or their increasing size that limits them from really expressing that individual "passion". Or maybe its a combo of both. But one thing I feel very strongly about, is that if there is a lack of motivation, I this community is not helping. Its only making things worse.

I like when my work is appreciated. When my work is appreciated, I feel good and I want to do more of it.

I don't like when my work goes unnoticed and unappreciated. When this happens repeatedly, despite hard work and improvement on my part, I begin to become unmotivated. Why should I try to improve things when no one will appreciate it and instead continuously point out weaknesses?

Which one sounds more like our community right now. If the devs are anything like me, I don't blame them for not being too gung ho. There have been improvements lately in the game. How much did people care for them. How many instead just complained about the weaknesses. How may are gong to reply: "Pfft, improvements! what improvements? you mean the teh FPS loss!! Yeah thanks alot BI!!!"

And I think the whole "if we don't whine they won't change" mentality is twisted. Yes giving construction criticism, so goals can be set, is good. That is what the feedback tracker is for. But for most issues we are past the point of "constructive criticism". We are beating a dead horse. BIS knows what issues need to be fixed. Now its a matter of time (and alot of it). But whining and being negative rather than appreciating the little improvements that are added is not going to make that time any shorter. In fact it is going to just make it longer.

Anyhow that is my spiel.

We only learned that things were axed much later, the actual decisions were made much much earlier. Still no one bothered to pass that information until it was too late (eg. until they had our money). And that is why they got so much criticism. They could have avoided that, not by not telling anything in the first place, but by beeing open and honest all the time, not just when it is convenient.

But would you not have bought arma 3 if you knew how it would be on day release? People use the "they took our money before they told us the truth" card alot, but really they didn't. They made it quite clear what you were buying when you bought it. whether it was alpha beta or campaignless official release. I personally think that for the most part people are just frustrated with the lack of features/fixes they expected to be implemented. Probably not you in particular. But I don't think anything BI said, no matter when or how, would soften the community outrage to, say, no 3d editor.

No one has a problem with a developer saying, "We want to try to implement this", but what's annoying is when you're sold something with the "loose" promise that X feature will be in and then find out 6 months later that it won't be and you find out from a 3rd party source. It just makes it look bad.

Okay I can understand that its frustrating. I was very disappointed when beta hit and I realized "this is it". But what do BIS have to do to show you that they want to make things right. They are releasing a patch every single day. Is that not enough? No offence, but to be honest it just sounds silly when people say things like "They lied to us! They stole our money! We had to hear from a 3rd party source!". Its far to personal for the simple transaction that is buying a game. And in my opinion people are holding it over BI's heads for far too long. Even if you took it personally, some time you gotta learn to get over it.