Difficulty Overhaul

[St. Jimmy 272]

 

1. Clarity in 3rd person camera and crosshair modes.  e.g. Veteran = not possible to have those on at all.  Regular = 3rd person and crosshairs on.  Mainly this is something that is immediately understandable in the server browser without having to rely on servers titling themselves something like this "3pp:on | xhairs: off | etc".

The Arma 3's Launcer already has filters for 3rd person and crosshair any/on/off. Those filters don't work yet but that's the filter you can use in the future. I believe this difficulty overhaul is the thing that's going to make them work.

[muf 49]

My understanding is that there will be a "Custom" difficulty setting preset in addition to the "Recruit", "Regular", and "Veteran" difficulty setting presets. The three main difficulty setting presets are static and any change to them would set the difficulty setting preset to "Custom".

Exactly as you say. It already works this way in dev branch.

[davidzi 11]

1.

I would love some more options for crosshairs. A lot of servers disable it to prevent people from hip firing but I love the snapping of the crosshair onto objects to indicate you're going to shoot into them, happens way too often without crosshairs. You think you have a clear shot and rip you revealed your position by shooting into the rock in front of you.

So some sort of fading indicator telling you if you're going to shoot into an immediate rock/object if your barrel is obstructed, without having the crosshair display otherwise. I don't think there are any mods for this either.

Happens less often now with resting and bipods but still does if you don't want to overexpose yourself.

If this won't make it onto the list, a lightweight scripting command for modders that works with crosshairs disabled.

 

2.

A more accessible way to define how AI react to suppression. Heavily suppressed, lightly suppressed, slider/setting to set the impact of the suppression on the AI in terms of aiming.

[ineptaphid 6413]

1.

I would love some more options for crosshairs. A lot of servers disable it to prevent people from hip firing but I love the snapping of the crosshair onto objects to indicate you're going to shoot into them, happens way too often without crosshairs. You think you have a clear shot and rip you revealed your position by shooting into the rock in front of you.

So some sort of fading indicator telling you if you're going to shoot into an immediate rock/object if your barrel is obstructed, without having the crosshair display otherwise. I don't think there are any mods for this either.

Happens less often now with resting and bipods but still does if you don't want to overexpose yourself.

If this won't make it onto the list, a lightweight scripting command for modders that works with crosshairs disabled.

 

2.

A more accessible way to define how AI react to suppression. Heavily suppressed, lightly suppressed, slider/setting to set the impact of the suppression on the AI in terms of aiming.

I agree with the cross hair issue. I recently played Alien Isolation and it had a wonderful crosshair option. Basically it is just a tiny dot and it fades away when not pointing at something. Although I usually play Arma with crosshair disabled.

[Dwarden 1125]

Any chance of some explanations of what which option does in the difficulty menu itself, or maybe even a button which opens a new tab in the default browser with the wiki page(just like in 3den) of the skill settings https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3_Difficulty_Menu#Super_AI

 

AFAIK, Super AI setting was already removed last year

[R3vo 2654]

Yes I know. The fact that the link directly points to superAI was not on purpose ;)

[lev 21]

Oh I have to disagree here-you are advocating the removal of a lot of choice. Forcing 3rd person and crosshairs on/off in Veteran or Regular should always be an option for the player to customize. You are looking at it from a server only point of view-what about players who only play Sp or with a small group of friends-the loss of that customization would be a real shame

 

I believe you have misunderstood me as well as the devs intention.

 

As I understand the dev summary on the wiki, the intention is to have 4 modes: recruit, regular, veteran, and custom.  Custom being whatever settings you want with everything being adjustable so you would not lose any choice or option.  While I am generally a supporter of 1st person only servers, I would never support the removal of choice from the game as I see it being one of Arma's most powerful aspects - being able to play the sandbox how ever you want.  

 

As it currently stands the concept of a difficulty preset (recruit, regular, veteran) is a useless differentiation and only adds confusion as most of these "difficulty" settings can be tweaked to the point of not even resembling the original preset.  You can run a recruit server with AI turned up to extreme, all UI off and still show up as a recruit difficulty server in the browser.  Or more like the actual status of the servers, you can run a veteran difficulty server with every single aid turned on as to resemble a recruit difficulty server.  Imagine how confusing that would be to a new player using the in-game browser.  Having consistent preset difficulty options are really for the benefit of the whole community, not just a server admin or a player.  It allows both parties at a glance to setup or choose their desired difficulty at a glance without having to dive into the details of what each setting is.  For those who do have that desire to dive more deeply into each particular setting, there is a custom mode just for that.

[galzohar 31]

I'll second the stamina bar and stance indicator on for all difficulties.

 

Adding an option that will be on in veteran to hide the magazine bullet counter would be nice to have as well (though exact implementation may need some consideration, since you don't have full control on which magazine you are reloading into your weapon - Maybe only show counter when reloading?).

 

 

Regarding AI, it is very unclear how server difficulty settings interact with scripted setSkill AI difficulty options. It should be clear how the 2 interact, so mission makers can tweak their missions in a way that will play as intended, and admins can tweak their server in a way that will hopefully work for all missions that took the way the system works into consideration. Currently, many set server difficulty to max and use scripts to set the AI skills, or worse, set the server difficulty to some value and then tweak further with mission settings, making it quite impossible to predicate how difficult the AI would actually be.

 

 

Hopefully, veteran/regular/recruit will be good enough so that not every other server has to resort to using "custom". And in any case, I hope the server browser works well to filter based on specific difficulty options (which will find both relevant custom and relevant veteran/regular/recruit servers).

[R3vo 2654]

As it currently stands the concept of a difficulty preset (recruit, regular, veteran) is a useless differentiation and only adds confusion as most of these "difficulty" settings can be tweaked to the point of not even resembling the original preset.

 

 

Recruit, Regular and Veteran should be always the same, if one wants to tweak it abit, like disabling VON, it should automatically be shown as Custom.

 

I'll second the stamina bar and stance indicator on for all difficulties.

 

Yes please, I don't even see the point of those being in the difficulty settings, they should IMHO be part of the normal game settings like advanced flight model.

[andersson 285]

I have no use of the stamina bar and turn it off. It just doesn't help me in any way so I disagree.

[R3vo 2654]

I have no use of the stamina bar and turn it off. It just doesn't help me in any way so I disagree.

Why would you disagree, you would still be able to disable it.

[Imperator-TFD 4]

Hopefully Mine Tag will still be an option available for Custom server settings.  Veteran and above disable it which kind of makes mine detectors useless.

Your character declares "I've spotted a mine" about 50 tmes when in or near a mine field but you've got no bearing or sense of where that mine actually is.

[ineptaphid 6413]

I believe you have misunderstood me as well as the devs intention.

 

As I understand the dev summary on the wiki, the intention is to have 4 modes: recruit, regular, veteran, and custom.  Custom being whatever settings you want with everything being adjustable so you would not lose any choice or option.  While I am generally a supporter of 1st person only servers, I would never support the removal of choice from the game as I see it being one of Arma's most powerful aspects - being able to play the sandbox how ever you want.  

 

As it currently stands the concept of a difficulty preset (recruit, regular, veteran) is a useless differentiation and only adds confusion as most of these "difficulty" settings can be tweaked to the point of not even resembling the original preset.  You can run a recruit server with AI turned up to extreme, all UI off and still show up as a recruit difficulty server in the browser.  Or more like the actual status of the servers, you can run a veteran difficulty server with every single aid turned on as to resemble a recruit difficulty server.  Imagine how confusing that would be to a new player using the in-game browser.  Having consistent preset difficulty options are really for the benefit of the whole community, not just a server admin or a player.  It allows both parties at a glance to setup or choose their desired difficulty at a glance without having to dive into the details of what each setting is.  For those who do have that desire to dive more deeply into each particular setting, there is a custom mode just for that.

Sorry-yes. I understand now what you meant, and you are right. :) my apologies.

[2legsakimbo 1]

on the subject of 3rd person and difficulty. be great to have a script command that lets mission makers force it for their mission. some of the workarounds are pretty clunky.

 

and as the difficulty settings are being tweaked it would be very nice to have the AI settings to not be so opaque and unclear to understand. its like black magic where no one really understands what its doing... just clearer info text would go a long way.

[old_painless 182]

Absolutely agree on the black magic bit. As a bare minimum, put in explanations of the settings in the Field Manual. That way, the settings info is in-game. And make it good explanations with examples :)  

[R3vo 2654]

Absolutely agree on the black magic bit. As a bare minimum, put in explanations of the settings in the Field Manual. That way, the settings info is in-game. And make it good explanations with examples :)  

 

Field manual is a good idea, but only if there's a button which leads to the entry there directly.

 

 

 

Hopefully Mine Tag will still be an option available for Custom server settings.  Veteran and above disable it which kind of makes mine detectors useless.

Your character declares "I've spotted a mine" about 50 tmes when in or near a mine field but you've got no bearing or sense of where that mine actually is.

 

I just noticed, that my AI mates still report mines even if that was disable in the difficulty settings, please fix that, it's utterly annoying.

[domokun 515]

Will there be any way to enable/disable revive?

[grumpy808 21]

Any chance the fatigue/stamina will be hooked into the new difficulty settings? I know the new system can be modded, but I play with a group that doesn't use mods and the new system is way too run & gun for my taste.

 

It'd be nice if servers could customise fatigue/stamina how they seem fit without resorting to mods.

[CaptainObvious 95]

Any chance the fatigue/stamina will be hooked into the new difficulty settings? 

 

This.

When playing milsim, I'd really like that your character is realistically affected by inclines etc. and get rid of the infinite jogging and other silliness' the stamina introduced.

But then again, I occasionally enjoy a deathmatch or some other more casual missions that benefit from reduced fatigue effects due to their fast gameplay.

 

This is an old pic and might be obsolete by now, haven't played much recently, but there used to be no difference in jogging to the top of the hill and jogging down the road, you used the same amount of stamina either way, but I think it should be no less than devastating to jog a hill that high when using the harder difficulty options.

 

[andersson 285]

Why would you disagree, you would still be able to disable it.

Misunderstanding :)

[R3vo 2654]

So one thing that just came into my mind is the following:

If we get a difficulty/settings overhaul, could we finally get an option to disable those annoying little icons, which pop up all the time in the middle of the screen?

 

Why do I think it's a difficulty related thing? Well easy. Those icons help one to be more aware of what's going on, they show players when their magazine is empty, when they are hurt etc. All those things are non-essential for a more experienced player, to the point where they are just irritating.

 

So please, give us finally an option to remove those icons and if that request is not enough, here are some bananas :yay: :yay:

[andersson 285]

So one thing that just came into my mind is the following:

If we get a difficulty/settings overhaul, could we finally get an option to disable those annoying little icons, which pop up all the time in the middle of the screen?

pic

 

Why do I think it's a difficulty related thing? Well easy. Those icons help one to be more aware of what's going on, they show players when their magazine is empty, when they are hurt etc. All those things are non-essential for a more experienced player, to the point where they are just irritating.

 

So please, give us finally an option to remove those icons and if that request is not enough, here are some bananas :yay: :yay:

Oh yes hell yes. They have annoyed me since armed assault.. 

[R3vo 2654]

Any chance the difficutly options could be sorted alphabetically? I mean, it's a listbox, it should be a huge deal ;)

[madrussian 347]

Forcing 3rd person and crosshairs on/off in Veteran or Regular should always be an option for the player to customize.

Agree, please continue to allow 3rd person and crosshairs forced on/off in Veteran (as it's always been).

 

Before the update there was the option to have the white markers on squad mates on or off depending on difficulty. The way I had it set was the marker would appear when that unit was selected, then would fade away after a few seconds like the rest of the HUD as I had permanent HUD set to "off". But now it seems that option no longer exists-the marker must either bu on or off-it will no longer fade.

Agree, I like the ability to show squad indicators and hide them, all-at-once or individually via a simple keypress (as we had it before the EDEN update).

Perhaps add to this an option where the squad indicators fade individually with squadmate distance and are no longer visible outside a certain radius.  (Again, this fading should be optional.)

 

Some improvements are planned that could replace this "workaround" to hide squad indicators. Ie. better fading or manual refresh of the indicators (and not only limited to squad leader). But it's probably too soon now to share more details.

Sounds promising!

[oukej 2910]

I just noticed, that my AI mates still report mines even if that was disable in the difficulty settings, please fix that, it's utterly annoying.

The difficulty options have no impact on AI reports.