ARMA 3

[anvi]

I finally got hooked on this. I thought it was never gonna happen because maybe I got burned out on Arma2 or something. But I love this now, I just needed to spend more time on the various modes and mods and stuff. That said, most of the modes are a failure to me. My home is with the various missions people make, they are getting more and more advanced and better over the years. I'd really like to use someone elses code and ideas to make some awesome stuff for myself to play.

 

[forumvisitor#451]

I finally got hooked on this. I thought it was never gonna happen because maybe I got burned out on Arma2 or something. But I love this now, I just needed to spend more time on the various modes and mods and stuff. That said, most of the modes are a failure to me. My home is with the various missions people make, they are getting more and more advanced and better over the years. I'd really like to use someone elses code and ideas to make some awesome stuff for myself to play.

What you like? I got some cool recommendations in this thread but more diverse options the better.

 

[anvi]

I like making my own missions and I mostly like flying so I played a lot of Ground Attack, and I really liked Close Air Support Day 2. It's not many missions and they aren't very good imo, but I love that it can spawn missions while you are in the air, and it was menu driven too. And you can refuel and re-arm well, so I'd like to reverse engineer it and make my own flying campaign. I also like Antistasi and Hunter 6 but they are both lacking in some ways, I would love to take parts of both and CAS Day2 and make something similar, if only for myself. If I make complex missions it just runs like a slideshow, too many scripts. But I want long missions, so being able to spawn battles realistically when I reach waypoints or whatever is a big deal. I could make an action packed campaign that hopefully will have good frame rate.

How about you?

 

[deuxhero]

Signs it will be terrible aside, what should the single player campaign of an ARMA4 do? The nearish future of ARMA3 wasn't great and already outdated.

Since it's just stuff mods are based on anyways, I think there should be two smaller campaigns using the same terrain with slight variations (mostly man-made stuff), one set in WW2 (or a Greece style immediate post-WW2 internal conflict) and the other in the modern day. That would cover most of the two most popular equipment sets people would mod in. Some abandoned arms caches, and really desperate local forces could allow reusing WW2 stuff in modern day (ala the Phillipines using modified M3 SMGs). Abandoned and forgotten mine fields would also be an interesting hazard. Third worldia can get some really weird arms combinations post WW2 and in the present day, which would explain a lot of gameplay conveniences (Could plausibly have Kar98ks, M1 Garands, and Bren guns all in 30-06 when using WW2 surplus, while modern foreign aid and purchases could have AKs and early M16 pattern rifles serve side by side)

 

[anvi]

Yeah I'd like more Arma2 style. But if I could wave a magic wand and get the dream Arma4, I'd have them figure out how to do 64bit data streaming well, and have much larger maps. 250km is awesome when you are on foot, but in a jet you can't fly for more than a few seconds without thinking about turning around. In Arma2 you could fly outside of Chernarus and it would create some empty looking landscape which at least felt less restrictive. But I'd really like to see some innovation that could allow big maps. Either flight sim size (600km squared?) or the whole hog like Minecraft, have it generate hills and valleys and cities endlessly, but with good graphics. The main thing is big and interesting regions. I miss Takistan, those huge Afghani mountain ranges were awesome for flying gunships and jets. The dream would be to have 1000 mile map or more and have some players fighting in a forest, and have them call in an airstrike that's 10 minutes away.

Besides that I think they need to start doing all their missions with set pieces that spawn as you approach. Some of the missions I played were so much better because of that. As soon as you fill up a mission in the editor, it runs like crap. But if the enemies only spawn just outside your visual range as you approach, then you can have complex missions without killing the frame rate. They should add this functionality in the editor so you can click trigger, spawns enemies, then you set up the enemies. Maybe they are an ambush, maybe they are chilling unaware, the map maker can set this up and have it trigger when the player gets close. And they should make stuff de-spawn too. Currently you can do this but it's not part of the editor.

Most of all I think they should come up with an all encompassing game mode that showcases all of Arma's features. Something like King of the Hill but bigger, less Playstation, more use of vehicles. And again bigger areas, people seem to struggle with balancing aircraft to not just bomb everyone and ruin everyones fun (except the pilot), but all they need to do is spread things out. Again in the Takistan map with CTI, I used to hunt people with gunships and jets and I loved every minute. But half the towns were controlled by the enemy and they could shoot me down with AA guns and missiles and shit so it wasn't overpowered. It balanced itself really well. Most modes are stupid because as soon as the planes go up, it becomes a Michael Bay movie, or they just don't have aircraft. And they need to figure out persistent worlds. All these multiplayer modes suck for me because whenever I want to play, the servers with decent ping are mid mission. And the missions only last an hour or so anyway, so there's no time to get stuck in. And again in Arma2OA CTI you got to control troops and vehicles more like an RTS. If you wanted. They seem to have given up on that now. It's in Arma3 but it's not in most of the missions people play. I would unify the players with a killer mode.

 

[V17]

I played the ArmA 2 mod, tried the standalone in the early days and then finally tried it out of curiosity after the supposed 'full release' including the Enfusion engine, and I was shocked. Visually the draw/render distances and 'simulation bubble' around a player are many times smaller, while performance is worsened. Ballistic simulation is nonexistent. Vehicle simulation is less realistic. There's no existing base of AI programming for it, I can't imagine that if they start over from scratch that it will be improved over what we have in ArmA 3. A3 has already lost some amount of functionality itself with general AI driving having gotten worse since release. In short, there is every possible indication that they have built themselves an 'engine' to power PvP console-friendly shooters.

A bit late with this, but I'm not that skeptical. Enfusion at the time of the DayZ engine update was a quite different thing than Enfusion now. Since then they hired new engine devs to work on it, one of them being a friend of mine, so I know there has been much work done at least.
Now obviously he won't leak anything about the games they're working on because he wants to keep the job for now, but I can ask him about his opinions on the capability of Enfusion and the development goals in the context of future gameplay, scale or optimisation for consoles.

 

[Hace El Oso]

Now obviously he won't leak anything about the games they're working on because he wants to keep the job for now, but I can ask him about his opinions on the capability of Enfusion and the development goals in the context of future gameplay, scale or optimisation for consoles.

I would take anything he says with a handful of salt because I assume he wasn’t working for Bohemia back when ArmA was much more closely related to the VBS products and so doesn’t have the full picture or, if he’s younger, the same sensibilities.
But if you ask him for his opinion I’d be happy to hear it.

 

[V17]

Apparently even talking about the engine is off-limits, anything that could be seen as talking in the name of BI has to go through the marketing department. Annoying, but it makes sense I guess.

However I can safely say stuff that has been published already anyway at various points, some of which is slightly relevant.
Firstly Enfusion was made specifically to handle larger open worlds and does so better than Real Virtuality - the exact same areas perform better in tests, including faster loading etc.
Secondly any changes seen in DayZ here regarded as regressions are simply the results of decisions during the development of DayZ unrelated to the Enfusion engine. Which probably surprises no one who followed the development.
Considering that Enfusion was afaik officially announced only last year I think it's safe to assume that DayZ is not a showcase of its current capabilities (this is my speculation).

Now BI can of course decide to embrace decline anyway, but I'm pretty sure it won't be the fault of the engine if it happens.

 

[forumvisitor#451]

Judging from screens it will be alright.

It just needs three things and it will instantly rise above everything else on market (like Squad, Hell Let Loose etc.) - keep it open, keep AI and no simulation bubble.

How about you?

I like endless missions like Pilot Wipeout on Altis or Saint 4-1.

When I want to play something with infantry/vehicles, I like Dynamic Recon Ops to play with a buddy and/or stuff like Dynamic Civil War or Antistasi.

Basically everything is double cool when playing in coop, that applies to Arma as well.

I cannot commit to it now but I semi-regularly play on Zeus Community server (UK based) - they have vanilla gaming nights, DLC gaming nights and fully modded (RHS, ACE, etc.) gaming nights. Around 40 players regularly and 90% of time coop.

 

[deuxhero]

But will Arma 4 have females? It's one of those things that mods can't really do in Arma 3 (all outfits are made for one body so changing clothes will change body, VA is near impossible for amateur work). It's weird seeing a total lack of them in the civilian population, not to mention resistance/partisans.

 

[forumvisitor#451]

Arma 4 should allow different skeleton animations but I think devs should not waste time with it as a minor thing. Its gonna be overlooked by large portion of community.

Besides they should not include them only for journos to get mad and thus BI gaining publicity (again).

 

[Konjad]

I asked BI if there are any chances of releasing Arma 3 and 2 on GOG or somewhere else as an installation file that requires no internet connection to install and run.

For context, OFP and the first ArmA are on GOG, ArmA 2 was on GOG but it has been removed, ArmA 3 was always only Steam.

This is the response I've got, basically no chances for that, and in consequence I'm quite certain this applies for Reforger and ArmA 4 in the future.

No it will not, it has been looked into in the past, the multiplayer part is too dependent on Steam. We could make a singleplayer only version but I don't see much sense in that.

The first game's were fine because they defined your identity via your name or serial key you used to activate the game. But since the transition to Steam all games use the Steam account ID and its integral to all multiplayer functionality.

 

[Rocket-Propelled Game]

Any ARMA III mods that turn the game into Tarkov/DMZ/Extraction shooter?

 

[Konjad]

Any ARMA III mods that turn the game into Tarkov/DMZ/Extraction shooter?

Just play King of the Hill