Turtlefarm

I agree with you 100% here. I too understand a few bugs here and there, I even expect them to come along with such a new release. I'm sure most of the bugs will be eliminated by patches soon enough. So my gripe is not really about the game itself, not at all. ArmA itself is a great game. Though the poor performance on my core duo E6600, 8800gtx, 2gb equipment is inexcusable... The campaign is just so mind-numbingly monotonous, full of plotholes (oh right... what plot? you might ask... well, I'm thinking the same question), unrealistic goals ("...hey I know, lets send 2 humwees behind enemy lines to hunt down a couple of enemy transports...see if they make it back..."), not to mention that the whole campaign is very short. The entire campaign with all it's secondary missions and missions with 2 parts totals to 24 (at least mine did). To compare: OFP had 40 missions (not including training, and that one where you had to play one of two, ie. After Montignac or Strange meeting, is counted as one). Also the OFP missions were incredibly long, some lasted 2 hours or more to play through, most took at least half an hour. Again to compare: if I remember correctly, my longest mission in ArmA took about an hour to complete, some took only 10 minutes and left me thinking "WTF was THAT it??". So to me both missions and the whole campaign in ArmA are way, waaay too short, and the story is somewhere between non-existent and slim. I feel betrayed by this poorly designed, sad excuse for a campaign. To me this feels like I just bought me a Porche and when I checked under the hood I found out that my new shiny car had an engine of a Toyota. Sure it looks pretty, but it's not what I thought I was buying. I'd say that they owe us a new, WELL designed campaign. So BI, I don't find it very fair to expect the community to create the content to the game that you sold to us. It's your job, the web 2.0 concept is not quite that far yet.

I actually tuned the original missions in OFP after completing the campaign so many many times. De-pbo and re-pbo worked well with some tiny tool I found from the Internet (I'm sure you know this though...). I don't really mind that the original campaign is not available in the editor straight away, it might just be too tempting to make a little 'fix' if you get stuck. As we all OFP fans are well aware, the fun comes with sweat and tears. Oh the feeling when you finally complete a mission after hours of trying. But after completing the campaign like a 100 times, you might want to try something new. I've had OFP installed on my computer almost from the day it came out, and I still have it right here, although I needed to reinstall it because I updated my system (I even played it through again just before Arma was released less than a month ago). I guess I can safely say that I've completed every mission in OFP every way imaginable. And I do believe that I'll soon play it yet again. Just have to fix the campaign even harder. I do agree that the campaign in Arma is far from being as well designed and compelling as it is on OFP, although it has it's moments. The overall physics seem to be a bit more realistic in arma than in OFP. The main lack for me is that in Arma I never really relate to the faith of the characters mainly because their personality and feelings etc. really never stand out from the story. In OFP the story was build together by those cut scenes which also revealed just a bit more about the main characters, their personality and their place in the whole conflict. By getting to know characters involved in the conflict, it was much easier to get sucked into the whole game. In OFP Resistance this was even pushed to the next level, as the story played even greater role in the whole game. So in that sense OFP Resistance was more like a war-rpg rather than a war simulation. Or in a sense, an interactive movie. That's why I just love OFP, not so much the overwhelming arsenal of vehicles and weapons (which are of course one thing to love), nor the vast landmass where it's really up to you and your imagination how you want to complete a mission, but it's all about the amazing story. In Arma the characters and the whole storyline seems very superficial and that's why I can't seem to get into the game. Sure I play the missions but the whole story stays a bit made up (which it of course is, but it shouldn't feel like it) and distant. The random news flashes sure don't help. It just seems like the guys at BI focused on remaking the whole world and physics, but they forgot to make the campaign. So they just slapped it on in the last minute so that we'd have something to play. Sure I, and most likely every other OFP fanatic out there, had high expectations about this game. We don't need more BF2's or HALO's or FarCry's in this world, they have their own audience. If you want to blow everything apart without thinking or planning, go play those games instead. This is about war simulation (read=no huge fragscores). Since it's more than clear that this game is more or less to be considered as OFP2 (say what you want but you can't completely deny this), I thing we had some reason to expect this game to continue the great OFP saga. In a way it did, the game it self is great, just the campaign is poorly planned. Even with all it's bugs, Arma's world is a clear advance from OFP. God forbid, OFP had many bugs even after it's last patch, but after v.1.96 it was very much playable. I have to say that this game left me waiting for add-on campaigns more than OFP did, although I'm not really sure if I'd but an add-on for Arma if they ever release any. I don't know if I can trust BI to be able to make a decent campaign, not after this. After all, I'm not sure who actually designed the campaigns in OFP...

For "#¤" sake! Still no fix for reloading sabot/heat issue. One might think that they'd make a keybinding possibility for it but no. This is really an example of piss-poor design if you ask me. The only methods for ordering your gunner to reload heat to my knowledge are: a) switching to gunners seat and doing it your self (fastest maybe) b) selecting your gunner (like F3 for example) and giving the order through command menu (action -> reload heat) but this is very very slow and error-prone on fast combat situation (the key combination is not always the same. ex. 6-2 or 6-3). c) the old OFP style switching to drivers seat and playing by command view (in OFP this was a neat trick to overcome the issue about AI driving head on to bad places, I'm sure all OFP fanatics remember the horrific command lag). Then you can actually use the action menu and switch weapons without the need to press the command mode key (whitch invokes the command menu so that while it's on you can't choose anything from the action menu). This way however you obviously can't use the commanders 50.cal so it's not the best way to do things in this game, though it worked very well in OFP. I've also noticed how if you issue a target command without pressing the command mode key, the square won't appear on the target but the gunner still targets it. Bug?

Too bad there's no .torrent for the 1.04 -> 1.05 version. I'm downloading the international patch for my 1.04 since it's coming in a lot faster through azureus...

My feelings exactly! At least in my 1.04 version it's reserved. Annoying to say the least. And what's more mind boggling, it seems to serve no apparent purpose.

You have to backspace out of the 0-9radiomenu in order to access the action menu. I wish they made the [ ] keys cycle the action menu while mousewheel did the 0-9radiomenu but they didn't. I commonly have to close the 0-9 in order to do an action in the action menu. Kinda dumb. Well a big part of the problem is that backspace won't exit the radiomenu (commandmenu), hence the mousewheel keeps scrolling the commandmenu instead of the actionmenu. The commandmenu sticks on screen like glued no matter how many times you hit backspace. It does retract from submenus but once in root, the menu sticks on screen. I'd much prefered if all selections from command menu would be done by number 0-9 selection like in OFP (since I'm already very adapt in using that method and I find it very fast way of issuing orders). So I'd say that plz set mousewheel to cycle only the action menu, command menu can very easily be used with the number keys. The good old philosophy is true here as ever: "if it's not broken, don't fix it".

I also have the bug that won't let this mission to finish. I hide into the church and blast off anyone who comes around to take a peak. After a while the chopper lands and the friendly troops come to the church killing enemy soldiers along the way that made it to their base. When they make it to the church the troops just stand there for a while and then start heading back north leaving me and the pilot behind. They never even go all the way to the downed chopper. At one try those troops just stood in the church while their team leader kept shouting "attack that officer" (there were no enemy troops left anywhere, believe me I checked). I've tried many different ways to complete this mission: gung-ho attack to the attacking enemies, hiding without killing anyone, attacking their base once they made it back there. At one try an elderly looking officer was standing in the enemy base after those airborne troops had again left towards north, but he just stood there and gazed at me vaguely. Any ideas on how to fix this? Also I have the ghost gun bug at the beginning of the mission (and also in one campaign mission).

So I'm not alone with this problem. Good. So far I've had absolutely no luck trying to change ammo (except by the prementioned hop to gunners seat method). Hopefully there'll be a fix soon.

Eh... Thank's but I know all this and I have tried all of these. My problem is that it just wont allow me to select anything from the action menu (I see the "reload heat" command right there but can't select it) because my previous/next (mousewheel and the set keys) keys just scroll the command menu (upper right corner). Switch weapon key won't do the trick either for some reason (I have default 'F' and also 'NUM 5' but neither works). And yes I am in the commanders seat. Switching to gunners seat and loading heat manually has so far been the only way to do this. Maybe this is a bug in version 1.04, or is it just my system specific problem? I have also noticed that my keysettings tend to change on their own.

Really? My version is 1.04.5121 (english version released in Finland a few weeks ago). My version just wont allow me to set right ctrl to anything. Hmmm... if yours is working then maybe this issue might be fixed in the next update.... Hopefully.

I do love the fact that almost every command can be set individually. This just gives out more opportunities for the user. Commands that you don't need can be left blank, that doesn't hurt anybody. I have only two major gripes about the keys. 1. That damn ctrl key... why in the name of hell can it not be used for proning?? Â I'm a cursor key player so I really really need the ctrl key!! 2. Crouch/stand toggle would be better than individual keys.

Eh... I came across this problem when playing a tank mission. How the h*ll can I order the gunner to load different ammo, say like switch from sabot to heat. I have a mouse with wheel (of course) and I've set the next/previous command keys to the mousewheel. So, now I enter the command mode by pressing spacebar, right... (or home-key in my case) and try to roll to the right command with mousewheel. But no! It just browses through the command menu, not the action menu where the order is at! And for some reason the command menu pops out when ever I enter the command mode (should it do that?). So how the heck can I make this work right. The only way I could switch to heat was by jumping to gunners seat and switching manually (not really good solution now is it...) and jumping back to commanders seat. Anyone else stumbled on the same issue? I also have the "ghost gun" slitch mentioned in some posts. Looking forward to seeing a fix for that in patch 1.05. (my campain is stuck in that watertower sniper mission until I have a working scope) My final grievance is the odd decision by the developing team to lock the ctrl key as a reserved key. Since I use the arrow keys for movement, I would need the ctrl for prone! Now I need to use another key much farther which is of course much harder to press in a tight situation. It's nice that Arma introduces new possibilities for setting keybindings and more versatile interface, but it feels to me that some of the basic controls have become needlessly too difficult. OFP missed shorcuts for most common commands but while addressing that issue, they should not have messed with already excellent interface for moving. Overall Arma is excellent game. I loved OFP, pretty soon I'll love Arma as well. Â