bugeater36

Holy shit the amount of copium you are huffing is FATAL! Yes, they are expected to first make a good product and only then get returns for said good product. That is how game development works. You make a game, and if that game is good, people buy it. Arma Reforger may be a proof of concept for the engine, but they released it in an UNPLAYABLE state, and even now, well over 1 year later, we have still received no meaningful content or changes. The game still has massive issues and lacks most of the content that was promised. ALL OF THIS COULD HAVE BEEN FORGIVEN IF THEY HAD COMMUNICATED WITH US. It would have taken at most 10 minutes to make a twitter post outlining what is going on behind the scenes, but aside from a handful of shitty devblogs that we get once in a blue moon, there has been complete radio silence. They made several controversial changes that the majority of the Arma community DOES NOT LIKE (Push for consoles and crossplay, Removal of Steam Workshop, ETC.), they released Reforger in a broken state, they have failed to fulfill nearly all of their promises and they have overrun every single one of their deadlines, and all of this while not being open to the people who bought their product. Perhaps most concerning, Bohemia Interactive has shown zero signs of changing their behavior. For these reasons, the community has every right to be upset. I am not exaggerating when I say that I don't think we will see Arma 4 until 2030. They need to communicate. They would if they cared. They haven't. One of the biggest issues I have consistently seen plaguing the indie game world is the problem of Developer Simps. By not holding devs accountable for the promises and mistakes they have made, you actively create an ecosystem where this exact type of problematic behavior is tolerated, leading to worse games and lazier developers. It is a lot easier to cut corners, overrun deadlines, implement bad features, and sometimes straight up lie when you know you have an army of simps ready to defend you wherever you go.

I have been an Arma player for over a decade now. I am an avid fan of the series and I have played nearly 3000 hours of both Arma 2 and 3. I was very hyped when I first heard about Arma Reforger, as we had heard next to nothing about the next Arma game in the decade since Arma 3 released. Upon purchasing the game, I found that it was very barebones; something that Bohemia said was part of the plan. I understand that at release it was only supposed to be essentially a tech demo for the Enfusion engine. However, what little that was there, should have been functional. The server issues and constant crashing was really amateurish by modern standards, but even with those very major problems, I was willing to play. I thought that those issues would be fixed in no time; That I could dive into the workbench and enjoy this new engine and it would all work soon. Fast-forward to 2 months after release, things were very bleak. The server issues had been worked on, but most players still couldn't go 20 minutes without being disconnected from the session, and any time I tried to use the workbench, progress was at a crawl due to the constant crashing. The playerbase had decreased by nearly 90% and I was ready to give up too, but then BI released a roadmap. It honestly was a pretty simple roadmap; one that was very much achievable if development continued at a steady rate. The promised content was the bare minimum expected for an Arma game; Helis, Mortars, Mines, ETC., and was set to release in the coming 12 months. Fast-forward to now, nearly a whole year since Reforger was released, and next to nothing has been added. We received maybe half of one of the 'milestone' updates, and nearly all of the bugs, crashes, and server issues are still present. I am not here to lobby against BI, nor am I here just to rant. Everyone is familiar with the state of the game. I am here to ask Bohemia Interactive to be more transparent. If the very achievable roadmap couldn't even be 15% completed, There must be something seriously wrong with the company right now. Features that are seriously needed, asked for by the community, and ridiculously easy to add (such as a proper arsenal, a simple civilian faction, destructible trees, ETC.) have not made it into the game. I would love for them to add the promised content and more, but I really think that by now, it is too late to save this game. Arma Reforger averages around 230 players at a daily peak, and unless BI can perform a miracle, I don't see that number increasing anytime soon. The whole point of Arma Reforger was to give the community a window into what Arma 4 was going to look like. If we are to take this at face value, then Arma as a series is doomed. We, the community, should expect Arma 4 to be an overpromised, underdelivered, and content dry game that will not only be unplayable, but will receive almost no support after launch, not even the most simple of asks. Bohemia Interactive, is this seriously what we should expect? If there is anyone listening who is part of the Arma team at Bohemia, then please, all I ask is for some transparency. Make a video or something that details the problems that lead to Reforger being in the state that it is. Give us an honest view into how you plan to go foreword. The lack of communication is almost as tedious as playing Reforger in the state that it is (lol). Bohemia Interactive, you owe this to your very loyal community. If there are problems, we will understand, and many are willing to help, we just need you to communicate with us. I hope that Arma 4 will be all we need it to be, and that Reforger gets the love that it needs; and very soon at that. However, for this to be possible, there needs to be some serious change at BI. I know that I am not alone in feeling this way, every Arma player I've met agrees. Sincerely, a big fan, who cares a lot about these games.

Personally, The bar is set at a pretty moderate level in terms of how much content we receive (factions, vehicles, weapons, etc.). I would like to see a focus on quality over quantity, albeit with a decent number of cool stuff to play with. The one area that I really want to see huge progress in is aircraft. Air power is the absolute factor in winning a modern war, yet it hasn't really been realized in Arma before. The absolute must for Arma 4 is that the view distance is at least 10km if not more; no wall of fog nor egregious LOD. Bohemia Interactive should really focus on optimizing the game to a visual scale comparable to other simulation games. I don't expect there to be maps or view distances on par with DCS, but I think that we really need to see Air power be actually represented in Arma. The map would also need to be a lot bigger than previous titles, even if that just means having a few islands spread far apart in a vast ocean. I hope to see realistic flight models and some depth to the systems on the aircraft, maybe something along the level of detail of DCS: FC3. I don't expect fully clickable 3d cockpits but complex radar and EW systems should definitely be modeled. There doesn't need to be a ton of shitty GTA planes, just give us a detailed and realistic F16 and MiG 29.

Bohemia could do a lot more. I really am not asking for a lot here, there are unanswered questions that they really need to address. Here is a quick but pretty comprehensive list of questions that they could answer in a single twitlonger. 1.) What is going wrong? What are the main problems that you are working on right now and what do you plan to do to fix them? Is it console versions? Code? 2.) What does the company look like right now? How many devs are working on Reforger? Are those devs also working on Arma 4? Are other games eating up time that would otherwise be used on Reforger? 3.) How did it get this bad? What led to the game being released in such a broken and bare-bones state and what lead to the original roadmap being deemed 'too ambitious'? Why has there been so little communication? What do you plan to do to avoid this in the future? 4.) What is the plan for the future? Do you still plan to cover everything in the roadmap and post-launch support? What can we look foreword to in the near future and when? Will you guys make a more realistic roadmap? Do you plan to add features requested by the community (better editor, workshop, better movement system, ETC.)? 5.) What can we do? There are a lot of talented people in the Arma community, have you considered outsourcing work? Is that practical? Are there enough devs already? Again, these are all questions that could be answered in a single twitlonger. It would take at most 15 minutes. If Bohemia Interactive actually cares about anything then their top priority should be to answer these questions. It would take very little effort on their part to be honest with us, and yet so far, we have only had radio silence. I am hoping for the best, but right now, I seriously have my doubts as to the trustworthiness of the devs.

Bohemia wasn't ambitious at all. That is the problem. The roadmap they released was pretty rudimentary, and included some things that were very easy to add, and yet we are only just now (1 year later) getting landmines, something that should not have taken nearly this long to add. Bohemia also put a ton of work (and likely a lot of money) into marketing this 'game'. If the code is in such a sorry state that they still have yet to pass the first milestone on their roadmap, then why was the game released? Shouldn't they have waited until the game was functional? Bohemia publishes their own work, so I doubt that there is external pressure to meet deadlines, so that begs the question; why? The game still is barely even playable, and the majority of playability comes from mods. Modders have already covered a lot of the stuff on the roadmap, even sooner than the roadmap stated (and I really commend them), but there is a huge problem here. Bohemia has made it clear through all the media they have produced that they expect modders to do nearly all of the heavy lifting in fixing this game and adding more content. Of course I welcome all the wonderful work that these people do, but it is really shitty and low of BI to ask these unpaid and underappreciated saints to clean up their mess. BI chose to release this game in such a terrible state, and they also chose to release a ton of promotional stuff for it, knowing full well that the game was unplayable. Once the players had realized this and had begun to leave, they chose to release the roadmap. I simply don't buy that this was honest. I believe that the roadmap was a complete lie and they never intended to follow it. They could have, but there is just no possible excuse for how little has been done. The roadmap was clearly just another marketing scheme to try to make the game sell. I would love to be proven wrong, but If there really is work being done on the code, then Bohemia desperately needs to communicate with the community because otherwise, I have no conclusion to draw other than they lied. Bohemia Interactive made this game to demonstrate their new engine. I am well aware that this is the purpose of Reforger. This, however, is not an excuse for the developers to release a broken product, and to lie to their fans. Bohemia interactive has seriously dropped the ball here and if they do not start communicating regularly and updating the game, then its game over for Arma. There are many things that are killing the modern gaming industry. I am sure that many of these problems are present at Bohemia Interactive. One of the biggest problems, however, lies within the community. Developer simping is present in many communities, and it enables developers to break promises and walk all over their most loyal of supporters, all the while not caring one bit. Yes, when developers deliver, we should cheer them on; However, when developers constantly drop the ball, it is up to the community to hold them accountable. I appreciate the positive outlook, but I think you have set the bar way too low. When we as a community let this type of behavior slide, we actively seal our favorite franchises' fate. Bohemia Interactive, I will once again say this: YOU NEED TO COMMUNICATE. YOU ARE SHOOTING YOURSELVES IN THE FEET. It would literally take maybe 30 minutes max a week to make a video updating us on what is going on. There is a long laundry list of things that the community expects out of Arma 4. Many of these things are possible with the technology that BI currently has. The bar is set very high, and if they meet it, Arma 4 will be one of the best selling and most played games to date; However, having experienced the catastrophe that is Reforger, I'm not sure they will be even remotely close. I don't mean to single you out in particular, just the over-forgiving mentality.

I think another thing that would be cool is to have optional 'free aim', similar to Rising Storm 2 and Insurgency.