GepardenK

Yes I remember the "bat ears" from back then when it came to reloading (and, I think, healing). I'm glad they fixed that, I was talking about personal sounds and it's role in feedback to the player. Particularly in 3rd person where personal sounds still are very low because of the character's relative distance to the camera. Lack of proper sound feedback when taking actions kinda breaks the gameplay flow Agreed, but sounds in a game is about more than just quality of soundscape. Some sounds are a integral part of the gameplay and not just immersive fluff. When it comes to "reloading" and "breathing" sounds they need to be emphasised to give proper feedback back to the player. Sounds like these should be "overwhelming" in the sense that their job is not only to play a proper sound, but also to make me as a player feel that I am actually doing the reloading action or being very very exhausted (sound, togheter with animation, must replace the lack of actual physical contact I have with the game) For a good example of really good sound design, see Thief: The Dark Project (from 1998). That game does so much right when it comes to sound. One example is the hilariously loud footsteps. Garret is supposed to be a master thief but his steps are so loud that, In real life, every guard in the entire building would know he was there after his first few steps. But In the game it works perfectly and makes you as a player feel connected with the environment in a way that, for some reason, has not been topped since. You know that feeling when you are trying to walk silently over a wodden floor at night but every step you take makes massive wodden shrieks that makes your hearth jump in fear of waking up somebody? Thief replicaded that feeling so so well

I would agree. Relative sound volume is a major problem in Arma atm. This extends beyond the firing sounds. Reloading for example is to low, the values might be "realistic" for all I know but in terms of giving the player proper feedback and immersion it does not work at all. Same goes for fatigued breathing - it feels very low relative to other sounds, slowing down and aiming poorly feels annyoing without proper audible context With BIS I think it's 1 step forward and 5 steps in random directions. But that's sandbox design for you, overall they do a great job

This. I love the new sound system but the range is way off. Just open the game and witness the arial view of soldiers figtning around Kamino in the main menu. The units are far away but the shots sounds like they are danger close. Other than this "bug" I think the changes are great. Much better than before

I aboslutely love the new mechanic. Nothing feels better than sitting down against a tree to get that extra accuarcy on your shot. Or picking firepositions carefully because you are wounded or exhausted. I strongly oppose any visual cue or hud icon for resting. The game will feel way too "technical" if we are supposed to run around until we get feedback that a particular buff has been applied. Leave that for the deployment feature (remember even weapons without bipods can be deployed by activly "resting" them down on any surface). The resting feature we talk about here is more about making some positions naturaly more stable because of the enviorment, It's supossed to be subtle. I would suggest making it even more subtle by applying the buff in varing degrees based on how much objects cover your arms/weapon, instead of just a digital on/off like it is now. That would mask the transition even more. If done right new players should not even need to be told about this feature. They would just experience some positions to be more stable than others in a "that makes sense" kinda way. Remember we are talking about passive resting based on enviorment here, active resting is of course something you should get feedback on and that will come with the deployment feature (as again, you can also deploy/rest weapons that do not have bipods)

You basicly described the original Operation Flashpoint campaign :) Most people familliar with it wants Arma3 to have a similar campaign

Well, It has an amazing campaign with good voice acting and memorable music. The best part is the story though. You follow a squad of inexperienced and naive soldiers during the cold war who gets their world turned upside down when a rouge russian general tries to force world war 3. It manages to create a sense of mystery about the entire situation and later panic as you realize you are figthing a loosing battle. Its epic and personal at the same time, a true classic

I know my favorite thing in Arma is the tense and sometimes amazing situations you end up in, its the only game that gets my hearth pumping like hell. After 10 years with the series I still end up in situation were I feel completely overwhelmed, insanely clever or absolutely amazed about whats going on. Even the lackluster campaign in the recent DLC gave me memorable moments I will never forget. The main reason for this is authentic gameplay (not realistic). Nevermind the realism of it, the fact is that Armas gameplay is set up to create authentic situations and here it succeeds like no other game has ever done. But Arma2 lacks 1 thing that makes most people not intersted, and thats the thing Cold War Crisis (first game) had in spades: Charm

The "cog in the machine effect" is something that Arma2 lacked, Arma1 tried in some early missions (to few) but failed in design and charm. Its an incredible experience being a grunt in a big battle trying to survive and maybe get to kill a guy if youre lucky. It really dosent matter that your side will win the battle even without you, surviving and following orders is the only goal. This is the perfect kind of missions to get new players hooked on the game really, and learn stuff like infantry combat and tanks. Occasionaly you can scare the player by giving him jobs he think he`s not ready for, like ambushing a convoy. Only about 1/3 or halfway into the game do you need to give players more complete control over the mission, let your squad leaders to the job until then.

I hope they have/take the time to make a proper showcase demo. Like if you press the editor button you get a cool trailer showing off how easy you can make a skrimish in the full game (something like the arma2 free trailer), this should go for all arma3 features to give new players a sense of the package`s scale. Also of course a brief mission or two to let players test the game and see if it runs well. Idealy a good single mission that triggers players on whats special about ARMA (It needs to have great gameplay, no gimicky stuff like a fast show off of certain features). Maybe something like swiming up from underwater into a coastal town battle with a few squads on each side and an bmp or two, then let the player drive a jeep through enemy territory after the battle and back to a safe zone. Think early OFP mission quality I think a loot of players might be open to what ARMA has to offer (more now after dayz), BIS just needs to give a good first impression

What about low-key ambient music that occasinaly play during long silent moments of walking through the forest? It would slowly fade inn so you don't even notice its there in the beginning. Of course, it wouldn't play all the time, so you'll have plenty of moments to enjoy birds singing and wind blowing as well. If shooting starts while it is playing, the music will aslo slowly fade. But it would do so well into the battle so you can't use it as a cue for being spotted or not

^this We may as well call it "hipfire" for lack of a better word. The bottom line is that its way to easy to fire fast and precicely over long ranges with the crosshair/hipfire combo. Arma need less of this to make tactics and better movement through terrain count more in combat, and also to make CQC have a place. So get ridd of crosshair, even the option for it, and increase "hipfire" recoil! This is not about making the game more hardcore or anything. This is about Arma having a more focused design on what it's good at. Red orchestra 2 has no crosshair and insane hipfire recoil, and it is a much more newbie friendly game than Arma. So stuff like this will not scare people away, on the contrary: It will make new player "get" what arma is all about faster, and thats the first step to enjoying it :)

The idea of using weapons "from the hip" and expecting accuarcy is sadly not ridiculous, in all Arma games including OPF the weapons are actually very accurate when shooting from the hip. And when you are using crosshair its easy to aim like that as well. There is no question that increasing recoil and/or bullet spread is needed for this type of shooting. And crosshair needs to go. It's not about making the game less arcadey or any such BS. It's about helping new players ease into the style of play better by not offering red herrings, stuff like that (maybe suprisingly) really confuse people because they start to play around with the feature from day 1 since its right in their face. Scanning the treeline with your view zoomed in and using crosshair feels like clunky simulation, scanning the treeline with ironsighs feels like real war.

Personally I belive BIS should get ridd of the crosshair for no ironsight, and not even have it as an option. Yes, it's an nostalogic OPF thing and kind of cute; but it's also a red herring for newer players that kind of puts them in the wrong mindset for Arma. This would aslo solve the heavy weapon CQC problem if we follow your idea and makes ironsight for those guns slower. MP would be more balanced as well. And hipfire should produce more recoil (you are not steadying the gun properly after all), but they must still of course keep that lovely float zone and allow directional blind fire.

After watching the Arma3 video presentation again this thought hit me that shallow water and shorelines really need some love. Especially since we're now going to have diving suits and stuff. I came up with a few simple ideas that hopefully shouldn't be too hard to implement or taxing on the system requirements. 1:Shallow waters need to be a bit more transparent (but not too much, that leads to the uncanny "where does the water end?" effect that some games have). Actually, all water close to the player need to be more transparent. Having this super visible blue sky mirror effect close to the player looks kind of stupid, even when in open waters. If a sphere of gradient transparency around the player is too hardware taxing then just make shallow water in general more transparent, its a perfectly fine compromise. 2:People need to move slower in shallow water. Since we now have soldiers swimming and entering the battlefield from the ocean this is a must have. Nothing fancy required: just slow those soldiers down from knee deep and out - even better if they gradually move slower as the water deepens. It adds buckets of immersion and bring up a few tactical possibilities as well. 3:Splash and sound effects when moving in water, especially needed if we consider the moving slow idea from above. Again, nothing fancy: just a few particle effects around the soldiers legs - I'm not even asking for ripples in the water. If too hardware taxing: just limit it to the player unit (only your own in MP as well). More splash if you run and different animation for moving in water would be big perks but not really needed. 4:Make fatigue rocket skyhigh if trying to run in water. Stuff like this, and most of the above, really make you consider water as a part of the world and not just pretty scenery. Ok, that was a few suggestions to help inspire you guys. I'm looking forward to A3 and what you all come up with for it. Have a happy holiday!

Last time I checked there was a lot of village sweeps and all out war mission in both Arma 2 and Operation Arrowhead, so no worries there peter_bullet Also, if you like fun casual gaming then there is always the mission editor. Just put a bunch of units at one side of town and a bunch of enemy units at the other - then watch armageddon happen. Possibly put yourself in a helicopter and rain death from above to both sides. It doesn't get simpler or more fun oriented than that They said in some interview that arma 3 would focus more on accessibility for new players. And in my book thats only good news