What made OPF better?

[punishment 1]

I still play ofp since 2004 or so. I probably would have stoped but i got a good mate that plays with me who cant use arma due to shity pc.

I got arma and did the campeign played a few mp games. I thought the end of the campeign was rather confusing, and there are maby too many controls in arma and i had to try and get them back to ofp style. Also they kept some anoying bugs like bull shit bush shots

[Teliko 0]

OFP Patch 1.96 didn't come overnight, it came over 5 years.

ArmA didn't come over 5 years, it came over what, a year?

OFP 1.00 had its fair share of bugs too...every rifle shadow was an M16... etc.

ArmA's been out for less than a year but people wonder why it's not as fixed as OFP 1.96.

Hmm...

[mr burns 131]

Quote[/b] ]What made OPF better?

By that time all the other games were even more shitty.

j/k

OFP simply was a breaktrough in PC Games, Carrier Command was kinda similar, but OFP took it to a whole new level and prolly was THE game most of the regulars here have been waiting for all their live (omg i hope this is proper engrish..).

[jasono 0]

OFP Patch 1.96 didn't come overnight, it came over 5 years.

ArmA didn't come over 5 years, it came over what, a year?

OFP 1.00 had its fair share of bugs too...every rifle shadow was an M16... etc.

ArmA's been out for less than a year but people wonder why it's not as fixed as OFP 1.96.

Hmm...

I know OFP at first, wasn't exactly bug free. Totally agree with you Teliko.

I understand this is a newer game, 6 years on.. do some people think the game will be bug free from the start.

I find some bugs annoying, and would like them to be fixed.. but thats for an ArmA thread.

I found that OFP was adaptable for serious paced games like co-ops and cti's, and could also do well in arcade like games for example dm and ctf. ArmA lacks that arcade feel which has frustrated a few people who have played ofp. I used to be a CTF player, as well as DM. I have since then dropped that and gone to tactical co-ops working together in a clan, as I feel thats what's ArmA is more suited for.

[MehMan 0]

ArmA's been out for less than a year but people wonder why it's not as fixed as OFP 1.96.

Because one expects the dev to learn from its previous mistakes and not reintroduce the bugs that existed in the prequel.

OFP was simply something new, something that nobody has seen before, something really amazing. ArmA is still amazing, but probably just didn't fulfill the expectations the community had, perhaps we hoped for too much. ArmA is just a stopgap between OFP and Game2(ArmA2) and while it came out in rough shape it's forming out to be something very good, at least with some mods.

[Guest Ti0n3r]

Quote[/b] ]Because one expects the dev to learn from its previous mistakes and not reintroduce the bugs that existed in the prequel.

I have to say that it's exactly the other way around for me. I wasn't surprised when I got ArmA and found out that a load of classic OFP bugs had made their way into ArmA.

I was expecting it I guess. After all, "it's just BIS". Let's see if it will be the same in ArmA II.

[Shadow NX 1]

Lets see how this feels when the CWC demo comes out including the original OFP demo level.

I think then we can compare pretty well if its just the setting or if its more thats lacking.

Personalyl i think ArmA could eb lot better but the tiny things and the good time we had with OFP makes us see it as worse.

My main things are:

- performance or gras and plants

- odd damage system

- sluggish movement

- flight physics

- Ai accuracy

If it werent for those and if ArmA had a more intresting camapign then i think i would love it a lot more than OFP, but seems BIS learned a lot ( and maybe even reads this thread - hi there - ) and makes as good as everythign better in ArmA2, so far it at least seems so.

[Second 0]

It's not about ArmA's bugs for me. It's mostly about islands (Sahrani is one of the worst maps i've seen. Too much extreme in height-map) and the fact that OFP was first of it's kind, so i quess there's big emotinal tie with OFP while not with ArmA.

Here's something to prove it:

I play Clean Sweap in OFP and i'm in high heaven. I play Sanitizing operation in ArmA and i feel nothing.

I play Battlefields in OFP and i love it. With ArmA if i try something like battlefields, i don't get anything: i just shoot and move.

So i guess it's more about emotional ties than hard and cold facts.

[Lepardi 0]

It's the gameplay. BIS lost it when they concentrated on the graphics, they thought graphics make the game. It was a HUGE mistake.

Especially I don't like the damn floaty movement of arma. IRL you can aim better and faster than in arma, in ArmA it just floats away. Float, float, float. NO!

But what are we dreaming here?

I bet BIS won't listen to us and will concentrate on graphics of ArmA 2 at the moment. I quess it just got to be that way that every game series gets worse and worse when they get sequels. Battlefield are another great example, battlefield 2 ruined a good start. Like ArmA ruined a good start with Operation Flashpoint.

Now they just concentrate on the consoles in ArmA 2, so us PC players will have just a lousy console-port.

[Shadow NX 1]

He he, you can say a lot about ArmA but not that its focussed on graphics ^^

About the floating, yeah its a bit annoying but you can change that in the options and most modern mouses can also counter that if you set them to higher rates.

[Lepardi 0]

He he, you can say a lot about ArmA but not that its focussed on graphics ^^

About the floating, yeah its a bit annoying but you can change that in the options and most modern mouses can also counter that if you set them to higher rates.

Yeah, the aiming is way too tied on FPS, when ArmA will always have low fps where you would need it. 30fps: dont even dream of hitting someone. 100fps: great response, you hit almost everything.

[NeMeSiS 11]

He he, you can say a lot about ArmA but not that its focussed on graphics ^^

About the floating, yeah its a bit annoying but you can change that in the options and most modern mouses can also counter that if you set them to higher rates.

Yeah, the aiming is way too tied on FPS, when ArmA will always have low fps where you would need it. 30fps: dont even dream of hitting someone. 100fps: great response, you hit almost everything.

Have you ever tried to search for 'Mouse AND lag' in the troubleshooting forum?

[code-red 0]

I dont see why OFP is better than arma.

and i have played "a lot" of OFP.

Just like it OPF it took me a while to adapt to arma but now i seem to be flying.

When OFP came out it was the first of its kind, that gave me the most magic feeling because we where exploring a new terrain in gaming.

Beeing able to get into any verhicle was new and exiting.

These days there are many more fps that have verhicles and big maps so the feeling is not the same anymore as in the old days.

But that is not because arma is lacking or to bugged i think.

In the first place i was very happy to see that Arma is so simular to OFP and that they didnt break the old game down for the sake of a new title.

The little downside of this is that in some places Arma looks like a good skinning job on OFP and it is a pitty that some of the old like ladder bugs have not been solved for arma.

But so far all the gaming modes i tred are very playable, co-op, ctf, rts4, mfcti, hold, etc.

So for me Arma is much better and i can never go back to OFP.

[Heatseeker 0]

It's the gameplay. BIS lost it when they concentrated on the graphics, they thought graphics make the game. It was a HUGE mistake.

Especially I don't like the damn floaty movement of arma. IRL you can aim better and faster than in arma, in ArmA it just floats away. Float, float, float. NO!

That wasnt much of a complaint. Its optional... you can adjust the float area and if you dont like it you can even disable it completely (in OPF you couldnt).

And the coments about BIS concentrating only on the graphics are not exactly true, they made dramatic improvements to the graphics engine. The outdated OPF engine doesnt come close to Arma's .

[Lepardi 0]

It's the gameplay. BIS lost it when they concentrated on the graphics, they thought graphics make the game. It was a HUGE mistake.

Especially I don't like the damn floaty movement of arma. IRL you can aim better and faster than in arma, in ArmA it just floats away. Float, float, float. NO!

That wasnt much of a complaint. Its optional... you can adjust the float area and if you dont like it you can even disable it completely (in OPF you couldnt).

And the coments about BIS concentrating only on the graphics are not exactly true, they made dramatic improvements to the graphics engine. The outdated OPF engine doesnt come close to Arma's .

No that is not what I meant. I meant to mouse floatiness, when you stop the mouse it doesn't stop, it keeps going and stops a while afterwards. It has a huge impact on aiming and hitting targets.

[NeMeSiS 11]

EDIT: Forget it...

[Heatseeker 0]

It's the gameplay. BIS lost it when they concentrated on the graphics, they thought graphics make the game. It was a HUGE mistake.

Especially I don't like the damn floaty movement of arma. IRL you can aim better and faster than in arma, in ArmA it just floats away. Float, float, float. NO!

That wasnt much of a complaint. Its optional... you can adjust the float area and if you dont like it you can even disable it completely (in OPF you couldnt).

And the coments about BIS concentrating only on the graphics are not exactly true, they made dramatic improvements to the graphics engine. The outdated OPF engine doesnt come close to Arma's .

No that is not what I meant. I meant to mouse floatiness, when you stop the mouse it doesn't stop, it keeps going and stops a while afterwards. It has a huge impact on aiming and hitting targets.

I think i understand what you mean but i dont experience it while playing. Try the render frames ahead tweak or turning down graphics settings (shadows, grass), might help.

It sounds more like a performance problem (low fps).

Its not something i disregard, i agree that the game should be more scalable and perform better if the user decreases graphical settings/visual quality but OPF was like this too..

[Jack-UK 0]

Good thread, i struggle to find what makes OFP so much better, when infact its a lesser version of what we have now...

I think the main factor is the performance, its far too erratic. In OFP it was much more consistent. In ArmA, it really depends on where you are, some rigs have problems with urban areas, others have problems with vegetated areas. Theres also so many more graphical issues such as texture bugs etc etc. I myself have to flush my cache regularly otherwise ArmA chokes to a standstill and crashes my PC, forcing a hard reboot. And ive got an 8600m GT 256mb VRAM, with 256mb shared additional 'VRAM' and 2GB RAM. Yet i have textures on very low and it crashes if i dont flush regularly (dam that sounds wierd ).

In OFP, you could find some settings, and stick with them, in ArmA, you gotta adjust settings for where you are, what you're doing, what map you're playing.

I think another of the main problems, which is sort of unavoidable is the similarity to OFP. When we bought OFP it blew us away, it was completely new, there was no comparable game. But now, ArmA is pretty much OFP, with a few new features jammed in. And in my opinion, i think ArmA is just OFP with these 'modern' features like HDR jammed in, without it actually working too well with the game. HDR pisses off a LOT of people. The animations may be more realistic now, but we still have issues with not being able to move and reload, super slow binocular animations, not being able to turn when falling etc... You know what i mean.

Not only that, but some people in the CTF community miss the ability to run and shoot at the same time, which granted... it wasnt too unrealistic, u couldnt hit accurately with that unless you were really close. Then theres other niggles like having to crouch manually everytime you sprint.

Its just that ArmA was not polished enough. OFP was a little rough round the edges of course, especially in terms of collision detection. But ArmA seems to have been brought up to 'modern standard' by shoving in a load of 'new' features like HDR and better shading detail, without it actually working well with the game itself. Many people have to force 16 bit HDR and turn off their shading cause of huge FPS drops.

Great thread though .. its helping me realise the differences and *why* OFP is so much better. I hope BIS read this and just see what the community feel is, and maybe try and bring back that OFP vibe into ArmA2.

[mrj-fin 0]

ArmA lacks that arcade feel

Indeed to me ArmA just feel too much of arcade so does OFP in this days but there is not any game on the market that would do things better so I have to play BIS games so far than some other will surpass ArmAs complexity in total. I miss the features from ArmA like dynamic destruction, humanlike AI, more open gameengine that allow easy change of physics some controls etc. But what I can expect from game that has no big attention from developer, no co-op whit community just too less work for doing anything the lack of manhours behind games totally ruined it to become so good it should be.

[Spindry69 0]

There is very little that OFP did better apart from character movement smoothness. With OFP there was a massive wow factor when it came out. The whole moddable sandpit was amazing and the iron sights on guns was great at a time when most shooters were using crosshairs to aim. ArmA doesn't have the same wow factor especially when other games like GRAW / GRAW2 have superior graphics and gameplay.

[NonWonderDog 0]

The Infiltration mod for Unreal Tournament did iron sights a lot better than OFP, but OFP had the atmosphere. ArmA's campaign really makes no sense whatsoever in comparison, and it's nowhere near as immersive.

That, and the performance is only barely passable on my (very overclocked) 3.2 GHz Core2 Duo and 8600GTS.

ArmA has a spectacularly more advanced script engine, though, and that's kept me quite busy.

[BraTTy 0]

I certainly like Arma better, it plays about the same to me, looks better and most important for MP it has JIP.

But the good points of OFP:

I bought OFP for SP, the SP missions and campaigns were nice along with the addon campaigns

I mastered scripting and made my own missions when I was bored (Arma just slightly more confusing i haven't bothered yet)

The overabundance of addons and more addons were included with the game (it even had a tractor and LST)

Addonmaking easier

I won't turn back, the JIP has me playing more MP than I did with OFP.The AI being smarter/harder almost makes it new again (it is really tough now, they go up on the roof take you out sniping, etc...)

OFP the AI was too easy ,the non-JIP was a crutch to compete with online play

[wamingo 1]

ArmA lacks that arcade feel

I think you edited this out of your post but I think you're right to the point that OFP _was_ more arcady, and I believe this is the main beef that OFP MP vets has with arma.

SP'ers don't like the campaign and missions and MP'ers don't like the pace of controls and gameplay and such which has all slowed down somewhat since ofp.

Playing nothing but MP myself, I for one, don't want to play an arcade game. I want a simulation. And Reality IS slow - put on your backpack and run around your neighbourhood, you'll see...

Hexen Kessle (spelling?) is not how I see the game to be fun, an endless stream of quake3 like respawn and shoot-em-up.

I've always looked at OFP/arma as a simulation and I've always hoped that BIS would concetrate on it as a simulation.

And I think consensus is that, as a sim, arma is generally better, flawed, true, but better.

In the end, I'm sure we can agree that overall arma is not worse than ofp, it's just different and it's just a matter of taste.

[Flanker15 0]

I think the one thing that made OFP so much better than ARMA was the campaign. This shows how important story and writing skills are to a game. Has anyone got a rating on the QG campaign compared to OFP? I am thinking about getting it.

On the up side the remake of OFP will join the engine of ARMA and the campaign of OFP together. Then you can just delete the ARMA campaign and you've got the game you've always'd wanted! After that they're remaking the resistance campaign which was also very well made.

[Thunnder Bunny 0]

I haven't had any problems with ARMA except a little pistol bug. But I still wanted to give OFP a shot on my new system.

I just moved my massive OFP files to my new game machine, and took a walk down memory lane.

But jumped back into ARMA almost immediately once I hit the 12 unit group limit on ofp.

Thank you BIS for getting rid of that.

If anyone's been with ofp from the start they know it takes awhile to fix things. I still remember when you could only move when you were holding a rifle....if you dropped it, you became a statue.

I think people should concentrate on universal bugs, and not on bugs that only effect their personal system....the disappointed thread would be smaller if people understood that.