Vladplaya

All are pretty legit points OP. Its funny that I was just complaining to friend of mine about how unintuitive controls are while playing Alpha. I know there are so many actions that you can do in the game, but come on, there is somewhat generic standard for FPS game controls, they could at least TRY to somewhat stick to it past WASD. Distinguishing enemies from friendlies is probably fine as it is, and I tell you that it doesn't get much better in real life when talking about trained soldiers. I have been in service for 6 years and with all the missions and training I have done I can tell you that sometime that's just what it is, its hard to tell if you are looking at friendly or enemy, if they are concealed or they are far away etc, especially when soldier's camos are very similar to each other. Heck I could hardly tell difference between British, German and Swedish soldiers when I see them, and I am standing next to them. If we would be in combat and all three of them would be mixed up, it would very hard to make quick decision on whether you are looking at enemy or ally. So I can't really complain there, except when you have lower graphics settings and textures on soldiers become blurry, then it becomes a problem, because there are even less detail that you can quickly look for recognition. Maybe if they would add friendly highlight, after you looked at person for few seconds, that would work, but I don't know about that one. Highlighting spotted enemies is little bit touchy subject, but then I certainly agree that there have to be little compensation considering that THIS IS a video game, so if I play on lower settings, I am not going to see things as good as player who is playing on higher settings, so I am at huge disadvantage with no compensation. Further more I find it very hilarious that I can jump in helicopter, fly around while my character auto spots bunch of enemy soldier that I, as player, can't even see, and then have buddy of mine sit with mortar somewhere far away and bomb the heck out of red dots on his map... This is as Battlefield 3 as it gets, just ridiculous. Anyways I think quick highlights of enemies for just a second or two as they get spotted would be great, at least you would have an idea of what your teammates are talking about, and not just very generic direction that also might change as enemies quickly move around.

Good discussion and some good points here. I just wanna kinda summarize biggest points that repels most people from playing PvP: 1) Accessibility, and lack of decent/engaging tutorials - it takes sometime to get acclimated to the game and learn to be effective, but most people don't want to do boring tutorials, so they jump in into the multiplayer without knowing how to do anything and just irate rest of the players. I don't think the game should be easier to more accessible, but I think tutorials should be more exciting and engaging, with cut scenes, voice acting, humor or what not, so people feel like they are playing and enjoying the game and not going through school online. 2) I always thought ArmA has un intuitive default control set up, and poor UI, and most people are rather quit the game, than try to fix those by spending bunch of time in options twiking stuff. I believe making at least Most common controls similar to the "standards" of the genre would help a lot. For example, Ctl to crouch, Space to get up, E to enter exit vehicles. Simple things that will make people feel like they know at least something. 3) No clear objectives in the huge game world. Its cool to have insane amount of landmass for your potential use, its not cool when really only 20% of less of it gets used to complete a mission or objective. ArmA needs set large maps (just like "normal" games), that players can learn and then get use to, with clear borders for the map and clear characteristics to differentiate those maps. With clear and game defined objectives, so no one can fk around with those and confuse people. Commanders and squad leaders can give side mission or objectives, but everyone should know simple goal of current game, like clear THAT village, or HOLD that factory, etc. Right now people jump in into the game, and then have 0 clue of wth is going on, because unless you are on teamspeak of the clan who owns the server, you are usually out of the loop. I think those three were the biggest barrier for me and my friends when attempting any PvPing efforts in ArmA. Those things need to be improved to attract people to the game, and show them that they can enjoy it. People are afraid that COD, BF crowed might start playing the game. Well its not a problem, let them at least try the game and perhaps convert to it by trail and error, better than nothing, better than people not even giving it a chance because they heard that its so out there in the nitch section.

Well that's understandable, but AI is pretty big part of the game, its important feature that perhaps deserves the time and work that has to be done in order to improve it. I can live with them not including 3D editor, because that doesn't effect gameplay directly. Better AI though, that's something that I would love to have in new game, and preferably out of the box. I guess what I am trying to say, is that perhaps its worth pushing the release just to get feature like that in the game. I can see how the game would be much more enjoyable with smarter opponents who can also behave properly indoors and underground.

What I don't understand is, if AI doesn't work properly, why don't they fix the AI? Create separate AI for underground behavior, or whatever they got to do. They are the developers, they have the source code that they created, and they know how to work with it, what's the problem exactly?

I honestly don't look forward for huge numbers per map, that would be great, but I really want servers to be stable. So if they can make solid and stable 64 players, that would be great, otherwise its hard to enjoy the game when there are 128 players teleporting and rubber-banding around the map.

Helicopter controls in ArmA2 are just too awkward imo. I can fly just fine, but I don't think that is even close to real life controls. As arcadish Battlefield chopper controls are, they got the basics down pretty well, you can be much more agile and precise, but it still takes a lot of practice to be superb at flying, which is nice.

From the game footage they showed so far, I can tell that lighting been improved dramatically compared to previous ArmA titles. I guess I have to play it to see how it stands against BF3, but still at least in Youtube videos the game looks great imo.

So you saying there will never be a situation where you can come up on a single soldier standing further than 20 feet away from another soldier, in the entire game? Or you can't kill three guards and come up behind last person left, who is probably gonna be hiding behind a cover at the point? And apparently there will be snipers overlooking Every city, every village, every enemy installation in the game too? Helmet and body armor? http://static2.videogamer.com/videogamer/media/images/pub/large/arma3.jpg Don't tell me that trained soldier wouldn't be able to stab a knife in the exposed half foot area of the neck? Yeah arma is about large scale, but in ArmA 3 we will have around 50 cities with all buildings that you can enter, which will make some encounters pretty up-close and personal. Even than I am not talking about running around slicing people with my knife, I am talking about rare occasions and chances when its better to use your knife than shoot a single guy when he happened to stand with his back turned to you. I am talking about the game btw, not how things work in real life.

I am all for stealth kills. If I come up on an enemy, who doesn't know I am behind his back, there should be no reasons as to why I shouldn't be able to take him out with single hit of a knife to the neck, or single hit with stock to the back of the head.