Hoodoo

In the voice of Ben Stein "Yippeee, another patch". On a funny note: I was playing an oldie but goodie yesterday, XIII from ubisoft. At one part you are escaping from the asylum, and you can hear a prisoner screaming from his cell "Let me outa here! I'm a software developer, ya hear me!! If the patch doesn't come out on Tuesday we'll never upgrade from 1.5.0.1 to 1.5.0.2!!" Changes I've noticed after the 1.03 patch: -Sound sometimes crackles and fades out during heavy MG fire, which is really annoying. -Razor team now responds at the beginning of the Badlands mission. -Loading, frame rate, and overall performance seem slightly improved. -AI have lost all their fight it seems (in Normal difficulty). BIS should not have listened to all those people whining about the AI being too hard, the AI was doing what it was supposed to, being intelligent, suppressing, flanking, taking cover, using concealment. So they shot at you through the trees, but unless you're a moron you shot at them through trees too, right? Their aim or sight was no more laser-accurate than your own, but now (on Regular) they seem to have a sluggish response time, horrible aim, and no desire to take cover, fight cohesively or do anything otherwise that would promote their survival. I'll try raising the difficulty but I'll miss the indicators on the map. I have a bad sense of direction but I'm not incompetent, I have learned to use the compass and GPS, which adds to the feel of realism (a hand holding the compass might do it better). I haven't had the time to play all the way through it though. I'm hoping the rest of the campaign works without a hitch.

One suggestion: (too late for ArmA 2 but in the future) prioritize on making the campaign mode 100% functional before the date of release. If a mission doesn't work, remove it, the story is so political and the missions so interchangeable anyway that players wouldn't even notice the gap. Try putting it in a later patch, or expansion. If that's what you have to do to get the game working by a deadline then do it! It makes much more sense than releasing a game that simply doesn't work. I'd rather play a campaign that seems to be missing a chunk of story or is a little shorter than expected than one that leaves me completely stuck on an impossible/broken mission. I think most gamers would agree. Maybe I'm wrong. In any case I hope to see a patch soon that fixes this, I'd be done with the campaign by now if it worked. that's a good suggestion for a poll: Would you rather wait and undetermined length of time for a patch to fix a mission with game-stopping bugs, or have that mission removed prior to the games release, leaving you with a working campaign, that is 1 mission shorter?

I am having roughly the same problems. Razor team would not respond at the opening of the mission, or at all, until I captured the first town alone. A cutscene plays after which i can order razor to my position (they are now responding) and move on. The next town falls easily under our control and I move to point Oranges for the mobile HQ, I am approach by the men in the white car asking for protection and decline. I set up base near the crest of the hill just north of point oranges, buy some units and begin recon on Stary Sobor. After 4 or 5 hit and run attacks, using smoke to retreat and re-arming at base I weaken the hostile presence in Stary enough to move in. I have a brief conversation on the Com with A "Don" something, and his forces become under my command. I used them to lead the charge on Stary and Novy Sobor clearing them easily. "Objective Complete" message displays but objective remains on task list. "Don" and I have a conversation about assassinating someone but I decline. I have a brief conversation with some villagers sitting on a fence (flickering like holograms) after which nothing else occurs. I have spent 3 hours just traveling to the other towns on the map, and into other factions zones but cannot find any enemies. Other faction NPCs do not trigger any dialog, no new objectives are given. "Find Evidence" 1/2 and "Conquer all Control Points" objective still remain. I have read all notes, tasks, briefing, dialog journal, etc. but cannot find any indication of what is left to be done. (I have spent at least another 2 hours reading forums looking for a legit solution or walkthrough that doesn't tell me to use a console command to "end mission" or do some secret magic raindance of the control points. I've had no luck) 2 questions: 1. Has ANYONE ever completed this mission? Anyone at all? Even at least 1 tester at BIS must have made it through the campaign right? I haven't seen any posted solutions to finish this mission from anyone. 2. If "NO" is the answer to 1- Why are BIS(and Got Game Productions) taking people's money for a game that is not ready to be on the market yet since it doesn't work? If there is not a law against that there should be. A game that has a few bugs on release is normal but a game that's unplayable on release is absolutely UNACCEPTABLE. It would be one thing if the game box read "The Ultimate Military Simulation....Oh, BTW it's not finished yet" or "The Ultimate Beta-Testing Simulation" or "Help us test our non-working game, now with 58% percent more bugs!! ONLY $50!!" so that the buyer knows that they are buying unfinished software, but the sad truth is IT DID NOT. There was nothing on the box to indicate that I would be paying for the experience of beta testing, but that's what it feels like. Most people get paid or rewarded for testing games, not charged!! The bottom line: games should be tested and 100% functional BEFORE hitting the market. Otherwise, I'd think the profits lost from word spreading through the gaming community that "company X makes buggy, or downright unplayable games" would far exceed the profits gained from releasing an unfinished product in the (especially a video-game) in the middle of the year. Oh Well, maybe there's still hope for Operation Flashpoint 2. Codemasters makes games that WORK, right out of the box too!! Can you believe it? It's almost as if they have someone who they pay just to play through the game and TEST IT before they release it. Hmmmm....