stagga

Absolutely. I think I mentioned this already but yeah, I found the campaign to be not as fun as the older games. I mean I enjoyed what there was but I was expecting it to escalate like it did in the old games and that I'd get to change characters to fly choppers and jets, drive tanks and all the other stuff that we could in OFP. I can see BIS tried to do something new and in a way it's more immersive as they've tried to bring the country to life but there's definitely a lack of variety now. I just feel that they've missed an opportunity with the campaign by just limiting you to the spec ops team. And even WITH that limitation they didn't exactly cover all the mission types. For example the only parachute jump I got to do (remember it was a big thing in the trailer) was from low level into my own base! Why no dropping behind enemy lines to destroy the bridge or other spec ops type missions? But as you also said I can't stop playing around with it. Hopefully someone will convert the original campaigns into Arma2, that would be amazing!

No I'm sorry I still don't buy that. You're suggesting that as fans of Arma are 'mature and serious' we should be prepared to put up with an unfinished product? That we should expect the standard to be lower because it's a niche market? That might be true with some indie developers but BIS has been working on this product for a decade and sells versions of it to various world militaries who, as you can see on the VBS2 website, pay rather well. I'm looking at my games collection now....DCS:Black Shark, LOMAC, Steel Fury, T34 versus Tiger, GTR Evo.... to name a few 'niche' products that would never top the bestsellers list but despite containing bugs were certainly playable on release. Going back to ARMA 2, I bought the game for it's campaign ok? I wanted to experience the same fun I had with CWC etc. It's not anybody's right here to tell me that the campaign is not important because I can do other things in this game! And PotatoMasher, you're right that there's nothing comparable (for the next few weeks at least) and I'm sure BIS tried hard to kill the bugs before release. But I suspect they released early to beat OFP2 to the market. My question is, is this really fair on the fans? I guess one way to look at it is to pretend that they haven't actually released the game yet and all we're getting is a sneak preview and the real game will be released in a few months when that inevitable 1gb patch turns up :) But like I said before I don't think there's any other game on the market that people would be so forgiving for. And before I get accused of being overly negative I do want to say thanks to BIS for actually being that one developer who actually brings this type of game to us. Really, your games have brought me more hours of fun than any other. Which is why it hurts so much that this one is broken!

EricM some of what you say is true. But i've had quite a lot of experience with fanboys myself. I worked on a recently released console game that received a lot of media attention and pre-release hype over several years. We managed to pick up an incredible amount of fanboys before anyone had even played the game! People who would argue constantly on forums about features of the game that didn't exist or technical aspects that they'd heard rumoured but were in fact entirely fabricated. Occasionally I would post anonomously on some of these flamewar forums asking the most extreme fanboys to back up what they were saying with some evidence or their source of information - you know, just for self amusement and all :). And you know what? The second they believe you're attitude towards THEM is negative they accuse you of being against the game they love! I was called a 'troll' and and fanboy of the 'other' console for asking a guy how he knew that an object had 1 million polys in it and pointing out that he was full of s*** when he claimed to have written a program that could analyse the poly count from a screenshot :p Anyway I haven't seen anyone that extreme here but my point is there are people who build up what seems to be their own mental image of the perfect game and refuse to budge on it even when faced with the obvious truth! I'm not a 'troll' or a 'fanboy'. I wanted ARMA 2 to be amazing. I've been anticipating it for months if not years. I used to point out that ARMA 1's bugs were forgiveable because it was just a stop gap and ARMA 2 would be the real deal, bug free and all the features we ever wanted. And the truth? It's an incredible sandbox to play in. Varied, beautiful, packed with details and I genuinely believe that (given the scope and size of the terrain) it's the best looking game out there. The vehicles (mostly) look good, they sound good, the atmosphere is fantastic and just looking through the screenshots forum you can see at times BIS have got close to photorealism. It really is an amazing accomplishment. BUT we're not just talking about an environment sim. ARMA 2 is packaged and sold as a game and therefore whether some people like it or not it has to be compared with other games. And other games have certain rules regarding quality. If Crysis or Call of Duty had so many faults there would have been public outcry! If I played a game of FIFA and found that not only were my goals not being counted but the match would never end because the clock hadn't triggered the end screen script I think that would be a big deal. Yet with ARMA2 it seems people take a strange attitude where this kind of stuff is ok (if I go back to FIFA it would be like saying "you can't play a season but you can practice free kicks and play friendlies and the rest will be fixed later, be happy with that!") when they wouldn't stand for it with any other game. At my company during the final QA stage we were all involved in hunting for and fixing bugs. They were categorised as Class A, B and C. Class A meant that it was game breaking and all other work was put on hold until the causes of those bugs had been identified and fixed. In my first hour of playing ARMA 2 I was faced with at least 3 Class A Bugs, both technical and script errors. On this forum there's a guy who's condescending and patronising to people who complain about bugs, refuses to acknowledge that there are any and then admits that he hasn't even played the campaign yet still believes he has the right to an opinion on the subject! This is precisely the 'fanboyism' that winds people up. So sorry for the long rant but I want to sum up by saying those of us who HAVE experienced problems that have NOTHING to do with our hardware, NOTHING to do with our lack of knowledge and experience about OFP/ARMA and EVERYTHING to do with a failure by BIS to make sure their product worked before they shipped it have a right to complain about it without being denounced as 'trolls' by certain people. We just wanted the game to be done properly.

:) That's a good point. But really the old ones were never this bad! I'm pretty sure I could play right through CWC, RH and Resistance with hardly any problems. But maybe I'm just viewing the past with rose tinted glasses! But these problems have plagued the series since Arma and I can't help thinking that things were better in the old days because Codemasters wouldn't have published anything this broken.

HKFlash the fanboy comments were clearly directed at you. Wake up to reality will you? And learn to read properly otherwise you'll find your attempts at sarcasm make you look rather stupid. I've been playing the OFP series as long as anyone on this board (barring devs!) but I'm not going to deny that I'm disappointed with this unfinished release.

You might have a point about the small squad missions being easier to do but why have they taken away the freedom? What happened to the variety and choice we were given in OFP: Resistance for instance? For example the mission where you had to stop an overwhelming enemy armoured advance with just a few old tanks and BMPs and it was up to you who crewed which vehicle and where to position them to make the best use of the terrain. I don't remember the AI being much trouble then, at least they moved where i told them to (and i didn't have to keep checking I wasn't telling the entire crew to Disembark because the menu wasn't so stupidly arranged!) and those kind of missions were brilliant. They gave the player an objective and it really was up to you how you solved it. I've played through the campaign (having to use the cheat to skip when it broke admittedly) and didn't see one enemy base where i could have liberated a helicopter or tank to help me with my main objective. I didn't get to do any flying (i had to rely on a retarded AI pilot who flew into trees and didn't take evasive action under fire), no tank battles, no boat insertions, no need for sneaking and silent kills, no massive co-ordinated battles, where I met enemy armour I was helpless because my team didn't have an AT soldier, no assassination missions, no sniping, none of that 'you're behind enemy lines and you need to get here' or 'ambush this convoy' or ANY of the things that made CWC and Resistance great. Yes there are improvements, it looks superb, the character has more freedom of movement, aiming is easier, the atmosphere is incredible at times and I played it for hours after I bought it because of those few moments where it gave me an unrivalled experience. But those moments were heavily outweighed by the game breaking bugs and the lack of variety and imagination in the missions and gameplay and the brilliant idea that if one of your AI teammates casually strolls out in front of the shilka it's game over! How about next time BIS hire the guys who made Finnish Defence Force to design and script the missions?!

I've been reading a few of these comments and I have to say the level of blind fanboyism is astounding! I've been a OFP/Arma fan since the days of playing the user made missions for the demo before the original OFP came out. I so wanted Arma 2 to be the game we've all been waiting for and it's just not! Walker, if you want specific SP issues how about: The option to select the chopper transport disappears from the comms menu. The option to select artillery disappears from the comms menu. Team AI frequently freezes and ignores all commands. When waiting for a helicopter to pick up an informer it decided to attack an enemy vehicle and flew into the ground making completion of the mission impossible. On the map view I can often see moving enemies who are in fact nowhere near where it says they are, this was never an issue in the past games. Changing graphical settings often means my display gets stuck in that blurred "fading into a cut scene" view making it impossible to play. Other times it gets stuck in some ridiculous under exposed' view meaning most of the scenery is rendered black unless viewed from an odd angle making the game impossible to play. In the Armoury challenges I get things like my SU25 spawns flying backwards. Or my mission as an SU25 pilot is to sneak into the enemy camp. Don't you think a QA dept might have spotted those flaws? And then there's the mission design. We get presented with missions were the stated objective is impossible and the real objective is hidden and the only way to find out is to be "auto killed" a few dozen times while trying to reach the target on the map and have to go to a forum to find out what to do. And where did the campaign go? I'm not allowed to post spoilers but weren't we promised the use of all those lovely vehicles? And no, I don't accept that being able to create my own missions covers it. I paid for the game, I expect the makers to have bothered to put the effort in! I read the comment "patches will solve all the issues eventually". What kind of attitude is that? These glaring issues should have been fixed before the game was released, why are you happy to accept an unfinished product? And for your information patches didn't fix the AI problems with ARMA or OFP so why would you expect anything more now? If BIS were just a poor indie developer I might be a little more lenient but the fact is they've made a huge amount of money from the military side and once again they're using paying consumers as bug testers.

Hi! I'm a forum noobie but a OFP/Arma player since the hacked demo missions days. I have a question about the tanks in Arma 2 and I'm sorry if it's been discussed already but I couldn't find the answer! I'm wondering how much detailed will the simulation aspect of the tanks be in Arma 2? Will BIS be carrying over the 'arcade' style tank controls from the previous games or give us something a little more realistic? I'm talking about proper IR Vision (not just Night Vision) and a Laser Rangefinder for accurate shooting. It wouldn't have to be as complex as Steel Beasts but making the gunnery more involving would be good. The same goes for the Air Vehicles- some better targeting systems rather than just clicking the mouse on the orange square on the radar would improve things immensely IMO. Anyway I have my fingers crossed that this game will be the definitive military shooter we're all hoping for!