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nkenny

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Posts posted by nkenny

  2. Posted · Edited by NkEnNy

    Thanks zipper.

    So far I've been shot at by stray infantry men a couple of times. My teammate ignores all this with fearless abandon and walks center street cowboy style to our objective. My companion has sounded the all clear TWICE while we were still under fire. *sigh* Finally a helicopter provides extraction from the area and ends the mission.

    Video Sequence--- 3 days earlier

    A quick ride in a car clears up some of the setting/theme elements. Rather colourful language provokes a grin. Bohemia displays that they haven't learned one of the major tricks (employed by Operation Flashpoint, Half Life1-2, and CoD4: Modern Warfare1) of first person shooter storytelling. KEEP THE CHARACTER IN FIRST PERSON.

    I understand that this is a continuation of the BAF stuff-- but I've yet to feel invested in the character. Lets go.

    -k

    ---------- Post added at 07:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:59 PM ----------

    Mission1

    So far the presentation of each mission has been excellent. The briefing is well written, to the point, and easy to understand. Signatures and other clipart is inserted effectively and tastefully. The same technique used to draw the credits is used to introduce teammembers again creating a unified and easy to understand interface.

    The next mission is fairly straightforward. Defend an airfield. There are no other troops present. Intel must have been fairly bad as the airfield is attacked from all direction (including sniper support and an APC). Teammembers are as ever cold as ice and the firefight is over fairly smoothly. As an ironic sidenote the force recon guy announces halfway into the first engagement "do not shoot until fired upon"-- so he's got humour eh?

    The enemy (despite being more numerous, attacking an unprepared enemy out in the open, and having a preformed plan) are readily dealt with. Perhaps the enemy ought to have brought in the mortars like on the intromission. No casualties on our side-- in fact so far ION inc operators seem almost invulnerable! :j:

    -k

    ---------- Post added at 07:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:25 PM ----------

    mission 2

    Well that was quick.

    ---------- Post added at 07:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:33 PM ----------

    Cutscene

    With the situation at the industrial facility resolved its time to load up and move out. Into the batmobiles and blast off.

    My reward is yet another cutscene which doesn't really add anything to the story nor help create an immersive (authentic/believable setting). I'm still not sure which of the characters is me nor why I should care. There is some shooting (and I guess its supposed to be exciting?) going on-- but I ain't getting any of it.

    -k

    ---------- Post added at 08:21 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:38 PM ----------

    Mission 3

    Go to the capital city of Takistan Zargabad and secure your contact. How to recognize him? He is a muslim type character named Abdul. Errrr.. Anyhow the mission plays out as the team clears with meticulous attention a few city blocks of a ruined city. Random stray clumps of uniformed infantry and some semi-hidden marksmen are randomly scattered across the city. Their purpose and motivation for sticking about isn't really explained-- I guess they are kinda like zombies? Or perhaps the monsters hanging about WoW style quest-instances?

    Game mechanics. After stumbling around the city I come across a roadblock. Force-recon-guy orders team sword to move up and deal with it. Great. Oh wait! suddenly I've got a backpack. I guess I'm the satchel guy? None of the other teammembers seem to care, but I didn't really get a specific order... oh well I am the protagonist after all...

    IED explosives. Suddenly the cry goes out over the radio. IED IED!! Well secure with the idea that I'm the explosives guy of the outfit my heart starts pounding as I move towards the charge.... Or rather where I think it is... after running around the block a few times I find a buried RPG7 shell-- Slowly and cleverly I creep towards it. I'm DEMOLITIONS MAN after all! Boom. Mincemeat. Reload.

    Ahh.. Apparently the way to properly discharge/disable a IED is by shooting your rifle at it. Silly me. This is a shooting game after all.

    Once the prerequisite number of city blocks are cleared its time for yet another cutscene...

    Cutscene

    Dramatics ensue. Mortar attack! Again the feeling that anytime anything exciting happens I'm not part of it. The ion-inc-boys get shot at for a bit which I guess is supposed to tie the story together with the first intromission. Now it doesn't explain how apparently Force-recon-guy teleports to fetch the helicopter which secured our ride-- I mean he was clearly there in the town with us-- yet also in the helicopter. Interesting.

    ---------- Post added at 08:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:21 PM ----------

    Mission 4

    The mission is to transport our clients to the province poetically named the "proving grounds". It starts out with a choice of some consequence. Either get out of the vehicle and wait about for force-recon-guy to sort things or fire a few rounds over the heads of American Troops.

    As declaring war on the US seems like a silly plan I opted for the pussy solution namely getting out of the car. A few ingame seconds later things were sorted and the mission was on. We rode forward perhaps 200-300 meters past the last remnants of a city then a single shot rang out. The bullet penetrated my head and ended the mission.

    Rather impressive getting a headshot on the gunner of a moving car.. Kinda deprotagonizing, but I guess that is the nature of war. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) my GF just got home with Tacos and beer so I had to leave off restarting the mission til later.

    see ya.

    -k

  3. Posted · Edited by NkEnNy

    May contain spoilers.

    This is my playthrough of the PMC campaign.

    Start

    No real introduction is given as after a confused intro sequence I find myself in a vast ruined city. There is some radio chatter made by the fellow who played the main character in Arma2 (can't for the life of me remember his name or anyone on the team for that matter)-- the astoundingly uninteresting acting prevents me from caring about what he is trying to say. From this point on I'll call him 'force-recon-guy'.

    Bohemia showcases ingame video briefing (shown as a a iphone like app) but because the video shows a pretty much static gamecharacter with no real animation/acting the effect is rather wasted. As I move toward the objective marker I'm rewarded with my first pleasant surprise. The ingame credits are rather cunningly drawn/overlayed the environment in an effect which looks quite professional without disrupting the 'feel' of the game.

    I proceed with the mission. So far I've been had to reload twice due to stray mortar shells. Three times. I'm told to look for circling crows; a rather unlikely proposition given the cautious nature of crows (a rather intelligent bird) and the amount of explosions going on.

    -k

  9. Posted

    Aiming is bad. i move my mouse a half inch one minute and I point a few feet away, a minute later i move the mouse a half inch and i end up poiting behind me. It never seems constant. Driving is bad too. There is a delay. It's like driving a car with no power steering. You turn using keys and a second or two later your vehicle turns. But by the time you start to turn you already have to turn the other way because you turn to far. i don't know why they can't fix that and make driving easy. I should be able to press a key and my vehicle turn at that exacxt moment. That way i could use the mouse to look. not steer.

    Turn off Mouse Smoothing in the control panel.

    -k

  12. Posted

    Mleh, just give us a universal slot system (all equipment share all slots) with a simple faux weight integration-- the more slots you use the less Stamina you have available. Backpacks can function just like now by adding extra 'slot/grid' space-- again at an abstract weight penalty.

    Reasonable realistic and easy integration. (note that larger backpacks already work like this-- ie you can put anything into the slots)

    -k

  13. Posted

    Yes, that's a good one. :)

    One little tip from me, which helped me a lot and I like to spread around:

    To GETOUT or EJECT from a vehicle I don't search for the option in the action menu, which sometimes causes delays or even wrong selections.

    I have these options set in the control menu to the following keys:

    Get out: 2x Lean Left

    Eject: 2x Lean Right

    This setup won't be in conflict with anything because you can't lean yourself in a vehicle.

    Edit: Oops, not 1 sentences longs, sorry. :)

    By default in vehicles E is fast forward and Q is slow forward isn't it?

    -k

  17. Posted

    I'd love to see a late 70's/early 80's cold war gone hot game in the style of Operation Flashpoint, the great part of that conflict is that:

    A) It has a great level of jeopardy (if it fails the world nukes itself in half)

    B) Fairly balanced sides in a fairly balanced conventional conflict

    C) People aren't so gear-obsessed up the arse that they don't know the individual foibles of every weapon, sighting and vehicle system you make, leaving room for more creative license

    D) The origin story of the Dentist

    I'd vote for you.

    -k

  18. Posted

    Or Ghost Recon which was a great success :P

    Just make the menu remember which subpage you visited last-- then give intuitive and obvious KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS to switch between pages (ie buttons 1,2,3) which opf:dr pretty much failed to produce.

    Personal/Squad admin ISN'T a replacement for the ingame 'quick' command, radial wheel, or whatever COMMAND functionality.

    -k

  20. Posted

    Bleh.

    Give us ONE button with a set of under-tabs that lets us sort all our 'admin' tasks.

    One button w/sub pages:

    : Personal Admin such as current inventory, equipment settings, and radio/comms

    : Map and Navigation. Just like the map right now.

    : Squad Admin such as creating fireteams, custom formations, ROE, etc.

    TAB button is nice and big. Also make sure there are keyboard shortcuts for the commonly used options.

  21. Posted

    I believe that the most common issue experienced with the Arma2 animations isn't necessarily their mechanical implementation (which has improved in some ways since flashpoint). Rather the complaints revolve around how the actual animations look and feel. Particularly obvious with heavier weapons which would behave quite differently in more realistic circumstances. In addition to that few animations are interpolated/soft which mean one often has to remain rigidly immobile while performing painfully slow action-- particularly when under fire.

    The clunky -feel- of the animations compounded by a terrifyingly finicky user interface give a poor rapport between player and game avatar.

    Examples:

    - Drawing sidearms

    - The ballerina step-over-animation

    - Gravity defying "slow movement while crouched" animation

    - To a certain extent-- getting into and out of vehicles.

    - Poor Weapon stances high ready, low ready, vs safe/not ready/slung*

    *Indeed this is one of the areas operation flashpoint did better.

    i) The weapon was held "at the ready" in the default jogging/tactical movement speed.

    ii) Moving slowly while crouched had the actor actually stand to a high-ready position. (not the gravity defying thing we've got now)

    iii) Weapon 'feel' in operation flashpoint behaved very differently from what we have now. Turning speed/point of aim was actually affected by weapon dexterity. Less of a animation issue-- and more a gameplay one.

    iv) There was less screen-wobble. Arguably a personal opinion-- but I'm of the Quake generation :P

    All in all the potential is already there in Arma2.

    -k

  22. Posted

    Personally, I feel that if BIS just restored the free-floating command cursor and tweaked the controls a bit so that holding down a single key would temporarily give you the old control scheme (disabling your own weapons of course), it'd be a lot more intuitive (if not a perfect solution). Right now there are several different controls such as "Command fire" and "Switch gunner weapon" which, while useful because they don't interfere with your own weapons, are not as direct.

    Not to mention that the existing command functions are hidden in a poorly organized button list a mile long. :P I agree with your assertion. A command 'overlay' when certain buttons are pressed would be hot.

    -k

  23. Posted

    All right, lets make things clear and to the point right now. It doesn't really matter what your deathspitting high-velocity metal caster looks like, nor which designation it has. After all its not what it looks like (or what its called) that matters. Its how you use it. Right?

    Except it does. The XM8 is what we're getting. No amount of bitching, name calling, or reasonable arguments is going to change that. BUT am I the only one who thinks that with the contemporary PLETHORA of would be M4 replacements there are out there-- Bohemia could have managed to pick something more credible main armament for a private military corp?

    Had I argued for plausible realism PMCs would all be armed with M4 or AKM derivatives. I'm not. I thought the FN SCAR was a silly choice for the US Army in the first place, but in the war torn future of the Armaverse... Not impossible. However once you've gone down that path of theme and setting you would expect some sort of consistency.

    Would a private military corporation really pick up a failed military product? Or might they go for something like a upgraded M16 platform made by (and sometimes for) the private marked? You know something that your would-be-operators might already be familiar with. Hell in today there are enough piston driven would-be-M4-replacements coming out of American industries to shake a stick at.

    Am I the only one who thinks that practically any modern firearm would make for a better choice than the XM8? :j:

    -k

    edit: But don't take this too seriously. I'm writing this bedridden with a 39+ fever-- its not like I wouldn't vote with my wallet and buy the DLC-- even if the mercenaries (Ooo, loaded word) only means of defence were thrown custard pies and badly performed folkmusic. From what I've seen so far the story/acting/immersion is looking better than any Bohemia title to date. (except the ol'first one) and all is forgiven.

    Quoting yourself is pretty weaksauce-- unfortunately I'll do so as a byproduct of the constant admin-driven merging of topics. This really ought to have remained as a seperate gunwan-- err thread.

    Neither the Xm8, nor the FN-SCAR (or ak107 for that matter) break the game, but all of them hurt the credibility of the simulator. It is my opinion that Arma2 did a decently good job of providing an authentic backdrop that permitted the ak107 to exist seamlessly-- operation arrowhead less so (for the fn scar)

  25. Posted

    I dont see why people complain about the Xm8. If BIS chose that ION.inc is using Xm8, so be it. Its completelly fictive Private Military Company. Hell, even Black Water are developing their own weapons, right? What if ION kept going on the Xm8 project after others dropped it? Its ArmAverse, and it takes place in what, 2012 or 2013? Now quit whining and deal with it. :D

    So whats next?

    Aliens_Pulse3.jpg

    Next step will be giving Russians Fn Fals, Stryker Shotguns, and modernized Ak-47s I mean its only a game right?

    -k

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