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vegeta897

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Posts posted by vegeta897

  2. Posted

    If you start charging people for that extra content then you lose something that puts Arma one step above other games.

    No, if you start charging for all content then you lose that.

    Your logic is starting to sound like the people that complain about Altis Life "ruining" arma, because there are so many of those servers. When in fact, there are just as many serious milsim servers as before, but it only seems like Altis Life has taken over because there are so many of them that it makes up a high percentage. Their existence alongside the milsim servers doesn't negate them. It's just added alongside. Why wouldn't paid mods work the same way?

  3. Posted

    You wave the potential of Dollar/Pound/Euro/Yen in someone's face and you'll find scarce few people who wouldn't jump at the chance of getting some of that action. Granted, not everyone will charge for their mods.

    However, given the opportunity, I fear many will.

    I'm sorry but I don't see why I should be concerned about people who are going to jump ship from free modding just because monetization is now possible. That is a problem with them, not the monetization.

    I get contacted plenty of time by people who can't figure out on their own how to make something work properly.

    Right now, i'm not better nor worse off by sharing what i know with them.

    If i was to monetize my content, i simply would choose not to share what i know with others, because that might damage me eventually.

    If you're a person who currently makes mods and helps people out, why are you going to start charging for your stuff? Just because you can? If your only reason for helping people is that they aren't a financial competitor, I think that's pretty shallow, and I don't view it as a great loss for the community. There will still be people who make mods for free and willing to help others. Again, you seem to be blaming monetization yet you're the one who must make the choice to monetize in order for this to be a problem.

  4. Posted

    If this ever happens, it's in your own interest to keep valuable know-how for yourself instead of sharing with the rest of the community. Is it not?

    The argument I made in my last post applies to this as well. This person who is keeping the know-how to themselves: would they have been a free modder who was sharing the know-how if monetization was not a thing? What would make them suddenly change just because they have the option to monetize?

    Again repeating my argument: The more reasonable assumption would be that the only people who are keeping their trade secrets in paid mods are ones who wouldn't have been giving them out for free already if monetization didn't exist. Therefore, nothing is actually lost here. They're just added to the people who were already doing what they're doing for free.

  5. Posted

    Its not a stretch to envision content-creators from giving up on projects if they don't sell a certain number, or achieve possible sales-goals set by BI/Steam

    But how is this worse than the current state of affairs? You are making the assumption that these hypothetical content creators you speak of would be working on their projects for free if they couldn't monetize. That's not very likely, if they'd stop working on a project due to lack of sales.

    That's really the flaw I see in this talk of modding dying out because of monetization. It makes a giant assumption that people who are already doing stuff for free are going to suddenly require money to keep doing it, only because they now have the option. I think a far more reasonable prediction is that the modders who monetize are ones who wouldn't have been able to justify creating something for free, and now have an incentive to. In other words, we end up with more mods than we did before. Of course there will be some small overlap, where some people suddenly decide the work they've been doing for free needs some compensation, but as I said in my earlier post, are these the kind of people we should be focusing on? Are they important to this modding community? Really? Aren't the most important people the ones who make the choice to keep providing their service for free, despite the ability to monetize?

  6. Posted

    Agreed. Its not like BI are forcing modders to require payment for their work (unless Steam Workshop submissions will require a price tag, though that is merely supposition).

    If anything it will help indicate who mods for a hobby/the "true" addon-makers, and who does it for the attention and (financial) rewards.

    I just came back here to say something along those lines.

    If there are any existing modders who suddenly decide the work they've been doing for free should be paid for, just because they now can do that, what does that tell you about them? Are they the kind of modder we should be concerned about here? I'd wish them luck in their venture and might even buy their mod if I think it's worth it, but losing these people from the ranks of free modders is no great loss in my eyes.

    If there are any free modders that will quit on some kind of principle against the existence of paid mods, I think that's quite childish. If you believe firmly in free modding, standing by that principle means continuing to do it, not running away from it by just giving up.

  8. Posted · Edited by vegeta897

    Thanks everyone, I'm glad to see my work has benefited others.

    I just made a small update to fix polls in threads. If you're using StyleBot, I think it should automatically update you. For Stylish, you will need to go to the theme page and click the update button.

    Edit: And updated again (4/16) to make the poll bars a little darker to not be distracting.

    Edit: And another update (4/16) replacing the thread icons with darker versions.

  9. Posted

    That's not an explanation, that's a victory lap and self-pat on the back...

    Might not explain anything to you and me, but I've had to say the things this blog covers many, many times (even in this thread) to people who don't understand the ideas behind the DLC. It's nice to have a link now that I can refer people to.

    Also, I wasn't totally certain if the strategy was working for them financially, or if they were going to buckle to the negative feedback received. This confirms that it is working for them and they're not going to change it (not radically anyway).

  10. Posted · Edited by vegeta897

    Welp, I don't see why it should take over 2 weeks just to get a simple response on whether it's coming back or not, so I went and made my own theme.

    StyleBot (Chrome): http://stylebot.me/styles/9606

    Stylish (Chrome/FF): https://userstyles.org/styles/112710/bi-forums-dark-theme

    To use it, install the Stylebot extension for Chrome (or Stylish for Firefox). Or if you already have your own CSS plugin, just go to that page and copy the CSS.

    This theme just covers the basics: viewing forums, threads, and posts. If there's anything else on the forum you'd like to see darkened, or if there's something I missed, or if you disagree with one of my color choices, just let me know and I'll try to take care of it or make a special version for you.

    Note, you should have the "Bohemia Interactive" theme selected in the bottom left of the page. Other themes may work but are untested.

    Previews: http://i.imgur.com/R0X8HRJ.png (156 kB)

  11. Posted

    reality check: BIS is an indie developer. as for Arma 3's full price: I bought Arma 3 as a modding platform, not a game. that's personal, of course. anyway, the price I paid for 3 years of continuous development by the game's community was, of course, worth it. their DLCs are not. I can't believe I have to repeat the same thing in every post, and yet people still try to decompose it into something I didn't say

    They're an indie developer creating a massive game that is worthy of its price tag. Just because there are indie developers making smaller games with lower prices doesn't mean all indie developers should charge a smaller amount no matter how big their game is. All "indie" means for BI is that they don't have a publisher influencing or controlling their decisions.

  12. Posted

    $15 could buy me a whole new game (or 3 other games, or 5 other games, or a crapton of games if we count Humble Bundle). compare that to a bunch of weapons I don't need (I never play the role of marksman/machine gunner), and it should become obvious, that from my perspective this DLC - as a product - is completely worthless. that's been my argument all along.

    Your price argument doesn't get you anywhere. Arma 3 sells for $60 full price. According to your logic, you could get 4 whole new games, or 12 other games, or 20 other games, or a huuuuge crapton of games if we count the humble bundle! What exactly does that prove or do to support the point you're making?

    It's totally fair that you don't consider the weapons needed or worth the price. I don't consider them worth the price either. I think it's really unfortunate that you're only capable of viewing the DLC as a product instead of what it very much really is in BI's view. I take it you didn't believe what I said about how BI is using this DLC in their business model.

    was making the DLC possible a lot of work (considering all the new features)? yes. does it justify the price tag? no.

    I'm not sure how you're in a position to say this. Didn't you just get done saying how essential it was that BI add bipods to their game? This price tag is what made their choice to add that a financially justifiable one. The less they sell it for the less they can pay their employees, thus the less they can add to the game. It's pretty easy for you to call the price unjustified on one hand and then enjoy the free features made possible by that price tag on the other.

    games are becoming cheaper and cheaper by the minute. it's where today's market is going. BIS is operating with last decade's prices and business practices. they need to reevaluate their approach. right now they seem to be mimicking Electronic Arts in attempting to sell every small thing they can add to the game. only with Arma 3 BIS is competing against their own community.

    This is a paragraph full of nonsense.

    1. Games are not getting cheaper. Major titles still sell for $60 (they used to go for $50). You're confusing the fact that there are a lot more cheaper games out there, and that's for several reasons: Indie development is much more viable today and small teams can make small games. Gaming is also reaching a much wider audience, and those less serious about gaming create a demand for simpler games that don't require plunking down that much money.

    2. BI's business practices are the exact opposite of last decade. Their DLC model has never been attempted by anyone that I've seen or heard of, and they were one of the first early access games on Steam. They are very much on the cutting edge in terms of the games market.

    3. How on earth are they attempting to sell every small thing? They aren't selling features. They aren't selling individual weapons or vehicles. They're just selling themed content packs alongside features relevant to that content. Content is a good thing to sell over features because content is modular/optional in a sandbox, while features affect the entire game.

    4. BI is doing anything but competing against their own community. Their DLC strategy requires a good relationship with their community, otherwise nobody would feel inclined to give them money on the premise that it will be used to improve the game. A brand new developer would not be able to pull off this DLC strategy because nobody would really know what their money is going towards and there is no trust.. BI has proven themselves worthy developers that will support their games if they have the budget.

    BIS should've bundled all of the new platform upgrades, made a new single player campaign around them, added new assets and sold all that as one expansion pack (pretty much how they did with Operation Arrowhead). that would've gotten me excited. I'd pay anything up to $40 for that kind of deal. instead they are feeding it to us piece meal at 15 bucks a pop, by the time the new terrain is ready, a lot of you will have spent another Arma 3 copy's worth on all of it.

    If you seriously want to put platform upgrades behind a paywall, I don't know what to say. Operation Arrowhead's standalone expansion model was a terrible idea because it ended up requiring everybody to purchase it, and then BI had to maintain 2 separate games that were almost the same game. Explaining this to friends when trying to get them into the game was a nightmare. And then we couldn't even play all of the missions we wanted because it would have required them spending even more money on Arma 2. It was ridiculous. And by the way, OA was full price ($50) when it went on sale. If you want to talk about people spending another Arma 3 copy's worth, you'd be doing that yourself if they pulled another OA.

    Their upcoming expansion will have a lot more content than one of these DLCs, and hopefully a pricetag you consider fair (though there will be free engine updates coming alongside it as always).

  14. Posted

    yes, because: bipods were a highly requested feature from day 1 of Arma 3's release. and stuff like BF3 was being brought up as an example ("even BF3 has bipods, and a military simulator doesn't!").

    as for mod support, I only brought it up now because I didn't fully understand what you meant by "if it wasn't for DLC the bipod feature wouldn't even exist".

    anyway, it's obvious you and I look at these things differently. I want BIS to release DLCs that make me go "wow, I really want to buy it not because I want to support the developers, but because it's a good product". so far, their DLCs have been very strangely marketed and implemented

    Bipods were a highly requested feature from the beginning of the series. Arma 3 still sold very well without them (without even a hint that they would come later, either) and the series would not have died or meet some other unfortunate fate if they hadn't been implemented. Mostly because of mod capabilities, but also because a game like Arma simply doesn't rise and fall from having or not having feature X or Y.

    I would buy DLC that made me say that, too. But I also like this DLC model, because it shows that BI understands its fanbase. Official content is nice, but if I had a choice between content-only DLC that was worth its price tag or content-light DLC that included engine upgrades, I'm going to pick the latter every time. Official content was never something I found lacking (this may be where we disagree) but upgrading the platform is beneficial to absolutely everyone no matter how they play the game, and it can breathe new life into old content.

  15. Posted · Edited by vegeta897

    that's not what my argument is, though. I don't care about the price. I'm saying it makes no sense to buy the DLC for what it gives (7 guns). I don't need those poorly made guns, I have a ton of those for free from people like Toadie, EricJ, Robert Hammer etc.

    I don't think anyone would consider the content of the Marksmen DLC alone to be truly worth the asking price. The people who bought it either 1) understand what BI is going for with their DLC model and want to support it, 2) felt like splurging and liked one or more of the guns, or 3) just wanted to give BIS more money after getting more than their money's worth out of the base game.

    true, if NOBODY paid for Arma 3, we wouldn't get them, but people did, I did. so they used those resources to introduce new features. how is not buying the new DLC make those features less likely to exist? people bought Arma 3 for completely different reasons.

    or maybe you're saying BIS made the decision to introduce these features based on marketing research of how good the future DLC would've sold? that's going so far into the realm of "what could've been if they would", that I don't see the point of going there.

    No speculation necessary, friend. This is what BI have said themselves. Just because they had money from Arma 3's sales to continue updating it does not mean they would have justified the amount of extended post-release support we're seeing now if they had decided not to sell any DLC or the upcoming expansion. The sale of these DLCs are what make their companion-features and other platform upgrades financially viable, this is not a matter of opinion or speculation. BI could certainly expect a reasonable amount of DLC sales to make up for the development costs. Just because the sales are made after the development happens doesn't mean the development could happen without the sales. Sure, it could happen the first time, but upon reviewing their sales figures they would be forced to either change their model or swallow the loss and stop future development. They aren't going to keep pouring money into a money-loser. Apparently the Heli DLC proved successful for them financially because things are continuing as planned.

    well, of all my friends who own Arma 3 (a dozen or so people), nobody plays it without mods. weapon resting is the first thing that gets modded in because it's such a game changer. so, yes, if there was no way to modify Arma, it would die.

    Way to completely forget/change what you said. You said BI had to implement bipods. You mentioned BF3's bipods as a reason that BI couldn't postpone adding bipods any longer. You didn't say anything about mod support. The game has always had mod support, and of course it would die without it. You never said anything about that and neither did I.

  16. Posted

    Can we not turn this thread into yet another beating of the same dead horse? The low-poly strategy is not coming back. It did not work. In fact, it failed spectacularly. The majority of people either didn't care about the quality or weren't even aware of the fact that it was DLC content they were using. That is a complete failure for a DLC strategy.

    I'll tell you what is less immersive than a notification to buy something you don't own: not being able to play at all. That is the only alternative. If they make using premium content tolerable then the purpose of the DLC is defeated and we are right back to Arma 2's problem. I'm sure you wouldn't mind it, but you would mind if BI couldn't justify continuing to support this game because nobody is buying the DLC. You could say goodbye to bipods and every other free feature we've received, whose development was funded by DLC sales.

    But I can tell you're adverse to the concept of paying developers for their hard work anyway, with this line: "You didn't pay extra for the full game you already purchased!'"

    You didn't purchase anything other than what was in the game on release. Buying content that BI has created as a supplement to the game is not paying extra for the game you already purchased. It's buying more content, and making it possible for BI to continue adding free enhancements alongside.

  17. Posted · Edited by vegeta897

    It does though. What i mean is that DayZ brought the massive player base to what is now, if i had to guess, 50% or more, of Arma 3 players, that carried over from Arma 2, when the DayZ mod was actually still very popular. You have no idea how many people bought Arma 2 Combined Operations and other DLC's, just because of DayZ the Mod.

    I think you're either not reading my posts or misreading them completely.

    I said nothing about how many players DayZ brought to the Arma series. It did bring a lot, and I never said it didn't. I don't understand why you assume I have no idea. I didn't bring it up because it has no bearing on the points I was making. The series didn't hinge upon the existence of bipods either before or after DayZ. It's totally irrelevant to my point.

    But saying Bipods not being in the game would cause Arma's followers to leave, is not true.

    I didn't say it was true. That's exactly what I was saying was incorrect about Sorophx's post! You are literally repeating what I said right back to me. The very first thing I said about that to him was "That is not true and you know it." Are you confusing me with him or what?

    You're one of the smartest posters I see around here, so I'm assuming you got confused somehow.

  18. Posted

    You know the only reason Arma had a flush of players is due to the DayZ Mod right? Millions of people didn't just find Arma and share it with their friends. Without DayZ, we would still have a niche product, and less 12 year olds that role play pedophiles, in a game more that allows you to pick Apples for a living, while trying to avoid corrupt law enforcement.

    I don't see what that has to do with my point. Sorophx said BI had to add bipods soon. Like the series would come crashing down because of one or two features that people had already been asking for since the series began. That is simply ridiculous. The success of Arma will never hinge on the lack of a couple features, unless they start taking existing features out of the game.

    What I would be cool with however, is BIS selling us single me weapons for a dollar each or something like that. Cheap price content adders or something.

    Eh, seems like things would just get too messy. It's better to reduce your variables here in terms of which packages players can and can't own. It's also a really bad user experience when they thought they purchased weapon X but it was actually weapon Y, and they find out they're restricted. The odds of this happening increases with the more individual packages you sell.

    I think that the system used with Arma 2, giving full expansions as paid DLC, is much better and can achieve better results, in matters of business and player base.

    Except BI flat out said that the Arma 2 system was not good for business. When most of your players don't even realize that they're using a lite version of a DLC asset, there's a serious problem. Not to mention it was more work maintaining 2 separate data sets than this method of simply unlocking content that everyone has.

    The problem with Arma 2 is that after Dayz Mod 99,9% of the players were playing that thing and obviously these players do not need and they will not buy expansions, unless its a sexy zombie or something close.

    But with Arma 3 the same problem remains, most of players are playing Life Mod and also now these players do not need and they are not going to buy these micro DLC with military stuff to play that thing.

    What point are you trying to make here?

    Also, when we have Mods like RHS that are giving millions of weapons for free, I doubt there is much interest on a sniper rifle paid DLC.

    I don't get how you go from praising Arma 2's DLC to this. Arma 2's DLC only added content, no features. Content that you could find in mods like RHS, as you said. So why would we want to go back to content-only DLCs? It sounds like you should be supporting BI fully here, since they're actually giving us what modders cannot give us, and for free even. You're also getting off the topic by talking about how much interest there is in a DLC based on its theme. Is there really any content they could deliver that is both in demand and not provided by modders?

    If anything, these micro DLC only contribute to split even more the player base.

    Would have been much better to have a base price higher (with alpha for instance) giving a full game, then providing paid DLC with full expansions.

    I need you to explain this part. Are you saying include the DLC we already have in the game while increasing the price, and then just releasing any future content in larger expansions instead of DLC?

  19. Posted · Edited by vegeta897

    from a business perspective that's a ridiculous notion, and BIS is a business.

    And how is it ridiculous? The replies in this thread alone are proof that it isn't so ridiculous. If you really think every person who bought one or more of the DLCs thought the price was fair for the premium content alone, you're the one being ridiculous. The people who don't view buying the DLC as supporting BIS are the ones that complain about the price. Everyone else apparently deems it a worthy purchase, either for the hours they've got out of the game, or because they want BIS to continue to improve the game, or both.

    but the argument is, everyone got these features anyway, piggybacking off people that felt like giving BIS money. there's a difference between paying for content, that is behind a pay wall, and paying for free content. saying that free features are "worth every penny" just proves the OP's point

    You say "everyone got these features anyway" but these features wouldn't exist if nobody paid. That's the flaw in your logic. Just because the features would still exist if you as a single person decide not to pay doesn't mean they'd still exist if everyone decided not to pay. So yes, everyone who has purchased the DLC is what makes the DLC possible, therefore one could say it is worth every penny.

    realistically, BIS couldn't have postponed implementing these features for much longer, because even arcade games like Battlefield 3 had already had them.

    That is not true and you know it. Are you seriously saying the series would have died if bipods weren't implemented? I've heard people say things like this since the Arma 2 days, but the popularity of the series has only grown since then. The Arma series is never going to die from a lack of implementing a few extra features, especially when modders can implement satisfactory solutions.

    I really don't know how you could say BIS dropped the ball on anything without knowing what their sales figures are.

  20. Posted

    I always thought smoke did obscure AI view, but I just did a simple test in the editor and it appears to have no effect at all.

    I remember it working in Arma 2, but I believe I was using ACE2.

    Edit: I couldn't recreate the behavior shown above at all, I think there's a good chance some patch since then broke this.

  21. Posted

    I'm going to copy paste a post I just made on reddit in a thread on this same topic.

    I view the DLC how BI views it: a sustainable business model.

    The game can't continue to grow without new income. No matter how they decide to charge for it, all the work still cost them money to do and has to be paid for. Some people say silly things like "With all the money they made from DayZ, they could afford..." No. That's a great way to completely throw away an opportunity to grow as a studio and be right back at square one. They can only take advantage of their sales (as they have) by continuing to be smart about their business.

    So there's a decision a player must make. It's not "Is X weapons worth Y dollars?", because in most cases the answer is no. It's "Do I want to support BI?" I view the premium content itself as simply an incentive. You get some content immediately, but you also help the game long-term by funding its continued development, both free and premium. There are some uncomfortable with the concept that some of the money they are paying is used to fund the development of what everyone is getting for free. What they don't realize is that this is true of almost everything you've ever purchased. Even if BI never added any free features to the game and only sold restrictive DLC in a classic model that had enough pure content to justify the price, you're still paying for the employees that work on maintenance patches (bug fixes and optimizations), and for any other expenses BI carries, like say web hosting costs. You're even paying Valve if you bought on Steam! You do not decide where your money goes when you give it to a business. It's BI's job to demonstrate that it's going to a good place (which they prove with all the free updates). BI has apparently decided that there are enough people who are willing to support them this way that this will be a sustainable business model for them. As far as I know, they haven't said anything about how right they were so far, but I'm willing to bet they were.

    This business model might not work for every game developer, but BI is a little special. The game's development has been very transparent, starting with the alpha release and continuing over a year since full release, we get daily dev branch change logs, an entire forum section for feedback on it (with developer participation), a bug tracker, and several posts a month on the official Arma 3 blog. This all serves to involve the community in the game's development in some fashion, which I believe makes it more likely that a player will understand the value of supporting a developer by buying something that is worth what it represents rather than only what content gets unlocked.

    I hope to see this trend catch on in gaming. The idea of supporting a studio rather than just purchasing a product.

  24. Posted

    You're not stupid, I get your very valid point which is why I in the video I say you can not use inverse square law in it's raw form. The idea is good, it's good to have rules of volume fall off. It's just the question of defining min & max values and interpolating inbetween them. But that's up to BIS to decide.

    Thank you for the explanation!

  25. Posted

    Somebody created a ticket asking to use the inverse square law for arma3's volume falloffs to make it more realistic.

    Bad idea. Realism often does not work in a video game. Why not? Watch this video:

    I might be stupid, but shouldn't you be rescaling the values he provided in the ticket to the actual dynamic range possible on a computer? Instead of 6DB per distance doubled, how about 0.25DB, or some smaller value? It's 6 in real life because the dynamic range in real life is much higher. It would only make sense to scale this down for used in the game.

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