Marksmen DLC: Concerns regarding suppressors

[doc. caliban 34]

Sorry for the late reply, but BI has made official statements specifically deeming Arma 3 to be a sandbox game with a default "near future military" theme, and unofficially has practically run away from the term "simulator"...

(Unofficially, the designers have also tended to treat Arma gameplay as informed by but not inherently beholden to realism*, tending towards more realistic than most shooters but still a game... and of course, there's all the time/scope/budget trifecta that can prevent or delay implementations of stuff that even the devs are interested, i.e. windage running into the brick wall that was performance and up against the Marksmen DLC's 8 April 2015 deadline.)

* You won't be able to shame the devs into more realism by pointing out VBS3 either, especially when there's multiple testimonials on its thread deeming Arma 3 the better game.

No problem. I was just wanting to hear the details about your reference.

I didn't know about VBS3 ... cool stuff!

Regardless of the symantics, Arma is where I want it on the scale in that it's on the simulator side of things. When I talk about reasilsm, suppressors in general make one of the best examples:

Decision: How to treat suppressed weapons in a game.

Realistic (simulation): Adjust the ballistics in a realistic way for the given system. (slightly better accuracy, higher velocity.)

Realistic (game): Don't alter the ballistics.

Unrealistic: Reduce the weapon's power, range, accuracy, whatever, to appease the people who think anything else is "unfair".

I'm simply advocating for Arma to stay well above that last option. That's my outlook on the fact that suppressors were not included in the vanilla game for the .408 and .50. They exist and are common, so why not have them? My "issue" is that I hope the reason that they are not there has to do with the feature not making the cut or something like that as opposed to, "Some people might be unhappy with how much it sucks to be shot at by a suppressed weapon from 1.5k away." That's the kind of balancing I'm against. Those folks can go play CoD. :-)

Thanks for the followup. I'm liking how the DLC suppressor on the .338 causes the point of impact to be significantly high at ranges beyond 700 or 800 meters ... I have to zero down 100m to get the point of impact back into the center of the crosshairs at around the 1k mark. Why? Because a suppressor increases the velocity of the projectile, meaning that it shoots flatter and requires less compensation. Excellent modeling! I'm impressed.

Enjoy!

-Doc

[doc. caliban 34]

Unfortunately, it appears that the original request for the .408 and .50 caliber suppressors has been formally closed with the reasoning that the DLC addressed the issue. It does not.

I've opened a new request ticket since the original issue is still unresolved, and was never formally denied during the two years that it was open. I'm still just being hopeful and would be understanding of, if not happy about, it being closed as "won't fix". At least that would be addressing the original request head on.

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=23751

Best,

-Doc

[chortles 263]

No problem. I was just wanting to hear the details about your reference.

Hahaha, the reason I brought it up is because official statements and 'unofficial' discussion (though coming from devs) were happening as far back as mid-2012 when the game had a different project lead, and public back-and-forth with devs ramped up once BI went public with the plans for Steamworks and early access (the game having been publicly playable for half a year before it "launched"), but I recall it being after the alpha and especially in the summer of 2013 when the official emphasis on sandbox over simulator started to heat up in response to complaints over certain features being omitted.

(In contrast, the complaints about the 2035 setting and lack of 1980s-2010s content in contrast have pretty much been ignored over the past few years... except for several Arma 2 vehicles making cameos as wreckage -- there's no way that I find this coincidental -- and the creative director quipping on a livestream that they'd considered giving the Dragunov SVD the "antique weapon used by local guerrillas" role before giving that to the Mk14.)

Oh, and if you hear anything about an official "infantry focus"... I'd tended to take that as the creative director simply formalizing some of what BI had been doing over the course of the series: namely, leaving fixed-wing air and "naval" aspects basically no fundamentally different than they were back in the ArmA 1 days.

I didn't know about VBS3 ... cool stuff!

Note that while its content development tools suite is reputedly superior to that of Arma 3's and it's got quite the reputed scenario creating capability (i.e. VBS2 had the Real Time Editor years before Arma 3 got Zeus), its game engine derives from Arma 1 and that really shows. Likewise, a lot of what it has over Arma 3 is in some cases both incredibly esoteric and in other cases actually less complex than what Arma or its mods have... and then some of its features are outright scripted and no more engine-native than Arma mods.

It should however also be pointed out that VBS3 is developed by a completely different company (despite the shared name, logo, and history) with its own network of third-party content producers, a completely different business model, and correspondingly very different development priorities...

[doc. caliban 34]

Wow, thank you for all of the great info and development lore! Having been on that side of some big software products, I'm always aware that there're a ton of "behind the scenes" factors and decisions at play (which is why my request for those suppressors is just that, a request), but it's fun to hear some of the details related to this title.

Much appreciated!

-Doc

[chortles 263]

Wow, thank you for all of the great info and development lore! Having been on that side of some big software products, I'm always aware that there're a ton of "behind the scenes" factors and decisions at play (which is why my request for those suppressors is just that, a request), but it's fun to hear some of the details related to this title.

Two places to look at for "official statements" would be the Arma 3 Dev Hub (in particular reading the weekly SITREPs and the occasional OPREPs, the latter of which are more narrowly-focused articles on the development/design philosophy of specific gameplay aspects) and the official BI blog. For example, SITREP #00088 had the project lead remarking that before the winter break of 2014 "we concluded all feasibility studies, conceptualization and prototyping for Marksmen DLC and its platform update. Importantly, that meant green-lighting the last of the weapon handling features we're developing for it. You must be getting tired of waiting for the specifics, but we want to be sure of what we can deliver", while the OPREP on weapon inertia describes the thinking behind BI's weapon inertia implementation, and the OPREP on the DLC weapons also has the sandbox design lead's explanation for why "wind affecting ballistics" and "one round in the chamber" aren't in... yet.

Dev statements on these forums are far less organized (other than official statement stuff like the dev branch changelog) and harder to browse (i.e. look how long the dev branch general discussion thread is!) but in general look for anyone who's got a BI logo avatar.

[1911shields 11]

I agree, what i've seen the CheyTac .408 fired its always been suppressed.

[doc. caliban 34]

I agree, what i've seen the CheyTac .408 fired its always been suppressed.

True. I'm sure BIS has no issues with the request from neither a technical nor gameplay standpoint as both of those are laid to rest with the inclusion of the .338 suppressor in the DLC.

The altruistic side of me thinks it would be great to offer suppressed long range rifles to folks who can't purchase one via the DLC, but the selfish side of me just wants them so that I can use them. :-)

If it's not something they can spend resources on, so be it. It's worth asking though since the original request was never actually denied, and I felt it was important to clarify that the original tickets were asking for suppressors specifically for the .408 and .50 vanilla rifles; not for "A suppressed sniper rifle. Eventually. That we can pay for." That's why I think there was a misunderstanding on the part of the owner of the ticket that was closed as "fixed".

Fingers crossed that the new ticket gains a bit of traction!

[Brisse 78]

MXM, Rahim, EBR... Long range rifles that you can use with suppressor. They are available to anyone with the basic game without DLC. They are not quite as precise and powerful as a .338 or 9.3, but they are on par with the other DLC Marksmen rifles.

[doc. caliban 34]

MXM, Rahim, EBR... Long range rifles that you can use with suppressor. They are available to anyone with the basic game without DLC. They are not quite as precise and powerful as a .338 or 9.3, but they are on par with the other DLC Marksmen rifles.

Sorry, my mistake! When I said, "long-range", I meant the same rifles we've been discussing throughout this thread, and which are specifically mentioned in the referenced request tickets. Perhaps I should have said, "longerer-range" to have avoided confusion. :-)

To keep things on-topic with the rest of the thread and referenced tickets, I'll make my statement more specific:

The altruistic side of me thinks it would be great to offer

suppressed, heavy-caliber sniper rifles, such as the consistently aforementioned .408 and .50

, to folks who can't purchase something suppressed

with a similar effective range, such as the .338 and 9.5mm

, via the DLC.

-Doc

EDIT: Personally, I still use the EBR (and updated version in the DLC) the most ... great balance between general combat and "long range" shooting. Good stuff!

Edited April 14, 2015 by Doc. Caliban