Santhonax

I guess it depends upon what type of game you prefer to play. Your boredom with travel times on a coop map or a mission against the AI is understandable, especially on repeated play sessions. Personally I find any AI to be tedious, and I much prefer competitive PvP maps where the increased travel time provides a real chance to utilize some measure of tactical flexibility and strategic thought, simply because you DON'T know where another player is going to set-up. As such I tend to agree with Herbal on this one. The act of driving/flying/running to an objective for some time makes your livelihood more precious, and thus the heart gets to pounding a lot quicker when you crest that last hilltop. By comparison, small maps provide little excitement when you consider that the only real consequence of death is the respawn timer before you can commence with shooting again. Naturally, nothing more than opinion and personal preference here.

Using just a stereo setup: I don't really get any notable crackling issues with the game, but what I DO get is a seeming inability to hear anything beyond about 200 meters. From gunshots to vehicles, helis to aircraft, I simply can't hear a bloody thing if they're beyond that range (once or twice my own weapon didn't make any sound also, but that's rare). It makes for an irksome MP experience because I have minimal situational awareness (had a tank roll up to within 50 meters before I heard his engine last night). I don't have my hardware specs right in front of me currently, or I'd post those.

26 here.

I too have noticed that the smoke grenades tend to give off the equivalent density of a mild fog, but as has been stated, I believe it shall be fixed with the next patch.

The number of cheaters is disconcerting to be sure, but far more troubling is the tenuous situation being set up by their mere presence. Though I fully support the act of actively weeding out the cheaters, forcing them play in an ever narrowing list of servers, I've also seen a number of respectable players being falsely banned and labeled through the sometimes "radical" desire of folks to become ban-happy. For example: I've been playing on public servers the first few days so that I can become proficient with the game before I head off to clan servers and use up resources. Last night, while playing a CTI game, I joined another player, named Phobos I believe, and together we coordinated the takeover of several towns. After an artillery strike, we both respawned at the main base where Phobos bought an APC, and while waiting for his newly acquired team to file in, some fool showed up and shot the APC with his rifle. This act, prompted by the fool's cheat, launched the APC into the air and several thousand meters away from the closest objective. Unfortunately, the Admin decided to ban Phobos for "cheating", and after informing him of the actual events that occurred, he decided to ban both the actual cheater, and myself (for what reason I am unsure. Apparently I'm an accessory through reporting the event). While such an event would normally simply be an annoying experience to be forgotten after a beer and an avoidance of that particular server, with the sudden push to garner a universal "ban" list, how many reasonable players are going to become falsely ostracized by the community through false assumptions? I encourage everyone to show some restraint and rationality in tracking down the exact culprits.

I'm definitely going to have to go with the "both" option. Each has more potential than the other play-styles to promote a more realistic play-style with bigger engagements.

What an amusingly naive post! My particular frame of reference was to a grouping of my fellow officers and I in the USAF, all of us have Masters or Doctorates, but we generally work most of the day, and don't really make enough to support buying brand spanking new computers. A surprisingly larger portion of society works in career fields where they love what they do, but considering the job market and economy, don't really make enough to justify buying a new computer every year for the next big game. Again, an amusing viewpoint. A very "silver-spoon" in your mouth, aristocratic outlook. I shall overlook such ignorance as being a bi-product of a privileged upbringing and inexperience. But I digress...

I would love to have something resembling a realistic/ginormous corp vs. corp shootout with tactical manuevering and coordination, and on the weekends I actively seek these games out. However, I do grow increasingly weary of the habitual "OMG play it my way!" mentality that's been popping up like mad as of late. Though I too despise the typical, cookie cutter whiny preteen gamer, I've found a surprisingly prevalent trend from some older, alienated gamers to revert to a preadolescent whine-fest when the rest of the gaming community isn't entertaining their grand notions of a true game-session. I typically play ARMA 2 for 30 mins-1 hour a night after leaving the base, so I don't have all day to pre-plan and chat it up for endless hours before blowing off some steam. I can often be seen pedaling my pitiful bike (because God-forbid a 1337 clan gamer waste his ridiculously under-tasked time to spare a ride for the disgusting "non-clanies") toward the most recently contested zone so I can cut a few folks down (in tactical fashion) before logging off. Realize that many gamers have the same time constrictions, and many more suffer from antiquated technology issues. This doesn't make them "idiotic" or intellectually inferior, but rather over-worked and under-paid. My recommendation (to play the role of a broken record) would be to join a clan of like-minded individuals, and spare the rest of us from more poorly-worded lectures. Thanks!