Ace42

Mod tools: * More streamlined updating / modding system to improve multiplayer compatibility. It's currently a nightmare trying to figure which modfolders each server is or isn't using, and then find out that some are or aren't using the same versions of the mods, etc etc etc. I shouldn't have to go back and forth between the main menu and the multiplayer browser to manually work out through trial and error what the problem with the mods is - if the mods are installed and the server has them on, the game should make them available. If the server doesn't have them, the game shouldn't assume they're active. Gameplay: * I want a game, not a mission-building toolkit. Some engrossing and "complete" multiplayer game-modes that are fun out-of-the-box; for example streamlining and including Domi / Warfare so that they don't exceed the server's capacity to run them - thereby preventing warping / respotting tanks, or the server just plain crashing after building large bases. AI: * Make the bot's wallhacks and aimbotting less severe. I hate getting counter-sniped at distances of over 1km by an untrained militia grunt using an AK. A more complicated scripting process for "detecting" enemies can be employed, as the problem is precisely that they're TOO FAST. A more realistic response would go hand in hand with it being slower. The way I see it working is, on hearing a contact, the bots are aware of the contact (not the player, but the location) and will "snap" their wide FOV onto the target; but won't engage until the FOV is 0 on the target (IE they have direct line of sight and are locked on). Their initial FOV (and its max range) will be determined by a number of factors (The stealth of the shooter, the perceptiveness of the AI unit in question, the loudness of the shooter, enhancing items such as binoculars, etc), and the bots will attempt to "narrow" the FOV by performing searching behaviours and moving around obstructions. The FOV will slowly "widen" if they don't have LOS or hear a contact - until they have "lost contact" and revert to their default behaviour. If they have LOS to the contact, the FOV will slowly "narrow" on that point until they have acquired the target and shoot. If they hear a contact outside of the FOV, they *reset* their FOV to appropriate base amount for the new contact, and shift they their attention to the new source. Thus a distraction (a grenade set off behind them), or another unit engaging) can draw their attention elsewhere. The reset of the FOV simulates the effects of tunnel-vision. A simple unit-based variable we can call "perceptiveness" would determine how narrow the FOV is, and how far the target has to be, before the unit in question "finds" the target and is positive of its location, and thus begins its engaging behaviours. Those are, as I said, the deal-breakers; however for just "wishlist" requests: A. The vehicle physics need to be worked out. Whether driving a bike, a humvee, or a LAV, I always feel like I'm driving a box being pushed around a table; I get no sense of traction, of suspension, or of forces acting realistically on a vehicle. Every single battlefield game since 1942 has managed to create a plausible and pleasurable driving experience, so it's about time ARMA catches up. B. Better quality control; I've restarted the Red Harvest campaign half-a-dozen times (usually after each patch) - and every single time I've found a new scripting error or game-breaking bug. I haven't even bothered with the PMC / BAF campaigns I own because every time I get enthused, I remember the tooth-pulling pain of trying to do ANYTHING in the original campaign, and how futile it actually is to try and get anything out of this game without running into totally unnecessary frustrations. C. Streamlined controls - there's way too many mutually exclusive keystrokes being tied up with individual functions. Completely segregate the keybinds into "common" "Infantry" "air" "land vehicles", so that duplicate keys can be used more easily.

Quite frankly the deal breakers for me, that need to be addressed before I buy another ARMA game are: 1. More streamlined updating / modding system to improve multiplayer compatibility. It's a nightmare trying to figure which modfolders each server is or isn't using, and then find out that some are or aren't using the same versions of the mods, etc etc etc. I shouldn't have to go back and forth between the main menu and the multiplayer browser to manually work out through trial and error what the problem with the mods is - if the mods are installed and the server has them on, the game should make them available. If the server doesn't have them, the game shouldn't assume they're active. 2. A real multiplayer experience, instead of having to download buggy missions which invariably lag out servers and cause them to crash just when things are getting interesting. Domi was ok, but the servers invariably lag-out when things are getting interesting; and warfare invariably crashes servers once some serious base-building has been done. I want a game, not a mission-building toolkit. 3. Decent enemy AI. They don't have to be geniuses, but they can't be simply aimbots; it's ridiculous that if I set up on a hill over a kilometer and a half-away and pop one with a sniper rifle, they quickly spot me and spray me with AK fire, etc. Depending on the unit types and their equipment, etc they should demonstrate vulnerabilities and skills dependant on their sides. For example, popping the officer with binocs means a unit's maximum detection range and ability to respond to you should be compromised - not that they all instantly know where you are and pinpoint you with laser-beam fire. The simply "un-fun" AI could be skipped altogether by simply shoring up the multiplayer game-mode to make bots in multiplayer unnecessary or mere window-dressing while human players on each side get on with the actual gameplay. Those are, as I said, the deal-breakers; however for just "wishlist" requests: A. The vehicle phyiscs need to be worked out. Whether driving a bike, a humvee, or a LAV, I always feel like I'm driving a box being pushed around a table; I get no sense of traction, of suspension, or of forces acting realistically on a vehicle. Every single battlefield game since 1942 has managed to create a plausible and pleasurable driving experience, so it's about time ARMA catches up. B. Better quality control; I've restarted the Red Harvest campaign half-a-dozen times (usually after each patch) - and every single time I've found a new scripting error or game-breaking bug. I haven't even bothered with the PMC / BAF campaigns I own because every time I get enthused, I remember the tooth-pulling pain of trying to do ANYTHING in the original campaign, and how futile it actually is to try and get anything out of this game without running into totally unnecessary frustrations. C. Streamlined controls - there's way too many mutually exclusive keystrokes being tied up with individual functions. Completely segregate the keybinds into "common" "Infantry" "air" "land vehicles", so that duplicate keys can be used more easily.

Awesome, thought so, thanks for the confirmation ;)

I've already got the original Arma2 and OA installed; so I figured that I'd save some hard-drive space if I just installed BAF & PMC. My question is - is there any content in the 9gbs of "full reinforcements" installation that I am missing out on; or is it just duplicating the core game engine files, and thus unnecessary? Cheers.

I don't recall saying it did. My point was about Bangtail being an egotist, and that restricting your definition of people who are qualified to criticise to a very narrow minority will only skew the balance of opinions provided. I don't really care how it "comes across". I didn't write it to make people feel good about themselves, I wrote it to list a serious number of key flaws in the game which would deter people from playing. The tone with which I did it is somewhat irrelevant. Actually no, that's not "all" I do, I covered a number of other issues. However, listing *positive* aspects of the game would hardly be illuminating on why it ISN'T popular, would it? Unfortunately, you are very much mistaken. Even with all the graphics set on max, and ignoring the fact that the game then plays like a slideshow, it looks pretty mediocre. Do I need to take some screenshots of random games and draw little circles on them to illustrate the deficiencies in the Arma2 rendering? It won't take me five seconds to load up Arma2 and alt-printscreen a picture of the muzzle-flash of the AKs and compare the hideous "yellow blob" with the fully animated muzzle "star" of the M16 in a battlefield game, for example, but is that necessary? What about comparing the cockpits of some of the birds? I suspect that no matter how many screenies I took contrasting various video effects and texture-filtering tricks that you'd not deviate from your opinion. I didn't realise that "time spent" was the metric with which we evaluated the quality of a product. And, to quote Mark Thomas, "Don't be shit and they won't shout..." If the game ran smoothly, half my complaints would be moot. I'm sorry if I insulted your lover; but if you don't like my objectivity, feel free to ignore me instead of bad-mouthing me. As I got it on pre-order, and it is currently living in bargain bins, I suspect the depreciation in value would make that an unattractive proposition; and it would hardly help the game be "more popular" if the only advice the community can give is "sell it, buy something better." Isn't that a lot like admitting that the game is only attractive to the minority of people who place brand-loyalty before functionality?

Firstly, the topic is called quite simply "Why is this game not more popular?" As the obvious answer to that is because "a lot of people aren't playing it"; and as no-one is in a position to speak for the entire video-gaming world at large; naturally people are going to speak from either their own personal experience, or else will be participating in idle speculation. Secondly, you seem to miss the point with the comparison to BF2; yes the game is five years old, and in those five years have BIS managed to learn anything from the competition? No, what we have is a game that looks *TEN* years old (barely better than OFP), and handles worse than more recent titles to boot. BF2 seemed a reasonable comparison because the two games share many similarities, and thus face the same technical challenges. Comparing Arma2 to the most recent FPSs would be unfair for two reasons: It's easier to make superficial run-and-gun scripted FPSs look pretty; and given how amateurish Arma2 looks such a comparison would totally derail this discussion with precisely the sort of recriminations you've been coming up with, rather than just respecting the fact that some people will have perfectly valid opinions that happen to differ from yours. Oh, well in that case I shouldn't've bothered posting, if it doesn't meet your approval... And while I'm at it, I shouldn't bother playing either, because my game-experience is unimportant to you. In fact, let's invalidate the entire purpose of this thread; and negate all of BIS's revenue stream while we're at it, because the entire Arma2 phenomenon is solely constructed to satisfy YOUR personal preferences, right? If you were a spokesman for BIS the we could dispense with the surgical analysis and look at the thing holistically: "The game isn't more popular because BIS don't care about what any potential customers think unless their opinions coincide with Bangtail's." So, thirdly: The fact is that I invested enough time and money to actually buy and play the game, and I found these reasons to be suitable for me to do other things whilst waiting to patch it. Unless you can do a better job of addressing the actual points I've made, then it is not unreasonable to assume my reasons are identical to those of plenty of other people, and all those people in agreement with me represent a sizeable body of people not "populating" Arma2 servers or taking a more active part in the community. As previously mentioned, simple, concise, on topic. Of course you can. It is not unreasonable to expect a recent game that looks worse than an ageing predecessor to handle at least as well as it does. Or in Bangtail land does the term "progress" not apply to video game development? Yes, it is too much to let you have the last word when all you have to bring to the table is arrogant elitism without any shred of justification. Guess what, bangtail, your opinion isn't more important than mine or his, not in terms of sales, not in terms of the content of this thread. Jeez, get over yourself. Or, you know, just put everyone on ignore apart from people who think just like you so that you needn't have to actually justify your self-importance at all, that could work too... What if you've been a professional video-games journalist working in the national print media? Would that qualify me to give my opinion? I think BIS would probably prefer I keep my negative feelings towards the game constrained to this forum, and in the format of constructive criticism, than from publications that might influence buyers and thus their revenue stream. Funny, I found that to be a more accurate description of yourself, given that you've failed to address anything raised by the other posters, and have only demonstrated a supercilious attitude towards people not in complete agreement with you, irrespective of the substantive contents of their posts. You don't care what people with dissenting opinions think? Fine, but why do you feel the need to tell them? Didn't mommy and daddy give you enough attention?

It's been months since I've played; I think I installed it and found that the single-player campaign STILL reached a crashing halt in the same places, and promptly forgot. I guess I will be giving Arma2 some sympathy play-time afterall then ;)

Is it me, or is it ironic that in a thread discussing why Arma2 is unpopular there is a zealot telling people to play other games? I can tell you why I haven't played Arma 2 in months: Bugs and performance. As someone astutely pointed out, the problem was a lack of "polish polish polish." The single player campaign was rough and buggy; despite my rig running BF2 maxed out with it being super-slick and sexy, I have to make Arma2 look like OFP for it to play tolerably; I had to use cheats to end rounds where the scripting routinely failed, and it seemed like I'd barely complete a mission before the next one bugged out. The AI was diabolical, with my squad being unable to walk down a street without getting confused and one of them trekking around the opposite side of a building to everyone else; not to mention the enemies being idiotic, but capable of lazer-beam like accuracy while your team of elite special forces seem unable to crack off a single shot. The weapons were all interchangeable, and thus boring, making armament selection arbitrary at best and meaningless at worst. The controls were convoluted and generally meaningless; dozens of menus of commands which have little to no effect on gameplay - suppress didn't even work, and who cares what formation your squad is in when they're going to get head-shot by some little dot on the horizon anyway, thereby ending your game? "Copy my stance" ? "Go prone" ? Redundant nonsense, the bots should be smart enough to take cover themselves and get down if lead is flying, etc. And three buttons just for crouch / prone / stand? Did the developers not check out BF2, etc? You can do it with *two* keys and it will STILL be more ergonomic... And that's the case with the whole game through, with humvees that are a liability to drive, to having to use a constantly shifting drop-down menu to enter or exit vehicles or open gates, to having to navigate dozens of number-based sub-menus to access commands that should be really straight-forward. Loading up an APC with munitions (AT gear, ammo, sniper rifles, etc) is a mission of itself; and try to order the generation of units in the campaign and you just end up with a load of turkeys running around like fools unable to mount a truck without getting run over. And don't get me started on the graphics; to even get the game moving at a decent speed you need to turn everything down, and even with stuff turned up high it looks amateurish; blocky, with buildings clipping left right and centre, iron sights that are so big and ugly that you're better off hip-firing and using the tracer to walk fire onto targets than actually aiming; and distant targets are just grainy dots, so firefights tend to be "whoever can determine if it's a friendly or not" rather than any sort of contest of skill. Quite simply, BIS were too ambitious and rather than release a more realistic product with polish; they released a mess that has alienated anyone who isn't a hardcore fan since the OFP days. And as *I* am an OFP fan from the old days and I'm saying this, you can see how deep this cuts. I could forgive crude graphics if the gameplay was smooth; it isn't. I could forgive counter-intuitive controls if the commands were meaningful and effective; they aren't. I could forgive an unplayable single-player mode if the multiplayer content was stream-lined and engaging; it isn't. I could forgive terrible AI if the gun-play was exciting and immersive; it isn't. I could forgive a lot, but given that it has been 10 years since OFP and Arma2 appears to have made next to no progress whatsoever, it's understandable that people are unwilling to "work" at the game. So, do I resent buying the game? Nah, it wasn't that expensive, and there were some enjoyable aspects to it; but I spend more time checking here and the main page to see if 1.06 is out and if it has fixed my major bug-bears than actually playing the game. Perhaps if they made it run without a CD in, like the latest BF2 patch did for that game), I might be tempted to click the icon and start her up now and then on a whim; but in the mean-time, nope.

I thought the launch-args from the ini file would solve the "no chat menu on scroll-X" but no joy. It's got me stumped, maybe it is something to do with how the game's keyboard shortcuts are configured?

:) That explains a lot. Hopefully this will become a lot clearer as I play through.

Hmmm, it's not giving me the other groups in the sub-menu to send them to. I assume after you pick "send units" it asks you which squad to bung them to? Mine's empty, despite having other squads there...

Arma 2 wasn't showing up on my installed list in xfire, and manually pointing it at the right folder, while it correctly started spotting my playtime stats, it didn't operate properly in game. My method to solve this problem was to open the xfire_games.ini file in notepad, and change the entry FOR THE RETAIL CD VERSION (not the steam version) to point to the CORRECT PLACE IN THE REGISTERY. The entry should look something like: [5856_2] LongName=ARMA 2 ShortName=arma2 LauncherDirKey=HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Bohemia Interactive Studio\ArmA 2\main LauncherNetworkArgs=-connect=%UA_GAME_HOST_NAME% %UA_GAME_HOST_PORT% Launch=%UA_LAUNCHER_EXE_PATH% %UA_LAUNCHER_EXTRA_ARGS% %UA_LAUNCHER_NETWORK_ARGS% The LauncherDirKey= originally incorrectly pointed to Bohemia Interactive, not Bohemia Interactive Studio, and to the \installpath not \main key. Making those corrections so it looks like above should sort most people out. Failing that, run window's registery editor (regedit.exe) and navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ and look for bohemia's entry, the arma2 entry, and the key with the path in it under that. Copy that key's path to the appropriate line in the xfire game.ini and you'll be good to go.

How do I make new squads if my existing ones have been wiped out? Surely if I can make assloads in my squad, it isn't unreasonable to want to peal some off and have them go it alone? How do I assign troops to different squads? If I buy troops at the barracks they just go in my squad, which becomes massive but hard to organise; and if I use the communications (complex commands) menu, when I choose to move the units, it doesn't give me a choice of squads to move them to. Ditto for my map > units menu. Is it just disabled for this mission, or is it just the squads are too far apart / in vehicles / in a town with too many obstacles between them? If so, how do I purchase units directly for a different squad? IE, I want to add AT to my second squad, and I don't want to have to buy it to my squad, hook up with squad #2, transfer the one infantry. Having sent squad #2 to my barracks, how do I instruct them to buy the new unit? Moh, they could've made this clearer...

A quick question, how do I assign troops to different squads? If I buy troops at the barracks they just go in my squad, which becomes massive but hard to organise; and if I use the communications (complex commands) menu, when I choose to move the units, it doesn't give me a choice of squads to move them to. Ditto for my map > units menu. Is it just disabled for this mission, or is it just the squads are too far apart / in vehicles / in a town with too many obstacles between them? If so, how do I purchase units directly for a different squad? IE, I want to add AT to my second squad, and I don't want to have to buy it to my squad, hook up with squad #2, transfer the one infantry. Having sent squad #2 to my barracks, how do I instruct them to buy the new unit?

After my squad managed to repeatedly get sniped while behind concealment, on a hill, a large distance from the camp; and were totally unable to return fire effectively against the 'daki running straight towards them, I got fed up of their inability to aim and decided to take matters into my own hands: MY LAV was loaded up with goodies (Javelin, SMAWs, tons of ammo, etc etc) that I patiently ferried to and from the ammo stacks at Manhatten FOB. Under a hail of gunfire (from miles away, I swear in 1.03 my guys' firing range and alertness has been nerfed to hell) I got out of range of the main base, parked up behind a hill having "lost" the troops. Unpacked my goodies from the LAV (javelin, SMAWs, etc). Found a good position overlooking the infantry, called in Boomerang and immediately initiated a HE artillery strike on the infantry, waited until the first few rounds went off and fired my javelin (predictably, despite artillery striking all around, the AI troops still managed to spot exactly where we were and run straight at us), ran back to the LAV. Boomerang mopped up the last troops along with us in the LAV, the arty had taken out the APC, job was a good'un. Was this a victory for smart tactics? No. I tried variations on this theme repeatedly, and no matter what tactics I used, I invariably got lazer-gun-sniped by enemy soldiers that were mere dots on the horizon while my useless "special ops" squadmates totally failed to return fire with any degree of efficacy.