ravenholme

I think that making that tie into the freelook system would be a brilliant way to handle it - so free-looking left or right as a driver of a tank switches you to the other scope views. And @ Zimms - Well, I'm really glad that nobody has been making that argument then. Just your strawmen.

I suspect it's a consequence of the PhysX stuff, and will probably be sorted at some point

This man pretty much says what I felt, except I enjoyed certain parts of the Arrowhead campaign. And Army of the Czech Republic gave me both CWC and Harvest Red vibes. As for single missions - I really enjoyed Merlin and Wildcat from BAF. I rather enjoy doing Heli-based CAS (Only really possible in the Wildcat mission because insurgents lack the AA available in ArmA 3) and transport/evac/csar missions. On the Usermade front - That's a lot harder, I didn't really play many usermade campaigns, but I did really enjoy Op Cobalt. Singlemissions... Op Black Thunder by Toasticuss sticks out in my mind.

Hey, there are sane people on here. I was beginning to worry.

AA-12 is. AA-40 is likely the ArmA equivalent of it. Suggests Shotguns might be coming soon-ish (Does fit the whole Firepower and Logistics theme of the beta content)

And latest devbranch update has given the Marshall and the Kamysh a commander slot

Well, the way I see it, the Namer (Sorry, Panther) has armament equivalent to the Marid, and also is actually an upgun of the real thing's armament (Which could carry the HMG or the GMG, not both at the same time) - this compensates for the Marshall having heavier armament than the Marid. The Marid's poor armament is compensated by the Kamysh having pretty heavy armament but relatively low survivability. So, in reality, the two forces are still symmetric in the name of "balancing", but not in an immediately obvious way. I can deal with this. I'd prefer more realistic asymmetry, but I'll survive. However, there is an issue, the Kamysh can't lock on with it's Titan AA box launcher (In fact, I suspect its misnamed, as it locks onto ground vehicles just fine), which makes it essentially useless, so that needs to be fixed (Though I've still gunned down helicopters with it's main cannon) However, I love them as additions, just as they are, but I would love to see more variants of the Namer/Panther, as a quick glance at the wiki shows it can be fitted with all kinds of weapon systems, including as a mortar carrier amongst others. Another thing, somewhere in the dev branches, the Titan MPRL ceased to be an MP rocket launcher, as only certain launchers accept the AA missiles, and others only the AT missiles, and I don't think I've found one that takes the AP missiles anymore. This really needs to be fixed, it totally defeats the purpose of the weapon. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLI-84 On a side note, I suspect this is a basis for the Kamysh

Can't tell if you're referring to me or Masharra :p

Probably because of the saturation point of shooters set in the current day, people are getting fed up of the same "Modern Day US Army versus Russians/Middle Eastern Terorists" situation that has been used over and over again. And yes, Crysis might have a more realistic physics simulation, but it uses a different, licensed engine and in the later games, is far less ambitious in what it tries to do with that. CoD does it's bit by restricting soldiers to two weapons and two weapons only. ArmA has done that (plus heavy weapons) since forever. In Beta, naturally, they haven't worked out the weight limits to impose because they haven't finalised gear weighting, so I'm not really seeing how CoD is doing ANYTHING better there, because in CoD you can carry around a .50 cal sniper rifle and an assault rifle, whereas that is just not possible in reality, and certainly not in ArmA 3, and that's without any finalisation. Especially as the ArmA 3 beta is actually mislabelled - it's not actually feature complete so is still technically Alpha. (Armour is lacking, Aircraft are lacking, they're still adding and finalising features, etc)

Because it was a Night showcase, not a proper Night Operation. You can't see all the nice lighting changes (new night ambience, chemlights, explosions, fires, etc) if you're running around with Nightvision on. They talked about this in several Pre-E3 videos including the Livestream, where they mentioned they'd updated the night lighting and now their mission designers were making every mission at night to show that off. Again, the Commanding Showcase was to showcase (funny, that) how to command your units (a tutorial, basically) and then to advise you on how to effectively command them in a small battle, because ArmA 3 is doing it's best to refine the formula and thus appeal to newcomers without experience with the series. Note, in nearly any scenario with troops approaching from the direction they did in that showcase, the advised deployments would've been very effective, thus suggesting to newbies how they might want to consider the lay of the land when commanding troops. And so on and so on for every Showcase mission, they are showcasing aspects of the game, rather than being proper story/mission based ops, hence why each Showcase op is focused around a particular aspect of the total whole that is ArmA 3

CoD and Crysis realistic now? Okay.

I suspect not, since they tend to keep things pretty grounded in reality and Mechs are just targets. (The Kajman being the only revealed vehicle with no real traceable origin other than a proposed project design by a Russian Design Bureau) They might go 2020-ish and do some kind of South China Sea conflict for ArmA 4, or maybe they'll do that as an expansion for ArmA 3 and set it in 2035. Or maybe they'll bow to the demand of the people who want ArmA 2 2.0 and just remake another modern day combat simulator, as if we don't have enough.

No, I'm not really. Each ArmA game has had a different scenario. You want a scenario that they have already covered in a previous game, ergo, you want that previous game. Every game has had engine improvements, and people still play the previous games if they want Cold War (OFP), or brushfire-esque conflict (ArmA 1), etc etc etc. They've also steadily been advancing in time, they hit the present day with ArmA 2 OA, and now they're going beyond, it just happens to be in a new game. Basically, deal with it. Some of us don't want ArmA 2 in a new skin, because if I wanted a game series like that, I'd go play the endless spew of CoDs and Battlefields. I want games that do something different every time, not just regurgitate the same sides with minor differences in different geographical locations. Future NATO vs Future Iran is something I've not seen before (nor the Mediterranean setting), and I want to see more. I really hope BIS will continue with this vision they have for ArmA 3 rather than listen to the people who want a Arma 2 2.0

Agreed. That's the point I was trying to convey in my previous post. Balance can mean more than "Given an Equal Number of Men and Armaments, fighting with equal skill, there is no winner." Capabilities and equipment can be balanced by more than being identical with side specific skin changes.

But one side's attack helicopter can also transport a squad of soldiers. Balancing doesn't necessarily mean "All must be exactly the same", especially as that's not really how reality works.

Uhm, ArmA 2? The game they did before this one? Base game focuses on a US vs Russia conflict in the current day, also has Afghanistan-esque expansion pack? You might want to check it out.

Don't get me wrong, before I started my last year at Uni as an undergrad and then went on to do my Masters, I used to be part of a pretty hardcore milsim UK clan (VOLCBAT), and I've got nothing against Milsimmers. However, I do dislike them trying to turn ArmA 3 into something it isn't supposed to be. ArmA 2 was the current day milsim, ArmA 3 was supposed to be a near-future milsim-ish sandbox, basically the near-future equivalent of the ArmA games as they have always been on release, but hopefully with less bugs and all the improvements we are seeing. Unfortunately, certain vocal groups have made it a case of two steps forward, one step back...

They cut that awesome UAV? Darnit, I was looking forward to that. And I was hoping for something like the BAE systems Taranis, as well :/ Yeah, I think that BIS should have stuck with their original vision and not bowed so much to the people who want ArmA 2 Electric Boogaloo

Er, no, not really. We still use things that were made in the 80s and earlier (And by We I mean pretty damn near everyone), so it's pretty much in line with that in that things that are being prototyped and tested today are main line stuff in ArmA 3

Also something that needs to be considered are the EFAMS/Wing Stubs that could be added above the integral weapons bays to carry further armaments. It'd be nice if we got variants of the Commanche/Blackfoot that had those stubs.

I disagree, if I wanted the stuff from ArmA 2 I'd... play ArmA 2. Funny that. I like this 40 minutes into the future stuff and I would like to see more. Realistic war simulators set in the near future era basically don't exist, so I am quite happy to have one.

Hear hear.

Sergeant. And, well, having learned to fly a helicopter is not that unrealistic, he makes it very clear that it was in a civilian capacity (And if you've got the money, why not?), disarming IEDs would be a bit of a stretch. Also, the comment in Aviation (Which is a horrible mission from the point your tail rotor gets damaged onward, so.. many... reverts...) about "What the hell is it with me and helicopters?!" made me grin, especially since that was not far off where they got shot down in Crimson Lance (iirc)

Play it co-op. That's all I can say. Makes a world of difference if your driver is your buddy, even if you DO have to shout frantically into the mic, "Slow down! I can't get a bead on that offroad and it's got an SPG!"

Ouch, sorry to hear that Rock, hope things work out for you :)