paul1290

As far as groups go, there are a couple that spring to mind at the moment. United Operations runs both Coop and TvT missions pretty regularly and they'll let you play on their server as long as you have the needed mods installed an join their TeamSpeak. They run ACE and ACRE as well as a few other mods. 15th MEU has a recruiting server that's also played quite frequently that you can play without having to join them. They also have a TeamSpeak and run ACE. If neither of those fit you that well then there are several more that others can point you to. If you want more PvP, then another option would be checking out the Project Reality mod for ArmA 2.

I'm guessing he means "Team Death Match" and "Death Match". Those terms aren't used very much in ArmA 2. Usually we use gamemode or mission name (like "Domination" or "Chernarus Life") and those sometimes have a either Coop (Cooperative), TvT (Team vs. Team) at the beginning of their names to indicate the type of mission or gamemode. As far as multiplayer goes, you'll want to find some kind of group to play with. A lot of servers are played at certain times or are locked and need a password so if you know of some groups to play with you'll have a far easier time getting into a multiplayer games. Fortunately, this isn't too difficult in ArmA 2 even if you can't put in the time to be a member of a clan because there are groups and clans who will let you play with them even if you don't necessarily join. Even some of the locked servers might not be that hard to get into, as some will give you the password if you just join their TeamSpeak or just let them know your there to play and not cause trouble.

I'll probably upgrade to play this game as I now have enough reasons (ArmA 3, Witcher 2, DCS: A-10C) to get better hardware. At the same time I'd be lying if I said I was looking forward to it as much this time. While I'm glad things are finally moving forward in this regard, I can't help but feel I'm paying more and more for what seems like smaller and smaller improvements. This can be a subjective thing, but unless the system requirements change I might end up having to pay just as much to run ArmA 3 well as I did for the jump between ArmA and ArmA 2, but it doesn't feel like quite same leap, at least visually. I do hope the increased hardware requirements will mean more units, more sophisticated AI behavior and pathfinding, more simulation in general happening at once. This is probably more a complaint about PC gaming in general rather than ArmA specifically.

Like I mentioned earlier my main objection to removing crosshairs in this game is that the game doesn't seem like it was set up for it, at least not very well. Right now the weapon pretty much behaves as if you were using the sights all the time with or without crosshairs. Unless you have a scope or other such device, bringing up the sights only changes how it looks on your screen. In other words, for most intents and purposes all fire is aimed fire in ArmA 2. As far as I can tell, there isn't any "un-aimed fire" in the game. Another way to say it would be that removing crosshairs right now doesn't turn firing without crosshairs into "un-aimed fire", it turns it into "aimed fire without crosshairs". This just makes it frustrating for some and irrelevant for the rest. For the most part this is the fault of a whole mess of things that would be a near-insurmountable pain-in-the-ass to fix including the flatness of our screens, our lack of tactile feedback, the fact we can't feel the mass of our weapons, the fact we only have a mouse moving on a flat plane, and so on and so forth. Now most other games get over the above problems by just intentionally making the weapon inaccurate in-game whenever you aren't looking through the sights, though I know a lot of people here would hate that solution even more.

I like the idea playing FPS games without crosshairs, but it doesn't feel as comfortable in ArmA as it should. I think the way in which players aim weapons in ArmA needs to be improved significantly before removing crosshairs would make sense. One thing that really bugs me is that the way which you see your weapon in first person when not looking through the sights isn't exactly ideal for working out where it is pointing. You don't really fire from the hip in ArmA, so you should have some reasonable degree of accuracy even if you aren't looking directly down the sights. Right now when you turn off crosshairs, you're either using ironsights or resorting to a lot of guessing, and there's not much in between. You could practice your way through it, but that seems like a brute force approach that shouldn't be as necessary to begin with (you could also learn to drive with left foot). It would be more comfortable to aim without crosshairs if the weapon was closer to your eyes and closer to the center like in Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield, but that would very annoying in ArmA if it was like that all the time since the weapon would obstruct a large portion of your view. Come to think of it, we already have a focus/zoom that works whether you're looking down the sights or not. The way it is now it already helps you aim by narrowing your view, it would be nice to take it a step further. Perhaps instead of zooming in, holding the right mouse button without looking down the sights could bring the weapon closer to your eyes while keeping the weapon pointed at or close to the center of your view. It would not only make playing without crosshairs more comfortable and provide a bit of a compromise between eyeballing it and looking down the sights, but it would also makes sense as far as "realism" goes.