Retail multiplayer questions

[leetby 0]

Hi guys, I'm playing the demo right now, in the prcoess of deciding whether or not to buy retail.

Can someone tell me how multiplayer in the retail version compares with the demo? How large is the community, what game types do most people play. Are there many dedicated servers, and how many people do they support (do you see a lot of 60 player games or is more like 8v8)?

In demo CTF and especially CTI maps, vehicles, AI and players respawn infinitely, but bodies and vehicle wrecks never get cleared. The towns get filled with mountains of carcasses, blown up helicopters etc and my FPS goes to hell (this is with less than 10 players on the server and on an FX55 with 2 gigs of ram and 8800 gts). Also, the ammo and weapon boxes don't replenish, but vehicles and men keep respawning (you can run out of ammo to fend off multiple vehicle attacks against a base).

Also I climbed on roofs and couldn't get back down because I couldn't step over the 3 inch high railing, and I popped up on a fence coming out of a car, and the game wouldn't let me turn or step down.

Just wondering, are any of these issues still in the retail version? What changes and improvements have been made to multiplayer since the demo?

Thanks

[W0lle 1052]

Moving to ArmA-Multiplayer.

[fasad 1]

In my experience (Australia), we have 30~60 ppl on one local popular server most evenings. There are generally a few other servers running with 5~15 playing co-operative missions.

The demo missions do not fairly represent what the engine is capable of. They were poorly made rush jobs. ArmA is an extremely flexible game engine, most problems you identified are due to poor mission making/scripting by the mission maker. The roof edge problem has been fixed.

Unfortunately, most currently played MP missions are of what I consider to be low quality and do not take advantage of the opportunities of the game engine. The most popular missions seem to "Bezerk" battleFieldxx42 style Capture and Hold with no groups or AI units. Gameplay is chaotic and unorganized. These missions also scale badly, ie they are no fun with <16 players, and get less playable with >30 players. BI CTI is still bugged, but the bodies now disappear. Other popular mission are CTF in a maze of mission placed buildings which force close quarters combat. Most co-ops are also rushed jobs with AI just put on the map with no waypoints, orders or reactive behaviour. In time, I am confident that mission quality should improve, and despite all I've typed, I really enjoy ArmA MP.

ArmA is a game that will be improved over a longer timescale than other FPS games, hopefully a reasonable sized community will endure through the first rough months.