WCG

1a is the EASY version? Heh, heh. There were just two of us - and both newbies, admittedly - but there were at least two dozen enemies in sight at once. At night, in the woods, with very thick cover, all of them could apparently spot us instantly and shoot with deadly accuracy. We didn't have a chance. We might have lasted a little longer with five people, but not much. It was just so lopsided that it wasn't any fun. We tried it a few times with different tactics, but the result was the same. The minute they knew we were there, we were dead. I really don't know how they can spot us like that, at night, in the woods. Of course, as I said, we're just newbies. But I have to wonder how hard the DIFFICULT version would be! Heh, heh. After that, note that we haven't had the courage to try 2a. :) But I'm sure we will, eventually. Thanks.

I can't say I enjoyed this, but that's because we were two newbies, and it was just impossibly difficult for us. We couldn't even see the enemy, but they could blast us from long range even when we should have been well-hidden behind a stone wall. I don't know how the AI can spot us so easily and shoot us so quickly, not matter how much cover we have. We can't see them at all through the grass, though they have no problem seeing us. And we might as well be crouched out in the open as behind a stone wall, since they're so incredibly accurate, even from a LONG way off. Of course, it's not just in your mission that that happens. But we couldn't even get started with this one. We tried it a couple of times, and were set down at two different locations at the airport, but we were slaughtered so quickly that it just wasn't any fun. Most missions are difficult for us, but they can still be fun. This might have worked better if we could have come at it from a distance, on land, so we weren't just instantly in a firefight with far superior troops. I really don't know. But the mission ended before it had even begun (and every AI we respawned into was injured, so we couldn't have hit anything even if we'd seen them). But keep in mind that we're just newbies. :)

Frankly, I wasn't crazy about this one - the only one of your missions I haven't liked. But that might be because there were just two of us. This is a lot like Birds Down, but in that mission you can at least shoot back. In this one, you couldn't even poke your head out to look for the enemy without getting shot. (There are lots of enemies in Birds Down, too, and they're equally deadly, but you can easily spot them, at least.) So I just waited on the second floor, out of sight of the windows, with my gun trained on the stairs. But no enemy came up the stairs, so there really wasn't anything to do. The other guy on my team got stuck respawning right in front of the enemy, which kept killing him instantly, so he ran out of respawns just as the helicopter arrived. It would help if we respawned on the second floor, away from the windows. But even then, the AI is impossibly deadly, and they can spot us instantly, while being very hard to spot, themselves (not a fault of the mission, but of the game itself, I'm sure). So you can't peek around a corner or poke your head up even a bit without getting it shot off. I guess it's just not much fun when I can't shoot back. Of course, if we'd had the full eight players, that would have made a big difference, I'm sure.

Is this thread really that much like the "Recommend, promote, and ask about user missions here" thread which was recently closed? It doesn't seem like that to me, but I'm just a newbie and maybe these things are more useful to beginning players than for long-time Arma players? As a newbie, I don't feel like asking for particular missions. For one thing, I don't know what kind of missions would be most fun. I'm just a beginner, after all. But for another, it seems kind of presumptuous to be asking someone else to make a particular kind of mission to suit my tastes, don't you think? Aren't mission developers normally going to make the kinds of missions they like? But I'd very definitely like to hear people recommending missions. Although I search out the individual mission threads (looking for simple co-op missions for just a few players with - sorry, Variable :) - respawn), it would be nice to have a thread where people would recommend missions in just a few lines (more succinctly than I post, I'm afraid - :p ). Bill

I'm a newbie, too, and after a bit of practice in the editor, I just started trying single-player missions. I tend to die pretty quickly, but it's more fun. And now I'm playing some co-op missions with another guy, again just trying different ones. (Co-op is a lot more fun than single-player, even when you've got just one other guy. But you need to find people who want to play the same way you do and - usually - in a similar timezone.) Re. specific missions, first there's "Skirmish at Marina Bay," which is a two-person mission (which can also be played single-player) that just spawns enemies in Agia Marina. You quickly re-spawn after every death, too. So there's no real mission there and no ending, but it's useful for training purposes. Play a little while until you get bored, then move on. There are 3 helicopters you can fly, too, if you want, though they don't have weapons. For single-player missions, I enjoyed "Dark Seals" ("Seals in the Dark"?), "Snakes in the Grass," and "Who Stole My Souvlaki?" As a newbie, I like short, simple missions. "Ground Attack" is a simple helicopter mission, though I'm hopelessly inept at flying helicopters, myself. "Operation Zap" is a co-op mission which can be played SP (order your troops to hold fire and sneak past the truck). For co-op, I really enjoyed "Operation Fallen Star," although it was mighty tough with just two guys. Still, I had a blast with that one. "Operation Morning Owl" was fun, too, despite a few issues (grenades wouldn't work until I rearmed at an enemy corpse, and you don't start with scopes for your rifles). In "Birds Down," you hold out for 30 minutes against constant attack by impossibly accurate enemies. Two of us completed the mission after respawning around 50 times. Heh, heh. But it was pretty good shooting (and grenade) practice. As a newbie, I like missions with quick respawns, not because I want to play this like a first-person shooter, but because I need the practice. I'm just not good enough to get through very much of a mission, otherwise. I hope this is useful. Take this with a grain of salt, as it's just advice from a newbie to a newbie, however, even when you're a complete newbie, co-op play is a lot of fun. And it's been my experience that other players don't care if you're skilled, as long as you're willing to play sensibly. Follow orders, watch your flank, try to work as a team, communicate effectively, etc. - it's lots of fun whether you're any good at it or not. Funny story: I played with the Comrades in Arms group (who are not in my timezone, so I don't play with them much) in one mission where I was the last person to die - no respawns - yet I never spotted an enemy throughout the entire mission. They were all around us, in cover, and being a complete newbie, I was just struggling to watch my flank. I ended up as the last player alive, until I was cut down from bullets coming from two directions at once. But I never even shot my rifle the entire time! Heh, heh. I felt like such an incompetent! But it was still fun, and no one ever said a word at how inept I'd been. Good luck! Bill PS. I think all of those missions can be found here, except maybe "Who Stole My Souvlaki?" which I got from the Comrades in Arms forum.

This makes it difficult to get revived - at least, if you've only got two players, as we had - since you can't get near the fallen player when there's still a firestorm at his location. And I do like using the revive command, rather than respawning. The latter just feels more like cheating, even though they're both pretty much equivalent. Still, as I say, I really enjoyed the mission. In fact, this might be my favorite mission yet. I'm not sure why - maybe because there was a lot going on? There were enemy soldiers patrolling the woods, there was a camp to clear out, some enemy appeared rather suddenly at close range, while others could be taken out from a distance - just a lot of variety. And at no point could you really relax. You had to stay alert all the time. I know I've downloaded at least one other mission by you, but I haven't had a chance to try it yet. Still, if it's anywhere near as good as this one, I'm looking forward to it!

This was great. Thanks! I played this yesterday with just one other guy. We're both newbies, so it was very tough, but lots of fun. We didn't make it to the end, mostly because we needed to stop playing, but I'll definitely want to try it again. We did have a little problem with tasks not showing as completed, maybe because we both took the leadership position (on separate teams, though they were both a team of one). But one of us would seem to be credited with completing a task, which would then show as uncompleted for the other guy. The main problem with this was that respawns (for one of us) ended up inconveniently far back. But next time, we'll both join the same team. That will probably solve the problem. Thanks again, Bill PS. One other issue we had was that, after being shot (waiting for revival) the AI would keep shooting at us - just a constant stream of shots, even walking up to our dead body and continuing to shoot it. That's probably nothing to do with your mission, though, but with an Arma 3 bug, I'm guessing.

I'm new to Arma III - to all the Arma games - and to multiplayer games entirely, pretty much. But I've played around with downloaded single-player missions enough to get bored (I realize that this game is just in alpha, so no problem) and I thought I'd try multiplayer. But my experience has not been good, and I suspect I'm doing something wrong. I look for games with a green 'ping' for me, then look for coop games with just a few people which aren't password protected. Most seem to be Wasteland, which I think is a modded game, so I skip those. And I want something relatively simple, not player vs player, where it's a struggle to figure out who's on my side. (This is a struggle enough for me!) The first game I tried, nothing happened. I mean, NOTHING. Well, one guy was driving a vehicle far from the rest of us. I thought they were waiting around for more players, but after awhile, the server went down. OK, so I tried another. This had a few people scattered across the map doing random things. One guy near me was in a vehicle, blowing up random stuff. Being so new and so clueless, I didn't want to talk, but I listened in to conversations, and it seemed like no one really knew what to do. I'm not sure there were even enemies on that map, because everyone seemed to be doing random things by themselves. So I tried another game and ended up at Camp Maxwell, surrounded by soldiers. Supposedly, we had to defend it from attack. Great, huh? But, eventually, I realized that they were all NPCs. There were two players somewhere else on the map, but when I asked, they didn't know what was going on, either. Certainly, there was constant talk from the NPCs, but I never saw an enemy (although I was killed once). This morning, I tried another (but this was the Escape from Stratis coop, which I was at least slightly familiar from attempting on my own). I spawned injured, far from everyone else, but I finally caught up with them. However, there was constant - I mean CONSTANT - nonsensical orders being given. One of the other players said that the leader was a bot. I can believe it, because it never shut up. I never fired my gun and eventually gave up, mostly because of the noise, but also since I didn't have a clue what was going on. The thing is, there are a million servers, but not very many options for me, it seems. If I rule out those with long ping times, those which are password protected, the Wasteland and other mods, the expert games, the team-based player vs player, etc., there's been very, very few games left. And this has been my experience with those. Am I missing something? Note that I bought the game for single-player, since I don't normally play multi-player games (not since MUDs long, long ago). And I know it's still in alpha, so I'm not complaining. I'm just wondering if I'm missing something obvious. It wouldn't be the first time! :) PS. Note that one reason I'm bored with the single-player missions is that I'm really, really bad at them - even at Recruit difficulty. I seldom get very far. And I'm never going to get very good, either. I'll improve, hopefully, but not that much. I'm pretty inept at this stuff. So if I play multiplayer, I want a game where I can just follow the group and try not to get killed too often. So far, though, I haven't found a single game to play.

I see. That makes sense. But I just don't have the time for yet another game (not this time of year, at least), and I think I'm past my initial confusion about the basic controls/interface (when that would have been most useful). Well, whether I am or not, there's just so much time in a day,... unfortunately. :) Thanks.

Thanks! This worked great as a single-player mission. I especially enjoyed avoiding the patrolling vehicle. I even made it off the island (though two of my men weren't so lucky). :)

Thanks, but I really don't think that would help. My problem is just general ineptness, I think, combined with terrible eye/hand coordination. If I ever reach a point where I can do the basics, then maybe an instructor would help. I don't have a joystick, but you've put your finger on my biggest failing. I swing from one extreme to another. Every time I try to correct a problem, I overcorrect in the opposite direction. So, for example, when I try to slow my speed, I end up rapidly flying backwards. My helicopter just alternates between undesirable states. And if I do, finally, manage to stabilize things (without auto-hover), and slow down enough to attempt a landing, the wind seems to push me out of position. Although, even that might be due to inadvertent mouse movement, because it often takes very little before I'm swinging wildly out of control again. I don't know if I'll ever get good enough to fly a helicopter in a game, and it's too frustrating to fail over and over again (and too boring to spend too much time practicing, especially for so little result). But I'll keep giving it a try, a little bit at a time. Believe it or not, I'm better than I was, even if I still can't land without crashing. :) Bill

I'm not going to get Arma 2, because I have a limited amount of time. And I'd rather start to learn Arma 3 while the content isn't quite so overwhelming. (If you're lost in Arma 3, why wouldn't you be even worse off in Arma 2?) But you make a good case for Wasteland. I didn't realize that Wasteland might be a good place to practice my skills. I've been playing single-player missions and practicing in the Editor, but Wasteland might make a nice change of pace. Thanks! Bill

I haven't played the most recent version, but I played this earlier, and I just wanted to thank you. It was a lot of fun. As a newbie, I tend to get killed fairly quickly - sometimes very quickly - in other scenarios, but I made it to the island on this one. Maybe that was just luck, but I'll be playing it again. So,... thanks! Bill

I apologize. I didn't mean to seem accusing. Unfortunately, it's easy to seem that way online, when I'm just intending to be direct. And yeah, I'm 62, so I've been playing games for a long time. If we're just talking about PC games, though, I don't think I started until the mid-1980s. So I expect to get better, eventually. :)

I'm 62, yet I'm new to the Arma series. Indeed, I don't usually play multiplayer games at all, but I really enjoy the cooperation and teamwork of COOP Arma 3 play. (And at my age, I don't have friends who play these kinds of games.) I've played just a bit with the CiA (Comrades in Arms) group, in Europe, and that's been great. But they play when it's early afternoon here in Nebraska - Central Time Zone, GMT -5 (right now). I'm retired, so I can play then in the winter (I do pretty much nothing but play games during the winter), but I'm generally busy - or should be - during the daytime the rest of the year. So I'm looking for a group which mostly plays during the evenings here. I prefer COOP play, since I enjoy cooperation more than competition. I'm a cautious, deliberate kind of player who prefers to work with others to accomplish missions. Don't expect me to lead missions - and certainly not to fly helicopters (not if you expect me to land in one piece) - but I'll follow orders, watch my flank, and generally be dependable, if not particularly skillful. I'll take part in training, if you want - indeed, I'd welcome that. I'm not interested in the kind of group where everyone wants to be a hotshot, and I don't want to play Arma 3 like a first-person shooter. I want teamwork and... thinking. On the other hand, I'm not obsessed with realism, either. I'm not ex-military, and I don't have any particular interest in military gear. So consider me a casual or semi-serious player, I guess. Basically, I just want some friendly, levelheaded people in a similar time zone with whom I can play COOP games, mostly - preferably not at the highest difficulty settings. (Note that I'm flexible about all of this stuff, but that's what I'm really looking for.) What do you get out of it? Well, I'm not particularly skillful, I guess, but I know the commands. I watch YouTube videos to learn tactics (ShackTac, Dslyecxi, Jester814, etc.). I've got a headset with microphone, and I've used Teamspeak. And I've never played Arma 2, so I don't throw grenades when I want to open my inventory. :) I won't get in the way, and I hope even to be useful. But I'm not going to claim more than that. If you want to give me a try, there will be no hard feelings if you decide I'm not a good fit with your particular group (or, I hope, if I decide you're not exactly what I'm looking for, either). Questions? Please send me a private message. Thanks, Bill

Practice is certainly important, but you seem to think that everyone has the same capabilities. I've probably been playing computer games longer than you've been alive, but I didn't grow up with video games, and my eye/hand coordination stinks. I never get very good at these things, even after lots of play. Depending on what's required of me, I do get better after awhile,... usually. :) But the other part of this is that I play games for fun, and grinding isn't fun for me. Practice is OK, but I'd want to get paid to spend hours at a miserable rote task which wasn't fun at all. So I'll continue to practice, but I'm not going to spend all that much time at it. I'd rather just stick with infantry tactics, if it came to that, since that is fun. (Luckily, I don't have to walk AND chew gum in this game, huh?) So, for me, it's not just a matter of how much practice I'm going to put into it. And even if it were, I'd just switch to a different game if this one ceased to be fun. But I don't see that happening - certainly not yet! :)

I remapped my keys, per the various suggestions earlier, and that seemed to help, though I still haven't landed a helicopter without crashing - not once. (Occasionally, though, I'm only badly injured, not killed. Progress!) However, I was wondering about the suggestion above. Whenever I make a tight U turn (well, as tight as I can make it, anyway), I hugely INCREASE my speed, not decrease it. I've heard this before, that tight turns will drop speed, but that's never happened to me. So I can't seem to get close to the ground without vastly picking up speed unless I stop in midair and lower the... collective? And by the time I get anywhere close to the ground that way, I'm far, far from my landing point, having drifted backwards, forward, to one side, or all of them together. I can't get back to my landing point without picking up speed again (and, likely, getting more altitude to avoid mountains, trees, etc.), at which point I'm right back where I started. So, if a tight turn really will "lower speed quickly," what's the trick to it? (Or, more likely, what am I doing wrong. I try to keep the nose of the helicopter up, but it seems hard to do that and turn, too.)

OK, that makes more sense, since my game is up-to-date, and I don't see any difference in version requirements. Thanks. Will my mods be disabled automatically, or is that something I have to do manually, if I want to try a game on those servers? Right now, I'm seeing almost none which are green for me.

I know what you mean. I feel the same way. I have been practicing, a bit. And I can stay in the air OK. What I can't do is (1) shoot anything, or (2) land without crashing. (I mean a hard crash, generally - instant death.) And hell, I don't even understand the terms used here! So it's hard to tell what some of you are even talking about. Oh, well, no big deal. I spend most of my time practicing infantry maneuvers, because I'm not very good at them, either. I don't expect to ever learn to fly the helicopters, but I'll continue to practice, occasionally. After awhile, it's not much fun, and there's really no point in making this a chore. Besides, there's plenty to do in the game without flying. I appreciate the advice, nonetheless, and I'll keep messing around with it when I have a spare minute. Thanks.

Yeah, I figured that red was bad. :p Incompatible game version? That makes sense, since the servers using the developmental game are all red. But so was almost every other server, last time I checked. The vast majority, at least. I wonder if Steam isn't updating my game, for some reason? Thanks!

This is probably a dumb question, but what do the red and green dots under "Host" in Multiplayer signify? The red dots can't indicate password-protected servers, since I've filtered those out. They don't indicate ping, which is elsewhere on that page (not that it's reliable, at all). They don't seem to indicate modded games, or games that are already full, or anything else that I can think of. But, no doubt, I've missed something obvious. So what do they mean?

I'm using Windows 7 (64-bit). And no, I'm not alt-tabbing, or doing anything else but playing Arma III, when this happens. One time, Teamspeak was also running, but usually it's just Arma III. And Windows sounds still work. Whatever is causing it, it's just momentary. It's just that I can't get the sound back in Arma III without exiting the game and starting it back up again. (Otherwise, this wouldn't be a problem at all.) Maybe it's a driver, but I doubt it. This computer is less than six months old, so the drivers are generally up to date. Also, it never happens at any other time. It's only in Arma III. Admittedly, that's pretty much the only time I use my headphones, too, so maybe that has something to do with it. When this happens, I hear the same Windows sound as when I turn on my printer (the "Device Connect" sound). As I say, I never hear it when I'm not in Arma III, but that might just be because I only use my headphones then. That Windows hotfix really sounded like it might be the right issue, but it hasn't eliminated the problem. Thanks for the suggestions. I'll check out my drivers.

I've actually discovered that Arma III has been lying to me when it comes to 'ping.' At least, I've played a bit with the CiA - Comrades in Arms - group in Europe with no problem, even though Arma III consistently shows the ping to them as 2500. (When I connect, it turns out to be 160 or so, which has worked fine.) The biggest problem with European-based groups, for me, is that they play in the daytime (here). In the winter, that would be fine, but I tend to be busy the rest of the year. But as a casual Arma III gamer - and a complete newbie - I've been taking it slow. I play a little bit on single-player, in order to train myself, so one good co-op session a week works well enough. For now. :) Thanks! Bill

I think so, too. But thanks for that link! That video was really useful. (I'm subscribed to Jester814's channel, but I missed that one.) Still, it takes me so long to find what I want and actually give the orders that I'm usually dead by then. Heh, heh. Still, that should get better with practice. Thanks again, Bill

I downloaded this and tried it as single-player (and a single-player who's a complete newbie, at that). I took a vehicle on the long drive to the other side of the airport, then sneaked into the area from a wooded draw. But when I encountered a couple of enemy vehicles, and shot one of them with a rocket launcher, Arma III crashed. Oh, well, it's still in alpha, so no surprise. I didn't feel like going through all that again, not immediately, but I'll definitely try it later. I don't expect to get very far - I never do - but I need the practice! And it did look like fun. (Plus, you've got all those different vehicles, boats, and equipment for me to experiment with. That's great!) Thanks! Bill