Second

And your point is wrong. You see casual gamers as dumb asses who understands nothing out of your "casual gamer" stereotype. That is pretty elitist view and wrong. How come they still buy and play (and enjoy) those games? GTA is hard as nails to learn to play well, atleast back in days of Liberty City. ArmA's flightmodel is eaaaasy compared to it. Try flying 15 minutes and then crash to ground just before you were to finish that mission. Aaaaaand re-start from start after getting out of from hospital, stealing car and be chased by polices. What is realistically difficult in ArmA??? Sniper AI performing shots which world's elite snipers would not be capable of? Thru darkness without NVGs. Sure wrap in you niece-gamer wrappings. However reality has already proven multiple times that you are wrong.

What ramboing? In current games you don't rambo anything, trust me i tried that in COD. It got me killed. tried it in Crysis... Yup, got me killed. Overall every shooter requires new learning. ArmA is not different. If players are willing to learn how to use nanosuit as tactical advantage in Crysis, they are pretty far, and most players were willing to learn it. You seem to talk only about BF it seems, however there are others. But yes what you describe is pretty much curse of all games. MP in ArmA's public servers included. Yes we have found breaking point: You can't define better game than what as ArmA is. Neither can't i, i can name bunch of games doing stuff better than ArmA does and i can say what Arma made better than those. But that is my point of view and i can't say which is best. Because of that i leave finding of ultimate answer to gaming press, which by forming average score from army of (more or less) professional reviewers.

Why shouldn't i mix them? Sure they all are different, but main point in all of them is to shoot enemies. In ArmA as in BF that includes vehicles is quite regular basis. Maybe its just my experience but most of the players I find playing this are well over their 28s-30s...my own clanmates are all over 30 (some of them are daddys  ). It is great to play a game like ARMA with polite, mature and cooperative people. To say the truth my clan is pretty large and includes another amount of people that play BF2...lets say that overall we are around 35-40 members from wich only 10-12 play ARMA. Firtsly we were a different clan, but merged with the BF2 people for the sake of saving money in the server renting.. more than 1 year after the merging I can tell you some of the BF2 players have tryed to play ARMA and yet only 1 or 2 of them switched game...the rest of the cases is like oil and water we simply dont mix. My personal experience with BF2 lasted like 5-10 minutes before I uninstalled it...and that really suxs balls when I allready payed 50 Euros for the game. So my experience here says wether they really make a arcade-mode for the game or they are having a hell of a hard time to put copys of this for console users... Lets say most of the PC gamers havent ever had contact with simulators (say LOMAC, Falcon 4.0, IL2, Silent Hunter...) or Tactical level Strategy games (Combat Mission series...) ... now try to traduce that to consoles (see what I mean). Although the micro-AI on this game is pretty poor and although there is a complete lack of a tactical level AI the game is pretty difficult to play for most of the people that try to play this based on their experience in arcade games (how many times have you seen Rambos going straight with their tanks and light armors without infantry support inside the citys? - how many support vehicles down the drain?) Since the release of ARMA there are lot of people that quitted playing the game for various reasons: - Too high PC requirements to run sumthing alike smooth. - Too many bugs/crashes. - Low playability PvP and complete lack of any competent anti-cheating system. - Rude awakening of the arcade gamer to the simulator level. I think that the rude awakening of the arcade gamers that try this could be eased by making proper tutorials so they get a comprehensive understanding of the weaponry avaivable on the game. By this they should at least have textbook examples of what is reasonable or not to do in the battle and so they get a starting point to develop their own tactics and dont get frustrated being killed like cattle. You know why common players don't like ArmA? Because there are better games. And that is not about level of simulation or arcadeness (because most games offers same level in infantry handling, some also in vehicle handling), that is because ArmA isn't worth their time. In other words: there are better games. As far as putting BF down goes i have to point out that ArmA MP died pretty fast. And besides many OFP players went to play games which offered better vehicle simulation. This really asks for to be shot down. Tell me what you mean this. You never define it, just toss word simulation and arcade in every another sentence. Now define it. btw. Simulator refers to word vehicle... Now ArmA's vehicles... Hard to learn?  You can't compare Arma to wargames with complexity and realism of battlefield or vehicle controls and technical details of full breed flight and tank simulators. ArmA is way too arcade for those... And it's a shooter And rest of your list falls to fact that BIS made flawed game. It's not gamer's fault if he sees unfinished game which really isn't most shining gem in markets. I really can't enjoy the taste which rotten eggs leaves in my mouth... Even if i want to.

We don't know does campaign start from full blown war or not. It probably escalates as full blown war at some point, but not necessarily right from start. Here's few options. 1. Maybe Razor goes there when US gets bloody nose first (as trailer seems to tell). 2. Razor's insertion is infact preparations for heavier forces. (as trailer seems to tell too). 3. 1 and 2 combined. 4. Razor working behind enemy lines while ground battles wages. 5. Something else. What?

First i think you misunderstood my shooter word. from Wiki concerning first-person-shooter: "The character is nominally a literal person; humanoid movement is expected. Games that primarily involve piloting vehicles are more correctly classified as vehicle simulation games." OFP/ArmA takes middle road in this, but i think main focus remains in infantry as that is what is played most by players and which has main role in campaign and single missions. So there. And which tells you that ArmA2 will focus even more to infantry aspect? As far as i can tell it seems to stay as it has been from days of OFP. Infantry having games best simulation (stamina, iron sights, ballistics etc) while rest staying more arcadey. It doesn't need to evolve to more infantry direction as that base is pretty much there already on it's place. That's about infantry/vehicle simulation aspect for player. Combat simulation's (in wargaming terms to deliver realistic battlefields) main problem is pretty much AI. In ArmA it's dumb as goose. That is main problem i see when trying to create realistic missions. BIS is saying that it will be improved, have major overhaul even (micro-AI). If that works well and vehicle and infantry behaves more intelligent and realistic manner (notice lack of SOPs and battle drills in ArmA, or lack of effects of fire other than wound or kill) then we are closer to more whole battlefield. If and when BIS gets there but still gives me my gun to kill my enemies i still call it shooter. I pray my arms crossed that i dont' have to call it vehicle simulation game or wargame.

Why shouldn't i mix them? Sure they all are different, but main point in all of them is to shoot enemies. In ArmA as in BF that includes vehicles is quite regular basis.

Lots of player will buy game, when review states: "This game is going to be classic" and if it happens to be shooter... It's pretty much that simple. They don't need to specially target it, as it is shooter. There we have target audience (=those who like to play shooters), no need to dumb down or anything. Just present good enough game. Sure it won't reach same level of buyers as some EA super-marketed game, which on top of that happens to be great game (=high points in reviews). But it will defined be something more than just niece game bought just by some shady "hard core simulator" and "common player are n00bs with no brains"-audience. Sure ArmA2 engine does have it's weaknesses (like heavily cheatable, if BIS doesn't manage to do something about it), but then again it has also strengths. So i say again: If it gets good scores, it most likely sells pretty well. Quite frankly i dont' see how ArmA2 goes to more extreme simulator direction, when it clearly seems to follow OFP's track of focusing into infantry (like shooters does), while lightly simulating vehicles.

ArmA2 will not be destined as niece game if dev-team manages to get good points from reviews. It has change to sell ~million of copies if getting lots of good points from reviewers. Common players are not dumb-asses, they know when game is good, they even read reviews and play what their friends tells them. No reason to become elitist-bastard. Granted they might not create missions, mod, hang in forums, or spent 100-9999 hours on it, but they buy a game and contribute to BIS to keep up their work. Good shooter sells well, of course ArmA2 has to compete in serious league aside with COD-series and rest of gang. But if ArmA2 gets awesome scores it's strength in selling to masses is it's (re-)fresh approach. Big spaces, freedom of action (atleast to some degree) and variety of battlefields, from open plains, dark forests to villages and cities. While still serving imersive battles, Big Action and small-unit engagements. Gamers are looking always something (slightly) new and interesting and that makes gaming industry to evolve.

Latest HD video shows just one side with PK, AK and RPG-7 armament wearing fine looking regular camo. Looking quite much like regular army units. Hard to say are those other guys (who gets flashbanged) resistance or just civilians. They seem to have some pieces of urban camo in their clothes, but overall they seem quite irregular. But i don't remember did they have any weaponry in that video.

Yeah. Resistance had their own T-80 and BMP with green paint-markings. Great example of unbalancing indeed

Because having ability to kick US's butt? When my T-55's and T-72 are able to out-smart M1A2s and cut them to pieces i'm quite happy. Much more than using M1A2 to butcher lower tech stuff without thinking. Well that is another game and another virtual reality.

Fabrigue does react differently to Active IR. They might even start clowing, that i've seen from photos. So outcome is different. Humor of situation is that US Army in Iraq gets issued washingpowder which has optical brightners. Basically ruining whole low visibility thing. Few guys seemed to be pretty pissed about that

I'm talking about Active IR whch illuminates terrain (found usually form Soviet era tanks, problematic to use as it can be seen) and passive (found in soldier's NVGs, can't be seen). And also about ultaviolet frequencies, used mostly at recon drones and stuff. Problem is that all these behaves bit differently, so to my understandment it requires a lot of study to find out right mix. Suit which is stealthy for passive IR, might not be as much for active IR or UV. I dont' know from which things lower visibilty comes from but mostly cloth, color pattern and maybe also additional chemicals (i've heard that even little amount of aluminium to give some stealth again thermals). I know that clothing atleast from early 90's tries to mimic natural colors (such as leaf green) as much as possible, however to my understandment modern (past 2000) digi camos are considerably better at this. Basically it doesn't distrupt, it just tries to mimic natural colors in various wavelenghts (normal light, both near-IR frequencies and UV). Camo suits from early ages, 70's and before, are mostly designed just for frequencies visible for normal eye.

Granted i'm modding n00b, but i've not found way to do it. I already started to think level of grass layer was hard coded. I agree with rest of your suggestions. Commando84: I don't know do you mean game or real life, but i was talking about color and cloth of real-life digi camos which makes them less visible (note: not from thermals, that requires more). Havent' infact tested do they work better in ArmA... I doupt it.

I havent' spotted camo in ArmA which would hide men well. While in reality i can throw ww2 gray mantel on my shoulders and still be able to hide well in wilderness. However this pours down to problem that ArmA's open fields are like football fields. While in reality you'd had all kinds of stuff to hide in. Shadows, long grass, small bushes, nooks etc. In Arma even long grass at longer distances, where actual grass isn't drawn anymore but terrain texture is raised, isn't able to hide men. True, modern digi camos works even better, even when their best improvement is low visibility to active and passive IR and UV.

I agree. This was major point of OFP and i think i haven't read single review about it which would not mention this. Illusion of being small wheel in big machine. And life outside combat (or leading into combat) was showed in some degree. SF missions are just at their base pretty "dull". Keeping low profile, playing "cowardly". I'm not that type of player who likes to keep low profile in games. Using several hours (maybe even days) just to make sure my few minutes lasting raid goes well (or not)... Not my idea of casual fun. Same problem with realistic combat, which with their lulls and flashpoints can take hours. Of course this usually is outside shooter's scope, as shooters happens in small unit level and throws player directly at the breaking point of battle. It's fun sometimes, but when there is real life with it's schedules and demands outside, time consuming game play becomes problematic.

Well, atleast i've seen something like that to happen. Friendly troops don't spot each of other behind fallen spruce... Test word isn't necessarily right word. I was testing alright but it was more about how easily army of T-72 flat whole forest. Tried to find good and easy way to clear cones of fire in to forests for defensive positions. Using T-72 was one way I don't know how other tree types works, maybe it's just spruce's speciality. Anyways in firefight it doesn't much matter as AI are still able to shoot thru trees just like with bushes, even if it can't establish line of sight to target.

I think it has been corrected in ArmA already. At least by tests i conducted in spruce-forest. Maybe it has been removed by patches, but it was there still at... hmm... Maybe it was 1.08.

About spotting. It's not that simple. You just fall into AI's pretty unique trick. It doesn't see you and it doesn't know where you are. It just calculates where you might be. As a clear and practical example watch how your yellow/orange target marker on screen moves. That is the same way how AI calculates these things. Oh and remember: they do hear gunshots and footsteps and by hearing they can predict where you are. AI is very human-like in this, which is definedly one of those less known but great aspects of ArmA/OFP AI. AI accuracy can tweaked by personal taste (shame there is not official instructions for it slammed at each players taste). I believe Maruk said that AI will get lower default stats this time. Which is fine.

Not a change, i wish to enjoy it

Oh really now... Are we little bit slow today? Example was to clarify to you that one doesn't need to go thru years and years lasting SF-traning to be able to wield two weapons. You just need to... take two rifles. It's that easy really. And besides hunting and war fighting does require a lot of same things. For some odd reason, our army approves hunting as very good hobby (sports is another) and WW2 veterans generally favor it too. Fast, reliable and accurate weapon handling is one of reasons... Have you ever tried to shoot bird which suddenly rushes from bush and tries to get into it's wings? And If you ask me i'd put hunter as a point man, ability to notice difference in enviroment (first to spot opponents) is there. I think i've spent enough days in the field exercises to notice that. Reason why i'm starting my own hunting hobby aswell.

This was indeed interesting to read! Thanks.

Under strength and very much! Hard to say were they separated from rest of company or what as i haven't seen the movie. It can be that they have just melted in heavy fights without supply of men. There are companies forexample in ww2 which have melted close to 10 men because of heavy fights and no supply of reinforcements. Full strength company has to be close to 100 maybe even bit more. I don't know how those went exactly, but that is pretty general rule for Soviet style units. As far as i can tell airborne units might have had less men in squads (maybe it's just BMD-units?), but basically structure of organization should be same. But i can't provide any hard facts.

Seems interesting, but i don't see part where improvements of AI to aim flanks of MBTs, and wait for flanks to be exposed, would be discussed. Would be nice to know how hard task it is to put such routine into game.

Okay penetreation discussion in it's full glory. I agree with SexyWombat that penetration model it self, if made simple, probably is simple to code. Now. Let's (again) presume we have lone M1A1 rolling down road, crew is getting drunk so they aren't most consentrated to keep up scanning their around. Jolly songs and stuff involved. + There is curve in road. In that curve we have experienced insurgents (having few RPG-7s) hiding behind bushes. = We have good ambush scenarion, where M1A2 probably will be reduced to pile of dust. ... Not really. Infact we have scenario where insurgents opens fire from maximum distance at tank's FRONTAL armor. Crew is getting drunk so i takes time for them to react. But it doesn't matter as insurgents puts ALL their PG-7s into FRONTAL armor of tank! Then tank starts doing it's job with main cannon and machineguns. Imagine this in every skrimish or major battle. Not that pretty or realistic really. Got it? It could be simple to add penetration model but it also requires AI to understand when it's not a good idea to fire at frontal armor and when it's not. I dont' know how hard process this is to put in to game. I tend to think that anything related to AI is pretty hard. True many games has this, but those are mostly mostly wargames and shooters which are designed for MP. Reason why BIS dropped penetration models from most objects probably is because it was resource hungry. ArmA HAD trees and houses which were penetrable by at least 7.62mm long cartridges, some house's structures even with smaller. Then by patches ArmA started to run smoother and smoother (and people praised), and soon i discovered that i can't anymore penetrate house walls or trees with small arms fire. Penetration of structure even changed projectile's trajectory slightly. Interesting eh? Â