Multi Player Communities dieing overnite

[Lincoln1stFJ 10]

Its a pity GA.Shrug is banned, I was enjoying his comments...:rolleyes:

Just because someone disagreed with him, or questioned his perspective doesn't automatically make someone a troll.

That's just lazy self-righteousness.

It is no wonder he was banned. He was probably 12.

[An Fiach 10]

What is happening right now is that BIS is patching up the game to a suitable level, this might take one or two years.

Actually, that's rather inexcusable.

[hund 0]

Actually, that's rather inexcusable.

Oh darn, you should have told me that nine years ago! :p

One thing this game requires is patience, both while playing and while not.

The way I see it:

One movie ticket is roughly eight euros where I am from. I paid about 50 euros for the game (actually somewhat less than that but its a good number). Your average movie is around two hours long. So that would make (50 / 8) x 2 = 12 hours of fun that I have paid Bohemia to provide for me. By that rationale (which makes perfect sense to me) I have already had my entertainment, and whatever Bohemia decides to do from now on is none of my business, since it's free. Now a lot of people have probably spent several hours trying to sort out the game so it will run on their rig, this has to be taken into account of course, but overall my guess is that most of us have already had our cumulative twelve hours of fun.

Edited July 20, 2009 by Hund

[{sas}stalker 10]

the problem with comparing A to B is that there's always a knob that comes along and points out the obvious, in this instance i'm happy to be said knob.

using your analogy I should be happy if my 300K brand new house only lasts me 300000/8 hours, IE 37500 hours or 1562.5 days or 4.28 years.

I don't really think anyone will be happy with this do you ?

[galzohar 31]

Except when you go to the movies you don't need a 1000-2000$ computer to get in.

[hund 0]

I am comparing one entertainment medium with another, not buying a god damn house, ya spazz (which is btw a nightmare in my experience - buying property, not being a spazz, ed.). So yeah, what I proposed was not a universal solution, but a quickie explanation of how I feel about the issue.

And about the computer. What people fail to realize is that BIS games don't actually run off chips and doo-dads. They work by magic, yup suree. I'm running the game off my 2006 rig and are getting better results than some of the new rig owners. And the server I play on is from bloody 2003, and it runs 20 people without a hickup. Trust me, nice as it seems, computer power isn't all it's cranked up to be when it comes to BIS games.

But yeah, there ya have it.

Edited July 20, 2009 by Hund

[galzohar 31]

My 2006 rig could barely run the game, had to use low resolution and minimum settings to get reasonable framerates, but then I couldn't see enemies beyond 50m.

[hund 0]

See?

Magic!

[spamurai 3]

Well, from my perspective... I paid 8 dollars for a movie ticket and the film projector blows a fuse 5 minutes into watching the movie.... been waiting 4 weeks now for the repairman to make it right so I can enjoy the movie my 8 dollar ticket entitles me too...

If this were actually a movie theater... I would have had my ticket refunded for the full 8 dollars with an apology from the management, likely a ticket for a free movie for my inconveniences... after the projector is running again.

I'm pretty sure neither STEAM nor BIS is willing to entertain a 50$ refund until they get their game working.

[hund 0]

Yeah some people have had a rough time getting this thing to work.

[spamurai 3]

It's not that I even want a refund. Nor am I mad, or feeling swindled.

I am however, feeling an increasing amount of frustrating disappointment each time my system locks up with a CTD or I hear of a mate BSoDing yet again mid way through an attempt at playing.

I sense the communities of players thinning out and disappearing and the game has hardly begun yet. So few PvP servers up and running... too many COOP games... so few servers in general in the list, the ratio of populated to empty way too low to sustain a healthy community.

[hund 0]

How can there be too many coop players? that's just nonsense.

But to be perfectly honest, I think a lot of new guys didn't know what they were getting themselves into when they bought arma 2, and how could they?

The game is and will always be very niche, what happened here was that BIS actually managed to improve the graphics so much that the screenies started to apeal to mainstream military gamers, who were then in for a rough awakening when they finally got their hands on the product. Because much as people may try, arma just isn't mainstream, or even particularly user friendly :D

At the end of the day, there is absolutely nothing new to what is goin on in the arma community, we have been through this treadmill twice before, and we know that we will eventually end up with what we want.

But again, let me extend my sympathies over your current predicament, friend. I've been fortunate enough to never end up in a hole deep enough for me to not be able to dig myself out again, technically speaking. ArmA1 ran like a case of the flu when I first got it, and so did Arma2, but with enough tweaking and bending and hammering I was able to fix it up so it would be at least playable, and with each patch, things just got better until they were as perfect as such things become.

Edited July 21, 2009 by Hund

[spamurai 3]

well.... too many coop servers if you want to play PvP like you do in most every other shooter you've played. You come to ArmA2 looking for a certain type of game being played and when you see not enough support for it because everyone else plays coop to avoid playing nothing at all... you might be inclined to just leave altogether and not play at all (a loss to the community).

I understand full well about needing patience with technical problems. When I first started ArmA1, it didn't run with great performance (it didn't flat out crash mind you). I invested the time, money and effort into solving my technical problems to get ArmA1 running smooth as a turbo-top. Now I'm back to step 1 (well more like step backwards to -1) with ArmA2. There is no disheartening lack of faith wondering if the game will ever run the way it should... but more the question of if there will be enough "Community" left to play the game with me, by the time it finally does. All those potential adversaries who understandably do not have the time, patience or money to wait and see are returning to the other games they came from bleeding out our community to a premature death.

Edited July 21, 2009 by Spamurai

[hund 0]

I am not sure I agree on the sentiment that people play coop because that's all there is to play. And if it is true (I'm not saying it can't be) then people are wankers. You want pvp maps? Then you make pvp maps. And if you don't know how, you learn.

We did.

[An Fiach 10]

Oh darn, you should have told me that nine years ago! :p

One thing this game requires is patience, both while playing and while not.

The way I see it:

One movie ticket is roughly eight euros where I am from. I paid about 50 euros for the game (actually somewhat less than that but its a good number). Your average movie is around two hours long. So that would make (50 / 8) x 2 = 12 hours of fun that I have paid Bohemia to provide for me. By that rationale (which makes perfect sense to me) I have already had my entertainment, and whatever Bohemia decides to do from now on is none of my business, since it's free. Now a lot of people have probably spent several hours trying to sort out the game so it will run on their rig, this has to be taken into account of course, but overall my guess is that most of us have already had our cumulative twelve hours of fun.

Look at it this way, BIS is fortunate to have people willing to buy their product when they know it will be below industry standards and barely working when they purchase it. You won't find many people shopping for a car willing to do that.

Now me personally, I made the purchase with the knowledge that the game was broken but fully expecting it to be fixed upon its full release or shortly thereafter as many were led to believe by assurances in the forums. Of course it was patched, but still broken.

Now I don't know anybody that purchases a product because they plan to enjoy it a few years after their purchase when they decide to open the package. You wouldn't wait 3 years for the plumber or the electrician or the mechanic, etc., etc. and most especially not when they were just there and failed to do the job right the first time round.

So to tell someone that has purchased the game to have patience is flat out wrong unless you are referring only to community made content. Now, I've said before that I see BIS has a long record of supporting and improving their games and for that reason alone, I'm still hanging on, but some people will not be that way and they are fully entitled to their outrage. Imagine going to the Cinema to see the latest new release that has been hyped for months and then you purchase your ticket and they say go home and we will call you when it's out of production. If you got your money's worth then you would have no problem if you were never able to play it again? Compare it to going for a concert and they cancel the show because they didn't have the correct color jellybeans back stage.

---------- Post added at 01:39 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:37 AM ----------

I am not sure I agree on the sentiment that people play coop because that's all there is to play. And if it is true (I'm not saying it can't be) then people are wankers. You want pvp maps? Then you make pvp maps. And if you don't know how, you learn.

We did.

You may not agree with it, but that's the reality, there are very few pvp servers online and playing something is better than playing nothing while you learn to make your own missions.

[hund 0]

It is true that there are more coop than pvp servers, but that's largely irrelevant. The real question is: why are there more coop than pvp servers?

Coop is a much more time consuming design process than pvp, and it's not because people don't know how to make pvp missions.

For me personally, arma is primarily a coop game, and I am a coop gamer. And I think there are quite a lot of people like me in the arma community. You are right in saying that there are pvp gamers hiding out in the coop servers because they have nowhere else to go, but that doesn't mean that the community is actually being forced to play coop by some secret hardcore elite of coop fanatics. The fact of the matter is that a lot of the community likes coop.

As for my whole rant about seeing arma as the same as going to the movies, that was clearly stated to be my perspective, so I don't really expect you guys to have the same view (which you obviously don't).

I just think that some people might be a bit (and i probably going to regret saying this) spoiled, really. It's like you expect BIS to deliver a perfect system that you can be all jolly about from the beginning, and that just has never happened with any BIS product in the entire history of BIS products. So just quit the whining and the wishful thinking and the crying, because it's not going to change.

So here is the truth:

- You are a paying beta tester.

- You will have to wait for months and even years for a finished product.

- You will have to make your own content.

If you can't handle that then I am sorry, because it is not going to change (at least it hasn't for the last nine years).

Edited July 21, 2009 by Hund

[{sas}stalker 10]

I know its not bringing much to the argument but I bloody hate the coop mode to this game, Its so terrible imho I'm not even sure I can be bothered to go into again.

As soon as our server is built and running its PvP all the way.

[Mickd 0]

I dont know why people think that PvP is dying. At Charlie Foxtrot we play pretty much every night with atleast 70 people, usually upto about 95-100 (see server sig). The server is open to anyone with no mods during the week as long as they dont fly choppers off by themselves and try to stick together.

Beyond that, and our real efforts is the tournament which run weeky on Sunday evenings which are closed events and have upwards of a 100 people in the server. Our community has positively exploded over the last 4 weeks.

Edited July 21, 2009 by Mickd

[sickboy 13]

Re patches; BIS has resolved some of the showstoppers in 1.01 and 1.02, and they are now supposedly working on 1.03.

Altough I also prefer more rapid, smaller, patch releases that could fix important bugs... It doesn't seem to be possible/feasable for bi's situation.

You can't compare this with cars, or any hardware for that matter. We're speaking about Software here, and even though we want to apply the same rules as other products on it, it just isn't reality.

If you look at both OFP and ArmA, you will see that both of the games were fixed over months and even years. ArmA1 became really playable at 1.08, and just got better with following patches.

(Though still bugs remain even in 1.16beta)

Personally, I play these games for years. For me it is no problem to have some patience. Altough I think that 6 months after release is the basic limit to have the game quality on a proper level.

Re coop vs pvp; It all comes down to personal preference. I like coop, I prefer cooperation by definition (also in PvP matches).

The PvP matches I have played, have never been satisfactory (which tbh is probably a problem on my side, not so much PvP in general).

IMO setting up PvP matches requires more energy (for organization) and somewhat trained people on each side to make the match interesting.

With coop you only have to worry about 1 side, while the other side (AI) is handled by CPU (and improved by scripts etc).

PvP on the other hand can be much more interesting, since you are playing versus humans.

And altough scripts and dynamic/random AI stuff goes a long way into making coops interesting, playing against humans will probably always remain more interesting :)

I would love to play sometime in properly managed PvP matches, and see how it's really done :P

Edited July 21, 2009 by Sickboy

[whisper 0]

You'd like competitive PvP, then Sickboy. I don't know how is the ArmA2 comp PvP scene though, not sure there is any, even though I've seen some ESL German things (they have their C&H pack already, it's not a bad sign)

[An Fiach 10]

Re patches; BIS has resolved some of the showstoppers in 1.01 and 1.02, and they are now supposedly working on 1.03.

Altough I also prefer more rapid, smaller, patch releases that could fix important bugs... It doesn't seem to be possible/feasable for bi's situation.

You can't compare this with cars, or any hardware for that matter. We're speaking about Software here, and even though we want to apply the same rules as other products on it, it just isn't reality.

If you look at both OFP and ArmA, you will see that both of the games were fixed over months and even years. ArmA1 became really playable at 1.08, and just got better with following patches.

(Though still bugs remain even in 1.16beta)

Personally, I play these games for years. For me it is no problem to have some patience. Altough I think that 6 months after release is the basic limit to have the game quality on a proper level.

Re coop vs pvp; It all comes down to personal preference. I like coop, I prefer cooperation by definition (also in PvP matches).

The PvP matches I have played, have never been satisfactory (which tbh is probably a problem on my side, not so much PvP in general).

IMO setting up PvP matches requires more energy (for organization) and somewhat trained people on each side to make the match interesting.

With coop you only have to worry about 1 side, while the other side (AI) is handled by CPU (and improved by scripts etc).

PvP on the other hand can be much more interesting, since you are playing versus humans.

And altough scripts and dynamic/random AI stuff goes a long way into making coops interesting, playing against humans will probably always remain more interesting :)

I would love to play sometime in properly managed PvP matches, and see how it's really done :P

No you can't compare it to a car, but in terms of providing a customer what they think they are paying for, the analogy stands.

---------- Post added at 11:28 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:27 AM ----------

I dont know why people think that PvP is dying. At Charlie Foxtrot we play pretty much every night with atleast 70 people, usually upto about 95-100 (see server sig). The server is open to anyone with no mods during the week as long as they dont fly choppers off by themselves and try to stick together.

Beyond that, and our real efforts is the tournament which run weeky on Sunday evenings which are closed events and have upwards of a 100 people in the server. Our community has positively exploded over the last 4 weeks.

I'll have to check this out a bit more, so far my experience on that server has been less than promising despite the fact it was well Administrated.

---------- Post added at 11:42 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:28 AM ----------

It is true that there are more coop than pvp servers, but that's largely irrelevant. The real question is: why are there more coop than pvp servers?

Coop is a much more time consuming design process than pvp, and it's not because people don't know how to make pvp missions.

For me personally, arma is primarily a coop game, and I am a coop gamer. And I think there are quite a lot of people like me in the arma community. You are right in saying that there are pvp gamers hiding out in the coop servers because they have nowhere else to go, but that doesn't mean that the community is actually being forced to play coop by some secret hardcore elite of coop fanatics. The fact of the matter is that a lot of the community likes coop.

As for my whole rant about seeing arma as the same as going to the movies, that was clearly stated to be my perspective, so I don't really expect you guys to have the same view (which you obviously don't).

I just think that some people might be a bit (and i probably going to regret saying this) spoiled, really. It's like you expect BIS to deliver a perfect system that you can be all jolly about from the beginning, and that just has never happened with any BIS product in the entire history of BIS products. So just quit the whining and the wishful thinking and the crying, because it's not going to change.

So here is the truth:

- You are a paying beta tester.

- You will have to wait for months and even years for a finished product.

- You will have to make your own content.

If you can't handle that then I am sorry, because it is not going to change (at least it hasn't for the last nine years).

Because BIS has consistently failed to provide a finished product to their customers despite it being advertised and sold as such, doesn't excuse that behavior in its continuance. So calling a person spoiled for expecting to receive what they are being told they are paying for is just stupid, it's how the world actually operates. I don't see it as a matter of liking the product overall, we all at some point have to try something to see if we like it or not, it is a matter of the product working as promised. I'll use the car analogy again. It's like buying a Ferrari except it only drives in reverse and having someone say, "Quit complaining, they will eventually fix it. In the mean time, I'm loving the hell out of driving backward and it looks and sounds awesome."

I'll be honest, this is becoming a trend in the gaming industry and before long we will be paying years in advance for sub par gaming experiences. Simply because as gamers we tolerate it and with these kinds of statements even support it. This has pretty much guaranteed I will never purchase a new game again, not from BIS or anyone else, if I do purchase them it will be from the bargain bin.

---------- Post added at 11:53 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:42 AM ----------

Almost forgot, in regard to the Coop servers, it is simply because they have imported missions from ArmA 1, so there isn't really a lot of work that went into it. The server lists are inundated with Domi and Evo maps, all of them poorly designed despite incorporating some handy scripts. We are seeing a few more PvP servers cropping up and I hope it continues to grow, simply for variety's sake. Coop can be loads of fun and I enjoy it but it also pales in comparison with competing against actual people that are unpredictable and assuming the mission is designed properly, cannot be exploited.

[xeno 230]

I'm quite happy that we have people like anfiach here.

Hope we will see your properly designed and made MP missions (PvP ?) soon :)

But it seems that it is more important to write post after post. It would be better to open the A2 editor, stick your nose into it, stop whining and actually make missions. BIS doesn't provide them.

Don't become desperate, it takes a long time to make missions, specially MP missions, that includes lots of testing and testing. One day after hundreds of hours you'll get there.

I personally will not release anything public anymore (ok, not completely true, one last release with different missions, even one PvP).

In my opinion it's not worth it, because of all those wiseacres here.

Btw, it takes countless hours to port an A1 mission over to A2.

Xeno

[haberman13 10]

@Xeno - I notice your name on a lot of maps that I play, please don't think the community doesn't appreciate, because we do. Your work in the ARMA series is amazing!

Unfortunately the Internet is full of people who complain constantly, and have no gratitude for what they do have. But the silent majority is here, enjoying every minute of your creations.

[galzohar 31]

Just because I don't like a mission, doesn't mean I don't appreciate the work and effort put into it.

[haberman13 10]

@galzohar I'm with you, I think Xeno was talking more about the over-the-top whiners and "kiddies"