roshnak

I understand the frustration with it being difficult to be recognized as the actual author of content on Steam Workshop, but, like I said, you wouldn't want it to necessarily be easy, either. You wouldn't want me to be able to just file complaints with all of your mods and have the assets all automatically taken down, right? I guess that's just a problem with large scale distribution platforms, in general. Things just get more bureaucratic and take more time, since the people in charge don't know anyone involved. Also, I don't really think "returned" is the right word to use when discussing your rights in this context. Since the agreement grants Valve non-exclusive rights, doesn't that mean you still have your rights, they just also have the rights to use your stuff? In that case, shouldn't we be talking about "revoking" the rights from Valve, instead? The only reason I'm bringing this up is that the way you phrased it kind of makes it sound like, if your stuff was uploaded to Steam Workshop, you would no longer have the right to, say, sell your stuff. But, honestly, I see this as the bigger problem with Steam Workshop. To me, it seems very unlikely that Valve will abuse the EULA, inentionally harm or steal from users of Steam Workshop, or even care about what people are uploading for Arma 3, especially given that their money makers are DOTA 2, TF2, and CS:GO. At the same time, I think it's fairly obvious that the license agreement is designed to give Valve the absolute maximum level of protection possible, at the potential expense of the content creators, and I can understand why content creators would rather utilize a distribution platform that is designed to protect them first. I think it's perfectly valid for content creators to be extra cautious about this stuff, especially since most good 3D artists inevitably have to deal with someone uploading or even selling their work without permission. And, ultimately, it can be difficult to opt-out of Steam Workshop if others choose to upload your stuff. I don't know, man, I'm guilty of two of those things.

Would you be willing to post what his interpretation of the User Generated Content section of the EULA? I'm only asking because it would be nice to get the opinion of a legal professional instead of everyone making guesses as to what that agreement is supposed to mean. It seems to me that any references to in-application distribution is only relevant to Valve games and that removing your content from Steam Workshop actually does revoke their "irrevocable right to use..." (I know! I totally just contributed to the guessing!) I totally get why people would be upset that it can be a difficult, red-tape-filled process to get IP infringing content removed from the Steam Workshop (although you wouldn't want it to be too easy, either), but won't that be a problem regardless of whether or not you personally utilize the service?

You should probably read the OP. This thread isn't about wanting contemporary weapons.

Well, it might hit the target. The missiles still try and level out and perform a direct attack, so if the vehicle is behind a chest high sandbag, the missile will probably hit that instead. I mean, at the very least we should be able to select between direct- and top-attack modes, right?

Yeah, I figured that the dev team was aware of the problem. There were just a lot of people in the thread that didn't seem to understand what the actual issue was. Although, isn't the whole point of the dev branch to make sure things like this and that recoil bug don't make it into the main branch?

That would be true if you had to point your weapon at a vehicle before it would lock on. Instead, the vehicle just has to be somewhere within your FOV when you hit the lock button. The reason this takes less skill is that you don't have to actually find or even know where the vehicle is to kill it. If you really wanted you could just spin in a circle hitting the lock button and the game would find the target for you. As for it being less management, first of all, you have to remember that this is Arma, and a lot of people are looking for more management. Second, I would argue that firing missiles right now is simplified to the point of being boring. It requires a minimal amount of player input. Also, the new system of making missiles take a while to lock on all the way is just an artificial restriction designed (I guess) to approximate the time a player would spend actively locking a target. Allowing players some form of finding and locking targets themselves would eliminate the need for that feature, and also give them the opportunity to potentially become skilled enough with the system that they could find and lock targets quicker than their opponent can.

I think he probably got that, but, like me, is confused about how the title actually relates to the content of the OP.

I think some people are really misunderstanding the problem. No one is saying that there shouldn't be fatigue penalties, or even heavy fatigue penalties. Yes, you should get tired and your aim should start to sway heavily. What is actually happening, though, and which shouldn't happen at all is that when you walk while tired your gun vibrates. Seriously, try it out. It jitters around like you're in an earthquake. It's crazy. Edit: Here's a video You can see that the sway looks reasonable when you're standing still, but it's getting multiplied with the built in movement weapon sway or something, causing some insane behavior.

Well, the look and feel of the CSAT uniform kind of epitomizes the setting of the game, right?

If they were always faithful to the setting of the previous parts of the series, then we would still be playing games about the Cold War. No, I'm not. The sentence that you cut out of my quote was pretty important to its meaning. I think it's strange that you are using the words "spirit" and "background" like they are interchangeable. No, he's making a valid point against the foundation of your argument. Is it your opinion that what makes an Arma game is the fact that it takes place in a contemporary setting or that it has "realistic" gameplay? If you think it's the former, it's hard to argue that games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (Yeah, those games actually do have Call of Duty in the title) and Battlefield 3 and Medal of Honor: Warfighter don't have the same "spirit" that Arma does. If you think it's ther latter, than I would ask in what ways you think Arma 3's gameplay is less realistic than Arma 2. And how you think the appearance of CSAT's uniforms affects the realism of the gameplay. Because last time I checked, combat plays out pretty close to exactly the same in Arma 3 as it did in Arma 2. Of course you could think it's a mix of the two, but then it seems pretty hyperbolic to claim that changing one aspect a little bit completely betrays the spirit of the series. I'm curious, by the way, whether you consider Call of Duty: World at War to be a spin-off or a real Call of Duty game.

I don't think the "spirit of the series" has ever had anything to do with the setting, which has been radically different in various iterations. What defines the "spirit of the series" to me is the gameplay, which has remained relatively constant (for better or worse) throughout its history. Arma's gameplay and mechanics are immediately recognizable no matter what the setting. Take on Helicopters is clearly Arma. DayZ is clearly Arma. The game could be about fighting Sewer Aliens on Mars with plasma guns and it would still feel like playing Arma. Most importantly, it doesn't handle melee well at all, which rules out a substantial gameplay element in all of those suggestions.

Yeah I was including TF2 in the $20 category, because that's what around what it cost to buy it on release. And that's if you bought it standalone. It was closer to $12 if you got it as part of the Orange Box (which was $50 and included HL2, Episodes 1 and 2, TF2, and Portal). Even disregarding benefits, $500,000 puts you in the top 1% of earners in the United States (obviously it's actually a more complicated than that, but I think it's a decent way to get an idea of how much money that is). Although, you're right, it's largely irrelevant since cases like that are an extreme circumstance. I was just saying that maybe linking that particular article isn't the best way to make the argument that we should have paid third party content in Arma, since very few people are going to see that number and not immediately get a bad taste in their mouths.

It is. It's supposed to be colored, weathered rubber. Like I said, the texture doesn't do a great job of selling it, but it's very clearly rubber in the screenshot of the high poly model posted earlier. Even the cooling units on the back look like they're supposed to be rubberized.

No one else has really addressed the "Valve approach," so I guess I'll just restate my concerns with it: It works really well for them, but none of the games it's implemented in cost more than $20. Most of them are Free-To-Play. It seems like it would be difficult for customers to rationalize spending a bunch more money on assets for a game that they have already paid for at the highest price point in the industry. Arma already costs $60. If addons were only to cost $3-5 a piece (and I suspect that they would be closer to $10), customers could rapidly approach the point where they are paying more than $100 for a video game. That's not a small sum of money. I also don't think that articles like "Top TF2 Item Makers Making 500k A Year" and "Valve Launches Steam Buy Orders Making It Easier Than Ever To Blow Your Money" are necessarily great arguments in favor of such a system. $500,000 a year is a crazy amount of money and it associates the idea of modding and money with greed. That is substantially more money (probably many times more) than what their counterparts, working for actual game studios, are making. And players don't want to hear about it being easy to blow their money. That's only good for the people who they are blowing their money on. Also, it could just be me but all of those PCGamer links are broken. Finally, I'm curious how much you think just having better tools and documentation and making it easier to work on and create addons would help the situation.

The texture doesn't necessarily sell it that well, but you know that metallic steampunk stuff is supposed to be rubber, right?

I'm pretty sure that's not what's happening. They're just assigning a new name to the DayZ branch of the engine since it has changed so much. I believe they also plan on merging the engines back together in the future.

No, but it does mean you don't have the legal right to sell it. I agree, but I try to temper my sometimes harsh opinions on those matters on the basis that I've never released anything, myself. And regardless of whether they comprise truly original custom content, they do add to the variety of content available for the game. I wouldn't worry too much about this, honestly. I don't know how much money the people renting servers are making in donations, but I think it's fair to say that no one is making a substantial amount of money on Arma videos or streaming. Maybe Dslyecxi, I guess. But then again, it's not like his early, unmodded Arma 3 videos got substantially less views than the full blown ACE Arma 2 videos. And even now, I doubt if people are watching his current Arma 3 videos and thinking to themselves, "I'm only watching this for the weapon resting script." It's not like those guys wouldn't be making that money on those videos without custom content. Most of the people who are truly succesful in that realm are selling their personalities more than they are the content of the videos. And when they are making money, it's through partnerships with advertisers, not selling a product. Of course, even knowing this might not really make anyone feel better about the situation.

I suppose the argument is that with the prospect of being monetarily rewarded, more people would creating their own stuff instead of porting old work, or it would attract more modders to the game, or it would allow the people who do create their own stuff to release at a faster pace. I'm not really sure how much I agree with that viewpoint, though, since the series has a long history of porting stuff, even if it's just ports of custom stuff that was made for previous games. You also mentioned not wanting to give out your work for others to use if you were charging for it, and it made me wonder: If you look through the credits of pretty much any custom unit, you'll probably see the same few names popping up over and over again, being thanked for allowing the use of their models. I wonder if those people would still be likely or able to give out their models for others to edit while simultaneously charging for their original work. And if they couldn't, I wonder if we would still see the variety of units that we do now. These are all good points, but I do have a question. If you were to charge for the terrain you're working on (the assets for which look awesome, by the way), how would you fund the work you're doing right now? Would you do like a Kickstarter style thing and ask for funds before you finish? I only ask because while I'm sure it would be nice to get money for your work, I don't really see many ways you can monetize a product that isn't finished or released yet. And if you aren't going to start making money until you finish the addon, that money won't really help speed up work on the current project. I can see how it would help with the development of future stuff, though.

It seems to me that the problem isn't that the gun jitters and sways, it's that it does it with such a high frequency and so violently. It's almost certainly not intended to be working like it is now. It doesn't really conform to your movement or breathing at all. The gun should move around more but change direction less abruptly. Basically, more sway and less jitter.

What? Since when? Are you talking about the gunner view?

Can you do that on the Steam Workshop? I thought it was pretty heavily regulated. Also, doesn't uploading to the Workshop basically give Valve full rights over your assets? I understand why the do it (so they can use that stuff in advertisements and the like (and maybe something else if they think of it later)) but it seems like it could present problems for trying to get money for anything distributed through Steam Workshop.

Something that's important to remember about Valve's system is that the games that it's implemented in are free-to-play. TF2 didn't start out that way, but it was only $20 at release. Also, seriously this. Honestly, there are a ton of issues that I can think of with monetizing third party content. Someone earlier in the thread said, basically, that it was all just speculation and worrying over worst case scenarios, which is true. But I think it's worth examining the issue as deeply as possible, since once the precedent is in place, it's really difficult take it back.

Why? There are a couple of reasons that separating out those options might help: -First, and most importantly, it's incredibly unintuitive for difficulty settings to affect PvP multiplayer. Have you ever played another PvP multiplayer game and said, "Oh, I better check the difficulty settings first?" -People might get the impression that if they set the gamemode to Veteran, they are suddenly going to start getting stomped. -If the server were to prompt admins to select a difficulty setting, admins may want to disable crosshairs and third person without upping the AI difficulty. Without separating those commands out, you're back to where we started with requiring admins to edit text files, unless you want to provide them with a whole list of stuff they have to change in the console. (Actually, this one is pretty important, too.) See above, please. Also, please don't just pick out the middle one and come after me about how I don't understand difficulty. It's one reason in three and the other two are far more important. The reason that I don't think it's a good idea to keep talking about crosshairs making the game easy, in a nutshell: It makes you sound like an elitest asshole who thinks that people who play games differently than you do aren't as good. It's dismissive and rude. It makes you seem oblivious to the whole world of different kinds of video games out there. It would be one thing to say, "That's just not my preferred style of game" instead of "It makes the game too casual and easy and it's a crutch for bads." Please note, this statement isn't directed at you personally, but the tone of some of the arguments in this thread in general. I'm really trying to be polite and argue in good faith here. There have been a number of times that I've typed out snarky or dismissive replies and changed them because I decided that I'd rather try and have a real discussion (where those replies exist, they're probably toned down). I don't really feel like you are trying to do the same. You accused me of saying the crosshair is "just a random dot on the screen for style reasons" but that's an incredibly unfair reading of that sentence. Surely you read the next par which was, "or under realism settings, or literally anywhere else..." It couldn't possibly have been that unclear that the purpose of that sentence was to say that it's weird to have difficulty settings affect PvP multiplayer. That's not even the only time you have done that in this reply. Honestly, man, it's taken me like 40 minutes to write this post because I keep deleting and revising things because I'm worried you'll just grab one part of a sentence out of context and jump on it instead of responding to the intent of the post as a whole. I'm naturally a little wordy, but I really am trying to be as clear and thorough as possible. It might help to know that I'm honestly not trying to bury you in words or confuse the issue.

Paid third party content may very well be better for modders, but I'm not sure it's better for players. I don't really want Arma to become a platform through which a bunch of extra content is sold. It's already a $60 game and people often play with dozens of mods. How much would that cost? Sometimes I have a rough time convincing the people I play with to download and install mods as it is. They straight up will not do it if it costs them money. Money just also makes things really complicated.

I made a couple of suggestions earlier in the thread. They basically boiled down to: -Remove the crosshair, third person, and similar options from the difficulty menu and put them in a separate menu called "Realism Settings" or "Simulation Detail" or something. -Add a prompt to the server start that asks the admin to pick AI difficulty and realism settings. -Maybe add an option in the server lobby to change the realism settings or vote on it or something. Even just adding the prompt at server start would ensure that no one could say that people were just too lazy to change the default settings anymore.