How Satisfied with Arma2 Are you??

[mad rabbit 0]

I paid AUD$50 for my copy from CDwow.

I would've been happy to have paid TWICE that if the performance was better, regardless of any other problems/bugs etc.

[James22 10]

Well I like the game. BUT- What the hell is the point of releasing a patch that is unplayable (in my case)

V1.0 - Works

V1.1 - Works

V1.2 - Works

V1.3 - WONT EFFING START - I mean WTF is the deal with that. I can play all other versions, but not 1.3.

[Bulldogs 10]

Try a beta patch, if it works with beta then it's likely to be a securom issue.

[James22 10]

Thanks bulldogs i'll give it a go.

Just for reference. I have;

The latest graphics drivers (nvidia)

The latest DVD firmware

The bought DVD version of the game

The latest directx drivers

Disabled UAC (exclusive admin rights)

Disabled daemon tools

No antivirus / spyware installed

Thats all I could find in other threads of the game not working.

I read 80odd pages of the troubleshooting thread to gather that info, and nothing has worked yet.

Any more advice?

[nyran125 10]

You shouldnt buy this game if you have anything less than what i have and thats a medium range computer runs at 35-50 fps.

8800GTS 512mb

intel core 2 duo 2.66Ghz (the quad core version ran my games worse)

3gb ram DDR2

Windows xp

If you have anything lower than my rig you shouldnt of even bought the game, seriously.

If you expect this to run on very high with all graphic settings on the highest possible settings , than you are also going to be dissapointed.

If you can handle this game on Normal graphic settings (which by the way look fantastic anyway, even on normal settings) then you will have a fun time adn wont have half the problems most people seem to be having :):)

Performance isnt a big problem at all for me i run the game on medium graphic settings and Vid memory normal and AA off ( you get use to it, after awhile you forget how awesome the game DID look on high graphic settings ,lol. Just try not to look at the game on high settings , then youll never know or forget after awhile.

My FPS only becomes an issue if there is more than 200 units on screen at once, which is rare.

ON A SIDE NOTE........

Theres a guy with a rig similar to mine on you tube called richie' something that boasts that he runs 1700 units in the editor and 250'000 people have watched it on you tube. I feel sorry for people that watched that video and bought the game and THOUGHT they could run 1700 units on screen at once, its almost false advertising by a player,lol. Not once in those videos do you see 1700 units ON SCREEN in broad daylight at one time. The video just shows him running around at night time and you barely see any units just loads of gun shots. Ive tested it in broad daylight and started the editor as a civilian so i could just watch what happens, with 400 units facing directly towards each other (barely 20 metres away from each other) 200 on one side of the runway at the airport and another 200 on the other side of the runway, and it DOES NOT run as good like those you tube videos with 1700 units. (The guy has the same graphics cards to mine,LOL) hmmm . However it did run better at night time for some reason. So that was interesting.

SO i hope you didnt buy this game because you saw those videos.

The only BIG gripe I have and people that i know that have uninstalled Arma 2 and will never ever play a Bohemia game again, are the people that only wanted to play the single player campaign, nothing else when Arma 2 was first released and it didnt work for them or it crashed badly. I just think in the future the Arma games need to get the single player thing right and completely bug free and perfect, even if Bohemia releases 2 campaigns on release 1 hardcore fully decked out one and another smaller campaign that doesnt require so many triggers so the new people that play it at least enjoy SOME kind of single player experience.

I love this game because of the infinate possibilites with the editor. Some people just dont get how awesome that editor is unfortunately and they just bought it off steam to play the single player campaign. (and those people will never know what they have missed out on, HOWEVER they may of stuck around longer to find out, IF the single player game worked properly STRAIGHT out of the box on release.)

[desertjedi 3]

people that i know that have uninstalled Arma 2 and will never ever play a Bohemia game again, are the people that only wanted to play the single player campaign

Wow - buying Arma 1/2 for the SP is a bit crazy - it's basically a sandbox/MP game - period. Those peeps might have been better served staying with the COD franchise and I don't mean that as a slight to them either. SP in COD4 works very well...with the downside that it's boring as hell.

Getting back to the topic...I've been trying some MP coop missions, some from SimHQ and Domination A2 as well. So far, I haven't really enjoyed the game at all. There are simply too many things for me to mention that just don't feel right. But...I'm sticking with it knowing that it took me some time to "adjust" to Arma 1 (which I'm a huge fan of).

So I install the Community Based Addon and SLX for Arma 2 and try a user-made mission called Cipher. I'm driving a troop carrier with my squad and I'm all over the road because I can't control the steering in Arma 2. Finally, I hit a concrete road barrier's end full on doing about 20-25mph. All of a sudden, all my mates start yelling out about being injured. Ok where is the enemy? Is it soldiers or a chopper strafing my vehicle? Then I realize, there is no enemy. They've all been injured by my little fender-bender.

I stop the vehicle to get everyone out so that the Medic can heal everyone. My entire squad exits the vehicle normally but then we all fall to the ground and start writhing and moaning - the entire group! I'm thinking WTF is going on with this game? I order my Medic to heal himself and then the others but we start taking fire from soldiers and then a Hind goes by and adds to the carnage. I have no visual on any enemy so I pull out the binocs and they don't work (they just block my view). Ok, that HAS to be a mod problem.

I run to the woods on a flanking manuever based on where the map tells me the Opfor is located. I go prone and realize that that won't work. I'm buried in a field of ferns and weeds that completely block my view. I keep moving toward the red enemy markers and start to believe that they're "false". Finally, I see an Opfor and realize that with all the visual clutter in the woods, I could have easily bumped into him. The positive side? They didn't see me either even though we were standing about 15 feet apart. I quickly take down 3 Opfor - as I said, I guess they couldn't see me either.

A Hind then flies over my position at low altitude. Being a bit disillusioned with the gameplay, I take a few blind potshots at the Hind through the tree cover. Guess what? My three potshots took down the Hind and it crashes right behind me.

How satisifed am I with Arma 2? How would you feel if you witnessed the above? If any of my gaming buddies (heck even my family) were in the room I would have been embarrassed. So far, I'm very disillusioned about this game and not sure if I'll continue "trying" to enjoy it.

[DarthElvis 0]

This will be a great game when it's finished. But it's not. Too many performance issues and campaign bugs. I still say give it another 2 years when hardware catches up, just like ARMA 1. Tweaks and user side optimizations are just placebo(in my experience).

The coding itself needs to be cleaned up a hell of alot better than they are doing right now.

The current fanboy mindset seems to be to blame the hardware, I've seen someone actually saying that 55c is hot for a video card. Grasping at straws. ARMA 2 has NOTHING that will tax a video card to the point of failure (unless that particular card is heavily overclocked and unstable.)

It's the game, not the hardware. When they get around to finishing the game, it will be awesome. Until then, enjoy having paid them to be a beta tester. It should be finished by the time ARMA 3 comes out (which will probably be another buggy mess). Sound familiar ?

[Bulldogs 10]

I find the anti-fanboy mind set entertaining. I love Arma 2 but only because it runs flawless for me, if it didn't then I'd likely be in the same mindset as everyone else.

But you have to remember that there's 2 sides to it. The first being, as mentioned, a problem with the coding. If you're suffering from this then in many cases tweaks will fix the problem, but in some cases they won't fix the issue and you'll just have to wait and hope. The second case being hardware. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying everyone's hardware is the issue, but I've actually seen posts like "My game keeps crashing and my video card is only running at 100 deg C"

In otherwords, it's not always hardware, it's not always the game, sometimes it's both, sometimes it's neither. When it's the game, tweaks won't always fix it, but sometimes they will.

[Noxious 10]

I stop the vehicle to get everyone out so that the Medic can heal everyone. My entire squad exits the vehicle normally but then we all fall to the ground and start writhing and moaning - the entire group! I'm thinking WTF is going on with this game? I order my Medic to heal himself and then the others but we start taking fire from soldiers and then a Hind goes by and adds to the carnage. I have no visual on any enemy so I pull out the binocs and they don't work (they just block my view). Ok, that HAS to be a mod problem.

.

I'm sorry to say this but I was laughing my head off. I've had this happen in single player quite a few times. (can't get on MP because of issues...)

But I feel your pain. The more I play single player, scenarios or even make a slight attempt to use the insanely advanced editor to set up a nice mission for myself. I become less satisfied with my purchase each time I run the game.

[ProfTournesol 956]

The more I play single player, scenarios or even make a slight attempt to use the insanely advanced editor to set up a nice mission for myself. I become less satisfied with my purchase each time I run the game.

My bad, you know what, i'm having the exact opposite feeling since 2001 when i first played OFP demo ! 8 years of SP fun and pleasure, of own mission creations and scripting, of breaking game engine limitations, of modding my favourite historical eras, despite the "bugs" which i've seen everywhere else on quite complex video games. I'm sorry for you, but maybe this kind of "slow rewarding and very open" games simply aren't suiting your needs. The bugs and their (very) progressive patching are the price to pay, i'm ready to wait until they disappeared cause i know i'll be paid back.

[desertjedi 3]

I love Arma 2 but only because it runs flawless for me, if it didn't then I'd likely be in the same mindset as everyone else.

I'm glad you love it because, you being a Senior Member, probably means you've played Arma 1, and even though Arma 1 is "pure gold" (to me), you still find Arma II great. To me that means, that I have to give Arma II more time in order to "feel the love". Hey, I remember the feeling I got when I played the original Arma 1 demo a long time ago - I don't I ever deleted anything that fast before. :D Now, I play Arma 1 every chance I get.

I do get concerned a bit when I hear peeps say they love Arma II. My first thought is...have you played Arma 1? I'd MUCH rather hear from peeps who've played Arma 1 (and still like Arma 2).

I was laughing my head off

I'm glad someone found it amusing. I thought I was losing my mind there. With the entire squad writhing and moaning, it was like some weird orgy. And I still don't know why the Hind(or KA-52 actually) went down after I took some potshots at it.

After my squad was writhing I quickly hit the Fraps record key. Maybe I'll put together a short funny movie but it surely won't be an advertisement for the game!

Oh, btw, when I play Arma II for about 45min to an hour, I either get an 'out of memory' error or the games goes into (and out of) continual short freezes. And I never get problems of any sort when I game. I'm surprised I haven't heard any others getting this.

[Noxious 10]

My bad, you know what, i'm having the exact opposite feeling since 2001 when i first played OFP demo ! 8 years of SP fun and pleasure, of own mission creations and scripting, of breaking game engine limitations, of modding my favourite historical eras, despite the "bugs" which i've seen everywhere else on quite complex video games. I'm sorry for you, but maybe this kind of "slow rewarding and very open" games simply aren't suiting your needs. The bugs and their (very) progressive patching are the price to pay, i'm ready to wait until they disappeared cause i know i'll be paid back.

MISSION EDITOR - Design your own missions by the intuitive easy-to-use mission editor and become part of one of the biggest most creative PC gaming community ever.

See I read that and I thought to myself, oh wow I can make some missions easy. But in reality someone with no scripting knowledge can't do anything other than set waypoints and units... No documentation in the book, and yes I know there are online modding resources but why should I have to go through hours of reading just to find the right trigger script etc. This was supposed to be easy-to-use.

I can't even get on in multiplayer, the main purpose of my purchase. I thought of all the intelligent people out there, there are probably infinite possibilities for fun MP scenarios.

I still hold my breath until I can get this solved, as IDEA GAMES I am having correspondence with about this MP problem and all they care about is why the video I sent them was recorded @ 25 fps. They just keep asking me about FPS problems (I DONT HAVE ANY), nothing to do with network.

I'm becoming further frustrated as time goes by.

Edited September 11, 2009 by Noxious

[ProfTournesol 956]

MISSION EDITOR - Design your own missions by the intuitive easy-to-use mission editor and become part of one of the biggest most creative PC gaming community ever.

See I read that and I thought to myself, oh wow I can make some missions easy. But in reality someone with no scripting knowledge can't do anything other than set waypoints and units... No documentation in the book, and yes I know there are online modding resources but why should I have to go through hours of reading just to find the right trigger script etc. This was supposed to be easy-to-use.

I can't even get on in multiplayer, the main purpose of my purchase. I thought of all the intelligent people out there, there are probably infinite possibilities for fun MP scenarios.

I still hold my breath until I can get this solved, as IDEA GAMES I am having correspondence with about this MP problem and all they care about is why the video I sent them was recorded @ 25 fps. They just keep asking me about FPS problems (I DONT HAVE ANY), nothing to do with network.

I'm becoming further frustrated as time goes by.

I understand that in some way, this (kind of) game may be frustrating, particularly people that can't get rid of major bugs that prevent them from playing.

But, i disagree with "But in reality someone with no scripting knowledge can't do anything other than set waypoints and units.". Without any scripting, just with an average knowledge of waypoints, triggers and synchronization, you can achieve very complex and rewarding missions.

[Bulldogs 10]

I find the mission editor easy to use for that one fact, that you can scatter squads around the map then give them all a place to converge on as a waypoint (that's extremely easy to do) and you can create many missions like this that are very fun to play, and after you've done that for a while you can move on to learning the difficult things. Search YouTube for some good starter/advanced tutorials.

Oh, and yep, played arma 1 and loved it... About 6 months after release. I admit that I shelved it when I first bought it but when I installed it later on it was pure gold (witha few patches). I loved flashpoint from day one, but that was lot simpler. Arma 2 I loved from day 1 but there are some things that put ne off, all of those things being in the campaign.

[1longtime 10]

We all know the majority answer to this poll: bugs are sucking the fun out of it (or worse).

The real question: what is the status on the fixes?

Edited September 14, 2009 by 1longtime

[Zipper5 74]

We all know the majority answer to this poll: bugs are sucking the fun out of it (or worse).

The real question: what is the status on the fixes?

*Facepalm*

How do people like you find your way on to forums anyways? Or even your internet browser.

Simple answer: they are fixing it.

[eirulan 10]

Wow - buying Arma 1/2 for the SP is a bit crazy - it's basically a sandbox/MP game - period.

I understand that you defend ArmA 2 (me too).

But you must accept that on the game box is not written "sandbox-multiplayer game".

It is written: "Play as Razor team in a enthralling/captivating single player campaign".....

On the back of the box there is a screenshot of Razor Team....

]Well, that is the point: ArmA 2 community must recognize that the majority of people who buy ArmA 2, buy it for the SP campaign. Community must respect these people, who is not happy with the game. Do not take joke of them, please. That's all.

Then, maybe they are "introduced" to the other features, such as MP, editor...and like it in the long term.

I strongly hope so.

Edited September 14, 2009 by eirulan

[1longtime 10]

*Facepalm*

How do people like you find your way on to forums anyways? Or even your internet browser.

Simple answer: they are fixing it.

Zipper, since you don't know the answer, why don't you shut up? This is beyond reading a changelog in a beta patch.

Poll shows overwhelmingly that customers are having trouble. I'm asking for a status update.

For instance, does BIS anticipate performance fixes before Operation Arrowhead?

[desertjedi 3]

Community must respect these people, who is not happy with the game. Do not take joke of them, please. That's all.

Oops - I worded that very badly - my apologies. :)

BTW, I put together a short video of my odd experiences that I talked about in my prior post for anyone interested.

Edited September 14, 2009 by DesertJedi

[bangtail 0]

Zipper, since you don't know the answer, why don't you shut up? This is beyond reading a changelog in a beta patch.

Poll shows overwhelmingly that customers are having trouble. I'm asking for a status update.

For instance, does BIS anticipate performance fixes before Operation Arrowhead?

Actually, it doesn't prove much more than some of the people visiting the Troubleshooting section are having trouble.

In the grand scheme of things, this is a very small number. You can remove another 50% (at a minimum) of those complaints that are a direct result of user error, low grade PC etc etc.

Sure, there are people with legitimate problems, but they are not the majority.

@ Eirulan : As far as the advertising goes, I have to side with the you on this one. The box glorifies the SP component, which to be fair, was not released in an acceptable state.

Having said that, Caveat Emptor. If you spent more than 5 mins researching ArmA and OFP before buying, you'd have known exactly what you were in for, regardless of what the box says ;)

Eth

Edited September 14, 2009 by BangTail

[Bulldogs 10]

1longtime, read the news section please before posting that, especially the thread titled "community update" (or something like that)

[1longtime 10]

1longtime, read the news section please before posting that, especially the thread titled "community update" (or something like that)

Ah, thanks. There's some very helpful stuff in the community update.

From the update post: "...the second area we're prioritising is improving performance, especially in urban areas, of course there will be other things addressed in 1.04 but it's too early to go into details about those just yet."

Fingers crossed.

[eirulan 10]

Actually, it doesn't prove much more than some of the people visiting the Troubleshooting section are having trouble.

In the grand scheme of things, this is a very small number. You can remove another 50% (at a minimum) of those complaints that are a direct result of user error, low grade PC etc etc.

Eth

I look at a primary forum in Italy, the section dedicated to ArmA 2 (more than 1.000 posts only for ArmA 2).

Well a wide majority of people who played the SP campaign (approx all the people) complained for the low quality production of the SP campaign.

The typical sentence is "great ideas, very bad implementation". This is not a good news. :rolleyes:

On the contrary, very few complaints for editor or MP.

People who played multiplayer liked a lot clans and coop mission.

And that is the good news.:)

[goose4291 11]

I think the big thing to be learnt from the SP campaign is that the Warfare missions were not well recieved as thats not what BiS game players (from the days of OFP forward) wanted. Most people will say their best memories of OFP and ArmA was running around merely as part of a squad.

Otherwise it's getting better, just fix the darn CD issues!

[tsb247 0]

I'm not terribly happy at the moment. I keep having issues with performance. I have experienced very few gameplay bugs, but the game performs terribly, and the latest patch seems to have caused more problems. I have relatively low framerates, artifacts, missing textures, and general lag. They are not ever-present, but they still hamper my gameplay considerably.

I have not been turned off to BIS products yet, but in the future, I think I will wait a while longer before buying; to make sure all of the bugs are ironed out first.