Why is this game not more popular?

[daraofp 10]

The funniest thing I've found is that when you read these other game forums for far more arcadey run-'n'-gun type FPS's, the issues that those guys bitch and moan about are never a problem in Arma2

you are right about that...I just stoped playing COD 4 online and uninstalled it because every time i play it with my friends and go to TEAM SPEAK all i hear is bitching and moaning "god d...t"," mother f....r","that sone of a b....h","why wont you die mother f....r" and so on!!!:angryfire:

And recentley two of my friends got angy at each other in that game like little children and did not speek for about 1 month:aa:

80% of those guys dont know how to play thats why they play arcade games they just now how to charge the enemy like in the ww1 tactics, no flanking or any thing else!!!

COD 4 is not that challenging and is a little boring to me after a while (bullets go trough 5 walls and have no time travel so shooting with sniper is a walk trough the park and you can kill a guy with a pistol at 150 yards while jumping around!!!

Here are 2 video i posted on youtube of my playing COD4 and kicking they're ass with a frickin shotgun and a sniper!!!

Hmmm i wonder how long they would survive in OFP or arma---i think they would get lost somewere in the woods and die from hunger:rofl:

[Opticalsnare 12]

I dont play online anymore simply because its boring and theres still a lack of addon support. Its rather sad and depressing to modders like me and others who spend alot of their time on something for arma2 only to get told to basicly f*** off when it comes to playing arma2 online, pretty much all of my friends who i used to play online with dont play arma2 online and if they did its mostly themselfs hosting a server for like 2 or 3 people and nothing on the scale of public.

Its like arma2 was meant to be a large battlefield type game big scale and stuff and yet when it comes to the online gameplay or whatever it just basicly is one big fat fail & falls apart and becomes a complete and utter mess of not catering for the public at all, its far too restrictive when it comes to allowing differnt addons and differnt missions, why do we need 20-30 servers hosting the same shit all the time its like all they do is copy eachother, most of the time all i see is warfare + ace, warfare + ace, warfare + ace, warfare + ace some small servers try to hosting something else but you try and join and its basicly a vanilla server that dont allow any mods at all, so nobody plays on em and they are empty most of the time, and when a server is empty its hard to fill as of course theres such a small online base going on right now, you can sit on a empty server for a whole day and nobody will join. If i had the money spare id host my own goddam server that allows most of the used mods to be used and has a differnt rotation of games but i dont.

You can scream and shout and question about addons and the advantages or whatever but at the end of the day, addons & mods is what keeps games going longer and on the basis that arma2 online is basicly the opposite, then its more or less making the game life shorter, its basicly killing it. Because people are going elsewhere.

Edited February 3, 2010 by Opticalsnare

[Herbal Influence 10]

When I started playing ArmA 2 back in Summer 2009, the peak global online players in the evenings (US time) as shown on arma2.swec.se were around 1200. Now its 350. According to the X-fire stats, ArmA 2 has lost 25% from December to now alone.

That's not a good sign at all - many people seem to abandon the game (at least MP).

There you can see that x-fire stats aren't trustworthy in this regard.

I steadily watch the swec stats and they are at about a 400 during the day and reach more than 1000 each night I checked them. On weekends they grow up to 1500-1760 as far as I remember.

Now at 17:00 European Time it shows:

Players Online: 521

Servers Online: 696

EDIT:

Now at 22:50 European Time it shows:

Players Online: 1231

Servers Online: 710

Edited February 3, 2010 by Herbal Influence

[whisper 0]

I dont play online anymore simply because its boring and theres still a lack of addon support. Its rather sad and depressing to modders like me and others who spend alot of their time on something for arma2 only to get told to basicly f*** off when it comes to playing arma2 online, pretty much all of my friends who i used to play online with dont play arma2 online and if they did its mostly themselfs hosting a server for like 2 or 3 people and nothing on the scale of public.

True that, the lack of addon auto-download is a huge drawback

[DevilBass 0]

Not popular, probably, because the game is not yet stable, have too much bug, and they engine is not fixed, actualy much peoples play arma 1 again, because have not a huge group of peoples have the computer to play arma 2, probably need a couple of patch again to fix all the issue and stability problem.

When all be fixed, peoples will come back again, for me, arma 2 is the real Arma 1 suposed to be! but very unstable.

[Herbal Influence 10]

Not popular, probably, because the game is not yet stable, have too much bug, and they engine is not fixed, actualy much peoples play arma 1 again, because have not a huge group of peoples have the computer to play arma 2, probably need a couple of patch again to fix all the issue and stability problem.

When all be fixed, peoples will come back again, for me, arma 2 is the real Arma 1 suposed to be! but very unstable.

Well, it's quite a long time ago 'stability issues' with Arma2 have been reported.

Since 1.05 everythings more than fine to most of the people I know.

@whisper:

Has there been another auto-addon possiblity than this very third-party-program which name I can't remember for OFP?

Maybe for Armed Assault - I didn't do that often enough ... it seems.

Edited February 3, 2010 by Herbal Influence

[qwertz 10]

There you can see that x-fire stats aren't trustworthy in this regard.

I steadily watch the swec stats and they are at about a 400 during the day and reach more than 1000 each night I checked them. On weekends they grow up to 1500-1760 as far as I remember.

Now at 17:00 European Time it shows:

Players Online: 521

Servers Online: 696

That's Europe. In the US, the evenings are now around 350 players during the week according to swec, down from over 1200 in summer 2009.:(

[Slyder73 10]

I think the oft-mentioned marketting, but also the near complete lack of any good dedicated PvP servers.

Many working adults like myself have that hour or so in the evening or a few hours on a weekend mainly to play. I'm looking for exactly what Arma2 has to offer and love when I find it once in a rare while.

I'm looking for playing with and against real people, no AI, no matter how good folks say the AI is, it is not a real thinking person.

I think another reason that discourages players from making servers a regular stop is the lack of servers using the ingame voice. Too many use VENT or TS, which is another side program and a hassle, also no easy way to go back and forth between squads, private local chat etc....the game voice is great, it's not used and that turns at least me off. I already have VENT open and chat with my buddy who I play with, we need ingame voice to communicate with team and typing...well we all know that most typing chat goes unnoticed.

If there was just ONE PvP server out there that had proper voice on, and had squad loadouts and icons on (as opposed to incommunicable servers with nothing but riflemen who all have some sort of missle), it would develop a strong and repeat playerbase very fast. Especially if it didn't require the extra hassle of finding a clan website, getting on there, finding passwords, getting permission to play etc.

Thats why I still stick to Darkest Hour, not because Arma2 is too arcadey, but because there are no good PvP servers that encourage communication and teamwork in a realistic way.

[wamingo 1]

When all be fixed, peoples will come back again

No, I don't think they will. Well a few might, but they won't make any real impact. Not without another product. First impressions are everything you know. The only thing that can revive a franchise is the next product and the publicity created with it.

...or a mod of counterstrike-like proportions...

I think the reasons why people quit arma are really much simpler:

A. They weren't actually as interested in the game in the first place.

B. They ran out of content and got bored.

Arma features no addictive achievements systems to keep people coming back. And the mods tend to add a lot of stuff, but little or no content. The content (ie missions) that is released takes effort and knowledge to install and use and there is no guarantee of quality... And it's virtually all mediocre quality.

People may watch user made rubbish on youtube all day long, but only as long as there's no effort required.

The (public) multiplayer population is small for several reasons besides the above: hard, slow, high fear of death (eg long wait and travel times), mod hell, hacker hell, non-standardization, barely any official content, demands teamplay to be enjoyable while rewarding soloing, unremarkable content, and stuff like that.

So if you want the player numbers to grow you need to look at the bigger picture and realise that bugs is but a small part of it.

There are many things that I would suggest are key to success, but they could pretty much all be summed up into these three words: Polish, polish, polish. The impressive bits are in the details. BIS please take notes ;)

[galzohar 31]

The main problem with in-game chat is that for many people it's just impossible (or very hard) to understand what people are saying on it. So until BIS improve it, there is no real other choice than using 3rd-party voice chat.

Probably the main reason for the lack of PvP servers is the lack of PvP missions that actually work. To make a good PvP game you need people who actually know how to make it with a massive amount of players testing them, giving feedback, playing the updated version and repeating the process. Right now even the biggest PvP communities IMO don't have enough players to get the testing needed for a proper PvP mission.

And then you have a huge difference in opinions of players on what is good PvP and what is bad PvP so even amongst those that prefer PvP, most will not play most types of PvP missions.

To top it all off, the stuff that do get played require a rather high minimum amount of players to get the game going, so if your server isn't constantly populated and well-known by players who like to play the missions it's running then it's going to stay empty. Especially when searching by game mode is not possible if the server doesn't already have players playing it.

[bangtail 0]

No, I don't think they will. Well a few might, but they won't make any real impact. Not without another product. First impressions are everything you know. The only thing that can revive a franchise is the next product and the publicity created with it.

...or a mod of counterstrike-like proportions...

I think the reasons why people quit arma are really much simpler:

A. They weren't actually as interested in the game in the first place.

B. They ran out of content and got bored.

Arma features no addictive achievements systems to keep people coming back. And the mods tend to add a lot of stuff, but little or no content. The content (ie missions) that is released takes effort and knowledge to install and use and there is no guarantee of quality... And it's virtually all mediocre quality.

People may watch user made rubbish on youtube all day long, but only as long as there's no effort required.

The (public) multiplayer population is small for several reasons besides the above: hard, slow, high fear of death (eg long wait and travel times), mod hell, hacker hell, non-standardization, barely any official content, demands teamplay to be enjoyable while rewarding soloing, unremarkable content, and stuff like that.

So if you want the player numbers to grow you need to look at the bigger picture and realise that bugs is but a small part of it.

There are many things that I would suggest are key to success, but they could pretty much all be summed up into these three words: Polish, polish, polish. The impressive bits are in the details. BIS please take notes ;)

No thanks.

All your "enhancements" will do nothing but attract exactly the kind of player that we DO NOT want here.

Go play BC2 as that sounds like EXACTLY the experience you are looking for.

[galzohar 31]

While I disagree that "ran out of content" is a reason, it's not very far from the truth. You have practically no content coming with the game - all of it needs to be downloaded, and when you download something most chances are you're going to get your hands on something very low quality, because let's face it - most of the stuff random people make and publish are low quality. Good quality stuff need to actually get tested and modified repeatedly until they are worthy of releasing - which just isn't realistically possible for most mission makers. Even if you get someone to play your mission most likely they will not play it more than once. Hardly anywhere near the amount of testing you need to actually get it to the quality level needed to make it worth releasing. So people just release things to the best of their ability, which in most cases turns out into not-so-great at best.

[bangtail 0]

While I disagree that "ran out of content" is a reason, it's not very far from the truth. You have practically no content coming with the game - all of it needs to be downloaded, and when you download something most chances are you're going to get your hands on something very low quality, because let's face it - most of the stuff random people make and publish are low quality. Good quality stuff need to actually get tested and modified repeatedly until they are worthy of releasing - which just isn't realistically possible for most mission makers. Even if you get someone to play your mission most likely they will not play it more than once. Hardly anywhere near the amount of testing you need to actually get it to the quality level needed to make it worth releasing. So people just release things to the best of their ability, which in most cases turns out into not-so-great at best.

Absolutely not true. There is sub standard content but equally, there is very good content as well.

That's the type of game it is and if you don't like it, I'd suggest BC2 or one of the many other "cookie cutter" shooters that are likely to feature "quality" DLC etc.

Anyone who has done more than a minute's research into OFP/ArmA knows what to expect.

The community is what makes the game great.

You have to be aware that many of the good missions etc are locked away on private servers because we simply don't want to play with strangers. I have played with the same group for years and I've tested certain missions for over 6 months. Sadly, we will never share them or open the server to the public. I've done it before and it never works out. I had one guy try to claim that one of my missions was his several years ago (after he downloaded and altered the pbo from my server).

Edited February 3, 2010 by BangTail

[Flash Thunder 10]

I dont play online anymore simply because its boring and theres still a lack of addon support. Its rather sad and depressing to modders like me and others who spend alot of their time on something for arma2 only to get told to basicly f*** off when it comes to playing arma2 online, pretty much all of my friends who i used to play online with dont play arma2 online and if they did its mostly themselfs hosting a server for like 2 or 3 people and nothing on the scale of public.

Its like arma2 was meant to be a large battlefield type game big scale and stuff and yet when it comes to the online gameplay or whatever it just basicly is one big fat fail & falls apart and becomes a complete and utter mess of not catering for the public at all, its far too restrictive when it comes to allowing differnt addons and differnt missions, why do we need 20-30 servers hosting the same shit all the time its like all they do is copy eachother, most of the time all i see is warfare + ace, warfare + ace, warfare + ace, warfare + ace some small servers try to hosting something else but you try and join and its basicly a vanilla server that dont allow any mods at all, so nobody plays on em and they are empty most of the time, and when a server is empty its hard to fill as of course theres such a small online base going on right now, you can sit on a empty server for a whole day and nobody will join. If i had the money spare id host my own goddam server that allows most of the used mods to be used and has a differnt rotation of games but i dont.

You can scream and shout and question about addons and the advantages or whatever but at the end of the day, addons & mods is what keeps games going longer and on the basis that arma2 online is basicly the opposite, then its more or less making the game life shorter, its basicly killing it. Because people are going elsewhere.

200% agree with you OS. :)

One of the reasons why I dont even touch PVP, nobody uses mods, such a damn shame although my Clan UnitedGamingFederation is going to host a server soon, supporting mods, Ill tell my coleaders to switch up the gametypes too will be the only server to publicly do so. :D

[qwertz 10]

200% agree with you OS. :)

One of the reasons why I dont even touch PVP, nobody uses mods, such a damn shame although my Clan UnitedGamingFederation is going to host a server soon, supporting mods, Ill tell my coleaders to switch up the gametypes too will be the only server to publicly do so. :D

We do allow mods on the server (ArmAcalypse). Only 2 restrictions apply:

1) It has to have a BIKEY signature, and that it is published on Armaholic or other reputable sites (read: quality check & hacker control)

2) It should not grossly go against fairness, i.e. change the power of weapons etc.

Currently, we allow:

- CSM2 modular 1.03

- D3 WeaponFX 1.1

- HiFi Weapons BETA 1.01

- HiFi A-10 & HiFi Weapon Systems 1.3

- RH heli sounds 1.02

- TRSM Tracked Vehicles Sounds 1.1

- TRSM RotaryWing Sounds 1.0

- TRSM Fixed Wing Sounds 1.0

- TRSM Wheeled Vehicles Sounds 1.0

- VopSound 2.1

- 642 faces unlocked 1.0

- 80 Custom Faces 1.1 (Rocco)

- LandTex_v1.0

- Night lighting effects 1.0

- WarFX Particles 1.3

- WarFX Tracers 1.3

- Community Base addons 0.3.0

- German to English language patcher 1.03

Whenever someone asks online for another mod to be allowed, we check the two criteria above and then add it.

I don't think that the lack of mod support is really the main show stopper. Instead:

Too many servers for too few players, too many (required) mods, too many "behind closed doors" players (mind you, before someone joins a clan, he must have had the change to get used to and like the game).

This scares the few newcomers away. Any game needs a constant stream of newbies to compensate for the churn rate in the long run, or the franchise will disappear eventually because last time I checked, games are still developed to generate revenue.

Having said that, I am still happy that we have enough players on our server to have a meaningful PvP experience in the evenings. But while playing 15-vs-15 is nice, playing large scale 30-vs-30 (or more) is what what would unleash the full potential of ArmA 2 PvP.

And quite frankly, numbers are not going up, so it is likely only a question of time until PvP disappears.

There are a handful of European/Russian PvP servers that reach these numbers, but for us US folks that does not help much.

[wamingo 1]

All your "enhancements" will do nothing but attract exactly the kind of player that we DO NOT want here.

Absolutely not true. There is sub standard content but equally, there is very good content as well.

You have to be aware that many of the good missions etc are locked away on private servers because we simply don't want to play with strangers. I have played with the same group for years and I've tested certain missions for over 6 months. Sadly, we will never share them or open the server to the public. I've done it before and it never works out. I had one guy try to claim that one of my missions was his several years ago (after he downloaded and altered the pbo from my server).

So am I getting you right that you want to avoid, you know, "that kind of player", but you play exclusively on a private server?

And that there ARE great missions, they're just not available because you don't want to share?

Please tell me I got you wrong, because otherwise I'm not sure I can take you completely seriously.

But hey, if it's coop, I'd love to play your missions regardlessly.

While I disagree that "ran out of content" is a reason

It is a reason. And yes there especially many interesting SP missions and even campaigns and such.. but that doesn't change the fact that you can play through all of that in under a month or 2. And most players don't bother with unofficial stuff.

Edited February 4, 2010 by wamingo
avoiding double post obviously

[bangtail 0]

So am I getting you right that you want to avoid, you know, "that kind of player", but you play exclusively on a private server?

And that there ARE great missions, they're just not available because you don't want to share?

Please tell me I got you wrong, because otherwise I'm not sure I can take you completely seriously.

But hey, if it's coop, I'd love to play your missions regardlessly.

It is a reason. And yes there especially many interesting SP missions and even campaigns and such.. but that doesn't change the fact that you can play through all of that in under a month or 2. And most players don't bother with unofficial stuff.

It's not that I "don't want to share". Years of experience have taught us (the little group that I play with) that letting "that kind of player" onto our server is always a negative experience.

The sad fact is that whether you "take me seriously" or not, many people in this community move in their own small circles.

Cheers

Edited February 4, 2010 by BangTail

[Alex Scorpion Chambers 10]

As many have stated here ARMA2 is simulated military operations, I hesitate to call it a game its much more that that. Now that being said, the reason its not so popular is because it is not a fast paced, rush in and start killing with out rhyme or reason Arcade Game! Simple as that! A large majority of online gamers are young immature thrill seekers or casual players that are bored easily. ARMA is for those of us who want to get some idea of what real military actions are like, or simply want to challenge them selves against a simulation that is some thing like real military OPs and that last more than 5 min.. We can nit pick the games engine, graphics, features, performance, untill we are blue in the face. The bottom line is ARMA2 is a great consumer Simulator. and this is coming from a noob who only got the game yesterday! Case Closed!!!

Edited February 4, 2010 by <82ndAB>Ferret
Needed to add a few things

[Avneet 10]

Man I am so excited to buy this game and the future expansion after reading posts of people talking about it. This is exactly what I love. Nice long military simulations. Do airsoft mil sims like once a month too with local teams. Just need Nvidia to release new cards and you will see me on everyday :D

[-Total- 0]

The short answer:

This was copied from another forum concerning Battlefield Bad Company 2:

Really, I thought this game would be ok, but the learning curve seems to be pretty damn high

Now if the guy is saying that about BFBC2, then what would he say about ArmA2?

ArmA2 was all over Steam, IGN, etc at release. It wasn't lack of advertising. It's the overall breadth of the game that overwhelms the average shoebox shooter player. They'll say things like "chunky movements", gamespeed too slow, etc etc It all boils down to the fact that OFP, ArmA, and ArmA2 make the players think.

It's a first person real time strategy game. Even in a death match server, it takes alot more thought than 99.9% of other death match games out there. It's too tactical for the average gamer.

Pat yoursevles on the back. You're not the average gamers.

[noubernou 77]

Yes, this game is real tactical and strategic realism. Its tactical realism is not a crutch for players like it is in tactical-realism played COD4/5 or other FPS games with user enforced rules. Its the real deal. A lot of people can not handle that, even coming from the COD4/5 tac-realism world.

[Opticalsnare 12]

But you seem to be missing the point that players numbers that are playing online are dropping quite rapidly and that the overall player base from old ArmA is alot lower.

This isnt because theres a difference in what games people wanna play if arma or whatever is tactical and differnt to others, theres always going to be differnt games the gameplay in A2 is still pretty much the same as before its just that the current way for playing online is broken and is causing a general lack of interest to alot of people overtime.

[JellBro 0]

Firstly i think this game is the best out there.

Why it's not more popular i can understand completely though:

an example:

Last online game i played i played for 30+ minutes, had not seen

a single enemy and was shot by friendlies and crashed with

choppers while riding in the back a couple of times. Choppers

left the aircraft carrier leaving people waiting for transport.

...and then my son needed attention. This game requires time

and that's okay , but if you're working and have a family the

time is limited. Usually i play about an hour, which for this game

is short.

Summary:

Online play can be frustrating and not rewarding,

experience too much of that and people are off

to something else.

To really enjoy this game you need:

+ a decent pc

+ time (patience)

+ people online working as a team

When the above come together these are the most rewarding games ever.

For the record, i played them all: OFP:CWC , RH, Resistance, Arma 1 , QG , Arma2

[whisper 0]

At last a sensible comment not resorting into portraying so called "ArmA 2 player" as far above the rest of online brainless pleb playing "games for kiddies" and showing A2 as the only game for real men.

Refreshing, I was starting to be worried about this community (and wonder less about game lack of popularity, when reading the comments .... )

[KeyCat 131]

To really enjoy this game you need:

+ a decent pc

+ time (patience)

+ people online working as a team

When the above come together these are the most rewarding games ever.

Spot on and I 100% agree but would like to change the last line to...

+ people online working as a team using voice coms

Just to clarify how important good communication is ;)

/KC