roshnak

Weren't the ponds in Arma 2 just cube shaped water objects that were placed on the map?

Has there been any indication that this is an issue which the Marksman DLC will address?

It still wouldn't be true.

Yes, but why does Arma 3 lack functionality that Arma 2 had, especially given the devs' professed commitment to backwards compatibility? I mean, I'm not the biggest fan of Arma 2's method of getting ponds and other bodies of water above sea level in game, but it was better than nothing.

First of all, just to clarify about your second point, Coulum is saying that it doesn't make sense that you can hold your breath for 8 seconds and 1.5 seconds hold you breath for another 8 seconds, and repeat this cycle forever. As for your first point, why would I ever fire my weapon without holding my breath if there is essentially no penalty involved in doing so? Wouldn't the ability to hold your breath whenever you want without penalty basically negate the whole point of the weapon sway in the first place?

I'm pretty sure the normal running in Arma is a run/jog and the turbo function initiates a sprint. It would be kind of weird if there was no intermediate pace between walking and all out sprinting.

Thank you. I knew there was a term that I was looking for but I couldn't remember what it was. That was driving me crazy.

If you just wanted to have more HUD elements styled like the compass and watch, then I misunderstood what you were suggesting and I apologize. I probably got the intent of your suggestions mixed up with those of the people who were suggesting that Arma do away with the HUD altogether. Although, to be fair, I was initially replying to a person who was suggesting a Dead Space style interface, which is a game that does do away with a traditional HUD and presents all of it's information via the methods I described. First of all, I have considered the arguments that people experience a sudden onset of fatigue like your marathon example. After having considered my own experiences and consulted with a friend who is a former Marine and generally a very fit person, I have come to the conclusion that it is not a typical reaction by physically fit people under most circumstances (incidentally, my friend was also outraged that the rate of stamina recovery was influenced by carry load when halted). It seems that this mostly occurs when people are either pushing themselves past the point where their bodies are telling them to stop, or are completely flooded with adrenaline. Chortles described the VBS 3 system as dynamically keeping your fatigue under 70% unless you pushed a special "PUSH HARDER" key, which seemed to be more accurate to what people experience under most circumstances. But I made that statement because I believe that tying the extra fatigue information to equipment like a heart rate monitor does not address the core issue of whether the current in-game cues give players a realistic awareness of their character's feeling fatigued. It just works around it. If you're a person who believes that players should have a more detailed inherent awareness of their character's fatigue state, then this solution probably will not make you happy (unless you just want to compromise or believe you will never be without that piece of equipment). If you're a person who believes that the current in-game cues already give about the right amount of information, but think additional information might be nice, then this solution will probably satisfy you. I also don't believe that knowing your heart rate provides you with more useful information than what your body feels. If I look at my monitor and see that my heart rate is 150 BPM, does that mean that I can run for 5 more minutes or 20? I just don't feel like the information is any less abstract than vignetting or heavy breathing. And, finally, didn't you already point out that heart rate and fatigue are not the same thing when the idea was first suggested? Disregarding the realism aspect (which, you're right, will only carry us so far), I have previously stated that I don't believe that the purpose of the fatigue system was to create a "guess how tired you are" minigame, but instead to force players to consider things like loadout composition, travel routes, and travel speed while playing the game, which is hard to do if you don't have a pretty clear understanding of how those things will affect, or are affecting your fatigue level. Thus, I think that being very clear -- even at the expense of perhaps being unrealistically clear -- about the player's fatigue state is better for gameplay. Edit: I don't think I repeated myself too much with this post (even though many of these discussions are just people repeating themselves anyway).

It's relevant in that my whole point was that there was no precedent for a fully immersive HUDless interface and that implementing that sort of thing in Arma would be a huge departure from the way it works now and is unlikely to happen. None of the things you mentioned (compass, watch, GPS) approach the fully immersive interface that was being suggested. They're closer to skeuomorphic gui elements than an immersive interface where the player character is animated looking down at his watch. The compass is on the HUD. It's just hidden until you push (or double tap) a button and it has a fancy picture around it (I am aware that it is actually a model). A HUDless solution would be if it worked like DayZ Standalone's compass. Posting "for the record," and "just saying" does not make your points irrefutable. You're allowed to post your opinion, and I'm allowed to post mine. That's the way discussions work. If you want to make the case for embracing the concept of a HUDless interface, you should probably make a thread for it.

Important information is tied to items which is tied to items in real life. And, even then, those things just pop up on your screen when you push a button. There is no animation. The character doesn't pull out a GPS and look down at it. There isn't even a border on the GPS in Arma 3. There is no precedent in this series for immersive presentation of information in the style of Dead Space or The Getaway or whatever other games have done it more recently. I really don't believe that the way that Arma presents information is particularly mixed up or inconsistent. The big things that are presented without HUD information are health, fatigue, and oxygen when under water (please correct me if I'm missing something). Health doesn't need a gui element. This isn't the kind of game where a health bar is useful. I could see the argument for having some indication of whether you've been shot in the arm or the leg, though. Fatigue is obviously something that I think should have an indicator in the HUD. I was unaware of the oxygen thing until I read it in this thread because I don't really mess around with underwater stuff, especially not without a rebreather. I don't know why that information isn't presented via the HUD and I think that it probably should be. Basically every other piece of information in the game is presented via the HUD. Even if you were to argue that there were some things that were inconsistent, it's massively weighted toward more information presented via the HUD, not less. And to bring the discussion back around the topic: Regardless of whether or not tying information about how tired you are to a piece of equipment like a watch or glasses is realistic (it's not), would it work to solve any of the complaints that the pro-stamina bar side has about the way the information is currently presented? I don't think it would. Glasses only work when worn, and players may not want to wear a special set of HUD glasses to get information about their character's body that they feel they should always have access to. A watch is an even worse option because it would force players to stop and interrupt what they are doing in order to figure out how tired they are.

Pretty sure you're not talking about sound occlusion here. Sound occlusion is when sound is dampened by terrain or obstacles. I don't think many other games have this feature.

I don't really know what you're getting at, here. If you're having trouble with the official single player content that is in the game right now, it is almost certainly because the there have been a lot of changes to the gameplay that had unintended consequences on missions that were not designed with the gameplay changes in mind. I will also say that Arma 3 is perhaps the first game in the series where I don't feel like I'm fighting the game.

This is what is already happening, so I guess you get your wish.

Again, I don't really think this is the thread to discuss completely changing the way information is presented to the player with fully immersive HUD systems. That's simply not the game that Arma is at this point, and, to be honest, I doubt it ever will be.

I understand that, and it is interesting, but is it realistic that I can't tell how tired I am feeling unless I am wearing high tech glasses?' That was the point I was making when I said that it's not necessarily more realistic than a stamina bar. Edit: I understand that you're saying it would just be complimenting the existing heavy breathing and vignetting as a method of reporting fatigue to the player, but since one of the main arguments in favor of a stamina bar is that those features are unrealistically vague, adding a wearable piece of equipment that reports more specific information doesn't really solve the core issue, which is that humans inherently have a better idea how tired they are than what the game provides players. It's a neat idea, and I'm not opposed to having those kinds of things in the game, but I don't think it's a good solution for this particular issue. And it's one of those things that kind of necessitates changing the whole way the game presents information to the player.

Okay, so what do you think happened if it wasn't that?

Fair enough. I guess I just felt like I already have the feedback that I get when clicking buttons since that is the thing that I am actually doing in real life and the systems are responding to it.

It's less realistic if you're trying to justify the presentation of fatigue information with in game equipment. Like, realistically I don't have to look at a watch or whatever to know when I'm tired. Like, the equipment itself may be realistic and even actually exist in real life, but the justification for using that equipment to display information that I inherently know about my body certainly can't be, "it's more realistic." But I also think the realism argument is kind of dumb and that we should be talking purely about the utility of the system and what kind of gameplay we want it to create. The problem I see with using in game equipment to display any kind of important information that players should realistically have access to at all times is what happens if I don't have that equipment. Like, what if I'm not wearing the those glasses? Do I keep my HUD indicators?

Should these things have sounds?

I could be wrong, but I took Bouben's post to mean that a heart rate indicator either in the HUD or on a watch that you have to push a button to look at isn't any more realistic than a stamina bar (and is perhaps less realistic), and thus wouldn't (or shouldn't) serve to statisfy anyone who is arguing against having a stamina bar for "realism" reasons. Is that not irritating? It sounds like it would get really irritating.

Not really, but if people think it is then I guess that's all that matters.

Action menu.

A heart rate monitor is a neat idea, but I don't know how great it would be to have a constantly animating element in the HUD. I'd also like to say that screen effects and sound effects may be okay for telling you when you are in the extreme, "you don't want to be here" fatigue state, but it can be easy to overdo it. You don't necessarily want screen and sound effects to be going off when you're in the early stages of fatigue, as that sort of thing can get annoying and distracting really fast.

What you're talking about at this point, though, is a complete redesign of Arma's whole philosophy and style of presenting information to the player. I can understand if that is the game you want to be playing, but you must recognize that it's not actually the game you're playing and that not including a stamina bar in favor of presenting the information through equally unrealistic, although perhaps more immersive means, doesn't mesh with the design philosophy of the Arma 3 that actually exists. I really feel like a lot of the arguments against having a stamina bar are being made by people who are just against the idea of a HUD at all and are therefore fighting any new additions to the HUD on general principle. I think that if people were to look at this issue in the greater context of the game, the concern over a lack of stamina bar may make more sense. If people are playing a game that tells them exactly how many rounds they have left in their current magazine, has indicators for the damage levels of each part of their vehicles, has indicators for what stance their characters are in, has bars for how full their pockets are, how much ammo is left in each of the magazines in their inventories, and how heavy their loads are, and probably other stuff that I'm forgetting or taking for granted, can players not reasonably be confused when the game provides no feedback for stamina beyond panting and vignetting?

Pain is not directly linked to injury state in real life. You can be in an enormous amount of pain and in no danger of dying. You may need experience to know where your breaking point is, but you don't need experience to know when you are tired or even very tired. No one is arguing about scenarios where player is on the verge of passing out, here. We're talking about having a better idea of how weight and movement speeds are affecting our fatigue levels during normal gameplay situations. Consider the following scenario: A helicopter crew has crashed and you are en route to rescue them. You're in a hurry because an enemy group is converging on their position. You're nearing the site and want to know if you're going to be able to accurately engage targets when you get there or if you're going to need to take a quick rest before you actually hit the site. Should you really have to stop and look at your sights to see how much they are swaying and listen for heavy breathing in order to figure out how tired you are? Isn't this something you should inherently be aware of? Shouldn't you be able to say, "Yep, I'm getting pretty tired" without stopping to consciously think about it? And what's more interesting about that scenario -- being able to figure out that you are tired, or being smart enough to account for fatigue levels in your battle plan? I'm not talking about whether or not you're at the precipice of your breaking point, here. What I'm talking about is: are your hands shaking? Does your weapon feel abnormally heavy? Are you breathing heavily? Is your heat pounding in your chest? Are your legs burning? Are these things and the awareness that comes from them accurately portrayed by a breathing sound effect and some vignetting (which is very difficult to impossible to see under poor lighting conditions)? I would argue that a health bar is irrelevant to the argument because you are never expected to make decisions in Arma based on whether or not you can take one more hit. Being shot is always bad and often times fatal in this game. You are never expected or encouraged to think to yourself, "If I cross this street I might get shot, but that's okay because I think that I can take two more shots before I die." It doesn't matter how much health you have left in Arma 3. All that matters is am I injured and, if so, is my injury affecting my ability to run or aim? By contrast, fatigue state is something that players are constantly encouraged to think about. Fatigue levels influence your choice of movement speed, stance, whether and when to engage an enemy, what position you choose to engage them from, how much you commit to said engagement, etc.