The essence of ARMA and how it provides value to the player

[Varis 34]

Just some thoughts. With my 600+ hours in ARMA, I often wonder WTH is it that I am playing or developing. I get a strong impression that ARMA is unique, even with all the similarities to some other gaming software. Perhaps BI is decades ahead in its business model and in the future other companies will copy it and be much more successful. Not sure if I yet dare to ask the question what ARMA is really about.

 

Many of you have probably long since abandoned the idea that ARMA is a game. It's not a platform either. Without further ado, here's ARMA as a gaming software stack:

 

 

 

Some of you may notice a similarity to the ISO/OSI network model. Maybe fittingly, in the 80's we had maybe just 3 layers or so, and still in many cases some are omitted or fused together. Like BI here does several jobs at the moment.

[Varis 34]

Hilarious that the image worked (after much hair-pulling) just a couple of hours ago. Here's a backup in case it doesn't come back:

 

https://imgur.com/LJzrYGd

 

ARMA forum.

[fn_Quiksilver 1636]

certainly they (BI) are not ahead of anything anymore. maybe 7-8 years ago you coukd say they were ahead of the times, but imo not anymore.

 

not only has a core part of their title (AI) been abandonded for 6+ years, but even coop/milsim supporting systems like Zeus werent really developed after release. all those things that were tedious and needlessly limited with Zeus in March 2014, are just as tedious and limited in Oct 2018.

 

something is crooked with priorities

[bigshot 64]

^this^

...it's been apparent that the core of what used to be this franchise's claim to fame (it's AI/Coop) has been all but left for dead.

 

The new kids on the block who now run the franchise seem to think PvP is the way forward and it hasn't gone unnoticed how they have been edging towards that in recent years. It's the end of an era for me, personally. Arma4 is dead to me now. If they decided to invest millions in new AI code and new engine as well, then I'd stay with them, but I believe according to their actions that it's just a pipe-dream.

[fn_Quiksilver 1636]

21 hours ago, bigshot said:

^this^

...it's been apparent that the core of what used to be this franchise's claim to fame (it's AI/Coop) has been all but left for dead.

 

The new kids on the block who now run the franchise seem to think PvP is the way forward and it hasn't gone unnoticed how they have been edging towards that in recent years. It's the end of an era for me, personally. Arma4 is dead to me now. If they decided to invest millions in new AI code and new engine as well, then I'd stay with them, but I believe according to their actions that it's just a pipe-dream.

 

what?! you arent sold on Ylands, Argo, Project Lucie, DayZ or Vigor or Arma Mobile Ops (all the titles BI has published after arma 3)??? :D

 

i am thankful to have gotten good value from arma 3 and had a good time with it. the trajectory given recent releases does indicate a break from “milsim/serious military game” genre tho

[tpw 2315]

I agree totally with you guys. As far as value, I appreciate that A3 has given me literally several thousand hours of enjoyment playing and coding, something that no other game in my collection has even come close to replicating. The unfortunate reality is that for me at least, much of that time has been spent working around the major and minor flaws in the game. Yes there's nothing quite like A3, but the game was already a couple of generations behind the times when it was released in 2013, as far as resource utilisation, optimisation, rendering pipelines, physics, animation etc. To say nothing of the broken mechanics of the game's 'realistic' core infantry focus. I've sat here for 5 years bug reporting and buying DLC to support the devs in the hopes that there'd be truly meaningful changes to the software, but it seems these are never going to come, because all the development investments have been made elsewhere according to the new priorities. BIS titles without AI and proper scripting and mod support are not the titles I'm going to invest money and thousands of hours in.  

[chrisb 196]

I don't play A3 much, well not at all now. But I'm still very much into A2 + all the dlc's.

 

The series has given me more hours of fun than I can remember. A4 (should there be one) will be where I depart from the series if they don't have decent vanilla ai, which I doubt they will.

 

But A3 will be, to many players, what A2 still is to me, a game that has years more play left in it. That is the way I feel about A2, will still be playing in another decade probably, provided I'm still here, that is.

[bigshot 64]

2 hours ago, Malcain said:

We're simply not in the era of AI yet(it may take another 50 years to get to the point where you want to try serious AI in a open-world game/platform), so I would doubt intellect of managers of any serious game company who would waste resources on stuff which haven't been accomplished yet in other tech spheres, let alone games.

 

Your assumption couldn't be more wrong. 50 years? heh, in that amount of time we will be much further along than you think, as far as AI tech is concerned.

 

There are MANY high tech companies all over the world today investing billions into this technology.

 

As far as gaming is concerned, it's no different...those who failed to invest years ago will be very sorry even 5-10 years from now when AI tech in games will start coming back into fashion. Eventually AI tech will be a dominant force in entertainment. It is here to stay and a huge part of humanity's future, not just in the real world but also in gaming. Even today's younger generation PvP'ers will be more interested in AI soon enough (as they age...and that won't take all too long).

 

Serious game companies ARE investing in it, already...and have been for awhile now. Here's a huge game company we all know that has been hard at work investing in AI tech for their games just as an example:

https://www.ea.com/en-gb/news/teaching-ai-agents-battlefield-1

 

I think it's only a matter of time before people wake up one day to understand that violent type PvP games will have a very negative connotation associated with it in our society. AI will provide a more socially acceptable vehicle for teenage entertainment.

 

[dmarkwick 261]

Well, I've seen stupidity in AI behavior, and I've seen stupidity in human-player behavior, I'd be hard pushed to favour one over the other :)

 

AI, while not perfect, is acceptable IMO. There's the possibility to tweak it, mod it, and use numbers to give appropriate levels of challenge in non-PVP gameplay. I don't do too much online play, I just like to pootle about in my own scenarios. Changing stuff around and adding randomisation gives me surprises and keeps me entertained :)

 

I'd say having AI in ArmA is pretty much a must, will it be perfect? No, but are human players perfect? No, so choose your stupidity and play within it :) I get huge enjoyment out of the AI.

[Malcain 35]

No one said AI is not needed. But it would be a waste of time to focus resources on it, given current progress state in that space. There are other directions and aims which shall be accomplished first.
AI is an important part in such an open platform. To be honest, anything that is only about pvp is not a good solution either. So what I meant, is that we don't need super-intellegent AI in the first place.

New engine, flexible modder-friendly and easy to use platform is the future of arma. AI is just a small component that can be kept in current state for some time and it would be just fine.

[twisted 128]

On 10/11/2018 at 1:07 AM, tpw said:

. I've sat here for 5 years bug reporting and buying DLC to support the devs in the hopes that there'd be truly meaningful changes to the software, but it seems these are never going to come, because all the development investments have been made elsewhere according to the new priorities. BIS titles without AI and proper scripting and mod support are not the titles I'm going to invest money and thousands of hours in.  

 

this hit home a lot. I dont see any chance of buying any other titles from BIS that aren't arma. But BIS seems to have grown tired of it in favor of newer priorities and are really abandoning arma until maybe later with nothing but stop gap measures.

[Sparker 185]

> Sorry to rain on your parade but I'm glad BIS don't waste their time and bother with AI anymore
Ofcourse some old players may leave, but they will be replaced by a bigger horde who prefer modder-friendly platform on a new engine over useless tries to simulate human behaviour by AI.

 

What we(or at least I) mean by 'bad AI' here is not bots' lack of intelligence but their inability to follow a plan, either made by their planner or by a human, in the virtual world where they exist. They would often crash into everything, poorly navigate in city environments, or even get totally stuck in the middle of an open road. This could do in something like GTA where a policeman's lifespan is half a minute, until he is replaced by a new one, but when something has to happen in the big scale of ARMA it is totally inacceptable.

 

I guess their AI code just became totally unmanageable, since it's FSM-based and as I understand it's derived from the very first iterations of Operation Flashpoint AI. I could understand this lack of will to invest effort into this as a programmer but unfortunately not as a consumer of their products.

 

Also, as for the point 'PvP is the future', this is simply not true. I have seen lots of ARMA players who prefer more casual PvE gameplay. In order to create better dynamic PvE scenarios we obviously need NPCs which can at least do what they are told to with the provided tools, that is, the SQF scripting commands we currently have.

[chrisb 196]

Really what it boils down too.. In 20yrs time, it will be the AI playing the game..;)

Humans will watch on and think 'err' why didn't we think of that.

Just a matter of time.

 

Modded ai, certain mods anyway, are very good at doing what soldiers & the military as a whole do, which isn't necessarily human nature. But trained behaviour. Its all trained, not human nature or human behaviour in general.

[B_Fox 132]

On 10/31/2018 at 8:31 AM, chrisb said:

Really what it boils down too.. In 20yrs time, it will be the AI playing the game..;)

Humans will watch on and think 'err' why didn't we think of that.

Just a matter of time.

I guess I'm ahead of the curve when it comes to this

What I really love Arma for is the editor it goes to show that a game can have alright graphics, alright ai, but once it has a powerful editor and a stronk modding community it will survive. Again Arma is a one of a kind game which fills a void in our hearts and in a way proves the race is not for the swift, But who can endure it.

[chrisb 196]

23 hours ago, B_Fox said:

I guess I'm ahead of the curve when it comes to this

What I really love Arma for is the editor it goes to show that a game can have alright graphics, alright ai, but once it has a powerful editor and a stronk modding community it will survive. Again Arma is a one of a kind game which fills a void in our hearts and in a way proves the race is not for the swift, But who can endure it.

The 'Editor' is king in this series, always has been. I think every player that really plays Arma, or indeed OFP/Elite, know that. Without touching any of the campaign's I've managed to play for, well regularly, since Arma, every week for several hours per week making missions for our group/friends.

I dabbled with ofp & elite on the xbox. Its the editor I found in ofp (pc) that decided me on getting my mates to play the game, which started in earnest at Arma launch. Moving from hex based wargaming really. Took me a few years to convince them that it was a very viable option/alternative to the type of gaming we had been playing for a few decades at that point.

 

But A2 + all the dlc's remains the King of the series, just for me that is, not for everyone. Every player has their own fav game in the series and rightly so.

Believe it or not, I loved the xbox (ofp-elite) version too. The editor in that was amazing for an early xbox machine, when compared to pc's around at the time. BI did an incredible job making that work so well on the xbox, big achievement.

[haleks 8212]

2 hours ago, chrisb said:

The 'Editor' is king in this series, always has been. I think every player that really plays Arma, or indeed OFP/Elite, know that. Without touching any of the campaign's I've managed to play for, well regularly, since Arma, every week for several hours per week making missions for our group/friends.

 

Making missions (or mods) is what Arma boils down to for me - but I can hardly call that "playing".

Last time I actually "played" Arma was during the dayz mod and then the Arma3 campaign (a unique but not so satisfying experience). Since then, it's all about creating content for me, and that's a very peculiar seat : it killed pretty much any fun I had playing the game (as I can't stop thinking about what systems or scripts are being used, how to recycle them or improve them). It's been years I reckon since I played any scenario.

 

On the other hand, making stuff and seeing that people actually enjoy it is a very unique thing. Arma trully is a bizarre beast once you start exploring it : you constently see the potential behind many systems, the flexibility of it and at the same time you battle with limits imposed by an aging series and an engine built on many iterations. You pull your hair as much as you dream.

 

I had a wonderfull time playing around with Arma, but I'm not sure I'll enjoy it as much in the future - modding is the magic of the series, and yet, modding does kill the magic behind the game (for the modder at least). It is also a frustrating experience : the bigger the project, the more time you'll sacrifice on it for very little benefit besides recognition. The way I see it, Arma relies on the "altruism" of content creators : it is one major strengh of the series, but also a growing problem, in the sense that modders are becoming more and more important for its success while being a cheap/free "work force" dedicated to further improve/think/design/fix the game.

 

We're certainly not at a "Bethesda" stage yet, but it's a trend I'm less and less comfortable with.

[chrisb 196]

13 minutes ago, haleks said:

 

Making missions (or mods) is what Arma boils down to for me - but I can hardly call that "playing".

Last time I actually "played" Arma was during the dayz mod and then the Arma3 campaign (a unique but not so satisfying experience). Since then, it's all about creating content for me, and that's a very peculiar seat : it killed pretty much any fun I had playing the game (as I can't stop thinking about what systems or scripts are being used, how to recycle them or improve them). It's been years I reckon since I played any scenario.

 

On the other hand, making stuff and seeing that people actually enjoy it is a very unique thing. Arma trully is a bizarre beast once you start exploring it : you constently see the potential behind many systems, the flexibility of it and at the same time you battle with limits imposed by an aging series and a engine built on many iterations. You pull your hair as much as you dream.

 

I had a wonderfull time playing around with Arma, but I'm not sure I'll enjoy it as much in the future - modding is the magic of the series, and yet, modding does kill the magic behind the game (for the modder at least). It is also a frustrating experience : the bigger the project, the more time you'll sacrifice on it for very little benefit besides recognition. The way I see it, Arma relies on the "altruism" of content creators : it is one major strengh of the series, but also a growing problem, in the sense that modders are becoming more and more important for its success while being a cheap/free "work force" dedicated to further improve/think/design/fix the game.

 

We're certainly not at a "Bethesda" stage yet, but it's a trend I'm less and less comfortable with.

 

Should always leave time for playing. It is playing really, mod making or mission making, but in a hobby sence. I call that playing, as do you "I had a wonderfull time playing around with Arma".

 

If you don't leave time for actual playing of the game though, well I think you miss out a lot.

[lex__1 422]

In the entire history of the development of the OFP / Arma series, it was Arma3 that became a visually significant breakthrough and it was Arma3 that became a crash in terms of the number of problems. The problems of Arma3 have acquired a landslide character, a long-term life cycle.
This entailed a lot of problems and a chain reaction in the development and support of enthusiasts in Arma3 / Mods / Missions. There are so many interesting Mods / Missions that are limited to problems related to vanilla. The official state of affairs in support looks like - support, and in fact new DLCs and new BIS units were created, with a practical unwillingness to correct even some minor problems. Even at feedback.bistudio.com, most of the common problems are not combined into a single area, everything looks broken / fragmented, and does not have a common problem area.
After publishing BIS about plans for 2016 to create a DLC for 2016 I created a theme in August 2015 "In September Arma3 2 years old. Change the way to solve problems". What I saw in this thread in this thread:
- desire to create more DLC
- no solution to feedback.bistudio.com and its contents.

Manufacturers Support Mods!
Where and how is the support going?
- No list of trusted mods
- When you get any problem, BIS asks you to disconnect all Mods and try to reproduce the problem. You will not even be asked with which Mods the problem arose. There is no "BIS - Trusted Mods" feedback at this location. Everything goes in the reverse order, where the manufacturer of Mods has to agree or abandon the modified concept of BIS, or be in the long wait to solve a related problem.

All these deepened problems lie on the surface.

This fiasco was predetermined at the beginning of the Arma3 journey.
  

External, not obvious disorganization of BIS, indicates internal disorganization, and cannot provide support, or even create the impression of support in future development. I apologize for my, such a sharp review, but for me it was a big disappointment.

  I did not stop playing Arma3, sending tickets to feedback, until the beginning of 2018.

At the beginning of 2018, I have found other game in which:
- graphics and physics are lower than in Arma3
- game process is worse than in Arma3
- not the perspective game logic having a peculiar individual character.

- there is no editor, but there is a training card where you can choose AI and invite friends.
- There are PvE and PvP missions.

- AI at the level of OFP or lower, but they do not reproduce unpredictable errors and not stop, and can create good competition for players.
It is more satisfying to my desire, to relax in my free time, to get a dive for a few hours in a narrow gameplay.The game does not have a good TOP, and probably will not be able to raise it higher, or get closer to the position of Arma3, but at least there is an AI development that can compete with players.

- There is a communication between the producer of a game and the entrusted Mods producer, at the level of reception of the connected problems after updating of a game.