Tyrant-0

Hey guys - thanks a lot for the replies. Sorry it took me so long to get back here. Real life kind of got in the way for a while. I appreciate what everyone had to say - even the guys calling me out for the Battlefield/ Cod comparisons. Either way, I stand by what I said. It's important to understand that I am definitely NOT bashing Arma. I do not regret my purchase. But at the same time, am a little frustrated. I have been tinkering around with the editor for some time now, and really believe this is where I'm going to get my money's worth out of the game. True - you need to watch some Youtube videos for an hour or so before you get a basic handle on it, but I don't mind a learning curve. And I fully appreciate the fact that these are, indeed, showcases. I even agree with some of you that say I'm a bit too nit-pickey on them. But if all they wanted to do was show off the lighting, couldn't they have just added a benchmark mode that did that? Or a video? The water effects, lighting effects, etc are excellent, especially for a game that still has so much polish left to go. But I don't need to sit through a glorified "challenge" mode to appreciate them to their capacity. I guess it boils down to this: I don't want or need ArmA to be super realistic - but I want it to suspend my disbelief (as Ghost Recon, SWAT 4 and Rogue Spear did before it). If the campaign mode can't do that then... it's disappointing (and I fully understand the "showcases" are a far cry from a campaign, but they are all I have to make assumptions on at the moment). But not a deal breaker. The real issue is that the things they get wrong are the easy things. Not the hard ones. They nailed what a UH 60 sounds like in the distance, the range and velocity of a 5.56 round, the handling and recoil of a 9mm pistol. The things they got wrong (kit, force size and terrain considerations) aren't things that you need an Army veteran with 5 years in the special forces community to point out -- they are things any 20-something who took a semester of ROTC knows better about. I know I can fix it myself in the editor (and don't worry! I have :) ) . I know countless other military vets are fixing it as I type this on their multiplayer servers. My question is, if it's so easy to fix in the first place, doesn't add anything to the scenarios -- but detracts from those who know better, and takes away from the claim that this is more detail-oriented and realistic than the competitors, why didn't BI do it from the start?

I know how this looks - a whopping one post, and a title that at first, looks like troll post. But I am legitimately curious. A preface: the only experience I have with previous Arma games is the free demo for ArmA 2 - which I appreciated for its attempts at accuracy, but ultimately found hilarious. I was unable to split up fireteams, simple soldiering techniques such as bounding overwatch, suppressing fire and break contact were mostly non-existent, enemies were woefully unrealistic (see you at 1 klick in heavy brush, but not hear you walking behind them on crunchy gravel?) etc. I appreciated things like realistic bullet physics (superbly done!), teammates that were constantly communicating, if not very helpful in a firefight, and realistic damage models. In the end, I didn't see a compelling reason to move away from my old school Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six -- I wasn't impressed enough to pull the trigger on buying Arma 2, but saw enough promise to invest in Arma 3 (especially for the price they were asking for the Alpha). The mod community alone will likely make the game worth the price of admission. That said, playing the scenarios in the Arma 3 alpha/ beta -- I am once again frustrated. Many of the details are right... but the big picture is way off. Weapons sound very realistic (I'm overjoyed that I can identify what I'm being shot at with based on the sound alone - great job). The handling is much less clunky than Arma 2, and many other small improvements. The Bottom Line Up Front: many of the scenarios in the Beta do not represent realistic military scenarios - ether conventional or unconventional. Instead, they put a special operator, alone, with kit that is not appropriate for the mission or terrain at hand, and ask them to do something that would often take between 8 and 20 men to accomplish in real life. The end result is a game that feels far more "Hollywood" than is advertised. Let's just take the "Night" showcase as an example. Why in the world am I alone? This is easily the job of a 4-man amphibious special ops team -- if not more. I'm facing an overwhelming force, expected to make contact with the enemy, and draw fire. Yet I'm alone? Talk about a James Bond moment. A 4-man fireteam would not only increase my odds of survival, but create a much better distraction, and be more effective at engaging the enemy. Yet they just send one man... Next, let's look at the kit brought on the mission. Large, open, arid terrain; night time operation, ambush techniques are required for success. Where is my night vision? At the start of the op, it is a little too bright to be using it, but what if things go wrong and I'm stuck out there for a bit? With such long sight lines, limited cover and concealment and such an overwhelming enemy force, why am I not given optics more suited to the terrain? Rather than a DMR with a 4x scope, I'm given a carbine with a red dot? Rather than a LAW, I'm given a couple of satchel charges? Where is my first aid kit? Close air support is out of the question, and if I get injured, I'm going to have to suck it up for the foreseeable future, but I'm not given any sort of blowout kit? If the game wanted to FORCE me into close quarters (a bad idea in such open terrain), why did they send me with an unsupressed weapon? Flash hider, even? No such luck. I understand weight is a huge consideration in such an operation, but again, it raises the question - why am I alone out there? A 4 man fire team, you can have 2 guys with a LAW, one grenadier, one marksman and everyone carrying a satchel charge. It isn't just common sense, its vastly more realistic than the scenario presented. 4 - 8 men could distribute kit items among themselves, attack multiple objectives at once, put more fire down range, and leave just as small a "footprint" as one man. It's why SOF operates in small fireteams in the first place. Give those 4- 8 men longer-range weapons with suitable optics, blood-stopping kits and NODs, and you would actually be on the right track. Don't even get me started on the SCUBA and Vehicle showcases. They are laughable at best, and undermine the notion that the game is a simulator, as opposed to CoD with better bullet physics and no regen health. It looks like 13 years later and Ghost Recon is still the game to beat... I understand the scenarios are meant to showcase improvements and features within the game, and aren't meant to be a replacement for the campaign mode found in the full game. But all they are showing off to me is the same reason I was reluctant to buy Arma 2. Realistic bullet physics, attention to detail on things like mag sizes, and 1-3 shot kills, do not make a game realistic. Put Battlefield on "hardcore" mode and it has all of the above. What was the reasoning in making the scenarios as unrealistic as they are currently? Will the campaign improve on the lack of military realism, or will it be more of the same with a story attached? Thanks for your time - and feel free to set me straight on any errors I may have made above.