JCDBionicman

Keyboards are factually un-intuitive towards gaming because they are also factually not designed for it (not talking about gaming keypads). Also, I never said anything against setting up keys the way you like, in fact I commended it. Perhaps you should look at my previous comments again. Players are lazy because they don't want to take a considerable amount of time trying to figure out how to fix something that shouldn't have been broken? Perhaps it's the devs who were lazy to not include a better control scheme. And if you want to talk about "most people," most people aren't going to try to memorize a few dozen hotkeys just to be able to play a game. People have jobs, school, other more relaxing hobbies, other better things they could be doing with their time. PC gaming provides for more options and freedom from console gaming. This is not an excuse to completely throw friendly user interfacing out the window. Similarly, that ArmA 2 is a military simulator does not provide an adequate excuse to not make more streamlined controls. That's no fault of the controller. You can't even play ArmA 2 with a controller because of the poorly designed controls. One example is the prone, crouch and vault keys. Rather than regulate vaulting to the action wheel (as vaulting is a command rarely used anyways) and put stance changing on one button which could have been easily done (press for crouch toggle, hold for prone toggle) they just plop all these inputs onto keys that could have been utilized for more important things.

I'm surprised there aren't more requests for this. The reason the multiplayer community fails so hard right now at... existing... for anything other than DayZ anyways is that CTI is too large for how few players it supports. 70 players in a 5 m area is already a situation in which players will often engage from long range or sometimes have to wait. Takistan is 144 square miles, and Chernarus is 244. So that's what I suggest. When I was tinkering around with the wizard to try and create a fun Sector Control multiplayer mode for Takistan, I found it was too small by default. Going into the editor within the wizard I found that there were no vehicles either. So I increased the map boundaries all the way out, and spaced the capture points so that they stretched to the towns in between both airfields, the capture points making a sort of line to each airfield. I gave each side's spawn point to an airfield as well. The problem with this is that the max player count is permanently stuck at 16, which is just not enough players for this playing space. I wanted each side to have an airfield stocked with vehicles, but with only 6 people a fully stocked airbase won't get much use.

This is a keyboard's weakness over a controller. Making controlling your player a scavenging hunt for a right button press, or an awkward twister session with your fingers is not ideal next to a smartly made control scheme that fits on a set of comfortable to press and easy to remember buttons. True, in ArmA 2's case the keyboard is better, but only because the developers didn't even try at making good control presets.

I heard a while back that the developers created some multiplayer modes that weren't included by default. Where could I find these?

But from the same article: Also, unless the controllers had a configuration that gave it a fair fight against the hotkey toting PC gamers, it wasn't a fair fight. But nevermind that. As I was saying to PuFu, and you must not have seen it, I sort of surrendered the idea that an analog stick is as good or better than a mouse and rather held my belief simply that a controller is better than a keyboard, and that while a mouse is more precise it is much more tiring to use in comparison to an analog stick. So my argument now is simply that a controller allows for a more consistent output of skill over a larger period of time, and that condensed smart controls in combination with a controller are better than the keyboard.

The very definition of "condensed" means "elimination of volume without loss of mass." So yes, creating a condensed control preset means exactly that. What I think you're trying to say is that condensed controls aren't necessarily better, and that's technically correct. In the case of my idea however I think I've found a great way to make controlling your highly realistic soldier as easy as possible. I wouldn't complain if someone suggested a better and different idea from mine however. You should be able to use the map to select your units. You should also be allowed to use a drag/drop box. Even without the map, you should be able to select your units no matter how far away on screen. And when we're talking about controls, we should be talking about how to make them easy for the player to use. The less you have to "exercise" in order to use controls, the better they are. There's nothing complicated about pressing one button in place of two actually. I believe pressing q and e to be just as intuitive, but what I'm suggesting is better because it allows those keys to be used more effectively, while at the same giving you a key that is just as intuitive to use while at the same time giving you analog leaning where previously you would lean all the way left or right. Now your able to lean as much or as little as you want which is much more useful for obvious reasons. Using the mouse wheel to change weapons is much easier and more natural for the same reason selecting soldiers by aiming at them is. I should remind you that you can still use these hotkeys in place of or in combination with my suggested condensed controls, this is after all a PC exclusive game we're talking about. A handful of people? Really? All I know is that only a handful of people even play ArmA or any of Bohemia's games for that matter in comparison to COD or Battlefield. While perhaps those games are a bit overrated, they are much more polished, even for their full price, than Bohemia's games. To clarify, those games may be less ambitious and less unique but they are at least polished. Bohemia is responsible for the creation of ArmA 3, more specifically in this case, it's modders. The modding community should only exist to create things that bring fresh new ideas the developers never would have thought of usually to be implemented in future games. The modding community should never be responsible for patching a game, fixing major design oversights in gameplay, or otherwise fixing something that should not be broken. Bohemia is not a charity after all, it is asking for our money in exchange for their game, and I assume ArmA 3 will be full price. You are completely wrong to assign the responsibility of multiplayer creation to modders solely.

I'd like to offer discussion on this idea I posted.

Not interested in BAF DLC. Talking about MP modes that were not included by default, dev created, that are available for download somewhere. If this doesn't exist, I'd like to know where to get some multiplayer modes that the community has created, preferably mimicing many game types available in games like Battlefield 3 like the m-com defense and conquest. Conquest as in BF is different than CTI because there is a higher concentration of players in a smaller area. ArmA features sector control, but I find that's far too small, there are no vehicles, and it's player cap is also too small.

The problem with ArmA 2's CTI is that it's too big, it's too dependant on the AI to fill the void of space and these AI are stupid and the command interface used to control them weak. Team Deathmatch, Sector Control, and CTF are too small in max allowed players and in that they lack vehicles. What we need for ArmA 3 is to make groups of map presets based on the following sizes in square Kilometers; 5 Km, 2 Km, 1Km, and then half or less than half a kilometer for CQC. These maps should be the "best cuts" from Stratis and Lemnos. There should be at least 4 carefully chosen 5 Km chunks cut out of both islands, 8 2 Km chunks, 8 1 Km chunks, and lastly 8 chunks less than half a kilometer in area. Again, these need to be carefully chosen, like quality cuts of meat. After the first 4 big chunks are chosen, choosing the smaller ones aren't so hard. If necessary, these maps can be parts of eachother, but it would be preferable if each chunk taken out was completely different as much as possible from whatever chunks are already chosen. In these chunks the only real difference between using the full map is that objectives are closer and fewer between. Players should still be allowed to use the whole battlespace. After that it comes to designing game modes for these maps. I'm only listing the most important game modes: Sabotage: One team defends objectives from an attacking team. Team Deathmatch: Unlike in ArmA 2, will feature vehicles by default Sector Control: Unlike in ArmA 2, will feature vehicles by default Warfare: Like CTI this is more for people interested in playing more of an RTS rather than raw PVP, and for those more interested in it's semi-real warfare logistics simulation. AI will be disabled by default to help make human-only games become a standard (with the exception of Warfare). AI will be able to be disabled and enabled specifically for certain things like support (artillery and UAVs and defense), and transport for people who don't want them completely disabled. Max player count will also be able to be configured to it's highest possible setting regardless of the mode or size of the map being played.

Would you agree that a controller is less tiring and more natural and easy to use in general than a keyboard though? That's mainly why I'm interested in better controller support for ArmA 3. When I can just lean back and play the game without fumbling around for keys, pressing weird key combinations that don't feel natural (and on a keyboard, pressing buttons will never feel natural as opposed to a controller) and straining my right arm. The comfort issue with using a keyboard and mouse is alleviated greatly by getting a proper desk, but the cheaper and I believe better method is just using a controller. Can we agree on the comfort factor at least? Try using a controller sometime, like a wired X360 or a PS3 controller (PS3 one requires DS3 or another free program in order to work). Just remember to set the sensitivity medium to low. Actually I use K&M right now for ArmA 2 because I have to switch back forth between that and my controller if I try and use my controller, which is just too awkward. What would be really cool is if a controller had trackballs in place of analog sticks, and with the flick of a switch next to both they could go back and forth between analog and non-constant input modes. I haven't actually used trackballs myself, but I've heard from people that have switched over to them from mice say that they're better.

I put my copy of CO on my brother's computer with my serial key. I bought him another copy so we could play online and now I want to change the serial. CENSORED Help please.

Why don't you infract all the users involved in modding, and censor all their stuff? If you want to stretch the forum rules as far as censoring directions used for replacing a legitimate key with another legitimate key without having to jump through a hoop (reinstalling the whole game) doing what I suggested isn't much more of a stretch. And it seems you even went as far as infracting the other user as I can't PM him.

Mouse definitely has analog beat when it comes to CQC, but ironically enough when it comes to aiming at something far away I can quickly aim in it's general direction but then for whatever reason, and call me crazy, I fumble a bit to accurately aim at the target before it manages to fire at me, where when I use an analog stick I find aiming at distant targets not too difficult. I think it's because with a mouse you'll gradually slow your aim as your reticle gets closer and with the analog the aiming is constant.

Not that I have a problem with criticism, but it's far too often that people argue quibbles and nonsense on peoples ideas put on any wishlist on any forum on the internet. There's always someone with nothing better to do than try to find things wrong with people's ideas where there are honestly none. It's very, very annoying. If you are going to critique, please put as much care into critiquing as the other person put into structuring their ideas please. You agree that ArmA's keys could be condensed, but you claim that 102 keys are better than a few, smart and easy to remember macros. Huh. Here's what's wrong with the F# keys: It requires me to take my eyes from the screen to the keyboard, and one or both of my hands to carefully press and browse through a large volume of keys. What's more intuitive is what I suggested, select your soldiers by aiming at them and adding/excluding them. Just like real life too; "you you and you go over there, and the rest of you flank left!" I'm not sure what your arguing in terms of the free look key and the lean/stance key. They need to be on separate keys because they work better that way. So, what you want is already possible. I lean and go into a low crouch with the caps lock, and I quickly look behind both my shoulders with alt, and once that's done I lock freelook in whatever camera angle I want to use for aiming. Shift is still used for sprinting, and now it works so much better because you have smooth analog movement with the mousewheel in conjunction. For quickly toggling between your basic run and walk speed you just briefly press the button, so if I'm walking and I want to sprint I press once to toggle to run and then hold it down and press the mousewheel forward. Perhaps it would be better if it toggled between "tactical pace" and sprint instead, I would imagine those would be the most useful paces. Why would the gear button double as a scroll macro for utilities? I don't know, it might better to put it there as opposed to assigning to a random other key that the player has to remember instead. And no, controllers will always be superior to mouse and keyboard, and this is coming from someone that dumped his console in favor of computer so I'm not here to start an argument about consoles. Again, using a few smart keys in place of, ONE HUNDRED AND TWO is quite obviously better. The mouse has the analog stick beat for aiming precision, but the left analog definitally has the awkward wasd keys beat, and even though the mouse is better it is tiring to use over an extended period of time and so that added precision doesn't mean quite much when your fighting wrist strain. I find an analog stick is just as good as a mouse with the exception of turn speed. You won't be able to aim very well with higher sensitivities that would allow you to turn like a ninja with a mouse, but your ability to aim will be consistent over a long period of time due to it's ease of use. I've been using my ps3 controller with the ds3 tool for playing games that aren't awkward to play with it. Whether ArmA 3 is Far Cry 3 is irrelevant. What's relevant is if his idea is feasible and useful, and it is both. Oh wait, how dare I ask Bohemia to actually create multiplayer modes! Preposterous! How about we get the modding community to make the game for them while we're at it. ArmA 2 leans on mods far too much, let's hope ArmA 3 doesn't lean on them as much as Skyrim and the rest of Bethesda's trash. A simulator should paraphrase reality, not directly mimic it. After all, we want to enjoy the videogames we're playing right? I think allowing the player to field-swap optics on the fly is just fine. For the "harzcorz" give them a difficulty where this isn't possible.

Are the first and last mods you cite able to be used in multiplayer regardless of whether others have it? I think I just came up with a great idea for how it might be done. This is just a copy and paste from where I posted it in the ArmA 3 wishlist. Using various keys as macros in conjunction with the mousewheel would provide for a sleek and intuitive interface: By default the mousewheel scrolls through weapons. Switching animations should be able to be interrupted so that this process is seamless. -Q Will be used for ordering units that are under your control, much like the spacebar in ArmA 2. This quick command interface will be much the same as the one in Armed Assault, allowing you to scroll through many different commands from movements, behaviors, and miscellaneous actions. While holding Q and selecting a soldier, a right click will select all but that soldier and if you continue to right click different soldiers you will continue to exclude soldiers from your selection for orders. Left clicking a soldier will select just that soldier and continuing to left click soldiers will add units to your selection for orders. -E is dedicated to communicating with units beyond your direct control and for communicating with higher commanding officers. Given it's own interface separate from quick command, this serves as a quick support interface. Units are sorted by distance and their current workload so that you can select the unit most able to support you. As said, you can also reply to and communicate with people giving your orders or requesting support from you. -R used to reload and held down opens up a menu used to interact with whatever is around you like vehicles and doors. -Shift toggles between walk and run and held down allows the mousewheel to be used as an analog modifier for movement. -Caps Lock allows the mouse to be used to lean and the mousewheel to be used to scroll through all stances from standing to last stand (last after prone). Animations should be able to be interrupted so that this scrolling is smooth. -Alt used for freelook as before, except this time pressing the fire button locks the camera so that the player can use his desired camera angle for the purposes of aiming or piloting. Mousewheel will zoom in and out. -G goes to gear as before, but held down allows scrolling through utility items like night vision, binoculars, range finders, and throwables. -F held down allows the mouse to scroll through the currently held weapon or item to have it's different fire modes or functions scrolled through. And that about covers everything, with just a few keys. Would make playing the game with just a controller a real possibility. What do you think?

Using various keys as macros in conjunction with the mousewheel would provide for a sleek and intuitive interface: By default the mousewheel scrolls through weapons. Switching animations should be able to be interrupted so that this process is seamless. Much of the scrolling through these menus is done directly, so that if it's highlighted it's happening. No additional button press is required. The exception is commanding where this wouldn't work. -Q Will be used for ordering units that are under your control, much like the spacebar in ArmA 2. This quick command interface will be much the same as the one in Armed Assault, allowing you to scroll through many different commands from movements, behaviors, and miscellaneous actions. While holding Q and selecting a soldier, a right click will select all but that soldier and if you continue to right click different soldiers you will continue to exclude soldiers from your selection for orders. Left clicking a soldier will select just that soldier and continuing to left click soldiers will add units to your selection for orders. -E is dedicated to communicating with units beyond your direct control and for communicating with higher commanding officers. Given it's own interface separate from quick command, this serves as a quick support interface. Units are sorted by distance and their current workload so that you can select the unit most able to support you. As said, you can also reply to and communicate with people giving your orders or requesting support from you. -R used to reload and held down opens up a menu used to interact with whatever is around you like vehicles and doors. -Shift toggles between walk and run and held down allows the mousewheel to be used as an analog modifier for movement. -Caps Lock allows the mouse to be used to lean. To clarify on leaning, you would lean and then let go of CL and then be able to aim. The previous q and e keys used for leaning are more competitive than what I'm suggesting because you can't lean and aim at the same time. Perhaps the ability in options to make it so when CL is held down, wasd is used for leaning instead of the mouse, which is the equivalent of what q and e did previously. -X would be used for stances. Pressing it once toggles crouch, holding it toggles prone. Last stand would be activated by leaning down. -Alt used for freelook as before, except this time pressing the fire button locks the camera so that the player can use his desired camera angle for the purposes of aiming or piloting. Mousewheel will zoom in and out. -G goes to gear as before, but held down allows scrolling through utility items like night vision, binoculars, range finders, and throwables. -F held down allows the mouse to scroll through the currently held weapon or item to have it's different fire modes or functions scrolled through. Pressing it once briefly would toggle the item or weapon's most useful function, such as an underslung grenade for a rifle. And that about covers everything, with just a few keys. Other commands I haven't covered would be covered by other macros. Would make playing the game with just a controller a real possibility. And of course, hotkeys can still be used in place of or in combination with these macros.

I've noticed there aren't many multiplayer modes to choose from. This is how I would do it: I'd disable AI, enable max amount of players, and put the clock into the early night. Each team has three bases fully stocked with all available vehicles and weapons. These bases spawn at random so that nobody knows where the enemy is. The rules would be Team Deathmatch. The whole map would be used.

So how about these things: Visibility strictly based on player's horizontal position and completely irrelevant of altitude Condensed smarter controls Better command interface Better AI Gun mounts on C130s Zeroing for underslung and grenade rifles Any mods out there for these things? I tried ACE but I feel that's for people who want realism as opposed to an improved gameplay experience.

I intend to play coop with a friend on this one. He is new to the game, but not a bad player necessarily. We both own combined operations, but not reinforcements. I'm thinking we each have just one squad mate to command so that the AI doesn't steal our thunder too much. Teamswitching will be enabled. We'll have any rifle but one with a useless CQB scope. Perhaps a scope with a CQB medium range combination. It'll be night. Our missions will at first be stealth and recon based, laser designating targets, ambushing small groups of infantry, sabotaging vehicles and things and perhaps a few intel gathering objectives thrown in but not too much as that sort of thing gets boring quickly. As the dawn approaches we will have started directly supporting a armored unit which is already being supported by an infantry unit take back back a large city. We'll be responsible for a specific high value target while the chaos of the battle is left to the opposing AI armies. At this point we'll be piloting Apaches. We'll be taking out various convoys, and who knows what else might happen. Shortly after we'll be responsible for taking out large amounts of armored units in A10s. I'll leave everything after that to the ambition of the creator (if there will be one). I'd like an AC130 section in there somewhere. I know there is some mod out there created with scripts that allows for that sort of thing already.

I'd like mods that have these features: Condensed smarter controls. Advanced quick command bar like in Armed Assault and/or better command interface in general Visibility based on horizontal position only (so that you can actually see what you're shooting at as a pilot) Fixed issue where you can't toggle zoom out for various random situations Bug fixes and improved AI Let me open the damn C130 cargo doors ...and shoot some shit up with the cannons it should have had already Let me lock wherever my view is in freelook so that I can aim or pilot with my desired camera angle True analog movement as infantry for analog stick Let me control zeroing for my underslung grenade launcher or 6 barrel Also, what are some good coop scenarios?

I would like condensed controls. For those that love having to memorize dozens of keys let them have their way, but if you want to attract more sales to your game Bohemia you have to actually make controls. An example would be using one button for stances. Briefly press for going to a crouch from a stand or a prone, hold for going prone from a crouch or stand. Better than fumbling between FOUR different keys. Vaulting should have been assigned to the action wheel as the way it acts now is very awkward. So if I wanted to share vault and another command on the same key I can't because you vault even if there is nothing to vault over. Also, that the mouse wheel isn't utilized for zooming and/or zeroing is ridiculous. It could have been that the mouse wheel was used in conjunction with another button like the secondary mouse button or a similarly macro like button to zoom in/out or zero. I'd like better controller support as well. I find that between using a keyboard and mouse, mouse is the only real benefit over a controller and a controller is much more comfortable to use. A mouse, while agreeably allowing for great precision is exhausting to use over an extended period of time due to how it forces you to twist your arm in an unnatural way. An analog stick used over a mouse is just as good provided you use normal sensitivity or lower and just accept that you don't have the turning speed of a ninja. Also, pressure sensitive triggers and buttons and an analog stick used in place of those crappy wasd keys are also very superior to the keyboard for obvious reasons. So overall controller>keyboard mouse. So please support the controller better. In ArmA 2 the analog movement for the controllers is not very good. You can move only directly diagonally and F B L R and the analog for speed is similarly choppy. At least let us program our own controls (completely) ingame if you won't give us some decent control configurations. Let us create our own macros so that commands can share keys without interrupting eachother. I saw, to my horror in an ArmA 3 demonstration, the demonstrator accidentally hit the vault key and vault over nothing as he ran across an open field. If ArmA 3 is just a glorified expansion pack to ArmA 2, you can forget my money. The command interface is similarly a big problem. I liked how it was in ArmA 1, not easy on the eyes of new players but simple enough once you became accustomed to it. Pressing backspace in ArmA 2 accomplishes much the same thing, but if you were to map that command to the spacebar it is not really a replacement for the quick command bar originally assigned to the spacebar. So what I'm asking is to give us the option of turning on "advanced quick command bar" under game options, then everybody wins. Others have pointed out other things wrong with the command interface but this is it's most direct problem. Please provide weapon inertia when aiming in first person. I end up turning up the aiming deadzone just a bit so I'm constantly reminded I'm not a robot. By weapon inertia, I mean a slight gun sway in whatever direction your aiming so that it looks more fluid. It'd be nice to be able to lock your view at wherever your looking in freelook as well, and this would be particularly useful when using vehicles, especially helicopters, and it would be cool just in general to be able to play with whatever camera angle you want. Visibility needs to improve. 10000 vis, which is the max setting for ArmA 2 should have been the standard setting, but as it is it's crippling to the average computer. Even 10000 isn't terribly much when your at higher altitudes, and even years old flight simulators provide ten times ArmA 2's max visibility as a standard setting. It's not cool when you can't see what your shooting at. Lastly, push back the release as much as you want. I would rather wait a long time and get a near perfect game than something that could have used more work. Judging from ArmA 2, it was released much too soon. It's less so much that there were bugs than that there are a lot of things that went overlooked, especially the controls as the largest example. What is the new release date anyways? I can't find it anywhere, so I guess there isn't one.

It seems straighforward enough to me. There are capture points, a main base, respawning vehicles and players, it's all much like Battlefield. And really CQC isn't a problem, you just don't use the sights. Actually I haven't played the multiplayer very much, mostly just the demo from arma 1 playing capture the island, only thing I could really complain about was how long things took because of the large map but playing space can be reduced so that shouldn't be a problem either. Only gotten to play the demo for OA recently. Thoughts?

I had never heard much of ArmA, just that it was a military simulator. I had never considered looking into it until I discovered it was on GOG. It's a great game. Please Bohemia, make your next game, ArmA 3, available on GOG just like Combined Operations. Steam doesn't protect your game from piracy, it only succeeds in annoying paying customers.

I would be interested in playing this. Could someone give me a link?

I don't see the need to postpone removal of Steam DRM, or a GOG release. The DRM is circumvented so rapidly, even within the first week of the game's launch. It defeats the purpose. And wasn't Bohemia an Independant company? They don't have to worry about snobbish and ignorant stockholders dictating to them to put DRM in their games. I recently wrote a paper about DRM. Other than for pleasing stockholders that should be better informed in the first place instead of being given a reassurring lie, DRM really is useless. Serial codes on the other hand do easily prevent the average person from simply handing it off to their friends while being unintrusive. So while the smaller population of elite hackers will easily circumvent it, the average consumer doesn't bother with pirating from torrent sites and the majority of potentially lost profits is secured. ---------- Post added at 07:27 ---------- Previous post was at 07:20 ---------- @Kylania Last I checked GOG was selling rather modern games on it's site like the Witcher. Yeah, the site started first selling mostly older games, hence it's original business model and name. It's business model is still selling games without DRM. What's your point?