Impressions after playing the game.

[pd3 25]

Considering how displeased I was with some of the concessions BI has made with A3, I really couldn't in good conscience pay for something I didn't believe in. Much less a purchase that I would have been very displeased with.

That being said, now that I've messed around with it I can give a reasonable assessment of what I think of the product within the context of the previous iterations of the series going all the way back to good old OFP.

First off, I was quite impressed with the level of performance I'm getting considering my machine is older, I had no expectation that it would run even remotely well considering the rig I use, which is quite decent for Arma 2.

Hats off to you BI, contrary to what some people may be saying, you really did manage to make the game run quite well considering the relative detail and expanse of the environments. This was no small feat considering the pedigree of the series which has always emphasized fidelity over performance (and rightfully so).

Honestly, the people who are complaining about performance have no right to be whining, my system is modest to say the least, and I'm still getting a more than playable experience for what I can expect, I'm starting to think that many of the newer people to the franchise may have a negative impact on the direction for the series if the dev team focuses excessively on making the game run on a potato. This series has always been niche, and to be honest breaking out of that niche annihilates it's relevance.

IMO, the optimization concerns are unfounded and should be summarily ignored, sucks not having a system that can run the game well, but seriously A3 has got to be one of the better optimized games in the series, and the first ARMA probably the worst.

I'm not really digging how everything is shifted around mind you in terms of UI and controls, but that is honestly to be expected. That's just me being used to the UI which hasn't changed much, especially in the editor, since the old OFP days from a functional standpoint.

I'm actually quite impressed with the recoil, it feels a lot better now.

Not really liking the off-hand grenade throwing, that feels like it's straight out of Halo, and I think it does nothing to improve the tactical pace of the game. Yes I understand that tossing grenades in Arma and OFP was ridiculously slow, but this seems a little off itself. I don't like the idea of the off-hand grenade used as a panic button when tactically stupid decisions are made. The OFP/ARMA series was always about brutally punishing the player for making them, and that's one of the reasons I enjoy it so much.

The movement on foot doesn't seem all that bad, however the 2x button press for sprinting was FAR superior, as it basically forced the player to think in terms of generally linear directions as sprinting should only be a tactical mechanism to get you from one place to the next as fast as possible, not strafe around. I tried resetting it myself, however it doesn't seem to work as consistently as it did in A2.

Additionally, there are times when leaning left or right causes me to turn instead of lean, which is kind of strange and disconcerting.

I'm seriously not digging the ease at which I can flick my mouse and turn 180 degrees in mere fractions of a second, I know that's been argued and bitched about, but now that I'm playing the game, it poses a serious problem in terms of mitigating the tactical importance of flanking an enemy. I know I may get bitching for this, but even though the game still plays at a slower pace, that just further accentuates how utterly unbalancing it could be to the game for somebody to be able to flick their wrist and be aiming at 90 degrees or more and completely defeating sound tactical planning on behalf of their adversary. This is old hat for a Quake/Unreal player from back when, and I don't want this crap to even be a factor in a series like this. Even though there are less circumstances under which it's relevant, it still is, and honestly people who would exploit that shouldn't be able to, including myself.

I do like the fact that aiming is "smoother" now although I'll always be a fan of the proper acceleration we saw in A2. All I can say is, for future games, please, do something, strike a goddamned balance between "smooth" movement and being able to spin like a CIWS on legs with laser precision, personally I would like to see some kind of inertial system implemented, because it simply feels better, it improves immersion.

This series will lose something if immersion and fidelity is broken in favor of making the game technically better for "deathmatch" type play. I'm not really sure what to think of the ballistics and damage model for the game, at least on AI, which seem from my testing thus for not to be very proactive once a threat has been identified.

Is the collision detection for bullets simply far better or are there impediments to weapon accuracy even when using a scope outside of the normal dispersion of the weapon? If anyone could clarify that, it would be nice. I don't really like what seems to happen when you shoot somebody in areas where there's obviously no armor protecting the AI, and they seem to simply just flinch as if shrugging off the impact of a bullet to their armor.

Being shot in the arm should fuck somebody up, and not simply momentarily inconvenience them as it seems to with the AI.

The sounds are... well, they're standard BI-tier sounds, they're not terrible, but I'm sure a sound pack will make them a whole lot better. BI gets a pass on that.

All in all, it's not really bad, but I still maintain that there are certain dangerous concessions made with this game's design that should be looked upon with caution, and perhaps rectified in future versions.

Unless they really want to go for them mediocrity dollars.

Edited May 17, 2014 by Pd3

[roshnak 41]

Honestly, the people who are complaining about performance have no right to be whining, my system is modest to say the least, and I'm still getting a more than playable experience for what I can expect, I'm starting to think that many of the newer people to the franchise may have a negative impact on the direction for the series if the dev team focuses excessively on making the game run on a potato. This series has always been niche, and to be honest breaking out of that niche annihilates it's relevance.

IMO, the optimization concerns are unfounded and should be summarily ignored, sucks not having a system that can run the game well, but seriously A3 has got to be one of the better optimized games in the series, and the first ARMA probably the worst.

Please keep in mind that performance is somewhat subjective. Since you didn't give any hard numbers regarding your performance, we have no idea how the game is actually performing for you. For all we know, you could be getting 15 FPS and saying, "It seems smooth to me!"

As far as optimization concerns being "unfounded," that's just not the case. The game is objectively not taking full advantage of modern hardware. There are still numerous uses of the CPU-intensive low quality shadows even when players have their shadows set to "high." This is especially a problem in an already heavily CPU-bottlenecked game, in which as many tasks should be offloaded to other hardware as possible. I'm also unaware of a fix for the issue wherein destroying buildings causes the undestroyed model to be moved underground and then placing a second, destroyed model, in its place (although there could very well have been a fix for this -- I don't follow the changelogs that closely). These are concrete problems that really should be addressed.

The movement on foot doesn't seem all that bad, however the 2x button press for sprinting was FAR superior, as it basically forced the player to think in terms of generally linear directions as sprinting should only be a tactical mechanism to get you from one place to the next as fast as possible, not strafe around. I tried resetting it myself, however it doesn't seem to work as consistently as it did in A2.

The problem with the old sprint system was that it was often needlessly awkward and clunky. It was also (as far as I am aware) unique to Arma 2. There were numerous occasions when I was either unable to sprint when I wanted to because the game failed to recognize a double tap, or I unintentionally sprinted forward when I just wanted to edge forward a bit. A modifier key is just better from a game design standpoint. Unless I'm mistaken, your mobility while sprinting is exactly the same as it was in previous titles.

I'm seriously not digging the ease at which I can flick my mouse and turn 180 degrees in mere fractions of a second, I know that's been argued and bitched about, but now that I'm playing the game, it poses a serious problem in terms of mitigating the tactical importance of flanking an enemy. I know I may get bitching for this, but even though the game still plays at a slower pace, that just further accentuates how utterly unbalancing it could be to the game for somebody to be able to flick their wrist and be aiming at 90 degrees or more and completely defeating sound tactical planning on behalf of their adversary. This is old hat for a Quake/Unreal player from back when, and I don't want this crap to even be a factor in a series like this. Even though there are less circumstances under which it's relevant, it still is, and honestly people who would exploit that shouldn't be able to, including myself.

I do like the fact that aiming is "smoother" now although I'll always be a fan of the proper acceleration we saw in A2. All I can say is, for future games, please, do something, strike a goddamned balance between "smooth" movement and being able to spin like a CIWS on legs with laser precision, personally I would like to see some kind of inertial system implemented, because it simply feels better, it improves immersion..

There are numerous reasons that your concerns of players flicking their wrist and shooting someone behind them aren't something you need to be that worried about.

First of all, this is a game that largely takes place at ranges far enough that it would be virtually impossible to accurately spin and shoot someone with a flick of the wrist. Basically, it's much harder to "twitch shoot" a target that appears as small as a person does when they are 50-150 meters away. In the relatively rare circumstances that players are in such close quarters that this kind of shooting might become viable, it would be akin to rapidly spinning on your heel or at your waist and squeezing off a bunch of bullets (and probably about as effective).

Games like Quake and UT take place in much closer quarters, and players rely mostly on muscle memory and map memorization to be able to pull off the kind of shooting that you are worried about happening in Arma. This is essentially a non-issue in this game.

Setting your mouse sensitivity high enough to be able to rapidly spin your character around with a flick of the wrist will significantly impede your ability to aim precisely at range. If you use a mouse with DPI-settings, it will take long enough to swtich your DPI and then move your mouse that it is functionally the same as if you had turned at the lower speed in the first place.

Weapons in the game have a fairly high degree of lethality, characters have relatively low movement speeds, and movement isn't particularly audible to other players. In what situation are you going to have snuck up on someone's flank and begun firing at them, but they still have time to turn and shoot you before they die? If this happens, it is because you didn't aim well enough, not because they have the ability to turn to quickly.

If you want weapon weight to be a factor in aim speed, I would recommend disconnecting the weapon from the aim point and having it lag behind at a speed based on the size or weight of the weapon. That way turning with the mouse still feels snappy and smooth, but you still have to wait for your weapon to catch up before actually engaging.

Is the collision detection for bullets simply far better or are there impediments to weapon accuracy even when using a scope outside of the normal dispersion of the weapon? If anyone could clarify that, it would be nice. I don't really like what seems to happen when you shoot somebody in areas where there's obviously no armor protecting the AI, and they seem to simply just flinch as if shrugging off the impact of a bullet to their armor.

Being shot in the arm should fuck somebody up, and not simply momentarily inconvenience them as it seems to with the AI.

Dispersion is the same as it has always been. There are a couple of things you could be experiencing.

The first is that the body armor is calculated per body part, so the helmet covers the entire head, the vest covers the entire torso, etc.

The second is that CSAT uniforms are supposed to be somewhat bullet resistant, so CSAT soldiers are (sort of) protected over their entire bodies. They don't have plate carriers though, so their total bullet resistence is lower than that of the other factions.

Either way, the implementation of body armor wasn't ideal, and created real problems with the balance of the game against the AI at the very least.

[Bee8190 10]

Honestly, the people who are complaining about performance have no right to be whining

BI has done quite a fine job so far but performance is still an issue for many out there and they have every right to be whining, ranting or bitching or whatever one wants to call it after putting up with sub par performance for years

newer people to the franchise may have a negative impact on the direction for the series if the dev team focuses excessively on making the game run on a potato. This series has always been niche, and to be honest breaking out of that niche annihilates it's relevance.

Arma is niche because most people can't even run it unless they settle for anything under 30 fps. I don't see how optimizing the game and getting rid of redundant pop up errors that doesn't tell anybody anything useful can be unwelcome by some.

It's also niche game because some stupid ass design decisions have been around the game for quite a while and take very long, if ever to be changed or improved upon

The sounds are... well, they're standard BI-tier sounds, they're not terrible, but I'm sure a sound pack will make them a whole lot better. BI gets a pass on that

Aside for a couple combat rifles, the rest of the sounds are sub par, insulting and horrible, all at once. This is not even subjective in 2014 game and no, BI is not getting pass on that

Being shot in the arm should fuck somebody up, and not simply momentarily inconvenience them as it seems to with the AI.

Agreed and I hope they are determined on fixing this issue

[WolfeUK 1]

so its ok for you to complain about aspects of the game but not for anyone else ??

[dav 22]

The game is a work of art, the jaw dropping visuals, rolling hills, immersive weather effects, team work, weapon systems, vehicles, I have been playing it creating single player missions in the style of a Rainbow 6 and it brings me back to those days, heaven. As for multiplayer I just don't have the time to commit to a squad but I play in the editor about 30 hours a week. I love the mods too, the TPW scopes are amazing, the variety is great. I play on ultra at 30fps and on veteran and it's always challenging. That's why I love this game, you can have 50 ai vs 4 player squad and it's hard. Although your points in your mind are valid I feel like your late to the party coming on the forums basically admitting your a fan now. 800 hours of game time later, I don't care what your opinion is, your late to the party, enjoy the game!

[roshnak 41]

so its ok for you to complain about aspects of the game but not for anyone else ??

I'm not sure where you think anyone in this thread said or implied that.

Although your points in your mind are valid I feel like your late to the party coming on the forums basically admitting your a fan now. 800 hours of game time later, I don't care what your opinion is, your late to the party, enjoy the game!

Aside from almost everything in your post being subjective and the laughable implication that 30 FPS is good performance, nowhere in the OP does it say that he is a fan "now," although his registration date implies that he has been a fan for quite a long time. At best, the OP is stating that the game is not as bad as he initially thought it would be. That's hardly a glowing recommendation.

The OP also isn't "late to the game," since waiting for a promotion to try the game doesn't invalidate his opinion, and is, in fact, a financially responsible decision to make. It seems entirely reasonable to have a place for people who are trying the game for the first time due to the free weekend to have a place to discuss their thoughts and impressions.

[WolfeUK 1]

I'm not sure where you think anyone in this thread said or implied that.

he starts off by saying ppl dont have a right to complain about a certain aspect of the game, then went on to complain about other aspects, this is a big contradiction and thats what i was pointing out, you cant moan cause someone complained, then do it yourself

Honestly, the people who are complaining about performance have no right to be whining,

Not really liking the off-hand grenade throwing,

Being shot in the arm should fuck somebody up, and not simply momentarily inconvenience them as it seems to with the AI,

[enex 11]

Good review, I would only comment on hand grenades.So whole system is Work in progress.Pins are not pulled out

when you throw it, there is only one way to lob a grenade, you can't cook, whoever I'm glad they moved away

from arma 2 chunkiness.Which means that in arma 2 life you throw a grenade and you are locked in that animation.

I can happy report that this restriction is gone in arma 3, and throwing grenade won't lock you in animation.

[k0rd 3]

I'm guessing that the OP did not play multiplayer yet..

[-Coulum- 35]

Actually a relatively fair review. Two things I would like to touch on:

Performance is greatly improved over arma 2 and I am happy to be able to play on a laptop with decent settings and performance. BI has done a great job.

BUT

There are still issues with MP. A well made mission with a reasonable amount of people will run fine. But more elaborate/poorly optimized missions run poorly. This not even necessarily BI fault, but there definitely is room for improvement if they want arma to be as open to ones imagination as they claim to.

On weapon handling I generally agree there is a lack of realistic limitations. I do think the new handling is better, but it is still lacking alot. We have gone from one extreme to another. I have a feeling BI is focusing on this issue and will address it over the next year though through their expansions/dlc features. Looking forward to that.

Armour is messed up. Shoot a guy with a helmet anywhere in the head and his he still beneifts from the helmets protection. Its better than the total lack of protection in arma 2, but definitely isn't modeled at a fine enough detail. I don't expect any changes to that any time soon, but you do get used to it and it does make weapon choice and closing in on the enemy more important. There is no doubt that bullets are still lethal.

[pd3 25]

Please keep in mind that performance is somewhat subjective. Since you didn't give any hard numbers regarding your performance, we have no idea how the game is actually performing for you. For all we know, you could be getting 15 FPS and saying, "It seems smooth to me!"

Nah, it's in the 30fps range whilst testing a modest engagement of infantry. I'm running a 980 black edition quad core, and I was quite impressed it even managed that. Honestly, expecting anything better than that given the relative hardware capabilities is just whining, I'm sorry. This isn't CS 1.6, you can't play it on a shite machine, I've been there when I was younger. I really don't want this series bogged down with ridiculous requests to occlude processing activity to only enemies that can be seen. Somebody literally had to tell some nooblet that this was not an IDtech engine game, and that the fidelity of the simulation depends on taking into account all activity both seen and unseen, performance hits be damned.

As far as optimization concerns being "unfounded," that's just not the case. The game is objectively not taking full advantage of modern hardware. There are still numerous uses of the CPU-intensive low quality shadows even when players have their shadows set to "high."

Okay, fair enough, however my concerns are more about the children who play DayZ and then say things like: "Y THIS NOT RUN ON MY E-MACHINE with ONBOARD GRAIFX!?"

I'm going to wax prejudicial here and say unequivocally that we don't need these people crapping up this game with that attitude.

This is especially a problem in an already heavily CPU-bottlenecked game, in which as many tasks should be offloaded to other hardware as possible. I'm also unaware of a fix for the issue wherein destroying buildings causes the undestroyed model to be moved underground and then placing a second, destroyed model, in its place (although there could very well have been a fix for this -- I don't follow the changelogs that closely). These are concrete problems that really should be addressed.

Again, fair enough as a matter of incidentals, however goldbricking for performance as somebody with a completely garbage machine should be summarily ignored, better?

There are ALWAYS things you can do to improve something, what I'm saying is the performance issues aren't nearly as bad as some would indicate, and I would presume either they're too used to playing games that don't "work" like the Arma series does, or they're trying desperately to run the game on crap hardware and crying about it.

The problem with the old sprint system was that it was often needlessly awkward and clunky.

Clunky, you mean more accurately represented human limitations.

There were numerous occasions when I was either unable to sprint when I wanted to because the game failed to recognize a double tap, or I unintentionally sprinted forward when I just wanted to edge forward a bit.

I've never had that problem with A2, had it with A3 though. And expecting to be able to stop on a dime is something that should be entirely relegated to games that are not in this series. IMO, if you needed to sprint and the available space was not there, you shouldn't have been sprinting.

Unfortunately there seems to be a certain level of the "dunning-kruger" effect when it comes to people who play games, wherein they just assume a player character should be able to do whatever they want without consideration (especially in a series such as this), as to whether it's actually practicable.

IMO, it indicates a level of poor planning or simple impatience that really has no place in this series. I'll steal a quote from the Dark Souls community: "Get gud".

There are numerous reasons that your concerns of players flicking their wrist and shooting someone behind them aren't something you need to be that worried about.

First of all, this is a game that largely takes place at ranges far enough that it would be virtually impossible to accurately spin and shoot someone with a flick of the wrist.

I implied this very thing in my initial post. Doesn't matter though.

In the relatively rare circumstances that players are in such close quarters that this kind of shooting might become viable, it would be akin to rapidly spinning on your heel or at your waist and squeezing off a bunch of bullets (and probably about as effective).

I've already dissected this before, and literally one person could turn around in a little better than a tenth of a second, which no human is capable of. And again, it's that dunning-kruger issue, where players assume spinning around is anywhere even remotely close to what you're capable of doing in real life (it's not even close), and regardless, it shouldn't be a tactical option available, no human can spin as fast as I was able to (and presumably others who hone the tactic).

It completely invalidates strategic flanking maneuvers in favor of simply twitching your way out of an admittedly inferior tactical position.

If you play fighting games, it's kind of like the difference between a Chun-li player, and a Zangief player.

Arma is supposed to be like the latter, you have a set of limitations, and you must learn how to do everything within your tactical repertoire to absolute precision, because unlike Chun-li, who has considerably more agility, you can't (or more appropriately shouldn't) just bounce and twitch your way out of a bad situation.

Games like Quake and UT take place in much closer quarters, and players rely mostly on muscle memory and map memorization to be able to pull off the kind of shooting that you are worried about happening in Arma. This is essentially a non-issue in this game.

Absolutely not, the analogy for closer range (60m and under) engagements is VERY relevant, and again, it's simply an "option" that simply shouldn't even be a consideration, you make inferior tactical decisions, you enjoy getting shot in the back or the sides, it's that simple.

Setting your mouse sensitivity high enough to be able to rapidly spin your character around with a flick of the wrist will significantly impede your ability to aim precisely at range. If you use a mouse with DPI-settings, it will take long enough to swtich your DPI and then move your mouse that it is functionally the same as if you had turned at the lower speed in the first place.

Again, doesn't matter, I was using the default sensitivity and I had to make only a minute movement, and because of the unrealistic speed at which I could turn, there would be MORE than enough time to correct my aim considering there's no inertia to deal with. Honestly, I can't see how anyone who isn't a completely incompetent player or running a machine that is grossly underpowered would not find that a useful option.

Weapons in the game have a fairly high degree of lethality, characters have relatively low movement speeds, and movement isn't particularly audible to other players.

Again, you're characterizing precisely why being able to turn around so quickly is so grossly incongruous and unbalancing for such a game.

Don't try to make excuses for shitty game design. The whole point is, you have FPS tier turning speeds with typical Arma tier movement speeds, and that spells nothing but unreasonable ease in subverting flanking maneuvers.

You can constantly twitch left and right to check your flanks and there's literally no penalty. Nope sorry, your argument is not convincing.

In what situation are you going to have snuck up on someone's flank and begun firing at them, but they still have time to turn and shoot you before they die? If this happens, it is because you didn't aim well enough, not because they have the ability to turn to quickly.

The relative damage of the weapons seems to be pretty low compared to Arma 2, and in general, aiming and hitting seems to generally be more difficult as a result of weapon sway, and seemingly improved collision detection for projectiles.

What that amounts to is a greater total time to line up a shot, and a relatively lower amount of time to turn, respond and return fire.

Again, it shouldn't even be an option, period. It's an indefensible argument.

If two players managed to find themselves in a situation wherein neither one knew they would encounter the other, the person in the inferior tactical position, barring poor skill on behalf of the player in the superior tactical position - should always lose, end of story. With this current mechanic, that simply may not be the case, and that's objectively terrible.

If you want weapon weight to be a factor in aim speed, I would recommend disconnecting the weapon from the aim point and having it lag behind at a speed based on the size or weight of the weapon. That way turning with the mouse still feels snappy and smooth, but you still have to wait for your weapon to catch up before actually engaging.

That's as garbage a solution as the expanding ring, which is common in many console FPS games, it's 16+ year old technology.

Nope, trespasser had the very rudimentary technology back in 1998 that we need to see now. Simply put, IMO no player should be able to turn himself at the speed his mouse can move (which is f'ing fast), period. And I would even be willing to compromise and have "console babby mode" movement, and "realistic" inertial movement so long as it was an option, and it was multiplayer-enforceable.

Divide the community if you have to.

The first is that the body armor is calculated per body part, so the helmet covers the entire head, the vest covers the entire torso, etc.

So it's literally no different than the previous versions.

The second is that CSAT uniforms are supposed to be somewhat bullet resistant, so CSAT soldiers are (sort of) protected over their entire bodies. They don't have plate carriers though, so their total bullet resistence is lower than that of the other factions.

Being hit with a bullet without plates would still leave the body having to deal with a lot of kinetic energy, and honestly, it's kind of silly to see them simply flinch.

I mean it's better I suppose than the previous versions, but it just seems more like you're fighting synthetic humans from Blade Runner than anything else.

Either way, the implementation of body armor wasn't ideal, and created real problems with the balance of the game against the AI at the very least.

Next release maybe.

Edited May 17, 2014 by Pd3

[pd3 25]

BI has done quite a fine job so far but performance is still an issue for many out there and they have every right to be whining, ranting or bitching or whatever one wants to call it after putting up with sub par performance for years

From what I've seen, no. Honestly, this sort of performance comes with the territory of high fidelity quasi-sims (I know BI has engaged in some rebranding chicanery as of late with regard to that claim). Additionally who else is doing ANYTHING even remotely close to this? Honestly? Codemasters and the new "Operation Flashpoint", not even close. There's very little if no basis for comparison here.

You can't expect the world when you have modest hardware and are attempting to simulate combat engagements with high fidelity visuals and broad, expansive environments. Claims that other games that don't do exactly what this series does is a fallacy of relative privation.

Arma is niche because most people can't even run it unless they settle for anything under 30 fps.

Honestly if that's a mitigating factor then those "people" I would characterize as spoiled and entitled, a lot of my gaming youth was played on shitty hardware. You've put the cart in front of the horse, there's a reason for the steep requirements and that's because the market for such software has ALWAYS been a niche interest. Only with the advent of pseudo-realistic shooters have we seen an increased interest in this particular genre, and I must say, not for the better it seems, save for BI's pocketbook.

I don't see how optimizing the game and getting rid of redundant pop up errors that doesn't tell anybody anything useful can be unwelcome by some.

Because if it were that simple it would've been done already, that's utopian logic. "Why would anyone hate optimization?!" You're begging the question, stop that.

The thing is the majority of people whining are people who really have no place whining, you're never going to get the same kind of performance from this series that you would out of a heavily dumbed-down, made-for-the-lowest-common-denominator cash cow multiplatform game. And outside of that, you really have no basis for comparison, so there's just no point in even moaning about it.

This series is metaphorically speaking, a machine with many more moving parts than most, and thus much more tricky to optimize. I fully understand the business aspect of budgetary constraints vs implementation. I'm honestly glad BI hasn't "sold out" more than they already have (I'm trying not to make that sound pejorative, but let's face facts).

It's also niche game because some stupid ass design decisions have been around the game for quite a while and take very long, if ever to be changed or improved upon

Dare I even ask?

Inb4

>muh clunky

>muh jumping

Aside for a couple combat rifles, the rest of the sounds are sub par, insulting and horrible, all at once. This is not even subjective in 2014 game and no, BI is not getting pass on that

They do actually, because I would rather their budget be allocated to actually making functional aspects of the game better.

How can you complain about "stupid ass design decisions and mechanics" and then somehow equally prioritize sound? Optimizing the game also requires much of that budget as well.

The community can fix the sound issues, it's not ideal but it works for now, they cannot fix hard coded problems, come on son. BI is not made of money, in spite of their pandering to certain demographics, even I know that they gotta make this pay, and the reality is we live in a zero-sum world. Allocating from one takes from another.

---------- Post added at 02:42 ---------- Previous post was at 02:38 ----------

so its ok for you to complain about aspects of the game but not for anyone else ??

That's my opinion dude, and you're entitled to yours.

That's how opinions work. I am not god-king of the internets, opine-away friend.

---------- Post added at 02:51 ---------- Previous post was at 02:42 ----------

Although your points in your mind are valid I feel like your late to the party coming on the forums basically admitting your a fan now. 800 hours of game time later, I don't care what your opinion is, your late to the party, enjoy the game!

Dude, I've been openly criticizing the game since I started seeing footage of it that I found disconcerting.

Again, it's a genetic fallacy to state that I'm not entitled to an opinion if I don't buy or play the game, I have eyes, and I have a brain that is capable of deductive logic.

I REFUSED, alone on the basis of seeing some of the things that I did, and on the basis that they likely would not get fixed to support a company that I felt was more or less driving a knife into the backs of their core supporters in order to pander to those who have specific biases influenced heavily by mass market games.

I'm now posting this basically to more or less confirm some suspicions I had about the game, because there were some naysayers again, plying the genetic fallacy that I was incapable of making an assessment on certain gameplay mechanics had I not played it. As well as also make some endorsements based on my unique experience with the game based on how it performs with my own hardware.

I don't know what it is about the majority of people on these forums who seem to be aggressively critical of people such as myself, and their appetency for genetic fallacies, but it doesn't matter if you have 800 hours of "game time". You admitted shortly thereafter that you openly hold a bias about the game and refuse to consider other points of view based on irrational and truly myopic conditions.

Secondly, I never said I was a fan of the game, in fact of all the games in the series, I would absolutely say gameplay wise it represents the nadir in some fundamentally critical ways. That to be truthful one couldn't appreciate that claim if one is too easily entranced by visuals and things that we've come to expect from the series for nigh on ten plus years now. Arma 3 looks and runs well, the gameplay dynamics in some way are not bad, however in the ways it has failed in my opinion, they are critical, and critically upset the balance the game has maintained for the worse.

I'm considering buying if only because it's cheap now, even though Arma 2 will be my go-to for a long time to come.

All I'm saying is, I won't tolerate as a consumer some of the egregious mistakes/insults that BI has made to certain portions of their customer base in future editions in the series.

And if BI doesn't care about that, then inevitably a market alternative will emerge, and I will put my money elsewhere.

---------- Post added at 02:56 ---------- Previous post was at 02:51 ----------

Good review, I would only comment on hand grenades.So whole system is Work in progress.Pins are not pulled out

when you throw it, there is only one way to lob a grenade, you can't cook, whoever I'm glad they moved away

from arma 2 chunkiness.Which means that in arma 2 life you throw a grenade and you are locked in that animation.

I can happy report that this restriction is gone in arma 3, and throwing grenade won't lock you in animation.

And I'm willing to accept that for Arma 3, although again, if this becomes a trend of simply half-assing game mechanics in favor of a more FPS-type feel, I will know that BI has more or less set their mind to pandering to a demographic that cares little for the roots of the series.

And yes, that would be one of the few appeals against "clunkiness" that I would agree with. You should be able to exit a throwing animation, however I would say that it shouldn't be instantaneous, as if it were just some interrupted frame that simply cancels, that would look terrible, and it would imply movement speeds that human beings are simply incapable of.

A MASSIVE portion of this game's challenge comes from working within a set of defined limitations that prevent you from having a wide array of movement options at all times, that's for the realm of circle-strafe nonsense festivals such as Nexuiz and Quake, etc.

---------- Post added at 02:57 ---------- Previous post was at 02:56 ----------

I'm guessing that the OP did not play multiplayer yet..

I don't do massive internet multiplayer because I cannot stand lag, at all, period. I play on networks and occasionally remote games, often on private servers.

I can imagine it's probably bad, but my perspective on that particular issue is skewed because I cannot stand latency at all. That being said I really hate this modern trend of tooling game mechanics toward being multiplayer friendly. They ruined Mount and Blade that way.

---------- Post added at 03:03 ---------- Previous post was at 02:57 ----------

I'm not sure where you think anyone in this thread said or implied that.

Aside from almost everything in your post being subjective and the laughable implication that 30 FPS is good performance, nowhere in the OP does it say that he is a fan "now," although his registration date implies that he has been a fan for quite a long time. At best, the OP is stating that the game is not as bad as he initially thought it would be. That's hardly a glowing recommendation.

Visually, Arma 3 is a triumph, and performance wise, for the visuals and and the scope it allows, it is as well, in spite of some critical faults. No question about that. Honestly, I get in the neighborhood of that with my old quad core and radeon graphics card that isn't physx capable. So knowing how old my hardware is, in the neighborhood of 30fps is reasonable.

-EDIT-

I actually hadn't configured the game well prior to that, and I'm actually now getting into the range of 45 and sometimes (rarely) the low 50s.

I guess the crossfire setup is holding out okay.

Granted I don't have everything on ultra, but it's not set to low either and I'm playing it on 1920x1080, I still think that considering how old my system is, that A3 runs and looks fantastic on it.

-EDIT-

I grew up in a time where computers were WAYYY more expensive, and I had to play with shittier performance than that. All I'm saying is, A3 isn't really any good for me right now with my current hardware except to fiddle around with the mechanics. A2 performance and gameplay ways FAR better serve my interests, but nevertheless, I don't think it's all that bad. It's not great, but it's not abyssmal.

However the mechanics are deviating toward catering to a demographic that I honestly and openly loathe, I retreated from other series back in the old days to OFP because they simply didn't care about making those people happy, they had their battlefield games and what not, and we had OFP.

The OP also isn't "late to the game," since waiting for a promotion to try the game doesn't invalidate his opinion, and is, in fact, a financially responsible decision to make. It seems entirely reasonable to have a place for people who are trying the game for the first time due to the free weekend to have a place to discuss their thoughts and impressions.

I was quite pissed off when I found out about certain aspects of the game, I did a lot of research, I did mess around with it on other individual's computers, however I'll admit it, I was pretty butt-ravaged when I found out what BI had done with the weapon movement, I get that there's a rift in the community and valid concerns about smooth controls, but my sympathy is more or less cut off when people start passively endorsing unlimited turn speeds.

Okay, we have customers now paying for the game that like that, dogs also sometimes get fleas, but at least BI could do the right thing and offer some consolation to those who have supported them when they were being attacked by the likes of PC Gamer magazine when they were a fledgling operation.

I've bought more than a few copies of their games over the years and inducted many players as a result of my enthusiasm for the series, so yeah, immature or not, I was a little offended. I know I'm not "owed" anything, but long-term this is an issue with the game mechanics that absolutely cannot remain as it is in future releases.

---------- Post added at 03:11 ---------- Previous post was at 03:03 ----------

Actually a relatively fair review. Two things I would like to touch on:

Performance is greatly improved over arma 2 and I am happy to be able to play on a laptop with decent settings and performance. BI has done a great job.

BUT

There are still issues with MP. A well made mission with a reasonable amount of people will run fine. But more elaborate/poorly optimized missions run poorly. This not even necessarily BI fault, but there definitely is room for improvement if they want arma to be as open to ones imagination as they claim to.

Honestly, the reason why I didn't give any sort of opinion on MP is because I don't really play much internet multiplayer at all, in fact almost ALL of my multiplayer gaming is done via LAN, so I'm not even going to contest that, and I would defer to somebody who has a bit more experience with it.

On weapon handling I generally agree there is a lack of realistic limitations. I do think the new handling is better, but it is still lacking alot. We have gone from one extreme to another. I have a feeling BI is focusing on this issue and will address it over the next year though through their expansions/dlc features. Looking forward to that.

I hope they do something eventually, even if it results in two very divergent ways in which the game is played.

Armour is messed up. Shoot a guy with a helmet anywhere in the head and his he still beneifts from the helmets protection. Its better than the total lack of protection in arma 2,

I noticed that, in A2 they were grossly underprotected, I actually had to use an infantry armor addon to get things to an acceptable ratio for my liking.

Edited May 18, 2014 by Pd3

[13islucky 10]

From devbranch update

16-05-14

EXE rev. 124337

Size: ~16 MB

-Parameter for inertia in weaponType

Is this enough to explain it or should I simply say yes, work in progress? :icon_twisted:

I would cool You down a bit, but WIP means it's not even configured at the moment, there is just an engine support for some parameter to be loaded. As You may see in the roadmap, we would like to address this for Bootcamp update, more details are inbounce soon :icon_twisted:

I'd say that they're doing something, so I suppose that's one issue that's going to be addressed. I'm guessing still a long way, but it's always nice to know, isn't it?

[pd3 25]

From devbranch update

I'd say that they're doing something, so I suppose that's one issue that's going to be addressed. I'm guessing still a long way, but it's always nice to know, isn't it?

That is encouraging, at least they're trying. I've decided that considering the game runs far better than I had ever expected it would on this older hardware, that I will buy it.

I'll use A3 for my close-in CQC type needs, and I'll use A2 for massive battles using the Flashpoint scripts.

I still say that with some marginal practice, that it is far too easy to spin around like a dervish on crack and fight flanking attackers. But that's just me.

[roshnak 41]

Nah, it's in the 30fps range whilst testing a modest engagement of infantry. I'm running a 980 black edition quad core, and I was quite impressed it even managed that. Honestly, expecting anything better than that given the relative hardware capabilities is just whining, I'm sorry. This isn't CS 1.6, you can't play it on a shite machine, I've been there when I was younger.

This is where the subjective nature of performance concerns comes into play. I, and a lot of other people, don't consider 30 FPS to be good or even mediocre performance. I'd prefer that my frame rate never dip below 40. Subpar performance in a vast and ambitious game isn't any better than subpar performance in a small and simple game.

Clunky, you mean more accurately represented human limitations.

Again, the sprinting mechanics are unchanged from previous titles. You could always strafe diagonally while sprinting. All they did was add the "Turbo" button back.

Aiming stuff.

All I can say is that I encourage you to play the game more in multiplayer and see if anything you're concerned about actually happens.

That's as garbage a solution as the expanding ring, which is common in many console FPS games, it's 16+ year old technology.

Nope, trespasser had the very rudimentary technology back in 1998 that we need to see now. Simply put, IMO no player should be able to turn himself at the speed his mouse can move (which is f'ing fast), period. And I would even be willing to compromise and have "console babby mode" movement, and "realistic" inertial movement so long as it was an option, and it was multiplayer-enforceable.

First of all, my suggestion for weapon inertia isn't anything like blooming crosshairs or expanding cones of fire. At all. In fact, it's almost exactly like the free-aim system implemented in previous games, except instead of turning with your torso before the rest of your body, you would be turning with your head before the rest of your body.

Second, are you referring to Trespasser, the Jurrassic Park game where you literally had to manually line up the iron sights on your gun by manually rotating your wrist and manually moving your arm into the middle of the screen? Because that mechanic, while an interesting novelty, was needlessly complex, not even close to an approximation of what it's actually like to use a firearm, and generally terrible.

While the limitations on movement and aiming in the previous versions of the game may have arguably been a more strictly realistic representation, there is a strong argument to be made that a keyboard and mouse cannot accuately reflect the range of finesse and control we have over our bodies, and concessions should be made in realism should be made to account for the wide range of options that we have in real life. I believe that the changes in movement and aiming in Arma 3 are largely a step in the right direction. Did they perhaps go a little too far? Maybe, but I feel like I have much more control over my actions in Arma 3 than I have in any of the previous titles.

Dare I even ask?

Inb4

>muh clunky

>muh jumping

He's almost certainly referring to the action menu.

I have to say, your initial review was pretty reasonable, but your follow-on posts have taken on an increasingly elitest and dismissive tone. You should really stop assuming that everyone here is some dumb newbie who doesn't how video games were done in the old days. You aren't the only person on these forums who has been playing video games for a long time. OFP contained a few pretty questionable design decisions even for the time, and the series stuck with a lot of those decisions for a lot longer than was reasonable. The action menu was awful in 2001 and its continued inclusion in the series has only gotten less forgivable. It doesn't make the game better in any way, shape, or form.

Edit:

Turn speed is ridiculous and just panders to a console generation of 360 no scopers.

You guys understand that turn speed is limited on consoles, right? Like, it has to be, because you are aiming with an analogue stick.

Edited May 18, 2014 by roshnak

[BL1P 35]

Im 2047 hours listed on steam in Arma3 and I agree with everything you said.

Turn speed is ridiculous and just panders to a console generation of 360 no scopers.

Performance is increasing each update in tests I have ran and Mp play is getting better but the amounts of AI and players we are able to get into a mission on a dedi server still leaves a lot to be desired when compared to the results in arma2.

I really like the look of the planed roadmap and hope that Bis will increase the level of difficulty required to play on the Veteran and Elite server difficulty settings and finally add in some of the restrictions people have been asking for since ofp.

no autohover, no autolanding, no ability to alter gamma and brightness in MP, less hud, take on Choppers flight mechanics , No radio chat messages from an imaginnary AI for the player , No stupid cover me messages from the player by default, etc etc.

Leave the 3rd view - hexagon marker - 360 spin - no sway mod - fatigue off - extended Armour on - regular difficulty guys as they are so that they can Look like their Heroes on youtube. But lets increase the difficulty of Veteran and Elite come on bis you know you can do it :P

[dav 22]

I'm not sure where you think anyone in this thread said or implied that.

Aside from almost everything in your post being subjective and the laughable implication that 30 FPS is good performance, nowhere in the OP does it say that he is a fan "now," although his registration date implies that he has been a fan for quite a long time. At best, the OP is stating that the game is not as bad as he initially thought it would be. That's hardly a glowing recommendation.

The OP also isn't "late to the game," since waiting for a promotion to try the game doesn't invalidate his opinion, and is, in fact, a financially responsible decision to make. It seems entirely reasonable to have a place for people who are trying the game for the first time due to the free weekend to have a place to discuss their thoughts and impressions.

Roshnak,

I can play in the 80's frame wise on med/high it's just I love the 3600 view distance on ultra, it's mind blowingly immersive, but you'll never get that level of immersion will you. You want high fames and low view distance, so you probably don't play the game as was intended. Good luck!!

[Sneakson 1]

ARMA3 runs admirably well compared to ARMA2 considering graphics though it still doesn’t work well compared to other games and I’ve heard multiplayer is messy and so is combat with many AIs.

Indeed the game works quite well on older computers if you settle for the medium settings. Even my 5 year old Q9550 (2008-2013) handles small singleplayer missions in about 50 fps on a mix of medium and higher settings with 1600 meters view distance which I thought was nice. Hell, I should never have upgraded really… still haven’t played anything my old computer couldn’t handle. At least Watch Dogs should make my computer sweat and I haven’t played Crysis 3 yet.

Quick grenade tosses is a good thing to me because in reality I believe it is indeed very quick however cooking and such could definitely be added some time though I wouldn’t demand it.

Movement in ARMA3 is nice. I’m bothered by how you can’t change speed without stopping though… clicking W+S or S+W stops you momentarily and it bugs me.

Quick turning is indeed unrealistic but as someone else said it really doesn’t give anyone any advantage outside of CQB at less than 50 meters. I’m more bothered by my gun getting stuck in walls because my character is unable to bring the weapon closer to his chest automatically.

Good thoughts. Still many things to be improved though such as health, damage, tiredness, vehicles and tons of graphical bugs and close to worthless AI and AI control.

By the way three years old is absolutely not an old computer. It's just weak. AMD.

he starts off by saying ppl dont have a right to complain about a certain aspect of the game, then went on to complain about other aspects, this is a big contradiction and thats what i was pointing out, you cant moan cause someone complained, then do it yourself

Maybe you should read what you're quoting instead of being a smartass about it.

[pd3 25]

I've decided to dabble in a bit of multiplayer and I don't know if this is aberrant or not, or whether my expectations are simply much lower, but it actually wasn't that bad!

In fact I had a lower latency than I would have ever had playing way back in the day. I mean, it's not like playing on a network, which is what I typically do, but it was actually pretty damn good! There was latency, but it wasn't horrendous.

Can anyone tell me how well listen servers work and how common they are?

The one game I was playing I'm not sure if I recall whether the person was running a dedicated server or not.

Either way, it was pretty damned good.

Sorry if people are upset by the performance, but honestly, that is one area I cannot fault BI. They've done a fantastic job making this series reasonably playable online.

[Ckrauslo 12]

Pd3 you said a person cannot turn 180º quickly to shoot another person? in 2012 i visited spartan 360 tactical defense and took a few classes, one of the classes was on this subject...as matter of fact i will leave a video and you give me your opinion about it...and one other thing, i had to wait till a promotion too...here at Brazil it is very expansive

One other thing, in basic CQB training you always start with your back to the enemy and than turn to engage as fast as possible as in real life

[13islucky 10]

Pd3 you said a person cannot turn 180º quickly to shoot another person? in 2012 i visited spartan 360 tactical defense and took a few classes, one of the classes was on this subject...as matter of fact i will leave a video and you give me your opinion about it...and one other thing, i had to wait till a promotion too...here at Brazil it is very expansive

One other thing, in basic CQB training you always start with your back to the enemy and than turn to engage as fast as possible as in real life

Hehe, Instructor Zero. I saw a Spartan 360 Defense ad a few years ago with him, before he had the beard.

Anyways, even though that is possible and somewhat reasonable to achieve with training, one of the biggest problems is that the animation does not really show how the stance changes as the person is spinning. Because of that, doing things like this in Arma 3 looks like you're rotating one one point, even if the legs are moving they don't look natural.

[Variable 322]

Pd3 you said a person cannot turn 180º quickly to shoot another person?

He is firing a pistol. Try to do the same with a Machine gun and see what happens in Arma 3, and then in real life.

[Ckrauslo 12]

I did this with a FAL in the Pelopes try outs in 09 and still do this in every training

---------- Post added at 08:18 ---------- Previous post was at 08:17 ----------

Hehe, Instructor Zero. I saw a Spartan 360 Defense ad a few years ago with him, before he had the beard.

Anyways, even though that is possible and somewhat reasonable to achieve with training, one of the biggest problems is that the animation does not really show how the stance changes as the person is spinning. Because of that, doing things like this in Arma 3 looks like you're rotating one one point, even if the legs are moving they don't look natural.

Well i play in 1st person and only pay attention to my sight picture and target

---------- Post added at 08:19 ---------- Previous post was at 08:18 ----------

He is firing a pistol. Try to do the same with a Machine gun and see what happens in Arma 3, and then in real life.

Oh and you should go there, the video is a mere advertisement he teaches the same with carbines too.....

[pd3 25]

Hehe, Instructor Zero. I saw a Spartan 360 Defense ad a few years ago with him, before he had the beard.

Anyways, even though that is possible and somewhat reasonable to achieve with training, one of the biggest problems is that the animation does not really show how the stance changes as the person is spinning. Because of that, doing things like this in Arma 3 looks like you're rotating one one point, even if the legs are moving they don't look natural.

Not within a tenth of a second, no you'd have to be a superhero.

Real world timescales and what I'm capable of doing in game are incongruous.

Having said that, after playing the game some more, I'm going to say this.

I am utterly blown away at how well my shitty old computer runs this game, honestly. Okay, I threw a fit over the turning speed, and yeah, it'd be nice to see that redressed in some way to both appease the newer people and the old school players in the future be it the next in the series or whatnot.

However I've delved into a few multiplayer games already, and it's so easy to jump into a reasonably full game, on altis no less, with a fully functioning dynamic conflict server running, and play a half decent co-op.

So I recant what I said about A3 being the lowest point in the series, that would go to Armed Assault, but only because it was a very awkward transitional game that eventually became Arma 2, which was better optimized.

I perhaps gave the game too much flak, and thus far in most of the scenarios I've played, they've been mostly ranged and therefore the more FPS like tactics actually HAVEN'T been viable, thankfully I was perhaps overreacting. I would still probably hate playing on a deathmatch or competitive server especially if there is CQB because it would be just a complete clusterfuck.

That being said, for the simple reason that A3 manages to look great, play well even online in spite of some lag here and there, (I grew up thinking 125ms was FAST in the old Quake days). I would say it's worth the money.

I'll always keep Arma 2 on my HD simply because it still does things that A3 cannot as yet. However overall, I would say the playability of the game compensates for some of the design compromises they've made.

So in all, I guess I'm acknowledging that A2 and A3 are two different beasts and they each do particular things exceptionally well, and I can appreciate that aspect of A3. However if the game did not perform as surprisingly well as it does, I don't think I could offer that endorsement.

So yeah, it's not perfect, but it's far from horrible.

Edited May 19, 2014 by Pd3

[Ckrauslo 12]

Not within a tenth of a second, no you'd have to be a superhero.

Real world timescales and what I'm capable of doing in game are incongruous.

Having said that, after playing the game some more, I'm going to say this.

I am utterly blown away at how well my shitty old computer runs this game, honestly

How are your graphic settings? Tenth of a second? how are your sensibility? this is changeable....you know...this is to do with your config