Why are much more people playing Arma 2?

[Tonci87 163]

On Saturday evening I took a look at some statistics and I was quite shocked to see the following:

People playing Arma 2 -> Over 22000

People playig Arma 3 -> a little over 12500 (almost everything on Altis Life Servers)

On a Saturday Evening...

Situation right now:

People playing Arma 2: 8570

People playing Arma 3: 4970

Why?

http://arma2.swec.se/server/list

[Mr. Charles 22]

People like the setting more, better optimization, less bugs, more features (with mods), less rubberbanding in MP and finally rose tinted glasses.

[raspu86 92]

Because there's no DayZ and its derivations for Arma 3? If I take a look at the Arma 2 server list almost all servers are DayzEpoch/Wasteland or this "life thingy".

[Kerc Kasha 102]

Because there's no DayZ and its derivations for Arma 3? If I take a look at the Arma 2 server list almost all servers are DayzEpoch/Wasteland or this "life thingy".

Yeah that

[nettrucker 142]

Lot's of Steam haters around so they are sticking to ArmA 2.

[chrisb 196]

Better game.

[.kju 3245]

remove the DZ mods, LIFE and wasteland from both games to get more comparable stats

[sgtsev3n 12]

maybe in a year more people will switch to arma 3 because arma 3 for now is very buggy and unstable

[novemberist 2]

maybe in a year more people will switch to arma 3 because arma 3 for now is very buggy and unstable

I always hear people repeating this over and over again, but is it actually true? Arma 2 crashes very very often for me or freezes my whole pc. In comparison, I haven't had any serious crash in Arma 3 for months...

I also don't think it's that buggy. Most bugs and glitches (and even MP instabilities) I experienced are related to mods / missions more than to Arma 3 itself.

I guess we will see a lot of people (even the DayZ and Wasteland people) eventually migrating to Arma3 once most of the assets have finally been ported over...

[HorbeySpector 164]

aside from all the DayZ & wasteland stuff..

because of (primarily) ACE and other big mods.

Arma 2 is still buggy as hell (Ai, animations...) but, even though A3 has much better graphics and animations, A2 is used more often because it has lots of mods wich for example realism units want to use.

[CrazyBaron 10]

little over 12k? this is why peak today was 22k?

http://savepic.net/4711091.jpg (112 kB)

[krycek 349]

Lack of content and some age old AI issues in my case oh and performance issues(can't say if it's the engine or my old setup).At least with ACO I have the same AI issues minus the lack of content and performance problems.

I still fire up A3 from time to time mainly when a new patch is released and if they announce a beefy expansion content-wise I believe a lot more will return.

So far don't see the point moving totally to A3,besides ACO aged quite well.

[OrLoK 20]

Hello there

I generally play A2 more as I achieve a higher framerate and the amount of content is high.

A3 keeps dragging me back with its extra engine/game features though.

Just one users reasoning and as .Kju says one has to discount the DAYZ mod and spin offs to estimate the number of Arma players. I think wasteland is a valid arma mission type and should be counted.

Rgds

LoK

[jgbtl292 0]

warfare in arma 3 is unplayable all big maps in amra 3 mp unplayable after 30min - 1 hour ( i mean battle maps not the new A- live pain mods .... ) the performance ist the the last sh...t and arma 2 has the better setting ;) and the feeling as a soldier is better i cant identify with this csat freaks and the weapons mix ... and i miss my ah64 ^^ and the weaponsstations and launchers ... all the same this frustrate me a little no feeling come up in arma 3 ... the immersion is in arma 2 bigger

Edited February 24, 2014 by JgBtl292

[Ezcoo 47]

A2 has more players because of DayZ mod, source:

http://arma3.swec.se/game/statistics

http://arma2.swec.se/game/statistics

[Hurtz72 10]

Who says there are no Dayz like mods for Arma 3. Check out breaking point, It's better than Dayz Standalone.

http://www.thezombieinfection.com/

[major_shepard 82]

ArmA 3 lake of content as just compared to ArmA 2 vanilla ?

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

This is my input. For now, Arma 2 is "The" Finished game. And yes, while it is older than Arma 3, its the reason most people know Bohemia Interactive due to things like modding, and sandbox ability, more content, and features. I do however believe that soon, in months time, or maybe as stated earlier; a year from now, there will be alot more people joining Arma 3, or switching over, because of features, and implementations that are currently not in, but planned through out the future timeline for Arma 3. The Engine is capable of alot of things, and i have hope that we can expect to see some of those cool things in the future.

[kklownboy 43]

Because its better.

GFX is good enough, and the clunky movement works fine for playing with AI.

A2>A3. I like both.

Oh yeah that, have to use Steam BS.... But I guess it works great for delta patching while we are still in A3Beta stage. Hope when they do finish the game it will be on a Optical format for purchases in North America.

[MavericK96 0]

WAY more content for ArmA 2 than ArmA 3. Not just in terms of mods, but also missions.

[semiconductor 309]

IMHO it's because in most cases Arma 2 is significantly better than Arma 3.

Even though I enjoyed playing A3 for some time, I eventually come to the conclusion that Arma 3 simply can't offer anything except new stances system and couple of maps, everything else is a step back compared to Arma 2 (well, okay, Arma 2 + A.C.E. + A.C.R.E.), not to mention controversial futuristic setting.

Between diversity, content, realism, immersion, complex gameplay and so-called super-tech with flexible stances system, I personally prefer Arma 2, but I hope that BIS will return to contemporary setting and eventually Arma 3 would be as diverse and enjoyable as Arma 2 now. :)

[xx_fr0st-w0lf_xx 10]

1) Lack of vanilla content

2) Lack of immersion

3) Lack of user missions

4) Lack of mods

5) Lack of new islands

6) Lack of Ace

7) futuristic setting

To be honest the futuristic content is just plain horrible. There is no immersion at all unlike the middle east and eastern Europe environment. The only reason I still play arma 3 is because of 3 commando brigade insurgency server. Its modded to death and it feels like a2/ace just with arma 3. If they shut down that server I'm done with arma 3 for a while.

[Smurf 12]

Because people like to suffer.

And ACE+ACRE.

[dale 11]

Generally because most people enjoy playing as "now" rather than future content, if Arma 3 had been marketed better and had chosen a different approach then it likely would be seeing a lot more convergence from the players who enjoy contemporary settings, unfortunately we are in that situation where to capture new faces the futuristic setting hasn't been marketed enough due to old ties which in turn has led to a bad marketing campaign.

In essence you either go all out or stick to your guns, the BIS devs hung in the middle, which basically buggered their ability to get a coherent message across.

Another reason why people play Arma 2 over Arma 3 is the same with most good games which take this long to develop and that is the people who bought their PC's for Arma 2 can't play Arma 3, also people who play games like BF3 can't play Arma 3, rather than buy a new PC they just take the next best thing.

Moreover you've got the whiplash from DayZ players who might be interested in something different, but you must remember they bought Arma 2: DayZ not Arma 3: DayZ so you have a few million players with a copy of Arma 2 lying around.

Overall it's a multitude of things, DayZ standalone will take the Arma 2 players who bought it for DayZ the mod and we won't see them again, anyone who bought Arma 3 will likely have enjoyed Arma 2.

The greatest issue with Arma 3 now is that the present and past aren't accounted for yet, once this happens there will be a resurgence of players, the one greatest thing we need to do is keep working at it and going forward.

[Bouben 3]

People like the setting more, better optimization, less bugs, more features (with mods), less rubberbanding in MP and finally rose tinted glasses.

Better optimization? Is it a joke? Arma 2 is still not running fluidly for me even on lowest details, while Arma 3 on medium details and with native resoultion runs just fine.