Is Arma 3 a milsim thread (yet another one)

[Nicholas 5]

Apart from few closed communities noone plays arma3 for the military sim stuff.

Games has no multiplayer modes when u buy it etc.

just a thought

I don't think their intentions were ever to create a military "simulation". I can't remember who said it, but one of the developers here on the forums stated that it was a mistake to put "military simulation" on the box artwork of ArmA 2. I agree with him because people use the term simulation now to hold the company up to high standards and forces the company to keep within "realistic" boundaries. They finally had the freedom with ArmA 3 to experiment a little and stretch those boundaries of being "realistic".

Just because other game modes out number the milsim groups, doesn't mean Bohemia Interactive is worried, or even should be. They are still making money on the game.

[Westonsammy 1]

I don't think their intentions were ever to create a military "simulation".

BI likes to say that ArmA isn't a milsim, that it is a "sandbox with realistic elements", but it is a milsim game in pretty much every aspect but category.

Almost all of ArmA's vanilla content in military-style weaponry, vehicles, and structures/fortifications. It includes a full military campaign along with several military scenarios. It goes to major lengths to simulate certain aspects of combat, such as the flight and penetration models. And last but not least, every single official screenshot, video and piece of artwork from ArmA features the military in some sort of way.

Like it or not, ArmA is MilSim.

[mistyronin 1181]

BI likes to say that ArmA isn't a milsim, that it is a "sandbox with realistic elements", but it is a milsim game in pretty much every aspect but category.

If you mean a true simulator, it's not. Would lack a lot of features that mainly simulate reality.

Arma series are just sandbox military games.

That of course, with certain mods and playing them in a certain way, can get a bit closer to military simulation. But nothing more.

But hey, you could even reach a certain degree of military simulation with Counter-Strike.

[froggyluv 2133]

Gotta love how the "Arma is/not a mil-sim sandbox open world cross arm sim-game/game-sim..." debate pops up this time year. Every year.

[miketim 20]

At this point it doesn't need to be a debate... why doesnt someone start a "is arma 3 a milsim thread" so we can get it off every other thread these days.

I am just happy RHS is going to fix the game, gj BI.

[roshnak 41]

... so TacBF minus the mod dependency part? Also not sure how to "force teamwork roles" when the game allows battlefield-pickup of specific weapons instead of "whole kit" like Battlefield, other than a mission-specific script.

I don't think you need "whole kit" pickups. There just needs to be less use of things like virtual ammobox. Admittedly, this isn't really up to BIS.

Admittedly I am one of those who thinks that the game could have stood to ship with something for official MP besides co-op versions of Showcases... even the basic FPS triumverate of FFA/TDM/Sector Control.

While I tend to agree with this, I also feel like it's almost irrelevant at this point. There are plenty of multiplayer gamemodes and missions that have been released and lots of servers hosting them. The only problem at this point is if someone wants to set up a listen server for his or her friends and doesn't know about downloading custom missions.

BI likes to say that ArmA isn't a milsim, that it is a "sandbox with realistic elements", but it is a milsim game in pretty much every aspect but category.

Almost all of ArmA's vanilla content in military-style weaponry, vehicles, and structures/fortifications. It includes a full military campaign along with several military scenarios. It goes to major lengths to simulate certain aspects of combat, such as the flight and penetration models. And last but not least, every single official screenshot, video and piece of artwork from ArmA features the military in some sort of way.

Like it or not, ArmA is MilSim.

Since it's a genre that BIS basically invented, they can really call it whatever they want. And if they decide that the word "simulation" creates unwanted or unrealistic expectations, who are you to tell them they can't change it?

By the way, by your definition, games like Battlefield and Call of Duty are milsims, too.

[Nicholas 5]

I don't know why a moderator had to create a new thread with my post. Considering my post is the initial post, I would prefer to have this closed. My intentions were not to start a debate on whether or not ArmA 3 is a milsim.

So, please close this thread. Thank you.

(Initial post reported.)

[mistyronin 1181]

I don't know why a moderator had to create a new thread with my post. Considering my post is the initial post, I would prefer to have this closed. My intentions were not to start a debate on whether or not ArmA 3 is a milsim.

I think:

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[Westonsammy 1]

Since it's a genre that BIS basically invented, they can really call it whatever they want. And if they decide that the word "simulation" creates unwanted or unrealistic expectations, who are you to tell them they can't change it?

By the way, by your definition, games like Battlefield and Call of Duty are milsims, too.

Yea, my wording was a bit off, shouldn't have used "milsim".

I instead meant a military-style game, where the main emphasis is that you are a soldier, shooting at other soldiers. Because personally, when I hear the word "milsim" these days, I don't tend to think of a full simulator like DCS or VBS, but instead just mainstream games with realistic elements (Like ArmA).

But either way, I don't think ArmA is only a sandbox. You cannot ignore the fact that everything about ArmA screams military besides the user-generated content. I regard games like gmod to be sandboxes, because the base "game" has no real direction other than just to make stuff.

[Nicholas 5]

MistyRonin, I posted that so that people could see that I did not create this thread. This thread was created by a moderator, using my post. I'm not questioning the moderation. As you can see from my first sentence, it is a statement, not a question.

[vran. 13]

Well I can tell that when OFP came out, other military shooters all felt like arcade games compared to it. It was so convincing that you couldn't even swim but just sink as a stone when dropping into water... ;)

Of course the flight and vehicle models were more "arcadey" but this was to make the game more accessible and frankly I don't believe that there will ever be DCS level of flight models/physics or Steel Beasts style tank simulation in a Arma game (it might come close to some 90s dedicated sims, although beating Falcon 4.0 will be hard).

Personally, I think popular military games such as BF and CoD haven't even reached OFP levels of combat simulation yet, despite running on much more advanced graphical and physical engines, but the downside always was the performance and AI issues.

The AI in Arma series is a lot more advanced than any other military shooter out there (save for VBS, which is not broadly available to the public) but it still can't handle certain situations well and the commanding interface is dated and clunky (goes for all Arma titles).

It could be said that the AI code is already showing it's age, despite the numerous improvements it underwent throughout time and it would be due to "enrich" it in some important ways (maybe resorting more to scripting could actually work to favorable results).

The in-game mission editor is one stand out feature that makes this series unique as it allows users to create their own content for the game. Because of the easy mission editing and a flexible, moddable engine with tools made by, or provided to, the public, it was given the "military sandbox" tag by some. But the modding is not strictly limited to military themes and as we have seen the most successful and popular mods turned to be non-military themed ones. This may be frowned upon by the "core" mil-sim players of the series, but it cannot be denied to be a success. So I certainly think that BI should expand and improve upon the "sandbox" and "life simulation" aspect of the series which includes a more flexible, feature-rich and powerful in-game editor (perhaps with many in-built scripts or even easy and basic terrain editing) and maybe even a sort of automated mission/objective generator as seen in games like Solder of Fortune II, or a level above.

That's not to say BI should attempt to abandon the military theme of the series and try to compete with GTA, Garry's mod, Minecraft and the likes (there already are spin-off titles in the form of the "Take On" series, or the standalone Day-Z), but the "window of opportunity" is there for them to extend and develop further and they have already demonstrated to be eager to bring some of those more "untraditional" themes to the series via official DLC (besides caring for, and improving upon, the traditional "military simulation" aspects too, of course).

Just my opinion. :)

[maddogx 13]

Closing on request.

(And no, I don't know who moved the original post into a new thread, or why.)