instagoat

Fantastic info. Thanks a lot, to both you and the BI team. Looking forward to the game more and more with every day.

I think reviewing the difficulty settings and their particular effects is a reasonable demand. As far as MP goes, though, I can´t say. I am not a multiplayer person, everything I say is with regard to the singleplayer aspect of the game. And I still think that these options don´t just belong to the lowest difficulty setting, but to every setting as an option. Like I said, the senses are woefully limited due to the platform used, for example unless you have a proper surround sound system, you can´t exactly tell where a shot came from. That´s what the indicators are for, to replace senses that are lost due to the limitations of the platform (PC). And I doubt that everyone has a complete surround sound system, multi-monitor setups and mega-resolution capable screens (and equipment.) that enable them to see, hear and feel their environment the same way they would in real life.

I would be interested in reading how you reason that depriving yourself of gameplay tools that are substituting for senses and perception you are lacking in the gameworld (as opposed to the real world) makes the game more realistic. I for one would claim that it does quite the opposite. As long as that point isn´t adressed, I maintain that your points are void. And I also don´t see how the suggestions of voting with your wallet (ie, not buying. If your crowd had any serious buying power, and thus business value to BIS, it would make a difference.) or setting up the game as you prefer it (which BI has always allowed in their games), and playing it with your friends as you desire it are invalid points. Instead you are proposing to DITCH these features in favour of your skewered perception of realistic gameplay, despite their obvious value to newcomers, and people who care about the realism where it counts, such as the combat and application of combat tools itself. Insofar, YOUR points are being unreasonable, so quit playing the victim here. I suggest trying to counter a point with a point of your own, instead of trying to invalidate what the "bis fanboys" saying with claims of victimization, and hollow arguments that do nothing to adress the point but to eliminate it alltogether. My two cents.

I facepalmed all the way trough this post. What is it with you rivet counters and your obsession for taking out anything -you- deem to be "unrealistic". You´re sitting in front of a computer screen, with stereo headphones. The screen is tiny, the screen resolution is abysmal, you most likely don´t have directional sound, and not as sensitive sound either as you´d have in real life. You have no sense of touch, no sense of smell, no general situational awareness outside of what you can see on your TINY screen. Bullet direction indicators, peripheral vision blobs and crosshairs are tools that ENABLE you to "sense" things you couldn´t sense without, because of the woefully limited perceptive range you get from your average PC. Why the hell did they add bullet direction indicators to VBS2, do you think? Because it replaces the precise sense of hearing and increased visual awareness that is NONEXISTENT IN A GAME. Really, every time you hardcore rivetcounters pop up, you grate my nerves to no end. It´s a game, ffs. Even the most realistic solutions in the commercial sim market have these features. But I guess instread of thinking about the lack of haptic access to the gameworld, it´s easier for you to just go "HURR ITS UNREALISTICCC TAKE IT OUT". Sorry about my tone here, but I really have strong opinions about this. And as the others said, if you don´t like it, turn it the fuck off. Easy. as. that. And stop cluttering the forums with your thoughtless nonsense. If you feel threatened by the developments, vote with your wallet. That´s all I have to say about that. Cheerio Insta

Those domes remind me of the last level of the original Rainbow Six game. Hopefully we´ll get combat inside of them (also with the new xaitment AI tech BI is integrating into VBS. It would be really great to have that kind of functionality in A3)

To be honest, I´d be disappointed if this were true. That´s a pretty cheap explanation, and a bit of a copout.

I would guess they´re self-colouring sunglasses, atop of being augmented reality displays/HUDs. They´ll probably be adjusted to look more transparent in time.

I have it turned off. I can´t stand the artifacts it causes in smoke, for example. And of course the performance loss it causes. The jagged edges, I barely notice anymore.

Will we get flying cars already? But no srsly, I´m looking forward to what kind of content we´ll get for the civilian faction this time. The most modern car we got with A2 was the golf. Maybe we´ll even get one or two really fancy cars this time. Bugatti Veyron, anyone? But while talking about cars, pls bring back the "point to steer" controls of CWA. Made driving cars so much easier.

This would be nice. However, I´d appreciate a more ambient main soundtrack this time. Most of the music in Arma 2 felt kind of out of place because it was rather cinematically written... good ambiences and soundscapes are lacking in the game. For good examples, check out the soundtracks of, for example, the Stalker games. Good ambiences are nonintrusive, and could almost regarded be as a musical environment. "Proper" music is often the opposite, and can break the immersion pretty badly, at least for me. What´d be cool too if we could get thematic references to previos arma games, as well as proper character themes. It´d be really rad.

Correct reloading animations and randomised weapon holding animations (so not every soldier holds his weapon the same way, especially now that we seem to get addons like foregrips and different scopes) would be rad. Though, they are not exactly high priority. I for one am more interested in the hard features. HC AI, improved AI pathfinding and coordination (Xiatment), physics implementation (because I´m one of the rare gamers who think that physics simulation in games is a pointless affair. So, right now and until I´ve seen otherwise, I think the whole physX thingy is a waste of time.), and of course campaign design and, most most MOST importantly, good tutorials! That, and maybe the multiplayer, good PVP and COOP content right from the start. That will prove to be important in the long run, for the average gamer crowd who won´t bother with the editor and community made content.

I love especially the xiatment thingy. The rest is quite awesome too, and AI having the abillity to really use buildings to their advantage is now within the feasible, I guess. I hope some of the advances made in VBS will also come over to Arma 3, where they make sense in a game.

Railgun tanks, yes. Hopefully modelled with realistic punch. I already love them, even though these are just as fictional as the MI-48 helo, it´s feasible technology, and war-driven development always has been faster paced than peacetime development anyway. These will probably be seen very rarely, and if you see them, you´ll probably want to either get rid of them quick, or stay out of their sight.

Wonnaful to see you back! I was just DLing all your old stuff for CWA, whatever you´ve got planned for the future will be a great addition to my box-o-toys. :>

Bought it on day one at a big electronics retail store here in germany. Installed it and beheld the dia-show :D Great game. Sadly, the release was kinda botched. Having seen IL2:ClOD, though, it´s not as bad in hindsight.

I think that they used the black eagle as base for their "T-95" is a hommage to a great CWA mod, DKM´s Black Eagle. DKM also made the Comanche that was featured in Eagle Wing. At least, that´s the way I like to think about it. :> And in the end, the name doesn´t matter, as long as it behaves like a tank with a railfun... gun... should behave. Ie, pack a punch like no one has seen before. And break down a lot.

Weapon wear and tear. Especially for equipment like Railguns. Railguns barely last two rounds in real life, much less a whole ammo load of your average MBT. Jams and failiures in rifles would be cool too, and if done right, could really enhance the game.

Word on that. What -would- be nice, though, would by dynamic weathering on Uniforms and Vehicles, though, sort of like the weathering in IL2ClOD. It´s done via a weathering texture layer that can be blended in by varying the opacity. That kind of thing´d be rad too. Though, this really is of tertiary concern. Realistic weathering on guns and kit won´t bail the game out if it´s another inaccessible, clumsy behemoth like Arma 2 was at release.

Caring about the Player. Hi, BI Forums First a little disclaimer: this is a fairly large post, and I am voicing a few points of criticism. These are the opinions of either me, or a very limited group of people, so they may or may not reflect the opinions of the gamer at large. Still, I hope that this is a constructive contribution, and not a complete waste of either your, the readers, or my time. So, here goes: I´ve had a chat with a couple of friends tonight, dissecting what they, as "normal" gamers (as opposed to milsimmers familiar with the Arma series) didn´t like about Arma, and what it would need to do to become a game they could enjoy. This is not about getting COD kiddies to play the game, this is about opening it up to another sophisticated, but not very well versed in military tactics, command, and depth audience: people who play games not just to pass time, but because they acknowledge them as an art form to be dissected and enjoyed in detail. One thing that consistently cropped up was the following argument: "Arma is a game purpose designed to not have a player interact with it." Summary of this argument is that the world in Arma is so open and densely populated with AI characters, and designed around these AI entities that trying to do your own thing as a player is more likely to break the mission, than achieving the mission goal. This is a point that worries me, mostly because I perceive this, as an avid fan of the series, as one of the major pluspoints of the game. The fact that you´re surrounded by dozens of AI, trying to achieve their own objectives alongside you, with you just being another cog in the machine, instead of the gun-toting super hero that saves the day, every day. Another consistent problem is the perceived buggyness of Arma. Only one of my friends bothered with the campaign of Arrowhead, (the others were put off by the complexity of the game, and its insistence on not bothering to explaining the details to them: the tutorials are good, but they only go into the bare bones of what you need to know to succeed on the battlefield.) and he was put off by constant glitchings out. In "Good Morning T-Stan" the commander sometimes refused to move, or the AI squadmates got themselves killed off in scores. In "Coltan Blues" the guy with the code de-spawned, didn´t have the code on himself, or entering the code didn´t work. Intercepting the bombers failed, despite consistently shooting them down every time. He stopped playing at that point. I on the other hand found shooting down the bombers to be stupendously difficult, never shooting any of them down once, and succeeding despite of that. He also played CWC and got kicked out of the army consistently, never knowing what he did wrong. My other friends have similar experiences with the series. What I´ve understood from them is the following... Arma tries its utmost to make the player not matter. AI achieves your mission goals for you, sometimes even punishes you for taking action. The complex nature of the missions means player action cannot be easily anticipated by the mission designer: this leads to situations where the player doesn´t understand the outcome of a mission, despite himself thinking that he did everything right/different enough to get another outcome. It is complex not just in its controls, but in the way you need to execute the missions. AI needs a lot of sheperding to be efficient, and the player is not taught at all how to effectively employ the AI teammmembers to greatest advantage. It took me TEN YEARS to learn how to use them, six of those years I played OFP/Arma DAILY, and I only learned trough trial and error because there were -no- tutorials on the advanced stuff in ANY of the games. Battlefield situations in Arma can become like those in real life: confusing, demanding and deadly: but contrary to real life combatants, the average gamer has zero experience in dealing with situations like that. There are no other games out there that teach the player how to approach Arma, and (understandeably) most of them have neither the time nor the patience to find out how to rule at this game by trial and error. It also is hard for them to discern what they are supposed to do within a mission. Even if they do master the controls, find out how to locate their squad leader and read the briefings, situations become often confusing enough that players become headless. Even with map markers and objectives on, Arma often sets up situations that put the player completely out of their depth. Mission 1 of arrowhead is a good example of this: instead of easing the player in, it immediately expects them to jump out of the helo, and function as a warrior. You are supposed to watch out for your squadmates, keep track of your leader, navigate to contact, dispatch of the enemies as they cross your path and then follow a set of waypoints. People shoot at you, friendlies and enemies are all over the place... there is a lot to keep track of, and my friends mostly made it trough the mission with lots of retries and the afforementioned trial and error. With the market you´re trying to tap into, BI (ie, a more casual gamer market), this won´t do. If the game is buggy, players will try it on the first day, get frustrated, and trade the game in the second day. If you don´t ease them in and -explain to them how to succeed- (best without being condescending), they will run out of patience, get frustrated and trade the game in. Then you need to provide a sensible difficulty curve, slowly introduce new gameplay elements, and give the players a consistent feel of achievement. This is where Arma shines! The odds are tremendous, and success is much sweeter in this game than is in most others. Build on this! The market has changed since OFP was released in 2001. Gamers aren´t the nerdy types they were back then, who were willing to put on the time and the effort to learn a game, even if it tried to do its best to break them. We were used to games being serious challenges. But in the meantime, games like Half Life, Halo and Far Cry among others have changed the scene: today, games are more about fancy graphics and bombastic effects and cinematics, rather than a sheer gaming challenge. There are still games that, in terms of gameplay, are excellence: Portal comes to mind. Most of these games shine trough innovative gameplay, and not by being exceptionally hard. Indeed, games either seem to be of a pick-up-and-play type, requiring little training and pracice to succeed in (apart from high-speed PVP scenarios, but even there, matchmaking has lowered the difficulty curve), or a challenge to the mind, not the hands. I don´t know how to adress the problem of the player not mattering in Arma games, since this has been one of the core things settings its gameplay apart. As for the easing in, though, progress has to be made, and can be made, I believe. An especially good example of how this can work is Valve´s system of "arenas". Look at HL2:Lost Coast, where they themselves explain how they show players new gameplay principles, and how to employ them in a safe setting, before putting them into combat. They also explain how they cue certain situations to the player, to prevent them from being unfairly ambushed. I´m not sure if this is possible in an open world setting like Arma (experience seems to indicate that it´s impossible, as stated by, for example, the devs of OFP:DR, who said that a big problem was players getting "shot and never knowing what they did wrong".) I apologize for the massive wall of text, but I stand by my criticism. I believe A3 is a big chance for the game, the community and the company, but if done wrongly it can blow everything out of the water. The old guard could end up alienated by the futuristic setting, the intermediates disappointed by the lack of depth, and the newbs getting rid of the game because of it´s complexity and difficult accessibillity. I´m obviously painting a pretty dark picture here, but you see what I´m getting at. I also hope that I do not come across as crass, or condescending towards the effort and skill of the developers: if this is the case, I apologize sincerely, it was not my intention. Hopefully this is taken as a constructive point, and that the discussion following will be polite and constructive too. Cheerio Insta

The PC gamer article hinted at even BI studio members not getting the game when they were faced with it for the first time. Arma is a pretty peculiar breed of game, and nothing will prepare you for it, is the message of that as far as I can see it. People who say it´s easy and that this is not an area BIS should pay attention to are not looking at it objectively. I just hope that we´ll also get external tutorials again for the more advanced stuff. Maybe some tactics videos explaining how to run a squad, sort of like the training videos in the old longbow and armored fist games?

They said so, however, no statement in what way. They also "changed" the animation system from A1 to A2 by adding more and more diverse animations, but leaving the basic system the same... the result is the jerky, clunky, cumbersome way of moving around we have right now. It´s comparatively easy to make new animations on an established system, but revamping the system is challenging I would imagine. I think BI are up to the task, though. To this one, and all the others. I am hoping for an overall much, much improved game. After reading the PC Gamer article, I´m even more hopeful about them thinking of the new players, and making entry easier for them. If half the studio found the game hard to get, how difficult would it have to be for the common gamer? Still looking forward to seeing more of the interesting stuff. Now that I´ve seen the railfun (no typo) tank, I´m more interested in the juicy bits. You know, like a new and better HC interface? :D

Railgun tanks? Those oughta be fun. Just hope BI gets them right in the effects departement. So that they sound realistic, and not like laz0rs from space. :I Instagoat demanding something to be realistic instead of gamey? The world must be ending! (But srsly. Sound effects and visual effects need a bit of beefing up. That´s one thing the Dragon Rising did well, if nothing else... well, visually, not in its audio dept.) Now, can we also get teasers for, say, the new interface? Or the new animations (or animation system. Are you doing something like an in-house euphoria, BI?) or demos of the AI doing stuff it couldn´t do before? That´d be rad.

Enable the AI to use backpacks. Right now they are doing nothing with them. For example if placing a javelin gunner and a javelin support gunner, the jav gunner will fire his missle and never get the one stored in the backpack of his teammate. No matter who leads the squad, which means all non-player led squads only have one shot like the AI in Arma 2. Or OFP, for that matter. So apart from enhancing the ammo load of Player controlled squads, we´re still stuck in 2001 in that departement. Or am I just tremendously unlucky never to have seen AI use backpacks? What´s more, if you load up a backpack with ammo, the AI will never take it from his own pack when he runs out of ammunition. What are the backpacks there for, if the AI can´t use them? AI is tremendously important, singleplayer stands or falls with them being able to operate. Right now, there are still holes, like massive friendly-fire uses in crowded terrain, not using backpacks, not retrieving lost guns (SAWs, AT weapons, Grenade launchers are all ignored by the AI when their bearers have been killed. AI should always attempt to retrieve hard-hitting equipment at almost any cost.) So, yeah. Basically either enable the AI to use the feature, or remove the feature. Because a half-working feature is likely not a very good feature, even if intent and idea are excellent. Cheers Instagoat

LIte versions have lo quality textures and sounds. This is how the full version Units of BAF look like: They´re the highest quality units BIS has produced so far, maybe save the new ones for Arma 3. The PMC ones are a disappointment, though, at least for me they were. And like Dice said, full DLCs also get missions, campaigns and maps, which lite versions don´t have.

Hello, BIS, I just had an Idea. (You don´t need to implement this as a mission, just make it possible from the features side) Wouldn´t it be cool if you could grab a parachute, have your friend fly you onto the roof of the TV tower in Seattle (whatever it´s named), and then film yourself jumping off from there with an A3 style parachute? HALO jumping is already possible, just make it easier to access. Then some modder only needs to integrate a module to do tricks (maybe by mouse drawing), and a scoreboard. Then we can have a BI-forums base jumping competition along with the helicopter aerobatics competition, the "build a stack-o-crates" (physX edition) competition and a race beer as slingload trough a storm in asia competition. Also, what´d be cool if you could have player handlers on the ground to do coop tower building with slingload. God, BI, I hate you. Stop making awesome games, it´s so distracting GOSH! :<<<< Back on topic