ArmA is just ... disappointing

[W0lle 1052]

Like the title says, share all your negative experiences and complaints about ArmA in this thread only.

For positive feedback and praising use this thread.

The channel rules apply here too, no flamebaiting, insults etc. Violations against this result in a 24h PR (at least).

[POPKA 0]

installed the game, started up the game, opened the editor, placed a civilian and my computer crashed when I pressed preview (though it wasen't armed assaults fault) still is a negative experiance.

started up the game, joined an internet server, started a coop game And the idiot pilot barrel rolled into the sea.

[CanadianTerror 0]

The game is at patch 1.07 and mine still looks like a crayon textured low lod mess when i try and use the North island or put too many units ingame.

That is disappointing.

Other than that its fun.

[dmarkwick 261]

The game is great IMO. OFP with better graphics, we all knew it would be that, and it's exactly what we got. Brilliant

I would have paid for just an OFP graphic update, sheeit I would have paid for just TrackIR support, but we got a whole new product.

Only one disappointment - addons cannot be directly ported.

By the way - why stop one thread and open another identical thread? Aren't we (the forum peasants) always being told not to start new threads but to use the already established threads? And I'm pretty sure a search of game disappointments would have thrown up a few more. This site is modded strangely to be sure.

[W0lle 1052]

By the way - why stop one thread and open another identical thread? Aren't we (the forum peasants) always being told not to start new threads but to use the already established threads? And I'm pretty sure a search of game disappointments would have thrown up a few more. This site is modded strangely to be sure.

Like I said in the Ask a moderator thread I'll make 2 threads for complaining and praising which will replace all other existing ones.

Sure I could have merged the old disappointing thread but then my inital post would have been moved to the end of the thread because it's newer and I wanted it to be on top for a good reason.

[vilas 477]

so my list of complains:

- pulsing annoying HDR (few movies on youtube)

- god-knowledge AI against player ( you shoot in his direction, although you are on his back and deep in forest, he turns, and shoots you, milimetrically knows where are you, zero of disorientation)

- AI do not obey order 3-2 (don't fire, so he gave your position to the enemy, you cannot crawl silently into enemy base)

- RPG is used by AI against man (i hope patch will fix it)

- textures, LOD missing bugs

- poor buildings, vehicles destroy structure (after shot from HEAT all house crush, and only small heap of trash left, there should be more of bricks or even some fragments of home only destructed)(cars wheels, car should blow up only if hited in fuel, not shot in doors or other place, after shot in engine place it should stop), (tank should be much much stronger in some parts),

- 2 shots in arm or leg kill, soldier should be heavy wounded, arms disabled to fire or etc, but alive, or soldier should bleed out in some minutes

- stupid weapons left after 30 seconds in water, should be at least minute

- vests are not working,

- vehicles like BMP, T72 still colliding, 25 % of missions failed, because instead of going in column, they collide and BMP is flying high

[Garbol 0]

What i don't like:

- No radar locks. in helis/planes "static" left & right radar screens in cockpits

- Targeting system is just Stoneage! no laser/thermal lock sometimes i feel like i'm flying a AH-1 in WW2 era... and no pilot's helmet targeting.

- why there is no T-80?! Sahrani forces can aford a SU-34 but no T-80!?

- Hovering a heli is just a nightmare...

- T-72 should get converted to T-80 or get better armour... T-72 can take only 1 hit form M1A1 and be destroyed (which ofcours is realistic) but puts an unfair advantage over multiplayer...

- Correct the VOIP! i want to know who i'am speaking whit. It should work like this: i see a player nick to the left when he is saying something over VOIP and there should be channels like in chat (vechicle, side, group).

- AI... after many patches its still dumb... tanks shooting other tanks whit KM... this is not normal.

[Scrub 0]

The only things that disappoint me are the little details and oversights, which happen in any project.  That's what patches are for.  

-The ability of armor to detect and engage moving A-10s >1km away with the precision they have is IMO a bit over the top.  

-The way the texturing and shadows are dependant upon the direction you face, and seem to change and be updated every time you turn around.  It makes them flicker or the textures get slapped on the geometry a frame or two after it comes into view.  I'm not sure if it's possible to change such things, but it would be appreciated.

-When the pointer/sights are removed so you only can use irons, it also takes away the lock images from TOW/Jav/MANPADS.. ect.  Would be nice to keep these elements seperated, if at all possible.

These little things annoy me, but don't really detract from the overall experience.

[Abbe 0]

Hm...with such pale light in the tunnel the line between "complaining" and pure observation is pretty thin...

I guess this new approache to the old community will close a whole lot of threads without selling a whole lot of games, don't you think...?

By the way, this could still become the computer game above all computer games...regard that as a prais.

/Abbe

[AfrographX 0]

Actually there are two things that disappoint me.

1. I'd have prefered more gameplay enhancements than updates of the graphic engine. Especially on the infantry side of things. That's the core element of the flashpoint series and there was little improvement in that department.

2. Editing Tools. Tools should've been available before the release. Now it's month after the first release and we're still waiting. That's not gonna gelp to revive the editing scene. Of course there will be more activity once the tools are released but with the delay there's a lot of potential lost.

Another thing (that I don't blame BIS for) is that i highly doubt that the mod scene will be anywhere as active as during the good old days of OFP mostly because making of good addons now requires even more effort.

[W0lle 1052]

To be honest I don't understand the hype about the tools. How many years passed by after the initial release of OFP before the tools was released?

As much as I understand that the addonmakers need them, I also can understand BI that they release the tools when they think the time is right (and bugs are fixed).

Buggy and crashing tools don't serve anyone and results only in even more BI bashing.

[seba1976 98]

To be honest I don't understand the hype about the tools. How many years passed by after the initial release of OFP before the tools was released?

May be it is because ArmA was release in such a way that the only hope it has is that modders work on it to add everything the game should have had from start? BIS has an incredible group of people, eager to work to improve their product, and ask nothing in return. The community is willing to even work to solve all the bugs it can, and the only thing that stands between them and ArmA, is BIS. May be that's why all the hype.

[seba1976 98]

By the way - why stop one thread and open another identical thread? Aren't we (the forum peasants) always being told not to start new threads but to use the already established threads? And I'm pretty sure a search of game disappointments would have thrown up a few more. This site is modded strangely to be sure.

Like I said in the Ask a moderator thread I'll make 2 threads for complaining and praising which will replace all other existing ones.

Sure I could have merged the old disappointing thread but then my inital post would have been moved to the end of the thread because it's newer and I wanted it to be on top for a good reason.  

I see your point, you wanted for some reason to put those barely relevant lines at the start of the thread, now you see mine.

For the begining and most important part of this topic, please refer to original topic

There was many good points already made, that people don't want to make clear again, as well as good discussions about the issues with ArmA.

[SHWiiNG 0]

oh oh ok my turn,

1. Ai Feel very mechanical and show no real emotion or change character when in different environments like calm and Firefight.

2. The game still lacks excitement and tension.

3. Tank / vehicle battles are a very boring spectacle (look at COH) and the damage could be improved like Sparks Effects or Bullet holes.

[bravo 6 0]

I rader not say it's totally disapointing but i think ARMA could be better and improved in:

[*] Animations (more real/natural, transmiting a better/realistic feeling to the player)

[*] Sounds (some are incomplete)

[*] AI behaviour ("inteligence")

[*] AI aim/fire precision

[*] Dense foliage (low FPS)

[*] I feel that i can not have huge battles in ARMA like was said before ARMA came out. ARMA does lag like hell if big battles are involved.

To be honest i don't feel the same pleasure i had when i played OFP.

I don't feel the same inspiration i had while building missions.

Maybe i expected more from ARMA.. maybe im alittle disapointed but not totally, i still have hope for this great game.

[Colossus 2]

BIS has done a great job from what little time and resources they had/got. Maybe would have helped if BIS and BIA could have shared more content like the tracers and sounds, who knows. But all in all they've done a good job in what time they had.

I really hope that Game 2 will be something else though. AIs and squads still don't communicate with each other for information about enemy whereabouts, and the lack of a radar system and a proper AA system (modern day missile systems and anti-AA systems: IR jammer, chaff & flares) still makes ArmA a bit "loose" in it's realism. Just a simple radar dome building would have sparked up the feeling a bit.

However, I'm really impressed that they have pushed the size of their island as far as 400 sq.km in real-time. Which is quite impressive if you think of all the other games made up until now.

[ArmaVidz 0]

Let me start by saying I like Armed Assault more than I dislike the "worst parts" of it. That said, these are my complaints:

1. No Dual-Core optimization. Waste of PC power.

2. Tracers are horrible. For such an integral part of immersiveness, this should not have been overlooked.

3. Default weapon sounds and vehicle sounds prove aggrevatingly irritating at best. Thank you FDF for making them truly enjoyable.

4. Wildly confusing issues with publishers and availability causing confusion of the consumers. "Which version will I get?"

5.  Realistic reactions from AI in-game without community made scripting which implement audible feedback.

6. As Radar stated, large battles are not possible without your game becoming a "slide show" per se. (This may be caused by lack of multithreading?)

7. Building damage: Collapse is nice, but damage modelling would be ideal.

8. Pathifinding for AI: "jerky" "wild" "round-and-round" pathfinding kills immersiveness. Especially in varying types armor.

9. Shooting from vehicles MIA. Another monolith feature that should have been a high-priority for immersiveness.

10. No naval vessels. RHIBS are great, thanks, but where are the carriers, destroyers and LSI's?

11. Great modelling on the A-10, bad implementation of the Avenger 7-Barrel in regard to smoke from the barrel, sound and visual damage on the ground.

12. Harrier's AI that cannot effectively engage armored targets (or any targets for that matter) consistently on the ground. One of the largest hypes of ArmA was the Harrier...this practical non-delivery.

13. Artillery MIA. (modding community has rectified this to some degree).

14. No radar lock on jets/heli's.

15. No Surface to air missiles.

EDIT 16. The music in the missions is ear piercing, and should be re-encoded with some treble loss. I have to turn it off in the options which makes me think sometimes, other sounds are being muted as well (not confirmed).

Lastly, the modding tools. I have a big beef with this as the modding community (which I am not a part of) has cited the tools as the primary reason some of these issues haven't been resolved. I feel that if BI were to acknowledge these points from the community and release (even in a buggy state) the tools to the community they would be able to solve most of this for us. The lack of tools now leaves the community without options, which leads to frustration...

All in all, it's still great. A big part of that reason is the mod community.

[Blanco 0]

My two biggest complaints are:

-Pathfinding. It's the worst I've ever seen, sorry.

Just watch how units board a vehicle in a city and it looks like your watching a comedy.

-Still a very complex command interface.

I wish we could create preset behaviors.

Formation, behavior, speedmode and rules of engagement combined in a preset so we can quickly select it during the battle. Micromanagement is nice but you don't need it all the time imo.

Orders in a queue could solve these things a bit, but we can't do that in Arma (nor in OFP) You always have to wait until an order is achieved before you can give the next order.

[william1 0]

my principal complaints are :

-sometimes LOD's take some time to charge correctly

-Ai accuracy

- Ai not following given paths

- choppers to weak !

well , it think is enough by now ...

[Silvio Camolesi 0]

After a brief excitement, I'm sad to announce that for me this game is crap.

I saw ArmA for the first time about two months ago when reading a forum about games in general. That age I didn't realize that ArmA was from Bohemia.

When I received a newsletter from Gamestop with details I couldn't believe what I was reading: the spiritual sequel from my favourite game ever!

But that was true, and I didn't linger to buy it from Sprocket.

Since then until now is one disappointment after other one, cause my mainly objective was to revival the same adventure that I lived with OFP Cold War Crisis, Red Hammer and Resistance so many times.

And that has been impossible cause the lack of the inteligence of the AIs.

If AI means Artificial Inteligence, in ArmA it should mean Artificial Idiot, cause I never saw such morons so well simulated.

They do everything wrong, they don't obey, they fail, they do things that a human would never do, they are so stupid that is hard to believe that these are the same from old OFP.

I'm not saying that OFP had brilliant AIs. No, they were not so good, but in ArmA they are simply awful!

Beside AIs, and the various bugs that I can't stop to find out, the Campaign.. oh... my... God... waht is that?

There are missions sincerely boring.

This is not the sequel of the OFP.

That should be great, vertiginous, stupendous, something that stimulate you to desire more, do not get away from the pc.

Is there hope in the future patches? I don't know.

I have the lastest beta patch, and that is supposed to be much better than 1.05 version, but there are so many bugs, the AIs are so stupid and the Missions from CA are so boring that I can't believe in the future.

Will be possible to improve the AIs behavior? Will we have a decent Single Player experience?

I can't play this game anymore... and that is so frustrating

[NetWalker 0]

After a brief excitement, I'm sad to announce that for me this game is crap.

I saw ArmA for the first time about two months ago when reading a forum about games in general. That age I didn't realize that ArmA was from Bohemia.

When I received a newsletter from Gamestop with details I couldn't believe what I was reading: the spiritual sequel from my favourite game ever!

But that was true, and I didn't linger to buy it from Sprocket.

Since then until now is one disappointment after other one, cause my mainly objective was to revival the same adventure that I lived with OFP Cold War Crisis, Red Hammer and Resistance so many times.

And that has been impossible cause the lack of the inteligence of the AIs.

If AI means Artificial Inteligence, in ArmA it should mean Artificial Idiot, cause I never saw such morons so well simulated.

They do everything wrong, they don't obey, they fail, they do things that a human would never do, they are so stupid that is hard to believe that these are the same from old OFP.

I'm not saying that OFP had brilliant AIs. No, they were not so good, but in ArmA they are simply awful!

Beside AIs, and the various bugs that I can't stop to find out, the Campaign.. oh... my... God... waht is that?

There are missions sincerely boring.

This is not the sequel of the OFP.

That should be great, vertiginous, stupendous, something that stimulate you to desire more, do not get away from the pc.

Is there hope in the future patches? I don't know.

I have the lastest beta patch, and that is supposed to be much better than 1.05 version, but there are so many bugs, the AIs are so stupid and the Missions from CA are so boring that I can't believe in the future.

Will be possible to improve the AIs behavior? Will we have a decent Single Player experience?

I can't play this game anymore... and that is so frustrating

I can use your words as mine. I feel exactly the same about ArmA. Unfortunately, BIS couldn't bring that brilliant sensation of a great game that OFP had. ArmA is not even closer to the pleasure OFP gave me in the past. Will hope some improvement in the future, but who knows?  

[gazmen 0]

- RPG is used by AI against man (i hope patch will fix it)

- poor buildings, vehicles destroy structure (after shot from HEAT all house crush, and only small heap of trash left, there should be more of bricks or even some fragments of home only destructed)(cars wheels, car should blow up only if hited in fuel, not shot in doors or other place, after shot in engine place it should stop), (tank should be much much stronger in some parts)

RPG shooting at human with A.P H.E Rocket ? Why not ? MG HE is same type of weapon, also in OFP, B.A.S has released soldier in Jam_magazines that do exactely the same think.

For the building I agree, it's was said by BIS that the wall will react like reality using falling bricks & real physics (perhaps it is was an article for Flashpoint 2)...

What is realy missing in ARMA engine :

- Computer Interface in tank, plane & chopper to use RECON SAT to mark target before attacking (for gunner) (like those of JANE'S, Razorworks, Novalogik simulation)...

- Working panel [M.F.D] on plane & chopper (showing weapons left, map, AA & AG radar, and other stuff) [like the AH64 by Franz or the DKMM MI28]

- The OFP side (C.R.E.W) plus the ARMA one (E.R.L), in CPP...

- Civil,

- Resistance (Afrika),

- East (C.E.I),

- West (U.S.N.A),

- Blufor (Euro),

- Royal (UK & CW),

- Liberation (Far & Middle East).

- Thermal sight & goggle (even electromagnetic like Splinter Cell 3 & 4)

- Electronical Binocular, Black & White Night goggle (Splinter Cell 2)...

- Furtivity_value_to_IR, SONAR, RADAR, MASER, ACOUSTIC, VISUAL, PSY, LASER, U.V, Ray X, G Ray in CPP for plane & chopper...

- Radar & IR scrambler...

- Laser & IR scrambler for tank (like T80UM) to perturb laser marking...

- Sonic boom for plane (Rad script)

- Camera view for plane & chopper (not only the Zoom of cockpit [touch V])

- Chaff & Flare, Electronic countermeasures

- Missiles that can change trajectory and follow the target even if they make strange mouvement...

- Capacity of a group of AA tank to target multiple plane & chopper at same time (RKSL script)

- OFP Addons compatibility (BIS said it would be in arma), by adding texture & model to ARMA.

- The AA men should able to rearm at ammo box & truck after they launch...

- We should be able to use knife & other white weapons...

Also the game crash often in 1.70 even with 1.50...

I ended campaign so I have no reason to play...

[jasono 0]

I enjoy ArmA, but I could enjoy it more if..

[*] More information on what we can expect soon. At the moment we just receive a patch all of a sudden that fixes a few things. At least the community can give SOME feedback before the thing's released.

[*] Performance Issues for people using at least recommended specs. I am on recommended specs yet I need to have everything on LOW settings to have a playable game. It's been mentioned enough times, I don't need to describe.. or even mention it really

[*] Dual Core compatibilty. I pay for dual core, why can't I use it in my game?

[*] AI realism. They are very good at finding and shooting you at day and night. What's annoying is that they are to good. Yes I know its a challenge, but one shot from your gun and all of a sudden EVERYTHING knows where you are. And a long distant AK shot takes you out in the first 5-10 rounds. At night it's still the same, maybe a little less accuracy, but the AI don't even have night vision goggles, so they can hear your position?

[*] AI driving.. LOL.. oh dear. They can't drive, they can't navigate.. its a nightmare

[*] Where's the wildlife? OK this isn't a serious problem and I can live without. But we was promised wild life and we get a few flys, birds and butterflys. There's sounds and other data of wolves and other animals in the animals.pbo.. but no mention of them.

[*] Weapons in water. Today I was in a mission with my clan and the bridge had been destroyed. The only way accross was to swim to the small island. It's black and we need night vision goggles. After getting into the water and swimming to the other side my vision suddenly goes black again. No night vision? I don't have any weapons either. There I am stuck somewhere in a river blind with no weapons - Mission = ruined.

That's all I can think off, but I still ENJOY it. It's a brilliant game with a great community and great features. This game has a lot of potential.

Thank you and good luck BIS!

[kevb0 0]

Lots of things..

Lack of polish, many small bugs.

Multiplayer Instability.

MP Auto-Assign feature.

Terrible Performance.

Things BIS said would be in ArmA:

60+ Player games (Plus AI)

AI that would actively seek cover and concealment

Good SP Campaign

[Silvio Camolesi 0]

I'm not a programmer, but I have notions. I don't know anything about how ArmA is programmed, but I can suppose things.

And one thing that I can't understand is why the AI behavior can be so stupid so many times.

In one side they are exaggeratedly good: once they find you their aim is really from robots.

But in other side, they are terrbile, mainly when they are from your team.

If you order to attack a BMP, why they get up just in front the enemy and take so long time to fire?

Is it so hard to program a behavior where an AI when engaging a tank, first look for objects between it and the target, analyse their heights, find one that be low just enough to put the launcher's tube outside, go until there  crawling, and plan a position to first prepare its gun, for after try a shot, doing a quick move back to the protection?

Or is it so hard to make a constant cicle of perception in all of the AIs, so when they listen to a shot the first thing they do is get the dirt and go find cover? Cause it is so weird when you start firing a group and they stay there, waiting to be shot, with no reaction.

I think I'll reinstall OFP and play again, just to remember and compare...