character switching

[tkokid 0]

did anyone see any similarity with bf2 ?

[Marco.A.Aguilar1 0]

DBR_Onix, brilliant post...haha! I do think Armed Assault (or any future engine from BIS) should really improve in CQB. I noticed that game engines that support huge environments are usually sloppy when it comes to looking around corners. BF1&2 (vomits) were kind of between those lines. So it is something that must involve some hefty work. Is Armed Assault going to allow jumping? They should. You guys ever played America's Army? I think they did a superb job with the jumping. And are they going to improve the animations when a trooper enters a vehicle/armor/aircraft?

Back to topic: Character switching is evolutionary, if it is not liked then it should simply be ignored. (i.e. Off option) Simple.

Edit: /me Vomits on tkokid.

[Metal Heart 0]

I don't think anybody is against removing engine limitations, I really don't understand where you come up with these accusations. It is obviously a good thing, everyone gets that. It's just the change to worse it might bring to the campaign and single missions. Hopefully, especially after seeing all these negative reactions, it will be completely and utterly disableable in the standard missions.

[GBee 0]

What I can't understand is why people who say they will never use it, still want it removed from the campaign. Are you confessing to being so weak willed that you would use it given the opportunity?

Or is it that if you are never going to use it that it is wrong for anyone else to?

[funnyguy1 0]

It's too console-ish for me. But they aparently want to attract shooter noobs. Hopefully, this will 'feature' be disabled in veteran mode. I don't even dare to think what's coming next... jumping around the maps, like in CS?

Well, <the character switching> isn`t consolish. It`s a broken limitation or whatever you name it...It could be used in many interesting ways by mission makers, and that`s a fact.

Switching characters could be some kind of compensation of the AI weak sides. You`re afraid X won`t do it the way you want? Switch to to X and do it by yourself.

I agree, however, that switching in every mission, forcing us to use it in certain situations, or switching to the theoreticaly most interesting roles (but completely arcadish) is really a BAD thing.

[sanctuary 19]

From a mission maker point of view, this switching body feature is just a great new feature , a scripting possibility that will unlock a lot of possiblities.

A simple situations : you make a mission involving a batle between 2 different army.

You coded and scripted it so the 2 sides could be playable, but want this mission to be SP.

While in OFP MP this is easy to do, as you can just select your side in the MP briefing, in SP it is just NOT possible because the player is stuck with the same soldier 3D model , a big limitation that force you to make 2 missions instead of 1 for SP to have the 2 sides playable.

Now with that switching body feature, in ArmA SP you can code a dialog menu allowing the player to choose what side he will play with in this mission.

And other than that, you can even allow the player in this same menu to select what role you allow him to have : a tank crew , a pilot , an infantry guy or some demo specialist using the soldier 3D model corresponding to it.

Something that was not possible again in SP , but was only possible in MP.

That's a great feature that will allow a ton of possibility in SP missions.

Ridiculous to hear statement like "BF2" , "CS" when people have few ideas of what they are talking about, and certainly have never made enough mission in OFP to be frustrated by the limitations of SP you are not able to circumvent.

Too bad people can't see further than a simple screenshot.

[Espectro (DayZ) 0]

Does NO ONE see anything to these new features other than "OMG noeewhhy it'll turn it into CS!1"

Character switching : It's not realistic, but neither was being able to jump into an apache and fly like a geneticly enhanced super-pilot from the future, and eject out and steal an enemy tank and single handly drive it around, jump to the gunner position, take out an enemy helicopter, drive to the base and enter the room though the wall.. Buuuuuuuuut, most of those things lent themself to far greater things.. Being able to drive any vehicle meant things like the Wanzer robots, star wars mods, there's better examples, but those sprung to mind..

The clipping though buildings while it's a bug (Sort of, more a game issue), it opens a new techique for playing, maybe times in MP I've "escaped" from something by running though a wall. It's not cheating, it's erm, making use of the game (Yeh it's glitching, but I always play with friends who do the same, so no one minds)

As for the character switching : In OFP, when you were making a mission, you set your player unit, and you were stuck as them, without loooots of screwing around with unrealiable setobjecttexture-ing. You couldn't change to a different unit, so you can't change your clothes..

But, if theres a command to change conrol to another unit, now you can :

Create the unit out the way, store the players position, move the new unit to the same position, switch controls to the new unit, move the old unit away, and you've changed the unit to the new one.. This means you can easily have basic transformers(!! ), RPG missions where you can change clothes, missions where you can change from a normal solder to a sniper, racing missions where you can swap cars, many many things

As for it screwing realism, theres a difference between realism, and playablity.. OFP had features that were completely unrealistic, like third person, the command view, being able to drive all vehicles (Unless they were magicly "locked").. But did anyone care? No? Great, Yes? Theres options to disable third person, the command view (Both from a players position with vet mode, and scripting commands), stoping people driving all the vehicles is the job of the mission editor not leaving a multimillion dollar Apache gunship lying unguarded and unlocked, lock+key type things are easily scripted (Add action to key-object, to give option to unlock the vehicle, or like the FDF-mod hasweapon "key" way)

In short : At first something like this might just seem like a desperate grab at arcadish-FPS-players, but even a single command like to switch what unit the player controls opens up many new posibilities..

Stop seeing everything so negatively, OFP could ship with de_dust for all I care.. Infact, that'd be a good thing, if it came with that, CQB must be greatly improved.... Yees *Prepares to get jumped by 40425 OFP fans for that comment*

- Ben

Exactly!

I cannot see why people are so foolish to hit down an idea like this that can bring so much new to the game??!

This also adds alot to the tactical side of the game.

Imagine you have to seiaze a town... You start out as a tank gunner and have to take out some of the enemy. Now you can choose which side of the town you want to empty out, so you know what to attack on foot with the role you are going to play next!

This gives the feeling of "belonging" to a unit that coexist of more units.

I dont know about you guys - but I would love a more tactical aspect of the game

[deanosbeano 0]

well, its a great debate, exactly what forums are for,you know it costs lots of money to ask gallop or other survey firms to take a proportion of people and ask there views . here we and Bis hopefully if they listen, get it for free and from people in the know(ish).reason i made this vote was so that we could get an idea of feeling, how people see ofp as a product, is it a military sim or is it a game ?. for me personally i treat it like a sim, long co ops good communication and profesional attitude(with fun as a side order). i was very excited when i heard that arma would be based on an upgrade of VBS1, so naturally when i saw in these late stages, the word "Mainstream" and "character switching", i was a little hmm dissapointed.

I for one would love to see more work in the overall gameplay not graphics or mainstream singleplayer tweaks,in my opinion only two things needed to have been changed from the old version, better anti cheat and better collision detection and that would have kept me happy until the elusive "game2".

now comes the reality check. this is my personal opinion of what i got out of ofp and how i played it.I am sure that whatever Bis release will be a fantastic product ( i am more sure that 4 years of community will make it more so).so in essence the reason i chose to select i didnt want this feature at all, all be it for selfish reasons , is because i would have liked to have seen more work on strengtheniong the original game,with the above features mentioned.If i know Bis they probably already have and this is all a waste of typing, but at the end of the day i see it as my right as a player of nearly 5 years and a customer of bis to voice my opinion and also everyone else having that same right, we waited 4 years for game2 ok things have changed and now we got a teaser to keep us going,but we still waited 4 years.

And finally i also think its a shame that we gotta hunt news down and base our judgements on "old video", there is nothing stopping an official thread for mods only to stop all this speculation, i.e official news and comments on third party released news".

as always i would like to thank Bis for there excellent products, i been a long time customer and play religiously, was 8 hours a day but sadly these days , only enough for 4 hrs. should jump back to 8 when the "old boys " come back.

remember this is my opinion of my vision of ofp/arma. no demands no nothing , just simply my own view.and its based on an "old video"sad i know but we are what we eat.not much but its all we had in four years (of the sequel to ofp res ).I respect the people who play offline and there views, i am sure that when your, playing with yourself,it would be great to switch characters, to feel like you did it all alone, "you sniped you tanked you conquered"©.

p.s dont slate my view ,it has no effect, put your own view, its easy to pick a sentence out of context and have a go.but its harder to say how you see it.anyone who ever played anderson gunship DM will know, its not good when you bout to cain a man and he dissapears into a tank and heats your ass at the click of a button lol. not relevant i know but its not nice either. .

[CsonkaPityu 0]

It just breaks immersion completely, you are no longer the gunner of the tank who has to sit it out infront of the village and watch for incoming enemy armor, you're some gamer jumping around the battlefield, babysitting the dumb AI like in rainbow six. You are not part of the team anymore, you ARE the team.

And what the... "do you think this pouch makes my ass look big?" - what you wanna make a fashion show in the middle of a war zone or what is with the changing clothes? Soldiers don't run around with woodland, desert, jungle and urban camo scheme gear in their backpacks. Only situation could be jumping into civilian clothes to get away, but since the setting is middle eastern (the russians are just placeholders - just look at the buildings) i doubt the northern army is going to be thick enough to let the only white guy for miles in civ clothes just walk off, not without atleast the bare minimum of ID check just to see if they don't shoot an aid worker or something.

And *duh* flashpoint has lots of unrealistic aspects as the game was released in 2001... i was expecting those to be gotten rid of, or at the very least improved - so you listing them isn't exactly calming me here.

[brataccas 0]

I dont really know what to say about this character switching tbh, All I will say is that it might be good for infiltration missions where youre a specop and the heli that normally picks you up, YOU have to fly it, to come pick up the specop but this time YOU have to decide a safe landing zone etc etc,

[ag_smith 0]

From my point of view, if this gets implemented in single player campaign, most likely we will be forced to use it. If you're forced to instantly switch from an infantryman to a tank gunner, imho the whole realism goes right out of the window. You no longer impersonate yourself with your character, it's like ....hmmm.... watching through a camera on soldiers helmet. Level of immersion was something I always appreciated in OFP. Much of it is lost thanks to such an option. You die ...oh well...I'm gonna switch to the next soldier and so on. That's what I didn't like the most about Ghost Recon and that's why I'm against it.

Oh well maybe I'm wrong, after all we don't know almost anything about how it will be implemented. Maybe people will make a better use of this feature. But so far I'm very sceptic about it.

[TeRp 1]

I think that switching units is a great new feature, and I also think it can be turned off just like JiP.

It can be used in different ways, and as long as we're able to disable the feature, there are no problems.

However it is very good for example to change clothes, e.g. in a campaign or CTI. In the later, you could go and buy a ghilli suit in the barracks and voila, have the soldier switched by script and replaced by a sniper in a ghillie suit..

[lwlooz 0]

I totally second what Sanctuary and a few others said.I mean seriously,I hope all you "Hardcore OFP players" realize that OFP/Arma is much much more than a campaign/mission produced by BIS,thats your standard FPS-game: Play the content and then throw it away.But BIS supplies us with a Enviroment where WE can create our own content.So the solution to the problem is very simple.Get off your butt once ArmA is released.Depbo the campaign(I.e wait for a depbo program if they added some new form of encryption -> which would suck btw) ,go to the missions which have this horrendus feature and remove it.Heck,If you don't want to yourself,wait for someone else to do it.We have a quite creative community,don't we.

I certainly don't want to miss out on a engine limitation broken just because some people seem to NEVER have touched the mission editor

[Metal Heart 0]

Quote[/b] ]What I can't understand is why people who say they will never use it, still want it removed from the campaign. Are you confessing to being so weak willed that you would use it given the opportunity?

Or is it that if you are never going to use it that it is wrong for anyone else to?

Oh noes, here we go again. If you were in any way referring to me: I don't give a flying **** if it stays on the campaign and missions as long as it's truely optional. If you can't understand what I mean with that, reread the other thread, without letting your imagination add the dramatic demands and other BS that isn't there.

Quote[/b] ]I certainly don't want to miss out on a engine limitation broken just because some people seem to NEVER have touched the mission editor

No one else does either.

[PainDealer 0]

I don't think anybody is against removing engine limitations, I really don't understand where you come up with these accusations. It is obviously a good thing, everyone gets that. It's just the change to worse it might bring to the campaign and single missions. Hopefully, especially after seeing all these negative reactions, it will be completely and utterly disableable in the standard missions.

I don't mind it on single missions at all. But I'd prefer the campaign as the old way. Having 3 characters in one campaign mission kinda removes the feeling of being an individual in war. I really do hope that if there's such an option in the campaign it wouldn't require using all of them in order to complete the mission.

My opinion: Works in Hidden&Dangerous series all the way, works in single missions in ArmA

[InqWiper 0]

I voted: 2 in but with option to turn off

But I want it more like in with an option to turn it on.

Just because there is a possibility in the engine to switch between characters it does not necessarily mean that it will be implemented in every mission through the campaign. I hope it will not be used much or at all in the campaign. If the feature is unlocked only in missions that you have already completed I see no problem with it.

The possibility itself is not bad, we just have to wait and see how BIS plan to use it.

[sputnik monroe 102]

Quote[/b] ]It just breaks immersion completely, you are no longer the gunner of the tank who has to sit it out infront of the village and watch for incoming enemy armor, you're some gamer jumping around the battlefield, babysitting the dumb AI like in rainbow six. You are not part of the team anymore, you ARE the team.

  That is what I'm afraid of. I totally agree with what you said about the immersion, I want to be "part" of the team, not "the team".

Quote[/b] ]The possibility itself is not bad, we just have to wait and see how BIS plan to use it.

 I also agree with this. It could be used for good things, for example: You begin a mission as a COC combat diver model. You swim to shore have a fire fight on the beach. Once the battle is over the screen fades to black with text that says "Hiding scuba gear and gathering equipment". Next it fades from black back to the mission and your player model is now a Laser land warfare SEAL in woodland uniform. Currently that is impossible to do with current OFP, your forced to wear the scuba gear the entire mission.

 My only gripe with it has to do with switching from character to character mid mission. If it's something you do once at the begining of the mission only, basically a character select and then you play the whole mission as that peson then that's cool. It's also cool as a system for changing the characters model mid mission, but still you are the same character. I just don't want to see Rainbow 6 or Ghost Recon style AI baby sitting, it really does kill the immersion when your not an individual, one man as part of a team.

 Time will tell.

[Dwarden 1125]

well i'm sure this feature have it's potencial ...

RTS / TBS / RPG mod makers already drool over utilizing it

[AliMag 0]

This is a fantastic feature if it is under the mission designer control.

If the mission maker can turn it ON/OFF and selects the positions that are available when he sees fit according to his mission design, this is definitely a plus.

Cheers

[stgn 39]

looks too me like its only at the begining of the game you can switch. only guesing though.

STGN

[Metal Heart 0]

Quote[/b] ]looks too me like its only at the begining of the game you can switch. only guesing though.

Nope. On the new video:

-the briefing says something like: "at later stage u can play as a sniper or a tank gunner!"

-on the mission, supposedly after completing the 1st objective ("proceed to the city and defeat enemy forces"), in-game hint says: "New mission objective: Proceed to the second town. New characters unlocked. Press 'K' to switch."

[VerySolidSnake 0]

This would be an absolutly incredible feature for any CTI game. The uses for this are completely obvious, and I trust the fact that BI knows when to have this feature turned on/off.

edit: <-- i just noticed this hahaha

Seriously though, I can see people's arguments about having this feature taken off the game. But, you have to think of this in the bigger picture down the road when the community starts to utilize this. If anything, I want BI to implement as many features as they possibly can so when the talented addon/map makers get their hands on ArmA, we'll be seeing some amazing stuff.

[Stendac 0]

Even if you decide not to use it, it is jarring when the game asks if you want to switch characters in the middle of the mission.

I think the best way to include this interesting feature is to have it become available when you replay missions that you've already completed.

Has someone already suggested this?

[Dwarden 1125]

snake for Maxthon lovers exist

[InqWiper 0]

Even if you decide not to use it, it is jarring when the game asks if you want to switch characters in the middle of the mission.

I think the best way to include this interesting feature is to have it become available when you replay missions that you've already completed.

Has someone already suggested this?

Yes, I did and someone did before me in another thread