Impressions after playing the game.

[pd3 25]

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

1080x1920, 100% sampling, a mixture of standard and high graphics settings, vsync off, even though it prevents image tearing, it does at a significant boost for my machine.

Some other fancier effects are tuned down a bit, but that's okay because A3 is still quite pretty without them and it helps.

My sensitivity is default, seriously it's not that hard to turn fast, like Flash Gordon fast with the way this game is set up, if you practice you'll probably be able to do it as well.

It's just wrist movement and unrestricted turn speed.

Edited May 19, 2014 by Pd3

[Ckrauslo 12]

1080x1920, 100% sampling, a mixture of standard and high graphics settings, vsync off, even though it prevents image tearing, it does at a significant boost for my machine.

Some other fancier effects are tuned down a bit, but that's okay because A3 is still quite pretty without them and it helps a bit.

My sensitivity is default, seriously it's not that hard to turn fast, like Flash Gordon fast with the way this game is set up, if you practice you'll probably be able to do it as well.

It's just wrist movement and unrestricted turn speed.

I can, i just don't.....i don't over drive my gun........What is your pc spec? and how many fps do you have in the cities with a fire fight.....

[pd3 25]

I can, i just don't.....i don't over drive my gun........What is your pc spec? and how many fps do you have in the cities with a fire fight.....

AMD quad core 980 black edition

16gigs of ram and two crossfired 6970s.

My FPS can drop pretty low if there's a lot of explosions and stuff going off at once, however I get reasonable range in the 40s for the most part and sometimes low 50s when there's less activity.

[Ckrauslo 12]

Yeah your pc is not as bad as you said

[pd3 25]

Yeah your pc is not as bad as you said

Quad cores are ancient now, and honestly 16gb of ram isn't that expensive, and it's not even the fastest.

6970s "were" considered higher end for their time, but they've been completely eclipsed by more capable hardware. Quite modest given consideration to most modern games. I wouldn't even try Crysis 3 with it.

[Ckrauslo 12]

Yeah, but is not a bad Pc... i use the following rig : 6870, 8gb ram and one i3 and run a lot of other games in ultra including Bf3, and cryses 2, you don't judge by the new products out, but by the quality of the hardware you have...there is stuff better out there...but don't make your hardware bad...isn't even that many generations passed

[k0rd 3]

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.

fair enough, thanks for giving it a try and posting your results.

you are correct that latency doesn't seem to be much of an issue (provided you connect to a server with low ping of course)

The problem that I (and others) have is that poor server performance causes a drop in player FPS. Personally, I can stand it until it approaches 20 or so FPS, then it starts getting hard for me to play. It really is hit-or-miss though, low playercount missions that are restarted often are very playable and enjoyable.

[pooroldspike 128]

Bearing in mind this threads title 'First impressions after playing the game', I think the first thing we all did when we bought AA3 was to think "how does it compare to AA2?".

So just for the record what do people think?

[Sneakson 1]

Bearing in mind this threads title 'First impressions after playing the game', I think the first thing we all did when we bought AA3 was to think "how does it compare to AA2?".

So just for the record what do people think?

I didn't play much ARMA2 but ARMA3 is a lot closer to a normal game in terms of quality even with ARMA scale whereas ARMA2 had dumb things like the stumbling around when you walk with your weapon up that a playtester should have caught after 5 minutes.

[Belbo 461]

Bearing in mind this threads title 'First impressions after playing the game', I think the first thing we all did when we bought AA3 was to think "how does it compare to AA2?".

So just for the record what do people think?

Nope. We didn't.

And if the thought actually came up, I thought: :eek: The lighting!!! The lighting!!! :eek:

[pd3 25]

Bearing in mind this threads title 'First impressions after playing the game', I think the first thing we all did when we bought AA3 was to think "how does it compare to AA2?".

So just for the record what do people think?

A2 very much bridged the gap between OFP and the current generation of both visuals and gameplay mechanics of the time.

Honestly, I feel now that A2 is basically OFP fully realized, and for that reason I'll always appreciate it, as OFP basically created the genre we know today.

I was quite worried about how A3 was going to compare, and I suppose for me I was amazed at the framerate stability, along with greatly increased draw distance. I can play reasonably at over 3k draw distance and it runs well on my computer. And yes, the lighting.

---------- Post added at 14:02 ---------- Previous post was at 14:02 ----------

ARMA2 had dumb things like the stumbling around when you walk with your weapon up that a playtester should have caught after 5 minutes.

Huh?

What do you mean exactly?

---------- Post added at 14:08 ---------- Previous post was at 14:02 ----------

fair enough, thanks for giving it a try and posting your results.

you are correct that latency doesn't seem to be much of an issue (provided you connect to a server with low ping of course)

The problem that I (and others) have is that poor server performance causes a drop in player FPS. Personally, I can stand it until it approaches 20 or so FPS, then it starts getting hard for me to play. It really is hit-or-miss though, low playercount missions that are restarted often are very playable and enjoyable.

Granted I haven't played in like 50 or 60 player games, however when my frame rate seems to dip that bad, it only usually does so momentarily, and my hardware and my internet connection aren't really top notch. I'm not deathmatching so it's not like it's going to make me rage quit if I lag out and get shot by some ai, if it happens it happens. That's online gaming for you. It was WAY worse back in the old days.

Perhaps I haven't encountered any servers yet that have been running for excessive periods of time, and/or are poorly equipped to handle a reasonable workload.

Edited May 19, 2014 by Pd3

[ratszo 17]

Respect for the 2002 join date. Back when i still had a nvidia tnt, my buddy showed me ofp on his ti4600,

--was like my first tab of lsd..., blew my mind.

Cheers!

[pd3 25]

Respect for the 2002 join date. Back when i still had a nvidia tnt, my buddy showed me ofp on his ti4600,

--was like my first tab of lsd..., blew my mind.

Cheers!

Yeah, the very first time I ever played OFP it was off the PC gamer demo disc, and wasn't fully optimized, and I do believe it was on a friend's computer with a nvidia TNT as well.

[roshnak 41]

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.

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.

A few of things:

First, while it's possible to make a 180 degree turn in a tenth of a second (I still think your sensitivity is too high), spinning around as quickly as you can and turning and accurately engaging a target are two very different things. Fortunately, BIS appears to be working on implementing a weapon inertia system. It is, however, likely to be similar to the system used in DayZ, which you didn't seem to be too fond of when I suggested it. Either way,

of the guy Ckauslo posted about earlier turning 180 degrees (with a rifle) and engaging targets in just over 0.6 seconds, which is a more likely timeframe for doing the same thing in Arma 3.

Second, broadband internet has been widely available in the parts of the world where online gaming is prevalent for over a decade. These days, if you're experiencing lag, it's usually either your connection or you're playing in a server located on another continent. I'm not sure why you are comparing your connection today to a time when ISDN was considered blazing fast. Framerate was always considered important in shooters, but as early as 2003-2004, players, or at least the people I played with, commonly expected framerates of 70-100 (CRT monitors!) and pings of less than 120ms.

To answer your question about listen servers: They're not that common. Listen servers are mostly used to play with a small group of friends (less than 10-12 people, probably).

Finally, your PC is midrange at worst. Quad cores may be old, but it doesn't matter all that much, since Arma 3 isn't multi-threaded. Your 16-gigs of RAM are largely irrelevant, since Arma can only use ~5 gigs, as it isn't a 64-bit application. Your GPUs are a little out of date, but overall your PC is pretty decent.

[jiltedjock 10]

Respect for the 2002 join date. Back when i still had a nvidia tnt, my buddy showed me ofp on his ti4600,

--was like my first tab of lsd..., blew my mind.

Cheers!

It was mind blowing. I upgraded to an AGP Geforce MX2 from a 3dfx card on the back of that demo. I think it had 32MB of VRAM! I created missions from the demo mission as people on the OFP forums started to discover the various unit names.

[Jona33 51]

In response to the spinning around and shooting discussion this video nicely shows spinning around and shooting in full kit for British soldiers.

In response to my first impressions of ARMA 3, I was extremely impressed. I'd played ARMA II Free and the OA demo in the past (alright I'm cheap) but figured I would actually buy ARMA 3. It's a massive improvement in nearly every way. The other day I switched back and opened up a mission in ARMA II just because I wanted to remember how to do something and realised just how much of an improvement ARMA 3 is. I really don't have an impressive computer but A3 doesn't actually run badly in my opinion though others would probably recoil in horror at the FPS I get. (I think my biggest problem is my Graphic card, a Nvidia GeForce 310.)

[Sneakson 1]

A2 very much bridged the gap between OFP and the current generation of both visuals and gameplay mechanics of the time.

Honestly, I feel now that A2 is basically OFP fully realized, and for that reason I'll always appreciate it, as OFP basically created the genre we know today.

I was quite worried about how A3 was going to compare, and I suppose for me I was amazed at the framerate stability, along with greatly increased draw distance. I can play reasonably at over 3k draw distance and it runs well on my computer. And yes, the lighting.

---------- Post added at 14:02 ---------- Previous post was at 14:02 ----------

Huh?

What do you mean exactly?

---------- Post added at 14:08 ---------- Previous post was at 14:02 ----------

Granted I haven't played in like 50 or 60 player games, however when my frame rate seems to dip that bad, it only usually does so momentarily, and my hardware and my internet connection aren't really top notch. I'm not deathmatching so it's not like it's going to make me rage quit if I lag out and get shot by some ai, if it happens it happens. That's online gaming for you. It was WAY worse back in the old days.

Perhaps I haven't encountered any servers yet that have been running for excessive periods of time, and/or are poorly equipped to handle a reasonable workload.

In ARMA2 when you aim using the sights and try to walk at the same time you stumble all over the place... looks really dumb. ARMA3 is better animated.

[pd3 25]

In response to the spinning around and shooting discussion this video nicely shows spinning around and shooting in full kit for British soldiers.

In response to my first impressions of ARMA 3, I was extremely impressed. I'd played ARMA II Free and the OA demo in the past (alright I'm cheap) but figured I would actually buy ARMA 3. It's a massive improvement in nearly every way. The other day I switched back and opened up a mission in ARMA II just because I wanted to remember how to do something and realised just how much of an improvement ARMA 3 is. I really don't have an impressive computer but A3 doesn't actually run badly in my opinion though others would probably recoil in horror at the FPS I get. (I think my biggest problem is my Graphic card, a Nvidia GeForce 310.)

I recently finished a sortie on an insurgency server at night, a solo assault on a town, and I can say with 100% certitude, that I can spin ungodly fast and maintain accuracy, either 90 degrees or 180 much faster than is humanly possible.

Now considering that the AI in the arma series has been this weird combination of oblivious and superhuman perception at arbitrary times, I don't feel so bad about snapping to the left after hearing something and popping an insurgent in the head before he could draw a bead on me at about 20 meters. Sometimes they see me when I can't even see them, and it's something as silly as a bit of a bush or something, and they're just firing away like they have x-ray vision and I'm ducking into a house. So when it comes to fighting the AI, I'll take the advantage I guess.

However I would definitely not want to have to play against other players in which every one of them is honing those turning skills to razor precision so it turns into one big clusterfuck if it ever becomes a close quarters engagement.

In spite of this, I actually found that solo sortie was more immersive and suspenseful than a great deal of the experiences I've had with other games in the series. Granted, I have some great quite recent memories of using ThompsonB's flashpoint scripts to create massive battles in A2. However simply by virtue of the environment and it's relative detail, I got a similar sense of immersion that I did playing Far Cry 2, even though that game has pretty crappy handling and ballistics models themselves. It was quite intense, moving from house to house, checking the streets, and picking off insurgents and hoping I didn't get overwhelmed if they spotted me.

I attribute that largely to the greater attention to finer detail, of course lighting, and movement capability (position changes, ease of negotiating areas on foot, not the super silly fast spinning)

Another thing I've also noticed is that unlike previous versions in the series, the AI aren't laser accurate sniper gods now, they can be caught off guard and fire off many errant rounds in seeming duress, which is kind of nice. I had to use Robalo's ASR-AI and heavily tweak it in order to get the A2 AI to behave a little less like cyborgs from hell. So good on BI for that.

I will say A3 does seem to still have that problem that A2 shared where interactive objects don't always give you the interaction indicator without some adjustment or shuffling, and in such a tense situation where time is of the essence, that can be pretty nerve wracking, if you need to shut a door and you can't bring up the option to do so.

It seems as though A3 has carved itself quite a nice little niche in terms of being very multiplayer friendly, and creating intriguing ambiance by which to play missions.

Ultimately the FUTURE of high fidelity "military style" games, will, 100% include a limited physics/IK system for modeling upper body movement, taking into account both the inertia and weight of weapons/recoil, and impacts from incoming rounds/debris.

You will have tensor/flexor values that will determine your relative strength at specific points in your arms, torso and shoulders, and if you get hit, those values will be compromised, resulting in poorer weapon handling. It will all be dynamic, it will also be awesome and bring the genre to a completely new level of immersion.

This of course will also have to precipitate slower paced combat, in which the AI is also subject to the same rules, which means you're likely not going to see it for a while, as you'll likely require a lot more processing power to model that behavior in AI and have it be at least remotely fair for the player. However I absolutely believe, barring the world blowing up, such a model will manage to find it's way into some form of militaristic shooter. Or hell, even some arcade'y FPS, albeit simplified.

Edited May 20, 2014 by Pd3

[Gutsnav 13]

^^^

They're working on it. In the Devblog a few days back they added an ability to have "weapon inertia". Will most likely be implemented before the Marksman DLC. Patience is key with the Czechs :P

[pd3 25]

In ARMA2 when you aim using the sights and try to walk at the same time you stumble all over the place... looks really dumb. ARMA3 is better animated.

Oh, actually I preferred ARMA 2 in that respect, if you wanted your sights to not jostle everywhere you had to walk slowly, again. I think it's a case of people grossly overestimating how easy it is to jog and maintain a sight picture.

Perhaps a slightly less-fast combat jog-like movement would be a reasonable compromise.

---------- Post added at 00:43 ---------- Previous post was at 00:18 ----------

^^^

They're working on it. In the Devblog a few days back they added an ability to have "weapon inertia". Will most likely be implemented before the Marksman DLC. Patience is key with the Czechs :P

Yeah, I'm glad they're at least considering it. What I described may not happen for a while, but it would be a rather terrible fate to see this series not evolve in a positive way, and remain like most quasi-military FPS games in which they use weapon handling and ballistics taken from games that are 10+ years old.

As far as A3 goes, for co-op which is really where it really shines IMO, I'm willing to accept some less ideal things here and there.

Edited May 21, 2014 by Pd3

[roshnak 41]

Ultimately the FUTURE of high fidelity "military style" games, will, 100% include a limited physics/IK system for modeling upper body movement, taking into account both the inertia and weight of weapons/recoil, and impacts from incoming rounds/debris.

You will have tensor/flexor values that will determine your relative strength at specific points in your arms, torso and shoulders, and if you get hit, those values will be compromised, resulting in poorer weapon handling. It will all be dynamic, it will also be awesome and bring the genre to a completely new level of immersion.

This of course will also have to precipitate slower paced combat, in which the AI is also subject to the same rules, which means you're likely not going to see it for a while, as you'll likely require a lot more processing power to model that behavior in AI and have it be at least remotely fair for the player. However I absolutely believe, barring the world blowing up, such a model will manage to find it's way into some form of militaristic shooter. Or hell, even some arcade'y FPS, albeit simplified.

I very much doubt this will ever happen in a commercial video game. It's a whole lot of work for a system in which the results just aren't that different from significantly less complex systems. You could just as easily define set values for accuracy decreases/speed decreases for each hitbox. The player would never know the difference unless you told them.

Oh, actually I preferred ARMA 2 in that respect, if you wanted your sights to not jostle everywhere you had to walk slowly, again. I think it's a case of people grossly overestimating how easy it is to jog and maintain a sight picture.

Perhaps a slightly less-fast combat jog-like movement would be a reasonable compromise.

The problem, like a lot of things with the series, was that it was poorly implemented. It would be reasonable to expect sight misalignment while moving with the sights up, but that's not what happened. The sights stayed aligned but the player's head acted like it was glued to the weapon. This caused your whole view to bounce around like you were looking through a camera glued to the gun, which you were. So your sights didn't jostle, your eyes did.

Edited May 21, 2014 by roshnak

[pd3 25]

I very much doubt this will ever happen in a commercial video game. It's a whole lot of work for a system in which the results just aren't that different from significantly less complex systems. You could just as easily define set values for accuracy decreases/speed decreases for each hitbox. The player would never know the difference unless you told them.

20 years ago somebody might have said the same about inverse kinematics/ragdolls for death anims.

It will eventually happen, player IK is slowly happening already (in HL2, characters legs would "adjust" dynamically based on what they were standing on, and that was 10 years ago), and will get more defined as technology progresses, again, there have already been proof of concepts of this made, and it's only a matter of time before the technology is there. The only thing that would serve as an obstacle is a reticent gaming audience.

The problem, like a lot of things with the series, was that it was poorly implemented. It would be reasonable to expect sight misalignment while moving with the sights up, but that's not what happened. The sights stayed aligned but the player's head acted like it was glued to the weapon. This caused your whole view to bounce around like you were looking through a camera glued to the gun, which you were. So your sights didn't jostle, your eyes did.

Yeah I noticed that myself, No doubt any future games in the series will likely see further refinement of mechanics as they interpret the actual kinesthetic negotiation of player-to-weapon interaction.

[Sneakson 1]

Detailed physics simulations instead of animations is far away and simply very impractical since programming an AI that wouldn’t just lie down and swing his legs wildly in the air would be very challenging.

There’s one indie shooter where your character moves using muscles not animations though, QWOP-style.

Allegedly the game is only 1MB big or something because everything is procedually generated... that's also quite inspiring.

[roshnak 41]

20 years ago somebody might have said the same about inverse kinematics/ragdolls for death anims.

It will eventually happen, player IK is slowly happening already (in HL2, characters legs would "adjust" dynamically based on what they were standing on, and that was 10 years ago), and will get more defined as technology progresses, again, there have already been proof of concepts of this made, and it's only a matter of time before the technology is there. The only thing that would serve as an obstacle is a reticent gaming audience.

Nobody would have said that about ragdoll or inverse kinematics because they are both obvious and visible effects. Nobody in history has said, "I can't tell if this is ragdoll or a death animation" and HL2's dynamic leg positioning was designed to solve obvious clipping issues when standing on uneven surfaces.

I was referring specifically to the idea that weapon handling characteristics will be determined by dynamic physics calculations done on individual muscles in the arms and that those muscles will be able to be damaged, impeding weapon handling. This same effect can be achieved by specifying that when the left forearm hitbox is damaged, aim stability is decreased by 0.5 and aiming speed is reduced by .7 or whatever. The differences between predefined penalties for damage and dynamically computed muscles are so miniscule as to be unrecognizable by the player. I'm sure someone will eventually create this kind of system, but I very much doubt if it will ever be anything more than a tech demo. The technology and computing power required to do this would be better spent in a number of other places that provide a far more obvious impact on gameplay.

Yeah I noticed that myself, No doubt any future games in the series will likely see further refinement of mechanics as they interpret the actual kinesthetic negotiation of player-to-weapon interaction.

I'm really not sure why you couldn't just say, "I hope that they improve weapon handling in the future." Either way, all it requires is different animations.

managed to pull it off in UT99 without any kind of physics based animation system.