roshnak

5m is really, really high. I think a bigger issue is that the game doesn't handle falling well in the first place. There are no animations for it so you just fall in whatever stance you were in when you jumped or fell off. Then, when you hit the ground, you kind of slide/get stuck for a second or two. It's really weird and bad.

These are totally fair points, but at the same time there's no incentive to change anything if we just keep throwing money at the series regardless of what happens. Basically, we are in kind of a bad situation here, where we can keep giving money to BIS and hope for the best or we can stop giving money to BIS and hope for the best.

Unfortunately, that's probably not going to happen. The market for this kind of game is probably just too small to get any kind of real money involved. AI sophistication is really going to come down to how the developer decides to program it. It's not really an engine feature in the sense that people are using it. This is one of the reasons that this whole engine discussion is kind of pointless. Game engines are really broad frameworks and aren't usually defined as "has good AI" or "has sandbox elements" or "accurately simulates ballistics" or these other game mechanics that people keep bringing up. I'm also not sure how player-centric the AI is in Cryengine. I haven't really done that much research, but the only way that the AI would be player centered in the sense that people are using the term in Arma is if the game basically turned off AI that were too far away from the player. I guess Crysis might despawn AIs, but again, this wouldn't really be a hardcoded engine feature, more of a game feature. The thing about really big maps like Altis is that they still aren't really negatively impacting performance that much. The major way that huge maps are probably negatively affecting the game is in drawing time away from the art department. Ironically, that is quite possibly one of the reasons that the houses aren't populated with furniture and stuff (the other, more likely reason being that it would probably be a lot of work to optimize). The whole underwater thing is just so weird. How many people were really like, "Gee, I sure wish I could scuba dive in Arma?" Honestly, the gameplay potential, at least in a military sense, isn't really that high either. It's not like underwater firefights are particularly practical, and the more likely scenario of an underwater insertion is only going to take up a small percentage of most missions. Maybe I don't have a good enough imagination, but I can't even really think of any great uses for diving mechanics outside of military scenarios. There are so many things that would have been better to work on.

None of this has anything to do with the RV engine at all. You are talking about what kind of games other developers choose to make. I don't even know why you are talking about this. That's all well and good but DayZ is hardly unique in creating a high lethality environment. That's probably because that guy only made one post about it and it's not an entirely unlikely outcome, whereas you have made pages of posts containing faulty logic and bad or off topic arguments. Basically, he might be a little wrong, but you are very wrong. BIS isn't staffed by a team of uniquely skilled programmers who are the only people in the world capable of writing code for an Arma style game. If a larger company with significantly more manpower and money were to set out to make an Arma style game, they would likely (not guaranteed; no one has said that in this thread) have more success implementing some of the more ambitious features that BIS would like to implement. The developers of Arma 3 themselves have stated that manpower and money are major roadblocks to achieving what they want to achieve within this game. I honestly can't figure out why you think a larger team with more money wouldn't have an easier time of making a game of this scale unless you think BIS has some secret ingredient they are mixing into the game. There are plenty of highly skilled developers out there. This whole argument seems especially strange since you have stated that you want to see more competition in the genre. Why are you arguing that other developers couldn't do it?

It would be great if there were some sort of official documentation on basic editor usage that shipped with the game. Overall I'm not super happy with how much documentation has had to be done by the community over the years. I'm still not sure it would actually help much, though. People have a tendency to get carried away with making something that's really big and cool.

Yeah that would be my preference. The reason people are concerned about how many bullets it takes to kill someone is because of the way the armor mechanic works. Basically, the bullet stopping mechanics of the armor are being triggered more than they should because the effect is being applied to the whole torso instead of just the area that bullet-proof inserts would be covering. So body armor is realistically stopping bullets, but it's stopping it in an area larger than it should be. Although, to be honest, the whole armor system causes a lot of problems with the ability to stop threats, since it makes it harder to kill people but non-lethal wounds are basically meaningless. So, yeah, the whole system isn't really very well thought out from a gameplay perspective. And yeah, the improved movement alone means I can't go back to Arma 2, and I don't hate Arma 3, I just don't think it's as good as it should be. I know it's not necessarily all Bohemia's fault that the game is in the state it is, but that doesn't really make the end result any more satisfying to me.

I don't know why you would make that implication, but you actually went further than that and outright stated such. I quoted it, remember? It is also highly relevant to your statement, since the fact that BIS is not large and other companies are is what would give those other companies an advantage. We aren't talking about semantics here; we're talking about whether you understand the core concepts of the arguments people are making. I consider the fact that BIS decided to implement armor without proper hit detection a pretty poorly thought out alternative. It leads to things like armor protecting areas that armor isn't covering, like plate carriers protecting the entire torso and helmets protecting the entire head. It makes body armor more protective than it should be and is pretty frustrating as well. I guess it sort of comes down to opinion and how much each individual is willing to put up with. Either way, it's definitely not doing it right the first time and the problem with that is there's no guarantee that it will be done right at all. This here displays a pretty big lack of understanding of how companies using licensed game engines work. It's not like making a mod. If some aspect of the engine as delivered is doing what you want it to do, quite often you can go in change stuff around. It's like saying, "Gee, you could never have a squad based shooter, MMO, turn based strategy, RTS, action RPG, or military shooter on that Unreal Tournament engine." Edit: You know that no one is using the BF2 engine anymore, right? Like, it's dead and gone.

No, I'm pretty sure we're all talking about the same thing. Properly accurate fire geometry is essential to a balanced and realistic portrayal of body armor (you know, like helmets that only cover the top of your head not protecting your entire face) and if the engine isn't in a place where detailed hit detection based on armor type can be implemented, it's probably not a good idea to shove some poorly thought out alternative system in there (helmets covering your face). I don't know what the rolleyes was for since I was using Oukej's statement as evidence that the engine isn't where it needs to be and perhaps an example of Bohemia's ambitions running away with them. I guess that's the kind of problem you run into when you don't keep up with advancements in the industry over the course of a decade. Courtrooms aren't the only places that your arguments have to make logical sense. You keep throwing this accusation around as if it's going to hurt my feelings and I'll take it easy on your flawed arguments. I'm not. Edit: This. Also, we really shouldn't be talking about RTI and VBS at all since they are completely different products from Arma and aren't even really supposed to be games. They are tools with specific purposes demanded by the organizations that contract with the companies that make them.

I bolded a huge problem with your statement. It wouldn't be another big company because BIS isn't a big company in the first place. Why do you take issue with people saying that if a huge company with many times the funding of BIS tried to make a game like Arma they would probably make a more capable game? Guess what? Money and manpower are pretty important in carrying out large projects. Also, no one is trying to insult the company. This is what I was talking about. If this game isn't brought up near the standards that it should have been in the first place, I'm not buying any more games from BIS. I've had a lot of fun with this series, but I can't justify throwing money at a company that hasn't demonstrated that it can make significant progress with follow up games. Blind faith isn't going to get me anything but an empty bank account. I made an exception in preordering Arma 3 and I almost regret it. It's a shame because I really do love this series and want it to be as good as it should be. This is just evidence that the engine needs a serious overhaul and of some fairly poor thinking on BIS's part. First of all, modifying the hitboxes based on what equipment you are wearing shouldn't be impossible. Second of all, why even bother implementing the feature if you can't do it right in the first place? It does nothing but make people frustrated and BIS look bad. It's not strange at all that few companies have tried to compete with Arma. It's a small market without enough opportunity for profit to justify the work. Unless you are really passionate about the project (which BIS is) then it's just not worth doing. There aren't a lot of companies attempting to compete with Eagle Dynamics and DCS for similar reasons. The payoff isn't there for the work involved. Also, stop talking about what DICE has accomplished with Battlefield. They aren't trying to do what Arma does so you can't compare the games. All of NeuroFunker's posts contain straw men. The problem with writing a new engine from scratch is that it could potentially (probably?) take more time and effort than bringing this one up to snuff.

Yeah, Bad Benson isn't talking about whether or not you can put 500 AI in a mission if you want. He's talking about whether the game will still run well if you do that. Just because Arma does things that other games don't doesn't mean it does those things well. That's what he means when he says "pulling it off." I don't understand why everyone gets so defensive about this stuff. No one is saying they don't like Arma, they are just saying there is room for improvement. It seems like every time someone gets too specific about what is wrong with the game someone jumps in to say, "No, you're wrong. I agree there is room for improvement, but you're wrong that there is a problem. But I agree there is room for improvement. But there's nothing wrong with the game. But I'm not saying it couldn't be improved." On the Star Citizen front: Sales have started. What do you think people are paying for when they back the game on Kickstarter? Furthermore: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/single-ship-packages <---Sales right here. They take credit cards and everything. And yeah, anyone with business savvy is going to realize that they can milk Kickstarter for money before paying for anything themselves, because they can get $100 for a copy of the game and a t-shirt before they even start developing. A game raising a lot of money on Kickstarter doesn't necessarily mean it has a lot of fans. It just means that the fans that it does have are willing to spend a lot of money to see the game made.

This. Also, Star Citizen doesn't have a ton of sales. It has a relatively small number of sales (compared to top selling AAA games) for a whole lot of money.

What? No, the financial reward is not there. This is a niche market. Games like Call of Duty and Battlefield generate far more sales than Arma does, and most of the people who are interested in playing this kind of game in the first place are already aware of Arma and purchasing it.

That's not the low ready depicted in the OP's screenshots.

Basically every shooter in the last decade has done this, so I'm not sure why you are singling out RO2 (especially since RO1 also had rebolting animations). Animations have never been a strong point in the series. It took until this game before your hands turned with the wheel. I can only imagine it is because they are using third person mocap data for reloading animations (Yes, I know that there aren't separate first- and third-person animations). This is great and all, but if then I'll shoot my gun into the ground if I don't sight in before shooting. I don't always want to aim down the sights before I fire. This is one of those concessions that have to be made in the name of gameplay.

Yeah, map size shouldn't really matter very much at all in terms of performance, given the streaming nature of the engine. Vegetation, on the other hand, has been a huge performance killer since Arma 1. I don't understand why this is the case when there are so many other solutions out there that impact performance so much less.

Yeah, it could probably be done. By the same token, the things people want in Arma 3 could probably be done in RV, too. Yeah, don't put AI in areas where players aren't going to be. The way Arma works is that it simulates every unit placed on the map, even if players aren't there, playing out engagements in full, with the AI behaving the same as they would if a player were watching them. Some games, like Falcon 4.0, stop fully simulating units outside of a "bubble" around the player and, instead, have a more rudimentary simulation of what's going on in those areas which is far less accurate and probably amounts to dice rolls (think Battle Map vs Auto Resolve in Total War games for a rough analogy). I believe the ALIVE module does something similar. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, since Arma isn't designed to have a fully dynamic war going on in the background like Falcon 4.0 and Total War are, and there are a host of options available to mission designers to allow for AI to only be placed or active when players are nearby. Honestly, the whole thing about AI being simulated when players aren't around isn't as big a deal as some people made it out to be. Most situations where it causes problems are probably more the fault of the mission designer than any problem with the system itself. Everything eats processor time, though, including the two alternative methods you listed. It's not like you can just get free calculations out of a game. If they were looking for a cash grab, they probably wouldn't be in the business of making games for a niche market.

This is pretty much the thing that concerns me about this series. Don't get me wrong, I love it, but a lot of things could have been improved with each iteration of the game. Four games in and most of them haven't been. If I have to wait until the sixth or seventh game to see improvements that should be in this one, I'm just going to stop buying them (with a great deal of disappointment).

I actually understand why RV isn't being used by other companies. I was responding to the people who say things like, "RV is the most powerful engine out there," which is just not correct. RV is pretty good at a few things and really bad at a lot of other things. Again, I have no problem with Arma using RV. I think it's the right engine for the game, it's just lacking in a lot of areas where progress has been made by other engines and needs a lot of work to bring it up to modern standards.

It's definitely one of the weakest points of the game. The thing I don't get is that OFP apparently had a doppler simulation (I don't actually remember noticing this), Arma had sound occlusion, and not only does Arma 3 not have either of those things, but it doesn't really have anything better, either.

So, basically, you want combat pace to toggle in and out of low ready, right? I mean, I guess that would be okay? It seems like a pretty minor, mostly visual tweak. I've never felt like the gun was taking up too much screen real estate, honestly. It certainly wouldn't change the way I play the game or anything.

How, exactly, do you expect me to prove that something is unproven? P.S. You are a terrible poster who brings down the quality of discussion in every thread you post in. This could easily be avoided if you read the entire post before replying.

Maybe you could list some actual examples of what makes RV so great and why nothing else can replace it instead of using vague analogies and marketing speak. Or how about this way: If RV is so much more amazingly powerful and capable than all of those other engines out there, why aren't companies breaking down the gates trying to license it? Once again, I'm not actually saying that BIS should actually adopt some new engine, but all of this talk about how no other engine can do what this one does is completely unproven.

FPS =/= lag, guys. Also, Bad Benson did say "hardly any server," not "no server."

The second and third paragraphs of my post were all about how no one else (except maybe Codemasters) has tried to make a game like Arma on another engine for the commercial market. That's why it was a side note. Probably? Why would you think there isn't? There are plenty of MMOs at the very least that have massive worlds and lots of objects so that's not really the roadblock to making an Arma-like game on another engine. I'm just going to quote vivoune's post because it's relevant reading for anyone who thinks that no other engine on the planet can do what RV does:

This must be a joke. If he was referring to RTI, why did he say that Battlefield 4 can't simulate the logistics of war or whatever? My statements make far more sense when you don't cut them off in mid-sentence. I'm not referring to competition in the genre. I'm talking about how many people on this forum treat Battlefield like it's the devil, instead of just a different kind of video game. I don't know, maybe I have unusually diverse interests or something, but I enjoy both Arma and Battlefield in different ways.