Gameplay Vs Graphics (3 months on)

[SHWiiNG 0]

okay, so After reading this article Graphics Vs Gameplay

I Felt the need to start this Poll, to see if the communities Views on what should be most important in terms of development in the coming Days, Months, Years of ARMA.

Personally its now Gameplay, we have a solid Graphics engine to support the right amount of eye candy so therefore there is no need to improve this, but now i feel that Gameplay should be primary field of development both for the Modders, Addon Makers, and BIS.

Note: The Article was written by JdB , all credit goes to him

tHIS Poll is used to identify what you as a user or modder of ARMA want was a whole, the Article merely provides some background into the subject, but i am looking for your opinion as a whole not just based on Addon or mod production

[Frantic 0]

ArmA needs a lot of improvement at the gameplay side, mostly the infantry part of ArmA.

[Bracken 0]

Great article, thanks JdB.

[NeMeSiS 11]

Well i guess everyone agrees on that, all modellers can now become config/scripting masters!

[Heatseeker 0]

The graphics are more than good enough.

The gameplay improved some but not as much.

Vehicle performance, damage model and a.i. (in some cases) didnt improve that much, but gameplay in the aspect of moving and shooting improved alot.

Simulation of water turned out alot better .

[ArmaVidz 0]

Graphics are good enough now, we just need to create immersiveness and gameplay

[TheReddog 0]

Well to me it feels with ArmA that gameplay has really not changed at all from OFP. The only real difference is a few extra moves you can pull off with your infantrymen like leaning and rolling and the unfortunate (IMHO) decision to apply the floating zone to iron sights.

It seems to me like 90% of the effort in developing the game was put into ramping up the graphics and it is really only semi successful because so many people cannot even see the nice graphics due to performance issues.

Personally I would have much preferred a small graphical update from OFP (hell better character models and textures would have done me) and much more effort put into making the game as bug free and awesome as possible.

[Heatseeker 0]

I just checked out the article that generated this small discussion, it seems to be more about addon making practices and focuses on the graphical side of addon models.

From my playing experience the most beautyfull OPF addon ever didnt 'lag' my game (OWP's Mi-26 pack) and yes i used more than one.

Arma has some amazing graphics using all the dx9 bells and whisles but sometimes i miss OPF's simple graphics, they were easy on the eyes. I find this to be true in other games too, the more complex the graphics turn out the more tiresome it gets.

But.. there is more to Arma than just graphics and gameplay .

[4 IN 1 0]

i think gameplay over GFX, but to me BI seems to trying a different sorts of things like GFX that have a part in gameplay, HDR for example, sun flare is affect by it, and ppl thinks that AA are also important too, so much they acturally creat a 8bit HDR trying to please everyone(which clearly failed, now if BI really fix the problem of missing sunflare on 16 bit and 32 bit )

[JdB 151]

I just checked out the article that generated this small discussion, it seems to be more about addon making practices and focuses on the graphical side of addon models.

True, what BIS does is their decision, I do not have the illusion of influencing that at all. It's even said so in the newspost on Armedassault.info

Quote[/b] ]JdB has written a very interesting article to express his points of view concerning gameplay vs graphics in the modding community.

I feel it is a rather important sidenote

[nephilim 0]

good article

had nothing to add

[Shadow NX 1]

Very good article, nice read indeed.

It was me Quoted in the middle btw, from Survive in my addons folder to the part about FDF

[Messiah 2]

I thought I recognised that mind set

I'm quoted in there too - good article indeed - hopefully a follow up will be written around the times of the tools being released? To see how the community is really taking the task of modding on?

well done JDB

[4 IN 1 0]

but i wonder how many mod teams would support this idea

old BAS for example is another good mix between gameplay and details

[sektor 2]

I agree with JdB, and think this will be very important issue for the good people who make addons. Trying new shiny weapons on Rahmadi, without any mission is just deja vu from desert island in OFP. I did it for years and some addons are great but without missions they are easily forgotten.

[SHWiiNG 0]

I know ARMA has more to it then Graphics and Gamepla.

If i could i would gladly put Performance and immersion into the votable list. Moderators any help?

[Messiah 2]

but i wonder how many mod teams would support this idea

old BAS for example is another good mix between gameplay and details

I don't think its a question of the mod teams, more the 'consumer' who have to support it

if an addon is rediculously laggy and worthless for anything but CP, then people should vote with their downloads and leave it well alone.

I doubt we will ever see an end to badly made addons with regards to optimization, lets just hope the community realise that missions and MP require well made addons

[JdB 151]

I know ARMA has more to it then Graphics and Gamepla.

If i could i would gladly put Performance and immersion into the votable list.

I personally count Performance as a part of Graphics and Immersion as a part of Gameplay, as both sets are very much interconnected (especially the first), and part of the same thing (especially the last). I didn't specifically mention it in the article, to keep the length down so someone would actually bother to read it instead of being scared off (I could easily have written a small book if I had dissected them into smaller bits).

All in all, "Gameplay, Immersion, Realism vs Graphics, Performance, CP Photography" would have made for a rather excessive title. I kept it down to the most superficial layer that gamers recognize (alot of game-related websites divide games into gameplay and graphics when pre/reviewing). It's a rather simplistic way of looking at things, but it keeps the main issues outlined rather than covered by an avalanche of interesting words.

Quote[/b] ]Note: The Article was written by Cervo, all credit goes to him

I wrote the article btw, but since not everyone can post on Armedassault.info, he posted it for me, "author" as in "author of the newspost", not of the article

This article was aimed at addonmakers, not BIS.

[EDcase 87]

I'm pretty happy with ARMA overall but I hope BIS can sort out the foliage lag...

As far as addons go there will always be a range of quality dependant on the makers. Hopefully it should easier to create quality addons when the tools are out.

[4 IN 1 0]

but i wonder how many mod teams would support this idea

old BAS for example is another good mix between gameplay and details

I don't think its a question of the mod teams, more the 'consumer' who have to support it

if an addon is rediculously laggy and worthless for anything but CP, then people should vote with their downloads and leave it well alone.

I doubt we will ever see an end to badly made addons with regards to optimization, lets just hope the community realise that missions and MP require well made addons

i agree, and just a side question, what would normal mapping bring to us, i mean, now that with normal mapping i assume that the polycount on 3D objects could reduce into a reasonable amount, but whould normal mapping itself cause another perforemce hit?

@EDcase

orthrough i agree that the fog must go, this post is intent to ask ppl to focus on addons optimization other then being simple CP eyecandy

afterall, i want a "optimized" HIND that i could play instead a beautiful one which is a lagfest

[Guest Ti0n3r]

Hehe, the poll says it all

[wamingo 1]

It's probably unintentional but in my opinion this poll is really ambiguous.

The article puts up graphics vs performance and is a call to modders only.

But this poll end up being graphics nutters against people who are content with the graphics. But arma's graphics by and large are already very good. And BIS can't really bump up the graphics anymore without some pretty serious performance issues. So is the outcome suprising?

Define gameplay. How do you enhance gameplay? What can modders do to enhance gameplay? How can BIS?

And is what BIS should concentrate on the same as what Modders should spend their time on?

Personally I think BIS should focus on a broad list of things: bugs, performance, animations need smoothing, some physics are off, some values are off, we need a proper armor implementation, and some sound improvements.

Some of these are graphics, some of the are gameplay. Many of them are a combination of both.

Who doesn't want sexy tracers? Surely that's a graphical effect. And does gunfire sound reverberations (which I think many would really want if it's subtleness didn't make it so easy to overlook) belong under gameplay or graphics?

Not many of these things can be done by modders in a way that makes the game better for all. Even downloading a soundmod can put you in an unfavourable position as some public servers doesn't allow them (for a good reason).

So what can modders do that most people want? Optional things that doesn't give anyone an advantage (graphically or otherwise), aka mission specific things: islands, models, playmodes, themes, utilities (eg artillery interface) and total conversions.

In other words, totally different from BIS, and makes graphics and gameplay totally intertwined.

IMO it would be more interesting to see a poll or two over a list of specific things that people want to see the most in arma (preferably multiple-choice).

[SHWiiNG 0]

Quote[/b] ]I wrote the article btw, but since not everyone can post on Armedassault.info, he posted it for me, "author" as in "author of the newspost", not of the article

Woops sorry about that mate, ive amended my mistake

[Radnik 18]

Did any of you guyz have friend who actualy plays other games and when see ArmA say: Oh my god, look how graphic is offull!.

I have few of them!.

ArmA has, and even OpF had, photorealistic graphics damn, are we totaly hipnotized by BIS or what?!.

ArmA`s fooliage is already top graphic (hence Linda), and BI should concentrate on phisics only in future...better land stearings, tank movement, collisions etc.

Anyways...gameplay comes first. But if you bought a PC above recomended sepcs and you can`t play it, shurley the problem is in software and it needs to be fixed.