the_demongod

It's not heavily console-oriented, but the menus UIs are console UIs that are irritating to navigate with a mouse compared to the A3 menus, and the new GM interface is a massive step down from A3 Zeus. I don't see it every being used for serious GMing of real ops. The inventory is the only thing that doesn't seem very usable on console (and ironically it's the only GUI in the game I find tolerable). The game itself is scaled down to shorter-range conflicts (mostly by the reduced eye zoom), either to make it more accessible to people who are new to Arma, or possibly to save performance (game might not be able to render enough detail at range yet), or maybe both. This is a good example of what I was talking about earlier; since we don't know exactly what BI's intentions are, it's hard to know whether BI has reduced the eye zoom just for the purposes of Reforger, or whether it's an indication of how they think Arma 4 should be. Without knowing, it's hard to provide feedback, since saying "this sucks, Arma isn't like this" isn't constructive if it's just a Reforger-specific design, yet accepting it without comment doesn't tell BI that Arma 4 really needs to have the original eye zoom back. This is most likely nothing more than a communication issue on BI's end. I assume these changes are indeed just temporary experimentation with more casual gameplay, similar to the Argo project. But without that context it's hard to not assume the worst and provide a lot of critical feedback to make sure that A4 isn't going to end up feeling like Reforger.

I agree that the new game leaves some things to be desired, and that Reforger seems somewhat console-oriented (it remains to be seen which of those design choices will be propagated to A4 or whether they are just for Reforger). That being said, this is a complete misunderstanding of how game engines work. UE5 is completely incapable of handling the terrain detail and scales of Arma, and the DCS engine isn't designed for small-scale infantry or physics in the slightest. The graphics technology in DCS are not in any way appropriate for a game like Arma; just because they both look realistic doesn't mean that they're at all similar under the hood or capable of being dropped into a completely different use case. Game programming is a lot more smoke-and-mirrors than you seem to think, the infrastructure that runs these games is not general enough that you would be able to build an FPS in the DCS engine or a flight sim in the Arma engine and get good results. Trying to build Arma on top of either one of these engines would take as much effort to adapt them as it would to make a new engine, at which point you may as well just write a bespoke engine that's perfectly tailored to your needs.

Nillers confirmed on discord that a Reforger section of the forums is indeed coming eventually; they had some technical issues setting it up. Our patience will be rewarded.

Are we going to get a BI forums section for Reforger? Wouldn't mind discussing the game away from the chaos of discord.

Unfortunately the sensor view is limited to 16km range, meaning that there's no way to see lasers outside of this range. You can still lock them by spamming R until you cycle to it, but it means you need to know that there's a laser out there to be locked, and if there are multiple you can't easily pick between the two. It would be nice if there were a better way to discriminate against targets at range. Cruise missiles can fly for hundreds if not thousands of kilometers so it's too bad that it becomes difficult to lock targets outside of 16km. As a side note, it would be equally nice if the missiles stopped leaving a giant smoke trail as they went... cruise missiles do create an initial plume of smoke as their rocket booster pushes them up to operating speed, but after that it falls away and the missile continues on a jet engine, which shouldn't leave smoke. It just looks kind of bad, you can shoot the missile all the way across the diagonal of Altis and it's still leaving a giant smoke trail when it arrives. It should look like this.

Dude you've been posting this question all over reddit and now here asking about this. Please go figure it out on your own, if you don't sit down and think through how you'd like the controller to behave for you, you'll never learn. How do you think the rest of us did it? It's better to build your own profile that matches your needs rather than getting one that's set up for someone else's and it literally takes less than 5 minutes. Start with the trigger for fire, maybe thumb rest button for temporary zoom, and so on. It's not that hard.

It should be usable as a support provider though, that way it doesn't require someone to go manually launch the missile. The other issue with the current implementation is that the sensor panel only goes up to 16km, making it really hard to use beyond that range.

It has nothing to do with looking at the weapon, you don't have to look down to be distracted.

Edit: why the hell did this get moved to this thread, the entire point was to stimulate a discussion I have seen discussions about granular weapon interaction before, and typically the idea is not particularly well received. The general sentiment tends to be something like "it would be cool, but it's sort of outside the scope of the game and most players wouldn't want it." That's about how I felt too. However, that view couldn't be more wrong. I recently picked up a game called Receiver, by Wolfire games. It's an FPS that was made for a 7 day challenge, and completely changed the way I view this issue. The game is nothing but a simple randomly generated series of rooms filled with extremely simple enemies, gun turrets, and flying taser bots. The player gets a single handgun, and a random number of spare rounds and magazines. The weapon interaction is 100% accurate. Every function of the handguns is modeled and controllable by combinations of the T, R, E, and Z keys. Ammunition is stored loose, and has to be manually inserted into the magazines. It is the single most realistic firearm-centric game I've ever played. The effects the handling has on the gameplay are beyond description. The center of the issue I now see is this: in an FPS game, reloading is an extremely easy task. You press a single button, and your character reloads. Your attention stays outwards, towards the enemy. Reloading seems like just an arbitrary cooldown for your shooting. Receiver taught me that this could not be further from the truth. Reloading actually takes a large amount of focus inwards, away from the enemy, and the dynamics it introduces into the gunplay are awesome. It fundamentally changes the way gunfights play out. All of my personal experience with firearms has been in relaxed, non-combat environments and so I had never considered the mental load reloading would put on a soldier in a stressful situation. The fact that someone could make a game whose only feature is detailed weapon handling is a testament to this. The rest of the game -- enemies, environment, story -- are basically the bare minimum for a finished game, and yet it's one of the most compelling and interesting games I've played. You only ever do one thing in the game, search for cassette tapes and spare ammunition while defending yourself, yet I've racked up 7 hours in the two days I've owned it. You really have to play it to understand it. Detailed weapon interaction sounds cool in theory, but doesn't seem that compelling in the grand scheme of things. Playing this game, however, will entirely change your view about what it means to be in a firefight. I know it may not be reasonable to expect BI to implement something like this in the next iteration of Arma, but I think it's absolutely critical to pushing the realism of infantry combat further, and it would be a difference of leaps and bounds, not just steps. BI, please have your designers play this game and decide for themselves.

Hahaha that's great, I'm stealing this. I too play without the "Xbox UI" and I know what you mean, the missions are often clearly designed around use of the waypoint markers, which is especially hard when it's something like "pick up an item from somewhere in our base" that leads you on a hunt all over the base just to find your gear.

A story is the last thing BI should be focusing on. As far as I'm concerned, Arma 4 should be a platform first and foremost. Ideally they wouldn't waste a single second on making assets, but obviously they'll need to since the vanilla game needs to have playable content. If you want an amazing story, go learn the editor and make one yourself.

Oh I agree, I've been hoping for some official confirmation that there will be an Arma 4, even though it was pretty obvious it was going to happen. I have so much to say about improvements that can be made to guided weapons and sensors, I just hope BI will be willing to spend some time focusing on bringing them up to the quality of the rest of the game.

I'm of the opinion that the game should be set in the present day or up to but no more futuristic than Arma 3 is. That eliminates the issue of trying to predict the future or focus too much on fancy drone swarms or anything. The best setting for Arma 4 is the one that is the most generalized. It needs to be designed to be flexible to suit as many periods as possible. That rules out anything in the past. The past has less tech, the future has more. It's always easier to remove features than add them, so if you want to play in WWII or the cold war, that's what mods are for. Picking a setting in the past limits the scope of the game. If the game took place during WWII there would be no guided weapons, leaving modders to have to do all the footwork, which is why I can safely rule out the possibility of that happening, since the average Arma player probably wants to fight in a modern setting. I too prefer the iron sights, map and compass style of playing but that's something that's easy to create by simply avoiding the items you don't want to use. Personally I'm the most interested in seeing missiles get a proper flight and guidance model, it's the biggest sore thumb in Arma 3.

This is a little tangential but on the topic of the fabled Arma 4, does anyone have any idea if BI is interested in implementing some of the features that came with Nvidia's Pascal architecture in Enfusion? Particularly Simultaneous Multi-Projection, I feel like with the flexibility that Enfusion will bring, stuff like VR will become far more viable in Arma.

Oh I'm aware of that, I have played way more DCS than I have BMS but BMS's dynamic campaign just makes the whole sim feel alive and is something that DCS sorely lacks. Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk