ARMA 3 Released

[Steel]

Anyone bought it?

I'd be most interested in things like AI and control of infantry: do you feel like you're a slightly spazzy gun turret when aiming, and then develop rickets when walking? How smart (or not) are the squad members and opposition?

It looks even prettier than the previous titles, how does it compare visuals and performance wise to contemporaries such as BF3?

[Sea Skimmer]

Unless they finally fixed the vehicle physics I couldn't have less interest.

[CaptHawkeye]

They didn't, and the vehicle damage models are still based on health bars.

Pass.

[Steel]

Ah yes, that was on my list of things to look out for too. I never liked the tank health bars. Given that even games like world of tanks have a vastly more sophisticated system there really is no excuse for it now.

The vehicle traction and power was always wonky too. If you wanted to go up an incline forget about it, everything has about 1/3 of the hp/ton it should have, and then when you were going downhill you could get up to ludicrous speed and it was like you were sliding on glass at that point and friction seemed to disappear.

Its sad that they're being overhauled in terms of realism for vehicle combat by things like Battlefield and WoT. The infantry controls just don't feel tight enough to get it for just that, so I'm not really feeling the need to get this for my large scale warfare needs as much as I used to.

[Tolya]

The infantry controls are much better this time, to the point of actually being playable. And 22 years after Catacomb 3D did it mostly right no less. UI is still abysmal and basic things like opening doors is just impossible. It doesn't matter though, because AI can't use buildings AT ALL.

The worlds they keep building are bigger and more convincing with each iteration, but there's not much to do there. Considering how much of a system hog this game is, setting up a huge scale tactical engagement on various fronts (270 sq. km map after all) is just impossible without a Cray class machine.

Apart from fixing infantry controls (mostly - I swear, they should fire their newly founded QA on the spot, because the bugs that are left would be obvious to a half blind donkey), they also fixed (mostly) the inventory system.

Yeah, I bought it in alpha (guilty), but only because I am a hopeless BI fanboy. Having said that, I doubt I will repeat the same thing next time around. Fixing the goddamn basic design problems seems just too damn difficult and the whole experience feels like it has been crafted in a Czech garage somewhere just seems too much for them.

I mean, c'mon, if your BIGGEST COMMUNITY FAN, who started cooperating with you on a regular basis, making tutorial&promo videos (dslyecxi), posts a 40 minute rant on the hopeless UI, along with gameplay examples of each irritating thing, finding NEW BUGS along the way during recording the video, then there's something going on. Of course nobody gave a fuck and the problems still persist, even though their own feedback tracker has tons of people actually suggesting much better solutions, along with detailed implementation instructions. Add to that the fact that they made a much better UI in VBS2, so clearly, it is not impossible.

Oh, and as for the "release", they released the entire game on the dev branch many days ago. So, anything that has changed is the price and the logo (removed "beta" tags).

Stay away if you are not a hardcore Arma fan. And if you are, make sure you have time to play multiplayer, because the campaign is still a month away (they couldnt make the deadline). I vaguely remember "many exciting singleplayer scenarios" on launch, but they only released a bunch of shitty showcases, so there's absolutely nothing to do in the vanilla game.

As usual, the community will release a shitton of mods, none of which will fix the core problems with the game, but will add glitter and milwank. It seems that at this point Bohemia is just unable to release a "proper" game, with normal gameplay. I mean, if Battlefield arcade games are doing a better job at immersing you in a battle, then clearly you are doing something wrong.

[CaptHawkeye]

I bet BI literally just wants to make training sims for the military. I knew BI was having problems back when ArmA 2 was released in a non-functional state and never really improved. It was super apparent after some modders designed a game based on their engine that like it or not ended up being 100x more popular than their clunky, overweight milsim. BI is like a lot of indie developers these days in that it seems they just want to make an engine and maybe some tech demos for sales and then let modders handle content delivery. This seems to work just fine for guys like Eagle Dynamics. Who knows if they'll figure it out before consumers blow off their cash for the 3rd public beta with the ArmA series?

[Mr Bean]

I mean, c'mon, if your BIGGEST COMMUNITY FAN, who started cooperating with you on a regular basis, making tutorial&promo videos (dslyecxi), posts a 40 minute rant on the hopeless UI, along with gameplay examples of each irritating thing, finding NEW BUGS along the way during recording the video, then there's something going on. Of course nobody gave a fuck and the problems still persist, even though their own feedback tracker has tons of people actually suggesting much better solutions, along with detailed implementation instructions. Add to that the fact that they made a much better UI in VBS2, so clearly, it is not impossible.

Who is this magic man and where might I found sad video? It sounds like a good watch.

As usual, the community will release a shitton of mods, none of which will fix the core problems with the game, but will add glitter and milwank. It seems that at this point Bohemia is just unable to release a "proper" game, with normal gameplay. I mean, if Battlefield arcade games are doing a better job at immersing you in a battle, then clearly you are doing something wrong.

Even when projects go off the deep end like Project Reality Battlfield seems to just have the better engine these days even if they can't do 50km sized fights.

[Steel]

Even when projects go off the deep end like Project Reality Battlfield seems to just have the better engine these days even if they can't do 50km sized fights.

I kind of feel that Battlefield and OFP/ArmA approached the large scale combat game problem from opposite directions.

OFP started with a large scale, although clunky, game. Battlefield started with a moderately big game focused around good gameplay.

Since then the ArmA series has become larger and although a bit more refined, still very clunky in places and possibly almost regressing in others.

The Battlefield series meanwhile is continuously increasing its scale and realism while retaining and improving on the playability side, to the point where in BF3 there maps that were pretty vast yet also loads of cool stuff to do.

It looks like the Battlefield series has caught up with the scale in every meaningful sense, while ArmA hasn't improved on the gameplay much at all. This leaves Battlefield being both better now, and more likely to be better in the future.

The only thing I can see that ArmA offers now with the scale is just larger tracts of emptiness to put a bit of extra time between engagements ie being shot in the head by someone hiding in a bush a mile away and starting again.

[CaptHawkeye]

Comparing Battlefield to Flashpoint is apples to oranges. The games both have...guns...and tanks? Flashpoint was so cool in 2001 because the raw technical marvel of its scale covered for its rough design and UI pitfalls. Besides it's not like many other games were doing either of the later much better. But while everyone else kept refining UI and controls BI just kept doing the same thing over and over again relying more and more on marketing buzzwords and bullet points from 2001 that didn't mean anything in 2008 and on. Problem is really that BI does commercial game development on the side of making training sims for the military, so they have no real impetus to change especially if people are dumb enough to keep handing them money for crap.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

Ah, the new version of Operation Flashpoint - I mean VBS2 - I mean Arma. Still stuck with the same shitty AI and physics that it had 12 years ago. Its authorability hasn't gotten much better either. As much as the DayZ mod sucks, I'm still very impressed with what they were able to accomplish with such a horrible engine and scripting tools.

[Tolya]

Who is this magic man and where might I found sad video? It sounds like a good watch.

For your viewing pleasure: http://dslyecxi.com/arma-3-fixing-the-action-menu/

[Tolya]

The biggest problem with the OFP series is that they were never really big about any kind of gameplay. It's a piece of software that sells entertainment through immersion and immersion only. It was fine in 2001, but in 2013 that is kinda crap.