KurtG85

I don't know the specifics of development time and cost but my instinct would be to call BUSINESS-minded BS on that if he was referring to guns; an opportunity to sell more guns later on in an update. So the devs model something like a thousand square miles of land, shrubbery, geological architecture etc. and yet the time it takes to model a small number of objects with very simple animations is what would break the bank and push the devs into losing touch with reality? Thats a hard one to buy.

Well I think quality modeling as many weapons as they can while not sacrificing more important areas of gameplay should be the goal. As I've mentioned every gun basically allows you to completely re-examine the gameplay. The guns are the most important toys of the sandbox so the more toys the better IMO.

No sarcasm intended. I know nothing about developing. About how long does it take to model a single weapon and its animations etc.? I would imagine the accuracy, bullet speed and dropp are fairly simple formulas to plug in compared to actually creating a graphic model. Please, enlighten me.

I agree it would be silly to see a bunch of antique weapons in serious missions where you are trying to keep a suspension of disbelief that you are an actual modern operator. Options for older weapons could certainly be overdone. However I personally find it a hell of a lot of fun to take the pre ww1 weapon we have in arma 2, the lee-enfield, on a quick play domination mission or something similarly light. Every gun offers a specific style of gameplay that you must learn in order to maximize your effectiveness. The more gun selection, the more opportunities for unique gameplay, unique tactics and replayability. The less advanced weapons often require alot more focus and skill to use effectively. Of course it would be a blast to have access to a large amount of classic weaponry and the opportunity to experience first hand how their characteristics stack up in combat within the most realistic sandbox shooter made. Obviously the focus should be more on more modern arms given the games time period but it would still be awesome to have the options. I can't imagine it would be that difficult or time consuming to model a large armory of weapons and simulate their accuracy/distance/stopping power traits.

The more the merrier. Turn it into a kind of gran turismo of guns; a massive selection all with authentic handling, recoil, accuracy, stopping power etc. This would really up the personalization factor in multiplayer coop. An operator with some futuristic weapon giving the right of way to a guy with a ppsh-41 to more effectively clear a room would be a real gun lover geek out moment. Most especially I'd like to see a tommy gun with 100 round mags, a mosin nagant sniper, and the m1903 springfield.

-Ability to slide into cover from a sprint (with the purpose of ducking behind low cover a half second sooner). -Ability to rifle-butt or pistol whip enemies when at close range. -Door charges or wall breaching charges which stun enemies inside for a short time after detonating + flashbangs -More varied animations for enemy bots like ducking out of fear from unexpected incoming fire, stumbling, tripping and falling, pointing, gesturing, panicking, impetuousness etc. -Modeling of suppression fire/fire superiority for both AI and player units. Maybe for player units this could be done with debris slightly obscuring vision or some kind adrenaline brightness/blur effect or something. -Ability to avoid explosion by stopping immediately when you hear the 'ping' of a landmine- a friendly must disarm it for you. -Ability to keep fighting from the ground when wounded until you are hit critically. A 'revive'/bleed-out feature I think should be automatically included in co-op. Its so reinforcing to teamwork. -Maybe some kind of skill based mini game for medics to stop bleeding, remove shrapnel, apply epinephrene, etc. -Surrendering enemies and the ability to restrain them. (especially helpful for creating missions where you are capturing a high value individual) -Ability to throw mortars by hand to detonate them.

I wasn't thinking unlocks could be a reward gained from consistent teamplay but actually that might be the most effective way of keeping the younguns' CoD-buzzed half second attention spans focused on cooperating and actually learning to appreciate the game as it should be played rather than wandering off to see how many shots it takes to kill a goat. Of course most achievements are nothing but pats on the back from the game but the little psychological boost of encouragement they provide is the root of why they are so strangely addictive to so many players. Every little bit helps in coaxing players to learning to play the game as it is meant to be played. As it is most players lose interest in teamplay or in the game entirely because its such a change in pace from most games. The game needs to provide more smaller rewards, however silly (BRTRTRING! YOU DID IT! GREEN JADE MONKEY PIN ADDED TO YOUR COMBAT VEST!), to motivate players towards learning to appreciate the team oriented gameplay. Of course teamwork is pretty pointless and that aspect of the gameplay is removed anyway when you have a bunch of servers where you can respawn, parachute into the middle of the action, and go rambo over and over for 15 second jaunts. The games co-op mode is in need of tension, atmosphere, adrenaline and that needs to be supported and built around a 'we rely on each other to complete the mission' kind of gameplay where everyone is naturally on edge to spot threats and defend everyone else; at least as soon as the bullets start flying (I hope they have some powerful sound effects that scare the crud out of you). This atmosphere is the most important component of making infantry combat simulation *FUN* and the disorganized gameplay in arma 2 co-op totally flubs on this aspect.

The core gameplay wouldn't have to be affected at all by adding in a CoD or Battlefield upgrade/achievement system with 50,000 little medals getting thrown at you every half second. It would add alot of fun and flair to it actually. Think of all the gameplay challenges that are solely unique to arma... alot of those acheivements or medals or whatever would only act as icing on the cake to an already one of a kind gameplay experience (along with a fun little bag of 'been there, done that' bragging rights for those that give a damn; apparantly the vast majority of gamers). It would work especially well to include the RPG element where upon perfecting the weapons of a certain class you gain access to more complex weaponry (although I like armas player made system of commanders purchasing upgrades with cash). This would prevent alot of the nonsense you see of people wasting high value vehicles due to total lack of experience. I'm sure some people will spaz out over even the consideration of the implementaion of these kinds of features but the fact is all this would do is add a hell of a lot more organization, very badly needed flair/presentation, and a better sense of organization and progression to those who play the game. I'd love to see teamwork badges/awards be a major feature. For example the ability to give credit to those who take new players under their wing or display a general positive team oriented attitude like those guys who do nothing but offer to give your armored vehicle a lift to the AO all day. Why not give props to encourage this behavior? Of course the real issue is creating a PvP, and co-op gameply system that actually highlights and encourages organization and balanced gameplay implementing all of the games features. Despite ArmA being my favorite game of all time the truth is its pathetically bad at providing the gameplay framework for steering players into really experiencing the range of features it has to offer. Again, even the co-op is pretty pathetic. Frankly theres not much presentation or creativity at all beyond the single player missions. I want to see dynamic randomly generated co-op, or pvp campaigns with missions which demand effective communication and teamwork among large groups of players while providing the tools to do so. For example a platoon communication system integrated into the game with heads up displays for platoon leaders to order their men around and provide formation cues, a chat system which only allows leaders to talk to higher command, going up to a small command group which monitors and coordinates the situation, allocates resources, etc. on the battlefield similar to the actual ARMA command organization. Dropping some players and a couple bmps on a square mile of map doesn't come close to doing the games potential justice IMO and just highlights how badly the gameplay needs some structure.

ArmA doesn't truly shine until it can integrate all of its aspects of realism and necessity for organization and communication into an accessible PvP mode. I've only ever seen one server that came close to doing this in arma2 with some user made map and custom gear purchasing system to keep things relatively balanced. It wasn't a laughably oversized play area like that common mode that uses the whole map. It had a series of zones within maybe 10 square miles of the map or so that both teams competed to capture which allowed you to spawn there, reminiscent of battlefield (which works great). Unfortunately I couldn't stay long because it had a ping limit and the server was overseas. The potential for the nuanced teamwork, tactics, and communication that would need to be practiced and developed when one group of intelligent humans competes against another in such a tactically complex game is mind boggling and if this mode were made easily accessible ArmA would instantly become a one of a kind experience. Some things keeping this from happening might be the difficult task of keeping things balanced and exploit-free in such a complex game. That really shouldn't be that hard though. The game would also become unbelievably unfriendly to new players. I also imagine the devs would face some major 'national security' flak given the hardcore personalities that would inevitably flock to such an intensely realistic 'training aid'. Honestly that one game where I experienced the adrenaline of a relatively balanced 50 vs 50 or so pvp session in a reasonably sized map with some appropriate tactical 'steering' of the combat into strategic areas (like in battlefield) opened my eyes to just how little of the games potential fun is on display in the co-op mindless AI zombie slaughters. I had put many many 100s of hours into the game before that and I lost most of my interest after seeing all the potential fun and tactics I was missing out on.

Im getting an error when I click on single player> campaigns: No entry 'Campaigns\Seal Team Six Gold v1.1\description.ext.Campaign'. Anyone have any idea how to fix this issue? Thanks.

If only this explained how to fix the problem! :eek::(

I have looked at a bunch of the files on my computer. Both for the full game as well as the demo and I do not see a file called 'ban.txt'. Can I get you to explain to me specifically where I can find it at? Thanks in advance. ---------- Post added at 11:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:50 PM ---------- Yea, there was ONE guy I banned and Im pretty sure this problem started right after doing that. Any idea how to remove this ban (please explain very specifically due to my computer/scripting 'illiteracy')? Thanks. :D

Mandrake, you mentioned deleting names from a banned list? How do you do this? Thanks for the replies. Re-iterating what another poster mentioned, it needs to be understood by BIS that in the two days I had my mission running I sold at least 6 copies of the game! People were grabbing family members and friends and showing them how cool the game actually is (which is in no way conveyed through the very lame missions which come with the demo). BIS should really take notice of what a poor business model they have in place when they choose to make the most vital aspect of the sale of their product: the preview of their product, so glitchy and just downright bad compared to the actual product. Not even a third party volunteer can sell your product because its so unpolished! Seriously, get to work guys! This goes for the fans of this product too. Help motivate whoever the slacker is at Bohemia who is in charge of product sales who flunked their business class! More revenue means a dramatically better product in the future! Well... at least in this case it should. Thanks, love ya BIS!

I have recently found that the message that people are receiving upon entering my game (who are then immediately kicked) is:"you have been banned". When I make a password room the user sees "connection failed" after a long "connecting" pause.

I have the demo of OA as well as the full game but lately I have been making maps on the demo to get people interested in the game because the ones it includes are so un-creative. For a few days I had people joining my servers regularly with no problem other than moderately frequent but not unbearable disconnects. However now when I try and host people are immediately kicked. I get the message "So-and-so connected" followed immediately by "so-and-so" disconnected". Why is this and is there something that can be done to fix it? Not to brag but nearly every person who played in my rooms with my custom missions told me how I had the best missions and many people told me outright that they didn't realize how much fun the game could be till they played my missions and that they were now planning on buying the game. My intent is to boost the games community (and as would follow; its profitability) so while this annoys me in a personal sense it also is disappointing that I can't help others see how much fun the game can be when playing an interesting mission.