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iratus

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Everything posted by iratus

  1. iratus

    Fatigue Feedback (dev branch)

    What ACE does is not relevant. Many realism oriented communities do not use ACE or other mods for stamina. ACE is not considered a "must have" for realism oriented gameplay anymore as it was in Arma2. Also ACEs stamina system is afaik just a tweaked vanilla fatigue and will break when fatigue is introduced. So this topic is relevant even for users of stamina mods. Exactly! Those communities found their own solutions (scripts or mods) or disabled stamina entirely - so why would they need a new system? Also it should be more convenient for users of those games to use a modified stamina system than for all the milsim folk: Stamina-changes are simply a part of KOTH, Wastelans etc. Mods (or scenarios), so the user does not have to think about it but can just install said mod or scenario. Realism focussed players now have to create and use mods to get the same experience they had, whereas the "casual crowd" gets a system that's maybe perhaps* better suited to their needs of unlimited running - wich they probably will disable or mod anyways (as in "in most populated missions/mods KOTH, Wasteland, Altis, Exile, etc, etc)- the fatigue is improved, increased or disabled..."). It is a bit like if the Milsim-Community somehow would have convinced BIS to remove Crosshair and 3rd person entirely from the game, saying "you could make a UI/camera script or mod to get it back!". It would not change much for the milsimers, but all the other people would have to byte the bullet or rely on modded/scripted solutions. Welll... This is a hot topic for some of us. It's about more than just removing/changing a single feature. People (me included) will sometimes react a bit more agressive than necessary, when in reality they just dont agree with your argumentation. *: I somewhat doubt this, because fatigue still penalizes players for running auround with heavy gear - just in different ways than before, so the "run and gun crowd" will still be better off with fatigue disabled. You are possibly right. But I could not resist :mellow:
  2. iratus

    Fatigue Feedback (dev branch)

    I agree. Although if looking at the stated design goals it was kinda inevitable to go into this direction. I wonder if this was their plan all along.
  3. iratus

    Fatigue Feedback (dev branch)

    I played some games on devbranch over the weekend to get a feel for stamina. I've stuck mostly to official scenarios or played in the editor with standard loadouts. This way I could test different game situations and couuld avoid the danger of "unreasonable loadouts". There are two main mechanics in stamina: the sprint part and the sway from jogging part Sprinting: The recently added influence of terrain steepness made me think more about the terrain as before (onder versions of stamina that is), even thouhg I'm not totally sure if that payed out. In genereal I had the feeling to allways have enough stamina (except with the Blufor Ammo Bearer who is loaded up to allmost maximum). I was allways able to sprint until I was either in cover or dead, even with the heavyer loadouts. However I stopped using "short tactical sprints" (doing a short-range position change e.g. going into another room in a house to get a better view/angle on a target) almost entirely. They don't seem to pay out anymore, since the time gained by sprinting can easily be lost while aiming at a higher sway. I do not have any metrics on this so it could be subjective. Overall the sprinting stuff works, but I dont find it particularly interesting as a game mechanic, especially compared to what fatigue had to offer. Sway from jogging: When the character moves, his weapon sway increases to a certain point (heavy breathing). The sway increases more/quicker if the character has a heavyer load. There might be other factors as well (terrain slope, movement style), but I'm not sure about this. Sounds good, right? Well... in theory it does. In practice I've got some problems with it. Firstly it is not all that clear: When I was affected the first time I did not really know why my character was breathing so heavily. I immediately checked the stamina bar wich was at maximum/rested (invisible). But this system is not tied to the samina bar, so it was a bit confusing even though I've read the OPREPs and this forum. The somewhat unnatural behaviour (see further down) adds to this effect, making it difficult to tie the sway to recent movement. It's not a big enigma or something, but since stamina is also about making the system more clear it should be mentioned. Secondly the system feels somewhat unnatural. We basically got a character who is able to jog for hours without getting slower (this solves the lack of organisation & driving/piloting skills on public servers-problem taking forewer to walk the two km to the combat zone-problem), but he starts to breath like an old steam horse after jogging 25m, rendering him basically combat ineffective. Thirdly the quick increase of breathing lends to strange/unenjoyable gameplay. The sway increases so quickly I found myself often jogging 30m to a cover, then hiding in said cover for about 10 to 15 seconds before engaging - in the middle of a firefight where my team actually needed my firepower. If i had started engaging sooner, my aim would have been so bad I'd not hit the broad side of a barn anyways. The sway increases less quick for lighter loadouts; light and to some degree medium classes have a bit more mobility. But it's still verry short even for a standard soldier before one needs to hold breath to hit even at close ranges. The heavyer classes (e.g. Blufor Soldier (AT)) run out of stamina so quickly* they are practically useless duringa firefight (or at least no fun to play - you have to use "hold breath" for every shot). And their loadout should be considered heavy but reasonable. To make a comparison: Under (old) fatigue you could jog close to the objective. Then you would take a stamina break for a minute or two (usually this time is needed anyways for teamleaders to coordinate/set up). then you would jog the last 300m or so and arrive combat effective in the combat zone. With the (current) stamina system you might skip the stamina break and jog straight to the combat zone. But you then have to pause every 25 or so meters for little 15 second stamina breaks during combat (or fight heavy sway all the time). Sumary I doupt the people who did not like fatigue will like stamina in its current state. It deals somewhat with the travel-time problem, but is verry restrictive during actual combat and does not lend itself well for fast, action focussed gameplay (nor for milsim stuff). TL;DR: I dont think the people who did not like fatigue will want to use stamina as it is now. *:maybe jogging with launcher in hand uses up stamina really fast? I had problems even if moving verry short distances.
  4. iratus

    Fatigue Feedback (dev branch)

    Later down the line Feedback Tracker would tell us that not a small portion of scenario designers, modders and admins think the system is not transparent enough. ;)
  5. iratus

    Fatigue Feedback (dev branch)

    This is a step in the right direction. I will give it a go on the weekend playing some missions I'm familliar with.
  6. iratus

    Fatigue Feedback (dev branch)

    In „OPREP core mechanics refinement“ BiS said this: So people could not figure out how fatigue works and because of this they could not strategize loadouts and movements that would be benefical fort hem. They became fatigued without knowing why, lost their ability to aim and (more annoying) their movement became slower. Naturally they did not like fatigue. Important: The root cause is „could not figure out how fatigue works“. So how to fix this? RiE kindly provided us the design goals fort he new stamina system: So how do we get there? Here’s my suggestion: Keep the mechanics from fatigue I know this is not what you want to read, but bear with me please! Fatigue achieves design goals 1 to 4, so it should be easier to work with this than to start from scratch (or use "industry standard" as a base wich only acieves design goal 5 while falling flat on its face for goals 1 to 4). Also the root cause is „could not figure out how fatigue works“, so we only need to fix this (design goal 5). „Fatigue is too complicated“ you might think and yes, learning all the many things it does in detail might be asked too much - at least for beginners. But the thing is: People do not need to know every single mechanism in the system to be able to use it in a fun way! If they get the general concept* of it, it’s good enough to have fun. Heck it’s probably enough for most of them to realize that it tries to mimik real life (like so many other systems of Arma) instead of just copy the industry-standard systems. Have fatigue/stamina be a topic in the field manual Now I do realize that many oft he people who find fatigue to be not transparent enough are also people who do not read the field manual. But it is still important to have a place where they can (be pointed to to) find more information about the system, therefor I mention it here. (Note: It is allready a topic in Field Manual>Tactical Guide>A06 Fatigue and Stamina - maybe it should become its own topic and be somewhat expanded) Changes to the Inventory Bar In most games your inventory meter (be it a bar or a numerical value) simply states your maximum load you can carry. It’s usually a binary system: Either you are within your limits (up to full bar) and receive no penalty, or you are above your limit and receive maximum penalty (i.e. can only move painfully slow or not at all). Some games simply render you unable to pick up things if it would bring you above your limits. That’s probably what a lot of players assume the bar to be in Arma. We need them to notice that it works different. So we need a way to indicate to the player that they should consider loading less than full. A text prompt on the Inventory Bar itself stating „light load“ (at up to 25% load), „medium load“ (25-50%), „heavy load“ (50-75%) and „verry heavy load!“ (75-100%) would probably go a long way: It would signal that there is more going on than just filling a bar to its maximum. Players know the concept of light, meduim and heavy classes from other games and could probably conclude that a light load means less firepower/protection but more mobility and vice versa. Add the Stamina Bar This is arguably the main thing missing. I personally like the breathing noise indicator, but i allready understand how fatigue works. Most players not familliar with Arma3 however are used to the industry standard: Character is able to run/jump/stunt indefinitely without penalty no mather the loadout and has a (limited) ability to sprint. However thats not how it should be in Arma3**. To learn that they loose stamina/gain fatigue off of other actions than sprinting, players need to get feedback direct feedback. The stamina bar does this in a way players are used to from other games: a bar depleting (and changing colour for additional clarity). When the bar moves there are little chevrons indicating if it’s going up or down. These could be futher improoved: The number of chevrons could go up for fast drain/regeneration and down for slow drain/regeneration. This would help players getting a feeling wich actions cost more or less stamina. Make the AI lower their weapons in aware state AI set on aware should lower their weapons during movement to save stamina. This would help scenario creators and players controlling AI teams. *: The heavier your load, the more exhausting your movement the more fatigued you get. Fatigue gradually affects your aim and ability to move quickly. **: As I pointed out earlyer as long as stamina is only affected by sprinting, it becomes almost non relevant. Medium to high loadouts will be viable in most if not all circumstances (fail on Goal 1 and 4). Sprint will only be used when one's plan goes wrong (failing goal 2 and in combination with failing 1 and 4 it will also fail on goal 3).
  7. iratus

    Fatigue Feedback (dev branch)

    Pretty much all the systems in Arma are not industry standard. That is what makes Arma what it is! It's different! Pay too much respect to the industry standard and it ends up like the newer "Flashpoints" published by Codemasters (Dragon Rising & Red River): Just another FPS noone cares about.
  8. iratus

    Fatigue Feedback (dev branch)

    As far as i am aware, the "baseline" of sway when the character is rested is the same in the old and in the new system. Both systems only controll how a player gets tired, thus increasing his sway from this baseline. If fatigue (old system) is disabled, characters never get tired and do not increase their sway. Same goes for stamina (new system): the character won't get tired and increase the sway as long as he does not sprint. As for the ability to use the old fatigue system, they said this: This roughly translates to: Fatigue will be gone. But there will be commands that can be used to create scripts and mods to get something similar to the old behaviour. So someone in the community will have to take the time and effort to recreate something along the lines of fatigue. Bear in mind this is going to be tricky since the config values for the ols fatigue system (wich took BiS months to get right) will most likely get lost in the proces, thus modders will be required to test out what values work best and basically start from scratch. And we will probably get seven different variants of recreated fatigue scripts and/or mods wich is fun for people playing in different communities.
  9. iratus

    Fatigue Feedback (dev branch)

    Maybe this is the case and maybe BIS should cater to them. But that would be quite easy: Allow mission designers to turn off stamina for KotH, Altis Life, Battle Royal etc. so their players don't have to bother with stamina. Fun fact: This is allready possible, so catering done! No need to trash the old stamina system (in wich BiS has put in a lot of work and refinement) for players who do not care about stamina anyways. And no need to anger the milsim-/more tactical focused community. The sum of people who fall into the category "did not buy Arma3 because Altis Life (etc.) had stamina disabled, but would totally buy if it had a verry simple/non restricitve fatigue system in those scenarios" can't be too big. And: BiS ALLOWS theAltis Life (etc.)-Community (respective the creators of those scenarios/mods) allready to implement their own simplified fatigue system if they deem it necessary. Should be easyer to modify a handful of popular scenarios/mods than to change every single one of thousands of custom scenarios/modsets for the milsim-community.
  10. iratus

    Fatigue Feedback (dev branch)

    I think the core problem with the new system is that fatigue is only generated via sprinting. Sprinting can (and should) be avoided most of the time, so gaining fatigue occurs rarely and only in short bursts (most of the time you are either safe or dead after sprinting). The fact that fatigue regenerates if the player does anything else than sprint on, tactical pace or look trough the sights further reduces the need to plan. Because of that the new system does not achieve points 1 to 4. To solve this problem fatigue would need to be generated by all the other exhausting activities and conditions (i.e. gonig prone, standing up, running uphills) to various degrees, modified by encumbrance... ...wich basicly would end up like/close to the old system with an added visual indicator. And that's probably why some people (including me) are so fussed about this change. The old system was not broken. It just was not transparent and comprehensible enough for a lot of people, and therefor failed point 5 (and in subsequence point 1 to 4 for affected players) on the list above.
  11. iratus

    Fatigue Feedback (dev branch)

    This is pretty much what I experienced too. Since fatigue is only reduced by sprinting, loadout weight becomes almost a non-factor in my eyes: Besides from impatience (wanting to reach a place 5 seconds earlyer) there is rarely ever a real need to sprint. And in those cases where there is one, it's mostly "sprint 5 seconds to the nearest cover", so one could carry a substantial load and still achieve that. There is no more reason to go for a light loadout, medium to heavy is in all but the rarest instances the better choice. The terrain ist a non-factor too when using the new system. This reduces the amount of tactical thinking during travel time. Since traveling is low intensity anyways reducing the ammount of things players have to consider may make traveling "more boring". ("boringly long travel times" migth be one of the reasons for the overhaul of the system in the first place). Also the new fatigue system is so much simpler than almost any other mechanic in the game that it does not fit compared to the rest of the game. I guess BiS received a lot of feedback from people who had their difficulties with the old system - otherwise there would be no reason for them to invest time and energy to basicaly do a 180° turn from what they did with the last stamina upgrade (a.k.a. the old system). But the problem was not the old system (nor people beimg "dumb casuals/COD Kiddies" btw): Most First person shooters out there use the simple, old stamina-bar mechanic where one can sprint draining their stamina bar until it's empty. There are usually no other actions that drain the stamina bar (even exessive jumping in full body armour does not affect it :P ). That's what most players are have become used to within the last ten or so years. As we all know the "old" Arma3-Stamina system is different. Many things affect your stamina and how fast it regenerates and low stamina has way more consequences than simply denying you the ability to sprint. There is no "stamina bar", one only gets rather suptle feedback trough breathing noises. If they are not aware of that feedback for some reason (e.g. listening to music/a stream in the background, not being used to have to use "Mk 1 ears" in games at all) they may never learn how stamina in Arma3 works and thus never be able to deal with it properly. They will get into situations where they first exhaust themselves for no reason without them noticing it. Then they will fail in combat due to heavy breathing and not know why they where exhusted. They will think something along the lines of "i've been rekkt so hard AGAIN! WHY?! Usually I pwn in FPS-games, so it can't be me. It has to be the game's fault!". More/clearer feedback would prevent that from happening. Now i am aware there are tutorials for stamina in the bootcamp campaign, but not every one has played them (8.8% have the bootcamp acievement on Steam - that's not completely acurate I know, but it gives a general idea). I think putting in the new visual indicator would have helped most of those people to understand the "old" stamina system to a degree where they could have had fun with it.
  12. iratus

    Soldier protection (dev branch)

    While real-world data certainly should be the basis, one must not forget the big picture. Having high-protective plates (stopping up to 6 rounds of 7.62mm) aviable only works if we get improved hitzones (so there is a chance of a bullet hitting a non protected area) AND if we get a strongly improved injury system that allows to be temporarily knocked down, supports bleeding and such. Call me pessimistic, but i don't expect tho get those systems. Without new hitzone- and injury-systems such high protective values will significantly change the gameplay. Knowing to be able to soak up multiple hits without "gowing down" will result in more reckless behaviour, especially if one knows that a first aid kit can heal most of the damage. Soldiers in the real world do not want to get shot at even if they know their vest will probably stop the bullet. Virtual warriors on the other sinde don't care because there is no pain. And if it takes one third of a magazine to drop an enemy, effective distances will become much shorter since one will need a good full-auto salvo to do enough damage that it matters. Shorter distances are also easyer to "rush" because the enemy has less time to get seven or eight hits on you, thus rewards reckless behaviour once more. Also factions who do not have plate carriers widely aviable (i.e. CSAT and FIA) would end up at a significant disadvantage. Changing the damage treshhold alone to such high values could easily end up in more battlefieldy gameplay (well, "normal mode" not "hardcore mode"). If we don't get significant changes in the hitzone and injury departments, I'd much rather prefer the values sugested by tmortensen.
  13. Civilians react scared to everyone that is set as hostile towards the indipendent (GREENFOR) faction. The standard-setting for GREENFOR is friendly to BLUEFOR, so unless one changes that, they won't be scared off of BLUEFOR soldiers. If you set Indipendent to friendly to OPFOR, Civilians will be scared off by BLUEFOR Troops, ect. Altough this is a good mechanism to controll the behaviour of civilians in a mission, it leads to problems if GREENFOR is intended to be hostile towards a faction that civilians should not fear :oops:
  14. iratus

    [REQUEST] ORBAT Tutorial

    Is there a possibility to set the commander name according to the name of a certain unit, for example to set it to the player's name if he is in command of a squad? This would be verry useful especially for larger multiplayer missions.
  15. iratus

    Soldier protection (dev branch)

    I agree on this. one of the core features that makes Arma gameplay different (I usually would say "more tactical") to most of the shooters out there is the fact that you can die from being hit by one or two bullets. It might be more realistically to be able to survive four hits and fight on, but I don't believe it will make for better gameplay. Think about it: If a player knows he can most likely survive 4 hits, crossing a street under fire to get into another building suddenly becomes an option. Crossing an open space where the enemy could engage him from several hundred meters away becomes an option too. Also it leads to shorter combat distances since players will try to get into autofire distance when possible for reliable kills. A good medical system might help here, but only if it punishes the character hard if he gets shot to the point that players really dont wants to get shot at (which may lead into the "taking controll away from the player" discussion) That's somewhat the dilemma with the body armour system: One one hand you want the player to feel the difference, i.E. letting him take more bullets when using vests. On the other hand if a character can survive about 4 bullets it changes the gameplay fundamentally.
  16. iratus

    Terrain Improvement (dev branch)

    Probably because some people complained about the many places on Chernarus that feature relatively high grass (i.e. you cannot see much when prone).
  17. CBA had a update since the beta started. Try downloading & installing the new CBA version from armaholic.com
  18. Maybe he just wants to say that he classifies himself as an "old A2 Hipster"? :) I myself had a hard time to get used to some of the changes.
  19. Don't like it either... It may showcase that attachments can change various propperties of guns - but it just doesn't make sense :(
  20. Blame the scenario. Arma has never been balanced for those take-whatever-weapon-you-like types of scenarios and there have always been complaints about this and that weapon "not being balanced", "OP". Some weapons are verry powerful yes, but they should be treated as a valuable and scarce ressource that has to be used wisely by the mission designers. If a mission allows for two people to get 20 AA missiles and sit on a hill close to the enemies airbase then of course being a chopper pilot in that other team is going to suck. That said, a cooler lock-on system (the beebiebeep thing from arrowhead for example) would be cool anyways :)
  21. One of the changes from Arma 2 to Arma 3 is that the nakedeye zoom does not zoom in as much as it used to in Arma 2. I have to admit, I had some trouble hitting enemies that where further away at the beginning. First I thought it's just me not being used to the new graphics and controls, but then I did a comparison (via screenshots) to be sure: Both pictures are taken at a distance of 200m while using the maximum nakedeye zoom aviable, needless to say without a scope. I've then enlarged the pixels via photosoftware to make the effect more visible. This makes it more difficult to see/spot units at great distance and it reduces the range at wich unscoped weapons can be used effecively. (Indirectly it also "boosts" the usefulnes of scopes). Personally, I like the change, because it makes it harder to spot enemy troops in the distance. Also in Arma 2 it sometimes felt a little bit too easy to hit enemies at distances of 400+ meters just using a aimpoint (for example with the M14 AIM). On the other hand it feels just a little bit overdone to me. Now it's really hard to hit a standing, well visible enemy at 300m using Ironsights, aiming at a target that's maybe 2 pixels wide does not work. And 300m should be possible IMO. So maybe the zoom should be increased a little bit to somewhere between what Arma 2 had and what we have now. What do you think about this?
  22. Well that explains why I did not hit a thing wth that rife :rolleyes: Using the Katiba I can reliably hit enemies at 350m using iron sights, so the zoom level seems to be fairly okay.
  23. iratus

    Proving Ground for ArmA 3

    This mission is verry useful! Thank you conKORD
  24. this is kind of curious... I made a trigger like yours that is triggered repeatedly and calls the script. If I then set debug = 1 I get a unspecified error (showscripterrors just reports "Error" at "if (|#|debug == 1) then {...", not describing the kind of error). However, if I call the same script with a trigger that only triggers once, it works as expected (no error). And to make things even more funny, if I trigger the script via a trigger only once and then later activate the repeating trigger, it works for the repeating trigger too :confused: I renamed the variable to Bundschuh to make sure not to use a reserved variable, but the effect is the same.
  25. Also make sure to put the condition into (round) brackets. This code works in a .sqf skript: if (debug == 1) then { hint "Debug is 1!"; }; Hope that helps :)
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