Why are much more people playing Arma 2?

[papanowel 120]

Can you also see those steam sale statistics by country? My guess for the high Arma 3 sales in february would be for a large part due to a massive increase in people buying Arma 3 because of Altis Life. Germany's most popular "Let's play" channels by Gronkh/Sarazar have recently started playing and praising Altis Life. They are massively popular among casual gamers...to maybe that's part of the explanation.

Same in France, many people are buying the game because of Altis-Life. It's like Dayz mod.

On the other hands not many people are playing coop/pvp games.

[big_t 1]

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".

LOL! Take "wasteland" and "life thingy" out of the Arma 3 server list and how may people are playing other types of games? :butbut: I'll tell you : not many at all.......... like no more than 150 players total at any one time playing non life/wasteland multiplayer missions on arma 3.

I've recently went back to playing Arma 2 and although the game is significantly more buggy and glitchy and less smooth, I still find I'm getting better games and having more fun times in Arma 2. I do love Arma 3 but the gameplay, maps and assets are just not there yet.

[defk0n_NL 2]

I don't really understand this complaint about the "futuristic" settings. I haven't seen anything particularly futuristic, like robots, laser guns, etc. The vehicles/aircraft seem to be fairly contemporary, so I just don't get it.

I do seem to get worse performance with A3, in MP at least but still enjoy playing it, as I find ArmA2's graphics look very dated in comparison now, although I still enjoy playing that as well. I think it mostly comes down to more mods and missions available for ArmA2 and although TFAR seems to be a good alternative to ACRE for example, maybe it lacks some features at the moment that the servers that use ACRE rely on.

I find arma 3 to be hardly futuristic, it feels more like a alternate reality, with strange rifles, strange handguns, strange vehicles. its feels chaotic. Where arma 2 sticks to its overall setting way more, like humvee, m16, ak47. even though arma 2 feels rougher around the edges,i like it more.

Would have rather seen full sci fi with futuristic vtols, mraps and assault rifles. (not lasers)

Edited March 3, 2014 by defk0n_NL

[matas55 10]

I have tried Arma 3 and I have to admit it's better than A2 but it should have been released in 2015. The amount of content in A3 compared to A2 is pathetic. Few guns, few vehicles incomplete campaign. It's like developers slightly updated the same 15 year old engine AGAIN and left the game to the modders. We can all agree that Arma has became AAA franchise. For 60$ I would expect the game to have as good campaign as OFP resistance, CWC or even better. It seems that campaign is an afterthought for them. For me campaign is always the main part of the game. All those good memories from OFP came from Cold war crysis and Resistance campaigns, which I loved. Yes playing with a clan with ace and acre is fun but campaign means a lot to me. I also miss good music composed for OFP. In Arma 3 it just isn't as good.

Yes I am happy about all those improvements. But reload animations and physics came in 2013 and still they aren't perfect :D Infantry control is so much smoother and so much better. I love stances, speed paces and gun control. Stock sounds are also better than A2.

But still it's the same ancient engine. Character interaction with enviroment isn't good- rocks glitching. Crashing a car or truck in a wall feels pretty much the same as it did 13 years ago. Physics suck.

The world feels dead except for underwater which is cool but could have been better. Few animals, no wind, weather effects aren't dramatic enough. Far Cry 2 from 2007 had some amazing dynamic weather. Still no, proper get in animations. I would expect Far Cry 3 first person get in animations. Building destruction sucks. You open doors with your mind not your hands.

Don't get me wrong I don't hate on the game. I just wish it was perfect, maybe I shouldn't compare it to multi-milion games such as Battlefield or Far Cry. But I want that fluidity, objects interacting as they should, proper animations, destruction. Maybe it's not the developers, maybe it's the engine. Maybe the only way is to create a new one from scratch which is quite expensive. Atleast it's not as buggy as A2 was at launch. A2 is a way more ambitious game though.

I always liked Arma for what it is. I am the old OFP vet but I am tired of this old game feeling Arma 3 gives me.

I want good campaign, with good story and good sountrack, I want the world to feel real like in Battlefield or Far Cry, I want cars to drive and feel heavy and meaty sliding around and digging like in Far Cry 3. I want animations to be as good as BF4 ones, I want destruction from Frostbite, Weather with strong wind and even storms, big waves in the sea I just want it to be perfect. In short it needs OFP campaign, Far Cry 3 animations (burning grass would be nice :D), BF4 destruction, AC4 weather and overhauled driving and collision physics.

Either my expectations are too high or I am spoiled by some game engines :D

Edited March 4, 2014 by matas55

[laverniusregalis 10]

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

The performance in ArmA3 is better for me than in ArmA2 Chernarus... Also, the setting is a matter of taste. I hate deserts with a passion. But, if the AH-64 and deserts are your thing,

http://i.imgur.com/DvzswqT.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/c7s0Uej.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/0lXq360.jpg

[chortles 263]

Annual Steam winter sale on Christmas. Then February 15th saw the release of Zeus on the dev branch.

In addition, not too long after Zeus' dev branch release, Arma 3 also got a Steam Storefront Weekend Deal at 40%. As far as sales go, Arma 3 was at 25% discount on the Steam Storefront from about the end of November to the beginning of December, as well as being at that through the Steam winter sale -- the 40% discount was on Christmas Eve as a daily deal and on the last day as one of the encore daily deals, so well did it do during the sale before the last day -- and Arma 3 got at least one discount sale on the BI Store, at 40% during the big sale when the rest of the Arma series -- other than Arma Tactics, which was only 25% -- and Take On Helicopters were all was on sale at 80% discount.

(In particular, the times that Arma 3 was at 25% discount lined up with its beta price -- $US44.99 -- while the 40% discount sales put it at $35.99, or just three dollars over the alpha price of $32.99; I would not be surprised if the chance to buy Arma 3 "now with way more content than the alpha for only three bucks more than the alpha price" was an effective incentive in driving sales.)

But one might think the winter sale would show as a sudden peak and then would've already declined back to more stable numbers by now, but instead, there's a constant climb. Whatever the reason is, it's nice to see those numbers.

From the Steam Charts link, the player peaks since the alpha were alongside the beta, the launch, the Steam winter sale, and the Zeus release on dev branch. Moreover, the player count decline after the launch stabilized petered out by the end of September and the beginning of October, whereupon it essentially plateaued until the Steam winter sale, which began the upward trend; the two plateaus thereafter were ironically enough the turn of the year bookended by its Daily Deal days, and then late January until the Zeus reveal.

Based on the above anecdotes, it seems evident that releasing and promoting* of official new content is the key driver of player counts, so we can expect another bump (and perhaps a new peak) come Q2 when Zeus arrives on stable branch... and it also seems that whoever at BI decided to promote certain 'major' updates such as Zeus as "free DLC" got vindicated. :lol: (I say "major" since the episodic campaign releases did not appreciably increase player counts, but rather were part of the aforementioned plateaus.)

* The higher visibility of BI and Arma due to DayZ does help with this second part, in part because "mainstream" gaming sites are now flat-out more likely to cover Arma at all.

Can you also see those steam sale statistics by country? My guess for the high Arma 3 sales in february would be for a large part due to a massive increase in people buying Arma 3 because of Altis Life. Germany's most popular "Let's play" channels by Gronkh/Sarazar have recently started playing and praising Altis Life. They are massively popular among casual gamers...to maybe that's part of the explanation.

Now this is an interesting anecdote here! The reason I say that is because during the alpha, a player survey was solicited on these boards about social networking/online features integration, where one of the survey questions was essentially what marketing got them to buy Arma 3 during alpha -- and I recall that a plurality of respondents answered that it was video reviews/previews/LPs, i.e. from trusted video bloggers on YouTube... which would correlate with your speculation about German LP channels that are "massively popular among casual gamers" now highlighting and promoting Altis Life.

[trickster144 1]

Arma 2 - cheap (fiver steam sales), 10x more mods, more established groups and servers

Arma 3 - great game but expensive, not many mods, gamemodes like dead nation are not mainstream as of yet and the amount of people I know who brought a2 for "dayz" is too damm high

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk

[-=seany=- 5]

I Play on Arma2 TAW Domination pretty much exclusively. They have an Arma 3 coop server, but no one is ever on it, so I don't bother either. I'd love to though. If it started to get popular I'd be there in no time.

[demerzell 10]

Don't understand the: "I don't like the furutistic settings" comments. What is so furutistic in this game? Heh? These are nowadays weapons. Where are these people living? 30years back in the past?

[msportdan 10]

i speak for myself but i take it could be a general feeling among people..

I have A2 and played it religiously lately.. Im a SP player but use COWAR mod, which i think makes the game as good as its gonna get, unless go online. Meanwhile ive been searching for a cheaper price than £30, i think A3 isnt worth the £30 atm, its still fundamentally broken and suffers from what a2 suffers today. Although some things are modded and fixed in a2 im not sure in a3 they have, as its not shared the same course of time for mods or R&D.

IM interested dont get me wrong.... but im not jumping ship yet, since A2 and 3 are fundamentally the same game with updated gfx/optimisation. and the same problems.?!

£10-15 maybe be a defo buy, anything over , not worth imo YET

/

p.s are they really weapons and vehicles of today.. i thought the game was based in 2030?

Edited March 6, 2014 by msportdan

[Tonci87 163]

Don't understand the: "I don't like the furutistic settings" comments. What is so furutistic in this game? Heh? These are nowadays weapons. Where are these people living? 30years back in the past?

Well that is not really the point. It is absolutely fine to have these weapons in the game, but some things just don´t make any sense.

Where is the equipment that is used today? I´m dead sure that some of it will still be in service in 30 years.

And then such things as the US getting an Israeli MBT.

[Sterlingarcherz101 15]

Simply put , anyone that still plays arma 2 for the military part. does so because its time base and ace.

Yay I'm glad arma 3 is in the future who needs an a10 and apache. Said nobody ever.

I have found this one of the major dislikes of arma3. Throw in the fact dev team has spent way too much time on SP campaign, then single player campaign fixes filling up bug tracker. All the while people screaming out for New stuff working bi pods , shooting from helos,and being ignored. It can be very frustrating considering bis ask for feedback in the firstplace.

[roshnak 41]

Yay I'm glad arma 3 is in the future who needs an a10 and apache. Said nobody ever.

People have said it on these very message boards.

[laverniusregalis 10]

Well that is not really the point. It is absolutely fine to have these weapons in the game, but some things just don´t make any sense.

Where is the equipment that is used today? I´m dead sure that some of it will still be in service in 30 years.

And then such things as the US getting an Israeli MBT.

We can speculate, though. Lend-lease, perhaps? The US force on Altis and Stratis all seem to be rather oddly equipped with quite a few different vehicles/weapons seeming to be lend-lease.

[roshnak 41]

We can speculate, though. Lend-lease, perhaps? The US force on Altis and Stratis all seem to be rather oddly equipped with quite a few different vehicles/weapons seeming to be lend-lease.

There is still the problem that there is absolutely no trace of older equipment (except the AAF, which is really just a mashup of modern equipment). There is tons of stuff in use by modern militaries that is 20+ years old. It's like all the militaries involved threw everything they had away and started over. It's not just that NATO is using new stuff, it's that everything NATO is using is new. Moving into the future is fine, but BIS didn't do a great job of making the equipment roster very believable.

[weedomatic 0]

Defining your own universe, i.e. "making up things", puts you at a major advantage with regard to critique: You defined the universe, you control it, you've made and will adjust the laws ... to your likings. From a developers' standpoint, rationally, this is a good move. From an at-the-end-of-day perspective, rational or not, I doubt it worked out the ideal way they had in mind. Then again, even though I suffer severe pains from the alternate world setting/feeling in A3 (whoever mentioned this in this thread: great circumscription, aggreed), I do hope this experience teaches a lesson ... for A4? :(

[pd3 25]

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

All those, and to be honest BI really created a rift in the community by "fixing" certain aspects of the game, pertaining to movement and weapon handling, that most of the original players had no problem with.

---------- Post added at 01:26 ---------- Previous post was at 01:16 ----------

What? Is Arma 3's aiming not frustrating enough for you?

It's not frustrating if you're not desperately trying to play the game like Unreal tournament, and like a game wherein human beings have actual human limitations, and cannot turn and move as if weapons have no weight.

Again, it says a lot about the person making the claim that it's frustrating than anything else. Objectively it isn't, it is however to people who... lack certain attributes.

[Instynct 1]

Because this game runs like poop

[roshnak 41]

All those, and to be honest BI really created a rift in the community by "fixing" certain aspects of the game, pertaining to movement and weapon handling, that most of the original players had no problem with.

Pretty much everyone I've been playing with has been complaining about the movement since Operation Flashpoint. Granted, it's a relatively small group of people, but it was one of their major complaints.

Objectively it isn't, it is however to people who... lack certain attributes.

Personal insults, however subtle and vague, are really not necessary.

I have no problem with simulating weapon weight. Arma 2's implementation was sloppy. It had a weird negative mouse acceleration thing, whereby moving the mouse too quickly would lock your turnrate kind of like hitting a wall. I believe this was essentially a side effect of the fact that the game was designed around a specific type of free-aim. This behavior is extremely pronounced in the standalone version of DayZ.

A good simulation of weapon weight would be to either lower the overall sensitivity of the mouse based on weapon weight, as has been done in countless games in the past -- and hope that people don't use dynamic DPI settings on their mice to cheat (why would they?) -- , or to disconnect the player's weapon from the point of aim, allowing the player to have an unlimited turn rate, while the weapon speed is based on weapon weight, causing the weapon to lag behind the point of aim and forcing the player to wait for their weapon to catch up to their movements.

Edited March 14, 2014 by roshnak

[twiddlingthumbs 10]

I will tell you why. Because of the monstrosity of the Opfor uniforms. Every time I look at their fucking weird helmets I want to be sick. And the Skeletor gloves. Who ever designed those needs to be shot. It's completely ruined the game for me.

Why and earth would you design the blufor and independent uniforms quite successfully and go "uh I know" , "I will just totally fuck up the design of Opfor Uniform just for the funnies". You know.. Because it's futuristic

[j4you 10]

And the Skeletor gloves. Who ever designed those needs to be shot. It's completely ruined the game for me.

I swear you made me weep with laughter....but you right 100%,it's so close to the nanosuit Crysis!...LOL!

[Belbo 462]

Why and earth would you design the blufor and independent uniforms quite successfully and go "uh I know" , "I will just totally fuck up the design of Opfor Uniform just for the funnies". You know.. Because it's futuristic

Honestly? I welcome that!

I'm sick and tired of fighting russian units who look like poor design choices made in the 40ies. Arma 3 offers you - ex factory - an insurgent faction (FIA/OPFIA), a regular military faction (AAF) and a setting-consistent military faction (CSAT). What's not to like about that? If you don't like CSAT, fine! Play against AAF. If you don't like AAF, play against OPFIA.

Arma 3 offers more possibilities in these regards than any other BI game before - and that's all without mods.

[mistyronin 1181]

Honestly? I welcome that!

I'm sick and tired of fighting russian units who look like poor design choices made in the 40ies. Arma 3 offers you - ex factory - an insurgent faction (FIA/OPFIA), a regular military faction (AAF) and a setting-consistent military faction (CSAT).

It seems that the new setting has not been like by a wide majority of the users of this forum, specially regarding to the CSAT design. And that may be the reason why in the SP campaign the main enemy is the AAF instead of the CSAT, remember that this change was made after opening the Alfa to the public.

Did OFP/Arma series required a revamp? IMO yes, but I'm afraid not in the final direction that it took. But I'm sure that in the next future BI will introduce new factions less alien-style, so no terrible harm done.

[twiddlingthumbs 10]

I'm sick and tired of fighting Taliban and Russians etc too. I haven't got a problem with fictional factions and the such. Just their helmets and gloves and those things round their necks. Remove them and I'd love opfor. I think the colour of their pattern is pretty cool. The brown I mean.

[j4you 10]

Honestly? I welcome that!

I'm sick and tired of fighting russian units who look like poor design choices made in the 40ies. Arma 3 offers you - ex factory - an insurgent faction (FIA/OPFIA), a regular military faction (AAF) and a setting-consistent military faction (CSAT). What's not to like about that? If you don't like CSAT, fine! Play against AAF. If you don't like AAF, play against OPFIA.

Arma 3 offers more possibilities in these regards than any other BI game before - and that's all without mods.

Beh! If you like it....you can feel lucky!

For me the uniforms about CSAT and OPFIA look so...irrealistic and outside all equipments then never i see in my life!

I know then ArmA III jump in 2030 age,but it is still difficult used that....fashion,they seems to be deep sea divers!

Now that I think about it, however,even the vehicles are not exactly a beauty,the car company must have used the ax to achieve them!:rolleyes:

BIS advertisement:

Experience true combat gameplay in a massive military sandbox. Authentic, diverse, open - Arma 3â„¢ sends you to war.

The uniforms will not be authentic...but diverse yes!;)

Maybe I'll be a nostalgic!....Opinions!

Rgds

Edited March 21, 2014 by j4you