Patch 1.03 Satisfaction Survey

[niQ® 0]

Re-install game, do not apply patch 1.02, go straight to patch 1.03.

Planck

re-install the game from 1:01 to 1:03 no need 1:02?

ok I'll try

:) bye

[Sniperdoc 0]

I give great kudos to BI for working hard on fixing all those issues. Rome wasn't build in a day and ArmA II won't be fixed in that period either. Though every patch is a step closer and it should be appreciated.

Keep up the good work and don't get discouraged by the spoiled little brats here.

Jesus, so many ungrateful f***s.

Sounds like you have really low expectations to so readily accept a POS release like this. Personally, I feel that about the only thing that was fixed in A2 was graphics. A1 was a complete let-down, and quite frankly I'm surprised I purchased A2 despite all its shortcomings.

Personally, I think people like you, praising developers, when they should have released a good product to begin with, are the root of all the problems in the Game Development industry. Everyone seems so-a-okay having games released in a broken state as almost a de facto standard. It's a bunch of horsesh*t and it needs to stop.

Everyone uses the excuse, "Well you can't test for every hardware configuration". Well then Mr(s). I-Like-Broken-Software, how about a public beta to make sure your stuff works on release? Not that friggin' hard!

Developers are hard up for cash and are willing to sell you crap cause you all (including me) feed into the bulls**t marketing.

The patch apparently didn't fix the graphic glitches that some are still experiencing with 64-bit systems that have 8GB of memory. The same problem was evident in Arma 1 and it's still evident in Arma 2. The same LOD issues that were evident in A1 are STILL evident in A2... So, it's amazing to me that people praise the hell out of BIS for patching something that still isn't working the way it should have right from the start.

They need to go out of business, those are my thoughts. They took advantage of consumers by releasing a product before it was properly tested. That's the end of that.

Edited August 31, 2009 by Sniperdoc

[Bulldogs 10]

Simple solution, if you don't like the developer, don't buy the product.

I bought arma 2 expecting to be able to create my own missions and play them coop. I was a little dissapointed to find all the bugs but fortunately for me, the game serves the purpose I bought it for, I just hope it will one day serve everyones purpose.

[madine75 0]

Sounds like you have really low expectations to so readily accept a POS release like this. Personally, I feel that about the only thing that was fixed in A2 was graphics. A1 was a complete let-down, and quite frankly I'm surprised I purchased A2 despite all its shortcomings.

Personally, I think people like you, praising developers, when they should have released a good product to begin with, are the root of all the problems in the Game Development industry. Everyone seems so-a-okay having games released in a broken state as almost a de facto standard. It's a bunch of horsesh*t and it needs to stop.

Except in this case, it is fact that the German publisher demanded that BIS release it before it was ready. As a result of the German release, BIS were then forced in to releasing worldwide, again before the product was finished. EA have released a far larger number of buggy games and been pasted for it.

Everyone uses the excuse, "Well you can't test for every hardware configuration". Well then Mr(s). I-Like-Broken-Software, how about a public beta to make sure your stuff works on release? Not that friggin' hard!

I'm one of those silent people out there who has no serious issues with Arma2. MY DVD installed V1.1 and I started playing the campaign with that, only the first two missions though. I then installed the v1.4 patch and continued through to the end. I've had/have 2 issues:

1) Some graphics corruption caused by my graphics card being OCed too far.

2) The rapid fire related audio bug. IT annoying, but hardly a showstopper.

Developers are hard up for cash and are willing to sell you crap cause you all (including me) feed into the bulls**t marketing.

The patch apparently didn't fix the graphic glitches that some are still experiencing with 64-bit systems that have 8GB of memory. The same problem was evident in Arma 1 and it's still evident in Arma 2. The same LOD issues that were evident in A1 are STILL evident in A2... So, it's amazing to me that people praise the hell out of BIS for patching something that still isn't working the way it should have right from the start.

They need to go out of business, those are my thoughts. They took advantage of consumers by releasing a product before it was properly tested. That's the end of that.

The marketing seems true to me.. There does seem to be some odd issues with higher end setups, which don't seem to effect those like me on more modest gear. I've got an E5200 @ 3.7Ghz, 2Gb DDR2800, 512Mb 4850 and it's on a G41-based mATX board, so it's not flash.

As I mentioned earlier, BIS had it's hand forced as far as release goes, so I think the fact that they are working hard to fix the issues is commendable. AS far as wishing them out of business goes, who would make games of this type is BIS is gone? No-one, that's who. And we the players end up the losers.. Great solution.

Having purchased both OFP and ArmA1, I was prepared for some nastiness when I installed Arma2, but was pleasantly surprised by how well everything worked for me. I'm now wrestling with a few issues in Visitor3, but they are unrelated to Arma2.

[Bulldogs 10]

Except in this case, it is fact that the German publisher demanded that BIS release it before it was ready.

Unfortunately this is the case for the entire games industry. The publisher always forces the developers to push the game out before it's ready. This forces the games to be released early and more often than not they come out buggy, but it is done because the industry does it as a standard and if one publisher doesn't push their game out early then the tech is old by the time it comes out (not to mention the christmas rush).

There have been a few cases where the publisher gave leniancy. These being Duke Nukem Forever (and now the publisher is suing since the game was canceled), Stalker (after 1 year after it was meant to be released the publisher forced the original developers to hand over the code, strip most of the features they were working on and release as is), there has also been several other cases and none of them end well.

In a perfect world we'd all love a game to be released promptly without any problems, but it's never going to happen unfortunately as the alternative is even worse, but the end result is that we end up with buggy games being released, which is bad for everyone since it shows in the reviews and no amount of patches can take back those initial reviews.

[Zombie_Mod 0]

Unfortunately this is the case for the entire games industry. The publisher always forces the developers to push the game out before it's ready. This forces the games to be released early and more often than not they come out buggy, but it is done because the industry does it as a standard and if one publisher doesn't push their game out early then the tech is old by the time it comes out (not to mention the christmas rush).

I love how people are blaming the publisher here... oh aye, it's the publisher's fault the game's a bugged mess eh? No, it's not the publisher's fault - it's the developers/project manager for not prioritising their work properly.

If the release date is known in advance and it's too short for you, then you cut your cloth accordingly. BIS could easily have taken some parts of Arma2 out and given us something smaller, yet more functional.

I would have been quite happy to never have had the "armory" section of Arma2 if that meant that the AI could drive and shoot properly. Tbh, throwing chickens over assault courses to save "my precious life" isn't what I bought the game for 2 months ago. I also would have been quite happy for this so-called "uber-campaign" to have been made smaller also.

Time to take your rose-tinted glasses off and stop blaming the publisher. You know your deadline, you deliver what you can in it. And if you fail to deliver then your project manager takes the heat, not the dev team, who usually bust their arse working 11 hour shifts up to release day. And yes, I am speaking from experience, albeit not from a games industry perspective.

Edit: 2 months I've had this game and the CD's gathering dust already! I keep checking for patches in vain... and as for the editor, well ... not changed much in 8 years :)

Edited September 6, 2009 by Zombie_Mod

[Flash Thunder 10]

It fixed a few annoyances, keep it up BIS.

Although right now I want the preformance of the engine to be better than anything.

[Bulldogs 10]

I love how people are blaming the publisher here... oh aye, it's the publisher's fault the game's a bugged mess eh? No, it's not the publisher's fault - it's the developers/project manager for not prioritising their work properly.

If the release date is known in advance and it's too short for you, then you cut your cloth accordingly. BIS could easily have taken some parts of Arma2 out and given us something smaller, yet more functional.

I would have been quite happy to never have had the "armory" section of Arma2 if that meant that the AI could drive and shoot properly. Tbh, throwing chickens over assault courses to save "my precious life" isn't what I bought the game for 2 months ago. I also would have been quite happy for this so-called "uber-campaign" to have been made smaller also.

Time to take your rose-tinted glasses off and stop blaming the publisher. You know your deadline, you deliver what you can in it. And if you fail to deliver then your project manager takes the heat, not the dev team, who usually bust their arse working 11 hour shifts up to release day. And yes, I am speaking from experience, albeit not from a games industry perspective.

Edit: 2 months I've had this game and the CD's gathering dust already! I keep checking for patches in vain... and as for the editor, well ... not changed much in 8 years :)

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying the developers are without blame, I'm just saying that they are often given unrealistic deadlines, or deadlines that seem realistic but the developers project management section made a miscalculation.

You've gotta remember that it's not always (and mostly not) a case of the developers looking at the game and saying "Hey, this game is completely buggy, but stuff it, let's add more features before fixing the bugs". In most cases it's a case of completing the game then being given a short amount of time to actually fully test the product before release, and especially with a game of this magnitutde, they don't have enough time to fully test it.

Of course, they could cut some things out to allow more time for testing, and many developers have done such in the past. Hence why Stalker didn't have the mass open world and radiant AI it was meant to have, hence why there was no co-op in Prototype. There's always an option to cut that stuff out, but I'm glad they don't. I love the epic scale of the campaign. I'm looking to venture across a mass area with dynamic objectives, I don't want another Crysis. I also love the armory. Quirky but fun.

There's a lot of issues with the game, and maybe it could have been done better with things cut from the game, but why should they. They had an aim with what they wanted in the game, and BIS is a company that develops the game the way they want it. I wouldn't goto a producer and say "Your movie is taking too long to develop, cut out half the movie and release it as a 30 minute tv show instead".

[Zombie_Mod 0]

You do not wait until the end of the development cycle to test everything though! That's a common misconception.

When you develop software there's a process called unit testing where developers test their own code before moving to the next piece of work - that's par for the course in any software dev job. I wonder what the AI driving developer was thinking?!! He should have gone to specsavers!!! ;-)

There's also weekly/fortnightly builds and peer reviews of code, play-testing and so on, alpha (internal) builds on a 3 monthly cycle ... plenty of continuous QA before the final release to test.

You can make excuses for BIS all you like but - nah, there isn't any. Especially since Flashpoint was released 8 years ago and IMHO Flashpoint Resistance 1.96 is in better shape (and more fun, may I add) than what we currently have.

Publisher blamed first, what next? Faulty electrical wiring? Poltergeists?

Regarding movies, I don't know about how movie studios work so I can't comment. I don't hear of Lions Gate Studios or Paramount pictures having fanbois defending their work religiously though.

[Bulldogs 10]

As I mentioned, I'm not defending BIS. I know they made mistakes, and released a buggy product, I just totally disagree that they should gut their game to reach the deadline.

BTW, is there any game on the market that's currently bug free?

[maddogx 13]

You can make excuses for BIS all you like but - nah, there isn't any. Especially since Flashpoint was released 8 years ago and IMHO Flashpoint Resistance 1.96 is in better shape (and more fun, may I add) than what we currently have.

That's a bit like saying Windows XP is in great shape now with service pack 3 and all the latest updates, so any new bugs Windows 7 has on release are completely inexcusable.

Judging by your posts, I somehow doubt you have much experience in project management. No offence, but how exactly were they supposed to remove core elements of the game in order to finish it faster? The main problems right now are with the renderer (performance, glitches), the sound engine and the AI. Your examples of "corners to cut" made absolutely no sense: the armory was already in Arma1 - I hardly think they spent very long updating it for Arma2. And the campaign was created by mission designers. You know, people who probably aren't working on core engine features in their spare time.

You know that different people at BIS are working on different parts of the game, right? You can't grab a couple of mission designers and 3D artists and expect them to help fix the rendering engine.

I think we can all agree that the game wasn't finished on release and is still in need of patching. I just don't see all this uninformed bitching is going to get the game fixed faster.

[Zombie_Mod 0]

That's a bit like saying Windows XP is in great shape now with service pack 3 and all the latest updates, so any new bugs Windows 7 has on release are completely inexcusable.

Judging by your posts, I somehow doubt you have much experience in project management. No offence, but how exactly were they supposed to remove core elements of the game in order to finish it faster? The main problems right now are with the renderer (performance, glitches), the sound engine and the AI. Your examples of "corners to cut" made absolutely no sense: the armory was already in Arma1 - I hardly think they spent very long updating it for Arma2. And the campaign was created by mission designers. You know, people who probably aren't working on core engine features in their spare time.

You know that different people at BIS are working on different parts of the game, right? You can't grab a couple of mission designers and 3D artists and expect them to help fix the rendering engine.

I think we can all agree that the game wasn't finished on release and is still in need of patching. I just don't see all this uninformed bitching is going to get the game fixed faster.

Much experience in project management? Well as it so happens I used to run a software dev team in the NHS, using DSDM principles, I still use MOSCOW rules nowadays etc... amongst other things, you can ask if you like. But you think what you want to think, mate. Do you work as a project manager? If not, then don't crow about anything you know squat about!

Remove core elements of the game to make it faster? Who's talking about core elements? Core elements is driving and shooting, the crux of the game. They don't work.

Non core elements - were you allowed to play as a duck or cow in Arma1? Did you get an assault course in Arma1? I don't remember them there. Did you get a dynamic mission generator in Arma1?

As for "uninformed bitching" I PAID for the f**king thing so if I want to bitch about it I will, alright? I don't need some gimp telling me to STFU just because he doesn't like his beloved game taking a panelling. I'm telling it how it is, if you don't like it kiss my hairy Scottish arse! Too many fanbois on here defending this game, it's time we knew what bugs are next up for fixing!

[-Snafu- 77]

After a couple weeks of 1.3 the campaign seems to be playable now, I have gone through most missions without a hitch so far (although the artillery bug in Manhattan is still there). However, there is still quite a bit to be done.

Edited September 7, 2009 by Snafu

[maddogx 13]

Remove core elements of the game to make it faster? Who's talking about core elements? Core elements is driving and shooting, the crux of the game. They don't work.

Non core elements - were you allowed to play as a duck or cow in Arma1? Did you get an assault course in Arma1? I don't remember them there. Did you get a dynamic mission generator in Arma1?

Driving and shooting don't work? Funny, I did lots of both just yesterday. In any case, do you think the people working on the oh so borked driving and shooting physics/controls somehow got sidetracked by modelling, texturing and animating a few cows and sheep? Or perhaps by designing an assault course? Oh, the curse of the multitalented game developers. There just ain't enough of 'em!

As for "uninformed bitching" I PAID for the f**king thing so if I want to bitch about it I will, alright?

No one can stop you (unfortunately), I was just pointing out the futility of it. From what I can see, many, if not most of your posts seem to be aimed purely at flinging poo at the game, BIS and all the "fanbois" who dare oppose your hallowed opinion. And of course you're correct and we're all wrong, because you're a project manager and you just know that the whole development of the game was fucked and it's not the publishers fault and you could've done a much better job and - oh yes, I can see it now, pigs are flying! At the end of the day you may be right on some points, but you're still an insufferable whiner.

I don't need some gimp telling me to STFU just because he doesn't like his beloved game taking a panelling. I'm telling it how it is, if you don't like it kiss my hairy Scottish arse! Too many fanbois on here defending this game, it's time we knew what bugs are next up for fixing!

Let me translate that into plain english:

I'm right, you're a fanboy and therefore wrong. So there!

:rolleyes:

As for being a project manager, no I'm not, at least not professionally. I've "worked" as a project manager with small teams in my free time, including game design I might add - but I'll go out on a limb here and assume you don't give a rats ass.

[Bulldogs 10]

Wait, what's wrong with the shooting?

[Planck 1]

This is a satisfaction SURVEY people, please keep any discussion on any particular area to a bare minimum.

Planck

[datter 0]

I for one am completely satisfied with this survey.

[thaFunkster 0]

Ok. Some bugs are still here for me:

I have never been able to complete basic training for various reasons, went back today, completed everything. Got to the MOUT, killed four or five guys, hunted around for about half an hour looking for any others, but I couldnt find them. But it was never completed.

Also, just had a go a the first scenario, it was all working fine, except at one point my leader went prone up against a wall and fence (he was in the corner).

Then he just sat there, for ages and ages, he couldnt see anything, so he wasnt calling. In the end I had to shoot him, at which point one of the others took command and all was well. Original leader got patched up, took command again and everything was fine from there (except that he now had to crawl for the whole mission!)

But overall framerates are better, everything feels better, my point is that the bugs are still there. Particularly in relation to objectives not being triggered.

[Rommel 2]

We are at patch 1.04, perhaps a new thread?

[^Th0mas^ 10]

We are at patch 1.04, perhaps a new thread?

Yeah, WTF? Havent 1.04 been out over one month at this point? I see moderators are still very active on the forums, so why the hell do we still need to answer if 1.03 is any good and not 1.04?