lukio

So first of all thanks for the bit by bit explanations, especially with the Seagull and the O'Clock thingie - I googled a lot and did not find anything informative on that! :-D So I guess its up to me to answer some questions :-D Yeah several reasons. #1 I play ESDF since DOOM - can't change the habit and if I try WASD my hand automatically moves over to the F key (the one with the bump). #2 Because many games use several keys (not as many as ARMA but still a few) I actually can use more keys to the left #3 its easier on the wrist / with WASD I often get repetitive strain injury. Well the remapping thing is something that I've gotten used to for so many games, for the default controls that you mentioned I'm well set up, basically most of the keys just get shifted one to the right. For the addons I try to play on Vanilla servers, but they are kind of rare. For getting familiar with the game I've done the campaigns / trainings and now am unlocking the armory bit by bit ^^ Thanks for the tip, will look into it. You've all been a great help, still some question marks but much fewer by now :) The Hand thing I was talking about seemingly comes when I target a usable object while in command mode (the circle reticle changes into the giant finger). For the gear ammo box I've found out that if you pick up a weapon directly with the default use button instead of selecting gear your character actually bends down to pick it up, fine for me but nonetheless confusing ^^

Just to add something in (Question). - What is the difference between thrust analogue and normal thrust (Aircraft) - What do the 4 slider bars for the controller settings do? - The two turbo's - which one is necessary and is it useful?

Integrated Modmanagement (like in CIV V from Firaxis would come to mind) Base difficulty setting for multiplayer and let players decide if they want to remove standard UI elements

So I've just recently given ARMA 2/OA a go, I've always enjoyed tactical or strategical games and also shooters, so this seemed to be a good idea, right? Wrong. Up till now I am completely confused. While I like the realism level and the way everything is simulated I am completely overwhelmed with all the keyboard bindings, especially as I am a ESDF player and remapped the whole default settings. I'm also overwhelmed with many inconsistencies and things that are not covered by the manual. So here goes my long list of questions: - When standing at an ammo crate or vehicle, sometimes when I get the Rifle / Circle icon for reloading my gear - when I select it I somehow go prone - other times I just stand there and have the gear window open? What is the difference? - Confusing controls that are a riddle to me: Evasive Forward (what is it for?), Reveal target (doesn't do anything), 7 different zoom controls (which of these are useful?), Next target appears twice but it won't actually change targets or acquire a new one, what is the difference between "Look" and "Freelook"?, Turbo and Vehicle Turbo is this important - most vehicles don't have a turbo from what i've seen up till now. The difference between "prone" and "go prone", What is "up" for and how is it different to "Stand up"? Car left / right and Car more left / right are redundant? What does command watch do? What is command watch for? What is the difference between "Tactical view" and "Toggle view" - both switch to 3rd person afaik? Why are there so many buttons with "A on / A off" instead of just combining it into a toggle key? Especially with the aircraft controls (Gears, Flaps, Autohover) this would make things much more straightforward. On the other hand there sometimes are a Toggle key + 2 On/Off keys for the same thing, which is confusing as well ^^ - I can bind SHIFT / CONTROL keys together with mousebuttons, but not with controller buttons, is there a tool for configuring these controls? There must be some kind of tool that tells you what the keys actually do and helps you configure them because the ingame configuration is a horrible user experience and often (to me ) unclear about what certain keys do. - What are the Seagull controls for? Do I need to bind them as well? - When I look into the Scope and then zoom in to see more, I can't zoom back out - how do I fix this? - Depending on the server I sometimes am able to aim and other times I can't which makes it very difficult interacting with vehicles, ammo boxes etc. this makes things even more difficult for a noob like me - I once needed almost a minute to target a vehicle so that I could enter because it would always show the seat symbol, but right when I pressed my use button it would swap to the Gear icon and I would get my inventory - If a team member calls out "Enemy. Far. 3 o'clock." is that from his position and where he is looking or from my position? and how should I know where 3 o'clock is depending on where I am looking at that moment it could be to the east or west of my position. - How do I target the enemy? The lock target key is not working somehow. In the single player missions the targets (or last known target position) sometimes gets marked with a red circle, sometimes not, which seems inconsistent. - What is the giant finger I sometimes get hovering over an enemy or vehicle? And why doesn't it always appear? - Almost every server I try to join has some obscure mod running or disables all kinds of things that I need to be able to play as entry level player. How do I filter for clean and normal difficult level vanilla servers so I can get some basic practice before using obscure mods that need even more keybinds or can't even switch to 3rd person view? - How do I setup favourites in the server browser? - what is the yellow and red symbol in the lower right side of the screen? --- Thanks for any answers, this might all be pretty simple to long time players, for someone who has never played many simulations (last one I enjoyed was Gunship 2000 I think!) or any ARMA game this is all extremely confusing and tedious. I've now bound over 100 keys now and am happy when I actually notice the enemy while fiddling around with all the controls and stumbling through the map. I am well aware that this game is supposed to be more tactical but it all seems very excessive and overwhelming to me a the moment.

Prior to this mission the player though should already have an understanding of the basics, throwing people into cold water usually is acceptable for generic shooters, but for simulations I'm not sure this is the best approach. At least not only after doing a very simple obstacle course and firing 20 rounds off an M-16. The importance of cover and noise level is very significant in this game, yet it isn't explained anywhere. On top of that this mission very much starts off like a action FPS "run and gun" mission, delivering a false impression. Yes it was Trial by Fire and up till now I've never managed to make it through without getting wounded, but maybe that is part of it . ---------- Post added at 12:35 ---------- Previous post was at 11:39 ---------- Not at all.In the meantime I know I was approaching it wrong, but the game or intro to this mission also gave me no indication or guidance towards this mindset. Quite the contrary as I wrote - its all about cliché going in and kicking ass / being the boss, which is completely counterproductive imo.

I once played OFP (on a buddys PC at a LAN) and had no idea what to do at all. He said something about "You have to breathe!". I told him that of course I was breathing, then he said "no stupid - in the game. Press CTRL + G before shooting." WTF? was my expression when I saw the keybind config. You need 100 keys just to play? Several years later I'm a bit older and decided to give ARMA 2 another look as it was discounted on Steam. Game runs fine with 45 FPS, Steam updates the newest version, all looks well. Now comes the big issue. I play shooters / FPS games with ESDF, not WASD. So I spent around 2 hours reconfiguring my keys because the descriptions are horrible and I had to check the settings in-game. (Optics mode vs. Optics for example). Then my first single-player game (after finishing the basic tutorials with shooting range). A landing in Utes, very dramatic with Aircraft Carrier and chopper landing. Wow! Action! Yeah Kickass! I run up the hill and am told to "Go. To. THAT. House". Which house? There are several? Oh I have a new waypoint. Why not just go to current waypoint? Hm. Oh well I walk to the waypoint. Suddenly I get shot, I am down. Oh right its a simulation, not a shooter. Then why the f**k do you create a mission that could be confused like a gugn ho mission from a generic war FPS? This happened several times until I understood that "Go to that house" means "take cover and move VERY slowly towards that house, then carefully check the corners with lean." I kind of rage quit after still being killed by some stray bullet from an opponent that was probably 1 km away lying in the grass and disguised as a shrubbery. I think this is what scares off many people from ARMA, especially if they have no idea what its about. Now after playing several weeks I understand how to look for enemies, scan the horizon, find decent cover (not just concealing) and actually am able to aim and hit an enemy, even if he is moving. Unfortunately I never learned this stuff by following the extensive and very "Hit the ground running" ingame tutorials and this is one of the issue that makes the game very inaccessible. The game takes certain understanding of the mechanics for granted and just throws you into the battlefield like CoD or Halo (or any other generic FPS), but actually you need to be a) very aware of your surrounding b) move carefully and c) learn to look out for and use cover at all times. Now it strikes me really odd that after just starting the game the first scenario I play has me doing the work of a specialized deep recon unit, whereas I basically only know how to do an obstacle course and shoot an M-16 without killing anyone behind me. I'm not even going to start on how there are 10'000 keys to configure and how the descriptions are almost meaningless (The difference between Prone and Evasive Prone would be another example that was not comprehensible at all). --- tldr --- Make the game more user friendly with better usability. Less clunky keybinds, better descpriptions. Tutorials that actually set the awareness mindset needed to survive 1 Minute in the battle. Do not create any tutorials or scenarios that have a CoD-ish action style and give a false impression Multiplayer / Coop with a hotseat system (like L4D2 on a small scale with 4-8 players) would be very useful. I still am afraid to join some huge server game because my skills still are mediocre at the most. The horrible "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" run sound, do soldiers have their own invisible coconut soundmakers with them all the time? Listen to the first 30s of this clip, this is what comes to my mind each time I run in ARMA 2. (Also wtf with the paranoid forum settings and the almost illegible captchas, sometimes in Arabic? Trying to scare people away on purpose?)

Yeah I'm mighty late to the party I guess, but anyway I'd like to chip in some things I've learnt so far. This seemed to be one of the few useful threads I've found through searching the boards, sorry for the thread necro. Unfortunately I haven't found any decent tutorials or really helpful texts on how to fly these things in ARMA 2, maybe I can add some things that may be apparent but aren't at all to the complete noob. 1) Imo the tutorials in the game are pretty worthless because you suddenly are expected to master flight with sharp turns, landings in difficult spots (surrounded by phone wires, trees and buildings) etc. without much prior practice or understanding how the controls work in ARMA 2. 2) What everyone is saying "Make a custom map and fly around there, get some practice". This is really nice if you already are good at flying and don't loose choppers too often. But this just means people have to figure out how to set up a chopper without the crew inside, make it usable etc. Imho its much easier to just go to the Armory and select a chopper there, the MI-18 for example unlocked pretty early and is quite comfortable to begin with. 3) Start engine. Use thrust to go up 20-30m, move forwards just a little (nose down), reduce speed (nose back) a little until you are hovering, try to land gently. Repeat until it you can do it wherevery you want to land and in between obstacles or behind a treeline. 4) Go up 50 - 100m and just fly, fly, fly practice curves, sharp turns, following streets, make waypoints on your map and do a low altitude approach. Do this again and again. 5) If you are using a controller (gamepad in my case) try to increase the bars in the advanced controller setup (customize) a bit upwards until they are around 60 -80% depending on your liking, elsewise controls might be jerky and this is very counter intuitive for learning. 6) Thrust seems to only mean increasing altitude/decreasing altitude, not more speed (this was very confusing for me) 7) Try to level out when landing without too much banking. If you have side-winds or somehow are drifting to the left and right, carefully "counterbank" and then immedately do another very light bank in the other direction again to level out. If you are going very slow and the rotation from the main rotor is turning you, gently use the pedal to counter this. 8) Use the pickup missions in the armory to get a feel how it is to select a decent approach and landing site (LZ is what the pros call it) close to a pickup location and to feel a bit of time pressure (especially with those old grandmas limping to the chopper!) 9) Learn to use mountains, buildings, treelines as cover when flying around 10) Helicopters with wheels do not actually roll at all. Its more like rubber prongs sticking out downwards. --- Now some questions that are still a mystery to me: - What is the difference between Thrust And Thrust analogue? On the Analogue stick I didn't notice any difference. - How do you keep the Helo from skating around / sliding if the LZ is not completely flat? I understand that I cannot land on a mountain side :) , but it seems as soon as there is the slightest angle on the landing site the heli starts to slide downwards. - How do you set several waypoints for a route? Currently I can only set one with Shift + Mouseclick on the map. - How do you go from fullspeed (160+) to 20 within such a short time? Whenever I try this "full stop" by pulling up, the helo of course keeps lots of the inertia and thus I often overshoot the landing site. For me the transition from normal flight speed to "landing speed" is currently the most difficult thing to do. - If I go down just a little bit too fast, immediately INST indicator goes to yellow or orange, if I go down too slow I start getting side rotation or a skating effect. How do you go the middle path? Its very difficult for me to guess how fast I'm decreasing altitude.