iratus

Some FPS on the other hand go a bit too far with that fluid thing, especially in regards to mounting vehicles. In some of them a player is able to mount a tank driving by at high speed simply by pressing [E] at the right time as if he was . This may be okay for certain FPS, but IMO would not fit into ArmA (not only because of immersion but also because of gameplay reasons).

I was thinking about something along the lines of the MP5, that is traditionally a primary weapon slot. Maybe Submachinegun is the wrong word and it should read machinepistol? I always confuse them! Anyways you've got the idea :) I like the new inventory system, because it now can make sense in (vanilla) Arma to take a lighter weapon even if weapons with better penetration/accuracy are aviable. And we no longer have to have 6 slot rocket ammunition :D

Fatigue system and loading capacity may balance things out a bit. Sniper Rifle + LMG + SMAW (+ ammunition for all those) equals heavy load, maybe even too heavy to carry at all. If one would like to be ... "verry versatile", one would probably choose to take something along the lines of (light) Sniper Rifle + Submachinegun + One-Way Rocketlauncher (RPG-18 style) + limited Ammo - protective gear.

Bear in mind that the game still is in alpha, thus things may change during development. BIS may use "placeholder calibers" and "placeholder magazines" at the moment for not fully implemented/tested calibers as they use placeholder images in the inventory. They do not want tho show "strangely behaving" projectiles at a public presentation for sure. (That's probably also the reason why we did not see any soldier launched rocket systems yet).

I agree on that one. If the main problem with 360 pad is that one needs to config all his butons manualy, there may be an easy solution: ToH has predefined controller schemes. If BIS implemets this in ArmA3 too, they could simply include a default scheme for the XBOX pad. Players playing with the pad could apply this scheme and would be ready to go/would have a solid basis to start finetuning their controls.

That's probably a major factor of the ArmA-PvP-Problem. PvP players expect or like different scales/setup of scenarios, but (as I understand it) PvPers also need standard scenarios supplied with vanilla ArmA. A couple of days ago here on the forums, someone suggested small, fast paced 5v5 matches as optional for PvP. But in such small scenarios you will never find tanks, choppers and planes, because there simply is no space for them. I imagine a lot of PvPers may object to this kind of scenario because for them all the vehicles are an integral part of what ArmA makes ArmA. Larger scenarios where helos and tanks are viable on the other hand may easily take hours to play trough and require way more players to play - wich leads to them being less suited for league play. I'm not saying one or the other is wrong, on the contrary in my eyes both of them are good setups for those people who like to play them. Now, BIS could just include scenarios of both styles, right? That may be an option, but it may split the (already small) PvP community more or less in two camps. And of course only half of the scenarios delivered with vanilla Arma would suit a certain playstyle. If we take a look at games that focus on PvP gameplay, most of them focus more or less on a certain Scale. Some of them are scaleable to some degree, but never to the degree ArmA is. And it makes sense because that way players get a more homogeneous experience. When looking at BF3 and its CQC expansion we can already see signs of splitting the community: Some players like the expansion and prefer CQC maps, while others avoid it alltogether. With a PvP scene as big as BF3's this may not be a problem, but for a smaller community it may be verry difficult. One of the strenghts of ArmA is that it can do all the thingsTM, but I have a feeling that this is a disatvantage in the highly standartisized world of competitive PvP.

I agree. But suprisingly it can be verry effective as this prominent example shows: KHEOp75doYs I prefer to use a joystik though.

Open up the editor, place a soldier, weaponcrates and some empty vehicles. Then start mission, try out vehicles, weapons and stuff and explore the map. :D

More options regarding imput devices is always a good thing (at least as long as it doesn't hurt the way established imput devices can be used - namely gamepad optimized menues are sometimes a real pain to use with mouse and keyboard). However, I can only see two reasons why someone would prefer a gamepad/analog stick over a mouse for aiming in 1st/3rd person games: One cannot use a mouse at all or not without getting hurt (typewriter's cramp for example). One has learnt to play 1st/3rd person games on a system where no mouse was aviable, thus one has simply more training in using a gamepad for such tasks. If you're one of the later I suggest switching to use a mouse. Of course it will take some time and training to make the change - but it will be worth it! :) If you don't want to completely get rid of the gamepad, try using it in your off-hand as Liquidpinky does (sounds like something I might try myself one day). Seriously, this is not something abut "PC elitism" or so! In fact a strenght of the PC as a gaming platform is that one is able to use a verry wide variety of input devices (from mouse & keyboard to joystiks to gamepads to TrackIR and so on), therefore a PC Elitist would overly proud state that he uses "whatever device fits best to the task!!!11". I use gamepads for some games too, but for aiming in 1st person/3rd Person games, the mouse is simply a better imput device than a analog stick. PS: Oh and as far as I remember the default settings for mouse acceleration in ArmA2 are way to high wich results in a somewhat strange behaviour of the aiming. I recommend turning mouse acceleration way down/off.

I'm willing to sacrifice GuildWars 2 in favour of alphatesting ArmA3 any time :o But I guess it makes sense to get things on a certain level before you start to test them. Otherwise you'll get "bugs" reported that only occour because of those missing parts (that are on schedule to be implemented).

What about putting weapon selection on the number keys and putting the command-interface at Shift+Number? This way the command menu can still be as complex as it is and be relatively quick.

Don't like the idea about W being default for tactical jog. Because most of the time during a mission you're not in close combat. This isn't CounterStrike where you start 50m away from your enemy and have to expect contact 5 secounds after Mission start. Tactical Jog is supposed to be used in CQB only, since it's a bit slower than normal jog and uses up more stamina. Don't want to see the newbies in my squad "tactical jog" trough the landscape. Lowered weapon while normal jog is fine IMO. One is unable to fire a that movement pace anyways and to newer players having your weapon lowered signals that pretty intuitive. If one has a problem with the weapon lowering/rising with small steps, one can simply double-tap LCtrl to lower the weapon in general (or use tactical jog if the situation demands the weapon to be ready at all the times).

Being under fire in ArmA2 makes me feels about 20 times more "suppressed" than in Battlefield 3 who has those effects. A bit of an effect here and there may be okay, but in my eyes gameplay and its consequences are far more imortant to get the feeling than graphical effects.

I'm okay with the marketing and the things I get from BIS. The trailers, report-ins, behind the scenes and stuff really do show what the features are about, not just hype the game for now reason. For example look what other games give their community: 0QP3_8y8uzk Basically what they are doing here is throw big names (from Hollywood) at you trying to impress you. Don't get me wrong, that music guy certainly has the talent and experience to do a good game soundtrack (for the writer it depends if he gets the difference between writing a game and writing a movie), but you do not learn much about the game and how it works from this trailer. There are other trailers. Some of them talk a bit about the story (they don't tell much though), the others are more like this one, telling you that this game will be even more epic than the last one but don't show much detail about it. (Oh, and if you preorder now, you will get that map that they will sell later on as a DLC :rolleyes:). Maybe there is more on the official site or in their forums, I don't know. But compare that trailer to one from BIS: mIwfS8uJJIk You get way more info about how the game will be, what they have improved, how they improved it and what the effects are. They don't hide their game behind "epic marketing". EDIT: fixed Youtube liks.

Having to do all the steps to manipulate your gun manually is interesting in that conceptional game, however it would be just a burden in ArmA and not add to the gameplay. Having to repeat a set of keystrokes everytime you reload gets old verry quick (and many people would just macro it, wich would render it useless). And: if you do this for handguns you would have to do it for every other weapon in the game too (including tank guns, mortars, heavy machine guns etc.) which would be much work for BIS, much to learn for players (ArmA already has a steep learning courve) but in my opinion would ot make the game more enjoyable. Let's just assume the soldier we control knows about using his weapons and concentrate more on the interessting choices and decisions to be made in the tactical environment. About manual cocking: It depends on if there is a "tactical decision" about it to be made. For example in Far Cry 2 your bolt action sniper rifle gets cocked automatically after you go out of scope view, so you have to decide "do I look trough the scope for a few secounds more" or "do I cock as fast as possible". I'm okay with that (although I don't know how realistic that is, I can imagine people being able to cock a rifle while still looking trough the scope). On the other hand, if you've got a pump action shotgun, why should someone wait to "pump" right after he fired the gun? There's no reason. So it would be best to just doubecklick after every shot fired, no decission would be needed. So the mechanic would become just a burden to the player and not really add to the gameplay.

Please use better ballistics for rocket launchers. In ArmA2 rockets fly straight ahead wich makes it too easy to hit at long ranges.

I also hope is going to visit them.

But... but... aehm... Oh well, you're right about this. They just came into my mind because I was thinking about energy sources on the island. At least the Iranis can use those wind turbines to charge their iPads while firing the railcannon :)

I would like to add that this isn't some sort of "elitism"/"we ArmA people are so special" thing but rather has tecnical reasons. In most multiplayer FPS the geographical data and the ruleset of the gamemode are stored in the same file. For example if looking at Team Forterss 2 the map Two Forts defines not only the terrain, it also defines the gamemode (capture the intelligence), spawnpoints and the like. If one wanted to have, say a control point variant of Two Fort, he would need to create new mapfile. In the ArmA series this data is divided into two files: One file wich contains all the terrain data, usually refered to as "map" or "island" (out of tradition even though it doesn't have to be an actual island anymore since ArmA2). One file wich contains all the mission/scenario data, including things like winning conditions, respawn and the like, usually refered to as "mission". Using the term "map" instead of "mission" almost certainly leads to missunderstandings and maybe rage (especially when used with words like "class" and "killstreak" in the same post ;)).

So in the end it's maybe "just" a huge, static long-range artillery-like system deployed at Limnos (and the reason for the Combat Technology Research Group to investigate the island). The island would be well suited: Close to NATO borders and it has its own powersources (there is at least a powerplant and some wind energy rotors). Probably all the rage about the "LMAO-tank" was for nothing

This! Doing a propper briefing and loadout is somewhat tricky for beginners. Being able to do them directly in the editor would certainly help new mission makers.

Regarding to the alpha: On Rock Paper Shotgun they did mention that Stratis will be the place where the Alphatest will take place: Can't wait to set foot on this island!

In ArmA2 lensflare only shows up in 3rd person (or camera wiev), not in 1st person. I expect it to stay the same in ArmA3 as it is a good solution. /edit Ninja'd... :)

"More fluid" does not have to equal "as in Battlefield 3". The movement in ArmA2 does feel somewhat clunky and I think all hardcore ArmA players would appreciate a more fluid movement system if it is done in a way that fits the gameplay of the series.

I guess what he means is that if you have a high, low, left and right variant of every stance, its way easier to use objects as cover. For example on Chernarus there are some houses where if you kneel yo're just a bit too low to shoot trough the window, shots go into the frame. So you have to stand up to fire trough the window (wich exposes way more of your body). If you just could use a "high kneel" stance, you would be able to use those windows much better as cover.