Sniperwolf572

OFP = A3 > A2 > [insert very large gap here] > A1 OFP is first because of nostalgia, the initial hook, After Montignac, the best campaign characters by far, countless nights blocking the telephone to download a 30 meg patch and my first squad experience which is alive to this day A3 shares the first place because to me represents a shift in the game being more openly developed, the dev team being so much more interactive. Props to the ones responsible for this. It's also a decent shift in polish. A2 is second because of Chernarus, the best overall terrain the series has ever had and the overall setting. A1 is last with a large gap. Even tho it was the largest tech gap between two titles in the series and the foundation for the future titles. The feel and presentation were really subpar. Also QG was the worst expansion pack ever.

You're overanalyzing it. :p It's clearly a storytelling/visual tool to illustrate how advanced/high-tech the CSAT is. To the point that every soldier is issued one and it's no big deal for them. Wherever they go, each individual can keep comfortable temperature. It's slightly chilly in the night outside? Dial it up a few degrees, etc. While the "low-tech" NATO deals with that by letting their guys wear short/no sleeves and lug hydration packs.

I wouldn't be concerned, leaderboards are just fluff. Top of the leaderboards will always belong to exploits and such as with every other similar leaderboard in any other online competition of the type.

Yep, would be nice to know what's changed.

Just to to put that in perspective. It's approximately the same landmass as one Sahrani (~98 km2) or one Nogova (~95 km2). Since Tanoa is apparently an archipelago, closer comparison might be to put five Stratis (~20km2) islands in an archipelago and you'd also get the same landmass.

For the keybinds, you don't. They've even removed the hardcoding from the number and "F" keys so you can use them for whatever you please, and you can bind the squad control keys to whatever, even the numpad if you have one.

We almost got East Timor based terrain back in OFP days, but Independence Lost ever saw the light of day.

A welcome to the club. :party: :beeeers: Maybe we should start issuing challenge coins. ;) And probably a professional deformation where you can look out the window at people driving and walking along the streets and you marvel at their AI. :p

Who are you, Barbra Streisand? :p

Wow. Just wow. Imgur album mirror if the pics get removed.

The first transition after that point really drives it home. It's so smooth I had to watch it twice. :D

I suppose you've never seen comparisons like this before? Or the A3 pre-annoucement ARG where someone from BI gave us Chernarus coordinates and someone went to find it IRL and found some A3 stuff.

I recall that, but it was mostly aimed at what they've already done. Removing hardcoding from ~ to 0 keys, F1 to F12 keys and adding the option to bind keys for switching to specific weapons, so you can bind 1 to your primary, 2 for your secondary and 3 to your pistol. Same goes for vehicles. I don't remember there ever being any talk about removing them from the action menu, except for the blanket sentiment that they're not happy with the action menu itself in general.

Yep, no clue why I typed days instead of weeks. :D

Trust me, the way that video looks has nothing to do with the system underneath it. Nobody is advocating for 360° spine bending. What they're saying is that the animation system has capabilities to blend multiple animations together incrementally to achieve something like that. Besides if you look at the finer details you'll notice that the guy adjusts animation according to the two parameters that the anim system has been fed. The "direction" of the soldier and the "view direction" of the soldier. When you rotate like that, it's blended so it looks constantly appropriate. While yes, they probably overdid the point where the "direction" changes so it looks slightly weird in the standing pose, it's not something they can't change. Crouched rotation is much better configured. What happens in A3 when you do this on the other hand is that you are in a static animation and if your angular rotation exceeds a certain threshold, you do a "shuffle" animation. If you do it slowly enough "shuffle" never triggers and you're rotating on your belly, etc. Again, BF4 is just an example of the underlying system in action. If you want to look at similar solutions, search for "animation blend tree" on YouTube. The whole "body attachment" and what the camera does is not specific to any animation system. What happens in 3rd and 1st person is completely up to the developer. You can do whatever you want with the camera. Anyway, here's an example of Unitys Mecanim/Blend tree system, if the only thing that you can associate with BF4 is killstreaks and flashing points.

Rahmadi was always in A1. It was a part of the Sahrani map and there was a standalone version of it so the game loads up faster. QG added United Sahrani which was basically Sahrani with some objects changed and as you mentioned, Porto, which was really small. If there's an expansion that the A3 one shouldn't be like, it's QG. :D Something like Resistance or OA is fine.

Oh and I forgot to drive another point home. Each and every refund still costs Valve money which is absolutely not transferred to the developer (outside the percentage they already take with or without it) or the consumer. Sure, it's a system that helps Valve reduce costs on other fronts like support tickets, but you can't really give them shit for doing a good thing.

Well, we're biting and trying to discuss. It's a two way street. :) (If it's this, then you're confusing the brothers, Suma is Ondrej) As I stated before, I disagree with the authors opinion. The author of the article either hasn't even bothered to read the subject matter and defaulted to "Money goes to wallet" which paints the rest of the article poorly because it's based on that false fact or is purposefully trying to misdirect hate onto Steam, which I find more likely considering the style of writing as it's an easy thing to do lately. The entire tone of the article that paints Steam as directly profiting from this goes, whooosh, out the window the moment you realize that the crux of his article is false. Where Steam profits is positive reputation and the sense of safety by making the most important person, the consumer, feel safe. And that is the right attitude. If there ever was a move that a "big player" stepped on the side of the "little guys", this is it. And nobody will ever openly argue that consumer should be treated like shit. And the argument that games will be designed as to pack all the action in the first two hours, I find it ridiculous. Games as is right now try to pack every moment with action and whatnot even without it being affected by the "2 hour window". And again, if you have a problem with making the first two hours of your game attractive, then you always had a problem because all the people who bought it and got bored and never played it, certainly never gave anyone else the incentive to do so or generated positive word-of-mouth. It's like saying that in ye-olden-days when demos existed, they were hurting games. You don't need nuclear explosions every 2 minutes and a touching character death in between to make a game attractive, like the author paints it.

I think you're misinterpreting, you clearly asked: and stated And here we are, asking you in return what leads you to ask those questions in the scope of Arma? The view you presented here is doubt, and we're asking why are you doubting. While we're also stating that we believe the answer to all of those questions is no, because you again stated that you haven't formed an opinion yet and those are our opinions that might help you form yours. There is no attack from which you need to defend, there is a request for your input, hence all the why's.

They also didn't mention any new scripting commands or features, and I'll bet you that there will be some.

While I get where you're coming from, I don't see how any of the campaigns they have released so far actually discourages you from playing more than 2 hours? They've always been something you have to put hours in. It's not like the campaigns they make are "Dear Esther", "Lost Coast" or similar.

Yes, agreed, but there's been a lot of talk to clarify why people are comparing it to BF4 and trying to explain it to the "well why don't you play that then" apologists. There's been people attributing it to "design" when it's just outdated tech nobody bothered to do anything about, there's also been people taking unwarranted pot shots at the mocap people, comparing the amount of actions you can do, etc. If both games had only one animation that looks exactly the same way in both games and that was to lift the characters arm 90 degrees, Arma system would still be greatly inferior. It's been a mix of people who understand that technicality of it and the people who don't, that keep labeling them as some kind of BF4 fanboys.

The article seems to be written from a standpoint of someone purposefully making it want to look bad. I can go on Gamasutra and write my own article titled "Arma 3 - A fun game or a recruitment and training tool for terrorists?". That's not true. You're only forced to refund to your Steam Wallet when the payment method makes it impossible. You can absolutely get a refund to your card and most payment providers. How is this worse than having no refunds at all where gamebreaking bugs can be there from moment one and you couldn't do anything about it because you bought it and Steam offered no refunds? It's not like someone is going to make a perfect game for first 2 hours. Also, it's not like the reviews, previews, youtube videos and whatnot are going to stop existing so you are incapable to judge for yourself before you buy or in the grace period you are given. Arma absolutely has nothing to worry about. Two hours was never enough time to even scratch the surface of the game. In my opinion, any developer that has a problem with giving you a 2 hour hands on demo, probably doesn't deserve your money anyway. Steams business suffers monetarily from just adding refunds. If you're getting a refund, you're also getting back Steams cut of the sale. You don't get a 70% of the money back, you get 100%. Steams business gains positive reputation from this. Here are two very simple questions to understand why this is good for you, the consumer and you the small time developer. "Would I rather not have the option to refund at all?" I absolutely don't see any universe where a customer of anything would say "No". "Would I rather people felt more free to try my game for 2 hours and not refund if they like it or not buy it at all?" This is simple if you think of the 2 hours as a 2 hour hands-on demo where the customer can form their own opinion, rather than letting the press fully form the opinion on your game. The refunds also take the value of MetaScore down a peg because the consumers are less likely to say "Oh, only a 8.2 game, I won't bother" and more "Oh, this seems something I'd like to see for myself before I commit to it" Besides, a refund doesn't mean you lost that money forever. Even in Arma's example where people might have wanted to get a refund when they saw there was no campaign initially, might purchase the game later down the line, when there was one once they felt like they're actually getting their monies worth. Considering people are willing to buy Early Access games which have 100% chance of being obviously broken and unfinished. I wouldn't worry about it too much. I don't see refunds as anything but a giant step forward.

Absolutely. The most requests I get are "Hey, you can do this, why not stow the rifle across the chest instead of putting it on the back" and every time I get that thousand yard stare just thinking about how much work would a simple thing like that require. And whenever you try to talk about the animation system, most people always jump on how they look. This thread, exhibit one.

I think it's safe to say campaign is going to be there. Historically there never was an expansion without a campaign. And even 50% of the DLC have campaigns.