ARMA III has been released

S

ScYcS

2[H]4U
Joined
Dec 11, 2004
Messages
3,960
Any first impressions? Is the inventory system easier to handle now for example? God i hated the first two parts just for the shitty inventory system and how to equip things.
 
Just launched it to see how it is. I am baffled as to how low settings and ultra results in pretty much the same FPS. EVGA precision even shows my 680's aren't doing that much work. Is this game CPU intensive? I have a 3930k, so it shouldn't be a problem.
 
im on a 3930k as well, using my gtx 460(im on 1680x1050 though as thats what my monitor is). fps is averaging 37 with most everything high, shadows low, fxaa 2x. I'd think improvements may come down for folks with newer video cards with a new nvidia update. i dont expect any improvements because the card i have is older as well as only 1gb. But, in afterburner onscreen i am showing any where from 77-92% so that part i find interesting.
 
The release is only the sandbox, right? The story mission will come as free DLC?
 
Arma has traditionally been very CPU bound, even [H] noticed that when they tired to incorperate it into their Reviews.
 
H-street said:
Arma has traditionally been very CPU bound, even [H] noticed that when they tired to incorperate it into their Reviews.
Click to expand...

If I run the game on my FX-8120, Win 8 64 parks at least 2 cores almost permanently and sometimes 4 cores. Then it turbos the others. My peak CPU usage is 28% on the 4 cores in use. It stays around the 10% - 20% range most of the time. Naturally performance is pretty bad. It's just ARMA being ARMA. I didn't expect much better performance out of it as the engine behind the game was designed for dual cores most likely.

This is an Intel or bust game.
 
bigdogchris said:
The release is only the sandbox, right? The story mission will come as free DLC?
Click to expand...

Yes, for now we'll have to get the community-designed missions, and there are plenty of them

The single player campaign will be released in 3 parts for all players.
 
SoFGR said:
go 4ghz+ or go home, 6 cores mean SHIT for this archaic engine !
http://steamcommunity.com/app/107410/discussions/0/828935672397053055/
AMD users don't even bother !
Click to expand...

Same thing would happen for me in Arma II. Coop was completely unplayable, which was the main reason I bought it for. With everything turned to low/off and at 800x600 I would still only get ten to fifteen frames per second. Granted my system is a little dated now but at the time Arma II was released it was still fairly high end. It was a complete waste of twenty-five dollars for me, not even looking into III now, nor ever probably.
 
I get a fairly consistent 45-60fps after having tweaked a few options, and my CPU is certainly nothing special (S-series Sandy Bridge). Performance suffers the worst in cities, but I've not seen unplayable frame rates.
 
wonderfield said:
I get a fairly consistent 45-60fps after having tweaked a few options, and my CPU is certainly nothing special (S-series Sandy Bridge). Performance suffers the worst in cities, but I've not seen unplayable frame rates.
Click to expand...

Everything is 50% performance on AMD systems. Whatever you get it's 1/2 for me as the game only uses 1/2 of my resources. I never complained before as it was in Beta and I give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Just giving AMD users a heads up on what to expect.
 
I've been having a blast with the beta and the player created missions, and am looking forward to playing the full version. The game gets a lot of hate, but there's not a single shooter out there that I'd rather play.

As some have pointed out, the game is extremely CPU heavy. I ran Arma 2 on my i5 2500k, 16GB RAM, 2x 6950's in Crossfire. The settings in Arma make a big difference here - so turning off post-processing and other things that eat away at your CPU cycles is important. I still only got about 20-40 FPS depending on where I was, what I was doing/looking at. It was playable, but not the way that other modern games that would run as smooth as butter on my rig (which isn't anything special). I have several friends that I play with that have similar rigs (i7 and nVidia flavor) and they have about the same framerate.

I had picked up closed-loop CPU water cooling kit though, and finally got around to installing it - then figuring "why not" I overclocked my system from the base clock speed of 3.3GHz to 4.5GHz. The results in most other games was not really noticeable, but in Arma 2 the framerate shot from 20-40 to 40-60. In most cases, it seemed to nearly double the framerate that I was getting. I didn't do a thorough test with this for Arma 3, but I would presume it would have been much the same way. When playing in missions in Arma 3, my framerate is 30-50. Very playable.

So yes, the game is very CPU heavy, and squeezing another few hundred MHz out of your CPU can make a significant difference.

Another thing which can affect performance is if you're running a mission with a lot of AI (which will put additional strain on your computer) or if you're playing online on a server that doesn't have enough resources to run the game well. I was connected to a server last night in the beta where my maximum frame rate was 20 fps because the server was running like ass. Connecting to a different server saw my framerate shoot up to 40+, and loading small mission up on my own had the same result.

So there are a lot of factors here, and there is some effort involved to get the most out of this game. But is it worth it? In my experience the answer has been a resounding "Hell yes".

Can't wait to play some wasteland on good server in the next few days - and I admire the devs to make the game so community friendly when most big games these days are going the opposite direction. Frankly, it's refreshing, and I can't wait to see where the game goes.
 
I don't think you understood what I said earlier. The engine can only see 4 cores at most and only uses on a peak 28% of a core. When your CPU performance is based on 8 cores this becomes a problem unless you just toss everything on low. I bet I can start rendering a film and have 0 performance loss while this game is running because 2 - 4 of my CPU cores are literally saying "Parked" in Task Manager. This is because my AMD FX-8120 is twiddling it's thumbs while the game is running as it has very little work being sent to it.

Now is the game fun? Yes! Would I recommend it? Yes! But I would warn AMD CPU users of the pitfalls also. Don't want them making the same mistake or expecting the engine to have become more multithreaded from ARMA II to ARMA III. If it ran like crap in DayZ it's going to do the same or worse here. Same engine, prettier visuals.
 
cageymaru said:
I don't think you understood what I said earlier. The engine can only see 4 cores at most and only uses on a peak 28% of a core. When your CPU performance is based on 8 cores this becomes a problem unless you just toss everything on low. I bet I can start rendering a film and have 0 performance loss while this game is running because 2 - 4 of my CPU cores are literally saying "Parked" in Task Manager. This is because my AMD FX-8120 is twiddling it's thumbs while the game is running as it has very little work being sent to it.

Now is the game fun? Yes! Would I recommend it? Yes! But I would warn AMD CPU users of the pitfalls also. Don't want them making the same mistake or expecting the engine to have become more multithreaded from ARMA II to ARMA III. If it ran like crap in DayZ it's going to do the same or worse here. Same engine, prettier visuals.
Click to expand...

Are you referring to what I said? I have no experience running this game on an AMD CPU and wasn't making any comments about it, but I can't tell if you're directing this at me or someone else. I was just providing my personal experiences with the game and engine, rather than responding to any particular reply here.
 
Hornet said:
Yes, for now we'll have to get the community-designed missions, and there are plenty of them

The single player campaign will be released in 3 parts for all players.
Click to expand...

DUWS is an awesome one. It's kinda like MoW/Company of Heroes.

What I've noticed is that the new map is very very unoptimized. I had to drop my settings considerably since the Stratis map.

This is a huge work in progress still. They phoned it in on a lot of the vehicles. I'm having fun with DUWS in sp, but there are issues.

BETA. said:
Just launched it to see how it is. I am baffled as to how low settings and ultra results in pretty much the same FPS. EVGA precision even shows my 680's aren't doing that much work. Is this game CPU intensive? I have a 3930k, so it shouldn't be a problem.
Click to expand...

Had the same results. Thing is, it hardly uses my CPU. So I'd say there's an issue. Last weeks DEV build had a major issue where all AI would go numb. They wouldn't shoot anyone.

When this is operating correctly, it can be a lot of fun. But you need quite a few mods to fix silly things.
 
Spidey329 said:
DUWS is an awesome one. It's kinda like MoW/Company of Heroes.

What I've noticed is that the new map is very very unoptimized. I had to drop my settings considerably since the Stratis map.

This is a huge work in progress still. They phoned it in on a lot of the vehicles. I'm having fun with DUWS in sp, but there are issues.



Had the same results. Thing is, it hardly uses my CPU. So I'd say there's an issue. Last weeks DEV build had a major issue where all AI would go numb. They wouldn't shoot anyone.

When this is operating correctly, it can be a lot of fun. But you need quite a few mods to fix silly things.
Click to expand...

Mind spelling out that acronym for me? I don't think I'm familiar with that one.
 
I've had it since late Alpha and its been a lot of fun. The inventory system is real easy to use when the first aid kits don't bug and you have to drop them to the ground before you can pick them up. Also be wary when putting stuff in vehicles. Often if you are attempting to put stuff in at the drivers location it will just go onto the ground so be sure to check if the location you are putting whatever the item is says "crate" and not "ground". It will always say "ground" but only when you're close to something does it add "crate". You can drag things between "crate" and "ground" which is nice and you can see each container in your inventory individually, which compared to Arma2 and Dayz is AWESOME!
The items have volume and each one of your 3 containers has a max volume it can hold. For example you can put 2 first aid kits and 1 magazine on your standard shirt and pants but if you have the pilot coveralls that goes up to 6-7 FAKs. But none of the shirts have enough room to hold a spare gun. You can hold 4-6 100 round mags in a combat vest but you can hold like 12 or so 30 round mags in the same type of vest. You can hold more than one rifle, I believe, even in the smallest of packs. From what I can tell neither the vest or shirts have enough room to carry an extra rifle.

I've been playing the Sa-Matra version of Wasteland and really like it. The only bad part of that is that most servers player distribution is like this:
Blue: 10
Red: 10
Ind: 30-40

I just opted into the dev beta to get the new map last night so I haven't played around with that at all but Stratis is not too bad for a map. Its pretty big and has a few towns of which every building is enterable and an airbase. But the scenery is pretty repetitive. And by towns I really just mean villages. There is no town as big as Cherno. There's almost no forest at all and the hills are steep enough to bring every vehicle but the quad bike to a crawl going up it. I just looked and I guess Altis will be the main map which is good because Stratis can get pretty boring. Altis looks huge and I can't wait to play on it more.

The scopes are good and the 2 different aiming models are a nice addition. The weapon customization is great. If I pick up an M14 I will put a scope on if I find one but I don't need to find a different gun completely. You can add suppressors, flashlights, laser sights, several different scopes... the SAW variant of the US rifle can use both 30 round mags and 100 round mags. Something that all the US guns should actually be able to do, but its better than only being able to load the one type. The belt fed weapons can only use drum mags though, which is appropriate.

I've uninstalled Arma2 after playing 3 for a while. I haven't gotten Zoombies to work but I haven't tried real hard either.

Again the inventory system is MUCH MUCH MUCH improved over Arma2 because you can actually see what you're doing
 
Performance-wise, I'm not really that impressed but I'm not super disappointed, either. On larger missions, though, CPU usage tanks and FPS is low regardless of settings. This has been a known issue since ArmA 2 (maybe even before) and there are thousands of posts about it. The developers know about it, they just either can't or won't fix it.

Overall, there seems to be a lot of disappointment with the amount of content and I have to agree with that a little. It doesn't feel content-complete, which is something that a title should be by BETA, not final release. They are supposed to release more content in free patches over time, but we'll see how long that takes.

I'm glad to have the game but I'm afraid a lot of the community won't embrace it any time soon.
 
The modders will turn A3 into pure awesome sauce. just give it a little bit of time.
 
I don't have a tremendous amount of faith in Bohemia's technical ability. Building a game engine that allows for the scale of world they do is certainly challenging (more so than you might think), and the depth of its simulations are more complex and thus more expensive than BF3 and so forth, but I question whether they've actually gotten any better at scaling that challenge in the years since OFP.

Some of the work they're doing is better, but at a very fundamental technical level, I don't think they've actually gotten better. The fact that DayZ's client/server architecture has taken around six man months of development to reach the point where it hasn't even stabilized is evidence of that.
 
Yeah, I agree. The engine has retained the same issues over multiple generations, some even since OFP that have not been addressed.

I like BIS in general, and they seem to have good community support and communication, but they also just ignore a lot of the really important issues that have been in the game series forever.
 
wonderfield said:
I don't have a tremendous amount of faith in Bohemia's technical ability. Building a game engine that allows for the scale of world they do is certainly challenging (more so than you might think), and the depth of its simulations are more complex and thus more expensive than BF3 and so forth, but I question whether they've actually gotten any better at scaling that challenge in the years since OFP.

Some of the work they're doing is better, but at a very fundamental technical level, I don't think they've actually gotten better. The fact that DayZ's client/server architecture has taken around six man months of development to reach the point where it hasn't even stabilized is evidence of that.
Click to expand...

lol... clueless..
 
Nice, wasn't expecting it to be released already. Hope they make a mod similar to dayz
 
I am a daily ARMA2 player. Closing in on 900 hours+400 hours pre-steam for around 1300 hours.

So far, im meh.
I dont care for the future stuff. Its the smallest weapon and vehicle list of any ARMA or flashpoint game by far. Only a single jet and that a port right from the last A2 DLC. Very limited weapons list hidden by accessories. But really, I cant stand not having an AK or an armalite.

I still have issues. mirrors and camera systems still flicker if I use SLi. I get crash to desktop if I fly the jet at low altitude.
My system cannot run at 1440 if I am in a high speed vehicle like the jet. looking side to side causes some kind of memory issue.

Game has potential and I have been an ARMA addict for as long as its been around, but overall I dont care for the feel of the game. I got the supporter package or whatever, so I get the dlc free, but I get the feeling they are holding lots back in hopes of making money on DLC similar to an EA release. Like others have said, modders will save this for me.
 
MavericK96 said:
Performance-wise, I'm not really that impressed but I'm not super disappointed, either. On larger missions, though, CPU usage tanks and FPS is low regardless of settings. This has been a known issue since ArmA 2 (maybe even before) and there are thousands of posts about it. The developers know about it, they just either can't or won't fix it.

Overall, there seems to be a lot of disappointment with the amount of content and I have to agree with that a little. It doesn't feel content-complete, which is something that a title should be by BETA, not final release. They are supposed to release more content in free patches over time, but we'll see how long that takes.

I'm glad to have the game but I'm afraid a lot of the community won't embrace it any time soon.
Click to expand...

I disagree, and I think it depends on which community you're referring to.

When I look back to the the predecessor of this game, almost all of the *mission* content that held any value was community-created. Basically, BI has created the engine, the terrain, the units and the basics for the gameplay - but they haven't really put all of that together and make something unique and usable out of it - but they have provided all the tools for the community to do so.

The community has provided richly in this regard - far more than one can expect from other mainstream games which don't allow user-developed content of any sort. I can easily measure the hours I've spent playing the BI provided content for Arma 2 - but I've long since lost count of the immeasurable amount of time I've spent playing with community-created content for the same game.

The same has already been true for Arma 3. There are already user-created missions out there and custom scenarios which I have spent far more time playing on than the bundled ones. The fact that they have integrated all of that with the steam workshop is icing on the cake. I can find a mission I want to play, click it, launch the game, and it's there along with all the other missions I've indicated interest in. I feel that in this sense, the community has already embraced the game.

Yes, it's a departure from the mainstream and what many people are used to, and while Arma 3 may end up reaching a broader base of mainstream gamers, I still expect that it will tailor itself far more to the niche audience that it already has. An audience which embraces the experience and customization delivered by user-generated content and will seek out such content to provide themselves with the experience they want to have.

In short, the content that most players are going to be looking for will not be coming from the devs.

As shifty said, just wait and see...
 
MavericK96 said:
Yeah, I agree. The engine has retained the same issues over multiple generations, some even since OFP that have not been addressed.

I like BIS in general, and they seem to have good community support and communication, but they also just ignore a lot of the really important issues that have been in the game series forever.
Click to expand...

This. The editor is a nuisance, command menu is a joke, and the MP server and way it handles things are terrible.

Oh, but we got worthless future tech that no sane person wanted and the worlds worst water interaction in video game history. :rolleyes:

I wish I could get my $33 back.
 
Droc said:
I am a daily ARMA2 player. Closing in on 900 hours+400 hours pre-steam for around 1300 hours.

So far, im meh.
I dont care for the future stuff. Its the smallest weapon and vehicle list of any ARMA or flashpoint game by far. Only a single jet and that a port right from the last A2 DLC. Very limited weapons list hidden by accessories. But really, I cant stand not having an AK or an armalite.
Click to expand...

I'm with you on the future tech and the available listing of armaments. However, all the assets from Arma 2 have been ported into Arma 3, and aside from a few gliches with the the perceived mass of these vehicles, I think we'll find ourselves surrounded by our familiar M1A1s, Bradleys, BTRs, BRDMs, etc. and carrying our M4's, M16s, DMRs, and AK's in fairly short order.

You're right though, the modders will make or break it, but I'm counting on the former.
 
Flogger23m said:
This. The editor is a nuisance, command menu is a joke, and the MP server and way it handles things are terrible.

Oh, but we got worthless future tech that no sane person wanted and the worlds worst water interaction in video game history. :rolleyes:

I wish I could get my $33 back.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's THAT bad, personally, but I do wish they would have just focused on fixing legacy issues from ArmA 2 all the way back to OFP rather than putting all the effort into new "future" stuff. Honestly if they just ported ArmA 2 and all the assets over to the new engine with the new mechanics, graphics, physics, and animations, I would have been happier.

As it is it feels like we have a half-baked game that is not ready to come out of the oven yet. I just hope they finish it up and we don't have to run a dozen mods to get basic functionality like we do with ArmA 2 sometimes.

FrozenLiquidity said:
However, all the assets from Arma 2 have been ported into Arma 3, and aside from a few gliches with the the perceived mass of these vehicles, I think we'll find ourselves surrounded by our familiar M1A1s, Bradleys, BTRs, BRDMs, etc. and carrying our M4's, M16s, DMRs, and AK's in fairly short order.
Click to expand...

That's not really true. Modders have already stated that a lot of the porting needs to be done on an engine-level basis and BIS is the only one that can do that, unless they decide to give modders access to more assets.
 
FrozenLiquidity said:
I'm with you on the future tech and the available listing of armaments. However, all the assets from Arma 2 have been ported into Arma 3, and aside from a few gliches with the the perceived mass of these vehicles, I think we'll find ourselves surrounded by our familiar M1A1s, Bradleys, BTRs, BRDMs, etc. and carrying our M4's, M16s, DMRs, and AK's in fairly short order.

You're right though, the modders will make or break it, but I'm counting on the former.
Click to expand...

...with the same sub par, garbage quality to right? And the extra added issues with combining a million addons together. Oh, and we'll have to type out the scripts for every damn soldier (and copy/paste some) we place because of the jokingly dated editor interface superseded circa 1999. Another 15 minutes making each mission! Oh wonderful! :rolleyes:

I put my money down on a bunch of promises and hope that they would get something right this time. They fixed movement, and I paid $33 for it. Others paid $60. As usual, BIS isn't ashamed and will continue to pump out garbage. Though I hope I keep my word and say this will be the last ArmA title I buy.
 
Yeah, cutting the 3D editor was a huge failure. They even had a partially-working one in ArmA 2 that you could hack in...all they needed to do was polish it up a little and release. Instead, it sounds like they scrapped it completely.

I guess it'll just be a case like ArmA 2 where we have to wait for 4 years for the first major expansion in order to have a workable game. *sigh*

Exactly what the open Alpha/Beta was supposed to fix...except the devs just ignored most of the community and did whatever they wanted anyway.
 
Flogger23m said:
I put my money down on a bunch of promises and hope that they would get something right this time. They fixed movement, and I paid $33 for it. Others paid $60. As usual, BIS isn't ashamed and will continue to pump out garbage. Though I hope I keep my word and say this will be the last ArmA title I buy.
Click to expand...

Due to the inability for any other game developer to produce an FPS that engages me to extent the Arma series does, I will be sticking with it until something better is produced, despite the failing points and the drawbacks of such. If that means I'm stuck playing a game that requires me to download a whole bunch of mods and wrestle with them to get them working right, then so be it. It's the only thing that will provide me with the gaming experience I'm looking for these days, and I find no enjoyment in the vast majority of the other titles that are prominent within mainstream gaming. If you do, then all the more power to you.

MavericK96 said:
That's not really true. Modders have already stated that a lot of the porting needs to be done on an engine-level basis and BIS is the only one that can do that, unless they decide to give modders access to more assets.
Click to expand...

It's not really false either - yes, perhaps not *all* assets are available, but the All-in-Arma team has already made many of the assets from previous games available within Arma 3. And yes, there are conflicts and issues that can only be resolved by BI - so it's not without problems. Whether or not these get fixed remains to be seen, but I can already play with many of the assets that came from the previous games and I fully expect this to increase as time goes on.
 
As others have discussed. A few things that they did get right were the "feel" of the weapons and movement. For the longest time Arma/OpFor seemed clunky to me. Not with this one.

The night looks sweet. Especially if you fire a rocket without NVGs on. The radio is much improved. Some effects are pretty damn sweet, others look like PS2.

There should have been some form of comma-rose for some actions. Such as full-squad move there, hold, open fire, stances, combat modes. I'd imagine it'd either be full squad or whoever you have selected at the time.

It is missing some other things for commands like a "defend this position".

The AI sometimes gets stuck in prone, so you have to toggle to them specifically and tell them to stand up. Cumbersome.

I wish there was a way to turn drive and operate as gunner at the same time (if you know a mod, let me know). Command + manual fire is annoying as you're not in direct control.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NK2qPdBsdA

Spidey329 said:
As others have discussed. A few things that they did get right were the "feel" of the weapons and movement. For the longest time Arma/OpFor seemed clunky to me. Not with this one.

The night looks sweet. Especially if you fire a rocket without NVGs on. The radio is much improved. Some effects are pretty damn sweet, others look like PS2.

There should have been some form of comma-rose for some actions. Such as full-squad move there, hold, open fire, stances, combat modes. I'd imagine it'd either be full squad or whoever you have selected at the time.

It is missing some other things for commands like a "defend this position".

The AI sometimes gets stuck in prone, so you have to toggle to them specifically and tell them to stand up. Cumbersome.

I wish there was a way to turn drive and operate as gunner at the same time (if you know a mod, let me know). Command + manual fire is annoying as you're not in direct control.
Click to expand...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWIfB-aM7h4

:)
 
Flogger23m said:
...with the same sub par, garbage quality to right? And the extra added issues with combining a million addons together. Oh, and we'll have to type out the scripts for every damn soldier (and copy/paste some) we place because of the jokingly dated editor interface superseded circa 1999. Another 15 minutes making each mission! Oh wonderful! :rolleyes:

I put my money down on a bunch of promises and hope that they would get something right this time. They fixed movement, and I paid $33 for it. Others paid $60. As usual, BIS isn't ashamed and will continue to pump out garbage. Though I hope I keep my word and say this will be the last ArmA title I buy.
Click to expand...

the early promises of easy to call arty that could blast buildings, trees and deform terrain. they posted videos of that.
 
Here's my impressions (from late beta):

Performance is the same/similar as Arma II. Mostly CPU bound, but mostly dependent on the server. I have a 7950 and i3 550 overclocked to 3.7Ghz (that I've been meaning to upgrade) and some servers are fine at 1440p, others are 15-20fps on average. It's entirely dependent on the server's draw distance in my experience. Some let you change it though.

I like the feel of it better than Arma II, but it's pretty much the same thing. The inventory is still the same style, but if you hated it before you'll still hate it. I don't mind it, but it's more like an rpg inventory than an fps one.

[Edit:] Overall, despite the graphical improvements, I feel like it's more of an expansion pack.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top