roshnak

Female civilians wouldn't require any less work than female soldiers. The total amount of art work required is basically the same. At the same time, it becomes more obvious and less acceptable if female civilians are using the same animation set as males, almost necessitating more mocap and animation work, at which point there's really no excuse at all for not including female soldiers. Basically, if you are going to include female civilians, there's no (non-political) reason not to include female soldiers. The thing is, BIS sometimes makes compromises in weird areas. Also, it's great that we are finally getting the ability to fire from cargo positions and a 3D editor, but those features have been requested since OFP and Arma, respectively. Which means that we have been waiting, conservatively speaking, betweem 7 and 10 years for those features. Both features were also present early on in VBS2, so it's not like it hasn't been possible to implement them until now. It just took this long for BIS to decide that they were worth implementing.

Google says:

That's not what he's asking. He's asking if modders will have to significantly alter their addons to implement rotorlib or if the vehicles will inherit it from their parent classes.

Well that's not on the table, so you're kind of out of luck, I guess. Edit: I realize that may have sounded harsh. You should really read either BIS's announced DLC strategy or my complete post. BIS will continue to work on updating the game with new features which will be released for free alongside paid content packs containing things like new vehicles or weapons. That means that, if it is ever implemented, you will get weapon resting for free like everyone else. If BIS decides to add an M60 as part of a Machine Gunners DLC pack, you will have to pay for the M60 if you want to use it. The idea is to use paid content-only DLC to finance the continued development of Arma's feature set. Thus, if you aren't interested in the content but you want to support BIS anyway, you can buy the DLC. If you aren't interested in the content and you aren't interested in whatever new features are being worked on or don't want to or can't afford to throw money at BIS then you can not buy the DLC and get the features anyway. Either way, everyone gets whatever gameplay features or mechanics are added to the game for free.

At this point all I want is for there to not be permanant overlays (or at least overlays that aren't as obnoxious as they are in Karts) or notifications I have to click through. Uh, no, I don't think we have agreed on that at all. That is the way I assumed they did it from the beginning. It doesn't seem like it would be any more difficult than the checks for overlays and restrictions they have now. Although the larger problem is that the Lite model wasn't enough incentive for people to buy the DLC (I bought it, though).

It's not possible.

Eh, the pricing thing isn't really the way it works out in practice. It's the reason that we have DLC in the first place. You can sell Marksmen, Helos, Tanks, UAVs, and Jets DLCs for like $8-10 each. Include all that in one package and it's a lot of content, but people won't expect to pay more than $30 for it. Besides, I think the best we can hope for is tweaking the current formula to be as acceptable as possible to as many people as possible, which I think is totally doable.

If you want to buy the DLC in order to finance Bohemia's continued work on free features, then go for it, since that is essentially what they are asking players to do (they really should just come right out and say it). If you are at all concerned that there will be any difference in the implementation of weapon resting between those who own the DLC and those who don't, you have nothing to worry about. BIS has stated many times that any new features that are implemented will be free updates the the base game. The only thing you ever need to buy DLC for is if you want the weapons, units, or vehicles that come with those DLCs.

Not to mention the fact that the advertising is one of the problems that many people have. For me, a hybrid model is the worst of both worlds. I honestly think there needs to be a separate poll asking whether people have a problem with the content being locked or the advertising. It's not easy to come up with a better alternative when people are coming up with solutions to different problems. Also, while I won't dispute that the Arma 2 method didn't perform to Bohemia's satisfaction, I don't understand the argument that keeps popping up that they would have to maintain two different sets of data. That doesn't make any sense. First of all, the difference is in the art, and how often does BIS update art assets? Secondly, I don't understand why they would need to data sets, anyway. The models weren't of lower quality and the textures were just forced to the lowest quality mipmaps. You don't have to create or maintain a separate set of data at all.

I didn't say anything about the code being a relic. I said the system was a relic. It's been around with zero changes since 2001. How is that not a relic? I also think you are either underestimating gamers or overestimating how much complexity needs to be added. Weapons systems don't need to be confusing or hard to use. We don't need the depth of the ACE artillery system. We just need weapons to be more "active" and allow users more input in the outcome of employing weapons systems. It was incredibly fun and rewarding to use LAWs in OFP. You had to judge range and the target's speed and adjust for both. You could also screw it up, and if you did, it was your fault. I still remember when a group of my friends were playing and the last guy with a LAW had never used it before. He asked how to aim it and we said, "Use the second line in the reticle." He responded with, "Wait -- two from the top or two from the bottom?" right before firing a rocket into the ground and killing himself. It was a good time. We all had a good laugh, and no one was put off by the system being too hard or confusing. None of that can happen with a Titan. You point your character so that a vehicle is somewhere within a 180 degree arc in front of you and press tab, then you click the mouse button and everything is out of your hands. The missile might hit and kill your target, but, since you can't even change whether the missile is firing in top-attack or direct modes, there's a pretty good chance that the missile will slam into the ground trying to hit the target. Boy, that sure was fun, right? While I don't think that it's particularly difficult to employ the weapons systems in modern aircraft, I don't think it's really reasonable to expect that we will have weapon systems even close to what DCS has. I doubt we will ever even have targeting pods. The thing is, it starts requiring a whole specialized control system that it just isn't reasonable to expect the average Arma player to have at his or her disposal.

This might be the reason, but it could just as easily be an action menu situation, where the current system is a relic of an earlier time that for whatever reason BIS has decided is too much work to be worth replacing. This also really isn't a problem the community can solve. ACE and Mando Missiles did some cool stuff and the developers of those mods did the best they could, but they -- especially Mando Missiles -- were largely too cumbersome to be worth using. If we want a really good and streamlined system it really has to be done by the developers. Lock-on missiles are fine. It would just be nice if you had to do more than push a single button to lock a target. It could be as complex as the gating method shown in the Javelin video or as simple as requiring players to hold their crosshair over the target for a few seconds. As it is now you only have to be facing roughly in the direction of a vehicle and you can cycle through a bunch of targets with tab.

1) Ok, so when are they going to fix shadows? 2b) This seems extremely unlikely. Define running "flawlessly."

The performance statement was directed at the OP, but I may have confused his intentions with some of the replies in the thread. As for the eye candy thing, I agree that the game doesn't need more focus on pretty visuals at this point. Yeah, but what wouldn't you pay BIS for? That's a serious question, by the way. I'm genuinely curious about where you draw the line.

This attitude could be applied to everything that's wrong with anything, ever, though. "Maybe they shouldn't do it like this, but they do," isn't a great defense against a bad idea. Lots of games have a stream friendly UI option, very few games (probably none) try to market DLC to people watching streams by forcing everyone who plays their game to deal with annoying popups and overlays. Such a small portion of players stream gameplay, and such an even smaller portion of those that do have any meaningful viewership, that it doesn't make sense to design your whole DLC distribution system around streaming. It's inconveniencing the vast majority of the playerbase for the sake of capitalizing on a few popular streamers. If streams really are one of the reasons that BIS decided to use this strategy, and I'm not convinced that they are, then it's possibly one of the worst reasons for doing so. This idea sounds promising as well. There have been a number of decent suggestions in this thread, most of which are just minor tweaks to the current system.

Yeah, apparently our culture is pretty gross and sexist. This thread was doing pretty good at staying away from the usual, "I don't see no kitchens in Arma!" comments that usually show up in these threads, too.

How do you think soldiers react to seeing dead women and children laying by the side of the road, something that wasn't an entirely uncommon sight during the invasion of Iraq? How do you exlain the over 800,000 women who served in the Soviet Army during WWII? We really don't need to be having an argument about whether it's realistic for women to be portrayed in Arma 3. It is.

With the exception of the full screen overlays this sounds fine to me. I don't even mind the restrictions from entering the pilot seat that much, as long as there aren't popup messages that I have to click through. Some text that is briefly displayed along the bottom of the screen stating that "This is DLC content. Some features are restricted" seems fine to me. New terrains also sound like they might be a better idea than vehicles and weapons. Let's not get crazy here, though. Most of the vehicles on Armaholic are ports of Arma 2 content, almost all of the units are retextures of the default Arma 3 units, and almost all of the weapons are ports of models that were made for CS:S.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/raam.htm http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/fascam.htm

I would argue that BIS shouldn't base their game design around streamers. As so many have said about the current system: That's the point. Edit: There's no real way anyone could think it's a bug, since there are annoying messages with links to purchase the DLC that pop up and have to be clicked through.

I think charging for better performance is a really bad idea. Isn't pointless eye candy exactly the sort of thing that should be farmed out to the GPU? If you are going to take advantage of the capabilities of a specific brand of GPU, such as Nvidia's PhysX stuff, shouldn't it be relegated to eye candy so as not to negatively impact users who don't have Nvidia cards?

The NS2 method wasn't exactly "pay-what-you-want" it was closer to a Kickstarter backer rewards program. They also averaged $45 per purchase for a game that people had already paid $40 for.

Oh, then I think you may have just been misunderstanding NodUnit (or I am), since I'm pretty sure he was just cutting out mocap, accessories, rigging a new skeleton, and game functions from Spamurai's list. I'm fairly certain he wasn't intending to downplay the amount of modelling work involved, since he seems to be relatively experienced in that field. There are always a lot of arguments in these threads about how much work it would be to make female soldiers look like girls, when people are really underestimating how much military uniforms hide what's underneath. I think the larger point is that it wouldn't be significantly more difficult to add female soldiers than it would be to add female civilians.

Do many large communities use Steam Workshop missions? More importantly, this is really just the second of the two scenarios that I said was likely to happen. These missions are made purely for DLC and are basically unplayable for anyone who doesn't own it. It's functionally the same as if I don't have any of the DLC assets because I can't (or won't, because of the restrictions) take part in those missions. The alternative is more likely to occur with the helo DLC, which is that a mission will have two helicopters sitting next to each other: a DLC helicopter, and a vanilla helicopter in case players don't have the DLC. I just bumped it up to 7.25%. Problem solved. But honestly, there probably aren't a lot of suggestions because it's a really hard problem to solve. A lot of the traditional kinds of cosmetic items are undermined by Arma's moddability, and the traditional DLC distribution is sort of undermined by the developer's desire to keep the content available for use in scenarios where not all the players own it. I also think Arma's price point is too high to ethically justify a bunch of microtransactions to continue to monetize development. The only suggestions I really have are to sell one time badges or uniform patches a la the NS2 strategy I detailed earlier, which has it's own problems, since that strategy only raised half of the target goal. Or, alternatively, to limit the annoying advertising as much as possible -- perhaps they could limit notifications to the first time you try to use a limited feature of a vehicle (e.g. getting in the drivers seat), not include gaudy banners with in-game links to purchase DLC, and remove DLC objects from the editor for players that don't own the DLC. My biggest problem right now is that it really feels like they are trying to use Arma 3 as a platform for advertising DLC as loudly as possible, which I'm sure is not their intention.

Yeah, but so what? What is the art department working on that's more important?

Unless I'm mistaken, that's not the way uniforms work in Arma. It's not a clothes model on top of the underwear model, it's just a whole separate model that is swapped in and out. I think the vests are layered on top, but even in the unlikely event that the female uniform model is so different from the male that it caused clipping or floating, I doubt it would take much more than pushing and pulling a few verst with soft selection to create a female vest model. You probably wouldn't even need a new set of UVs. Really, mocap and voice work are probably the things preventing BIS from adding female characters. Assuming that it's not some kind of idealogical thing, of course.