Fenrisulven

Brilliant mission thomsonb! I like the instant "random" battlefield concept. It works really well on both small and big maps and the AI is fighting you all the way to the objective. :pc: Do new units spawn close to you along the way or is the number of units fixed?

EDIT - like it says, it's my FIRST impression and it's not very good, but I'm still evaluating IF and I do see some potential. Just in case you are reading this and still considering IF, then take what I say here with a pinch of salt. Having a great day and don't want to ruin your good mood? Then look away. Unfortunately I don't have much positive feedback on IF. I just learned about it so I can't really say I had high hopes for IF. However I paid for it so I feel obliged to say something. Being a veteran BIS fan I'm used to bugs and problems that needs to be ironed out over time. BIS however always delivers good design and the bugs are often engine related and not because of sloppiness. Clearly AWAR have skipped a lot of tweaking and bug testing. I found bugs after a few minutes. For example if you get hit while in a tank, the sound completely disappears ? It doesn't come back even if you switch units or respawn. This bug alone renders tank battles obsolete, or at least for me. Perhaps it works for some. Then we have the classic AI path finding problems (again) and vehicles tend to get stuck in buildings and objects. The editor is working just fine, but there are no templates for quickly setting up MP missions, for example WF, CTI or even CTF, TDM. You have to do everything the hard way, including scripting. In most coop missions done by AWAR you respawn as a bird in MP :crazy_o: Seriously? Finally what's up with the Blitzkrieg mode? It's the worst yet! AI is severely broken on medium and large sized maps and simply mass group on the first capture point even after it's been captured. The rest of the capture points are left undefended and uncontested. That's about it. There is nothing else to test except the campaign and I already lost interest. It's clear that AWAR was hoping that the community would fix their game. A challenge some of you may enjoy (however unlikely with A3 around the corner) but good luck with that. In this state IF should have been released as a MOD and not a fully-fledged game.

Yeah I noticed. I'm also interested in the "procedural template gameplay modes". Anyone know what that is about?

The day before 1.60

For once I noticed quicker reaction. I was testing a DAP conquest mission and carelessly drove into a group of AI in a city (Taki) and they immediately scattered behind cover. I jumped out of the car, my AI gunner opened up but within seconds we came under heavy fire and I didn't even see where they fired from. I don't recall the AI ever firing this much before. Suppressive fire? Normally I have time to escape and pick off the AI, but not this time.

Can't find any info on possible warfare support? Anyone know if we can use this faction with the wf- module?

Marvelous patch. Much better AI ! and I get performance boosts everywhere. Trees no longer bog down my system and radio chatter seem more fluid? Textures load faster or cache better. Also the new FXAA with sharpen filter is genius! It makes everything look super crisp without sacrificing fps. Nice work with this one! A2OA feels fresh and polished, almost like a new game.

Well I don't regret buying it anymore. I kind of regret writing this first look however. Turns out I enjoy IF and play it almost as much as A2, mostly making my own battles in the editor and tweaking them. Tank physics is way better then A2 and I love the new and improved vehicle damage. Low tec tank battles are seriously enjoyable because of it. I still got some AI issues but I don't consider it game braking anymore. Now if we only had some WF missions on those big beautiful maps :)

Sounds interesting. Do vehicles also respawn and do AI use air? Does it require dedi?

How is it that this subject is the most discussed? Personally I don't care if we see female soldiers or not but as someone already mentioned. You shoot at targets and eliminating the enemy is equally important regardless of gender of the target.

Arma III is rated 2nd after Diablo III as the top 10 hottest and most newsworthy games on the Swedish site "Fragzone" fz.se

Excellent game but I agree with most here. IF desperately needs a Warfare Module or similar for better SP and coop playability on larger maps. That's it. Did I mention it needs warfare?

Impressive mission SaOk. I didn't think it was dynamic or had random generated elements at first. From reading this, it seems that this is the case after all. One question though. Is it possible to recruit reinforcements later in the mission or are you stuck with the men you start out with? Also what type of vehicles can you get hold of. Considering it's a very big map it would be great not having to run everywhere once you loose your wheels.

You may be right. Perhaps it is more about the mission design than the AI code. In that case AWAR messed up and especially with Blitzkrieg. I still got some awkward AI behavior on simple test missions though. It's too bad I don't have the patience to make missions these days. DAP if you read this and have IF. We need some of your excellent Battlefield - Conquest missions. Those are still my favorites for a quick SP fix in OA :biggrin:

That is interesting actually. I sincerely hope I didn't jump the gun on this one, but considering A2 runs so well I don't think I did. Maybe I will stick around and see how IF develops, and do some more tests. I like some of the features in IF but that only makes it worse because without a proper way to play with all these new toys it just feels like a wasted opportunity to make something truly amazing with this engine.

A2OA runs like a dream on this rig. So you don't have any AI issues with IF? That is indeed very interesting, if true.

Not likely. It's a brand new i7 8 cores. I normally used a secondary comp as dedi when running warfare but my new rig can handle it single handed with 64 AI teams (A2). The tests I did in IF was small scale with 3 teams (20+ units) on each side.

I know ,) Normally I'm one of them but IF is just too bad. It dishonors the RV engine IMO. I would have been happier if the box didn't say "Powered by Arma2 technology". I did a few engagements in the editor with AI cranked up to max and the results are just laughable. Somehow AWAR managed to mess up micro AI and you have units standing in the open looking the wrong way while being shot at. You have units walking slowly and straight up when under fire. The "guarded by" trigger tend to stop working after a few minutes. AI teams standing around doing nothing while there is heavy fighting just a click away. I also tested the German campaign and found units under fire standing on the wrong side of cover, also doing nothing :crazy: Apparently AWAR don't know much about quality assurance. These issues should have been found during alpha testing. Think I am being unfair? Well had IF been released as a MOD for a lower price then I would have overlooked most of these issues. Now I really regret that I bought it.

What part of my post didn't you understand? :j: Sure it's negative but I believe I'm fully entitled to my opinion. To be fair, the units and maps are pretty good. Good models and textures, so thumbs up to the artists at AWAR. However it's a bit expensive for a few maps and nice models, but if BIS gets a piece of the action then by all means, buy it.

Again, there is no sticky first impression thread. Could be a good idea to make one but the thread posted by stephsen is not official and it's full of off-topic discussions. Better just leave forum policing to mods :rolleyes:

First impression by stephsen. Not some type of "official first impressions thread" so why post the link?

I just bought Metro2033 just to try it out and didn't have Steam installed on my new rig. Had to struggle with it for over 2 hours :annoy: installing Steam, updating it, getting Steam to install from DVD instead of downloading everything and finally I could not start the game until it was updated and the update kept failing with all kinds of errors, like "Steam servers are too busy. Try again at a later time". Offline mode not working etc. by the time I got it running it was too late to start playing. So yes I stand by my opinion to keep A3 Steam free! The A2 DRM worked perfectly. Either you could unlock the product online or keep the DVD in the drive. Easy as pie and you don't have to install anything else but the game AND you can start playing it immediately once it's installed. The way it's supposed to be IMO. ---------- Post added at 09:29 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:18 AM ---------- Don't get me wrong. Digital distribution is the future, no doubt, but online DRM is not. I don't get that concept, seriously. If someone downloads pirated software then they have already worked around the online verification process, and only those who paid for the product are stuck with it. So what is the point? Why make it more frustrating to be a honest customer? Whoever thought of it must be a complete moron.

I agree with lapa, n7snk and many others. I feared the worst when first learning about the new spec op approach for A2. However I don't really pay much attention to storytelling and campaigns, so in the end it didn't bother me. It will be the same for A3 and it's possible I won't even play one mission on the campaign actually :lookaround: I always dive into the editor the first thing I do, and then I'm stuck. I did enjoy it in Flashpoint though but that was one brilliant and well thought out campaign.

Wow.. why is this thread not locked? ArmA may be a game developed for entertainment purposes, but it shares the same platform and soul as VBS that is used by professionals and military personnel world wide. Therefore ArmA is enjoyed by "real men" with a passion for hard core realism ,) while CoD, BF and the likes are mainstream games developed for boys and by clueless studios *cough* Codemasters *cough* who mainly cares about profit. ---------- Post added at 01:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:57 PM ---------- .. and yes I'm aware that CoD is developed by Treyarch and BF by DiCE (whom I support, great studio) but I was using Codies as the example because they disgraced "Flashpoint".

IF is not a BIS game so I don't really know anything about it, but I love the concept of a WW2 theme using the RV- engine. Anyone with a copy who can confirm, or deny, if it's possible to set up a warfare type of mission using the editor?