instagoat

People seem to be not getting my point, to reiterate. Arma´s gameplay is based on freedom of execution on the mission objective. The problem is the following: Players want to make a difference, and they want to do well. I am NOT talking about changing the gameplay principles that underly Arma. I´m talking about making them more accessible. Changing the gameplay is chickening out. But people need to be told what the game expects of them, and what the measure of success is in the game. Instead of just giving them a random set of missions that run their course around them, without them understand what is going on. For most people, Arma is a completely new experience: they don´t know what to expect, and all they can do in absence of a tutorial is equate their experience to those which they had with other games. Arma being so completely different leads to alienation. This will not be the case if people are prepared from the get go to experience a game that is wholly different from what they´ve known before, and that there is enjoyment to be had even if they´re NOT the super hero.

I agree with this. I too am in for the freedom the game allows: the problem still remains that this is something that´s largely uncommon in the regular gaming world. Even sandbox games like Saint´s Row or Far Cry (Does the latter count as a sandbox freeroamer?) are heavily player centric. Thus, from a common gamers perspective, the argument is the following: Why should I play this game, where AI take the task out of my hand, completely beyond my control? Why should I play this game, when it ultimately comes down to being a glorified screensaver where I matter in only one out of five cases, where I am tossed into the cold water, and where I most of the time am not told what is going on, and how to make a difference? I love this game. I worry about making people not coming from our part of the gamer pool love it too. One Mission that did this really well is Abandoned Armies: there you matter, yet you have complete freedom. A3´s story at first glance bears a superficial similarity to Abandoned Armies scenario, which is good. Still, new players still need to be eased in, and told how to be good at the game without having to spend months trying to figure it out for themselves. People want to matter, and People want to do well in the game. This is, I guess, what my point comes down to.

Well, it is kind of alike.

I played trough OA, BAF and PMC on release and before patches, and none of them had any problems worth mentioning. BI themselves said that the initial release of A2 was poor, and they have substantially upped their game in the releases that followed it. Unfortunately, the bad rep sticks more than is warranted. I myself am guilty of going with that vibe (see my sig). Though I try to take it with a bit of humour. I trust BI to do a good job with A3 this time. As for codies, there seems to be nil comms from their side, no patch, no support, and the game seems to be selling slower than anticipated. There is mention of a post on a gaming mags forum, where an editor points out price droppings rapidly after release. I´m almost tempted to try the game myself: friends of mine have bought it and deemed it decent, but offensive in its tone and skewed in its logic and poor in mission design. For example, it´s never explained why the PLA picks up hostilities against the USMC, when they have the mutual goal of suppressing the insurgency. The only reason I can think of is "We needed a powerful enemy, and we had all the models on HD already, so..." I just hope that A3 will have a more decent backstory. Though the ending of PMC doesn´t bode well, in that regard.

I believe it´s even more than that. The system suppresses the IR signature from all angles except the back (since heat has to be vented -somewhere-). So on top of being a climatics unit, it helps in camouflaging the soldier. Possibly pointlessly so, since he doesn´t have a visor or mask shielding his face, which will glow in our optics like a flashlight in the dark. Still, this is quite in the realm of the possible. What will make or break the game for me, though, is proper simulation of some sort of "super-AI", which represents the digitized nature of the modern battlefield. ie, a system such as Land Warrior.

Hello BIS. I know this is a silly thread, but these Units have given me eyesores from both an aesthetical and marginally rivetcounting perspective, so I wondered if you could quickly produce a replacement for them. They are ugly. The shaders on the torso don´t match up, so the torso is reflective while the sleeves aren´t. The colour of the vest is just silly. And the charred ACU pattern on the magpouches is just not nice to behold. It´d be happy if you just could reproduce the same units, but with different camo patterns. ACUPAT for the vest and woodland or descam for the shirt. Olive as in the BAF units for the pouches. And maybe give the PKM/M8 SAW gunner MG-magazine pouches. Make them look as if they´re actually in the field. Three pouches doesn´t make them look like that. Sorry to be whining, but these have -really- bugged me. The models of the commander and the engineer/medic/driver are beautiful, the one of the guy with the czech vest is decent. Just these, simply put, are not. They´re shameless reskins of the base model of the US army grenadier minus the battle rattle, and need a bit of spicing up. Pretty please, BI?

And somebody could infiltrate, and kill the enemy commander to destroy the enemy cohesion. There´s really endless possibillities here, BIS. I hope you can see that, even though it´s probably difficult as heck to implement.

A Dev blog or something of the sort would indeed be cool, with regular updates. At any rate, I´m really just fishing for -any- new content, because I can´t wait to see more. Same goes for the other games.

This was mentioned in the FAQ, which was made in response to my thread. http://www.bistudio.com/index.php/english/company/developers-blog/225-take-on-community-faqs They say that both retreating blade stall and vortex ring state are going to be modelled. I´ve not tried provoking them yet, because I spent most of my time configging and trying to get the thing to lift off without spreading parts over the landscape. But if you say you don´t get them, I´d think the devs haven´t implemented that part of the FM into the helo yet. Nice post, though, it really surprises me to hear that helicopters irl also behave as sluggishly as I perceive them here. Maybe I´m just spoiled by the snap-to controls of the default A2 helos. Cheerio

Not having flown helicopters myself, and being told by a friend who read "The art and science of flying helicopters" that trying to hover a helo is like trying to balance a ball on the tip of a needle, I am wondering if Helos of the light size the demo helicopter is in really behave so sluggishly to control inputs. The framerate is dysmally low, which may be contributing to this perception, however, while I understand the engine being sluggish in response to control inputs, collective, anti-torque and roll/pitch response should be a bit quicker than they are right now. Any thoughts on this, anybody?

1: Technology that promises a trans-human future without actually eliminating humans. 2: Eta Carinae exploding. 3: Men on Mars

Tank driving over low stone wall. Tank begins to bob. Physics kicks into high gear: Tank is flung into low earth orbit. Two minutes later the crew falls out of the sky, dispersing themselves over a wide area. Sometimes, Arma is hilarious. It only happened once, though, and I´ve got no video, unfortunately, so I may or may not have made this up.

More scopey-mopey stuff. This time with A2OA tag instead of A3. No, this is not real, it´s photoshop. Clearly you should be able to tell by a few pixels. Somebody needs to figure out how to do this proper. It´s just too great. Edit: Credit where credit is due. Vehicles are NZXs fantastic stuff, Russian soldiers are BIS, and last but not least Binkowski´s SF.

Uh. Quality wise, these are at LEAST equal to the A2 marines. They are also more accurate to what real life Marines are equipped with right now, I would guess. The textures are also of a higher quality than those of the A2 default Marines... and some minor weighting glitches aside (the only one I really notice is the spikes on the back top of the shoulder pockets), these are extremely well modelled. For being completely free, these are pretty much superior to A2s default Marines. The issues are miniscule compared to what these really are, accurately modelled, diverse and high quality Units. I really respect the effort you and the other people who helped with these put into them. Might not be much, but I really do thank you for these. They´re a wonderful addition to my box-o-toys. And as far as the complaining goes, people generally do tend not to be able to appreciate what kind of effort such craftwork and artwork takes.

Watched the launch live. No matter what you think about the shuttle program, it was beautiful to behold. From now on, the international community will have to rely on the russians to supply the space station. At least until somebody else comes up with commercially viable transport options. No european nation, and the US, have heavy lift launch vehicles right now, especially since the ares family of rockets has been cancelled.

Way to make things more "complicated". Is "complicated" equal to "realism"? I think the system right now needs improvement, but adding complex, interface based simulation routines that are challenging to learn puts the hurdle a little too high, I think. Especially seeing as BI is trying to tap into a new market (ie, mature, casual gamers looking for a deeper, freer, tactical experience.) where peoples attention spans are short, this could end up being a reason for people to drop the game. (In the worst case, at least.) MMA has its place, but as a mod, it does the job much better than any system like it, implemented from the dev side. I for one don´t use MMA because I can´t figure out how to use the different weapons on helos, for example. Part of that may be because I don´t want to invest my precious time in wading trough endless forum threads and piecemeal documentation to learn how to properly use the thing. Same goes for mod work in general. Things need to be easy to get into, while offering challenging gameplay. Some sort of mechanism is needed to achieve this. Again, a complicated sim-front end for the missles is not the way to go, unless you tether it to difficulty settings. My two cents

This would be useless, in my opinion, if the AI wouldn´t be able to access it. Right now they don´t even know how to properly deal with buildings! How would they cope with underground sewers, with complex ladder and staircase system, and very narrow passageways? With the AI as it is right now, they simply won´t. And since I seem to recall a dev stating that the AI wouldn´t get major improvements, I doubt that something like this´ll be implemented. Not that it wouldn´t be nice, though. If it´d work.

I´m a bit sceptical as to how this would be realized in a module. The situations in which the AI can encounter bodies are simply too diverse. For example, what happens if a patrolling AI gets run over by a civilian car? What kind of reaction are the enemies supposed to have in response to the body? There´s been a few missions, especially in the OFP days, where the AI reacted to finding bodies, especially some of the mapfact missions. But in every instance it was realized by a very dedicated scripting, which probably wasn´t generally applicable to every mission.

It worked for me no problem in this mission. Maybe try and restart the mish? Do you have any mods running that may interfere with the mission architecture? I found that some mods that change the game in a major fashion often tend to bend or break missions that were not specifically designed for them.

Hi, People. I´ve only noticed this problem recently, after starting A2 vanilla, which runs smooth as silk. My CO install is suffering from random and permanent stuttering, despite a high framerate. I´ve tried various things to alleviate this, defragged my drive, tried various graphics settings and sound options, but to no avail. The problem also persists when mods are run, and when the game is run clean (ie, only A2CO plus BAF and PMC). Game version is 1.59. Does anybody else have a similar problem? I am getting kind of annoyed by this because I can´t seem to isolate the error, so I´m tempted to try a full reinstall of the game. Cheers Insta

This is true. My performance also got better when I cleaned my PC a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, then, the stuttering became apparent which I noted here: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=121861 On total though, keeping the PC interior clean from dust is important, reduces the stress on components, and ensures proper displacement of heat from the hard working parts. Before I cleaned the PC, the radiator of the processor was completely clogged up with dust. It looked horrible... Cheers Insta

I agree with this. I think you could almost go as far as calling Arma a genresetter, much like GTA is not entirely a game series, but a genre. (As the makers of Saints Row have claimed.) On top of that, it´s also completely alone in its niche. The only games Arma is competing against are earlier releases. A2 competed against A1, while A1 was released too late for OFP having a chance to compete against it. OF:DR was an attempt to tap into the genre of open world battlefield simulator, and it failed. RR isn´t even in that genre anymore, instead occupying the same niche as the more recent Ghost Recon games. Tactical shooter or something. I don´t know how well Arma would handle competition. It could either be for the better, causing BI to try and evolve the concept further, or it could shoot the whole thing down because the competing games are just that much better. That´s all hypothetical now though... Arma 3 seems to have some improvements, but right now I´m not sure if it´ll be radical enough to be interesting to the casual gamer market (which is small on PC platforms too, at least compared to the console market.)

Completely wrong attitude. The lack of proper explanation of these menus is a major reason why many newbies don´t get into the game. People nowadays don´t have the time to explore every facette of the command menu. It took me TEN YEARS to figure it out completely and learn to use every command according to its purpose. Of that, five years of nonstop playing of OFP, Arma and Arma 2. I hope to see this averted in A3. What is needed, in my opinion, is the following: -Revision of the Command menu to streamline it and making it more accessible. -Detailed tutorials explaining every single command menu, and how to use it. -Detailed tutorials teaching the new player how to best employ his AI subordinates. Teaching basic infantry tactics, and also explaining the equipment. -Further improvement and enhancement of the contextual menu. This also needs to be explained in detail by a dedicated tutorial. BI, think of it this way: If you introduce a function, you can´t expect the player, who may come from a completely different gaming background, to be able to immediately figure it out by themselves. Attention spans are short and precious. See to it that the players are taught how to succeed, before they run out of patience due to frustration or boredom. My two cents.

There was a thread back when this forum was opened, specifically dealing with this. The devs say it´s a feature that´s just being implemented for the campaign, though they´re debating wether or not to turn it into an editor module. It won´t affect the AI in general, and is a tool exclusively to permit events in the campaign to play out as the mission designer (and thus story teller) intended them to. Stray AI breaking the story has always been a problem with open world games: which is the reason why, in every instance in other games, the AI has been tethered, cut back or otherwise inhibited, to prevent them from breaking the game. Off the bat I would point to Oblivion, and Stalker:Shadow of Chernobyl. Both were released with severely lobotomised AI after the devs found it too difficult to have the gameworld act as they intended it to.

I really hope the campaign will be good. Well written story, (Split into acts, writing wise, as part of the drama curve. You learn this in cinema and theater education... do you have a professional working on this, BI?) well executed and implemented in the mission, multiple prongs that can be explored without breaking the mission or the story (coherency and continuity. A char I shoot in mission one shouldn´t magically reappear in mission 5 just to make the story work out, for example.), and a sense of geneneral continuity. Latter in particular was lacking from Harvest Red and Arrowhead, where you couldn´t really tell how much time passed between missions, what had happened so far etc... Especially PMC (because it´s story has global implications) has gotten me hot on this... I really want to know which ending of PMC, for example, is canonical, and how it leads into Arma 3. Why is the war happening, how long has it been going on, who is involved and why, etc. Also, obviously which ending of Harvest Red and Arrowhead is canonical, and how those influenced the story up to Operation Magnitude. Big demands I have here, BI, I apologize for this... but when you ignite a hype, over my favourite games series no less, I get accordingly hyped up. Cheers Insta