Contact Expansion Playable Content Feedback

[mickeymen 324]

I want to add my impressions. At the moment I can’t finish the company, because I’m stuck on last several missions (non English speaking player) and it’s not clear what to do next.

These are some of the main concerns of the contact campaign, but overall, I want to say - Arma3: Contact is a very atmospheric campaign that brings a unique gaming experience.

 

Great mysterious and sci-fi atmosphere.
Quite an interesting story.
Terrific experience with radio communications (this is completely new experience)

 

However, problems do interfere with complete enjoyment..

Some problems which I noticed:

 

1) low fps (much has already been said about this)

 

2) the ambiguity in the description of some tasks (several times I was stuck in a mission) and just did not understand what exactly needs to be done! (non English speaking player)

As seems to me, the Task descriptions (text description) should be clearer and more detailed. Also, if the player is slow in completing the task, then the player’s partner should periodically ask the player and remind the player what needs to be done, through the radio. But if the player is stuck in his mission, then nothing will happen. Player can wait 2,3,4,5 hours but none of the player’s team will be interested in the player!

 

3) The aliens creatures appear too often (this loses its value, when it just loafs around) and it seems that they have no effect on the Livonia Defense forses soldiers, while the, while the player cannot approach them. Looks weird.

 

4) The enemy AI disappointed me in this compaign, probably a problem with the Arma3 AI in generally. The enemy AI is blind when it is in safe mode (patrols and sentinels) - In the moonlight, in the empty place the player can move nearby at a distance of 30-50 meters but the AI will not notice it! My AI settings - Skills 0.85,  precision - 0.35. Value 0.85 is not small, for visual detection, but enemy AI still is too blind. It would be nice if the enemy AI could visually detect the player at much greater distances. Especially patrols and sentinels! This would allow the player to behave more carefully and feel the constant threat. 

The player has only a small threat when he is on the roads or near settlements, but if he goes into the forest and he can run inside the forest or away from the roads, knowing that no one will notice him!

 

Also lack of enemy AI support disappointed me, If the player was detected by this enemy (when the player started attack), then the nearest enemy AI will not react in any way to this battle, in which their ally participates. OMG, not good. The enemy who was subject to attack will start shooting at the player, while allied enemy AI located within only 200-300 meters will not respond in general to shots, explosions nearby. If they do not support an ally, then at least they must respond to the threat, let them run in danger, instead of standing like statues.  @BIS please give your AI a greater threat response range, better yet, give them fire support for the allies!

 

5) If a player plays with a map on which all indicators are disabled (allies, enemies, mines, etc.),  then at the start of each mission the player does not see a self start point.

As a result, the player does not understand where he is at the beginning of the mission, since different missions start in different places of Livonia. @BIS Please add a Start marker for players who do not use map additional information.

 

6) Secondary missions tasks are immediately considered completed, as soon as the player enters the mission designated area.  This looks very bad, because the player still does not have time to get information from this site or destroy all enemies inside this location. The mission must be completed ONLY when all opponents are destroyed and required information is collected.

 

7) When a player communicates with any character from the campaign, this character will not be turned with his face to the player.

Unfortunately this is a problem for all ArmA3 campaigns. If the talking character will constantly turned himself into the player’s side, then it would be natural. I can’t understand why, after 6 years of life, the Arma3, the player still cannot see the talking character, who is constantly turned to his interlocutor with his face. Please and finally implement this for all campaigns!

 

[atom222 10]

I'm having a strange and horrible issue with framerate on Contact.  I'm on mission to steal another EDIE.  I cannot get more than 20 FPS no matter what I do.  I'm on a gtx 1080,  i5 4670, 16 gb ram.  Playing at 2560 x 1440 Ultra everything and max antialiasing I get 20 FPS.  Change everything to low, draw distances to nothing, resolution to 1920 x 1200 and no AA, I STILL get 20 FPS.   If I switch back to Arma 3, everything works as intended (FPS relative to video settings changes).  Any ideas in what would be hard locking my framerates? No mods loaded, cleared all start parameters.  Would love to be able to play this expansion, right now its a frustrating framerate optimization simulator with zero fun. 

[XOSPECTRE 40]

2 hours ago, atom222 said:

I'm having a strange and horrible issue with framerate on Contact.  I'm on mission to steal another EDIE.  I cannot get more than 20 FPS no matter what I do.  I'm on a gtx 1080,  i5 4670, 16 gb ram.  Playing at 2560 x 1440 Ultra everything and max antialiasing I get 20 FPS.  Change everything to low, draw distances to nothing, resolution to 1920 x 1200 and no AA, I STILL get 20 FPS.   If I switch back to Arma 3, everything works as intended (FPS relative to video settings changes).  Any ideas in what would be hard locking my framerates? No mods loaded, cleared all start parameters.  Would love to be able to play this expansion, right now its a frustrating framerate optimization simulator with zero fun. 

I have alienware 18x it have 2 graphics in sli... and have sometimes 25 fps too I think biggest problem is CPU I tried contact on desktop pc with 5 ghz CPU 8 gig ram and 60fps no problem I suspect there's just tons of script and CPU have to handle them

[Glow 181]

3 hours ago, atom222 said:

I'm having a strange and horrible issue with framerate on Contact. (...)

 

1. Turn off Battleye.

2. Setup difficulty to any but not Custom.

3. Try to switching screen display mode from Full Screen to Full Screen Windowed.

 

[atom222 10]

21 hours ago, XOSPECTRE said:

I have alienware 18x it have 2 graphics in sli... and have sometimes 25 fps too I think biggest problem is CPU I tried contact on desktop pc with 5 ghz CPU 8 gig ram and 60fps no problem I suspect there's just tons of script and CPU have to handle them

Thanks - I think you are right, but the weird thing is the hard 20 fps cap.  I expect all the electronic warfare variables (which are undoubtedly awesome) would hammer the processor, but it's odd that I can drop resolution to nothing, put everything in graphics on low, look up at the sky, and still only hit 20 fps.  

[atom222 10]

20 hours ago, Glow said:

 

1. Turn off Battleye.

2. Setup difficulty to any but not Custom.

3. Try to switching screen display mode from Full Screen to Full Screen Windowed.

 

I tried turning off Battleye, and difficulty was already set to regular.  Thanks for the advice, but no luck.   This expansion should have a one song soundtrack.  FREEZE FRAME - J Geils band.  Frame freezes right before i take a shot or AI does.  Miserable. 

[DropbearCommando 7]

A great campaign and a  huge Arma 3 mystery solved:

 

Spoiler

 

[XOSPECTRE 40]

On 8/8/2019 at 4:18 PM, atom222 said:

I tried turning off Battleye, and difficulty was already set to regular.  Thanks for the advice, but no luck.   This expansion should have a one song soundtrack.  FREEZE FRAME - J Geils band.  Frame freezes right before i take a shot or AI does.  Miserable. 

If u run arma without steam* u get 15 fps more.. 

[stburr91 1002]

1 hour ago, XOSPECTRE said:

If u run arma without steam* u get 15 fps more.. 

 

 

How do you run Arma without Steam?

[ISparkle 49]

8 hours ago, XOSPECTRE said:

If u run arma without steam* u get 15 fps more.. 

How do you even do this? You have to launch Steam and connected to Steam to play.

[FoxFort 341]

I presume he meant on disable steam overlay, then you are running a3 "without" steam.

[zukov 490]

On 8/13/2019 at 9:40 AM, ISparkle said:

How do you even do this? You have to launch Steam and connected to Steam to play.

https://forums.bohemia.net/forums/topic/139136-steam-performance-troubles-and-how-mitigate-them/
 

[soceris 56]

Location of something strange...

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

The strange THING.....

Spoiler

 

ATTENTION ALL D-CLASS PERSONEL

PLEASE ENTER THE CONTAINMENT CHAMBER.

PLEASE APROACH SCP-173 FOR TESTING...

 

 

Edited August 17, 2019 by soceris
Wanna keep the spook a surprise. :)

[XOSPECTRE 40]

On 8/13/2019 at 8:40 AM, ISparkle said:

How do you even do this? You have to launch Steam and connected to Steam to play.

Well arma is a sandbox u can do what ever u want and when u use scripts magic happens... And Windows 10 Is the same thing 😄

[Glow 181]

19 hours ago, soceris said:

ATTENTION ALL D-CLASS PERSONEL

(...)

 

Someone should made a map with all those funny places.

 

Spoiler

SCP-173 - spoiler in your post!

 

[EO 11275]

This error keeps popping up in Eden... 

All other units in the NATO (Woodland, EMP) faction have editorpreviews with the exception of the ammo bearer, just running your mouse over this unit in Eden produces error message.

No other mods loaded other than Contact.

[reyhard 2082]

On 7/28/2020 at 9:13 PM, EO said:

This error keeps popping up in Eden... 

Thanks for the report - issue should be gone in next Arma update 🙂

[dragon01 902]

Got back into ArmA after all this time, bought Contact, and I have to say, I'm impressed. Really good writing here, characters were interesting and varied, dialogue felt good. Loved the new comms mechanics, though I often had an issue locating both speakers in a conversation, and brining the device out fast enough. No FPS issues, but the reason for my absence is that I got back into flight sims, and when you've set your rig up for flying jets in 4K VR, it doesn't even warm up properly when playing on the good old screen, so this might not be the average player's experience. I enjoyed the plot twists, I have to say that the story was really fresh. 

 

I'd love to see a BI game follow up on this. Even if not in the ArmA series (which should probably remain closer to Earth, although there's no harm in tying the universes together), not necessarily even a shooter, but the story has some real potential. Could be a better way to continue the future setting's storylines than to set the next ArmA even further out in the future, in fact (mostly because good chunks of A3 are hilariously outdated even now).