PurpleXVI

Well, maybe it could just be made so that the non-player characters never drop beyond "groaning and useless on the ground, but still healable"-levels of injured? They could still be taken out so they couldn't help him, but the main character could always revive them and he wouldn't have to constantly babysit them to avoid the mission going derp and failing him. At the end of any given campaign mission, if they're still groaning on the ground, it's assumed that someone came along and patched them up so they could still participate. I think that would be a nice mid-point between Realism, Story and Not Annoying The Player.

I found this problem while I had the M203 underbarrel grenade launcher and a variety of M203 grenades in my inventory(one green flare, one green smoke and some normal explosive ones.). Firstly, I could find no option to switch which kind was loaded, but that wasn't the major issue. It was not DISPLAYED what kind was loaded, it merely told me how many grenades were currently in the barrel(1 or 0) and how many I had left of that given type. It auto-switched to another kind when I ran out, but it never told me what kind it had switched to. For all I knew I could've been trying to mark locations with HE grenades or trying to blow up enemies with coloured smoke.

I was rolling around in a BMP-2 with an AI gunner the other day, told him to just shoot as he pleased, but he only ever used the machinegun option in the turret, even when we ran into another armoured vehicle. It's possible I was just unlucky, but it feels to me like the AI doesn't know how to switch weapon/fire modes in vehicles.

How about just having it a server option WITHOUT needing to set the difficulty to "recruit"? If you're only playing with people you know and people who are highly capable and you want MAXIMUM REALISM then you can switch it off. But if it's a public server where random goons can join and be idiots about it, then you can switch it on. Because, like, sometimes it'd be nice to have the function without also having to fight recruit-level AI only. Just two options for the server admin. Option #1: Friendly IFF tags, Option #2: Hostile IFF tags. Either can be off or on as the admin pleases. How about that? No option should be forced, BUT, the people who want to play with it off lose nothing by the option EXISTING, and the people who want to play with it ON gain more fun. It's win-win for everyone.

See, that's the main thing, here. You could easily make a game that REQUIRES military-like precision and training to be any fun or playable, or winnable. But that makes it so much easier for one idiot WITHOUT any brains to ruin it for everyone. Slacken up a bit on the need for attention to detail and you're much less likely to get your experience ruined by the guy who only knows how to play CounterStrike.

Do you walk or run? I find that walking matters more to not getting spotted than stance. When walking, I can basically, well, walk right up to an enemy and not get noticed. When running, even if I'm prone or crouched, I get spotted and headshotted instantly at ridiculous distances. I also think the Armory mode, if that's what you're playing in, may be cranked up to the most brutal there is by default. Because playing on Normal and Recruit in the Scenarios and Campaign, I can get by. Just waltzing around in the Armory I'm a bullet magnet 90% of the time.

Games also need to make a few abstractions to make gameplay easier on the players. Unless you want to spend more time maintaining your weapons than using them or other such "realistic" things. Let's just say you have a 32-man team split into two 16-man groups, though. In most conditions in Arma 2, you can hardly see who the hell you're looking at without the IFF blobs on. Everyone's just some uniform shade of gray at a distance, and this isn't a game that lets you get closer for a better look, especially if you're dealing with bots who sometimes have some amazing eagle-eyed attacks going on. Additionally, they already pop up as identified to amazing detail(even right down to their gear, missile soldier, officer, etc.) on the map, but you need to waste valuable time hauling that up. Just a "this is not an enemy for shooting at"-marker would be fine and really not ruin immersion, it would be assumed that there's a constant level of low-grade chatter going on so everyone has some idea of where their buddies are. I mean, I really appreciate the concept. But fact is, we're not there personally, so there are senses and stuff that we are not privy to, no matter how well the game is designed. I almost NEVER get lost in person, but I can get lost in a videogame, just something about it screws with my spatial perception. Which is something I need to have polished and top notch to, for instance, keep track of 16 unmarked buddies running around in the middle of the goddamn night. Most of the people playing this game are not trained military professionals, the game should not require that we be just to avoid friendly fire.

(The third-person view thing is a minor niggle, the ladder thing is a major annoyance and has gotten me killed from falling damage more than once.) If I jump out of a vehicle while in 3rd-person view, it leaves me in 3rd-person view on foot, it's often useful to be in 3rd-person in a vehicle so you can tell how close you are to bumping into stuff(which can be a bit of a challenge with a tiny viewport and not actually being present inside it), but I can't imagine any reason to ever be in 3rd-person on foot, it's mostly just annoying and troubles aiming. Would it be possible to make it so it always defaults you to 1st-person view when getting into or out of something? I also find that with more than a few ladders, as soon as I get to the top, my guy will not actually go OVER it. Instead he gets stuck on it for a moment(or literally stuck) and can't climb down, instead I just get to drop down and get injured, and there's rarely anything to let me know if it's going to be a ladder that'll screw me before I try climbing it. Though I think it's tied to those ladders that proceed in a large curve above where they actually connect to a surface. It's hard to describe.

Speaking of movement issues, am I the only one who occasionally finds that it's possible to get stuck in narrow spaces? I mean, it makes sense that I can't just wave my machinegun through a wall, but it can get really annoying at times that my guy seems to take up so much damn space. Even with a normal assault rifle and just trying to navigate a stairwell, I find myself bumping into walls and obstacles all the time! It feels like my soldier is just ever so slightly larger than he ought to be, it's weird.

They are, they only appear on the easiest difficulty setting or if you make a custom difficulty.

The one thing that would lift this game from a 9 out of 10 to a 15 out of 10 for me would be simple: Multiplayer Armory Mode. Let people join, pick their favourite animal, vehicle, weapon or character, and then just randomly generate challenges as usual. Some could be competetive: Who gets the most skeet shooting hits, who gets to the assassination target or steals the item first(but they also have to deliver it first, have fun running from your friends' sniper rifles!), races, etc. Others could be cooperative: Attacking positions, defending positions, maybe an enlarged Kill House, so forth.