Why is this game having such a serious lack of user-created content?

[chortles 263]

NouberNou has confirmed that ACE3 was being developed but is NOT an Make Arma Not War contestant/entrant.

[PuFu 4600]

ACE release can make a whole lot of difference, and may bring back a some of the older modders and players.

how so?

They might be working in the dark for the 500 000$ prize

negative

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?169555-Big-Announcement-(Make-Arma-Not-War)&p=2574432&viewfull=1#post2574432

[codarl 1]

I think that giving proper feedback on a free product is the least you can do.

About the lack of Addons.... Well, I think performance is the main game breaker here: All the brilliant minds are shouting at bis, telling them to ditch CPU intensive "stamped" shadows in favor of GPU-drawn shadow maps, Telling them that destroyed buildings are still present sixty feet under the ground, and hogging recources. They're discovering that AI can snipe anyone without a direct line of sight, as long as a member in their team can see the target.

Back in OFP days, DKM mod's RAH-66 Commanche featured a working minimap, MFD's displaying weapon and system stats. Individual shell casings from the cannon, scripts for tail-rotor loss, damaged models to replace the default "warped" model in case of a crash. A radar jammer, and the gunner could tell the AI pilot what height to fly at.... that's ONE addon!

Now, ten years further, Nobody bothers looking into this stuff, because it will gnaw at the delicate status quo that is "our framerate".

[chortles 263]

At this point I'm not sure how many of the devs even know how to "ditch CPU intensive "stamped" shadows in favor of GPU-drawn shadow maps", much less fix the destroyed buildings state(s).

[zapat 56]

Wrong topic, sorry...

Edited January 30, 2014 by zapat

[eymerich 11]

I think that giving proper feedback on a free product is the least you can do.

About the lack of Addons.... Well, I think performance is the main game breaker here: All the brilliant minds are shouting at bis, telling them to ditch CPU intensive "stamped" shadows in favor of GPU-drawn shadow maps, Telling them that destroyed buildings are still present sixty feet under the ground, and hogging recources. They're discovering that AI can snipe anyone without a direct line of sight, as long as a member in their team can see the target.

Back in OFP days, DKM mod's RAH-66 Commanche featured a working minimap, MFD's displaying weapon and system stats. Individual shell casings from the cannon, scripts for tail-rotor loss, damaged models to replace the default "warped" model in case of a crash. A radar jammer, and the gunner could tell the AI pilot what height to fly at.... that's ONE addon!

Now, ten years further, Nobody bothers looking into this stuff, because it will gnaw at the delicate status quo that is "our framerate".

I rember that add-on, as well the blackhawk from B.a.s. (which had the same feature).

I don't think it's a problem of frame rate.

Problems are the lack of informations: just compare the tutorial of opf (or arma2) to arma 3.

As kyu said there are no information about the config, the new command added, the new tool, line in the config's vehicle which I can't understand. I'm trying to port in arma3 an f117 but i am getting crazy about the config: still now i have problem about the external sound.

And factor time too: add-on you mentioned was released after 3\4 years opf was out.

[zimms 22]

Do you mean 3-4 years or 9 months?

[roshnak 41]

It might have something to do with the fact that it's harder to forward-port addons from OFP and Arma, which, let's face it, a large portion of addons for this series have historically been (mixed in with weapons ported from CS).

[Gattobuono 10]

You must have missed the boat on this two years ago, but I'm pretty sure that this was never up for "discussion" or "community feedback".

Well there's one of the problems right there.

---------- Post added at 21:16 ---------- Previous post was at 20:59 ----------

There is tons of user-created content in the works or already finished atm. Most of it is work-in-progress, but the games been out for less than six months, what do you expect? ArmA 2 has been out for 5 years, its going to have tons more content than ArmA 3.

Now then, onto that content I mentioned above...

None of these are re-skins or ports, almost everything here is original content made by modders ... etc

Well that's not exactly true. Some of these mods, such as the M4's for example, were made for Arma 2 and have since been updated for A3. As for the terrains, well N'Ziwasogo requires the Arma2 map pack as it uses objects from Arma 2.

However, just a quick look through the weapons mods that you tagged proves my previous point:

Plus the fact that Arma 3's setting and futuristic factions don't inspire people in the way that previous versions have. Let's face it, a lot of the most welcomed Arma 3 mods are those that port A2 (and even IF44) content into the new engine, or add recognisable present day factions and weapons.

What do we find in those weapons pack? M4's, AK's, Scars, and so on. I.E. weapons contemporary to now.

[PuFu 4600]

and where is the problem? As Prof said, if anything, there is more incentive for that

[chortles 263]

What sparse "official" documentation exists specifically for A3 is geared for prior Arma 2 modders and focused on "what's new"... which makes sense for them, but means that there isn't official documentation for going "from concept to content", on top of existing documentation incompleteness, which is detrimental for people new to Arma modding period.

[roshnak 41]

What do we find in those weapons pack? M4's, AK's, Scars, and so on. I.E. weapons contemporary to now.

I don't understand what your point is with this. Arma's (somewhat) futuristic setting doesn't stop people from making contemporary addons any more than Arma 2's (initial) Eastern European setting prevented people from making Middle Eastern and Vietnam war set addons. The whole point of a mod is that it is not dependent on the setting of the base game. You could make World War I addons all the way up to Space War 6000 addons if you wanted.

[biggerdave 56]

Erm... excuse me?

I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but... what lack of user-created content? A cursory look on armaholic shows me we've had 10 different missions or addons released or updated today (30-1-13) for ArmA.3. I'm can't claim to be an authority on this sort of thing, but it seems to me that if you're getting that much community generated content in a single day, then you do not have a lack of community generated content.

[Kerc Kasha 102]

What I miss most is hardcore missions. I mean missions that follow a concrete briefing and logic and has no respawn (or use GROUP or SIDE respawn, which aren't quite respawn at all). It seems essential for a game with such an emphasis on realism.

Yeah I'm disappointed that the user mission forum is full of 'DYNAMIC *INSERT THING HERE* SANDBOX' that's either SP only or respawn domination style. Sometimes I don't mind something like that but no respawn set objective missions are the best

[Wiki 1558]

yeah, I agree.

IMO, a good SP mission is set as:

you're a guy (infantry, pilot, crewman...), leader or not, with detailed briefing and infos before launching the mission, with objectives set.

arma 3 showcase (but I don't like all of them) or old SP missions from previous AmrAverse games

---------- Post added 01-31-2014 at 12:04 AM ---------- Previous post was 01-30-2014 at 11:59 PM ----------

and no, for the moment there are not much of them, in term of high quality

[babylonjoke 22]

We all have to face the fact that Arma 3 is a modding platform with outdated tools and very poor documentations... If things aint gonna change in the future Arma 3 will see a very low ammount of mods... I think what would incentivate modders could be some new "eyecandy" feature...at least thats what could attract new modellers, like supported colors for the specular map or better shaders...

I've already seen enough skilled modders leave Arma community...

[Smurf 12]

OP: Is it?

[dale0404 5]

OP: Is it?

I was thinking the exact same thing, just look at the modding forums...

[Darkhorse 1-6 16]

Please, as an introduction: do not take this as an offense. Compared to the other games Arma players' effort to create new content is astonishing.

But still, Arma 3 seems to severly lack user created content. Why is that so? Noone liked the game? I kinda do. I am aware that there are a lot of features missing or cut, eg. CAS aircraft for BLUFOR and OPFOR, but I am generally pleased about A3's presence. The modders doesn't seem to be however, and the amounts of user created content after almost half of the year is quite poor, compared to the Arma 2's situation back in 2009.

Why is that so?

You do understand the differences in ArmA 2 and ArmA 3, right? These days if you're doing a vehicle addon it *has* to have PhysX, which is a *royal pain in the ass* to implement. If you want it to behave like it would in real life you apparently have to have an understanding of mechanics, etc. so it takes a whole hell of a lot more work right off the bat for vehicles. Infantry now have to have customizable uniforms (helmets, vests, packs), weapons have to work with rails, body armor has to be set up, etc. etc. etc.

Then you have the things the community is starting to demand from addonmakers. Interactive cockpits, better armor systems, compatibility with every other addon in existence, so on and so forth. We only recently got the ArmA 3 tools. We are still lacking a whole hell of a lot in the modelling department but at least we have an O2 that works with A3. Terrains you won't see much of until BI releases Visitor, and once that's out it'll still be 3-12 months before those start flowing in fairly regularly.

tl;dr - The standards have been raised, workload has increased dramatically, we're having to learn the new requirements pretty much from scratch and a lot of it's hit and miss, addonmaking takes a lot of time, and most importantly we only recently got the basic tools while still lacking things that could smooth the process. (Plus, on top of all this, you do realize that the tools BI gives us have almost no documentation whatsoever, right? There is no manual. The wiki is of note but still, no manual. You learn the tools by yourself and from community members)

[purepassion 22]

Cleaned up the thread a little bit.

Please try your best to keep the discussion civil, constructive and on-topic. Thank you! :)

[Westonsammy 1]

Well that's not exactly true. Some of these mods, such as the M4's for example, were made for Arma 2 and have since been updated for A3. As for the terrains, well N'Ziwasogo requires the Arma2 map pack as it uses objects from Arma 2

However, just a quick look through the weapons mods that you tagged proves my previous point:

What do we find in those weapons pack? M4's, AK's, Scars, and so on. I.E. weapons contemporary to now.

I think you missed my point, I wasn't trying to point out that all of this content is stuff we haven't seen before (Although some of it is), I was trying to point out that there is no lack of user-created content for ArmA 3 atm, at least if you consider the time it has been since release.

Also, let me emphasize that "almost everything here is original content made by modders". I do understand that these guys did use some stuff from BI, but most of it was made by them.

As for your argument that ArmA's futuristic factions don't inspire people to create content, I don't see how you think a contemporary military setting will (in the way that previous versions have). Personally, I think that BI did the best they could in picking the timeframe/setting for ArmA 3, although it could use TONS more polish. But lets not get into that right now.

Also, if you look further than the weapon packs, you will find some pretty wacky stuff, such as the 2017 (NOT a zombie mod, mind you), the S.T.A.L.K.E.R map being made by meshcarver, Abs' Star Trek mod along with those strange new world maps, Terminator Rising (This looks the coolest), and the WW2 Czechoslovakian military mod. All of these have the potential to be really awesome, and we haven't seen anything like them in ArmA before.

[smokedog3para 365]

Even porting is not simple the a2 walls in a3 when hit don't fall over now they spin round when hit or blown up its messed a lot up so fixing things is slow without docs and tuts, I know I am struggling with a lot of things now it makes it hard and the motivation starts to drain away fast when we can't get our hands on information. Ive got a lot sat on the side waiting to go it will sit there till we get what we need in terms of info and the new visitor so there is content but not as much as some of us would like to put out but can't.

Edited February 2, 2014 by SmokeDog3PARA

[fn_Quiksilver 1636]

In my mind, the poor documentation is the worst part.

There is a very steep learning curve for anyone who wants to get into creating content, and there is nowhere aside from a cruddy community wiki and trawling through hundreds of forum threads, to learn about A3.

[b00tsy 28]

There is also the possibility that people give up on making content because, no one rates or even gives feedback on their stuff. It demoralizes people when they see their hard work go to waste, simply because no one cares enough to throw the creator some positive reinforcement.

This. And the fact that destruction derby races on Altis airport and other casual/bunnyhop scenarios are more popular then the true military missions (that takes much more work). The new community in not quite the same as the old community.

---------- Post added at 10:34 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:26 AM ----------

Yeah I'm disappointed that the user mission forum is full of 'DYNAMIC *INSERT THING HERE* SANDBOX' that's either SP only or respawn domination style. Sometimes I don't mind something like that but no respawn set objective missions are the best

Because if you make a mission realistic and hard now and don't add a respawn you get an angry pimpels crowd complaigning (on steam). You need to make the missions casual now, with infinite lives, dumbed down AI skills, and you need to have VAS. Yes you need VAS, because a mission is not good without it... thats what I am being told anyway by the pimples crowd...

[[evo] dan 79]

Because if you make a mission realistic and hard now and don't add a respawn you get an angry pimpels crowd complaigning (on steam). You need to make the missions casual now, with infinite lives, dumbed down AI skills, and you need to have VAS. Yes you need VAS, because a mission is not good without it... thats what I am being told anyway by the pimples crowd...

^this, I have found this to be true, so we pretty much only play those kind of missions within the clan.