Arma 3 DLC - CONTACT

[froggyluv 2136]

Problem is the decision was made in the big office some time ago to give zero information on things like AI and military competance and the future of Arma. Always used to think they had like 5 slightly insane AI guys locked up from Arma 1on who were cooking up the master AI future race. Arma 2 showed promise with micropathfinding and fence crawling but then went pretty silent from there in terms of major AI plans. Apex is when my rather large post count turned from rabid fanboi to skeptic to habitual eyeroller. Apex campaign was like a slap in the face to old grognard military SP lovers and they're promise to 'make it up' with either a revamped Apex and/or Old Man's continual absence from any real news (even noted in a recent PC Gamer) only reinforces the doubtful awareness from the Devs towards this old but imo, steady niche of the fanbase.

 

"Arma 4" simply holds little promise for our kind at this point.

[Vigil Vindex 64]

25 minutes ago, cb65 said:

Has anyone seen what the aliens look like ? or has that not been released yet ?

 

Nothing yet, but I am betting on us never seeing them directly, just their drones and hover tanks with rail guns.

[Grahame 94]

Running ARMA servers (both 2 and 3) I get more, justifiable complaints about AI on ARMA3 than 2... Just from a personal perspective I honestly think AI were more human in ARMA2. But with VCOM and some mission systems I use, the AI can be tamed... but why do mods and mission systems need to?

 

I am a fan boi, got to say... rarely a day that goes by that I am not playing or working on ARMA stuff... but fan boi-dom does not mean that we do not lose the right to comment on the game we love or loved... neither do the 1000 post mafia have a right to tell a poster that he is worth less cause he only has 16 posts so far... They had less than that at some point. 

 

Old Man's absence is worrying... But shit like climbing walls, going through windows, proper ballistics, proper medical rather than arcade medical, screwed up vanilla ghillie configs and so much more. Why did a player have to come up with the solution to the AI shooting through fallen static objects? (Fair play to BI, they added the fix, but). Why is naval a second class citizen when we can see the BISIM VBS3 naval videos (I know that they are separate companies, but they are buddies).

 

I'll leave it at that for tonight. Got an early start in the morning

[maxl30 81]

I hope we get some middle european wild animals.

[maxl30 81]

48 minutes ago, Vigil Vindex said:

 

Nothing yet, but I am betting on us never seeing them directly, just their drones and hover tanks with rail guns.

 

The alien (reticulan_co.paa) is released since 2014 - but just in the vanilla files folder, lol.

I am pretty shure they will implement it, maybe just for the last sequence of the campaign, but they will.

[ISparkle 49]

I am new to the forums, but I have to say, I am really unsure why people are displaying almost 'allergic' reaction to this DLC. How is it more overdone than say... 'Russians bad! America good! Sidekick Europe neutral!' trope video games (especially shooter games) have been doing for years and years? Ever since the beginning of any shooter games, we've been shooting other humans who are service members of other countries. Can anyone explain to me why repeating this for the entirety of this franchise is a-ok but something new like next-gen weapons, vehicles and gears are a no-no (refer back to ArmA 3's initial release when people realized Americans didn't hold M16/M4/M249 SAW in their hands which are looking to be replaced by 6.8mm rifle platform irl)? And why are completely non-human possible foes are a no-no when we haven't really seen them in action in ArmA? It's not like the game lost its moddability and milsim aspect because of those. People still play with their M4/M16s in their ops, right? They still can do milsim things with MX weapons or Katiba depends on which faction you play.

Also, I am pretty sure when games/companies rely on fictional names with altered designs, it means there are licensing issues to deal with which is eliminated when they use fictional names/altered designs. I think game companies have been doing so for decades tbh. If they don't and they didn't pay the licensing fee, they'd get sued, i.e. humvee maker suing Activision, EA getting sued over Bell aircrafts. So, I don't really understand why ArmA has to be restricted to this little box of 'real world stuffs only' when the game is a sandbox milsim.

Now that's out of the way... my only concern in this DLC is that alien faction will not be fleshed out and all we get is some static needed to be scripted to move aliens.I hope this is not the case. I want to see those car sized aliens move around on their own and be on all 3 sides so that they can be used against all 3 sides. Also, I do also hope for working decontamination showers without jumps and loops of scripting because not every single one of us are coders/scripters just to use it in our Zeus co-ops.

[Tankbuster 1746]

1 hour ago, froggyluv said:

 Apex is when my rather large post count turned from rabid fanboi to skeptic to habitual eyeroller.

2

I saw that change. I was like that too. Very sad.

[chrisb 196]

The series changed with A3, that is why I'm still with A2. It just progressed for BI. They got the sales and A3 is still supported. Players have to get over changes. Look at DayZ, no lets not.. But how popular was that. 😕

 

I was really disappointed with A3, but soon got over it, just didn't move on. Luckily there was a better game, called A2..

😉

[lex__1 422]

7 minutes ago, chrisb said:

The series changed with A3, that is why I'm still with A2. It just progressed for BI. They got the sales and A3 is still supported. Players have to get over changes. Look at DayZ, no lets not.. But how popular was that. 😕

 

I was really disappointed with A3, but soon got over it, just didn't move on. Luckily there was a better game, called A2..

😉

I am a longtime fan of the series of games from BIS, OFP (2001) - ArmA3 (2015).
It was important for me to understand the movement of BIS in the direction of the Enfusion engine.
For me, the appearance of additions to the old VR engine is becoming unclear, with a lot of limitations on performance and the lack of prospects for working on topical issues and fixes.
I really like this DLC, it looks tempting. But I have absolutely no desire to see anything in the VR engine, since the platform is unable to provide stable FPS with limited AI and a growing base of errors. I was not used to refilling the car that is leaving for scrap metal tomorrow.
If BIS needs funds for the development of ArmA, it is enough to inform about the plans of release and announce the preliminary purchase of ArmA-Enfusion. This would be fair and more acceptable for most fans of the ArmA series who want to support the project and see such development prospects.
Now the work of the DayZ team is more attractive to me, despite the fact that the genre of the game script DayZ attracts me less than this DLC in Arma.
Grateful for the work on Enfusion.

[instagoat 133]

I hope the Aliens have a good reason to be on earth. Maybe the CSAT device turns out to be some sort of Alien technology that they have clandestinely seeded into the human information sphere, to provide a some sort of jump beacon. As in A for Andromeda, where the Aliens sent plans for a supercomputer supposedly designed to help humans grow, but is in fact a device to take over the planet.

 

That Aliens in fact -are- hostile towards humans is quite possible. For example, if the Aliens have the capability to travel interstellar distances, their tech level also allows for extremely destructive weapons. Such as relativistic kill missiles. Thus they know that any species of their own tech level is capable to potentially destroy their own planets. They also know that communicating with other species is nigh impossible (which we know because there are human languages that cannot be translated anymore, and that's the same species). So a good life insurance policy is to destroy any intelligent life emitting radio waves within a certain radius around your location, kind of the same way we destroy ant colonies when they pop up inside our homes. Except the ants do not have the potential to nuke us if we leave them alone, 500 years down the line.

[zukov 490]

i didn't understand some moans regarding the aliens/ futuristic settings. For the first time BI give a soul to the game that involve mystery, the discovery, help a lot the mission maker, this move is very smart. For example a tropical island with alien artifact with a scuba challenge, My hope is that BI work better on the CSAT stuff,  sometimes is put in game with less quality than nato stuff

[lordfrith 401]

8 hours ago, ISparkle said:

my only concern in this DLC is that alien faction will not be fleshed out and all we get is some static needed to be scripted to move aliens.

 

yeah this, an editor module would be ideal 😉

 

There are normally new mission maker options with most DLC that update the base game, it will be interesting to see what new tricks come with these new floaty aliens and how useful they are for more general mission making. for example some kind of hunter AI would be handy for many things non-alien.

 

from the 1 screenshot of them on the steam page they... look like they ought to move. I really hope they do more than float ominously and scripters don't have to attach them to an invisible dog or something.

 

hopefully 'Jboys Alien' will be a thing 😄

 

🖖

[krycek 349]

Like I said in another post the idea is quite awesome but the content is very weak from what they showed. The worst part is they call this an expansion.

It has some retextures, some more deco sims objects, a few guns, a goddamn tractor from all the list of assets they could do, an useless drone, a terrain that reminds me of acr dlc instead of BIS older maps and probably some static alien ship.

All this on top of the still junk as hell AI.

The spetsnaz are a good addition, and hopefully they have new gear instead of more retextures. The campaign might also be interesting considering LoW was pretty good.

[Wiki 1558]

I'm just curious about the SP campaign

[M. Glade 524]

7 minutes ago, Wiki said:

I'm just curious about the SP campaign

 

I am aswell, since this is a spin-off I wonder if it will continue on / shed light to the events of the base game and previous expansions. Also how many missions will be included and maybe alternative choices?

[zukov 490]

So for the russian soldier why not the Ratnik 3?

[krzychuzokecia 717]

16 hours ago, Defunkt said:

What did the RPG/Life players tell you on the subject?

Fix the MP performance, fix optimization, add multicore support etc. Those are most common comments under every Arma 3 announcement on Steam (the main marketing platform of the game). And I don't really have any of those problems, for me game runs amazing. But it is a sign of what people want.

 

However I will tell you what I heard from a guy who, almost every week, hosts MP sessions of OFP/CWA, and who's favorite mods (ones he's promoting, and hosting) are sci-fi, fantasy and horror ones (coutless of them were made for OFP). In his words this expansion is... so-so. And that's exactly what I'm trying to say. There's not enough of sci-fi content to change Arma into a real mil-sim sci-fi, and there's not enough of serious content to justify the price for serious mil-sim players. And before you'll ask: that guy I was talking about is playing A3 too. But for him there's not enough of interesting non-military content in the game (which I don't agree with).

 

This DLC just stands at the crossroads, unable to make decision which way to go. And don't get me wrong - I'm critical of this DLC, but not critical of aliens in Arma idea altogether. I'm a fan of X-COM series, and UFO series (the one which was essentially killed by BIS themselves) and would love to experience this in a proper mil-sim FPS game. But for some reason (technical difficulties? short development time? I don't know) that's not what awaits us in Contact, and we're left with feeling of confusion.

[Defunkt 431]

35 minutes ago, krzychuzokecia said:

And I don't really have any of those problems, for me game runs amazing.

...

But for him there's not enough of interesting non-military content in the game (which I don't agree with).

 

Sounds to me like the opinions you're presenting as 'what the players want' are quite diverse and you're pretty much at odds with all of them. Forgive me if I'm not convinced by your claim to know what 'the players' want.

 

Right now this forum is fair bubbling with posts claiming to know what Arma is all about, what is the right way to play it and what BI should have done to support that. Funnily they often bear little resemblance to one another. Could be people just imagine that what they want is lent credibility by claiming to speak for everyone.

[dyrmoon 22]

12 hours ago, ISparkle said:

I am new to the forums, but I have to say, I am really unsure why people are displaying almost 'allergic' reaction to this DLC. How is it more overdone than say... 'Russians bad! America good! Sidekick Europe neutral!' trope video games (especially shooter games) have been doing for years and years? Ever since the beginning of any shooter games, we've been shooting other humans who are service members of other countries. Can anyone explain to me why repeating this for the entirety of this franchise is a-ok but something new like next-gen weapons, vehicles and gears are a no-no (refer back to ArmA 3's initial release when people realized Americans didn't hold M16/M4/M249 SAW in their hands which are looking to be replaced by 6.8mm rifle platform irl)? And why are completely non-human possible foes are a no-no when we haven't really seen them in action in ArmA? It's not like the game lost its moddability and milsim aspect because of those. People still play with their M4/M16s in their ops, right? They still can do milsim things with MX weapons or Katiba depends on which faction you play.

Also, I am pretty sure when games/companies rely on fictional names with altered designs, it means there are licensing issues to deal with which is eliminated when they use fictional names/altered designs. I think game companies have been doing so for decades tbh. If they don't and they didn't pay the licensing fee, they'd get sued, i.e. humvee maker suing Activision, EA getting sued over Bell aircrafts. So, I don't really understand why ArmA has to be restricted to this little box of 'real world stuffs only' when the game is a sandbox milsim.

Now that's out of the way... my only concern in this DLC is that alien faction will not be fleshed out and all we get is some static needed to be scripted to move aliens.I hope this is not the case. I want to see those car sized aliens move around on their own and be on all 3 sides so that they can be used against all 3 sides. Also, I do also hope for working decontamination showers without jumps and loops of scripting because not every single one of us are coders/scripters just to use it in our Zeus co-ops.

 

I agree with everything you wrote.
Exactly, why do everyone still want to live in the past? And I say this as a person playing Arma series for about 15 years.
For me DLC positive surprise. It's great that developers are not afraid of change. 

 

And I also hope to see some real enemies and not just static objects for exploration.

[zukov 490]

so the spetsnaz are quite ordinary, gorka 3 uniforms with a helmet like a altyn with rhino mount,  the first from the left has a mop suit? just the guy in the middle has a plate carrier? finally the rpg 42 in olive!
Chest holster ...... this means that the holster on chest rig in apex work too?

[maxl30 81]

43 minutes ago, zukov said:

so the spetsnaz are quite ordinary, gorka 3 uniforms with a helmet like a altyn with rhino mount,  the first from the left has a mop suit? just the guy in the middle has a plate carrier? finally the rpg 42 in olive!
Chest holster ...... this means that the holster on chest rig in apex work too?
 

 

I hope it will works.

[lex__1 422]

1 hour ago, Defunkt said:

Sounds to me like the opinions you're presenting as 'what the players want' are quite diverse and you're pretty much at odds with all of them. Forgive me if I'm not convinced by your claim to know what 'the players' want.

 

Right now this forum is fair bubbling with posts claiming to know what Arma is all about, what is the right way to play it and what BI should have done to support that. Funnily they often bear little resemblance to one another. Could be people just imagine that what they want is lent credibility by claiming to speak for everyone. 

I like any content and any direction of development. I am interested in creative works. Everyone finds their own interest. But it hurts me when my interest is limited by the platform, which is not stable and the workload for troubleshooting the platform is reduced, since there is no reason to do so. VR is more limited than the enthusiasm of the Arma team and the enthusiasm of the guys making different mods.

[Defunkt 431]

12 minutes ago, lex__1 said:

I like any content and any direction of development. I am interested in creative works. Everyone finds their own interest. But it hurts me when my interest is limited by the platform, which is not stable and the workload for troubleshooting the platform is reduced, since there is no reason to do so. VR is more limited than the enthusiasm of the Arma team and the enthusiasm of the guys making different mods.

 

Perhaps that's why all of BI's engine people are working on a new one? Do you actually want them taken off that to twiddle with the current 5-year old platform?

 

Meanwhile other non-engine developers are probably most usefully engaged in generating development funds by releasing a content pack for the current game. If you don't want that fine, don't buy it, but it's daft to equate that with a failure to improve the platform (which obviously BI is very actively engaged in doing right now).

 

Honestly it's like some of you have your dial so stuck on "Maximum Whinge" you can't even think the simplest of scenarios through.

[lex__1 422]

3 minutes ago, Defunkt said:

Meanwhile other non-engine developers are probably most usefully engaged in generating development funds by releasing a content pack for the current game. If you don't want that fine, don't buy it, but it's daft to equate that with a failure to improve the platform (which obviously BI is very actively engaged in doing right now).

I do not argue about the usefulness of investments in the development of the new platform Enfusion. For this reason, I bought DeyZ. But I see no point in buying content that I will not use, in view of the lack of stability of the VR platform. I do not want to continue to look at the problems that the old platform reproduces, coupled with the lack of work to fix the problems.

[froggyluv 2136]

3 minutes ago, Defunkt said:

 

Perhaps that's why all of BI's engine people are working on a new one? Do you actually want them taken off that to twiddle with the current 5-year old platform?

 

Meanwhile other non-engine developers are probably most usefully engaged in generating development funds by releasing a content pack for the current game. If you don't want that fine, don't buy it, but it's daft to equate that with a failure to improve the platform (which obviously BI is very actively engaged in doing right now).

 

Honestly it's like some of you have your dial so stuck on "Maximum Whinge" you can't even think the simplest of scenarios through.

 

 Its called trajectory and where the focus (or lack) of has appeared to have been heading for some time. You cant blame people for doubting BI's long term intentions because BI has some sorta weird internal gag order on the long term plans of the series -darkness breeds spores, molds and fungi. For gods sake if they're all happily working on some new cutting edge engine that would finally realize some of the old mil-simmers long held dreams than shed a little light on it. Ever see Star Citizens long term plan roadmap available to the public -god knows if they will hold up but they have quarterly assessments of what areas of Combat/Ship AI/Infantry AI/Group Behaviours/Civilian Behavious etc mapped out for the next couple of years.