Why is this game not more popular?

[Defunkt 431]

What I've meant is that in a simulator that tries to be realistic the lack of proper physics is a huge flaw.

Have you stopped to consider what sort of computer you'd need to run a full physics simulation for all the objects in a battlefield several kilometres square? For 1500 AI? No really, did you think about it? What did you decide?

[Bulldogs 10]

Saying ArmA 2 is like OFP with mods is like saying that Modern Warfare 2 is COD1 with mods. Any which way, I'd love to have better physics in ArmA but unless another physics based hardware solution company rises up and merges with ATi, then it's unlikely to happen, at least not without forcing the limitations of other open world games (IE; Tether system)

[metalcraze 290]

Have you stopped to consider what sort of computer you'd need to run a full physics simulation for all the objects in a battlefield several kilometres square? For 1500 AI? No really, did you think about it? What did you decide?

I'd decide that you need to find a compromise. Making a physical model for buildings so undestroyable walls won't stand there is possible. If a console full of 5-6 years old technologies can do that (see RF3), why not something as powerful as a modern PC?

I'd rather see Bohemia trying to make a realism and gameplay better instead of seeing them release content packs with occassional updates to a graphic engine.

Saying ArmA 2 is like OFP with mods is like saying that Modern Warfare 2 is COD1 with mods.

That will explain why all CoDs are basically the same game with different models and textures

Edited May 5, 2010 by metalcraze

[*LK1* 10]

I'd decide that you need to find a compromise. Making a physical model for buildings so undestroyable walls won't stand there is possible. If a console full of 5-6 years old technologies can do that (see RF3), why not something as powerful as a modern PC?

I'd rather see Bohemia trying to make a realism and gameplay better instead of seeing them release content packs with occassional updates to a graphic engine.

That will explain why all CoDs are basically the same game with different models and textures

aiaiaiaiai...i'm preparing my popcorn :bounce3::bounce3:

[Scrub 0]

Don't you think it's time AA2 became something more than a game engine for the ACE team?

This I can totally agree upon. But what you are talking about (I believe) is polish. What BIS has done is staked out a very large, aggressive amount of environment, content, and AI. The volume and depth alone HAS to be a lot to contend with. They have been, and if you see the OA data, are, refining and adding sophistication to the interface that we use to work with this already sophisticated world.

Defunct: I feel ya man. I wish a dev would come on here and give us a talking point / fact tip we could copy, about how much processing power goes into one little function per unit. X*1500=@&$@

Metalcraze: The buildings were stated to take a long time to make destroyable, and you know the release issues BIS has had (just noticed a bunch of junk comes flying off destroyed sections, latest beta change? or ACE?). OA has destroyable/enterable buildings.

[metalcraze 290]

That's why I've called Operation Arrowhead promising. I have hopes for it with all those little details there. And yes polish is what this game needs too. It looks pretty silly when you place a bag barrier on the hill and half of it just hangs in the air or when your teammember tries to climb down from a rock that is just 1 meter in height and dies (pretty common on Utes when you are flanking along the coastline). And convoys. They were perfect in OFP and ArmA1 (let alone one of the better and more popular guests in coop missions), how could BIS break them so badly?

[Flash Thunder 10]

Defunct: I feel ya man. I wish a dev would come on here and give us a talking point / fact tip we could copy, about how much processing power goes into one little function per unit. X*1500=@&$@

I honestly would like to see what the RV Engine now can truely render.

I want to know why this engine seems so inefficient even when you have a 4670 or something equivilant.

I want to understand (semi) about how this engines rendering pipeline works, how the AI functions etc etc, AI tech demos.

Right now with what ive experienced the RV engine is severly lacking, Little physics, Im not talking full feldged physics simulation, but things like "Angular momentum, Trucks not flying 100 feet + when shot with a rocket launcher, better collision detection etc.

The engine as far as OFP times is still lacking heavily in animation, lighting and Artificial intelligence.

But like I said this is from what ive experienced, my thoughts is that BIS should add and improve to the engine more than worrying about modeling 150 vehicles and 80 weapons yada yada since the modding community could easily put out more content.

But please BIS I would like to see how the engine works, I like this kind of jargon and also see some AI tech demos.

Of Course RV engine also boasts one of the Best view distances around. :)

[Bulldogs 10]

If a console full of 5-6 years old technologies can do that (see RF3), why not something as powerful as a modern PC?

That's what I was mentioning by a limitation system. RF:G uses a loading system based on only loading the physics and graphics of the area you are in (basically 1.5-2 times your visual range). This is a great way to do it except for the multiplayer limitation. If you add another player and that player go's off to another section of the map then you'd need a computer twice as powerful in handling the physics calculations.

ArmA on the other hand has the entire map loaded all the time, hence why it works coop. Say there's 20 small battles going on around the map at one time. Add RF:G's level of physics to the game and you'd need a computer 20 times more powerful in physics capabilities than the system running RF:G.

I'd love there to be better physics in ArmA, but it's very difficult to impliment, especially since CPU's are straining under handling the AI calculations right now, add any level of physics and you're going to bring it all to a halt.

The alternate being physics based hardware solutions. Unfortunately the only current one is Physx as part of nVidia, and even that couldn't handle ArmA's full map covered in physics. Although the tech isn't that far off, it still requires implimentation into a 3rd party solution (like nVidia's CUDA), and ATi has no yet known links to any physics company.

[*LK1* 10]

there are a sort of subliminal messages which force people to play arcadish

games.and behind this project there is some mason :bounce3:

[Scrub 0]

Bulldogs, I think the real cost of Armas processing is the underlying logic infrastructure to handle the scale and quantity of features and modability..

[Wolfstriked 11]

Is OA basically a new map,some new vehicles etc.I am just wondering what its bringing to Arma?

[Inkompetent 0]

Is OA basically a new map,some new vehicles etc.I am just wondering what its bringing to Arma?

Why not ask this in like... the actual OA-thread at the top?

[Placebo 28]

Is OA basically a new map,some new vehicles etc.I am just wondering what its bringing to Arma?

If only there were some kind of FAQ about OA

[jw custom 56]

Is OA basically a new map,some new vehicles etc.I am just wondering what its bringing to Arma?

Yeah thats right, nothing more than that lol :rolleyes:

[Seitan 8]

Is OA basically a new map,some new vehicles etc.I am just wondering what its bringing to Arma?

Njaah. It's basically just another OFP. And we love it.

[Wolfstriked 11]

HEhe I get it! Now should I respond here about OA or the other thread?:confused:

[dr death jm 117]

i think this game is just like the old ofp , its going to take awile for it to be or get big..theres not enuf gamers/players scripting there own ctf/rts, typ maps everyone is still to much into cti.(6+hour games) witch i dont realy cear for but im here for the outcome not the moment. i think somone should go into the old ofp pbo's and find KaRRlioNs old maps rts/ctf ect...and make them new dont add to much more than whats there(you dont fix somthing that isnt broked) ...anyway im a little off topic....this game will be big its just going to take 2 or 3 years. and other games (call of duty,moh,aa wich ever ) will never be as good or as complicated fun, theres no thought to running around shooting people for points,wher arrma makes you plan and think befor you just go running down a street ...

[Sardaukar17 10]

Well I didn't read all 107 pages of this Thread but to answer the first post I wanted to put in my 2 cents

I believe it is the PVP aspect. It needs to be encouraged with as you said, Dedicated servers and a core set of precreated scenarios. You can only play verse the AI so many times before it all starts to feel like the same mission.

Once there is a core set of servers playing a core set of 10 or so maps all dedicated to Team vs Team scenarios.. I think this game will take off.

[oktane 0]

You tell em Zipper! :D

Seriously though i think Radical Ghost's idea was smart. Not auto-download of mods, but smart. Read his post here: http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1586814&postcount=20

We all know the ARMA online browser could be better as its pretty bad informative wise atm. We cant see the full server names sometimes, there is no info for used mods apart from the map/server name itself, you cant see all players etc etc. So Ghost's idea is nice with info that can be written by the server admins that tells all the info you need to know plus all the links written down to the mods used. No more need to search the sites for the mods and extra info that server admins want you to know before entering the server. A button to get this info window up would be great.

I am at like page 70 of this, I can't read any more been up too long (playing A2 mp of course, all night/morning)

My opinion is very simple, oh wait for the 500 bullet points in no particular order, see last paragraph for jist:

• Arma is a pretty hard to use, open ended simulator game, created at the dawn of the sandbox era.
  
• People are busy, especially in the US. This leads to impatience, frustration with an ever more complex life. Maybe we over here have a grass is greener work life kind of thing compared to say Europe. This could be totally wrong, it's based on a personal opinion.
  
• Most people have no insight to how game development works, or the very limited resources of an indie studio. They expect multi-million dollar budgets and the team, process, polish that comes with that. (as in manpower implied, not so much brains.. because we all know of many big budget turds) This is in contrast to the 'old days' of gaming, when the expectations were much lower and on a more human level, rather than the assembly line blockbuster machine we have now.
  
• They expect more and more, address our problems now, boycott this or that, selfish brat attitudes. It seems to get worse as life gets more complex. (or maybe I am just an old dude now? sigh) I try not to ask of things unless I have exhausted all possible resources I can think of.
  
• On the game developer side, the market is shrinking for PC games, and has been for quite a few years unfortunately. Dev's blame all kinds of things, piracy a big one, yadda, but I hope everyone can agree that the modern console is killing it. It just isn't profitable unless you already have a foothold with a brand or genre. People that used to maintain their gaming computers and game libraries have now settled on the reasonably high quality of console games and the luxuries that provides. (along with apparently settling with the negative aspects, such as 12yo's spamming racial slurs into your headset) I think it's bit of a cultural thing too, going with the whole complex life thing. People like simple, easy to use, even if the game being played isn't that simple itself.
  
• Consoles have a lot of 'social-integration' features and are based on a very well thought out and very well supported platform. (especially the XDK for the 360, PS3 sdk is a nightmare honestly) The delivery systems are superb. People want to connect, have fun, not learn complex systems(six updater, teamspeak, addons), deal with hardware and operating systems.. all of these things add up to kill the PC Gaming for other than a few niche footholds. (like MMO's, accessible + competitive + polished FPS's(TF2), and simulators-especially flight sims)
  
• Since Arma crosses a few genre boundaries, our possible target audience is decreased due to that modern console exodus.
  
• PC milsim market is niche for many reasons, and this seems to create a bit of pride and elitism, some for good, some for bad. Or maybe it's just the kind of person that this game attracts. Some people are put off by this. Others wonder what drives a person to be an evangelist of such things and discovers something wonderful.
  
• Dare I say OFP/Arma has always striven to be the very definition of 'feature-bloat' and 'scope creep', treating it in almost a non-negative way. (!) And even though those features are often buggy, some unfinished, and yet I still love them. They represent the imagination of the devs at BIS, and even the community of which they often give and take from. Aiming so high, their vision seemingly unfettered by milestones, scrum meetings and shareholder demands like most developers have to deal with.
  
• But certain things become a detriment to even the most patient of players... The addon system for example, we have people here saying it's easy, well it isn't for most folks. I don't know what you're smoking but give me some! I am a 'supporter', I help a lot of people with the problems that come with this game, often (much to my dismay) when I'm trying to play it.. but I can't help it. I don't want people to give up, to get fed up with it, because then they are gone from an already small pool...
  
• If you've been in the game industry, you are familiar with what is lovingly referred to as 'programmer art'. Arma seems to have what I'd call a 'programmer gui' (funny pic) You could go on and on about this but what it all boils down to is the end user experience. Specifically, I refer to a new player, unable to join servers with required addons, error boxes providing no meaningful info, barely usable yet commonly accessed interfaces (server list, mission select list (ffs, same as ofp's!)) Because of the indie nature however, the developers (and rightly so) instead devote their effort into more substantial gameplay improvements. But the problem is that all of these little things add up. And a new player doesn't care about improvements over the last version, because he didn't know about or have the last version. All he experiences if lucky are some awesome battles and a lot of usability issues. (even though he doesn't know anything about usability, ui design, etc.. he doesn't have to. He's a user and experiences the design failures firsthand, the game fails him in that aspect.)
  
• For some of the issues highlighted, I've made some CIT tickets for. This brings up another issue, the communities inability to agree on anything. Some people would rather have no solution at all if they disagree with a single thing. Take the addon auto-downloading issue here. People entirely miss the point and think that a 3rd party solution is best. Sure best for them, because people forget about the big picture. And they, being Arma power-users so to say, perhaps it is better for them to use Yoma's. But that doesn't help that possible future player I mentioned, who has no knowledge of these 3rd party systems. His first impression. Not to mention, that again, this time because of Yoma's limited resources, his updating app has resembled a submarine control panel for most of it's existence. Same goes for Six-Updater! (and no offense intended to either, I greatly admire and respect the people that contribute tirelessly to this community with more than forum posts) Back to that player, we as admins cannot even tell them to go here or there to get so and so addon pack, all they get is a generic error box 'you cannot play this mission, depends on xyz_cryptic_classname', wtf does that mean to them? To them it means this game sucks, it's half assed, which to me is frustrating because they may miss out on the real fun experience in game on that server. But it's those small things that add up. As public server/newbie friendlyadmins, we are stuck in this tug of war, player count vs content. When add content to make our regulars happy, we unintentionally destroy any chance of getting that less-informed player in to have fun. Only when a huge all-in-one pack comes out like ACE are we able to add that content, since again it's *easier* to manage. (then again maybe not, since Six Updater keeps breaking for people frequently) This extends across many elements of MP, required addons making 3rd party tools necessary, kick messages for custom files, deficiencies in the voip system leading to using 3rd party apps, the list goes on.
  
• People that think that the game should be some kind of secret indie hit, we don't need new people, we don't like those people, we don't want to attract those people.. well those people were all US at one point. Get your heads out of your asses and realize that having a few thousand more players is not going to dent your ego. There will still be niches of players that like one style of play(see TF2), servers that enforce certain gameplay rules(see TF2), everything we have now and love. There will just be more people, more excitement in large battles, more serious players you'd like to play with. If you don't open the door, nobody can get in, whether you like them or not. It's a chicken-egg scenario. Compare this to this, and think of what an awesome difference just a few thousand players could do to the scene.
  

I should mention that I am not a console gamer, I'm an A2 player. ;) If/when I play MP games, it's always been OFP/ArmA/A2 for the most part, cooping with a close friend since around 2002. But ironically I spend most of my time helping other people with their A2 problems or with my head in mission code. I own a console (360) only because I got one for free from work, my girlfriend likes to play it sometimes, but I could never get into it because I'm naturally a tinkerer. (code, wires, anything) I do not think A2 should be a console game, even if it's sales will forever suffer as a result. (I don't think it's plausable to consider the game scope working on a console and without community mods) I worked dev support inside the game industry for a measly 5 years (at a place that originally did PC games and transitioned to cross platform) but I learned a lot of interesting things about the trials those teams go through to make games. I defended PC gaming's merits to my similarly aged peers (I was a minority!) until I was faced with hard sales numbers and realized my misconceptions and narrow sightedness about the niche PC gaming market. I also felt there was a large disconnect between how BIS does things compared to the rest of the industry. As such, it almost feels as if A2 is not a game but something more worth while for me, a hobby? It's just a bit obscured under some oily rags and newspapers.

Anyways this is long enough. I hope you'll all vote on any of the CIT issues (see sig + list below) with the core vision in mind, the same as this thread, to make it more popular so that we can all have a better time. Even if you do not agree with every tiny detail, the consequences are far worse, like not having enough players for a good ol game of blowing shit up. New players would benefit all parts of our community ecosystem, except possibly the patience of the forum mods. :D I'm not going to subscribe to this thread because it's kind of hopeless to me, sadly. Instead I want to enjoy the fun while it lasts.

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/5523

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/5520

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/5795

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/6258

Cheers and much respect, oktane (really really sorry for wall-o-text)

Edited May 11, 2010 by oktane

[jonneymendoza 10]

well said

[jw custom 56]

I think the problem is the cover....

[Sardaukar17 10]

Oktane you can speak for me on this subject anytime.

I would fall under the less informed category of players (happen to be form US too lol). I have 0 Mods installed for Arma2. And it is very difficult to get into a community of players without having to ask How to do it and get past all the errors to have a smooth game. 9 times out of 10 times allot of these communities are filled with Elitists that take it all way to seriously and make you feel stupid for not know what they do. It really does turn you off to the game. I play with a very small group of friends when we can all manage to get online at the same time. I really do believe that there are tons of people in this same situation. What would solve allot of this is if BE did try and take allot of these Mods that are most common and incorporated them into a patch of the game. That would be catering to those demanding plug and play users that you don't like but it would open up the community for everyone. (I am sure there are about 3 million legal issues in doing something like that though and I am also sure it is not cheap to do just add content like that. but since we are wishing...)

I fortunately realized back in OFP that this family of games is the next evolved step in gaming. I even started to learn a little scripting and have made about 3 (almost completely not buggy lol) maps. I am tired of Coops though and realized that soon I am going to have to grit my teeth, do some research, and get the mods all installed and working. PvP is where I want to play. Want to see how tough these elitist are verse a real team of players.

[whisper 0]

So yeah ArmA2 is like OFP with mods. If we won't count the flashy graphics.

Can you JiP in any modded OFP version?

no

=> A2 is definitely not OFP with added mods. This kind of silly comparison need to cease

[Jelliz 10]

I am at like page 70 of this, I can't read any more been up too long (playing A2 mp of course, all night/morning)

My opinion is very simple, oh wait for the 500 bullet points in no particular order, see last paragraph for jist:

Wall-o-text removed

Cheers and much respect, oktane (really really sorry for wall-o-text)

Dont be sorry, its a well written wall of text which didnt make my eyes bleed. Full of valid points and reflected my opinion aswell. Although i'm mostly in the editor cooking up missions(and recently started some texturing) and i am rarely playing multiplayer, the community can only BENEFIT from increased accessability. More people will join the community and will most likely be inspired to make their own mods and missions.

[HyperU2 11]

Most MP games thrive on PVP and I think for ARMA to succeed in that realm the CQB would have to be a whole lot better.