Will it ever be fixed?

[dannyboyee82 10]

Ok, so here I am, roughly a week and half after buying ArmA 2 and I am still tweaking and visiting these forums to find out what is the matter with my game. If it isn't the poor frame rate, it's the crash to desktop, if it isn't the crash to desktop it's the AI bugs, if it's not the AI bugs it's the mission bugs. What is next? Will it ever end? And most importantly, will it ever be fixed?

Now I know that some people are not having the same problems, I am sure that some people are not having any problems at all. Or if they have, they have been ironed out. But for the rest of us, who are having these problems on a daily basis I pose the question to the people responsible; why release a game that either isn't finished, or is just doomed to be un-playable?

I am a fair man, I can see that the game has amazing potential. The graphics are superb, the story flows and the missions are captivating, all leaving you wishing that you were at your PC playing it when at work. But, the sad fact is that when I am playing, all the goodness the game has to offer is completely overshadowed and spoiled by the many bugs it has.

I think I can speak for many a PC gamer here, the reason why we play PC games is because we love to fiddle with the them, push them to their limits, tweak them and mod them. But when it comes down to playing, we just want to play! We don't want to be thinking "Maybe I should turn the AA down", "Why is Boomerang driving up and down a country lane a kilometre away when it is meant to be aiding my assault on the Main Camp" or "What? Why has my desktop appeared? I was in a bush shooting at a russian just this second".

This post is a plead, it is not meant to be a stab at Bohemia. It is an honest plead to everyone involved in the development of ArmA 2, we love your game but could you please fix it!

[Bulldogs 10]

The plead is understood, but you may want to put it in the general or suggestion forums as it's not actually asking for help with troubleshooting (mods tend to either ignore or lock threads in troubleshooting that aren't related to troubleshooting)

[dannyboyee82 10]

Ok, will do.. cheers for the heads up.

Danny

[Planck 1]

Please don't cross-post, you could have asked a moderator to move your previous topic in Troubleshooting instead of starting a new topic here.

Never mind I will merge them anyway. :p

Planck

[kozzy420 21]

I have not had any of those issues. No crashing, no mission bugs that stop me from beating/playing the missions.

I have no tweaked or changed anything other then 1.4 update and made sure I have up to date drivers on my pc.

Hope you get yours working soon, because its an outstanding game, with a few AI issues, but no game breaking problems for me.

[bushlurker 46]

Its one of the most complex and demanding PC games ever devised - and we all have systems as diverse as fingerprints... inevitably that means issues - they WILL get fixed... any other company than BIS I'd hesitate to say that... but it might take a while to nail them all...

Read the troubleshooting section thoroughly - look for reported issues with your hardware, or problems that sound like yours, and check what other people reporting the issue are using...

You'll find a couple of threads with performance tweaks too - check them out too...

If you DON'T find a thread with your exact issue - and remember, you may have more than one problem going on - try to isolate them - then make a thread of your own in troubleshooting... detail the issue clearly, and include full specs and relevant info... you WILL get a response...

B

[Aelin 10]

danny i understand your rage,it remembers me the first impact i had with arma 2 but it IS amazing already

[jw custom 56]

....upgrade your computer or play a game it can handle :eek:

[grub 10]

You obviously didn't play OpF? ;) It'll take a while to nail all the bugs as said previously. Or it could be your rig. What are your specs?

[dannyboyee82 10]

Yeah, it is an amazing game.. I can see that. I wouldn't bother with it otherwise, I just want to get it running smoothly. To be honest the biggest down side to the game for me is the AI bugs. Anyway, my specs are..

XP 32bit

E8400 @ 3.6

4gb Corsair Dominator

8800GTX

ASUS P5Q Pro

The only weak link in the chain is the 8800GTX, but up until this game i hadn't even considered upgrading it. The 8800GTX is an amazing card, let me tell you! I can still run any game maxed out apart from ArmA 2 and Empire TW. So, in light of the new ATI 5850/70 release, I may splash out on one of those beauties. With the release of Windows 7 around the corner, I intend on making a dual boot.. using Windows 7 64bit and investing in another 4gb or Corsair Dominator RAM. Should be a pretty sweet system then.

[bushlurker 46]

Starting to get a little specialised now for a "general enquiry" thread, but...

Your system IS fairly badass - you should be able to get pretty decent performance...

I never thought I'd see the day, coz they WERE such good cards but, yup - your 8800GTX probably IS your weakest link...

I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry to upgrade... Once BIS nail the majority of the gamebreaking bugs and annoying stuff like misdetected VideoRAM they WILL move on to performance related patches - and we'll all be pleasantly surprised but, if you have the cash... there's shiney new Nvidias coming soon!

PS - Unless you do a lot of graphics intensive work, 3D modelling and the like, I wouldn't worry too much about another 4GB of RAM - you'll be hard pushed to find a program that actually uses it all, unless you work in the aforementioned fields... Arma 2 is deeply unlikely to ever use more than about 2GB... add the extra cash to your G card budget!

B

[dannyboyee82 10]

Yeah, I agree.. the 8gb of RAM does sound a tad excessive for gaming but I do work with photography and of course use Photoshop, so it's not such a pointless upgrade. The price of RAM these days is so good that it doesn't really make too much of an impact.

I think what I'll do is shelve ArmA 2 for a month or so, I'll return to it when some of the bugs have been ironed out and I have a new GPU. I have plenty of other games to play with until then, NFS Shift is my latest install.. I think that will keep me entertained for now!

Cheers for the replies everybody, see you in a while.. if I can keep away from it that is! Easier said than done! Take it easy.

[Aelin 10]

hmmm i got an 8800 gt and my sp runs fast even with many ai in chernogorsk and at high res and details ....i guess it s your cpu the matter,just switch to quad i suggest.

[grub 10]

That's probably your best shot apart from that you should be sweet.

I too had to have a major upgrade but well worth it.

[dannyboyee82 10]

Why would I switch to a quad? Find me a game that uses all four cores and I will buy a quad, but for now I'll stick with my overclocked E8400 ta!

The processor is not the problem, it is the graphics card.. as somebody else pointed out in the thread, there is an endless amount of possible set ups and they all work differently. I am happy that yours works for you. However, I doubt you are getting a fps of 40+ (playable fps to me, ideally I'd like it double that). I do get a fps of 25-30 average with decent settings. But, as I said, personally that isn't playable.

That is beside the point though, the game itself is the major drawback for me, not the tweaking of graphic settings. The AI bugs I have experienced have just made it un-playable. I am aware that some people have not experienced these bugs, but to the people that have.. c'mon! You can't tell me that you aren't a little more than a bit disappointed? I am going to wait until they have it fixed and come back to the game then.

We have a load of next gen games about to be released over the coming year or so, I can't wait to see the rewards of DirectX 11. Although I know older video cards will support the main features of DX 11, at the price that the ATI 5850/5870 are retailing at (£200-300).. if I'm going to upgrade I may as well get one of those!

[jw custom 56]

The processor is not the problem, it is the graphics card.

ArmA 2 is a CPU hog so it's not just the GPU :)

[kklownboy 43]

it depeneds on your resolution and IQ pain if you need a better GPU.

The game likes 3.6ghz cpus , loves 3.8cpus and will have a baby with anything over 4ghz and quad...

[bushlurker 46]

He's using an E8400 @ 3.6!... and a 8800GTX

Now personally that beats me on both counts and I'd consider his rig an Upgrade :D , but if it were me and I defo WAS gonna upgrade I'd be looking at Graphics Cards first...

B

[kklownboy 43]

He's using an E8400 @ 3.6!... and a 8800GTX

Now personally that beats me on both counts and I'd consider his rig an Upgrade :D , but if it were me and I defo WAS gonna upgrade I'd be looking at Graphics Cards first...

B

yes a GPU forsure, but thats me. To upgrade a CPU he needs a new MB RAM ect, unless he goes for a 9750 or whatever a OLD quad is.

[dannyboyee82 10]

That is my point exactly, to make a CPU upgrade worth my while I would need a new system altogether. A socket 1366 Mobo, DDR3 RAM and of course an i7. Do I have that kind of money? No! Nor do I have the money for a Core 2/Quad Extreme CPU. But more importantly, do I need that kind of rig? No!

So, from a frugal point of view.. a new GPU is the only way of squeezing the most out of my current set up. The new HD5870 or 5850 is looking more and more tempting, looking at a few benchmark tests from around the net and from MicroMart, it blows its competition out of the water.. for a reasonable price too.

Do NVIDIA have a new card up their sleeve? Probably, but can they offer it at such an affordable price? I doubt it. We will see, but I think AMD finally have their headstart in the GPU market.

[Heatseeker 0]

Im sorry but the steep requirements arent justified if you compare A2 with Armed Assault. A 4.0 dual/quad?? What for?

The a.i. is the same, it just uses better pathfinding and cover. Same graphics, same physics, same hitpoint damage system, same everything.

A2 runs bad because its poorly optimised/developed, same reason there is no scalability whatsoever.

The simulation of trees and houses makes A2 run bad, wich is ridiculous.

The game requires the best graphics card/CPU out there for no reason.

[kklownboy 43]

Im sorry but the steep requirements arent justified if you compare A2 with Armed Assault. A 4.0 dual/quad?? What for?

The a.i. is the same, it just uses better pathfinding and cover. Same graphics, same physics, same hitpoint damage system, same everything.

A2 runs bad because its poorly optimised/developed, same reason there is no scalability whatsoever.

The simulation of trees and houses makes A2 run bad, wich is ridiculous.

The game requires the best graphics card/CPU out there for no reason.

well whatever you think of the lack of "optimization" a 4.cpu and a Quadfire/TriSLi setup will play faster and with more IQ. And if they do increase performance, well its just that much more... In my rig default 3.2, i get (X)fps, at 4.0 i get (X+15fps)fps. And i would say the graphics are night and day difference, A2 to A1... to think otherwise means you have a 6600gs and some amd 1.8ghz cpu... you cant tell... I think in allot of spots and areas are better looking than "default" Crysis, and its a huge map with huge VD....

[dannyboyee82 10]

Isn't it annoying that they release a game that only a small percentage of people can play "the way it's meant to be played"? I'm sure that they will optimise the game in due course, but that raises my point of why release an incomplete game?

I have not played Armed Assault, so I cannot compare the two. But after playing ArmA 2 I am more than a bit disappointed with the game.

Time will only show if they will/can fix it, but until then I am playing games that I can rely on.

[Flash Thunder 10]

Hopefully Arma 2 will be fixed faster than Armed Assault....

[Heatseeker 0]

well whatever you think of the lack of "optimization" a 4.cpu and a Quadfire/TriSLi setup will play faster and with more IQ. And if they do increase performance, well its just that much more... In my rig default 3.2, i get (X)fps, at 4.0 i get (X+15fps)fps. And i would say the graphics are night and day difference, A2 to A1... to think otherwise means you have a 6600gs and some amd 1.8ghz cpu... you cant tell... I think in allot of spots and areas are better looking than "default" Crysis, and its a huge map with huge VD....

I can tell... that A2 looks decent with 150% 3D resolution but so do most other games if you can play them at high HD resolutions .. if you know a thing or two about games there really isnt a huge technical diference in graphics betwean the 2 games.

The lighting and shadows look the same, the shadder detail is higher in A2 and theres the annoying bloom and blur, everything else is just artwork.

The huge map with huge view distance is a bad excuse, Armed Assault too has a huge map and a huge view distance but it actually had better draw distance for world objects, larger urban environments and more complex topography.

I didnt expect A2 to become a benchmark that stresses hardware for no apparent reason but its certainly not the game that will make me upgrade my old 8800 gtx, E6600 and 4 GB of ram.

I hope Arrowhead will either justify steep system requirements with worthy features or be well optimised, scalable and a decent production at last.