Feedback on the demo from a U.S. LAN party

[=jps=sgtrock 4]

Please take this in the spirit in which it is offered. I really want to see this game take off and dominate the charts in the U.S. because I think it is hands down the only game coming out in 2007 that looks like it's worth playing. However, this demo does not help its cause at all.

This feedback comes from a LAN party held in Wisconsin about 3 weeks ago. Most of this group of about 30 has been playing together for about 10 years. When we get together for a LAN, we'll start around noon and play until 2 or 3 in the morning each night.

We had 6 to 12 people there for three days; 6 the first night, 12 the second, and 10 the third. Of those, maybe 3 had any experience with OpFlash. I was the only one who had played the ArmA demo at all.

The rest had all played FPS games since Doom ][. All had experience in a wide variety of games. All had played several to most of the following either on the Internet or at LANs: BF1942, BF:V, BF2, the Desert Combat mod for BF42, Ghost Recon, Joint Ops:Typhoon Rising and JO:Escalation, America's Army versions 1.0 to 2.8, and others too numerous to mention. IOW, this is a crowd that knows how to judge this kind of game on its own merits.

The consensus from the party? A resounding "Meh." If the demo were the only thing that this bunch of players judges the game by, most of them won't buy it when it comes out.

We fired up the ArmA demo (version 1.03, patched server) on the first day of the party after everyone had arrived who was going to be there that night. We first ran the demo server in dedicated mode on a spare PC that I had: Win XP Pro, P4 2.5 GHz, 1 GB RAM. All unnecessary background tasks were killed. No wallpaper. IOW, this PC, though dated, was about as stripped down as I could make it. We experienced lag so bad in all three scenarios that the game was unplayable.

I then fired up a dedicated server running on the same PC that I was using as my gaming rig: WinXP Pro, AMD 64x2 4400, 2 GB RAM. Again, all unnecessary background tasks killed, no wallpaper. This PC was able to act as a dedicated server comfortably supporting everyone, including my own connection to the server.

Once we got past the server issues and actually started playing, everyone got annoyed quickly with all three scenarios. We ended up shutting down the demo server after no more than a couple of hours and devoted the rest of the night to America's Army. We may have only played ArmA for as little as an hour and a half.

I've had some time to think about that night, and I think I know what the problem was. The fact is that the demo does a truly lousy job of showcasing what ArmA is capable of. If the demo is going to be a considered as a sales tool, it needs to do a much better job of reflecting what the game engine can do. With that said, on to specifics for each scenario.

We started with the CTI mission. There are far, FAR too many interim objectives on this map. In addition, the need to wait for a supply truck to reach a base before it would start producing other vehicles caused a delay that was too long. Remember that we only had three to a side. When we all fanned out to grab objectives, we found out after the fact that the bots were spawning some place and re-cutting the road by the main bases, which in turn meant that our supply trucks were being destroyed before they got 10 yards from the gate. We played that one for about 20 minutes and quit.

It would have been a far more interesting CTI scenario while still set up as a three sided map (2 player, one bot) if:

* The number of capture points was reduced dramatically. Dropping it down to about one third to one quarter would have made it far more playable. I think that it still would have made a great scenario to play with up to 60 players when you think about how big the map is.

* Some means of handling the supply route defense automatically once points were cleared would have been nice. Say, give the human players a Little Bird?

* Maybe changed the promotion of a captured point to a supply point to something other than a very fragile truck that had to be waited on for several minutes?

* There were some way of eliminating the bot threat entirely short of clearing every single one off every single capture point. That gets pretty boring pretty quickly.

Next, we tried the co-op mission. We ran this one three or four times and barely got as far as the first buildings. Most of the time we were all dead in about three minutes of the first shot being fired. We gave up in disgust pretty quickly.

The good news? The bot AI on the attack is much better at attacking, flanking, and is far more aggressive than in OpFlash. I see lots of possibilities for user made mods.

The bad news? This mission SUCKS for someone who isn't familiar with all of the controls and all of the radio comms. It's also so unbalanced that unless you're (a) obsessive about learning exactly where each bot and each BDRM starts, or (b) have unbelievable skills, you'll never beat it. Most new players will just find it too discouraging and walk away.

Finally, we gave the CTF scenario a shot. This is, IMSHO, one of the worst CTF maps that I have ever played. First, it's badly unbalanced. Matching HMMWVs against BDRMs? Excuse me? Especially when AT weapons are so limited on the U.S. side?

Second, no cover in the center means that successful flag runs on foot are nearly impossible. Combine that with the fact that no HMMWV is capable of dodging a strategically located BDRM, and that means that the U.S. side has little chance of capping flags.

Third, the map size is far too large for 6 players. Heck, I think it's far too large for its stated goal of 16!

If the two flags had been placed at opposite ends of Paraiso, or in two closer small towns with lots of cover between them, it might have been playable. As it was, we gave up on it pretty quickly.

I'd love to see a BI put out a demo that really shows off the game. If it is to be a successful tool for selling the game, I honestly believe that several changes need to be made.

In addition to the comments that I've made about what could be done to fix up the CTI and CTF maps, I'd like to see a co-op map or two that are actually playable by newbies to the game. For example, instead of stacking all of the bots in one place, why not spread them out in a couple of ambush points that a recon in force has to clear? Or, how about some sort of retrieval mission with multiple ways to get it done?

The other thing that I believe needs to be showcased in the demo is a greater variety of vehicles. What's especially lacking are the air units. At minimum, I think that the demo would benefit a great deal if at least one type of flyable chopper and one type of flyable fixed wing aircraft were included in one or two scenarios. Basically, give people a taste of what they'll be playing in the full game.

Thoughts? Comments? Rotten eggs?

[Nikopol 3]

In my personal opinion:

-You have 40% of the land mass available on the demo. it's sufficient to have a good idea of the freedom you get with arma.

-3 types of missions: coop, ctf, cti.

This is a DEMO, you cannot expect more in my opinion, and seeing your post, the job is done, you are catched. ^^

On details such as difficulty, location choosed for the ctf, it's BIS choice and show what they want to show: the coop is hard, that's bis choice, they don't want happy triggers to be desillusioned with their game i guess.

Or at least wanted to show the direction they take. That's partly why Bohemia interactive studio crew is great, they don't make concessions when it's about the idea they have about their baby ARMA.

What bis could do i my view (with the 505 release) is a sp demo with 2-3 immersives missions.

[Maddmatt 1]

I really think a singleplayer demo should have been released first. With a couple decent missions, it would probably do a better job at attracting players.

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ] With a couple decent missions

First of all there are no decent single-player missions in the full version. They all look hurried and are bugged.

I have already uninstalled Arma for bug and playability reasons. It´s a shame that the demo keeps getting updates but the full product for the full price is just left in the state as it is for a really long time now. People who play the latest demo are cheated because the full product they can buy right now doesn´t even have the same version history as the demo.

Cheap tricks for cheap bucks.

[Maddmatt 1]

Quote[/b] ] With a couple decent missions

First of all there are no decent single-player missions in the full version. They all look hurried and are bugged.

I have already uninstalled Arma for bug and playability reasons. It´s a shame that the demo keeps getting updates but the full product for the full price is just left in the state as it is for a really long time now. People who play the latest demo are cheated because the full product they can buy right now doesn´t even have the same version history as the demo.

Cheap tricks for cheap bucks.

The demo doesn't keep getting updates, it got a couple updates to fix problems it had. It also has some improvements planned for the 505 release.

Remember that the game was released early, it is unfinished. Things should be better after the 505 release.

[kavoven 4]

The demo doesn't keep getting updates, it got a couple updates to fix problems it had. It also has some improvements planned for the 505 release.

Remember that the game was released early, it is unfinished. Things should be better after the 505 release.

Well, you can't ignore the fact that the demo did have updates which were and are really needed in the full version of the game, no matter when the 505 release will be, which will of course be in a better state.

But don't you think that those people who bought the full game already feel fooled, while the improvements are there, but just not available for their version? Some kind of logic I can't follow...

[Maddmatt 1]

Well, you can't ignore the fact that the demo did have updates which were and are really needed in the full version of the game, no matter when the 505 release will be, which will of course be in a better state.

But don't you think that those people who bought the full game already feel fooled, while the improvements are there, but just not available for their version? Some kind of logic I can't follow...

There isn't much improvement. Just the grass going flat when you lie down and proper ping displays. Apparently improvements in ballistics and minor LOD switching improvements.

This is just part of a larger patch that will be ready for the 505 version. They are going to release the patch when everything is ready.

[NeMeSiS 11]

The demo doesn't keep getting updates, it got a couple updates to fix problems it had. It also has some improvements planned for the 505 release.

Remember that the game was released early, it is unfinished. Things should be better after the 505 release.

Well, you can't ignore the fact that the demo did have updates which were and are really needed in the full version of the game, no matter when the 505 release will be, which will of course be in a better state.

But don't you think that those people who bought the full game already feel fooled, while the improvements are there, but just not available for their version? Some kind of logic I can't follow...

I have to agree that it feels a bit weird, on the other hand its not that weird that they'll release the update that will patch us to 505 level when the 505 version gets released.

Quote[/b] ]With a couple decent missions

Hah! I havent seen 1 decent official mission, they all feel like they were made in 15 minutes.

I hope we get a decent, (free) official campaign in a patch some day, but its probably too much to hope for.

Guess its up to the community to show what the engine is capable off

[Jack-UK 0]

The demo doesn't keep getting updates, it got a couple updates to fix problems it had. It also has some improvements planned for the 505 release.

Remember that the game was released early, it is unfinished. Things should be better after the 505 release.

Well, you can't ignore the fact that the demo did have updates which were and are really needed in the full version of the game, no matter when the 505 release will be, which will of course be in a better state.

But don't you think that those people who bought the full game already feel fooled, while the improvements are there, but just not available for their version? Some kind of logic I can't follow...

I have to agree that it feels a bit weird, on the other hand its not that weird that they'll release the update that will patch us to 505 level when the 505 version gets released.

Quote[/b] ]With a couple decent missions

Hah! I havent seen 1 decent official mission, they all feel like they were made in 15 minutes.

I hope we get a decent, (free) official campaign in a patch some day, but its probably too much to hope for.

Guess its up to the community to show what the engine is capable off

Im looking forward to CWR team bringing over the Cold War Crisis campaign... That was something to be proud of ...

Though i havent played any official missions except that in the MP demo i've yet to hear any positive comments about the official campaign...

[Dallas 9]

=JpS=SgtRock even though I'm truely taken by ArmA, it's nice to read something as constructive as yours above.

I usually play with a small groupe of people so the demo's CTI also felt too big. We ended up joining the same side and fought the AI.

Regarding coop, it's difficult to make a fast transision from an AA mindset to ArmA gameplay. Generally AA rounds take 10 minutes, while a good ArmA/OFP coop mission takes +60 minutes. You haven't got a fair chance if you confront the enemy directly. They'll reinforce, flank or call upon armour. You have to close the distance first, find a good position where you can engage from and maintain 360 degree security. Take 30 minutes to get into the city, where you're fairly protected against vehicles and can begin clearing the area block by block.

ArmA is a kick in the teeth from new players, just look at the 50-100 key configs. Add a slower gamepace, with very little room for mistakes. Especially in coop without respawn.

I don't consider ArmA to be a shooter, but a simulator. Not that's it's 100% realism, but you have to be dedicated to really master it. Most shooters you just need to know your WASD keys and your mouse button, here you have to master various tasks. CQC, recon, navigation and operate different vehicles.

I hope you give it a second chance, but there is defenently a learning curve and it requires a good deal of effort to climb. It's defenently not for everyone.

[wamingo 1]

Next, we tried the co-op mission. We ran this one three or four times and barely got as far as the first buildings. Most of the time we were all dead in about three minutes of the first shot being fired. We gave up in disgust pretty quickly.

The good news? The bot AI on the attack is much better at attacking, flanking, and is far more aggressive than in OpFlash. I see lots of possibilities for user made mods.

The bad news? This mission SUCKS for someone who isn't familiar with all of the controls and all of the radio comms. It's also so unbalanced that unless you're (a) obsessive about learning exactly where each bot and each BDRM starts, or (b) have unbelievable skills, you'll never beat it. Most new players will just find it too discouraging and walk away.

If you rambo straight forward every time you can expect this game to slap you in the face, every time. This game is one of those that requires pretty extensive amount of practice or you're just not likely to succeed.

Game's/demo's that no one has played rarely do well in LAN parties, because usually there's a undertone with people, they don't really wanna spend this time sitting around waiting for things to work, and even when they finally do get working people aren't bothered trying to set controls and stuff and then learning them and then do poorly to top it off. People play games they know they enjoy at lan parties.

Though I think the coop mission is pretty amusing (for a while), I agree the demo could have been put together better, but at least we got a feel for the new graphics and functions and such.

[l mandrake 9]

Agree completely with the above 2 posts.

Finally, we gave the CTF scenario a shot.  This is, IMSHO, one of the worst CTF maps that I have ever played.  First, it's badly unbalanced.  Matching HMMWVs against BDRMs?  Excuse me?  Especially when AT weapons are so limited on the U.S. side?  

Second, no cover in the center means that successful flag runs on foot are nearly impossible.  Combine that with the fact that no HMMWV is capable of dodging a strategically located BDRM, and that means that the U.S. side has little chance of capping flags.

Third, the map size is far too large for 6 players.  Heck, I think it's far too large for its stated goal of 16!

Personally I think the CTF map in the demo is superb. The smart US players know to hide their hummers until the BRDMS have all been trashed with the rocket launchers. The US side also has the high ground as compensation, both sides can sneak their way through the vineyards/orchards (when cadet mode with its all-seeing map is disabled), snipers can have a field day on either team - something for everybody here  

In short, I don't think playing a 16 player map with 6 players who have never played ARMA before is going to help you get the most out of it. There are some great 16player internet games running right now - may I politely advise you to jump on these for a week or two then get back to us?   

[Heatseeker 0]

I think its because the 3 demo levels are not very good, i didnt like playing the demo, only looked at it like a tech demo.

Bah.. how many times have i posted that the a.i. skill level can be toned down in the dificulty options now?

[sailindawg 0]

@ the original poster:

I have been running this demo since it came out late December. I'm currently running the 5116 demo version. It has been challenging to get the demo to run at frames consistently above 20 fps. I came across this thread over at Tweakguides.com. This particular post was most helpful in getting the game to stream more efficiently. There was also a post regarding how to get the game to use SLI by changing the arma.exe file to another game .exe to get SLI to work.

I enabled all of the tweaks recommended in the Tweakguides thread, including the SLI tweak. (I run GX2 vid card) There is also an interesting point of view in the thread regarding how Arma handles antialiasing. It seems that because of the HDR, Arma handles AA like GRAW, with shaders. Using this info, I renamed the ARMA .exe to GRAW.exe to be able to use the nVidia developed driver profile for Arma.

After all that tweaking, in COOP mode, I was finally able to get the game to run at a steady 30 fps. I now get fps that go to 50's, but no more <20 fps.

Now, where the demo really shines, is when one starts the coop mission, locks the server and commands the team AI. Think of this game as a combat sim. You MUST plan your attack, get the enemy AI to react to your movements that puts the enemy AI at a disadvantage.

I explored the map for quite a bit until I came across a very nice piece of defendable high ground behind the enemy compound. I engaged, got the enemy to attack and let the carefully placed team AI take the enemy out.

I spent about 2.5 hours on this one mission to get it to this point. The best part is that it ran very well, fps staying at 30 fps, which was very playable.

My game settings were:

Overall quality: high

visibility: 1200 m

all other settings were very low, AA & AF were disabled.

I ran the game at 1920x1200 resolution. That resolution took care of any jaggedness and looked as good as 1024x768 with everything on high or normal.

I cannot find a demo server for CTF or CTI. There just aren't enough players for these modes. It takes a while to figure out how to control team AI and to figure out work arounds to get them to do what you want them to.

The point of my post, is that once you get the game to settle down and run well, the coop mission is quite good. It requires team work, fire discipline and TACTICS. Locking the server down and using just AI can be quite rewarding. The enemy AI do not seem real scripted. The map runs in a very open ended manner. You must really explore the map environment to achieve tactical advantage.

This is were this game shows it's true potential. I have never played OFP, however, based upon the coop, I will probably get this one. It's far from perfect, but it can provide some very good replayability on the coop side. I would really like to see a single person mode demo before purchasing this game.

[Planck 1]

Quote[/b] ]

I would really like to see a single person mode demo before purchasing this game.

Last time I looked the Demo was Single Player AND Multiplayer.

You do have the 1.03.5116 version I trust, if so it has a single player mode.

Planck

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ]Remember that the game was released early, it is unfinished.

I´m still waiting for the official version of that. It´s user-talk, hearsay and in no way confirmed by BIS. Were we told that the game is unfinished before we ordered it ? I must have missed that.

The facts are that BIS released it, knowing that it lacks complete functionality in many areas, they released although they knew that it was not working. That´s what´s on the bill. Just send out some AI driving on the roads and they will freak out at almost every object near the road. Those are things that can´t have been missed. For me there is no reason to defend BIS anymore.

The lack of official words and an excuse to the people who have already bought the alpha-Arma just confirms my opinion why Placebo has left BIS.

I guess I´m not the only one who feels cheated by BIS and this is something that won´t go away within a few days, keeping in mind that noone of BIS felt the necessity to even make a statement about it.

This is just bad style and disrespecting people who are customers.

[Maddmatt 1]

It seems that because of the HDR, Arma handles AA like GRAW, with shaders. Using this info, I renamed the ARMA .exe to GRAW.exe to be able to use the nVidia developed driver profile for Arma.

That's a load of crap. GRAW fakes anti-aliasing, it'd not real AA. ArmA supports AA because it doesn't use full precision HDR. If you tweak you profile file in ArmA and set "HDRprecision" to 16, that will enable full precision HDR and stop AA from working on cards that can't do HDR + AA simultaneously.

Why don't you test to see if renaming ArmA.exe to GRAW.exe actually makes a difference. Maybe it enables the SLI profile, but it wont do much else.

[=jps=sgtrock 4]

Good comments, all. If you guys don't mind, I'll try to sum up the common themes and attempt to respond to them. Before I do so, please let me restate that based upon what I've read elsewhere and my own view of the demo as strictly a tech demo, I think that ArmA may be the only game worth buying in 2007. My comments are aimed strictly at getting a set of demo missions that will actually help sell the game as opposed to turning away potential players.

First the co-op mission: As I stated in my first post, I had played the demo a bit before that weekend. I warned my friends not to attempt to Rambo it, as I knew that was a quick suicide. I think I was also guilty of some exaggeration when I said we only lasted three minutes, but seriously, we were wiped out very quickly once combat started.

We tried three approaches. In the first one, we cleared the defenders to our immediate front, then worked our way down to the buildings. I warned the guys to watch for the flanking elements on our right, as I'd seen them plenty of times before. We got so focussed on that threat that when a flanking force appeared on the left we were caught looking the wrong way. Result: the whole team was wiped out immediately.

Next, we tried defending the starting point and drawing the bots to us. This time, we lasted a little longer. However, one guy with the anti-tank rocket got nailed attempting to get into position for a flanking shot and we couldn't retrieve his weapon. I had the other one, and missed. Return fire got me before I could get reloaded.

We all agreed that we were so badly outnumbered that we were in no position to attack. We also knew we needed a better defensive position. We worked our way over to the factory complex with Santa's chimney overlooking the bot tents. Two guys went up the stack (one with an M24. I don't remember what the other guy had) while the rest of us set up a kill zone in the factory. Result when the guys on top of the chimney opened the ball? About 5 minutes before we were all dead.

Like I said, IMO the objective is too hard for someone who is new to this game. There's no point creating a mission for a demo that will turn players away, not suck them in. If the co-op mission had been set up to give positive feedback while still providing a challenge, it would be much more enjoyable for newbies. That's why I suggested setting up a co-op mission with maybe the same number of bots, but spread them out in three or four objectives. Let people have a chance to experience a win, for heaven's sake! Even if it's only a partial one.

This group of players loves to play co-op. We used to play the JO:TR and Ghost Recon co-op maps to death. While both have their flaws from a playability standpoint, both had missions that rewarded teamwork and solid tactics. GR in particular rewarded a slow, careful, methodical approach. JO:TR did tend to favor a more Rambo like approach because the respawn cycle was pretty fast on the co-op missions. One point that they both had in common, though, was spreading out bots enough that they could be taken on piecemeal. 55 bots and two BDRMs (well two that we saw, anyway) all jammed into one small town is a bit much for 6 newbie guys and two bots with no armor support to take on.

Time constraints: Time lengths to play a co-op mission are an issue, I'll grant you. However, it is my belief that the crowd that I play with is about average in skill, and certainly very experienced. We used to play those GR and JO:TR maps for an hour straight and not even notice the time going by.

On the subject of the CTF map: I stand by my original statements. While it certainly would provide a challenge for experienced players (especially on the U.S. side), it is a poorly thought out choice for newbies. It's not even a good map to play for long as an experienced player who prefers sneaking in for flag grabs. It's spread out so much and cover is so bare that it can take 15 minutes just to get to the opposing flag on foot.

I also stand by my statement that the map is very unbalanced. I've played this map maybe 5 or 6 times since I first DL'ed the game during the Xmas break. Every time, I ended up on the U.S. side and every time, we lost by a huge margin. Not by one or two caps, but by 4 to 10. I think that most of the time we didn't get a single cap. This is definitely /not/ the way to get people excited about playing ArmA.

What I am surprised about is that no one has commented about the total lack of flyable toys in the demo. Does that mean that you all agree with me that their lack definitely holds the demo back?

Keep in mind that from BI's point of view, the demo is all about getting people excited about the game so that they rush out to buy it. It is (or should be) a critical piece of their marketing effort. Ask yourself this question: If I had no experience with OpFlash, would the demo be more likely to suck me in or turn me off?

I would like to propose something for the mission makers out there: Take the same terrain that BI used for the demo and create some new missions. Heck, just use the three mission types that they came up with and come up with better designs. Get those designs playtested somehow, and forward the ones that people like to BI. Lobby them to cherry pick the best ones for a re-released demo. Let's get some excitement going about this game!

Thoughts?

[sailindawg 0]

@ SGT. Rock (original poster)

I hear ya loud n clear. Along with you, I also hope that BIS will do more to tighten the game play. Unfortunately, these forums are more about attacking/flaming points of view, than giving back useful feed back. You will need to find a non-BIS supported forum for a more balanced discussion about AA.

Along with you, I hope that BIS is taking stock of the feed back they are getting in their own forums to improve what can be a pretty darn good pc game. This game has a lot to offer for those that take their time with it and learn it's features. It truly seems to offer much more than other successful titles. BIS can also make it better, only if they listen.

[mr reality 0]

What I am surprised about is that no one has commented about the total lack of flyable toys in the demo.  Does that mean that you all agree with me that their lack definitely holds the demo back?

Ask yourself this question:  If I had no experience with OpFlash, would the demo be more likely to suck me in or turn me off?

Maybe the omision (except in the CTI)of a helo and plane is due to the fact there difficult to master. So a newcomer to ArmA would be put off by this.

I will admit that if i hadn't been playing flashpoint for 4 years prior to this demo i would definitely be put off. I've only played the co-op locked so i play singleplayer and it's drove me crazy. I've played it countless times (trying different tactics with differing weapon loadouts and such) and i've only acheived it once, and then it didn't trigger the helo extraction.  

I only play singleplayer and i was more than a little upset to see the exact same command method. I'm not an expert typist and i havn't got a degree in computer studies so it takes me a while to remember cetain key configurations, and this game certainly has a few of them. 3 keys to change formation, infact i think it's 3 keys for just about everything. In the heat of battle you really need to know which squad member is armed with the AT weapon because if your too late with the order you could loose half your squad to a BRDM. Infact i don't trust the AI armed with the AT weapon (there crap at aiming and take too long getting back to prone after firing it) so i usually take it for myself.

[Mr_Tea 0]

I have not played Arma in the last weeks. All my hope is in a big, and i mean a really BIG Patch, after the 505 release.

In it`s current state i don`t want to play Arma. It`s wonderful, and in the same time totally bugged and unplayable in many situations.

There are so many problems besides the performance, which is not bad on my rig.

[Dallas 9]

Demo CTI got UH-60s.

BTW What settings did you play coop on, Veteran or regular and what difficulty settings did you use? I still say 3 attempts is quickly to pass judgment on coop. Seems like you had some pretty good ideas, but got taken on the wrong foot. Remember provide security 360, not just where you encountered the AI last game.

Did you set the Enemy Units to novice and add all the aids in options/difficulty?

[=jps=sgtrock 4]

We couldn't figure out how to fly the Blackhawk on the CTI map. Near as I could tell, it was only for flying in the parachute reinforcements. What did we do wrong, I wonder?

I still contend that the co-op mission is too difficult for a crowd of newbies. It should NOT be an almost impossible task to win this battle for a bunch of guys who have played these kinds of missions before in other games.

Re: your comment about 360 security. Yeah, we got caught the first time that we tried. The second two times we were simply overwhelmed by superior numbers and firepower.

As far as the difficulties in mastering flyable assets? Well, maybe so. However, anyone who ever flew choppers in the old Desert Combat mod should be able to fly just about anything!

[Jack-UK 0]

I like the new flight model.. Very realistic, fun to fly and it will stop problems which happened in OFP where you'd get a player who didnt know how to fly just flying around and ending up killing the whole squad by flying out of the zone. At least now they'll get in the chopper and crash themselves :P

Its not difficult to fly, i use mouse + keyboard... q to rise, lean forward to fly forward, lean back to slow down and go backwards... easy to steer in 1st person, 3rd person i find near impossible because of the still camera.

I love the COOP, difficult coops are fun, if i had completed it the first time i played it there would be no replay value. The fact that its hard means i can try and do it various ways (i found out some good tactics which work) and great fun, at a LAN party it would be even better as you are often in the same room.

CTI is a big dissapointment however... CTF is pretty good, needs more vehicle respawn for it to be more fun imo... BRDMs vs Hummers are a bit wierd too...

[Kode 0]

Last time I looked the Demo was Single Player AND Multiplayer.

You do have the 1.03.5116 version I trust, if so it has a single player mode.

Planck

There is a single player mode available in the demo, but unfortunaly still no missions.

the fact that they got a patch for a demo already shows that it has been rushed a bit... But they'll probably release a next patch with a single player mission, at least I hope.

There is still indeed a lot of room for improvement, so let's hope that when the 505 release comes, we get a decent product that doesn't require a patch just to be able to play.