ARMA Reforger - alternate 1989 cold war milsim - now available on Early Access

[forumvisitor#451]

I am buying this and not even playing it. Even though Arma 3 was succesful, it was incredibly long supported. To release it this way is a business decision that makes sense to me, although is not liked very much and I understand that.

How else would you do it though? More Arma 3 DLC's? Subscription fees?

It's time to choose:

1) devs who have mod support from the start, take care of community, embrace it, push things forward, let their stuff be open, reasonable monetization

2) monetization hell, limits everywhere

Yes BI is guilty of "mods will fix it" but that is not completely the case. And so what? You get the experience that nothing else provides.

If Arma 4 sucks then I will shit on BI. Not now though.

 

[Alienman]

I don't think they need financial help. They have more games than Arma, and DayZ was, and still is a huge success. Also they took a huge investment from Tencent recently. So, please don't buy their games thinking poor indie Bohemia.

 

[Konjad]

They have enough money to waste it on stuff like buying a tank to drive it around for fun, so they surely aren't next to bankruptcy.

 

[Hace El Oso]

Well, a friend bought this for me and himself, so I've been playing it a bit. It's obviously a skeleton frame, a glorified tech demo for ArmA 4. You get disconnected constantly from servers. But having said that...

The presentation and delivery are very nostalgic for the original Operation Flashpoint and sims/games from the 2000s. Everything from the french horn music in the menu to the rather remarkable re-creation of Everon. Whoever made it put quite a lot of love into those things. I can't deny that it had an immediate effect on me and gave me a flutter of that excitement I've rarely felt with games in recent years.

The realism and density of the terrain, landscape, inhabited areas and interpretation/scaling of distances visually and in combat are plainly conducive to infantry fighting rather than the cyborg-like visual clarity of ArmA 3 and obvious lean towards Gulf War levels of machine lethality. It reminds me very much of real-world military operating environments and training exercises, which I suppose means it's simply more natural and 'humble'. The graphics are very pretty, but it's the improved fidelity with reality that is the real payoff. This is also the case with the movement through the world, both on foot and by vehicle. Being able to instantly modulate your movement speed with the mousewheel is really quite nice, and the animations effortlessly adapting to it is very immersive. The weight, center of gravity and transmissions of the vehicles are also very satisfying and driving rally-style around Everon is quite entertaining.

Of course, being made by Bohemia it does instantly remind you of Kingdom Come. It is modelling the same part of the world, after all. Even the soundtrack (if you leave it on) sounds very similar, right down to the menu music. There's a tune that sounds just like the KCD sneaky 'mystery' music that plays when you're approaching an enemy-held objective and I instantly felt like I was controlling an AK/M16-toting Henri in 1989.

The biggest potential problem is the AI, which is essentially non-existent and what is there is completely retarded. I don't know if I can think of a single sim/series over the last 20 years that has had AI improve from one title to the next, and without good AI that can do well with tasks like convoy driving from point to point and dismounting, all of this will only be good for PvP, which isn't the point or strength of ArmA. Maybe this is going to be an exception. I heard from a modder that he'd seen signs that the AI was being developed to be more autonomous and less dependent on placed AI 'modules' and waypoint orders, which would be encouraging.

Speaking of modding, it appears that it is actually quite a bit easier to mod, at the cost of graphical fidelity being so onerous (all vehicles have interiors, etc.). I know some modding groups have already successfully imported equipment and vehicles, and I'm tempted to start getting to grips with it now rather than wait. Supposedly having to write text configs will be very limited.

That's all I can think of reporting at the moment.

 

[anvi]

Hidden & Dangerous 2 has the mouse wheel movement speed thing, glad to see it come to Arma. I was replaying H&D2 lately because I've been remaking some of the missions in Arma3. Glad to see Arma finally getting some updates, I'm excited for ArmA 4. Although as I've said for years, I think what they need the most is a good mode that unifies the players and showcases all the various strengths of the game. I can't believe after all these years KOTH is still the best anyone can come up with. It's so shit. I think BIS should hire a game designer on contract to just build a game mode with their existing tools.

 

[ADL]

Star Citizen has the scroll wheel movement speed thing too and it's one of my favorite features from that game so I was very happy to see it in Reforger.
Bohemia should take a cue from Wildcard's ARK Sponsored Mods program and just start paying modders to make cool shit as a full time gig. You go through an application process and anyone who gets accepted gets a monthly stipend as long as they provide progress and/or playable builds of what they're working on. Pretty much what they've been doing with ARMA3's Creator DLCs except it's all released for free. They'd make it back from people buying their games for the mods.

 

[Hace El Oso]

Hidden & Dangerous 2 has the mouse wheel movement speed thing, glad to see it come to Arma. I was replaying H&D2 lately because I've been remaking some of the missions in Arma3. Glad to see Arma finally getting some updates, I'm excited for ArmA 4. Although as I've said for years, I think what they need the most is a good mode that unifies the players and showcases all the various strengths of the game. I can't believe after all these years KOTH is still the best anyone can come up with. It's so shit. I think BIS should hire a game designer on contract to just build a game mode with their existing tools.

H&D2 is one of my all time favorites, I’d forgotten about the mouse wheel movement in it (and very smooth animations). I wonder if there’s any workforce overlap, with both being Czech studios.

As for ArmA 3 game modes, I’d say that the user-made Antistasi guerilla campaigns and BECTI(a ‘capture the island’ variant) are the best. Both best center on playing with one or a handful of comrades each acting as squad leaders of AI troopers against the enemy.

‘Evolution’ for ArmA 1 was the first of these and hugely popular, a great persistent war campaign with varied objective types, defense management and AI commanding. Probably my favorite of them all. ArmA 4 initially being a remake of all the Flashpoint islands with something like that integrated would be real incline.

 

[anvi]

I play Antistasi mostly, I used to love BECTI but only really in Arma2. In Arma3 I haven't enjoyed that mode at all. They developed it more but I just don't like it now. The main differences I can tell are that in Arma2 you could control your own squads and send them on missions and stuff, or have them join you and you could assault some village away from all the mayhem. I loved that. In Arma3 CTI they seem to have avoided letting us have our own squads. Also the main thing for me is how short the missions are. I don't really like shooting much, I play mostly for the tanks and gunships and planes. In Arma2 CTI I could play for a few hours and end up with a gunship or plane and fly around blowing people up, nice pay off for the hours of grind. In Arma3 the mode never lasts that long, it always ends not long after I join and even ones that I play from the start it's a real rush to make enough money to buy an aircraft. If you even can... Also I hate how you can't double click locations on the map to give yourself a waypoint to head for. I loved CTI in Arma2 but they kinda ruined it for me in Arma3.

I like Antistasi, but that has issues too. I wish I could tweak these modes but it seems like a big job to reverse engineer them. If I was BIS I'd have someone make a huge mode like that but more fleshed out and focused. I'd also have 5v5 dogfighting missions and stuff, tank wars, some fun CTF/deathmatch modes, etc. I can tinker with Arma3 offline for years but the multiplayer I find pretty lacking. Hope with Arma4 they'll figure it out.

Also on my wishlist, I'd like to see them focus on some indoor combat. In H&D2 there are lots of great underground factories and things, so you have to clear rooms, use grenades, be quiet and listen for guys etc.. It's all fun and interesting and all basically non-existent in Arma3. There are a few buildings but they are all very small and pretty buggy too. There's a 3 story apartment building with a rooftop and a wider office type building, but not much else. Having some good stock buildings would really help, especially if the AI knew how to navigate them. There are a lot of SWAT fans looking for a game too and I think Arma4 could be it if they had better buildings, let modders make a door jam and mirrors for walls or something and we could have a SWAT3/4 type of experience in Arma. Ideally the AI would be upgraded to hear footsteps and stuff too but that might be asking too much.

Also as well as the buildings it needs more stock characters and stuff. Mostly all it has now are troops and some surfer hobos. You can add more with mods but as standard it should at least have security guards with hand guns, hostages, terrorists, and stuff. It sounds like they are updating the editor though so hopefully they'll do this. I hope Arma4 builds upon Arma3, that could be awesome! I hope it isn't like starting from scratch.

 

[forumvisitor#451]

I tried it out of curiosity. Many problems, many crashes. Multi-player is unplayable atm. You get disconnected all the time. I wonder where those youtubers got their footage.

There are some odd choices which I wonder will be changed. Like using space screen reflections. I also wonder how will mirrors and cameras be implemented.

When it finally worked (Battleye is doing all kinds of problems and is a reason for crashes), I was hooked. It is mythical Game 2 in my mind. It's everything I wanted it to be. They listened to feedback and fixed the issues so it will soon prepare Arma 4 to annihilate any limited competition. I haven't felt this good since OFP or early Arma 3. Its OFP2 proper. Hard for me to get back to Arma 3 or even Squad.

 

[anvi]

They listened to feedback and fixed the issues

Like what though? My issue has always been that they listen to the wrong people.

 

[forumvisitor#451]

Like what though? My issue has always been that they listen to the wrong people.

From the top of my head: utilizing newer hardware and better performance, included melee, better animation system, better interaction system, better sound design, dynamic lights with dynamic shadows, wet textures and materials, AI capable of going and fighting indoors, pointing, better implementation of scopes a.k.a. "real scopes", distant shadows, better hit reactions, in-game management of addons without need to turn off the game, decorated interiors, bit more environmental destruction, zeroing visible in-game, seamless getting in and out of vehicles, vegetation moving even in distance, rivers and streams, less vanilla look of assets, better driving, proto armor implementation, bigger weapons properly obstructing environment/indoors and thus being unusable, smoke collision with objects and terrain.

Some of those are not properly implemented (destruction of furniture is in but its disabled by default, armor acts weird) yet, some are implemented poorly (like smoke collision) but what is there now is very solid. That plus no simulation bubble and it's a dream come true for long-time Arma players. It's basically everything they wanted. Yes, many features I am missing but this is again very solid foundation. I know that my former unit is going crazy over this and for example guys from RHS are already developing for it because of all the possibilities.

What wrong people did they listen to? I am not getting the feeling that they do.

It's kinda funny situation if you think about it, Arma (3) is ageless, you implement some proper features like this, which were not possible anymore for RV engine and bam, you add another 10 years to its active life. It's that simple. Distant shadows and dynamic shadows from multiple sources is already total game changer. Every feature added to the game is magnified by the fact game is totally open, so shooting from vehicles applies to players as well as AI etc.

There are still many question marks as to what will it be like with lot of people and vehicles, how will helicopters behave, how will mirrors and other be implemented. Time will tell.

 

[forumvisitor#451]

New update is in and it half fixed the MP issues. Meaning you still can get regular disconnects but I was finally able to play MP for more than hour without any issues.

What is not talked much about is the OG OFP atmosphere it has. Plus the music which is brilliant. Squad has also brilliant soundtrack btw.

It feels so smooth, both in terms of performance and gameplay. It brings tears to my eyes that we are finally at the time when Arma is no longer clunky mess. It's actually even more technically advanced than previous entries and runs better. A joy to play, makes it harder for me to go back to 3, even though Reforger has like 0,1% of content.

I was just binging through some SP content and "Hometown Defenders" mission is very solid basic defend mission in rain.

Technical problems that should be fixed: LOD of trees, screen-space reflections look great but kind of suck for this kind of game, hopefully they bring some good solution for long-distance grass.

So far it looks to be one of the best experiences I had in years. The potential with realism mods and content is insane.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Anyone played the new 1.0 update?

 

[Matador]

New update is in and it half fixed the MP issues. Meaning you still can get regular disconnects but I was finally able to play MP for more than hour without any issues.

What is not talked much about is the OG OFP atmosphere it has. Plus the music which is brilliant. Squad has also brilliant soundtrack btw.

It feels so smooth, both in terms of performance and gameplay. It brings tears to my eyes that we are finally at the time when Arma is no longer clunky mess. It's actually even more technically advanced than previous entries and runs better. A joy to play, makes it harder for me to go back to 3, even though Reforger has like 0,1% of content.

I was just binging through some SP content and "Hometown Defenders" mission is very solid basic defend mission in rain.

Technical problems that should be fixed: LOD of trees, screen-space reflections look great but kind of suck for this kind of game, hopefully they bring some good solution for long-distance grass.

So far it looks to be one of the best experiences I had in years. The potential with realism mods and content is insane.

Hi, my old ARMA3 squad mate during COVID year. Is it worth playing this now just for SP? If so can you recommend some user missions?

I had an Arma itch the other day.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

I can't believe after all these years KOTH is still the best anyone can come up with. It's so shit.

I know right. CTI was all I ever played in Arma 2. KOTH is such a shit mode.
Really though if they want those GTA bucks they can officially support City Life, that'd be a good gateway for newplayers and really pull in the RPing crowd.

But for me CTI was always what Arma stood for, it was the very core of why you'd chose to play arma over any other generic ass FPS title. That and I love the base building aspects, its like playing an RTS but all the units are real players. So much fun.

 

[Hace El Oso]

I’ve always felt that player command of AI troops in multiplayer, so each player is a squad or platoon commander, is really one of the primary strong points of ArmA. Evolution/Domination, BECTI/CTI, Antistasi.

That review of REFORGER is right about the phenomenal job they did cultivating the classic OFP atmosphere.

 

[adddeed]

Hidden & Dangerous 2 has the mouse wheel movement speed thing, glad to see it come to Arma. I was replaying H&D2 lately because I've been remaking some of the missions in Arma3. Glad to see Arma finally getting some updates, I'm excited for ArmA 4. Although as I've said for years, I think what they need the most is a good mode that unifies the players and showcases all the various strengths of the game. I can't believe after all these years KOTH is still the best anyone can come up with. It's so shit. I think BIS should hire a game designer on contract to just build a game mode with their existing tools.

H&D2 is one of my all time favorites, I’d forgotten about the mouse wheel movement in it (and very smooth animations). I wonder if there’s any workforce overlap, with both being Czech studios.

As for ArmA 3 game modes, I’d say that the user-made Antistasi guerilla campaigns and BECTI(a ‘capture the island’ variant) are the best. Both best center on playing with one or a handful of comrades each acting as squad leaders of AI troopers against the enemy.

‘Evolution’ for ArmA 1 was the first of these and hugely popular, a great persistent war campaign with varied objective types, defense management and AI commanding. Probably my favorite of them all. ArmA 4 initially being a remake of all the Flashpoint islands with something like that integrated would be real incline.

Nothing has ever topped H&D2 yet, 20 years later. Such a masterfully crafted game. I play it every few years still.

 

[forumvisitor#451]

This game received few updates and community already produced great but limited mods. Yes it is limited but quality of what is there makes it that I already can have more fun with this than in Arma 3. And I do, with community or a friend, as it should be. I already made the jump from 3 but give me couple of more functions and tweaks and I can finally have the time of my life.

 

[Matador]

This game received few updates and community already produced great but limited mods. Yes it is limited but quality of what is there makes it that I already can have more fun with this than in Arma 3. And I do, with community or a friend, as it should be. I already made the jump from 3 but give me couple of more functions and tweaks and I can finally have the time of my life.

How is right now for SP with mods and user missions?

Only time in my life I played MP Arma was with you in the COVID year.

 

[forumvisitor#451]

This game received few updates and community already produced great but limited mods. Yes it is limited but quality of what is there makes it that I already can have more fun with this than in Arma 3. And I do, with community or a friend, as it should be. I already made the jump from 3 but give me couple of more functions and tweaks and I can finally have the time of my life.

How is right now for SP with mods and user missions?

Only time in my life I played MP Arma was with you in the COVID year.

Hey man long time no see! Well it is limited, but gear is there, maps are there, mods are there, dynamic missions are there and it all works wonderfully. Thanks to all the improvements (vanilla AI goes into buildings, flanks, uses cover etc.) it plays just great and with good performance finally. I forgot to mention what is limited - scripts (missions are very basic but enjoyable enough) and vehicles outside vanilla (they work but can be buggy). Happy to do some missions with ya, just let me know.

 

[Konjad]

Apparently, a new map is coming in 2025, and these are artworks for it

 

[Alienman]

Looks like a Half-Life 2 area.

 

[Hace El Oso]

Sahrani, Chernarus and Everon are such great maps because they’re believable fictional countries in the military tradition, like Pineland. When you start from that position, you can use the map for almost anything (and people do). But making the map as a kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland from the start means it’s not going to have remotely the amount of thought and care put into it as a place where people live and events transpire.
In other words, decline.

 

[Konjad]

Is it post-apo? To me it just looks like an abandoned industrial village.

Kinda reminds me of some areas in Livonia in Arma: Contact, but this one is an island.

 

[Hace El Oso]

Is it post-apo? To me it just looks like an abandoned industrial village.

Kinda reminds me of some areas in Livonia in Arma: Contact, but this one is an island.

But half of Livonia was essentially post-apocalyptic (and the houses were all specifically made to accommodate DayZ with stupid, weird barred interior doors). Make the industrial area poor and shabby, sure, plenty of that in South Zagoria:



...but long, long abandoned? Come on, people have to eat don't they? Surely people should live in the place where the conflict takes place? I've seen enough of this 'abandoned' schtick to guess at the writing on the wall. I hope they (continue to) take the opportunity with REFORGER to go back to the place that confuses and frightens zoomers:

 

[Konjad]

If you want towns with civilians then that ship sailed long time ago, Arma 2 is the last game in the series with that. Bohemia wants to avoid any controversy with allowing performing war crimes. They even removed in some patch in Arma 3 a possibility to wear enemy's uniform to confuse them (before the patch if you wore the enemy's uniform they wouldn't notice you're not one of them from afar, only if you got close).

Best they allow are occasional male civilians in a non-combat mission in Arma 3, and in reforger there are no civilians from what I've seen (I don't have the game, I refunded after 1h of gameplay).

It's over.