zoog

Sounds good mate, got look with the refreshing.

Awesome stuff Lightspeed. Are they also fit for SP on release (sorry if I missed this).

Is it so demanding, really? I have a PC which is more than 3 years old, an i5 4670K and Ati Radeon HD 7870 (the graphics card was €200 at the time), and it runs very smooth on Tanoa with high to very high settings and 5000 view distance. So I think that's very decent to have good performance on such a large scale jungle map with a mid-range PC from 2013.

Congrats on the release. Looking forward to play this!

Ability to set a maximum speed limit while driving in a vehicle. So when driving in convoy for example you can set max. speed of the vehicle on the fly so you don't have to keep tapping W constantly to make sure you drive more or less at a specific speed (like the speed limiter in Mafia, but with the option to set your specific max speed yourself). Will be much easier to drive in convoy and won't have the engine constantly changing pitch/rpm when you manually try to keep a static speed. This will make driving much more fluently.

I didn't get any achievements even though we, among other things, finished the Apex Protocol campaign with a group of 4 friends. So not sure if all the achievements are working as they should?

This!

You're over-thinking way too much IMO. The time spend on the forums and thinking about what if's or could be's is better spend on actually playing and getting to know the game ;) Just get it on Steam, try it for <2 hours and if it's not what you like: request a refund. Cheapest edition is €34,99 (without the Apex deal-breaker) which has enough content available, both official and unofficial, to last for years. Seriously, we can't make this decision for you :) Like someone said earlier, it's not like you're applying for a mortgage.

The promo video is hidden on Youtube, maybe make it public? :) Gonna plan some of these missions soon with our community. Looks good.

@johnstewjohnny: - Arma 3 is so much more than the 7 mission co-op campaign in Apex. The regular Arma 3 campaign has enough content to enjoy the tension gameplay without respawn etc (and I'm not even talking about all the user made campaigns and scenarios). Truthfully, many people even never play any official content (hence why they tried to make it more accessible), because there is so much community made content for all sorts of playstyles. - Arma 3 is not catering to casuals and turning into a new CoD. Yes, the Apex co-op campaign is not what most expected, and easier/different/more accesible with the respawn system etc. which most of us don't like. But thinking that Arma 3 will go into CoD type of gaming is overreacting. Truthfully, there is no reason to not buy Arma 3 if you are interested in military/tactical FPS gaming that's not dumbed down. Honestly, basing your opinion on this Apex co-op campaign actually shows that you're new to Arma, because Arma is not just about some official content or missions, it's a big sandbox environment with unlimited diversity and unlimited custom content waiting to be discovered :) So yeah, don't read into the negative reactions too much if the whole arma verse is still new for you and waiting to be discovered really. There is so much to do and experience within the Arma environment that a generally badly received 7 mission co-op campaign is just a drop in the ocean and shouldn't be the deciding factor AT ALL :) Don't miss out just because of the negativity surrounding the Apex co-op campaign. There is so much more!

I had a great evening playing the campaign in co-op with 4 players. Spend about 3 - 3,5 hours finishing the missions. + Nice cut-scenes + Great voice acting + Great atmosphere with different time/day weather which sometimes made your jaw drop taking in the scenery. + Liked the addition of the second Raider team you had to work with, making it seem you were operating together with another team + I like SF missions and I like jungle environments, so I was happy from an MP/coop experience with the campaign. - Do agree that respawn is ill suited, especially after playing 2 hours you'll slowly have a tendency to play more loosely which definitely would be different if you would have limited lives. - The campaign was quite short, but we had an enjoyable 3 - 3,5 hours none the less. Would have liked more though. More missions/variety/gear/showcase etc. - I don't see how it has a lot of replayability though? I think most things are not randomized as far as I know?

Yes, but suggesting that BIS is going down the disastrous Ubisoft road when releasing a single more accessible and simple fun co-op campaign in a DLC package is unfair given their track record the past 15 years. It's not as if they removed bullet drop, added health regen and added other "dumbing down" changes with a platform update or something. It's so premature to claim (in general, not meant at you specifically) that BIS from now on go down hill and will only want to please a less hardcore crowd. I'm glad some things have been made more accessible and improved (think of Steam workshop, Showcases, VR etc). The campaign might have been a miss. But it's no indication that BIS has decided a completely different approach. Ah well, we all can have our opinions of course :)

So far Arma has always been great value for money. BIS tried a different approach, many don't seem to like it (or at least those in the forums), and others do like it. Personally I don't understand why all the hate if something is different than you expected. BIS can try new things, it might work or it might fail. Such is life. So I voted for the first option.

Are the addons listed in post #1 (CUP, RHS) still required?

I also had a few times that a new spawn point was available in a forward area. Simplest solution was simply not choosing that new spawn point, but spawning on a previous one where I actually already had been. You don't HAVE to use a spawn point that gives you an advantage ;)Squad mate respawn will probably be an issue if you play it on your own as you don't have any team members. Maybe they should remove the spawn points very close to the objectives? So if you die near an objective you always have to pick a spawn point that's at least a few hundred meters back (which will at least punish you also a bit for dying, instead of spawning right back into the action?). So maybe less spawn points and all further from the objectives...

Played the first mission in SP. Love the atmosphere, had a very great feel to it. Lots of tension raiding the objectives, good production value overall. It does feel as if the scaling system is not really working correctly? There were quite some enemies during the first mission. Not sure what the amount should be when the scaling is active? I think the radio tower had about 9 enemies for example, fighting an uphill battle and guarded bunkers 1 vs 9 is quite hard. Not sure if it should be less with the scaling? Also when the two jeeps drive by they had about 8 enemies who all jumped out and started shooting me. That's quite tough when on your own (and forces you to respawn basically). I do agree that respawn and no friendly squad AI is not really suitable when playing the "SP" version. Respawn does kill the tension and doesn't give you a real penalty. Died about 5 or 6 times at one of the objectives and just spawned over and over again to fight the remaining enemies.

I really love Tanoa as well, but that's also because I love jungle settings in videogames. But so far the map has a lot of atmosphere and the jungles are beautiful. Personally I'm glad I bought Apex. Is the campaign already available in the Apex preview? I can't find it anywhere.

Yes please!

Agreed, I also feel the need to be able to manually assign groups, tags or comments to subscribed missions in the list. Would make it a lot easier to navigate and find the specific mission you'd like to play.

I also felt a bit disappointed to encounter simple huts/houses that were not enterable on Tanoa. At first I thought it was a bug, or I was not looking correctly at the door. I do understand everything is a trade-off in resources and priorities, and I love the rest of the atmosphere of Tanoa. I'm really glad there is an official jungle environment for Arma 3 including all the new extra stuff in Apex. But hopefully we will have more buildings available, especially the little ones, open for access somewhere down the line.

Good news! They've got an AI guy on board to help develop the AI framework for Ground Branch and the Unreal Engine. And here's an new and fresh interview with John Sonedecker from GR.net: http://www.ghostrecon.net/html/interview-john-sonedecker.html

A roadmap has been posted online, giving an idea what they want to implement for the Early Access Steam build. You can view it here: https://trello.com/b/Th9370Gy/ground-branch-roadmap It's still being tweaked and changed where needed, it's not a list of everything, but the global goals and features they want to have for the EA build should be in there.

The game is based on Ground Branch, which is a subsection of the Special Activities Division of the CIA. So I assume you probably won't play as an eastern GRU Spetsnaz etc. any time soon. No idea if there are any plans for the future, or maybe as OPFOR etc.

New Tech preview build released, with a bunch of fixes/new features

That's one reason why they need money coming in, to actually hire the specialists they require :) Also, don't forget they basically had to start from scratch when they moved to UE4. But people are allowed to be skeptical, you can always wait a bit and see how it develops in the upcoming months for the Steam Early Access program. Maybe you'll get more faith by that time. I do hope people will be confident that these guys can pull it off and they have the vision for a real next-gen tactical shooter, with a lot of novel ideas and details, and not that main stream crap. For a few bucks it's a small risk with potentially a really big reward.