Soon(TM)

[Alex_LT 16]

Apparently BIS are taking their time to keep up  their  words, all is abstract, no strict details for the future. We are still missing most crucial parts  from Ground support, like AI driving and direct commanding, promised  RFI video is now weeks old, mostly forgotten by many,  and once I ask about some ETA for that, I get one answer  - soon (TM), what  means nothing. With this pace, we are going to see A4 in 2030 , if not later. Also, version 1.0 of Reforger is getting closer, and their statement of "A lot of content in version 1.0" is not believable. There is slight chance, that they are working on it secretly, but that chance is almost none, same as their work on A4 alongside Reforger.

[jakeplissken 77]

When they fix the session errors and connection timeouts in 12 months. And fix the netcode and poor collision detection. They should spend another 2 years on the engine first.

[razor6014 35]

Am I getting this right, they shold work on the engine with no income stream for 2 years and hope they make a return on the investment ? 
If you are so commited why dont you volonteer and work pro bono with them ? 

[stburr91 996]

On 9/9/2023 at 12:25 PM, razor6014 said:

Am I getting this right, they shold work on the engine with no income stream for 2 years and hope they make a return on the investment ? 
If you are so commited why dont you volonteer and work pro bono with them ? 

 

Companies the size of BI should have waited until the game was functional before releasing it into early access. 

[jakeplissken 77]

Yes, there are still connection timeouts and session errors after the latest update. Maybe in 7 months, it will be fixed.

[Alex_LT 16]

On 9/15/2023 at 10:54 PM, jakeplissken said:

Yes, there are still connection timeouts and session errors after the latest update. Maybe in 7 months, it will be fixed.

Yes, MAYBE 🙂

[krzychuzokecia 701]

On 9/9/2023 at 6:25 PM, razor6014 said:

Am I getting this right, they shold work on the engine with no income stream for 2 years and hope they make a return on the investment ?

This line of thinking has big problem when faced with particular reality of BI and Enfusion. Enfusion engine is being worked on since 2017, according to an official press release from 2021. Or since 2014, according to an official press release from 2015. Quite obviously, BI has not gone bankrupt in this time, in fact one could say it was the time of their biggest commercial success - mainly due to the release of standalone DayZ game which, again according to that 2015 press release, was said to be the first Enfusion-powered game in BI's portfolio.

 

Now company stance is that Reforger is their first "truly Enfusion" game, even if it doesn't really look that different to DayZ (heck, it feels like a mod to DayZ at times). Anyway, the game basic systems - like the netcode - are in state of complete disarray. And while Reforger might be a recent project, Enfusion surely is not - I would say people have the right to be at least concerned when seeing how bad this engine handles basic things after 6 years of development.

 

Moreover, going back to the "income stream", Reforger surely is not the main power-house among BI commercial offerings. Heck, it even earned a disparaging nickname of "Refunder". It's a game that had an all-time peak of concurrent Steam players the day of it's release - and it fell rapidly just in two weeks. Compare that to Arma 3 or DayZ. Postponing the release of Reforger until it's ready to be shipped (whether it's two years or less/more) would not impact BI revenue that much, simply for the fact that the game just has minimal following and sales - a lot of it thanks to the "word of mouth" coming from people who bought it and were heavily disappointed in it. I'm not sure how much interest it would have if it would be a properly working game - it's main draw, Conflict mode, is a rather limited take on CTI/BF modes from previous games, and pales even when compared to games like Squad or Hell Let Loose (which offer only a fraction of what I'd call a quintesential "Arma" gameplay).

[razor6014 35]

But thats the thing, you as customers want the finished thing. And I am sure BI knew every argument before they put this out you would be making. And they still went on ahead, so why do you think they did that?

Money? Even to you its clear its not that much, and even when promoting it it was clear(at least to me), that its a testbead.

Its a chassis of a car , no paint , no windshield no doors. Its in a state of early squad.

Its a testbed to figure some things out and thats why we did see them swaping out the assembly (the whole principal of networking was changed)

 

And to me your arguments  are clear,  I can understand your viewpoint becouse its thought out, articulated even if I dont agree with it.

 

The reason why is because its idealistic and when I look at the features list its so much deeper than squad and hell let loose ( which suffer much more development issues than BI)

 

I am not saying its perfect, but its def not deserving of the gremlin like posts every week of we still have some bugs in a testbed (sarcastic tone: "nooo waay dude")

 

[kev2go 6]

 

I haven't had any crashes or disconnects yet happen to my since the latest 0.99.97 patch. Games more stable then its ever been. 

 

I cant wait till 64 player servers are done on everon. Developers invited players to join in  to do a couple stress tests  experimental branch with 64 players preceding the current patch launch and all went well. Although we still don't have official 64 player servers, ive been playing on power bits 64 player server, i haven't had any issues there yet, so maybe next patch 

[bugeater36 14]

On 9/9/2023 at 10:25 AM, razor6014 said:

Am I getting this right, they shold work on the engine with no income stream for 2 years and hope they make a return on the investment ? 
If you are so commited why dont you volonteer and work pro bono with them ? 

Holy shit the amount of copium you are huffing is FATAL!

 

Yes, they are expected to first make a good product and only then get returns for said good product. That is how game development works. You make a game, and if that game is good, people buy it.
Arma Reforger may be a proof of concept for the engine, but they released it in an UNPLAYABLE state, and even now, well over 1 year later, we have still received no meaningful content or changes. The game still has massive issues and lacks most of the content that was promised. ALL OF THIS COULD HAVE BEEN FORGIVEN IF THEY HAD COMMUNICATED WITH US. It would have taken at most 10 minutes to make a twitter post outlining what is going on behind the scenes, but aside from a handful of shitty devblogs that we get once in a blue moon, there has been complete radio silence. 

 

They made several controversial changes that the majority of the Arma community DOES NOT LIKE (Push for consoles and crossplay, Removal of Steam Workshop, ETC.), they released Reforger in a broken state, they have failed to fulfill nearly all of their promises and they have overrun every single one of their deadlines, and all of this while not being open to the people who bought their product. Perhaps most concerning, Bohemia Interactive has shown zero signs of changing their behavior. For these reasons, the community has every right to be upset. 
 

I am not exaggerating when I say that I don't think we will see Arma 4 until 2030. 

 

9 hours ago, razor6014 said:

But thats the thing, you as customers want the finished thing. And I am sure BI knew every argument before they put this out you would be making. And they still went on ahead, so why do you think they did that?

Money? Even to you its clear its not that much, and even when promoting it it was clear(at least to me), that its a testbead.

Its a chassis of a car , no paint , no windshield no doors. Its in a state of early squad.

Its a testbed to figure some things out and thats why we did see them swaping out the assembly (the whole principal of networking was changed)

They need to communicate. They would if they cared. They haven't.

 

One of the biggest issues I have consistently seen plaguing  the indie game world is the problem of Developer Simps. By not holding devs accountable for the promises and mistakes they have made, you actively create an ecosystem where this exact type of problematic behavior is tolerated, leading to worse games and lazier developers. It is a lot easier to cut corners, overrun deadlines, implement bad features, and sometimes straight up lie when you know you have an army of simps ready to defend you wherever you go.

[jakeplissken 77]

Just wait for Q1-Q2 2024 and see what happens.

[Alex_LT 16]

8 hours ago, jakeplissken said:

Just wait for Q1-Q2 2024 and see what happens.

Such a naive optimist 🙂

[nomisum 129]

Iirc there was communication going on when they scrapped the initial roadmap in favor of smaller updates. Since then some updates dropped even if not as frequently as hoped.

 

Its safe to assume they are not happy with dev speed either but game development is a complex topic that can include setbacks. I like the current approach way more than (over)promising or announcing stuff they cannot guarantee. Just saying devs are 'lazy' is does not help anyone. I bet if they would communicate more openly they would be called 'incompetent' as they didnt magically foresee any and all issues they explain. And they do explain quite a bit already in their dev blogs.

 

We know what was initially planned for Reforger and I still expect the missing features of the roadmap will release eventually. My biggest gripes that I expect won't be solved until A4 are the console inspired UI and the missing mission editor as workbench is not comparable to 3DEN in any way.

[razor6014 35]

 

But That is the thing, you maybe dont remember the early days of Arma 3,  It had crashes, It was poor, and it got better even with the old engine. I had to relog every so often, crash but it was always fun and thats whats important.

And through constant updates it got better. That behaviour that track record of always improving the game (sometimes free, sometimes with dlc) got them some slack other companies do not get.

 

I never said that expectation is wrong, yes you should expect a full game. Evey team has their behaviour and what you can expect from them.

Maybe you dont look at the same channels as I do but I can tell you I clearly picked up on that in the communication (then again I am a software dev so maybe its more evident to me).

 

Posting angry posts here only proves that you care, but they should not be some form of bullying and gaslighting as this is not productive.

Expecting perfection from people is not sane, sorry but that is the truth.  I can tell you this as someone who led people, you always get more out of people when you are POLITE , CURTEUS and PATIENT. 

That is because lashing out when things dont go right produces two things. One people are hurt, and second then those people look to bring you down as a result. An Eye for an eye makes the world go blind. 

 

And thats the thing, noone says you should not say how to improve things, but if you lash out , they dont listen, they just react to your anger (Oh one more angry post ), and then your advice gets lost.

 

You wan to be Ted Lasso in any interactions but you maybe dont realise that yet. 

 

 

 

On 9/19/2023 at 1:40 AM, bugeater36 said:

 

Holy shit the amount of copium you are huffing is FATAL!

 

Yes, they are expected to first make a good product and only then get returns for said good product. That is how game development works. You make a game, and if that game is good, people buy it.
Arma Reforger may be a proof of concept for the engine, but they released it in an UNPLAYABLE state, and even now, well over 1 year later, we have still received no meaningful content or changes. The game still has massive issues and lacks most of the content that was promised. ALL OF THIS COULD HAVE BEEN FORGIVEN IF THEY HAD COMMUNICATED WITH US. It would have taken at most 10 minutes to make a twitter post outlining what is going on behind the scenes, but aside from a handful of shitty devblogs that we get once in a blue moon, there has been complete radio silence. 

 

They made several controversial changes that the majority of the Arma community DOES NOT LIKE (Push for consoles and crossplay, Removal of Steam Workshop, ETC.), they released Reforger in a broken state, they have failed to fulfill nearly all of their promises and they have overrun every single one of their deadlines, and all of this while not being open to the people who bought their product. Perhaps most concerning, Bohemia Interactive has shown zero signs of changing their behavior. For these reasons, the community has every right to be upset. 
 

I am not exaggerating when I say that I don't think we will see Arma 4 until 2030. 

 

They need to communicate. They would if they cared. They haven't.

 

One of the biggest issues I have consistently seen plaguing  the indie game world is the problem of Developer Simps. By not holding devs accountable for the promises and mistakes they have made, you actively create an ecosystem where this exact type of problematic behavior is tolerated, leading to worse games and lazier developers. It is a lot easier to cut corners, overrun deadlines, implement bad features, and sometimes straight up lie when you know you have an army of simps ready to defend you wherever you go.

[stburr91 996]

On 9/21/2023 at 8:37 AM, razor6014 said:

 

But That is the thing, you maybe dont remember the early days of Arma 3,  It had crashes, It was poor, and it got better even with the old engine. I had to relog every so often, crash but it was always fun and thats whats important.

And through constant updates it got better. That behaviour that track record of always improving the game (sometimes free, sometimes with dlc) got them some slack other companies do not get.

 

I never said that expectation is wrong, yes you should expect a full game. Evey team has their behaviour and what you can expect from them.

Maybe you dont look at the same channels as I do but I can tell you I clearly picked up on that in the communication (then again I am a software dev so maybe its more evident to me).

 

Posting angry posts here only proves that you care, but they should not be some form of bullying and gaslighting as this is not productive.

Expecting perfection from people is not sane, sorry but that is the truth.  I can tell you this as someone who led people, you always get more out of people when you are POLITE , CURTEUS and PATIENT. 

That is because lashing out when things dont go right produces two things. One people are hurt, and second then those people look to bring you down as a result. An Eye for an eye makes the world go blind. 

 

And thats the thing, noone says you should not say how to improve things, but if you lash out , they dont listen, they just react to your anger (Oh one more angry post ), and then your advice gets lost.

 

You wan to be Ted Lasso in any interactions but you maybe dont realise that yet. 

 

 

 

 

Few have been more openly critical of reforger than I have been, heck, I just told the lead programmer that he botched the development of reforger. I've been so vocal that I've had the community manager, reforger's lead programmer, and the enfusion engine lead developer, and a few others, all respond to me.

 

Why am I being so openly critical?

 

It's to put pressure on them to not repeat the same mistakes with Arma 4. Look, reforger is stuck in development h*ll, the game may never recover, it is what it is, but....things can be done differently with Arma 4. I don't like being "that guy" that everybody is annoyed by because he's always complaining, but it's the only thing I can do to (hopefully) help the journey to Arma 4. Nobody likes a swift kick in the a**, but it's needed, and I'm going to keep kicking until we either get the Arma 4 we all hoped for, or we don't.  

[Alex_LT 16]

13 hours ago, stburr91 said:

 

Few have been more openly critical of reforger than I have been, heck, I just told the lead programmer that he botched the development of reforger. I've been so vocal that I've had the community manager, reforger's lead programmer, and the enfusion engine lead developer, and a few others, all respond to me.

 

Why am I being so openly critical?

 

It's to put pressure on them to not repeat the same mistakes with Arma 4. Look, reforger is stuck in development h*ll, the game may never recover, it is what it is, but....things can be done differently with Arma 4. I don't like being "that guy" that everybody is annoyed by because he's always complaining, but it's the only thing I can do to (hopefully) help the journey to Arma 4. Nobody likes a swift kick in the a**, but it's needed, and I'm going to keep kicking until we either get the Arma 4 we all hoped for, or we don't.  

 

Good job.They really must be more open with  entire community  I wonder what response you had

[razor6014 35]

Honestly cant believe what I am reading, next you will tell me you are gonna knock on developer doors? 

 

I would expect the guy to act in the polite version of yes yes dear customer you are right we are working on it as thats what is expected of his position. 

 

Still cant believe you wrote you are one stop short of harrasing people, and you are proud of that!?

 

I mean you got yourself a perfect position, you cry that its bad, if its still bad you where right, if its better you will say its because of you?  WTH?! 

[stburr91 996]

2 hours ago, razor6014 said:

Honestly cant believe what I am reading, next you will tell me you are gonna knock on developer doors? 

 

I would expect the guy to act in the polite version of yes yes dear customer you are right we are working on it as thats what is expected of his position. 

 

Still cant believe you wrote you are one stop short of harrasing people, and you are proud of that!?

 

I mean you got yourself a perfect position, you cry that its bad, if its still bad you where right, if its better you will say its because of you?  WTH?! 

 

I'm not harassing anyone, I'm simply giving my opinion, and I'm doing so within the rules of each forum that I post in. 

 

The only "position" I've gotten myself into is being the "bad guy" that (hopefully) keeps the pressure on them to not repeat the same mistakes with Arma 4, that they made with reforger.

 

If Arma 4 turns out to be a good game, it's not because of me, it would be because BI pulled it together, and made a decent game.  

[razor6014 35]

If you yourself say you are acting as a bad guy,

you are not simply giving your opinion.

 

I have gone that route, dont worry its common, I also had managers and the jist from them is,

wait wait wait, what you mean you have to be the bad guy,

you are just giving yourself permission to act the only way you know how.

Learn the other ways.

[stburr91 996]

10 hours ago, razor6014 said:

If you yourself say you are acting as a bad guy,

you are not simply giving your opinion.

 

I have gone that route, dont worry its common, I also had managers and the jist from them is,

wait wait wait, what you mean you have to be the bad guy,

you are just giving yourself permission to act the only way you know how.

Learn the other ways.

 

Saying things some people don't want to hear will make you a "bad guy" to them (even when what is being said is true), but it's still just giving your opinion. 

 

I have lead small teams, for projects that last months, and I have done so while always maintaining a very good working relationship because I'm a very easy person to get along with, I respect people, treat them fairly, and I lead by example. My taking on this "bad guy" role is something I don't enjoy because it is the opposite from how I normally act. 

 

You may think it's best to just be supportive of BI, that's fine, you do that, I believe they need constant pressure applied to them, so that's what I'm doing.   

[razor6014 35]

Oh I understand what you mean, and criticism delivered calmly is usefull.

The reason I felt it was a bit outside the ideal is when certian people only post the bad, it starts to look like a toxic forum. And you know people, you cant just criticise, you need to do the sandwich

[Alex_LT 16]

6 hours ago, jakeplissken said:

Dead game.

I am waiting for A4. Reforger is not my type of cookie

[teabagginpeople 398]

On 10/10/2023 at 1:12 AM, jakeplissken said:

Dead game.

Ha Jake, while I have openly agreed with some of your criticisms  of the game as fair and warranted, I think you can also just come across as overly hateful of Reforger. The disconnects have definitely been worked on, I cannot remember my last. I am not sure if you played Arma3 at launch but it was not smooth, and at one point in Arma3 years into release, a memory issue caused disconnects for weeks, pissing lots of people off, including devs.

 

I don't think it is helpful to just brow beat devs about the game. Reforger while slow in development, is fun, can it be better? Yes 100%. Now I am cautious myself about how Arma4 might play out and will it stick to what makes the Arma series great. I hope they do, and have a clear vision for it.   

[razor6014 35]

Well the helos are here 😄

 

[jakeplissken 77]

The helicopters are OK, controlling direction with the mouse and shift to go up, but landing is tricky. Plus you are capable of refuelling now.