sproyd

Same. Bare with it, they are probably trying to fix the pricing issues.

This statement is a perfect illustration of how irrelevant High Street PC Game retailers are.

Ohhhhh - for some dumb reason I always thought you had to have Beta off for SP. Well that makes the whole ACR campaign so much better (and probably easier) - I would have to send my super soldiers into battle ahead of me to ID targets

Agreed. Would love this.

Thanks for confirming my OP thesis good sir :) (Hopefully by saying so you're not in breach of the BIS/Valve agreement though :confused:)

wrong http://www.arma3.com/buy Alpha and DDE available to purchase via Steam.

I'm not a developer but I'd imagine the latter is easier than the former. See Arma 2 and getting spotted and shot through dense foliage.

The key is that's its an infantry-focused game (which devs have repeated on many occasions) and so they really can't justify making it perfect in every regard re: aviation or land vehicle impacts. There are other games for you if that's your thing.

Good post. I guess the idea is that Steam doesn't so much need the 'support', and that Arma-fan consumer money is best distributed to BIS in as large a proportion as possible to improve and encourage resourcing for future releases. However, if you feel like you are happy buying directly from Steam then that's fine too. As per my OP though, I would strongly advise against buying retail box in Q3 (who am I kidding, Q1 2014), that is of course unless you want to support high street retail, truck drivers and warehousing staff ;)

Economically speaking you are better off with the Alpha edition. However, I would feel like a cheat paying £20 or whatever it is for Arma 3 pre-order + constant Alpha then Beta access up until release, together with mods, mission editor and more. Its about value and fairness and that is really up to you to determine. Of course if you don't have the means then by all means get the Alpha (just make sure you buy through BIS Store then validate on Steam). ---------- Post added at 14:02 ---------- Previous post was at 14:00 ---------- City pay, City costs. My EC1 rent and council tax hurts more than you know! Thanks for the new screenies they all look incredible. I'm stoked I live in a world where this game exists!!!

There are some really dumb arguments in this forum and people feeding the trolls. A copy of a game given away is not a lost sale, you sound like those RIAA scumbags who think that because Justin Timberlake's album was downloaded 1 million times on The Pirate Bay they missed out on $20M in revenue. The world doesn't work like that! ---------- Post added at 13:55 ---------- Previous post was at 13:52 ---------- This is the best answer. Otherwise, the closest thing to a donation for BIS is buying as many copies of the Alpha edition on their website as you want and not registering the keys on Steam. The Alpha edition obviously has the lowest Cost Of Goods Sold/Marginal Cost as it doesn't include any extras and if you are buying multiple copies it doesn't matter that its cheaper - just buy more copies to make it up X amount of $/EUR/£.

Go that man. ACR has some great missions but you have to grit your teeth to get through some of the tougher ones. PM me if you need tips I just finished the campaign last week. I'm going to replay a fav mission today for YouTube. The more I think about it the less I can get away with buying a DDE - got to go supporter. I'm a well paid professional and Arma is just SO GOOD. Things like this page swing me towards Supporter

Exactly. Gabe Newell is now very very rich. However much money he has made to date is small compared to his net worth through owning Valve - companies are valued at a multiple of EBITDA (Earning Before Interest Tax and Depreciation) - the multiple is higher when there is good annuity streams of income, and growing revenues - two ticks. So Gabe's worth a lot. BUT, contrary to a typical Wall Street type he said in a recent interview that he would much rather be working on games that he loves with a team of passionate good quality people than cruising the ocean in a superyacht - he said he'd get bored in 2 weeks!

OH MY GOD that's brilliant. ---------- Post added at 09:53 ---------- Previous post was at 09:52 ---------- OH MY GOD that's horrific. Surely they can fix that. WTF is going on???

Are you referring to Valve? I would suggest reading their New Employee Manual that got leaked last year and then tell me they are not innovators (not just in the gaming world but in the corporate world). They have a successful extremely flat and flexible corporate structure that I don't think any other company of their size could pull off. That is innovation. And on the technical side that most people see, it would be belittling to call Steam anything but innovative. Of course the core idea is fairly basic but the technical wizardry that sees it all operate seamlessly with constantly high bandwidth, very little downtime, robust community features, mod-ability, ease of use et al is incredible.

You are not alone - I don't think anyone gets better performance in Chernarus than Takistan - I blame it on the trees, but this is a real reason so you can't complain. I am also of the opinion that Arma 3 will generally run better than Arma 2. I think on MP view distance is often set by the server rather than the client - please someone correct me if I'm wrong. I know in Wasteland specifically you can change it through your special in-game Player Menu to Low/Med/High.

Thanks. I thought that TrueSky's claims of minimal CPU and GPU usage seemed a bit too good to be true. It is an excellent looking effect though I must say - can anyone link me a YouTube video of how this looks in-game in TOH? I'd be even more interested to see how this looks with fixed wing flight - How amazing would it be on an overcast day to take your F35 (or what have you) straight through the 3D cloud cover up into the blue!!!! I really hope there are massive cloud stacks as well because that would just be freaking awesome - like this .

LOL they're not going to demo their upcoming game on Low now are they!! Anyway, on this point I've resurrected this (2 day) old thread - new PC Gamer interview that talks about performance issues, auto-settings etc http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/02/arma-3-interview-arma-3-alpha/2/ A quote Great news!

Things to do: - Prepare a eulogy for your PC. - Invest stocks in water cooling/liquid nitrogen suppliers - Have a fire extinguisher handy for your CPU & GPU - Watch old timey movies so yet can get used to the 3 FPS you are about to see - Warn your neighbours not to call the cops because you haven't installed a jet engine your living room, that is likely just my PC's cooling fans spinning at twice their OEM recommended max RPM.

Regarding the photos of the towns - they look huge - I wonder if BIS is going to stand by their statement (Ivan Buchta) of every building being destructible and enterable?

I'm guessing Melbourne!! I lived in St Kilda for a while.

I'm very interested as to what TrueSky does to performance - I found TOH (demo only) did not run near as well as A2:CO at the same settings. Obviously they are different games but I didn't expect TOH to run slower (rather expected it to be faster without AI, less objects, low polygon count Seattle skyscrapers vs Chernarus rounded terrain etc). Could this have been due to TrueSky and all the intricacies involved with it affecting flight models?

This analogy is not strictly correct as you can't buy goods from FedEx/DHL if you so choose. Furthermore, you don't continue to receive free automatic updates to your products when they go out of date, and you certainly don't receive another free product when you lose your last one (although this would be awesome !) ---------- Post added at 22:55 ---------- Previous post was at 22:54 ---------- done.---------- Post added at 23:08 ---------- Previous post was at 22:55 ---------- I'm very glad you asked, and the answer is no I don't given these types of negotiations and resulting contracts are most certainly private (even when between two publicly listed companies) as they are 'commercially sensitive' and usually bound by NDAs. However, there are a number of factors that have allowed me to draw this conclusion - most specifically BIS's recent comments about having to go Steam exclusive in order to deliver the game in 2013 (makes no sense as many have pointed out as they have an established distribution network), the booming size of Arma through DayZ and therefore BIS's increasing revenues and market power, and comments made by BIS employees on this forum that explicitly state it is better for the company if purchases are made from the BIS store and then validated on Steam. Also, as Iroquois Pliskin pointed out there is a degree of common sense. The vast majority of Steam revenues come from non-Valve games and if you think they got to that size and having mega-blockbuster games like MW3 and Skyrim on there by just saying to the big guys "yeah you get the same blanket fixed margin as Braid or Fez" then you aren't really understanding the commercial aspect of this booming digital market. Look at EA's relationship with Valve - loads of their games are available on Steam, many aren't. Crysis 2 was withdrawn at one stage and later put back on. This is classic behaviour of a large market player going through high level negotiations and effectively Valve trying to "call their bluff". So I wouldn't say this is "conjecture" as you put it. ---------- Post added at 23:12 ---------- Previous post was at 23:08 ---------- I'm also interested in your opinion on this. I think Valve is an incredibly amazing and very rare company. I have met hundreds of businesses large and small through my job and have never seen one quite like Valve - which owes a huge amount to Newell.

ANZAC St made me smile as a Kiwi!

This thread will be locked shortly but to answer your question - that's just a chance you have to take.