Arma is awesome

[Lone Penguin 15]

I don’t know if any member of the team at Bohemia will read this, but I needed to tell you this, even though I’m just a random person on this planet. This is just a thank you letter and me rambling about why I like this game because I don’t have a therapist anymore.

 

The game is outstanding so far, I fell in love with Arma 3 in 2013 and I can’t wait for all the future updates of Reforger and obviously for Arma 4. Thanks for the Enfusion engine and all the improvements that come with it (better performance, smooth animations, gunplay feeling, jumping and climbing, entering vehicles, vehicles handling and interactions and interiors, water puddles forming when raining, overall lighting, clouds shadow effects, sound design…).

 

The vehicles and weapons models are super nice, and a lot of the rifles have a nice punch to them and are super fun and satisfying to shoot with. I think Arma 3 lacked in that department, and now a lot of the clunkiness is gone with Reforger, which is awesome. 3D scopes are fire. I think I need a new graphics card though.

 

Music ! Like, what the hell ? I couldn't believe my ears. I was walking in game master solo to test out the game and discover the map (because the online was broken for me at that time), and then suddenly, ambiant music ! I thought to myself, what is this, am I in minercaft ? I don't know if you had a lot of feedback for this yet, but I have to tell you, this is a really smart and appreciated addition to the game. It adds feels. And sometimes the themes are kind of ominous you know. The eerie music combined to the fact that I'm alone on this island really got to me. I felt the loneliness, and that something obscure and mysterious might happen. Is Arma hiding a horror twist somewhere ? We have to talk about the creepy ambient background noise that plays at night when you are in a dark forest too... (It's awesome don't delete it, but really what are you hiding ?)

 

3D compasses handheld by the character and wiggling as you move. Nice. No GPS, no position on the map. You just feel like you are back in time. You have to do things more analog style you know. I love it.

 

Animations when entering vehicles. Hnghn. Finally. Awesome but, finally ! Please make this a standard for every vehicles, even tanks in Arma 4 where the animation might be more complex (character has to climb on the tank and drop inside the hatch). I hope if there is something like the M1 Abrams, that there will be turret interiors too, and animations for the crewman loader, who has to load the shell inside the canon before shouting "UP !".
Having to start the engine, super nice. Now that you've added a handbrake mechanic, please make this realistic to the point where if a player forgets to pull it before leaving, the car starts to roll down the hill. It would be just too much fun.

 

Handheld flashlights. Cool. You know, Arma is a game that made me learn a lot about military equipment and how rifles work in real life as opposed to other games and movies. Things like bullet drop, the crack sound they make due to supersonic speed, that they ricochet, the fact that rifles lose accuracy and it’s super hard to shoot at a target from far away, that tanks don’t explode after being hit by a single RPG, and that tracer bullets are a real thing and not laser beams shooting in the sky. But one thing I’ll remember forever is when I experienced my first nighttime in Arma 3. There wasn’t any moonlight to brighten the environment, and I was in the middle of nowhere without any source of lighting. I was like, what the fuck is this game, I can’t see shit. Wait, what did you say ? Oh, is this how dark is the night in real life when you don’t live in a city with public lighting ? Hell, I didn’t know that… I still couldn’t see though, like, anything. But the stars were pretty. Please keep this kind of realism forever.

 

The radios and the bleeding mechanic are a nice touch from the start and a really needed feature. I hope the medical mechanics of the game will get a lot of improvement in the future (I saw they will in the next update, but I still hope for awesomeness, you know, dragging bodies, putting an incapacitated teammate in a vehicle, having to extract him to a field hospital and abort the mission…).
Maybe a more hardcore pvp or pve game mode with a limited number of deaths, forcing the players to get injured players back to the base via ground or aerial means and avoid losing a respawn ticket (but that may prove to be impractical).

 

The addition of the conflict game mode from the get go is a really nice idea too. Even if a lot of players will do milsim on private servers, this really helps get into the game with less hassle than Arma 3. Also this game mode seems to be on a really good path to become something meaningful for a game like Arma (the addition of the supplies mechanics is nice).

I always found game modes with battlefield style combat like king of the hill really dumb for this game. I admit that I played it a bit, but it’s really not what Arma was made for. Nevertheless, PvP is exciting, in certain aspects more fun than PvE (smart ennemy), but it lacks the scenario part, and scenarios are awesome. I wish I could find a private PvP server one day with a game master to get the best of both worlds. I always thought realistic war PvP combat is impossible to do on public servers. But on a private one ? That would be the best experience for me.

 

The map, the map is beautiful. I really think this is the department where you Bohemia shine the most, and you probably know it. There are a lot of games with spectacular art direction that blew me away and made me feel a myriad of emotions, that’s for sure, but the maps in Arma have a unique feeling of authenticity and freedom to them which I can’t find in any other game. And the military sandbox aspect of it all always makes my imagination rush when I discover a peculiar spot on the terrain. I say to myself, this place would make for an epic multiplayer battle, or, this would be a fantastic location to start the story of a custom solo campaign. A castle, a steep path in the mountains, ruins of a watermill in the forest, the shore of a lake, a lonely house with a pond at the edge of the island…
Sometimes I just want to take a walk in the forest and immerse myself in the beauty of the vegetation, admire the dead leaves and mossy rocks, hear the rustling of the bushes and the tree branches cracking under my feet… Until an enemy appears behind a tree, gunshots start to ring out, and all this calm and relaxing atmosphere becomes the theater of operations of a large-scale war.

I hope for a winter terrain in Arma 4, with snowstorms, white military camouflage and snow cracking under my feet. Hmpf. Maybe more underground mechanics and better lighting of enclosed spaces (bunkers with lots of corridors and missile silos).

Maybe terrain deformation ? If it’s possible with Enfusion. (I saw objects destruction will have a lot of improvement soon, can’t wait for that).

 

Without transition, I want to say that I love all the possibilities of stories and gameplay Arma gives to the player, and I hope the team will continue this awesome work on this awesome series for a long time !

 

This might be overexaggerated, but Arma is one of those things for me, a piece of art you just love and immerse yourself in, like your favorite music or movie, you experience it and it allows you to escape everything else for a moment in your life. And I can’t wait, I can’t wait for the things to come in the next updates, and the things to come in Arma 4. I hope we will see in it all the features already deployed in Arma 3 (firing from vehicles, sling loading…) and much much more.

 

I wish you the best, keep up the amazing work you do, and I hope for more stability in Reforger multiplayer of course ! 😄