roshnak

There is still the problem that there is absolutely no trace of older equipment (except the AAF, which is really just a mashup of modern equipment). There is tons of stuff in use by modern militaries that is 20+ years old. It's like all the militaries involved threw everything they had away and started over. It's not just that NATO is using new stuff, it's that everything NATO is using is new. Moving into the future is fine, but BIS didn't do a great job of making the equipment roster very believable.

Someone shot this down with quotes from an ACE dev two posts down from the one you are replying to. ACE has some cool features that I personally would like to see included in the base game, but there are users of this very forum that prefer not to use ACE, so it is inaccurate to say that everyone is waiting for it to make the game good. Some people aren't interested in it at all. This is a really a response to both sides of this argument: BIS hasn't tried anything significantly different in terms of gameplay with Arma 3. They haven't abandoned their commitment to realism or gone after the arcade shooter market, but neither has the game significantly advanced past previous iterations. This is a terrible opinion and you people need to get over it. You are not better than anyone else because you play a different kind of video game. I know you are half-joking, but this attitude is really pervasive on these forums and it's not cool. Seriously, this kind of elitism is going to drive new players away and the playerbase will dwindle and BIS won't be able to make any more Arma games.

First of all, your scenario relies on the assumption that the player has stopped firing on the last round in his or her magazine. The odds of this aren't super high unless the player is firing only one shot at a time. Shots are generally fired in groups of 2 to 3 quick consecutive shots, so there is a good chance that you will fire once or twice and then hear a click prompting you to reload, rather than finishing a group of shots and ending on the last round in the magazine, then running around with an empty gun until you encounter another bad guy and realize you're out of ammo when your gun doesn't fire. Second of all, as mentioned by others in this thread, many of the weapons portrayed in the game operate in such a manner as the bolt stays locked to the rear when the last round has been fired. It's pretty easy to tell this has happened in real life, since it sounds and feels different from a regular shot. It's not nearly as easy to tell that this has happened in game -- except with the MX, since it has an ambidextrous charging handle that locks to the rear as well --, since you can't feel the gun firing. An onsceen indicator helps to indicate to players that something that they should have been able to feel has happened. So I would say that, in general, it is not unrealistic. This is because the fact that this happens is actually a symptom of the fact that reloading is in the action menu, and reloading an empy weapon comes up as a default action, like when you walk up to a door or something.

People have said it on these very message boards.

Um, none of those are big changes. They're just refinements to the way the AI already behaves. VVV Edit: Uh... It depends? Arma 3 is generally better than Arma 2. The question is, is it better in the ways that are relevant to you? I get the impression from the OP that you are mostly interested in single player and, unfortunately, many of the improvements seem to be multiplayer based. First and foremost, the campaign hasn't been finished yet, so if that is one of your primary interests, it might be better to hold off. Zeus is a pretty cool addition, and it seems like a major focus of development, but it has virtually no effect in most single player scenarios. Since you asked specifically about driving/flying: Helicopters are pretty much exactly the same. Planes have been tweaked a bit, but they aren't any easier or harder to fly, nor are they more realistic. Driving is now physics based, but it's not a huge change to handling; it still mostly feels like driving in previous titles (although they did add analogue steering). The addition of body armor is generally okay for multiplayer, but tends to not play nice with the AI, since they don't react in the same way to being non-fatally shot as players do. This tends to make neutralizing AI a bit more difficult than it has been in the past, as they tend to react less to being shot. The game does have a lot less content overall than Arma 2 did, and there aren't a ton of mods that add high quality content out yet. Vehicles and weapons generally feel very similar. If you are looking for a lot of variety in what you are fighting with and against, then you may be a bit disappointed. The fact that all the factions are basically fully equipped modern militaries leads to less variation in what you encounter and there aren't really any disparities in equipment levels or anything. Basically, everyone has an MRAP, a tank, an APC or two, a transport helicopter and an attack helicopter, and they all perform very similarly. Getting more varied content at this stage is going depend largely on your tolerance for ports and reskins. On the other hand, the game looks better than it ever has. The lighting engine is amazing, and the new clouds and fog are visually pleasing while also adding complexity to the game environment. The new fog especially is highly controllable and can completely change the way players approach a mission. There have been a number of usability tweaks to the editor that I am a huge fan of, including a huge leap forward in documentation -- it's generally a lot easier to find out what something does and how to use it from within the game itself --, adding the ability to set a unit or object's elevation without scripting commands, and a number of modules that allow users to access features that were previously only available through scripting commands. Also, a built in debug menu! Splendid Camera can be a pretty useful tool for messing around in the editor as well. Movement and aiming feel 10,000 times more smooth and natural. The stance adjust and combat pace are really cool additions that genuinely expand your options in combat. Grenades aren't in the firemode selection anymore! Now we just have to get UGLs out of there. There are probably a bunch of other small tweaks that I'm forgetting. This post has gotten really long, and ultimately only you can decide whether or not Arma 3 is worth buying right now, but I've tried to add as much information as I thought was relevant, since it's very hard to decide whether it was worth it before you buy the game and experience it yourself. I hope this post has been somewhat helpful.

This is pretty hilarious I'm pretty sure this is for performance reasons. Arma's render-to-texture isn't that great. Now I'm wondering if it would be possible to render the magnified optic at full res and the unmagnified area outside the optic at reduced resolution with a slight blur filter over it. This is also pretty bad. I could deal with it if glass didn't do such terrible things to bullets. It would be cool if we had the option to manually open windows or break glass panes in order to make firing from windows less worthless. I'm not 100% sure what you mean by this, but if you are saying what I think you are, then you can set up fire sectors by selecting units and giving "watch direction" orders. You can even hold alt with units selected and it defaults to telling units to watch a specific location.

Are you sure you were playing as the Virtual Zeus that is listed under Game Logics and not from a physical unit in the gameworld? From what limited amount of testing I've done, it looks like playing from the Virtual Zeus slot will not allow you to use iron sights when remote controlling a unit. However, if you place a rifleman, for example, and define that slot as Zeus, then you can use iron sights, regardless of whether or not the Zeus interface is forced on. Are you using the Virtual Zeus game logic in the editor or placing a solider and defining it as Zeus? It's important to give as much information about this stuff as possible in order to find out what the problem is.

I wouldn't count on any big changes. You're going to be playing with essentially the same AI as Arma 2 as far as features go.

No one in this thread is asking for bug fixes. They are asking devs to mark tickets as being read, so that users know that they their submissions are being seen. It's a pretty simple thing that would allow users to say, "Oh, at least they know about my issue." I also can't imagine that it takes more than three or four clicks to mark a submission as read, and if devs are taking the time read submissions there's no reason not to let the community know they are doing so. Basically, it's a small little thing that would help people who take the time to submit tickets feel like they are more involved and contributing.

Two the the opinions are basically the same. The other guy is talking about things that either aren't related to AI or are the same as they were in Arma 2.

You can actually thank tpM for kicking off this trend. Anyway, the flyby effect is probably the least scripted sounding implementation I've seen, so that's pretty cool.

So the thing you don't like about Steam is the user input it requires? Those are literally the only three things that Steam requires of you. It also starts up and logs in automatically for me, so I'm not sure how this is adding workload. I mean, it is designed to be running all the time, if you are launching it yourself, then you are using the program wrong. The only times I ever even think about Steam are when I right click the icon to launch a game and when it asks me to restart for an update. Sorry, I don't mean to keep harping on this, it's just that I've seen people be mad about Steam for a lot of reasons, some of them valid, and the amount of user interactivity it requires has never been one of them. Anyway, that's the last I'll post about Steam in this thread. If it's a pet peeve, then it's a pet peeve. I just feel like you have rather unusual reasons for disliking the service. It would be cool to see some fixes for some of the minor stuff like keep playable units playable while merging missions, though. This thread does have a tendency to remind me of things that I think are really annoying that I've gotten used to over the years.

Last time I checked you can't aim down the sights with a remote controlled unit if you are playing from the Virtual Zeus slot.

Pretty sure I saw cycling patrols made of four waypoints in the Eurogamer video. I don't know if that's in the build we are using, though.

This is pretty frustrating. It's been a few years since I played OFP, but I don't remember them reacting to being shot at all in OFP. I can't tell if you're talking about death animations or the new armor system in Arma 3, which I think most people will agree still needs a ton of work. So, is your argument that mid-range textures are just as ugly as they were in OFP, but it's okay in OFP because everything is ugly? To be honest, if you are going to complain about graphics issues with Arma 3, OFP is not the game you should be going back to. Edit: To be clear, I agree that most of these things are problems, I just don't understand how they are less of a problem in OFP, which has all of these problems and then some.

Anti-radiation weapons: Why? They are typically employed against SAM sites with ranges in the tens of kilometers. The kind of SAM sites it would be reasonable to engage with anti-radiation missiles could shoot you from far outside reasonable view distances. GPS guided munitions: This is just my personal opinion, but they are tremendously boring. Like, they are by far the least interesting way to attack targets from an airplane. They require virtually no action from the player. Fly over target, hit button, bombs kill target. I feel like GPS munitions would be a step away from making flying jets more engaging. I just don't understand how people think smart munitions will make the game more fun, I guess. You also probably wouldn't be entering map grids, but rather GPS coordinates to drop GPS guided bombs. Dumb bombs: Sure, but we could use a way of telling where they are going to land to go along with them (CCIP). I also want CCIP for guns and rockets. Damage system: Yeah, the default system is dumb. I'm not sure why bullets make airplanes explode, but they do! I'm pretty sure airplanes damage model is still working with the hitpoints system. There should at least be damage induced rolls and engine flameouts. Targeting pod: This is the kind of thing that seems like a good idea, but how would you control it? Targeting pods are typically controlled by a miniature joystick attached to the throttle. I don't think everyone playing arma wants to buy special flight sim level equipment to fully utilize airplanes. The other thing is that view distances are typically too low to properly utilize a targeting pod. Consider that the view distance cutoff is a sphere, so if you are flying at 3000m you can only see everything properly if it is directly below you with a 3000m view distance. As much as I would love to play a flight sim and coordinate with other players on the ground in mulitplayer, Arma is definitely not the right platform for it. Edit: But I will say that one thing that would make flying airplanes much more pleasant was that if the HUD was bright enough to read in daylight.

I didn't say it was a good thing. I said it wasn't really a thing at all. You can take a look at any popular torrent site and see how many Steam only games are available (lots). Also, it seems like your biggest problem with Steam is that it has to be running, which is fair, but pretty much every feature of Steam is designed around the idea that it's always running, anyway. The way it downloads updates when other games aren't being played basically allows for fairly gargantuan updates to be pushed without users really having to think about it. I don't really understand why you wouldn't have Steam running all the time if you have Steam games installed on your computer. And if Valve has a monopoly on digital distribution services, it's not because other companies haven't tried to unseat them. EA has Origin, Stardock had Impulse, they just weren't as good as Steam is. Steam used to be really bad, but it's not anymore. As far as large video game companies go, Valve is one of the better ones. The only complaint I can understand about Steam is that if Valve ever goes out of business, people could lose access to their Steam libraries, which I'm not really that worried about since, like I said, there are cracks available for the vast majority of Steam games.

How is any of what you mentioned worse than it was in OFP? I fully agree that it's been disappointing to be playing the series for this long and to still see some of the same bugs and annoyances in the game, but there are improvements. I'm just not sure why you would say, "It's not improved enough, so I'm going to stick with the game that isn't improved at all." I won't disagree with this... But what does this mean? It seems like you are suggesting that Steam encourages people to pay for games they would otherwise pirate, which many people would argue is a good thing, and I will argue that it doesn't even stop people from pirating games in the first place. As easily as people are addicting to achievements and other such rewards, I don't think anyone has ever bought a game on Steam for the trading cards or achievements. Those are incentives to keep you playing, which Valve doesn't really care about since they already have your money. Also, I'm not sure how Steam sales do anything but help me. They only thing they do is guarantee that I will not buy a game unless it is at least 50% off, and I usually wait until it's more like 75% off. Yeajh, Steam sales are designed to get me to buy more stuff. All sales are designed to get you to buy more stuff. Do you hate buy-one-get-one-free sales, too? Edit: Oh, man. It's probably not great that this huge derail of a post is starting a new page.

What? Is Arma 3's aiming not frustrating enough for you?

I'm going to suggest that the percieved accuracy of the AI isn't actually because they are unreasonably accurate, or because of lack of simultion of "battlefield effects," but rather that the AI (and most players for that matter) only ever engage with point fire. Basically, no matter how far the AI is from a target, no matter what kind of target it is (groups vs individuals), or what size of force is doing the engaging (groups vs individuals, again) they always pick a specific individual unit and try to kill it. This leads to (fairly) reasonable behavior in close quarters engagements that breaks down at longer ranges. In my opinion, the AI should alter its behavior based on range and unit size. Large groups should use area fire against large groups at long range. Groups should use point fire in close range and against single units or small groups at long range. Single units and small groups should use point fire pretty much all the time, unless the unit is an AR or machine gunner, which should transition to area fire at long range. This system isn't perfect, but I think it would allow the AI to behave more realistically while still allowing for a reasonable amount of versatility. Of course, it would also probably require a near complete rewrite of the AI, so it will probably never happen. And while I'm on the subject, varying the length of bursts and time between shots would go a really long way to making the AI seem less robotic.

I was thinking more from the pilot's perspective of "oh man I don't want to get shot down here." In my opinion, it just generally makes the game less interesting and removes one more element of risk to the player. Low level, aggressive bombing runs as opposed to the traditional straight and level delivery from 15-20,000 feet that you would get with CCRP. And, it's just my opinion, but clicking on the map, flying over the point and dropping bombs is a lot less interesting than CCIP delivery. GPS weapons are boring in flight sims; I can't imagine they would be more entertaining in Arma. LGBs are kind of a different story since they should theoretically require teamwork between players to be effective. Oh, and it's worth noting that we kind of have CCRP now -- for guided munitions, at least -- we just don't have very usable symbology. Lock a target and fly at the box; when the diamond appears, pickle.

This is a thing: http://dev.arma3.com/oprep-refactoring-animations But, yeah, a couple of the things the OP is commenting on aren't really related to animations.

Why, would the DayZ engine be used for other things, though? It's literally the same engine that the Arma series has been using all along, except it's more optimized and finely focused to do one specific thing. All of the things that are different about the DayZ engine are there specifically to suit the needs of DayZ. It's more of a little detour from the main RV engine than anything else. Also, I don't really see how a single player DayZ game would sell well, since the whole concept of the game revolves around multiplayer. A single player game would just be a standard survival game and there are plenty of those. I was more replying to the people who keep saying things like "there won't be another Arma game," which is insane, since it's the only product BIS makes that has basically guaranteed customers. Discontinuing the Arma series would be a huge risk to the company.

Pilots everywhere will be sad. More seriously, from a game perspective, I feel like it could cause some balance issues (please don't yell at me) since it removes any real danger to the pilot. From a realism standpoint, barring some pretty huge advances in situational awareness for UAV pilots, I don't see UAVs being a viable option in anything but completely uncontested skies. Honestly, CCIP would be enough of an advance for me. It would be a huge game changer as far as utilizing weapons from aircraft goes. A working CCIP system wouldn't have to just apply to bombs, it could be applied to guns and rockets as well. CCRP and GPS guided weapons would be nice, I guess, but I'm not sure how practical those systems would be at the ranges that aircraft engage in Arma. Units don't even typically render at the distances that CCRP and GPS munitions would normally be used. Basically, most attack profiles that you'd normally be running in Arma would call for CCIP bombing, anyway. Plus, from a gameplay standpoint, CCIP is way more fun and engaging than CCRP, and GPS guided munitions are just plain boring. And yeah, ARMs would be pretty much useless since there aren't any active AA systems in the game, really.

Also, Russia exports tons of military hardware to the nations that would be involved in CSAT.