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sayjimwoo

Bohemia Interactive's ambitions are always set too high.

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The competition will more likely come from an indie group that licences an engine use for thier own and probably start on kickstarter , the market isnt big enough firAAA to invest in even if it was better and more stable , they deal in tens of millions of individual sales not one or two million people .

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full squad control, full AI in the scale of hundreds if not thousands

if that is refering to arma then i'm sure we are playing two different games ;)

full squad control? i wish...and these AI numbers are beyond unrealistic. that's the whole point here. arma is great and all but before we talk about what arma pulls off in comparison to other games we should maybe define what pulling off actually means. :p

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The competition will more likely come from an indie group that licences an engine use for thier own and probably start on kickstarter , the market isnt big enough firAAA to invest in even if it was better and more stable , they deal in tens of millions of individual sales not one or two million people .

This.

Also, Star Citizen doesn't have a ton of sales. It has a relatively small number of sales (compared to top selling AAA games) for a whole lot of money.

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if that is refering to arma then i'm sure we are playing two different games ;)

full squad control? i wish...and these AI numbers are beyond unrealistic. that's the whole point here. arma is great and all but before we talk about what arma pulls off in comparison to other games we should maybe define what pulling off actually means. :p

Ok maybe not thousands unless you count caching, but certainly hundreds as the countless hours on cti can attest to. As far as pulling it off, yes they did. I would liken something more along the lines of ofpdr as not pulling it off...ya know, with things like 64 unit cap and teammates needing to be tethered within 100m..and I bought that game day 1.

The sad truth is that so far...games just aren't giving us editors, the ability to control squads on any level, really nothing even close to the reasons I fell in luv with ofp. The ghost recons the swat 4s, the r6's, the battlefield's with bots or mod support -gone..So in relative terms, yes, full squad control

---------- Post added at 14:33 ---------- Previous post was at 14:30 ----------

Star Citizen is pre alpha so sales haven't even started. Breaking all Kickstarter records, anyone with business savvy is sure to take notice

Edited by froggyluv

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Ok maybe not thousands unless you count caching, but certainly hundreds as the countless hours on cti can attest to. As far as pulling it off, yes they did. I would liken something more along the lines of ofpdr as not pulling it off...ya know, with things like 64 unit cap and teammates needing to be tethered within 100m..and I bought that game day 1.

The sad truth is that so far...games just aren't giving us editors, the ability to control squads on any level, really nothing even close to the reasons I fell in luv with ofp. The ghost recons the swat 4s, the r6's, the battlefield's with bots or mod support -gone..So in relative terms, yes, full squad control

---------- Post added at 14:33 ---------- Previous post was at 14:30 ----------

Star Citizen is pre alpha so sales haven't even started. Breaking all Kickstarter records, anyone with business savvy is sure to take notice

Yeah, Bad Benson isn't talking about whether or not you can put 500 AI in a mission if you want. He's talking about whether the game will still run well if you do that. Just because Arma does things that other games don't doesn't mean it does those things well. That's what he means when he says "pulling it off."

I don't understand why everyone gets so defensive about this stuff. No one is saying they don't like Arma, they are just saying there is room for improvement. It seems like every time someone gets too specific about what is wrong with the game someone jumps in to say, "No, you're wrong. I agree there is room for improvement, but you're wrong that there is a problem. But I agree there is room for improvement. But there's nothing wrong with the game. But I'm not saying it couldn't be improved."

On the Star Citizen front: Sales have started. What do you think people are paying for when they back the game on Kickstarter? Furthermore: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/single-ship-packages <---Sales right here. They take credit cards and everything.

And yeah, anyone with business savvy is going to realize that they can milk Kickstarter for money before paying for anything themselves, because they can get $100 for a copy of the game and a t-shirt before they even start developing. A game raising a lot of money on Kickstarter doesn't necessarily mean it has a lot of fans. It just means that the fans that it does have are willing to spend a lot of money to see the game made.

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Just because Arma does things that other games don't doesn't mean it does those things well. .

It does them well enough, that being CTI, that many have had countless fun with large scale engagements from OFP on. Does that mean there is no room for improvement? Absolutely not but those of us that enjoy that type of gameplay do enjoy it as well as have no alternative being that other publishers are to afraid to try.

don't understand why everyone gets so defensive about this stuff. No one is saying they don't like Arma, they are just saying there is room for improvement. It seems like every time someone gets too specific about what is wrong with the game someone jumps in to say, "No, you're wrong. I agree there is room for improvement, but you're wrong that there is a problem. But I agree there is room for improvement. But there's nothing wrong with the game. But I'm not saying it couldn't be improved."

First off, I have a family, career and full time life -so to be frank I care little for the 'feelings' of a game company some thousands of miles away. I enjoy there series since 2001 but also hope and pray for some competition. What I do take issue with is careless statements such as "If another big company wanted to, they could kick BIS's asses in this genre.." type of tripe. It's yet to be proven and until someone succeeds, it comes across as pedantic posturing to insult a company in such a flippant manner. Criticizing certain attributes of the series is completely fair game -writing them off or worse, taking that parent talking to a misbehaving child tone I find rank.

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AAA is run by suits and money men simply weigh risk, cost of production to projected sales and the above is risky as hell....

That is your answer. Bohemia already has the tech going, they'll need research time, developing time, etc., which is not cheap in western states. It doesn't mean they can't do it, it simply means, it cost to much at the moment for the small market. For instance, Hitman and Tomb Rider sold like what, 5-6 millions and was barely enough? One studio just by himself cannot do it and investors want something more real, already proven - and that's why we have the same gameplay over and over again (arma is not that different as well).

To say "if Bf would go ArmA's way" is like saying "if CoD went Arma's way", same stuff. They are making more money doing that type of games. Day Z is great, probably will sell like 4-5 millions in total for the first 1-2 years since alpha launch (if Dean actually pulls it of and in turns out to be good), but that's nothing really (still, perhaps outsell Arma, lol) :D. Bare in mind, this type of complex game would simply not work on consoles, not even on next gen ones.

On the other hand, Bohemia DID show the interest of going forward with this game. Control is better than arma 2, graphics wise can go shoulder to shoulder with other modern games, sound is far better than arma 2 (communications, chatter in general), it runs better, etc. I would say they are looking at things like different APIs, HSA and so on, but they are relatively small and don't want to go there that fast. That's the problem and that's why we have problems like AI which may be more advanced than others, but it's still quite stupid, boring and "machine like". It is there, but not really fun or THAT good after you start to play with it. Size it's a little bit pointless since the map is EMPTY. No civilians or others NPC, a snake or rabbit and that's it. Performance is playable and that's about it and if you really try to do something complex, the game just collapses on itself.

These are all real problems, no point in avoid them. The devs most definitely know that and are making small steps to fix them. The thing is, they may be to small and you don't actually get a "finished" product until vary late in the life cycle.

Edited by calin_banc

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What? No, the financial reward is not there. This is a niche market. Games like Call of Duty and Battlefield generate far more sales than Arma does, and most of the people who are interested in playing this kind of game in the first place are already aware of Arma and purchasing it.

the standalone of DayZ is still in Alpha yet they have sold over $20 million (far more than ARMA) If Bohemia wants to remain competitive and keep that audience they better have some kind of plan for a new engine otherwise we will see triple A developers create an alternative that is far far far better than DayZ

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If another big company wanted to, they could kick BIS's asses in this genre..

this is more about scale than anything. at least from my side. the genre part is a whole different story. acting like a small studio like BI couldn't be competed with in that regard (scale) is a bit naive. the question is more why it's not done and you got that one right. at least in my view.

Criticizing certain attributes of the series is completely fair game -writing them off or worse, taking that parent talking to a misbehaving child tone I find rank.

i agree about tone sometimes but let's not derail into the whole "hurt feelings cycle" again. i find the title pretty interesting. too much ambition is not 100% bad. it's not all black and white. issues don't mean that BI totally failed. but they are real. and many of them persist over 4 games in the series. for me personally that's the most frustrating part of it.

yes the AI is something special. i fell in love with ofp partly because of the free roaming AI (all i did was test them in certain situation back then) and i'll be the first one to defend the AI against blind insult from outside. but let's be honest about it for a second. it still can't drive (on roads! aka predestined paths). and the indoor AI is still a dirty hack.

i'm all for keeping it polite but let's not get overly sensitive. i agree that you can have a lot of fun still in the editor but even after testing some [perf] servers today MP is still a no go for me. i'm scratching on the "playable" mark but only occasionally. and my specs are "recommended"...it's good being vocal about things. after all MP improvements are now an actual bullet point in recent changelogs and roadmaps/sitreps.

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What I do take issue with is careless statements such as "If another big company wanted to, they could kick BIS's asses in this genre.." type of tripe. It's yet to be proven and until someone succeeds, it comes across as pedantic posturing to insult a company in such a flippant manner.

What about when it comes from a person within BI?

"It's like, I think that if DICE wanted to kill Arma, all they'd need to do is release some modding tools tomorrow. Psh, gone." - Dean 'Rocket' Hall

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i find the title pretty interesting. too much ambition is not 100% bad. it's not all black and white. issues don't mean that BI totally failed. but they are real. and many of them persist over 4 games in the series. for me personally that's the most frustrating part of it.

That's the frustrating part, when you see things persist past a reasonable point and it goes from "hey guys you should fix this" to "guys you really really need to fix this", and still watching it be skipped for some ambitious side project. I saw work being done into the AI configuration and it was actually starting to go somewhere, now it's on to soldier protection with nothing major being done with the AI in awhile. It seems like BI picks something, does it halfway and then gets bored and moves on to something else, It's almost like someone with ADHD. Soldier protection kind of feels like a band-aid this is what we can do right now but it's not perfect fix, and it's really lacking in some situations without any kind of incapacitated state or proper wounding and ballistic simulation of vests or even just proper simulation of the area's a vest would cover.

It's not about being negative for negative sake, but these are real issue's, they may even be issue's that keep me from buying the next title if they persist. That's why I voice my criticism about it, because I don't want it to have to come to a point where I no longer support BI or ArmA because I like ArmA and I like BI. I try to keep it polite, but sometimes when something sucks, the only thing to say is that it sucks and no amount of sugar coating is going to make it sound better unless you excuse the fact that it sucks, which is what most people seem to try to do.

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Soldier protection kind of feels like a band-aid this is what we can do right now but it's not perfect fix, and it's really lacking in some situations without any kind of incapacitated state or proper wounding and ballistic simulation of vests or even just proper simulation of the area's a vest would cover.
You say "even just proper simulation of the area's a vest would cover", but I distinctly recall oukej outright saying that yeah, they can't get that working in-game right now for whatever reason so the tweaks are a case of "this is what we can do right now".

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this is more about scale than anything. at least from my side. the genre part is a whole different story. acting like a small studio like BI couldn't be competed with in that regard (scale) is a bit naive. the question is more why it's not done and you got that one right. at least in my view.

i agree about tone sometimes but let's not derail into the whole "hurt feelings cycle" again. i find the title pretty interesting. too much ambition is not 100% bad. it's not all black and white. issues don't mean that BI totally failed. but they are real. and many of them persist over 4 games in the series. for me personally that's the most frustrating part of it.

yes the AI is something special. i fell in love with ofp partly because of the free roaming AI (all i did was test them in certain situation back then) and i'll be the first one to defend the AI against blind insult from outside. but let's be honest about it for a second. it still can't drive (on roads! aka predestined paths). and the indoor AI is still a dirty hack.

i'm all for keeping it polite but let's not get overly sensitive. i agree that you can have a lot of fun still in the editor but even after testing some [perf] servers today MP is still a no go for me. i'm scratching on the "playable" mark but only occasionally. and my specs are "recommended"...it's good being vocal about things. after all MP improvements are now an actual bullet point in recent changelogs and roadmaps/sitreps.

Well to be honest, it's been like 13 years and no one's really come close. Could they in terms of scale and genre? I honestly don't know but it's pretty strange that they haven't even attempted save a failed Dragon Rising and seemingly the RTI attempt. I really, really wanted to see how that RTI was gonna pan out as their tech demos were that promising, even if not for general public. To have gotten as far as they seemingly did and just stop is pretty telling. What possibly shut down that operation that seemed as as far along as it was? Dragon Rising had high hopes as well, talking of a full AI playbook that reacted dynamically to the players forces and of large scale, open world military action. Yet, they were severely limited to 64 entities?!? Im not talking even fighting units, that includes tents, poles anything. In that respect, Arma truly does feature thousands of entities :P

What about when it comes from a person within BI?

"It's like, I think that if DICE wanted to kill Arma, all they'd need to do is release some modding tools tomorrow. Psh, gone." - Dean 'Rocket' Hall

Well obviously I disagree with him as well. Modding tools for BF2 allowed expanded maps and guess what? The AI just absolutely froze in the extended terrain. Their AI was not free roaming like Arma's in which they'll just start walking anywhere and thats even when they did support bots. Honestly thought by their fourth iteration, their bots would be pretty studly on giant terrains -but they closed shop on them. Sorry but I call them out as failures in this dept or at the very least sellouts. They would have to develop AI from scratch again capable of the things Arma bots can do in CTI -and thats quite abit despite their shortcomings. Remember when Dayz was taking off and disgruntled programmers from AAA companies were awed and jealous by the freedom given to the direction of Dayz? One even posted here about his frustration of constantly regurgitating the same old formulas again and again without room for new direction. Hopefully these types will run a successful kickstarter one day expanding out into our favorite niche and giving us proper competition.

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Well to be honest, it's been like 13 years and no one's really come close. Could they in terms of scale and genre? I honestly don't know but it's pretty strange that they haven't even attempted save a failed Dragon Rising and seemingly the RTI attempt. I really, really wanted to see how that RTI was gonna pan out as their tech demos were that promising, even if not for general public. To have gotten as far as they seemingly did and just stop is pretty telling. What possibly shut down that operation that seemed as as far along as it was? Dragon Rising had high hopes as well, talking of a full AI playbook that reacted dynamically to the players forces and of large scale, open world military action. Yet, they were severely limited to 64 entities?!? Im not talking even fighting units, that includes tents, poles anything. In that respect, Arma truly does feature thousands of entities :P
I wouldn't compare RTI at all, considering that the US Army presumably took a pass on 'em for reasons having little to do with what we'd be looking for in a video game.

But tbh, I would agree that it's telling that Dragon Rising was basically the only non-mod attempt at an "Arma competitor".

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tha one made no sense.

As soon as someone says that ArmA is unoptimized or could use a brand new engine, the apologists come out of the woodworks to remind us all that RV is superior to all other engines because "BATTLEFIELD 4 CAN'T RUN ALTIS!" while completely missing the point about RV being bloated and outdated.

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it's kinda funny compare something, what not even being finished. Lets compare rh-commachie with mi-28 then, and m1 abrams with t-100 "black eagle".

---------- Post added at 03:43 ---------- Previous post was at 03:41 ----------

As soon as someone says that ArmA is unoptimized or could use a brand new engine, the apologists come out of the woodworks to remind us all that RV is superior to all other engines because "BATTLEFIELD 4 CAN'T RUN ALTIS!" while completely missing the point about RV being bloated and outdated.

there are cars from 50's what can outrun some modern ones from today, so what? Because frostbyte is newer, does it mean, it's cappable of everything RV engine does?

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Nobody is saying Frostbite should replace RV, you're just using it as a strawman. Just because RV4 (or whichever one we're on) can run a map like Altis doesn't mean it's perfect or that it couldn't be improved on.

BIS should start over with ArmA 4 (if there is one) and write a new engine from scratch instead of patching up this twelve-year-old frankenstein.

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Well to be honest, it's been like 13 years and no one's really come close. Could they in terms of scale and genre? I honestly don't know but it's pretty strange that they haven't even attempted save a failed Dragon Rising and seemingly the RTI attempt. I really, really wanted to see how that RTI was gonna pan out as their tech demos were that promising, even if not for general public. To have gotten as far as they seemingly did and just stop is pretty telling. What possibly shut down that operation that seemed as as far along as it was? Dragon Rising had high hopes as well, talking of a full AI playbook that reacted dynamically to the players forces and of large scale, open world military action. Yet, they were severely limited to 64 entities?!? Im not talking even fighting units, that includes tents, poles anything. In that respect, Arma truly does feature thousands of entities :P

well you seem to think that BI's coders are some kind of prodigies that no one in the industry can match. i just disagree on that. ;) the question is more why no one tried. in my opinion most studios want to create a distinct experience rather than just a platform to play around with. something like "running simulator 2013" aka walking around for hours looking for something to happen is not something that many devs find appealing i can imagine. there is more a trend of being afraid to lose the players attention (no judgement from me here, just pointing it out). it's not all there is in dayZ but try to see it with the eyes of someone who isn't the typical arma player.

did no one come close?

scale? yes ofc. many games come close. just cause is even bigger i think. genre? not so much.

about DR. i'm the first one to hate on codemaster's weak try on the ofp thing but i can imagine that the reason they are putting caps on things is because they didn't go all the way and also to not create something that people can easily break. you can easily "break" arma by maxing out certain options and placing too much stuff (too easily :p). that is a good thing but i can also see why a company like codemasters would be afraid of that (bunch of pussies ;)). it' stupid but QA is QA. if it runs like shit most companies limit it. BI doesn't. it's good and almost heroic on the one hand but on the other has nothing to do with the fact that arma 3 scales worse than arma 2 when it comes to AI/placed objects numbers. not all comparison is with outside things. it might change/improve slowly but so far it's a problem.

i hope too that more devs will have the courage to create more raw games like arma. that's where arma is really a sim at heart. not necessarily when it comes to being overly realistic. although it is, compared to the games people like to compare it to for what ever reason. it's more that you can simulate a lot of situations and it's very open to your input in a lot of regards. like a real simulation. "what would happen if...".

people knew about arma and what it does before dayZ and arma still was niche (sales wise). so thinking that dayZ is so big because of it's arma aspects is only half the story. there are some destinct parts of dayZ that made it popular. zombies are number one combined with the whole open survival kind of thing. that is something that many people longed for for a while and that arma doesn't provide.

so saying that dayZ shows that the arma "concept" is a very marketable one doesn't make much sense since it ignores many other factors that created the dayZ hype.

Edited by Bad Benson

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well you seem to think that BI's coders are some kind of prodigies that no one in the industry can match. i just disagree on that. ;) the question is more why no one tried. in my opinion most studios want to create a distinct experience rather than just a platform to play around with. something like "running simulator 2013" aka walking around for hours looking for something to happen is not something that many devs find appealing i can imagine. there is more a trend of being afraid to lose the players attention (no judgement from me here, just pointing it out). it's not all there is in dayZ but try to see it with the eyes of someone who isn't the typical arma player.

.

Hehe, I do judge the general gamers extreme apathy and acceptance of mediocrity -but thats just me.

did no one come close?

scale? yes ofc. many games come close. just cause is even bigger i think. genre? not so much.

When I speak of Arma's scale I mean both the terrain size, the amount of potential units as well as the ability to control many if not all of them thru either direct or indirect means in a 3d world. I own JC2 and have only played it a few times but I don't recall that exactly fitting the bill

about DR. i'm the first one to hate on codemaster's weak try on the ofp thing but i can imagine that the reason they are putting caps on things is because they didn't go all the way and also to not create something that people can easily break. you can easily "break" arma by maxing out certain options and placing too much stuff (too easily :p). that is a good thing but i can also see why a company like codemasters would be afraid of that (bunch of pussies ;)). it' stupid but QA is QA. if it runs like shit most companies limit it. BI doesn't. it's good and almost heroic on the one hand but on the other has nothing to do with the fact that arma 3 scales worse than arma 2 when it comes to AI/placed objects numbers. not all comparison is with outside things. it might change/improve slowly but so far it's a problem.

Nah twas hardcoded in the engine. They tried mightily *cough* to up it and belive they got it to a staggering 82 though with a few hiccups. If it's anyone who should be clamoring for a new engine -it's DR fans..

i hope too that more devs will have the courage to create more raw games like arma. that's where arma is really a sim at heart. not necessarily when it comes to being overly realistic. although it is, compared to the games people like to compare it to for what ever reason. it's more that you can simulate a lot of situations and it's very open to your input in a lot of regards. like a real simulation. "what would happen if...".

Yep, sandbox gamers have a harder and harder time finding homes these days.

people knew about arma and what it does before dayZ and arma still was niche. so thinking that dayZ is so big because of it's arma aspects is only half the story. there are some destinct parts of dayZ that made it popular. zombies are number one combined with the whole open survival kind of thing. that is something that many people longed for for a while and that arma doesn't provide.

so saying that dayZ shows that the arma "concept" is a very marketable one doesn't make much sense since it ignores many other factors that created the dayZ hype.

I think zombies were just an interesting ingredient but what really drew them in was the PD as well as the Arma-type gameplay that threw away all the military rules, limitations, and dressings giving them unprecedented freedom along with the survival aspect. Most people that I've ever tried to get into Arma:

A: Don't like SP like I do

B. Were utterly turned off by MP due to lag, bad performance, lack of any communication with anyone on their team (arma players are famous assburgers), and lack of direction in too wide a landscape.

Dayz they didn't have to worry about that and everywhere on the island is potentially dangerous as well as possibly hold resources, so you never feel like your way outside the area of operations "just walking". Although I'm not a Dayz fan myself, it's actually a good things as it introduces more players to the type of gaming we enjoy. People may actually like the feeling of 1 bullet = death, they may like or at least tolerate not starting off in insta-action or needing to be funneled through a shooter storyline with no room for deviation. Happy that Dayz happened and perhaps, AAA may venture into these murky waters as well.

Edited by froggyluv

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What I do take issue with is careless statements such as "If another big company wanted to, they could kick BIS's asses in this genre.." type of tripe. It's yet to be proven and until someone succeeds, it comes across as pedantic posturing to insult a company in such a flippant manner. Criticizing certain attributes of the series is completely fair game -writing them off or worse, taking that parent talking to a misbehaving child tone I find rank.

I bolded a huge problem with your statement. It wouldn't be another big company because BIS isn't a big company in the first place. Why do you take issue with people saying that if a huge company with many times the funding of BIS tried to make a game like Arma they would probably make a more capable game? Guess what? Money and manpower are pretty important in carrying out large projects. Also, no one is trying to insult the company. This is what I was talking about.

It's not about being negative for negative sake, but these are real issue's, they may even be issue's that keep me from buying the next title if they persist.

If this game isn't brought up near the standards that it should have been in the first place, I'm not buying any more games from BIS. I've had a lot of fun with this series, but I can't justify throwing money at a company that hasn't demonstrated that it can make significant progress with follow up games. Blind faith isn't going to get me anything but an empty bank account. I made an exception in preordering Arma 3 and I almost regret it.

It's a shame because I really do love this series and want it to be as good as it should be.

You say "even just proper simulation of the area's a vest would cover", but I distinctly recall oukej outright saying that yeah, they can't get that working in-game right now for whatever reason so the tweaks are a case of "this is what we can do right now".

This is just evidence that the engine needs a serious overhaul and of some fairly poor thinking on BIS's part. First of all, modifying the hitboxes based on what equipment you are wearing shouldn't be impossible. Second of all, why even bother implementing the feature if you can't do it right in the first place? It does nothing but make people frustrated and BIS look bad.

I honestly don't know but it's pretty strange that they haven't even attempted save a failed Dragon Rising and seemingly the RTI attempt.

Well obviously I disagree with him as well. Modding tools for BF2 allowed expanded maps and guess what? The AI just absolutely froze in the extended terrain. Their AI was not free roaming like Arma's in which they'll just start walking anywhere and thats even when they did support bots. Honestly thought by their fourth iteration, their bots would be pretty studly on giant terrains -but they closed shop on them. Sorry but I call them out as failures in this dept or at the very least sellouts.

It's not strange at all that few companies have tried to compete with Arma. It's a small market without enough opportunity for profit to justify the work. Unless you are really passionate about the project (which BIS is) then it's just not worth doing. There aren't a lot of companies attempting to compete with Eagle Dynamics and DCS for similar reasons. The payoff isn't there for the work involved.

Also, stop talking about what DICE has accomplished with Battlefield. They aren't trying to do what Arma does so you can't compare the games.

Nobody is saying Frostbite should replace RV, you're just using it as a strawman. Just because RV4 (or whichever one we're on) can run a map like Altis doesn't mean it's perfect or that it couldn't be improved on.

BIS should start over with ArmA 4 (if there is one) and write a new engine from scratch instead of patching up this twelve-year-old frankenstein.

All of NeuroFunker's posts contain straw men.

The problem with writing a new engine from scratch is that it could potentially (probably?) take more time and effort than bringing this one up to snuff.

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What I do take issue with is careless statements such as "If another big company wanted to, they could kick BIS's asses in this genre.." type of tripe. It's yet to be proven and until someone succeeds, it comes across as pedantic posturing to insult a company in such a flippant manner. Criticizing certain attributes of the series is completely fair game -writing them off or worse, taking that parent talking to a misbehaving child tone I find rank.

No triple A developer will ever challenge ARMA because quite frankly ARMAs sales are chump change compared to the numbers Battlefield or Call of Duty makes BUT Bohemia will have some heavy competition against DayZ (the real money maker in BI portfolio) and its not a matter of if but when. Sticking with this engine will hurt them in the long run and the majority of DayZ players agree.

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You say "even just proper simulation of the area's a vest would cover", but I distinctly recall oukej outright saying that yeah, they can't get that working in-game right now for whatever reason so the tweaks are a case of "this is what we can do right now".

Then why implement something that you know you can only get half right and forget about the dozen other important things you are doing? This is what I'm talking about, they start one task, then get interested in another without finishing the first task they began.

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This is just evidence that the engine needs a serious overhaul and of some fairly poor thinking on BIS's part. First of all, modifying the hitboxes based on what equipment you are wearing shouldn't be impossible. Second of all, why even bother implementing the feature if you can't do it right in the first place? It does nothing but make people frustrated and BIS look bad.
Then why implement something that you know you can only get half right and forget about the dozen other important things you are doing? This is what I'm talking about, they start one task, then get interested in another without finishing the first task they began.
You're talking about soldier protection at all. :rolleyes: The relevant post from oukej states that "the proper implementation" of the optimal solution (fire geometry of vest) "has currently been impossible" as of a week before ADAPT's release, therefore "The changes/tweaks are aimed to simply improve the experience of the game "as it is now" - increase the variety and benefits of wearing vests/helmets (unlike the previous state)." (Boldfacing is by me.)

Then again, Windies, I see that you already told oukej "do it right or not at all"...but I really do think that you two were aiming at different things altogether at that point in time, since I thought that oukej was quite clear that all of the changes were in lieu of "fire geometry for vests", which I'll note isn't half-implemented but rather isn't implemented at all...

It's not strange at all that few companies have tried to compete with Arma. It's a small market without enough opportunity for profit to justify the work. Unless you are really passionate about the project (which BIS is) then it's just not worth doing. There aren't a lot of companies attempting to compete with Eagle Dynamics and DCS for similar reasons. The payoff isn't there for the work involved.
To be quite honest, some appropriate variation on "The best lack all conviction, while the worst. Are full of passionate intensity" would probably be the perfect epitaph for the 'milsim genre' concept.
The problem with writing a new engine from scratch is that it could potentially (probably?) take more time and effort than bringing this one up to snuff.
So the very idea of 'having a better engine' is to either try to squeeze milk from a rock or to start from nada, especially when "ran out of time to bring engine up to snuff" almost certainly had to do with a lot of why the game engine didn't nearly as much as people were hoping for? (You may well disagree with the idea that development should be done within a certain period of time, but that bird flew the coop well over a year ago.) Sounds very "damned if you do, damned if you don't." Edited by Chortles

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I bolded a huge problem with your statement. It wouldn't be another big company because BIS isn't a big company in the first place. Why do you take issue with people saying that if a huge company with many times the funding of BIS tried to make a game like Arma they would probably make a more capable game? Guess what? Money and manpower are pretty important in carrying out large projects. Also, no one is trying to insult the company. This is what I was talking about.

LOL, for christs sake man we're not in a court of law yet you find a "huge problem with my statement".... Lets put it simple, I was paraphrasing another posters sentiment -"If a another company which happned to be huge and have a larger budget". Better? And no, money and manpower does not necessarily = superior product. Many AAA titles have been critically and player based panned in the last few years. Look at the music industry in which you can have the biggest budget trying to trump up pop-star X with the best musicians - does that always equal the best final product?

Also, stop talking about what DICE has accomplished with Battlefield. They aren't trying to do what Arma does so you can't compare the games.

Many feel they haven't accomplished much since Bf2 and have actually gone backwards. Sure, people will still always buy the brand name of BF/COD -see my quote on player apathy.

---------- Post added at 00:23 ---------- Previous post was at 00:19 ----------

No triple A developer will ever challenge ARMA because quite frankly ARMAs sales are chump change compared to the numbers Battlefield or Call of Duty makes BUT Bohemia will have some heavy competition against DayZ (the real money maker in BI portfolio) and its not a matter of if but when. Sticking with this engine will hurt them in the long run and the majority of DayZ players agree.

When then I guess will never know if their engine is capable of beating RV or not, unless of course, DayZ players demand more...The fact that Cryengine lost out to RV for the big military contract says something.

Edited by froggyluv

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When then I guess will never know if their engine is capable of beating RV or not, unless of course, DayZ players demand more...The fact that Cryengine lost out to RV for the big military contract says something.
I distinctly recall RTI "losing out" on account of rather different criteria than "a battle of the engines", or at least on criteria that (compared to what we look for out of Arma) is very esoteric and practically irrelevant to our experience as gamers.

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