Chrissd21

Would you disagree that vanity/fun DLC like Karts should be kept as DLC? There's a split, but it's not a game ending split. It's just anyone up for Mario Kart needs to buy Karts sort of split which isn't terrible. It lets BIS release a small pack to increase their income without affecting the main game, which is just about perfect as far as DLC goes. For weapons and helicopters though, no way. That's expansion pack or lite model stuff. EDIT: And vanity stuff is a reasonable "buy 'cause I love BIS" purchase which may or may not be used later. Less tax problems than a donate button. :p

If you've fired an AK before, then yeah that's what you'll be hearing in real life. :P On topic, big game. Huge maps, lots of weapons, realistic physics, full on wildlife simulator, and multiplayer that doesn't degenerate into ye olde quickscoping snipers from opposite ends of the map ala CS Source/CoD. For what you get it's pretty good. Simply being open to mods these days is a big thing which in itself is worth the odd bug or a realism complaint. If the sounds a truly the most horrible thing you've ever heard and you know a better milsim than ArmA, please let me know. Otherwise make a thread asking for more sounds, and then pay for the privilege by buying the game and all expansion packs (Including PMC :P). And by "the game", I mean every ArmA released, unless it's Codemasters only content, you can skip that.

Well no, Steam is the industry leader for certain categories of games. If you like Paradox games then you're better off being on GamersGate. Steam has some, uh, issues.. Divine Wind was several months late to Steam, the current Victoria 2 DLC completely screws the game. Multiplayer for, what was it. EU III? Forget, but the Steam version is incompatible with any other. GamersGate is fine though, so that's the industry leader if you're a fan of certain strategy games. Hearts of Iron, Vicky, EU, etc. If you play ArmA then Sprocket would be the industry leader, or the DVD sales, so Amazon maybe. There's a few games where if you like mods you're better off not playing on Steam because it has absolutely horrible support. VAC was even banning everyone who used a certain HL2 mod a while back, the mod changed a texture so VAC decided that it of course must be a wall hack. Actually Steam rep said that VAC couldn't be told not to look for that, so it's still there. Running constantly in the background of your machine. False positives will get your entire account banned for life so stay away from mods. :P I have 171 games on Steam including store bought, Steam bought, which I think a few mods like , free games like America's Army and some demo's. But there's still well over 100 retail games in there so I'm not all that hateful towards Steam. I do think it's better than other forms of DRM out there (except when it includes all the regular DRM and the Steam application. Having to login to three different auth servers in order to play single player is a joke. But yea, I have a few games, I still buy games on there, and I could write you a well reasoned essay as to why ArmA should stay well away. Complete with inline citations. :P I'd much rather buy a disc version (collectors edition with shiny physical items that are completely useless? lol), or from a site like Sprocket or GoG.

It could be a community thing. For instance, I like music that most people would classify as "noise", the heathens. The Mars Volta for instance, a prog rock band that most people can't stand. Or Shining, a Norwegian "Black jazz" band. Something like John Zorn, fairly avant garde free jazz and entirely disconsonant. So when introducing people to this band, I start of small, say Miles Davis. Work up to Ella Fitzgerald, let people wrap their heads around be bop, the idea that the voice is an instrument and not merely a speaker. Then keep going up, Free The Robots, electronic jazzy hip hop. Eventually I get to Zorn's album Spy Vs Spy and from there anything is possible. So if you want to convert people to ArmA, do it the same way. First CoD for the "You are the war" idea, then Battlefield for the squads and open battlefields. After that would be Ghost Recon, a more hardcore FPS than Battlefield but still not at the ArmA level. Then and only then do you introduce them to ArmA. Make sure they go through the campaigns first, or give them a mod with more story in it and less of a sandbox. Slowly opening up the world instead of dumping it on them all at once. ArmA is the FPS equivalent of the spreadsheet games. Europa Universalis, where taxation isn't a slider with five values, it's twenty sliders with thirty values each and detailed discussions on inflation and various accountant talk. You don't dump that on someone unless you know they're the type of person who's going to like those games, you introduce it slowly. Changing the game to suit the people who need to be spoon fed into existence merely serves to alienate the people who make the game what it is in the first place, at which point we've got another CoD clone and half of us are demanding refunds. Bugs and such can be eliminated, animation work can be fixed, but I don't want another stabby-stabby-shotgun-one-man-hero game. I've got a few of those already and I don't play ArmA for that reason. tl;dr Wine tasting, you don't give someone a four hundred year old bottle and expect them to know the difference between that and the two dollar swill they picked up, you teach them to cultivate their taste and learn to appreciate the finer things in life. ArmA is the five hundred year old bottle which is only for the deserving. The masses can be taught to appreciate it or they can stick to their normal rubbish.

Netcode > destructive environments. Actually your list contradicts itself. You don't want an arcade type shooter, but you do want knives. You want better netcode, but you want mutable environments that you can change around as you see fit. Actually even better wounds would be detrimental to improved netcode. If you need to calculate the exact velocity of the bullet as it impacts and the exact area it hit, then the amount of calculations required has just gone up by a lot. You'd have to completely change the hp system around. Not a terribly bad thing, highly advanced games are the reason we upgrade our computers, but still detrimental to multiplayer. You seem to have missed the point of knives too. Knives are for when plan A (assault rifle), plan B (pistol), plan C (frag grenades), and plan D (run) have all went horribly wrong. If you're in a position to use a knife.. Well, shouldn't be in position to use a knife, ever. If you want silent, then a pistol with a silencer? Suppose you could hit them with the butt of your rifle.. If they added that along with a chance to damage your rifle and increase jamming then I'm all for it. :P The problem with wounds too is that you go from a game to a sim. At the moment it's a game, changing it to "You get shot, you're pretty much finished for the game", that's a sim. That's also insane. Carrying a pistol by pointing it upwards.. This is not 24, there is no need to do any of that. lol The only things on my wishlist would be netcode and ammunition. If they went through and put the ballistic effects of different ammunition into the game then you could mod in any weapon you wanted, although that would probably be detrimental to the netcode again. :S The problem with features and usability.. You gain one at the cost of another. Maybe for ArmA 10 :p

FX-05 Xiuhcoat lhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FX-05_Xiuhcoatl Mexican rifle, and army use only so unlikely it would get into the game since details of it aren't that easily available. But titanium under frame with polymers on top, apparently recoil delayed system allowing for three shots prior to recoil hitting, sources are scarce for that one. Programmable underslung grenade system, built for Mexico's fuel air grenade round, but being able to fire all standard NATO munitions. Firing 5.56x45mm NATO round, info mostly off the Wiki. So light, accurate, powerful with the potential for destruction. Everything you want in an assault rifle. :D Then there's the Félin system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Félin If they changed the game from basic FPS to something that was based on a real system, it would be very cool. Especially if they added one of those acoustic based location detectors for snipers. It's technology used now, so a few years time should be easy. I know, they're equipment and not weapons/vehicles, but they would be pretty sweet.